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DISCLAIMER: Not JK. (Is that enough information to still be called an official disclaimer?)
My verbose arse was challenged by an author/friend to do a disclaimer in 6 letters or less. Did I succeed?
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CHAPTER 16: REFLECTIONS
Severus closed the heavy mahogany door behind him and turned the ornate silver key in its lock.
Just to be on the safe side, he also set several complex protective wards in place. Even the Malfoy house elves shared the same Pureblood prejudices as their masters.
Severus Snape meant to protect what was his.
He'd just finished mending his witch, and she needed time to recuperate. The very last thing she needed right now was underhanded elfin magic hindering her healing process or interrupting her exhausted, but much needed, natural slumber.
She'd consumed the maximum dosage of 'Dreamless Sleep Draught' for her size and weight simply to make it comfortably through her surgeries; any more administered just now could prove fatal.
Natural sleep would now be the best possible thing for the young witch anyway.
Severus deeply sighed as he pocketed the key.
Gods, he was so tired! The Potions Master leaned back against the smooth dark wood for a moment, and wearily raised his long-fingered hand and slowly massaged his aching, burning, eyes.
Even though he was exhausted to the bone himself, he still needed to check on his cousin.
Severus began the long trek from his private quarters in the South wing of Malfoy Manor over to the East wing, where he knew Lucius could be found.
The vain blond wizard was now his only known living relative; as such, Severus felt a sense of responsibility towards him now in his time of grief and need.
Besides, it was a sure bet that Lucius would have plenty of liquor on hand right about now.
Severus really wanted a drink of the strongest proofed alcohol currently adorning his cousin's liquor cabinet; actually several drinks would be more technically accurate.
All around this had proved to be a most trying, seemingly never-ending, day for the weary Potions Master.
Aaahh . . . , sweet oblivion! At least for a while.
Severus rolled his neck and shoulders to ease the tired kinks out as he strode faster toward his destination.
Damn! He hadn't realized that he'd been quite so tensed when his spine made several soft 'popping' noises as it suddenly realigned.
Severus took the wide hallway back to his right, where his cousin's private suite was located, then descended the grand staircase down to the main floor of the East wing.
In mere minutes, his rapid, long-legged, strides had him standing outside the third set of doors on his left, those thick, ornate, double-doors that opened directly into Lucius Malfoy's private study.
Severus hadn't even raised his hand to knock yet when his blond cousin called out to him.
"Come in, Severus," came the slurred, muffled, voice from behind the intricately-carved cedar doors that Abraxas Malfoy had commissioned while honeymooning in Italy with his Pureblood bride, the pallidly beautiful, silver-eyed, Marisa Lapaglia.
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Theirs had been an arranged marriage, as was common amongst most Pureblood families.
Miraculously, the marriage had also become one truly of love-at-first-sight when the fifty year old Abraxas Malfoy had lifted his nineteen year old bride's antique lace veil, and brilliant blue eyes had met her amazing silver eyes for the very first time.
That the bride's dowry had greatly increased the wealth of the Malfoy family coffers was an insignificant second to Abraxas, when compared to the wealth of warmth, and love, the silver-eyed Marisa Lapaglia brought to him within her own delicately formed self.
Abraxas Malfoy had successfully remained a rakish bachelor for much longer than most of his acquaintances, including Professor Albus Dumbledore. Abraxas hadn't really thought that wizard would ever marry anyway; he was too . . . attached . . . to his closest friend, Gellert Grindelwald.
Dumbledore should have been honorably ensconced in a contracted marriage for years now, as was the responsibility of a proper Victorian eldest son. Arranged marriages were absolutely the way to go, even for Halfbloods.
It was tradition. It was honorable. It was one's duty to one's family line.
Besides, once the necessary obligations were taken care of, most married couples lived their public lives one way and their private lives quite another entirely.
Witches, by law, had to honor the marriage contracts that their father or guardian had legally arranged for them, no matter what their personal wishes in the matter might be.
His own sister, the beauteous Amarlys Malfoy herself, had been betrothed from her cradle to Edgar Prince, the only son of Septemius Prince; their father Alexander Malfoy's closest friend.
Amarlys didn't have the luxury of slowly falling in love with Edgar Prince, as she'd attended Hogwarts and he'd attended Durmstrang.
Of course, they'd associated all throughout their childhood, as the children of family friends often do, but neither had known what fate they were to share until her eighteenth birthday party.
That night at the stroke of midnight, their fathers, to the shocked surprise of both Amarlys and Edgar, had announced their imminent wedding to the assembled guests.
Soon after, she'd stiffly repeated her binding vows to her barely-known childhood playmate, did her required duty, and spit-out the necessary Prince heir within the first year of their marriage.
Edgar and Amarlys Prince named their only son Ethan. The boy soon became their pride and joy, and drew the couple into such an agreeable familial companionship that a deep and abiding love slowly grew up between them.
