Fic Post: The Black Asphodel Part 1 of 5
Title: The Black Asphodel
Author: DementorDelta
Pairing: Severus Snape/Harry Potter
Rating: Adult
Word Count: Approx 36,000
Summary: All of England is mesmerized by that daring hero, the Black Asphodel, who risks life and fortune to spirit French wizards out of Paris during the French Revolution.
Notes: Beta read by the marvelous Accioslash and by the equally marvelous whitecotton. Thank you ladies for tackling this for me! This work is based on The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy and is intended, in style and plot, as a gentle homage.
Written for the extremely patient rory8 as part of the livelongnmarry fundraising project. Thanks so much for your support and your patience.
Presented in its entirety in 5 parts.
The Black Asphodel, Part 1 of 5
Paris, During the Reign of Terror
Harry's heart thudded in his chest as he caught a glimpse of the rakish profile nearly concealed by the heavy velvet drapes of the theater box just above his head. The mysterious man was in the audience of the Theatre Francais again tonight, in the box closest to the stage. Only the fact that Sirius had drilled his lines into him kept Harry from missing his next cue as he sought to distinguish more of the man's shadowed features.
"Hold still," his dresser, Madame Malkin, hissed after he ducked into the wings for his mid-act costume change. Harry tried to peer past the scrim to see if the man's gaze had followed him off stage as it had done last night and the night before. "In faith, you're slipperier than a kneazle tonight," she scolded, inspecting his lace cuffs for rips.
Dutifully Harry held still while she fastened the heavy brocade coat needed for the next act around him. He'd begun to think of the persistent patron as his visitor alone, for he was aware of the man's glittering gaze upon him every moment Harry was on the stage of the Theatre Francaise, his godfather's theater. Conversely, the man always vacated the box by the time the lights went up for the curtain calls so Harry had got only the scantest glimpses of him in return. He could not say why the mysterious admirer had piqued his interest so, only that Harry, used to admiration from strangers in the audience, found this particular stranger more compelling than any he had ever performed for.
The first night he'd spotted him, Harry had hoped some ardent swain would be waiting for him at the stage door, perhaps clutching roses. No one had been waiting, at least not for Harry, but the box had been visited the next night, and all the ones for a week by the same man. Several times, during his dramatic scenes, Harry, out of the corner of his eye, could see the man leaning forward, as if swept up in his performance.
"There," Madame Malkin whispered, smoothing an invisible wrinkle from the brocade before shooing Harry back out onto the stage. "Die well tonight."
Harry shot her a jaunty grin. "I always do," he said just loud enough for her to hear.
After his scene, instead of dashing back to the dressing room he shared with several other young men in the company during the interval, Harry lingered in the wings, trying to stay out of sight while the burly stagehands shifted the set for the second act.
"Here now, what are you doing, loitering about?" a voice from behind him barked. Harry yelped and got out of the way as a stagehand in a cockaded hat wheeled a massive trunk, crucial for Harry's climatic death scene into place.
"Harry, why aren't you in costume?" came another voice and Harry gave up his vigil with a sigh. Sirius Black, his godfather and stage manager, stood frowning down at him.
"Just going," Harry replied, abusing the buttons of Madame Malkin's carefully fitted coat.
Sirius's shrewd gaze surveyed him a moment more. "Full house tonight," he observed with a flick of his head to the sounds of the crowd just beyond the curtain. "Every box is full," he added. Harry felt his cheeks flushing with color.
"I was just--" he stammered, trying to think of a reason he would be trying to see out into the audience.
A hand cupped his chin and tugged it back up. "Careful, boy," Sirius said kindly.
Harry nodded, and Sirius released his chin. "I'm only looking," Harry said impishly, striking the overly-dramatic pose that had made even hardened theater critics weep during his performance of Orpheus last season. "I want to break a few hearts on my own."
Sirius's smile held fond amusement, but something wistful beneath the humor. "You will, my boy," he said, giving Harry a gentle shove toward the dressing rooms, "of that, I have no doubt."
~~**~~
Harry forced himself to concentrate on his role, that of the heroine's half-brother who is tragically killed in a duel for her honor in the last scene. He poured every nuance of the craft Sirius had taught him into each line, finally expiring in the heroine's arms, only to spring to his feet again for the tumultuous curtain call.
Boldly Harry looked toward the box closest to the stage, hoping against hope that his mysterious swain would reveal himself tonight at last. His heart plummeted. The box was empty again.
A practiced smile adorned his face during the curtain calls. Harry had to step over roses being tossed at his feet to make his way forward for his bows. There was a disappointed roar when he threw no kisses into the crowd before the curtain started to close. His smile faded as soon as the curtain swung shut. He dragged his fingers down the oversize pearl buttons of his frockcoat, giving his cravat a dispirited tug. The other cast members brushed past him, chatting and laughing gaily, off--no doubt--to late night suppers or assignations.
A hand touched his shoulder and Harry summoned one more smile. "I have a note for you, monsieur," M. Malkin said, patting the capacious pockets of her apron.
"A note?" Harry blinked in confusion. "Has something happened to Sirius?" These were dangerous times--not even the actors and actresses in one of the city's leading theaters were safe.
"Non," she said, waving away his anxiety with a Gallic shrug, dislodging scissors and a tape measure from one pocket while Harry hopped impatiently from foot to foot.
"Who is it from then?" Harry asked, wondering how rude it would be to cast an Accio spell himself on her pockets.
"How should I know?" she said, peering at a parakeet who squawked in annoyance at being turned out of her apron. "Do I look like the sort who goes around demanding footmen who their masters are?"
"A footman brought it?" Harry asked, breathless excitement quickening his voice.
"Haven't I just said so?" she replied crossly, but her expression brightened at once as her fingers plunged into a pocket, and they both heard the crinkle of parchment. "Voila!" Several butterflies fluttered around her hand as she pulled the note out and handed it to Harry. The butterflies swirled lazily over both their heads before darting into the wings. Madame tsked. "I'll have to catch them again for the first act tomorrow."
Harry, however, had no eyes for butterflies. His eyes fixed on the dark seal on the note, and his heart fluttered as though the butterflies had Apparated inside him. Distantly he heard Madame chattering as she turned away while he stared at the cream-colored note. The seal's device was blurred, but Harry knew no noblemen or aristocrats so wouldn't have known this one by their coat of arms anyway. With trembling fingers, he broke the seal.
Monsieur Nigellus-- it began.
Nigellus was the stage name he and Sirius had adopted when coming to France, though Harry didn't remember it, being just a baby. He answered just as often to his first name, Etienne, also bestowed upon him by Sirius for the stage, as he did to his own.
I am desirous of speaking with you, upon a matter which will, I believe, take up only a small portion of your time. If you would be so kind, I am waiting in my carriage on the Rue Germaine. The crest on the carriage matches the one on my seal.
Your very humble servant--
There were only initials, two very fancy, interlocked esses that looked like miniature snakes. Harry clasped the note to his chest and blessed whatever gods in the wings that were looking after him. It had to be his visitor.
He wanted Harry.
And Harry very much wanted to be wanted.
~~**~~
Harry knew the Rue Germaine well. It was one of the main turn-around points for the carriages that dropped off visitors to the theater. At this hour there were only a few hackney cabs waiting for late night stragglers, and one fine carriage. Nervously he ran a hand through his hopelessly untidy hair as he approached the intimidating bulk of the carriage. It was indeed very fine, trimmed in gilt. There was an elaborately carved device on the door and four stamping bays at the head. Before he got too close, however, Harry was challenged by a footman.
"Off with you, boy," came the shout and Harry jumped back.
When he was on the stage, the scripted lines always flew from his lips with rehearsed ease but when faced with an angry footman and a dark street, Harry stammered. Fumbling a little, he patted his waistcoat for the note he'd tucked inside.
The carriage door swung open and a dark head appeared in the opening. "It's all right," came a cultured voice. English, Harry concluded, though with a very good French accent. "He's expected." The door opened more widely and Harry climbed up the little step and inside.
The air inside the carriage smelled of fresh herbs, a common practice, Harry had heard, to keep the close air from fouling. Harry sat back against the cushion and stared at his impromptu host. Somehow Harry had known that his visitor would be no young, handsome fop. The reluctance to show his face from the box had perhaps unknowingly alerted Harry that the man disdained parading himself as that class did. Instead the man's face, though lined, had the depth of character of a great tragedian. His hair was as black as Harry's own, though longer, pulled back into a queue and unpowdered in the common English style. His eyes--ah, here Harry had known too, that they would glitter with amusement when first they met.
"Thank you for meeting me," the man said, in his pleasantly accented French.
He was immaculately dressed in the haut monde style, his coat a testimony to his tailor, his high boots, a tribute to his valet. The cravat, a frothy confection of lace and silk, Harry supposed, he'd chanced to no hand but his own. There was a large emerald stick pin through the knot, the gem as large as a Runespoor egg and a heavy looking very old ring on the finger of one hand over his glove.
"My pleasure, monsieur," Harry said, tugging off his high crowned hat and settling it on his lap.
"I have only a few simple questions for you," continued the man, reaching into his folded cuff and pulling out an ornate snuffbox.
"Questions, monsieur?" Harry asked, waving away the offered snuffbox. "That is not one of my vices," he said, trying to sound worldly. In truth, Sirius had never let him try it.
"Yes, questions," the man said, with a touch of impatience that pulled his thin lips into a moue, "as I explained in my note."
Harry lowered his eyes demurely, rubbing the front pocket where he'd tucked the note. "I was happy to receive it."
When the man made no reply, Harry lifted his gaze. The man was staring at him as if puzzled. When he saw Harry looking back at him, he cleared his throat and said, "Yes, well, I wanted most specifically to ask you about your father--"
"My father?" Harry sputtered.
"Yes, I believe I may have known him, under another name of course," the man went on, while Harry's brow darkened.
"You mean you truly wish to ask me these--" He waved one hand vaguely in the air, tilting his hat off his lap, "these questions?"
"Yes, of course," the man said, looking taken aback.
"This is not an assignation?" Harry demanded, half lifting off the carriage seat.
The man's mouth dropped open. "Do I look like a defiler of innocents?" he retorted, leaning forward so that their knees nearly touched.
Harry's outrage ameliorated and he felt a reluctant grin tugging up the corners of his mouth. "Yes, actually, you do, a little," he replied, then attempted a world-weary look. "Besides, I am not an innocent, I'm of age." He sat back down on the leather seat.
There was a small indelicate noise that might have been a snort from the other side of the carriage. Harry sighed and retrieved his hat from the floor of the carriage. "If you are not going to make mad passionate love to me--" he began.
"In a carriage?" the man gasped.
Harry shrugged. "I suppose it sounds more romantic than it is," he replied wistfully, looking around at the plush interior. He caught the man's languid gaze flicking over him, and it occurred to him that not once had the man made any demur about Harry's sex.
