Pride, accomplishment, content. I hope I didn't butcher Hagrid's accent; I did the best with it that I could. This one's for my cat, Shithead, for attempting to provide help by walking all over my keyboard while mewling cutely. And Anya, because exams sip rat piss.
Part 11 – A Symphony of Horror
At dinner, Gwendolyn was considerably more exhausted than she had been in Potions. Her first detention had been with Professor McGonagall, and gods, was that woman's private library ever disorganised. It had surprised the Slytherin that someone so outwardly stern and put-together allowed such chaos to reign over something as prized as books, and had made that fact known despite her inclination towards respecting her elders. The ones she had no personal aversions to, anyway. In the end, she must have re-arranged and ordered at least several hundred pounds of parchment and leather, and now her shoulders ached agreeably, so much so that she was concerned for her arms – namely, whether or not they would continue to remain attached to her body when she reached for a roll.
"What's wrong with you?" Malfoy asked upon her slight wince as she lifted her juice goblet.
"McGonagall transfigured me into an octopus."
"Did she? That hypocritical cow – after the hell she raised when Crouch the Crotch..." he trailed off, his face pinking faintly at a memory he'd yet to share with Gwendolyn.
"I was being facetious," she said, ignoring the frown that next crossed the boy's pretty face. "She may as well have, though. I think my muscles have turned gelatinous."
"Ha. Glad it wasn't me."
"Happy about that decision to not hold a knife to your girlfriend's throat, then? Where is she, anyway?"
"I don't know," Malfoy shrugged. "Why do you care?"
"I don't care. But I'm not one to trust breaks in routine, especially not in the routines of my enemies."
"Healthy philosophy."
"It's yet to steer me wrong."
"I think she's in her dormitory, trying to worry me into seeking her out and begging forgiveness or some bollocks like that. She's a looker, but she's not exactly a thinker – she ought to know by now that Malfoys never beg for anything. We see something we want, and we make it ours. If we lose interest in it...well, our manor wouldn't have half as many of the dust-catchers – valuable dust-catchers, mind you – in our attic as it does if we got rid of everything we didn't like anymore."
"And are you planning on putting Pansy into your attic anytime soon?"
He shrugged again, and Gwendolyn could tell that his nonchalance was forced. For all his ego and bluster, she had a feeling he craved the pug-faced girl's attention as much as any other sort, and Pansy would never disappoint in giving him that. That subtle security was probably what had kept them together for the last two or so months.
She picked apart the roll, flicking the bits of it onto her plate, not feeling much like eating. Malfoy's words echoed in her ears, "We see something we want, and we make it ours," and she swung her gaze up to the High Table. Professor Snape's eyes were focused on some random point between the Slytherin and Ravenclaw tables, as though he found the floor entrancing. Make it ours... her head whispered at her, and her mouth curled into a tiny, mischievous smile as her mind filled with a grandiose vision – Snape, Death, and the Nosferatu, her boys, all of them rattling inside her skull, running a Caucus-race around her brain. They would all win, of course, and she would distribute their prizes accordingly before tea with the March Mr. Munch and the Mad Poet Poe.
Oh, my dear Professor...if you could but glimpse the worlds I walk in...you would be content to join me, I think. You've already begun to see, haven't you? To realise the futility of your eyelids, for when they close, everything becomes darker still. Or perhaps you don't believe it, don't believe in me. It is...fine. I'll wind you like a clock, twisted and taut, backward and forward until your face travels back to when childhood reigned in your mind's eye and you consent to meet me in the wilted garden, the one behind the moon where the sun is frozen and the stars burn themselves black with every twinkle. We'll dance in the cemetery, drink the red waters of Lunacy Lake and feast upon the sour apples that fall from the psychosis tree. They're only sweet after they've hit the ground, you know – until Death comes to sugar them out of the branches, they're all spoilt and rotten, and that would never do.
"Looks like Lupin's hit his time of the month," said Malfoy, cutting into Gwendolyn's train of thought like a metallic shrapnel shard. He had followed her gaze up to the High Table, and had taken more notice of the Dark Arts professor's absence than of the Potions master's pensive look.
"What do you mean?" Gwendolyn asked him distantly, still half-distracted as Snape took a drink from his goblet that stained his lips with a faint blush-pink.
"You don't know? I never told you? Hm. That's odd..."
"Never told me what?"
"Professor Lupin's a werewolf."
There was a nigh-audible crack as Gwendolyn's mind returned to the Slytherin table, and she widened her eyes at the blond boy sitting next to her. "What? And they let him teach here?"
"They do. Dumbledore's got a thing for mangy strays, I think – Mudbloods, a werewolf, Potter...I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he hired a banshee to give voice lessons or a hag to teach the culinary arts," he sniffed, though Gwendolyn had stopped listening to him after the second 'werewolf'. Her eyes flickered rapidly back and forth on her plate of scraps, and Malfoy smirked at her reaction with curiosity mixed with disbelief. "What? Don't tell me Lupin is the only thing that actually phases you."
"I hate dogs," she muttered.
