Back to Hogwarts: FIC: This is a Kiss Title: This is a Kiss Author:conzieu Other pairings/threesome: Background Ron/Hermione Rating: NC 17 Word count: 3,862 Warning(s): (highlight for spoilers) *Masturbation, brief mention of anal penetration, American spelling.* Summary: Something is brewing in the Potions classroom. Severus Snape investigates and finds “A Cauldron Full Of Hot, Strong Love.” A/N: No thievery intended. Thanks to janice_lester for her original beta, kyriesnape for her read through and comments, carolinelamb for her read through, suggestions, moral support and cheers and, last but definitely not least, accioslash for the final beta.
This is a Kiss
Severus Snape was prowling the corridors, as was his habit when he could not sleep (which was often). He considered it a productive use of his insomnia and his colleagues considered it a blessing, though not so the students. He would often appear around eleven, and relieve whomever was on patrol duty, taking on the last three hours of his or her shift.
For reasons unknown, ever since his return to teaching after his months of recovery, Monday and Thursday nights had been particularly bad. To the point that Snape no longer even bothered preparing for bed. He just went out to find whomever was on call as soon as he was done marking the pathetic drivel that the idiots he taught tried to pass off as Potions essays.
Of course, walking the corridors tonight was absolutely pointless, as today was Monday, December the 23rd, and only twelve students remained in the school. Not only were there no patrol duties during the holidays but also, as luck would have it, all of the students still in residence were over seventeen and therefore of age.
However, Severus felt restless. He knew, of course, how the evening would end. When he felt this way, no matter how hard he struggled to resist, how long he walked, how much he tried to ignore his need, if he was to get any rest at all, he would have to indulge the animal urges of his body.
He would lie on his narrow bed, under his thin duvet, his eyes shut in the dark, and would let his hand wander to his… to that area, and it would feel (despite his disgust at his own weakness) wondrously, marvelously good. He would be quick, concentrating his focus wholly on the sensations.
He could never allow his mind to wander. If he did, his thoughts would go to places they had no business going. To forbidden places. To forbidden thoughts. To a forbidden someone. He shivered in the shadowy corridor. It must be close to two. He would go home now. It was futile. His basest nature would not be denied.
The dungeon hallways were truly frigid. He could see his breath in the flickering glow of the torches. The dancing light animated the shadows in the recesses and doorways as he passed. He stopped suddenly.
The door to the Potions classroom stood ajar. Outside class hours, it was always kept locked. The stores contained expensive and potentially dangerous ingredients. It was not a safe place. Who could have broken in and why? He heard a sound from inside, like a sigh. Whoever had forced the wards was still in there. He approached, noiseless as always, and pushed the door open.
The classroom appeared empty. A lone torch near the entrance provided hardly enough illumination to see all the way to the lectern. There was a movement, a shape, on his desk, further back. His heart skipped a beat when his brain made sense of the information provided by his eyes.
Someone was lying on the desk, shirt open, naked from the waist down, and he was… his hand was… The man sighed again, and arched back, and Severus saw his face. The messy dark hair, the angle of the jaw, the pale skin. Even with the eyes closed, and the glasses gone, there was no mistaking this face.
Potter.
Potter was on his desk, his knees slightly bent, a hand slowly caressing the pale golden skin of his chest, playing with a nipple, pulling lightly on hair that formed a dark line to his groin where the other hand was grasping his…
Snape was paralyzed. His heart was beating so strongly he could hear it. He could not avert his eyes from that other hand and its activity. Up and down it went, in easy motions, the thumb occasionally swiping across and spreading glistening fluid around. Severus swallowed. He tore his gaze away to look again at Harry’s face (so beautiful, always so beautiful), at the arch of his back, at the shadows playing on his sculpted stomach, at the length of his thighs, at his feet, resting flat on the desk.
It was the most exquisite sight Severus had ever seen, more so than he could ever have imagined, had he ever let himself do so.
Harry sighed again, or was that more of a moan? Whatever it was, it was lovely, lovely. His motions became more rapid, more focused.
To his horror Severus realized he had been slowly moving forward up the aisle between the tables and was now only three or four meters away. He stepped back abruptly and collided with the corner of a desk, which scraped along the stone floor with a shockingly loud noise that made both of them jump.
Severus remembered himself enough to say, in a cold and disdain-filled voice: “Potter! What in the world are you doing?”
To his dismay, Potter did not jump to his feet, or cover himself up with the robes lying next to him, or… anything. He simply looked up at Severus with soft, warm eyes, his left hand now behind his head but his right hand still gently stroking himself, and said in a languid voice, “What does it look like I am doing, Professor?”
How could he be so brazen about it?