With an expressive sigh, Harry said, "My father, monsieur, I'm afraid I cannot tell you much about him. Both of my parents were killed in a carriage accident when I was but a babe." He fiddled with the buttons on his coat. "May I go? I have another assignation after this."
He heard the swift intake of breath, and before he knew it, the man had grabbed his wrist, as though Harry had actually made a move to leave.
"Little liar," the man hissed, spreading his fingers over the inside of Harry's wrist and yanking him forward. Harry felt his pulse leap as the man's thumb brushed over the vein in his wrist. "You've been watching me every night as assuredly as I've been watching you."
Harry's heart leapt in his chest, beating a frantic tattoo against the man's thumb. "I--I study all my lovers before--"
The man tugged him unresistingly closer, his mouth now very close to Harry's. "Liar," he said again and Harry could feel the whisper of breath across his own lips.
There was a jingle of harnesses outside and the shout of a coachman, " 'ere now!" The carriage jolted forward a pace as the commotion outside increased. The man's dark eyes darted to the covered window but he kept hold of Harry's wrist.
"Stand aside, by God--" came a voice that Harry--to his horror--recognized. Without warning, the door of the carriage flung open and Harry's godfather stood glaring between them, his wand drawn.
"Black!" the man hissed, fingers tightening reflexively on Harry's wrist.
"Snape!" Sirius bellowed, his wand pointing unerringly at the man. "Unhand my godson!"
The man's fingers slipped off as Severus Snape, his father and his godfather's childhood enemy, gazed down at him.
Harry's head sank into his hat and he groaned. "Merde!"
~~**~~
"Of all the reckless, stupid, ill-advised--"
Harry huddled miserably in the wing chair of their usually cozy sitting room. Sirius, when he'd been on the stage, had been able to deliver the longest soliloquies ever written while hardly pausing to draw breath.
"--reckless--"
"You've used that one already," Harry pointed out.
Sirius, who'd been pacing during his recitation, swung around to face Harry, the tails of his coat fanning out. "Well, it was doubly reckless. How do you think I felt finding you half naked--"
"I was no such thing!" Harry protested, thinking perhaps, if he had been, this lecture might have been worth being discovered in a compromising position with his godfather's enemy.
"In the arms of Severus Snape," Sirius went on, ignoring Harry's outburst. He'd drawn Snape's name out with extra syllables as though exposing the villain in the last scene of a badly-written play. Almost Harry expected the sitting room lights to dim and the curtain to fall.
"I didn't know who he was," Harry replied as patiently as he could. He had been protesting his innocence since the night before to similar avail.
"You should have known him," Sirius scowled, looming over Harry's chair. "You should have known those black, beady eyes." He pressed the tips of each forefinger to each thumb and held them up to his own eyes and scowled even though the effect made it look more as if he had spectacles than beady eyes.
"They weren't beady," Harry said, muffling his own laughter. "They were dark and…and romantic…Like he knew some sort of secret that amused him beyond all measure."
"Or by that great giant beak of his," Sirius went on, miming a giant nose over his own, ignoring Harry's attempts to explain.
"It was more…" Harry thought of that face hovering so closely over his own, when Snape had pulled him forward in the carriage, "noble, really." He'd checked this morning to see if there were great bruising finger marks on his wrist only to find his arm disappointingly unmarked. Surely such a great adventure should have left marks.
"Or that greasy mop of his," Sirius said, wrinkling his nose as if he smelled something bad.
"It wasn't greasy," Harry said dreamily, lost again in the moment when Snape's mouth had been very close to his. If only Sirius had been a moment or two longer. "It looked sleek and soft. I'd have liked to have touched it. I'd have liked to have--" He conjured up the same pleasant fantasy he'd had last night, once he was back in his own room, of his fingers tugging loose the black ribbon that held that curtain of black hair back and--
"Not in my house!" Sirius roared.
Harry deflated back into the armchair as the fantasy slipped away. "Yes, Sirius," he sighed.
"And not with Severus Snape," Sirius went on.
"Severus Snape," announced a voice from the doorway.
Both Harry and Sirius blinked as the name was repeated, then realized it was the butler announcing a visitor. Sirius stared down at the calling card that had been thrust into his hand and scowled. Harry unfolded himself from the armchair and smoothed the fronts of his breeches, then, belatedly remembering his spectacles, took them off and thrust them into a pocket.
"We are not at home to--" Sirius began.
"Of course you are," Snape said appearing in the doorway, a frantic footman behind the butler. Snape doffed his high-crowned hat and pointedly thrust it behind him for the servant to take. The footman looked scandalized, for no gentleman would ever consider entering a house beyond the entrance hall before taking off his hat and gloves.
Snape looked, to Harry's eyes, every inch a gentleman, resplendent in dark green satin with a silver-embroidered waistcoat. Harry could not help but let his gaze wander lower, over the snug-fitting breeches and gleaming Hessian boots.
Snape held up a silver quizzing glass and surveyed them. "You look perfectly at home to me." He waved away both butler and footman with a negligent flip of his glass and stepped into the sitting room.
They all stared at one another for a moment, though Harry knew Sirius's silence was more anger than awe.
"Aren't you going to ask your old school friend to sit down?" Snape asked, but he was not looking at Sirius, but at Harry.
Harry shot to his feet. "Of course we are," he said, sending his godfather what he hoped was a significant look. He took their visitor's arm in what he thought of as a solicitous manner and led him over to the small sofa. Snape flipped his coattails and sank onto the worn brocade, making a startled noise when Harry wedged himself beside him, despite there being barely enough room on the sofa for them both.
Snape stretched his long legs, the tips of the gleaming Hessians reflecting their silhouettes. This close, Harry could see that his silver waistcoat was embroidered with fashionable silver stitching.
"What do you want, Snape?" Sirius growled. He hadn't moved from the center of the room save for the agitated clenching of his jaw.
"It's Sir Severus now," Snape said addressing Harry, ignoring Sirius's discomfort.
To Harry's surprise, Sirius snorted with amusement. "Finally did your cousin in, did you?"
Harry's fingers clenched the arm of the sofa, fully expecting Snape to name his seconds and call for swords at dawn. Instead Snape's thin mouth slid into a sort of smile.
"Natural causes, I'm afraid," Snape replied, "if you can call falling from a horse after a night of drunken debauchery natural."
"Did they test him for poisons?" Sirius pushed.
Harry gasped. "Sirius!" He glared at his godfather, no longer relying on significant looks. He glanced apologetically at their visitor. "He doesn't mean it."
"Of course he does," Snape said, sounding not the least put out.
"Of course I do," Sirius said, sinking into the chair vacated by Harry. "Snape was a dab hand at Potions when we were at school."
"Cousin Clyde was quite free of anything save an overabundance of fire whisky," Snape said, and Harry got the feeling it was more for his benefit than Sirius's. "And the ill grace to be a bad judge of horse flesh."
"So you finally got what you always wanted," Sirius said, though his tone was not at all friendly. "Enough money to rival James Potter."
Again Harry's gaze shot to Snape's face, waiting for him balk at the insult to his honor and call Sirius out. Instead Snape made a noise that was almost a laugh. "I've enough now to rival the Potter and the Black fortunes combined," he said, leaning back further on the sofa. The movement brought his thigh sliding against Harry's, though Harry wasn't certain that had been the intended effect.
"Then what do you want here?" Sirius growled, still making no effort to be hospitable.
Snape glanced at Harry and smiled as if he'd read something in his countenance that pleased him. That smile, the barest flicker at the corners of his mouth, filled Harry with the same languid sort of warmth he'd had in the carriage last night, a warmth that had nothing to do with the temperature from the fire in the grate.
"Simply paying my respects, Englishman to Englishman--now that I know you are English and not French," Snape replied. "Paris has become increasingly hostile to our countrymen."
"To the English aristos," Sirius said, stretching out his legs.
"And to wizarding kind," Snape said, "With the anti-Apparition wards and other measures in place to keep French wizards from escaping."
Sirius looked at him keenly, an unreadable expression on his face. "What do you know of the measures in place against them?" he asked.
Snape made a dismissive gesture. "No more than what I read in the Daily Prophet." He gave another of those lazy smiles to Harry and added, "That's the newspaper for our kind in your homeland."
The way he said 'our kind' made Harry want to shiver, but he held back, not willing to risk provoking Sirius's ire when he seemed, if not to have accepted Snape in their drawing room, then at least not tempted to give their visitor any further reasons to call him out.
"Harry's home is here," Sirius growled, shifting one booted foot over the opposite leg.
"Just so," Snape replied. "You may imagine my surprise when I glimpsed your godson on the stage. I couldn't help but be…struck by his resemblance to his father." Again Snape glanced at him and a slow flame lit inside Harry. "Though he has his mother's eyes."
"Well, now you know the story," Sirius said briskly, pushing himself up out of his chair. "Lovely catching up with you and all that. I'll have Gargery see you out."
Disappointment that the visit was over so soon depressed Harry's spirits. Then he noticed Snape was making no effort to stand up. Instead he reached inside his coat and pulled out the inlaid snuffbox he'd used last night. Deftly he popped the lid and offered snuff to Harry. Sidling a glance at Sirius, Harry shook his head, trying not to become alarmed at the barely muffled spluttering noises Sirius was making.
"Perhaps you would be so kind," Snape said in that lazy English drawl of his, "as to take a turn about the park with me?"
It took Harry a moment for the full import of the softly voiced question to make itself known. "Oh yes," he answered without further hesitation.
"Absolutely not," countered Sirius, his cheeks flushing a dull angry red.
Both Harry and Snape looked up as if just remembering he was in the room. "Under no condition will I allow--" Sirius sputtered.
"Allow?" Harry yelped, his brow darkening. He was not a child to be allowed.
Sirius wheeled on Snape. "I don't know what you're up to--"
"Up to?" Snape drawled, in a way that had parts of Harry provide their own answer to the question. "I can't imagine what you mean."
"Can't you?" Sirius growled, sounding more and more like he was just changing into his Animagus form, that of a large black dog, though in case it would be more likely to be a large angry black dog.
"I'll just get my hat," Harry said, hopping off the sofa and barreling up the stairs. He tore through his armoire until he found his best hat and cloak, patting the pocket to make sure he had gloves and rushed back down the stairs, listening for the sound of curses being thrown.
The silence from the drawing room was even more ominous. Harry skidded past a concerned looking Gargery who looked like he was trying to work up the nerve to enter the drawing room. Snape and Sirius stood nose to nose glowering at each other but neither of them looked singed or bloody. Yet. Harry tugged down his waistcoat. "I'm ready!" he called brightly attempting to shrug into his cloak while keeping an eye on them both. Hands closed around his shoulders and settled the cape around them. Harry looked up, smiling gratefully at Snape before settling the hat on his head.
