Where are you?
Where I always am at 8pm on a Wednesday night. And you?
You know where I am. Fucking detention.
Oh dear. Naughty girl.
You utter bastard. Couldn’t you have got me out of it?
Certainly not. Serves you right for wandering the corridors after hours.
I fell asleep!
And that was my fault?
Yes! You fell asleep first, you’re supposed to remind me of the time.
My sincerest apologies. At least you have me to entertain you through your punishment.
True. These parchments are a genius invention. McGonagall thinks I’m doing a Potions essay.
Quite the skiving aid. Where did you get them from, incidentally?
There’s a shop on Diagon Alley, Weasley’s Wheezes or something, one of the owners sent them to me.
Which owner?
George Weasley.
You’re friends with George Weasley?
Well, not really. Sort of. I met him in the shop, and we went for a drink one time.
Oh, a drink. How cosy. I’m sure his tour of the shop was most illuminating.
Tour?
Took you into his back room, I assume? Showed you all of his exciting inventions?
How on earth do you know about that room?
I’m a spy. I know everything.
Well, yes, he did show me around the back room, since you ask.
How thrilling for you.
Severus, are you… Are you jealous?
Of George Weasley? Don’t make me laugh.
What if I told you I tried on some of the lingerie they sell, and asked his opinion?
I’d say you were lying.
What if I told you he’d come into the changing room with me?
See above.
I tried on a black see-through nightdress thing which cut away under the bust, and matching knickers, and came out to show him and ask what he thought. He said he thought the blue one would look even better on me and went to fetch it. I was getting changed, standing there in these skimpy little black knickers and looking in the mirror, and he came up behind me and suddenly put a silk blindfold over my eyes, and tied it behind my head. Then he started stroking me, just up and down my back, then around my waist and up and down my belly, really softly with the tips of his fingers, but I could hear him breathing more quickly and I started getting really, really excited, then his hands went down to my knickers, and I thought he was going to touch me but instead he moved his hands up to my tits and got me all wound up by stroking all around my nipples until I couldn’t help moaning, I was getting so wet, then he ran his hands down my arms, and before I knew it he’d grabbed my wrists and tied them together behind my back so I was completely helpless. He said ‘you didn’t really think you were in control, did you?’ in my ear, and then pushed me onto this little sofa in the corner of the changing room and straddled me from behind, and started stroking me through the silk of the knickers, feeling how wet I was through the material, and I was so turned on I started tossing my shoulders trying to get free so I could force him to touch me properly, and I pushed myself against him and felt how stiff he was so I kept moving back and forth trying to get him so horny he’d finally fuck me, but instead he flipped me onto my back and squeezed something cold onto my thighs, then put his fingers in my mouth. There was something slippery all over them which tasted exactly like Champagne, I sucked it off his fingers and he rubbed it into my skin, then started licking the insides of my thighs and I was going insane, I was so tight, I started panting and gasping so he pushed a silk handkerchief into my mouth and kept on licking at me, then he put some more of the Champagne stuff onto my belly, in a line running down from my navel to the elastic of my knickers, and I knew he was going to lick that off too but first he ran his hands all the way down my legs, put my knees over his shoulders and then he tied my ankles together too, with his head between my thighs, and he leaned really close into me and started lapping at my skin, pulling down my knickers, his tongue all hot and wet and
‘Professor McGonagall,’ came a thunderous voice from the doorway, making Delilah drop her quill and accidentally elbow it off her desk. As she ducked down to retrieve it, she saw his lower half stride into the room and stop a foot or so from her. ‘I requested a student to file some papers for me. Did you not receive my note?’
‘I did not, but by all means. Finnigan, please pack up your-’
‘No. Finnigan hasn’t the barest grip on the alphabet: if he does my filing, I’ll only end up spending twice as long re-doing it myself. You,’ he snapped his fingers behind Delilah’s head, and she straightened without looking at him. ‘Come.’
Delilah smothered an enormous smile, and had to check herself before she snatched her belongings up with such conspicuous enthusiasm that she gave the game away.
‘If I may, Professor Snape – you make a good point about Finnigan, but his accomplice in the Greenhouse Heist will be a perfectly competent filer, and also tops my list for extra punishment. Goldstein, please go with Professor Snape.’
Delilah could almost hear Snape’s brain whirring behind her but it was hopeless: it would be far too risky to raise another objection. So, under the Baltic glare of Professor McGonagall, Anthony Goldstein packed his papers into his rucksack and dragged himself to his feet. Finnigan punched him gamely on the arm as he passed, trying to look sympathetic, but unable to disguise his triumphant relief. Delilah snuck a look over her shoulder, but only caught a flash of Severus’ rictus profile as he vanished through the doorway, Anthony trailing after him.
Delilah could have howled with disappointment.
‘Fucking McGonagall’, she scribbled furiously, but there was no reply. She stared blindly at the pages of her text book, flipping them occasionally to give the illusion of reading, but really watching the clock hand creep along, until it finally approached the hour and McGonagall said ‘OK, you may leave’. She stuffed her things into her satchel and sped out of the room before anyone else in order to escape without them seeing where she was going, and vanished into a gallery off the corridor, then through a door concealed in the shadows of its far corner, through which she’d lately discovered – in the course of one of her and Severus’ many misadventures – a staircase which brought her out in the dungeons just beyond the Potions laboratory. She skulked along in the shadows to his office and hovered outside the door. There were a few moments of silence, but then she heard a mumbled voice, followed by the snap of Snape’s retort which carried through the crack under the door, ‘you’ll leave when you’ve finished the job and not a moment sooner.’ She hid in the unlit Potions lab, pacing aimlessly between the work benches, half-forming an excuse about needing more ground nux vomica seeds in case she was caught, listening for movement outside the door which would mean Goldstein had left, until almost forty five minutes had passed. She returned to Snape’s office door again to listen, but could still hear the shuffling of paperwork inside the room.
