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His wife is trying to divorce him. His wife. His Lily.
It’s— There are not words for what it is. How broken it is. How everything is now ruined.
Ruined.
He is ruined.
The only thing he ever really wanted— Well. Almost. The rest of it though, adventures and maybe being an auror or something, definitely being part of defeating Voldemort, hanging around and having a good time with his friends, making his parents proud, getting to see said parents live to a ripe old age, a whole bunch of kids, the Potter line continued on— basically a good life— it all required having Lily Evans as his wife.
But now she’s trying to divorce him. She’s sent the paperwork and everything.
Of course he’s not going to sign it, and of course as a Pureblood and a Potter he has the advantage there— they did get married under Wizard law after all— and she can’t force him— Can Muggles do that? He’s heard Muggles can do that. He’s heard all sorts of horror stories about Wizards from powerful old Pureblood families being seduced by Muggleborns into Muggle marriage only for her to decide to divorce him and take half of everything he owns whether he likes it or not— but then the mouths he’s heard those stories from are usually Dark mouths, Malfoy and the like, so— Though after the comments on how clever and powerful she is his mum did ask him very, very carefully if he was sure when he told her he was going to propose to Lily—
Well. Whatever the case. He is sure Lily didn’t marry him for his money, or his power, or to have a bunch of little powerful babies, or to steal Potter blood, because in her letters she keeps going on about wanting nothing from him, no money, no houses, none of it, so— So.
So she still wants to divorce him and he just can’t work out why.
Why? What did he do wrong?
Was it because he was spending so much time with Padfoot? He knows she doesn’t like Sirius much— but it’s because the two of them have been working for Dumbledore, important work, fighting against Voldemort— But maybe he should have told her that. It just— Well. She’s his wife— surely a man’s supposed to want to keep his wife safe and not dump her onto the frontlines of a wizarding war?
She is Lily though. Lily doesn’t like being cossetted. Maybe this is just some expression of her displeasure and if he explains everything and lets her join the fight she’ll take back the whole divorce thing—
Except he has no idea where she is. It’s like she’s completely vanished off the face of the Earth. She’s not anywhere in the Wizarding World as far as he— or the people his parents have hired to find her— can tell, and her own parents have no idea where she is, other than that she’s sent them a couple of letters to say she’s ok, and hasn’t lost her mind, and is serious about wanting a divorce.
It’s really very worrying— in fact it’s absolutely terrifying. He can’t sleep. He lies in bed all night and stares at the wall and feels as if his heart is choking him and wonders what he missed, what was going on under his nose, that could have led to this.
He loves her. He loves her to distraction. He has loved her since before he really realised it. He has loved her since before he knew what that aching, yearning, prickling feeling to always have her eyes on him, to have her full attention, to impress her, to please her, to protect her was. He had thought it was all sorted, he was going to get his happy ever after, and now—
And now.
And now Pads is the only one with any idea how distressed he is, but even then he has to go on being James Potter, he has to be calm and in control and the model Pureblood son, and really what he feels like is falling apart. He feels killed.
The war won’t wait for him to pull himself together though, or to find his wife, and James Potter is not the type to abandon his duty, so— But if he’s re-joining the fight Padfoot, Sirius, his best mate, insists he takes some kind of light duty , telling him he’s too distracted for battles and duels and going head to head with Death Eaters, so when one of the Order’s contacts spots Snivellus in London and they need someone to track him down, see who he’s meeting, if this is some advance before a proper attack, he takes the job.
Usually he wouldn’t. Usually he’d insist on something guaranteeing a bit more action— and also he tries to stay clear of Snivellus. Some of the few fights he and Lily ever had were about the little squit— and for years she was stupid, couldn’t see what was right in front of her, little Dark wizard always hanging around— A little pervert too. Always chasing her when a good girl like Lily wouldn’t want anything to do with him. Sniv took advantage of her good nature. Pretended he was something he’s not. Tricked her into believing he wanted to be her friend when what he really wanted was—
Little chair sniffer. Probably wears women’s underwear.
Still, better him than Pads following the other. Sirius doesn’t have his self-control. Sirius sees Sniv and wants to—
But then, secretly, deep down he wants to, too. There’s just something about the boy— man now, he supposes. Something off about him. Puts the wind up him. Always has. Since the first moment he saw him.
Still, chasing Sniv around London doesn’t sound that hard, or that dangerous, and it gives him something to do other than to go completely insane while he waits for his parents’ people to find his wife. It gives him time to think about what he’ll say. Rehearse his speech— He has to get it right. He has to win her back. He has to. No choice.
It takes him almost a week spent hidden in his Invisibility cloak to find Sniv, starting where the other was spotted, and when he does— Things get confusing, quickly.
Sniv, Sniv he sees out of the corner of his eye, just a flash of darkness, movement, a figure walking down the street on the other side from where he’s lounging against a store front, wishing desperately for a cup of tea and maybe something more to eat than the slice of toast he managed for breakfast, and that’s enough to recognise him, that skinny form burnt into his mind forever. He thinks he’d recognise Sniv a hundred years from now even if he hadn’t seen the man between now and then, so Sniv almost two years since school ended is pretty easy.
Though the Sniv he sees is not the Sniv living in his mind. This Sniv is clean for one. This Sniv also stands, walks, upright, showing off that height the little bastard always hunches as if to hide.
His hair’s grown long— that’s another thing. Down past his shoulders to his upper back. It’s— it makes him feel odd, looking at it, that hair. Clean and dark, so perfectly black, and shining in a glossy fall.
Then he realises Sniv’s dressed like a Muggle. Charcoal grey trousers, black jumper, dark shirt— he thinks a green so dark it might as well be black. Very neat. All in all, very neat. Sniv looks very neat.
Sniv.
Neat.
Of course he follows him, oozing through the foot traffic, darting across the road in a break between cars, and falling into the flow of people behind Sniv. He’s easy to follow. Distinct enough its’s impossible to imagine losing him.
He expects the man to lead him to some Dark gathering, some covert cabal of Death Eaters, some helpless Muggle or Muggleborn he can rescue, what he does not expect is for the man to lead him down some little side street and straight to a small, crowded fabric store. A Muggle fabric store.
At first he’s thinking this may be a Death Eater attack he’s stumbled upon, but Sniv doesn’t seem to be attacking anything. As he watches through the window Sniv disappears into the back, before emerging a moment later to stand somewhat awkwardly behind the overcrowded counter as if— As if he’s actually working here.
How peculiar.
Unfortunately there is a bell above the door, and the door is in direct sight line of Sniv, so he can’t exactly sneak inside by himself without alerting the man, so he’ll have to follow a customer— and it takes a long, long while for the first customer to appear, but while he waits he stays at the window, stays staring in.
Aside from Sniv he sees two women, older, dressed neatly but severely. Maybe sisters, maybe not. It’s hard to tell. The two don’t seem to say much, either to Sniv or each other, but he does notice that neither of them seems to want to be out of arm’s reach of the other, moving with a surprising elegance through the crowded store. It’s bigger than he first suspected on the inside, he sees, but not really if you count the amount of space a person could stand in. Most of the store is rows and rows of racks, piled high to the ceiling with bolts of cloth.
The first customer is an older woman, dressed as neatly as everyone inside the shop. He follows her inside, slipping in as the bell above the door echoes in the air. Then he sneaks his way to a spot between two racks of cloth and waits, watches, trying to work out what he’s seeing. Trying to understand it, because it looks like the woman goes straight to the counter and asks to see what they have in a pale blue silk shantung, and Sniv— after a quick glance at the older women— goes and fetches a couple of bolts of cloth off a rack to show her.
