Snarry-a-Thon11: FIC: Cupid Stunt Title: Cupid Stunt Author:shiv5468 Other pairings/threesome: Various, some het. Rating: PG 13, sorry. Word count: 7,914 Warning(s): (highlight for spoilers) *None, really, apart from bad puns.* Prompt: #004: After death, Snape becomes a cupid. He's the grouchiest, most reluctant, most cynical cupid ever, but he does his job--right up until his assignment is to make Harry Potter fall in love. Or perhaps he screws up the assignment? Summary: Is it really wise to put a bow and arrow in the hands of a man with a grudge and no hesitation about shooting people in the back? A/N: I’m sorry. Really, I am.
Cupid Stunt
Severus had expected to die.
If he had a tutelary deity, he was off skiving behind a cloud somewhere having a crafty fag, and had been since the moment of his birth. There would be no last minute reprieves, no million to one chances, no fucking way out of choking out his last breaths in a dusty shack in the arms of a boy he couldn’t stand.
It would have made a lesser man bitter.
He winced as Potter allowed his head to fall to the ground, failed to master the energy to utter one last expletive to send the lad on his way, and promptly expired.
His first cautious thought on opening his eyes that the afterlife looked promising. There were wings. Wings were good, especially if they were white and feathered and not red snakeskin and accompanied by a whiff of sulphur.
His second thought was how much he wished Lucius was here to see this, to realise that the Muggles had it right about Heaven after all. Severus snorted softly.
A cold finger of fear ran its finger down his spine as he assessed the scene again. The wings were small and attached to a fat child with horribly knowing eyes and a bow and set of arrows.
“Oh, fuck,” he said. “It is hell after all. At least I can expect Lucius here eventually to keep me company.”
“Hell?” asked the angelic creature. “Why would you think this is hell?”
“You’re a cupid. What worse torture could hell devise than for me to be trapped in Valentine’s Day for perpetuity? At some buggering point, Lily will come tripping down those stairs and fall into the arms of James Bloody Potter. It’ll be thirteen, all over again. Over and over again, until I snap and try and hang myself with my own intestines.”
“You are a gloomy one,” the cupid said. “And I’m not a cupid. I’m the cupid.”
“Is that supposed to impress me?” Severus levered himself up on one elbow. “If you’re the cupid, I want to register a complaint.”
“We don’t have a complaint’s procedure as such,” Cupid replied. “Traditionally, if you feel that you’ve been treated unfairly, you should address yourself in poetry to a rose, or a nightingale, or something.”
“And that’s supposed to help?”
“It’s produced some of the world’s greatest art,” Cupid said. “Other than that, no. You could always take it up with Mum, but ....” Cupid shrugged. “She’s not always that sympathetic to a bloke’s troubles. She’s had a bit of a rough trot, to be honest, and it’s made her a touch bitter.”
“Not,” said Severus, his voice ringing with truth, “anywhere near as bitter as me.”
Aphrodite had a fine pair of jugs.
Severus couldn’t keep his eyes off them. He supposed that a connoisseur would call them ewers, or something else suitably posh, and admire the red glaze and the figure of the Minotaur, but to Severus they were jugs. Hopefully there was some wine in them, and Aphrodite could be persuaded to share her bounty with a poor sod that’d been crossed in love.
There was no way he was raising his eyes any higher than those pots because it was that or look at her bare breasts, and he was in no mood to be torn apart by passing hounds just because some goddess took offence.
“Cupid tells me that you wish to complain,” Aphrodite said, her voice soft and warm and caressing.
It was the sort of voice His Lordship had used just before he started on the ranting and the Crucio.
“I do,” Severus said stoutly. “I’ve been cheated.”
“In love? Don’t talk to me about being cheated. I wrote the book on it.” Aphrodite sniffed, sounding like Molly disapproving of Something.
“In death.”
“Not my department,” Aphrodite replied.
“It never is, when it comes to complaints,” Severus said bitterly. “It’s never your problem, is it?”
“I don’t do death,” Aphrodite said. “I do love.”
“So what happened?”
Aphrodite blinked at him, then tugged her shawl – made from the very heavens themselves – rather more firmly over her bosom. “Er, what do you mean what happened?”
“Love.” Severus glared at her. “When did I get my chance at love? There’s supposed to be someone for everyone isn’t there?”
“That is the theory,” said Cupid. “But it’s not a guarantee. It’s not an actual commitment from the Gods that there will be a Someone.”
“You’ve been letting lawyers into heaven, haven’t you?”
Both deities looked a little shifty.
“Actual lawyers are getting into heaven, presumably even getting their Someone, and I don’t even get so much as a sniff of a Significant Other.”
“There’s no need to be indelicate,” Aphrodite snapped.
Cupid murmured something into her ear.
“Oh,” she said. “Sorry. I rather mistook your meaning there.”
