The Seer's Touch by suitesamba Title: The Seer’s Touch Author:suitesamba Pairing: Severus/OMC, Severus/Sybil Trelawney Rating: Hard R Word Count: 2302 Warnings: Dubious consent Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. The characters and their worlds belong to their original writers and no copyright infringement or offense is intended. No money was made from this story. Summary: Severus would like to get to know the new healer better, so he fakes an illness to end up in the hospital wing. But a true flu epidemic hits and he gets a new (and unexpected) caretaker. Dying would have been easier. Prompt: PROMPT 4. Dying should have been so easy, but love was making it hard. -- Oh, the #angst #beautifulangst ... Unless, of course, Severus needs someone to die so he and his chosen can be together. ;) A/N: I am nothing without my betas. abrae and roozetter, I salute you!
The Seer’s Touch
Winston Slughorn was everything his uncle was not. Tall, fit, attractive, not overly fond of sweets nor of the admiration of the students. Hogwarts had been lucky to get him on loan from St. Mungo’s while Poppy Pomfrey recovered from a painful case of Wizarding shingles.
He and Severus clicked. They shared a love of potions, and research, and their own gender. They went out together to Hogsmeade several times to drown a pint or two at the Hog’s Head. Winston seemed quite happy to have Severus as a friend.
Severus, however, wanted a bit more.
He didn’t care that they were colleagues and that is was a bad idea to fraternize with co-workers. He didn’t care that Winston was only at Hogwarts for one term, possibly two, and that he’d be returning to St. Mungo’s. He didn’t particularly care that Winston was married—to a witch five years older than himself who worked as an Unspeakable and took her job so seriously that she only rarely spoke even to Winston.
He was forty-four years old. It had been a year since his relationship with Draco Malfoy ground to an unfulfilling end a week after Draco’s marriage to young Astoria Greengrass, and his proposition to her that they invite their former Potions Professor to bed with them. Astoria was neither receptive nor amused.
If only Winston could see him, really see him, with all his scars and vulnerabilities. Of course….
Severus was a Potions Master, was he not? Capable of bottling fame, brewing glory and stoppering death?
The concoction he needed would make him weak and vulnerable, in need of a healer’s touch. He would be incapacitated for a week. It would mimic the Wizard flu but without the pesky muscle pain and torturous throat that accompanied true cases. His fever would spike, muscles weak, temperature fluctuating from hot to cold, and most importantly, he would be put to bed in the infirmary and would look – if not feel – miserable.
When the time was right, he took a double dose, knowing, how resistant he was to most medicinal concoctions due to the potions testing to which he had subjected himself over the years. His body had built up a resistance to most common active ingredients.
Except, it seemed, bowtruckle blood.
It certainly was not a common ingredient, but when freely given by the tree-guardian itself, exhibited some of the best qualities of dragon blood, and came at about half the price.
The first day should have been magnificent.
He had Winston’s undivided attention as the healer plied him with potions, turned him every half hour, plumped pillows around him and gave him water from a straw keep him hydrated. He took care to comb Severus’ sweaty hair away from his eyes, gathering it in a tie at the nape of this neck, and even massaged the knots in his shoulder.
Unfortunately, the double dose of the concoction left Severus nearly comatose the first day.
Just as the initial effects of the potion wore off, leaving Severus with heavy, uncooperative limbs and an internal furnace that randomly put itself out, making him shiver and quake, Hogwarts was hit with a true epidemic of Wizard’s Flu.
And while this made Severus’ symptoms all the more believable, it also put great demands on Winston’s time, and unaffected faculty members were called in to help care for the patients. And Severus, only halfway through his second day of inertia, found himself face to face with his new caretaker.
Sybil Trelawney.
“Oh, Severus. Looook at you,” she drawled. “We should have known you’d be the first to fall. Those dungeons are so drafty. All that negative air down there. No positive energy in it at allll.”
She pulled the cover off of his body, leaving him in a hospital-issued green gown that tied down the side. “Your feet look cold, Severus. Ohhh…let me do something about that.”
