Your Own Protection for mamabasto
Title: Your Own Protection
Author/Artist: zerrah
Recipient mamabasto
Rating: NC-17
Pairings/Characters: Snape/Ginny
Warnings: character death, a bit of Stockholm syndrome, mindfuck, very dark
Notes: So I know this pairing is unusual but I hope you still enjoy it! Thank you so much literaryspell for the awesome beta work.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters, they just occasionally haunt my dreams.
Summary: Ginny is different and Professor Snape wants to know why. Then, he ‘helps’ her.
Ginny Weasley knows what it is like to have evil inside of her.
Not that she would ever tell Mum and Dad about that. They really have enough to worry about, what with the family trip to Egypt, Sirius Black on the loose, and Ron nearly getting himself killed with Harry and Hermione in the Shrieking Shack. Then it is Dementors and the return of You-Know-Who and they are trying to protect Harry and cushion him from the loss of innocence, which is ridiculous because innocent people can’t see Thestrals, Ginny would know. Finally it gets to the point where they can’t help or protect anyone anymore. They all just sort of brace themselves and try to breathe as the war closes in and the world around them shatters into pieces.
She can see the other half of everything now, the dark half, the part that people try to push down and ignore. It takes the form of shadows behind people’s eyes and she can see it struggling to break free from its cage. Some people have stronger locks than others. Professor Lupin scares her because his shadows are the most violent, at times swallowing his whole pupil, even though he suppresses it better than any other wizard Ginny has met. Sometimes, when their eyes lock and his head tilts to one side, she swears he can see right through her and he knows. She only makes eye contact with Professor Lupin if she is forced to and avoids him in the hallways during the one year he teaches at Hogwarts. Ginny is the only one to feel relieved when he does not return for her third year.
But these changes do not make her lonely; at least, no more than how she felt before Tom possessed her mind. Ginny doesn’t feel normal, either. It is like being asleep for a long time and finally waking up, everything warm and brimming with color, lucid in a way the world never was before. Like finally remembering your name after a period of amnesia and nobody but you realizing that you were answering to the wrong name all along.
It is a revelation to Ginny that no one notices that she is different. She is sure her voice has become stronger, steadier, and her gaze no longer wavers when her friends and family meet her eye. She’s smarter, too, because everything that seemed like a struggle before Tom is now so easy.
Her highest marks in second and third year were in Potions, much to Fred and George’s disappointment. Ron tries to pressure her into tutoring him but she insists his poor grades are because of laziness and his hatred for the class. Potions is the only real challenge left for her. All Ginny has to do is concentrate in Transfigurations and pay attention to the flick of her wrists and she is successful. Defense lessons should not be so easy, as she was unable to defend her mind and body from Tom’s invasion, but she takes to it like it was always a natural talent and has become the best student in her class. Potions, on the other hand, require concentration and patient manipulation of ingredients, even though her hands grate and cut and stir as if she has been doing it for years.
Snape isn’t happy about Ginny’s high marks, either. He watches her cauldron like a hawk for months, waiting for her to slip up or to catch her cheating, but she doesn’t and wouldn’t and it seems to make his mood even more acerbic than normal. He’s not nice to Ginny, and even though her brothers hate him and she knows that she should, too, she can’t help but notice that he lets the shadows run free inside him, moving across his eyes like shifting clouds bending the moonlight.
*****
“Professor, please,” Ginny says calmly, her voice echoing off the dungeon walls in Snape’s office. “I didn’t cheat. I just knew-“
“How could you know that unicorn horn,” he spits out, “is an alternative to the sole ingredient in the Mandrake Draught?” He slams his hands on the surface of his desk and Ginny starts. “Not even my seventh year students know this, let alone a fourth year Gryffindor. How would you have known unless you’ve been sneaking around in the Restricted Section?”
Ginny feels heat creep up her neck and digs her fingers into her palm. While she can’t say that she has never snuck into the Restricted Section, she wouldn’t need to because of the information that is stored in her mind. It is just one of those things she’s picked up from Tom, his brilliant mind having drained out of hers but leaving a residue behind that gives her adult abilities in a small body. She knows what he knew, and even if that part of his soul is dead, bits and pieces live on in Ginny.
One of those things is the ability to kill without saying a word or moving a muscle. Wandless magic, and she has never had the desire to use it more than she does standing before Snape, being accused of something she couldn’t help.
“Professor.” Ginny smirks and Snape’s eyes widen. “I think you’re implying that you asked a question on your test that would be impossible for a fourth year student to answer.” She tilts her head to the side. “Isn’t it strange for you to ask a question that should be impossible for me to know the answer to?”
Snape draws back and appraises her through hooded eyes. Ginny can’t make the smirk go away even though it is a death warrant. It is like Tom is back, dulling her senses and blurring the edge of her vision as he talks and acts through her, but now everything is vivid and bright even as she speaks and acts like not-Ginny.
“My reasoning for how I make any test is not your concern.” His voice is icy but he picks up a quill on his desk and twirls it between his fingers slowly as if thinking, or plotting, deeply. Ginny stares at it, transfixed but still enraged. She has to look away because she is certain her anger will cause her to set the quill on fire if she focuses too hard.
“You’ve certainly changed,” Snape says in a low, measured voice, “Ms. Weasley.”
Ginny’s attention snaps back to Snape, but his eyes are unreadable and the shadows continue to shift there as if he has said nothing out of the ordinary.
He gets out of the chair slowly and Ginny freezes. “In your first year, you were particularly awful at Potions.” He chuckles as if the memories warm him. “In fact, I seem to recall that your boil cure potion exploded quite spectacularly. I gave you detention to scrub it all up without a wand.”
Snape moves and then is standing in front of Ginny, and she meets his gaze with a stubborn set of her jaw.
“Do you remember,” he says, smiling widely, showing off his stained, crooked teeth, “Ms. Weasley?”
“Yes,” Ginny snaps. She hadn’t meant it to come out that harsh but she refuses to back down. It has always been in her nature to be stubborn like this, something that has gotten her into trouble with Mum countless times.
“Yes.” His eyes are swallowing her up, and her anger is fading quickly, but her throat is tight and she can’t identify the feeling that replaces it.
“And then you cried in front of the whole class. Do you remember that?” Memories surface, feelings of inadequacy and being overwhelmed in this new school, and maybe it would be easier if Professor Snape weren’t so dark and tall and yelling at her. She had cried quietly and no one would look at her, her lab partner the only one shooting sympathetic glances. Ginny’s breath catches. “Yes.”
“Yes,” he repeats. Ginny realizes too late that Snape’s hand is on the back of her neck and tilting her head up, but she is sinking in her memories and can’t seem to care. “And then you started acting so differently, like a precocious child rather than the clumsy, mediocre student you were the year before. What happened, Ms. Weasley?”
Her breath hitches again, and as Snape moves closer she remembers sitting on her bed and leaning over the diary with its seductive words of praise and reassurances, shooting longing glances at Harry in the Great Hall that never get returned, screaming when she finds her robe stuffed at the bottom of her chest stained in chicken blood, a tall, handsome young man dressed in Hogwarts robes smiling at her.
The only thing that pulls her out of this descent is Snape’s eyebrow shooting up in surprise, and she chokes as she realizes that she’s sobbing. Ginny pulls away but her mind is hazy and her limbs don’t seem to be working right, and Snape easily grabs her arm in one hand and her chin in the other.
“We’re. Not. Finished,” he hisses, and jerks her chin painfully when she tries to tug out of his grip. Ginny realizes with a sinking feeling that what is surfacing in her mind isn’t accidental, and that somehow Snape is drawing it out of her. Occlumency, a not-memory informs her.
“Why are you doing this?” she cries. It doesn’t occur to Ginny until this moment that even though no one has figured out why she has changed, that maybe she wants it to be that way, maybe she wants the stain Tom left behind to be a secret. Ginny has always been good at keeping secrets, and even though Snape seems to have a dark past that lends itself to a history of secret keeping as well, it doesn’t mean she wants to share.
Professor Snape sneers down at her but doesn’t answer. Soon memories are flooding her of Tom, Tom in her journal, Tom in her mind, Tom smiling at her in the Chamber of Secrets before she loses consciousness. Tom, Tom, Tom.
Ginny whimpers and feels warm tears slide down her cheeks. Her vision fades as the memories wrap around her head like lazy trails of smoke, filling her skull and making her dizzy. At some point she blacks out and forgets herself, the memories spinning around her head and blurring together until they don’t make any sense at all.
She comes back to her senses sitting on the grass right outside the Great Hall, her eyes trained on a group of Ravenclaws laughing and playing Quidditch, sprawled out as if she’d been like that for hours. The sun is low on the horizon, not at all where it was when Ginny first entered Snape’s office. There is a moment of panic, and Ginny rises to her knees, preparing to go straight to Dumbledore, until it sinks in that Snape knows everything and what is the point of going to the Headmaster, anyway? Ginny was the one hiding things, wrong things, using her secret in school like an enchanted broom in a Quidditch match, cheating and excelling beyond her peers.
Ginny pulls the robe closer to her, digging her fingers into the material until it nearly tears, and decides to tuck another secret away from the people who love her but would never be able to understand any of this.
