Victoria Spring

Our House is Made of Glass

2008-01-02T05:10:32Z

Title: Our House is Made of Glass
Characters: Severus Snape, Remus Lupin
Summary: Severus believes in keeping your friends close, and your enemies closer.
Rating: hard R

for cherry

Our house is made of glass... and our lives are made of glass; and there is nothing we can do to protect ourselves. –Joyce Carol Oates

-summer
The world is full of darkness. At least, that is the world that he has come to know. Seething, rippling darkness, like the surface of the lake at midnight, disturbed by the movement of something just beneath its surface. Severus does not like it here. The air is too warm; it makes his skin crawl and beads of sweat form on the nape of his neck. It makes him wish for turning leaves and darker hues. It makes him wish for September.

-autumn. sixth year.
On the first day of school, they lock him in a broom closet with a Venomous Tentacula. There is not much room, even to breathe. His back is pressed to the wall, vertebra sliding painfully against the stone as he hollows his body, tilting away from the reaching stem and leaves. He will never admit it, but he has always been afraid of small spaces, of the walls somehow closing in and devouring him. This is as small as it gets.

His breaths sound foreign and raw to him, scratching the back of his throat. The plant snaps and he ducks. No need. The tendrils cannot reach him. Not yet.

Stomach roiling, he closes himself into a corner and pulls out his wand, muttering a quick Stupefy and praying that it will work on a plant. It doesn’t. He knows better than to try to unlock the door with a spell. The incantation that Potter spoke forbade it.

He can feel nausea climbing up from his gut, spitting bile into his mouth, sharp and gritty. His head is spinning and he almost does not hear the voices outside, tones raised and stilted. But then the door opens and light spills into the closet, illuminating the pale, ill face of Severus Snape as he cowers like a child against the back wall. Cowers. The thought is bitter in his mind.

Someone pulls him out into the corridor and he gasps, taking in several deep gulps of air, back still hunched, still twisted as a creature more like a terrified beast than a boy. His saviour is a classmate he knows all too well, and he curses that Lupin should be the one to find him like this. He utters an expletive, some curse about werewolves and murderers, and Potter starts toward him, fury etched on his face.

“No, Prongs, don’t,” Lupin is saying. Potter looks for a moment as though he is going to disregard the other, but then he falls back, expression still dark and angry.

“Halfbreed,” Severus snarls, his face still hot with shame.

He can hear Potter’s shouts behind him as he whirls about and stalks down the hall, eyes locked on the floor, still nursing his injured pride.

-winter. seventh year.
“Can I sit here? All of the other tables are full.”

Lupin is standing a meter away, arms stacked with four or five books. Severus can see him straining under the weight. He is too small, and ropes of underdeveloped muscle are twisting up his forearms, trembling slightly. He is blinking abnormally fast, although his tone remains steady.

For a moment, Severus considers telling him no. It would be worth it, to see just one of the members of that bloody gang sitting on the cold stone floor. Dirty animal. Someone ought to teach Potter that he shouldn’t let his pets in the house.

A harsh noise bursts from his lips, and Severus realizes belatedly that it is a laugh. A guttural, barking noise, but a laugh nonetheless. Lupin looks stunned, lips parting just slightly as though he is about to speak. Severus quells the noise and automatically scowls.

“Fine,” he says. “Sit down. But don’t talk.”

Lupin slides into the seat just opposite him, setting the books down on the table. Severus expects to see a look of relief cross the halfbreed’s face, but somehow he manages to keep his expression clear. Severus grunts and yanks his gaze away, forcing it down to the parchments in front of him.

Dipping his quill into the ink, Severus presses the nib to the page, but the words he had meant to write escape him. He grasps in the dark and comes up empty-handed. Lupin’s presence is a curse. Severus can sense him, even without looking. He is curled over an open book, leaning down, the ends of his hair brushing paper. He is jittering his leg under the table, rattling it up and down at an abominable speed. Severus waits for him to relax, to get absorbed into the book, but the leg just keeps going and going, vibrating through the floor. Severus is a seething black ball of frustration.

“Will you stop that?” Severus speaks in a near hiss.

Lupin starts as though caught off his guard and looks up too quickly, hazel eyes meeting black, widened. “I—what?”

“Your leg.”

Lupin glances downward, surprised, as though he had not even realized what he was doing. “Oh. Right.” The vibrations stop.

Severus simply glares at him and turns back to his essay. His quill has left a blotch of ink on the page now, a guilty pool amidst lines and lines of practically illegible scrawl. Lupin is still looking at him, but Severus acts as if he does not notice, and eventually the other is reading again.

For a moment, all is still, but then the jittering starts once more, faster this time. Frustration clenches in Severus’s gut and he slams his fist down on the tabletop, sending his own quill skidding across the flat surface.

“STOP!”

Lupin nearly falls out of his chair this time, but Severus cannot even enjoy the werewolf’s discomfort before Pince—wretched, diseased tart—is swooping down on him in self-righteous rage. Severus does not wait for her to start her diatribe; he stands up, knocking his chair to the floor. Lupin probably did it on purpose, bloody little--! Grasping his schoolbag with white knuckles, he stalks out of the library, taking care not to look back.

-winter. seventh year.
Severus, it seems, is not fated to live a werewolf-free life. Someone tosses a note onto his desk in Potions, a neatly folded square of parchment with his name written in unfamiliar, cautious letters on the outside. He opens it with delicate fingers as if it is contaminated.

