Delilah had expected a long, painful, sleepless night. A tiny House Elf was standing like a sentry at the bottom of the moving staircase when she left Dumbledore’s office, who nodded deferentially to her and trotted off along the corridor with the implication that she should follow. When they arrived at the Guest Quarters she found a beautiful cosy living room with a crackling fire, and in the adjoining bathroom a claw-footed bathtub had been filled with hot, lavender-scented water, lighted by several candles. She slipped out of Snape’s robes, avoiding catching sight of herself in the mirror, and climbed into the bath, sinking apprehensively into the water, braced for its sting against her wounds, but the water had evidently been infused with some kind of soothing solution: her broken skin cooled as the water surrounded it, and she immediately felt deliciously relaxed and drowsy. She lay blissfully for half an hour or so before gently massaging the dried blood out of her hair using a glug of something called Super Trooper’s Extra Efficient Hair Potion which had been left on the side of the bath, and climbed out feeling much better. She dried herself off and pulled on a rich red bathrobe which was hanging on the back of the door, and, out in the sitting room, found that the table by the fire had been laid with a pot of tea and an enormous pile of buttered crumpets, so she curled up in the armchair and tucked in. It was so warm and peaceful sitting alone by the fire with a hot mug of tea and a full stomach that for a few minutes, she almost managed to forget how she’d ended up there.
A cold feeling shot through her every time she remembered Snape’s words: you wouldn’t have survived much longer … you would certainly have been killed … I was only just in time to save her…
‘You want me to attack you?’ Pansy had said, her puckered little mouth twisting into an ugly snarl of disbelief. Delilah had dragged her into a deserted Potions laboratory, and the greenish flicker from the brackets cast her in a more than usually unflattering light.
‘Yes. Badly enough to get me sent home.’
‘But why?’
‘You were right. I don’t belong here, I want to leave, go back to Beauxbatons where I belong,’ Delilah lied, using Pansy’s own words in the hopes of goading her into one of her bigoted frenzies.
‘What’s in it for me?’
‘Except for seeing the back of me?’ Delilah replied bitterly. She pulled out her Gringotts bag and shook it at Pansy. ‘I’ll pay you.’
Pansy gaped at the bulging sack.
‘How much?’
‘Twenty Galleons.’
‘Thirty.’
‘Twenty five, and that’s my final offer. Want it or not?’
Pansy had reached out greedily for the bag, but Delilah lifted it out of her reach.
‘You can have it at the time.’
She thought with ferocious disgust of Pansy’s puggy little face, her thin-lipped, scrunched up little mouth like a cat’s arse, and then felt an even more violent stab of disgust at herself.
You can’t blame her, she reminded herself, you asked her to do it, you paid her to do it, and it’s not her fault it all backfired. You’re the stupidest person in the world.
She didn’t have to pick such a vicious curse though, the evil bitch. I didn’t ask her to nearly kill me.
Well. You kind of did.
The bottom line was, it had been a harebrained plan and she hadn’t thought it through at all. Now she was still spending Christmas alone in an empty castle, but doing it twenty-five Galleons lighter, scarred for life and lucky to be alive.
A wave of desolate exhaustion washed over her. She put down her empty mug and shuffled into the spectacular bedroom, where the largest bed she’d ever seen was dressed with rich red bedclothes and a mound of fluffy pillows. Her new woollen pyjamas were folded neatly on the pillow, so she put them on, leaving the bathrobe folded over the back of a high-backed velvet armchair. She bounced into the bed and wriggled under the duvet, and then spotted a small goblet on the bedside table, with a luggage tag tied around the stem reading For a Dreamless Sleep. She downed it in one and crashed into oblivion.
In the morning she woke to find a full cooked breakfast on a tray resting on the small stool beside the bed, covered by a brass cloche, along with a pot of coffee, a jug of iced pumpkin juice, a huge pile of warm pastries and a crisp copy of The Daily Prophet. As she lounged in the lavish guest bed devouring the sumptuous spread and flicking idly through the newspaper, she almost felt as though she were on holiday, staying in a luxurious hotel.
As she was thinking this, leaning back on the pillows with a hot mug warming her hands, a sable-black owl swept into the room and landed on the foot of the bed, its claw outstretched. Delilah leaned forward to receive the missive and gave a sharp inhalation as her chest stabbed with pain. She was fairly sure she already knew whom it was from. She unfolded a single sheet inscribed by a spidery hand.
No time like the present.
