Truth in the Keeping of Stones (NC-17; Snuna; 3450 words)
Title: Truth in the Keeping of Stones
Author: iulia_linnea
Pairing: Snuna
Rating: NC-17
Warning (highlight to view): Luna is sixteen-years-old.
Word Count: 3450
Summary: Severus and Luna are bound by something more than loneliness.
Disclaimer: This piece is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling; various publishers, including, but not limited to: Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books, Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: Written for hp_het_kink's Bondage Challenge. Thank you, eaivalefay, for beta'ing.
He feels vaguely disconnected, yet he knows things. He knows that he should be sleeping, that he is not alone in the corridor, but these things don't matter because he is too intent on deciphering the diffuse throbbing of the stones which surrounds him. He knows that Hogwarts is composed of voices, that its bricks are held together with something more than mortar, with secrets other than those of magic, and he is attempting to understand why these things are true when the person with him speaks.
"I tend to kick a bit."
The world moves back into focus for him then, and that focus is a lithe female form; he knows at once who she is as she begins to walk away.
Following Luna Lovegood into what he presumes to be her bedchamber-for it seems right that he should do so-Severus does not understand why she is telling him about her kicking until he sees the headboard: there are two fastened belts hanging in loops from it. The straps are of the same blue as the girl's eyes and have intricate silver buckles. His cock hardens and pulses as the image of a nude Luna, her legs spread and raised overhead, her ankles caught by the leather loops, rises in his mind. He forgets about the stones but says nothing, and Luna, who has turned to regard him, frowns.
He doesn't remember ever seeing the girl frown before-at him or at anyone-and finds that he doesn't like it.
"I'll just take these off, then," Luna tells him, kneeling up on the bed and leaning over farther than is strictly necessary to grasp the first loop.
Severus takes in the sight of her heart-shaped arse pressing against the leaf-green cotton of her dress and stumbles.
She's doing that on purpose, isn't she? Not one to waste an opportunity, and because he thinks it might make her smile, he orders, "Leave the belts where they are and strip off," while removing his robes.
Luna cranes her neck to look at him, a grin overspreading her pale, flushed features.
And Severus is pleased.
Luna's grin widens as she sees that Severus is nude but for his boots.
"Oh, that's naughty, isn't it? Leave those on," she tells him, as she spins around enthusiastically to land on her bum.
The bed shakes-so do Luna's breasts-but she makes no move to undress.
Severus advances until he is looming over her, and Luna, undaunted, leans back to rest upon her elbows. Severus places his palms flat on the mattress, one on each side of her body, and lowers himself down until he is almost touching her and says, "I told you to. Strip. Off."
"So you did, but I'd prefer it if you'd undress me, yourself," Luna says, arching her back and presenting her neck and torso to Severus.
He leans forward and down to lick up her neck at the same time that he reaches for her gown with his right hand, balls the material up in his fist, and pulls.
The sound of ripping cotton seems very loud, but there is no echo.
"Oh!" Luna exclaims. "Yes, just like that, Severus."
Annoyed by her use of his name, Severus bites her throat-lightly-and worries the tender flesh of it with his teeth.
It is a warning that Luna ignores and a tease to which she responds, writhing against him, pushing her breasts into his chest, and Severus growls as he falls upon her, groans as he feels Luna wrap her legs around his torso, gasps as the girl thrusts the cloth-covered heat of her cunt against his straining erection.
"Fuck!"
"That's the idea," Luna replies, falling back onto the mattress as she reaches up to twine her fingers into Severus' hair and pull his mouth down to her own for a kiss.
There is nothing hesitant about her, and Severus wonders why he isn't surprised.
Aren't Ravenclaws supposed to be frigid?
The wet soft silkiness of Luna's tongue is, however, proof enough of her desire, and Severus allows it to invade his mouth unchecked, delighting in the feel of the girl's explorations.
And then Luna bites his lower lip, hard.
"Why'd you do that?" Severus demands angrily, allowing his arms to go limp so that his full weight rests on the girl as a punishment.
"I want . . . your . . . attention," she forces out. "Kiss . . . me back."
Severus rolls off of Luna and up into a kneeling stance to tower over her. "Take that off," he insists, meaning what is left of her dress, and Luna does, smiling with what Severus knows is feigned meekness as she wriggles out of the torn cloth and pushes it down to her ankles to kick the fabric to the floor.
