A Winter's Tale

by chaos rose (cathouse_mary)

Summary:

Snape has a secret, Filch has rheumatism - wackiness ensues.

Notes:

I was trying for angst, but I got this instead.

 

Merry Smutmas, atdelphi!

 

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To: atdelphi From: chaos_rose

Title: A Winter's Tale
Rating: NC-17/M-18 or what have you.
Pairing: Snape/Filch

There was little that ailed a Black Country man that could not be cured - or at least made more endurable - by repeated application of tea and buttered toast.

As Argus had a great deal which he was required to endure, he could have built a replica of Hogwarts with toast for stones, butter for mortar, and filled the lake with tea by the time Severus Snape's first three months as a professor were over. The beaky, sharp-tongued stripling boy was now a beaky, sharp-tongued man - and the terror of the students who had become perhaps too accustomed to Slughorn's laissez-faire. The new professor had sent Argus more detentions than all the other professors in the school combined, and more Gryffindors than a man ought to be rightly plagued with.

Now, the snow on his windowsill bright with moonrise, the halls were quiet. This morning, the Houses emptied of students even as a pile of baggage grew in entry. The little toffee-nosed gits - every last one - had left for the Hogsmeade station before the scent of bacon had faded from the Great Hall. Even Peeves, lacking the impetus of hormonal adolescents to fuel his mayhem, had fallen to quiet by teatime. Argus would have twenty-one blessed days of quiet and solitude to tide him over until June. Nothing for him to do but catch up on some reading, start restoring a portrait he'd bought from Old Pritchett back on the end of summer-

Cocking his head, Argus paused in his thoughts as his sharp ears picked out a noise at odds with the serenity of the empty castle. Brow creasing, he went to the door of his office and opened it, listening as a credible baritone echoed down the circular stair at the end of the corridor.

"… here's to the hedgehog, he's sharp as they come!
You'll never get through his impr… imer… imperegenabagnable…"

A pause, Argus was certain, to contribute a bit more alcohol to the problem.

"… his really tight bum!
With his nose up his arsehole and rolled in a baaaaaaaaaaaaaall!"

Crash. Rattle. Bang. Thumpity-grunt-thumpity-grunt-thumpity-grunt-thumpity-thud.

He might also append to that list of winter occupations, 'sorting out random drunks fallen downstairs.'

"Oh, my life…" The sigh met the air in a plume of steam as he took his coat from the hall tree, his lantern from the hook, and ventured out into the dark corridor.

"Bleeding elves don't seem to think that anyone but sodding wand-wavers need to see in the dark…" He stumped into the stairway, Missus on his heels, and gave the pile of dark cloth lying at the foot of the stair a good prod with the toe of his boot. Bending closer at the lack of response, Argus was enveloped in a warm funk of spices, tobacco smoke, and a fair amount of brandy. "D'you know all the blasted Ministry paperwork I'll have to do if you die here? Bleeding idiot!"

The pile of robes stirred and a long-fingered hand emerged and most carefully set a silver flask on the stones, then - only after making sure that the flask would not tip and spill the brandy - the bundle began to sort itself out. Legs in black trousers emerged, with painfully polished boots at the ends, the hands were attached to starched white cuffs that disappeared into the sleeves of a black coat, one hand raising itself to disappear into the hood of the voluminous black cloak - and coming out covered in blood that gleamed in the light of Argus' lantern.

"Shit." Argus knelt and pushed back the hood, finding - as expected - a copiously bleeding head wound. Moreover, and most unexpectedly, finding the head belonging to the young Professor Sourpuss himself, Severus Snape. "For pity's sake, boy," he grumbled, fishing out a handkerchief and pressing it against the wound as the idiot winced. "I thought you had better sense. What do you have to say for yourself?"

Snape blinked at him, seeming to either ponder the question or trying to bring his eyes to focus, then with a deep breath he opened his mouth.

"… the hedgehog can never be buggered aaaaaat alllllllll!"