Severus-

I noticed that you left your essay in the library the other day. I waited for you to come back for it, but when you never did, I took it with me to the dormitory. I can bring it down to dinner tonight and give it to you then, if you like.

-Remus Lupin

Severus briefly entertains the idea of simply rewriting the essay and avoiding Lupin altogether, but it is already at nearly 120 centimeters, and he does not have time to adequately rewrite the whole thing. He looks up. Lupin is watching him as though waiting for some affirmation, so Severus jerks his head into a single, brief nod. This seems to satisfy him, for Lupin grins widely. What the hell is he smiling about?

By the time it is dinner, though, Severus has recognized an entirely new quagmire: how to preserve his reputation when Lupin walks up to the Slytherin table during the middle of desert and holds out a roll of parchment.

“Here you are, Severus,” he says, that irritating smile still spread across his lips. “I sanded it for you so that it wouldn’t smear.”

Severus hears a snort, and he does not even have to look to know that it is Rosier. He yanks the essay out of Lupin’s hands and stuffs it into his bag, face hard as if it is chiseled out of stone.

And yet Lupin still stands there, looking at him with his hands clasped behind his back, as though expecting some sort of—compensation for his good deed.

Severus meets his gaze with a scowl and holds it for a good thirty seconds. Lupin does not move, and his expression does not waver.

A muscle twitching in his jaw, Severus curls his hands into fists beneath the table. “Thank you.” He somehow manages to spit the words out from behind gritted teeth.

“You’re welcome,” Lupin says, tone bright as though he had not even noticed Severus’s tone. Maybe he hadn’t.

Rosier is laughing and Severus takes a deep swallow of his pumpkin juice, tilting the goblet up to hide his face.

-spring, three years later
The two men sit in the pub and pretend not to recognize each other. The dark one is hunched forward over his drink, face pinched and twisted into an expression that is somewhere between a grimace and a sneer, all amber skin and heavy black hair. The other is on the edge of his seat, spine erect, fingers caressing the curve of his cup. He is not drinking. If anything, he seems to be distracted by the presence of the other, for his keeps shifting hazel eyes to the right, glancing first at hooked nose, then at firewhiskey, then at eyes, and finally resting on Severus’s lips.

“Stop looking at me, Lupin,” Severus hisses, his grip tightening around the base of his mug.

He knows what the other man is thinking. He is debating between sitting here and silently finishing his ale, or doing the right thing by turning him into the Order. Only, Lupin does not seem to be aware of just how obvious his thoughts really are.

Severus finishes his drink in one swallow and slams the cup down, tossing a few glittering Sickles into the barman’s hand.

He can hear Lupin’s movements behind him, the clatter of gold on marble, and the pounding of footsteps before a hand touched his shoulder. Severus whirled around, eyes flashing, fury etched onto every centimeter of his face.

“Don’t—touch—me!”

Lupin reels back as though, in touching Severus, he has touched something burning hot. “I—I’m sorry. Severus…. Severus!”

But Severus is no longer listening. His heart is beating abnormally fast as he stalks out of the bar and Disapparates.

-summer, the year of voldemort’s return
Number 12 Grimmauld Place is enemy territory, so Severus treads lightly. He can hear Black’s voice issuing from the other room, never quite soft enough, even in whispering. The sound is a remnant of his schooldays, and it irks him. Molly Weasley had the nerve to offer him tea and scones when he first stepped through the door, forgetting for a moment who he was. It was only moments before his decline that she seemed to come back to her senses, a frown settling on her thin, rouged lips.

Severus hears Black’s harsh, barking laughter, and for a moment he is tempted to go into the other room out of spite, knowing that his presence alone will put a stop to the mirth. But no, he reminds himself, Black is not the reason that he is here. He is on business—official business—and he will be damned if that arrogant imitation of a wizard will cause him to spend any more time in this awful house than is absolutely necessary.

Severus finds Lupin as a hunter stalks a beast, slinking through hallways and along walls until he finds his prey in the upstairs library, a thick book perched neatly on his hand, thumb and fifth finger gripping its pages in a manner that seems almost rough for a man so frail and slender. Severus refuses to allow himself to be taken aback, however, and he waits for a moment for the other man to acknowledge his presence.

Lupin either ignores him or is impervious, and eventually Severus is degraded to clearing his throat in a pointed manner, eyes already sharpened and narrow.

“Hello, Severus,” Lupin says seconds later, glancing up from his book. His tone is calm, and he gives no sign of being startled. He knew I was here all along. The bastard.

“Lupin,” he snarls back, intentionally putting even more bite in his words than usual.

The wolf is imperturbable. “I thought that you were not coming until the Tuesday meeting.”

“Oh, believe me, Lupin, I would rather be anywhere other than here. I bring a message from Dumbledore.”

One light brown eyebrow lifts. “Could he not have sent someone else?”

This is the first sign of anything other than cool amicability that Lupin has ever displayed toward him, and for a moment, Severus’s scowl falters. “He wanted me to give this to you in person.” He retrieves a plain brown package from within his cloak. It seems as though he has pulled it out of nowhere, though with those billowing robes, it is quite easy to imagine that he could be concealing a great many things within the folds of black cloth.

