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DEATH EATERS AT THE MALFOY ESTATE

Episode 4: Brimstone Bridges Everywhere

The sexiest picture Severus had ever seen was the tamest image in Rosier’s favorite porn mag. It was of a voluptuos nude woman with a short black bob sitting on a white shag rug. Her legs were folded together in such a way that blocked her naughty bits from view, and in her lap she cradled a black cat with intense green eyes, which obstructed her breasts. As porn goes it was quite benign. Rosier had allowed Severus to tear it right out of the magazine, as it didn’t show anything good.

But it did. Something in that picture had been setting fire to Severus for five years. It wasn’t her pose, her skin, or her hair; it was something juxtaposed between the way she held the cat and the look on her face.

She held the cat tenderly, protectively, red nails on long fingers spread over its sleek back. The look on her face was both an accusation and a dare, and she was looking right at him.

The various thoughts of what he had done, or what he was about to do, to deserve that look had stirred him for a long, long time. It had gotten to the point where he had but to think of the image and blood started rushing away from his brain.

Which was why he was puzzled at this latest development as he held the actual picture, a little faded and cracked, in his left hand while his right was in an entirely different topographic location.

It was the first time he’s failed to react to her. Puzzled, he had tried to ignite things without the usual mental foreplay. Nothing there either. Which was quite a shame, since Severus really had his heart set on masturbating that morning. He hadn’t all week (all week!) and decided that was something of a travesty - though he hadn’t been feeling sexual at all lately. The long hours burned it out of him, he supposed. It had taken his morning shaving cream exploding all over his hand in a vicious spurt to even give him the idea. No, not sexual at all, lately.

At least not for the right reasons.

He put that out of his mind as tried to focus on the picture. "Come on. I’m petting the cat. I’m petting the cat and breathing on your neck, and you can feel it, only you’re acting like you can’t. No! You know what, I’m TAKING the cat! Ha! So there! Now you’ll pay attention to ME! Oh, does that piss you off? I’m so SORRY...I can make it better..."

She scowled at him.

"Oh, you’re a stubborn bitch, aren’t you? I’ve got a cure for that...."

Severus’s stomach lurched. Christ, that was corny. He made a mental note never to write porn. He couldn’t even make his own fantasies compelling. He was about as aroused as soggy cardboard.

He focused once more on her.

Why are you even trying? This is a joke, she said.

“No, really, I want to fuck you. Savagely.”

She rolled her eyes. You do NOT. She made kissing noises at the cat, who climbed back into her lap and glared at him. You’re not even hard. You’re usually hard by now. Hell, you’re usually DONE by now. Is something wrong?

“Nothing’s wrong! Will you just shut up and let me do this?”

Allow me to help. Do you want the one where I talk about how badly I want you inside me but it’s a no-go because Mr. Tibbles hates you? Or perhaps the one where I play with myself with my back turned to you, you love that.

“I do not, it’s the most infuriating-”

You LOVE it. Oh, I know, the one where you recite bad poetry to me while I lick my arm-

“Hey!”

Sorry, had to get that in. Nothing yet? Maybe the one where I speak in tongues and you have to figure out-

Severus held up his hand. “No, none of those. It has to be something...different...I think.”

She considered this for a moment. How different?

He shrugged. She gave him a cruel smile and beckoned him closer.

“You’re not going to make me fight for it?”

She rolled her eyes again. Oh, for crying out loud. She collected herself and said, sparing no sarcasm, Gosh, I’d be really upset if you were to take Mr. Tibbles away. Boy howdy, that would make me mad - oh, you’re taking him. Oh. Severus. You bastard. Give me my cat back. Good enough?

“I...suppose..."

Good. She suddenly lunged forward, wrapped her arms around his neck, and shoved her tongue into his mouth in what was the deepest, hardest imaginary kiss he’d ever received. Mr. Tibbles gave a yelp as Severus threw him aside. She pulled him down to the floor so he was atop her, but her body felt...different. Firmer. He ran his hands in her hair, and it was still short, shorter maybe, and fine...her hands caressed his back, flatter and warmer than usual. Thick thighs wrapped around his hips. Her lips were rougher, but, god, so nice, these changes....

He pulled away from the kiss to catch his breath, eye still closed. Oh, that had done it, whatever she had thought of this time - his very palms tingled.

“Oh,” he said, “Bloody brilliant, you are.”

Thanks, replied a light but decidedly deeper voice. You’re not so bad yourself.

He opened his eyes to see a shy, smiling Barty Crouch beneath him.

Severus cried out and leapt away. Barty sat up and smiled playfully. You said something different, love.

