Title: Balance of Power
Author: thegildedmagpie
Characters/Pairings: Dumbledore/Tom Riddle
Rating: R
Kinks/Themes Chosen: birching
Other Warnings: Spankings in an academic setting, pervy student-teacher relationship, UST, Tom is 15ish.
Word Count: 2232
Summary/Description: Sometimes Tom got in trouble at school. The punishments, arguably, hurt his Transfiguration teacher more than him.
Author's Notes: When I was about twelve I read a fic on ff.net in which Dumbles had a brief vivid fantasy of spanking Tom. This is dedicated to that mystery author and her lasting warping effect upon my sexuality.




“I'm truly rather surprised at you, Tom.”

He sets his jaw and forces himself to pause before answering. “I am a bit surprised at myself.”

“I think everyone expects a bit better from you than this.”

“As well they should,” he answers quietly, and judges that suitably vague that it should satisfy the professor without being too humiliating to speak.

Dumbledore stares at him for a moment, that totally up-front stare like a small child inexplicably gone auburn, august and bespectacled. “Do you know why I was asked to speak to you?”

A brief calculation, concluding in: Honesty is, here, the best. Tom meets his eyes to answer. “Because none of the people who are more in a position to do so want to cope with me at the moment. I worry them when they can't deal with me in the persona of eager student who listens attentively to their wisdom. And presumably they think you're better able to deal with me than the people whose job it technically is to do so.”

Dumbledore takes this moment of truthfulness perfectly in stride. Tom has to admire him for it. He's nervous, like the small boy who first greeted the professor visiting the orphanage – though he hides it better now than he did back then, back when any change could be threatening. Before he learned to calmly and smoothly adapt. Now his nerves are easily hidden below a placid exterior, his well-practiced mask of not-quite-penitent-but-satisfactorily-humble unslippingly in place.

The professor regards him with a touch of equally well-hidden chagrin. Tom is difficult. Brilliant, yes, and an excellent student, but difficult. One is left with the problem of knowing whether he's understanding or accepting or agreeing or even any two of three … Dumbledore makes the attempt.

“You understand, Tom, that few are blessed with an ivory tower from which to pursue their intellectual leanings.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And that associating profitably with others is necessary to conducting our lives.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please enlighten me as to how your behavior with your younger colleague demonstrates an understanding of either truth.”

An edge of testiness creeps into Tom's voice. “I'm very well aware that it doesn't, sir.”

“I'm to take it that you understand the nature of your wrongdoing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then all that remains is to exact penitentiary justice. I expect you're aware of the usual discipline for this offense.”

Tom winces invisibly. He knows. But he's never experienced it and had rather hoped to achieve his majority without doing so. “Yes, sir. 'Ten of the best,' as many people my age are given to saying.”

“That's right.” And Dumbledore rises from his chair, sliding open a desk drawer as he does. “Lower your trousers, please.”

Tom looks up to meet Dumbledore's eyes for a moment but finds he can't, because the professor is looking down into the drawer. Tom is desperate to avoid this. The idea of it, of trying to look Dumbledore in the face after exposing himself to him and being struck like a recalcitrant little animal – but every phrasing he tries, running them rapidly past the auditor in his brain, sounds like an undignified plea. His jaw tightens as he concludes that he has to take this.

Ten blows. Undoubtedly with some implement borrowed for the purpose. He can do this. He'll do it quietly.

And I can take this back from you. See if I don't.

He shrugs off his robe (slightly too short; he needs a new set), laying it over a side chair in which he's often sat during private tutorials in magical languages or the laws of Transfiguration. He slips his jumper over his head, then, with the humiliation starting to be eaten away by a faint burn of deliberately chosen insolence as he acts unbidden, he toes off his shoes, unknots his tie and begins to unbutton his shirt.

When Dumbledore looks up and sees this, his eyes go wide, and Tom congratulates himself with a flicker of pride at breaking his facade. I know you well. Even in my submitting to this you can't make me submit to you.

“I don't think it's necessary to undress entirely, Tom,” he says.

“I would prefer to, sir,” he says, and their eyes fasten.

Dumbledore is the first to look away, but it's quite deliberate, or so the professor tells himself. Tom has bared his shoulders now, revealing a slim, silken-pale, well-proportioned young body that – no. No. It does not stir him. It will not.

The youthful boy's slender legs are revealed then as Tom steps out of his trousers and pants and straightens up again. There's a challenge on his face, which Dumbledore tries to focus on to distract himself from Tom's cock, slender but gaining the inches of manhood now, which he assures himself he's never wondered about –

Very clearly, he thinks, Damn Slughorn for doing this to me. Damn him.

But would he rather that the man nominally in charge of Tom's moral education be the one to administer this punishment? The undressing is such an obvious ploy to use the attractive lines of his body to distract from the vulnerable target of his arse. (He had done badly to allow it. The boy will take his permitting it as evidence of something.) No doubt Tom would have disrobed for whoever administered this prescribed amount of pain. He's a suspicious boy, always has been, though he buries it now with a cunning beyond his years in the appearance of quiet self-assurance and faith. And Dumbledore finds himself protectively reluctant for Tom to make himself so vulnerable before others, others with less self-control and less interest in Tom's success.

No, better it be here, better it be he.

Tom is staring at him, waiting apparently for his reaction, a touch of resistance clear behind his green eyes. How good it would be to get the boy to remove the mask of calm, show Dumbledore the emotions he can just detect. There is more to this boy under the surface. He longs to see it.

