Title: The Penitent
Author: coffee_n_cocoa
Characters: Severus Snape, Neville Longbottom
Rating: R
Warnings: BDSM, reverse dub-con, masturbation
Themes/kinks chosen: Flagellation
Word Count: 1178
Summary: Punishment takes many forms.
Author's notes: Thanks to juniperus for the plotbunny and zoanthropic for the onceover. It's not especially porny, but it's dark.

The Penitent

Severus waits, ramrod straight in his chair, both hands resting flat upon the surface of the hand-carved desk. The grandfather clock ticks off the seconds, the sound shockingly loud in the expanse of the headmaster’s office. He deliberately does not look, his gaze fixed upon the door, keeping his silence while he is still able.

Midnight chimes, bells from all the other clocks both in and outside the office ringing; and his lips thin in a quiet agony of anticipation, fingers tightening almost imperceptibly against the desktop. The door opens, admitting a cloaked figure garbed entirely in black, the better to move unnoticed among shadows whilst painting the walls with graffiti. The other man moves with a silent surefootedness Severus knows he couldn’t have been capable of even last year.

It is something else to be laid at his feet. Not the fact that his guest moves with a newfound economical grace, but that he had to learn it at all. He’s still a boy, barely grown, like all the others he’s failed to protect, to save, to keep whole.

“Detention yet again, Mr. Longbottom,” Severus says, rising smoothly, hands lifting to undo the first of the many buttons marching down the front of his robes. “One might begin to believe you actually enjoy spending time with the Carrows and their tender ministrations? Or do you find risking their company in hopes of receiving mine instead too alluring? Perhaps you are learning other lessons from them in addition to the material taught in Muggle Studies?”

Longbottom doesn’t move, nor does he answer, seeming hardly even to breathe as Severus strips down in front of him until he’s fully naked. He hadn’t expected a reply; the boy has learned some questions are rhetorical.

“Same as last time, then?” he asks instead, voice taut.

“You know what to do. Do it.” Severus walks back toward the desk and bends slightly, one hand gripping the edge, the other wrapping around his slowly stiffening prick. He hears movement behind him, listens as Longbottom opens a cabinet door. There is the sound of rummaging, a low sigh, the whistling swish of something moving rapidly through the air, and the quiet echo of approaching steps.

Severus closes his eyes.

The first blow falls, as it always does, without warning. The birch is thin, whippy, and Severus imagines the red welt rising on his sallow flesh, the same colour as her hair, Lily’s hair; and he begins to stroke his cock as the second blow falls, and the third.

Longbottom has a strong arm, the result of carrying sacks of mulches and fertilisers for Professor Sprout, aided by wrestling recalcitrant plant life. He brings the birch rod down hard, the twigs cracking smartly against Severus’ arse cheeks and the backs of his thighs. He twitches, breath catching in his throat, but otherwise doesn’t make a sound. The hand wrapped around his cock continues squeezing, long fingers undulating around his rigid length, bringing him a pleasure nearly as great as the birch striping his buttocks as Longbottom strikes him yet again. Severus moans softly, rising onto his toes, rocking back into the pain.

I waited too long, Lily, he thinks, and is rewarded with another blow, this one against the backs of his legs. I could have saved you, saved the child. How was I to know then the Dark Lord would attack on Samhain? It seems so obvious, now…

“Headmaster?” Severus hears the tremble in Longbottom’s voice, interrupting his silent reverie, but the birch continues to descend again, and again, and yet again, and he cannot restrain a cry of pain, an echo of unbearable loss.

“Please…” he whispers, leaning back into the blows, glorying in each thin red line blooming across his bare flesh. His hand moves faster, remembering bright red hair and brilliant green eyes and a smile that lit his darkest days.

“Please, what?”

“Harder…Don’t stop…”

Longbottom sucks in a breath, but the next blow is indeed harder, more forceful, the pain as bright and shining as the sound of Lily’s laughter echoing through the empty chambers of his soul. Severus soon loses count of the blows, torn between the pain of the lash and the pleasure of his hand pumping at his cock, pulling him toward release and a temporary surcease from guilt.

Severus pants, moaning as the blows continue to fall, his body slick with sweat despite the cold winter air chilling the office as it enters past the open windows. His mind fills with the litany of his failures with each stroke of the birch. Lily braiding her hair. Her pale face recoiling at the word Mudblood. Turning away, turning away toward Potter, arrogant Potter, her hand slipping into his, reading about the wedding, the baby, the boy as arrogant as the father, brilliant green eyes sullen, rebellious, heedless of good advice, the one he has failed to protect as he failed to save his Lily, the one wandering the wilderness armed only with infernal luck and bravado, who must surely fail the task set him, all his fault, all his doing…

Throwing back his head, Severus howls his pain and rage and loss, hand tightening around his prick, milking it, shuddering as the first spurt erupts, slicking his fingers with each slow pulse. Lily, Lily, Lily… There is no forgiveness, not tonight, not tomorrow, not ever. She’s still gone, never to return.

The blows cease at the moment of culmination, the birch rod clattering to the floor with a sound that makes Severus think Longbottom threw it from him, but he doesn’t turn to look or chastise. Tonight is as much Longbottom’s punishment as it is his, and they both know it.

Severus leans against the desk so his knees won’t buckle against the searing pain emanating from his buttocks and thighs, stiffening as strong arms surround him, keeping him upright. He doesn’t want comfort, or rescue, and he shakes off the boy with a snarl. Longbottom complies, standing back, looking at him with old, cold eyes that glitter from his pale, rigidly set face.

“Why do you do this to yourself?” he hisses. “If you hate yourself that much, you should join us against the Carrows! We could throw them from the school, keep them in the dungeons until the war ends. Earn back the self-respect you’ve lost for whatever reason!”

“You understand nothing,” Severus murmurs, shrugging back into his robes and beginning the laborious process of the buttons all over again, too tired for anger. “Return to Gryffindor Tower, Longbottom. This detention is at an end.” His eyes snap upward, fixing the boy with a baleful glare when he doesn’t immediately obey. “Or do I have to turn you over to the Carrows after all?”

The office door slams shut a moment later, leaving Severus alone with bitter memory and the sound of the ticking clock once more. He finishes buttoning his robes, and sits behind the desk, stiffly, hands flat upon the polished wood, revelling in his pain and penitence.

It’s all he has left.