Chapter 2

~ / ~ / ~

That had been the beginning, but it weren't the end.

Back in his bed that night, the light from the fire and candles carefully extinguished, Argus had started to jerk himself off, panting in the darkness, Mr Pumblechook banished to the sitting room in the interests of privacy.

He'd tried to empty his mind as he pulled on himself under the covers, but he couldn't get the pictures of Severus out of his head. The more he tried to concentrate only on the sensation of his hand on his shaft, the more he were swamped by thoughts of the lad's pale skin gleaming in the firelight, of what his cock would look like standing proud and tall, waiting to be stroked or for someone to suck deep ...

... that thought pushed him over the edge, and Argus felt his hips shudder and buck as though they belonged to someone else. It were like a jinx, he always thought, the way the feeling took you over. Helpless, you was. Helpless.

As soon as he could pull himself back together, he got up to clean himself, hobbling awkwardly so that he didn't dribble on the sheets or floor. Just habit; no caretaker ever made himself extra work. Besides, it were nicer that way. Argus didn't really hold with bodily fluids.

He had thought maybe taking care of his needs would also take care of his interest in young Severus, but no.

Images of that pale, skinny body seemed to take up permanent residence in his mind's eye. He couldn't hardly look at the boy without his imagination peeling off the long, black robes; couldn't be near him without feeling almost dizzy at the smell of him, a combination of potions fumes and something sharper, something that reminded Argus of woodsmoke and his uncle's pipe and the scent of cold night air that Apollyon would bring back with him from his Friday-evening visits to the Hog's Head pub.

It were the smell not just of a man, but of Severus, and it never failed to make Argus hard. It were embarrassing, like being a schoolboy again, and yet it filled him with something he couldn't name, something deep and delicious and wanting.

He took to spending more and more time in the Potions classroom, and Severus would often be there, too. He were a loner, that boy, like Argus himself. Though Severus never said a word about his colleagues ... barely said a word about anything at all, truth be told ... Argus didn't think the other teachers did much to make him feel welcome. Sometimes McGonagall argued Quidditch with him, or Professor Flitwick chatted about students, but mostly, they left him alone.

It were the same for Argus, and thus he felt a kinship with the awkward lad, even considered inviting Severus to his sitting room for a wee nip. But he never could quite bring himself to do it.

Still, he thought Severus must be lonely, not having even a cat for company. He were broody and sometimes got snappish, but when that happened, Argus snapped right back. He always made a point of giving as good as he got, Uncle Stan had taught him that.

Then came the night that Argus hadn't had to go looking for Severus; Severus had come looking for him. Well, if shouting for help counted as looking for him.

Argus had been mopping the corridor that led from Severus's classroom to the Slytherin common room when he heard a whoosh and an almighty crash. A dark cloud poured from the Potions room, and Argus had set out for it at a run even before he heard Severus bellow, "Filch!"

A cauldron had exploded. It turned out to be more messy than dangerous, but Severus had been that angry with himself. He'd scowled fiercely as he worked by Argus's side, using magic to clear away the poisonous parts of the debris while Argus mopped up the ordinary bits.

Finally everything had been set to rights, and the room looked good as new. Argus wanted to say something pleasant, something friendly, like, but his brain had never felt so empty, and he could do nothing but watch as Severus began striding impatiently towards his laboratory nook.

He'd just about reached the door when he turned back and spoke.

"Mr Filch," he said. "Thank you."

Now's the time, Filch, you idiot, Argus told himself. Offer a drink, invite him to you rooms. See what it's like to have a friend.

But then he chanced to look at the boy, and the sight of his pale face and crooked nose, the thought of his thin hands and the cock hidden under his robe, snug against lean thighs...

His own cock swelled, and his throat closed, and Argus couldn't utter a word.

~ / ~ / ~

"You take care of the Castle, Argus, and the Castle, she'll take care of you."

So Apollyon Pringle had said nearly every day, and Argus found that it were true.

Somehow Hogwarts always knew what he needed, sometimes even before he did. Squib he might be, but that didn't signify to the great Castle. She provided her magic for him same as for any other ... gave him rooms that contained whatever he required, whether he knew he required it or not.