“Not...not that! You know how I feel about...that!”

It’s your head.

Severus quickly raised his hands to his head and pressed his temples. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that when he opened them the Barty apparition would be replaced by the black-haired woman. When he did open them no one was there; just Severus, alone, in his dingy room holding a faded picture.

The sexiest image Dobby the House Elf had ever seen was a picture of a blueberry pie from a “Better Homes and Gardens” cookbook. It was, literally, a perfect pie, gorgeous and unattainable in its flaky crusted mixed berry sweetness. Hard as he may try to reproduce such a specimen (how he would love to present it to his master!) his efforts were in vain. A confection possessed of such white, clean light was never to be made in such a dark and Death Eaterly kitchen.

It was his private agony, but such was the life of a house elf.

At present he had work to attend to - when didn’t he? - a special message to be delivered to the young Potionsmaster. A message given him by the young Malfoy himself. Dobby dared not read the message.

He found the potionsmaster heading down the hall in his usual gait- eyes cloudy with thought, head bent forward as though he would plow through anything that got in his way. He reached into the pocket of his cloak and produced a pack of cigarettes, one of which he stuck in his mouth.

Alarmed, Dobby ran up to him and tugged on his pant leg. “Master Snape! Master Snape! I has a special message for you!”

“What now?” Severus growled.

“A special Message from Master Malfoy!” Dobby waved the scroll.

“From Lucius?”

“Yes!”

Severus stared at it and had a startling moment of clarity.

“I don’t want it,” he said. “Not interested. Take it away.” He held the tip of his wand to his cigarette to light it.

“But, M-M-Master Snape, you has to...and, uhm, you is not to smoke in here. Is bad for the drapery.”

“It’s the seventies. You can smoke everywhere,” he replied around the cigarette.

“Please, Master Snape, I is asking you please not to smoke, I is asking you please take the scroll, I is asking very nicely, I is-”

Severus took a deep drag on his cigarette and kicked Dobby somewhere in his nondescript abdomen, which sent the elf flying down the hall.

“Greasy little vermin,” he muttered and stormed away.

When Dobby regained consciousness he re-rolled the scroll and found himself, oddly enough, wondering what it would like to be free. A free house elf. Possibilities that had never before tickled his tiny, furry brain now began to drip in like clean water out of a rusty pipe. Catching his dim reflection in a panel of polished wood, he briefly considered what he might look like in a nice pair of boot-cut jeans and a striped polyester shirt. Maybe with a little navy blue beret, oh yes, that would be lovely....

It could really be something. The places he could go, the things he could do, if only he could free himself of this genetic burden of service, were endless.

But then again, he may have just hit his head a little too hard.

The pleasure portion of his day having been sufficiently squandered, Severus went to go sit in the garden and chain smoke for approximately half an hour. Though he did see a rather rare and remarkable violet butterfly, which sent him thinking of butterflies in general, and their meaninglessness, and thereby his meaninglessness, and thereby again the meaningless of the universe, which proved to be a rather depressing and existential thread of thought, his actions there were not too exciting. However, what was happening the in the Potions lab at the time was food for thought indeed.

Myra Psue had been awake for three days. Her eyes were bright red and misty as she pored over books and formulae. Her hands shook and she gently poured a flask of black oily stuff into a beaker of heavy water.

“This should do it,” she muttered softly. “This should soooo do it.”

She waited a moment. It didn’t do it.

“Fuck my cock,” she said. Sighing, she prepared another line of Hype. Dirty, inefficient Hype that only did the job for a short time and didn’t have nearly the addictive qualities it should.

Then again....

She wiped her nose from a fresh snort. There was a voice behind her.

“Excuse me,” it said.

“Jesus fuck!” Myra cried. Behind her stood a teenage girl in a Wizarding school uniform. She had bunched, frizzy hair, buck teeth, and held a small gold timepiece.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your...uhm...cocaine,” she said, “but I was just wondering if you might tell me where I am?”

“Where you- ? Kid, how did you get in here?”

“I don’t...I just....where am I?”

“Is that a Time Turner?”

“This? Um, yes, I, no...I-?”

“You’re wearing Hogweasel’s robes! Are you from the school?”

“Hogwarts, yes. I’m from Hogwarts. Where am I now, though?”

Myra gasped. “Did that old wizard send you? Dumbledore?”

“No, no! He had nothing to do with this! Neither did Professor Macogannal, I swear, it was all my fault, don’t blame them!”

“Kid, what are-?” Myra turned. There were voices in the hall, someone distinctly saying ‘Are you sure this was it, my Lord?’

“Someone’s coming.” Myra said. “Quick, we’ve gotta hide you.”

