Chapter 15: Elara guides Blythe's trembling hand to Snape's cock while whispering the ancient bonding spell, their three voices rising in unison as he thrusts into Blythe from behind while fingering Elara to screaming completion.
The taste of lye soap lingered in Elara’s mouth three days later. A futile scrub, but she’d tried. The memory, however, was a stain no charm could lift. It lived in the faint soreness at the roots of her hair, in the way her throat constricted when she swallowed her pumpkin juice at breakfast. It lived in the electric, shameful jolt she felt every time she saw Professor Snape glide through the Great Hall, his expression unreadable as tombstone.
Graduation was tomorrow. Hogwarts, a place of seven years of magical theory and predictable chaos, now felt like a gilded cage whose door was swinging open onto a terrifying void. The only constants left were the stone walls, the whispering portraits, and this… thing… that thrummed between them.
She found Blythe in their usual deserted corner of the library, not studying, but staring out the diamond-paned window at the fading twilight. Blythe had been quiet since the cabin.
“You’re thinking about it too,” Elara said, sliding into the opposite chair. Her voice was low, barely a whisper in the dusty silence.
Blythe didn’t turn. “I can still feel it. When I walk. A phantom… fullness.” A faint, wistful smile touched her lips. “It’s not unpleasant. Just a reminder.”
“Of what we did?”
“Of what we are,” Blythe corrected, finally looking at her. Her blue eyes were clear, serious. “What we chose. It wasn’t just fucking, El. It was a… a transaction. We gave him something. He gave us something. It’s still sitting there, between us, like an unlabelled potion. We can’t just leave it on the shelf and walk away tomorrow.”
Elara’s heart hammered against her ribs. The intellectual part of her, the Ravenclaw strategist, had been gnawing on the same problem. “What are the possible outcomes?” she murmured, more to herself. “One: We graduate. We become amusing, dark little secrets he remembers when grading particularly dull essays. Two: We try to compartmentalize. We become two more ghosts in his haunted house.”
“Option two sounds shit,” Blythe said with a sudden, sharp grin. “And option one is fucking tragic.”
“There’s a third option,” Elara said. The idea had been forming in the dark corners of her mind since the camera’s red light had blinked off. It was insane. It was scandalous. It was the only thing that didn’t feel like an ending.
Blythe leaned forward, her voice dropping. “Tell me.”
“We don’t leave it on the shelf. We take it with us. All of us.”
Blythe blinked. “A… souvenir? I don’t think he’d let us keep the camera.”
“Not the camera, you idiot,” Elara hissed, but she was smiling, a wild, nervous excitement fluttering in her chest. “The arrangement. The… dynamic. We present it as a continued proposition. A renegotiation of terms, post-graduation.”
Blythe stared at her. The concept hung in the air, fragile and audacious. “You mean… we ask him to keep us? Both of us?”
“I mean we tell him we’re not done. That what happened wasn’t an experiment. It was the first chapter.” Elara’s words came faster now. “He’s bound by nothing tomorrow. No student-teacher rules. We’re bound by nothing. We could… build something. Something real. With rules we all write.”
“A triangle,” Blythe whispered, her eyes widening. “A real one. Not just two girls sharing a fuck, but… a relationship. With each other. With him.” She paused, chewing her lip. “He’ll think we’ve been confunded. He’ll throw us out of his quarters.”
“Probably,” Elara conceded. “But what if he doesn’t?”
They found him in his quarters later that night, under the guise of returning a borrowed potions text. The door swung open silently before Elara could even knock. He stood there, framed by the gloom of his sitting room, the single chandelier painting his face in stark planes of light and shadow. He wore his teaching robes, but they were open at the collar. He looked exhausted, and older than his years.
“Miss Thorne. Miss Blythe,” he said, his voice flat. “Graduation eve nostalgia does not require my participation. Return to your revelries.”
“This isn’t about nostalgia, Professor,” Elara said, her voice steadier than she felt. She held up the book. “A pretext.”