She gave a growl of impatience, then started along the corridor, ambling towards the Ravenclaw common room _ until sudden inspiration struck, and she sped up and ran all the way to the Ravenclaw common room dodging greetings from Padma and Lisa, who invited her to join them in completing the Witch Weekly crossword, and rushed through the dormitory where the fires had already been lit, knelt before her trunk, and brought out the package from George Weasley. She reached into the envelope, pulled out a small silver velvet pouch with a drawstring neck, and ran back through to the common room. At the doorway she almost flattened Michael Corner coming up the stairs.
‘Bloody hell Delilah, where are you going?’ he exclaimed. ‘Haven’t you literally just left a detention for breaking curfew, and now you’re running off again at quarter to ten?’
‘Just got something to do, I’ll make it back in time,’ she said breathlessly, slithering past him.
‘If she loses us any more House Points…’ she heard Marietta grumble before the door closed behind her. Back down in the dungeons, even as she approached his door, she heard Snape’s sharp voice through the door.
‘I will give you a note to explain that you are in the corridors out of hours because you were serving detention with me, and that you work at a pathetic pace. If you’ve been prevaricating on the mistaken assumption that I’d have to let you toddle off for your bedtime, then you’ve only your own idle stupidity to blame.’
In the shadows of the alcove in front of his office she felt into the silver bag. There were two small objects in there, of which she pulled out one and put it in the breast pocket of her robes. She unfolded a small piece of parchment, drew a quill from her pocket and rested the paper against the wall.
“PUSH ME”, she wrote. Then she turned and knocked on the door.
If Snape was surprised to see her standing there, he didn’t show it. Goldstein glanced up from the large filing box he was working his way through but, seeing her, went straight back to work, evidently determined to finish the job as quickly as possible.
‘Yes?’ Snape said expressionlessly.
‘Professor McGonagall asked me to pass on a message,’ she said, holding out her hand with the folded scrap of parchment, and the little silver bag underneath it. She dropped the bag into Severus’ palm, covered by the parchment, and turned to leave. Goldstein looked hopefully up again, clearly hoping for an early release, but when Snape began to close the door on Delilah, he returned to his filing.
Delilah took the secret staircase and ran back to the tower with thirty seconds left until curfew. She knew that if she was caught again she’d be in for a week of detention, and took the stairs two at a time, trying to ignore a searing stitch in her side.
‘When does peril pay?’ asked the door.
‘Sometimes things are only fun if they’re dangerous,’ Delilah panted back.
The door swung open, and she made her way straight to the bathroom, where she took the object from her pocket, a smooth, shiny oval-shaped metal piece, attached to a tiny disk like a watch battery. She prised the two apart and slid the larger metal piece into her knickers, positioned and repositioned it until it felt right, and then placed the watch battery piece on the outside of her knickers, where it snapped magnetically onto the oval and held it into place. The two combined weighed almost nothing, and she could hardly even feel them. She dropped her robes and went back to the common room.
‘Sorry about that, guys,’ she said, joining Padma and Lisa as they waved her over.
‘What was so urgent?’
‘There was a competition in last week’s Witch Weekly to win a 150 Galleon shopping spree at that new designer robe place on Diagon Alley, Aubrey Rosewater or whatever her name is, the American woman. I suddenly remembered the deadline is tonight so I ran off to the Owlery to get my submission in.’
‘You do live life on the edge,’ Padma laughed, and pushed a box of Honeydukes’ Fizzy Toadstools across to her. ‘So, what about this one – eight letters, something-O-something-something-W-something-something-T. “Fern is earth’s satellite, with skin growth by the sound of it”.’
‘Moonwort,’ Delilah said at once.
‘Woah!’ Lisa said, pencilling it in. ‘You’re a machine!’
Padma and Lisa puzzled over the last few clues, whilst Delilah’s attention wandered. The sky outside was still purplish, and she stared quite happily out through the enormous windows which lined the common room. This, she thought, had to be one of the most beautiful rooms in the entire castle, with its exquisite views. How lucky she was.
Terry came and sat in the chair beside her.
‘How’s it going?’ he said. Padma immediately tried to enlist his help with the last crossword clues, but he just laughed. ‘I’m hopeless at these things,’ he said. ‘If you’re down to the last few, I won’t be any help.’ He turned to Delilah, who flopped her head onto her shoulder to look at him. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve done that Defence against the Dark Arts homework yet?’ he asked.
‘Yep, I have for once,’ she said, feeling very relaxed. ‘Why, need a hand?’
‘A bit,’ he said, his brow wrinkling. ‘There’s that thing about wand length affecting the casting speed, but I can’t get my head around the calculation – can you?’
‘It’s much simpler than he made it sound – it’s all moot over nine and a half inches and under thirteen inches, so it’s pretty niche, but all you do is add a quarter of a second for every half-inch under, and deduct the same for every half-inch over, so in real life it wouldn’t make any particular-’
She suddenly gasped and half-jumped out of her seat, as a furious vibration erupted against her skin.
‘Are you OK?’ Terry said in alarm.
The vibration stopped as abruptly as it had started.
‘Fine,’ Delilah said, lowering herself back into the chair. ‘Just a, er, muscle spasm. What was I saying?’
‘About the wand length thing – so you only subtract the time under, what was it, nine and a half inches? Half a second for every quarter inch?’
‘Other way around…’
‘Who the hell has a wand over thirteen inches anyway?’ Lisa put in.
‘Wouldn’t you like to know,’ Terry quipped. Padma laughed and threw a Fizzy Toadstool at him, which he caught, tossed in the air, and caught in his mouth.
She was distracted and on edge for the next hour, expecting the metal piece to start vibrating again any second. She even risked sneaking the parchment out of her pocket to check it for a message, but there was nothing, and soon people started drifting off to the dormitories. Delilah was one of the last to brush her teeth in the bathroom, and by the time she went to bed, the other girls were already beginning to turn off their bedside lights. She changed into her blue nightshirt, keeping her knickers on, and threw herself on her front on the bed, not at all sleepy, unfolding the parchment again. She longed for him to send her another message.
