FIC: Is that a Decoy Detonator in Your Pocket, or are you Happy to See Me? (2/2) George/Snape, NC-17
Title: Is that a Decoy Detonator in Your Pocket, or are You Happy to See Me? (2/2)
Pairing: George Weasley/Severus Snape
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: DH SPOILERS, rimming, dub-con depending on how you read it
Word Count: ~18,000
Summary: George Weasley is struggling to find his place in a new, post-war world. The injured, reticent refugee he discovers in the Forbidden Forest isn't part of his plans.
Author's Notes: This was written for lilyeyes at the 2007 hp_summersmut exchange (originally posted here). It was originally meant to be a fairly frivolous and PWP-ish Harry/George/Fred fic that just wouldn't work for me after I read DH (though I might go back to it some day). Instead, this fic came out of nowhere and helped me break a two-month writer's block from hell. Thank you to my ever-vigilant beta, thescarletwoman, who prevents me from adding kitchens to scenes where no kitchen has any right to be.
Originally posted: September 21st, 2007

part one may be found here



George could never say later why exactly he'd taken Snape in, or why he'd never worried that the other man would leave or try to murder him in his bed. It was that night, though, that he realised why Snape had agreed. Only desperation could have driven him to accept George's help. It was already dropping to near freezing at night, an early onset to autumn, and Snape hadn't had a bed or a decent meal since June. Worse, when George had retrieved Snape's soiled clothing and bandages from the loo, he'd seen just how much blood had soaked through them and promptly incinerated them. Snape was dying, just more slowly than anyone in the world had thought. And Snape was nothing if not a survivor. He'd hung on this long only through sheer spite and determination. Surviving seemed to be the one skill that Snape knew better than anything else.

Snape was still asleep when George left to teach the next morning, and there when he returned home after supper that night. George didn't know he would be surprised by the other man's presence until he discovered Snape reading intently, hunched over on the couch.

"You're still here," he said blankly.

"Yes, my captor," Snape drawled, flipping the page and reaching for a quill that was laying beside him. "Imbeciles. There are three mistakes in this article alone. You do not use true unicorn root for headache tonics, you use false unicorn root."

"Are you correcting my potions journals?" George asked incredulously.

"Yes. I must express my shock that you actually subscribe to them. It shows a level of commitment to your profession I would not have thought possible in one as frivolous as yourself."

"Actually, they're your old subscriptions, I just never bothered to cancel them," George said with a nasty smirk.

"Childish."

"Anal."

"Not right now, thank you."

George blinked. And then blushed. Snape had not just made a joke, had he? A joke with sexual, nay, with homosexual connotations? George felt somewhere between fainting and marking the calendar.

"Have you decided yet what you are going to do with me?" Snape asked. "If you haven't, you might at least provide food. Even during war prisoners are fed."

"You're not my prisoner, and you can call for food yourself," George said absently, checking his store cupboards. "Have you been self-medicating?"

"You're an idiot, Weasley. I can hardly call for food." He examined his shoulder, and George noticed for the first time that Snape was wearing one of George's robes, and that it was burgundy. The colour wasn't half bad on him. "Though of course I have been making use of my old potions stores. That is why I am here, other than the house arrest you've put me under."

"I'm going out," George said, deciding he'd had enough sartorial weirdness for one day. He firecalled the kitchens-- honestly, why Snape couldn't have done that himself was beyond George-- and had a plate of roast beef sandwiches and a pot of tea sent up. Making a hasty retreat, he headed to Bill and Fleur's cottage for the first time in over a month. He didn't yet feel like stopping by to see any of his friends. He couldn't rejoice at the end of the war the way they could. Even those who had lost loved ones didn't seem to experience the pain of death the way he did.

~*~

"It is four in the morning, Weasley."

"Waiting up for me, Snape?"

"It is difficult not to be awakened by a Neanderthal with red hair stomping in at all hours of the night."

"And yet it doesn't look like you were asleep at all. Fancy that."

"Pardon me if I have not had access to up to date reading material-- journal subscriptions, mind, that I am likely still paying for in spite of my status as 'deceased'."

"Enjoy them, then. I'm going to bed."

"So that you may arise in three hours and teach classes. Ah, I'm so pleased the future of the Wizarding world's future is in such reliable hands. Tomcatting about all night sets such a positive example."

"Jealous, Snape?"

"I beg your pardon!"

"Wish you could be the one out 'tomcatting'?"

"Go to bed, Weasley. You're interrupting my reading."

~*~

"Why are you back so early?"

"I live here, Snape. Why, did you have some wild party planned that I've interrupted?"

"It is four o'clock. Do you not have detentions to supervise?"

"As a matter of fact, no. I wasn't in the mood to look over any of the other professors' charges today."

"What about your own?"

"I don't assign detentions, you prat."

A snort. "Typical."

"What does that mean?"

"You lacked any sort of discipline yourself. It therefore should not surprise me that you do not discipline your students, either."

A matching snort. "Don't terrorize them, you mean. They do just fine in and of themselves without being made to feel worthless, too."

"Pfft. If Huffie Carrington is passing your class, there is clearly something wrong with your grading scheme. Not to mention that the number of high grades will throw the curve off entirely."

"Are... Snape, have you been looking at my students' papers?"

"What else have I to do, cooped up in here all day? And you just left them unattended."

"In my locked desk."

"Indeed. It was practically an engraved invitation."

~*~

"Did you know that you snore in your sleep?"

"It's better than snoring when I'm awake, is it not, Weasley?"

"Prick. I came out for a glass of water last night and heard it-- I'm shocked my books didn't rattle right off the shelves."

