Pairings: Silvanus Kettleburn/Millicent Bulstrode, Severus Snape

Author's Notes: Written for Delphi in the 2012 hp_beholder exchange.

I'm hoping that my scene breaks are resistant to ff.n's meddling, but if they at some point disappear, I apologise and will eventually get around to fixing them (the same with my em dashes).

An Affinity for Dangerous Creatures

He'd always had an affinity for dangerous creatures.

Silvanus Kettleburn didn't remember his first encounter with a minotaur calf, but he had the missing forefinger to prove it, at least until 1939. That was the year his entire right arm, shoulder to dung-stained fingertip, disappeared into the gaping maw of a broody Hydra who'd just savaged her entire clutch. He'd been angling for a gap in her neckplates to land a Stunner when an incompletely severed head revived enough to gobble his arm, wand and all.

He was the reason why first- and second-years didn't have Care of Magical Creatures—not because he had refused to teach it, but because he had taught it a bit too enthusiastically. It had been unanimously decided by the Board of Governors that seeing their teacher mauled by a Cù Sìth was a bit much for eleven- and twelve-year-olds, particularly those from Muggle families to whom the entire wizarding world was already a frightening, barbaric place. Apparently, third-years had been sufficiently inoculated by bone-shattering, blood-spilling Quidditch matches, lessons about the goblin rebellions and giant massacres, and the occasional Potions spill.

He'd mourned the loss (and when he'd frankly expressed his disappointment to Dippet, the headmaster had dithered and waffled and nearly turned himself inside out before falling back on the authority of the Board to justify the decision). Most eleven-year-olds retained enough of their childish guilelessness to make them tolerable company. They still lacked the tact to refrain from staring at his missing nose or asking him questions that they really wanted to have answered, like why that Aethonan was jumping on the back of another, and whether he could hear just as well with one ear as with two, and how he could use a wand with a prosthetic arm.

Silvanus was genuinely fond of his students (most of them, anyway, and he couldn't wish ill to those he didn't particularly like). He always tried to be careful that he was the one in harm's way, not the students. His nearly impeccable student safety record was usually better than that of Filius or any of the half-dozen flying instructors employed by the school during his time there.

A reputation was unrelenting, though, and everyone (particularly during Dippet's tenure) always brought up the Fountain of Fair Fortune incident from his first year as a Hogwarts professor. It rankled with him still.

Albus Dumbledore, hired only a few years before, had approached Silvanus with a request for an Ashwinder and an assurance that he would fireproof the Great Hall himself. He had turned over the creature with reluctance only to see it swollen to grotesque proportions by an Engorgement Charm. (No one who really knew Silvanus would have ever accused him of casting a spell like that on a creature, particularly not an Ashwinder, whose vascular structure was too delicate to support a body of those dimensions; besides, wandwork had never been his forte even before he'd lost his wand arm.)

When the flames had been quenched and the hospital wing quieted for the night, Albus had been the first to admonish a flabbergasted Silvanus on the rashness of his actions and to entreat the headmaster to show leniency to the inexperienced Care of Magical Creatures professor who had 'made a simple misjudgment, as youth is prone to do'.

Silvanus had protested at the probation, attempting to set the record straight, but Dippet's eyes flicked back and forth between the indentation where his left ear had been and the hole drilled through his rough-hewn right hand to accommodate a wand. The headmaster had interrupted him with uncharacteristic decisiveness and proclaimed that he was lucky he'd not gotten the sack for his reckless endangerment of life and property.

After that, probation followed probation with wretched regularity. As it turned out, Flobberworms had more teeth than the probationary dicta, but the injustice galled him more than any restriction ever could.

~o~o~

Albus' invitation to tea had been innocuous enough, if a bit off the ordinary course of an early summer day. The tea was well-brewed, the biscuits suitably crisp, and the ever-present bowl of sweets had not been offered too forcefully.

"I have a proposition for you!" In retrospect, such an exuberant announcement from the headmaster should have been cause for concern, if not downright perturbation. "You have served Hogwarts faithfully, and I believe that you have earned a well-deserved retirement."

"Retirement?" was all Silvanus could manage to sputter in a spray of biscuit crumbs. He was in the prime of his life, with at least another half-century to go before considering it even a possibility.

"Yes." Nearly concealed by the benevolent smile and twinkling eyes, there was steel in Albus' voice. "There won't be much left of you if we selfishly insist you stay on. Besides, Harry Potter will be starting Care of Magical Creatures this fall, and it will be necessary for him to have a . . . different teacher."

There it was. With that name, the inevitability of the situation became starkly clear. He'd been aware of Albus' machinations regarding the Potter boy, but had paid them no heed, believing it to be none of his business. What a fool he'd been!

The Hogwarts pension, while something more than nothing, was considerably less than his current salary, so he held out for a cottage deep in the Forbidden Forest, a few miscellaneous charms, and, most importantly, an open bed at St. Mungo's on the school's Galleon. With that, Silvanus was dismissed from the school he'd given fifty-three years, one and a half limbs, half his face, and countless other bits of flesh. He had, quite literally, poured out his blood for Hogwarts, and now he was being discarded like a broken broom.

Never before did he hate Albus Dumbledore so much as he did in that moment.

~o~o~

A few decades back, Silvanus' N.E.W.T. class had been breeding Puffskeins to practice colour selection (they were well-suited for this particular project, as they reached reproductive maturity within a month and 'bred like Puffskeins,' as the saying went). Pelagia Pullings had been mortified when her agouti dam had thrown a litter of hairless kits. Silvanus was intrigued, however, and did not sell them to Magical Menagerie with the rest of the surplus Puffskeins at the end of term.