She touches the cloth, runs it through her fingers, then starts peering at the slight variation in colouration, before picking one in a kind of duck egg shade and telling Sniv, Sniv of all people, she wants such-and-such amount of it, at which point Sniv measures it out on the table and cuts it. He parcels it up, neatly, and she gives him the strange Muggle money that apparently corresponds to the equally strange sounding price, and— and—
And so it goes on, all day, whenever someone comes into the shop— only it’s not always silk shantung. It is always Sniv serving them though, and being polite about it, no matter how Muggle they all are. Very polite. Quiet, soft spoken, polite, contained— In a weird way he fits in a shop like this. Maybe not a fabric shop, but—
But— Oh, he’s confused.
Sniv isn’t this. This must be— he doesn’t know what. A lie, a trick, a— But why? What does the little Death Eater have to gain in tricking these people in this shop— unless the man knows he’s here— but then Sniv would be frothing and drawing himself up and spitting hexes, wouldn’t he? Looking mad and ugly and evil. That’s what he always does, none of this— whatever this is.
At lunch he slips out the door after the most recent customer, the need for food and to use the facilities— so to speak— becoming too strong for him to stay without his rumbling stomach becoming noticeable— or the puddle of piss he fears he’s about to release. He Apparates back home to see to his needs, makes himself a sandwich with leftover cold beef— last night’s dinner, sent round from his parents by a couple of House Elves— and then goes back, wondering if Sniv will have escaped to do his evil business while he was away.
No.
Just— No.
Sniv stays working, stays polite, stays this other creature he’s never even met before, until well after six, when the women suddenly decide to shut the shop, and Sniv sets out into the cold night air. He follows, because what else is he to do, and gets led down street after street, to what must have once been a fairly grand terrace house which is currently far from in the best kind of repair, and that looks like it’s been divided into a series of flats. He follows the other inside, up the central staircase— but he’s keeping far back enough the man won’t detect him, so by the time he’s on the third-floor landing, feet on grimy, moth-eaten carpet, he’s lost track of him.
He waits in the hall, waits for Sniv to come out, Sniv to leave again, Sniv to go off and do his wicked deeds— but it doesn’t happen. He waits, he waits, he waits, he waits until long after it’s dark and long after he’s longing for his bed, and Sniv never appears.
The next day he does it again.
And the next.
Each day spent crawling out of the bed where he barely slept, feeling Lily’s absence like a thorn beneath his skin, eating what breakfast he can stomach, then Apparating to outside the shop, and watching this neat, polite, composed— almost graceful— version of Snivellus going about his business, being everything he never thought the man could be. He finds himself wondering if this is Lily’s Sniv, this is the boy she saw as her friend, and then doesn’t know what to do with the wondering, why he’s even thinking about it, whether or not that sinking feeling at the heart of him is guilt.
The man he sees does not look like a Dark wizard.
He just looks like— he doesn’t know what he looks like. Well, someone who works in a shop, obviously, but an elegant person who works in a shop. Not quite ordinary, with that dark, dark hair, those perfectly black eyes, that ivory skin, his high cheekbones and distinctive features he’ll never look ordinary, but he does look human. Human and not like a monster.
He doesn’t understand it. He’s never seen this Sniv before. How polite he is to the customers, the way he seems to get on with the women that he presumes own the shop, how he never sneers or snarls or cowers or— or— or—
The third day is the first time he sees something like his Sniv again.
It’s mid-afternoon and two women come in, a mother and daughter he’d guess, the mother leading the way to the counter. They are different to the people he’s seen so far, the men and women and sometimes people that seem somewhere in-between that have come into he shop and politely interacted with this new, polite Sniv. They are— loud, is the only way to put it. Or the mother is. She speaks loudly, instead of in the odd, hushed-library way everyone else has, and she dresses loudly, in a riot of colours that would fit in the Wizarding world, if any of them remotely complimented her colouring— though the brassy copper of her dyed hair hardly works with her pinkish complexion to start with. The makeup is also— He doesn’t know much about Muggles and what they wear, the way they paint their faces, but he has gone to school with Muggleborn and Halfblood girls, and the impression he gets is that this woman is wearing too much of the wrong sort of makeup, and not done well enough to make it an acceptable stylistic choice. The girl is a bit more creepmouse, hair a pissyellow blonde, makeup a bit softer— though not that flattering— and dressed in a frothy pink number that looks a little like a doily and makes her pink complexion only look pinker.
The mother looks Sniv up and down in a way that’s hardly polite, then demands pink satin. Sniv blinks, visibly bristling at the tone, though he doesn’t say anything, just goes and gets several rolls of the cloth in various weights and shades of pink.
The woman pokes and prods at the cloth, eventually picking one and demanding to know the price. Sniv replies with some incomprehensible amount in Muggle— and then the woman starts snapping at him, voice raising, going on and on about how unreasonable the price is, and that she could get the same cloth in some other shop he doesn’t recognise for a sum that sounds like it’s probably much less.
‘This is silk,’ Sniv replies with a gentle touch on the bolt of cloth. ‘You can’t expect silk for that price. We have some in rayon, as you can see—’ he pets a couple of the other bolts, ‘—but not in that exact shade of pink.’
‘I didn’t ask for silk now, did I? — stupid boy,’ is the woman’s response, ‘Nylon or Polyester — You must think me a fool. You must think me made of money— What kind of shop is this, trying to take honest people for a ride?’
‘We don’t stock Nylon or Polyester,’ Sniv bites out, remnants of politeness a cracked veneer showing the contempt beneath, ‘It says so on the front. If you want satin we stock silk or rayon, that’s it.’
At this point the women that own the shop have come over, and instead of trying to smooth things over one of the women, the slightly taller one, demands to know what the mother wants the satin for in faintly accented English. German he thinks. She replies with an evening dress for her daughter. ‘In this pink? The girl is already pink enough. She will look like a cherry— what you want is something to contrast, cool her down, pale blue perhaps, or pale green, maybe silver— not pink— and why you would want Polyester when we have silk I do not know. I have never found these fake satins convincing. They have no lustre. If you could not afford it I would understand, we have to make do in life after all, and we have some lovely art silks, rayons, in stock— but with the amount of gold you are both wearing— No. No. I do not understand it.’
This makes the mother puff up, offended, and what follows is a nasty little squabble between her and the taller of the two shop owners about cost versus value, Sniv looking on slightly wide-eyed and the creepmouse daughter seeming to try and fade into the background as much as a pink doily can fade into the background of such a sombre little shop. It all comes to a head when the mother gets right up in the other woman’s face and says ‘Listen here you greedy—’ and then a word he hasn’t heard before, short and sharp, like the bark of a dog, and a slur he can guess by the relish with which she says it and the way Sniv flinches, ‘—my husband and my brothers fought in the war for people like you, the least you could do was show a bit of gratitude!’
‘Get out,’ that’s Sniv, quiet at first, but soon shouting, snarling and hissing and pointing at the door, ‘Get out! Your kind of people, nasty little narrow-minded people, cruel people, they’re not wanted here! You’re not wanted here! Calling people that just because they don’t sell Polyester— You’re exactly the kind of bitch that let it happen in the first place! See no evil, hear no evil— as long as it doesn’t disrupt your comfortable little life!’
‘Enough,’ the other woman, the shorter one, says, gently, her own accent a little different, slightly more Eastern European, ‘Severus, enough. Don’t upset yourself. It’s nothing new—’ her pale, blue eyes turn to the mother, who looks ruffled and even more offended, ‘You are right, they sell Polyester or Nylon satin in many other shops, for much less than we ask for proper silk, so it would be best if you went to those other shops and bought what you want there.’
The mother puffs up, starts protesting, but as she is the daughter finally speaks up, ‘Mum, please don’t. They’re right. We don’t need their overpriced silk.’
With a huff the mother turns around and marches to the door, daughter following. She gets the final word in though, the mother, snapping the words, ‘I shall tell everyone I know that everything here is overpriced, and the staff so rude they’re not worth talking to— and they employ all kinds. It should still be illegal, that’s what I think—’ the last is said with a sneer at Sniv, before the two women finally leave.
