Disclaimer: All characters seen in this portion are property of the wonderful and imaginative J. K. Rowling (yes, ALL of them, but some of them are only mentioned VERY BRIEFLY, so their personalities are my own creation).
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Shadow Singer
Chapter 2
She stood, dripping, amongst strongly smelling herbs and jewel toned vials of unknown anointments. Snape, scowling, waited in the doorway leading to a back room from which golden firelight radiated. She came forward, not at all perturbed by his expression. The scowl deepened, but he let her enter. He could hear her teeth chattering somewhere from the depths of her soggy gray robes. He sighed.
He gestured at the stairs on the far side of the room. "There's a bathroom on your left," he said, not looking at her. "Arsenius, my boss, keeps a set of spare robes in case of potion spills in the cupboard. You can wear those."
"Thanks," she said and trudged up the stairs, with a longing glance toward the fire.
Snape was annoyed with himself. He couldn't fathom what had possessed him to let her come in. The lightening must have temporarily blinded his rationality. But now that she was here, what difference did it make? Arsenius probably wouldn't mind if he let some wanderer in for the night to escape the storm. God knew he'd certainly been pleased to get away from it. Lightening flickered behind the closed curtains. Thunder crashed immediately after, louder than ever before. The storm was almost directly over Diagon Alley, he realized.
From the top of the stairs, a voice chanted, crisp and musical as autumn:
"The storm will arise
And trouble the skies
This night; and, more the wonder,
The ghost from the tomb,
Affrighted shall come,
Called out by the clap of thunder."
The storm raged outside. The wind began to pick up, moaning for all that is lost and forgotten.
He heard her step down several stairs, then stop. "All right," she called, cheerfully. I'm coming down. But these robes are a hundred sizes too big, so you must promise not to laugh."
"I wouldn't dream of it," he said, sarcastically, as he turned to see her. She was astonishingly tall and becomingly slender. The black robes hung loose off her shoulders and her arms were lost in the billowing sleeves. A simple chain of gold was clasped about her bare neck. Fierce and lion colored hair hung tangled yet free, glistening with droplets of water. Her skin was pale as snow in starlight. She had a very sharp nose and chin, but otherwise an entirely pleasing face. And those eyes. . . Could they really be peridot? wondered Snape.
It was not her beauty that surprised him, but her age. She was still--- or at least appeared to be--- very young, eighteen at most. He felt he might have seen her somewhere before, but couldn't remember for sure. If he had, she'd looked quite different then. Perhaps at Hogwarts?
She grinned foolishly, tugging at the robes in a self-conscious manner.
Snape's expression did not register any of his surprise. "Ravishing," he informed her, dead-pan.
"I feel ridiculous," she said, laughing as she crossed to sit on the couch by the fire. The lightening flashed again, outlining her against the flames. The thunder groaned in agonized lament, then all was still, but for the clamor of the rain. "A night for ghosts and shadows," she remarked, and laughed again, as if over some private joke. Snape raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. The wind muttered.
She reached out her had so that it almost touched the flames "I feels as if I could never get warm again," she said and shivered. "I hung my cloak up in the shower. I cast an evaporation spell, so it should be dry by tomorrow." She looked at him, a little expectant, a little apprehensive.
Snape sighed again and sat in the chair opposite the couch. "Yes, you can stay here, but only for the night. I suggest you be gone by noon, no matter what the weather. And don't nod at me like that. I know how bards have their ways of preying on other people's hospitality," he told her.
"I. . . Well. . . Hey, how did you know I was a bard?"
He allowed her a small, mocking smile.
She fiddled with the folds of the robe and glared at the fire. "Very well, Severus, be that way." Her hair shown amber with its warmth.
"Am I supposed to ask how you knew my name?"
She gave him a patronizing look, tainted with teenage annoyance. She was still very young, not entirely mature. He was only in his mid-twenties himself, but he had grown up long ago.
