A Matter of Black and White

DISCLAIMER: This story is based upon the works of JK Rowling. Anything you recognize is hers. I’m making no money off of this. I’m just having some fun adding my own little corner to the amazing world she has already created.

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CHAPTER 22—SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK ’N’ ROLL
(BUT NOT NECESSARILY IN THAT ORDER)

Aurora Apparated to the road in front of the Burrow at a quarter to eight in order to meet up with Fleur and Bill. Like Severus, they barely recognized her.

“Ron told us you’re working for the Order,” Bill said after she had explained why she didn’t want to look too much like her usual self. “Guess Mum didn’t have anything to worry about after all,” he chuckled.

“I told ’er we could trust Aurora,” Fleur said triumphantly, still obviously bitter about the argument she and Molly had had when Aurora had first visited the Burrow.

“Well, you all look fantastic, too,” Aurora said. Fleur was wearing white like Aurora, though she had chosen a form-fitting t-shirt with an image of Waldemar Weissman pictured under flashing silver letters stating, Ma couleur préférée est le blanc.”^1^ She needed to do little else to glam herself up because she was shining in full Veela radiance next to Bill. He fiancé always looked dressed for a concert, but he was looking even more like a rocker in snakeskin trousers and an open shirt. Fleur had even applied some mascara around his eyes and painted half his face silver.

“Like it?” Bill asked eagerly. “I thought I’d welcome the Zauberflöten to Britain with my best face.”

Aurora liked it, but she had to wonder if Molly Weasley had approved.

“I like it,” Fleur crooned, kissing her fiancé on the cheek without any makeup.

In addition to Aurora, Fleur, and Bill, there was a fourth person in their party, a young woman with mousy brown hair and a drawn face who went by the name of Tonks. She was wearing an old t-shirt from the 1992 Weird Sisters Tour but otherwise looked completely unprepared for a concert.

“We are trying to cheer her up,” Fleur informed Aurora in whispered French as the foursome mulled in front of the Burrow, waiting for their Portkey tickets to activate and take them to the concert.

“What’s wrong with her?” Aurora asked while Bill tried (unsuccessfully) to humor Tonks with a joke.

“Unrequited love,” Fleur answered somewhat wistfully. “The poor thing’s so miserable she looks as bad as she feels. She’s been no use as a Metamorphagus lately, and she wouldn’t even let me put any makeup on her.” The fact that Tonks wasn’t even interested in looking any better seemed to be the true sign of degeneration to Fleur.

Aurora tried to get Tonks to talk about the Weird Sisters, whom she seemed to enjoy, but by the time their Portkey tickets were activated to transport them to the concert, she had gotten only a few vague responses from the sullen young woman.

Once they arrived at the deserted Muggle warehouse where the concert was being held, there was plenty to distract everyone from their cares. This venue was much smaller than the Quidditch stadiums Aurora had seen the Zauberflöten fill, but it still buzzed with excitement. Despite the small number of wary Britons in attendance, there were plenty of foreigners like Fleur who just happened to be in the country, not to mention the die-hard groupies who had followed the band from the Continent. Everywhere people were singing the chorus of their favorite Zauberflöten song, purchasing souvenirs from the stalls at the back of the warehouse, or admiring their fellow concert-goers extravagant outfits, about half of which were outrageously white in honor of Waldemar Weissman. In addition to a variety of t-shirts expressing their wearers’ undying love for the band’s bass player, many of the clothes featured the latest styles in wizarding couture. In typical magical fashion, this meant that the wizarding musical world was only now discovering the Muggle ’60s, and many glammed-up bellbottoms were peeking out from the hems of robes. The retro theme also extended beyond clothing and was being warmly embraced by a group of long-haired middle-aged wizards who were smoking pipes that puffed rings of smoke in the shape of peace signs.