Barty Crouch Jr. was jogging up and down the circular staircase in the highest turret of the manor. Sometime he exercised there when the weather outside was not to his liking. Today it was just too hot for his usual one and a half mile run and fifty sets of jumping jacks in the front expanse of lawn. The turret stairs were a better workout anyway.

“Huh one and huh two and huh three,” he panted, trying to lift his knees up more on each step.

“Little Barty Junior,” whispered a voice like bath oil.

Barty jerked to a stop. “Who...who’s there?’

On the wall was a relief of an old church. It was dark in the turret so the church appeared as a large, solid black shape in the wall. There was a rustle from inside the relief. A flicker from the torches caught movement.

“Over here,” the voice said.

Barty took two steps closer to the relief. He gasped as a flicker of torchlight revealed a face, alabaster-white and pearl smooth, with the slightest hint of a satisfied smile. It was Lord Voldemort himself, sitting inside the what Barty could now see was a castle shaped hole and not a picture at all. Voldemort wore a stunning wedding gown, his straight black hair falling over his shoulders, his knees drawn up to his chest.

“My...my Lord.” Barty alternately gasped and swallowed. ‘I..I had no idea you were here, my, my Lord, if I dis-dis-disturbed you-”

One long, cool white finger barely touched Barty’s lips. ‘Shhh, precious boy. Oh, precious, naive little Barty, who takes such good care of himself.”

“What are you doing here, my Lord?”

“You don’t wonder why I’m wearing this wedding gown?”

Barty blinked, realizing it was a cue. “Why are you wearing a wedding gown, my Lord?”

Voldemort sighed. “Because I shall never be a bride.” He straightened out a cuff. “Never ever, I’m afraid. Narcissa, ah, so lucky. Now you shall ask what I’m doing here.”

“What are you doing here, my Lord?”

Voldemort sighed again, with more flair. “Sometimes...well, sometimes I come here to think. Even Lords must have private time, you know. Special time.” Voldemort drew the back of his hand along Barty’s jaw line. The boy took a sharp breath. All he could think about were snakes, snakes crawling around him, through him, inside him, the queasily exciting sensation of their cool writhing.

“A penny f-for your thoughts, My Lord.”

“A penny? That’s Yank money, practically worthless.” He smiled. “I want at least a shilling.”

“A shilling for your thoughts, Lord. Many, many shillings. A pound even, if it would please you. Anything to please you.”

Voldemort tilted his head and looked softly at Barty for a moment. He reached forward and cupped the boy’s face in his perfect hands. “Do you know what used to please me, a long time ago?”

“Oh...oh....” Barty said.

“There were beautiful dens of sin in the mansion, years and years ago. Downstairs in the basement, as I recall.”

“Dens of sin?”

“You know...” Voldemort stroked Barty’s hair. It was all the boy could do to remain standing. “Idling places for the rich. Secret dens for pleasure potions and, dare I say it....sex.” He said the last word about two inches from Barty’s ear.

“Why don’t you escort me down to th-”

“Okay.”

“-the basement, so I might see again these dens once again.” Voldemort slid out of the relief and took Barty’s arm, a frosted glass princess guided by a strapping blonde knight.

There was a knock on the door to the lab. When Myra opened it, Barty was in the midst of saying “This is the potions lab, my Lord, I think-”

“Do you doubt me?” came a sharp retort.

“My LORD!” Myra gasped. ‘My Lord, My Lord, I - I mean we - weren’t expecting you, my partner is out, was there something you needed, we can make anything you know, potions, tonics, balms, you name it, we-” Myra backed into a counter, knocking a flask to the floor, where it shattered. “Oh my, I dropped that, didn’t I, my fault, I’ll-”

“SILENCE!” Voldemort said. “There is only so much pitiful groveling I can stand in a day, Miss Psue. Prior deeds notwithstanding, I really can’t stand the sound of your voice.”

Myra nodded.

“Now, as I recall, this was at one time a den of pleasure. Of sorts. Yes?”

“Before it was a potions lab, I think it was a-”

“Oh!” Voldemort exclaimed, holding his hands to his ears. “Oh! That sound, that sound! Barty, be a dear and grab Miss Psue and pad and quill. It really is too much.”

Barty looked about frantically for a pad and quill. “I uh, uh...” he turned to Myra. “Where do you keep them?”

Myra pointed to the third drawer from the left in the second row on a chest of drawers that had about seven rows. Barty went over to it and started to open random drawers in a blind panic. “This one? This one? Which one is it? I can’t find them! Where are they? Where are they?”

Voldemort sighed and extended his hand. A pad and quill flew out of the drawer and into Myra’s chest, where she barely caught them.