Sniv is around the counter and halfway to the door, shoulders hunched, fury on his face, the look of a man about to do violence, before the taller woman catches him by the arm. With her other hand she flips the sign on the door from open to closed, ‘Come. Coffee, cake— You do not eat enough. It will do you good. Forget that small, little woman. She is not likely to come back, and if she does we will deal with it.’
‘And if she does?’ Sniv asks, wild eyed, ‘If she brings her husband and her brothers and whatever sons she has and—’
The two women exchange a glace, before the shorter one says, ‘Then they come back. We have friends in this street though, and we have never had any problems with the police— when there have been thefts they have investigated, and when the shop window was broken last year they were nothing but polite, so if they do come back we hope things—’ she sighs. ‘You should not worry, not yet. No— not yet—’
‘Is this about the other thing she said?’ the taller woman suddenly asks. ‘Because you must know we do not judge. Good manners and good principles are all we care about, and the latter far more than the former. You did not let it go. You did not stand aside and watch, which to me, to us, says you are probably a good man.’
Sniv stares at her, black eyes wide and dark in his pale face, before that same face suddenly crumples, ‘No! No, I’m not good— I— I— I associated with— terrible people. I said terrible things. I thought— I thought that because it wasn’t me it was ok, that if I was safe that was all that mattered— I— I hurt—’ he can’t seem to say anything else.
Lily he wonders, is it just Lily causing that guilt— and he thinks it is guilt— or is Sniv confessing to cruelties enacted on Voldemort’s orders. Confessing— to two old Muggle women? For some reason? His heart’s in his throat, cloak clutched tight around him, as he leans in, wanting to hear more, some bright hunger at the heart of him that he doesn’t understand.
The women are exchanging another look, before the shorter one asks, ‘Did you agree with what those terrible people thought?’
‘No!’ Sniv yelps, looking almost offended, ‘No— No I didn’t, no matter what I said or what I wanted, because they’re wrong, they’re provably wrong. There’s no sound foundation behind their beliefs, no science, nothing that stands up to anything, just— hate— But I still went along with it for— for far too long. Long enough it started to change who I was—’
‘But you no longer associate with them?’ asks the shorter one.
‘Of course not,’ Sniv snaps.
‘So you don’t agree with them, you don’t associate with them—’ the taller one says, counting the points off on her fingers, before fixing Sniv with her stern, pale gaze, ‘How badly did you hurt people? Did you beat them? Kill them?’
He flinches back from the question, all of a sudden looking very, very young, and when he answers his voice shakes a little, ‘I came up with ways to hurt people, but I never did— What I did, mainly, was say things I—’
‘So, no violence,’ the shorter one.
Sniv begins with, ‘No, I suppose—’ only to be interrupted.
‘Did you incite others to violence?’
He answers, hesitantly, ‘—N-no— I—’ only to be interrupted by the taller one this time.
‘Do you regret what you said? The man you were in the past?’
For a moment he doesn’t answer, but then, ‘More than I can say.’
The shorter woman nods, ‘And you never want to be such a man again? The man you were disgusts you?’
The look Sniv gives her borders on broken, ‘—I—Yes, but—’
The taller woman, the one still holding his arm, gently leads him behind the counter as she speaks, a final judgement on all that has been said. ‘Then you are good, as good as anyone can be. Very few are ever without flaw. The thing is to see it, to know it, and to not deny it. To fight it in yourself. To fight it in society— Which you did today. I have seen many, many people say nothing, do nothing, not always because they agree with what is happening, but because they are too afraid or too complacent to do something about it. So, yes, you are at least a little good—'
Good.
Sniv?
Sniv good?
Sniv is Dark, Sniv has always been Dark, born Dark, born irredeemable— But.
But— But he needs to see the other’s arms, needs to see them bare, because it sounds so much like Siv has, in fact, walked away from Voldemort, but if he has then— Then what has he been doing, for one? Watching some ordinary wizard for days when he should be doing something to help the cause— but then it’s Sniv. No. Not ordinary.
He needs to see his arms. Needs to know for sure so he can— what?
He doesn’t know.
Moving slowly, carefully, he follows the trio into the back of the shop, away from fabric and counter and where customers ever step. It’s neat back here, though the walls are crowded, utterly crowded, with art— some of which he thinks might be quite good for Muggle art. They end up in a little kitchen, all tiled in cheery buttery yellow with white cupboards that look very much like they’ve been here for the last sixty years.
They make Sniv sit at the kitchen table and then the taller one starts fussing with the coffee pot while the shorter one gets a large, sweet and spicy smelling cake from the cupboard and cuts three slices, each of which is neatly plated on fine looking china, patterned around the rim in art deco style.
Three cups of coffee are poured, all three black, before the taller one glances at Sniv and heads to the fridge, pulling out the milk to add a splash to one cup, which she then doctors up with two teaspoons of sugar. ‘Here,’ she tells the man, placing the cup in front of him, the shorter one adding one of the plates of cake a moment later, before the two women take their own seats, pressed close together.
Sniv looks lost, which he doesn’t understand— though he’s beginning to feel like he doesn’t understand a lot of things.
The two women drink their coffee and eat their cake in silence, and eventually Sniv lifts his cup, has a sip, then puts it back, only touching his cake fork when the taller woman gives him a pointed look. He pokes at it, unearthing slices of apple, breaking it down to crumbs, before another pointed look has him lifting a bit to his mouth.
Sniv at table is an odd thing to watch— or maybe this version of Sniv is. Sniv at table at Hogwarts was a hunched and crouching little gargoyle, perched over his plate as if expecting someone to attack him for the few scraps of food he ever put there— Not necessarily an unreasonable suspicion, he reflects, considering—
But that was years ago— Ok, only a couple of years ago— but he did leave Sniv alone, mostly, after Lily agreed to go out with him, and he encouraged both Pads and Wormy to as well— and Moony never seemed to have as much of an appetite for teasing the boy as they did— so it was really only the Slytherins— and as he was pretty firmly in Voldie’s camp by then he should have been able to eat in peace.
He even thinks Sniv sometimes had company in their last year. Pads’ brother, for one, and also cousin Narcissa. So— So—
So Sniv manages about a third of the cake before pushing it away with a mumble of, ‘It’s lovely. I’m just not hungry.’
The women exchange a look, before the shorter one says, ‘Then you shall take some home with you in case that changes. I always cook too much.’
Sniv protests, they ignore him, the shorter one getting up to cut a big wedge of cake, probably about a third of the thing, and wrap it up in wax paper to deposit the string tied bundle in front of the man.
It’s— Strange. Strange because Sniv does seem to fit here, in a weird way, with these two neat, contained, older women— fit in a way that— Sniv must have a family, mustn’t he? Of course he does. Everyone does. It’s just that he’s never imagined the other having one. Never imagined him going home to some loving mother and doting father— Just sort of imagined him exiting stage left and entering again when needed, antagonist on call— but even knowing Sniv must have a family he can’t picture what they’d be like. Would they be like him? A pair of skinny, twisted creatures, more than a little fey, coming off as more than a little Dark— Maybe. Or are they like these two women— because Sniv fits as not the Sniv of school here, just a young man, a little— odd still, but—
But. But. But. But. But—
He follows the other home again, of course, when Sniv leaves after the women are satisfied he’s drunk his coffee, at least. It’s earlier than usual, the sun still up, as they trek the walk to the house, Sniv carrying the parcel of cake a little like it’s a bomb he expects to go off.
This time he sticks closer, as close as he can without Sniv noticing— though the man does seem warier, does stop— every now and then— and look around as if he feels like he’s being watched. He’s going to follow the man into his flat— he knows he is. Has already made that decision. He really does need to see his arms.
If they’re blank then this is it, the last day he’ll spend doing this, the last day he’ll spend watching.
If they’re blank he’ll have to go back and tell the Order that Severus Snape is not what they think he is. No follower of Voldemort. Not someone worth keeping an eye on.
