The Masque
Chapter 3a
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Title: The Masque 3a of 6 (~~3500 words) (total length
~12,000 words and counting)
Pairing: Snape/Bill
BETA'D
Part target="_blank">1
target="_blank">2
A/N: Posted for scribbulus_ink's 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="Masque3a_files/image001.gif" alt="[info]" v:shapes="_x0000_i1025">
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.
For src="Masque3a_files/image001.gif" alt="[info]" v:shapes="_x0000_i1026">
hope that even though this is a bunch of crap and angst, and general awfulness,
it cheers you up some :)
(note Lj does not want me to post this in one part - so I'm splitting it into
two)
III
In Debtors' Yard the stones are hard,
And the dripping wall is high,
So it was there he took the air
Beneath the leaden sky,
And by each side a Warder walked,
For fear the man might die.
The cells clanged open the following morning with neither more nor less force
than usual. Severus thought that world should have slowed on its axis
overnight, that there should have been some indication that this
beautiful young man was going to hang.
Severus knew that little in life was fair. Yet this endless confinement (not so
much of his, but the Gryffindor’s, for he was made for open space and fresh
air, not for dank cells and dark dungeons) prior to Bill’s death seemed
merciless and cruel. The boxing in, the close and careful confinement as the
walls pressed in upon them, the shortening of each day, from blood-red dawn to
amber dusk, the bars and lines and mechanics trapping them in a prison of both
the body and of the mind.
He did not wish to leave his cell, did not wish for the doors to open, to have
to face Bill, to face his betrayal, his lust, his simple pity in the eyes of
that young man.
Or else he sat with those who watched
His anguish night and day;
Who watched him when he rose to weep,
And when he crouched to pray;
Who watched him lest himself should rob
Their scaffold of its prey.
Crushed between Lucius and Pettigrew at breakfast, there was little that
Severus could do but stare into his breakfast, as he had done on so many other
occasions. His head was leaden, sinking downward as if under the pull of a
steadily intensifying mass, his neck about to break under the strain. If he
moved his neck, pulled his head up, he would rise into Bill’s visage – he would
show his pity and remorse, much more than was appropriate for a teacher and
much more than was appropriate for a friend. He was sure that his lust was
slowly eking from each pore and blazed upon his forehead like the mark of Cain,
and that if he did something, if he did nothing, whatever he did, he would
drown in it.
Severus could not bring himself to acknowledge the normality of Bill’s
presence, or his quiet muted greeting, There was something obscene in carrying
on as normal. Stronger men than Bill had stayed in their cells after hearing
that their demise was imminent. And yet this young man was here, asking,
begging for interaction in every phrase and inflection. And Severus could not
give it to him, could not even bring himself to move or breathe. The sharp
spike of the bell ended breakfast. Severus had never been more thankful for the
rules and regulations of the prison.
The Governor was strong upon
The Regulations Act:
The Doctor said that Death was but
A scientific fact:
And twice a day the Chaplain called,
And left a little tract.
Repetition and boredom, the static passage of time from task to task, skill to
skill, boring headcount to harangue and the silent flick of the switch plunging
the prison into darkness. In daily routine, and even in the dreary passage of
time from one cell to the other, from one pointless set of processes to another
equally as useless, Severus could find pleasure. The mechanisms of life held
his turmoil in abeyance, and kept him pleasantly in check from the tides of
emotion which threatened to overwhelm him. He only had to get through the day,
get back into his cell, and collapse on his hard pallet. At least then he would
be able to think without the conscious gleam of so many feral eyes glaring at
him, waiting for a weakness, for a sign that he was failing.
At least his usual taciturn behavior made it look merely like he was slightly
irate, not panicked and worried and desperately trying to torture a method of
reprieve out of his tired mind.
And twice a day he smoked his pipe,
And drank his quart of beer:
His soul was resolute, and held
No hiding-place for fear;
He often said that he was glad
The hangman's hands were near.
It was obscene, the way in which Bill would answer questions about his
impending demise. One cocked eyebrow, and an easy smile would grace his
features. It never ceased to surprise Severus that people could be tactless
enough to ask, of a condemned man, the details of his eminent hanging. But that
was neither here nor there; his task was to wear a mask, hide himself from the
world and make sure that enough of a façade was in place so that on the day of
Bill’s demise he would not weep, would not sink to the floor and make a fool of
himself, but would be able to carry on, stoic as always.