“Now, continue,” Voldemort said.

Myra began to write.

“Write faster.”

She wrote faster.

Before this was a potions lab, it was some kind of opium den. Lord Malfoy had it refitted for your purposes.

“For my purposes?”

We needed a lab and this was the best space for it.

“I don’t remember ordering that.”

You never were one for micromanaging, Lord.

“That’s not true! How dare you-” Voldemort stopped for a moment to think. “Okay, well, I suppose that’s true. I do have better things to do than worry about Malfoy’s little basement projects. Hm, well. It’s a shame, really. Good times were had here.” He shrugged. “Thank you very much, my dear. I’ll leave you to your duties.”

Thank you, My Lord.

Voldemort gestured for Barty, who came rushing over to take his arm. Voldemort laughed a little. “You may not be the sharpest tool in the box, little Barty, but I do enjoy having something fresh and young upon my elbow, yes indeed I do.”

Myra was frozen, a smile on her face, until they left. After that she rushed to an old armoire and pulled open the door. Inside, curled into a fetal position and sweating like a bull in August in Death Valley, was the frizzy haired girl. She stared up at Myra with wide eyes, the tips of her buck teeth just barely sticking out from beneath her top lip.

“You OK?” Myra asked.

“Was that - was - was that-?” the girl replied.

“Voldemort? Yes. Fuck.” Myra slammed the door shut and whirled about as someone else entered the room.

It was Severus. He glared at Myra as he lit a cigarette.

“Get. To fucking.Work,” he said.

They had three cauldrons going and the lab had heated to ungodly degrees, which only serve to enhance Severus’s already fuckfoul mood. “Fuckfoul” was not a term he used lightly. Something had to be pretty awful to be up for consideration.

This mood gave new meaning to the term “fuckfowl”. It radiated from him like poisoned ether. There were many things Severus didn’t like, perhaps more than he did, and a morning straight out of the prolific young Gilderoy Lockhart’s “Tales of the Sexually Bizarre” was one of them.

What was worse, that morning’s exertions hadn’t even been kind enough to leave him with the same feeling of exhaustion and minor nausea he had been lucky enough to associate with sex only last night. He had lit a fire that shouldn’t haven been lit and was now suffering the itchy, moody, disgruntling consequences.

He tapped a pencil lightly on the table and watched Myra work, pushing her hair back, wiping sweat from her brow, rubbing her nose. He felt suddenly certain that if he could get a look at her chest he would feel better. Her robes were still on so she resembled a tent, but he was sure that if he could look upon the great, heaving breasts of his lab partner he would remember where his real sexuality lay. He still had a sexual trigger for breasts. He liked breasts. And Myra had the only pair in the room.

He watched her for a moment. She was stiff and kept glancing towards the old armoire in the corner, the unused one with the broken door. She mixed a potion, rubbed her nose, looked at it. Cut open a frog, scratched her chin, looked at it.

“Waiting for the boggart?” Severus asked.

She jumped. “Huh? Uh, no. I’m just...a little wired. You know how it is.”

“Hm. Maybe we should put on another cauldron,” he said thoughtfully. “Get started on the asphodel thing what’s-his-name wanted.”

“You’re not serious. It’s a million degrees in here.” She glanced at the armoire.

“Why don’t you take off your robes, then?”

“Oh. God, I forgot I had them on. God.” She tapped her forehead. “Not enough sleep.”

She began to undo her robes as Severus watched. She stopped as she was about to slide them from her shoulders and cocked her head at him. “Is there any particular reason you’re looking at me like a vulture, or...?”

“Was I?’

“Quite.”

“Sorry,” he said, and continued staring.

“Riiiight,” Myra said, turning away from him as she slid off her robes, underneath which she was wearing - huzzah! - a very tight tank top. All she had to do was turn around and there would be breasts aplenty.

A bang came from the empty armoire. As Severus leapt to his feet there was another bang - that of the lab door flying open.

“YOU!” Lucius cried. He was a platinum blonde fury in creaking leather, holding a squealing, parchment-bearing elf by the scruff of his neck. “I told you not to abuse Dobby!”

He released his hold on the elf and dropped-kicked him a good ten feet directly into Severus’s chest. Severus dropped with Dobby on top of him, the parchment unrolling with a flutter over his face.

“How dare you ignore a message from me! If you had read that you would have known you were supposed to meet me in the parlor half an hour ago! No get off your ass, we have things to discuss! Now, now, now!” Lucius turned on his heel, slamming the lab door behind him.

Severus rose and brushed off Dobby, who fell with a plop to the floor. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the armoire. “Whatever’s in there,” he said, “kill it.”

