Author's Notes: This is a flashback chapter. Who was Snape's first lover?
What was his history with Narcissa and Lucius? Was he ever a father?
Read on and maybe you will find out my answers to these questions.
Implied coerced sexual contact in this chapter. Not a hard R, but R to be safe.
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me. Not a damn thing.
Chapter 40: Face of an Angel, Heart of a Devil.
Mentally, he compared her to his memory of Narcissa. The conversation they had earlier in the evening brought back a memory of the past. He stared over Mira into the fire and drifted back over twenty years in his mind.
Just a couple of weeks before graduation, Narcissa was having cold feet regarding her impending nuptials to the Heir of the Malfoy fortune. She had slipped Snape a note during Arithomancy class, asking him to please meet her in the building known as the "shrieking shack" in Hogsmeade at midnight. Intrigued, he pocketed the note. Narcissa was never one to say "please". She demanded, and she received. She never asked. Midnight approached, and Snape sneaked out of his dormitory, and away from the castle, unseen and unheard. Not having the luxury of an invisibility cloak, he kept off the main road from the school to Hogsmeade and instead took a lesser-traveled shortcut through the edges of the forest. He approached the dilapidated old house, and saw a faint glow coming from inside. He also heard a faint moaning or whimpering noise, and for a brief moment thought that maybe the thing really was haunted. But as he drew closer, he recognized the sound as that of a woman crying.
He pulled out his wand and performed an unlocking spell on the heavy door lock, and entered the main room of the old house. There, he found Narcissa Bryce-Prescott, soon to be Mrs. Lucius Malfoy, sitting on a blanket with a small lantern. Her knees were drawn up to her head, and she was crying like a child.
"What's this about Narcissa? There better to hell be a good reason for you risking our expulsion this close to graduation."
"I can't do it. I can't go through with it. I hate him!" She started crying harder, choking on her sobs.
Snape kneeled down in front of the girl, an impatient look on his face. "Get hold of yourself. You have a choice. His family approached yours. You have the right of refusal."
"You don't understand. It was your family, then Malfoy's family, and the third choice was LeStrange. But Alphonse recently withdrew his bid and proposed to that lowborn he was keeping company with. Honestly I don't know how a girl with parents as painfully common as hers ever got sorted into Slytherin. So, as you can see, I do not have a choice. My father had decided the day I received my letter that I would graduate Hogwarts with wedding plans firmly set."
"And you want sympathy from me?"
"You're the only person I know who doesn't kiss his ass or think his shit doesn't stink. I can't talk to any of the girls in Slytherin, they would just love to see the Princess Bride taken down a peg, and I can't talk to any of the boys, they all think the sun rises and sets at Lucius' beck and call."
"What makes you think I even care Narcissa? I mean, you certainly have your nerve! Summoning, no, pardon me, asking me to meet you here in the middle of the night so that you can whine to me about how imperfect your perfect little life really is."
He stood up and turned around to leave. And then curiosity got the better of him. In retrospect, he wished he had just walked out of that building and out of the lives of Narcissa and Lucius forever. He stopped and turned back to her.
"Although, on second thought, I'm awfully curious as to just what Lucius could have done to throw a wrench in his little fairytale romance. He always did have an eye for you. What's the matter, the reality not quite live up to what he has admired for so long from afar?"
"He's a sick bastard."
"Well, no shit. You've heard the stories about his great grandfather. Which reminds me, how is it even possible for a human to breed with a house- elf? What would their progeny look like? I guess we'll never know, will we, seeing as he killed and mutilated the poor creature before he violated it. So, not only does bestiality run in his family, so does necrophilia. What an outstanding catch, Narcissa. I couldn't think of more deserving girl."
Narcissa began to wail and wring her hands together. "No, you just don't understand, I can't do it, he's disgusting!"
"Oh, for Merlin's sake Narcissa. What the hell did he do to you? Did he take you behind the greenhouse and ask you to lie down and play dead or something?"
Narcissa leapt to her feet and slapped Snape soundly across the cheek.
"Fuck you! I don't care how much you've suffered this year; nobody deserves to endure what he did to me! I didn't cause any of the problems with your family. I don't hold any animosity towards you. Why can't you just be a friend to me?"
"Because I have no friends. And are you telling me that he forced himself on you Narcissa? If he did, you need to tell the headmaster, and you need to tell your mother. Just because he put a ring on your finger, it doesn't give him the right to take you against your will."