The first time it happened, he'd been in a remote corridor and realised he'd run out of WizKleen for the floors. Looking up in vexation, he'd seen a door in the wall where he'd of sworn there weren't no door just a minute before.

He opened it to find a cupboard full of cleaning supplies, several bottles of WizKleen in the very front. It were possible, he supposed, that this closet had been stocked by Pringle, and he just hadn't never mentioned it. But in his gut, Argus knew the gift came from the Castle: she'd put that cupboard there and filled it with just what he needed when he needed it.

And the supply closet were not the only door that Hogwarts opened for Argus Filch over the years.

There were also the door in the dungeon corridor, a door Argus were willing to swear no one but himself had ever seen.

After that night in the Potions classroom, he'd never again considered pursuing ...anything with Severus. He tried to tell himself that it were because of Mr Pumblechook. Having people to his rooms would of upset Mr Pumblechook's routine, and Mr P didn't like his routine upset.

And no more did Argus himself. He didn't want to upset his own routine, and that were the real truth of the matter.

That, and the fact that...

Well, it were like this: When Argus had been a boy, there's always been cats around his aunt and uncle's house; his aunt had been partial to them. And there'd been this one old tom ... Mouser, he'd been called, except that he weren't one.

Oh, he'd catch mice, all right, but once he'd caught 'em, he'd never wanted to eat or kill them. Didn't seem to want to do nothing with them but watch 'em. He'd use his paws to keep them right there in front him, running back and forth until he lost interest or the little things expired from fright.

Argus had long known that he were like Mouser: he didn't mind catching a lad now and then, but he didn't want to do nothing with them. He only ever wanted to watch.

Of course, he'd had his youthful sexual experiences, same as anyone. Had felt the rush of heat and need that made his heart pound and his head ring. Had felt actual hot hands upon his body.

But not for many years. Truth was, the hot hands of his youth had learnt Argus something: he didn't like to be touched. It made him feel like he couldn't stay inside his skin, like he might split open, his bloody organs laid out for anyone to see. Touches were like little bits of fire on his body, nice and warm at first but then too much. Too much.

At first he hadn't admitted it. He'd told himself that the reason he didn't have no one to warm his bed were an accident of geography. It were just his bad luck that he worked at Hogwarts among the wizards. Who'd have him there, Squib that he were?

But gradually he'd accepted the truth. He didn't like to be touched. Weren't no help for it. He preferred to look.

And it were men he liked to look at. Argus were bent; he knew that. Had always known it, really, and somehow it had never bothered him, although Uncle Stan would of pounded him to dust if he had ever twigged.

Most of the time, Argus did his looking in the Muggle world, in them peep shows where you put your coins in a slot and watched a little film in a booth just by yourself. It were safe and easy, and usually you could get in and out without having to talk to no one. He'd never felt a need to watch anyone he actually knew.

Until he'd had his vision of a naked Severus.

At first he wondered if he just needed a friend. He'd always thought he were content enough to be alone, but maybe he were wrong. It were possible. Lots of people had friends; maybe he could give it a try, too.

So he'd tried to imagine himself and Severus sitting by the fire in Argus's office, drinking, talking about their days...

And knew after the night of the exploding cauldron that this idea were a joke. He didn't need to make a friend of Severus. He needed to watch him.

It were two days after he came to this understanding that the Castle gave him the door in the dungeon corridor.

~ / ~ / ~

Argus had been mopping and doing his once-monthly emptying of the magical rubbish bins, thinking of nothing in particular, when the door had appeared out of nowhere.

It happened just like with the supply cupboard, except that this time, there was no shelves full of WizKleen. There were only a tiny, dark space occupied by an armchair that sat facing a blank wall.

Argus squinted, not quite believing his eyes. The armchair weren't just any armchair: it looked like the comfy, battered one from his own office. In fact, as near as he could tell, it were the exact same one. He sat in it, just to test it, and sure enough, it moulded to fit his backside, just like his own chair.

And no sooner had he sat down than the blank wall in front of his knees began to waver and swirl, like water, and soon it were a wall no longer.

It were a window.

