Series: Minor Arcana. Sequel to "Declaro" (rating R). You really need to read that first. Find it through the author link @ ff.net or skyehawke.com.
Rating: R.
Pairings: This section – SS/HP, RW/HG.
Notes: The end of "Temperance". Next up "Great Expectations", but probably not for a while.
Spoilers: Various up to the end of Book IV. No OotP whatsoever.
Dedication: Though she's not around to see it – Chapter VI is for switchknife, who made me believe it was actually good.
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling and various corporate tentacles.
Archiving: Only where I've agreed.
Feedback/Reviews: Please, it's just plain encouraging. I'm especially grateful to people who give me some direction as to what works and what doesn't.
Pervinco VI (c): Temperance
HERMIONE:
Professor Lupin is the most scholarly Defence teacher we've ever had. Not everyone appreciates the additional references, but the masses love the idea of learning about Dark Arts from a werewolf, assisted by an apprentice Death Eater. I'm not so sure about the last part, but then I'm not sure Draco is either – oh lord, I have to stop thinking about it, Harry will work it out, and it's not like I could tell him what to do if I knew myself.
Stop dithering, Hermione, you're just excited.
As he enters, Ron gives me what he hopes is a reassuring smile, and so I say "Hello Ron," and he feels able to come over. His happiness is palpable, but I'm already uncomfortable. I know I can't really feel the bond stretching out from him and wrapping around me, but it always seems that way.
He wants to say something, winding himself up as he always does when it's uncomfortably about 'us' in 'that' way. I cut him off with "Ron, shh, Professor Lupin."
"Headmaster Dumbledore will be here tonight to demonstrate a particular hex. Ausculto is not common, and sometimes considered to be 'Dark' – you've all read the extracts from The Imperius Debate?"
There are various groans, some silences – Pansy Parkinson rolls her eyes, she's never been half as clever as her marks suggest – and just the occasional enthusiastic agreement. I'm sure it wasn't only me. Cho gives me a smile.
"Good, let's test that reading shall we, before he arrives." In front, Harry groans, and I really should point out to him that despite the intrigue and melodrama Draco is certainly not falling behind in class, in fact he's never done better. Harry turns to sigh expressively at Ron, waiting on the usual disgusted protest at "theory", but it never comes.
* * *
"Did you know," Dumbledore said, walking between the two rows of 7th year students, stroking his beard and singling them out one by one for twinkling attention, "that the pervinco spell involves both demonstration and persuasion of your intention?"
He gave Harry a quick, bright glance as he turned to Cho, who shone like a star in her white robe amidst everyone else's black, and blue, and green. "In fact," Dumbledore continued, "it would require some skill and practice to cast pervinco for someone you didn't really want to accept." Cho blushed and looked away, and Harry figured she must really like that young man. He was glad – although she didn't much like him, Cho deserved things to work out for her.
Dumbledore turned and walked back. "Like all Rite spells, pervinco works on your will, and thus belongs to the same family as the Imperius curse." Harry was sure he glanced at Hermione as he said that, but as he stopped the Headmaster looked openly at Draco. "Ausculto amplifies the power of your voice to convince, persuade, or impel, but it is famously difficult to cast," he said. "Can anyone tell me why?"
Draco looked away, Harry noticed Remus watching him, and without turning aside Dumbledore said, "Mr Weasley, I believe you've been reading in this area?"
Numerous Slytherins, Ravenclaws, and Hermione turned impressed or startled faces towards Ron. Several Gryffindorish comments about Snape circulated, but Dumbledore smiled affably, as if he hadn't just thrown the year into yet another kind of turmoil.
After a long minute, the expectant silence drove Hermione to interject. "Ausculto requires attachment to its object as well as enough independence to control them," she said.
Dumbledore smiled his approval, "Exactly Miss Granger – in theory. Now let us attempt to practice that."
