Rosura, Part Four

Narcissa shook her head to try and clear it. Memory was coming back to her in steady drips - first an image, then a feeling. There was a dull, throbbing pain in her temple, but she tried to concentrate on remembering, instinctively reaching up to make sure that her hair was neatly tucked into its sleek, flawless little knot. With a groan, she realized that it was coming loose, and a few lawless, silvery strands had already escaped; she could feel them tickling her face.

But she could see nothing. She recognised the damp, mossy smell of the castle dungeons - it was comforting: it reminded her of her first days at school, sitting at the back of Potions classes and observing the other students complacently, noting with satisfaction that their robes were second-hand, or their cheeks were pudgy; she was indeed the prettiest girl in the world; her family had always told her so, but it was gratifying all the same to see for herself.

Overlaying the familiar smell of the dungeons, however, was a sharply unfamiliar one: the odour of sweat. Narcissa had never permitted a smell like that to be in the same room as her. She wrinkled her nose and peered uselessly into the darkness. Had she fainted, and been brought back to the common-room? No, there would be noises in the common-room - all Narcissa could hear at the moment was a distant roar, as of running water.  

She tried to reassemble her memories. She had been following the mudblood, Evans, to observe the effects of the potion she’d slipped into her pumpkin juice. She’d followed her to a dungeon classroom, watching her behaviour with increasing puzzlement. Twice, as she passed a boy going in the other direction, Evans had pulled him into a lingering kiss, without a word of explanation, and then, just as suddenly, departed, leaving the boy staring after her in red-faced bewilderment.

Narcissa remembered waiting outside the classroom that Evans had entered. After about ten minutes, Severus had come down the corridor - Narcissa had drawn back into the shadows. As he entered the classroom, Narcissa toyed with the idea of stopping him. She felt a little possessive of Severus; she would never have gone out with him - imagine being seen in public with such an unattractive little oddball! - but she wanted to be the only girl to tease him. Still, she was curious to see what Severus would do. Would he be loyal to his Death Eater principles and reject the mudblood, despite the temptation? (because she was attractive, Narcissa was grudgingly forced to admit, in a boisterous, unstudied kind of way)

They had been in there for some minutes: Narcissa had edged towards the door, trying to listen, but their voices were hushed and soft - Severus could not have been insulting her, or torturing her, but then Severus was subtle; he didn’t torture the way Bella did - he chipped away at people, rather than shattering them. He would probably put the mudblood in a trance and make her walk off a cliff, or steal her memories.

And then… what? Here Narcissa’s memory faltered. A hand on her shoulder, a flash of red light…

“I’m glad you’re awake, Miss Black. We haven’t spoken in a long time, and I have much to tell you. It broke my heart to have to stun you - well, broke it into slightly smaller pieces, anyway - but it was necessary. You would have been frightened if I hadn‘t done it.”

Narcissa sat up, terror thrilling through every nerve in her body. She felt as though she’d been showered with chips of ice. It couldn‘t be him. Dumbledore would never have let him into the castle. He had no business being in the castle.  

“This is an oubliette,” said the voice that sounded so much like Malfoy’s. “That’s French, you know, for a place of forgetting. And a place in which to be forgotten. My father used to imprison troublesome students down here when he was teaching at the castle. He understood how to break spirits, not like those walking disgraces to the name of wizardry that teach here today. Three days down here and, when they returned to class, his students would be obedient little angels. That’s the wonderful thing about children - they’re so impressionable - hurt them now, and they’ll fear you forever.”

Narcissa was too frightened to speak. She had nothing in the darkness, not beauty, not wealth, not family connections. She was far away from her powerful family and her still-more powerful dressing table, where she brewed her potions and cosmetics for befuddling men’s wits. All she had here was her mind. Still, that was one thing she had that Malfoy didn’t.