Lupin glances down at the package, eyes amber crescents beneath briefly lowered lashes. They are the same pale cedar colour as his hair, and the lightness of them often makes Lupin’s expression look shifty, as though he is constantly on tenterhooks. Severus frowns and wonders why he is noticing such things.

After what seems like minutes to Severus, but was likely only a few seconds, Lupin takes the package. “Thank you.”

Now it is Severus’s turn to arch a brow. “Don’t mention it.”

Their gazes meet and Severus feels a muscle tighten in his jaw. Lupin’s face is blank, unreadable, and Severus quite suddenly feels as though his own thoughts have been plastered quite clearly across his countenance. Lip curling, Severus steps back, first as a preventative measure, before whirling about, black cloak flapping, his feet unable to take him from the room fast enough.

autumn, two months later
In his seventh year, Severus had been kissed. He let his lips and his body fall under the calloused touch of wide hands, moving along his spine and molding him like clay. There had been a sense of obligation to the act as Rodolphus fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, their mouths heavy and wet, Severus’s body acting as a being separate from his mind as he watched on from a distance, studying each movement, academic. They stopped before Rodolphus’s tie was even entirely undone, scarcely speaking a word to each other about what had just occurred as Severus passed the other a Transfiguration textbook and they settled down at their respective desks, quills scratching against essay parchment.

This is nothing like that time. Lupin’s breath is hot against his skin and their bodies pulse together as one flesh, chest to chest, throbbing in a balanced rhythm. Severus wonders for a brief moment if he has finally—for the first time in years—finally lost control, but he finds that his mind will not linger on the subject, and that he no longer particularly cares.

Lupin is responding to his touch, back arching, pressing his pelvis forward, soft sighs escaping his lips, heat against Severus’s tongue. His hands disappear into the black liquid of Severus’s robes and now he cannot hold back his own moan, as the other’s hand curls around his cock.

Severus grabs Lupin by the hair, twisting ink-stained fingers among those honey curls and yanking his head back, lips falling upon bared throat, venomous kisses.

“I hate you,” Severus says against the warm skin, licking the jugular vein that snakes across Lupin’s neck. “Monster.”

Somehow, though, this seems to spur Lupin on and he grabs Severus by the high collar of his robes and presses him against the wall, his hand quickening its rhythm between Severus’s quivering legs.

“But you will fuck me anyway,” Lupin says, with all the smugness of a man who knows his own triumph is at hand.

Severus nods. And he submits, letting the werewolf spin him around to face the wall, hands flat on the stone, as he tears into him. Severus bites back a cry and Lupin digs his nails into his shoulder. Their bodies move sinuously together, fusing at the hips, Severus arching back against the other, tilting his head back so that Lupin’s lips can move along his ear, biting at the crest.

Afterward, Severus will let his robes fall straight to the floor once more, feeling the wetness of his own come smeared against his cock, and turn to face the other. Their eyes will meet, and Severus does not say it, but Remus knows. The truth is embedded in his eyes, in the way his hand lingers on Remus’s arm before he pulls himself away and disappears from the room.

And Remus will stand there for a moment, the fire still crackling behind him, as he smiles—and then, as he laughs. He can still smell old books, fresh ink and pressed parchment, a slowly simmering potion, Severus’s scent buried in his skin.

“I love you too,” he will say. And Severus, although he is already halfway to the dungeons once more, will smile.

Light and Dark

2007-12-17T17:14:32Z

Title: Light and Dark
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Helena Ravenclaw, Rowena Ravenclaw, Salazar Slytherin, Bloody Baron. But primarily Helena.

“It means ‘light.’”

That was her mother’s explanation. Simple, vague, a response like any other. Her mother had been in the midst of one of the several dissertations she produced during those final years, each one more brilliant than the last. Her tone had been clipped and brief, too distracted was she by her own latest foray into the close and delicate ties between the primitive Muggle and the advancing wizard brands of medicine.

Her temper was even shorter those days than it had been when her daughter was a mere child, so Helena left Rowena alone. Clearly, the name was derived from Greek, from Helen of Troy—the beautiful woman whose face alone had sent thousands to death. Nonetheless, it was a topic that seemed too trivial for research, and to ask her father could perhaps be construed as an insult.

After all, it seemed contradictory. Rowena Ravenclaw gave birth to the child of the greatest Dark Wizard of that age—or any—and she chose to bestow a name that meant light.

Helena had not known her mother to be given to superstition, but it almost seemed like a charm, a feeble protection against her father’s alleged evil. Rowena was a woman of pure reason, cold and hard fact. But there were moments such as this when Helena could not help but wonder if her mother’s upbringing in such a paranoid and archaeic culture, one so steeped in fable and mythology, had affected her in a deeper manner than was initially apparent.

The unhappiness in their makeshift, unmarried family, after all, was palpable.

Helena had overheard it not once but four times, hushed voices, whispers stolen in the corridors between her parents, or the sharp conversations that always seemed to accompany her father’s visits to the Ravenclaw quarters.

“You tricked me. I never wanted a child.”

“Not trickery. I told you. Our daughter—our Helena—she is your intelligence and my skill, combined. You knew I wanted this. And you knew me better than to think I would not do everything within my power to achieve it.”

“Perhaps you deserve your reputation, then, Salazar.”

“You speak like Irina.”

