Author's note: This is another Rated R chapter. Stronger R than the last Rated R chapter. Much stronger. Proceed with caution.
The halls had a sad sort of richness to them. The rugs had once been a lush burgundy, and still were in spots right up against the walls. Mostly they were stomped flat and brown from dirt and wear. Walls were spattered in mud and cracked like dry desert ground, formerly regal deep paint of some color faded to gray. Soft sounds came from the doors he passed, sounds that added to the tattered aura.
A place of sin. A place of fallen innocence, or something equally profound.
This wasn't the first time this particular blond and regal Englishman had walked this hall. He came about once a month, never satisfied, always looking for someone new.
He followed his hostess, eyes taking in her practiced walk. There was no real interest there - he had long ago accepted his preference for his own gender - but there was appreciation. She wasn't clinging to him and cooing and trying to put him in some sort of mood, which he appreciated.
She nodded to a doorway and knocked before opening. A smile was the last he saw of her.
The room inside matched its surroundings, save one difference. The bed was large and fairly new, and occupied.
He had been very specific in his instructions, and the boy inside seemed to have been well briefed. No words, no faces, no names, no small talk. He wanted something anonymous, quick and impersonal. Enough to rut out his pent up tensions.
He moved inside and looked the prone figure up and down. This was no street urchin. No waifish twenty year old struggling to look fourteen. This one was muscled and lush.
The boy didn't acknowledge him, as per instructions. He shifted just enough to show that he wasn't sleeping, but his face was turned towards the wall and his arm was over his eyes to allow anonymity.
The Englishman stripped himself quickly and effeciently. There was something about this one that aroused him more than he had thought to let himself be interested. Beautiful, there was no denying that. Young and fresh skin always was. Unmarred and gently curved and lined, muscle wrapped smoothly around bone. Golden, somehow, even in the lacking light of the bulbed lamp across the room.
The man stepped out of his slacks. He moved to the bed, letting himself enjoy his own arousal. The boy was a natural blond, he noted with a smirk.
The room was quiet. He could hear the boy breathing. He could hear himself breathing. He could hear the low grumble of bedsprings as he lifted a knee to the mattress and pulled himself onto it.
He had thought to flip the boy over and get right to it. But he wondered what lush and healthy skin tasted like. He had rarely been offered a treat this decadent. He bent and traced his lips over the bump of a collarbone.
The boy sighed as if suddenly having a particularly nice thought, but didn't move.
The man smiled dryly, licking his lips to absorb the taste. Lovely, really. He traced a fingertip down the boy's stomach, watching muscle clench and relax, ribs coming into view and then vanishing with an indrawn breath.
The human body was a fascinating thing. The Englishman knew and was very talented at the things that could make a body shudder, a person scream or sob or moan or come. He knew how to manipulate nerve and joint and muscle to get any reaction he wanted.
But this wasn't about the boy's reactions, it was about his own release. He licked a warm stripe over the upraised arm, from armpit to elbow. A shiver went through the youthful body.
His fingers trailed over the boy's side and nudged him firmly. The boy obeyed after a beat, as if the idea was his own to do when he pleased.
The back was as pleasing as the front. A beauty like this was probably fawned over, prized by lecherous clients. He had fetched a high price, that much was certain.
The curves of the boy were astonishing. Perfect, perhaps. His waist was slender, his shoulders broad. His spine curved straight and down, to end in the dip of lower back and then the curve of his arse. And a lovely arse at that. His thighs were strong, legs long and well muscled. This one took good care of himself.
His mouth watered and he licked his lips. He was thoroughly hard then, strictly by looking at the boy. Amazing, the reactions a body could cause. He trailed over the beautiful curve of the boy, first with questing hand and then with a curious tongue.
A faint sheen of sweat was forming on the boy's neck, and that had an oddly chemical taste, which made him frown. Did this one indulge in narcotics? His eyes went to the boy's other arm. He saw a tell-tale cluster of raised marks. Disappointing. Not surprising, though.