"No, it's not like that at all. My mother couldn't care less, all she cares about is wedding plans. And if I told the headmaster, it'd mean dragging my own name through the muck along with his. The contract has been signed, if I backed out now, there would be an inquiry, and I couldn't bear that kind of publicity. You do understand now, don't you, why I have to confide in a neutral party."
Snape sat down against the wall, and motioned for Narcissa to sit down next to him on the blanket.
"Okay. I'm here. You've gotten your way. I'm listening."
"Lucius got permission from the headmaster to bring me to his family's house the weekend he formally proposed to me and presented me with the ring. It was humiliating. As soon as I arrived on Friday afternoon, Lady Malfoy brought me to my suite of rooms, and there was a doctor waiting to examine me and verify that I was still a virgin. Saturday evening, the Malfoys held a party in my honor where Lucius presented me with a ring and signed his name to the contract with my father, formalizing the engagement. Late that night, Lucius came to my bedchamber and I let him in. I thought he was there to get romantic, and I figured it would be okay. I mean, we are of legal age and formally engaged to be married. Anyway, we started to kiss, and then things got a little more heated, and I started to take off my nightdress. He went mad. He slapped me and called me a whore and said that he didn't care if we were engaged, that I should have a strong enough sense of propriety to present myself to him on our wedding night as a virgin. He said that since I was such a filthy whore and had already gotten him aroused, I had to finish the job. I asked how, since he insisted I remain a virgin until the wedding. He took down his trousers, and he told me that I had to use my mouth. My mouth! Why, that's something only muggles and whores do!"
"Only muggles and whores Narcissa? You are sheltered. Did you tell him to go get stuffed and leave you alone?"
"No, I did it. He told me that if I didn't do it willingly, he would force me. So I did it. But it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. He wasn't very big and it didn't hurt or anything. But it was utterly humiliating and I cannot forgive him for it."
Snape turned towards Narcissa, a strange bemused look on his face.
"Narcissa, I don't mean to trivialize your plight, but are you saying that your fiancé is under endowed?"
"Well, I suppose, but honestly I have nothing to compare him to. I mean, I've seen the disgusting photographs of witches and wizards doing horrible things to each other that those nasty lowborn sluts keep hidden away in their trunks. And, he looks nothing like the men in those photographs. But I don't look anything like the women either, so they may not be normal wizarding folk, or they've used charms or something to alter their bodies."
"So, just how under endowed is he, if I might be so forward as to inquire?"
Narcissa shrugged her shoulders and held thumb and forefinger apart, approximating a fairly unimpressive measure.
Snape's eyes got large and he started howling with laughter. He fell to his side, clutching his ribs, tears streaming down his face, laughing until he could barely catch his breath. He sat back up, convulsing and gasping for air, and wiped the tears from his eyes.
"Lucius Malfoy, hung like a mouse? Sweet Merlin Narcissa, you have no idea how hilarious that is!"
"I'm glad you find it so amusing, but I am very torn up over this. He hurt me in ways that cannot be forgiven. He doesn't deserve me, and now I'm stuck with him, and I will have to endure sharing my bed with him for the rest of my life."
Snape finished catching his breath, and took her hand, patting it.
"Narcissa, really it's not that bad. I mean, you do your duty as a wife until you get pregnant, then you ban him from your chambers. He'll seek the services of whores and you can discreetly take a lover on the side. You know how it works in highborn families, what else did you expect? Surely you didn't expect for it to be a real marriage of love and passion, did you?"
"I had hoped it would be that way, yes!"
"Well, you are certainly more sheltered and inexperienced than I had thought."
"Gosh I wish it had been you. At least you're not perverted like Lucius."
"And just how do you know what I'm like in that respect? All I ever got from you was a chaste peck on the cheek for my birthday, Christmas, New Year's Eve, and Valentine's Day. For all you know, I could be a bigger pervert than he is. Hmmm?"
"Let's just say I have my sources. I know you've been with women, or rather a woman. I knew it all along, but pretended to be oblivious to your little trips into Hogsmeade. Severus, she's a commoner, born of the merchant class. How could you? Have you no shame or sense of the position you've been born to?"
