A/N - Just an indulgent little piece. Everyone wants their happily ever afters, right? Please do review - I'm delighted by your comments and criticisms. If you'd like the backstory, check out my other fic, Bartleby.
This is a fanfiction, and I thank the legitimate owner(s) of the characters and world borrowed below for their tolerance in letting us fanon folk meddle.
The Cider House
From the third-floor balcony of a handsome manor house, three children spied on the valley below.
One of them, a blonde girl, wrinkled her upturned nose. "I think you're having us on, Draco."
"I am not!" replied a blonde boy hotly. "They'll come out any minute, I swear it. You just wait, Pansy."
Pansy frowned and looked through the omnoculars hanging around her neck again while the third boy, a darkly handsome one, issued an affected sigh.
"We've been up here for ages. I'm bored, Draco. Let's go play on your broomstick again," he said.
"Shut up, Blaise," snapped Draco. "They'll come."
But, even as Draco stared down the valley, he felt a cold trepidation creeping through his veins. What if they didn't come? He'd knew they were in there, in the cider house, and they had to come out eventually, right? But what if, in the scant few seconds it had taken him to call his friends over, they'd snuck out the back and gone to the Apparition point?
No, that wouldn't do. He'd look like a fool in front of his friends.
"Give me those," Draco said, holding his open hand out to Pansy in an imperious gesture. She pouted, her lower lip stuck out, but nevertheless took the omnoculars from around her neck and handed them over.
After a brief moment of adjustment, Draco got a closer look at the valley.
It was beautiful – all of Malfoy Manor was beautiful – but he liked this particular part of the grounds the best. It was wilder and more utilitarian than the manicured flower gardens he and his mother walked. This was the part of the yard that held the gardens for the kitchen, a pond so wild and large one felt tempted to call it a lake, and an ancient apple orchard full of twisted and mysterious trees. This was where he was allowed to dig, to swim, to fly his broomstick and generally romp around in the way that young boys ought to.
Nestled between the orchard and the lake was a long stone building. The cider house.
Draco could sense Pansy and Blaise getting restless. It was up to him, the Lord of the Manor, to keep them entertained.
"The cider house was the first thing built on this property," he began, grateful, for once, that his mother had drilled the family history into his head. "My Great-Great-Great Grandfather had it put here first, along with the orchard."
When this failed to produce any appreciative noises from his companions, he added, on the fly, "And it's haunted."
"Haunted!" Pansy said, turning wide eyes on him. Even Blaise shifted behind him as though trying to conceal a renewed level of interest.
"Haunted," Draco repeated. "From all the dead Muggles my Great-Great – there!"
He practically screeched this last word, for the door to the cider house had just flung forward, and out walked a witch.
She was young, in her mid-to-late-twenties, with ashy blonde hair falling down her back and a white cotton dress that, in the sticky heat of the summer day, left very little to the imagination.
Pansy grabbed the omnoculars back and pressed them hungrily to her eyes.
She let out a low whistle. "She's fit!" Pansy said of the woman in the valley. Both the whistle and the words tripped awkwardly from her tongue. Pansy was still new at this, and experimenting with being one of the boys. She wanted desperately for Draco to like her, not view her as Prissy Pansy, the girl.
Blaise squinted skeptically at the woman in the valley, who was now stretching in the sun, her arms raised high overhead.
"She's old," Blaise proclaimed indifferently. "Besides, she probably smells like vinegar. You know, from living in a dirty old cider house."
Draco said nothing. In truth, he used to have a crush on Miss Amy, even if she did, sometimes, smell just a little bit like apple cider vinegar. The cider press hadn't been used for years, if not decades, but a smell of old cider lingered faintly about the place. It was a sweet, sharp scent, but not unpleasant or unclean.
But Draco was eleven now, and would be going off to school in a few short weeks. He was much past any kind of babyish thing like a crush. Much past. Miss Amy might have been nice with her little cider house full of interesting plants and comic books, but Draco had other things on his mind.
Blaise walked over to the balcony, rested his arms on the handrail, and squinted down below before continuing: "And, anyway, her I've seen before. I think you're lying, Draco. I don't think that's the Potions' Master's mistress at all. I think she's your father's mistress."
Draco grew pink and hot in the cheeks. "You take that back!" he said over Pansy's giggles.
Blaise smirked at him. "Your father's mistress," he repeated deviously. "That's why she lives here in the first place. When your dad gets tired of your mummy, he sneaks down the valley and—Ow!"
He broke off suddenly when Draco pounced angrily on him. The boys tussled for a moment, exchanging insults and the soft, glancing blows of children unaccustomed to physical altercation.