As they required high temperatures to breed, Silvanus cast a Self-Renewing Heat Containment Charm on a corner of his sitting room (and Anti-Copulation Charms on all but his current breeding pairs). He kept up the line, managing it with judicious outcrossings and meticulously tracking hundreds of pedigrees in a leather-bound journal. Hairless Puffskeins proved to have butter-soft skin and were twice as affectionate as the haired variety, as they craved the warmth of a human body (or any creature, for that matter, which created a spot of difficulty whenever he brought an injured predator inside to be nursed back to health). Rather sooner than later, they overran his sitting room and cheerfully invaded the rest of his quarters.

While magical prosthetics were superior to Muggle, they still didn't possess enough dexterity to satisfyingly pick one's nose (particularly when one's nose consisted only of two nostrils flush to his face and constricted by scar tissue), and Silvanus appreciated the creatures' appetites for bogeys nearly as much as their cuddlesome nature on draughty winter nights.

He knew he couldn't endure being tethered to a desk in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and, with the extent of his accumulated injuries, he had no prospects of being hired as a dragon keeper, a Re'em herder, a Bundimun exterminator, or even a gamekeeper's assistant, so he settled down to breeding his Puffskeins and dabbling in other, less licit areas of Magizoology.

He intensely missed the actual teaching part of being a teacher (even more than he had anticipated), but otherwise found that retirement was not so bad. He kept himself to himself mostly, occasionally venturing out to the Hog's Head during its off-peak hours, and spent most of his time engaging in the research and experimentation he'd never had the time for (or been permitted to do).

Silvanus wasn't antisocial; he just had a low tolerance for duplicity and pretence, and the polite little insincerities that normal social discourse relied upon grated his nerves so badly that his infrequent contacts with other people reaffirmed the wisdom of his solitary lifestyle. Most animals were straightforward, uncomplicated beings—if a Hippogriff didn't care for you, it was easy to discern by the chunk of your flesh dangling from its beak.

~o~o~

Silvanus knew—and the knowledge was bone-deep, engraved into his flesh—that it only took one slight misstep with any creature to imperil life and limb, and his latest experiments were no Hairless Puffskeins.

As the jaws closed around his shoulder, dribbling foul-smelling, stinging saliva down his neck, the trees in his field of vision swayed and swirled and began to fade into darkness. He gladly relinquished the burning pain for oblivion as he felt the tug behind the place where his navel used to be (before an enraged griffin pecked it out).

Another of the conciliations he'd managed to wring out of Dumbledore was a few charms cast by the great wizard himself. One protected his cottage, and another provided food from the Hogwarts larder, but the most important one turned the small amulet around his neck into a Portkey to St. Mungo's whenever he was injured to the point of incapacitation.

~o~o~

"What the hell were you playing with this time, Kettleburn?" Healer Smethwyk loomed above him with a sour expression on his face.

Silvanus couldn't lie, but he wasn't about to divulge any information, either, so he kept his mouth shut. They knew where he lived and wouldn't hesitate to send an Extermination Squad that would set his breeding programme back ten years.

"Your friendly beast has a nasty bite. None of my spells or potions are doing a bit of good, and the wound won't stop bleeding."

"It won't?" Silvanus eagerly twisted his neck to look, managing only to see Smethwyk's hand firmly pressing a wad of reddening gauze against his shoulder. Blackness edged his vision, and he gagged weakly, thankful for the Anti-Emesis Charm that gripped his stomach like an iron fist and kept his lunch in its proper place.

His interest elicited a look of disgust from Smethwyk. "You might think this is an exciting discovery, but it's nearly taken you to the door of the mortuary. You're lucky that this is an enlightened hospital willing to indulge that nutter Pye in his eccentricities, or there'd be nothing we could do for you."

"Where is Augustus?"

"Healer Pye is attending a workshop in Transylvania on preventing the transmission of vampirism, so I've contacted the witch he sometimes calls in to assist him in his . . . experimental work."

A big witch clad in dark robes hove into view, a scowl incising deep lines beside her mouth and across her forehead.

"Bulstrode, it's about time! This is that case we spoke about. Sort him out." Healer Smethwyk transferred his hold on the gauze, and with a nauseating flash of green robes, he was gone.

Some of the menace dissipated from the witch's countenance as she peered into Silvanus' face.

"Professor Kettleburn?"

"Silvanus."

"Millicent, then. Dumbledore said you were retiring to enjoy more time with your remaining limbs. I didn't realise this was what he meant."

"The old sod could only tell the truth when it was to his benefit, which wasn't often," Silvanus muttered through gritted teeth. "He told me I had to go for the good of Harry Potter, and thereby all of wizardkind." He paused. "I missed teaching, but I did make the best of enjoying my limbs while they lasted."

"So I see. . . ." Her words trailed off as she palpated his clavicle and scapula with one strong hand, the other being occupied with attempting to stanch the flow of blood. She leaned heavily on the wound, an almost sweet ache against the sharper pain of torn flesh. "Your bones seem to be intact, so all I should need to do is clean up the wound and stitch you up." She considered him for a moment. "And now?"

"An' now, wha?" Loss of blood was making a pretty good case for unconsciousness, and he was coming close to ceding the argument.

"Do you still enjoy yourself without your limbs?"

"Tha's a, a . . ." He fumbled for a suitable word. "an imper'nant question."

