Beauty Is Not Gold
Chapter 1: Snape
Beauty is not gold. That was the old saw my mother said to me the first time I came home from Muggle school crying about my looks, my jumble-sale clothes, and my unhygienic body.
I was forever annoyed by that statement. It's not as if we had the gold either. Father was on a continuous downward spiral between the dole, shift work when he could get it, and the pub. So, I supposed if there was no beauty in my person and no gold to be had, I must simply live by my brains.
I did, and that large organ landed me in more trouble than anyone dreamt I could find. Not that mother didn't attempt to warn me. She did in her wan, defeated way. By the time I came home with my love lost, to me forever as she had married my enemy, and the Mark on my arm, it was well and truly too late.
And then Lily died, and you know the boring, mawkish rest of the story:. The years of service to Dumbledore ultimately ending in his murder, my death and then rebirth were all things that mother could have never foreseen growing from that one simple statement of fact. Beauty is not gold.
Now, I sit here in my dilapidated house, expecting the arrival of one Harry Potter and his ever-present accusatory stare. I await it with both dread and a strange kind of anticipation.
I have challenged myself to keep my temper in the face of his youthful innocence. I have challenged myself to give into his blandishments about the need to move on, away from the past, and towards the future. He is the reincarnation of Albus Dumbledore, less the colourful robes, and deceptively simple wisdom.
If only I could tell Potter what I really think, if only I could say to him, "You are not your father. You are not your mother. To me, Mr. Potter, you are just an irritant, and one I have to endure no longer." But, alas, I cannot. In some way, I owe him as much as he owes me. And that cosmic ledger on which our lives have been written will never be balanced. We are intertwined in such a way as to make it impossible to separate ourselves from one another. It is because of him that I am free and because of me that he still lives. Check and balance, yet nothing paid in full.
I start when I hear the knock on my peeling door, not the type I expected. Potter's knock should be loud, bold, daring. This one is tentative, soft, and if a sound can be described as such, graceful in its precision.
I stride to the door and throw it open in my best Dickensian-heavy imitation, only to see the one face that might bring my ire to the fore even more than Potter's cheeky visage. It is Weasley. He carries a basket, no doubt a tribute from his parents. Ronald Bilius Weasley could never have brought himself to be so thoughtful, especially of me. He lifts his gaze to mine, his expression diffident. "Mum thought you might need some care."
I see the shaking of his hands. I recognise it as battle fatigue that strikes him even a month after the war’s end. It will be with him for years if not forever. I know that particular brand of stress. It wakes me at night, sends me to my labs, my books, or the pub. It surprises me, the black look he shoots me as he notices me noticing him.
"Well?" Weasley lifts the basket, waggling it in front of my face, and I catch the scent of bangers, pastry, sweets, and young male sweat. It is a homey smell, and not at all one that has graced this shack, not since my mother died and I was left under the tender mercies of my bastard father that last summer I was in this house. I bite back the retort on my lips and step aside. Molly, for all her intrusive ways, has always been fair to me.
Weasley enters with a slouching of his shoulders. He looks defeated. "Where d'you want this?"
I point to the kitchen, a drab area with little resemblance to anything but a charnel house. It is where I killed my last putative compatriot, and still reeks of Death Eater blood, guts, and gory sundries. I have not entered that room since I returned to this dismal corner of England to find one of the Lestrange cousins lying in wait. The Aurors carted the body away and left the rest for me to clean. I have seen too much of death, and I cannot face the room, even now. I hear Weasley draw in a breath, and I follow reluctantly, wanting to see what his reaction is to my living situation. He stares at the flecks of brown, of grey, and of bone white that were splattered across the room in the fight I encountered to save my worthless hide the second time that fateful day of the Final Battle.
I smirk at his back until I hear the ragged breath torn from his throat, until I see the straightening resolve in the line of his shoulders. He places the basket outside the door on the back step that had served as a cooler in my younger, hungrier days. He turns to me, his face averted, downcast as he says, "You need some help."
It is not a question, more a statement of fact. Now I do have the impetus to bellow at him, but the smooth line of his cheek as the sun caresses it through the torn window shade draws my attention first. He is still impossibly young, moderately untouched.
I remember what I was at that age and I ache for what we've both seen. I answer without thought, "Yes."
Weeks go by, and every morning, there is Weasley, or Ronald as I have come to call him in my unguarded moments. He always carries a basket and his ragged trainers scuff the dusty floor as I bid him to enter. He helps mostly with his brawn, his silence, and the evidence of his own pain. I don't know why. I could not abide the boy when he was part of the unholy trio, and he had felt the same for me I thought. I gather, after some days, that all is not well between Weasley and the other two. I never ask. It is neither my desire to be drawn into the drama nor to enquire personally about his liaison with the Granger girl. He is, whilst he is here, an anachronism, a creature out of place and time. That state suits me.
I see our kinship in our tatty robes and our willingness to work. I admire the graceful arc of his brows, the reverent way he treats my meagre possessions, those left after the Ministry seized my Darker collection. I realise, with a startling bit of clarity, that he sees the same in me. Over time we have become, if not friends, at least uneasy allies in this war we wage on filth. despair, and shaking hands.
