
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/93358.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Harry_Potter_-_Rowling
  Relationship:
      Harry_Potter/Severus_Snape
  Character:
      Harry, Ron, Hermione, Snape
  Series:
      Part 1 of The_Passion_of_Lovers_series
  Collections:
      The_Quidditch_Pitch
  Stats:
      Published: 2010-06-09 Words: 3552
****** Burning From the Inside ******
by Cluegirl
Summary
     Harry requires a short, sharp shock to pull him out of his downward
     spiral. Snape gives it to him.
"I. Don't. Care." Harry spoke the words with terrible precision.
Hermione blinked, momentarily stunned into silence by the stony look on her
friend's face, but then her meddlesome nature reasserted itself and she settled
her hands onto her hips and gave Harry her best prefect's scowl. "Harry, you
have to care! This isn't some homework assignment you're skiving off, it's
detention!"
"She's right, mate," Ron chimed in, though reluctantly, "Snape'll bust
Gryffindor down to negative points, and-"
"Fine. Let him. I don't care about House Points."
"Well, what about those of us who DO care then?" Hermione huffed.
Harry slammed his book closed, and stood -- towering over her in the privacy of
his own mind, though he could only look her in the eye in reality. "Let THEM go
serve Snape's bloody pointless detention. I'm through with it! I'm through with
his picking on me just because he's a bloody teacher, and if nobody else is
going to stop him being unfair, then I guess it's just up to me, isn't it?"
"This is about the quidditch ban, isn't it?" Hermione pursed her lips, clearly
trying to resemble Professor MacGonagall. "You know Umbridge had Ministerial
approval for her edicts last year, Harry -- the Headmaster can't just overturn
what he likes without going through the Board of Governors-"
"NO IT BLOODY ISN'T ABOUT THE STUPID QUIDDITCH BAN!" He roared, "I DON'T CARE
ABOUT QUIDDITCH!" Ron made a squeaking noise, but Harry rolled onward. "I don't
care about Umbridge's stupid rules, and I don't care about Dumbledore's stupid
rules, and I don't care about that stupid new Defense professor we've got this
year, and I don't care about house points, or homework, or the stupid goblin
wars, or smelly humpgubble plants, or sock-mending charms, or about SNAPE'S
BLOODY DETENTION!"
But Harry," she started, "you can't just-"
"Watch me," he snarled, then shoved past Hermione's shoulder, stomped through
the tomb-silent common room, and up the stairs to his dorm room.
He slammed the door, startled Trevor under Neville's bed, and told himself
fiercely that he didn't care. Harry Potter was bloody well tired of caring.
Because caring didn't matter, did it? His caring about Sirius had only gotten
him killed, hadn't it? Oh, everyone was careful to say it wasn't his fault -
- Sirius had always been reckless (they said) if anyone was to blame, it was
Voldemort (they said) and how could Harry have known that his dreams were
Voldemort's doing? (They were always sure to add.)
Only Harry was sure he ought to have known, somehow. And he was likewise sure
that he was to blame. Somehow. And if nobody would bloody well say so, then
what could it mean but that somehow… somehow Sirius's death wasn't important
enough to blame on anyone?
Because they sure as hell weren't blaming Snape, and for all Dumbledore's
having said he was to blame, nobody seemed to want him to pay! And Bellatrix
Lestrange was bloody well supposed to be trying to kill him, wasn't she? They'd
been dueling, after all, so what else was she meant to do but hit with her
deadliest force? He could hate the bitch for killing Sirius, but Harry sure as
hell couldn't blame her.
"It wasn't anybody's fault," they all told him at one point or another -- at
least the ones who had anything at all to say about it, "it just happened."
Only if something like that could just… happen, despite every single thing
Harry could do to stop it. Well, it rather meant that anything at all could
just 'happen', didn't it? And in that case, why should Harry bother to try and
stop anything at all from 'happening'?
Let Voldemort believe in Trelawney's stupid prophecy. He already believed it
enough for the both of them, and he was going to do whatever he thought he
needed to about it whether Harry gave a damn or not. And in light of that
thought, giving a damn didn't really make much sense to Harry anymore.
He flung open his trunk and began hurling his belongings across his bed until
he reached the tugged-loose lining pocket where Sirius's mirror rested,
shattered and blank in the accusing darkness. He pulled it out and scowled at
the glassy, dull surface. "So who cares about you anyway?" he asked it, dry
eyed and breathing fire, "Who cares about anything? Not me. Not bloody me!"
The door opened behind him, and the mirror's cracked edges glinted a spark of
carroty hair and embarrassed pink skin. "Unless you've come to ask me if I want
to play chess with you, Ron, you can just piss off," Harry warned him without
turning, "Because I'm not going."