Millicent Bulstrode shrugged and tossed the sodden dressing to the floor, where it promptly vanished to the incinerator in the basement. "Yeah."

The crooked lines of his mouth twisted into a soppy grin. The candles floating overhead seemed to dim, then surge to a blinding wash of light as a long, thin pair of silver scissors snipped away the muscle tissue contaminated by the bile green venom. "I do my best," slid through his mind and valiantly tried to escape through the gaps between his teeth, but Silvanus was unable to ascertain their success as he succumbed to the darkness once more.

~o~o~

Silvanus awoke for a second time. The taste of iron lingered on his tongue from a Blood-Replenishing Potion that must have been forced down his throat while he was unconscious. A steady rhythm of small, sharp pains drew his attention inexorably back to his shoulder. Millicent was stitching the wound as placidly as one might darn a pair of socks, except that she was using her hands instead of her wand or an auto-charmed needle.

"Apparently Muggles have these anti-stetics to put their patients to sleep while they do this," she offered conversationally. The underlying layer of muscle was already pieced back together, and Millicent was doing the delicate work of splicing the shredded scraps of skin into a sufficient covering for the wound.

"So, those bits of thread aren't affected by the venom?"

"Nope." She hesitated, then added, "Well, you do have to be careful what kind you get. Augustus accidentally bought a temporary variety the first time he tried it out; they actually call them dissolvable sutures, but he hadn't read very closely. He said the thread dissolved almost immediately upon contact with a particularly virulent snakebite. I hear Smethwyk had his guts for garters over that one. It was very nearly the end of Augustus' experimentation, except that he happened to read the packet one more time before binning it.

"Once it's healing, we can Vanish the stitches, both inside and out. I think that's what Muggles use the dissolvable kind for; when there is no magical venom to interfere, they start to disintegrate after a few weeks, and then you don't have to disturb the new tissue growth to remove the stitches."

Satisfied that she seemed to be confident in her work, Silvanus let his head loll back and tried to distract himself from the pain in his shoulder and his unsettled stomach.

Millicent Bulstrode. He had a fair memory when it came to his students, although she hadn't actually ever had him for class. She'd been in Harry Potter's year—a Slytherin, if he wasn't mistaken—who had distinguished herself quite early on (to the staff, at least) as being the most likely source of tears, bloody noses, and bruises suffered by both the girls and the boys of her year. He remembered that she'd angered Minerva, Filius, and Pomona for committing violence against her classmates, and she'd vexed Severus nearly as much for readily admitting to her misdeeds when questioned.

Early on in his tenure as Headmaster, Dumbledore had sent Filch to relay a message to Silvanus regarding his attendance at the start-of-term welcoming feast.

Silvanus liked Argus. The caretaker was a bit too gleeful in his yearning for the return of corporal punishment, but at least he didn't attempt to mask his frustration with the admittedly filthy and occasionally malicious students who (intentionally or not) made his job a source of misery. Silvanus had even helped him plead his suit with Irma Pince. It was ironic that two confirmed bachelors should conspire to court the caustic old spinster, but Argus' persistence—if not his seduction strategies—eventually bore fruit.

Thus it was with a great number of apologies and curses that Argus relayed Albus' request that Silvanus spend the welcoming feast in his quarters. ("He's a right bastard, Albus is. He doesn't want to scare the little buggers off before they can be Sorted. Hmph! They ought to be scared.")

Silvanus kept no mirror in his rooms, as, even years later, it was disconcerting not to see all the missing bits that he had been born with, but he didn't find it fear-inducing (and he didn't imagine that any amount of disgust could prevent the students from gorging themselves on the spectacular array of food prepared by the most skilled house-elves in all of Britain). However, it wasn't worth the bother to argue over one meal, so long as he wasn't denied entrance to the Great Hall for the rest of the year.

The night of Harry Potter's Sorting, Silvanus' customary retreat to his chambers had been delayed by a chance encounter with Sybill Trelawney, who had been particularly agitated and would not let go of his robes until she had warned him of the terrible danger he faced in the morning (something even he could have predicted, as he would be starting the day with a third-year Gryffindor-Slytherin class that promised to keep him on his toes).

Once free of her clutches, he was crossing the entrance hall with as much haste as he could when a hard-faced first-year straggling behind the rest of the queue caught sight of him and stared intently at his scars.

"Did it hurt?" She spoke with the peremptory directness of her age.

"Yes."

"A lot?"

"Yes." It wasn't something he spoke of much, but she'd asked, and he'd always believed that an honest question deserved an honest answer.

"It happens, doesn't it?" The pronouncement sounded flat, like an adult's dismissal of the world's woe, but there was a childish uncertainty about her eyes.

"Miss Bulstrode! Please stop pestering Professor Kettleburn and join your classmates." Minerva McGonagall's voice pierced the muffled din seeping out of the Great Hall, and the girl jumped guiltily.

She fixed her gaze on Silvanus again, as though committing his visage to memory. "I'll see you again, won't I?"

"All done." Silvanus started as the flat of Millicent's hand thumped dully against his arm. "Don't overdo it until you've had the stitches out. I'd advise you against returning to your creatures, but I figure I'd be wasting my breath."

~o~o~

Silvanus answered the brisk knock at his door with no little trepidation. Not many people knew of the location of his dwelling, and none of them were in the habit of stopping by on a social call.

He'd never been a particularly tall man, and his prosthetic legs had been constructed shorter than the originals to lower his center of gravity and improve his balance, so he found himself stepping back from Millicent Bulstrode's towering frame, which filled the doorway and—for a moment—seemed to block out the daylight.

