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ravenna_c_tanThis is a repost of a fic that was a part of the HP Death Eater Smutathon, which comm has been deleted. So I'm putting the story up here. It's one of my bitter!snarky!snape stories.
Title: Sweet Coin
By:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ravenna_c_tan
Written For:cnary_crem_dght
Pairing: Snape/various, including but not limited to flashbacks and fantasies of Snape/Lucius, Snape/Draco, Snape/Karkaroff, Snape/Voldemort
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 5775
Warnings: Dubious consent, prostitution, brief cutting/blood play, implied incest, Death Eaters being Death Eaters
Summary: The war is over but Snape finds himself still dealing with the legacy of the Dark Mark and his past.
Betas: Thanks to Nomi and Slashpervert!
Notes: This was written in a fic exchange called the "Death Eater Smutathon." The comm. has sadly been deleted. The original request was for any of the following: Snape/Lucius, Snape/Draco, Snape/Karkaroff, Lucius/Draco, Snape/Voldemort -- I decided to go ahead and put them all. The request asked for "Abuses of power, non-con, dub-con, forced-prostitution (especially if it is "out of love" for another person), dark themes, chan." No chan, but otherwise I hope I hit the mark on all of these... Enjoy it!
Sweet Coin
by Ravenna C. Tan
When Those Days were over, I decided it would please me never to speak to any of the people I had known ever again. Potter I certainly did not care to even lay eyes upon, to the point where I refused to read the Prophet. I would not miss his classmates, either, nor any of my former students. Moody and Lupin would certainly never miss me, having tried to get rid of me enough times themselves. I said terse goodbyes to Minerva just before the final battle and only later heard that she had survived. The Malfoy boy disappeared when I told him to, just after Narcissa's death, and just before Voldemort's fall. In the chaos that was wizarding England those days, it was easy for a lone wizard to remake himself with a new name in a new place, what with Ministry records forever lost and refugees moving all across the country.
I should know.
I not only left London, I left behind the War Veterans Benefits that I was grudgingly awarded when my role was acknowledged by certain parties within the Ministry. Said benefits chiefly consisted of paying for the once-monthly treatments to lessen the effects of the Mark, although--truth be told--I never believed that what they did at St. Mungo's had anything more than a temporary palliative effect. And that was something I could provide for myself. In fact, I was certain that "Mark illness" could be treated by potion and it was not long before I had devised a formula that would serve.
I ended up in Wales, just barely, settling in Knighton, which straddles the Welsh-English border. There were a number of wizardfolk still hidden in the community there. Not so many as to trouble me, just enough to provide a little company when it was warranted and customers for my brews to keep me in sickles. One or two of my old cohort did find me by owl, desperately hoping I had survived and could provide a cure. I was happy to take their Galleons and ship by owl, keeping my location hidden. And when the effects of Mark illness became too much to bear for me, I could dose and then shutter myself in my attic while the townsfolk merely thought me a drunkard. I suspect I was the subject of mild gossip, but I kept to myself enough that it never reached my ears.
That may have been why I knew not of the existence of the house at the end of Genie Alley, as our neighbourhood was known. The house's charms were only learnt by word of mouth, and as I rarely spoke to anyone beyond a terse transaction, I remained ignorant. And the house's secrets, well, those were known to no one who did not sleep within its walls.
A boy came to me one market day, the one day a week when I opened my dingy front parlour to walk-in customers, his hood up over his face until he was standing before me.
"Can I help you?" I asked, looking up from my book and appraising him. He let the hood slip and revealed a brown-haired youth, his hair curling enticingly down his neck, a pleasing curve to his cheek and the half-smile he wore. But his eyes were dead. Which meant he was either a whore or a war veteran, or perhaps both.
"I understand you can treat a very specific condition," he said quietly, studying me with those flat eyes.
I snapped my book closed but did not stand up from my seat. "And you'll have to be more specific if you want my assistance."
His face twitched and then he slipped a length of willow from his sleeve, charming the air around us with a privacy spell. "The Mark," he said simply, wand in hand.
He was too vibrant for that cluttered, sepia-toned room, like a painting by Caravaggio, luminescent in his self-possession, his youth and beauty. It reminded me of Lucius in his youth--the magnetism of his figure, even in a crowd. With Lucius I had thought it a glamour at first, but after we became lovers, I was not so sure. For that matter, it reminded me of Tom Riddle, an inner charisma that could not be suppressed.
It made me want to smack the boy, tell him to get out, that I had no medicine for him or his ilk. But I did not. "Who sent you?"
The boy shrugged. "I could tell you the name I know, but I'm quite sure it isn't the one he used in Those Days."
So, one off my former cohort was holed up nearby, I thought. Intriguing. No doubt someone who belonged in Azkaban and would pay dearly to stay out of there. "Indulge me with the alias he uses, then."
"Marcus Brindle," the boy said. "And a couple of the boys who were Marked toward the end, as well. He's been taking care of us ever since."
I raised an eyebrow. "How many of you?"
He shrugged. "Half a dozen. We were one more, but the fool who was getting the stuff for us from St. Mungo's ran off with his healer--fell in love or some such rot."
My mind made the leap of logic from there to the rest of the puzzle. "So, you're prostitutes, then." At the boy's bare nod, I could not help but add, "So then, who takes care of whom? It sounds to me like you all take care of Mr. Brindle."
I could not miss the flash of bitterness in those eyes.
"My services are expensive," I drawled, and then to my consternation, or perhaps hidden delight, he unpinned his cloak and said:
"So are mine."
The air fairly crackled with electricity at this little pronouncement, and my cock stood up like a lighting rod. "Are you proposing a transaction today?"
"If you've the potion, yes. If not, perhaps a... down payment." He licked his lips and I watched his eyes flick over me as if trying to guess how I would want my pleasure.
"If you think I am one of those pathetic old men who would be so grateful to have a nubile thing such as yourself in my bed that I would suck you and eat your come and thank you for it, you are mistaken," I said evenly. "I might be satisfied with your mouth. But as I am the seller and you the buyer in this case, I think I shall want your arse as well."
He hesitated a moment, then gave a sharp nod, the flicker of insolence in his eyes seeming out of place in a whore, but perhaps he was one of those who specialized in resisting. I made a mental note to ask about this later, if not him, perhaps one of his fellows.
