Title: Feet on the Ground
Author: kelly_chambliss
Characters: Filius Flitwick and the feet of several Hogwarts staff members
Rating: R
Kinks/Themes Chosen: Podophilia (foot fetish)
Other Content: Masturbation
Word Count: 2800
Summary: For Filius Flitwick, sexual arousal is all a matter of point of view.
Author's Notes: I love Filius, and I don't write him often enough. Of course, after he reads this, he may be glad that's true.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Filius Flitwick spent a great deal of his life staring at breasts, bollocks, and backsides.

Not out of any sexual perversity, you understand, or from a more-than-ordinary sex drive -- but because, when a man is only slightly over one metre tall, well, it's breasts, bollocks, and backsides that are the objects most often level with his eyes.

This fact of life had caused Filius difficulty more that once. The first time had been during his own Hogwarts schooldays, when Josina MacDougal, his Hufflepuff partner in Potions, had blamed her exploded cauldron on the distraction of his gaze. "He's always staring at my b-b-bosom," Josina had sobbed, standing there covered with the dripping ruins of the day's lesson. "I can't concentrate."

As a result, Filius had had to endure an embarrassing "little chat" with Professor Slughorn, who'd kept clapping him on the back as he assured him that he understood all about "boys and their hormones, but a man needs to learn a smidge of control, what?"

Then there'd been the excruciating episode of his first Charms apprenticeship, where he'd nearly found himself engaged to be married to the Charms master's unpleasant daughter. "I see how you look at her, my boy," Master Hixson had boomed. "If you want to make an offer for her once your term is complete, I shan't say no." The man had been, not to put too fine a point on it, desperate to get the girl off his hands, and when she herself took to sneaking up silently behind Filius, so that he'd find his face buried in her breasts when he turned round, he decided the time had come to apply for a transfer.

In his next placement, so assiduously did he avoid looking at any woman that he inadvertently convinced Kenwith, his fellow apprentice, that he was sexually interested in him. The two of them had been spending a late night experimenting with counter-spells for permanent sticking charms, and when the master's wife had brought them their dinner, Filius had steadfastly cast his eyes away from her chest. He didn't realise that he'd appeared to be staring at Kenwith instead until after they'd eaten, and Filius suddenly felt a hand slide between his legs.

"Ye been eyein' me bum all night, laddie," Kenwith had bent over him and breathed beerily into his ear. "Is it true what they say about ye wee ones -- short man, long cock?"

Had Master Fenwick not chosen that moment to return to check on their progress, Filius couldn't have answered for what might have happened. He knew only he was relieved that nothing had, either with Kenwith or with anyone else whose anatomy he had unwittingly ogled.

It wasn't that he had anything against women's breasts -- or men's bums, either, come to that -- but he was also an intensely private person, and a childhood filled with teasing about his size had made him reluctant to risk the sorts of relationships that would require him to divest himself of clothing in the presence of others.

Besides, the years he'd spent looking away from bums and boobs had taught him that when it came to sexual satisfaction, there were many enchanting ways to find it that did not involve other people at all. Well, not direct interaction with other people, at any rate.

Because when you made a point of always directing your eyes downward, you discovered that bosoms and bottoms weren't the only sights that could pump up a pecker. Or even the best ones. No, not at all.

For, as Filius had quickly discovered, there were also Feet.

Feet, glorious feet -- long feet, thin feet, chubby feet, stubby feet. Feet with elegant arches, solid feet with comforting flat soles, erotic hairy feet, soft feet, feet with the callouses and corns that spoke of hard work well done. English feet with pale, fine skin that barely concealed the sexy lines of the metatarsals. Warm brown Mediterranean feet that walked the beaches of summer. Men's feet, women's feet. Filius loved them all.

Then there were the toes, an infinite variety of toes: there were delicious little phalanxed buttons that one could imagine soft and clean in one's mouth. There were long toes like fingers, digits of mystery and promise. And when one spent summer holidays iin Greece and Spain, there were carnivals of brightly-coloured toenails that made Filius envy the pedicurists with their little stools, those people who spent their days trimming, snipping, filing, painting, their hands filled always with the soft warmth of feet.

He might have envied the pedicurists in general, but he would never had been able to undertake such a job himself, of course -- not unless he wanted to exist in a perpetual state of sexual excitement. And while he enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh as much as anyone, he believed strongly that everything had its proper season, its proper space. The workplace -- be it a pedicure parlour or a school classroom -- was most assuredly not the proper space for sexual thoughts.