"Well, fuck me dead," he grinned, looking almost satisfied. "You're afraid of him now, aren't you?"
"I'm not afraid of anything," she snapped at him, recovering enough from her mild shock to shoot a scowl his way. In truth, she wasn't afraid of Lupin, but now she was a hell of a lot more circumspect in her thoughts of him. For all her morbidity, and the love of darkness and death that she had possessed since she could remember, the only nightmares that had beleaguered her as a small child had been ones of wolves, be they chasing her, stalking her, prowling around the edge of her bed in the middle of the night. They had been her solitary fear, and though that had dimmed with age, she could not shake the unease that gripped her that her lone enemy of her formative years now presented himself to her in such a form as the benign, kindly professor with whom she had fifth period three days out of the week. How fitting that her one trepidation would have such an affable persona to him, while her one affection had quite the opposite.
"You are. You're terrified of the big, bad wolf," Malfoy teased. "You're scared shitless. You'll be able to do nothing but shake and piss all over yourself the next time you see him."
"I'll piss on you is what I'll do," Gwendolyn threatened him, but was unable to keep back a playful smirk.
"Ew. You're nasty, Cross."
"And you're an asshole, Malfoy."
"Fair enough." He took a bite of turkey, and then a drink of his pumpkin juice. "What'll you do if you if he's seeing over detention anytime during the next two weeks?"
"I doubt he will. From what I've read of lycanthropes, it always takes them a good week or two to get back on their feet. Dumbledore probably wouldn't put an extra workload on him after all that. ...Would he?"
"Shaking and pissing," Malfoy repeated, shaking his head resignedly. "And don't bother getting your parents to owl the school about him – there've already been hundreds of letters. Dumbledore ignores them, it seems. Stupid of him. If he had any brains at all he'd be doing everything in his power to please the parents, especially with everything happening right now. But if the crusty old sod doesn't want the confidence of a thousand-odd witches and wizards, I'm certainly not going to be the one to inform him of that mistake."
Gwendolyn shifted slightly, paying no mind to manners as she propped up her elbow on the table and her chin on the L of her right thumb and forefinger thoughtfully. Malfoy's little rant had reminded her of the book still weighting down her rucksack, waiting to be combed through. She was hesitant to return to her dormitory to start her investigation – if Pansy was indeed already there, the pug-faced girl would no doubt attempt to distract her as much as possible, and it was doubtful much would get done then. The common room was out of the question. Too many students coming and going, some of which knew her well enough to ask what she was doing, and many of which wouldn't waste the opportunity to sneer at her lack of knowledge on the subject, as they had been raised with it. Briefly, she thought about retreating back to the brilliant storage room in the mystery wing she'd found earlier that day, but that idea was rebuffed, again with the reason of distraction. Exploration of the new and fantastic Nosferatu was all well and good, but not when she had other things that needed to take precedence before it.
And then it struck her – the dungeons. The Potions classroom wasn't the only one down there, and many of the others, she was positive, weren't in use. She could work in quiet, in the cold as she preferred, with the added bonus of Professor Snape being but a few doors away. Perfect.
Gwendolyn rose from her seat and left the Great Hall, telling Malfoy she wanted to have a shower before she collapsed from exhaustion. A last look up at the still-brooding Potions master, and she was out the doors, sore muscles already tingling with anticipation at what she was sure she would find.
~*~
Karkaroff, Igor – 1987^
Killian, Evangelia S. – 1988x
Killian, Isidor T. – 1988*
Knave, Sylvania – 1986*
Krueger, Hans O. – 1986*
Lestrange, Claude F. – 1987*
Lestrange, Corinne L. – 1987*
Levinskaya, Svetlana – 1988*
Lilikov, Agniezca – 1987^
Lilikov, Vladimir – 1987^
Lore, Klaus – 1986x
Gwendolyn skimmed down the extensive list – every witch and wizard ever accused of being in league with the Dark Lord, each name with the year of its owner's trial and small symbols of the outcomes – signs that they had been acquitted or pardoned, had struck a deal of some sort with the Ministry, were dead, or imprisoned in Azkaban. Malfoy, Lucius V. and Narcissa L. were both marked down as the first, much to Gwendolyn's lack of surprise. Nott, Phillip N. and Clarice Y. were also labelled as such.
There were many other familiar names – Theodore and Caroline Montague, Marius and Rose Parkinson, Pervis and Francesca Pucey....All of these, she filed away in her memory, and stopped only when she found what she was looking for. There it was, written in precise black letters in between Sinistra, Cassius A. (a relative of the Astronomy professor's, Gwendolyn was sure, though next to his name was an 'X' – whomever he might have been, he was dead now) and Tombs, Basilius D.: Snape, Severus A. – 1986.
She read over it again and again, grinding the information into her brain, if just to be completely sure her eyes weren't playing tricks on her. So it was true; the Potions master was indeed a Death Eater.
Gwendolyn's hands trembled slightly, and she sat back in her chair, staring blankly at the dark wall across from her. Her suspicions had been confirmed, and the numb of accomplishment was beginning to sink in. Her breath fogged in the bitter cold air. She watched it swirl, then quickly dissipate, then swirl again like a series of miniature storm clouds, and smiled. The Potions master was a Death Eater. What a delightful little quirk.