* * *
Like all higher hexes this one required a particular kind of mental focus – it wasn't, of course, just knowing the word and having a wand. While Defence was Harry's best subject, he found some kinds of focus difficult. This spell required that you not only know your opponent but also, somehow, feel for them. He couldn't quite get it – because how could you form an attachment with someone at the same time as you were trying to bend them to your will? While Neville, Hannah and Justin were miles away from enough detachment, and Draco, Cho and Hermione couldn't manage enough "empathy", as Dumbledore put it, Harry seemed to manage neither. The whole thing was making him quite frustrated, and he wasn't the only one.
The crisis hit when Ron made Seamus drop his wand. They'd faced off, Seamus groaning because they'd been at this for an hour and Draco still corrected his wand grip, and then they'd both cast Ausculto. Seamus rolled his eyes and was clearly about to call out something silly, like "hop up and down on one leg," when Ron said calmly, "Drop your wand, Seamus."
He did, and took several steps away with an appalled look on his face.
"Well done Ron," Dumbledore said. "Can you tell us what you were thinking?"
Ron looked like he didn't want to do that at all.
"It's a difficult spell, Ron," Remus said, "and it will help the whole class if you can explain how you managed it." Ron looked at his wand, at Seamus, and then at Hermione, who stiffened slightly at Harry's side. Draco was also watching Ron intently.
"When I was focussing," Ron said evenly, looking back to Seamus, "I thought, Seamus would always want to duel because he loves a game, and he loves to win. But right now he isn't sure what I might do, whether I'm different. So part of him really wanted to drop the wand, and when I cast the spell I knew I only had to tell him to."
Harry was more than a little impressed, but most of the Gryffindors seemed horrified. As Hermione, rigid with something Harry couldn't place, turned and walked out, Ron tried to apologise to Seamus as Dean was pulling away. Parkinson was unaccountably doubled over in laughter and Remus gave her a stern look.
As the last cluster of students were left behind in the classroom – Harry watching Ron with the Professors and a few Slytherins and others gossiping in the corner – Harry heard Crabbe say distinctly "Can't you just see Snape cornering Potter like that?"
Goyle chortled and said in a deep but totally un-Snape like voice, "On your knees, Potter", and then, in falsetto, "Oh Professor!"
Harry turned to them slowly, just catching Crabbe's expression as said, "Bet he gags him the rest of the time – he never could stand Potter's whiny voice."
Breaking off a snickering laugh, Goyle pantomimed, "Oh ream me, Professor! I just can't get enough of that evil cock!"
Draco was in front of Harry, turning him away, moments after his wand was raised. He got to the door guided, more or less, by Draco's occasional touches to his wand arm.
"You don't want to do that," he said quietly at Harry's side. Harry wasn't so sure.
* * *
SEVERUS:
Turning into my corridor after dinner, I'm neither as surprised nor as annoyed as I ought to be to find Harry Potter leaning against my door.
"Subtle, Mr Potter," I growl.
"Sorry," the boy says. "Ron wouldn't let me in."
"I should think not." I'd have him scrubbing cauldrons by hand for a month. Possibly by tongue. But given the Weasley predisposition to fun and friendship, I can't help being rather pleased. It's not quite sadism that leads to me to open the workshop door rather than the one to my office.
Weasley is grading. There's almost a flinch in his recognition that I've brought Potter in with me.
"I didn't think I was supposed to let anyone in," he says a bit tentatively. "No exceptions." His eyes circle the room, and I see him seeing it from his friend's point of view. There's a flush rising at his neck, and I'd be very interested to know what exactly he's embarrassed by.
"You were right," I say brusquely. "No exceptions."
He nods, and his hand hovers over the page, uncertain whether to continue or – "The shrivelfigs are ready to be pressed," I say.
"They need about an hour more according to Weltschaung. Is he wrong?"
No, he's not, which means Weasley just indirectly corrected me. I indicate that will be fine and begin to sort through the carded seeds cabinet, not because I need any, but because I want to see him respond to Potter. There's the scratch of a pen, and I believe he's marking. Extraordinary. I select something, Aspidistra, and ask Potter to wait here.
