The Masque
Chapter 2
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Title: The Masque 2 of 6 (~2600 words)
Pairing: Snape/Bill
BETA'D
Part target="_blank">1
A/N: Posted for src="Masque2_files/image001.gif" alt="[info]" v:shapes="_x0000_i1025">
Classic Cannon challenge. I chose The Ballade of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde -
a 4000 word poem.
A/N2: There is no way that I can possibly thank my beta src="Masque2_files/image001.gif" alt="[info]" v:shapes="_x0000_i1026">
enough for this. She tweaked my rambling prose into something exquisite, and
I'm in awe of her help. Thank you so very very much.
II
Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,
In the suit of shabby grey:
His cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay,
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.
William moved around the prison like a phantom in light. There was a certain
translucence to his skin, an alabaster beauty only emphasized by the
progressive peaking of his cheek-bones, and the ever increasing pallor which
made the lightly marring freckles stand even further to attention. The wasting
process so inherent of his captivity (that boy was made for the sunlight –
pretty Gryffindors did not grow well out of the glow of their high tower as
opposed to the skulking Slytherins, which thrived in the dark) drew out the
careful lines of his physique. Day by day Severus charted the process from man
to skeleton, and marveled at how none of this seemed to infringe upon the basic
beauty of William’s form. There was a lesson to be learnt here, Severus was
sure of it – though what it was, he could not tell.
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every wandering cloud that trailed
Its ravelled fleeces by.
Bill’s mind was open, however – free and unfettered, and able to move
throughout the prison. It lit up his countenance and kept hope in his eyes. It
was a strange sight for Severus, so wrapped up in his petty drudgery. The
illumination in Bill’s eyes was like a strange manuscript, beautiful, erudite,
and almost completely unfathomable to the uninitiated.
Severus wondered what gave him so much hope. What could possibly be intrinsic
to this one man – this paradigm of virtues – that would make so many men sneak
subtle glances, and turn around, to see him. The early morning “Severus,” that
he received from Bill was never joyful, never patronizing, always
quintessentially respectful. William Weasley had always known his place, and
here, even under the quiet adulation of the prison walls, he had an inherent
sense of self which kept him firmly entrenched on the ground.
He did not wring his hands, as do
Those witless men who dare
To try to rear the changeling Hope
In the cave of black Despair:
He only looked upon the sun,
And drank the morning air.
Severus was locked in again at night, the worn beds creaking with the midnight
fumblings of a few hundred deprived, depraved men. He had never really known
Bill when he was at school. He hadn’t needed any extra aide with his Potions
studies, and Severus certainly never bothered to befriend the brilliant
Gryffindor. There was never really time for it, anyway. He only ever had time
to work with and come to know those from his own house – the little lost
serpents.
However, now Severus noticed certain things about Bill, and how such things
were oddly adapted to the art of survival, of mystique, even at such close
quarters. There were never the creaking springs from the bed opposite him,
never the rhythmic rubbings of flesh on flesh, the twisted sigh of completion
in a house without hope.
Even Severus succumbed at times, hating and loving himself in equal measure as
he brought himself off with quiet, precise strokes. There was no joy in
satisfying his body’s requirements, only the mechanistic progression from lust
to satiation. Severus wondered if Arthur had castrated Bill. Knowing the crime,
he would not put it past him.
He did not wring his hands nor weep,
Nor did he peek or pine,
But he drank the air as though it held
Some healthful anodyne;
With open mouth he drank the sun
As though it had been wine!
Invariably, Bill’s lack of familiarity bred respect amongst the inmates, and
none more so than Severus. He took to searching for the shock of red hair
everywhere, between meals and through crumbling bars, around tables and out of
the corner of his eye. Bill was everywhere and nowhere to Severus, a phantasm of
familiar opacity, an oblique shadow cast by the rays of a fading sun. Severus
knew that there was little left for Bill here, but admired him for the way he
nonetheless drank in the beauty of what surrounded him. Bill hoarded up his
experiences, mercilessly cataloging the passing of each individual day, and
Severus wished that he, too, could find enough beauty in every day to hold to
his chest, to cherish, as opposed to enduring this seamless miasma of boredom.
And I and all the souls in pain,
Who tramped the other ring,
Forgot if we ourselves had done
A great or little thing,
And watched with gaze of dull amaze
The man who had to swing.
