Chapter Thirty-Two — Cut, Sever and Bite

AN: It's been a while since I made any acknowledgements. Thanks to JKR for providing such interesting characters and a fascinating world. My gratitude to those who still read this story – your reviews and feedback are invaluable to me. And last but certainly not least, my appreciation to my beta, froggie-becky, who tolerates my infrequent writing and sudden demands with such good graces.

The pages were useless to him. The werewolf had been smart enough to Charm them so that they would only be legible while his hands were in contact with them. It was an ingenious piece of spellwork, though no less irritating for it. There was very little chance Macnair could undo the charm. It required the wand that had originally cast the spell, as well as a precise and incident-specific counter-charm. Otherwise, it would have been useless as a security measure.

It was clear that Lupin had been engaged in research of some kind, but for whom? There was no indication of it from the books left behind, their subject and sources as varied as they could possibly be. One had even been written in Ancient Greek, though Macnair was uncertain whether or not Lupin could translate it.

Macnair tossed the sheaf of incomprehensible parchments onto the table in front of him and suppressed a sigh. His house was quiet at this hour. Truth be told, his house was always quiet, for that was the way he preferred it to be. The house-elves knew this and had learned it the hard way. Macnair didn't appreciate guests... intruders... into his sanctuary, but sometimes it was necessary for the job at hand. They too knew his unwavering demand for quiet, but the man who shared the room with him currently was having trouble remaining inconspicuous.

"Stop fiddling with it," he grated out at Trint. "Your finger's gone. Learn to live with it."

The olive-skinned man scowled at him from across the room. He sat stiffly in the leather armchair, more a captive than a guest, and keenly aware of the difference.

"If you can't get used to losing the first, you'll be in pieces, figuratively and literally, by the time you lose the third."

Trint's expression turned blacker.

"If you feel my skill is so poor that it warrants further dismemberment, why not dismiss me?" the information peddler snapped truculently, clutching his maimed hand with his untouched one, wide shoulders rounded in protectively.

Macnair scratched at his moustache. "I think not." He fixed the man with a stony glare. "And nor should you."

Trint glared back at him, his mouth pinched into a sphincter of hatred. Macnair let the man's attitude roll straight off him. He couldn't give two figs what Trint thought of him...he was a paid servant, nothing more. Macnair had much more pressing things to consider.

Firstly, how did both Lupin and Snape manage to escape? They had been over the plan more times than he could care to remember. Trint had assured him that there was no way to escape from that house they had been in other than by Apparating. All the exits had been covered, and Macnair had seen to it himself that the Nullifier had completely covered the entire building, even going so far as to wrapping the spell under the foundations of the house as well. Trint had followed Snape all the way to the house and had remained, hidden, to ensure that no-one had left until the others had arrived.

And yet, the quarry had escaped. Trint was lucky that Greyback hadn't killed him outright. Macnair was still weighing up in his mind as to how aggrieved he was himself that he had failed to get a hold of Snape. Once Macnair made a decision, he clung to it doggedly until it was carried through. It would consume him, filling his every waking moment until the goal was reached. He disliked having the desired result yanked away from him. It made him irritable and upset his stomach ulcer.

He didn't care about Lupin. The man was a wastrel, and a disease-ridden one at that. His loyalties lay with Dumbledore, so even his lycanthropy was lost to Macnair...he was effectively chaff.

Snape was another matter. Macnair didn't want him sniffing about, discovering what he was up to. He already seemed to know way too much, and Snape never left information unused. He'd unravel it and twist it into a rope to tighten around Macnair's throat. He'd done it before to others, and now the Ministry's Executioner was in line to be served his own brand of justice. The Dark Lord's right-hand man was a serpent in every sense of the word: cold, unreadable, hard to find and swift to strike. The only way to avoid the bite was to kill him first, but that was proving hard to achieve.