"Take your wand," Sirius said tightly, arms crossed over his chest, vibrating with disapproval. Harry rolled his eyes and followed Snape down the stone stairs in front of the house.
There was an open curricle waiting by the curb and a bored looking groom holding the reins to a pair of match bays. Eagerly Harry climbed in, clutching his hat when Snape took the reins and urged the horses into a gay trot. The pace was too swift for conversation so Harry drank in the sight of the familiar streets from this new angle. He and Sirius kept only a basic stable, with no money left over for fancy curricles.
He could not help but steal glances at Sir Severus, admiring the deft fingers threading the reins. Harry's gaze wandered down to the skin tight breeches--so tight he could see the man's thigh muscles clenching as the horses took a particularly narrow turn.
Only when he realized Snape's attention had turned away from the horses and onto Harry did he flush with heat. That lazy smile flickered at the edges of Snape's mouth, catching Harry out with a single glance.
All too soon they were at the park. Snape tossed the ribbons to the groom as they climbed out. The park, despite no longer being the exclusive charter of the aristos, still teemed with citizens--the fashionable and un-, the aspiring and the sinking, the ever present parade of mamans hoping to make matches for their daughters as well as hopeful young men hoping to catch a glimpse of their lady-loves without their governesses. Here and there were the rosettes of the Revolution, seemingly at odds with the true roses blooming along the peaceful paths.
"Thank you for coming out with me, M. Potter," Snape said, starting down a well-marked path with Harry at his side, "despite your godfather's…disapproval."
"Outright loathing, you mean," Harry said, nodding to a young lady and her maman. Snape looked at him approvingly. "Why does he hate you so?" Harry asked.
"Say rather that we detested each other quite from the moment we laid eyes on each other," Snape replied.
Another gentleman and a lady passed them, a courting couple from the looks of the chaperone trailing them at a discreet distance. Harry cast an envious glance at the lady's arm tucked securely into the gentleman's. Harry had always understood that deviants such as himself were not allowed such liberties in public.
"Sirius told me all about his school days at Hogwarts," Harry said, edging a bit closer to Snape on the path. "He said you hated my father and mother."
Snape stopped so abruptly that Harry nearly tilted into him. "That is not true," he said, voice going dangerously low. "Why would I go to such lengths--daring the wrath of your fire-breathing godfather--to make your acquaintance if such were true?"
Harry had righted himself, making sure they were alone on the path before he said, "You could make me fall in love with you, then abandon me and have your revenge upon them as well as Sirius."
The dark gaze flitted about Harry's mouth. "Could you fall in love with a scoundrel such as me?" Snape asked, his tone equally low and urgent.
Harry repressed the urge to shiver, feeling suddenly as naked as a plucked goose in the marketplace. "I--I am young, m'sieur; I fall in love easily," he said, trying for some semblance of worldliness.
The dismissive gesture was very nearly French. "If I wished revenge on your godfather." Snape said, "I have money and influence enough to ruin him and the Theatre Francaise. As for your parents, even I could derive no satisfaction for revenge upon the dead."
Though Harry had no basis for it, he believed Snape.
"Besides, what Black said is partially correct. I did hate your father."
Sirius had boasted of the many pranks they had played on the hapless Snape in school. "But not my mother?" Harry guessed. The path wound around a fountain, fish captured in stone, forever spouting water into a tiled basin. The courting couple had stopped to admire it, though to Harry it looked more like the young lady merely wished an excuse to lay her head upon the young man's shoulder.
"No." Even that single brief syllable was infused with fondness. "I never hated your mother." They too had stopped, a few paces away from the others, though Snape was not admiring the fountain.
"Did you love her, monsieur?" Harry asked, trying to imagine Snape as an eager swain for his mother's affection. "I know there are men who dally with either sex," he said, affecting a worldly air.
Snape's snort told him just how well he'd succeeded. "A gentleman never discusses such things."
"You said you were a scoundrel," Harry retorted. They had started back down the path.
"And so I am," Snape replied, adjusting one already flawless glove. "Despite that, your mother was very dear to me." The lazy black gaze returned to Harry's mouth. "Not, however, in the manner in which you are thinking."
Harry laughed as they strolled down the manicured paths. "So, because you nursed a tendre for my mother, you are trying to seduce me?"
"You little minx," Snape said, though there was amused tolerance in his tone. "What makes you think I'm trying to seduce you?"
"Because you were watching me on stage every night just as I watched you," Harry said boldly, using Snape's own admonition back at him. I'm told there is a hedgerow behind the fountain that is very private," Harry said, pitching his voice low as they passed an overworked governess giving chase to her charges.
"In a hedgerow?" Snape asked, giving a horrified shudder. "If that is your idea of seduction, your past ones can't have been any good."
Harry shrugged. He had not actually expected Snape to drag him off into the bushes. "There have been so many, I have forgotten."
He was instantly aware of Snape's scrutiny. "I see why you are so good upon the stage," Snape said. Before Harry could quiz him on his meaning, Snape went on. "I am not trying to seduce you."
Dismayed, Harry turned his face away only to have Snape tsk at his side. "I am going to seduce you--properly, slowly, with all your secret desires laid bare for me so that I may choose which to grant. I have known this from the first night I saw you on stage."
Harry's knees nearly gave way. The promise--for the words were so earnestly spoke that they could be no other form of address--made his cock shift treacherously in his breeches.
His worldly air sounded a bit strained even to his own ears. "Then you had better be about it, monsieur, we are nearly at your carriage."
"In time, cherie," Snape said, taking the reins from the groom and swinging up into the seat of the curricle.
The heat in Harry's blood only cooled when he realized Snape was taking him, not somewhere exotic for his ravishment, but back to Sirius's townhouse. His disappointment must have shown plainly on his face. Snape brought the horses nigh to the house. "I've an engagement this afternoon," he explained, turning toward Harry. "Have supper with me tonight."
"I have a performance in a few hours," Harry said, desperately wishing he could cry off.
"Meet me afterward," Snape said, then frowned, sighting something over Harry's shoulder. Harry turned in time to see the front study curtain flutter. "I'll wait for you in the carriage outside the theater."
Harry dared lean only slightly forward. "Until tonight, monsieur," he said.
"Until tonight," Snape said, as Harry climbed off the box. With a flick of his wrist upon the reins, Snape was gone.
The house was silent when Harry entered. The butler, Gargery, took Harry's hat and cloak, silent rebellion writ upon his face. Harry guessed that he'd been subjected to one of Sirius's rants. In response to Harry's silent inquiry, he merely pointed to the closed study door.
Squaring his shoulders, Harry knocked softly and pushed open the door. "Sirius?"
His godfather sat in a chair by the fire and looked up as if just noticing that Harry had arrived home, though the curtain had caught on the rod from where someone had been fluttering it, no doubt moments before. "Ready for tonight?" he said gruffly.
Harry sank into the chair opposite, feeling the blood draining from his face. Surely Sirius couldn't know about the plans he'd just made with Snape. "T-tonight?" he managed.
"Surely you remember the Marquis d'Malfoy and his family will be in attendance." Sirius replied. "I expect you to give your best performance."
Gratefully Harry relaxed into the chair. "I shall," he said, "I know you expect no less."
For a moment Sirius looked sad and far away, then he rallied. "Perhaps I've burdened you with my own expectations, lad," he said. "We had so little when we left England."
Harry had heard the story many times, how Sirius, in his grief and despair over losing his best friend and his wife, had come to Paris with Harry. He'd been cut off from the family he'd spurned, nearly penniless. He'd started doing magic in the streets, harmless tricks that fooled the Muggles into throwing coins. Eventually he'd joined a street theater troupe, then got parts with legitimate theater companies until earning enough to finance his own company, a company of which Harry had always been a member.
"I'm grateful for--for everything you've done for me," Harry said, more used to his godfather's bluster than this quiet mood.
"I didn't do it for your gratitude," Sirius said, turning his head to the fire.
"You have it all the same," Harry said, leaning forward to get Sirius's attention. "And my love. Nothing will ever change that."
There was no palpable change in Sirius's demeanor but Harry sensed that he had said the right thing. Sirius shifted in his chair, bringing his gaze back to meet Harry's. "Careful down this path," he said, "I never knew Severus Snape except that he was up to something."
~~**~~
For the first time, since his nervous debut at the age of eight, Harry almost bollixed up his cue. His pulse had been alternately racing and slowing to a hesitant thud as he got into his costume and make-up, breathlessly waiting for the moment he would step out onto the stage, certain that Sir Severus's eyes would be on him, imagining the delights of the evening to come.
Eagerly Harry trod out onto the stage, inhaling breath for his first line. A quick glance was all it would take, one sidelong look to see Snape in the box closest to the stage--
Snape was there, in his usual--surrounded by three unfamiliar people. Harry nearly faltered with surprise, but somehow managed to get out his lines. Who were they, that leaned so close, laughed so intimately, smiled so familiarly with Snape? A family, to judge by the similarity in coloring. Harry could not see them well, being slightly near-sighted, but could well enough make out three fair-haired strangers clustered about Sir Severus.
When the curtain closed for the next act, he nearly sagged in relief. He trudged into the wings, pulling listlessly at his cravat.
"Isn't it thrilling?" M. Malkin asked, rushing to help Harry with his coat. "Amazing, really."
"Amazing," Harry agreed, then frowned in confusion. "What's amazing?"
"Haven't you heard?" M. Malkin tutted at him. "The Black Asphodel snatched another victim from the jaws of Madame Guillotine this very afternoon!" She splayed one hand over the lace fichu covering her bosom and heaved a sigh.
The news of the daring hero didn't take Harry's mind completely off his own misery, but all of France and probably most of England thrilled to the exploits of the Black Asphodel.
"Who was it this time?" he asked trying to feign interest in a story that once would have thrilled him.
"The Fortescues," Sirius said, coming up behind Harry. "Their confections were favorites of the King, you know, and for that the whole family was sentenced to death."
Harry could not suppress a gasp. He had known several of the Fortescues well and had been visiting their shop ever since he'd started getting his own pocket money. "How did they escape?" he asked, ashamed that he'd been so preoccupied as to have missed the news.
"An upturned pig cart just as the tumbrel passed," M. Malkin said, certain of her attentive audience. "Pigs racing everywhere, knocking over guards and citizens alike. Once they got everything sorted out the Fortescues had just--" She snapped her fingers knowingly. "Vanished with only a calling card with an asphodel flower upon it left in their tumbrel."
"But surely they couldn't have Apparated," Harry said. The anti-Apparition wards had been in place since the Terror had begun and no one, wizard or Muggle, could leave the city without papers. "And they wouldn't have had wands once they were arrested."
"Turned into pigs, most likely," Sirius said, while Madame Malkin nodded. "By the time the Muggles figure it out, they'll be halfway across the channel."
Madame Malkin, hand still clutching her bosom, headed off to spread the tale further. Sirius sobered at once.