Delilah sighed and finished her coffee, then climbed gingerly out of bed, wincing when she put her weight on her arm, and dressed with some difficulty in the jeans and jumper which were folded neatly on the chenille ottoman.
*
‘Enter.’
Delilah pushed open the door to Snape’s office and found him sitting at his desk marking a stack of parchments. A shaft of chilly December sunlight lit him from behind through the high, narrow window, illuminating hair so black it was almost blue. He didn’t look up when she edged into the room.
‘I had begun to fear you weren’t coming.’
‘I came as soon as I got your note. Good job I’m here at all since you didn’t think to sign it or tell me where to come.’
‘Apparently I was right to rely on your devilishly accomplished deductive powers.’
He dashed off a few words on the bottom of the parchment he was marking, underlined them three times with a flourish, then tossed the parchment on top of the pile and stood, finally turning his attention to Delilah.
‘To begin our defence classes, I would like to work on your Shield Charm,’ he announced without preamble. ‘You have clearly mastered the spell, but your technique could use some work.’
‘I cast a great Shield Charm,’ Delilah said grumpily.
Snape cocked an eyebrow and immediately raised his wand, giving Delilah barely a second to splutter the incantation and cast a patchy silver shield around herself. Snape sent a well-aimed jinx through the shield and Delilah had to spin aside to avoid it.
‘That’s not fair,’ she protested. ‘You didn’t give me any warning, I can do much better than that.’
‘Oh, I see,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Well, next time someone tries to kill you do be sure to let them know, so you have sufficient time to protect yourself. I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to oblige, as long as you ask nicely.’
Delilah knew he was right and gritted her teeth, clutching her wand. He raised his own again and this time Delilah cast a shield so powerful that her view of Snape was obscured by a shimmering mist; but he pointed his wand at her knee and, to her fury, managed to land a Knock-Knee Jinx which caused her to totter over and her shield to evaporate.
‘What you need to do,’ Snape instructed once he’d administered the counter-jinx and she was back on her feet, ‘is describe a figure of eight with your wand-tip as you cast the charm. Your shield is powerful, but it doesn’t give you sufficient coverage to protect you from a determined assailant.’
This sounded like simple advice, but turned out to be monstrously difficult to achieve.
‘Protego!’
‘Cratos.’
Delilah crashed to her knees, having stumbled over an invisible barrier.
‘Protego!’
‘Cantabellium.’
Now she found herself uncontrollably belting out a painfully off-key aria, replete with chest-clutching and arm-waving, until Snape, grimacing, released her with a wave of his wand.
‘Protego!’
‘Tarantallegra.’
‘Protego!’
‘Langlock.’
‘PROTEGO!’
‘Obscuro.’
The complicated wand movement delayed the materialisation of the shield so much that Snape always got in first, and after an hour and a half Delilah was sweating, frazzled and frustrated. She stood before him seething with rage as he defeated her again and again, her knuckles white around her wand, which was humming with exertion.
‘That will do for today,’ he said at last.
‘No!’ she snapped, breathing heavily. ‘I can do it, let me try again!’
‘Not today,’ he said. ‘That is quite enough for now.’
Delilah relented and, after catching her breath, went over to her handbag, which was propped against the curved leg of the chaise lounge.
‘This is the present for my mother,’ she said, drawing out the velvet box. She walked across the room and held it out to him. ‘You said you’d get it to her?’
Snape took the box and laid it on her desk, then turned back to face her. Her cheeks were pink and her chest heaving from the morning’s work, but he was marble-cool and as composed as ever.
She wondered why she wasn’t being unceremoniously dismissed, as she normally was when he decided a meeting was over.
‘Take this off,’ he said abruptly, gesturing at her jumper.
‘What?’
‘Take it off.’
A long pause elapsed between them before Delilah took her jumper by the hem, her forearms crossed, and peeled it over her head.
Underneath she was wearing a crinkled silk camisole.
‘Take that off as well,’ he said.
Again, she complied slowly. The strangeness of standing topless in Professor Snape’s office made her head spin and her heart pound. She realised she couldn’t catch a proper breath, and in spite of the chill air of the room, she flushed all over, and felt a trickle of sweat run down her back.
He turned away and picked up a brown glass jar from his desk.
‘Luckily, Professor Sprout has just provided the essential ingredients to brew a Dermorestorative Poultice,’ he said. ‘Very effective, but extremely dangerous if even a tiny bit of it should be accidentally swallowed, so I must insist on administering it myself.’