"And you with so many comic books in your possession. What would you have done if I'd damaged one of them?"

~*~

"Weasley, do you have any idea how long I have been waiting here?"

"Waiting?"

"Yes. That is what one does when one is confined to a solitary space and has no outside contact, save for one's captor who does not come home all fucking night long."

"I don't think I've ever heard you use that word before."

"Which? I know I used a few that had more than one syllable."

"Sod off, Snape. If I want to stay out all night long, that's my business."

"Not when you don't leave an ounce of food here and I have no way of procuring more, imbecile. Even if I had my wand, which I do not--"

"Call the house elves."

Withering glare. "The house elves. The creatures I have to hide from when they come in to clean, you mean?"

"You... hide from house elves? My goodness, Snape, what an interesting phobia. Are you afraid of clowns too?"

"They cannot know my whereabouts! The little gossips, I wouldn't be safe an hour after they found out I was here."

"Relax, Snape. I'll pop down to the kitchens and forbid the lot of them from talking to anyone about anything that might happen in my rooms. Make you feel any better?"

"You are the most frustrating young man."

"Positively ear-itating, wouldn't you say?"

"..."

"Geddit? Ear-itating?"

"I will ignore your puerile puns and reiterate that I am not afraid of house elves."

"Don't sulk. ... I am kind of afraid of clowns."

~*~

George let the situation linger on for another week, and Snape didn't seem to mind. For a 'prisoner', he wasn't a complainer. He wore George's robes and a black eye-patch George transfigured for him, read and graffiti'd his magazines, and ate his food. He used the potions and, after the first day, made scathing criticisms that, to George's dismay, were entirely accurate. The guidelines that Snape barked out improved George's potions every time. And even worse, better lesson plans, because Snape could not refrain from reading and commenting upon those as well.

He would never admit it, but George kind of liked the company. Well, not this particular company-- if he could have chosen anyone in the world to have as a roommate, a half-dead Severus Snape would not have made the list at all. To be sure, the man was as horrible as he'd ever been, and George had had to make good on his promise and swear the entire house elf staff to silence that he had a visitor at all, let alone the identity of the man sleeping on his sofa. He didn't know what the hell he was doing keeping Snape like a pet, and he didn't have the first idea why the man hadn't sneaked out in the dead of night yet. It wasn't as though George had bound him magically or physically. He suspected that Snape was weaker than he was letting on and didn't want to make his escape until he could do so without collapsing. With never-healing wounds, though, George didn't know when that day might come. He only knew that in spite of criticisms, complaints, sarcasm, and bitter vitriol, it was still kind of nice having someone around his quarters.

Friday came quickly enough, and George found himself wandering up to his quarters before dinner. Snape was there, of course, a stack of George's unmarked papers on the desk and a jar of salve in his hand. He'd stripped naked from the waist up and was twisting around, trying to reach a particularly nasty laceration near the middle of his spine. The more he twisted, the more it forced the wound open, blood mixed with pus oozing from it.

"There's a pretty picture," George joked, and Snape coloured and tried to cover himself with his shirt.

"Just what are you doing here?"

"Do we have to go through this again? I live here."

"You haven't been stopping in before dinner. I wasn't expecting you."

"You should keep your ear to the ground, Snape. I don't usually attend Hogwarts dinners on Friday nights."

Snape looked at him strangely. "Did you just make another ear joke?"

Laughing lightly, George took the salve. "I suppose I did at that. I used to make them all the time. I just... fell out of the habit."

"Where are you going, then? Supervising detentions at last?"

"Do you know, Snape, that there is a sharp divide in student attitudes toward Potions classes?" He spooned a little onto his fingers and tried to slip them under Snape's unbuttoned shirt. Snape screeched and arched away from him.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Getting the hard-to-reach places. Guess I shouldn't be surprised you're a prude, though."

"I am not a prude!"

"If the shapeless black full-body robes fit..."

From his good eye, Snape shot George a look so scathing, he wondered if his eyebrows would burn off. "Just... if you must, then do it quickly." The shirt fell to the floor, revealing Snape's scarred and abused torso.

"Such a romantic," George muttered, daubing some of the thick blueish goo over the open lacerations. Snape winced once only, and then stayed preternaturally still.

"You were babbling about your Potions students?"

It took George a moment to remember what the other man was talking about. "Oh. Yeah. There are four years of students who were in class with you, and the first, second, and third years never had you as a Potions master. In fact, the first years never had you for anything."

Snape grunted.

"The older four years seem to like the subject a lot, and the younger three can't stand it, no matter what I teach them."

The superior smirk Snape shot over his shoulder made George's blood boil. "That is what happens when a true master teaches. He ingrains a love of the subject upon even the dullest of students."

"Actually, the way I figure it, the subject itself is pretty dull, but it's only the last four years who have something even worse to compare it to. They think of you and decide my classes are much better."

George couldn't help guffawing as Snape whipped around, expression livid. "Listen, you young whelp, you wouldn't know what a proper Potions class was if you were beaten over the head with one."

"Play nicely, Snape. I have some good news to wipe that surly scowl off your gob." George bit his lip. He'd been wondering if he should mention this all week, and he wasn't sure exactly why he hadn't. "I think I might be able to help you get rid of these."

"What nonsense are you talking about?"

Teasingly, George signed his name across Snape's chest with the salve still coating his finger. Snape shivered and snatched up his shirt once more. "My dad. You know he survived a Nagini attack. Don't know what they did, but he doesn't have any lasting damage."