"I'm off tonight, I know," Harry said before the rebuke could come.
"I asked you specially," Sirius began.
"I know!" Harry repeated, feeling miserable.
"The marquis is a devoted follower of the theater. If we can secure his patronage the Theatre Francaise will have nothing to worry about if the winds shift for our kind." He slid one hand over Harry's shoulder. "We have to be so careful these days."
Harry hung his head. "I didn't know you were that worried about it," he said.
"I'm not," Sirius said. Harry made a skeptical noise. "All right, I am a bit. A man would have to be a fool not to be worried in these times."
Harry gave him a reassuring smile. "The second act will be better," he promised.
"I don't want to see a dry eye in the house when you--" He mimed driving a sword through Harry's gut. Harry clutched his belly, eyes rolling, half-swooning before the laugh bubbled to surface and he grinned and bowed.
"I always die well," he said. "The critics don't call me The Boy Who Dies for nothing!"
~~**~~
The second act was better. Harry avoided looking at Snape's box, and when his moment came, added silent flailing and a few staggers to his on-stage death. The gasps and sobs when he finally collapsed to the stage were a fitting reward.
For the first time, apparently due to the presence of guests in his box, Snape stayed for the curtain calls, applauding with the rest of the audience. Harry nodded toward their box as roses rained upon the stage. There were indeed three visitors in the box beside Snape, a tall thin man, his blond hair unpowdered and tied back like Snape's, a beautiful woman dressed in the height of fashion and a young man about Harry's age.
Sirius stopped Harry as he emerged from his dressing room, having Scourgified off his stage make-up. "What was Snape doing with the marquis?"
"The--the marquis?" Harry sputtered.
"If he's trying to sabotage the theater I'll serve his bollocks to Madame Guillotine myself." He clapped one hand to his forehead. "I can't believe I agreed to let you have supper with him!"
Harry's mouth opened in surprise. Sirius had, when told of Harry's invitation for the evening, subjected him to a quarter of an hour rant, ending with a reluctant, "Well, you're of age; I can't stop you."
"I've got to go," Harry said, missing the fastening of his cloak because his fingers were shaking. "I'm sure it'll be all right."
Tonight Snape's carriage was parked just outside the theater. Harry pushed past the small crowd waiting to meet members of the company, ignoring the admiring glances being thrown his way as he made his way to the carriage. It was then that he noticed the second carriage, with the d'Malfoy coat of arms on the door just behind Snape's carriage. Harry climbed in, eyeing Snape warily.
"You were magnificent," Snape said, leaning back in the cushions.
Harry waved airily. "I am always magnificent, monsieur."
The carriage lurched over a loose cobblestone in the road, spoiling Harry's pose. He flopped back into the cushions, avoiding the swaying lantern.
"My dear friends, the Marquis d'Malfoy and his family are joining us for supper," Snape said, reaching for his snuffbox. "They were all quite…taken with your performance." He took a pinch of snuff.
"And you, monsieur?" Harry asked.
Snape closed the snuffbox with a snap. "I am quite taken with you as well."
The simple words and the renewed promise in Snape's features allowed Harry to get through dinner. He didn't much care for the d'Malfoys, for they seemed to embody everything the Revolutionary Committee was campaigning against -- indolence, privilege and entitlement.
The Marquis himself seemed genuinely pleased to make Harry's acquaintance but there was a coldness in his eyes that Harry misliked. The Marchioness, Narcissa, also praised Harry's performance, though more than once she looked like she wanted to pet him like a lap dog.
It was the youngest d'Malfoy, Draco, who made Harry feel the most uncomfortable. After supper he managed to corner Harry on one side of the drawing room. They'd both refused brandy and cigars, though Harry noticed the Marquis took both, despite his wife's presence.
"My father says you're going to be a star performer one day," Draco said. The aristocratic drawl that Snape managed so well sounded nasal and petulant in the Malfoy heir's voice.
"That's very kind of him," Harry replied, casting a beseeching look toward Snape. His host, however, seemed deeply entranced by the Marchioness's indifferent pounding on the harpsichord.
"You'll need a patron," Draco said, though the word 'patron' seemed oddly ill-suited to the expression on his face. "Someone who can introduce you to the right people."
"I'm perfectly content with my godfather's theater," Harry explained, deftly side-stepping when Draco leaned in closer to make his point. He turned to admire a portrait of some long-deceased presumed ancestor of Snape's.
"You'll be wasted there," Draco said, making a face at the portrait. The portrait made a face back and turned away. "Meet me for luncheon tomorrow and we'll discuss it."
"There is nothing to discuss, monsieur," Harry said firmly. He wheeled around to join the small group clustered around the harpsichord.
"Dreadful business," Lucius, the Marquis, was saying. Since Narcissa had stopped playing, Harry could only assume the comment was not in reference to her skill at the harpsichord.
"What is, Monsieur l'Marquis?" Harry asked, standing as close to Snape as he could.
"This Black Asphodel creature," Lucius said with disdain in his voice.
"Surely, dear, he is a hero to wizarding kind. Why only today he snatched the Fortescues from under the very noses of the guard," Narcissa said, her slender frame doing a fair approximation of M. Malkin's more impressive bosom heaving.
"Why anyone would want to bother about the Fortescues is beyond me," Snape said, as Lucius nodded in agreement.
"Most wizards are safe under the new regime," Lucius said, taking a sip of his brandy.
"Then why won't they let us Apparate?" Harry asked, earning himself a cold smile from the nobleman.
"Only a precaution until the new order is established. Then our freedoms will be restored to us," Lucius replied.
"They wouldn't have been to the Fortescues," Harry said, with more heat in his voice than he'd intended.
"I should be escorting Harry home," Snape interjected quickly, with the barest warning squeeze to his shoulder.
"We can take him home," Draco said with an icy smirk very much like his father's. "Can't we, Maman?"
"Of course we can, darling," Narcissa said dotingly.
Snape's hand remained possessively upon is shoulder. "I'm afraid I promised his godfather that I would see him home personally," Snape said, ringing for a footman. It was such an admirably told lie that Draco could make no reply. Harry mistrusted the calculating look in his eyes, but managed to keep silent until they were in the carriage.
"I do not like your friends," Harry said once the door had been closed behind them and the carriage got underway.
Snape's expression was sardonic. "I'm not certain I like them either." He heaved a sigh. "Still, they are friends." He held up one gloved hand when Harry would question him further. The heavy old ring on his finger caught the lantern light, gleaming dully. "I've something to tell you."
Harry sat back on the cushions. He didn't think Snape was going to tell him anything pleasant.
"I'm leaving Paris tonight," Snape said and Harry's heart went cold, "bound for Calais and on to Dover. My yacht sails on the tide."
"What? Why?" Harry wailed.
"I've urgent business at home, something that cannot wait."
"I see," Harry said, wishing again the d'Malfoys had not intruded on this night. He could not think of anything that urgent, not even one of Sirius's rehearsals. He turned his head toward the window even though the curtains had been pulled closed.
"I should be back in a fortnight or so," Snape explained, though Harry still didn't look at him. A fortnight might as well be forever.
"You will be welcome back at the theater, monsieur," Harry said, swallowing his disappointment, "should you choose to visit."
There was silence in the coach, save for the steady clip clop of the horse's hooves over the cobblestones. Then Snape spoke. "Don't sulk or I shan't kiss you goodnight."
Harry's frame became energized as though awakening from a dismal slumber. He smiled saucily. "I knew you could not resist me," he said, launching himself across the scant space that separated them. He had reason to thank the excellent coach makers for the sturdiness of their cushions as his weight propelled Snape backward into them.
Strong arms wrapped around him, pulling him deeper into the cushions. "I cannot," Snape said, the words mere ghosts of breath against Harry's lips just before he joined their mouths together.
Harry had sensed the passion that must lay buried beneath the languid gaze and perfect mouth. Every heated suspicion confirmed when the kiss became a fiery thing, flaring like little sparks. Harry groaned between the breaths that had been granted by Snape and found himself being pressed along Snape's lap, arms around his neck.
Heat stole through his body, enflaming every nerve as he gasped into another kiss. Snape's mouth felt as heated and alive as his own and when a groan flourished between them it was no more Harry's than his own will. His feet no longer touched the floor, legs stretching out along the bench, finding purchase in a more enticing haven--the warm body kissing him into the cushions.
"Say you'll wait for me," Snape said, barely lifting his lips from Harry's own. The lantern light flickered in the depths of his eyes as they swept Harry's face searchingly.
Harry was not certain what he should wait for, so he pressed another kiss against Snape's damp lips. Snape made a needy noise and plundered Harry's mouth with his tongue. One hand lay on Harry's chest, still heated like an ember that had escaped the fire. Slowly the hand began to journey down, past the hem of Harry's waistcoat, over the top of his breeches. The pace was so tortuous, punctuated by kisses, that Harry thought he would dissolve before Snape cupped the aching tumescence of his cock.
"I don't want to find you with another man in your bed when I return," Snape said, fingers making filigree tracings over the front of Harry's breeches. "Or boy," he added significantly.
Dazed, Harry shook his head, arching his hips toward Snape, toward the only thing that would ease this sudden wildfire of longing.
"Say you'll wait," Snape said, eyes glittering as they looked down at Harry. A strand of his hair had come loose from his queue and there was high color on his cheeks.
"Oui, monsieur," Harry said, fingers catching the wisp of loose hair and smoothing it behind one ear, "I shall wait for you." Snape's eyes darkened with triumph, but Harry did not mind being the prize. Not when the buttons of his breeches parted and Snape's hand--no longer gloved, though Harry did not remember him removing it--plunged into his small clothes. The heat of those fingers was no match for Harry's needy prick.
Harry nearly melted into the cushions, his head lolling back as Snape's mouth slid along his throat. One hand closed around his cock. Harry swirled into the vortex of lust and need that threatened to sweep him away.
"Mon Dieu," Harry whispered as if in actual prayer, to the god of pleasure that seemed to dwell in the church of Snape's hand. He clutched at the only solid fixture in the vortex as Snape stroked him and shuddered endlessly with release that was almost religious ecstasy.
Snape went still, save for the hand guiding him through this pleasure, his kisses gentled until Harry sighed softly and opened his eyes.
"Quite irresistible," Snape decreed, slowly uncurling his fingers and sliding them free of Harry's clothes. He reached into his own coat for a scented handkerchief before his wand to remove the evidence. Harry, still panting and sated, trailed a finger down his chest until he realized Snape was fastidiously tucking him back into his breeches.
"But I want to--" Harry began, quite aware that only a single climax had been reached in the carriage--his.
Tucking his wand away, Snape lifted Harry's hand and kissed the back of it, caressing his fingers. "We are nearly at the Rue d'Richelieu," he said as Harry too realized the distant clopping of the horse's hooves had slowed. "And I must sail for England on the tide."