"The door's opening!" Pansy suddenly yelled. "Stop it, you idiots! The door's opening again!"
The boys untangled from one another with a few final shoves and rushed to the balcony for a look.
A German Shepard dog trotted out of the cider house. It was a battle-scarred old thing with a notch missing from one ear and a slight limp, but there was nothing old or infirm about its wagging tail or eager sniffing of the ground as it made its way to the woman in white.
"Ha!" said Blaise. "Apparently our Potions' Master is a dog! I knew you were lying, Draco."
But before Draco had a chance to pounce again, Pansy shushed them both.
"There he is! There he is!" she cried.
A sliver of a man stepped out of the cider house after the dog and closed the door with what must have been a very deliberate click. Everything about the man seemed deliberate – contained. Even from this distance the children could see that his black robes were impeccably fit and folded around him. The way they billowed in the breeze felt dramatic and purposeful. His stride seemed purposeful, too, as he crossed the lawn to join the woman and her dog by the edge of the lake.
Blaise snapped up the omnoculars and, skipping the step where he acknowledged Draco had, in fact, not been lying, commented:
"So he'll be our Potions Professor, huh? Not much to look at, is he?"
Pansy giggled again. It was true; from their spot on the balcony the children could see that the man had sallow skin, as though he did not ordinarily spend a lot of time outdoors, and a great hooked nose. His shoulder-length black hair hung limply about his face.
Draco shrugged. If he hadn't grown up seeing Snape, the professor probably would have appeared ugly to him, too. Certainly he wasn't pleasant to look at compared with Draco's mother and father and all the grand opulence of the Manor. As it was, though, Draco took Snape's appearance for granted. He took most things in his life for granted.
The sky was blue, water was wet, and yes, the Potion's Professor was ugly. So what?
"He's the head of Slytherin House, too," Draco said, crossing his arms in front of him. "He and Father go way back." He felt smug to know what the others didn't, and smug to have a family friend at the school.
It's like his father always said: It's not what you know that's important, it's who you know.
"So what's the Head of Slytherin House doing in your valley? With your servant?" Blaise asked, handing the omnoculars back to Pansy.
"Miss Amy's not our servant, really," said Draco. "I mean, she looks after the grounds some, but she's our tenant. She rents."
"And what's she doing with him?" Pansy asked, staring down at the couple, who appeared to be talking by the lake. The woman in white levitated a small, flat stone from the lake's shore with her wand and sent it skimming over the glittering surface of the water.
Draco smirked again. "She was his student," he said.
Pansy turned to him. "Nuh-uh! That's not true!"
"Is too," Draco shot back. "It was back when he'd just started teaching at Hogwarts like, ten years ago or something. There was an….incident."
He liked the way the adult word – his father's – word rolled off his tongue. He liked the way it made the others hold in their breath and give him their attention, too.
"An incident?" Blaise repeated, interested despite himself.
Draco nodded. "A scandal, really. Miss Amy ended up killing this Mudblood. Dumbledore – that's the Headmaster – wanted to hush the whole thing up, but Professor Snape and Father wouldn't let him. That's actually how Father got on the Board of Governors."
"Hmph," said Blaise, as the children digested this incomplete morsel of information.
Thirty yards down the valley, Severus quirked his lip in irritation. "They're staring at us again."
"They're staring at me, Sev," corrected Miss Amy. "I'm really rather famous, you know."
"Ha!" he sneered.
"I am. My admirers are everywhere. They're perverts mostly, but still. That's why Lucius lets me live here. He likes to trot me out at parties."
"And here I was under the impression Narcissa enjoyed playing benefactress to the less fortunate."
"Oh, she does. Sometimes she even has Dobby box up the leftovers for me. It's like – "
"—Being a dog?" Severus interrupted, his lip curling distastefully around the last word.
Amy turned to the dog at her heels and said, quite seriously, "He doesn't mean it, Jupiter. There's nothing wrong with being a dog."
"It's embarrassing, the way you dote on that smelly beast. I wish you'd stop letting it sleep in the bed."
Miss Amy dropped to one knee and took the dog's head into her hands. "Who likes sleeping in the bed? You do! Yes, you do!"
"I'm quite serious. It leaves sand in the sheets. Each time I spend the night, I wake smelling of dog."
"Are you smelly? Are you a smelly dog?!" she coaxed the animal, whose tail was now thumping in wild rapture.
"Good God, woman. Cease that this instant."
"Ooh, we've made him grumpy, Jupiter. Yes, he's so, so grumpy!"
