tarte scrawling (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} girl_tarte) wrote,@ 2007-06-27 12:16:00 |
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death row epilogue (snape/potter)
title: Death Row (5+1/5+1 - COMPLETE)
pairing: Snape/Potter
rating: R this chapter
previously:
One: Malfoy Manor
Two: Godric's Hollow
Three: The Burrow
Four: Hagrid's Hut part a; part b
Five: The Manor, the Hollow, the end
note 1: it's almost a year since i posted the first chapter of this fic as a late birthday present forfitofpique. so, um. happy late birthday again, piqueface, i love you! the whole saga really belongs to pique and to cindyjade who have so sweetly read each part and squealed in the right places. it's really all been written with you two birds in mind. <3
note 2: 3 pairs of hands required for holding for this last chapter:buckle_berry, secrethappiness and algernon_mouse. to berry and pinn especially, who've beta'd the whole enterprise, thank you so much! you've been amazing. babies in the post to you soonest. <333
Epilogue: 12, Grimmauld Place
Stories never begin and they never end; it is a matter of where you open the book and where your gaze finally drifts away from the page. If Snape had hoped for his own story to end in a sullen but satisfying hermitage at Spinner's End, if he had envisaged a prickly forest of wards to keep out both the gratitude and the recrimination of the masses, he was to be disappointed.
He returned to the house of his birth the afternoon after the morning that Voldemort died, to find it sliced to the ground, a neat gap in the little terrace of houses, no fragment bigger than a five-galleon piece, and a straight view through to the shopping trolleys in the ditch behind the yard. Or what used to be the yard. Potter found him in that same ditch two days later, picking through the muggle postage stamp-sized remains of his potions library, and if he had not missed five meals in a row, he would have argued more coherently against what the boy proposed.
"I do not lodge with Gryffindors, Potter."
"I'm staying at the Burrow. You'll hardly even see me."
"I'm staying at the Burrow, Professor."
At that point, Snape had staggered on a shard of shelf and come over a little faint. When he came to himself again, he was on a sofa under a faded scarlet blanket, with a ham sandwich next to him, and the argument was more or less moot.
~
The Quibbler
1st November 1999
The Boy Who Lived Twice: Could Harry Potter be the Second Coming?
Harry Potter, subject of some suspicion in the past, but now widely acknowledged to be the Saviour of the Wizarding World as we know it, is this month at the centre of fresh rumours that he is the reincarnation of the Most Revered Lord Merlin.
Potter, who has been lying low for two weeks since the glorious vanquishing of the dark wizard Tom Riddle, self-styled Lord Voldemort or the “Dark Lord”, is said to have used no more than an ordinary Ollivander’s wand, holly, size two, to reduce He Who [Up Until His Recent Demise] Must Not Be Named to a small glutinous yellow blob. A source close to the Chosen One reports that: “It was amazing. A single flick. Swish. Just like that, and blimey, there he was – You Know Who – just a splodge on the ground. You could have trodden in him. Amazing. No. No, I wasn’t there,” leading to rampant speculation that the nineteen-year-old boy wizard has powers far exceeding those of any auror or mage within the last half-millennium.
The mystery that surrounds Mr Potter’s own parentage has further fuelled speculation that he is the living embodiment of the Great Sorcerer’s deathless soul. The Quibbler has received letters from a number of readers who claim to have handled the shards of a broken Nimbus 2000, said to belong to Potter and currently housed at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes in Diagon Alley, London, and have subsequently been the recipients of great good fortune in their personal and professional lives.
The Boy Who Lived was unavailable for comment.
A good thick stack of Quibblers makes a very heartening fire, it turns out. A fire that burns in the kitchen hearth all through the morning until lunch, which is a bowl of thin tomato soup. Snape eats in his shirtsleeves at the long kitchen table. It's a pale sunny day today, showing up a thick fuzz of dust on the piles of plates and mugs stacked on the dresser opposite him. Snape is economical in his own routines. His bowl and spoon are scourgified when the soup is finished, and left tidily on the side for tomorrow, but he sees no need to touch what does not concern him.
