Duel

One: Open the Gates

The door was slightly ajar, barely touching the jamb. Lucius tapped it lightly with his fingertips and it swung open. The house was bright inside. A fire flicked and snapped cozily in the fireplace, and candles were burning along the walls. Lucius stepped inside, turning to Severus and ordering him forward with a flick of his head. In the startling warmth of the parlor, squinting in the firelight, Severus asked, \"Doesn\'t someone live here?\"

\"Not anymore,\" purred Lucius, and he shut the door quietly behind himself, locking it with a quick incantation. The air was sharp with wood smoke and the scent of starched cloth, and light, salty food smells, and something else unpleasant and indeterminate and sour.

Lucius went to Severus and kissed him lightly, with loose wet lips, and slipped his arms around his waist, and slid his hands up his back. Even through the cloaks his body was hot. This, this heat, this envelopment and touch and nervous rapture, this was what Severus had been waiting for. Wearing his thick-soled boots Lucius was the same height as Severus, and their mouths were even. Severus had always felt that Lucius should be taller than he was. It didn\'t suit him to have to tilt his face up or wait for Severus to lean down.

\"Take this off,\" Lucius commanded, pushing the hood of Severus\' cloak over the crown of his head, letting it fall in folds around his shoulders. Lucius\' own hood was still up, and it made deep shadows under his cheekbones and around his eyes. The fire painted his skin in warm sepias; a pink flush was becoming evident on his nose and cheeks. Severus pushed his cloak off of himself and let it rustle down him to the floor. Lucius flung his own off, swinging it artfully around him like a matador, and threw it lazily onto an armchair in front of the fireplace. Underneath he was wearing crimson, a tight and shiny fabric, tailored to him precisely. Severus wore gray, a good weave, not the best. Lucius always had the best.

Severus took Lucius boldly by the hips, pulled him close, pressed against him, and bit down on his lower lip. Lucius let out a short bark - a laugh, or a gasp, or an aborted moan, impossible to tell - and took Severus\' upper lip in his teeth. They nipped and sucked each other ravenously, snapping and flinching like fighting dogs. Lucius smelled of old smoke and clotting blood and a sweet skin cream, and his mouth tasted of butter and rosemary, and he gripped the back of Severus\' coat so fiercely that a seam ripped. Severus broke away and shrugged clumsily out of it, laying it over Lucius\' cloak, seeing for the first time the slack male hand that hung over the arm of the chair, nails ragged, fingers curled loosely, wrist bent, naked arm disappearing into the shadows behind. He blinked at it once, and it clicked inside him like a Muggle snapshot, still and silent and isolated. Then he turned back to Lucius and kissed him deeply, probing the soft inside cheek with his tongue. Lucius knotted his fingers into Severus\' hair and pulled his head forward, crushing their mouths together so hard that Severus could feel his own pulse twitching in his upper lip. Lucius pulled away abruptly, turned on his heel, and strolled indifferently out of the room, dropping his overcoat on the floor behind him. Severus followed him into a long hallway, hastily unbuttoning his shirt and flinging it to one side. He left the trousers for Lucius to undo, and followed him through the door at the end of the corridor.

The master bedroom was cool and dim. A circular skylight, made of many little panes of glass, each tinted a slightly different shade of gray, cast a silver spotlight on the wide bed. The bedspread was velour, and Lucius was sitting on it nude with his legs straight in front of him, rubbing the fabric between his fingers with a slight but detectable sneer. He was a uniform silver in this light, hair distinguishable from skin only by the vague shadow it cast across his hairline. It was shorter then, and he was just as vain about it, and even after this feverish evening it hung in cool white stalactites around his face. He cocked his head at Severuaisiaising an eyebrow, a silent come-hither. They were both usually silent at times like this. Words were an intrusion; each knew the other\'s face, the other\'s hands, the varied emotive scents of the other\'s sweat. Severus crawled across the bed and stretched himself on top of Lucius. Lucius allowed him a kiss, received it passively, then flipped Severus violently onto his back. With a lopsided grin he moved to suck at Severus\' neck, laving a wet warm trail down his collarbone. Severus smiled beatifically, childishly, let his eyelids droop, and stared up through the skylight. The moon peeked shyly over one corner. As Lucius slid himself down, as he reached Severus\' pale belly, a sharp star raced across the skylight, froze for an instant overhead, and exploded into a chaos of green smoke, a clear and beautiful Morsmordre, with its naked rictus, its winding snake. The moon was tinted green. In the street there was a high, grating scream, and Severus shut his eyes and moaned along with it.