I took him upstairs to the creaking bed, bade him denude himself of every stitch of clothing, and then merely pulled my cock from my trousers, my robes parted, and wanked myself slowly while he prepared his own arse with long fingers. He kept looking at me resentfully while doing so, and I found it delightfully arousing. Perhaps this whelp was better at his trade than I had given him credit for. He was on his back atop my bedspread, greasing himself with both hands from a pot of waxy unguent he'd brought with him, clearly expecting this as a possible outcome.
"Hurry up," I snapped, just to see his reaction, which was a lovely little snarl before he mastered his expression.
Those eyes no longer looked quite so dead.
They closed, though, when I pushed myself into him, and I paused when fully sheathed to let my body remember this. It had been years--yes, years--since my cock had been inside another human being, and sordid as the situation was, I found myself wanting to savour it.
I fucked him slowly then, my hands pressing against his chest and shoulders, holding him still, as I pulled out and then wormed my way back in gradually, again and again. I felt him start to tremble beneath me after a few minutes of that. Yes, it was agonisingly slow and I sneaked a look at his face, trying to determine if the agony were literal. He was biting his lip like a virgin, his eyes screwed tightly shut.
"Reach down and spread your cheeks," I said. "Stretch your hole for me."
He did, his face unchanging, but his hands pulling obligingly at the flesh, and I shifted my position so I could watch my cock disappear inch by inch into him, and then the slight pull at his pucker as I slid out again. The pale skin of his inner thighs was becoming chafed from my rough clothing.
I smiled.
It was an hour before I came. He left with several doses of the potion, full instructions on how to administer it, and a bit of cream for his sore arse. And with an admonition to send a blond next time.
That night I dreamt of Lucius. In the dream I had just left Hogwarts, just taken the Mark, and I was showing it to him. Indeed, this scene might have once happened in our past, though I think perhaps I was embellishing. He ran his fingers over the tender underside of my flesh, and in the way of dreams, it was suddenly no longer my forearm in his hand, but my cock. He crooned silly words at me, stroking me, teasing me, letting me bury my nose in his hair while he pulled and pulled and pulled at me until I was sore, but came on his command.
I woke to find of course I was sore, and I swore I could smell his hair still. I resolved to brew a superior lubricant before the next whore's visit.
It came a month later, as I'd expected. And I was pleased to find this one was a blond, as I'd requested.
I took him up to the bedroom. "Are you Marked?" was the first thing I asked.
He looked at me in surprise. "Er, yes."
"The last one wasn't. I'd prefer to fuck those who are Marked to those that aren't. Though you're pleasing to the eye. I might want you again." I know my demands were petty and churlish, but one exercises what power one has. "Show me."
"Th-the Mark?" He barely hid the surprise in his eyes.
"Yes."
He slipped his robes from his shoulders and then rolled up his sleeve. There it was, ash grey ever since Voldemort's death, and as ugly as ever. I took my cock out of my trousers and rubbed it along the Marked flesh. He shivered and looked up at me for a moment, just a flash of beseeching in that look before he looked away.
I lay him back on the bed then, holding his arm still, and frotting against it in earnest. He whimpered.
"Does it hurt?" I asked him.
"Yes," he said through gritted teeth, and I was surprised to find tears at the corners of his eyes. At that moment he looked entirely too much like someone I once knew, someone who was once in my care.
I let go, looking at him carefully as he gathered his arm to his chest and glared at me, indignant. But he was too beefy and square-jawed for me to keep imagining he was Draco, sweet as that fantasy might have been. His hair was too dark, as well, and he barely approached the level of ire that Draco Malfoy could have put into that one brief glare.
"You need a higher dose than what you're taking, then," I said, "if it hurts that much. Now get your clothes off."
As he undressed, sullenly, I let my imagination wander. In those insane days of running and keeping the boy a fugitive from the Dark Lord, I had often consoled myself with fantasies of fucking his aristocratic arse until he cried. Always in revenge for what Lucius had done to me, of course. In some of my fantasies I told him he owed me, in fact, because of that. In some of the wilder ones, the boy would come to my side after that, turn against his father, and we would run off...
As I said, an insane time, Those Days.
I fucked this one from behind, one hand buried in his hair, so that I could almost believe it was the younger Malfoy I shoved my cock into. Though he didn't cry. Not that I expected him to.
When he left, I gave him a larger amount of the potion in a cobalt blue jar, with instructions on measuring it properly for all who needed it. He mentioned before he went that next month they would be happy to host me at the house, if I preferred. If I wanted, of course, he said he'd come to me, but that there was greater comfort and amenity there. I allowed as how curiosity alone dictated at least one trip there.
So it was that a month later I found myself picking my way to the end of the row of houses and buildings all pressed together in the fashion of that time, some with slim alleyways between them, others sharing walls with their neighbours. In the cul de sac at the very top of Genie Alley stood one house, a bit grander yet darker than the rest--it reminded me of number twelve, actually. It was easy to imagine a beautiful boy in each room of the house, plying his trade with sighs and groans, so that the master of the house could live out his days in comfort.
I spoke the password I had been given, and the door opened for me. Inside, I found a parlour of understated opulence. Indeed, the boys must earn as well as that first one had boasted to me, and I quickly concluded that the clientele must include many of the powerful figures in the Wizarding world.
It was the sort of place that Lucius Malfoy would have visited from time to time. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up at that thought. Once, and only once, had he brought me with him to such an establishment. We went by Side-Along Apparition, so I had no idea where exactly we were, though at the time I was guessing somewhere in South London.
He had made sure I was thoroughly aroused before we'd gone. At the Manor he'd tut-tutted over my clothes, telling me they were too shabby for where we were going, even though these were some decent robes of mine. He'd sliced them off me then, one strip at a time, until there was no hope of repairing them with a charm, until I was standing naked before him while he ran the cool metal of the blade all over my skin. He let it fall to the floor, clattering against the parquet, as his hand grasped my cock, already hard and dewy thanks to his attention. He brought me to the edge of orgasm, not once but twice, then charmed a ring around the base of my balls to keep me painfully erect.
These kinds of games were common enough between us by then. He dressed me in some of his own finery then, surrounding me in his heady scent--is it any wonder I mistook my feelings for love?
He was terrible to the whore we had that night. He cut the boy and slicked his cock with the blood, using it as lubricant as he fucked him--and that was not the worst of it. The boy's back was crisscrossed with fine white scars where he had been cut previously. Perhaps most surprising was that the boy came three times in the course of the night, and Lucius not once.
Nor I, of course.