Delilah’s lips were quivering and her tongue felt leaden, so she indicated her consent by squaring her shoulders further, pressing her chest towards him. He dabbed his index finger into the pot and began at her shoulder, stroking at her wound with the utmost care, gently massaging the balm, which smelt bewitchingly of calendula and sage, into the raised edges of her skin. He dipped again into the jar and continued his progress down past the fold of her underarm and into the uppermost swell of her breast, before diverting to her sternum, where the wound was at its worst. He devoted his attention to the purple gash that hollowed out the centre of Delilah’s body, massaging carefully downwards, and then back up again, across the soft, flushed skin of her breast, which yielded beneath his fingertip, to where the wound grazed her areola. He now switched from his index finger to the pad of his thumb, and laid his entire hand over her breast, raised like a cage over her trembling flesh, just his thumb touching her, moving in methodical circles over her skin, which pulsed and stiffened under his touch.
Just as his thumb reached the end of the wound, where it was barely more than a scratch, his clenched fingers collapsed for a moment and the flat of his palm closed for a single moment over the throbbing warmth of her breast. Then it was gone.
‘That will do for now,’ he said throatily. He turned towards the window and stood, in bizarre, stiff aspect, staring out of it.
Delilah blinked and gaped for a moment, then snatched up her camisole and jumper, dragged them over her head and rushed from the room without a word.
After she had gone, Severus stood exactly where he was for a long time, then turned back to his desk, picked up the black velvet box which lay there, and wandered over to the fireplace, examining it. Around the box was a red ribbon tied in a beautiful bow, and a heavy, glittered gift tag, inscribed with careful calligraphy, ‘Maman’.
He tore off the ribbon and gift tag, and threw them together into the dancing flames.
*
‘Not like that,’ Lilith commanded breathlessly, clasping Leander’s hand and guiding his fingers to the tight bud of her pleasure, pressing his middle finger to show him just the right pressure and directing his fingertip in small, slow circles, then letting her own hand fall and collapsing back against him, gyrating and moaning, pressing her buttocks against his hard-on so that he gasped with desire, dewlets pooling at the tip of his cock…
Delilah was in the library, theoretically making use of its deserted tranquillity to complete her holiday assignments, but her mind kept wandering.
Small, slow circles…
She crossed her thighs and stared out of the tall windows at the already-darkening sky, a few ashy flakes of snow still falling, buffeted this way and that by the wind which was howling through the gaps in the glass.
Small, slow circles…
She blinked determinedly, snapped shut Lilith the Lionheart and turned her attention resolutely back to the History of Magic homework, which Professor Binns had decreed she had to submit even though she wasn’t continuing the class.
She turned the page of her textbook, and her eye was immediately drawn to a paragraph around halfway down the page, which made her start so violently that she knocked over the stack of books she had piled beside her.
Evidence of Blood Rituals occurring in medieval England during the twelfth century is decidedly non-existent, and claims to the contrary exist only in the form of scurrilous and beastly rumour. However, that modern neo-Dionysian sects have engaged in such rites is incontrovertible, as rare photographic evidence of these practices was obtained in 1972 by Chambers Prize winning photojournalist Ormond Blackthorn, and published in The Daily Prophet to much public…
Delilah snatched up the book and dashed over to the main library desk.
‘Yes?’ groused Madame Pince, twitching her rimless glasses up her nose.
‘This paragraph,’ Delilah said excitedly, jabbing at the page, ‘this name, I want to know more about it, where can I find out more about it?’
Madame Pince peered at the page, then jabbed a gnarled thumb over her shoulder.
‘Records.’
Delilah strode in the direction Madame Pince had pointed until she found a door with a small sign above it reading ‘Records and Archives’, behind which she found a dusty abundance of material: narrow corridors built of cases and cases of back-issues of The Daily Prophet going back to the 1750s; a filing cabinet twice her height and twelve feet long marked ‘Prefects: school records, later achievements, personal data, deaths’; a towering bookcase marked ‘Samizdat’, stacked with cheaply-bound black-and-white magazines; a whole trunk dedicated to ‘Hogwarts Infrastructural Records’; a rather grander-looking case marked ‘Notable and Noble Alumni’; another detailing ‘Hogwarts Wildlife and Non-Human or Undead Inhabitants’… She knew she could get lost in there for days, and for the first time, she found she understood the attraction the Ministry Records Office had held for her father.
After wandering through the room for a long time, marvelling at the wealth of information gathered there and stopping to rummage through various crates and albums, she found a cabinet marked ‘The Daily Prophet: Personnel, Hogwarts’, and she pulled it open with a rush of excitement. After flipping through three drawers of files she found a tab with ‘Blackthorn, O.: 1946–’ written in faded ink, pulled it out, and sat on a box marked ‘Merchieftain(esse)s – 1851-present’ to open it.