* * *


Tonight there is a thin stratum of mist hanging over the lake, and the light breeze that drifts perpetually in from the water pulls it into thin translucent slits, lit from behind by the yellow glow of Hogsmeade. They slice cleanly through the black lake and the green banks and the gray road, splitting the gentle pall of night, like the marks of fingernails dragged through wet paint, exposing the canvas below. This time of night the Hogwarts grounds could be an oil painting, an especially fanciful one, impressionist and dramatic with its tapestry shades and its deep shadows, with its blurred lines and indistinct boundaries. Fog breaks around him as he walks through it, warping and wrapping, disseminating into curls, like smoke blown against a bedpost.

When he considers the scenery this way he is comforted. Other thoughts are dangerous. This way he can pretend this is a midnight stroll, that it is voluntary and unnecessary, that he is not going anywhere but ahead. He also has an idea that it will not be the same when he gets back. Stability is what he loves most about this place. It\'s something he clings to, it\'s something that came to him at a terrible price, and he is aware of how tentative it is. This is a dividing night. This is a time that will be reckoned in terms of before and after. When after comes, will there still be mist and lake and dusty road? He thinks so. Will he be able to look at them the same way, as comforts, as constants, as pieces of home? He thinks not. This is not the first time he has come this way, at this time of night, with this purpose, and it will not be the last. Home means so much to him now, and this is an act of leaving it, this is an act of letting it exist without him.

His pace keeps changing: quick, sharp, kicking up little scatters of gravel, getting on with it; slowing to a drift,induindulgent amble, one foot very consciously in front of the other; picking up again, storming ahead. When he reaches the wrought-iron gates, he pushes through them manually, forgoing the opening spell, getting flakes of rust and deposited minerals on the palms of his hands. He has to lock his elbows and bear down with all his weight to get them open. The hinges groan brokenly, which they don\'t do when they\'re opened with a wand. He steps across the property line, pulls up his sleeve, grips his wand tightly, rests the tip of it on his burning scar - a crackle emits from the contact point, and a thin wisp of black smoke - shuts his eyes, and whispers the familiar incantation: \"Apparate Laevum Caligo.\" For one euphoric instant, he loses his body, becomes insubstantial, and then is slammed back into being with a wet, revolting sound, the slaughterhouse slap of flesh against itself.

His skin is hot and dry and being pelted with something. Hot ash. A volcano? Or maybe he is being stung or bitten. The ground under his feet is solid and even. He can feel sun at an angle above him, warm and vague on his face. The wind is a low and terrible scream. He takes a shallow inward breath. The air is hot and gritty and salty. Through his eyelids there is a pale orange glow.

Right in his ears, like a secret, he hears: \"Open your eyes.\" The old familiar rasp. He opens his eyes, terrified, holding his face and body stiff and neutral.

Not ash. Sand. A yellow, raging blizzard of it. His hood is up around him, but he still has to squint to keep himself from being blinded. Visibility is very low, but he mentally lists what he can tell: he is in a desert, and it is early afternoon or late morning, and there is an intense, burning sandstorm all around him, and he is not alone. Indeterminate: whether the storm is natural or orchestrated, where this place is, and who is in it with him. Severus moves his wand in a quick spiral, casting an invisible shield around his body. Sand whips and rasps against it, muffled softly from inside. He takes a quick look around: four indistinct figures stand a few feet to the left and slightly behind him. Six or seven are barely visible behind them. In front of him and to his right, one tall figure and one hunched one. They are all cloaked, featureless blots, but he recognizes these two immediately. One of them is Lucius Malfoy. His posture is impeccable and proud.

\"Kneel,\" the bent figure commands in its insectine drone, echoing schizophrenically inside his head, the result of an aural spell.

\"Yes, my Lord,\" he says, and falls heavily to his knees, bowing his chin to his chest, holding his hands cupped and empty before him. The familiar genuflection. It\'s all so familiar it sickens him.

He flinches as the shield around him dissolves. It should have held; Voldemort must have broken it. Hair blows into his face and catches in his mouth, bitter and dusty. He forces himself to breathe slowly through his nose. Voldemort lays a skeletal hand in Severus\', moist palm down: a baptismal gesture, not a fraternal one.

\"Severus Snape, do you love your Lord?\"

\"I do,\" he rasps, throat coated in alkaline dust, beginning to weep phlegm.

\"Show your love,\" it commands, no longer buzzing but thundering, leaving a high aftertone in his ears.

