Fic: "Whoever Keeps Me" (Snape/Draco/Harry, NC-17) 3/3
Title: Whoever Keeps Me (Part 3 of 3)
Author: Ravenna C. Tan
Type: Fiction
Length: 21,000 words total; This post: 8654
Main character or Pairing: Snape/Draco, Harry/Draco, Draco/Death Eaters
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Non-commercial fanfic, done for the love, not any money.
Warnings: Voldemort-won AU. Canon-compliant thru HBP. Heavy dub-con. Torture, gang-banging, sexual slavery, angst.
Summary: Voldemort gives a disgraced Draco Malfoy as a slave to Severus Snape. Draco is resigned to his fate, until Snape collars Harry Potter as well.
Cards Drawn: Death (reversed), Wheel of Fortune (reversed), Eight of Cups.
Card Interpretation: Death reversed is "holding onto something you know is over," such as a relationship you stayed in too long. The Wheel of Fortune reversed is taking control of your destiny. And the eight of cups is "Possibility of change in a stable situation. Flashes of excitement, movement." I also interpreted "death, reversed" as orgasm denial, the wheel of fortune as suspension bondage, and the eight of cups to be potions, so you will find all three of those elements in the story as well. Full notes and interpretations at the end.
Author Notes: clauclauclaudia was my wonderful beta. Any mistakes left are purely my own. Thanks to Gateway Girl for helping me wrestle a very recalcitrant Draco to the ground. Metaphorically speaking. Title comes from a Shakespeare sonnet. This story also matches up to my 7spells table for Snape/Draco/Harry.
Part One on LJ
Part Two on LJ
(with a slight reprise of part two as a reminder...)
I wake to voices. I am curled alone under a blanket but their voices are close by. I am groggy, unable to wake completely, and I wonder if I have been given a sleeping draught.
"Won't you at least tell me what to expect?"
"It is of no consequence. I would prefer you kept your mind on our mission."
"No consequence? You do realise he's desperately in love with you, don't you?"
"Desperate may be accurate."
Are we moving? I have a vague sense of rhythmic jostling. A carriage?
"Don't you even care how he feels? He thinks you hate him."
"How I feel, and how he feels, are of no consequence when compared with what we need to accomplish. Wouldn't you agree?"
"No, no I don't."
"You always were a stubborn, argumentative..."
"And we don't have time for this. We're nearly there."
"So we are."
And then a sharp tingle as a spell shocks me awake. Snape's eyes, dark and intense, are the only thing I see. "We have been summoned, Draco."
I nod. "I understand."
"Good boy," he says, and I think I hear a warmth in his voice. Perhaps I imagine it.
* * *
Imagined or no, that is all I think of as we exit the carriage. I cling to the illusion that there was something there in his voice because I need to. I look up-it is a castle but it is not Hogwarts. I do not recognise the place. We are led into a banquet hall, crawling on all fours as Snape leads us both from incongruously delicate chains attached to our collars. I am absorbing the details of the room without them quite sinking in. The banquet table is far larger than it should be for the inner circle alone, in a three-sided rectangle, meaning that all eyes will be on the spectacle in the centre.
Us.
Don't look up. Can you hear me, Draco?
The voice inside my head does not "sound" like his, because it does not sound like anything. And yet the words are there.
Yes, yes I hear you.
Good. You won't once I let go the chains.
The stone floor scrapes against my knees as he leads us to the centre. The others are hurrying to their seats, not wanting to miss a moment of the action. The Dark Lord, of course, is already sitting, implacable, stroking his own chin contemplatively, his eyes unwavering from Snape's face.
I don't like this, I think. There are too many of them. And there are members of the Red Hand here.
I feel his acknowledgement. Then: Are you loyal to me?
Yes! There is no question of my answer, as if all this time I were only waiting to be asked. Yes!
That loyalty may be sorely tested. You can only do your best.
I will. I will. Whatever you ask of me...
But he draws in the chains then, and each of us settles back onto our heels. Potter does not look up-his eyes may even be closed under the curtain of his overlong hair. No wonder he gained a reputation for being broken. I could never feign such implacability. Such lack of fear.
Snape is speaking but I am trying to imitate Harry. To sink into my own world. I hear bits and pieces of the patter. Schoolboy rivals. A bitter grudge.
A contest. A winner and a loser.
And then he is tipping my chin back and pouring a sharp, bitter potion down my throat. I fall forward onto all fours, gagging a bit as it takes hold and he administers it to Harry the same way.
I feel my cock rise as if of its own accord and I begin to comprehend what the contest is. A flick of his wand and each of us is bound in place, hands tethered behind us. Harry's implacability shatters and he looks up at me like a predator, every bit as transformed as a werewolf undergoing his change.
Snape asks for two volunteers, holding out two more bottles.
MacInnis is there in a heartbeat, taking the bottle, upending it into his palms. And then he is rubbing me all over, greasing my skin. I barely register the words-my money's on you, and other more lascivious things-even as he pushes his fingers into my hole, greasing me there as well.
Bellatrix is the one greasing Harry, but he seems unaware of her, straining toward me as if he cannot wait to tear my throat out. He jerks once as she forces her fingers inside of him, then she withdraws far too quickly.
Snape, too, withdraws, his wand raised, awaiting our lord's signal to begin. The rabble are shouting and laughing-can I actually smell the sourness of the liquor on their breaths in my potioned state, or is that my imagination?
Yaxley's voice cuts through my haze as he speaks one more spell, aimed at Harry. Harry hisses, sucking in a breath as if the barbs that extend all around his penis hurt him, though I know they don't. If the potion itself hadn't filled me with a drive to be the winner, that sight surely did. No one bespells me in any way, which makes me think that the majority of them believe Harry will prevail.
And then the bonds dissolve and we are on each other like two dogs in a pit. It takes me a while to realize that the surface under us is no longer stone, which is good as far as bruises and scrapes are concerned, bad because the cushioning replacement is as slippery as our skin.
I have one advantage, I discover, as we wrestle and slip out of each other's grasps again and again, neither of us able to hold the upper position for very long. I am taller, but more importantly, Harry's hair is longer. It gives me much more to grip, and more than once I am able to get him trapped on the ground with it, but never able to do more than slide my oiled cock between the hills of his arsecheeks. The angle is wrong to penetrate him, yet I am desperate to do so.
He upends me suddenly and the lack of purchase I have on the floor prevents me from scrabbling away. He is on me then, his cock slipping between my thighs. The barbs catch my skin and I cry out, which raises a great cheer from the audience, then a groan of disappointment as I slip away and it becomes clear that he did not truly have me. I feel the blood between my legs, dripping from the scratches on my thighs, just enough to add another layer of slip to things.
Fatigue begins to set in, as Harry at least begins to look a bit more sluggish to me. We continue to wrestle, and almost by accident I find myself in the correct position. I push anxiously, almost overbalancing, and then-God--I push into him. He makes a sound I have never heard; there is a cheer and I hear MacInnis leading them. I push and push, the potion making me desperate to finish.
But I can't. Can I? Does Snape have to be touching me, or is his presence enough? I don't know and I cannot think and my hesitation is all Harry needs to manage an escape from me. I cry out at the loss, the air on my cock making it ache as if it were cold as winter, and then he is on me. I am defeated and I go limp for a moment, then rigid again as I remember the barbs. He frots against me, growling like an animal and drawing blood, but not tearing me the way he is about to...
And then he pushes in, and holds me, still growling, but I know this moment of stillness is my last respite. I think I hear his voice in my head. I'm sorry.
And then he tears me. The pain in my throat as I scream is excruciating, and yet it does not compare. I pray that this will be the time when pain will be too much and I shall pass out from it, but I am never so lucky.
The one saving grace is that unlike Yaxley, Harry comes quickly. The moment he pulls out, triumphantly flaccid, there are hands there restraining me. The potion in my system still makes me set on fucking whatever orifice I can, on whomever I can.
Naturally, that is why as the loser, I am strung up for all to see, rampant still as the moment the potion was administered. I am suspended as if from a spider's web, on a great wheel, arms and legs outstretched and hanging at an angle with my face toward the floor. Thankfully, I am too high up for anyone to take me from behind. No, they must reach up to stroke my long-suffering cock. And they do, between courses of the meal. One by one, each feels he or she must prove their place among them by coming to touch me, to worsen my situation. I can see two spatters of red on the stone below me-my torn hole oozes blood down my legs and it drips steadily. Some of them push their fingers inside, then paint my skin with the mixture of blood and come they find.
MacInnis strokes my cock for a long time. "Yaxley, yeh bastard, ye've ruint'm fer fucking. 'f I want'd to fuck such a bloody mess I'da cut a new hole m'self."
You wouldn't dare, I think, trying to gather enough spittle in my dry throat to spit at him. But I am dry, utterly dry. I look up and see Harry, the victor, sitting at Snape's feet, next to the Dark Lord, being fed by his hand. Snape gives him a morsel and then pets his hair.
I see red. I make a pained sound and rattle the chains. This only precipitates more laughter. MacInnis strokes me faster, as if trying to make me come. He opens his mouth, as if he wants to catch sweet milk from the teat, but I cannot come. I cannot. He pulls at me until I am sore and abraded, and making pitiful sounds, and yet I cannot bring myself to beg him to stop.
He does only because the Dark Lord calls for his attention. I lapse into my own cocoon of pain for a while, then, but a few minutes later it becomes clear to me that something more than the usual banquet conversation is going on.
MacInnis is being made a Death Eater. I admit to a certain amount of glee when he screams as the Dark Lord magically brands him. He curls in a ball on the stone floor, thrashing as if undergoing Cruciatus. Receiving the Mark has made stronger men than he piss themselves. He manages not to.
Then it is done, and the Dark Lord's voice slips through the remaining silence. "Rise, my minion, and join our inner circle. As a reward for all you have done, you may ask a boon of me."
Oh no.
He gets to his feet, and his voice, though shaky, is clear enough. "Gi' me the Malfoy boy, then, m'lord."
