AN: Alright, kids. I'm sorry for the delay. I kept putting off writing this scene because I really, really just didn't want to write it. But the good news is that my procrastination led me to really plot out the next several chapters, so I finally know how we're going to get from here, to the opening scene of Deathly Hallows. Yay!

Chapter 3: Humiliation

Draco felt like he was in a fog as he heard Snape's name called.

"Severus, haven't you a new toy, too?" The voice wasn't the Dark Lord's, but came from the man sitting between Snape and the Dark Lord. Draco hadn't even noticed him come in, and he couldn't see him from where he sat on the floor.

He felt a wave of someone else's - Snape's - anxiety washing over him, and that really didn't help.

"Yes, but he's hardly worth the time. I'm afraid asking him to perform even the simplest tasks will leave us, as always, disappointed," Snape sneered.

"Oh come now, let's see what the boy can do," came the silky tones of the mysterious man.

"I see your... appetites... haven't changed much since your school days, Pious," Snape sneered back, and Draco could feel something dark, and long-seeded, rising up from the pit of Snape's stomach.

"Nor yours, I'm told," Draco heard the man - Pious, apparently - mumble under his breath.

"Come on, bring out the little bugger!" came the harsh growl of Crabbe Sr., from across and down the table.

Other shouts and jeers echoed around the room and Draco recognised many of the voices. Goyle, Dolohov, Travers, Selwyn, Nott.

But Draco felt himself in a daze as he followed Snape, led by the leash but controlled by the collar around his neck.

Waves of mixed anxiety and something artificially and unconvincingly calming passed over him from Snape, though he wasn't sure if Snape was trying to calm him, or just himself.

They climbed the narrow steps up to the makeshift stage slowly, and it felt to Draco like climbing to a gallows.

Don't be so dramatic he heard Snape muttering in his mind.

Too soon, Draco was standing in front of the jeering crowd, just trying to remember to breathe.

Which is about when he heard Yaxley's gruff low voice shout, "A bit overdressed, Master Malfoy?" and with a whoosh of air he felt every stitch of clothing on his body stripped away.

Naked.

Naked in front of a crowd of jeering onlookers. Men and women he knew, men he'd stood beside while others had been tortured in his place. Men he knew had been bitterly jealous of the Dark Lord's favouritism, and who were know delighting in his fall from grace.

The redness of his cheeks burned and pricked his eyes, but he remained stalwart, refusing them the pleasure of seeing him cry. He held his head high, jaw clenched, and tried to tune into the waves of calming emotion coming intermittently off of Snape, who stood behind him, and did nothing.

"Go on then!"

"Show us the goods!" He heard someone – Dolohov? – shout, and then he felt the strange, clunky force of someone's imperius, no where near as elegant and the Dark Lord's or Snape's – urging him to turn around, to bend over, but he resisted, because there was no grace to it, and he recognized it for what it was.

Only when he felt Snape's own, delicate, almost seductive imperius, did he allow himself to question whether he didn't want to turn around after all, allowing himself to be convinced that yes, he did, he wanted to give in to them, to turn around, to spread his feet on the smooth wooden surface of the stage floor, to bend over slowly until his hands clasped his ankles, baring his arse for all to see.

He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the occasionally painful bursts of guilt coming off of Snape.

Not helping, he complained, jaw clenched.

Shut up, boy, he heard back.

Then he felt someone shoot a whipping charm, and then another, against his thighs, and his arse.

"He is such a pretty little thing, isn't he?" He heard the unmistakable, cruel giggle of his Aunt Bella. "So pretty, just like his mummy!"

If Snape hadn't in that instant reinforced his imperius, Draco probably would have turned around and spat at the bitch, but he restrained himself, cheeks burning with humiliation and rage.

"Go on, then! Show us what he's good for!" Came the lilting drawl of Syllian Selwyn.

Stand up, he heard Snape order, clearly opting for direct commands over the subtley of his imperius.

