Disclaimer:I don't own the Harry Potter characters. I never will! Everyone belongs to J.K. Rowling, except for Peter's girlfriend Grace. I'm pleased to say I own her.
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Glitter, Spice, and Everything Nice
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Chapter 6 - The Flashback Chapter
Severus Snape was the only seventh-year Slytherin who did not venture into Hogsmeade that weekend. He had fully intended to, but the arrival of an owl on Saturday morning had completely changed his plans. He sat on his bed, biting his lip and looking down at the folded piece of parchment clutched in his hand. It was already deeply creased from being opened, read, folded, and opened again, seemingly a hundred times over.
Almost against his will, he opened it again, his long fingers smoothing out the parchment with only the slightest hint of a tremble. His black eyes scanned the sprawling, loopy handwriting once more, and he bit down harder on his lip with each sentence.
'Dear Severus,
I know the news of my marriage came as a shock to you, and I'm sorry. You must believe me when I say this marriage was not what I wished for. Narcissa is a beautiful woman and will make a fine wife; but she has nothing compared to you. Severus, you were my first love, I swear it, and you always will be. I'm sorry it had to turn out this way, and I hope you'll forgive me, in time. If it weren't for Narcissa's pregnancy, I would leave her in an instant. But I must do what is respectable. I must marry the mother of my son - a son, yes, I just know she is carrying a boy - and put everything else behind me. But, my love, I will never regret or forget the time we shared. Please forgive me. I hope we can continue to correspond - yes, even remain friends. For the sake of the past.
Sincerely,
Your Love,
Lucius'
Snape hardly noticed the tear that splashed on the signature. He folded up the letter, shakily, and tucked it into the top drawer of his nightstand.
At one point, Lucius Malfoy had been a good friend of Snape's. In fact, they had been lovers, after a fashion. During Snape's first two years at Hogwarts, the pair had carried on a relationship kept quite secret from everyone else at the school. It was a point on how naive Snape had been then, he thought bitterly, that he had imagined Lucius would love him forever. Perhaps not to the point of marriage, no, not for two wizards; but at least to the point of keeping Snape by his side forever.
"What a sodding fool I was," Snape said. He meant for it to come out in a venomous hiss, but all that escaped his lips was a feeble whisper. He flopped face-down on his bed, resting his forehead on his arms. His eyes closed. He was dozing, he was...
...he was twelve years old again, not as embittered with the world as he was at sixteen, one of the top students in his year for the second year running. But that didn't matter. What mattered was the slender, pale body of seventeen-year-old Lucius Malfoy, stretched out beside him on the cushions. They were in their secret room, the room only they knew about, located on the seventh floor opposite a tapestry of trolls being trained for the ballet. It was here they came to hide, here they came to make love. Their room was so different, so pleasant, than the rest of the school, that it seemed hundreds of miles away, not even in Hogwarts at all.
"Severus, you look like the cat that's gotten into the cream," Lucius purred. "Feeling extra good today?"
"I'm always happy when I'm with you," Snape murmured, cuddling closer.
"You make me blush, darling." Lucius sat up, pushing his long blonde hair off his shoulders and securing it in a queue with a short length of blue velvet ribbon. "But I wouldn't have it any other way." His lips brushed a kiss across Snape's forehead. "Come along, now. I'm afraid we'll be missed if we spend any longer here."
Snape caught Lucius' wrist as he made to stand. "Luci."
"What is it?"
"You love me, don't you?"
"Yes, darling. Very much."
"Will you always love me?"
"Of course I will."
Mollified (for the moment at least), Snape allowed a rare smile to cross his visage. He released Lucius' wrist and began to dress as well.
(In his sleep the older Severus moaned, knowing he was being silly, knowing he never should have believed a word. He should have avoided Lucius like the plague, never even looked his way. But what good would it have done?)
