Commentary: "Unlocked"

[stephanometra]

Nothing like meta to get the juices flowing, yes?

For etrangere and kethlenda, with love.

So I wanted to write Narcissa again, and lo and behold, Kelsey requested a Narcissa pairing. True to form, I started thinking about this story immediately after I got the assignment (which was in January), but I didn't actually start to write it until all of my other fest fics for the spring were done (which made it late, heh, and tarie has my eternal gratitude for being so patient with my late lateness). It was the rain and communication through touch bits that struck me the most, and I basically had to shop around for a story premise that would allow me to play with that. I thought I was a genius for happening upon this one.

This story is part of the Bellatrix & Narcissa canon in my head - it's very important to me that my stories fit together, almost as important as it is for them to be canon-compliant. I'm just anal like that. As such, I was a little worried that it wouldn't come across quite the way I wanted it to in the fest; not having read "Sans Foi" or "Muscle Memory" (and to a lesser extent, "Make Peace"), I think, detracts a little bit from this story. But it went over well, and Kelsey liked it, and I felt like it adequately did what I wanted it to do on its own.

Also, I mostly wrote this at work, including the porn. I was so brazen after that first month, I swear to God.

Her last owl from Severus had told her when it's supposed to happen, if not how or where or any other of a thousand details that are too delicate and dangerous to commit to paper or a nervous mother's mind. She isn't supposed to know, strictly speaking, since the Dark Lord chose not to tell her, but Severus has become her own saving grace as well as her son's. What bothered me about Narcissa!fic after HBP was the insistence on portraying her as weak and sentimental, and from the very start of this story I wanted to make it clear that I didn't see her that way - I think this is where "Sans Foi" is important to the meaning of this story more than anywhere else. The point of that story is to show her resignation in doing what she needs to do to protect herself and her son, regardless of her own misgivings; this one is meant to show her taking that strength one step further and becoming an avenging angel.

She has to act normal around Bella – Bella, her beloved, mad sister, who keeps her unofficially imprisoned in the grand, cavernous Manor that becomes a smaller and smaller cell each day – but as the afternoon drags on, she can't control her agitation any longer. The syntax of this sentence fucking drove me to distraction. You've never seen so many synonyms for "prison" go in and out of a story in your life.

Thus Narcissa sits alone, silent and terrified in her parlour, wards humming around her (hers, to keep Bella out, and Bella's, to keep her in), (Isn't it sweet how they don't trust each other? Oh wait, no I guess it isn't.) waiting for her son to irrevocably change both of their lives.

A sickening sort of relief washes over her when the Summons finally comes.

~ ~ ~
Narcissa Apparates into the circle amongst dozens of other black-robed figures, Bella immediately at her heels.

The place to which they have been called is a large, lavish ballroom that she's never seen before; the only light comes from a single candlelit chandelier. The Dark Lord sits atop a black marble dais along the north wall, flanked by a haughty, smirking Severus. (Well, wouldn't you be smirking too?) Several more Death Eaters stand behind them – Greyback and the Carrows, and a couple others she doesn't know.

Draco is not with them. The melodrama in that phrasing kind of bothers me.

Dread settles like a stone in her stomach, and she suppresses the sudden urge to vomit.

She desperately scans the sea of thrown-back hoods, searching for the familiar shock of white-blond hair.

He isn't there.

Circe and Morgana, he's dead. Gods, gods, please don't let it be true. Somebody had a poll about this awhile back, about religion and swearing and things - I always see my pureblooded scions as the type to disdain Muggle religion and cling to what they see as "the old ways," even if those ways aren't particularly old or unique. Can't you just see in, like, the early Roman empire, the magical community in Gaul going to ground and clinging to their form of paganism, and then that religion getting mixed up in Roman paganism, and then that mixture becoming the standard for separatist magic folk when Christianity comes round? Because I can.

The Dark Lord stands and begins to speak, but his words could be in Mermish for all she understands as she sways dizzily on her feet and tries not to be sick amid the cheering of her fellows. She doesn't even recognize her name when he calls her forward.

Bella clamps her hand down on Narcissa's elbow in an iron grip and leans forward to whisper, "Don't make Him wait, Cissy," into her ear before shoving her towards the Dark Lord's throne. Oh Bella, you're such a cunt. I love you so much.

Narcissa falls to her knees before him in obeisance (fuck, how much do I love that word?), absurdly grateful for the solidity of the floor beneath her. "My Lord," she murmurs.

"Madam, we have a problem," he says, voice a displeased hiss. I can so totally hear Ralph Fiennes saying this in my head. Damn you, movie canon! It's a great line, anyway - dramatic understatement seems to me to be something that Tom would think rhetorically invaluable when manipulating people.

