His Heart's Desire

This story was written for ginny___weasley for smutty_claus 2007, with a special request for creepy!stalker!Snape, disturbing content, darkfic, noncon, being forced on display, sex as torture or punishment, forced sex to avoid something bad happening to someone the victim cares about, victim fighting aggressor and only making matters worse for themselves, sexual humiliation, twisted morality, and "bad and wrong".

So if those kinds of things aren't your cup of tea, you might prefer to read some of the other fic featured on this lovely site! :)

But if (like me), you have a muse who digs the darkfic, this may be up your alley.

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Lily rose to consciousness slowly, so slowly that it took her some time to realise she was conscious at all. She felt very strange and her initial reaction was that she'd been put into a Muggle-style isolation tank, but she realised she could hear and feel her breathing and the beating of her heart, although she couldn't move and she definitely felt "off" in some manner. Wondering if an experiment at work had gone horribly awry, she twisted, meeting a resistance she couldn't classify and then the telltale static that meant Muffliato had been cast suddenly disappeared. She hadn't even noticed its presence until it was gone, leaving an almost aching silence in its wake.

"I believe our guest is awake . . ." drawled a deep aristocratic voice she couldn't immediately identify but which she thought she should recognise and reminded her vaguely of work. The tone of it, however, was nearly as icy as the room and caused goose-flesh to raise all over her body. She tried to distract herself by attempting to identify the voice but only succeeded in getting a headache, which seemed to throb violently with every beat of her heart.

Where am I, anyway,she thought to herself. She couldn't see anything or feel anything beyond the pounding of her heart and head. She couldn't even tell if her eyes were open or closed but her mental commands to her eyelids to move didn't appear to be working, as there was no change in what she could see. Or couldn't see for that matter.

She was frustrated and began to try to figure out where she was. The last thing she remembered was Rookwood announcing he was about to begin his experiments with the Ustilagor in the Time Room and heading off to her own locked department . . . and then nothing.

"You have it?" drawled the voice, obviously to whomever he'd been speaking to previously.

"Mmm," came the non-committal reply, the monosyllabic grunt nearly inaudible but nonetheless worming its way into her brain. She felt sure she'd be able to identify the second voice long before the first if only the second would concede to speak. She was proven wrong nearly immediately.

"I don't know why you want to soil yourself with this filthy trash. You can do much better. We can do much better for you," drawled the first voice, and the insult, combined with the overall derision in the tone cued her in. Lucius Malfoy.

She tried to whip about to face him. "Let me go, you animal!" she shrieked when she discovered she was unable to move. She was almost surprised she could speak.

"Shut up, Mudblood," Malfoy hissed at her.

"You incomprehensible bastard! The only difference between the blood that runs in my veins and the blood that runs in yours is mine is missing all the consanguinity!"

"Such language! And from a 'lady'!" Malfoy sneered sarcastically. Lily could hear his smirk even though she couldn't see it, and the sarcasm in his voice made it quite clear. Frantically, she tried to move her arms, but they were obeying her mind no better than her eyes were.

Damnit!

"You FUCKING coward! How many of you are there? Give me my wand and duel me like a man!"

"Oh, but isn't that how you like the game to be played, my dearest Miss Evans?"

"I'm not playing any games with you, Malfoy!" Lily spat.

"You couldn't compete with me if you tried, stupid girl," Malfoy snarled at her dismissively.

"Whoaooah!" she gasped as she was abruptly spun about in mid-air. It occurred to her that they must have been Levicorpus-ing her, and she fought back a wave of nausea at being suddenly upended.

Still blind, she was unprepared for the hands that whipped around her face...one vice-like hand clamped her nostrils shut and the other whipped her head back.

"Aaaah!" she yelped and instinctively began breathing through her mouth. She tried to buck and kick, but only felt robes swishing against her back, legs and buttocks.

Her bare back, legs and buttocks.

She howled in outrage and made to bite whoever it was holding her head, but for some reason couldn't gain any purchase. She clenched her teeth shut with a feral growl, panting shallowly.

"Hurry now," Malfoy said in a strained voice from behind her. "The sooner I can unhand this, the better."

Lily was completely unprepared for the blow to her stomach, and gasped again. Quick as a flash, a burning and acrid liquid was poured into her mouth, and equally quickly Malfoy slammed her mouth shut. "Swallow," he commanded.

