From HellChapter 6By Pigwidgeon37Lucius Malfoy is duly admired. Christmas at Hogwarts is not as merry as it should be. These men are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—shepherds who feed only themselves. (Jude, 1:12)
Narcissa Malfoy was sitting in her favourite salon—the cosy one, furnished in English country style, in the north-eastern corner of the manor—reading Sense and Sensibility, silently wondering whether those nineteenth-century Muggle girls ever got sex and whether it was likely to have been even half-decent, when she heard a knock at the door. She didn’t really like being disturbed when she had retired to her private haunt, but on the other hand Lucius knew that perfectly well and always respected her wishes. If he had come to intrude upon her isolation, it had to be important. “Come in!” she called and closed her book. The smile on her husband’s face told her better than words could have that he had finally finished, and successfully finished, his research. “It’s nice to see that that crease between your brows is not permanent,” she said, “And it’s even nicer to see that you haven’t forgotten how to smile. I take it that you have been successful, then?” She quite liked it when Lucius was in one of his more ebullient moods. Although they had long ago established that being married didn’t automatically mean you might abandon all forms of politeness you used even with perfect strangers, he had been unusually formal these last days. She knew, of course, that this behaviour was due to the stress he was under, but to see him like this, striding towards her with that boyish look on his face, like a child that had a special surprise in store for its mother, always moved her heart. Narcissa held her hands out to him, and found herself lifted out of her chair and into his arms in the next second. “Yes!” he whispered and squeezed her to him, “Yes, I did it. I have the recipe and I think it works. Do you think you might deign to listen to an incredibly boring account of what I found out and how?” “You know exactly that I can’t wait to hear it. But I might prefer to do so in a slightly more comfortable position, maybe even without having my ribs broken. Do you think you could manage that?” His grip loosened instantly. “Oh, sorry, ma petite. It was just the enthusiasm…” They sat down, side by side, on the large Chesterfield sofa, and she leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder. “I think I am comfortable now. And ready to listen to the tale of your exploits.” Lucius placed a kiss on the top of her head and began. “You see, it was clear right from the beginning that the Faunus Draught was ideal for my purposes. The question was how to make it undetectable and how to make it work exactly at the moment we want it to. I already told you about the Demiguise blood—”
“You did indeed, and I already admired you for it. I will admire you again, if that is what you secretly crave.” He chuckled. “Ah, Narcissa, what would I do without a wife who subtly reminds me of my shortcomings? However, I was just starting from the beginning. And I have to admit that I stumbled across the Demiguise blood by mere luck, leafing though the library catalogue. Blessed be Guillaume de Malefoi’s blackened soul for his insatiable curiosity about magical beasts. He was a pervert and a lunatic, but who else would have made those experiments? Let alone described them in minute detail? What you don’t know, though, is that the Demiguise blood really does make potions undetectable.” “How did you come by that certainty?” Narcissa asked, reclining her head so that she was looking at his face. He kissed the corner of her mouth. “It is too tediously prosaic—you wouldn’t want to know.” “You only say that when you know exactly that I would like to know. Who did you test it on?” “Well, the first victim is pretty obvious.” “The Weasleys?” “Exactly. The Weasleys. Those fumbling amateurs at St. Mungo’s still can’t believe that their patients obviously caught the plague, or rather that they are showing its symptoms, without being actually infected. Did I ever tell you how much I like the way your ears move upwards when you giggle?” “Too fast for you to catch?” “I don’t think so,” he muttered, trapping her earlobe between his lips and giving a gentle bite. “But I had to test it more than once, of course, to be absolutely sure. Unfortunately, I could not use the Faunus Draught—Snape has to remain the only case of unaccounted-for hormonal madness. We cannot afford the risk of anybody putting two and two together. On the other hand, the Dementia Potion belongs to the same category, they differ only very slightly from each other, and so it was the next best choice. Thus, I took the liberty of administering it…”
