sam_storyteller (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-15 09:55 am
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-15 09:55 am
Entry tags:
The Founders Trilogy; NC-17, Salazar/OFC/Godric
Summary: Salazar is playing a dangerous game with Godric, and he's not playing it alone.
Warnings: None.
Also available at AO3.
I. Snake Charmer
Salazar's body was slim and sinuous, skin smooth over hard muscle; it attracted attention from students and teachers alike. Salazar was an outdoors sort of person, and went barefoot and bare-chested in the summer months, a pair of hardwearing if somewhat elderly leather britches his only protection from the elements. Snakes didn't thrive in captivity, he said; they needed to find their own food and shelter, be wet when they wanted to be wet and dry when they wanted to be dry. And as Salazar's passion was snakes -- snakes and Dark Arts -- he was required to spend more time outside than in.
He had plenty of scars, and was completely unselfconscious of them, though neither would he explain to curious students how he'd acquired them. Some were obviously animal bites, others seemed like whip scars. Some defied explanation.
Godric considered this as he watched Salazar run across the green lawn that rolled gently into small hills at the west gate of the castle. He was taunting two students, aged fourteen and sixteen respectively, agile as he dodged the hexes thrown at him. They were playing Kill the King, a game Godric suffered terribly in, which was why he never played.
Salazar had the inflated pig's bladder which served as the Orb; therefore he was king. The rest of the students quite simply had to incapacitate him for long enough to take away the pig's bladder. Whoever had the bladder when the charm on it caused it to burst was the winner.
Salazar wasn't even half-trying. He didn't even have his wand out to protect himself with.
Salazar always won Kill the King.
Godric watched Salazar duck into a roll, body curving to protect the Orb, and rise out of it already running. Some of the younger students, seated near Godric on the sun-warmed stone steps of the West entrance, gasped and cheered.
Salazar threw the Orb to his younger pursuer, suddenly, and the boy caught it; the older girl, not more than arm's reach away, turned instantly and hexed the boy with a petrification spell, catching the Orb. Salazar's hex hit her just as her hand touched it, and she tumbled to the ground, her fingers turning into slugs. He walked over, plucked it out of her writhing fingers, and tossed it up in the air. It burst mid-arc.
Salazar turned to the children and Godric, grinning.
"What did we learn?" he asked, as he unhexed his opponents. One of the youngest girls eagerly raised her hand, and he pointed at her.
"Slugs are slippery, Master Slytherin?" she ventured. Salazar shook his head.
"Interesting, but of no use in grander applications."
There was a soft murmuring, and then a slightly older boy raised his hand.
"Don't get close enough for someone to be able to reach the orb while they hex you, Master Slytherin."
"Close."
A dark-haired girl with a sullen face and wide black eyes slipped her fingers out saucily. Salazar grinned.
"Yes?"
"Your enemies are each other's rivals. Use them against each other," she said throatily. Salazar pointed at her.
"Never forget that," he replied. Then he glanced sidelong at Godric, and his smile widened. "Don't you agree, Master Gryffindor?"
"It is easier to make enemies than friends, Master Slytherin, but far less rewarding," Godric replied.
"And always easiest to answer a moral question with a homily," Salazar said with a smile. "Acha, your people -- the Greeks -- perfected the art of elegant warfare, which the Romans then learned from them and in turn passed on to my people, the Picts and Celts and others who lived in this place, when they invaded. So your ancestors, in a way, educated mine; and now I educate you." he brought his hands together, forming a sphere with them, removing the hand on top to reveal a shining silver star of light in his palm. "A lovely symmetry."
"The Romans are your people also, Salazar," Godric reminded him, watching the way Acha stared at the small ball of spiked light. Vague worry prickled the back of his mind. Salazar brought his hand back down over the light, obliterating it.
"Rapists and plunderers, like the Muggles that hang our people and are hunting the werewolves to extinction in my native fens," Salazar replied. "Our tribes were strong before the Romans came -- we married one another and fathered children powerful in the magical tradition. The stupid Muggle Romans with their gods and priests, watering down the blood -- "
"Salazar!" Godric snapped. There were children of Roman descent in the crowd seated on the steps, and they were uniformly hanging their heads. "You are no less of Roman descent than any of us."
Salazar smiled. "And imagine what I could do if I weren't," he said lazily. Godric began gathering the younger children, ushering them inside for the evening meal, but he noticed as he did so that Salazar stayed still, looking out over the grass, and so did Acha, the sullen-faced girl -- only she was looking at Salazar.
And neither of them came in to dinner.
It was not unusual for Salazar to miss dinner, staying out later and later as the days grew longer. He would wander through the forest, speaking to the snakes, climbing trees, getting up to mischief of one sort or another. He said it didn't do to be always in the castle, a presence the students could not forget. Sometimes the students followed Salazar out into the forest -- Godric didn't understand the pull Salazar had, but obviously he did. Even the children who were ashamed when he spoke of Roman blood, they looked up to him and wanted to be like to him -- perhaps especially those children.
But then Salazar was young, barely more than a student himself sometimes, and perhaps he understood them better.
Godric strolled back out-of-doors after dinner in the late evening light; this far north sometimes it didn't go down until ten or eleven o'clock by the great gear-and-pendulum castle clock. He expected that Salazar would be seated on some stone somewhere, giving a private lesson to Acha as he often did to the more advanced students. He used the special-bestowed lessons as a reward for cleverness, and thus his students were often very clever.
Instead, however, Godric found the grounds empty. Either Acha had followed Salazar into the forest, or...
He heard hissing at the forest's edge, Salazar's voice speaking Parseltongue, and moved quietly through the higher grass, grateful for the summer heat and humidity that dampened the forest cover and made his footsteps soft as a lion's.
The hissing ended and there was a soft, muscular noise, like skin sliding on skin. Godric followed it, working his way up a tree that bent at a low angle to the earth, when the ground began to fall away into a gully. The air was cooler, here, but not by much. He flattened himself along a stout branch, wincing as it creaked, and scanned the forest floor --
There.
Salazar's brown back and its scars, blending into the leafmould and dappling sunset light. His body moved and bent, the bumps of his spine throwing small hollow shadows over his skin.
Godric watched in fascination as two forms became distinct from the soft forest groundcover; Acha's brown hair spread against it, her slim throat standing out now that Salazar's head had moved to her shoulder, now that his brown body was only partially covering her paler one.
He caught his breath, stunned, as Salazar bowed his head over Acha's breast and slipped his thin pink tongue over it, watched her fingers twine and clench in his sun-bleached hair. Her eyes were closed; Salazar hissed again and Godric realised there was a snake twining up Salazar's bare ankle -- and that was all he wore. Another snake skimmed across Acha's skin, circling her other breast, small head rubbing into the hollow of her throat.