"I didn't know St. Mungo's made home visits."

She laughed, a loud bray that startled a young pair of Puffskeins that had nested rather precariously above the lintel; they tumbled onto Silvanus' shoulder, and he set them back up on their perch.

"They don't. I was looking for any excuse I could scrape up for coming out to see you, so I volunteered to check in on you rather than having you come back for a follow-up. Healer Smethwyk was only too happy to shift the responsibility. They're none too pleased with having to keep patching you up at Hogwarts rates."

The unexpected delight at seeing her again was instantaneously replaced by suspicion. "Why would you want to come out to see me?"

"The venom was unusual, but I'd recognise that fang configuration anywhere. That's a Bodmin Moorbeast, but crossed with something big and extremely nasty; maybe a Nuckelavee?"

"That'd be a violation of the Ban on Experimental Breeding," he countered mildly, feeling a cold prickle of fear scurry up his spine.

"Yeah, it would." She grinned, suddenly feral in her avidity. "It'd also be bloody brilliant!"

Silvanus relaxed. There was no mistaking the sincerity of her interest. One final question, then, before he admitted her into his confidence. "Where did you learn dental pattern identification? It wasn't on the Hogwarts curriculum when I was there."

Millicent stared, uncomprehending. She opened her mouth, closed it, and wrinkled her brow. Then an unpleasant understanding approaching dismay crossed her face. "That cunt! He didn't tell you? Shit! He was supposed to have gotten your consent by the time I arrived." She slammed her fist into the doorframe, and the Puffskeins above it plopped onto Silvanus' shoulder again. This time he lowered them to the ground to scurry away in alarm. "Fuck! And it's my fault for not checking." She growled—actually growled—in frustration. "Augustus usually handles that before he calls me in. I should've known . . ."

Silvanus knew better than to barge in on a troll dispute before he knew what it was about, and he figured this was a similar situation. Patience prevailed. Millicent stopped muttering angrily to herself, faced him squarely, and began speaking with resignation.

"I'm not employed by St. Mungo's. I'm not a Healer or a Mediwitch or even a Trainee Plaster-Sticker. I studied basic Magizoology, and then I apprenticed to a Squib vet who taught me Muggle techniques and their application to magical creatures. I'm very good at what I do, but I have no legal right to do it on human patients, particularly without their consent. You can report me directly to the Ministry of Magic, I suppose, although it's probably easier to do it through St. Mungo's. It's a hundred Galleon fine and a month in Azkaban for first-time offenders."

Silvanus cocked his head. "Do you do much of this stitching technique on the creatures you tend to?" Millicent gaped at him. "Come into the kitchen. I'm interested to hear about what you do."

While Silvanus put the kettle on, Millicent cleared a chair of its snoozing Hairless Puffskeins. Once she had settled into the chair, they slowly crept back to claim warm spots in her lap. She fondled a pair in her cupped hands, and they were soon humming loudly in pleasure. Silvanus found it hard to look away.

She answered his question of several minutes before and launched into what grew to be a two-teapot discussion of magical creatures and their care. She had taken advantage of the 1999 Spell and Potion Ban for Production Beasts and built a practice catering to those affected by the ban. Silvanus had been aware of the furor surrounding its enactment, but had never considered just how far-reaching its consequences were. Thirty days prior to the slaughter or harvest of an animal destined for standard magical uses, no spells could be used directly on the animal, nor could it be dosed with magically brewed potions. There were a few exceptions—no one was ever going to suggest facing down a dragon without a wand, but the hides had to cure for an extra two months before anyone could make so much as a gauntlet out of them.

"Most wizards want nothing to do with Muggle veterinary procedures—too messy, too time-consuming, too hands-on—so there aren't many of us licenced for it. I could work every waking hour and still turn down offers, but I'd be worn out by all that owner contact. I take my pick of the cases, and I only work with owners who agree to stay out my way."

Even at Hogwarts, Silvanus had lived a rather solitary life, so the ease of conversation caught him unawares. After Millicent finished telling him about the giant parchment sheep she'd tended in New Zealand, he sketched out his breeding programme (which did indeed involve a very tricky cross between Bodmin Moorbeasts and the Orcadian Nuckelavee). She listened attentively and offered a few ingenious suggestions of her own.

When the second teapot came up empty, Millicent sprang up, dislodging the dozing Puffskeins from her lap. She hadn't intended to stay so long, and there was still the matter of his stitches to see to.

Silvanus remembered discovering a dead Niffler caught in a gnome trap on one of his illicit expeditions into the Forbidden Forest. He'd been fourteen and curious, so he'd pried it out, warded it with a few clumsy spells, and returned every afternoon to investigate the decomposition process.

It had been fascinating to observe the disintegration undisturbed by the larger scavengers. The skin beside the festering death wound had bulged out and began to undulate. A tentative Cutting Spell exposed a writhing mass of maggots. He hadn't had a strong stomach then, either, and his tea had soon reappeared in the undergrowth a headlong dash away from the carcass.

The deep sutures unstitching themselves felt like maggots wriggling under his skin, and a quick glance confirmed the aptness of the simile. It was with great difficulty that he stifled his urge to gag until all the thread had been meticulously removed.

As Millicent took her leave with a promise to call again sometime soon, Silvanus realised that he'd enjoyed her forthright company and, for the first time in a great while, he eagerly anticipated another conversation.

~o~o~

Millicent reappeared on his doorstep sooner than either of them had expected. Without even a cursory greeting, she brusquely presented her predicament.

