 | Lore of the Serpentby jat sapphire |
Disclaimer:
I'm absolutely certain nothing even slightly like this will ever happen in J. K. Rowling's books. Snape and the Slytherins and Hogwarts belong to her, to her publishers, and to Warner Brothers. The voice is Alan Rickman's. This unauthorised, unprofitable fic is not intended to warp anybody's mind or damage anybody's profit.
Acknowledgements:
Thank you, my wonderful beta-readers! Ellen Fremedon made me think more about Pansy; Lies about the Bloody Baron; rac about semicolons and the right colours for auras; laur about warnings and story logic. Any problems remaining are my own.
This fic was inspired by various others, including Predatrix's "Sex Education" and Rushlight's "Rite of Passage," as well as Internet research I did on auras and forms of sex magic. I have not attempted to be accurate, just looted various pages for ideas, including one where I found this charming thought: "The energy raised in sex magic is sometimes referred as the kundalini power, or serpent power." See, we knew that.
Warnings:
I consider this to be slash, though there's not much sex-with-a-partner in it. If you are underage or feel any dismay at the notion of homosexual romance, then hit that Back button right away, and keep going until you find something legal for your age group and to your taste.
There's also a medical situation here which some will find offensive; it's described fairly graphically.
A terrible sound suffused the damp air of Severus Snape's dungeon office. It was something like a death-rattle, something like the hiss of a giant cobra, and it lingered unpleasantly in the ear.
Snape looked up from the scroll he was reading. Before him a head protruded from the wooden desktop, resting on its jaw, its eyes rolled back, its swollen tongue extended.
"Well, Baron?"
"No ... time ... to ... lose ...." rasped a voice that seemed hoarse with unbearable pain.
"Tonight, then." Though he looked back at the parchment, Snape could still see the baron glowing at the edge of his vision; he raised his head. "Oh, for pity's sake. It can't be that urgent--they're not killing each other, are they?" The ghost's eyes rolled. "Must you be so melodramatic?"
"Yessssss," the ghost whispered. "Someday ... you too will know."
Snape pressed his lips together, then snapped, "I have no intention whatever of haunting Hogwarts. Of all places. Melodramatically or otherwise."
He looked down yet again, but could see the silvery ectoplasmic shape rise and lengthen. The Bloody Baron had come halfway through the desk-top now; he was resting on his elbows and glaring. "I never planned to ... linger ... either. Don't be too ... confident."
"Yes, yes, if you have anything to say about it--only I doubt very much you will. And I doubt even more that you are loitering in my desk to tell me that all over again."
The Baron blinked and made a sound like a gulp; his tongue retreated into his mouth. His voice sounded much more ordinary when he said, "Snippy boy."
Snape raised one eyebrow.
The Baron sighed, still sounding a bit tortured but no longer as if dying right at that moment. "Beware! Beware!" When Snape simply waited, the ghost folded his arms and announced, "Parkinson hasn't menstruated since they arrived this term."
"I don't believe," said Snape, "that I wish to know how you gathered that piece of information."
"Bulstrode is blackmailing her." The ghost smirked now.
Rubbing one temple, Snape frowned. "All right. I shall deal with it. Are there any other little things you want to tell me, or will you get out of the way so that I may use my inkwell?"
The ghost howled and rose out of the desk, dribbling trails of silver blood and scattering rolled-up parchments to the floor. Snape sighed again and bent to retrieve the rolls closest to his chair. Putting them on the desk, he wondered how the other housemasters managed these matters. It had been a very long while since anything of the sort had come up at a staff meeting, so he supposed that his colleagues had developed methods appropriate to their charges, as he had. The Ravenclaws probably read up on the subject, he thought, with appropriately anerotic illustrations and a great deal of information about venereal disease. Gryffindors probably practised heroic abstinence. He snickered a little. Emphasis on the "heroic." Hufflepuffs probably didn't think about sex until someone else told them about it. They didn't seem to think about very much, even after being told about it.
But Slytherin children ....
Precocious, Snape had heard them called, when people were being kind about it. He preferred to think of the fierce hunger for physical power in all its forms as connected to the hallmark Slytherin ambition. His charges didn't always turn to sex early. Sometimes they focussed on taking power over their own bodies, and he watched all of them closely to prevent anorexia. One bad year he'd had to teach the whole house something about blood magic to stop the little circle of boys who were cutting themselves. Next to that, the kind of house meeting he faced tonight was ... well, perhaps easy was an overstatement. After all, he had been putting it off.
