The dungeon: quiet and solitude and chill air. His room at the manor was bright and spacious. The cat made a small sound as he entered his bedroom at last. He unpacked it, setting it unceremoniously on a table where it proceeded to nose among his candles. There are better ways to live than inside cages. The broom found its place behind the door; his cloak went to a chair and he began again the process of shucking his robes. It could continue to wait until after he had a bath.

No bubbles in the water; only a blend of oils that smelled of greenery and spice. His nose—far too trained to acuteness by his art—could decipher the individual scents, but this was too tiresome now. It would be soothing, warming. The water was hot enough to boil his flesh from his bones, but he preferred it so. At times, it seemed that he had forgotten how to feel anything other than pervasive chill. The cat perched on the step of the tub. It groomed a forepaw while he shut his eyes and sank into the water to his chin.

She had been good at what she did. The boy hadn't so much, but he brought her the type of joy boys bring young girls before either of them learns that love is not so easily wrought. Potions, again, with children who could not tell one elixir from another, but then she would have been graduating regardless. He had considered approaching her to offer apprenticeship. He was far from old, but his job was fraught with uncertainty, and he would have preferred to look through potential successors while there was time to train appropriately.

He felt old, here, with the blood of children on his hands. Not directly, he supposed. Indirectly, through a lack of action, through too much and not enough of anything that mattered beyond his small and petty existence.

-

-

-

Lucius' hands on his waist, his lips against his shoulder. A glass of wine in one hand, and the warmth of the fire hot against his belly. The warmth of breath against the back of his neck. Only sensation: Lucius holding his hip, flattening a hand against his thigh.

-

-

-

Images dissipating, resolving: Voldemort in a chamber deeply underground—moss on the walls, cracked stone beneath his feet. It smelled of death and unopened tombs; he believed Voldemort found it vaguely amusing to deny death by surrounding himself with it.

Voice like a hiss, like a crackle of electricity along damaged wires: "Does it not seem appropriate that we should remind the old fool that there is no safety in sacred spaces?"

And his own answering, from beneath the hood, with teeth grit and his nails digging into his palm, "Yes, lord."


-

-

-

There were claws in his shoulder suddenly, the very tips of two paws' worth. Curling his fingers over his own flesh, he withdrew no blood. The cat glanced at him with a tilted head before it stepped away from the tub to return to the bedroom, tail up and crooked at the tip. He said, tired and tinged bitter, "Perhaps, cat, we should name you Cruciatus. He finds it a useful device for divulging memories."

He stood and retrieved the towel from its hook, water sluicing carelessly from his body. The cat did not reply, though he heard it settle again at the foot of his bed. He considered it luck momentarily that he also spent much of his life underground. Few people came to ths section of the dungeons without adequate cause, and it was unlikely then that he would be disturbed today.

It could not wait forever.


-

-

-

His desk held mail, delivered while he was in the bath by one of the few house elves that refused to be intimidated away. His hair dripped into the collar of his robe, but he could not be bothered to care. He was occasionally preternaturally tidy; his hand fell immediately upon the letter opener when he pulled open the drawer. The top was a note from Dumbledore, the next from Lucius, and a handful of late homework and excuses from students. He cast those aside. If they could not be punctual, they hardly deserved his regard.

Lucius. The paper was so pale a blue that it seemed nearly white, shot through with gold. The Malfoy crest at the top center (as if he wouldn't know this scent, this absurdly expensive writing material, this silver-blue ink).

So early; you missed your breakfast, my dear. Was it something I said?

--- L.

So snide. He felt nearly ill. Lucius knew, had known, and knew even that he cared more than he should. It was a constant point of contention between them. He knew that Voldemort questioned his loyalty; he knew that this was a test of a sort. Sides are so easily blurred in love and war. Dumbledore wrote concerned missives and pressed lemon drops into hands that shook after nights spent ringed with Death Eaters, nights of feeling the Dark Mark ache in his bones.

It was a choice, once. Made in anger and apathy, and then grief and stricken remorse. Both sides played against the middle, with two more children dead. He wondered if he would lose count one day. Already their names and faces blurred together, among memories of lives and the particular flavor of their screams. Lucius enjoyed it. So had he, once.

"Do they not deserve it?" Voldemort was fond of rhetorical questions. Voldemort styled himself a weaver of nightmares, raking the most pathetic recollections again over the coals to fan the flame of devotion he required. Then the whisper, shared only private and among the two of them: "Did they mock you, Severus? Did they laugh when you went past?"

His first: a boy who had been in his class, a mudblood with grey-green eyes and unremarkable dark hair.

"What did he call you, Severus?"

So many memories cresting like waves: his hand, trembling as he raised the wand, so many memories cresting like waves; a burst of green (less pretty than his eyes, however cruel they were) and a body crumpling to the ground.

He set Dumbledore's note on the edge of his desk, away from his immediate view. Too much of the weekend had been wasted this way. He lifted the basket of potions essays to a small side table and began reading. The cat nosed in his disregarded lunch.