She thrashed against him as much as she could and tried to spit the liquid out, but Malfoy's hand was clenched too tightly...too expertly...over her mouth. She was sure her eyes watered with the effort, and she held her breath, unable to breathe around the liquid and unwilling to swallow it.

"SWALLOW!" Malfoy commanded again, his voice dark and deep in her ear. "It's not deadly and it's not Veritaserum. He wants you alive, although I cannot fathom why he wants you at all."

Lily refused, her head swimming with the effort. "It matters little to me, you know," Malfoy continued quietly. "I'd just as soon dispose of you. You may hold your breath until you turn blue, for all I care...which, I might add, you are doing quite nicely now...but you will eventually lose consciousness, and then you'll have swallowed it anyway. And while he prefers you conscious, I'm sure I can convince him to finish with you if you are not."

Lily's eyes, although she couldn't see out of them, opened wide at that revelation. She quickly debated the merits of swallowing the liquid versus willingly conceding control to them. She moved her tongue to shift the liquid so she could breathe around it, but there was too much of it and Malfoy's large hands clamped over her nose and mouth prevented any further manoeurvring. She tried to fake him out by forcing her throat through the motions of swallowing, but the angle of her head forced the liquid down her throat and she whimpered in defeated frustration.

"Very good," Malfoy said, thrusting her away from him. She briefly debated why his so doing didn't cause her to fall, but was distracted when she heard him casting Scourgify and wiping his hands with a shudder.

Pompous ass! He couldn't stand to touch her? Well it's not as if she asked for his attentions!

"Give me my clothes back, Mal . . . uhhhh," she started angrily but drifted into a nonsensical slur. She suddenly felt like a marionette without strings, and the subsequent feeling of the dissipation of a spell explained why she'd been unable to move under her own power previously.

What is happening to me?!

"Actually, Lucius, you misspoke slightly," said the second voice. "Essence of Peace Lily is actually poisonous, as is Curare. But when expertly prepared . . . and administered . . . the combination achieves the desired effects."

SEVERUS! she wanted to scream, as her mind catalogued the combined effects of Curare and Peace Lily extract (paralytic, mago-suppressive, non-hypnotic and slightly psychoactive, not amnesiac) but her tongue felt heavy and thick in her mouth.

"Why not just knock her out, or take her by force?" Malfoy queried, his voice now off to her side and slightly lower. She had a bizarre mental vision of him lounging in an armchair.

"Because," Snape replied softly. She felt the air shift in the billowing of his robes as he stepped closer to her and trailed thin, spidery fingers up her sides.

Lily mentally groaned. Nononono.

"Do you see, Lily?" Snape whispered into her ear, and trailed the tip of his tongue lightly across her throat. "Do you see what you've made me do?" he whispered in her other ear.

She'd have whimpered, but she had completely lost control of her voluntary muscle function, whilst remaining completely aware of everything that was happening to her. She still couldn't see, but that fact somehow slipped to the bottom of her list of concerns. Significantly more disturbing was the fact that she'd just been drugged by someone who clearly intended to rape her, with his creepy friend in attendance watching the whole thing. She wasn't the least bit convinced said creepy friend wouldn't be taking a turn.

She tried to pull away and failed. Judging by her significantly slowed heartbeat and breathing, she'd been given a dose just shy of what would render her unconscious. She'd be able to hear and feel everything but be unable to move or even fight back with wandless magic, for at least the next two hours.

And she'd remember everything.

"Will this potion have any other effects?" Malfoy was asking in a bizarrely detached voice. He might well have been asking the weather or the time of day.

"It will make her a little more difficult to arouse," he commented dismissively.

"Why bother?" Malfoy commented, clearly confused and disgusted.

"It's the principle of the thing," Snape replied, and bent his head to her neck again, lightly trailing his tongue from Lily's shoulder to her ear.

She tried to distract her mind, tried to force herself to think of a project she wanted to start at work...anything to keep her mind off Snape's tongue, which was slowly and gently wreaking havoc on her throat. Hot tears of frustration dribbled from the corners of her almond-shaped eyes.

"Oh look, she's crying," Malfoy mocked, a fact Snape had apparently missed. Much to Lily's relief, he stopped nibbling at the base of her throat, rising to rub his cheek against hers. He had to have shaved recently, as his skin was soft against hers.

"Don't cry, Lily," he whispered, licking her tears away. She wanted to recoil in disgust. "I have learned the carnal arts well; I assure you, you will enjoy my touch," he promised earnestly. "You will be aching for me before this is over."

