Disclaimer:

It's JKR's world, I just live in it.

Sorry it's been so long everyone — I've had an awful cold. More on aCE soon too.

This, btw, is not as graphic as the party scenes in Ghosts, BUT, it might be vaguely upsetting in a different vein.

Thanks to all as ever, but especially Serpentfeuer, for seeing Severus' life as his own, Tsarina, for having him over for pie (he reports being quite fond of lemon, btw, as long as it's not too sweet), and Kat for being perfectly okay with the fact that I'm completely damn bonkers.

And now, back to the Malfoy Estate —

-------

"You know," Allosia said, laughing, "one of these days you're going to have to tell me what you're up to."

Draco let out a low chuckle, making him for a change, seem like the adult he now was. "Is it that hard to figure out?"

"Yes. If you merely wanted me, you'd play this differently."

"Maybe I want your husband."

Allosia let out a bark of laughter in response. "Unlikely. You're not that much like your father."

"You're right, of course."

"Of course."

"I didn't know you were so possessive," Lucius drawled.

"I try to keep it under control. I had thought our little Cruciatus experience had made it clear to you just how supreme an effort that is."

"No. Not precisely. It was an excellent display of your perversions however."

Snape remembered his boot on Lucius' throat, and couldn't help but chuckle. There wasn't only no denying it; there was no point in it.

"You're lucky Allosia enjoys that."

"Why, would you like a show?" he spat, before it occurred to him that was one of the worst ideas he had put in the older Malfoy's head in quite a while.

"Well, the opening act has been oh so amusing," he said calmly, turning his palms up to the ceiling, the fallen angel, unable to help himself, "and there is so much useful beauty downstairs."

Snape snorted. Lucius played with words endlessly, often without purpose; it was one of the few things they had in common, other than their endless, and he hated to admit it, but almost comfortable, animosity.

"When can I learn to fly?" Gabriel asked.

"Even my students who learn before they come to Hogwarts generally wait until nine or ten."

"I don't want to wait."

"I didn't figure you would," Hooch muttered. Willful child.

"Will you tell my parents I should learn now?"

"You're awfully young, Gabriel, I don't know if we could find a broomstick to suit you."

"They're both good flyers, I can figure it out."

"It takes a lot of magic and physical ability Gabriel. You really are awfully young."

"Father wants me to start classes early."

"Really? Well, that figures. When?"

"As soon as possible, I think. Mum doesn't want it though."

"She wants you to have time to be a kid."

"But I already live at the school, it's silly not to have class."

"All your schoolmates would be so much older."

"Well, I'll wait a few years," Gabriel proclaimed, as if it were obvious.

Hana Hooch made a mental note to ask if Snape had been so calmly precocious a child. "You have everything all figured out, don't you?"

"No. Trying to. Go faster."

Hooch sighed, and accelerated.

Snape glided up behind his wife silently, but to her credit, Allosia only flinched slightly when his hand unexpectedly brushed the small of her back.

"We'll be going downstairs soon," he said in low tones to her as he inserted himself between her and Draco and took her latest glass of wine from her. "Are you very drunk?" he mumbled in her ear, as Draco fidgeted silently besides them.

"As instructed," she said tightly.

"No," he said, condescension creeping into his voice. "I told you to relax and mingle."

"And so I did."

"So I see," he said, casting a glance at Draco. His voice was low, warning, not amused, and to Allosia, vaguely arousing. It occurred to her that all of this was going to get very, very bad, very, very shortly. "What does Draco want with you?" he continued, still breathing into her ear as his fingers tightened on her waist.

"I'm not sure he knows. I am sure I don't know though."

Snape sighed, fingers loosening slightly. He really just wanted to go home.

Lucius Malfoy was babbling inanely as he led his selected guests down the stairs to his notorious dungeons.

"Gods, he always sounds like a tour guide when he does that," Draco muttered under his breath, his tone tinged with no small amount of disgust.

Allosia giggled too shrilly at that, and Snape shushed her gently, while digging his fingers harder into her arm.

When they reached the bottom of the steps, she found herself backed up into a wall, her husband looming over her.

"What?" she asked, trying to keep the nervousness down out of her voice.

"I'm not pleased with you right now."

"I noticed."

"And I'm trying very hard not to lose my temper."

"For now."

"Precisely."