Turning back to the book, she flipped it back to the table of contents, where the Dark Mark stared up at her from above the list of records, she located the year of his trial, and turned the pages.
~*~
Not far from where she studied, Gwendolyn's subject of interest stared down at his left forearm, at the ugly red mark marring the pallid flesh there. He ran over it with a soapy washrag roughly, knowing that it would never come clean no matter how hard he scrubbed at it – the burn was deep, searing through layers of muscle and sinew, and probably bone as well. Yes. When he died, and his body decomposed into a casket of rot, his skeleton would still bear this particular stain, this symbol that he had been damned long before he had been judged. The thought didn't bother him. He had known the risks and consequences of his actions those twenty years ago, and age had not changed that, had not led him into regret or remorse. Such futile emotions, so petty, so useless.
He moved the washrag up to scour his upper arm and shoulder, then around his neck and down along his other arm in the same methodical manner in which he approached most everything in life. His hair fell into his face, dripping water down his front. Though it had been recently drawn, his bath had cooled quickly in the icy dungeon air, and he paid no mind to the slight discomfort of it. It was somewhat refreshing, actually – the sun had set hours ago, and with the moon's rising had come the persistent craving that he had come to expect by now. He was almost used to it. Almost.
Severus was wary of sleep tonight. Since the wretched realisation that that early morning had delivered to him, he had been dreading unconsciousness, for he now held no illusions as to the nature of his dreams, and knew that this time, the bravura body that visited his mind every night would have a face, and that it would be one that he didn't care to see.
Gwendolyn Cross. So pretty a name for so vile a creature, composed of sin itself, so very loathsome and so very tempting. Yet another ill-starred condemnation thrust in his face like so many others before it. He had wondered more than once what the hell it was about this...this child that had absorbed every fabric of his subconscious, why his mind had chosen her as the vessel upon which he was to enact his more insidious inclinations, and every time, he could not grasp an answer, no matter how ardently he groped for one. He felt as though he had been chosen for something about which he had no knowledge, and it unnerved him. It didn't take a manipulative genius to decipher that she appeared to have chosen him as much as he had her, though whether her predicament was anything akin to his, he did not know.
Her words had been haunting him all day, that quiet murmur as though she'd felt he would hear her even if she hadn't spoken aloud. "Because I find you to be a creature of terrible beauty." Like him, she did not possess the flaw of needing to raise her voice in order to be heard. It was an inherently Slytherin trait – where others had to work to achieve such a level of instinctual respect, the serpents were born with the sort of pride that made such a labour needless. Generations of the ambitious and cunning had built most of them decent fortunes. Combined, they could very well own a large chunk of the earth, and that wisdom was not lost on any of them. As a collective, they had come quite close to ruling the immediate world many times, and they had never forgotten that, and still walked individually as though they had succeeded in doing so hundreds of years ago.
She didn't walk like them, not exactly. The pride was there, and the cold, but not the lack of emotion. As impassive as she could school her face to be, there was a touch of expressiveness there that she would never be rid of. She was a dancer – of that much Severus was certain. Anyone could learn the steps he'd witnessed her execute with the Baron, and with him in dreams, but her movements had been far more liquid than that of a mere aristocrat exercising the steps they had been trained to know since childhood, and far more expressive. She was a performer, an artist, and when she danced, she was free, and it was a glorious sight to behold.
He contemplated the blending of that freedom with his own – pain – within his dreams. Dance and hurt, the aching grace they spun between them like that of an intricate spider's web. Beauty and brutality. Here, in his craving-haze of heat and tired, blurry mind, it was all too easy for him to forget his position, her age. All too easy to want.
And you do want, he told himself. You want so wholly it's maddening. Is it really such a dreadful thing to allow your sanity to fold?
"Yes..." he hissed aloud.
Why is that, do you think? Desire is ambition, and ambition is no weakness, not to you. It is an attribute to be nurtured, nourished, fed. Why not feed this desire?
"It is depraved. The bittersweet musings of flesh alone."
And yet it was spawned from your mind, in dreams. The first desire was not one of flesh – it was one of intellect, of thought. You paid no mind to her body until you realised the nature of your nightly mental encounters. This want is not beyond her – you know quite well she desires what you do.
"She is sixteen years old! She's scarcely more than a child – she has no idea what she wants, and I will not be party to whatever fleeting infatuation with me that she may possess! I will not indulge something as wanton as a schoolgirl's crush. It is beneath me."
You fear it, don't you? You fear what she is doing to you. You fear her.
"No..." he said slowly, "...no, not fear. Detestation. Loathing. Hate. Incomprehensible abhorrence of a little brat who knows not who she is dealing with. The ignorance surrounding this...quandary...disgusts me. She disgusts me, for playing these ill-considered games, and I disgust myself for having joined her in their execution. There is no fear here; only revulsion."
You're an excellent liar, Severus. Pity you were always too logical to be able to lie to yourself.