He pulls the slick hand toward him, gentle and servile. He closes his eyes and brings it to his mouth, parting his lips, wetting them with his tongue. He kisses each of Voldemort\'s fingers, counting, the rhythm worn into his memory like a hymn. The skin is sticky and thin and rough, flaked with dead skin and filmed with dust, seeming denticled. It scrapes into the thin skin on his lips, leaving tiny lacerations, leaving a sting. He turns it over and kisses the center of the palm. A weak hbeatbeat flutters under it. How this touch used to draw him in, how it used to ruin him. The hand is pulled away, then laid gently on his face. The loose and clammy skin creates a vacuum seal between them, and sand is caught and dragged along his cheek. The thumb moves up along his jaw line, stopping at his earlobe, where the long, ragged nail cuts a thin line into the skin. It doesn\'t hurt much, not as much as he remembers these things hurting. Blood seeps into the fold between his ear and his face and rests there. \"You have been untrue,\" Voldemort storms.

\"I -\" Severus knows better than to argue. He takes a long, slow breath, sucking sand up his nostrils and fighting a cough. \"I have survived, my Lord. I have survived to enter your service again.\"

\"You have sucked -\" Voldemort pauses strangely, a slight static emitting from him, an uncertain throat noise. Severus\' heart slams against his breastbone. He has never seen this kind of weakness in the Dark Lord. \"You have suckled-\"

\"You have suckled at the teat of our enemy, Severus.\" Lucius continues, stepping forward interceptively. \"You have suckled-\" he draws the syllable out, clearly relishing the moment. \"- at the grinning geriatric, you have served him for years.\" Even raging - especially raging - Lucius seems a measured orator, aware of the ring and tone of his voice, the curves of his diction. He drops to a contemptuous whisper. \"What makes you think you deserve His love?\"

\"I do not,\" says Severus, leaning into Voldemort\'s clammy hand, pressing against it. \"I do not deserve it, but I long for it. I have waited for it, and I want to make amends.\"

Lucius moves, and through the blur of the sandstorm the motion is clear: he is drawing his wand from inside his cloak. Severus tenses, his muscles knot. He knows he cannot prepare, there is no preparation, but he could never swallow his own fight reflex.

\"Does he satisfy you, my Lord?\" asks Lucius.

\"You will be mine again,\" Voldemort intones, addressing Severus. His voice is mild now, a loving murmur. His composure seems to have returned.

\"Yes,\" whispers Severus, and the hand is taken from him with the moist kiss of separating skin.

\"Get up,\" says Lucius. A familiar phrase, an achingly familiar voice. Severus\' body relaxes, suddenly very tired. A harsh gust shoves against him, spraying him with sand, and he sways. Voldemort does not, despite his frailty. \"Join the others.\"

He does, walking backwards - he knows never to turn his back on his Lord - with his head bowed. Another Death Eater brushes past him to kneel before Voldemort, and Severus can no longer hear what is being said. There is only the whine of the sandstorm. The kneeling Death Eater\'s back suddenly arches, the fists clench, the head is thrown back - the possessed whiplash of the Cruciatus, the ruined spasms, like a poisoned rat. A scream cuts through the storm, pier and and high: female. Severus grimaces, keeping his head down, struggling to swallow past the membrane of filth in his throat.


\"Why do you do that to me?\" Severus asked him, bathed in sweat one night, dangling a spent leg over the edge of Lucius\' lush feather mattress. His muscles still ached, thought he knew they shouldn\'t have. There weren\'t supposed to be physical aftereffects.

\"You flex beautifully,\" Lucius said calmly. He was lying on his back, looking up at the ceiling. He didn\'t give Severus a glance. \"Like during sex, only better. You lose yourself totally. It\'s delicious. Don\'t you notice? Or are you too busy screaming?\"

Severus glared at him, imagining his gaze narrowed into two sharp points, physical probes on the side of Lucius\' face.

Finally Lucius turned over, flouncing comfortably onto his side and resting his face on the pillow. \"Why do you let me?\" he asked.

Severus\' upper lip twitched, an animalistic sneer to match a primal swipe of anger. He sat up, reached over to the bedside table, took Lucius\' wand, and broke it in half.

Lucius laughed merrily in Severus\' face.


When he Apparates back to the gates, Lucius is already there beside him. Severus is startled, but does not show it. Lucius holds out his wand - another reflexive tense in Severus - and flicks it lazily, muttering \"Ablutum,\" cleaning the leftover grit from both of them. They stand facing oth other, close but separate, as in the first stage of a duel.