"Oh, my life." Reaching for the boy - and never mind that Professor nonsense, this was as stupid and boyish a thing as Argus had ever seen - Argus manhandled him up from the floor. "Come on, you, come on… don't startle at me. The morning after the night before is going to make you wish for a switching to take your mind off your head…" The arm in his grip told him that Snape had more cloth than meat on his bones, seemingly as spindly in manhood as he'd been in boyhood. There'd always been something lean and hungry about him, and as watchful as a feral cat who'd felt a boot in his ribs too many times.

Snape, fortunately for Argus, was too potted - and likely addled from the knock on the head - to fluff himself into offence as Argus bundled him through the door and into the chair by the fireplace. "Sit." Snape took hold of his robes, opening his mouth and drawing himself up. "Stay sat, or I'll have Madam Pomfrey on you."

"I am not afraid of Madam," he pronounced after a significant hesitation, though his eyes did twitch briefly to one side as if looking for the redoubtable starched apron.

Argus noted that the boy nonetheless stayed put as he brought out the small aid kit. "More fool you, then. Just because she's a Hufflepuff doesn't mean she won't tear a hole in you for this kind of caper." He sat on the hassock, opening the kit and peering at the wound. "Lemme see your eyes… no… can't tell pupil from iris on you… don't see any lump coming."

"I… I think I cut it on the edge of the last step. It's fine, I'm just-"

"Hush. Here, hold this on it. Get the bleeding stopped then get it clean…"

"I said-"

"I could always call Madam."

Snape subsided into a petulant silence as Argus worked, the quiet broken only by the pop and crackle of flames in the hearth. The bleeding was stopped, the deep gash cleaned, a healing salve spread on with one of his best brushes, and the work was completed with a coronet of white gauze. Snape used the time to retreat into his accustomed sour demeanour, acting as if he hadn't bounced down the stairs as brandy-soaked as a Christmas pudding. He stood, arranging his professorial robes with the fuss of one new to them.

"Thank you, Master Filch, for more than was strictly necessary, but thank you nonetheless." He paused, eyeing Argus with an indecipherable expression. "I trust that you will not feel… obligated to report my lapse to the Headmaster."

"I'll not need to be mentioning it so long as it's not going to happen again." Argus growled, "You, I thought would have more sense."

Snape had the grace to look away, embarrassed, as he took himself out. "Good evening, Master Filch."

~

The Death Eater trials were on the wireless, and as Argus worked at restoring a portrait of the Grey Lady, he listened. He'd been born on Knockturn Alley, raised in Saint Cuthbert's Home for Boys, and passed to an apprenticeship under Apollyon Pringle at fifteen - no, some things might surprise him, but never shock him. He heard students he'd once known, their deeds laid before the Wizengamot without so much shock as revulsion. Oh, he remembered them all, pureblooded gits so inbred that they should have had their eyes on the sides of their heads. Vicious little snots, first to last, but hardly the most fearsome witches and wizards of their generation…

He regarded the restored lace of the Grey Lady's ruff critically. "Considering what they got up to, I'd say that it was hardly a surprise how it all turned out. The tree grows as the branch is bent, I say."

Standing, he stretched, grunting slightly at the popping in his back and knees. Just five years ago, he would have been simply stiff. Reaching for his coat, he decided to go tickle the pear - some hot, spiced cider might make him a little less creaky.

Outside the door was a small, lidded piggin, a twist of parchment around the handle, with a line in small, exact writing.

For rheumatic discomfort. Use twice daily; upon rising and before retiring.

~

It was like having another ghost about the place, actually. Snape was not often visible, much less sociable, but his presence altered the quality of the winter's silence in a manner palpable to Argus. Over the following week, there were occasional odd smells, and a few mercifully small explosions - the explosions accompanied by blistering invective that caused some comment amongst the portraits. On one occasion there was a scream that rivaled that of a bain sidhe, though when Argus knocked to inquire, Snape disclaimed it with a face as white and hard as one carved from marble.