What was he doing hanging around with Lupin? Macnair knew that Snape was posing as a turncoat, shielded by Dumbledore like a canker at the heart of the apple, sent there by the Dark Lord himself, but sometimes Macnair wondered what Snape's motivation truly was. If he were anything like the other Death Eaters, he'd cut the throat of anyone he thought was getting in his way and leave no evidence of his involvement. Normally, there were things that Macnair could use against a person: a loved one, some precious possession or way of life, avarice, self-preservation... Snape didn't seem swayed by any of these, except perhaps self-preservation. There was nothing else that Macnair could use as a goad, so it boiled down to killing Snape outright. However, the man was hard to track and even harder to trap. Quite frankly, Macnair was amazed that Trint had managed to do the first.

Whilst Snape was high on Macnair's list of acquisitions, one rated higher: Parr. It had turned into a race between Greyback and himself as to who would get her first. Of course, the werewolf had no idea that Macnair was after her as well, and he was intending to keep it that way. Greyback didn't know that it was Macnair who had sent the killer into St Mungo's. Of course, Greyback had heard about the attempted murder, but he was still in the dark as to who the machinator was. He wouldn't take kindly to Macnair eliminating a very crucial pawn in his long-term plan.

For many months, Macnair had thought that the murder had been successful. The Daily Prophet had certainly reported to that effect. It had been a little strange that the murderer had not returned after having carried out his task, but considering the man had been Imperioed to do the deed, perhaps he'd been so mortified at what he'd done that he'd gone to ground. This caused some irritation for Macnair, since he had intended to murder the murderer in order to cover his own involvement in the whole affair. The Imperius Curse must have failed, which was not unheard of when used on a person to commit an act against someone well-known to them. Such long-standing association made it difficult to get the curse to hold for a length of time. It must have given out before the man could return to Macnair.

At least, that's what he had thought at first. When Trint had revealed to him that someone had been looking for a person sounding suspiciously like Chara Parr, he had thought that it was mildly intriguing. He did not recognise the person looking for Parr from the description that Trint gave him, so dismissed it as perhaps someone who had noticed her disappearance and was trying to track her down. He'd shrugged internally and told Trint to keep him informed. After all, Trint wouldn't be able to find her...she was dead.

Yet it seemed that was not the case. Macnair and Brachoveitch had been in Albania, using a Striker and Handler to search out more of their kind, who apparently populated Albania in greater numbers than in England. There had been whispers of the Dark Lord's location in all sorts of countries in the northern hemisphere...a couple even in the southern!...which Macnair had not taken too seriously. However, whilst in Albania, Brachoveitch had said that he'd seen Pettigrew skulking about and had set a watch on the rat of a man using the Carello seevy. What they had reported back was enough to pull Macnair from his home in the middle of the night to see for himself.

It hadn't been long after they had Apparated to Albania that the sudden appearance of Lupin and Parr had surprised them all. Parr had been the first one to break the stasis, costing his Striker a broken leg and Brachoveitch one of his ears. She'd moved so fast that Macnair had only just been able to Apparate himself before she'd set her knife to his throat. It turned out that Brachoveitch had managed to escape as well, but the Striker and Handler were left behind, their fate unknown. Missing in action. Macnair hadn't bothered to go back and find them. The loss was substantial, but Macnair had replacements, and that was sufficient.

The bitch wasn't dead. Worse still, she was hiding behind Dumbledore, burrowed into Hogwarts like a blood-sucking tick. Unless she stepped beyond its walls, Macnair didn't have a chance in hell of getting anywhere near her.

Seevy were hard to find. He himself had only ever had control of three sets of them, one of which he had been forced to kill when they had steadfastly refused to stand on the side of the Dark Lord. Nothing that Macnair had done to them could convince them otherwise, so rather than release them to no doubt put the rest of their kind on guard, he had dispensed with them. It had been a long and messy process, but that had been Macnair's choice. One other set had been the Carellos he had lost in Albania.

Greyback had suddenly fixated on acquiring Parr, and if he had to go through Macnair to do it, he wouldn't hesitate. Macnair had enough on his plate without keeping constant watch on the werewolf, so he'd ensured that he gave no indication that Parr was as of much interest to him as she was to Greyback. If the werewolf discovered that Macnair was looking for Parr only to kill her, all hell would break loose. He could forget any potential alliance with the werewolves. Greyback would gut him from groin to throat. The risk that resistance to magic could be bred into the werewolves was too great to allow Parr to live. Who knew how many other seevy had such a trait? The Teveringtons, not blessed with such a trait, couldn't tell him, and they were under his thumb as securely as he could ever want...not all seevy were willing to shun the Dark Lord. The issue was whether Macnair could find enough of them to make a real difference to the Death Eaters. It would be like holding a bare blade, but the potential edge they could provide made it worth taking the chance.

