The Fold
Severus felt the first warning in the middle of Ravenclaw 5th, and as they'd been studiously attending to his outline of the NEWTs program in Potions it did not go unmarked. The searing pain radiating out from the Mark was followed closely by a wave of nausea.
"Professor?" he heard one of the girls say as if from a distance. He clasped a hand on the edge of the desk and turned back to the board, concentrating on erasing the outline there.
"You will reproduce this outline for me by the end of the week, complete with notes about which elements of this year's course are most important to it." There were murmurs and even a groan - Severus smiled grimly to himself. It was a good day when he could make older Ravenclaws groan over homework. Usually, it was a good day.
* * *
By evening the call was imperative, the pain thrumming through his blood and huddling blackly behind his eyes. His arm was utterly numb, a vacuum centering an excruciating whorl of sensation. Severus had to concentrate to recall the password to Dumbledore's office.
He flinched at the Headmaster's hand on his arm, and buckled under the wash of clarity and calm.
". . . consonantia est," he finally heard as he opened his eyes.
Albus drew Severus to his feet - so, he'd actually fallen - and led him to a chair. "How can I help, dear boy?"
Severus waved the Headmaster away, and he went. By the time he returned, bearing an aromatic tea (bergamot, lemon and comfrey, Severus automatically registered), Severus had recognised the small insistent presence of Draco's thoughts, flickering at the back of his mind. Was he all right, was something wrong, where was he? Without considering it carefully for once, Severus responded with a reassuring thought. Something like a dark red curtain swept across his consciousness and was gone.
"Severus?"
Severus took the tea. Odourless borrell root, he added to the list, and drank it gladly despite the oily texture that the flavouring couldn't conceal.
As the potion cut through his pain and his protective dissociation, he faintly felt Draco anxiously wondering how he could shake Crabbe and Goyle to look for Severus. He knew it was impossible - the mental link was entirely one-sided - but Draco had been able to sense his pain.
The boy's fear echoed distantly in his mind, but he pushed consciousness of Draco's thoughts aside, as he'd trained himself to do over recent weeks. He concentrated on the tea and on Albus.
"Voldemort," he said. "A call which clearly brooks no delays."
Albus merely nodded.
"Malfoy Manor," Severus continued. "Which has never happened before. Despite Malfoy's boasting he's never been first in Voldemort's plans." He met the headmaster's careful concern with his own. "There's bound to be a specific reason."
Albus nodded. "I will keep a close eye on Draco."
Severus let the old man's tone pass in exhaustion.
"There's something gone strangely awry with this spell, Albus. I think you need to know."
* * *
Evans was anxiously pacing the small foyer to the ballroom when Severus Flooed in.
"Snape," he said with relief. "Could you have cut it any closer? The Dark Lord is. . . he's waiting." Severus didn't answer. Waiting was not a state in which one wanted to meet Voldemort. Evans was a lesser minion as a Death Eater, just as he'd been a lesser minion as a Hogwarts Prefect. Lucius Malfoy's puppet then, and the puppet of a puppet now.
The puppet's florid face turned away into the darkened room. At the far end the ballroom was lit with the red and gold of low fires , and Severus schooled his features to conceal his disdain for the showy display.
"You've arrived," Lucius Malfoy said from the shadows half way up the room. "I'm surprised you didn't find it more urgent."
The tall pale figure moved out into the column of light extending from the doorway.
His consciousness of Draco's thoughts was many miles away in Hogwarts' grounds, but shadows of things he'd seen and heard hovered at the edge of his mind and Severus turned away to avoid communicating some of what he thought.
"Do you have something on your mind, Snape?" Lucius asked in a clipped tone as Severus moved past him. He supposed turning away was in fact a communication of some kind - particularly for a Malfoy.
"I trust I am in fact urgently wanted," Severus said without looking back, and Lucius let it pass, at least for now.
* * *
Partly because he'd spent most of his evenings with Snape for weeks now, and partly because one didn't question a Malfoy, Draco wasn't missed until curfew.