He smiled down at her and continued teasing her ear. “Oh, come on, Lucius, tell me!” “Guess!” “Mmh… let me see… McNair?” He clucked his tongue. “Now, really! Do you honestly think there would be a notable difference?” When she had recovered from her fit of laughter, she said, “No, I don’t think so. Well, then… It had to be somebody with whom you could have a drink without raising suspicions… and who isn’t too normal… Not Alan?” “The very one. He’s been somewhat unstable these last times—although, if I had gambled away my fortune, so would I, probably—and he was so very grateful for getting my undivided attention for his astonishingly insignificant problems. Being the solicitous friend that I am, I was most preoccupied on his behalf and accompanied him when he was transported to St. Mungo’s.” “I’ve always known that you were a worthy… member of the wizarding society,” she purred, her hand creeping to his crotch. “Narcissa Malfoy, uncrowned queen of the double entendre… Well, as I said, I went there with Alan, deeply worried about his mental sanity. Henderson was on duty, so of course I asked him to see to Alan personally… do all the tests…”
“The result of which was nil, I suppose.” “Indeed. The effect will have worn off by tomorrow, I should say. Well, at least he didn’t spend any money for three days in a row, which is a first unless memory fails me. If I had a conscience, it would be soothed by that thought.” Narcissa gave him a worried look. “I hope you aren’t implying that you’re in any danger of developing one! That would be most unsettling.” Laughing, he shook his head. “That should be the least of your worries.” She let out a sigh of relief. “I am relieved to hear it. But there’s more, I presume?” “Always so impatient… But yes, there is, of course, more. You do remember, don’t you, that the potion has to be keyed to that Granger Mudblood.” “Yes,” she said, “And please don’t tell me that you need one of her hairs or something like that. It would annoy me to no end if Draco had to pluck that goose!” Lucius just smiled at her. “You found another way, then?” “Yes, I did. This, my dear, would be the ideal moment for unbridled admiration.” Narcissa gave a throaty laugh. “First let me hear it.” “Fine,” he sighed, “This is what the world has come to. My own wife denies me unconditional worship. Well, then, if you insist… You know the Fetish Curse, of course?” “How could I not know it? Remember when you put it on Pettigrew, so that he asked Lord Voldemort for a pair of his socks, preferably dirty?” “Yes, that was indeed quite a brilliant idea,” Lucius agreed, smiling fondly at the recollection of Voldemort’s astonishment that had quickly turned into fury. Not that he counted Pettigrew as a rival—this was a label he only attached to people he deemed his equals, thus the category was about as peopled as the Inner Antarctic—but it was always fun to see vermin trodden upon without having to soil his own shoes. “However,” he continued, “I had the even more brilliant idea of using it to… er, customize the Faunus Draught. The addition of yet another ingredient might have altered its effect, so the curse was better anyway. It will be activated the moment Severus sees the girl’s name written on a piece of parchment.” Frowning, Narcissa looked up at him, her expression slightly bewildered. “But what if he has finished grading homework before we can give him the potion? You know how obsessed he is with getting the tiresome part of his work done as soon as possible. What if—”
“No, no, ma petite,” Lucius said, putting a finger on her lips to silence her, “No, I have thought of another way. And that’s exactly where our son comes in…” <><><>°<><><> Another Merry Christmas. It had started to creep up towards him on last year’s Boxing Day, so slowly at first that he almost couldn’t see it was moving, and from the start of fall term onwards, it had increased its speed. In the early morning of 25 December, it had obviously succeeded in pouncing on him and biting off his head. Right new, his head was being chewed… Severus opened his eyes and groaned. Merry Christmas took a healthy bite out of his skull. His eyes clamped shut again, and he fumbled blindly for the vial on his nightstand that contained a powerful painkilling potion, found and opened it and downed the contents in one gulp. It tasted pleasantly of peppermint and aloe—an additional touch he had added for his own sake. Of course you could take potions just as they came out of the cauldron, which meant that most of them tasted horribly. But if you were a skilled Potions Master, you could vastly improve the taste. Difficult but feasible. Not something he would do for anybody else. The satisfaction of seeing the others grimace, of telling them that, the viler it tasted, the better it worked, was far too great. Nothing and nobody could have made him put eucalyptus leaves into Lupin’s wolfsbane potion—it would have taken all the fun out of watching the werewolf grimace and almost retch with disgust every time he took it. And he had to watch, didn’t he? Make sure that dear old wolfie took his remedy. Anyway, the next full moon was only in two weeks’ time, and today was Christmas day. With undisguised horror, he had looked at the list of students remaining at Hogwarts over the holidays. There were only eleven of them. For once, he would have wanted more of them to be around, for the presence of less than fifteen meant that the House Tables were banished from the Great Hall, so that they were all sitting together at a large, round table in the centre of the room, teachers alternating with students, like one big, happy family. Draco and his two mountain trolls were staying. Those three at least were not likely to give him any trouble. Unless he counted watching Crabbe and Goyle devour their food as trouble. Which it probably was, aesthetically speaking. Granger…