Ironically, it had been Greyback that had originally tossed Parr aside, having dismissed her as scrap. Parr was barren and, therefore, useless in Greyback's plan to breed resistance to magic into the werewolf population currently under his control. It wasn't until after Parr had been left behind to her fate in one of the abandoned squats the werewolves lived in that Greyback had discovered that bleeding Parr's Handler and drinking the blood gave him a temporary immunity to magic. That had come as a result of a suggestion from Pirino. Acted upon, it had opened up a whole new world of possibilities for the werewolf, one that gave him the upper hand in dealings with Macnair. Macnair was unsure as to whether or not the immunity that Greyback bled from Parr's Handler also rendered his own magic dead. The werewolf was not a frequent user of magic, preferring instead to rely on the insane brutality and strength that his lycanthropy gave him in order to achieve his aims. He could use his wand when the mood took him, but Macnair knew it was the personal physical contact that Greyback relished. The maniac liked to touch the flesh he was torturing and maiming, enjoy the sensation of tissue tearing apart under his fingernails and teeth. Magic was starting to fail in satisfying the ever-increasing bloodlust in the man who was becoming more rabid beast with each passing full moon. Now he wanted Parr back...two blood banks were better than one, and perhaps she could be used as a bargaining chip to get the Handler to co-operate. But first, Greyback had to get the Handler conscious, which was proving to be a lot harder than either of them had anticipated. Macnair had no idea how she was managing to survive for so long in such squalor and state of ill-health. He had no doubt in his mind that Greyback would have abused her in every way he possibly could without actually killing her, but now, with Parr still eluding him, the Handler was becoming more and more precious to the werewolf, so he'd stepped back from his more disgusting uses of her and was haranguing Pirino to get her out of her coma and into some form of breeding capacity.

"Find Parr before Greyback does," Macnair told Trint stonily. "I don't care how you do it. Use the Teveringtons if you must, but if I learn that Greyback has her before I do, I will personally cut every extremity off you and feed it to the strays while you watch."

Not here. Not again. Not now. Please...

Did he do this to himself, or was this a punishment exacted by a wholly separate entity? He didn't know which answer was worse.

"Severus?"

He refused to look up. The very instant he had arrived here and seen that he wasn't alone, he had known that it could only mean the worst for him. The silhouette of the shadow was unmistakable.

"Severus?"

What did she want? She was dead! He'd already taken from her the most she'd had to give. His hand may not have been the one that had held the knife, but he felt no less guilty than if it had been.

"Severus, why won't you look at me?"

"Because you're not really here."

"What makes you say that?"

"Dead people do not come here."

"Is that so?" There was a tinge of wryness to her response that was achingly familiar to him. It made the simulacrum less a copy and more crushingly real, and his confidence that she was nothing more than an aggregation of experience and memory started to falter.

"Look at me, Severus. You owe me that." A faint sting of rebuke.

Perhaps, at the very least, he did owe her memory that one thing. Pressing the tips of his fingers into the wall behind him, Snape slowly lifted his head to look at the shadow in front of him. At first, he could see no detail beyond her outline. The boarded-up window was directly behind her, the light that filtered through the cracks giving her figure its unique form: all angles and straight lines. She stood in the exact centre of the room where the now-permanent dark circle stained the floor. He couldn't tell if it were just a marking or if the floor itself was starting to rot away. Sometimes it seemed as if it were in both states at once.

As his eyes became used to the low light levels, other features began to appear: the burgundy of her coat with its large buttons, the weave of the braids she always had her hair drawn into, hands clasped in front and failing to cover the ugly rent straight down her torso. The thick fabric of the coat glistened with blood that must surely have stopped flowing not long after that cut had been made. The sight of it made him go cold, and he raised his eyes to her face so that he would not have to see what Trint had done to her.