Again, she wrote.
She wondered if Goldstein was still there; whether Snape had the button on his desk; whether he was looking at it; was maintaining a veneer of respectability whilst thinking about what happened when he pushed it…
Again, she repeated, curling her toes. Stop being a fucking tease, press it again.
Maybe he didn’t want to think about what happened when he pressed it, in case he started to get hard, started to pulse with excitement under his desk, had to clench his fists and his thighs to try and control himself, shifting discreetly in his chair, maybe wondering whether he could get his trousers unbuttoned without being noticed, growing light-headed with the rush of his pulse and the effort of keeping his hastening breath from becoming audible, thinking about the intensity with which he could make her come if he just pressed the button again, (again, again) but afraid of losing control…
I’m going insane here, she wrote messily, losing her grip on her quill.
Thoughts of George Weasley keeping you awake?
Thoughts of you thinking about me and George Weasley.
What are you wearing?
Knickers and a silver vibrator.
That seems risky. What if someone should walk in on you?
My state of undress would be the least of my concerns. The fact that I’m so horny I’m practically screaming would be more awkward.
Are you touching yourself?
You’ve left me no choice, you’re ignoring the button I gave you. This lovely slick warm thing pressed against my clit doing absolutely nothing, I’m having to massage it against myself since you’re leaving me to suffer. After you almost dragged me out of detention earlier I haven’t thought about anything else, I swear I’m going to explode with
‘OH!’ she gasped as the vibrator sprang to life, and she rolled onto her side in ecstasy, immobilised by the waves of pleasure which rushed through her.
Go on?
That’s so good don’t stop DON’T STOP
You like it?
Don’t stop
What are you thinking about?
What are you thinking about?
Tell me what you’re thinking about
Delilah
Delilah
Through her half-closed eyes she saw the hearth burst into a dazzling emerald fireball, and his outline appear in the middle of it. He stepped out onto the flagstones, and she saw the arched entrance to the chamber glow momentarily as he cast a Silencing Charm between her bed and the other girls without breaking his stride towards the bed, towards her, where she lay in an agony of ecstasy, the metal still pulsating in her knickers. He stopped beside the bed, the silver button clutched in his right hand, his wand in his left, and she saw that he was barefoot under his robes. He stood watching her writhing, her nightshirt up around her waist, then he threw the button and wand on the bed, pulled his own robes up and thudded one knee down on the mattress, straddling her with bare legs and leaning over her, pressing his face into her throat.
‘You are so fucking dangerous,’ he rumbled, his voice resonating through her breastbone. He moved up to her face and rested his forehead on hers, shoving his tongue into her mouth, pushed his hand up under her nightshirt to trace the lines of her ribs and down to her belly button, down to her hip bone and slid into her knickers, delighting breathlessly in the slick fever of her core; he felt her pulse pound under his fingertips for a few moments, then clenched his arms around her, sat up and flipped her over onto her front in a half-kneeling position on her elbows, his chest pressed against her back, one hand frantically massaging her breasts.
‘Did you really fuck George Weasley?’ he breathed into her ear.
‘No,’ Delilah whispered back. ‘He fucked me.’
He was hard as steel, and gave a wincing growl, gathering his robes in a grand sweep with one hand to ram his stiff length against her.
‘I bet you loved that.’
‘It was the hottest thing that ever happened to me. He fucked me senseless. He put my legs behind his head and-’ Delilah gasped as Severus rammed suddenly into her – ‘and he fucked me until… until…’
‘Did he touch you while he fucked you?’ Severus hissed into her ear, his hair stroking her shoulders like trailing ivy.
‘Yes,’ Delilah invented, ‘he touched me all over while he filled me up. He drove me crazy, and he was so big, he made me gasp, he made me-’ again, she was cut off by an unexpectedly vigorous pounding from Severus, whose eyes had become hot and dilated behind her, now kneeling upright, both hands on her hips.
‘You liked it?’ he demanded. ‘You liked it when he fucked you? It made you come?’
‘I fucking loved it.’
‘Tell me more about it,’ he said, slamming harder and harder into her.
‘More about how he fucked me?’ she said, her voice becoming thin.
‘More about how he made you come.’
‘Oh fuck, he made me come so hard when he touched me, and then when he fucked me he kept going for ages, he made me come at least twice more, and then I could see he was on the edge himself, he was going really slowly, but I wanted to feel him come inside me so I started moving really fast against him, really fast, back and forth really fast, really fast… really fast…’
Severus moved his hands up to her nipples, as stiff as lily nodes, and she circled her hips with a balletic fluidity that sprang a new current of sensation through both of their bodies, and as they both mimed screams of bliss Severus collapsed in slow-motion on top of her, crushing her against the bed, breathing like a bear into her back.
*
‘I’m sure I just heard footsteps…’ Gannon whispered, but he didn’t take his hand away from her head, guiding her back and forth as she slid her tongue up and down the length of his cock. Lilith felt an extra surge of excitement go through him which signalled that he was close, so she pulled away and snaked up his body, ignoring his snarl of frustration, and pressed herself hard against him, breathing “come on Gannon, fuck me, finish inside of me…” in his ear. He grabbed her and turned to push her against the wall, lifting her skirt and feeling her plump arse as she wrapped her legs around him.
Behind Gannon’s back Milton inched around the doorway and caught Lilith’s eye, one hand inside his trousers, and she licked her lips, smiling at him as Gannon kissed her neck and shoved inside of her…
Delilah was lying on the grass under an enormous beech tree beside the Great Lake. She let her battered copy of Lilith’s Lovers fall onto her belly, and stared up at the gently waving branches above her. It was a heavenly afternoon, warm but with little breezy wafts that sent aspen seeds rolling across the lawn. Her last class of the Spring term had been that afternoon, and having spent an hour in the dungeon gloom of the potions laboratory, she’d changed into a cotton dress and resolved to spend the rest of the day enjoying the sunshine.