In the front was a copied Certificate of Academic Excellence from Hogwarts, celebrating the achievement of ten ‘Outstanding’ O.W.Ls and six N.E.W.T.s, as well as extra credit for founding and managing the school’s ‘exceptionally popular Photography Club’. After that was a speckled carbon print of an article published in Shutter Speed Monthly entitled ‘Muggle Photography: A Study of Equipment, Development and Techniques, and an In-Depth Analysis of Differences and Similarities with their Magical Equivalents’; an excerpt from The Daily Prophet named him ‘Photographer of the Year’ with a list of fifteen articles which he’d illustrated; a front page announcing the appointment of Minister for Magic Eugenia Jenkins was half-taken up with a large photomontage, credited with Ormond’s name, of the Minister engaged in various inauguration ceremonies and traditions, dominated by a giant portrait of her smiling around at a gathered crowd of press, whose camera flashes cast her placid face in momentary featureless masks.
She unfolded the next sheet to find a double-page spread entitled ‘COLD BLOOD’ which described in stomach-turning detail the tribal blood rituals that had led Delilah to the Records room, illustrated with large, unflinching images of the process, whose textual accompaniment consisted almost entirely of an interview with Ormond himself, who, she learned, had surreptitiously followed the perpetrators through a jungle in order to obtain the images, and gave a vivid and eloquently descriptive witness statement.
Delilah turned to the next sheet to see her father in his dress robes, smiling up at her from beneath a headline announcing ‘DAILY PROPHET PHOTOJOURNALIST WINS INTERNATIONAL CHAMBERS PRIZE’. It was strange seeing him with a full head of hair, eyes creased with laughter, a Champagne flute held by his hip and the other hand holding up a trophy shaped like a camera, glancing repeatedly at it as though in disbelief. Another man was clapping him on the back, clearly wild with joy and pride. They both looked young, strong, in their element. The article was dated May 1974: 5 years before he met Genevieve, then lost her, and that light died from his eyes for so long…
Delilah was still staring at the photograph when she became aware of a feeling of being watched. She raised her head, and started when she saw Snape’s black owl sitting patiently on a filing cabinet beside her. She leapt up and untied a sheet of parchment from its leg.
See me.
The owl took off. Delilah looked down at the file and, glancing around her guiltily although she knew the room was completely deserted, stuffed it under her jumper, then bowed her head and walked as quickly as she could back to her desk, gathered up her books into her bag and left the library.
She approached Snape’s office with mounting nerves. She paused outside, her fist suspended a few inches away from the door, biting her lip.
‘Enter,’ came a voice from within, before she’d knocked.
She pushed open the door.
‘How did you know I was out there?’
Snape was sitting at his desk studying a large book. The snow was now swirling thickly outside the window and the fire was lit. He looked up at her and didn’t answer. She noticed a decanter of port on the desk, and a small empty glass beside it.
She closed the door behind her.
Snape leaned back in his chair with his arms outstretched before him and stared at his hands, knitted loosely at the fingertips. His silence seemed to hang around him like a fog-blackened net curtain.
‘Did you want to have another lesson?’ she asked, in order to break it.
‘No,’ he said without shifting his gaze. Delilah felt a growing self-consciousness, but, having already tried to break the silence once, felt she couldn’t again. She shifted from one foot to the other and watched Professor Snape.
Eventually he gave a noise like a cross between a cough and a sigh and sat upright, resting his hands on his desk and pushing himself into a standing position.
‘I wanted to check that you haven’t had an adverse reaction to the Dermorestorative Poultice,’ he said.
‘Adverse reaction?’
‘It’s a powerful substance which can sometimes provoke a rash. Do you have a rash?’
‘No.’
‘Any itching or burning?’
‘No.’
He walked over to her, stood right in front of her and placed the back of his hand on her forehead.
‘Any fever?’
‘No,’ she breathed. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘You feel slightly warm,’ he said.
‘I have done all day… On and off, I mean, but not… I don’t think it’s a fever.’
‘And the wounds? Any swelling or discolouration?’
‘I… I don’t know, I haven’t checked…’
He moved the back of his hand to rest against her cheek, and then pressed it on her jawline.
‘Let me see,’ he said.