Irina. Her father’s wife, whom Helena had met only twice. The woman was always perfectly cordial to her, but whenever Salazar returned from the manor, he would invariably find his way to Rowena’s rooms, clutching silken handkerchiefs to a bleeding arm, pressing ice to a bruised and swollen cheek.

After all that he had allegedly done, the torture and murder of all those Muggle women and children, he never lifted a hand to defend himself against his own wife.

Rowena, decisive and helplessly correct as always, had coldly pronounced Irina to be mad.

Salazar, after that, had not spoken to her for a week.

It had been he, during this prolonged silence, who had introduced Helena to the Baron.

Ealdred was charismatic, the most handsome man Helena had ever seen. Wealthy—independently so, having compounded his already large family fortune hundredfold through his shrewd business dealings. He was precisely the sort of person her father would appreciate—pale-skinned, with inky hair that seemed almost violet in candlelight, eyes that seemed to have impenetrable depths. He could trace his line, Salazar informed her, to the earliest wizards of Wallachia, in Romania.

He would not have been a terrible match, were it not for the simple fact that Helena was not prone to appreciating any sort of manipulation with her personal life on the part of her father.

Ealdred had pursued her with all the delicacy and nobility of his class, courting her without excessive presumption—sexually, at least, for Helena nevertheless always suspected that he would sooner kill her himself than see her in the arms of another man.

She resisted him.

Rowena, Helena thought, approved of this move. Helena was not blind—she could see as well as anyone that Salazar loved her mother with a fierce and sometimes violent passion, in a manner that he had certainly never displayed regarding his wife, or anyone other than his own self.

Rowena seemed indifferent to his emotion, or perhaps simply determined to force herself into oblivion where he was concerned. Love, as she told her daughter, was a wonderful thing—but it could all too easily overcome your reason, make you susceptible to manipulation and attack.

Perhaps, Helena thought, her mother had loved Salazar, once. Before his thirst for power had led to the birth of a daughter, and Rowena’s harsh scorn.

And yet she let him return, every Friday at the least, into her heart and into her bed…with soft looks and softer kisses in the morning.

Ealdred was identical to Salazar in almost every way, and it was his intense and sweltering passion that Helena feared.

Passion such as this destroyed nations, ripped hearts asunder, and the light hair of Helen of Troy had alone brought the “civilized” world to its knees.

Light hair. Light woman. Light child.

Helena was not a child of light, or Dark, or anything of that quality. Nor was she the combination of power and brilliance that her father had craved.

She was a daughter of fire and heat and sex. Of hatred, anger, betrayal, abandonment, a stolen affair. The solid memory that would torture Rowena for years after Salazar left, until the pain became illness and slowly wasted her away.

She was not the light innocence that Ealdred sought, or the light beauty of her namesake, or even light of spirit.

She was Helena, proud, eighteen years old, beautiful, strong, clever—and she was determined to prove it no matter the cost.

The equal—no, the better of both her parents—she would throw away their legacy like a cloak. Her mother’s fame and her father’s infamy would hold no sway over her life.

But even so, she could not resist.

The diadem. The seemingly inheritable habit of abandonment. In defying her heritage, Helena embraced it.

And the price would be the same.

Rose Angel

2007-12-05T17:27:18Z

Title: Rose Angel
Fandom: Angel Sanctuary
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Rociel/Katan

Sometimes, at night, Katan thought he could hear his master screaming. It was insubstantial, something that lingered merely on the borders of his consciousness, but it nevertheless unnerved him. From time to time he would slip across the corridor to the seraph’s chambers and peer inside, but Rociel was always sleeping peacefully.

God, he was beautiful as he slept.

In slumber, the anger, hatred, rage—the nefarious sadistic smile—all was washed away. His lashes lay still upon his milk-white cheek, eyes closed rather than open and challenging. His hand curled softly on the pillow, fingers elegant and calm, rather than recoiling and ready to strike. Those gorgeous crimson lips fell open just slightly, devoid of those biting words that always pierced Katan’s soul.

Katan liked to imagine that his master’s dreams were gentle and comforting, although he knew that it was not so. After all, even the cherub’s wildest hopes could not erase the furrows that marred his master’s forehead or lift the corners of that frowning mouth.

He never touched Rociel, even though he longed to. It was too risky, too likely that the angel would awaken in a flaming rage and push him away, screaming profanities and breaking his child’s heart. But Katan did linger, if only for a moment, if only to admire the spun silver of his master’s hair and pretend to himself that things were the way they used to be.

The way the used to be…the way they once were, before fear and anger clouded Rociel’s mind, before his rotting soul began to eat away at his once flawless flesh. Rociel would take him in his arms, ruffling his hair with those pianist’s hands, their laughs mingling in the sweet summer air. He would drop by the think tank on Wednesday mornings to observe the students, and he would always spend a few extra seconds gazing over Katan’s shoulder before moving on down the row.

Katan could trust him, then. He could go to him when he needed help with his studies, he could confide in him when the other boys teased him mercilessly. His father had always offered him refuge, a cup of tea, and a few soft words of reassurance. Katan knew that he could deal with anything, as long as Rociel was there to guide him.

Part of him knew, while Rociel was in the midst of his brief affair with the girl Kirie, that it was all a façade. Rociel was determined to get his revenge, to prove to Katan that he could survive without the cherub. He had vowed to himself that he would never, ever lose control. Not of Katan, not of himself, not of anyone. He had failed.

