Rosura, Part Eight

Snape was lying on his bed in the Slytherin dormitory, staring out of the window at the rain-lashed castle grounds. Down in the common room there were no windows, just squashy leather arm-chairs, an industrial-sized fireplace and lots of shaded lamps - presumably to disguise the sordid dealings of the inhabitants, though Severus suspected that the low light-levels had also served to make pure-blood witches and wizards seem more attractive - certainly, he had seen Avery’s parents, and he was convinced that they could only have got together in the dark. Here in the dormitories, however, there were wide little windows close to the level of the ceiling, surrounded by bars, and half-covered with grass and ivy.  It gave the light in the dormitories a greenish tinge. You learned to recognise the shoes of passers by - Bella’s scuffed leather ankle-boots, as featured in Snape’s recurring nightmares, and Narcissa’s polished high-heels. But today, nobody was out in the grounds, because it was raining mercilessly.

Snape heard the dormitory door open, but didn’t look away from his contemplation of the darkening sky. After a few moments, the smell of rotting flowers announced Narcissa’s presence. Snape sighed.

She didn’t seem in the mood for exchanging pleasantries, because her first words, uttered in her usual cruel-but-silky drawl, were:

“If you wanted the mud blood, why did you come to rescue me?”

“Believe me,” said Snape coldly, “it wasn’t my idea.”

“I think it was.”

“You can think what you like,” he said shortly.  

“I think you were jealous of Malfoy having me all to himself.”

“What an interesting theory.”  

“And I’m not sorry. I like you, Severus,” she murmured.

“Yeah?” Snape said, in a very bored voice. “Well,  you’ll understand if I don’t leap for joy, something tells me that your love is as poisonous as your hatred.”

Narcissa’s playful smile faded, but she recovered herself. “Why this attitude all of a sudden, Severus?” she asked gently. “Aren’t we friends anymore?”

“You took everything from me,” Snape replied in a hollow voice, still staring out of the window.  

“Oh, please,” she sneered. “What did you have in the first place? A half-blood ancestry, a muggle upbringing, a beastly father and a disgraced mother: neither of your parents could perform magic, from what I hear. And - oh, yes - you had a crush on a filthy mudblood.”

Snape clenched his fists and narrowed his eyes, but said nothing.

“What did I take from you, Severus?” she went on, purring with her own cruelty, thrilling at the way he flinched. “You had nothing but embarrassments to begin with. Even if you had any chance with that - that creature - and, let me assure you, you did not, she would have destroyed you - ruined all your prospects, alienated all your friends.”

Snape sat up, the better to glare at her. “What prospects?” he said angrily. “What friends?”

“You can have both, if you are only strong enough to take them,” Narcissa breathed. “Malfoy is your friend - ,”

Snape smiled unpleasantly. “So, that’s it,” he said. “I wondered why you were wasting your time with me. What do you want me to do this time - deliver love-notes to him?”

Narcissa sat down on the bed beside him, and gripped the front of his shirt, pressing her face extremely close to his. Severus could see nothing but those corpse-grey eyes, and smell nothing but her intense perfume - like rotting lilacs - but he didn’t move away. Coldly, he said: “I wasn’t joking about that Hemlock perfume dissolving your skin. Stop using it.”

“I will, if you do something for me,” she breathed.

Severus raised his eyebrows. “I hate to be pedantic,” he said, “but the first thing was for you. You think I care if your skin goes see-through?”

“Yes, I think you care,” she murmured, putting her lips close to his ear. “Or, if you do not already, you will soon. I can give you everything you could possibly desire in the magical world - power, influence,” she paused artfully, and pressed her palm to his chest, smiling at the rapid heartbeat she could feel fluttering under her fingers, “pleasure…”

Snape did not remove her hand. There was a hot throbbing in his head - an enticing oblivion was beckoning to him but, as always, his doubts stepped in front of it, and cleared their throats in an officious kind of way, ready to announce their long list of objections.

“Kiss me,” Narcissa whispered.

Severus withdrew into that ice-cube of rationality at the centre of his brain, and said:

“How do I know you haven’t smeared your lips with Belladonna, or Arsenic, or Acromantula venom?”

“You don’t,” she whispered. “That’s what makes it so exciting.”

Snape could feel anger spreading like numbness through his body. This bitch had taken Lily from him - her shrill, spoilt screams had prised him away from the most intense happiness he’d ever known. She owed him.

The contemptuous attraction he’d always felt for Narcissa stirred within him. He grabbed her roughly and pulled her to him, squeezing her waist, digging his nails into her flesh.

Severus tried not to think about Lily as he pressed his lips to Narcissa’s, but it was no good, the comparison had formed in his mind before he’d even kissed her  - Narcissa’s skin was cold and white, and there was no pretty laughter, no eager clumsiness, no hiding behind her hair in shyness. Narcissa didn’t even seem to want him; she was so fake, grasping and insincere.

