Note: this chapter turns dark and contains dubious consent and mature subject matter.
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Minerva doused the flames at once, her face flushed with the shame of losing control. Merlin. See what such speculations led to.
Knelt before the hearth, she Firecalled each of the other heads to warn them of Alecto's treatment of their students. It soothed her bristling temper to hear their gasps of dismay and indignation.
She hesitated before saying goodbye to Filius. "Would you mind very much keeping an eye on the three of them at dinner? I'd prefer to eat in my rooms, but I don't want them to feel they've been thrown to the Manticore."
"Of course," Filius said. "We need to take turns at this constant vigilance business. I can already imagine Alastor's spirit grumbling at me from beyond the grave for the way we let ourselves get caught flat-footed this morning. And I fear that's just a taste of things to come."
He gave her a bleak little smile. Alastor had been one of his favourite duelling partners, and during after-practise drinks would lead Filius in many a raunchy ballad, the kind you could roar if you were shite at singing. Filius' choral students would have combusted with glee if they'd ever had the chance to overhear those inebriated, squeaky, bellowing duets. Minerva knew most of the verses by heart. So did Horace, who had a soothing, if sometimes quavery, tenor - and had probably been the one, come to think of it, to teach Alastor the scandalous Hellfire Club rewrite of Henry VIII's 'Pastyme With Good Companye."
"Go on," Filius said, his green-tinted face retreating from the flames. "Get some rest, Minvera. I'll let you know if anything noteworthy happens at dinner."
Rest? She watched the fire go out. Hunger seemed beyond her, let alone 'rest.' Even the nice chop and side of braised greens appearing on her writing table failed to tempt her.
Plate cooling untouched, she stood at the parlour window as the last smoke-grey light darkened behind solid clouds. No candles or lamps blazed to life behind her. The room dimmed as the day did, and the evening added a layer of chill to the icicles forming around her heart. She didn't move, merely watched the sky fade behind panes of glass while berating herself for that sordid murmur of – Merlin, it wasn't even desire, surely? It was awareness, nothing more. It was confusion at the way Severus had transformed himself - no, revealed himself - as a powerful creature best-suited to be a weapon in a Dark Lord's hand. Perhaps, as in primitive ritual magic, Albus' murder had bestowed a certain quantity of the sacrificial victim's life force upon him, enabling Severus to distil the darkest parts of his soul, like the pure toxin at the heart of various poisons and remedies.
The problem was what to do about this 'awareness' now that he knew. She didn't want to risk being manipulated. He could mortify her in public, of course. That might almost be the best outcome. No one but herself would suffer, and she was sure whatever arbitrary heat jumped awake at sight of him would be extinguished under a drenching bucket of disgrace.
But perhaps (she drew her shawl closer and pulled the shutters to) perhaps she could turn this unfortunate revelation to advantage. (Oh God, such a foolhardy idea, why was she wasting time thinking about it?) Severus hadn't drawn attention to her weakness in front of the other staff, so either he disdained it as an older witch's ridiculous susceptibility to his power or – much more likely, given this was Severus – he planned to save the knowledge for later, when it could be used against her to devastating effect.
But was that all? Hadn't he deliberately implied something more by plucking Oldfellow and Ramchand and - the other one, Ingram - from Alecto's clutches and tossing them to her? The Carrows despised him. What if they took it into their foul heads to complain to the Dark Lord? (Minerva looked over at her dinner, grimaced, and banished it to the kitchens.) Was it so inconceivable that Severus had dangled a proposal, an oblique hint at the very least, in front of her? But why would he? No, she was making this up. That twisted sleep-borne heat was only the irrational pulse of a terrible dream, eroticising what she feared. Severus didn't think of her that way. He would not be flattered. And even if he was, even if the idea tempted him, it would be rash to assume he'd want to protect the students in return.
Still.
Depending on his reaction, it might give her something she sorely lacked: a bargaining tool. She had a new vulnerability to offer, which was only as good as the value he placed upon it. But it might be the very thing she'd been wracking her brains to come up with: an entry point, a way to influence Severus' behaviour. A bribe. Forget loyalty and decency and the lives of children. Carnal knowledge. Carnal ... humiliation.