He rinsed the soap from his skin, pulled the plug from the drain and rose, slipping into his dressing gown. His feet left small puddles of water on the stone floor as he strode into his bedchamber, pushing his still-damp hair out of his face and heading for the narrow writing desk that rested between two bookcases. What he was searching for was easily located in the desk's small drawer, and he watched it intently for a few moments before retrieving his wand from on top of the liquor cabinet and sparking a fire in the fireplace. On the cover of the book, little Alice broke away from her tea party with the Mad Hatter and the March Hair to blow him a kiss.
He tossed the book into the flames without a second thought.
~*~
Gwendolyn had been disappointed to find that, while there were pages upon pages of the full criminal accounts of others, there had been precious little information on the trial of Severus Snape – only that he had been given a full pardon for his activities as a Death Eater for 'reasons unfit to be disclosed'. Both the Notts and the Malfoys, she'd learned, had claimed to be under the Imperious Curse for the years leading up to Lord Voldemort's downfall, and had returned to the Light side's fold almost immediately following the Dark Lord's ruin. Those not so quick to denounce their master, like the Lestranges and the Killians, were now either dead or entombed in Azkaban, or had recently been moved to St. Mungo's.
The list of victims had been far longer than the list of the accused. The Boneses, the McKinnons, the Longbottoms (Gwendolyn had been pleasantly surprised at that little piece of knowledge), the Prewetts, and finally the Potters, to name but a handful. And the confessions, some fearful, like Sylvania Knave, who begged in vain for Bartemius Crouch to have mercy; some madly proud, like Corinne Lestrange, who was passionate in her faith in Lord Voldemort. "The Dark Lord will rise again, Crouch!" the book read, and Gwendolyn could nearly hear the woman's voice screaming in her head. "Throw us into Azkaban; we will wait! He will rise again and will come for us, he will reward us beyond any of his other supporters! We alone were faithful! We alone tried to find him!" It sent a shiver up her spine, and she decided she liked Mrs. Corinne L. Lestrange.
Gwendolyn shut the book and shoved it back into her rucksack. She wasn't certain of the time, but she knew that it was late – quite possibly early morning. Sleep was not in the cards tonight, but she could drop off the book in her dormitory, wash up and change into a clean set of robes before slipping out again to meet with the Bloody Baron in the Great Hall.
She was already halfway down the corridor that would lead her to the Slytherin common room when something caught her attention – voices, heated ones, coming from a room just off to her left. They sounded young, far too young to be professors, and Gwendolyn took the lack of risk as an invitation to spoil her curiosity. The large wooden door was closed, but the gap between its bottom and the floor was at least an inch, and a dim yellow light like that of a wand's streamed through the crack. Her own wand was unlit, and it was doubtful that they would notice the shadows of her feet if she stepped close to listen.
Their words were muffled, and she only managed to understand a few – 'don't care'; 'kill me'; 'fuck you' – one male, one female, the former exasperated, and the latter near-tears. It wasn't until one of them threw something of a tantrum-like outburst that Gwendolyn realised just who was behind that door at such an hour. "If you like her so much then why don't you just go fuck her?! And hey, then you can take turns slitting each other's throats!" It seemed as though Pansy and Malfoy were finally having their little confrontation.
"I don't want to fuck her!" Malfoy's voice shouted. "She's just a friend – why are you so damn jealous of her?"
"Because if I held a knife to her throat, you'd actually bat an eyelash! You don't care about me – as long as you've got your precious Gwendolyn to talk to, you don't give a flying fuck about me unless we are, indeed, fucking at the time!"
"You're full of shit."
"No, Draco, you're full of shit! Everything that leaves your mouth is shit, and I put up with it! I take your foul tongue in my mouth and I smile at the taste of it, and you never even notice!"
"If you hate it all so much, then why the fuck are you still with me?"
"Who else is going to be?! Cross? You know very well she wouldn't stand for the chauvinistic crap you dish out. I mean, for fuck's sake, you think I don't know what people say about us? About me for looking like I enjoy the way you treat me? I'm your ornament, Draco; it's what I was brought up to be, and I'm damn good at it. I make you look good, and I make sure you feel good. I'm an asset to your image, and if you had half-a-mind you would realise it and stop turning it into a fucking joke before you make yourself look like a fool."
Malfoy was silent for a few minutes, and the only sounds resonating through the door were Pansy's occasional sniffles. Gwendolyn found herself mildly surprised that the pug-faced girl had so freely admitted to being a trophy girlfriend. Less so that she wasn't completely satisfied with the relationship, and made that fact known. Let the record show that today marks a turning point in the social politics of Slytherin House – Pansy Parkinson actually showed some depth, and Draco Malfoy has yet to scold her for it.
Gwendolyn hadn't been wrong about Malfoy, either – judging from the lack of a female storming from the room at his incessant berating, he wasn't all that eager to give Pansy up. They complimented each other well in that respect: Each serving the other's needs, albeit unintentionally in his case. It could have almost passed for romantic. After all, there are many contexts to meant-to-be. Some are just more practical than others. He was raised to wear a woman as though she were a decoration, and she was born to act as such.
