Author's Notes: This is a fanfic - Standard disclaimers apply. I own nothing.
Thank you again to those who favorited/followed. Please do review; any feedback is appreciated. Please be advised that there are graphic descriptions of sexual situations in this chapter.
A/N: 12.2.20 -
Thank you so, so, so much to those who left reviews. My apologies for the delay in updating. One more chapter after this one; maybe an epilogue after that.
All The Way
"Get up, Amy. You've been moping in bed all week. You're starting to stink."
She hasn't been hiding.
Really, she hasn't.
It's just that she knows how this will end. She's not stupid, after all.
She thought about Snape's mouth moving so intimately against her flesh and how desirable he'd made her feel. She thought about his black eyes raking over her skin with that hungry gaze, and the weird flattery that was his 'only wanting to look.' She thought about his cock.
Yeah, she knows how this ends.
This ends in hurt feelings. It ends in a whispered aside, an open secret, a footnote in somebody else's story.
Whatever happened to that girl, Amy?
Amy? Oh, she got all depressed or something. Flunked out of 7th year and fucked a teacher.
A teacher? Eww.
Her mum had told her it wasn't too late to turn things around. Her father had told her she had "potential." They'd both pulled strings to get her back on the list to take the NEWTs and now expected her to work some last-minute academic miracle because, hey, she's a smart girl.
At least Snape wasn't angry with her for not living up to her potential. He didn't think she had any potential.
She thought again about what she'd not only let Snape do with her body, but what she'd begged him to do. It's like she'd been a different person, then. And she had a hard time squaring that person with this girl who'd been moping in bed all week, hiding, because she thinks she might just spontaneously combust if he ever touches her or looks at her that way again.
Alex ripped back the hangings of Amy's bed and gave her a dirty look. "I'm serious, Amy. I know you're like, all depressed or whatever, but other people have lives, too. Get up. Take a shower. Then help me with this term paper."
Amy rolled over, away from Alex, and stuffed her face in her pillow. "Get Myron to do it."
"Myron's busy. He's taking all his exams early or something so he can leave for his senior project. Everybody knows that."
Amy groaned into her pillow. "Fiona, then. Get Fiona to help."
"Fiona's busy with her senior project. She's supposed to take the candidates for that empty Governor's seat on a tour of the school today, remember?"
As if anyone could forget about the stupid election. Fiona had spent the last week announcing loudly that the advisory board had nominated candidates, then shoving flyers about it in everyone's faces. These were usually followed by chirpy sentences intended to impress on everyone how very important and relevant the politics were.
"The Board of Governors decides on the appointment or suspension of the Headmaster!"
"The Board of Governors approves the hire and retention of new teachers!"
"The Board of Governors sets curriculum standards for each upcoming school year! So, if you're tired of abstinence-only education, tell your parents to vote!"
Blah, blah, blah.
Amy had even agreed to wear a "Malfoy for Governor!" pin just to make her shut up.
"Whatever," Amy said, and pulled her covers over her head.
Alex ripped them off of her. "Oh, no you don't. Get up, Amy."
The cold air hit her legs and all of the sudden Amy could smell herself. Alex was right; she was starting to stink, and she reeked of cowardice. It turned her stomach.
"Why do you even care?" she snapped at Alex. "What does it matter to Theodore Knott if his trophy wife passes Transfiguration?"
Alex recoiled, obviously hurt, and Amy almost felt bad. Almost.
Then Alex stood up straighter and fortified herself with a huff. "You know what, Amy? Fuck you. Fuck you. Just because you've decided to quit on life or whatever doesn't mean everyone else has. Fucking bitch."
And then she stormed out, slamming the door behind her.
Amy stewed in her own stink and shame for about twenty more minutes, then got up and took a shower so scalding and harsh that her skin was still lobster-red when she pulled on her stupid uniform with its stupid skirt and tie and "Malfoy for Governor!" pin.
She found Alex in the Common Room with her Transfiguration work spread over two tables, apparently stressed to the point of tears.