“That too,” said Severus. “Look, it’s bad enough that I died without ever consummating my love, without being finished off by something that’s nothing more than a giant phallic symbol. I ask you – is it fair? Is it tasteful? Isn’t it just some cosmic bloody joke?”
Aphrodite fixed him with a hard stare, then patted the ground beside her. “Why don’t you sit down and tell me all about it.”
Severus settled down beside her, tucking his legs beneath him.
“Wine?” she said, holding out a goblet.
“I don’t mind if I do,” Severus replied, and did.
Severus had never had anyone really listen to him before. Lily had always tended to look over his shoulder to see if there was something more interesting happening. Lucius had tended to look over his shoulder to see if there was someone more important to talk to. And Albus had always cut short any confessions from Severus, tending to the rather more practical extraction of information.
It was heady stuff.
This, he supposed, was what it was like to have a proper relationship, to have someone who listened and cared about what you had to say. Obviously, there was the downside that you had to listen to them in their turn, but presumably Aphrodite was unusual in having several millennia of grudges to get off her (admittedly bountiful) chest.
“No one ever loved me,” he said with overly careful diction.
“You poor man,” Aphrodite said. “Come here, and let me make it up to you.”
Severus found himself nose deep in cleavage. “Madam,” he said. “Much as I appreciate your generosity, I’m really not that type of man.”
“Really?” Aphrodite patted him on the back, and sighed. “All the best ones are. It’s a crying shame.”
“Mmmph?” Severus said.
“Gay.”
Severus struggled upright, mouth open, Lily’s name on his lips. His mouth closed with a snap. She didn’t look like a woman who took kindly to being scorned. “Yes, well,” he said, and shrugged. “That’s not been my experience. All the best ones are straight.”
“You know, I really should do something about this,” she said. “It’s not fair. It’s not right. You should never have died a virgin.”
Severus didn’t think it was the right time to bring up his few successes in the lists of love, and allowed his reputation to be traduced unopposed. He was... an emotional virgin, that was it. He’d had sex, but it had never been with anyone he loved.
Sometimes he hadn’t even liked them very much, but a fuck was a fuck, and he wasn’t in a position to be fussy.
“I shall do something about it!” Aphrodite wriggled out from underneath him, and scrambled to her feet in a way that would have lost her any worshippers who had seen it. She put her fingers in her mouth, and whistled, making Severus’ ears ring.
Cupid appeared, wings aflutter, scowling. “What do you want, mum?”
“How do you feel about taking on an apprentice? You’re always complaining about your workload, and how you want to spend more time with Psyche.”
“Well....”
Deities may not be too hot on the answering of prayers, but even they find it hard to say no to their Mum.
Severus had always known that there were worse things than death. He’d seen a lot of them; whether it be vicious torture meted out by His Lordship or Bella, or Monday morning double potions with Gryffindor and Slytherin. A volatile combination at the best of time, but made all the worse by Neville “Cauldron-Melter” Longbottom and his abetter if not aider, Granger, of the Unmanageable hair.
These were as nothing compared to the humiliation faced by a grown man in nappies.
He had heard rumours that Lucius, in the privacy of his own home and when under horrific stress, had been known to crawl around on the floor in a nappy, but that was for reasons of sexual perversion and therefore acceptable under the Rules of Slytherin.
Nappy wearing, accompanied by a set of bow and arrows slung over his shoulder, and which kept catching his ear hole, was not acceptable. It was work, for one thing, and he knew that Lucius “Ponce” Malfoy had never knowingly done a stroke of work in his life.
It was clear that Severus was destined for the role of Minion in any and all possible existences.
It was also bloody draughty, and he kept tugging the hem of his nappy to make sure it covered as much of his arse as possible. People may not be able to see him, but the wind could certainly find its way to him.
Gloomily, he parked himself up against a stone wall in one of Hogwarts’ lesser known courtyards and fished in his nappy for the envelope with the names of his victims.
Ronald Weasley
Hermione Granger
Harry Potter
Neville Longbottom
He could see a theme here. The heroes of the Order would be rewarded with love, affection, and all the hot sex they could handle, which in Longbottom’s case....
He shuddered.
Bollocks to that, he thought.
If he wasn’t going to get a happy ending, then neither was anyone else.
Severus decided to start small.
He didn’t have much of a grudge against Longbottom, despite the years of cauldron melting. More accurately, he’d had a hell of a grudge against Longbottom but it had been paid off by the aggravation Neville caused the Carrows, as well as the snuffing out of Nagini.
Nevertheless, it wouldn’t be right if he were to be too happy. He had performed some small services, but nothing as compared to Snape’s contribution to things; therefore, his reward should be measured in relation to Snape’s.
If he, Severus, had died, did that mean that Neville qualified for a little death?
Severus sniggered to himself, and went in search of some robes, and then his target.
The wards to his rooms still allowed him to pass, whether because he was dead, or because they had not been changed yet, he had no way of knowing. His robes were lined up neatly in his wardrobe, in a line of tasteful black, black, and more black. He shrugged into his casual holiday robes, for when he pottered around in his potions’ garden in the holidays, and was pleased to see them settle round him, clothing him in some small measure of slightly shabby dignity. In some small way, then, he was still real.
