Snape had had a long day standing over cauldrons. He was stiff, tired, and his arms were beginning to ache even using his special technique with no wasted wrist motion, that swapped arms every thirty minutes.
Every so often, he resorted to a form of what one might call Unlucky Dip, using a student’s homework to plumb the depths of what was usually truly awful theoretical understanding.
Potter won the game this time. Oh joy.
Right in the middle of a discussion about safety precautions in the use of mandrakes came a swoop of ink down to the middle of the page, where the words
God I am so bored!
suddenly animated themselves and marched about, flashing gold and silver stars between the letters, and little mouths opened up on the letters. The mouths were moving.
Snape lowered his head to the paper. The letters were making tiny rude noises, as if they were blowing raspberries.
Snape snorted with laughter. A crude effect, but excellently done. Potter must have spent hours on it. Hours which had not, of course, been spent on the essay itself.
He sighed, and returned to work.
The essay came back without comment.
The next week, Harry turned to the blank space in the middle of the scroll, and put the question he was actually thinking about.
Crabbe won that week’s Unlucky Dip. Snape wore himself out correcting the work of a semi-literate whose every second word needed amendment.
After that, he wanted a rest.
Instead of picking one out at random again, he broke his own unwritten rules and picked out Potter’s scroll.
Potter’s essay was a miracle of literacy and calm good sense by comparison, not that that was saying much. But there was another blank space with an interpolation in there.
Why,
Potter asked plaintively,
do Potions always smell so terrible?
Snape snorted with laughter again. He’d like to know that himself. It wasn’t anything anyone had ever dared ask him before. Trust Potter.
Then he got on with his real work.
Curious, though, that Potter’s homework managed to brighten his day for the few seconds it took for him to read it.
The essay came back without comment again. Harry sighed. He knew that Snape wasn’t reading the things, but it was nice to talk to something, even if it was only a piece of paper. Mind you, that last time he’d talked to a piece of paper things had gone very badly. Under the question he was thinking about this time, he put a PS.
Snape settled down with a cup of strong coffee and Potter’s homework. The boy would be horrified were he ever to find out that his stupid questions were rapidly becoming one of Snape’s few indulgences over the course of his weary days.
Sir: Why do you spend half your time trying to save my life and the other half giving me detentions? A person could get confused.
There was a space. Under it Potter had written:
PS: I know the last time I said what I was thinking on a piece of paper it had been enchanted by Voldemort, but I do think he’d have been unlikely to look at my Potions homework, even if he weren’t actually dead now. I’m not totally stupid. HP.
Snape shook his head. I haven’t actually killed any of the students, not even Longbottom, even when I was seriously annoyed. It’s not as if I... well, it’s not because I like you. Because I’ve saved other students’ lives over the years, and cordially detested quite a few of them. In fact I find you irritating.
He found it even more irritating to be amused by Potter’s maunderings, and inconveniently tempted by Potter’s body. At least the boy hadn’t taken to writing naughty words in the margins. Normally a tedious and ignorable diversion, somehow this would be different if he was imagining Potter’s perfect mouth shaping the filthiest of gutter language as he scrawled.
He went in for a cold shower.
The questions went on. Harry got quite used to saying what he thought to the mute and innocent surface of his homework scrolls.
One evening, as he was cutting at a badly-flowing quill, Ron came up to him.
“What are you thinking about, Harry?”
Distracted by the fiddly little task, Harry replied honestly: “Potions homework.”
It was only when Ron stared at him in horror that he realised there was something unusual about this.
“No, I haven’t swapped brains with Hermione or something. I’m trying to annoy Snape. You know he doesn’t read our essays, so I’m putting stupid questions in the middle of them.”
“What, like ‘Why is your nose so huge?’“
Harry grinned. “Didn’t think of any physical ones.”
“Ask him what rude words mean. Ask him what ‘shagging’ means. Bet he’s never shagged anyone!” said Ron cheerfully.
“Mm?”
“Nobody’s ever fancied him. I mean,” said Ron judiciously, “nobody could.”
Harry crossed his legs hurriedly, although he was fairly sure Ron couldn’t see under the table.
“Black beetly eyes, huge nose, horrible face, horrible expression on the horrible face, greasy revolting hair...”
Dark dark eyes I could get lost in, big nose (wonder if it’s true what they say about men with big noses?), gorgeous face (not pretty at all, just gorgeous), that controlled expression that makes me wonder what he’d look like sweaty and panting, with his hair falling into his eyes. Mm.
“S’pose I’d just better put something naughty in. Could always blame you for giving me the idea!” said Harry, rolling his essay open to the now-traditional middle part and writing three words.
“Don’t you dare!” said Ron, laughing.
Harry wrote his question that week with a wicked grin.
Actually, he wouldn’t mind Snape giving him a little practical instruction on that. Snape was almost as fanciable as he was irritating, with those compelling eyes and that low purr of a voice. But since that wasn’t on offer, he could at least have a little quiet fun trying to infuriate Snape behind Snape’s back, sort of.
He went to bed early that night, and thought about Snape
Snape got out his ruler and started to measure. Four feet into the essay, he found a blank space. But it had something written on it.
What’s fellatio, Professor?
He snorted irritably and wrote a couple of words.
Harry unrolled the scroll for its usual pro-forma glance. There was a small annotation in red ink just where he’d put his question. Oh shit. Why had the bastard taken to answering back now, the week when he’d gone filthy-minded instead of just wittering on! Why hadn’t it crossed Harry’s mind that it would embarrass him rather more than it embarrassed Snape!
