Title: Drawn after him like a moth
Author: chiralove
Characters/Pairings: Percy/Snape, Percy/Luna
Rating: R
Kinks/Themes Chosen: pyrophilia
Other Warnings: character death
Word Count: ~1.5k
Summary/Description: Snape makes an offer that isn't an offer, a request that is more like a command, and Percy follows him... (or, five times Percy had sex)
Author's Notes: Huge, huge, huge thanks to bewarethesmirk and la_dissonance for last-minute betas and to r_grayjoy and entrenous88 for the cheerleading!



It happens in London, in between terms – Percy is old enough to go on his own, and careful enough to hide his face with a glamour. He loiters by a streetlamp close to the entrance to Diagon Alley and stands there smoking one cigarette after another, dropping them before they can burn his fingers.

He wants this – he needs it, the burn of the smoke in his lungs, choking him and remaking him. He isn't a prefect. He isn't Perfect Percy. His fingers are stained with smoking, and his fingers are numb with the cold, but in the cold air, he can breathe. He can feel the warmth of the fire at his fingertips.

He has to strike several matches before he manages to light a cigarette. The matches go to the ground like falling stars, extinguished in mid-air.

He's approached when he stops looking for it, when he's ready to give up and go home, back to the warmth and stifling holiday cheer. Percy gives a light to a stranger, holding a match to his cigarette with fingers that are almost trembling – that do tremble when he realizes that it's Professor Snape, dark and hooded but not disguised well enough to fool Percy.

"You don't know what you're doing here."

Percy tilts his head and looks Snape in the eyes. "I know exactly what I'm doing."

Snape makes an offer that isn't an offer, a request that is more like a command, and Percy follows him, drawn after him like a moth.

*****

There is no way to escape the portraits, the threat of the Carrows or the shadows of the war – but Percy slips through the corridors of Hogwarts. He uses glamours to make himself unrecognizable – he's a ghost, the Bloody Baron, he's a student, he's a mouse.

He has defied his father, his mother, his family – he has stood under a lamp post, waiting. He goes through the corridors of Hogwarts, places that have been and should be familiar, and makes his way to Snape in the end.

The portraits are all turned to the wall when Percy arrives in the Headmaster's office. Snape is behind his desk, putting pen to parchment, but he pushes it aside when Percy enters.

"I don't know how you do that," Percy says, letting the glamour fall off him. It feels as if he's been plunged into cold water, stripped bare of the outermost layer of his skin. It stings.

"I knew you would be in London looking for something long before you knew what it was. You always were a stupid boy." Snape's face is half in shadows, but his eyes are gleaming, and Percy's learned to interpret his snide comments for what they are.

"You'd better hope I was clever enough to make it here unnoticed," he says, trying to keep his tone of voice light enough to make it a joke. He remembers standing on a street corner in London, smoking cigarettes and pretending to be someone else, young enough to think that it was vastly important.

He's old enough to find that ridiculous now, old enough to know that he'll think the same of himself in a few more years. With Snape looking at him, it doesn't seem to matter.

"Strip," Snape says, as if he hasn't the time for pleasantries.

Percy obeys him, folding his clothes and piling them on the Headmaster's desk. He doesn't shiver in the cold air, doesn't react to the appraising glances that Snape gives him. He stands and waits for Snape's touch, bending his head and arching into it when it is given. A hand on his shoulder, a caress down the length of his spine, a dry kiss pressed to his skin – it will have to be enough.

There are still ashes, under the perch where Fawkes roosted. There are still traces of Albus Dumbledore here, though the man's portrait has been turned to face the wall and he won't be able to see Snape fucking Percy over his old desk.

*****

Percy doesn't have the right to say anything. He hasn't had the right to say anything since he came back, and he's supposed to be fucking grateful that he's here, that he's allowed to be here. Watching Harry and Ginny, Ron and Hermione, Fred and Katie, he can't say anything.

They're trying to cover the holes left by the war with fucking tissue paper, the crepe paper coming down from the ceiling in sad little spirals and the trays of slightly soggy canapés, the words and the wedding rings and the whole spectacle. The band plays, and if the music is a little too bright, if the laughter is a little forced, if some of the tears shed are not for the wedding but for the dead … Percy can't say anything.

He arms himself with a glass of Firewhisky and takes a place at the end of the bar, standing like a sentinel watching over the wedding party. After enough whisky, he won't remember or care which wedding this one is.

After enough whisky, he won't remember Snape. He won't wonder if Snape would have been invited, if he would have stood on the edge of the crowd and watched over it too, if he would have pressed against Percy and whispered in his ear, asking him if he wanted to leave early.

When Luna finds him there, she looks at him with something like pity and takes him by the hand, leading him away from the bar. They end up in the bathroom, though Percy isn't clear on how they got there, and he sits down abruptly on the floor, his heels flat on the tiles and his knees pulled up to his chest. His head hits the wall with a dull sound that promises him pain tomorrow.

"I could have been in your House," he tells Luna, who sits next to him and puts a hand on his knee. "I wanted – I wanted–"

Anything but Slytherin. Anything but Snape, staring at him from the Head Table. He'd wanted…

She silences him with a kiss, her lips warm against his, and hikes up her gauzy skirt and presses her body against his. "Shush," she says. "I know, I know."

Percy lets himself forget – for a while, he tells himself, he'll forget for awhile. In the end, he tells himself, it doesn't matter. It doesn't. He has the taste of Firewhiskey on his lips, the memory of the flames dancing over the liquid, all shadows and golden reflections – he has the burn of the whiskey in his throat.

*****

He lights the fire to keep warm, but it isn't long until Percy realizes that it's more than that – he needs the fire. He leans in to the warmth, feeling the heat from the flames ghost over his skin.

This is what he needs, and Percy can't stop thinking about the Resurrection Stone. Harry left it in the Forest, but if he had it now, if he had a way to speak to Snape–

It's like being close to Snape, though, the heat of the fire like phantom fingers on his skin, an almost tangible touch. It's harsh when he's too close, too rough, too much, but that's like Snape was, too, and that's what Percy wants, now. It's what he needs.

Percy's skin has become rough, worn by the work he's done. His fingers have new calluses now, and they're not the same as the ones that Snape earned with a lifetime over a cauldron, but it's all that Percy can do now, all that he'll ever be able to do. He slips his hand down his trousers and if he touches himself, if he closes his eyes, he can pretend that it's Snape, touching him. He can conjure him with a glamour – he can pretend that Snape is there. Percy opens his eyes when he comes, watching the flickering of the flames and looking for a familiar face.

There's nothing more than firelight in the darkness and shadows on his skin.

*****

It is like the junction between London and Diagon Alley – alleys and twisted streets and rubbish bins where homeless men light fires and warm their hands. Percy is wearing fingerless gloves, and he twists his hands together before slipping them into his pockets.

He has been waiting, and sometimes he thinks he has waited too long. He stands under a lamp post and lights a cigarette. He feels the heat in his fingers and lets the match burn until it scorches his skin.

Snape is there, then, cradling Percy's hands between his own. He breathes a kiss over them, and pulls Percy closer.

"I was ready to leave without you," Percy says, holding his chin up and looking Snape in the eye. "I would have taken a train without you."

He can pretend that he would have left without Snape, pretend that he would have taken another train – he can pretend.

"But you didn't," Snape says, kissing him and pressing him back against the post. "You won't."