Snape whirled on him for the second time in as many minutes, and if George had thought Snape's expression was angry before, it was sunshine and fluffy bunny tails compared to the ugly mask he saw now. "You..."

"I thought you'd be pleased," George said, frowning.

"I have been help captive here by my status as a murderous Death Eater and by my own wounds. And you have known since I got here how to free me?" Snape snarled. "You stupid, ignorant child!"

"Hey, now!"

"Go off on whatever brainless, sex-fuelled evening you have planned and leave me to my gangrene."

"Sex-fuelled?"

"Out!"

"Snape! These are my bloody quarters and you will not speak to me like I'm a kid!"

With a growl, Snape lunged forward, tangling his long fingers in George's professorial robes. "Then step aside because I am going."

Circling Snape's thin wrist with his hand, George tried to prise the surprisingly strong grip open to no avail. "Let go, you stuck-up idiot."

"Then let me go, you juvenile ignoramus!" Snape shoved him hard and they both tripped, stumbling a few feet and each grabbing the other for support. George glanced up at Snape and found his breath catching involuntarily. The intensity he saw in the older man's uncovered eye frightened him, somehow, those dark lashes fencing in a hurricane of chaotic emotion. Was this some sort of Legilimency, or was that pain and confusion latent in Snape's eyes all the time?

"Snape," he breathed, and just as quickly as the connection was made, it was broken. Snape took a step back and smoothed out his clothing with the utmost dignity.

"I am going," he announced, the words painfully over-enunciated.

"Look, I'm going to my mother's tonight. That's where I go every Friday, you paranoiac. I'm going to ask her how Dad got better, so that I can do the same for you."

A suspicious tilt of the head. "Why are you helping me?"

"To get you out of my hair," George said, turning away quickly. "Good night."

~*~

George tiptoed past the figure on the sofa later that night, shocked that for once, Snape wasn't waiting up for him. He slipped into his bedroom at the end of the short corridor and stripped off his outer robes. He was finally feeling like a normal human being again, not a distended glutton stuffed beyond decency on his mother's unrivalled cooking. Tucked in his pocket, he had a list of everything the Healers had done for his father, and he was sure Snape would... well, actually he wasn't sure that Snape appreciated anything, but at least the man wouldn't sneer at it. He would tell him in the morning that--

"Weasley."

George nearly jumped out of his skin-- and then had a bizarre creative flash. That would be quite the product, wouldn't it? Something that made it look like your skeleton jumped away, leaving its skin behind it. Great for Halloween, which was fast approaching... not that it mattered, since Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes no longer existed. He turned a stony glare on Snape. "Do you do that on purpose, sneaking up on me as though you aren't making enough noise for the students on the other side of the school to hear you?"

Snape almost looked impressed at the creditable imitation of himself. "Must you always be the joker, making infantile puns and dropping noisemakers down Slughorn's trousers?" he sneered.

George arched a brow. "Where did you hear about that?"

"The house elves. I have spoken with several about the situation in the castle."

"I thought you were afraid of them," George smirked.

"Sod off, Weasley. What do you have for me?"

"My, my, aren't we eager?" Now that George had his wits about him once more, he wasn't going to let Snape make him jump again.

"Have you the remedy that will let me heal myself at last?" Snape demanded. "I must have it, Weasley, or did you fail to secure it?"

George rolled his eyes. "I have it. It was a mixture of bedrest, the healing potions I've already been feeding you, and a Muggle homeopathic medicine that cured my dad."

Snape took a breath. "Homeopathic? Do you mean lachesis?"

George's eyebrows lifted upward. "Good guess. You're familiar with it?"

"I never make guesses, I am simply informed enough to draw logical conclusions. Lachesis is snake venom, as fresh as possible, from the South American bushmaster," Snape said softly, "and then diluted heavily in lactose. How brilliant-- venom to cure snake bites. Though I do not know why it worked on your father. Each homeopathic remedy has a personality profile."

"Mum didn't mention that."

"Yes, well. Certain types of people respond better than others to certain homeopathic medicines. The lachesis individual tends to be high strung and tense, as well as intense."

"You're perfect, then," George snorted.

"Well, it's hardly your father. The lachesis individual may be anxious and irritable, and usually loquacious. He is often taut with sexual energy and passion that must find an outlet in some form or other."

George opened his mouth to register disgust at the very thought, or make an inappropriate joke about Snape and sex, but then their eyes locked again. And instead of cracking wise, George found himself surging forward, meeting Snape in the space halfway between them. They crashed together, Snape's hands tangling in George's undershirt, George's fingers threading through Snape's thick, shoulder-length hair. Snape's mouth sealed over his with a hunger that surged through them both. Their bodies moved against each other, trying to press closer as Snape's tongue curled against George's mouth, as Snape's teeth assaulted George's lips. This was like nothing George had ever experienced before, these surprisingly strong hands furrowing under his clothing as he tilted his chin up to grant them both better access to the kiss.

And with a gasp George stumbled backwards. Snape stared at him wildly from his one good eye, hair a tangle mess and trousers-- oh, and trousers tight against an unmistakable bulge. George gulped in another breath of air. "I just... you're a bloke," he said lamely.

"I see." The temperature in the room went from scorching to glacial.

"I've never... what the hell were we-- my God, Snape, I thought you and Harry's mum were--"

A lean, determined hand closed over George's throat, cutting off his words and his air supply. George was too startled to fight back. "You will not mention her. She has nothing to do with this. I am indeed the poster child of the lachesis individual, and I have always managed to find outlets for the passion that she didn't want."

George wrenched Snape's hand away from him. "And I'm just a handy outlet?" he demanded, outraged.

