NOTE

Warning for recollections of sexual assault, implied sexual assault, implied violence, and sexual content.

4. the scent

He dreamed of her.

It was one of the revels, in the early years. The moon hung cold and bright over the Malfoy Manor, and the music of the chamber orchestra which accompanied the evening's dancing had long since given way to the screams of the night's victims.

Snape did not know how long it had been. How many people had come pleading and afraid, and gone broken and bloody. He'd not been asked to take part in the torture. One of the others was being rewarded tonight, and Snape was left to observe, faking envy, jeering and laughing along with the rest.

An unconscious man was dragged from the room by two struggling house elves, and with a beckoning motion of the Dark Lord's pale arm, a woman was brought through the door. She was naked. The men howled, and Bellatrix cackled. Snape muttered in tongues to Avery, who was too drunk and distracted to notice Snape was saying nothing.

Usually, when there was a woman, she was brought in fully dressed. The disrobing, the taunting, was part of the fun. But tonight she was thrown to the floor at once. She kept very quiet as the man whose gift she was stepped forward to claim her. If she pleaded at all, it could not be heard under the roars of the Death Eaters.

Snape's view was blocked. He allowed it to be. All he could see of her for certain was a pale, exposed ankle, and a single paintstroke of red, between the two black-robed shoulders in front of him. Red hair.

The images and sounds became distorted, as in one of those wavy mirrors. So did time. It went on, and on, until a soft hand touched his shoulder from behind, and he turned.

"Come away from there," Lily said, her green eyes warm and sad. "Follow me."

She took his hand and led him away, through the door and out of the room, which vibrated with the mad stomping and shouting of the Dark Lord's followers. The vibrating darkness of the wood-panelled hallway dissolved. And then there was a different room, warm with lamplight. Lily pushed him gently into a chair, unbuttoned his robes, and brought a basin of warm water, cleaning the filth from his soul with a soft cloth. He sat there, panting. Crying, perhaps.

She dressed him again in dry clothes and brought him a hot mug of tea. Then she bent down and pressed herself close to him, her chin hooked over his shoulder. He squirmed.

"Stay still," she said.

"What are you doing?"

She smiled against his neck. "Hugging you, you imbecile."

He wrapped his arm around her and pressed his hand into the small of her back, pulling her close before the dream disintegrated.

Snape woke in bedsheets soaked with sweat. Once he'd got over the initial panic and could breathe again, he registered that other slickness between his thighs and grimaced.

"Like the boy you never were," he muttered. But it was a poor attempt at the old comfortable sarcasm. His voice was weak and shaking.

The single window of his chambers let in the cold grey light that preceded dawn. The small clock on his wall read five, its face faded yellow.

Only another dream. Given, a dream deep and endless, which he'd barely escaped. It was good she'd come to save him. Otherwise he might have been sucked in, never to wake.

He was tempted to call upon her now. But his nightmares were the one thing he never told her about. It seemed that the voice he heard during the day and the fragment of her that appeared in his dreams were too close to one another. If he made one aware of the other, both would shatter. So he kept quiet as he disentangled himself from his sheets and went into the toilet.

Snape turned on the water in the shower and stripped off his grey, sweat-soaked nightshirt, reminding himself of the basic facts. Today is Thursday, et cetera, et cetera.

He was shaking. He hated it, this reminder of the limitations of his body. Its inextricable connection to his mind, to his past. He stepped under the water–good, numbing cold–and stood there until the shaking became shivering.

Normal. Natural.

Fingers slightly numb, Snape washed himself. Then he stepped out, wrapping a towel around his waist. Refreshed, he dressed in his black robes, then took care of the mess in the bed. He used scourgify for the sweat and semen, but he made the bed the muggle way. It was a ridiculous habit, but Snape knew it… grounded him.

Whatever that meant.

He should have followed in the footsteps of Miss Green and taken a dose of Dreamless Sleep. But it was not quite so simple. For Snape, the potion was no longer a simple medicine.