And then, suddenly, a smile would be directed his way, a slightly world-weary
grin, and his stomach would soften into twisted desire. It was almost
necrophilic, this yearning for the walking dead.
But why he said so strange a thing
No Warder dared to ask:
For he to whom a watcher's doom
Is given as his task,
Must set a lock upon his lips,
And make his face a mask.
Severus tried to struggle against this insane longing. There was no way in
which Bill would consent to this tired old man touching him, caressing him,
holding him close and whispering ridiculous nonsense about how everything was
going to be all right. There was no hope of “all right” now, no hope of
redemption after the horse-haired judge handed down his testament. Bill was
going to swing backwards and forth, cracked neck and prickling bones depriving
Severus of the only thing he had left in this misbegotten jail. And yet Severus
still lusted for his body, still dreamt night after night of lighting a sodden
pathway up that translucent skin with moonlight and tears. Brushing the red
hair away, kissing, nibbling and sucking, reaffirming the life in William,
showing him as much pleasure as he could before the end.
Or else he might be moved, and try
To comfort or console:
And what should Human Pity do
Pent up in Murderers' Hole?
What word of grace in such a place
Could help a brother's soul?
And the nights. The sodden mattress writhed beneath him as the tortured scratch
of flesh on flesh brought him closer and closer to completion. The tame
fantasies of Bill in the shower were now superceded by graphic and obscene
imaginations of rape, and lust, tying and torture, sensations overwhelming even
the most primal cortex of his brain, so that there was nothing more than the
heavy musk, and Severus did not care anymore, did not care about Lucius and
Pettigrew quietly shuffling their snickering selves behind bolted bars, did not
care that William had the perfect view if he dared to look up, did not care
until the moment when he drew blood, each and every night, as he bit down on
his hand, screaming into broken flesh, “Bill!”.
There were no potions in the prison – at least, none that were available to
him. And yet, no one, not even Bill, commented upon the red raw and blood
encrusted marks at breakfast.
With slouch and swing around the ring
We trod the Fools' Parade!
We did not care: we knew we were
The Devil's Own Brigade:
And shaven head and feet of lead
Make a merry masquerade.
Day by day Severus danced that awful dance, a cotillion of fools and murders,
all moving to a prescribed series of steps and motions, following a pattern
which lead them ever closer to the gallows. He wanted to stand back and scream
each and every time he saw the gaping maw of the noose, mocking him from the
scaffold. He was the last sane being, the last person not constrained by the
death to come, not accepting that this could possibly be the end of Weasley. It
was probably that which made it so hard to comprehend it all. In a few short
days, a vibrant, alive, and almost innocent man was to die. Not Severus, not
Lucius or Pettigrew (though Heaven knew they deserved it more than most) but
one of the last epitomes of heroism and purity. At the behest of his own
father. The last scion, the end of the Weasley line. Severus could think of
nothing worse.
We tore the tarry rope to shreds
With blunt and bleeding nails;
We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
And cleaned the shining rails:
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
And clattered with the pails.
The prison life was mirrored in the broken form of Lucius Malfoy. There was
perfection in his destruction, the crisp, clear cut of his suit and skin
melding into the generic nothingness of shapeless prison form. His rattail hair
hung halfway down his back, and the he always bore the sly glance of someone
who was once so regal, and was now so feral.
It was small things like that which cut Severus to the quick. The clear, clay
form of what people once were (misshapen, yes, after a madman had taken his
tools to them) that had never bent, always trying desperately to keep the form
with which it was created.
Yes, it was times like these, few and far between, that Severus was glad that
Bill’s demise would be quick. It would not do to leave him turning on the
wheel, a half-formed lump, broken, destroyed, and good for nothing.
We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
We turned the dusty drill:
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And sweated on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still.
Then came the day, unheralded, unlooked for – yet Severus had known it
would come sometime – that his precious hands were lost. An accidental hammer
blow, sharp, searing pain, poorly applied healing charms, and suddenly his
beautiful, sculptured, cultured hands were useless. It had to happen, he still
had identified too strongly with the Potions master; his former life all
wrapped up into ten digits and two palms, encompassed in the breath and
dexterity of his hands.