Amy shoved her hands in her pockets. "I'm going to the kitchens," she declared, her voice stiff and petulant even to her own ears.
Alex wiped angry tears from her cheek. "Well, bully for you, Amy."
"Do you want me to bring you back anything? Then we can look at your paper."
The silence between them stretched on so long that Amy nearly turn back to her dormitory, to her bed. Then Alex cleared her throat. "See if they have any of those marshmallow things left, yeah?"
"Yeah," Amy repeated in what she hoped was a diplomatic tone, and left.
She got distracted before she'd even made it to Hufflepuff territory, much less anywhere near the kitchens. Because of course she did.
Before she knew it, she stood in front of the open door to one of the Potions' classrooms, watching as Snape delivered a vicious tongue-lashing to some first or second-year Gryffindor boy.
He levelled the boy with a look that would have destroyed what little sense of self-worth Amy still possessed, had it been directed at her.
"Orange, Weasley," he snapped, ladling some potion out of the cauldron and letting it splash back down so that everyone could see. "Orange. Tell me, boy, does anything penetrate that thick skull of yours? Didn't you hear me say, quite clearly, that only one rat spleen was needed? Didn't I state plainly that a dash of leech juice would suffice? What do I have to do to make you understand, Weasley?"*
She wondered if maybe he wouldn't be quite such an asshole, under different circumstances. Perhaps humiliating 11-year-olds was just his way of chafing against a life two sizes too small.
A few Slytherins in the back giggled. The boy looked close to tears. Then the bell rang.
Snape Vanished the contents of the boy's cauldron and called out homework over the end-of-class din of scraping chairs and cleaning-up. The students seemed impossibly young as they passed her, featherless little fledglings incapable of flight, and she wondered whose brilliant idea it had been to give them wands and make them orphans.
When the last one had left, Snape caught sight of her loitering pointlessly by the doorway and issued one of his hmph noises. "I ought to make you wear a bell."
He wasn't so scary, really, in the light of day.
Snape leaned against his desk and raised an eyebrow at her. "Well? What are you doing here?"
She opened her mouth to make up some transparent excuse about whether he needed any more grading done, then closed it again. "I…I don't really know," she confessed.
He sighed. "Well of course not, Bartleby."
It occurred to her suddenly that perhaps not all…romantic entanglements (is that what they had?) were as awkward as this one, or as constrained. It wasn't as though he could ask her for a drink at the Hog's Head. There wasn't any shared interest or work gossip to discuss over the tops of their butterbeers. She didn't have some cute little rented flat she could invite him up to, afterwards.
They weren't equals.
Of course, if they were, there wouldn't be any of this furtive, forbidden thrill, either.
"You got the time wrong," she found herself blurting out.
Brilliant, Scrivener. Well done.
"Excuse me?" His tone was glacial; low and dangerous.
"In Diagon Alley. The time. We were there at twelve, but your owl actually said two. That's why my parents were late. Or seemed late. They weren't, actually."
He tipped his chin up slightly and gave her a long, hard look. It was the kind of look that made her sure they were playing some game without a name or rulebook.
"My mistake," he finally said.
He was lying, but how she knew or what she was supposed to do with that information, she had no idea. So she closed the door behind her, locked it with a flick of her wand, and took three steps toward him.
He'll respond to that with something witty and disparaging and rude, because, God, he could be so bristly, so touch-me-not. But it won't stop her from taking a fourth step toward him, and then they'll be clutching at each other again, right there in the Potions' classroom
He'll find her wet and ready for him when his hand sneaks under her knickers like a thief in the night.
"Fuck" he'll pant against her ear, his voice hot and ragged. "You feel – "
And whatever he was going to say will melt into a snarl as her hand does some sneaking of its own.
She'll be fascinated by the smooth, silk-over-steel feel of his cock in her hand.
Then they'll jump guiltily away from one another as some moron knocks on the door to whine about his grade, or ask about the twelve uses of moonstone, or whatever reason students have for seeing their professors beyond conducting illicit affairs.