Katan bit down on his lower lip to control what he knew could be a sob. Rociel shifted slightly and the cherub froze. But no, he was still asleep, simply turning onto his back. The movement caused his shirt to gape open, revealing a sliver of glowing pale skin and the rosy tinge of a nipple. Katan blushed.

He should not be here. Should Rociel-sama open his eyes, see him…he refused to complete the thought. But the sight of his master’s effeminate flesh nevertheless sent the blood rushing to the lower extremities of the cherub’s body. Katan nearly choked at the realization of what was happening to him, and he doubled over as though he could somehow reverse the act of nature. It didn’t work, of course, and Katan was left feeling distinctly self-aware and more than slightly nervous.

His hand groped for the door. He must leave, now. Before it was too late. His fingers closed around the doorknob, but before he could make his escape, a sound behind him made him halt in his tracks.

“Katan.”

The cherub’s breath froze in his throat, and he turned around slowly. Rociel was sitting straight up in bed, his eyes still bleary from sleep although his voice remained firm and alert.

Katan swallowed, hard. “Y-yes, Rociel-sama?”

Rociel gazed at his face for a moment, before his amber eyes averted downward, traveling along the other angel’s torso. Katan made a movement to hide the evidence of his arousal, but it was too late. Rociel’s eyes jerked upward again. Katan flushed deeply, but this only served to intensify the perilous physical reaction.

“Rociel-sama, I—.”

“Hush, Katan.”

Rociel stood and crossed the room in a few simple strides. He brushed his fingers against the cherub’s cheek lightly and Katan shivered. Rociel laughed, but he did not draw away. Rather, he let his hand trail along Katan’s neck and linger for a moment at his collar before continuing downward.

Katan refused to follow his master’s movements with his eyes, choosing instead to gaze firmly at a spot on the far wall. Rociel’s touch was electric as it traced a soft pattern down his chest, coming to rest at last on the other man’s hip. Katan jerked away in alarm.

“Don’t move,” Rociel instructed him coldly.

Katan stood still, and once more fixed his sight on the other wall.

“Look at me.”

Katan looked, letting his own gray eyes meet cool, calculating gold. Rociel’s thumb was tracing a circular motion in the hollow just beneath his hipbone, and the sensation was infuriatingly amazing.

“Please…please, Rociel-sama….”

Rociel smiled, scarlet lips curving upward as he moved closer to his protégée. “Please what, Katan? Please stop?”

Katan could not breathe. “Please, Rociel-sama,” he choked. “Please, this is a sin.”

Rociel’s smile vanished. “Do not tell me what is and is not a sin, Katan.”

Dear God, he needed to leave. Now. Rociel’s fingers were drawing far too close for comfort.

Katan twitched.

“Do you wish me to stop, Katan? Do you wish me to leave you alone, to let you return to your rooms?”

Katan tried to speak, but all that he could manage was a cracked sob.

Rociel smirked. “What was that, Katan?”

Katan shook his head.

“I can’t hear you.”

“No.”

Rociel raised his eyebrows.

“No, I do not wish for you to stop, Rociel-sama.”

“Good.”

Before Katan had time to think, Rociel’s lips were pressing against his and he could feel the warmth of the seraph’s body on his hips. He stumbled back and slammed against the door. Rociel pinned his arms above his head, trailing fiery kisses down his jugular vein. Katan could not help the soft moan that escaped his lips, his head tilting backward of its own accord. Rociel was biting down on the cherub’s shoulder, but the pain was welcome, exquisite. He arched his body against that of his master, unable to control the mortal urges.

“Rociel-sama….”

Rociel pulled back for a moment, out-of-breath, eyes bright with an emotion that Katan could not recognize.

“What is it?”

Katan wet his lips, his heart fluttering in his ribcage like a trapped bird. He could not speak.

“Well?” Rociel moved forward, so that their lips were almost touching—enough to tempt Katan, but just far enough away. “Well, Katan? Tell me.” His breath was hot on the cherub’s skin. “Tell me…am I beautiful?”

Katan’s mouth was dry as he fumbled for the correct words. “I—yes, Rociel-sama, of course.”

“How beautiful?”

Katan’s eyes fluttered closed, but they opened again swiftly when Rociel slapped his arm lightly.

“How beautiful, Katan?”

The cherub’s gasps were shallow. He felt as though he were suffocating.

“I…I can not say, my Lord. More—more beautiful than there are words to describe.”

Rociel released him and returned to his bed, expression impenetrable as he pulled the silken covers up to his chin.

“Rociel-sama?”

“You may leave, Katan.”

Katan nodded slowly and bowed before exiting the room. He closed the door softly, but as soon as he was out of his master’s sight, he collapsed against the wall, chest heaving. He wiped the back of his hand against his sweaty forehead, struggling to regain control over his body. It was several moments before he could stand upright once more, and at least another two minutes before he could bring himself to return to his room.

He undressed for bed in silence, folding his clothes neatly and placing them on his desk to be picked up by the laundry-maid. He knew he would be unable to concentrate on a book, so he blew out the candle.

There, in the dark, he allowed himself to shake his head slowly.

“You will be the death of me, Rociel-sama.”

In his own chambers, the inorganic angel smiled.

