The Masque
Chapter 5 & 6
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Title: The Masque 5&6 of 6 (2500) (total length ~18,340
words)
Pairing: Snape/Bill
BETAD
Part target="_blank">1
target="_blank">2
target="_blank">3a
target="_blank">3b
target="_blank">4
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="Masque56_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.
V
V
I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.
They sat across from each other. The room was so silent that one could hear the
oaken table settle under its own weight and the chairs creak in and out of
position underneath the loads sitting upon them. Severus looked down into his
hands, slightly cupped. There was no way that he could bring his head up, and
he would not bring his head up and look at the man opposite.
Arthur Weasley had murdered his own son, and Severus could not forgive him for
it.
Arthur, for his part, was trying very hard not to look at the broken wreck of a
man in front of him. He knew this professor of old, knew his culpability in
landing him in this state. A part of his heart would not forgive him for this.
Arthur leaned forward and asked a single question.
“Why?”
But this I know, that every Law
That men have made for Man,
Since first Man took his brother's life,
And the sad world began,
But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
With a most evil fan.
Why what? thought Severus, why am I here, why is his son dead, why
did Bill do it?
“Which why?” Severus did not look up as he mumbled the words, and Arthur hardly
caught his hoarse rasp. He had asked for Severus to be kept off all drugs, to
be lucid, and not drifting in a haze of opiates. But the destruction in the
man’s eyes showed how dear a price he had paid for this privilege.
“Why did Bill kill Ginny?”
Severus felt the world fold up around him. Why should he spare the feelings of
a man who had betrayed him, had landed him in this hole on the word of a
Longbottom?
This too I know - and wise it were
If each could know the same -
That every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
How men their brothers maim
Severus raised his head, bleary eyes meeting Arthur’s.
“He didn’t.”
Arthur’s toes filled with the condensed weight of his blood, and he was
suddenly sweating.
“He was a Gryffindor.”
Arthur was choking on his own bile, choking on his own damnation and conceit.
“He took the blame for someone else’s actions.”
“Whose?”
“Longbottom’s.”
With bars they blur the gracious moon,
And blind the goodly sun:
And they do well to hide their Hell,
For in it things are done
That Son of God nor son of Man
Ever should look upon!
Arthur did not know whether to laugh or cry. Neville, little Neville
Longbottom, his son’s fiancée, the boy they still had over to family dinner,
the orphan they treated as family – he had killed Ginny? It was absurd.
“You are lying, Snape, you are lying because you know that Neville told
the truth about you.”
Snape could feel a ghostly hand press into his arm, urging him onwards. He drew
courage from this phantom touch.
“What reason would I have to lie to you, Minister Weasley…Arthur? Your son is
dead. You killed him as surely as his house killed him, as surely as that
putrescent pestilence of a whore killed him.”
Severus continued under his breath.
“As surely as they have killed me.”
The vilest deeds like poison weeds,
Bloom well in prison-air;
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair.
There was something in Severus’s face which convinced Arthur that that this was
(at least, in that madman’s mind) the truth.
“Did Bill tell you this, Severus?”
How could Severus bring himself to say that Bill was standing by him, right at
that very moment, hand on his shoulder, telling him to continue, to tell his
father the truth.
“Yes. Bill told me. Bill told me about him and Neville, too.”
“Why was that important, Severus?”
“Because Neville was with me, in the war. We were together in all senses
of the word.”
For they starve the little frightened child
Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
And gibe the old and grey,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
And none a word may say.
Arthur went numb. Neville was the one with Severus in the last battle, then. If
this was not a hoax, then there was an innocent man in front of him.
“And the rape?”
“Never happened. I thought that Neville was upset that I went off to fight
Voldemort by myself. Though now, I think that he had loftier goals in mind.”
It was the matter-of-fact tone which sliced Arthur to the quick.
“But you do not deny that you were there?”
“How could I deny it? You always knew that I was a spy.”
Each narrow cell in which we dwell
Is a foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity's machine.