He placed his hands on her neck and slid them down to her shoulders caressing lightly, raining feather-light kisses on her face and throat. As his hands continued down her arms, he tented his long, spidery fingers so that only the very tips of his nails dragged lightly down her arms. At the same time he bent down to her neck, trailing his tongue along the base of her throat. Her breath caught as he found the most sensitive spot, and she felt him smirk against her skin.

"That's why I bother, Lucius," he confessed, sounding supremely pleased with himself.

He moved to the other side of her neck to repeat the attentions there as his nails skimmed lightly up the inside of her arms. Little bolts of electricity danced across her body, converging most inconveniently in her breasts and groin.

I do not want this, I do NOT like this! she repeated to herself, desperately hoping her paralysed body would obey her mind. Severus, let me GO! she mentally screamed at him, much the same way she'd cast a spell non-verbally, hoping that Snape's psychic abilities would enable him to "hear" her.

Either he didn't, or he chose to ignore her, and in that moment Lily couldn't have been sure as to which. His hands continued a path across her breasts, and immobile as she was, she felt her flesh draw taut around them as her nipples peaked in his rough palms.

"So soft," he murmured, laving one nipple with his tongue while he teased the other softly with thumb and forefinger. "So warm," he continued, nibbling slightly before sucking with alarming expertise.

Her face burned with shame as her breathing sped up, and she knew she couldn't blame it entirely on her fear, anger and frustration.

She was shifted suddenly; she felt like she'd been vertically elevated but her sense of orientation was skewed and she couldn't be certain. What she was certain of was Snape's face nuzzling her abdomen, his hands lightly scratching down her sides, causing an unbearably tickling sensation that was also causing her clitoris to throb painfully.

NO! she screamed inside her head, desperate to break away, desperately trying to call her wand to her, desperate to free herself.

Snape's hands, meanwhile, continued their relentless path down her sides, down the outside and then up the inside of her legs, splaying them slightly when they reached the juncture of her thighs. With a motion that left Lily with the ridiculous vision of a cat sheathing its claws, Lily felt the pads of Snape's fingers spread first her outer, then her inner labia.

His hands went back to her hips and she was shifted again, and then she felt him...his mouth!...upon her. His tongue gently explored the nub of her clitoris, trailed lightly to the crease of her clitoral hood, and wrapped gently around its base.

"Uck! Severus, that's disgusting!" Malfoy hissed, revulsion dripping from every syllable.

Snape snorted, and Lily felt him turn his head slightly. "I feel sorry for Narcissa," he said scornfully.

"Oh believe me, I attend to Narcissa's needs quite well," Malfoy declared haughtily. "But . . . Narcissa is . . . pure . . ." he explained, revulsion having returned to him.

Snape's shoulders were leaning against her thighs, and she felt him shrug in response as he turned back to her. He licked her slowly and reverently before sealing his lips around her and suckling lightly, his tongue flickering and massaging her clit in a most insistent manner.

Lily found herself desperately hoping that Snape would be the stereotypical male, and wouldn't be completely sure of a woman's reactions during orgasm. She knew if he kept up his current activity she was going to climax from his ministrations, and if he knew that, she thought she'd die of shame.

She completely ignored the voice in the back of her head that insisted Snape was many things, but a strong adherent to a stereotype was not among his best strengths.

Dimly, she realised his hand had begun to massage her vulva, and as he slightly increased the speed of his tongue, she felt one long, thin finger slide inside her. She felt him pull the finger toward him as his suction intensified, and she had the horrified feeling he was searching for something.

And he found it.

She gasped as his finger found the bundle of nerves inside her that was counterpoint to the one he was so expertly attending to with his mouth and tongue.

"Oh good, Augustus has returned!" Malfoy said. "And look! He's brought a gift with him!" The creep sounded as though Christmas had come early.

Snape paused for a moment, presumably to look at the newcomer, leaving Lily in a very frustrated state of high arousal, yet uncomfortable with being on display to even more people. She was rather uncomfortable with being aroused at all, come to that.

Snape snorted at whatever it is he saw, but turned his attention nearly immediately back to Lily and whispered, "Legilimens.".

He must have had eye contact with her, because her mind was suddenly flooded with a vision belonging to someone other than her. Snape, presumably.