I took the scars and the way they spoke as we parted to mean this was hardly the first time Lucius had treated him this way. The boy was very, very well compensated for the treatment and was all smiles as we left. I can only imagine what my own facial expression must have been. By then I had learned to be stoic through all manner of Death Eater atrocity, and even to bury my own moral sense to the point where it would soon be permanently stunted, but to know that Lucius took such pleasures of his own will, in such a manner, I did not fathom it.
Or perhaps my head was too addled by my advanced state of arousal, maintained throughout the evening not only by the ring, but by touches and kisses from Lucius, by the sight of him naked in his glory, his erect cock gleaming with the boy's come slathered over it.
He took me in the alley behind the building, a delicious irony that injected the danger that had only been faked indoors. First, he bade me suck him, the cleaning charm he'd cast insuring that no disease would travel, yet leaving him musky and tinged with the taste of the boy's arse, his blood and bodily fluids.
My memory is imperfect; I think I begged for Lucius to come in my mouth, to allow me the honour of that. That is how deeply submerged in him I was. His cruel laughter I do remember, how it thrilled me to my core. I do remember he fucked me, pressing me against ancient bricks, the intrusion of his cock into me a pleasure that I still wake up imagining sometimes, when I am half-asleep and my hand strays to my morning erection.
Damn him.
That night he fucked me in the alley, and then did come in my mouth, filling my nostrils with the scent of my own arse as he did so. I gagged and choked and he laughed.
When we stepped out of the alley, my robes an utter mess and his looking remarkably pristine, a carriage was there waiting for us. I asked no questions. We got in and I assumed with a pang of bitterness that the night was at an end, with my cock still straining under the folds of the robes.
But he kissed me then, tender and caring, asking me if I were too... something, I cannot recall the word now... to continue. Too shocked? Too appalled? Something like that. Of course I said no, and then he asked me to choose how I would take my own pleasure.
That seductive voice in my ear: "Anything you want, Severus. Male, female, or both? A seraglio in Morocco? A virgin girl on the steps of the Ministry? I can arrange anything. You've indulged me so very much. Let me indulge you in return."
I was too young and too stupid to know what the consequence of my decision would be. All I saw was that he had handed me the power; I did not then know that I was expected not to exercise it fully. I did not understand noblesse oblige, nor that there was any future that I should be fighting to preserve.
"Your arse," I had answered tersely. "Here in the carriage. I want you to impale yourself on the cock you've teased all night."
I knew I was bold. I knew it was within my power to ask. And so I did.
He did exactly as I asked, fucking himself on me with abandon, keeping me in the charm so that my own ejaculation was held off as long as possible. He did not skimp. When I did finally come, holding him against me and nearly suffocated in his hair, I thought I had found the only true ecstasy on Earth.
He severed ties with me the next day. I am not sure what hurt more, the loss of him from my life, or the fact that idiots like Karkaroff thought me easy prey once I was no longer under Malfoy's wing. Karkaroff was a bad lay no matter how one counted it, but there were political reasons to suck his cock from time to time.
And there were definitely political reasons to allow the Dark Lord to take me. Though it was only the once. Thankfully.
Looking around the parlour of this house now, and thinking on the treatment Lucius had given the whore that night, I began to wonder if I hadn't been entirely too soft on the boys so far. But I have never been a grand sadist, merely an enthusiast of petty cruelty, which is hardly the same thing.
The blond came into the room, bearing a tray with both brandy and tea. "Would you like a bit of refreshment?" he asked.
"Afterward, perhaps," I said shortly. "I have more pressing needs."
He slid to his knees at my feet then, a gorgeous motion, one he must have practised in front of a mirror, and rubbed his cheek, his mouth gaping, against the bulge in my trousers. "You needn't merely come and then leave," he said in a near-whisper. "I am yours for the night."
I pulled him back from his teasing with a fist in his hair. "Those were not the needs I was referring to," I said. "I would like to meet the master of the house."
He jerked a bit as I said that. "I can't..."
"Listen, boy. I know how to deal with Death Eaters. If Walden Macnair is hiding in a room upstairs, I shan't close my eyes even for a moment in this house." None of them knew, of course, of my duplicity, my part in the Dark Lord's fall, but any number of them wouldn't hesitate to enact some other form of personal and petty revenge on me for some slight, whether real or imagined.
"You're safe," he choked out. "I swear it. We need you. It doesn't benefit us to harm you in any way."
"Very well." I let him go. Honestly, some part of me was almost disappointed--that same part of me that had loved the danger of the alley. My blood had not flowed so briskly in my veins since the war itself. Desire had made me reckless--it very well could be Macnair upstairs--but I had not walked there merely to turn around and leave again.
"Suck me to hardness," I said then, though I was quite erect already. "Do you know a constriction charm?"
He was undoing my fastenings as he asked, "For the base of your cock? Yes, I know one."
"Apply it to me and then we shall go to your room."
He nodded, doing as he was told. I was amused to see he used the same spell as Lucius had all those years ago--Lucius had probably learnt it from a whore, I realized then, with a laugh. The tea tray forgotten, I followed the boy through the house, up two flights, and into a nicely appointed room with a bed, a settee, and an ottoman that looked about perfect for bending the boy over.
Which I did without preamble, though I slicked him myself, luxuriating in the feel of my fingers digging deep into the wet silken heat of his body. Just as I was about to push my cock into him, though, I thought better of it.
"Come here," I said, taking a seat on the settee. "Impale yourself. Fuck yourself on me until you come." Yes, perfect, I thought. The one thing that was missing from that night with Lucius. Well, that and my common sense. Lucius had been too spent for any possibility of it. But this one... I stroked his cock roughly with my still-slick hand as he held onto the back of the settee and settled his feet on either side of me.
He lowered himself down on me, sweating and shaking a bit as he did so. I admit that I found myself concerned. "Take your time," I admonished, as if his ill-hidden distress were his own fault.
"I'm all right," he snapped back. "Just sore from... another customer." That he was lying was obvious, though exactly what of it was untrue, part or all of it, I could not determine.
The boy's problems were not mine to solve, however. I merely waited and then he began to move, doing as I'd asked.
It was nothing like fucking Lucius in this position had been. Lucius had been feral and challenging, nipping at my mouth with his teeth, his eyes gleaming as he rode me. This one, who still had no name to me, not even in my head, whimpered softly as he went on, clinging to me child-like.
I caught a glimpse of his expression, his eyes squeezed closed, biting his lip, and was reminded of the first boy they'd sent.
