A/N: Written for the Monthly Het-tastic Drabble-Athlon Competition. Prompt 1 – liar.

The Slave, the Prince and the Angel
1: Liar

It had been written long ago that a slave could only look – really look – upon their own kind, but for a slave to say their eyes had never strayed would be a lie. Their hair was always long and unkempt, straggly bangs falling over their eyes and masking any brief transgression they partook in – and for many of them, it was a guilty pleasure to be able to look upon the noblemen and noblewomen and dream.

And, for those who had been bred from birth in slavehood, those dreams were enough for them – but those abandoned to the world: those marketed on the streets and then sold, those like Severus – they could not help but feel bitterness and resentment in such a transgression, and so there was no worth in it. Still, they partook in that transgression and lifted their eyes: if they did not peer at the noblemen and noblewomen they peered at the palace, and the mountains, and the skies.

Sometimes, Severus thought he saw an angel where the heavens touched the earth on the mountain's peak, and those days his eyes strayed evermore.