They had been friends once.
Professor Snape comes through the door of the lounge; impatient, brisk. He has never been one to mince words or dally long, but his host is admiring the smooth, clear sheen of his fingernails with deliberate slowness and exacting criticism when he seems to find a slight flaw on his left index. Snape can read the grey eyes easily.
That will not do at all.
"Good morning, Severus, most honoured murderer" he drawls, languid and arrogant and hateful.
He knows his tone irritates the pale, lanky professor for he smiles indolently; so painfully, dangerously like his son. He now waits for his guest to say something, knowing that the words will flow darkly acidic and velveteen from his mouth. He would expect nothing less.
"Lucius," Snape murmurs, "I expect you did not invite me here to discuss the weather over tea and biscuits?"
A small frown flickers across the other mans face, marring the pale blonde beauty of him. Severus's answer was not as artful as he had hoped. He wonders, perhaps, if Snape is slipping.
Snape is wary and suspicious as to why he was summoned, a part of him knowing and praying and feeling the weight of himself cracking the outward façade. Lucius must have liked what he saw – the fear – because he smiled.
"The weather…"
Gracefully, years of being at the top of every social circle making the practiced movement an art form, Lucius extends his hand to a decanter of brandy sitting on the sideboard. He remembers the blonde enjoyed a fine brandy on cooler evenings.
They had been confidants once.
"Is sadly dark."
Turning his grey assessing eyes away from the sunny window – always looking for that weak link in the armour – Lucius smiled.
Bitterly. Brutally.
Snape realized with a sharp wave of panic that Lucius Malfoy knew what he should not know. That she could already be dead. The crack widens, gapes, spills, and it is raw and wounding and bloody as he pours out of the awful thing he has created. Her dark eyes could be empty, her wildly curling hair matted with blood, her curving, eager body twisted in pain. A moan wells up inside his throat, is bit back and swallowed. He feels as if his chest will burst because there is so much pouring out all at once. He has never felt so much before, and an unhinged, madness driven part of him wonders idly if this was what it was like to die.
But Lucius says nothing, pouring himself a small glass of the fine vintage and returning
to his seat where he crosses his long legs and smirks.
They had been partners once.
Snape cannot find words, feeling as if his skin was the only thing holding him together and if he moved – if he spoke – then something inside him would crumble, and he would lose his mind.
"How," he manages to whisper, and Lucius shrugs.
It is a gesture that is entirely too casual on his shoulders. It makes Snape shudder.
"Not in the ways you may think."
Snape finds that he must sink to his knees or he will fall, and his hand, thin and pale, latches onto the wooden arm of a chair. He clenches it so hard his knuckles crack even as the plush oriental carpet soothes his knees.
"Now, now, Severus. No need for such melodrama."
They had been united once.
But there is every need, for he may have just destroyed the only precious thing he had owned…But it had only been for a moment! Those stolen hours could not have cost them so much!
"Is she dead?"
His tone is listless, wooden.
"Are you?" Lucius scoffs, sipping his alcohol and tapping a well perfected fingernail
against his armrest.
Bewildered, unable to focus completely on Malfoy because the overwhelming enormity of what he had done swamped him in a tide of guilt, Snape could only stare. Lucius arched a pale brow, his eyes hardening to chips of rock.
"I find the company you choose to keep… disheartening. But I will not forbid my friend the only real emotion he has ever been freely given."
Malfoy's sneer is damning evidence that it is not emotion he believes Snape wants from the mudblood of Harry Potter.
"Lucius," he begins, but the man swipes a hand through the air, cutting him off.
"Do not, Severus. Keep your little mudblood and defy everything you were supposed to stand for. Your purpose. This shall be our dirty little secret, for all the times you have been beside me, and our history as friends. But make no mistake, if you are discovered, I will aid him as he tears you limb from limb."
They had been brothers once.
So grateful, so sickened, Snape stood. He could feel his heart pounding and the quaking heaviness in his limbs. He would not thank Lucius.
He would abhor Lucius.
He turns to leave, holding his spine straight and his shoulders back, when the sinuously deceptive voice slides through the room once more.
"But tell me, Severus… Do you think she will stand by you? When she discovers the dark, perverse things you have done so willingly? Will she see you the same when she knows of the blood on your hands? The screams in your ears? Tell me truly… Do you think she will stay when you are greyed and brittle and ugly?"
Snape closed his eyes, strides from the room with purpose.
He would not answer, not even to himself.
Behind him, Lucius swirls the dark liquid around in his glass, recalling a different world between them, when the two young men had stood side by side and tried to change their times for the better.
Yes, they had been friends once.