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The Masque	By : ElectricAndroid Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male Views: 1127 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Title: The Masque 1 of 6 (~3000 words)

Pairing: Snape/Bill

BETA'D

A/N: Posted for scribbulus_ink's
Classic Cannon challenge. I chose The Ballade of Reading Gaol by Oscar
Wilde - a 4000 word poem.

A/N2: There is no way that I can possibly thank my beta bathyspheres
enough for this. She tweaked my rambling prose into something exquisite, and
I'm in awe of her help. Thank you so very very much.

The Masque 1 of 6

I

He did not wear his scarlet coat,

For blood and wine are red,

And blood and wine were on his hands

When they found him with the dead,

The poor dead woman whom he loved,

And murdered in her bed.

They had found her body as the sun eked its way over the horizon, blood red,
and somehow making the room look less terrible, the deep shimmering spatters on
wall and window combining with the sultry beams to achieve the effect of a
brothel rather than a murder. That changed when Arthur parted the curtains, and
found his eldest in a coma and the body of his youngest, his tiny baby girl,
beheaded next to him, defiled and obscene.

The spell was reversed.

Bill was to hang for the rape and murder of his twenty year old sister.

He walked amongst the Trial Men

In a suit of shabby grey;

A cricket cap was on his head,

And his step seemed light and gay;

But I never saw a man who looked

So wistfully at the day.

He wandered around the courtyard, a single red head starting up at the sky, not
proud or defiant, merely curious, basking in the heat of the midday sun.
Severus could see the emotion writhing on his face and his hopes in the lines
etched around his mouth. He knew why Bill was there, and why the lines and
grime encased in there were so prevalent in his young face. A
thirty year old man, defiling his sister, defiling himself. And yet Bill
was hope � hope to the prisons with their ramshackle feet stumbling through the
dirt, afraid to look up at the sky and see everything that they were missing.
Bill basked in the purity of the sky, reflected his Gryffindor brightness into
a place of no hope. For once, Severus felt his spirits rise above the usual
despair. Maybe there was something to live for out there. Maybe, hope was not
yet dead.

I never saw a man who looked

With such a wistful eye

Upon that little tent of blue

Which prisoners call the sky,

And at every drifting cloud that went

With sails of silver by.

They sit in fettered rows, ball and chain, gang to gang on the hard wood
planks, and shovel food meaninglessly into gaping mechanical maws. In and out
the forks go, gobbets of flesh sliding down slippery throats. There is no
appreciation for this swill � Severus could not bring himself to offer it to
Potter himself � and he knows that the stench will pervade his carelessly cut
cassock. A fly buzzes past him, and he follows its flickering path.

His eyes land on a shock of red, illuminated by beams of light passing through
cracked and barred windows. It is a tableau of beauty, the rows of bowed and
busy mouths leading towards this pinnacle of hallowed beauty. Bill is all the
more pure in the reflection of his surroundings. He is all the more clear as compared
to the fetid dankness around him. Bill is the light in that stale room, and as
a few more set of eyes fix upon him, Severus understands that if Bill were to
stand up now and lead a revolution, they would follow. Bill is hope.

I walked, with other souls in pain,

Within another ring,

And was wondering if the man had done

A great or little thing,

When a voice behind me whispered low,

'THAT FELLOW'S GOT TO SWING.'

Lucius corners Severus after the meal, tilting his cap in a condescending
fashion as he proceeds to state, in the most explicit
fashion, the myriad crimes of William Weasley. Lucius can always gather
information. His name and fortune have whipped the populace into subservience
for long enough to have ingrained itself on their psyches. Yet Lucius also
follows Bill lingeringly with his eyes, pauses to let the young man pass
through the gate, his face lighting up, years removed, as Bill thanks him.
Severus hates to think of what his own face looks like in the darkness, as Bill
turns round and mutters �Professor.� As the warders prod him back towards his
cell, Severus rolls the word around.

�Professor.� How could a single acknowledgement
engender such hope?

Dear Christ! the very prison walls

Suddenly seemed to reel,

And the sky above my head became

Like a casque of scorching steel;

And, though I was a soul in pain,

My pain I could not feel.

Severus sits in his dank cell, the walls of the prison closing in upon him.
They are crumbling at the corners, and the apathy that they symbolize gives
little incentive to his plans for escape. He lies back on the flea-infested
mattress, and waits for the warder to come around and bolt him in for the
night.

Lucius is as always in the cell on his left � the incessant humming of operatic
arias alerts him to this. The quiet clang of the cell to his right indicates
the presence of the ubiquitous McNair. Nothing like the sound
of a skull on metal to brighten one�s day.

The pacing of the warders in double-time alerts
Severus that something less than normal is going on. As the cell door slams
shut in the opposite wall, he knows that William Weasley has been placed in
front of him. Part of him curses his fate: this familiarity is bound to lead to
contempt, and his last bastion of hope may founder. Part of him thanks the
powers that be for replacing a blank wall with a colored panorama of light.

Not wishing to face this, he rolls towards the wall. As his eyes fall shut, he
sees a red haired man, sitting on a cot, looking wistfully out of his window.

