It was not a surprise to Anezka that they arrived in good order - because, when you still manage to learn how to apperate without having any idea what "destinație, hotărâre și deliberare" mean, you perforce learn what mistakes to NOT make very quickly. Despite that moderate success though, she was preparing herself for everything else to be a roaring catastrophe.
It was a faintly long trudge in very uncomfortable shoes down the approach from the gate to the house; the security around the estate was somewhere between Hogwarts and the Ministry in terms of stridency, so there could be absolutely no apparition in or out of the grounds unless you were family. She qualified, despite being able to count the visits to the place on one hand. However, Snape most certainly didn't qualify, so she was forced to set her destination at the gate, and be formally announced, much to her chagrin. It would have been far more enjoyable to just pop into the kitchens, get first dibs on the food and booze before it hit the dining room, and avoid the public humiliation of speaking to her grandmother in a formal receiving line.
Somehow the impending doom of hearing that woman's voice, caused Nezza a sudden uncertainty if the cast-off dress from the twins would pass muster. At least that anxiety gave a moment's relief from thinking about the excess weight in her clutch.
She knew that she would never be able to break the undetectable extension charm Snape had obviously put on it. Not with the grades she got in Charms, at any rate. So while she knew she'd have no way of finding out, and that he would probably never tell her, even if she confronted him about it, she could not help but wonder what he was smuggling into the world's most boring party. "Hopefully it's a bomb or something and we can get out of here early." She thought to herself .Her only true consolation was that at least she knew he was up to something. She didn't need to know what it was, just as long as she was keeping up with him.
"So what's our cover story?" Taking a break from trying to out think the only person in the world she acknowledged as vastly more clever then her, she leaned in close to whisper this questions to him.
"Our what?" He seemed baffled by the very words.
"I am going to assume that we won't want to tell them that we are boink buddies, so why are we here together?" Knowing a few more paces and they might need the answer, she chose to forgo leveling any sass at him for his deliberate ignorance.
"Why do we have to tell them anything?"
"Cause they sweep the podium in the nosy competition: they're old, upper class, and my relatives." She counted off on her fingers. "If we don't tell them something they will pry even harder"
"Can we not just tell them that we are . . . Friends?" Snape seemed to choke on the word, as if the concept was almost as distasteful to him as anything more accurately describing their liaison.
Anezka scoffed. "Either of us having friends is even less believable than us shagging." Time was up, they had reached the end of the lane, and there was only one other couple in front of them in the receiving line.
"Alright, Jeeves?" She greeted the footman at the door with a jut of her chin, garnering her a weary sigh from the man as she turned over the invitations to his proffered hands. His name was not actually Jeeves of course, but Anezka had seen a program on TV a few summers back and had unilaterally decided all stuffy male house staff now had to be referred to as Jeeves, at all times.
Credentials inspected, outer layers removed and absconded to the cloak room, Anezka squared back her shoulder and gave a whispered "Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead . . . ."
"Did you just refer to your grandmother as a torpedo."
"Talk to me in five minutes and tell me it isn't accurate." She pushed out through gritted teeth posing as a large smile.
They were announced with the pomp and ceremony one could expect; Nezza with all the flowery hereditary niceties her Grandparents would deem important - umpteenth great granddaughter of Merlin, first witch of the Myriddan line, etc etc etc - and Snape with the seemingly simpler title of "Headmaster", though everyone there gathered knew what that position meant, both historically and in the current climate.
One spoke of prestige, the other of power, and if Nezza had to guess they would both prefer to trade the honorifics. She'd love to be known for where her ambitions took her, as Snape was, but for certain, Beryl Myrddian would not consider "Knocturn Alley Shopkeeper" a boasting point. Conversely, Snape being the obvious product of some kind of rough childhood probably thought that having an ancestral line long enough to fill a book of the Bible was an ideal.
"Annie darling!" Claws sunk into shoulders and air kisses were planted somewhere in the space between cheeks and ears.
"Grandma Bertha!" Having spent every interaction with her mother's mother heretofore in her life trying to make herself as small and unnoticeable as possible, entirely against type, she decided this was going to be the time that she would finally respond as she wished. She had a full arsenal of weaponized comebacks, collected from years of disuse, ready and waiting. Perhaps, If she painted enough of a target on herself, Snape's presence would go almost entirely unnoticed.
"Haha, Darling whatever do mean by calling me Bertha?" Beryl's cackle was a forced cover for her shock. Appearances must be maintained, and who knew who could have been watching. She held the hug a little longer, and a little tighter though, as she asked the questions.
Having the same sentiments, but wanting to make sure that whoever might be, was watching her an no one else, she mimicked the laugh cynically. "Oh I just figured we were using made up names, since, y'know, my name isn't Annie."