"Please Narcissa, can you give the highborn rubbish a rest? Not like it matters now, I have only a ruined home and a tarnished name to leave school with. And yes, she is a commoner, but she enjoys me for who I am, not what I am. She never knew my last name; she never knew what my birthright was. She didn't care. And for the record, that was nothing ever intended to be shared with you. It was my business, and my business alone. The very reason why I chose somebody unrelated to the school was because I wanted to keep it my business. Tell me Narcissa? Would you have rather it had been one of your Slytherin housemates? Or was it easier to justify in your mind because she was just a common merchant class tart?"
"Of course it wasn't any easier for me to take. I felt like a fool. You had been promised to me for over a year when you started your little affair, I was the last to know, and I was utterly humiliated. Of course, it's the man's right to come to the marriage bed well practiced, but I am expected to offer myself over to Lucius totally inexperienced and unsullied."
"You know the rules, you've had years to get used to them. I simply cannot feel sorry for you Narcissa. I mean, for Merlin's sake; the day after my entire family was wiped from existence, you had already dropped me and moved on to Lucius. As far as I'm concerned, you are reaping what you have sown and so be it."
Narcissa started to cry again. Snape tried to get up to leave, and she grabbed his arm, and pulled him back down beside her. She was rapidly approaching hysteria.
"Please don't leave! You're my only friend, and I'm so afraid! I can't do it! I can't! I'd rather die than marry that monster and subject myself to his disgusting perversions! Oh God I just want to die! My life is over. Over!"
Snape patted her on the hand, and put his arm around her shoulder. She fell onto his chest, wailing and choking on sobs. Uncomfortably, he stroked her hair, trying to placate her.
"Why me? Why? I hate my life, and I want to die! I'd rather die than subject myself to him! I'm going to throw myself off of the Astronomy tower! Or drown myself in the lake! I'll slash my wrists or take a poison! Anything to keep him away from me!"
Narcissa climbed up into his lap, her voice hoarse from wailing, her body shaking with heavy sobs. Snape hesitantly put his arms around her shoulders to comfort her, her floral perfume heavy and cloying in the confined space. He awkwardly caressed her shoulders through her school robe, scowling at what he felt through the heavy fabric.
"Merlin's Beard! You're not much more than skin and bones! Don't tell me that you're slimming to fit into a fancy wedding robe. You've always had a fashionable figure, enough is enough."
"It's not that, my wedding robe hangs on me now. I can't bear to eat. I think of him and lose my appetite and feel sick at my stomach. I don't care, I just want to waste away and die."
"Now, look here Narcissa, you can't go on this way. You need to go to the headmaster and tell him you're sick. Get the nurse to prescribe you an anti-nausea potion and start eating again. You need to tell somebody else what's wrong, because I cannot help you. You don't have to tell them why you're sick, tell them it's pre-wedding jitters. That's really the truth of it anyway."
She stopped crying, and reached up and put her hand on his cheek, he flinched uncomfortably at the touch.
"Oh Severus, you're so good to me, even when I don't deserve it. Maybe my punishment for having been callous to you when your family died is being stuck with Malfoy for the rest of my life. I am so sorry about what happened with your family. Please believe me that I truly did feel for you. Lucius knew that the contract with your family would be voided, and he pressured me to have no further contact with you. That it wouldn't be proper. I wanted so badly to be there for you, but I knew his reputation with the dark arts, and I knew he had leanings towards Voldemort's movement. I was afraid to defy him."
She rested her head on his chest, and he gently caressed her hair.
"It's okay Narcissa. I forgive you. I know what an ass Malfoy is, I believe that he would be that controlling over you."
Narcissa looked up at him with large brimming eyes.
"So, you don't think I'm a bad person? You don't think I'm a cold, heartless bitch?"
"No, I don't. You're not a bad person Narcissa, you're just spoiled, and a product of your upbringing."
"You mean you don't hate me?"
"No, I don't hate you. Now that I'm out of the social loop so to speak, I actually pity you."
Snape pulled her closer to him and kissed her on the forehead. Narcissa buried her face in his neck, grinning wickedly. She looked up at him, a look of utter fragility and vulnerability on her face.
"You're everything he's not. Oh, why can't he be more like you?"
"Narcissa, it's getting late, I need to help you back to the school so that you can see the nurse."
"Not yet. Please, just hold me for a few more minutes, I feel so safe and protected with you."
He wrapped his arms more tightly around her. He turned his head to kiss her on the forehead again, but she looked up at that exact moment, and the kiss landed on her cheek. Narcissa pulled back in surprise, and then pulled his face down towards hers, and kissed him fully on the mouth, holding on until he kissed back. He broke away, face paling in the dim lantern light, brows knitted in confusion.