He crossed the room and opened a low cabinet to retrieve a flat piece of parchment that glowed like the shade of a lamp. On the way back to his desk with it, he collected two last wayward homework scrolls from the floor. When the bright sheet lay on the desk and he had seated himself, he took up his quill and wrote, "House meeting tonight, 7.15, common room. Power rally." This last was a euphemism he had developed, based on a couple of muggle terms. It was rather vulgar, but one never knew where the little beggars would be when they looked at their copies of the notice. He waved his wand over the parchment, murmuring, and then wrote an additional note farther down the sheet: "Miss Parkinson, I will see you directly after supper and before the meeting, in my office. ~S.S.~ Mr Zabini, your detention is rescheduled for tomorrow evening. ~S.S.~" --then he waved and muttered again.
In every Slytherin's pocket, a small roll of parchment began to heat up until the temperature caught the student's attention, and until the notice was pulled out, unrolled, and read. Blaise Zabini, in the library, opened it at once, grinned widely, and tucked the roll behind his ear at a jaunty angle. In the stands, watching the house team's Quidditch practice, Crabbe tapped Goyle on the shoulder when his back pocket began to smoke (Snape had made the spell on that specific notice parchment stronger than the rest, for Goyle's attention was hard to capture at the best of times). Members of the team saw light streaming around the edges of their locker doors when they returned to the changing-room, found and read the notices, and engaged in a good deal of joking and horseplay as they showered and changed--the jokes were dirty, but the horseplay comparatively mild, as none of them wanted to anger Snape and all were certain there was nothing they could get away with today. Pansy Parkinson burst into tears in the hallway and pulled Millicent Bulstrode into the nearest girls' washroom to screech at her in some slight privacy. Two seventh-year Slytherin girls read them in the common-room and giggled together. This would be the fourth "power rally" they were old enough to attend, and they had fond memories of the others.
After dinner, Snape sat with his hands folded on his desk, awaiting Pansy Parkinson and reminding himself that she was in her fifth year, and might have a better reason than sheer woolyheadedness for her situation. But he doubted it when he saw how she crept into the room, closing the door so carefully behind her that even he could scarcely hear it meet the jamb.
"Do come in, Miss Parkinson," he purred, "and sit," gesturing to a high, hard chair that he kept for just such interviews. Few of the students ever grew tall enough for their feet to rest flat on the floor when they sat in it. The first-years could scarcely clamber into it to begin with, which multiplied their nervousness in a pleasing way.
He waited until Pansy had settled as much as possible, and knotted her hands in her lap.
"Are you married?" he asked. "--Just in case you simply forgot to update your student file."
"N-no, Professor Snape."
The Parkinsons were not really ancient enough wizarding blood to follow that tradition, but there was no harm in checking first: "Nor betrothed?"
"No, sir."
"Nor apprenticed for any particular ritual?" He dearly hoped not; the only ones that required a pregnant apprentice or a new-born child were dark indeed.
Pansy's eyes were wide and round. "No, sir." She knew better than to ask, if she didn't know there were such rituals.
"Then," Snape leaned forward a little and let some steel into his voice, "do tell me what happened to your Contraceptus potion."
"I b-, br-, I broke the vial, Professor Snape. In my suitcase. When I got home I opened it up, and it was--broken."
"Indeed. And it did not occur to you to ask for more."
"I couldn't ask my parents--they weren't--they wouldn't understand. I tried to go to Knockturn Alley, but--" she said, and he raised one hand to stop her whinging. Of course she would not have been sold anything useful in the shops she could have entered. But the silly creature tried another excuse: "And I couldn't make any, of course--"
"Yes, yes." She was hardly going to impress him by her adherence to the rules at this stage. He frowned at her, and she shrank back in the chair. "What spell were you casting with the sex?"
"No, honestly, sir, really I wasn't, not at all. It wasn't-- I mean, my-- the boy-- he's not a Hogwarts student. I knew him in primary school, and we went about this summer ... and ..."
"Spare me," Snape rasped, completely unwilling to hear the tale of love's young dream. "Do you mean to say that you didn't even harvest any power from it?"
