lumos_maxima | open rp post #002

SO MANY THINGS.

can you just leave me picture prompts and poke me to get my lily journal set up?

I'm not saying we should have Snape/Bella angst

but we should totally have Snape/Bella angst

SO YEAH.

Snape and Marion should have another encounter. He should possibly discover that she's been hiding her werewolf status.

It would explain things to him. There should be yelling. :D

It was barely dawn when Severus awoke. He wasn't entirely sure what had roused him from sleep - not that it truly mattered, as he was a light sleeper and tended to have broken sleep most nights on account of that alone - but when he turned lifted his head from the pillow to look over his shoulder, he saw Bellatrix sitting on the edge of the mattress, on the other side of the bed.

The room was just light enough for him to make out that she was naked, and her shoulders hunched. She almost - almost - looked strangely fragile; a stark contrast to the night before, the evidence of which was now dried on the sheets. The night before, Bellatrix had been all biting teeth and fingernails and panted, wanton gasps in between goading remarks while Severus had pinned her down to the bed by the throat. She'd been savage and insatiable, and he'd been merciless and felt more alive than he'd felt in as long as he could remember. If it weren't for the silencing charms cast on the room, the landlord of the inn above the small pub would have thrown them out onto the street for being so noisy and vulgar. Especially Bellatrix.

Against his better judgement, Severus rolled onto his back and reached a hand out, skimming his fingers down her bare back. He realised what he was doing and swiftly pulled his hand away again, tugging the sheet up securely over his own nakedness as he rolled back onto his side away from her.

"You should leave," he said, his voice low and scratchy with sleep.

At his mother's insistence, Draco returned to Hogwarts. It took a little over a year for the school to be rebuilt fully, and it was eerily beautiful, as Draco remembered seeing it when he was a young boy. His pale, misty eyes scanned the dining hall, and you'd have never known the war that tore the tables and the waiting dinnerware asunder. You never would have known all the death, and the chaos.

There was more tension than ever between rival houses Slytherin and Gryffindor; the way even some of the other houses spoke about the house with such sneering contempt made Draco's house name sound like a slur. And indeed, even within his own house, things were tense and awkward—Pansy was less vocal about her political views for fear of the consequences, especially given everything that had happened. They were all treated like villains, but not in the way like they were some sort of silly house of cartoon evil-doers—but as criminals, no matter what they said.

Truthfully, Draco supposed that it was fair, but that didn't mean he didn't hate it. He went through his studies decently enough, but in particular, Draco was almost as legend as Harry; the stares that stuck to him were scathing, and he was hollered passing threats. Draco flinched, sometimes, but hurried along and ignored things like this. The school knew, or had at least heard rumor, that Draco was ordered to kill Dumbledore. Even if he hadn't, it certainly didn't color his image well, especially with his behavior and talk all years previous to his sixth.

And perhaps most insufferable of all was probably the fact that Harry, Hermione and Ron were often catching his eyes as well—it was too uncomfortable to bear, and it made the bile in his throat rise up with contempt, as well as a heavy, sickly feeling that twisted viscuously in the pit of his stomach. It was a feeling he didn't have the heart nor gumption to name, and so he normally took to bitterly scowling in some other direction. Indeed, Draco was getting a taste of it, and this was not lost on Harry. Mysteriously, the two boys had stopped antagonizing eachother altogether, which was sometimes commented on by members of their respective houses, or the peers of the other houses involved.

Of course, things as delicate as they were, post war, a lot of the talk got too personal much too fast—often sore from the remarks of his schoolmates, Draco would make his comebacks too slighting, whipping on fresh wounds. He rowed with Ron Weasley, in fact, during such an incident, earning himself a black eye and a swollen lip. Weasley, on the other hand, had been stunned—the two boys were separated, the both of them given an agonizing week of detention together.

And it was common for Hermione or Harry to pick him up after detention—Hermione, while sweet on Ron, was still much more academically minded than anything else and was working hard to make up for lost time. Harry, however, seemed to miss the company of his best mate in the evenings.

Again, Harry's eyes uncomfortably caught on Draco's as Harry prepared to leave with Ron. "Hold on a moment," Harry said to Ron, gesturing with a nod of his head towards Draco. "You go on. I've got a word for this one." Careful to mask his intent, Harry said this with a very mild snarl on his face. Ron eyed him dubiously, and just as dubiously acknowledged his words. Ron then turns to leave.