They had to go, but how he mourned their passing! For a week or so there were
no more tilted eyebrows making their morning gesture to Bill, no more sly grin
when Lucius, unkempt as always, tried to pass himself off as his former lordly
self. No half masked glances in a shaded doorway as he would watch Bill at
work. No, he felt useless, alone in a way he had never felt before. He had lost
his last connection to the man he had been, and with the going of his hands,
Bill would too soon go; and his identity was slowly being wrenched away from
him.
So still it lay that every day
Crawled like a weed-clogged wave:
And we forgot the bitter lot
That waits for fool and knave,
Till once, as we tramped in from work,
We passed an open grave.
Every day, simple, straightforward, reminded him of what he had lost in his
betrayal by that bastard Longbottom, and of what simple, covetous pleasures had
landed him in this hellhole. There need not be some great epiphany, or any
reading of portents, omens, when each and every day he passed the cell block,
and the scaffold, and passed by the leering warders and their roving, probing
eyes. The bore into him with the cutting gaze of a thousand sharp pins, and he
was hard put not to prostrate himself at their feet, screaming, begging,
pleading, crying. But at the end of the day, he still had his pride, and that
pride would see him through this. He had to remain intact for Bill’s sake. But
why, he did not know.
With yawning mouth the yellow hole
Gaped for a living thing;
The very mud cried out for blood
To the thirsty asphalte ring:
And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair
Some prisoner had to swing.
Some days he was asked to dig graves for the weak, the sickly, the walking
dead. The scaly stench of quicklime permeated the soil around him, acrid and
biting. His useless claws were good for little else, and it struck him as
vaguely amusing how bored he had become with the gentle etching away of the
flesh from his bones as a result of the acid soil. At lunch, dinner, tea, where
slop was meted out to the privileged few, he would stand back and view the
hungry, gaping mouth he had been asked to excavate.
He could even lose himself in the parable, and develop a sort of spurt of
paranoia and gibber briefly before pulling himself together, not wanting to get
into the hole, to go back in and risk his life within those jaws. But one
thought of Bill, one thought of how his stupidity would reflect on him, and he
was up, over, and into the hole before he knew it.
Right in we went, with soul intent
On Death and Dread and Doom:
The hangman, with his little bag,
Went shuffling through the gloom:
And each man trembled as he crept
Into his numbered tomb.
The nights melted into one another. The same creaking planks, the same hungry,
wanting flesh calling out for his hand. The same disgust and dissatisfaction at
the moment of culmination. How he wished that he could die then, how he wished
it would be possible to place his life as forfeit, to demand that his neck hung
on the scaffold, broken and buried, and that William be able to live out his
life in peace. He would trade his pathetic, perverted existence (Lusting after
one of your former students, Severus? How shameful!), for the ability to see
William walk free from this catafalque.
He would embrace the gallows then, his redemption carried out in the rescue of
a single man, free to grow up, have children, and make the world a better
place. But it was in vain; Bill had killed his sister, decapitated her in a
paroxysm of lust.
That night the empty corridors
Were full of forms of Fear,
And up and down the iron town
Stole feet we could not hear,
And through the bars that hide the stars
White faces seemed to peer.
Prison was lonely. There was little besides the dragging days and the hard cold
pallet at night. Relationships, when they existed at all, were all too brief,
cut short by a mistimed blow, a lawyer’s plea, or a hangman’s noose. Slop and
sludge, drag and drudge, the ill- timed and maliciously conceived fate to which
Bill’s father sentenced him.
Severus could not understand how a father could put his last remaining heir to
death. It must have been a Gryffindor virtue, this aimless heroism. No
Slytherin would ever allow the last of his line to be extinguished in such a
menial fashion. But the death of a daughter, well, Snape could never
understand. There would never be father’s place for him – no puling grandchildren
rubbing up against his knees, asking for stories from dear Granddad, as he
would smile benignly but sternly. All thanks to that wretch of a boy. His
lover. His enemy.
He lay as one who lies and dreams
In a pleasant meadow-land,
The watchers watched him as he slept,
And could not understand
How one could sleep so sweet a sleep
With a hangman close at hand.