She shook her head. His mouth twisted as he glared at her. She was trembling.
"Twenty points from Slytherin for unmitigated stupidity," he said. They were the first points he had taken from the house since term began, and though he really couldn't get through an entire academic year without ever using this disciplinary tactic, he hoped Draco wouldn't feel the need, when he heard, to inform his father. Lucius Malfoy appeared to think that there was something disloyal to Voldemort in subtracting Slytherin House points. Recovering from whatever loyalty-test or punishment Lucius might dream up on this occasion would waste time Snape needed for all the work of his double life. He gritted his teeth.
"Go to Madam Pomfrey. Tell her how long it has been since your last menstrual period. She will determine whether you are in fact pregnant and, if you are, what must be done. Do whatever she asks of you and then go directly to bed. To sleep," he clarified, though she would never dare to react if she had heard an off-colour implication there.
"I'll ... miss ..."
"Yes, indeed you will miss it. And as always, the penalty for missing a house meeting is detention for a week. You may go."
Potter, or one of the other inane Gryffindors, would have protested. His Slytherins knew better. She got carefully out of the chair, said, "Thank you, Professor Snape," and went.
He wrote Poppy Pomfrey a note and summoned a school owl to take it. "If she's not, the matter's simple enough," it said in part. "But if she is ... the Parkinsons are halfway in YKW's camp already and must not have a foetus or a newborn to offer at this stage. Notify Albus; he may have a fosterage available. Otherwise we shall have to timeshift it and hope the war is over by then. Either way, don't tell the girl any more than you must--I don't want her mooning over it. ~S.S.~"
The Slytherin common room was at best austere, hung in black and silver and forest green, with furniture upholstered in dragonhide of an even darker shade. Though there was a good fire, it was rather overshadowed by the mantel, so high it was like a small cliff of black marble. When the room was filled with students, as it was now, it seemed even more shadowy, grim with their rivalries and angers. Walking into a roomful of Slytherins was always like plunging his arms into a basket of snakes--just as it should be, of course, but a strain all the same.
He swept in smoothly, robes billowing about his legs, and took the high armchair nearest the fire. "Good evening," he said. Their eyes locked on him and they settled into silence: for these serpents, he had his own Parseltongue.
"The subject of tonight's meeting--" and he paused long enough for the older students to savour that they knew it, while the younger ones did not-- "is sex."
Still, he knew, they were surprised that he announced it so baldly, so he had retained the upper hand. He turned his face toward the fire, kept his expression impassive. Young Malfoy was to his right, flanked as usual by Crabbe and Goyle. Wherever the blond boy was in a room, Snape felt him, saw the afterimage in the corner of his eye like a flare of Will o' the Wisp without treasure below it. Damn Lucius for what he had already done to the boy, and what he was poised to do. "Can some first-year student repeat for me what I said in the first house meeting that you were particularly to remember?" Hands rose, rather tentatively. "Mr Restarick."
The boy tossed back the lock of hair that always fell into his eyes and said, "That we were the true heirs of Slytherin, sir."
"Correct as far as you go, Mr Restarick. Any other first-year care to add anything?"
"That--" Windham-Lewis blurted, then stopped.
Snape swung his head around with that slow movement that so many students had called reptilian, and the girl--who was far too much like Granger for his liking--flinched. "Go on," he said.
"That we Slytherins should never forget our true purpose, should never cease to grow stronger."
"And how do we grow stronger?" He turned back to show his profile against the flame. "You may all answer."
A ragged chorus rose, the voices blending and clashing--the sixth- and seventh-year boys growled and the lower-school babies shrilled; between them rang the varied and breaking tones of the other children: "We ought never to sleep until we are stronger than when we woke. We ought not to wake until we are stronger than when we lay down to sleep. Our bodies bring us power, and so do our minds. When we breathe, when we eat, when we act, when we study, when we speak, we can grasp power, and ought not to let it go."
"Yesss--" he drew out the sibilant. "Well done, my little snakes." Then, slowly, he set elbows on the arms of the chair, raised his hands and steepled his fingers, looked into the little hollow there between his own palms. "You may be wondering how sex fits into the power we seek with every breath. In fact, it fits ... intimately. As a spell focuses the power within you through your wand, an orgasm creates an ... explosion-point, a release of power. One can use sex, and abstinence from sex, in many magical processes. It is an invaluable ... tool." His gaze travelled around the room, daring them to make a joke of the word; even Malfoy barely smirked. "Now, does one use any magical thing without training and thought?"
