FIC: "Sod Off" Means "I Love You" for kinky_kneazle
Recipient: kinky_kneazle
Author/Artist: anguis_1
Title: “Sod Off” Means “I Love You”
Rating: R
Pairings: Severus Snape/Millicent Bulstrode/Dennis Creevey
Word Count: 6,227 words
Warnings: Umm . . . you did read the pairing, right? And you’re aware this exchange is for characters of dubious popular attractiveness?
Summary: It begins and ends with the camera. Snapshots of life, and the living thereof.
Author's Notes: This fic takes place about 5 years after DH (so Dennis is, indeed, of age).
***
Millicent’s first thought was that he could use a good meal (or ten). He was standing outside her shop, studying the sign that listed her hours (“Whenever I’m arsed to be here.”) as though it were the newest installment of Big Breasts Bimonthly or whatever it was that blokes of his age went in for. She was just contemplating ordering him to shove off--not that there were any customers that he was scaring off, but still, it was the principle of the thing--when he jammed his hands deep into the pockets of his ragged cloak and slouched away towards the high-end shops farther down the road.
A week later, he was back, bouncing on the balls of his feet on the pavement outside her door as preoccupied passersby shouldered past him without taking the slightest notice. He wasn’t setting off her Anti-Loitering Charms, which probably meant that she ought to recast them. Before she could make a note to that effect, he opened the door and stepped inside, setting off a host of tiny silver bells hovering above the lintel.
Millicent tossed a spell in his direction, and he dove to the floor, catching his chin on the edge of a dusty wireless.
He scrambled to his feet. “I’m not trying to rob you, honest!”
Millicent glared down at him. “I’d like to see you try.”
The prospect was amusing. He barely cleared five feet and probably wasn’t even half her weight, and his reflexes obviously tended more towards flight than fight.
The door, which he’d not had time to fully close, swung open in a gust of wind. The bells above it began their delicate pealing, and Millicent silenced them again with another offhanded wave of her wand.
“Oh, sorry, I thought--”
“Whaddaya want?” Millicent interrupted before he could explain himself into a deeper hole.
A hopeful smile brightened his face, and he produced a battered camera from his robes.
“It’s a Muggle camera. Take it to a Muggle shop.” She dismissed him with a half-hearted shrug and returned to fusing the cracked glass on the tabletop Sneakoscope she’d been mending.
“I did. They told me to scrap it without even looking at it. It was curse damage, I think.”
That much was obvious. Its casing had crumpled like tin foil and was marked with purplish gashes.
“Muggles do occasionally get things right. It’s not worth the trouble.”
"Could you at least try? It belonged . . . . Um, it's . . . it’s important. I can pay whatever you ask.” His assurance was even more holey than his cloak, desperation apparent in every stammered syllable. (The Sneakoscope remained silent, however, and Millicent made a note to recalibrate its sneakometer.) Even so . . . . She could definitely use whatever it was that he could pay her. Besides, it would be a bit of a diversion from the usual magical devices that were her stock in trade.
Momentarily distracted, the white-hot tip of her hornbeam wand slipped across the glass and glanced off the hand she’d been using to steady the device, leaving a small burn trailing down the length of her thumb. She hissed a few obscenities that brought two spots of colour to his cheeks.
“It’ll be a week or two.”
His big, brown cow eyes lit up, and he began to babble some disgusting sentiments of gratitude.
She ignored this blunder and wrote up a chit, and he scrawled his name Dennis Creevey. As he slipped out the door, she recalled a tiny, blank-eyed waif curled over another slight body, the pair engulfed in the eerie calm that shadows death. Then she shrugged again and picked up her wand. The dead had no use for maudlin thoughts, and the living certainly didn’t need them either.
****
It had taken a week’s worth of intermittent fiddling--poking and prodding with care and a few choice invectives--but Millicent had finally teased out the residual Dark Magic obscuring the aperture (some rather nasty stuff that had scalded the burn mark off her hand) and pounded out all the dents she could. Unsurprisingly, Dennis had left no Floo contact, so she shelved the camera under the counter and continued on as usual, being surly with her customers and cantankerous with everyone else who crossed her path.
He returned exactly two weeks later, managing not to flinch when she silenced the bells above the door. His face lit up like a chandelier when she produced the camera and pronounced it to be functioning.
The brilliant smile dimmed when he saw the bill. “I don’t take charity.”
“Good on you. I don’t give it.”
His chin thrust out. “I know I’m not all that bright, but even I know that should cost more.”
“You think you know my business better than I do?” The edge in her voice was dangerous, but he persisted obliviously.
“If you won’t take my money, then let me help you out for a bit to make up the difference.” His voice was quietly insistent, as though this were a weighty matter. “I always pay my debts.”
“Gryffindor nobleness does not impress me. Besides, I already have--” Millicent’s protest faltered, and she glanced nervously behind her. “I don’t need any help.”
Dennis continued undeterred. “Surely you can use a few hours help cleaning up some of this clutter.”
“I like clutter.” The best defense was a stinging offense, or so she’d learned from the Slytherin Quidditch team, so she added, “And you’re a scrawny midget in danger of misplacing your front teeth.”
Another less foolhardy person would have recognised the implied threat, but Dennis just pushed on. “I bet your customers don’t like it, or--” He paused to survey the empty shop. “Or maybe that’s why you don’t have any customers.”
Millicent gritted her teeth. “Most of my custom comes by owl. If somebody doesn’t like how I run things, they can get stuffed.”
In the end, she relented. It was easier than to try to verbally out-manoeuver him (and, although she was mightily tempted, the fine imposed by the Wizarding Alliance of Shopkeepers for hexing a customer wasn’t something she could afford to pay for a fourth time this year).
Not realising that he had jabbered her into acquiescence, he kept trying to persuade her for another few seconds until she repeated with a snarl, “I said alright.”
He flashed a startled, gap-toothed grin and looked about expectantly, eager to begin.
“You can start by paying me.”
Upending a small pouch on the counter, he counted out her fee in Sickles and Knuts, and she fidgeted with a crumpled stack of orders, trying not to notice that he scooped up only a handful of Knuts to return to his bag.
“You can move those ampliphones blocking the way over there. Put them back here where I can get a chance to work on them.” Just as he shook his wand from its sleeve holster into his palm, she added, with only a trace of malevolence (because, destitute or not, he was still a nuisance), “Without magic. They’re too sensitive.”
Dennis’ eyes widened. The ampliphones were rusty iron boxes of varying sizes and shapes embellished with elaborate grille work, most still containing their original mechanisms. Slipping his wand back into place, he straightened his shoulders and strode over to the lopsided pile.
He set to work with a will, hauling the ampliphones one by one to their new residence behind the counter, straining every spindly muscle in his body and quickly looking as though he were about to pass out among the bits and bobs and various oddments littering the floor.
When he was nearly halfway through, Millicent called out, “Oy!” He paused, panting. “You can use your wand if you’re careful.”
Something that looked suspiciously akin to betrayal washed over his face as he met her placid gaze. It quickly set back into a grimace as he seized the heaviest of the lot and staggered with it to the counter without any magical assistance. She wondered how he’d survived this long being that gullible. He was stubborn, too, which would have raised him in her regard had it not been a very Gryffindorish sort of stubbornness with all the finesse of a Bludger (and any resemblance to her own bullheaded obduracy was entirely beside the point).
Millicent gave up any pretense of working and watched him totter back and forth until the remaining pile had been reduced to a bare spot on the floor that she had not seen for nearly a year.
“There, you’ve paid your debt, upheld your honour, and all that rot. Now, scram!”
He picked up the camera from the counter with tender reverence and swayed, only just setting it down gently before collapsing into an untidy pile on the floor.
