Work Text:
I Put A Spell On You
I put a spell on you
Because you're mine
Stop the things you do
I ain't lyin'
I can't stand
No runnin' around '
I can't stand
No puttin' me down
I put a spell on you
Because you're mine!
Oh yeah
Stop the things you do
I ain't lyin'
I love you
I love you
I love you anyhow
I don't care if you don't want me, I'm yours right now
I put a spell on you
Because you're mine.
Screamin' Jay Hawkins, "I Put a Spell on You"
"It's Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and he's a wild man, so bug off." Jim Jarmusch, Stranger than Paradise, 1984
****
It's immoral as hell, Severus thinks. There is no way to justify this ethically. He winces internally at the contradiction. How can he be hesitating about this minor thing when he is going to have to kill the Headmaster? Is murder ethical? Or, maybe he can concede the language to Albus, is euthanasia ethical? Even if the victim argues it is, it isn't.
It's insane that he is in this position. He's about to do the worst thing he has ever had to do. His courage has never failed him, not in front of the Dark Lord, not under torture, not in battle. He's not afraid of dying. But he can't bear the thought of hurting Albus Dumbledore, and he's going to have to kill him.
Instead of rebelling against the weight of this task, he's not thinking about it at all. He's thinking about how to cast a love charm. It's adolescent, and it's giving him panic attacks. His heart pounds, he can't breathe, he can feel his cheeks flush but he's cold at the same time. He tries to tell himself that it's because of his anxiety about the task, but when he thinks of the task he only feels bitterly angry. At least he isn't afraid of that.
He only sees Remus at Order meetings, and he isn't invited to every one, and Remus is with the werewolves for some of them. That was why he thought of the spell in the first place, to be able to be with Remus when they are physically separated. He has to be able to touch Remus. He knows he doesn't deserve it, but he wants. I am giving up everything. Can't I have even this one thing? He will never love me but can't I have something?
When he sees Remus, he wants to confess everything, and it's dangerous. Remus is the most dangerous person Severus has ever met, more dangerous than the Dark Lord or Albus Dumbledore. Whatever they can compel him to do or inflict on him is not as overwhelming as his feeling about Remus. One night he thinks, "I'm not afraid that the Wolf will eat me, because Remus is consuming me now."
Then he thinks he is a pathetic, wet prat. At least he's smart enough to keep his mouth shut around Lupin. The only thing worse than being a double agent with a panic disorder is being a double agent who is a bloody pathetic prat.
Severus turns back to his book. Some of the spells can be cast without the intended subject being present, with just a token from the other person. He has already saved some of Remus' semen from the last time he sucked him off in the hallway at Grimmauld Place; that should help. He also has a strand of yarn from one of Remus' horrid old jumpers, and a few strands of his hair that got caught on the back of a chair. Severus is always planning ahead. One can never be too prepared.
The spell book has a few spells that will work. He can give Remus erotic dreams that they will both experience. He could bind Remus' heart to his—his literal heart, so that if one of them should die, the other's heart would slow and stop. He doesn't like the idea of that one. It's possible in the next few months that one of them will have to kill the other.
I won't do that. I can refuse to do that. I'll die anyway, what's the point. But he knows he would do it, would do anything to defeat Voldemort, even if no one ever knew why. After all, he has already agreed to kill… He can't afford to think about this. The book is very absorbing, in any case, even if he never casts the spell. Maybe he won't cast any spells. He doesn't need this kind of aggravation. It's good to have a distraction, this book is rare, it's just research.
Here's a spell that will allow me to experience his sensations every time he has an erection. That's interesting. Here's one that will let me touch his skin, even when we are miles apart. That's the one! Wait. Here's another, one that will let me know whenever he thinks of me.
It's not obvious which spells are reversible. Severus deduces that the language of the dream spell can be limited to create one dream at a time, so he decides on that one, to start. Following the directions, he takes out the hair, and adds some dried aphrodisiacs and soporifics, and puts the mixture in a silk bag.
He puts the bag inside his pillowcase and recites the spell. It's 2AM so surely Remus has gone to bed, he hopes alone. Severus has to restrain himself from masturbating. He knows it would enable him to sleep, and he is hopelessly hard from thinking about Remus lying in bed wherever he is now. He breathes the rose scent of the charm in his pillow and thinks of June in the gardens on Hogwarts grounds, and the first time he smelled them as twelve year old boy. He may not even be at Hogwarts this year for the roses blooming. If he is, it will be the last time. He falls into a charmed sleep.
