WARNING: This is a slash story, which means it contains male/male erotic content involving consenting adults. If you're not of legal age or are offended by such material, please go find something else to read.

Title: Ave Ignis
Author: Ren
E-Mail: humbleren@hotmail.com
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Written for the Snape Fuh-Q Fest, Scenario #70: An illness/injury drives Snape into despair, and his methods of self-treatment become increasingly desperate and dangerous. The cumulative effect of Cruciatus is chronic pain. Snape finds his palliative in unlikely places.
Warnings: adult themes including masochism
Disclaimer: Alas, the characters and concepts in the following story do not belong to me. They are the property of JKR, who actually treats them a lot better than I do, so there you go.

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He'd tried potions, at first. Both wizard and muggle concoctions, searching feverishly through text and grimoire until he thought he must be resistant to every ailment known to either, except that which plagued him.

It might have been easier, he thought, if there were only some visible sign of his suffering. Blood or disfigurement or blindness - anything but this ceaseless, hideous ache that gnawed at him from beneath both skin and sinew, torturing the very marrow of his bones.

The pain was constant and unyielding, stealing sleep and sometimes rational thought until he imagined himself one of the faceless cripples in Knockturn Alley, curled in on themselves and their missing pride, oblivious to anything outside their own despair.

It had not the sharp bite of a cut, simple and somehow satisfying, nor the purifying agony of cruciatus itself, the paroxysms of which erased even the memory of other pains as insignificant, and it was this last, finally, that made him think.

It came to him under the aegis of crucio; the realisation that beneath the shrieking fire of his blood the expected sullen throb of his bones had disappeared.

Ave ignis purgans.

It came to him, that perhaps pain could be subsumed and conquered by another, more tangible tormenting of the flesh; ecstasy through agony, suffering become surcease.

To be redeemed from fire by fire.

He needed to explore the more subtle degrees of pain. No need, after all, to suffer more than was absolutely necessary.

New scars, as well, would be noticed and commented on, and he had no desire to render himself even more unbeautiful.

So he mixed the potion with utmost attention to detail; nothing corrosive, and nothing that would kill. Fire ants and hornet wings and ashes from a burning man, mixed with goat's milk because he rather liked the taste.

He forced himself to let the liquid cool naturally before he drank it.

It took him a full five minutes before he started to scream.

He came to his senses on his office floor, limp and exhausted and glad of the silencing charm he had cast. The relentless ache of his bones was gone, and he pressed his cheek against the cold stone and allowed himself to laugh, in both giddy relief and very slight hysteria.

The hoarse, rasping sound of his voice was to be expected; after all, his insides had just undergone the liquid equivalent of an enthusiastic sanding.

He remained supine, afraid to rise lest the movement trigger the ache's return, until his muscles began to cramp with the cold and he levered himself with some reluctance to his feet...

...Only to double over, racked with harsh, frustrated sobbing, as the plague in his bones roared back to life once again.

An hour's grace, nothing more, and he slammed his fist in a fit of temper against the wall, feeling the grind of broken bones and knowing it would not sustain him.

He had a class to teach, and the willpower required to heal himself was almost enough to make him weep.

Lupin would be arriving soon for his potion.

The werewolf had been moody and snappish all day as the wolf inside him sensed its coming freedom. Today, gentle Remus had bared his teeth at a group of insolent Slytherins and snarled.

It was easy enough to add a potent aphrodisiac to the mixture as he stirred.

The look of weary gratitude Lupin shot him as he downed the potion induced a momentary guilt, but the glimpse of sharp white teeth was enough to override it, that and the knowledge that tonight was going to hurt.

He judged the time perfectly, knocking on the door to Lupin's hide in a pretence at civility before showing himself in. Remus was coiled on the floor, tense and scowling but still human.

And naked.

The hard length of flesh between the man's thighs was...satisfying.

"Why are you here?" The snarl in the voice made him shiver.

Snape tilted his head slightly and removed his robe, gaze fixed on the other man. He had not bothered with clothes underneath, and he watched as Lupin leaned ever so slightly towards him, pink tongue darting out as if to taste the air between them.

"I'll hurt you." More growl than voice, this time, and Snape felt the pulse of it in his own body, dropping one hand to heated flesh to soothe and to tease until with a sharp barking sound Lupin exploded to his feet and stalked across the distance between them.

"I'll hurt you," he repeated, and Snape smiled.

"Good," he purred, felt the response to his voice in the helpless jolt of hips against his own, and leaned in for a taste of the other man's fangs.