Snape will allow his fingers to trail surreptitiously over the back of Amy's hand even as he's opening the door to admit the unwanted visitor.
She will gasp audibly at that, because there's no reason such a simple touch should make her knees melt like that, and there's no reason she should be so...so stricken with him. But it does, and she is.
On a sunny Friday in June, just before final exams, Professor Kettleburn took them to a seasonal pond at the edge of the forbidden forest and told them to think about it for a while.
"Think about what?" said a prissy Ravenclaw, wrinkling her nose.
"Life," was what he said.
So Amy stood around the pond and thought about life for a while, but nothing particularly profound came to mind. In just over a week, she'd be free of Hogwarts forever.
Fiona sidled up to her, a stack of hand-outs clutched to her chest. "MALFOY, BONES, OR PREWETT – WHO WANTS THE BEST FOR YOUR SCHOOL?" screamed the hand-outs in all-capitals.
Fiona shoved one in her hand. "You know Snape's been asking after you for like, a week, right?"
Amy knew.
And, God, if it wasn't flattering to make him wait.
"So what's he want?" Fiona pressed, the nosy bitch.
Amy shushed her as Kettleburn started lecturing.
He told them about all sorts of critters that lived in the pond, even the boring ones. He talked about microorganisms and algae, insects and invertebrates. He talked about snails and tadpole shrimp and all the other little creatures who'd stopped evolving somewhere around the Mesozoic era because they figured, hey, swimming around in a muddy pond without a brain was as good a way as any to live.
He talked about the interconnectedness of all life — the beauty of it — and how every living thing, from the greatest Wizard to the lowliest bit of pond scum, was part of a whole. Life began in a puddle like the one at their feet, he told them. Life, with all its complications and swollen nodes of pain and shimmering, ephemeral joy, had begun so simply.
Amy could sense her classmates shooting looks at one another, wondering why Kettleburn was talking about bugs and philosophy instead of drilling them on unicorns and acromantula and whatever else they'd be likely to need for their exams.
"Um, Professor?" began one of the Ravenclaws tentatively.
"Yes, Mr. Fawcett?"
"Will this be on the test?"
Kettleburn gave a long-suffering sigh and closed his eyes with a pained expression.
But Amy, for whatever reason, found herself interested. In fact, this was the first time in over a year she'd been interested in any schoolwork at all.
"What's this one?" she asked, pointing down into the shallow edges of the pond. A four-inch creature, something like a crab or a lobster, sat passively in the water, waiting for something interesting to happen. It looked like a rejected Slytherin mascot, all pewter grey with muddy green spots. It was beautiful.
"Well spotted, Miss Scrivener," said Kettleburn, peering into the water. "That may be the only Magical creature in here: The Mackled Malaclaw. Go ahead and pick him up. He's quite harmless. Just grab him by the carapace—no, Miss Scrivener, that is not the carapace — yes, there — good. Hold him up for everyone to see."
Although she wasn't at all sure the Malaclaw wanted to be looked at, she did as Kettleburn asked and held him up.
She promptly dropped him back into the pond with an "Ouch!"
"You've been bitten!" Kettleburn boomed, snatching up her hand to examine the wound. He couldn't have sounded more delighted. "Gather around, class! The bite of the Mack — Stop taking notes and pay attention, Shepard—the bite of the Mackled Malaclaw is a singular one in that it has the unlikely side-effect of burdening the victim with bad luck for up to, but not exceeding, an entire week!" he lectured happily.
Lovely. Brilliant. Just bloody dandy.
"I thought you said he was 'quite harmless,'" groused Amy.
"Ah! Ten points to Slytherin! I think you've spotted the great irony of the thing. Yes, normally they are quite harmless. One needs to have exceedingly bad luck to get bitten in the first place!" said Kettleburn. "Miss Scrivener, do be advised that the bad luck generally begins mild and escalates after a few days."
There was probably some kind of idiom for this. Bad luck begets bad luck, maybe?
