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(abandon fic! abandon fic!)
Title: By Starlight
Pairing: Severus/Sirius; extremely slight hint of past Severus/Regulus if you squint.
Rating: PG
Word count: ~2300
Summary: After an Order meeting, Sirius presents Severus with an unusual gift that seems to have more than one purpose.
Warnings: None
Why I give up: This is just an unexciting idea. The plot device is contrived and the whole thing just falls really flat. Treads close to being an astronomy lesson rather than a story. Trivia: this is the fic in regards to which many, many moons ago I posted a question, "Would you know what a planisphere is without looking up the word?" If you didn't know, you're about to find out.
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Sirius peered cautiously from the hall into the front room, where he saw Severus sitting near the fire, paging through some book. Good; he was still here. Late at night was not always the best time to get Severus to do something; a tired Snape was an even crankier and more stubborn Snape than usual, after all. But this was a rare occasion after an Order meeting when Severus, for some reason, had not fled the house so fast that it almost seemed he left before he had arrived, and Sirius was not going to waste the opportunity.
"Meeting's over, Snape," he said, entering the room and settling himself into another one of the chairs. "So what are you still doing here? Don't tell me you like it here. You never know what awful thing you might run into if you turn the wrong corner in this house. Like me, for instance."
Severus didn't rise to it. "Trying to warm my old bones up thoroughly before going back out in that," he said, jerking his head slightly towards the window, but not looking up from his book. "I dare say Saint Valentine has taken up a new position as a god of ice-storms, and against his awesome power my pitiful mortal warming and drying charms have so far proved futile."
Sirius snorted. "At what point in your hard slog by Floo were you going to be stepping outside? And 'old bones', my arse," he said with a roll of his eyes. "You're barely thirty-six, Snape. Last month, wasn't it? That makes you younger than me, and we're both spring chickens compared to Dumbledore. Even Arthur could probably call us a pair of young scoundrels, although I suppose having seven children will age a man before his time."
"So does teaching them, and I've taught far more than seven. That godson of yours is especially accomplished at sapping my youthful vigour and beauty. But if anyone is a pair of scoundrels, it's you and Lupin. Refresh my memory, Black—which one of us had dozens of boxes of school punishment records all to himself and his little gang? Was it me? Oh, no, that's right—it was you."
"You leave Remus out of it," Sirius growled, leaning forward in his chair. "If you want to have a go at me, fine, but Remus never did a thing to you. James and I were no princes, maybe—but then, neither were you, Snape."
Severus finally looked up at Sirius at that remark. He saw then that Sirius had in his lap a circular piece of black glass about a foot in diameter; one of his hands curved gently around the edge of the glass while the other rested lightly on its face.
"More so than you by about half, I'd wager," Severus said dryly.
"What are you talk--" Sirius began angrily, his eyes flashing in the firelight. He bit the last word off in the middle, exhaled slowly, and bowed his head for a moment, reining in his temper. "Look, I don't want to get into it with you right now. I didn't come in here looking for an argument."
"Wonders shall indeed never cease. In that case, what did you come to bother me about?" Severus asked, sounding annoyed. He looked at the glass with curiosity, however.
Sirius's voice dropped pitch a little and took on a growling timbre. "It isn't your room to get territorial about, Snape. It's mine, because it's in my house, remember?" He set the round piece of glass on the table in front of Severus. "But I wanted to give you this," he continued, more lightly. "It's a planisphere."
Severus peered at the thing and frowned. "A plani—"
"—sphere, yes. A map of the night sky that adjusts to the date and time of night, and since this one is magical, your location, too."
Severus waved his hand dismissively. "I'm familiar with the word, Black," he said, looking up from the glass. "But I am surprised that you are." Sirius regarded him steadily, and Severus held his gaze in return.
"Astronomy was required for Gryffindors too, you know," Sirius said. "Although you might say I have a certain advantage when it comes to the names of stars." He winked. "But refresh my memory, Snape—which one of us is it that became an Animagus by the time he was sixteen and helped create a map that can track every warm body within the walls of Hogwarts? Was it you? Oh, no, that's right—it was me."
Severus scowled, and Sirius grinned. "Face it, Snape: I'm not as think as you dumb I am."
Severus looked nonplussed, but did not press the point any further. Instead, he looked at the glass again. "It's blank," he said. "Where are the stars?"
"It activates by touch. Try brushing your fingers over the surface. But I don't want to see any fingerprints, now." Sirius wagged his finger as if scolding a child.
Severus reached out a hand to touch the glass, but before his fingertips contacted the surface, he recoiled. He looked up at Sirius again, his eyes narrowed.