He groaned. If Dumbledore had the gall of actually putting that know-it-all brat next to him, he was going to cast a Hiccoughing Hex on the Headmaster. And certainly not a weak one. The Weasley girl. Well, she was quite easy to subdue. Cherry Beanstock from Hufflepuff. No problems there—she was a fourth-year and could be silenced with a single glare; the same went for Hannah-Insipidly-Pigtailed-Abbot. And four fifth-year Ravenclaws, almost as mentally deranged as Granger, for they had gotten it into their heads that the Christmas holidays were best used for studying for the O.W.L.S. But Granger… It wasn’t that she asked him stupid questions; on the contrary, she was really, really bright. He just loathed her way of asking them, and her timing. Why couldn’t the girl get it through her thick skull that he, much like everybody else, wanted to have his holy peace while eating breakfast? Or lunch or dinner, whatever. If Dumbledore placed her next to him…
His headache was gone. It had been more of a hangover, though. A pre-Christmas hangover—Lucius always claimed that you didn’t get them from Laphroaig’s Very Ancient. Well, he had been proven wrong. Provided you drank a sufficient quantity, it did give you a hangover, and quite a spectacular one at that. Only Dumbledore was not likely to accept that as an excuse for missing breakfast on Christmas day. It couldn’t be helped, he had to get out of his bed. With a sigh, Severus sat up and swung his legs over the edge. His ankle hit a pointed object. Merry Christmas indeed. Bending forward to rub the injured spot—he was a little out of practice pain-wise, due to Voldemort’s reluctance to cast energy-consuming curses—he peered down to have a first and last glance at what exactly he was going to incinerate. With a groan, he fell back on the mattress. Presents, of course. To judge by the somewhat unconventional wrapping—reindeers fornicating happily while Santa Claus, sprawled in the snow, gulped down bottles of liquor, and that was only what he did with his left hand, Snape noticed with a start—his ankle was now sore because of Dumbledore. It rhymed, and it figured. And he couldn’t get rid of his anger by turning the offensive object into ashes immediately; he had to open it first. Covering his eyes with his left hand, he pointed his wand at the parcel and pronounced “Aperio!” With a soft rustle, the ribbon and paper undid themselves and the lid flew off a cardboard box. He swallowed. Better be done with it now… Cautiously he peered at the open box through his fingers. <><><>°<><><> “I really can’t see why Ron is allowed to go to Egypt while I have to stay here.” Thirty-nine. When she said it for the fiftieth time, Hermione thought grimly, Ginny would hate her mother for having taught her the use of human language. “Because you’re young, pretty and red-haired,” she repeated—she always used the same answer; there seemed to be absolutely no point in finding another one, as Ginny just wanted to wail, not to hear reason. “And Christmas is a time of peace, not a time for fending off hormonal nomads offering camels in exchange for you. Or whatever it is they offer nowadays,” she added as an afterthought. “I could have used an uglifying spell,” Ginny objected stubbornly. “Yes,” Hermione said, in complete exasperation, “you could. But for some weird reason, your parents didn’t want you to or didn’t think of the possibility. Come on now, I’m hungry and want my breakfast.” “Would serve them right if I started an affair with Malfoy just out of boredom,” Ginny muttered, pushing open the door to the Great Hall. “Oh, look, Hermione, I think Professor Dumbledore is in serious trouble.” The Heads of Gryffindor and Slytherin were looming over the Headmaster, both glowering with anger, while Dumbledore was paying more attention to his breakfast than to them. “Look, both of you,” he said, putting down his knife and fork and raising his palms in a gesture of innocence and helplessness, “I already told you that it was the House Elves’ fault.” “So why do I have difficulties believing that?” the Potions Master asked through clenched teeth. “I would have sincerely doubted Christmas could climb any higher on my list of unbearabilities—”
“Is that really a word?” Dumbledore inquired, squinting up at Snape, “I have to look it up immediately after breakfast. For if it is, my Scrabble score—Ah!” he interrupted himself, “Good morning, children! Happy Christmas. Have a seat and enjoy your breakfast!” Ginny and Hermione looked at each other uncomfortably and, acknowledging they had no choice but to follow the Headmaster’s invitation, moved slowly towards the table. “Merry Christmas,” Hermione said, peering anxiously at the still-fuming Heads of House, “Where is everybody else, Headmaster?” Dumbledore was chewing on a bite of bacon and eggs with a look of utter ecstasy on his face, and thus Snape snatched the opportunity of venting his anger at a perfectly innocent victim. “The other two faculty members who were forced to stay at Hogwarts when they probably had other, and more interesting pastimes to pursue than keeping an incessant watch on unruly students whose behaviour is excused by the ridiculous pretext of Christmas High Spirits, are Professors Sprout and