He realised suddenly that his own hips were moving, that one hand was rubbing the skin of his own throat even as Salazar's hands were reaching down to remove the rest of Acha's clothing and cast it aside. He recognised some sort of magic thick in the air, not just the charm that was forcing him silent when he should be crying out against a Master and a student making love in the forest -- although Acha didn't seem to mind -- but also a darker magic, drawn by the pair of them coupling below him, a spell that Salazar was weaving in language older than the bastard Saxony they spoke --
He fought to silence the growl in his throat when Salazar slipped inside her and her thighs slid up over his hips, though one of Godric's hands, obedient to the charm, released his throat and ran lower, over the bulge in his breeches that made his face flame red with shame. Inside, between leather and skin, undoing the laces as best he could and pressing his forehead to the cool tree branch as Salazar bucked and groaned against the girl -- and she was making the most obscene purring noises he'd ever heard from Acha.
Then her breath caught suddenly and the purr turned to a high whine, and Salazar went silent and Godric came with a muffled groan, watching the muscles in Salazar's back clench in his own climax, all three perfectly timed.
Salazar's breath hissed in the evening air.
"Did you feel that?" he asked the girl, who swallowed and nodded and pulled him down for a kiss that twined their tongues together, while Godric slid slowly down the tree, muscles protesting at this activity so soon after climax.
He could feel the charm waning as he walked away, and yet he didn't return; nor did he wait at the forest edge for them to come walking out, shamefacedly adjusting their clothes (or, more likely, Acha would come out and go to her dormitory and Salazar would remain until dark fell).
Instead he went into the castle, and went to his room, and took down a wineskin of mead and prepared to get very drunk.
And perhaps recall the forest evening in his mind once more...
***
II. Lion Tamer
The sun had just dropped behind the horizon when Salazar, in his soft leather britches, barefoot, with a harmless snake slipping around his neck and up over one ear, trotted up the steps of the South entrance. He liked the feel of cold stone under his feet, as much as he liked dirt and grass and forest-floor with its light smell of decay. He felt as though when he stripped off the shirt and robe and boots and what-all that the Masters wore to classes, it was like shedding a skin, like rebirth. He enjoyed running across the fields and playing games with the children, wearing not much more than he was born with -- just enough to preserve his dignity and not offend Helga.
After they'd made love, Acha had dressed and gone off; the charms they'd been working required no formal closing. He had watched her, the bend of her spine as she fetched up her clothes, the twists of her body as she put them on. The swing of a heavy breast, still young enough to be firm under his fingers, the toss of long black hair.
It wasn't that he didn't find her worth the rutting, by any means. He liked Acha. She was clever and quick and ambitious, nearly three-quarters fullblooded Hellene, more pureblood Greek than he was pureblood Pictish. He was glad to teach her, especially this, but he knew it was going to cause trouble, and he should have known Godric would come looking for him. A part of him probably had known, which was why he'd cast the heavy charm that would prevent any unwanted audiences from interrupting.
Godric had enjoyed it, he was sure.
Still, and he sighed at this, Godric got sensitive about these things -- sleeping with the students and all. It probably wasn't even that, come to think of it, as Godric never got in the way of a Master or Mistress if their actions were, in the end, educational (and non-lethal). It was the fact that Godric would undoubtedly know the sex in the forest had been for the purpose of Dark Arts.
It was a good charm. It bound the girl's energy to his, united the two of them so that either could draw on the other. It had led to the downfall of countless wizards, who invariably fought over who ought to have use of the power. The trick was, of course, in the balance. Acha was clever, but not as clever as Salazar, nor as strong. He could give her power if she needed it, and he could draw from her, but they would never fight, because if they did she would lose almost immediately.
Someday he'd promised she could have one of her own that would be to her as she was to him. Acha, he suspected, would take without asking, but there was nothing to be done about that.
He had better talk to Godric, if only to see the look on the man's face. After all, Godric was a part of the equation now; he'd felt Godric's arousal and orgasm intruding on his own and Acha's just as clearly as he'd seen the lionlike man up a tree watching them.
Probably seeing Acha had been too much for the man. Godric kept less company than some hermits he'd known.
He knocked on the heavy oak door that led to Godric's quarters, and was rewarded by the thud of boots.
"Aye?" Godric called through the door.
"It's Salazar," he replied. "I'd like a word."
"I'm busy, Salazar," Godric said. Salazar could hear the slur in his voice.
"About the forest," he added quietly.
The door swung open.
Godric's jerkin was off and the torc around his neck, the one Salazar had only seen twice before, was settled just above his knotted shoulders. He still wore breeches and boots, and strips of cloth were wound around his left hand. In his right he held a wineskin.
He stepped back. Salazar glided inside, smoothly, feeling as always that he was somewhat dwarfed by Godric, though it wasn't truthfully the case. It was just that Godric was broad and muscular and somewhat clumsy most of the time, while he was thin and quick and neat.
Godric poured half of what remained in the skin into a goblet, then filled another one with the rest. He held one out to Salazar, who took it and sat on the rude bench that served as most of Godric's furniture. He drew one leg up against his chest, heel hooking on the edge. Godric leaned on the window-sill.
"Well?" Godric said finally. Salazar sipped the mead.
"You disapprove," he said.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Acha and I. In the forest. Dark workings. Sex," Salazar said, rolling the last word off his tongue languorously, so that it almost became Parseltongue. "I saw you. Clawing at your tree like a rutting lion."
"You didn't come in to dinner," Godric rumbled, draining his cup. Salazar watched him sway slightly before he regained his balance.
"Of course not. I was seducing Acha in the forest."
"She's a student!"
Salazar shrugged. "I was teaching her."
"We don't need any bastards of yours running around," Godric growled.
"And none will you have, rest assured," Salazar answered. "I was showing her a charm that required coupling. It's easier in the forest."
"Dark workings," Godric muttered. "S'wrong, is what it is, Salazar."
"You've never stopped me before. And don't think I'm not grateful, Godric, as I know you don't approve. But really, I can handle it. So can Acha. She's a grown woman."
"She's still a student. Her mother entrusted me personally with her care."
"Jealous, are we?" Salazar drawled. Godric coloured. "Fancy Acha for yourself?"
"Of course not."
Salazar cocked his head to one side. "Then why, my dear Godric Gryffindor, did you go get drunk? Anyone who wasn't caught up in the throes of some desire would have waited at the forest's edge for me, punched me in the head, and thrown me off the grounds."
"I'm not drunk."
"Not happily drunk, at any rate." Salazar pushed himself off the bench, and began to pace the floor, slowly. "Know thyself, Godric. Before you can know the children you must know who you are. I've told you before you should come to my fens. We've no beer there, but you can be just as drunk on desolation. There's a reason men go to the wilderness to find gods."
"I'm not drunk," Godric insisted, swaying forward. Salazar placed a hand on his chest, holding him upright, elbow crooked so that they were face to face, only Salazar's hand and a few inches of space between them.
"You are drunk," Salazar said. "Is it Acha? If I'd known I'd have let you have her, Godric, she means nothing to me."
Godric's eyes hardened. "I'm not drunk and I'm not jealous," he declared.
Salazar gave it a moment's quick thought. The snake that had been curling up into his hair dropped down to his neck, forming a strange, sinuous imitation of Godric's torc.