Unbreakable

2007-11-27T00:53:17Z

Title: Unbreakable
Rating: PG
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters or Pairings: Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore

The brittle crust of the skin stretched dry across his lips was rough beneath his tongue…tasting slightly of wax and glowing ember. The air was cold in his lungs, crackling and expanding in his chest. He could feel hot, life-giving blood pounding in his ears, a steady beat all too easily stilled.

His fingers trembled, and he gripped them tighter over his wand. The rough splintery wood dug into the gold-hewn flesh of his palms, sobering him. Each panting breath was sheer torture—seizing in his throat and somehow clenching his stomach with each shallow exhale.

“Severus…” “Snivellus….”

Years---no, decades—of hatred, welling in his breast, fueling him onward. His first step forward echoed off the high winged ceilings of the castle hall. Never…never had this man done anything to protect him. He had almost been killed, and still he dreamt in silence. Never had he stooped low enough to notice.

The movement of shifting his weight from his left foot to his right sent a jolt up his leg, vibrating in his pelvis—clanging like a steeple bell on Sunday, or a cathedral bell on Golgotha. There was an odd humming in his ears, a tinny buzz that soon was spreading, swarming over his entire body.

Hatred, yes. Anger. Rage. It is a necessity….

He took another step forward, and this one was quieter, less painful. He took in another shaky breath, the oxygen circulating no farther than the base of his throat, constricted by the tense muscles of his shoulders.

He paused for a moment, allowing a smirk to drift lazily across his thin sallow features, toying with the corners of his thin, white lips.

“Severus…please….”

Look at him.

No!

Yes…look. Look at him. In his eyes. You know there is no other way….

There must be.

You swore doubly. Once to him, and once to the girl. Vows you can not break, even if you tried.

It’s Death, it is…Death for us all.

A double vow. To protect. To protect whom?

Black eyes shifted downward slightly, to the pathetic, crumpled figure of a once-great man. How long had he waited to see the old bastard in this position? How much had he sacrificed for him?

Nothing. Nothing at all…. Do it. Fulfill the promise.

Those penetrating blue eyes, drilling through him mercilessly, ripping him apart like a rag doll. Begging him. Pleading with him

It had been so long ago…surely measures such as these were unnecessary. There would be no redemption, after all. No crucified Christ to mend shattered hearts…shattered souls. Yes, for he is unredeemable. He can not repent, he can not want to. Choice is such an elusive nymph.

Do it.

No right or wrong here, there never was a…

black or white

Just grey…sweet storm blossoms over the silver sea, crashing, melting, screaming

…trembling

Breaking over the rocks and raining down white lilies in the snow

..dirty snow, and he has no choice but to turn around and

Do it

Yes, the little bird has flown, my Easter gift to you

The lamb is on the table, now will you serve your god?

Breaking down cherry trees all over again, just to see them breathing

The blood on your doorstep is my promise to myself

“I don’t know what you are asking me to do…”

“Just trust me. That is all…trust me.”

I trust you, sir.

Trust me enough to kill me

to do it

Do it, the vow, you

…swore to

and there’s no escape

so you must fulfill

your vow, you must

do it

No other choice, it is the best

Yes

Yes!

Because it is

Unbreakable. And

“Avada Kedavra!”

…you promised.

Unforgivable

2007-11-26T02:20:16Z

Title: Unforgivable
Rating: PG-13 for violence
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters or Pairings: Neville Longbottom

Cruciatus. Crucio. Excruciating pain. Even the way the word was spoken was a reflection of silent, all-consuming pain. The pain that causes you to writhe on the floor, mouth gaping in the very image of a scream, but no sound can force itself past the agony. This is the pain that does not stop for sound. It is superior to death. You could be tortured by it forever, with fire snaking up your bare skin leaving crumbling trails of invisible ash in its wake and bands of metal twisting around your ribs like a corkscrew turned by a giant’s hand, and you would never die. To die would be to escape; to fall away to that blissful, dark land with its soft embrace like the most exquisite velvet.

So the pain continues on, not pausing even for a moment of unconsciousness. You do not even remember what it was like before the curse. That feels as though it were a lifetime ago—that you awoke from your mother’s womb to be greeted by this torment. Every strand of your life-force is pulsing to the beat of the torture. And you can not escape, because you do not hold the wand. Only the one who holds the wand can release you, and they never will.

He had experienced that curse once. Once, in all fifteen years of his being. He had already been in pain—there was warm blood still streaming down his lips from his broken nose.

“He’s dot alone! He’s still god be!”

She had been standing at the foot of the benches. She had been strangely beautiful, herself. Her lush black hair tumbled down her back in gentle waves. Her eyes were dark and alive, framed by the longest lashes he had ever seen. It was a beauty contorted by evil. She had given him the same agony she had given his parents. He saw it as a gift. The pain was the one thing he now shared with them.

He sometimes wanted to put the curse on himself. He was hungry for the anguish, the sheer, harrowing mutilation. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. When he saw the wand tip pointed inches from his face, his nerve always failed him. He hated himself for this. He was a coward in the face of danger. The fact that he could not endure a few moments of the agony that his parents had endured for hours plagued him.

But he might as well be under the curse. His life had become an embodiment of the Cruciatus, but with a pain less physical than emotional. It controlled every particle of his being. He could not scream, could not speak. He couldn’t even die.

