Selkie - 1. The Ugly Little Boy

The Ugly Little Boy

It is said among the older wizards, winkingly, and with more than a few leers, that the first magic in humans came from couplings between mankind and the tribes of Fae. Malfoys were most noted for their resemblance to not only the few Veela that emigrated from France during the Roman occupation of Gaul, but also the fair Dani that still lived in England in shy retirement. Malfoy would scowl and sneer at the utterance just as his father had taught him, and yet he would still be unable to deny the possibility. His mother was a bit fey and prone to flights of fancy, but that may have had more to do with her lot in life than her heritage.

Lucius straightened his robes, dusting off specks of imagined dirt as he made his way to the Hogwarts express. It was his final year and he was Head Boy. Full with the knowledge of his own importance, he barked at the miserable creature who brought his trunks behind him. "Hurry on, Gribli, I mustn't be late."

The house elf bowed while pulling with a mighty grunt on the overstuffed trunk. Lucius merely kicked at it to make it move faster. He watched in lofty disdain as the younger students boarded the train, their shining faces and awed expressions irritating him in the same vague way that the house elves' fawning servitude did. The only one of the younger students to catch his eye was a weedy dark boy, who slouched against the side of an ancient trunk. The boy wore carefully tended secondhand robes, but his shoes were more scuff than polish. Lucius thought him an odd dark spot in the sea of bright wizarding plumage which milled about him like dancers on the stage.

The little boy watched a redheaded girl almost covetously as she made her goodbyes to her obviously Muggle family. The boy's mother stood to the side, her dark, sallow looks an echo of the boy's. Lucius recognised her as the blood-traitor Father had pointed out to him in Diagon Alley when they had gone to collect his school supplies one year. She had been dressed in the same worn and faded togs that day as she was today. Lucius sniffed dismissively and turned his back on the filth.

He boarded the train, managing to scare several third year Hufflepuffs out of the carriage he wanted. Rabastan and his odd brother joined him, along with sycophantic Bella. Lucius wondered if he was to be treated to the same sexual show that he had when he left Hogwarts last term. If so, he would put them all out on their arses. None of them bathed well enough for him to endure the smell of their exhibitionism. When the three started speaking of things best left out of hearing of the Hogwarts staff, Lucius feigned sleep. He needed time to recover from his father's latest lesson. He let his legs fall open, easing the burn in his lower back from the beating he had received just that morning for being late to breakfast. He had only been tardy a few seconds, but father had lashed out, bringing his cane down repeatedly on Lucius's back until he could no longer hold in his cries. Mother had looked on impassively, eating her toast and sipping her tea placidly, as if nothing untoward occurred before her. She had learned to do thus early on in her marriage, lest Father's wrath fell on her.

When Father left for his offices, she had taken Lucius to her chambers and eased his bleeding with dittany, a few healing charms, and soft words. She knew better than to heal her son completely. Father would expect scars for the effort he put into schooling his son.

She had shyly handed him a soft white shirt and kissed him in her ghostly way before she sent him through the Floo. Lucius thought that when she died it would not be a great effort to part her soul from her body. Father had killed her spirit years before Lucius was born.

&*&*&

The Sorting Hat put the dark boy in Slytherin. Lucius clapped politely as he sat, not really seeing him as he turned his attention to Narcissa Black. Father had already arranged for his marriage to her upon completion of her last year of schooling. She simpered as she flashed the rather large diamond ring that had been a portion of her bride price to the numbers of envious girls seated beside her. She batted her lashes coquettishly and took Lucius' hand. He did approve of his father's choice. Narcissa was a fine specimen of pureblood womanhood. She was decorous, lovely and satisfyingly subtle. What more could Lucius really ask for in a woman?

He disentangled his fingers from hers as the Old Fool began his standard welcoming speech. She affected a pout, but her pain at his withdrawal did not reach her eyes. She was a consummate actress, his future wife. She had to be to suffer through his father's embarrassing attentions. Lucius had no doubt that his father would taste her wares well before he did in their marriage bed. It was the way of Malfoys, or so his father said.

When the food appeared, Lucius happened to glance down the table at the dark boy. He sat poised, as if he would flee, as the older students who surrounded him filled their plates with food. The boy's black eyes shifted between the food and his empty plate before he picked up a small piece of roast and placed it delicately on his plate. His bruised, bony wrists extended past the frayed and greying cuffs of his shirt as he picked up his knife and fork. He cut a tiny piece of the roast, placing it in his mouth and chewing it meticulously before he swallowed. Lucius watched the delicate jerking of his throat, suddenly arrested by the pale beauty of the boy, with his solemn dark eyes and translucent parchment-coloured skin. The boy turned his gaze to Lucius, a sneer marring his features, making him appear older and much more unpleasant than a boy his age should be. Lucius' gaze fled back to his own neglected plate, suddenly hungry for something he could not name.