"What are you at, Black?" Severus rested his hands back on the arms of the chair and drummed his fingers against them a few times. "Passing over why on the wide green Earth you thought I would want such a thing, there remains the question of whether this object is, in fact, what you claim it is." He raised his eyebrows.
"Perhaps you thought this was at last your lucky day, when I would lose my mind and my memory and choose to believe something you said without obvious proof?" Severus steepled his fingers under his chin and put on an expression of mock concern. "If that is the case, esteemed sir, then I am loath to tell you this," he said, his tone of voice suggesting rather the opposite, "but despite the weather outside, I am informed it is still quite balmy in Hell." He pointed at the glass on the table. "Show me."
"I can't. It's keyed to you. Didn't you notice it was blank while I was holding it? Only your touch can turn it on." Sirius smirked. "As for why you need it... it's special. Trust me." The smirk turned into a smile as charming as he could muster.
Severus glared at him. "Trust you? Oh, of course; that has gone so excellently for me in the past." He cocked an eyebrow at Sirius, then looked back down at his book, licked the first finger of his right hand and turned the page with exaggerated slowness.
Sirius's face fell. Clearly, he wasn't going to get any satisfaction out of Severus tonight. "All right, fine," he snapped. "Have it your way, you git. There's no pleasing some people." He sighed and stood up from the chair. "Mostly ones named Severus." Sirius turned on his heel and stalked out of the room.
Severus listened to Sirius's footsteps travel down the hallway, presumably heading for the kitchen. He waited several more minutes, until he was reasonably certain Sirius wasn't going to pop back in with "And another thing, Snape—" and take up the idea of having a row after all. He closed the book he had been pretending to read and laid it aside, then gingerly picked up the glass by its edges and placed it in his lap. It was unadorned; not even set in a frame. He could see nothing in its blackness but a hint of his own reflection.
Tentatively, Severus touched the fingertips of one hand to the surface of the glass. Nothing happened, and he was briefly disappointed. He was about to leave the glass on the table, depart the house, and forget the whole thing when he remembered that Sirius had told him specifically to "brush" his fingers over it.
Still wary, Severus did just that, moving his fingers lightly over the surface in a spiralling motion. His eyes widened in surprise as silvery sparks bloomed within the depths of the glass, as though he were looking down into a well. An off-center oval outlined with a faint blue light contained brighter stars. Except for that area, the sparks appeared very dim, though visible.
Severus studied the space enclosed in the oval, recognizing the constellations displayed within as ones that would be seen over London at about this time of night in the middle of February. He traced the shape of Ursa Major with one finger and was surprised again to see ghostly silver name-labels appear as he touched each star. Alkaid. Alioth. Mizar. Intrigued, he touched the star in the center of the glass: Polaris, of course. Then Arcturus. The Pleiades, rendered in a flowing, feminine script of a calming pale blue. Capella. Spica, the Virgin's ear of wheat.
Another faint line dashed in green showed him the line of the zodiac, cutting the oval in two along a curved line. With his eyes he followed away from Virgo towards Leo. Severus pressed his lips together and lifted his hand, hesitating; he knew this constellation contained a star whose name would be painfully familiar to him. Just as the stars began to dim in the glass, thinking themselves no longer needed, he touched one fingertip lightly to the brightest star in Leo, where it sat neatly on top of the green line.
Regulus.
These letters appeared in a faded, greyish, pale violet light. Severus gazed at the word for a moment, running his finger backwards and forwards across it, then lifted his hand again. He looked at Orion and touched each of the hunter's shoulders: Betelgeuse, in a pleasant red. Bellatrix, in an angry one. And then, below and to the left of Orion, there was...
Well, he would have had to come to it sooner or later. The brightest thing in the sky, short of Venus or the Moon. The spark indicating its place was not so much a spark as a diamond embedded in the black depths, flashing rainbow fire; apt for a star whose name meant "scorching".
Severus recalled some choice words once levelled at him by the Sirius of another map, and was seven-eighths expecting something very similar to happen now. This would have been a lot of work to go through just for an insult, to be sure, but a stint in Azkaban might give a man an odd idea of what constituted a worthwhile use of his time.
He touched the star. Sirius faded into view, copperplate letters gleaming white-gold. Nothing more.
Severus was puzzled, and he stroked his thumb thoughtfully over the characters that spelled out Sirius as he pondered the situation. So this was just what Black had said it was? An inventive and beautiful object, to be sure, but what exactly was he expected to do with it? And more importantly, why was it "keyed to him", as Black had put it?
