Smoke and Mirrors

WARNING: Please note this chapter includes sexual scenes of a heterosexual nature.

Chapter Four: Graveside

Dawn sunlight slants through the gap in the curtains onto my face as I turn over, restlessly. I'm too warm. I push the covers down over my body. My eyes snap open. I am naked, under silk sheets. I sit up. I am in Narcissa's room. I glance down at her, and for a moment it is as if I am a different man in a different time.

She is, as many say, a beautiful woman. Age does not touch her (I suspect partly because she is a Metamorphmagus) but defines her beauty in a way I find more curiously attractive. She is asleep, on her side turned towards me, her hair coiled around her face, her arm over her ribs, her breasts bared, their nipples rosy.

I feel my body respond. It brings me back to reality: Severus, not a poet or a lover, but a liar and a murderer and taker of another man's wife.

Lucius has never seemed to care. But he has always valued the wrong things.

Not for the first time I consider how I have managed to end up in a sexual situation with Narcissa. It could almost seem fated, if I believed in fate. She has pursued me, grasped at me, and tried to manipulate me into her bed, yet when I finally gave way it was not because of what she wanted, but because of what I needed.

Love it is not. I remind myself of that. I have loved, and I know what love feels like, and this is not it. Yet when I look upon her I get a sense of a man I might have been, had things been different, if I had made different choices and more effort and seen the world through the eyes of an ordinary man.

I am not sure, however, even in retrospect, that I would have done things differently. Perhaps we are who we are, and there is nothing to be done.

I reach out my hand to touch her breast. The discolouration of my skin and nails looks ugly against the wondrous pale and rose of her flesh. This makes me harder. I cup her breast, watching the pressure of my fingers swell the flesh. She stirs a little, catching her breath. I push her gently onto her back and dip my hand between her thighs, parting them. She sighs again, a small, erotic sound. I fling the covers back and kneel up between her legs, lifting them and pushing them back to her belly. I'm inside her before she is fully awake, relishing the expression of surprise on her face, revelling in my power, watching the reflection of my ugliness play in her wide and beautiful eyes.

I take her three different ways before I'm done. There is a smear of blood in evidence when I release her, and I'm not sure which of us it has come from; more to the point, I do not care. I fall onto my back and catch my breath, my eyes closed.

It makes me feel bad when she slides across and rests her head in the crook of my arm. I've satisfied her, I know, but she still feels used. She knows I don't love her. Even though she feels no love for me, she would still like the pretence. I place a dry kiss on the top of her head. She rests her arm across my ribs and her leg over mine. She has not asked me again if I would like her to change into someone else. It is as if she knows I would never correctly reveal my secret desire.

That thought makes me hard again: this is insane. She takes me in her hand, then after a moment gets on top of me. It's a punishing ride. Her eyes blaze, her cheeks blaze, but her hair is the wrong colour. I close my eyes, gritting my teeth against this mindless lust, that is so powerful it hurts, it hurts ….

"I want you all the time," she whispers into my shoulder as she rests on top of me. "I can't think of anything else."

"I believe I have a potion for that," I murmur, automatically.

She breathes a laugh into my neck. "I believe I've had it."

I stroke her flank and delve deeper.

"But I could take some more," she adds, muffled.

"You don't stand a chance," I say: my body feels done in.

"Potion?" she murmurs, hopefully.

I give her my fingers instead. I clamp my other hand over her mouth to stop her screaming. I disgust and fascinate myself with the violence of it. After she has come, she licks herself off my fingers, and I don't think I have ever seen a woman look so feral. The sense of wrongness returns to me, but I know that I am enjoying myself more than I have for a long, long time.

I snap back to reality again with a jolt, a cold sweat. I know I am hiding. I cannot hide forever.

I can't leave her rooms smelling like I do, of her, so I need to wash. She wants to bathe with me, but I don't let her. I have an errand, so I take the bathroom first and leave her dozing, spent, twisted amid the pastel silks on the bed. Once in the bath, I rue my mistake, for everything in the bathroom is scented to her good, but feminine, tastes. I summon a house elf and he brings me something plain, and fresh clothes from my room.

I stand over the bed for a long moment, watching her sleep. I know that this cannot end well. Our days are numbered, and I am surprised when I sense the slightest pang of regret.

I had once said to her: "Your aptitude for self-delusion never ceases to amaze me. You wanted to see yourself reflected in my eyes."