During term at Hogwarts, whether he was teaching or enjoying a meal in the Great Hall, Filius took great care not to look at a single foot, no matter how well-shod it might be. Of course it would have been highly inappropriate to look at students' feet in any case, and he also avoided even the slightest glimpse of his colleagues' lower extremities. He didn't want to have to deal with any possible complications.

No erections in public places: this was one of his unbreakable rules. Although most robes made it easy enough to conceal the problem, having a hard-on with students around would not only have been unseemly in the extreme, but it would also have been deuced inconvenient. One could hardly excuse oneself from dinner or lessons to head out for a wank.

Nor could one always be certain that one's fellow staffers wouldn't notice. Minerva, for instance, was a good friend, yet she had far too sharp an eye for irregularities. She would never say anything, but Filius preferred not to have to face her expressive eyebrows. Then someone like Rolanda would have none of Minerva's delicacy; she'd make certain the entire table knew. Pomona, bless her heart, would think it was sweet, and Filius generally did not enjoy being considered "sweet"; it was too often an assumption based on his size and not his demeanour. Severus, poor boy, would sneer (such defensiveness, sadly, had become second nature with him), and that insufferable Lockhart would probably call Filius a "sly dog" again, the way he had done on Valentine's Day. And there was always the risk that he'd charm pink penis-shaped confetti to fall on all and sundry.

No, the proper place for noticing one's colleagues' feet was in the staff room or on holiday or out of term time. And the proper time and place to enjoy a full foot-fantasy was in the solitude of one's own bed.

Filius loved his bed -- he loved his entire suite of castle rooms, in fact: his cosy sitting room, his snug bedroom, his study with its low shelves housing his collection of antiquarian Charms texts. He found it such a relief to retire to his chambers at night, where he'd set up a world in which at last everything was in proper proportion for him. A place where he could look down at table-tops and sit on a sofa with his feet reaching the floor. He'd even charmed his windows low, so that he could sit and look at the grandeur of the Highlands instead of having his view cut off by a sill.

And on a night like tonight, when the castle was wrapped in chill fog, and they still seemed no closer to finding the "Heir of Slytherin" that was terrorising the entire school, Filius appreciated the warmth and comfort of his bed all the more. Here, with his hot spiced wine waiting on his bedside table, his bed-curtains open only enough to admit a little soft candlelight, his nightshirt resting lightly around his haunches -- Filius was ready to treat himself to a little foot-fueled relaxation. As far as he was concerned, such an activity barely even counted as an indulgence: in times like these, it was a medicinally-necessary release of tension.

Tonight, he thought, he'd begin with a foot that had long been one of his favourites: Minerva's. Now, Filius had no desire to bed Minerva herself; he didn't believe in sullying a good friendship with sex, and in any case, since her husband's death from a rogue tentacula, Minerva had been keeping company with Madam Malkin the dressmaker.

At first, their liaison had surprised Filius -- not because it was unconventional (people who believed Minerva to be a conventional prim spinster were people who did not know her), but because both she and Madam M were rather sharp-tongued and hot-tempered; too much alike, he would have thought. But there -- when it came to sexual attraction, one simply never knew.

People who thought they knew Filius, now: they would probably be surprised to know that one of the surest ways for him to make his cock twitch with interest was to think of the narrow refinement of Minerva McGonagall's foot.

It had been her shoe that had initially attracted him. At first glance, it appeared to be simply an ordinary, respectable black witch's boot, with a moderate heel. Witches of Minerva's generation rarely went in for exotic footwear, given that it was usually hidden beneath their long robes. So his occasional glimpse of black boot under the swirl of Minerva's skirts hadn't immediately intrigued Filius; he'd noticed only because he was so intent on not focusing on her bosom.

But one afternoon in the staff room, she had crossed her leg, and the boot had been clearly visible for some time.

Its narrow heel had been higher than Filius realised, and the black leather toe had been sharply pointed, not square and thick the way his grandmother's everyday boots had been. The leather itself was clearly the finest, softest of kid; it sheathed Minerva's shapely ankle like -- and the simile had leapt unbidden into Filius's mind -- like a lover's caress.

Wreathed across the front of the shoe had been a series of tiny dotted holes, like wingtips but more delicate; they'd directed the eye along the thin laces to the smooth blackness of Minerva's stockings, which disappeared demurely and invitingly under her skirt. Filius had had to sit on his hands, so strong was the temptation to unlace those chic high-heeled boots and stroke Minerva's silk-clad arches.

Her actual foot, he hadn't seen until the following summer, when a long hot evening had tempted the few staff who remained at the castle to go wading in the lake. Minerva had charmed off her boots and stockings and had lifted her skirts above her bare feet -- and Filius had had to excuse himself and run to his rooms, so urgent had his need become. That wank had been one of the best of his life.

