Eating Death

"Greedily she engorged without restraint,

                                                                       John Milton, Paradise Lost (9.791-2)

Severus looked at Minerva, trying to read her. Was this really what she wanted, or was it to be just another sacrifice meant to assuage his guilt and pain?

If he had looked into her mind, he would have found that it was nothing of the sort. When he had pulled her close, then put his mouth on hers...not a kiss; you couldn't call it that...she had been seized by a sudden and intense longing. Not for his body, although that was there somewhere beneath the surface of it, but for something that could tether her to herself again. It had seemed to her, when she looked at the corpse of Albus Dumbledore lying askew in his ruined tomb, that she might have ceased to exist. Nothing was keeping her firmly on the earth; not Albus, not her friends, her students, not her work...it all seemed to have slipped away, and she didn't know quite how it had happened. Severus' touch had reminded her that she still had a body, and that it could need and want and ache, and she found that it was enough.

Severus hadn't answered her, so she took his collar in her hands and pulled him to her, pressing her own mouth to his again, this time parting his lips with her tongue searching for his. It took a moment for him to begin kissing her back...it was most definitely a kiss this time...and he wrapped his arms around her, their tongues dancing back and forth from his mouth to hers.

She moved her hands to his chest, running her palms over the plain, white shirt that covered him. He caught her wrists in his hands and brought them to his lips, turning them over to kiss each palm. He performed the spell to open the door to his bedroom and started to back toward it, gently pulling her along with him. He still hadn't spoken.

It had been nearly a year since she had been in this room, and the changes were stark. Gone was the large, heavy, four-poster bed that had dominated the room when Albus was its master. Gone were the blue and gold hangings...so gaudy, she had always thought...and of course, gone was the large painting that had graced the wall opposite the bed; she had removed that herself just after Albus' death.

The room now resembled a monk's cell. A single bed with a wrought-iron frame and a plain, cotton blanket stood against the center of the far wall. The bedside table held just a lamp, no books, no photographs, nothing to betray anything about the creature who presumably took his rest here. There was a table along the other wall that held a pitcher and a single glass, as well as a comb. There was no mirror. The wardrobe was tall and oak, the only substantial-looking piece of furniture in the room. The large window, she knew, afforded a beautiful view of the grounds and the lake beyond, but it was now obscured by an opaque, black curtain.

Minerva took all this in at the moment they entered the room. She had that fleeting sense of untethering again, so she banished it by pushing her body up against Snape's, crushing her breasts against his chest, pressing her hands into the small of his back.

He had been silent the whole time, so she spoke: "Do you want this?"

He nodded slowly, and she caught one of his hands, bringing it up to her breast. "And this?"

He gave a thick-voiced "yes," and bent his lips to her neck, tracing its length with his tongue and teeth. He kneaded the breast with his palm and ran a thumb over her nipple, making her exhale raggedly. She let him explore both sides of her neck before she took her wand and Banished first her clothes, then his. There would be no slow, tender unveiling of flesh here this evening. She unpinned her hair, letting it fall to just below her shoulders, the pins making sharp, metallic pings as they hit the bare floor. She sent her wand floating to the table, where it laid itself down next to the comb.

He had been shocked by the sudden rush of cool air that accompanied the loss of his clothes. Then he had been shocked by the heat of her bare skin against his as he pulled her against him again. She pulled away, and he thought for a moment that he had startled her with his erection, which he had pressed hard against her belly, but she was merely moving to lie down on the bed. He stood where he was and looked at her.

He had never seen her entirely naked, except for that awful evening in the Great Hall, and then he had not allowed himself to look. Now he drank her in.

Her skin nearly glowed in the shadows cast by the low lamplight, so pale was it. Her body was no longer that of a young woman, but it was still firm in most places. Her breasts were small and round, the nipples forming delicate coral peaks the circumference of a Muggle dime. Her bones were finely wrought; her clavicles and even her ribs were set in bas-relief against her flesh, and her iliac crests formed a sharp frame for the slightly rounded lower belly that was the hallmark of a slender woman in her middle years. Her legs were impossibly long...coltish, she would have been called in her youth...and still bore the hint of a musculature formed by long-ago Quidditch practices and broomstick rides. There were fine wrinkles in the skin at her neck and chest, and he could see a faint dusting of reddish freckles just above where her breasts met her chest wall. Two small, white, starburst scars marred the skin between her breasts; another two marked her left breast, one just above the nipple.

Her face was extraordinary. It could no longer be called beautiful exactly; time had chiseled away any extraneous softness from her prominent cheekbones and jawline, leaving the planes of her face slightly too hollow. There were furrows in her brows that signaled a life of worry and frowning, but these were accompanied by fine lines radiating from her eyes that hinted at joy and laughter mixed in as well. In middle age, Minerva McGonagall had become what is condescendingly known as a handsome woman. But the penetrating intelligence that informed her features as they moved was as striking as any beauty she had ever possessed.