"I've got a Thestral mare experiencing dystocia that's gone into a panic and won't let anyone approach her. I figured you might know how to settle her down. I wasn't called in until just now, and she'll be dead in an hour if I can't get that foal out of her.

"I don't know as I have the strength and dexterity to do it alone anymore," Silvanus said regretfully, holding out his hands to demonstrate. His fingers curled stiffly towards his palms, not quite touching, and then slowly stretched out again. After all these years, it still took a frustrating amount of concentration and visual contact.

Millicent shrugged. "I've got an assistant. Just tell him what to do, and it'll be done."

Silvanus couldn't refuse to aid a creature in distress, so he agreed.

Millicent Apparated them into a large clearing deep within a boreal forest. A square-built wizard was waiting near a foaling pen. She put a hand on his arm and made her curt introductions.

"Greg, Silvanus. Silvanus, Greg." Greg looked at Silvanus mutely, no hint of recognition or even a smile of welcome on his broad face. He'd been in Millicent's year, Silvanus decided, but could remember no more.

A young witch in her twenties leaned on the fence, propping her foot on the bottom rail and hunching into herself. She stared anxiously at a spot towards the middle of the small paddock where the ground had been churned up. There was something off about whole the picture, and it took Silvanus a few moments to realise that the Thestral mare was standing by the far railing, head hanging near to the ground.

"She can't see them. What the bloody hell is she doing raising Thestrals if she can't see them?" he hissed to Millicent.

"It's the family business. Her parents are away on a Graphorn hunt in the Urals, and she's terrified of losing Nellie on her watch. She wasn't due for another month, but foals come on their own schedule, as you very well know."

Silvanus briefly outlined their plan of attack and then led the way into the paddock. The mare's wings flashed out, then furled as she recoiled from the intruders. Dried sweat laced her heaving flanks, and a pair of small hooves protruded from beneath her tail.

After backing the mare into a corner, Silvanus wrapped his arms behind her head, hugging it tight to his chest. She shrieked and began to writhe her sinuous neck. He moved with it; even though she was nearly worn out, she was still more than a match for his strength.

No sooner had he shouted, "Her eyes, Greg!" than two massive hands smoothed the eyelids over the white, staring eyes with surprising gentleness. The thrashing stopped abruptly, and the only movements he could feel were the mare's panting breaths and the quivering muscles in her legs. He called out, "She's about done in. You'd better hurry."

Millicent was already setting to work. Her sleeves had vanished, baring large biceps, and the flowing hem of her robes clung unnaturally close to her ankles. She laid her cheek on the mare's bony buttock and began to feel around to diagnose the problem.

"One of its wings is bent forwards, and it's catching on the rim of her pelvis."

She'd have to push the wing back far enough to get it righted. He remembered—when he still had a flesh and blood arm to do that sort of thing—the powerful clenching of the birth canal muscles that wore you out faster than doing press-ups. Millicent was drenched with sweat by the time she was shoulder-deep, and she grunted with the exertion of working against the contractions. Her face contorted and turned deep red as she strained to manipulate the errant wing.

The quivering in the mare's legs had progressed through trembling and into shaking, and she collapsed to her knees just as Millicent shifted the wing into place and pulled free. Silvanus and Greg helped to ease the mare onto her side, and then Greg joined Millicent in pulling on the forelegs. With the obstruction cleared, the foal quickly emerged into the sunshine. It was a beautiful colt, all bones and overlarge wings that flapped wildly as he attempted to clamber into a wobbly, knock-kneed standing position. His mother lay prone on the ground, too exhausted to tend to her foal (although she followed him with a watchful eye), so Greg knelt to rub him down with straw and nudge him towards a teat.

They waited for the afterbirth to be passed, which Millicent checked to see that it was intact and then scooped into a pail she'd transfigured from a handful of straw. "It's part of my fee," she told Silvanus. "If I gave it to you for your hybrids, would you let me feed it to them?"

~o~o~

"I'd like to kiss you." Millicent said the words in the same conversational tone as her previous comment, "I think you might want to add whole rabbit carcasses for a bit of variety," and in the same breath, even.

Half a face was better than no face at all (or so Silvanus surmised, not yet having the opportunity to find out and hoping he never would), but expressions of surprise and doubt and— well, most expressions tended to lose their communicative value.

After several long moments, Millicent spoke again. "You'll have to say something. I can't tell what you're thinking. If you'd rather snog a Horklump, just spit it out."

"I—" He swallowed. "What did you say?"

"You heard me," she replied and stared back at him implacably.

"I'm old enough to be your grandsire." There were other, more substantial objections, but that was the only one he could articulate while his brain was still reeling.

"In my family, you're only old enough to be my father."

"That's not any more comforting."

"It wasn't meant to be."

He kissed her. It was neither comforting nor comfortable, but it was good.

"It's easier without your nose getting in the way of mine." She kissed him again, hard, and backed him up against the rough stone wall next to the fireplace. Pinned in place, he closed his eyes and yielded himself to the sensations: the cool stone at his back and her warm bulk pressing him into it, her tongue probing the empty sockets between his remaining teeth and the catch of his close-cropped grey hair on the stones behind his head, her thumb digging painfully into the still-tender scar on his shoulder and the coarse wool of her work robes scratching his throat.

"Would you like—" His voice hoarsened painfully. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Would you like to remove your robes?"

