And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming. . .
~Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven

There was a raven on the foot of his bed. The sun streaming in from the tall, narrow windows backlit the bird, limning it in gold and giving a violet sheen to its oil-black plumage.

He blinked.

The sun. . . the windows. It was wrong somehow.

Ah, he had it. No windows in the dungeons. Ergo, no sun. When had these appeared?

The raven ruffled its feathers and scratched its breast with one black, scaly foot.

There were no ravens in the dungeon, either. The bird cocked its head, fixing a beady black eye on him over its heavy, curving bill.

Like looking in a mirror, thought Snape, wondering where that thought had come from.

He closed his eyes. He had a headache. When he opened them again, the raven was gone.

"Shhh, now. It's all right. Drink this."

". . . trying to kill me. . . " he heard his voice say, but he didn't recall having spoken.

"It's all right. It's all right, Severus." She's calling me by name. What does that mean?

A hand behind his head, supporting it. A cool sensation at his lips, and then something warm sliding down his throat.

Darkness. The smell of bandages. Silence.

"You'll be just fine." A sepia-hued baritone. He did not open his eyes. His head throbbed and the sun had come back, seeping red and bloody through the skin of his eyelids.

"You were wonderful. . . " The voice made him warm all over. Or was that the sun?

". . . so beautiful, the way. . . " He found he could actually see the words. They looked like footprints, but footprints that had somehow become the boots that made them, all soft mahogany leather. He smelled saddle soap and tobacco, warm and brown.

"I'll be back later. . . "

I'm glad, he thought, and opened his eyes a fraction.

The raven was back, gazing at him stoically from just beyond his feet.

His fingers clutched the edge of the mattress as he retched. Every muscle in his body was clenched, working in unison to expel the vileness that had somehow crawled inside him. The spasm stopped and he rested his head on the smooth cotton sheet, spittle trailing from his lips and a bitter taste on his tongue.

". . . secondary infection. . . "

A cool cloth wiped his face, and cool hands pushed his hair back from his brow.

". . . until he's recovered?" Albus. The smell of sugar and lemons. Bitter taste of tea drunk from a bottomless cup.

". . . very soon. . . not as bad as it seems. . . "

A soft rustling of robes. He thought of feathers.

". . . not as bad as it seems. . . " Not Pomfrey, but that warm voice again, still the color of a ripe chestnut, still smelling like a tack room.

It was evening, because the room was lit with lamps and candles instead of daylight. He was tired, so very tired, but he wanted to stay awake while the voice was speaking.

". . . always loved that about him, you know. . . "

He tried to speak, to answer, but the effort didn't make it past the fog in his skull. A strange, one-sided conversation. The words were insidious, twining around him and burying their roots deep inside.

". . . takes me back to see you like this. . . "

It reminded him of reading books as a child. He never remembered the words, later. The ink on the page had seemed to go from abstraction to reality as if by sublimation. Stories were recalled not in phrases but in emotions and sensations and knowledge that felt like instinct.

". . . soon. It won't be long, now. . . " Not long. Good.

He wrapped that knowledge around him, a rough woolen blanket. For a time, all was silence. Then a harsh croak from the foot of his bed snapped his eyes open.

The raven, black on black, with glittering eyes and a quizzical expression.

"Snape. You look like hell," it said, in a voice that smelled of leather.

He woke at dawn in the infirmary, with his throat dry and cottony and his half-hard cock twitching between his legs. What had he been dreaming? All he could remember was hands on him, and a warm voice that cried out his name. The memory sent another flush of heat to his groin, and he struggled to clear his head.

There was a glass of water beside the bed, and he drank thirstily. The sheets were wet with sweat. He supposed his fever must have broken in the night.

He felt oddly insubstantial, as if the fever had burned essential parts of him away. He wasn't sure how long he had been here.

When Pomfrey came, she smiled to see him looking so well and brought him breakfast on a tray. He drank the tea and ate the toast, but had no stomach for the rest. Not surprising, she said. He'd been ill for three days. Complications of pneumonia.

"Next time you've got a 'cold', Professor, don't wait until you're blue around the lips to come to me," Pomfrey scolded.

It's back to Professor, he thought. I must be getting better.

Around noon a dark head peered around the privacy screen between his area and the rest of the infirmary.

"Sir?"

