Author's Warning: Sex in this chapter. Not for those under 17.

Severus was dead. His was the most base, legal definition of death. His heart had stopped beating, his muscles had slackened, the tautness of his fist had loosened, and the warmth of his body was slowly creeping into the carpet.


Yet he was not dead.


His eyes stirred, the veins within beginning to pulse in a melodiously painful way, thrashing against his lids, forcing them open.


He was stiff and cold, the joints in his body feeling alien, and the dull, but unyielding headache was ambling down the distorted pathway of his spinal cord. There was something missing from him, he was quite sure. His body seemed to lack the extra cushioning he had grown used to, and his mind seemed lethargic and slow. The ivory fingertips, stained with various vile substances, had none of the warmth they usually contained.



He rolled over on his side, knowing that he had, in fact, died, and now was wishing he had stayed that way. It maddened him, this unidentifiable pang of some missing puzzle piece.


The girl lay next to him, and Severus almost yelped in shock. Not only was she alive, she was completely radiant. There was an eerie and ethereal glow of well being about her, sparks practically flying from her each time she took a breath. The carpet around her body was shimmering gold, and her skin had returned to a tawny flush.


Reflexively, he reached out and touched her. His own body craved the warmth she seemed to be emitting. He raised himself upon his elbow, shoulder edging painfully into the angle of his jaw, and he rolled her towards him.


She was directly beneath, curled up almost post-coitally. He lay his head, less gently than he could help, and listened to her heart. Severus frowned; he had been dead for a few minutes, yes, but he was positive his knowledge of anatomy had not escaped him.


He could not detect a heartbeat.



He placed his hands on her stomach, not being able to help the infantile urge to place his head in the dip of her belly and listen to the distant and familiar rumblings of her womb. He lifted the shirt from her, her finely polished hipbones gleaming up at him, the skin supple where they extended.


He placed his face there, the small concave muscles a very offertory bowl. Severus, knowing it was preverse and wrong, opened his mouth and tasted her. Beads of prespiration had formed there, a nectar of ambrosial health. He felt disgusted and begrimed, but also felt a primal urge to suckle off some of the life she had suddenly befallen.


Severus felt a sudden pain in his groin, a throbbing, pulsing pain. He glanced down, bestially wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. An erection was threatening him; he was already half hard from salivating over the morsel before him.


He gave an exasperated, and pained look. The waist of her pants were so low, the cotton of her underthings were temptingly close. He could smell the warm drifts over if he crouched close enough. He convulsed with self disgust. Raping a sleeping woman! Yet such things were not unheard of. The poison of his brain was inky black and spreading to his frontal lobes.


He was over her again, her face shining directly up into his. There was such a potent aura about her, it was aching to stare at. He felt like he was defiantly eyeing the sun in full sky.


And, with the deepest breath he had ever seen someone take, so deep that the tips of her breasts nearly touched his own chest, she opened her eyes.


She looked confused, then pensive. She seemed unoncerned that there was a hungry man leering over her, observing her most innocent gestures with distasteful lust.


Her hand crept out of the confines of his body, snaking around his shoulder, coming up slightly around his ear. Severus, always curious, but never appearing to be, cast a scornful glance at her palm. She sucked in a deep breath, eyelashes flattening themselves against the bone of her socket.


The lines were sealed, the scar a white zenith.


The shape a lightening bolt.


Severus looked at his own, a smile, slightly maniac, creeping over his features, illuminating his face in a wicked glow. She ran a finger over his, the almost feverish tip of her hand tracing over his newly aqquired mark with unbearable sensuality.


He raised himself more, a parody of two lovers entangled, and glared into her eyes. Her gaze was suddenly smoky and wanton; a need that lingered, something close to his own.


She opened her lips to speak, but his mouth had already forced itself onto hers, clamping on with life leeching strength. She didn't protest, only raised herself to meet his raging erection. Severus ground, fingers clenching the carpet around them.


Her tongue was a lecherous seeker of his own, prodding his lips gently, until he relented and allowed her to sweep his teeth indifferently. They wrestled, a struggle of dominator and the subdued, but neither won. She was writhing against him, her body's needs quickly overriding her principles.


She had torn the shirt from him, and for the first time in nearly twenty years, Severus didn't care about his naked form. His hands had slipped up, fingers slowly massaging the nubile and erect forms of her breasts. She broke the kiss, rolling her head back into the carpet with furious ecstascy. He pulled it roughly over her head, the soft flap of her ear momentarily caught up.