Millicent swore. It was late, past her usual hours of operation, and it would be easy to toss him over her shoulder and tuck him into the doorway of some shop farther down the street like the vagrant he probably was--perhaps the apothecary (whose snide assistant had tried to pass off salamander blood as dragon bile), or maybe Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes (only last week, George had sent her an experimental version of his new line of Horrible Howlers, which had made her ears ring for hours).
As she gathered his limbs and hoisted him up, Millicent realised that her initial assessment of a ten-meal deficit was a gross underestimate. He was fragile and birdlike in a way that birds ought to be, but humans definitely shouldn’t.
Something that was most assuredly not guilt roiled her stomach. (She didn’t do guilt, and, anyway, it was his own fault if he was too stupid to realise how close he’d been to the brink of collapse.) Somehow, he wound up on her sofa instead of outside on the damp chill of some shop’s paving stones. She covered him with a duvet summoned from the top of the laundry hamper (clean enough for an uninvited guest, she reasoned).
****
Dennis awoke to calloused fingers probing the delicate skin behind his jaw. It was actually quite pleasant, sending strange thrills rippling through his face and neck, until he recalled his last few moments of consciousness.
“Hey! Geroff me!” He started to flail.
“Stop it, Creevey!” A sharp slap stung his cheek, and he wriggled back under the bedding. “I’m not in the mood to deflower you. I’m just checking to see if you’re still alive.”
“I don’ have any flow’rs,” he mumbled through the duvet he’d pulled over his face.
“You’re doing a pretty good impression of a pansy--” A noise from behind the wooden door at the back of the room interrupted her gibe, and a note of panic shaded Millicent’s voice as she called to its source, “Stop! Don’t come in!”
Whoever it was lurking behind the door was obviously having them on, as they were making tortured breathing noises that alternately whistled and growled. Dennis peeked out and murmured, “Luke, I am your father,” as Millicent’s warning was disregarded, and a black-robed figure shuffled into the room.
It was a cadaverous apparition Dennis had never expected to see again in this world (and probably not in the next, either). A knotted, red-rimmed scar blossomed on his throat and spread branching tendrils along the blood vessels of the right side of his neck, wending upwards towards his ear and disappearing beneath the collar of his robes. His face was more lined, and strands of silver now threaded through his lank black hair, but the scowling, hook-nosed visage was unmistakable.
“Professor!” Dennis’ voice squeaked up the octaves, and he would’ve been embarrassed had he not been so preoccupied with falling off the sofa and fumbling for his wand. Scrambling to his feet, he shot a frantic glance at Millicent. “Is he a zombie?”
A voice that grated like the hinges of a rusty pasture gate answered instead. “If you had paid attention in Defense against the Dark Arts, you would know the correct term is Inferius.” A pause, and another gasping breath. “Besides, your brain holds no interest for me.”
Dennis thought he heard a strangled mutter add, “Not even enough there for a nibble, I wager,” but it was quite possible that it was an auditory hallucination brought on by stress or starvation or shock.
He recovered quickly enough, though, and a hundred questions burbled up in his mind, beginning with, “How did you survive, anyway? Harry said--”
“Potter’s a fool, and incompetent, as well. You want to live badly enough,” Snape cast his jaundiced gaze over Dennis’ tatty robes, “and sometimes you do.”
Time fluttered briefly as Dennis’ breath hitched and his wandgrip turned white-knuckled.
A cough--thick and wet and bending him double--wracked Snape’s body. When it had passed, he straightened regally and turned his back on them, exiting the room via the door through which he’d entered.
Millicent watched the door until they could no longer hear the laboured wheezing. She considered Dennis, his wand still fixed upon the closed door. “I won’t apologise for him.”
He slowly reholstered his wand and replied, “You shouldn’t have to,” with as much indignation as he could muster.
She grunted and abruptly changed the subject. “Lie down before you fall down.”
He reluctantly took her advice and fell into an exhausted sleep as soon as his cheek nestled into the rough weave of the cushions.
****
Dennis awakened the next morning to see Millicent looming over him. She plunged into her speech even as he stretched and rubbed at the sleep encrusting his eyelashes.
“Look here, Creevey, last night, Severus and I talked about what to do with you. I convinced him not to Avada you in your sleep, but you’ve thrown quite a spanner in the works by seeing him. I figured it’d be easier to keep an eye on you if you’re within reach, so if you’re as keen to work as you were yesterday, you can have bed and board. In any case, you’ve got to keep your mouth shut about him. If you want to eat first, we can do the Unbreakable Vow after breakfast.”
Just behind her (and in danger of being swept away by her bum) was a table laden with more food than he’d eaten in the last month; the smooth domes of boiled eggs fairly begged to be smashed, toast soldiers stood smartly at attention, rashers of bacon wafted their smoky scent throughout the room, and the morning sun glowed through the marmalade pot as though it were stained glass.
Dennis didn’t care what else her bargain entailed. He clambered up and took a place at the table, sitting as far away from a glowering Snape as possible. Without waiting for a second invitation, he set to eating ravenously.
“Slow down,” warned Snape, “or we’ll be seeing that again.”
Dennis had only had an egg and toast, a few sips of tea, and a nibble of bacon when his stomach rolled. It seemed to flop around, its barely digested contents welling up in his throat. He pressed a napkin to his lips and willed himself not to vomit.
“You listen about as well as a stewed Flobberworm. Your stomach isn’t ready to handle much food yet.” Snape returned to his own breakfast, a thin gruel that he swallowed with difficulty.
After the remains of breakfast had been cleared to the small kitchen, Dennis and Millicent clasped hands as Snape performed the Unbreakable Vow wordlessly, his wandwork elegantly spare and economical.
It seemed as though it ought to feel more momentous, staking his life as a forfeit should his impetuous tongue mention the continued existence of the supposedly late Potions Master, but Dennis watched the proceedings with detachment. Afterwards, despite feeling rather bilious, he managed to ask Snape if he had done it wordlessly because he couldn’t pronounce the incantations precisely enough anymore. Snape coldly ignored the question and departed.
****
The next month passed quickly as Dennis settled into the bizarre situation. Despite its clutter (which was very resistant to his efforts to organize), he became nearly as familiar with the shop as Millicent.
Snape’s harsh, gasping breaths even faded into the background as his ears became accustomed to them, although Dennis still had to watch Snape’s mouth form the words, because his brain refused to reconcile the formerly silken tones that had caressed the ears with the gurgling croaks that now obscured his speech. He mostly only joined them for meals and their customary after-dinner lounging by the fire, retreating in between times to whatever it was that occupied his time and attention in the rooms above.
Dennis spent most of his waking hours with Millicent, and, much to his surprise, discovered that he was growing fond of her. She was rough and crude and sometimes unnecessarily vulgar, and she was often downright rude to her customers (he could understand why most of them preferred to conduct their business with her long-distance).
And yet, somewhere underneath it all, she was tenderhearted enough to look after Snape, whose sharp tongue had not been dulled by his tribulations and who seemed to cultivate his caustic temperament just to be contrary.
And she had taken Dennis, himself, in (he couldn’t pretend that his meagre contribution of shifting junk this way and that was much compensation for his meals and the inconvenience of always having him underfoot) with such a careless largesse that he still couldn’t quite believe that it had actually happened. He’d had too much pride to ask, but none of his former housemates had offered him so much as a decent meal.
****
“Stop staring at my breasts.” Millicent straightened up from clearing away the supper dishes and glared at Dennis.
“What? I’m not . . . . oh.” Red flashed across his sharp cheekbones. “I’m, uh, I’m sorry.”
It was, indeed, a magnificent view. As part and parcel of the rest of her superabundant figure, she’d been endowed with a large bosom and augmented it with the skillful use of a Lift and Separate Charm (modified from an old family Lift and Squish Together Charm that displayed one’s assets most impressively in the low-cut fashions of centuries past, but was unsuitable for her usually modest necklines).