The truth of it hit me suddenly. This was the same boy, glamoured. I'd asked for a blond, and instead of sending a different whore, this one had changed his appearance. I wondered if he had a talent for it and if so...
My fantasies coalesced in my head. I may have grinned wolfishly. I pushed him back from me slightly, loosening his grip. "Are you good at glamours?" I asked him with a slight shake.
He nodded. I could not tell if he knew I had penetrated his ruse or not. "I need my wand in hand, though," he said.
I Summoned his wand and handed it to him. "Your hair's too curly, straighten it a little, and lighten it a bit, yes, just there." I held him with my hands on his hips, punctuating my words with thrusts up into his body. "Your eyes are too blue. Make them grey. And narrow your shoulders."
The boy for his part did as I asked, his opinion of these changes masked by his alternating winces and gasps as I fucked him. Soon there was a credible facsimile of Draco Malfoy straddling my lap, or at least the Draco I remembered.
"Now, fuck yourself little Draco," I said, pleased to see his eyes go wide as he got into the role. "I always dreamed of doing this, you know. Burying my cock in you."
"Y-you did?" he prompted.
"Oh not often, certainly not. But when I couldn't stand it any longer, I indulged in fantasies of fucking the daylights out of you." My breaths turned to pants as he rode me, the whimper returning to his throat. "Did you know your father and I were lovers? For two years. He initiated me to every form of depravity I know, and whenever I would grow frustrated with you, I would imagine enacting them on his son, on you," I corrected, nearly forgetting the play-act, "in revenge."
"Revenge?" he gasped, as I grasped his cock in my hand.
"For discarding me like a used come-rag," I answered. "Perhaps next time I'll have you look like him, now that I've discovered your hidden talent?"
The boy nodded, looking for all the world like the real Draco, right down to that smidgen of adoration I used to sometimes see in his eyes, when he would let the sneer up long enough for it to show through. I was stroking him earnestly then, thinking on Lucius' largesse, how the whores always came under his touch, sometimes more than once.
"Draco," I said, just to be perverse, "do you enjoy me teaching you all the perversions of the flesh?"
"Oh yes, Professor!" he enthused, clenching his arse around me as he shifted up and down.
"I'm glad. Every bright pupil should have a mentor." The tightness was overwhelming. "When you are ready to come, release the constriction charm."
"All right," he agreed, and in no time at all, he had done just that, and we were both fountaining, me deep into him, he into my fingers.
I did spend the night there, him wearing the Draco-glamour the entire time and me sleeping curled protectively around him, as the boy and I had sometimes used to do on cold nights when we were on the run. Is it any wonder that thoughts of fucking the younger Malfoy were lodged in my head in Those Days?
The next day I returned to my home worrying at the mystery, though, as a dog worries a bone until it cracks. For in that whole night there, I only once heard a board creak on the floor below us, but otherwise I never heard another soul, and surely if there were half a dozen young men in the building, I would have known it? Even Silencing Charms only do so much. I began to suspect there were no others, just the master and this one. If that was the case, what were they doing with all the extra potion I was giving them? Hoarding it for a time when they would no longer need me? That would still take years if they expected to hoard a lifetime supply. That or the master's Mark illness was much worse than anyone else's I'd ever seen, if he needed that much?
Could they be selling it to other Death Eaters in hiding? I knew of a few, so surely there must be others. That seemed the most likely possibility, and yet I did not want to confront the boy with it. After all, what business of mine was it what they did with the product they purchased from me? Especially when it was paid for in such sweet coin?
The boy came to me always as Draco now, sometimes at my home, sometimes at the house, and I did perform every manner of depravity on and with him, taking especial delight in the times when he wore something that looked like an old school uniform and called me "Professor." The very wrongness of it, the very fact that it would never have come to pass in real life, made it all the more sublime to act out. I told you that my moral sense had long since atrophied-- the final vestiges I'd held onto while the boy had truly been in my care were thus swept away.
He began to appear more often, as well--not to fuck, for I could not have afforded that--but bringing food for dinner sometimes, sharing the Prophet with me over tea when he noticed I did not subscribe. I began to suspect he had ulterior motives.
My suspicions were confirmed the night he told me he yearned to free himself of the master of the house. "There are other places I could go," he said wistfully, as he lay against my chest, as I brushed the hair back from his face as his sweat dried. "I could... ply my trade anywhere in the world at this point. Brothels in Bangkok. A seraglio in Morocco."
The words had passed through me before I registered them with shock. Surely just a coincidence. Yet, would it make sense for Lucius Malfoy to be the mysterious master of the house? It would. I lay still, listening to him talk, fishing for more information.
"But I'm beholden to him. I cannot simply leave him."
"I know," I said softly. "Since you're the only one."
He nodded. "I thought you might have figured that out."
It was with a sudden chill that I realized why it was that he was beholden to him. And if it was Lucius there in the house, who it must be, there in my arms.
"Draco?" I croaked, my body rushing to catch up with my mind, which was thrashing about like a fish pulled from the water.
"Yes?" he asked in return, hand petting my chest soothingly.
I thrust him away from me then, vertigo making the room swim. I used anger to ground me. "Don't play with me, boy. What's your real name and what do you really look like?"
He stood by the bedside. "Severus, don't be ridic--"
I swept up my wand then and stripped him of every bit of magic clinging to him, stalking around him and examining him carefully. Oh yes, there were glamours. There was the one that hid a scar on his face, little more than a crescent moon along one jaw. There was the one that, shockingly, stood in for the Dark Mark, revealing instead a forearm crisscrossed with whitish traces of scars, the veins running under them vulnerably blue. There was the one that hid the circles under his eyes from lack of sleep, and the marks on his back, more thin, white lines, some of them crisscrossed with red...
I stepped back in horror. I had been about to ask why he had come to me with this plea, this pipe dream of leaving, when if he was who I thought he was, we should all be content to maintain the fiction. But I knew those marks.
I have ever been blunt. Too blunt for my own good, sometimes. But there was no pretty way to say what I did. "Your own father fucks you with your own blood."
Draco Malfoy stood before me, his chin held defiantly up. "Yes."
"Do you love him?" I snapped.
"Did you?" he shot back.
Our gazes met and were identical. I saw then that our answers would be the same, as well. Complicated and impossibly full of contradictions.
"How much of a supply does he have?" I heard my voice quaver only slightly.
"About a year's worth. He needs quite a lot." There was something beseeching in those eyes. "But there are other potions masters in England, if you'd leave the formula."
