The many wounds and temptations of Severus Snape

There, stood in the open doorway, was a man I barely recognised. Blood matted his hair and he clutched his left side which hung limply. Blood splattered robes and a bruised face.

Severus had come home.

The knife dropped from my hand and I reached back to support myself on the cabinets. I rushed towards him and he stood looking down at me. I helped him down the step into the kitchen and pulled him towards my chair. I supported his weight as he sat gently and I turned from him, not daring to look at the injuries. I went to Dads drink cabinet and took out the firewhisky. I through a large amount into a glass for him and poured some in with my milk, taking large gulps of the strong concoction. "I should get Molly." "Lena." Tears streamed down my cheeks, he was broken. Terribly broken. He made to get up when I turned towards him crying but stopped as pain gripped his body. I rushed towards him and took his face gently in my palm. His eyes were bruised and his cheeks swelled and cut. My finger flicked gently across his bruised lips and I placed the gentlest of kisses upon them. His breath caught and he sighed, taking the glass of firewhisky from my hand. He chocked some of it down and held my hand gently in his. "I really should get Molly." I looked into his eyes, but he couldn't hold my gaze. "No. It's fine..." "Severus, it's hardly fine." I went to the sink and poured a small amount of water into it and grabbed the softest cloth I could find. Sitting down in-front of him I began to slowly wash the blood from his face. Every time he flinched I'd make to stop but he'd pull my hand back up and continue to wash his face. We sat and I worked in silence. His face was clean within a matter of minutes and I made to start work of his side but he stopped me, I noticed the left arm on his robe was torn and as he held my hand stopping me work, I made with my other hand and pulled the sleeve up.

My stomach turned and I ran to vomit in the sink. I held my head and tried to focus. I took several more gulps of my milk and felt fresh tears make their way down my face. "Lena, I'm sorry. Maybe you should get Molly." I placed my milk on the table and made my way over to the alcohol cabinet again. Finding something that resembled Muggle Vodka I grabbed a clean cloth and sat back down beside him. The dark mark was almost black as I began to rub the alcohol gently over it. Severus cried out and I stopped and pressed a kiss against his lips as hard as I could without hurting his already sore lips. Tears began again and I noticed they were mingling with the ones that now ran from his own eyes. Several large scratches tore his arm, the tattoo barely recognisable. It was killing me to cause him pain but I had to do it. I rubbed it gently once more and he cried out again, and his cry was again replaced my mouth upon his. For every stroke of the alcohol I smothered his cries with kisses, each one harder than the last as the scars grew deeper the closer I came to his wrist. Slowing I realised what had happened and gently pulled up his right sleeve. Only one cut lay here but it was deep and straight across his wrist. They'd tried to bleed him. The urge to sob and run from the room was almost unimaginable but I forced myself to sit and continue the cleaning process. When I'd cleaned the remainder of his arms, it came to cleaning his left side. He started to unbutton the front of his robes but the pain this caused him was obvious and I replaced his hands with my own, gently unbuttoning the small black buttons that lined his chest. I pushed back the fabric and several deep bloody scores lined his left side. I gently pushed the robes from his arms and shoulder so that he now sat in-front of me, his chest exposed. My eyes raked his body. He was well defined and his muscles looked powerful. He lifted my chin so I looked him straight on and he kissed me more passionately than I'd kissed him. My fingers trailed a path down his chest, but he flinched when my fingertips brushed the bruises on his ribs and I was quickly alerted to the wounds in-front of me. I repeated the cleaning process again and after it was finished I grabbed a roll of bandaging from Molly's medicine cabinet beneath the sink. I wrapped the scars on his wrists and then his chest carefully, but the wounds on his wrists had already begun to bleed through. I made to remove the wrapping but Severus grabbed my hand to stop me. His exhaustion was obvious now and I made a decision quickly in my mind. I grabbed his robe shirt and threw it over my arm before helping Severus to his feet. I placed his arm around my waist and helped him walk up to my room, each step slow and painful. When we reached my room I pushed open the door gently and led him to my bed. He wouldn't sit so I took his hand and pulled him down beside me and there we lay, he held my waist gently as I lay on my side to face him and again I got lost in the black pools of his eyes. "You should sleep." I didn't know whether I trusted myself to fall asleep next to him and feared I'd have to stay awake to watch him sleeping to make sure he really was safe and wasn't going to die on me. I took his hand in mine and shuffled myself closer to him, placing my hand on his shoulder, feeling the strength in his arms, wishing he was able to hold me. Within moments I knew I was asleep and that night there were no nightmares.