"...all right," Malfoy spoke again, finally. "A negotiation, then. I'll take you more seriously, and you stop throwing jealous fits about Gwendolyn." The mentioned girl wanted to tell him how proud Lucius would be of him at that moment. Cold, shrewd business skills applied to his personal life. It was the sort of trait his father would be appreciative of, and Malfoy would be pleased to hear it. As it was, she kept quiet, and waited for Pansy's reply.
After a short while, there was a soft, "Okay...deal," and Gwendolyn bit back a sigh. Practical romanticism aside, she really didn't want more of the Parkinson girl hanging around than absolutely necessary. But who knew? Perhaps Malfoy's words had actually sunken in and she would be nearly tolerable. Perhaps...though Gwendolyn doubted it.
~*~
A blizzard had kicked up by lunchtime, and by the end of school hours, most could be found indoors, huddled near fireplaces with books and the companionship of friends. Such was not the case for Gwendolyn, who was to serve her second detention with Hagrid, the gamekeeper, which meant crossing the snow-riddled grounds to the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where his hut was located. Filch led the way by the light of a lantern, for the storm had brought darkness with it much more quickly than usual. She followed him a few paces behind, and could still hear his sour grumblings despite the howling winds. Snowflakes whipped at her face and stung her skin, and her eyelashes nearly froze together in the short time it took to walk from the castle to the humble yet cosy-looking house at the forest's perimeter.
Filch dropped her off with a barked "Detention" at Hagrid, who ushered her inside, mumbling something about who would be thick-skulled enough to assign a student to a detention with him in such ghastly weather.
"Professor Snape," Gwendolyn said softly, and the half-giant squinted at her from beneath knitted, bushy eyebrows.
"What?"
"You were wondering who had assigned me my detention; it was Professor Snape."
"That so? One o' his own students? S'not like him...man hasn' bin actin' himself lately..."
"Have you known him long?" she asked.
"Since he was a student here. Would yeh fancy a cuppa tea, warm yeh up a bit?"
"Please, that would be lovely."
"Go on, then, have a seat." He gestured to one of the massive chairs stationed at an equally massive table, and Gwendolyn sat, her toes barely skimming the floor. She took a moment to survey her surroundings. Everything in the hut had been enlarged in size – the cupboards, table and chairs, even the dirty plates and cups stacked in the basic in the kitchen area of the cabin were at least twice what their bulk should have been. She was just looking over the mammoth bed resting at the centre of one wall (and arching a brow at the indecency of having such a piece of furniture visible while one is entertaining company, detention or none), when he thumped back over with a clay teapot in one hand, two large cups in the other.
"Do yeh take sugar?"
"Yes, thank you."
He dropped in two great lumps, and sat down in the seat next to her to attend to his own cup.
"There's not much fer us ter be doin', what with the weather an' all. Night like this, yeh don' wanna be wanderin' through the forest, no matter how bad Professor Sprout's bin needin' Mooncalf dung for them plants o' hers. S'hard ter see in the snow, anyway. Blends righ' in, it does. But I doubt yeh'll be wantin' ter hear about that..."
Gwendolyn's mouth twitched in what could pass for a polite smile, and she took a sip of her tea. She'd had better.
There was an odd sort of whining sound from beneath the table, and she frowned. Hagrid grinned pleasantly through his wiry beard.
"Oh, that's jus' Fang, me dog." Oh, bloody perfect, that, Gwendolyn mentally scoffed, bringing her legs around to the side of the chair and away from the invisible beast. "Do yeh want me ter call him out? He's jus' shy 'round strangers, is all."
"No – that's quite all right, thank you."
The gamekeeper shrugged and reached beneath the table, Gwendolyn guessed to pat the thing. She looked around for something to distract her from the canine's presence, and, spotting a recent copy of the Daily Prophet on the table, she pulled it over and read the headline: "Minister of Magic Orders More Prisoners Relocated." The articles author was a woman by the name of Raven Dormouse, and the picture directly beneath the heading was one of two Aurors leading an unrecognisable man in a straightjacket and muzzle into what could best be described as an iron cage. The caption beneath it told her that the man was none other Claude F. Lestrange, and Azkaban didn't appear to have agreed with him. The bottom half of his face was not visible, but his eyes were two glittering marbles in deep, grey-rimmed sockets, and his tall frame, which might have once been intimidating, was painfully thin.
"He looks as though he wishes to scream, but has forgotten how," she murmured, frowning at the picture as though it were a riddle. Hagrid glanced over at what she was reading, and grunted in an acknowledging sort of way.
"Lestrange," he muttered, as though the word brought a putrid taste to his tongue. "He never was one for talkin' much. His wife always had a bit more ter say."
Gwendolyn raised her eyes to meet the gamekeeper's, and she narrowed them slightly. "Did you know them as well?"
His pink, round face grew darker, more serious. "Not by choice. Put that away; yeh don' wanna be readin' about stuff like that."
"On the contrary. I find it all rather fascinating."