Come over here. Draco did. He walked over to Snape and stood in front of him, eyes fixed on the million little black buttons running from throat to groin down his professor's robes, his fisted clenched.

Get on your knees, he heard. But was there something strained in Snape's voice? He complied, dropping to his knees on the hard stage floor.

Just… just do it… he heard Snape say, but the emotional quality was drowned out by the waves of disgust and fury coming off of the man, nearly overpowering him. He struggled with nausea that wasn't even his own, and with the overwhelming shame it produced.

Yet he complied. He opened the Snape's trousers, pulled apart his boxers, and placed his flaccid cock in his mouth. What if I'm so awful at this, Snape disowns me? Hands me off? He's obviously not interested himself…

Shut up, boy, you're not helping, he heard Snape whisper in his mind, and felt the cock in his mouth swelling. Encouraged, he worked harder, opening the back of his throat to take him deeper and deeper, sucking and swirling his tongue over the tip with every pass, feeling the pressure building through the bond, rising as his own body temperative began to rise, and his cock began to swell, trying to block out the lewd shouts and jeers of the onlookers.

And then, he felt a wave of panic and regret wash over him, before he even heard the word, Stop. And then, turn around.

And then: I have to do this.

Before he could really register it, he was on his hands and knees, facing away, arse bared. A faint, weak, probably invisible prep charm stung through him, but it wasn't enough... surely Snape didn't mean to…

But he did.

Sharp pain rippled through him as he felt the large member thrust inside him. It felt like he was being torn in two. He bit his tongue but couldn't stop himself from crying out in pain, raising shouts of jubilation from the audience.

Thrust after thrust sent shocks of pains throughout his body, again and again, and tears streaming down his face unheeded, now. Yet through the pain he felt the swelling pleasure rising like bile in Snape's belly, pushing it's way through the stifling guilt, and disgust, and shame, pressing into him a thin ribbon of pleasure than he, too, felt, until finally, in a white hot flash, Snape came, shuddering into him.

It was over.

Draco stumbled out of the hall, the leash on his collar hanging down around his ankles. Blood, and probably semen, and probably shit, dribbled down the back of his bare legs.

Snape walked in front him, at his usual brisk pace, and Draco struggled more than ever to keep up, to not lose sight of him, as Snape's billowing black robes disappeared around the corner leading to the stairs up to their quarters.

But as soon as Draco turned the corner, he felt himself thrown backward by the strength of a stunning spell, and then, in a daze, found himself to be floating, somehow. He could hear, and feel, Snape's leviosa. He struggled against the restraints as he was floated back up their room. To be robbed even of the dignity to walk away from his own torture on his own two feet - it was unbearable.

No sooner had Snape closed the bedroom door behind them, and bolted it shut, did Draco feel himself hurtled through the door into the bathroom and dropped into the cold, empty tub.

And as soon the stunning spell was lifted, Draco sat up, and with as much dignity as he could manage, reached for the little bar of soap, still gooey and wet from his bath earlier. Snape turned on the tap, sending stingingly hot water rushing over his sore backside.

Then, to his surprise, Snape unbuttoned his long black robes and hung them over the back of the little stool in the corner, and then unbuttoned and rolled up the white sleeves of his shirt.

Snape intended to help, it occurred to him.

"No, no! You can't... you don't get to... how can you? After you..." Draco struggled to articulate through the throbbing rage in his temples, and the nauseating guilt - Snape's guilt - that he desperately needed to ignore. "And what is this?" He shouted, grasping at the collar around his neck and wincing as it stung him, leaving his fingers purple and sore. Still he clawed at it, desperate to be freed of the intimacy it forced upon him, aching to be rid of the shared experience, the shared emotions, it was all too much.

"Stop that!" Snape barked, yanking his hands away and brushing across all the stinging purple stains, making them disappear.

Then, more calmly, he explained: "It's an old slave spell. The spell itself takes on a shape unlikely to raise eyebrows among muggles, but obviously has additional functions. It's meant to make the subject more... pliable," Snape explained. "And this," he said, indicating the last of the purple stains on Draco's hands, "it designed to let the Master know when his slave has tried to break free."