James was stuffed into a locked wire crate barely big enough for him to be balled up into. He was on his knees in a fetal position, but he was watching the proceedings.

"Lily! Don't! Snape, you bastard!" she heard James pant near-incoherently. Her mind saw him straining against his bonds, shoving his face into the bars of the crate.

The vision faded as Malfoy spat at him, "Oh, shut up you filthy blood-traitor!" Lily assumed some sort of spell had been cast at James, because it wasn't like him to take such an insult without replying. A jarring, irregular thumping noise from the general direction of where she assumed Rookwood had entered with James in the cage seemed to indicate James was fighting against the crate.

Lily's confused state of heightened arousal and horror disoriented her. Her mind screamed for Severus to stop; her body screamed for him to continue, but regardless of how good it felt, emotionally she didn't want to be here and wouldn't have chosen it. Before she could focus any further on her rattled state, Snape's mouth returned to her clit, and his hand, still buried inside her, returned to stroking and massaging her.

He suckled and licked her clit and his finger coaxed her inexorably to the edge but just as she was about to hurtle over it, he changed his technique. He broke the suction and danced his tongue lightly across her clit, and laved her labia with broad strokes of his tongue. The lone finger from his right hand slid in and out of her slowly; his left hand snaked up to fondle her breasts.

A few moments later, his hand was pulled from her cunt, only to be replaced by his tongue. He licked her lasciviously, and she felt the strange sensation of his tongue penetrating her, whilst his withdrawn hand tweaked her swollen clit.

"Mmmm," he purred, and she could hear him licking his lips. "So sweet. SO wet . . ."

She tried to summon her wand again, though what use it would do her if she had it, given she couldn't move her hands in the proper motions to cast any spells, she had no idea.

That thought disappeared as he slid now two fingers inside her and resumed his activities with his tongue and mouth. So high was her arousal that in mere seconds she was back to the same level she'd been before he stopped.

Again, mere moments before she exploded into orgasm, his technique changed dramatically. He withdrew his hands and wrapped them around her waist, fondling her buttocks with his large hands. His long fingers scratched down the back of her thighs and calves; while an erotic sensation, it broke the pattern he'd established and halted her climax.

She would have roared in frustration had she been able.

She felt him shudder slightly and realised he was laughing silently. He's playing with you. He knows damned well what he's doing!

Malfoy had also apparently cottoned on. "Oi, Snape. Get her off already!"

"Oh, I will . . . but look!" he said, his voice sparkling with amusement. She felt him withdraw from her entirely.

Utterly beyond her control, she was trembling . . . and she knew they could all see it. They all knew she was, indeed, aching for him.

She heard Malfoy snicker in appreciative amusement.

"Very well, you've proven your point...do get on with it, we haven't all day, you know." Despite his statement, Malfoy sounded quite bored.

Snape shifted again, this time standing behind her, and she had the horrified thought that he was going to sodomise her. Instead, he adjusted the angle of her head...to what end, she couldn't fathom. When he walked back around her, she heard him whisper a spell again, and a frisson of magic on her eyes made her hope her vision had returned. She pried her eyes open, and indeed, the bright glare of the room around assaulted her optic nerves.

Unable to close her eyes, unable to move them or squint, she realised he'd positioned her rather deliberately. In her immediate field of vision was Snape, his black eyes burning with lust so intense it threatened to incinerate them both. Just over Snape's head, James' hazel eyes exuded frozen fury.

Slowly, knowing she couldn't take her eyes off him if she tried, Snape bared his teeth in a feral grimace and with deliberate gentleness, rubbed them lightly across her painfully throbbing clit. His unblinking eyes never left hers as he quickly worked her into and past her frenzy with suction and friction. He slipped his fingers back into her and rubbed at the nodule of nerves insistently.

The last thing she saw before her vision exploded into white sparks was James' horrified face, but knew by Snape's moan of victory that he had no need of verbal affirmation to recognise her physiological reactions.

"That's one," he said, his voice full of dark promise that the experience was far from over. She panted shallowly and felt him adjust her height again, and realised he was adjusting his robes.

As the haze from her orgasm dissipated, her vision returned to her and she found his eyes meeting hers again.

She felt no need for him to have a reciprocal orgasm and poured all the energy she could summon into pleading with him with her eyes.

Severus, NO! Please, no! Nononono, I trusted you, don't do this! Please, PLEASE no!

Again, he either chose not to heed her or couldn't understand her, and she felt the tip of his cock against her.