He was left there, bare and uncovered save the less-than-generous gown, while she left the room. He was able to turn his head an inch or so and saw that nearly every cot in the room was full, and more were being set up. At this rate, he thought – his mind was the only thing sharp about his body now—he’d be exposed to the real flu and would come down with it just when the potion’s effects wore off.
Sybil returned with a pair of hand-knitted sock-booties. They were lavender and yellow and had puffy-balls on the ends of the laces. She lifted one of his feet at a time to pull them on, causing an unpleasant draft around his privates as she manipulated each leg. Satisfied, she pulled the covers up to his chin but pulled them off his feet, exposing them in all their yellow and purple glory to the rest of the room.
“We wouldn’t want those tootsies too warm now, would we, Severus?” she cooed. Cooing did not sound natural coming from Sybil Trelawney’s mouth. She sounded more like a mooing cow than a cooing nurse.
He must have dozed off, as it was dark when he woke again. He heard groaning from several places in the crowded infirmary, and tried to move his arm to the bedside table to find his water. “Ohhh. No. Let me, Severus.”
What was she still doing here?
A straw poked at his lips and he obediently opened them and slowly sucked tepid water into his mouth. He tried saying “cold” but only managed a pained grunt.
“Oh, you’ll need the bedpan for that.” And before he could shoot a wandless, wordless Crucio at his caretaker, his midsection was levitating upward and something was shoved underneath him. Something cold and hard.
“I’ll just wait right here, Severus,” she said in that deep and monotonic voice. “Don’t be embarrassed. It’s something we all have to do. It may be hard to imagine me doing it, but even those blessed with the inner eye must give way to natural forces of the body.”
He tried to move, to roll off of the offending implement, but couldn’t muster the energy even to kick the covers off.
Nothing, he thought, nothing could be worse than having Sybil Trelawny wait for him to use the bedpan.
He was, of course, wrong.
He had managed to sleep the rest of the night, mainly by self-hypnosis, and he woke in the morning to an odd feeling and an even more odd noise. It was a rasping sound, and within a few seconds of wrenching his eyes half-open, he realized that someone was using a razor to shave his beard.
“I’ve always imagined you with a moustache, Severus,” she was saying. Didn’t the woman have classes to get to? What day was it, anyway? “So I’m going to leave your upper lip alone and get a proper handlebar started.”
Moustache? No! No moustaches!
But he couldn’t even muster the energy to blow her a raspberry.
All day long he wanted to scratch at his upper lip. He had a heavy beard, and he felt as if a caterpillar had taken up residence just under his nose.
For lunch, Sybil fed him spoonfuls of broth from a deep-bowled spoon and wiped away the dribbles on his face with a gauzy pink scarf.
He should have known, when he saw the privacy curtain pulled around his bed, that something unsavory was about to happen.
“You’re perspiring so much you’ve soaked the sheets, Severus,” Sybil intoned, setting a large, steaming bowl of water on the wooden visitor’s chair. “Winston has asked me to give you a sponge bath.”
Winston asked her…? No! This would not do! He flailed a bit, managing to move his thumb and forefinger an inch or two. His body was so heavy. He groaned, trying to call up the energy to bite her if her hand—or any part of her—got close enough.
The bath was excruciatingly slow and embarrassingly humiliating. She flipped him to his stomach first, untied his gown and uncovered him one piece at a time. She took quite a bit of care with his most private of areas, enough that he simply could not help it. He tried to will away the erection. He thought of Deloris Umbridge dancing naked with Hagrid. He imagined Horace Slughorn doing the dirty with Minerva. But Sybil was doing such as thorough job, just grazing over his entrance with that warm, slightly rough flannel, dipping low enough to rub against his perineum. Really, there was nothing he could do. Except…
Feign sleep.
When she flipped him over to do the front, his eyes were closed and his head lolled to the side of the pillow.
There was no activity for a long moment, just a few audible breaths.
Then he felt the gown being lifted off his cock and balls. The chilly air hit it and he swore it grew another inch.
“I shall return, Severus. I…there is…a problem. Please do not worry….”
