When all else has been tried and the time for good intentions has passed, Severus Snape brings his secret with him to the altar and lays the both of them down.
"With my consent..."
The girl is gone. She left the room in tears, her robes held around her like a shield, and Minerva saw her off with tightened lips and worried eyes and perhaps a few meaningless words of comfort, back to the continent as quietly as she'd come. As untouched as well, and perhaps somewhat less prideful for her troubles.
The rest of his colleagues make sounds of quiet resignation where they stand gathered outside in the corridor. Elsewhere in the castle, the students, as always, know nothing: the headmaster is busy just now, children, the headmaster is away.
Here inside the great bedchamber, Albus Dumbledore lies...not awake, but not anything that could be called sleeping. He stares up blindly at the canopy, blue eyes clouded by the rheum of foul humours. His ragged breathing rattles about his hollow chest, the only sound he can make.
Severus locks the door, and steps precisely around the room, taking in everything in his own time. The curtains are drawn, a fire lit. On the nightstand, the oil is still warming over the brazier, and half-dribbled candles and freshly cut flowers clutter the window ledges and the gaps in the bookshelves--someone's poor attempt at lending a touch of romance to the evening's intended entertainments. Yarrow for healing and peach roses for desire, it smells at once of a sickroom and a brothel.
He lets his cloak fall, watching it pool haphazardly on the floor and taking some dim satisfaction in marring the artificial order of the room. His robes follow. His boots, his socks, and then his drawers, the last surrendered reluctantly. He stands naked, awkward, but warmed by the bolt of liquid courage still burning in his belly.
Then two hesitant steps bring him to perch at the edge of the mattress. He can smell his own bare skin reeking of fear and excitement as he slowly, carefully turns down the bedclothes.
A soft sigh escapes him.
The old man's body, laid bare, isn't a particularly handsome sight, and yet he can't help but find himself moved by the aged skin and grizzled hair, the sad, ghostly presence of something that might once have been magnificent.
"Pathetic," he says. But softly, as one baits a beast that might not be dead but only feigning.
He takes a wet cloth from the basin, wringing out the tepid water, and bathes Albus's brow.
"She was very beautiful." His voice is nearly accusing as he thinks of the girl and her blood-red lips, the contours of her slim body beneath her silk robes, the spill of dark curls over the graceful curve of her shoulder.
The fairest in the land, or so he was told. A budding maiden, pureblood and chaste--a distant cousin to them both, if one cared to trace bloodlines across marriages and over the channel.
His gaze lingers on Albus's nakedness, unflinching and hungrily curious. It's a worn body, a used body, a body grey with cold, and not even enough life left in it to shiver. He trails two fingers across the sunken chest, fascinated and smug when the white skin blushes pink beneath his touch. Down, over a starving stomach to a soft, pale cock.
Perversely, he imagines it as it should have been. Hard and red and virile, slick with the girl's juices.
Such a lovely girl. Only just turned seventeen, or so they said.
The foolishness of it brings a bitter smile to his lips. Idiots: her procurers, his peers, to put such faith in a mere seventeen years of purity. Did they think, perhaps, that the magic lay in her innocent smile, her firm young flesh? In between her pretty legs, with that useless bit of untorn flesh?
Philistines.
Seventeen years is but a trinket, a trifle. A single cherry, barely ripened, whose plucking serves only to sweeten a meagre dowry.
That chit of a girl, no matter her fathomless eyes, could hardly have known true longing, true sacrifice. Suffering, what is that to a young beauty? Hatred? He would give up his eye-teeth if she had ever once burned, truly and ceaselessly until there was nothing left but madness and ashes; his tongue if she had ever then breathed cold relief, only to waken again one night in fever-sweat to find the wretched fire rekindling itself once more.
He takes Albus's hand in his own and shivers as he moves it down his chest, nudging the cool weight of it against his cock.
No, he thinks, feeling a tingle of magic rousing in his blood. This is no place for beauty--only power.
"By my breath," he whispers, pressing Albus's hand to his lips and breathing hot against him.
Is that a twitch? Or only his own nervous motion as he wonders at the lock, and the silencing charm, and the gathered mourners who watched him enter with a few coloured phials, hope in their every breath.
"By my body..." He takes a little oil on his fingers, letting it drip down his hand.
It isn't quite as strange as he'd expected, holding another man's cock. It is something he knows intimately, after all--how to touch, how to coax. He is steady and patient, relentless, stroking until he feels the inevitable slow swelling in his grip.
Without pausing, he reaches for the clean blade on the nightstand and carefully nicks his thigh, stifling a hiss.
"By my blood..."
He paints his fingertips crimson and draws three angled lines over Albus's heart with care. The effect is immediate, a shudder that wracks them both, and Severus closes his eyes as a flare of heat blossoms deep in his belly, rolling out through his body in a delicious flush.
A pounding begins to fill his ears, rough and steady like the grating of the sea over the shingle, rocking him with it--the sound of their hearts beating in unison--its rhythm irresistible. His skin crawls, suddenly too tight for his flesh as he lets himself be drawn forward, clumsily clambering astride Albus's body.
The blade falls to the floor, clattering against the stones.
Severus sways a moment, dizzy, his head abuzz with the fluttering of awakening moths. The spread of his legs is a wicked, sickening thrill.
"By my breath..."
His arousal pulses painfully in his loins when he presses their mouths together, breath hitching and wits lost. There's a trick to it, he thinks, pressing closer. It's nothing that was found in the dusty, dog-eared pages of his research, in bound tomes or madmen's scribbles, but the knowledge comes to him nonetheless as their lips meet, dusty and dry. There is a coin, and on one side is the Dementor's kiss, and on the other, this.
He exhales, a careful puff of warm air, and feels Albus draw a deep, clear breath.
Relief floods him, a cool embrace at the centre of all that roiling heat. His fingertips tingle as he hurriedly fumbles for the oil again, anointing them both. Slick, hot, trembling.
He steels himself, making his bones iron and his mind clear glass.
"By my body...."
Oh.
Oh, God.
Slowly down, and spreading open. It hurts, it hurts. A strangled moan tears itself loose from his throat as he's breached, the pain not quite unbearable, but enough that his body begs retreat with every inch that he gains.
"By my --"
But where beauty has always disfavoured him, pride holds steadfast, clinging to the hot rush of his blood, the tremulous pleasure that seems just beyond his reach.
"By my body, by my body," he whispers, fighting to keep his seat. He pulls at himself with an unsteady hand, over and again, refusing to go soft.
After a long moment, he chances movement, holding his breath as he feels himself spitted, split, that hot thickness shifting inside of him. He watches Albus's colour rise, a flush creeping up from his chest and, fearing a trick of the candlelight, he touches him--feeling heat suffusing the pale skin.
Something surrenders in him then, driving him to plant one hand on Albus's chest and bite his lip as he begins to move in earnest.
After that, it's...he...he couldn't stop if he wanted to, seized by a compulsion he can't put into words, his hips flowing like water, over and on. This is old magic, powerful magic, devoid of either nuance or kindness. He has given his consent, and now the life will flow out of him whether it finds its vessel or not.
Albus stirs slowly beneath him, breath by breath, with every creak of the bed, and Severus is keenly aware of the smallest changes, even as his vision swims and the blood thunders in his ears. A gasp, a flicker of movement behind closed eyes, a thrust that meets him as he rises and falls.
His hair hangs down limp in his eyes, his muscles strain, and he feels the pressure welling up inside him.
"Come on...come on, you bastard..."
And then Albus's lips part--hands curled around Severus's hips as he pushes up--crying out his peak in a voice that's rusty but strong, and full of desperate life.
Severus shudders in relief, wrenching the pleasure from himself with a quick, cruel hand, catching his seed as it splatters on his fingers.
"By my blood..."
Weak and hollow, cold and trembling, he smears it reverently over Albus's lips, into his mouth, onto his tongue, aching to linger over the heat he finds there.
"...I give myself to you."
He draws back when Albus's eyes open, the milk-white cataracts slowly clearing from them like windows to the soul wiped clean. He meets them, trying to swallow down his shame as he reads the shock written there, the bewilderment, and then that first terrible glimmer of understanding.
He looks away before he can see the pity he knows will follow.
With limp and clumsy limbs, Severus eases back, wincing at the withdrawal and colouring hot to feel something warm drip down his thigh. He shakes off the hand that reaches for him--a warm hand, a strong hand that grasps his wrist--he shakes it off and pulls away.
"Severus..."
He gets to his feet, eyes averted as he quickly gathers up his clothing and dresses. He's covered in sweat, smelling more of Albus than himself, and shivering. He fights to keep his features blank, his mind firmly barricaded against the questing touch that follows.
"I don't owe you anything," he says quietly, turning to leave. "Not anymore."
He doesn't dare look back as he draws himself up with what dignity he can muster and walks to the door, ignoring the dull ache between his legs. He slips an empty phial from his pocket.
Let the old man live. Let the Order keep their leader for another year, perhaps two, and pray that it will be time enough. Let the charlatans clucking outside believe that some clever brew saved the day, and let them be ashamed of themselves--else let them cling to the belief that their pretty little Abishag worked her magic after all.
Let Albus pity him.
It's enough to know that this debt will be remembered, and all others forgotten--or so he tells himself as he shoulders past his colleagues, down the winding stairway from the tower, hearing their first tentative steps into the bedroom. Perhaps it's simply enough to have Albus just a little longer.
"Hallelujah," he hears someone cry, a roar of chattering voices breaking out in its wake as he sets foot on the landing and shuts the door behind him. He stands there for a moment, collapsed against the cold stone wall. He shudders, and his chilled breath sinks like a stone in the warm air. He touches his lips and closes his eyes.
Hallelujah.