Delilah gave a great, involuntary shiver and yanked her jumper by the shoulder seams, pulling it over her head in such a jumble that she emerged with her hair standing up in static fronds around her face, her cheeks flushed, tugging the inside-out jumper sleeve from her wrist and dropping it to the floor. She stood in her camisole, waiting for the instruction that she knew was coming. A blotchy rash was already creeping up her chest and neck.
She tried to stop her breath from coming so shallowly, but didn’t succeed.
‘Take this off,’ he said, indicating the camisole and glancing the knuckle of his index finger against her waist.
She swallowed hard and slid the camisole up her ribcage and over her head, savouring the chill of the office on her naked skin, and dropped the camisole on the floor with her jumper.
Snape stared at her.
‘It’s looking better,’ he said tonelessly.
He lifted his hand, but only moved her shoulder so that her chest was facing the firelight.
‘How is the sensitivity? Increased, decreased?’
Delilah’s pulse was racing so quickly, she felt she was about to faint.
‘I don’t know,’ she said tremulously.
Snape looked straight at her with his fathomless sable eyes and, without breaking contact, ran his finger along the scar that slashed across the top of her areola, faltering as the scar petered off, and then directing his touch down and around her nipple.
‘Well?’
‘…Increased,’ Delilah gasped.
He turned to his desk and retrieved the tub of Dermorestorative Poultice, twisting off the lid and tossing it back onto the desktop. He plunged his fingertips into the tub and flattened his left hand on her chest, his right hand clasped in a steadying grip around her ribcage, spreading the balm with thrumming fingertips, dancing like a spider across the knotted scar tissue that defaced her breasts, deftly avoiding her nipples which seemed to stand up and scream for attention, the fingers of his right hand tightening, digging into the tendons between her ribs, and Delilah half-closed her eyes and tipped her head back slightly, her balance wavering, her breath becoming audible…
‘That will do,’ he said suddenly, releasing her from his grip. Delilah thought his voice sounded harsh in his throat, and although he had taken his hands off her, he hadn’t moved away.
She stood, staring at him, and he stared back at that over-tall, yet somehow tiny figure in her loose jeans, flushed, swollen, the raised points of her collarbone fluttering like moths in the firelight.
In an uncharacteristic move, he bent to retrieve her camisole and jumper from the flagstoned floor and handed them to her, almost cordially.
‘I will see you tomorrow,’ he said.
She ducked her head and stared stupidly at the clothing in her hand, then pulled the jumper over her head. She retrieved her satchel from where she’d left it on the floor, propped against the chaise lounge, and stuffed the camisole into it, then made for the door.
‘Happy Christmas Eve, Professor,’ she said softly from the doorway, and then slipped from the room and closed the door behind her.
*
The next morning, Delilah woke to the frosty air of an empty dormitory. She lay in her bed for a long time, staring up at the canopies, fingering Lapsie’s velvety, time-worn ears.
‘Miss du Lac!’ Dumbledore said warmly as she came into the Great Hall. ‘We were worried we might not see you!’
Delilah blinked in surprise at the sight of a single table plonked comically in the middle of the cavernous hall, barely a quarter of its benches filled, but groaning with a mouth-watering selection of dishes and enormous piles of Christmas crackers.
‘At Christmas we often eat together,’ Dumbledore explained, indicating an empty seat opposite him. ‘You, of course, are a guest of honour as this is your first Hogwarts Christmas, so we’ve saved you a prime spot.’
Delilah slipped into the seat beside Professor Sprout, who was engaged in animated discussion with Professor Hagrid on her other side, and smiled at Professor Flitwick, who was beaming across the table at her.
‘Anyone for a cracker?’ Dumbledore said cheerily. ‘Delilah?’ She leaned across the table and pulled the proffered end, and a sparkling ruby tiara burst out onto Dumbledore’s plate. He chuckled and immediately put it on, stowing his wizard’s hat under his chair.
Delilah spooned a handful of golden roast potatoes and a few slices of turkey onto her plate, and poured a drizzle of deliciously aromatic gravy over it.
‘…I know I said that,’ Professor Sprout was saying, ‘but Hagrid, they’re eating the entire lot, I need to have some left over for the students, I can’t seem to grow it fast enough for them…’
‘Wine, Delilah?’ Dumbledore said solicitously, leaning over with a golden carafe.
‘Miss du Lac can summon her own,’ Flitwick hiccoughed. ‘Best glass of Picpoul I’ve had in a long time, the one she charmed for me.’
‘No doubt,’ Dumbledore said, twinkling at Delilah as he filled her goblet. ‘We’re privileged to have such an accomplished Charmswoman in our midst.’
