FIC: "Three Days of Warfare" (SS/HP, R)
Title: Three Days of Warfare
Author: Penumbra (pen_and_umbra)
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: SS/HP
Rating: NC-17
Word count: ca. 2,200 (complete)
Disclaimer: Not mine. Don't sue.
Feedback: Makes the world go 'round.
Summary: "I realise I've made a Potter into my own image and the thought fills me with unbecoming hysteria."
Notes: Companion piece to Necessary Surrogates though the two are quite separate entities. This one was a bitch and a half to write and I'm not quite sure how happy I'm with it overall (then again, I'm anal retentive that way).
Three Days of Warfare
by Penumbra (c) 2004
My day starts with roses, sodomy, and scrambled eggs.
Potter has made a habit of these foolish, insipid stunts he calls romantic and I consider disgustingly plebeian. Never offended, he smiles at my sneer. I wonder why he is here in the first place; he knows that look by now and admonishes me for my need to question every good thing in my life. This is how well he knows me.
What happens after the flowers, however, is the reason I forgive him his myopia. His Latin is impeccable: hedralingus is his art and fellatio is something he shouldn't be able to do with such devastating flair at his age. He is sometimes deceptive that way, this hero of ours -- Janus-faced, faceless, face down on my bed and spread out like a whore.
"You have no shame," I whisper even as I push into him. "None."
He laughs into the pillows and shifts his hips. When inside him, a man could go blind from that. "If I had...oh, fuck...if I had any to begin with, you fucked it right out of me, Severus."
My heart or whatever of it is left feels heavy in my chest. Had I a conscience, it would be reaching for the Dreamless Sleep.
Underneath me, his back is slick and flexing with muscle and pleasure; his feet stroke my calves in a feat of contortion and concentration only someone of his age is capable of performing.
That concentration fades when I force every last inch of my cock into him. His words trail to inchoate syllables; I fuck him as if he were an animal being punished and he takes all of it with the heedless ecstasy of a born sybarite. The sinuous flex of his spine and the sounds he makes are positively epicurean and when I sink my nails into his back, he does something with his hips that turns my blood to quicksilver.
"Impatience doesn't, ah, become you," I hiss, staring past the stars in my eyes and at the crescents of my nailmarks on his skin.
"Oh, hell, Severus," he moans, voice tight with delight; "Fuck all I care when you fuck me like this. Oh god..."
He comes and along with my orgasm, the flawless press of his flesh wrings all breath and shame out of me. The beauty of his body is in the momentary freedom of oblivion it offers me.
Later, at breakfast, he sits at the head table because there is no table for Dumbledore's weapons of war who didn't leave Hogwarts when they should have. I can't quite decide if it makes me more of a fool that I left only to crawl back at my darkest hour, all those years ago.
"You taste so much better than the eggs."
My fork wobbles in my hand. "Potter..."
His smile is as genuine as my ire. "Don't you dare 'Potter' me, Severus, not when I have your come leaking out of my arse. It was a compliment."
"Very well," I say, pushing my plate aside. "However, if you dare make one comment regarding egg whites or hen-pecked cocks, I shan't be responsible for my actions."
When he laughs, Minerva turns to us with an expression that is both scandalised and curious. Dumbledore suspects something, so I think she must, too. For the duration of the day and with moderate success, I escape her speculative looks to my work: the harmonic convergence is soon upon us.
* * *
The next day, the prospect of sunlight lures me out. I fear its inherent optimism might soil my perfectly dark mood through osmosis and I'm relieved when it doesn't. When I sit down, the sun-warmed bark of an oak feels rather pleasant against my back, though.
The students are out, too, wandering about the lawns in large groups like plagues of tiresome, bored locusts. They steer well clear of me and their consideration fills me with weary humour; misanthropy has its benefits. I catch stray sentences of their conversations -- of homework and essays and how disgustingly unfair I am -- and the sheer banality of their worries brings an air of surrealism into this most extraordinary of days.
And speaking of the banal...
"I'm surprised to see you out here, Severus."
I glance up at her. "Minerva."
She doesn't sit, for which I'm grateful: her robes clash horribly with the green grass and her manner gives me hope that she won't linger.
"Albus tells me you have suggested it should be today."
My apprehension sits in my gut like a nest of reptiles, uneasy and alive with venom. "The planetary convergence lasts three nights. I'm ready today."