"No!" said the roomful of students.
"No," he agreed. "Virginity, especially, is a specific ingredient in some rituals. If you can contribute to the power of some wizard to whom you owe fealty, ought you to do so, or may you fritter that power away on self-indulgence or sentimentality?" The question was too complex to gain an immediate chorus in answer; he sighed, and said, "Miss Windham-Lewis, will you use up your virginity before you know its worth?"
"No, sir," she said firmly.
"Good. Five points to Slytherin for that ready answer. All first- and second-years, now retire to your dorms, and remember that not all magic one learns of may be immediately used."
Eleven- and twelve-year-olds filed out under the cool gaze of their elders. Most managed without looking around nervously themselves. Slytherins learned first and best to be wary of each other.
Snape remembered overhearing McGonagall one year--was it 1990? after?--telling a gaggle of brand-new, unSorted students that their houses would be like their families to them during their years at Hogwarts. This, he reflected, was in some students' cases only too true.
In his own case, for instance, when he bothered to look back so far, though usually he did nothing so fruitless.
The smaller children gone, the remainder were for the most part into or past puberty. He picked out a few with his eyes, then named them: "Landry, Bannerjee, and Rico, you go too." All three looked startled, and Rico looked shamed as well. None dared to argue, however.
Snape shifted slightly in the chair, and a wave of anticipation travelled through the room. "Sex is power," he said ruminatively, softly. "Different sorts of sex bring different sorts of power. It seems obvious enough to some of you that if you took a child's virginity--or took sex from anyone unwilling--that it would be taking power from them, as easily as you might take a chocolate frog from their hands and eat it." He sighed, careful to make his expression disdainful, knowing that the slightest touch of moralising would cost him the very attention he needed. "This is a vulgar error," he said. "As you learn more of these arts, and of the art of domination in particular, you will know that the submissive must consent for the dominance to have meaning. Some of you will be submissives, and will not be good ones unless you find that power within yourselves. For it is power." He ran his eyes over the students. Crabbe and Goyle were preening themselves a little. He supposed it was progress of a sort that they recognised their own submission to Malfoy.
They all looked too complacent, though. Snape frowned. "You know already that violent assaults are not permitted to schoolchildren. Nor are sexual ones. But for those inclined to disobey school rules ... there are practical reasons to control yourselves as well. I repeat, to mistake rape for dominance is imbecilic. An unwilling submissive, a weak one, a young one, will give you nothing that you can use. You can expect neither mercy nor protection from me if you commit such a ... barbarism."
His voice had roughened just a little, and he caught himself back, relaxed slowly against the high back of the chair, let his grip loosen on the carved wooden arms.
His own housemaster had neglected that bit of the house's education. Snape never would.
"But to return to pleasanter subjects," he said, smoothly, the voice he had so carefully trained spilling through the room like honey. Most people imagined the Potions master was relatively unskilled at other forms of magic, such as spellcasting.
Most people were, as usual, fools.
"The simplest way to harvest power from your sexuality, and one which will interfere very little with any other use of sexual magic, is masturbation. As this is by nature a highly individual pursuit--" again he paused, daring them to snicker, and again they proved that they were tame to his hand, staying silent--"I have little advice to give you, except that if you are not to spill out your sex magic with your fluids, you must concentrate. There is a delicate balance to be created between the controlling, wary mind and the passionate emotion, both of which you will need. Employ your sigil-drawing lessons to encode the power-gathering goals you are seeking before you begin to touch yourself. Choose some very specific, fairly short-term goal for the sigil. Judging from the reports of the house-elves and ... other sources ... Quidditch or Potions prowess are particular favourites." He permitted himself to look amused. "I am sure you will not be averse to frequent practise."
They reflected his smile.
"A demonstration of a related technique will perhaps not come amiss. Mr Malfoy will assist me."
Of course the boy was openly smirking now. Part of Snape itched to wipe the smug expression off Draco's face. But it would please Lucius to think that Snape could not resist his child; it pleased Draco to imagine he had Snape's measure; it always pleased Voldemort when one of his slaves placed himself in a vulnerable position, as he would indeed have been had he felt real passion for this boy.