Sniv will just become— Nothing.
Incidental.
No part of his life.
Odd that thought. It doesn’t quite feel right.
He’s lucky. If Sniv wasn’t being so careful not to drop the cake he probably would have ended up with the door slammed in his face, leading him to have to try and surreptitiously break in later, but Sniv is being careful, Sniv does go inside and spend a moment fumbling with his key, trying to get it back in his pocket without losing a grip on the cake— that he very much doubts Sniv would lose even if he wasn’t careful, because Sniv is a lot of things, but clumsy is not one of them— before shutting the door behind him. It’s in that moment he slithers past, sticking to the wall like the snake the other man, in fact, is.
Odd little place, this flat. The house where he lives currently with Lily is the smallest house he’s ever lived in, and it does feel terribly small, but this whole place can’t be much bigger than the room he shared with his yearmates at Hogwarts. Tiny, really, yet it’s got a double bed pushed against the wall, with a bedside table and a rack of clothes next to it, a bath randomly just in the room, near the window, a cooker, one cabinet, a small fridge, and a porcelain sink— those by the wall opposite the bed— a small table with two chairs, a— cupboard? In the corner— no, wrong dimensions— it almost looks like a loo cubicle, but in the corner of the room, nearer the bath than either bed or kitchen. And also books. Lots of books. A small bookcase, but otherwise books on every available surface, including the floor.
There’s barely any room for him in here, let alone both him and Sniv.
It is clean, in as much as such a place can ever be clean, but there's no mess in the little kitchen, and the bath looks positively sparkling— but it’s not very neat. There probably isn’t space for neatness.
The cake gets placed on the little table with a kind of reverent uncertainty as he’s tiptoeing into the tiny amount of free space in the corner of the room, near the foot of the bed. This is where he’ll stay— for now.
It does start to occur to him that escaping this room without Sniv becoming aware of his presence is not going to be particularly easy. He just hopes he doesn’t need a piss any time soon.
Sniv sinks down into one of the two chairs at the table, sitting there for a moment, still eying the cake as if it’s a bomb, before he hunches down into himself, hiding his face in his hands. The man starts mumbling, quiet, snapping, incomprehensible words, before he erupts out of his seat with a snarl, kicking the thing to go skittering across the floor and land with a thump against the bed.
He flinches at the movement, huddling back against the wall, almost missing it when Sniv snarls, ‘Good? What a bloody joke—’
The man stands there, panting, for a long moment, before he seems to come back to himself. A deep, shuddering breath, and then the other stomps over to the chair, picking it up with an angry mutter of, ‘I’m not working for bloody Dumbledore. I’d rather do nothing. I’d rather stand aside and let it happen—’ The chair is deposited back at the table with a clatter, then, ‘I’m not— I’m— I’m— fuck. Dinner. That’ll— Get it ready for her. Something nice. I need to be—’
Her?
With sharp, jerky movements, Sniv strips his jumper over his head, throwing it down on the bed, then unbuttons the cuffs of today’s grey shirt, precisely rolling each sleeve up to his elbow, revealing—
No Mark.
No—
Just pale, perfect, unbranded skin, marred only by— What are those? Some scars or something. Probably from a potion accident, he imagines— burns they look like.
Did Sniv have them at school? Funny, he can’t remember. He doesn’t think so, but— Wait. Sniv used to only roll his sleeves up to mid-arm, didn’t he? Some funny false modesty, wasn’t it? Though what he had to be modest about—
While he’s trying to remember if he ever did see all of Sniv’s bare forearms when they were kids the man goes to the fridge, opens it, peers inside discontentedly for a moment, then starts to pull things out. A slice of bacon, a carrot, half an onion, two sticks of celery, a tiny portion of a chicken breast— ‘We need to go shopping,’ the man mutters to himself. ‘Very nice. She’ll be really impressed. Exactly what she wants to come home to, bloody chicken stew with barely any chicken— I could probably manage some dumplings. What am I doing? She deserves better than this. She should just go. She should just leave— What if she leaves?’ the man seems to freeze in place at the words, staring off into nothing with an increasingly agonised look on his face, before, ‘She should leave. Of course she’ll leave— why would she stay?’ A nod then, shaky, and a quiet sniff, a hand raised to swipe at one of those dark eyes—
Her. She— a girlfriend? Could Sniv, Sniv of all people, actually have a girlfriend?
It beggars belief.
What kind of woman would—?
Who would want to—?
It’s— It’s Sniv. Hardly an erotic prospect.
A slight wave of a long, elegant hand and a pack of cigarettes flies off the table and straight into Sniv’s grasp— His heart catches in his throat, staring at what he just saw. Wandless. Wordless— Absolutely casual, as if such a feat was everyday— Exactly how powerful is he? Sniv shouldn’t be able to— Surely Sniv couldn’t just— A fluke, perhaps, or maybe a spell he does so often it’s become second nature. A snap of the man’s fingers and a small flame appears floating on the end of his index one that the man uses to light one of the cigarettes, a flick and it’s gone.
That’s— That’s— Um—
With the cigarette hanging out of his mouth Sniv gets to cooking, slicing and dicing with that terrible proficiency both he and Lily have with potions prep work. He loves his wife— Oh, he loves his wife— but he has never liked brewing with her. She is not polite about it. She takes the subject seriously, and expects him to be able to achieve her kind of results with nowhere near her aptitude, and not even their love seems— seemed— to be enough to soften her standards.
He doesn’t particularly like Potions anyway, has no real natural affinity for the subject, and only really skated by due to the fact that he’s many things, but not stupid— but his Potions As, and the standards required for Potions As, are nothing like the standards required for Os— or whatever could theoretically be above an O, which he suspects Lily could earn if it was possible. Her potions are far better than anything he’s ever seen anyone produce. Far better than the kind you buy in most shops.
She really should try and become a Potion Master—
It took him a while to come to terms with the idea of having a wife that worked, but if she’s going to she really should try and live up to her full potential. With talent like hers— She’s not going to end up some two-bit supplier for every Apothecary in the country. She will be able to charge a premium even for the most basic Potions— and he suspects she’ll end up inventing some of her own, maybe even writing her own textbooks—
Sniv too, he hates to admit— and when the two of them work together—
He has seen something very like awe, uncomfortable and overwhelmed, in the eyes of Slughorn when examining what they have produced, to the point the man’s usual— patter, perhaps, has fallen silent, and all he can manage is a whisper of, ‘Textbook— Yes. Yes, absolutely— textbook. Perfect— I have never seen such a thing—’
The food Sniv’s cooking sure smells good— he only hopes his stomach doesn’t give him away.
It’s simmering on the stove, Sniv seated at the table, head in a book— some incomprehensible and alarmingly thick Potion manual— when there’s a noise, the sound of a key in the lock. The girlfriend? Sniv’s head jerks up, the latest cigarette is snubbed out in the ashtray there for such a purpose, and the man is grabbing his wand— a threat? — but before he can decide if he wants to intervene if it is a threat, that wand is pointed at Sniv himself, and a couple of rounds of Scourgify are cast in the tiny amount of time it takes for the door to start swinging in—
‘Sev?’ he hears a voice call, ‘You home early?’
A voice.
A voice.
A voice.
His heart’s stopped.
She steps in, kicking off her shoes in the doorway, then pushing the door shut behind her.
Lily.
His Lily.
She’s dressed almost exactly like Sniv, trousers, blouse, woollen jumper— except instead of every shade of dark her trousers are pale grey, the blouse white, the jumper pale green. Her hair’s back in a long plait. No makeup— She—
His Lily.
‘L-Lils—’ it’s not him speaking, saying her name, relief and delight there, it’s Sniv.
