Chapter Text
A pale afreet with glittering eyes was deftly changing the coals in Bill's sheesha pipe when Professor Severus Snape stepped out of the fireplace in Diagon Ali's Interpet Cafe. Bill recognised the man at once, and curiosity made him withdraw into the shadows of his little alcove that he might observe without being noticed himself. Bill wore a galibeya of the same simple cut and muted colours as the local wizards, and it was the work of a moment to pull the white cotton scarf up over his head to hide his distinctive hair. Amidst all the brightly clad tourists and ex-pats and locals, Bill felt fairly confident that he might go unremarked.
It took the professor a moment or two to adjust to his surroundings: the filigree lamps gave out little light, and the air was thick with the cardamom-rich scent of Turkish coffee and the seductive apple tang of flavoured sheesha smoke. Beneath these smells there was the unavoidable musk Bill always associated with the Owlery at Hogwarts; arrayed all over one long wall of the coffee shop were owls and bats and messengers of every shape and size, whose services were available for a very reasonable charge. Many of the customers were engaged in penning quick missives home between gulps of coffee, then fastening the little scraps of papyrus to the legs of rented birds and sending them out into the warm night air. Light glinted off the gilt glass of water pipes and from ornate silver trays, and the chatter of wizardly merchants and shoppers vied with the tinny sound of artificially produced Arabic music that carried from the bazaar's nearby Muggle streets. The conversation in the cafe was in a host of different languages, many of them not designed for human vocal chords, but the vast majority of the customers were English-speakers. Ali El Din Salem Salem was a Londoner himself, and he had gone out of his way to prepare a menu and an ambience with as many British features as Egyptian ones. It had proved popular with locals and visitors alike, and whenever Bill found himself craving a taste of home he popped in and ordered Toad in the Hole, Bubble and Squeak or Cheese-and-Pickle Toasties, to be followed by a nice glass of mint tea and a relaxing water pipe.
The newly-arrived Professor Snape blinked irritably and peered into the gloom as one of the cafe's hosts offered him a bowl of rosewater to wash the floo dust from his fingers.
"Shukran," said Snape perfunctorily, handing the waiter a couple of knuts. Bill's eyes widened. The accent, surprisingly, really wasn't half bad; Classical Arabic, rather than Egyptian, but perhaps that was only to be expected. Bill brought the mouthpiece of his sheesha pipe thoughtfully up to pursed lips and breathed in a lungful of apple-flavoured sheesha smoke. The cloud that he breathed out shifted from green to blue to purple and back again as it wreathed his head. Snape glanced around with an expression that seemed almost suspicious, but, gratifyingly, he paid Bill absolutely no attention. To Bill's quiet satisfaction the professor accepted a seat at a tiny, ivory-inlaid table near the door which was easily in Bill's line of sight. He had his back to Bill, which was a little frustrating, but probably just as well in the long run.
Bill realised with a little embarrassment that he was getting a considerable kick out of playing spies like this, silly though it undoubtedly was. It reminded him of the cloak and dagger days of chasing after runaway Death Eaters after young Harry Potter had disposed of Voldemort. More than likely Snape was just here to see a supplier - the vast bazaar of Khan El Khaleili had a far better range of potions ingredients than Diagon Alley could ever boast. And yet - it was odd, to see him here. And there seemed to be something slightly - furtive - about his manner. Bill lifted the tea to his lips and took a meditative sip. Across the room, Snape accepted a creamy menu from an obsequious afreet and Bill could just make out the squirm of movement as the sinuous curves of Arabic writing stiffened and straightened into neat English script under Snape's unsmiling regard. He scanned the list, shrugged, and ordered an infusion of Hibiscus petals. Bill's eyebrows twitched again, infinitesimally. He had rather expected black coffee, or perhaps something acidic.
Some minutes passed, and Bill watched the professor accept his glass of Karkaday and swallow it with unseemly haste. He drummed long fingers on the tabletop and then pulled a slip of parchment from a pocket inside his robe. Bill was too far away to read what it said, but it was clearly a message of some kind. An assignation? wondered Bill, suddenly unable to suppress a grin. Now *that* would be funny as hell - he couldn't wait to see who Severus Snape was so nervous about meeting, and so secretly too. *That* piece of gossip was one that Fred and George would really relish. Bill ran through the possibilities in his mind and his grin grew broader and broader. Professor Sprout, perhaps? Or Gilderoy Lockheart? Or possibly Verity Hemlock, whose writing he so publicly dismissed?