It was hilarious. He had always thought his life was in his control. Every breath he took belonged to him. He should be able to cease those breaths if he so wished.

“Mr Longbottom? The answer to question fourteen?”

He could not open his mouth to reply. If he opened his mouth, he might take a breath. He shook his head, mind fuzzy from lack of oxygen. “Mr Longbottom?”

He could perceive a figure moving toward him, but it was tilting sharply, and splitting into a thousand shards of light and color. His ears were pounding with what sounded like music. The colors bounced to the rhythm, swirling inward, and out.

Put your whole self it, put your whole self out. Put your whole self in, and turn yourself about. You do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself around. That’s what it’s all about!

The childhood song burst into his head clearly, as though he had sung it just yesterday.

“Mummy, Mummy, why is everything spinning?”

“If you didn’t run in circles you wouldn’t be dizzy, Neville, dear.”

“Oh, Alice. Let the boy have some fun. He is only a child for so long.”

His lips parted, and air rushed into his lungs. Blinking furiously to clear his vision, he shook his head again.

I’m fine.

He hadn’t slept for weeks. It seemed almost as though he didn’t need to. He was greater than sleep now. Or perhaps his pain would not allow for slumber.

Every day passed as though it were a dream. Maybe it was. Maybe he only thought he hadn’t been sleeping. Maybe this whole thing was a dream, one long, never-ending dream in which everything was blurred and dull and faded into itself.

His reflection had surprised him one day. He hadn’t been expecting to see it, but he had turned around and the bathroom mirror was there. It was like gazing into the face of a stranger. Gone was the round, content boy he had grown to accept as himself. The man in the mirror was gaunt and diminished. He could see the bones of his cheekbones and his jaw that had been concealed by layers of fat before. They seemed almost unnaturally sharp. He touched his fingertips to his face. His skin was as thin and delicate as paper. He was astonished that it didn’t rip at the contact.

Leaning closer, he saw the grey shadows beneath his eyes and in the hollows of his cheeks. His eyes were more like reflecting pools than anything else. He couldn’t see further than the surface. He wondered if he was going blind; if his sight was disappearing.

Or perhaps he was disappearing himself.

Three blind mice, three blind mice.

His mother used to call him her “Little Mouse.” That used to be close to the truth. He used to be round and colorless and spoke seldom. Now he was wraith-like, grey, and didn’t speak at all.

“Look, Mummy, a mousie! Help me catch it!”

“You can’t catch it, Neville. It’s faster than you think. It will get away.”

Little Mouse-Neville had run away too. He couldn’t catch him. He had been enveloped by the past, and the past didn’t want to give him up. It liked Little Mouse-Neville. The future had no place for him.

But he had like Little Mouse-Neville too. But the old Neville was faster than he had thought. It had gotten away.

They didn’t recognize him now. He was another face, another voice speaking quiet words as though afraid of talking too loud. Like he was afraid they might break.

But maybe they did remember him, a little. His mother, at least. She saved the wrappers for him, slipping them into his palm at the end of visits.

“Neville, put that wrapper in the bin, she must have given you enough of them to paper your bedroom by now....”

He didn’t especially like Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum. But he kept the wrappers she gave him and pasted them to the inside of his trunk when he got home. The lid was covered now, and now he was expanding to the back panel. If she ever got better, he would show them to her. Maybe she would remember.

He had never had a good memory. His grandmother said that he was born with it, that it was a disappointment that he was not as talented as his mother and father had been. She was wrong. He had been very smart, and he had remembered everything. But that was Before, and this was After. When they forgot, he slowly began to forget too. Maybe one day he would forget the pain as well.

One day he would forget the pain.

Forget the pain.

The pain.

Pain.

One day.

Emotion

2007-11-26T02:14:32Z

Title: Emotion
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters or Pairing: Helga Hufflepuff/Rowena Ravenclaw

Note: The strange words at the end are Greek: excerpts from the poem "Sapphos."

She is not a myth. Not a myth, or a legend, or notorious or whatever it is that they call her these days. She is a woman, flesh and blood, as given to the same whims and fluctuating emotion as the rest of them, albeit she approaches such things with more honesty and presence of mind.

At least, this is what she tells herself.

Her lips are dry in the mornings, breath warm and caking the insides of her mouth like a virus. This always culminates in a moment of self-disgust, yet simultaneous and suppressed, an odd sort of rapture. Fascination at the thought that she has been breathing through her nose throughout the night, that this very oxygen giving her mouth such an acrid taste is the very same breath that she took in the evening, just as her mind curled into sleep.

So despite discomfort, she lingers for a while, cool sheets pulled to her chin and clenched there with white-knuckled fists as she withholds an urge to urinate, to relieve herself so that she can renew the day into the clean promise of splendor. For splendor is what she feels will be her fate, for these few scarce minutes of dawn, the grey sun just beginning to peer over the fog-blurred horizon.

A faint mist coats the windowpane, fairy-dust sprinkled in the late night, and she presses her hand to the cold glass, moving her palm against the condensation, smoothing it away in a single gesture.

Such beauty, in the dawn.

Such promise of clean beginning and sin as easily forgotten as it was committed.

She sits up and draws her legs up to her chest, pressing the crown of her forehead against her knees, each exhalation warm against her thighs. She can feel the light coating her back like the cool touch of a child, frail but sure.