The dull creaking noises roused Severus from his sleep. Lucius was mumbling
again, cock in fist and the name of his most beloved son on his lips. It would
have shocked Severus, if anything depraved could drag an emotion out of him
anymore. However, loath as he was to admit it, he was jaded, saturated by the
cruelties and infidelities, the mercenary tricks of the imprisoned. It was only
Bill, his Bill Weasley, who could make him start back in unalloyed wonder.
Severus gasped a little, clutching at the bedsheets inadvertently. His Bill?
His William. Had he finally fallen into the last trap he had sworn to avoid –
that of desiring to corrupt the innocent flesh of a dying man? And they were
all dying in this hell of a prison, with no regards to age or sanity, dying
because the pompous bastards called judge and jury had decreed it. William was
dying faster than most, his enraged father pushing the well-oiled death
sentence through the gears without compunction, and now did Severus want to
corrupt him?
Severus rolled onto his side, tears staining the mattress. There had to be
something wrong when all that could make him cry is the final desecration of
the innocent.
And strange it was to see him pass
With a step so light and gay,
And strange it was to see him look
So wistfully at the day,
And strange it was to think that he
Had such a debt to pay.
Overnight, the saline tracks had dried on Severus’s cheeks, and the lightly
salted blankets bore testimony to the reality of his situation. Unfortunately,
there were more pressing matters at hand. Eyeing the light to discern the time,
he slipped his palm beneath his robes and began the mechanical process of
stroking himself to completion. Fisting his cock, his mind ran through a
cacophony of images: Lucius on his knees, head thrust back and sucking his cock
like a whore; Draco, bent over the potions desk, robe hitched up and the lace
of a garter belt framing his pert arse; Potter tied and trussed to one
Quidditch goalpost, his hand barely able to reach his cock and yet still
frantically wanking himself off. Nothing, no response, nothing!
Severus sighed, lay back against the cot, and moved his hand gently up and down
in an almost meditative way. Usually one of those images would force him to the
brink in an instant, and yet today, nothing. He had a sneaking suspicion that
he knew where the problem was. Well, there was no way he could leave his cell
in this state of arousal. He closed his eyes.
A shock of red hair, a flash of thigh in the shower. The path which William’s
hand traced as it went down from his neck to his balls, cupping them, caressing
them, almost fondling them. The supple fingers tapering a measured path up and
down William’s cock. A raised eyebrow, a proposition in a glance, and Severus
came in his hand. He would have to be cautious today, keeping the encrusted
come facing away from Weasley under the grimy spray of the showers.
For oak and elm have pleasant leaves
That in the springtime shoot:
But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
With its adder-bitten root,
And, green or dry, a man must die
Before it bears its fruit!
Severus made his way into breakfast feeling as if he had betrayed the one thing
he held holy. He was an apostate, a Judas. He could barely muster a “Good
Morning” in reply to Bill’s daily “Professor.” The porridge on his plate had
congealed, bits mixing in with the eggs and greenish bacon, and he stared at it
as if Longbottom had created the swill – which he could have, for all Severus
knew.
No. Longbottom was a war hero, simply present at the apprehension of the evil
Death Eater Snape. Severus sneered. It would be just his fate to have
that bumbling excuse for an Order member there, the only one so full of petty
grudges against him. Well. Perhaps being a Gryffindor gave one courage, even
when that happened to be the courage to do wrong.
The loftiest place is that seat of grace
For which all worldlings try:
But who would stand in hempen band
Upon a scaffold high,
And through a murderer's collar take
His last look at the sky?
Different, it would all have been so very different if it had been Potter or
even Granger there. But no, Longbottom betrayed his mentor, his lover, lead
Severus to the scaffold just as surely as if he had held his hand, and mounted
the steps with him. Severus knew that he should have told Longbottom it was
over before he went to rejoin the Death Eaters, to reply to that final summons
– he had made a promise, and had broken it. But the result should have not been
his death.
He and Neville had fallen into quiet fucks beside the last bastions of defense.
The affair sprung out of a shared sexuality (stumbled upon one night when
Severus had heard the familiar, quickened breathing and a dropped “Harry” in
the moment of Neville’s climax) more than any other thing. He had just returned
from a Death Eater summons, and found Longbottom on his back in their shared
tent, nude and nubile. All self control was lost, and Severus lurched upon him,
divested himself of his masks and robes, and blood-caked, stained, claimed
Neville’s virgin arse as his own.