\"I didn\'t think I\'d see you tonight,\" says Lucius.

\"You don\'t know me as well as you always thought you did, Lucius.\"

\"Evidently.\"

A cold silence. Lucius stares at him archly.

\"Expecting to be thanked?\" Severus says coolly.

\"Whatever for?\" Lucius breathes.

\"You know what for. Why wasn\'t I punished tonight?\"

\"Our Lord is aware of your... circumstances.\" Snape narrhis his eyes. This cannot be the whole truth. \"Which is what brings me here,\" continues Lucius. \"Quite a coup for you, this - interment at Hogwarts. What did you barter for it?\"

Severus studies his face. It is blank, calculatedly curious. \"I thought you knew,\" he says carefully. Lucius raises his eyebrows. It\'s possible that he doesn\'t know everything. They haven\'t spoken of these things since before Lucius\' trial. Severus locks onto the most obvious answer. \"I\'m a pity case,\" he says evenly. \"You know Dumbledore\'s soft spot for the pathetic.\" He spits the last word, falling into the groove of this lie which is not actually a lie. He smiles sharply. \"You should have seen it, Lucius. Your amnesiac playacting had nothing on me. I wept at his feet. I groveled and flagellated like a house elf, tearing at my hair -\" he notes Lucius\' small twitch of disgust at this \"- whinging that I\'d been used, that I\'d gotten ver ver my head and been too scared to get out, that I was just a child when I turned and didn\'t know any better. I begged him to rehabilitate me.\" None of this is untrue. Only abridged.

\"Clever boy. But you know that already, don\'t you?\" Severus tilts his face up, looking down his nose, and waits. \"This could be quite a coup for us as well, Severus,\" Lucius continues. \"Having an inside man. Think of the possibilities.\"

As if he hasn\'t already. He wants to laugh, he wants to laugh in Lucius\' face, but he smirks instead, an expected and acceptable reaction.

\"Has He pla plans for Hogwarts?\" he asks, keeping his tone gossipy.

\"Oh, yes,\" drawls Lucius. \"And so do we.\"

Severus takes a small moment, frowning. His gaze flickers up and down. \"We?\"

Lucius grins. \"You\'ll find out more. When I\'m sure of you.\"

Severus draws himself to his full height, an inch or two above Lucius, tilting his face at a slight but detectable downward angle. \"What\'s not to be sure of, Lucius?\" He keeps his mouth taut in a coy smile.

Lucius raises his left hand, shaking it free from his sleeve, and lightly strokes Severus\' cheek with his palm. \"It\'s been such a long time,\" he whispers, face relaxing into a sort of neutral wonderment, eyes so large they almost seem reverent. Severus closes his eyes, succumbing, wavering slightly where he stands. Lucius twists his hand around, first grazing Severus with his fingernails, then with the backs of his fingers. A thin, cold pain begins at the top of Severus\' left cheekbone, and is drawn down to the corner of his mouth. His eyes snap open and he snatches Lucius\' hand, squeezing it inside his own, feeling the sharp, cold gem on one of Lucius\' conspicuous rings, chiseled to a dangerous point, dewy now with hot blood. He crushes Lucius\' fingers together, feeling the ring dig in, cutting both of them. He fancies hn ten tell Lucius\' blood from his own; it seems a different temperature. When he relaxes his grip, Lucius doesn\'t pull away, letting his hand rest in Severus\', a soft satiated smile on his lips. He leans close to Severus, who tenses and bares his teeth, preparing for a kiss or a bite. Lucius delivers neither. He presses his cheek against Severus\', making the wound smart, face enclosed in the folds of Severus\' hood.

\"We\'ll be seeing a lot of each other now,\" he murmurs.

\"Don\'t we already?\"

\"Different.\" He pulls on Severus\' earlobe with his lips, setting fires in that wound as well, tasting the crusty clot with his tongue. Then he pulls away quickly and Severus\' blood is a matte blot on his face, black in the cold moonlight. \"Expect my owl,\" he says softly, and Disapparates.

Severus walks home slowly, around the lake, which is still there and still black. The mist has evaporated, though, and there is a pale purple glow over for forbidden forest. Dawn. He remembers dawn. It is a constant and for that he decides to love it.

In his chamber he falls on the bed fully clothed and sleeps.


* * *


Severus woke with something on his face. A pale skin of fabric, slimy with old sweat and overnight dew. His shirt. He wadded it in his fist and sat up on the narrow bed.