As with his master, it came down to power.
He would have to want her first, of course. (If she couldn't stop thinking about this, then she ought to reason her way through how to make it happen.) Want her enough to honour any bargain. Want her willing, at least within the terms of any arrangement that made concessions to her side of things, when in fact he could force her and take what he wanted without fear of reprisal. He wasn't, Minerva hoped – would once have wagered without a second thought – interested in rape.
It would require planning. She couldn't overstep. She couldn't approach him until she had a better sense of what he saw when he looked at her – a pathetic, dried-up old Gryffindor or a proud woman bending to her desires, a conquest whose body and moral reputation would both be his to fuck. For a price.
Minerva McGonagall, no longer deputy headmistress but merely mistress.
Merlin, how disgusting. But this was the new Hogwarts. She would have to gather herself together. It could hardly be worse than the futility she felt every hour of the day, the seething rage that kept her awake at night, imagining the deaths of the Carrows, the triumph of the children, every one of whom, in the privacy of her own mind, survived.
Oddly enough, she hadn't yet considered killing Severus. She preferred a scenario in which he had to face them all, bound tight, his wand snapped in pieces, surrounded by the consequences of his betrayal, the hard, hurt lack of mercy from his former friends and colleagues.
She was, perhaps, as mad as a hatter. These were the maunderings of a woman with her back to the wall, a teacher whose care for her students would drive her to the brink of immoral acts.
And all of this, every fear, every hope of negotiation, would of course be an open book to Severus, a mental page he could rip out and set fire to any time he chose.
For a moment, Minerva leaned her forehead against the shutter, the wood cold on her brow. Then she pressed her fingertips hard under her cheekbones, sighed, and reached back to uncoil the long drape of her hair. She might as well grade essays in relative comfort. Time to light lamps and candles, sit close to the fire, and behave as if pedagogical standards meant anything.
Yet she was reluctant to dispel the gloom and chill, the undemanding silence. These days a preference for light and warmth tended to draw the wrong sort of attention. Wearily, she lit a single lamp, poured a thrifty finger of scotch, barely wetting the bottom of the glass, and sat down with her quill at the ready. The ludicrous fiction that Hogwarts operated according to classroom priorities might reassure a few students and provide plausible deniability to their overlords, but Minerva saw in it her own helplessness and hypocrisy. Even if she were able to lose herself in the familiarity of the material, she found it harder and harder to care.
She had brooded her way through seven essays and was presently losing patience with a third-year's desperately ungrammatical attempts to hide the fact that he hadn't done the reading, when someone knocked.
Minerva paused, shawl clenched in one fist, and stared into the candle flame. Then she rose and went to see who it was.
Severus entered without waiting to be invited and closed the door before she had a chance to. It felt like a declaration of intent, and she fell back before it, warily putting distance between them in case she needed to defend herself.
He gazed at her without speaking, and for all his self-control, a slight distortion of his features dented the rigid contours of his headmaster mask.
He was in her rooms. Snape, the viper in the walled garden, deadly and unrepentant. She wasn't afraid of him, but the sense of violation hovered, shuddering in the space between them. The cold impact of his magical potency and the freezing heat of his scorn confronted her, an enemy she wasn't quite prepared to face yet.
"Headmaster," she bit off, refusing to betray her nerves. "May I ask what it is you think you're – "
"No," Severus said, his voice quiet and wrathful. "You may not. You are a fool, Minerva. A bloody lunatic. Don't presume to act as if you have no idea why I'm here. I could ignore your foolishness, but I take it as a personal affront, and I would prefer to address this now."
So he was insulted. She was being reminded that her perception of her own womanliness failed to live up to the standards of a younger man whose dark star was in the ascendant, promising him all the social revenge and personal gratification he could take. Literally take. She glanced at Severus' hands. No wand. He was supremely confident. For good reason, she supposed. She raised her head and studied his narrow, accusing face. Like the rest of them, he'd lost weight. Scornfully, she wondered what had put him off his appetite, or if he were drawing sustenance from having bested them all, his greed assuaged by watching them eat their hearts out, starve their souls.
