Kristmas Wish Fulfilled for: kelly_chambliss
From: thegildedmagpie

Title: Repeat Offenders
Characters/Pairings: Sprout/McGonagall/Pince with Neville watching
Rating: NC-17
Kinks/Themes Included: voyeurism, orgasm delay, corsets
Other Warnings/Content: cunnilingus, mild erotic discipline, bit of dirty talk, and a slightly violent DH-era flashback.
Word Count: 3860
Summary/Description: After DH, Neville returns to Hogwarts as Professor Sprout's assistant. In between learning to call his former teachers by their first names and cope with their odd senses of humor, he goes to return some library books and learns all he never wanted to know about the penalties for failing to renew on time.
Author's Notes: So this happened. Some of the relationships in this fic evolved completely unintentionally; it was delightful to write. I will provide the additional flashback, which features NEWT-student Minerva and an eleven-year-old Pince, on request; it was sort of a warm-up drabble but it didn't work properly in a story from Neville's POV.




Professor Sprout said Neville should call her Pomona now. He was trying to get into the habit. He'd have plenty of practice now he'd come back as her full-time assistant, and he had to learn by the time the students came back for the fall term next week.

“You'll want to be able to establish a bit of difference from the year-sevens or they'll try to take advantage of you – not to be spiteful or grasping, just because that's the nature of a student,” she'd told him with uncharacteristic seriousness. The other professors had nodded and corroborated with stories of each of their own first year of teaching – with Professor Sinistra pointing out that Pomona's predecessor, Herbert Beery, had wound up with the unpleasant responsibility of awarding a T grade to an ex-girlfriend. Neville had been appropriately fore-armed by the story.

Neville was the youngest person working at Hogwarts by a couple of decades, even after Headmistress McGonagall's desperate pitch to coax Order members into filling the emptied roster (“Albus had to head-hunt Defense professors. I suppose it's to be expected that I'd be scrounging around the bottom of certain unpleasant barrels for at least one position,” McGonagall had said once to the world in general while reviewing the regrettably slender pool of applicants for the re-created Muggle Studies job). He was also learning a bit more than he'd ever suspected there was to know about the Hogwarts staff.

For instance, Madam Hooch (Rolanda) was an out lesbian and everyone on staff had known since she took the job in 1978. Professor McGonagall had an incredibly foul mouth, and when she let fly one of her remarkably creative curses (“Merlin's week-old dirty knickers!”) her accent deepened considerably. Also, there was a general understanding in place that the current Potions master was always responsible, nay, obligated to spike the punch at any school function.

One slowly reviving staff-room joke was the tendency to refer to the Headmistress as RB. Eventually Neville had gotten Professor Flitwick – Filius – to explain that this stood for Right Book-end. Snape had been LB, which had usually been Left Book-end as one would expect but which Madam Rosmerta down at the Three Broomsticks had once interpreted as Little Bastard, which for various reasons stuck better. The book in question had evidently been Dumbledore (“Picture a book,” Professor Vector (Septima, Septima) had told him. “A large book. With a periwinkle cover. And shiny foil lettering. And sparkles. Are you getting a certain image, then?”).

Additionally, the staff quarters were in a special part of the castle that shared a convenient hallway so they could have professional consultations, and also, most of the staff bedrooms opened into the office of the professor in question. Somehow. Except for a couple of bedrooms that opened into someone else's office. For some reason. “We put the new staff in there,” Septima had advised him. “But only if we don't like them.”

Neville had looked over and down toward his own rooms, which had a window overlooking the greenhouses, and wondered if he should send round a fruit basket in thanks or just let it be.

***

Neville remembered that once last year Amycus Carrow had blacked Professor McGonagall's eye. The entirety of Gryffindor and half of Hufflepuff had risen up in conspiratorial revenge over this. There had been all manner of stealthily-arranged “accidents” in Carrow's presence, several involving small explosions, a few employing various forms of pus.