Kettleburn kept her after class and gave her a note excusing her from every single class, exam, and responsibility for the entire upcoming week with the assurance that she was better off avoiding magic for the time being.
"I know you're back on the list to take the NEWTs," Kettleburn said, handing her the note. "But I'm sure you can take them in the next round, instead. That's, erm, probably for the best, in any case. I'll speak to Sev…" he trailed off, apparently thinking better of that plan. "I'll speak to the Headmaster about it."
This meant there were no more classes left.
None.
No final exams.
No NEWTs.
In one week, her probation would be over and no more Hogwarts.
Amy positively beamed.
The next day, Amy discovered a rather interesting book in the library called Enchantments for Editors. She had been reading it for nearly an hour, and scratching her Malaclaw bite absently, when she was interrupted by Myron.
He whirled into the library in a dramatic flurry of robes and cleared his throat in a most distressingly Snape-like way. "You are to locate Miss Scrivener," he drawled in his best impression of Snape. "I imagine you'll find her in the library, reading something deeply boring about sentence sprawl."
Amy snapped the book shut, scowling, and tried to hide the title. "And why are you to find Miss Scrivener?"
"She is to be my eyes and ears, Mr. Wagtail, as you embark on this ill-advised publicity stunt."
"She is?"
"She will be escorting you to your meeting to ensure you represent the school well."
"She will?"
"Your actions reflect on this school and this House – my House. You will not say anything critical of the school, the Dumbledore administration, or any staff member, including myself. You are not to appear anything less than deeply fond of the giant squid, for that matter. Rest assured, Miss Scrivener will tell me if you neglect to mind these directions."
Amy, who didn't much like being pimped out as Snape's own person snitch, frowned. "Well, this is all news to me," she said.
Myron shrugged, dropping the impression. "Just Snape being Snape. I've a meeting in the Three Broomsticks with someone from the Prophet. She's doing a piece on my senior project. Want to come?'
Yes, Amy did want to come. She hadn't been to Hogsmeade all year, and Myron's pass was just the ticket she needed.
"One final thing," Myron said as they left the library, resuming his impression of Snape, "You are to remain on topic – is that understood?"
The trouble was, the reporter didn't seem to want to stay on topic at all. She was already waiting for them in the pub, a gigglewater at one elbow and an acid-green quill at the other. "Rita Skeeter, Jr. correspondent," she'd said by way of introduction, and shook both their hands aggressively.
"So, how long have the two of you been together?" was her first question.
Myron and Amy exchanged a discomfited look and assured her they were just friends. When Amy said something along the lines of 'I'm not dating anyone,' the acid green quill zoomed illegibly across the parchment with an energy that quite impressed Amy. She'd read a great deal about quill enchantments while copying that MLA handbook for Snape.
"Ignore the quill, dear," was all Ms. Skeeter had to say about it. Then she bought Amy the first of several mulled meads.
In retrospect, Amy really should have known better.
Ms. Skeeter asked them both several leading questions about the school, especially Dumbledore's leadership and the issues of safety and transparency. She spoke very quickly, except for one or two words per sentence whose vowels were drawled out in a fairly obnoxious manner:
"Would you say the school is, at present, a saaaafe place for students?"
"Can the Headmaster be truuuusted to tell parents the truth about what happens behind his walls?"
"Is Dumbledore faaair in his treatment of students from different Houses and backgrounds?"
"What are students saaaaying about the upcoming Board of Governors' eleeeeeection?"
She seemed especially interested in Amy's answers, which involved a lot of "Er's" and "Um's" as she watched the quill vomit out unreadable text.
Eventually Myron, apparently desperate to get back on the topic of his senior project, pulled a Memoriball out of his pocket. Skeeter couldn't have been more delighted.
"Ah – I understand there's been quiiiiiite the trouble with those this year," she said, her quill scratching madly at her elbow. "On a scale of one to ten, how seeeeerious would you consider the Memoriball problem at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardryyyyyy?"
Myron, sensing a path of least resistance, shrugged with false innocence. "How about I show you?" he asked, proffering the Memoriball for all to use.