"Harry," Ron squeaked, "it's just, er-"
"I don't care!" Harry flung the cracked mirror on his bed and turned, "Snape
can assign me whatever stupid detention he wants, but he can't bloody well make
me go!"
"Actually, Mr. Potter," that voice oiled around the back of his neck and made
every hair stand upright, "I think you'll find I can." And before Harry could
so much as remember where he's tossed his wand, he found himself petrified,
bound neck to knee in dark green, snaky ropes, and floating four inches off the
ground. "Mr. Weasley," Snape's voice was smug and vile, "kindly collect Mr.
Potter's book bag, Potion's text, parchment, ink, and a quill."
"Sorry mate," whispered Ron, who clearly needed no legilimency spell to
translate the look Harry shot him, "nobody went to fetch him, he just showed
up, and-"
"NOW, Mr. Weasley."
"I'm just getting his shoes, Sir," Ron turned to protest, but Snape only gave
him an ugly smile as he turned Harry upside down.
"My, my," Snape raised an eyebrow. "Not wearing your shoes or robes for a
detention in the dungeons? Heavens, but you'll be chilly, won't you? Not a
choice I would have made, Potter, but who am I to question your reckless
disregard for personal comfort?" And with that, Harry was flipped upright so
quickly that his dinner kicked him.
"But Sir," Ron tried, clutching Harry's trainers in one hand, and his bookbag
in the other, "it'll just take a moment to-"
"Mr. Potter is already behind his time," Snape replied, clearly enjoying
himself as he snatched the bag and slung it over Harry's rigid shoulder, "Much
longer, and his detention will last all night." He led the way down the stairs,
and Harry had no choice but to bob along behind him like a slightly nauseated
fishing float while the entirety of Gryffindor house stared in abject horror.
But nobody stepped into the Potions Master's way, and nobody so much as coughed
to draw his attention, and nobody failed to look away from Harry's blistering
glare.
Fine, to hell with the lot of you! Harry raged silently as the portrait hole
opened, I still don't bloody care! He can't make me, and you can't either! But
Harry's dinner still gave an uncomfortable lurch when he saw Professor
MacGonagall give Snape a curt nod as he climbed through the portrait hole and
swept Harry off down the stairs.
                                      ~*~
The dungeon stones were fiercely cold under Harry's feet once Snape finally set
him down and un-hexed him, but not nearly as cold as the Potions Master's
glare. Harry swallowed, then reminded himself that he didn't care, and returned
the glower.
"Where is the report which you were to have turned in during the potions class
you missed today, Mr. Potter?"
Harry shrugged, and slid his bookbag into the chair. "Didn't do it."
And oh yes, Snape noticed the lack of his title. "Why," he said through his
teeth, "may I ask, did you find yourself incapable of producing a twelve-inch
essay which even Longbottom managed to complete?" Snape waved one long, spidery
hand over the stack of parchments, weighted down by a ruler marked in red. "Or
was it perhaps that you fancied yourself -"
"I didn't do it," Harry snarled, advancing on the desk, "because it didn't
bloody well MATTER!" He slammed both hands down on the desktop, sending essays
and quills and inkwells and ruler flying. "Billywig stings don't make one
fucking scrap of difference in whether I live or die, or anyone else either!
They're just crap, like it's all crap! And I'm not bloody well doing it
anymore!"
Snape's only response was to raise an eyebrow. "And when that attitude leads to
your expulsion, Potter? What will you do then?"
And oh, wouldn't that be Snape's fucking wet dream? Harry Potter kicked out of
Hogwarts without him having to stick his big old nose in? Harry shook his head.
"I won't be expelled, because nobody but you cares what I do!" Snape opened his
mouth, but Harry pushed on before he could reply, "But if I am expelled, then
that's just fine. It won't change anything. That fucking prophecy will still
say the same thing, and Voldemort will still believe it, and I'll either kill
him, or he'll kill me, and billywig stings STILL WON"T FUCKING MATTER!"
Fire woke in Snape's black eyes. "I daresay it will matter when you find
yourself packed back to those Muggles you hate so much!"
"I won't go!" Harry snapped, "I'm seventeen last month, and they can't make me
go back there!"
"Then you will throw away the protection of your blood, give up the wards on
your home, and just wait for the Dark Lord to-"
"It's not my fucking home, and I don't bloody CARE!" Harry leaned across
Snape's desk, nose to nose as he screamed, "Voldemort can come kiss my-"
Suddenly he lurched off balance, nearly sprawling as his tie jerked tight. "And
what about your parent's sacrifice, you selfish little brat?" Snape hissed,
dragging Harry around the desk by the tie, while Harry pried in vain at his
fingers, "Is this how you uphold all the blood debts you carry? All the lives
which have been sacrificed to keep you alive? Do you care about them?"