Severus, unable to make eye contact, found himself staring (as he had so many times before) at the perfect bow of Potter’s upper lip. He heard himself stuttering rather stupidly. “For Merlin’s sake, Potter, you… you have a… a room! …and a bed! With… with curtains!”
“My two best friends are currently busy in that room, so here I am,” Potter explained gently, as if it was a perfectly valid excuse. And his right hand was still moving, squeezing, up and down, up and down, as he stared right at Severus. His eyes, vividly green eyes, no longer hidden by his glasses, seemed full of meaning. It was utterly… unnerving.
“You have the whole castle at your disposal, Potter, why in the world would you come here of all places?” he could not help asking (though he knew he should have been saying something more… chastising? Reproving? Taking points, maybe?).
Potter licked his lips (good God!). He kept staring at Severus without any shame and answered in a low, warm voice that made Severus lose whatever grasp he had left on the situation:
“Why do you think, Professor?”
Severus’s brain was telling him that Potter had chosen this spot for this activity to mock his position, to get back at him for years of undeserved abuse. His heart however, was foolishly hoping for a very different explanation.
Potter moved with a cat-like grace, and came to sit on the edge of the desk, both hands finally (mercifully) still at his side. Then he said the two most arousing words Severus had ever heard:
“Come here…”
Severus’s feet started moving (Far, far away in the confines of his mind, a small unheeded voice told him he should object to the familiarity of the tone, to the assumption of his obedience.).
Even as he said: “I can’t…” he took another step forward. “I shouldn’t…” Another step, and another.
“I think you should, Severus, I really do…” Potter said, in that warm low voice.
Severus…
Potter’s right hand grasped the front of his robes and pulled him close, his eyes suddenly dark, the green only a narrow edge around his pupils. His left hand came up behind Severus’s head, and he pulled him down, gently, his gaze mesmerizing. Softly, softly, their mouths met, Potter’s warm and alive, and parting (Oh, God!), his breath soft and moist against Severus’s trembling lips.
Severus did not know what to do with his hands. He raised them tentatively and let them rest on Harry’s sides, the right one having slipped underneath the open shirt. His skin was smooth satin, the echo of his heart resonating in Severus’ palm. Then Harry’s tongue (…!) wet, and inquisitive, was slipping gently along, parting his lips and probing delicately inside his mouth.
(“This is a kiss,” Professor Snape’s detached, analytical mind informed him, helpfully.)
He heard a strange mewling sound and, distraught, realized it was escaping from his own throat. But as Harry’s hand pressed on his head more urgently and as his own lips seemed to take the matter into their control and open without his consent, and as his tongue decided that it liked (really, really liked) playing with Harry’s, Severus let go, just let go and kissed Harry back. It was marvelous. It was beautiful.
It was the most amazing thing Severus had ever experienced.
There was a language in Harry’s kiss, one that he instinctively understood, that told him about desire and hopeless wishes, of yearning, of…love. Severus spoke back, telling his story of fruitless denial, of want, of dreams yet unfulfilled, of amazed joyful hope, of…
Severus suddenly noticed that Harry’s hand had left the back of his head. It had gone back to his lap and was doing something to his... Abruptly, Severus came back to his senses, feeling a fool. Here he was baring his soul in a kiss, imagining… projecting emotions that… and the brat was wanking. He stepped back, disgusted with himself. Potter was fulfilling a prurient little teacher-student fantasy, that’s all this was! He turned away and stumbled to the door, angry and feeling utterly humiliated.
“Professor, wait!”
Professor! He had believed, for a moment, that he had been Severus, just Severus, and that it had been he Harry had wanted.
What a good laugh Potter would have tomorrow, telling his friends about him. Their ridiculous, greasy old Professor, who kissed with such desperation (and probably so horribly clumsily), one would think he’d never been kissed before!
He all but ran back to his rooms just around the corner and slammed the door behind him savagely, pouring all his magic into his wards. He fell more than sat in the straight back chair in front of his desk (the only chair in the room), and buried his head in his shaking hands, unable to hold back a sob of desolation.
He had tried so hard. Ever since watching Potter follow his Patronus in the Forest of Dean, he had felt it. The young man had been so beautiful in the pale moonlight, graceful even in his bulky garments. Nothing childish remained in his walk, in his stance. His courage, his fortitude, his power (Severus had felt Potter’s magic humming, even from forty feet away)…
He had told himself that it was just a normal emotion, spilling over from years of watching over the boy. Or maybe a yearning, for the hope Potter represented to the wizarding world. But deep inside he had known, really.
He had ignored the mad, foolish drumming of his heart when Potter came to see him in the infirmary to return his memories; he had ignored the unexpected rush of pleasure when Potter, his student again, had finally shown his natural ability at brewing more and more complex potions. He had refused to acknowledge the fact that his eyes no longer followed Potter to find fault in his every move, but to fill his mind with every detail of his spare body, his walk, his profile, his sudden smiles (not for him, those, but still).
