A/N: Lordisa help me, I never thought it would happen to me but I've done it---I've just shipped Snape with someone. I have no sympathy for his character, rest assured, or hers either for that matter, but blame the Velvet Underground for inspiring me to write some backstory to these two baddies many many months ago. The song is Pale Blue Eyes, and it's more beautiful by far than the sick imitation of caring that exists between these two sorry excuses for humanity, and the verse in question is this:
Thought of you as my mountaintop,
Thought of you as my peak,
Thought of you as everything
I've had but couldn't keep.
Though It's Truly a Sin
Severus Snape sat in his leather armchair for many minutes after Narcissa and her sister had departed; traces of something lingered in all the places her pale, sweet-smelling body had brushed against his own. Sometimes he still got that strange, warm-blooded feeling of raging lust when he thought about her, that thing that colored his face like nothing else ever could; sometimes the thought of her made him weep, but more often than not, it seemed, she just made him a little mad. An Unbreakable Vow, for the love of evil! What would possess him to make such a hasty and potentially detrimental commitment? She would. He scowled and stood up from his chair, the faraway location of his mind reminding him most appallingly of something James Potter would do. He shuddered.
If he knew what it meant to be whipped, he would know that that's exactly what he was—indeed, in a way, that's exactly what he always had been. Poor, whipped little Severus Snape, wanting a woman he was neither wealthy enough to seduce nor seductive enough to compensate for the lack of wealth.
Not that he pined. He wasn't Potter for cruelty's sake! Once upon a time, Narcissa had led him to believe that he could make her happy—for all of a single, silvery night he had lived in a glorious dream with a beautiful woman and no one else, but that was all it was: a dream, and he knew it. So what do you do when you don't succeed? When the woman you love runs off with Moneybags? Deny, deny, deny, you were even trying. Befriend the Moneybags in question—don't shrink from seeing them together, happy and contented, and treat their son as if he were your own. Just be careful never to linger too long on wishing he were. That was sinful, as far as he was concerned. But to this day, her pale blue eyes to him were the symbol of all the sweetest things in life of which he'd only ever had the smallest taste, and of which men like Lucius slept beside every night without knowing, without appreciating so much as the warmth of a woman's body.
He sighed and waved his wand around the room, floating the empty glasses down the hall and into the kitchen, not caring that they each cuffed Pettigrew on the head as he tried to make his way through the door into the study.
"What did they want?" asked Pettigrew, sneaking furtively—purely out of habit. Snape's jaw clenched and then unclenched—he would have to speak to the Dark Lord, no doubt, for his clumsy 'assistant' was waxing audacious in his ill-disguised nosiness.
If he could have his way all women would be like Narcissa: soft, compliant, quiet, and beautiful—then it wouldn't matter that they were stupid, then they couldn't manipulate and come charging into everything insisting on equality and a fair share of things they couldn't handle in the first place. And when he said 'women', by the way, he meant to include Pettigrew: the pathetic lump would do well not to meddle in things he was incapable of understanding.
"Go away, Wormtail," he said airily. He took no further notice of him after that, and did not even know whether Pettigrew stayed or continued to sit there in the room being pathetic, too lost was he in contemplating this morning's interesting, though not entirely unanticipated, turn of events.
When all was said and done he couldn't help the small flickerings of satisfaction which lapped at his insides when he thought of Lucius in Azkaban, or of Narcissa, all alone in her great manor. Look where money had gotten the pair of them, and look where brains and talent had gotten him: a comfortable spot in the pocket of the greatest wizard of all time and the Defense Against the Dark Arts post at last. Narcissa had learned fairly early into her marriage with Lucius that money wasn't everything.
"It only conceals... other things." She said woefully to him one winter night a few years ago when Lucius was off somewhere on business.
"What does it conceal?" He had asked, unable to contain his silky glee, "What is the matter, Narcissa?"
She had demurred then, flushing and muttering something indistinctly, looking rather ashamed. He felt a bit sick, and said with a deceptively mild drawl, "Does he hurt you?"
She turned pinker still.
"Does he not respect you? Does he force you—"
She gave a short, harsh laugh, "If only that were the problem!"
Severus moved closer to her then, tentatively, but enough so that she could see that even if Lucius was not satisfactorily fazed by her intense beauty he was still, and she looked up at him then with tears shining in her eyes.
"I love my husband." She said, her voice hardly quavering.
"I know." He whispered, his fingers brushing her cheek softly, "And you are nothing more than a friend to me."
She closed her eyes and pressed her cheek closer into his hand as tears were squeezed onto the pearly skin of her elegant cheeks. And that night he had brought her comfort, and tried not to know only too well that her thoughts were not there— that her pale blue eyes were not seeing the same man who was on her mind.
In the morning she cried quietly in naked shame, and Severus did all he could to make her stop it.
"There is nothing to be ashamed of, Narcissa," he said, in a very convincing lie.
"I am married!" She sobbed. He pressed a finger to her lips to quiet her.
"Which only proves this meant nothing more than comfort. You are only a woman who misses her husband, and I... am only a trusted friend."
Narcissa had unknowingly intoxicated him many times before, and he had done the same to her with aching deliberateness and careful manipulation. He was sick—he knew it.
Sometimes, he thought perhaps he loved her. Sometimes it felt more like hatred. Sometimes it was a happy control, sometimes it was cruelty—but it was always madness. It was always ill-advised, and it was never real. Narcissa's name, hissing from his lips was the very pinnacle of pleasure, it was the height of all possession, of every good thing he'd ever had, but that would never be his. And it was truly, truly a sin.
Here's the rest of the song:
Sometimes I feel so happy
Sometimes I feel so sad
Sometimes I feel so happy
But mostly you just make me mad
Baby you just make me mad.
Chorus: Linger on, your pale blue eyes
Linger on, your pale blue eyes
Thought of you as my mountaintop
Thought of you as my peak
Thought of you as everything
I've had but couldn't keep
I've had but couldn't keep
Chorus
If I could make the world as pure
And strange as what I see
I'd put you in the mirror
I put in front of me
I put in front of me
Chorus
Skip a life completely
Stuff it in a cup
She said 'Money is like us in time
It lies but can't stand up'
Down for you is up
Chorus
It was good, what we did yesterday
And I'd do it once again
The fact that you are married
Only proves you're my best friend
Though it's truly, truly a sin.