"He's an odd breed of cat, my sweet, an odd one indeed," Argus murmured, polishing the cote des armes. "He was all hiss and claw, but if he'd had a tail it would have been bristled out as wide as his head."

He stopped, flexing his hand. That salve had done a fine job on the stiffness, the only problem was that he was running out; which presented him with another problem.

How was he to obtain more?

Hard work was nothing shameful, but after forty-odd years on the job it could wear on a body. Though Argus put little faith in apothecary, he'd been given few enough gifts in his lifetime that he would never slight an honestly given one. He'd dutifully applied the salve the evening he'd received it. Though he was no leaping faun the next morning, there was less stiffness and the aches were not so deep. A little moving about his small kitchen and a hot shower had seen him right.

However, approaching Snape - over any matter - was a tricky thing indeed. He was prideful even as a lad, and for a halfblood among purebloods, that was a thing that had better be backed by sterling ability - and so it had been. If Argus needed a reminder, he could peruse Snape's six-inch thick permanent record replete with such incidents as to raise one's hair. To approach Snape as if he were a mere tradesman was to risk him taking insult, so this must be done with… gratitude.

Yes, exactly. Gratitude for the gift and respect for his abilities, with an appeal and coin in hand ought to work nicely.

Argus neatened himself up, donning his coat and picking up the piggin. The things didn't grow on trees, and Argus knew to the knut how little a freshly minted professor made. On his way he silently rehearsed his piece - gratitude for the gift, respect for the effort and knowledge required to make it, make a proper show of how well it worked and…

As he raised his hand to the door, Argus' knock was aborted by a groan as deep and horrible as he'd ever heard. He set his shoulder at the door, backed up a good five steps, and then charged, slamming it with his not-inconsiderable weight. This show of bravado turned out to be completely unnecessary as the door opened easily and sent him tumbling across the threadbare carpet where - to his horror - Severus Snape stood at the hearth, taking a knife to the flesh of his arm.

How he moved from floor to hearth, Argus could not rightly say. Nor could he say from whence the nerve came to strike that knife from Snape's hand and to press his handkerchief over the wound. He'd seen a great deal of horrible goings-on in his time at the school, but he'd never seen anyone purposefully cutting at his own flesh.

"Have you run mad, boy?" The handkerchief was turning red as he wound it tight, Snape's struggles and protestations notwithstanding. "I suppose they'll be able to tell me that at St Mungo's…"

"I am not going to hospital, now unhand me, you old-"

"-cutting into your blasted arm and bleeding like a stuck pig, you most certainly are-"

"-ruined that potion and now I must begin all over-"

"-potion?!"

"-potion. A very expensive and important potion, for which I was to be paid quite handsomely-"

"-for which you were giving flesh and blood!"

Snape looked most discomfited, his eyes sliding away from Argus. "Yes. Well. The ingredients are rare, and one is almost impossible to obtain-"

"I don't care if you were adding Merlin's left testicle." Argus growled, deftly knotting the handkerchief. "You were cutting into your own flesh like you were the Christmas goose!"

Snape tried to yank his arm back, button-black eyes narrowing. "I'll thank you to mind your own business."

"And we'll see whose business it is at St Mungo's-"

"I am not going to that pond of quacks-"

"- if I have to carry you kicking and screaming into that floo-"

"Where the hell would you expect me to obtain a virgin's blood without-" Snape's mouth shut with a snap and his lips thinned to the point of disappearing.

Argus was aware that he should say something, but what that ought to be utterly escaped him.

~

It preyed on him in the coming days.

Virgin.

Severus Snape was a virgin.

Argus could hardly credit it, considering the boy's penchant for the fast company of his former housemates. Hell, if the Carrows could get their ashes hauled in that crowd, anyone could.

"Virgin," he muttered incredulously, the Grey Lady's portrait rolling her eyes as he did so. "Well, he's the first twenty-year-old virgin I've ever heard of. Not sure if I should pity him or offer him to the British Museum."