Over the summer he'd developed a dependence on those small purple vials, and since July he'd been trying to break it. Nine nights, so far, was the longest he'd gone without it. The trouble was that no matter how many nights he held off, inevitably a nightmare so terrible came along that he was frightened into taking the potion the following night, for fear of witnessing anything worse.

This one had been bearable. Snape figured he had one or two more nights before another bad one. Or perhaps the stresses of teaching would distract his mind, and the intensity of his dreams would remain mild.

He'd found the embrace odd.

He rarely felt much physical sensation in his dreams, so it had been quite out of the ordinary.

Likely, he reasoned, it was because of the events of last night. Carrying Miss Green had been the closest he'd physically been to another person since being tended in St. Mungo's for the damage to his throat.

As he fluffed the pillows, he wondered how Miss Green had slept. The concealment charm he'd performed on her neck would have worn off by now, but she was probably still asleep. Hopefully Miss Malfoy would not pull back the curtains of Miss Green's four-poster and see something that was better kept secret.

Bed made, Snape strode through the door from his bedroom to his office. He glared at his barren desk. He loathed the start of the year. These first few days with no stack of essays to tear to shreds with his red-inked quill. Nothing to distract him.

Mornings weren't for patrolling the corridors, and he'd examined his new shrunken balloonfish in its green fluid to the point of boredom last night. Grabbing his travelling cloak and swinging it over his shoulders, Snape walked out the door of his office and up the stairs to the entrance hall. He would go out past the wards and then apparate deeper into the highlands. There was plenty of time for a solitary walk in the three hours before breakfast.

The dream was still disturbing him. That flash of red hair, that pale ankle. He now recognised the latter as Miss Green's, which he'd seen beneath the hem of her robes as she'd left his classroom yesterday.

But the mountain air would help. By the time he returned to the castle later, the dream would have diminished from a hulking, threatening shadow into what it was. A dream, and no more.

Pushing open the heavy castle door, Snape stepped out into the cold morning air and set off over the viaduct bridge towards the foggy hills.

"Snape carried you?!" Sadie exclaimed in a whisper over the breakfast table.

Fay kept her head down, staring at the apple pie on her plate, and did not respond. Lucy sighed histrionically. "Yes, Nott, for the umpteenth time."

Sadie shook her head, her mouth open in awe and disbelief. "Oh Fay, how mortifying."

"Yes," Fay agreed. "Can we forget it now?"

Lucy tutted. "Never."

Fay grumbled to herself and lifted a forkful of pie to her mouth.

"I wish I'd seen it," Isobel said, her voice cautious. She was still walking on eggshells after Lucy had thrown her hairbrush at her the night before.

Lucy shifted her hair over her shoulder. "It might have been romantic. If it hadn't been Snape."

Fay groaned. "Please, Lucy."

Fay had to admit that despite the embarrassing circumstances which had brought it about, her sleep had been the deepest it had been in months. Unfortunately, being rested had the side effect of further sharpening her already overwhelming senses. The scents in the great hall filled her throat and made eating difficult. She'd been trying to focus on the apple pie, its warm fragrant steam. But the conversation was making it difficult.

Lucy leaned forward, her eyebrows raised. "Not until you give a detailed account of what happened last night."

"It's not important," Fay snapped.

A ripple of surprise went through the other girls. Fay never raised her voice.

"Gosh," Lucy said. "Fair enough."

Sadie changed the subject, and Fay wolfed down the rest of the pie, blocking out their chatter.

Wolfed.

Ha.

But not even her wit could save her from the pure humiliation she felt when her nose caught a deep scent that sent a flash of heat straight to her womb. Her face flushed and her head turned sharpy as she sought out the source.

She remembered where she'd smelt it before just moments before her eyes landed upon Snape. Last night in his office. Leather, parchment, ink and rum. And rain.