The exchange roused Snape from the latest edition of Dangerous Decoctions Digest. Even when seemingly dozing, his keen hearing always alerted him to even the softest mutter across the room. He rose and shuffled over to sling his arm around Millicent, half clutching her to his side and half supporting himself. He splayed his fingers over the expanse of one heavy breast and rasped, “They’re not yours to stare at.”
The scene froze.
With a swiftness that surprised even himself, Dennis drew his wand and fiercely commanded, “Keep your hands off her!”
Snape slitted his eyes, and a frisson of fear shivered through Dennis. He glanced hastily at Millicent, expecting to see her lash out with her wand or her fist, or, at the very least, excoriate him for presuming that her feminine honour needed protecting. Instead, she had chosen an option that hadn’t occurred to him, leaning into the awkward embrace as though it were a commonplace occurrence.
And, suddenly, there it was--he had been so preoccupied with his own growing attachment to her that he had been blind to everything else. Snape’s sallow face was alive with a fierce jealousy, and Millicent radiated contentment.
When they retired together each night, it wasn’t to two chaste bedrooms above-stairs. Dennis blushed furiously. It was stupid--stupidly naïve--to imagine so. With all the wounded dignity he could muster, he retrieved his cloak (its ragged holes rather crudely patched with the help of Millicent’s Stitching Charm) and walked quietly out to the shop.
Severus muttered, “Impudent whelp,” as they heard the tinkle of bells.
****
Not that either of them would admit it, but it took nearly a fortnight to get used to the Dennis-sized hole lurking just behind their elbows, not asking a hundred questions a minute and not vibrating with enough energy to power half the shops on Diagon Alley.
Another couple of weeks passed before Millicent, on a rare errand to Flourish & Blott’s, spotted a familiar slight figure standing on tiptoes to rummage through a dustbin in the adjoining alley. Using all the stealth she’d learned from living these past five years with Severus, she slid silently into the narrow gap between the buildings. A tap on the shoulder sent him diving headfirst into the bin, and he refused to emerge from the refuse when he recognised her.
He was obviously living rough, but convincing him to return with her took rather more persuading on Millicent’s part than she would ever care to admit.
Dinner that night was a bit awkward, with Dennis spending most of his time staring shamelessly at Snape and trying not to accidentally stick his fingers in the gravy, but they slipped back into their old routine without further ado. In the shop the next morning, Millicent announced brusquely that it was high time that Dennis learned a trade. She handed him a small object and told him to fiddle with it until he discovered how it worked. Then, maybe, she would take him on as an apprentice of sorts and teach him some of the tricks of her trade.
The enigmatic object was a cylinder that looked as though it had been whittled out of oak by a novice woodcarver with dull tools and a penchant for Firewhiskey. Dennis diligently tried to puzzle it out each night after supper, tapping it with his wand and whispering every incantation he could remember (and some that he didn’t, which resulted in a few mildly embarrassing mishaps). The cylinder resisted every attempt, remaining infuriatingly impervious to even conjured flames and cutting charms.
Every night, too, Dennis soon realised, Snape and Millicent went upstairs in tandem. Snape initiated the departure, of that much he was sure, but what the signal was or how he decided when to give it was a complete mystery.
****
Although adages about the untimely demises of felines had often been repeated pointedly in his hearing, Dennis had no fear, no compunctions about asking questions. He’d learned from the best, most persistent questioner Hogwarts had seen in years, and after, there’d been twice as much silence to fill.
As they worked together in the shop, Dennis took advantage of the ample customer-free time to pepper Millicent with questions--everything from her opinion of the likelihood that the Chudley Cannons would win another a match while Galvin Gudgeon was Seeker (“Who gives a rat’s arse?”) to who she thought should replace Kingsley as Minister for Magic (“It doesn’t matter. They’re all lying tossers, the lot of them.”) to her weight (“Twenty stone, give or take.”) to whether or not she had any siblings (“Sod off.”) to why she didn’t join the Death Eaters (“I’m slow, not stupid. Why weren’t you at the Battle of Hogwarts?”).
One day the conversation veered in an unlikely direction--to Snape. Except for the odd question here and there, Dennis had studiously avoided talking about him since his return.
“How, uh, How did you . . . um--”
“How do we fuck?”
All the saliva in Dennis’ mouth suddenly flooded his windpipe, and he choked. He had been fumbling for a good way to ask how they got together after Snape’s surprisingly nonfatal encounter with Voldemort’s snake. Now that she brought it up, however, a barrage of vague, blurry images swarmed through his mind, and all he could do was nod--she already thought he was a pervert, so he might as well satisfy the curiosity she had just aroused.
“We don’t. He can’t.” She paused, then added, “Most Potions Masters can’t. It’s an occupational hazard they don’t tell you about until it’s too late.”
“But, you . . . he . . . .”
Millicent snorted. “Believe it or not, there’s a lot more to being intimate than sticking a penis in a vagina.”
She returned to mending the lid of a self-heating teakettle, and that was the end of the discussion. Dennis asked her opinion on the exorbitant price of broad beans in China, and soon the conversation was rolling along again (Dennis chattering blithely, and Millicent drily interjecting her own two Knuts’ worth).
****
Finally, one night, while trying to ignore their recent simultaneous departure, Dennis gripped the cylinder tightly and gave a sharp twist in frustration. The middle gave way, and two tiny doors opened, revealing an intricately carved bird that ruffled its feathers and fluttered its wings. He jumped up and shouted in jubilation, then abruptly sat down again upon remembering that he had been abandoned.
Dennis set the contraption down on the floor, reached into his robes, and began to morosely fiddle with the camera. It was soothing to hold it and run his fingers over the wrinkles in the metal where Millicent had pounded out the dents and twiddle the knobs. He’d never actually taken a picture with it (although they’d happily shared everything else, Colin had been adamant that no one else--not even his beloved brother--be allowed to use the camera), but the solid weight of it was reassuring and somehow friendly in his cupped palms.
The door creaked open, and a wand poked into the room. Millicent followed it warily, her gaze darting around the room in search of an intruder. When she saw that Dennis was alone, she relaxed her wand arm.
“It was just me.” He paused and thought a moment. “Y’know, I could’ve been murdered and the place burgled by the time you got here.”
She rolled her eyes. “I figured you’d chatter any would-be burglars into submission. So why were you making a racket?”
Dennis remembered the cylinder and picked it up from the floor. Millicent’s eyes gleamed.
“You’ll take me on as your apprentice now?” In the flickering gloom of the dying fire, his plea was a bit pathetic, but Millicent seemed rather distracted.
“Hmm? Oh, yeah, yeah. Tomorrow. Tonight, though--”
“I’ll go straight to sleep, I promise,” Dennis interrupted.
She huffed impatiently. “If you’d shut your gob long enough to listen, tonight you’re coming upstairs.” With that, she extinguished the fire with a flick of her wand and left, leaving Dennis standing dazedly in the dark.
****
“Millicent, I think you ought--” Snape trailed off when he saw Dennis appear in the doorway behind Millicent. He set aside a small cauldron he had been repairing, as his mouth quirked in what on any other person would have been a grimace, but seemed oddly like a smile on his thin lips. “Finally! I was beginning to wonder if you were still the same dunderhead who bungled his Swelling Solution so badly that it actually shrunk its cauldron. Or who broke nearly as much glassware as Longbottom melted cauldrons. Or--”
Millicent interrupted hastily. “In any case, he’s here, Severus. Not all of us are as brilliant as you.”
Dennis stared at the two of them, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open far enough to house a nesting pair of Quarksnaps. He set the camera on the mantel above the fireplace, as his fingers (along with his knees) suddenly felt about as wobbly as jelly.
“Exuo.” Millicent flipped her wand casually in Dennis’ direction, and his robes and underwear slithered down to the floor and away to a far corner, eluding his belated attempt to retrieve them. Cool air gusted around his privates, and he instinctively clasped his hands in front.