Aurora and the others had little time to take in all the excitement. Just a few minutes after they had arrived, the crowd started chanting for the band, and smoke started filling the stage. The noise rose to a roar when the band swooped in on the back of a Welsh Green dragon.

“Charlie’s going to be sore he missed this!” Bill shouted over the noise.

They edged near the front, where Fleur and Aurora started serenading each other to the songs they knew. Everyone was amazed when Eknath Singh, one of the flutists who gave the Zauberflöten their name, charmed a serpent during the third song. The band had also added a few new English songs to their set to appease their audience, helping Bill to quickly pick up the lyrics to a few choruses as well. Tonks, on the other hand, remained so distant and distracted that Bill finally shrugged and pulled out a small flask as a remedy.

“This ought to loosen her up a bit,” he grinned and passed around the container of Firewhiskey.

The thing that really lifted Tonks’s spirits, though, came near the end of the performance, when the band announced that they wanted to do a tribute to their British friends, the Weird Sisters. The band had only played a few strains of “Do the Hippogriff” when suddenly the crowd broke into a roar. Coming from backstage was none other than Myron Wagtail, lead singer of the Weird Sisters. The audience shrieked in excitement, and even Tonks couldn’t help but applaud for her favorite musician. Aurora got Tonks to teach her the moves to the Hippogriff as they danced in front of the stage, their inhibitions and self-respect stifled by the rhythm of the drums and the buzz of the Firewhiskey in their heads.

Near the end of the song, Wagtail took out a glittery handkerchief and wiped his brow, which was beading under the hot spotlights. He then spotted Aurora and Tonks, who by this time were doing a decent rendition of the Hippogriff, “wheeling around and around and around and around.” At the final chorus, he came to the edge of the stage, in front of which they were dancing, and tossed the handkerchief toward them. Tonks grabbed at it mid-twirl but ended up stumbling over a goblin in front of her. Aurora managed to catch it just before a bare-breasted hag with the words “Weissman, let me bear your love child” snatched it away.

“Here,” Aurora told Tonks once the number was over and Wagtail had retreated backstage. “You take the handkerchief. You’re the one he was throwing it to. You could’ve been dancing onstage, you were so good.”

Tonks grinned. “Thanks. Too bad I’m such a klutz with anything besides dancing.”

As a sign of her gratitude, Tonks insisted upon buying Aurora a souvenir concert poster after the performance. Aurora also had some shopping to do, for her best friend Marion would never forgive her if she didn’t buy her the miniature Zauberflöten figurines that sang the band’s latest songs. She also couldn’t resist purchasing a few of the more retro items for sale, including a tie-dyed headband for Albus and a “Smile, Be Happy” lapel pin for Severus. Aurora made her purchase and returned to her three companions, pleased to see Tonks doing an encore rendition of the Hippogriff as the group knocked back the last of the Firewhiskey. She was glad to see that the heartsick young woman no longer needed the little happy face button tonight and was equally thankful that, for the first time in a long time, neither did she.

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The Aurora who arrived for Occlumency lessons on Sunday morning was a far cry from the red-haired rock vixen whom Snape had encountered the night before. Her hair was back to its usual cornsilk yellow and had been hurriedly gathered into a ponytail. She wore a casual jogging suit this morning—an outfit far less revealing than her clothes from last night, though Snape couldn’t help but now notice traces of the hourglass figure he had seen before. (He chided himself for looking, but last night had left him with nowhere else to look.) This morning’s white was an everyday cotton, not the sparkly stuff she had worn to the concert. It was no wonder she didn’t want to shine like a Christmas tree, given how she was squinting behind a pair of reading glasses charmed with a dark tint.

“You’re hung over,” Snape observed.

“You said to arrive on time, Severus. You didn’t say what state I should be in.”

For someone whose head must be pounding, she was awfully cheeky this morning. Snape wondered just how good a time she had had at the concert.

“Why haven’t you taken a remedy?” he asked. He supposed she must have been spending too much time drooling over some scantily clad musician in a magazine on the day that Madame Flétri had taught the appropriate potions.