Snape's face does not even twitch. The Dark Lord strokes his chin. "A wise choice. Severus, my brother, you would not begrudge your fellow member of the fraternity this, would you? After all, it seems you have taken Potter in hand so nicely."
Snape speaks, his voice low with menace. "I live to serve your will, my lord," he says. "But you will forgive me if my own estimation of the upstart does not yet match your own?" He receives some silent signal to continue. "I would pit Potter against Malfoy again. If MacInnis cannot train him to win the match, I would like the chance to win him back."
The Dark Lord chuckles. "Ah, Severus, you surprise me not at all. You never did take any form of loss well. Very well. But I propose a best of three. Let us gather here each week on this night, and we shall see the outcome of it. And of course there must be jeopardy. If Malfoy does best Potter two of the three nights, you must lose him, too. Perhaps it is time he returned to my own side..."
Severus inclines his head, a cruel smile playing upon his lips as if he loves nothing better than gambling with our bodies as the coin. "Entirely fair. In fact," he stands and tosses a vial to MacInnis, who catches it deftly. "That is a restorative that will ensure you are not beginning your tenure as an owner with damaged goods."
MacInnis's eyes are greedy, and he seems to realise that his best option now is to leave before any other twists of fate can occur. "By yer leave, m'lord, I'd best be away. I've got much fooking to do."
My heart doesn't start to break until he actually pulls me down from the suspension. I keep my expression glassy, as if I am only half aware of what is going on. The bloody animal waits only until we are in his carriage, and then he shoves his cock in me, holding me pinned in his lap, crooning as he strokes my skin. He forces the restorative down my throat, then sighs as my innards repair themselves, stroking him obscenely inside my body. "Yeh're m'perfect fit, now, boy," he says, as he lifts me and slams himself upward into me.
I do not cry, though, until I am alone.
* * *
In the morning he wakes me by "fooking" me. He is already inside me by the time I claw my way awake, but I cannot say that I feel any surprise about this. He spends himself quickly, then "washes" his cock by forcing it into my mouth, then leaves me alone for a few hours.
I lie there not moving for the longest time, but awake now, completely awake, at first utterly numb. The worst has come to pass. How long before this bastard breaks me? I no longer have even the pretence of being with Snape. I have lost the tender connection I forged with Harry. I have been supplanted by him, in fact.
I should feel grief, outrage, loss, despair. Instead I feel... nothing. Perhaps, I think, I have felt so much pain that I have used up my capacity for it. At any rate, I am calm.
Perhaps this is where Harry's implacability came from, I think. They thought him broken, but in truth it was that he had already suffered the worst they could dish out.
My neck itches and I reach up to scratch it... and my fingers meet the gold band of the collar, still there. Surprise runs through me. I comb through the memory of the night before. Did Snape toss him the key to it also? No, I'm sure he did not.
Your loyalty may be sorely tested. That was what he had told me.
At that moment I begin to hope. The whole plan to have me fight Harry again-it could be a plan to get me back. He might want me back...
My heart thuds in my chest and I begin to feel again. Hope and fear in equal measure. If I win, he will lose Harry and me both. And yet if it looks in any way like I am trying to lose... I am sure I would forfeit all chance. If they use the potion as they did last time, though, I will not have any choice...
Hope and fear in equal measure.
* * *
The week passes in what quickly becomes a kind of monotony. MacInnis is not imaginative. He fucks me every morning when he wakes, his morning erection mine to deal with. He uses lube and he does not torture me overmuch. Then I am fed, food and potions, to make me both strong and aggressive. After dinner he and two of the Red Hand go out and kidnap a Muggle, then give him the same potion that Harry and I took. They do not give the potion to me, just grease me up and goad me on with words. It means that every night I rape some poor sod with my own mind completely and utterly clear. Yes, I win every time. They do not seem to particularly care that I do not come. I have no idea if they kill the Muggle later, Obliviate him, or just return him to his normal life with a shameful memory that he will never, ever be able to tell another living soul about.
* * *
The designated day dawns. MacInnis and his right hand man, a dolt named Bard, consider me and my chances, speaking as if I am not there in front of them.
"Which'd be better," MacInnis asks, "Leave'm tight, or grease'm up?"
Bard looks me over. "If his arse is tight enough, it might be tougher for Potter to get it in him. I'd say take any advantage we can get."
MacInnis pulls my cheeks apart and stares at my arsehole. "Been usin'm pretty rough."
"There's a potion, you know, witches use it all the time. Restores virginity, they say."
"Eh?"
"Doesn't really, but it does make 'em tighter than the drawstrings on a goblin's purse."
"Get some."
After lunch MacInnis applies the potion to me himself. It is in the form of a salve, and he slathers it into me like lube, fucking me with two fingers as if he's forgotten what he's supposed to be doing.
Then I gasp as my flesh closes down around him. He applies more of the potion; this time only a single finger presses into me, and it barely fits. "Bard, yeh genius," he says. Soon I am so tight that pressing even a single finger into me is excruciating. I note with some trepidation that MacInnis has used only a small portion of what was in the jar and that he carefully caps it and places it next to his usual jar of lubricant by the bed, as if he will want to use it again.
We are as ready as we can be and I pass the rest of the afternoon in nervous contemplation. He puts a cloak on me before we leave, but leaves me naked and barefoot underneath. In the carriage, he paws my cock, ensuring I am rampant, my erection a deep red, when we emerge. My cock juts from the split in the cloak. MacInnis makes me precede him into the banquet hall, my cock leading us both.
As we enter the space defined by the tables, though, I can see there is something there we do not expect. A sort of wooden frame is standing there, looking like a gate to nowhere. Something for the loser to be suspended from? But it is right in the centre, where it would be in the way of the wrestling.
The tables are already full; it would appear there are even more in attendance tonight. I see the Lestrange brothers have even returned for this. And at the head of the table, I see Snape conferring with the Dark Lord, both of them with malice on their faces. The Dark Lord breaks into a wide grin as he sees us; that can never be a good sign.
"Brother," he says to MacInnis. "So glad you and yours could join us." Snape is rising and coming around to this side of the table, leading Harry by one of those fine chains. I wonder if they are speaking through the spell in the collar, or was that only my collar that worked that way?
I do not dare meet either of their eyes. I want so much to search for some sign, but I must not. Not if I hold out any hope...
"As you can see," the Dark Lord goes on in his unnatural voice, "we have prepared another challenge for these two fine prizes." He snaps his fingers and mad aunt Bellatrix steps forward. Ropes fly from her wand, seizing me by the wrists. The cloak falls away as I am jerked into place, onto my tiptoes, hanging from my arms which are secured to the frame above me.
And Harry is bound the same way. We are chest to chest, placed just inches to the side of each other so that we are also temple to temple. I feel his cock against my hip and know he feels the same.
Snape walks in a circle, behind me, then behind Harry, and I see him swinging a leather flail idly as he goes.
"The first one to cry out is the loser," the Dark Lord explains. "You will each try to wring a scream from the other's property, of course, else you would go too easy on your own. You will begin with flails. If there is no winner after a hundred strokes, then we will move on to whips."
Snape's eyes are black and steely, and he moves out of my sight again, taking up his position behind me, while MacInnis comes to stand behind Harry.
Snape speaks to Harry, but I find myself complying with his words as well. "Keep your eyes closed. Stray tails can sometimes fly."
With my eyes closed, I do not know how they decide when to start, how they know to both strike at the same time, but they do. The first blow makes me gasp, Harry and I pushing against each other. It stings and burns on the surface of my skin but not unbearably. The second blow follows the first in the same path diagonally down my back, though, and the sensation intensifies. On the third blow, a light sweat prickles across my skin and I clench my jaw.
A voice is in my head. Try to relax. Breathe.
Harry?
Yes. Our collars are touching. Breathe, Draco.
The next series of three seems to double the pain, and I clench harder.
Breathe, Harry says again. Try to sink into it. Float away from it.
Is that how you survived the tortures they've put you through?
Sometimes. He hisses and sucks in a breath on the next blow, though, and I know it's not as easy as he claims.
"The loser, of course, will be punished by his master in front of all of us," the Dark Lord says, giving us a brief respite around 25 blows. "I am greatly looking forward to that, whoever should win."
This comment seems to spur our masters on to greater efforts. Each blow is searing now, yet still bearable somehow. After each one, I tell myself I can take another. And then another. And then another.
Severus and I miss you, Harry thinks when the next pause comes. We are both panting hard now, both slick with sweat and trembling from the arduous position and the beating.
Then all thought is impossible as just surviving from one blow to the next absorbs my entire attention. The thought that it is Snape-Severus--who is delivering the lashes makes me all the more determined to accept as many as I can.
And then there is a respite, and I feel, very gently, Harry suckling my neck. He makes no motion as he does it, so as not to draw attention. It is a secret touch, just for us. We have made it to one hundred lashes with the flail.
I jump as I hear the whip behind me being cracked experimentally.
The first lash of the whip is a hundred-fold worse than the flail. I find if I wanted to cry out I cannot, every muscle in my body locked rigid against the agony. Even pressing against Harry can do nothing to assuage it.
They wait before the next lash, giving us time to recover... or perhaps to dread. I am shaking all over. No limit was put on how long the whipping will go on. Until there is a victor, it would seem.
The second blow crosses the first and it feels to me like a hot knife slashing me open. The scream is trapped behind my teeth again, though as my head arches back. Our collars are no longer touching and I wonder how Harry is faring. Has he floated off into that place where what happens to his body barely registers in his consciousness?
A third blow burns across my shoulders, and I am shaking worse than before, my shoulders aching as I pull against the bonds, as panic begins to set in, as my mind no longer wonders whether it can withstand more of this as it is slipping into animal reflex... no thought of anything but escape, even if I have to pull my arms from their sockets to do it...
A soft warm touch comes then on my shoulder, Severus' hand, and I cry out then as the gentle fingertip traces the welt. I cannot explain it, but that tenderness undoes me completely, tears bursting forth and the wail, unbidden, rises from my throat, releasing every ounce of misery I have hoarded in this past week.