And Draco was comely, slim and ivory-pale with hair like the Galleons in Gringott's--and, knowing that, he loved to show himself. A perfect choice all round.
Now he stood beside Snape's chair, leaning in slightly, as if awaiting a command to sit in his housemaster's lap.
"The other side of the fire, Mr Malfoy, if you please." As Draco moved off, Snape explained to the rest, "Surely you've observed that if you stare into someone's eyes long enough, a connection seems to form between you. This is an extension of the principle, and though it's related to mesmeric magic, it is a suitably harmless and simple exercise for a beginner."
He wondered if anyone in the room were listening any more, because Draco was taking off all his clothes. Robes dropped casually, shirt undone with little flicks of the wrists that somehow made the buttons flash in the firelight, then the shirt hung open, draped down as he bent to untie his shoes. He stepped out of them, pulled off his socks in some ridiculously graceful and swift way, so that when he stood again he was barefooted, bright and flushed and debauched-looking. He opened his trousers, and paused.
Snape realised that his own voice had stopped. He cleared his throat, and Draco's teeth gleamed in a smile. "You may be surprised, however, how much power is released in this little ritual. Sex magic has this quality of ... excess."
The excessive little creature before him had skinned off trousers and underpants--if indeed there had been underwear there--and was already lightly fondling himself. Snape very deliberately undid the fastenings of his outer robe and spread it over either side of the chair. He unfastened his trousers and undid the fly, adjusting his cock but not exposing it. "This is a simple enough ritual; no incantations are needed--and no pentacles or potions. Mr Malfoy and I will look into each other's eyes, and he will touch himself. Meanwhile, you lookers-on may amuse yourselves as you see fit, with the proviso that there will be no intercourse." Snape raked the room with a gaze just like the one he'd use in the classroom, the one that said don't even think of it--and all over the room his sly and callous little snakes blushed and dropped their eyes until he knew they would obey. "This ... activity ... is called 'Basio Ocularis'. You may begin any time, Mr Malfoy."
Pale eyes met Snape's. These were the moments when he could believe the old Muggle ideas about eye-beams, for there was an almost tangible connection here, as if he were tangled in the boy's gaze. It also resembled the first stages of trance, that sense of sinking, sliding, being enveloped. Snape's impulse was always to resist. He forced his eyes a little wider, plunged into the silver-grey irises, like a winter sky, bright, cool, a rush of wind around him, like flying. Like Seeking.
No, it was Draco who thought that.
Snape saw himself from Draco's point of view, a common if mercifully temporary side-effect. Behind him the shadows fell like velvet drapes, softer and nearly as dark as the folds of his robe, moving a little with the changing firelight. Above the still-buttoned jacket was the slice of white shirt-collar and the pale skin of his face, framed in black wings of hair. His eyes looked huge, deep, like caverns, like a place Draco could drop into completely and never have to come out--
The fingers on the arms of Snape's chair--Snape's fingers--tightened until his nails hurt, pressed into the wood. His heart was pounding, his throat tight. Think of sex, you little-- and then Draco's hands did move, thank Merlin. This was right--this was the plan.
The boy's excitement grew, and Snape felt an echo in his own body, tingling and building. An itchy feeling in his spine. A heat and fullness in his cock. He was tempted to rub it as Draco was rubbing his own, stroking lightly, teasing the foreskin, then holding harder with one hand and pulling while the other went to the parted red lips and Draco licked his fingers and palm. Snape felt how wet each stroke of tongue was, knew how Draco's mouth was watering. The boy was fantasising about Snape's cock in his mouth, and then imagining the organ he stroked in Snape's mouth. The housemaster's thin lips would be pale against its angry red, soft against its taut hot skin.
Eyes--Snape forced himself to see them, cool blue edging the hungry dark pupils, and yet could feel wet fingers slip to and fro while the other hand moved to Draco's nipples, pinching and rolling them, and then the palm dragged up and down his torso, around his hip, circling on his arse as it flexed.
Over Snape's own laboured breath and the echoing sensation of Draco's heaving chest came the sounds and shifts of the others, little gasps, wet smacks and then a very soft moan. The whole room felt warmer. A wave of energy built, sweeping upward, carrying them all together, seeming swift and yet prolonged. The light looked brighter. Colour flared and grew everywhere.
