Title: Slytherin's Locket
Author: centaury_squill
Characters/Pairings: Harry/Severus
Rating: R
Kinks/Themes Chosen: capnolagnia: arousal from watching others smoke
Other Warnings: Harry is 17, frottage.
Word Count: 2,280
Summary/Description: What really happened in the Forest of Dean.
Author's Notes: The opening scene was inspired by Pojypojy's iconic picture of Snape smoking.


Snape leaned over the battlements of the Astronomy Tower and stared moodily out into the night. Even though the students had all left Hogwarts as soon as the Christmas holidays began, his respite was only temporary. The Carrows weren't the brightest of Death Eaters, but he couldn't allow them to suspect anything; he had to appear friendly, to be subtle in reining back their cruelty. The hatred of the rest of the Hogwarts staff was – almost – a relief. And down below in the headmaster's office Dumbledore's portrait was no doubt waiting to give him yet another impossible task. Sometimes he was tempted to bring it up here and throw it after its original. Smiling grimly at the thought, he dipped his long fingers into his cloak and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. Once he'd thought he'd left the habit behind forever in 1970s Cokeworth, but that was before his life had grown even more excruciating than it had been back then.

He tapped a cigarette out of the packet and lit up.

*
Harry sat hunched in the tent doorway staring out into the forest, brooding bitterly over the revelations in Rita Skeeter's The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore. He'd once thought he knew his old headmaster, but it was now obvious he knew nothing. And Dumbledore had been careful to keep it that way. Why?

He shrugged impatiently, trying to push away the hurt he felt. To distract himself, he pulled out the Marauder's Map and unfolded it. But he'd forgotten that it was the Christmas holidays: there was no sign of Ginny, or Neville, or any of his other friends. He was about to put it away when his attention was caught by the pair of footprints labelled Severus Snape. For once they weren't pacing the headmaster's office or prowling the castle's corridors, but standing still on top of the Astronomy Tower. What could he be doing?

*
Snape took a final drag on his cigarette and pitched it over the battlements. He watched the red spark until it disappeared, then, straightening his shoulders, he swept down the stone steps from the tower. He took a circuitous route back to his office and breathed a sigh of relief when he arrived there without encountering anybody on the way.

He'd barely reached his desk when Phineas Nigellus came rushing into his portrait.

"Headmaster! They are camping in the Forest of Dean..."

*
The silver doe led Harry through the silent forest, stepping daintily, a glowing beacon in the darkness. He followed her trustingly, taking care not to stumble over tree roots hidden under the snow. In spite of Slytherin's cursed locket around his neck, he felt better than he had for a long time: purposeful, calm, safe.

All of which disappeared with the doe. Harry stood bereft, looking wildly around in the darkness.

"Lumos!"

Now he could see. There at his feet, glimmering in the light of his wand, was a small frozen pool. Why had the doe brought him here? Harry raised his wand over the pool and in its light he could see, deep under the ice, something glinting – a strangely familiar shape. Excited, Harry sank to his knees, concentrating his wandlight on the spot, recognising the shape, the glint of red stones. It was the sword of Gryffindor!

Harry stripped to his underpants and, without stopping to remove the locket from around his neck, pointed Hermione's wand at the ice.

"Diffindo."

The ice splintered, broke apart. Taking a deep breath, Harry dived into the freezing water.

*
Hermione woke suddenly from a deep sleep with an uneasy feeling that something was wrong. She climbed out of her bunk, pulled on her dressing gown and slid her feet into her slippers. There was no sound in the darkness around her. She padded to the front of the tent where she'd left Harry on watch, only to find him gone. And with him, her wand.

She hesitated in the tent entrance, peering out into the gloom. Was that a magical glow she could see coming towards her?

"Harry?" she called tentatively.

To her surprise, she was answered, but not by Harry. The well-remembered tones of Professor Snape came out of the darkness.

"He is suffering from hypothermia, Miss Granger. Kindly stand aside."