On to Part 2
Author: DementorDelta
Pairing: Severus Snape/Harry Potter
Rating: Adult
Word Count: Approx 36,000
Summary: All of England is mesmerized by that daring hero, the Black Asphodel, who risks life and fortune to spirit French wizards out of Paris during the French Revolution.
Notes: Beta read by the marvelous Accioslash and by the equally marvelous whitecotton. Thank you ladies for tackling this for me! This work is based on The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy and is intended, in style and plot, as a gentle homage.
Written for the extremely patient rory8 as part of the livelongnmarry fundraising project. Thanks so much for your support and your patience.
Presented in its entirety in 5 parts.
The Black Asphodel, Part 1 of 5
Paris, During the Reign of Terror
Harry's heart thudded in his chest as he caught a glimpse of the rakish profile nearly concealed by the heavy velvet drapes of the theater box just above his head. The mysterious man was in the audience of the Theatre Francais again tonight, in the box closest to the stage. Only the fact that Sirius had drilled his lines into him kept Harry from missing his next cue as he sought to distinguish more of the man's shadowed features.
"Hold still," his dresser, Madame Malkin, hissed after he ducked into the wings for his mid-act costume change. Harry tried to peer past the scrim to see if the man's gaze had followed him off stage as it had done last night and the night before. "In faith, you're slipperier than a kneazle tonight," she scolded, inspecting his lace cuffs for rips.
Dutifully Harry held still while she fastened the heavy brocade coat needed for the next act around him. He'd begun to think of the persistent patron as his visitor alone, for he was aware of the man's glittering gaze upon him every moment Harry was on the stage of the Theatre Francaise, his godfather's theater. Conversely, the man always vacated the box by the time the lights went up for the curtain calls so Harry had got only the scantest glimpses of him in return. He could not say why the mysterious admirer had piqued his interest so, only that Harry, used to admiration from strangers in the audience, found this particular stranger more compelling than any he had ever performed for.
The first night he'd spotted him, Harry had hoped some ardent swain would be waiting for him at the stage door, perhaps clutching roses. No one had been waiting, at least not for Harry, but the box had been visited the next night, and all the ones for a week by the same man. Several times, during his dramatic scenes, Harry, out of the corner of his eye, could see the man leaning forward, as if swept up in his performance.
"There," Madame Malkin whispered, smoothing an invisible wrinkle from the brocade before shooing Harry back out onto the stage. "Die well tonight."
Harry shot her a jaunty grin. "I always do," he said just loud enough for her to hear.
After his scene, instead of dashing back to the dressing room he shared with several other young men in the company during the interval, Harry lingered in the wings, trying to stay out of sight while the burly stagehands shifted the set for the second act.
"Here now, what are you doing, loitering about?" a voice from behind him barked. Harry yelped and got out of the way as a stagehand in a cockaded hat wheeled a massive trunk, crucial for Harry's climatic death scene into place.
"Harry, why aren't you in costume?" came another voice and Harry gave up his vigil with a sigh. Sirius Black, his godfather and stage manager, stood frowning down at him.
"Just going," Harry replied, abusing the buttons of Madame Malkin's carefully fitted coat.
Sirius's shrewd gaze surveyed him a moment more. "Full house tonight," he observed with a flick of his head to the sounds of the crowd just beyond the curtain. "Every box is full," he added. Harry felt his cheeks flushing with color.
"I was just--" he stammered, trying to think of a reason he would be trying to see out into the audience.
A hand cupped his chin and tugged it back up. "Careful, boy," Sirius said kindly.
Harry nodded, and Sirius released his chin. "I'm only looking," Harry said impishly, striking the overly-dramatic pose that had made even hardened theater critics weep during his performance of Orpheus last season. "I want to break a few hearts on my own."
Sirius's smile held fond amusement, but something wistful beneath the humor. "You will, my boy," he said, giving Harry a gentle shove toward the dressing rooms, "of that, I have no doubt."
~~**~~
Harry forced himself to concentrate on his role, that of the heroine's half-brother who is tragically killed in a duel for her honor in the last scene. He poured every nuance of the craft Sirius had taught him into each line, finally expiring in the heroine's arms, only to spring to his feet again for the tumultuous curtain call.
Boldly Harry looked toward the box closest to the stage, hoping against hope that his mysterious swain would reveal himself tonight at last. His heart plummeted. The box was empty again.
A practiced smile adorned his face during the curtain calls. Harry had to step over roses being tossed at his feet to make his way forward for his bows. There was a disappointed roar when he threw no kisses into the crowd before the curtain started to close. His smile faded as soon as the curtain swung shut. He dragged his fingers down the oversize pearl buttons of his frockcoat, giving his cravat a dispirited tug. The other cast members brushed past him, chatting and laughing gaily, off--no doubt--to late night suppers or assignations.
A hand touched his shoulder and Harry summoned one more smile. "I have a note for you, monsieur," M. Malkin said, patting the capacious pockets of her apron.
"A note?" Harry blinked in confusion. "Has something happened to Sirius?" These were dangerous times--not even the actors and actresses in one of the city's leading theaters were safe.
"Non," she said, waving away his anxiety with a Gallic shrug, dislodging scissors and a tape measure from one pocket while Harry hopped impatiently from foot to foot.
"Who is it from then?" Harry asked, wondering how rude it would be to cast an Accio spell himself on her pockets.
"How should I know?" she said, peering at a parakeet who squawked in annoyance at being turned out of her apron. "Do I look like the sort who goes around demanding footmen who their masters are?"
"A footman brought it?" Harry asked, breathless excitement quickening his voice.
"Haven't I just said so?" she replied crossly, but her expression brightened at once as her fingers plunged into a pocket, and they both heard the crinkle of parchment. "Voila!" Several butterflies fluttered around her hand as she pulled the note out and handed it to Harry. The butterflies swirled lazily over both their heads before darting into the wings. Madame tsked. "I'll have to catch them again for the first act tomorrow."
Harry, however, had no eyes for butterflies. His eyes fixed on the dark seal on the note, and his heart fluttered as though the butterflies had Apparated inside him. Distantly he heard Madame chattering as she turned away while he stared at the cream-colored note. The seal's device was blurred, but Harry knew no noblemen or aristocrats so wouldn't have known this one by their coat of arms anyway. With trembling fingers, he broke the seal.
Monsieur Nigellus-- it began.
Nigellus was the stage name he and Sirius had adopted when coming to France, though Harry didn't remember it, being just a baby. He answered just as often to his first name, Etienne, also bestowed upon him by Sirius for the stage, as he did to his own.
I am desirous of speaking with you, upon a matter which will, I believe, take up only a small portion of your time. If you would be so kind, I am waiting in my carriage on the Rue Germaine. The crest on the carriage matches the one on my seal.
Your very humble servant--
There were only initials, two very fancy, interlocked esses that looked like miniature snakes. Harry clasped the note to his chest and blessed whatever gods in the wings that were looking after him. It had to be his visitor.
He wanted Harry.
And Harry very much wanted to be wanted.
~~**~~
Harry knew the Rue Germaine well. It was one of the main turn-around points for the carriages that dropped off visitors to the theater. At this hour there were only a few hackney cabs waiting for late night stragglers, and one fine carriage. Nervously he ran a hand through his hopelessly untidy hair as he approached the intimidating bulk of the carriage. It was indeed very fine, trimmed in gilt. There was an elaborately carved device on the door and four stamping bays at the head. Before he got too close, however, Harry was challenged by a footman.
"Off with you, boy," came the shout and Harry jumped back.
When he was on the stage, the scripted lines always flew from his lips with rehearsed ease but when faced with an angry footman and a dark street, Harry stammered. Fumbling a little, he patted his waistcoat for the note he'd tucked inside.
The carriage door swung open and a dark head appeared in the opening. "It's all right," came a cultured voice. English, Harry concluded, though with a very good French accent. "He's expected." The door opened more widely and Harry climbed up the little step and inside.
The air inside the carriage smelled of fresh herbs, a common practice, Harry had heard, to keep the close air from fouling. Harry sat back against the cushion and stared at his impromptu host. Somehow Harry had known that his visitor would be no young, handsome fop. The reluctance to show his face from the box had perhaps unknowingly alerted Harry that the man disdained parading himself as that class did. Instead the man's face, though lined, had the depth of character of a great tragedian. His hair was as black as Harry's own, though longer, pulled back into a queue and unpowdered in the common English style. His eyes--ah, here Harry had known too, that they would glitter with amusement when first they met.
"Thank you for meeting me," the man said, in his pleasantly accented French.
He was immaculately dressed in the haut monde style, his coat a testimony to his tailor, his high boots, a tribute to his valet. The cravat, a frothy confection of lace and silk, Harry supposed, he'd chanced to no hand but his own. There was a large emerald stick pin through the knot, the gem as large as a Runespoor egg and a heavy looking very old ring on the finger of one hand over his glove.
"My pleasure, monsieur," Harry said, tugging off his high crowned hat and settling it on his lap.
"I have only a few simple questions for you," continued the man, reaching into his folded cuff and pulling out an ornate snuffbox.
"Questions, monsieur?" Harry asked, waving away the offered snuffbox. "That is not one of my vices," he said, trying to sound worldly. In truth, Sirius had never let him try it.
"Yes, questions," the man said, with a touch of impatience that pulled his thin lips into a moue, "as I explained in my note."
Harry lowered his eyes demurely, rubbing the front pocket where he'd tucked the note. "I was happy to receive it."
When the man made no reply, Harry lifted his gaze. The man was staring at him as if puzzled. When he saw Harry looking back at him, he cleared his throat and said, "Yes, well, I wanted most specifically to ask you about your father--"
"My father?" Harry sputtered.
"Yes, I believe I may have known him, under another name of course," the man went on, while Harry's brow darkened.
"You mean you truly wish to ask me these--" He waved one hand vaguely in the air, tilting his hat off his lap, "these questions?"
"Yes, of course," the man said, looking taken aback.
"This is not an assignation?" Harry demanded, half lifting off the carriage seat.
The man's mouth dropped open. "Do I look like a defiler of innocents?" he retorted, leaning forward so that their knees nearly touched.
Harry's outrage ameliorated and he felt a reluctant grin tugging up the corners of his mouth. "Yes, actually, you do, a little," he replied, then attempted a world-weary look. "Besides, I am not an innocent, I'm of age." He sat back down on the leather seat.
There was a small indelicate noise that might have been a snort from the other side of the carriage. Harry sighed and retrieved his hat from the floor of the carriage. "If you are not going to make mad passionate love to me--" he began.
"In a carriage?" the man gasped.
Harry shrugged. "I suppose it sounds more romantic than it is," he replied wistfully, looking around at the plush interior. He caught the man's languid gaze flicking over him, and it occurred to him that not once had the man made any demur about Harry's sex.