See it for what it is, I tell myself now: no more, or less.

I sit amid a crowd of mourners.

The ceremony has not taken so long. It was as simple as Dumbledore had instructed it should be. He had told me I should not come, but when it came to it, I knew I could not stay away.

In that promise, at least, I have failed.

I only know how much time has passed by the subtle vibration of my wand upon the hour, which reminds me to take the Polyjuice again. I carefully pop the phial and swig it discreetly from a handkerchief, with unsmiling humour thinking of the woman who would be incensed to know how I was using her likeness.

All the mourners are moving away. It is a relief not to have their presence pressing upon me from all sides. I stand up and plot a path to exit this place, and my eyes fall upon Potter.

He is standing with his school friends. There is a stark difference between the way they look, and the way he does. He looks like a man, now. There is a … poise to him, clear in the set of his shoulders and the lines of his expression, that Draco has not yet achieved. The others just look like grief-stricken orphans. The Weasley girl is beside him, close enough to touch him, but not. I wonder what has happened between them, a teenaged falling-out no doubt, an inability on his part to juggle grief and life.

For a brief moment, his eyes alight on me, then he glances away again. I turn away and choose a path that will not take me close to him, or to other people whom, as Dolores Umbridge, I wanted to avoid. Between the two of us, that was the majority of the people here.

I feel numb, unsatisfied. What was I expecting? Drama? We've had our surfeit of that. An effigy of me, burning? It might have been … satisfying. Potter's anger is almost tangible. It will be his undoing, as it is Draco's. If he wasn't so young, I would not be in this position.

If I had not betrayed him, whilst he was still a baby.

The thought catches in my throat, I almost stumble into someone, then waddle on, unsure of these short, dumpy legs. I must get off Hogwarts grounds and Apparate. The irony that I look other than myself, and that I feel like someone else is not lost on me. The growing sense that I no longer know myself presses upon my resolve. I have the awful thought that I can no longer trust myself, and I am not sure where this feeling comes from.

At Malfoy Manor, I have a room that faces to the west. In the afternoon light, I stand by the bureau that Narcissa has kindly had brought for my use, and open a small box. It contains a few very personal items. I lift from it a ring set with a large Bloodstone gem. It is gold, an old, soft gold. The band is worn, though still substantial. I smooth my thumb over the curve of the stone, the edge of my nail finds the small clip, and I gently prise it open.

A small curl of red hair falls gently onto a sheet of parchment on my blotter.

I press my eyes closed against its frail truth. When I open them again, it is still there. How miraculous, that the woman whose head it came from has been dead for fifteen years, and it looks as if it could have been clipped from her head only this morning.

….It's for luck, Severus….

I reach out a reluctant finger, and touch it, and snap my hand away again. It is real.

…friends give each other gifts, don't they? ….

Did Slughorn, the humbug, realise what he had begun with his club? There were people who met there who never should have got to know each other.

…now what can you give me?…

"Death and betrayal," I whisper, and I clamp my jaw against the emotion that rises. I pull up a chair and sit down. I take a small tool wallet from a drawer and take a pair of tweezers. Carefully, I tease a single hair from the curl, without disturbing the rest. I fold it in a square of parchment and place it in the wallet with the tweezers. I have to touch the curl with my fingers to press it carefully, so carefully, back into the poison ring.

With my concentration, the emotion is dissipated. I realise that this is what I do, I focus. I must not lose this focus.

Unbidden, Narcissa's image rises in my mind's eye, and my desire rises with it. Undone by a woman, I think, wryly. But the image is enjoyable. I cannot live in the same house and avoid her, not think about the respite being with her gives me. And I have nowhere else to go.

Only to my chosen doom. And I have chosen it. I cannot blame Dumbledore any more. I cannot blame Voldemort or Lily. Or even Slughorn. Or my father, who did not love me; or my mother, who did.

I look up out of the window and see Draco wending his way slowly home. His head is bowed and he kicks the grass with his feet as he walks, his whole body tight with frustration and undirected fury. I find myself shaking my head, as a father might do, perhaps. The clock on the mantle emits a single musical note. I place the ring back in the box and close it, and go to the bathroom to wash for dinner.