* * *
Severus had endured an extended session of Voldemort terrifying all lesser beings until, eventually, the corpses of several Muggles and the unconscious body of a tardy lower level Death Eater, who'd made the unfortunate mistake of constructing an excuse for his lateness, were hauled away. The Dark Lord imperiously dismissed the lower ranks back to their lower lives, and reclined sinuously in the Roman chair Lucius had provided.
"Severus," Voldemort rasped eventually, after an observant pause, "how considerate of you to join us."
"I have no excuse, My Lord, except protecting the secrecy of my services to you," Severus said, with a slight bow.
"Yes, of course. Your services to me." Severus carefully did not hesitate in deepening his obesiance. "What would you say those services are, Severus?"
"My Lord knows best how to use me," Severus said, now a little concerned by the drift of this conversation, and bordering on alarmed at the satisfied smile on Malfoy's face.
The boy couldn't have tricked him, despite the spell's strange effects. He was confident the boy. . . felt strongly about him. But not more strongly than he felt about his father, he had to admit, and that intensity of. . . interest. . . could be served in other ways. Damn, he should have pushed for more clarity about Draco's desires - would the boy trade for him as some kind of reward?
"Yes. And perhaps it is time this use was less cautious." Voldemort's smile unfurled more widely than it should have according to the physics of a human face. His arms flexed on the upturned ends of the chair as if also shifting in pleased anticipation.
"Perhaps, Lord Voldemort," Severus said, "you might tell me how my position should be changed."
"We have another spy at Hogwarts," Lucius said with a pleased smile.
"Your son," Severus said.
Lucius nodded.
"He will do an excellent job," Severus said, and watched Malfoy's smile falter infinitesimally. "I look forward to guiding him in dealing with Dumbledore and the Order personally," he added, and the smile clearly stretched slightly.
Voldemort's attention to their exchange struck both of them more or less at once - Lucius relaxed and Snape collected a disinterested poise.
"Such an interesting son you have, Lucius," Voldemort replied. "Shall we see him now?"
As Malfoy clapped his hands to summon a house-elf, Severus ordered his thoughts by carefully scanning the room for possible avenues of escape. He was by no means prepared to die at Voldemort's hands to no purpose, although he was more than inclined to ensure Malfoy died with him if it came to that. He was only mildly irritated that he meant Malfoy Sr and not Draco given the boy's treachery.
* * *
From Draco's demeanour one really would think he served the Dark Lord. However, the boy's first thoughts on entering the Manor flew to Severus. "You're here," he had felt distinctly in his mind as if at the end of a long trailing anticipation.
Again Severus could feel some of the observation flowing back the other way. Just the merest touch, a tentative flicker of sensation, but there nonetheless. "You're well," he felt Draco think, seconds after the boy was escorted into the ballroom.
Draco bowed formally to Voldemort and, just as carefully, to his father. It was polished and careful on the surface, but Severus felt Draco's flaring anxiety under Voldemort's smile, and something almost desperate reaching out to Lucius as his son acknowledged him. Lucius gave Draco a pleased nod, and Severus felt the boy's flush of excited pleasure.
There was a crystalline image in his head for just a moment - Draco and Lucius in Diagon Alley, his father laughing at Draco's caustic remark about the boy serving at Flourish & Blott's, resting a hand on his son's shoulder. Draco's face hurt from smiling.
The image that followed, as Draco turned to acknowledge Snape's presence, and perhaps his thoughts, might have visibly shaken Severus if he hadn't been returning Draco's slight bow. Draco bent panting, one knee on a high- backed chair with broad winged arms, his hand clutched around the pale green sheen and weft of upholstery, his father's hand pressed into his upper back and the other hooked under his hip, angling his pelvis up into his hard sensual thrusts. It wasn't brutal, or even cold; it was a warm sense of belonging and pride.
Severus felt a wave of pity and regret before he could filter those thoughts. Draco flinched and angled his eyes towards the floor.
Lucius coolly stepped into the situation as he saw it. "Your duty to your family and your family's cause is far more important than mere school protocols, Draco; you need not be concerned about Professor Snape's disapproval."
Draco and Severus met one another's eyes for a moment, and although nothing specific was exchanged for their own reasons both Lucius and Severus were evidently pleased.