Too shocked even to ask how he'd managed to break through their protective enchantments, Hermione stepped back, wordlessly indicating the boys' bedroom. Snape strode towards it, a pale, unconscious Harry cradled in his arms. As they passed her, Hermione caught a glimpse of a silver sword lying on top of Harry, his bone-white fingers clenched around its ruby-studded handle.

*
Harry lay, wrapped in a cocoon of warmth, looking lazily out into the forest. He felt he'd just recovered from a life-threatening illness, even more so than in the aftermath of Nagini's attack on him in Godric's Hollow. He'd protested he felt much better, demanded to leave the tent; Hermione and Snape – and when had they become such firm allies? – had insisted he stay in his bunk. This was the compromise: Snape had levitated him, bunk and all, to his present position just outside the tent. Hermione, Polyjuiced as an old lady, was off foraging in the nearest shop. And Snape... Harry turned his head so he could see what Snape was doing. Despite being saved from strangulation and drowning, Harry still didn't quite trust Snape.

He was looking innocuous enough at the moment, in fact more relaxed than Harry had ever seen him. He was supposed to be on guard, but he didn't seem at all alert for danger, leaning casually against a big oak tree. As Harry watched, Snape reached into a pocket of his cloak. Harry tensed, but all that appeared was a packet of cigarettes. Wait, what? Snape was a smoker? Apparently so: his long fingers were practically caressing the packet; he stripped the cellophane away as if undressing a lover, and when he finally inserted the cigarette between his thin lips...

Harry gulped. Was he under some kind of spell? Snape looked downright sexy, leaning back against the tree, eyes half-closed, sensuously drawing on his fag. Harry felt his cock begin to stir, surreptitiously slid his hand down under the covers to touch it.

"Potter..." Snape's tone was lazy, amused.

"Y-yessir?" Harry stammered, guiltily snatching his hand away from his cock.

"Stop staring."

*
Snape took one last, satisfying drag on his cigarette, dropped the butt and ground it out under his boot heel, slowly, deliberately. He couldn't put it off any longer. Time to talk to Potter.

Harry looked up apprehensively as Snape approached his bunk, his green eyes wide, his pale skin flushing. Flushing guiltily? Interesting...

"Perhaps you could enlighten me, Mr Potter," Snape drawled.

"Er – what about?"

"About why this charade was necessary. A charade which, I might add, would have cost you your life had I obeyed Dumbledore's instructions to the letter."

"His instructions?"

"To ensure you received the sword of Gryffindor under conditions of – what was it again – ah yes, need and valour. And without knowing that I gave it you." He glared at Harry. "What do you need the sword for, Potter?"

"Didn't Dumbledore tell you?"

Snape put his face very close to Harry's. "No, Potter, he did not," he hissed.

Harry's face was a picture of conflicting emotions, and Snape braced himself for the inevitable rejection. But then the boy gave a quick nod, as if making up his mind.

"You know that locket that tried to strangle me..."

*
Harry stared down at the letter 'S', inlaid with emeralds, then up at Snape. "Ready?"

Snape frowned. "Don't you think you should be the one – Dumbledore –"

"Fuck Dumbledore," Harry said, more harshly than he'd intended. "You said it yourself; I'd be dead if you'd followed his instructions to the letter. And Gryffindor's sword would still be frozen in that pond." He grinned. "I'll do the Slytherin bit and tell it to open. You be a Gryffindor and stab it."

Snape shrugged, picked up the sword.

Harry narrowed his eyes, imagining the 'S' to be a snake. The locket shook frantically as if aware of its danger, but this only increased Harry's determination.

"Open!" he hissed in Parseltongue, and the locket clicked apart.

*
Whatever Snape had been expecting, it wasn't this. He took a step back, almost dropping the sword, as the thing in the locket addressed him by name.

"Why are you doing this, Severus, when your heart is truly mine, and his is – another's?"

He glanced from the locket to Harry, who was staring at him, making frantic stabbing gestures. Then back to the locket.

"I know your secret desires, Severus, but he will never return them..."

And suddenly two figures grew out of the locket, ballooning monstrously above their heads: giant representations of Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley.

"You disgust me," the Harry-figure said, in Tom Riddle's voice, "with your furtive, filthy longings. I know the way you look at me when you think nobody sees, how you want to grope me with your dirty, disgusting hands."