It was the Mimbulus mimbletonia sap coating Carrow's dinner plate that brought things to a head. Those believed to be the ringleaders of the avenging acts had been publicly beaten in the Great Hall one night. Some of the professors had made as if to leave, horrified and powerless, but a quiet word was spoken from the seat to the right of the Headmaster's. And they'd all stayed. Every one. Even Professor Trelawney, though she wept and wibbled. Most of them had just stared, stone-faced, straight ahead of them, witnesses at least to the things they couldn't prevent. Minerva McGonagall had, of course, been one of these. Pomona Sprout had been another.

Getting up from the floor as he tried to remember the spell for regrowing knocked-out teeth, Neville had happened to glance at the two of them, left side-by-side by the vacated chair between them. So different – Professor McGonagall straight and adamant with her silvering black hair pulled back more severely than ever, her pressed dark red robes magisterially neat, Professor Sprout smaller and rounder with her hair spritzing out in flyaway wisps under the slouchy conical hat with its straps to hold phials of plant food – but both so proud and so – well, Neville knew he wasn't the only one who was grateful for their being there to witness, thankful for the silent show of moral support even as he wiped the blood off his face.

His glance had happened to be just at the angle where he was rather certain that the two women were tightly holding each other's hands under the table. It had flooded him with an inexplicable tenderness to see that the professors who had already sacrificed their chance to run still supported one another so. But he'd mentioned it to no one.

Anyway, by the time the bruise had risen he'd already made his peace with the fact that he could do little more for Professor McGonagall than she could do for him. “My strong right hand,” she'd called him once, very quietly; and Professor Sprout had murmured to him under the cover of a rustling Flutterby Bush, while he helped tutor a first-year class that was unruly with fear, that she didn't really know what she'd do without him – and that had felt good, but their hands were turned to the protection of the younger students, not one another. Their strength had to turn downward and outward. Not a one of them could expect to guard both others and themselves.

So the Mimbulus mimbletonia sap poured into a little pool in the center of the dinner plate to infect everything on it hadn't actually been about the incident with the briefly-installed ex-Headmistress. It had been about broken clay pots and a delicate tuber yanked from its peatmoss to be abused in a lesson; it had been about a Death Eater they had to call Professor setting fire to the Venomous Tentacula instead of simply swatting it away – when the plant had shown no sign of being more than curious. It had been about a baby Mandrake kicked across the greenhouse, its trailing squeal leaving third years swooned in every direction. It had been about the laughter on that occasion, the all-in-fun sadism. Someone had to stand up for the plants, too.

***

Working with Pomona in the greenhouses all day was pleasant. More than pleasant, really. Actually rather divine. A bit rapturous. As Pomona Sprout's apprentice, Neville was learning things about fertilizers that made the whole world seem rich with organic matter, balancing thriving miniature ecosystems of microscopic soil-dwelling magical creatures that most people never even guessed existed.

Evidently Pomona always had to have an assistant over the summer, as even the less-than-tender ministrations of a handful of hundreds of Herbology students were only barely sufficient to manage the six greenhouses and a large walled garden worth of magical flora. And Neville would be staying on for the year; evidently just before he'd arrived Professor Grubbly-Plank, substitute teacher par excellence, had thrown in the towel with vigor and declared she would never set foot on Hogwarts soil again after what had happened to her in 1997. So while his official title was Apprentice to the Professor of Herbology, Professor McGonagall – Minerva – had explained that she was unofficially appending Other Functions as Needed and she expected him to like it.

Today, having washed off soil and sap and brushed bits of leaf and twig out of his hair, he was venturing from his quarters toward the library to return the books he'd been consulting while he learned more of the vagaries and whims of the plants he tended. They were due back to the library by midnight, and in the staff room it was darkly hinted, apparently in all seriousness, that the things Filch wanted to do to students paled next to the things that Irma Pince would do to those who failed to return or renew in a timely fashion.

The castle was quiet. Neville liked the castle in summer, the stone halls cool, the portraits subdued but chatty in the absence of students, the full quiet echoes of footsteps making the walls themselves seem friendlier. He threaded his way through the familiar corridors, some of which still showed the new, less-weathered stonework from a season's worth of repairs, others of which were completely different – and still others untouched, looking just as they had when he was a First Year.

