Disclaimer: Just borrowing, don't own them. Hopefully nobody who owns these characters will ever read it. I blame Alan Rickman for being so damned sexy. Thanks to MG for the Willow-ish idea.

Unexpected 9, by Seeker. Rated NC17.

<><><><><><><><><><>

Harry knew something was wrong.

It wasn't just that Severus Snape was over an hour late returning from his supplies run at Diagon Alley, although Snape was never late to anything unless he was being held hostage by death eaters or unconscious somewhere. The man was irritatingly punctual and loved to rub others' noses in their own human failures. One of many things Harry loved about him.

No, the idea that worried him was the second of the possibilities. It was Snape's first run into Wizardly London since the Final Battle. Many of the details were still suppressed for security reasons -- the main one being if the majority of the magical public knew how many government officials had been dwelling in the dark side for decades they'd revolt. PR had been intense, and a few truths had been sacrificed for the greater good. If the greater good could be interpreted as pacifying the public and washing one's dirtiest linen in a filthy dungeon on the lowest levels of Azkaban.

Unfortunately, one truth, while it didn't get buried, had been relegated to very small print buried in the back pages of the Daily Prophet. That truth was that some presumed Death Eaters had been moles all along and were heroes. Or at least one had, namely Severus Snape. So too many of the people he'd worked so hard and suffered so much to save, none of whom read small print anywhere much less at the tail end of the newspaper, thought he was one of the slimy bastards who'd escaped justice. Given that many of them had also suffered through his Potions class, there was a lot of built-up resentment waiting for an opportunity to present itself.

He'd known this, Harry had, and he'd wanted to go with Snape, but the resultant tantrum from Snape about being an adult even if he didn't look it and needing no one to baby-sit or mollycoddle or hold his hand had been impressive, particularly given the fact that Snape had been tied hand and foot at the time, fucked well enough to make a normal wizard sleep for a month, and whipped until his thin pale skin was a uniform shade of cherry rose. Still, Harry had been determined.

So Snape snuck out.

When he found out, Harry was furious, but he'd been busy debating into retreat a snake the length of the circumference of Hogwarts that had invaded the castle. Snape had been gone for hours by the time he was done.

That was three hours ago. Snape should have been back exactly eighty one minutes ago.

Going with instinct that hadn't failed him since before he'd been old enough to be truly cognizant, Harry headed from the classrooms to the Great Hall and on into the main foyer. As he opened the front doors, he was just in time to catch a battered, tattered form as it fell away from the door frame and reeled into his arms. Snape opened the eye that wasn't swollen shut and glared up at him.

"Say told you so and I'll thump you," he hissed through split lips. Then he passed out.

Harry cursed under his breath, harmless Muggle curse words that made him feel better without turning any unfortunate who happened to get in his way between the door and the infirmary into a ferret. Or worse. Pomfrey looked up, wide eyed, and moved immediately to join them, hovering over Snape as Harry lowered him into the bed. He backed away, though not by much, to let her get to her work.

Snape didn't wake up until it was over. Just as well. Bone-setting hurt, especially when the bones had been splintered. Bruised kidneys and a collapsed lung weren't great fun either, not to mention the myriad of cuts, dark fist- and boot-shaped bruises, and deep abrasions scattered all over the man. Harry stared at him, then stared through him, reading the signature imbedded in those wounds in a way he didn't understand but instinctively knew how to use.

That night, a small gang of Wizardly thugs woke to more excruciatingly uncomfortable bouts of diarrhea and scabies than they ever could have imagined. They had no idea where they got it, but in the next month, their joints swelled at odd times, until their hands and feet were in such agony they wished they could cut them off. None of them could pee without feeling like they were passing acid, and every single one of them discovered the symptoms disappeared every time they went to a doctor and reappeared, to a greater degree, as soon as they got home. Since they were strangers to one another, drawn together in singular stupidity and mob mentality to brutalize a man they didn't know under the mistaken impression they were some sort of heroes, they didn't compare notes, and not one of them realized their suffering was due to the punishment they'd inflicted on Snape. Still, for the ten weeks it lasted, it was fitting reward for their deeds.

It wasn't enough for Harry, though. He was blazingly angry, not just at the idiots who'd hurt his Snape, but at himself for not being there and the Ministry for not making it crystal clear that Snape was a Good Guy, and even Snape himself for being so damned independent outside the bedroom. The first time Snape opened his eyes and glared up at Harry, he'd told the snarky bastard so.