We had gone within the hour. And where we are remains a secret.
Title: Sweet Coin
By:
ravenna_c_tanWritten For:
cnary_crem_dghtPairing: Snape/various, including but not limited to flashbacks and fantasies of Snape/Lucius, Snape/Draco, Snape/Karkaroff, Snape/Voldemort
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 5775
Warnings: Dubious consent, prostitution, brief cutting/blood play, implied incest, Death Eaters being Death Eaters
Summary: The war is over but Snape finds himself still dealing with the legacy of the Dark Mark and his past.
Betas: Thanks to Nomi and Slashpervert!
Notes: This was written in a fic exchange called the "Death Eater Smutathon." The comm. has sadly been deleted. The original request was for any of the following: Snape/Lucius, Snape/Draco, Snape/Karkaroff, Lucius/Draco, Snape/Voldemort -- I decided to go ahead and put them all. The request asked for "Abuses of power, non-con, dub-con, forced-prostitution (especially if it is "out of love" for another person), dark themes, chan." No chan, but otherwise I hope I hit the mark on all of these... Enjoy it!
Sweet Coin
by Ravenna C. Tan
When Those Days were over, I decided it would please me never to speak to any of the people I had known ever again. Potter I certainly did not care to even lay eyes upon, to the point where I refused to read the Prophet. I would not miss his classmates, either, nor any of my former students. Moody and Lupin would certainly never miss me, having tried to get rid of me enough times themselves. I said terse goodbyes to Minerva just before the final battle and only later heard that she had survived. The Malfoy boy disappeared when I told him to, just after Narcissa's death, and just before Voldemort's fall. In the chaos that was wizarding England those days, it was easy for a lone wizard to remake himself with a new name in a new place, what with Ministry records forever lost and refugees moving all across the country.
I should know.
I not only left London, I left behind the War Veterans Benefits that I was grudgingly awarded when my role was acknowledged by certain parties within the Ministry. Said benefits chiefly consisted of paying for the once-monthly treatments to lessen the effects of the Mark, although--truth be told--I never believed that what they did at St. Mungo's had anything more than a temporary palliative effect. And that was something I could provide for myself. In fact, I was certain that "Mark illness" could be treated by potion and it was not long before I had devised a formula that would serve.
I ended up in Wales, just barely, settling in Knighton, which straddles the Welsh-English border. There were a number of wizardfolk still hidden in the community there. Not so many as to trouble me, just enough to provide a little company when it was warranted and customers for my brews to keep me in sickles. One or two of my old cohort did find me by owl, desperately hoping I had survived and could provide a cure. I was happy to take their Galleons and ship by owl, keeping my location hidden. And when the effects of Mark illness became too much to bear for me, I could dose and then shutter myself in my attic while the townsfolk merely thought me a drunkard. I suspect I was the subject of mild gossip, but I kept to myself enough that it never reached my ears.
That may have been why I knew not of the existence of the house at the end of Genie Alley, as our neighbourhood was known. The house's charms were only learnt by word of mouth, and as I rarely spoke to anyone beyond a terse transaction, I remained ignorant. And the house's secrets, well, those were known to no one who did not sleep within its walls.
A boy came to me one market day, the one day a week when I opened my dingy front parlour to walk-in customers, his hood up over his face until he was standing before me.
"Can I help you?" I asked, looking up from my book and appraising him. He let the hood slip and revealed a brown-haired youth, his hair curling enticingly down his neck, a pleasing curve to his cheek and the half-smile he wore. But his eyes were dead. Which meant he was either a whore or a war veteran, or perhaps both.
"I understand you can treat a very specific condition," he said quietly, studying me with those flat eyes.
I snapped my book closed but did not stand up from my seat. "And you'll have to be more specific if you want my assistance."
His face twitched and then he slipped a length of willow from his sleeve, charming the air around us with a privacy spell. "The Mark," he said simply, wand in hand.
He was too vibrant for that cluttered, sepia-toned room, like a painting by Caravaggio, luminescent in his self-possession, his youth and beauty. It reminded me of Lucius in his youth--the magnetism of his figure, even in a crowd. With Lucius I had thought it a glamour at first, but after we became lovers, I was not so sure. For that matter, it reminded me of Tom Riddle, an inner charisma that could not be suppressed.
It made me want to smack the boy, tell him to get out, that I had no medicine for him or his ilk. But I did not. "Who sent you?"
The boy shrugged. "I could tell you the name I know, but I'm quite sure it isn't the one he used in Those Days."
So, one off my former cohort was holed up nearby, I thought. Intriguing. No doubt someone who belonged in Azkaban and would pay dearly to stay out of there. "Indulge me with the alias he uses, then."
"Marcus Brindle," the boy said. "And a couple of the boys who were Marked toward the end, as well. He's been taking care of us ever since."
I raised an eyebrow. "How many of you?"
He shrugged. "Half a dozen. We were one more, but the fool who was getting the stuff for us from St. Mungo's ran off with his healer--fell in love or some such rot."
My mind made the leap of logic from there to the rest of the puzzle. "So, you're prostitutes, then." At the boy's bare nod, I could not help but add, "So then, who takes care of whom? It sounds to me like you all take care of Mr. Brindle."
I could not miss the flash of bitterness in those eyes.
"My services are expensive," I drawled, and then to my consternation, or perhaps hidden delight, he unpinned his cloak and said:
"So are mine."
The air fairly crackled with electricity at this little pronouncement, and my cock stood up like a lighting rod. "Are you proposing a transaction today?"
"If you've the potion, yes. If not, perhaps a... down payment." He licked his lips and I watched his eyes flick over me as if trying to guess how I would want my pleasure.
"If you think I am one of those pathetic old men who would be so grateful to have a nubile thing such as yourself in my bed that I would suck you and eat your come and thank you for it, you are mistaken," I said evenly. "I might be satisfied with your mouth. But as I am the seller and you the buyer in this case, I think I shall want your arse as well."
He hesitated a moment, then gave a sharp nod, the flicker of insolence in his eyes seeming out of place in a whore, but perhaps he was one of those who specialized in resisting. I made a mental note to ask about this later, if not him, perhaps one of his fellows.
I took him upstairs to the creaking bed, bade him denude himself of every stitch of clothing, and then merely pulled my cock from my trousers, my robes parted, and wanked myself slowly while he prepared his own arse with long fingers. He kept looking at me resentfully while doing so, and I found it delightfully arousing. Perhaps this whelp was better at his trade than I had given him credit for. He was on his back atop my bedspread, greasing himself with both hands from a pot of waxy unguent he'd brought with him, clearly expecting this as a possible outcome.