"So satisfying," Voldemort said, stretching out a hand. Snape was a little disturbed by his own reluctance to watch Draco be embraced by Voldemort, but he was somewhat compensated by Malfoy's own obvious irritation. The Dark Lord was unlikely to miss it either.
Voldemort's skin was discoloured and uneven, his arms and fingers somewhat elongated, all of which seemed especially defined in comparison to Draco's pale clear skin and delicate build. A scarred hand twisted fingers up to caress the boy's face. Draco seemed to lean into the touch, and Voldemort's approval was evident in every slight readjustment of his attention, away from a careful if oblique observation of the men and wrapping tightly around the boy's responses.
Severus itched to react and felt the tension in Lucius also.
"It doesn't matter," Draco thought. Severus thought it did and, for the first time, pushed on his contact with Draco's consciousness. He could see, like a barrier of tangled iridescent strings, Draco's efforts to shield and deflect his thoughts. With the lightest push he caught flashes of the Dark Lord's arms around Draco's naked waist and chest, mottled against his whiteness and twisted where he was smooth. Severus was sickened, and the boy flinched at the thought.
Although Snape was slamming down a barrier between them as it happened he couldn't avoid the wash of desire and regret that flowed from Draco.
They waited patiently through Voldemort's careful exploration of the boy's exposed skin - his wrists and hands, his face and neck. Draco didn't struggle or complain, but he'd stopped responding with pleasure as well.
"Severus will be carefully watching and coaching you, my small snake. Perhaps he shall train you to be Master of Potions in his place, so he can serve me in other ways." Voldemort pressed a hand firmly into Draco's oesophagus, openly observing the responses of both men.
"The boy has never shown a particular inclination for Potions," Severus said, concentrating on the even rhythm of his own voice.
"He will learn," Lucius said with obvious haste. Severus sighed in inward relief.
"Yes, of course he will," Voldemort said.
The boy's face was coloured and taut, but he hadn't struggled or tried to cry out. Voldemort pulled him closer by his throat and pressed his mouth to Draco's in a painful image of a kiss. The boy gasped into the Dark Lord's mouth, and Severus cautiously glanced at his father, whose face was utterly blank.
* * *
TBC
Severus felt the first warning in the middle of Ravenclaw 5th, and as they'd been studiously attending to his outline of the NEWTs program in Potions it did not go unmarked. The searing pain radiating out from the Mark was followed closely by a wave of nausea.
"Professor?" he heard one of the girls say as if from a distance. He clasped a hand on the edge of the desk and turned back to the board, concentrating on erasing the outline there.
"You will reproduce this outline for me by the end of the week, complete with notes about which elements of this year's course are most important to it." There were murmurs and even a groan - Severus smiled grimly to himself. It was a good day when he could make older Ravenclaws groan over homework. Usually, it was a good day.
* * *
By evening the call was imperative, the pain thrumming through his blood and huddling blackly behind his eyes. His arm was utterly numb, a vacuum centering an excruciating whorl of sensation. Severus had to concentrate to recall the password to Dumbledore's office.
He flinched at the Headmaster's hand on his arm, and buckled under the wash of clarity and calm.
". . . consonantia est," he finally heard as he opened his eyes.
Albus drew Severus to his feet - so, he'd actually fallen - and led him to a chair. "How can I help, dear boy?"
Severus waved the Headmaster away, and he went. By the time he returned, bearing an aromatic tea (bergamot, lemon and comfrey, Severus automatically registered), Severus had recognised the small insistent presence of Draco's thoughts, flickering at the back of his mind. Was he all right, was something wrong, where was he? Without considering it carefully for once, Severus responded with a reassuring thought. Something like a dark red curtain swept across his consciousness and was gone.
"Severus?"
Severus took the tea. Odourless borrell root, he added to the list, and drank it gladly despite the oily texture that the flavouring couldn't conceal.
As the potion cut through his pain and his protective dissociation, he faintly felt Draco anxiously wondering how he could shake Crabbe and Goyle to look for Severus. He knew it was impossible - the mental link was entirely one-sided - but Draco had been able to sense his pain.
The boy's fear echoed distantly in his mind, but he pushed consciousness of Draco's thoughts aside, as he'd trained himself to do over recent weeks. He concentrated on the tea and on Albus.