Tom moves then – and, oh God, he's bending slightly to grip the edge of the desk, the curve of his arse as he bends a symphony in pale skin and tempting shadows –

“No,” Dumbledore says calmly, moving back to his seat. “Come here, please.” Is he really about to do this? He finds that he is. The importance of this lesson for someone like Tom is such that it should be made memorable. And he's apparently just enough of a masochist that the warm weight of the boy is somehow preferable to watching him bend over.

The boy is clearly unsettled, caught off guard by the request.

“Don't be nervous. Soon begun, soon finished.” And the element of surprise goes to Dumbledore again.

He's been longing to do this, he must confess it to himself. For months he's been wanting to take Tom off balance, see the quiet defiance in his eyes fade into a more childlike surprise. Show him that others can take power over him. Can care enough to want to.

When Tom has approached, looking a touch more vulnerable in his nudity now, Dumbledore takes the boy's arm and pulls him over his lap. It's easy, so easy. Tom isn't big enough to be difficult to move. There's brief convulsive motion in the long, slender limbs and he feels Tom grip one of the chair-legs. Then he's still, his breathing a little fast, and his bare arse is up on Dumbledore's right thigh.

The bundle of a dozen birch twigs is on the desk. Dumbledore picks it up, feels its deceptively light weight in his hand. Marvelling at the clinical tone he hears in his own voice, he advises, “Please don't take this amiss, but I think you'll find I'm less likely to strike somewhere injurious if you spread your legs slightly.”

Tom stiffens on his lap, then, after a tensely balanced moment, obeys, his back and shoulders visibly tight. Dumbledore thanks any nearby deities for his own foresight in having situated Tom forward over his knees – his interest is growing obvious.

Too old for this. Too pretty. Slender. Pale. Visibly trembling. If he dared, if only he dared …

To distract himself, Dumbledore lifts the birch and brings it down with a swish just above Tom's thighs.

Tom jumps dramatically at the rapid sting, like a half-dozen cat-scratches all at once.

“I believe the general procedure is to have you count,” Dumbledore advises.

“Sir,” Tom says breathlessly, then, after a gulp of air, makes it clear that wasn't an agreement: “I am sure you won't lose track before ten, sir.” His knuckles are white on the chair legs as he waits for the sting to fade. Head down, naked, in pain – pain enough to distract him briefly from humiliation – humiliation enough to make the pain pale by comparison –

He intellectualizes, I shall need to remember how effective a combination this is.

The second stroke gets a different sound from impact and a fainter squirm from Tom. Dumbledore watches the welts grow for a moment, entranced by the way the livid pink rapidly rises on the pale skin, then hits a third time.

Tom hisses audibly. He's counting in his head – fortunate, because the next blow is sharper and followed by an inquiry: “And how many was that?”

“Four, sir,” he says between his teeth.

“Just seeing that you're paying attention,” Dumbledore says amiably – a hateful phrase, and Tom is going to flash-freeze into cold rage next time that it's employed after an incisive little question about an assignment just completed -- or while he's sitting next to Minerva. He tries to hold still. Tries not to give the professor the satisfaction of seeing his arse cringe from the blows.

And Dumbledore, seated very straight in his chair behind the teak desk, realizes: I need to finish this before it grows more obvious still that … that.

The remaining blows rain down in quick succession, welting, scratching, leaving the lower half of Tom's arse an uneven ladder of marks. By the end he can hear what might be a low moan between Tom's teeth, see his thighs tremble slightly under the thrashing, which by the ninth blow has grown violent, heralding the tenth which is nearly brutal – but somewhere in the last eight seconds Dumbledore has realized that even that is probably not sufficient lesson. For too long he's looked across his desk at Tom as he stands and waits for his copy-books to be reviewed, and wondered what it would take to turn the fleeting emotions in the boy's eyes behind the tepid academic politeness and turn those flickers into honesty – wondered if it's his place to gently break the boy, wondered how long he can pretend that modeling humility is any semblance of education, wondered if he's only a coward who cannot face what this too-young boy stirs in him …

He drops the birch rods. One hand has been on Tom's lower back to hold him in place, stop him thrashing about or, worse, shifting onto his teacher's erection – and the other tops the welts with a firm slap.

Tom's cry is quickly cut off, but Dumbledore can see the back of his neck flush deeper at the sound he made. The professor's hand comes down again.

Below him, staring backwards at an expanse of carpet, the carved chair legs, his own bare feet, Tom quivers with humiliated rage, his body rocking at each slap. He's not above an academic appreciation of pain, nor unmoved by its eroticism, but this is … this is an outrage. The crack of Dumbledore's hand on his unprotected arse is loud even over his own faint panting. Every blow sets the cuts of the birch afire again and under it is the deeper, broader sting of being … spanked. He swallows and sets his jaw hard.

Dumbledore only stops when his own palm is throbbing. He stares at Tom's arse, striped and reddened in blotches on the pale skin, the cleft darkening, and he can see it move and part as the boy cautiously, probably unconsciously lets his muscles unclench.

“That will be all, then,” he says, and again is shocked at the steadiness of his tone. “I expect this wasn't entirely necessary for you to learn your lesson, intelligent young man that you are – but now no one can say that justice has not been done.”

He stays firmly in his chair as Tom rises and redresses, his cock fully hard behind the merciful screen of the desk and jumping at the faint gasp when Tom's trousers scrape over his very red arse.

“Good night, sir,” says Tom, apparently not in any mood to stay – thank aforementioned randomly chosen deities for it …

“And Tom,” Dumbledore says as the boy's hand is laid on the doorknob, “we can keep this just between us.”

Tom looks up. Green eyes meet blue. And though the boy must be in pain, he manages to give Dumbledore the gentlest and most sardonic smile imaginable.

“Of course, sir,” he says, “just between us.”

Dumbledore thinks, with a sinking sense of exposure, Bloody hell.