He slid his cock around her dripping cunt, coating the head and shaft liberally with her juices as they seeped out of her. Just before he pushed into her, he rubbed the head of his cock on her still-engorged clit. The sensation was shockingly erotic, and she knew the horrified look in her eyes was clouding in her distraction.

His cock felt much different from James' . . . but in her paralytic state, she wasn't entirely sure exactly how they were different. His left hand pulled her tight into him whilst his right pressed on her lower abdomen as he slid deeper into her. He apparently wanted to savour the sensation as it seemed to take forever. Finally, she felt a tremendous pressure, and he released his hand from her abdomen, and wrapped it around her back.

"God, you're tight," he growled at her, flexing his hips slightly.

The angle they were at was curious...he was standing, and she was hovering just in front of him. With her complete loss of muscle control, not only could she not fight him, she could not assist him either. Her legs dropped uselessly toward the ground except for when he positioned them otherwise, and as his hands were otherwise occupied, they dangled. This had the unexpected effect of causing her clit to rub against the shaft of his cock as he thrust ever-so-slowly in and out of her, and her breath caught in her throat again. His eyes gleamed as a smug look worked its way across his face, and he firmly planted his legs in such a way that hers were clamped together.

He exhaled slowly through his mouth, face scrunched up in concentration as he adjusted their positions. "That's a girl," he commended her, as if she had some sort of control over the proceedings then found a slightly more regular rhythm and began to pick up speed. His grunts of pleasure horrified her; she was doubly horrified at her traitorous body which bade him such a warm and wet welcome.

He staggered slightly...the force of his hips moved her away from him and he was slightly overbalanced.

"I need my hands," Snape complained in a strangled voice, and someone...Lily assumed it was Lucius Malfoy...conjured something soft behind her, which Snape backed her into. Snape withdrew his hand from around her back and placed his hand against the flat surface for support. He also braced her hips against it, holding her to the surface with his own body, and forced her legs apart so that he could adopt a more traditional position. It enabled him to increase his speed and his intensity, but it also freed his hands up to fondle her. In short order, the slightly roughened pad of his thumb was stroking her almost exactly the way she stroked herself, so adeptly that she assumed he had pulled the technique from her mind.

His sallow face was flushed and sweat plastered his lank hair to his skull, and the look in his eyes was desperate, fierce. She knew from the intensity of his gaze that he was struggling to hold back his own orgasm, and his forefinger suddenly joined his thumb in a rolling motion.

It was her second undoing and she succumbed to the sensation, feeling the walls of her cunt clench tight around him.

"Yesssssss!" he hissed into her ear, as she wept tears of rage and shame. "That's it," he crooned to her, his thrusting frantic and erratic as he spilled into her with a rapid series of strangled grunts.

He stayed there a few moments, gasping and fisting his hand in the material over her shoulders, as if he needed help in staying upright.

When his breathing had mostly returned to normal, he nuzzled her cheek and kissed his way along her jawbone to her lips. On reaching her mouth, he suckled her full lower lip slightly before kissing her in earnest. His tongue found entry to her mouth and danced lightly across her teeth and tongue before he pulled away.

"I would have rather have waited for three . . . and four . . . and five," he confessed, "but we are unfortunately pressed for time."

He lifted his head and gazed at her. "I would give you more...would have given you SO much more...if you would have but taken it," he admonished with a voice full of great reluctance.

With a sad shake of his head he disengaged himself and reached into a fold of his robes. He withdrew a phial from it and uncorked it. Her panic must have shown in her eyes, because a dark look of disappointment and sadness flickered across his face. "It will give you your voice back," he said, and in what amounted to a show of faith, touched the stopper to his own tongue.

Unlike the original potion, this one was cool and soothing on her tongue. She swallowed it and found she was also able to blink, which she did profusely, soothing her aching and dry eyes. Her lip started to tremble and he sneered at her with a look of contempt. "Don't even try and act like you didn't like it, Lily. I know better, and so do you!" He yanked her away from the soft structure he'd supported her on only moments before and shoved her to her knees. She yelped in terror, sure that he meant her to reciprocate the earlier oral attentions he'd favoured her with. That fear however, was nearly entirely set to rest when he joined her on his knees, and barked Malfoy's name.

Oh God, not Malfoy too!

Malfoy was impeccably dressed as always, and was even wearing long gloves. He scowled at her with disgust but held his wand to Snape's hand, which was clenched around hers in a vice-like grip.