The excited chatter of the assembled Death Eaters abruptly dies.

He's going to kill me. She looks up, despair written all over her face.

"Your son –"

Don't say it, don't make it real, just say the words. Draco, my darling, I'm so sorry. Lee doesn't like this construction. She totally made me take out something similar in "Nothing That's Worth Seeing." ♥

"– is missing."

She stares, wide-eyed. "How?" Her eyes dart to Severus' impassive face and back again. But that means…

"The deed is done, Narcissa, but at the end of the wrong wand. Draco has disappeared."

"He was not entirely unsuccessful, however," Severus says. "His plan was both ingenious and brilliantly executed, and had I not hurried him –" I wasn't sure that I was laying on the Snaco implication heavily enough. I'm never sure about things like that.

"You cannot know that, Snape," Voldemort said sharply. "He is nothing more than a disgrace. Alecto tells me he very nearly let the old man talk him out of it; if you had not hurried him, he may have betrayed us!"

"The boy is many things, my Lord, but never a traitor."

"Explain his absence, then!"

Narcissa bites her bottom lip and looks at the floor.

Severus takes a deep breath. "He was ashamed to have failed you, my Lord, and he panicked. Nothing more. He will return; I am sure of it."

"I have no use for cowards!" His voice rings out in the silence of the room, and he pointedly looks out over the faces of his followers before he turns back to Narcissa. "He is not without talents, and he did prove himself to be of service, but I cannot tolerate desertion." In retrospect, that line is a lot creepier than I wanted it to be. A well-placed ellipsis would make it even creepier!

She swallows hard and nods. "What do you want from me, my Lord?"

He grips her chin in one skeletal hand and looks into her eyes, already pushing into her mind as he asks, "Do you have any idea where he might have gone?"

She can think of thousands of places, but none of them is more than pure speculation. "No, my Lord." I don't think you can talk while someone is going through your brain with a fine-toothed comb, but we'll pretend you can. And for some odd reason, that makes me think of Foreman saying "GET OUT OF MY TEMPORAL LOBE, HOUSE." Your guess is as good as mine, people.

He abruptly severs the connection, apparently satisfied. "Bella!" he calls.

Bellatrix kneels beside her. "My Lord."

"Take her home, and see to it that she stays there. She is not to leave your sight."

Out of the corner of her eye, Narcissa sees Bella's jaw tighten almost imperceptibly. "As You wish." The honorific capitalization is, I think, one of the most distinguishing features of my Bella's characterization.

"You own a house under Fidelius in Dorset, do you not? Part of the Rosier legacy, if I remember correctly." I love making shit up.

"Yes, my Lord."

"Who is its Secret-Keeper?"

"I am, my Lord."

"Who else knows its location?"

Bella thinks. "My husband and his brother." Both of whom are comfortably ensconced in Azkaban, she doesn't bother to add.

"No one else?"

She shakes her head. "Everyone Evan told when he Kept its Secret is long dead, my Lord. But for You, of course." She pauses. "The house is entailed on Draco, but I was waiting until he completed his mission to tell him." Doesn't that make sense? It totally makes sense.

"Wise of you, my dear."

"Thank you, my Lord." I can totally see her preening at that comment.

"Severus requires a bolt-hole, Bella. You shall furnish him with one." SICKBURN.

Despite the anger Narcissa can suddenly feel coming off her sister in waves at this command, Bella merely nods and says, "Yes, my Lord."

Voldemort turns to Severus once again. "Severus."

He inclines his head. "How may I serve you, my Lord?"

"You are certain that the Malfoy boy will return?

"Entirely, my Lord."

He sits back in his chair and looks at Narcissa calculatingly. "What would you stake on it, Severus?"

Severus' lips thin. "I am not a betting man."

"Come now, I know you are fond of the boy, and it's perfectly obvious that you would rather he continue living. I merely wish to know how much your…affection for him clouds your assessment of his loyalties." Oh look, there's that ellipsis I was talking about earlier! Tee hee.

Narcissa's eyes widen. I am right here, you know! It is rather gauche to talk about someone's son taking it up the ass when she's right there, I think. Man, Tom has no manners whatsoever.

With a slight moue of distaste, Severus says, "My allegiance is to you, my Lord, not an adolescent with a pretty mouth." He briefly glances at Narcissa in apology. Severus, on the other hand, is polite enough to be abashed. Good boy.

"Indeed." Voldemort pauses. "You have served me exceptionally well; it pleases me to indulge you in this."

"I do not ask for –"

"Had you asked, Severus, he would be dead by morning." Oh, and he'd do it, too. You know he would.