I have lost. They tear Harry from me with rough hands and the next thing I know I am strapped down over a barrel, my arse in the air.
Oh God, and I am tighter than any virgin ever was. MacInnis pries my arsecheeks apart and chuckles with satisfaction, telling me it's no worse than I deserve for having lost the contest. He explains to all assembled what he has done to me, making it out as if I incurred the treatment because of my former whorish ways.
Just get it over with, I am thinking, but then I hear what he is saying.
He is offering my newly virginal arse to the Dark Lord for the taking. And I begin shaking again, this time with fear.
Our Lord has never taken me. I am seized by the fear that his seed will somehow infect me, will make me sicken with despair until I die from withering away. That his cock inside me will lay bare my secrets, that he will know how much I want to belong to Severus, that he will see the fragile gift of gentleness that Harry gave to me...
His laughter chills me to the bone. But he declines the invitation, saying he would rather watch MacInnis teach me a lesson.
MacInnis does not need to be told twice. I hear the distinct sound of him greasing up his shaft, and then the head is nosing between my arse cheeks. His hands clamp hard upon my hips-he knows it will take some force to overcome how unwilling my flesh is to yield, thanks to the potion.
"Don't lose next time, lad," he growls, and then splits me asunder.
* * *
When he was done fucking me, after he came, MacInnis decided he would want seconds after the meal. Since the potion was still at work and after he withdrew, my pucker would shrink back down to pinhole size, he thought it would be best not to let it tighten back all the way up. He took the bone from the leg of lamb that had been carved and shoved it into place. It did not hurt very much at all, not when compared to what I had already been through.
The other Death Eaters, though, took it on themselves to make sport out of it, of course. While MacInnis ate his fill, someone I could not see pulled the bone free, and replaced it with something heavy and metal and irregular. A candlestick, I guessed. Someone else yanked that free, and replaced it with something large and unyielding... perhaps a broomstick.
And on and on, until at last MacInnis throws down his napkin, shoots a last glare at Snape, and positions himself behind me again.
All the objects have actually stretched me quite a bit or the potion is beginning to wear off, but either way, as he pushes greased fingers into me this time, they fit better. If I had not been so bruised and torn there, his cock would feel almost good sliding into me.
Which, apparently, is what he wants as he says, "Is't good, lad?"
I make a moan of what could be interpreted as pleasure.
"Tell'm all how much y'love m'cock. Used t'come round lookin' f'r me, he did, when he were Snape's. Tell'm."
Oh God. "Yes," I say, and moan again as he settles into a sensuous rhythm. "Yes, I... I love... being fucked... Your cock ... I... .I want it... every day... every hour... " And all manner of other nonsense. I cannot stop once I start, and the thing that hurts most of all is that I can see, even through his mask of utter indifference, a flare of hatred in Severus' eyes at my words.
* * *
By the next morning the restorative has done its work, and I am whole in body if not in mind. And I find myself caught on the horns of a dilemma.
If Harry defeats me again this week... then I return to Severus, to him and Severus, right? Well, maybe, if the Dark Lord keeps his promises. Which I know he does not, but perhaps he might keep that one? No certainty but...
But I cannot take another night like that one. Not so soon. Were Harry and I to play that game of "what was your bloodiest night?" now... both my top answers would have come from these past two performances.
I need to believe that the next contest, I might win, or I will not live through this week. When MacInnis grabs me sleepily in the morning, already rutting against me, I say "I will not fail you again."
"Damn right yeh won't," he mutters in return, greasing his pole with his eyes still closed.
"No, I mean it. We must come up with a challenge to them that I can win. And I know just what that is." He has rolled me onto my stomach and is spreading my thighs.
"What?" he asks as his cock pushes sleepily at me, searching for the entrance and the angle.
"Challenge them to a contest where the one who comes first is the loser. I know I can outlast Potter. I know I..." But whatever I was going to say is lost in the gasp of pain that seizes me as my body clamps around him. He has used the virginal-tightness formula as lube, and his cock is knifing into the still-contracting flesh.
He groans contentedly, hands using my hipbones like handles, as he forces his way back and forth, thrusting ever harder.
I dare not ask if the mixup of the jars was intentional.
* * *
Sleepy or no, MacInnis is not entirely a fool and he remembers what I suggested. By that afternoon he has proposed to test me, and he spends the better part of two hours trying to make me come. When that fails, he invites a friend of his whose name I do not learn, but she is beautiful and talented... another two hours and she leaves, herself quite satisfied, me still unspent.
I convince him that the best preparation for me for this is a lot of sleep. Restorative potions, and sleep. I do not come out and say that I ought to avoid sex, but he is not a dolt and he leaves me blissfully, mercifully alone for the rest of the week. He spends a good portion of it checking out his fief, and I suspect he is also working his way up the Death Eater political ladder, planting the suggestion for the next contest, and ensuring it will happen. I feel a bit nauseous, wondering whether I have helped him far more than I wished by making this suggestion. But it is out of my hands now. And I cannot spend another night with Bellatrix shoving candlesticks up my arse.
This time it is we who arrive early. MacInnis arranges two divans in the centre and bids me lie upon one. He lies behind me, spooning me, gently bringing me to full hardness.
I see that flash of anger in Snape's eyes as he takes in the scene when they enter. This time the Dark Lord bids him welcome, invites him to lay Harry down upon the divan, and explains the terms of the contest.
"Ah," Snape says, one hand playing down Harry's chest and then cupping his balls. I am staring, I know I am, but it is the first time I have seen the evidence of my suspicions. Whatever they were before, now, at this moment anyway, they are lovers. Harry presses back against him, his lips slightly parted. The look on my face is probably murderous, and yet I see no reason to try to mask it. No one there will know its motivation, after all.
"My lord," Snape says then, as he strokes Harry to full hardness, "it seems to me this contest would be improved, though, by a swap of partners, just as we did with the whipping. That way neither of us will be holding back in our efforts to make the slaves come."
Oh no. No no no. I am begging him with my eyes, but there is no way for him to answer me, and no way for me to tell him that I would capitulate next week if only he would spare me this time...
"Agreed," says the Dark Lord. I feel cold air on my back as MacInnis climbs off the divan, then a moment later, Snape is there, adjusting his robes fussily as he gets comfortable, then stroking my hair over my shoulder...
Was this contest your idea, Draco? Clever...
I cannot completely hide the jolt that goes through me, but I make it look as if his hand brushing my cock is what caused it. Please, please, please don't make me lose this time. I can't...
I can sense his consternation at my pleading, and no wonder. He thinks I planned this, so that he could ensure that I lose, and return to him. If only it were so. Hush. Did I not say your loyalty would be tested?
Another gasp goes through me. I plead my case anyway. I can't take another evening like the last one. They're... they're all more emboldened each time. Please don't make me do it. I'll... I'll capitulate next week. I promise.
He strokes me in silence then and the feel of his hand around my cock is heartbreakingly familiar.
I want to be yours, I find myself thinking. I've always wanted to be yours.
The tone of reproach that comes through is gentle. And you'll be mine if you trust me. You realise that if you lose again, MacInnis loses you and you come back to me?
I know, but...
Trust me, he repeats. There is much I can not tell you, but you must trust me.
He knows my cock, my body, so very well. I wonder if the collar allows him to sense my arousal, too. I am burning steadily, the fuse burning down toward the inevitable explosion.
Severus... I've never dared to call him by his given name in person, especially not as a slave. But here, in the world of our minds, I do. Why didn't you... I can barely frame the question, though, as I can hardly understand why I've never asked it. Why didn't you collar me sooner?
If I had known that was what you wanted, I would have, he replies, a fierce emotion coming through. I tried to leave you as untouched as possible. To leave the Draco that you were to his own devices, and only force you to play the part of my slave when it was necessary to protect you or me.
Oh. I thought... I thought you just didn't want me.
His hand increases in speed then, becoming a blur as it moves up and down my shaft. I want you. A hungry growl comes from his throat then, too. I want you for my own. And I want you to come. Come for me, Draco. Prove you're mine and mine alone.
It's been weeks since my last orgasm, but regardless, with all I had just learned and the expert manner in which he touched me, I come so hard that I cry out as if I were in great agony. I am not, but the untrained ear would not know that. They might even suspect that some form of Dark spell was used to force my come out of me, but, well, that would not be against the rules, would it? I come so hard that I lose my vision, and then consciousness.
* * *
When I come to, I am shocked to find Harry tapping my cheek lightly and trying to get me to sit up. I blink and realise I can smell the burnt odour of duelling spells on the air. Harry hauls me into a sitting position with a hug, until our collars touch.
It's over, he thinks which is hardly an explanation, but my eyes tell me a great deal more.
Severus is sitting in the chair where the Dark Lord had been, and two bodies lie at his feet. MacInnis' and... I blink, disbelieving.
It's true, Harry says. Voldemort's dead. He tried to kill me, but the protective spell in the collar sent his own curse back at him.
And MacInnis?
Voldemort tried to kill me because I was trying to kill MacInnis with my bare hands. MacInnis tried to return the favour and Severus killed him. His hands stroke my back and I realise Severus has been speaking aloud all this time, but I have only been listening to Harry's voice in my head.
Severus is... the new Dark Lord?
For a while anyway, Harry answers, kissing me on the shoulder. There's no time to explain more. Hold me, Draco. Hold me tight and don't let go.
And then there is an explosion, a burst of light and heat combined with a great shaking of the earth, rocking the foundations of the castle. I know it is the collars that protect us, but it feels like I am held safe in the circle of Harry's arms.
* * *
I wake, expecting there to be smoke and debris surrounding me, but all is quiet. I open my eyes slowly to find we are in what must be a tower room, round and stone, in a four-poster bed that was only made for one. It is Harry who is spooned around me, breathing softly against the back of my neck.
It's all too much. I cry silently, for what has happened, crushed under the weight of my unanswered questions and aching with the terror of the unknown. A small sob of mine wakes him and I feel his lips, soft and questioning against my back. Then the words. "What's wrong?"
"I don't know."