"Good," Minerva says and fidgets. She never fidgets so something must be bothering her a great deal. It takes her a minute to find the words. "Severus... I wanted to talk to you about Harry."
Ah. Of course. "What of Potter?"
"He has been spending a lot of time with you recently."
Potter has said that while his friends make him laugh, only I can make him smile. I don't quite know what to say to such a statement of monumental naïveté; often, I don't have to reply at all, for he is so easily distracted by his cock.
"Not that it is any of your concern, Minerva, but I can assure you we are not about to hex one another into oblivion."
From the thin line of her mouth, I can tell my palliative was rather impotent. "I worry, Severus. He is... impressionable."
Don't have him turn out like you, her tone says. For one delicious moment, I consider telling her Potter is already too much like I used to be: quick with his tongue, quicker with his desires, and growing into the kind of ruthlessness that kings and killers envy.
There are limits to what I'm willing to teach Potter, though I've yet to find those limits. There are so many things he doesn't know -- these fascinating, macabre things I've come to learn: how revolting the smell of burnt meat is when it's one's own flesh that's burning; the numerous and mostly diabolical uses of corrosive potions; how I sometimes can't distinguish between sounds of torture and the scream that he makes when he comes.
I have no acceptable answers for Minerva and soon, she grows weary of my reticence and leaves. I watch her go and wonder if she has any idea, any idea, of the kind of a Pandora's Box her question is.
Not five minutes later, Potter approaches and sits down next to me.
"Good morning, Severus. Enjoying the sunshine?"
I attempt a smile in reply and from the sardonic frown on his face, I can see it wasn't a resounding success. His smile is much better.
"It's going to be tonight?" he continues, intensely, as if pleading for the planets to align themselves differently.
"Tonight, if the Headmaster has so agreed."
He touches my shoulder and my skin crawls underneath his hand. I'm peripherally aware of the odd looks his friends are giving us from the comfortable distance they maintain; they know even less than Minerva. I am as much his shameful, scandalous, addictive vice as he is mine.
"I'm ready," he tells himself. "I am."
My smile is better now, too. "You may be many things, Mr. Potter, but ready isn't one of them."
"I really don't have a choice in the matter, do I?"
His relative youth doesn't bother me as much as the hard, old edge in his voice does. His nihilism is like an ill-fitting robe: familiar, aesthetically disturbing, and vaguely uncomfortable. I realise I've made a Potter into my own image and the thought fills me with unbecoming hysteria.
That evening, Potter kills Voldemort. The hours turn pale and cold before he falls asleep; I don't sleep at all.
* * *
The morning brings the news into the open. He races into the bedroom at half past dark, making a racket that immediately sets my teeth on edge. The Daily Prophet he dangles in front of my face tells me Voldemort is five ounces of oily ash and a royal mess on our hands, as if I didn't know it already.
When he runs off to share his overabundance of energy with the rest of the world, I rise and wonder what happened to my sanity.
Voldemort's ashes are in my office, stored in a jar bristling with wards and when I open the lid, the smell of rancid fat permeates the air. Swallowing against the nausea, I run my hand through the ashes. His magic still lingers and it's strong, dark, and so very tempting. I close the jar and shove it to the back of my ingredients cupboard before I can add to my weaknesses. The boy is enough.
"Mr. Potter," I curse into the quiet. He's left the Daily Prophet on my desk and he waves at me from its front page. "Congratulations. Now what the hell are you going to do with the rest of your life?"
He looks tired in the picture, shell-shocked and hollow. Even this miniature facsimile of him reads like an open book -- all neat lines, black and white and little in between. He is too young to see gradations and the shadows that eat at me, though not young enough to not have succumbed to them. He's already ingested so much of me and of the cold, hungry poison that passes for my soul.
In the evening, there is the obligatory feast, and I amuse myself through it by imagining new uses for Voldemort's ashes. I'm up to 'Mandrake fertiliser' when Potter finds me. He brings with him the sordid smell of excitement and gin-enhanced punch and if I don't look too closely at the glow of his eyes or at the bruises on his innocence, I'll never be able to tell Voldemort is gone.
Of course, all I need to do to remind myself of reality is roll up my sleeve and see my master's brand on my arm: it's now but a stain that mars my mortality. With the Dark Lord dead, I wonder whether Potter's scars and vices will dull and fade, too.