Not that Severus had started with a surplus he could afford to lose, of either flesh or heart. And after what had happened with Albus, it wouldn't do to contemplate the state of his soul.
"Cat got your tongue?" he snapped, still unaccountably angry.
"That was beneath you," Minerva said, although the irony was that nothing, really, was beneath him now. "I'm still waiting to hear why you've taken it upon yourself to invade my privacy."
The emotional disfigurement had faded from his sallow face, leaving a vacancy that was filled by that subtly breathtaking focus. She felt it, that frisson of awareness, the sudden tightening of her nerves in preparation and excitement. She refused to feel chagrin. If he probed her thoughts, she dared not shrink from him.
Severus' breathing slowed. She had the distinct impression he was holding something back. His glance took in the single candle, the scatter of scrolls, and lingered on her unbound hair.
"So, Minerva. There's something you want from me, I take it." He spoke so softly, almost caressingly, that it couldn't help but sound seductive.
She stood straight and let the possibility whisper through her. Perhaps she'd been wrong. Perhaps he was more susceptible – perhaps he was hungrier – than she'd realised.
"You seem to believe there is," she said dryly. "Or is there something you want from me, Headmaster?"
"Is this a guessing game, then?" He narrowed his eyes, drawing attention to the power behind them. He could discover anything he wished to know without recourse to asking, and he was apparently impatient enough to remind her of that fact.
"Want? From you? For the students to be safe from harm, of course."
"And you think the way to guarantee this is to score off Alecto Carrow when she's disciplining troublemakers?" Ignoring her outraged glare, he swept past her to the fire. "All you've accomplished with your actions is to ensure she targets the students simply to spite you."
He turned, and she got a noseful of the scents clinging to his robes, mingling with the heat of the flames, the smell of snuffed candles and faint day-old sweat stronger than the rest. More evidence that he'd been burning the midnight oil and probably hadn't changed his clothes since the previous day.
"So what would you have me do, Headmaster? The last time we brought our concerns to you, we were told to mind our own business."
"Advice that obviously went in one ear and out the other. Don't make the mistake of coming to me expecting support for your resistance to the Dark Lord. I'm in a foul mood at the moment, and you being obtuse isn't helping. So with that out of the way," he cut her off before she could get a word in edgewise, "stop wasting my time."
Ah. He wanted her to choose.
Minerva wasn't a woman who could shrink before anyone with tear-filled eyes or wring her hands and beg. Severus wouldn't have believed it anyway, and she suspected he wouldn't be here if that was what he wanted. But the terms of the encounter were changing so rapidly she was unsure of her footing. "I didn't invite you here. I don't know, under the circumstances, what you expected to find that would make it worth your while."
"An answer, Minerva. I do expect that."
He stayed where he was, his back to the fire and his face veiled in shadow. He hadn't lifted the gloom by lighting more lamps, but the knowledge that Severus was at home in darkness had by now gone past the point of cliché to become a symptom of the disease they should have recognised long before it took over every molecule of his soul.
Perhaps not every molecule. Wasn't she banking on the slim hope that he possessed some sense of vanity, of self-regarding honour? That he would rather trade than take? Put like that, it was evident he was right. She was a fool.
The hush in the room, the subdued snap of flames, the self-contained, inimical stillness of his body, the coiled-snake intensity of his magic, all flowed together into a long silence. He was leaving it up to her to decide. Her involuntary exposure had been alluded to but not named. She could deny it by saying nothing and show him to the door. She was fairly sure he intended to let the subject die, buried beneath his contempt, if she failed to take advantage of his presence here tonight. He wouldn't speak of it again, but he would also never again allow this level of dangerous negotiation.
He had promised her nothing. Yet, on a hunch, Minerva ran a hand through her hair to make it ripple down her back and walked to the cupboard where she kept her liquor. She poured one for Severus and refreshed her own, then carried the glass to him.
The scotch swirled and glowed, a cup of liquefied fire. This close, her new awareness of Severus' body beneath the shrouding robes – so entirely the opposite of Albus' indulgence in colour and sparkle – leaped the short distance between them, flashing over her with feather-touches, a prickle of suspense in the crease of her thighs, the tips of her breasts.