"Narcissa! What are you doing? This can't happen! You are contracted to Malfoy. If he found me so much holding your hand, he could call me out for a duel."
"Please Severus, please don't make me go to that monster without ever knowing any different. I promise, I won't tell a soul, nobody will ever find out."
She started rubbing her hand on his chest, and pressed her body against him.
"Narcissa, stop before you start something you'll live to regret."
"No regrets. I have enough of them already."
She kissed him again, and to her pleasure, he kissed back and didn't stop. Gently and slowly, he took her through the build-up of foreplay and made love to her for the first time, stealing what rightfully and legally belonged to Malfoy. Afterwards, he walked her quietly back to the castle underneath her invisibility cloak, and helped her sneak back into her dormitory. The minute the door to the girls' dorm closed on him, she grinned like the Cheshire Cat. Mission accomplished, she wafted over to her bed and drifted off to sleep. Still basking in the glow of pleasure, she longed eagerly for the time when she would be able to re-live the experience with her first post-pregnancy lover.
Snape never spoke to her again outside of a few tense words here and there in the halls. After graduation, while he was spiraling down into darkness, and frequenting the bars in Knockturn Alley, he overheard a rowdy conversation among some of his classmates who were whooping it up over the gossip that Malfoy had been delivered damaged goods on his wedding night. There was a wager pool going to try and guess who had the balls to make a cuckold out of Lucius Malfoy. Currently the top contender was LeStrange. There was quite a bit of gold going to the winner of the pool. Snape uncomfortably hoped that LeStrange wouldn't be pinned with the blame. Also, if Lucius would stoop so low as to administer veritaserum to her, he'd be a dead man.
After returning from their month long wedding holiday, Narcissa announced that she was into her first pregnancy. But her husband still badgered her to tell who had stolen her virginity. He threatened veritaserum, and Narcissa begged, fearing that the powerful potion would harm the baby growing inside her. But she never gave up the name of her first lover. Malfoy slipped the potion into her drink one evening without her knowing, and the results were not good. Instead of loosening her lips and revealing her lover's name, the potion reacted violently with her increased hormonal levels, and caused her to miscarry. After that incident, Narcissa was said to have retreated to private bedchambers and submitted to her wifely duty once per fortnight until another child was conceived. As far as anybody knew, she had not shared her bed with her husband ever since.
In retrospect, Snape very much regretted the encounter with her that night in the shrieking shack so many years ago. But he was a teenage boy, mad at the world, hormones aflame. And in a sense, he felt that it was a way of literally sticking it to the highborns. More disturbingly, he realized that the fetus Narcissa miscarried could have been his own child. The timing was such that nobody would ever really know whose baby she had carried until the potion mishap. Snape felt that Lucius knew this, and that he really did understand the risks of administering veritaserum to a pregnant woman. He hoped he was wrong, but in his heart, knew that he was most likely right. Malfoy wanted to take no chances of a bastard heir coming into the world.
He felt a conflicted pang of loss. He had never been interested in having a family, not then, not ever since. He certainly had no desire to start one at this stage in his life. But nonetheless, the thought that the unborn child could have been his made him wonder.
He also knew the next morning that Narcissa had played him. She recovered from her hysterical grief too easily, and a clandestine trip to the hospital ward confirmed that she had never seen the nurse and had never taken any healing potions. He felt a fool for allowing himself to be manipulated and put into such a compromising position. Angry with Narcissa, angry at women in general, and even angrier at the world, he never returned to his lover in Hogsmeade. He had only seen her briefly in passing since, and went out of his way to avoid her.
Returning to the present, he felt the warm flesh of Mira's body beneath his hand. He thought back to that night, to Narcissa's pale angular body. The envy of every girl in the school, Narcissa was moderately tall, icy pale, and fashionably androgynous. Angular noble features and flaxen blonde hair were her crown and glory. The woman lying beside him now was none of those things. She was tall, but even taller than some men. She would also never be willowy. She had lost weight during her long stay in the hospital ward, but even as such, she was still all curves and smooth rounded contours. Whereas Narcissa wafted through a room like a specter, Mira slinked through it like a panther. Everything about her was Earthy and womanly. She reminded him a little of his first lover. But she was also strong. Physically, magically, and mentally powerful. He definitely admired that. He caressed the firm swell of her belly and thought that in her he had truly found his match. He closed his eyes, and held her, until their breathing fell into the same rhythm and he drifted off into a peaceful sleep.