That earned him a softening of the glare, for no reason he could figure. "I love you, too, Potter," Snape whispered. Harry was startled to find his knees give, and he sat on the edge of the bed before he made a complete prat of himself and fell over.

"Too close," he whispered back.

The muscles in Snape's throat worked as if he was about to scream, or throw up. Harry was wondering whether to grab a bowl when the strangled words inched from Snape's clenched jaws. "I'm sorry."

"Ooh," Harry's eyes narrowed. "That hurt, I can tell."

The glare ratcheted up several notches. As always since Snape had de-aged and Harry'd started tying him to and fucking him through the mattress on a regular basis, it turned him on. Leaning forward, careful of the newly healed lips and jaw, he kissed Snape soundly. Snape returned it with fervor and no little impatience at the unexpected tenderness. A cleared throat behind them didn't penetrate the fog of lust deepening around them.

Pomfrey popping Harry over the head with a thankfully-clean bedpan brought them right out of it.

"Save that for later, boys," she warned them, eyes over-bright, cheeks flushed, a suspiciously sly grin on her round face. "For now, Severus needs his sleep, and don't you have a House playing Quidditch to cheer, Harry?"

Before he could protest that Snape's health was more important than any Quidditch match, thus shocking his beloved into fatal cardiac arrest, Pomfrey assured him, "Severus will be fine. If you let him sleep. Sleep now, snog later."

Harry was still trying to get the echo of those words coming out of Prissy Poppy's mouth, and the helpless chuckles coming from Snape, out of his mind, when he found himself sitting next to Hagrid cheering on Gryffindor. He didn't think much beyond the moment, the problem of protecting Severus worrying at the back of his mind, for the next day, until Snape was pronounced well and sent off to teach his classes.

Magical medicine was a wonderful thing.

But it wasn't enough. Harry spent every meal sitting so close to Snape their thighs rubbed under the table. While it reassured him, it left them both more than a little wild-eyed and wanting by the end of the day. After dinner, and the inevitable detentions they'd each been forced to give attention-seeking students who wanted to moon over them (neither had ever had such clean classrooms in their lives, with all the students they had hanging about wanting to do for them ... or to them), Harry cornered Snape in his bedroom.

"Mine," he growled, and pounced on Snape before Snape could so much as open his mouth. Then something odd happened that froze Harry in his tracks. Instead of melting at the first sign of aggression, as was his wont, Snape ... flinched.

Harry's hands trembled. He stared down into Snape's startled eyes for the space of a heartbeat, then with a soft touch he hadn't shown since the first time they'd made love, given their personal predilections for rather more intense expressions of affection, he slid to his knees in front of Snape and worked his way through robe, trousers and shorts to the half-hard prick buried beneath all the material.

Closing his eyes, wrapping his hands around Snape's hips to hold him steady, Harry licked all around the shaft, dipping his head to nuzzle and nip very lightly at the testicles rolling in their sac. Sucking one into his mouth, he held it there, running his tongue over and under it, until Snape whimpered softly. Then he reluctantly let it go, running his cheek along the length of the prick, now fully enlarged.

Back to the head, he spent long moments playing with the foreskin, sliding his tongue along the slit in the glans and poking the blunt end into the tiny hole until Snape's body shook under his hands. He pushed his tongue as far as it would go between foreskin and cockhead, until the flesh was the color of cinnamon, dripping with a combination of Harry's saliva and Snape's pre-ejaculate. The whimpers had long turned to incoherent pleas by the time Harry swallowed Snape down to the curls, nose rooting through them as he twisted his mouth on the prick jumping against his tongue.

A questing hand left a hip and shifted the swollen balls aside, moving behind them to rub firmly, yet still with that disconcerting gentleness, then slide still further back to circle the small hole flinching against his fingertip. Snape was muttering a litany of nonsense, words like love and please and hurt me and now and God and Harry and more, when Harry slid his thumb in Snape's arse and twisted it, the motion mimicking the movement of Snape's prick down his throat. That was it. Snape arched, bumping Harry's chin hard, and came, all his energy seeming to stream out of him with his come.