Well, that made sense, at least.

"Wait, you...?"

"Of course I cast it, stupid boy. The moment the Dark Lord granted you to me. I could hardly have you making a scene and jeopardising everything even more than usual!"

"Did you know?" Draco asked, his voice as cold as he could make it. "Did you know what they had planned for tonight?"

Snape snorted like this was absurd question. That didn't help.

"You knew! You knew and the best you could come up with was a bloody collar to make it look more real?"

"You think I wanted to spoil my evening performing such a grotesque ritual?" Snape snarled back.

"Oh, don't pretend you didn't enjoy it! I could feel it, remember? Must be a nice change from having to bend over for your werewolf mutt!"

Snape's voice was barely a whisper of ice when he answered, "I would rather bend over for James fucking Potter, back from the dead, than ever have to…" his voice wavered slightly, "to rape you for them again."

Draco was too stunned to respond to that. He watched as Snape pinched the bridge of his long nose and sighed, looking suddenly very old, and very tired.

Presently, he began to speak again, "Now that the worst is over, though, I hardly think we've any use for it anymore, at least in private," he said, leaning in almost uncomfortably close, his cold fingers sliding over Draco's shoulders and up to his neck, his thumbs bare brushing over his throat in a way that made Draco almost dizzy, before slipping back to the base of his skull, his face furrowed in concentration, as he unbuckled the collar by hand, and pulled it off, and laid it gingerly on the stool atop his robes.

Then, before Draco could protest, he reached for a washcloth hanging off of the side of the sink, and began to lather it with soap, before sliding it along the now raw and overly sensitive ring around Draco's neck, where the collar had been.

And he didn't stop. Warm, slick hands and the soft cloth slid over his shoulders, and down his long arm, and he leaned forward against his knees to let the cloth scrub and scratch along his sore and aching back.

And when strong hands took him by the shoulders and laid him back against the rim of the tub, exposing his chest, his legs, his nakedness, he did not resist. He only closed his eyes while Snape washed him softly, allowing himself to be a strange and intimate proxy for Snape's own absolution.

It was over too soon.

The last warm cascade of water washed over him, and he stood, shivering now from the heat, and exhaustion, and the disorienting loss of the connection from his collar. He had no idea how Snape felt now, seeing him standing there, naked and vulnerable just as he had not an hour ago on the banquet stage, but willingly, and alone.

He couldn't tell what motivated Snape to find a softer towel, and wrap him up, nor what drove him to retrieve a set of his own black robes for him to wear, nor still what drove him to lead Draco not his pallet in the corner of the room, but to Snape's own bed, where Draco lay down on what felt to him like heavenly softness after so long on the hard cold ground.

Snape pulled the desk chair over to the side of the bed, and sat down heavily, his joints creaking audibly. It must have been past 2am now, Draco realized.

When Snape finally spoke again, his voice was quiet, but no less stern.

"They will never trust you again unless you do your time, Draco, you know this. If your rehabilitation as a member of the circle is achieved through anything other than ruthlessly clawing your way back up from a state of abject humiliation, you undermine them, and me, and they will always resent you."

Draco nodded. He knew that, of course. Simple Slytherin politics.

"Fortunately for you," Snape continued, "you won't have to stoop to the very bottom. Anyone else would have been whored out to the whole group by now, and might have a few missing fingers, or an eye, if not a hand or foot to match Pettigrew's."

Draco swallowed and nodded numbly. Yes, he knew that. It didn't make the humiliation of being taken by his professor in front of a crowd of jeering on-lookers any less painful, though.

He almost didn't dare to ask, but he needed to know, needed to have hope, have something to hold onto. "Is there… do you have a plan?" He asked quietly.

Snape smirked, but it was a grim expression. "A plan for your rehabilitation?"

Draco nodded.

"Yes," Snape answered, and there was just enough finality in it that Draco decided he would believe it.