"You've never chased any skirt, student or otherwise," he mused. "Now why should that be, Godr -- "
Godric kissed him before he could say his name, as though it was a desperate gambit to stop an invocation. Salazar, able to see the situation somewhat more objectively, leaned into the kiss and at the same time shifted his weight, sliding the hand on Godric's chest around his ribcage and down, supporting the small of his back.
"Not jealous of me," Salazar murmured, against Godric's lips. "I see. Jealous of Acha....aaah..."
Godric had deepened the kiss, and was lifting his own slightly-trembling hands to Salazar's hair, pinning his head in place, pouncing like a cat on prey. Salazar consciously relaxed his shoulders, allowing Godric to pull him close. After all, it wouldn't be the first man he'd had, or the first time he'd thought that it might be intriguing to meet an equal on the sexual gaming field...
Kill the King indeed, he thought, with a laugh.
He pulled Godric backwards onto the bed, sliding underneath the heavier man easily, drawing one leg up to keep Godric from tumbling off. He really was remarkably drunk, but Salazar could still feel Godric's erection against his thigh, pressing against his britches.
Godric pushed himself up and spread clumsy hands across his chest, tracing the dips and ridges of a hundred scars, the evidence of battles and tangles with wild creatures and workings darker than poor, golden Godric could ever imagine.
"Fight back," Godric whispered, and Salazar frowned. "Why don't you fight back?"
"Do you...want me to?" Salazar asked, confused suddenly. He slid his hands down Godric's arms, feeling the shape of the muscles there. He couldn't fight back with his hands if he wanted to; he was a runner, not a boxer.
Godric's eyes were a peculiar shade of brown that sometimes reflected almost coppery, and his gaze now could have scorched a lesser being, but Salazar knew him too well. He ought to have noticed if Godric liked his lovers to fight, but then he'd never noticed Godric wanting anyone to do anything to him --
"Aren't you going to struggle?" Godric slurred. Salazar smiled. Poor, moral Godric.
"No," he said, and bucked his hips, and Godric collapsed on top of him, tongue exploring his mouth, eyes closed, hands roaming everywhere, struggling out of his clothing and helping Salazar writhe out of his own. The sudden friction of hard muscle and flat chest where hours before there had been soft, round breasts and smooth belly -- Salazar tasted each contrast in his mind, delighting in the deep sound of Godric's moans, the sword-callouses on his hands. They were rough and textured and when Godric stroked him there they made Salazar want to purr...
Or hiss.
He felt Godric thrust against him and stiffen as he stumbled his way from pleading moans Godric Godric there faster please into Parseltongue, a better language for begging in hsssk, thksss khaaaasss....
Godric opened his eyes and his warm copper gaze met Salazar's as Salazar jerked one last time against him and came, breath hissing, fingers clenching against the broad firm skin of Godric's back.
They lay there, in a breathless heap, touching and shifting, until Salazar turned his head to the side and laughed.
"She means nothing to me," he repeated. "Acha. It was just a spell. You, Godric, you are my friend...you mean something..."
He let his hand drift down over Godric's shoulders, pushing him a little so that Godric opened his eyes and looked sideways at him.
"Think of the power we could have, together," Salazar said, lazily.
"I am," Godric rumbled. "It terrifies me."
Salazar looked up at the ceiling again, feeling Godric relax that final degree, into sleep. When he was sure the other man was unconscious, he smiled.
"That can be fixed," he said softly.
***
III. Milk
Acha knew, in an idle sort of way, that Master Slytherin did not wholly approve of her.
He liked her well enough, thought her clever and pretty, taught her things that he didn't teach the other students, but she knew he saw the ambitious streak in her that drove her, and perhaps found it too like his own to make him entirely comfortable with her.
It wasn't as though he'd seduced her. He'd simply said, catching her in a private moment between the dinner hour and the girls' dormitory doors closing for the night, that he would like to teach her some advanced workings. They would involve things she'd really only known from books and those were not books that had been supplied to her by her parents, that was certain. He'd apparently found her idle notes in the margins of some of the volumes on the high shelves in the burgeoning magical library of the little school.
But it was only sex magic; she had no illusions that it was love or anything like love. So she was surprised when he asked her to come to his rooms after dinner, especially as he knew the rules as well as she did and any girl not in the dormitories by an hour past mealtime would be --
He stopped her speech with a finger on the lips.
"I've arranged it with Helga and Rowena," he said, normally lazy green eyes far more intense than usual, the single scar on his face darkening across the bridge of his nose as his skin flushed a little. Contact between them now, ever since the night in the forest, seemed to make her blood quicken. She could only assume it did the same for him.
She could tell where he was, now, except when he didn't want her to; she could feel his eyes across the room during lessons, across the corridor, across the dining hall and sometimes through walls. She pictured him stopping in a hallway, wearing all the silly accoutrement of a Master at the school, head suddenly turned to find her through the wall, nostrils flaring, fingertips curled. It was not a love-bond but a power-bond, and she knew he had all the power. Still, sometimes she wondered if her mere presence didn't distract him, and that was why she so often, in the past two weeks since they'd gone into the forest, had felt him watching her.
In the evenings sometimes she wished he'd come and fetch her and they could spend another few hours in the forest, because Master Slytherin was handsome in his own way and much more skilled than the fumbling farmhands she'd encountered before coming here to Hogwarts. Now he had, and she wasn't sure what she would do.
"Are you going to give me lessons, Master Slytherin?" she asked. He smiled.
"Not of the sort you're accustomed to, Acha," he answered. He wasn't dressed in his teaching robes, or even in much of anything; just the leather britches he always wore. A thin black snake twined itself around his waist, slithering up his chest. He closed the door behind her and pulled the snake gently from his skin, laying it on a windowsill and hissing quietly to it in Parseltongue. She noticed the rooms were dark; he'd drawn fabric across the windows, and only two candles burned.
Most of the students were afraid to go into Master Slytherin's rooms, because he was Master Slytherin and because he kept snakes; she was not one of them. It took a special sort of fearlessness to work with the Dark Arts, Master Slytherin had told them once. Acha decided she, like her warlike ancestresses, would be fearless, and she had been rewarded. So she did not fear his rooms now, even in the dark, with the smell of Myrrh burning bitterly in a brazier on his hearth.
"What is required of me, Master Slytherin?" she asked. He smiled at the formality in her tone.
"Concealment, for the moment," he said, and guided her backwards, gently, into the deep shadows and the hazy smoke from the incense. All the way until her back touched stone that was oddly warm. "You'll know what to do, when it's time."
His hands undid her clothing, pushing most of it away, leaving only what would preserve her dignity if she were allowed back in the candlelight.
He kissed her lightly on the lips, and stepped backwards until he was visible by the candlelight again. He poured a goblet of milk -- fresh milk, she remembered, could tempt both snakes and cats -- and sipped it, resting in one of the cushioned chairs close to the door...
...and to the bed, she noticed, narrowing her eyes while they adjusted to the darkness.
To keep herself busy she counted her heartbeats, and then when that grew tiresome she counted the beat of Master Slytherin's pulse against a jagged scar in his neck that made it uniquely visible. She couldn't feel the whisper of his presence looking in on her; in fact, if she'd been elsewhere, his defences were up so fully that she wouldn't have been able to find him at all.
