It was less than two months after I'd finally left Hogwarts for good when Lucius Malfoy knocked on the door to my rooms in Knockturn Alley. I'd been expecting him sooner or later. I accepted immediately when he invited me to meet his Master. There really wasn't anything left to consider. I had already made up my mind while I was still at school.

Meeting the Dark Lord for the first time was both terrifying and enlightening. If one knew nothing else about him, one would know his mastery of the Dark Arts simply by standing in his presence. The power that flowed from his being was stronger than anything I had ever felt before, with perhaps one exception. I answered his questions and did not resist when I felt the pressure of his mind against my own. I had nothing to hide from him. And when he offered me the Dark Mark, I rolled up my sleeve and took it willingly. It was the path to my own mastery of the Dark Arts. It was the symbol of my own future power. It was what I wanted.

Or so I thought at the time. It slowly became obvious that the path I had chosen was leading me in a different direction than the one I'd been expecting to follow. There was less pursuit of the Dark Arts than I'd hoped, and the discoveries I did make were due solely to my own initiative. The others were content to revel in the damage they could do and the pain they could inflict. I found their delight in such endeavours deeply vulgar. Had they no self-control at all? Surely the Dark Lord couldn't approve of such disgusting displays of depravity? But secretly, in the darkest and most hidden corners of my mind, I was beginning to have doubts about my new Master as well.

That was the state of mind in which Regulus found me when he knocked on my door in late June. I'd nearly forgotten his year-old threat to search me out. When I opened the door and saw him standing in the dingy hall, smirking at my stunned expression, it came rushing back in a virtual flood of memory. He strode into the room before I could bar his way and looked around with his nose wrinkled in disdain.

"Best you could do, I suppose," he said, shrugging faintly and his smirk broadened. Even as he began to remove his cloak, I snarled at him,

"Leave. Now." He actually had the nerve to chuckle, laying his cloak on the chest of drawers opposite the door.

"Now, Severus. That's hardly any way to speak to a guest."

"I would agree," I said, pulling the door wider for him, "which might indicate to you that you are not a guest. You are an unwelcome intruder. And I invite you to leave while you still may do so under your own power."

His eyes narrowed, although the smirk never left his face.

"A threat? Has so much changed in one year that now you think you can threaten me," his voice lowered to a menacing whisper, "and get away with it?"

That goddamned voice! I slammed the door shut, abruptly and loudly. But it was seeing the look on my face that finally wiped that beautiful, self-righteous smirk from his.

"Actually," I said, advancing on him slowly, "quite a lot has changed in the past year. I've taken employment at Slug & Jiggers. The pay is unremarkable, but it affords me these rooms, among other things. I've continued my studies of the Dark Arts. I'm becoming more and more convinced that Dumbledore should be tried before the Wizengamot for professional negligence. My knowledge is nowhere near the level of a master such as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, although…" I leaned in close to him, my lips curling, "that is as it should be between a master and his disciple."

"You?" he murmured. The shock on his face, as if he were amazed that I could've managed such a thing, only added fuel to my anger.

"Yes, me," I sneered. He'd grown taller since I'd last seen him; we were nearly the same height now. I couldn't loom over him the way I might've been able to at Hogwarts, so I resorted to the other means of intimidation at my disposal. I lowered my face even closer to his, fixed his soft grey eyes with a penetrating stare and allowed all of my malevolence and contempt to pour out into the very small space between us.

"So you see," I whispered, sneering again as I felt him shudder, "it would be very unwise of you to continue to provoke me. I've never made threats idly. But I assure you, when I make them now, I most certainly can get away with it."

His eyes were wide and his lips were still slightly parted in surprise. I wasn't entirely sure what his reaction might be. Perhaps he'd run. Perhaps he'd make a few stammering apologies and back out of the door. For half a moment, I wondered if he might draw his wand on me. Instead, his eyes dropped to my torso and he muttered softly,

"Show me."

"What?"

"Show me," he repeated, reaching out his right hand to touch the left sleeve of my shirt.

I backed away from him as if he were fatally contagious. His surprise hadn't melted into fear as it should have, as I'd intended it to. His expression was one of avid interest and a hungry, disturbing awe.

"Get out!" I snarled again, the old feelings of alarm and a strong, perverse desire uncoiling from a knot behind my breastbone and dropping down to writhe in the pit of my stomach.

"I know what's there. I just want to see it, Severus," he said, reaching out for me again. I swatted at his hand and when he kept coming, I struck out at his face. He ducked artfully away from the blow, dipping under my outstretched right arm and grabbing onto my left. Before I could level another strike at his head, he'd taken hold of my sleeve and with a mighty yank, ripped it away from the shoulder at the seam.

Infuriated, I stepped back, pulled my wand from my pocket and took aim. He stood frozen in place with the torn sleeve hanging from his right hand. He watched my wand without a trace of concern, wearing a small, triumphant smile on his lips.

"You're being ridiculous," he said quietly in that bloody fucking voice.

"Am I," I snapped, angling my left side away from his line of sight.

"Completely," he said, carelessly tossing the torn sleeve on the floor. "I fully intend to have one just like it on my own arm. I simply want to see what it'll look like."