One breath, then two. Harry stared, shakingly furious, but aware on some level
that his shelter was being threatened. If he began to care, then it would all
just begin again, Because then he'll have to care about Sirius, and about Peter
Pettegrew, and about Cedric, and about -- "No," he said at last, "No I don't!"
Snape's face twisted, and it took Harry a breathless second to realize that the
man was actually smiling -- really smiling, not smirking or sneering or
grimacing, but giving a little, almost-sad quirk which on any other face, would
have meant concern, or even regret. And then, before Harry could even shout,
Snape's knee jolted into his thighs, and he found himself being dragged/shoved
face down across Snape's lap.
Breath knocked out of him by landing hard on Snape's other knee, Harry still
managed to yell when he heard the ruler whistling through the air. And that was
good, because when it hit him, Harry couldn't manage anything more than a
ragged gasp. With only his thin school trousers to cushion the blow, that ruler
really fucking stung!
Harry cursed, struggled, shouted with all his startled might, but the blows
just kept coming, each one like a stripe of fire across his arse, ten times
more painful than the one before it, twenty times more humiliating with each
ringing slap. This was nothing like Uncle Vernon's bearlike cuffs to the head,
or being shoved into a damned cupboard -- this was sharp, blazing pain that
didn't stop hurting no matter how he fought it. In fact, the harder he
struggled, the harder he cursed, the harder the ruler seems to slap across his
arse, until his throat was raw from screaming, and surely, surely he had to be
bloodied back there!
But more to the point, he was helpless -- just as helpless as he'd been in the
Riddle family graveyard, just as helpless as he'd been when Sirius flew
backward through the ghostly veil. He was splayed and spread across Snape's
knees, with his arse blistering hot and no bloody traction to get away, and no
more words coming out of his throat because all that would fit were those
shaking, ragged sounds he'd never heard himself utter before, and suddenly
Harry found that he DID fucking care -- he cared very much indeed!
He fought that even harder than he'd fought the beating, thrashing like a mad
thing to escape the burning, blinding weight that was clawing its way up from
his belly with every stroke of that damned ruler. His eyes were hot, as sharp-
stung as his arse was, and that thought only made him flail the harder. Because
no matter what happened to him, Harry Potter Would. Not. Fucking. Cry. DAMMIT!
But then a vicious wriggle brought his head hard into the desk, overwhelmed the
pain and shame with a shocking, ringing dizziness, and startling them both
still for a second. Then Snape grabbed a handful of Harry's blistered arse, and
hauled him firmly back into place into his lap, and FUCK! Harry couldn't hold
back a scream at the wool grinding into his arse, and Snape's fucking leg
pressing his erection hard and hot against his belly and-!
Harry froze again with a jagged, horrified gasp. He was hard. He was really
really hard, and Snape…
Snape's fingers closed on Harry's abused arse again, this time in a solid
grope, which made Harry wail in mortified anguish even as he jutted his trapped
penis even harder into Snape's thigh. "Here's irony for you, Potter," Snape's
voice was low, ragged and vile with smugness, "you're aroused by this, and now
it is I who don't care!"
And then the ruler whistled again, and the rain of fire continued, only this
time each blow rocked Harry's cock hard against Snape's leg, and each lash of
agony from behind was met with a curl of lust and friction from before, and
Harry was gasping, sobbing desperate breaths, clutching at Snape's arm for
balance, for some anchor in the storm of punishing blows pushing him closer and
closer to the edge and.
And oh fuck! He was going to come. He was going to come any moment, right there
against Snape's leg, with his arse thrusting up into that goddamned ruler, and
he couldn't fucking do a thing to stop it! And with that horrified realization,
the tears he'd been fighting back wrenched free at last -- broke like a mighty
wave over his head and shattered his resistance like matchwood. Harry could no
more fight back the emotional release than he could evade Snape's slashing
ruler, or his own impending orgasm, and he knew it.
"Please," he stopped struggling, went limp and shuddering in Snape's grasp,
though he knew begging would make no difference. "Please."
But then Snape did stop -- shoved Harry backward off his lap, to kneel beside
his chair on the icy floor, heels pressed into his screaming arse, cock tenting
his trouser fly, and that was almost worse than before. Because he still
couldn't stop it, the pain, the lust, the tears, the damned, sick, helpless
terror clawing out of him through his burning eyes -- he was just as helpless
as before, but now he was facing it alone.
"Oh, do stop sniveling, Potter," Snape growled as Harry sagged, shaking against
his leg.
But he couldn't stop -- didn't dare try to stop for fear the sharp, angry sobs
would rip him apart. Harry shook his head, hiding his tears behind his sweaty
fringe and half-fogged glasses, and begging silently, fervently, though he
didn't know what for. The burning ache in his arse was almost as bad as the
ache in his cock, or the one coiling like a basilisk around his heart. How
could he tell relief to pray for first?