There was a knock on the door, and Master Slytherin flicked his fingers. The latch slid open.
Master Gryffindor entered, barefoot like Master Slytherin, and wearing not much more; just a tunic and britches. She tried not to make a noise but her breath caught. Master Slytherin didn't even flick a glance in her direction, but stood.
"Salazar," Master Gryffindor said, almost hoarsely. Master Slytherin offered him the goblet, and he sipped the last of the milk, setting it on a side-table when he was finished.
"Godric," Master Slytherin answered, moving closer, until they were nearly touching.
She felt her fingertips touch her lips as they kissed, Master Salazar reaching up to knot his fingers in Master Gryffindor's hair, bodies turning slightly so that all she could see was the broad, tunic-clad back, the tilt of dark-rooted, sunbleached hair on the other side of pale gold.
There were soft murmurs of appreciation, rougher noises of fabric shifting, and she could see Master Slytherin's fingertips smoothing the folds of the tunic. Master Gryffindor bent his head further, and she met Master Slytherin's eyes.
He smiled, then lifted his chin and gasped a little, fingers flexing on Master Gryffindor's shoulders as the bright-haired man's lips did something to his neck. When he lowered his head again, his eyes were heavy with the sort of lust she hadn't even seen when they'd worked their charms in the forest.
His hand barely left Master Gryffindor's shoulders as he beckoned her forward.
She felt her feet move almost of their own volition, body swaying unsteadily, as she moved into the candle's less chilling gloom, her hand rising to touch the one that had beckoned her, body fitting to the unfamiliar, broad shape of Master Gryffindor's back.
"What are you doing, Salazar?" Master Gryffindor asked, in a low rumble. She saw Master Slytherin smile.
"Acha needs training," he murmured. "You wouldn't want her running about practicing Dark Arts without any experience, would you?"
Acha rested her cheek on Master Gryffindor's shoulder, and Master Slytherin stroked her face, his body still pressed against the other man's.
"You act as though I could train her," Master Gryffindor said stiffly, but she could feel the muscles of his back relaxing, and she kissed the dip between shoulder and neck.
"You can help me train her," Master Slytherin replied. "She's already seen this much. I said we could do great things together, Godric. Real power. Acha could be our crowning glory."
"Your crowning glory."
Master Slytherin's fingers moved from her face to Master Gryffindor's. "My glory is your glory, Godric, you know that."
His other hand had snaked around Master Gryffindor's hip and was pulling her fingers over his flat, muscular belly, under the tunic, against warm skin. Master Gryffindor gasped.
"She's young and beautiful into the bargain."
"You're a fool -- "
"I'm a teacher." Master Slytherin raised his lips to Master Gryffindor's ear, and as she watched, he whispered, "Teach her."
Master Gryffindor moaned as Master Slytherin stepped back, away from them, and threw himself down into the chair again, long limbs sprawling. She felt the man -- the teacher! -- tremble, with her arms around his body, and she pulled a little, turning him.
They tumbled back onto Master Slytherin's bed together, Master Gryffindor steadying her underneath him, large hands already removing her clothing, but suddenly she felt Master Slytherin's eyes on her, and raised her head.
He was watching them, eyes hooded, the mark of Master Gryffindor's teeth still standing out in red on his neck. He gave her a small smile as Master Gryffindor removed the last of her clothing and most of his own into the process, with a skill that surprised her and, to judge by Master Slytherin's look, him too.
"Him, Acha," said Master Slytherin quietly, and she turned back to the man moving against her, the man who was kissing her neck, her breasts and shoulders, with a ferocity she'd never found in the predatory, deliberate man watching them.
She raised her arms to lock them around his neck, guided by deft touches almost unfelt, in her mind -- little hints Master Slytherin was passing along to her through the bond they'd formed in the forest, a bond that was only exchange of power, not thoughts, but even the slightest variation...
When she kissed his face, she felt power withdrawn, and when she moved lower felt it returned. Punishment and reward. Very well.
She was smaller than Master Gryffindor but he was easily swayed, and they rolled until she straddled his thighs, sitting up to look down at him. She could feel Master Slytherin examining her body in the candlelight.
A little pressure from him, a little movement from her, and this she remembered, even though it felt as if she was nothing more than a barrier between the two men -- some sort of strange conduit for their lovemaking. When she arched her back and Master Gryffindor pulled her hips forward and thrust up, it was Master Slytherin who cried out, Master Slytherin who, she saw, was not even moving -- was sitting perfectly still in the chair, head tilted back, eyes glassy, fingers clenched on the arms. She saw the muscles of his belly twitch when Master Gryffindor moved inside her again, felt the pressure and fell forward, her body now wrestling against Master Gryffindor.
And then the surge of power as reward was unmistakable, Master Gryffindor's own grip on her undeniable, the pressure of his body and Master Slytherin's mind too much for her, too much pleasure, Master Slytherin's lessons in the forest magnified a thousandfold --
***
Salazar couldn't breathe. Could not breathe.
He finally managed a choking, heaving breath, and opened his eyes. He had never taken them from the bed, where Godric now lay, arms spread slightly, Acha fairly clearly unconscious on his chest.
"What did I tell you?" he asked, feeling slightly drunk. Godric's eyes, threatening to roll up into his head, focused a little.
"What did you do, Salazar?" he said hoarsely.
"Lessons," Salazar replied. "She felt herself, and myself, and quite possibly..." he stretched his arms, aware that he'd never even taken his britches off, never moved, and this was something to try again some other time. "...quite possibly..."
"You...demon..." Godric said suddenly, pushing himself to his elbows. Acha protested softly, and he caught her with one arm before she could fall. "The working you and she did -- you -- "
Salazar rolled his shoulders and took a deep breath. The air shuddered out of Godric's lungs.
"Linked us?" he asked. He exhaled, and Godric inhaled. "Yes. Oh I should say so, yes."
"Do you know how many men this has destroyed, this link?" Godric demanded, but his words were slurring a little, like Salazar's. The power went both ways, after all.
"But it won't destroy us. I've done it before," Salazar assured him. "Think what we can do, the two of us, our talents combined -- why, between us if you add it up and divide it out, we make one pure Pictish wizard."
"And one pure Roman," Godric growled. "Will you cast off that? You'll cast one of us off with it, and I don't doubt -- "
Salazar hissed, suddenly, and Godric paused.
"I would never cast you out," he said, voice thin and low and sharp, like the metal edge on a blade. "Don't you think we mean more to each other?"
"You used the girl."
"She meant nothing, I told you."
"And when do I begin to mean nothing, Salazar? When you have no more need for me?" Godric asked. "Break the spell."
"Kill the girl. She's the locus."
Godric stared at the woman sharing his bed -- Salazar's bed.
Salazar reached for his wand and spun it through his fingers, pointing it at the pair of them. "Somnus," he murmured, and Godric's faint protests died on his lips as he slipped into sleep.
Salazar remained awake the long night, thinking.