It takes a moment before she can stand, and cross to the basin to rinse her mouth with peppermint and water, the heat and the heaviness sharpening to cold and crystal alertness. And suddenly her mind is bladelike, the precarious edge of a razor, breaths coming quicker, more confident, more ready.

She glances back to the bed, where a sleeping body still lies, white sheets falling over the subtle curves of a torso and hips, an arm outstretched as though reaching for something to hold. The light falls gracefully upon the edge of a cheekbone, white as snow and almost as pure, rose lips parted slightly. The woman barely seems to breathe, her form fitting so easily to the bed, head still upon the pillow, cradled by corn-silk curls and made almost innocent by the pale splattering of golden freckles across the bridge of her nose.

To her, at least, I am no legend. I am real.

She crosses toward the other, hesitating only briefly before falling to one knee, leaning over to touch her fingertips to the curve of a chin.

The golden woman shifts, a soft sound escaping from her lips and hazel eyes flutter open, unfocused for a moment, crossing, before clearing as they center on the face before her.

“How long have you been awake?”

She smiles, and withdraws her hand, relaxing into a seated position. “Only a few minutes. I did not mean to wake you.”

The woman sits up, leaning against the palm of one hand braced against the bed, her head tilting to the side. “Really, Rowena, you must stop apologizing for the most ridiculous things.”

Rowena allows her a small, almost forced smile and she stands, turning her back as she crosses to the basin once more, dipping slender hands into the water and dabbing a bit on her neck, a sigh falling from her lips like a weight into the bowl.

“Of course.” She bites her tongue to keep from apologizing again.

She tries to remember the emotions of last night, though it is more difficult now in the light of day, without the guidance of velvet dusk, flickering candles, and Helga’s lips soft as clay molding against her own.

Rowena wipes her hands on her bare thighs, leaving finger-trails of water in their wake, dripping down toward her knees. Emotion is a fickle thing, sometimes there, sometimes as distant as if she had only imagined being able to feel.

She wishes that she could swear to humanity, but as of late it seems to be a medal that only the most noble can achieve. For the first time that she felt rust on her hands, the darkening stain of dried blood spreading from not just her fingers but along her arms, coating her shoulders, her chest, her heart…she knew that she could never go back.

Logic had chosen itself as her path, and follow it she must. And as the hours passed, with her staring into the lake, still-bloodied hands clenched against the black rocks, it seemed to make more sense, to become increasingly rational with the fading of the minutes. Her actions had not been those of reason, but rather those of fear, and anger, and emotion.

Even as she had sat by the body, out of breath, her heart slamming itself against her ribcage so hard that she swore her bone would crack, she had felt not guilt—or regret—or the stain of transgression…rather, she had felt pride. Emotion burned a path through her gut and erupted in her chest and she had laughed, laughed until she cried, tears falling upon the split chest of her enemy and mixing with his already-congealing cruor.

But that very laugh clenched into a retch and she found herself heaving over his corpse, vomit dribbling down her chin and making puddles in the hollow between his collarbones and his neck. Her torso hurled itself in a rippling motion over the body and she threw up until there was naught left but bile, acidic brown liquid that she spat to the side, each breath rattling in her chest, crawling on her hands and knees toward the lake.

When she washed her hands, the blood sent a stream of red through the water, fading to rose, then disappearing altogether as it dissipated into grateful oblivion. It was then that she realized that she could never—ever—let the fear take hold like that again.

Helga was moving toward her now, and Rowena realized that she had been standing still at the basin for several minutes, oblivious to anything the other woman may or may not have spoken to her, hands limp in the water, pupils dilated and fixed upon something that only she could see.

Rowena jerked away from Helga’s touch and turned her back, finding a dress in the closet and yanking it over her head, simply jerking her chin in a nod when her colleague asked if she were all right.

There was silence for a moment, then the splashing of water: Helga must be rinsing her face.

Poikilo-thron’ athanat’ Aphrodita, pai dios doloploka lissomai se, me m’asaisi med’ oniaisi damna—

Poikilo-thron’ athanat’ Aphrodita, pai dios doloploka—

Poikilo-thron’—

She can not think. Memory fails her.

What emotion is it now that is blocking her mind? Rowena’s gaze is fixed upon the wood of the wardrobe door, eyes following the curve of each knot, blackening toward the center, disappearing into oblivion.

I have emotion. You just can’t see it.

Poikilo-thron’….

Introduction

2007-11-26T02:06:48Z

Hello! I am Victoria Spring, ugly sweater-wearer extraordinaire, and this is my journal that will be solely dedicated to my writing and things related to it.

Most of the actual fiction here will either be novel excerpts or fanfiction, due to first publishing rights. And a lot of the time, I may simply be ranting about frustrations with writing, or raving about its joys. Be prepared for that.

Things you should know about me:

-An odd combination--in addition to being a serious writer, I am also actively pursuing a degree in medicine.

-I love drinking tea, especially peppermint mixed with orange.

-I refuse to eat milk chocolate.

-I adore the movies A Very Long Engagement and Amelie, and pretty much anything involving Audrey Tautou.

-I love wearing wooly socks with clogs in the autumn and winter.

-I sing very loudly in the shower at midnight, waking up the whole building.

-I have played piano since I was a very young child.

-Sometimes, a good bit of any story gets written on the back of my hand.