"Voldemort," he said. "A call which clearly brooks no delays."
Albus merely nodded.
"Malfoy Manor," Severus continued. "Which has never happened before. Despite Malfoy's boasting he's never been first in Voldemort's plans." He met the headmaster's careful concern with his own. "There's bound to be a specific reason."
Albus nodded. "I will keep a close eye on Draco."
Severus let the old man's tone pass in exhaustion.
"There's something gone strangely awry with this spell, Albus. I think you need to know."
* * *
Evans was anxiously pacing the small foyer to the ballroom when Severus Flooed in.
"Snape," he said with relief. "Could you have cut it any closer? The Dark Lord is. . . he's waiting." Severus didn't answer. Waiting was not a state in which one wanted to meet Voldemort. Evans was a lesser minion as a Death Eater, just as he'd been a lesser minion as a Hogwarts Prefect. Lucius Malfoy's puppet then, and the puppet of a puppet now.
The puppet's florid face turned away into the darkened room. At the far end the ballroom was lit with the red and gold of low fires , and Severus schooled his features to conceal his disdain for the showy display.
"You've arrived," Lucius Malfoy said from the shadows half way up the room. "I'm surprised you didn't find it more urgent."
The tall pale figure moved out into the column of light extending from the doorway.
His consciousness of Draco's thoughts was many miles away in Hogwarts' grounds, but shadows of things he'd seen and heard hovered at the edge of his mind and Severus turned away to avoid communicating some of what he thought.
"Do you have something on your mind, Snape?" Lucius asked in a clipped tone as Severus moved past him. He supposed turning away was in fact a communication of some kind - particularly for a Malfoy.
"I trust I am in fact urgently wanted," Severus said without looking back, and Lucius let it pass, at least for now.
* * *
Partly because he'd spent most of his evenings with Snape for weeks now, and partly because one didn't question a Malfoy, Draco wasn't missed until curfew.
* * *
Severus had endured an extended session of Voldemort terrifying all lesser beings until, eventually, the corpses of several Muggles and the unconscious body of a tardy lower level Death Eater, who'd made the unfortunate mistake of constructing an excuse for his lateness, were hauled away. The Dark Lord imperiously dismissed the lower ranks back to their lower lives, and reclined sinuously in the Roman chair Lucius had provided.
"Severus," Voldemort rasped eventually, after an observant pause, "how considerate of you to join us."
"I have no excuse, My Lord, except protecting the secrecy of my services to you," Severus said, with a slight bow.
"Yes, of course. Your services to me." Severus carefully did not hesitate in deepening his obesiance. "What would you say those services are, Severus?"
"My Lord knows best how to use me," Severus said, now a little concerned by the drift of this conversation, and bordering on alarmed at the satisfied smile on Malfoy's face.
The boy couldn't have tricked him, despite the spell's strange effects. He was confident the boy. . . felt strongly about him. But not more strongly than he felt about his father, he had to admit, and that intensity of. . . interest. . . could be served in other ways. Damn, he should have pushed for more clarity about Draco's desires - would the boy trade for him as some kind of reward?
"Yes. And perhaps it is time this use was less cautious." Voldemort's smile unfurled more widely than it should have according to the physics of a human face. His arms flexed on the upturned ends of the chair as if also shifting in pleased anticipation.
"Perhaps, Lord Voldemort," Severus said, "you might tell me how my position should be changed."
"We have another spy at Hogwarts," Lucius said with a pleased smile.
"Your son," Severus said.
Lucius nodded.
"He will do an excellent job," Severus said, and watched Malfoy's smile falter infinitesimally. "I look forward to guiding him in dealing with Dumbledore and the Order personally," he added, and the smile clearly stretched slightly.
Voldemort's attention to their exchange struck both of them more or less at once - Lucius relaxed and Snape collected a disinterested poise.
"Such an interesting son you have, Lucius," Voldemort replied. "Shall we see him now?"
As Malfoy clapped his hands to summon a house-elf, Severus ordered his thoughts by carefully scanning the room for possible avenues of escape. He was by no means prepared to die at Voldemort's hands to no purpose, although he was more than inclined to ensure Malfoy died with him if it came to that. He was only mildly irritated that he meant Malfoy Sr and not Draco given the boy's treachery.