Delilah smiled back and sipped from the goblet.
‘…But they need to eat, Pomona,’ Hagrid said emphatically, waving his tankard, which was the size of a wastepaper basket. ‘They’re pups, growin’ every day, and the school’s always had a world-class pack o’ crups, they’ll end up with stumps fer tails if we don’t feed ‘em properly…’
‘Professor Snape!’ Dumbledore said welcomingly. Delilah didn’t have time to turn around before he sidled into the empty seat beside her. ‘Let me pour you some wine.’
‘Thanks,’ Snape said, holding up his goblet to be filled. ‘My apologies for being late.’
‘No matter, no matter, plenty to go around. I got the prize from the cracker I pulled with Delilah, why don’t the two of you pull another?’
Snape gave a suggestion of an eyeroll and obediently picked up a cracker, the end of which Delilah grasped. Professor Flitwick clapped gleefully as a fountain of glitter burst out of it, and a festive wreath of white Christmas roses flew up in the air and landed on the table in front of Delilah.
‘Bravo!’ Flitwick cried. ‘Put it on her, Severus!’
Snape lifted up the wreath and placed it one-handedly on Delilah’s head.
‘…far be it for me to tell you how to do your job, but even every other meal, I mean, the Agropyrum is just a garnish, it’s not like they’d actually starve…’
‘Filius, you must tell me more about that fascinating article you wrote for Wandsman’s Weekly…’
Snape took a left-handed gulp from his goblet and placed it down just as Delilah reached for hers, and her little finger nudged against his. She could have sworn he held the stem for a second longer than was natural, their skin touching so lightly it could almost have been imagined.
He speared a steak and lifted it onto his plate.
‘…it’s what makes ‘em flourish though…’
‘…amazing how little we really know about Memory Charms, a blunt instrument really…’
Delilah sliced a roast potato in half and her elbow nudged Snape’s. She tilted slightly and held her arm deliberately out to the side, so her upper arm brushed briefly against his bicep.
‘Professor Trelawney!’
A misty-eyed woman whom Delilah had never seen had wafted in and perched herself at the end of the bench.
‘Thank you headmaster,’ she was saying, ‘I don’t suppose there is any sherry…?’
‘Of course Sybill…’
Delilah reached for her goblet again and Snape’s hand darted out for his own. They each drained their wine and placed the goblets back, their fingers again glancing against each other. Snape refilled his goblet from the golden carafe, and then, without looking at her, topped up Delilah’s.
‘…don’t normally partake, of course, but on special occasions, you know…’
‘So Sybill, what news do you bring us from your tower?’
‘I’m glad you should ask, Filius, because my readings of late have been most interesting…’
The main dishes soon melted away, Delilah’s barely touched, to be replaced with a selection of desserts. Delilah reached for a chocolate éclair, shifting in her seat to lean over the platters. Her knee connected with Snape’s under the table.
‘…the bitch is in heat, so it’s especially important they get the nutrients they need…’
‘…Venus is in a most interesting aspect…’
Snape lifted the carafe in front of him and, finding it empty, leaned across Delilah for another, pressing his entire thigh alongside hers. She felt his muscles flex against her leg as he lifted himself slightly out of his seat. He refilled both their glasses, put down the carafe and sat back, shifting his leg away from hers, but leaving it close enough that she could still feel its proximity.
‘…isn’t she a little young to be mating?’
‘…Mars is literally in perfect alignment, squaring right up to her…’
Delilah bit into her éclair and an explosion of sweet, frothy cream burst on her tongue.
‘…Nah, perfect age…’
‘…going back to our earlier discussion Albus, it’s the reversals which fascinate us in the field the most…’
Delilah was so aware of Snape’s leg alongside hers that she seemed to be able to feel heat radiating from it, flooding through her lower half. An intense flutter tickled her haunches, and she pressed her thighs tightly together. Snape’s left hand was closed around the stem of his goblet, and Delilah shamelessly reached for her own, thrusting her knuckles against his.
Snape left his hand where it was for a moment, then lifted his goblet to his lips.
The dessert trays faded.
‘Merry Christmas one and all!’ Dumbledore said cheerfully, raising his goblet. Everyone raised their own in synchrony and drained them.
Snape twisted to lift the napkin off his lap to shake it of crumbs, pressing his thigh hard against Delilah’s one more time, then stood. Delilah stood as well and staggered slightly, more drunk than she had realised; Snape discreetly caught her elbow and righted her. Dumbledore retrieved his wizard’s hat from underneath his chair and waved them all farewell, escorting Professor Trelawney out by the arm.