‘Deliiiilaaaaaaah,’ came a voice, and she turned to see a small group coming towards her, led by Michael Corner carrying a crate of butterbeer under one arm. She put her handbag on top of her book and sat up.
‘You’re under our tree,’ Michael said good-naturedly, dropping the crate and throwing himself on the grass beside her.
‘Your tree?’ she said, confused. The rest of the group – Terry, two girls and a curly-haired boy – also settled themselves around her.
‘It’s the only one that can’t be seen from the castle steps or from Hagrid’s hut,’ Terry explained, propping his satchel against the tree roots and leaning back on it.
‘And why don’t you want to be seen?’
‘We’re having a little end-of-term celebration,’ Michael said cryptically.
A blonde girl in the group laughed as she pulled a little embroidered pouch from the pocket of her robes and tossed it to Michael.
‘You’re Delilah, aren’t you?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Delilah said, leaning across to extend a hand.
‘I’m Hannah,’ the blonde girl said, shaking it. ‘Terry’s told us about you.’
Terry uncorked a bottle of beer bottle and handed it to Delilah, while Michael untied the string around the embroidered pouch and unrolled a length of purple fabric with lots of pockets, which he laid it flat on the grass.
‘Michael,’ said the boy with curly hair, raising a warning hand. ‘Is she…?’ he threw Delilah a significant look.
‘Delilah’s cool,’ Terry said, leaning his head back on the trunk.
Michael gave Delilah a crooked smile.
‘You won’t tell on us, will you?’ he said.
‘No,’ Delilah said, with no idea what was going on. The other boy looked unconvinced, but took a Butterbeer from Terry. Michael lit a stubby rolled cigarette from the pouch with a flame from the tip of his wand and passed it to him, and he took a deep drag, leaned back on his elbow and seemed to forget about Delilah.
‘So you were at Beauxbatons before?’ Hannah said.
‘Yep,’ Delilah replied, watching Michael as he slid a tiny, translucent piece of paper from a pocket of the pouch, and a pinch of greenish stuff from another pocket.
‘What do you think about that attack? Scary, right?’
‘Yep,’ Delilah said again, as Michael sprinkled the green stuff along the crease in the paper. She tore her eyes away to look at Hannah. ‘It’s still a total mystery though, nobody seems to know why it happened or who was behind it.’
‘Susie?’ the boy said, offering the cigarette to the other girl, who took it between her finger and thumb.
‘Oh,’ Hannah said, ‘but somebody died didn’t they? Did you know them?’
‘They weren’t a student, so I don’t think so,’ Delilah said, ‘although I don’t know who it was.’
‘It was a visitor,’ the curly haired boy said. ‘My uncle was told by someone at the embassy.’
‘I thought the Daily Prophet said it was a teacher?’ Susie said.
‘Delilah?’ Michael said, proffering a freshly-rolled cigarette.
‘Oh, no thanks,’ Delilah said. ‘I don’t smoke.’
‘Come off it, all French people smoke.’
‘Go on Delilah,’ Terry said. ‘Live a little. Give it here, Michael.’ He sat up and took the cigarette, lit it from the end of his wand and took a deep, blissful drag, then passed it across to Delilah. ‘Go on, try it.’
Delilah took the cigarette uncertainly between her index and middle fingers, as she’d seen many of her mother’s friends doing, and took a shallow pull from the hot, crinkled paper, trying to look like she knew what she was doing.
Terry watched her expectantly.
‘Try again,’ he said encouragingly. ‘More this time.’
Delilah dragged again, taking the smoke further into her lungs, and held her breath for a few moments before letting it slowly out, as the curly-haired boy had done. The most wonderfully drowsy feeling washed over her, and she passed the cigarette to Hannah.
‘Well?’ Michael said.
‘Oh, it’s very nice,’ she heard herself say. Michael and Terry laughed.
An hour later the sky was turning pink. They were all lying on the grass except Michael, who was still sitting cross-legged, occasionally rolling more joints and passing them out to be distributed among the group. Delilah felt tickled by nothing in particular, as though something had amused here earlier but she couldn’t remember what it was, so mirth kept bubbling up in her and making her smile for no reason.
‘Hey, this is fun,’ she said, in a voice that didn’t sound entirely like her own. ‘Do you guys do this a lot?’
‘When we can get our hands on the stuff,’ Hannah said lazily.
‘Where do you get it from?’
‘Oh, a few different places. Finnigan grows it when he can, so does Nott, and a bunch of dealers tend to rock up in Hogsmeade when they know we’re allowed out…’
‘What is it, exactly?’
‘Mellowvine. It’s perfectly harmless but obviously forbidden. Hypocrisy if you ask me, I’m convinced Sprout grows it in Greenhouse Four and hands it around the staff room on weekends.’
‘Definitely. If Dumbledore’s not out of his tree at least sixty per cent of the time then I’m a fucking porgle.’
‘Don’t forget Trelawney. Last week she grabbed me on a staircase and told me to beware of five-legged beasts. Trippy.’
‘OK, fun game,’ Susie said, propping herself up on one elbow. ‘Who do you reckon gets the messiest at those staff parties they have after the feasts?’
‘Hagrid to be sure. I had to serve detention with him on a Saturday morning last winter, I was supposed to be de-slugging the school pumpkins, and when Filch took me down there we found him completely unconscious in his vegetable patch. It was freezing, too.’
‘I dunno, you’d need half a brewery to take him down. I reckon it’ll be a dark horse. Somebody you’d never expect, like McGonagall.’
‘Or Snape.’
‘Snape wouldn’t surprise me at all, he seems to have a permanent hangover…’
Delilah was lying with her head resting on her hands. She realised her arms were growing stiff, so she lifted her head and stretched them out in front of her, then rested them back on the grass either side of her head, and, as she did so, felt a nudge at her little finger. She glanced out of the corner of her eye to see that Terry had moved his hand up next to hers, and rested it barely a centimetre away.
She felt her handbag vibrate briefly beside her, and half rolled over to pull out the parchment, which she opened a crack to surreptitiously glance at the message.