*****
The next few months are awkward for Ginny in Potions and then in Defense Against the Dark Arts, but Snape acts like nothing has happened and practically ignores her. While she appreciates that he is no longer actively trying to catch her at deceit, it is still unnerving that he knows things about her and that he is keeping it to himself. She can hear Tom’s voice in her head telling her to undermine Snape and eliminate him before he uses this weakness against you, but she ignores it. She is curious as to why he would go through so much trouble to extract this information from her only to act indifferent about it now. Why was he so fixated on her memories of Tom?
When Ginny is watching Dumbledore’s casket getting lowered into the ground, she has a pretty good idea what the reason is: Snape is a Death Eater. However, it would have made more sense if Snape had extracted memories of Harry and Dad from her mind, as he could have used that information to undermine the Order of the Phoenix.
A year later, Snape is not a Death Eater but a hero that has given his life for the love of a woman. Harry refuses to elaborate, which irks Ginny to no end that he would hide anything from her, but apparently he loved a woman so deeply and with sincerity so profound that he had worked for years at a job that he hated with children he deplored under a Dark Lord that terrified him to redeem himself in her eyes. Pathetic weakling, Ginny hears in her mind, and she swears she can see Tom smirking, but she pushes that away like she always does on the days his voice is particularly loud. Ginny wonders who this woman is and briefly entertains the notion of it being McGonagall or Professor Sprout, but that just makes her giggle inappropriately during the funeral service. The glances people send her are mixed bag of reproachful and worried.
Time goes by and her power seems to grow. Ginny thinks she could probably best Harry in a duel now, but she doesn’t tell him that. Part of Harry’s problem is that he is too honest for his own good and isn’t willing to fight dirty when the situation calls for it. Who cares about integrity in a fight, Ginny reasons, if in the end the loser turns up dead? That’s what Tom tells her, at least, and after the war with her brother killed and her Dad nearly so, she is more inclined to believe him. Gryffindor ideology couldn’t and wouldn’t save either of them in the end.
Unfortunately, there is little to prepare her when the other side decides to fight dirty. Of course it would happen the one time she goes out with her friends to a pub in Diagon Alley and, after wobbling to the restrooms and falling to her knees, she has a brief moment to wonder why Tom had never warned her about that possibility before darkness swallows her up.
*****
Ginny comes to with a piercing headache that makes her whimper. A low chuckle makes her open her eyes, and her heart nearly stops from what she sees.
Severus Snape is sitting in a chair, watching her with hooded eyes and sneering at her in amusement.
“You’re…” She licks her lips and squeaks, “You’re dead.”
The corners of his lips sink lower, shifting from amusement to annoyance.
“Of course, Weasley. That’s why I’m sitting here speaking to you now. Which could only logically mean that you’re dead.”
Ginny gasps, and Snape, impressively, seems to glower even more darkly. Slowly, she manages to calm herself and take deep breaths. Unless this is a hallucination, Snape really is alive. If he were a ghost then he would be translucent. After the initial panic subsides, she realizes where she is.
“Am I in a cage?”
Another chuckle; the amusement is back. “It seems your powers of observation have not completely deserted you. For a moment, I was afraid some of your intelligence had been knocked out of you when you collapsed.”
“This is not funny, you condescending prick! Why am I in a cage? Where’s Harry?” Her panic is back. What if Snape had been a Death Eater all along and this was an elaborate way to get at Harry? She would never be able to forgive herself if Harry’s worst fear came true.
Snape’s eyes narrow but he does not respond to her insult. “This is not about Harry Potter. This is about you.”
“What about me?” She lifts her hand to pull her hair from her face and brushes metal. “Am I wearing a collar, too?” Ginny’s hands encircle it and tug, but the smooth material only chokes her.
“The collar is an amulet of protection … for me. As long as you wear it you won’t be able to kill me, although that is a near impossibility without your wand. The cage-“ He waves at the golden bars. “-Are to prevent any magic from coming in or out as I study you.”
“Study me for what?” she spits out. This is becoming more and more surreal for Ginny by the second.
“Believe it or not, Ms. Weasley, I’m trying to help you,” Snape says grimly. “The Dark Lord has left an imprint on your soul caused by the months his Horcrux influenced and possessed you. While it has increased certain abilities in regard to your magical potential, his presence left a taint that will most certainly grow and take hold with time.” He steeples his fingers, and the small fire in the nearby hearth cause the shadows to flicker and dance across his sharp features. Ginny shivers. “This is for your own protection.”
*****
Ginny likes to think she knows what is good for her, thankyouverymuch, but that isn’t enough to appease Snape and get him to release her from her bloody cage. It’s not very small as far as cages go, only a few meters across and about half as wide, but on the days she is restless it seems so much smaller. She paces it and shoots Snape furious glances as he bends over potions ingredients, preparing concoctions that are supposed to cleanse her from Tom’s darkness but don’t do a bloody thing.
They seem to be in a small cottage; there are no walls dividing the kitchen, living area, potions worktable, Snape’s bedroom, or Ginny’s cage. She can see him at all times and he can see her. The curtains are always drawn over the windows but Snape will occasionally leave on errands and she can see through the door as he enters and leaves that there is snow normally covering the ground outside. The fireplace is normally lit and the house would seem cozy if Ginny weren’t a captive here.
She soon realizes that he was honest when he told her no magic can come into or out of the cage. She attempts to use wandless magic, as her own wand was confiscated and has probably been hidden or discarded, but nothing happens. While being escorted to the loo on another occasion, she tries to stab Snape with the fork he had given her with one of her meals only to have her hand freeze in mid-air, harmless, and Snape pulls the weapon from her grip, a wry twist on his mouth.
Ginny soon extracts from the sarcastic remarks to her inquiries that Snape used a potion (of course) to make himself appear dead to Harry and other observers, then used a Portkey to escape his grave. He had also carried an anti-venom potion on him at all times in case Nagini attacked him with the main ingredient being, ironically, aconite. The poison must still be in his blood because she notices that he still prepares and ingests it every morning.
It drives her to gnawing her lower lip in frustration and clawing at her hair that she has to ask for potty breaks like she’s a little girl again, and after being treated by her family as the incompetent youngest child for years, she resents it. Snape ignores the colorful insults she flings at him, and she feels helpless, invisible.
She doesn’t know what to do with this Snape who will not rise to her bait and is never quick to temper. It’s almost like his ‘death’ changed him, and now he’s a slightly less bitter, angry man. Someone she can’t overpower or manipulate or deceive.
Finally, she begs to participate in her ‘recovery’ by offering to help him prepare potions. Snape hesitates for a moment, and she slyly suggests that maybe his amulet doesn’t work after all. After his explosion that surprises her after weeks of cold indifference, he shoves a mortar and pestle in her hands and tells her that if she disobeys any of his orders she will go straight back into her cage.
The distraction is good. Cutting and stirring, grinding ingredients and murmuring charms, makes her feel like herself again. Like she really is a witch and not some prisoner without any hope of escaping in the near future, forced on her because evil possessed her when she was eleven.
After a while, he begins to invite her to have tea with him by the fireplace. Ginny hates it a little because these are the moments that Snape opens up to her, when he seems to be the most human. She sips Chai and listens to him talk about the Dark Lord and his work for the Order, then after a while launches into accounts of his own childhood, unfulfilled and shattered dreams; apparently, Snape always wanted to be an Auror but didn’t have high enough marks in Transfigurations for his OWLs. Dumbledore is still a touchy subject. Ginny tells him about the freedom she feels when riding a broomstick and her growing love of Potions. Harry Potter is still a touchy subject for her.
Sometimes Ginny catches Snape staring at her. Not with the kind of affection Mum or Dad gives her or even Dumbledore when he was still alive, or the undisguised lust she sometimes gets from boys like Cedric Diggory or Seamus Finnegan. No, this look is dark and penetrating and intense, and she finds and answering shiver travel up her spine and through her fingertips, giving her goosebumps. He looks away when that happens, and Ginny pretends she doesn’t notice anything.
Ginny lays on the cold, hard cage floor with the pillow and blanket Snape has given her and thinks about her family and friends, her home. She knows that Mum is probably flustered with worry and Dad would be using his connections at the Ministry to push through a rescue effort. Considering that she’s been captive for weeks now tells her that they probably have no idea where she is. She also wonders about Harry and misses him with a dull ache that twists and forms knots in the pit of her stomach. How long would he long for her, too, before he gives up and moves on?
*****
“Keep your hand steady, Weasley,” Snape snaps at her. “Mandrake root needs to be slenderly sliced for this potion to be a success.”
“Fine.” Ginny knows enough by now not to argue that her hand is steady. She slows down, pretending like she’s taking Snape’s comment seriously by measuring out her movements.
“Excellent.” Ginny stills involuntarily before she continues cutting. She can never remember Snape giving her a compliment; in fact, this is the first compliment she’s ever remembered him giving any Gryffindor in the years he was her teacher.
“You may also do it this way.” His long, stained fingers grasp Ginny’s hand and gently guides it in short, precise motions. Electrical currents spark and travel up her arm from the surprisingly gentle touch. This is the first contact she’s had in nearly two months, and Ginny can’t help it when her breath catches. Ginny feels Snape behind her, the heat of him against her back, and she leans back involuntarily.
“Very good,” he says softly. Snape’s breath tickles her hair. “You would make an excellent Potions Mistress one day, Ms. Weasley.”