Ethan Prince was extraordinarily gifted in the Dark Arts, as were all members of the Prince family. However, it was in potions brewing that the tall-for-his-age, black-eyed and haired, Pureblood Prince truly shone. Thus the young Slytherin became Professor Slughorn's personal pet throughout his years at Hogwarts.
Because of this, a slender handsome lad named Tom Riddle, a fellow Slytherin and classmate, curried both his friendship and favor. They became the closest of friends and confidants, even after they'd both long since graduated and left Hogwarts for the Wizarding World at large.
It had come as somewhat of a shock to Ethan, just as he'd reached his eighteenth birthday, to discover that his beautiful, beloved, mother was unexpectedly pregnant again. The family of three was delighted with the prospect of another child to love and hold.
Edgar and Amarlys had both begun to believe that she was unable to conceive again, after the passage of so many years without her doing so.
Tragically, this last child, a daughter they planned to name Eileen, had come at a heavy price. The loss of her mother's life during her birth.
Neither her father nor her Uncle Abraxas could ever see past that brutal, misfortunate fact. From her very infancy, Eileen Prince was thought of, and treated by both of them, as her mother's murderer.
Her beloved older brother and their old nursery-elf, Gristle, had been her only sources of familial love and compassion during her whole childhood at home.
Small wonder that a love-starved, rather homely, burgeoning seventeen year old witch had succumbed to the very first pretty words and compliments any young man ever paid her during her Seventh year Easter break from school.
It didn't even matter to the agonizingly lonely young witch that the hook-nosed, strapping, young man was only a Muggle. At least it hadn't, until she unexpectedly found herself with child from their first day of April's riverside tryst.
When she'd finally confessed her condition to her suspicious father at Halloween, Eileen unwittingly handed him the opportunity that he'd been waiting seventeen years for on a silver platter.
Edgar Prince renounced both his daughter and her child as members of the Prince family that very night. He immediately cast them out of the only home she'd ever known; quite literally into the teeth of an early winter's storm.
The fate of both mother and child was sealed when she'd knocked on Tobias Snape's door that stormy night in her sheer desperation.
Eileen Prince was hysterical, and soaked to the skin from falling into the river that divided her former world of magic and wizardry from the ignorant-of-the-fact Muggle village just across it.
She was sobbing through chattering teeth, a garble of running-together words that made little sense to the tall young man that opened his front door to her. At least they hadn't; until she'd repeated them slower, over and over.
"I'm pregnant. Oh gods! I'm pregnant! My father has disowned me and cast me out. What do I do now?" she wailed.
He gently pulled the distraught teenaged girl into the tiny sitting room of his rundown, two-up/two-down, red brick rowhouse at the dead-end of the cobbled alleyway of Spinner's End.
Soothing her remorseful tears aside with a tender brush of his work-roughened hand, Tobias Snape tightly pulled Eileen Prince into his arms with a sad, tender, kiss and the promise of immediate marriage.
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The arrival of Lucius' dark cousin had been heralded by the overpowering scent of freshly brewed potions. The rich, herbal, smoky, aroma always preceded Severus by five meters whenever he'd spent any length of time in his laboratory.
It was a comforting scent to Lucius, and had been so ever since their school years together at Hogwarts. He'd earned the Head Boy position in his Seventh year, just as his dark young cousin was beginning his Second year.
For Severus Snape's whole beleaguered First year, Lucius had ignored him as being unworthy of acknowledging as distant family.
To be blunt, ever vain and arrogant, handsome Lucius Malfoy had been embarrassed with Severus' actually being his cousin, and had gone to great lengths to suppress any knowledge of it.
The too-thin, lank-haired, gangly, little boy was only a filthy Halfblood after all, as well as being even poorer than the poorest member of the damned Weasley clan!
Lucius Malfoy had been receiving top marks in potions every year from his Head of Slytherin House, Professor Slughorn. The marks were achieved strictly because of the prestige of his family name and the friendship the Professor shared with his father, Abraxas.
Lucius simply couldn't do the actual brewing no matter how hard he tried. He lacked the necessary patience for potions; his specialty was skillful wandwork and creation of dark spells.
If not for his Ravenclaw girlfriend doing his entire Potions practicals for him up to this point, Lucius Malfoy would have already failed the damned bloody course five years ago.
He'd be required to brew at least one viable potion directly in front of the Auditing Board to pass his NEWT's in order to enter his internship in the Ministry upon his graduation.
Taking credit for the work of another simply wouldn't work in that setting; besides that, the Auditors were a depressingly honest lot, and simply couldn't be bought off.
On his patrols late one night, Head Boy Malfoy had caught young Snape sniveling, and brewing a complicated potion for causing extremely painful long-lasting boils, up in the fifth floor Prefects bathroom.