I only knew what hunted thought

Quickened his step, and why

He looked upon the garish day

With such a wistful eye;

The man had killed the thing he loved,

And so he had to die.

All through the day Severus hears the twisted mutterings of rebellion, and the
staccato beats of the gossips on the gutters, communicating information about
this newest inmate. He tries to turn a blind eye, attempts to remove himself
one step from the man whose nights he would be sharing without repose or
solitude, whose form would be the alpha and the omega of his day, who sighs and
sounds would lacquer his dreams in a new coat of noise, the ceaseless cacophony
of the prison house. Severus wants to keep the mystery, preserve the beauty of
that pale skin pure in his mind. He does not want to think of the crimes, but
rather on the unadulterated joy which the sight of that carrot-topped body
brings to him as he whips around in the morning, hair dripping onto corroded
concrete. He wants the unsullied beauty of a sunset to remain pristine. He
wants his last thought at night to be of the blood red rays as they match
Bill�s hair.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,

By each let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!

Severus knows that he is not a good man. Never has been. Not as awful as those
hypocritical Marauders, no chance of that, but not a good man. He has killed
too many people, broken too many hearts and hoped to ever be considered good.
Every last iota of help and love has been lavished on him, and no one else is
going to extend a forgiving hand. Every iota of self punishment has been
brought down on him; he has beaten himself into the ground on countless
occasions. He is a tortured soul. A cripple in all but the physical sense, and
he fully acknowledges this. Sometimes he sits back in
bed, watching the beams of light through the slatted windows, and thinks back
on all his mistakes, trying to catalogue which one brought him here, which one
was the final step on this disastrous path. Which betrayal cut the most, which
choices he could make differently now in hindsight. He always draws a blank.
Unlike the blessed, courageous and brave, he has had only one path open to him.
He made his choices to survive. How ironic that they should result in this
limbo, facing death.

Some kill their love when they are young,

And some when they are old;

Some strangle with the hands of Lust,

Some with the hands of Gold:

The kindest use a knife, because

The dead so soon grow cold.

It was not his first time with the Death Eaters � he knows this. To deny Lucius
would have been death, to deny Voldemort, a fate worse than that. There is only
so much a human body can take, Severus knows, he has experimented with the very
line between sanity and madness, between torture and death, too often to count.
Though he stills sees nothing intrinsically wrong in this accumulation of data,
he is loath to admit that he might have overstepped the bounds of prurient interest.
Looking at Bill, thinking of the countless people tortured that might have been
him, or might have lead to his demise, he shudders. Well, in the end did he not
turn, did he not give himself back to Albus. He quashes the voice that reminds
him of how little difference that sacrifice made.

Some love too little, some too long,

Some sell, and others buy;

Some do the deed with many tears,

And some without a sigh:

For each man kills the thing he loves,

Yet each man does not die.

His second encounter was much worse than his first, because he was so embroiled
in the plots and counterplots, the mental shields and the tiring, trite
tortures to which Voldemort subjected him. Lucius was never tortured, not
Lucius, money and looks to back up his claim, the Dark Lord�s whore. But slimy
sticky Severus, he was the plaything, the rag doll of the Death Eaters,
tortured for his supposed defection. Of course the real defection was not
discovered, for his life would have not been worth living after that. No Severus
was the perfect spy, and the irony inherent in how this had lead to his
precarious position. His incarceration only brought a wry grin to his face. It
was that or to gouge out his eyeballs with his nails.

He does not die a death of shame

On a day of dark disgrace,

Nor have a noose about his neck,

Nor a cloth upon his face,

Nor drop feet foremost through the floor

Into an empty space.

The first time, the trials were cruel, but just. Men are righteous in their
anger, truth be told, and at least these farces of
trials were held � at least men got to genuflect in passing to the font of
justice. At least Dumbledore was able to vouch for Severus, was able to redeem
him from a life lived in Hades. But where is Dumbledore now? Where are the
bodies of the handful of Death Eaters, caught and faithful to their master?
Where is the codicil in which each good and bad deed are
listed? They are all dead now, dead and buried as the last corpse to be
entombed in the gardens outside. There is no-one to choose between the rotting
corpses, savior, saint, and sinner. No one to vouch for one
man who trod that precarious line, the string binding the war effort together.

He does not sit with silent men

Who watch him night and day;

Who watch him when he tries to weep,

And when he tries to pray;

Who watch him lest himself should rob

The prison of its prey.

Not so this fracas of the second war. Without Dumbledore, the entire process of
justice was handed to the hurting and thirsty on a platter. Anyone even
suspected of Death Eater affiliation, let alone was seen in the final battle
near them, surrounded by known Death Eaters, was to be punished. The Dark Mark
on his arm was only cementation of this process. To beg forgiveness, to claim
Imperio, was unheard of after the list of Death Eaters was made known. Too much
trust had been lost in the simple word of a wizard. And Snape, at the behest of
Minister Weasley, was not allowed Veritaserum. A potions master might be able
to counteract its effects. Severus never thought that he would pay for the
death of the Weasley twins so severely. Lucius had handed him the dagger, and
there was nothing he could do, in the interests of keeping his own life, but to
obey. But Arthur never forgave him, just as Arthur would not forgive his own
son, his last son, for the death of his baby girl.

