Um, no, aljake. I was not playing chess. I : went on summer vacation, broke my foot, worked on some original fiction that ACTUALLY MIGHT EARN ME SOME MONEY (unlike this crap), had a big drunken going away party where I barfed my guts out, moved to Toronto, started university, and endured Frosh week. Try again next time : )
This chapter is dedicated to aljake, who reviewed not to tell me he liked my last chapter, but to tell me to get off my ass and write the next one. You have him to thank.
This chapter is short, but that's because it's merely a buffer chapter before the action picks up in the next one.
X X X
Severus avoided her to the best of his abilities for the next week following the dinner party at the Malfoy manor. He had slept with strange ease that night, his mild insomnia banished by the small smile Celeste had cast his way as she shut the door to her room; but by the following morning, when Severus awoke and the evening before washed back into his memory, the exchange they had shared in the dim room had taken on a new grotesqueness that even he could not bear. The intimacy of their fire-lit words, recalled the following day in the unforgiving grey light of morning and of sanity, scored him close to the bone and left him with a confused shame he could not dispel.
Beginning the following day, Severus isolated himself from Celeste–and his mother as well, since they had become inseparable–and threw himself into his work. He did not seek out Celeste in the kitchen for help with his reading or other menial tasks. He barricaded the double doors to his office, ate his meals alone, and did not go to bed till late in the night when he was certain the house was asleep.
Still, she managed to creep up on him in the library once, and corner him, before he even knew she was in the room.
"Hello, Severus," she said, a question lying between her words. Severus considered her apprehensively.
"I have no reading for you to do today," he said brusquely, turning from her and pulling a book from the shelf he had been examining.
"That's fine. I think your mother was missing me in the kitchen."
Severus did not reply. He stared intently at the first page of the book and read the opening sentence several times. He was waiting for Celeste to go, but exasperatingly, she merely stood and watched him.
In a different tone, she spoke again. "Severus." Celeste was quiet again. Suddenly, she made that small, feminine noise that Severus was beginning to grow so accustomed to hearing. Severus clapped his book shut and whirled around.
"Is there not enough to keep you busy in the kitchen? Or must you periodically interrupt me to amuse yourself?" He crossed his arms with his book under one elbow.
Celeste looked stunned. "Pardon?"
Severus sneered and turned around again, putting the book—he knew not what it was called—back on the shelf. "I have work to do."
He stared past the spines of the books and waited for her to leave. Finally, he heard Celeste spin on her heel and march from the room.
Inexplicably furious, Severus snatched a random book from the shelf and threw it across the room.
A few days after his encounter with Celeste in the library, Severus found himself sitting at his desk, his tired thoughts rebelliously straying as he tried to work out a formula. He rubbed his raw eyes for the tenth time and stood from his chair. Pacing his room with impetuous movements, he finally stopped in defeat in front of the doors that led out to the hallway.
Half way down the stairs to the kitchen, he stopped. He did not allow himself to relax, but instead remained alert and poised to return the way he came at a moment's notice.
"Pass the coltello, per favore."
He could hear them speaking from where he stood. Fatigue suddenly washed over him and he slumped against the wall, passively allowing the comforting sounds of their voices and the kitchen wrap around him.
X X X
After that, it was more than Severus could do to resist spying on them. At least once a day he would creep down from his office to eavesdrop on their conversation. Usually it was the kitchen, but sometimes the drawing room or the library as well. His mother's presence was useful in that it meant that it was a prompt for Celeste to speak herself. From the kitchen stairs or from the shadow of the doorway, Severus could hear Celeste voice her thoughts, her hopes, her interests, her fears. Severus decided he liked the way her voice sounded when she was talking to someone other than himself.
What he anticipated the most, however, was mention of his own name.
"I would like for Severus to hold her more."
She said it. His name. Severus strained his ears to listen for what she said next.
"I think Speranza would like it too," Celeste continued.
"He takes her flowers everyday," Constanza commented.
"But he never touches her."
"It's not in a man's place. His father never held him. It's the woman's job."
Celeste was silent. Severus couldn't see her from where he stood on the stairs above the kitchen, and so he could he read the facial expression that would have enlightened him to the nature of her silence.
At last, in a small voice that Severus could barely make out, she said, "I think it is the father's job, too."
Constanza made a skeptical noise. In the circle she had been brought up in, the men had nothing to do with their sons before they learned to speak, and rarely had much to do with their daughters before it was time to marry them off.
Severus listened to the lulling rhythm of the vegetable knife knocking against the wood of the tabletop and the scraping sound of a wooden spoon stirring sauce in a skillet. He leaned against the wall of the stairwell and closed his eyes. Celeste spoke again, a low murmur that no matter how hard he tried, Severus could not make out. Her words warbled quietly under the din of the cooking and were lost long before they reached his ears.
Severus felt he would have given anything to hear what those words were.
X X X
Severus may have forsaken his wife and mother, but he continued to bring Speranza flowers every morning. The growth potions he administered to plants to speed their development encouraged also the growth of the unwanted weeds, and as a result, the plots needed daily weeding. He would rise early each morning before anyone else in the house awoke and he would tend to his garden. When he was finished, he would take a small bouquet, usually of daisies, but sometimes of fragrant herbs, up to Speranza's room.