And then he was brought to a halt by a voice saying, "Oh, for fuck's sake, Irma."

"It was two weeks overdue," Madam Pince said forbiddingly.

"I'm the Headmistress. I think I get allowances for overdue books."

Madam Pince sniffed, "Surely you know that would set a dangerous precedent."

Minerva's voice had the strained overtones that generally marked great irritation, her throaty Lowlands lilt thick and strong. Madam Pince's ... well, Pince's never actually changed, who was he kidding? Still. Neville began to backpedal – but he was brought to a halt by a sound. An odd sound. A sound he knew with weird immediacy. Rope on stone.

He peered around the corner – nearly dropped his pile of books and jerked his slackening arms back to obedience just in time – let his jaw drop instead. Kept peering.

The Headmistress lay on the well-worn wool rug with its legions of neatly elf-mended holes that spread over the floor in front of the library's checkout desk. She was spread-eagle, flat on her back ... completely nude. Rather gloriously so. Jet-black hair, now more heavily ribboned with grey than it once had been, spread around her shoulders like a shawl. He'd realized, dimly, that it must fall to her waist when let down – he knew the volume of hair that was kept pinned below his grandmother's magnificent piece of haberdashery, so he'd known without ever thinking about it that his Head of House's ever-arranged hair must be of surpassing length – but the primal beauty of the silver-salted tresses, how thick and dark they were, struck him now as abruptly as if he'd been like his classmates who speculated that she must have been born with her hair pinned severely back.

All of which was nothing but a momentary embarrassed distraction from her pale, lean body.

Minerva's skin was mostly tight and thin – its only concession to her age – stretching like old kid leather over sharpish facial bones, thin but strong shoulders and shapely calves, but in some places it turned soft and deep … like her tense stomach, the undersides of her breasts, where she looked touchably tender. Her hips were a touch wider and better-padded than he would have guessed beneath her robes, her breasts large and unusually proud, with nipples dark as damask rose against skin the lively cream of anacard sap. Her head was thrown back and her throat blushed like a nascent petal.

And thin ropes round her wrists and ankles spanned the floor, holding her to the foot of a study table, the lowest of one of the nearby bookshelves, and the base of the formidable medieval librarian's desk.

Neville was an instant from stepping into the room and demanding to know just what in Merlin's favorite brothel was going on here. But then he saw Professor Sprout and it stopped him again like a hand to the chest.

The Professor of Herbology was kneeling next to the Headmistress on the rug. She also had her hair down, for once unconfined by bobby pins and patched hat. It made a corona of fine fuzzy curls round her shoulders, which were sloped with decades of attention to stems and shoots but strong with digging and pruning. And she was also, for the most part, undressed. Her body was a plump hourglass, and Neville knew from years of taking cripplingly heavy fertilizer sacks from her that a deceptive amount of power was packed into her compact form – knowledge that made it somehow incongruous to see her like this. Because she was not just bared; her waist was drawn to unnatural narrowness by the lacings of a garment that Neville recognized as a corset – which (of course) was grass-green. It seemed so inappropriate on her, somehow. Sexy and restricting on she who was nothing but down-to-earth. Yet below the tight pull of the lacings her body curved into voluptuous fullness; her ampleness made the corset seem a harder casing by contrast, like grasshoppers' wings so delicate that they make the outer, hard wing-covers look tougher in comparison.

She turned a little, looking up at Madam Pince, who stood austere and fussing and fully clothed over them – and Neville saw how the flat top of the corset pushed weighty breasts up into high curves against her chest, its piping surely no more than an obscene half-inch above the nipples. He gripped his books all the harder, feeling faint. This was something he should not see. But he could no more look away than he could restrain the lift of his cock as he saw his instructor there tightly laced and on her knees.

“To hell with dangerous precedents,” said Minerva.

“You sound like a nasty, scabby little student. You ought not to say such words in the library.” Madam Pince was sharp, leaning forward to look down at her.