Everyone except Lily was playing a game with him, trying to get something from him, trying to torment or manipulate him. And suddenly he felt weary and sick and couldn’t go on hiding it.   

Furious with himself, and with her, Snape pulled Narcissa away. “Leave me alone,” he said coldly. “I don’t want anything to do with you or Malfoy, have you got that? I hope he rots in Azkaban, and I hope you rot in your mansion, you spoilt brat.”

Narcissa watched him go with fascinated indignation. Nobody had ever refused her advances before. Perhaps Severus just didn’t like women. No, it couldn’t be explained away as easily as that, because she had seen him in the arms of that Mudblood. He had been unrecognizable in the arms of that Mudblood.

Narcissa was a true scientist. Everything she ever did was motivated by the desire to see how far she could push things: her magic, her beauty, other people’s restraint…   

She suddenly realized that she was cherishing a growing passion for both Malfoy and Severus. She couldn’t seem to separate her attraction to one from her attraction to the other. Malfoy could be reckless and desperate, and Severus could slap away the hand that fed him, with an angry independence that was just… beguiling.

Of course, he was not attractive, in so many words (in fact, a limitless amount of words would not serve to make him attractive), but still, there was something pleasing about his stark, sallow, hook-nosed profile: something, not handsome, but sublime, like a ruined abbey or a dead, twisted tree.   

How curious that she had lived her entire life without feeling an attraction to anyone, and now two men had come along to tempt her at once. She would marry Malfoy - of that she was adamant. But Severus… well, Severus would be a bit of fun. Her ancestors had always had time for fun, however seriously they took their marriage alliances.

He definitely wanted her. He had been using the last of his restraint to refuse her. He wouldn’t do it again. As for Malfoy, she would ease his suffering gradually: there was no need to rush. She would let him speak to her next week, or the week after, and take it from there. Severus would be her amusement in the meantime.


Severus walked rapidly through the dungeon corridors, paying no attention to where he was going. He felt hot, confused and angry, and it wasn’t helping that Peeves the Poltergeist kept leaping out from behind suits of armour at him, and singing: ‘Snakey Snapey, the Memory Thief - kissed the girls and gave them grief’.

Nobody really knew what had happened down in the dungeon but Peeves, who could navigate the currents of gossip in the castle better than anyone, had managed to piece together a rough version of events. He clearly assumed that Snape had been in league with Malfoy, and that they’d lured Lily down to the dungeons in order to wipe her memory of the magical world and get her to go back to the muggles. Peeves also seemed to know about the Rosura potion - though Snape wasn’t sure how. Perhaps Narcissa had been talking to him - she had seen him kissing Lily, after all.

Snape stopped when he was sure the corridor was empty, and leaned against a statue of Rowena Ravenclaw taming her Giant Eagle.    

He needed to see Lily. It didn’t matter if she squirmed with pity at the sight of him. Even her pity would be better than this uncertainty. He needed to know what she remembered; he needed to know whether there was any hope. With his fatalistic imagination, he’d naturally assumed that there wasn’t, but it wasn’t as easy to banish hope as he’d hoped. If she didn’t remember, maybe he could start again, maybe he could be her friend - things would be different if only he could talk to her again. He’d never, ever, ever hurt her, never frighten her with talk about Dark Magic and Death Eaters - he’d find some way that she approved of to get powerful, he’d sever all his ties with Malfoy and the Dark Lord, if only, if only, she had forgotten how he felt about her.

He directed his footsteps towards the Hospital Wing, thinking that this was the bravest thing he’d ever done, and taking no comfort in the fact.  


Lily was preparing to leave. She had packed her pyjamas, cards and chocolates in her rucksack. It hadn’t been easy, because half the contents of Honeydukes had been swept onto her bed-side table during her brief stay in the Hospital Wing - there were Whistling Lollipops, Chocolate Frogs, Bertie Botts’ Every Flavour Beans - after getting marmalade and disinfectant, she’d given that box to Margot Holloway, who had been robbed of her sense of taste after a potion explosion during her childhood. Meg had bought her chocolates filled with vodka, rum and Fire whisky - she thought alcohol was medicinal, having been raised on it from the age of three.  

“Puts hair on your chest,” she’d said bracingly, when Lily had raised her eyebrows at the chocolates.

“And I want that because…?”

Meg had rolled her eyes. “It’s an expression, Lily! Like ‘No use crying over Spilt Potion’, or ‘Smells like Trouble.’ You should talk to Regulus sometime.”

“What?”

“You should talk to - ,”

“No,” Lily had said. “Before that - right before that - ‘Smells like…?”

“Trouble,” Meg said, mystified at Lily’s sudden agitation. “It’s a wizard expression. From Herpo the Foul and his necklace of severed heads? You know, because you could always smell him coming?”

“I’ve heard it before,” Lily murmured.  

“When?”