She looked at him sadly, a line between her brows that he could see even in shadow. Her throat had been slit from ear to ear, cleanly and deeply. The lower half of her throat was almost black with dried blood, but the silver of the chain around her neck was untouched, the lines of it guiding his eyes down to the triangular pendant he knew was still in his hand back where he slept.

"I'm... sorry, Kettering." The words seemed so inadequate, so pale in their ability to truly represent how much her death had punched a hole straight through him and smothered him in acrid guilt.

"Death comes for us all," she replied quietly.

His eyes flicked from the pendant to her face. "Not like this."

She had no answer to that and instead unclasped her hands to hide them behind her back. Her fingers looked strangely short until he realized that the ends of each digit had been cut off at the knuckle closest to the nail.

"Does guilt serve you well, Severus?"

The question caught him off-guard. She must have seen the surprise on his face.

"You carry it around with you like a child with a security blanket."

He frowned. This was not like her. Kettering had never accused him of anything before, much less self-victimisation.

"A personal choice," he admitted, hesitantly.

Kettering's face was split by an unfamiliar twist to her mouth that looked suspiciously like a sneer. "What do you think it buys you? Absolution?" She snorted in derision. "That isn't how it works."

He blinked, mute, unsure of how to react to this unfamiliar attitude radiating from her.

"I should know." Her thin lips formed a smile that he had never seen on her face. Snape didn't know who or what this was, but it wasn't Kettering.

"Why? Because you are dead?" he asked.

Her sudden laughter carried in its depths the screams of countless numbers, the tears of those left behind, the exultation of the victorious and the despair of the vanquished.

"No, because I am death."

She took a step forward, and Snape pressed himself more tightly against the wall. Now that she was closer, he could see the subtle differences in her face: the cheeks were too hollow, the jaw not angular enough, eyes so completely dark that they may well have been twin voids in her skull.

"What's the matter, Severus?" she mocked him in a voice higher than Kettering's ever was. "Do you not like the face you've chosen to see me in? Does it not please you to finally meet me? Am I what you expected?" Her voice battered at him, harsh and cruel, like nails raking through flesh.

"I never saw death in her face," he denied, almost angry at the accusation in the words she spat at him.

The lifeless eyes glinted at him as Death tilted her head to look at him like an avian Inferi, face pale above the blackened throat.

"Ah," she sighed, nodding slightly at his response. "Then perhaps this suits you better?" She lunged for his throat with clawed hands as her face twisted and melted, hair falling to reveal a vein-riddled pate as pale as moonlight on water, soulless eyes contracting to slitted pupils floating in red, nose so abbreviated it was almost two holes in the face, tongue cleft and teeth like needles.

Snape had nowhere to move as the Dark Lord's nails pierced his throat like shards of poisoned metal and tore downwards.

Death. It was not terribly surprising. Snape lived with the constant sensation of it looming over him like a Dementor, so there was little reason for it not to be in his dreams, as well. It would have been nice, though... a brief respite if he were allowed at least some time out from under its shadow.

He sat on the edge of his bed, hunched over and shivering as the sweat on his body froze in the frigid air of his private quarters. He welcomed it. As it was, the chances of him being able to return to sleep were now woefully small. He wasn't sure he wanted to sleep again, not if he had to face some macabre visual interpretation of guilt. Sometimes, his imagination had a ridiculous flair for the dramatic.

Death was a woman? How droll. He rubbed one eye with the heel of his hand and sighed. And not just a woman but a bitch as well, knowing exactly how to put him through the emotional wringer. Of course, it was all in his mind; that Death would taunt him in such a manner was his own doing, but did it have to be so damned vivid and cruel? Was this to be the start of some new self-punishment technique that would see more of those that had died at his hand trotted out to make accusations at him in Death's soprano-like lilt? Or attack him with hands that were colder than winter stone?

Since a night's rest was now effectively written off, he may as well end the charade and occupy himself in some other fashion. That thought didn't cheer him at all. He really did want to sleep. Bone-weariness was starting to get old hat, and lately even he was starting to get sick of his crabby attitude and short fuse, so Sycorax knew how the rest of the faculty felt about it!