Implied coerced sexual contact in this chapter. Not a hard R, but R to be safe.
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me. Not a damn thing.
Chapter 40: Face of an Angel, Heart of a Devil.
Mentally, he compared her to his memory of Narcissa. The conversation they had earlier in the evening brought back a memory of the past. He stared over Mira into the fire and drifted back over twenty years in his mind.
Just a couple of weeks before graduation, Narcissa was having cold feet regarding her impending nuptials to the Heir of the Malfoy fortune. She had slipped Snape a note during Arithomancy class, asking him to please meet her in the building known as the "shrieking shack" in Hogsmeade at midnight. Intrigued, he pocketed the note. Narcissa was never one to say "please". She demanded, and she received. She never asked. Midnight approached, and Snape sneaked out of his dormitory, and away from the castle, unseen and unheard. Not having the luxury of an invisibility cloak, he kept off the main road from the school to Hogsmeade and instead took a lesser-traveled shortcut through the edges of the forest. He approached the dilapidated old house, and saw a faint glow coming from inside. He also heard a faint moaning or whimpering noise, and for a brief moment thought that maybe the thing really was haunted. But as he drew closer, he recognized the sound as that of a woman crying.
He pulled out his wand and performed an unlocking spell on the heavy door lock, and entered the main room of the old house. There, he found Narcissa Bryce-Prescott, soon to be Mrs. Lucius Malfoy, sitting on a blanket with a small lantern. Her knees were drawn up to her head, and she was crying like a child.
"What's this about Narcissa? There better to hell be a good reason for you risking our expulsion this close to graduation."
"I can't do it. I can't go through with it. I hate him!" She started crying harder, choking on her sobs.
Snape kneeled down in front of the girl, an impatient look on his face. "Get hold of yourself. You have a choice. His family approached yours. You have the right of refusal."
"You don't understand. It was your family, then Malfoy's family, and the third choice was LeStrange. But Alphonse recently withdrew his bid and proposed to that lowborn he was keeping company with. Honestly I don't know how a girl with parents as painfully common as hers ever got sorted into Slytherin. So, as you can see, I do not have a choice. My father had decided the day I received my letter that I would graduate Hogwarts with wedding plans firmly set."
"And you want sympathy from me?"
"You're the only person I know who doesn't kiss his ass or think his shit doesn't stink. I can't talk to any of the girls in Slytherin, they would just love to see the Princess Bride taken down a peg, and I can't talk to any of the boys, they all think the sun rises and sets at Lucius' beck and call."
"What makes you think I even care Narcissa? I mean, you certainly have your nerve! Summoning, no, pardon me, asking me to meet you here in the middle of the night so that you can whine to me about how imperfect your perfect little life really is."
He stood up and turned around to leave. And then curiosity got the better of him. In retrospect, he wished he had just walked out of that building and out of the lives of Narcissa and Lucius forever. He stopped and turned back to her.
"Although, on second thought, I'm awfully curious as to just what Lucius could have done to throw a wrench in his little fairytale romance. He always did have an eye for you. What's the matter, the reality not quite live up to what he has admired for so long from afar?"
"He's a sick bastard."
"Well, no shit. You've heard the stories about his great grandfather. Which reminds me, how is it even possible for a human to breed with a house- elf? What would their progeny look like? I guess we'll never know, will we, seeing as he killed and mutilated the poor creature before he violated it. So, not only does bestiality run in his family, so does necrophilia. What an outstanding catch, Narcissa. I couldn't think of more deserving girl."
Narcissa began to wail and wring her hands together. "No, you just don't understand, I can't do it, he's disgusting!"
"Oh, for Merlin's sake Narcissa. What the hell did he do to you? Did he take you behind the greenhouse and ask you to lie down and play dead or something?"
Narcissa leapt to her feet and slapped Snape soundly across the cheek.
"Fuck you! I don't care how much you've suffered this year; nobody deserves to endure what he did to me! I didn't cause any of the problems with your family. I don't hold any animosity towards you. Why can't you just be a friend to me?"
"Because I have no friends. And are you telling me that he forced himself on you Narcissa? If he did, you need to tell the headmaster, and you need to tell your mother. Just because he put a ring on your finger, it doesn't give him the right to take you against your will."