And now he was eleven, a new student at Hogwarts, shakily approaching the Slytherin table after being Sorted. He collapsed into his seat beside a few other first-years, grateful to be away from the prying eyes of the school. He watched as the dwindling group of new students clustered before the staff table grew less and less, relieved to be away at last. Not just from the staring eyes of the student body, but from everything. Everything. His sop of a mother, who spent her days slaving for his father and never had time for anything else; his father, brutish lout that he was, a heavy drinker with an easily raised temper (and though Snape didn't know it and wouldn't care if he did, he shared something in common with Sirius Black in this respect) and a heavy hand. Snape loathed his home, but now... Hogwarts was his home.
He felt eyes upon him and looked quickly 'round; the only student looking his way was a tall and thin upperclassman with long blonde hair tied in a queue. The iciness of his steel-grey eyes made a shudder pass through Snape's body, and he turned away quickly. Looking at him too long would hurt your eyes.
But it wasn't long at all before Snape learned who the older boy was. Lucius Malfoy, heir to one of the oldest and greatest pure-blooded families in the wizarding community. Though he didn't know why, he seemed to have caught Lucius' eye, though whether that was a good or bad thing remained to be seen. For a few weeks Snape pretended not to notice the way Lucius sometimes stared at him. But late one night in the library, it became impossible to ignore, especially as Lucius had approached the table where Snape sat alone, poring over a book for his Herbology essay.
"Snape."
Severus looked up, and gulped at the hard look in those cold, stormy eyes. "Y-yes?"
"Do you know who I am?"
"Er - upperclassman Malfoy, if I'm not mistaken." Snape knew perfectly well what his name was. Lucius was infamous around school, especially for hanging around people like Bellatrix and Narcissa Black and Rodolphus Lestrange.
"'Upperclassman Malfoy'? That sounds so stiff. Please, call me Lucius." Those grey eyes had taken on a different look. Snape supposed it was Lucius' version of good humour, but he wasn't sure. In fact, he wondered why Lucius was there at all. Normally sixth-and-seventh years never took notice of lowly first-years.
"I've noticed you're quite... ah, shall we say, out-of-sorts with Sirius Black?"
So that was it. "If you want the complete and honest truth, I hate him," Snape replied with a sneer. He had been in school just long enough to attract the teasing and rude comments of Sirius and his band of friends, including James Potter, whom Snape had known ever since birth and loathed. "What do you want with him?"
Lucius rested his chin in one hand. "If you want the complete and honest truth, I just want to see what makes him tick," he replied, almost thoughtfully. "He holds a very great position within the Black family, you know. Heir to the family. He holds the fate of the noble and most ancient house of Black in his hands. Wealth, power, women, anything he could possibly want. And yet he has utterly rejected it all. He rebels against his parents, especially his mother, and refuses to have anything to do with the lot of them. His cousin, Bellatrix, tells me he is the black sheep of the family - except for her sister, Andromeda, that is."
"Why are you so interested in something as useless as that?" Snape asked suspiciously.
"No matter." Lucius stood, his long hair glowing in the light of the gas lamps on the walls. "I like you, Snape," he said simply, mystifyingly, before turning on his heel and striding out of the library.
I like you, Snape. And somehow, dizzyingly, so fast Snape could barely catch his breath, he was in love with Lucius Malfoy. He had no idea how it had occurred. It had been hardly a week after their conversation in the library when Snape found himself being kissed by Lucius in the corridors late one night; somehow the relationship had escalated into snogging and groping sessions in whatever deserted location they could find when the fancy took them. It was all his fault, the bastard. Which wasn't exactly true. Lucius was the siren, the seducer, the one who could tempt Snape into doing anything. But it was Snape himself who went along with it, every time. Despite his young age he was very much attracted to Lucius in a way that was more than half sexual; many times he had wondered if it was simply the thrill of letting an older student have his way with him like that.
Snape's first year at Hogwarts seemed like the lives of two different people. During class he was the quiet, hard-working student who went unnoticed unless Black and Potter were tormenting him again; in his free time he was with Lucius, allowing himself to be kissed and touched, feeling like a whore but unable and unwilling to put a stop to it. Second year started off with Lucius whispering in Snape's ear during the Welcoming Feast that he wanted to take him to bed. Though the possibility had been interesting, enticing, and rather erotic, Snape had refused on the grounds that they had no place where they would get privacy long enough to try such an act. However, curiosity got the better of him. He actually found himself wondering what Lucius would be like... and finally led his lover to the secret room he had found while hiding from Potter's gang.