He felt better for covering up, though he supposed he looked rather more like the Grim Reaper than Love’s Messenger. He peered at his reflection in the mirror and sighed, casting a charm to run a discreet line of silver hearts along the cuffs and neckline of his clothes.
Damn himself for being such a good little follower, determined to do things right, and damn Aphrodite for being so kind and understanding. He tucked his envelope of instructions into a pocket, slung his bow over his shoulder as he’d seen Robin Hood do on the telly of his youth, and left in search of Gryffindors.
It being breakfast time, the Great Hall seemed the most likely hunting ground, and so it proved.
There, in a huddle, were all of his targets. Granger, Weasley, Potter, Longbottom, all seated together and busily chattering away.
Not even death and destruction could keep a Gryffindor from their porridge and hot sausages of a morning. They had no finer feelings, no delicacy, no....
Severus sniffed.
They were very nice sausages.
Encouraged by his apparent corporeality, Severus waited until Weasley turned to say something to Granger on his right, and deftly Accio’d a sausage. It tasted as good as it looked, the rich juices running down his chin, before he wiped them off with his sleeve. There was something liberating about being unseen. He could break all the rules his mother had dinned into him about being a Good Boy, and all the lessons Lucius had given him on how to be a Polite Boy, and everything else he had ever learned about being a Bad Boy.
A couple of sausages, and a piece of toast later, and he was cocked and ready to go.
As usual, there were no instructions, no manual, and no guidance as to how he should proceed. Have bow and arrows, will match people for life, he presumed, and that was it. No suggestion that there should be matches made on the basis of personality, hair colour, size of Gringott’s account or some other criterion, and he was a person least fitted to work out what made someone a good match for someone else.
He hadn’t even been able to work out who was suited for him on a temporary, just one night of passion, basis. Not without payment of some sort or another.
He sniffed, took his bow, lined up an arrow against the string, closed his eyes in some sort of metaphorical nod to love being blind, and let loose. There was a dull twang, he opened his eyes to find that the arrow had dropped limply from the bow and landed on his own foot.
There was a couple of seconds delay whilst his brain wondered whether being dead meant he could no longer feel pain – no – and whether hopping up and down and screaming a series of curses would attract unnecessary attention – again, no.
He pulled the arrow free, and nocked it again. Taking sight along his outstretched arm, he could see Potter, that delectable little morsel of manhood, sliding the last slice of sausage between his pink, moist, pursed lips.
Severus shivered. Why had he not noticed the boy before? Not a boy any more, he realised. There was a faint sprinkling of hair along his upper lip that just begged to be licked, and firm muscles under his robes that demanded to be caressed, and when he stood up to leave the Hall he revealed a perfect set of buttocks, like a pair of peaches, demanding to be bitten.
And when Potter left, Severus felt as if the sun had gone in.
He shook himself out of his reverie, slung his bow over his shoulder, and followed after Potter. There was no way that man was going to be anyone but his, and the small matter of being dead and invisible wasn’t going to get in the way of that.
He realised quickly how much he had misjudged his darling Harry in the past. Far from being a glory hound, he was surrounded by people who wanted something from him – his time, his attention, his support, and even his body. Where was Harry’s support? Where were the people caring for him?
It was manifestly unfair, and Severus was filled with the righteous urge to put things right.
The Weasley girl, in particular, was making Harry unhappy. Just as he left the Hall, she buttonholed him and spent a solid fifteen minutes whinging at him about how he had left her behind when he was off saving the world, and how unfair it was, and was he sure that he didn’t like Hermione in that way?
Harry was getting pinker and pinker with the effort of dealing with her unreasonable demands, and was only saved by Longbottom coming out to see what was going on, giving Harry the chance to slip away quickly and quietly with some murmured excuse about going to the Infirmary.
Even a heartless wench like Weasley couldn’t begrudge the man some first aid.
All it took was two arrows. One minute she was whining to Longbottom about Harry leaving her behind, and how close he was to Hermione and how it wasn’t fair, then she was looking up at him with wide eyes and saying how Neville was the only one who had ever understood her before attaching her mouth to his with all the assiduity of a moray eel.
If he had still been alive, and a teacher, he would have enjoyed putting the pair of them in detention on opposite sides of the castle for the rest of their academic careers.
Severus wrinkled his nose in thought. He wanted to find Harry, and gaze upon his perfect form, but there were other bludgers on the way to the snitch, and some of them were Weasley shaped as well.
Eliminating the competition first, longing gazes later, he concluded. It was the Slytherin way.
Granger and Weasley proved harder to find, certainly together. Her natural habitat was the Library; his, the Quidditch pitch or the dinner table, and lunch was a long time away. Nor did Imperio work when you were dead and wandless, even assuming there was something in Weasley’s empty head to be Imperio’d.