Miss Skeeter, obviously no stranger to them, placed a finger on the odd little object and closed her eyes. Myron bade Amy to do the same, and, reluctantly, she did. She closed her eyes and experienced a curious sensation of falling and spinning, not unlike Floo travel. When she opened them again, she found herself in a different pub – or, rather, the memory of a different pub – one not at all like the Three Broomsticks.
At the front of the club was a stage, and on the stage was a band. Smack dab in the center was Myron Wagtail, allowing the final chord of a song to reverberate on a curious, cello-like instrument that appeared to be connected via cords to several black boxes of Muggle origin. The club around him exploded in cheers and applause. Myron, sweaty and exhilarated, grabbed an odd-looking device from the stand before him and screamed into it, 'THANK YOU, LONDON!"
More cheers, screaming applause.
"THIS NEXT ONE IS DEDICATED TO A FRIEND I KNEW IN SCHOOL. AND A ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR!"
Music filled the bar. It went something like this:
Sometimes I feel I've got to
Run away I've got to
Get away
From the pain that you drive into the heart of me
The love we share
Seems to go nowhere
And I've lost my light
For I toss and turn I can't sleep at night
Once I ran to you (I ran)
Now I'll run from you
This tainted love you've given
I give you all a boy could give you
Take my tears and that's not nearly all
Oh tainted love
Tainted love**
Amy didn't even look at the reporter. She was too busy staring at Myron in pure, unadulterated astonishment. "What the…what the hell is this?" she shouted at him.
Myron looked endearingly boyish as he smiled. "My senior project" he shouted back. "I'm in a Muggle cover band!"
It took Amy so long to adjust to this new information that she didn't even protest when the reporter took a picture of her and Myron, nor did she read the whatever-it-was that Skeeter gave her before signing it. Instead, the entire walk back to the Castle and the dorms, she asked questions.
"What did you say your band's name was?" she asked Myron for the umpteenth time.
"The Wired Sisters – because, you know, we're wired."
"They'll probably call you the Weird Sisters," Amy said, shaking her head in disbelief.
He laughed. "That's not bad – kinda catchy."
"So that's what you've been doing for your senior project? Going to London? Playing music? For Muggles?" No matter how many times she clarified the basics with him, she found she still couldn't quite believe it.
"That's right," he said.
"For Muggles?"
Myron stopped just in front of the entrance to the Slytherin Common Room. "I know what you're thinking, Amy. All that pure-blood stuff. That's why I didn't tell anyone. But these Muggles…they know what they're doing. I mean, Warbeck was the last person in our world to do anything innovative with music since Vivaldi! We're still playing on acoustics, but the Muggles have these amazing instruments. And the crowds…I just…I can't spend the rest of my life playing weddings and funerals, you know?"
She got the sense he'd been waiting to say this to someone for a long time.
"Your dad's going to be pissed," was all she could think to say. "Doesn't he want you to work at Gringotts?"
"My dad wants a lot of things," Myron said. "Maybe seeing my name in the paper will make him think differently. If my name ever gets in the paper. That reporter didn't seem very focused, did she?"
Amy shrugged. "Maybe It'll all come together when it's published."
"Maybe."
"How'd you even get in contact with that woman? Slughorn?" Amy asked.
Myron frowned, looking oddly discomfited. "That's the weird thing – It was Professor Snape's idea."
"Snape?" Amy repeated, looking over at him.
"Yeah, he set the whole thing up. Weird, innit?"
"Huh," said Amy.
Like she said, she really should have known better.
"Hey, Myron?" she asked.
"Yeah?"
"You go on without me. I just realized I left my watch at the Three Broomsticks. I'm going to go back and get it." This was a lie, of course.
"Sure," said Myron. "You want me to walk with you?"
"No, I'll be fine. See you later."
"Alright, bye."
As soon as he was safely in the Common Room, Amy turned on her heel and walked the familiar steps to Snape's private quarters.
Snape stood crucified in the doorway, his arms braced against either side of the threshold, and looked down his great ugly nose at her.