‘Sev!’ she echoes, bright and delighted, as if the sight of Snivellus is an oasis after a long wander in a dry desert. She almost bounces over to the man, catching him up in her arms and leaning up, taking his mouth in a kiss that—
Kiss that—
Kiss—
He clutches at the wall as everything around him feels like it gives way, as he becomes a man on a raft thrown into a suddenly stormy sea, feeling like the air itself in this tiny flat is waves a thousand feet high. Reality becomes unreal. Everything becomes unreal. He becomes unreal as he watches his wife, his wife, crowd Severus Snape up against a tiny table and then, with hands on the man’s narrow hips, encourage him up onto it, so he’s sitting on its edge, legs spread, her in between them, as they still kiss.
It never seems to end, the kiss.
It never seems to stop.
His life feels like it’s become this, become watching his wife shove her tongue down the throat of a Sniv that’s almost melting beneath her touch. She’s actually pushing him back. She’s trying to bear him down flat on the table—
Who is this—?
Is this Lily?
Lily is never this aggressive—
But is does stop. It stops when Sniv suddenly seizes up and reaches behind him, pulling away from Lily’s lips to mutter a frantic cry of ‘Cake!’
It breaks the moment. It makes him realise he should be doing something about this. He shouldn’t just be hunched here in the corner, watching his— his—
Watching Lily ravish Snivellus.
Except— He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to handle this. He doesn’t— Is he supposed to throw off the invisibility cloak and start flinging hexes? He should— If Sirius was here he would— but he feels so lost. So helpless. So confused, so very confused, so—so—
This isn’t supposed to happen.
His heart is— He—
The cake. Sniv rescues the cake from—
And then they’re talking about it— and Sniv tells her about the incident and—
The cake. Yes. Cake— it— She, Lily, takes it and puts it on the kitchen counter and— the pot of stew, she turns it off, and—
And—
‘Have you heard from Potter?’ He flinches. His name in Sniv’s mouth and he flinches.
What is she going to say? Can he bear to hear what she’s going to say? How long has this been going on? Is he a joke to her? Did she marry him just to humiliate him like he has—?
Sniv. He has humiliated the man in the past. Not so funny now, is it?
She shakes her head, ‘No.’
A pause, heavy and awkward— or maybe it’s just him that’s awkward— and then Sniv says, ‘You really need to talk to him. Properly. It can’t go on like this— unless you want to spend the rest of your life hiding from your husband in the Muggle world?’
‘It’s not so bad, is it?’ she says with a grimace pretending to be a smile. ‘You’re getting on alright in the fabric store. They’re kind to you—’
‘But you hate where you’re working,’ Sniv states.
‘Well, I never planned to spend my days selling underwear and socks,’ she shrugs, ‘But it’s not forever. You know it’s not forever, don’t you sweetheart?’
Sweetheart?
‘He’s not going to agree if you don’t talk to him,’ Sniv replies. ‘He’s Potter. When has Potter ever rolled over on anything?’
‘I know—’ she sighs, rubbing her hands across her face, ‘I know. It’s just—’
‘You feel bad,’ Sniv states, finally getting off the table, though once he has he stands there hunched and awkward, more the Sniv of the past than the one he’s seen recently. ‘I understand. You still love him.’
Lily startles at that, a look of guilt flashing across her face, before she’s darting across the room, reaching for the man who darts backwards, out of her grasp, so she ends up chasing him around the table, ‘Not as much as I love you. Sweetheart, Sev— never as much as I love you. I’ve just made a mess, and I’m embarrassed, and I just don’t know how to fix it.’
There is a pause, then Sniv draws himself up, ‘You should go back to him.’
‘We’re not having this conversation.’
‘You should. You love him and he can keep you safe, he can give you a good life, if you’re with him you don’t have to be stuck in this little shithole with an evil—’
‘Sev,’ Lily snaps, darting forward and grabbing the man by the wrist. ‘Stop it. It’s not going to work. You’re stuck with me now— How do you think I could ever give you up once we finally—? I have loved you forever, I will love you until the day I die.’
‘Lils,’ Sniv mumbles—
Forever, huh? For—
She says she loves him. She told him she loved him. She’s obviously told Sniv she loves him— But she loves Sniv more? She loved Sniv the entire time they were together? She—?
She—
His breath catches in his throat, He freezes, terrified they heard him, but they don’t seem to have. Sniv has let Lily come in close again. They’re—
More kissing.
More kissing while he’s in the corner, crying. Merlin’s Beard, he’s actually crying—
What kind of man is he?
This is not— James Potter should not— He—
Hexes, he tells himself. Any moment now. Heartbreak will be anger, proper anger, and he’ll fling off the cloak and hex the both of them. That’s what he should do. That’s what he’s supposed to do—
Things like this were never supposed to happen. This is not the kind of life he was supposed to lead. He was supposed to get his happy ever after—
‘Lily—’ Sniv breathes.
‘We should have dinner,’ she responds, words breathed against the other man’s lips, showing no evidence of any kind of desire to stop kissing him to do so.
‘I’m not hungry,’ Sniv whispers back. His wife pulls back to give her lover a look, prompting a defensive mutter of, ‘I ate some cake earlier. I told you— How about after.’
‘Hmm,’ she hums, then, ‘You’ll fall asleep.’
‘I won’t.’
‘You will—’ she gives Sniv a smile, sweet and besotted, ‘But I’ll wake you up— and don’t think I won’t. I’m not having you starving yourself just because you’re worried about—’
‘Don’t,’ Sniv snaps, then softens, ‘I— Just— I just want to forget James Potter for a moment, please Lils.’
‘It’ll be ok,’ she says, so soft, so loving— but so different than the Lily he’s always known. Different in a way he can’t quite work out through his rushing thoughts and the heart in his throat. ‘I promise you Sev, sweetheart. I promise I’ll keep you safe, ok?’
It’s all too much. He needs to leave. He should never have come here. He should never have been following Sniv in the first place, the man’s not even a follower of Voldemort—
‘Sorry,’ Sniv is saying, ‘Sorry. I know my behaviour isn’t— I mean. Not exactly filled with erotic promise now, is it?’
‘Says the man who can make tying his shoelaces into a tease,’ Lily replies— and he’s not sure whether she’s teasing or not.
Sniv doesn’t seems sure either, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘You know I’m serious,’ she purrs back, ‘You drive me nuts. You drive me to distraction— You’re the only thing that gets me through work. I stand behind the counter ringing up endless socks, vests, and panty girdles and the only thing that stops me from screaming is remembering I’ve got you to come home to. I think about your body, your face, your hair. I imagine picking you up and seating you on the counter in front of all the mothers and grannies and creepy old men and showing them exactly what I have that they can’t ever touch.’
What? What— Lily. This— What is she saying? He—
‘Do you want to?’ Sniv asks in— Is Snivellus trying to be seductive? Soft and sweet and almost purring, looking at Lily through his lashes like— ‘We do need to continue testing it to work out how to improve things.’
‘Do I ever not want to?’ she replies with a filthy smirk.
Sniv shudders, breath catching— he’s hard. Sniv is bloody hard. Merlin’s Beard. Yuck— that’s— that’s— ‘Do you want my mouth first?’ the man breathes.
They’re going to fuck.
Oh—
‘How about your mouth on it. I want to see that,’ she replies, her lovely green eyes on Sniv’s lips. She— He remembers their wedding day. He remembers lifting the veil and meeting those green eyes, the sweet smile there— He remembers their wedding night, the white silk she’d worn beneath her white silk gown. The garter. The way he’d pulled it off with his teeth all the while she’d giggled, then grabbed for him, pulling him into her arms, between her legs, eager and wriggling and—
And not this creature with the sex rough voice and this strange, heat-haze confidence.
Oh, she’s never been shy, not in the bedroom. There’s never been much modesty to Lily, not in that way— in fact he, himself, may have had more than she did. He’d been worried, wanted to wait, didn’t want to push her— but she all but climbed him in sixth year, and after that they’d never had any problems in the bedroom. She was always eager, easy to please, knew her own body and seemed happy to get to know his—
But she wasn’t like this and he can’t even work out in which way, but it’s unsettling, on top of— well. Everything.