Before Ginny has time to process that he moves over to the other end of the worktable, gathering tools and acting like nothing unusual has taken place. Ginny draws in deep, steady breathes, her world momentarily unbalanced. Tom is whispering in her ear, telling her to hate Snape and to use this opening against him. Then there is the other part of her that has always secretly longed for his approval and is sated and warmed by his words. Ginny’s hand still burns from where he touched her, and she wants more.
She makes a decision.
“Professor Snape,” Ginny says, unable to call her former teacher anything else without feeling awkward. “I need some help with this.” Anxiety squeezes her stomach, and she bites her lip.
“What is it?” He raises an eyebrow. “Help with crushing elderberry root, Ms. Weasley? I believed we covered that in second year.” Amusement tinges his voice but he comes up behind her again, wrapping his hand around her wrist slowly and tilts it to the side just so. She has never been so aware of his presence as she does now, his chest pressed into her back. As he guides her movements again she can hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears, the scrape of metal against herbs, the heat of his touch on her skin. Everything else is fading away and every sensation is becoming more potent and filled with hidden meaning.
Ginny’s breathe hitches when he turns her hand over and trails his fingertips lightly up and down the inside of her wrists. She’s afraid to turn or say anything, as if he’ll stop or throw down her hand or apologize profusely and back away. But Snape never apologizes; every action is always planned and calculated, which means he knows exactly what he’s doing now and is probably waiting for her to accept or turn him away. She responds by bringing his wrist to her lips and kissing it. Snape freezes behind her and she hears his breath catch. Ginny takes his other hand and tugs his arms around her, encircling her shoulders, and he gives in easily, pulling her back into an embrace.
They stay like that for a moment, both their breathing ragged and coarse. Ginny realizes that he’s waiting for her to make the next move, and that he probably will expect her to make any other subsequent move after this. She turns in his arms and he allows it, loosening his hold. She tilts her head up, and he meets her lips with an open-mouthed kiss. Snape’s mouth tastes like mint tea and he smells like something earthy, dragon’s blood. The kiss is hot and wet and electric, shooting down to Ginny’s toes and making her wet. He’s quite a bit taller and surprisingly strong, wrapping his hands around the back of her head like the first time he entered her mind.
That thought causes her to pull back sharply, breaking the kiss. Snape looks down at her with concern, eyes hooded and lips parted. “Are you all right?” The honesty in his words cause her another start, but she smiles slowly and says, “Of course,” before placing a hand on his chest and pushing him toward his bed. He follows her direction and stares down at her with that same unnerving intensity, except now it’s causing something to unravel in the pit of her stomach.
There is a moment when Ginny mentally steps away from this intensity and tries to make sense of it, why she would ever desire her belligerent, ugly Potions Master. Snape’s nose is too big for his features, he’s as pale as a ghost, and his hair looks like it hasn’t been washed in weeks. He’s also much older than her and is keeping her in his home against her will, shutting her out from sunlight and all social contact. Trapping her in a cage and collaring her. Instead of anger Ginny now feels sympathy, remembering the stories he told her of being bullied for his looks and gawky demeanor. Also, Snape is keeping her confined to protect her, he said so himself. And there has always been a part of Ginny that has desperately wanted her Potions Professor to finally shift away from suspicion and indifference and false accusations against her to finally giving her a compliment and looking at her with genuine approval.
They fall to the bed with another kiss, teeth clashing and carelessly grazing her tongue and lips, swallowing up her whimpers. This time, Snape has no problem taking a bit of the lead, unbuttoning her top and pressing kisses to the top of her breasts, running his fingers through her hair. Ginny lays back and arches into his touch, all thoughts fleeing in the face of these intense sensations. Harry had never paid such close attention to her breasts, gently tracing them and then kneading, suckling on each nipple as hands explore lower.
Snape’s lips find her neck and suck again, gently nipping, as his hand goes lower and curls under her panties. She’s already soaking wet and can’t help a small moan as he traces the lips back and forth, slowly.
He lifts his head and asks, “Is that good?” and her answering keen and demand that he not stop makes him chuckle warmly. He pauses to remove his shirt before going back to making small circles around her clit. Ginny gyrates her hips involuntary and bites her lip as she feels something building. She moans and hears an answering gasp near her ear.
Suddenly, Snape quickens his movements and friction and that, combined with his answering groans to her pleasure, sends her over the edge and she comes.
By now, Snape’s breath is harsh, and she can feel a hardness pressed into her hip. His languid circles and strokes are almost too much now, but she can’t help but spread her thighs and welcome it.
Snape tugs off his pants and, surprisingly, he’s not wearing any underwear underneath. The erection is almost purple and stands out prominently against his pale skin. He holds his cock and looks down at her, his lank hair falling into his face.
Ginny tugs his hips forward and, taking his cock in her hand, she rubs the precome over the head and smiles when he groans. She pulls him closer and positions him at her entrance, draping her legs over his thighs. Snape pauses.
“Have you done this before?” He stares down at her, as if her answer would determine whether or not he penetrates her.
“Yes,” Ginny responds honestly. She had lost her virginity to Harry months ago, not that she wanted to be thinking about that at the moment. Something occurs to her. “Have you?”
Snape doesn’t answer but slowly sinks into her, filling her until he is sheathed to the hilt. It hurts a little even though Ginny isn’t a virgin, and Snape waits until wraps her legs around his calves before moving again. The movements are slow and measured, sliding over a spot that makes Ginny shiver and tilt her hips up to meet his thrusts. Snape’s hands are braced on either side of Ginny’s shoulders, and he’s staring down at her with an inexplicable somethingthere that is hypnotizing, making it impossible to look away.
“Wanted you…so beautiful.” He leans into her neck, and his thrusts become more violent. “Clever girl.” Ginny moans louder and digs her nails into his shoulders. She feels suspended, all memories of Tom and Harry and Good and Evil forgotten, nothing but the abandoned moans and slap of flesh filling her mind.
Snape shudders and pulls out, shifting to the side but still shooting cum over her right leg. She lets out a breath at the same time he does, and he shifts his weight to his heels and kisses her knee. Snape slowly rubs the length of the sides of her thighs, still looking down at her with that strange expression on his face. Then, he moves out of the bed and grabs a towel by his dresser.
“I’ll clean us up.”
*****
Visions of suffocating darkness wake her. After a disorienting moment, Ginny remembers that she is in Snape’s bed, then remembers the reason she is there. She can still feel the dull throb between her thighs of being stretches after weeks of abstinence. Ginny blinks as more scenes fill her mind: a redheaded girl that was not her (wasn’t that Harry’s mother?), Voldemort, Dumbledore laying on the ground and begging Snape to do something. She realizes that she’s picking up on Snape’s dreams; either she’s an unknown talent at Legilimency or Snape is leaking them while he sleeps.
Not wanting to receive any more disturbing images, she drapes one of Snape’s nearby robes around her shoulders and wanders away from the bed. The embers are dying low in the fire but there’s still enough light for her to be able to see where she’s going. She walks over to the worktable and, out of outright curiosity that has always gotten her into trouble in the past, looks through the potions books that Snape has never let her touch.
She’s not surprised to find material that would normally be found in the Restricted Section and flips through them with vague interest, noting the horrid illustrations of Inferi and animated bones. It would make sense that Snape would want to stock up on information about reviving the dead as it should be a miracle that he is still alive.
A plain journal catches her interest, and after reading a couple of spidery-scrawled handwritten pages, it becomes obvious that this is some sort of record of Snape’s experimental potions and spells. There are comments in the margins, usually snarky and sometimes even excited if the experiment was a success or showed potential. Flipping to the end, her eyebrows climb as she realizes several pages are dedicated to her. She recognizes some of the potions from the ingredients listed, and most of them are accompanied with a sarcastic but obviously frustrated comment of its failure.
She remembers Snape writing, but he never does it while preparing any potion. Usually it’s while he’s reclined in his cushy chair early in the morning, when Ginny would much rather be sleeping. She never noticed a connection until now.
Ginny frowns a little. The dates don’t match up. She woke up here several weeks ago and the last potion they performed yesterday is dated…
Her entire body goes cold. Yesterday was her birthday. That means she’s been here for five months, not two. It also means that Snape slept with her on her eighteenth birthday. He waited until she was eighteen before they had sex. Knowing Snape, that wasn’t a coincidence.
Hands shaking, she turns the pages until she finds the first page dedicated to her; she isn’t even referred to by name in this section, Snape just mentions attempting to rid a body of the ‘Dark Lord’s taint’ with a series of spells, both ones known and others probably fabricated. Likely, he used a charm to keep her unconscious all those months.
Ginny’s hands shake with fury. Why didn’t he tell her? Why did he lie to her all this time? As she reads on, the spells become more complex, but all fail. He entered her mind during this time, feeling out the ‘imprint’ that was supposedly left there. Ginny also gathers from the notes that he had revived her after the spells didn’t seem to be working and thought something might be successful if he switched over to potions.
There are comments of a more personal nature, noting the strength and ‘fire’ or her personality and spirit, and one in particular leapt off the page: In many ways, she bears marked similarities to Lily.
Ginny has to force herself to not grind her teeth. She isn’t stupid. Lily was Harry’s mother. Snape was in love with Lily. She was the one he nearly sacrificed his life for in the name of redemption. Ginny had red hair but that’s where the similarities ended, in her opinion. Still, it would explain why Snape wanted her and kept giving her weird looks.