This was the fourth time and final she'd lingered outside his private quarters, and this time he'd opened the door before she even had the chance to knock. He was strangely human in his shirtsleeves and trousers; the most exposed she'd ever seen him.
On his left forearm, his Dark Mark stood out sharply against the whiteness of his skin. It made her think of words like transgression, absolution, fate. It made her want to trace the lines of causality from the immediacy of here and now all the way back to their foggy origins.
It made her want to touch him.
"So. You came." He sounded as though he were internally debating whether he shouldn't just tell her to get the fuck out of his sight. Now.
Amy smiled faintly, emboldened by mulled mead still sloshing around in her gut. "I hope to, anyway."
He moved silently aside with an air of surrender, then closed the door behind her once she'd entered.
"Would you like a drink?" His tone was stiffly polite, almost formal, the same way her parents spoke to each other after a fight.
"Sure," she said, setting her schoolbag down on his couch.
Snape must have been doing something fancy with their drinks – adding a twist of lemon, or a dash of contraceptive – because he took so long in making them that she found herself wandering in his rooms, restless. Everything seemed new somehow, imbued with meaning and history. Perhaps that red book in Latin was bought with Abraxas Malfoy's gold. Maybe Snape's lover – the one she, Amy, is nothing like – bought him the pocket-watch sitting neatly on the coffee table.
Before she knew it, she'd opened the door to his bedroom and was peering in.
Well.
She could almost believe Slytherin himself once slept here.
Almost.
A massive lake-window dominated one wall, its murky green light casting shadows on Snape's side-table, his trunk, his bed. This latter was huge, the sheets black, and the four posters adorned with serpentine woodwork. Tiny emerald chips glinted in her direction – the snakes' eyes.
It was an intimidating bed.
More inviting was a plush carpet cushioning the stone floor. She kicked off her shoes and socks, then stepped to the center of the room and curled her toes into the fibers. As she looked down at her own feet where they nestled into the rug, two boots appeared in her line of sight.
She looked up to find Snape offering her a glass, his expression queer, as if slightly puzzled by the sight of this teenaged girl standing in his bedroom. His fingers brushed hers as she took the whiskey from his hand.
Amy almost expected him to raise his glass – to clink it against hers – and then wanted to laugh at herself. Because what in Merlin's name would they even be toasting?
Choice, she thought.
Snape downed his drink expertly, no stranger either to hard alcohol or potions, and she watched the complicated architecture of muscles move as he swallowed, his Adam's apple falling down, then rising back up. He set his glass on the bedside table with a muted clink.
He stood very close to her, and didn't have to reach far to finger the "Malfoy for Governor!" pin attached to her lapel.
"Were you wearing this during the interview?" he asked.
She blinked. What an odd question. "Oh, yeah. I must have. I'd forgotten it was even on."
His hand slid off the pin and down over the fabric of her shirt, just barely ghosting over the contour of a breast.
"It was…nice of you," she said. "Having me go with Myron to Hogsmeade. I'd really missed it."
The corner of his mouth twitched at that, threatening either a smile or a sneer, and if there was something like regret in his look, she chaulked it up to the fact that they shouldn't have been doing this.
He nodded to the tumbler in her hand. "I haven't poisoned the drink, you know," he told her.
Amy felt herself smile again. "I know," she said, and raised the glass to her lips. It burned her sinuses going down and, while her eyes were still pinched together against the sensation, she felt Snape take the empty glass from her hand and heard him set it down by its twin on the side table.
She became aware of her heart beating, whooshing too loudly in her ears.
Lub-dub.
Lub-dub.
Snape was giving her a strange look again.
Lub-dub.
lub-dub.
Every beat that passed increased the probability that she would lose her nerve or that he would do something weird. She hurried to kiss him before either had a chance to happen, all her inexperience evident in the way her teeth clacked against his. He didn't seem to mind.
His chest felt different without the many-layered teaching robe covering it. Harder, and more tense. She plucked at the buttons of his shirt, undressing him with fumbling hands.
