THE BOGGART OF ERISED
by A. Vulgarweed

Response to Josy's challenge at WIKTT. Not my characters, not my copyright, not my anything except sense of humor.

The staffroom was empty. This was wondrous and unexpected, and Severus couldn't help but be suspicious. No chatter and smoke from his stressed-out colleagues; no inane gossip or Quidditch betting pools; no barrage of attempts to get him to "lighten up." Even Dumbledore's hideous blue and gold-ornamented cookie jar seemed empty, and for once it wasn't constantly mewling at him to "take one!" There was nothing but blessed peace, with just a gentle clickety-clicking sound from the ancient heating ducts, and the seductive scent of coffee.

It was too easy, and Severus looked immediately at the cupboard. After all these years, was that blasted Lupin still in the habit of storing his teaching-aids in hazardous places? No doubt, and indeed, as he started to reach for the handle, the cupboard burst open, and an all-too-familiar hooded, masked figure stepped forward.

Severus rolled his eyes. The symbolism was just too stupidly obvious: what had admittedly frightened the gibbering bejeezus out of him the first few times was by now simply patronizing. Yet something about the feel of this particular boggart manifestation -- infestation, rather -- was slightly different in timbre and tone. With a slow graceful motion, the boggart-hand rose to the boggart-face and peeled away the expressionless mask to reveal, as usual, the image of seventeen-year-old Severus Snape, budding Potions master and passionate young Death Eater, black eyes blazing with the radiant but vapid fervor of the recent convert. The boy moved with a new-found arrogance, trying on a sense of mastery and finding it fit him well, completely oblivious to the slightest possibility of defeat or moral crisis. Repugnant. Horrifying.

And moving towards him as no boggart had quite dared before. Forty-year-old actual-Severus began working to muster up the disdain for a good "Riddikulus," and was nearly about to burst into harsh laughter, when it was silenced right out of him from sheer shock. For the seventeen-year-old Boggart-Severus had laid a physical hand on his chest, pushed him against the wall, and pushed its boggarty-yet-Severus-tasting tongue right into his mouth. Actual-Severus gasped into the creature's mouth as the hips that nudged up against his own felt so corporeal, so solid, so...Boggarts are masters of illusion, he told himself. They can simulate anything - even those slim hands on either side of his neck, turning his face this way and that, then sliding up into his hair, pulling his head backward as the boggart-teen turned its attentions to his earlobe and his neck, kissing and nibbling, licking and nipping.

Severus strained to look, to see an amazing rendition of desire in the accurate duplication of his own dark eyes, unlined by age and undimmed by uncertainty; to feel that body so smooth and slim and strong...Oh gods, he thought, was I ever really like that? His own real hands rebelled against his will, tugged at the boggart-boy's black ponytail, slid around his neck, loosened that replica of his own green-and-silver school tie, exposing a soft delicate throat.

His knees were decidedly weakening. The boggart's lean thigh, pressed in between his own, helped to keep him pinned. The boggart-Snape's cock was already rock-hard--well, yes, he was seventeen. His own was nearly there, and he groaned when the slim hand found its head through his robes and squeezed lightly.

This was insane. No, really, literally, insane. Was his greatest fear being seduced by himself? Looking at some old picture of himself and thinking "I want to fuck me"? Was it some kind of hex? He had, after all, been told to go do just this very thing many times (most recently by the new Arithmancy assistant, his bookwormish but volatile mistress). But if this was a curse, it felt shockingly....firm, and warm, and rounded....yes, that was the teen-boggart's shapely young arse being kneaded in his own iron grip, pinning the creature's deft fingers between their aching groins ground together. Severus opened his eyes and only then realized he had closed them, and saw his own young face swollen-lipped and dreamy-eyed and deliriously hungry, with a flush on those thin cheeks and a dishevelment to that raven hair, like some Renaissance Ganymede who looked like he'd been whoring himself for weeks and never yet run out of lust.

Severus groaned again, a bit raspier, a bit louder, as the creature slowly sank to its knees before him, opening his robes and taking him into its mouth and....oh. Oh, Circe...fuck...it knows exactly what I....well, of course it does! His hands wound in its hair, his knees trembled and bent and parted a little as he yielded to that wicked wet pressure.

And he thought he felt its hair change texture, and he glanced down briefly...No. That was NOT a distinctive scar on its forehead, it was NOT....No. The hair was NOT that honey-brown, grey-peppered colour....No. It was back to himself again. Caught between helpless arousal and profound, room-spinning psychic vertigo he watched his own shaft moving in and out between his own soft lips.

It was too much. He shut his eyes. He could feel his brain dissolving, hear a wild rush of interior mind-wind blowing around in his skull like a small private cyclone, amid the gentle hissing of the coffee machine and the infernal soft clicketing of the heat...

And he heard something else. Something between a gasp and a whimper, distinctly from outside himself, and distinctly...feminine. With a heroic effort he lurched himself free of the boggart's preternaturally talented mouth, just far enough to follow his instincts straight through to reach under the cloth on the coffee table, where he sank his hand into hair. And not just any hair, but an all-too familiar mass of bushiness. He yanked, and out she came, whimpering, flushed, robes partly unbuttoned, panting a bit, and still clutching that infernal adapted Muggle laptop she'd had some Weasley or other tweak into magic for her.

"GRANGER!!" he bellowed, reverting to habits left over from her student days.

She composed herself as best she could. "I was just writing."

"So I....smell," he smirked, passing her little fingers beneath his prodigious and gifted nose.

"Do not meddle in the affairs of slashers," she snarled. "For you are hot and look good with other men."

"I can't believe you were spying on that."

"You have to get over your homophobia. You promised!"

"I AM NOT A HOMOPHOBE!"

"Oh yeah? Then why won't you do what you promised me?"

He sighed.

"I kept up my end of the bargain," she pouted. "I set up that private show and that three-way with Rosmerta for your birthday, just like I promised. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, so now it's your turn...."

"You could be more patient."

"I'm tired of being patient. I think you're just scared."

"I still can't believe you..."

"Could have been worse," she said smugly. "It could have been Sirius Black."

Severus felt himself visibly blanch, as some of his blood went treacherously elsewhere.

"Aaaahhh," said Hermione. "I see I struck a nerve center."

Severus realized too late that part of him was still enjoying a healthy breeze.

The boggart lingered forgotten in the corner, watching, now in fact bearing a unhealthy resemblance to Sirius Black.

Hermione squirmed in anticipation as her lover sat in the big chair and hurled her over his knee for the spanking she'd worked so hard to earn. She'd get her wish someday soon, no matter what. Maybe very soon.

~fin~

A/N: I don't know who originated that "do not meddle in the affairs of slashers..." line. I do know it's a pastiche of a famous line from The Lord of the Rings, that it's been around in fandom for a long time, and that whoever said it first, it wasn't me. Thanks to that anonymous wit. Also, I'm not sure if this meets the challenge requirement if Sev only thinks he's alone. Oh well.