But Snape looked perfectly normal. He did not even start handing out detentions for wasting his time or defacing school property or misspelling a word (Harry had looked it up, but he wouldn’t put it past Snape to pretend he’d got it wrong).
He amused (and terrified) himself trying to think up what Snape had written: starting with “See me” and “Twenty points”, and going on to the pragmatically-informational “Cocksucking” (Snape did like to impart information).
He could think of any number of lengthy unpleasant comments Snape might have made, but whatever it was had been very terse.
Now he had to wait until he was alone. The lesson crawled by. Or zoomed by, because every time Snape silently crept up behind him to ask if he was paying attention (which he wasn’t), he twitched with excitement and fear, and by the time he’d got his nerves under control, another fifteen minutes had slipped past.
That evening, when (at last) he drew the curtains on his bed, called light and settled down with his scroll, he read the two words Snape had written.
Ask Malfoy.
Harry rolled the scroll up again. If Malfoy’s—when I haven’t—I’ll—His fist clenched on it with rage, and the scroll crumbled down to dust instantaneously.
Harry sighed, got out of bed, and went to fetch a fresh scroll. He wrote the title of the week’s homework at the top, and rolled it open to the middle.
There he wrote:
Does he know, sir? Is it one of those extra assignments you help him with when he trots down to the Potions dungeon after school? Maybe you could teach me, sir. I’d hate to think Malfoy was better at anything than I am. I’m sure I could learn!
Then he sighed, waited for the ink to dry, rolled it back up, and began to actually write the essay at the beginning of the scroll. There was always a chance that his private thoughts could get jumbled up in the essay, if it was a long one, but it hadn’t happened yet. He’d always thought that Snape, reaching the end of the essay, rolled it up again. He wasn’t sure he’d have dared to write his private thoughts in the middle of his scrolls if he’d known Snape actually read them.
As usual, the essay stopped far short of the middle of the scroll.
Snape twitched his long fingers over his Essay-Marking Unlucky Dip game. Longbottom ‘won’ this time.
Forty minutes of scathing red ink later, he groaned hollowly and went to make himself a cup of coffee.
He was still obsessed with Potter’s parenthetical remarks. What if Potter had got involved with Malfoy following his ill-considered witticism? And if he has? What are you going to do, Severus, claw Malfoy’s eyes out?
The truth was worse. When he’d read Potter’s latest comment, he rubbed his eyes and groaned softly. The brat’s flirting with me. Which wouldn’t matter an iota if I weren’t tempted.
At the bottom of Potter’s comment, he put:
Malfoy thinks he is the resident Slytherin expert on erotic matters, which is not an opinion shared by his Head of House. However, far be it from me to ruin the traditional method of adolescent sexual enlightenment by misinformation. SS.
Still, at least he would have a while to think better of it before the next adulterated essay.
At that moment, one of the school owls hooted outside his window, then tapped on it with an impatient talon.
He unrolled the message, saw the familiar handwriting and groaned. Potter had apparently grown impatient with the regular essays.
I bet you know a lot more about it than he does. HP
Indubitably. SS
Private lessons? Please? HP
I am paid to teach you Potions, Potter. SS
Would you be offended if I offered to pay for extensive tuition? HP
In Potions? SS
No. HP
You couldn’t afford me, Potter. SS
I’ll just have to fall back on my fantasies. HP
Spare me. SS
No. HP.
What do you mean, ‘no’? SS
I mean, I won’t spare you my fantasies. HP
Do I have to be the recipient of an adolescent’s fervid ramblings?
Yes. HP
It had been a rotten day, Harry thought, starting with Dobby discovering the state of Harry’s sheets after last night’s wet dream, and trying to tell him the facts of life: “You is older, Harry Potter sir! When an Elf boy is growing up, he is finding a nice Elf girl or a nice Elf boy to be keeping him company.”
He’d done his best to explain that he knew what one did, he just didn’t have anyone to do it with yet.
“But you is hero, sir!” Dobby cried out shrilly while Harry tried vainly to stop him. “You was killing Evil Lord Voldemort, and you is deserving happiness more than anybody.”
A passing Hufflepuff looked shocked.
Harry, shushing Dobby vainly and frantically, had decided it was lucky he himself wasn’t like Malfoy’s dad. He could almost see the appeal of telling Dobby to slam his ears in something when he thought of the entire school finding out either a) that he didn’t have anybody or b) that he was talking to House-Elves about being a hero.
It wasn’t as if he minded not having anybody. Well, not much, anyway.
He certainly didn’t want any of the people who’d offered because they wanted a hero or a Quidditch genius.
In the evening, he sat down with a long piece of parchment and forgot about all of it. Soon he was transported to the happy realm of the imagination, where no Dursleys locked him in a cupboard, no house-elf waxed indignant over the state of his sex-life, and no Snape peered at him with piercing dark eyes when he was trying to work up an innocent little fantasy about him.
Well, not that innocent.
Now, let’s see, he thought. He’d try being somewhere else for this one, just for a change. Suppose he walked into a Muggle bar, and Snape was sitting in a corner, dark eyes staring at him as he came in. Maybe Snape might be touchingly grateful for an approach: half the kids talked about him as if he hadn’t had a shag for years—if ever. And, Harry thought, I suppose I’ve got youth on my side, even if I’ve got messy hair, glasses, and a stupid scar.
He started to write.