"Do you swear, Lily, to never utter a word of what happened here to anyone except the people in this room?"

. . . Oh my God, he's going to force me into an Unbreakable Vow?. . . At least James is here . . . . "I so swear it."

"And do you swear to not give any indication, nor hint or clue, as to anything happened out of the ordinary?"

. . . You've got me in a corner, Severus . . . it's not as if I can reasonably go to the Daily Prophet and swear under Veritaserum that you raped me. Not when you went so far out of your way to give me pleasure. And it's not as if I'm so inclined to talk about such an event, anyway . . .

"I so swear."

There was a long pause. Lily wasn't sure if Severus was gathering his thoughts for his final condition or what the delay was, but what he said next shocked and horrified her even more than she thought possible, even after what she'd just experienced.

"And do you swear to accept my advances from this point forward, without distaste or prejudice, while maintaining the other two conditions?"

For eternity?! her mind screamed. She'd have to suffer his advances whenever he felt so inclined and not tell anyone?

She stoically ignored the small voice in the back of her mind that whispered that she'd quite enjoyed his attentions, thank you very much, and there were certainly much worse things than having a man stimulate you until . . .

A wand jabbed in her throat distracted her from her rambling reverie.

"Do you swear to accept my advances from this point forward, without distaste or prejudice, while maintaining the other two conditions?" Severus repeated demandingly.

Still, she paused. Secrecy, particularly about something she wouldn't be inclined to discuss with anyone except James in the first place, was one thing. Being turned into someone's private whore was quite another. Even James didn't have such a ridiculous demand that she yield to his desires at any whim.

The wand was whipped away from her neck and Snape jerked around, wielding his wand quite effectively in his left hand. "CRUCIO!" he bellowed, and from across the room, James shrieked an absolutely inhuman screech of torture.

"I SWEAR!"

She felt the fiery chain of magic wrap itself around her and Severus' conjoined hands, and the reality of everything that happened came crashing in on her. She collapsed onto the floor in a sobbing heap. Nearly immediately however, she was pulled up to a seated position.

James' face weaved unsteadily before her watering, unfocused eyes, and it took her a moment to realise there was something wrong with him. Not only was it completely lacking the love, anger and concern she'd expected to find there, it was moving in a most bizarre way. She stared at him curiously, wondering if, as her vision returned, his face would quit its strange dance. Her peripheral vision made her vaguely aware of Severus righting his clothing off to her side and Malfoy looking on with self-satisfied scorn.

Suddenly she realised what was wrong with James. It wasn't James at all. It was someone...and she increasingly suspected that 'someone' was Augustus Rookwood...Polyjuiced to look like James.

And she'd just sworn an Unbreakable Vow to not utter a word to anyone other than the three in the room.

She and James went into hiding eight weeks later.

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Author's notes:

Many, many years ago, I read about a sensory deprivation chamber in what I believe was Tom Clancy's The Cardinal of the Kremlin. That's similar to what's going on with Lily here . . . you know, only without the big messy tank set-up. ^_^

The Ustilagor is a tentacled brain ( . . . really . . .) straight out of the Dungeons & Dragon's Complete Psionics Handbook. A picture may be found here (http://www.kieranyanner.com/gallery/ustilagor.jpg ). If that doesn't describe the brains that attacked Ron in the Department of Mysteries, I don't know what does! (Yes, I am fully aware that the Psionics handbook predates Harry Potter by several years.)

Peace Lily is not actually a paralytic. It will, however, stop your heart (and/or that of your pets and/or children) if taken in a large enough dose. However, it was too ironic to not use "Peace Lily" to subdue her.

Curare (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curare), is a paralytic and it can kill you, because it does stop your involuntary muscle action (i.e....your breathing). But witches and wizards don't always seem to have exactly the same reactions as Mugglefolk. And in any case I think Snape has the innate potions brewing ability.

The comment about blood ("The only difference between the blood that runs in my veins and the blood that runs in yours") came from Lone Fenix, although I don't recall where he got it. He also came up with the idea of the lily (flower) being used to subdue Lily.

Thanks tons to S for the beta!

Thanks also go to the mods and admins at The Petulant Poetess, who have for several years tried in vain to teach me how to properly utilise commas. For the life of me, I still cannot figure out what a compound predicate is, but I am getting back fewer corrections these days!