How dare he keep this from her? How dare he remove her from her life when she was doing just fine without any of his supposed help? She was going to get back at him. She was going to take her life back by any means necessary and make him pay for everything he’d done to her in the process.
There are words whispering in her ear, it seems, and she knows she shouldn’t listen to Tom, but her rage is drowning out all other thought. Soon she has a plan, and she carefully places the journal exactly as she found it and slips back into bed, careful not to wake Snape. Her hand goes to her neck involuntarily and touches metal, reminding herself of who and what she is to him.
*****
Ginny starts to hate Snape. It begins with a flutter of disgust whenever she catches him staring at her or runs his fingers through her hair, no doubt seeing Lily in her place. She wants to stamp her feet, slap him, scream, ”I’m not fucking Lily!” But if she wants her plan to work, she has to acquiesce. So she gives him slow smiles through lowered lashes and hides her smirk when his breath hitches and he freezes, obviously coming undone from so little. Ginny has power over him, she soon realizes. Snape is unused to being desired or even liked, so all she needs to do is leave a trail of crumbs and he will follow like a person long starved, finally remembering his own hunger.
The burning mixture of anger and something darker begins to spread when she realizes that no matter how many times she gets on her knees for him and makes him come, he has no intention of removing the collar. So when she takes Snape in her mouth now she’ll scrape with her teeth, random enough that it seems like an accident, and savors the hiss and involuntary jerk of his hips joyfully. She cups his balls and digs in her nails right when he’s about to come, so his cry is a combination of ecstasy and pain. What strangely feeds her resentment is that Snape’s gone all gentle on her now, petting her hair like a bloody cat and lecturing her on how to give a proper blowjob as if she doesn’t already know.
Ginny doesn’t offer sex again and he doesn’t push the issue, although she can tell he wants to. Snape gropes her after she sucks him off, running his hands over her shoulders and down her back until she shivers uncontrollably, then sinks down and makes her come using his tongue and fingers. Ginny closes her eyes and imagines someone else is doing this for her as she squirms and rides waves of pleasure, her own orgasm a burst of sensations and colors that she experiences silently. Snape, Severus Snape of all people, casts her nervous glances in obvious insecurity, but she refuses to offer him any encouragement. The only evidence of her pleasure is her cum covering the bed sheets, and he remains quiet as well, as if afraid to acknowledge his perceived failure.
She shifts dialogue subtly, at first offering sweet smiles and fake submission, then giving him small commands. It starts in the bedroom, “Use your fingers more…yes, right there,” then in front of the fireplace, “I’d like more tea as long as you’re up,” then everywhere, “I’m not going back in the cage tonight. Yes, I want to stay with you.” Snape pauses now before giving her orders, obviously afraid of how it will affect what he believes to be their growing relationship. Probably doesn’t want to interrupt a steady flow of blowjobs, she thinks viciously.
She’s going to poison him slowly, and the thought shouldn’t make her smile and her throat close up with joy, but it does. The Ginny who loves flying and Potions and Quidditch seems to be dying, and this new girl, cold and indifferent to human suffering, is taking her place. She has dark thoughts, thoughts of Snape trembling and gasping for air as she stands over him laughing, and she doesn’t feel a bit of regret or guilt as she starts to tamper with his daily potion.
He still keeps an eye on her constantly and locks her up when he leaves, a true sign of ex-Death Eater paranoia, but she still finds ways to tamper with his anti-venom potion. While lying next to him in bed and after checking to make sure that he is indeed asleep, Ginny uses magic to float pure silver into the aconite, diluting it more and more each time. After a while, Snape begins to cough harshly, drawing out his lungs. Then he starts to wobble a little, catches himself, takes extra care while walking. It thrills Ginny because she knows her plan is working.
His dreams still seep into her thoughts, and it amuses her that in his nightmares, the source of his terror shifts between a face like a pale serpent and a woman with red hair.
*****
Ginny waits for Snape in the shadows like in his dreams. After a short while, he stumbles into the living room and clings to the doorknob, coughing in heaving fits, then takes a shaky breath.
Snape takes one look around, realizes the Ginny is not in her cage, and immediately draws out his wand. He looks around, pronounced nose the most noticeable feature whipping about to take in the surroundings. Ginny waits, savoring her edge in the situation, until Snape starts another coughing fit that nearly brings him to his knees. Finally, Ginny steps out.
“You should sit down, you know,” she says, noticing how flat and cold her voice sounds but not really caring. “It’s only going to get worse now.”
Snape looks at her and, as he takes several steps back, his legs give out and he collapses to the ground. He glares at her. Ginny has transfigured one of Snape’s ratty robes into a cloak and is dressed to go out. She can’t help but smile when he mutters a low curse and points his wand at her. When he says a spell under his breath and nothing happens, the way his eyebrows shoot up and his eyes widen is almost comical.
“That’s not your wand. This is.” Ginny opens her palm and allows the broken pieces to float forward and land at Snape’s feet. He stares at her with an unreadable expression. His limbs are shaking and his attempts to rise from his knees are pathetic to watch, it is so obviously difficult for him to control his motor functions.
“So.” Snape’s voice is tight, as if working past a lump in his throat. “You’ve learned wandless magic.”
“It’s never something I had to learn,” she says with amusement. “I can just do it.”
“This is very serious, Ginny.” As if saying her given name would talk reason into her. “This means the imprint set in far deeper than what I originally believed. It could be the reason all of our attempts have not worked so far.”
“You mean attempts like when you kept me unconscious for three months and tried to experiment on me?” Ginny watches with interest as Snape pales; his complexion is ordinarily very pallid already.
“I did not mean” I thought I could fix it and return you without anyone knowing.” Snape starts coughing again, and Ginny decides she is tired of their conversation.
“You told me that I couldn’t kill you.” Snape is drawing in deep, raspy breaths, as if forgetting how to breathe. “So I tampered with the aconite levels in your counter-venom potion.” Snape stops breathing altogether then, but whether it is because of what she has said or because the poison is shutting down his lungs, Ginny cannot say.
“Just enough to make you sick but not outright kill you. I removed more and more until your magic got weaker. Now look at you.” She is standing in front of him, looking down her nose and watching him clutch his chest in pain. “You can’t even stand, let alone do magic. You can’t control me anymore, can’t cage me like an animal.”
Snape draws in a deep breath as if it takes every amount of concentration and strength left in him to do so, and snakes out a hand to grab her cloak. Ginny doesn’t pull away or shove him off, just watches him.
“Didn’t want… cage you… so beautiful…” Raspy breath that is somehow louder than his voice. “Please... help you...”
“It’s too late, Severus.” She draws out his name like it’s something distasteful but necessary to say aloud. “The poison has already been damaging your organs for weeks now. Consider this a mercy.”
He shudders but keeps his grip on her robe, curling it between his fingers. Each breath Snape makes sounds like wind rushing through a tunnel, and his chest hitches as if the air is stuck in his lungs. Ginny sees a glimmer of something on his cheeks and realizes with surprise and disgust that Snape is crying.
His fingers that are curled around the hem of her robes tighten weakly, and he chokes out a sobbing, “Please… Lily…”
“I’m not your Lily,” Ginny sneers, staring down at him. “We’re nothing like each other. She actually liked you, for one thing.” The corner of her lips curls up again. “She didn’t want you, but she was friends with you for a while, I suppose.” Snape finally releases her cloak. “I want you, but I don’t really like you.” Then he pushed away, dragging his body away from her. And Ginny can’t help it, the laughter bubbles up and spills out of her mouth.
Ginny finally sits down in a cushioned chair, the same one Snape occupied when she awoke in her cage all those weeks ago. She’s prepared her favorite tea, Chai with a bit of cream, and sips it slowly as she watches Snape gasp and choke and try the lever himself upright only to stumble down again. Finally, he manages to lift his head, trembling, and meets her gaze.
She can feel the pressure in her temples of Legilimency but makes no effort to push him out of her mind; he’s too weak to do any real harm and besides, the man will be dead within a matter of minutes, anyway. Snape sends images to her of innumerable Order meetings, disturbing memories of Voldemort and the countless deaths and immeasurable suffering he’s caused, and Dumbledore falling from the Tower, his heart already stopped before his body hits the ground. The message is clear: end this now, so that Dumbledore did not die in vain.
“I know what I’m doing,” Ginny sniffs. “It isn’t my fault you didn’t see this coming. Tom always said you were too trusting of Gryffindors. Besides,” she says darkly, “Tom was a fool for getting himself killed. He was out in the open with his power because he always wanted more. He didn’t know how to keep things to himself, how to bend people instead of forcing them to his will until they broke. I would never do anything that stupid.” She laughs again.
Snape’s breathing is ragged and coming out in small short breaths interspersed with longer ones. It will be any minute now. Ginny indulges for a moment and thinks about what she’ll do once he’s finally dead and she can remove her collar. She’s certain her friends and family will be happy to see her. Ginny will have to come up with some story explaining her absence, maybe one about renegade Voldemort supporters that kept her prisoner to get at Harry. A frown creeps up on her face when she thinks of Harry and whether or not he’s moved on. Maybe she should prepare a love potion just in case.
The embers burn and crackle in the fireplace, the warmth they give off making her sleepy. Ginny sips her tea and, looking into Snape’s eyes, waits for the shadows behind them to go out with the light.
