Rosura

Lucius Malfoy had been sending Narcissa Black a letter every day for the past two weeks. She hadn’t replied. He had sent flowers and chocolates - she sniffed them, she ate them - but she still hadn’t acknowledged him.  

Even Snape, who never had any trouble believing the worst of people, had been unprepared for how cruel she could be. She read Malfoy’s letters out to her friends at the Slytherin table over breakfast, giggling scornfully. And it got worse. Desperate to hear some kind of response, Malfoy talked openly about the Dark Lord in these letters, telling her that he had powerful allies, warning her that the revolution was coming, promising her that he could ensure she was Queen over the entire wizarding world someday, with hordes of muggles and wizards alike paying tribute to her.  

Bad enough if the Ministry heard about these letters - Malfoy would be sent to Azkaban without trial - after all, what need for a trial if you had written confessions? But if the Dark Lord heard about them, Malfoy’s fate would be far worse. Snape, busy as he was, planning his revenge on Potter and sullenly watching Lily from behind a book everywhere she went - this latter was a painful but compulsive pastime - couldn’t help feeling that this was partly his fault. He decided to try reasoning with Narcissa.  

He found her in the girls’ dormitories - boys were allowed up there in the Slytherin common room, though they had to pass through a magical force-field that scanned their intentions - a kind of fixed Legilimency Charm that could detect hostile or amorous intent. Snape had always been able to fool it - since his feelings toward Narcissa were a mixture of both.

She was standing over a small cauldron on her dressing table, adding ingredients from her vast collection of glass bottles and phials almost indiscriminately. Her grey eyes - normally so dead-looking - were shining with the thrill of discovery.  

“Do you remember me saying that I couldn’t be responsible for what he’d do once he’d taken the potion?” Snape said, without preamble.

Narcissa did not appear surprised to see him. “Certainly,” she murmured. “As far as I’m concerned, Severus, your part in the whole affair is finished.”

Snape decided to ignore this clumsy hint. “Well, I meant it. You can’t just keep refusing to talk to him, or he’s going to do something stupid.”

Narcissa raised her eyebrows. “He slept with my sister,” she said lightly. “He can wait a few more weeks.”

“No, he can’t.” Snape came closer to her, and swept the potion she was brewing with a contemptuous eye. “By the way, that’s going to explode if you don’t add some Armadillo bile to it.”

For the first time, Narcissa’s confidence seemed to falter. “How long do I have?” she asked.

Snape shrugged. “About two minutes.”

Narcissa let her hand hover over the glass bottles and phials, silver flasks and hollow jewels arrayed on her dressing table. “Armadillo bile…” she murmured.   

“Anyway,“ said Snape, “about Malfoy. This isn’t one of those love potions that you get in wizard crackers, or that they give out as free samples in Witch Weekly. This is Amortentia. Be nice to him or he’ll kill himself.”

“Armadillo bile…”

“Or you.”

“I don’t have any Armadillo bile, Severus,” she murmured, with a little squeak in her voice.   

Snape sighed deeply. He was finding everybody so exhausting these days. “Maybe we should talk about this later,” he said.

“Wait!” Narcissa squealed, all pretence of dignity thrown aside. “You’ve got to help me, Severus. I can’t blow up the Slytherin common room, I’ll be expelled!”

“That will be the least of your problems if you’re anywhere near that explosion.”

Narcissa took a deep, steadying breath, and her voice was soft, almost pleading, when she continued. “Alright, alright, I’ll write to him. How’s that? I’ll send him a letter tonight - I’ll sign it with kisses - just help me.”

Snape delved in the pocket of his robes and produced a small glass phial. He held it over the potion with a steady, spindly white hand and allowed a drop of the thick, petrol-like substance in the phial to trickle into the cauldron. The potion hissed pacifically, and then there was silence.

Narcissa, now that the danger had passed, resumed her composure. She was looking at him with resentful admiration. “You’re always prepared for everything, aren’t you, Severus?”