Anyway, he’d walk over to Snape, looking at him all the way, as he never dared look at him in lessons. Well, particularly those bits he never dared look at in lessons. He’d got a good glimpse in the toilets...once. He’d never forget that. At least seven inches, perhaps eight, and a nice fat pair of balls to go with it. He’d practically memorised it; the precise shape, where the vein was, how it would move in his hand, the way it might look when it was dripping and throbbing and ready and oceans of hot white come were gushing out of it...aaaah...
Damn. He’d lost interest now.
Snape started to read:
He was wearing a pair of green gloves to match his eyes his friend had brought him from Paris...
Snape sighed.
Watch your antecedents, Potter,
he wrote. He glanced back at the page.
but despite his youth and beauty the dark man in the corner with the black eyes was the one for him.
Watch the antecedents again. I find the ‘black eyes’ interesting, though—were you intending to convey an impression of Stygian melancholy or domestic abuse?
Snape grinned nastily to himself, but the next few lines wiped the grin off his face.
The man rubbed stealthily between his legs at the huge bulge in his trousers, wanting the boy to play with it. It was bigger than any other he’d ever seen - and he’d been looking at boys in the changing-rooms for ages.
Snape cupped his crotch protectively. Don’t read it, he warned his prick.
Watch point of view,
he wrote.
He pulled his hand crossly away from his crotch. He was not going to pay any attention to the lurid fantasies of a boy young enough to (if he’d been heterosexual) be his son. He was certainly not going to wank himself over them. He returned his gaze to the page:
Nice big pair of balls, too. But it was that prick, thick and hard and ready, that had the boy wild for sex...
Snape became aware that he was touching himself through his clothes. Well, all right, he’d just stop short of bringing himself off, then. That would preserve his standards. He just had to cup it reassuringly, and maybe just fondle it slightly.
The boy’s going to - I’m touching it now - big and hard at at least eight inches long - and I
Snape was panting now. He withdrew one hand from what it was doing for long enough to reach for his wand and use a small spell to clip the parchment open, and dropped the wand with a sob of relief; now he could use both hands to rub greedily at his cock and balls. He was so overcome with emotion that he forgot to point out the simple grammatical error and the misplaced word (‘at’ for ‘and’).
At this point a streak of ink fell across the page.
He almost wailed as Potter’s story ran out, leaving him high and dry.
After a few minutes of silent furious misery, he picked up his quill and began to write:
Even as a simple sexual fantasy, this is a
very bad story, Potter. You have got to remember the issue of pacing. Let the tension build and build before you let
yourself or your reader succumb to orgasm.
A thought occurred to him.
Use the following spell...
(he described it in minute detail)
...to permit yourself to control your quill by thought alone if it’s inconvenient to use your dominant hand.
Now, watch how a better writer might have handled the same weary plot. I will sketch one in and annotate it so that you can see the parts you missed. NOTES SHALL BE IN CAPITALS, WHILE THE STORY IS IN HANDWRITING.
He had, of course, no intention of actually going ahead and giving the boy this particular commentary, but he might indulge himself by writing it up. He had to indulge himself with something, after all.
Not that the man ever gave the impression he knew how to unwind.
YES, BOY, I AM PERFECTLY AWARE OF HOW I APPEAR TO PUPILS. I JUST DON’T ACTUALLY CARE.
He found himself studying the man as if he were a casual pick-up, not his hated nemesis at all: sweep of dark hair (he liked long hair: he could tangle his fists in it as the man sucked him); great eagle beak of a nose; thin hard mouth that made him ache to taste it and soften it.
Then his gaze grew more particular, straying where it had never dared to in classes, and he skipped a breath as he saw an impressive prick, a beautiful stiff length of flesh set off nicely by a fine pair of balls. He could see that much through the tight trousers.
Snape paused to adjust his clothing. Not because of the description of his own sexual organs (no novelty to him, after all), but because the thought of Potter’s green gaze ablaze with lust was making his trousers feel rather tight. He could, if he felt like it, make a smart comment about the unusually-good lighting in the sleazy club, but decided to leave that much to dramatic licence.
IN CASE YOU WISH TO MAKE ILL-JUDGED REMARKS ABOUT MY SUDDEN NARCISSISM,
Snape pointed out, sighing with relief as he let his prick feel the relief of cool air rather than imprisonment,
I WOULD LIKE TO POINT OUT THAT PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION IS SOMETHING I WAS SADDLED WITH BY THE REQUIREMENTS OF THIS PARTICULAR NARRATIVE.
INCIDENTALLY, ACTUAL MEASUREMENTS ARE RATHER A GAUCHE DETAIL, AND RISK ALIENATING READERS LESS BLESSED BY NATURE (SEVEN AND A HALF, INCIDENTALLY. ONE COULD WISH, IF YOU HAVE AN EYE FOR DETAIL, THAT YOU BROUGHT IT TO LESSONS WITH YOU).
The boy moaned. His own prick was pounding and slipping inside his trousers.
AND NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO HAVE AN ORGASM. PACE YOURSELF. A COUPLE OF SENTENCES FOLLOWED BY PREMATURE EJACULATION WILL NOT MAKE YOU AN ENVIABLE LOVER OR AN ENVIABLE WRITER.
Snape grabbed his wand and aimed it at the quill. He continued writing without using his hands.
Well, without using his hands to write with, anyway.
“Boy,” said the master, “come.”
The boy nearly did.
WAIT FOR IT, POTTER.
Instead, the master rose from his seat with slow dignity. “Follow me.”
The boy didn’t mind that the club was sleazy, ill-cared-for and smelt of smoke. All he cared for was getting the relief he so badly needed.