Nothing, he decided, around dawn. Nothing will separate us. We're bonded now, one to the other. Even if he did kill Acha, which he won't, it doesn't matter.
Nothing will separate us.
END
Warnings: None.
Also available at AO3.
I. Snake Charmer
Salazar's body was slim and sinuous, skin smooth over hard muscle; it attracted attention from students and teachers alike. Salazar was an outdoors sort of person, and went barefoot and bare-chested in the summer months, a pair of hardwearing if somewhat elderly leather britches his only protection from the elements. Snakes didn't thrive in captivity, he said; they needed to find their own food and shelter, be wet when they wanted to be wet and dry when they wanted to be dry. And as Salazar's passion was snakes -- snakes and Dark Arts -- he was required to spend more time outside than in.
He had plenty of scars, and was completely unselfconscious of them, though neither would he explain to curious students how he'd acquired them. Some were obviously animal bites, others seemed like whip scars. Some defied explanation.
Godric considered this as he watched Salazar run across the green lawn that rolled gently into small hills at the west gate of the castle. He was taunting two students, aged fourteen and sixteen respectively, agile as he dodged the hexes thrown at him. They were playing Kill the King, a game Godric suffered terribly in, which was why he never played.
Salazar had the inflated pig's bladder which served as the Orb; therefore he was king. The rest of the students quite simply had to incapacitate him for long enough to take away the pig's bladder. Whoever had the bladder when the charm on it caused it to burst was the winner.
Salazar wasn't even half-trying. He didn't even have his wand out to protect himself with.
Salazar always won Kill the King.
Godric watched Salazar duck into a roll, body curving to protect the Orb, and rise out of it already running. Some of the younger students, seated near Godric on the sun-warmed stone steps of the West entrance, gasped and cheered.
Salazar threw the Orb to his younger pursuer, suddenly, and the boy caught it; the older girl, not more than arm's reach away, turned instantly and hexed the boy with a petrification spell, catching the Orb. Salazar's hex hit her just as her hand touched it, and she tumbled to the ground, her fingers turning into slugs. He walked over, plucked it out of her writhing fingers, and tossed it up in the air. It burst mid-arc.
Salazar turned to the children and Godric, grinning.
"What did we learn?" he asked, as he unhexed his opponents. One of the youngest girls eagerly raised her hand, and he pointed at her.
"Slugs are slippery, Master Slytherin?" she ventured. Salazar shook his head.
"Interesting, but of no use in grander applications."
There was a soft murmuring, and then a slightly older boy raised his hand.
"Don't get close enough for someone to be able to reach the orb while they hex you, Master Slytherin."
"Close."
A dark-haired girl with a sullen face and wide black eyes slipped her fingers out saucily. Salazar grinned.
"Yes?"
"Your enemies are each other's rivals. Use them against each other," she said throatily. Salazar pointed at her.
"Never forget that," he replied. Then he glanced sidelong at Godric, and his smile widened. "Don't you agree, Master Gryffindor?"
"It is easier to make enemies than friends, Master Slytherin, but far less rewarding," Godric replied.
"And always easiest to answer a moral question with a homily," Salazar said with a smile. "Acha, your people -- the Greeks -- perfected the art of elegant warfare, which the Romans then learned from them and in turn passed on to my people, the Picts and Celts and others who lived in this place, when they invaded. So your ancestors, in a way, educated mine; and now I educate you." he brought his hands together, forming a sphere with them, removing the hand on top to reveal a shining silver star of light in his palm. "A lovely symmetry."
"The Romans are your people also, Salazar," Godric reminded him, watching the way Acha stared at the small ball of spiked light. Vague worry prickled the back of his mind. Salazar brought his hand back down over the light, obliterating it.
"Rapists and plunderers, like the Muggles that hang our people and are hunting the werewolves to extinction in my native fens," Salazar replied. "Our tribes were strong before the Romans came -- we married one another and fathered children powerful in the magical tradition. The stupid Muggle Romans with their gods and priests, watering down the blood -- "
"Salazar!" Godric snapped. There were children of Roman descent in the crowd seated on the steps, and they were uniformly hanging their heads. "You are no less of Roman descent than any of us."
Salazar smiled. "And imagine what I could do if I weren't," he said lazily. Godric began gathering the younger children, ushering them inside for the evening meal, but he noticed as he did so that Salazar stayed still, looking out over the grass, and so did Acha, the sullen-faced girl -- only she was looking at Salazar.
And neither of them came in to dinner.
It was not unusual for Salazar to miss dinner, staying out later and later as the days grew longer. He would wander through the forest, speaking to the snakes, climbing trees, getting up to mischief of one sort or another. He said it didn't do to be always in the castle, a presence the students could not forget. Sometimes the students followed Salazar out into the forest -- Godric didn't understand the pull Salazar had, but obviously he did. Even the children who were ashamed when he spoke of Roman blood, they looked up to him and wanted to be like to him -- perhaps especially those children.
But then Salazar was young, barely more than a student himself sometimes, and perhaps he understood them better.
Godric strolled back out-of-doors after dinner in the late evening light; this far north sometimes it didn't go down until ten or eleven o'clock by the great gear-and-pendulum castle clock. He expected that Salazar would be seated on some stone somewhere, giving a private lesson to Acha as he often did to the more advanced students. He used the special-bestowed lessons as a reward for cleverness, and thus his students were often very clever.
Instead, however, Godric found the grounds empty. Either Acha had followed Salazar into the forest, or...
He heard hissing at the forest's edge, Salazar's voice speaking Parseltongue, and moved quietly through the higher grass, grateful for the summer heat and humidity that dampened the forest cover and made his footsteps soft as a lion's.
The hissing ended and there was a soft, muscular noise, like skin sliding on skin. Godric followed it, working his way up a tree that bent at a low angle to the earth, when the ground began to fall away into a gully. The air was cooler, here, but not by much. He flattened himself along a stout branch, wincing as it creaked, and scanned the forest floor --
There.
Salazar's brown back and its scars, blending into the leafmould and dappling sunset light. His body moved and bent, the bumps of his spine throwing small hollow shadows over his skin.
Godric watched in fascination as two forms became distinct from the soft forest groundcover; Acha's brown hair spread against it, her slim throat standing out now that Salazar's head had moved to her shoulder, now that his brown body was only partially covering her paler one.
He caught his breath, stunned, as Salazar bowed his head over Acha's breast and slipped his thin pink tongue over it, watched her fingers twine and clench in his sun-bleached hair. Her eyes were closed; Salazar hissed again and Godric realised there was a snake twining up Salazar's bare ankle -- and that was all he wore. Another snake skimmed across Acha's skin, circling her other breast, small head rubbing into the hollow of her throat.
He realised suddenly that his own hips were moving, that one hand was rubbing the skin of his own throat even as Salazar's hands were reaching down to remove the rest of Acha's clothing and cast it aside. He recognised some sort of magic thick in the air, not just the charm that was forcing him silent when he should be crying out against a Master and a student making love in the forest -- although Acha didn't seem to mind -- but also a darker magic, drawn by the pair of them coupling below him, a spell that Salazar was weaving in language older than the bastard Saxony they spoke --
He fought to silence the growl in his throat when Salazar slipped inside her and her thighs slid up over his hips, though one of Godric's hands, obedient to the charm, released his throat and ran lower, over the bulge in his breeches that made his face flame red with shame. Inside, between leather and skin, undoing the laces as best he could and pressing his forehead to the cool tree branch as Salazar bucked and groaned against the girl -- and she was making the most obscene purring noises he'd ever heard from Acha.