* * *
HARRY:
Ron continues working, even once the door is shut.
"Ron?" He looks up at me. "He's gone."
"I don't know where he went," Ron says, looking back to the page. "He doesn't tell me things like that."
"No, I meant. . . can we talk?" I move over to the desk – there are no chairs, only a stool at the desk and another bolted to the workbench. He puts his quill down slowly.
"There's nothing to say, because I don't know why."
"Why what?"
"Why I'm suddenly so much better at everything, even than Hermione." He rests his elbows on the table, his forehead on his hands, and doesn't look at me. "I'm working as hard as I can here, Snape is looking every night, but I don't know why."
"Actually," though it seems really childish now, "I just meant can we talk – will you talk to me instead of doing that while I stand around awkwardly wondering how come all of this looks so. . . not like torture."
We both look around the room. His robe hangs by the door – he's sitting in his Weasley jumper, the orange one with an R he really hates – and his book bag hangs next to it. Through the door behind him I can see a bed in a small room. It hits me that Ron sees Snape every night before he goes to bed. Do they eat together; share a bathroom? Surely. . . I'm looking for a bathroom, for somewhere he eats, weirdly angry at the idea, and I nearly miss him say – "I guess it isn't so bad. It's not fun, but I need to make it right."
"You didn't mean any harm, Ron."
"Which hardly makes it okay."
"You sound like Snape!" and not for the first time either, and now I know I'm jealous, because I've been noticing it for a while but not wanting to.
"Don't start, Harry, it's all I ever hear from Dean and Seamus."
"You didn't do anything to Seamus, Ron. It was a task; you passed."
"I think I could have though," he says quietly.
And it's gone, the stupid resentment of him having rooms next to Snape, where, for Merlin's sake, he slaves away every day doing things I would hate to do for detention in the hope that someone will find a way to undo his mistake. Away from all his friends, from Hermione, who is still so angry, and always scared she has a right to be.
"I'm sorry, Ron," I say, without knowing how to explain what for.
It doesn't seem to matter. He smiles. "Can you keep a secret, Harry?"
"Better than you," I laugh.
He's explaining about a marking charm he found, which corrects grammar, spelling, punctuation, the lot, and is saving for a special occasion, and I'm thinking it makes no sense that Hermione isn't all over this version of Ron, when Snape opens the door.
* * *
Harry walked around the room. There was nothing personal here, really, but there was a door, which Harry knew led into the bedroom, which might say more about Snape than this room did.
"What is it, Mr Potter?"
Harry turned back to look at him, pouring tea. Somehow that always seemed so inappropriate. The Headmaster drank tea, Remus drank tea, Aunt Petunia drank tea; actually, that probably. . .
"Mr Potter? I do have other demands on my time."
Harry tried to remember how he'd decided to say it. "The Slytherins are making jokes about us" – however he'd meant to say it, that wasn't it.
"Hardly surprising."
"Are you going to let them?"
"Are you saying you want me to punish students for embarrassing you."
"They were ridiculing you."
"And you are suddenly concerned for my reputation?"
Harry realised he – "In a sense. Maybe." Harry silently took the cup Snape offered, and sat down. Snape watched him with interest.
"It matters what people say about you." He looked up at Snape. "Which is ironic." He managed a smirk at Snape's raised eyebrow. "I suppose it seems like your reputation is my business now. I don't usually care what Crabbe and Goyle say about me."
"What did they say, then?"
Harry blushed. "It doesn't matter. . ."
"I believe your being here demonstrates that it does." He waited a moment while Harry shuffled through various stages of embarrassment.
"Everyone thinks your offer to me is about sex," he said, eventually.
"Wasn't that the idea, Mr Potter? The conceivable reason why I would choose you?"
Harry looked up as if startled; Snape looked unpleasantly pleased with himself. He stood abruptly. "I'm sorry to have bothered you," he said, "Goodnight."
Snape grabbed his arm before he could pass, pulling him near. "That was the idea," he said, putting a hand to Harry's waist. "And isn't it more or less correct?"