The house itself is lulled and dumbfounded. The dust has settled over everything since the departure of the Order, and, stripped of the majority of the dark magic that had thrummed through its walls and floors and the small beings that had crept among its furnishings, Grimmauld Place seems old and forgetful. There is hardly anything left to be disturbed and yet Snape walks through the place cautiously; there are memories if nothing else, bitter pureblood memories and his own more recent ones of the thoughtless rampaging of Gryffindors with mops and shouting.
That the tiny library remained untouched is an irony not lost on Snape. Here he sits, apart from the rest of the house, with the grimoires and a hundred species of dark vermin who scuttled in to avoid the purge. There are two seats in here; a short sofa with an arm missing and mismatched purple and green cushions, and the chair that Snape chooses, stiff and upright, faded black, with tightly stuffed arms, fabric scratched and frayed. His fingernails snag on the loose threads, and the balls of his feet press against the bare floorboards. For the first half hour, he sits like a spider in the corner of the room, like he’s crouching, waiting for a reason to leap up.
There’s a torn scrap of paper in his inside pocket that says CRUCIO in big messy capitals.
At teatime, an owl comes with a letter addressed to "Severus Snape, care of Harry Potter". It is unrolled with enough force to nudge Snape's sandwich plate to the very edge of the side table, and to produce a large tear through the sender's address.
My dear Severus,
I hope you are settling in well at Grimmauld Place. I must admit I was surprised to hear that you had moved in with Harry – I know how you two have always disliked each other. Am I to understand that the straitening events of the war have brought about a more lasting truce between the two of you? Severus, I have to say that nothing would give me greater pleasure.
Be that as it may, I have a proposal to make to you which I hope may alter your living arrangements favourably. The Ministry has decided that in a bid to raise morale, Hogwarts is to be reopened as soon as possible, and with some reluctance, I have agreed to take up the position of Headmaster. It will take a lot of work to return the living quarters to a habitable state – I believe the Slytherin dormitories are still largely hexed and entirely flooded – and there is substantial investment required to restore some of the more valuable losses from the Restricted Section of the Library. Nevertheless I am hoping to be able to welcome the first students back in March. This brings me to the first part of my proposal: I would be delighted if you would return to Hogwarts to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts. I believe there is no better man for the job, and although I have not yet mentioned this possibility to the Ministry, I assure you I am more than willing to speak to them on your behalf, should objections be raised.
The second part of my proposal is a more selfish one. The position of Headmaster is mine on condition that I undertake extensive structural repairs to the Shrieking Shack and that I stick to a strict monthly regime of wolfsbane potion. Naturally, although I do not share the Ministry's less generous attitude towards your defection two years ago, I understand entirely that circumstances made it impossible for you to continue to brew the potion for me. I would be honoured if you would consent to resume this work now, and will of course reimburse you in whatever amount you deem fit from my – humblingly generous – Ministry stipend.
We have always been friends, Severus. I do hope you will consider –
When the small fire has flared and settled into a pile of ash in Snape's empty teacup, he takes up his sandwich again. The bird nudges pointedly at his wrist and is batted away.
"You," he says with some force, "should consider yourself fortunate that I've left you your feathers."
~
There is a thunderstorm easing off the next day when Snape wakes up. He’s taken a low-ceilinged bedroom on the top floor which is devoid of portraits and looks like it hasn’t been slept in for decades, unless it was by some sort of animal. Half a day’s cleaning of straw and dried muck made it minimally habitable. Still it has barn-like qualities: the smell of compost, and the racket that comes through a rattling window, which this morning is the hiss and spatter of rain.
A different sound drifts up the stairs, as he heads, barefoot, for the bathroom. The house has been so deathly still and quiet that it stops him cold for a moment.
"Make Kreacher clean the kitchen, will he? Make him scrub the blasted floors until his hands fall off? Make him polish the windows with his own pillowcase?”