He nudged a leg between the boy's thighs, and caressed a slow hand down that lovely back. His fingers padded over the warm softness of the curves of the boy's arse. He gently parted those luscious cheeks and felt another aching throb go through him.
The boy's breathing was faster, but all else was dead silent. He let out a soft sigh of his own and drew one hand down the part between his cheeks, sliding over the small puckered hole, dwelling there to stroke lightly.
The boy shimmied against his touch, arse arching upwards.
The man smiled almost grimly. His fingertip glistened, and he realized the boy had taken the step of preparing himself properly. He considered for the first time leaving a tip.
That hole wasn't well-used, not by appearances. Not red or sore or swollen. Perhaps he was new. Perhaps he was usually the top for his punters. His finger drove against that hole and into the warm, slick depths of the boy's body.
A gasp and a shiver below him, and he saw a hand fisting into the pillow by the boy's head. He felt unnaturally pleased - the boy had been instructed to be silent and not indulge in the gasping pants and hideous moans others tended to fake. So this was sincere.
He watched the mucles up the boy's body shifting fluidly under his skin. He removed his finger quickly and reached for the usual platter of condoms on the bedside table. Sudden need made his hand less deft than usual, but he got the hated rubber on and slid up the boy's body to position himself. He wanted to be in that body.
He gritted his teeth and lined himself up and probed his aching erection through that ring of muscle. He moaned - the boy was bloody tight.
He lost himself so quickly and so entirely that he got nervous later to think about it. All he was aware of was gripping heat around his cock, and an arse lifting to meet him. A white-knuckled hand squeezing the pillow, joined by another beside it that he took a moment to recognize as his own.
The boy fit against him too well, and accepted him too eagerly. The man's need for distant, anonymous rutting was overpowered by wanting to see how those muscles would shiver if he found the right angle to his hips...
And then the need to hear that soft voice gasp and moan as he hit the boy's prostate expertly with deep thrusts.
He watched the boy's hair darken with sweat, watched drops form on his skin and slide down out of sight between their bodies. He swallowed to keep from moaning himself.
The only thing he felt truly detached about was the one thing he should have cared about most - the sight of his hand slowly changing. The knuckles beside the boy's clenching hand stuck out more suddenly, the skin around them stretching tighter and paler. His short white hair morphed as he rode the boy - slow and then fast and then excrutiatingly slow - and dark, limp strands came down over his shoulders to block everything but the boy under him from his sight, hidden behind a black veil. He wondered if the boy could feel it as the well-formed body on top of him became thinner, and bones jutted where muscle melted away.
Was Polyjuice something another could feel?
He shut his eyes against the change, unable to focus on anything but stretching this experience out more and more. He did anything he could, changing his pace and thinking grim thoughts about Minerva McGonagall coming on to him in some frightful Muggle negligee. None of it was enough to silence the boy's soft, tenor moans or the reactions they shot through his body.
He buried himself in smooth, beautiful youth and felt the release come, painful in its power. His body wracked, thin again and less graceful than before. His hand nearly tore the sheet it clutched, and he reached his other hand under the boy in an unusual gesture of generosity, fingering a slender erection and then stroking firmly. His talents came in there - he wanted the boy to shudder in completion with him still buried inside.
And he did. A broken cry, and the flesh in his hand pulsed.
He collapsed onto the boy's back, panting for air and reason.
The Polyjuice had worn off. It came to him with the return of ugly reality, and he felt a bolt of alarm. He had spent too much time on this whore. He had more potion with him, of course, and the boy wasn't looking at him. Still, it was an alarming happening. He was usually smarter.
He pushed up and slid out of the boy. There was a murmur from the prone form that he could ignore now that his sanity was back. He moved off the beed, marvelling at how unsteady his legs were, and went to dress. The clothes were ill-fitting over his real body, and he grasped in the pocket of his slacks for the small vial of polyjuice.