The sheets are white and smell slightly musty. He pulls them up under my chin. "Severus is alive," he says, trying to guess at my distress's source.
I admit, that is good to hear. "What happened? Did he... did he kill them all?"
Harry nods. "The only people alive who still bear the Mark are Snape, your parents, and you."
His embrace gives me strength. I cease crying, curiosity and other things awakening. "How was it done?"
He nuzzles in my hair. "Goblin magic. My collar... acted like a bit of a hex collector. Severus was able to unleash them all at once, using the key."
I turn in his arms, needing to look into his face, and I see the thin silver band is still on his neck. I reach up; mine is still there, too. "You two have been plotting this for a while."
He nods. "Years."
"When it sounded like you were fighting, he was hexing you?"
"Yeah. The collar would rebound the Unforgivables back onto the caster, but other things... it would just absorb. There had to be one for each Death Eater, though, or it wouldn't have worked. Some would have escaped."
I remember how sick he looked that day when Severus stormed out. "You still felt the hexes, though. You weren't completely protected."
He nods and presses a kiss to my forehead, but I want to push him away. I want to pull away, but I'm too tired, too drained. "I can't compete with that kind of bravery," I say. God, here they were plotting to overthrow the Dark Lord, hexing Harry half to death every day and then pumping him back up with the restorative... and I couldn't even make it through one more bloody night as a Death Eater plaything.
I don't even have the balls to push him away from me. "And now you're supplanting me."
"What?" I startle the word out of him.
"Aren't you?" I hope to startle another truth out of him. "How long have you and he been lovers?"
"Draco...!" Bah, no good. I've startled him to silence.
"I just want to know what's going to happen to me," I say. I finally get up the nerve to sit up, but still don't pull away from him completely. "Where are we, anyway?"
"Gryffindor Tower. It's been empty for years." He sits up and puts a hand on my shoulder. "I'm... I'm the first one who could get the portrait hole to open. The stairwells wouldn't even lead here for the Red Hand apparently."
He moves away from me then, climbing off the bed and wrapping another sheet around himself like a skirt. "I think you need to talk to him, though."
"Is he here?" I ask, meaning Severus.
"Yes," Harry says. "We came here to receive the loyalty of the Red Hand and such. There won't be... an instant transition."
"An instant transition to what?" I think, still thinking of myself and my affairs.
"To a new Ministry. It was essentially the Wizarding version of a military coup. It'll take time to rebuild social services and democratic representation."
"Uh huh." I could not care less about the state of the wizarding world at large. It was all too much to think about. And all I wanted to know was, what was I now? Was I still a slave? a pet? a lover? a disgrace? It was Voldemort who had stripped me of my wand. Now that he was gone, what was expected of me?
I hear Harry's sigh of relief and look up to see Severus standing in the archway.
Harry approaches him first. "I'm making a terrible mess of an explanation."
"I know," Severus says, dangling the tiny keys in front of him. "I've heard every word."
"I'll... I'll leave you alone, then."
Severus catches him by the chin and kisses him, one eye never straying from me as he does it, deliberately, so that I will see it. "Thank you, Harry," he says, and lets him go.
Then he comes to me. I am rigid with fury. "He always always bested me, in everything we did, from the first day we met."
He meets my anger with an edge of exasperation. "Why are you so difficult? He's not supplanting you. But a day is coming, soon, when keeping wizards as pets will be highly unseemly. And your parents are on their way back from Hong Kong as we speak."
"My parents?"
He looks suddenly very tired as he steps close. "What do you want, Draco?"
It is entirely too difficult a question, one I cannot answer when I do not know the rules, when I do not know the choices. "I would have... I would have been content, if you'd just... loved me." I realise I have not answered the question, but I throw it back at him. "What do you want, Severus?"
His hand is in my hair before I can move, his grip firm but not painful. "I want you. I've always wanted you. What an irony then that the Dark Lord gave you to me, making me determined never to take you against your will, to give you as much freedom as I could. Meanwhile your mother's meddling Vow meant I needed to ensure you stayed alive."
"Vow?" My already overtaxed brain did a flip.
"She made me take an Unbreakable Vow to protect you, before your sixth year. The wording was imprecise; I feared if you died, I would as well." His eyes are not soft; his glare is hot as he explains. "The goblin-made collar was my answer to that. And you made it clear enough to me that any bed but mine, any cock but mine, was your preference."
"No!" I should be shrinking from his vehemence, but I cannot let these things go unsaid. "I thought you didn't want me! You resented me. I w-was miserable... and I couldn't even find comfort with someone else because of the collar."
Here something goes through his eyes, and he examines my expression in turn. "I thought, initially, that you were just finding other lovers," he said. "I could use the key to tune in to what was happening. But I was too jealous to get more than a peek here or there. It was not until more recently I came to realise you were suffering as you were. I... wrongly assumed that if you were so mistreated, you wouldn't repeat the experience."
My heart is pounding in my chest. "I just wanted you. I just wanted to be yours."
"I see that now. Perhaps that explains why you could not come without me." He loosens his grip, runs one finger along the thin band of metal, then up the edge of my chin. "There is no charm on the collar to prevent you from coming."
A gasp catches in my throat.
"You were loyal to me all along."
"And," I say, but weakly, "you were loyal to Potter...?"
He lays me back on the bed, his robes black against the white sheets, covering me. "The plot for Harry and I to eliminate Voldemort stretches back into your school years. That was... always my first concern. But it is done with now."
He is kissing my neck and I am trembling, but I keep speaking. "And what is Harry to you now?"
"Perhaps we should settle the question of what you and I are now, before that one, hm? Harry is alone in the world. His friends and family are all dead and his destiny is fulfilled. He is adrift. But I could ask you the same question. I know you and he were lovers in my absence." His hands are warm against my ribs.
I dodge the issue. "Can I be yours, Severus? In this new world where you are Minister?"
"You can be anything you want to be," he whispers, just before brushing his lips across mine. "If your parents object, I will fight to keep you. But you must fight to keep me, too."
"Ah." My fingers are feverishly working at his robes, there between our bodies opening the cloth until I feel his bare cock against my belly. "You've never..." I am blushing. "We've never..."
"What do you want, Draco?" he intones, lips brushing against my ear.
"Make love to me," I say, my voice quavering with emotion, but not fear. "Please."
His lubrication charm is warm and sends a ripple of arousal through me. He stretches me with his fingers, just enough, as if he is as impatient for this as I am. I feel every inch of him as he makes his way into me, but there is no pain. He is sizable and it seems odd that I should only learn this now.
I wrap my legs around him, and he fucks me slowly, kissing my mouth and neck, letting his hands roam over me, brushing my nipples, seeking out the tender spots on my neck and shoulders. Harry fucking me felt good. This feels like each thrust turns back time, takes away one day we were angry or distant from each other. Each thrust erases the difference in our ages, our stations, our backgrounds. Eventually I am clinging to him with my arms, too, and he keeps himself propped with his own so that his hips are free to move, his cock plunging into me again and again.
I pass into a trance after a while, which seems slightly unfair-I have no wish to escape this sensuous ecstasy, why would I drift off now and not when I was being subjected to torture? But when my full awareness settles into me again after some unknown amount of time, I know for a certainty that I am close to coming.
"Severus..." I whisper. "So... so close..."
"Good," he says, and makes no move to change anything, just continuing to thrust as he has been, relentless and sure. And quite suddenly each penetration is like a scratch of a match against a flint, once, twice, thrice... and all of a sudden my orgasm catches fire, sending a cry into the air and heavy spurts of my seed between our bellies. Just as I am slowing down, though, he pounds into me harder, and his own spasm seems to prolong mine.
When he kisses me, it is with unfeigned passion.
When he speaks, it is breathless, but undeniably happy. "At least until things settle, you and Harry ought to continue to wear your collars."
I shake my head. He looks at me questioningly. "I'm never taking mine off willingly. I don't care."
"And Harry?"
I shrug. "He can decide for himself about the collar. But he can still be our lover, don't you think?"
"You won't be jealous?"
"Of course I'll be jealous. But he'll make it up to me, I'm sure."
"Good." He presses a kiss against my forehead. "Rest now. You're safe here. We'll go home as soon as we're able."
He leaves, and Harry comes back in. I slip under the covers and hold them open for Harry to join me. He does with a grateful smile, and I find my hand closing easily over his cock underneath the sheets. Neither of us says a word as I bring him off, the scent of his skin becoming familiar to me as we drift off to sleep together.
Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard;
Thou canst not then use rigor in my gaol:
And yet thou wilt; for I, being pent in thee,
Perforce am thine, and all that is in me.
--Sonnet 133, William Shakespeare
-end!-
and now, The Afterword!
I sat down thinking to write angstful smut, since that is often what I do. I thought perhaps the cards would determine:
what kind of pain was inflicted
on whom
by whom
But what I got was:
Death Reversed: Holding onto something, even when you know it's finished. Fear of change.
The Wheel, Reversed: Taking hold of your destiny. Discovering the causes behind events.
Eight of Cups: Possibility of change in a stable situation. Flashes of excitement, movement.
That seemed to me to clearly define a plot arc, in which a situation that has been stable for a long time changes. I also made the connection of "death" to orgasm (the "little death") so death reversed would be orgasm denial. The Wheel of Fortune seemed like a torture device, like a Catherine Wheel I once saw in a dungeon, and the eight of cups said potions to me. So that sounds to me like a Snape-centric story...
I also wanted to combine this with one of my Seven Spells prompts, which really cemented the direction when I chose the prompt "disheveled." Which immediately sent my brain to an image of just-fucked or roughly-used Draco. Click. Everything fell into place.
The three card arc describes Draco's situation, the untenable balance he has with Snape for years where both of them are miserable, but then Harry arrives and Draco starts trying to find out what is going on, and there are various positive signs he receives while doing this. Interestingly, the plot arc ALSO describes things for Snape and Harry, who have been lying in wait for an opportunity to move their plot against Voldemort forward.
I hope you enjoyed it! Don't forget to comment on all the pieces in the hp_tarot fest! Awards will go to the best commenters, and your nominations for the best fics and art will be taken starting September 1st!