A window that looked into a small, sparsely-furnished bedroom. Argus saw a fireplace, with a wingback chair and bookcase to the left of it, a door to the right. A bed with a small table beside it. A wardrobe. A larger table, parchment-heaped, near the fire, with a straight-backed chair behind it.

He'd barely taken in these details when the door next to the fireplace opened, and Severus walked in.

In thinking about it later, Argus had been a bit surprised that he hadn't been surprised. But at the time, the entrance of Severus had seemed the most natural thing in the world.

Argus felt a rush of heat and some of that same hot shame mixed with excited anticipation that he'd felt as boy, when he'd sometimes awakened in what seemed like the middle of the night to hear his aunt and uncle on the other side of the paper-thin wall that separated his bedroom from theirs. He'd listen to the squeak of the bed, to his uncle's grunts and his aunt's giggles and her whispers of "shhhhh! You'll wake the lad!"

He'd loved and hated the sensations he'd had then, the flush in his face and loins that meant embarrassment and arousal both. He'd felt a similar jumble of feelings the night he'd seen Apollyon Pringle in a back room of the Hog's Head, bending one of the local farm hands over the scarred wooden table.

It had been the first time he'd seen two men together outside of one of them dark film booths in a Muggle sex shop, and this time, the shame he'd felt as a boy had become something more, something secret and hot and necessary.

And now, just the thought of possibly seeing Severus naked was shortening Argus's breath and stiffening him. This were the way he wanted it ... a little corner of quiet darkness where it could be just him, seeing what he needed to see and knowing what no one else knew. He slid his hand inside his trousers.

But Severus did not begin to undress. It were early, Argus realised ... too early to be going to bed, and Severus seemed to have no intention of doing so. Still in his long classroom garb, he used his wand to freshen his fire and then caused a few candles to come to light on his table. When he sat down in the wooden chair and took up a quill, Argus understood that he were about to mark essays.

Argus had often heard the professors complain about the tedium of marking, and if it were tedious to do, it turned out to be beyond boring to watch. He had felt heat in his privates at the first sight of Severus, at the thought that he might be about to see the pale skin and lean flanks he'd dreamt of, but after five minutes of watching Severus scrawl comments across parchment, Argus were as limp as a noodle.

The poor boy didn't even fortify himself with a glass of summat. He just went on, endlessly marking, his expression becoming darker and darker, his quill moving more and more angrily.

Argus's nook seemed darker and darker, too, his chair softer and softer, and without never meaning to, he fell asleep.

~ / ~ / ~

When he woke, cold and stiff in ways that had nothing to do with his cock, the window into Severus's bedroom had become a blank wall again, and when Argus managed to heave himself to his feet and step into the silent late-night of the corridor, the secret door disappeared, too.

Damnation.

What if this had been his only blamed chance? What if he could never find the door again? The Castle looked out for him, but she were fickle, and she might take offense at his having nodded off instead of paying attention to whatever she'd wanted him to see.

Retrieving his mop from where it he'd propped it against the now-solid stones of the corridor wall, Argus jabbed viciously at a dark smudge that he hoped were a rule-breaking student or at least a mouse, but it turned out to be only a shadow, blast his usual luck.

To his annoyance, he didn't find a single brat lurking anywhere ... oh, what he'd of done to them ... and even Mr Pumblechook appeared to have deserted him. By the time Argus got back to his rooms, he were livid. Rot them. Rot them all. Rot everything.

~ / ~ / ~

But as it turned out, Argus were wrong. He should of known better than to distrust his Castle. Fickle she might be, but like all great ladies, she were also merciful.

She offered him the secret door many times over the years to come. Always it were the same ... the door would appear out of nowhere, in the middle of what had been a thick rock wall just a minute before. Inside the tiny space would be Argus's armchair, growing more battered and comfortable as time passed, and as soon as he sat down, the blank wall facing him would shimmer and clear and become like a window.

Sometimes the window looked into Severus's bedroom, sometimes his sitting room, depending on where the lad were. The sitting room were no more luxurious than the bedroom ... a fireplace, a mantel, more bookcases, an old sideboard that held a few glasses and cups a-top and some bottles of drink in the cabinet below. There were a desk piled with parchment and books and beakers. And a couple of mismatched chairs what no one ever sat in, or so at least Argus judged from the fact that they always seemed to be stacked with books.