‘Maybe we should break into the party after the feast tonight and find out for ourselves,’ Susie was saying.
What are you doing with yourself this fine evening, Miss Blackthorn?
As she thrust the parchment back into her handbag she saw the spine of her book, and flopped back down, replacing her hand beside Terry’s.
‘Speaking of which, we should go and get changed, it’ll be starting in about half an hour…’
‘Oh God, do we have to?’
‘Are you kidding? I’m starving, I could eat a hippogriff…’
Michael started rolling up the embroidered pouch. Susie was seized with a weak, continuous giggling fit; Hannah was smiling so broadly she looked like she had a coat hanger stuck in her mouth; and the curly-haired boy had his eyes closed in lazy contentment. Terry stood up and dusted the grass from his jeans, so Delilah stood too and deliberately staggered so that he caught her; she leaned in and whispered quickly into his ear, then slung her handbag over her shoulder.
‘I’m dying for the loo, I’ll see you guys at the feast,’ she said to the others. ‘Thanks for letting me join in your end-of-term party.’
‘Hey, any time,’ Hannah said. ‘You should come again next time, one of the boys will let you know. You’re always welcome.’
‘Thanks,’ Delilah smiled, waving, and set off for the castle whilst the others gradually became vertical. Once in the Entrance Hall she took the staircase at a jog and ducked into the picture gallery where she’d first met Terry, pulled out the parchment and scribbled a brief reply:
Shadow Garden. Ten minutes.
Terry arrived at the Shadow Garden moments after she did, climbing through the window, which was now flanked with an abundantly flowering passion vine.
‘What’s this about?’ he grinned, walking over to her where she was resting her back against the wall.
‘Oh, y’know,’ she said in a low voice, with a suggestive smile.
‘I don’t actually,’ he said, watching her expectantly.
‘Take a guess,’ she said, playing for time, watching the window out of the corner of her eye.
‘You want to upbraid me for my irresponsible recreational habits?’
‘Actually, I’ve always thought irresponsible habits are kind of sexy.’
Terry smiled slowly.
‘Really?’ he said.
A tiny movement shook the leaves of the passion vine, and only Delilah could have noticed the sliver of a shadowy form move behind its leaves.
‘Oh yes. Where’s the fun in anything if it’s not a little… dangerous?’
As she said this she cocked her head invitingly and, as she’d planned, after a moment’s hesitation, he leaned in closer to her. She put her arms around his shoulders and pulled his face towards her neck, which he started kissing. Over his shoulder she watched the passion vine tremble, and tipped her head back, giving a theatrically blissful moan of pleasure. Her moan spurred Terry on, and he started to toy with the neckline of her dress, so she writhed encouragingly and he slipped his hand underneath the thin cotton and groaned when he felt her nipples respond to his touch. She tugged her dress down entirely and put her hands over her head, performing another gasp of delight as he started to kiss her breasts, and half-closed her eyes, watching the window through the crack in her eyelids.
She saw a slice of a dark profile and a flash of an eye peering through the leaves as Terry’s hands roved down her thighs and started to push up her skirt.
‘Oh yes, yes,’ she gasped, ‘touch me, Terry, touch me…’
He pushed her skirt all the way up to her waist and Snape’s face emerged from behind the passion vine, his jaw working, his eyes flickering between her and Terry.
Delilah gave a huge gasping cry as Terry slipped his hands into her knickers, and breathed ‘yes, yes, yes, just there, just like that…’ She lifted one leg and wrapped it around his waist, so that he started to fumble with the zip of his jeans, and she looked directly at the window, catching Snape in the eye. She tossed her head and sank her hands into her hair, undulating with paroxysms of pleasure. He had now stepped out entirely from the shadows and watched openly as Terry pressed himself against her, gnashing with excitement, kissing arbitrarily at patches of her flesh and trying to get his trousers unbuttoned. She could tell from the set of his jaw and the half-lidded blaze of his eyes that Snape was seethingly hard, pulsing under his robes, and she wondered if he was touching himself out of sight under the windowsill, watching her being ravaged by Terry’s lust. He sprang lithely through the window, so silently and discreetly that Terry noticed nothing, wasn’t distracted for a moment from his explorations of her skin, and the sight of him in the half-light over Terry’s shoulder, coming silently closer, watching her with explosive yearning, made her glad of Terry’s hands in her knickers, and she ground herself against his touch, suddenly so wet that he whimpered with excitement. She grabbed both of her breasts and kneaded them, pushing them together, but Terry was blocking Snape’s view, so she put one hand on his shoulder and pushed him easily down to his knees, then guided his head between her legs, feeling a delicious throb of pleasure as the tip of his nose nudged against her clit and his tongue stroked her rhubarb-pink skin. She pushed her bodice down further and pulled her skirt up higher, feeling Snape’s eyes roving over her, and running her hands over herself in line with his gaze, spreading her legs and rolling her hips, until Terry, panting with impatience, stood up, pushed his jeans open and rammed his hips against hers, picking up her other leg and lifting her to lean against the wall, burying his face in her hair…
Suddenly he flew backwards by six feet, as though he were magnetically opposed to her body, staggered into an enormous pot plant, grabbed at the arm of a knobbly cactus to try and regain his balance, and yelped and crashed to the ground as its sharp edge spiked his hand.
‘Fifty points from Ravenclaw,’ Snape thundered. ‘Get into your robes and be down to the Great Hall in five minutes, you disgusting boy.’
Terry, looking mortified, scrambled to his feet and looked at Delilah, who had let her skirt fall and pulled up the bodice of her dress, holding it against her chest and trying hard not to smile.
‘Miss du Lac, you will stay here,’ Snape added. Delilah raised her eyebrows at Terry and jerked her head towards the window. He hovered for a moment, but with Snape’s wand still trained on him he didn’t dare argue, so with an apologetic look, he vanished through the window. Delilah and Snape stood where they were for a few beats, then moved at exactly the same time, so that a second later she was back against the wall with her legs around his waist as he kissed her hard, all over her face, neck and chest and up and down her arms, as though trying to reclaim every inch of her, whilst ripping desperately at his trousers.