Suddenly, there was light in the darkness. It burned into Narcissa’s eyes, and she put her hand up to her face (the first time she had ever willingly obscured her appearance). Malfoy had uncovered a storm lantern - it illuminated a little way around them, placing them in the middle of a bubble of light.

In later years, she would think of this quality of light quite differently. When she read to her little son in bed, leaning against her husband’s shoulder, with her wand fixed to the headboard, illuminating the pages of the book and her boy’s ruddy little face, she would silently adore their little bubble of light, their charmed circle. Outside of it, there was an immensity of darkness: the spectre of the Death Eater trials, the humiliation of having people who had previously cowered at their approach spitting on their shoes, the arrival of Howlers and hate-mail with the morning post-owls. Narcissa had never been hounded before: it made their circle of light at bed-time all the brighter.

Sometimes, she would look back on that moment in the oubliette and muse lazily - as she did everything - about the chaos that could lead to contentment. She would listen to her husband’s snores - he always fell asleep, while Draco was always wide awake, clambering over her, putting his pudgy little hands on her shoulder, hiding his face in her hair - and remember how miserable she had made him, and feel, for the first time in her life, a twinge of conscience.

It was always driven out of her mind by Draco’s happy little gurgles, and the necessity of keeping him entertained, but it was there, all the same - the tiniest, bewildering recognition that, while her beloved female ancestors might have been clever, they were not kind, and that perhaps, somewhere, there were better examples to follow.

But here and now in the oubliette, the bubble of light was hateful. Apart from anything else, Narcissa felt sure that it wasn’t flattering.   

“Now, how many magical ways of escaping a place like this do you think there are?” Malfoy asked happily. “A brave child might try a Levitation Charm, or a Springing Jinx. Perhaps they might have tried yelling for help,” Malfoy was pacing around now, and there was a worrying crunch beneath his feet as he walked - Narcissa thought uncomfortably of bones or crumbling rock, but she couldn’t see - her eyes had still not adjusted to the sudden glare of the storm lantern - and she didn’t dare investigate the platform by touch, for fear of what she might find.  

“Or sending a Patronus to summon another teacher?” Lucius resumed. “Because even under Dippet’s regime - that’s Dumbledore’s predecessor, Armando Dippet - locking children in solitary confinement for days on end was prohibited. But my father thought of everything. You are aware of the enchantments that prevent a wizard from Apparating or Disapparating inside a certain space? Hogwarts was already laced with such spells - my father simply enhanced them. This entire room is impregnated with a magical dampening field. It took him the best part of a decade to construct it. Here, a wizard must live as a muggle - with his wits and his hands. And prolonged exposure to the dampening field can damage ones powers permanently.”

There was a pause. Narcissa could now see a little in the rusty glare of the lantern - Malfoy’s face, wild and unshaven, and around his feet, as though bowed down to worship him, were bones. She had been right. The platform was littered with them.

“You see the brilliance of it, Narcissa?  Repeat offenders were soon rendered unable to repeat the offence. Magical impotence awaits anyone who spends too long in here.” Malfoy’s voice became rather strained. “My father used to threaten me with incarceration in this room whenever I misbehaved. Until very recently, it was one of my worst nightmares - but no longer, Narcissa,” his voice had lowered to a fierce hiss, and Narcissa shuddered. “Now I know that there is something worse than a life without magic: a life without you.”

He adjusted the beam of the storm lantern, so that it shone on her face, and Narcissa was blinded again; terrified and exposed, she could do nothing but concentrate on breathing - that was enough of a struggle. The idea of escape in this state of total vulnerability seemed as far off as the moon.

“We can be happy here,” Malfoy said, his voice warm with enthusiasm. “Nobody else knows of this room’s existence: there will be no-one to take you away from me - and they would not succeed even if they tried. As long as we are together, prison is a paradise: nothing else matters - not magic, not power struggles, not blood. Neither Dumbledore, the Dark Lord, nor the war between them, can reach us here, my dear Narcissa.”

