Entry tags:

snape/charity burbage

FIC: Caritas (Snape/Charity Burbage)
To: cmwinters
From: Your Secret Santa

Title: Caritas
Author: kethlenda
Pairing(s): Severus Snape/Charity Burbage, a bit of Bloody Baron/Helena Ravenclaw, and a brief implication of Snape/Lily Evans
Summary: A chance meeting in an ancient sacred place. A sacrifice.
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Canonical character death, violence
Author/Artist's notes: Happy holidays, cmwinters, and I hope this warms your December a bit! I've taken some artistic license with pagan lore, and all errors are my own. Thanks to J. for everything.

"Severus, please…"

For the second time this summer, the supplication. This time, unlike the night atop the Astronomy Tower, Severus is unsure of what is being asked. Charity hangs suspended above the table, her pose a cruel mockery of the Hanged Man card, waiting. Waiting for what? Does she beg for rescue, or death?

She was never supposed to be the sacrifice. Severus has always known his own road will end in shadow, but Charity…

Voldemort hisses, explaining why he has brought her here, and Severus steels his mind as best he can, that the Dark Lord might not read the mingled horror and admiration that fills it. Last week—in this climate, writing that? Foolish woman. Brave woman.

She turns again in midair. Her eyes implore him. He makes a blank of his face.

***

On a cold winter solstice night, Charity follows the white doe to the ancient circle.

Without the shining creature lighting the way, she'd never have found it. The position of Professor of Muggle Studies doesn't call for much wandering in the Forbidden Forest, and besides, the place is nearly overgrown. Trees have encroached all the way to the circle's edge, their limbs meeting to form a black skeletal ceiling above, and ropy vines have nearly swallowed the stones.

The doe gallops into the circle, illuminating a dark-robed figure for an instant before dissolving into the figure's upraised wand. A Patronus, then; Charity had taken it for…

"What incredibly foolish student comes here?"

Charity knows the voice. She can't say she knows him well, but there's no mistaking the venom-dipped tone. "Well met, Professor Snape," she says with a laugh.

"Burbage, is it?" He has reached the circle's edge by now, and flicks his eyes over her face. "What brings you to this place?"

"The doe," she says. "I thought it was sent by the Lady…"

"Well, Miss Burbage, I'm terribly sorry to disappoint you, but there's no lady here. Only me. And if you don't mind, I'm rather busy at the moment."

Charity surveys the scene: a long-forgotten stone circle, Severus Snape standing alone in it on solstice night, and a full moon shining through the trees. Gran, who taught Charity everything she knows, always told her that when coincidence was too good to be true, perhaps it wasn't coincidence at all. "Actually, I think I was right the first time. I think the Lady brought me here for a reason."

He looks at her again as though seeing her for the first time. "Are you a witch, then?"

Charity knows what Snape is asking. There are witches, and there are witches. There are a few, like Charity, who are both kinds: filled with the innate power that enables them to wield wands, and also devoted to the Old Gods. "Yes, I am."

"Be welcome, then." Snape gestures in the air with a dagger, opening the circle to Charity, and she enters.

Charity realizes, upon stepping inside the circle's boundaries, how thoroughly accustomed she'd grown to the forest's night noises and to the bitter, biting cold. Here, it is hushed, and warm. Whether this is an inherent property of the place--an enchantment cast by those who raised the menhirs—or whether Snape bespelled the spot himself, she does not know.

"How old is this place?" she asks in a whisper.

"No one knows," says Snape. "They say that revels were held here in the days of the Founders, but the stones themselves are older still."

"It's beautiful," she says.

He nods briskly. "Shall we begin?"

"Yes."

He surprises her, then, by kneeling before her. She feels the touch of his lips through the velvet of her slippers. "Blessed be the feet that brought you here," he says. Charity shivers, though she is not cold.

She feels warmer still as his hands slide up her calves, as he presses his lips to her knees through her robes. "Blessed be your knees," he murmurs, fingers caressing the soft backs of her knees. Whatever she expected from a ritual with Severus Snape, this was not it, nor had she expected to find herself aroused by the ritual kiss. Maybe it's his voice, as silken now as it is caustic back at the castle.

By the time he lays a brief kiss at the juncture of her thighs, her breath sounds loud in her own ears, and she trails her hands through his hair. It's oily, and tangled, and she is startled out of the moment by remembering that this is Severus Snape, whom she never expected to desire, and yet at the same time an acceptance settles upon her, the certainty that it doesn't actually matter what he looks like or that he needs hair potion rather badly, because tonight he is the God, and the God is beautiful no matter what face he wears.

Yet when he peels back her robes to bare her breasts, she half expects criticism; she's so accustomed to the sardonic curl of his lip, and she knows she's no classic beauty, but instead he gives her naked flesh a long look. Reverent, almost. He kisses her in the hollow between, then cups her breasts in his hands, thumbs rubbing at her nipples until they harden and her breath grows ragged. "Severus…" she exhales, because using his last name feels wrong when he's doing this to her.

