Harry nearly went past the staff room, which suddenly turned up much sooner than he'd expected it--he'd forgotten that the question of where things were at Hogwarts was fairly optional some of the time. But it was definitely the staff room door; large, brown, and said STAFF ROOM on it.
He knocked twice, but there was no answer. He pushed the door ajar, and a horrible scene met his eyes.
Professor Snape was sitting down, and had pulled up his robe to reveal a leg which would have been pale and unlovely at the best of times, and now had a wound just under the knee, with blood and yuck on it.
He was complaining to Mr Filch about monsters on school property, shouldn't be allowed, and Filch was nodding, and Harry was thinking well, they let both of you stay here, don't they?
Filch was leering at Snape's bare leg, as far as Harry could tell, because Filch had the sort of face that pretty much leered all the time unless he was looking at his cat.
"Daft brat," Filch said, leaning forward and pinching Snape's bare thigh cruelly. It must have hurt. Harry would have felt sorry for Snape if Snape had been anyone else. And--revoltingly--Snape had a stiffy. His forehead wasn't the only thing with a big ugly vein in it.
Harry'd overheard something from Fred and George--when you were older the damn thing popped up all the time, even when you weren't thinking about Doing It. He was a bit surprised that it kept going on when you were old, like Snape.
He was also a bit surprised that Filch didn't say anything about it, because people tended to say that Filch had No Respect For His Betters, and would mouth off in front of anyone. He wouldn't have thought Filch would be tactful. Except since he and Snape were both equally hateful, and both lived to annoy the pupils, they probably liked each other.
"I suppose you're going to punish me for letting myself get bitten, aren't you?" said Snape. He sounded resigned, irritated, and something else Harry didn't have a name for. Harry wondered whether to be horrified that even the professors were subject to Filch's rules, but it didn't really surprise him. He'd seen enough of wizarding justice in his time at Hogwarts to realise that it was a bit brutal; he supposed that since wizards could fix broken bones and so on relatively easily it seemed less of a big deal than it would in the Muggle world.
"Nah," said Filch. "You don't get punishment for reckless endangerment."
Why would Filch not want to punish someone for doing something bad?
Snape writhed restlessly, and seemed about to say something, but he suddenly clutched the wound on his leg, and went rather pale.
"Better slap somethin' on that so yer'll be able to concentrate," muttered Filch, and went to the back of the room, where he pulled out a large cardboard box. MOTHER PEPPERUP'S PAINKILLING POULTICES (ANKLE), it said. On the same shelf was Harry's copy of Quidditch through the Ages. He knew it was his because it had a pumpkin juice stain on the cover and a Chocolate Frog wrapper as a bookmark. There couldn't be two like that. He'd wait for them to go away, then collect the book.
The room seemed to wobble a minute, so he watched Filch, who opened the poultice box and slapped the thing around Snape's ankle.
Snape soon resumed a better colour. It was still unpleasantly sallow, but it was normal.
"Well, are you going to punish me, then?" Snape snapped.
Filch looked doubtful.
Snape lowered his head. "I will be good," he said, in a whisper. "I do intend to be more cautious in future."
"Right then, brat!" said Filch, rubbing his hands together, and returned to the shelf at the back of the room.
Harry couldn't see where his book had gone. Instead, he saw a whip. Quite a large whip. He couldn't imagine how he'd missed it the first time, unless it was lost in the shadows. Filch picked it up, and flicked it a couple of times.
Snape's eyes were wide and black and staring. He must be really scared. But Filch had said he wasn't going to punish him.
Filch tapped the whip-handle against the palm of his other hand, as if impatiently. Rotten lying swine, Harry thought, deciding he'd be indignant about how unfair Filch was if it was anyone but Snape.
Snape gulped, shrugged out of his robe which landed in a tangle on the floor, and scrambled round on his hands and knees, clutching the chair. A set of ropes hissed their way out of the chair-arms and tied him up. At least, Harry thought, he couldn't see Snape's scared face from the back. He could still see Snape's thing (which he could have done without), because Snape was lifting his bum up.
Harry had never thought of Snape being upset by things that upset normal people, like Filch's punishments. Actually, now he thought about it, Filch had been forbidden to do physical punishments. He thought about it again; Filch had been forbidden to do physical punishments on students. Probably wizards were big enough and ugly enough to stand up for themselves.
Snape normally was, anyway.
Harry couldn't figure out why Snape was letting the chair tie him up. Snape was a proper wizard, and a teacher, and he'd have been able to hex Filch into painful purple boils to stop him hitting him, for example.
"One," said Filch, and Harry watched his arm bring the whip down, hard. Filch had muscles, probably from all the cleaning, and the whip made a noise as it smacked down, although not as loud as Snape was yelling.
Harry watched Snape's pale bum and tense legs and reddened stiffy sort of bounce in reaction. There was a vicious scarlet line where the whip had hit.
Filch had a stiffy too. Not quite so visible because he was dressed, but he was rubbing his left hand over the bulge at his crotch.
Harry listened to them both panting for breath.