Pulling his hand away from Snape's arse, Harry caught the collapsing body for the second time in three days, albeit for a much more enjoyable reason this time. Dazed dark eyes sparkled at him, and he grinned. Snape leaned forward and licked the skin beside Harry's mouth, lapping up a spill, no doubt, from the way he went at it. Like a cat grooming a kitten. Or cleaning a cream bowl. When he was satisfied Harry was clean, Snape leaned back against the wall and stared at him.

"I sincerely hope that is *not* an indication of the way our sex lives will continue. Not that I didn't enjoy it, but it was ..."

"Tame?" Harry supplied.

"Best soporific I've ever had." With that, the bastard actually fell asleep on him.

Harry couldn't help laughing softly as he gathered Snape up in his arms and carried him to bed. Undressing him didn't wake him up, so Harry stripped him to the skin and tucked him under the blankets before stripping himself. Worn out, he curled himself around Snape, smiling again as Snape's arms wrapped around him and held him close, even sound asleep. Still, his dreams were plagued with misgivings, and he awoke abruptly a few hours later, in the early hours of the morning.

"Mine," he whispered again, staring down at the smooth pale cheeks, the thin mouth relaxed in sleep, the ridiculously long black eyelashes shielding the fierce brown eyes. He knew he couldn't always be there to protect Snape, not in person. But he was the single most powerful wizard to come along in countless generations, as proven by the way he'd handled Voldemort and his minions, and he'd be damned if he was going to stand idly by while anyone laid a hand on what was his.

As usual, instinct came to the fore, as his subconscious mind handed him the answer to the puzzle it had been working over since Snape had reappeared, beaten and bloodied. Disentangling himself from Snape's clutching arms, he rolled Snape over onto his belly and began to run his hands over the soft skin, long muscles and fine bones from Snape's skull under his silky hair, down his spine, over his ribs, to the slight mounds of his ass. Snape stirred but didn't wake. Harry parted the cheeks and nuzzled there, licking and biting from the top of the crease to the lump of Snape's balls between the parted thighs.

That provoked a sleepy noise, but Snape was still more than half-asleep. Harry muttered a summoning spell, and the pure aloe gel he'd liberated from Pomfrey's stock to use on Snape's lingering aches flew to his hand. A moment later, his prick glistening, he set the pot of gel aside, stroked his sticky hand down into Snape's arsehole, then pushed his prick in with one stroke, all the way to the balls.

*That* woke him up.

Happily, it also made him buck backward, nearly up onto his knees, at the perfect angle for Harry to pull out a tiny bit and ram back in, raking the head of his prick over Snape's prostate. From nearly asleep to utterly fucked in the space of a heartbeat, Snape roared, "Potter!"

"Yes?" Harry asked as innocently as he could, given that he was now pistoning his prick in and out of Snape's arse. Before Snape could come up with a nasty comment, something he could do even when he *was* asleep, Harry made a lightning move, darting his arm around Snape's waist and catching his wakening prick and hanging balls in his fist. He squeezed.

Snape whined. "More like it," he gasped out, and Harry grinned.

It was a fast ride from there, Harry fucking Snape as hard and as deeply as possible, using Snape's captured prick and balls as a handle to move him up and down. Snape's fists clenched into the pillow and his head fell forward, keening cries coming from his throat as he let himself be used, Harry's fingers clenching and unclenching around him. From the contractions of the arse around his prick, Harry knew Snape was in heaven. When the prick bound in his fist spasmed and spat, and the vise around his own prick tightened and jerked in response, he let himself go.

Hand slimy with come, he slid it down to hold the still-spasming balls, crushing the last of Snape's orgasm from him and enjoying the moans of "Fuck yes, Harry, god, just like that" as he did. When Snape had given all he could, Harry closed his fingers around the emptied sac and squeezed, riding out the involuntary movements that shook Snape's body at the manhandling of the sensitized flesh, before finally pushing in hard. A couple good hard pumps and he was close, but he didn't come in Snape.

Instead, he drew his hand away from Snape's balls, used the other in the middle of Snape's back to push him flat, then aimed his prick so that when he came it splattered across Snape's back. He brought his hands together around his prick and aimed it lower so the second splash landed at the top of Snape's arsecheeks, pooling in the two dimples at the base of his spine. The third jolt washed across the cheeks themselves. The last he aimed up again, splattering from between Snape's shoulder blades up to the nape of his neck, exposed by the hair parted and falling over his shoulders.