"There was nothin' fascinatin' about it," he said, his tone grave. "Them were terrible times, terrible things happenin'. Yeh got no business diggin' around in ugly business like that."
"I disagree. There's no better teacher than history if one wishes to learn from the mistakes of the past. To ignore it simply because it's unpleasant will only give it leave to repeat itself." She paused, then added, "As is evidenced by the current goings-on in our world."
Hagrid squinted at her, trying to figure out what was going on behind those round, impassive eyes that stared back at his so openly. She supposed he had concluded his search fairly unsuccessful, for he averted his gaze and cleared his throat before taking a gulp of his tea. Gwendolyn, however, was not so eager to let the subject drop.
"How long have you been working here, Mr. Hagrid?"
"Oh...I'd say 'round fifty years or so. Yeah, that sounds 'bout right."
"Fifty years..." She did the math quickly in her head, and arched an eyebrow. "So you would have known – or at least known of – almost every witch and wizard who was either accused of being or proved to be an accomplice of Lord Voldemort's. Excluding those who went to Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, of course."
He had tensed at her use of the Dark Lord's name, and his frown deepened.
"What are you gettin' at, girl?" he asked slowly, apprehensively.
"Well, you would have seen them all when they were children, wouldn't you? You watched them all grow up; it must feel strange to know what was lurking in the Hogwarts halls all that time. Does it worry you still, that something foreboding might still be breeding underneath your very nose? All the professors at this school, with all they must have seen over the years, and yet none of them seem overtly concerned with the future occupations of their pupils. And if they are, I've certainly never seen them show it."
He looked mildly confused, and his voice was gruff and somewhat indignant when he spoke. "What's yer point?"
"I've already made it," she said shortly, and made no move to make it again. If his grasp of the English language wasn't sufficient enough for him to follow a simple conversation – one where he was the topic, no less – then speaking with him had been a worthless venture. She had very little patience for those of very little brain, and her tolerance was decidedly lacking as well. "Are you going to put me to work at all, or is this little tea party meant to be my punishment?"
If he caught the thinly veiled insult, he gave no outward indication of it. From the way the smile reached his beetle-black eyes (which were nowhere near as captivating as Professor Snape's, Gwendolyn decided), he probably thought she had been making a joke. "I can't see what work there is ter give yeh. This storm doesn't look like it's gonna be lettin' up anytime soon. Figured I'd keep yeh out here long enough ter satisfy Filch – he'd accuse yeh of skippin' out on yer detention if he caught yeh back at the castle too soon."
"Thank you for your concern, but I'd much rather return to my dormitory."
"Are yeh sure? It's awful cold out there, can't see much, neither."
"I'm positive. I've got Arithmancy homework; I've already fallen behind in that class, and I don't want to make a habit of that." It wasn't a total lie – her tardiness in Vector's class had set her back a good portion of a lesson, though she probably wouldn't actually study up on it until the night before their next test.
"Well...all righ'. Can yeh make it back ter the castle on yer own?"
"I shouldn't have any trouble with it. Good evening, Mr. Hagrid." She rose quickly, and Fang's small whimper from beneath the table only made her quicken her pace. She was halfway out the door when the gamekeeper's "Evenin'" reached her ears.
A gust of wind and snow pushed against her as she took out her wand. "Point me," she told it, and it immediately swivelled to the North. The hut was to the east of the school; all she had to do was head west.
She was back at the castle within ten minutes, in the Slytherin common room in twenty, and in her dormitory in twenty-one, though Arithmancy homework was nowhere on her agenda. Blaise was the only other one in the dorm, on her bed, painting her fingernails a deep blue. She made no move to greet other girl's presence other than a slight glance, which Gwendolyn didn't notice, as she was too busy changing. She pulled her school robes back on over her thick, pale tights and black leotard, grabbed her toe-shoes from her trunk and stuffed them in her pocket, and padded up once more to the common room.
"Hey, Cross, where're you headed?" Montague called to her, pausing his chess game with Nott.
"For a walk."
"But you don't—" Too late – she was already out the door. "—have any shoes on." He looked questioningly at Nott, who only shrugged and made his move, taking Montague's bishop.
It hadn't taken long to clear a decent-sized space in the storage room. Most everything was broken in some way or another, so she hadn't had to worry about keeping things neat and unblemished. The dusty floor turned the feet of her tights black, and her toe-shoes probably wouldn't fare too well, either, though she didn't much care. They could always be cleaned, and besides, she quite liked worn things. Scuffs and wear and tear gave things character.
She shed her robes, laced on her toe- shoes, and stretched during her Nosferatu's rather light beginnings, bending and twisting her muscles against their burning protestations until they performed the manoeuvres they had slid so easily into not five years previous. A stack of broken chairs provided a makeshift barre, and as the music picked up, so did her movements. Basic at first – tendus, glissés, fondus and ronds de jambe à terre – and then more complex – entrechats, pirouettes, splits and leaps with feather-light falls. Her gaze fell upon the sputtering pictures flashing against the wall, upon the tragic magnificence of the strangely fanged man there – Count Orlok, she'd learned his name was – and her mind ripped in a fissure of thoughts of her darling Severus Snape. She envisioned him there with her, the sole audience member in a private recital. She spun thrice on pointe, her neck twisting rapidly around to follow her body, and she could picture the man on the wall having a very different visage, one with eyes of ink and hair of raven plumes.