Narcissa finally found her voice, and she was surprised to find it steady. “Lucius,” she said. “You’re not really in love with me. I gave you Amortentia.”

“You can’t tell me what I’m feeling isn’t real,” Malfoy said hoarsely.

“Alright,” she said in a placatory whisper. “Even if it is real, it isn’t right. You wouldn’t feel this way on your own.”

“That is quite irrelevant, Narcissa,” he snapped. “We will never know how I would have felt if you hadn’t poisoned me, because you did, and I am in no mood for philosophical speculation.”

Silence resettled around them, broken only by the sound of rushing water far below. Narcissa wondered how far it was - whether she could jump off the platform and still survive. It would be a back-up plan, she decided. Right now, she still had her charm, even if she had no magic.

“Alright,” she said again. “This is easily solved, Lucius. We don’t have to stay here, away from our families, gradually turning into muggles. Imagine how you would feel if there were a revolution, if the Dark Lord seized power, if there were a new regime, and you weren’t part of it. Or the opposite,” she added desperately, “what if the Dark Lord is defeated and Dumbledore continues to let wizard blood degenerate, until magic is driven to the brink of extinction? How could we live with ourselves, knowing that we hadn’t done everything in our power to prevent it?”

Malfoy was silent for a few moments. “You said there was a solution,” he prompted eventually.

“I will marry you,” she said simply. “I promise to marry you. We can leave this place in the knowledge that we will not be separated, whatever happens.”

Another silence. Narcissa couldn’t have sworn to it, but she thought she heard a soft chuckle.

“I hope you will not think me cynical, my beloved,” he said, “but I’m afraid I don’t believe you.”

“I swear it!” Narcissa protested. “I’ll…” she paused, considering, “I’ll make the Unbreakable Vow,” she finished, in a small voice.

She had planned to be the Mistress of Malfoy Manor, whatever happened. She had intended either to marry him or be left his entire fortune in his will if he killed himself. She wouldn’t have to break the Vow, if all went to plan.

But things were so far from going to plan that she had to bite her lip to keep back tears. This was not the future of luxury and influence that she’d envisioned for herself. And the idea of losing her powers… becoming a muggle… she would be worse than dead… she would be a disgrace.   

“You can‘t make the Vow here,” Malfoy remarked. “Magic doesn’t work here, remember? At any rate, Dumbledore is no fool. I would be very surprised if there were not enchantments in place to prevent the Unbreakable Vow from being made anywhere in this castle.”

“Then you must trust me,” she implored.

“It isn’t worth the risk. You don’t seem to understand me. I want nothing else than to be with you, nothing else. What would I have to gain by allowing you to leave this place?”

“Don’t you want my happiness?” she asked accusingly.

“Ideally, yes, but it isn’t paramount amongst my priorities.”

“And you call this love?”

Malfoy suddenly lurched towards her. Narcissa scrambled away, and felt one hand slip off the edge of the platform. She screamed, teetering, but Malfoy caught her other wrist and pulled her up, so that her face was level with his. “No,” he breathed, “love is precisely what I did not call it. Amortentia is what I call it. A very dangerous potion, that sentimental, self-important young witches imagine will make their fortune: an understandable ambition for the ones that didn’t already have a fortune. Everything you could possibly desire, you already had, including my heart, but it wasn’t enough, was it, Narcissa? You had to have my soul.”

“You slept with my sister!” she shouted, throwing caution to the winds.

“Only because I thought you were too good for me!”

“What?”

“And let me tell you something about your sister,” Malfoy growled. “She knew what she was doing. I didn’t bribe her with diamonds or dragon‘s blood, I didn’t promise her a job or a husband, I didn’t even pretend that I wasn’t in love with her sister. She had her eyes open - ,”

“I do not,” Narcissa roared, her voice echoing shrilly in the vaulted darkness, “want to hear about it!”

