hibiscush

Snape turns his left arm at the elbow - slowly, deliberately; like someone signalling to a partner that a dance is about to begin.

Sirius can’t pull his gaze from the careful revelation of the secret skin of Snape’s inner wrist - from the contrast and chiaroscuro between the sun-forsaken paleness of Snape’s skin and the tattoo inked atop it. Even in the cleansing white of the moonlight, the Dark Mark is the colour of dried blood. The skull stares back at him with hollow, soulless eyes.

Sirius understands.

There are to be no excuses, that’s what Snape is telling him. It is Halloween, and the moon is high in the sky, and if Voldemort had been successful on another Halloween night - if Lily hadn’t refused to get out of the way, if Sirius hadn’t known in his bones that something was wrong - then the very same skull would have glittered odiously over Godric’s Hollow. Wormy has an identical brand on his skin - Wormy watched James and Lily die with an identical brand on his skin. Lucius has one. Roddy does. She does. Reg did, once upon a time. All the Death Eaters do.

Because Sirius is going to bed with a Death Eater. If he wraps his lips around Snape’s cock - which he would like, which he wants more than anything - the blood pulsing beneath his tongue will have Voldemort’s poison flowing within it. He’s not allowed to wake up tomorrow, picture the disgust on James’ face, and decide that he was misled. Snape is making that clear. Snape is keeping him honest, forcing him to acknowledge that he knows exactly what he’s doing, and with whom.

Sirius lifts Snape’s forearm towards him. Thin lines of faded scars fleck the skin. They are relics of Snape’s mill-town childhood: he added to the collection each summer - there would be more lines, new lines, still purple and not fully healed, every September; you would be able to see them in Potions, when he rolled up the sleeves of his robes. The Mark is etched over them. Sirius wonders whether Voldemort told Snape that he was making himself anew. Sirius wonders whether it hurt.

He takes one last look into the eyes of the skull and covers the Mark with the palm of his right hand. Its basilisk-glare is blinded; it has no power, not here. Snape’s nakedness does not belong to Lord Voldemort.