"No, it's not like that at all. My mother couldn't care less, all she cares about is wedding plans. And if I told the headmaster, it'd mean dragging my own name through the muck along with his. The contract has been signed, if I backed out now, there would be an inquiry, and I couldn't bear that kind of publicity. You do understand now, don't you, why I have to confide in a neutral party."
Snape sat down against the wall, and motioned for Narcissa to sit down next to him on the blanket.
"Okay. I'm here. You've gotten your way. I'm listening."
"Lucius got permission from the headmaster to bring me to his family's house the weekend he formally proposed to me and presented me with the ring. It was humiliating. As soon as I arrived on Friday afternoon, Lady Malfoy brought me to my suite of rooms, and there was a doctor waiting to examine me and verify that I was still a virgin. Saturday evening, the Malfoys held a party in my honor where Lucius presented me with a ring and signed his name to the contract with my father, formalizing the engagement. Late that night, Lucius came to my bedchamber and I let him in. I thought he was there to get romantic, and I figured it would be okay. I mean, we are of legal age and formally engaged to be married. Anyway, we started to kiss, and then things got a little more heated, and I started to take off my nightdress. He went mad. He slapped me and called me a whore and said that he didn't care if we were engaged, that I should have a strong enough sense of propriety to present myself to him on our wedding night as a virgin. He said that since I was such a filthy whore and had already gotten him aroused, I had to finish the job. I asked how, since he insisted I remain a virgin until the wedding. He took down his trousers, and he told me that I had to use my mouth. My mouth! Why, that's something only muggles and whores do!"
"Only muggles and whores Narcissa? You are sheltered. Did you tell him to go get stuffed and leave you alone?"
"No, I did it. He told me that if I didn't do it willingly, he would force me. So I did it. But it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. He wasn't very big and it didn't hurt or anything. But it was utterly humiliating and I cannot forgive him for it."
Snape turned towards Narcissa, a strange bemused look on his face.
"Narcissa, I don't mean to trivialize your plight, but are you saying that your fiancé is under endowed?"
"Well, I suppose, but honestly I have nothing to compare him to. I mean, I've seen the disgusting photographs of witches and wizards doing horrible things to each other that those nasty lowborn sluts keep hidden away in their trunks. And, he looks nothing like the men in those photographs. But I don't look anything like the women either, so they may not be normal wizarding folk, or they've used charms or something to alter their bodies."
"So, just how under endowed is he, if I might be so forward as to inquire?"
Narcissa shrugged her shoulders and held thumb and forefinger apart, approximating a fairly unimpressive measure.
Snape's eyes got large and he started howling with laughter. He fell to his side, clutching his ribs, tears streaming down his face, laughing until he could barely catch his breath. He sat back up, convulsing and gasping for air, and wiped the tears from his eyes.
"Lucius Malfoy, hung like a mouse? Sweet Merlin Narcissa, you have no idea how hilarious that is!"
"I'm glad you find it so amusing, but I am very torn up over this. He hurt me in ways that cannot be forgiven. He doesn't deserve me, and now I'm stuck with him, and I will have to endure sharing my bed with him for the rest of my life."
Snape finished catching his breath, and took her hand, patting it.
"Narcissa, really it's not that bad. I mean, you do your duty as a wife until you get pregnant, then you ban him from your chambers. He'll seek the services of whores and you can discreetly take a lover on the side. You know how it works in highborn families, what else did you expect? Surely you didn't expect for it to be a real marriage of love and passion, did you?"
"I had hoped it would be that way, yes!"
"Well, you are certainly more sheltered and inexperienced than I had thought."
"Gosh I wish it had been you. At least you're not perverted like Lucius."
"And just how do you know what I'm like in that respect? All I ever got from you was a chaste peck on the cheek for my birthday, Christmas, New Year's Eve, and Valentine's Day. For all you know, I could be a bigger pervert than he is. Hmmm?"
"Let's just say I have my sources. I know you've been with women, or rather a woman. I knew it all along, but pretended to be oblivious to your little trips into Hogsmeade. Severus, she's a commoner, born of the merchant class. How could you? Have you no shame or sense of the position you've been born to?"
"Please Narcissa, can you give the highborn rubbish a rest? Not like it matters now, I have only a ruined home and a tarnished name to leave school with. And yes, she is a commoner, but she enjoys me for who I am, not what I am. She never knew my last name; she never knew what my birthright was. She didn't care. And for the record, that was nothing ever intended to be shared with you. It was my business, and my business alone. The very reason why I chose somebody unrelated to the school was because I wanted to keep it my business. Tell me Narcissa? Would you have rather it had been one of your Slytherin housemates? Or was it easier to justify in your mind because she was just a common merchant class tart?"