Author: Ravenna C. Tan
Type: Fiction
Length: 21,000 words total; This post: 8654
Main character or Pairing: Snape/Draco, Harry/Draco, Draco/Death Eaters
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Non-commercial fanfic, done for the love, not any money.
Warnings: Voldemort-won AU. Canon-compliant thru HBP. Heavy dub-con. Torture, gang-banging, sexual slavery, angst.
Summary: Voldemort gives a disgraced Draco Malfoy as a slave to Severus Snape. Draco is resigned to his fate, until Snape collars Harry Potter as well.
Cards Drawn: Death (reversed), Wheel of Fortune (reversed), Eight of Cups.
Card Interpretation: Death reversed is "holding onto something you know is over," such as a relationship you stayed in too long. The Wheel of Fortune reversed is taking control of your destiny. And the eight of cups is "Possibility of change in a stable situation. Flashes of excitement, movement." I also interpreted "death, reversed" as orgasm denial, the wheel of fortune as suspension bondage, and the eight of cups to be potions, so you will find all three of those elements in the story as well. Full notes and interpretations at the end.
Author Notes: clauclauclaudia was my wonderful beta. Any mistakes left are purely my own. Thanks to Gateway Girl for helping me wrestle a very recalcitrant Draco to the ground. Metaphorically speaking. Title comes from a Shakespeare sonnet. This story also matches up to my 7spells table for Snape/Draco/Harry.
Part One on LJ
Part Two on LJ
(with a slight reprise of part two as a reminder...)
I wake to voices. I am curled alone under a blanket but their voices are close by. I am groggy, unable to wake completely, and I wonder if I have been given a sleeping draught.
"Won't you at least tell me what to expect?"
"It is of no consequence. I would prefer you kept your mind on our mission."
"No consequence? You do realise he's desperately in love with you, don't you?"
"Desperate may be accurate."
Are we moving? I have a vague sense of rhythmic jostling. A carriage?
"Don't you even care how he feels? He thinks you hate him."
"How I feel, and how he feels, are of no consequence when compared with what we need to accomplish. Wouldn't you agree?"
"No, no I don't."
"You always were a stubborn, argumentative..."
"And we don't have time for this. We're nearly there."
"So we are."
And then a sharp tingle as a spell shocks me awake. Snape's eyes, dark and intense, are the only thing I see. "We have been summoned, Draco."
I nod. "I understand."
"Good boy," he says, and I think I hear a warmth in his voice. Perhaps I imagine it.
* * *
Imagined or no, that is all I think of as we exit the carriage. I cling to the illusion that there was something there in his voice because I need to. I look up-it is a castle but it is not Hogwarts. I do not recognise the place. We are led into a banquet hall, crawling on all fours as Snape leads us both from incongruously delicate chains attached to our collars. I am absorbing the details of the room without them quite sinking in. The banquet table is far larger than it should be for the inner circle alone, in a three-sided rectangle, meaning that all eyes will be on the spectacle in the centre.
Us.
Don't look up. Can you hear me, Draco?
The voice inside my head does not "sound" like his, because it does not sound like anything. And yet the words are there.
Yes, yes I hear you.
Good. You won't once I let go the chains.
The stone floor scrapes against my knees as he leads us to the centre. The others are hurrying to their seats, not wanting to miss a moment of the action. The Dark Lord, of course, is already sitting, implacable, stroking his own chin contemplatively, his eyes unwavering from Snape's face.
I don't like this, I think. There are too many of them. And there are members of the Red Hand here.
I feel his acknowledgement. Then: Are you loyal to me?
Yes! There is no question of my answer, as if all this time I were only waiting to be asked. Yes!
That loyalty may be sorely tested. You can only do your best.
I will. I will. Whatever you ask of me...
But he draws in the chains then, and each of us settles back onto our heels. Potter does not look up-his eyes may even be closed under the curtain of his overlong hair. No wonder he gained a reputation for being broken. I could never feign such implacability. Such lack of fear.
Snape is speaking but I am trying to imitate Harry. To sink into my own world. I hear bits and pieces of the patter. Schoolboy rivals. A bitter grudge.
A contest. A winner and a loser.
And then he is tipping my chin back and pouring a sharp, bitter potion down my throat. I fall forward onto all fours, gagging a bit as it takes hold and he administers it to Harry the same way.
I feel my cock rise as if of its own accord and I begin to comprehend what the contest is. A flick of his wand and each of us is bound in place, hands tethered behind us. Harry's implacability shatters and he looks up at me like a predator, every bit as transformed as a werewolf undergoing his change.
Snape asks for two volunteers, holding out two more bottles.
MacInnis is there in a heartbeat, taking the bottle, upending it into his palms. And then he is rubbing me all over, greasing my skin. I barely register the words-my money's on you, and other more lascivious things-even as he pushes his fingers into my hole, greasing me there as well.
Bellatrix is the one greasing Harry, but he seems unaware of her, straining toward me as if he cannot wait to tear my throat out. He jerks once as she forces her fingers inside of him, then she withdraws far too quickly.
Snape, too, withdraws, his wand raised, awaiting our lord's signal to begin. The rabble are shouting and laughing-can I actually smell the sourness of the liquor on their breaths in my potioned state, or is that my imagination?
Yaxley's voice cuts through my haze as he speaks one more spell, aimed at Harry. Harry hisses, sucking in a breath as if the barbs that extend all around his penis hurt him, though I know they don't. If the potion itself hadn't filled me with a drive to be the winner, that sight surely did. No one bespells me in any way, which makes me think that the majority of them believe Harry will prevail.
And then the bonds dissolve and we are on each other like two dogs in a pit. It takes me a while to realize that the surface under us is no longer stone, which is good as far as bruises and scrapes are concerned, bad because the cushioning replacement is as slippery as our skin.
I have one advantage, I discover, as we wrestle and slip out of each other's grasps again and again, neither of us able to hold the upper position for very long. I am taller, but more importantly, Harry's hair is longer. It gives me much more to grip, and more than once I am able to get him trapped on the ground with it, but never able to do more than slide my oiled cock between the hills of his arsecheeks. The angle is wrong to penetrate him, yet I am desperate to do so.
He upends me suddenly and the lack of purchase I have on the floor prevents me from scrabbling away. He is on me then, his cock slipping between my thighs. The barbs catch my skin and I cry out, which raises a great cheer from the audience, then a groan of disappointment as I slip away and it becomes clear that he did not truly have me. I feel the blood between my legs, dripping from the scratches on my thighs, just enough to add another layer of slip to things.
Fatigue begins to set in, as Harry at least begins to look a bit more sluggish to me. We continue to wrestle, and almost by accident I find myself in the correct position. I push anxiously, almost overbalancing, and then-God--I push into him. He makes a sound I have never heard; there is a cheer and I hear MacInnis leading them. I push and push, the potion making me desperate to finish.
But I can't. Can I? Does Snape have to be touching me, or is his presence enough? I don't know and I cannot think and my hesitation is all Harry needs to manage an escape from me. I cry out at the loss, the air on my cock making it ache as if it were cold as winter, and then he is on me. I am defeated and I go limp for a moment, then rigid again as I remember the barbs. He frots against me, growling like an animal and drawing blood, but not tearing me the way he is about to...
And then he pushes in, and holds me, still growling, but I know this moment of stillness is my last respite. I think I hear his voice in my head. I'm sorry.
And then he tears me. The pain in my throat as I scream is excruciating, and yet it does not compare. I pray that this will be the time when pain will be too much and I shall pass out from it, but I am never so lucky.
The one saving grace is that unlike Yaxley, Harry comes quickly. The moment he pulls out, triumphantly flaccid, there are hands there restraining me. The potion in my system still makes me set on fucking whatever orifice I can, on whomever I can.
Naturally, that is why as the loser, I am strung up for all to see, rampant still as the moment the potion was administered. I am suspended as if from a spider's web, on a great wheel, arms and legs outstretched and hanging at an angle with my face toward the floor. Thankfully, I am too high up for anyone to take me from behind. No, they must reach up to stroke my long-suffering cock. And they do, between courses of the meal. One by one, each feels he or she must prove their place among them by coming to touch me, to worsen my situation. I can see two spatters of red on the stone below me-my torn hole oozes blood down my legs and it drips steadily. Some of them push their fingers inside, then paint my skin with the mixture of blood and come they find.
MacInnis strokes my cock for a long time. "Yaxley, yeh bastard, ye've ruint'm fer fucking. 'f I want'd to fuck such a bloody mess I'da cut a new hole m'self."
You wouldn't dare, I think, trying to gather enough spittle in my dry throat to spit at him. But I am dry, utterly dry. I look up and see Harry, the victor, sitting at Snape's feet, next to the Dark Lord, being fed by his hand. Snape gives him a morsel and then pets his hair.
I see red. I make a pained sound and rattle the chains. This only precipitates more laughter. MacInnis strokes me faster, as if trying to make me come. He opens his mouth, as if he wants to catch sweet milk from the teat, but I cannot come. I cannot. He pulls at me until I am sore and abraded, and making pitiful sounds, and yet I cannot bring myself to beg him to stop.
He does only because the Dark Lord calls for his attention. I lapse into my own cocoon of pain for a while, then, but a few minutes later it becomes clear to me that something more than the usual banquet conversation is going on.
MacInnis is being made a Death Eater. I admit to a certain amount of glee when he screams as the Dark Lord magically brands him. He curls in a ball on the stone floor, thrashing as if undergoing Cruciatus. Receiving the Mark has made stronger men than he piss themselves. He manages not to.
Then it is done, and the Dark Lord's voice slips through the remaining silence. "Rise, my minion, and join our inner circle. As a reward for all you have done, you may ask a boon of me."
Oh no.
He gets to his feet, and his voice, though shaky, is clear enough. "Gi' me the Malfoy boy, then, m'lord."
Snape's face does not even twitch. The Dark Lord strokes his chin. "A wise choice. Severus, my brother, you would not begrudge your fellow member of the fraternity this, would you? After all, it seems you have taken Potter in hand so nicely."