It had been the biggest mistake of his life.
It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air!
The following night, while Neville was out on a raid, Charlie Weasley had come
to his tent trussed up in leather. It was all that Severus could do to not
stake his claim on the man. And Charlie had wanted it, had wanted his
subjugation, had begged Severus to take him by the collar and force him down
into the ground, to make him and break him and drive him to the brink of
insanity time and time again. Charlie spoke with the uncertainty of someone
used to taking, not to asking, and in his perfect body and winning smile
Severus knew he could find succor. Yet it had not been worth the risk: Arthur
and Molly were only two tents down and prudishly monitoring everyone’s
movements in the interest of safety. And Neville, were he to come back to find
his teacher fucking another man (not that that would stop him normally, but the
threat of Weasleys and Dumbledore had been looming large on the horizon) was
certain not to keep his mouth closed.
So Severus rejected Charlie, and, spirit broken, Charlie volunteered for the
raid the next night, and the one the night after, and the night after that. A
month later to the day, Charlie died.
So with curious eyes and sick surmise
We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul may stray.
Lucius broke through his reverie with a well-placed elbow. The feral grin on
his face left Severus with little room for hope. Even this sliver was dashed
when Lucius opened his mouth.
“Severus, quit mooning over the Weasley boy. That whole family is as near to
Mudbloods are any pureblood can descend.”
Severus blanched. Was he really that obvious?
“Severus, you know that Weasley is going to hang today, tomorrow, sometime
soon. Why can’t you just let him go? I’m quite willing to bend you over and
fuck you, if that’s what it’s going to take to get that puerile, doe-eyed
expression off your face.”
Severus looked down at his macerated meal. He did not have the energy to argue.
He refused to lift his head, even when the warders came in to remove Bill, and
take him to his trial.
At last the dead man walked no more
Amongst the Trial Men,
And I knew that he was standing up
In the black dock's dreadful pen,
And that never would I see his face
In God's sweet world again..
Severus made his way to his cell at sunset. The sky was portentously red, drawing
long bloody stripes across the floor and mattress. Still, he hoped that Bill
had been found innocent, had won a mitigated reprieve from the judges. That
neck, cracking, spasming as he drew his last breaths – it wasn’t right. Why
could no one else see this? The breaking of that perfect form, that perfect
mind lost, one of the best and brightest deemed to die at his father’s behest.
Gryffindors. They were the prudish, the hypocritical. No Slytherin would ever
have let one of their own die like that. Slytherins protected what was theirs;
Gryffindors offered their own up on a pyre in the name of righteousness. And
yet, Severus hoped against hope, hoped for a miracle, hoped for an invocation
of mercy, that William would come back to his cell to pack him few belongings,
would never come back to his cell at all, had never been in prison, and would
live a happy life, sire children and become a grandfather, rather than being
set to dance on the scaffold at dawn.
Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
We had crossed each other's way:
But we made no sign, we said no word,
We had no word to say;
For we did not meet in the holy night,
But in the shameful day.
His hopes were dashed with the creaking of the gate, the whispered shuffle of a
convict, so different from Bill’s usual pace. Severus turned his back towards
the gate. It was not in him to mock Bill’s misery. It broke him just as much as
it crushed the Weasley boy. The death of something perfect was not a reason to
rejoice, but to bitterly mourn. If only Severus were a free man, free to go to
the hanging and cut down the broken body before the crows tore out his eyes.
Free to bathe the dead boy, run his hands up and down Bill’s body in pale
reverence and awe. To be a Magdalene at his crucifixion, a sinner made whole by
the touch of Christ. To offer aide and succor to one who had brightened his
days, his nights, the torrid fetishes and fantasies, now set in the perfection
of Bill’s body.
Severus could feel himself hardening at the thought of that naked form, and as
tears trickled down his face, as his mind was embroiled with the death of his
lust, he brought himself to climax.
A prison wall was round us both,
Two outcast men we were:
The world had thrust us from its heart,
And God from out His care:
And the iron gin that waits for Sin
Had caught us in its snare.
Severus did not, could not sleep that night. The silent breathing of Weasley
kept him awake. He felt he ought to count each breath and each passing second
of Bill’s life. It could end tomorrow.