Snape cranes over the banister, leaning on his knuckles, but there’s no response. He’s wrapping his robe around himself, about to descend, when there’s a sudden shriek of “Mudblood!” and footsteps are thudding up the stairs at a steady jog.
Potter is breathless and pink when he reaches the top. He is smiling.
“There you are!”
Snape feels the need to say something quelling at once. “Ever observant, Potter,” he manages, for want of something better. “More to the point, there you are. And why precisely are you there?”
“Things got a bit awkward at the Burrow. I’m, um. I’m moving back.” Potter fingers the newel post. “If that’s okay.”
“It’s your house. I am here on your sufferance. I daresay my vote would be a little tokenistic.” And with just a glimpse at Potter’s look of surprise, Snape retreats.
After half an hour of sitting on the bed watching the rain trying to fight its way in through the window, Snape is beginning to feel ridiculous. He has a potion that needs seeing to.
“You’ve got a potion that needs seeing to, I think,” Potter says, gesturing with a mug towards the pantry, when Snape appears in the kitchen. The elf is indeed polishing the windows, accompanied by a dull hum of invective. The sun has come out and is beaming in now, refracting through the rain drops on the window, and lighting swathes through the dusty air. Potter is pale in this light, and there are two small patches of shocking white in the thick black hair at his temple. Snape stares at him for a moment or two, looking for anything else that might give some hint of what the boy’s done. He is still smiling.
Finally: “Have I?” Sarcasm has always covered a multitude of sins.
“Smells like wolfsbane.”
Snape turns back. “How would you know?”
“I made it once last year. Just to see, you know. We were out in the field – there wasn’t much in the way of – caging – available.”
Snape’s eyes must be goggling. “And?”
“Apparently it didn’t pass muster. Professor Lupin had a sip of it to be polite, but –” He shrugs.
Snape laughs, a single loud and humourless guffaw. “Potter, wolfsbane is a potion far beyond the capabilities of most of the fellowship of the Wizarding Society of Tincturists and Master Blenders. You didn’t even make it to NEWT-level.”
“Actually I did.” He’s indignant now. The mug clunks onto the table.
“Well you shouldn’t have.”
Perversely Potter follows him into the pantry. “I did really well in sixth year.”
“If I remember rightly, Potter, it was I who did well in sixth year. You merely showed an unwonted interest in reading.” Snape cannot account for the sudden gloominess he feels. He doesn’t look at Potter, but stares instead at the cauldron sitting over a small conjured fire in the back corner of the pantry. The potion is smoking a little, which may be due to the damp air. It’s a good rosy colour and smooth as silk – ready in a day or two, certainly, but it will keep. He’ll make Lupin wait.
The boy breaks the silence.
“Professor Lupin told me he was going to ask you to start making wolfsbane for him again. Does this mean you’re going back to school?”
“Certainly not. I would not work for that man if he held the last remaining key to Silas Fishbinder’s Wholesale Herb and Rhizome Warehouse. However, I happen to agree with the Ministry that an undosed werewolf is an unfit headmaster.”
“I think you’re being unfair. Remus helped us win the war after all. He deserves a leg-up. And he’s always been a good friend to me. I remember the stories he –” Potter breaks off, rubbing a hand against his jaw and frowning.
“A leg-up? I can only assume it has slipped your mind that he tried to kill you. He tried to make me kill you.”
The boy looks up at him, peering round to try and see right into his eyes. It’s unsettling. “I tried to kill myself – have you forgotten that?”
“No.” Snape points his wand at the fire under the cauldron, reducios the flame. “Now get out of my laboratory.”
“My laboratory.”
Potter leaves just the same, hands in pockets.
When Snape emerges, Potter is still in the kitchen, leaning against the worktop by the sink. The washing up has been done, and apparently without a screaming fight – Potter must have done it himself. The elf is no longer anywhere to be seen; the boy on the other hand, is resolutely hanging around.
“How are you, anyway?” Potter asks, almost before the pantry door is closed.
Snape is aware of the slight friction of his fingers sliding slowly off the iron door knob. He gestures at himself, a small downward sweep of both hands, consciously brisk.
“As you see.”