****
"Severus?"
I look into Remus Lupin's tawny, changeable eyes. This is really a dream, not like getting to be awake and in control while someone else is asleep. We are both asleep and dreaming. I am dismayed. I won't remember everything properly.
Then I am calm. I am dreaming, I can say anything.
No, I can't. Shit. He can hear me because of the charm. "Remus, I can't even talk to you now, and I want to tell you how much I…"
"Severus, you are so beautiful in my dream." Remus is running his hands through my hair, petting my head and touching my shoulders. He knows he is dreaming, too. His eyes and his smile are gentle and open, like I used to see him sometimes at school when we were boys, or looking at someone else—a child.
"Oh Remus. Let me kiss you."
He lets me. My hands are on his waist, arse, legs, and his tongue is on my tongue. One of us is moaning, maybe me.
Then we are naked, I am not sure if we have been wearing clothes anyway. It's dream logic. We are on a bed. It is my bed in my old dorm room in Slytherin, with the green velvet curtains. I am lying on my back and he is on all fours over me. He is licking my ear. I am impossibly hard.
He rubs his body over my body and I can feel the hair on his chest. Oh his erect penis rubs against mine. He moves down my body to suck me and his mouth is wet and hot on my chest. He sucks my nipples and then his tongue is in my navel and then he takes my cock in his mouth and I am groaning again.
"Please! I don't want to come yet!" I am afraid it will all be over too soon, like when I was a teenager and had this dream. Then he has flipped me over and is licking my arse, and oh God, then his fingers, and then his cock, and he is fucking me. God. I forgot all about how in dreams you go right to the best part, his cock inside me and somehow he's also holding me, his arms are around me, his palms on the mattress.
"Severus, I've wanted…for so long…" He's thrusting into me and we are gasping, his cock is so hot in me. I feel all his warmth around me.
I want to last, his chest is against my back, his balls are against my buttocks. It doesn't feel like he's thrusting into me, but like he is everywhere at once. Oh God, oh Christ, oh Merlin, oh fuck me.
He kisses my face with a wet tongue, and-- right there, oh yes--oh, I'm coming, oh Remus.
****
As soon as Severus has come, the dream is over and he wakes up.
It's not what he expected. He feels sad, sadder than when he cast the spell. He knows they could be happy together, in a different world, he would have liked to tease and laugh but he's so sad. If it had been real, if he had been in my bed, would I have said anything at all?
He takes the bag out of his pillowcase and puts it carefully aside. He casts the cleaning spell on himself. Empty and tired, he falls asleep.
****
Two weeks pass before Severus returns to his book on love charms.
He has returned to his rooms in a foul mood. Draco Malfoy has almost succeeded in poisoning another student. When Severus confronts him, he is surly and mistrustful. Little shit Malfoy, his whole family is fucking arrogant privileged pureblood pricks, fucking pricks! He kissed that little shit's arse for five years, now he's turned on him. Those crazy bitch Black sisters, that psychopathic Bella, she's behind it. Shit. Then he made it worse by saying what he said about that great twat Lucius. He can't even decide whether it was good manipulation of Draco or just another example of losing control.
It completely knocks the wind out of him to think he's doing all of this to protect that fucking fascist bully Potter's fucking little runt. Fuck how did he get into this?
Severus recognizes that he's working himself into a right state, a full-fledged tantrum, and that he has to calm down. He works to clear his mind. In classical Occlumency theory, clearing the mind of emotions is the first step. It doesn't hurt to have a glass of whiskey either, he thinks.
I am never going to be able to get clear of all these negative emotions from school as long as I am working with the children of my former classmates. Which I guess isn't going to be long, is it? Then I'll go off and be a damned Death Eater with the murderous aristocratic pigs from my house who hold me in absolute contempt. Or if I'm lucky, Draco will kill Albus and I will be able to stay in the Order with the people who think I'm a traitor, or at the very least, a pathetic and horrible person. Which I guess I am.
This is not helping. Whiskey. Where is that spell book? This is the sort of thing he has always loved, these old magic books. They aren't as sophisticated as potions journals. They feel old fashioned, like cookery books. A million possibilities.
This one sounds like a medieval ballad—if Remus gets married, he can appear at the foot of his bed and his bride will sleep through their conversation as he seduces the new groom away from her. With the way Nymphadora Tonks has been looking, this could be important. If she thinks he doesn't know what her Patronus means… but he has already told her that he knows. She's a Black, too. Maybe just as crazy and single-minded as her aunt. He remembers she was very good in his class. Also pretty, she's pretty, and Severus certainly isn't.
