"In White," Tom/Minerva, R
Title: In White
Author: kethlenda
Pairing: Tom/Minerva
Rating: R
Summary: This is the last time, though Tom does not yet know this, and Minerva goes to meet him in white.
Word Count: 1292
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Author's Notes: Written for hp_literotica, because omg it is closing, woe. :( Special thanks to sionnain for the beta.
What would you do with me if I came "in white?"
--Emily Dickinson
This is not a night for diaphanous white nightgowns.
The calendar proclaims it to be May, but the chill penetrating her feet through the thin satin of the slippers gives it the lie. A draft whips between the lurid panes of the stained-glass windows, and Minerva wishes again for her sensible flannel gown.
The flimsy scrap of georgette had seemed like a good idea at the time. She remembers that first feel of the silk between her fingertips on the rack at Gladrags; she had closed her eyes and had a sudden vision of herself veiled and crowned, walking with mingled fear and anticipation across a plain of obsidian, a pair of scarlet eyes flickering in the smoke-hazed distance. She'd only vaguely registered the other voices in the store--the saleswitch's murmured now, miss, that one's meant for brides, perhaps you might be interested in a more youthful look, and Olive Hornby giggling with her friends, just imagine, Miss Prim Prefect in something like that; there had been no choice but to buy it.
Tonight, when the garnet flared to life and scorched a tiny kiss of fire onto her throat--I'm experimenting with communication enchantments, Minerva, she had realized why she had bought it, why she had been meant to have it.
This is the last time, though Tom does not yet know this, and Minerva goes to meet him in white.
The door opens at her feather-light touch. Tom has seduced Hogwarts as thoroughly as he has Minerva; the castle spreads its treasures out before him, lays its secrets in his lap at his smile. He always knows where to find an abandoned room, a forgotten tower.
She enters. The room is stygian; in the moment before her eyes accustom themselves to the gloom, she cannot see him, yet is conscious in every cell of her skin that he can see her, is studying her.
"You look rather like a virgin sacrifice, Minerva."
No, no virgin, not now; but as for the other…
"Though if you truly wish to look the part, love, you ought to take your hair out of that prim little knot." His fingers find one of the tiny pins that hold her hair in abeyance; he plucks it, traces a line down the bare skin of her arm with its chill point. She shivers.
"Too slow, I think," he says. "Accio pins." The pins obey, flying like tiny birds to his waiting hand, some of them pulling painfully at her scalp as they twist their way out of her tresses.
Her hair falls heavily to her shoulders. It tickles her shoulders, her arms, and Minerva is frightened by her own sensitivity; what madness is this, if the touch of her own hair can raise gooseflesh?
Then, only then, does he touch her.
His hands wander lightly over her shoulders, as if she’s a statue he’s studying and not warm flesh at all, though it’s his hands that are icy against the heat of her skin. He bends to kiss her, and she answers the kiss with weeks, months, of repressed need. There is no use trying to hide her shudder from him; Merlin knows she’s been the subject of a thousand experiments in Legilimency; he can read her now as though her love for him, that hopeless pointless shameless love, were written on a page before him.
She decides, as he traces the curves and hollows of her body, that a caress through a thin film of silk is sweeter even than a touch upon bare skin. An hour or a heartbeat later, he slides the gown from her (snakeskin smooth), and as cool fingers meet Minerva’s impatient heat, she concludes she was wrong.
He takes her on the floor, crushing her against the crumpled spill of silk. There is no room for innocence in his world, and virgins are useful only as sacrifices, and Minerva has always known this.
It is only after the madness of their bodies passes that she thinks again of what she must tell him, and what she must do.
“This is the end,” she says; “it has to be; we’ve got to go on with our lives…”
Minerva hears rustling, a quick indrawn breath, and flinches instinctively, but no blow comes. Only words. Minerva can handle words.
“Why?” The word is not imploring as it falls from lips that twist in the half-darkness. It is a demand, an interrogation.
Minerva draws a deep breath. “I leave school in a few weeks. I’ve finished.”
“You always said you wished to remain here, to apply for a teaching position. You’ll stay, Minerva, and continue assisting me with my research.”