At least the boy was devious; no one ever used that bathroom as it was rumored to be haunted.
The thin homely lad's left eye had been thoroughly blackened, and his bottom lip was painfully split wide open.
Sirius Black and James Potter had physically jumped the young Slytherin as he'd left the Great Hall, alone, after dinner for walking out with his Gryffindor friend, Lily Evans, earlier in the day.
Severus had hidden a dented old portable cauldron, and the ingredients necessary for the potion, in here weeks ago for 'just in case'. He'd not brewed the potion before tonight because of Lily's urging him not to seek retribution against Black and Potter for all of their cruel pranks against him.
This physical beating of two-on-one had been young Severus Snape's final straw. He endured enough of them from his drunken father at home; he'd be damned if he would tolerate being beaten by his classmates at school.
They both richly deserved whatever he could do to them in return. Besides, if he made the potion time-released, he'd be able to provide himself with any number of incontestable alibis to prevent suspicion from falling on him.
Severus simply hadn't counted on being discovered in mid-brewing by the Head Boy, even if he was a fellow Slytherin. There would certainly be all kinds of hell to pay now, perhaps even his expulsion from Hogwarts!
To his astonishment, Lucius Malfoy not only understood the younger boy's desire for revenge against the two Gryffindor's bullying tactics, he actually approved of it!
Head Boy Malfoy amazingly refused to turn him in on the condition that young Severus would teach him how successfully to brew Veritaserum, late at night here in this bathroom; in private, of course.
Professor Slughorn had slipped Lucius the name of just which potion he'd be required to brew for his NEWT's, and that was to be the one; Veritaserum.
Young Severus Snape had been gobsmacked when Lucius Malfoy had finally admitted his family connection to him during their midnight potions tutorials. Severus had thought that he had no living relatives left in the Wizarding world at all.
In a matter of mere weeks, Lucius Malfoy was brewing quite adequately on his own without anyone's continued help. The second-year Slytherin, Snape, had been an excellent teacher.
Lucius even suggested to the lad that he should make it his career choice.
At least professors were held in esteem and treated with respect. As a Halfblood, the best beginning position his little cousin could rightfully aspire to out in the real world, outside of a school, would be as a shopkeeper's assistant somewhere.
In most employment venues, as in most other areas of daily wizarding life, Blood purity still mattered; regardless of whatever drivel concerning Blood equality the Ministry was currently paying lip-service to.
Just before his graduation, Lucius Malfoy publicly claimed his kinship to young Severus Snape in the crowded Slytherin common room.
Quite a few of the younger brothers and sisters of Lucius' Pureblood cronies soon rushed to befriend the powerful, but terribly lonely, young Snape.
Severus Snape's road to complete acceptance within Slytherin House had just been paved with pure gold, the gold of Lucius Malfoy's acknowledgement and approval of him.
Severus never looked back.
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Now just how the hell had this all come about? I must have really died when that bitch, Nagini, attacked me.
That has to be it. I died, and now I'm in hell.
Severus' dark head lolled over to his right in an almost drunken stupor.
He allowed his spinning head to rest for several long minutes against the cool leather backrest of the tall wingback chair that he was currently occupying, at least until the room quit revolving so.
He cut his black eyes over to where his fair-haired counterpart laid drunkenly weeping and slobbering, facedown, on the expensive black leather sofa.
Severus managed a self-deprecating smirk of a sad grin.
"Ah, Lucius. Quite the pair now aren't we, cousin?" He managed to slur to the other man.
"Gone! All gone, Sev'rus! Can't you see? Don't you know? They're both gone!" Lucius rolled over and hoisted himself up, only to weave and bob on his unsteady, liquored, legs. He attempted to straighten his hopelessly stained and wrinkled robes.
A pale shaking hand raked trembling fingers through equally pale, thoroughly knotted, hair as Malfoy unsuccessfully tried to smooth it into some semblance of order.
"I'm going to the Dark Lord. I'll claim to have been a spy. He'll certainly kill me then."
Lucius suddenly looked semi-sober, and stormy grey eyes stared for a long moment of rare sincerity into troubled black eyes, before he continued, "I simply can't survive without my family. You're a stronger man than I am, cousin. You've been alone almost your entire life and managed. I don't know how to live without my family to support and idolize me."
Severus' turbulent eyes took on a haunted, hollow, look. His cousin hadn't cast any blame on him for being instrumental in Draco's demise.
Lucius Malfoy had been too shocked that his own flesh-and-blood, the son who couldn't even snuff out an already dying old wizard's life, had attempted to take out the Dark Lord himself!
He hadn't needed to accuse or to place any blame.
Severus' own conscience thoroughly scourged his soul each time he remembered any of the many small redeeming things about Draco; he'd truly loved his godson. A part of his mind would forever flagellate itself over that single irreversible deed.