Harry closed his eyes, and felt his heart beat in his ears. "No," he said, looking up at Snape's watchful expression. "So stop treating me like a ball of hormones on the edge of explosion." Snape crooked an eyebrow sarcastically and Harry felt enough anger to push away. "We both know you're more experienced, so stop playing with me."
"Playing with you," Snape said stiffly.
"You confuse me," Harry said in a low voice, "you make me. . . you know what you do."
Snape moved back in, close enough that their bodies were touching, and put a hand to Harry's face. "What do you think, then, Harry – do you think I should just stop playing around and take you to bed? Though you're my student, though you're young enough. . ."
Feeling hot all over and sick with something, Harry whispered, "Don't use those reasons." He didn't want to hear it. "How can it matter when we have no choice."
"We always have choices, Harry."
Harry leant into Snape's hand and against him. He wished Snape would stop saying his name like that, with an edge of something both rich and sharp.
Snape bent his mouth to Harry's ear – "So, do you really want me to fuck you?"
Harry was sure he would have fallen in shock at Snape saying or even thinking that, if there wasn't an arm around him. Was it really a question? Snape's eyes were dark, one hand on Harry's back, one on the side of his face.
"Yes," he said, and he could have sworn Snape's eyes flinched, though every part of him was still. "No," he said then, dropping his forehead to the man's chest.
Snape tipped his head back again. "Then what do you want?"
Harry said the first thing that came into his head – "Tell me to touch you" – and then froze, not sure what his brain thought his body meant.
Snape shut his eyes and said, as if it hurt, "Touch me, then."
Harry looked up into Snape's pale face, angled towards him, framed by black hair lank after the day. He ran his hand down Snape's robe, blinking as he found the waistline, and then inside the open outer robe. He felt Snape's hip under his hand and, biting his lip, slid his hand across Snape's groin. There, the man's cock lay under the tips of his fingers, swollen and firm under the cloth. His eyes caught Snape's as they registered the touch, and Snape was hard for him. Which was. . . he took a sharp breath, and his own erection was tight and humming even before he felt Snape's mouth in his hair.
Harry curled his hand around the firm length and stroked along it. "Tell me," he said, half into the woollen robe, quelling a blush with the thrill of Snape hardening further beneath his touch, "last time we. . . did you. . .?"
"Did I what?" Snape said into his hair, a hand resting on his shoulder, his hips still under Harry's gently moving hand.
"You know," he said hesitantly, "last time. . . did you. . . come?"
Snape's arm wrapped him into an embrace and he laughed, trailing his mouth across Harry's hair. "Do you play the virginal role to turn me on?"
Harry lifted his face to Snape's, "Does it turn you on?"
"Idiot," Snape said warmly.
"I want to know," Harry said, urgently, breathing up into Snape's mouth, pressing his own erection into Snape's hip as he brushed his hand over him. "I want to see, to feel it."
Snape began to unclasp his own robe. Harry thought, dizzily, that he should probably be getting undressed too, but when Snape pulled off his outer robe he grabbed Harry's hand and pulled it to the buttons on his trousers.
Harry felt like he was struggling to breathe as he pulled at Snape's buttons, and his erection was painful, his underpants pressing into the swollen flesh. He had the buttons mostly undone before his fingers brushed soft tight curls.
Snape didn't comment at Harry's gasp, but his mouth was suddenly breathing into Harry's ear as he, with what seemed like the longest pause, reached forward to tentatively touch Snape's cock.
He'd never. . . He whispered, "I've never," and ran the inside of his fingers along the length of another man's penis. It fell heavily across his palm and wrist, softer than anything, harder than anything. He curled his fingers around the smooth middle and drew his hand up to the soft tip, just as he liked to touch himself.
Snape made a noise, Harry pressed against him and said something – perhaps it was "thank you," maybe he said it more than once as he brushed his hand along Snape's prick – and Snape seemed to tense and draw back. For an instant he met dark eyes, which closed and opened again, and then there was a firm pressure on his shoulder.