Snape brushed a few more crumbs from the lap of his robes and turned to leave without another glance at any of them. Delilah stared at his retreating form and, emboldened by wine, marched out after him.
‘Professor?’ she called. She jogged across the Entrance Hall in pursuit and swung herself onto the staircase to the dungeons where she found him, one hand on the bannister, turning to look up at her.
She walked down a few steps.
‘Professor…’
‘Yes?’
‘I wondered if you wanted…’
‘Yes?’
‘I wondered if you fancied… another drink?’
Delilah was leaning back against the wall on the step above him, her bottom resting on the iron bannister. In the flickering green light of the dungeon brackets his expression was implacable. He didn’t answer for what felt like a long time, so she inched down the banister, her left thigh meeting his right knee.
He looked down at her leg.
‘No,’ he said, categorically. ‘I have work to do.’
He turned his back on her so forcefully that she slipped down a step.
She hovered on the stairs for a few moments, toying with the mad idea of following him, and then made her way back up to the ground floor, her blood pressure rising appreciably.
She felt she could scream with inexplicable frustration. What the fuck was going on? Why the fuck was she feeling this way?
As she stamped through the castle towards the Ravenclaw tower, in the back of her mind she knew the answer to both of these questions, but through the drunken confusion of her mental turmoil she was able to chase single threads of thought without considering their logical relations.
She walked through the common room, inhabited only by a couple of absurdly diligent seventh-year students who had already returned to their silent, unblinking studies, bounced down the steps to her dormitory, and then down to her quarters at the bottom, where a fire had been lit and stoked into a rousing flame. She strode unhesitatingly to the end of her bed, threw open her trunk, and pulled out a small claret box from where it was concealed underneath her summer clothes, along with a tiny glass vial containing a single black hair.
FOR INDIVIDUAL USE:
Heat 100ml of water until it begins to bubble…
She flipped the page impatiently.
TO PERSONALISE:
Heat 100ml of water until it begins to bubble
Pour in mixture
Wait until steam subsides and liquid turns dark redAdd ONE strand of (head) hair of your own, and, immediately afterwards, ONE strand of
(head) hair from your object of desire
Consume immediately.
Delilah twirled a strand of hair from her temple and pulled it gently from her scalp, leaning into the fireplace, where she had suspended a beaker of water and the Rapture solution. As a cloud of claret smoke from the beaker wafted up towards the vast ceiling, she dropped in her own hair, and upturned the small glass vial into the solution.
The liquid in the beaker turned a swirling red and pink colour, and Delilah carefully lifted it to her lips. She sat on the edge of her bed and drained the entire thing in one go, faintly registering a subtle herby taste, and at once flopped heavily down in an entranced, leaden sprawl, the flower crown tangled in her hair, and her arms flung out over her head in a Fusiliesque tableau of wild, sensual abandon.
*
‘Professor?’
‘Enter.’
She pushed her way into his office, closed the door and collapsed backwards against it.
Professor Snape was sitting at his desk, but he stared up at her with darkly smouldering eyes. He stood slowly, falteringly, and walked a few paces towards her.
‘I’m going to show you a new spell,’ he said, his baritone voice so thick it was almost a purr.
‘OK.’
‘You have to lie down for it.’
She walked over to the chaise lounge and stretched out on its cushions, shifting onto her side to face him, one arm thrown out over her head.
‘What’s the spell?’ she asked. To her own ears her voice had a cattish quality, the words forming in the back of her throat and rolling luxuriantly over her tongue like ivory marbles.
Snape didn’t answer, but raised his wand slowly and pointed it at her stomach, and immediately she felt an intense, hollowing, fluttering sensation.
‘How does it feel?’ he asked.
‘It feels… It feels strange,’ she said, arching her back. ‘It feels good.’
He trained his wand tip down, and Delilah felt a hot, tightening sensation between her legs, and a throb of pleasure.
‘How does it feel?’ he asked again.
‘It feels good,’ she gasped, tossing her head and pushing her chin into her shoulder, slithering down the chaise lounge, rubbing her thighs together.
‘Do you want me to carry on?’
‘Yes.’
He lowered his wand and walked over to her. He held out his hand and pulled her to her feet.
Snape stared at her face, his gaze darting between her eyes and her mouth, and then down to her neck.
‘Take this off,’ he breathed, leaning in close to her and pulling at the hem of her cardigan.
‘Take if off me,’ she replied lowly, closing her eyes.