A sardonic eyebrow lifted. “How Slytherin of you. Enter. But be brief.” He turned, leaving the door open, and retreated to stand by the cold fireplace.
They followed, the door shutting with a soft, definitive click. The room smelled, as ever, of old parchment and dried herbs. But beneath it, Elara swore she could catch the faintest ghost of sweat and sex.
Blythe, usually the bolder one in speech, hung back, letting Elara take the lead. Elara placed the book on a heavy oaken table. She turned to face him, clasping her hands to stop them trembling.
“We’ve been conducting an analysis,” she began, slipping into the clinical tone of a lab report. “Subject: The events of the recent past. Variables: Power dynamics, consent, mutual… gratification. Hypothesis: The experiment need not conclude with the end of the academic year.”
Snape stared at her, utterly still. “Define your terms, Miss Thorne. In plain English. I am not grading a thesis.”
Elara took a breath. “We don’t want this to be over. Tomorrow, we cease to be your students. We become… adults. Free agents. We are proposing a continuation. A triad. You, me, Blythe. A relationship.”
The silence that followed was absolute. It was so heavy Elara felt the pressure in her ears. Snape’s expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes shifted, a black pool stirred by a stone.
“A relationship,” he repeated, tonelessly. “You are nineteen. You are leaving this castle for the world. You propose tethering yourselves to a notoriously bitter, middle-aged man with a catastrophic personal history. For what? The novelty?”
“Don’t,” Blythe said quietly, stepping forward. She wasn’t looking at Snape; she was looking at Elara, her voice firm with a protective edge. “Don’t do that. Don’t paint yourself as some monstrous favor we’re bestowing. You know it’s more than that.”
He switched his gaze to her, the intensity palpable. “Do I?”
“Yes,” Blythe insisted. “You were there. You saw. You felt it. That wasn’t just a novelty. That was… connection. Ugly and complicated and fucking intense. We’re not naive kids dreaming of a fairy tale. We’re proposing a reality. A messy, difficult, probably secret one. But a real one.”
Elara found her voice again. “You’re not a hobby, Professor. And we’re not a diversion. We’re offering a partnership. With rules, with confidentiality, with equal agency. We love each other.” She reached out, her fingers finding Blythe’s and threading through them, a united front. “And we have… significant and complicated feelings for you. Feelings that graduate with us tomorrow.”
Snape looked at their joined hands. A muscle in his jaw twitched. He turned away from them, staring into the empty grate. The shadows danced across his back.
“You speak of rules,” he said, his voice low and rough. “What is your first rule?”
Elara exchanged a glance with Blythe. This was it. The negotiation. “No secrets between the three of us. About this. About anything that affects this. Total honesty, even when it’s cruel.”
A bitter, short laugh escaped him. “A rule I am genetically disposed to break.”
“Then we’ll learn,” Blythe said softly. “Together.”
He was silent for a long time. The clock on the mantel ticked, each second a hammer fall. Elara’s hand was sweating in Blythe’s.
“You would live where?” he asked finally, still not facing them. “How would this… arrangement… function in the practical world?”
“We’ve both taken flats in Diagon Alley,” Elara said, relief flooding her at the practical question. “Separate, but adjacent. You have your duties here. We would have our lives there. It would require… scheduling. Discretion. Apparition. It wouldn’t be easy.”
“It would be a logistical nightmare,” he stated.
“We’re good at nightmares,” Blythe said, a hint of her old lightness returning. “We’ve been studying under the master for years.”
At that, he turned. His face was still an impenetrable mask, but his eyes were burning. He looked from one to the other, a man surveying a particularly complex and dangerous potion recipe.
“This is a folly,” he said, but the conviction was gone from his voice, replaced by a weary sort of wonder. “A catastrophic error in judgment.”
“Probably,” Elara agreed, a smile touching her lips. “But will you make it with us?”
He didn’t answer with words. He closed the distance between them in two long strides. His hands, cool and large, came up to cradle both their faces, his thumbs brushing over their cheekbones. His touch was not possessive, but searching, as if verifying their solidity. He looked deeply into Elara’s eyes, then Blythe’s, and in that shared gaze was a torrent of things he would never say: fear, longing, a terrifying, fragile hope.
