He stares at her, a feeling both fear and anticipation as he meets her eyes.
“You’re going to corrupt me, aren’t you?” he asks baldly.
She shakes her head, smiling sadly. “Don’t you see? I already have.”
He starts. “You have?”
“Yes,” she answers, saying it as though stating a fact as obvious as the sun rising each day and setting each night. “And I’ve done such a good job of it, you haven’t even noticed. The very fact that you allow me in your home, in your thoughts, is proof enough. It’s important, you see,” she continues as she moves closer to him, seeming to float over the ground in the ease with which she moves, her voice low and seductive in the darkness, ‘to get them when they’re young.”
“I am not young,” he says, grumbles, knowing the moment the words are out of his mouth that he’s proven her right yet again.
She smiles again. “No,” she amends herself. “You’re not. Your experiences have made it so. As they have corrupted you.”
The words come with dangerous promise and he meets her eyes. “I’m corrupt,” he says aloud, as though hearing it would prove it, convince him.
“Yes, my dear, you are,” she agrees, her voice soft, soft as her scent, as her hand when she places it on his arm, eyes bright. “Repeat it until it seeps into your brain. Until you become it, murmuring the truth in your sleep. Time after time until the corruption flows through your veins and to your heart: I am corrupt. I am corrupt. I am corrupt.
The passion with which she speaks drives him back, and he shakes her hand off. “No. It isn’t true.”
“Do not deny it,” she says, her voice a harsh hiss. “It will only make you mad if you try. You can not deny your true nature. No one can.”
“I’ve done it for years now,” he claims boldly, denying what he is sure they both know to be true.
“And that was how you came to shun human company,” she scoffs, her voice laced with derision. “You hid yourself from the world rather than embrace your true nature and the Dark Gift. It will swallow you alive, now that you have emerged from your years beneath the earth, hidden from life and living within it.”
He knows that what she says is the truth, has already felt it starting to change him. “Will it truly consume me?” he asks, his voice shaking as he wishes he sounded more like the man he feels he is than the boy she must believe him to be.
“Yes. I assure you of it,” she answers with an honest smile and he is hers in that moment.
There is a part of him that denies this, strongly and vehemently. “No. It isn’t fair,” he says stubbornly, as though that might make the difference in explaining, in justifying this confusion. “What’s the point, then? If I have no choice?”
Her laughter fills the room. “What does it matter?” she asks and he knows that she is avoiding his true question. “You are here to satisfy your own needs. Your own desires. That is all.”
“My what?” he asks, surprised by her answer.
“Darling darkling,” she says, and her voice caresses him as her finger traces a path over his cheek. “There are far more interesting questions that you could be asking. How to fulfill those needs and desires would only be the beginning. And there is only one who can grant that to you, the ability to feed your own insanities and perversions.”
There is the sound of a heavy noise from above them and her hand leaves his face as though stung, burned, by some invisible force.
“Your father will be wondering what is keeping you. I must leave.”
He meets her eyes with sadness, unwilling for her to vanish from him yet again, this woman who is both stranger and confidant, the only person who seems to understand. “Good night.”
“Farewell,” she says, and turns to leave.
He grabs her arm suddenly, gently, but he grabs it
nonetheless and she finds herself prisoner to this boy who is slowly becoming a man. “I AM leaving now, darkling,” she says, looking at him over her shoulder, her eyes glancing down meaningfully to where his grip wraps around her arm. Powerful men thrill her; breaking them excites her and this boy may yet prove to be such a man.
“Please, Mistress,” he begs her. “Don’t go.”
“I must,” she says simply, urging him with her eyes to release her. “My own Master calls for me. I must go to Him. I“”
A footstep thuds on the other side of the door and they both freeze as it creaks open.
“Boy!” a cross voice calls down the dark steps. “Were you planning on staying down there until Muggles learn how to fly? Get the bottle and come back upstairs!”