“Where is it?” Myra demanded after tossing the unconscious house elf outside. He’d skidded over the basement halls like a hockey puck.

“Where is what?”

“The Time Turner.”

The girl , still curled in the bottom of the armoire, sighed. “As a fellow thinking woman, it’s my sincerest hope that you’ll understand why I did this, as I have virtually no idea of the consequences were such a powerful object to fall into Voldemort’s hands.”

She reached into her back pocket and yelped as her elbow brushed against the invisible Wall of Pain Myra had erected around the girl to keep her from getting out of the armoire. There was a flash of gold; she held up the watch. The face has been smashed. It was useless.

“Kid, you didn’t have to fucking do that!” Myra neutralized the force field and yanked the girl out by her collar. “What should I do with you? What should I do with you?” Myra asked as she shook her. “You have no idea what a windfall you are, kid. A girl from the future. I could be promoted to Senior Death Eater for finding your ass. Senior Death Eater, with the cool gold mask and the little pin.”

“I - well - I suppose this would be a good time to exercise the excellent diplomacy skills I’ve learned from being smarter than everyone around me.” She cleared her throat. “I would ask you, please, as a consideration, not to hurt me.”

“I’m not going to hurt you! I mean, I’m not. If my bosses find you, they will. They’ll probably torture you for information for the next thirty years. But there’s something I need from you. Help me and maybe I’ll help you fix that watch and get out of here. Or maybe I won’t.” She released the girl. “Tell me, kid. What’s your name, anyway?”

The girl pursed her lips. “Why not just call me ‘Kid’? You seem fond of it and it’s a lot easier to say than my real name.”

Myra shrugged. “Have it your way. Want a granola bar or something?”

“If I eat one will I be trapped here, like Persephone with Hades’s foul pomegranate?”

Myra looked incredulous for a moment, then chuckled. “I don’t know who think you’re impressing with that, but it sure isn’t me. No, I have a question for you.”

“As they say, shoot.”

“Okay. In the future, given current trends, you know, I’m guessing education is pretty liberal. Way more liberal than it is now, anyway,” she said, sitting at a cauldron,.“So what do they teach you about making drugs?”

Lucius shut the heavy oak parlor door, rather serene, given his previous outburst. The door was carved in the design of an ancient forest, complete with tigers dragons, and fearies and other, older creatures spoken of only in myth and remembered only in the blood and loins. Standing in from of it Lucius looked like a shiny metropolite who had wandered into some kind of fucked up fairy tale. And the scowl on his face meant he was pissed off, lost, and wondering where the maitre^d was.

“They’re on to us,” Lucius said. He slammed open a cigar box filled with cigarettes and pulled a cigarette holder out of his silk jacket.

“Who?”

“The Ministry, that’s who. Law enforcement. Something your lab woman bought in Knockturn sounded some alarm bells. They keep tabs on it. Abyssian Grousefrinkle, I believe-”

“Abyssinian grousefrinkle? I didn’t tell her to add that.”

“Well apparently she does a lot of things you’re not aware of, because that stuff is rigged. All they have to do is break down some metamorphine, find the grousefrinkle, trace is back to us, and it’s bye bye business.”

Severus shook his head. “Well, they’re not GOING to trace it back to us, because there is no Abyssian shit in my metamorphine, case closed.” Severus lit his own cigarette and took a puff.

“That’s where you’re wrong. They already traced it. Good thing I have a friend in the Ministry who saved my ass for a little favor. But there’s only so much time before someone catches on, and frankly, only so many blow jobs I can give. You have to reformulate the stuff. Have your woman buy ingredients no spooks can trace back here.”

Severus blinked. “That’s going to be pretty fucking hard to do, Lucius, considering that grousefrinkle is the man ingredient.”

“You know what’s hard to do? Suck off the four hundred pound oliphaunt that’s in charge of Dark Substances, that’s what. Change the shit.”

Severus choked.

Lucius cocked his head at Severus and gave a tiny laugh.

“What?’ Severus asked.

“You get so flustered,” Lucius said, “whenever I talk about sex.”

“Which is always, and I’m never in the mood.” Severus ground his cigarette into the ashtray and made to leave.

“What?’ Lucius called after him. “Has the cat-lady gone on strike?”

Severus bristled but pretended he didn’t hear. He had too much to do to let Lucius provoke him.

Lucius ashed his cigarette. ‘Never in the mood,” he whispered. “I’d fix that right up, you know. You’re begging for it. You all are.” His leather pants creaked as he crossed his legs and leaned back against the desk for a long, hard smoke.

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