Minerva had never been anxious about her looks or her body, and she was not now as he stared at her, despite the thirty-four years' difference in their ages. She regarded Severus' body with interest that bordered on the clinical. It had been many years since she had laid eyes on the nude figure of a man who was not Albus Dumbledore, and the differences were fascinating. The young man was as pale as she was, and almost as smooth. Albus had been bear-like, with a thick mat of hair on his chest running down his belly, and thick, muscular arms. Severus was lean, with ropy muscles running from his shoulders to his forearms. Where Albus had been soft, Severus was hard. She could see his ribs, and his abdomen was flat, as she remembered Albus' had been when they had first become lovers. Over the years, Albus had thickened around the middle, which she had teased him about, but had, in truth, found oddly attractive. He had felt substantial, both when she wrapped her arms around him and when he lay on top of her. She wondered how this smooth, hard man would feel.

The most startling thing about Severus' body, however, were the scars that crisscrossed his torso like thin vines. They were faded, but there were so many that it seemed there was not a square inch that was left unmarked. She wondered how many had been present even before Severus had ever met the Dark Lord and his temper, but knew she would never ask.

She had, of course, seen his erect penis before...had had it in her mouth...so she was not surprised either by its length or the fact that it curved slightly to one side.

He approached the bed and startled her by Accio-ing his wand. After a quick word and a swish, however, she felt the bed expand underneath her to become twice as wide.

"I thought we might need more room," he said, sitting down next to where she lay. He ran his hands down her shoulders and over her arms, then moved them to cup her breasts. He kept his hands still for a few moments, feeling her chest rise and fall underneath his palms, then bent to take one of her nipples in his mouth. She moaned, and he suckled her harder, flicking his tongue over the bud, then moved his mouth to the other breast. She was kneading his hard shoulders, encouraging him to come closer.

He moved his legs to the bed and stretched out beside her as she turned on her side to face him. She ran one finger down his chest and belly, then reached between his legs to gently palm his testicles. She heard him inhale with a hiss as she moved her hand to grip his cock, running her fingers up and down its length, letting her thumb brush over the sensitive tip. He took her by the back of the thigh and moved her top leg over his hip, then moved his hand down between her legs. When his fingers found her opening, he discovered she was very wet, and he wondered if it was a charm or a natural response. He slipped two fingers into her and felt her muscles contract around them as she pressed herself into his hand. He ran his thumb over her swollen clitoris, and she let out a cry that could have been pleasure or pain. Given the circumstances, he decided to assume it was the former. She kept stroking him, though, until he said in a husky voice, "Stop, Minerva... I'm going to come...."

"It's all right," she said.

"No, not yet," he said. He shifted her onto her back and knelt between her legs, still stroking her.

She closed her eyes and said, "I want you to fuck me."

He was glad she hadn't said "make love" because that's not what it was; they were not lovers. Minerva, he knew, valued precision in language as in all else. So did he. And he wanted to fuck her. He wanted to lose himself in her and make her forget herself for just the few minutes it would take. So he removed his hand from her sex and replaced it with his cock. He slid into her, marveling at how good she felt. He had been inside her a half-dozen times before, but never had he allowed himself to think about it. He had always tried to imagine himself someplace else...with limited success...but this time he could just be with this woman and concentrate on how good it felt. She was wet and she was tight, and it was so, so sweet!

She moaned again when he started to move and wrapped her legs tightly around his hips. When he looked at her face, her eyes were closed. He wondered if she was thinking about Dumbledore...imagining that it was the old man's cock moving in and out of her. He stopped and said, "Minerva, open your eyes. Look at me."

She did, and he asked, searching her eyes, "Who am I?"

She knew what his worry was. She took his face between her hands and said, "Severus. You're Severus."

He began to thrust harder, and she unwrapped her legs from his middle in order to lift her hips to meet him at an angle that provided the most friction to her sensitive nub. He was grunting and thrusting, just as he had done during their scenarios, only this time it was real, and he was fucking her hard, and she loved it. She moved her arms over her head to grasp the iron bars of the headboard, lost in the sensations he was producing in her core.

She came, crying, "Yes! Oh! Yes, yes!" and he was right behind her, coming inside her for the first time.

"Ahhh, gods," he moaned as he shuddered, still pumping into her until he finally stilled.

When he had regained his breath, he moved off of her and settled on his back. She didn't try to snuggle into his arms, nor did either of them speak for a few minutes.

"Would you like to stay?" he asked without looking at her.

"It isn't a good idea," she answered.

"No," he agreed. Still, they lay together, neither making a move to get up.

In the end, she did stay and took what she needed from him over and over until they were both spent, and the dark had been beaten back for a few precious hours. They fell asleep, both slick with sweat and sex and reeking with it.

When Severus awoke as the sun was just beginning to slice though the gaps in the drape, he was neither surprised nor disappointed to find that she was gone.

He sat up and took hold of the pillow she had used, pressing it to his nose. It smelt of honeysuckle and linden.