Snape's look of cold loathing chilled him. "You are not even a momentary diversion, Mr Weasley. Goodnight."

The man disappeared into the darkness, and George collapsed on the bed, shaking with adrenaline and endorphins. His lips still stung with mutinous pleasure wherever Snape's had covered them.

~*~

In the morning, George found the bathroom locked and the outer room empty. He wasn't about to hammer on his own loo door and demand entrance, not from that manipulative, disgusting son of a bitch, and so he left for his Saturday morning errands unwashed and unshaven. It took only an hour's search to find a Muggle homeopathic doctor willing to sell him lachesis, which George left in his sitting room along with his scribbled instructions on how to use them, before going out again. There had been no sign of Snape, but then, the man was excellent at hiding in plain sight and George didn't care to look for him. He didn't return home for the rest of the weekend, taking the opportunity to visit Harry and Ginny rather than have it out with his unwelcome house guest.

Snape was seated at the little dining table eating a bowl of Scottish oats when he dashed in Monday morning. He went directly to the bedroom, grabbed his teaching robes, lesson plans, and a couple of old Potions texts, and then marched right out again. Neither man said a word. Neither had to. Snape would leave the moment he was physically capable of it and George would never have to deal with him again.

And so it went. Snape would either pretend to sleep or ignore George outright whenever they were in the sitting room together. Despite the fact that George could see what little colour Snape possessed returning to him, he didn't seem to be leaving any faster, either. And if George's gaze lingered accidentally upon the other man during his transit from door to bedroom, that was only to be expected. He needed to know when Snape would be well enough to depart for-bloody-ever. His fascination had nothing to do with his muddled dreams of Snape pressing against him, of dark stubble like sandpaper against his throat as Snape bit his shoulder. That George preferred the sitting room because it was infused with the intangibly male scent of Snape was disturbing, too, but something he could ignore. This was the ultimate prank on the ultimate prankster: after years of getting one over on Snape, his erstwhile professor had finally got the better of him. Not that he would ever let Snape know it.

A week after George had brought home the lachesis, he sat on his bed, scribbling out notes for the seventh year NEWT class. It still surprised him how life could go on after the hell of last year, that NEWTs could still be held after the Ministry had been infiltrated and begun to perpetrate hate crimes against its own people. Umbridge was now in jail herself, and Kingsley was doing smashingly trying to right the multitude of wrongs of the last regime. But that was the way of life, he supposed. It just kept on going, no matter what happened.

Deciding not to get too philosophical, he stood and stretched, and then padded down the hall, and firecalled the kitchen for a glass of milk. Ignoring Snape just as hard as Snape was ignoring him, he accepted the glass from a chipper little house elf directly through the flames, and took a noisy slurp.

Snape cringed, but didn't look up. George smirked. "Aren't you leaving yet?" he asked, suddenly tired of skulking around this plague personified. Snape didn't respond. "I mean, I go out of my way to make you potions and get you the medicine you need, and what do you do? You take over my home for a month, you boss the house elves and try to dictate the way I teach my classes. You bleed on my floor and molest me in my bedroom--"

Snape snapped the book he was reading shut with a mighty crack. It was the first time either of them had alluded to that incident. "I did no such thing."

George rounded the coffee table like a panther on the prowl. "You deny it, then? You didn't grab me and..." Damn it, he hadn't meant to falter, and he really wished he weren't blushing. Bloody fair complexion. Snape's cruel smile made him want to break things. Loudly.

"Temper, Weasley. Just what did I do to you that was so awful?" Snape asked, his words deceptively soft. They seemed to dance along George's nerve endings. "It certainly wasn't anything you weren't trying to do to me as well."

"I happen to like girls." But there was uncertainty in his tone now.

"Really? Is that why you've done nothing but flirt shamelessly with me since I arrived here?" Snape demanded, and George tried to remember just when the man had gone from his habitual place on the sofa to standing scant inches away.

"Flirt? With you?"

"Dangerously, yes." The nail of one index finger scraped against George's throat, and George couldn't move. "I've never liked you."

George tried to tell him the feeling was mutual but couldn't force sound from his vocal chords.

"Really, I've never met a Weasley I did like, from your do-gooder father to your eldest brother, always playing the good boy to Dumbledore and getting into mischief behind his back, to your youngest siblings, flagrantly flouting the rules."

"Hated Fred and me most, though, did you?" George managed at last, and for once, Fred's name didn't burn his tongue. Perhaps it was the distraction of another of Snape's nails inscribing his skin in a language George didn't think he knew.

Surprisingly, Snape laughed. It was a short, harsh bark of a laugh, but somehow it held no rancor. "No, Mr Weasley. I never liked you but I never hated you, either. At least you and your infernal twin were always honest about who you were."

That shocked George as much as the thigh that brazenly insinuated itself between his legs. "Whuh?" he queried, befuddled, and worse, aroused. His hands found Snape's hips, steadying himself and drawing the other man closer. God, he'd been dreaming of this for days.

"You drove the entire staff mad, Weasley, but you did not pretend to be anything but yourselves. As a man who was never able to do so, I am forced to admit that I... respect that." Snape swooped forward, lifting the thick locks of his hair away from his ear and licking its shell languidly.

"Bloody hell, Snape," George moaned, pleasure jolting through him.

"And as to your claim that you like girls, you might like them well enough as friends but I don't ever recall you having a girlfriend at school, or later, in the Order. Your twin, yes, but never you." Snape was outright smirking now, and he brought his hips flush against George's at last. Both men gasped. "Not to mention this incontrovertible evidence to the contrary."