There was silence. Narcissa listened to the echoes of her words, fluttering like bats around the oubliette. She had been advancing on him, and she was sure that the edge of the plateau was only a few inches behind his feet. The idea of pushing him flitted briefly across her mind.  

When Malfoy’s voice returned, it was calm and menacing. “You never wanted me,” he murmured, “you just wanted to be wanted… That’s right, isn’t it?”  

“The first part is right,” she replied acidly.

“So you thought you’d give me a love potion,” he went on, his voice rather higher than usual. “And you didn’t want to make any mistakes - it would have to be a strong love potion, something that would humiliate me, something that would make me beg, something that would bring the House of Malfoy to its knees - all to satisfy your pathetic, teenage vanity. You’d heard about your ancestor, Claudia Black, using Amortentia, and you decided - Merlin knows how, because you’re not the brightest of girls, beautiful as you undoubtedly are - that you would make some. But you did not understand the magic you were using, as your clever ancestor did. Amortentia does not, does not, produce love. That is a profound misapprehension. What it produces is need. And need is something you’ve never understood. If you did understand it, you would have been prepared for anything from me. You would never have let me live to continue needing you, because there is nothing in the world more dangerous than a creature that needs you.”

All this time he’d been holding her wrist - Narcissa could feel her fingers going numb - but now he threw it from him contemptuously. Yet he couldn’t seem to keep away. He kept his face by hers, breathing in her scent - that cloying sweetness - and the next moment, he reached his hand out to her again, grabbing her waist and drawing her to him. His voice was suddenly soft and remorseful.

“I’m sorry, Narcissa,” he said gently. “I was angry, but I forgive you. What’s done is done, and it cannot be helped now.”

Narcissa didn’t struggle. She looked up at him and, making sure the light caught her perfect face, she smiled. “Kiss me,” she said.

Caught off guard, Malfoy stared at her, but it was obvious that he was in no position to protest. He kissed her fiercely, greedily, trailing his biting lips across her cheek, her forehead, her nose.  

Narcissa moaned softly and tilted her head back, exposing her neck. Malfoy pressed a trail of kisses from her chin to the collar of her shirt - the pressure of it was almost enough to collapse her wind-pipe. Narcissa gave a strangled little gasp.

Then, very suddenly, he stopped. He pulled away and looked at her impassively for a few moments, and then he collapsed at her feet.   

Narcissa staggered with relief. She put a hand up to still the throbbing in her temple, and then knelt down beside Malfoy and felt the pulse in his neck. It was weak, faltering. He would probably only last a few minutes. Hemlock was extremely poisonous, after all.   

She sighed. This was not the first time her perfume had got her out of a tight spot, but it usually did so without killing people.

Still, she’d done what she had to do. She’d done what her clever female ancestors would have done. Now the only difficulty was getting out of here. If magic really didn’t work down here, then she would have to think like a muggle, and she was just wondering if perhaps she would rather die, when the sound of voices reached her.  


“But how did Malfoy even get into the castle?” Lily asked, as she and Severus made their way tentatively down the dungeon corridor, in the direction of Narcissa’s scream.

Snape paused. “Well, you know that map of Potter’s?”

Lily shook her head in disbelief. Her cheeks were still glowing, but she was fighting back against the Rosura potion. She had folded her arms so that they wouldn’t be tempted to stray in Severus’ direction, and he was over-brimming with admiration and disappointment in equal measure. His consciousness of her strength, and the dangerous situation they were walking into, was making the warm oblivion of her body seem even more appealing.  

“I don’t believe even Potter would be so stupid as to leave that thing lying around!” she exclaimed.

Snape didn’t say anything. When Lily insulted Potter, that writhing creature deep in his chest was suddenly pacified. The idea of telling her the truth about how Malfoy had got into the castle had never been less appealing.

“I’m going to kill him,” she breathed furiously. “He might not mind about Narcissa being killed - and I’m still not sure that I should mind either - but think of all the points he’s going to lose for Gryffindor when Dumbledore finds out!”

