To Hell in a Handfasting
by Juliane

Chapter 4

The usual disclaimers apply - all characters are JK Rowling’s, except Viviane Chance.

Severus stormed into the room, flourishing her message, furious at being interrupted in the middle of an angst-ridden drinking bout at the Three Broomsticks. "What is it? We've successfully avoided each other for weeks now-" He stopped, his slightly-unfocussed eyes growing wide as his mouth dropped open.

Sitting at a long table, laden with china, was Viviane, drinking from a large goblet of wine, one empty and one half-full bottle beside her.

"Where did you get this...this..."

"Atrocious china?" Viviane answered, staring mournfully at the plate in front of her. "Albus presented it to us for our handfasting, and requested that we give our first dinner party, as an, er, couple, tonight, for all of the Hogwarts Professors. It starts in an hour."

Severus gazed at the china, laden with iridescent butterflies, pixies and elves crawling amidst gold glitter and rose petals cascading across the glossy surface. The sight of sixteen place settings and the attendent serving pieces, all covered in happy, ceaseless motion, made him feel horribly nauseated. He walked over and dropped into the chair opposite Viviane.

"Wine?" she asked.

Ignoring her, he waved a bottle of Old Ogdens over from the sideboard and poured himself a full goblet. After trying to poke a pixie in the eye, only to get bitten, he drank down half of the whiskey at a gulp. "What are we serving?"

"Seaweed soup, boiled tripe, canned catfish over potted meat, blood sausage and sauerkraut and, for dessert, syllabub."

Severus drank the rest of his whiskey and poured himself another glass. "Sounds divine, my love. Give everyone my regrets - I've got a particularly noxious potion to brew this evening."

Viviane began to laugh. "My dearest husband, Albus specifically requested your presence here tonight. "This handfasting was all your fault, anyway."

He stared at her in disbelief. "Mine? The fault, Viviane, is yours. If you hadn't-"

Viviane set down her wineglass so forcefully that she had to try a quick repair to the stem. "Me? Me? Was I the one who just had to tell Albus what had happened-"

"I thought he would help. I thought he would immediately understand that never in my right mind would I think of marrying-"

"You certainly thought of it that...that night. Dragging me off to some half-witted judge while I was too drunk to know better." She gave up trying to mend the stem of her glass and tossed it over her shoulder, reaching for another. "Drunker even than I am now."

Severus continued to empty his glass of Old Ogdens, and rapidly refill it, matching Viviane's pace with her wine. "I remember perfectly what happened. It was you who begged me to marry, and hustled me off before I knew what I was doing. You took dreadful advantage of an incapacitated wizard. You tricked me into this, and now I'm stuck with you, and your falcon, and this unspeakable china." He glanced at it again, and shuddered.

He jumped as a plate whizzed by his head, and shattered against the mantelpiece. "Bah! You remember nothing. You were just as shocked as I was by the evidence the next morning," she shouted. Both of them quieted down for a moment and blushed, thinking of the embarrassing photo locked securely in the depth of Severus' largest safe.

Recovering first, Viviane continued her tirade. "You are a dimwit nonpareil," she hissed, glaring at him in green fury. "We did exactly what Albus wanted us to do. He's been beside himself, worrying that we'd fall out permanently and render the Talisman useless. Remember that little detail? That little trinket we created in a moment of passion and idiocy? We all assume that that dratted Potter boy will conquer Voldemort. But Albus now knows he's got another option, and he'll do anything to make sure that option stays intact. With Potter's record for spectacular muck-ups, we'll probably need to use the thing in the end. Damn him." Crash! A finger bowl met its fate against the wainscot. "Damn them both." Crash! A bread plate glanced off of Severus' shoulder and dropped to the floor, scattering shards everywhere. "Damn you, you bloody fool." Crash! Another finger bowl shattered behind him, after grazing his ear. The elves on the still-intact china began screaming in panic.

"Er, Viviane-"

"Devereaux do not eat off of pixies and rosebuds!" she shrieked, throwing a teacup which he parried with the plate in front of him, breaking both.

As the saucer flew by, he gave up on diplomacy and reached for one of the matching faux-Sevres vases in the middle of the table, removing the arrangement of thistles and Venus flytraps and hefting it for a moment before aiming it squarely at Viviane's head. She ducked just in time, and it shattered against the portrait of Algernon Zwieback with a thoroughness that was balm to Severus' soul. Algernon protested.

"Shut up!" chorused Viviane and Severus, scooting their chairs down the table in search of more weapons, wine and whisky in hand.

"Since you raised the subject of muck-ups, I wouldn't be too hard on Potter," remarked Severus, reaching for the gravy boat. "You failed to save Cedric Diggory."

Viviane leaped to her feet, making inarticulate, drunken noises, and picked up the massive platter meant for roasts.