"Fuck." Throwing whatever modicum of sense he ever possessed right out the seventh storey window, George seized Snape around the neck and dragged him down into a soul-consuming kiss. It was what he had been craving all week long, what no amount of food or drink or other company could slake. He wanted this with a desperation borne of weeks of strange comfort and growing awareness and... George stopped thinking entirely and focused instead on the slide of his tongue against Snape's in the space somewhere between their mouths.

"Snape," he mumbled. The other man caught George's lip between his teeth, sucking it and tonguing it as George writhed against him. It was ridiculous, how perfect this was. George hadn't felt this good, this complete for a long time.

And that scared him. He pulled back, panting. God, he was used to feeling incomplete, physically and emotionally. This black storm cloud of a man, spilling blood and aspersions all over George's quarters, was not supposed to take that emptiness away. He laid a hand on Snape's chest, gratified to feel that Snape was breathing just as heavily.

"You want this," Snape said, but it was almost a question.

George found himself nodding even before he'd thought it through.

"Then what is the problem?" Oh, the impatience in Snape's words went straight to George's groin. This was want, pure and simple. Snape wanted him. What would Fred have said about that? What would Harry and Ron say?

"This is new. All of this." It sounded lame when he said it like that, and he could tell that Snape was restraining himself from rolling his eyes. God, was his former professor disappointed in him?

"You do not strike me as the maidenly type. Why are you pulling away?"

"I don't know." Because this was a man? Because it was a former teacher? Because it was Severus Snape, someone George had spent seven years thwarting and taunting? Or because he couldn't let himself feel this good so soon after losing the people he cared about most?

Now Snape did roll his eyes, taking a step back. "Are you a virgin, Weasley?"

"What? God, no!" George squawked indignantly. "I've never kissed another bloke, though. This is weird, Snape. Don't tell me it seems perfectly normal to you?"

Dark lashes fanned against pale skin as Snape closed his eyes. "'Normal' has never been something I have been concerned with. And since very nearly, as you once said, being eaten by a snake, it seems most prudent to take what I want now, rather than waiting for a day that might not come."

He reached for Snape, thinking he'd never heard anything make so much sense in his life, and to hell with anything but finding that warm, lithe body moulding against his once more.

"I take it we're in agreement?" Snape gloated, and George thought a gloat had never tasted so good as their lips met once more. This time he took the initiative, sliding his hands under Snape's shirt, trying not to touch the damaged portions. From the way Snape caught George's face in his hands, holding him with a possessive hunger that George had never been the object of before, he knew that he was doing this right. That Snape's fingers rested where George's ear should have been didn't seem to bother either of them.

Somehow, they were moving, a tangle of shuffling feet and legs trying to press up against all the right spots as their mouths met again and again. They were next to the fireplace now, the stone wall cold against George's back as Snape's deft fingers traversed the expanse of his chest beneath his shirt. Who knew such unassuming touches could be so... assuming?

"George, dear! Are you home?" called a voice from the dying fire.

George groaned as Snape flattened himself to the wall between George and the hearth. They glanced at each other, guiltily and conspiratorially. Like two children caught stealing freshly baked cookies just before dinner. Dinner! Oh hell, he'd completely forgotten.

"Mum, one second," George said, running an unsteady hand through his tangled hair. He checked to make sure his fly was still fastened and then stepped in front of the fireplace, where his mother's head was perched amongst the coals.

"Were you exercising, dear? You look flushed."

"Yeah," George said, fighting the urge to snicker. "What do you want, Mum?"

"Fine way for a son to greet his mother!"

"I'm sorry, Mum." Sheepishly.

"That's better. Can you come through?"

"Why?"

Molly Weasley tutted. "Why, indeed. It's Friday night, silly. We've been waiting on you for an hour and dinner's getting cold! Aren't you coming?"

George glanced toward the kitchen, where Snape was smoothing his rumpled clothing. "Of course. Just let me get cleaned up, yeah?"

"All right. I'll have your father pour the wine." With a little pffoot, Molly disappeared from the flames.

"Snape--"

"Go to your mother's, Weasley. I have some very important reading to do."

"Snape, I--"

"One doesn't realise how far one will fall behind when one lives like a wild man in a forest for a season. I don't know what Emerson saw in it."

"Who the hell--"

"Weasley." Snape walked closer to him, George's gaze involuntarily following the graceful gait of his long legs. "Go to your mother's. You can hardly tell her why you might wish to stay home." He slid a hand along George's side in a gesture so arousing and so painfully intimate that George couldn't help the quiet moan that escaped him. "I will be here when you return."

"You could come with me," George said, surprising himself yet again. Why could he no longer control his responses around Snape?

The other man snorted. "Have you been sniffing the wormwood extract? You can hardly bring a criminal and a murderer, presumed dead no less, to family dinner. Even if I had any desire whatsoever to attend. I believe I made my feelings regarding your family quite plain?"

George groaned again, this time not from anything close to arousal. "You're an infuriating bastard, Snape."

Lean arms slid around George's neck. "I am aware, yes." Snape's lips teased his with a light brush, the promise of a kiss, before he backed away once more. George made a hasty retreat to the fireplace, and the last thing he heard before he tossed in the Floo Powder and went to his mother's was a cacophony of bells, whistles, and Snape's extraordinarily verbose cursing. Really, the man should have expected a decoy detonator in his pocket one of these days.