Potter stops in front of me, smiling with all his teeth, and tugs on my arm. "Come on. Let's get out of here."
"Where to?"
"Someplace with fewer people and more nudity, Severus," he says through his smile and yanks me upright.
The outraged looks we get as we depart hand in hand are almost worth the ignominy of his enthusiasm. I should resist but I don't have the willpower, not when I'm this exhausted and when he is this incandescent with perfection and lust. If Minerva only knew how weak I can be and with what ease this beautiful, broken boy becomes a temptation.
"In here," he whispers into my ear and pushes me through the nearest open door.
I look around. "Trysts in cupboards, Potter? How very sordid."
He still smiles; his breath reeks of alcohol. "Somehow appropriate, too."
Amidst the prosaic decor of brooms and buckets, I almost laugh. The sound turns to a gasp when he kneels in front of me and opens my trousers. It's embarrassing how someone at my age can be this predictable.
I try to feel as much of him as I can with my hands -- the concaves of his cheeks that he almost needs to shave and the texture of his hair that almost understands what gravity is. And, fuck, his mouth that surely defies several laws of physics as it draws these pathetic sounds out of me. His name, too.
"The things you do to me," I hiss, angry; it shouldn't feel this good, not when I can feel the sharp edge of his teeth as he smiles. "Ah, careful..."
When I look down, I'm transfixed by his lips. They gleam red like ripe cherries, sinful and fresh, as they strike sparks on my cock. In the near dark he looks like one of my Knockturn Alley rent boys, servicing me an oblivion with as much regard for his own soul as a dead man has for his heartbeat.
In this state, I cannot quite muster the remorse I should be feeling, not when the obscene, wet sounds of his mouth on my hungry flesh fill me with dread and want.
He's told me he loves me. That thought is pure dread, too.
He belongs to the world, not the dark depths of my dungeons. He shouldn't become another failed experiment of Dumbledore's, not like this and not because of me; surely, he deserves his victories untainted.
This has to end, too. It needs to end today, I decide, until I feel his throat swallow around me. It makes me forget everything but my animus and the incendiary lethe of his mouth.
Perhaps not today, then.
* * *
Fin.
On to the next story in series: Distractions in Abeyance
Author: Penumbra (pen_and_umbra)
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: SS/HP
Rating: NC-17
Word count: ca. 2,200 (complete)
Disclaimer: Not mine. Don't sue.
Feedback: Makes the world go 'round.
Summary: "I realise I've made a Potter into my own image and the thought fills me with unbecoming hysteria."
Notes: Companion piece to Necessary Surrogates though the two are quite separate entities. This one was a bitch and a half to write and I'm not quite sure how happy I'm with it overall (then again, I'm anal retentive that way).
Three Days of Warfare
by Penumbra (c) 2004
My day starts with roses, sodomy, and scrambled eggs.
Potter has made a habit of these foolish, insipid stunts he calls romantic and I consider disgustingly plebeian. Never offended, he smiles at my sneer. I wonder why he is here in the first place; he knows that look by now and admonishes me for my need to question every good thing in my life. This is how well he knows me.
What happens after the flowers, however, is the reason I forgive him his myopia. His Latin is impeccable: hedralingus is his art and fellatio is something he shouldn't be able to do with such devastating flair at his age. He is sometimes deceptive that way, this hero of ours -- Janus-faced, faceless, face down on my bed and spread out like a whore.
"You have no shame," I whisper even as I push into him. "None."
He laughs into the pillows and shifts his hips. When inside him, a man could go blind from that. "If I had...oh, fuck...if I had any to begin with, you fucked it right out of me, Severus."
My heart or whatever of it is left feels heavy in my chest. Had I a conscience, it would be reaching for the Dreamless Sleep.
Underneath me, his back is slick and flexing with muscle and pleasure; his feet stroke my calves in a feat of contortion and concentration only someone of his age is capable of performing.
That concentration fades when I force every last inch of my cock into him. His words trail to inchoate syllables; I fuck him as if he were an animal being punished and he takes all of it with the heedless ecstasy of a born sybarite. The sinuous flex of his spine and the sounds he makes are positively epicurean and when I sink my nails into his back, he does something with his hips that turns my blood to quicksilver.
"Impatience doesn't, ah, become you," I hiss, staring past the stars in my eyes and at the crescents of my nailmarks on his skin.