Neville. His bane and lust and enemy. Poised on the brink of battle, why did
Severus have to chose that to sink himself into? Of all the people who
could have suffered his wanting, weeping, cock, why did circumstance have to
begrudge him a loyal lover?
Categorizing the kills, the deaths, every small cruelty which he was
responsible for, Severus sighed. Karma, yin, yang, whatever one wished to call
it, had come round full circle and bit him hard in the arse. There was no
escape from his cruelty, even hip deep in the bottom of a cozening catamite.
Yes, Severus was made – had been created – to pay, to suffer, to remember.
But there is no sleep when men must weep
Who never yet have wept:
So we - the fool, the fraud, the knave -
That endless vigil kept,
And through each brain on hands of pain
Another's terror crept.
If Severus could slip inside Bill’s skin and collect the warmth and goodness of
his soul, maybe he would be saved. Something had to save him, something had to
bottle the slivers of goodness left inside of him, to keep them. Someone had to
save Bill’s goodness, all that would be left of him. And to what consequence,
if he’d killed his sister; if he’d decapitated the body? That was not the Bill
that Severus knew, and not the Bill who greeted him each day, eased his tired
hands by subtly helping in his tasks. That was not the Bill whom his five
fingers fantasized about every night, hot breath on cold, cold stone.
Alas! it is a fearful thing
To feel another's guilt!
For, right within, the sword of Sin
Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
And as molten lead were the tears we shed
For the blood we had not spilt.
There must have been some temptation, though. There had to have been. What son
would desire their sibling? Severus knew it was unnatural, but knew, too, how
the Weasley girl, in her last years of school, would sit at the front of the
class, lips locked around a sugar quill, dress hiked up almost to the tops of
her thighs. And Severus paid her no mind, not even on the days she did not
deign to wear underwear, though he was tormented by the thought of her brothers
or her friends doing the same thing. In this his sexuality he was lucky; he was
at once removed from the Muggle-baiting Death Eater games and removed from the
unwanted advances of his students. Karma yet again, his final lover, his final
betrayer.
The Warders with their shoes of felt
Crept by each padlocked door,
And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
Grey figures on the floor,
And wondered why men knelt to pray
Who never prayed before.
Severus sunk to his knees before his flea-ridden cot. There were many deities
out there – the propagation of Voldemort’s power had covered many
contingencies. Severus had been forced to sacrifice, forced to pray on
occasion, and it had worked. The ground was hard and gritty beneath his knees,
and the mumbled words took quite some time to come to mind. But Severus fell at
last into the rote of prayer and into the supplication before a higher power.
In times gone by, this would have been Dumbledore, but if Dumbledore had been
here, there would have been no need. He would not be here, William would not be
here. So he pressed his heart into words which might bring his troubled mind
surcease. It was the least he could do for the man breathing gently in the cell
opposite him.
All through the night we knelt and prayed,
Mad mourners of a corse!
The troubled plumes of midnight were
The plumes upon a hearse:
And bitter wine upon a sponge
Was the savour of Remorse.
This was everything which was wrong with the Light side of this
conflict. They left a criminal to pray for a condemned man, each one of their
own, and rotting in prison because of other higher principals. There was
no way out of that hell, or that box which was growing steadily smaller by the
second. Kneeling and praying, wasting the night in fruitless pursuits, in the
flash of a fire, and the Minister saying “No; we made a mistake.” Disjointed
dreams in a palace, with bars of steel, bars of light. Demons tormenting his
thoughts, crawling through his brain and leeching on to each hope, draining it
to nothing. The surety of Bill’s demise drew closer.
The grey cock crew, the red cock crew,
But never came the day:
And crooked shapes of Terror crouched,
In the corners where we lay:
And each evil sprite that walks by night
Before us seemed to play.
A pall seemed to descend as the light increased. Severus was seeing the world
through a deathly shroud. Sleep-deprived and tottering on the verge of
insanity, he waited out each moment until the clanging of the bars screamed
breakfast. He was sitting, kneeling, pacing around his cell to the steady
breathing of Bill, thoughts constrained by the patterns of his inhale, exhale.
His mind was reeling, steadily approaching a point where he knew that he
would do something stupid. He wanted to reach out and capture Bill, with his
hands, with his mouth, with every tendon and sinew of his body. He wanted to
mark Bill, and claim him, and maybe that way, Bill would not die.