The Fold, part 2
Severus walked back through the Slytherin corridor more or less on the way to his rooms. He was sure Draco hadn't returned as the mental link was absolutely silent, but he focussed on the boy as he passed by Slytherin just in case.
Any variation on the news that Draco was at home due to a family emergency would have come to him already as Head of House, so asking Albus would be pointless. And obvious.
He didn't miss the constant presence of Draco's attention, ambitions and pleasures. He was, however, concerned for the welfare of a student in his house, and far more seriously concerned about the risk this particular student posed to the Order, and to his own safety.
As he had for many years, Severus instinctively checked his protective wards as he entered his rooms. The main lights flickered and rose as he passed through the office to his private rooms.
He wasn't interested in food now any more than he had been in the Hall, but the house elves had left something. Or house-elf - the one he'd fought with over Potter in the summer. Its indignity at being implicated in Potter's slow poisoning had been comical, but the creature took the saving of Potter's life very seriously indeed. Now, as some kind of strange recompense, it watched his diet and, he suspected, monitored his clothes. Last month was not the first time a favourite worn robe had disappeared, requiring him to replace it. At this rate. . . never mind.
He picked absently at the cold chicken and cucumber salad.
Perhaps he should just sleep.
* * *
Severus woke in the night, which happened often. But as he woke he felt he was struggling to move from a strange heavy darkness, and a sound almost like whispering that he couldn't pin down, towards a red warmth. A sweep of dark clouds rushed above him as he opened his eyes. He tried to pull himself upright and look around, but he seemed to be somehow pinned to the ground. He could sense rather than see a dark horizon, and his fingers caught in short, lush, unnaturally even grass.
Severus?
He knew where Draco lay, as if he'd seen him there moments before. Turning his head now he did see him, exceedingly pale against the verdant green and lain out beneath a sky flushing crimson to burgundy to black. Draco's eyes were closed, and his skin seemed to blur into his silver-blond hair and the silver mesh of the strange robe he was wearing.
"Draco?"
He watched the boy shiver and his closed eyes flicker.
"Look at me Draco," he said, and the head finally tipped towards him, eyes slowly opening - grey eyes, not like steel and not like ice - not cold or hard eyes at all, or not here. Ethereal as he appeared, this Draco had the eyes of a boy.
"This is the place made by the spell?" Severus said, "Or accessed by the spell?"
Draco nodded. "Although it seems really different with you here," he said, or rather thought - his mouth didn't move and his voice was far too soft to have carried the six feet between them.
"Why am I here?"
"I don't know," Draco said, and his mouth curved into a smile. "I would have brought you before if I knew how."
"Draco, what's happening outside of here? Where are you?"
"I'm not sure," the boy's voice said, his mouth and eyes still smiling. "I can never quite remember, and the longer I'm here. . . . Oh, look at this!" he said, and suddenly they were sitting side by side on the grass, the chains of Draco's robe falling over the black sweep of his own, an unlikely swathe of silk which flared out across the grass.
If this was some space in Draco's mind, as he suspected, then Severus really hadn't wanted to know that yards of black silk was how the boy fantasised about him.
"Actually," Draco said, "it's not what I'd pick for you at all. But here, look at this."
Draco tipped his arm up so the chain mesh slid away from his inner arm. Silver and white filigrees of raised flesh traced out the shape of a rose, with a snake twining through and around the petals. Severus reached out to it without thinking, about to ask if Voldemort had put it there when his memories identified the design.
At the same time, Draco said, "No, it's from the room where the spell was cast."
He had hesitated, but now Severus let his finger touch the very edge of the flower, which instantly flushed with colour, spreading out from his finger and shadowing into the folds and up onto the next petal and on. The snake shifted and slid, brushing up against the tide of red and filling out with shades of emerald and dark green as it passed. There was a soft sound of rough against smooth - the scrape of scale against petal or of chain against silk - the first sound Severus was sure happened outside of his mind in this place.
"So that's what it was for," Draco said beside him, his arm resting in Severus's hand, and then everything passed away into darkness.
* * *
Malfoy
I thought you should know that the boy's ongoing absence has generated a significant amount of discussion, and if he is to take an active part in our work here it is imperative he return immediately.
Snape
Despite the encryption and the sealing and protection charms, Severus knew he didn't have to say that the writing of this note indicated how important the matter was. And in fact there had been some discussion of Draco's absence in the staff common room - Black, the posturing oaf, had gone so far as to ask whether the boy should be readmitted without being tested for the Mark. Severus had been more than usually annoyed with the man's bluster given that it touched on his own deepest concern about why Voldemort was holding the boy.
