Chapter Text
Vera tore the dress from her body and flopped facedown on the bed, hot tears dampening the pillow without her permission. She should be elated. She knew that. After all of this time, her life was finally her own. But all she could find within herself was emptiness.
There was so much pressure inside her. She'd always assumed it was an external pressure, but now that she was free, she felt no freer. It would be good , she thought, if my body could dissolve just now . To live out her days as particles of light, unthinking and unfeeling, would be ideal. Light had no boundaries while humanity had ever so many.
The trial had gone well enough. Better than she'd really expected, although that was nothing new. Vera Snape had learned long ago always to expect the worst. Harry Potter had been a surprise, though. She wouldn't have dreamed that the idiot boy would ever stand up and speak her innocence in spite of the fact that he spoke only the truth. She didn't think she'd have done the same had the tables been turned; her capacity for holding grudges knew no bounds.
"Vera," a deep voice called from the floo. She had no idea how long she'd been lying there, but it must have been a considerable amount of time. The room was far darker than it had been when she'd entered it. She knew the voice well and she ignored it. Lucius would either go away or he'd come through of his own volition. Her response, or lack of one, would not have any impact on him whatsoever. She continued to lay.
"Your trial went well." So, he had decided to come through.
"Yes," she mumbled, still not moving. She probably ought to have felt some kind of modesty – she was nearly naked but for her knickers and her boots – but she didn't. It was nothing Lucius hadn't seen before and it was just a body after all. She held no profound love for it. She didn't even feel particularly connected to it.
"Are you well?" he asked from the doorway.
"No," she whispered after a beat, then listened to the sound of dragon-hide boots crossing the worn wooden floor of her bedroom.
He lay down on the bed beside her, just close enough that she could feel his body heat against her side. He didn't reach out to touch her; he knew better. She felt him cross his ankles, fold his arms behind his head. He was getting comfortable. He did not speak for a long time as the room grew ever dimmer around them.
Finally, he said, "You know that you aren't bound by anything any longer." It was a statement, not a question. She turned her head slightly and gazed at him through one eye. He smelled like French cologne and Malfoy Manor, dusty portraits and extravagant wealth.
"I'm bound by my mind , Lucius," she said darkly. "By my reputation and my body. I'm bound in every possible way save for those that gave me a purpose." Teaching had never been her dream, nor had fighting a war or spying on both sides, but now that she was stripped of those roles, she found herself drifting. Had she been sentenced to Azkaban, that may have been better. There would be no energy left for having an existential crisis were she in Azkaban.
Lucius shifted beside her and she heard the soft click of a cigarette case being opened. Seconds later, the rich scent of elf-rolled cigarettes filled the air. She rolled to her back then sat up and, pulling her knees against her chest, held her hand out until he lit one for her and passed it over. He still lay on his back, breathing smoke into the air above him. She idly hoped that he wouldn't set her bed on fire, then decided that it wouldn't necessarily make anything worse if he did. She took a drag from her cigarette. It made her empty stomach turn a bit, but she didn't mind it. Feeling sick was still feeling something and something was always better than nothing.
"Just let it go, Vera," he said finally. "Whatever you feel constrained by… release it. Reintroduce yourself to the world. They'll hate you or love you or feel indifferent toward you, but they'd do that anyway. You may as well feel good about it."
"And if I decide to let go of existing altogether?" she asked casually, as if she were saying something mundane, expressing her distaste for caviar, perhaps, rather than a distaste for life itself.
"I would greatly prefer that you not," he said in an equally casual tone. "I would have to find someone new to brew my hangover potions and I'm far too old to be finding new suppliers."
She snorted a laugh then stood up. "You're right," she said, taking another drag from her cigarette as she walked over to the floor-length mirror. "You are old."
It had been many months, maybe even years, since she'd really looked in the mirror. She stared at herself, feeling almost as if she were looking at someone else. The lines on her face were deeper than she remembered. "I'm old too," she said.
She noticed a slight movement in the mirror. Lucius had sat up. He caught her eye in the reflection and shrugged gracefully. "You're never too old to do whatever you want, love. Not until you're in the grave, and even then I'm not so sure."