He was probably being terribly forward, but that wasn't what made him anxious. He was a fair judge of people, and Millicent didn't seem the sort to be overly concerned with propriety. Far more likely was the rejection of all that the simple request implied. There were few witches he'd found to be tolerable company, even fewer he'd proposed intimacy with, and the ache caused by their repulsion at his mutilated body had been difficult to endure. Millicent had asked to kiss him, though, and he did not want to contemplate bearing the crushing of that frail hope.

The tall dragonhide boots came off first. They were daubed with Murtlap dung, but it was neither the first nor the last time his rugs were to have exotic excrement ground into their loose weaves. Her robes went next. She folded them clumsily and let them drop to the floor. Knickers and a sturdy bra followed, and then she was naked.

"You passed the test." Her voice was even, as though delivering an impassive pronouncement, but a flicker of satisfaction animated her face.

For a moment Silvanus was back at Hogwarts, in his seventh year, when one of his recurring nightmares involved sitting N.E.W.T.s in Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, and other subjects he'd not continued on with. Despite not giving a toss for his marks during his waking hours, in his dreams he was always terrified of failing. Occasionally such dreams would end with the realisation that his robes were being quickly nibbled to shreds by Chizpurfles as the entire student body watched in amusement. This brought his thoughts back to the present situation. "Test?" was all he managed to croak.

"You asked me to take my clothes off. And you watched." There was more than a trace of anger in her voice as she added, "I won't be anyone's convenient orifice."

Millicent bent to retrieve her wand from her robes as Silvanus watched eagerly, her belly folding over on itself and her breasts swinging away from her body in the shadowy gloom.

"I don't do anything halfway," she warned as she flipped her wrist to send his curtains scudding back on their rods. White winter sunlight streamed in to illuminate the room, making her pale skin gleam with its brilliance. Her chin snapped up, and her arms abortively made as if to wrap around her torso. She curled her hands into fists and thrust them to her sides.

"I didn't know I had a Muggle grandmother until I returned to Hogwarts for my final year." The harshness of her voice matched the hardness of her eyes, and there was an unrelenting challenge being offered that he recognised all too well.

What had been hidden in the dull glow from the hearth now manifested itself with vivid clarity. A large scar, easily an inch in width, emerged from under the droop of her right breast and slanted down and across her body to disappear into the crease where her belly sagged against her left thigh.

"I won't pretend to understand the circumstances, but I know something of the cost of a scar like that." It seemed to shimmer there in the bright light, the pain and the perseverance written in one great slash across her skin. "It's beautiful." He paused to consider. "You're beautiful."

Some of the stiffness eased from her bearing, but she held up a hand to stall his impulsive advance towards her. "No. Your turn."

"My—?"

"You've already made free in offering your opinion of my body. Now let me see yours."

Her demand brooked no argument, and it would have been callous to dispute the justice of reciprocity, so he settled for a hesitant, "I've not done this before."

He supposed it was telling that she offered no reciprocal admission, but what it revealed, he wasn't sure. Instead, Millicent unceremoniously dragged Silvanus to his bedroom and pushed him down onto his straw mattress.

She opened his robes by hand—clasp by clasp—painstakingly unveiling first his chest, mottled red and white with scars, and then his navel-less abdomen. She smiled a small, private smile upon discovering that, like most wizards of his generation, he preferred the wind to have complete and unfettered access to his privates. At least, he hoped that's why she was smiling. It could have been because he was only averagely endowed or because a dirty joke had come to mind or because of the Doxy tooth marks ringing the head of his cock. She seemed pleased enough, though, as she continued to uncover the hairy stumps of his thighs that changed abruptly to the smooth, regular surface of his prosthetic legs.

Being on display was uncomfortable, so he quickly averted her attention by lifting his hand to one of her breasts. Concentrating hard so that he didn't accidentally squeeze too strongly, he cupped it with what he hoped was a pleasing touch.

He could see her breast overflowing his hand, could even detect pressure and a faint warmth in his palm, but he couldn't feel the delicate softness of the skin or the firmness of the nipple poking out between his fingers. He had chosen, he reminded himself. It had been his choice, which was more than most people could say. Every hydra, every dragon, every Chimaera—he'd made the choice each and every time. His eyes stung.

"It's not the same, is it?" Gentleness lay awkwardly on her features, and it was only the absence of pity in her voice that kept him from lurching off the bed and fleeing into the forest.

He shook his head and withdrew his hand, fastening a burning glare on it to avoid meeting her gaze. Finally, long after she should have abandoned him for the pathetic old cripple he was, Silvanus lowered his head to nuzzle tentatively at her breast. She eased her own hand underneath it to afford his tongue a better angle.

"Neck before nipples. If the dictionary can manage to get that right, you should at least have the decency to try."

Silvanus choked on the nipple in question. There, sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed and looking as though he were correcting a particularly dense first-year, was a cadaverous apparition dripping silvery blood from a ragged wound in his neck.

Millicent appeared unconcerned by this ghostly intrusion. "The dictionary puts cunt before either, Severus, but you've never suggested that particular order."

Severus Snape snorted. "If you're going to be pedantic, then you must concede that cock precedes all of them, yet I see no movement on your part in that direction."

She reached for Silvanus' cock. Her large, calloused hand squeezed hard, and he winced.

"Ease up a bit," he cautioned breathlessly. The last really satisfying wank he'd had had been in the summer of 1979, the night before he lost his left forearm trying to distract a vengeful Chimaera, and (despite the twinge of discomfort from her forceful grip) it was gratifying to feel a real human hand again.

"Merlin's balls, woman! Are you trying to break it off for yourself?"