He watched without comment as she took a sip, then handed her his glass and said, "Drink."
Minerva conveyed her opinion with a rude eyebrow, but she did as he said, helping herself to a portion and waiting a few seconds before handing it back to him to scorn or accept. He delayed a moment longer, watching her, then took the glass and turned it until he could place his lips where hers had been. He drank the whole thing off in three long swallows, then said, "Your bedroom, I think," propelling them into sexual territory without a by-your-leave.
Minerva quaffed her own scotch, somehow finding the fortitude not to hex him on the spot.
"You expect my compliance," she said tartly, "even though you offer nothing?"
Severus stepped right up to her, face to face, forcing her to withstand uncomfortably close quarters. The skin around his eyes was soot-smudged with exhaustion, a highwayman's strip of shadow borne of long hours lying in wait. Nervy, simmering tension slowly rose between them like firewhisky in a fluted glass. A challenge rose with it, as if they had each laid a hand on their wands.
"I'm here," he said, sour and distinct, "because of the opportunity presented to me. An opportunity that has nothing to do with children. I have no interest in simply taking, but neither will I lower myself to cat and mouse games. This isn't a bargain wherein you treat yourself as payment, a condition of good behaviour to be met. I don't consider you a hostage. You are Minerva McGonagall, a professor in my employ, not a procurable and convenient cunt who sells herself for favours. Especially the unrealistic kind."
The crudely worded pronouncement hit Minerva like the claws of a predator ripping her composure from throat to knees.
She stayed still until the desire to throw him out of her rooms receded. "Really, Headmaster. Do you truly expect me to fornicate with you simply to pander to your lust for power? To give the devil a free ride, without some assurance that my 'cunt,' as you so tactfully put it, will buy my charges every scrap of protection I lose by doing so?"
She saw his nostrils flare at that word on her lips, and he made an aborted move toward her.
The heel of her hand caught him in the chest. "I wish to see whatever comfort I give you reflected in whatever comfort you can guarantee them."
"You forget, they are even more my charges than they are yours." Severus reached up then, and Minerva resolutely did not flinch when he lifted a lock of her hair. "I repeat: no promises. I have one vow left that I am sworn to honour in this life, and it is to that master I remain faithful."
"That monster, you mean," she said, unable to help herself.
"If you say so," Severus murmured, smiling ironically. "Who am I to question the moral clarity of the most judgemental of Gryffindors?"
They stood in silence a few seconds longer. The long drape of Severus' robes flowed from his shoulders like a heavy, uninflected outpouring of guilt, merging with the mystery of his body, lean and expectant and emanating a subtle demand. Provoked by hearing 'cunt' applied to herself, she was free to think 'cock' in relation to him.
"Well, Minerva?" he said quietly, cutting her speculations short.
"So you'll give me nothing else?"
"Apart from my undivided sexual attention? Only the knowledge that I will keep your concerns at the forefront of my mind. Or," he said in a flat voice, dropping the lock of hair, "I can go about my business and leave you to finish yours."
Meaning the opportunity would never come again. Certainly not in any way that would benefit her.
Her mind went blank at the intolerable crossroads. God, could she? She slipped past him, allowing their bodies to brush, and said, "This way," in a voice so clear and austere you would never have known her throat was dry.
Her room was even colder, but Severus gave a negligent wave of his hand and the chopped logs in the fireplace hissed briefly, then started to crackle. Minerva didn't go to him, or he to her. He had her disrobe entirely, standing at a distance as her boots were placed by the wall, her outer robes and skirt and underthings piled untidily on the dresser. She laid her glasses on top, then flinched when he summoned a dressing gown, holding it out to her to drape over her nakedness. A single candle caught and stretched into a high, bright point, enough to see by but not enough to expose them to mutual ridicule.
Not that Minerva felt the least bit ridiculous. She stood before him in the silent, draughty castle, a site of magic and learning that had long felt like home but which had lately become a home of nightmares only, a penitentiary where the impenitents made the innocent suffer.