A few moments later, Sybil was back with reinforcements.
“I was simply bathing him, Winston. I finished his backside and turned him over and found…this!” She was hissing now, an altogether unattractive raspy, breathy, hiss. “Perhaps you should examine him.”
Winston cleared his throat.
Severus opened one eye.
“Is it serious? Perhaps an ice pack might help reduce the swelling?”
Severus’ one open eye opened further in alarm. He suddenly realized that Winston would think that he was aroused by Sybil.
Having Winston in the small cubicle, staring at his naked torso while Sybil Trelawney wrung her hands in distress, should have deflated him.
It did not.
Winston looked exhausted. His fringe was sweaty, plastered to his forehead. His robes were wrinkled. His glasses were crooked on his nose.
“Carry on, Sybil,” he said at last, at least giving Severus an apologetic look. “It’s a perfectly normal state for a man in his condition. And mind you, it will likely get worse before it gets better.” He sighed and left Severus’ bedside.
“Nghhh!”
“Shhh! I’ll make it all better.”
Sybil went about the rub down with gusto.
She poured oil on his cock, drizzling it over his thighs as well. She then took hold of his cock with both hands, grasping it as if it were a rolling pin, then rolling her hands this way and that way. When her right hand slid up the shaft a bit and grazed the crown, he let out a long, slow hiss, reminiscent of air leaking out of a tire.
“I know, I know,” soothed Sybil. “But you heard what Winston said, Severus. It will get worse before it gets better.”
She shifted her position and suddenly her hands were moving up and down the shaft instead of holding it like a rolling pin. As her right hand moved up and closed around the head, he grunted. Sybil gave him a pitying look. She instinctively focused on the parts that seemed to give him pain, undoubtedly thinking of the exercise as a massage. She proceeded to knead his cock as if working out the knots in the tissue.
How she ever settled on the pattern of one hand – her left—working up and down the shaft while the other—her right—rubbed, massaged and teased the crown he never knew. In fact, a few minutes later, he realized he was having the most bizarre—yet arousing—hand job he had ever had. The only thing taut on his entire body was his cock. Every other muscle was an amorphous pile of goo. He couldn’t tense his legs, suck in his gut, grip the sheets or clench his buttocks. All feeling…all of it…was centered on his prick and bollocks.
“Oh my,” Sybil breathed as the head of Severus’ cock reddened and his bollocks began to draw up. She shook her head and grimaced. “Oh my my my. I am so sorry, dear Severus. This looks terribly painful.”
His prick throbbed in her hands, under her unskilled ministrations. He wanted to scream. He had no control over his words and could only grunt. When he grunted, she squeezed harder. His prick was separate from his body now, a gravitational force unto itself. He was close…close…close…so close…
He exploded in a semi-asphyxiated psychedelic burst of color and light, the oxygen his lungs took in to feed his blood sucked down to his prick and away from his brain. Something hit him on the side of his nose. He could hear Sybil screaming but could barely make out the words. Explosion? Something exploded? By the time his brain had enough oxygen to function again, he knew there were others around his bed.
“It does that, Sybil. It’s called an orgasm.” The other voice was soothing. “What were you doing to it, anyway? Male genitalia doesn’t just do that on their own, you know….” Merlin’s holy hemorrhoids, was that Minerva?
“It was swollen!” Sybil sobbed. “And Winston…Winston said it would get worse before it got better! Now look at it! It’s…it’s lost all its stuffing!”
“Sybil. Calm yourself.” Severus opened his eyes slowly, just in time to see Minerva draw out her wand, hold it up next to Sybil’s head and whisper ”Obliviate.”
Sybil blinked several times behind her owlish glasses, and Minerva pushed her away and directed her out of Severus’ curtained cubicle. Severus really wished he had enough control to move his hand up and wipe his nose off. Or cover up his exposed genitalia.
“Do you want me to obliviate you, too?” asked Minerva. She gently pulled up the quilt and tucked it under his chin.
“Ngh.” He moved his head to the side fractionally. Minerva was a gifted witch, but he didn’t trust anyone with his brain.