Bill's musings were cut short by the sudden arrival of a medium-sized vampire bat that swooped through the open window and landed delicately on Snape's table. It carried a dainty message scroll strapped to one small foot. Bill craned his head forwards, thoroughly fascinated now. Interestingly, Snape had frozen quite still when the creature landed, as if by not moving he could manage to go unnoticed. For a long moment he made no attempt to relieve it of its burden; indeed, if anything he seemed almost poised to flee. Curiouser and curiouser, thought Bill, who had dabbled in forbidden Muggle literature from time to time.
At last Snape stretched one tentative hand towards the bat. It waddled closer, its ears whirling around, and butted its little scull against his fingers with every appearance of familiarity. He stroked its head tentatively, and then offered it a fingertip to feed from. Bill grimaced. The little creature clung to him almost loverlike as its teeth pierced his skin and it lapped at the sudden flow of red, and for a long time Snape sat quite still, ignoring the unopened scroll as if by doing so he could make it disappear. At last the bat let go and backed away, and Snape lifted the wounded fingertip up to his mouth in a gesture that was curiously childlike. It struck Bill then that he could probably have been wearing a gold lame robe and been accompanied by the entire Weasley clan all dancing the lambada and still not have impinged upon Severus Snape's consciousness at this point.
He stared down at the bat for a long moment, and then knocked back the last of the jewel-bright Karkaday. There was a curious set to his shoulders as he finally unfastened the scroll from the creature's proffered foot. His hands were shaking. He really did not strike Bill as particularly happy about the message even before he had uncurled it, but as he read it he seemed to hunch up and withdraw into himself, almost as if he were aging before Bill's eyes. Is she standing you up, old man? Bill wondered unkindly, and he watched as the professor fed the little scrap of parchment into the flame of the small candle in the centre of his table. As soon as it was gone, Snape clutched almost convulsively at the elbow of a passing waiter and muttered a request, and a moment later he was handed a fresh slip of papyrus and a sharpened quill. There was a neat little inkpot on the table already, as there was on every table, nestled beside the sugar bowl. Bill watched as the quill was dipped into the ink and then dragged hastily across the pale paper, but he had absolutely no idea of what Snape could be writing, or to whom. In a twinkling, he had finished and was fastening the scroll gently around the bat's ankle once more. With the weird, ungainly grace of its species the bat unfurled wings like flexible slices of umbrella, and hurled itself back into the smoky air.
In his solitary chair, Severus Snape was trembling. Bill wished he could see the man's face.
He was unsurprised when the professor scrabbled in his money pouch and rose; Bill had already tipped the sheesha-tending demon and left a generous handful of coins on his own table. When Severus Snape left the cafe, Bill Weasley was only a few paces behind him.
Outside, the Street of Smoke and Dreams was thronging with busy shoppers of every nationality, despite the lateness of the hour. Witches and wizards, vampires and shape-shifters, goblins and djinnis and creatures stranger still strolled through the warm night in ones and twos and family groups. All around, people were dickering over chasubles and saffron and mortars and crystals and small plaster statues of the Sphinx. Jasmine scented the air, along with camel dung and lemons and barbecued kebabs. Coins clinked in hands and on headscarves, and there were dervishes whirling on a makeshift stage. Bill smiled in spite of himself; he loved living here.
Ahead of him Severus Snape was picking his way purposefully between stalls, fending off offers of sweet potatoes and embroidered galibeyas so successfully that Bill could perfectly imagine the glower he must be wearing. He followed the professor at a cautious distance, and then had a rather splendid idea.
Darting across to a little stall he hailed the nine-fingered old Nubian witch who crouched behind an array of talismans and amulets with a familiar smile. "Salam Alecum," he said hastily, glancing over his shoulder at the vanishing figure of Snape to be sure that he did not lose his quarry in the process of trying to ease his pursuit. "Honeyed evening to you, Farida daughter of Seif. Might this one buy one of your very fine chameleon glamours?" She leered toothlessly at him and proposed an outrageously high sum, which Bill countered with an offer of an outrageously low sum. Under normal circumstances the bargaining would have been leisurely, but Bill was pressed for time; within half a minute he had handed over two silver crescents and a handful of copper ankhs in exchange for a disposable disguise, and Farida was gaping delightedly at the profit she had wrung from him. He would be the talk of the market, he knew, but there was no helping it. Bill slipped the little amulet hastily over his head and then hurried after Snape with no more fear of being noticed. Muggle Cairo was popular with visiting wizards - although the Library of Alexandria had been successfully disguised from the Muggle world long centuries ago, there were still many sites of magical interest that were in Muggle areas. Moreover, the Muggle sections of Cairo's great bazaar held many potions ingredients, and many tourists enjoyed the frisson of buying from unsuspecting Muggles. Temporary glamours were an immensely popular and easy way of passing unremarked.
