ravenna_c_tan

So, I’m speaking on panels at Balticon this weekend, and one of the most fun was Literary Never Have I Ever, in which each writer had to name a “literary sin” they’ve never committed, e.g. “I’ve never written a story in the second person.” If no one else on the panel had either, the person who brought it up was challenged to do it by next year, and if only one person had, they had to describe the circumstances under which it was done. One of the other writers mentioned “ripping off old school Old Testament stories.” I raised my hand, having realized I wrote a Harry Potter Sodom and Gomorrah story.

I later went to link people to the story and realized… I had never posted it before! Wow. I think I must have written it for a fest, then set it aside at wrote something else because it didn’t have enough sex in it for the prompt? I’m not sure. It would have been back in 2008, most likely, and I can barely remember what happened last week!

So anyway, I figured I had better share the story now. Voila! You asked for it Balticon, Harry Potter and the City of Sodom.

Title: The Lot of Severus
Word Count: 2,015
Pairing: Snape/Draco
Genre: Voldemort-wins!AU, Biblical retelling
Warnings: Hints of non-con offstage, character death
Rating: Hard R
Summary: An old testament story done Harry Potter style

I do not blame him for looking back, for that had become his home, but I do blame him for leaving me so alone.

Hogwarts was our domain, you see. The Dark Lord had made me Headmaster, but it was not until his triumph over the Potter boy, it was not until the failure of Dumbledore’s plans, that I was truly given any power there. Then, oh then, the castle truly became mine to rule. Hogwarts quickly put Durmstrang to shame as the premier institution for development of the Dark Arts.

Understand, though, that there is no such thing as evil magic. Only intentions can be evil. Only souls can be corrupt. And so many souls were corrupt.

Draco had tried to take shelter under my wing during his disastrous seventh year and I was all too happy to exploit his weakness in my favor. He deserved it, after defying me so foolishly in his sixth year, and now the lesson was brought home. I left him exposed to the predations of the Carrows and Fenrir just enough that he would consider the price I exacted from him to be a mercy. I did not use him often, but when I did, I used him roughly, and thoroughly. Years of celibacy had done nothing to refine my technique as a lover and plenty to whet my appetite. I would coat my member with a concoction of my own making, such that any injury I might do his insides would be healed.

I said I was rough. It was the only pleasure I allowed myself in that dark year when Potter and his band roamed free and the battles still loomed.

I knew him truly cowed when not a sound of complaint did he make when I first treated him thus. I am a spiteful man, but a sweeter satisfaction than I found in teaching Draco his lesson I have never known.

I did not allow myself the luxury of mourning, though, when I’d thought him killed in the Battle of Hogwarts. There was no time, and with the Dark Lord ascendant, I had appearances to keep. It was only later, when he was given to me as a spoil of war, that I learned Draco had survived.

The Malfoys asunder, the Manor now in the Dark Lord’s hands, their scion came to me broken.

This time I was not so rough. This time I coaxed him gradually from his shell, drawing his mind away from the horrors that still filled his thoughts and made his eyes so far away, and bringing him into a modicum of comfort and pleasure. The first time he climaxed in my hand, his eyes went wide and round with a sudden shock of understanding: oh, he means it to feel good. This is not like before.

We settled easily enough into a routine after that, and no other Death Eater or visitor dared lay a hand on him, knowing he was now mine. He regained his tongue and his wit quickly enough, and I might have almost been content for a time, master of my desmenses and well-companioned.

Until, of course, the day a pair of visitors came. I often entertained wizarding scholars and envoys from the world over, so a visit was not unusual. But this pair was. One was old and almost frail, his white beard nearly trailing to the ground, for he was stooped over that much. The other was young and watchful, dark-haired and sullen, quick to temper. There was something familiar about them, but I could not recall having met them before.

We dined together in the Great Hall, the eyes of all present taking their measure. They were not father and son, or even grandfather and grandson, and yet there was something protectively parental in the old man’s demeanor. The young one, I decided, was a guardsman, though, the one who was actually protecting the other.

He threw aggressive looks toward the Death Eaters at the head table, which only roused the interest of the likes of MacNair and the Carrows. They were not above provoking a fight if they thought it would get them a piece of fresh meat. Blood rose around the table as the meal went on. Draco fell silent as the room was awash in unrest.

I felt it wise for us to take our port after dinner in private. Myself, Draco, and the two strangers repaired to my office in the tower, where we began a discussion of philosophy.

“I am quite interested in the power of redemptive magic,” the elder said. He sat in the chair by the fire while the young watchdog stood behind him. “Which must be equally powerful as harmful magic.”

“Must it be so?” I asked, as I leaned against my desk, the port glass cradled in my hand. “I know of no natural law that claims human emotions to be a finite system, one in which there must be some transitive property or balance.”

“Perhaps I misspoke,” he said. “Though the writings of Albus Dumbledore suggest that we have yet to quantify the power of love.”

“Agreed, but I would say it was one of Dumbledore’s basic arguments that love is in limitless supply. Infinite.” I gestured as if to indicate the world outside, which we all knew to be hellish, but only Draco chuckled at my irony. I continued more seriously. “Love begets love, but pain begets pain. The two systems are independent.”