\"We have to leave,\" said Lucius, who was clothed and standing near the door. He picked Severus\' trousers off the floor and threw them at him. Severus caught them at his chest.

\"Now?\" he asked, still numbed by sleep.

\"Yeah.\" Lucius drew the syllable out, working his jaw around it. His features were gray and undistinguished in the soiled darkness of the tiny apartment. Severus untangled his shirt, pulled the sleeves out of themselves, and slid it on. The dampness made a sickly friction against his skin.

\"Is she dead?\" he asked quietly.

\"Yeah,\" said Lucius, quickly this time, offhand, flicking his head to the side and looking away as if disgusted.

Severus kicked back the sticky bedsheets. He still had her juices on him, and Lucius\'. He got up to step into his trousers, and could feel a lock of her hair prickle under his feet. She was under the bed. He didn\'t look down.


\"You know our history,\" Severus says.

\"I know of it,\" corrects Dumbledore. Sev\' b\' brow pinches. Dumbledore holds up a hand. \"I don\'t need you to fill it in. It\'s your history; keep it.\"

\"If you\'re worried about a relapse, you needn\'t be.\" Dumbledore\'s eyelids droop and he gazes at Severus levelly. Severus sighs and settles back into his seat. The chairs in Dumbledore\'s office are deceptively comfortable, considering the things that have happened in and around them, the people who have occupied them. \"He was a rion.ion. It was all a reaction, you know that. He was one of the trappings. He came with the lifestyle. I was - I don\'t know what I was to him. Maybe an experiment. Maybe a challenge.\" His mouth turns down sourly. \"I wasn\'t much of a challenge, though, not really. I turned out to be embarrassingly easy game.\"

Dumbledore shifts behind his desk. Severus realizes he is lapsing into a ramble. This is not the time, and for all his usual warmth Dumbledore is not his confidant.

\"Does he want you again?\" Dumbledore asks, looking now at the surface of his desk.

\"He -\" Severus falters. His pulse quickens; this is a thin line. This is Dumbledore\'s trust. \"He might try again. He is difficult to read.\" Sometimes. This he does not say.

Dumbledore sighs heavily, and the slight shudder in his constricted throat has an undertone of revulsion.

\"You must do what you feel is necessary, Severus...\" he says, leaving this to hang in the air, looming and loaded like a thunderhead.

Severus blinks at him, understanding a beat late, speechless.

Dumbledore stands, a styptic gesture, punctuated by the dry scrape of his chair against the floor. \"If you\'ll follow me outside, Professor,\" he say, suddenly deferential. \"There are three people I think you\'ll be wanting to meet.\"


Later Severus would wonder how long Lucius had been planning this. If not planning it then at least wanting it. He had always been a slave to his appetites.

She was crushed between them. Lucius was at her back, her chin was hooked over Severus\' shoulder, they were kneelingon the bed and sharing her. She was willing because she was paid. She was disappointingly passive. (To Severus, at least, this was disappointing. To Lucius it probably wasn\'t.) Now and then she would wriggle or squirm, surely uncomfortable. Lucius held her hips to keep her still.

Their thighs were touching, rubbing against each other between the whore\'s legs. Severus\' hips grazed Lucius\' knuckles each time he thrust into her. Lucius\' face was inches away. These things did not escape his notice; they excited him as much as the girl did. Maybe more. There was her half-assed gyrating seduction, her used limpness, her ready spread, and there was Lucius\' fierce grip and impassioned twitches and shuddering breath. She was reception; Lucius ses sensation, action, reaction, lust. Severus pushed up into her quickly and hard, making her groan uncomfortably and flex her back. This was all he could get out of her.

Lucius moved his hands from her hips and slid them around the small of Severus\' back. Severus tensed, eyes squeezed shut, with a broken inward breath. His back and buttocks clenched. The whore, hips unmuzzled now, shifted impatiently against him. He opened his eyes and Lucius was staring at him, lids lowered, lips parted slightly. He thrust once, slowly, demonstratively, lifting his hips and then dropping them, his hard gaze a challenge, a thrown glove. When he thrust again, Severus joined him, and they moved in time, a cooperative machine, a pistoned engine. The whore\'s breath came in high gasps; their movement inside her was violent. Severus slid his hands up Lucius\' arms and Lucius bent to drag his lips over Severus\' throat. When they finished they fell apart, the men breaking off the woman like halves of a shell, falling spent onto the bed.

And in a few hours she was dead and Lucius was throwing Severus\' clothes at him. This was their first afterglow.

To be continued.