Flinching at the casual tone of voice, Narcissa claps a hand over her mouth to stop a cry of anguish escaping. Bella unnecessarily places a restraining hand on her other arm.

The Dark Lord smiles down at her; the kindly expression looks horrifying and out-of-place on his malformed, serpentine face. (I bet him smiling really is a massively sinister affair) "Don't fret, Narcissa. If Severus is correct, then you have nothing to worry about."

She notices that he does not say that Draco ought to be similarly untroubled. Well, duh.

~ ~ ~
After returning home, she once again closets herself in her sitting room, the conditions for Draco's redemption swimming in her head.

Three days. Three days during which the person of her son would be inviolate, so long as he refrained from any acts of aggression against the Dark Lord or any Death Eater. Seventy-two short hours for Draco to return to the fold of his own free will and under his own power; seventy-two hours in which no Death Eater might attempt to contact him, under pain of both of their deaths. Three days for her to hope and wonder and worry under lock and key and Bella's watchful eyes, like nothing so much as a pretty little songbird in the largest of gilded cages.

She wishes she had the courage to fly away, to look for him in defiance of the Dark Lord's command, but she knows the mere thought is absurd – her Occlumency isn't good enough for her to trust it to protect herself and Draco both. Instead, she knows she'll spend the next three days sitting and waiting once again. How dare they be so mean to my Cissy! >:|

Voldemort had not said what would happen at the end of those three days, but he didn't have to, really.

Narcissa thinks of Regulus, lying silent and still in his mahogany coffin in the front parlour of a grand old house she can no longer picture, and she starts to cry. There is so much Regulus!fic that focuses on his relationship with Sirius, as if he had no other family, and I think that is horribly unjust. I've read some Regulus/Narcissa that was effing brilliant, but there's simply not enough of it.

~ ~ ~
Bella prowls around the house like a crazy jungle cat, always making sure to stay just inside Narcissa's peripheral vision just in case Narcissa manages to forget she is there. (She'd totally do that, too.) It's obvious that she resents having to stay home and mind her baby sister – just like she had when she'd been ten and relegated to the inconsequence of the children's table when she wanted so badly to sit between Father and Aunt Walburga (OH GOD THE PLUPERFECT ERRORS. FUCK ME SIDEWAYS.) – but her devotion to the Dark Lord prevents her from carrying out his command with anything but single-minded determination.

That doesn't stop her from spitting venom about Severus at every possible opportunity, however. Well, of course it doesn't.

Most of it is inane, jealous drivel that Narcissa has heard many times before. Snape is a lying traitor (the old standby); Snape is a lapdog to blood traitors and Muggle-lovers (Narcissa thinks this one is particularly unfair, seeing as how Severus had quite handily bitten Dumbledore's hand clean off while ostensibly being fed (yay metaphor!)); Snape is a vile half-blood mongrel (I, uh, actually didn't mean to extend the canine metaphor for so long here; it just kind of happened) of no good family (also unfair, as Severus' mother's line went back nearly three hundred years on her father's side) and thus of no good character.

Then, as they sit in the solarium after supper on the second day: "They say he's been buggering your son, you know. How dare the filthy pederast touch a pureblooded child!" Manners, Bella! Christ, there just aren't enough polite people left in the world.

Without even stopping to think, Narcissa has her wand out and at Bella's throat before she finishes her hateful sentence. "Not. Another. Word, Bella," she hisses. "You will not speak thus of my son and your heir, do you hear me?" I grappled with the thought of Draco being Bella's heir for a little while before deciding to write it that way; I think that Black women are domineering enough to justify the thought of matrilineal inheritance, and whatever my thoughts about Bella/Rodolphus (and honestly, they change constantly - I can never decide if I like my interpretation (Bella getting with him in order to get a foot in the door with Tom and uncertainly placing Rodolphus in this liminal space in her affections, and Rodolphus actually loving her) or certain others (sionnain, I am looking at you here) better), there is no way Bellatrix would allow Black wealth to fall into the hands of her husband's brother, who would be their heir by default in a patrilineal entailment scheme.

Bella only laughs mockingly. "Even the Dark Lord has remarked on it, don't you remember?" No shit she remembers, you crazy bitch. Salt that wound, sweetheart.

"The Dark Lord may say what he pleases; you remain a guest in my house and shall not!" She punctuates her words by jabbing her wand into the pulse point below her sister's throat. Then she's spinning on her feet as Bella pushes her away and snatches her wand from her hand. *cringe* God, I really need to get away from that method of describing sequential events. It's so fucking unwieldy.