"Stay there," Harry ordered breathlessly. Snape stopped the tiny movements; he'd begun to turn over but relaxed again at Harry's words.

Straddling Snape's thighs, Harry whispered a second summoning spell, and his wand flew to his hand. Touching the tip of it to his own prick, he felt the frisson of power as it pierced the last drops of semen welling from his slit. One long drop fell then, a single string of come connecting Harry's body with Snape's, the wand intersecting the strand at the beginning.

An emerald and crimson sparkle began where the wood touched the fluid. Harry felt it warming him, then the touch began to burn. Slowly, he moved the wand down from his body to Snape's, breaking the string and taking it with him. It clung to the wand, making the tip glow. Vaguely aware he was chanting, Harry paid it no attention as he began to draw symbols with his semen on Snape's skin. Symbols of power. Of ownership.

Of protection.

Long glyphs scrolled along Snape's spine, forming a raised pattern on the soft skin before sparkling, then subsiding through the skin into the flesh beneath. Harry knew from the residual burn, like that of the finest acid, that it must burn. Snape began to moan again, soft, panting sounds, and his hips began to move.

"Still," he commanded, and Snape shivered convulsively once before lying completely still. The moans turned into cries, muffled in the pillow. "Let me hear you," Harry told him, and Snape did. Harry took the sounds, the pained ecstasy, and wove it into the wards he wrote on Snape's skin, making it a truly shared creation. He felt himself harden as he worked. The connection between himself and Snape was stronger than it had ever been, and it aroused him deeply.

More symbols, along his shoulders, over the muscles tensed there as Snape fought to remain still through the etching eating delicately into his skin and his own reawakening arousal. Then down, following the lines of his ribs, further down, across his sides, along his flanks, the tops of his thighs. The most intricate of the glyphs were reserved for the last, as Harry etched his love and ownership, his bone-deep protection, into the softest skin, covering Snape's arse with symbol within symbol, circling inward. At the last, the tip of the wand slid into the pinkened hole, and Snape screamed.

"I love you," Harry whispered as he slowly fucked Snape with his wand, pushing the magic deep, infusing the man with it, feeling the last of the semen seep into Snape's body as if it was coming from his prick, not his wand. With no other touch at all, Snape came, his arsehole clenching around Harry's wand, as if to pull an orgasm from it, or to absorb it completely. Harry watched, licking his lips, then moved so that his wand lay back between his own thighs, shifting aside his balls, handle riding the crease of his arse. Then he placed the head of his prick next to his wand where it sat buried in Snape's body.

Pushing steadily, moaning as Snape's hole clenched around him, pressing his prick into his wand and tightening like a fist around them both, Harry carefully thrust his full length in Snape, then lay there, feeling the burn of the magic flowing from his wand equally into his prick and Snape's gut. It was immeasurable pleasure bound to the knife-edge of agony, and he was nearly lost in it.

Snape was mewling now, body shaking uncontrollably as he kept coming, unable to stop. Harry didn't need to thrust; he came without moving, the fresh infusion of come causing the wand to vibrate strongly, pulling cries from both he and Snape. Barely aware, moving still on instinct, Harry reached behind himself and gently pulled the wand away, drawing it up between his own arsecheeks and over his hole, sighing at the last sting of sensation as the magic bled away.

He lay there for some time, tracing the thin gold glyphs carved into Snape's back with his lips, before his softened prick finally slipped from Snape's body. Only then did he begin to tremble. Snape moved beneath him, shifting and turning, until he could wrap his arms around Harry's body and pull him into an embrace.

"Yes," he whispered. Harry buried his face against the side of Snape's neck and bit, sucking until he could feel the heat of the blood beneath the skin. Snape hummed approvingly in his ear. "It will be all right."

Harry knew it would. He'd made damned sure of it. If anyone ever tried to hurt Severus Snape again, it would rebound hard enough if they didn't actually die in the attempt they'd bloody well wish they had. Leaving the truth unsaid, he teased breathlessly, "Better?"

A soundless laugh brushed his hair. "Much," Snape informed him. "That's one use of a wand I'm certain has never been taught at Hogwarts." The comment held a question. Harry licked the welt he'd raised on Snape's throat.

"I guess some things aren't taught. Some things just come from the heart. Instinct."

If Snape had a comeback to that, Harry didn't know. He was already asleep. He didn't dream.

END