Title: Sometimes in the Night
Author: elfflame
Characters: Severus/Draco
Rating: Heavy R or very light NC-17
Warnings: Nothing, really.
Kinks chosen: 3) Spectrophilia: sexual arousal by intercourse with spirits, ghosts, angels, or gods
Word Count: 1011
Summary: Draco has trouble, sometimes, living in the present.
Author's notes: Thanks to the encouragement of Wolfish Cat, I’ve managed another. One of these days, I’ll actually write the story a whole week in advance again. At least the story was one that seemed to want to be written. I hope people like.


Draco is a good Malfoy. After his family’s formal pardon, thanks to Potter, he had gone on with his life. He had married a good girl from a Good Family, and they had had a son, and no one could say he had not fulfilled his duties. Astoria was a good Malfoy wife. But theirs had never been a marriage of love. Just one to bind two pureblood families together and to provide the Malfoy family with another heir.

No, Draco’s love was reserved for someone years gone. Someone he only truly let himself think about at night.

When he was with others, Draco tried not to dwell on the past too much. It was when he was alone that the memories came. Some nights he would wait alone in his study until he was certain he was the only person left awake in the house. Then he would move to the Pensieve he’d inherited from his father, set it on his desk, and then strip and sit to watch the memories that would unfold there for him.

So many memories. So many might-have-beens. He’s watched them all more times than he can count.

Some days, he pulls up the image of him the summer after his sixth year. Not even summer, truly. After running from Hogwarts, the two of them had spent twelve hours alone, with Snape berating him constantly for his idiocy in not trusting him.

He often wishes he’d pulled that face, red with fury, the thin white lips in a sharp line, close, and kissed Snape. He wonders if Snape would have responded by softening and pulling him closer, their bodies pressing together, emotions wound high from fear and adrenaline, long-suppressed passion curling around them, fingers pulling at clothes until there was nothing between them but skin.

He can almost imagine the feeling of Snape’s fingers around his cock as he stroked him slowly, reverently, not wanting to let go even long enough to press him down onto the nearest flat surface.

Draco can imagine that low silken voice saying his name, the tone so different from his anger that night. Deep and rich enough to wrap himself in, raising goosebumps on his skin. Sometimes that is what he misses the most.

He strokes himself to the image, even knowing that the truth would have been as harsh as the reality had been. Snape would have slapped him. Or pulled away. Or worse, laughed at Draco’s folly for opening himself up to a fellow Death Eater. He would have been shamed ever more by even the memory of the man.

Other times, it is the Christmas of that year he pulls from his memory. Trying to sneak up to the Room of Lost Things, being caught by Filch and inventing the story that he was simply trying to sneak into Slughorn’s stupid party. He remembers easily Snape’s reaction, and how he had draged him off to a room where they could talk in secret.

This fantasy starts much the same as the other, with a desperate kiss from Draco. But this time, Snape responds. And after, Draco is quick to accept the offer of Snape’s help. Quick to ask him to take him under his wing, protect him. With this memory, he is not so certain how Snape might have responded.

He doubts it would have gone as he wishes now, though, with Snape pushing him down onto a desk and kissing him as though he had asked for help in breathing. He imagines clinging to the older man as robes are pushed aside until there are no barriers between them… Imagines swallowing a gasp as Snape presses fingers into him and begins to open him. Can practically see the look of need and want in Snape’s eyes as he watches Draco writhe on his fingers. And the soft, silken whisper of Draco’s name once more before fingers are gone and Snape’s cock…ohgodyes…

He tries so hard to convince himself that then, it might have happened. Then perhaps he would not be so alone now. That Snape might, even now, be at his side, watching the memories with him and telling him what a ridiculous child he had been at the time.

Often, after seeing that memory, Draco finds it hard to function. It’s almost like losing Snape all over again. And he knows he can’t do this. Shouldn’t do this. He has a son to raise. Duties to see to. Scorpius deserves better. And he is the head of the Malfoy family now. Without him, their enemies would tear what little they had managed to rebuild apart. So he desists—for a while.

But eventually the urge returns, and eventually he gives in. It is the dream that Snape hadn’t died in the Shack like Potter had told everyone in the Great Hall during the final battle that drives Draco truly mad. Draco can almost imagine hurrying to his side as soon as he’d been allowed; that he had helped him recover. That that silk and velvet voice was now coarse from what the bite and the snake venom had done to him, but that he was otherwise unharmed.

Then there were the times he could imagine leaving it all behind to find him. That Severus was just out there somewhere waiting for him to find him, and wondering what is taking so very long. Sometimes Draco even starts to pack his bags.

Then Scorpius runs into the room, with his bright smile and pale Malfoy hair making Draco’s breath catch. He will not leave his son fatherless. Even if it means being eternally without the man he has always loved.

Draco takes his hand, kissing it, unless the boy has caught up something slimy again, in which case, he tells him how proud he his of his bright and clever son. And he lets Scorpius drag him down to the kitchen where they have milk and cookies together, once hands have been washed, and Draco lives in the real world for a few days more.