It was purely by chance that he found the solution. Even dunderheads were sensitive to invisible men standing behind them glaring at the back of their head. It was some sort of atavistic instinct, Severus supposed, that allowed even the stupidest monkey to feel uneasy about the tiger sneaking up on it from behind, and allowed Snape to chivvy the fool in the direction of the love of his life.
And if Granger was not the love of his life, she soon would be.
“Just a little further,” Severus said to the insensible Weasley. “It’s all right, the books don’t actually bite. You’re perfectly safe in here. There’s a good little target.”
Weasley eased his way through the stacks with all the poise of a thestral in a china shop. “There you are,” he said, to a figure in the distance. “I thought you said you were coming outside for some fresh air?”
Severus’ eyesight was rather more accustomed to the dimly lit environs of the Library than Weasley, and he could see that the person he was addressing was not Granger, but one of his own Slytherins. He supposed he should wait until he had his two targets in the same room but he was anxious to return to Harry, and it was dawning on Severus that this business of matching people up with their Ain True Love was going to be rather more difficult than he had supposed.
Weasley and Granger would have done nicely for each other, but even he couldn’t muster up enough dislike for the girl to inflict those table manners on her for the rest of her life.
Or her shrewishness on him, come to that.
A man, no matter how ill-mannered, needed peace in the morning. So, someone more robust for Weasley, and someone more refined, someone who had cracked the spine of a book for pleasure not just homework, for Granger.
He was getting soft in death.
Severus aimed and fired, pinning Weasley effortlessly between the ribs. The boy staggered, then straightened himself gazing adoringly at the girl at the library desk.
“Millicent?” he said, in tones of wonder. “Why haven’t I noticed you before, you wonderful thing you? Your face, your breasts, your thighs... I bet you’ve got a really good grip on a broomstick.”
It wasn’t the most romantic statement in the world, but it had a certain direct charm, especially to a girl built like a brick outhouse.
He nocked another arrow, and stepped round the bookcases to finish Bulstrode off. Poor girl, it wasn’t right that one of his Slytherins should suffer like that, but she wasn’t likely to do much better on her own.
Granger appeared behind Weasley. Severus swore under his breath, then realising no one could hear him, swore a lot louder.
Late, Severus thought, which served her right. She had something of a habit of being late, especially when it came to rescuing potions masters lying bleeding on floors.
Served her right, really.
“Ron?” she said. “What are you doing with Millicent?”
“Pledging my undying love,” Weasley replied, standing up tall and puffing out his chest.
“For Bulstrode?” Granger said, her voice faltering.
Granger’s eyes filled with tears as she watched Weasley and Bulstrode fall upon each other like ...
Severus shuddered.
There was no metaphor apt to encompass the horror of the sight of the two copulating forms moving together, like tectonic plates meeting and grinding against each other.
Granger took one last sobbing gasp, then turned on her heel and fled. She paused to open the door, and he took his shot cleanly. There was no point leaving her to suffer the pain of unrequited affection for Weasley, not when her complaining would take up Harry’s valuable time.
There was someone behind the door when she opened it.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s you. Aren’t you beautiful?”
Lucius blinked down at the young lady addressing him. “Have you hit your head?” he asked after a moment.
“If I said I had, would you kiss it better?” Granger said huskily.
Lucius coughed, and shifted on his feet. “Erm, no, not really.”
Severus, having a mind like a steel trap, could see no way this was going to end well. Lucius may own a large library, but he had never been seen actually reading anything in there. The library was for sipping brandy in, and plotting to take over the Wizarding World.
On the other hand, he supposed that Harry would still like that career in the Aurors, and whatever his darling Harry wanted, his darling Harry would get.
Which meant no new Dark Lords.
Which meant Lucius needed to be kept under the thumb, and Narcissa had already shown she wasn’t up to the job. Granger, on the other hand, had managed to keep Harry from running off and getting himself killed – dear, brave, perfect, boy – so she was made of sterner stuff.
It was the work of an instant to put an arrow in Lucius’s heart, but something he would savour for all eternity – the look of shock, the instant of gooey eyed adoration, followed by the slight moment of calculation as Lucius worked out all the advantages of seducing a member of the Golden Trio.
The conclusion was reached and the reaction was instant. Madam Pince was going to be livid once she realised the use that her desk had been put to, and the cushioning charms were going to be a dead giveaway.
Severus left swiftly thereafter. He had been parted from his Harry long enough, and there were sights that no one needed to see, and Lucius’ arse was one of them though Granger apparently disagreed.
It was enough to drive a man to drink, so it was a shame that spirits weren’t allowed spirits.
Severus had never smoked before, but he needed something to settle his nerves. Deprived of alcohol and points deduction, he decided to try a new vice.
He damned near swallowed his hastily conjured cigarette when Cupid popped into existence by his side.
“How are you getting on?” the boy asked, fanning his wings gently, stirring the leaves in the sunny courtyard into motion. “Any problems?”