Lucius was haunted by that moment for years.

&*&*&

During the next weeks, whilst Lucius held court in the Common Room, he was aware that the dark boy watched him from the shadows. Young Severus Snape, it seemed, was as much a part of the underworld of Slytherin society, alone and ugly, like poor Vulcan toiling away at his furnace, as Lucius was a major deity in the constellation of Slytherin luminaries. Malfoy tried to dismiss the boy as dirt, a half-blood, and beneath his notice, but the truth was, the boy unsettled him. Lucius liked order, regularity and uniformity. The boy was an ugly snarl in his life, and Lucius went out of his way to avoid him. Still, the boy watched as if he were weighing Malfoy with his Stygian eyes. Lucius could not help but feel that he, at least in the boy's black gaze, had been measured and found wanting.

That was a new feeling to Lucius amongst his sycophantic peers, and he found over the weeks that it both irritated him and intrigued him. Lucius was attracted to the boy, as the opposite poles of lodestones attract to each other. He found himself seeking the boy's approval when he spoke, when he flew for the Quidditch team, or when he studied. The boy's silent, weighted stare compelled him for the same reason his father's more brutal tactics did. Lucius needed approval. He was, at his core, the little boy whose father rebuffed him brutally for crying over his dead kitten, killed as a punishment by Father for a minor infraction committed by the Malfoy scion.

Lucius also recognised in the boy the same hunger for approval without the means to achieve it. The boy was homely to all but Lucius, who saw in him some spectre of lovely kinship.

It was when the disgraced Black, with his Gryffindor placement and blood-traitor friends, started his campaign of terror against the boy that Lucius finally spoke to him.

He found the weedy boy in an abandoned classroom one night on his rounds. Snape sat huddled in on himself atop a desk, drying blood on his face, his eyes red-rimmed and burning with hate. Lucius recognised the surface emotion, but also saw the underlying architecture of the boy's defeat. He wore his victimhood like he wore his secondhand robes. Lucius, in his fascinated state, stared at the small boy whose shoulders had straightened under the older Slytherin's scrutiny.

Blood littered the boy's greying shirt and trousers and spilled over his school robes, discarded on the floor like a selkie's skin. Lucius unaccountably wanted to take the boy in his arms and sooth away the hurts as his had never been, he wanted the boy to don his damnable robes and flee from Lucius in fear, he wanted to kiss the boy's thin brow and sooth away the pain in both their breasts. He did none of those things.

"Snape." Lucius said, the sibilant word hissing through the quiet of the room like a knife through flesh.

The boy's black eyes met his and Lucius was once again drawn to him. He traversed the stone flagged classroom, his boots ringing on the flooring as he crossed. The boy merely peered at Lucius rather than cringe in fear at Lucius' intrusion, or worse, fawn and blush at Lucius' proximity. They sat together atop the desk, Lucius' expensively shod feet touching the floor, Snape's scuffed shoes, still and together, hanging above his. The dark boy was not the typical firstie, fidgeting away under Lucius' scrutiny with spare energy and no grace.

Lucius bestowed a frosty expression of commiseration as he asked, "So, young Snape, what happened to you?"

"Why do you care?"

His vowels were atrocious and hard, his face pinched and ugly. Lucius wondered fleetingly at his fascination with the weedy lump of clay. He merely answered, "I am Headboy."

The boy made a noise of disgust in his throat, quelling any desire that Lucius might have had to ease his pain. It was just as well, Lucius had enough of his own left untended. Instead, Lucius stood. "There is a duelling club that meets on Wednesdays. I expect you to be present at the next gathering. You will not disgrace Slytherin with your inability to protect yourself."

Lucius rose and made it to the door before he heard the boy's monotone reply. "Thanks."

Lucius inclined his head in a gesture of munificence and left the boy to repair himself and get back to the Common Room. It was almost curfew and Lucius would give him no quarter if he were late.

&*&*&

Lucius observed the ugly little boy for the rest of the term. He was fascinated by the boy's hitching walk, his subdued manner, and his quiet intelligence. On the few times Luicus was able to talk to him, he instructed Snape on the ways of the upper-crust, his drawling intonations noted and subsequently copied by the boy's quick mind.