This was some cruel, absurd joke. It had to be. Or, worse yet, it was a trap, and his face was about to join those of Rupert the Rogering Rogue and Buddy Burger the Budgie-Buggerer in the Rogues’ Gallery of the Sexually Deranged.
There was no laughter, no flashing camera--just an uncomfortable awareness of the inadequacies of his own naked body as it was perused by two impassive sets of eyes.
Then Millicent shrugged off her own robes as casually as one might remove a cloak upon coming in from the cold, and Snape waved his own clothing away with his wand. Dennis blinked. He knew he should look away--knew he should want to look away--but it was futile. His gaze was transfixed by the incongruous couple calmly getting into bed.
When he didn’t know about the two of them as a them, he’d entertained a few of his own private fantasies about Millicent. He’d expected to be disgusted by Snape’s body, though, and was startled by the utter absence of repulsion. Death had got its teeth into him and left its mark, but a hundred little pulses of life animated his rawboned frame. He was certainly no longer the invincible, terrifying teacher who could cow his students with one thunderous glance. Indeed, the unexpected vulnerability made him a compelling sight.
“Well?” Snape gestured imperiously at the small patch of bed to Millicent’s right. “Are you coming or not?”
Millicent sniggered, but was silenced by a well-placed elbow in the side.
“I, um . . . er . . .” Dennis’ eyes goggled as he attempted to process the invitation. Finally, his brain reverted to the first question he ever learned. “Why?”
Snape heaved an irritated sigh. “Being impotent does not mean I cannot derive gratification from giving pleasure, difficult as you may find it to comprehend that I can enjoy making someone happy.” When Dennis reacted with bafflement to this cryptic remark, Snape harrumphed. “You can do something for Millicent that I cannot.”
The more rational side of Dennis’ nature had long ago given up trying to keep pace with his impulsivity, so he found himself snuggled into Millicent’s warm curves with his bare arse hanging over the edge of the bed before that niggling voice in the back of his mind had time to object.
Then Snape began to lecture. “This is a breast. It has two functions: to shut up squalling infants and to initiate foreplay prior to the act of sexual congress.” Millicent smirked fondly at him, and this was rapidly becoming the most surreal event of Dennis’ life (surpassing even that incident with Douglas MacDougal, a goat, a bottle of Butterbeer, and a pair of Professor McGonagall’s knickers).
Dennis protested, “Prof-- Um, Sn-- Severus? I do know what a breast is.”
“Really?” Snape interrupted his arch incredulity to press his face into the pillow for a wracking cough. Millicent’s smirk flickered momentarily until he recovered himself and continued. “Then you know what this is?” His finger began to trace the wide band of dusky skin around her nipple, which was rapidly standing to attention in a most fascinating way.
“Looks kind of like the outer bull on a dartboard.”
Millicent let loose a loud guffaw, and Snape’s mouth twisted into that grimacing near-grin. He tweaked her nipple and said, “I suppose that would make this the bull’s-eye?”
Five minutes later, after Millicent had regained her composure and Dennis had learned about areolae, she tucked his hand underneath her breast and curled his fingers around it. It was soft and velvety like the pot of Lamb’s Ear Neville had given him for his twelfth birthday. It also was heavier than he’d expected, and he hefted it a few times just to watch the flesh wobble.
Dennis had the vigour and clumsy enthusiasm of a newborn centaur foal, all gangly limbs and an impressive startle reflex. With Snape’s persistent tutelage and Millicent’s gruff orders of “Here!” and “That hurts, you twat,” he managed to achieve an outcome satisfying to all involved.
It was sweaty and sticky and a great deal more complex than Dennis had anticipated (although he suspected that Snape might have made things out to be more complicated than they actually were, especially the part about the Reverse Starfish). It was also utterly exhausting, and he quickly fell into a deep sleep.
****
Dennis awoke to a gentle click, whirrrrrrr. One leg was trapped underneath Millicent, and he found that his lips had been nuzzling the soft skin of her upper arm. There were fingers cradling the back of his skull that didn’t belong to either of them, and he found it just as surprising this morning as last night that Snape had such a gentle touch.
The camera.
It sat where he’d left it, like an obedient familiar patiently biding its time until its master returned. Yet, perhaps not so patiently. The sound that had awakened him was the film rewinding.
Dennis carefully extricated himself from the tangle of limbs, paused to locate and pull on his robes, and tiptoed over to the fireplace. The film was, indeed, fully exposed and rewound.
The next step was obvious. His insatiable curiosity needed to know what was on that film, so he took the camera and silently slipped downstairs.
He had helped Colin in the darkroom often enough that he thought he remembered most of the steps. His brother had been pants at transfiguration, so he’d learned the spells to change utensils and dishes (always easily nicked from the Great Hall) into equipment and basins, and water into a passable developing potion.
Transfiguration had always come easy for him when he was working with Colin. He could sense an object’s yearning to be something else--to be useful--and his empathy enabled him to coax the transformation along with great ease. Class had been a different story entirely, surrounded by careless peers and intimidated by Professor McGonagall’s stern, looming presence. Besides, everything they transfigured in class was always returned to its original state in the end. It didn’t seem fair--like Cinderella’s pumpkin coach--to give things a taste of something better and then snatch it away. Once he transfigured an object, he hoarded it away for future use, building up quite an array of equipment during his stay at Hogwarts.
Dennis blacked out the first hints of dawn glowing at the window with his duvet and a carefully applied Sticking Charm, then transfigured the necessary paraphernalia.
It had been a while (and he’d never done it entirely on his own, either), so the first several prints were streaked and blotchy. Colin had tried to charm the camera to be used for surveillance purposes (everything from trying to catch a candid shot of Harry Potter to spying on Umbridge and the Inquisitorial Squad), but with little success. Somehow, its automatic release must have been jostled into functioning, perhaps when Millicent repaired it. Most of the photos were of ceilings and walls and close-ups of the inside of his pocket, but the last five recorded the events of the previous hours.
Dennis gawked at the shock of the juxtaposition of the three bodies. There was his own--despite the month of regular meals and a hint of softness now padding the concavity between his hipbones, his skin still angled sharply over the long ridges and knobbly bumps of most of his bones. He’d always been vaguely aware of (and reluctantly resigned to) his small stature, but never had he seen it in such stark contrast. Next to him, Millicent looked immense and wildly disheveled, her coarse features screwed up and steadily reddening, tangled hair flopping every which way, rivulets of sweat coursing down her face and between her breasts. Everywhere that he hollowed in, she curved out (and then some), and he could still feel the enveloping softness of her belly and thighs. Then there was Snape, gaunt and jaundiced and looking like death warmed over. His cock was flaccid, but he nimbly played their bodies like a virtuoso violinist commanding the stage of the Royal Albert Hall.
That shock was quickly preempted by another, bumping insistently against the table. Dennis gazed thoughtfully down at his tented robes and willed his erection to subside. Like the faux mice in Transfiguration and the pumpkin coach, it wouldn’t do to get his hopes up; it had probably been a one-off, just Snape trying to give Millicent a taste of something he never could. An ache plunged through his chest to his stomach.
Then he looked at the second-to-last picture in the series. He’d fallen asleep precariously close to the edge of the bed, anchored only by Millicent’s arm draped around his waist. As he watched the image, Snape kissed Millicent, reached across her to lay a hand on Dennis’ back, and whispered something as he rested his head on her shoulder.
Dennis had gotten quite good at lip-reading photographs, but even so, he had to rewatch the scene several times to decipher the simple three-word sentence. Bewildered, he turned to the final picture, taken only an hour before.
Their bodies--scrawny and fat and scarred and terribly imperfect by even the most generous allowance--fit together like the pieces of some bizarre jigsaw. Each one was distinct from the others, but they seemed to truly belong together. Perhaps . . . .
What had Snape said? You want to live badly enough, and sometimes you do. For the first time since Colin died and that enervating gloom had descended upon him, Dennis really felt like wanting to live.