"Of course it wasn't any easier for me to take. I felt like a fool. You had been promised to me for over a year when you started your little affair, I was the last to know, and I was utterly humiliated. Of course, it's the man's right to come to the marriage bed well practiced, but I am expected to offer myself over to Lucius totally inexperienced and unsullied."
"You know the rules, you've had years to get used to them. I simply cannot feel sorry for you Narcissa. I mean, for Merlin's sake; the day after my entire family was wiped from existence, you had already dropped me and moved on to Lucius. As far as I'm concerned, you are reaping what you have sown and so be it."
Narcissa started to cry again. Snape tried to get up to leave, and she grabbed his arm, and pulled him back down beside her. She was rapidly approaching hysteria.
"Please don't leave! You're my only friend, and I'm so afraid! I can't do it! I can't! I'd rather die than marry that monster and subject myself to his disgusting perversions! Oh God I just want to die! My life is over. Over!"
Snape patted her on the hand, and put his arm around her shoulder. She fell onto his chest, wailing and choking on sobs. Uncomfortably, he stroked her hair, trying to placate her.
"Why me? Why? I hate my life, and I want to die! I'd rather die than subject myself to him! I'm going to throw myself off of the Astronomy tower! Or drown myself in the lake! I'll slash my wrists or take a poison! Anything to keep him away from me!"
Narcissa climbed up into his lap, her voice hoarse from wailing, her body shaking with heavy sobs. Snape hesitantly put his arms around her shoulders to comfort her, her floral perfume heavy and cloying in the confined space. He awkwardly caressed her shoulders through her school robe, scowling at what he felt through the heavy fabric.
"Merlin's Beard! You're not much more than skin and bones! Don't tell me that you're slimming to fit into a fancy wedding robe. You've always had a fashionable figure, enough is enough."
"It's not that, my wedding robe hangs on me now. I can't bear to eat. I think of him and lose my appetite and feel sick at my stomach. I don't care, I just want to waste away and die."
"Now, look here Narcissa, you can't go on this way. You need to go to the headmaster and tell him you're sick. Get the nurse to prescribe you an anti-nausea potion and start eating again. You need to tell somebody else what's wrong, because I cannot help you. You don't have to tell them why you're sick, tell them it's pre-wedding jitters. That's really the truth of it anyway."
She stopped crying, and reached up and put her hand on his cheek, he flinched uncomfortably at the touch.
"Oh Severus, you're so good to me, even when I don't deserve it. Maybe my punishment for having been callous to you when your family died is being stuck with Malfoy for the rest of my life. I am so sorry about what happened with your family. Please believe me that I truly did feel for you. Lucius knew that the contract with your family would be voided, and he pressured me to have no further contact with you. That it wouldn't be proper. I wanted so badly to be there for you, but I knew his reputation with the dark arts, and I knew he had leanings towards Voldemort's movement. I was afraid to defy him."
She rested her head on his chest, and he gently caressed her hair.
"It's okay Narcissa. I forgive you. I know what an ass Malfoy is, I believe that he would be that controlling over you."
Narcissa looked up at him with large brimming eyes.
"So, you don't think I'm a bad person? You don't think I'm a cold, heartless bitch?"
"No, I don't. You're not a bad person Narcissa, you're just spoiled, and a product of your upbringing."
"You mean you don't hate me?"
"No, I don't hate you. Now that I'm out of the social loop so to speak, I actually pity you."
Snape pulled her closer to him and kissed her on the forehead. Narcissa buried her face in his neck, grinning wickedly. She looked up at him, a look of utter fragility and vulnerability on her face.
"You're everything he's not. Oh, why can't he be more like you?"
"Narcissa, it's getting late, I need to help you back to the school so that you can see the nurse."
"Not yet. Please, just hold me for a few more minutes, I feel so safe and protected with you."
He wrapped his arms more tightly around her. He turned his head to kiss her on the forehead again, but she looked up at that exact moment, and the kiss landed on her cheek. Narcissa pulled back in surprise, and then pulled his face down towards hers, and kissed him fully on the mouth, holding on until he kissed back. He broke away, face paling in the dim lantern light, brows knitted in confusion.