Severus removed not a stitch. Minerva held herself composed, dignity the only form of defiance she could manage, the lapels of her dressing gown sliding over her nipples in token modesty but leaving her bush on display. The soft, consoling weight of her hair hung against her rigid back.
The candle reflected hints of gold over their silent faces, the comparative blackness of their hair, and the edge of the counterpane she'd smoothed that very morning with no idea she would soon be inviting violation. On the blank wall by the headboard, an oval of comforting light wavered like the last hazy illusion of a time when his presence here might have been welcome.
Severus didn't move. His head was tilted down, his expression unreadable, but some fierce emotion struggled to break through his self-control, she was sure of it. She didn't think it was mockery, nor yet disappointment. From the placement of shadows on his face, she would have guessed, against all the evidence, sadness. Or perhaps she sought to find in those hard, familiar lines the same thing she felt in that moment. Because it was there, sadness. It coursed in a steady undercurrent beneath her loathing and anger, and it had been there since Albus died at Severus' hand.
Then his hand – not that one, not the side bearing the Mark of betrayal and murder – reached out slowly, as if to let her see and prepare herself. She waited, remote. His fingers traced a path through the air, not quite touching as they travelled from her navel up over the peak of her right nipple, hovering at the gap in her robes, finally coming to rest on the bony indent between her breasts.
She started. His fingers were ice-cold.
At her flinch, his expression narrowed and darkened. Bloody hell. At this stage, to have the game fail because she didn't play well enough would ensure all the shame and none of the advantage.
"Headmaster, your hands are freezing."
In a low voice, veiled like his face, with that same hint of suppressed emotion behind it, he said, "Then why don't you warm them for me, Professor."
One moment's stillness, then Minerva pulled her gown aside, took his hand, and guided it down beneath her breast, shaping his palm to its luxurious weight. His lips tightened, and his gaze acquired that remote, almost threatening focus, consuming and inscrutable enough that she couldn't even be sure he was pleased. She reached for his other hand, which he surrendered after a moment's unwillingness, his wand sliding up into the lining of his sleeve. She pressed her advantage, forcing him to cradle her left breast, her hands over his, his long fingers raising goosebumps on her skin.
She couldn't bring herself to go farther. A nauseating heat and rapid, relentless patter of distress stirred half-formed fantasies of shredding the surface of his mask, the skin of his face, pulling him as off-balance as she was, punishing him for not being loyal, not being salvaged by charitable deeds, not being the man she'd worked with for years. For being this embodiment of icy, unsentimental magnetism, a word she would never have associated with petty-minded, pride-sensitive Severus Snape, the glowering student who'd been elevated to the title of potions master by an act of Dumbledore. An act of faith that had backfired on the true headmaster in a conflagration of green spell light, blood-spattered betrayal, and a seismic shift in the balance of power.
Aching with memory and at the limits of what self-respect would allow, Minerva inhaled deeply, not caring that it would make her breasts swell into the murderer's hands. She needed the oxygen. In response, Severus squeezed, his thumbs brushing the flat circles of her nipples, his nails scraping the small buds into standing out.
A spasm of excitement jabbed her low in the abdomen. Her hands dropped from his, clenching into fists. Severus squeezed harder, monitoring her reaction as he rolled a nipple between finger and thumb. When the pinch grew slightly painful and flared with the sharp twist he applied, Minerva had to choke down the indignant gasp of let go of me.
He did, and for a moment regarded her with no visible sign of desire. "Perhaps it would be better if you were to lie down."
She waged a brief battle against the temptation to snap, "Thank you, but I'd rather be degraded standing up," only what was the use? She would have liked nothing better than to burrow under the blankets, summon a book, and settle in – alone – to forget this whole depressing episode. Perhaps, without knowing it, she'd already passed the last peaceful evening she would ever enjoy in her own rooms. Oh, she could stand on principle and send him away, but all she'd accomplish would be a sleepless night spent berating herself for her own cowardice.
Regal with disgust, she drew her dressing gown together and crossed to the bed. It was her bed, damn it. She shouldn't have to stand before it as if fording some tumultuous stream, on the other side of which lay no relief from pursuit, only imminent penetration and cold fingers at her nipples. And Severus' black, unforthcoming stare.
