Rom To My Private Dungeon

WARNING: Tissue alert. There are no more lemons to this story. And there is no lemonade to be made from them…

Snape wound his way around the castle, stopping now and again to kick a rock or squash an insect. He had no destination in particular. The circles he tread matched the circles of thoughts in his mind. After about an hour, he stopped and observed. Finding himself facing the low window to his own dungeon quarters, he leaned against the building and sank to the ground, scraping his palms against the cold stone.

“I must go,” he heard her voice say.

“I’m sorry,” and he could feel the gentle brush of her fingertips against his cheek. Her lips pressed against the bridge of his nose.

Her smile flickered.

The music went off.

The lights went out.

Against his better judgment, he had yielded to her charms. He had given his flesh, his mind, his hope, his tears.

But it was ill judgment on both their parts.

He gazed into the distance. A swarm of flies circled something a couple metres away. He pulled out his wand, and with a gesture so ingrained since adolescence he did not even realise he was doing it, he zapped the flies one by one. The pain and his thoughts circled his brain like a buzzard. And he wondered when hope might finally die.

It was poor judgment on his part. He’d listened to his libido. And to that part of his brain that still believed he had a chance for love.

It was poor judgment on her part. Her grandmother had all but sent her to Hogwarts to find a husband. Caught in between worlds back home, no wizard would have her and no Rom would tolerate her. “It is easier to milk a cow that stands still,” her grandmother would say every time she hit the road with her healer’s bag. But Maracuja could never stand still. And she was much too old for a proper Rom marriage by now, anyway.

So she found her way to Hogwarts, and gave her body and mind to a man who she tried to believe could provide her with the life she craved. She thought he would be the one. She let her dreams and her grandmother’s magic convince her. And who was this man?

A Teacher.

A Potions Master.

A giving lover.

A private man who knew her pain and let her in.

A Gadjo.

A man caught up in war, whose heart was not his to give.

********

It had been many weeks since they first consummated their passion. It was beautiful. She could feel his lips on her still, his body and soul penetrating her own. She’d tasted his skin, his tears, his fluid. Many nights she lay with him. Many days she gazed into his eyes. Learned from him, made discoveries with him—in her heart and in the potions lab.

Now she cried a deep cry as she packed her bags and put her things away.

Carefully, her notes were folded and tucked into a pocket of her trunk. So many potions discoveries they’d made, new knowledge that she could take to her people on the road who she treated. She prayed her skills and the compassion she held in her heart and actions would be enough to carry her away from her transgressions, her regret.

********

She had been conversing with her grandmother over the floo. Every week they talked. It was a great comfort, being so far away from her life back home. She heard the gossip. She told of her lab work. She told of the feelings Severus had awakened in her. She prayed she would not meet the same fate as her parents.

She did not know why she wore a white shawl that day. Why did she reach into the fire? Was it so important to push a log over so she could see her grandmother’s face better in the flames?

“Now I have a dark mark,” she moaned, unintentionally rubbing the soot further into the fabric. “It will never come out.”

But all he heard was ‘Dark Mark…” He never heard the voice at the other end of the floo. He never saw the shawl. He never tried to ask. “How could she know?” He immediately thought the worst.


********

And so as the saying goes, the ears told her what the eyes could not. That HE had a dark mark. Like the one she saw once long ago, on her father’s arm. On Karkaroff’s arm too, she remembered woefully. It wasn’t visible now. But it might be again, one day.

He accused her of being a spy. And she knew at that moment that he was the spy in the room, spying on her conversations, and spying to stay alive. She knew he could no longer bear to heed the call of that mark, were its master to call again. He heeded the call of another master now. And she remembered her mother’s words from long ago…a man cannot sit on two horses with one behind.

But nor can woman. She could not be with a man who accused her of spying, who spied on her, whose first instinct was not to trust in love. But equally, she could not be a Rom, a travelling Healer, and a wizard’s wife.

********

And so, Severus zapped the flies until the buzzards stopped circling his heart. Until all the wine was gone, and all the smiles faded, and all the caresses ceased, until al the words went quiet, and all the discoveries fled, and all the kisses dried up, and hope was once again tucked away in the box where he knew it belonged.

THE END


A/N: Deep bowing apologies to anyone who ever waited for this update. Since day one, I planned for this story to end on a sad note. But my muse went for a walk when I started “Skills” a year ago, and the road she went on refused to circle back until today.

I want to thank everyone who ever asked about this story. My endlessly and unshaken faithful betas Pigwidgeon and Fidelio, and everyone else who has helped me with this fic; the Rom woman who hated this story enough to wake up Maracuja in my brain again; and my own miserable love life for providing the emotional fodder. At least my most recent ill adventure was good for something.

Gadjo is a Rom (not Romanian) word for someone who is not a Rom. Maracuja speaks both languages.