"Hurry up," I snapped, just to see his reaction, which was a lovely little snarl before he mastered his expression.
Those eyes no longer looked quite so dead.
They closed, though, when I pushed myself into him, and I paused when fully sheathed to let my body remember this. It had been years--yes, years--since my cock had been inside another human being, and sordid as the situation was, I found myself wanting to savour it.
I fucked him slowly then, my hands pressing against his chest and shoulders, holding him still, as I pulled out and then wormed my way back in gradually, again and again. I felt him start to tremble beneath me after a few minutes of that. Yes, it was agonisingly slow and I sneaked a look at his face, trying to determine if the agony were literal. He was biting his lip like a virgin, his eyes screwed tightly shut.
"Reach down and spread your cheeks," I said. "Stretch your hole for me."
He did, his face unchanging, but his hands pulling obligingly at the flesh, and I shifted my position so I could watch my cock disappear inch by inch into him, and then the slight pull at his pucker as I slid out again. The pale skin of his inner thighs was becoming chafed from my rough clothing.
I smiled.
It was an hour before I came. He left with several doses of the potion, full instructions on how to administer it, and a bit of cream for his sore arse. And with an admonition to send a blond next time.
That night I dreamt of Lucius. In the dream I had just left Hogwarts, just taken the Mark, and I was showing it to him. Indeed, this scene might have once happened in our past, though I think perhaps I was embellishing. He ran his fingers over the tender underside of my flesh, and in the way of dreams, it was suddenly no longer my forearm in his hand, but my cock. He crooned silly words at me, stroking me, teasing me, letting me bury my nose in his hair while he pulled and pulled and pulled at me until I was sore, but came on his command.
I woke to find of course I was sore, and I swore I could smell his hair still. I resolved to brew a superior lubricant before the next whore's visit.
It came a month later, as I'd expected. And I was pleased to find this one was a blond, as I'd requested.
I took him up to the bedroom. "Are you Marked?" was the first thing I asked.
He looked at me in surprise. "Er, yes."
"The last one wasn't. I'd prefer to fuck those who are Marked to those that aren't. Though you're pleasing to the eye. I might want you again." I know my demands were petty and churlish, but one exercises what power one has. "Show me."
"Th-the Mark?" He barely hid the surprise in his eyes.
"Yes."
He slipped his robes from his shoulders and then rolled up his sleeve. There it was, ash grey ever since Voldemort's death, and as ugly as ever. I took my cock out of my trousers and rubbed it along the Marked flesh. He shivered and looked up at me for a moment, just a flash of beseeching in that look before he looked away.
I lay him back on the bed then, holding his arm still, and frotting against it in earnest. He whimpered.
"Does it hurt?" I asked him.
"Yes," he said through gritted teeth, and I was surprised to find tears at the corners of his eyes. At that moment he looked entirely too much like someone I once knew, someone who was once in my care.
I let go, looking at him carefully as he gathered his arm to his chest and glared at me, indignant. But he was too beefy and square-jawed for me to keep imagining he was Draco, sweet as that fantasy might have been. His hair was too dark, as well, and he barely approached the level of ire that Draco Malfoy could have put into that one brief glare.
"You need a higher dose than what you're taking, then," I said, "if it hurts that much. Now get your clothes off."
As he undressed, sullenly, I let my imagination wander. In those insane days of running and keeping the boy a fugitive from the Dark Lord, I had often consoled myself with fantasies of fucking his aristocratic arse until he cried. Always in revenge for what Lucius had done to me, of course. In some of my fantasies I told him he owed me, in fact, because of that. In some of the wilder ones, the boy would come to my side after that, turn against his father, and we would run off...
As I said, an insane time, Those Days.
I fucked this one from behind, one hand buried in his hair, so that I could almost believe it was the younger Malfoy I shoved my cock into. Though he didn't cry. Not that I expected him to.
When he left, I gave him a larger amount of the potion in a cobalt blue jar, with instructions on measuring it properly for all who needed it. He mentioned before he went that next month they would be happy to host me at the house, if I preferred. If I wanted, of course, he said he'd come to me, but that there was greater comfort and amenity there. I allowed as how curiosity alone dictated at least one trip there.
So it was that a month later I found myself picking my way to the end of the row of houses and buildings all pressed together in the fashion of that time, some with slim alleyways between them, others sharing walls with their neighbours. In the cul de sac at the very top of Genie Alley stood one house, a bit grander yet darker than the rest--it reminded me of number twelve, actually. It was easy to imagine a beautiful boy in each room of the house, plying his trade with sighs and groans, so that the master of the house could live out his days in comfort.
I spoke the password I had been given, and the door opened for me. Inside, I found a parlour of understated opulence. Indeed, the boys must earn as well as that first one had boasted to me, and I quickly concluded that the clientele must include many of the powerful figures in the Wizarding world.
It was the sort of place that Lucius Malfoy would have visited from time to time. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up at that thought. Once, and only once, had he brought me with him to such an establishment. We went by Side-Along Apparition, so I had no idea where exactly we were, though at the time I was guessing somewhere in South London.
He had made sure I was thoroughly aroused before we'd gone. At the Manor he'd tut-tutted over my clothes, telling me they were too shabby for where we were going, even though these were some decent robes of mine. He'd sliced them off me then, one strip at a time, until there was no hope of repairing them with a charm, until I was standing naked before him while he ran the cool metal of the blade all over my skin. He let it fall to the floor, clattering against the parquet, as his hand grasped my cock, already hard and dewy thanks to his attention. He brought me to the edge of orgasm, not once but twice, then charmed a ring around the base of my balls to keep me painfully erect.
These kinds of games were common enough between us by then. He dressed me in some of his own finery then, surrounding me in his heady scent--is it any wonder I mistook my feelings for love?
He was terrible to the whore we had that night. He cut the boy and slicked his cock with the blood, using it as lubricant as he fucked him--and that was not the worst of it. The boy's back was crisscrossed with fine white scars where he had been cut previously. Perhaps most surprising was that the boy came three times in the course of the night, and Lucius not once.
Nor I, of course.