It took a moment Harry tried to make sense of the gesture, but then a churning weight in the base of his stomach explained it.
He couldn't possibly, but he did, let Snape press him down to his knees.
Above him a voice said, a little brokenly, "You wanted to see?"
It was impossible that when his eyes opened he was looking at his own hand wrapped around the end of a man's cock. It was wet and glistening. Harry swelled impossibly harder and he had to press his other hand against his own aching cock.
He knew what should happen now, vaguely, but he couldn't possibly – and then he did. With Snape's hands in his hair and on his shoulder he leant forward and pressed his tongue to the head of Snape's cock.
It tasted unpleasant, but the noise Snape made throbbed down into his cock. He let his lips close around the soft end of Snape's cock – Snape's dick, Snape's penis, was in his mouth – and ran over it with his tongue. It was dreadful, wonderful, his cock throbbed and pressed, and he was going to come in his clothes again here at Snape's feet.
Bitter, salty, and intense. He ran his hand lower to touch the base in a thick spray of curls. Pushing his mouth a little further down, tonguing the not entirely smooth flesh, he was not at all ready for it to push abruptly into his mouth. He jerked back but Snape's hand was there, holding him still as he pushed in, pressing his tongue down, making his throat gag, and then pulled out on the smell of hair, flesh and sweat. It came in a little faster the next few times, and the intensity of Snape's fingers curling through his hair as he sucked him was so right and so wrong. Harry felt his orgasm coming from far away and fast, and then he was clenching Snape's hip as he came. When he opened his eyes Snape was standing over him, stripping his own hand erratically along his prick. With a gasp he look up at Snape's face, catching his intense gaze as his whole face shifted. White spurts of cum fell across his hand and his robe.
He was breathless, shocked. Goyle's screwed up face flashed through Harry's head, and his stomach twisted and rolled. As Snape turned away he dropped his eyes to the mess on his lap. Snape still had his back to him, adjusting his clothes and moving away. Again. Harry knelt there, biting down on the urge to cry or to ask for something he didn't know how to name.
After a moment Snape was there with his wand. The now almost usual silent cleaning took place. As Harry left he met Snape met his eyes, as if looking for something, but he didn't say anything, so Harry didn't either.
* * *
Seamus and Dean jumped up apologetically from where they'd been playing with Harry's duelling game, a gift from Blaise. Tiny figures of famous wizards waived their wands and protested at the interruption.
"It's fine," Harry said without much interest, "I said you could."
They insisted they were done anyway, probably awkward at being caught playing with Zabini's gift, which they'd teased him about for most of yesterday. He was probably lucky they didn't know the little snitch-pin was from Draco.
Neville asked Harry did he want a game, but he really didn't. Padma was keen to learn though, and said she'd much rather learn from Neville. Harry looked at them, blushing and avoiding each other's eyes as they sat down and began to remove the squirming figures, which became rigid as they were put away. That was interesting.
Though he closed the door to his room with some relief, Harry immediately felt Ron's absence. Not that he could discuss this with Ron, not before and certainly not now. And not with Hermione either – he couldn't imagine what she would say, or if he could he certainly didn't want to.
He removed the Chalybs from his ankle first. It wasn't uncomfortable, but he couldn't sleep in it. Then his robe, which would probably never feel like it wasn't stained. But he'd asked for it, hadn't he? Crabbe's laughter floated through his head.
There was a scratching at his window and something in Harry unclenched in relief that Snape had written to him, even if it wasn't likely to be anything reassuring it meant he knew how disoriented, how overwhelmed, Harry felt.
But it wasn't Thetis. It was a large grey owl trailing red leather cords. Unwinding the parcel somewhat numbly he offered her something to eat and watched her as she snapped up the treats like she was starving.
He unwrapped the square box almost routinely. Karkaroff. A crystal ball. He sat on his bed, turning it in his fingers, contemplating the irony of strangers who knew such things about him.