“Still alive.”
They’re both still for a moment, then Potter begins to tap his palm on the worktop, drumming, impatient. “And how am I?”
Arrogant child.
“Still alive?” Snape moves towards the fire. The conversation is proceeding awkwardly. I’m fine. You’re fine. Slaughter of Dark Lords notwithstanding? The question Snape will not ask is practically itching at his palate. “Tea?” Surely that’s enough of a concession towards civility.
“I’m doing a lot of sleeping, as it happens.” Snape lifts the lid of the kettle as if he hasn’t heard – there’s already enough water for two, thankfully. He looks sideways at the sink, where Potter is crossing his ankles. “They knocked me out cold at St Mungo’s for three days.”
“So I read. I am an avid reader, as I’m sure you’re aware. And I see from today’s paper that you’ve ‘moved to dissociate’ yourself from ‘several nascent cults’. My congratulations.”
Potter huffs, but brings his mug over regardless. “Two sugars in mine, please.” The mug is handed over.
“Two now? How revoltingly typ– ical,” Snape finishes flatly as, for a moment, three neat fingertips press against the heel of his palm, clearly intentional.
They are gone before Snape can look up, and Potter is bending over the kettle himself, lifting the lid with a surprisingly steady hand. Two white spots beam from his temple like splotches of paint or the puff of dust from a burst flour bag.
~
It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. Every fibre in Snape’s body is crying out for a cup of earl grey and a slice of bread and butter, but there are boys in the kitchen, apparently unaware of his presence, and so he is forced to stand at the pantry door, listening through the crack, ladle in hand. To be evermore at the mercy of auburn visitors.
“Mum’s worried, obviously. And Ginny’s still in that gigantic sulk – she bat-bogeyed Malfoy again this morning. That didn’t go down well.”
Snape can imagine.
“But the people have gone?”
“More or less completely. Dad’s put a sign up saying you’ve left. We’ve got a pretty good collection of omnioculars now, though. Every-flavoured bean boxes too.”
“Sorry.” Potter sounds sullen.
“S’alright, mate. All more or less back to normal. How’s things here?” Weasley lowers his voice. “How’s he?”
There’s a pause. Snape is tempted to lean forward, peer through the gap, but there is the danger of a creaking floorboard. Instead his fingers drift to his chest, press a little over his inside pocket. The workings of his body seem to still as he listens, yet he can hear nothing.
“I should bloody well hope not!” Snape almost jumps. “Mate, that’s foul!”
“Oh right. And what about you and Malfoy?”
“That’s diff–” The scraping of a chair. “No, wait. Wait. Okay, I see your point.”
“At least he’s not a pointy-faced little shit.”
“No. He’s not. He’s a greasy sadistic wanker – oh come on!” Clattering; something smashes. “All right, calm down. I didn’t – well, I did mean it, but anyway, I shouldn’t have said it. But you shouldn’t have said that stuff about Malfoy either.” More scraping, then there’s silence for a bit, and finally a sudden burst of laughter from Weasley, then Potter, that seems to go on and on. Snape grips the ladle till it cuts into the fleshy parts of his palm.
“Oh – my god.” Potter’s words come with difficulty. “How is Malfoy anyway?”
“He’s okay. Miraculous recovery, you might say. Mum’s got a bit of a soft spot for him, which was weird to start with, but she’s got a thing for orphans, I suppose. He likes to talk about how I killed his dad sometimes. I just sort of put up with it.”
“Such a freak.”
“Oy.”
“Sorry.”
“Actually I tried to bring him with me, but he kept wandering into the paper shop on the corner. I thought he was just being difficult at first – well, you would. Turns out it was the Fidelius. He couldn’t get anywhere near the place, old Dumbledore never let him.”
“Ha!”
“Still, at least you know you’re safe here. Safe for ever with Professor Snape.” Snape can practically picture the expression on Weasley’s face, the grasping hands of a pantomime lecher.
“Shutup,” Potter hisses. “Shutup!”