"…your lips," he is saying, and when their mouths meet, it's no elegant ritual kiss, but a force of nature. It takes a moment before they truly flow together, and then it's as if they've been doing this for years. His tongue darts into her mouth quickly, steadily, and she wonders what other tricks he knows with it. She entwines her own tongue around it, dancing, their rhythms falling into synchronicity.

Severus pushes Charity's robes down, further down, until they fall in a pool at her feet, and she feels the warmth of the enchanted circle bathing her skin. He cups her against his body. His cock pushes against her thigh, hard as stone, and she reaches down to touch it through the cloth of his robes. He makes an inarticulate noise against her lips, then before she knows how they got there, they're lying in the grass, and surely no grass was ever this soft, especially not in the depth of winter.

He kneels between her thighs, bending down to worship at her altar. His tongue is just as skilled here, and as he pleasures her clit with a steady motion, his fingers slide inside her, roughly, perfectly, and Charity moans as she moves her hips to draw him deeper. The sensation rises like a wave, inexorable, and she throws her head back, gasping. The moon rides high overhead, amid her court of stars, and the branches reach for her in supplication, and as Charity tumbles over the edge, she feels as if she's falling upward, into the twinkling sky.

Severus groans, and strips his own robes away, sliding inside Charity with one hard thrust. She clutches him close, scenting her own musk on his lips, relishing the way he pounds into her. He whispers against her ear, words she can't quite catch, but it's the sensation of his breath against her skin that she loves. That, and the way his entire face--ordinarily tight with tension--relaxes as he comes.

Afterward, Charity sleeps, and dreams.

***

She is here, in this clearing, but it's different somehow; the trees are not the trees that watched over her and Severus, and the stones stand out clearly from the forest around them. The moon is wrong, too, a waning crescent.

A pale shape flickers in and out of the trees, and as it comes closer, Charity can see the figure is a woman, tall and beautiful, her long skirts blowing around her in a merciless wind. Into the circle she comes, and Charity calls out a greeting, but the woman doesn't hear her.

A man follows, pursuing the woman. The woman laughs, darting among the stones and trees to elude him. The man isn't laughing. There's something about his eyes that Charity doesn't like, some excess of intensity; his stare is both unnerving and familiar.

He catches her in the center of the ring, embracing her from behind. Her laugh bubbles like fine champagne. He mutters something into her ear, and his hands roam up and down her body through the fabric of her gown.

The world shifts, then, and the stones are gone. Another wood, another configuration of trees, these bearing the leaves of another season. The man with the burning eyes holds the woman still, in the same way, but her gasp doesn't sound like one of mirth this time, and his whisper has a harsh sibilance.

Before Charity can cry "No," the man draws a dagger and thrusts it into the woman's chest. Her breath bubbles; he weeps against her neck as she collapses against him.

***

Charity wakes to the sun filtering down through the canopy of trees. Severus is gone, but the charm has held; the cold has not broken through the circle. She is still nude. A black cloak is tucked tightly around her.

She closes the circle with her knife, and returns to the castle in last night's robes and Severus' cloak. The dream lingers in her mind, making her feel uneasy, but she tells herself it's nothing a good breakfast can't fix.

Later, she visits Severus' office. He glances up as she closes the door behind her, but doesn't hold her gaze.

"I think we should talk," she says. "About our relationship," and oh, Merlin, that came out all wrong. She hadn't meant to imply that they had one; she'd come here to tell him she didn't mind if they didn't have one, but…

"Our relationship, Miss Burbage, exists between the worlds." His tone leaves no doubt: in this world, it does not.

She leaves, knowing she will see him again in the circle when Imbolc comes.

***

The blood rushes to Charity's head, and she fights to stay conscious. "Please," she says again. Severus does not look at her, but she knows that means little. Never has she known anyone who played his cards so close to his vest.

She knows he must be playing some deep game; they say he killed Dumbledore, but there must be more to the story. He cannot be a Dark wizard. Charity has seen his Patronus for herself.

A push, rather like a knock, at her mind. She lets him in.

I'm sorry, he says, then an image of a time gone by. A woman, broken and in rags, crouches in a filthy cell. A man kneels to touch her face, and to press a packet into her hand. The woman can smell the herbs even above the prison's stench; she understands that she is being offered release in the only way the man can give it.

Inexplicably, she thinks of the strange man and woman in the clearing as green light fills the room.

***

Severus swallows hard. He prays that his high standing with Voldemort will earn him forgiveness for this lapse. A foolish thing to do, really, when so much is at stake. Yet he could not do otherwise.

"I beg pardon, my Lord," he says. "Her presence here caused me to lose my temper, and I acted rashly."

The Dark Lord smiles. "Lord Voldemort is merciful," he says. "The woman was nothing. However, you will ask first in future, will you not?"

"Of course, my Lord." Severus looks down for a moment and sees Nagini begin to feast. He looks away. He tells himself that Charity's body is but a shell, of no more meaning than a shed snakeskin, and that indignities visited upon her lifeless flesh cannot hurt her.

Merry part, kind lady.