So Severus began the long tale of the morning’s events, but with rather more emphasis on how his chosen partnerships were clearly soul mates and rather less reference to arrows going off half-cocked that was strictly accurate.
“So you’ve finished your list,” Cupid said, with the air of a man who didn’t believe a word he’d been told, but was determined to make everything all right by the sheer power of the twinkle of his eyes. Severus was reminded powerfully of Dumbledore’s insane optimism, and blenched.
“Sort of,” Severus replied.
“You need to get it finished.”
Severus shrugged. “There’s no rush. I’ve got all eternity.”
“If only one of a pair of lovers is pierced by an arrow, and the other is not... pinned down within 24 hours, the lovers are cursed,” Cupid said. “Doomed to pine away from lack of fulfilment.”
Cupid made the whole business sound cheap and sordid and filthy, unlike his unspoiled and unspotted love for Harry. “No one mentioned that,” Severus said. “Not that there was much by way of Induction. At least Albus told me where the loos were, and how to get a cup of tea on my first day.”
Cupid shrugged. “It’s not that hard, shooting arrows into people, though don’t tell Mum I said that.”
Severus took one last drag of his cigarette, coughed three times, then wheezed, “I’d better get on with it then.”
Nothing could have prepared him for the shock.
Harry had said he was going to the Infirmary and thither Severus also.
There, in the bed before him, hooked nose hanging over the bed covers, greasy hair spread over the pillows, was his body. He blinked at it owlishly for several seconds, looking as stupid as any first year on seeing a moving staircase for the first time.
He stood there, staring at the bed, wondering when he’d become so small.
His reverie was broken, when Harry came into the room. His beautiful Harry had come to see him.
Harry took the seat to the left of the bed, and took Severus’ hand in his. Madam Pomfrey, hearing Harry’s arrival, came bustling out of her office and made herself busy, tucking in Severus’ sheets, and casting diagnostic spells.
“Has there been any change, Madam Pomfrey?” he asked.
“He’s breathing more easily, so that’s an improvement,” Poppy replied. “We mustn’t give up hope.”
Severus felt something cold and wet hit his hand, and realised that Harry was crying on the hand he held. His hand. He staggered over to an empty chair, and sat down, hard.
“Fuck me,” he said. “I’m not really dead.”
“I think he said something,” Harry said. “I’m sure I saw his lips move. Did you see?”
I did say something. Severus said again, but there was no movement from the body in the bed. Whatever it was he’d done before, there was clearly a knack to it.
Vaguely he was aware of Poppy being cheerful and optimistic and supportive, and offering Harry a hanky to wipe his eyes with, but he had only room for one thought in his head – I’m not dead, and how am I going to get back in my body?.
“He tried to speak, Madam Pomfrey,” Harry said, looking down at the bed. “I swear he did.”
“That’s good,” Madam Pomfrey said.
Harry sighed. “I did see it, honestly.”
“And I believe you, which is why you need to be fighting fit when he comes round and starts shouting at people.”
Harry summoned up a slightly damp grin, and allowed himself to be persuaded to eat a bit of lunch brought to him by a house elf.
“Are you going to have something?” Harry asked. “There’s some cheese left if you want.”
“It’s kind of you to offer Mr Potter, but I had something earlier.” Poppy hesitated, before adding, “I wonder if you’d mind sitting with Severus for a while, whilst I check on some of the other casualties.”
“Of course,” Harry replied. “I’d be happy to help. It’ll be just you and me then, sir. Ron’s off to see his fan club. He thinks I haven’t noticed, and what’s worse is, he thinks that Hermione hasn’t noticed either. All this fame has gone to his head a bit.” Harry paused, and grinned a little awkwardly. “Well, not just his head.”
Severus congratulated himself on his percipience in choosing new partners for the pair of them.
“It’s not right, though. It’s been barely a week since he snogged Hermione, and he’s already sniffing round someone else. Lots of someone else’s. She says she doesn’t mind, but I think she does.”
“I think she’s bright enough to know when she’s had a lucky escape,” Severus said.
“Yeah, maybe,” Potter replied.
There was a pause, and then they both spoke at the same time: “You spoke.” “You heard me.”
Potter hadn’t changed that much. His first reaction on realising Severus was talking was not to calmly consider his options, summon medical assistance, or do anything useful. He let out a loud shout, and then ran out of the room, returning half an hour later with Granger and Longbottom, but no Weasley.
“Are you sure he said something?” Granger said. “Because I’ve been reading up on magical comas, and it says that....”
“Always the know-it-all,” Severus said sourly.
“I heard that!” Potter said.
Longbottom shook his head. “I didn’t hear anything, and his lips didn’t move.”
“Shit,” said Granger, exposing her Muggle heritage. She stumbled to the bed and stared hard at Severus’ body. “I suppose it could be some curse, and we’re the only ones who can hear him.”