‘But you can’t— Or at least you haven’t been able to yet—’ Sniv replies, confusingly.
‘We’ll get that part sorted out. You and me, we can do anything, so there's no way we’ll be defeated by a simple bit of magic to make the sensation more intense, more realistic from my end,’ she says, cupping the side of Sniv’s face and leaning in so she can purr, ‘I want to cum when I’m inside you, and I’m not giving up until I have,’ against his lips.
For a moment everything stops making sense again. It doesn’t roil and roll around him, reality coming apart at the seams, but— words. Words and their meanings— Words—
What—?
No. No she didn’t just— Did she just—?
Sniv’s right hand flails towards the bed, a— thing— floating off the chipped bedside table pressed up next to it and over to him as he does. More wandless magic, part of him notes. The rest is—
He doesn’t know what the rest is.
He knows nothing.
Lily makes a sound of approval, shrugging off her jumper as she does, then undoing her blouse— revealing a plain, white bra— and removing her wand from its holster at the small of her back before stripping off everything else until she is completely naked.
His wife.
Her pale skin. Her freckles. The dip of her waist. Her pink tipped breasts. The red hair between her legs.
Severus Snape looking on.
She takes the thing from Sniv— a kind of round, greyish, cylinder that looks squashed and crumpled in on itself, then places it against her body— against her pubic mound, in fact, cupping it there like the base of a cock, before she grabs her wand, taps the thing, mumbles some incantation, and—
Black straps erupt from it, that’s the first thing, crawling across her pale flesh, wrapping around her until the thing is firmly fastened in place. She taps it again, a new incantation, and— it swells, it buds up, begins to protrude like some strange growth, growing larger, longer, longer, longer, until—
A cock. A greyish cock.
Growing from Lily’s groin like—
So realistic— aside from the colour, of course.
Big too.
A big cock.
His wife has a big cock—
Maybe it’s the weight of it, maybe it’s the way it’s attached, but it sticks out more horizontally than sticking upright, bobbing with every breath, every slight movement she makes, looking fleshy and real and—
And like a cock.
Sniv groans, his legs going out from under him, sinking straight down to his knees in front of her, hands reaching out for the thing, the thing now protruding from his wife’s groin. Cupping it. Stroking it. Leaning in and licking it.
She grunts, hips darting towards Sniv’s face— which only seems to encourage him, as soon he’s got his mouth open and is— is— is—
Cocksucker, an ugly voice whispers at the back of his mind. Snivellus is a dirty little cocksucker—
Him and Pads and Wormy, cornering the boy away from everyone else— knowing on some instinctive level it would be pushing things too far, that they might really get in trouble for this one— all those rumours about Dumbledore— Pushing Snivellus around. Hexing him. Calling him that word, that one and others— It was Wormy that said it first, and who knows where he got it from, the idea, but then Sirius started too, the idea catching fire in him the way any cruelty to Sniv would. He can’t remember if he said it himself. Did he say it? He probably said it. At least once. Called Sniv a cocksucker. Maybe called him worse— then threw his books in the lake again. Padfoot threatening to break his wand— and it had started to feel wrong, really wrong, those dark eyes wide and scared, but Sirius was there, and Peter, and he couldn’t not be James Potter, not in front of them, couldn’t back down, especially as Sniv had been seen lurking around Lily again, trying to talk to her, even though she no longer wanted anything to do with the other, even though she was now his girlfriend. They’d kissed. They’d even kissed. She was his— and those dark eyes, begging the world for help that wasn’t coming, and that ugly, ugly word, and—
Maybe he deserves this. Lily leaving him for Sniv.
Sniv the cocksucker— only it’s not really ugly is it, looking at it?
Was never ugly when Lily sucked his cock, but Sniv is— How wrong of him, thinking Snivellus is a more elegant cocksucker than his own wife. He is though. One graceful hand on the base of it as his head bobs and bobs and bobs, getting lower and lower each time, until it has to be bumping the back of his throat, past there, until— The hand leaves, the head bobs, the cock disappears all the way down— No choking, no coughing, no heaving, just a sinuous movement back and forth, almost unnatural.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Lily grunts, one of her hands burying itself in the dark silk of Sniv’s hair, not forcing his movements, just holding on as he— She looks like she can feel it. She looks like it feels good. ‘Sweetheart,’ she gasps, ‘Sev, baby, you need to stop now. I need to put it in you.’
Sniv makes a small noise of complaint at that, choked by the cock in his throat, but he moves backwards willingly enough, the thing sliding out of him, bobbing as it leaves his mouth, a thin strand of spit still connecting them for a moment before it suddenly breaks.
Wet. The cock— Lily’s cock— So wet from Sniv’s mouth.
Merlin’s Beard—
Mer—
What is he doing? He should not be watching this. He should—
Leave, he should— Go home. Go—
Even if they spot him, surely he’s strong enough to Apparate away before they can— and, anyway, he can probably out duel them. Also, Obliviate— they’d never know he was—
He doesn’t want to.
He wants to keep watching.
Why?
Is he a man off to face his execution? To see it through to the end? This final, total rejection of him by the woman he loves— Or—?
Or—?
Sniv rises to his feet with that strange grace he’s always had, and then Lily’s on him, tearing at his clothes, tugging at wool, then cotton, then his trousers, and—
Pale. So pale. Ivory pale— None of Lily’s freckles. None of his own, somewhat darker, colouring— The legacy of more than one side of his family’s old interests in India, before the end of Empire. Wives taken. His great-grandmother for one. Some less savoury rumours— all hushed up now, swept under the carpet. All the Indian whitewashed away.
Sniv’s body is incredibly narrow, long and slender, and naturally so he’d guess, from the slight span of shoulders and hips— though the man is obviously too thin, bones too prominent. He always was skinny though, wasn’t he? Never did— Never did eat enough.
Funny. He’s seen almost all of it before, Sniv hanging upside down, long legs on display, pants on display— He hadn’t really been looking had he? Not then, and not a moment later, when he’d stripped them off the boy then dumped Sniv in the lake.
It’s different isn’t it, in this context, Sniv entirely bare. His long, thin cock’s hard in its nest of black hair, more crinkly than curly, and not so much of it. Hair there, in his armpits, a little on his legs— more on calves than thighs, and some on forearms. Otherwise bare. Bare aside from those strange, round scars. Scars on both arms from about the elbow up, some on his right shoulder too. Not many though, just a few, but they’re pinker than the skin surrounding them, and that catches his attention.
His attention.
His—
They’re kissing again.
Lily’s hands are— they’re on Sniv’s rear. A slight curving swell. Both hands. Hands squeezing—
She’s pressing herself in close. She’s pushing at Sniv, walking him back towards— towards—
Oh fuck, they’re headed for the bed.
The bed right next to him.
He shoves his body backwards, hunched and clawing into the corner— If they catch him— No. No— he may not feel like James Potter, but he still is James Potter. James Potter can handle this, he can, he—
He can’t. He can’t— but it’s too late now.
Two naked bodies, Lily’s hips and thighs and arse the only things clad, the straps holding the cock to her crossing her pale, freckly skin. The cock she’s grinding against Sniv. The cock she intends to put inside Sniv.
Up his bum, isn’t that right? He can’t imagine there's anywhere else for it to go.
His wife is about to bum Severus Snape right in front of him.