And maybe, despite everything, he would do exactly that.
***
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Author/Artist: anguis_1
Title: “Sod Off” Means “I Love You”
Rating: R
Pairings: Severus Snape/Millicent Bulstrode/Dennis Creevey
Word Count: 6,227 words
Warnings: Umm . . . you did read the pairing, right? And you’re aware this exchange is for characters of dubious popular attractiveness?
Summary: It begins and ends with the camera. Snapshots of life, and the living thereof.
Author's Notes: This fic takes place about 5 years after DH (so Dennis is, indeed, of age).
***
Millicent’s first thought was that he could use a good meal (or ten). He was standing outside her shop, studying the sign that listed her hours (“Whenever I’m arsed to be here.”) as though it were the newest installment of Big Breasts Bimonthly or whatever it was that blokes of his age went in for. She was just contemplating ordering him to shove off--not that there were any customers that he was scaring off, but still, it was the principle of the thing--when he jammed his hands deep into the pockets of his ragged cloak and slouched away towards the high-end shops farther down the road.
A week later, he was back, bouncing on the balls of his feet on the pavement outside her door as preoccupied passersby shouldered past him without taking the slightest notice. He wasn’t setting off her Anti-Loitering Charms, which probably meant that she ought to recast them. Before she could make a note to that effect, he opened the door and stepped inside, setting off a host of tiny silver bells hovering above the lintel.
Millicent tossed a spell in his direction, and he dove to the floor, catching his chin on the edge of a dusty wireless.
He scrambled to his feet. “I’m not trying to rob you, honest!”
Millicent glared down at him. “I’d like to see you try.”
The prospect was amusing. He barely cleared five feet and probably wasn’t even half her weight, and his reflexes obviously tended more towards flight than fight.
The door, which he’d not had time to fully close, swung open in a gust of wind. The bells above it began their delicate pealing, and Millicent silenced them again with another offhanded wave of her wand.
“Oh, sorry, I thought--”
“Whaddaya want?” Millicent interrupted before he could explain himself into a deeper hole.
A hopeful smile brightened his face, and he produced a battered camera from his robes.
“It’s a Muggle camera. Take it to a Muggle shop.” She dismissed him with a half-hearted shrug and returned to fusing the cracked glass on the tabletop Sneakoscope she’d been mending.
“I did. They told me to scrap it without even looking at it. It was curse damage, I think.”
That much was obvious. Its casing had crumpled like tin foil and was marked with purplish gashes.
“Muggles do occasionally get things right. It’s not worth the trouble.”
"Could you at least try? It belonged . . . . Um, it's . . . it’s important. I can pay whatever you ask.” His assurance was even more holey than his cloak, desperation apparent in every stammered syllable. (The Sneakoscope remained silent, however, and Millicent made a note to recalibrate its sneakometer.) Even so . . . . She could definitely use whatever it was that he could pay her. Besides, it would be a bit of a diversion from the usual magical devices that were her stock in trade.
Momentarily distracted, the white-hot tip of her hornbeam wand slipped across the glass and glanced off the hand she’d been using to steady the device, leaving a small burn trailing down the length of her thumb. She hissed a few obscenities that brought two spots of colour to his cheeks.
“It’ll be a week or two.”
His big, brown cow eyes lit up, and he began to babble some disgusting sentiments of gratitude.
She ignored this blunder and wrote up a chit, and he scrawled his name Dennis Creevey. As he slipped out the door, she recalled a tiny, blank-eyed waif curled over another slight body, the pair engulfed in the eerie calm that shadows death. Then she shrugged again and picked up her wand. The dead had no use for maudlin thoughts, and the living certainly didn’t need them either.
****
It had taken a week’s worth of intermittent fiddling--poking and prodding with care and a few choice invectives--but Millicent had finally teased out the residual Dark Magic obscuring the aperture (some rather nasty stuff that had scalded the burn mark off her hand) and pounded out all the dents she could. Unsurprisingly, Dennis had left no Floo contact, so she shelved the camera under the counter and continued on as usual, being surly with her customers and cantankerous with everyone else who crossed her path.
He returned exactly two weeks later, managing not to flinch when she silenced the bells above the door. His face lit up like a chandelier when she produced the camera and pronounced it to be functioning.
The brilliant smile dimmed when he saw the bill. “I don’t take charity.”
“Good on you. I don’t give it.”
His chin thrust out. “I know I’m not all that bright, but even I know that should cost more.”
“You think you know my business better than I do?” The edge in her voice was dangerous, but he persisted obliviously.
“If you won’t take my money, then let me help you out for a bit to make up the difference.” His voice was quietly insistent, as though this were a weighty matter. “I always pay my debts.”
“Gryffindor nobleness does not impress me. Besides, I already have--” Millicent’s protest faltered, and she glanced nervously behind her. “I don’t need any help.”
Dennis continued undeterred. “Surely you can use a few hours help cleaning up some of this clutter.”
“I like clutter.” The best defense was a stinging offense, or so she’d learned from the Slytherin Quidditch team, so she added, “And you’re a scrawny midget in danger of misplacing your front teeth.”
Another less foolhardy person would have recognised the implied threat, but Dennis just pushed on. “I bet your customers don’t like it, or--” He paused to survey the empty shop. “Or maybe that’s why you don’t have any customers.”
Millicent gritted her teeth. “Most of my custom comes by owl. If somebody doesn’t like how I run things, they can get stuffed.”
In the end, she relented. It was easier than to try to verbally out-manoeuver him (and, although she was mightily tempted, the fine imposed by the Wizarding Alliance of Shopkeepers for hexing a customer wasn’t something she could afford to pay for a fourth time this year).
Not realising that he had jabbered her into acquiescence, he kept trying to persuade her for another few seconds until she repeated with a snarl, “I said alright.”
He flashed a startled, gap-toothed grin and looked about expectantly, eager to begin.
“You can start by paying me.”
Upending a small pouch on the counter, he counted out her fee in Sickles and Knuts, and she fidgeted with a crumpled stack of orders, trying not to notice that he scooped up only a handful of Knuts to return to his bag.
“You can move those ampliphones blocking the way over there. Put them back here where I can get a chance to work on them.” Just as he shook his wand from its sleeve holster into his palm, she added, with only a trace of malevolence (because, destitute or not, he was still a nuisance), “Without magic. They’re too sensitive.”
Dennis’ eyes widened. The ampliphones were rusty iron boxes of varying sizes and shapes embellished with elaborate grille work, most still containing their original mechanisms. Slipping his wand back into place, he straightened his shoulders and strode over to the lopsided pile.
He set to work with a will, hauling the ampliphones one by one to their new residence behind the counter, straining every spindly muscle in his body and quickly looking as though he were about to pass out among the bits and bobs and various oddments littering the floor.
When he was nearly halfway through, Millicent called out, “Oy!” He paused, panting. “You can use your wand if you’re careful.”
Something that looked suspiciously akin to betrayal washed over his face as he met her placid gaze. It quickly set back into a grimace as he seized the heaviest of the lot and staggered with it to the counter without any magical assistance. She wondered how he’d survived this long being that gullible. He was stubborn, too, which would have raised him in her regard had it not been a very Gryffindorish sort of stubbornness with all the finesse of a Bludger (and any resemblance to her own bullheaded obduracy was entirely beside the point).
Millicent gave up any pretense of working and watched him totter back and forth until the remaining pile had been reduced to a bare spot on the floor that she had not seen for nearly a year.
“There, you’ve paid your debt, upheld your honour, and all that rot. Now, scram!”
He picked up the camera from the counter with tender reverence and swayed, only just setting it down gently before collapsing into an untidy pile on the floor.
Millicent swore. It was late, past her usual hours of operation, and it would be easy to toss him over her shoulder and tuck him into the doorway of some shop farther down the street like the vagrant he probably was--perhaps the apothecary (whose snide assistant had tried to pass off salamander blood as dragon bile), or maybe Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes (only last week, George had sent her an experimental version of his new line of Horrible Howlers, which had made her ears ring for hours).