She shielded her face from the candelabra he lit in the parlor as they sat down. “Don’t think I didn’t try. It’s just that I lost my potions kit in the move and haven’t been able to get a decent replacement set.” She managed to give him a hopeful glance over her tinted glasses. “I don’t suppose you enjoy brewing Hangover Remedies the same way you do Bowel Tonic?”

“But of course,” he said smoothly, “but what would that teach you? You should be careful with alcohol,” he warned her. “It won’t serve you to be out of control with the Dark Lord.”

Aurora pushed her tiny glasses back up her nose. “All the more reason for one last hurrah.”

“You should have considered engaging in your ‘hurrahs’ sometime other than on the eve of our lesson. You might have spared yourself the embarrassment of dealing with impaired Occlumency skills”

“Music waits for no witch or wizard,” Aurora laughed and then moaned and rubbed her temple at the headache she had precipitated. “Besides, I think these lessons have already prepared me for dealing with embarrassment.”

It was true that Aurora had been learning to deal with awkward memories with increasing ease as they had progressed with their Occlumency lessons. Though she still got rattled at memories in which other people’s pride or well-being was compromised, she was now able to show him instances like the one in which she was teased by Monika and Sabine while barely batting an eye. “Maybe it’s time we went searching for some new awkward situations,” Snape suggested.

Aurora’s expression turned queasy…or queasier, as it was.

Once again, Snape wondered what kind of antics Aurora had engaged in at the concert that had gotten her into this state. The provocatively clad witch he had encountered last night had seemed to have few inhibitions. Nevertheless, she herself had admitted that her concert attire was a costume. He still couldn’t imagine the baby doll white witch of Hogwarts behaving even slightly immodestly. This contemplation made Snape study the woman sitting before him again. Suddenly he had an idea for a new way to test his student’s composure.

“I presume you realize that the Dark Lord might also be interested in your…private affairs.” As much as Snape would have liked to have caught her off guard, he suspected that Aurora might revert back to sending him flying across the room if he didn’t give her some sort of forewarning for this particular lesson.

Aurora slid her glasses back down her nose. Snape half expected to find indignation in her bloodshot eyes, or at least another sickly expression that spoke of how much she was in need of a Hangover Remedy. Instead he encountered the glittering traces of mirth. “Severus, you dog, for this you ask permission?”

Snape straightened. “I am not a complete brute, you know…though you shouldn’t expect such consideration from the Dark Lord. Despite popular belief that he does not care what his Death Eaters do or with whom, the ‘whom’ part is still of the utmost importance to him.”

“In other words, nothing but Purebloods.”

“Precisely.”

Snape wondered if Aurora still wasn’t thinking clearly through the alcohol, for the corners of her mouth were playing again at a smile. “Well, then,” she said simply, taking off her glasses and allowing him easier eye contact. “Have fun.”

Snape’s expression thinned at the ease of her response. Half the effectiveness (and entertainment) of the lesson was lost if he couldn’t get her even a little riled up. Another part of him, though, was intrigued by the reemergence of the seductress he had glimpsed the night before. He wondered whether the white angel or the red-haired she-devil would win out when he actually slipped into her head.

Linking Aurora’s gaze with his own, Snape found that her mind was nearly as groggy as her eyes this morning. Wading through her brain was a muddier than usual affair, but soon he stumbled upon the kind of memory he sought.

Snape found himself in a barn of extra-large proportions. The air was rich with the smell of animals and fodder, and the dusty floor was littered with forgotten tools and broken Abraxan harnesses. Through the slats in the boards, Snape could tell he was in a room off the ground—the loft most likely. The space was dissected by dark support beams and a maze of hay bales stacked shoulder-high.