Obviously he’s gone mad. Sniv probably is a dark wizard, an ally of Voldemort. Sniv has probably caught him and Cruciod him into insanity, and insanity has turned out to be imagining some perverse sex act of the type he honestly had no idea people could even engage in, being engaged in, by his wife and—
A few faint lines on Sniv’s hips and thighs and arse, shining, pale, the tight, taught look of scars, almost a pale mirror of the straps around Lily— and his eyes catch there. They catch—
Those are scars from a lashing. They have to be. A lashing— maybe more than one, because a couple cross each other in a way— and he can see those round scars better now too, and they’re— No. No. They can’t be. They’re not. There’s no way those are the same size as the tip of a cigarette. They’re from a Potions accident— Of course, potions being potions, there must be some kind that leaves perfectly identically sized round scars the same size as the tip of a cigarette—
Whatever they are they’re old. They look old. They look— If they’d happened at Hogwarts, post Hogwarts, Sniv would have done something about them, wouldn’t he? With magic like his. With his Potions expertise. So they must be—
Suddenly the image of Padfoot is in front of him, Pads getting changed, old scars— not the same kind of scars, but faded old curse marks from when his mother had—
Oh. Oh no. Please no— Please let those scars be anything but from Sniv’s parents—
Strange. Dark and strange and too skinny. Dirty. Unwashed. Stinking— the first time he ever saw the boy. Every time Sniv went home for the holidays. Always worse. Sniv was always more offputting when he’d been home. Sniv was—
Sniv, the Sniv of now, is being pushed onto the bed by Lily, so the man’s lying across it side on to where he’s hiding. She stands over the man for a moment then, surveying his body with an unnerving, predatory satisfaction, before circling the base of her cock with her hand and purring, ‘Do you want it? Sweetheart, do you want me to put it up inside of you?’
The man groans, legs spreading, legs pulling up and back so Lily must be getting a bloody good look at everything there is to see, even though he’s at the wrong angle to see it all personally. One of the man’s long fingered hands slips down, briefly stroking over that long cock, caressing dark furred balls, and then down further, hips moving as he does, as he— Is he touching it, bracketing it, shoving fingers up it—? Whatever the case, Sniv’s fingers are down there, by his arsehole, and Lily’s eyes are on them, her gaze hungry. ‘Yes,’ the man murmurs hoarsely. ‘I want it, Lils. Please—’
She drops to her knees, nuzzling her face into his right thigh, pressing a kiss there, then a little nip, before kissing her way up towards— Sniv stops her, drawing back, away from her, bracketing her head in both hands as he says, ‘No.’
She sighs, turning her face to press a nipping kiss to his wrist, before pulling back to crawl over to the bedside table and start rooting around in the top drawer, speaking as she does so, ‘One day you’ll let me put my mouth on you, sweetheart. One day you’ll let me eat you out. The only way I got through lunch today with that bloody Maureen blithering on was imagining you sitting on my face.’
‘It’s dirty Lily,’ Sniv protests, legs dropping back down and pressing together defensively.
‘That’s what makes it sound so fun,’ she says with a laugh, pulling a vial of something out of the drawer and moving back to the man on the bed.
‘Lily—’ Sniv chastises.
Her face drops into seriousness, ‘You’re clean, Sev. I promise you. I put my mouth on you and it’ll be me getting you dirty—’
‘That is not tr—’ Sniv begins, before sighing. ‘No, Lily. I said no.’
‘Ok,’ she replies, sounding sad. She reaches out and tangles her fingers with his, ‘You know I’ll never do anything to hurt you, don’t you Sev?’
‘I—’ the man whispers, something vulnerable in his face.
‘I love you,’ she adds, lifting their joined hands to her lips to kiss his knuckles. ‘Do you still want to?’
‘Of course,’ he replies, voice a little shaky.
Another kiss and she lets his hand go, both of hers now fiddling with the vial she retrieved, opening it and pouring pale, golden fluid out onto her left palm. She dips the fingers of her right hand into the liquid, then slathers the rest over her cock— she’s not wearing her wedding ring— reaching out as Sniv lifts and spreads his legs once more, her hand disappearing to—
Sniv gasps, head arching back, as she must push her fingers up inside of him. Inside of— In— ‘You’re so tight sweetheart,’ she says, softly. ‘Can you try and relax for me? I don’t want to hurt you.’
The man makes a soft humming noise, ‘I don’t mind.’
‘But I do,’ she says, ‘Remember?’
A pause, then, ‘I’ll try.’
It seems to take forever, her hand moving there, Sniv twitching and moving back against her, before she seems satisfied, before she climbs off the floor and into the other man’s waiting arms, her hand on her cock, guiding it as she pushes forward and in.
Sniv gasps, arms wrapping around her shoulders, legs coming up to wrap around her waist. She takes his open mouth as in invitation, going straight in for a greedy, filthy kiss, the little noises he’s making as she starts to thrust getting swallowed down by her.
If they were lying on the bed properly, instead of across it, he’d be able to see everything—
Whatever strange, surreal bubble he’s been in suddenly pops, and suddenly he’s properly aware that he’s watching his wife fuck Snivellus with her fake cock—
His own cock is so, so hard, and he doesn’t understand it, but his mouth feels wet, and his hands itch like they want to touch, and he has no idea what he wants to touch, where he wants to put his mouth, his cock— but he does.
This should be disgusting. His mind should by crying out that it’s unnatural. He should by fighting down nausea and bile. It should be so easy to do what he should do, throw off his cloak, denounce the two of them— He really didn’t know people could do this. Of course he knew two men could— but not a man and a woman, and especially not like this, with her the one up inside of him—
He can’t imagine it. The thought of it happening to him does make him feel a bit sick, sends an uneasy roiling in his stomach, but looking at from the outside— He’s never, ever, ever thought about another man before. Never imagined the things two men do together could be anything but disgusting and offputting. Ugly. Violent— But watching Sniv— not that Lily is a man, but it’s still the same act, and Sniv’s still—
Merlin’s Beard, Snivellus is so bloody— erotic.
Moaning and arching and taking it, like it feels so unbelievably good.
Lily is sort of attractive like this too, this strange Lily, this almost slightly masculine Lily. Lily aggressive. Lily the conqueror.
He doesn’t want to be the subject of it, this desire of hers, but he finds he likes watching it. Watching her— watching Sniv— watching the two together—
He always has watched the two of them, hasn’t he? Ever since he met them.
He just thought he was watching them for different reasons—
‘Ah,’ the man in question cries out, breaking the kiss as his whole body shudders, head arching back.
Lily makes a soft hum of triumph, her hips moving with increasing purpose, snapping forward and sliding back, a steady hammering pace that has Sniv falling apart beneath her, toes clenching and curling, body shifting around with little uncoordinated bursts of pleasure.
What would it be like, being the one inside Sniv?
Crawling in between those incredibly long legs, bracketing narrow hips or that slender waist with his own large, broad hands, biting at the dusty rose of the man’s little nipples, nuzzling along the length of his throat, suckling a plump earlobe into his mouth—
Or behind Lily, running his tongue across her sex, lapping up the wetness that must be oozing from her, rubbing his cock there, pushing it in as she pushes into—
His cock twitches, throbs in his trousers. He’s so hard. He doesn’t think he’s ever been this hard in his life.
He’s not going to touch it. He’s not going to—
Who is he kidding? He’s as bad as Sirius when it comes to resisting temptation.
As first he just covers it with his palm through his trousers, applies a little gentle pressure, but the button of his waistband is just there, and the zip, and—
And Sniv is so loud. Making these punched out cries with every thrust, or sometimes calling out, ‘Lily’ or ‘Please.’ It’s so sexy. It’s— He’s never been with a girl that made much noise before. Not that he’s been with many— his cock’s wept a little wet spot into his pants, right over the head. He shudders as he touches it, as he rubs damp cotton against sensitive flesh. Just a finger, just a little touch, not like he’s really— A couple before Lily, and then Lily herself. He’d thought maybe she’d be louder, that she’d sigh and moan and cry out, especially once they moved in together, weren’t trying to find somewhere they could be together at school, always worrying someone would stumble upon them. But she wasn’t. She mainly just grunts— Like she’s doing now. Deep, throaty grunts as she grinds her hips into the quivering, whimpering form of—
His hand worms its way into his pants, playing with the head of his cock for a moment, running his finger back and forth over the weeping slit, then down, caressing the edge of his foreskin where it’s pushed back, spreading the wetness— then he might as well go for it at this point, so he pulls the thing out of his trousers and gets pumping, instinctively matching the rhythm of Lily’s hips.