“More likely that he’s haunting you for leaving him in the Shrieking Shack,” Longbottom said cheerfully, from the safe position of non-hauntee. “He’d do that. You know he would.”
“The only flaw in that masterly summation - and thank you for the description of my character as vengeful, as if there’s something unreasonable about haunting people who leave you to die in a pool of blood – is that I am not sodding well dead. I lie before you, mute, unconscious, but still bloody breathing!” snarled Severus. “And I would thank you to remember that and get on with sorting this out. You bloody owe me, Longbottom.”
“He says he’s not dead,” Potter said, précising the diatribe ruthlessly. “So he can’t haunt us.”
“Would you say that Lu-Mr Malfoy owes you one?” Granger asked.
“Of course I would.” Severus stopped, and considered that Granger, whilst irritating and verbose, was by no means stupid. “Yes, he would be a useful control, though I’d say it stops short of a full life debt.”
“I’ll fetch him,” Granger offered, then blushed.
“No dawdling,” Severus said.
Granger slipped away, leaving Severus with the two boys.
“Why would she dawdle?” Harry asked.
“It appears that she has moved on from Weasley,” Severus replied absently, half his mind on the conundrum of his half-death.
“Moved on? Hermione? With Malfoy?” Harry sat down on the edge of the bed, his mouth open, begging to be kissed. “But he’s a Death Eater.”
“People can reform for love,” Severus said.
“And he’s old!” Harry shook his head. “Hermione and Lucius... you have to be wrong.”
“I saw it with my own eyes.” Severus eyed Harry nervously, and cleared his throat. “When you say old, how old is old? Exactly.”
When Lucius arrived, hot on the heels of Granger, some ten minutes later, he was badly out of breath. Severus chose to assume this was due to the celerity of their arrival rather than pausing to disport themselves on the way up.
The scenes in the Library did not need augmenting by his imagination, not if he was ever going to have sex again.
“They tell me you’re alive, and talking,” Lucius said to the body in the bed.
“In a manner of speaking,” Severus replied, shifting round to stand at the side of his body rather than continuing to talk to the back of people’s heads.
“Ah, I see. That is a little awkward.”
Severus reflected that Lucius had a talent for understatement, which was almost matched by his Dark Arts expertise. “Any idea if some hex caused this?” he asked.
“Hex? I thought Nagini....” Lucius waved his hands in the air, expressing the fateful interaction between snake and neck without being tactless enough to mention the word bitten.
“She did,” Severus replied dryly. “However, I don’t think this is a side effect of the venom, or the blood loss, and His Lordship could well have decided to over-egg the pudding by casting some hex at the same time, but I was too preoccupied to notice.”
“Ah,” said Lucius. “This could be a hallucination.”
“Would you say that if it were?”
“Well no, but you could hallucinate me saying that. Which seems a little more rational that one would expect from a man who has had his brains hexed loose. Figuratively speaking.” Lucius smiled the smile of a man who knew to a nicety how to hex a man’s brain lose literally. “Working hypothesis, then, is that this is real.”
“And if it’s not real, then as figments of Professor Snape’s imagination, we are helping him find a solution to whatever his subconscious believes needs solving,” Granger put in.
Severus refused to examine in detail what psychological issues could possibly be resolved by Lucius taking up with Granger, or Bulstrode and Weasley.
When Lucius and Granger elected to do some research – or rather, Granger said she was going to the Library and Lucius elected to tag along like a lost puppy – Severus reluctantly decided to supervise. Much as he would have preferred staying near Harry, his long term aims were better served by keeping an eye on his most likely source of rescue.
It was only the suggestion that Granger should look in the extremely dangerous Even More Restricted Section that managed to prise her from Lucius’ side, and that reluctantly and with promises that he wasn’t to go too far without her.
“And now that my little sugar plum has left us alone, you can tell me the rest,” Lucius said, eyes fixed on the direction that Granger had gone.
“What make you think there is a rest?” Severus replied, temporising.
“This morning, I was rather fond of my wife – you remember her? Tall, willowy blonde woman, handy with a wand – and this afternoon she is the pale moon to Hermione’s blazing sun. That isn’t natural.”
“Ah,” said Severus, then decided that the best time to explain things to Lucius was when he was half-dead already, and not at risk from hexing.
“So, you’re currently standing in for Cupid, I am in love with a Muggleborn witch, because your aim was off, and you’re in love with Harry Potter?”
Severus nodded, then realised Lucius couldn’t see him. “Er, yes.”
“Mmmm. I assume that this is irrevocable?”
“I believe so.” Severus assessed Lucius’ reaction. There were no death threats, offers of hexes, suggestions as to torture, or even a hint of a pout. “You don’t appear to mind too much.”
“When she’s near, she’s all I can think about, and it’s the most marvellous feeling in the world.” Lucius paused, and flicked his hair back over his shoulder, a nervous habit of old. “I do hope the effect fades a little. It’s disconcerting to behave like a teenager at my time of life, and I would like to concentrate on something other than sex, especially when I have one third of the Golden Trio to play with, and all that could lead to.”
