Birthday Fic #23: "Old Game" (Severus, Lucius; PG)
Title: Old Game
Characters: Severus, Lucius
Rating: PG?
Words: 840
A/N: This is the 23rd of the one-a-day birthday fics. Prompt from leni_jess Lucius/Severus, or just Lucius, Negotiation. I wrote a longer version of this, which goes on quite a bit further, but I'm pretty sure it's stronger ending here. Also, I assume that given Severus reportedly gets to school with a lot of knowledge despite what looks to have been a troubled mixed-blood childhood, and given he is able to carry out double-agentness for a very long time, he is very smart/precocious.
Old Game
It's an old game, and one with which Severus is already familiar before it first begins.
His mentor--and certainly the Prefect, standing haughty just so, where the cool light filtering in through the lake turns him to beautiful marble before his young charge, intends to teach him something, although of course what lesson Severus will learn remains to be seen--expects nothing of him. Severus knows why; his name is, to be blunt, not to be found in the old cold tapestries of the great houses, and there are two ways for that to happen. One is happenstance: an unpredictable and therefore inherently frightening accident. The old families take note of the newcomers with a complex emotion that lies midway between mistrust and disdain. The other is the circumstance of Severus's birth: a traitor to the blood breeds outside their people, knowing as she must that her child is likely to one day find himself among the peers she has abandoned. The old families trust these children even less; they are born of treachery, in the dark, lacking the history and tradition that is their broken birthright.
Severus knows this, because his mother has explained it in careful complicated words from the floor of his room, seated against the wall at the head of his bed, in whispers that his father won't hear. She has told him he will be held accountable for her faults and errors--not that these are different things, among the people who will now be his family ten months a year--and why. She has told him no one in this house will allow him among them easily. She has told him it will go better for him among the clever and studious Ravenclaws, and has taught him well beyond his years in order to make sure he will fit in there even better than his sharp mind would without the extra help.
He would do well, there. His classmates would spend their hours on homework and questions, but Severus craves concrete success, preferably involving Galleons and a tapestry of his own, which no one will consider worthy for generations to come, but which everyone will have to accept. He isn't a Ravenclaw.
She will worry, he is certain, when he writes home. But he is not his mother, and her fear for him does not override his own ambition to overcome this handicap along with the others: the sallow skin and angular body he's inherited from her that his brief assessment suggests will not win him the easy camaraderie of the beautiful among his classmates--all of whom seem to have been destined for homes in the castle's high towers, in the sun--and the overpowering nose and temper--not that the one has anything to do with the other--which will not only amplify his (many) other physical flaws, but which will make the game difficult.
He intends to play it anyway, and win. The temper, he will control. He will. And the rest is only what people see. Mother will understand, even as she fears for him. They are too alike for her to not see his intent, and while she may not believe he can thrive, or even survive, she will understand.
It is with her lessons in mind, therefore, that he begins. Before his new mentor can prowl forward and speak to him just too quietly to hear, taking the advantage of forcing Severus to work too hard for basic conversation, he asks what he can do for him.
The hesitation is minute, and then the Prefect lifts one pale brow and turns his chin an inch to the left. He asks what Severus means, addressing his elder, his superior, as though they are equals, and says his name with clear crisp enunciation, in case Severus should have failed to apprehend to whom he was speaking.
Severus doesn't back down. He feels powerful. The Prefect towers over him, but he isn't as tall as father, and despite the relative power he holds, he is constrained against doing Severus any harm. Severus ignores the sneered question and stands up straight, then repeats his original request for information.
There is a moment of stomach-clenching panic as Malfoy raises his hand, the sharp sour twist in Severus's belly when he wonders whether he has misjudged and Malfoy will ignore the constraint, but he doesn't flinch. Mother has taught him to defend himself, and while there's never been an opportunity for a practical examination, his grasp of theory is sound. And then Malfoy slides the hand, broad and unscarred with trimmed and rounded fingernails unbothered by hangnails and ragged tears, into his lapel and takes out his wand. He uses it for light, the Lumos spell Severus has known since he was eight, and examines Severus more closely. And then a crooked smile, by no means genuine, cracks his face.
Malfoy doesn't ask for anything, because now is not the time, but Severus knows he will. The first round of negotiation has been successful.