* * *
From Draco's demeanour one really would think he served the Dark Lord. However, the boy's first thoughts on entering the Manor flew to Severus. "You're here," he had felt distinctly in his mind as if at the end of a long trailing anticipation.
Again Severus could feel some of the observation flowing back the other way. Just the merest touch, a tentative flicker of sensation, but there nonetheless. "You're well," he felt Draco think, seconds after the boy was escorted into the ballroom.
Draco bowed formally to Voldemort and, just as carefully, to his father. It was polished and careful on the surface, but Severus felt Draco's flaring anxiety under Voldemort's smile, and something almost desperate reaching out to Lucius as his son acknowledged him. Lucius gave Draco a pleased nod, and Severus felt the boy's flush of excited pleasure.
There was a crystalline image in his head for just a moment - Draco and Lucius in Diagon Alley, his father laughing at Draco's caustic remark about the boy serving at Flourish & Blott's, resting a hand on his son's shoulder. Draco's face hurt from smiling.
The image that followed, as Draco turned to acknowledge Snape's presence, and perhaps his thoughts, might have visibly shaken Severus if he hadn't been returning Draco's slight bow. Draco bent panting, one knee on a high- backed chair with broad winged arms, his hand clutched around the pale green sheen and weft of upholstery, his father's hand pressed into his upper back and the other hooked under his hip, angling his pelvis up into his hard sensual thrusts. It wasn't brutal, or even cold; it was a warm sense of belonging and pride.
Severus felt a wave of pity and regret before he could filter those thoughts. Draco flinched and angled his eyes towards the floor.
Lucius coolly stepped into the situation as he saw it. "Your duty to your family and your family's cause is far more important than mere school protocols, Draco; you need not be concerned about Professor Snape's disapproval."
Draco and Severus met one another's eyes for a moment, and although nothing specific was exchanged for their own reasons both Lucius and Severus were evidently pleased.
"So satisfying," Voldemort said, stretching out a hand. Snape was a little disturbed by his own reluctance to watch Draco be embraced by Voldemort, but he was somewhat compensated by Malfoy's own obvious irritation. The Dark Lord was unlikely to miss it either.
Voldemort's skin was discoloured and uneven, his arms and fingers somewhat elongated, all of which seemed especially defined in comparison to Draco's pale clear skin and delicate build. A scarred hand twisted fingers up to caress the boy's face. Draco seemed to lean into the touch, and Voldemort's approval was evident in every slight readjustment of his attention, away from a careful if oblique observation of the men and wrapping tightly around the boy's responses.
Severus itched to react and felt the tension in Lucius also.
"It doesn't matter," Draco thought. Severus thought it did and, for the first time, pushed on his contact with Draco's consciousness. He could see, like a barrier of tangled iridescent strings, Draco's efforts to shield and deflect his thoughts. With the lightest push he caught flashes of the Dark Lord's arms around Draco's naked waist and chest, mottled against his whiteness and twisted where he was smooth. Severus was sickened, and the boy flinched at the thought.
Although Snape was slamming down a barrier between them as it happened he couldn't avoid the wash of desire and regret that flowed from Draco.
They waited patiently through Voldemort's careful exploration of the boy's exposed skin - his wrists and hands, his face and neck. Draco didn't struggle or complain, but he'd stopped responding with pleasure as well.
"Severus will be carefully watching and coaching you, my small snake. Perhaps he shall train you to be Master of Potions in his place, so he can serve me in other ways." Voldemort pressed a hand firmly into Draco's oesophagus, openly observing the responses of both men.
"The boy has never shown a particular inclination for Potions," Severus said, concentrating on the even rhythm of his own voice.
"He will learn," Lucius said with obvious haste. Severus sighed in inward relief.
"Yes, of course he will," Voldemort said.
The boy's face was coloured and taut, but he hadn't struggled or tried to cry out. Voldemort pulled him closer by his throat and pressed his mouth to Draco's in a painful image of a kiss. The boy gasped into the Dark Lord's mouth, and Severus cautiously glanced at his father, whose face was utterly blank.
* * *
TBC