Perhaps he'd just lie back for a few minutes, just until the lingering disorientation let him go and he could piece himself back together long enough to at least partially function as a human being. Sort of.

The pillow was damp, the sheets were wet, and he was still cold. He sneered in the dark and closed his eyes.

He was hungry. Again. Maybe he should get something to eat?

He found himself standing directly behind her, hands on either side of her on the surface of the table she was standing in front of, the heavy wood grain teasing at the pads on his fingers. Since his height superceded hers by nearly a foot, he could see clearly over her shoulder at what she was doing.

Her attention was centred on a small, half-full earthenware pot that sat primly atop a metal stand, under which a yellow flame licked repeatedly and lazily at its base. In the palm of one hand, she cradled what at first looked like a small and rather withered turnip, but to his practised eye was in fact Lepidium Myenii. In her other hand, her silver Potions knife spun slowly between her fingers, as he had seen it done many times in his classroom. It tended to indicate either thought or waiting. In this instance, he couldn't tell which it was due to the position he was standing in: it was abnormally close. Well, abnormally for him. Actually, abnormally for anyone who wasn't either a close relative or a slavering debauchee. He wasn't actually touching her, but it would only take a slight sway forward to change that.

Light flashed along the blade of Parr's knife as it rotated smoothly. She gave no indication that she was aware of him, though how she could miss the way he was breathing down her neck was a mystery. Breathing in down her neck was more accurate. Her scent was all too apparent to him with his nose poised such an incredibly small distance from where her ear was almost hidden behind her silvery hair, curling up in the heat that radiated out from the collar of her grey jacket.

He pressed his fingers into the table and sniffed in a small arc, sorting through what he could pick up on. It was all the things he had smelled on her before, though never so strongly. It seemed that this dream was going to be a lot more immersive than those he had previously experienced, and that brought a genuine, if small smile to his face. The other dreams had not been... objective, or even especially realistic, but they had been an interesting mental exercise nonetheless. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and resisted the urge to move even closer to her.

Blatant, undisguised sexual dreams were not unknown to him, nor entirely unwelcome, although at times his subconscious seemed to pair him with the most unlikely and disturbing of partners. He'd learned to embrace it and take from it whatever he could rather than shun the opportunity for this kind of fictional physical intimacy. At times that could be challenging. Sprout had been something of a test of his abilities to put aside preconceptions in favour of the chance to indulge fully in an activity that was rarely offered to him, but he'd shrugged and figured that his subconscious must have assessed that the very generously-padded frame of the Herbology professor held some hidden potential for his libido to exploit. Surprisingly, it had been... not too bad.

At least his subconscious hadn't tried to pair him with a man. That truly would have made him baulk.

Parr closed her fingers over the Lepidium Myenii and moved to hold it over the earthenware pot. She hesitated, and the knife stopped turning between the fingers of her other hand.

"I thought I told you that your hair is to be pinned back when in my class, Miss Parr," he reminded her quietly, noticing a small knick in the cartilage of the ear he was breathing into. He was about to run the edge of his bottom lip over it when her voice stopped him.

Parr had made no move at his words. "I am not in your class, Professor," she replied smoothly and rather faintly, as if he merited only a small portion of her attention; a situation he had every intention of changing.

He dipped his head and snaked his tongue out to wrap it around the hip-length tress of her hair and draw the strands into his mouth and between his teeth. Leaning back, he pulled the hair up and over her shoulder until it exposed her ear completely. The strands slipped from his mouth like fine threads of silk to rest on her back, leaving the taste of sweetness on his tongue.

"Thankfully not," he whispered, his fingers imprinting themselves even more forcefully on the table top as the very end of his nose traced along the folds in the shell of her ear.

Parr sighed, although not in the way he had hoped...she sounded tired and not a little exasperated.

"You shouldn't be standing there," she told him, bringing her hand back and away from over the mouth of the earthenware pot.

"Why not?" His lips brushed the lobe of her ear, determined to use this chance of a vivid imaginary fuck to the fullest extent.