"Potter." There was no escaping the boy, it seemed, not even in a sick bed. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm getting discharged today, sir."

"Have you been ill?"

"No, sir. Hurt my leg playing Quidditch. S'been bloody boring lying around for three days."

"Language, Potter." The remonstrance lacked any real conviction.

"Sorry, sir. Um. . . I heard you were here."

He gave a derisive little snort. "You've developed an admirable grasp of the obvious over the years."

"I mean, I. . . um. . . I hope you're feeling better, sir."

Snape sighed. Potter was beginning to grow up. It was growing ever more difficult to provoke him. He found that he rather missed Potter's adolescent defiance. 'Infuriating', though hard on the nerves, was at least preferable to 'insipid'.

"Madam Pomfrey assures me I will be able to return to work on Monday."

"Oh! That's. . . just great, sir. I, uh. . . "

He was rescued from the nuisance of any more of Potter's small talk by another voice's interruption.

"What're you up to, Harry?" Snape felt his heart give a great thump, and then he was filled with a cold sense of dread. No. No, it couldn't be. . .

Sirius Black. He looked from the boy to the bed where Snape lay. "Oh. Paying your respects? Good lad." His expression was stony, and his cold gaze was trained on Snape's face.

Snape shuddered in disbelief. Black's voice. It was the voice. A warm baritone, and unmistakably the voice from his dreams. No, he realized. Not just dreams. Black must have come to visit Potter, and he'd overheard their conversations. It made perfect sense.

Except that it made no sense at all. Why should a voice have such an effect on him? And why in the name of Merlin did it have to be that voice?

The fever. It had to be the fever, he thought. It's boiled my brain like an egg.

". . . Severus."

Oh, Christ. His name, in that voice, sent a sharp, fiery squeeze through his belly.

They were looking at him, both of them. "What?" he rasped.

Black smirked and threw a sidelong glance at Potter. "I said, I'll see you at the next Order meeting, Severus." The man cocked his head and stared at him, black eyes glittering.

Snape tried to muster fury, but he was too busy ignoring his swelling cock. Even with the unspoken Snivellus behind it, Black's use of his name was powerfully distracting. He cursed his wretched failure to summon a retort. At last he merely gave a curt nod and Black and the boy mercifully disappeared.

A week of dreams later and Snape was coming to dread nightfall. More than once since he'd been discharged from the infirmary he'd awakened to find his hand on his prick, the dream-echo of that voice fading as he swam back to consciousness.

Worse, he'd found himself unable to keep his eyes off the man. At Order meetings, he'd catch himself staring at the hollow of Black's throat, or tracking his movements as he paced from table to stove for more tea. He watched with reluctant fascination when Lupin touched him, laying a hand on his knee, or pressing shoulders as they sat together, listening.

And now, here was Black himself, standing in the doorway of the Potions classroom, looking at him with a most disconcerting intensity.

"Snape."

"Black." He pushed the essay he'd been marking aside and steepled his fingers in front of his chest. "What do you want?"

Black did not answer, but swaggered into the classroom and looked around, running a finger along the surface of a desk, along the back of a chair.

Snape watched him uneasily. "Taking advantage of your new freedom of movement, I see. Now that you've been. . . unleashed?"

Black turned to him with a sneer. "Lupin thinks you've been watching me, Snape." He pulled a chair up in front of the desk and straddled it. "I think he's jealous, to tell the truth, for all he tried to make out it was a joke."

Snape stared at the man, feeling his pulse quicken.

"Kindly keep your lovers' quarrels to yourself. I find the pathetic insecurities of a lovesick werewolf even less diverting than these essays." He gestured with one long finger at the stack of parchment in front of him. "Leave me alone, Black. I have work to do."

To his chagrin, Black merely smiled. "But I'm curious. Tell me, what do you find so fascinating?"

Snape opened his mouth to reply, but no words came.

"Don't tell me you're falling for me, after all these years? And here I thought you and Lucius were a love match."

A hot flush crept up his throat.

"Fuck you, Black," he snarled as he rose to leave. He was stopped by a hand on his shoulder before he'd gone three paces.

Whirling, he shrugged off the touch and stared into Black's face. He could not read the expression there. The man was standing so close that he could feel the heat from his body. And to his dismay, he found himself unable to stop what was about to happen.