Author/Artist: zerrah
Recipient mamabasto
Rating: NC-17
Pairings/Characters: Snape/Ginny
Warnings: character death, a bit of Stockholm syndrome, mindfuck, very dark
Notes: So I know this pairing is unusual but I hope you still enjoy it! Thank you so much literaryspell for the awesome beta work.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters, they just occasionally haunt my dreams.
Summary: Ginny is different and Professor Snape wants to know why. Then, he ‘helps’ her.
Ginny Weasley knows what it is like to have evil inside of her.
Not that she would ever tell Mum and Dad about that. They really have enough to worry about, what with the family trip to Egypt, Sirius Black on the loose, and Ron nearly getting himself killed with Harry and Hermione in the Shrieking Shack. Then it is Dementors and the return of You-Know-Who and they are trying to protect Harry and cushion him from the loss of innocence, which is ridiculous because innocent people can’t see Thestrals, Ginny would know. Finally it gets to the point where they can’t help or protect anyone anymore. They all just sort of brace themselves and try to breathe as the war closes in and the world around them shatters into pieces.
She can see the other half of everything now, the dark half, the part that people try to push down and ignore. It takes the form of shadows behind people’s eyes and she can see it struggling to break free from its cage. Some people have stronger locks than others. Professor Lupin scares her because his shadows are the most violent, at times swallowing his whole pupil, even though he suppresses it better than any other wizard Ginny has met. Sometimes, when their eyes lock and his head tilts to one side, she swears he can see right through her and he knows. She only makes eye contact with Professor Lupin if she is forced to and avoids him in the hallways during the one year he teaches at Hogwarts. Ginny is the only one to feel relieved when he does not return for her third year.
But these changes do not make her lonely; at least, no more than how she felt before Tom possessed her mind. Ginny doesn’t feel normal, either. It is like being asleep for a long time and finally waking up, everything warm and brimming with color, lucid in a way the world never was before. Like finally remembering your name after a period of amnesia and nobody but you realizing that you were answering to the wrong name all along.
It is a revelation to Ginny that no one notices that she is different. She is sure her voice has become stronger, steadier, and her gaze no longer wavers when her friends and family meet her eye. She’s smarter, too, because everything that seemed like a struggle before Tom is now so easy.
Her highest marks in second and third year were in Potions, much to Fred and George’s disappointment. Ron tries to pressure her into tutoring him but she insists his poor grades are because of laziness and his hatred for the class. Potions is the only real challenge left for her. All Ginny has to do is concentrate in Transfigurations and pay attention to the flick of her wrists and she is successful. Defense lessons should not be so easy, as she was unable to defend her mind and body from Tom’s invasion, but she takes to it like it was always a natural talent and has become the best student in her class. Potions, on the other hand, require concentration and patient manipulation of ingredients, even though her hands grate and cut and stir as if she has been doing it for years.
Snape isn’t happy about Ginny’s high marks, either. He watches her cauldron like a hawk for months, waiting for her to slip up or to catch her cheating, but she doesn’t and wouldn’t and it seems to make his mood even more acerbic than normal. He’s not nice to Ginny, and even though her brothers hate him and she knows that she should, too, she can’t help but notice that he lets the shadows run free inside him, moving across his eyes like shifting clouds bending the moonlight.
*****
“Professor, please,” Ginny says calmly, her voice echoing off the dungeon walls in Snape’s office. “I didn’t cheat. I just knew-“
“How could you know that unicorn horn,” he spits out, “is an alternative to the sole ingredient in the Mandrake Draught?” He slams his hands on the surface of his desk and Ginny starts. “Not even my seventh year students know this, let alone a fourth year Gryffindor. How would you have known unless you’ve been sneaking around in the Restricted Section?”
Ginny feels heat creep up her neck and digs her fingers into her palm. While she can’t say that she has never snuck into the Restricted Section, she wouldn’t need to because of the information that is stored in her mind. It is just one of those things she’s picked up from Tom, his brilliant mind having drained out of hers but leaving a residue behind that gives her adult abilities in a small body. She knows what he knew, and even if that part of his soul is dead, bits and pieces live on in Ginny.
One of those things is the ability to kill without saying a word or moving a muscle. Wandless magic, and she has never had the desire to use it more than she does standing before Snape, being accused of something she couldn’t help.
“Professor.” Ginny smirks and Snape’s eyes widen. “I think you’re implying that you asked a question on your test that would be impossible for a fourth year student to answer.” She tilts her head to the side. “Isn’t it strange for you to ask a question that should be impossible for me to know the answer to?”
Snape draws back and appraises her through hooded eyes. Ginny can’t make the smirk go away even though it is a death warrant. It is like Tom is back, dulling her senses and blurring the edge of her vision as he talks and acts through her, but now everything is vivid and bright even as she speaks and acts like not-Ginny.
“My reasoning for how I make any test is not your concern.” His voice is icy but he picks up a quill on his desk and twirls it between his fingers slowly as if thinking, or plotting, deeply. Ginny stares at it, transfixed but still enraged. She has to look away because she is certain her anger will cause her to set the quill on fire if she focuses too hard.
“You’ve certainly changed,” Snape says in a low, measured voice, “Ms. Weasley.”
Ginny’s attention snaps back to Snape, but his eyes are unreadable and the shadows continue to shift there as if he has said nothing out of the ordinary.
He gets out of the chair slowly and Ginny freezes. “In your first year, you were particularly awful at Potions.” He chuckles as if the memories warm him. “In fact, I seem to recall that your boil cure potion exploded quite spectacularly. I gave you detention to scrub it all up without a wand.”
Snape moves and then is standing in front of Ginny, and she meets his gaze with a stubborn set of her jaw.
“Do you remember,” he says, smiling widely, showing off his stained, crooked teeth, “Ms. Weasley?”
“Yes,” Ginny snaps. She hadn’t meant it to come out that harsh but she refuses to back down. It has always been in her nature to be stubborn like this, something that has gotten her into trouble with Mum countless times.
“Yes.” His eyes are swallowing her up, and her anger is fading quickly, but her throat is tight and she can’t identify the feeling that replaces it.
“And then you cried in front of the whole class. Do you remember that?” Memories surface, feelings of inadequacy and being overwhelmed in this new school, and maybe it would be easier if Professor Snape weren’t so dark and tall and yelling at her. She had cried quietly and no one would look at her, her lab partner the only one shooting sympathetic glances. Ginny’s breath catches. “Yes.”
“Yes,” he repeats. Ginny realizes too late that Snape’s hand is on the back of her neck and tilting her head up, but she is sinking in her memories and can’t seem to care. “And then you started acting so differently, like a precocious child rather than the clumsy, mediocre student you were the year before. What happened, Ms. Weasley?”
Her breath hitches again, and as Snape moves closer she remembers sitting on her bed and leaning over the diary with its seductive words of praise and reassurances, shooting longing glances at Harry in the Great Hall that never get returned, screaming when she finds her robe stuffed at the bottom of her chest stained in chicken blood, a tall, handsome young man dressed in Hogwarts robes smiling at her.
The only thing that pulls her out of this descent is Snape’s eyebrow shooting up in surprise, and she chokes as she realizes that she’s sobbing. Ginny pulls away but her mind is hazy and her limbs don’t seem to be working right, and Snape easily grabs her arm in one hand and her chin in the other.
“We’re. Not. Finished,” he hisses, and jerks her chin painfully when she tries to tug out of his grip. Ginny realizes with a sinking feeling that what is surfacing in her mind isn’t accidental, and that somehow Snape is drawing it out of her. Occlumency, a not-memory informs her.
“Why are you doing this?” she cries. It doesn’t occur to Ginny until this moment that even though no one has figured out why she has changed, that maybe she wants it to be that way, maybe she wants the stain Tom left behind to be a secret. Ginny has always been good at keeping secrets, and even though Snape seems to have a dark past that lends itself to a history of secret keeping as well, it doesn’t mean she wants to share.
Professor Snape sneers down at her but doesn’t answer. Soon memories are flooding her of Tom, Tom in her journal, Tom in her mind, Tom smiling at her in the Chamber of Secrets before she loses consciousness. Tom, Tom, Tom.
Ginny whimpers and feels warm tears slide down her cheeks. Her vision fades as the memories wrap around her head like lazy trails of smoke, filling her skull and making her dizzy. At some point she blacks out and forgets herself, the memories spinning around her head and blurring together until they don’t make any sense at all.
She comes back to her senses sitting on the grass right outside the Great Hall, her eyes trained on a group of Ravenclaws laughing and playing Quidditch, sprawled out as if she’d been like that for hours. The sun is low on the horizon, not at all where it was when Ginny first entered Snape’s office. There is a moment of panic, and Ginny rises to her knees, preparing to go straight to Dumbledore, until it sinks in that Snape knows everything and what is the point of going to the Headmaster, anyway? Ginny was the one hiding things, wrong things, using her secret in school like an enchanted broom in a Quidditch match, cheating and excelling beyond her peers.
Ginny pulls the robe closer to her, digging her fingers into the material until it nearly tears, and decides to tuck another secret away from the people who love her but would never be able to understand any of this.