She leaned up from the wall then, to get past him, presuming they were going to rejoin the others.

"No," he said simply, placing his hands on her shoulders.

"Shouldn't we —"

He cut off her question with a brutal kiss.

"I don't understand," she said, when he finally came up for air.

"This is safer, this is expected. I may be angry, but I don't want you to see, that," he spat out and gestured with his head to the rest of the room, where nothing much was yet happening other than people milling about and fawning over Lucius.

"Alright then," she said and leaned back against the wall looking at him expectantly, challenging him.

He shook his head slightly. He had never seen her truly back down from him and doubted he ever would.

His hands went to either side of her head on the wall she leaned on then, as he let his hips settle against hers. She made a little noise of pleasure and he smirked. "All that wine makes you easy, my wife," he said and she returned the facial expression cruelly.

A voice in the back of his mind told him to remember that they were both in over their heads by mere virtue of her being here. He ignored it and dipped his head to kiss her then, smiling into her mouth as she relaxed into it. He kept his own eyes open, flicking constantly at the periphery of his vision to see just what might be headed their way.

Predictably, it took the form of Lucius Malfoy and a girl clearly under Imperious, although with that facial expression, she might merely have been stupider than usual.

"A gift for you," Lucius said smugly, depositing the girl on her knees as Snape turned to him.

"Are you trying to start trouble, Lucius?"

"First, I'm not trying. Second, it seems like it already started quite some time ago. You really should just learn how to say thank you, Severus. It would make your life so much easier."

Snape set his jaw, and then turned to Allosia with a stricken look on his face when she leaned up from the wall, put a hand on Lucius' arm, and thanked him in perhaps the most ingratiating tones he had ever heard from her.

Lucius smiled and backed away, looking pleased with himself.

"What in the hell are you thinking?" Snape hissed at his wife as he nudged the spaced out girl with the toe of his shoe.

"A lack of proper gratitude has always caused problems for you with Lucius. So I expressed some proper gratitude."

"We're expected to do something with her now, I hope you understand. Lucius doesn't like his play things to go to waste in so, non-active a fashion."

"So we'll do something with her."

Snape just gaped at her.

"Kiss me," she said, tilting her head back up against the wall, exposing her neck to him.

He bent to her with an obvious lack of enthusiasm, but that didn't stop her from running her hands lightly up and down his back or murmuring to him to relax. So strange, he thought, that even when he was furious with her and half-frightened, she was so easy for him to respond to.

It took him a moment to understand what was going on, when he felt a pressure against his thigh. Lucius' gift, rubbing herself against him as if she were a cat, but with a far clearer intent. He willed himself to ignore her, until Allosia's hands found their way to the fastening of his robes and then pants.

"Don't," he said hoarsely.

"Shut up, we have to make use of her."

"Please don't do this."

"Do what?"

"Please, Allosia."

"What?" His tone was starting to scare her.

"This is a bad idea."

"Do you have another one?"

"No," he said, breathless then, as her hands brushed against him.

"It's alright."

"I no, it's not please," he shut his eyes tightly for a moment, before continuing. "I don't find sexual pleasure in the touch of strangers, and I don't want you to see the type of pleasure I do find."

"I know you."

"No, you don't."

"Yes, I do Severus, despite your best efforts. Now give yourself up to me, and her, before we have to be involved in something worse. Is my logic wrong?"

"No," he said defeated, as the strange and bored mouth fastened on him. He stared into Allosia's eyes and gripped her hands tighter and tighter, in an effort not to run, in an effort to prevent his hands from finding the girl's hair, or throat.

When his breathing became hoarse, Allosia smiled. When he shut his eyes in response, she sensed the depth of the mistake she had made. He came, and literally kicked the girl away from him.

"You should not have done that," he ground out, resting against her.

Faster and higher were perhaps the only two suggestions that Hana Hooch could always take to heart, even when uttered by a six-year-old boy. What she didn't anticipate was that her broom would also take them to heart, even when uttered by a six-year-old boy. And so, the broom went both faster and higher than she anticipated. When she turned sharply to avoid hitting the castle walls themselves, she tumbled off. Thinking quickly and drawing her wand, she was able to soften her descent, but the boy remained aloft, fixed to a broom he couldn't command, that was diving, to find its mistress.

Ten feet from the ground, Hana Hooch's broom evicted its passenger.