Happy Daft Day, venturous! Recipient:venturous Title: Tangled Author:asnowyowl Rating: NC 17 Word Count: 2250 Warning(s): Harry is 17, *Dark, possible dub-con* Prompt/Summary: Prompt (which I somewhat used): Harry with dark or out of control magic, Snape has to help him master it. Feel free to go to the dark side. Summary: Something is amiss at Hogwarts, Severus must discover what it is. A/N: Beta'd by the lovely, bk7brokemybrain. venturous, I tried to include at least a few of your kinks: magical intimacy; black robes, white shirts, frottage, light BDSM. Written in present tense.
Tangled
Something is wrong. Severus feels it.
There's an energy he can't account for, an off-putting amalgamation of Dark and Light. It unsettles him. When the chill of the unknown seeps to his bones, he searches for the source. It's easy to find. The prickle of dread is only present when Potter is: seventh-year potions, the Great Hall at meals, incidental passings in the corridors. Those are the times when Severus feels the unease, the bone-deep chill.
Potter is hiding something. Severus has always enjoyed exposing Potter's myriad sins, but this is different. Potter's never felt Dark before.
Since no one else notices, or cares, since everyone else is still reveling in the glow of the Boy Who Killed the Dark Lord, Severus must take action. The prospect sits on his shoulders, weighs him down. He'd hoped he was through with spying. Apparently, he is not.
He holds no regret over what he's to do. There is no shame. He's done worse. Yes, it is not strictly legal. Yes, he could lose his position at Hogwarts, be cast from the only home he's known for nigh on two decades, but the unease grows. It worms its way into his gut, disrupts his sleep.
Legilimency is the answer. He will open the boy's mind, he will peel it, and examine it, and find the malignancy.
He will not be able to excise it, but he can, at least, arm himself against the threat.
And Potter goes on like nothing is amiss, like he's not holding some blood-red secret.
He gives Potter a detention on some trumped-up charge. Best to do this in privacy rather than give ammunition to those who'd still see Severus hanged for his crimes. After all, raping the mind of the Savior would be tantamount to… well… to raping the Savior. Yes, best done in private.
Potter seems to find humor in the fact that he's given detention, like it's all a game of chess, and he senses the mate move only a step or two ahead.
It goes as planned, except it doesn't. Severus casts the Legilimancy spell wordlessly, though he must brandish his wand. He may as well scream the word for all his 'secrecy' buys him. Potter smiles and nods, but the contours of his mind are not contours at all, they are smoothed over, filed down, slippery as a plate of glass, and Severus cannot hold on, not to even one snippet of memory. He scuttles back out, narrows his eyes, and scowls at the boy.
"What did you find, Professor?"
Severus turns on his heel and almost leaves the room. He only just wraps his dignity around himself and does not scamper away like a scared rabbit. Only just.
The detention drags on interminably.
*****
The dreams start. Nightmarish in their perversions. He lies with Potter, in his rooms, in his bed. They are intimate in ways Severus has never thought of being with a student. Indecent in ways he would never consider.
They ruin his days, coming to him in flashes at odd moments, spurting into his brain like pus pinched from a gangrenous wound.
Just when Severus thinks he might go mad, the tide turns. His affection-starved mind finds the dreams infinitely more interesting than repulsive, their content horrifyingly seductive. He finds himself stealing glances at Potter whenever he can, hoping he isn't noticed, not sure he could stop if he is.
"Are you feeling well, Severus?"
Severus startles from his reverie. Has he been staring at Potter throughout dinner? He turns toward Minerva and frowns. "I am quite fine."
She nods, her gaze darting to the Gryffindor table. Her mouth a thin slash across her face.
*****
He breaks.
It can hardly be considered his fault. At the Yule Ball, Potter is dressed in a crisp white shirt under black dress robes. Severus has a déjà vu moment, remembers stripping those very clothes off the boy, stripping him naked and biting his flesh. Burying himself deep into Potter, even as he tastes the tang of blood on his tongue. He is sure it has all happened before, but then with the ticking of the next moment, he is not. It was only a dream, only the product of night upon night spent in the most hideously delicious seductions.