Usually he could not see auras, and had never told a soul that he could during sex magic--and even for a short while afterward. Gossip might get back to Trelawney, who would make his life unbearable. But now he pressed back a little more firmly in his chair and watched the glow spreading from Draco's body, enclosing and surrounding him.
The aura was primarily orange nearest the boy's skin, which was right for a Slytherin as it signalled a desire for control and power, but the colour was rusty, streaked with dirty-looking brown. The red of sexual arousal was also there, spiking and blooming--but also darker than it should have been--and the clear sun-yellow that should have shown Draco's agile mind looked sickly and greenish, like venom. Around the edge was an angrier red, the protective shell Snape and half the other Slytherins also had, which formed after trauma or neglect.
Damn Lucius.
Arousal-red glowed brighter, clearer, everywhere, and the boy nearly reflected it, as if the others' excitement were another firelight. He squirmed like a cat in heat, ran both hands up and down his body and then grabbed for his prick again. His chin lifted, and then Draco widened his eyes as if only then remembering that he was not to lose contact with Snape's.
Snape knew the boy's testicles were drawing up, could see that he was panting and sweating, and felt the resonance of Draco's index finger circling and teasing his arsehole. Burning in Snape's gaze, the colours of his aura were heating and brightening, and his skin looked gilt. His hips swayed back and forth. Even the rug beneath him must be giving some slight friction, a slow tongue-swipe of sensation. The air moved over them like breath. They both hung on the brink of Draco's orgasm, trembling, dizzy.
Snape made a wordless sound, low, a kind of hum, and felt the very walls vibrate with it. He opened his mouth, said in a soft growl, "They're all watching. Draco, they are all watching you--" and just as he'd known would happen, voice and words and the taut connection of the spell made Draco's eyes drop shut, his head sag back, his prick let loose a little pearly jet and then another, the arc bright and lovely and his aura flaring so powerfully red and yellow that Snape felt a short, intense pulse of orgasm through his own body, and distinctly heard a collective gasp from the audience.
A few of them had come already, but most of the girls and some of the boys were still rubbing and writhing--above and around them were lavenders, blues, greens, yellows, dancing high and darting low under the lid of red and the undercoat of sullen orange. The smoky greys and browns were falling, fading, and Snape reached out with his mind to force them to go the faster. He drew in the power filling the room, let it rage in his own body--then murmured in words the youngsters did not know and he scarcely would remember afterward but which meant Bright .... Clear .... Strong .... Safe. Even his hand was outstretched, fingers working as if braiding the energies that rose, rang, keened, until like firecrackers he felt one after another coming, and heard them too: "Oh! Oh! Draco! Professor! Fuck!" One of the girls was weeping with her release--Bulstrode, Snape thought.
Afterward, they lay breathing hard and glowing as purely as crystals. Snape watched them with a satisfaction deeper than mere orgasm. But then he felt a snag in the web of power he held. Across the room, in the door to the girls' dormitories, stood Pansy Parkinson. He met her envious eyes and captured her, holding her like a mouse in the gaze of a hunting snake. Her aura was sulphur and brown under the red shell, and around her waist was a glow of white shot with black lightning.
Snape sat up straight, fear lancing through him on the girl's behalf. So she was pregnant after all--the foetus was intruding on her aura--and it was toxic to her. That was the black of pain and suffering, the white of impending death. Why had Poppy not aborted it? He rose and felt for his wand, flicked a sleep spell over the roomful of sated adolescents--"Addormio"--and went over to where she stood, as rigidly as if he had cast Petrificus Totalis on her. Each step reminded him that he was still hard, sensitised skin rasping against the wet linen of his underwear.
"Follow," he said, and she obeyed without a word. They went to his office. He felt every hair on his body: the sparse pelt on arms, legs, and torso nearly stood on end, while the longer hair on his head just lifted and waved a little as if windblown. Sparks could have been issuing from his fingers and feet, and he wondered how it looked. Pansy was too generally terrified to say.
He gestured her toward the same chair she'd sat in before but did not sit himself. "Open your blouse," he said, and the red shell of her aura thickened, clotting like blood. "Come, come, girl, I'll not hurt you." But her hands shook while she fumbled with the buttons.