Then her breath caught suddenly and the purr turned to a high whine, and Salazar went silent and Godric came with a muffled groan, watching the muscles in Salazar's back clench in his own climax, all three perfectly timed.
Salazar's breath hissed in the evening air.
"Did you feel that?" he asked the girl, who swallowed and nodded and pulled him down for a kiss that twined their tongues together, while Godric slid slowly down the tree, muscles protesting at this activity so soon after climax.
He could feel the charm waning as he walked away, and yet he didn't return; nor did he wait at the forest edge for them to come walking out, shamefacedly adjusting their clothes (or, more likely, Acha would come out and go to her dormitory and Salazar would remain until dark fell).
Instead he went into the castle, and went to his room, and took down a wineskin of mead and prepared to get very drunk.
And perhaps recall the forest evening in his mind once more...
***
II. Lion Tamer
The sun had just dropped behind the horizon when Salazar, in his soft leather britches, barefoot, with a harmless snake slipping around his neck and up over one ear, trotted up the steps of the South entrance. He liked the feel of cold stone under his feet, as much as he liked dirt and grass and forest-floor with its light smell of decay. He felt as though when he stripped off the shirt and robe and boots and what-all that the Masters wore to classes, it was like shedding a skin, like rebirth. He enjoyed running across the fields and playing games with the children, wearing not much more than he was born with -- just enough to preserve his dignity and not offend Helga.
After they'd made love, Acha had dressed and gone off; the charms they'd been working required no formal closing. He had watched her, the bend of her spine as she fetched up her clothes, the twists of her body as she put them on. The swing of a heavy breast, still young enough to be firm under his fingers, the toss of long black hair.
It wasn't that he didn't find her worth the rutting, by any means. He liked Acha. She was clever and quick and ambitious, nearly three-quarters fullblooded Hellene, more pureblood Greek than he was pureblood Pictish. He was glad to teach her, especially this, but he knew it was going to cause trouble, and he should have known Godric would come looking for him. A part of him probably had known, which was why he'd cast the heavy charm that would prevent any unwanted audiences from interrupting.
Godric had enjoyed it, he was sure.
Still, and he sighed at this, Godric got sensitive about these things -- sleeping with the students and all. It probably wasn't even that, come to think of it, as Godric never got in the way of a Master or Mistress if their actions were, in the end, educational (and non-lethal). It was the fact that Godric would undoubtedly know the sex in the forest had been for the purpose of Dark Arts.
It was a good charm. It bound the girl's energy to his, united the two of them so that either could draw on the other. It had led to the downfall of countless wizards, who invariably fought over who ought to have use of the power. The trick was, of course, in the balance. Acha was clever, but not as clever as Salazar, nor as strong. He could give her power if she needed it, and he could draw from her, but they would never fight, because if they did she would lose almost immediately.
Someday he'd promised she could have one of her own that would be to her as she was to him. Acha, he suspected, would take without asking, but there was nothing to be done about that.
He had better talk to Godric, if only to see the look on the man's face. After all, Godric was a part of the equation now; he'd felt Godric's arousal and orgasm intruding on his own and Acha's just as clearly as he'd seen the lionlike man up a tree watching them.
Probably seeing Acha had been too much for the man. Godric kept less company than some hermits he'd known.
He knocked on the heavy oak door that led to Godric's quarters, and was rewarded by the thud of boots.
"Aye?" Godric called through the door.
"It's Salazar," he replied. "I'd like a word."
"I'm busy, Salazar," Godric said. Salazar could hear the slur in his voice.
"About the forest," he added quietly.
The door swung open.
Godric's jerkin was off and the torc around his neck, the one Salazar had only seen twice before, was settled just above his knotted shoulders. He still wore breeches and boots, and strips of cloth were wound around his left hand. In his right he held a wineskin.
He stepped back. Salazar glided inside, smoothly, feeling as always that he was somewhat dwarfed by Godric, though it wasn't truthfully the case. It was just that Godric was broad and muscular and somewhat clumsy most of the time, while he was thin and quick and neat.
Godric poured half of what remained in the skin into a goblet, then filled another one with the rest. He held one out to Salazar, who took it and sat on the rude bench that served as most of Godric's furniture. He drew one leg up against his chest, heel hooking on the edge. Godric leaned on the window-sill.
"Well?" Godric said finally. Salazar sipped the mead.
"You disapprove," he said.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Acha and I. In the forest. Dark workings. Sex," Salazar said, rolling the last word off his tongue languorously, so that it almost became Parseltongue. "I saw you. Clawing at your tree like a rutting lion."
"You didn't come in to dinner," Godric rumbled, draining his cup. Salazar watched him sway slightly before he regained his balance.
"Of course not. I was seducing Acha in the forest."
"She's a student!"
Salazar shrugged. "I was teaching her."
"We don't need any bastards of yours running around," Godric growled.
"And none will you have, rest assured," Salazar answered. "I was showing her a charm that required coupling. It's easier in the forest."
"Dark workings," Godric muttered. "S'wrong, is what it is, Salazar."
"You've never stopped me before. And don't think I'm not grateful, Godric, as I know you don't approve. But really, I can handle it. So can Acha. She's a grown woman."
"She's still a student. Her mother entrusted me personally with her care."
"Jealous, are we?" Salazar drawled. Godric coloured. "Fancy Acha for yourself?"
"Of course not."
Salazar cocked his head to one side. "Then why, my dear Godric Gryffindor, did you go get drunk? Anyone who wasn't caught up in the throes of some desire would have waited at the forest's edge for me, punched me in the head, and thrown me off the grounds."
"I'm not drunk."
"Not happily drunk, at any rate." Salazar pushed himself off the bench, and began to pace the floor, slowly. "Know thyself, Godric. Before you can know the children you must know who you are. I've told you before you should come to my fens. We've no beer there, but you can be just as drunk on desolation. There's a reason men go to the wilderness to find gods."
"I'm not drunk," Godric insisted, swaying forward. Salazar placed a hand on his chest, holding him upright, elbow crooked so that they were face to face, only Salazar's hand and a few inches of space between them.
"You are drunk," Salazar said. "Is it Acha? If I'd known I'd have let you have her, Godric, she means nothing to me."
Godric's eyes hardened. "I'm not drunk and I'm not jealous," he declared.
Salazar gave it a moment's quick thought. The snake that had been curling up into his hair dropped down to his neck, forming a strange, sinuous imitation of Godric's torc.
"You've never chased any skirt, student or otherwise," he mused. "Now why should that be, Godr -- "
Godric kissed him before he could say his name, as though it was a desperate gambit to stop an invocation. Salazar, able to see the situation somewhat more objectively, leaned into the kiss and at the same time shifted his weight, sliding the hand on Godric's chest around his ribcage and down, supporting the small of his back.