Certainly there were other possibilities, all of them nasty, but rape, torture, enforced murder, all often interchangeable where Voldemort was concerned, were things a strong mind might overcome in time. With help. But the Mark was a permanent burden, a drain on one's will, a deep spiritual stain - and in fact something he hadn't felt all day. Its presence was insistent, like a rough scar in an inconvenient position, something he was always half aware of. . . except for now.
Severus almost ran back to his rooms, barely glancing at his wards on the way, shutting the door impatiently behind him and casting the protective charms by rote. He anxiously unclasped the buttons and yanked up his sleeve. The mark was there, but traced out in his flesh in silver and white lines of scar tissue - colourless, painless, and mute.
* * *
He'd checked the scar more than once, and then even checked it in the mirror, which reassured him in a puzzled tone that it was mostly gone, and asked if he was quite all right. Severus caught his own strange expression in his reflection and said, rather unconvincingly, that he was fine. The mirror launched into a long and enthusiastic account of how terrific, how splendid, how utterly super it was to hear that - it had been a gift from Albus and for seven years he'd managed never to reply or speak to it - but he barely heard, nodding absently before going out to find a large shot of whisky.
The slight absence of sensation that came with the loss of the mark was impossible to ignore, and seemed to make sleep impossible. Whenever he closed his eyes the possible ramifications of this floated through his head in order of increasing disaster. He turned over again.
Severus?
Draco.
He was out of bed and retrieving his robe before Draco thought, I'm coming to you now.
Severus stood in his bedroom, holding his robe half undone - can you hear my thoughts, Draco?
I think I can hear you when you're upset, just faintly - broad feelings rather than sentences. I like it. I could feel you worrying about me. I'm coming down the stairs now.
Severus met him at the door. There was a decided tingle along his arm as Draco passed. He shut and resealed the door, wondering about that, and listening to Draco's anxiety over his reception here and over what kind of secrets, if any, Severus was going to allow him to keep.
"Tell me, then," he said, "if you don't want me to try and find out."
Draco's carefully composed face seemed such an unlikely cover for the turmoil of his thoughts.
"I'll pour us both a drink," Severus said.
Draco followed him, wanting something, a welcome, an admission, an embrace.
"Are you hungry?" Severus continued, "I have food left from dinner."
"No, thank you," the boy said, while his thoughts filled with disappointment and new anxieties about what Severus might require him to say. And there it was - Severus had the decanter in his hand as the unbidden image appeared and he only just held onto it. He turned back to Draco, who was already turning away. Shame, sadness, fear.
"If I'd not joined you it still would have happened."
Which meant, they both recognised, that Lucius had known all these years it would come to this. Watching that small spoilt boy and nurturing his sneering superiority and waiting for the right time to begin preparing him for this.
Moving to sit down, inclining his head away from Severus, Draco remembered the stricken look on his father's face - Voldemort's clammy hand on his cheek, a nail leaving a single sharp trail, and Lucius's eyes.
"I began to expect it," he said, "probably before he thought it was unavoidable."
With hands that didn't shake, because he'd known and seen worse things, Severus poured the drinks, keeping his mind off Draco's shifting thoughts. As he handed him the glass Severus jumped a little; the contact of their fingers reminded him of his dream.
Draco ran over Severus's response in his mind, remembering his father's jealous questions about the new tutorials. He instructed himself not to look the man's fingers, or his mouth, and then laughed because Snape would have heard that.
Draco looked up from his drink and smiled. Severus smiled back.
"Blaise'll never believe me."
Severus quirked an eyebrow at him.
"That you smiled at me," Draco explained, and thought to Snape how incredibly hot that eyebrow thing was. Severus smirked. And the smirk too, Draco thought.
"Hiding behind the spell now?" Severus said.
"As long as saying that aloud is likely to get me thrown out."
Severus took his drink to the bedroom door. "I'm not going to throw you out tonight, Draco - we've got a lot to talk about."
Draco's mind stuttered, though his face didn't reflect it. Severus was more than a little impressed, the boy had learnt a lot, but then he'd had very good motivation. He waited for a response.
"I don't want your pity," Draco said quietly, "but if you think I'd turn down a pity fuck with you out of pride you've seriously underestimated how much I want you."
Severus moved into the bedroom, juggling reasons he shouldn't with reasons why he must. They were beyond what he wanted now, but he couldn't deny that right now he wanted to offer the boy comfort.
He couldn't repress a bitter internal sneer - as if there was anyone less well qualified to offer comfort. Except perhaps for this boy in these circumstances.
There was too much at stake in his choosing the Order over his father for there to be a mistake here. Severus lifted the light on the candles a little and turned to watch the boy approach, flushed with expectations, and there was no refusing him.