Sitting there running his fingers absently over and around the word and the star it labeled did not seem to be generating a satisfying explanation, however. Severus finally withdrew both his hands from the surface of the glass, watched the sparks dim and wink out, and set it back on the table.
He rose from his seat, collected his cloak, and extracted his wand from a pocket within it. With a wave Severus conjured a length of velvet and carefully wrapped it around the glass. He wasn't at all certain what he was going to do with it once he got it back to his rooms at Hogwarts, but it did seem a shame to leave it behind.
As he leaned over the table closing up his fragile package, Severus was interrupted by the sound of a man clearing his throat. He started, looked up to see Sirius leaning casually against the doorframe, and hastily pulled his hands back from the dark mass on the table.
Sirius grinned conspiratorially at him. "It's no use trying to look innocent, Snape. Well, that's no use with you on general principle, but what I mean is I know you must have touched it. In fact, I know you must have touched Sirius, in particular. And quite nicely too, I must say." He shifted his stance and glanced downwards. Severus followed the line of his gaze and noticed, with far less horror than he would have expected to feel, the bulge at the front of Sirius's trousers. "I could get used to treatment like that."
"You have a strange and perverse little mind, Black," Severus said while averting his gaze, but he laid a hand on the velvet bundle anyway. "Tell me, what have you got from all this nonsense that couldn't have been accomplished much more quickly with a good old-fashioned wank? Much more thoroughly, too, I might add, since I doubt if you've gained any ground over the state of excitement most men achieve simply by waking up every morning."
Sirius approached to within a few steps of Severus, who concluded that his bones – among other things – seemed to be quite thoroughly warmed now, thank you. "Doing that wouldn't tell me if you were still alive to wake up that morning as well," he said quietly.
Severus blinked, frowned, then blinked again. He felt slightly ill at ease under the intensity of Sirius's gaze, especially at close range, but was determined not to back down. "I repeat," he said with a sneer, "strange. Perverse. Little."
Sirius folded his arms and clucked his tongue softly. "You can try lobbing that stone at me again when you've spent twelve years in that hell-hole, Snape. But it's well past midnight now. Isn't there somewhere else you ought to be? Morning classes come disgustingly early, I seem to recall." He inclined his body towards Severus slightly. "Do let me know if you ever feel like stargazing more closely. I expect you'll know where to find me."
Title: By Starlight
Pairing: Severus/Sirius; extremely slight hint of past Severus/Regulus if you squint.
Rating: PG
Word count: ~2300
Summary: After an Order meeting, Sirius presents Severus with an unusual gift that seems to have more than one purpose.
Warnings: None
Why I give up: This is just an unexciting idea. The plot device is contrived and the whole thing just falls really flat. Treads close to being an astronomy lesson rather than a story. Trivia: this is the fic in regards to which many, many moons ago I posted a question, "Would you know what a planisphere is without looking up the word?" If you didn't know, you're about to find out.
Sirius peered cautiously from the hall into the front room, where he saw Severus sitting near the fire, paging through some book. Good; he was still here. Late at night was not always the best time to get Severus to do something; a tired Snape was an even crankier and more stubborn Snape than usual, after all. But this was a rare occasion after an Order meeting when Severus, for some reason, had not fled the house so fast that it almost seemed he left before he had arrived, and Sirius was not going to waste the opportunity.
"Meeting's over, Snape," he said, entering the room and settling himself into another one of the chairs. "So what are you still doing here? Don't tell me you like it here. You never know what awful thing you might run into if you turn the wrong corner in this house. Like me, for instance."
Severus didn't rise to it. "Trying to warm my old bones up thoroughly before going back out in that," he said, jerking his head slightly towards the window, but not looking up from his book. "I dare say Saint Valentine has taken up a new position as a god of ice-storms, and against his awesome power my pitiful mortal warming and drying charms have so far proved futile."
Sirius snorted. "At what point in your hard slog by Floo were you going to be stepping outside? And 'old bones', my arse," he said with a roll of his eyes. "You're barely thirty-six, Snape. Last month, wasn't it? That makes you younger than me, and we're both spring chickens compared to Dumbledore. Even Arthur could probably call us a pair of young scoundrels, although I suppose having seven children will age a man before his time."
"So does teaching them, and I've taught far more than seven. That godson of yours is especially accomplished at sapping my youthful vigour and beauty. But if anyone is a pair of scoundrels, it's you and Lupin. Refresh my memory, Black—which one of us had dozens of boxes of school punishment records all to himself and his little gang? Was it me? Oh, no, that's right—it was you."