I took the scars and the way they spoke as we parted to mean this was hardly the first time Lucius had treated him this way. The boy was very, very well compensated for the treatment and was all smiles as we left. I can only imagine what my own facial expression must have been. By then I had learned to be stoic through all manner of Death Eater atrocity, and even to bury my own moral sense to the point where it would soon be permanently stunted, but to know that Lucius took such pleasures of his own will, in such a manner, I did not fathom it.
Or perhaps my head was too addled by my advanced state of arousal, maintained throughout the evening not only by the ring, but by touches and kisses from Lucius, by the sight of him naked in his glory, his erect cock gleaming with the boy's come slathered over it.
He took me in the alley behind the building, a delicious irony that injected the danger that had only been faked indoors. First, he bade me suck him, the cleaning charm he'd cast insuring that no disease would travel, yet leaving him musky and tinged with the taste of the boy's arse, his blood and bodily fluids.
My memory is imperfect; I think I begged for Lucius to come in my mouth, to allow me the honour of that. That is how deeply submerged in him I was. His cruel laughter I do remember, how it thrilled me to my core. I do remember he fucked me, pressing me against ancient bricks, the intrusion of his cock into me a pleasure that I still wake up imagining sometimes, when I am half-asleep and my hand strays to my morning erection.
Damn him.
That night he fucked me in the alley, and then did come in my mouth, filling my nostrils with the scent of my own arse as he did so. I gagged and choked and he laughed.
When we stepped out of the alley, my robes an utter mess and his looking remarkably pristine, a carriage was there waiting for us. I asked no questions. We got in and I assumed with a pang of bitterness that the night was at an end, with my cock still straining under the folds of the robes.
But he kissed me then, tender and caring, asking me if I were too... something, I cannot recall the word now... to continue. Too shocked? Too appalled? Something like that. Of course I said no, and then he asked me to choose how I would take my own pleasure.
That seductive voice in my ear: "Anything you want, Severus. Male, female, or both? A seraglio in Morocco? A virgin girl on the steps of the Ministry? I can arrange anything. You've indulged me so very much. Let me indulge you in return."
I was too young and too stupid to know what the consequence of my decision would be. All I saw was that he had handed me the power; I did not then know that I was expected not to exercise it fully. I did not understand noblesse oblige, nor that there was any future that I should be fighting to preserve.
"Your arse," I had answered tersely. "Here in the carriage. I want you to impale yourself on the cock you've teased all night."
I knew I was bold. I knew it was within my power to ask. And so I did.
He did exactly as I asked, fucking himself on me with abandon, keeping me in the charm so that my own ejaculation was held off as long as possible. He did not skimp. When I did finally come, holding him against me and nearly suffocated in his hair, I thought I had found the only true ecstasy on Earth.
He severed ties with me the next day. I am not sure what hurt more, the loss of him from my life, or the fact that idiots like Karkaroff thought me easy prey once I was no longer under Malfoy's wing. Karkaroff was a bad lay no matter how one counted it, but there were political reasons to suck his cock from time to time.
And there were definitely political reasons to allow the Dark Lord to take me. Though it was only the once. Thankfully.
Looking around the parlour of this house now, and thinking on the treatment Lucius had given the whore that night, I began to wonder if I hadn't been entirely too soft on the boys so far. But I have never been a grand sadist, merely an enthusiast of petty cruelty, which is hardly the same thing.
The blond came into the room, bearing a tray with both brandy and tea. "Would you like a bit of refreshment?" he asked.
"Afterward, perhaps," I said shortly. "I have more pressing needs."
He slid to his knees at my feet then, a gorgeous motion, one he must have practised in front of a mirror, and rubbed his cheek, his mouth gaping, against the bulge in my trousers. "You needn't merely come and then leave," he said in a near-whisper. "I am yours for the night."
I pulled him back from his teasing with a fist in his hair. "Those were not the needs I was referring to," I said. "I would like to meet the master of the house."
He jerked a bit as I said that. "I can't..."
"Listen, boy. I know how to deal with Death Eaters. If Walden Macnair is hiding in a room upstairs, I shan't close my eyes even for a moment in this house." None of them knew, of course, of my duplicity, my part in the Dark Lord's fall, but any number of them wouldn't hesitate to enact some other form of personal and petty revenge on me for some slight, whether real or imagined.
"You're safe," he choked out. "I swear it. We need you. It doesn't benefit us to harm you in any way."
"Very well." I let him go. Honestly, some part of me was almost disappointed--that same part of me that had loved the danger of the alley. My blood had not flowed so briskly in my veins since the war itself. Desire had made me reckless--it very well could be Macnair upstairs--but I had not walked there merely to turn around and leave again.
"Suck me to hardness," I said then, though I was quite erect already. "Do you know a constriction charm?"
He was undoing my fastenings as he asked, "For the base of your cock? Yes, I know one."
"Apply it to me and then we shall go to your room."
He nodded, doing as he was told. I was amused to see he used the same spell as Lucius had all those years ago--Lucius had probably learnt it from a whore, I realized then, with a laugh. The tea tray forgotten, I followed the boy through the house, up two flights, and into a nicely appointed room with a bed, a settee, and an ottoman that looked about perfect for bending the boy over.
Which I did without preamble, though I slicked him myself, luxuriating in the feel of my fingers digging deep into the wet silken heat of his body. Just as I was about to push my cock into him, though, I thought better of it.
"Come here," I said, taking a seat on the settee. "Impale yourself. Fuck yourself on me until you come." Yes, perfect, I thought. The one thing that was missing from that night with Lucius. Well, that and my common sense. Lucius had been too spent for any possibility of it. But this one... I stroked his cock roughly with my still-slick hand as he held onto the back of the settee and settled his feet on either side of me.
He lowered himself down on me, sweating and shaking a bit as he did so. I admit that I found myself concerned. "Take your time," I admonished, as if his ill-hidden distress were his own fault.
"I'm all right," he snapped back. "Just sore from... another customer." That he was lying was obvious, though exactly what of it was untrue, part or all of it, I could not determine.
The boy's problems were not mine to solve, however. I merely waited and then he began to move, doing as I'd asked.
It was nothing like fucking Lucius in this position had been. Lucius had been feral and challenging, nipping at my mouth with his teeth, his eyes gleaming as he rode me. This one, who still had no name to me, not even in my head, whimpered softly as he went on, clinging to me child-like.
I caught a glimpse of his expression, his eyes squeezed closed, biting his lip, and was reminded of the first boy they'd sent.
The truth of it hit me suddenly. This was the same boy, glamoured. I'd asked for a blond, and instead of sending a different whore, this one had changed his appearance. I wondered if he had a talent for it and if so...