Severus made an aggrieved noise, turned on his heel, and strode purposefully back to the cider house without another word. The door slammed shut behind him. His irritation must not have been very genuine, or else the woman was used to it, because she remained outside for a long time, skipping stones and playing fetch with the dog. The sun was low in the sky by the time the animal, tired and at peace with his existence, dug a shallow bed under his favorite apple tree, lay down, and began to snooze.
Only then did the woman return to the cider house.
She was mildly disappointed but not very surprised to find it empty. Snape had probably slunk out the back door and walked to the Apparition point. He was slippery like that, dark like the night and impossible to pin down. He refused to belong to anyone.
So Amy shrugged off her disappointment and enjoyed her home, with its quaint domestic debris and faint cider smell. She charmed the radio to some wizarding pop station, watered the Venomous Tentacula cuttings in the window, and read for a bit – candy fiction, nothing deep. And, when the sun dropped below the horizon and the cicadas began to sing, she decided to have a shower.
The water was luxuriously silken and warm. It glided sensuously down her body, its rivulets tracing down the angles of her neck, over the swell of her breasts, and across her belly to meet and pool between her thighs. It felt good, and her hands soon joined it, slipping effortlessly through her curls to rest gently on her nether lips.
She began to tie and untie the shivery knots of an orgasm with her fingers. Both hands moved languidly, all gentle strokes and soft plucking, the way you'd play a musical instrument made of silk and flesh.
A third hand joined the other two.
Amy's eyes snapped open and she started. She lost footing in the slippery water and thrust all limbs outward in an effort to catch herself, regain her balance.
Strong male hands closed around her waist, steadying her. "Relax," a voice purred in her ear. "It's only me."
She couldn't help it; she laughed as she relaxed into Severus Snape's arms. "You shouldn't scare me like that," she chided.
"Ah, but you're so easy to startle. It's hardly my fault," he said, and dragged a large, warm hand between her legs.
"I…Ah, gods, that feels good…Mmm. What're you doing here?"
Amy struggled to voice the words as she leaned back into him, his wiry torso slick and strong against her back. One finger teased at her entrance, then gently – ever so gently – entered. Her inner walls tensed around him as she issued another moan.
"I've brought dinner," he murmured, his lips humming against her ear as his finger slid further inside, filling her to the hilt. "That Muggle curry you're so fond of."
"I don't…" she began, but broke off with a cry as his finger curved inside her and the heel of his hand pressed against her clit.
"Yes?" he queried, and captured her earlobe between crooked teeth.
"I don't – gods – I don't want dinner," she gasped, griding into his hand. She could feel his cock, engorged and pulsating, rubbing up against her bum.
"What do you want?" Snape purred.
"You, you idiot, I want you," she breathed.
That was all he needed to hear. A fevered groan escaped his lips, and suddenly his hands were everywhere, dragging along the curve of her side, squeezing her breasts, pinching her nipples into tight little points between his thumb and forefinger.
"Then open for me, minx," he commanded, one of his feet slipping between hers where they stood, encouraging her to spread her legs. She did, bending forward and thrusting her back end toward him with another sensuous moan.
The air around them became charged with magic; tiny coils of electricity crackled in on themselves, producing miniscule bursts of light as they ignited.
One hand slid between their slick bodies, and she felt him guiding himself to her entrance, slipping up and down. And, when he thrust forward, it was quickly and decisively.
"Ah – Christ – Severus!" she intoned to no one in particular as her inner walls stretched to accommodate him.
He responded with another fevered groan and settled his hands on her hips, guiding her pelvis toward his as he found as easy rhythm.
Her hands curled against the slick tiles of the shower, anchoring herself. The water was beginning to run cool, but she was beyond caring. The heat igniting between their bodies and in the air around them was more than enough to compensate. She reveled in every thrust as he pulled his lean hips back, then snapped them forward. Again. And again. And again.
"Ooh, Merlin," she keened, nearing the crisis point.
"Yes – God – Yes – " he responded, now angling his pelvis so he sunk even deeper into her, pounding madly. The carnal slap of their flesh echoed around the tiny room.
"Oh, fuck – oh, fuck – oh, fuuuuu—"
A bottle of hair potion in the corner shattered from their combined magic as something primitive and raw and real battered her senses. This wasn't just an orgasm – that shivery little knot of pleasure – this was something else. This was a litre of fluid slamming against her pelvic floor, exploding outward and drenching them both from the waist down.
Or was that just the shower?
She never did find out, because the lights blinding her eyes and the sheer ineffable pleasure and the sound of Severus groaning in her ear as he, too, came, was too much. They slid to the floor of the shower, a quivering, throbbing mass of release. It was like…
It was like the Sublime, but without all that cumbersome German philosophy.