Severus traces the lace edging of the waistband of her knickers lightly, sliding his fingers under it and jerking until it snaps free. "Lift up," he says, and, as she does, he pulls the ruined garment down her legs and off of her body in satisfaction.
Luna is in no way cowed by his abruptness and asks, "Now what?"
"Turn yourself around-hands on the headboard," Severus orders, and he is a little surprised to see how quickly she obeys him.
The only sign that the girl might be nervous is the whiteness of her knuckles as she grips the wooden slats above her.
Probably just anticipation, Severus thinks, reaching for Luna's right leg. "Grab the right loop," he tells her, and when she does, he threads her ankle through it.
He repeats this procedure with her left leg and sits back, noting how excited she is by the glistening of her cunt. He can smell her arousal, as well, and desires nothing more than to bury his face into her sex and lap at it until she is screaming.
But it isn't time for that, yet, he tells himself, scooting forward to run his hands over the backs of her thighs to the hind curves of her knees, which he tickles lightly with the pads of his thumbs.
Luna giggles. "Aren't you going to kiss me?"
"When I'm ready."
Luna pouts. "What are you wait-"
"Waiting for, Miss Lovegood?" Severus asks, wondering himself.
"Yes, Severus. What are you waiting for?" she asks again, thrusting up her hips.
In her position, she does not have much freedom to move, though she is not truly bound.
"Whom do you 'kick a bit'?"
"What?"
"Whom," Severus repeats, moving his hands to stroke along her belly toward her breasts, "do you 'kick a bit'?"
It isn't jealousy he's feeling; still, he wants to know.
Luna just stares at him, so Severus pinches, in turn, and none too gently, her erect nipples.
"Oh! I . . . oh."
"You're not answering me," Severus observes, rolling each nipple between his fingers.
"No, I'm . . . that's . . . oh."
Continuing his manipulation of Luna's breasts, Severus aligns his prick between the slick, drooping folds of her cunt and pushes himself against them. So hot, so wet . . . for me, he thinks, almost swooning from the rush of blood to his cock.
Luna bucks her hips; her legs swing in the loops, but they can't quite close.
"Please, do something, do anything," she begs. "Move!"
Severus decides that he no longer cares whom else Luna has kicked and slides his swollen shaft up and down over her gaping cunt, purposefully avoiding her clit in his thrusts. He is light-headed now, and so pleased by her moans that he thinks he might have to take her. Still, he resists.
There is something else, he knows, that he is supposed to be doing-or not doing.
Either way, he can't think of what it is or isn't as he exults in Luna's obvious yearning for him. He can barely think at all as the girl reaches out to grab at the light dusting of hair over his chest and attempts to pull him closer to her by tugging upon it. Her fingers find no purchase, however, and she whimpers in frustration.
Hoarsely, Severus asks, "You want me?" even though he knows the answer.
"To kiss me, yes. Please?"
It is delightful to be begged, Severus thinks, but better to be begged properly. "'Please', what?" he demands, staring into Luna's wide blue unfocused eyes.
Luna's eyes sharpen then, as if she's been waiting for his question, and she asks, "Please kiss me, Professor."
Yes, Severus thinks. That's what I want to hear. Yes, he thinks, sliding his body between her strap-bound legs to claim Luna's mouth.
His kiss is rough, but the girl doesn't seem to mind; she strains against Severus' body, causing her cunt to grind against his weeping cock. The sensation makes Severus heedless of any prior concerns.
Ready. She's ready for me, he tells himself, thrusting his tongue and his prick deeply into Luna's body at the same moment. Hottightwetohsofuckinggood!
Luna's sex is like a vise, pumping him, squeezing him. It's like a slippery, welcoming fist-two fists-and it takes all of Severus' concentration not to jerk his hips too savagely against her as he slides in and out of her cunt with a slowness that is magnificent agony to him. But then the girl pushes his tongue back out of her mouth before sucking it back in with her lips, mimicking the grasp of her interior flesh on his cock, and Severus loses what little control he has.
"Fuck!" he yells, rearing up onto his knees and grabbing Luna's thighs with his stained, greedy hands to steady himself as he slams into the girl.
"Professor! Oh, Prof-fessor Snape! Fuck . . . fuck . . . fuck me!"
And Luna's not begging now, but Severus doesn't care; "fuck me!" is an order with which he can cheerfully comply.
"Say it again," he pants.