She danced through Orlok's first taste of Hutter's blood, and through the vampire's obsession with the man's wife, Ellen, who had Gwendolyn's own face. Through Orlok's journey about the ship of death, where he saw fit to leave its crewmembers the parting give of plague, and it was she who indulged the vampire's craving until the first crow of the cock, and it was he for and with whom she died at dawn's first light.
She danced well past the end of the film, when the wall depicted nothing but a blinking white light and the only sound in the room was the rickety-racket of the machine that continued to whirl, and the rasping sighs of her own breath, strained from exertion. In her head, the music still played, and her body was caught in its cyclone, unable to stop though her leotard was drenched with sweat and her muscles were sore and shaking and her heart nearly broke her ribs with the ferocity with which it was beating. The violins turned to screams, and the cellos to sobs, and it wasn't until both had gone hoarse that she at last collapsed on the dirty floor, and could not bring herself to move for quite some time.
Her ankles were swollen around the ribbons of her toe-shoes, and when she gingerly pulled them off she was not surprised to find that her feet were bleeding, staining her tights as though she had dipped her toes in pools of vermilion. The pain of it was sweet.
She rose and turned off the noisy contraption, shrugged back into her school robes and nestled her toe-shoes once again in her pocket. The blizzard had passed – she wasn't sure how long she had been there, but obviously it had been hours – and the room was illuminated in silvery-blue moonlight. Gwendolyn bade it farewell and stepped out into the corridor, treading lightly so as not to leave any bloody footprints that would betray her presence there. Forcing her feet to obey her will to walk, she made her way back down to the dungeons.
~*~
"Two hundred and thirty-seven points thus far – we're in the lead."
"We're always in the lead until Potter's annual end of the year display of stupidity."
"Point." Professor Sinistra leaned against Snape's desk, thumbing through the Slytherin House book in which they kept track of their students – detentions, points won and lost, everything was well-documented through the grace of an enchanted quill, and gone over once a month by the two alumni of the serpent House. "Still, perhaps we'll get lucky this year."
"We're Slytherins, Selene. The only luck that dares to touch us is that which we make ourselves."
Sinistra glanced back at him, her eyes glittering strangely. "I know." He glared up at her in an expression of finality; she made no attempt to censure the hint, and stood. "I'd best be leaving, then. I've a class to teach in an hour – Gryffindor and Hufflepuff second-years. They're monsters."
"Quite," was his clipped reply as he, too, rose and made to follow her out of the room. "I myself must have a discussion with the Baron."
"Oh? Whatever for?"
"Peeves. He's been behaving as more of a nuisance than usual. Filch is dangerously close to an aneurysm. I told him I would...intervene on his behalf."
"How very gracious of you," the Astronomy professor scoffed, and Severus sneered at her sarcasm as they headed down the hall. She noticed the pale, black-clad figure swaying twenty feet in front of them before he did, though once he caught sight of it, he knew precisely who it was. "Who is—" Sinistra started. He cut her off.
"Cross. What are you doing out of bed?" he demanded, agitation making his skin crawl. Agitation. Is that what they're calling it these days? He pushed the thought away.
"I lost track of time," the girl murmured, leaning with one arm braced against the wall as though she were taking a rest from a lengthy journey. "Have you seen it? The track of time?"
He scowled deeply at her as he and the Astronomy professor approached her. "What nonsense are you talking about?"
She didn't answer, and beside him, Sinistra let out a small gasp. "Bloody hell, girl, what happened to your feet?"
Severus followed her gaze down to the bottom of his student's robes. Peeking out were stocking-covered feet, the toes of which were stained brown with dried blood, and glossy red with fresh, and he couldn't help but imagine taking a brush and dipping it into the crimson to paint brilliant rings around knee-socks.
"I was dancing," the girl said, and offered no further explanation.
"Why didn't you go to the hospital wing to have your feet taken care of?" Severus barked, and Sinistra frowned at him as she knelt in front of the student and gently took the injured left foot in her hands to examine it more closely.
"The hospital wing's closed at this hour, Severus."
"That's no excuse for her to be tracking blood throughout the corridors. She could have cleaned herself up in a washroom."
"I didn't track blood," Cross protested. The two teachers ignored her.
"Oh, yes, tap water and paper towels. The finest in medical care." The Astronomy professor rolled her eyes and dropped the foot she had hold of. "Surely you have something for her – a wound-cleaning potion, or at least a pain-numbing one? Of course you do," she answered for him, and stood again, turning to Gwendolyn. "I really must get back to my tower before my class does. Professor Snape will take care of your feet. Won't you, Professor?"
Severus ground his teeth, his most terrifying scowl sliding over his features. Sinistra seemed unaffected by it and flashed him a brilliant grin before carrying on her way. He watched her go until she round the corner that would take her up to the ground floor of the castle before turning back to the Cross girl, who stared widely up at him, a tiny smile playing at the corners of her mouth that he wanted to slap off her face.