Why did I bring him there? It was a fucking downward spiral from then on. He had been surprised to find the dingy cupboard had become a spacious room draped in silk curtains, with a great heap of cushions on the floor; but it had hardly mattered as he locked the door behind them and went dutifully into Lucius' embrace. His virginity was gone at twelve and he didn't care. Nothing mattered as long as Lucius was there.
Lucius had promised to remain faithful. And naive child that he had been, Snape had believed him entirely. He had kept this happy thought deep in his heart for when he was feeling his worst, after being taunted by Potter or after visiting home and becoming once more a witness to the daily battles between his parents. As soon as he left Hogwarts Lucius would take him into his home and everything would be all right.
Bellatrix Black killed off this notion when Snape was in his fifth year; she had informed him quite frankly (and brutally) that Lucius was sleeping with her sister Narcissa. "He loves her, I think," she had concluded in a half-sneering way that made Snape wonder if she truly believed what she was saying. After confronting Lucius on the Christmas holidays Snape had learned what Bellatrix had told him was true. But still he continued to believe. He had allowed Lucius to take him to bed again, had believed every word as Lucius panted "I love you, I love you" in his ear over and over, almost perfectly in time with his thrusts.
Severus jerked awake quite suddenly to find himself bathed in sweat; the sunlight was slanting across the dormitory floor in such a way that indicated it was nearly sunset. He had been lost in his dream-memories for nearly the whole day. Shaking, he sat up. He reached out and ripped open the drawer of the nightstand, pulling out Lucius' letter. A raging, stinging hatred had suddenly risen inside him, making him more furious than he had ever been.
"Incendio!" he hissed, touching the tip of his wand to a corner of the parchment and setting it alight. He watched it burn with something very much like glee coursing through his body. As the flames reached the edge of the letter, he let it drop, watching the last fragments of parchment burn as they wafted to the ground.
"He loves me, he loves me not," he snarled, stomping on the crisped remains.
Goddamn Lucius Malfoy. Goddamn Narcissa Black. Goddamn the child she was carrying.
He took the ashes to the window and threw them to the breeze.
"Good riddance."
It was all just dust in the wind.
To Be Continued...
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(A/N: Serious Timeline Issues As Presented in Half-Blood Prince!
Well, again, I've had a story's progress spoiled by the release of a book. As I recall, I set Bellatrix to be a year older than Sirius in this story. But as we learned in HBP, Bellatrix is the eldest Black sister, not the youngest (I always assumed Narcissa was the oldest, though her son is much younger than her sister Andromeda's daughter). Sorry about that. And also, I am having difficulty understanding the whole timeline concerning Mouldy Voldie, the Lestranges, and the Malfoys. In HBP, one of the boys in Slughorn's office during the Horcrux flashback was called "Lestrange". Now, let's assume Slughorn was talking to Bellatrix's husband, Rodolphus. How could he be in school with Mouldy Voldie, when Sirius said in GoF that Snape hung out with both Lestranges when they were in school? If Snape was hanging out with Bella and Rodolphus, they would have to be a lot younger than the books would have us think. I mean, if Bella and Rodolphus had been at school with Mouldy Voldie, they'd be about in their mid-60's, like him, and there would have been at least a twenty, possibly thirty-year gap between the Lestranges' graduation from Hogwarts and the arrival of Snape and the Marauders. And also, it leaves a large gap between the Black sisters. We know Narcissa is 42 in HBP, and if Bella went to school with Mouldy Voldie she is anywhere between 58 to about 65 or so - leaving that twenty-year gap in which the middle sister, Andromeda, was born. I don't think anyone, even wizards, wait that long between children. sigh Sorry, that was long, but I was just confused. And sorry for messing up the timeline, but after all, I started this before HBP came out!)