“I’m taking a year off,” she says. She hasn’t said this aloud to anyone until now. The idea of it feels more real somehow, now she’s spoken it. She holds the images in her mind, savors the freshness of them, like a crisp green apple after tasting only half-rotten fruit for months. A summer bustling half-smiling at the Muggle café back home, setting aside her wages along with last summer’s money, and then in the fall…
She need not tell him where she intends to go; he steals the thoughts from her mind, magpie-like, picking over the glittering images of castles, leaning towers, sunlit piazzas.
“You will not leave, Minerva."
"And why not?" She can feel his anger in the air, a vein of magma barely held in check by a thin crust of rock, and she knows she's courting the explosion, but in the hot rush of her own anger she finds the dignity sorrow would deny her.
His eyes turn to obsidian, glassy and distant. "I cannot let you go. You know too much."
Minerva is no Legilimens; perhaps he's telling the truth, and her leaving is no more to him than a strategic setback, the possible leak of classified information. Or perhaps this is a mask. Perhaps somewhere in his stunted, starved soul he loves her. She cannot, however, allow this to soften her resolve. Not if she means to escape. "You will not tell me what I can and cannot do, Tom."
Pain sears her throat; the stone glowing with infernal light. She rips the chain from her neck. Triumph courses through her as the clasp gives way. She feels hot blood at the back of her neck and does not care. She meets Tom's eyes one last time and throws his gift, his poisoned pomegranate seed, in his face.
It buys her a precious instant in which to cast Protego and reach the door. She does not look back. She does not listen to the hexes and imprecations that ring from the walls.
The stones of the corridor are icy against her bare feet, and only then does she remember she left the nightgown in the room with Tom. She shifts, takes to four nimble feet, and reaches Gryffindor Tower safely.
***
Minerva travels in the Muggle fashion. She rests her arms on the railing, watching the endless ocean unfold before her. She turns and looks back at the vanishing speck that is England. So easy, when the land is so small and the sea so wide, to tell herself that Tom is nothing more than a mistake, a regrettable footnote in what will be a long and rich life.
They say demons cannot cross water.
The full skirt of her Muggle dress whips against her legs. It is red. She knows she will never again wear white. She will never walk down the aisle to the altar of sacrifice. She has had enough of possession to last a lifetime.
Author: kethlenda
Pairing: Tom/Minerva
Rating: R
Summary: This is the last time, though Tom does not yet know this, and Minerva goes to meet him in white.
Word Count: 1292
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Author's Notes: Written for hp_literotica, because omg it is closing, woe. :( Special thanks to sionnain for the beta.
What would you do with me if I came "in white?"
--Emily Dickinson
This is not a night for diaphanous white nightgowns.
The calendar proclaims it to be May, but the chill penetrating her feet through the thin satin of the slippers gives it the lie. A draft whips between the lurid panes of the stained-glass windows, and Minerva wishes again for her sensible flannel gown.
The flimsy scrap of georgette had seemed like a good idea at the time. She remembers that first feel of the silk between her fingertips on the rack at Gladrags; she had closed her eyes and had a sudden vision of herself veiled and crowned, walking with mingled fear and anticipation across a plain of obsidian, a pair of scarlet eyes flickering in the smoke-hazed distance. She'd only vaguely registered the other voices in the store--the saleswitch's murmured now, miss, that one's meant for brides, perhaps you might be interested in a more youthful look, and Olive Hornby giggling with her friends, just imagine, Miss Prim Prefect in something like that; there had been no choice but to buy it.
Tonight, when the garnet flared to life and scorched a tiny kiss of fire onto her throat--I'm experimenting with communication enchantments, Minerva, she had realized why she had bought it, why she had been meant to have it.
This is the last time, though Tom does not yet know this, and Minerva goes to meet him in white.
The door opens at her feather-light touch. Tom has seduced Hogwarts as thoroughly as he has Minerva; the castle spreads its treasures out before him, lays its secrets in his lap at his smile. He always knows where to find an abandoned room, a forgotten tower.
She enters. The room is stygian; in the moment before her eyes accustom themselves to the gloom, she cannot see him, yet is conscious in every cell of her skin that he can see her, is studying her.
"You look rather like a virgin sacrifice, Minerva."
No, no virgin, not now; but as for the other…
"Though if you truly wish to look the part, love, you ought to take your hair out of that prim little knot." His fingers find one of the tiny pins that hold her hair in abeyance; he plucks it, traces a line down the bare skin of her arm with its chill point. She shivers.