After a minute, Snape muttered, "Get on with it!"
He didn't sound afraid, just annoyed.
"Two," said Filch, and whacked it down just as hard as before.
Snape yelled again, and bucked.
Filch licked his lips, and put the whip down. He was sweating. He ran the index finger of his left hand down the new red line the whip had left, while his right hand struggled with the buttons at the front of his coat.
"What are you doing?" Snape wailed.
Filch shuffled round where Snape could see him. He panted 'huh huh huh' like a dog, as he pulled at his dirty coat and trousers, clawing his clothes open enough to get his thing out.
Snape sort-of reared up, staring at it as if it was something from Honeydukes, not a part of Filch's body.
Harry looked at it, just to check it hadn't turned into something wonderful when he wasn't looking.
It hadn't. It was still red, and ugly, and unwashed-looking.
"God, I'm goin' ter give yer such a whippin' when you're better!" panted Filch, rubbing himself rhythmically. There was a dazed, happy expression on his face Harry had never seen before.
"Give me..." Snape panted, "...now!" Give him what? The whip? Is he going to whip Filch back to punish him?
Harry watched Snape's wrists flex in the ropes. They looked sore.
"I'm goin' to lash yer bloody," panted Filch, rubbing himself ferociously, to the accompaniment of a lot of pained moaning from Snape, "until yer can't walk..." His hand stopped for a moment, then started again.
Snape didn't make a sound, just stared and stared.
"...and I'm goin' to make yer crawl to me cock, all raw and sore and beggin', and goin' to force yer to..."
Filch's other hand began to rub at his balls.
"...touch me. That's it, that's--ah!"
Filch's face screwed up, and Harry watched the stuff come out of his thing. Fred and George hadn't been lying about that, either.
Some of it had hit Professor Snape in the face, a sight Harry could cheerfully have lived without seeing.
The unnerving thing was that Snape didn't seem to be hopping mad. His eyes were closed, and he was panting.
Filch wiped Snape's face dry, but didn't swipe his mucky hand on the arm of the chair the way Harry would have done if he'd touched anything that revolting. Instead, his hand dived around Snape's thing.
"Harder!" spat Snape, with a great gasp of breath as Filch put his other hand to work somewhere between Snape's legs.
Filch squatted down, whispering mad horrible things about whippings, one hand flying up and down Snape's stiffy, while the other hand seemed to be squeezing at Snape's balls.
Isn't that painful? Harry wondered.
Snape's face drew up tight in a scowl, he thrashed around in the chair, and he groaned 'fuck!' as the stuff came out of his thing: jerkier and more-of-it than Filch's.
Harry had never heard a teacher swear before; it sounded much dirtier than kids' swearing, or maybe it just sounded dirty because of Snape's husky greedy voice.
When Snape finished, the ropes rustled away from his wrists, and Filch moved his hands away. Snape lay in the chair, eyes closed, panting, then rolled to the side and landed on a bed which had certainly not been in the room before--and what would a bed be doing in a staff-room anyway?
Filch took the poultice off and handed Snape his wand. "Abstergeo!" Snape muttered quickly, aiming his wand at the wound.
Filch bandaged it up again, this time using a proper healing bandage like Harry'd seen Madam Pomfrey use, while Snape abstergeo'd their clothes where they'd got stuff on them.
Filch went back to the shelf, and this time found a Potion bottle. It smelt lemony, like the painkilling potions you got in the infirmary.
He handed it to Snape, who drank it, complaining all the time about how it was barely passable and he could brew a better one with both eyes shut and one hand tied behind his back.
Filch snorted, and lay down beside Snape, leaning on his chest and kissing it tenderly.
Harry could see Filch's face, and for once it wasn't leering. It had the same expression Filch had when he looked at his horrible cat.
Snape kissed the top of Filch's head.
"Make me bleed next time, all right?" said Snape, still husky and sounding pleased. Harry had never heard him sound quite so satisfied and contented before.
"Anythin' for you, me love," said Filch.
Harry didn't go and look for his book. There was something funny about the staff-room at the moment, and no power on earth could make him face those two.
Besides, all this made his head hurt quite apart from being generally distasteful. He had a place in his head for horrible things (the Dursleys, Snape, Filch) and a place in his head for good things (Gryffindor, Dumbledore, his parents). He knew bad people wanted to do nasty things to cause pain--but this was bad people doing nasty, horrible, painful things and then looking at each other with love.
Instead, he pelted back to his friends and asked them a favour.
"Could somebody Obliviate me, please?"
"Yes, but why?" asked Ron, quite reasonably.
"I don't want to think about it."
"But we've got to know," explained Ron. "If you Obliviate everything you'd be left with your mind a blank, wouldn't you? So we've got to know the limit of it."
Harry sighed. "I looked in the staff-room," he said, "looking for my book, but Snape and Filch were there, and Snape had a horrible wound on his leg where something had bitten him and...it was h-horrible, all right?"
To his relief, Hermione did the spell carefully. He could remember Snape had his leg bitten, and that Filch was there, but he forgot most of it.