Anything

"You. Potter." Harry's heart sinks. It's the voice he's dreaded, here, now, behind them. The voice Hermione promised they wouldn't hear as they lifted the boomslang skin from the potions store cupboard. The voice coming from the thin lips that peer in at them, dark eyes gleaming in the candlelight. "Oh, Potter. And Granger. How very, very unfortunate."

It is. It's most unfortunate, when the latest - Harry curses the name - idiot from the Ministry has brought back corporal punishment to Hogwarts. This is going to be worse than detention.

"Professor." Harry tries to sound determined. As though there could be a plan that would make Snape let him off. "Please. This is nothing to do with-"

"Six for you, Potter," says the Potions Master, slowly, silkily. "Don't make it worse."

"-with Hermione, Professor. She was trying to stop me."

"Don't lie to me, Potter," Snape hisses. "Another six, for your insolent untruth."

Harry, glaring, says nothing. Hermione begins to sob quietly. Harry puts his arm round her; he has nothing to comfort her with, but just to touch her like this makes him feel stronger. He has to stand up to Snape, for her sake, if nothing else.

"Alright." He sets his jaw gallantly. "Whatever for me, but leave her alone."

Snape laughs. "Come here, Granger," he murmers softly.

Hermione takes a step towards him, before looking back in confusion at Harry. NO! he mouths at her. It'll be okay, she mouths back.

"Come here, Granger."

Snape runs his hands over Hermione's arse. Harry would like to be doing that himself, fondling and squeezing the smooth, soft flesh, kneeding, pinching, making her gasp like that, and moving himself into position between her legs where he could --

raise a hand and land four - five - six hard blows onto her, instantly turning her gorgeous flesh an angry red.

"Get out," Snape says dismissively. Hermione turns her tear-streaked face towards Harry.

"Go on," he says, "I'll be okay."

Hermione nods without speaking, and runs from the dungeon. Harry watches her go; he just wants to hold her and comfort her, but he still has Snape to deal with himself.

"And now Potter." Harry knows the bastard is enjoying this. "Assume the position, please." Snape gestures to the bench with the tip of the cane, as Harry walks slowly towards him. "Come now, Potter. It won't go away if you delay it. Or would you like another six for being slow about it?"

Harry would not like another six, so he steps up to the bench and, as Hermione has done, places both palms flat against the wood.

"Really, Potter." Snape's voice from behind him is exasperated. "I can believe neither that you are so stupid yourself, nor that you believe me to be so unobservant."

For a second, Harry is confused. Then he realises: he's still wearing his jeans. The image of Hermione simply lifting her short little skirt for Snape had been powerfully erotic for Harry, even if the pain and the humiliation that had followed it had almost driven that from his mind. Somehow the complicated actions of unbuckling his belt, unbuttoning the waist of his jeans and sliding down the zip, hooking his thumbs into his belt loops and shrugging the jeans down over his hips to land on the floor seems so much more shameful, so much more a deliberate handing over of himself to Snape.

"Good…" the Master at his side breathes silkily. "And the rest, please, Potter."

The white boxers fit him snugly, and while Harry can't imagine that they could really afford him any protection, he baulks at removing the last think layer of cotton which stands between him and the nasty, nasty cane, between his nakedness and Snape. With an audible sigh, Harry pushes his underwear down to his thighs, where it falls to his feet on top of the jeans. He bends forward again, hands sweating against the wood, and hears one, two quick steps as the Potions Master moves behind him.

"Good," breathes Snape again. "A dozen, isn't it, Potter: six for your original infraction and six for your gallant attempt to protect Miss Granger. You will count the strokes aloud, please."

The pain is beyond anything Harry has ever felt before. He wants to lay his head against the bench and cry. He wants to beg Snape to stop, to promise anything, a year's worth of detention or no Quidditch ever again, rather than take the next eleven.

"One, Potter," growls the soft voice behind him. "Or do you want me to add more for yet further disobedience?"