Snape speaks, his voice low with menace. "I live to serve your will, my lord," he says. "But you will forgive me if my own estimation of the upstart does not yet match your own?" He receives some silent signal to continue. "I would pit Potter against Malfoy again. If MacInnis cannot train him to win the match, I would like the chance to win him back."
The Dark Lord chuckles. "Ah, Severus, you surprise me not at all. You never did take any form of loss well. Very well. But I propose a best of three. Let us gather here each week on this night, and we shall see the outcome of it. And of course there must be jeopardy. If Malfoy does best Potter two of the three nights, you must lose him, too. Perhaps it is time he returned to my own side..."
Severus inclines his head, a cruel smile playing upon his lips as if he loves nothing better than gambling with our bodies as the coin. "Entirely fair. In fact," he stands and tosses a vial to MacInnis, who catches it deftly. "That is a restorative that will ensure you are not beginning your tenure as an owner with damaged goods."
MacInnis's eyes are greedy, and he seems to realise that his best option now is to leave before any other twists of fate can occur. "By yer leave, m'lord, I'd best be away. I've got much fooking to do."
My heart doesn't start to break until he actually pulls me down from the suspension. I keep my expression glassy, as if I am only half aware of what is going on. The bloody animal waits only until we are in his carriage, and then he shoves his cock in me, holding me pinned in his lap, crooning as he strokes my skin. He forces the restorative down my throat, then sighs as my innards repair themselves, stroking him obscenely inside my body. "Yeh're m'perfect fit, now, boy," he says, as he lifts me and slams himself upward into me.
I do not cry, though, until I am alone.
* * *
In the morning he wakes me by "fooking" me. He is already inside me by the time I claw my way awake, but I cannot say that I feel any surprise about this. He spends himself quickly, then "washes" his cock by forcing it into my mouth, then leaves me alone for a few hours.
I lie there not moving for the longest time, but awake now, completely awake, at first utterly numb. The worst has come to pass. How long before this bastard breaks me? I no longer have even the pretence of being with Snape. I have lost the tender connection I forged with Harry. I have been supplanted by him, in fact.
I should feel grief, outrage, loss, despair. Instead I feel... nothing. Perhaps, I think, I have felt so much pain that I have used up my capacity for it. At any rate, I am calm.
Perhaps this is where Harry's implacability came from, I think. They thought him broken, but in truth it was that he had already suffered the worst they could dish out.
My neck itches and I reach up to scratch it... and my fingers meet the gold band of the collar, still there. Surprise runs through me. I comb through the memory of the night before. Did Snape toss him the key to it also? No, I'm sure he did not.
Your loyalty may be sorely tested. That was what he had told me.
At that moment I begin to hope. The whole plan to have me fight Harry again-it could be a plan to get me back. He might want me back...
My heart thuds in my chest and I begin to feel again. Hope and fear in equal measure. If I win, he will lose Harry and me both. And yet if it looks in any way like I am trying to lose... I am sure I would forfeit all chance. If they use the potion as they did last time, though, I will not have any choice...
Hope and fear in equal measure.
* * *
The week passes in what quickly becomes a kind of monotony. MacInnis is not imaginative. He fucks me every morning when he wakes, his morning erection mine to deal with. He uses lube and he does not torture me overmuch. Then I am fed, food and potions, to make me both strong and aggressive. After dinner he and two of the Red Hand go out and kidnap a Muggle, then give him the same potion that Harry and I took. They do not give the potion to me, just grease me up and goad me on with words. It means that every night I rape some poor sod with my own mind completely and utterly clear. Yes, I win every time. They do not seem to particularly care that I do not come. I have no idea if they kill the Muggle later, Obliviate him, or just return him to his normal life with a shameful memory that he will never, ever be able to tell another living soul about.
* * *
The designated day dawns. MacInnis and his right hand man, a dolt named Bard, consider me and my chances, speaking as if I am not there in front of them.
"Which'd be better," MacInnis asks, "Leave'm tight, or grease'm up?"
Bard looks me over. "If his arse is tight enough, it might be tougher for Potter to get it in him. I'd say take any advantage we can get."
MacInnis pulls my cheeks apart and stares at my arsehole. "Been usin'm pretty rough."
"There's a potion, you know, witches use it all the time. Restores virginity, they say."
"Eh?"
"Doesn't really, but it does make 'em tighter than the drawstrings on a goblin's purse."
"Get some."
After lunch MacInnis applies the potion to me himself. It is in the form of a salve, and he slathers it into me like lube, fucking me with two fingers as if he's forgotten what he's supposed to be doing.
Then I gasp as my flesh closes down around him. He applies more of the potion; this time only a single finger presses into me, and it barely fits. "Bard, yeh genius," he says. Soon I am so tight that pressing even a single finger into me is excruciating. I note with some trepidation that MacInnis has used only a small portion of what was in the jar and that he carefully caps it and places it next to his usual jar of lubricant by the bed, as if he will want to use it again.
We are as ready as we can be and I pass the rest of the afternoon in nervous contemplation. He puts a cloak on me before we leave, but leaves me naked and barefoot underneath. In the carriage, he paws my cock, ensuring I am rampant, my erection a deep red, when we emerge. My cock juts from the split in the cloak. MacInnis makes me precede him into the banquet hall, my cock leading us both.
As we enter the space defined by the tables, though, I can see there is something there we do not expect. A sort of wooden frame is standing there, looking like a gate to nowhere. Something for the loser to be suspended from? But it is right in the centre, where it would be in the way of the wrestling.
The tables are already full; it would appear there are even more in attendance tonight. I see the Lestrange brothers have even returned for this. And at the head of the table, I see Snape conferring with the Dark Lord, both of them with malice on their faces. The Dark Lord breaks into a wide grin as he sees us; that can never be a good sign.
"Brother," he says to MacInnis. "So glad you and yours could join us." Snape is rising and coming around to this side of the table, leading Harry by one of those fine chains. I wonder if they are speaking through the spell in the collar, or was that only my collar that worked that way?
I do not dare meet either of their eyes. I want so much to search for some sign, but I must not. Not if I hold out any hope...
"As you can see," the Dark Lord goes on in his unnatural voice, "we have prepared another challenge for these two fine prizes." He snaps his fingers and mad aunt Bellatrix steps forward. Ropes fly from her wand, seizing me by the wrists. The cloak falls away as I am jerked into place, onto my tiptoes, hanging from my arms which are secured to the frame above me.
And Harry is bound the same way. We are chest to chest, placed just inches to the side of each other so that we are also temple to temple. I feel his cock against my hip and know he feels the same.
Snape walks in a circle, behind me, then behind Harry, and I see him swinging a leather flail idly as he goes.
"The first one to cry out is the loser," the Dark Lord explains. "You will each try to wring a scream from the other's property, of course, else you would go too easy on your own. You will begin with flails. If there is no winner after a hundred strokes, then we will move on to whips."
Snape's eyes are black and steely, and he moves out of my sight again, taking up his position behind me, while MacInnis comes to stand behind Harry.
Snape speaks to Harry, but I find myself complying with his words as well. "Keep your eyes closed. Stray tails can sometimes fly."
With my eyes closed, I do not know how they decide when to start, how they know to both strike at the same time, but they do. The first blow makes me gasp, Harry and I pushing against each other. It stings and burns on the surface of my skin but not unbearably. The second blow follows the first in the same path diagonally down my back, though, and the sensation intensifies. On the third blow, a light sweat prickles across my skin and I clench my jaw.
A voice is in my head. Try to relax. Breathe.
Harry?
Yes. Our collars are touching. Breathe, Draco.
The next series of three seems to double the pain, and I clench harder.
Breathe, Harry says again. Try to sink into it. Float away from it.
Is that how you survived the tortures they've put you through?
Sometimes. He hisses and sucks in a breath on the next blow, though, and I know it's not as easy as he claims.
"The loser, of course, will be punished by his master in front of all of us," the Dark Lord says, giving us a brief respite around 25 blows. "I am greatly looking forward to that, whoever should win."
This comment seems to spur our masters on to greater efforts. Each blow is searing now, yet still bearable somehow. After each one, I tell myself I can take another. And then another. And then another.
Severus and I miss you, Harry thinks when the next pause comes. We are both panting hard now, both slick with sweat and trembling from the arduous position and the beating.
Then all thought is impossible as just surviving from one blow to the next absorbs my entire attention. The thought that it is Snape-Severus--who is delivering the lashes makes me all the more determined to accept as many as I can.
And then there is a respite, and I feel, very gently, Harry suckling my neck. He makes no motion as he does it, so as not to draw attention. It is a secret touch, just for us. We have made it to one hundred lashes with the flail.
I jump as I hear the whip behind me being cracked experimentally.
The first lash of the whip is a hundred-fold worse than the flail. I find if I wanted to cry out I cannot, every muscle in my body locked rigid against the agony. Even pressing against Harry can do nothing to assuage it.
They wait before the next lash, giving us time to recover... or perhaps to dread. I am shaking all over. No limit was put on how long the whipping will go on. Until there is a victor, it would seem.
The second blow crosses the first and it feels to me like a hot knife slashing me open. The scream is trapped behind my teeth again, though as my head arches back. Our collars are no longer touching and I wonder how Harry is faring. Has he floated off into that place where what happens to his body barely registers in his consciousness?
A third blow burns across my shoulders, and I am shaking worse than before, my shoulders aching as I pull against the bonds, as panic begins to set in, as my mind no longer wonders whether it can withstand more of this as it is slipping into animal reflex... no thought of anything but escape, even if I have to pull my arms from their sockets to do it...
A soft warm touch comes then on my shoulder, Severus' hand, and I cry out then as the gentle fingertip traces the welt. I cannot explain it, but that tenderness undoes me completely, tears bursting forth and the wail, unbidden, rises from my throat, releasing every ounce of misery I have hoarded in this past week.
I have lost. They tear Harry from me with rough hands and the next thing I know I am strapped down over a barrel, my arse in the air.