Behind one of these yellow-green walls, Snape heard a giggle. As if in a dream, he was whisked around the edge of the bales to see the source of the sound. A pile of loose hay was hidden in this corner of the barn, which was lit by bands of red and gold as the sunset filtered in through the slats of the outside wall. Cushioned at the base of the heap was a teenage girl of about seventeen with loose yellow hair that was highlighted by the warm streaks of light from the setting sun. She was wearing a light blue silk blouse with a tiny pair of crossed wands embroidered onto the collar. The shirt was unbuttoned to reveal the cream-colored valley that ran between two firm, satin-cupped mounds. A bit lower, the sheer fabric parted even wider to frame the flat plain of her stomach. This bit of her anatomy was shying from a length of straw, which a shirtless boy with a freckled torso was tracing over her skin.

“Not fair,” the girl laughed, lightly pushing the boy away from her. “You know I’m ticklish there!”

The young man’s hazel eyes sparkled under a mop of red-brown hair. “Which makes this all the more fun.” He dropped down beside her and laid a kiss upon her navel, which he then circled with a wet line from his tongue. Keeping his mischievous eyes trained upon her face, he blew warm breath over her stomach.

She laughed again. “You are wicked, Bayard Leroux.”

“Thanks,” he grinned and then laid a calloused hand, browned by sunlight and freckles, on her bare skin. He ran it up her torso, parting one side of her blouse and then the other to reveal the white flesh of her breasts. Just above the front clasp of her bra, he placed a lingering kiss while he unhooked the clasp of the satiny garment.

She sighed in pleasure as he nuzzled her breasts, but still she asked, “Are you sure no one will find us up here, Bay?”

“I’m hurt, Aurora!” he said with mock indignation. “Have you forgotten the one advantage to dating the school stable boy? I’m the only one who knows the spell up to the loft. Besides, if half the class can have their trysts in the stalls downstairs without ever getting caught, we certainly shouldn’t have anything to worry about up here. Welcome,” he said, gesturing to the wood and hay around them, “to the Stable Boy’s Sanctuary.”

The young Aurora grinned. “In that case, I think there’s more than one advantage to dating this particular stable boy.” She ran her hand up his thigh until it rested at the crotch of his patched canvas work trousers.

He shook his head in mock disapproval. “Pure of blood but not pure of mind, are you?”

“Mmm,” she intoned absently as he worked her school skirt up her hips and found the damp fabric of her underwear. “You’re one to talk.”

“Hey, there’s nothing Pureblood about this Muggleborn,” Bay answered. “I can be as dirty as I want.”

At these words, Snape felt a tug at his midsection—just a side effect of the Mentior-Occlumency, he assured himself. The present-day Aurora had taken her dear sweet time in removing him from this memory. It was far too late to prevent him from realizing that the incident had occurred with one of the Dark Lord’s Undesirables. Her attempt at redirecting him was lethargic and misdirected, no doubt the byproduct of her night of excess at the concert. He caught half-images of other men and sensed traces of emotions ranging from love to lust, but nothing settled into a defined memory. He could feel her impaired mind turning inside out for a memory to give him until at last she seemed outside of herself. Finally she latched onto a strain of thought, and Snape focused his mind to see what she had settled upon.

The memory was in a Potions laboratory, a subterranean room much damper and less well-lit than Madame Flétri’s classroom. A red-haired teenager was leaning over a cauldron with exaltation in her green eyes. “We did it!” she cried and kissed her partner, a skinny pale-faced boy with lank black hair.

Snape shook his head. What the…?

The stream of thoughts continued, and a beautiful woman with raven hair removed the mask of a young Death Eater. “I know you’ve always desired my sister,” she breathed into the wizard’s ear, “but perhaps you’d be willing to scratch the itch of one more willing?”

Snape snapped his mind shut. “I think you need to clear your mind with the Hangover Remedy,” he declared to the witch sitting across the sofa from him in his parlor. He sprang to his feet and sought some of the potion from the stores in his office. When he returned, she had twisted around and was hanging over the back of the couch, looking eagerly at him.