He leaned his forehead against Elara’s, then turned slightly to press it against Blythe’s. A triad of contact. A silent, shuddering breath passed through him.
“We will need many more rules,” he whispered, the words a promise and a surrender.
Outside, in the corridor, the ghosts of Hogwarts floated by, oblivious. Inside, under the dim chandelier, a new, precarious magic was born, not from a wand, but from a choice, spoken aloud in the dark.
Inside, under the dim chandelier, a new, precarious magic was born, not from a wand, but from a choice, spoken aloud in the dark.
That shared breath broke. Snape pulled back just enough to look at them, his dark eyes reflecting the flickering light, and then he kissed them.
He turned his head and captured Blythe’s mouth first, a deep, claiming kiss that was all hunger and relief. His fingers tightened in her hair. She melted into it with a soft, eager sound, her hands coming up to clutch at the black wool of his robes. He tasted like black tea and the lingering bitterness of wormwood, and Blythe drank it in.
Then he shifted, his lips leaving hers to find Elara’s. This kiss was different—slower, more deliberate, a sealing of a contract. It was passion tempered by a startling reverence. Elara met it with equal force, her intellect finally quiet, consumed by the sheer physical truth of his mouth on hers, the scratch of his stubble, the low sound in his chest.
He kissed them until they were breathless, until the room seemed to tilt. When he finally pulled away, a strange, almost youthful energy crackled around him. It was in the slight, unguarded curve of his mouth, the brighter gleam in his obsidian eyes.
“Folly,” he murmured again, but the word was warm now, a private joke. He traced Elara’s lower lip with his thumb, his other arm pulling Blythe firmly against his side.
“The best kind,” Blythe sighed, resting her head on his shoulder, her face flushed. “So what’s rule two? Besides the honesty thing.”
“Rule two,” Snape said, his voice a low rumble they felt more than heard. “We do not make plans for tomorrow in the bed of today. The future is a volatile potion. It requires a stable base.”
Elara laughed, the sound bright and unexpected in the somber room. “Bit late for that. We just planned our entire future relationship five minutes ago.”
“A logistical outline,” he corrected, but he was still looking at her mouth. “Not the… particulars.”
Blythe grinned up at him, her hand sliding down his chest with a playful possessiveness. “Speaking of particulars. The future’s a big place. Got any… specifics in mind? Eventually?”
He stilled, his gaze turning inward for a moment. The shadows of his past were always there, circling. “I am not a man built for domestic… pleasantries.”
“Who said anything about pleasant?” Elara quipped, earning a sharp glance that didn’t quite hide his amusement.
Blythe pressed on, softer. “I don’t know. Maybe… kids? Someday? Far-off someday,” she added quickly, feeling the tension coil in his frame.
Snape was silent. The word seemed to hang in the air, huge and fragile. Children. A concept so alien to his self-image it was nearly absurd. He saw a flash of a different life, a dark house, a crying infant—a ghost that wasn't his to mourn. This was different. This was a choice.
Elara watched the conflict play out over his face. She nudged his side, her tone light but her eyes serious. “I’m thinking lots of kids.”
His brow furrowed. “Your optimism is clinically alarming.”
“It’s not optimism,” she said, her hand drifting to the belt of his robes. “It’s extrapolation. Based on observable, recurring data. You can’t keep your hands to yourself. You definitely can’t keep your pants on. The math is pretty simple, Professor.”
A genuine, sharp bark of laughter escaped him, startling all three of them. It transformed his face, cutting years off the weariness. He shook his head, the tension breaking like a spell.
“Insolent to the last,” he muttered, but he was pulling them both closer, his earlier excitement simmering back to the surface. The sheer, audacious normality of the conversation, layered over the profound abnormality of their situation, was somehow the most magical thing of all.
The chandelier above them seemed to glow a little brighter, pushing back the dark, just for now.