The scent was imperfect now, diluted by the hundred others. Yet, for a moment, some channel in the air was disturbed (perhaps by the flapping of an owl's wing) and the scent travelled directly into her.

Fay felt her face drain in mortification, her mouth trembling. She stared at the faces of the other girls as though they were planets viewed through a telescope. Her own heartbeat thundered in her ears. She was about to be sick.

"What's wrong?" Lucy demanded. "You look like you've seen a boggart!"

"I don't feel well," Fay whispered.

Lucy's expression grew slightly more serious when she saw the dire pallor of Fay's face. "What exactly went on between you and Snape last night?"

"Nothing went on between me and Snape," Fay said, her voice dark and strident.

Lucy recoiled. "Merlin's sake, is your period next week?"

Fay put her hand over her mouth and carried her bag out of the great hall, her whole body feverish and shaky.

She went to the nearest girls bathroom, which was entirely empty but for her. She pushed open one of the wooden stall doors and knelt down over the toilet, her hands in fists on the seat.

In the end she wasn't sick, but she remained disgusted with herself. She knelt there crying until the subtle scent of the toilet water became almost comforting. Her breath echoed around inside the porcelain bowl like wind inside a bell.

After a minute or two she knew she would not be followed. Lucy had probably talked the others into leaving her be. And good thing, too. An ache was clouding her womb, and an echoing itch was growing between her legs.

She'd known this was coming, but had hoped for another day or two of peace. Tears subsiding, she pushed herself up from the floor and closed the lid of the toilet, sitting down. Better to have done with it now than to endure it for longer and sneak away suspiciously at lunchtime. Resigned, she lifted her left heel onto the edge of the seat and slipped her hand beneath her robes.

She was already wet. A numbness filled her mind and she moved her fingers in quick, dispassionate circles, biting down hard on her lower lip to keep from making a single peep. Once upon a time, masturbation had come along with the shedding of tears. To touch herself was to dive into a river of deep emotion. Now it was nothing more than a physical need, which she dealt with brutally.

She arched her back and added a second hand, hooking her fingers under her pubic bone and scratching more than stroking. Quickening her pace, she felt the pearl of nerves swell beneath the fingers of her first hand. There was already enough heat there to drive her to the peak, but she sensed completion would not come so easily.

Come on, she breathed, as a bead of sweat ran down her calf from her bent knee.

A bad memory wrapped around her windpipe like a string and she kept her eyes wide open and fixed on the lock on the door. Her thoughts concentrated into a single mantra, leaving no space for anything else. Don't remember– Don't remember–

In the end she recalled Snape's scent again. The way it had suddenly arrived inside her mouth, her throat. The piercing depth of it. Her wolf's heart hammered against her ribs, and she came.

Her breath huffed out in a single tremulous exhale, the loudest sound she'd made since she'd begun. She panted, withdrawing her fingers from her clenching body. Her pulse was in her neck.

Slowly the soft seizing stopped. Her heel slipped off the toilet lid and lowered shakily to the floor. Water dripped from one of the sinks. Fay leaned forward and put her forehead against the heels of her hands, her robes falling back over her legs, her breath evening.

There in the throbbing darkness behind her eyelids lurked the ghost of Johnny. His shoulder, sweating, chafing her nose as he thrusted into her. She was crying. His hand crawled between her legs and rubbed furiously. It was three days before the full moon and her body was burning and so wet, so wet. Little slut, he said, as his cock made a slapping sound inside her, bruising her cervix. She bit down on her wrist to stop herself moaning. You like that. And she'd come. The first orgasm she'd ever had with a man inside of her. After that he'd kissed her mouth and shoved his tongue down her throat, and that had been the first time too.

Fay opened her eyes and wiped herself clean, staring at the grain of the wood of the stall door. In the sink she scrubbed at her fingers, avoiding the mirror, only lowering her face into the cold water in her palms to cool it. Then she left the bathroom with her bag and set off to History of Magic.