*****
The next few months are awkward for Ginny in Potions and then in Defense Against the Dark Arts, but Snape acts like nothing has happened and practically ignores her. While she appreciates that he is no longer actively trying to catch her at deceit, it is still unnerving that he knows things about her and that he is keeping it to himself. She can hear Tom’s voice in her head telling her to undermine Snape and eliminate him before he uses this weakness against you, but she ignores it. She is curious as to why he would go through so much trouble to extract this information from her only to act indifferent about it now. Why was he so fixated on her memories of Tom?
When Ginny is watching Dumbledore’s casket getting lowered into the ground, she has a pretty good idea what the reason is: Snape is a Death Eater. However, it would have made more sense if Snape had extracted memories of Harry and Dad from her mind, as he could have used that information to undermine the Order of the Phoenix.
A year later, Snape is not a Death Eater but a hero that has given his life for the love of a woman. Harry refuses to elaborate, which irks Ginny to no end that he would hide anything from her, but apparently he loved a woman so deeply and with sincerity so profound that he had worked for years at a job that he hated with children he deplored under a Dark Lord that terrified him to redeem himself in her eyes. Pathetic weakling, Ginny hears in her mind, and she swears she can see Tom smirking, but she pushes that away like she always does on the days his voice is particularly loud. Ginny wonders who this woman is and briefly entertains the notion of it being McGonagall or Professor Sprout, but that just makes her giggle inappropriately during the funeral service. The glances people send her are mixed bag of reproachful and worried.
Time goes by and her power seems to grow. Ginny thinks she could probably best Harry in a duel now, but she doesn’t tell him that. Part of Harry’s problem is that he is too honest for his own good and isn’t willing to fight dirty when the situation calls for it. Who cares about integrity in a fight, Ginny reasons, if in the end the loser turns up dead? That’s what Tom tells her, at least, and after the war with her brother killed and her Dad nearly so, she is more inclined to believe him. Gryffindor ideology couldn’t and wouldn’t save either of them in the end.
Unfortunately, there is little to prepare her when the other side decides to fight dirty. Of course it would happen the one time she goes out with her friends to a pub in Diagon Alley and, after wobbling to the restrooms and falling to her knees, she has a brief moment to wonder why Tom had never warned her about that possibility before darkness swallows her up.
*****
Ginny comes to with a piercing headache that makes her whimper. A low chuckle makes her open her eyes, and her heart nearly stops from what she sees.
Severus Snape is sitting in a chair, watching her with hooded eyes and sneering at her in amusement.
“You’re…” She licks her lips and squeaks, “You’re dead.”
The corners of his lips sink lower, shifting from amusement to annoyance.
“Of course, Weasley. That’s why I’m sitting here speaking to you now. Which could only logically mean that you’re dead.”
Ginny gasps, and Snape, impressively, seems to glower even more darkly. Slowly, she manages to calm herself and take deep breaths. Unless this is a hallucination, Snape really is alive. If he were a ghost then he would be translucent. After the initial panic subsides, she realizes where she is.
“Am I in a cage?”
Another chuckle; the amusement is back. “It seems your powers of observation have not completely deserted you. For a moment, I was afraid some of your intelligence had been knocked out of you when you collapsed.”
“This is not funny, you condescending prick! Why am I in a cage? Where’s Harry?” Her panic is back. What if Snape had been a Death Eater all along and this was an elaborate way to get at Harry? She would never be able to forgive herself if Harry’s worst fear came true.
Snape’s eyes narrow but he does not respond to her insult. “This is not about Harry Potter. This is about you.”
“What about me?” She lifts her hand to pull her hair from her face and brushes metal. “Am I wearing a collar, too?” Ginny’s hands encircle it and tug, but the smooth material only chokes her.
“The collar is an amulet of protection … for me. As long as you wear it you won’t be able to kill me, although that is a near impossibility without your wand. The cage-“ He waves at the golden bars. “-Are to prevent any magic from coming in or out as I study you.”
“Study me for what?” she spits out. This is becoming more and more surreal for Ginny by the second.
“Believe it or not, Ms. Weasley, I’m trying to help you,” Snape says grimly. “The Dark Lord has left an imprint on your soul caused by the months his Horcrux influenced and possessed you. While it has increased certain abilities in regard to your magical potential, his presence left a taint that will most certainly grow and take hold with time.” He steeples his fingers, and the small fire in the nearby hearth cause the shadows to flicker and dance across his sharp features. Ginny shivers. “This is for your own protection.”
*****
Ginny likes to think she knows what is good for her, thankyouverymuch, but that isn’t enough to appease Snape and get him to release her from her bloody cage. It’s not very small as far as cages go, only a few meters across and about half as wide, but on the days she is restless it seems so much smaller. She paces it and shoots Snape furious glances as he bends over potions ingredients, preparing concoctions that are supposed to cleanse her from Tom’s darkness but don’t do a bloody thing.
They seem to be in a small cottage; there are no walls dividing the kitchen, living area, potions worktable, Snape’s bedroom, or Ginny’s cage. She can see him at all times and he can see her. The curtains are always drawn over the windows but Snape will occasionally leave on errands and she can see through the door as he enters and leaves that there is snow normally covering the ground outside. The fireplace is normally lit and the house would seem cozy if Ginny weren’t a captive here.
She soon realizes that he was honest when he told her no magic can come into or out of the cage. She attempts to use wandless magic, as her own wand was confiscated and has probably been hidden or discarded, but nothing happens. While being escorted to the loo on another occasion, she tries to stab Snape with the fork he had given her with one of her meals only to have her hand freeze in mid-air, harmless, and Snape pulls the weapon from her grip, a wry twist on his mouth.
Ginny soon extracts from the sarcastic remarks to her inquiries that Snape used a potion (of course) to make himself appear dead to Harry and other observers, then used a Portkey to escape his grave. He had also carried an anti-venom potion on him at all times in case Nagini attacked him with the main ingredient being, ironically, aconite. The poison must still be in his blood because she notices that he still prepares and ingests it every morning.
It drives her to gnawing her lower lip in frustration and clawing at her hair that she has to ask for potty breaks like she’s a little girl again, and after being treated by her family as the incompetent youngest child for years, she resents it. Snape ignores the colorful insults she flings at him, and she feels helpless, invisible.
She doesn’t know what to do with this Snape who will not rise to her bait and is never quick to temper. It’s almost like his ‘death’ changed him, and now he’s a slightly less bitter, angry man. Someone she can’t overpower or manipulate or deceive.
Finally, she begs to participate in her ‘recovery’ by offering to help him prepare potions. Snape hesitates for a moment, and she slyly suggests that maybe his amulet doesn’t work after all. After his explosion that surprises her after weeks of cold indifference, he shoves a mortar and pestle in her hands and tells her that if she disobeys any of his orders she will go straight back into her cage.
The distraction is good. Cutting and stirring, grinding ingredients and murmuring charms, makes her feel like herself again. Like she really is a witch and not some prisoner without any hope of escaping in the near future, forced on her because evil possessed her when she was eleven.
After a while, he begins to invite her to have tea with him by the fireplace. Ginny hates it a little because these are the moments that Snape opens up to her, when he seems to be the most human. She sips Chai and listens to him talk about the Dark Lord and his work for the Order, then after a while launches into accounts of his own childhood, unfulfilled and shattered dreams; apparently, Snape always wanted to be an Auror but didn’t have high enough marks in Transfigurations for his OWLs. Dumbledore is still a touchy subject. Ginny tells him about the freedom she feels when riding a broomstick and her growing love of Potions. Harry Potter is still a touchy subject for her.
Sometimes Ginny catches Snape staring at her. Not with the kind of affection Mum or Dad gives her or even Dumbledore when he was still alive, or the undisguised lust she sometimes gets from boys like Cedric Diggory or Seamus Finnegan. No, this look is dark and penetrating and intense, and she finds and answering shiver travel up her spine and through her fingertips, giving her goosebumps. He looks away when that happens, and Ginny pretends she doesn’t notice anything.
Ginny lays on the cold, hard cage floor with the pillow and blanket Snape has given her and thinks about her family and friends, her home. She knows that Mum is probably flustered with worry and Dad would be using his connections at the Ministry to push through a rescue effort. Considering that she’s been captive for weeks now tells her that they probably have no idea where she is. She also wonders about Harry and misses him with a dull ache that twists and forms knots in the pit of her stomach. How long would he long for her, too, before he gives up and moves on?
*****
“Keep your hand steady, Weasley,” Snape snaps at her. “Mandrake root needs to be slenderly sliced for this potion to be a success.”
“Fine.” Ginny knows enough by now not to argue that her hand is steady. She slows down, pretending like she’s taking Snape’s comment seriously by measuring out her movements.
“Excellent.” Ginny stills involuntarily before she continues cutting. She can never remember Snape giving her a compliment; in fact, this is the first compliment she’s ever remembered him giving any Gryffindor in the years he was her teacher.
“You may also do it this way.” His long, stained fingers grasp Ginny’s hand and gently guides it in short, precise motions. Electrical currents spark and travel up her arm from the surprisingly gentle touch. This is the first contact she’s had in nearly two months, and Ginny can’t help it when her breath catches. Ginny feels Snape behind her, the heat of him against her back, and she leans back involuntarily.
“Very good,” he says softly. Snape’s breath tickles her hair. “You would make an excellent Potions Mistress one day, Ms. Weasley.”