Bill found himself unsurprised when Snape left The Street of Smoke and Dreams behind and stepped out onto the streets of Muggle Cairo. Very clearly, the professor was not here to see a supplier or buy a plaster pyramid. He was up to something. It only remained to discover precisely what.
There had been whispers, not so many years ago, that Severus Snape had never been loyal to the Order of the Phoenix. There had been whispers that he secretly supported Voldemort - suggestions that perhaps he had even had a hand in Dumbledore's death. Nothing had ever been proved, of course. Still, there had been whispers.
Bill watched the professor stalking silently through these strange streets and wondered whether any of them had ever really known him. His hand tightened around his wand. Overhead Bill could glimpse the sky blushing luridly as the sun dipped towards the horizon, slices of it visible in blood-bright slices between buildings, pierced by minarets. The sky roads were invisible from the ground, but Bill knew that overhead hundreds of magic carpets and a handful of broomsticks were swooping back and forth. Muggle Cairo was dirtier and dingier than Wizarding Cairo, but otherwise there was little enough difference, at least in this quarter of the city. Cars were an occasional peril, battered and wheezing and pumping out raucous Arabic songs, but the more usual form of Muggle transport around here tended to be horse-drawn carts, or donkeys. Neither cars nor donkeys seemed to care which side of the street they travelled on. Unwillingly, Bill found himself quite impressed that Snape remained unflapped by his surroundings, but then he had a reputation for being difficult to disconcert.
Snape finally stopped at one of the restored mansions that peppered the Khan. It had once been a grand house, but the years had not treated it kindly - now, though, the ornate mashrabeya window screens had been restored and the interior probably restored to some echo of its former glory. Bill knew the type of place well enough - there were dozens of them open to the Muggle public. Indeed, there remained many in the Wizarding section of the Khan that had never fallen into disrepair in the first place. The Head of the local branch of Gringott's lived in just such a house, off the Street of Smoke and Dreams, and Bill had been invited over for dinner on several occasions.
Bill watched Snape pause outside the vast wooden door and stare at it for a long moment before he lifted one pale fist to knock at it. The professor glanced over his shoulder, even looked directly at Bill himself, but evidently saw nothing out of the ordinary. Bill blessed Farida's little charm and stepped closer, and then closer still, until he was so close that he feared the hushed sound of his breathing might alert Snape to his presence, even if the man could see nothing amiss. He needn't have feared. Snape was far too focussed upon the door in front of him to pay any heed to the faint whisper of breath near his ear.
He knocked once more, harder this time, and Bill looked speculatively from Snape's tense face to the door and back again. He had no idea what to make of Snape's expression. Almost it looked as though the other wizard was in physical pain. Probably got an ulcer, reflected Bill uncharitably, knowing that it was nothing so simple.
After an interminable length of time, they both heard the sound of footsteps. Someone peered through a small mashrabeya screen set into the door, and then there was the sound of bolts being drawn back. The door creaked open to reveal a darkened courtyard. Snape swallowed - Bill watched his Adam's apple bob - and then stepped inside. Impulsively, Bill followed him.
The door closed heavily behind them, and Bill wondered what the bloody hell he thought he was playing at. If he didn't manage to leave within the hour, the charm on the amulet would run out and he would find himself up to his neck in Merlin knew what. This as quite the most ridiculous thing he had done in - well, in at least a week.
He wasn't expecting the sudden flood of Muggle electric light, and it made him jump. But that was nothing to his astonishment at the sight of Lucius Malfoy, whom all the Wizarding World confidently believed had died months ago. His hair was cut short, and he wore Muggle clothes, but he was quite unmistakeably Lucius Malfoy.
Bill gaped, and stared at Snape. The professor was blinking in the harsh light, but he had his wand drawn and his stance was every inch that of the experienced duellist facing a potentially lethal opponent. Bill made a quick mental readjustment.
"Severus."
It wasn't uttered like an endearment, but something in the tone - and something else in Snape's expression - made several pieces of the puzzle fall swiftly, if belatedly, into place for Bill. He fought a suicidally inappropriate urge to laugh out loud.
"You're alive," Snape rasped, and there was a quality in his voice that quite quashed Bill's desire to laugh. The intensity with which he regarded Lucius was almost painful to look at.