"I answer to the Dark Lord, Cissy, not to you. Do not presume to tell me what I shan't do, or I promise that you will regret it." And she slips Narcissa's wand into a hidden interior pocket of her robes and stalks over to the armchair in the corner of the room, sinking into it with a malevolent glare.

Narcissa stares at her, feeling betrayed and worse than naked without her wand, before turning on her heel and making for her chambers. She slams the door to her suite and screams, "Keep her out of here!" at the ceiling. I've always considered 12 Grimmauld Place to have a mind of its own; the Malfoys have to be at least as distinguished as the Blacks. I can just see everybody sitting around in the eighteenth century trying to one-up each other with the artificial intelligences they've imbued their homes with, and it's totally hilarious to me.

Bella tries all night to break into her room, even going so far as physically disintegrating the door, but the house itself stops her passing the threshold even as it puts itself back together.

It placates Narcissa somewhat to know that the Manor, the castle of which Lucius had made her queen, is still on her side, and she greets Bella's sullen eyes with a smug grin when she leaves her rooms the next morning. Should have said something different there. Proper ladies do not grin. On the other hand, abandoning propriety to gloat is entirely sensible, especially given what she does the next day.

~ ~ ~
She spends the morning of the third day thinking up credible reasons to spend time in the library, which has one of the Manor's two external Floo connections, in hopes that someone will call with news of Draco. By midafternoon, however, she dispenses with the excuses altogether and simply ignores her sister's patronizing looks.

Bella sits in a corner and watches Narcissa pace the room, tidy the drapes, retrieve and open and close book after book after book. She's said barely a dozen words to Narcissa since the previous night, not even to mock her for fidgeting or spew vitriol about Severus. Well, she's feeling cowed and murderous. I don't blame her for not wanting to talk, either.

Narcissa would probably be worried, if Bella's unusual silence weren't so welcome. If she can't keep a civil tongue in her head, then it's better she remain silent, she thinks, wincing as she recognizes her mother's chiding voice in her own head. (Don't we all have moments like that?) She arranges herself on the chaise longue (random: it really bothers me when people say "chaise lounge") in front of the westward portrait window to watch the sun set over the Manor's grounds, trying desperately to keep her spirits from sinking along with it.

An elf rings the bell for supper, and she hears the rustle of Bella's skirts behind her, but she stays still, staring out the window.

"He isn't coming home, Cissy," Bella says softly in her ear.

"You don't know that." Narcissa turns to face her.

"But you do."

"I know no such thing!"

"You've known it since you dragged me to that bastard's house a year ago; don't play games." Bella's voice is hard.

Tears well in Narcissa's eyes, but she angrily blinks them back. "I did what I had to and nothing more."

"And see where it has got you!"

"I refuse to have this argument again!" "This argument," of course, being the one that ended in incestuous hatesex before.

"Denial won't change a damned thing, Narcissa, and you know that, too."

"What do I deny, Bella?" she asks, turning back to the window. "Forgive me if I am not near so ready as you to bury my child."

"Your child," Bella sneers, circling around to loom malevolently over the chaise, "is a cowardly weakling who has spent the last year playing the whore for that Muggle-spawned trash (that line was the starting point for this entire scene) instead of fulfilling his obligations to the Dark Lord. He is not coming home except in a coffin, and you should be pleased to bury him rather than endure the shame of his failure." She pauses. "I only hope that they find your precious Severus with him, so we may be rid of two traitors at once." Oh, Bella. Jealousy does not become you! Because you know she's just jealous, of course.

Narcissa clenches her right hand into a fist, acutely missing her wand. In its absence, however, she does the next best thing to casting a hex: she slams her fist into her sister's smug, aristocratic face, screaming triumphantly when she feels Bella's nose shatter under her knuckles. NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION! Or, y'know, that your sister is going to punch you in the face. But oh, how I loved writing those words.

There is blood everywhere almost immediately as Bella staggers and falls to the floor, stunned. (Clearly, as opposed to Stunned.) Quickly Narcissa tears open Bella's robes to find her wand, and then after a second's thought takes Bella's as well. (Good girl.) She stands and steps back with both wands nervously trained on Bella, as if she doesn't know what else to do.

Bella drags herself up onto her elbows, obviously conscious, but her eyes are glassy and unfocused when she looks up. "I'm right, Cissy," she says, voice thick with blood but still fanatical and arrogant.

"No, you're not." Narcissa says slowly, making a decision. "You are certainly not right about my son, and Severus has done nothing to deserve your abuse of him except play his hand better than you have played yours. Siccet." (sicco, -are [to make dry, to dry; to stanch; to drain]) She flicks her wand at Bella's face; the heavy bleeding slows to a trickle. There's nothing to be done about the mangled cartilage, though. In retrospect, I should have tacked that onto the previous sentence.