"You know that's just what I call you darling, I always have."
"Yeah, mostly because you've always been a slightly xenophobic gorgon who's never gotten over the fact that your Squib daughter ran off with a foreigner who then had the balls to name his kid after HIS grandmother, rather than you." It was said with a vapid laugh, through teeth still clenched.
Grandfather hadn't even really had the chance to say hello before the claws had come out next to him, and years of experience with his wife, and years inexperience with his granddaughter left him completely bereft of deescalation skills. Instead, with a clearing of throat he turned to the guest. "Professor Snape - or I suppose I should say Headmaster, now. How good of you to come to our little party." The two men shook hands.
"Yes, Professor Snape, so wonderful to see you again. It has been so very long, we've rather come to not expect you at these sort of things any more." Classic Beryl, finding the most polite way to poke at him for having committed the tragic social faux pas of not RSVP'ing. "How on earth did Annie convince you to come along!" Her tone remained the frozen pitch of perfect hostess as she addressed Snape, but her gaze bore daggers, and never left her granddaughter, lest she make a sudden move or try to say such insulting truths again, but louder.
"Now that is a story that would take forever even if it weren't me telling it!" Anezka was continuing to ape her grandmother's tone and forced conviviality. "And I would hate to keep you from your other guests. I'm sure I'll be seeing you at dinner"
It was a clever pivot. Nezza knew that her grandmother would never break the sacred bonds of social etiquette - to her, they were practically an Unbreakable vow, only it was shame that would kill her, not magic. Etiquette deemed that the receiving line keep moving, and every guest be they family, friend, enemy, or any combination of the three, got only a few words of greeting before being hurried on to make room for the next.
Faced with the strictures of her own gilded caste Beryl had no choice but to claim defeat, and waved her wayward offspring's wayward offspring through the hall's door and into the ballroom. It was a decadent room; worn, sweeping timbers from bygone epochs curved themselves in stately fashion over ornate parquet floors, while the whole room was punctuated by fussy victorian furnshings and art. The entire room was a testament to the longevity of the family, and to the fact that they were affluent for the duration of it's timeline.
"So, buffet line first, or some daaaancing?" Anezka smirked at her own imitation of her grandmother. "But whatever you choose, I suggest you decide quickly, cause we've been clocked by a Ministry lackey at 3 o'clock, and a nosy great Aunt at 8, so we best become otherwise engaged quickly."
The dance they did throughout the evening was more artful and delicately paced than any waltz occurring on the polished hardwood of the ballroom floor. They circulated through the crowds just quickly enough to seem engaged but not avoidant; paused to socialize with the odd acquaintances long enough to exchange pleasantries but no serious conversations. She had made such an artful show of being just clumsy enough, just loud enough, to garner attention from every other social coterie they passed, without seeming to be cartoonish or embarrassingly gauche. Noticeable, but unremarkable. It had been extraordinarily helpful - No one would even think to question his whereabouts, he was visibly, noticeably in attendance here, while still being largely ignored.
After a few hours of this, the great Aunt, who seemed oddly convivial for this family, finally intercepted them at the beverage table and seemed content only to tell Anezka how pretty she looked and to pour some extra brandy from a flask into both of their glasses of mulled wine, punctuated with an offhand invective that her sister in law was a cheapskate when it came to booze. Finally a family member that he could believe the impish brat on his arm was actually related to.
Anezka at one point managed to get trapped into a conversation with Gretchen Fox, much to her chagrin. Gretchen had seemed oblivious his presence on her old roomate's arm and was content to speak only about herself, despite Nezza's witheringly snide responses,
During that time, when he did not have the benefit of the social shield she had been providing, he himself was corned in his own version of social misery. The "ministry lacky" that Anezka had clocked earlier - no less then Corban Yaxley, of course – sidled his way over to him. The veiled attempts at discussing Death Eater business were easy to wave off in consideration of the mixed company and the clout Snape had with the man. The much more crass comments and questions of how Snape had 'managed to bag the Myriddan girl', were less so.
Unable to protest convincingly enough that his attendance with her was incidental, Snape put on his best annoyed sigh and eye roll. "We all have our wartime dalliances, Yaxley..."
"Still, a young and pretty Pureblood girl like that would be a ripe reward. I'm sure Lord Voldemort would happily give her to you on a more permanent basis."
The comment twisted so many knives; one, the disturbing disregard for the girl's own self-ownership and humanity, to be given away as a reward ...as if she would ever allow it; secondly the idea that there could be any kind of future with Anezka in it, when he knew such a thing would never be possible, on so many fronts; and finally, that she would not be the first woman that Voldemort had "promised" him. The pain these realizations caused whilst crashing in his gut simultaneously gave him a laser like focus to end the conversation, the only way he knew how.