“Naked.”
NOT YET.
The boy undressed, hands trembling as he did so, leaving his clothes tumbled on the floor.
“On the bed, boy.” A narrow hand pointed the way.
The boy whimpered and pressed himself down on the bed, careless of the filthy sheets, just needing pressure.
“Stay still.”
THIS MEANS YOU, POTTER.
The master moved towards him with confident skill,
wrote Snape, who was fairly certain his own erotic skills must have atrophied over years of disuse, and who was glad that all this particular situation called for was bluff.
The boy whimpered, rolling his hips and pleading for the dark man to mount him then and there.
AGAIN, DON’T GO OFF HALF-COCKED AT THE MERE THOUGHT. LET THE FEELING BUILD.
The master took his time, stretching and dilating the boy until he was whining and pleading nearly continuously. Begging for it.
NOT YET,
Snape wrote, eyeing his groin repressively.
One long hard stroke, first; letting the boy feel it and then waiting a moment for the boy to catch his breath.
The boy felt the master’s hand sneak under and pull his balls tight, stopping him from coming.
Snape grabbed his own balls viciously, and only just managed to hold himself back by main force.
“Not till I say.”
The master started pounding into him hard, not holding back, and it almost hurt, but it felt good, hammering his prostate with every stroke, and then the man let go of his balls, and...
“Now.”
...he was coming like a fountain, great thick spurts of it, sobbing as it erupted from his aching prick, riding the pleasure to a glutted sweaty finish that left him exhausted.
Snape sighed, and opened an eye to check on the progress of his notes. The quill had kept writing obediently, but the last of the text had been obliterated by a pool of semen.
He sighed again and reached for his wand. One minute flick (which was, let’s face it, about all he was capable of) and the mess had adjusted itself downwards by about an inch, leaving his text in all its shining glory.
He grinned tiredly, and added, under the ‘punctuation’ of his own juices.
THERE NOW. THAT’S MUCH BETTER, ISN’T IT?
What he really needed to do was clean off what he’d, ah, written, then send the less-revealing notes back to Potter. He hadn’t got the energy for the necessary spell, so he’d have to stay here and sleep for a bit.
He slept relatively deeply. He could hear an owl hooting at him in his sleep, could even feel an owl talon prodding at him sharply.
When he woke up, half an hour later, the desk was empty of essay and commentary. Had it been a particularly-vivid dream?
He looked at the desk.
A white owl-feather quivered in the breeze.
Sod, he thought.
Snape was about to shut his eyes again when a thought occurred to him. There was no guarantee that the worst had already happened. There was no guarantee that Potter had received his unintended gift. There was no guarantee, anyway, that he knew he’d received it.
Glancing downwards at his lap, he snarled: This is all your fault!
With an expression that reminded him of Potter’s, it replied, Didn’t you enjoy it?
Muttering, he put it away.
Rejecting the option of disembowelling Potter’s blasted owl out-of-hand, he considered going to the Gryffindor tower by stealth and collecting his inadvertently-posted reply. Unfortunately, that would entail going past quite a few carefully-set wards and safeguards, many of which had no liking for Slytherins. If he was caught, too, his reasons for visiting Potter might be misinterpreted. He probably could manage to do it if he hatched a careful plot involving a diversion (caused by Peeves), a severe fright (caused by the Bloody Baron) and a Slytherin sortie on the other side of the castle. None of his allies would mind helping him at all, but he did draw the line at doing all that to cover up his own private personal miscalculation.
Instead, he owled Potter in haste.
Don’t read your last communication from me: it was posted in error. SS
Why? HP.
Your owl picked it up from my desk when I was momentarily distracted. SS
By what? HP
DON’T BE IMPERTINENT, BOY!
Why not read it? HP
Snape considered. He refused to say, ‘because I came all over it’ or ‘because it’s turned into a tutorial in pornographic writing’. The bloody boy would only take that as encouragement.
Your sense of honour should at very least prevent you from taking advantage of my mistake. SS
Why? HP
Snape pounded his head on the desk gently. Why? WHY? He scrawled:
Are you sure you’re a Gryffindor, Potter? SS
Well, the Hat suggested placing me in at least 3 other Houses, including yours. But it did finish off by accepting me as a Gryffindor, yes. HP
Are you going to return the item unread? SS
Well, I’m not sure I can, sir. HP
WHY NOT? SS
Snape underlined that with three furious stabs of the pen.
Well, I could give it you back without reading it again, sir. If you made it worth my while. HP
The more Slytherin aspects of Potter’s character were definitely coming to the fore.
Oh, Salazar, no! Snape thought, groaning hollowly and hiding his head in his hands.
Snape jumped a foot every time his wards triggered, but it was never Potter.
The usual endless succession of Slytherins carried small niggling problems in to the dungeons like ants carrying grains and leaves.
Problems with work (too much or not enough). Problems with bias from the other Houses (he did his best to offset this by believing his Slytherins even when the bias of probabilities was against them). Problems with love or hate. Problems with sport; they were being ground down at Quidditch, yet again (every time they started to win Dumbledore moved the goalposts).
Nothing personal to him, of course. Not until Malfoy came in to flirt, utterly un-tempting. Every time Malfoy widened his eyes that precisely-calculated amount, wet his lips delicately, tossed his hair and finally reached to smooth his robe over his bottom, Snape had difficulty repressing a yawn. Nothing like the way Potter slid hot stealthy glances his way, as if to say, ‘how dare you make me want it like this!’ Malfoy didn’t sweat and pant and squirm, all impulse and appetite. The blond scion of the Malfoy line gave the impression that wild sweaty sex might break a fingernail.