A shifting sound from the bed drew his attention before he could take the potion.
"'s nice, professor. Thanks."
The boy's voice was slurred - he was on them now, whatever narcotics he was partial to. But that wasn't what registered.
Professor.
It hit him harder than the polyjuice and he reached the bed in a flash. Turning the boy around, he opened his mouth to snap at him for breaking the rules and calling him some foolish nickname that he couldn't possibly know had any grounds in truth...
But the words froze in his mouth.
He recognized the glassy, strangely green eyes looking back at him.
Snape shuddered awake, groaning as his dream was pulled from him bit by bit. Like Seamus and his habit of slowly stealing the sheets as the night wore on.
He wanted the dream back. He wanted to lose himself, even though that first meeting had ended less than amiably. Even though the long days after had been so conflicted, before he went back to that brothel and asked for Seamus by name, and something compelled him to speak to the boy who used to be his student.
"Severus."
He resisted the voice at first, clinging to what he had, to the warmth of that memory.
"There seems to be a problem."
He waded into reality. Nothing like an understatement of the obvious to force him to retort. "What was your first hint?"
Albus looked down at him. "How do you feel?"
"Like I don't work properly. It's not a nice feeling." Snape tried to sit up, but he felt abused and aching. Just like he had when...
He sighed. "Potter tried again."
"Indeed. And did not succeed."
"Of course not." He grimaced, head falling back on the pillow. Back to the bloody hospital wing. Alone. "Did he cause any irreparable harm?"
Albus hesitated, glancing to the side. The brat was there. Figured. "Voldemort has the strength to escape, but luckily the killing curse has the same effect on him than on young Harry."
"And me, apparently." Snape grimaced, rubbing his ruined Mark.
Albus sat down beside the bed, stiff. "And every other person who bears that Mark. The Ministry reports that every Death Eater in custody had the same reaction as the last time."
"Of course." Snape raised his eyebrows as he looked at Albus. "The Dark Lord is very good at what he does. When he wanted us joined to him in life and death, he meant it. "
"Did he tell you?"
"That we might die if he were killed? No. I doubt he ever believed it would happen."
"Then he didn't specifically design this to happen?"
Snape shrugged. "I couldn't tell you."
"A way might be found..."
"Albus. I take every potion that has any effect on the Dark Mark. It doesn't dull the reaction in the slightest. I tried removing the Mark. I suspect if I remove the arm itself the Mark would stay with me, invisible. This is for life. That was clear when I let myself be Marked."
Albus nodded slowly. "It is beyond me to fix, but I will try. I fear it will do Harry no good to know this."
That he would be murdering every Marked man and woman when he killed the Dark Lord? Doubtless it would inspire all sorts of needless Gryffindorish angst. "Then don't tell him."
Albus looked to the side again, his face softening in that sickening Potter-worship way. "I have a history of bad judgement calls when it comes to what to tell Harry and what to keep secret."
"It will do him no good to have more reason not to go through with this."
Albus turned back to him, standing up. "I will leave you to rest, Severus. You will remain here until the morning."
Severus frowned. A moment later he sat bolt upright as a thrill of fear shot down his spine. "I have plans tonight. I have to leave."
Albus glanced back. "It's been taken care of."
"What?" Snape glared at him, not even questioning that Albus knew what he was talking about. The man simply knew. Everything. "What the hell do you mean, taken care of?"
"Trust the Order, Severus. Trust your friends."
"Friends? I don't have any bloody..." But his eyes slid to the side, to where Harry lay. Weasley and Granger were on the bed opposite Potter, talking. No one else was there.
"Lupin."
"Remus volunteered, yes. I assure you, he will let no harm fall on young Seamus."
"Malfoy will eat him alive."
"I don't believe so. In fact, I believe it will rather go too quickly for Mr. Malfoy to even try to take a bite."