beholder_mod (![]() ![]() @ 2008-04-20 16:39:00 |
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Entry tags: | fic, rabastan lestrange, severus snape, slash |
FIC: 'All the Ways We See' for leianora
Recipient: leianora
Author: edgewise
Title: All the Ways We See
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Severus Snape/Rabastan Lestrange
Word Count: ~3000
Disclaimer: Credit for the characters resides with Ms Rowling.
Warnings: Not as much plot as I may have liked.
Summary: Used to the direction of his father, Rabastan receives a new assignment from the Dark Lord, in which he learns to apply his talent of looking closely at things in a new arena
Author's Notes: My thanks to all who helped me with this story, to the moderator for running the exchange, and to Leianora for the inspiration. I hope you enjoy.
***
Soft light fell across the thick, creamy parchment that Rabastan had smoothed out on the desk before him. He felt a little guilty about sitting in Father's chair, even though he knew there was no chance of his being discovered. But, like with so much else in his life, drawing was something he knew he had to keep secret.
Rodolphus and Father were off courting the Blacks, and would not return for a few days, at least. Earlier in his life, Rabastan might have felt slighted somehow at being left behind, but he understood that the family needed to put their best face forward - or perhaps it was feet - Rabastan didn't remember exactly, but Father had explained it to him, once, and the result was he got to spend time at home being attended by the house-elves, which he found he didn't mind.
Especially when they supplied him with pencils, and paper, and didn't tell Father.
Today he had chosen Father's study because there was always something new to draw. He was no good at imagining things, and he'd long since tired of sketching the view out of his window, or the end of his bed, or his armoire. Father's study was packed with all sorts of interesting things, from knickknacks, which he called objets d'art, to the gold and silver cups, which he called trophies. Rabastan didn't care much what they were called, or what the markings across the bottoms of the trophies meant - he only cared what they looked like: the way the light glinted off the gleaming silver in the morning sun, or the intricate twists and turns of a moving statue on a pedestal.
Today he selected one of the smaller decorations, a bird no taller than his thumb that stood on a high shelf and never moved. Those kind were easier to draw, he'd found. He knew the bird was called a heron because Rodolphus had asked Father, once, but Rabastan knew only that he liked to look at the contrast between rounded body and thin, knobby legs, that there was something majestic about the bend in its long neck and the crest of feathers above its head.
He drew it large, to fill the paper from edge to edge, using long sweeping strokes to outline the body and the edges between light and dark, then coming back through with small swift pencil marks to make feathered wings, sharp beak, a shadow underneath where the light from the window couldn't reach. In a fit of imaginative excess, he added a few long strokes at the bottom of the parchment that might be reeds, or grass, and instantly regretted them.
He amused himself for a while, adding more depth to the feathers and shadows, until his calm was interrupted by a burning sensation in his arm. He ignored it for a moment, concentrating as he was on the movement of his pencil, but the burning surged suddenly, and his hand jerked across the page, leaving an ugly dark line across the heron. He blinked, and remembered.
Rabastan had never been summoned to the Dark Lord by himself, so he assumed Rodolphus and Father were being similarly called. He was wrong.