Severus held up his hands. "No, don't. Don't. Viviane, that's-"

She stepped back to hurl it at him with all of her strength, but inebriation spoiled her aim and it landed on the table, exploding into a rain of sharp fragments. One of them cut across Severus' forearm, bringing him to his feet in rage. "Look at that!" he thundered, leaning across the table to shove his arm under Viviane's nose. "You cut me!"

He is awfully sexy when he’s furious, confound my wretched taste in men, thought Viviane, noting how his eyes came alive and his thin lips unclamped as he forgot his reserve in anger.

After a moment’s pause, she puckered her lips into a mock pout. "Oh dear. Does little Sevvie have a boo-boo?" She grabbed his arm and slowly lapped up the trickle of blood meandering down the codlike skin of his wrist. His breath caught and he froze, staring at her as she drew away to look at him through her eyelashes and strands of untidy hair, running her wine-stained tongue around her lips.

Damn my festering soul, she’s gorgeous when she’s mussed, Severus thought.

"Come here," he said, grabbing her under the armpits and tugging her up and across the table, kicking and wriggling, to the destruction of the inoffensive stemware.

"If I wasn't...so drunk....you'd never...be able to do this..." she panted, struggling against him as he pinned her to the table with one arm. He bent over her, his breath sharp on her face.

"Before you came to Hogwarts, my life was complicated and exasperating. Now my life is complicated and intolerable. You and your games. Mind games. Power games. Sex-"

Viviane's lips curled down in contempt. "You didn't mind the sexual games that night after the Tournament. But then, it must have been years since a woman had taken pity on you."

Severus’ pale skin blanched to a slightly blue tinge, and he grabbed her gown by the neck, hands tugging desperately in opposite directions. Viviane began a loud, drunken laugh.

"You weak fool...you didn't mind it when I rescued you from Glossop...when we created the Talisman..."

A steak knife was pressed to her throat, then lightly trailed down her breastbone. "I came looking for you in that seedy Muggle pub," remarked Severus. The knife continued downward, the tip finally slipped between her breasts and caught underneath the fabric. "I found you in the garden that first night, followed you after Lucius upset you, and nearly ruined my mission with thoughts of you," he commented, his body taut, but his voice casual. Viviane gasped as the knife tipped up, creating a small rend in the silk of her gown. Tossing the knife aside, he ripped the gown apart, the silk tearing easily down its length.

He stepped back to gaze at her. "Ah, the linen. I forgot the linen," he said, and picked up the knife again, carefully cutting away her underclothing. As he dropped the knife again, she reached out and dragged him down to her.

"I'm at a disadvantage," she said. Viviane ran her hands over the row of buttons adorning his shirt and trousers, and they flew off, bouncing amongst the fragments of china on the floor.

"Why do you harbor such a vendetta against my fastenings?"asked Severus, momentarily aggrieved.

"Better," she said, ignoring his question and pulling aside his shirt, running her hands down the turnip-white skin of his torso, only to grab the edges of the fabric and pull him down to her for a kiss that made his elbows tremble.

He wrapped his arms around her, lifting her from the table to press her against his body, unable to deny, even to himself, just how much he wanted her. From the way she captured his lower lip between her teeth, scraping lightly against the flesh, it was evident she wanted him every bit as badly.

"Annoyance and lust so inescapably linked. I wonder…" he mumbled into Viviane’s neck, then rolled both of them onto the table.

"You’re so good at necks,"panted Viviane, proceeding to rip the rest of his clothing off. "Are you sure you aren’t a vampire?"

"No, I’m not at all sure one way or the other,"said Severus, applying his tongue to a convenient nipple. Happily, it was one of hers. "I do have some of the signs, but I haven’t come to any conclusion yet."

"You academics," sighed Viviane. "Oh, do that laving nipple thing again - yes, that. You need to learn to make decisions."

"I can make decisions,"replied Severus, indignant. "I’ve decided I"m going to make raw, violent love to you, right now."

To Viviane’s great delight, he began to do so. The elves on the butter dish lying a few inches from her foot began to make their last wills and testaments.

~*~*~

"What is that noise? And why is the door locked?"asked Flitwick, rattling the doorknob with one hand and reading his invitation with the other. "She wrote down 8 p.m. Even if punctuality is unknown to Viviane, Severus should be here to let us in."

A wailing grunt reached their ears, in the unmistakable deep tones of the Potions master. It was accompanied by a sound like shattering glass, and a shriek in Viviane’s well-known voice.

"It seems we won’t be getting any dinner. Lets go to the Three Broomsticks and get drunk instead,"said Hetty. "They’re either having sex, or killing each other."

"Probably both,"sighed Minerva. "I wouldn’t mind a drink or two."

Valerian Vector took her arm. "My dear Minerva, what an excellent idea. And then a walk around the lake? There’s a lovely slope to the lawn there, that is calling to me. Would you like to join me in a sensual roll in the dew-laden grass?"

Ignoring Hetty’s snorts, Minerva shrouded herself in a fog of dignity and walked off with Professor Vector, leaving the others to follow and Viviane and Severus to finish up and tenderly pick shards of china out of each others’ arse.