As she climbed the stairs her body reached a sort of equilibrium, and the world seemed more tolerable than it had all morning. It didn't matter that, in the penultimate moment, she'd recalled Snape's scent. An embarrassment like that was well worth the relief she felt now. Whatever primal urge she'd forced into submission would keep its head down for the rest of the day.

Oh, how wrong she was.

"Get out your books. Yesterday's disaster proves you're in dire need of a review."

Snape's walk in the highlands had been restorative, but the frustrations of that morning's first year lesson had instilled in him an ugly mood, which he now took out on his seventh years.

His eyes scorched the room as the students pulled their books from their bags and set them on the tables in front of them. Snape did not miss the subtle glances they shared whilst bent over in their seats; of annoyance and grim expectation. But he was paying more attention to Miss Green, whose fingers trembled as she opened her bag, her face quite pale. The Creevey boy, seated beside her, noticed too.

Snape turned his face away and stood with his back to the blackboard, his hands clasped behind him. Yesterday's vials flew from one of the cabinets, each to the desk of its brewer. The pairs who had succeeded straightened up in their chairs. Those who'd failed, shrank.

In another life Snape would have been a great orator. Like a Shakespearean actor, he stretched his audience's ear with some words and sharply stabbed them with others. Changing pace to prolong tension, he wove a web around his students until there was no question of who held the most power in the room.

Unbeknownst to him he had already caught the small pale girl in the middle, the threads of his voice and his scent tightening around her as she fought to keep still.

"Amott, Bartlett, your potion is perfect. Button, Woborn, Peters, Garrett… acceptable."

In his peripheral vision he saw Miss Green staring down at the cover of her book, as though some awful news was written on it.

A flash, then, of the nightmare. That weak ankle, and her neck the night before. The imprint of Greyback's teeth in her smooth flesh, and Snape's bone-deep embarrassment on seeing it.

"Miss Green," he snapped.

Hazel eyes, more green than brown, flickered to meet his.

"Tell me the faults in what you see before you."

She hesitated, staring at him like a child with stage fright.

"Your vial. Describe its imperfections."

The Creevey boy tried to interject with the stuttering beginnings of a sentence, but Snape cut him off. "I was addressing Miss Green."

Fay looked down at her sample and spoke so quietly that the glass vial could have been a tiny person to whom she was telling a secret. "It's a muddy green colour."

"What did you do wrong?"

She was still staring at the vial, her cheeks the pink of almost crying.

"Or do you fail to remember?"

Lily's voice chastised him from the back of his mind. Sev! But it was too late to soften. The hardness within him had emerged, and some deeply wounded part of Snape wanted to punish the girl for making him… making him… feel.

Fay spoke in a half-whisper. "I didn't add enough–"

"Speak up."

"I didn't add enough rose oil."

"And?"

"The stirring pattern."

"Was?"

"Wrong, sir."

"How?"

She kept silent, failing to remember. "Mr. Creevey?" Snape prompted.

Dennis's voice was laced with disdain. "In the final step, sir. She stirred twice counterclockwise instead of once clockwise."

"Correct."

Miss Green looked shaken and Snape swiftly moved on to address the next failure, not knowing why he had done it and refusing to feel the guilt that curdled deep down.

After each of the failed potions had been sufficiently criticised, Snape announced that next week they would begin brewing Amortentia.

"With your partner, collect the correct amount of each ingredient from the apothecary jars in the back and set them aside in the cabinet in preparation for Monday's class. Well? Skip to it."

Chair legs scraped against the stone floor as Slytherins and Gryffindors stood up. The students gathered around the large glass jars, finding their partners and measuring out vials of rose thorn, pearl dust and peppermint. Snape began writing further instructions on the blackboard with a narrow white stick of chalk.

Fay thought she would faint at any moment. It was becoming very hard to stand. Her heart was fluttering unreliably, and in the wrong place. Not her chest, but much, much lower.

She could smell it. Her arousal.