Swearing silently, Minerva climbed into the middle of the bed and arranged herself on her back, thinking that she was too old to be cast in the role of ravished virgin. It almost made her get up again to lecture Severus for taking this sham to extremes, for stubbornly clinging to his ridiculous imposture of a melodramatic gobshite.
But he was, he always had been, and this wasn't just a feud between rival Houses. The mattress dipped, and a wave of warmth curled around her as he renewed the charm. She ignored it. Refusing to look at him was almost as childish as losing her temper, but she couldn't bear to watch him crawl across her bed.
"Posing for a sarcophagus, are we?" Severus said with distaste. "The sainted queen in effigy? If you expect me to rape you so that you may demonstrate the power of virtue above all, you seriously misunderstand what we're doing here."
Minerva tightened her jaw, afraid of what might come out of her mouth if she opened it. She kept her eyes on the ceiling, but it made no difference. His voice echoed off it and descended upon her.
"Make room for me."
Reluctantly, she spread one leg, then the other. The mattress joggled again, and she shifted around to shake off the sweep of something soft over her feet. A weight settled, and there was a nudge at her thighs. When she made herself look, Severus was kneeling in the open V she'd created, his robes spread around him like those of a medieval prince at his own coronation, bent in affected humility to accept the crown. His boots looked uncouth and vaguely threatening on the counterpane, and the quantities of black, pooling fabric enhanced the sense of a power hovering over her, heavy enough to blot her out.
However, his expression was merely one of annoyance. "So this is how it's to be, is it?"
It really wasn't possible to spit in someone's face while lying down. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought you were in charge of this seduction, Headmaster."
His icy silence nearly quenched the warming charm. "If you've decided to play games, Minerva, remember who it is makes the rules." He rested a hand on his flies. "If you don't want to fuck me, now would be the time to say so."
God of her father, how she loathed his trick of turning the decision back on her and forcing her to choose every step of the way.
Bedded in the waves of her hair, she sighted down the white length of her body, her breasts slipping luxuriously from under the lapels of her dressing gown like soft-sided custards, her legs extending to either side, slender and luminous atop the black lake.
"Tell me," she said, matching her voice to her cool, supine body. "What happens to the students if I say no?"
Severus' cock was out in the open now, held almost protectively in the curve of his palm. He was half-hard, and from this angle looked thick. His steady frown, the one that assessed through the lens of what he himself would do and thus judged everyone by their worst behaviour, reinforced his resemblance to a fifteenth-century portrait, saturnine and unsmiling and aged beyond his years.
"The students have no part in this," he said. "Nothing happens to them. Nothing good, nothing bad." He stroked down to the base of his cock, revealing it to her. His other hand reached out. Cold fingers cupped her sex, pressing and holding until she throbbed resentfully beneath him. "I came to your rooms because I saw desire," he said softly. "Yours for me. I thought perhaps it was a trap. That you were setting up an ambush. I thought you were using yourself as bait and that you were a fool."
One finger pushed inside her with deep, probing ease. "I still think so. But I'm starting to believe the desire is real."
He dragged his finger along the firm roof of her cunt, and Minerva tightened around him, pulsing with anger and unwanted pleasure as a lubricating spell eased the way.
Leaning closer, Severus drew his finger out and up, smearing it hard across her clit. He kept his eyes on hers, and she wasn't surprised when his cock pushed her open, a smooth, hot intrusion that strained deeper, urging her to become a sheath for him. He didn't force it, letting her become accustomed to the pressure and shape, and she resented it. She resented the relief. She refused to be grateful.
It ended with the two of them locked together, Severus' rigid length burning inside her, and even being agonisingly aware of every single second it was happening didn't save her from the bitter shock of having him seated completely inside her. They remained pressed together for a moment, as if neither of them was sure of how to go on. Severus studied her face but didn't speak as he drew out and pushed in again, then again, upping the pace to strong, hard thrusts when she failed to object.