Snape was rather looking forward to the chance to let Potter know that he had no chance: keyed up on malice and adrenaline, he jumped every time someone came to the door.
After three or four days, he’d decided it had all blown over, and felt a twinge of what he was determined not to call disappointment.
Well, there was always research (... and when did you ever think of it that way, Severus? he asked himself crossly. Research had always been the prize at the end of each day’s tedium). He settled down to writing up his results for a batch of testing he’d done last week: red (correct); red (correct); red (correct); sludge-brown (inactive); red (correct); red (correct) and ultramarine (unusual result, repeat).
There was a noise.
He jumped, again.
No, it wasn’t a person, this time. It was Potter’s owl, looking amused.
He glared at her. She put one talon forward and handed him a roll of parchment.
Ah. Potter had sent him the mistakenly-posted essay back again. Good. He rolled it open hurriedly.
A note fell out.
Do you need it back for inspiration, sir? HP
PS. Only used it about five times.
Snape’s mouth set in a sour expression. Glancing at his own mistaken missive, he saw an additional line at the end:
Crikey, I wasn’t expecting that, but you’re right, it does feel a lot better.
I thank you from the bottom of my balls, sir. HP
Lips thinning even further, Snape tossed the scroll on the fire and sent it up in enormous green flames, which didn’t do much to relieve his feelings.
And how dare he assume I want to masturbate!
Don’t you? replied his prick, in a mental voice that sounded remarkably like Potter’s.
He tried to get back to his work, but the momentary diversion had ruined his concentration. He shifted in his seat restlessly.
There was some excuse for Potter, at seventeen, having difficulty keeping his hands out of his robes.
It was, of course, a matter of physical relief. He simply hadn’t bothered since...
There was a knock on the door.
When he answered it, panting a little, there was nobody there. There was a scroll with a pink ribbon round it. A sudden cool breeze went past him as he bent to pick it up, and he twitched irritably.
He unrolled it, went back in, and sat down comfortably with it.
At the top, he read
I’ve been taking your advice about writing better erotica, sir. HP
He sighed. Well, he supposed he might always satisfy his curiosity. He might always explain to Potter the things he’d got wrong.
He was a little curious. What sort of fantasies did Potter have? He unrolled the scroll, and set the spell on his quill so that it would write without being held in his hand.
Thanks for the ‘look-no hands!’ spell, sir. In return, have you tried one for unrolling a scroll to read it effortlessly? I made this one up. You sort of hook it round on itself in an endless loop, and set the reading speed.. HP
Snape tried it. He was almost impressed: Potter had a decent brain when he bothered to use it.
Even though it was fun imagining you at some sort of Muggle club (where I’ve never been, obviously), I get even more fun out of imagining you in your natural habitat.
In the blank space between paragraphs, Snape paused the scroll, and caused the quill to write:
I think I can safely assume that ‘fun’ (having or giving) is not something I was put on this earth for, Potter. SS
You’re probably going to tell me this isn’t about ‘fun’, sir,
the text scrolled up,
but you can’t stop me having it.
Snape gulped.
Fun, that is,
Potter continued.
The boy was late. His Potions master would take away about 12 zillion points from his House for that, and it also meant he wouldn’t have time for any preparations.
He usually did two things before Potions lessons. 1) work, in a doomed attempt to impress his master and 2) wank himself silly, in an attempt not to fancy Sir.
Snape snorted. Was that what they called the masters at Muggle schools?
Well, that day I - I mean he - hadn’t had time to do anything, which meant the master was going to take the piss all morning and he’d have nothing to show for the misery but an aching erection.
After about forty minutes he couldn’t bear it any longer. Longer being the operative word.
He stealthily trapped a fold of his robe between his legs, moving it slowly back-and-forth, back-and-forth. His eyes were blurring with sweat, or maybe he was going blind. Rubbing and rubbing and...
And he could hear footsteps behind him.
He stopped, or almost stopped. He was so close to that happy place where nothing mattered but the space between his legs.
“What are you doing, boy?”
He couldn’t know. He couldn’t.
“Are those dried bat wings?” the master continued,
God, that voice! thought the boy. He wriggled on his seat, and panted.
He had to touch.
Instead, he slipped a hand inside his robe and feigned to scratch a nipple.
“Flea-ridden brat,” the master murmured.
He moved his hand down restlessly, and rubbed his balls, hoping it looked as if they itched.
He wanted to push his clothes off and pump his erection thoroughly.
Instead, all he could do was slip a stealthy finger into the front of his robe and, fingertip just round the head of his prick, just where it felt fantastic--aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Snape noticed that those enchanted quills made a very brave stab at phonetic representation.
I SEE YOU STILL HAVEN’T SOLVED THE PROBLEM OF PREMATURE EJACULATION,
he wrote, his own body tingling pleasantly at the thought of Potter having a helpless noisy orgasm.
AND IF YOU EVER SHOW ANY SIGN OF ENJOYING YOURSELF THAT MUCH IN ONE OF MY CLASSES I’LL HAVE YOU CASTRATED.
He let the scroll scroll down, not expecting to see anything else.
Some way down, Potter apparently recovered consciousness.
Are you tossing yourself off, sir? I like thinking about that,
Potter said.
Snape made no sound, although a rich, wanton groan filled his mind, as he pushed both hands under his robe. He felt just a little self-conscious, but that was irrational. There was no-one there to see.