"Oh, hell, Severus," he moans, voice tight with delight; "Fuck all I care when you fuck me like this. Oh god..."
He comes and along with my orgasm, the flawless press of his flesh wrings all breath and shame out of me. The beauty of his body is in the momentary freedom of oblivion it offers me.
Later, at breakfast, he sits at the head table because there is no table for Dumbledore's weapons of war who didn't leave Hogwarts when they should have. I can't quite decide if it makes me more of a fool that I left only to crawl back at my darkest hour, all those years ago.
"You taste so much better than the eggs."
My fork wobbles in my hand. "Potter..."
His smile is as genuine as my ire. "Don't you dare 'Potter' me, Severus, not when I have your come leaking out of my arse. It was a compliment."
"Very well," I say, pushing my plate aside. "However, if you dare make one comment regarding egg whites or hen-pecked cocks, I shan't be responsible for my actions."
When he laughs, Minerva turns to us with an expression that is both scandalised and curious. Dumbledore suspects something, so I think she must, too. For the duration of the day and with moderate success, I escape her speculative looks to my work: the harmonic convergence is soon upon us.
* * *
The next day, the prospect of sunlight lures me out. I fear its inherent optimism might soil my perfectly dark mood through osmosis and I'm relieved when it doesn't. When I sit down, the sun-warmed bark of an oak feels rather pleasant against my back, though.
The students are out, too, wandering about the lawns in large groups like plagues of tiresome, bored locusts. They steer well clear of me and their consideration fills me with weary humour; misanthropy has its benefits. I catch stray sentences of their conversations -- of homework and essays and how disgustingly unfair I am -- and the sheer banality of their worries brings an air of surrealism into this most extraordinary of days.
And speaking of the banal...
"I'm surprised to see you out here, Severus."
I glance up at her. "Minerva."
She doesn't sit, for which I'm grateful: her robes clash horribly with the green grass and her manner gives me hope that she won't linger.
"Albus tells me you have suggested it should be today."
My apprehension sits in my gut like a nest of reptiles, uneasy and alive with venom. "The planetary convergence lasts three nights. I'm ready today."
"Good," Minerva says and fidgets. She never fidgets so something must be bothering her a great deal. It takes her a minute to find the words. "Severus... I wanted to talk to you about Harry."
Ah. Of course. "What of Potter?"
"He has been spending a lot of time with you recently."
Potter has said that while his friends make him laugh, only I can make him smile. I don't quite know what to say to such a statement of monumental naïveté; often, I don't have to reply at all, for he is so easily distracted by his cock.
"Not that it is any of your concern, Minerva, but I can assure you we are not about to hex one another into oblivion."
From the thin line of her mouth, I can tell my palliative was rather impotent. "I worry, Severus. He is... impressionable."
Don't have him turn out like you, her tone says. For one delicious moment, I consider telling her Potter is already too much like I used to be: quick with his tongue, quicker with his desires, and growing into the kind of ruthlessness that kings and killers envy.
There are limits to what I'm willing to teach Potter, though I've yet to find those limits. There are so many things he doesn't know -- these fascinating, macabre things I've come to learn: how revolting the smell of burnt meat is when it's one's own flesh that's burning; the numerous and mostly diabolical uses of corrosive potions; how I sometimes can't distinguish between sounds of torture and the scream that he makes when he comes.
I have no acceptable answers for Minerva and soon, she grows weary of my reticence and leaves. I watch her go and wonder if she has any idea, any idea, of the kind of a Pandora's Box her question is.
Not five minutes later, Potter approaches and sits down next to me.
"Good morning, Severus. Enjoying the sunshine?"
I attempt a smile in reply and from the sardonic frown on his face, I can see it wasn't a resounding success. His smile is much better.
"It's going to be tonight?" he continues, intensely, as if pleading for the planets to align themselves differently.
"Tonight, if the Headmaster has so agreed."
He touches my shoulder and my skin crawls underneath his hand. I'm peripherally aware of the odd looks his friends are giving us from the comfortable distance they maintain; they know even less than Minerva. I am as much his shameful, scandalous, addictive vice as he is mine.
"I'm ready," he tells himself. "I am."
My smile is better now, too. "You may be many things, Mr. Potter, but ready isn't one of them."
"I really don't have a choice in the matter, do I?"