Before Ginny has time to process that he moves over to the other end of the worktable, gathering tools and acting like nothing unusual has taken place. Ginny draws in deep, steady breathes, her world momentarily unbalanced. Tom is whispering in her ear, telling her to hate Snape and to use this opening against him. Then there is the other part of her that has always secretly longed for his approval and is sated and warmed by his words. Ginny’s hand still burns from where he touched her, and she wants more.
She makes a decision.
“Professor Snape,” Ginny says, unable to call her former teacher anything else without feeling awkward. “I need some help with this.” Anxiety squeezes her stomach, and she bites her lip.
“What is it?” He raises an eyebrow. “Help with crushing elderberry root, Ms. Weasley? I believed we covered that in second year.” Amusement tinges his voice but he comes up behind her again, wrapping his hand around her wrist slowly and tilts it to the side just so. She has never been so aware of his presence as she does now, his chest pressed into her back. As he guides her movements again she can hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears, the scrape of metal against herbs, the heat of his touch on her skin. Everything else is fading away and every sensation is becoming more potent and filled with hidden meaning.
Ginny’s breathe hitches when he turns her hand over and trails his fingertips lightly up and down the inside of her wrists. She’s afraid to turn or say anything, as if he’ll stop or throw down her hand or apologize profusely and back away. But Snape never apologizes; every action is always planned and calculated, which means he knows exactly what he’s doing now and is probably waiting for her to accept or turn him away. She responds by bringing his wrist to her lips and kissing it. Snape freezes behind her and she hears his breath catch. Ginny takes his other hand and tugs his arms around her, encircling her shoulders, and he gives in easily, pulling her back into an embrace.
They stay like that for a moment, both their breathing ragged and coarse. Ginny realizes that he’s waiting for her to make the next move, and that he probably will expect her to make any other subsequent move after this. She turns in his arms and he allows it, loosening his hold. She tilts her head up, and he meets her lips with an open-mouthed kiss. Snape’s mouth tastes like mint tea and he smells like something earthy, dragon’s blood. The kiss is hot and wet and electric, shooting down to Ginny’s toes and making her wet. He’s quite a bit taller and surprisingly strong, wrapping his hands around the back of her head like the first time he entered her mind.
That thought causes her to pull back sharply, breaking the kiss. Snape looks down at her with concern, eyes hooded and lips parted. “Are you all right?” The honesty in his words cause her another start, but she smiles slowly and says, “Of course,” before placing a hand on his chest and pushing him toward his bed. He follows her direction and stares down at her with that same unnerving intensity, except now it’s causing something to unravel in the pit of her stomach.
There is a moment when Ginny mentally steps away from this intensity and tries to make sense of it, why she would ever desire her belligerent, ugly Potions Master. Snape’s nose is too big for his features, he’s as pale as a ghost, and his hair looks like it hasn’t been washed in weeks. He’s also much older than her and is keeping her in his home against her will, shutting her out from sunlight and all social contact. Trapping her in a cage and collaring her. Instead of anger Ginny now feels sympathy, remembering the stories he told her of being bullied for his looks and gawky demeanor. Also, Snape is keeping her confined to protect her, he said so himself. And there has always been a part of Ginny that has desperately wanted her Potions Professor to finally shift away from suspicion and indifference and false accusations against her to finally giving her a compliment and looking at her with genuine approval.
They fall to the bed with another kiss, teeth clashing and carelessly grazing her tongue and lips, swallowing up her whimpers. This time, Snape has no problem taking a bit of the lead, unbuttoning her top and pressing kisses to the top of her breasts, running his fingers through her hair. Ginny lays back and arches into his touch, all thoughts fleeing in the face of these intense sensations. Harry had never paid such close attention to her breasts, gently tracing them and then kneading, suckling on each nipple as hands explore lower.
Snape’s lips find her neck and suck again, gently nipping, as his hand goes lower and curls under her panties. She’s already soaking wet and can’t help a small moan as he traces the lips back and forth, slowly.
He lifts his head and asks, “Is that good?” and her answering keen and demand that he not stop makes him chuckle warmly. He pauses to remove his shirt before going back to making small circles around her clit. Ginny gyrates her hips involuntary and bites her lip as she feels something building. She moans and hears an answering gasp near her ear.
Suddenly, Snape quickens his movements and friction and that, combined with his answering groans to her pleasure, sends her over the edge and she comes.
By now, Snape’s breath is harsh, and she can feel a hardness pressed into her hip. His languid circles and strokes are almost too much now, but she can’t help but spread her thighs and welcome it.
Snape tugs off his pants and, surprisingly, he’s not wearing any underwear underneath. The erection is almost purple and stands out prominently against his pale skin. He holds his cock and looks down at her, his lank hair falling into his face.
Ginny tugs his hips forward and, taking his cock in her hand, she rubs the precome over the head and smiles when he groans. She pulls him closer and positions him at her entrance, draping her legs over his thighs. Snape pauses.
“Have you done this before?” He stares down at her, as if her answer would determine whether or not he penetrates her.
“Yes,” Ginny responds honestly. She had lost her virginity to Harry months ago, not that she wanted to be thinking about that at the moment. Something occurs to her. “Have you?”
Snape doesn’t answer but slowly sinks into her, filling her until he is sheathed to the hilt. It hurts a little even though Ginny isn’t a virgin, and Snape waits until wraps her legs around his calves before moving again. The movements are slow and measured, sliding over a spot that makes Ginny shiver and tilt her hips up to meet his thrusts. Snape’s hands are braced on either side of Ginny’s shoulders, and he’s staring down at her with an inexplicable somethingthere that is hypnotizing, making it impossible to look away.
“Wanted you…so beautiful.” He leans into her neck, and his thrusts become more violent. “Clever girl.” Ginny moans louder and digs her nails into his shoulders. She feels suspended, all memories of Tom and Harry and Good and Evil forgotten, nothing but the abandoned moans and slap of flesh filling her mind.
Snape shudders and pulls out, shifting to the side but still shooting cum over her right leg. She lets out a breath at the same time he does, and he shifts his weight to his heels and kisses her knee. Snape slowly rubs the length of the sides of her thighs, still looking down at her with that strange expression on his face. Then, he moves out of the bed and grabs a towel by his dresser.
“I’ll clean us up.”
*****
Visions of suffocating darkness wake her. After a disorienting moment, Ginny remembers that she is in Snape’s bed, then remembers the reason she is there. She can still feel the dull throb between her thighs of being stretches after weeks of abstinence. Ginny blinks as more scenes fill her mind: a redheaded girl that was not her (wasn’t that Harry’s mother?), Voldemort, Dumbledore laying on the ground and begging Snape to do something. She realizes that she’s picking up on Snape’s dreams; either she’s an unknown talent at Legilimency or Snape is leaking them while he sleeps.
Not wanting to receive any more disturbing images, she drapes one of Snape’s nearby robes around her shoulders and wanders away from the bed. The embers are dying low in the fire but there’s still enough light for her to be able to see where she’s going. She walks over to the worktable and, out of outright curiosity that has always gotten her into trouble in the past, looks through the potions books that Snape has never let her touch.
She’s not surprised to find material that would normally be found in the Restricted Section and flips through them with vague interest, noting the horrid illustrations of Inferi and animated bones. It would make sense that Snape would want to stock up on information about reviving the dead as it should be a miracle that he is still alive.
A plain journal catches her interest, and after reading a couple of spidery-scrawled handwritten pages, it becomes obvious that this is some sort of record of Snape’s experimental potions and spells. There are comments in the margins, usually snarky and sometimes even excited if the experiment was a success or showed potential. Flipping to the end, her eyebrows climb as she realizes several pages are dedicated to her. She recognizes some of the potions from the ingredients listed, and most of them are accompanied with a sarcastic but obviously frustrated comment of its failure.
She remembers Snape writing, but he never does it while preparing any potion. Usually it’s while he’s reclined in his cushy chair early in the morning, when Ginny would much rather be sleeping. She never noticed a connection until now.
Ginny frowns a little. The dates don’t match up. She woke up here several weeks ago and the last potion they performed yesterday is dated…
Her entire body goes cold. Yesterday was her birthday. That means she’s been here for five months, not two. It also means that Snape slept with her on her eighteenth birthday. He waited until she was eighteen before they had sex. Knowing Snape, that wasn’t a coincidence.
Hands shaking, she turns the pages until she finds the first page dedicated to her; she isn’t even referred to by name in this section, Snape just mentions attempting to rid a body of the ‘Dark Lord’s taint’ with a series of spells, both ones known and others probably fabricated. Likely, he used a charm to keep her unconscious all those months.
Ginny’s hands shake with fury. Why didn’t he tell her? Why did he lie to her all this time? As she reads on, the spells become more complex, but all fail. He entered her mind during this time, feeling out the ‘imprint’ that was supposedly left there. Ginny also gathers from the notes that he had revived her after the spells didn’t seem to be working and thought something might be successful if he switched over to potions.
There are comments of a more personal nature, noting the strength and ‘fire’ or her personality and spirit, and one in particular leapt off the page: In many ways, she bears marked similarities to Lily.
Ginny has to force herself to not grind her teeth. She isn’t stupid. Lily was Harry’s mother. Snape was in love with Lily. She was the one he nearly sacrificed his life for in the name of redemption. Ginny had red hair but that’s where the similarities ended, in her opinion. Still, it would explain why Snape wanted her and kept giving her weird looks.