With an expressive sigh, Harry said, "My father, monsieur, I'm afraid I cannot tell you much about him. Both of my parents were killed in a carriage accident when I was but a babe." He fiddled with the buttons on his coat. "May I go? I have another assignation after this."
He heard the swift intake of breath, and before he knew it, the man had grabbed his wrist, as though Harry had actually made a move to leave.
"Little liar," the man hissed, spreading his fingers over the inside of Harry's wrist and yanking him forward. Harry felt his pulse leap as the man's thumb brushed over the vein in his wrist. "You've been watching me every night as assuredly as I've been watching you."
Harry's heart leapt in his chest, beating a frantic tattoo against the man's thumb. "I--I study all my lovers before--"
The man tugged him unresistingly closer, his mouth now very close to Harry's. "Liar," he said again and Harry could feel the whisper of breath across his own lips.
There was a jingle of harnesses outside and the shout of a coachman, " 'ere now!" The carriage jolted forward a pace as the commotion outside increased. The man's dark eyes darted to the covered window but he kept hold of Harry's wrist.
"Stand aside, by God--" came a voice that Harry--to his horror--recognized. Without warning, the door of the carriage flung open and Harry's godfather stood glaring between them, his wand drawn.
"Black!" the man hissed, fingers tightening reflexively on Harry's wrist.
"Snape!" Sirius bellowed, his wand pointing unerringly at the man. "Unhand my godson!"
The man's fingers slipped off as Severus Snape, his father and his godfather's childhood enemy, gazed down at him.
Harry's head sank into his hat and he groaned. "Merde!"
~~**~~
"Of all the reckless, stupid, ill-advised--"
Harry huddled miserably in the wing chair of their usually cozy sitting room. Sirius, when he'd been on the stage, had been able to deliver the longest soliloquies ever written while hardly pausing to draw breath.
"--reckless--"
"You've used that one already," Harry pointed out.
Sirius, who'd been pacing during his recitation, swung around to face Harry, the tails of his coat fanning out. "Well, it was doubly reckless. How do you think I felt finding you half naked--"
"I was no such thing!" Harry protested, thinking perhaps, if he had been, this lecture might have been worth being discovered in a compromising position with his godfather's enemy.
"In the arms of Severus Snape," Sirius went on, ignoring Harry's outburst. He'd drawn Snape's name out with extra syllables as though exposing the villain in the last scene of a badly-written play. Almost Harry expected the sitting room lights to dim and the curtain to fall.
"I didn't know who he was," Harry replied as patiently as he could. He had been protesting his innocence since the night before to similar avail.
"You should have known him," Sirius scowled, looming over Harry's chair. "You should have known those black, beady eyes." He pressed the tips of each forefinger to each thumb and held them up to his own eyes and scowled even though the effect made it look more as if he had spectacles than beady eyes.
"They weren't beady," Harry said, muffling his own laughter. "They were dark and…and romantic…Like he knew some sort of secret that amused him beyond all measure."
"Or by that great giant beak of his," Sirius went on, miming a giant nose over his own, ignoring Harry's attempts to explain.
"It was more…" Harry thought of that face hovering so closely over his own, when Snape had pulled him forward in the carriage, "noble, really." He'd checked this morning to see if there were great bruising finger marks on his wrist only to find his arm disappointingly unmarked. Surely such a great adventure should have left marks.
"Or that greasy mop of his," Sirius said, wrinkling his nose as if he smelled something bad.
"It wasn't greasy," Harry said dreamily, lost again in the moment when Snape's mouth had been very close to his. If only Sirius had been a moment or two longer. "It looked sleek and soft. I'd have liked to have touched it. I'd have liked to have--" He conjured up the same pleasant fantasy he'd had last night, once he was back in his own room, of his fingers tugging loose the black ribbon that held that curtain of black hair back and--
"Not in my house!" Sirius roared.
Harry deflated back into the armchair as the fantasy slipped away. "Yes, Sirius," he sighed.
"And not with Severus Snape," Sirius went on.
"Severus Snape," announced a voice from the doorway.
Both Harry and Sirius blinked as the name was repeated, then realized it was the butler announcing a visitor. Sirius stared down at the calling card that had been thrust into his hand and scowled. Harry unfolded himself from the armchair and smoothed the fronts of his breeches, then, belatedly remembering his spectacles, took them off and thrust them into a pocket.
"We are not at home to--" Sirius began.
"Of course you are," Snape said appearing in the doorway, a frantic footman behind the butler. Snape doffed his high-crowned hat and pointedly thrust it behind him for the servant to take. The footman looked scandalized, for no gentleman would ever consider entering a house beyond the entrance hall before taking off his hat and gloves.
Snape looked, to Harry's eyes, every inch a gentleman, resplendent in dark green satin with a silver-embroidered waistcoat. Harry could not help but let his gaze wander lower, over the snug-fitting breeches and gleaming Hessian boots.
Snape held up a silver quizzing glass and surveyed them. "You look perfectly at home to me." He waved away both butler and footman with a negligent flip of his glass and stepped into the sitting room.
They all stared at one another for a moment, though Harry knew Sirius's silence was more anger than awe.
"Aren't you going to ask your old school friend to sit down?" Snape asked, but he was not looking at Sirius, but at Harry.
Harry shot to his feet. "Of course we are," he said, sending his godfather what he hoped was a significant look. He took their visitor's arm in what he thought of as a solicitous manner and led him over to the small sofa. Snape flipped his coattails and sank onto the worn brocade, making a startled noise when Harry wedged himself beside him, despite there being barely enough room on the sofa for them both.
Snape stretched his long legs, the tips of the gleaming Hessians reflecting their silhouettes. This close, Harry could see that his silver waistcoat was embroidered with fashionable silver stitching.
"What do you want, Snape?" Sirius growled. He hadn't moved from the center of the room save for the agitated clenching of his jaw.
"It's Sir Severus now," Snape said addressing Harry, ignoring Sirius's discomfort.
To Harry's surprise, Sirius snorted with amusement. "Finally did your cousin in, did you?"
Harry's fingers clenched the arm of the sofa, fully expecting Snape to name his seconds and call for swords at dawn. Instead Snape's thin mouth slid into a sort of smile.
"Natural causes, I'm afraid," Snape replied, "if you can call falling from a horse after a night of drunken debauchery natural."
"Did they test him for poisons?" Sirius pushed.
Harry gasped. "Sirius!" He glared at his godfather, no longer relying on significant looks. He glanced apologetically at their visitor. "He doesn't mean it."
"Of course he does," Snape said, sounding not the least put out.
"Of course I do," Sirius said, sinking into the chair vacated by Harry. "Snape was a dab hand at Potions when we were at school."
"Cousin Clyde was quite free of anything save an overabundance of fire whisky," Snape said, and Harry got the feeling it was more for his benefit than Sirius's. "And the ill grace to be a bad judge of horse flesh."
"So you finally got what you always wanted," Sirius said, though his tone was not at all friendly. "Enough money to rival James Potter."
Again Harry's gaze shot to Snape's face, waiting for him balk at the insult to his honor and call Sirius out. Instead Snape made a noise that was almost a laugh. "I've enough now to rival the Potter and the Black fortunes combined," he said, leaning back further on the sofa. The movement brought his thigh sliding against Harry's, though Harry wasn't certain that had been the intended effect.
"Then what do you want here?" Sirius growled, still making no effort to be hospitable.
Snape glanced at Harry and smiled as if he'd read something in his countenance that pleased him. That smile, the barest flicker at the corners of his mouth, filled Harry with the same languid sort of warmth he'd had in the carriage last night, a warmth that had nothing to do with the temperature from the fire in the grate.
"Simply paying my respects, Englishman to Englishman--now that I know you are English and not French," Snape replied. "Paris has become increasingly hostile to our countrymen."
"To the English aristos," Sirius said, stretching out his legs.
"And to wizarding kind," Snape said, "With the anti-Apparition wards and other measures in place to keep French wizards from escaping."
Sirius looked at him keenly, an unreadable expression on his face. "What do you know of the measures in place against them?" he asked.
Snape made a dismissive gesture. "No more than what I read in the Daily Prophet." He gave another of those lazy smiles to Harry and added, "That's the newspaper for our kind in your homeland."
The way he said 'our kind' made Harry want to shiver, but he held back, not willing to risk provoking Sirius's ire when he seemed, if not to have accepted Snape in their drawing room, then at least not tempted to give their visitor any further reasons to call him out.
"Harry's home is here," Sirius growled, shifting one booted foot over the opposite leg.
"Just so," Snape replied. "You may imagine my surprise when I glimpsed your godson on the stage. I couldn't help but be…struck by his resemblance to his father." Again Snape glanced at him and a slow flame lit inside Harry. "Though he has his mother's eyes."
"Well, now you know the story," Sirius said briskly, pushing himself up out of his chair. "Lovely catching up with you and all that. I'll have Gargery see you out."
Disappointment that the visit was over so soon depressed Harry's spirits. Then he noticed Snape was making no effort to stand up. Instead he reached inside his coat and pulled out the inlaid snuffbox he'd used last night. Deftly he popped the lid and offered snuff to Harry. Sidling a glance at Sirius, Harry shook his head, trying not to become alarmed at the barely muffled spluttering noises Sirius was making.
"Perhaps you would be so kind," Snape said in that lazy English drawl of his, "as to take a turn about the park with me?"
It took Harry a moment for the full import of the softly voiced question to make itself known. "Oh yes," he answered without further hesitation.
"Absolutely not," countered Sirius, his cheeks flushing a dull angry red.
Both Harry and Snape looked up as if just remembering he was in the room. "Under no condition will I allow--" Sirius sputtered.
"Allow?" Harry yelped, his brow darkening. He was not a child to be allowed.
Sirius wheeled on Snape. "I don't know what you're up to--"
"Up to?" Snape drawled, in a way that had parts of Harry provide their own answer to the question. "I can't imagine what you mean."
"Can't you?" Sirius growled, sounding more and more like he was just changing into his Animagus form, that of a large black dog, though in case it would be more likely to be a large angry black dog.
"I'll just get my hat," Harry said, hopping off the sofa and barreling up the stairs. He tore through his armoire until he found his best hat and cloak, patting the pocket to make sure he had gloves and rushed back down the stairs, listening for the sound of curses being thrown.
The silence from the drawing room was even more ominous. Harry skidded past a concerned looking Gargery who looked like he was trying to work up the nerve to enter the drawing room. Snape and Sirius stood nose to nose glowering at each other but neither of them looked singed or bloody. Yet. Harry tugged down his waistcoat. "I'm ready!" he called brightly attempting to shrug into his cloak while keeping an eye on them both. Hands closed around his shoulders and settled the cape around them. Harry looked up, smiling gratefully at Snape before settling the hat on his head.