For Merlin's sake, his mind screamed at him. You. . . will. . . not. . . do. . . this.

But he was doing it, leaning across the hand's-breadth between them and pressing his lips--oh, dear God, his lips --against Black's. For a moment it was bliss, hot and vital and electric. Then there were hands on his shoulders, pushing him back, and those fiery black eyes staring, all spark and flash amid a tangle of black hair.

Like looking into a mirror, he thought, and then Black's fist crashed into his face.

The taste of blood, immediately, and then the crack of his tailbone on the stone floor. He was very still for a moment. No way now to preserve his dignity, but he could at least assuage his ego.

"Clever, Black. The purest blood in the wizarding world, and yet you are so big a fool as to forget you own a wand. What next? Swordplay? Pistols at a hundred paces? What a credit to House le Noir. Toujours pur." He spat blood and wiped his mouth with the back of one hand.

Black glared. "Shut up before I put my boot in your face, you pathetic little tosser."

"Or perhaps you'd prefer to set your pet werewolf on me again? You could even ask his permission first, this time. Tell me, did he ever really forgive you for that?"

"Fuck you, Snivellus." Angrier, now. Good. Snape moved in for the kill.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you? To fuck me? Regulus did, you know. Thoroughly. Frequently. Consummately."

"You're a goddamned liar!"

"Oh, but I'm not. Your little brother was a marvelous lay."

Black's eyes were wild and his face ghost-white.

Snape picked himself up from the floor as gracefully as he could, ran his eyes up and down Black's shaking form, and gave a snort of disdain. He moved around the desk and sat back down in his chair, picking up his quill.

He did not look up as Black walked out the door, but neither did he move to resume his marking. Instead he sat, staring blankly at the parchment, struggling to banish the feeling of Black's lips under his own.

November passed in dark black-on-black stares and mutual silence. Lupin looked continually puzzled and hurt. Not so very unlike his usual expression, thought Snape bitterly. No one will notice the difference.

It was just past midnight.

Snape sat by the fire, eyes drooping, an old, heavy Potions text lying open on his knees. He had just decided to put it aside in favor of bed when suddenly there came a knock at the door of his chambers.

He opened it, and at first saw nothing but darkness. Then a figure stepped out of the shadows, dark-robed, dark-haired, dark-eyed.

"Ah, the scion of House le Noir. Such an august visitor to my humble apartments," he sneered. "What the fuck do you want, Black?"

"What my brother had," he said, pushing past Snape and striding into the room.

Snape made no move to stop him. He watched as the man unclasped his cloak and tossed it over the back of a chair. Underneath, he wore a soft gray shirt and black trousers. His hands were on his hips, and his eyes burned like embers.

"You hate me," said Snape.

Slowly, Black nodded. "Never more. Never more than now."

"And I hate you."

"I expect you do."

They stared at each other a moment longer, the air between them thickening like smoke from some unseen censer.

"Why are you here?" asked Snape in a hiss.

A shadow flitted through Black's eyes, and his lips parted as if he were about to speak. Then he lifted his chin and smiled.

"Get out," Snape whispered.

Black did not move.

"Out!" Snape was trembling with rage, his voice a hoarse rasp. He moved to draw his wand but Black was on him like a cat, twisting his arm behind him.

"We're not going to play like that tonight, Snivellus. Now drop it."

He held on.

"I said drop it." A savage pain tore through his shoulder.

His fingers loosed their grip and the wand fell to the floor. Black kicked it aside and shoved him over to his worktable, forcing him face down against the wooden surface. Hands grasped his wrists and stretched his arms out above his head. He heard Black mutter something behind him. The hands released him, but his wrists remained pinned to the table. He pulled against the invisible bonds. They held firm.

"God damn you, Black. Let me up."

He felt hands at his waistband, loosening his trousers and yanking them down around his ankles.

"You are not going to do this, Black."

The hands pulled off his shoes and then removed the tangle of clothing from his legs.

"Damn it, Black!"

"I'm hurrying, Severus. Don't get so impatient." He felt a sharp slap on his left arsecheek. "And your protests would be more believable if your cock weren't already dripping."

Snape flushed and gritted his teeth.

"Spread your legs," Black commanded.

"Go to hell."

"I think not. Spread them, or I'll skip this step altogether." He waved a small vial in front of Snape's face. "You don't want that."