“Yeah…” Snape was tempted to join in with this abuse and, had Lily been more lucid, she would have wondered why he didn’t. But he didn’t like lying to her. It made him feel like he’d called her ‘mudblood’ again - it made him feel dirty and tainted, as nothing else had ever done. Frightening first years, lashing out at Pettigrew or some other hopeless idiot, getting his own back on Potter - all these had never troubled Snape’s conscience a bit, but hurting Lily was unendurable.  

He had never wanted to lie to her. It was just that, he being who he was, and she being who she was, it was sometimes necessary. He wished it wasn’t. But lying to her was less painful than disgusting her, or disappointing her, or living without her, so he let it go.

“His dad knew these dungeons better than anyone,” Snape said, trying to change the subject. “Malfoy’s always boasting that his dad had secret rooms for imprisoning students.”

Lily screwed up her face in distaste. “I always wondered why Malfoy was so screwed-up.”

“Oh, that’s not why,” Snape said, uncomfortably aware that he was edging into a subject that would require him to lie to her again. “He’s taken Amortentia.”

Snape had to give her credit for the way she absorbed this information. Lily was a very feeling, impetuous woman, but she knew when calmness and clear-thinking were called for.

“Well, then, we’ better be prepared for anything,” she said, and walked on, holding her lit wand in front of her.

They came to another of the many splintery wooden doors that branched off the dungeon corridor. This one was like all the others, except that it had a rusty iron bolt on the outside. It was clearly used for locking people in, not out. Lily and Snape looked at each other.

“No,” she said. “Dumbledore would have noticed…”

“I think,” Snape murmured, running his hands over the rusty bolt, “that it’s bewitched to be visible only to troublesome students.”

“How come I can see it then?” Lily asked.

Snape couldn’t help smiling at her. “Oh, because it wasn’t you who blew up Potter’s cauldron in Potions last year? Somebody put you under the Imperius Curse? You were possessed, right?”

Lily gave him a grudging smile back. “As it happens, yes,” she said sweetly. “I was possessed by the spirit of justice.”

Snape grinned. It was one of his favourite memories - but, as with all his favourite memories, it was tinged with bitterness. Potter and Black had been taunting him every time Slughorn turned his back, calling him gutless and pathetic; Snape had been painfully aware of Lily’s eyes on them, and he’d got up to curse Potter - because he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t be humiliated in front of Lily, he’d rather be expelled - when he had felt a slight pressure on his shoulder, and a murmur as she brushed past him. “Give me ten seconds,” she’d said.

Then she had walked past Potter, smiling sweetly at him and, while he was grinning stupidly back (because he had a tendency to do this around Lily), she’d emptied a bottle of Knarl quills into his potion.

Lily just had enough time to saunter serenely back to her seat, before the cauldron exploded, showering the class with drops of Shrinking Solution. There were yells, as people’s hair started to shrink back into their scalp, or their noses dwindled to the size of tadpoles.  

“How do you bewitch something so that only troublesome students can see it?” Lily asked, peering at the bolt with keen interest.

“It’s called a Contrition Charm,” Severus told her. “It means something’s there but only people with a guilty conscience can see it. Designed to make criminals confess to their crimes - you know, because they think they’re going crazy. Apparently, Herpo the Foul used to wear a necklace of severed heads strung around his neck, but the decaying flesh would only smell bad to people who had betrayed him. That’s how he knew who his loyal followers were. Anyone who could manage to breathe the air around him was trustworthy. That’s why wizards have the proverb ‘smells like trouble’.”

Lily was gazing at him in horrified fascination. The glow of desire had not left her cheeks - but there was something else underneath it, almost like fear. “You really know a lot about this, don’t you?”

Snape shrugged. “I get bored with moronic lessons on Cheering Charms,” he muttered defensively.  

“It’s a shame. You could have used one.”

Snape pulled the bolt back, perhaps a little harder than he would ordinarily have done. “It’s not real,” he said petulantly. “It doesn’t last.”