~*~

Dinner had been an interesting affair, one that George had used for some rather subtle fact-finding. Bill, Fleur, and Charlie had all stopped in, and George had made off-hand inquiries regarding his family's views on wizard-wizard relationships (Bill and Charlie didn't care, Fleur thought it was such a captivating concept that Bill had actually blushed, and his parents both changed the subject quickly and awkwardly) as well as their views on Severus Snape (each believed the man to be an absolute hero who deserved the vindication he had received posthumously in the eyes of the entire magical world). Not that George was planning on dancing home next week screaming at the top of his voice about his possible homoerotic affair with Snape, but at least he knew what kind of reception they would get. Shock and delight that Snape was alive, shock and horror that George was sleeping with him.

Because that was all George had been able to think about throughout dinner. The way Snape moved, almost serpentine against him, his cock hard against George's thigh. What it would be like for that acerbic mouth to take George in, what Snape would smell like as they both began to sweat. He'd barely been able to contain himself and had nearly excused himself twice to go to the loo to get himself off. He wanted Snape, and to be truthful, he wanted the spectacle that bringing the other man home would create. There was nothing like watching his mum valiantly trying to hide her exasperation with him. Maybe he could accompany the Snape Unveiling with fireworks-- he hadn't made any firecrackers since before Fred had died.

"Honey, I'm home," he called as he stumbled out of his fireplace, wanting to get a bit of a rise out of Snape. The other man was sitting across from him on the sofa, his expression so livid that George actually froze. "What?"

"All this time," Snape said, voice deadly quiet. "All these weeks you've been tripping about the place, flaunting yourself at me, pretending to be helpful."

"Funny, thought I was being helpful," George said coolly, irritated by the derision he heard in Snape's inflection.

"Helpful people do not keep vital information from the men they are trying to help. Helpful people do not tantalize and titillate the men they are actually holding fucking prisoner!"

George blinked. "I've never forced you to stay, you stupid prig. What are you on about now?"

"When you left, a house elf named Tufty arrived to clean up the mess you made with that ridiculous device," Snape said, as if he were telling a news story on the Wizarding Wireless Network from which he was completely detached. "I muttered some invective or other about marching out the door if I wasn't sure I'd be arrested on the spot and thrown in Azkaban. And Tufty informed me that no, Professor Snape, sir, the wizards would not be putting me in jail. They would be throwing me a parade, sir, and giving me many shining medals for my heroic role in keeping the children of Hogwarts safe and helping to topple the great threat of the bad, bad You-Know-Who, sir."

George wanted to laugh. Snape's words were a spot-on impression of a house elf's, though his pitch was about four octaves lower. "I never said you were a wanted man."

"You never denied it, either, no matter how many times I mentioned it," Snape growled. "You never thought to point out that I am a celebrated war hero because Potter shared my dying memories with the entire sodding magical community! I could have left here at any time! I could have healed myself on my own, or sought help in St. Mungo's, not that I would ever actually go there, or--"

"Snape, look," George cut him off. "I don't know why I didn't mention it. Maybe I should have, but you needed to stay here and rest. I wanted you to."

"You wanted to torture me and humiliate me into admitting my desire for you. For a Gryffindor and a Weasley and yet another red-head who could never return how I..." he caught himself before he said anything more. He was pale and shaking, and George shook his head.

"Look, I don't know what I was thinking, but I don't--"

"Enough. I am going. I simply wanted to do this before I left." And Snape spat at his feet.

"You son of a bitch."

But Snape had already grabbed a handful of Floo powder and disappeared through the flames. George didn't hear where he was going.

~*~

Two weeks passed-- not that George was counting. And there was no mention of Snape anywhere-- not that George was checking. Not in the Daily Prophet, not on the Wizarding Wireless Network, and not amongst the prodigious gossips of Hogwarts. The man had simply disappeared, lachesis in one hand and bitterness in the other.

George didn't care. If anything, the silence in his quarters was welcome because it spurred him on to other tasks. Rather than being drawn into stupid debates on pedagogy and correct ladle angles, he'd taken a look at few designs that he and Fred hadn't got around to developing fully, as well as a few new ideas that had occurred to him over the last little while. As long as the headmaster didn't figure out why that group of fourth years had all lost their tibias at the same time, then everything was going according to plan. Product development wasn't the same without Fred, who had been the one with the showier ideas, but it was still coming along well in his honour. George was particularly proud of the Riveting Root Beer, guaranteed to leave the drinker glued to his seat until his need to pee outweighed the light bodybind charm in each bottle. And he liked the Handy Dandy Collapsing Door as well, inspired by the now-destroyed Room of Requirement. In this case, the Door folded down to fit into a student's school bag, but could be expanded with an easy Inflatio spell and propped against any wall. The student could step through and hide in the broom-closet-sized space behind the door, which immediately blended into its surroundings, rendering it invisible until it was opened from the inside.

He had also decided to expand a bit and begin to develop products that adults might enjoy as well. One, a riff on the Patented Daydream Charm, called into being in the space of a sitting room an entire vacation setting. George had created a winter skiing chalet and a babbling brook in a summer forest setting, perfect for camping. He was nearly finished a tropical jungle paradise and a table for two in a Parisian-style bistro. He had a new catalogue ready to send to the printers with some of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes best-selling classic products, as well as showcasing his new products.

So it wasn't as though George was bored without Snape, or lacking challenge. It wasn't as though he needed the man's unsolicited advice on his lessons and grading. He didn't miss getting surly one-eyed glares from the sofa every time he walked out of his bedroom. No, he was far better off without Snape underfoot, and he only wished he'd kicked the man out sooner.