He knelt next to the chair and slipped his hand in, resting it against the still-shallow curve of her belly. She was panting. He closed his eyes to help block out her terror and concentrated, drawing on the power the rally had raised. Yes, there was the foetus, time-stopped as he'd asked Poppy to do--but only if it were viable! The girl could not possibly carry this deadly thing for the rest of her schooling. Merlin alone knew what complications it would cause.
He opened his eyes and saw her fear-dilated ones staring back at him. "Pansy," he said, as softly as he could, and she shivered all over. Perhaps it was not only fear she felt. What a nuisance. He withdrew his hand, took out his wand again, put his other hand on her forehead, and stroked down over her closing eyelids, her nose and mouth, saying once more, "Addormio."
Albus Dumbledore would say it was a vile thing he was about to do, especially without asking the girl. Snape supposed he could infer Poppy Pomfrey's reaction from the fact that she had preserved the foetus in spite of its mismatch with its mother's body. Whether this was caused by blood type, congenital illness, or something else, Snape did not care. Nor did he care much for Pansy's consent. She was a child, and a sentimental one; he would not shirk his duty for some ideal state in which she could freely and safely choose when he knew that in reality there was no freedom and precious little safety for her.
He reached into her blouse again and flexed his fingers, willing power into them. In response, she inhaled deeply and slowly. "Abiga," he said, almost coaxingly, the movement of his wand following the curve of her body. "Abiga. Abiga."
Her muscles hardened and shifted under his hand. She gasped and convulsed, still deeply asleep. A gush of blood and other matter burst from between her legs, soaking her skirt and dripping off the edge of the seat.
What power there was in this blood and in the tiny corpse, he well knew. And he would have none of it. The smell alone made him stand swiftly, swallowing back nausea, clutching the mark on his forearm.
He lifted his wand again: "Sanifer uterus." Normally he would not even try to cast a healing spell, but at the moment he was able to do a number of things he would not normally trust himself to do. Also, he did not want to confront Pomfrey tonight. He cast another spell to clean up the abortion and then one to wake Pansy, who sat up with bewilderment lighting her features almost as brightly as her aura still lit the dim spaces of the office.
"Sleeping, Miss Parkinson?" Snape glared down his nose at her. "Have I been boring you?"
"No, honestly, Professor Snape!"
"Then go to your dormitory, as I am certain that I told you to do." He was exhausted, suddenly. The moment the office door closed behind Pansy, he made for his own bedroom and readied himself for bed. The students could wake in their own time. If it was not until after curfew, all the more reason they would slip quietly away to their rooms. Even teenagers ought not to be ready for misbehaviour after such an evening's work.
His erection had gone, and in the circumstances that was only right. But once in bed, covered discreetly by night-shirt and sheet and counterpane, he indulged himself in images drawn from the rally--the gleaming skin, the eyes like winter sky, the powerful lust that had filled the room like water--and stroked himself much as Draco had. If the body in his mind was not Draco's, that was all the better. If it was scarcely older and dim with memory, that was no one's business but his own.
They were not happy memories, though, which was the reason he had held Slytherin power rallies as seldom as he could get away with, since he had gone back to the Death-Eaters.
He gritted his teeth and shook his head against the pillow, forcing himself up to the peak and over it, then milked out the last of a rather pedestrian orgasm and opened his eyes, sighing. The Bloody Baron was hovering above the foot of the bed, eyes round--though they always were.
"If you are here to act the incubus, then get out." Snape heard weariness and despair in his own voice and did not try to conceal them.
"Damn Lucius Malfoy," said the ghost, even more hollowly than usual.
"Unnecessary. He's damned already." A thought struck him and he nearly sat up with the revulsion it produced. "He had better not haunt Hogwarts! Ever!"
"No," the Baron moaned. He looked just as horrible as usual, but his hands stretched out, palms down over Snape's body, and it seemed to be meant as a comforting gesture. Perhaps the ghost was doing a little aura-clearing now. Snape could no longer see for himself, but he could guess that he needed it.
He lay down again and closed his eyes, waiting until the waves of silvery light retreated to what must be the bottom of the bed. Nor did he try to utter any thanks, saying only, "I need my rest." The insides of his eyelids grew yet darker, and he knew he was alone.
Eventually, he slept. Swirling aural colour filled his dreams--red and yellow and pink--and he listened to a voice that murmured things he would never, awake, admit to wanting to hear.
*** end ***
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