At first she forgot what it was to have a normal human nose, how absolutely clueless her classmates were to the strong, sweet musk between her legs. She stood beside the jar of rose thorn, miserably pressing her thighs together as Dennis waited to measure out the three thimblefuls.

"Alright?" he murmured to her.

"Fine," she whispered. But the whisper was more of a whimper, and his eyes brightened with concern.

"Fay–"

She was very pale now and leaning against the tall table, her neck weakening as her head grew heavy with dizziness. Dennis reached for her wrist but she withdrew it sharply, her elbow sweeping one of the glass lids from the table. It flew to the flagstone floor and shattered loudly, a kind of high-pitched laughter in her buzzing ears.

Shock slithered through the room, freezing the students like statues. Snape's head whipped around at the crashing sound. Fay had covered her mouth with her trembling hands, and when her eyes found Snape's black ones they were as wide as an animal's, expecting to be struck. Her fear made Snape hesitate just long enough for the girl to flee the room, stumbling over the broken glass and out the door without so much as an apology.

The classroom was as cold as if a blizzard had just swept through it. The thousand splinters of glass covered the floor. No one moved a muscle.

Snape waved his hand and the glass pieces floated through the air, twinkling as they reformed into the lid they'd recently been. "Back to work," he intoned.

The students obeyed at once, with the exception of the Creevey boy, who glared at Snape as though the whole ordeal had been his doing.

"Miss Malfoy."

Lucy set down her vial of pearl dust and went to the black-robed professor, her blue eyes still startled from her friend's mishap.

"Sir?"

"Follow Miss Green and bring her back. If she refuses to come, report to me."

Lucy nodded and went out the door into the dungeon corridor.

Snape turned his face sharply away from the students, stifling his confusing frustration as he returned to his work at the blackboard. It wasn't his responsibility to worry. But the look in the girl's eyes after the crashing of the glass had concerned him. How many acts of rage had she witnessed? How many picture frames shattered on the floor? Plates thrown across the kitchen?

A low growl vibrated in Snape's throat, and he shook his head as his fingers stilled and he stared forward at his writing. His distraction was so great that he had missed a step of the instructions. He picked up the eraser and rubbed out what he'd written last, quickly writing over it again. But the dusty white remnants of the mistake lingered.

Lucy caught up to her in the tapestry corridor, just around the corner from the entrance hall. She was hurrying along at a kind of desperate limp. "Green!" Lucy stage-whispered.

Fay turned and Lucy saw she was pressing her hands to her lower abdomen. "Oh. Do you already have your period?"

"Go," Fay groaned, pushing the air away with a trembling hand as she turned again and kept on her way.

Her tone was final, so Lucy didn't argue and went back to the Potions classroom.

Fay struggled down the narrow tapestry corridor and turned into the wider stone one where the girl's bathroom was. It was a windy day and the clouds skated across the sky outside the windows. All of nature seemed to laugh at her.

It was different this time. The moment the stall door was locked she untied and unbuttoned her robes and leaned back on the toilet, spreading her legs wide. Her knickers were sodden, and the throbbing between her legs frightened her. She didn't think about it. She let Snape's scent overwhelm her, panting silently, her mouth open as she slid her hands under her shirt and rolled her nipples with her fingertips.

Only when she could stand it no longer did her fingers slip lower, rubbing inside her slick notch. She pushed two fingers of her other hand inside herself and arched her back, soundless cries catching in her throat like butterflies in a net. She lasted no more than a few seconds, and then was left in a haze of blue heat, her body like a beached jellyfish, draped unceremoniously over the toilet.

"Fuck," Fay whispered.

She was as nasty as one of the boys, wasn't she? Getting off in the bathroom. How often would she have to sneak away like this before the moon on Monday night? It had been twice already today, and it was not yet noon.

As she rested in this post-orgasmic heaviness, she wondered whether her stepfather's nocturnal visits had somehow satisfied the wolf inside her. There was something in her womb which ached even now. Was she lacking something? Lacking a man? She gave a halfhearted chuckle at the vileness of it all. Perhaps she should write to her mother and enclose a separate letter for her abuser.