Nadyae's warm hands undid his own pants with the ease and precision of someone well practiced. Severus ignored the prominent sentinels that were sirening in his head.


He was hard and needy, gasping for release. She wriggled out of her pants, looking, momentarily, like an amorous fish caught outside of its pond. She pulled herself up by him, her arms crossing over his back, peaked breasts moulding with his chest. He grasped her, his nails leaving stubby ridges in their wake.


With collective breaths, he entered her. She gasped, first in pleasure, than the sudden pang of discomfort. Her eyes watered with the sting, and he kissed her cheeks, collecting up her salty emotions, and encapsulating them for his own use.


She craned her neck upwards, and he kissed her, hard enough to bruise her, his lips and mouth pursing around her non-pulsing vein and suckling. He rested his chin in the hollow of her shoulder, giving vantage of her protruding spine.


They were rythmic, and unhurried. It wasn't some sordid rendez-vous with an underage student. And neither was it some sort of unrealised lust. It was simply the basic and all encompassing need of male and female. He hugged her, his large hands roaming up and down her back, kneading the soft skin of her buttocks, and smiling into her collarbones as she groaned in pleasure.


Severus could not discern virgins from non-virgins, nor did he care to. But she had felt exquisitely formed around him, the walls of her beating in almost impossible precision with his own. He felt himself approaching the peak, and he removed his head from her shoulder, and reached up to turn her head to his.


Look at me.


It was panted, and almost shouted, as hers roved towards his own, losing themselves in melancholy unison, flooding with inky memories and present bliss.


They both climaxed this way, clutching onto each other, Severus feeling unreasonably consoled and uncomfortably vulnerable. He was also coming to terms with his rather lecherous disregard of the rules.


Not only had he performed semi-dark and stupidly dangerous magic on her, it had killed both of them. Which would not explain why, although her heart failed to beat, that she was sitting atop him, coral buds of her breasts blooming into his mouth. He had also just had intercourse with a twenty year old girl who was emotionally unstable, as well as vulnerable. He felt ashamed and disgusted, the retching pains in his stomach begining to creep into his concious.


Let me go.


He whispered this imploringly, not wanting the feel the arousing heat of her limbs over his own; the damp smell of humans in heat.


She shook her head, earthy smell of slightly unwashed hair in his face. He tried to pry her off, gently rearranging her arms so that they did not snake over his neck to tightly.


Don't. Just hold me, just for a bit.


Her hot breath in his neck, stirring the muscles that were dormant. He felt the warm shape of her mouth on him, the soft, chaste kisses of a doting mother. He relented and enfolded her once more, rocking her back and forth, at ease with his nudity.


In Severus' past, his lovers were quick and hurried sucessions, grunting, groaning, sweating. All things unpleasantly human as they writhed and shrieked beneath him, pelting him with obscenities, battering his limbs with their teeth and hands. Sex was not really a pleasure for Severus; it was a build up of pain and torment, released in a few, quick thrusts.


He had spiraled into a perversive and subversive habit of checking for ill-will after his conquests were asleep: poisons, deadly sleeping draughts, weapons. He had always insisted upon positioning himself, so that his back was never facing a door. Long and furtive years of working as a sharpened double edged sword had taken its toll; he had become reclusive and paranoid, women avoided him. Not that he minded, he preferred his solitary company.


Until now.


Severus couldn't explain this sudden sexual and untimely hormonal drive that left him sapped of energy, yet panting for more. He could never recall ever having been so attracted to one of his students (save for the stolen kiss from Granger) that it made him hard within seconds of thinking upon it.


The girl was beginning to shift, the dampness of her groin growing warm against his own. He could feel himself tighten for her, and wordlessly, they began again.


It was over much more quickly this time, and she didn't seem to mind. She closed her eyes, sleepy and pleasured. He kissed her neck again, using the blunt and uneven edges of his teeth to create a gently painful friction.


Is there something wrong with me?.


The suddeness of her question surprised him, he stopped mid-nip. He raised his head, looking into her very grave eyes. There was deep seated panic there.


No. Why? You seem perfectly alive to me.


He was too exhausted to try and banter.


Fine. Then if I ask, will you promise not to go and make fun of me?.


He nodded. She looked perplexed as she took his hand, and guided it towards her breast. She placed his cool palm upon her ignited skin. He felt nothing, the same emptiness he had felt before.


Why isn't there a heartbeat?.