"What a spectacularly redundant statement, Severus." Lucius looked his guest up and down with every appearance of amusement. "Nothing changes, I see. You need a bath - your hair is absolutely foul - and the hem of your robe is starting to fray. You look like a scarecrow." Snape glanced down at his immaculate black robe and Bill experienced a sudden sense of dislocation. He could almost see them then as they must once have been: a greasy, sallow teenager tagging along after this shining paragon of Slytherin values. "Evidently this is what comes of living in the midst of Gryffindors and their ilk."
Snape shook his head, visibly rejecting this echo of the past, and his knuckles whitened as he clasped the wand more tightly. The scowl he cast at Lucius was almost exactly his usual bad-tempered expression. Almost.
"Under the circumstances that surely counts as the bat calling the cauldron black. I presume you had some reason for summoning me? Or were you merely weary of your own company, and overwhelmed with an urge to criticise my appearance?" Lucius smiled again, and there was something in the way he met Snape's gaze that made Bill decidedly uncomfortable. It seemed to be having a similar effect on the professor, because after a long moment he drew an uneven breath and looked away. "You seem remarkably sanguine about my presence. How do you know there aren't two dozen Aurors waiting outside, armed to the teeth? Or that wretched Potter boy?"
Lucius shrugged. The gesture was effortlessly graceful and it reminded Bill of Harry Potter's boyfriend, whom he had had occasion to meet, if not warm to, several times. (Molly Weasley was still clinging to the increasingly slender hope Harry's proclaimed homosexuality, or at least his inexplicable fondness for a Malfoy, was just a phase he was going through. A phase which had now lasted more than three years, and which had resisted all Molly's well-meant attempts to subvert it, but a phase nevertheless.)
"Why don't you come inside?" Lucius casually indicated the door that led from the courtyard into the Muggle house beyond, and although his tone was still that of an irritable Emperor, his body language reminded Bill of Charlie. There was something there that echoed the way he'd seen Charlie handling a feral wyvern, blithely pretending to be more dangerous than it was and ignoring the razor-sharp talons altogether whilst he roared in its face and stared it down until he had browbeaten it into going where he wanted it to be. Bill watched a glowering and truculent Snape cross his arms across his chest, fingers still clenched around his wand, and frown like thunder as Lucius turned on his heel and strolled nonchalantly into the house.
There was a moment when he thought that Snape was going to leave, or possibly let loose one of the Unforgivable Curses, but at last he followed Lucius through the open door. Bill was only half a step behind.
* * *
It was the first time that Bill Weasley had been inside a Muggle house, and foremost in his mind was the thought that his father would have cheerfully emptied the Weasleys' meagre savings account, and probably sold his right arm and his left leg, if it would allow him to be there at this precise moment. The combination of all this fascinating Muggle paraphernalia and the vision of a shorn Lucius Malfoy in fancy dress would have been just too great a temptation for Arthur to resist.
"You look ridiculous," said Snape, voicing Bill's own thoughts. Lucius raised one hand half-way to his scalp, a reflexive gesture that he quickly stilled. Snape's mouth twitched. He was leaning against the door jamb, his arms still crossed in front of his chest, the wand only a quick flick from being lethal, watching Lucius through half-lidded eyes. It was, Bill reflected, a very conscious attempt at portraying relaxation; he suspected that Snape was actually on the brink of bolting, and perhaps Lucius had the same idea, because he beckoned Snape imperiously over to an ornate and thoroughly uncomfortable looking sofa. Snape shook his head. Lucius scowled. "So - you're alive," said Snape again. He seemed a little more composed. Bill fought off the impulse to start examining Muggle artefacts and instead peered from one Slytherin to the next with unabated curiosity. "Alive and, it appears, now a complete and utter raving lunatic."
"Merely a pragmatist," returned Lucius, glancing down at himself with distaste. "I endure this sullying because it is preferable to the alternative. Barely. And see how successful my disguise has been - I've got them all fooled, haven't I?" Snape nodded, and his scowl had grown so ferocious now that it almost looked as if he were trying not to grin. "These unimaginative Gryffindors can't begin to guess what compromises and indignities a Slytherin might be willing to endure, given sufficient motivation." There was an inflection there that made Bill suspect he was missing part of this conversation, that he lacked a necessary context for understanding. "Still, I find that survival is an excellent motivator, my old friend."