“You told me that when we were both students, Irma. Why would you think you could change it now, if I might ask?”

“Because,” Madam Pince replied in clipped tones, “swearing is a filthy habit maintained by the same people who are destroyers of books, desk-carvers and shelf-climbers and users of inappropriate types of bookmarks.”

Pomona turned almost toward Neville, her eyes apparently on Minerva's right foot – he thought she was carefully schooling away a smile from her pleasant features. He saw she wasn't taking this especially seriously, though he had the impression Madam Pince meant every word in deadly earnest.

Minerva had let her head fall back and her eyes were mostly closed. “How much longer, Irma?”

“Fourteen minutes and fifty seconds,” said Madam Pince.

“Bugger,” said Minerva, quite heartfelt. Neville felt a sharp pulse, because the Headmistress's legs spread a little wider, her feet pushing down as her hips tilted upward. Between her thighs the skin gleamed with moisture; she was wet and flushed and secret and bold, and Neville swallowed hard, the sound of it loud in his own ears, as he looked without blinking, without turning away.

“I shall begin the timer again whenever you are ready, Pomona,” Madam Pince said haughtily, visibly electing not to react to the word.

The timer, Neville saw, was on the desk. Professor Slughorn'd had a similar one; it was a state-of-the-art research wizard's device, with revolving unconnected tumblers that could be set to separately and accurately measure dog years, lunar months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, intermediate sexagesimal units, microfortnights, seconds, microseconds, and, though he wasn't even sure what they were, millijiffies. The little runic display below did indeed show fourteen minutes, forty-nine seconds, and eleven microseconds.

“Ready when you are,” Pomona said with great good nature, and – oh Merlin – she slid between the Headmistress's spread legs and bent down and applied a pink tongue to the wetness of Minerva. Over Minerva's gratified moan, Neville heard Madam Pince touch one of the tumblers to restart the frozen timer again.

Minerva arched against Pomona's mouth, her breasts quaking as she pressed herself down, thighs flexing a bit with evident desperation until Pomona's strong forearms pinned them in place. Incredulous, faint with the pressure of his cock against the fabric of his soil-dusted trousers, knuckles white on the book-covers, Neville watched.

As Minerva's moans grew fuller, longer, more distraught, Pomona's hand first reached up to caress her just under where her tongue was at work, then slid down – in a quiet moment while Minerva drew breath Neville could hear her fingers rasp past the metal clasps that ran down the front of the corset. Then he saw Pomona's hand reach between her own thighs, the longest of her slick fingers finding the place among the scant, soft curls there to stroke and rub and tease. For an instant he imagined he could catch her scent.

Minerva's voice developed a high catch and Pomona sat up – carefully, almost awkwardly, the corset evidently making it impossible for her to bend at the waist. Neville quivered, his own hips shifting just barely even as Minerva's lifted yearningly. The Headmistress's green eyes opened again, focusing for a flickering second on the hand that still worked between Pomona's thighs as Minerva bucked slightly on the floor. Why? Neville wondered. Why didn't you let her finish?

“Eleven minutes and fifty-two seconds,” said Pince.

Minerva's long distressed moan might just have contained the sentence “Fuck everything you hold dear.”

“Then perhaps you should have returned the book in a prompt manner like a mature and civilized user of the library. We have discussed this time and again,” said Madam Pince.

Then Neville understood what was being timed. His already quickened breath ratcheted up again, becoming nearly a pant.

“I was bloody well using the thing – oh, Merlin,” she gasped as Pomona's free hand brushed teasingly over her. “You're a book-husbanding pervert. And you,” this last evidently directed at Pomona, who wore a contented little smile as – ah, he would never get this image out of his head and he never wanted to – two of Pomona's wand- and trowel-callused fingers parted her wet curls and slid inside of her. Pomona moaned too now, her contentment a grace note to Minerva's loud and clear frustration as she pleasured herself, intensely watched by all present – sour-looking Pince, desperate Minerva, Neville with his pulse quickened to pounding.

