(Untitled)
Date: Wednesday, October 11, 2000
Time: From 1pm
Location: The Blackpool Tower Ballrooms, Blackpool
Characters Involved: OPEN TO ALL (Pansy's such an attention whore)
Rating: PG-13ish, presumably for possible swearing only
( Finally - she got to be the centre of attention )
Time: From 1pm
Location: The Blackpool Tower Ballrooms, Blackpool
Characters Involved: OPEN TO ALL (Pansy's such an attention whore)
Rating: PG-13ish, presumably for possible swearing only
( Finally - she got to be the centre of attention )
The gift he had brought was not in the least 'personal', considering that he no longer had much insight into the young lady's preferences. However, he did know enough about females, in general, and wealthy females more particularly, to be able to have a tolerable 'guess'. The jewelers in Hogsmeade was able to help him select a tasteful pearl-teardrop pendant on a fine gold necklace, and matching earrings. It was less than he generally spent on Draco's birthday, but would not be considered 'miserly' considering his station in relation to theirs. The store wrapped it appropriately in paper with tasteful imprints of their logo on the bow, and he had retrieved it just before he Apparated.
So now he merely waited in the queue for his chance to be so 'privileged' as to be permitted to deposit his gift to the enormous mountan on the table, and the dubious honour of 'greeting' the ghosts of his past and present.
He contented himself, while waiting, to look for signs of the ravages of time on Anna Marie, or at least a bit of plumpness left from the pregnancy twenty-one years past. One advantage to being arse-ugly - old age would hardly have a chance of making Severus look worse.
Reply
Of course, she had aged since Snape had last seen her. She was twenty-three years older and twenty-three years had a way of leaving their mark. Fine lines, very fine, had formed at the outer corner of her eyes and on her forehead but a positive outcome of hardly ever expressing a spontaneous or extreme emotion was that laughter lines or frown lines would never be a problem. Her light-brown hair was light brown yet - for all that her daughter had just turned twenty-one, Anna-Marie was not yet quite forty, and if she had had any beautician's assistance in keeping her colouring, it didn't show.
She still remembered well the girl she had been at school, and remembered often, comparing her own wayward daughter with the measured coolness Anna-Marie had exhibited her entire school career... and since.
She remembered Severus Snape too, but as nothing more than a leech on the rearside of all good society. Perhaps that was unfair. Anna-Marie pursed her lips. She wasn't in the best mood tonight, and she hoped it wasn't showing. Outwardly another layer of frost descended over her features. Oh, she remembered Severus Snape all right. In her day, Anna-Marie had been considered one of the catches of her generation. Beautiful, accomplished, of good breeding stock. Most of the boys at school (and some of the teachers) had looked after her as she walked by. And she always walked by.
But it was difficult to walk by gracefully when something was sprawled in front of you. It was even more difficult not to sneer.
Seeing a hook-nosed profile over the queue of the great, the good, and the nobodies who were waiting to pay their respects and enter the fairground of Pansy's nightmarish dream birthday party, Anna-Marie remembered and smiled faintly, so that the Ministry official she was greeting blushed and congratulated himself on scoring a positive impression on the notoriously distant Mrs. Parkinson. Perhaps he'd come and find her later - who knew?
Anna-Marie had positioned herself nearest to the entrance to the ballroom, so that at least people's first encounter with the family throwing this party was one of taste and sophistication - a standard her husband would attempt to uphold and Pansy's dress would destroy.
It meant that she was the first of the family to greet Severus Snape - who was a Professor now of course, and Anna-Marie looked up at this tall, sour-looking man and she could see where the desperate boy had gone. She fancied she could still see him, a little, hiding in the blackness of Snape's eyes.
Quietly she took his rght hand in hers, the silk of her gloves gliding smoothly against his skin and nodded a little more deeply than to the other unknowns. An acknowledgement that for six years they had lived in the same house, that was barely noticeable.
"Mr Snape. How wonderful that you have managed to escape the dark of your dungeons at last."
Reply
It required almost as much control now. He almost did not take her hand - even that common gesture was at least as distasteful to him as it was to her! However, if he was to 'prove' himself to have matured beyond that boy which she must surely still see as she looked at him, it would not do to slight her, here and now.
Besides, Severus had developed a highly critical view of everything and everyone. He no longer saw the perfect beauty which had set his adolescent hormones raging, but instead saw the ice-princess, as cold and untouchable now, as ever, and he wondered how she had ever submitted to such a carnal act as to conceive a child at all. The tiny lines and slight roughening of the once-perfect complexion did not escape his sharp gaze, and the sadist within reveled at the signs of fading beauty.
Arching a haughty brow, he smirked at her disdainfully. How liberating it was, in that moment, to realise her opinion of him no longer mattered.
Much.
"It is Professor Snape, Lady Parkinson," he corrected her with graceful gallantry as he bowed slightly, deliberately 'elevating' her title as well as his own, to take away any 'sting' of the correction. Long gone was the boy who would so rejoice at a glance from her that he would become utterly tongue-tied.
"It is not an 'escape' to be drawn away from that which inspires one's passion. As you might imagine, I do have a great many obligations, considering my post.
"However, as Miss Parkinson was one of my students, any inconvenience to me, in the rearrangement of my schedule, was very minor. Your daughter has grown into a fine, independent young woman. I am certain you are very proud."
If his hands were sweating, shamefully... well, her gloves and the fact that he had tucked them safely back behind his back after the unwanted 'handshake' would conceal that embarrassing tidbit from her notice.
Reply
"And how wonderful it must be for you, Professor Snape," she said quietly, "to be able to work for a wage in a profession you enjoy so much."
As ever with Anna-Marie, it was the unspoken which was of the utmost importance. It was really too easy for her to judge this man, looking down his over-sized nose at her in her, while he worked for his living. Disgraceful. Though for a man of his breeding, not entirely unexpected...