His relative youth doesn't bother me as much as the hard, old edge in his voice does. His nihilism is like an ill-fitting robe: familiar, aesthetically disturbing, and vaguely uncomfortable. I realise I've made a Potter into my own image and the thought fills me with unbecoming hysteria.
That evening, Potter kills Voldemort. The hours turn pale and cold before he falls asleep; I don't sleep at all.
* * *
The morning brings the news into the open. He races into the bedroom at half past dark, making a racket that immediately sets my teeth on edge. The Daily Prophet he dangles in front of my face tells me Voldemort is five ounces of oily ash and a royal mess on our hands, as if I didn't know it already.
When he runs off to share his overabundance of energy with the rest of the world, I rise and wonder what happened to my sanity.
Voldemort's ashes are in my office, stored in a jar bristling with wards and when I open the lid, the smell of rancid fat permeates the air. Swallowing against the nausea, I run my hand through the ashes. His magic still lingers and it's strong, dark, and so very tempting. I close the jar and shove it to the back of my ingredients cupboard before I can add to my weaknesses. The boy is enough.
"Mr. Potter," I curse into the quiet. He's left the Daily Prophet on my desk and he waves at me from its front page. "Congratulations. Now what the hell are you going to do with the rest of your life?"
He looks tired in the picture, shell-shocked and hollow. Even this miniature facsimile of him reads like an open book -- all neat lines, black and white and little in between. He is too young to see gradations and the shadows that eat at me, though not young enough to not have succumbed to them. He's already ingested so much of me and of the cold, hungry poison that passes for my soul.
In the evening, there is the obligatory feast, and I amuse myself through it by imagining new uses for Voldemort's ashes. I'm up to 'Mandrake fertiliser' when Potter finds me. He brings with him the sordid smell of excitement and gin-enhanced punch and if I don't look too closely at the glow of his eyes or at the bruises on his innocence, I'll never be able to tell Voldemort is gone.
Of course, all I need to do to remind myself of reality is roll up my sleeve and see my master's brand on my arm: it's now but a stain that mars my mortality. With the Dark Lord dead, I wonder whether Potter's scars and vices will dull and fade, too.
Potter stops in front of me, smiling with all his teeth, and tugs on my arm. "Come on. Let's get out of here."
"Where to?"
"Someplace with fewer people and more nudity, Severus," he says through his smile and yanks me upright.
The outraged looks we get as we depart hand in hand are almost worth the ignominy of his enthusiasm. I should resist but I don't have the willpower, not when I'm this exhausted and when he is this incandescent with perfection and lust. If Minerva only knew how weak I can be and with what ease this beautiful, broken boy becomes a temptation.
"In here," he whispers into my ear and pushes me through the nearest open door.
I look around. "Trysts in cupboards, Potter? How very sordid."
He still smiles; his breath reeks of alcohol. "Somehow appropriate, too."
Amidst the prosaic decor of brooms and buckets, I almost laugh. The sound turns to a gasp when he kneels in front of me and opens my trousers. It's embarrassing how someone at my age can be this predictable.
I try to feel as much of him as I can with my hands -- the concaves of his cheeks that he almost needs to shave and the texture of his hair that almost understands what gravity is. And, fuck, his mouth that surely defies several laws of physics as it draws these pathetic sounds out of me. His name, too.
"The things you do to me," I hiss, angry; it shouldn't feel this good, not when I can feel the sharp edge of his teeth as he smiles. "Ah, careful..."
When I look down, I'm transfixed by his lips. They gleam red like ripe cherries, sinful and fresh, as they strike sparks on my cock. In the near dark he looks like one of my Knockturn Alley rent boys, servicing me an oblivion with as much regard for his own soul as a dead man has for his heartbeat.
In this state, I cannot quite muster the remorse I should be feeling, not when the obscene, wet sounds of his mouth on my hungry flesh fill me with dread and want.
He's told me he loves me. That thought is pure dread, too.
He belongs to the world, not the dark depths of my dungeons. He shouldn't become another failed experiment of Dumbledore's, not like this and not because of me; surely, he deserves his victories untainted.
This has to end, too. It needs to end today, I decide, until I feel his throat swallow around me. It makes me forget everything but my animus and the incendiary lethe of his mouth.
Perhaps not today, then.
* * *
Fin.
On to the next story in series: Distractions in Abeyance