Snape, Part 2

Snape

As Snape reached the top of the main staircase, he again experienced a surge of the castle's magic. This time, however, he could discern differences: there were levels...flavours, almost, that hovered just beyond his sense of taste, colours just beyond his sight. He stopped, his hand on the banister, and closed his eyes, letting the feel of the enchantments wash through him. Sensations merged and then separated; if he concentrated, he could...see.

He could see the castle wards, arching over and around him, visible as bands of unbroken black – all was well there. The school itself lay in his mind like a three-dimensional, transparent model. Some rooms contained a softly-glowing smudge of reddish warmth – living people, he decided. Wispy trails of blue and gold snaked along some of the corridors and in some of the rooms; when he focused on them, he could feel the prickles of recently-completed spells and charms.

He wondered if other headmasters and headmistresses had seen the same visions, or if the castle manifested itself differently for each person. What had it looked like to her...to Minerva?

As he thought of her, he realised he could sense her specific presence. The image of the castle wavered and faded, until all that remained was a spot on his mind, like a bruise, where he could feel her, could feel her essential Minerva-ness, even though it was overlaid just now with layers of rage...pain...loss, sensations so strong that he couldn't tell if they were her feelings or his own.

~ ~ ~

The entry hall was deserted as Snape passed through on his way out into the Hogwarts grounds. Normally he had little use for the outdoors, enduring it only when he needed to gather potions ingredients, but just now even the endless empty skies were preferable to the oppression of the castle and its portraits and its magic.

And its Minerva. He wasn't surprised to find himself still unsettled by her. There had always been something between him and Minerva, even in his student days. It had not been sexual then: Minerva never gave any evidence of finding adolescents romantically appealing, and Severus had never been one for crushes on teachers; no, he'd distrusted his professors along with nearly everyone else he knew. McGonagall he had distrusted both on principle and as Head of the House that sheltered Sirius Black and James Potter.

Yet she had disconcerted him in ways that the other professors had not. "You are not without ability, Mr Snape," she had said to him one afternoon in his third year, and he had known her well enough by then to understand that this was high praise. "Do not waste it."

After that, he'd often had the sense that she was pushing him, testing him. Sometimes, he knew, he failed the tests, and she would tighten her lips as if she'd made a bet with herself that he was causing her to lose. But as time went on, his failures became rarer, and her losses, however she defined them, far fewer.

He kept a sharp memory from his sixth year of his success with a tricky transfiguration that had earned him her best compliment – "Exactly right, Mr Snape" – and five points for Slytherin. He could still see how she'd looked as she'd turned away, her eyes glittering, her pointed face marked by a triumphant half-smile. He knew that he was participating in a constant competition that only she understood and whose score she never forgot.

That feeling had returned when he'd come back to Hogwarts to teach. Rumour had it that Minerva had opposed his appointment, but if that were true, her behaviour never hinted at it. During his first year, she treated him with unfailing, if distant, professional courtesy. But gradually he'd felt that old, challenging edge return, and soon he began to enjoy competing with her by his own choice, carefully keeping his own score.

Their eventual positions as Heads of rival Houses gave a plausible public face to the growing tension between them, but never did Snape believe that their personal contests were actually about Quidditch matches or House Cups. For a long time, he'd thought they were really about his history as a Death Eater and about Dumbledore's insistence upon trusting him.

He hadn't recognised the sexual possibilities until one night after he'd been teaching for several years. The Ministry had proposed a revision of the Potions curriculum, and Snape had gone to the Deputy Headmistress to object.

He'd found Minerva in her chambers, for it was late in the evening, and she'd sat on the sofa while he paced and ranted. At first she had listened carefully, but eventually she lost patience.

"Severus," she'd said tightly, "you cannot simply show up at the Department of Magical Education, sneer at the ministers and the Hogwarts Board, inform them that they are idiots, and then stalk out. Your billowing-robe routine is quite effective on children, but I don't think it will have much impact on people like the Averys. They're powerful and ruthless and will require tact and careful handling –"

Snape stopped his pacing and stood directly over her, his lip curling. "You routinely let 12-year-olds get the better of your temper, and you're lecturing me about tact? And what do you know about 'people like the Averys'? Were you ever out there with them, father or son, while they happily did You-Know-Who's worst bidding?"

Minerva, he saw, had gone very still. "You're going to play 'Competitive Darkness' with me now, are ye, Severus? That's the plan, is it?" she asked, her voice brogue-thick and dangerously soft. "You're going to suggest that your few years of serving as sullen bad boy to a posturing lunatic have given you a worldly understanding that a pitiful, school-bound old woman can't possibly match? Well, think again, lad."