I’m touching myself. One hand sliding up my inner thigh while the other one toys with my balls,
the obedient quill wrote.
Nobody would have heard him even if they’d been standing next to him, which was fine. He might be having depraved fantasies about corrupting one of the boys in his charge (the boy might even have been colluding in his own corruption), but he could practice his depravity in silence.
I like a fingertip stroking slowly over my balls,
he wrote.
I like waiting until I’m really desperate.
The hot secretive pleasure of that mingled with the image in what Potter had written; the stealthy hand slipping under the robe, the fingertip tracing around the eager cock.
He wanted to come.
It wouldn’t take much. He started to give himself long, slow, hard strokes, luxuriating in the pleasure of it. Deliciously tight, hard strokes. One, two, three, four... one more would do it, but...he refused to record his pleasure for Potter’s later delectation.
The quill scratching on the paper scrawled,
Giving you an orgasm isn’t one of my duties, Potter.
He stopped. Through the red agony in his mind, and the clamour of his pride that he had been able to stop, and the half-rictus half-vicious-smile on his face—he was aware of something.
He was still silent—the obdurate silence that refused to break rang in his ears, but there was a sob of caught breath. Not his.
Under his own breath, his own pain, he listened and totted-up that sense of not-being-quite-alone.
His fist shot out and closed round a thin wrist. Refusing as he did to countenance the thought that he had some perverse natural sympathy with Potter, he had to believe it was mere coincidence that drew his hand there.
He’d been a fool. He knew Potter wanted, for some reason, to have sex with him. He knew Potter had an invisibility cloak. He even knew Potter was the sort of reckless idiot who, when he’d got away with something once, upped the stakes and tried to get into more trouble.
Furiously, he felt for the clasp at Potter’s throat, undid it and roughly threw the cloak aside.
He gulped.
The little bastard was stark naked. Nothing but lots of warm naked skin, and a firm muscular body, and...traces of sweat, and...a very damp...
Not that I’m looking, of course, Snape lied firmly, wondering how such a completely ordinary phenomenon as the soft trail of body-hair down Potter’s belly could appear so fascinating.
“Oh god yes,” said Potter, squirming, “rip my clothes off and do me.”
“As I told you, that is not part of my job description. And have you any idea what sort of trouble you might get into...”
“Isn’t that the point?” Potter said, smirking.
“Little boys,” snarled Snape right into Potter’s face, “who court danger might get raped.” Hoping against hope to terrify the boy right out of the room.
“Yes, but you’re not going to rape me.”
“Believing against the odds in my ethical standards. How touching.”
“You can’t rape me,” the boy said. “I want to.”
That broom won’t fly: try something else, Snape decided, with the one remaining lucid corner of his mind.
“Luckily for you,” said Potter. “If you scared me out of here starkers I bet that would get you in a hell of a lot of trouble.”
“You don’t want me,” Snape snarled, contradicting the visible evidence that Potter did. “I’m not even a good lover. I haven’t had it for about twenty years, and I’m only good enough to fool you on paper.”
“Does this lie?” gasped Potter, waving his erection at Snape, apparently for emphasis.
Another poor strategy, Snape thought, determined to find one that worked.
“Just because you’ve always had everything you wanted...” he said angrily.
“I did not have a sheltered life. My ‘family’ feared me and hated me. Then, for a nice change, I came to Hogwarts and was told that all the wizarding world thought I was a hero, in-between bouts of fearing me and hating me again. In between all that, I’ve been trying to kill people who were trying to kill me. I have money, but it’s pretty incidental.”
That speech had evidently been waiting to come out for a long time.
“Catch you on the raw, did I?” said Snape, unsympathetically. “And I think you’ll find that money is only ‘incidental’ if you possess it.”
“Not necessarily,” said Potter thoughtfully. “I was brought up as a charity-case. My Muggle relatives were very clear on the point that I was a waster like my father. Finding I had a Gringotts’ vault stuffed with cash—it was like leprechaun gold. It didn’t seem to connect to much I could actually do. For fuck’s sake, I didn’t even know this monetary system existed until I came here!” he added indignantly.
Snape nodded slightly. He’d thought it was an elaborately-staged act sometimes: ‘look at the Gryffindor who is good and true and cares nothing for money’. It hadn’t occurred to him quite how ignorant Potter had started out.
“Malfoy does what you think I do, sir. Consistently. He thinks he’s special. He thinks he can get anything he wants because of who his father is. And...” Abruptly, the measured, adult tone collapsed. “And you like him for it!” Potter added furiously. “You give him an easy ride.”
“Malfoy is an inbred overbred puppy. And I wouldn’t give the slut a ride if he paid me.”
“I knew I should have pretended to be less lewd. If you don’t like sluts,” muttered Potter.
“Not every comment is about Harry Potter. It’s the way Malfoy’s behaviour is so visibly calculated and predictable that offends me,” Snape went on. “The glance, the lick of the lips, the flick of the hair: all in that order. Wearisome.”
“Whereas I’m just panting and squirming because I feel like it,” said Potter cheerfully.
Yes, thought Snape.
“If you snogged him, he’d be complaining about making a mess of his hair,” Potter went on. “Mine’s a mess anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Anyway, the point I was making, Potter, was that you shouldn’t be given everything you want because you want it.”
“In my formative years, sir, I wasn’t given anything I wanted.”
Snape snorted.