Fuck. Arthur had to leave, had to check up on this, had to talk to Longbottom.
“Severus. I’m leaving now, okay?”
“It makes no difference to me, Weasley. I’ll still be behind bars.”
Strangely enough, there was little rancor in his tone.
“I have to go now, Severus. For what it’s worth, they told me that you were
close to Bill. I’m…sorry.”
Now Severus laughed, the jade tone of malice coloring his words.
“Sorry – what on earth are you apologizing to me for? Go home, Arthur,
go tell your wife that you killed your son.”
The guards had never seen anyone vacate the visitation room so quickly.
The brackish water that we drink
Creeps with a loathsome slime,
And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
Is full of chalk and lime,
And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
Wild-eyed, and cries to Time.
Bill did not leave Severus this time. He walked back to the cell with him, kept
the faces and voices at bay. Severus could hear him shushing them, telling
everyone to go away, leave him alone, that Severus was his and his alone.
The guards wondered why Severus was being so calm. If they had angered the
Minister as he had, there was no way they would not be incredibly nervous,
frightened of loosing their jobs. Or their lives.
Minister Weasley did not suffer fools gladly.
With a clang, they locked Severus up in his cell.
But though lean Hunger and green Thirst
Like asp with adder fight,
We have little care of prison fare,
For what chills and kills outright
Is that every stone one lifts by day
Becomes one's heart by night.
In the inner recesses of his mind, he could almost hear the cell opposite being
closed. Bill. Bill was there. Only a few more hours, and the light would go
out.
Severus was a bit unsure as to what was keeping Bill in his cell. He did not
think that ghosts could be bound by bars. But at least Bill was there,
at least he would have a chance to see him, to feel him, taste him and touch
him when the lights went out.
When the lights went out.
All he had to do was wait.
With midnight always in one's heart,
And twilight in one's cell,
We turn the crank, or tear the rope,
Each in his separate Hell,
And the silence is more awful far
Than the sound of a brazen bell.
In the meantime, Arthur was interviewing Neville. Neville, whom he had come
home to find in the kitchen, helping Molly with dinner. It had turned his
stomach, and he doubted that he would be able to look at roast pork in the same
manner again.
Neville had tried to brave him out, and asked for Veritaserum.
Luckily, Arthur had had some on hand.
The tale corroborated Severus’s. Halfway through, he had to call for Aurors to
come and take confession.
Without Arthur’s iron will, Neville Longbottom would have received the death he
so richly deserved.
And never a human voice comes near
To speak a gentle word:
And the eye that watches through the door
Is pitiless and hard:
And by all forgot, we rot and rot,
With soul and body marred.
The grates and grilles locked, the lights went off. Severus was alone in his
darkness. But strangely, there were no voices this time, no faces or blood or
fears. He lay back; facing up towards the ceiling, staring at the moldering
roof, breathing in the damp.
Severus Snape was at peace.
In a few hours, everyone would be still. Then Bill would visit him.
Part of his mind noted that he was tearing up his bed sheet, but he paid it no
heed.
Bill was going to visit him.
And thus we rust Life's iron chain
Degraded and alone:
And some men curse, and some men weep,
And some men make no moan:
But God's eternal Laws are kind
And break the heart of stone.
Arthur went to the Ministry with the Aurors. There were so many loose ends he
would have to tie up, so many things he would have to do before he could sit
back and face the reality, and that was well, because he did not want to think.
Ever.
He had killed his own child, and invited a traitor into his family.
Pettigrew – Pettigrew had nothing on Longbottom.
Arthur made his statements through a haze of righteousness and revenge.
Somehow, he would have to make this all right.
And every human heart that breaks,
In prison-cell or yard,
Is as that broken box that gave
Its treasure to the Lord,
And filled the unclean leper's house
With the scent of costliest nard.
Severus’s hands completed the rope slowly and laboriously as his mind slowly
simmered with the thought and smell and taste of Bill.