She rose and faced him, not yielding an inch to his looming bulk. "Don't you dare patronise me, Severus Snape. I have war stories that would make your Dark Lord weep."

Her eyes snapped with anger, and he could feel heat crackle between them. He was suddenly intensely aware of her – the hint of her spicy perfume, the lift of her breasts under her robes, the sharp edge of her jaw. He wondered how that edge would feel under his thumb, and all at once he was harder than he'd been since his teenage years.

Minerva had been over sixty then, while Severus was still shy of thirty – not the age gulf it would be for Muggles, true, but still quite a difference. Yet when Snape looked back at that night, he couldn't recall giving age or situation or experience a thought. What he remembered was the press of his trousers on his cock and the play of the firelight on her face and the fact that when he'd reached out to touch her, she had reached back.

They'd never made it to her bed, not that first time. He'd taken her there on the sofa, taken her from behind with one arm around her waist and the other across her breasts, one leg bent along the cushions and other braced on the floor to give him the force he needed. He remembered how tightly he'd held her and how hard he'd thrust, bending over her, feeling his sweat slick their bodies as he moved his hand to stroke between her thighs. He'd been inside her, but even then, he'd not felt close enough, he'd wanted to be part of her, to merge with her, to own her...

He'd settled for making her come first, exulting when it happened. She'd cried out and arched against him, her muscles clenching, her head thrown back, and he had leant down to mark her pale neck.

~ ~ ~

The first time Minerva had bound his arms, he had found himself resisting, reminded too vividly of painful moments with Potter and Black and Voldemort.

She'd stopped at the first sign of his reluctance. "I will never do anything you don't want, Severus," she'd said. "It is your choice, fully. I shan't think any the less of you if you refuse.'"

Oddly, considering their constant competition, he'd believed her. Somewhere over the years, he had come to trust Minerva McGonagall. And as he thought about it, he saw that there would be satisfaction in yielding to that trust, a freedom in bondage, in turning over the decisions and the struggles and the roles to someone else, with nothing demanded of him but his own pleasure and hers.

Plus, it occurred to him that if he refused to submit to her in this way, he'd be showing her greater weakness than if he simply gave himself over to whatever she planned.

No, he realised, as his cock gave a twitch, he didn't want to refuse.

But neither did he want her to think she'd won too easy a victory, so he sat back and scowled at her. "You won't think less of me?" he'd said. "Right, and I suppose next you'll be trying to claim that James Potter was a wee nice lad. I'm not falling for it, Minerva. So go ahead; do your worst."

Her smile told him that he wasn't fooling her; she knew he wanted it.

"Fine," she said, and let the smile turn predatory. "We'll start with a little respite from that wagging tongue. Until we find something better for it to do."

Inexperienced as he'd been then, he'd expected her to use a Silencing charm, but she'd preferred a silken gag, in Slytherin colours, that she transfigured from his shirt and tied herself, slowly and tightly.

"Quite a charming picture," she said as she finished and stood back to look at him. "And what's more, you'll still be able to make a few wee nice sounds."

That time, her smile had hardly been a smile at all.

~ ~ ~

She was so clear about what she wanted, and so at ease with her wanting, that he knew she was no stranger to other people's beds and games. For reasons of his own, it mattered to him who those other people had been.

He thought about asking her, late one night when they lay sated and quiet, but he was fairly certain – despite the fact that mere minutes earlier, he'd been buried deep within her – that she would deem such questions too personal.

So he waited until the upper hand was his, until he had her cuffed and naked, her hair streaming darkly over the ivory of her breasts, and then he had asked. Who? When?

She didn't reply.

"No answer?" he'd said, allowing himself a slight sneer as he'd tilted up her chin with one finger. "Are you going to use your safeword then, Minerva? Be the first to break?"

This challenge had got to her, as he'd known it would, and so, her voice tight with anger, she had told him. It wasn't a long catalogue, of course – Minerva was discriminating, reserved, and of a generation that distrusted profligacy. So she hadn't listed many sexual partners, just a couple of men, and rather to Snape's surprise, one woman.

But the name he had feared wasn't there, and he let himself relax. She could have been lying, he supposed, but it suited him to take her word. He didn't want to let her know that it was important to him that she'd never had sex with Albus.

Yet it very much was. Albus Dumbledore had already taken enough from him.