Snape avoided him as much as he avoided Snape, and the silence in the halls had a thick, expectant quality. Argus could have cut it with a knife spread it on his toast, had he a mind.

The more he thought about it, however, the more he… well… imagined.

Not that Snape was something a man such as himself might normally imagine. Lusting after the kiddies was… but he wasn't a student any longer. Hadn't been one for a comfortable amount of years and…

"Oh, belt up," Argus muttered to himself, and then to the portrait when she took offence.

A good walk in the cold air would settle the nonsense in his head. He'd been breathing turpentine for too long and it was unsettling his humours, making him think things he truly oughtn't. After all, if a man wanted to drive himself mad with frustration-

"Ah, will you belt up, man!"

Argus' education in matters horizontal had come early and fairly often before he was apprenticed to old Pringle. Afterwards, well, a squib among wand-wavers was a lonely place, but the folk who plied the oldest profession in town cared only for the colour of your money. The Black Boar, the Cask and Crown, and the May Queen's Slipper were full of pleasant company with which to pass an evening.

Perhaps a little visiting in town was in order. Yes, that might be just the thing to settle his overactive humours. An apology to his Missus and a promise to bring her up a fine tin of sardines all her own settled the matter as he took the trouble to give himself a better shave. Then he went to the chest and took out his better clothing - no point in going about town looking like some ratcatcher.

He was whistling, feeling nicely randy and likely equally foolish as he gave his trilby an unneeded dusting, setting it on his head as he opened the door.

~

Severus was of two minds. He could hide in his rooms from sheer mortification at blurting out his secret without even benefit of Veritaserum; or he could act as if nothing had happened and hoped that the kicking around most squibs received over a lifetime would keep old Filch quiet.

"I'll be a laughingstock," he muttered sourly. "Not that it will be the first time."

Among all of his set - Slytherin, not just Death Eaters - he was thought to have bedded everyone from Lucius Malfoy down to Alecto Carrow. They certainly boasted it was so, but every last one of them was lying.

The town broom had never, in fact, been ridden at all.

"And for Alecto to call me the town broom is the pot calling the cauldron black - that hideous slattern."

He'd never called any of them on their lies; the leverage it gave him was simply too good to give up for anything so fleeting as a reputation. That and it allowed him to conserve his greatest resource, with nobody any the wiser. Dark potions often called for a snippet of virgin's hair, or virgin's tears, freshly drawn virgin's blood, or other renewable bodily substances. He was making a fortune by charging market price!

And perhaps for that reason alone, Severus thought he'd better have a talk with Filch and possibly administer a bribe. His gaze fell on the piggin that the man had returned - it had been pleasingly and appreciatively emptied of the salve. Perhaps a bit more was in order, and would provide an excuse for the visit as well.

Casting an inflammare, he took a small cauldron and hung it from the hook. Beeswax with olive oil, a dram of dragon's blood for each decade of life, capsicum powder and fine-grated ginger, hundred-year lily root - it was the precise formulation that made it so effective, and just one other activating ingredient that it was Severus' pleasure to add.

Pouring the contents into the piggin, he closed his eyes, summoning his imagination to the task as he reached into his robes to take himself in hand. Oh, Severus knew what he liked - he was hardly a stranger to his own left hand - but there was little to commend the act to him. Fantasizing was a part of the working, but as ultimately unsatisfying as fantasizing about a steak sandwich when one was starving. He teased his foreskin back, fingers playing the sensitive underside of his cock with a practiced expertise, his thumb rubbing the sensitive glans to coat it with pre-ejaculate. The hitch in his breath was reflex, he told himself, not a reaction to the vivid visualization of someone else's hand on him. The moan in his throat a reaction to the tightening of his scrotum and not thinking about what it would feel like to be bent over the table by a pair of rough hands and-

Gasping, Severus opened his eyes, hips still jolting as the unusual strength and intensity of his climax ebbed. Thank Mercury that he'd managed to get it all in the potion and never mind all that about what delirium his mind presented to get him to do it. He whisked the emission widdershins into the potion, chanting softly, "Potio potente, potio potente, potio potente," until a soft, silvery light glimmered on the surface, and then sank into the cooling salve.

