Poppies In The Winter Of My Heart

A/N: If the idea of sex in front of religious icons bothers you, please do not read this. This fic contains religious/Catholic overtones. Please note that if I have misnamed any of the religious paraphenalia drop me a note so I can correct it.



The wind whips coolly around the school these days, the mornings clear and bright, and the nights bitterly cold. But the thing I have recognized the most this year is the sounds. Never before have I been so intent upon hearing the voices murmuring in the halls. The sounds of the birds in the forest. The fall leaves rustling in the breeze. It is as if my eyes have been blinded and I am hearing these things as a newborn. No longer are my days fraught with bitterness, my nights filled with sorrow.

I have been delivered.

An angel has swept down from the heavens and taken me from my misery. I suppose it all began innocently enough. A late night, wandering the halls endlessly searching, needing, hating. I remember I was so lost, until I saw him. Bathed by the cold light of the moon pouring in from the open window. I quickly drew myself into the shadows, away from his presence, and watched as he sobbed. This man one so usually quiet and steadfast crying? I felt an aching come from the bottom of my soul, and it was then that the deeds of the past the petty bickering, the downright loathing, were released. My heart alighted with gladness, and I left him to his lament. It was a rare gift to see him bathed in the beauty of the moon, and I was not going to let him know that I had seen him in one of his most private holy moments.

The next day my thoughts were only of him the way that he seemed paler, purer, more human…than he ever had before. I watched him as he ate at meals, peeking slyly past the edge of my newest tome. It was as if I were a schoolgirl with a crush on a particularly handsome and rugged teacher.

I felt so odd. Ashamed. Scared.

How I wanted to fling down my book and declare my feelings for him right in the Great Hall. I wanted to shout to the Heavens that I, Severus Snape could, for once in twenty years, feel my heart beating and my blood pounding. For once in twenty years I could feel whole. But my breath caught in my throat and my tome had fallen from my hands forgotten. The severity of the situation branded itself across my cheeks in a blaze of color. It was then that I collected myself and with what meager measure of dignity I could muster I left.

Back to the dark pit of the dungeon. Back to where the dark walls held all of my darkest secrets. Back to where only the likes of I could live. It was there that I wept. Tears springing forth in a river. Tinged red with the blood of my making, staining the white silken sheets. Crimson on a field of white, poppies blooming in the winter of my heart. I prayed to the gods to release me from my torment. It appeared that they were not listening. Crying to the gods, and cursing my fate I fell asleep.

I awoke much later the need for nourishment burning in my gums. My eyeteeth already descending as if my prey were right in front of me. I arose from my place of slumber and prepared to feed.

A person in the situation such as mine is a dreadfully sorry mess. My turning had been a woefully quick and painful deal. I was only a lad of three when I met the likes of my blood master for the first and last time. He had stolen into the house through my open nursery window and preyed upon me while I slept. How I imagine I must have looked then the rosy glow of youth upon my slumbering cheeks and lips. The dark fringe of lashes at my eyes. He had drained me to the point of death when my father found him. In the orgasmic throes of feeding he never noticed that he had been impaled through the heart. My father being the strong and steadfast man an Auror is the one who took the blood of that vampire and smeared it into my mouth. It was only this that saved my life. F

rom that day on he tutored me at home, fearful of the fact that my secret would be revealed. During the day while I slept he developed the potion that allows my to retain my status as a daywalker. By the time I went to Hogwarts my eleventh year, he had passed this basic potion on to me.

I keep it in a special place. Somewhere where the students and their prying eyes cannot see. Somewhere where I can go to be alone. It is a small chapel, decorated with the workings of my fancy. A wonderfully old crucifix from an abandoned catholic church dominates the wall behind a small alter. I sometime wonder about the suffering of Christ as I kneel there to contemplate my daily life. The walls are lined with scores and scores of votive candles, lit for this reason or that. The communion box holds a chalice of my creation, filled with the blood of my life. It is here I come every night to feed. While the taste of blood on my lips is still fresh I strip off my heavy black robes and the heavy shirt underneath it. With the sins of my past upon my shoulders, I take my scourge and attempt to make myself clean.

Dumbledore knows of my activities. Every night he is awaiting my emergence from this room and every night he tells me. \" Severus, The sins of your past may be great. But the suffering of your soul is greater. Only when you can realize that the past is not the present will you be whole.\"

Every night he wipes the tears from my cheeks, hands me a potion to heal my bloody back, and goes his merry way. Although his step is not as spry, nor his voice as light as it once was.

Tonight all is different. My anguish is greater. As I wring my misdeeds from myself handling the scourge like it is a fine wand. It brings words to my mouth and they spill forth like a prayer. When I am done, I am broken and bleeding. I hang the scourge in its place. And slip the shirt onto my raw back. But when I open the door to my sanctuary. It is not Dumbledore who awaits me but him. And he is weeping.

The words spill from him he heard someone in pain, he was only investigating, he didn\'t want them to be alone. He saw me. Why would I do such a thing? I can barely hear his words. The shame of my sins, old and new, drowns out his sorrow.

I know I am crying as I tell him of my ritual.

He does not react as I had though he would. This man whom I have been an enemy with up until this moment, is stripping me of my shirt. Is muttering words in Latin to mend my broken flesh. Is taking my hand a pulling me back into my secret place so that no one else will see me as he has.