He was thin and hard, all lean muscle and bone, with a slight dusting of black hair over his chest. A knotted scar stretched across his ribs on his left side, the relic of some long-ago duel. His was a body made for spying and for war, and she knew, when he pulled away from the kiss and looked at her, that she must look silly and enraptured by the sight of him, with all his history written there on his flesh. He didn't seem to mind that, either.
And it's funny, because for all her near-virginal disbelief that they were really doing this, they were. And it was so very easy. It was easy to shed their clothes, and it was easy to surrender to him as he walked her backwards until the backs of her knees hit the edge of the bed. Then she was sitting, lying down, and he was crawling on top of her, and none of it was very difficult, after all.
His skin touched hers in all sorts of unseen places, but she found herself distracted by his gaze where he stared at her again, searching her face for the slightest indication of pleasure or pain as he squeezed her breasts, toyed with her nipples, rubbed her cunt against the bony fulcrum of his thigh. The intensity of it made her breath catch in her chest, and for a moment she wanted to crawl out of her own skin, because she's never been looked at so intimately before in her life.
"Does…" she began tentatively.
"Yes?" He quirked his head minutely, his voice strangely labored.
"Does it have to be…does it have to be quite so bright in here?"
He plunged them into near darkness with a whispered "Nox."
In the gloomy half-light of the window, she became aware of all sorts of novel sensations.
Not just of the aching in her quim, but of the thousand other gentle, lovely feelings in parts of her body she'd never thought of as sexual. The small hairs on the back of her neck, sliding against the soft fabric of Snape's pillow. The feel of his sheets under the soles of her feet, where they were anchored flat on the mattress. Snape's hand, just ghosting over the curve of her side. His breath feathering over the whorls of her ear.
"Say my name," he purred into her ear. "Say it."
Her tongue had already pressed to the roof of her mouth, seamlessly blending the S into the N, when she realized that wasn't what he'd meant at all. She abandoned the word and tried another:
"Sn…Severus."
"Yess…" he hissed. "Again."
She said it again, lingering on the sibilant S. "Severus."
He made her come with his mouth again, as he had the night after they'd seen the dragon.
Still buzzing and drunk from her orgasm, she barely registered what he was doing as he wiped his face discreetly on the corner of a sheet and crawled back up her body. Then his weight was settling over her, and one of his hands disappeared, snaking into the scant space between their bodies, and she snapped back to reality as she felt his cock at her slick folds, probing, sliding up and down.
"I – "
"Relax," he said, and eased forward.
Her lungs stuttered, and her body quivered under his. Then his mouth found hers, and he tasted of her – musky, and forbidden.
"Fuck," he moaned into her skin, then sank his teeth deliciously into the flesh of her shoulder.
She whimpered against the pressure, the fullness, the strangeness, as he pressed into her, filling her to the hilt.
Just as she was getting used to the sensation, he began to pull out of her, and the slow drag of flesh against flesh ravaged what little was left of coherent thought. His hips snapped forward again, and his public bone ground against her clit, and she found herself crying his name again.
"Severus!"
He began to rock in and out of her in earnest, with her cries punctuated here and there by the moist, carnal slap of those particularly hard thrusts that sent shockwaves pulsating across her clit. She was practically weeping now, her nerves overtaxed from the last orgasm even as a new one built. It's not painful, but it made her think of pain, and of a loss of control, and of the sound glass makes when it breaks.
And just when she's sure she will lose control and fall to pieces, Snape gathered her in his arms, pulling her tightly to him, the movement of his hips becoming hard and erratic.
"Fuck – God – you feel –" he hissed raggedly between breaths, and she was surprised to actually feel his orgasm flare inside her, and fill her, because –
His thumb found her clit, and made these circling motions, and –
"Ah!" Her hips bucked wildly, and a dull red filmed over her vision, and she had to screw her eyes shut and dig her nails into his back to anchor herself against the surge of sensation. It was like breaking glass, like losing herself in hairline fissures, and shattering along the sharpest edges of pleasure.