He thought of her thin foot now, its skin so fine and pale that he could see the blue veins beneath the surface, crossing the enticing web of clearly-defined metatarsal bones. Her toes marched in a perfectly-graduated line from great to little, and he let himself remember how she'd dipped her pointed toes into the water, how he thought he'd never seen anything as graceful as that line.

In his mind, it was her foot beneath his hand rather than his own cock; if he closed his eyes, her could imagine the silky warmth, could almost feel the velvet skin between each separate toe. . .

The woman herself disappeared, and he meant no disrespect to Minerva, but it was only her foot that he wanted, only her foot that let him feel that rush of blood into his privates, that fullness, that. . .unghhh.

And now it was a different foot he saw in his mind, this one solid and substantial, the kind of foot that reminded him of the first bite of autumn wind, cool and bracing, bringing the scent of harvested earth. . .

It was Pomona Sprout's foot, short and thick with dirt curling between her blunt toes. The first time he'd seen her barefoot, she'd been standing in the middle of her outdoor herb bed, preparing the ground for planting.

"Take your shoes off and join me, Filius!" she'd shouted. "It's the best way to aerate the soil; the growing spell needs the warmth of a real body. And it feels wonderful! You'll think you're a child again, with the whole long summer just around the corner."

He'd joined her, and had enjoyed himself thoroughly, but not because he felt like a child again. No, he'd felt like the randiest of adolescents, his blood humming excitedly through his veins and into his cock as he'd memorized the contours of her lovely wide instep, planted so firmly on the ground that it seemed a part of the very earth itself.

He could smell that fresh dirt now, here in the depths of his winter bed, and he unconsciously tightened his hand with the strength of his memory, pulling on himself as he imagined pulling on Pomona's bare foot, using both his hands so as to miss no part of her, pressing, releasing, pressing, sending tendrils of sensation shooting throughout his body just as the tendrils of Pomona's plants every year brought new life from the dead ground.

Filius was panting now, almost groaning aloud, but it wouldn't have mattered if he'd made noise; he was safe in his rooms, safe inside his head, safe in the perfect time and place. . .

. . .as Pomona's beautiful dirt-encrusted toes faded from his mind's eye to be replaced by the vision of yet a third foot, this one as solid as Pomona's but longer and even sturdier. It was a foot dusted with thick auburn hair that Filius like to imagine would produce the most delectable sense of friction, if one were lucky enough to be able to knead that manly foot in one's hands, to run one's thumbs firmly along the high arch and revel in the resulting shudders of pleasure that would shake both stroker and strokee. . .

This third foot that filled Filius's imagination belonged to Albus Dumbledore, and if the rational part of Filius knew that the auburn hair was likely to be thin and white by now, the strong foot wrinkled and calloused, the foot in his mind was nonetheless still that of a vigorous man, one who used regularly to invite Filius and the other male staff spend an evening in the little sauna that was one of the Headmaster's perquisites.

The scent of the sauna came back sharply to Filius, the clean, musky odour of men and heat and new sweat. Though he'd been wearing only a towel, Albus had filled the small space with presence and authority, and Filius used to marvel at how even his feet seemed powerful, so surely placed, the corn on his left little toe providing a reassuring touch of humanity in a great (flawed, yes, but still great) man.

Albus's toes were quirky, like the man himself, the second one longer than the great one, narrow and finger-like, so that Filius could imagine ancient times, when humans might have have used their feet as hands to help them move through the thick jungles of their world.

His breathing grew heavier, his hand moved faster, his own world reduced to friction and heat, all of him expanding, filling, thickening. . .

He could feel his hips begin to move of their own accord, his cock thrusting into his hot hand as he imagined what it would be like to open his mouth and let Albus's long toes slip inside, to be all over warm wetness, the toes becoming slick the way his cock was now slickening in his own leaking juices. . .

Filius let himself cry out with sharp yips that he might have felt the need to silence had he not been happily alone, and he smeared . . . sucked . . . thrust . . . aaaahhhhhhhh.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was but the work of a moment to charm himself clean and accio his wine toddy, which was still at the perfect temperature, of course. Truly, if the school's Charms master couldn't cast an effective Warming Charm, he had no right to the position.

Filius sipped his wine slowly and contentedly, feeling the beginnings of a welcome drowsiness steal over him. He would sleep well tonight.

He sent the cup back to the table, wanded out the candles, and turned on his side under his down-filled duvet. He was asleep within moments, his arms folded across his chest.

And his feet tucked up beneath him, snug and warm.