‘Poor Terry,’ she whispered, ‘he’s going to explode if he doesn’t get to fuck me soon’; and Snape stiffened like he’d been struck by lightning, then slammed into her and fucked her into the wall with such force that the skin on the small of her back grazed like a nettle rash.
*
Delilah slept late the next morning, and woke to an empty dormitory, everybody having left for the Easter holidays. It was sunny and peaceful in the high-ceilinged gallery, with the beds still unmade and a chaos of abandoned robes and spellbooks littering the floor. Delilah hummed contentedly to herself as she dressed in jeans and an old pink T-shirt, and brushed her teeth at the dormitory sink. She mooched down to the common room and spread out on a sofa in the recess of the curved oriel window, rifling inattentively through that morning’s The Daily Prophet which she found on the coffee table.
The previous evening, she’d had to go and change into her robes and hastily tidy her dishevelled hair for the feast, and so had missed the first few minutes of the festivities. She’d tried to sneak in unnoticed but it felt like everybody looked up as she sidled up the length of the Ravenclaw table. Hannah waved at her and Michael gave her a knowing wink, making her feel sure Terry had told him what had happened; he was sitting beside Michael looking pale and nervy, and gave her a quick, shy smile when she came in, then looked down at his plate. Delilah squeezed into a seat between Lisa and Cho and half-joined in with their chatter, but caught Snape’s eye across the room so frequently, they may as well have just sat openly staring at each other. Every time she glanced up and caught him watching her a little flare of excitement leapt in her chest, and when she averted her eyes from his to look at somebody else around the table, she could still feel his gaze drinking her in. When she turned her head to listen to Marietta telling everybody the latest news on Ariadne, whose parents she was in contact with, she gathered all of her hair over one shoulder to expose her neck, and ran her fingers over her skin, making it look like an unconscious gesture, but absolutely sure Snape was watching her every move.
Now her stomach started to rumble, so she made her way down to the Great Hall for lunch, where, since there were so few people, a small buffet had been set up to the side of the room rather than a whole spread for each table. She ended up taking a stack of sandwiches, a bottle of butterbeer and a slice of carrot cake out into the grounds, where she lay under the beech tree with the intention of making some progress on her holiday Potions homework, but ended up putting that off by writing overdue replies to George and Remus.
Hiya Remus,
Thanks so much for your letter. Yes, I am staying at Hoggy Warty Hogwarts for Easter, and yes, I would really love to see you if you can get away! It looks like it’s even quieter here than it was at Christmas; it’s only the first day of the holidays but I haven’t seen another soul in the castle today except for Nearly Headless Nick. Nothing much is new – I expect you heard from Dumbledore that a Ravenclaw girl was attacked in the Forbidden Forest the day you and I went to Hogsmeade. Some mad conspiracy theory started flying around straight away that I was the one who had attacked her, but I think it was just hysteria, I told them I was in Hogsmeade and nobody’s brought it up since. Nobody seems to know who really did do it – she was cursed so it can’t have been a centaur, which was another theory that was going around for a while. I guess it was another student. Or a teacher. Anyway, I heard last night from one of her friends that she’s making really good progress in St Mungo’s, apparently she’s talking again and they think she’ll be walking soon, which is a relief – I mean, she’s a nasty cow who wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire, but she didn’t deserve to be permanently maimed…
Hiya George,
Thanks so much for your letter and the top-up of RosyGlow – it came in the nick of time, I was down to the last scrapings of my old one. You must let me pay you this time – you’ll go out of business if you keep sending me free things! I should’ve written to you sooner to thank you for that other package you sent. It was fucking incredible, I really can’t thank you enough. I had a bit of a mishap with the aphrodisiac stuff (FYI, you’ve developed a weapons-grade sex toy there, you should add it to your military range) but everything else has been amazing. Sorry to hear your brother’s ditching you with the shop over Easter, I bet you’re green with envy that he’s off to Egypt – still, you’ve got one in the bank now, you can get your own back over the summer, go off for your own jaunt somewhere sunny. It’d be great to meet up for a drink but I’m afraid I’m stuck at Hogwarts, I actually have no idea when I’ll next be in London…
After she’d finished her letters she rolled onto her back and read her book for a while, then dozed off in the sunshine. It was very relaxing with the heat of the sun on her cheeks, the reflections from the lake casting sun pennies against her closed eyelids, the grounds silent except for the rustling willows and occasional sigh from a swallow overhead, and she drifted off into a shallow, nonsense dream about walking Wilbur the crup on a lead through the Forbidden Forest, trying to keep him in check as he bounded off in every direction chasing shadowy wisps of vapour, until she lost patience with him and picked him up to her chest, where he turned into Matilda, who laid her tawny head on Delilah’s shoulder…
‘Oi, get off…’ she mumbled, feeling a clutch of talons digging into her wrist. She opened her eyes to see Snape’s owl perched on her arm, silhouetted against the backdrop of the sinking late afternoon sun.
Miss du Lac,
We seem to have been left unsupervised, so I wonder if you would honour me with your presence this evening, for dinner in my quarters at 7pm?
S.S.
The request had obviously been rhetorical, as the owl took off without waiting for a reply. Delilah bit her lip, staring down at the note. Dinner with Severus… for some reason the idea made her feel nervous. She’d spent plenty of time in his room, but always in hours snatched between lessons, or between dinner and curfew, so that their meetings had an exhilarating urgency to them. The prospect of a whole evening in his company felt almost frighteningly intimate.
She made her way back to the castle, where she threw her bag on the bed and agonised over what to wear. She’d long since given up dressing up for him whenever they’d met by arrangement (as opposed to chancing on one another in a stairway or forest clearing), but this seemed different. This time she’d been formally invited, and they’d be sharing a meal almost like it was a… a date. What on earth did one wear on a date? Especially a date with someone you’d already been sleeping with for several weeks? A ridiculous image flashed through her mind of her tottering up to Snape’s office door in an elaborate ball gown, high-heeled shoes, elbow-length gloves and a tiara, with sparkly earrings swinging from her ears… Eventually, deciding it was better to under-do it than over-do it, she kept her jeans on and just put on her silver birthday necklace, and changed into a black blouse which, she reflected, was smart even if it wasn’t glamorous.