"Give me back my wand."

"No," she says again.

Snarling, Bellatrix lunges towards her feet; Narcissa steps neatly to the side and hits her sister in the back with an Incarcerous. After the ropes have done their work, she kneels on the floor and turns Bella over.

Bella spits in her face, her saliva tinged pink with blood. "Bitch," she says. Forgive her, she's a little too shaken up to come up with a proper insult at the moment.

Narcissa wipes her cheek with the sleeve of her robe. "I'm going to look for him, Bella, and you can't stop me."

"Don't be a fool; the Dark Lord commanded –"

"I don't give a thestral's arse what the Dark Lord said," Narcissa interrupts. "I will not stand idly by and allow someone else to choose the course of my life, or that of my son. I am going to find him." Oh yeah, you go, girl.

"You don't even know where to begin looking!"

"But Severus does, according to you. Tell me where to find him."

Bella clamps her jaw shut and angrily shakes her head. She's acting like a two-year-old, and I love it so fucking much.

Narcissa stands up and steps back, Crucio on the tip of her tongue, but she hesitates in the middle of raising her wand. Pain won't make her talk; try something else. (She's a smart one, my Cissy. Also I don't think she really hates Bella enough to cast Cruciatus anyway - the emotions are too muddled.) "You can't stop me leaving."

Watch me, says the glare she gets in answer.

"You can't, Bella. And the Dark Lord is not going to be pleased that you let me go."

The glare crosses the border between angry and baleful.

"But he'll be much angrier if you run off with me, won't he?" she continues.

Baleful becomes poisonous. "I am not going anywhere, Narcissa, and neither are you." You keep telling yourself that!

"Well, I don't trust you, anyway, but that's mostly beside the point. Tell me, Bella; what would Father and Grandfather Pollux say, were they to see you so ready and eager to sacrifice the end of their line to a madman?" MASTERSTROKE.

"I will not listen to this!" Bella shrieks, struggling against her bonds.

"You shall, or I swear to you that you will never leave this house again," Narcissa says flatly.

Bella stops moving and stares disbelievingly. "You can't do that."

Narcissa laughs mirthlessly. "No, I can't. But the Manor can." She twirls Bella's wand between her fingers. "Even with this, you're no match for six hundred years' worth of Malfoy protective magic, if I set it against you."

"You don't have that kind of power!"

"You know that I do. Have you forgotten so soon?" She crouches down at her sister's side. "I didn't even have my wand," she says.

Bella's eyes widen with the beginnings of fear. "You wouldn't." Yeah, I think Bella's right here. But tee hee, she isn't in any sort of position to call Narcissa's bluff.

Watch me, she thinks grimly. "I've told you before, Bella – there is nothing I wouldn't do anymore. And so help me, if you do not tell me the location of that house, you will rot in this one. I will bury you so deeply in my dungeons that the Dark Lord himself couldn't break you out with an army of giants, and nobody will ever know what happened to Bellatrix Black Lestrange." She pauses and lets that sink in for a moment before adding, "I wonder how long it will be before he writes you off as a traitorous, cowardly weakling like Draco? Like Igor? Or Regulus, even – surely you remember his crime of conscience, as you yourself killed him for it?" By far, my favorite bit of fanon is that Bellatrix killed Regulus. By far, especially since it's easily justifiable in the context of Bella's character. The only thing that even comes close is using movie!uniforms in fic, because ties are just that sexy.

Narcissa doesn't even try to fight the triumph she feels at the dejected defeat in Bella's eyes.

<mortalkombat>NARCISSA WINS. FLAWLESS VICTORY.</mortalkombat>

~ ~ ~
She Apparates to the outskirts of Dorchester just as dusk turns to twilight. Fat raindrops fall from a bruise-coloured sky, soaking her to the skin, as she half-runs towards where Bella had said Rosier Trellis (a conceit, I confess) would be. When the sprawling, beautiful house appears before her as she passes a row of overgrown dogwoods, Narcissa very nearly weeps with relief.

A winding flagstone path leads up the hill from the gardens – also overgrown, but it's hardly surprising seeing as how their mistress hasn't visited in almost fifteen years – so she follows it, and it leads her to what certainly looks like the main entrance. She hurries onto the veranda to get out of the punishing rain and dries her robes with a whispered spell.

The heavy, lacquered door with its stained-glass rose is set with a tarnished silver knocker, but she doesn't bother; Bella had told her that the estate is so well-protected that it doesn't need locks, and the house's doors will open to anyone fortunate enough to have learned its location.

