Behind Every Good Woman fic
I've finished my Snape/Pince just in time. Or, anyway, it's horribly brief, but I'm done with it. Very pissed off at uncooperative and untalkative Pince!muse, who says she'd be more inclined to shag Umbridge, as long as her horrible quill gets to come along. *facepalm* Also pissed at Snape!muse, who has left the building and flat out refuses to come back in.
Title: On Fleshly Tablets
Author: Malecrit
Fandom: Harry Potter
Ship: Snape/Pince
Rating: PG, I suppose
Notes: for viola_dreamwalk's Behind Every Good Woman challenge. Apologies for: lack of beta, general crappiness, lack of plot/dialogue/smut/any redeeming qualities, random Bible quote in title. Thanks to Wikipedia for the parchment info.
Irma knows the students call her an old vulture, watching over them with her wand and her skimpy feather duster, as they take their fill and then abandon the remains of the leather-bound carrion on the library tables. In the evening, she re-shelves the books for later consumption, digestion, and she recalls that sharp moment in her youth when she learned, This is how parchment is made. A small betrayal to the mind of an innocent girl. Grindelwald is vanquished and evil is past, but parchment is the stretched skin of calves, and vellum sheep, and we are wizards, so also: hippogriff, centaur, mooncalf. Death into life. A little suffering for great knowledge. And, oh, the parchment made from thestral--exquisite!--and now unseen because Grindelwald is vanquished and sorrow, gone.
At that time, she had had a choice. Do nothing, or refuse to read, or insist upon paper. But paper, so Muggle, and Irma decides she doesn't like the feel of it beneath her fingers, the pulp pressed into planes, words written upon the remains of an insensate being. She doesn't like it when she could have the grain of parchment, flesh against flesh, the single sheet of dead flesh against her living.
Her fingers wrap around Severus's pale forearm and, though she doesn't know why, she is reminded of a thirteenth century text, its parchment made from the flesh of stillborn unicorns, dark magic even without the spells inscribed within. Her thumb slides along the tendons of his wrist, the flutter of his pulse and of her own, slides up across the blank expanse of skin without her realizing what lies beneath, invisible. For a moment, the pressure of her fingertips leaves paler marks on his pale skin.
Reading is an act of greed, of selfishness, and writing is, too, but it’s also an act of sharing. Irma is never a writer, but a reader only. She speaks little to Severus, in public or out of it. His is merely skin against her skin, a blank book. The acrid cauldron scent of his hair like the pressing scent of her library, thick with the threat of mildew held off by magic.
Parchment is always for Irma a reminder of her death, and it is a comfort. Without death, there would be no moldering manuscripts, no literature, no spellbooks, no advancement. She drags the sharp tip of a quill across Severus’s thigh, inkless, leaving only red scratches across his skin. She writes without thinking--her name, poetry, potion ingredients, incantations from the unicorn parchment spellbook, old attempts at immortality.
In the end it matters not that it’s Severus in her bed. It could be--has been--anyone else instead: the caretaker, the Divination professor, more Defense Against the Dark Arts professors than anyone would suspect. Irma does not care if she likes them, does not truly bother to form any opinion of or attachment to their personalities, only wants the warm expanse of their bodies, like books breathing, while in the library the dust, unable to rest on the books, is suspended in mid-air, forming a pale skin an atom’s breadth from the surface of the shelves.
Title: On Fleshly Tablets
Author: Malecrit
Fandom: Harry Potter
Ship: Snape/Pince
Rating: PG, I suppose
Notes: for viola_dreamwalk's Behind Every Good Woman challenge. Apologies for: lack of beta, general crappiness, lack of plot/dialogue/smut/any redeeming qualities, random Bible quote in title. Thanks to Wikipedia for the parchment info.
Irma knows the students call her an old vulture, watching over them with her wand and her skimpy feather duster, as they take their fill and then abandon the remains of the leather-bound carrion on the library tables. In the evening, she re-shelves the books for later consumption, digestion, and she recalls that sharp moment in her youth when she learned, This is how parchment is made. A small betrayal to the mind of an innocent girl. Grindelwald is vanquished and evil is past, but parchment is the stretched skin of calves, and vellum sheep, and we are wizards, so also: hippogriff, centaur, mooncalf. Death into life. A little suffering for great knowledge. And, oh, the parchment made from thestral--exquisite!--and now unseen because Grindelwald is vanquished and sorrow, gone.
At that time, she had had a choice. Do nothing, or refuse to read, or insist upon paper. But paper, so Muggle, and Irma decides she doesn't like the feel of it beneath her fingers, the pulp pressed into planes, words written upon the remains of an insensate being. She doesn't like it when she could have the grain of parchment, flesh against flesh, the single sheet of dead flesh against her living.
Her fingers wrap around Severus's pale forearm and, though she doesn't know why, she is reminded of a thirteenth century text, its parchment made from the flesh of stillborn unicorns, dark magic even without the spells inscribed within. Her thumb slides along the tendons of his wrist, the flutter of his pulse and of her own, slides up across the blank expanse of skin without her realizing what lies beneath, invisible. For a moment, the pressure of her fingertips leaves paler marks on his pale skin.
Reading is an act of greed, of selfishness, and writing is, too, but it’s also an act of sharing. Irma is never a writer, but a reader only. She speaks little to Severus, in public or out of it. His is merely skin against her skin, a blank book. The acrid cauldron scent of his hair like the pressing scent of her library, thick with the threat of mildew held off by magic.
Parchment is always for Irma a reminder of her death, and it is a comfort. Without death, there would be no moldering manuscripts, no literature, no spellbooks, no advancement. She drags the sharp tip of a quill across Severus’s thigh, inkless, leaving only red scratches across his skin. She writes without thinking--her name, poetry, potion ingredients, incantations from the unicorn parchment spellbook, old attempts at immortality.
In the end it matters not that it’s Severus in her bed. It could be--has been--anyone else instead: the caretaker, the Divination professor, more Defense Against the Dark Arts professors than anyone would suspect. Irma does not care if she likes them, does not truly bother to form any opinion of or attachment to their personalities, only wants the warm expanse of their bodies, like books breathing, while in the library the dust, unable to rest on the books, is suspended in mid-air, forming a pale skin an atom’s breadth from the surface of the shelves.