He had stubbornly denied that his mortifying physical urges, which had until this year been so rare as to be almost nonexistent, had become embarrassingly frequent, and that it was Potter’s image he had to concentrate not to visualize when his pleasure spilled forth. And now…
All his efforts ruined. A look, a word (No, two: “Come here…” He shivered), and it had all come rushing out. There was no way for him to put the stopper back now, to pretend, as he had until now, that nothing was there. And to make his mortification complete, Potter knew. Potter had read him like a book, had seen how he felt, and had taken advantage of it to add spice to his little fantasy.
Another realization twisted his gut. Dwarfing the personal humiliation Severus felt, there would be much more concrete repercussions. Potter might only tell the story for a laugh but it would spread like wild fire and come January, Severus would find himself out of a job.
After all, he was only back on sufferance, because Minerva had stood up for him against the will of the board. Exonerated or not, he was a Death Eater and Albus’s murderer. Now he had molested a student. How could he have been so stupid as to jeopardize his entire life on a puerile and ridiculous fantasy?
He wanted to turn his own body inside out, to cut out his traitorous heart and feed it to the castle’s rooks as so much carrion.
Severus’s wards were strong, loaded as they were with most of his magic, on top of Hogwarts’ own; so he felt it physically, like a shock to his nerves, when they were triggered by a hand knocking on his door.
“Professor? Professor? Please… please, Sir. Can we talk, for a moment?”
What in the world could Potter want? For Severus to return, so his right hand could pick up where it had been interrupted?
Sitting with his face in his hands, he tried to erase the vision of loveliness, of Potter lounging on his desk, from his brain. Who would have ever thought to associate such an activity with such beauty and grace?
Severus will be thirteen years old in eight days. He is home at Spinner’s End for the Christmas Holidays. He has the flu. He knows exactly when he got it: Defense Against the Dark Arts end of term examination with the Hufflepuffs. Trina McLarren was tested right before him and she was obviously sick as a dog, coughing and sneezing all over. He started feeling sick Christmas eve and has been in bed ever since, burning with fever, teeth chattering, the room spinning at times. He tries hard not to make a fuss.
His mother is sick, too. A lot sicker than he is. The kind of sick that doesn’t get better, especially if, like her, you do not seek medical attention. Her eyes, bright with fever, are sunken and the circles underneath them look like days old bruises. One can clearly picture her skull under her jaundiced skin. Her mouth is permanently thinned by pain.
She looks so much worse than she did last summer. He has no doubt she is dying. It’s only a matter of time now. He feels she has been dying inside for years.
That is why when, dehydrated by the fever, Severus, who cannot stand his thirst any longer, makes his way on shaky legs down the stairs for a glass of water. He has to cross the den to reach the kitchen. He wishes he did not.
His father is watching the telly in there and has been drinking. From his bedroom, Severus can hear the squeak of the refrigerator door and the clink of the bottle’s glass neck against the wall mounted bottle opener every time his father helps himself to another beer. But the water from the bathroom has a horrible metallic taste and is always lukewarm.
At the bottom of the stairs, a little dizzy, he leans against the wall for a moment before he makes his way to the swinging door to the den. The sounds coming from the telly are weird, like a large dog panting. Though they are perhaps loud enough that he might be able to make it past his father without notice.
He slowly pushes the door open and starts walking in when he sees the picture on the screen. The panting sound is coming from a woman. She is naked and ugly, with enormous bosoms, her legs spread and she is pushing something flesh colored into her crotch, which is red and open and wet, displayed for all to see.
His father is in his recliner, talking to the telly as he always does, but right now he is saying disgusting filthy things to that woman on the screen. His undershirt is pushed up on his hairy beer gut and his trousers and pants are halfway down his thighs. He has a beer in one hand and his large, meaty prick in the other and he is pulling on himself, his foreskin moving back and forth over the purplish head.
Severus is paralyzed with revulsion until a hand pulls him back and allows the door to swing closed again. He leans against the wall, bends forward and throws up whatever small amount of food was left in his stomach. His mother’s hand feels cool but clammy on his forehead.
“He has no self-control,” she spits out in a low, disgusted voice as she banishes his vomit. “No self-respect. He is no better than an animal.”
Severus shudders, dry heaving. He feels vile and dirty, sick with fever and loathing. Though she is no more than a walking skeleton, his mother’s grip is incredibly strong as she helps him back up the stairs.
“I am sorry you had to see that,” she apologizes, shame keeping her from even looking at him. “I will bring you some water.”