As she gathered his limbs and hoisted him up, Millicent realised that her initial assessment of a ten-meal deficit was a gross underestimate. He was fragile and birdlike in a way that birds ought to be, but humans definitely shouldn’t.
Something that was most assuredly not guilt roiled her stomach. (She didn’t do guilt, and, anyway, it was his own fault if he was too stupid to realise how close he’d been to the brink of collapse.) Somehow, he wound up on her sofa instead of outside on the damp chill of some shop’s paving stones. She covered him with a duvet summoned from the top of the laundry hamper (clean enough for an uninvited guest, she reasoned).
****
Dennis awoke to calloused fingers probing the delicate skin behind his jaw. It was actually quite pleasant, sending strange thrills rippling through his face and neck, until he recalled his last few moments of consciousness.
“Hey! Geroff me!” He started to flail.
“Stop it, Creevey!” A sharp slap stung his cheek, and he wriggled back under the bedding. “I’m not in the mood to deflower you. I’m just checking to see if you’re still alive.”
“I don’ have any flow’rs,” he mumbled through the duvet he’d pulled over his face.
“You’re doing a pretty good impression of a pansy--” A noise from behind the wooden door at the back of the room interrupted her gibe, and a note of panic shaded Millicent’s voice as she called to its source, “Stop! Don’t come in!”
Whoever it was lurking behind the door was obviously having them on, as they were making tortured breathing noises that alternately whistled and growled. Dennis peeked out and murmured, “Luke, I am your father,” as Millicent’s warning was disregarded, and a black-robed figure shuffled into the room.
It was a cadaverous apparition Dennis had never expected to see again in this world (and probably not in the next, either). A knotted, red-rimmed scar blossomed on his throat and spread branching tendrils along the blood vessels of the right side of his neck, wending upwards towards his ear and disappearing beneath the collar of his robes. His face was more lined, and strands of silver now threaded through his lank black hair, but the scowling, hook-nosed visage was unmistakable.
“Professor!” Dennis’ voice squeaked up the octaves, and he would’ve been embarrassed had he not been so preoccupied with falling off the sofa and fumbling for his wand. Scrambling to his feet, he shot a frantic glance at Millicent. “Is he a zombie?”
A voice that grated like the hinges of a rusty pasture gate answered instead. “If you had paid attention in Defense against the Dark Arts, you would know the correct term is Inferius.” A pause, and another gasping breath. “Besides, your brain holds no interest for me.”
Dennis thought he heard a strangled mutter add, “Not even enough there for a nibble, I wager,” but it was quite possible that it was an auditory hallucination brought on by stress or starvation or shock.
He recovered quickly enough, though, and a hundred questions burbled up in his mind, beginning with, “How did you survive, anyway? Harry said--”
“Potter’s a fool, and incompetent, as well. You want to live badly enough,” Snape cast his jaundiced gaze over Dennis’ tatty robes, “and sometimes you do.”
Time fluttered briefly as Dennis’ breath hitched and his wandgrip turned white-knuckled.
A cough--thick and wet and bending him double--wracked Snape’s body. When it had passed, he straightened regally and turned his back on them, exiting the room via the door through which he’d entered.
Millicent watched the door until they could no longer hear the laboured wheezing. She considered Dennis, his wand still fixed upon the closed door. “I won’t apologise for him.”
He slowly reholstered his wand and replied, “You shouldn’t have to,” with as much indignation as he could muster.
She grunted and abruptly changed the subject. “Lie down before you fall down.”
He reluctantly took her advice and fell into an exhausted sleep as soon as his cheek nestled into the rough weave of the cushions.
****
Dennis awakened the next morning to see Millicent looming over him. She plunged into her speech even as he stretched and rubbed at the sleep encrusting his eyelashes.
“Look here, Creevey, last night, Severus and I talked about what to do with you. I convinced him not to Avada you in your sleep, but you’ve thrown quite a spanner in the works by seeing him. I figured it’d be easier to keep an eye on you if you’re within reach, so if you’re as keen to work as you were yesterday, you can have bed and board. In any case, you’ve got to keep your mouth shut about him. If you want to eat first, we can do the Unbreakable Vow after breakfast.”
Just behind her (and in danger of being swept away by her bum) was a table laden with more food than he’d eaten in the last month; the smooth domes of boiled eggs fairly begged to be smashed, toast soldiers stood smartly at attention, rashers of bacon wafted their smoky scent throughout the room, and the morning sun glowed through the marmalade pot as though it were stained glass.
Dennis didn’t care what else her bargain entailed. He clambered up and took a place at the table, sitting as far away from a glowering Snape as possible. Without waiting for a second invitation, he set to eating ravenously.
“Slow down,” warned Snape, “or we’ll be seeing that again.”
Dennis had only had an egg and toast, a few sips of tea, and a nibble of bacon when his stomach rolled. It seemed to flop around, its barely digested contents welling up in his throat. He pressed a napkin to his lips and willed himself not to vomit.
“You listen about as well as a stewed Flobberworm. Your stomach isn’t ready to handle much food yet.” Snape returned to his own breakfast, a thin gruel that he swallowed with difficulty.
After the remains of breakfast had been cleared to the small kitchen, Dennis and Millicent clasped hands as Snape performed the Unbreakable Vow wordlessly, his wandwork elegantly spare and economical.
It seemed as though it ought to feel more momentous, staking his life as a forfeit should his impetuous tongue mention the continued existence of the supposedly late Potions Master, but Dennis watched the proceedings with detachment. Afterwards, despite feeling rather bilious, he managed to ask Snape if he had done it wordlessly because he couldn’t pronounce the incantations precisely enough anymore. Snape coldly ignored the question and departed.
****
The next month passed quickly as Dennis settled into the bizarre situation. Despite its clutter (which was very resistant to his efforts to organize), he became nearly as familiar with the shop as Millicent.
Snape’s harsh, gasping breaths even faded into the background as his ears became accustomed to them, although Dennis still had to watch Snape’s mouth form the words, because his brain refused to reconcile the formerly silken tones that had caressed the ears with the gurgling croaks that now obscured his speech. He mostly only joined them for meals and their customary after-dinner lounging by the fire, retreating in between times to whatever it was that occupied his time and attention in the rooms above.
Dennis spent most of his waking hours with Millicent, and, much to his surprise, discovered that he was growing fond of her. She was rough and crude and sometimes unnecessarily vulgar, and she was often downright rude to her customers (he could understand why most of them preferred to conduct their business with her long-distance).
And yet, somewhere underneath it all, she was tenderhearted enough to look after Snape, whose sharp tongue had not been dulled by his tribulations and who seemed to cultivate his caustic temperament just to be contrary.
And she had taken Dennis, himself, in (he couldn’t pretend that his meagre contribution of shifting junk this way and that was much compensation for his meals and the inconvenience of always having him underfoot) with such a careless largesse that he still couldn’t quite believe that it had actually happened. He’d had too much pride to ask, but none of his former housemates had offered him so much as a decent meal.
****
“Stop staring at my breasts.” Millicent straightened up from clearing away the supper dishes and glared at Dennis.
“What? I’m not . . . . oh.” Red flashed across his sharp cheekbones. “I’m, uh, I’m sorry.”
It was, indeed, a magnificent view. As part and parcel of the rest of her superabundant figure, she’d been endowed with a large bosom and augmented it with the skillful use of a Lift and Separate Charm (modified from an old family Lift and Squish Together Charm that displayed one’s assets most impressively in the low-cut fashions of centuries past, but was unsuitable for her usually modest necklines).
The exchange roused Snape from the latest edition of Dangerous Decoctions Digest. Even when seemingly dozing, his keen hearing always alerted him to even the softest mutter across the room. He rose and shuffled over to sling his arm around Millicent, half clutching her to his side and half supporting himself. He splayed his fingers over the expanse of one heavy breast and rasped, “They’re not yours to stare at.”