Returning to his quarters exhausted after a day of teaching the third years how to distill volatile oil out of flitterbloom leaves, George knew that all he wanted to do was put his feet up and making a few revisions to the catalogue. Shuffling toward his bedroom, he gave himself just a moment to close his eyes and savour that lingering richly dark Snape-scent that seemed even stronger today than usual. It shouldn't have been so damned sexy, he mused, and furthermore--

The Bodybind curse hit him without any warning, and though it prevented him from moving, it didn't stop him from feeling the lean, hard body that draped itself against his back. Damnation and hellfire, when someone attacked him from his earless side, he didn't stand a chance of hearing them.

"When a man successfully evades the press, Aurors, and well-wishers," Severus Snape hissed into his ear, "and he finds for himself the perfect wand, and disappears to parts unknown to start his new life, that man should be content. Would you not agree?"

George couldn't respond but Snape didn't seem to care. He ran his hand over George's chest, deftly undoing every button he came across. "He should be pleased that he has been able to leave behind the imbecile who scooped him from his Forest hideaway and kept him captive by providing medicines and withholding vital information."

Short, blunt nails raked over George's bare chest, and the other arm wrapped around George's hips, kneading his thigh but not straying any closer to George's cock. George wanted to scream. His body was frozen, and the arousal hurtling through him could find no physical outlet. He felt like he should be hard enough to pound nails but his body could not respond to his hormones. Snape laughed softly, and George could not tell whether he was amused or being cruel. Knowing Snape, it was likely a mixture of both.

"Close your eyes, Weasley," Snape teased, for George could not close his eyes. He heard the other man tut behind him. "You never could follow instructions, could you? Here, allow me to assist you." A heavy blindfold fell into place, blocking George's vision entirely, and the tip of Snape's tongue slowly drew itself along George's throat. Then Snape grabbed hold of him tightly and he felt himself being squeezed, turned inside out in a Side-Along Apparition. Moments later, Snape lifted the curse and the blindfold and George blinked dazedly in the harsh light and warm breeze. He took a step, nearly losing his footing before realizing that he was on a soft, white-sand beach. Picturesque palm trees swayed along the shore, and an ocean so azure it looked too real to be real lapped against the sand. Seagulls cried out overhead, and the smell of warm salt water enshrouded his senses. His body, free now to respond to his raging libido, became aroused so quickly that his knees nearly buckled. Snape was there to catch him, smirking with triumph and, thank god, desire.

"Snape?" he said incredulously, for once too shocked to say anything more. He didn't have to. Snape pushed him against the nearest palm tree, its rough bark hard against his back. Snape looked like he hadn't shaved in days. George had never seen the man with stubble before, and it combined so well with the damned eye patch that George wondered if he'd always had a kink for pirates.

"No wisecracks, Mr Weasley?" Snape purred, whipping his wand in a couple of intricate little wordless patterns. George squawked as his arms wrapped backward around the tree of their own volition and stayed there. He tugged at the invisible bonds of magic, but he couldn't pull away from the tree.

"Are you out of your mind?"

"That's not very witty." Snape tilted his head and licked George's neck once more, dawdling around his Adam's apple and his pulse points. Teeth scraped against the underside of his jaw and lips caressed his earlobe.

"Nothing to say at all?" Snape asked, flicking the lobe with his tongue.

"Where's your shoulder parrot?" Or at least, that's what George wanted to say. It was rather more incoherent than that, and Snape snickered.

"You want this, Mr Weasley," he told George, hands wandering over George's straining biceps and downward to graze his sides. George arched against the tree, though whether he wanted to get away from Snape's touch or move into it, even he didn't know. "Don't deny that you've wanted this for weeks. Evanesco vestamentis totalis. Reverso."

George felt a whooshing sensation, as if the tree was revolving around him, and then found himself with a faceful of bark. Completely naked. Snape had magically flipped him over so that he was facing the tree, his back to the older man and his arms still wrapped around the trunk and magically held in place.

Snape's skillful hands were busy now, smoothing over George's arse, and George could picture the discerning appraisal to which he was being subjected. "This is your first time, is it not? Do you know what it is you are craving?"

"Fuck off, Snape. You think this is a game?" George demanded, trying to turn around enough to see the other man.

Snape merely chuckled and after a moment the dark cloth that had acted before as a blind fold was forced into his mouth and tied behind his head. An ocean zephyr licked across his suddenly bare arse and thighs, and then something else licked the small of his back. George yelped.

"Did you dream of this, Weasley?" Snape's voice demanded haughtily from the vicinity of George's hips. "Did you imagine me with you like this, spreading you open?"

George wanted to ask Snape why he was posing questions when George couldn't answer them, but instead all he could do was groan against the gag. Snape had his hands on George's buttocks, palms flush against his skin and spreading him open, just as Snape had promised. George had never felt like this before. He had never been so open. So exposed. And he didn't understand how he could feel vulnerable and yet not alone at the same time.

Snape's breath, warmer than the ocean breeze, huffed against the sensitive skin of his hole, though, and before he could fully process just what Snape was planning, Snape drew a circle with his tongue that left George sagging and whimpering against the tree trunk.

"Do you like that, Weasley? You're shaking for me. You're shaking because no man has ever fucked you with his tongue before. But you want that, don't you? You want me." George wondered dizzily if Snape kissed his mother with that mouth, which was capable of doing the most obscene things.

And the perfect obscenity continued as Snape lapped against him, tonguing him over and over the way the ocean water stroked the shore. George clung to the palm tree, unable to do anything else but keep himself upright. The gag muffled a carnal cry when Snape's tongue pushed into him, as no one had ever done before. George wondered briefly what a diary entry would look like this evening. "Dear Diary, kidnapped by Snape to a remote desert island, whereupon he tongue-fucked me until I came against a palm tree." Because he was close. Merlin's nipples, he was close, and Snape was not relenting, pushing ever deeper inside with his tongue. George wasn't even aware how wet Snape had made his entrance, or how relaxed his muscles were, until the tongue withdrew abruptly to be replaced by a finger.