Flitwick, who have already finished their breakfast. As for said students, I suppose they have not yet degenerated into mere automats unable to adapt their habits to the situation and thus are still able to sleep longer during the holidays.” Hermione, who assumed that the bit about mere automats was an insult directed at her, swallowed and merely nodded. Ginny tried to glare at the Potions Master, but it was like trying to stop an enraged hippogriff by throwing a breadcrumb at it. Hit by Snape’s vicious stare, she gave a small mewling sound and tried to duck behind Hermione. “Sleeping late, one of the benefits of the holidays,” Dumbledore agreed, “Now why don’t you sit down? Miss Granger, do take the seat at my right side, and Miss Weasley, here at my left. You, Severus, would be most comfortable at Miss Granger’s right, I think, and you, Minerva, at Miss Weasley’s left. If we sit too far apart from each other, passing the teapot becomes such a tiresome affair, doesn’t it?” In fact, the whole breakfast proved to be rather tiresome and very, very tense. Hermione wasn’t sure what exactly had happened to drive Snape to new heights of vindictiveness, but the answer he barked at her when she tried to involve him into a discussion about Xavier Kuentzli’s essay in the latest issue of Potions & Draughts was so discouraging that she didn’t make any further attempts at polite conversation. Ginny didn’t fare much better with McGonagall, as far as she could see, and so the two girls finished their breakfast rather hastily and left the table with a muttered excuse about having to write to their families. “I’ve never seen McGonagall in such a bad mood,” Ginny said when the doors of the Great Hall had finally closed behind them. “I wonder what happened to make her so angry. And Snape…” She shuddered. “He was worse than ever. I thought he would bite your head off when you talked to him.” “Mmh,” Hermione agreed, chewing her lip, “I tried to cheer him up by talking about an interesting new approach to Truth Potions. But if even that fails to make him any friendlier… I mean, potions is what he lives for, after all… Maybe it was just professional jealousy, anyway, for I mentioned that Swiss researcher, Kuentzli. But if every meal is going to be like this, I’ll have developed an ulcer by the end of the holidays. Just what I needed to make my life even more enjoyable.” <><><>°<><><> Once again, her thoughts were surprisingly similar to those of the Potions Master while he stalked back to his quarters, trying to piece together the remaining shreds of his dignity. It didn’t help that he now knew about Minerva’s guilty little secret—although he had to admit that he would never have imagined her to read the Victor Vanderbilt The Vicious Vice-Consul series; in fact, it opened an alluring array of new possibilities of teasing her. This unexpected insight would have lightened his mood considerably, had it not been counterbalanced, or rather outweighed, by the consciousness that McGonagall now knew that he was fond of Muggle comics, something he regarded as an unforgivable weakness he would never have admitted to anybody. Dumbledore had found out by mere chance—well, make that shameless intrusion into his private space—and seemed to have made a point d’honneur of finding the most outlandish varieties to bestow upon his Potions Master every Christmas. Despite the Headmaster’s protests that it had been the House Elves who had unfortunately mixed up their gifts—and the wrapping paper the Headmaster had chosen for his deputy’s gift posed more than one question Snape didn’t really want an answer to—he was more inclined to believe that it had been a deliberate prank the old man had played on them. With a sigh of relief, he closed the door to his quarters behind him, ready to spend the rest of the morning excogitating biting insults he could throw at the students during lunch. A loud hoot coming from his bedroom attracted his attention, and he was anything but pleased to see a large eagle owl with a letter tied to its right foot sit on the bedspread, trying to pick threads from the fabric. Given its insolent behaviour, it could only belong to Lucius Malfoy. His deduction was proved right when he untied the letter that turned out to be an invitation for dinner on Boxing Day. Snape groaned and briefly reflected whether he should feed the unmannerly bird a mouse laced with slow-acting poison, just to spite Lucius. He decided against it, though, and limited himself to scribbling “A.A.D.”