"Professor . . . Professor . . . Professor Snape!" Luna shouts, losing herself to orgasm as Severus discovers that the flesh of her cunt, working his prick in ecstatic undulation, cannot be denied.
"Gahfuckyes!" he chokes out, collapsing atop Luna.
She feels like pillows.
But Severus doesn't think about this; he can't think about it because the fingers on his cock are massaging it, forcing it to squeeze out every last drop of his come, and the aftershocks of pleasure this is causing send him shuddering into unconsciousness.
~*~
Severus wakes up in his own bed on his belly atop a pile of sweat-dampened pillows, his hands sticky and wrapped around his spent shaft, and he feels stiff and sore and sick as he pushes himself up and notices the mess of student essays scattered over his bed.
There are no blue belts with intricate silver buckles looped to the wooden slats of his headboard.
"And no Luna Lovegood," he murmurs in disappointment, shoving himself up and staggering into his loo.
He runs a hot shower and stands under it, unmoving.
I should know better by now than to mark essays in bed, he remonstrates with himself, when he is at last beginning to wash all traces of the shameful activity from his body. Damn Lovegood for being so thoroughly versed in binding potions!
The Sixth Year's essay on their . . . alternative uses had been exemplary-most inspiring, in fact-and Severus had not been able to help himself. He understands this now; it has happened before.
He turns off the water and reaches for his bathrobe, which he wraps around his slender frame-after pulling free and casting away its belt-before walking back into his bedroom to gather the essays. He recollects that he did not complete marking them before Lovegood's essay drove him to all fours, his chest resting on a pile of pillows, so that he could stroke himself off two-handedly.
Severus lays the inspirational essay on top of the pile and carries it through his rooms to his office, where he sits down at his desk to stare at it and wonder at the state of his personal life.
He feels guilty, for his personal life has always been, by necessity, very personal, indeed, and he knows that it is wrong of him to have involved, even obliquely, an innocent in the slaking of his carnal needs.
How can one slight pale slip of a girl unnerve me so? What's wrong with me?
It is not, he knows, wise to fantasize about a student, particularly when the student in question is as . . . odd, as observant, as Luna Lovegood. Severus has seen her watching him. He knows that she has seen him watching back.
Sometimes-and he'd never admit having such a foolish notion to anyone-he swears that he's being watched by the very stones of the castle. He attributes this whimsy as being the result of his solitary, nocturnal habit of wandering the corridors and tries not to dwell upon it.
Besides, even if I am in the keeping of stones, even if they are watching, it's obvious that they have no desire to interfere, isn't it?
He has, he knows, interfered enough on his own.
He wonders at what he's seen in Lovegood's mind while he's been bent over her, guiding her in the stirring of her cauldron. He knows that it is a weakness to pry as he does, but he can't help himself-Luna Lovegood has the most fertile imagination of any student he's ever taught.
And there's no way she could possibly know of my perversion, he consoles himself.
He promises himself, again, that he will stop. He promises himself that his most recent . . . indulgence will be enough for him. He promises himself these things as his head dips forward-but he forces his eyes to remain open because he doesn't want to dream. It isn't right for him to keep dreaming of Lovegood, to fuel his dreams of her by what he finds in her mind.
All students develop crushes on their professors; even he used to do.
Severus sends up a grateful prayer thanking whatever gods saw to it that Minerva McGonagall did not become a Legilimens; he begs for strength, as well, for he knows that his own Legilimentical forays into Lovegood's mind might one day compel him to be careless outside of the safety of his bed.
That would be a mistake that even Albus could not forgive.
A knock falls upon his door; the sound of it echoes upon the stones.
Without first considering his state of undress, Severus calls, "Come."
The door opens, and the most recent object of his masturbatory fantasies enters his office.
Severus immediately notices the two entwined blue belts with intricate silver buckles at her waist that are holding up the gauzy, leaf-green skirt that is half-covered by her open robes. The drape of her blouse prevents him from making out just what the buckles represent.
"Are those leather?" he asks, to explain away his staring.
Luna Lovegood smiles. "I thought you might have noticed my wearing them," she says, as if it's perfectly normal to be discussing her clothing's accessories with her Potions professor. "I found these one day-in a corridor, while I was walking by myself-and I kept them. I like belts, you know."
"Do you?" Severus asks, his mouth going dry. "Why?"