"Don't," said Snape, harshly. Lucius had mirrored Snape's pose, leaning back against a door in the opposite wall with his arms crossed in front of his narrow chest. His expression was mocking in a way that reminded Bill of being at school; the Slytherin kids really had raised this kind of thing to an art form, or perhaps a competitive sport.
"Don't what, Severus?"
"Don't start this. We aren't friends, Lucius. We can never be friends. Not after everything we've been and done." Well, that's another question answered, thought Bill, gnawing absent-mindedly on a thumbnail. "I haven't come all this way to play games with you."
"Then why have you come all this way?" asked Lucius, his voice suddenly dropping low and soft. Insinuating. Intimate. Bill's mouth was suddenly dry, because that was exactly the question he'd been asking himself -- but here was the answer as well, as unambiguous as it was disturbing. Without really thinking about it, Bill had stepped closer to the professor. Snape's expression was difficult to read; Bill glanced from Snape to Lucius and back again, and wondered what was going on in the potion master's head.
"You think you know me so well?" Snape demanded at last. His voice was icy, but it made Lucius's smile widen. Bill watched Lucius push himself away from the wall and cross the room very deliberately. As he drew closer, he slowed down, finally stopping just too close for comfort. Bill was close enough to touch them both, if he only stretched out his hand. He didn't move. Neither did Snape, but his breathing had quickened noticeably. Bill glanced down at Snape's wand hand, and saw that the knuckles were white.
"Severus, Severus," murmured Lucius, still smiling. "Of course I know you so well. I know you better than any of them ever have. I understand you the way no Gryffindor ever could - not your humourless headmistress nor that repulsive Weasley, nor the cur Lupin." Bill had stiffened at the reference to his father, and stared at Lucius with intense dislike. Very carefully, Lucius Malfoy raised one curled hand and brushed the edge of Snape's sallow, sharp-cheeked face with the back of his fingers. "I know you, Severus."
Snape's eyes closed and his head went back when Lucius touched him, and the look on his face was enough to distract Bill from his sudden reverie about how much he was going to enjoy handing Lucius in to the authorities. Snape's expression took Bill's breath away and embarrassed him quite as much as if he had walked in on them both naked - but he did not look away. He had never had a great deal to do with Severus Snape; there were ten years between them, and when Bill went up to Hogwarts as a first year, Snape had already completed his studies there and apprenticed himself to Arsenius Jigger. Bill knew of Snape, though, from the brothers who had had the misfortune to study under him, and he did not have a very high opinion of the man, war hero or no. And yet the sheer intensity and intimacy of this expression made Bill blush. It struck him then that Snape was not a man whom people often touched. Coming as he did from a household where rough and tumble games and motherly hugs had made physical contact as normal as breathing, the way that Snape responded to this mildest of caresses was quite astounding. An unexpected surge of something that wasn't quite pity washed over Bill. Sympathy, perhaps - but sympathy sounded fine and selfless, and there was a darker edge to this sensation. If Snape were so responsive to a chaste slide of skin against his cheekbone - Bill's mouth was suddenly dry, and he didn't want to know why.
"Don't," breathed Snape, but his voice was only a shadow of its former self. It was the kind of 'don't' that really failed to convince. Bill swallowed. Lucius cupped Snape's cheek, and brushed his thumb almost meditatively across Snape's lower lip. Snape's eyes were still closed. He looked almost like he were in pain.
"Don't what?" asked Lucius very softly, moving closer. There was barely a handspan separating their bodies now. It seemed to take an effort of will for Snape to open his eyes, and when he looked at Lucius his eyes were huge and hopeless, pupils dilated as if drugged. "Sshh," said Lucius. "It's all right, Severus. I forgive you." And so saying, he swayed that little bit closer and licked the corner of Snape's mouth, wringing a gasp from him. Lucius's tongue darted between the parted lips in the swiftest of teasing strokes, and then out again, and Snape made a choked sound of protest before stepping into the embrace and sealing his mouth to Lucius's lips. Bill stared, his antipathy all but forgotten, as Lucius responded by shoving the other man hard against the wall; and then it was all urgent hands crushing into flesh as if they wanted to tear one another apart, robes and all, and mouths locked together as if determined to devour one another. Bill pressed the heel of his hand down hard against the tented front of his galibeya, torn between unexpected lust and honest embarrassment at finding this arousing when it should have been risible. Fred and George, he knew, would have found it utterly hilarious. He realised then that, whatever else happened, he would not be telling Fred or George about this. But certainly the Wizarding World needed to know that Lucius Malfoy was alive. The man was guilty of war crimes, and Bill was the son of the Minister of Magic.