Maybe it was the lightening of her grip to a firm caress, or maybe it was the sudden, overwhelming realisation that there was a woman in his bed with her hand on his cock of her own free will, or maybe—just maybe—it was the incongruously silken voice speaking so crudely. Whatever it was, it brought him swiftly to full arousal.

"He has the same effect on me," Millicent murmured. No doubt in her mind, then. She shifted her legs apart and tugged at his hand with her free one. "Do you want to feel— Oh." She released his hand at his reflexive withdrawal.

"No, but I could taste . . . ."

Her nose wrinkled, her face bunched up, and she pressed a fist to her mouth. "That's disgusting."

Severus sneered, "You stick your hand up the fundaments of animals for a living, and you call this disgusting?"

Millicent's whole body shuddered, and she heaved herself into a sitting position and snarled, "Shut up! If you had—" A flickering glimpse of a wounded beast, and then she regained control of herself, breathing heavily as she lay back and stared grimly up at the ceiling.

It was enough to silence Severus. He swallowed the retort evident in his opened mouth and bowed his head in what seemed like regret. It was as close to an apology as Silvanus had ever seen him come.

Silvanus, himself, was reminded of an incident with the Western Europe Creature Attack Search and Rescue Unit. The year before hiring on at Hogwarts, he'd been at a loose end. With a passion for Magizoology and a calm head in the face of danger, he had enthusiastically volunteered his services to the nascent group (he was the only surviving founding member—not something to boast about, though, as he was the only one to transfer away before his demise). They'd been notified of a unicorn accidentally Banished to the Isle of Drear and had located her in the throes of a Quintaped attack. The Quintapeds were predictable in their malevolence and were easy enough for the skilled team to evade. The unicorn had concealed the extent of her injuries, however, and in her frenzied panic, she'd gutted a man with her horn.

He welcomed the familiar frisson of fear and adrenaline, and was surprised to discover that it was commingled with lust. Before he had time to analyse that, Millicent sighed and sat back up.

"Let's just get on with it." Climbing astride Silvanus' hips, she settled cautiously onto his erection. Her belly spilled over onto his—warm and soft and enveloping—as she leaned forward to adjust her position.

They fumbled through the act aided (or at least accompanied) by Severus' running commentary, which halted unexpectedly towards the end. The dearth of commands was so noticeable that, even though he was on the verge of orgasm, Silvanus glanced towards the foot of his bed. Severus was hunched over, his hands working rhythmically in his lap. He convulsed as a silvery liquid, indistinguishable from the blood flowing from his neck, spilled forth from between his clenching fingers.

Silvanus threw his head back in disbelief. I'm being fucked for the first time in my life, by a beautiful witch young enough to be my granddaughter, and there's a voyeuristic ghost dripping spunk on my rug. It was absurd—absurdly wonderful—and he laughed as he came.

"What was so funny?" Millicent queried when they had both recovered enough for coherent speech.

"Most days, Life spits in your eye, and you're just grateful it's not worse. Sometimes, though, she grabs you by the cock and gives you a nice, sweet tug." The words, once out of his mouth, didn't quite express the joy he meant by them, but they must have conveyed his intention well enough, as Millicent smiled in response.

"Severus never struck me as the type to linger after he died," Silvanus mused. The ghost had vanished sometime in the intervening minutes as silently as he had appeared.

"He loved deeply—obsessively, even—but he's never been loved. That's what he wanted more than anything in life, and no one ever gave it to him."

A resounding crash from the kitchen startled Silvanus, and he was halfway out of bed before Millicent pulled him back.

"Don't worry. He's not a poltergeist—he can't actually hurt any of your stuff. He's scarily good at Summoning ghostly items to hurl, and they make a spectacular noise, but they just pass through anything in their way." The crashes were attaining a peculiar rhythm, disconcerting despite Millicent's assurance.

"Severus told you that he's pining for love?" It was difficult to imagine him admitting anyone into his confidence, although death could do strange things to a person.

"I worked it out myself. I fancied him in school and spent a lot of time watching him. I didn't suss out the spying and double-dealing—not even Voldemort cracked that one—but his feelings were there to read like a book for anyone who bothered." The kitchen fell silent, and the contented humming of the Puffskeins could be heard once more.

Millicent curled into herself, pillowing her head in the crook of her arm and pulling the Diricawl down duvet up to tuck under her chin. After a few moments, she opened one eye.

"I don't like people watching me sleep. Either shut your lids or I'm off."

Silvanus placed a kiss on her forehead (well, more of a lick than a kiss, as his upper-lip-lessness rendered unilateral kisses nigh impossible) and shut his lids as commanded.

~o~o~

"We'll collect the Fwooper eggs, shall we?"

Silvanus grunted his assent to Millicent's rhetorical question and burrowed deeper into the warmth of the bedclothes. She was an early riser, and he was thankful that he no longer had to be. It had been one of the few genuine pleasures he could unreservedly anticipate during that difficult first year of unemployment. He wasn't quite sure what assistance Severus gave, besides offering peevish remarks about not interfering with the Silencing Charms or breaking the brightly-coloured eggs, but Millicent never left for the Fwooper coop without her ghostly escort trailing behind.

Millicent hadn't made any fuss moving in—just another pair of dung-smeared boots beside his, a few extra dirty dishes and an extra pair of hands to wash them. Most of the tools of her trade were stored in the shed behind the cottage. She brought the wounded creature inside her, too—seen but rarely and always in a flare of violence—and the more Silvanus thought about it, the more he supposed that there was a kindred beast hiding deep within himself. Another bachelor of his years might have bridled at the intrusion, but he found himself strangely content. It was still his home, only more so.