How dare he keep this from her? How dare he remove her from her life when she was doing just fine without any of his supposed help? She was going to get back at him. She was going to take her life back by any means necessary and make him pay for everything he’d done to her in the process.
There are words whispering in her ear, it seems, and she knows she shouldn’t listen to Tom, but her rage is drowning out all other thought. Soon she has a plan, and she carefully places the journal exactly as she found it and slips back into bed, careful not to wake Snape. Her hand goes to her neck involuntarily and touches metal, reminding herself of who and what she is to him.
*****
Ginny starts to hate Snape. It begins with a flutter of disgust whenever she catches him staring at her or runs his fingers through her hair, no doubt seeing Lily in her place. She wants to stamp her feet, slap him, scream, ”I’m not fucking Lily!” But if she wants her plan to work, she has to acquiesce. So she gives him slow smiles through lowered lashes and hides her smirk when his breath hitches and he freezes, obviously coming undone from so little. Ginny has power over him, she soon realizes. Snape is unused to being desired or even liked, so all she needs to do is leave a trail of crumbs and he will follow like a person long starved, finally remembering his own hunger.
The burning mixture of anger and something darker begins to spread when she realizes that no matter how many times she gets on her knees for him and makes him come, he has no intention of removing the collar. So when she takes Snape in her mouth now she’ll scrape with her teeth, random enough that it seems like an accident, and savors the hiss and involuntary jerk of his hips joyfully. She cups his balls and digs in her nails right when he’s about to come, so his cry is a combination of ecstasy and pain. What strangely feeds her resentment is that Snape’s gone all gentle on her now, petting her hair like a bloody cat and lecturing her on how to give a proper blowjob as if she doesn’t already know.
Ginny doesn’t offer sex again and he doesn’t push the issue, although she can tell he wants to. Snape gropes her after she sucks him off, running his hands over her shoulders and down her back until she shivers uncontrollably, then sinks down and makes her come using his tongue and fingers. Ginny closes her eyes and imagines someone else is doing this for her as she squirms and rides waves of pleasure, her own orgasm a burst of sensations and colors that she experiences silently. Snape, Severus Snape of all people, casts her nervous glances in obvious insecurity, but she refuses to offer him any encouragement. The only evidence of her pleasure is her cum covering the bed sheets, and he remains quiet as well, as if afraid to acknowledge his perceived failure.
She shifts dialogue subtly, at first offering sweet smiles and fake submission, then giving him small commands. It starts in the bedroom, “Use your fingers more…yes, right there,” then in front of the fireplace, “I’d like more tea as long as you’re up,” then everywhere, “I’m not going back in the cage tonight. Yes, I want to stay with you.” Snape pauses now before giving her orders, obviously afraid of how it will affect what he believes to be their growing relationship. Probably doesn’t want to interrupt a steady flow of blowjobs, she thinks viciously.
She’s going to poison him slowly, and the thought shouldn’t make her smile and her throat close up with joy, but it does. The Ginny who loves flying and Potions and Quidditch seems to be dying, and this new girl, cold and indifferent to human suffering, is taking her place. She has dark thoughts, thoughts of Snape trembling and gasping for air as she stands over him laughing, and she doesn’t feel a bit of regret or guilt as she starts to tamper with his daily potion.
He still keeps an eye on her constantly and locks her up when he leaves, a true sign of ex-Death Eater paranoia, but she still finds ways to tamper with his anti-venom potion. While lying next to him in bed and after checking to make sure that he is indeed asleep, Ginny uses magic to float pure silver into the aconite, diluting it more and more each time. After a while, Snape begins to cough harshly, drawing out his lungs. Then he starts to wobble a little, catches himself, takes extra care while walking. It thrills Ginny because she knows her plan is working.
His dreams still seep into her thoughts, and it amuses her that in his nightmares, the source of his terror shifts between a face like a pale serpent and a woman with red hair.
*****
Ginny waits for Snape in the shadows like in his dreams. After a short while, he stumbles into the living room and clings to the doorknob, coughing in heaving fits, then takes a shaky breath.
Snape takes one look around, realizes the Ginny is not in her cage, and immediately draws out his wand. He looks around, pronounced nose the most noticeable feature whipping about to take in the surroundings. Ginny waits, savoring her edge in the situation, until Snape starts another coughing fit that nearly brings him to his knees. Finally, Ginny steps out.
“You should sit down, you know,” she says, noticing how flat and cold her voice sounds but not really caring. “It’s only going to get worse now.”
Snape looks at her and, as he takes several steps back, his legs give out and he collapses to the ground. He glares at her. Ginny has transfigured one of Snape’s ratty robes into a cloak and is dressed to go out. She can’t help but smile when he mutters a low curse and points his wand at her. When he says a spell under his breath and nothing happens, the way his eyebrows shoot up and his eyes widen is almost comical.
“That’s not your wand. This is.” Ginny opens her palm and allows the broken pieces to float forward and land at Snape’s feet. He stares at her with an unreadable expression. His limbs are shaking and his attempts to rise from his knees are pathetic to watch, it is so obviously difficult for him to control his motor functions.
“So.” Snape’s voice is tight, as if working past a lump in his throat. “You’ve learned wandless magic.”
“It’s never something I had to learn,” she says with amusement. “I can just do it.”
“This is very serious, Ginny.” As if saying her given name would talk reason into her. “This means the imprint set in far deeper than what I originally believed. It could be the reason all of our attempts have not worked so far.”
“You mean attempts like when you kept me unconscious for three months and tried to experiment on me?” Ginny watches with interest as Snape pales; his complexion is ordinarily very pallid already.
“I did not mean” I thought I could fix it and return you without anyone knowing.” Snape starts coughing again, and Ginny decides she is tired of their conversation.
“You told me that I couldn’t kill you.” Snape is drawing in deep, raspy breaths, as if forgetting how to breathe. “So I tampered with the aconite levels in your counter-venom potion.” Snape stops breathing altogether then, but whether it is because of what she has said or because the poison is shutting down his lungs, Ginny cannot say.
“Just enough to make you sick but not outright kill you. I removed more and more until your magic got weaker. Now look at you.” She is standing in front of him, looking down her nose and watching him clutch his chest in pain. “You can’t even stand, let alone do magic. You can’t control me anymore, can’t cage me like an animal.”
Snape draws in a deep breath as if it takes every amount of concentration and strength left in him to do so, and snakes out a hand to grab her cloak. Ginny doesn’t pull away or shove him off, just watches him.
“Didn’t want… cage you… so beautiful…” Raspy breath that is somehow louder than his voice. “Please... help you...”
“It’s too late, Severus.” She draws out his name like it’s something distasteful but necessary to say aloud. “The poison has already been damaging your organs for weeks now. Consider this a mercy.”
He shudders but keeps his grip on her robe, curling it between his fingers. Each breath Snape makes sounds like wind rushing through a tunnel, and his chest hitches as if the air is stuck in his lungs. Ginny sees a glimmer of something on his cheeks and realizes with surprise and disgust that Snape is crying.
His fingers that are curled around the hem of her robes tighten weakly, and he chokes out a sobbing, “Please… Lily…”
“I’m not your Lily,” Ginny sneers, staring down at him. “We’re nothing like each other. She actually liked you, for one thing.” The corner of her lips curls up again. “She didn’t want you, but she was friends with you for a while, I suppose.” Snape finally releases her cloak. “I want you, but I don’t really like you.” Then he pushed away, dragging his body away from her. And Ginny can’t help it, the laughter bubbles up and spills out of her mouth.
Ginny finally sits down in a cushioned chair, the same one Snape occupied when she awoke in her cage all those weeks ago. She’s prepared her favorite tea, Chai with a bit of cream, and sips it slowly as she watches Snape gasp and choke and try the lever himself upright only to stumble down again. Finally, he manages to lift his head, trembling, and meets her gaze.
She can feel the pressure in her temples of Legilimency but makes no effort to push him out of her mind; he’s too weak to do any real harm and besides, the man will be dead within a matter of minutes, anyway. Snape sends images to her of innumerable Order meetings, disturbing memories of Voldemort and the countless deaths and immeasurable suffering he’s caused, and Dumbledore falling from the Tower, his heart already stopped before his body hits the ground. The message is clear: end this now, so that Dumbledore did not die in vain.
“I know what I’m doing,” Ginny sniffs. “It isn’t my fault you didn’t see this coming. Tom always said you were too trusting of Gryffindors. Besides,” she says darkly, “Tom was a fool for getting himself killed. He was out in the open with his power because he always wanted more. He didn’t know how to keep things to himself, how to bend people instead of forcing them to his will until they broke. I would never do anything that stupid.” She laughs again.
Snape’s breathing is ragged and coming out in small short breaths interspersed with longer ones. It will be any minute now. Ginny indulges for a moment and thinks about what she’ll do once he’s finally dead and she can remove her collar. She’s certain her friends and family will be happy to see her. Ginny will have to come up with some story explaining her absence, maybe one about renegade Voldemort supporters that kept her prisoner to get at Harry. A frown creeps up on her face when she thinks of Harry and whether or not he’s moved on. Maybe she should prepare a love potion just in case.
The embers burn and crackle in the fireplace, the warmth they give off making her sleepy. Ginny sips her tea and, looking into Snape’s eyes, waits for the shadows behind them to go out with the light.