She didn't stay angry long. The annoyance faded, to be replaced with that imp-like grin. She made herself more comfortable on the couch, lying on her stomach, still reaching out to the fire's heat. "Was it the poem that tipped you off?" she guessed.
"No," he replied. "I'd never heard it before."
"It's a Muggle poem. Muggles may lack a lot of things, but they have beautiful literature. Without magic, they get so creative. Magic blinds you to so much. That's why I dropped out of Hogwarts and decided to come a bard." A stray spark licked her hand. She flinched and held knuckles to her lips. "I'm not very successful," she mumbled. Not at all, in fact. I'm completely broke." She eyed him carefully.
"I'm afraid you have a rather unsympathetic audience," he advised her. "But from my understanding, most bards are extremely irresponsible when it comes to money."
She examined her singed hand and said nothing.
Snape, getting increasingly aggravated with himself every second, got up and went into the other room. Her returned with a glass vial. She did not speak as he knelt and applied some anointment to her hand. The redness calmed and her hand returned to its astonishingly white color.
He stood up. She considered him gravely. "So, is this when you ask what my name is?"
His dark eyes fixed on her, a little harshly. "Well?" he asked her.
She sprang to her feet, happy to oblige. "Narcissa Grae at your service," she said, bowing.
"Severus Snape," he said. "But then you already knew."
"Yes," she admitted. "I remember you from when I went to Hogwarts. I came when you were a sixth year. I was in you House, but you probably don't remember. You didn't associate with first years. Or hardly anyone at all. Neither did I, for that matter."
Her smile was more than a little sardonic.
Snape nodded. "I thought you were familiar," but he was surprised to hear she had been a Slytherin. She hadn't seemed like the type to him, until he'd seen that smile. It wasn't pleasant.
"I hated Hogwarts in general though." Her hands fingered the gold chain around her neck.
"So did I, at times," said Snape, thinking of Sirius Black and James Potter, his two chief rivals.
Narcissa moved to the window and drew back the curtain. Her golden reflection against the rain spatter glass reminded Snape of the shadow of someone she once had been. Her breath left small clouds against the glass. "What a night," she whispered, and he could not tell if she spoke of the storm that raged outside or a distant memory of long ago. Her laugh was bitter.
She shook herself and returned to the couch, this time catching up the pillow and hugging it in her arms. She looked exhausted. The fire snickered at her in the stillness.
Without speaking, Snape went into the other room to replace the vial. She had bizarre mood swings, he thought and wondered how old she really was. And secrets. I didn't think so at first, but she has them. Dark ones.
He wondered what Arsenius was going to say when he found a teenaged bard sleeping on the couch in the back room in the morning.
He came back quieter than he'd intended. She was still sitting on the couch, her white arm outstretched as she examined her hand. The sleeve of her robe had slipped back all the way to her shoulder and he could see dark bruises on her upper arm. Finger marks.
"Narcissa," he said.
Startled, she dropped her hand. She looked at him, her green eyes lost their sparkle and turned to cold jade. "Don't ask," she said fiercely.
"I wasn't going to," he said dryly, eyes narrowing. "But someone must have had you arm in a very tight grip."
She said nothing.
"Narcissa---" he began.
"Oh, don't say my name that way," she burst out. "You make it sound like bits of broken glass that you could cut yourself on if you didn't watch out."
He stared. "I---- what?"
"Have you ever been in love?" she demanded.
"No," he said without thinking, caught off guard.
"That's what I thought," she snapped. "Now kindly go away. Since I'm to depart tomorrow morning, I would like to get a decent night sleep first. Please leave." She flung the pillow onto the side of the couch and curled up. She eyes were angry, but he thought he saw a faint shimmer of tears.
He went upstairs to his quarters, over the shop, angrier than he had been in a long time. He'd never met anyone like her before. . . and God knew, he certainly wished he never would again.
(A/N): heh heh. She's nutters, isn't she? btw, the poem that Narcissa says can be found in Peter S. Beagle's The Folk of the Air. Considering that it's my absolute favorite book, I just had to fit it in somewhere.....