Dear Johnny. I never told you, but I'm a nymphomaniac werewolf and our regular nighttime encounters really took the pressure off. Cheers.

She shifted slightly, her hips aching. She could hear her heartbeat as it slowed down, smell the sourness of her own scent.

Was it really the fault of the wolf, she wondered? Or was she just damaged?

Fay let out a huff of frustration as she wiped herself clean with toilet paper, wrinkling her nose at the film of slickness that stretched between her fingers like a web.

One thing bothered her above all.

Why Snape?

Wasn't it bad enough that he'd been the one to find her in the forest in her climbing tree? That he'd been there when Pomfrey had questioned her about her scars? That she'd inflicted the ones on her arms with the help of his own spell? Apparently not. Now she had to be so suffocated by his scent that to think a single clear thought in his presence was impossible.

Grim.

At least it wasn't something so demeaning as a crush. She'd had an innocent one on Lockhart in her first year, along with all the other girls. That had been bad enough. But Snape?

Never.

Not even Isobel, inclined towards ninety-nine-year-old vampires who composed depressing nocturnes, would have a crush on Snape. He was too broody. Too mean. Too… Snapelike.

Yes, Fay was safe. There was no image of him in her mind when she touched herself. Just that overwhelming scent, filling her chest so thickly she feared it might drown her.

Fay remembered the shame she'd felt when he'd berated her for the poorness of her Veritaserum sample.

But why had that shame been accompanied by a twitching between her legs?

"What are you doing?"

Fay yelped at the sudden voice, and pressed her thighs together when the ghostly face of Moaning Myrtle appeared through the wood of the stall door. Her wide gaze floated down to Fay's naked knees. "Ohh…" She laughed, a high watery giggle. "Who's moaning now?"

"I wasn't moaning," Fay said through gritted teeth.

Myrtle pouted mischievously. "Most people come in here to cry. You're the first I've ever seen masturbate!"

"Seen?" said Fay, alarmed.

But the ghost girl only giggled, twirling up towards the ceiling with an oooh! of taunting glee. By the time Fay had put her robes in order and furiously unlocked the stall door, Myrtle had disappeared down another of the toilets. As she scrubbed her fingers Fay was unsure whether the low sound in the empty bathroom was that of water dripping, or Myrtle chuckling from the U-bend.

Fay didn't return to the dungeon until the last ten minutes of class. The time she spent walking up and down the corridors hadn't soothed her anxiety but heightened it, and when she pushed open the door her palms were clammy and cold. She kept her head down as she stepped into the room, and closed the door quietly. When at last she dared to look up, Snape's eyes were waiting for hers, sharper than obsidian blades.

"Detention, Miss Green. Five nights, beginning tonight. Seven o'clock."

Her resignation was such that she didn't piece together that seven was the time Snape had already appointed for her Wolfsbane visits. She stared at the floor, breathing as shallowly as she could.

Snape's voice was frigid. "Is that clear?"

"Yes sir."

"Join Mr. Creevey."

Obediently she crossed the classroom to where Dennis stood, grinding down Ashwinder eggshells with a pestle. Snape strode to the front of the room where he began writing out the homework on the blackboard.

"Where were you?" Dennis whispered.

Fay only shook her head. Her stomach was hard with dread. What had she been thinking? Before, staying away from Snape for as long as possible had been her only objective. Walking around the castle aimlessly hadn't seemed like such a bad idea. Now, as she faced the consequences, she sorely regretted her impulsiveness.

For such an offence as deliberately skipping the entirety of class, she'd surely be punished with the most gruelling of tasks.

Fay's face fell as she fully understood the predicament she'd put herself in.

It would be an hour on her knees scouring cauldrons while Snape supervised. Only the two of them in the room. Nothing but his silence… and his scent.

Merlin, spare her.

NOTE

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