Severus's P.O.V

My dreams were clouded with images of a pretty teenage girl in a towel and I imagined lying with her, my hands caressing every inch of that porcelain skin. When I woke Lena lay dreaming and I watched as her chest rose and fell with every breath. I stroked a stray hair that had fallen across her face as she slept and she moved slightly so that her head lay against my bare chest so I lay my arm gently around her. The bandages that covered my wrists were bloody and would need changing. I wouldn't put her through that again. She'd been so close to vomiting the night before and it had done nothing to stem the fear I'd felt at her seeing my dark mark for the first time. She was the first to see that for a long time.

I still felt weak and knew I would until I'd drunk a replenishing potion. I quickly realised I would be relying on Molly Weasley to help regain my strength. They'd taken so much from me, but I knew I'd be forced to return yet again under Albus's orders. I had no more free will than Potter did. Sad how he had yet to realise he was just a pawn in Albus's much greater game. It was so much bigger than any of the children realised. To them the Order was fun, exciting even, but to the adults, the ones actually taking orders it was much more than that, and for I it was the worst punishment. The regime had taken so much from us last time, the fight for good and evil, and we'd all been forced to take sides. An on-going battle to kill or be killed. The children would know nothing of its true force until they lost something, one of their own, and then the change would be irreversible.

This was no more obvious than in Lena's behaviour. She'd lost her mother to people she'd never met and because of a father she'd never seen, let alone had a chance to love, to be now with only him. She didn't laugh as Potter and Weasley did, did not have the same fight that Granger had, but she did have that pure ability to question everything and if needs must use her anger to get her an answer. She was clever and quick, that much was clear after her actions the night before. She had not run like weaker may, and had been quick to come to my aid even though I must have looked a monster. I'd be careful. Not rushing her into anything. I couldn't act as I had before now, pushing until she called me up for it. I would allow every choice to be hers.

Her age of course would play a part in our relationship. It was true that when she was in my classroom she'd see no favouritism or love; I'd treat her as any other. But in every other way id favour her above all others. No physical relationship could be played out at school; there was too much risk for both of us. But we could talk and show our emotions in other ways, such as those of how I'd apologised to her last time. The peonies. It had worked obviously, but not a second of my time away was spent not wishing I could contact her, apologise verbally, not knowing whether a lovesick teenager's act of floating flowers would be enough. Every curse, every jinx, I'd faced with her face in my mind. Hoping above all else that I would survive just to see that face and smell that sickly sweet smell I now associated only with her.

A small movement of her hand to my cheek was enough to awaken me to the fact that she'd awoken to find me watching her. I smiled and kissed her palm, reaching my hand to shelter hers. "Your wrists Severus." A frown played across her face and I couldn't bare the look of worry in her eyes. "Snake Venom. It won't heal for a while." And her eyes swept the length of my chest to where the bandages and bed sheets beneath me were soaked in my blood. "Severus you should have woken me. Are you in pain?" "None," I lied. The venom burnt through my veins as if destroying every vessel and nerve, but laying here beside her, her cold breath blowing across my face, those huge brown eyes looking up into mine, the pain was only a murmur in my mind.

She reached up and kissed me gently, my still bruised lips stinging with the pressure, but I held on and rolled onto my back pulling her on top of me. My tongue flew across the inside of her mouth and her tongue danced with mine as I my wrapped around her waist, holding her too me. The pain in my side burned like hell, but if hell was where I was going I'd take this moment with me. Her hands reached up and wrapped themselves in my hair and I couldn't help but taking a handful of those heavy curls in my fist and tugging on them a little. She reacted by pulling at my own hair and shifting her legs so that she straddled by bruised body. I felt my hand move from her waist and rest under her slip camisole at the small off her back. Only when she broke the kiss to kneel above me and look down at me with those huge russet eyes did I realise how sheer it was, and felt my stomach flip in response. She however felt another piece of my anatomy react and those eyes glowed cheekily, a guilty smile appearing on her face as she tipped her curls over her chest to cover the origin of my predicament. She was so perfect and I wanted nothing more than to turn her over and take her here and now. "Come on you, you need to talk to my Dad, and we need to change those bandages." She slipped away from me and began to grab and pull on clothes. On orders I averted my eyes and attempted to pull on my own robes. I couldn't get my arm in the sleeve, all power leaving my arms and Lena was quickly at my side, sliding my arm into the correct position. She was now fully clothed and wore a pair of skin-tight brown jeans and a tight white vest with thin lace straps. I groaned and she laughed innocently. Merlin. Control was difficult to keep under such a beautiful temptation, and beautiful she was.