"Take your wand," Sirius said tightly, arms crossed over his chest, vibrating with disapproval. Harry rolled his eyes and followed Snape down the stone stairs in front of the house.
There was an open curricle waiting by the curb and a bored looking groom holding the reins to a pair of match bays. Eagerly Harry climbed in, clutching his hat when Snape took the reins and urged the horses into a gay trot. The pace was too swift for conversation so Harry drank in the sight of the familiar streets from this new angle. He and Sirius kept only a basic stable, with no money left over for fancy curricles.
He could not help but steal glances at Sir Severus, admiring the deft fingers threading the reins. Harry's gaze wandered down to the skin tight breeches--so tight he could see the man's thigh muscles clenching as the horses took a particularly narrow turn.
Only when he realized Snape's attention had turned away from the horses and onto Harry did he flush with heat. That lazy smile flickered at the edges of Snape's mouth, catching Harry out with a single glance.
All too soon they were at the park. Snape tossed the ribbons to the groom as they climbed out. The park, despite no longer being the exclusive charter of the aristos, still teemed with citizens--the fashionable and un-, the aspiring and the sinking, the ever present parade of mamans hoping to make matches for their daughters as well as hopeful young men hoping to catch a glimpse of their lady-loves without their governesses. Here and there were the rosettes of the Revolution, seemingly at odds with the true roses blooming along the peaceful paths.
"Thank you for coming out with me, M. Potter," Snape said, starting down a well-marked path with Harry at his side, "despite your godfather's…disapproval."
"Outright loathing, you mean," Harry said, nodding to a young lady and her maman. Snape looked at him approvingly. "Why does he hate you so?" Harry asked.
"Say rather that we detested each other quite from the moment we laid eyes on each other," Snape replied.
Another gentleman and a lady passed them, a courting couple from the looks of the chaperone trailing them at a discreet distance. Harry cast an envious glance at the lady's arm tucked securely into the gentleman's. Harry had always understood that deviants such as himself were not allowed such liberties in public.
"Sirius told me all about his school days at Hogwarts," Harry said, edging a bit closer to Snape on the path. "He said you hated my father and mother."
Snape stopped so abruptly that Harry nearly tilted into him. "That is not true," he said, voice going dangerously low. "Why would I go to such lengths--daring the wrath of your fire-breathing godfather--to make your acquaintance if such were true?"
Harry had righted himself, making sure they were alone on the path before he said, "You could make me fall in love with you, then abandon me and have your revenge upon them as well as Sirius."
The dark gaze flitted about Harry's mouth. "Could you fall in love with a scoundrel such as me?" Snape asked, his tone equally low and urgent.
Harry repressed the urge to shiver, feeling suddenly as naked as a plucked goose in the marketplace. "I--I am young, m'sieur; I fall in love easily," he said, trying for some semblance of worldliness.
The dismissive gesture was very nearly French. "If I wished revenge on your godfather." Snape said, "I have money and influence enough to ruin him and the Theatre Francaise. As for your parents, even I could derive no satisfaction for revenge upon the dead."
Though Harry had no basis for it, he believed Snape.
"Besides, what Black said is partially correct. I did hate your father."
Sirius had boasted of the many pranks they had played on the hapless Snape in school. "But not my mother?" Harry guessed. The path wound around a fountain, fish captured in stone, forever spouting water into a tiled basin. The courting couple had stopped to admire it, though to Harry it looked more like the young lady merely wished an excuse to lay her head upon the young man's shoulder.
"No." Even that single brief syllable was infused with fondness. "I never hated your mother." They too had stopped, a few paces away from the others, though Snape was not admiring the fountain.
"Did you love her, monsieur?" Harry asked, trying to imagine Snape as an eager swain for his mother's affection. "I know there are men who dally with either sex," he said, affecting a worldly air.
Snape's snort told him just how well he'd succeeded. "A gentleman never discusses such things."
"You said you were a scoundrel," Harry retorted. They had started back down the path.
"And so I am," Snape replied, adjusting one already flawless glove. "Despite that, your mother was very dear to me." The lazy black gaze returned to Harry's mouth. "Not, however, in the manner in which you are thinking."
Harry laughed as they strolled down the manicured paths. "So, because you nursed a tendre for my mother, you are trying to seduce me?"
"You little minx," Snape said, though there was amused tolerance in his tone. "What makes you think I'm trying to seduce you?"
"Because you were watching me on stage every night just as I watched you," Harry said boldly, using Snape's own admonition back at him. I'm told there is a hedgerow behind the fountain that is very private," Harry said, pitching his voice low as they passed an overworked governess giving chase to her charges.
"In a hedgerow?" Snape asked, giving a horrified shudder. "If that is your idea of seduction, your past ones can't have been any good."
Harry shrugged. He had not actually expected Snape to drag him off into the bushes. "There have been so many, I have forgotten."
He was instantly aware of Snape's scrutiny. "I see why you are so good upon the stage," Snape said. Before Harry could quiz him on his meaning, Snape went on. "I am not trying to seduce you."
Dismayed, Harry turned his face away only to have Snape tsk at his side. "I am going to seduce you--properly, slowly, with all your secret desires laid bare for me so that I may choose which to grant. I have known this from the first night I saw you on stage."
Harry's knees nearly gave way. The promise--for the words were so earnestly spoke that they could be no other form of address--made his cock shift treacherously in his breeches.
His worldly air sounded a bit strained even to his own ears. "Then you had better be about it, monsieur, we are nearly at your carriage."
"In time, cherie," Snape said, taking the reins from the groom and swinging up into the seat of the curricle.
The heat in Harry's blood only cooled when he realized Snape was taking him, not somewhere exotic for his ravishment, but back to Sirius's townhouse. His disappointment must have shown plainly on his face. Snape brought the horses nigh to the house. "I've an engagement this afternoon," he explained, turning toward Harry. "Have supper with me tonight."
"I have a performance in a few hours," Harry said, desperately wishing he could cry off.
"Meet me afterward," Snape said, then frowned, sighting something over Harry's shoulder. Harry turned in time to see the front study curtain flutter. "I'll wait for you in the carriage outside the theater."
Harry dared lean only slightly forward. "Until tonight, monsieur," he said.
"Until tonight," Snape said, as Harry climbed off the box. With a flick of his wrist upon the reins, Snape was gone.
The house was silent when Harry entered. The butler, Gargery, took Harry's hat and cloak, silent rebellion writ upon his face. Harry guessed that he'd been subjected to one of Sirius's rants. In response to Harry's silent inquiry, he merely pointed to the closed study door.
Squaring his shoulders, Harry knocked softly and pushed open the door. "Sirius?"
His godfather sat in a chair by the fire and looked up as if just noticing that Harry had arrived home, though the curtain had caught on the rod from where someone had been fluttering it, no doubt moments before. "Ready for tonight?" he said gruffly.
Harry sank into the chair opposite, feeling the blood draining from his face. Surely Sirius couldn't know about the plans he'd just made with Snape. "T-tonight?" he managed.
"Surely you remember the Marquis d'Malfoy and his family will be in attendance." Sirius replied. "I expect you to give your best performance."
Gratefully Harry relaxed into the chair. "I shall," he said, "I know you expect no less."
For a moment Sirius looked sad and far away, then he rallied. "Perhaps I've burdened you with my own expectations, lad," he said. "We had so little when we left England."
Harry had heard the story many times, how Sirius, in his grief and despair over losing his best friend and his wife, had come to Paris with Harry. He'd been cut off from the family he'd spurned, nearly penniless. He'd started doing magic in the streets, harmless tricks that fooled the Muggles into throwing coins. Eventually he'd joined a street theater troupe, then got parts with legitimate theater companies until earning enough to finance his own company, a company of which Harry had always been a member.
"I'm grateful for--for everything you've done for me," Harry said, more used to his godfather's bluster than this quiet mood.
"I didn't do it for your gratitude," Sirius said, turning his head to the fire.
"You have it all the same," Harry said, leaning forward to get Sirius's attention. "And my love. Nothing will ever change that."
There was no palpable change in Sirius's demeanor but Harry sensed that he had said the right thing. Sirius shifted in his chair, bringing his gaze back to meet Harry's. "Careful down this path," he said, "I never knew Severus Snape except that he was up to something."
~~**~~
For the first time, since his nervous debut at the age of eight, Harry almost bollixed up his cue. His pulse had been alternately racing and slowing to a hesitant thud as he got into his costume and make-up, breathlessly waiting for the moment he would step out onto the stage, certain that Sir Severus's eyes would be on him, imagining the delights of the evening to come.
Eagerly Harry trod out onto the stage, inhaling breath for his first line. A quick glance was all it would take, one sidelong look to see Snape in the box closest to the stage--
Snape was there, in his usual--surrounded by three unfamiliar people. Harry nearly faltered with surprise, but somehow managed to get out his lines. Who were they, that leaned so close, laughed so intimately, smiled so familiarly with Snape? A family, to judge by the similarity in coloring. Harry could not see them well, being slightly near-sighted, but could well enough make out three fair-haired strangers clustered about Sir Severus.
When the curtain closed for the next act, he nearly sagged in relief. He trudged into the wings, pulling listlessly at his cravat.
"Isn't it thrilling?" M. Malkin asked, rushing to help Harry with his coat. "Amazing, really."
"Amazing," Harry agreed, then frowned in confusion. "What's amazing?"
"Haven't you heard?" M. Malkin tutted at him. "The Black Asphodel snatched another victim from the jaws of Madame Guillotine this very afternoon!" She splayed one hand over the lace fichu covering her bosom and heaved a sigh.
The news of the daring hero didn't take Harry's mind completely off his own misery, but all of France and probably most of England thrilled to the exploits of the Black Asphodel.
"Who was it this time?" he asked trying to feign interest in a story that once would have thrilled him.
"The Fortescues," Sirius said, coming up behind Harry. "Their confections were favorites of the King, you know, and for that the whole family was sentenced to death."
Harry could not suppress a gasp. He had known several of the Fortescues well and had been visiting their shop ever since he'd started getting his own pocket money. "How did they escape?" he asked, ashamed that he'd been so preoccupied as to have missed the news.
"An upturned pig cart just as the tumbrel passed," M. Malkin said, certain of her attentive audience. "Pigs racing everywhere, knocking over guards and citizens alike. Once they got everything sorted out the Fortescues had just--" She snapped her fingers knowingly. "Vanished with only a calling card with an asphodel flower upon it left in their tumbrel."
"But surely they couldn't have Apparated," Harry said. The anti-Apparition wards had been in place since the Terror had begun and no one, wizard or Muggle, could leave the city without papers. "And they wouldn't have had wands once they were arrested."
"Turned into pigs, most likely," Sirius said, while Madame Malkin nodded. "By the time the Muggles figure it out, they'll be halfway across the channel."
Madame Malkin, hand still clutching her bosom, headed off to spread the tale further. Sirius sobered at once.