Minerva opened her mouth to breathe into each stroke. It was … bearable. She'd assumed the very act would leave her consumed with loathing. She wasn't sure what to make of the fact that each rocking intrusion felt so sensual and full, or that her body, braced for assault, was relaxing into the rhythm of that internal glazing, gliding friction. Severus wasn't taking the opportunity to teach her a lesson. He didn't seem interested in hurting her. She almost would have preferred to feel repulsed, but it wasn't that bad.
Sitting back with knees spread, he drew her legs up onto his shoulders, the better to push with his hips. His hands slid down her thighs to explore, and Minerva's inhale tripped and stuck for a moment when his thumb scooped the lining of her labia and came up beneath her clit.
His searching gaze fastened on her again, and Minerva turned her face away, shame squeezing around the hot centres of her body. Brief sensations flared at his fingertips but didn't quite connect with the deep, breath-clenching pangs of orgasm. She closed her eyes, mentally striving to keep her distance from his searching fingers, the wet, rhythmic thrusts inside her, and the roughness of Severus' breathing. His thumb rubbed circles on just the right spot, and she tightened under his touch, quivering in place as the elusive intensity blossomed into a streak of almost unbearable sharpness. His teasing grew rougher, his thrusts a steady percussive impact between her legs, counterpoint to the devastating throb of buried heat. The rapid twinges, the clench and release, folded and unfolded in escalating coils, widening, rising, a piercing pleasure that squeezed her loins in a shaking grip.
She gasped, blood rushing to her head, and gasped again, and that breach of silence accompanied each wrung-out contraction until her resistance broke and she groaned. Gripped by radiant, repeating pleasure, an exquisite cousin to pain, she let the last voluptuous pulses diminish and for those few seconds didn't care who was fucking her.
Afterward, her limbs prickled faintly with fading adrenalin, sent in waves to the very ends of her body. Severus drew back as if to sink in again and instead slid out of her. When air cooled her skin, Minerva swallowed and opened her eyes.
Severus was already doing up his trousers, fingers deliberate, controlled, his expression preoccupied. She was fairly sure he hadn't ejaculated but saw no reason to ask why. He was off the bed so quickly that even if Minerva had tried for her wand, she would have been a second too slow. Keeping her face inscrutable, she lay as she was, confronting him with the body he'd just used.
They were both silent as he tidied away whatever dishevelment might give the lie to his aura of contained malevolence. If any flush had reddened his cheeks, it had already faded.
At first, she thought he might leave without looking at her or speaking to her, and although it would have freed her of his presence, Minerva would have hated him for it. Instead, he turned to inflict the full, assessing force of his scrutiny upon her. They studied each other, and Minerva started to feel the chill again despite the restless passage of firelight travelling up and over Severus' body to join the shadows beyond, hypnotic proof that the logs still burned.
"Well," he said dryly, "that was a beginning, I suppose. If you wish to actively pursue our agreement, I'll seek you out when I have time."
Sitting up and swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Minerva wrapped the dressing gown tight and fended off the suffocating desire to summon her wand and duel him until one of them made a fatal error. He'd been her student, for Merlin's sake. His insubordination, his lack of respect, his ability to disregard their history, all human connection between them, outraged her so entirely that only violent magic could have expressed it.
"Honour your end of the bargain," she said. "Otherwise, please stay out of my rooms."
One step from the bedroom door, Severus swerved back around so abruptly his robes swam outward like squid ink. The effect was unsettling. "Let us be clear. Don't delude yourself into thinking you can order me around and demand concessions. This damnable Gryffindor impulse to flout the rules will only undermine whatever you hope to gain from this."
Minerva bit the inside of her cheek until the soreness reminded her: a game. This was a game. Every word a gamble, every gesture a feint.
"I'm tired, Headmaster." She made her voice as dead as possible, refusing him any emotion, any admission of rage or regret or understanding. "If you don't mind, I'd really rather like to sleep now."
The deadness seemed to catch him off guard, call forth the underlying bone, the wings of his nostrils flaring as if a curse had got past his duelling reflexes and split a tendon. If she'd believed those were marks of pain, that the cavernous stare and subtle flinch were her doing, Minerva would have laughed in his face. Instead, she had the satisfaction of seeing him stalk away without another word.