Just once, he searched for a hint of the man and saw only the golden eyes of the wolf to come before he was pinned to the floor and rolled, sprawled face down with sharpening teeth fastened onto the nape of his neck and almost-claws digging into the skin of his hips.

A bite would not infect until the change was complete; still, he found the fear intoxicating.

He felt Lupin lift his head briefly, heard him speak softly, the words slurred by lengthening fangs. "You drugged me, didn't you? I've come five times today and it hasn't been enough."

The accusation was punctuated by quick thrusts of Lupin's cock against him, hot and urgent and weeping slickly onto his skin. Stiff fingers plunged into him without warning and he grunted.

"More," he managed, and felt sharp pain in his shoulder as Lupin bit down, felt the trickle of blood past his collarbone and down over his chest.

The fingers thrust into him again, curling inside so he moaned and pushed helplessly back, needing it, pleading wordlessly.

Low animal chuckle behind him and Lupin bit down harder, teeth sinking into him as the fingers were removed and the blunt hardness of his cock shoved ruthlessly inside.

The length and thickness of it cramped all the muscles in his gut, slamming into his prostate with every plunge inside and creating a maddening cycle of pain-pleasure-pain until he shrieked, feeling the rough stone abrading his skin and the puncturing of his flesh from claw and fang, and the warm slickness of his own release against his belly as the werewolf above him howled and spurted inside him and fell backwards, screaming as he changed.

He lay panting, unable to move out of sheer physical relief; the ache gone and another, more intimate ache purged also. His eyes snapped open, feeling warm, damp breath against his cheek, and he looked at the wolf with nothing more than mild curiosity.

It was still Lupin in there, the potion made certain of that. His was in no danger from the wolf; the question remained as to whether Remus himself was angry enough to bite him of his own volition.

The wolf eyed him for a moment, and then made a peculiar coughing sound that resembled nothing so much as a laugh. There was the brief swipe of a wet tongue against his cheek, and then it padded away to sprawl in a corner.

Apparently, then, he was forgiven.

He performed a brief cleaning spell and donned his robes; the wolf had its eyes shut and appeared for all intents and purposes to be asleep, so he let himself out of the hide and made his way back to the dungeons.

Three hours' grace, this time, and it occurred to him that he really shouldn't have enjoyed it quite so much.

Pain untempered by pleasure, then, and the fiercer the pain the better, and the longer the relief.

There was only one pain he knew that outstripped all others; the one that would flay him from the inside out and burn the ache away to nothing, maybe forever.

Ironic, perhaps, that the cause of the ache should also be the means of its banishment.

To be redeemed...

The tip of his wand felt reassuringly cool and blunt against his overheated forehead. His hand did not shake in the slightest, and his voice was calm and clear as he spoke the single word of the spell.

"Crucio."

And the world. Turned. Red.

He awoke to whiteness, and the absence of pain.

Not even the lingering aftershocks of crucio remained, and he wondered over that until his surroundings focused further, and he looked into the sombre gaze of Dumbledore, who stood watching him silently.

The medical wing, then. Not entirely unexpected, but still he cringed against an obscure feeling of shame.

"Young man, you're very lucky to be alive." There was something like grief in the Headmaster's voice, and Snape frowned, waiting for the expected anger, or contempt. The apology took him by surprise.

"I'm sorry, Severus, that I let things go so far. That I didn't even realise your life had become so difficult that you felt you had to resort to...this." One hand gestured helplessly over the hospital bed, and Snape felt a cold wave of fear run through him. Albus Dumbledore was never helpless. It went against the natural order of things.

"It's not -" he began, and then stopped when no sound at all emerged from his mouth.

Albus' smile was sad, and very gentle. "Don't try to speak just yet," he said. "Parts of you are still sleeping."

Snape felt his eyes widening in alarm. Parts of him...? But no, he could still feel his body. The ache was truly gone, not just dampened by some strong analgesic, and he relaxed back into the mattress with a soundless sigh of relief.

"You should sleep now, child," Albus told him. "And when you are fully recovered, we are going to have a very long talk, you and I."

He was tired, he realised, the ability to sleep returned with a vengeance, and he let his eyes slide shut as he listened to Albus' departing footsteps.

The warmth now residing in his bones was soothing, but somehow...empty. Unbidden, his mind flashed back to the feral gold of Remus Lupin's eyes, just before he pounced.

Now that the ache was gone, his drifting mind informed him, he would have to find something to replace it.

He fell back into sleep with a smile.

Finis.