"Too slow, I think," he says. "Accio pins." The pins obey, flying like tiny birds to his waiting hand, some of them pulling painfully at her scalp as they twist their way out of her tresses.
Her hair falls heavily to her shoulders. It tickles her shoulders, her arms, and Minerva is frightened by her own sensitivity; what madness is this, if the touch of her own hair can raise gooseflesh?
Then, only then, does he touch her.
His hands wander lightly over her shoulders, as if she’s a statue he’s studying and not warm flesh at all, though it’s his hands that are icy against the heat of her skin. He bends to kiss her, and she answers the kiss with weeks, months, of repressed need. There is no use trying to hide her shudder from him; Merlin knows she’s been the subject of a thousand experiments in Legilimency; he can read her now as though her love for him, that hopeless pointless shameless love, were written on a page before him.
She decides, as he traces the curves and hollows of her body, that a caress through a thin film of silk is sweeter even than a touch upon bare skin. An hour or a heartbeat later, he slides the gown from her (snakeskin smooth), and as cool fingers meet Minerva’s impatient heat, she concludes she was wrong.
He takes her on the floor, crushing her against the crumpled spill of silk. There is no room for innocence in his world, and virgins are useful only as sacrifices, and Minerva has always known this.
It is only after the madness of their bodies passes that she thinks again of what she must tell him, and what she must do.
“This is the end,” she says; “it has to be; we’ve got to go on with our lives…”
Minerva hears rustling, a quick indrawn breath, and flinches instinctively, but no blow comes. Only words. Minerva can handle words.
“Why?” The word is not imploring as it falls from lips that twist in the half-darkness. It is a demand, an interrogation.
Minerva draws a deep breath. “I leave school in a few weeks. I’ve finished.”
“You always said you wished to remain here, to apply for a teaching position. You’ll stay, Minerva, and continue assisting me with my research.”
“I’m taking a year off,” she says. She hasn’t said this aloud to anyone until now. The idea of it feels more real somehow, now she’s spoken it. She holds the images in her mind, savors the freshness of them, like a crisp green apple after tasting only half-rotten fruit for months. A summer bustling half-smiling at the Muggle café back home, setting aside her wages along with last summer’s money, and then in the fall…
She need not tell him where she intends to go; he steals the thoughts from her mind, magpie-like, picking over the glittering images of castles, leaning towers, sunlit piazzas.
“You will not leave, Minerva."
"And why not?" She can feel his anger in the air, a vein of magma barely held in check by a thin crust of rock, and she knows she's courting the explosion, but in the hot rush of her own anger she finds the dignity sorrow would deny her.
His eyes turn to obsidian, glassy and distant. "I cannot let you go. You know too much."
Minerva is no Legilimens; perhaps he's telling the truth, and her leaving is no more to him than a strategic setback, the possible leak of classified information. Or perhaps this is a mask. Perhaps somewhere in his stunted, starved soul he loves her. She cannot, however, allow this to soften her resolve. Not if she means to escape. "You will not tell me what I can and cannot do, Tom."
Pain sears her throat; the stone glowing with infernal light. She rips the chain from her neck. Triumph courses through her as the clasp gives way. She feels hot blood at the back of her neck and does not care. She meets Tom's eyes one last time and throws his gift, his poisoned pomegranate seed, in his face.
It buys her a precious instant in which to cast Protego and reach the door. She does not look back. She does not listen to the hexes and imprecations that ring from the walls.
The stones of the corridor are icy against her bare feet, and only then does she remember she left the nightgown in the room with Tom. She shifts, takes to four nimble feet, and reaches Gryffindor Tower safely.
***
Minerva travels in the Muggle fashion. She rests her arms on the railing, watching the endless ocean unfold before her. She turns and looks back at the vanishing speck that is England. So easy, when the land is so small and the sea so wide, to tell herself that Tom is nothing more than a mistake, a regrettable footnote in what will be a long and rich life.
They say demons cannot cross water.
The full skirt of her Muggle dress whips against her legs. It is red. She knows she will never again wear white. She will never walk down the aisle to the altar of sacrifice. She has had enough of possession to last a lifetime.