"Come on," he spat, spinning on his heel and starting for the Potions classroom. Once there, he pulled one of the tables over to the basin and ordered her sit on it before ducking back out of the room again to retrieve the necessary items from his office.
His hands moved erratically as he reached for this and that – bandages, a washrag, the cleaning and numbing potions he always kept on-hand in case of any mishaps during class time. Get a grip on yourself, for fuck's sake! his mind commanded of his body. She's sixteen years old, she's your student, and she is injured. It – ends – there. He shut his eyes and took a deep, composing breath before returning to the classroom, shoving the door open so hard that it slammed shut of its own volition behind him. She was right where he'd left her, sitting on the table with her knees tucked to her chest and her ankles crossed. She'd removed her school robes, and was now in nothing more than what could have passed as a swimsuit over thick dancing tights.
"Put your feet in the basin," he instructed, setting the supplies down next to her. She complied without a word.
Severus moved around to the side of the basin and took her left foot in his hand, showing none of the care with it that Sinistra had. He wasn't about to ask her to remove the tights which covered the wounds, as she would have had to remove her leotard as well to do so – an uninvited notion that slunk into his head regardless.
"They're ruined anyway," he muttered, and tore them off from the ankle on down, tossing the bloodied fabric into the rubbish bin. Her toes were in quite a state – the nails there were apparently the cause of the bleeding. Some had been ripped back, others dug into the surrounding skin far too deeply, and the proximate flesh was swollen and purpled with bruises.
He turned on the taps, and icy water began to flow out of the stone gargoyle's mouth. He dampened the washrag, began to wipe her foot clean and, against his better judgement, did so gently. She flinched slightly, and he smirked, pressing down harder, making it hurt more, stopping when the next muted sound she made wasn't one of pain at all. He paused, looked at her. Her face was as impassive as ever, corpse-like eyes gazing glassily into his.
He continued, ripping the material from her right foot just as easily as her left, cleaning both before pouring a small amount of the antiseptic potion over each and dabbing at the excess with a short length of gauze. He made to apply the numbing potion, but stopped him by placing a hand on his arm and shaking her head. His eyes narrowed at her, but he set the potion aside and began to wrap her feet expertly in bandages, binding them tighter than necessary.
When he had finished, he gripped the edge of the basin, forcing his fingers to keep a loose hold. "You're dismissed," he muttered darkly. The girl did not move, and he turned to glare at her. "I said you are dismissed."
"Did it hurt?"
His upper lip curled back in distaste at her voice. "Did what hurt?"
She moved quickly, uncharacteristically so, sliding her hand up his left wrist, along his forearm. "This." Her fingers stung cold against his mark, and he jerked back, his eyes suddenly quite wild with questions and outrage.
"That," he hissed dangerously, "is none of your concern." He didn't ask her how she knew – she was a manipulative little thing, and he would put nothing past her.
"Can I see it?"
Perhaps it was the tone of the request that got to him, that child-like lilt that brought back the image of little Alice blowing him a kiss, and the way she'd writhed in the fire he'd abandoned her to. Something in his mind broke, and without thinking Severus seized the Cross girl by her wrist and yanked her down from the table, threw her violently against the wall with such force that the air gasped free from her lungs. Her knees buckled, and he held her standing with a hand clasped 'round her throat that gave her just enough leave to breathe. He moved his face gravely close to hers; he could feel her hot breath on his cheek, and sneered in disgust.
"Whatever little games you're playing, Miss Cross," he growled, his voice a mixture of hissing silk and grating gravel, "I advise you to put an end to them very, very quickly. You think you want this, you think you want pain?" He pressed the heel of his boot into her toes, twisting it, grinding it against the bruises and coercing fresh blood into flowing. Her expression didn't falter, and the only indication that she'd felt anything was a slight nod of her head. "You're a little girl, an insipid, ignorant little girl who knows nothing of what she wants. You don't know pain. You don't know desire. You can't even begin to understand what those things are, what they entail. You, Miss Cross, and your inanity, make me sick."
She continued to hold his gaze through half-lidded eyes, and it was he who first broke away, shoving her aside. She staggered twice and glared up at him, and he was unprepared for her assault when she threw herself back at him, twisting her hands in his robes and pulling him down to crush her mouth against his in a brutal kiss. Her tongue snaked along his, and through the sensory contrasts of its heat and the chill of her lips, realisation blindsided him. This was not their first kiss.
His mind struggled to absorb and repel the information simultaneously, and he roughly pushed her back. She hit the desk with a small grunt, and if looks could kill Severus had no doubt that he would have been dead where he stood, and only slightly more that that would stop her from what she wished to do to him. They were both statue-still, and both breathing heavily. He fought back a shiver at the sudden absence of the fever of addiction that she had stolen from him, could still feel the imprints of her hands on his chest, and did the only thing that he could think of to do, the only thing that drove its way through the fog of wanting to kiss her again....
He fled.