Perfect - as usual.

Now to bring it to Filch, and insure that one way or another, his lucrative little secret would remain just that.

Only Filch… was not Filch, exactly. For a moment, Severus didn't know whom it was coming out of Filch's door. The tattered brown coat and dust-brown trousers were gone, the scruff of a beard shaved, and the man's hair - for the first time in Severus' memory - brushed and tied back like a respectable wizard's instead of as untidy as a warlock's. He was even whistling.

"Ah. Pardon me, Master Filch?" Severus did not wince at the uncertainty in his voice, as much as he felt like it. After all, he was well past the age where he thought the teachers and staff just folded up in a drawer for the holidays. He was most intrigued, however, by the series of emotions that played across Filch's face - furtive guilt, annoyance, and a sly blandness that would have done credit to any Slytherin.

"Good evening, Professor Snape."

"Master Filch, good evening. I trust I'm not interrupting… anything." The man was even wearing cologne. My, my, what had he here?

"No, no - not at all. I was just heading down to the Black Boar for a game of darts, a nice… shepherd's pie." Flich's eyes darted again. "Good pie there."

Severus might have been born at night, but it was hardly last night.

"The Black Boar, Master Filch?" Severus felt his lips curve in a mocking smile - oh, a secret for a secret was a better trade than he'd hoped. "I'm given to understand that shepherd's pie and darts are secondary attractions to the young men of negotiable virtue?"

Filch's jaw shot out even as a flush rose in his cheeks. "The cider's tasty. Piano player gives a good show."

"It is a whorehouse, Master Filch. A bordello. A house of ill-repute." Severus lingered lovingly on each syllable, unable to resist the squirms this elicited. Filch's discomfiture was exquisite! "I am quite surprised, sir."

"I'd be surprised if you were, boy," Filch snarled. "There's nothing about being a virgin that says you're required to be ignorant or that you can't pull your own tackle."

Severus flushed, his choler rising on the memory of just how and with what visualization he completed the potion. "I assure you that I am far from ignorant, but the rest is none of your business."

Filch's lips quirked in what could not be called a smile. "Then we both have something that's not anyone else's business, don't we? And it'd be wise for us to both keep things as they are."

Severus slowly nodded his agreement. "Exactly. Nobody has a need to know our own private matters."

"Just so, lad, just so." Filch buttoned his coat, that humourless smile changing to one of anticipation. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an appetite for the Boar's fare."

Stepping out of Filch's way, Severus could not say why that tone and smile made his cheeks heat, or worse, why it made his parts below flush with warmth. He would be a liar - not that lying was a bad thing, but lying to oneself was stupid - to disclaim all desire. He did, after all, masturbate when it was not actually necessary for anything other than to improve the shining hour. However to have Filch come to mind, of all people…

Severus rubbed his forehead, listening from habit as Filch's footsteps faded up the stairs and into the nighttime castle. He could feel an entirely different but equally alluring impulse prodding him.

"He'd never know, and if you knew, you could stop thinking about it…" Severus was chagrined at his own wayward thoughts. "And the last time you 'just had to know' worked out so well for everyone involved."

But this was hardly anything on the par with the Dark Lord and the Potter Problem.

This was just a little peeking. Not espionage. It was just an insignificant little indulgence - like stealing a biscuit. Nobody had to know.

His boots sounded crisply on the stone as he turned for his rooms. While he was fetching his cloak and gloves, Filch would have a good head start on his debauchery, never imagining a spectator.

~

The Black Boar was a pub in a certain part of Hogsmeade, but was as well kept as any establishment respectably east of Barrelhouse Street. The door and shutters hung neatly and the windows were whole, a warm light shining out onto the trampled snow of Trotter's Row. Admittedly, this was more due to the presence of a pair of warlocks and their cudgels and less to the manners of the patrons, but it was notable on the western side of town.