“Seriously. They were Muggles, and they hated magic. What I wanted most was magic, and I didn’t even know it existed. As for presents, they gave me a 50p bit (oh, about a few Knuts. Roughly), a couple of broken toys, a jigsaw with half the pieces missing, and a book. That only had one page missing. It ended: ‘Who would ever have guessed that the murderer was—’“
Potter paused. “I always thought Dudley did that on purpose, but he wasn’t exactly careful with his things.”
“I apologise for any mistaken assumptions about your past, Potter. Next time I disappoint you, I will do it in full and complete knowledge of what I am doing. Now go away.”
“This isn’t about me, sir,” the boy had the cheek to say.
Snape glared.
“It was to start with,” said Potter. “because I wanted you, but now I feel sorry for you. I mean, you’ve probably had even less of what you wanted in life than me. You stopped yourself, and you must be—it must be hurting by now. You need a good shag more than I do, sir.”
Actually to be pitied by this, this boy...!
Snape saw red.
The next minute was a blur. The next time he realised what he was doing he was on the bed, Potter was squirming in his lap, and he had raised his hand to wallop Potter.
Potter gave him a hot, knowing glance. “Punish me, sir,” he murmured.
“Sadomasochism isn’t part of my duties either, Potter,” Snape snarled, and reached down to tip the boy off his lap, except as soon as his hands touched warm, firm skin they ceased to obey him, and moved to cup Potter’s arse.
Potter thrust against him, hard. He groaned.
His hands still played absently with the perfect curves of Potter’s arse. Not that he had much attention to spare for it, not with Potter’s prick frotting him gloriously in front, catching the most sensitive bit on every stroke.
“Fuck!” gasped Potter.
“No, I won’t,” said Snape obstinately, as Potter ground desperately against him.
“Fuck, I’m coming!” Potter clarified, and did.
Fuck, yes! thought Snape, although all he could manage to utter was a deep groan. He could feel every pulse of it gushing out, exquisitely-belated and exquisitely-prolonged, long and luscious and hot against Potter’s body as he pumped himself shamelessly dry.
Next thing he knew, he was in bed, clean and exhausted. Must have been a dream. Nice dream. Nice pillow. Warm. Better armful than usual. Couldn’t usually get it against him right down to his toes. Nice. Mm.
Snape woke up. His nose was tickling. Black hair was tickling his nose, and it wasn’t his.
“Oh, fuck!” he said viciously.
“Good idea,” said Potter.
“Potter, if you can’t tell the difference between an expletive and an imperative by now there is no hope for you.”
Potter snorted. “Knew it was an expletive. Thought the imperative was a better idea. No, I’m not going to jump on you now. I do have some self-control. It’s nearly dinner-time, and I need to feed m’self up if I’m to have an active sex-life.”
“No hurry then,” said Snape bitchily.
“Ha very ha,” said Potter, and kissed him inaccurately on the side of the mouth before picking up his cloak and (probably) leaving quietly and invisibly.
I wish he didn’t do that, thought Snape. It’s nerve-racking being practically sure someone’s left the room without knowing.
To his surprise, Potter didn’t return that night, which left him in a foul temper. He’d had a few nicely-crafted put-downs worked out.
Instead, Potter went back to sending notes. He sent a very plot-heavy story next, where Snape (the apparent hero) saved Albus’s life, saved Sirius Black’s life, unmasked a Death-Eater plot (not in very great detail), and finally saved Potter’s life and screwed him through the bed (in rather repetitive detail).
Try not to do plot unless you can do it competently, boy. I know you’re waiting impatiently for what you consider the ‘good bit’, but don’t bore your readers by putting in detail that it’s all-too-obvious bores you.
Bloody hell, sir,
Potter replied, in a rather aggrieved note.
I never realised it was so much work. I mean, last week all I had to manage to do the trick was think of your voice whispering, “Potter, you are in so much trouble!” and just touch myself and - wallop! Now it’s a three-act play.
Don’t try to be funny unless you can actually manage it.
I wouldn’t dare try to amuse you, sir, Potter replied. Your face might crack.
Snape snorted. He replied.
I can be amused, but it takes talent.
Potter’s next story contained the line:
He lifted the boy’s t-shirt over his head. His boxer-shorts followed.
Nice trick if you can manage it. Now stitch the parts back together.
PS. Why is it always boxer-shorts?
Always boxer-shorts?
the boy replied.
Do tell me of the exhaustive study you’ve made of your students’ underwear. If you need further research, you can get into mine any time. Oh, I forgot, I’m not wearing any. In fact, I might be standing right beside you in nothing but a cloak.
“No, you’re not,” said Snape, aloud. He wasn’t sure why he was so certain, but that twitchy feeling he tended to get when a hidden Potter was in the vicinity was entirely absent.
Over meals that day, he stared at Potter.
I’m not going to ask, he thought firmly. Very firmly.
The next note he got from Potter was a lot shorter, and contained no fictional content at all.
9 pm,
it said.
At seven thirty he finished dinner and had a few amusing fantasies about how disappointed Potter was going to be to be ignored. Then he got on with making extra Pepper-Up Potions for the winter.
At twenty to nine he finished that.
Five to nine happened to coincide with him taking them up to Madam Pomfrey. Good. He might just happen to be casually out of the way when Potter turned up.
When he came back, he went to run a bath. Despite what the students thought, he routinely bathed after work. It helped him relax. And it might also help him not notice any knocking at the door if he was running a bath.
He had the bath.
When he came out, warm and relaxed and wearing only a dressing-gown, he discovered that Potter was in his bed, naked.