At five minutes to seven she headed down to the dungeons, and approached his office with butterflies in her stomach. The door was already ajar, so she pushed it open and was astounded to see thirty or forty candles dotted around the room, some floating in mid-air, others gathered on bookshelves, and a little fold-out table in the middle of the room laid with napkins, cutlery and platters covered in brass cloches.
‘Wow,’ she said as she walked in, closing the door behind her. ‘What’s the occasion?’
‘I thought we’d celebrate having the castle to ourselves,’ Snape said from the doorway to the bedroom. A bottle of Champagne and a crystal flute had been floating beside the table, and now drifted over to Delilah and nudged her elbow, so she took the glass and allowed it to be filled by the bottle. The bottle and a second glass drifted over to Snape, who did the same, then raised the glass in a silent toast. She raised her own and they each took a sip, holding eye contact.
‘Well, shall we…?’ he said, gesturing the lavishly laid table.
‘Oh, yes,’ Delilah said, making her way towards it. He darted around the table and held out her chair for her. As she sat down he gathered her hair out of the way of the chair and let it fall down the back. He took his own seat, and lifted off the brass cloche to reveal two lobsters.
‘Lobster,’ Delilah smiled. ‘My favourite. How did you know?’
‘I can’t take credit I’m afraid. For that or any of this,’ he said, gesturing the candles. ‘I sent down to the kitchens for a house elf to prepare dinner for two in my chambers, and they seem to have… taken the initiative.’
‘We don’t literally have the castle to ourselves do we?’ she said, uncovering the other platters to reveal wedges of lemon, dishes of fresh greens, chips, and little silver jugs of sauces.
‘More or less,’ he said, lifting one of the lobsters onto her plate with a pair of silver tongs. ‘There are a handful of students left, but nothing Filch can’t handle should they choose to misbehave. We always have to have at least one Head of House on the premises if there are any students around, and on this occasion everyone else had other places to be, so it fell to me. Filius is at a conference, Minerva’s visiting her niece, Pomona’s a judge at some kind of horticultural show, and the headmaster’s off doing goodness knows what. I thought we’d make the most of there being nobody around to notice that you’re not in your bed in the morning.’
Delilah’s stomach squeezed. She snapped one of the lobster’s claws with the cracker on the side of her plate, and used the long fork to winkle out a perfect horn of flesh.
‘I’m staying for the night?’ she said.
‘If you want to. You’ve almost done it by accident enough times. And you can have that bath you’ve been going on about.’
‘I mentioned that once,’ she protested with a smile. ‘A bath does sound amazing though.’
‘Well. Perhaps I’ll join you.’
He gave her a smile through the prongs of the candelabra. Maybe because he so seldom smiled, or perhaps it was the glow of the candles and the effects of the Champagne, but she felt the most overpowering, unexpected rush of adrenaline swoop right through her and straight to her head, so that when she tried to smile back at him, she wasn’t sure she managed it since her lips seemed to be twitching of their own accord. She lifted her drink to her mouth instead, and it trembled in her hand, spitting tiny golden droplets on her wrist as the bubbles sparkled over the lip of the flute.
Once they’d devoured the meal, as well as two crème brûlées in crystal dishes with a handful of plump raspberries on the side, Delilah leaned backwards in her chair and put her hands on her stomach.
‘That was absolutely divine,’ she said, putting the last raspberry in her glass so the Champagne fizzed around it and buoyed it to the top. ‘Thank you.’
He simply nodded in response, then stood and held out his hand for hers. She allowed herself to be pulled to her feet and led through to the adjoining room, where the bathroom door stood ajar. Severus pushed it open to reveal yet more floating candles, and the air thick with scented steam from the bathtub, which was filled with hot fragrant water and sprinkled with rose petals.
‘Did you do this?’ Delilah said in amazement. ‘Or was it the house elf again?’
‘I did, actually. I had to consult an immensely silly book in the library to find a charm for keeping bath water hot. If anybody spotted me, my reputation will be ruined.’
Delilah walked up to the sink unit, which was also scattered with rose petals. She picked up a petal and crushed it between her fingers, feeling suddenly shy. She took another sip of Champagne for something to do, and looked at the blurred outline of her reflection in the misted mirror. Snape came up behind her and snaked his arms around her waist, beginning to unbutton her blouse from the bottom, and her stomach began to fizz as his fingers climbed upwards. He undid her top button and ran his fingertips over her breasts exactly as he knew drove her wild with excitement, and sure enough she gave a faint moan, and closed her eyes as a tight thrill gripped her, and she immediately felt herself getting wet. Within less than a minute she was wearing just her knickers, and was perched on the edge of the sink with her arms wrapped around him, grinding desperately against his bulging crotch and ripping at the buttons of his robes, kissing his chest as it was revealed to him inch by inch, running her hands up and down his spine and then slipping them down the back of his boxer shorts, stroking in teasing little circles with her fingertips and feeling him stiffen further in response. She slid off the sink and took him in her mouth as he dragged his robes over his head, licking the nacreous beads of nectar that speckled his skin with each fresh pulse that contracted against her tongue, then slithered up his naked body and grabbed at his hand, shoving it between her own thighs and moving back and forth against his palm through her drenched knickers; he watched hungrily as her eyelids began to flutter, her cheeks blazed snapdragon pink, and she came with a vibrato gasp and collapsed against him, hot and heavy, her heart galloping like a charging doe.