But I do ask one day, "So, Potter sent you to take care of me? He couldn't be arsed to do it himself?"
Weasley, who has been dusting bent over arse in the air, straightens, the long muscles in his back straining his shirt. "Naw. I came on my own. Harry... he didn't want you to have... he knows he makes you uncomfortable, what with... so..."
Weasley shrugs, the collar of his shirt pushing his longer than fashionable hair up in the back, rilling it as if fingers have combed through it at his nape. My fingers ache to do the same. I have a definite fondness for ginger. His hair is not red all over, I notice, more a copper where the sun has not bleached it, a semiprecious metal, a useful one. I lift my hand and drop it. I am aware of my own failings, my own Haephestan darkness next to his Apollonian brilliance.
I feel unaccountably comforted and at the same time irritated by Weasley's presumption. I open my mouth to speak, to rend him, to destroy whatever strange feelings that burn in my gut which have arisen over him in the past weeks. If he is young and fresh, then I am ancient and unworthy. It is a straightforward and cold equation.
Weasley turns to me, his hands out in supplication, in questing need. "Sir... Severus... I want... no, I need...."
And that is when it happens, where gold and beauty do not matter as he strides to me and in one moment, shatters my world-view of Weasleys in general and this one in particular. He grabs me my by my dark robes, I still wear the unrelieved black of mourning, and his mouth crashes down on mine. Soon, we are mired in loosened cloth and questing hands, both moaning our need and desire. I take him there in the dust of my childhood home, and he keens his pleasure, this man-boy who is so unlike and yet so like me.
When all is finished, he doesn't cling, he merely pulls up his pants and trousers and gives me a complicit smile as he turns back to cleaning. I watch, not knowing how to proceed. He is a boy and I am ancient. I should damn myself, but am too shaken by the moment to think much beyond the burning in my thighs and the aches elsewhere. It is a good kind of pain, cleansing in its presence. I ask, to cover my own shock at the actions of us both, "What of Miss Granger?"
Weasley shrugs again. "What of her? We're friends, nothing more. It's not her I want."
I am awash in desire once more, still perplexed by the nettling feel of it in my body. I pull down my robes, attempt to draw the cold veneer that I have used for so many years to cover my needs and deep longing. I want to be loved, but I am a man who has played a role for so long that it surprises me that Weasley could break through the hard carapace I have erected to see my heart's desire. He has, and it frightens me. I lash out, "I never asked you to do... what we just did. I never wanted anyone...." besides Lily, my flower, my first love... "to shag me out of pity."
I have my pride, broken though it is, and I wear it like quixotic armour.
Weasley chuckles, not the reaction I expect, and I rise up, my tarnished hubris clanging about me useless and tattered. Before I can flay him for his mirth, he says, "I'm not in the habit of having men up my arse out of some misguided sense of duty or pity. I wanted you. It's that simple." I reel as he says, "I hope we can do it again. You were good at it. I thought you might be."
He turns back to the dusting, his pale torso gleaming in the grime Spinners End has never been a place that engenders hope for me, yet now that I see him, my Weasley, I feel the emotion germinate in my chest, spill out through the dingy rooms. Ronald pauses in his duties, "Well, are you going to stare at me like a lump, or are you going to help? I would like to at least get the parlour done before I have to leave."
"Don't go," I say, my voice croaking over the words trying not to sound as if I'm pleading, knowing the tone is there.
"I won't be gone forever, just 'til tomorrow," he answers, "I need to get a few things if I'm going to stay the night or... longer." His swift blush and defensive stance at his presumption heartens me. He is on no crusade to save an old and bitter bastard. "I hope you don't mind."
I shake my head, not wanting to ruin the moment with my brambled, spiky words.
We work in silence after that, the hours wearing on comfortably. When I happen to spy him, my breath catches with the stirrings of (love?) lust. When it is time for him to leave, he kisses me and then laughs, "You're not half-bad to look at, Severus. Not half-bad at all once you get out of those undertaker robes."
"I am..." I wince, not wanting to let this obviously blind boy know that I am ugly, unlovable, and needy. "Not much."
"Mum told me once that beauty wasn't gold,' he says as he runs his hand down my shadowed cheek, his fingertips straying over my lips. "I think you're gold, Professor. I don't much care about the rest."
"It's Severus," I say with lips held stiff from the need to suppress my desire. I quiver with want under my façade. "Ronald, after what we just did... what I want... I am Severus."
"Yeah," he answers. He brushes his lips over mine, a phantom caress. I am pleased by the pink that stains his cheeks, the sigil of his youth. "Tomorrow then."
He leaves whistling a shrill, tuneless scrap of song. I close the door after I hear him Apparate, trying to steady my shaking hands, ease my trembling heart.
I wonder if mother, when she told me that axiom, if she knew the events that would unfold today? She never claimed to be a seer, but there were many predictions she made that were right.
I say it aloud, just to break the buzzing silence of the room, "Beauty is not gold."
I return to cleaning. There is no need to waste time in the mundane when I might spend the next days in more satisfying pursuit