Snape smiled unpleasantly. “I have to be. I’m surrounded by idiots.”

Narcissa glared at him; her icy politeness had turned to icy disdain. “I could ask Malfoy to have you killed for that remark, you repugnant little half-blood.”

“Oh, so you’ve finally got it into your head that a person who’s taken Amortentia can get violent?” he asked coldly. “Well, you’ll find out - because you’d rather blunder into mistakes than listen to advice, wouldn’t you? - that his violence isn’t so easy to control.”

“He’d never hurt me.”

“Not even if he found out you’d asked me to poison him?”

Narcissa faltered slightly, but the sneer was still in her voice when she replied. “You wouldn’t…”  

“Just remember that he’s dangerous,” Snape growled. “Amortentia victims who get rejected sometimes take what they want by force. Your precious pure blood isn’t going to help you. That’s why I told you I couldn’t take responsibility - .”

“Oh, since when have you ever taken responsibility for anything?” she snapped. “Everything’s James Potter’s fault, isn’t it? You go sneaking around the castle at night, but that’s alright, because Potter and his gang do it. You jinx first-year Gryffindors, but it’s only because Potter jinxes first-year Slytherins; you called that mudblood a mudblood, but it was only because Potter made you mad. Well, at least I know what I am, Severus. I don’t go around all doe-eyed, whining about my mistreatment, pretending to be a victim. You’re pathetic!”  

Snape had taken out his wand. He was breathing fast, and his mouth was twisted, as though he’d just swallowed something extremely bitter. “You watch your mouth,” he growled.

“Or what?” she sneered. “My father is Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. You so much as think about hexing me and I’ll have your wand snapped faster than you can blink. You’ll have to go back to the muggle world, or live like Hagrid, carrying things around for Dumbledore, or cleaning wizard dwellings like a common house elf. Maybe Potter and Sirius will take you on as a kind of butler.”

Snape teetered on the edge of blind fury, but that icy core of rationality at the centre of his brain saved him. She was right. He couldn’t do anything to Narcissa Black - at any rate, not yet. He didn’t have anybody in the wizarding world who could help him - no family, no friends, and the Death Eaters didn’t trust him. With that talent for self-control that had helped him survive his childhood, he pushed his anger down, feeling it writhe and chafe against his insides as he did so. He lowered his wand, hands shaking, and glared at her.

“I’ll get you for this,” he growled, knowing how stupid this threat sounded, and chafing all the more.

Narcissa, though pale, was smiling triumphantly. “That’s right, Severus,” she said sarcastically. “Why, I expect one day you’ll be somebody in the wizarding world. Under-secretary to some pure-blood Minister, perhaps. Just remember that, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, you can’t empty your veins of that muggle blood. There’s only one way to do that. And, if you bother me again, I’ll have Malfoy do it for you.”

She took a deep, contented breath, and went on, “you know, pure blood wizards might condescend to talk to you, Severus, but you’re not their equal. Even with all the cleverness in the world, you can’t hide what you are.”

Snape clenched his fists as she left, seething with hatred and humiliation. He wouldn’t have detested her half so much if he hadn’t been afraid that she was right. Oh, not that he was inferior - he knew he was smarter than all those sneering, in-bred morons - but that it would never matter, because he’d been tainted from the very beginning. Nobody would ever care what he could do, because he was half-muggle. He could get out of that claustrophobic muggle dunghill in Spinner’s End, but he could never leave it, because it circumscribed him here, as surely as if he’d been branded on the forehead with the word ‘half-blood’.      

He had thought he’d seen evil - his wife-beating father, the Muggle-baiting Death Eaters, and the despicably arrogant show-off James Potter. With the exception of the last one, he had cohabited with these evils amicably enough. They hadn’t got to him.  But Narcissa was going to pay for her insolence. Well, he should have expected it, he realised. How could Bellatrix Black’s sister be normal?

Not for the first time, his thoughts wandered back to Lily. He wanted to show her that he could command people in this place, that he belonged here, that he was just as good as any of them.