A spasm crossed Lucius’ face. “Something will have to be done for Narcissa,” he said.
“What did you have in mind?”
“If she had a new lover of her own, someone powerful, who was on the right side, who can protect her and Draco,” Lucius said. “That would make the divorce go more easily.”
“Divorce?”
“Oh yes, Hermione and I will be getting married as soon as possible, and it’s generally considered to be good manners to remove the first wife before proposing to the second.” Lucius smirked. “For one thing, she’s mine, and for another, it’ll go a long way to keeping me out of Azkaban. And someone has to keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t destroy the Wizarding World.”
“I thought you were head over heels in love?”
“I am. I am also fifty, not fifteen. I can see the practical advantages to the match.” Lucius’ smirk turned into a wider smile. “And you can stop hiding behind the bookcases now, dearest.”
Granger stepped out of the stacks. She looked different, less pinched, seeming to flower under Lucius’ regard, and he wanted that for himself. To turn from disregarded, overlooked Severus, to something appreciated, admired and loved, and it didn’t seem important to him that it wasn’t real.
He’d had real for forty years, and it hadn’t worked out that well for him.
“Would you change it, if you could, Miss Granger?” Severus asked, feeling the slightest twinge of conscience.
“No, though of course that could be the charm speaking, but it does feel wonderful.” Granger shifted closer to Lucius and allowed him to take her hand. “Besides, think of all the advantages. I get a husband who has mastered a knife and fork, is interested in something other than Quidditch, and who is absolutely brilliant in bed.”
“On tables, dearest,” Lucius murmured. “Beds are yet to come.”
“And someone has to stop him destroying the Wizarding world,” Granger added, and the look they exchanged was both soppy and determined in equal measure. “Now do you want to hear the solution to your little problem?”
Granger’s essays were overlong and littered with footnotes. Granger’s explanations were more concise.
“It’s simple,” Granger said. “Hades is the god with power over life and death, but he’s also a god who spends six months a year apart from his wife. He’s going to be sympathetic. Just don’t eat anything he offers you, try not to make any deals you can’t honour, and if he takes you to the Underworld don’t look behind you when you leave.”
“Is that it? I expected something longer.”
“Pretty much. I’m used to editing for Harry’s benefit. He has many fine qualities, but he’s not always the sharpest wand in the box, and has a tendency to run at things half-cocked."
Severus was relieved to find he could still think mildly critical thoughts about his Love - even if he did mentally re-write that criticism into Harry being charmingly impulsive and unconcerned with trivialities - and that his brains hadn’t entirely trickled out of his ears. He would need all his wits about him to deal with Hades.
The ritual itself was simple enough, involving a stick each of ivy, holly, oak and ash, and 4cc of mouse blood, but no Granger on the basis that Severus would like his privacy, thank you very much, when talking about his potential love life, not to mention it technically being a branch of the Dark Arts and Lucius had suddenly come over all delicate about his little sugar plum being exposed to other bad influences.
“Things must be desperate, if you’re giving up the chance to ponce around in front of an appreciative audience just because you don’t want to corrupt someone. I thought that’s what you did; corrupt people,” Severus said snidely, as Lucius shook back his cuffs to begin the incantation.
“Do you want to get into Potter’s bed or not?” Lucius replied shortly, and Severus subsided into silence with bad grace. Love clearly affected a person’s sense of humour.
The final declamation was uttered, the spirits of darkness were summoned, and the mouse blood was smeared on the floor in interesting patterns that shifted before your eyes.
“There you are,” Lucius said. “Are those hearts on your robes?”
Severus shifted on his feet. “Might be.”
“You really are taking this all very seriously, but then you always were an old Romantic."
Severus shrugged. “Unlike you and your little Sugar Plum?”
“It’s not natural doing this sort of thing in the middle of the day,” Lucius said, changing the subject swiftly. “Where’s the lightning? Where’s the stygian gloom? Where’s the bloody atmosphere?”
As if on command, the light coming in through the Library windows faded, as if a cloud had passed in front of the sun. The temperature dropped and there was a prickling sensation between the shoulders that hinted at numinous forces behind you.
“That’s better,” Lucius said, with incongruous cheer. “Much more like it.”
“I’m delighted the arrangements meet with your approval.” The words rumbled round the room, coming from all directions. From each corner, the shadows came, and melded together, forming the shape of a man.
Lucius had the sense not to give marks for style out loud.
“I have been Summoned; why?”
“My Lord, I would ask a favour,” Severus said.
“Of course. People always want a favour. No one ever Summons me for a chat, or to enquire how I am.”
“Er, how are you?” Severus asked. Years of dealing with Dumbledore at his vaguest had prepared him to deal with any deity, no matter how unfocussed.
“Very well, thank you for asking. At least you have some manners.” Hades sniffed. “And your friend has good taste. Speak, then, lowly mortals.”