“Didn’t you see me drop in? Must have been wearing my cloak,” Potter said innocently.
Getting in secretly must have taken a bit of effort.
“Come to bed,” said Potter. “Please.” Potter was holding a certain jar which he must have found in the bedside table. Serve him right if it were a rare undiscovered (except by Snape) poison, but in fact it was lubricant.
“I’m not going to fuck you. Not fucking my pupils is a clear simple unambiguous rule that serves me well, and I’m not going to abandon it now,” said Snape, trying not to notice that he was shrugging out of his dressing-gown and slipping into bed. It was chilly in this dungeon, and Potter might as well make himself useful. Not by being fucked, though. That was a Rule.
“What are you doing?” he added, as Potter’s wet fingers started to trail up his thighs.
“Preparing you,” Potter replied.
“I said I wasn’t going to—!” said Snape indignantly, and caught his breath as Potter began to play with his hole, circling it and wetting it.
“I’ve no idea how to do this, Sev, but I’m a quick learner,” said Potter.
“Where did you get the impression you could call me—” began Snape furiously, only to catch his breath as Potter slid a whole wet finger in.
“I rather thought we dealt with the introductions last week,” purred Potter.
“You should definitely have been in Slytherin, Potter.”
“I’m going to be. In a Slytherin. Anyway, thank you, Sev. You can call me Harry, if you like.”
“That wasn’t a compliment, Potter.”
“I know,” the boy whispered into his ear, leaning close to him and beginning to slide the finger slowly in and out. “Let’s just say it’s taken me a long time to see the good points of Slytherin House.”
“Which are?”
Potter nibbled his earlobe. “Ambition. Strength. Desire. Intelligence. Will to survive. And an arse I’d have fought Voldemort to possess, although maybe that’s just you, Sev—can’t see anyone battling for Crabbe’s or Goyle’s, for instance.” Potter paused. “Maybe I was wrong about the ‘intelligence’ bit.”
“They took a short-term Learning Charm just before the Hat looked into them. Cheating is an acceptably Slytherin trait.”
“Are you going to tell me the good points of Gryffindors?” Potter said hopefully.
“What do you think?”
“I think I’d better stop and wait while you think about it, Sev.”
“Faint traces of brains, occasionally. If you and Granger are a large enough sample. I’m not counting Longbottom, naturally. Nerve. Skill. Determination,” Snape added pointedly, arching up off the bed. “And they’re never boring,” he admitted. “Even Longbottom isn’t quite boring, although that’s probably because he’s too dangerous.”
“Anything else?”
“Long, strong, big fingers,” Snape added, losing track of the wider context a little. He moaned softly.
“Anything else?”
“It is said,” said Snape carefully, “that they can fuck almost as well as they play Quidditch.” Well, it probably wasn’t said yet, but Snape felt an unprecedented desire to deal with a pupil by encouragement rather than blame.
“Well, I’ve never done this...” Potter paused to get his prick into place, and shoved gently, “...to a broomstick.”
Snape groaned as a jolt of pleasure/pain shot straight from his prostate up his spine, tingling all the way.
“Did that hurt?” said Potter worriedly.
Idiot boy, thought Snape. “I have never been shy about telling you when you’re doing something wrong. Therefore, assume that you’re making a reasonable job of it unless told otherwise.”
“Are you sure it didn’t—”
“Shut up and fuck me.”
Potter shut up and fucked him, quite hard. Snape stayed there, trembling, on his hands and knees, and let him go at it. Potter grunted and swore and sweated, thrusting like a maniac, and then shoved in and went dead still, soaking Snape’s guts with his juices in a way which was nearly enough to do the trick all on its own.
Potter sighed, and grinned against his neck. “Oooh, that was good.”
“Was it really?” said Snape nastily.
“It was bloody incredible!”
“D minus,” snapped Snape. He thought a minute. “Ungraded.”
“Oh, sorry, Sev,” Potter said. “Look, lie down a minute.”
Potter clumsily eased them both down, still joined. “There. Feel nice, does it?” he murmured in Snape’s ear, “all wet and full of me, while I play with your prick.” His hand went at it hard, and then he bit Snape on the earlobe, not quite gently. Snape whimpered and swore, feeling his prick jerk heavily in Potter’s hand as he succumbed to wave after wave of pleasure, orgasm shading to slow sweet aftershocks in his arse and prick that left him soaked and limp.
“How did I do?” asked Potter.
“A minus.”
“What’s the minus for?” demanded Potter indignantly.
“Not taking care of your partner first,” said Snape, and smirked at him.
“Fair enough,” said Potter. “As long as I’ll get an A when I get it right.”
“If,” said Snape.
“I’ll keep trying,” said Potter.
Snape yawned. He’d had a very good night’s sleep when Potter had practiced frottage on him, and he felt as if he was going to have another one now. Unlike the last week or so, when he’d been thinking about Potter’s little notes (and what he was not going to do to him) all the time. Virtue was simply too exhausting, he decided.
“I’m still not going to fuck you, boy.”
“All right.”
“I don’t like the sound of that ‘all right’. You agreed too easily,” said Snape suspiciously.
“That isn’t a problem, Sev. You can teach me about that when I’ve left school. We can just do all the other stuff first.” Potter cuddled up to him confidingly.
I’m a Slytherin. We don’t do outmanoeuvred. Particularly not by Gryffindors, Snape thought.
He had a nasty feeling Potter had taken his bemused silence for assent, but he was too tired to worry about it now.