“Very well, perhaps the two are not in direct conjunction, but love can heal pain,” the elder continued. “Love can change a man.”

“So can pain,” Draco said acidly, sitting in the chair opposite.

“Listen to me, Severus,” the elder said then, looking me in the eye. “Do you truly believe that the inhabitants of this castle are beyond redemption? Are they truly so deep into the ways of evil that, if given the chance, they could not be redeemed, should the world around them change?”

“I can barely guess to know what is in men’s souls,” I answered. That was not a lie. Legilimency led me to know a great deal of what was in their minds, but souls? Reading those would take a power greater than mine.

“Are there ten men, you think, of all those who fell under the Dark Lord’s spell, who would turn to the side of good, if given the chance?”

My heart hammered suddenly, as if leaping with hope. But I did not ever hope to see evil defeated in my lifetime. Our best chance of that had been lost years before, in the days when Potter and Dumbledore still walked the earth. My tone was biting in my reply. “You mean are ten of them so inconstant, so unreliable, so brazen, that they would turn on their Lord in such a manner?”

The old man shook his head sadly, then, and the younger one snorted, as if I had said no less than what he expected.

At that moment, a dark form flew past the window. Then another. I heard MacNair’s voice then. “Snape, don’t hide your guests from us. We’ve had quite enough of the attitude of that lovely morsel with the green eyes. Give him to us. His attitude will change once we’ve each put our broomhandles up his arse.”

I drew my wand to strengthen the wards on the windows, but found my hand shaking. What fresh torment is this? I thought. I could barely raise it to cast a spell.

A horde of Death Eaters was gathering outside the window, I realized, and I knew not what spell they ued to spa my power and breach my defenses. They were charmed nearly invisible, only wisps of darkness against darkness appearing in a roiling mass outside the window. Just as well. I had no desire to see them, each man steering his broom with one hand and stroking his cock with the other like a warrior sharpening his spear.

“Give him to us,” came another voice, “so that we may all get to know him intimately.”

“Yes,” called another. “If he’s to join our ranks, we’ll initiate him.” But this comment was followed by an evil laugh. They were out for blood.

“Remember the last one you gave us?” MacNair was clearly leading this pack of predators. “So many of us pumped him with come I think it came out his eyeballs.”

Lovely. I turned to the old man. “No,” I said. “I don’t think there are ten who can be redeemed. There are far too many who have done far too much.”

The elder stood straight then, the hunch gone, and I stiffened, holding the gasp at bay that threatened to shake me, as I realized why he had seemed so familiar. Redemption? Did I dare believe it could exist? Dumbledore had once given me a chance at redemption, did he offer it again now? If there was no redemption for the brazen creatures baying outside… could it exist for me?

“We want him. We want a piece of him. Our hunger is stoked. We will not be denied.” So cried the chorus of unholy souls outside.

“Take Draco,” I whispered, realizing now that I had to protect the visitors at all costs.

“Maybe we should take you, Severus!”

I fell back as my wand caught fire in my hand. I do not know what Dark Arts the men who had turned themselves to demons employed, but it was beyond even my formidable capabilities to defend. In a moment they were flying through the broken spells of the window and the air was thick with the flapping of their robes. Draco rushed into my arms and I closed my robes reflexively around him, shielding him.

But then our attackers fell screaming, one by one, to the stone, each clutching at his eyes. The wizard before us, who I now knew to be Dumbledore, shone bright like a star, like a sun, blinding the dark wizards but sparing us.

The younger one then stepped forward, blazing brightly, too. Potter. Of course.

“Are you real?” I asked, like a dumbfounded child.

“We are not the men you once knew, Severus,” Dumbledore said, “and yet, we are who we are. We have come to cleanse this place.”

Potter pointed his wand at the lumps of robes on the floor, and the moaning ceased as they went still. “I told you,” he said to his mentor, “that we wouldn’t find enough of them worth saving.”

“I’m afraid you are right, Harry,” the old man agreed. “I think, in fact, that the number of souls worth saving here numbers exactly two.”

Potter’s eyes blazed and I felt he saw right through us. “Yeah,” he said. “I don’t understand it, but they love each other.”

Albus drew his own wand then and rose into the air. “Leave the castle now, Severus. We will destroy it and all within. Whatever you do, don’t look back.”

I was all too eager to have my back to that place as the fire came down and the screams began. I held Draco by the hand as we hurried toward Hogsmeade. My mind was already plotting how we would disappear, how we would start anew in another place, far from here.

But Draco, had he not heard the warning, or did he simply not heed it? Or did he think the warning was only for me? He looked over his shoulder and was caught by the sight of the destruction taking place behind us. The sound, the light, what could it take to destroy the castle and all within it? It had to be a magic like none I had previously seen! But I knew I could not look or I would share his fate. I let go his hand as I felt it go cold and stiff, as if he were turned to stone.

Perhaps it was stone. The legends, though, will say it was salt, because of the powerful alchemy of tears.

-end-

(For those of you not familiar with my smutty smutty HP fanfic, there’s a directory of it here:
http://ravenna-c-tan.livejournal.com/13797.html

For those of you not familiar with my smutty original fantasy, erotica, and erotic romance, you can find a list of it, here:
http://blog.ceciliatan.com/?page_id=41)

Archived at Ravenna's Quill.