"'The sublime without…?'" Snape echoed faintly, the verbal sneer somewhat marred by his breathlessness. "Good God, woman. That must be the worst orgasm metaphor I have ever had the misfortune to hear. Do us both a kindness and keep your Kant out of the bedroom."
She let out an exhausted laugh at that, because it must have been the worst pun she'd ever heard – and, anyway, she hadn't realized she'd been talking out loud.
Severus was still dressing when he wandered out of the lavatory and found his mistress naked, curled cross-legged in an armchair with a Styrofoam container of Muggle take-out in her lap. She'd let the dog in. It lay politely on the floor before her, salivating as it waited for a morsel of curry to fall.
He tugged the button at the nape of his throat through its proper hole. "I'm leaving."
"Sure you won't stay?" she asked, shoving a large measure of rice into her mouth. It was curious how this youthful behavior, so irritating when multiplied across the entire Hogwarts student body, was almost coquettish in her. Perhaps it was the heady knowledge that he had been the one to help her work up such an appetite.
"No," he clipped. "Term begins in two days. I've lesson plans to finalize, schedules to write."
She smiled, tipping a bit of curry onto the floor for the dog to lick up.
"What?" Severus said.
"Nothing," she replied, still smiling.
"What?" he repeated irritably.
"It's just funny. I know you hate that place. Hogwarts. But you go back every year. Year after year. You know, Lucius says –"
"I know what Lucius says," he interrupted, now shrugging on his cloak.
Severus' mistress continued smiling. She set aside the curry and stood. She padded lightly over to him and ran a hand down the front of his robes as she tipped her face upward to meet his eyes.
"I'll see you next summer, then, I suppose," she said quietly.
Severus said nothing, but tucked a damp curl behind her ear. He allowed his hand to linger on her cheek as he withdrew. His fingers barely grazed her jawline, something like regret slowing their movement.
"Perhaps sooner," he said, almost grudgingly. "I may be able to get away during the winter holidays."
She leaned in to kiss him sweetly. "I'd like that."
Severus indulged in one last kiss, then pulled himself away from her abruptly. He walked swiftly out of the cider house, his boots clacking loudly on the stone floor. That was the only way to leave a dream – quickly. Resolutely. If you weren't careful with places, and with people, like that, they'd suck you in and hold you forever in their grasp. Like Odysseus' Lotus-Eaters.
He closed the door with an irritable click behind him and strode to the Apparition point without stopping. He met Lucius standing there, puffing contemplatively on a cigarette.
"Muggle cigarettes, Lucius?" he chided.
Lucius shrugged and tossed him the pack. "One needs something to take the edge off."
"I wasn't aware you had an edge," Severus responded. "Trouble in paradise?" He wasn't particularly interested in the answer, but he did crave the smoke. He removed a cigarette from the pack and lit it with the tip of his wand.
Lucius didn't respond. At least, not right away. He continued puffing, letting the foul smoke pour out his nostrils.
"You'll keep an eye on Draco, I trust?" Lucius finally said.
"Of course."
"His mother's too soft on him. I…I worry."
"Don't. He's an intelligent boy. He'll manage, as others before him have."
The two men were quiet for a long time after that. Eventually, Lucius threw his cigarette butt into the night.
"You should marry her," said the blonde wizard suddenly.
"Excuse me?"
"I'm serious. At a certain point bachelorhood no longer flatters a man. It's the realm of pederasts, and homosexuals. Marriage confers authority. It implies stability. Breed a child or two and add virility to the mix."
Severus scoffed.
"She'll inherit a modest country estate in Suffolk at some point. And a little gold. You could retire, finally get out from under Dumbledore's heel."
"And what would I do with a 'modest country estate,' Lucius? Grow peas?" Severus said, pointedly ignoring the jibe about Dumbledore's heel.
"The bastard son of a Muggle mill rat could do worse."
If Severus had been a different sort of man, the hint of a future might have flashed before his eyes. He might have seen his mistress, older but still beautiful, herding two black-haired children into a garden. It would have been modest, like Lucius said, but comfortable. There would have been vegetables growing up a trellis. A vineyard heavy with fruit. In the distance, that country estate would have risen from a hill.
But Severus wasn't a different sort of man. He was exactly who he was, for better or worse. And so he ground his cigarette butt under his heel and girded himself to return to the life he'd chosen when he'd allowed himself to be branded like an animal.
"Goodbye, Lucius."
"Goodbye."
Back in the cider house, Amy and the dog curled into bed and enjoyed the soundless, untroubled sleep of the innocent.