"Yet you seem to know so much about it already," I sneered, my wand still pointed directly at his throat.

"I know as much as you did before you left Hogwarts. Perhaps a bit more. Wouldn't you be curiousif you werein my place?"

My jaw clenched almost involuntarily. "My curiosity wouldn't have led me to rip the sleeve from your shirt."

His devilish grin would've melted the knees of any teenage girl unlucky enough to have seen it. "Sorry about that. I got a little carried away."

When I snorted derisively, he seemed to take my amusement as permission to move. I jabbed my wand in his direction and he stopped, eyeing me with barely restrained exasperation.

"Let's see…allow an old schoolmate one small, inconsequential favor or go through the hassle of disposing of his body after you've cursed him into oblivion."

"Don't tempt me."

"Did I mention that you're being ridiculous?"

"An opinion to be taken with a large grain of salt, considering the source."

At that, he threw back his head and laughed.

"Fuck, I missed you," he said through his mirth, moving toward me again. He ignored the warning jab from my wand and came to stand directly before me. Hex him, my mind screamed, jinx the little prick! But something stayed my wand as he reached up, took my face in his hands and pulled me into a deep kiss. He pressed himself against me and it felt every bit as good as it had at Hogwarts. It had been so long…and without being conscious of it, my wand fell from my hand and I returned his kiss. He slowly drew his hands from my face, smoothing them down my neck and over my chest. He wrapped his arms around me and reached down to grip my arse. He pulled me hard against his pelvis and I groaned into his mouth.

It was so strange. Had the same thing happened while we were still at school, I would've given anything to make it stop. But standing there in my shabby little rooms in Knockturn Alley with my arms entwined with his and our mouths locked together, the feelings of panic and loathing—for both him and myself—weren't as strong. I was able to enjoy it. I don't know why. Perhaps it really had been too long. But when I felt his hands fumbling at the buttons on my shirt, I reached up to help him.

He broke off the kiss, looking up at me with another hint of surprise glittering behind his smoky eyes. I stared into them, silently daring him to say anything. But he only smirked, working the bottom buttons loose as I undid the top. I pulled my right arm from the shirt and let it fall to the floor as he lifted his jumper over his head and tossed it away.

I had seen him unclothed before, at Hogwarts. I had learned the useful skill of fitting a full shower into less than two minutes due to the sadistic pleasure he took in following me around in the Slytherin bathrooms, stark naked. He'd pretend to talk to me about our potions lessons, the latest Quidditch match…sometimes he even resorted to remarking on the weather, just so he could then watch me hurriedly rinse the lather from my skin and make a desperate dash for my towel before anyone should happen to notice the effect his voice had on me. How I had hated him.

And yet there he was, bare from the waist up and I stood transfixed at the sight. He smirked again, something else about him that I had always detested and which now made my fingers twitch in anticipation. He reached out with one of his own forefingers and ran it along the outside of my left arm. I drew away from the touch, hissing in instinctual self-preservation.

"Severus," he murmured, a faint, plaintive note of supplication in his voice. "Let me see it."

He strode purposefully toward me, grasping my left wrist and pulling it up and out until my Mark was in plain sight. Half-heartedly, I tried to wrest my arm from his grip. But he clasped my forearm with both of his hands and raised it closer to his face. He stared at my Mark, still dark against my pale skin from the last summons. After what seemed like half an eternity to me, he slowly bent down and kissed it just where the serpent emerged from the open mouth of the skull. I hissed again, trying to wrench away from him more forcefully. He refused to let go of me, reaching up with his left hand to take hold of my neck and pull me into another searing kiss.

He drove his tongue into my mouth and sucked at my lips, bringing both hands up to the sides of my face. The kiss was voracious, and my body responded with a desperate hunger of its own. He ground his pelvis against me and growling in frustration, I reached down and held his hips, thrusting against him as he sucked firmly on my lower lip. With a soft bite, he released my lip and broke the kiss. He looked up at me, panting slightly. His eyes burned with unmistakable lust. And in that brief moment, I wanted him more than almost anything else in the world.

"Fuck me, Severus," he said, his voice low and hoarse. "I want to be fucked by a Death Eater."

There was no more resistance, from either one of us, after that. All of my frustration, my hatred of him, my desire for him; it all came rushing out in a torrent of crushing prurience that threatened to burst my heart inside my chest if I did not satisfy my need. He was quick to teach me the finer points of homoeroticism with which I was unfamiliar, and I used his lessons to thank him many times over that night. Coming inside of him felt like no other pleasure I had ever known, made twice as sweet by his deep, satisfied moans. When I had finally exhausted myself, I collapsed next to him on the bed, breathing heavily but feeling deliciously satiated. I looked over to find him smirking at me yet again.

"What?"

"You're smiling," he said, a rakish grin teasing the corners of his mouth.

"Am I," I muttered, unconcerned.

"It doesn't suit you," he quipped, failing to suppress a soft snort of laughter. I frowned at the gibe.

"Ah, there you are. That's better," he said, laughing again. He threw an arm across my chest and slid one of his legs between mine. To my remembrance, I had never slept in the same bed with another human being in my life. So it was some surprise to me the next morning when I found him still draped around me and enjoying the same peaceful, comforting sleep from which I had just awoken.