Apparently she had been wrong on that count, because the door doesn't budge.

Narcissa knocks using the heavily-wrought chunk of silver, pressing her ear to the door and peering into the dark house through the lovely varicoloured rose. Nothing stirs within the house, and no lights come on; no house elves come to greet her.

No. Please, no. She begins to panic. Do you blame her?

She knocks again and again, eventually abandoning the knocker in favour of beating on the door with her fists and sobbing for Severus to open the door. She doesn't notice when the rain starts to fall in heavy windblown sheets behind her, once again turning her thin silk robe into a sodden ruin, or when the skin of her knuckles bruises and breaks. This was where this story came from. Everything else was just leading up to this tableau. Hell of a mental image, though, isn't it?

~ ~ ~
When Severus walks up the garden path, he finds Narcissa a shivering, hysterical mess of soaked robes and bloody hands, on her knees and crying brokenly before the door.

"Narcissa?"

She looks up at him from under wet eyelashes and gathers enough composure to say "Please," before going to pieces again.

He grips her forearm and pulls her to her feet; she buries her face in his robes until her crying subsides to miserable hiccoughs. She doesn't care that she looks a fright or that she's getting him all wet, and he doesn't comment.

Finally she steps back. "I beg of you, please tell me he's safe. I don't – I couldn't –"

He cuts her off by placing his fingers on her lips. "You should not be here." Severus Snape, master of the understatement.

You utter bastard! Stricken, she only stares at him. "I needed –"

"I don't know how you coerced Bellatrix into divulging this location, but it's incredibly unwise and very dangerous for you to be a single step outside the Manor –"

"Shut up! For the love of all the gods, Severus, I don't need this from you, I just…" She takes a deep, unsteady breath. "You know why I'm here."

"Because you have a death wish!" I love this line.

"Where is my son?"

He sighs. "Draco is alive, Narcissa, and for the moment he is safe. Now go, before –"

Safe, he's safe! Holding Severus' face in both her hands, she leans forward and kisses him – chastely, but with all the force of her relief and gratitude behind it.

She pulls back after a moment, blushing when she sees the way he is looking at her.

His eyes flick downward for a fraction of a second, but it's more than enough for her to realize that the rain has made the pale silk of her robes translucent and clinging; the tight points of her nipples and the shadow at the juncture of her thighs are both tantalizingly visible. Severus meets her eyes again, and then he attacks her mouth with his own. And honestly, who could blame him?

She makes a startled sound as her back hits the door. This isn't supposed to happen! she thinks as her fingers scrabble for purchase on the smooth wood behind her. He kisses her as if he's starving for her, cradling the back of her neck in one hand and resting the other on the curve of her hip.

Gasping for air, Narcissa pushes him away. "Severus, I…" She trails off. Absurdly, she thinks, What about Draco? But Severus looks at her with naked longing, his thin lips swollen and his breathing heavy, and she can't remember the last time someone looked at her like that. (Even I'm not sure why he wants her so much, when he's clearly getting ass from Draco. Maybe because she's always been unattainable before, maybe because the only other time (in my mind) that he's had her she was the emotional equivalent of a walking corpse? It's an interesting question.) "Sod it," she says, and twists a hand in the fabric of his robes so she can pull him to her.

Severus' body is lean and hard and warm against hers, and she can feel the dry roughness of his wool robe through her own filmy, dripping clothes. She twines her arms around his neck and seeks his lips again; the kiss is deep, intense, wildly sweet.

Narcissa tilts back her head and moans softly as he kisses along her jawline, his mouth searing hot against her cool skin. Water from her wet hair trickles down her neck, and he catches it by licking a long stripe up her throat. At the same moment, he covers one of her breasts with his hand and brushes his thumb over the hard peak.

She cries out, and he traces the shell of her ear with his tongue. "You're all wet, Narcissa," (ohgodtakemenow) he murmurs against her skin, and she moans again, louder this time. Severus silences her by recapturing her mouth, tongue sweeping lingeringly over her bottom lip.

His fingers deftly unfasten the row of ivory buttons at the front of her robe before parting ways, one hand opening the front of her camisole and caressing her naked breast and one slipping down to cup her mons through her knickers.

She breathes in sharply and presses her cunt into his hand. He smiles against her lips.

As Narcissa unbuttons his robes, he traces small, teasing circles over her clit through the silk; when he finally pushes aside the flimsy material, she bites down on his collarbone and they both groan in pleasure. She laves the red marks her teeth left on his skin with her tongue and reaches down to wrap her hand around his cock.

"Fuck," he chokes out, and he kisses her again, thrusting jerkily into the circle of her fingers and sliding two long fingers into her in time with his movements. "You're wet everywhere, aren't you?"