"It is not your place," she said rather sternly and put the creamy-coloured tuber down on the table.

That elicited a gentle laugh from him. "But this is my place, Miss Parr, and I think you'll find I can do what I want here."

"Whether I want it or not?" she pointed out in a slightly fractious tone, gripping the silver knife in her hand tightly.

She didn't even flinch as he ran the silken tip of his tongue along the bottom of her earlobe before drawing it into his mouth and biting down gently. The flavour of her spread along his tongue, the softness of her skin encouraging him to bite harder into the fruit of her ear.

"Oh, you'll want it, Miss Parr," he assured her in a slightly slurred voice, unwilling to let his mouth release the plump little prize it had.

She snorted at his assurance and pushed the earthenware pot on its stand further away from her. The sound of metal on wood made him raise his eyes to see what she was doing, though he never took his teeth from her ear, tongue still teasing gently at the lobe.

Spread in front of her was a series of knives of varying sizes and shapes, from a heavy steel knife the width of three fingers to a pair of almost needle-thin daggers. Her blade with the orange and silver-wrapped hilt sat somewhere near the centre of the array.

He frowned slightly as he realised that he was going to have to try harder at getting her undivided attention. It appeared that this wasn't going to be one of the easier sexual fantasies granted to him, but that just made the challenge more realistic and, therefore, so much sweeter when he finally got his way.

He finally let her earlobe slip from his mouth with one final liquid swipe of his tongue and trailed his nose down the side of her neck. He realised that, for once, her throat was unbandaged. Even better. However, the jacket's high collar was preventing him from reaching as far down as he wanted. His left hand lifted from the table and back until his middle finger touched the fabric of her jacket, sliding slowly upwards over her ribs, pausing ever so briefly as it traversed over the swell of her breast and then up to the fastener at her left shoulder.

Parr merely began to change the order the knives were placed in on the tabletop in front of her, completely ignoring the way he grazed his teeth along the side of her neck.

His finger dipped behind the front seam of her jacket to determine how to undo the fastener without having to raise his head from where it was nipping at her. It felt like a hook-and-eye, which he easily undid with one hand. He was used to dealing with difficult clothing, so there was barely a pause before he peeled the flap of her jacket down and across her chest. It loosened the collar enough to allow him to tug it away with his teeth, granting him access to the point where her neck met her shoulder. It took all his willpower not to bite her hard. If he did that, it'd be over much, much too soon.

Parr continued to swap the order of the knives in front of her, her expression unknown to him as he buried his face to the task, both hands on the table now pushing him back from her body instead of just balancing him in his current position.

She smelled disgustingly delicious: sweet, citric, ripe. He breathed her in through his mouth and nose, picking up on something he hadn't noticed before. Or perhaps, it had been too faint for him to detect. He inhaled again, brushing his lips and tongue across skin that had never been exposed to him before, that had always been hidden from his eyes, that here was unmarked except for the light bites he was tenderising it with. He could taste it, this... other element, and he gripped the edge of the table in a Herculean effort to restrain himself, a thrill running through him like a static shock. His subconscious had thrown up one of the most subsuming experiences it ever had for him, but he was going to have to work for it.

With a steady smoothness, he sank his teeth briefly into the firm muscle in her shoulder before licking away the imprint he had left and moving ever so slightly closer to her, the buttons of his coat touching her back.

"You're going to make things very hard, Professor," she muttered, spacing the knives out farther from each other.

He swayed his body forward until it pressed against the admirable curve of her behind.

"Too late," he told her, his smirk reflected in the depth of his voice.

She tutted. "I meant for me, you prurient egomaniac!"

"I sincerely hope so." He lapped at her with agonising slowness in an effort to break her concentration.

"I had no idea you were into butch, Professor," she mused, turning three knives so that their cutting edges face to the left instead of the right.

He continued to drink in the intriguing taste of her, his assuredness growing that this was going to be a truly spectacular, if illusory experience.