Only in his dreams.
He wants it in wakefulness, too. Needs it. He would do almost anything to get it, even walk up to Harry Potter and whisper in his ear, "My quarters. Now."
It doesn't surprise him when Potter follows, though the look on Minerva's face as they pass promises steep recompense for his sins.
They are at the door to his rooms, and then inside, almost before they leave the Great Hall, or so it seems.
"Tell me what you want," Potter says.
And Severus will be damned to the hottest level of Hell for even thinking these thoughts about a student, much less acting on them, but his reservation to Hades was booked years ago, so he says, "Your body."
The boy pouts. Severus expects shock, or horror, or, in his deepest fantasies, lust, but pouting? No. He doesn't know how to deal with a protruding lip and sad eyes. Just as he's ready to back out, to cover his tracks, to Obliviate, Potter smiles that saucy grin that is far too like his father, and says, "Just that?" He steps closer. A small body that holds more heat than brimstone presses against Severus. "I want more than just your body. Can't you want more from me?"
It's twisted and wrong, that question. What more could the boy want from him? He's the man with no soul, no emotions, certainly no empathy — at least that is what's growing on the grapevine, whispered through the stone. "What? What would you want?" And Severus asks because he is sure whatever it is, he will give. He's paid high prices before for a kind word, a bit of praise, a moment of pleasure, what would be the difference now?
"You. All of you." Potter shifts closer, though Severus wouldn’t have believed that possible. The boy presses their bodies together as if he expects their very cells to merge. "I want your body." He thrusts his hips, pressing his hardness against Severus's thigh, pushes his stomach against Severus's own need, tightens his muscles to provide a harder plane. "Your mind." He glances up, holds Severus's gaze with his own for just a moment before tensing his body again, thrusting against Severus.
Severus groans.
"Your heart." Potter lays his head on Severus's chest.
If the boy is surprised at the rapid rat-a-tat of Severus's heartbeat, he shows no sign.
"And your soul." The words are whispered, barely audible, but more chilling for the lack of volume.
Severus tries to pull away. This isn't right. Potter wants too much. No Gryffindor, no hero, would demand all. Severus's first instincts were correct. Something is wrong with the boy. Terribly, filthily wrong.
Potter wraps himself around Severus like a parasitic vine. "Your soul," he says again, a bit more loudly.
"I have no soul," Severus says. He tries to struggle again, but like Devil's Snare, it only causes this parasite to cling tighter. "I sold my soul. I cannot give what I do not have."
The boy doesn't answer. He loosens his grip only enough to sinuously rub against Severus's body, stomach flexing, hard flesh poking a thigh. He is the devil, offering paradise.
Severus resists as long as he can, until his willpower wanes, until the need for more pressure on the ache between his legs surpasses the voice in his brain shouting Beware!
He moves along with Potter.
In a daze, he thrusts, even as his mind supplies images, depraved scenarios cultivated from his dreams. Chains, whips, clamps, wax — they hadn't previously been included in his sexual repertoire, but now they are the fodder of his fantasies.
"Tell me." The boy stops moving, stills Severus's hips with small hands curling about his waist.
"Tell… tell you what?"
"What do you prefer? Whips? Chains?"
Severus startles. Images fire through his brain, one on top of the next, bringing to mind some sort of erotic apocalypse. "How do you know what I'm thinking?" He mentally checks his fail-safe Occlusions.
Potter laughs. "What'll it be? You get no more of this," he thrusts once more, "until you answer me."
He should scream, get out! Or he should rip the boy's clothes off and take him, unprepared, against the wall, but quick-fire images obscure rationality. Days-old fantasies spin deeper, darker, until there are scalpels and blood, cherry-red branding irons raising the smell of burnt flesh, scarves biting into a pale throat. He wants it. He wants it all. He wants to be as perverted and horrible as he can with Potter. He wants to abuse him, hurt him, humiliate him, and make him his.