Again someone was congratulating her on her daughter - spoiled madam that she was, brazenly flaunting her body as though she was for sale to the highest bidder. And yet the highest bidder appeared to be that disreputable young Derrick. He was here somewhere, Pansy had said so.
Well, she was comforted by the presence of some families she labelled as "proper" company for her only daughter. Perhaps Pansy would come to see that there her way truly lay.
"Indeed, I am proud of her, often, and she is certainly... independent. I only wish sometimes that she was not so headstrong. But then I am sure you are aware that she has never listened to advice. I wonder at you, Professor Snape," she added, "spending your time guiding other people's children - I think you never married?"
Of course, she knew he had never married. Nor never really consorted successfully with any of the girls in their age group, at least while they were at school. It was more than idle curiosity that was leading these questions - Anna-Marie never liked to be unsure of a person's motivation and there was much uncertainty surrounding Severus Snape.
Reply
He glanced at Miss Parkinson, finally able to see her through the thinning queue in front of him, and his brows arched slightly, in spite of himself, in surprise at her rather daring attire.
Daring, but still quite elegant. The daughter possessed a flair and a passion for life which the mother had never achieved. Perhaps that was why Anna-Marie's exquisite beauty no longer seemed to have sway over him.
Well, that, and his recent discovery that he did, indeed prefer men. Or at least, one man.
His gaze returned to Anna-Marie, and his expression became taught with disapproval. Qualifying her 'pride' in her daughter as something which could only be earnt by certain behaviours was not a winning point with Severus! He had watched Draco, for years, strive to be 'worthy' of the filial pride he so longed for, while Lucius withheld it, to be given out only at his whim. The proud, beautiful young woman standing only a few feet away deserved far more than conditional pride!
"Interesting. The very qualities you wish she did not possess are those which I thought would make you most proud. Miss Parkinson is not a young woman to be manipulated or coerced into anything not of her own choosing. Few possess that strength of character and sense of self."
He certainly had not, and look where it had led him! Though, it was true, he had done much to foster that very quality among 'his' Snakelets, once he was Head of House.
Recognising Anna-Marie's slight as it was intended, he offered another bland smirk, though his gaze was piercing as he sought to launch his own barb.
"You are quite correct. I have never married, but I find my position quite rewarding, and do not mind guiding other people's children, in the least."
Well, not the Slytherin children!
"I find often, when they come to me, they have had very limited parental guidance, and I have seven years in which to make reparations for parental neglect."
Reply
Certainly, her barbed comments on Snape's breeding and lifestyle did not seem to have the effect she was used to exciting in people. Of course, usually Anna-Marie only associated with people who appreciated her own good breeding and superior status and while Snape had once been situated well within that group, it had been a long time.
She didn't like the insolent way he looked at her, the way he commented on her child and her parenting. As though anyone had ever intended that she should be a mother in lower people's meaning of the word. One couldn't host soirees with a baby on one's hip and a splodge of gloop down one's front. What was the point of house-elves if not to relieve one of less savoury tasks?
How to regain the upper-hand in this conversation? Ah yes, of course. Strike at known weaknesses. This sneering middle-aged man, he would not like to be reminded of his snivelling, whimpering youth.
"Do not misunderstand me, Professor Snape. I am proud of her in many ways, but I do not see that being headstrong to the point of idiocy is to be celebrated. She had much better keep calm and think logically, as I'm sure you, the Potions master, comprehend." She smiled thinly. "Of course, you must be well able to understand such children, with your... background and your troublesome years at school. Why, it seems almost as though it were yesterday, that I was sat before the fire in the common room and you - now, where would you have been?"
Reply
Still, before he could argue the point - and he was more than willing to engage in heated debate right here in the queue, which Anna-Marie would consider ample evidence of his 'low breeding' - she launched her next attack, and unfortunately this was a 'direct hit'. He was not that boy, anymore, and he no longer cared (much) what opinion those like Anna-Marie held of him. None of which changed the fact that being reminded, so blatantly, of such history was exceedingly distasteful.
Where would he have been? Lurking in a corner buried in his revision if he had homework, but just as likely to have been quite literally sitting on the floor near the feet of which ever 'important' person in the House was presently tolerating Severus' presence or showed any inclination of being able to advance his 'status'! His intelligence served him well, even then, and some students were more tolerant of him than others, in exchange for assistance in their studies, but he was always of the 'lowest ranks' within the House, even in his seventh year.
He was not quite as fawning and servile as Peter Pettigrew had been amongst his House - but only because, even then, Severus had preferred to be alone as much as possible. However, the exceedingly, humiliatingly deferential behaviour had been there, undoubtedly. NOW, he bowed to no man, recognised no innate superiourity of birth or blood, unless it was his choice and in his interest to do so. Then... the mere memory of it still made him burn with shame and self-disgust.
Outwardly, his expression became a complete blank, a mask of feigned boredom behind which he had learnt to hide. His spine became, if possible, even more rigid, and he scarcely breathed. Only his glittering eyes betrayed his anger, and even this he concealed as well as may be, with Occlumency and decades of practice. Anna-Marie Parkinson was NOT more difficult to face than the Dark Lord himself!
Though, he was beginning to think she might be a close second or third.
"I would have been somewhere far beneath your notice, I am sure, Mrs Parkinson," he said coldly. "But I monopolise your time and hold up the queue of the admiring masses."
A moment before, he had been quite prepared to argue with her indefinitely, regardless of propriety or crowds. Now, he could scarcely wait to be shot of her. The husband, at least, could not be as bad. Severus scarcely knew of the man, being older than himself, and could not be humiliated by painful recollections of the worst kind.
Reply
Leave a comment