Yule came and Lucius went to Vienna with his mother, Father having decided at the last minute that the office needed his presence. Lucius rightly interpreted this state of affairs as Father needing time with his current mistress. Mother accepted the news blithely and with little more reaction than a crease of her brows. Father mentioned that there would be a New Year's party and Lucius was expected to attend with Narcissa. Mother was to stay on the continent until later. Lucius had a feeling of foreboding at this last announcement.

They spent nearly a fortnight in Vienna. When it was time to return, Lucius bade his mother farewell in his typical manner, a courtly bow over her hand and a kiss above her knuckles. She stopped him, breaking from her spiritless mould for the first time in Lucius' memory. "No matter what happens in your life, son, know that I will never love you any less. You are everything a mother could want in a child."

Lucius was shocked to silence. He stared at her. "Mother, is there something you are not telling me? Is it father? Has he asked for a divorce?"

"There will be no divorce, Lucius." Another frown creased her brow, deeper and more despairng. "Now, you must be off. That lovely Miss Black will not appreciate having to wait for you."

As Lucius stepped into the Floo he thought he saw tears glittering in his mother's eyes, but he was never sure.

&*&*&

It was after the official party, when Narcissa had left with her over-reaching family, that Lucius was taken aside by his father and led down to the dungeons. Lucius quaked.

The dungeons had been the scene of many of his more painful lessons at his father's hands. Lucius bore all the scars on his legs, buttocks, and back. Father had not seemed angry earlier, but it meant nothing with his mercurial temper and sadistic nature. It was when Father blindfolded him though, that he thought he might not live through the evening with his wits intact.

Lucius, when he was eleven, had been caught playing doctor with a Muggle girl who lived in the village. His father had taken him to the dungeonsm and for days had beaten him, denied him sight, and tortured him with threats to his mother. At one point in the ordeal, he thought he had gone mad as he heard the jeering taunts of his father when the man was not present. At the end of the lesson, Father dragged him out to recite his perfidy to both mother and the assembled Knights of Walpurgis. Lucius had barely contained his weakened bowels as the Brotherhood taunted him. Lucius had never repeated the mistake and looked on his disgrace only when he was alone and would not have to explain the perspiration on his brow or the quaking of his limbs.

Father led him into the same room. Lucius knew it immediately by the fusty smell. The blindfold was quickly removed and Lucius was pushed to his knees before the handsome figure of Lord Voldemort. The man smiled, the expression not meeting his eyes. "Hello, Lucius. How delightful to finally meet you."

&*&*&

On the train back to Hogwarts, Lucius found himself looking for the inky black head of Severus Snape. He needed the constancy the boy's homely presence brought him. He paused at each open door, the train was not as crowded as it had been for the beginning of the school year. Lucius wondered at that observation, but shrugged it off as he had done much after meeting the Dark Lord.

He spied the boy in the last compartment, alone. The Mudblood was seated with several Gryffindor firsties a car up. Lucius entered the area. The boy was reading as he twisted his hair between his forefinger and thumb. He acknowledged Lucius' presence with a swift upward glance and returned to reading.

Lucius sat, propping his long legs next to the seated boy. Snape sighed and scooted away from Lucius' dragonhide booted feet. Lucius felt the familiar cat and mouse smirk cross his face. He had felt the same way in his pursuit of Narcissa a few years ago, it unsettled him, but not enough to desist in his efforts to jar the boy out of his silent complacency.

Lucius Accio'ed his copy of the Daily Prophet from his satchel, rattling it in a great show as he opened it. He smirked as the corners of the boy's lips drew down and he cast a black look Lucius. Lucius rattled the paper again as he moved his feet closer to the boy.

Snape primly closed his book, marking the page with a tattered Muggle bookmark which bore the faint impressions of a dragon and a figure either holding a sword or a wand. The boy stared at him for a moment before he drawled, in an imitation of Lucius' tones, "What is it you want, Malfoy?"

Lucius considered his actions for a moment before answering truthfully, "I don't know."

"Well then, sod off. I've not finished my essay for Herbology." The boy opened his book again, ignoring the high compliment paid him by Malfoy's continued presence.

Lucius smiled and tucked the newspaper under his arm. "I like you, Snape. You're not like everyone else."

"Obviously." The boy sneered, resuming his fidgeting play with his hair. Lucius chuckled darkly, wondering at his fascination with the ugly little boy, hoping they could continue their strange association even after he left Hogwarts at the end of the term. If Snape applied himself, and Father approved, Lord Voldemort might find a place for him, even if he was a halfblood.

Lucius closed his eyes and spun his plans, unaware of the burning gaze which the boy cast at him.