The scene froze.
With a swiftness that surprised even himself, Dennis drew his wand and fiercely commanded, “Keep your hands off her!”
Snape slitted his eyes, and a frisson of fear shivered through Dennis. He glanced hastily at Millicent, expecting to see her lash out with her wand or her fist, or, at the very least, excoriate him for presuming that her feminine honour needed protecting. Instead, she had chosen an option that hadn’t occurred to him, leaning into the awkward embrace as though it were a commonplace occurrence.
And, suddenly, there it was--he had been so preoccupied with his own growing attachment to her that he had been blind to everything else. Snape’s sallow face was alive with a fierce jealousy, and Millicent radiated contentment.
When they retired together each night, it wasn’t to two chaste bedrooms above-stairs. Dennis blushed furiously. It was stupid--stupidly naïve--to imagine so. With all the wounded dignity he could muster, he retrieved his cloak (its ragged holes rather crudely patched with the help of Millicent’s Stitching Charm) and walked quietly out to the shop.
Severus muttered, “Impudent whelp,” as they heard the tinkle of bells.
****
Not that either of them would admit it, but it took nearly a fortnight to get used to the Dennis-sized hole lurking just behind their elbows, not asking a hundred questions a minute and not vibrating with enough energy to power half the shops on Diagon Alley.
Another couple of weeks passed before Millicent, on a rare errand to Flourish & Blott’s, spotted a familiar slight figure standing on tiptoes to rummage through a dustbin in the adjoining alley. Using all the stealth she’d learned from living these past five years with Severus, she slid silently into the narrow gap between the buildings. A tap on the shoulder sent him diving headfirst into the bin, and he refused to emerge from the refuse when he recognised her.
He was obviously living rough, but convincing him to return with her took rather more persuading on Millicent’s part than she would ever care to admit.
Dinner that night was a bit awkward, with Dennis spending most of his time staring shamelessly at Snape and trying not to accidentally stick his fingers in the gravy, but they slipped back into their old routine without further ado. In the shop the next morning, Millicent announced brusquely that it was high time that Dennis learned a trade. She handed him a small object and told him to fiddle with it until he discovered how it worked. Then, maybe, she would take him on as an apprentice of sorts and teach him some of the tricks of her trade.
The enigmatic object was a cylinder that looked as though it had been whittled out of oak by a novice woodcarver with dull tools and a penchant for Firewhiskey. Dennis diligently tried to puzzle it out each night after supper, tapping it with his wand and whispering every incantation he could remember (and some that he didn’t, which resulted in a few mildly embarrassing mishaps). The cylinder resisted every attempt, remaining infuriatingly impervious to even conjured flames and cutting charms.
Every night, too, Dennis soon realised, Snape and Millicent went upstairs in tandem. Snape initiated the departure, of that much he was sure, but what the signal was or how he decided when to give it was a complete mystery.
****
Although adages about the untimely demises of felines had often been repeated pointedly in his hearing, Dennis had no fear, no compunctions about asking questions. He’d learned from the best, most persistent questioner Hogwarts had seen in years, and after, there’d been twice as much silence to fill.
As they worked together in the shop, Dennis took advantage of the ample customer-free time to pepper Millicent with questions--everything from her opinion of the likelihood that the Chudley Cannons would win another a match while Galvin Gudgeon was Seeker (“Who gives a rat’s arse?”) to who she thought should replace Kingsley as Minister for Magic (“It doesn’t matter. They’re all lying tossers, the lot of them.”) to her weight (“Twenty stone, give or take.”) to whether or not she had any siblings (“Sod off.”) to why she didn’t join the Death Eaters (“I’m slow, not stupid. Why weren’t you at the Battle of Hogwarts?”).
One day the conversation veered in an unlikely direction--to Snape. Except for the odd question here and there, Dennis had studiously avoided talking about him since his return.
“How, uh, How did you . . . um--”
“How do we fuck?”
All the saliva in Dennis’ mouth suddenly flooded his windpipe, and he choked. He had been fumbling for a good way to ask how they got together after Snape’s surprisingly nonfatal encounter with Voldemort’s snake. Now that she brought it up, however, a barrage of vague, blurry images swarmed through his mind, and all he could do was nod--she already thought he was a pervert, so he might as well satisfy the curiosity she had just aroused.
“We don’t. He can’t.” She paused, then added, “Most Potions Masters can’t. It’s an occupational hazard they don’t tell you about until it’s too late.”
“But, you . . . he . . . .”
Millicent snorted. “Believe it or not, there’s a lot more to being intimate than sticking a penis in a vagina.”
She returned to mending the lid of a self-heating teakettle, and that was the end of the discussion. Dennis asked her opinion on the exorbitant price of broad beans in China, and soon the conversation was rolling along again (Dennis chattering blithely, and Millicent drily interjecting her own two Knuts’ worth).
****
Finally, one night, while trying to ignore their recent simultaneous departure, Dennis gripped the cylinder tightly and gave a sharp twist in frustration. The middle gave way, and two tiny doors opened, revealing an intricately carved bird that ruffled its feathers and fluttered its wings. He jumped up and shouted in jubilation, then abruptly sat down again upon remembering that he had been abandoned.
Dennis set the contraption down on the floor, reached into his robes, and began to morosely fiddle with the camera. It was soothing to hold it and run his fingers over the wrinkles in the metal where Millicent had pounded out the dents and twiddle the knobs. He’d never actually taken a picture with it (although they’d happily shared everything else, Colin had been adamant that no one else--not even his beloved brother--be allowed to use the camera), but the solid weight of it was reassuring and somehow friendly in his cupped palms.
The door creaked open, and a wand poked into the room. Millicent followed it warily, her gaze darting around the room in search of an intruder. When she saw that Dennis was alone, she relaxed her wand arm.
“It was just me.” He paused and thought a moment. “Y’know, I could’ve been murdered and the place burgled by the time you got here.”
She rolled her eyes. “I figured you’d chatter any would-be burglars into submission. So why were you making a racket?”
Dennis remembered the cylinder and picked it up from the floor. Millicent’s eyes gleamed.
“You’ll take me on as your apprentice now?” In the flickering gloom of the dying fire, his plea was a bit pathetic, but Millicent seemed rather distracted.
“Hmm? Oh, yeah, yeah. Tomorrow. Tonight, though--”
“I’ll go straight to sleep, I promise,” Dennis interrupted.
She huffed impatiently. “If you’d shut your gob long enough to listen, tonight you’re coming upstairs.” With that, she extinguished the fire with a flick of her wand and left, leaving Dennis standing dazedly in the dark.
****
“Millicent, I think you ought--” Snape trailed off when he saw Dennis appear in the doorway behind Millicent. He set aside a small cauldron he had been repairing, as his mouth quirked in what on any other person would have been a grimace, but seemed oddly like a smile on his thin lips. “Finally! I was beginning to wonder if you were still the same dunderhead who bungled his Swelling Solution so badly that it actually shrunk its cauldron. Or who broke nearly as much glassware as Longbottom melted cauldrons. Or--”
Millicent interrupted hastily. “In any case, he’s here, Severus. Not all of us are as brilliant as you.”
Dennis stared at the two of them, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open far enough to house a nesting pair of Quarksnaps. He set the camera on the mantel above the fireplace, as his fingers (along with his knees) suddenly felt about as wobbly as jelly.
“Exuo.” Millicent flipped her wand casually in Dennis’ direction, and his robes and underwear slithered down to the floor and away to a far corner, eluding his belated attempt to retrieve them. Cool air gusted around his privates, and he instinctively clasped his hands in front.
This was some cruel, absurd joke. It had to be. Or, worse yet, it was a trap, and his face was about to join those of Rupert the Rogering Rogue and Buddy Burger the Budgie-Buggerer in the Rogues’ Gallery of the Sexually Deranged.