The crack in her voice alerted him that she was aware that she was somehow an awoken corpse. That she was flourishing in life after death. He sighed, and slowly slid from beneath her, extending his legs so that she tumbled gently from him.


She sat, knees in front of her, large and luminous eyes appearing from the rugged peaks of her legs. They accusingly followed his every move; it made him nervous to be observed like this, starkly stripped of outer protection.


He observed her again, this specimen of newly aqquired resilience that was placed before him. Her skin was flushed, blood that should have been stoppered up in her veins, deprived of any nourishing oxegyn, was evidently still flowing. He frowned, hating to not know the end-all of things.


Vampirism, though Severus knew it was highly improbable, was one likely explanation. Though it couldn't quite tell the astute Professor why she was so radiantly alive.


He took an arm, and with a very quick, downward tear, making a small incision. She gave him a partially disgusted, partially fascinated look.


Are you hungry?.


The question was casual, sounding as though Severus just happened to stumble upon people who thirsted after blood everyday. She shook her head, watching intently the small beads of blood that formed upon the seams of his cut.


He knelt down, placing his arm towards her face, the blood directly beneath her nose. She flinched, pushing him away, taking care not to touch his wound.


You feel nothing? Not some urge to feed?.


She shook her head, colour fading. He nodded, and wiped his arm. He expected the cut to heal, seal itself beneath his hands. If one was born with magic, it lived in their bodies, harvesting itself in their fingertips, their brains. Their skin. Their blood. Magic existed in rythym with the heart, flushing itself through the body, renewing itself when needed.


The cut remained gaping, pink flap of skin beginning to turn rust coloured with oxegyn.


He smoothed his hand over his skin again, knowing inherently it wouldn't work the second time, either. A feeling of despair, dread and lifelessness was beginning to choke him.


She had crept over, drawn to his sudden need, and smoothed her fingertip over the cut, just as she had seen him do it. It immediately puckered beneath her touch, the skin re-fastening.


The girl was staring at her hands in wonder, stupified by what she had done. Severus looked at her, black eyes narrowing in furor, his body tensing with his rage.


I don't understand. It's never happened before.....what does it mean?.


She was gasping, struggling to give voice to her newfound emotions and complex gift.


If I am correct, and woe betide you if I am, in my unwitting and stupid error, I believe my own magic was transferred to you.


Severus himself was finding it difficult to speak, throat thickened by tears and sudden weight of loss. His magic was robbed of him, the thing that made him different. It was gone now, pulsing happily in the body of another, cycling around in a girl who couldn't even comprehend what she had befallen.


I'm sorry......I didn't know.


She reached out, trying to placate him, golden dusted arms outstretching like some drugged deity, some glorious Ganesh whose blue hued limbs lured the hapless many. She was on her knees now, tears pouring forth unabashedly, trying to win back the man she had unknowingly burnt. He felt suffocated, placed upon a pile of wood, waiting to be crucified.


He ran past her, shoving her naked form out of his way, bruising her delicate skin. He thundered into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him, hearing the crunch of the plaster on the metal lock. Severus flipped open the porcelain lid, and glanced at his weary face in the creamy white of the bowl, before depositing what felt like everything he had ever eaten.


His stomach coiled in upon itself, snaking its way in his body, up his throat, causing his eyes to tear, and the repulsive growls that were emitted to become louder. He was screaming in pain, the sudden numbness that he had become so used to was wrenched away, a missing limb that he was never quite aware of. He clapsed onto the sides, admiring the cool basin before it was heated beneath his feverish body.


Gods...gods....help me......Albus............gods save me....please.....Jove....Hectate........Mab....


He was hoarse, intermingling deities and oaths. His legs and back quivered in his exertion, sweat beading upon his brow, and tumbling into the water.


He closed his eyes, willing the hot blackness to force his head beneath the angry and interrupted sea.


















A/N: Sad and depressing. But there was some sex, even though it wasn't pretty,or that descriptive. See, I haven't many personal reserves to draw from, and the fics I do read make having sex with Snape sound fun and romantic. But, come one! He's tortured, possesive, sadistic. It's not going to all be scented candles and massage oils. I think that his despair was finally culminated in the fact that he lost his magic. I doubt that if he had been more hopeful that he could return to Hogwarts, that he would have been so easily bereft. Anyway, hope you liked that rather dismal one. Please keep reviewing! It's loads of help, and just all around wonderful to know that you're making peoples days (or in case of Ami-the-writing-queen, delaying their nail growth). Much love to anyone and everyone who reads.