My fantasies coalesced in my head. I may have grinned wolfishly. I pushed him back from me slightly, loosening his grip. "Are you good at glamours?" I asked him with a slight shake.
He nodded. I could not tell if he knew I had penetrated his ruse or not. "I need my wand in hand, though," he said.
I Summoned his wand and handed it to him. "Your hair's too curly, straighten it a little, and lighten it a bit, yes, just there." I held him with my hands on his hips, punctuating my words with thrusts up into his body. "Your eyes are too blue. Make them grey. And narrow your shoulders."
The boy for his part did as I asked, his opinion of these changes masked by his alternating winces and gasps as I fucked him. Soon there was a credible facsimile of Draco Malfoy straddling my lap, or at least the Draco I remembered.
"Now, fuck yourself little Draco," I said, pleased to see his eyes go wide as he got into the role. "I always dreamed of doing this, you know. Burying my cock in you."
"Y-you did?" he prompted.
"Oh not often, certainly not. But when I couldn't stand it any longer, I indulged in fantasies of fucking the daylights out of you." My breaths turned to pants as he rode me, the whimper returning to his throat. "Did you know your father and I were lovers? For two years. He initiated me to every form of depravity I know, and whenever I would grow frustrated with you, I would imagine enacting them on his son, on you," I corrected, nearly forgetting the play-act, "in revenge."
"Revenge?" he gasped, as I grasped his cock in my hand.
"For discarding me like a used come-rag," I answered. "Perhaps next time I'll have you look like him, now that I've discovered your hidden talent?"
The boy nodded, looking for all the world like the real Draco, right down to that smidgen of adoration I used to sometimes see in his eyes, when he would let the sneer up long enough for it to show through. I was stroking him earnestly then, thinking on Lucius' largesse, how the whores always came under his touch, sometimes more than once.
"Draco," I said, just to be perverse, "do you enjoy me teaching you all the perversions of the flesh?"
"Oh yes, Professor!" he enthused, clenching his arse around me as he shifted up and down.
"I'm glad. Every bright pupil should have a mentor." The tightness was overwhelming. "When you are ready to come, release the constriction charm."
"All right," he agreed, and in no time at all, he had done just that, and we were both fountaining, me deep into him, he into my fingers.
I did spend the night there, him wearing the Draco-glamour the entire time and me sleeping curled protectively around him, as the boy and I had sometimes used to do on cold nights when we were on the run. Is it any wonder that thoughts of fucking the younger Malfoy were lodged in my head in Those Days?
The next day I returned to my home worrying at the mystery, though, as a dog worries a bone until it cracks. For in that whole night there, I only once heard a board creak on the floor below us, but otherwise I never heard another soul, and surely if there were half a dozen young men in the building, I would have known it? Even Silencing Charms only do so much. I began to suspect there were no others, just the master and this one. If that was the case, what were they doing with all the extra potion I was giving them? Hoarding it for a time when they would no longer need me? That would still take years if they expected to hoard a lifetime supply. That or the master's Mark illness was much worse than anyone else's I'd ever seen, if he needed that much?
Could they be selling it to other Death Eaters in hiding? I knew of a few, so surely there must be others. That seemed the most likely possibility, and yet I did not want to confront the boy with it. After all, what business of mine was it what they did with the product they purchased from me? Especially when it was paid for in such sweet coin?
The boy came to me always as Draco now, sometimes at my home, sometimes at the house, and I did perform every manner of depravity on and with him, taking especial delight in the times when he wore something that looked like an old school uniform and called me "Professor." The very wrongness of it, the very fact that it would never have come to pass in real life, made it all the more sublime to act out. I told you that my moral sense had long since atrophied-- the final vestiges I'd held onto while the boy had truly been in my care were thus swept away.
He began to appear more often, as well--not to fuck, for I could not have afforded that--but bringing food for dinner sometimes, sharing the Prophet with me over tea when he noticed I did not subscribe. I began to suspect he had ulterior motives.
My suspicions were confirmed the night he told me he yearned to free himself of the master of the house. "There are other places I could go," he said wistfully, as he lay against my chest, as I brushed the hair back from his face as his sweat dried. "I could... ply my trade anywhere in the world at this point. Brothels in Bangkok. A seraglio in Morocco."
The words had passed through me before I registered them with shock. Surely just a coincidence. Yet, would it make sense for Lucius Malfoy to be the mysterious master of the house? It would. I lay still, listening to him talk, fishing for more information.
"But I'm beholden to him. I cannot simply leave him."
"I know," I said softly. "Since you're the only one."
He nodded. "I thought you might have figured that out."
It was with a sudden chill that I realized why it was that he was beholden to him. And if it was Lucius there in the house, who it must be, there in my arms.
"Draco?" I croaked, my body rushing to catch up with my mind, which was thrashing about like a fish pulled from the water.
"Yes?" he asked in return, hand petting my chest soothingly.
I thrust him away from me then, vertigo making the room swim. I used anger to ground me. "Don't play with me, boy. What's your real name and what do you really look like?"
He stood by the bedside. "Severus, don't be ridic--"
I swept up my wand then and stripped him of every bit of magic clinging to him, stalking around him and examining him carefully. Oh yes, there were glamours. There was the one that hid a scar on his face, little more than a crescent moon along one jaw. There was the one that, shockingly, stood in for the Dark Mark, revealing instead a forearm crisscrossed with whitish traces of scars, the veins running under them vulnerably blue. There was the one that hid the circles under his eyes from lack of sleep, and the marks on his back, more thin, white lines, some of them crisscrossed with red...
I stepped back in horror. I had been about to ask why he had come to me with this plea, this pipe dream of leaving, when if he was who I thought he was, we should all be content to maintain the fiction. But I knew those marks.
I have ever been blunt. Too blunt for my own good, sometimes. But there was no pretty way to say what I did. "Your own father fucks you with your own blood."
Draco Malfoy stood before me, his chin held defiantly up. "Yes."
"Do you love him?" I snapped.
"Did you?" he shot back.
Our gazes met and were identical. I saw then that our answers would be the same, as well. Complicated and impossibly full of contradictions.
"How much of a supply does he have?" I heard my voice quaver only slightly.
"About a year's worth. He needs quite a lot." There was something beseeching in those eyes. "But there are other potions masters in England, if you'd leave the formula."
We had gone within the hour. And where we are remains a secret.