She was muggle-born but he had never associated her with the muggle world. She was so strongly, so obviously, magical that he was surprised anyone could see the muggle in her - nobody with those electric green eyes and ruby-red hair could belong to that dreary world of cars and concrete. In his childhood, she had represented the magical world that he’d been denied access to. He had dreamed about escaping with her to Hogwarts, getting away from the bulky, block-headed children that infested their muggle neighbourhood, the ones who would have crushed her spirit if she’d had the kind of spirit that could be crushed.

But it hadn’t turned out like that. Cruelty, he had discovered, was not an exclusively muggle trait. And this world didn’t want either of them - or, at any rate, it didn’t want them to be themselves. You had to fit in with the magical world - keep your head down, study hard, befriend the powerful people - no matter how stupid, arrogant or down-right sadistic they were. Cleverness and talent could only get you so far in this world - the rest was down to cunning and diplomacy.

This couldn’t be explained to Lily, and he wouldn’t have wanted her to change even if she did see the necessity for it, so Severus had decided, sometime in his first year, after the first shock of disillusionment was over, that he was going to get to a position of power for the both of them; he would become somebody important, and then he would make people accept her, just as she was - muggle-born, outspoken and impulsive. He had realized that life was unfair, but there was no reason why she had to realize it.        

It was partly that, anyway, and partly that he wanted to impress her. Severus was a pragmatic man; he knew - he’d known since he was ten - that he was not in her league in terms of looks. Nobody was going to confuse him for a Gilderoy Lockhart, or even - he clenched his fists again - a Sirius Black. There were a limited amount of things he could do to deserve her; being powerful seemed like the only feasible choice.

And, somewhere at the back of his mind, there lurked the assumption that if he could just get powerful, if he could just make people respect him, she might want him again.

Snape cast his eye over Narcissa’s bejewelled and heavily-laden dressing table. There were mirrors curled around its full width, and each of them reflected him from a different angle: his straggly, lank hair, his hooked nose, his sallow skin - flushed at the moment with hatred and bitterness - but usually an unhealthy-looking curdled white with a greenish tinge, like phosphorescent fungus.  

He sighed, and made an effort to collect himself. How to show that snooty ice-queen that he was not to be trifled with? He had been busy with his revenge on Potter, but there was always room for a diversion for someone who really deserved it. Come to think of it, there was no reason why the two schemes couldn’t inter-mesh.

On the bed beside the dressing table was the latest issue of Witch Weekly. A relentlessly grinning Gilderoy Lockhart dazzled up at him from the front cover, underneath some bright green lettering which read: ‘Don’t Let the Magic Die: Fifty Spells that will Save your Relationship’. And, attached to the front cover was a little heart-shaped red paper purse. It seemed to contain some kind of jelly-thick liquid, because it made squishing sounds when it was squeezed. Written in curly pink letters on top of the heart were the words ‘Rosura: See Him Again for the First Time.’ And underneath, in slightly smaller writing: ‘Important: Do Not Exceed Stated Dosage’ Snape ripped it open, and poured the whole thing into the now gently-bubbling cauldron in front of him.   

The wonderful thing about potions was that they couldn’t be traced. They crept through their victims’ veins with impunity, silent, sudden and anonymous. Wands could be coaxed into revealing the spells that they’d performed, but no potion would ever betray its maker.   

All he needed to do now was let Lucius Malfoy into the castle.

There were only two antidotes to Amortentia: sex or death (which, incidentally, was the motto that most Amortentia victims lived by). If you could get the object of your obsession into bed, the spell would be broken when you woke up the next morning. Pure-blood witches knew this, and always ensured that they were married (and had a good bodyguard on hand) first. But potions could do wonderful things - they could make you forget yourself.

Narcissa was always in control. It would be fun to see this momentarily suspended. And it would be wonderful, too, to see that ice-bright complexion sullied. And he could accomplish these very simple feats with a potion that was given out as a free sample in Witch Weekly.   

Really, dark magic was not necessary if you had a dark mind.