Dangerous Escapism

Chapter 1

Professor Severus Snape, Potions master at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, sat at his desk, waiting with carefully concealed impatience for the two girls at the back of the room to finish their Friday evening tutoring session and leave. His usual methods of dismissal were useless in this situation: How could he tell them to sod off if he couldn't even trust himself to look at them? And Plan B, Looming Uncomfortably Close, wouldn't fly because he wasn't entirely sure that his robes would conceal his painfully-throbbing erection.

Most noticeable at sunset, the verdant, provocatively fertile spring air permeated every nook and cranny of the school, (including the dungeons), despite Snape's yearly efforts to repel it. The heady scents were bad enough if predictable, but this spring a dangerous ingredient had been added to it's sun-warmed moistness: eau de girl. Girls, actually, the last two that Snape imagined would ever be spending voluntary time in the Potions classroom, and the last two that he ever imagined being friends (if friends was all they were, and that was another enjoyable speculation altogether).

In the 12 years that he had been teaching at Hogwarts, Snape had carefully schooled his mind against allowing himself an iota of even private attraction to a student. It wasn't that he was a particularly moral man (although he was perhaps more moral than many people supposed), but it was actually his amorality that placed a cautionary lid on his private musings...Snape knew himself too well to declare with confidence that if he did fantasize about a student, that the fantasy would stay in his head. He knew that he had the capability to satisfy himself with anyone at Hogwarts, student or teacher, and cover his tracks sufficiently to prevent disclosure. Whether he also had the predilection to do so was something he never wanted to find out.

Which was part of what was making him so damn' uncomfortable! Since the TriWizard Tournament Debacle, as he privately called it, he had enjoyed an occasional private wank in the company of a certain fantasy girl, the irresistibly lovely part-Veela Fleur Delacour. He excepted her from his no-students rule by dint of her temporary residency at Hogwarts, and her virtual seclusion from normal school life. If she had been taking classes with him, he would have put her off-limits (at least, that is what he told himself as he sat in his favourite chair in his rooms, his right hand covered with spunk, imagining her white-gold hair entwined in his left hand as he held her down in his lap).

What was it that Muggle Elizabethan advisor said... "Like private parts to the Gods are we, they play with us for their sport..."

Indeed. Never in his adult life had Snape felt closer to wishing that someone would dispatch him to whatever hell awaited him in the afterlife. Unfortunately, considering the direction his mind was taking of late, if his fate in eternity had been heretofore ambiguous, he feared that his future actions would doom him for certain.

***

The soft murmur of the girls' mingled voices drifted towards him like a Siren's call. Were they deliberately lowering the pitch of their voices to tease him? Snape found himself speculating on their sexual experiences. He was almost as certain that Granger was a virgin as he was sure that Fleur was not (since she wasn't a Hogwarts student, he allowed himself to think of her as Fleur in the privacy of his mind). He was also almost positive that they had known each other in ways that went beyond friendship - how could they not? They were both almost impossibly desirable, and seemed to spend all their time together, he knew that if he was either of the two, that he himself could not resist the other. Then again, was it just his imagination that there was an undercurrent of tension between them? He was certain that it wasn't conflict, so could it be...

He couldn't say that in the time that they had been working together in the Potions Classroom that he had ever seen them flirting with each other - if anything, they seemed to work in tandem, like two young lionesses on the hunt (now there was a thought to twist a lariat of icy fear around his...heart). He had never imagined that Granger could be so confident, predatory, simmering with sexual power. He assumed that the source was a string of Sapphic experiences with her project partner but perhaps Granger was being tutored in the hunt, not the capture (or consumption, he thought with wry glee).

Gods, why didn't they hurry up already? So that he could retire to his chambers and relieve this agonizing hard-on, a pastime that had become comically familiar during the almost five months that Fleur had been his Potions Apprentice. Prior to her arrival, Snape had not paid too much attention to his nether regions - he supposed that he actually jerked off less-often than most men his age. He shrugged it off with a cynical inner half-smile, repeating to himself the words he was sure almost everyone said about him, that he must simply be devoid of human feeling. When he had stroked himself to orgasm, once a week or so, Fleur had been one of several fantasy lovers who had come to his assistance. Now that she was here, working under him (Urgh, was he really reduced to thinking in such trite double-entendres), he felt lucky to restrain himself to masturbating once a day.

Feigning protest and irritation to Dumbledore, when the older man had approached him with the request (read: suggestion/order) that Snape take on Mlle. Delacour as an Apprentice, came as second nature to him. It was only after his initial elation and extreme arousal at the idea of her at his mercy - er - at his service - in the dungeons - wore off, did he experience the fear associated with the precariousness of his situation.

It was with dismay that he realized himself to be unable to fulfill his commitment to himself to strike her off his list of fantasy partners; on the contrary, he found himself turning to her in his mind more and more often, and in increasingly provocative and realistic scenarios.

The reality of working with her had been uncomfortable, but not impossible; however, he was more than happy to fob her off on Granger when the opportunity presented itself upon the debut of the irrepressible 7th year's second Potions project proposal.

***

A/N: 10 points to your house and a detention with Snape if you can figure out the origin of the paraphrased quote in this chapter.

The Siren's call was borrowed from I believe either Blank Slate or Compelling The Heart - if I am wrong, please forgive (and correct) me.