Sniv’s a mess at this point, red faced and sweaty, eyes clenched shut, body contorted and convulsing, looking a hair’s breadth from cumming— Oh he wants to see that. Do it Lily, make him cum—
‘Let go,’ she says, green eyes open and burningly intense on Sniv’s face, ‘Come on sweetheart. Come on, cum for me—’
‘Need—’ Sniv chokes out, but that single word seems to be enough for her to understand, as she leans back enough to get one of her hands there, in between them, wrapping it around Sniv’s long, thin cock and starting to pump—
The man shudders, whole body jumping, clenching, contorting as his hips thrust upwards, pushing against both her hand and her cock as the first squirt of white erupts to splatter up his torso.
F-fuck!
His own hips jump— almost—
Lily keeps thrusting, keeping pumping, until she’s milked the last squirt out of Sniv’s cock, until his body’s unclenching, relaxing, collapsing back against the bed. She starts to pull back then, but Sniv catches her by her upper arm, gasping out, ‘You can keep going if you think you can, too—’
She groans, ‘Oh, you’re too good to me.’ Her hips resuming their thrusting, grinding her cock into the shuddering form beneath her, Sniv obviously rocked by aftershocks, intensified by—
Almost—
A snarl of frustration erupts from her, her hips shifting backwards, pulling out so she’s kneeling between Sniv’s thighs, cock bobbing in front of her. She scrabbles for it, grabbing it and muttering some incantation, the straps holding it to her releasing the moment she does. She flings it onto the bed beside them, a hand going between her legs to—
‘Up,’ Sniv gasps, reaching for her with uncoordinated hands, ‘Up here. My mouth— Let me—’
The two move together, her crawling up his body in a desperate scramble, his arms reaching out and embracing her, curling around her hips and tugging her in as her thighs come to bracket his face, her sex grinding down towards his face as he cants it up to receive her, the same moment her hands smacking against the wall to help her keep her balance.
She groans, hips moving, riding Sniv’s tongue as—
Oh— Oh fuck—
His own hips push forward, fucking into his palm like it’s her cunt, like it’s Sniv’s arsehole, like it’s a warm, wet hole belonging to someone splayed and welcoming him in. The world shimmers and shivers around him. The first squirt, wet and slick into his palm, the sound of her grunting, Sniv’s wanting little moans, the—
When he can think again he realises he’s still huddled in the corner, hidden beneath his Invisibility Cloak, his wife and Sniv curled up together on the bed, Lily gently casting a cleansing charm on her and Sniv— not Scourgify, he notes— and he also has a handful of his own spunk. His cock is hanging out of his trousers. He—
Shame rises, a choking thing. What did he just—
Then guilt, a slightly different thing, a nuance on the wretched feeling filling him. The things he’s done before now—
Heartbreak next.
He’s lost his wife, hasn’t he? Lost her to Sniv— to Severus Snape.
They’re kissing now, Lily and Sniv, lazy, comfortable kisses. The kisses of people who have been doing a lot of kissing. People comfortable in each other.
He can’t even muster up the conviction that he should go out there and hex them. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to be here— He’s seen enough. He wants to leave. He wants to go lick his wounds in private. He wants to banish this bloody handful of spunk. He wants to—
He needs to think. Think about this. Think about what to do next—
He still loves her.
He doesn’t want to lose her.
He’s already lost her.
‘Come on,’ he hears her voice, dragging his attention back to the pair so near to him he could probably reach out and touch them if he stretched— long arms, you see, because he’s tall isn’t he? Tall and good looking, smart, powerful— the result of generation after generation of careful, selective breeding that his family no longer actively acknowledges but still practices. The Potters careful to introduce hybrid vigour(Lily, at the end of the day. His love. His parents’ acquiescence their addition to the project this generation.), to not engage in too much line breeding, to do everything in their power to perfect their line, to not end up like so many other Pureblood families. Full of congenital defects and insanity. All down to him. The perfect son.
He hardly feels perfect does he.
‘Under the covers Sev. A nap, just a nap, then we have to eat—’
They shift and squirm on the bed, tugging at the blankets, Sniv uncoordinated, half-asleep, and no less attractive than he realised the man was earlier, Lily still Lily, beautiful, the only woman he’s ever really wanted— Look at them— They look so good together.
They end up on their sides, Lily behind Sniv, wrapping him in her arms, nuzzling her face into the nape of his neck even as she draws the covers over both of them.
The least he can do is put his cock back in his trousers—
Of course he still has a handful of spunk, and wandless magic has never been his strong point— no matter what lessons his parents ever tried to give him. No matter their worried mutterings— so he can’t spell it away. He’ll have to handle it one-handed, not impossible, but he feels clumsy and— Well. He feels a lot of things. He feels—
He doesn’t really know what he feels.
He can’t even talk about it with anyone.
Not even Sirius— especially not Sirius. If Sirius found out—
Sirius would come after Sniv and that— He doesn’t want that.
He does manage to put his cock away, which is a small increase in dignity, though he does still have the handful of spunk. He could always wipe it somewhere— Like a dog marking its territory, but with spunk instead of piss— A strange, hot surge rushes through him at the thought. He could wipe it on something of theirs, of Sniv’s. On Sniv himself— A mark. A sign he was here. A claiming— but the thought brings with it a whole new surge of shame and confusion.
He wishes he had a handkerchief. Sometimes he forgets things like that, handkerchiefs, matching socks, whether he needs to wear a tie, what colours go with what, little practicalities he’s used to having House Elves sort out for him. Lily never wanted an Elf of their own. Gave him a funny look when he suggested they take one with them when they got married. Only the one— The house is so small they wouldn’t need more.
He doesn’t think he can do this all night— Why would he want to do this all night? What kind of a person would want to hide in the corner of a room shared by his wife and her lover all night with a handful of spunk—
Oh. Oh— he thinks they’re both asleep. They’re both breathing slowly, a slight wheeze coming from Sniv, he assumes, as he can also hear that faint snore Lily makes.
Asleep.
Ok. Yes. Ok.
Very, very carefully he creeps out of his corner, wary of the piles of books and papers on the floor as he tiptoes towards the door. He is getting out of here— and since he is getting out of here, will soon be able to wave his wand and use magic without either of them noticing, there’s no reason not to wipe his hand on his trousers before he does.
Other than the faint shiver of disgust he feels, but it is a drop in the ocean of bad feeling he is leaving with.
It’s easy. It’s too easy. He just reaches the door, and carefully reaches for the lock, unlocks it, and turns the knob— and even though there are small mechanical noises, clicks, squeaks, unoiled hinges— sooner than he could imagine he’s stepping outside, carefully pulling the door shut behind him, and—
Running.
He bolts to the stairs, flings himself down them, slams into the front door in his haste to get it open, and then out into the cold night of Muggle London.
Then he just keeps running. Running, running, running, running until he can run no more, until he is— He has no idea where he is— but only here, this strange, unrecognisable street, empty, does he remove the cloak, gasping in the cold air as he does. He grabs his wand, a flick and the spunk is spelled away, a Scourgify and his hand is clean, like it never was— though stinging a little from the roughness of the magic.
He stares down at it, at his hand— it’s like it never happened. But it did— it—
He will go back to Headquarters, report that Sniv— Severus Snape is no ally of Voldemort, has not taken the Mark, is in fact an ordinary wizard—
Or he could go back and report just the opposite. The right words and dangerous, kill on sight could be amended to the man’s profile—
What a thing to think. What a— What kind of man is he?
He glances at his hand again, shame burning in the heart of him. What kind of man, indeed.
No. No— For once he’ll do the right thing for Sniv, for once, then he’ll go home and—
What?