* * *
TBC
Severus walked back through the Slytherin corridor more or less on the way to his rooms. He was sure Draco hadn't returned as the mental link was absolutely silent, but he focussed on the boy as he passed by Slytherin just in case.
Any variation on the news that Draco was at home due to a family emergency would have come to him already as Head of House, so asking Albus would be pointless. And obvious.
He didn't miss the constant presence of Draco's attention, ambitions and pleasures. He was, however, concerned for the welfare of a student in his house, and far more seriously concerned about the risk this particular student posed to the Order, and to his own safety.
As he had for many years, Severus instinctively checked his protective wards as he entered his rooms. The main lights flickered and rose as he passed through the office to his private rooms.
He wasn't interested in food now any more than he had been in the Hall, but the house elves had left something. Or house-elf - the one he'd fought with over Potter in the summer. Its indignity at being implicated in Potter's slow poisoning had been comical, but the creature took the saving of Potter's life very seriously indeed. Now, as some kind of strange recompense, it watched his diet and, he suspected, monitored his clothes. Last month was not the first time a favourite worn robe had disappeared, requiring him to replace it. At this rate. . . never mind.
He picked absently at the cold chicken and cucumber salad.
Perhaps he should just sleep.
* * *
Severus woke in the night, which happened often. But as he woke he felt he was struggling to move from a strange heavy darkness, and a sound almost like whispering that he couldn't pin down, towards a red warmth. A sweep of dark clouds rushed above him as he opened his eyes. He tried to pull himself upright and look around, but he seemed to be somehow pinned to the ground. He could sense rather than see a dark horizon, and his fingers caught in short, lush, unnaturally even grass.
Severus?
He knew where Draco lay, as if he'd seen him there moments before. Turning his head now he did see him, exceedingly pale against the verdant green and lain out beneath a sky flushing crimson to burgundy to black. Draco's eyes were closed, and his skin seemed to blur into his silver-blond hair and the silver mesh of the strange robe he was wearing.
"Draco?"
He watched the boy shiver and his closed eyes flicker.
"Look at me Draco," he said, and the head finally tipped towards him, eyes slowly opening - grey eyes, not like steel and not like ice - not cold or hard eyes at all, or not here. Ethereal as he appeared, this Draco had the eyes of a boy.
"This is the place made by the spell?" Severus said, "Or accessed by the spell?"
Draco nodded. "Although it seems really different with you here," he said, or rather thought - his mouth didn't move and his voice was far too soft to have carried the six feet between them.
"Why am I here?"
"I don't know," Draco said, and his mouth curved into a smile. "I would have brought you before if I knew how."
"Draco, what's happening outside of here? Where are you?"
"I'm not sure," the boy's voice said, his mouth and eyes still smiling. "I can never quite remember, and the longer I'm here. . . . Oh, look at this!" he said, and suddenly they were sitting side by side on the grass, the chains of Draco's robe falling over the black sweep of his own, an unlikely swathe of silk which flared out across the grass.
If this was some space in Draco's mind, as he suspected, then Severus really hadn't wanted to know that yards of black silk was how the boy fantasised about him.
"Actually," Draco said, "it's not what I'd pick for you at all. But here, look at this."
Draco tipped his arm up so the chain mesh slid away from his inner arm. Silver and white filigrees of raised flesh traced out the shape of a rose, with a snake twining through and around the petals. Severus reached out to it without thinking, about to ask if Voldemort had put it there when his memories identified the design.
At the same time, Draco said, "No, it's from the room where the spell was cast."
He had hesitated, but now Severus let his finger touch the very edge of the flower, which instantly flushed with colour, spreading out from his finger and shadowing into the folds and up onto the next petal and on. The snake shifted and slid, brushing up against the tide of red and filling out with shades of emerald and dark green as it passed. There was a soft sound of rough against smooth - the scrape of scale against petal or of chain against silk - the first sound Severus was sure happened outside of his mind in this place.
"So that's what it was for," Draco said beside him, his arm resting in Severus's hand, and then everything passed away into darkness.
* * *
Malfoy
I thought you should know that the boy's ongoing absence has generated a significant amount of discussion, and if he is to take an active part in our work here it is imperative he return immediately.
Snape
Despite the encryption and the sealing and protection charms, Severus knew he didn't have to say that the writing of this note indicated how important the matter was. And in fact there had been some discussion of Draco's absence in the staff common room - Black, the posturing oaf, had gone so far as to ask whether the boy should be readmitted without being tested for the Mark. Severus had been more than usually annoyed with the man's bluster given that it touched on his own deepest concern about why Voldemort was holding the boy.