~ ~ ~

The affair with Minerva, occasional though it was and carefully concealed from literally everyone, became a touchstone in Snape's life. They met one Friday a month, Minerva being a woman of schedules. Snape looked forward to his submissive evenings as much as he did to his dominant ones: the chance to put all his responsibilities into Minerva's hands was as appealing as the chance to bend her to his will.

And then had come the final night of the Triwizard Tournament, the night that saw the deaths of Cedric Diggory and essentially of Barty Crouch, Jr., and, as far as Severus was concerned, of himself as well. The fact that he still breathed and ate and walked was of little matter: from the moment of the Dark Lord's return, Snape had felt the shears of the Fates touch the thread of his life. The only question remaining was when the "snip" would come.

They had closed a bit, those shears, on the evening after Diggory's death, when Snape had gone to Minerva's rooms to keep their regular assignation. She had invited him in, given him brandy, and then refused to let him touch her. "It's too dangerous now, Severus. Your mind and time will no longer be your own, and neither of us can risk knowing too much. We can afford no distractions."

She was right; he knew she was. He'd even considered saying something similar. It was too dangerous to continue seeing each other now; they all had too much to lose. Even he did.

Neither of them had ever spoken of permanence or commitment or anything like love. Severus wasn't in love with Minerva, and he had never expected their arrangement to last even as long as it had.

And yet, when she turned away from him, it felt like a little death.

~ ~ ~

Outwardly, nothing changed. Professor Snape's public relationship with Professor McGonagall continued much as it always had; they treated each other exactly as the colleagues everyone thought they were. Snape prided himself on his ability to show only those emotions people expected of him, and Minerva, too, was expert at donning the professional mask.

Only once after the Dark Lord's return had they met as lovers, during the summer following Minerva's Stunning at the hands of High Inquisitor Umbridge and her Ministry stooges. In the castle one evening, it had been just the two of them at dinner, and somehow they had ended up in Severus's bed, making love with a gentleness he hadn't known either of them possessed. They had fallen asleep together afterward, curled around one another, but when he had awakened at first light, he'd been alone.

In the months that followed, the months leading to Dumbledore's death, he had scarcely seen Minerva. Oppressed as much by Dumbledore's demands as by Voldemort's, Snape had spent as much time as possible by himself, and the one time that he and McGonagall had spoken at length – the day that Harry Potter used the Sectumsempra curse on Draco Malfoy – they had argued bitterly.

Minerva had not questioned Snape's punishment of Harry, but the entire subject of Potter was too charged between them; neither could let it drop. One comment had led to another, the argument had moved from Harry to the always-festering sore-spot that was Lupin and Black and James Potter, to Dumbledore and Voldemort, and finally, to themselves.

Snape had never underestimated Minerva's skill with either wand or words, and he knew himself to be her equal. They had dueled viciously, verbally, their tongues cutting as deep as any Sectumsempra.

Only this time, there had been no healing incantation to stanch the wounds.

And yet...and yet underneath the acrimony and accusations, Snape had sensed her regret – and his own. He knew that they fought not only about what they'd been to each other and what they'd had together, but also about what they would never be and would never have. And what they both missed.

There had been – or they had taken – no chance to make amends before the flood of Dumbledore's death had swept all before it, and Snape had been gone.

~ ~ ~

Now he was back.

His walk through the grounds had taken him past the lake and the Quidditch field to the outlying hills, but the sun was setting, and he needed to return. As he reached the edge of the Forbidden Forest, he could no longer avoid the sight of the castle, of the hard reality of its hewn stone and mullioned glass.

As much of a sanctuary as Hogwarts had once been for him, Snape did not delude himself that he would continue to find protection within its walls. That he was entering the final phase of his life, he still did not doubt. And he had much to do.

Today, he'd begun his first task: he'd faced Minerva, driven her to her knees in front of him, and started the process of saving her.

He had told Dumbledore the truth, secure in the knowledge that the old devil would never believe him: threats and duress were Snape's gifts to Minerva, the only ones he had left worth the giving. With them, he would ensure her survival if he could, and he would spare her any further regret.

It had been a consolation to him, the fact that he knew she missed what they'd once had. But that solace was one he could no longer afford. Far better and safer that she despise him, as she must surely do by now. He would use all the means at his disposal to make certain that when he departed Hogwarts for the last time, she would not lament losing him. He would make sure that she could hate him cleanly.

And mourn him not at all.

Snape let his steps carry him to the castle's heavy main doors. They opened soundlessly as he approached, recognising his position.

The Headmaster of Hogwarts stood for a moment at the threshold, looking back at the shadow-crossed grounds. Then he strode through the grand entry hall and began the long climb to his new office.