“Yes Father,” he replies, and she hears the resignation in his voice, the desperation and depression before the door closes to leave them in darkness once again. “Goodbye then,” he says and the sadness in his voice reaches her, touches her. Men may thrill and excite, but boys have their own appeal. “We’ll meet again?”
“Of course,” she says with a soft smile, promising, encouraging. “The Darkness that manages the course of the earth would have it no other way. And neither would I. Until then....”
“Until then...my Mistress,” he says, but he still has not yet released her arm.
“Please!” she exclaims, playing the role assigned to her, nearly begging. Did he not see that she had to leave? “I would not flee from you. Release me!”
“I am yours,” he promises. “Always.”
She smiles once more. “How silly to suggest that you could be otherwise. But you will learn my darkling. You will learn.”
His blush is visible, even in the darkness. “I am eager to.”
Her laughter fills the room once more. “But of course you are,” she laughs, radiant in her freedom, in this game, before her arm burns again. “My dear darkling, I must go,” she pleads. Does he not see her pain, that he is hurting her by keeping her here, with him, instead of allowing her to return to her Master? “Would you hold your Mistress against her will?” she asks.
“If I must,” he says firmly, and she wonders where this man came from, this man who replaced the boy who was in front of her only moments before.
“If you do, I will not return,” she answers, threats. “You shall force me to flee from you. And all the worse it shall be for you then.”
“Then go!” he says sharply, releasing her, nearly flinging her away from his body. “Go!”
She places a tentative hand on his chest, can feel his heart thundering against her palm, yet he stares resolutely, unseeing, at the wall in front of him.
“I don’t wish to leave you,” she says quietly. “But my own Master must be obeyed.”
He places his hand over hers, after a moment and it feels like forgiveness and a promise. His pulse is steadying and the hem of her robe brushes against his as her breath brushes against his throat, her hair against his temple as she leans close against his shoulder.
“Go, then,” he says again. “Go and promise that you will return.”
She shakes her head. “Do you truly wish something as futile as a promise?” she asks, raising her head to meet his eyes once more before her bitter laugh fills the room once more. “What is a promise but more words? Words such as your mother uses, or your father? Or the fool Minister? There is no truth,” she says, her voice angry. Sharp and harsh. “No truth in words or actions. Only here,” she says, tapping her temple with a slender finger. “Only here is there ever truth. And then...then there are those who would lie even to themselves.”
He hangs his head, embarrassed and after a moment, she guides his head up once more, his eyes to hers with a gentle finger beneath his chin. “I leave you now,” she says, her own eyes seeking deep within his. “Enjoy the darkness while it is still yours, darkling. Enjoy your secret and the peace it brings you,” she says, a benediction on his cursed soul and her own.
“Go,” he urges now, seeing the pain on her face, in her eyes. “Go“”
“Until the next time,” she promises, withdrawing from him, entering the shadows once more.
“We’ll meet again,” he says firmly, but the crack of Apparation has already faded and she is gone. He looks around the darkened room, still able to feel her presence, the scent of her perfume and her body in the wisps of the wind. Where the cold enters through the cracks of even the strongest of walls, the strongest of houses, it finds the depths of the cellar too, so far removed from the winter storms and penetrates.
“Until,” he echoes her words quietly, his voice filling the empty room as he reaches blindly for the bottle of elfin wine his father impatiently awaits and wearily trudges up the stairs to resume the act once more.
She watches him leave from the shadows, carefully placing the small sachet back in the folds of robes where both its contents and her self will be safe. Severus Snape is no more than a bug in the scheme of her world, but he is clever at mixing potions and powders, creating things unimaginable. Such as the dust she carries now, which makes a loud crack similar to Apparation when it makes contact with the floor.
Yes. A clever little bug, indeed, she thinks as she watches him disappear up the stairs, pleased with the results of the evenings task.
With the exception of his own promise and its seal, the seduction of Bartimus Crouch Junior is complete.
The Dark Lord will be pleased.