Narcissa is alone in the dining room. She checks over my shoulder to see that no-one is watching, then slides her hands up to my shoulders, looking deeply into my eyes. She is wearing an elegant lilac dress. I know how she looks out of that dress. I imagine tearing the fragile cloth, ripping the fine weave, wrenching it from her body. She kisses me, almost chastely, but not quite, a small smile upon her lips. I get that brutal feeling again, like boiling lava at the base of my spine. There's no time for fucking. An image shoots into my head of striking her, with the back of my hand, her head snapping back as she falls…

Sometimes, I appal myself.

We sit down just as Draco appears. He looks quite untidy, studiously so, but neither of us comment. First course arrives.

"How has your afternoon off been, Draco?" I ask, politely.

"Great," he responds, curtly.

"Didn't I see you with Pansy earlier?" Narcissa asks.

He shoots a quick look between us. "Yes."

"I thought Severus has said you must ask permission before bringing visitors into the grounds."

His eyes move from me to his mother. "Yes. Sorry. I forgot."

"No, you did not," I say, quite evenly, knowing that Draco knew that tone well.

He simply looks at me, waiting for the hammer to fall, not looking at all concerned. But it is Narcissa who speaks.

"I will contact Pansy's mother tomorrow. I'm afraid she won't be able to visit until further notice."

Draco pauses for a moment, then slowly cracks open a bread roll. He tears a piece off and places it in his mouth, chews, and swallows.

"Why?" he says, finally.

"Because I say so," Narcissa replies, softly, her face a mask.

Draco tears off another piece. Chews. Swallows.

"I don't agree," he says.

I stare at him. He doesn't look at either of us. Narcissa casts me a helpless look. I smile.

"Perhaps you do not," I say, "however –"

"Pansy can come when she likes," he cuts in, and gives me an odd smile, a knowing smile. "Or should I say, as often as I like her to come." He gives a short laugh and takes a sip of claret. "Which was, I believe, twice today."

He lays the challenge on the table between us. In a flash I see that he strongly suspects about his mother and I. I have not prepared myself for this. Still, he is but a child –

"I don't want to know about your sex life, please, Draco," Narcissa says, maternally embarrassed.

Draco's mouth twists. I don't like the look of it. "But it's perfectly fine for me to know about yours," he says in a tight little voice.

Narcissa is frozen in the act of lifting her glass.

Draco turns his head slightly towards me and raises his eyes. They blaze, ice cold, colder than a Scottish winter, then he turns this gaze upon her and she is captured, her eyes wide and horrified.

"You could have picked someone more appropriate, mother," he says, softly and with cutting derision. "Snape. For Merlin's sake. Someone of our own class, at least. Someone who bathes –"

"Enough!" she gasps, and I don't know whether this is because she is defending me, or whether she cannot bear to listen to the truth.

I myself am quite fascinated. I don't know quite what to say or feel above this.

"My father is in prison -!"

"Your father has nothing to do with –"

"He'll kill him!" He turns to me, jumping up and upsetting his plate. "He'll kill you!"

"He knows!" Narcissa cries.

Draco stares at her.

"Yes," I say, "he knows, so sit down, you foolish boy."

Draco raises his arm, and too late I see his wand, but even at this distance the hex passes over my shoulder because the boy is shaking so violently. This quite disgusts me. I snatch the wand off him and toss it into the corner.

"Go to your room," Narcissa says, quietly.

Draco turns and thrusts his chair back violently.

"No, Severus, I mean you," she says.

I push back my chair and walk to the door. His eyes burn into the back of my head. I am glad he has not got his wand. I am not sure that, this time, he would fail to mean the killing curse.

To be continued.

NOTES AND NODS

The next chapter 'Veritaserum' leads on directly from this and involves an exasperated Severus, a furious Draco, and a determined Narcissa, and one of them is in a compromising position. Sign up for email updates!

THANK YOU Thirteen Ravens for the beta; Aiden2, Jade Green, Morgan, finalfantasy, Aimee, theletterk, qush3, Mistress Siana, Emily Anne, qusj and Lizella for the reviews.

The quote: "Your aptitude for self-delusion never ceases to amaze me. You wanted to see yourself reflected in my eyes." is from my fic 'Sins of the Mother'.

Bloodstone (Jasper or Heliotrope) – can turn the sun's rays red if cast into water. If worn can turn the wearer invisible. Can help to heal a lover's argument. Can strengthen the blood and give vitality.