He began at the bottom button, and she felt the twitches of his fingertips climbing up from her hip, to her belly button, to her ribs, to her sternum, and he pulled the cardigan opened and peeled it away from her shoulders so that it slipped off her arms and fell to the floor.
‘Take this off,’ he said again, now standing so close that her nipples were glancing against his robes, stroking her camisole at the hip.
‘Take it off me,’ she whimpered, so excited she felt faint.
He peeled the hemline up over her hips and waist, and she raised her arms and crossed her wrists behind her head. As the camisole blinded her and brushed against her ears she felt the chill air against her breasts, immediately followed by a burst of lusciously hot breath. Severus’ hands continued to lift the camisole slowly over her head, but his face was at her chest, his lips glancing against her skin, which tightened at the suggestion of his touch, and as his scaldingly hot tongue slid across her skin Delilah felt her pussy clench with excitement, and she tugged the camisole over her head herself so she could look down at the top of his raven head against her naked skin.
He ran his tongue over and over the surface of her skin with a feather-light touch, teasingly avoiding her nipples, and she began to moan as he circled in closer and closer, licking at her left breast whilst stroking her right, and then hovered over her nipple, the tip of his tongue out, and she couldn’t breathe for the anticipation as he moved closer and closer, and finally touched the engorged little bud with his tongue. She gasped and pressed towards him, and he closed his entire mouth over her nipple; she felt the sharp edges of his teeth glance against her skin, nibbling and kissing at her, both his hands and his mouth all at the same time, and Delilah began to buck her hips towards him, the tight pulsing between her legs becoming unbearably insistent.
He ran his hands down her body to the waist of her jeans, over her hips and buttocks, and then fumbled at the top button, shook her jeans open and slid his hand down inside, and Delilah almost exploded with excitement when he pressed all four fingers against her through the lace of her knickers. A loud ringing seemed to fill her ears as he moved his fingers back and forth, and she clung to him, gasping and moaning, rocking against his touch as waves and waves of intense pleasure coursed through her, insensible to her own whimpering gasps. Severus’ breath was coming out in laboured pants and his arms were beginning to shake. She looked at him to see his eyes darkened with lust, and he gave a deep groan of pleasure as he pushed her gusset aside and touched her naked skin, running his fingertips, which seemed to be charged with an electrical pulse, over her wet, heated folds until she was practically crying with excitement, and then, after prowling around the opening a few times, he plunged his index and middle fingers inside her, and Delilah’s entire body seemed to throb and clench around him as she gave a juddering cry, and came at once.
He kept fucking her with his fingers until he felt the seizing waves subside, and then extricated his hand from her jeans and pushed her gently onto the chaise lounge, shimmying her jeans down her legs as she raised her hips in solicitous assistance, still lolled back on the cushions in a trance-like state.
Delilah felt the tip of his nose nudging against the hem of her knickers and jerked her head up to see him crouched over her, his fingers at her hips, slowly peeling away her knickers, his nose nuzzling a trail between her navel and her clit. He peeled away her knickers and continued downwards, burying his nose and mouth between her legs, and then sunk the muscular trunk of his tongue into her, lapping and stroking at her; she felt a washing, drowning sensation building again, less overpoweringly convulsive than before, but more deeply, primitively satisfying, and as his tongue massaged the tense pinpoint of her pleasure, she again began to moan, ramming herself into his mouth, which bussed rapturously against her, his lips and tongue working wildly, his eyelids fluttering, stertorous breaths escaping between his tongue’s frantic explorations of her sex, and this time she screamed with feral abandon as she came violently against his lips.
Before she had even recovered he had crawled up her body so that their faces were level, and he was pawing with frenzied, clumsy motions at his own buttons, his hands shaking violently and his jaw grinding against her neck and breasts as he pulled his robes away, and he slid his hand underneath the small of her back to lift it up, nudging her thighs apart with his knee, and she inserted an experimental hand between their hips and, with a shock, encountered the hard, throbbing length of his naked cock; as she grasped its shaft he reared up and froze in a shivering guise, tipping his chin back and dropping his draped shoulders like a drunken faun, before he twitched his pelvis to align with hers so that he could slide into her, and out again, and in again, and out, and Delilah felt him filling her up with a more complete and delirious thrill than she had ever known, and glanced through parted eyelashes at his face, illuminated with an expression of positively beatific euphoria, until she felt she couldn’t bear another second of such paralysing bliss, and the whole scene faded like an eruptively dazzling sunset, and she collapsed into the deepest sleep she would ever know.