He does not wake at dawn to see

Dread figures throng his room,

The shivering Chaplain robed in white,

The Sheriff stern with gloom,

And the Governor all in shiny black,

With the yellow face of Doom.

Even with the final view of Bill, Severus does not sleep easy. The walls seem
to close in, and the twisted dance of piteous groans, interspersed with pious
mumblings and the fetid murmurings of the insane, lull him into a tortured
sleep.

The prison guards leer up at him, eviscerating his mother with a single stroke
of the knife he has used to murder the twins. She reaches out for him, for her
son, but Lucius parts her thighs and brings forth a demon-child, telling
Severus that this child is his soul. And when Severus reaches out to the child,
it jumps into his arms, and bites into his neck, pleasure and pain
intermingling. Then, as Severus claws his way to orgasm, the child reduces in
size, and slips into the bleeding mess, where it swims through his body, and
clutches at his heart, its tiny claws scrabbling, scratching at the surface.

He wakes up startled, one hand on his neck, and one on his heart. Staring at
the pallid moonbeams, he doubts that he will get to sleep again that night.

He does not rise in piteous haste

To put on convict-clothes,

While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats,

and notes

Each new and nerve-twitched pose,

Fingering a watch whose little ticks

Are like horrible hammer-blows.

Severus sees the Rat at breakfast before he sees either Lucius or Bill. Too
weary to summon a sigh after a night of insomnia and virulent dreams, he walks
over to him and drops his slop on the table. The only thing even vaguely
edifying about this gruel is the half passable coffee, thick, black and strong,
the way Severus likes it. Pettigrew is afraid of it, its tarry consistency
being liable to stain his teeth an even more putrid shade of yellow and leave
his whiskers twitching for days. Severus has heard that some of the prisoners
pay Pettigrew to transform, and then use his writhing body to pleasure themselves. Taking in the filth-slathered body, the
distinctly human aroma surrounding him, Severus can well believe it. He settles
into his morning brew, oblivious to the people surrounding him.

He does not know that sickening thirst

That sands one's throat, before

The hangman with his gardener's gloves

Slips through the padded door,

And binds one with three leathern thongs,

That the throat may thirst no more.

Lestrange comes in next. He eases his bloated carcass onto the bench, and
begins to hastily shovel the gruel into his mouth. The little porcine eyes,
sparking with animalistic intent, eye Severus�s food hungrily. Severus shoves
it over. The caffeine more than makes up for the loss of this unpalatable
sludge, and keeping Rodolphus well fed is more a duty than a prerogative. The
yowling tones of his stomach mar Severus�s concentration, and even in his
caffeine-induced vigilance, the utmost concentration is required for his
delicate tasks. One misstep, one miscalculation, and he will be dead. Whoever
gave him Lestrange as a Potions assistant (and he has a fair idea who
steamrolled this streak of genius through the Wizagmot) was clearly unhinged.
The simple healing potions were made despite Lestrange, and not because
of him. Even then Severus had to ensure that the blubbering fool did not ingest
any of the more potent ingredients. The death due to the filthy glutton beside
him was not his business to decree.

He does not bend his head to hear

The Burial Office read,

Nor, while the terror of his soul

Tells him he is not dead,

Cross his own coffin, as he moves

Into the hideous shed.

Then Weasley enters. As opposed to the other two bottom feeders, his presence
lifts the head of more than a few of the inmates. Severus observes the slow
rustle of faces lifting up as he passes by, the sight of clean hair and not-yet
sickly cheeks entrancing them. He is the bloom of youth in this charnel house
of death. The indefinable has entered, the one man who could topple this place
with a lift of his hand. And yet Bill does nothing extraordinary. He picks up a
bowl and a mug, and seats himself opposite Severus. It is the quiet calm and
control of these motions which has the populace so on edge. Weasley does not
walk, move, breathe like a condemned man. It is known
that his father has publicly disinherited him, and so there will be no succor
there�.and yet, it is obvious to all that Bill is at peace with himself.
Severus can almost feel the hands cease their scrabbling around his heart at
his soft, �Morning, Professor.� William Weasley, savior of the dispossessed.

He does not stare upon the air

Through a little roof of glass:

He does not pray with lips of clay

For his agony to pass;

Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek

The kiss of Caiaphas.

The last of the five enters � Lucius Malfoy, the man whose kiss a traitor
betrayed. Severus would have died that night thanks to the gentle brush of his
best friend�s lips upon his jawline had the Aurors not chosen to follow him. He
was lucky that the Headmaster and the Order came as quickly as they could. Lucky that that Potter boy had vanquished Voldemort.

However, he was unlucky that Dumbledore had died, for now he stands as traitor
to both sides. No one would vouch for him, and the smoldering bodies of both
his mentor and master were ceded to the earth. Severus Snape is alone. In prison, and alone.
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The Masque