"I'm not. Butch doesn't have a body made for pleasure. You do," he pointed out, pushing himself harder against her to dispel any doubt in her mind as to what he had planned for her. She fumbled the slender dagger she'd had in her hand, and it clattered to the table, causing a pulse of exultation to rise in him that he'd finally unsettled her.

"Oh, I'm going to enjoy this, Miss Parr," he vowed, nuzzling his large nose into her. "Several times, I think."

Parr used one finger to turn one of the knives in a semi-circle until its point was away from her.

"You seem very cocksure that I will allow it, Professor," she mentioned in an amused tone, turning another knife until the point faced away from them both.

He stifled a groan at her choice of descriptor, the images that flitted through his mind too lascivious too early on.

"Why not?" he answered, his voice muffled by the fabric of her jacket. "I've had you before."

That got her attention. She twisted around in the cage his body had set around her, her hip brushing across his groin, nearly making his legs fold with the exquisite sensation the contact gave.

"Oh, really?" Her eyebrows were up as high as he had ever seen, and he'd had to lean back to avoid getting clipped in the face by her shoulder as she turned. She appeared scandalised by his comment, which succeeded only in spurring him on.

He smirked at her, baring his teeth slightly and shifting his right hand so that his thumb brushed along the side of her thigh. He could feel the edge of her underwear through her trousers; the same style he'd seen her in back at the safe house when she'd demolished the bathroom over that stupid spider: soft cotton shorts that moulded relentlessly to her shape. He wondered if they were the same deep red colour as those had been, then realised that right now he was more interested in what was in them.

"Does that bother you, Miss Parr?" he asked her, eyes narrowed and head tilted to one side.

"To be leered at by a closet roué?" She barked a laugh at him, but the colour that sat in her cheeks said otherwise.

"Leering wasn't what I was doing to you, Miss Parr," he assured her with the sort of confidence born from someone who believed he was completely in control. He trapped the tip of his tongue between the front teeth for a moment, gazing lazily at her. "And you weren't complaining."

"Ah, I think I see the problem here, Professor," she said with the smile of shark about to bite a seal in half. "That wasn't me. That was some quirky little fantasy version of me, wasn't it?"

He raised an eyebrow of scepticism at her, his thumb still brushing across the seam of her underwear.

Parr huffed at his expression. "Who was on top?"

He blinked at the question that had caught him slightly off-guard. He managed to cover the hesitation quickly.

"Tut, tut, Miss Parr. Your question suggests that you think that I enjoyed you in only one position." He paused for effect. "And only once." He drew the words out of his mouth slowly and languidly.

Now, it was her turn to blink, but the revelation failed to rattle her. She leaned forward slightly, tipping her head to the side so that she could avoid his nose. He thought for a moment she was going to kiss him, which was much more along the lines of what his body was screaming insistently for.

"You'd not find the reality as pliable as the fantasy, Professor," she breathed at him.

Ah, finally she was going to play! It was all he could do not to push her back and up onto the table, pin her down by ramming the knives into the table through her clothing to hold her still and show her that, in his case, it was true what they said about men with prodigious noses.

"Are you flirting with me, Miss Parr?" he asked her, his breathing quickening as he edged nearer, making her tip her head backwards to keep looking at him in the face. "Surely you'd know by now that such a course of action will get you into trouble?" He smiled slowly as her eyes widened. "Or should I say, will get me into you." His long-fingered hands slipped over her behind and pulled her into him. Her body felt even more luscious than it had a right to, and his breath caught in his throat, his eyes closing slowly from the pure, undiluted lust that soaked into every cell in his body.

If he had been able to, he would've grovelled at the feet of his subconscious for giving him this.

His eyes opened again to meet her grey gaze, the pupils dilated and her mouth open slightly in amazement, her hands clutching at the edge of the table she was backed against. He slipped the palm of one hand up the front of her body, around her neck and under the back of her head where his fingers twisted in her hair, pulling her head even further back.

Snape leant down, air hissing through his teeth as he ran the side of his nose up along hers, over the bridge and down the other side. The friction of their skin sliding against each other made a growl rise in his throat.

"I knew it!" Parr whispered.

He ran his tongue along her bottom lip and went to suckle the words from her mouth.

That was when Folter woke him.