Harry waited a moment, watching his friend, and then he approached Draco. Draco was immediately defensive in his posture and his expression, and Harry, unbelievably, seemed to try to start leveling with him. As unconvinced as Ron was, Draco listened uncomfortably—his feelings regarding Harry were perhaps the muddiest of all—but when Harry seemed to finish what he had to say, his voice as low as possible, Draco's eyes had gone wide.

Staring unblinkingly to middle-distance, Draco turned his head to look at Harry. "You must be having a laugh at me, Potter," Draco said with disbelief.

Harry smiled, regarding Draco without a single thing more to say.

"Why would you tell me something like that, even if it were true?"

And, Harry merrily marched off in wake of his friend. Draco, however, stared stupidly at Harry's back as he went.

This wasn't the first time that Harry eluded to something suspicious. It was something about Snape. Since even before returning to Hogwarts, Draco had the strangest feeling that Snape simply hadn't died; it was a vague sort of itchiness at the back of his mind, a unpleasantness in his chest and stomach; some sort of ineffably strange, terrible feeling. The more he dwelled on it, the more Draco felt he might have been going mad, unsure as to why he was fixating so obsessively on Snape specifically.

"I'd heard you were frustrated," Harry had said back then, when Draco had finished detention with Ron. "seeing that you couldn't properly grieve or process his death. I wouldn't tell you otherwise, but—" Draco could hardly process Harry's explanation as he continued on, his mind racing just like his heart. What was he saying?

"—he's well."

Draco began collecting all information he could about it, but he raced for all of this in secret—Harry knew regretfully little about his actual alleged whereabouts, which made Draco feel insecure in the actuality of this story.

He pulled Harry aside, some months later, towards the end of the term, though they hadn't really spoken much through the entire year.

"I'm going. Deflect any questions regarding my absence."

"Of course," Harry said with an arrogant lipcurl. "Why would I care?"

"Yeah. That's right." Draco looked Harry up and down with a disdainful glowering, nodding his head once. "You bloody better well not be pulling my leg on this, Potter, or—and I mean this with sincerity—I will kill you."

"Heard that before."

"Shut up."

Draco had set himself somewhat poorly for his quest. Having been pampered comfortably his whole life, he was not really used to roughing it this way. He did at least do his homework, and he did pack mostly enough to get him by. He went by broomstick to make most of the traversing easy—and he had a map that he'd poured into and scrawled on to help his way, based on what he'd discovered. It was reckless, and it was stupid, but the force driving Draco was not one he can explain or stifle.

The path was appropriately confiding and elusive, even with his broom, and with lots of obstacles—even without magic tampering his way, the way is very arduous even naturally. Draco had to leave his broom, as the terrain became too demanding; he didn't want it broken, and it would hinder him. It was all the sort of wildness untouched by man, even wizards, of intimidating heaps of cliffs and confounding mist. Draco had to stun wildlife, howling in alarm when something found him. It had been almost five days of looking, and Draco's jaw and upper lip became covered with a fine, short and pale stuble that was mostly made visible by the sun.

But, a further pain in his ass, he thinks it's around the mountains—and traversing them has been no easy task. Through lots of stumbling of different sorts, Draco lost his broom to an aggressive river.

Cursing, but otherwise managing, Draco came to a clearing in the treacherous, dark forest. He knew it was close. He could feel it, more and more.

It was impossible to see anything, with all of the mist—there was the distant, eerie sounds of the predators and prey around the area. Draco's chest heaved, his fair skin scraped at its cheak, and his hood hung heavily over his head, obscuring his face. It was damned cold, and Draco was beaten out; just exhausted.

It was at this point, closer than ever, Draco had to wonder what the hell he was doing when he realized just what sort of shit he was in. His parents were going to have him hanged, and he wasn't even positive of his leads.

But he couldn't shake the feeling that he was right on top of it... Even if he had sense it was further up, Draco had to rest; his body, lungs and mind all ached terribly. He wasn't accustomed to this exertion.

His pale eyes looked for something, and he found nothing, but the clearing itself was too conspicuously serene and clean to go ignored.

Got a starting point in mind for these two?

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Snape/Bella - for @phrenesis

UH there are probably errors. i am sorry.

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