Severus, for all his insubstantiality, took more getting used to.

Severus the boy had begun his education burdened by resentment and Dark knowledge and all the ugliness of blood pride. Over the course of his schooling, he had attempted to practice subterfuge and stealth and failed miserably at it, much to the delight of his Gryffindor tormentors and the despair of his Slytherin housemates.

Severus the colleague, however, had mastered the art, and deception heaped upon deception until one could no longer make out the true shape of the man. His emotions (perhaps as a safety valve so he did not implode under the crushing weight of all that deceit) were as brazen as ever: bitterness, seething anger, pride, grasping covetousness, spitefulness, and hatred. This flagrant display of all the unseemly passions that discomfited polite society did not endear him to any of his colleagues, save Silvanus.

Severus the ghost was somewhat perplexing. He was snide and rude, high-handed in offering his opinion whether it was wanted or not, and prone to glowering at the Puffskeins. He also listened to Millicent's tirades about inconsiderate shepherds and instructed Silvanus in more efficient methods of brewing pain-alleviating potions and sometimes even told a straight-faced joke that wasn't comprehended until several seconds after he'd casually strolled away through a wall. Severus came and went according to his impenetrable moods, although he always accompanied Millicent on her egg-collecting excursions, and he always sat in the high-backed chair at the foot of the bed while they made love, wearing a hungry expression so intense it seemed to impart a faint flush of pink to his grey features.

~o~o~

It was a balmy late summer night, and the windows (fortified with Insect Repelling Charms) were open to catch the occasional breeze and the incessant sounds of the forest settling down to slumber. Millicent and Silvanus, themselves, were turning in for the night when Silvanus felt a pressure on his arm and looked over to see Millicent prodding it cautiously.

"Do you ever take them off?" she asked, brow furrowed.

The limbs suddenly seemed to press into the straw ticking like lead weights, pinning him as securely in place as iron shackles. "I have a yearly inspection at St. Mungo's. They take each in turn to clean and repair damaged parts."

Millicent considered this gravely. "Would you trust me to take them off?"

The question caught him off guard, more intimate than sex and twice as frightening. "Do you promise not to run off without putting them back?"

A glint of wry amusement flickered in her eyes, but she replied steadily, "Of course."

"Then, yes."

Millicent ran her hands up his left leg, feeling for the seam of joining, where flesh and charmed wood converged. She raised an eyebrow. "I take it this doesn't just twist off?"

Silvanus showed her the counter-spell to release the prosthetics, and she removed them one by one and laid each gently on the floor.

He'd never had all four off at once, and without their substantial weight he felt oddly light. After an interminable moment of irrational panic that, unmoored, he was in danger of floating up off the bed to be stopped only by the ceiling, Millicent lay down beside him and planted a heavy palm on his chest, anchoring him to the bed once more.

Usually impatient with foreplay, she now took her time. Her fingers crisscrossed his body, following every gouge, ridge, and shiny burn. Her own experience had obviously taught her to press firmly so as not to irritate the somewhat numbed scar tissue, each one in a slightly different stage of regaining sensation. She toyed with the three patches of hair left on the non-cicatrized parts of his chest, curling it around her forefinger and tugging gently.

Silvanus closed his eyes, unable to bear the ineffable sweetness of watching her broad, work-roughened hands tracing the damaged skin with a tenderness that should have been reserved for delicate, precious things.

By the time her thumbs found the crests of his hipbones, he could wait no longer. It was awkward, having just his uneven stumps with which to gain leverage, but Millicent alleviated most of his initial frustration with a few judiciously placed pillows.

They were joined, groaning and panting towards completion, when Silvanus suddenly felt something cold slide up the length of his cock. Millicent's muscles clenched out of rhythm at the intrusion. His eyes flew open in confusion. They looked first to the chair, as Severus had been uncharacteristically silent throughout the proceedings, only to find it vacant. Then his near vision sharpened, and he encountered an astonishing sight.

Millicent must have been unbearably cold. Severus was kneeling behind her (and Silvanus was thankful that the knotted remains of his legs were insensible to temperature). Her eyes were closed, and her head tipped to the side to bare her neck to the spectral lips descending upon it. Severus' long fingers curved around her breasts like tendrils of mist, sinking into her flesh with every upward roll of her hips and reappearing on the downward thrust.

Unlike ordinary cold, the supernatural chill did not dampen Silvanus' ardour; if anything, the exquisitely uncomfortable sensation seemed to heighten his pleasure, and as he approached his climax, the room, Severus, and even Millicent faded from his view.

When Silvanus regained his breath and his sight, Severus was gone. Millicent was nestled around him, and he could feel the shivers that still coursed through her body.

He quickly closed his eyes to avoid the inevitable request, only to feel a finger jab at his ribs. "Should I put them back on now?" she whispered.

"In the morning," he replied in an equally hushed voice. He was helpless as a newborn Puffskein, and in some strange way he relished it. Morning would come soon enough to reassume the weight of his false limbs and all their attendant burdens.

He'd always had an affinity for dangerous creatures, and nothing was more dangerous than a wounded beast. Perhaps the most dangerous creature of all had been himself, oblivious to the inner wounds that were far more grievous than the external. Millicent (and Severus, he was sure of it) had recognised this and set about patching him up so deftly that he had been unaware of it all. He hoped fervently that he could return the favour someday, until—in a moment of terrifying clarity—he realised that he already had.