Argus knew the Boar well, and they knew him. The barman was drawing a mug of good brown ale for him before he'd even hung his coat, a shepherd's pie put steaming next to it as he sat down. Plain fare, but done well, and Argus tucked into it after nodding his thanks. In all ways, the place was as unremarkable as any pub in any town anywhere else in Britain - save for the fact that one could bounce a sickle off the serving lads' arses and the sheets upstairs were changed once per hour.

Over his mug and bowl, Argus considered options for his afters. He could have a smooth-cheeked blond with wide blue eyes and gold curls, or maybe a red-haired saucepot of a lad whose lips were quick with a quip or a kiss? There was always tried-and-true Ian, who was dirt-plain, brown-haired, brown-eyed, and a rousing good screw. Perhaps some of the exotic new blood; like the one with black hair and dark eyes, skin both darker and warmer-hued, narrow-hipped and as slender as a willow wand…

The empty plate was cleared, another mug of brew set at his elbow as Argus took out his pipe and filled it. There was no hurry as he puffed fragrant smoke, watching the room, amused as the black-haired boy boldly watched him back, then sauntered over with a feline slink. Ravi was his name, it turned out, and he thought well enough of himself to demand the price of a galleon an hour.

Laughing, Argus offered eight sickles for thirty minutes; if Ravi was that good, he'd have his the remaining nine sickles and Argus would take another thirty minutes.

Ravi smirked, looking him up and down - likely thinking that he'd make an easy handful of silver.

Argus was going to teach him not to judge a book by its somewhat worn cover. Holding up his purse, he hesitated long enough to make sure he had Ravi's full attention.

"I like an obedient lad; someone who takes direction." He let the coins jingle in the bag as Ravi wet his lips, eyes not for Argus but for that purse. "Do we have an understanding?"

Now it was Ravi who hesitated, eyes darting from the purse to Argus and back for a minute. "All right. You've got yourself a boy." His fingers closed around the bag as Argus dropped it into his hand. "Room five. I'll be up as soon as I give this to Ian."

Dropping two sickles on the bar for his meal, Argus nodded, the pleasant warmth of ale and food being replaced by another, sharper heat as he made his way up the stairs.

Room five was a typical crib. A chair and a four-poster bed just a shade too small for two to sleep in and made up with cheap linen sheets, were the only furnishings. A worn rug lay on the floor, pegs had been driven in the bare wall to hold clothing, and a small washroom was provided in an alcove. The window was high and too small for anyone but a cat to fit through, and hung with curtains as tired-looking as the rug. The scent was what truly set it apart from your average inn - even as often as the rooms were cleaned, the musk of rut and a salty tang remained.

Hanging his vest, Argus gave himself an idle rub. It'd been a good two months since he'd paid a visit, and his prick was eager and straining at his buttons for any company other than his hand. It would be a fine hour, he thought, topped off with buggering Ravi's high, tight little…

The back of Argus' neck prickled, derailing his train of thought as he looked about the room.

"Ha, you old fool. It's been so long you're seeing a student in every shadow," he grumbled. Crossing to the small window, he drew the curtains.

~

"Bugger."

Severus had circled the pub for the better part of an hour before Filch had appeared in an alley-facing window, and just as soon as Severus picked a good warm spot up against the chimneypot of the New Broom, the man had closed the bloody curtains.

Now what?

Severus considered his options with his back nicely warm and omniculars in hand - it certainly was more comfortable than most surveillance, but just as frustrating when one's quarry did what one did not want him to do. It was a point of pride not to quit at this little setback, but also difficult to separate the wishes of one's strangely insistent prick from one's normally rational mind.

Pursing his lips, Severus bullet-pointed a mental list.

• He could give up and go back to the castle.

Even swallowing his pride when none but he would ever know about it was not something he could do.

• He could go into the Black Boar and wait.

A virgin walked into a whorehouse… sounded like the start of one of Lucius' tedious jokes. No.