"Tut tut, Corban. I never took you for a doddering old maid, clucking and arranging marriages. Next you'll be suggesting that we braid each other's hair and promise to name children after one another." He drawled caustically, his tone just haughty enough to put the other man quickly in his place. "I had assumed that we all had more important things to do." He could make a dozen or so more arguments, devaluing who and what Anezka was in an attempt to convince the other man that she was nothing other then a warm and willing body that didn't require payment further then that of attending a few formal functions together, but the few words he spent on the argument the more convincing it was.
As if she had sensed she was the subject, Anezka finally rid herself of Miss Fox and took the few steps back to return to Snapes side. "There you are!" She said, linking her arm with his, neither fawning or swooning but still casually familiar – a perfect level of intimacy to back up his point. "Minister Yaxley, a pleasure to see you. We've not been formally introduced, but I have heard quite a bit about you." It was the pitch perfect greeting as well – demure enough to appease the Death Eater's ego and entitlement, but bold and self-assured enough to remind the status minded man of her own prestige over his own.
A few more niceties and then somehow, they were free of the repugnant man. The version of Anezka he was used to was more likely to tell people to go die in fire if she had not interest in speaking with them, but here with this and every other social interaction they had encountered together she ticked off all perquisite social tasks, all appearances correctly made.
Anezka had been correct in her assumption earlier in the evening that he, both by personal nature and by gravitas of his mission, had no interest in prolonged social interaction with people prone to pry. How she choreographed their path through the crowds was actually a good contribution to his plan. That his presence had been noted at this event by Death Eaters in Ministry clothing was no bad thing. He knew her well enough to know that she hated every honied word she was saying but that she understood the game – just as she understood the annoying troubled child in school was most likely to be left alone, the bland and unremarkable socialite would be noticed but widely ignored.
That she was so adroit in a setting such as this was startling enough to him that he commented on it, once out of Yaxley's earshot. "Prolonged exposure to the Argent girls seems to have had some effect on you."
She smirked inscrutably. "What makes you think that they taught me anything?"
"Well, I had always rather assumed you hadn't spent much time in this place as a child."
"Why? Cause I sound like I spent my formative years in a gutter in London?" He refused to give her the benefit of response to such a stupid question, when they both knew that was exactly the answer. "Not all of us can, or want, to iron out the accents from where started."
He turned away, annoyed at the knowing reference. One of the last people to have ever heard anything other than his hard-fought-for Received Pronunciation died a year ago atop the astronomy tower. That somehow, at some time, she heard anything else from him was frustrating and infuriating.
"It's amazing what you can figure out if you just pay attention." Whether that applied to her noticing the shadows of the Black Country in his speech patterns when he was tired and less guarded or what she was about to expound upon from her own life, was ambiguous. "We'd come down from the City for a week or two in the summers when I was small for a festival, and Grandmother thought it would reflect poorly on the family if we didn't stay with them… At first I thought this place was heaven."
"What changed that opinion."
"Torpedoes." Both an answer and a warning - her grandmother was bee-lining towards them. Instead of the look of consternation he was used to seeing her don when dealing with her maternalforebearer, she turned to face him, nose wrinkled and a glint in her eye. Before he could even question it, she had pushed him towards a pillar that only partially obscured them, wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling herself up on tiptoes to kiss him passionately.
"What are you doing?" He murmured against her mouth in a pause.
"Convincing Yaxy that I'm just the booty call you told him I was, while also deterring my grandmother from bothering us – she hates PDA worse then you do. Now, grab my ass like you are into it before people think I'm just sexually assaulting you."
He complied, though it went against his very nature, because he could not fault her logic, and after a minute his discomfort settled. They parted again and she leaned in her face to his ear, and after a performatively playful nip of his lobe, she whispered. "Are they both watching?"
"Yes. . . " Beryl Myddian looked apoplectic and Yaxley looked smug
"Good – he will tell people and she will make sure those people don't tell anyone else" She pulled away from him just enough to run her finger over a rune, carved into the side of the pillar, which lit up and the sound of a stone wall rolling back behind him echo'd. She pushed aside a tapestry and with a flirtatious jaunt of her head, motioned him towards the hidden passageway she had exposed.
"Where exactly are we going?"
"As far as they are concerned, to go fuck on my grandfather's desk."
Snape cleared his throat. That prospect sounded both titillating and tortuous at the same time. "Where are we really going?" This just earned him a lascivious eyebrow waggle that he only believed was partially in earnest.