"Narcissa! What are you doing? This can't happen! You are contracted to Malfoy. If he found me so much holding your hand, he could call me out for a duel."
"Please Severus, please don't make me go to that monster without ever knowing any different. I promise, I won't tell a soul, nobody will ever find out."
She started rubbing her hand on his chest, and pressed her body against him.
"Narcissa, stop before you start something you'll live to regret."
"No regrets. I have enough of them already."
She kissed him again, and to her pleasure, he kissed back and didn't stop. Gently and slowly, he took her through the build-up of foreplay and made love to her for the first time, stealing what rightfully and legally belonged to Malfoy. Afterwards, he walked her quietly back to the castle underneath her invisibility cloak, and helped her sneak back into her dormitory. The minute the door to the girls' dorm closed on him, she grinned like the Cheshire Cat. Mission accomplished, she wafted over to her bed and drifted off to sleep. Still basking in the glow of pleasure, she longed eagerly for the time when she would be able to re-live the experience with her first post-pregnancy lover.
Snape never spoke to her again outside of a few tense words here and there in the halls. After graduation, while he was spiraling down into darkness, and frequenting the bars in Knockturn Alley, he overheard a rowdy conversation among some of his classmates who were whooping it up over the gossip that Malfoy had been delivered damaged goods on his wedding night. There was a wager pool going to try and guess who had the balls to make a cuckold out of Lucius Malfoy. Currently the top contender was LeStrange. There was quite a bit of gold going to the winner of the pool. Snape uncomfortably hoped that LeStrange wouldn't be pinned with the blame. Also, if Lucius would stoop so low as to administer veritaserum to her, he'd be a dead man.
After returning from their month long wedding holiday, Narcissa announced that she was into her first pregnancy. But her husband still badgered her to tell who had stolen her virginity. He threatened veritaserum, and Narcissa begged, fearing that the powerful potion would harm the baby growing inside her. But she never gave up the name of her first lover. Malfoy slipped the potion into her drink one evening without her knowing, and the results were not good. Instead of loosening her lips and revealing her lover's name, the potion reacted violently with her increased hormonal levels, and caused her to miscarry. After that incident, Narcissa was said to have retreated to private bedchambers and submitted to her wifely duty once per fortnight until another child was conceived. As far as anybody knew, she had not shared her bed with her husband ever since.
In retrospect, Snape very much regretted the encounter with her that night in the shrieking shack so many years ago. But he was a teenage boy, mad at the world, hormones aflame. And in a sense, he felt that it was a way of literally sticking it to the highborns. More disturbingly, he realized that the fetus Narcissa miscarried could have been his own child. The timing was such that nobody would ever really know whose baby she had carried until the potion mishap. Snape felt that Lucius knew this, and that he really did understand the risks of administering veritaserum to a pregnant woman. He hoped he was wrong, but in his heart, knew that he was most likely right. Malfoy wanted to take no chances of a bastard heir coming into the world.
He felt a conflicted pang of loss. He had never been interested in having a family, not then, not ever since. He certainly had no desire to start one at this stage in his life. But nonetheless, the thought that the unborn child could have been his made him wonder.
He also knew the next morning that Narcissa had played him. She recovered from her hysterical grief too easily, and a clandestine trip to the hospital ward confirmed that she had never seen the nurse and had never taken any healing potions. He felt a fool for allowing himself to be manipulated and put into such a compromising position. Angry with Narcissa, angry at women in general, and even angrier at the world, he never returned to his lover in Hogsmeade. He had only seen her briefly in passing since, and went out of his way to avoid her.
Returning to the present, he felt the warm flesh of Mira's body beneath his hand. He thought back to that night, to Narcissa's pale angular body. The envy of every girl in the school, Narcissa was moderately tall, icy pale, and fashionably androgynous. Angular noble features and flaxen blonde hair were her crown and glory. The woman lying beside him now was none of those things. She was tall, but even taller than some men. She would also never be willowy. She had lost weight during her long stay in the hospital ward, but even as such, she was still all curves and smooth rounded contours. Whereas Narcissa wafted through a room like a specter, Mira slinked through it like a panther. Everything about her was Earthy and womanly. She reminded him a little of his first lover. But she was also strong. Physically, magically, and mentally powerful. He definitely admired that. He caressed the firm swell of her belly and thought that in her he had truly found his match. He closed his eyes, and held her, until their breathing fell into the same rhythm and he drifted off into a peaceful sleep.