“So you’re quite the ladies’ man, are you, Severus Snape?”

He let out a “hmph.” If only she knew how she had latched on so easily to some of the few encounters that he—big-nosed, short-tempered Severus Snape—had ever had.

“Who’s the girl?” she asked with enthusiastic curiosity.

“None of your business,” Snape snapped. “Who’s the Muggleborn?”

“I asked first,” she said impishly.

Snape scowled. “My partner for N.E.W.T. Potions,” he answered briskly.

“Ah, young love brewing over a cauldron. What’s her name?”

“Immaterial,” he said shortly, realizing that he was at least fortunate enough to be talking to the one person in wizarding Britain who wouldn’t be able to recognize the witch in his memory. “Nothing came of that moment.”

“But you remember it,” she pressed on with a grin. “Quite fondly, too, if my senses serve me right.”

“We’re supposed to be talking about your memories,” he snapped and thrust a dose of Hangover Remedy at her. “Here, take this so we can start working properly.”

She swallowed the potion. Almost instantly, color returned to her face and the whites of her reddened eyes cleared to highlight the blue of her irises. “Bayard Leroux,” she said, handing him back to phial.

“What?” Snape asked.

“Bayard Leroux—the young man in my memory—Madame Maxime’s stableboy, my Beauxbatons boyfriend, and…,”she added with a wistful look, “…one hell of a kisser…among other things.”

Snape marveled at how easily Aurora spoke of her romantic life. In most other private affairs she was so closed. “You forgot Muggleborn,” he added.

“Yes, well, I hadn’t intended you to get to that part.”

“I hope you’re not still involved with him. The Dark Lord would not approve.”

“Don’t worry, Severus,” she said coquettishly. “You’re the only man in my life at the moment.”

Snape blanched only slightly before recovering. “More’s the loss for you.”

“That Death Eater friend of yours wouldn’t seem to agree. Who was she?”

Snape’s hand clenched around the empty phial in his palm. “No more questions,” he snapped.

“Oh, come on, Severus. We were finally having a good conversation.”

“That was not a conversation; it was an agreement—a question for a question.”

“Then you haven’t fulfilled your end of the bargain.”

“On the contrary,” he answered smoothly. “You asked about the first young woman. I replied in return for your response about your…partner. You failed to inquire about the second woman.”

“I’m inquiring now,” she pointed out with a playful grin. “Come on, Severus, do you think I’ll meet your smitten seductress?”

Snape’s eye’s flashed. “You had best hope not.”

“Ah, one of the unreformed, I take it.”

She had no idea. Still, Snape had had enough of this questioning. He was supposed to be investigating Aurora’s life, not vice versa. “Enough of this for today,” he declared. “You’re not ready for this new subject, not after gallivanting around last night.”

She peered knowingly at him. “I thought the potion was supposed to fix that,” she answered, seemingly keen to keep him shifting awkwardly around the subject of their shared memories.

“Come with a fresh mind and we’ll work with fresh material. For now we will continue with the basics.” The schoolgirl dramas of a prepubescent witch stuck in a Muggle school were wearing thin on Snape, but at the moment they promised a far safer realm of inquiry than anything having to do with the so-called personal lives of either Aurora Bernard or himself. Never before had he dived so eagerly into the unmagical world of Monika and Sabine.

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FOOTNOTES: ^1^ My favorite color is white.

AN: I hope this hint of citrus will tide readers over for awhile, even if the scenes didn’t quite make it to the pairings we were hoping for.

“Do the Hippogriff” and the line “wheel around and around and around and around” are from the GoF film/soundtrack. I know the movie couldn’t technically say the band was the Weird Sisters because of some legal drama with a group in Canada, but I think we all knew who they were supposed to be.

The incident with the sweat rag actually happened to my best friend at an Aerosmith concert. Yeah, it’s gross, but she loves the thing, and I imagine that Tonks would too.