One by one, the mutterings of the other prisoners fell silent. Severus was left
alone to rip and shred, to lie in bed and dream of the future, to braid and
plait and to imagine ghostly hands trailing down his body.
As the last sigh sounded, dreamlike, Severus got out of bed, dragging the rope
with him.
He looked across to the other cell.
Bill was trapped within.
Ah! happy they whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from Sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?
Severus sunk towards the floor of the cell, trying hard to still his breathing.
Bill was in the cell opposite, naked and glorious as the day he was born.
“Get up for me, Severus, show me yourself.”
Severus stripped in a conflagration of pants and shirts and shoes, shucking
them off like a dead skin.
He faced the bars, naked and alone.
Bill trailed a hand down himself, neck and shoulder, nipple, stomach.
Cock.
Severus’s hands were winding the rope around the bars, but he did not notice.
Bill was there.
And he of the swollen purple throat,
And the stark and staring eyes,
Waits for the holy hands that took
The Thief to Paradise;
And a broken and a contrite heart
The Lord will not despise.
Severus teased himself, watched Bill tease himself, as his right hand slowly
wound a noose and knotted it. Shafts of moonlight speared the cells, broken and
fragmented lines of clarity in a prison of darkness.
Severus felt the same way.
He no longer cared about what was right, what was there.
Bill was there, no matter how, and he knew that was all he wanted.
During one particularly harsh stroke, one effective tableau, he looped the
noose around his neck.
As he pulled back, it started to tighten.
The man in red who reads the Law
Gave him three weeks of life,
Three little weeks in which to heal
His soul of his soul's strife,
And cleanse from every blot of blood
The hand that held the knife.
Severus was feeling lightheaded now, and Bill was going faster, much faster,
panting and moaning his name, straining against the bars, his corporeal cock
turgid and throbbing.
Severus could see where the come was puddling, and his hands, both free now,
wrapped around himself without finesse or clarity. He scratched himself and did
not care, he was riding the waves of William’s pleasure, riding the rigid
vision spread out before him.
His world was tunneling in from the edges, each pleasure heightened.
All that there was now was Bill.
And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
The hand that held the steel:
For only blood can wipe out blood,
And only tears can heal:
And the crimson stain that was of Cain
Became Christ's snow-white seal.
The world was narrowing to a pinpoint, sucking itself into a single image
imprinted on his retina, patterns of blue and black and white and milky clear
skin spread eagled in front of him, calling him, begging him to follow, begging
him to come through.
He watched as Bill came, watched as he spasmed through the bars in a final
paroxysm of lust.
When Bill licked his hand, he came too.
He collapsed backwards, the last sobbing breath drawn out of him.
His final thought was of Bill.
VI
In Reading gaol by Reading town
There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
Eaten by teeth of flame,
In a burning winding-sheet he lies,
And his grave has got no name.
Arthur signed the paperwork and went home. Tomorrow he would agitate for
Snape’s release, tomorrow, but right now he had to face his wife and tell her
what had happened.
Molly left him that night.
Arthur sunk into an alcoholic haze, and locked himself in the kitchen with the
bottles standing around him, guarding him, as he ransacked the drawers for her
apron, trying to reclaim her scent. He threw open one, and the knives glittered
in the moonlight, and all the bottles shuffled a little closer and breathed
their alcoholic fumes upon him, waiting, watching.
The shimmer of the knives was a gorgeous specter in the light of the waning
moon.
And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
In silence let him lie:
No need to waste the foolish tear,
Or heave the windy sigh:
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.
He did not go to work the next day, nor the day after. He did not accept the Prophet,
and ignored the owls that pecked at the windows and settled in the garden,
clucking disapprovingly.
He did not know that Severus Snape was dead.
On the third day he went into work – Apparated directly into his office, picked
up a bundle of papers, and Apparated to the prison.
And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
In the anteroom, Arthur signed the forms for Snape’s release.
In the courtyard, Snape was being buried.