Then Snape seized a handful of Harry's hair and craned his head back, revealed
his shame to the merciless light. "Stop crying," he repeated in a terrible,
soft voice, "or do you want me to give you something to cry about?"
Harry stared, gulping helpless sobs and waiting for the condemnation, for the
cruelty to return. But there was only silence, and waiting, and that level,
inescapable black stare, and Harry began to realize there was something
different there -- a hot, hard sort of understanding. As though Snape knew what
it felt like to vomit up sixteen years of choked-back tears, and knew how best
to manage it without going mad, and oh god, but he wanted to come, and maybe
there was that there as well, but- Snape shook Harry's head, made him open his
eyes, made him stop hiding again. And what could Harry do but nod?
Snape nodded back. Then he jerked Harry to his feet, worked his belt buckle
with deft fingers, swiping it free of the trouser's loops almost before Harry
knew what he was about. A second later, Harry's trousers were open, and then
shoved down along with his pants, and oh GOD, the bunched-up fabric caught on
his erection, then dragged over his arse in a promise of what would follow.
And when Snape tipped Harry back over his lap, Harry let himself go without a
fight. And when his belt slapped like liquid agony over his sore arse, and the
beating began in earnest, Harry didn't struggle, didn't scream. He just clung
to Snape's leg and relaxed into the pain, weeping and sobbing and letting the
roaring, blood-thundering waves toss him along as the strap cracked down again
and again. Each fierce slap rocked Harry's cock against Snape's thigh, against
his scratchy wool trousers, and the pleasure was a maddening coil around his
spine, braiding together with the agony and the anguish until they were the
same thing, and suddenly the ice Harry'd been hiding under cracked away melted
and flowed away in gulps and gasps and spurts of blazing white. And the only
sound he had left to him was a wordless, shuddering howl.
                                      ~*~
Snape lay the belt gently across Harry's heaving, shuddering back. His fingers
trailed in soothing, easy strokes down the small of Harry's back while he rode
out the storm. No hugs, no words of comfort to burn and itch and feel entirely
wrong between them, just that gentle touch, that balance point of
understanding. It is the first he'd ever had from the man, and realizing that
made Harry cry a little harder. Because it made him care.
Eventually though, the tears failed, wound down to hiccoughs and gulps, and
finally petered out entirely. Harry's arse was burningly hot and chilled at
once, his stomach ached, his face was a mess, and his feet had long since
fallen asleep. But Snape's hand still made those restless circles in the small
of his back, where his shirt had ridden up, like rings in calming water, and
Harry found himself strangely reluctant to give that up. But he would have to
sooner or later, Harry knew, so he took a last deep breath, and put some effort
into gathering his scattered wits.
"May I," he began, startled at the thick, harsh sound of his voice, "May I
please get up now, Sir?"
Snape's only response was to lift his hands away, but Harry took that for tacit
permission. He got up carefully, relying as much on the desk for balance as his
own chilled legs. He tried a sniff, but his nose was too packed, so Harry
settled for wiping his face on his shirtsleeve.
He froze as Snape made a disgusted noise, but the man only thrust a
handkerchief at him. Harry put it to use, but didn't quite have the nerve to
use it to wipe himself up down there. Snape waved him away with a sneer when he
tried tentatively to hand the cloth back.
"You will sit there," he pointed to the wooden directly in front of his desk.
That chair was uncomfortable on the best days -- on a freshly tanned arse,
Harry realized, it was going to be sheer torture. "and you will write your
essay on the uses of billywig stings in detection potions. Twelve inches, as
assigned in class. Once I have read and graded it, you will be allowed to
return to your dormitory for the night." Snape raised an eyebrow at him. "Any
questions?"
Harry started to shake his head, but then licked his lips and swallowed
instead. "Your trousers, Sir -- your robes, where I…" he pointed at the sticky
shine he left behind, and then, because it couldn't be helped, at the
conspicuous bulge ridging up between the buttons of Snape's trouser placket. He
couldn't believe he was saying it, only he heard the tentative waver in his own
voice. "Oughtn't I to…"
Snape sat back, knees still spread, hiding a smirk behind his steepled fingers
as he watched Harry blush. He was going to laugh, Harry just knew it. He was
going to be evil and horrible, and why hadn't he just kept his stupid mouth
shut? Only Snape just leaned his chair a subtle tilt farther, so that the light
gleamed over his cloth-trapped erection.
"Why Mr. Potter, "he said at last, and the smile his lips would never show
curled out on his smug velvet voice, "I didn't know you cared."
                                      Fin
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