Severus had always regarded pleasuring oneself as a gross, humiliating and shameful activity. He had had no idea it could look like Potter did on that desk. There was nothing ugly, or depraved, or shameful in that. It was just… beautiful. He jumps as Potter’s voice comes again through the door.
“Snape, please let me in. Let me explain…”
What in the world was there to explain? Potter was eighteen after all, doing what indulgent eighteen-year-olds did. Why could he not just go away?
Throughout his Hogwarts years, Severus has to listen the nocturnal activities of his roommates. He lies smugly in bed at night, sometimes so hard it is painful, but he never indulges. They look down at his half-blood status, at his greasy hair, at his second-hand robes, but he carries in his heart the conviction of his moral superiority.
He has wet dreams sometimes, but feels no shame at those. They are beyond his control. But what he can control, he does.
Eventually, his feelings on the subject are validated by the Dark Lord who sees any sexual activity as a waste of energy better directed towards magic. His Master congratulates him on his abstinence. It makes his essence extremely valuable for dark potions.
The first time he gives himself an orgasm, it is dedicated to the Dark Lord, and his need for a potent Subjugation potion. His Master mentions it is the strongest one he has ever used and seats Severus to his right that evening.
Yet Potter made pleasuring himself look like the most natural thing in the world, like a celebration of life.
“Severus, I’m sorry. I’ve wanted you for so long, you were so wonderful, you smelled so good, I would have come… I didn’t want to…not yet, not without you. So I had to… Please! Please, give me a chance…”
He had to what? So he wouldn’t come? Still, Potter’s voice through the door.
“Don’t do this. Please, I… It hurts. It was all right before, when I didn’t know. I never even imagined you might… But I felt it in your kiss! Don’t pretend it’s not true. I… I… Damn it, open this door, or I swear to Merlin, I’ll break in.”
Arrogant whelp. As if he could.
Then it came, and Severus was glad he had been sitting, because he was sure the wave of power that hit him would have knocked him down. Potter had actually attempted to break his wards. Stupid. They held, of course.
The second wave left him breathless, disbelieving, scrambling to regroup his ebbing resistance. The wards still held, naturally, and surely that was all Potter had got in him. Severus breathed deeply, shaken. The idiot could have hurt himself badly (perhaps he should relent lest the willful brat do himself harm?).
“Please…” came a last, defeated appeal, and then nothing.
Ah. He’d given up. (So soon). Snape was glad he had kept his door closed. Still. What had Potter said? About wanting? About feeling something in his kiss?
Suddenly, Severus’s entire magic was drained, for a split second, and then returned with a physical jolt as his wards gave in and the door burst open. Potter stumbled in and leaned against the wall, shaking, a small drop of blood trickling from his nose.
The fool! What had he done?
Severus could not fathom the power he must have had to focus to overcome his wards, aided as they were by Hogwarts existing ones, and filled to capacity by his own magic. He rushed to Potter’s side, supporting him in his arms as the man's knees gave and he started sinking to the floor.
He held him, unsure what to do, terrified of the consequences such an output of magic might have had physically. Potter’s shaking slowly ebbed, but he was leaning heavily into Severus’s embrace.
“Potter, are you all right?”
Potter sighed, a sigh that did not have the sound of pain, but that of blissful comfort, and his arms came up around Severus, holding him tightly.
“Please Severus. To you, I want to be Harry, just Harry.”
Potter looked up, and their eyes met.
“See for yourself,” he said, and the invitation was clear.
“Legilimens,” whispered Severus, and he was lying on the desk, his mind full of long fingered hands, of swirling black robes, when a sound made him look up to see himself, but through Harry’s eyes, the embodiment of Harry’s dreams. He had been right to believe he had understood the language of Harry’s kiss, as it had indeed been desire, and yearning, and love it had spoken of.
Severus felt Harry’s admiration for his courage, his gratitude for his unwavering loyalty and his respect for his intelligence. He felt the warmth of Harry’s love like a physical presence, wrapping around him, and the powerful arousal that his proximity had awakened, the intense desire Harry had felt.
Delving deeper, he encountered vague sensuous wishes, of naked flesh and glistening bodies, and one (marvelous), of his own hand guiding himself into Harry’s welcoming body, Harry’s deepest desire. He backed out of Harry’s mind and, troubled, looked in his eyes.
“I have never… I wouldn’t know how…”
Harry kissed him, a sweet, passionate kiss, a token of love.
“Neither have I, Severus. But we can learn, together. We have time now, don’t we? All the time in the world…” and they kissed again, and Severus loved that kiss, knowing now how much Harry liked it, knowing what it did to him.
He slid his hand under Harry’s shirt caressing the warm silken skin. And as Harry hummed appreciatively, Severus thought he might have found something else besides potions and Dark Arts for which he had a natural ability.