She shudders at that, squeezing his cock and hooking her leg around his thighs. "Gods, yes." He pulls his fingers from her cunt, leaving a wet trail over her knickers as she shifts, and then his erection is pressing bluntly against her entrance.

He whispers a spell, and her underclothes disappear, leaving her naked but for the wet ruin clinging to her shoulders, and then Severus pushes forward, head falling forward to rest on her shoulder. Narcissa cries out sharply as he fills her. The feel of it is overwhelming – the soaking wet silk at her back gliding against the hard wood of the door, the rough wool of Severus' own robes rasping the sensitive skin of her breasts, the velvet heat of his cock moving inside her. Mmm, porn. I like what I did with the contrast of sensations here.

She clutches at his shoulders and wraps her other leg around him, completely giving herself over to his rhythm and trusting that he won't let her fall. He sinks his teeth into the muscle between her neck and her shoulder, but he takes her weight.

Time seems to stop when he slips a hand between their bodies; Narcissa can't tell if it's a minute or an age before she comes undone under his fingers, the gentle cadence of the rain drowned out by the roar of blood in her ears.

As she spirals down from her orgasm she draws him into another deep kiss, whispering, "Come for me," against his lips. (God, sexiest mental picture ever.) He obeys with a cry, gripping her hips and shuddering his release before leaning heavily against her.

They stay like that for a moment, spent and panting with his weight pressing her into the door, before Severus lays his hand on the wood and mutters a string of spells Narcissa does not recognize. Abruptly, the door swings open behind her.

She instinctively clings more tightly to his body, but relaxes when he wraps an arm about her waist to support her.

The foyer is dark, but the lamps set in sconces that line the walls flare to life as soon as they cross the threshold. She twists around to see where they are going, and her breath catches at the beauty of the large, airy room. "Oh," she says, entranced.

"Lovely, isn't it?" he murmurs, setting her down on a table conveniently placed to the side of the hall. "Your sister is justifiably protective of such a place."

Bella. Oh, no. Narcissa pulls her wand from her sleeve, stands, and dries her robes and hair, blushing as she does up the buttons over her naked body. (I don't think I like her blushing, honestly. She's a little too worldly for that.) "We can't stay here. Bella is…" likely to murder me as soon as she can find me "…not pleased with me, I fear." She Vanishes the puddle on the floor and sits on the tabletop again.

As Severus sets his own clothes to rights, he says, "It would take her a month to break the wards I've put up, and that's only because she rightfully owns its Secret; nobody else could even begin to touch them. You're quite safe, I assure you."

Narcissa looks down. "You don't know what I did," she says darkly.

"You have directly disobeyed an order from the Dark Lord, and you pried a Secret from her which she was no doubt loath to share. If there's anything else that could make her angry beyond those, I confess myself impressed if you have managed it." She feels his eyes studying her, and then he gently tilts her face towards him by lifting her chin. "I am perplexed, however, as to why." I see Severus' wanting to know everyone else's motivations as an expression of the complexity of his own. And look, he's being polite again by asking instead of just finding out.

But Cissy doesn't know that, heh. She avoids his questioning gaze. "My son –"

"That isn't what I meant, Narcissa." His grip on her chin tightens almost imperceptibly.

She takes a deep breath and looks straight into his eyes. "I refuse to be powerless any longer, Severus."

He gives her a half-smile. "Only the greatest of fools would ever think you were."

She returns it. "Don't speak that way about my sister."

"While Bellatrix has been incredibly foolish of late, I wasn't referring to her." He pauses. "What did you do to her?"

Narcissa grimaces. "I hit her."

Severus arches a dark brow. "How very Muggle of you." Possibly my favorite way of imagining how Harry defeats Tom involves Muggle means of some sort. Breaking the Horcruxes and then shooting him in the head, something of that nature. I doub it'll happen that way, though, because even though JKR has set herself up for it nicely - Muggles being another force that Tom disdains - she actually seems to be pretty squeamish about the physical violence.

"Yes, well, she had my wand, so I had very few options. I broke her nose." She looks at her hands, washed clean by the rainwater but still bruised and abraded, and begins to tap each of her knuckles in turn with her wand to charm the contusions away. "And then I left her tied up in the library." Bellatrix, in the library, with the lead pipe. (Sorry.)

He sits down next to her on the table, and neither says anything for awhile (well, what is there to say, really), both lost in thought.

Narcissa finally breaks the silence. "I want to see him, Severus."

"It isn't safe for either of you."

"I am more than willing to accept the risk."

He gives her a sidelong glance. "In a few days, perhaps. Not now."