The Ginny-figure joined in, laughing shrilly, "How could you presume to look at the Chosen One, who is MINE, who loves ME, who would never look at you without loathing –"

With a sudden effort, Snape closed his mind to the evil locket's insinuations, and was able to hear the real Harry, who had apparently been shouting for some time.

"Stab it, Snape! It's all lies, I broke up with Ginny ages ago, STAB IT!!!"

Lips drawn back in a snarl, Snape raised the sword, brought it plunging down. There was a piercing scream, the locket shattered, the monstrous figures vanished. It was over.

Snape dropped the sword and staggered back, reaching automatically into his cloak pocket for the comfort of his cigarettes.

*
Harry watched avidly as Snape took a deep drag on his fag then blew twin streams of smoke out of his nostrils. It was almost like spying on a dragon – dangerous, exciting, hot. Wait, where had that last thought come from? This was the second time he'd found it arousing to watch Snape smoke. What was wrong with him? His cock was already hard, demanding attention, but Harry hesitated. The last time he'd touched it, Snape had somehow known.

The end of the cigarette glowed as Snape drew on it again. Harry couldn't tear his eyes away; he felt his face burn as red as the cigarette. Snape only had to look at him now to know Harry's guilty feelings about him. Then he caught his breath. Wasn't that what the fragment of Riddle's soul in the locket had been accusing SNAPE of? Secret desires. Furtive, filthy longings. About him, about Harry. And that meant...

Cheered on by his cock, Harry strode up to Snape and pinned him against the nearest tree, grinding their groins together enthusiastically.

*
Snape hastily plucked the cigarette from his lips before he either swallowed it or burnt the stupid boy's eye out with it.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" he spluttered.

But his cock, too, had a mind of its own, straining eagerly forward to meet Potter's frotting. Snape moaned, leaning back against the tree trunk, his head thrown back in temporary surrender. He felt Potter start to nip and suck at his throat, licking his prominent Adam's apple as if it were some delicious sweet. He felt the scrape of the youth's stubble against his neck. He felt – "Fuck!" – his cigarette burning his fingers.

Snape hurled his fag to the ground and stamped it out. Heedless of the pain in his hand, he twined his fingers roughly in Potter's hair, jerking his head back so he could plunder his mouth with a savage kiss. To his fury, Potter flinched away, grimacing. Snape pulled out his wand, a hex trembling on his lips, but before he could cast it, Potter spoke.

"Shit, Snape, your mouth tastes like an ashtray. Don't you know any breath-freshening charms?"

Snape smirked, and hastily changed the hexing motion into that of a spell he'd invented at ten years old, to stop his parents finding out he'd been experimenting with cigarettes. It had always fooled his father, insensate Muggle that he was, but he now suspected that his mother had known all along.

"Mmmm," Potter murmured happily, "tastes like seaside rock."

*
They lay together underneath the snow-laden branches of the tree; Severus had cast Cushioning and Warming Charms even as he'd pushed Harry to the ground. Now he was setting the pace of their frotting, a slow – maddeningly slow, thought Harry – rhythm, which nevertheless was bringing them both inexorably to the edge of climax. But then Severus pushed himself up on his arms, arching his groin away from Harry, dipping his head for more sweet, mint-flavoured kisses.

"Fuck, yessss," moaned Harry, almost breaking into Parseltongue in his excitement, "make me come, Severus! Please!"

Slowly, tantalisingly slowly, Severus lowered himself so their cocks just brushed together as he resumed the arousing back-and-forth of sex. Harry felt his balls being rolled, his cock being stretched and released as the long, full-body strokes continued; he felt himself tighten, and thrust blindly upwards.

"Y-E-S-S-S-S SSssssssssssssssss!"

*
Snape was once more on the Astronomy Tower, leaning over the battlements, staring out into the night. Tomorrow, term would begin again, and all his problems would come pouring back through the gates with the arrival of the Hogwarts Express. But for now, he had the castle to himself, a packet of fags in his hand, and his memories of the past few days to console him.

He smiled.

- the end -