Once inside the silence is oppressive. I open my mouth to speak but he silences me with a finger to my lips. His breathing is shallow; his eyes dart back and forth. Yet all the while I can hear the blood pounding. Pounding in his veins. His eyes stray to the broken Messiah, and when he looks back to me I can see the understanding in his eyes.

This is my secret place, the place that I go to when I need solace, when I need forgiveness.

Now that he has seen it he is better for it. We both know that we are not as alone in this sea of differentially as perceived. He follows the tides of the moon, I the pull of the ocean of life.

In an instant our hands are twined his lips hot on the flesh of my wrist where my pulse maddeningly beats its staccato rhythm. He is presence. He is passion. I am in awe. He leans upward for a kiss. I oblige. His mouth tastes of garlic. It burns but I find I like it. My erection growing harder with each passing second. It is he who breaks the kiss at last. Gasping for air he backs away. His eyes flashing violently, his chest heaving, his erection making a bulge in his pants.

I am at a loss for words.

He is so beautiful. His body highlighted by the glow of the candles, seeing the communion box he strides toward it. He runs his hands over the carved wood of the doors, feeling the ancient carvings.

He pauses then. Pondering for a moment. Then silently he strips off his robe and his shirt. He is now standing half naked in the shadow of the crucifix. He flings open the doors of the Eucharist and pulls the cup from its resting place. He studies it for a moment and before I can say a word he has pulled his athame from it\'s scabbard and I am watch as blood spills from the cut on his arm into the chalice. It is an almost holy moment. The sound of his blood falling into that sacred cup, the murmured pray he is offering to his deity. Once he has filled it to his liking he sets the athame on my alter and turns to me. I can see that his wound is already starting to heal. There is a strange and wild look in his eyes. He offers me communion with his blood and I drink.

It is a strange feeling being filled so completely with the taste of another. His blood is sweet, and I am thankful for his generosity. It has been since I was a small child that I have tasted the blood of another. I replace the cup to its shrine, and turn to face Remus. There is warmth coursing through my body. He cups my face in his hand. Then with a movement so slight and unexpected he is kissing me again. I feel dizzy with intoxication, his blood pounding through me. The kiss deepens as I respond. Waves of want and desire threatening to drown me. I find myself undoing the couplings of his trousers, as I feel his hand undoing mine. Then we are kneeling. Hands roaming. Clothes forgotten.

His hands brush the head of my cock, and I am his. He takes his time to sample the communion offered to him and I wonder how I ever managed to survive the long lonely nights without his presence. His mouth has moved from my lips to my chest, kissing, nibbling, and words seem not enough to describe how he is making me feel.

I feel the heat of his breath move lower and then I am gasping out his name, as he envelops my aching cock with his mouth. Letting the tongue teasing the edge of my foreskin before slipping under and sliding it back. Swirling around my sensitive head. This is sheer torture. I am afraid that if I move he will stop, go away, never return. His movements are getting bolder. He is sucking and swirling, and licking, and nibbling, and jamming as much of me down his throat as he can. Like I am some sort of perverse sweet from Honeydukes, and then it is too much for me to bear and I find my release. Filling his mouth with my seed and he is swallowing it all.

With my senses aflame I lay him back right there with the taste of him still strong in my mouth and I devour him. His cock is fat and long, and I love it. Peeling away the foreskin I think to how much like unwrapping a present it is. The head is a beautiful purple color that makes me think of wine. It tastes even better. His skin is salty sweet, and when I suck him in deeply he calls out my name. He has wrapped his hands in my hair and is pumping me up and down on his shaft. Calling out my name, nonsense words, and I prepare myself to taste his essence.

But he howls for me to stop. I obey and he is pushing me down. Down so that my lips are touching the flagged stone of my chapel floor. I realize his intent and I open myself to him. He bids me to spit in his hand and I do so. He is running his hand along his maleness lubing it up, and then he is adding his spit to mine and lubing me up. His fingers rubbing my most sensitive spot, beckoning me to open like a flower. He has one finger deep in me twisting, turning, and then another. When he has been able to admit three to my aching ass his fingers are withdrawn and he is placing his head at the entrance.

In an instant we are joined. He fills me up completely. His cock is all heat, and steel. He\'s rocking into me breathing words that I cannot comprehend. His hands grip my hips, my insides grip his cock, and I am wailing. A heat is growing in the pit of my belly. I find that his hands have left my hips and are twisting my nipples turning them into hard knots of flesh. His thrusting is getting harder and deeper his breathing more erratic. I can hear his blood is pumping in an ever-increasing speed.

He grips my once again hard and aching cock in his hand and is stroking me off to the frantic pace of his fucking, and then he is slamming his cock home with such force that I am seeing stars, and he is calling out my name as his come snakes its way deep into my bowel. He is still stroking me and I hear myself telling him that I am his, and that I love him, and that is what I am repeating over and over as I climax. Ropey strings of it splattering over my chest, his hand, the floor.

It is not long after that he cleans himself off and slips away, and as I dress feeling content yet sore. I realize that I have made a friend. That I no longer feel so alone.

Dumbledore is waiting outside the door for me as usual. In his hand there is no potion, in his eyes there is twinkle. He silently hands me the tome I dropped at dinner, and walks away with a spring in his step. Humming a happy tune.

The End