Huffing, she went back to studying her face. Eileen Prince's black eyes stared back at her above Tobias' mouth, twisted in a smirk that the man would never have worn himself. Between the two, stood a nose that had caused her nothing but shame and grief. It had always been large, but it had only gotten worse when that arsehole James Potter had broken it in their first year at Hogwarts. Never wanting to go to the hospital ward, she'd just returned to the Slytherin common room, shaken and teary. Lucius Malfoy, four years her senior, was many things, but a proficient healer he was not; she bore the evidence of that encounter still, nearly 30 years later.
What would James Potter say, she wondered, if he knew that his own son had stood up for her today, rambling on about how she was a hero, a victim, not a villain? Her very bones bore witness to the type of person James had been, her mind even moreso. Would he claim his son still, if he knew that he was on her side? Would he own up to all that he'd been?
Not that it mattered. "Harry Potter spoke to me after the trial today," she said as she ran her eyes over her bare body. She felt nothing but mild contempt for it. What had this body done for her aside from causing her shame? She briefly recalled the way the boys had taunted her in her youth. Are you a boy or a girl? they'd jeered, never considering that she could only wear the clothes that her family could afford, that she couldn't change her personality anymore than she could change anything else. Later on, they'd gone to great and painful lengths to find out what parts lay beneath her clothes, much to their amusement, much to her horror..
She missed the tight but shapeless robes she'd worn to teach in, but she was a teacher no longer. She didn't know what she was.
"And what did the Chosen One want?" Lucius asked dryly, sounding bored. She knew that he was the farthest thing from bored; that was just his voice.
"He wanted to take me to dinner," she said, her voice dry and incredulous, "to 'thank me for all I'd done.'" She lifted her breasts in her hands, then dropped them again, irritated. Stepping away from the mirror and dropping her cigarette butt into an old potions vial half-filled with water, she slipped an old flannel robe on, suddenly exhausted from looking at the slopes and curves of her body.
"Hmm," Lucius considered. "I think you should do it." He held up a hand, cutting her off as she began to protest. "You should take care of yourself first. Figure out who you are when you're not fighting a war. Then do it. How better to reintroduce yourself than at the side of our dear Saviour?" he asked, his tone slightly sarcastic. She knew that Lucius had complicated feelings regarding Harry Potter; she largely shared those feelings. "What have you got to lose?"
What, indeed, she thought. "Very well," she finally relented. "If I am ever at that point, I will consider it."
Lucius smirked as he lit another cigarette. "You'll get there," he said, confident as only someone of extreme privilege could be. "There's nothing standing in your way any longer."
Sighing, she sat back down and plucked the cigarette from his fingers. "Narcissa is going to kill me when you come home smelling like smoke," she said, taking a drag and passing it back to him.
"Wishful thinking, love," Lucius replied. "If she hasn't killed you yet, she's not likely to ever do so."
Flopping back on the bed, she covered her face with her tattooed left arm. "What is wrong with me, Luce?" she asked. She felt small and pathetic. Why is this my life? she thought.
"You need to eat something," he said. "Put some clothes on – not that horrid frock from the trial – and come back to the Manor."
"What's wrong with my dress?" she asked, not particularly offended. She didn't like the thing either.
"It looks like something Professor Sprout would wear," he replied. "And I mean that in the most offensive way possible."
Vera sighed. That was fair, if she was being honest. It would have to be muggle clothes then. She kicked off her boots to pull on a pair of worn jeans and topped them with a loose-fitting button down. "Better?" she said, smirking from the knowledge that she was forcing him to admit that muggle clothes were superior to whatever else she had. She certainly felt better in them, at any rate.
The look of vague disgust on his face was priceless. "I am sorry to admit it, but yes, that is a vast improvement," he relented. "Beyond that," he told her, moving on as she pulled her boots back on, "you ought to consider what it is that makes you feel right. What makes you comfortable? Expand on those things, and rid yourself of the rest."
Vera rolled her eyes. Rich people, she thought, always thinking that happiness and contentment were so easy to come by. It wasn't even that it didn't make sense. It did! That was the problem. It just seemed like quite a luxury, to be able to decide what you wanted to be or do and then make it happen without any pushback, without anyone telling you no. "Sure, I'll get right on that," she said dismissively.
But his words lingered in her head for longer than she really cared to admit.