Twilight Gardens

"I needn't be much longer," Narcissa warned. "I don't know what you're going to do without him though. You might as well go about wearing a bracelet that says 'What Would Lucius Do?'"

"Like yours that says 'Who Wouldn't I Do?'" Severus shot back, although he was feeling quite cornered.

"It doesn't matter what you say, anyway, Snape," Narcissa squinted furiously. "I'm marry your beloved Lucius and when I do, well, I guess you'll be moving back in with your parents -- if they still want you. Did they *ever* want you?" Despite Lucuis' claim years before that Narcissa was a drunken liar in whose statements few held much stock, Narcissa was quite a truthful person. This was perhaps her most irritating quality. She had a way of saying everything in the most painful manner possible. The pain of her words was mainly inflicted by their undiluted truth. Still, Severus told himself that all that she said was unquestionably false.

"You're just peeved that funerals don't have open bars," muttered Severus, trying not to let the flaxen-haired girl see how disconcerting her threats were to him. "Now piss off, will you?"

Grinning maliciously, Narcissa obeyed.

That night, Severus dreamt he was back at Hogwarts. As he slowly made his way through the corridors, he saw that death was all around him. His former schoolmates were there as they had been in real life, except they now radiated suffering. Some were twitching with the agony of the Cruciatus curse. Others were the lifeless products of the Avada Kedavra curse. There was a gloom which Severus had always felt in those halls. The hopelessness of his recently past school days settled so easily into his soul that his surreal images had a distinct realism that made him want to vomit.

An unnatural silence shrouded the corridors. Severus wanted to cry out at the horror of what he saw but the silence was suffocating. As he approached the Slytherin common room, the air thicked with despair. When Severus entered the common room he found everything much as it had been the night he and Lucius had first kissed, save for the decaying cadavers of Slytherins strewn across floor. Their faces were livid and around their necks were their green-and-silver scarves were tightened lethally. Their throats seemed to have stretched during strangulation. Catching sight of Lucius' corpse, Severus knelt by his lover's body. Just as he was about to stroke a strand of Lucius' hair, a hideous rat leapt onto Lucius' dead face. Much to Severus' horror, the repulsive rodent gnawed away a chunk of Lucius' flesh.

Severus felt his stomach lurch as the rat turned to him and hissed, "Traitor! You and I are two of a kind!"