Severus' dark introspection had sobered him up enough to snarl authoritatively, "Do not force me to confiscate your wand . . . or to have to place you under the 'Imperius' for your own good, Lucius!"
"If you think that you're having it bad, just spare a moment of your time to ponder young Miss Weasley's burden. It's been three days now since she lost her entire family. She's not eaten, spoken, or even properly attended to her body functions. I had to 'Scourgify' the girl, twice, before I'd hold onto her to Apparate her here!"
His nostrils unconsciously quivered in remembrance of the stench that had clung to both of the young Gryffindor witches currently installed under his roof . . . well, technically, Malfoy's roof.
However, it wouldn't be Lucius' possession for much longer if his blond cousin didn't straighten-up.
Actually, the sole reason that Voldemort hadn't already evicted Lucius from Malfoy Manor, and claimed it for his own private residence, was that he'd wanted control of Hogwarts even more.
"Lucius, you are now basically an orphan. A family man without a family." Severus bent forward and rested his elbows on his knees, sitting in an openly confiding manner.
He was speaking from his heart, man-to-man, cousin-to-cousin, and so his deep baritone trembled slightly with rare, but honest, emotion. Severus had to blink and swallow the bitter lump of guilt caused by his contribution to his cousin's loss, no matter how unwittingly.
"Miss Weasley is truly an orphan now." He cleared his throat, and then went on, "She's locked herself away in such a depth of despair that I do not believe that I will be able to reach or mend her."
Severus quirked a sad grin, then bluntly added, "She doesn't trust me."
He self-deprecatingly arched an inky eyebrow at the blond older man, the unspoken 'but who does?' left unsaid, but completely understood between them.
Severus now had Lucius' still intoxicated, but complete, attention.
"Perhaps only one who truly suffers just as she does can reach her. Perhaps neither of you need be alone. She is a Pureblood, Lucius, and her blossoming beauty at sixteen holds the promise of becoming an extraordinarily beautiful adult witch. She's bright, loyal, and brave."
Severus paused as he ruefully chuckled to himself, before he candidly added, "A true Gryffindor, and a credit to her House."
"That is something that I will expect you to honor as a confidence, cousin; that I can speak well of a Gryffindor. But then there is that Gryffindor mystique of their supposedly being enthusiastic partners and wildly gifted in bed."
Lucius Malfoy flopped back down on the sofa, apparently deep in thought. He wasn't in the market just yet to fill Narcissa's bed. But . . . perhaps . . . just perhaps a . . . as an . . . advisor?
He'd personally disliked Arthur Weasley for his traitorous Muggle-loving ways, but Lucius was instantly filled with deep sympathy, and empathy, for the man's only daughter's tragic loss and deep grief.
Hot, fresh tears burned his bloodshot grey eyes again for several long minutes before Lucius finally succumbed to the excess of liquor that he'd consumed, and passed out. His house elf, Stubbs, would later come in and levitate his master up to his bed, just as he'd been doing for days now.
Severus hadn't intended for his thoughtless comments to be disrespectful in any way concerning Lucius' loss.
'In vino est veritas.' In wine is truth. Sometimes extremely brutal truths.
Buoyed up by alcoholic euphoria, Severus had thoughtlessly been thinking only of his own brand-new Gryffindor sex-toy; the intelligent one. The one that was now completely his own, simply for the taking, and currently asleep in his private quarters just up those stairs.
Severus groaned, and adjusted himself. Damn, he wanted her!
But on the other hand . . .
Severus suddenly decided that a bit of discretion and self-control exercised just now would probably lead to a more pleasurable final victory in his siege of Miss Granger.
He would allow his witch the time to heal. She was wounded, in pain, and in all probability still shell-shocked from everything that had happened to her.
His time would come soon enough. He'd already been waiting seven long years for her, with absolutely no hope of ever having her at all.
He could wait a day or two longer to assume complete possession of his property.
And then Miss Granger . . . aahh yes . . . then indeed!
You will certainly pay then for all of the trouble that I've had to put myself to just to obtain you.
Oh yes, my little lioness! You will most definitely pay your physician.
Severus finally slumped back against the smooth, cool, leather of his chair when Lucius began to drunkenly snore, and closed his tired, burning, eyes.
His thin lips lasciviously arched up at that thought; payment.
Before a heavy inebriated slumber overtook him, Severus Snape allowed himself to begin imagining the multitude of very pleasurable ways in which his Miss Granger would be repaying him nightly for many, many, exciting long years to come.
END OF CHAPTER 16
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A/N: We will be leaving our two cousins to "sleep-it-off" for a chapter or two, at least while Hermione heals. As stated in my opening warnings, this is a revolving story format.
Is anyone wondering about Neville, Justin, Harry, and Ginny?
Or about Rodolphus, Bellatrix, and Crabbe, Senior?
I haven't forgotten about any of them. Have you?
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