In front of the fire stood a long sofa that Severus sometimes stretched out on, his hands behind his head, his eyes staring at nothing.

Over the years, Argus had many times got his wish of seeing the lad in the altogether. His body were as lean as ever Argus had expected, and talk about bony...sometimes in the firelight, he looked like he were nothing but ribs and hips and shoulder blades. But graceful, too, even if Argus did feel daft using such a word for a man.

Argus never tired of looking at the narrow back, the tight arse, the pale chest that seemed even paler under the black hair that lightly covered it and that started up again, lower down on his flat stomach, pointing the way to the cock that Argus also never tired of.

Oh, yes, he'd seen the cock ... seen it quiet and soft in its nest of short-and-curlies, seen it (though not very often) being pleasured by Severus's own hand. Seen it standing at attention, not huge or nothing, but definitely of a size to get the job done.

And get the job done it did. Argus had seen that, too. Seen and in his own way, done.

~ / ~ / ~

The first time it happened had been a surprise. It were maybe the third or fourth time he'd found the magic door, so maybe a year after its first appearance. Truth be told, he hadn't expected this time to be any different from the other times, when he'd simply watched Severus sit and mark, or sit and sip one small firewhisky, or sit and read. Or simply sit and stare.

He'd almost been tempted to give up opening the door ... if he were only going to get to see Severus just sit there, he might as well do that in the Great Hall as in a dark closet. But then, he trusted his Castle, trusted her to know that a man needed something more. Or that Argus did, anyway.

And on this night, the Castle came through. The hour were late, and Severus were already in his nightclothes when the magic window cleared to show him in his bedroom, sitting in his wingback chair next to the grate, sipping from of one of them big brandy glasses and looking towards the fire.

After a time, he vanished the glass and leant his head back, his eyes closed. Then slowly, his expression changed: his lips twisted, his eyes scrunched, and for a shocked moment, Argus thought he were crying.

But then he noticed Severus's hand ... in his lap, moving slowly in a gesture that Argus were only too familiar with...up, and down, and up again as he stroked what Argus could now see were his stiff cock, the shaft palely visible against the dark of his nightshirt, the hand sliding up, then down, then moving faster...

Argus could feel it, could feel what it would be like, the slight ridges along the shaft, the smoothness, the coarse hairs against his skin as his hand travelled from tip back down to base...

He hadn't been aware of opening his own trousers, but he'd done so, and now his cock were the mirror of Severus's: stiff and ready, growing slick under Argus's sweaty hand. He tried to quiet his breathing, the wheeze that grew worse with each Hogwarts winter; he didn't want to miss the sound of Severus's deepening gasps; he could feel his cock jerk with every little moan that issued from the lad's now-parted lips.

Their hands was moving as one now, up and down, faster and faster, and without taking his eyes from Severus, Argus captured the drop of liquid pooling at the tip of his cock, spread it down the shaft...

Severus's hand were moving like a piston, pulling himself high and squeezing until Argus could almost feel the wonderful pain of it. Then the lad began fluttering the fingers of his other hand against his balls and the base of his cock, something Argus had never heard of before, his own fingers seemed to move of their own accord to do the same, he felt a surge, a jolt, a taste in his mouth almost like one of Dumbledore's sherbet lemons, he felt...he couldn't...

In front of him, Severus threw his head back and groaned as a small eruption of silvery come flowed from his cock, one spurt, then another, and a third, then a bit more, sliding down over his clenched hand as its stroking slowly stopped.

Severus, his eyes still closed, his chest still heaving, let himself relax against the chair back. The come glistened in the firelight, and Argus could hold himself back no longer. He came hard himself, as silently as he could, his eyes fixed on the sated man by the fire.

After just a moment or two, Severus sat up abruptly, his face wearing the same expression of irritated distaste that he usually directed towards students and half the staff. One twist of his wand were enough to clean his cock and hand thoroughly, and as soon as it were done, he tucked himself back under his nightshirt so fast it were like he wanted to pretend he didn't really have a willy.

In no time, he'd climbed into his bed and shut the curtains, the magic window had closed itself, and Argus were left alone in the cold, sticky dark.