Oh God, and I am tighter than any virgin ever was. MacInnis pries my arsecheeks apart and chuckles with satisfaction, telling me it's no worse than I deserve for having lost the contest. He explains to all assembled what he has done to me, making it out as if I incurred the treatment because of my former whorish ways.
Just get it over with, I am thinking, but then I hear what he is saying.
He is offering my newly virginal arse to the Dark Lord for the taking. And I begin shaking again, this time with fear.
Our Lord has never taken me. I am seized by the fear that his seed will somehow infect me, will make me sicken with despair until I die from withering away. That his cock inside me will lay bare my secrets, that he will know how much I want to belong to Severus, that he will see the fragile gift of gentleness that Harry gave to me...
His laughter chills me to the bone. But he declines the invitation, saying he would rather watch MacInnis teach me a lesson.
MacInnis does not need to be told twice. I hear the distinct sound of him greasing up his shaft, and then the head is nosing between my arse cheeks. His hands clamp hard upon my hips-he knows it will take some force to overcome how unwilling my flesh is to yield, thanks to the potion.
"Don't lose next time, lad," he growls, and then splits me asunder.
* * *
When he was done fucking me, after he came, MacInnis decided he would want seconds after the meal. Since the potion was still at work and after he withdrew, my pucker would shrink back down to pinhole size, he thought it would be best not to let it tighten back all the way up. He took the bone from the leg of lamb that had been carved and shoved it into place. It did not hurt very much at all, not when compared to what I had already been through.
The other Death Eaters, though, took it on themselves to make sport out of it, of course. While MacInnis ate his fill, someone I could not see pulled the bone free, and replaced it with something heavy and metal and irregular. A candlestick, I guessed. Someone else yanked that free, and replaced it with something large and unyielding... perhaps a broomstick.
And on and on, until at last MacInnis throws down his napkin, shoots a last glare at Snape, and positions himself behind me again.
All the objects have actually stretched me quite a bit or the potion is beginning to wear off, but either way, as he pushes greased fingers into me this time, they fit better. If I had not been so bruised and torn there, his cock would feel almost good sliding into me.
Which, apparently, is what he wants as he says, "Is't good, lad?"
I make a moan of what could be interpreted as pleasure.
"Tell'm all how much y'love m'cock. Used t'come round lookin' f'r me, he did, when he were Snape's. Tell'm."
Oh God. "Yes," I say, and moan again as he settles into a sensuous rhythm. "Yes, I... I love... being fucked... Your cock ... I... .I want it... every day... every hour... " And all manner of other nonsense. I cannot stop once I start, and the thing that hurts most of all is that I can see, even through his mask of utter indifference, a flare of hatred in Severus' eyes at my words.
* * *
By the next morning the restorative has done its work, and I am whole in body if not in mind. And I find myself caught on the horns of a dilemma.
If Harry defeats me again this week... then I return to Severus, to him and Severus, right? Well, maybe, if the Dark Lord keeps his promises. Which I know he does not, but perhaps he might keep that one? No certainty but...
But I cannot take another night like that one. Not so soon. Were Harry and I to play that game of "what was your bloodiest night?" now... both my top answers would have come from these past two performances.
I need to believe that the next contest, I might win, or I will not live through this week. When MacInnis grabs me sleepily in the morning, already rutting against me, I say "I will not fail you again."
"Damn right yeh won't," he mutters in return, greasing his pole with his eyes still closed.
"No, I mean it. We must come up with a challenge to them that I can win. And I know just what that is." He has rolled me onto my stomach and is spreading my thighs.
"What?" he asks as his cock pushes sleepily at me, searching for the entrance and the angle.
"Challenge them to a contest where the one who comes first is the loser. I know I can outlast Potter. I know I..." But whatever I was going to say is lost in the gasp of pain that seizes me as my body clamps around him. He has used the virginal-tightness formula as lube, and his cock is knifing into the still-contracting flesh.
He groans contentedly, hands using my hipbones like handles, as he forces his way back and forth, thrusting ever harder.
I dare not ask if the mixup of the jars was intentional.
* * *
Sleepy or no, MacInnis is not entirely a fool and he remembers what I suggested. By that afternoon he has proposed to test me, and he spends the better part of two hours trying to make me come. When that fails, he invites a friend of his whose name I do not learn, but she is beautiful and talented... another two hours and she leaves, herself quite satisfied, me still unspent.
I convince him that the best preparation for me for this is a lot of sleep. Restorative potions, and sleep. I do not come out and say that I ought to avoid sex, but he is not a dolt and he leaves me blissfully, mercifully alone for the rest of the week. He spends a good portion of it checking out his fief, and I suspect he is also working his way up the Death Eater political ladder, planting the suggestion for the next contest, and ensuring it will happen. I feel a bit nauseous, wondering whether I have helped him far more than I wished by making this suggestion. But it is out of my hands now. And I cannot spend another night with Bellatrix shoving candlesticks up my arse.
This time it is we who arrive early. MacInnis arranges two divans in the centre and bids me lie upon one. He lies behind me, spooning me, gently bringing me to full hardness.
I see that flash of anger in Snape's eyes as he takes in the scene when they enter. This time the Dark Lord bids him welcome, invites him to lay Harry down upon the divan, and explains the terms of the contest.
"Ah," Snape says, one hand playing down Harry's chest and then cupping his balls. I am staring, I know I am, but it is the first time I have seen the evidence of my suspicions. Whatever they were before, now, at this moment anyway, they are lovers. Harry presses back against him, his lips slightly parted. The look on my face is probably murderous, and yet I see no reason to try to mask it. No one there will know its motivation, after all.
"My lord," Snape says then, as he strokes Harry to full hardness, "it seems to me this contest would be improved, though, by a swap of partners, just as we did with the whipping. That way neither of us will be holding back in our efforts to make the slaves come."
Oh no. No no no. I am begging him with my eyes, but there is no way for him to answer me, and no way for me to tell him that I would capitulate next week if only he would spare me this time...
"Agreed," says the Dark Lord. I feel cold air on my back as MacInnis climbs off the divan, then a moment later, Snape is there, adjusting his robes fussily as he gets comfortable, then stroking my hair over my shoulder...
Was this contest your idea, Draco? Clever...
I cannot completely hide the jolt that goes through me, but I make it look as if his hand brushing my cock is what caused it. Please, please, please don't make me lose this time. I can't...
I can sense his consternation at my pleading, and no wonder. He thinks I planned this, so that he could ensure that I lose, and return to him. If only it were so. Hush. Did I not say your loyalty would be tested?
Another gasp goes through me. I plead my case anyway. I can't take another evening like the last one. They're... they're all more emboldened each time. Please don't make me do it. I'll... I'll capitulate next week. I promise.
He strokes me in silence then and the feel of his hand around my cock is heartbreakingly familiar.
I want to be yours, I find myself thinking. I've always wanted to be yours.
The tone of reproach that comes through is gentle. And you'll be mine if you trust me. You realise that if you lose again, MacInnis loses you and you come back to me?
I know, but...
Trust me, he repeats. There is much I can not tell you, but you must trust me.
He knows my cock, my body, so very well. I wonder if the collar allows him to sense my arousal, too. I am burning steadily, the fuse burning down toward the inevitable explosion.
Severus... I've never dared to call him by his given name in person, especially not as a slave. But here, in the world of our minds, I do. Why didn't you... I can barely frame the question, though, as I can hardly understand why I've never asked it. Why didn't you collar me sooner?
If I had known that was what you wanted, I would have, he replies, a fierce emotion coming through. I tried to leave you as untouched as possible. To leave the Draco that you were to his own devices, and only force you to play the part of my slave when it was necessary to protect you or me.
Oh. I thought... I thought you just didn't want me.
His hand increases in speed then, becoming a blur as it moves up and down my shaft. I want you. A hungry growl comes from his throat then, too. I want you for my own. And I want you to come. Come for me, Draco. Prove you're mine and mine alone.
It's been weeks since my last orgasm, but regardless, with all I had just learned and the expert manner in which he touched me, I come so hard that I cry out as if I were in great agony. I am not, but the untrained ear would not know that. They might even suspect that some form of Dark spell was used to force my come out of me, but, well, that would not be against the rules, would it? I come so hard that I lose my vision, and then consciousness.
* * *
When I come to, I am shocked to find Harry tapping my cheek lightly and trying to get me to sit up. I blink and realise I can smell the burnt odour of duelling spells on the air. Harry hauls me into a sitting position with a hug, until our collars touch.
It's over, he thinks which is hardly an explanation, but my eyes tell me a great deal more.
Severus is sitting in the chair where the Dark Lord had been, and two bodies lie at his feet. MacInnis' and... I blink, disbelieving.
It's true, Harry says. Voldemort's dead. He tried to kill me, but the protective spell in the collar sent his own curse back at him.
And MacInnis?
Voldemort tried to kill me because I was trying to kill MacInnis with my bare hands. MacInnis tried to return the favour and Severus killed him. His hands stroke my back and I realise Severus has been speaking aloud all this time, but I have only been listening to Harry's voice in my head.
Severus is... the new Dark Lord?
For a while anyway, Harry answers, kissing me on the shoulder. There's no time to explain more. Hold me, Draco. Hold me tight and don't let go.
And then there is an explosion, a burst of light and heat combined with a great shaking of the earth, rocking the foundations of the castle. I know it is the collars that protect us, but it feels like I am held safe in the circle of Harry's arms.
* * *
I wake, expecting there to be smoke and debris surrounding me, but all is quiet. I open my eyes slowly to find we are in what must be a tower room, round and stone, in a four-poster bed that was only made for one. It is Harry who is spooned around me, breathing softly against the back of my neck.
It's all too much. I cry silently, for what has happened, crushed under the weight of my unanswered questions and aching with the terror of the unknown. A small sob of mine wakes him and I feel his lips, soft and questioning against my back. Then the words. "What's wrong?"
"I don't know."
The sheets are white and smell slightly musty. He pulls them up under my chin. "Severus is alive," he says, trying to guess at my distress's source.