Harry takes a gulp of air. "One," he sobs.

"'One, Professor Snape'," says the Master.

Harry grits his teeth. "One, Professor Snape, sir," he mutters.

"Good, Potter, very good."

'Two' falls a little below the first stripe, and 'three' a little below that. Harry realises that Snape will not let more than one blow fall on any one area of flesh. His whole arse, and the tops of his thighs, will be marked by the time they reach twelve. Harry thinks distractedly that Snape knows what he is doing, that he's good at this.

"Seven, Professor Snape" falls at the very base of Harry's buttocks, just as the skin meets his thighs. The blow knocks Harry flat against the bench. He expects Shape to tell him to get up, but the prone position seems to let the Master swing more easily against the tops of his legs. Harry's thighs clench hard as he counts "eight… nine, Professor Snape." His hands hold on so tight to the edge of the bench, body taut and prone before his punishment, surrendered now to Snape's blows and the slow rhythm that rips into his flesh.

"Ten, Professor Snape."

The man is carving his flesh into a new shape, thinks Harry. It doesn't hurt any more, he only has to hold on and give himself up, allow Snape to finish it now, beating him into complete submission, and oh gods and Merlin!

"Eleven, Professor Snape."

his cock is so hard, so achingly throbbingly hard, it has to bore straight through the wood of the bench and

"Twelve, Professor Snape."

if there's just one more blow, one more touch of any sort, Harry swears he'll come, come screaming and begging for more and anything, he'll do anything…

so long as he doesn't have to stand up.

"Potter. You may get up now."

Slowly, Harry stands up, taking care to keep his ravaged backside towards his abuser, and wondering how he can get dressed and leave the dungeon without Snape seeing his hard-on, and if he might even make it back to the dormitory before he has to wank himself any more crazy than he is right now.

"Turn around, Potter."

Harry tells himself he didn't hear it. He's so confused and ashamed and utterly, utterly turned on that he can't possibly be thinking straight.

"Turn around now Potter." The man's voice is like a hook, snaring Harry and turning him to face the Potions Master. Snape's eyes are like black rays burning into Harry's face, and then they are moving down over his chest and stomach to where his cock hangs, throbbing erect, in the air between them.

Snape smirks, that same expression that Harry has longed to slap from his face for six whole years now, the expression that completes Harry's humiliation.

"Oh, Potter," says Snape, softly.

Harry wants to fall to his knees and beg, anything, anything, just release, some blessed release and don't send me away yet, please, "please, Sir."

"I don't think so, Mister Potter," Snape says slowly. "What use would I have for someone so wilful, so arrogant, so undisciplined?"

Harry knows that this would be the moment for eloquence, for him to pour out his need and longing in an articulate speech that would drive Snape into a frenzy and make him take Harry and… here, Harry's mind blanks out a little just what is it he wants Snape to do, but anything to make this aching longing go away. But there is no glib rhetoric in Harry; his mouth is dry, his brain is empty of everything but his arousal.

"Please… sir," he manages, feebly. "Please. Anything."

"Anything, Potter?" Snape asks. "Are you sure? I think that you had better be very certain indeed before you offer me anything. Don't you?"

Based on what Harry has seen tonight, he can make a good guess at where Snape's appetites lie. Offering him anything at all is probably a bloody stupid idea, but Harry isn't thinking with his brain. He's thinking with his cock. His cock, which Snape is now touching softly, with the end of one long, slim, cool finger. "Ligo," he says, lazily, and a thick, black band forms itself tightly around the base of Harry's erection, holding it firm.

Snape smiles.

"Let me show you what I mean by anything, Harry," he says smoothly.

Harry can't believe that the move from Potter to Harry can mean that Snape has suddenly decided to be friendly towards him. If anything, he thinks, it means the situation is even more dangerous. But stuck here, in Snape's dungeon, with an erection that isn't going to go away any time soon, really, how much worse can things get.

He's about to find out.