"You leave Remus out of it," Sirius growled, leaning forward in his chair. "If you want to have a go at me, fine, but Remus never did a thing to you. James and I were no princes, maybe—but then, neither were you, Snape."
Severus finally looked up at Sirius at that remark. He saw then that Sirius had in his lap a circular piece of black glass about a foot in diameter; one of his hands curved gently around the edge of the glass while the other rested lightly on its face.
"More so than you by about half, I'd wager," Severus said dryly.
"What are you talk--" Sirius began angrily, his eyes flashing in the firelight. He bit the last word off in the middle, exhaled slowly, and bowed his head for a moment, reining in his temper. "Look, I don't want to get into it with you right now. I didn't come in here looking for an argument."
"Wonders shall indeed never cease. In that case, what did you come to bother me about?" Severus asked, sounding annoyed. He looked at the glass with curiosity, however.
Sirius's voice dropped pitch a little and took on a growling timbre. "It isn't your room to get territorial about, Snape. It's mine, because it's in my house, remember?" He set the round piece of glass on the table in front of Severus. "But I wanted to give you this," he continued, more lightly. "It's a planisphere."
Severus peered at the thing and frowned. "A plani—"
"—sphere, yes. A map of the night sky that adjusts to the date and time of night, and since this one is magical, your location, too."
Severus waved his hand dismissively. "I'm familiar with the word, Black," he said, looking up from the glass. "But I am surprised that you are." Sirius regarded him steadily, and Severus held his gaze in return.
"Astronomy was required for Gryffindors too, you know," Sirius said. "Although you might say I have a certain advantage when it comes to the names of stars." He winked. "But refresh my memory, Snape—which one of us is it that became an Animagus by the time he was sixteen and helped create a map that can track every warm body within the walls of Hogwarts? Was it you? Oh, no, that's right—it was me."
Severus scowled, and Sirius grinned. "Face it, Snape: I'm not as think as you dumb I am."
Severus looked nonplussed, but did not press the point any further. Instead, he looked at the glass again. "It's blank," he said. "Where are the stars?"
"It activates by touch. Try brushing your fingers over the surface. But I don't want to see any fingerprints, now." Sirius wagged his finger as if scolding a child.
Severus reached out a hand to touch the glass, but before his fingertips contacted the surface, he recoiled. He looked up at Sirius again, his eyes narrowed.
"What are you at, Black?" Severus rested his hands back on the arms of the chair and drummed his fingers against them a few times. "Passing over why on the wide green Earth you thought I would want such a thing, there remains the question of whether this object is, in fact, what you claim it is." He raised his eyebrows.
"Perhaps you thought this was at last your lucky day, when I would lose my mind and my memory and choose to believe something you said without obvious proof?" Severus steepled his fingers under his chin and put on an expression of mock concern. "If that is the case, esteemed sir, then I am loath to tell you this," he said, his tone of voice suggesting rather the opposite, "but despite the weather outside, I am informed it is still quite balmy in Hell." He pointed at the glass on the table. "Show me."
"I can't. It's keyed to you. Didn't you notice it was blank while I was holding it? Only your touch can turn it on." Sirius smirked. "As for why you need it... it's special. Trust me." The smirk turned into a smile as charming as he could muster.
Severus glared at him. "Trust you? Oh, of course; that has gone so excellently for me in the past." He cocked an eyebrow at Sirius, then looked back down at his book, licked the first finger of his right hand and turned the page with exaggerated slowness.
Sirius's face fell. Clearly, he wasn't going to get any satisfaction out of Severus tonight. "All right, fine," he snapped. "Have it your way, you git. There's no pleasing some people." He sighed and stood up from the chair. "Mostly ones named Severus." Sirius turned on his heel and stalked out of the room.
Severus listened to Sirius's footsteps travel down the hallway, presumably heading for the kitchen. He waited several more minutes, until he was reasonably certain Sirius wasn't going to pop back in with "And another thing, Snape—" and take up the idea of having a row after all. He closed the book he had been pretending to read and laid it aside, then gingerly picked up the glass by its edges and placed it in his lap. It was unadorned; not even set in a frame. He could see nothing in its blackness but a hint of his own reflection.
Tentatively, Severus touched the fingertips of one hand to the surface of the glass. Nothing happened, and he was briefly disappointed. He was about to leave the glass on the table, depart the house, and forget the whole thing when he remembered that Sirius had told him specifically to "brush" his fingers over it.
Still wary, Severus did just that, moving his fingers lightly over the surface in a spiralling motion. His eyes widened in surprise as silvery sparks bloomed within the depths of the glass, as though he were looking down into a well. An off-center oval outlined with a faint blue light contained brighter stars. Except for that area, the sparks appeared very dim, though visible.