Frustration – then the – yes. How long had they been doing this? Neville wondered. How long had the Professor lain on the floor and had Pomona lick her? How … how glad he was that he had to hold his pile of books in his arms so tightly. For if the noise of falling books would not have alerted the women he was watching and stopped their play (in the library! On the rug! With the door open!) he wouldn't have been able to keep his hand from his cock.

“Get on with it,” Minerva urged, her limbs contracting against the vine-thin cords, shifting her on the floor, “I can keep back, Pomona, for fuck's sake lick me.”

“There will be further consequences if you don't wait,” said Madam Pince with asperity.

“Such as?”

“Suspension of loaning privileges.” Still dead serious, was Pince. But Neville thought the strangled sound Minerva made might have started as a laugh as Pomona again leaned to her, her garment making her unbalanced and bringing her beautiful arse high as she compensated for the restriction, supporting her weight on her unoccupied hand as she returned her attention to Minerva's body.

Neville might have blushed at the creative filthiness of the language Minerva used as Pomona licked, lightly suckled, kissed and even nipped at her swollen sex. Normally he would definitely have blushed at the crudity of the oaths that fired from her full, bitten lips when she came close and Pomona pulled back again. Not to mention the sight of his Herbology teacher fucking herself with slow, deep enthusiasm as she attended to the Headmistress. But he couldn't blush when the blood necessary to color his cheeks was aching in his cock.

Again and again they stopped, after two minutes, three minutes, thirty seconds – all of them evidently familiar enough with one another that the exact tone that heralded coming orgasm for Minerva was instantly recognizable. When Pomona came, her pleasure's sounds deep and warm and bespeaking appetite pleasantly sated, Minerva called her a root-digging costermongering dirty bitch, to which Pomona replied with great but breathless aplomb that in that case Minerva was a dried-up catty old shrew, and then Neville was witness to the brief but incongruous sound of both of them trying not to giggle – which faded into a near-shriek from Minerva as Pomona's fingers, still glistening from being inside her own body, found their way between Minerva's thighs and circled the taut, tender flesh that lay there.

“Time,” announced an unamused Madam Pince, and Pomona nearly fell over in her generous haste as she bent back down to apply a firm tongue to Minerva's clitoris. Minerva's cry was the loudest yet – she strained against the ropes holding her, which gave way at the other ends and left her thrashing with long streamers of cord attached to each limb, and when she came, her hips rising entirely off the floor, Neville nearly came in his pants with her.

After a few moments, there was silence in the library but for the heavy breathing of the two women on the floor and the silvery sound of the timer expending its energy with a last speeding spin of the tumblers before it went still.

At last Minerva sat up, clearly weary and stiff but looking deeply satisfied, and reached for her wand – which he saw for the first time had been left where it was within her reach even bound, no further than the slack of the ropes would let her move. Which made sense, Neville thought. She'd been through a lot.

“I still think that was excessive,” she said, breathlessly but relatively pleasantly, for her. She raked back her hair with a hand and started putting it up again.

“This is a repeat offense,” said Madam Pince. There was no softening whatever from her. Neville wondered if she too would be pleasuring herself once the Headmistress and the Herbology professor were no longer there. He wondered who was being indulged with this particular game, if it was one or two or all of them.

“Remember, Professor,” Madam Pince continued in measured tones, “that you borrowed a copy of Ridbelly's Compendium of Toxic Fungi which is due next week.”

“Yes,” Pomona said inscrutably. “Yes. No need to nag, Irma, I'm sure I shall remember.”

She and Minerva shared a look for an instant – a wonderful weary amused look, a look that spoke of knowing each other too long to have any but the most closely guarded secrets left from each other. Neville, despite his discomfort, felt a hint of a smile rounding out his face.

And then he looked up and straight into Madam Pince's narrowed carrion-bird eyes.

Since discretion was after all the better part of valor, Neville finally fled. And decided as he scrambled to escape her view that a shower – a long, warm, did he mention long shower – was most definitely in order.