His body collapsed on top of hers, heavy and slick with sweat, at once protective and confining. They lay joined like that for what felt like a long time, only breathing, waiting for the surge to recede. Then he rolled off of her, out of her, and she winced at the sudden slickness between her legs.
Amy's first coherent thought – when she could have a coherent thought, again, and was cognizant of the fact that Snape had already gotten up and began to dress – was that she should leave.
She didn't know much about relationships, but she doubted theirs was the kind that involved spending the night and having tea and toast together in the morning.
Still, the idea of going back to her dorm – to the same bed she'd slept in since she was eleven – made her stomach twist unpleasantly. So instead, after composing herself and dressing in his lavatory, she sat on the sill of Snape's lake-window and smoked one of his cigarettes.
That was usual policy, right? That one could stay for at least as long as it took to have a post-coital smoke?
Based on the muted gold filtering through the lake water, she suspected that the sun was just beginning to rise.
"What was your paper about?" she asked suddenly.
"My what?"
She could see through the window's reflection that he was standing, wearing nothing but his trousers as he leaned against the bedpost, but she couldn't make out his expression. She imagined, though, that it was sated. Like a wolf after the kill.
"Your paper," she repeated. "The one you submitted in Diagon Alley, around Easter."
He took a long time in answering, as if weighing how much to say. Then, tersely, "The properties of pomegranate seeds."
"Huh. I've never seen a recipe that called for the fruit. Leaves and flowers, yes, but never the actual fruit." She knew she was talking too much, but she couldn't help it.
"Well of course not, Bartleby. You failed Potions."
She gave him a look through the window and only continued when she figured she'd properly expressed her indignation. "So what are they used for? Pomegranates?"
He lit up his own cigarette before speaking. "Love Potions, Veritaserum, Binding Elixirs – anything involving compulsion."
"Like Persephone," she said suddenly.
"Whom?"
"Persephone – from the Greek myth. I don't remember it very well...I think Hades kidnaps her and takes her to the underworld. Her mum intercedes on her behalf, asking...Zeus? I think? to make Hades release her. But just before she gets the news that she's to be freed, she eats three pomegranate seeds. And...And she knows better. She does. But she's so frightened and starving, she can't resist. She eats three pomegranate seeds, so she has to stay in the underworld three months out of the year. She's goddess of the harvest or something, so, for those three months, nothing grows. It's winter..."
Amy realized she'd been talking to the window for a long time, uninterrupted.
She licked her lips and looked down at her cigarette. It was only half gone; she still had time. "Anyway, that's just what pomegranates reminded me of. It's not important. Just kind of a sad story."
"I haven't forced you to be here." There's just the slightest hint of defensiveness tinging his words.
She actually turned to face him, then, and found his eyes narrowed against the smoke coiling in the room. He took an aggressive drag of his cigarette, then let the smoke pour out his nostrils. His cigarette was about half-gone, too.
"I know," Amy said. "It wasn't supposed to be, like, a metaphor or anything. It's just what I thought of."
And the way he looked away from her and shook his head minutely, as if clearing away the cobwebs of some private musing, or answering his own question with a "no" or, just, well...something. It was so strange. And she wanted more than anything to ask what he was thinking.
But then the cigarette burned past the filter, nearly searing her fingers, and she dropped it in one of the empty glass tumblers on the bedside table.
"I should go," she said.
"You should," he agreed absently.
But Snape caught her lightly by the elbow as she passed. "Wait. Come here."
He pulled her to him and, in an odd gesture that spoke more of paternal than erotic affection, pressed his thin lips to her forehead.
Years later, she'll still be unnerved by the uncharacteristic tenderness of that action, and by the way it had seemed like the kind of apology you offer to someone you never expect to see again.
Years later, she'll still be struck that such tenderness can precede such betrayal.
* Taken from Canon - Snape says this to Neville in Prisoner of Azkaban.
** Tainted Love, a song originally composed by Ed Cobb, although I imagine Myron singing the Soft Cell version.