"Ayyngh!" George gasped, rocking between the tree and Snape's hand. The other man did not slow down, pushing his finger inexorably inside.

"Don't tell me you don't want this, Weasley," Snape murmured. "Have you any idea how tight you are? Do you know how much I want this?"

With those words, Snape hooked his finger and brushed against something inside George that made his vision fog out in a dizzying array of colour and his nerve endings short circuit. He came hard, his seed splattering against the tree trunk, his hips pumping in the air and thrusting backward against Snape's finger.

Fingers, rather, because there were definitely more than one now, moving in and out of him, stretching him with a persistence that robbed George of breath and rational thought. His arousal didn't stand a chance, hard again even though he'd just spent himself. With every stroke of his fingers-- three, definitely three now-- Snape found the nub that could only be George's prostate, and George could do no more than concentrate on standing upright. Just as he felt his pleasure coiling tight and hard within once more, Snape pulled back.

"Ungh?!" George protested, desperate for more, for another release, for something he couldn't put words to, even if he could talk right now. For several painful seconds, nothing at all touched him but Snape's sadistic voice.

"If I remove the gag, will you beg, Weasley?" George snarled, and Snape rocked his hips forward. He was hard, and naked, and his cock nestled against George's arse as if it had been made to fit there. "Again: will you beg me for it? Will you tell me how much you want this?"

Snape tore the fabric from George's mouth, as eager as George was, and George found himself babbling, "Do it. Now, you bastard, I need more."

"Fuck," Snape groaned, and the long, heavy cock resting against George was suddenly blunt and hard and very, very there. "Push back," he hissed, and he thrust the tip of his cock inside. George couldn't stifle his low, loud grunt. This wasn't pleasurable, exactly. It was bigger than pleasurable, more than that. Snape rocked his hips forward, inching himself further into George's body.

"Snape," George groaned, breathing hard. He could feel sweat breaking across his brow, and he rested his head against the bark, not caring if he scraped it raw. "More," he said, thrusting back. Snape bit back a sharp laugh, accepting the challenge and burying himself in George fully. They panted together for a long moment, peppered only with the sound of their twin breathing and pounding hearts. And then they were moving, George unsure which of them had started it. Snape drove into him, opening him as he'd never experienced before, and George welcomed him, meeting him with each thrust. Snape was silent now, his earlier patter dying away now as they lost themselves in the sensations of one another. Snape's rhythm accelerated, a staccato cadence of hips against hips until with a wordless cry, he thrust once more into George, deep and hard. They stayed like that while Snape gathered himself, back to front, slick with sweat.

"Not satisfied yet, Weasley?" Snape teased softly, nipping at George's neck, and indeed, George was still achingly hard.

"I want more, yeah," he said, achieving a perfect nonchalant tone that Snape apparently didn't buy for a minute. Without warning, the older man wrapped his hand around George's cock and began to pump him mercilessly. George couldn't help it-- he spilled himself over Snape's fingers almost immediately, slumping against the tree, which, now that he could stop and think about it, was surprisingly soft. Almost as if it were cushioned. He craned his neck around to look at Snape shrewdly.

"You cushion-charmed the tree?"

Snape lifted himself gingerly off George's back, his softening cock sliding free from George's body frictionlessly. He waved a hand at George, whose arms unstuck from the tree and fell heavily to his sides. "I deny it," he said, arching a brow.

"Snape, you're stark bloody naked, you've just, just..."

"Sodomized you."

"Fucked me silly against a palm tree! You sodding well kidnapped me from my own home! And you're going to deny that you kept me safe from rubbing myself raw?" George's eyes were twinkling with mirth.

An answering spark appeared in Snape's good eye, though of course he didn't smile. "Weasley, I did no such thing."

"You didn't fuck me silly?"

"You were silly enough to begin with. No, I didn't kidnap you from your home. Finite viaticum." The scene around them dissolved, and George found himself back in his sitting room. His eyes widened.

"You didn't?"

Snape assumed an unconvincing innocent expression. "What, steal one of your little vacation charm packages, modify it, make it far superior to what it was originally, and then use it to have my wicked, wilful way with you? Of course not."

George stared at him in open admiration. "Do you want to be my partner?"

It was Snape's turn to be shocked, and George snickered. "Not like that, idiot. Business partner. I'm starting Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes up once more."

"I certainly won't be your partner if you keep that name."

"Then you do want in?"

Snape snorted. "I didn't say that. And just who will teach Potions?"

"I will."

"You cannot be a professor in this school and sell tools of destruction to the nitwit students!" Snape sputtered.

"Why not?"

Snape changed the subject. "I notice you do not deny that my product was superior to yours."

"I did all of the groundwork," George protested. "You added sounds and smells."

"And the cushioning charm."

"Good point."

They eyed each other for a moment. Both naked, both with sweat and semen cooling on their skin, and both with amusement and arousal plain on their faces.

"We'll talk," George said, sauntering toward the bedroom.

"I'm never going to your weekly dinners at the Burrow," Snape warned, following.

"You'll need to accept a medal or two, for your war hero status."

"No, I most certainly will not."

"I could always keep you here and not tell anyone but the house elves about you, but that didn't work too well the first time."

"Shut up, Weasley."

"You shut up," George shot back. All right, this wasn't going to be easy. It wasn't even guaranteed to last until morning. But this, he knew, was a good place to start.

Fin