“Am I dead?” Severus asked.
Hades fixed him with a hard, probing stare. “Not as such, no.”
“I’m not in my body, though.”
Hades shrugged.
“I’d like to be, and as you’re the god of the Underworld, I thought you might be able to arrange this.”
“I might. For a price. Typically, the price is your life though, so I don’t really see that moving us forward at all.” Hades smirked.
“You are aware that Severus was instrumental in the downfall of Lord Voldemort,” put in Lucius. “A man who tried to cheat death seven times.”
Hades made a hissing noise that brought back a lot of bad memories for both men before him.
“So perhaps you could consider a discount for favours already rendered?” Severus offered. “To a deity like yourself, a wait of, say, a hundred years, is the blink of an eye. You could collect on the life later.”
“Twenty years,” Hades said.
“Oh, you can do better than that.” Lucius held his hands out, inviting Hades to agree with him. “Just think of poor Severus, separated from his Love by death for years and years, pining and sighing.”
“The underworld isn’t noted for being cheery,” Hades remarked dryly. “Forty years, and that’s my final offer.”
“I think we should have a word with Aphrodite,” Severus said. “She and I got on like a house on fire.”
“Are you trying to play two deities off against one another?” Hades asked, with a voice like thunder.
“Whatever works,” Severus said.
Hades muttered something under his breath about not being shown up by some tart, then said, "I cannot offer you better terms than I had myself. If I return you to the land of the living you can only spend six months of the year with your love, and the rest of the time must be spent apart. I’ll give you your hundred years, then. And your arrangements with Aphrodite are your own business.”
Severus opened his mouth to argue the point further, when Lucius cut across him. “All right, one hundred years, 50% of his time to be spent with Potter. We agree.”
“Do we?” Severus said.
“I performed the Summoning,” Lucius replied. “So, yes, we agree.”
“But...” Severus protested.
“Shut up,” hissed Lucius. “And think about it.”
Severus blinked, considered the difference between six months, and 50% of the time, and smiled broadly. Even the most in-love couple needed to be apart for some of the time, especially as he had to fit in his Cupiding duties, but that still left twelve hours in every day to be spent with his Darling Harry.
Hades stepped forward, and held out his hand. Severus grasped it, beads of sweat running down his face, and arms shaking with the effort required to hold the grip.
“So shall it be,” Hades said, and his words hit Severus’ ears like blows, sending his head spinning into darkness and silence.
When Severus woke up there were no wings, whether feathery or leathery. He allowed himself a moment of cautious optimism. He shifted against the sheets, registering their coolness and texture against his skin.
“I think he’s stirring,” said the voice of his Beloved.
His eyes fluttered open to meet the gaze of Harry staring down at him. They were beautiful, and green, and fringed with impossibly long lashes, and looking at him with care and concern. Lucius was standing behind Harry, with Granger alongside looking as if nothing short of the end of the world would shift her from his side.
“Oh,” he said. “So it wasn’t a hallucination.”
Lucius smirked and laid a possessive hand on Granger’s arm. “Not at all.”
“How long....”
“I just had time to go home and take care of a little business, as you were indisposed,” Lucius said airily. Severus could see Cupid’s bow and arrow resting against the wall behind Lucius. “Shacklebolt. Before you ask.”
Harry looked confused, and Severus wanted to smooth the crinkles out between his eyebrows with his tongue and tell him it was all going to be all right.
“And because I recognise the debt I owe to you, I saved the last arrow,” Lucius added. He arched an eyebrow at Severus in mute query, and Severus nodded; he had his heart set on Harry, still.
When Harry was his, he would have to teach him the lesson about never turning your back on your enemy unless you had a strong protection charm in place – Lucius didn’t bother with the bow, just stepped forward and jabbed the arrow into Harry’s back.
It was crude, but effective.
The concern in Harry’s eyes deepened into something richer and warmer, and his pupils dilated. He ran a wet, pink tongue across his lips and Severus made a noise at the back of his throat. He barely noticed Lucius and Granger slip away, as Harry lived up to his reputation for impetuous action and launched a concerted assault upon Severus’ person. He used lips and tongue in long sucking kisses that edged into bites. It was like being in bed with the giant Squid, he seemed to have so many hands in so many places at once, and he sucked cock like he’d been doing it all his life.
Several hours later, exhausted, sweaty, and with his own personal Gryffindor hot water bottle tucked up against him, Severus stared at the ceiling and pondered which stamina potion he should brew first.
A feather drifted down across his line of sight.
“I hope you’re not a voyeur,” Severus said.
“You’re not supposed to take your work home with you,” Cupid replied, ignoring the question. He suddenly fully manifested above the bed, wings gently stirring the air into a pleasant breeze.
Harry murmured something into Severus’ chest then tried to burrow closer, and Severus’ arm tightened round His Love. “Perks of the job.”
“And what am I going to tell mum?”
Severus smirked. “You can tell her that I rather shot myself in the foot.”