"Not jealous of me," Salazar murmured, against Godric's lips. "I see. Jealous of Acha....aaah..."
Godric had deepened the kiss, and was lifting his own slightly-trembling hands to Salazar's hair, pinning his head in place, pouncing like a cat on prey. Salazar consciously relaxed his shoulders, allowing Godric to pull him close. After all, it wouldn't be the first man he'd had, or the first time he'd thought that it might be intriguing to meet an equal on the sexual gaming field...
Kill the King indeed, he thought, with a laugh.
He pulled Godric backwards onto the bed, sliding underneath the heavier man easily, drawing one leg up to keep Godric from tumbling off. He really was remarkably drunk, but Salazar could still feel Godric's erection against his thigh, pressing against his britches.
Godric pushed himself up and spread clumsy hands across his chest, tracing the dips and ridges of a hundred scars, the evidence of battles and tangles with wild creatures and workings darker than poor, golden Godric could ever imagine.
"Fight back," Godric whispered, and Salazar frowned. "Why don't you fight back?"
"Do you...want me to?" Salazar asked, confused suddenly. He slid his hands down Godric's arms, feeling the shape of the muscles there. He couldn't fight back with his hands if he wanted to; he was a runner, not a boxer.
Godric's eyes were a peculiar shade of brown that sometimes reflected almost coppery, and his gaze now could have scorched a lesser being, but Salazar knew him too well. He ought to have noticed if Godric liked his lovers to fight, but then he'd never noticed Godric wanting anyone to do anything to him --
"Aren't you going to struggle?" Godric slurred. Salazar smiled. Poor, moral Godric.
"No," he said, and bucked his hips, and Godric collapsed on top of him, tongue exploring his mouth, eyes closed, hands roaming everywhere, struggling out of his clothing and helping Salazar writhe out of his own. The sudden friction of hard muscle and flat chest where hours before there had been soft, round breasts and smooth belly -- Salazar tasted each contrast in his mind, delighting in the deep sound of Godric's moans, the sword-callouses on his hands. They were rough and textured and when Godric stroked him there they made Salazar want to purr...
Or hiss.
He felt Godric thrust against him and stiffen as he stumbled his way from pleading moans Godric Godric there faster please into Parseltongue, a better language for begging in hsssk, thksss khaaaasss....
Godric opened his eyes and his warm copper gaze met Salazar's as Salazar jerked one last time against him and came, breath hissing, fingers clenching against the broad firm skin of Godric's back.
They lay there, in a breathless heap, touching and shifting, until Salazar turned his head to the side and laughed.
"She means nothing to me," he repeated. "Acha. It was just a spell. You, Godric, you are my friend...you mean something..."
He let his hand drift down over Godric's shoulders, pushing him a little so that Godric opened his eyes and looked sideways at him.
"Think of the power we could have, together," Salazar said, lazily.
"I am," Godric rumbled. "It terrifies me."
Salazar looked up at the ceiling again, feeling Godric relax that final degree, into sleep. When he was sure the other man was unconscious, he smiled.
"That can be fixed," he said softly.
***
III. Milk
Acha knew, in an idle sort of way, that Master Slytherin did not wholly approve of her.
He liked her well enough, thought her clever and pretty, taught her things that he didn't teach the other students, but she knew he saw the ambitious streak in her that drove her, and perhaps found it too like his own to make him entirely comfortable with her.
It wasn't as though he'd seduced her. He'd simply said, catching her in a private moment between the dinner hour and the girls' dormitory doors closing for the night, that he would like to teach her some advanced workings. They would involve things she'd really only known from books and those were not books that had been supplied to her by her parents, that was certain. He'd apparently found her idle notes in the margins of some of the volumes on the high shelves in the burgeoning magical library of the little school.
But it was only sex magic; she had no illusions that it was love or anything like love. So she was surprised when he asked her to come to his rooms after dinner, especially as he knew the rules as well as she did and any girl not in the dormitories by an hour past mealtime would be --
He stopped her speech with a finger on the lips.
"I've arranged it with Helga and Rowena," he said, normally lazy green eyes far more intense than usual, the single scar on his face darkening across the bridge of his nose as his skin flushed a little. Contact between them now, ever since the night in the forest, seemed to make her blood quicken. She could only assume it did the same for him.
She could tell where he was, now, except when he didn't want her to; she could feel his eyes across the room during lessons, across the corridor, across the dining hall and sometimes through walls. She pictured him stopping in a hallway, wearing all the silly accoutrement of a Master at the school, head suddenly turned to find her through the wall, nostrils flaring, fingertips curled. It was not a love-bond but a power-bond, and she knew he had all the power. Still, sometimes she wondered if her mere presence didn't distract him, and that was why she so often, in the past two weeks since they'd gone into the forest, had felt him watching her.
In the evenings sometimes she wished he'd come and fetch her and they could spend another few hours in the forest, because Master Slytherin was handsome in his own way and much more skilled than the fumbling farmhands she'd encountered before coming here to Hogwarts. Now he had, and she wasn't sure what she would do.
"Are you going to give me lessons, Master Slytherin?" she asked. He smiled.
"Not of the sort you're accustomed to, Acha," he answered. He wasn't dressed in his teaching robes, or even in much of anything; just the leather britches he always wore. A thin black snake twined itself around his waist, slithering up his chest. He closed the door behind her and pulled the snake gently from his skin, laying it on a windowsill and hissing quietly to it in Parseltongue. She noticed the rooms were dark; he'd drawn fabric across the windows, and only two candles burned.
Most of the students were afraid to go into Master Slytherin's rooms, because he was Master Slytherin and because he kept snakes; she was not one of them. It took a special sort of fearlessness to work with the Dark Arts, Master Slytherin had told them once. Acha decided she, like her warlike ancestresses, would be fearless, and she had been rewarded. So she did not fear his rooms now, even in the dark, with the smell of Myrrh burning bitterly in a brazier on his hearth.
"What is required of me, Master Slytherin?" she asked. He smiled at the formality in her tone.
"Concealment, for the moment," he said, and guided her backwards, gently, into the deep shadows and the hazy smoke from the incense. All the way until her back touched stone that was oddly warm. "You'll know what to do, when it's time."
His hands undid her clothing, pushing most of it away, leaving only what would preserve her dignity if she were allowed back in the candlelight.
He kissed her lightly on the lips, and stepped backwards until he was visible by the candlelight again. He poured a goblet of milk -- fresh milk, she remembered, could tempt both snakes and cats -- and sipped it, resting in one of the cushioned chairs close to the door...
...and to the bed, she noticed, narrowing her eyes while they adjusted to the darkness.
To keep herself busy she counted her heartbeats, and then when that grew tiresome she counted the beat of Master Slytherin's pulse against a jagged scar in his neck that made it uniquely visible. She couldn't feel the whisper of his presence looking in on her; in fact, if she'd been elsewhere, his defences were up so fully that she wouldn't have been able to find him at all.