“I can’t remember.” She ran a hand through her hair, trying to cast her mind back, but the memory had slipped through her fingers, and Meg had started talking about her ancestors, and how they’d been bottle-fed Firewhisky, and they’d all turned out perfectly normal. Lily had been forced to humour her dear friend, because Meg was by no means so sure about the supremacy of her blood as she had been a year ago.

Lily was now sitting on the edge of her newly-made bed, looking out of the window of the Hospital Wing, at Hagrid’s hut, with its happily smoking chimney. She felt at once hollow and tender, as though her insides had been scooped out with some kind of blunt object, and were freely bleeding all over her school uniform. She had most of her memories back now - there were a few gaps; she’d found that she couldn’t remember Bellatrix very clearly, but Meg had assured her that this was probably for the best.

She also didn’t remember how she’d got into the tunnels where Malfoy had attacked her. She supposed she had heard Narcissa screaming and followed the sound, to find Malfoy and Snape… doing what? She couldn’t remember. They must have been arguing, and she’d got caught in the cross-fire, because Severus had put Malfoy under the Cruciatus Curse right afterwards.

Lily still shuddered at this memory. It was imprinted vividly in her mind. She’d seen how full of hatred her beloved friend was, and she would never forget it.

And the worst part of it was, she had nobody to blame but herself. He had never so much as given her the impression that he was anything other than a sadistic Death Eater. What was it he had said to her? ‘It’s not my fault if you expend all of that formidable intelligence on fooling yourself’.

She had arranged to meet Potter that evening: they were going for a drink in Hogsmeade, which was apparently the special privilege of House Quidditch Captains. Lily felt guilty for doing this, fearing that she was leading him on, but he had been so contrite and down-right masochistic earlier that day; she wanted to set his mind at ease, and he’d sworn that it would just be a friendly drink:

“No funny business, no flirting, just alcohol,” he’d promised, grinning in that disarming way he had. “We can drink in total silence, if you want.”

She wasn’t sure why she’d agreed; she only knew that the sight of Malfoy being tortured needed to be driven out of her mind - it had confirmed all her worst fears about Severus, and there was no better way of distancing herself from him than befriending his worst enemy.

It was wrong, yes: but she felt entitled to be wrong. In the past year, she’d been called a mud blood, battered with cauldrons and had her memory wiped clear - she wanted to do something easy for once.

There was a tap at the Hospital Wing door, and for a moment, she thought it was Potter, come to collect her for the Hogsmeade trip, but then, with an icy prickle, she recognized Severus. Still, she didn’t look away: she gazed at him with cold expectation.

He looked very uncomfortable. He was clutching his arm, as though it was wounded, and flushing a dull red - the sight stirred something in Lily’s memory, but it collapsed back into the waters of forgetfulness as soon as it had broken the surface.    

“Have you got all your memories back now?” Severus asked abruptly, without any preliminary niceties. He looked fierce and unhappy and stared resolutely at the floor, just as James Potter had done. He, however, didn’t look anywhere near so contrite - which Lily found infuriating, considering what he’d done to Malfoy.   

“Pretty much,” she answered coldly, busying herself with the last of her packing.  

Severus Snape looked up at her. “Oh,” he said. “OK. Um… do you…” She could tell that he was getting angry with himself, because there was a dull flush in his sallow cheeks, and he was twisting his fingers savagely. “Do you remember what happened the night Malfoy hexed you?”

Lily stared at him. How could he ask her that? She could still see Malfoy writhing in the soot and skeletons, still hear his screams building past the point of endurance in the echoing tunnels, as Snape stood with his wand poised over him, watching him with that hungry, pitiless look.

“Of course I do,” she said, her mouth twisted with disgust.

“Um… so…” Snape seemed to be losing the battle with his voice - he couldn’t make it steady. “How much do you want to talk about that?” he finished quickly, looking at the floor.

“As little as possible?” she suggested, with brittle brightness.  

Snape was staring at her. He had stopped twisting his fingers, and now he was white and motionless. Lily hoped this was remorse.

“Look, I haven’t told anyone,” she said quietly. “Just make sure it never happens again, OK?”

They were interrupted by James Potter tapping at the Hospital Wing door. Lily was relieved at the interruption, but wished it could have been somebody else who interrupted them. There was a prickly silence in the Hospital Wing, which Potter seemed blissfully unaware of, as he stepped into the room. He was grinning in a bemused, happy kind of way, and hardly seemed to notice Severus.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Lily said awkwardly, glancing at Snape, who was still white and staring. She grabbed her rucksack, but Potter lifted it off her shoulders and carried it himself, still grinning. “It’ll be great,” he said, “the Weird Sisters are playing an acoustic gig in The Three Broomsticks. My dad knows the bassist. We‘ll be able to go back-stage and talk to them.”

Lily made noises of polite interest and followed him from the room. She couldn’t look back at Severus. He hated James so much that he would look upon this as the ultimate betrayal - but he was angry and cruel, and she had to stop caring for him, however much it hurt.