In the outer room, the door to her quarters clicked shut, and the snipped thread of Severus' presence swung loose, leading to nothing. She was alone. Relief rushed through her like a fever breaking.
It took another few breaths before she could lie back and curl on her side, holding herself with both arms, her cheek pressed into a river of hair. No physical damage. She would almost have preferred evidence of some sort. But really, the physical violation didn't matter that much. She'd prepared herself for it, had literally been in the process of examining those conflicting feelings when he'd knocked at her door, but - oh, there was no denying it, all she wanted to do right now was beat the stuffing out of him. Had he raped her? Perhaps not. But Merlin, she hated the way having him in her bed felt like something that could have happened naturally. As if there were still a bond between them, some sympathetic resonance that ignored the blood on Severus' hands and the defilement of his place in their lives - her life - over the last fifteen years.
This wasn't the roiling, sweltering darkness she'd dreamed about. Severus had come to her because it was her and not because she was a pawn he could exploit and torment at his convenience.
If there was a scrap remaining of whoever they had once believed Severus to be, back in the days before all belief had shattered into blood and bone at the foot of the Astronomy Tower, she hoped that shred was suffering. She hoped there was some part of Severus dying every day of horror and despair at what he had become. Because surely he couldn't escape unscathed forever. A man so good at betrayal would someday have to find himself betrayed in turn.
After five minutes of this, Minerva got up to prowl her rooms, her wand gripped possessively as she scoured the whisky glasses clean. She went to the loo, dampened a flannel to wipe her breasts, then washed between her legs before summoning a fresh cloth to press, drenched in cold water, against her hot face. Magic would have been faster, but this way felt more personal and vindictive. After a listless glance through her unfinished marking, she banked the fire, blew out the candles, and returned to bed. She kicked at the covers. Her body felt loosened, even limbered by sexual release. She turned on her side. Then her stomach. Every time she closed her eyes, she opened them again. Before, she'd have predicted that once she was alone in the dark, shame would consume her.
Not even close.
She pulled the pillow out from under her head and threw it to the floor. She wanted to fight, damn it.
She sat up, flung back the coverlet (did it smell of Severus? never mind, she couldn't bear its weight on her anyway), and shoved herself out of bed. A single candle spelled to float ahead of her, she paced the chilly flagstones, slippers askew on the rug behind her. In the dark, silent parlour, the fire had sunk to a sunset-cloud of ash and glowing coals. She rekindled it with a wand flick, levitating a fragrant log onto the grate and watching as the space between the sofa and the hearth brightened like a cave. The smoke of burning spruce would chase off the memory of Severus' whisky breath (her whisky), the underground damp-stone odour of his robes (no, those were potions fumes, he slept in the headmaster's suite now, not the dungeons). Cold-footed, Minerva circled the sofa twice, her lips moving with unspoken expletives and admonitions to stop roaming around like a madwoman.
Suppressing a shiver, she sat down on the sofa to warm herself in the flickering heat. Hands in her lap and feet neatly together, she stared into the heart of the fire, thinking about tomorrow, thinking in blinks and tight breaths of the cock she'd had inside her. It would happen again. She needed to get better at this. The aftermath. The bargaining.
Tomorrow was a weekday and sleep an absolute necessity if she wished to play her role as the strict but fair professor her students depended on. Accepting the inevitable, Minerva ran harsh fingers through her hair, sniffed a handful for traces of Severus, wove it into a lopsided braid, then tucked her legs under her and transformed. Four-footed and sleek-furred, she stamped circles in the cushion, claws pricking, and curled up where it was warmest, her tail bushed over her nose and ruffling with every breath. She didn't purr. She didn't forget. But cats spend most of their lives asleep, and there was something about this small, supple, instinctive body that made it easier to let go.
Eyes shut, Minerva dozed through the night after her first encounter with trading sex for favours - promises not made that she might never collect on - and didn't dream. Erotic mystery couldn't survive the ordeal of being fucked by someone she'd once considered a friend.
The darkness Severus represented in the flesh was exhausting enough.