Snape closed his eyes. Slowly he slid his feet apart until his legs were stretched wide. A poisonous mixture of humiliation and arousal choked him, and he could feel his heart pounding inside his ribcage.

Fingers, slick with oil, slid between his buttocks and pressed against his arsehole. They swirled there a moment, forcing a gasp from him, before they insinuated themselves past the tight opening and thrust inside. The friction set off gentle, cramping spasms and Snape fought the desire to thrust against those invading fingers until they were knuckle deep.

Then the fingers were removed and the head of Black's cock was pressed firmly between his buttocks, hot and hard and feeling impossibly huge against his entrance. Black paused, one hand on the small of Snape's back.

"Is this what you've been after? Is it? You fucking whore." Black's voice was softly menacing. "Take it. Take my cock." He thrust forward, brutally, pressing Snape's face against the rough wood and sending a fiery pain lancing upward from between his legs. Hard hands clamped down on his shoulders and he felt Black bend forward over him, his chest pressed against Snape's back.

"Like this? Like my cock up your arse?" He thrust again. "Of course you do, you ugly son of a bitch." Another shove, and Snape gave a strangled cry of mixed pleasure and pain. He felt Black's hipbones dig into him. "You were practically begging for it. You're disgusting, you piece of shit." He was thrusting in earnest now, his breath gusting against Snape's neck.

Underneath the pain, Snape felt his arousal increasing, and a wave of shame swelled in him.

"You sound like a rutting hog, Black," he gasped. "Are you getting off on fucking the greasy git? What would the werewolf say about that?"

A low whine escaped Black's lips and he dug his fingers harder into Snape's shoulders.

"You're about to come, aren't you? You're going to come up my arse, you bastard." Snape's voice was low and husky, and it burned with lust and a bitter, helpless fury. "Are you a screamer? Your brother was. Let's see if it runs in the family, shall we?"

Black's moans grew sharper and to Snape's surprise he felt a hand leave his shoulder and come around his waist to grasp his cock, fisting it in time with Black's thrusts.

"Black, you son of a bitch," he panted.

"I hate you, you fucking bastard," growled Black.

Then there were no more words, only groans and the soft slap of flesh on flesh. The rhythm was insistent, and the hand on his cock was sending jolts of pleasure through him. He heard the tone of Black's grunts change and knew he was close to coming.

"God. . . damn. . . fuck. . . "

Snape felt Black's teeth sink into his shoulder as he climaxed, heard the harsh cry muffled against his own skin. The pain and the sound and the tight, slick grip on his cock overwhelmed him and he came hard and silently, shaking against his bonds, his come spurting in hot jets onto the floor.

They stood like that for long minutes, sweat cooling on their bodies, muscles trembling from exertion. At last Black withdrew, slowly, and Snape bit back a gasp. He felt the restraints on his arms disappear. He drew his hands back and pushed up from the table, rubbing his wrists. Black stepped away from him without a word, but Snape could feel the man's eyes on him.

"Satisfied, Black? Did it scratch an itch?"

Silence. Snape stood where he was, staring at the floor.

"Get out, Black," he said, without heat. "You don't know what you want."

After a pause, he heard footsteps moving away through the dungeon. He did not turn to watch the man go.

Painfully, he made his way to his washroom and drew a bath. He lay there a long time, until the water grew chill and his skin puckered. At last he stepped out of the tub, toweled himself off, and fell into the bed. He was asleep almost immediately.

He dreamed there was a raven at the foot of his bed. He watched it a moment, wondering. It hopped gracelessly onto his legs, then up to his hips, his belly, onto his chest. He couldn't move; he was frozen, lips parted, arms rigid at his sides.

Inches from his face, the bird stared at him with one jet-black eye. Then its beak descended sharply and struck Snape in the mouth. He fought to twist away, to scream, but the bird kept on, pecking his mouth bloody, tearing out shreds of his tongue, its beak rattling hollowly against his teeth.

He woke in a sweat, eyes staring into the darkness of his dungeon. Shivering, he rolled over and pulled the blankets more tightly around him. He wondered what Black was doing at this moment--if he, too, dreamed.

And what if he did?

Dreams were ghosts; they were shadows, best forgotten.

He closed his eyes against the night and felt himself carried down into sleep like a dark feather floating through clear, cold air.