She still slept with her lips parted, but the tendency was becoming somewhat endearing as everyday her face became more defined and distinct. Fine black eyebrows had grown in, arching dramatically and recalling her Italian heritage. Thick eyelashes delicately emphasized her pale eyelids and fed into the roundness of her white cheeks. Her black hair, what little of it she was growing, was uncompromisingly straight, but it was glossy and soft to the touch. Her fragile hands were often clenched in odd shapes as she slept and dreamt; sometimes they covered her eyes in fists, sometimes they grasped the edge of her blanket to her face.
Severus crept into Speranza's nursery more times than Celeste would ever know; he would certainly not admit to it. Speranza's door opened to the hallway and so it was very easy for him to check on her in the night when he could not sleep. Once, she had begun to cry, and it was Severus, not Celeste, who comforted her and sent her back to sleep without ever waking the mother.
Her breathing was so shallow, and her face so white, Severus would often watch her for an hour at a time to make sure he wasn't imagining the gentle rise and fall of her belly; he did not have to worry about Celeste catching him. If he heard movement in the next room he would slip out through the nursery door into the hall, like a shadow–a shadow father.
X X X
A clear melody drew Severus towards the nursery. Through the open door he could see Celeste gently swaying with the baby in her arms. Her hair was down, the first time he had seen it so since the day he had encountered her at the top of the stairs in her parents' house. Speranza appeared to be grasping it in her hands.
He felt something indescribably painful.
X X X
In his dreams he reached for the errant lock of hair. It glimmered seductively and wavered slightly in the still air. As his skin brushed it, it jumped to life and ensnared his fingers. More curls fell down and wrapped themselves around his hand. There was nothing he could do. He could not pull free.
X X X
Remus Lupin seemed to sense his mood. He fiddled with the frayed cuffs of his robes as he sat on the edge of his chair before Severus's desk. The potions master in question was staring intently at a fixed point in the air in front of him.
"Severus?" Remus tried gently. Severus did not respond.
"The..." Remus paused, casting about for something conversational. "The house looks very nice since you started fixing it up."
Severus surfaced from his thoughts and cast Remus an impatient look. "What?"
"The house," Remus said.
Severus shook his head distractedly. "It's Celeste's doing."
"Just the same. The place has quite a different atmosphere to it now."
Severus gave a shallow, curt nod. He did not much care for the slant of Lupin's conversation. He did not wish to talk of Celeste. The mere mention of the woman's name frustrated him in a way he could not pin down, and therefore did not wish to explore. With a decisive movement, Severus snatched up the formula he had been working on, signifying to Lupin that the chat was over.
However, he was right. Sunlight flooded the house in a way it had not before, diffusing into the dimmest corner and washing away the shadows that had always stained the interior of the manor. The other things, the furniture and the walls and the things that Severus did not understand much about, all had a freshness to them that he could not explain. He thought he dared not say it was an improvement.
X X X
"I would like for Severus to hold her more," Celeste said. "I think Speranza would like it too."
"He takes her flowers everyday," Constanza commented.
"But he never touches her."
"It's not in a man's place. His father never held him. It's the women's job."
Celeste was silent. After a while, she said, "I think it is the father's job, too."
Constanza made a skeptical noise. In Italy, in the circle she had been brought up in, the men had nothing to do with their sons before they learned to speak, and rarely had much to do with their daughters before it was time to marry them off.
The lulling rhythm of the vegetable knife knocking against the wood of the tabletop and the scraping sound of a wooden spoon stirring sauce in a skillet did not drown out the sound of a creaking step. Celeste spoke again, in a low voice so that only Constanza could hear :
"I think he's listening again."
X X X
We3 : The way I wrote it is the British way, but thanks for stickling just the same. Sticklers unite!
Purplerebecca : Lucius isn't so much boisterous as just plain lecherous. Come on, he's a smarmy guy with a lot of money. Don't you think all the signs scream "lecher!"? And about the sighing thing : the act in itself has no significance whatsoever. It's the effect it has on Severus that's important. It's the fact that he's noticing it, and that it's distracting him. He's beginning to pick up on her little habits and mannerisms, a sign that she's not a cardboard character to him anymore. I could have picked another mannerism, I suppose, but I have a female friend who makes these little sighing noises all the time to emphasize what she's saying when she's talking and I just sort of stole that. My friend's a singer, so her sighs are calculated to sound nice. The thing is, guys really respond to the little noises that she unconsciously makes, and she doesn't seem to be aware of the effect she has on them. So, here we have Celeste, innocently indulging in a habit, completely unaware of the confusion she is inflicting upon Severus. Does that explain the sighing? But yeah, in retrospect, it's kind of an annoying mannerism to give to a character. I'll keep that in mind next time.
Sum1strange : Yep. You stick in there and you get the good stuff in the end. But isn't it all the better for the wait?
Kerichi : How did you find out about my little disillusionment spell? I thought I had made the spell undetectable. Shucks. Well, you found my story anyways, and I have to say you gave me the most thorough reviews I have ever had. If anyone out there wants to know how to make someone's day with a review, check out Kerichi's reviews, and while you're at it, we3's and Nebula Zirconia's too.
Not that all you other regulars don't put a smile on my face when you review. In fact, I'm having a severe smile deficit right now and I think you should probably review. Now. All I have in my crappy little dorm fridge is saltines.
My author's notes are LONG, aren't they? Almost as long as the chapter...