There was no laughter, no flashing camera--just an uncomfortable awareness of the inadequacies of his own naked body as it was perused by two impassive sets of eyes.
Then Millicent shrugged off her own robes as casually as one might remove a cloak upon coming in from the cold, and Snape waved his own clothing away with his wand. Dennis blinked. He knew he should look away--knew he should want to look away--but it was futile. His gaze was transfixed by the incongruous couple calmly getting into bed.
When he didn’t know about the two of them as a them, he’d entertained a few of his own private fantasies about Millicent. He’d expected to be disgusted by Snape’s body, though, and was startled by the utter absence of repulsion. Death had got its teeth into him and left its mark, but a hundred little pulses of life animated his rawboned frame. He was certainly no longer the invincible, terrifying teacher who could cow his students with one thunderous glance. Indeed, the unexpected vulnerability made him a compelling sight.
“Well?” Snape gestured imperiously at the small patch of bed to Millicent’s right. “Are you coming or not?”
Millicent sniggered, but was silenced by a well-placed elbow in the side.
“I, um . . . er . . .” Dennis’ eyes goggled as he attempted to process the invitation. Finally, his brain reverted to the first question he ever learned. “Why?”
Snape heaved an irritated sigh. “Being impotent does not mean I cannot derive gratification from giving pleasure, difficult as you may find it to comprehend that I can enjoy making someone happy.” When Dennis reacted with bafflement to this cryptic remark, Snape harrumphed. “You can do something for Millicent that I cannot.”
The more rational side of Dennis’ nature had long ago given up trying to keep pace with his impulsivity, so he found himself snuggled into Millicent’s warm curves with his bare arse hanging over the edge of the bed before that niggling voice in the back of his mind had time to object.
Then Snape began to lecture. “This is a breast. It has two functions: to shut up squalling infants and to initiate foreplay prior to the act of sexual congress.” Millicent smirked fondly at him, and this was rapidly becoming the most surreal event of Dennis’ life (surpassing even that incident with Douglas MacDougal, a goat, a bottle of Butterbeer, and a pair of Professor McGonagall’s knickers).
Dennis protested, “Prof-- Um, Sn-- Severus? I do know what a breast is.”
“Really?” Snape interrupted his arch incredulity to press his face into the pillow for a wracking cough. Millicent’s smirk flickered momentarily until he recovered himself and continued. “Then you know what this is?” His finger began to trace the wide band of dusky skin around her nipple, which was rapidly standing to attention in a most fascinating way.
“Looks kind of like the outer bull on a dartboard.”
Millicent let loose a loud guffaw, and Snape’s mouth twisted into that grimacing near-grin. He tweaked her nipple and said, “I suppose that would make this the bull’s-eye?”
Five minutes later, after Millicent had regained her composure and Dennis had learned about areolae, she tucked his hand underneath her breast and curled his fingers around it. It was soft and velvety like the pot of Lamb’s Ear Neville had given him for his twelfth birthday. It also was heavier than he’d expected, and he hefted it a few times just to watch the flesh wobble.
Dennis had the vigour and clumsy enthusiasm of a newborn centaur foal, all gangly limbs and an impressive startle reflex. With Snape’s persistent tutelage and Millicent’s gruff orders of “Here!” and “That hurts, you twat,” he managed to achieve an outcome satisfying to all involved.
It was sweaty and sticky and a great deal more complex than Dennis had anticipated (although he suspected that Snape might have made things out to be more complicated than they actually were, especially the part about the Reverse Starfish). It was also utterly exhausting, and he quickly fell into a deep sleep.
****
Dennis awoke to a gentle click, whirrrrrrr. One leg was trapped underneath Millicent, and he found that his lips had been nuzzling the soft skin of her upper arm. There were fingers cradling the back of his skull that didn’t belong to either of them, and he found it just as surprising this morning as last night that Snape had such a gentle touch.
The camera.
It sat where he’d left it, like an obedient familiar patiently biding its time until its master returned. Yet, perhaps not so patiently. The sound that had awakened him was the film rewinding.
Dennis carefully extricated himself from the tangle of limbs, paused to locate and pull on his robes, and tiptoed over to the fireplace. The film was, indeed, fully exposed and rewound.
The next step was obvious. His insatiable curiosity needed to know what was on that film, so he took the camera and silently slipped downstairs.
He had helped Colin in the darkroom often enough that he thought he remembered most of the steps. His brother had been pants at transfiguration, so he’d learned the spells to change utensils and dishes (always easily nicked from the Great Hall) into equipment and basins, and water into a passable developing potion.
Transfiguration had always come easy for him when he was working with Colin. He could sense an object’s yearning to be something else--to be useful--and his empathy enabled him to coax the transformation along with great ease. Class had been a different story entirely, surrounded by careless peers and intimidated by Professor McGonagall’s stern, looming presence. Besides, everything they transfigured in class was always returned to its original state in the end. It didn’t seem fair--like Cinderella’s pumpkin coach--to give things a taste of something better and then snatch it away. Once he transfigured an object, he hoarded it away for future use, building up quite an array of equipment during his stay at Hogwarts.
Dennis blacked out the first hints of dawn glowing at the window with his duvet and a carefully applied Sticking Charm, then transfigured the necessary paraphernalia.
It had been a while (and he’d never done it entirely on his own, either), so the first several prints were streaked and blotchy. Colin had tried to charm the camera to be used for surveillance purposes (everything from trying to catch a candid shot of Harry Potter to spying on Umbridge and the Inquisitorial Squad), but with little success. Somehow, its automatic release must have been jostled into functioning, perhaps when Millicent repaired it. Most of the photos were of ceilings and walls and close-ups of the inside of his pocket, but the last five recorded the events of the previous hours.
Dennis gawked at the shock of the juxtaposition of the three bodies. There was his own--despite the month of regular meals and a hint of softness now padding the concavity between his hipbones, his skin still angled sharply over the long ridges and knobbly bumps of most of his bones. He’d always been vaguely aware of (and reluctantly resigned to) his small stature, but never had he seen it in such stark contrast. Next to him, Millicent looked immense and wildly disheveled, her coarse features screwed up and steadily reddening, tangled hair flopping every which way, rivulets of sweat coursing down her face and between her breasts. Everywhere that he hollowed in, she curved out (and then some), and he could still feel the enveloping softness of her belly and thighs. Then there was Snape, gaunt and jaundiced and looking like death warmed over. His cock was flaccid, but he nimbly played their bodies like a virtuoso violinist commanding the stage of the Royal Albert Hall.
That shock was quickly preempted by another, bumping insistently against the table. Dennis gazed thoughtfully down at his tented robes and willed his erection to subside. Like the faux mice in Transfiguration and the pumpkin coach, it wouldn’t do to get his hopes up; it had probably been a one-off, just Snape trying to give Millicent a taste of something he never could. An ache plunged through his chest to his stomach.
Then he looked at the second-to-last picture in the series. He’d fallen asleep precariously close to the edge of the bed, anchored only by Millicent’s arm draped around his waist. As he watched the image, Snape kissed Millicent, reached across her to lay a hand on Dennis’ back, and whispered something as he rested his head on her shoulder.
Dennis had gotten quite good at lip-reading photographs, but even so, he had to rewatch the scene several times to decipher the simple three-word sentence. Bewildered, he turned to the final picture, taken only an hour before.
Their bodies--scrawny and fat and scarred and terribly imperfect by even the most generous allowance--fit together like the pieces of some bizarre jigsaw. Each one was distinct from the others, but they seemed to truly belong together. Perhaps . . . .
What had Snape said? You want to live badly enough, and sometimes you do. For the first time since Colin died and that enervating gloom had descended upon him, Dennis really felt like wanting to live.
And maybe, despite everything, he would do exactly that.
***
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