• He could get a little closer.

Which was likely suicidal. While Severus was a fully trained wizard, Filch was a man with fists the size of bludgers. Severus might be able to hex the squib six ways from Yule, but Filch could pound him to mince.

But he might not have another opportunity.

"Amiculumbra." The shadows of the rooftop elongated, stretching toward him, and then wrapping around him as he crept to the edge of the roof. A thin band of light escaped the curtains, dimming and brightening with the movements of Filch and his rented boy. A slow motion of his finger parted the curtains just a little more, and Severus held himself as still and quiet as a shadow, waiting to see if that little flicker of power had been noticed.

It had not.

Another flicker and the curtains opened to the width of three fingers and Severus set his omniculars to his eyes, inhaling with silent surprise at the sight they gave him. That annoying flush warmed his cheeks and other parts below, his tongue tracing his lips as his attention became equally divided between the spectacle unfolding in the tawdry little room and his stubbornly rousing prick.

"He's endowed like a hippogriff…"

Not that the rented boy seemed to mind, as he was performing fellatio upon said member. Well, Severus knew about it and had seen it amongst Malfoy and his coterie, but this was so frank and… lusty. He didn't know why he was under the impression that it was not enjoyable for the one doing the service, for certainly the dark-haired fellow was displaying proof of pleasure in one's work.

And Filch was… leering. Trousers and shirt unbuttoned, his lips moving as he leered down at the naked lad who proceeded to take more of Filch's prick orally than Severus would think possible considering the presence of the uvula and soft palate. Lowering his omniculars, Severus chewed his lip, fighting to think rationally with the better part of his blood supply answering demands elsewhere. He did not need to know what Filch was saying; this was not espionage.

But when had he ever undertaken anything, even the most casual endeavour, with less than his accustomed thoroughness?

The room next to the one he was watching was dark, the sash of the narrow window slightly ajar. There was nothing watching him from the alley but for the rats, but mounting a broom with a case of raging tumescence was problematic. Nonetheless, he descended as quietly as a falling snowflake, peering into what seemed to be a broom closet between two working rooms. The sash stuck for a breathless moment, and then moved up with a soft creak.

The closet was at least clean, if unlighted, narrow, and pungent with the scent of vintage mops sitting in indifferently rinsed buckets. The bare lathe of the walls, however, was everything dear to an eavesdropper's heart - after all, who would bother with the expense of plastering a broom closet? He pressed an ear to various spots, seeking to hear more than just the frustrating murmurs and moans.

"… just gagging for it, you little harlot…"

Severus' erection, flagging as his brain wrested control of the blood supply, rallied with a pulsing surge. Filch's voice was low, and rumbling with something that caused Severus' knees to loosen.

"… get smart with me. I'm going to make you earn it…"

Well, wasn't that the point of visiting a prostitute? Severus tried different spots, stopping when his ear met incongruous cold metal. His fingers explored it - round, bas-relief, attached to a bit of leather, and nailed to the lathing. Lips curving in a smile, Severus lifted it, setting a cautious eye to the aperture he knew had to be there.

And almost ejaculated in his robes.

Filch was nude, his body unbeautiful, but muscled in a workmanlike fashion, his thick sex emphatically erect. The dark-haired whore lay on the bed, flushed and wanton as Filch upended a phial of something slick over his prick, spreading it with luxuriant strokes.

"Going to give me my fucking, old man?"

"Oh, going to give you all manner of things, boy," Filch rumbled, pouring more slick stuff into his hand and spreading it between the whore's thighs. "If you want that galleon."

Unbuttoning himself just enough, Severus slipped a hand into his robe and under his braies, stifling a moan as his fingers met the feverishly taut skin of his prick, then closed around it with a squeeze and stroke. Just peeking, he told himself, he was just peeking and needed… wanted a bit of a wank.