Or here's another one, it's a scry, it will reveal if Remus returns his feelings. No, he can't handle that. It will be too humiliating. He doesn't even know what his feelings are.
Just pick one, pick one and have done with it! What is so difficult, you want to have sex with him, have sex with him. What do you care, what do you care, he's just a werewolf anyway.
I said that to myself, didn't I. I'm as horrible as they think. I deserve to be alone.
He wants to try the touch spell, but he's afraid. If he touches Remus like he wants to, Remus will know. He'll know. Severus doesn't think he can stand it. Why is he trying to find a spell that will allow him just to get off with Remus? Remus never says no to a bit of messing about. Neither of them ever says anything. It's something else that he can't ask for that he really wants.
If he does the dream spell again, he can put in a proviso that will make Remus tell him he loves him. But he has to remember to speak an incantation during the dream. He notices that the book doesn't say that the spell will make Remus love him, just that it will make him say he does.
Good enough.
Severus is tired anyway; it's after midnight. He's been so agitated lately that he can't stand himself. He finds the silk bag in his drawer and puts it in the pillowcase. He says a slightly different version of the spell. This time the rose smell makes him think of his grandmother's rosewater and glycerin lotion. He remembers her hands, stroking his forehead, when he was little, and again his heart is heavy as he falls into a charmed sleep.
****
"Severus?"
Remus is lying in a narrow bed, like an army cot. It's cool outside. I bend to kiss him on his forehead, his cheeks, stroking his grey-streaked hair. He says, "Shh, shh, don't cry." He sits up and begins to kiss the tears on my cheeks that I didn't know were there.
"Severus, why are you spelling my dreams?"
I know if I were awake I would be deeply embarrassed, frozen, but I'm not. I keep touching him for a moment as though I haven't heard.
"Severus…you have to talk to me." I do, don't I? He knows something about the magic of the dream spell, and I am compelled to speak.
"Remus…I put a spell on you."
"I know. I knew the other night, as well." He keeps kissing me, kissing my neck, my ear.
"Because it was me, in the dream?" I am relaxed, not embarrassed, while I ask this, but sad.
"No, I've dreamed of you before. I knew because I could feel the spell magic."
"You've dreamed of me before?"
"Severus." He kisses my mouth, it's delicious, it's a dream kiss like nothing in waking life. "Severus, of course I dream of you. I love you. You hurt me. I'm angry with you. I don't understand you. You are so important to me."
"Remus, I'm so sad, I'm so lonely."
"Severus, how can I trust you?"
"You can't, you can't. Why are you making me say these things?" He is taking off my clothes, his hands are in my shirt, on my chest. My hands are on his wiry arms; I feel his muscles crowding under the skin.
"This is a very Dark spell, Severus. Didn't you know that when you cast it?" We are naked, embracing, standing together, intertwined. His tongue is in my ear. I am electrified. Then we are lying down, I am between his raised knees, and then I am inside him. Oh. Dream sex is too fast. He's full of lube and I'm sliding into him, his legs are around my waist. We kiss and my tongue moves in the rhythm of my cock.
"No, no, I didn't want to hurt you," I'm saying. "I just can't tell you anything. I can never have you." Tears are falling from my face to his. "Remus, Remus."
"God, God, what I wouldn't do to hear you say my name," he groans. "Why can't it really be this way?" His face goes slack with pleasure. I hit his prostate, and then again, and again, and he writhes. He is tight around me and it is so good.
I tell him, "I don't want you to remember that I did this when you wake up. I want you to love me." I say the incantation. He won't remember. He'll tell me he loves me.
"You don't have to compel me," he says. I have, though. He says "I love you, Severus" and I grasp his cock and I thrust into him and feel him come. Then I'm coming, coming so hard, and the dream is over.
***
Severus wakes alone, cold and weeping and covered in his own semen. This was a bad idea.
The dream spell is Dark, why didn't he recognize that? He's teaching Defense, he's supposed to know the difference. The Dark magic is making him weak and sad. He was weak and sad before. He says the cleaning spell. He throws the little bag across the room. He'll have to burn it but not where he can smell it.
I don't understand why he doesn't hate me. Maybe because it was a dream he couldn't be angry. Now he'll forget. He won't be angry because he won't remember.
I am shit.
Clearing his mind as best he can, Severus relaxes his body and finally falls asleep.