I admit, that is good to hear. "What happened? Did he... did he kill them all?"
Harry nods. "The only people alive who still bear the Mark are Snape, your parents, and you."
His embrace gives me strength. I cease crying, curiosity and other things awakening. "How was it done?"
He nuzzles in my hair. "Goblin magic. My collar... acted like a bit of a hex collector. Severus was able to unleash them all at once, using the key."
I turn in his arms, needing to look into his face, and I see the thin silver band is still on his neck. I reach up; mine is still there, too. "You two have been plotting this for a while."
He nods. "Years."
"When it sounded like you were fighting, he was hexing you?"
"Yeah. The collar would rebound the Unforgivables back onto the caster, but other things... it would just absorb. There had to be one for each Death Eater, though, or it wouldn't have worked. Some would have escaped."
I remember how sick he looked that day when Severus stormed out. "You still felt the hexes, though. You weren't completely protected."
He nods and presses a kiss to my forehead, but I want to push him away. I want to pull away, but I'm too tired, too drained. "I can't compete with that kind of bravery," I say. God, here they were plotting to overthrow the Dark Lord, hexing Harry half to death every day and then pumping him back up with the restorative... and I couldn't even make it through one more bloody night as a Death Eater plaything.
I don't even have the balls to push him away from me. "And now you're supplanting me."
"What?" I startle the word out of him.
"Aren't you?" I hope to startle another truth out of him. "How long have you and he been lovers?"
"Draco...!" Bah, no good. I've startled him to silence.
"I just want to know what's going to happen to me," I say. I finally get up the nerve to sit up, but still don't pull away from him completely. "Where are we, anyway?"
"Gryffindor Tower. It's been empty for years." He sits up and puts a hand on my shoulder. "I'm... I'm the first one who could get the portrait hole to open. The stairwells wouldn't even lead here for the Red Hand apparently."
He moves away from me then, climbing off the bed and wrapping another sheet around himself like a skirt. "I think you need to talk to him, though."
"Is he here?" I ask, meaning Severus.
"Yes," Harry says. "We came here to receive the loyalty of the Red Hand and such. There won't be... an instant transition."
"An instant transition to what?" I think, still thinking of myself and my affairs.
"To a new Ministry. It was essentially the Wizarding version of a military coup. It'll take time to rebuild social services and democratic representation."
"Uh huh." I could not care less about the state of the wizarding world at large. It was all too much to think about. And all I wanted to know was, what was I now? Was I still a slave? a pet? a lover? a disgrace? It was Voldemort who had stripped me of my wand. Now that he was gone, what was expected of me?
I hear Harry's sigh of relief and look up to see Severus standing in the archway.
Harry approaches him first. "I'm making a terrible mess of an explanation."
"I know," Severus says, dangling the tiny keys in front of him. "I've heard every word."
"I'll... I'll leave you alone, then."
Severus catches him by the chin and kisses him, one eye never straying from me as he does it, deliberately, so that I will see it. "Thank you, Harry," he says, and lets him go.
Then he comes to me. I am rigid with fury. "He always always bested me, in everything we did, from the first day we met."
He meets my anger with an edge of exasperation. "Why are you so difficult? He's not supplanting you. But a day is coming, soon, when keeping wizards as pets will be highly unseemly. And your parents are on their way back from Hong Kong as we speak."
"My parents?"
He looks suddenly very tired as he steps close. "What do you want, Draco?"
It is entirely too difficult a question, one I cannot answer when I do not know the rules, when I do not know the choices. "I would have... I would have been content, if you'd just... loved me." I realise I have not answered the question, but I throw it back at him. "What do you want, Severus?"
His hand is in my hair before I can move, his grip firm but not painful. "I want you. I've always wanted you. What an irony then that the Dark Lord gave you to me, making me determined never to take you against your will, to give you as much freedom as I could. Meanwhile your mother's meddling Vow meant I needed to ensure you stayed alive."
"Vow?" My already overtaxed brain did a flip.
"She made me take an Unbreakable Vow to protect you, before your sixth year. The wording was imprecise; I feared if you died, I would as well." His eyes are not soft; his glare is hot as he explains. "The goblin-made collar was my answer to that. And you made it clear enough to me that any bed but mine, any cock but mine, was your preference."
"No!" I should be shrinking from his vehemence, but I cannot let these things go unsaid. "I thought you didn't want me! You resented me. I w-was miserable... and I couldn't even find comfort with someone else because of the collar."
Here something goes through his eyes, and he examines my expression in turn. "I thought, initially, that you were just finding other lovers," he said. "I could use the key to tune in to what was happening. But I was too jealous to get more than a peek here or there. It was not until more recently I came to realise you were suffering as you were. I... wrongly assumed that if you were so mistreated, you wouldn't repeat the experience."
My heart is pounding in my chest. "I just wanted you. I just wanted to be yours."
"I see that now. Perhaps that explains why you could not come without me." He loosens his grip, runs one finger along the thin band of metal, then up the edge of my chin. "There is no charm on the collar to prevent you from coming."
A gasp catches in my throat.
"You were loyal to me all along."
"And," I say, but weakly, "you were loyal to Potter...?"
He lays me back on the bed, his robes black against the white sheets, covering me. "The plot for Harry and I to eliminate Voldemort stretches back into your school years. That was... always my first concern. But it is done with now."
He is kissing my neck and I am trembling, but I keep speaking. "And what is Harry to you now?"
"Perhaps we should settle the question of what you and I are now, before that one, hm? Harry is alone in the world. His friends and family are all dead and his destiny is fulfilled. He is adrift. But I could ask you the same question. I know you and he were lovers in my absence." His hands are warm against my ribs.
I dodge the issue. "Can I be yours, Severus? In this new world where you are Minister?"
"You can be anything you want to be," he whispers, just before brushing his lips across mine. "If your parents object, I will fight to keep you. But you must fight to keep me, too."
"Ah." My fingers are feverishly working at his robes, there between our bodies opening the cloth until I feel his bare cock against my belly. "You've never..." I am blushing. "We've never..."
"What do you want, Draco?" he intones, lips brushing against my ear.
"Make love to me," I say, my voice quavering with emotion, but not fear. "Please."
His lubrication charm is warm and sends a ripple of arousal through me. He stretches me with his fingers, just enough, as if he is as impatient for this as I am. I feel every inch of him as he makes his way into me, but there is no pain. He is sizable and it seems odd that I should only learn this now.
I wrap my legs around him, and he fucks me slowly, kissing my mouth and neck, letting his hands roam over me, brushing my nipples, seeking out the tender spots on my neck and shoulders. Harry fucking me felt good. This feels like each thrust turns back time, takes away one day we were angry or distant from each other. Each thrust erases the difference in our ages, our stations, our backgrounds. Eventually I am clinging to him with my arms, too, and he keeps himself propped with his own so that his hips are free to move, his cock plunging into me again and again.
I pass into a trance after a while, which seems slightly unfair-I have no wish to escape this sensuous ecstasy, why would I drift off now and not when I was being subjected to torture? But when my full awareness settles into me again after some unknown amount of time, I know for a certainty that I am close to coming.
"Severus..." I whisper. "So... so close..."
"Good," he says, and makes no move to change anything, just continuing to thrust as he has been, relentless and sure. And quite suddenly each penetration is like a scratch of a match against a flint, once, twice, thrice... and all of a sudden my orgasm catches fire, sending a cry into the air and heavy spurts of my seed between our bellies. Just as I am slowing down, though, he pounds into me harder, and his own spasm seems to prolong mine.
When he kisses me, it is with unfeigned passion.
When he speaks, it is breathless, but undeniably happy. "At least until things settle, you and Harry ought to continue to wear your collars."
I shake my head. He looks at me questioningly. "I'm never taking mine off willingly. I don't care."
"And Harry?"
I shrug. "He can decide for himself about the collar. But he can still be our lover, don't you think?"
"You won't be jealous?"
"Of course I'll be jealous. But he'll make it up to me, I'm sure."
"Good." He presses a kiss against my forehead. "Rest now. You're safe here. We'll go home as soon as we're able."
He leaves, and Harry comes back in. I slip under the covers and hold them open for Harry to join me. He does with a grateful smile, and I find my hand closing easily over his cock underneath the sheets. Neither of us says a word as I bring him off, the scent of his skin becoming familiar to me as we drift off to sleep together.
Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard;
Thou canst not then use rigor in my gaol:
And yet thou wilt; for I, being pent in thee,
Perforce am thine, and all that is in me.
--Sonnet 133, William Shakespeare
-end!-
and now, The Afterword!
I sat down thinking to write angstful smut, since that is often what I do. I thought perhaps the cards would determine:
what kind of pain was inflicted
on whom
by whom
But what I got was:
Death Reversed: Holding onto something, even when you know it's finished. Fear of change.
The Wheel, Reversed: Taking hold of your destiny. Discovering the causes behind events.
Eight of Cups: Possibility of change in a stable situation. Flashes of excitement, movement.
That seemed to me to clearly define a plot arc, in which a situation that has been stable for a long time changes. I also made the connection of "death" to orgasm (the "little death") so death reversed would be orgasm denial. The Wheel of Fortune seemed like a torture device, like a Catherine Wheel I once saw in a dungeon, and the eight of cups said potions to me. So that sounds to me like a Snape-centric story...
I also wanted to combine this with one of my Seven Spells prompts, which really cemented the direction when I chose the prompt "disheveled." Which immediately sent my brain to an image of just-fucked or roughly-used Draco. Click. Everything fell into place.
The three card arc describes Draco's situation, the untenable balance he has with Snape for years where both of them are miserable, but then Harry arrives and Draco starts trying to find out what is going on, and there are various positive signs he receives while doing this. Interestingly, the plot arc ALSO describes things for Snape and Harry, who have been lying in wait for an opportunity to move their plot against Voldemort forward.
I hope you enjoyed it! Don't forget to comment on all the pieces in the hp_tarot fest! Awards will go to the best commenters, and your nominations for the best fics and art will be taken starting September 1st!