There was a knock on the door, and Master Slytherin flicked his fingers. The latch slid open.
Master Gryffindor entered, barefoot like Master Slytherin, and wearing not much more; just a tunic and britches. She tried not to make a noise but her breath caught. Master Slytherin didn't even flick a glance in her direction, but stood.
"Salazar," Master Gryffindor said, almost hoarsely. Master Slytherin offered him the goblet, and he sipped the last of the milk, setting it on a side-table when he was finished.
"Godric," Master Slytherin answered, moving closer, until they were nearly touching.
She felt her fingertips touch her lips as they kissed, Master Salazar reaching up to knot his fingers in Master Gryffindor's hair, bodies turning slightly so that all she could see was the broad, tunic-clad back, the tilt of dark-rooted, sunbleached hair on the other side of pale gold.
There were soft murmurs of appreciation, rougher noises of fabric shifting, and she could see Master Slytherin's fingertips smoothing the folds of the tunic. Master Gryffindor bent his head further, and she met Master Slytherin's eyes.
He smiled, then lifted his chin and gasped a little, fingers flexing on Master Gryffindor's shoulders as the bright-haired man's lips did something to his neck. When he lowered his head again, his eyes were heavy with the sort of lust she hadn't even seen when they'd worked their charms in the forest.
His hand barely left Master Gryffindor's shoulders as he beckoned her forward.
She felt her feet move almost of their own volition, body swaying unsteadily, as she moved into the candle's less chilling gloom, her hand rising to touch the one that had beckoned her, body fitting to the unfamiliar, broad shape of Master Gryffindor's back.
"What are you doing, Salazar?" Master Gryffindor asked, in a low rumble. She saw Master Slytherin smile.
"Acha needs training," he murmured. "You wouldn't want her running about practicing Dark Arts without any experience, would you?"
Acha rested her cheek on Master Gryffindor's shoulder, and Master Slytherin stroked her face, his body still pressed against the other man's.
"You act as though I could train her," Master Gryffindor said stiffly, but she could feel the muscles of his back relaxing, and she kissed the dip between shoulder and neck.
"You can help me train her," Master Slytherin replied. "She's already seen this much. I said we could do great things together, Godric. Real power. Acha could be our crowning glory."
"Your crowning glory."
Master Slytherin's fingers moved from her face to Master Gryffindor's. "My glory is your glory, Godric, you know that."
His other hand had snaked around Master Gryffindor's hip and was pulling her fingers over his flat, muscular belly, under the tunic, against warm skin. Master Gryffindor gasped.
"She's young and beautiful into the bargain."
"You're a fool -- "
"I'm a teacher." Master Slytherin raised his lips to Master Gryffindor's ear, and as she watched, he whispered, "Teach her."
Master Gryffindor moaned as Master Slytherin stepped back, away from them, and threw himself down into the chair again, long limbs sprawling. She felt the man -- the teacher! -- tremble, with her arms around his body, and she pulled a little, turning him.
They tumbled back onto Master Slytherin's bed together, Master Gryffindor steadying her underneath him, large hands already removing her clothing, but suddenly she felt Master Slytherin's eyes on her, and raised her head.
He was watching them, eyes hooded, the mark of Master Gryffindor's teeth still standing out in red on his neck. He gave her a small smile as Master Gryffindor removed the last of her clothing and most of his own into the process, with a skill that surprised her and, to judge by Master Slytherin's look, him too.
"Him, Acha," said Master Slytherin quietly, and she turned back to the man moving against her, the man who was kissing her neck, her breasts and shoulders, with a ferocity she'd never found in the predatory, deliberate man watching them.
She raised her arms to lock them around his neck, guided by deft touches almost unfelt, in her mind -- little hints Master Slytherin was passing along to her through the bond they'd formed in the forest, a bond that was only exchange of power, not thoughts, but even the slightest variation...
When she kissed his face, she felt power withdrawn, and when she moved lower felt it returned. Punishment and reward. Very well.
She was smaller than Master Gryffindor but he was easily swayed, and they rolled until she straddled his thighs, sitting up to look down at him. She could feel Master Slytherin examining her body in the candlelight.
A little pressure from him, a little movement from her, and this she remembered, even though it felt as if she was nothing more than a barrier between the two men -- some sort of strange conduit for their lovemaking. When she arched her back and Master Gryffindor pulled her hips forward and thrust up, it was Master Slytherin who cried out, Master Slytherin who, she saw, was not even moving -- was sitting perfectly still in the chair, head tilted back, eyes glassy, fingers clenched on the arms. She saw the muscles of his belly twitch when Master Gryffindor moved inside her again, felt the pressure and fell forward, her body now wrestling against Master Gryffindor.
And then the surge of power as reward was unmistakable, Master Gryffindor's own grip on her undeniable, the pressure of his body and Master Slytherin's mind too much for her, too much pleasure, Master Slytherin's lessons in the forest magnified a thousandfold --
***
Salazar couldn't breathe. Could not breathe.
He finally managed a choking, heaving breath, and opened his eyes. He had never taken them from the bed, where Godric now lay, arms spread slightly, Acha fairly clearly unconscious on his chest.
"What did I tell you?" he asked, feeling slightly drunk. Godric's eyes, threatening to roll up into his head, focused a little.
"What did you do, Salazar?" he said hoarsely.
"Lessons," Salazar replied. "She felt herself, and myself, and quite possibly..." he stretched his arms, aware that he'd never even taken his britches off, never moved, and this was something to try again some other time. "...quite possibly..."
"You...demon..." Godric said suddenly, pushing himself to his elbows. Acha protested softly, and he caught her with one arm before she could fall. "The working you and she did -- you -- "
Salazar rolled his shoulders and took a deep breath. The air shuddered out of Godric's lungs.
"Linked us?" he asked. He exhaled, and Godric inhaled. "Yes. Oh I should say so, yes."
"Do you know how many men this has destroyed, this link?" Godric demanded, but his words were slurring a little, like Salazar's. The power went both ways, after all.
"But it won't destroy us. I've done it before," Salazar assured him. "Think what we can do, the two of us, our talents combined -- why, between us if you add it up and divide it out, we make one pure Pictish wizard."
"And one pure Roman," Godric growled. "Will you cast off that? You'll cast one of us off with it, and I don't doubt -- "
Salazar hissed, suddenly, and Godric paused.
"I would never cast you out," he said, voice thin and low and sharp, like the metal edge on a blade. "Don't you think we mean more to each other?"
"You used the girl."
"She meant nothing, I told you."
"And when do I begin to mean nothing, Salazar? When you have no more need for me?" Godric asked. "Break the spell."
"Kill the girl. She's the locus."
Godric stared at the woman sharing his bed -- Salazar's bed.
Salazar reached for his wand and spun it through his fingers, pointing it at the pair of them. "Somnus," he murmured, and Godric's faint protests died on his lips as he slipped into sleep.
Salazar remained awake the long night, thinking.
Nothing, he decided, around dawn. Nothing will separate us. We're bonded now, one to the other. Even if he did kill Acha, which he won't, it doesn't matter.
Nothing will separate us.
END
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