Certainly there were other possibilities, all of them nasty, but rape, torture, enforced murder, all often interchangeable where Voldemort was concerned, were things a strong mind might overcome in time. With help. But the Mark was a permanent burden, a drain on one's will, a deep spiritual stain - and in fact something he hadn't felt all day. Its presence was insistent, like a rough scar in an inconvenient position, something he was always half aware of. . . except for now.
Severus almost ran back to his rooms, barely glancing at his wards on the way, shutting the door impatiently behind him and casting the protective charms by rote. He anxiously unclasped the buttons and yanked up his sleeve. The mark was there, but traced out in his flesh in silver and white lines of scar tissue - colourless, painless, and mute.
* * *
He'd checked the scar more than once, and then even checked it in the mirror, which reassured him in a puzzled tone that it was mostly gone, and asked if he was quite all right. Severus caught his own strange expression in his reflection and said, rather unconvincingly, that he was fine. The mirror launched into a long and enthusiastic account of how terrific, how splendid, how utterly super it was to hear that - it had been a gift from Albus and for seven years he'd managed never to reply or speak to it - but he barely heard, nodding absently before going out to find a large shot of whisky.
The slight absence of sensation that came with the loss of the mark was impossible to ignore, and seemed to make sleep impossible. Whenever he closed his eyes the possible ramifications of this floated through his head in order of increasing disaster. He turned over again.
Severus?
Draco.
He was out of bed and retrieving his robe before Draco thought, I'm coming to you now.
Severus stood in his bedroom, holding his robe half undone - can you hear my thoughts, Draco?
I think I can hear you when you're upset, just faintly - broad feelings rather than sentences. I like it. I could feel you worrying about me. I'm coming down the stairs now.
Severus met him at the door. There was a decided tingle along his arm as Draco passed. He shut and resealed the door, wondering about that, and listening to Draco's anxiety over his reception here and over what kind of secrets, if any, Severus was going to allow him to keep.
"Tell me, then," he said, "if you don't want me to try and find out."
Draco's carefully composed face seemed such an unlikely cover for the turmoil of his thoughts.
"I'll pour us both a drink," Severus said.
Draco followed him, wanting something, a welcome, an admission, an embrace.
"Are you hungry?" Severus continued, "I have food left from dinner."
"No, thank you," the boy said, while his thoughts filled with disappointment and new anxieties about what Severus might require him to say. And there it was - Severus had the decanter in his hand as the unbidden image appeared and he only just held onto it. He turned back to Draco, who was already turning away. Shame, sadness, fear.
"If I'd not joined you it still would have happened."
Which meant, they both recognised, that Lucius had known all these years it would come to this. Watching that small spoilt boy and nurturing his sneering superiority and waiting for the right time to begin preparing him for this.
Moving to sit down, inclining his head away from Severus, Draco remembered the stricken look on his father's face - Voldemort's clammy hand on his cheek, a nail leaving a single sharp trail, and Lucius's eyes.
"I began to expect it," he said, "probably before he thought it was unavoidable."
With hands that didn't shake, because he'd known and seen worse things, Severus poured the drinks, keeping his mind off Draco's shifting thoughts. As he handed him the glass Severus jumped a little; the contact of their fingers reminded him of his dream.
Draco ran over Severus's response in his mind, remembering his father's jealous questions about the new tutorials. He instructed himself not to look the man's fingers, or his mouth, and then laughed because Snape would have heard that.
Draco looked up from his drink and smiled. Severus smiled back.
"Blaise'll never believe me."
Severus quirked an eyebrow at him.
"That you smiled at me," Draco explained, and thought to Snape how incredibly hot that eyebrow thing was. Severus smirked. And the smirk too, Draco thought.
"Hiding behind the spell now?" Severus said.
"As long as saying that aloud is likely to get me thrown out."
Severus took his drink to the bedroom door. "I'm not going to throw you out tonight, Draco - we've got a lot to talk about."
Draco's mind stuttered, though his face didn't reflect it. Severus was more than a little impressed, the boy had learnt a lot, but then he'd had very good motivation. He waited for a response.
"I don't want your pity," Draco said quietly, "but if you think I'd turn down a pity fuck with you out of pride you've seriously underestimated how much I want you."
Severus moved into the bedroom, juggling reasons he shouldn't with reasons why he must. They were beyond what he wanted now, but he couldn't deny that right now he wanted to offer the boy comfort.
He couldn't repress a bitter internal sneer - as if there was anyone less well qualified to offer comfort. Except perhaps for this boy in these circumstances.
There was too much at stake in his choosing the Order over his father for there to be a mistake here. Severus lifted the light on the candles a little and turned to watch the boy approach, flushed with expectations, and there was no refusing him.
* * *
TBC