"A loyal Death Eater would have said 'no,' I think."

"If I see one, I shall be sure to find out for certain." Oh, you snarky, snarky bastard. I love you so much.

She bites her lip. "Severus."

"Yes?"

"I don't care whose side you're on, so long as you keep him safe."

Severus doesn't reply.

"I don't care if you're sleeping with him, either, so long as he doesn't get hurt."

He sighs. "Somebody always does, Narcissa."

"Don't break his heart just because Lucius broke yours." SEVERUS/LUCIUS COMES FROM FUCKING NOWHERE! It's actually kind of creepy that he's slept with the whole family, isn't it? And yet I can't think it's creepy because it's just too hot. Snape's a little black dress, pairing-wise, anyway.

Smirking, he replies, "I always wondered if you knew."

"Do give me a little credit for knowing what goes on in my own house." Ever the lady, my Narcissa.

"Indeed."

Another moment of silence passes. "I miss him," Narcissa says. And she does, too. She wouldn't have been so quick to defend him to Bellatrix in "Spinner's End" if she didn't. I think she sees this...dalliance, for lack of a better word, as a necessary evil - her heart belongs to Lucius, and her fierce protectiveness of Draco is an expression of that, as well as a compulsion in its own right.

"I'm not doing this for Lucius," he says quietly. And therein lies the main thing I was getting at with this story - I don't even think Severus knows precisely why he's doing what he's doing; his loyalties and emotions are so fucked up and have been for so long that I think he's just trying to manage all of the damage that has been done. My Severus isn't this Machiavellian super-spy creature that I think JKR's presentation of him forces us to believe he is; he's entirely too human for that.

I do, however, think that he loves Narcissa a little, and Draco a lot (although I think that Dumbledore, even after Severus killed him, is still the primary force in Severus' life). At the very least, he wants to keep them safe, even if caring for them stands in the way of the master plan he knows he's a part of. I want to think of him that way, at least.

She nods. "I know." I don't know who you are doing it for, but it's certainly not my husband. That aside was unnecessary.

Severus rubs at his temple and looks as if he wants to say something, but instead he gets up and makes for one of the myriad of doors that open into the main hallway. "I'd advise against it, but tell me if you wish to leave so that I can reset the wards behind you."

"Thank you." For everything.

He snorts. "Don't thank me, Narcissa. I only opened the door." (See how much he respects her? I love that about him.) He gestures toward a hallway that branches off to the right. "There are guest suites that way. Pick one." And in a swirl of black wool, he's gone.

Narcissa takes a deep breath and goes to choose a room. There have to be some decent robes around here somewhere; these are positively ruined.

She smiles when the first door opens into a parlor elegantly draped in green and gold. Aaaaaaaaaaaaand we come full-circle setting-wise.

~ ~ ~
Late that night, Narcissa's Mark heats suddenly, a sure sign that Draco's three days' grace has run out.

A black-robed Severus finds her curled up in a chair in her sitting room, dressed in a dove-grey brocade dressing gown, cornsilk hair streaming down her shoulders. She looks up from the book open in her lap at his knock, smiles briefly, and then turns back to her reading. I thought it was important to allow her to play the ice queen again at the end - we basically see two different people in canon (Quidditch Cup and Madam Malkin's Cissy, and "Spinner's End" Cissy), and I had to have both of them appear in this story. Here she's in control again, and that suits her.

"Well, I suppose that answers that," he mutters, turning to go.

"Severus," she says, and he stops.

"What is it?"

"Be careful of Bella; she'll be out for blood, and I don't know whether she'd prefer yours or mine right now." I can just hear her saying this - her tone just this side of disinterest, not looking up from her book. Mmm, I love her.

He smirks. "I have played this game a time or two, you know." There's that snark again. Although Severus is different in this final scene, as well; Narcissa's betrayal of her sister to save her son puts her in a similar position to the one he's in - playing the odds and hoping like hell that everything turns out all right. And I think that having her know that his loyalties are more complex than anyone else would guess, even if she doesn't know the full extent of his treachery to Tom, would put him a little at peace as well. There's strength in kinship working, here.

"Nobody is beyond reproach, not even you. Please be careful."

"Duly noted."

She turns a page. "Will you see Draco when you're through?"

"Almost certainly."

"Do tell him to stay out of trouble, won't you?"

He inclines his head politely and takes his leave.

Narcissa doesn't watch him go. And there's the real difference - in the beginning, she's waiting frantically for someone else to tell her what the fuck is going on. Here, she knows that she and Draco are both safe, and that Severus can take care of himself - she has no reason to be anxious. She's free.

And I like her that way.