The door shuts inexplicably behind Luna as she walks forward, places her palms flat on the desk, one on each side of the pile of student essays, and leans down until she is almost touching Severus' mouth with her own. "Because I tend to kick a bit-in bed-and the belts keep me from strangling my lovers when their faces are buried in my sex and lapping at it, lapping at it until I'm screaming," she says, before pressing her lips against Severus' and sliding her tongue into his mouth. Moments later, she pulls back, drawing her lips up his inquisitive tongue and sucking on it lasciviously as if fellating a tiny cock before continuing, "but then, you know that, don't you, Professor Snape?"
"Lo-ovegood," Severus stammers, a vague tendril of shock pushing through the renewed arousal of his treacherous body to wind itself as a warning around his mind, for the memory of her tongue feels real enough. Too real. Too wrong.
"Call me Luna, Severus," the girl insists, caressing the side of his face with one unstained, generous hand.
Luna's lack of hesitancy is familiar, too familiar. No, reassuringly familiar, Severus tells himself. I must be dreaming.
And such a dream as this one is not an opportunity to be wasted, Severus knows, no matter the promises he has foolishly made to himself.
I never did taste her, did I? he thinks, as he carries Luna back to his bedchamber. Besides, there will be time enough for guilt later. There always is.
~*~
When Luna wakes up to the chilly, near-dawn of a Hogwarts' morning, she smiles to find that one of Severus' wrists remains lashed to a wooden slat of his headboard. As she reaches up to free it, she can still feel the tickling, probing wetness of her professor's tongue in her cunt.
He likes to take her mouth while bound beneath her, and she has no compunction against indulging him in this desire.
"You were inspired," she tells him, kissing him gently on the mouth before sliding her belt over his chest and gracefully rising from the bed. "And you were dreaming," she continues, as she returns to it with a phial of clear liquid she has removed from her robes, unstoppers it, and pours one drop of the substance onto a fingertip before rubbing it into his lower lip.
Severus' eyes flutter open as his tongue darts out to lap at the potion with what Luna considers to be a frustrating eagerness. She wishes that he would remember, that he would want to remember, what they do together.
In spite of this, she assures him, "You were dreaming," and feels only slightly disappointed to know that he needs believe their lie. "Now, go back to sleep and dream of me-only of me."
"You. . . . Yes," Severus murmurs, "only ever you, Luna."
She knows that he feels guilty about what they do-about what he had been doing, before there was a "they." That's why she's worked so hard on refining the particular binding potion she's been using on him for months. Before-before Luna caught him crying out her name in his office as he came-there had been lots of other names on his lips. Severus had been so very drunk and embarrassed when he had confessed this to her, and Luna, who had never been particularly judgmental, had decided it was reasonable to help the man restrain his lustful, Legilimentical forays to her mind alone.
That she has come to offer the professor her body, as well as her fantasies and her discretion, stems from the pragmatism born of her own loneliness: she is not one to waste an opportunity, and, since coming to study and live amongst the enchanted stones of the castle, Luna has found many interesting opportunities to seize.
Severus' prick is, to date, her favorite.
I understand you, Luna believes, looking at the near-peace of Severus' sleeping state and smiling because, suddenly, she doesn't need him to acknowledge her undreamt self in their waking hours. I like your mouth on me too much, she tells him silently, and I'll dream about it, she promises, as she covers Severus with his worn bedspread before tip-toeing from his room on whispering feet that only Hogwarts ever seems to hear.
The stones of the corridors' floors feel warm, almost alive, as they guide Luna back to her own bed, and, snuggling into her blankets, she is struck by the notion that the castle keeps her secret with Severus so that it may dream, as well, and thus never be lonely.
"Oh, I quite like that idea," Luna murmurs, shutting her eyes and wondering about what it is that Severus is dreaming.
She does not, therefore, notice how the moonlight washes in through the open windows of her dormitory to bathe the buckles of her entwined blue belts, which she's looped over one arm of her desk chair, but the intricate silver buckles, wrought by some ancient art to be twin images of Hogwarts, glint with an eldritch glow in the light and pulse in time with the mysterious song sung by the stones of the castle.
It is a lullaby, and soon, all Luna knows is sleep.
Joining Luna is Severus, for whom Hogwarts sings, as well, and the dream they share in the peace of the coming dawn holds more than just the stones of the castle together-for dreams are older than magic, and love, in all its forms, is older still.
This truth, as Hogwarts understands it, is a secret that must slowly be revealed if it is ever to be believed at all.