He wants full ownership.
"Whatever you want, I'll give you," the boy purrs. "Anything… anything at all."
Severus pushes Potter away, but only so he can herd him toward the bed, banish their clothes, conjure wicked toys he's never owned, never thought he'd desire.
He's unsure how to proceed. It's one thing to imagine all this, quite another to know where or how to begin.
Potter takes charge. He plucks a nipple clamp off the duvet and makes a show of pressing it open, hovering it over the tan bud on the left side of his chest, and then letting it snap closed. He throws his head back and gasps.
It's enough to push Severus into action. Though it's already hard, he pinches Potter's other nipple, firms it further, before attaching the second clamp. Despite his bloodlust, he does it more gently than Potter did, easing it onto the nub, not allowing it to gnaw like a hungry beast. He watches the boy's face, sees Potter's eyes darken in lust.
He turns his attention to the other toys scattered across the bed. He considers using them each, in turn. He imagines, only for a moment, Potter's body striped with lines, puckered with burns, rouged in blood. These thoughts seem so foreign in the here and now, that he stops just before his hand makes contact with a lit candle. He doesn't really want all that. Indeed, he feels as if he's waking from a nightmare. "How do you do it?"
"Do what?" The boy's voice is whiny, impatient.
"How do force desires into my mind?"
A slow smile spreads across kiss-damp lips. Potter shrugs. "Does it really matter?" He runs fingers lightly up Severus's cock, leans in to tease a nipple.
The overwhelming desire returns; the moment of lucidity slips away.
When Potter drops to his knees and sucks Severus into his mouth, nothing matters except the heat, and that tongue. Oh! That wicked tongue.
When he fears he will explode down the boy's throat (a fine thought, but one to be saved for another time), Severus pulls him up by his hair, noting how Potter whines delightedly at the rough touch. In keeping with the moment, the theme of the night, Severus sweeps the toys to the floor and tosses Potter onto his bed. He summons lubrication from the bathroom and furiously prepares the boy, jabbing fingers into him, causing lovely bucks, and moans, and squirms.
And Severus does. He positions Potter's ankles over his shoulders and plunges in, feels muscles quiver and clench, hears Potter moan and gasp. He is in the place of his dreams, he has entered his fantasy, and it surpasses expectation. So hot, so tight, so perfect.
Except for the voice that whispers in his head, tells him to go faster, to be brutal, to tug at the clamps, to bite until blood seeps into his mouth, to bend Potter in two and plow into him. One look in Potter's eyes, and Severus knows those desires belong to the boy, not to him.
He does it all anyway.
He fucks with abandon, takes with all the greed he should deny. Guilt and fear curl in his stomach even as his orgasm builds.
Obeying a sudden and alien whim, though wishing not to, he gives one of the clamps a vicious twist. It is all it takes to send Potter over the edge. "Severusseverusseverus."
Tightness turns to a pulsing clench. Severus gasps. He moans, and thrusts, and arches, and spurts his seed into a willing body. His mind shouts, Mine, but another voice, one more insistent, whispers, his.
Severus tries to pull away, the warnings of beware finally heeded, but the boy has become vine again, clinging, stifling, suffocating.
He feels the magic, then. It swirls around them, emanating from the boy, but overtaking Severus. It's Potter's magic, but more. Changed. Grown. Multiplied by strands that should reside in others. Severus is an expert at recognizing magical signatures, and once felt, he never forgets. If he untangles all these, unbraids one from the next, he will know who they once belonged to. Bella is here, and Vincent Crabbe, Lupin, the older Creevey boy, and, Merlin forbid, Tom Riddle. More frightening still, are the pulses of the energy that belong to the living: several Weasleys, Granger, Longbottom….
Potter is like a sponge, sopping up power.
Severus shudders as he feels his own magic knit seamlessly with the ghastly mélange.
The boy smiles, he wriggles, presses a kiss to Severus's chest, directly over his heart, and murmurs, "Mine."