Severus studied the space enclosed in the oval, recognizing the constellations displayed within as ones that would be seen over London at about this time of night in the middle of February. He traced the shape of Ursa Major with one finger and was surprised again to see ghostly silver name-labels appear as he touched each star. Alkaid. Alioth. Mizar. Intrigued, he touched the star in the center of the glass: Polaris, of course. Then Arcturus. The Pleiades, rendered in a flowing, feminine script of a calming pale blue. Capella. Spica, the Virgin's ear of wheat.
Another faint line dashed in green showed him the line of the zodiac, cutting the oval in two along a curved line. With his eyes he followed away from Virgo towards Leo. Severus pressed his lips together and lifted his hand, hesitating; he knew this constellation contained a star whose name would be painfully familiar to him. Just as the stars began to dim in the glass, thinking themselves no longer needed, he touched one fingertip lightly to the brightest star in Leo, where it sat neatly on top of the green line.
Regulus.
These letters appeared in a faded, greyish, pale violet light. Severus gazed at the word for a moment, running his finger backwards and forwards across it, then lifted his hand again. He looked at Orion and touched each of the hunter's shoulders: Betelgeuse, in a pleasant red. Bellatrix, in an angry one. And then, below and to the left of Orion, there was...
Well, he would have had to come to it sooner or later. The brightest thing in the sky, short of Venus or the Moon. The spark indicating its place was not so much a spark as a diamond embedded in the black depths, flashing rainbow fire; apt for a star whose name meant "scorching".
Severus recalled some choice words once levelled at him by the Sirius of another map, and was seven-eighths expecting something very similar to happen now. This would have been a lot of work to go through just for an insult, to be sure, but a stint in Azkaban might give a man an odd idea of what constituted a worthwhile use of his time.
He touched the star. Sirius faded into view, copperplate letters gleaming white-gold. Nothing more.
Severus was puzzled, and he stroked his thumb thoughtfully over the characters that spelled out Sirius as he pondered the situation. So this was just what Black had said it was? An inventive and beautiful object, to be sure, but what exactly was he expected to do with it? And more importantly, why was it "keyed to him", as Black had put it?
Sitting there running his fingers absently over and around the word and the star it labeled did not seem to be generating a satisfying explanation, however. Severus finally withdrew both his hands from the surface of the glass, watched the sparks dim and wink out, and set it back on the table.
He rose from his seat, collected his cloak, and extracted his wand from a pocket within it. With a wave Severus conjured a length of velvet and carefully wrapped it around the glass. He wasn't at all certain what he was going to do with it once he got it back to his rooms at Hogwarts, but it did seem a shame to leave it behind.
As he leaned over the table closing up his fragile package, Severus was interrupted by the sound of a man clearing his throat. He started, looked up to see Sirius leaning casually against the doorframe, and hastily pulled his hands back from the dark mass on the table.
Sirius grinned conspiratorially at him. "It's no use trying to look innocent, Snape. Well, that's no use with you on general principle, but what I mean is I know you must have touched it. In fact, I know you must have touched Sirius, in particular. And quite nicely too, I must say." He shifted his stance and glanced downwards. Severus followed the line of his gaze and noticed, with far less horror than he would have expected to feel, the bulge at the front of Sirius's trousers. "I could get used to treatment like that."
"You have a strange and perverse little mind, Black," Severus said while averting his gaze, but he laid a hand on the velvet bundle anyway. "Tell me, what have you got from all this nonsense that couldn't have been accomplished much more quickly with a good old-fashioned wank? Much more thoroughly, too, I might add, since I doubt if you've gained any ground over the state of excitement most men achieve simply by waking up every morning."
Sirius approached to within a few steps of Severus, who concluded that his bones – among other things – seemed to be quite thoroughly warmed now, thank you. "Doing that wouldn't tell me if you were still alive to wake up that morning as well," he said quietly.
Severus blinked, frowned, then blinked again. He felt slightly ill at ease under the intensity of Sirius's gaze, especially at close range, but was determined not to back down. "I repeat," he said with a sneer, "strange. Perverse. Little."
Sirius folded his arms and clucked his tongue softly. "You can try lobbing that stone at me again when you've spent twelve years in that hell-hole, Snape. But it's well past midnight now. Isn't there somewhere else you ought to be? Morning classes come disgustingly early, I seem to recall." He inclined his body towards Severus slightly. "Do let me know if you ever feel like stargazing more closely. I expect you'll know where to find me."
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Date: July 31st, 2008 08:10 pm (UTC)From: