A Very Good Occlumens

After, he played with her hair with one hand and held his cigarette with the other. He was staring at the ceiling, not blinking, while she lay against him, eyes closed, seeming almost to be asleep, her hair fanned out behind her on the pillow.

“So he’ll come for Harry again,” she said, moving only her lips.

He took a long drag off the cigarette and after a second, expelled a gray plume toward the ceiling. “Yes.”

“When?”

“Don’t know. He’s too weak now, but he’s gaining strength fast.”

In the silence that followed, he inhaled deeply off the cigarette twice more, directing the smoke at the ceiling. The he crushed the butt out.

“Lily.”

“Hm?”

“What did you do to him? Before?”

“Nothing.”

“You must have done. I’ve never seen him like this. I think he’s almost afraid of you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” she said, raising her head from the crook of his arm and opening her eyes.

He glanced at her and pulled her back. “Just don’t do it again. You have me now. You may not realize it, but I—-"

“Sev, I couldn’t have gone through seven years with you at Hogwarts and not have some idea of how powerful a wizard you are.”

He glanced at her again, to make sure that wasn’t sarcasm. “Well, just so you know. I have a lot of—-just promise me, Lily, you won’t do it again.”

“I don’t know what I’m promising.”

“Whatever it was,” he said, coming up one elbow and an edge creeping into his voice, “don’t do it again.”

“All right, all right. I’ll, well, I’ll try.”

He lay back with a grunt.

*

The days that followed found Snape indulging Lily. He bought Harry some toys and generally let Lily have the run of the house.

“What are those?” he asked several days later on entering their bedroom, a small room on the second floor.

“Accent pillows,” Lily sang out.

Snape took stock of the room. Gone were his few wall hanging and pictures of torment. Gone, too, were the bedclothes. The room was swathed in bright colors.

“Red and gold,” he observed. “Perfect for my next assignation with the Dark Lord. Or, perhaps, for the next Death Eater gathering.”

“We-ell, maybe I overdid it a bit,” Lily allowed, her smile fading. She waved her wand and instantly, the colors became subdued. The gold crusted and tarnished, the red darkened to the hue of old blood. “Better?”

“Much.” He looked around the room again. “Like the art.”

“Yeah?”

“Very, ah, Bosch.”

“Thought it might work,” she brightened.

“Where’s Harry?”

“Sev, it’s after 9. He’s asleep.”

“Oh.” He felt a curious disappointment at that. He could tell, when he peered into the toddler’s green eyes, that a piece of Lily lay back there, if he only had time to find it...

“You’ll see him tomorrow,” Lily was saying.

“Quite.”

But the message he was dreading came all too soon.

The Mark burned, but just for him. He Apparated instantly to the forest where he knew Voldemort to be. Wind whipped through the barren tree branches, making Snape’s cloak billow. Voldemort was standing in the church graveyard in Godric’s Hollow, very close to James’s tomb, nearly caressing it with his wand. Snape blanked everything from his mind, and willed his heart rate to a steady thump.

“The time has come, Severus,” Voldemort said in his high, cold voice, cocking his head in a way that reminded Snape of a cobra before it strikes, the slitted red eyes fixed on him. “I will come tomorrow. Do away with the woman or disable her, whichever you prefer, but hold the boy where I can get him.”

“Yes, my Lord. I’ve been anticipating the day!” The wind combed through his hair and cloak like frozen fingers.

“Have you?” Voldemort said, and Snape felt the wind like daggers this time.

“My Lord, I seek only to serve you. I have Imperiused the woman, and she will do my bidding.”

“This woman. You have desired her for a long time. Isn’t that right?”

“I am sated, my Lord. More than sated, if truth be known. She has begun to annoy me. It is hard to maintain certain...pretexts.” Must keep mind blank. Must control all emotion.

At that, Voldemort stopped caressing the tombstone and met Snape’s eye with a strange glint flashing in the red eyes. “My servant always, isn’t that correct, Severus?”

“My Lord,” Snape said, bowing his head and coming down on one knee, a fervent throb to his voice, “always. Always and forever.”

Voldemort gave a high, mirthless laugh, and Disapparated with a crack.

Snape was left bowing in the forest, the wind howling around him, his thoughts still blank and gray. He rose and Disapparated as well, back to Spinner’s End.

“What was that all about?” Lily demanded. Her face was white with worry.

“He’s coming tomorrow.” She went whiter. “Where’s Harry?”

“In the nursery, playing.”

Snape took the stairs two at a time and strode to the nursery door, Lily right behind him. The toddler looked up from some blocks. “Mama,” he said, getting to his feet and stretching out his arms. Lily pushed past Snape and lifted the child. “Mama’s here,” she soothed.

“Tomorrow,” Snape repeated. “And remember what I told you.”

Lily just looked at him with an expression that would have won her an O in Occlumency, Snape reflected bitterly.


*

That night, he was in no mood for tenderness. As soon as she lay on the bed, he rolled on top of her and took her breasts in his hands, smothering her protests with his mouth. He pulled up her night gown and pulled out his cock. Her breathy cries of, “Wait! Wait!” finally pierced his determination, and he rolled off her, struggling to slow his breathing.

“What is—-what was that all about?”

He was still not in the mood to entertain questions. This time he turned around and rolled her on top of him, but with the key change that her mouth was now directly over his cock. He spread her thighs, getting one on each side of his head, and spread the lips of her sex open with his thumbs, dimly aware of her gasp of pleasure. He pointed his tongue and pressed it under and up at her clit, while he held her firmly open with one hand and began working a finger inside her. She began to wriggle. He pulled his face away.

“Put my cock in your mouth.”

When she hesitated, he firmly stroked the inside of her vaginal walls.

“I want to feel your tongue on my cock.”

She made a little sound and lowered her warm mouth just over the head of his cock. He could feel her tongue laving him there, the fingers of one hand playing with his balls. He went back to tonguing her clit and stroking inside her. Then he began trying to work another finger into her, a difficult proposition.

She was now swiveling her head and taking as much of his shaft as she could into her mouth, pulling back up and flicking her tongue under the tip of his cock. He wouldn’t last long if she kept that up, but he didn’t care. He let her bob up and down on his cock a few times, then pulled his fingers out of her pussy and used that hand to prevent her neck from lifting as he came in powerful bursts into her mouth. He was still hard and wanting when he finally allowed her to raise her head.

Before she could speak, he got out from under her and was behind her, opening her swollen pussy lips from behind and pushing his cock head into her. He heard her long groan and saw her spread her legs wider and arch her back. Now her whole sex was presented to him, and he had a wonderful view of his wet, shiny shaft stroking between and into those swollen, red pussy lips. He kept her spread and used his hips to vary the angle of penetration. He could last a long time now, well past her endurance. He fingered her clit and felt her begin to come around his shaft.

“Let me feel it,” he muttered, bending close to her ear.

Then he pressed a thumb against her anus (startled squawk on her part) and continued riding her through her orgasm and on toward another, keeping her sex spread so that her clit was rubbed every time he thrust into her. As he felt another orgasm gathering force in his balls, he pulled out of her and flipped her over. He pushed his cock inside her and pulled her legs around him.

“Come again for me, Lily.”

He began riding her in earnest, feeling his cock getting harder and her heels drumming pleasurably against his back. She was making jerky noises. His fingers were under one buttock, holding her pussy open for him, and he was pumping into her in a way that was making his cock swell thicker and thicker still.

“Come again for me. Now!”

Her hips bucked against him almost, it seemed, against her will. He felt the ripple of wave after wave of her climax along the whole of his rod-like shaft.

She was mewing, making small, high noises of pleasure and incoherent phrases—“Ah—-your shaft—-so good—-more—-ah! I can’t believe—-"

And he began to come, even longer than the first time, his second orgasm seeming to last forever.

When it was over, he rolled off her, and neither of them spoke for a moment.

“I need my fags,” he said finally. He fumbled around on the beside table until he found the pack and lit one up, his hands steady but his inhalation deep.

“You’re worried,” she remarked quietly.

He pulled her into the crook of his arm and blew out the lungful of smoke.

“Do what I said.”

“I said I’d try.”

“Trying isn’t good enough. Don’t try.”

“Don’t lecture me. I’m not a student in your class. Thank Merlin.”

He concealed his spurt of anger by blanking his thoughts.

“It won’t work, Sev. I can read you.”

He didn’t dare answer until he had dragged in some more smoke. “You’re the only one who can, my dear.” The endearment was offhand, almost flippant, but she read it, too.

“You love me.”

He put the cigarette to his mouth again.

“You love me. I know. It’s all right, Sev. I love you, too.”

And that undid him.

He stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and rolled on top of her again. “Lily, Lily, please,” he said low against her mouth. “Please. I don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t.” Almost a whisper.

“Can you take me again?”

“Yes.” Barely audible.

And he was inside her again.

*