On the bed, Filch straddled the whore's closed thighs, pressing his erection between them and then thrusting. Whatever that did, the boy on the bed gave a low moan from it and so - nearly - did Severus, his hand moving in unconscious mimicry on his prick.

"Like that, do you? Hits that sweet little spot back of your balls?" Filch sounded amused. "Not everything is fucking and sucking, boy."

You learn something new every day, Severus thought through the haze of arousal.

~

Argus took his time, savouring the slick strength of Ravi's thighs around his prick and the lewd sight the flushed young wanton made under him. These young ones needed lessoning - everything was about sticking it in or getting stuck and getting their stuff off.

"Not everything is fucking and sucking, boy." He tugged gently at Ravi's tightening balls. "Not yet, you don't. That's mine and I paid for it - you shoot when you're let."

"Ahh… killing me… let me come, please…"

And such a pretty plea it was, coming with a flexing of the thighs that made Filch catch his breath.

"Do you want that galleon," Filch panted, "or to shoot your stuff?"

Greed won out, and Argus had another thirty minutes for six sickles, if he would just let Ravi come. To be fair, he'd never said that he wouldn't. The serving lads here were always glad to take him upstairs for that simple fact - but Ravi didn't know that.

"Good lad," he crooned, pulling back and helping Ravi turn over. "Get up and show me that tight little arse. Lord, you'd never know you were having it off three times a night." And so he wouldn't - the boy's bum was a perfect peach, smooth and tight under an oiled finger, opening sweetly when Argus pressed. "Don't you shoot, boy."

Ravi's back arched, knees spreading as Argus tugged his balls, vowing that Argus was torturing him.

"Am not," he retorted, slipping in a second finger. "If I were torturing you, I'd do this at the same time." Curving his fingers, he found the chestnut-shaped nub in the boy's channel and pressed, tugging again at his balls. "Now that would be torture."

To all indications, Ravi agreed wholeheartedly and wished to cooperate with as hard a buggering as Argus could manage. Argus, lined himself up, seated himself with a sure thrust into Ravi's welcoming heat, and did his best to oblige.

~

The whore - Ravi - arched with a cry, spending without a hand touching his prick. Filch's fingers dug into his hips as the man gave a low, gasping growl, shuddering in the throes of his own release. Pressed against the wall as if against a lover, Severus was dimly horrified to feel his own semen fill his hand in wet spurts. It should not feel that good, should not because…

He'd… he… and from watching Filch…

The intoxication of arousal faded, filling his nose with the bitter salt-scent of semen and sour mop. Severus was no longer dimly horrified; he was completely horrified and confused, enough so that he tripped over a broom, smacked into a shelf, and brought what sounded like half of hell crashing down as he fled to the window and out into the winter night.

~

It was instinct and only instinct, but sometimes that was all a squib had to go on. There was nothing to say who had been in that broom closet, only that someone had been. The shadow Argus had seen out the corner of his eye had been just that, a faceless shadow. But there was that instinct, honed by years of exposure to the cunning little beasts of Hogwarts, that turned as true as a compass' needle. Some part of Argus just plainly knew and was sure in that knowing.

The little horse brass that had hung on the wall now resided in Argus' pocket, his hand curled around it as he hid in shadows himself, watching Snape's door like Missus at a mouse's hole. Hours had passed now, the moon-cast shadows having changed from west to east as he waited. Soft steps sounded in the staircase, the brush of a broom's bristles against stone as Snape made his wary way home, poking his head cat-like through the arch and then following with the rest of him.

Argus stepped into the light cast by the torch and Snape reared back, eyes narrowing and ire gathering on his tongue - until Argus pulled the horse brass from his pocket.

"We should talk, you and I." Argus watched as Snape's gaze shifted between him, the horse brass and the nearest escape route. "Nothing bad, lad. I think we might just reach an accommodation. It was pretty plain you liked what you saw."

For a long, tense moment, Snape's hand hovered near his wand and then settled on the door handle, unlocking it with a whispered word and holding it open.

"We might indeed, Master Filch. We might at that."

-- The End --