Characters: Severus, Lucius
Rating: PG?
Words: 840
A/N: This is the 23rd of the one-a-day birthday fics. Prompt from leni_jess Lucius/Severus, or just Lucius, Negotiation. I wrote a longer version of this, which goes on quite a bit further, but I'm pretty sure it's stronger ending here. Also, I assume that given Severus reportedly gets to school with a lot of knowledge despite what looks to have been a troubled mixed-blood childhood, and given he is able to carry out double-agentness for a very long time, he is very smart/precocious.
Old Game
It's an old game, and one with which Severus is already familiar before it first begins.
His mentor--and certainly the Prefect, standing haughty just so, where the cool light filtering in through the lake turns him to beautiful marble before his young charge, intends to teach him something, although of course what lesson Severus will learn remains to be seen--expects nothing of him. Severus knows why; his name is, to be blunt, not to be found in the old cold tapestries of the great houses, and there are two ways for that to happen. One is happenstance: an unpredictable and therefore inherently frightening accident. The old families take note of the newcomers with a complex emotion that lies midway between mistrust and disdain. The other is the circumstance of Severus's birth: a traitor to the blood breeds outside their people, knowing as she must that her child is likely to one day find himself among the peers she has abandoned. The old families trust these children even less; they are born of treachery, in the dark, lacking the history and tradition that is their broken birthright.
Severus knows this, because his mother has explained it in careful complicated words from the floor of his room, seated against the wall at the head of his bed, in whispers that his father won't hear. She has told him he will be held accountable for her faults and errors--not that these are different things, among the people who will now be his family ten months a year--and why. She has told him no one in this house will allow him among them easily. She has told him it will go better for him among the clever and studious Ravenclaws, and has taught him well beyond his years in order to make sure he will fit in there even better than his sharp mind would without the extra help.
He would do well, there. His classmates would spend their hours on homework and questions, but Severus craves concrete success, preferably involving Galleons and a tapestry of his own, which no one will consider worthy for generations to come, but which everyone will have to accept. He isn't a Ravenclaw.
She will worry, he is certain, when he writes home. But he is not his mother, and her fear for him does not override his own ambition to overcome this handicap along with the others: the sallow skin and angular body he's inherited from her that his brief assessment suggests will not win him the easy camaraderie of the beautiful among his classmates--all of whom seem to have been destined for homes in the castle's high towers, in the sun--and the overpowering nose and temper--not that the one has anything to do with the other--which will not only amplify his (many) other physical flaws, but which will make the game difficult.
He intends to play it anyway, and win. The temper, he will control. He will. And the rest is only what people see. Mother will understand, even as she fears for him. They are too alike for her to not see his intent, and while she may not believe he can thrive, or even survive, she will understand.
It is with her lessons in mind, therefore, that he begins. Before his new mentor can prowl forward and speak to him just too quietly to hear, taking the advantage of forcing Severus to work too hard for basic conversation, he asks what he can do for him.
The hesitation is minute, and then the Prefect lifts one pale brow and turns his chin an inch to the left. He asks what Severus means, addressing his elder, his superior, as though they are equals, and says his name with clear crisp enunciation, in case Severus should have failed to apprehend to whom he was speaking.
Severus doesn't back down. He feels powerful. The Prefect towers over him, but he isn't as tall as father, and despite the relative power he holds, he is constrained against doing Severus any harm. Severus ignores the sneered question and stands up straight, then repeats his original request for information.
There is a moment of stomach-clenching panic as Malfoy raises his hand, the sharp sour twist in Severus's belly when he wonders whether he has misjudged and Malfoy will ignore the constraint, but he doesn't flinch. Mother has taught him to defend himself, and while there's never been an opportunity for a practical examination, his grasp of theory is sound. And then Malfoy slides the hand, broad and unscarred with trimmed and rounded fingernails unbothered by hangnails and ragged tears, into his lapel and takes out his wand. He uses it for light, the Lumos spell Severus has known since he was eight, and examines Severus more closely. And then a crooked smile, by no means genuine, cracks his face.
Malfoy doesn't ask for anything, because now is not the time, but Severus knows he will. The first round of negotiation has been successful.