"I'm off tonight, I know," Harry said before the rebuke could come.
"I asked you specially," Sirius began.
"I know!" Harry repeated, feeling miserable.
"The marquis is a devoted follower of the theater. If we can secure his patronage the Theatre Francaise will have nothing to worry about if the winds shift for our kind." He slid one hand over Harry's shoulder. "We have to be so careful these days."
Harry hung his head. "I didn't know you were that worried about it," he said.
"I'm not," Sirius said. Harry made a skeptical noise. "All right, I am a bit. A man would have to be a fool not to be worried in these times."
Harry gave him a reassuring smile. "The second act will be better," he promised.
"I don't want to see a dry eye in the house when you--" He mimed driving a sword through Harry's gut. Harry clutched his belly, eyes rolling, half-swooning before the laugh bubbled to surface and he grinned and bowed.
"I always die well," he said. "The critics don't call me The Boy Who Dies for nothing!"
~~**~~
The second act was better. Harry avoided looking at Snape's box, and when his moment came, added silent flailing and a few staggers to his on-stage death. The gasps and sobs when he finally collapsed to the stage were a fitting reward.
For the first time, apparently due to the presence of guests in his box, Snape stayed for the curtain calls, applauding with the rest of the audience. Harry nodded toward their box as roses rained upon the stage. There were indeed three visitors in the box beside Snape, a tall thin man, his blond hair unpowdered and tied back like Snape's, a beautiful woman dressed in the height of fashion and a young man about Harry's age.
Sirius stopped Harry as he emerged from his dressing room, having Scourgified off his stage make-up. "What was Snape doing with the marquis?"
"The--the marquis?" Harry sputtered.
"If he's trying to sabotage the theater I'll serve his bollocks to Madame Guillotine myself." He clapped one hand to his forehead. "I can't believe I agreed to let you have supper with him!"
Harry's mouth opened in surprise. Sirius had, when told of Harry's invitation for the evening, subjected him to a quarter of an hour rant, ending with a reluctant, "Well, you're of age; I can't stop you."
"I've got to go," Harry said, missing the fastening of his cloak because his fingers were shaking. "I'm sure it'll be all right."
Tonight Snape's carriage was parked just outside the theater. Harry pushed past the small crowd waiting to meet members of the company, ignoring the admiring glances being thrown his way as he made his way to the carriage. It was then that he noticed the second carriage, with the d'Malfoy coat of arms on the door just behind Snape's carriage. Harry climbed in, eyeing Snape warily.
"You were magnificent," Snape said, leaning back in the cushions.
Harry waved airily. "I am always magnificent, monsieur."
The carriage lurched over a loose cobblestone in the road, spoiling Harry's pose. He flopped back into the cushions, avoiding the swaying lantern.
"My dear friends, the Marquis d'Malfoy and his family are joining us for supper," Snape said, reaching for his snuffbox. "They were all quite…taken with your performance." He took a pinch of snuff.
"And you, monsieur?" Harry asked.
Snape closed the snuffbox with a snap. "I am quite taken with you as well."
The simple words and the renewed promise in Snape's features allowed Harry to get through dinner. He didn't much care for the d'Malfoys, for they seemed to embody everything the Revolutionary Committee was campaigning against -- indolence, privilege and entitlement.
The Marquis himself seemed genuinely pleased to make Harry's acquaintance but there was a coldness in his eyes that Harry misliked. The Marchioness, Narcissa, also praised Harry's performance, though more than once she looked like she wanted to pet him like a lap dog.
It was the youngest d'Malfoy, Draco, who made Harry feel the most uncomfortable. After supper he managed to corner Harry on one side of the drawing room. They'd both refused brandy and cigars, though Harry noticed the Marquis took both, despite his wife's presence.
"My father says you're going to be a star performer one day," Draco said. The aristocratic drawl that Snape managed so well sounded nasal and petulant in the Malfoy heir's voice.
"That's very kind of him," Harry replied, casting a beseeching look toward Snape. His host, however, seemed deeply entranced by the Marchioness's indifferent pounding on the harpsichord.
"You'll need a patron," Draco said, though the word 'patron' seemed oddly ill-suited to the expression on his face. "Someone who can introduce you to the right people."
"I'm perfectly content with my godfather's theater," Harry explained, deftly side-stepping when Draco leaned in closer to make his point. He turned to admire a portrait of some long-deceased presumed ancestor of Snape's.
"You'll be wasted there," Draco said, making a face at the portrait. The portrait made a face back and turned away. "Meet me for luncheon tomorrow and we'll discuss it."
"There is nothing to discuss, monsieur," Harry said firmly. He wheeled around to join the small group clustered around the harpsichord.
"Dreadful business," Lucius, the Marquis, was saying. Since Narcissa had stopped playing, Harry could only assume the comment was not in reference to her skill at the harpsichord.
"What is, Monsieur l'Marquis?" Harry asked, standing as close to Snape as he could.
"This Black Asphodel creature," Lucius said with disdain in his voice.
"Surely, dear, he is a hero to wizarding kind. Why only today he snatched the Fortescues from under the very noses of the guard," Narcissa said, her slender frame doing a fair approximation of M. Malkin's more impressive bosom heaving.
"Why anyone would want to bother about the Fortescues is beyond me," Snape said, as Lucius nodded in agreement.
"Most wizards are safe under the new regime," Lucius said, taking a sip of his brandy.
"Then why won't they let us Apparate?" Harry asked, earning himself a cold smile from the nobleman.
"Only a precaution until the new order is established. Then our freedoms will be restored to us," Lucius replied.
"They wouldn't have been to the Fortescues," Harry said, with more heat in his voice than he'd intended.
"I should be escorting Harry home," Snape interjected quickly, with the barest warning squeeze to his shoulder.
"We can take him home," Draco said with an icy smirk very much like his father's. "Can't we, Maman?"
"Of course we can, darling," Narcissa said dotingly.
Snape's hand remained possessively upon is shoulder. "I'm afraid I promised his godfather that I would see him home personally," Snape said, ringing for a footman. It was such an admirably told lie that Draco could make no reply. Harry mistrusted the calculating look in his eyes, but managed to keep silent until they were in the carriage.
"I do not like your friends," Harry said once the door had been closed behind them and the carriage got underway.
Snape's expression was sardonic. "I'm not certain I like them either." He heaved a sigh. "Still, they are friends." He held up one gloved hand when Harry would question him further. The heavy old ring on his finger caught the lantern light, gleaming dully. "I've something to tell you."
Harry sat back on the cushions. He didn't think Snape was going to tell him anything pleasant.
"I'm leaving Paris tonight," Snape said and Harry's heart went cold, "bound for Calais and on to Dover. My yacht sails on the tide."
"What? Why?" Harry wailed.
"I've urgent business at home, something that cannot wait."
"I see," Harry said, wishing again the d'Malfoys had not intruded on this night. He could not think of anything that urgent, not even one of Sirius's rehearsals. He turned his head toward the window even though the curtains had been pulled closed.
"I should be back in a fortnight or so," Snape explained, though Harry still didn't look at him. A fortnight might as well be forever.
"You will be welcome back at the theater, monsieur," Harry said, swallowing his disappointment, "should you choose to visit."
There was silence in the coach, save for the steady clip clop of the horse's hooves over the cobblestones. Then Snape spoke. "Don't sulk or I shan't kiss you goodnight."
Harry's frame became energized as though awakening from a dismal slumber. He smiled saucily. "I knew you could not resist me," he said, launching himself across the scant space that separated them. He had reason to thank the excellent coach makers for the sturdiness of their cushions as his weight propelled Snape backward into them.
Strong arms wrapped around him, pulling him deeper into the cushions. "I cannot," Snape said, the words mere ghosts of breath against Harry's lips just before he joined their mouths together.
Harry had sensed the passion that must lay buried beneath the languid gaze and perfect mouth. Every heated suspicion confirmed when the kiss became a fiery thing, flaring like little sparks. Harry groaned between the breaths that had been granted by Snape and found himself being pressed along Snape's lap, arms around his neck.
Heat stole through his body, enflaming every nerve as he gasped into another kiss. Snape's mouth felt as heated and alive as his own and when a groan flourished between them it was no more Harry's than his own will. His feet no longer touched the floor, legs stretching out along the bench, finding purchase in a more enticing haven--the warm body kissing him into the cushions.
"Say you'll wait for me," Snape said, barely lifting his lips from Harry's own. The lantern light flickered in the depths of his eyes as they swept Harry's face searchingly.
Harry was not certain what he should wait for, so he pressed another kiss against Snape's damp lips. Snape made a needy noise and plundered Harry's mouth with his tongue. One hand lay on Harry's chest, still heated like an ember that had escaped the fire. Slowly the hand began to journey down, past the hem of Harry's waistcoat, over the top of his breeches. The pace was so tortuous, punctuated by kisses, that Harry thought he would dissolve before Snape cupped the aching tumescence of his cock.
"I don't want to find you with another man in your bed when I return," Snape said, fingers making filigree tracings over the front of Harry's breeches. "Or boy," he added significantly.
Dazed, Harry shook his head, arching his hips toward Snape, toward the only thing that would ease this sudden wildfire of longing.
"Say you'll wait," Snape said, eyes glittering as they looked down at Harry. A strand of his hair had come loose from his queue and there was high color on his cheeks.
"Oui, monsieur," Harry said, fingers catching the wisp of loose hair and smoothing it behind one ear, "I shall wait for you." Snape's eyes darkened with triumph, but Harry did not mind being the prize. Not when the buttons of his breeches parted and Snape's hand--no longer gloved, though Harry did not remember him removing it--plunged into his small clothes. The heat of those fingers was no match for Harry's needy prick.
Harry nearly melted into the cushions, his head lolling back as Snape's mouth slid along his throat. One hand closed around his cock. Harry swirled into the vortex of lust and need that threatened to sweep him away.
"Mon Dieu," Harry whispered as if in actual prayer, to the god of pleasure that seemed to dwell in the church of Snape's hand. He clutched at the only solid fixture in the vortex as Snape stroked him and shuddered endlessly with release that was almost religious ecstasy.
Snape went still, save for the hand guiding him through this pleasure, his kisses gentled until Harry sighed softly and opened his eyes.
"Quite irresistible," Snape decreed, slowly uncurling his fingers and sliding them free of Harry's clothes. He reached into his own coat for a scented handkerchief before his wand to remove the evidence. Harry, still panting and sated, trailed a finger down his chest until he realized Snape was fastidiously tucking him back into his breeches.
"But I want to--" Harry began, quite aware that only a single climax had been reached in the carriage--his.
Tucking his wand away, Snape lifted Harry's hand and kissed the back of it, caressing his fingers. "We are nearly at the Rue d'Richelieu," he said as Harry too realized the distant clopping of the horse's hooves had slowed. "And I must sail for England on the tide."
On to Part 2