—Accepté Avec Dégoût (A/N: accepted with disgust)—on the bottom left corner, reattached the parchment to the owl’s leg and told it in unmistakeable terms to leave the premises. <><><>°<><><> During their first year, Harry had told them—and Hermione still remembered it very well—about Dumbledore’s complaint regarding his Christmas presents: everybody always gave him books when in reality he would have liked socks. Sitting on her bed, a neat stack of brand-new volumes beside her, wrapping paper and all the other detritus—inevitable side-effect of unpacking—already banished into the dustbin, Hermione thought that she understood the venerable wizard better than she would have wanted to. She was a human being, for God’s sake, not a bookshelf. Did people really think she wanted nothing but books? Was that the image she conveyed to them? That she was completely devoid of anything human and warm and fuzzy that might have been overjoyed and really, really happy with something like… well, what? What would she have liked to receive instead? What did she do besides reading and studying? Could she even think of another pastime? Burying her face in her hands, Hermione began to cry. Snape, that insufferable, sarcastic, cynical, bloody-minded old bat, had been right. She had become an automat. Worse, a computer, which unfeelingly accepted whatever information it was fed and did whatever it was told. The only quality that still distinguished her from a computer was that she had to eat and sleep—no, cancel that. Even a computer fed on electricity. Sleep—well, in a kind of way, computers needed that, too. You couldn’t leave them switched on forever and ever, now could you? So, the only thing that made her different from a computer was that she could cry. Which wasn’t much, come to think of it. Neither much nor particularly desirable. And worst of all, she couldn’t think of doing anything else but functioning exactly as her makers—read: parents and Hogwarts staff—desired. It was horrible. She was horrible. And she was only eighteen. People were supposed to have that sort of crisis at age forty, not eighteen. It wasn’t called midlife crisis for nothing. Therefore, she either had to accept that she wasn’t going to live beyond 2016—not that the thought greatly disturbed her unless her life changed dramatically—or she had to do something about it. Now. Considering that to work up the courage to go to Dumbledore didn’t seem to be an option, at least not right now, she had to start with something smaller. Small steps, that was the solution. She could try and remember what she had liked to do in her leisure time before she had turned into such an insufferable nerd, for example. Maybe there was something she could work on. Rekindle the spark, so to speak. After attaching a note to her door to tell Ginny she didn’t want to be disturbed until further notice, she sat down at her desk with a sheet of parchment, quill and ink, and, staring out into the grey masses of fog, began to wrack her brain for childhood memories. This was going to be hard work. <><><>°<><><> “Thank you for another lesson in human anatomy, although I’m not quite sure whether human is the right adjective,” Draco drawled, his face a disgusted grimace. “Honestly, Goyle, I think you’re the only human being—with all due reservations concerning the adjective—that manages to burp on nothing but tea and toast. Haven’t your parents taught you any manners before you left that flea-infested hole you call a house? And why are you eating only tea and toast, by the way? If it has to do something with your digestive processes, I don’t want to know, though.” Goyle slowly raised his head, making Draco think that, if ugliness alone could petrify the beholder, the Heir of Slytherin wouldn’t have needed to use a basilisk to wreak havoc during their second year. “I’m on a diet,” Goyle said placidly. Of all the absurd answers… “You’re on a what? And since when?” Crabbe snorted. “He wants to stuff himself silly tonight, so he’s trying to get famished.” “Ah,” Draco said, his eyebrows shooting up, “That seems to be an entirely new definition of the concept of diet. Very interesting. I take it that you have no such intentions, or do you, Crabbe?” Crabbe shook his head. “Why should I? My capacibility—” “Capacity, Crabbe, it’s capacity. You don’t sound more intelligent if you try to use longer words, especially if non-existent.” Draco’s interjection was waved away by a large hand that looked like a cross between a pizza for six and a black poodle. “Whatever. What I wanted to say is that I can eat as much as I want whenever I want. No problems there.” To judge from how he felt after merely three hours in those morons’ company, Draco supposed that by tomorrow night his brain would have been reduced to a glibbery green mass. He hadn’t yet opened his presents. They would have to be really, really good in order to make up for this intellectual Calvary. “I know, Crabbe, I know,” he sighed, “The narrow confines of your mental horizon are made of sausages and Christmas pudding. No need to remind me. I’m going to open my presents now.” Still shaking his head at the sheer amount of dumbness that never failed to hit him like a fist—only today he was exposed to it in undiluted form, so to say—he left the common room where the House Elves had served their breakfast and went down the stairs towards the seventh year boys’ dormitory. The pile of presents at the foot end of his bed was impressive, and he couldn’t resist grinning broadly. The grin left his face only when he opened one of the smaller parcels containing a sweets box with a red lid. So his father needed his help after all. Draco put a locking spell on the door—his father had taught him quite a lot of them, and to break even the easiest of them would have taken Crabbe and Goyle the better part of the holidays—opened the box and, after pronouncing the appropriate spell, unfolded the parchment sitting among the assorted champagne truffles. While he perused the missive the grin returned to his face. It was definitely more evil than before. |