“What doesn’t?” Lily asked, stepping through the doorway, with her lit wand held ready in front of her.

“Cheering Charms. They’re not really making you happy. They’re just preventing you from remembering why you’re depressed.”

“Maybe that depression is preventing you from remembering why you’re happy,” she answered cheerfully. "It's not a delusion if you're already deluded - or anyway, not necessarily."  

Snape smiled, but said nothing. After a few steps, Lily held out her hand to him, without looking at him, and he took it.  

She was breathing very heavily, and squeezed his hand so tightly it was almost painful. Had she been a different woman, Snape would have thought that she was afraid. But he knew she was fighting the effects of the Rosura, struggling to remain rational while desire whispered to her, screamed at her, nipped and pinched at her flesh. He didn’t want to say it again - because it was going to be unbearable to remember having said it even once when she was back to normal again, when she remembered how he felt about her, and she turned those pained, pitying eyes on him, but she was amazing.

The corridor opened out into a room that felt, by the coldness of the air and the quality of the echoes, like a cathedral. Their wand-light could penetrate only a little way into the darkness and, without thinking, Severus put his hand out to stop Lily going forward. He had the feeling they were on the edge of an abyss.     

It reminded him of one Christmas when he’d slept over at her house. They’d dragged sleeping bags into the living room and had lain down, propped up on their elbows, talking about spell-books, alchemy and unicorns, until Lily’s head drooped, and Snape, though wide awake and aching for her attention, let her sleep. He’d watched her for some time - her breathing soft and shallow, her lips slightly parted. The only source of light in the room had been the coloured lights draped over the Christmas tree - glittering green, yellow, orange and pink - fake, garish things, he had always thought them, but they were pretty now.  

Severus had always hated Christmas-time in the muggle world, because the season seemed to plunge his mother deeper into misery. She couldn’t stop herself from talking about Christmas in the wizarding world - the trees decorated with real fairies, the crackers that contained live mice and Rear Admiral’s hats.

Snape had listened, spell-bound but anxious. He was always thirsty for more details of the magical world - the world he belonged to, the place where he’d be accepted, the place where he wouldn’t have to suffer the teasing of barely-sentient, screeching little muggle children - but he had always listened out for his father’s tread on the carpet outside the living room, ready to hush his mother at the first sounds of his approach. Talk of the magical world made Tobias angry, but then, Eileen Snape liked to make him angry. She didn’t care that it would cost her a good hiding; she didn’t even seem to care that it made her son cry; she just wanted to provoke Tobias, to rob him of his peace as he had robbed her of hers.  

At any rate, watching Lily’s sleeping form in the glow of the muggle fairy-lights had reconciled Severus to muggle Christmases. He’d felt, at that moment, like his soul was on fire - it was comfortable but painful, halfway between longing and contentment - a fulfilling thirst, an aching satisfaction. And he gloried in it, as he would have gloried in anything he had to endure for her sake.

But then, rolling onto his back, and looking out of the still-open curtains, he’d seen a green light in the sky. For one heart-stopping moment, he thought it was the Dark Mark - but it was only an aeroplane, its green and red lights flickering as it soared over Manchester’s red-brick houses and smoking industrial chimneys. And Snape had realized that, outside of their little puddle of light was a hungry, beckoning darkness, where people were cold and intolerant, and would try to take his precious friend away from him.  

There’s nothing like the fear that grips you when you realize that, outside your charmed circle, there are cold, blue, grasping fingers waiting to drag you away from your beloved. And she doesn’t see them. Her blissful ignorance makes you all the more afraid. It was this fear, more than anything, that had prompted Snape to do the reckless, increasingly desperate, increasingly meaningless, things he’d done to secure her. It was fear of the darkness that drove him out into it.

They stood looking at each other on the edge of the abyss. Snape didn't know why, but he thought he could hear it calling to him. And then suddenly, their wands flickered out.