Forgetting the bath, he picked her up and she wrapped her legs around his waist to be carried back to the bedroom. He dropped her heavily on the bed and kneeled over her, breathing like he’d just run the perimeter of the castle, and fell on her, punch drunk, his eyes unfocused, so turned on that his hands shook violently, his hard-on standing stiff and frantic, and she wrapped her arms around his neck to pull him closer to her, pressing herself against him, inflamed by his desperation for her, gasping in anticipation of his hot rapier impaling her, filling her up; she fell on her back and pulled him on top of her–
Kneeling upright with her between his thighs, he suddenly froze. She felt every muscle in his body tense, and instinctively she froze too; she stared up at him and saw his eyes widen and his pale torso give a deep, ominous shudder.
‘What…?’ she breathed, but he’d already stood, bounding across the room with incredible speed, pulling on his robes, snatching up his wand and reaching for a cloak so quickly that the whole thing looked like a choreographed dance.
‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘At once. You can stay here. Have that bath. Nobody will disturb you.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I have been summoned.’
What do you…?’ she began, frowning, but then she saw that he was swinging on a black cloak with a wide hood, that she’d never seen him wear before. The sleeve of his robe fell to his elbow as he lifted his arm to pull the hood up, so that she caught a flash of the mark on his inner forearm, which stood out more vividly than it ever had before.
‘Wait, you’re going to Voldemort?’
‘Yes.’
‘When will you be back?’
‘It could be any amount of time. A few hours, a day, longer. Stay as long as you like, but don’t wait around for me.’
‘Oh… OK. Well…’
He was already making for the doorway.
‘Hey, Severus, thanks for…’
He turned briefly.
‘The pleasure was all mine. Or, it almost was.’
He strode from the room and she heard the office door open and then slam. She stayed in position on the bed for a few moments, stunned by the speed with which he had gone. She felt bereft, lonely in his empty room. She gazed around at the bare little chamber, lit only by the bedside lamp, trying to decide what to do. She wasn’t going to stay here alone all night, was she? The idea of climbing into his cold bed, turning off the light and rolling over to sleep, it was just too bizarre. The door to the bathroom still stood ajar, and a segment of flickering light stretched across the opposite wall. She slid off the bed and pushed the door open, gazing again at the romantic scene beyond it. The candles, the aromatic steam, the rose petals… it gave her a strange, skittish feeling to imagine him pacing the library shelves, glancing furtively over his shoulder, looking up the bath water charm, procuring the rose petals, preparing the whole thing, all and entirely for her. From everything else, the food, the Champagne and the candles, she could have believed he’d just wanted her for the night – he’d admitted it was the handiwork of a house elf – but this… there was something so intimate about it. He’d seemed different this evening: more accommodating, more reticent, maybe a tiny, tiny bit… nervous?
She wiped a small window in the misted up mirror and stared at her streaming reflection. With her fingertip she traced the line of the violet scar across her chest. The smaller ones had now faded to white, and were only visible in the sunlight. She stared into her own eyes, challenging herself not to blink, until her pupils seemed to oscillate and swell like sea anemones. After a couple of minutes, she turned away from the mirror, took her Champagne flute and climbed into the bath, sinking blissfully into the water and letting the heat flow through her, slackening and unfurling every muscle in her body. She lay there for a long time with absolutely no thoughts in her mind, occasionally sipping from her glass, every so often dipping her head under the water to intensify the silence, so that only her nose and upper lip protruded from the shimmering surface of the water.
When she eventually emerged, she draped herself in a navy dressing gown which was hanging on the back of the bathroom door, so large on her that the armholes came to her elbows, and wandered back into the study where the foldaway table was still laid with the remains of their dessert. The fire had waned in the grate and now smouldered invitingly, casting a ruby glow over the chaise lounge. Severus’ desk had several papers strewn over it; she idly picked up an open copy of The Daily Prophet to see what article he had been reading, and underneath it recognised the blank piece of parchment which was partnered with the one in her handbag. She walked behind the desk and glanced guiltily over her shoulder, even though she knew she was quite alone, and eased open the top drawer. Right there, on the very top, was one of the photographs she had taken with the CribCheat, of her sitting naked on the floor with her back to the camera, glancing coquettishly over her shoulder, and shaking her hair. She closed the drawer and tried the one under it, but found only a stack of boring-looking manuals and information sheets; in the bottom drawer, a deep one for filing papers, she found, to her bemusement, nothing except a thick stack of editions of Witch Weekly piled up, the most recent on top. She rifled through them and found that the oldest one, right at the bottom of the pile, was the edition with the pirouetting witch on the front, that had Connie’s message on the Whispers page. It looked like he had taken out a subscription the same week that she had.
She took the most recent edition, which, she realised, she hadn’t even got round to opening since it had been delivered to her a couple of days earlier, and took it over to the chaise lounge, where she curled her feet under her and angled the page towards the fireplace to give herself enough light to read by. The Champagne bottle drifted over and topped up her glass as she skimmed through a feature on window polishing potions, an interview with a witch who had founded a hospital in India which was now the world’s leading treatment centre for dragon pox, and several pages of photographs of a male aerialist clad in tight white leggings performing incredible feats, backflipping gracefully off tiny platforms and catching a loop of rope nine feet away, or suspending himself by one ankle from a length of fluttering silk. She stopped automatically on the Whispers page and cast her eyes over the entries: this wizard has it from a trusted confidant who doesn’t want the source of their information known, but let’s just say they have details of conversations which could only have been overheard through a garden fence… their calendars claim it was a fifty-minute floo conference with the ambassador in Helsinki, but the brevity – not to say absence – of the minutes filed afterwards tell a different tale…
Then she saw something that made her grip slacken on the stem of her flute, so that Champagne spilled all over the chaise lounge and the glass rolled to the floor and smashed.
UN BOUQUET DE LILA ET DE PRUNELLIER
Ooh la la! Another secret message to the snapper’s girl, in the language of flowers!
She’d be wise to pay close attention to this one. What are we to make of reports that the Lady of the Lake has received a visit from an enemy of her late husband?
Her secret’s safe for now, but time’s running out.
The Sunday of the waning moon is her last chance, or devastation awaits. This could get very, very messy…