~
It has rained on and off for two days. Snape forgets that it used to seem silent here. A good twenty minutes of screaming from the portrait in the hall – and what is Potter doing, poking it with a stick? – has been succeeded by the tapping of one owl after another on the study window. Potter is constitutionally unable to exist anywhere without bringing a farrago of noise and confusion with him. Even his bouts of sleeping, which – he is right – are frequent and inconveniently situated, involve a maximum of snoring, grunting and twitching. And now here he comes thumping up the stairs for the third time in ten minutes. Snape huddles back into the chair and pulls his book tight into his stomach. The footsteps are past the door, when Snape surprises himself by calling out.
“Why don’t you just go outside?”
Thump thump thump. The door opens, and Potter stands there smiling, eyebrows high. He’s in jeans and an old grey jumper, frayed and frilled at the bottom, and he has an apple core between the thumb and forefinger of one hand.
“It’s still raining. Besides there’s a couple of women out there. I saw them through the letterbox.”
“How terrifying.”
“They used to hang around at the Burrow as well. They must’ve followed Ron when he came the other day, I suppose. Of course, they could actually see the Burrow, so that was probably worse. What are you reading?”
“History.”
“Hogwarts: A History?” He’s such a child. “Hermione was always trying to get us to read that.”
“Miss Granger was a diligent student.”
“She was a diligent everything.” He’s leaning on the doorframe, with his feet crossed one over the other. “I miss her.” It sounds ominously like the opening to a much longer conversation. Snape looks down at his book.
“I’m certain you do. Perhaps one or other of your ladies outside would be happy for you to tell her all your war stories.”
“Perhaps.” Potter is quiet for a moment or two. His expression might almost be called thoughtful. “Why don’t you tell me yours?”
Clearly the boy is to be satisfied only with some sort of humiliating scene of shared confidence. Doesn’t he ever feel rebuffed? Snape closes his eyes. Is that the beginning of a headache?
“There’s nothing I could tell you that won’t be thoroughly hashed over by the Ministry in due course.”
“I’d like to hear it anyway. I just think, if we’re going to –” Snape’s eyes are open now. Several useful words appear to be irrevocably stuck on his tongue. “Anyway, I don’t really want to talk to anyone else about mine. Definitely not girls. I like – well, you know.” He gestures gingerly with the apple core, which swings precariously on its stalk. Potter steps a little closer and Snape eyes the apple, as if it is a threat to his book.
“You like what?” Snape swallows as subtly as he can manage. “Ageing authority figures?”
Potter laughs, surprised. “No!”
“Potter, we are not going to anything. If you are referring to what you perhaps thought you felt in that hovel at Hogwarts the night before you were very likely about to die, I would remind you that you are a nineteen-year-old boy.” Snape tries to put a hard emphasis on the word ‘boy’. “Nineteen-year-old boys have some very particular modes of behaviour. Besides which, I don’t flatter myself that you have had many alternative outlets.”
“I have a few now. I get letters.”
“I am well aware of that.”
There’s a pause. “They don’t really know who I am.” With a soggy inevitability, the apple core finally detaches itself from its stalk and drops to the floor. Snape waits while the boy bends to pick it up, then rubs at the sticky mark on the floorboards with a socked toe.
“And I do?”
“Well. Don’t you?” Potter looks up with a shyness he is barely entitled to.
Snape closes the book with a thunk, careless as to creased pages. “As it happens, I do, Potter. I know exactly who you are, just as I know exactly who I am. And what a surprise: we are – who we are, just as we have always been. No childish regret of yours can change that.” Potter is beginning to scowl. It’s just as well.
“You would be better served answering your owls,” he calls out, as the boy stamps out of the room. Snape watches him go – there is a large hole in the heel of his right sock – and for a minute or three after the door has slammed shut, he stares blankly at the bottom panel of it, before opening the book again at the wrong page.
~
In the middle of the afternoon, Potter is asleep on the living room sofa, one arm hanging over the side of it. On the floor, next to his open palm, is a half-empty mug of pumpkin juice and several scraps of parchment. Out of curiosity, Snape stoops to read.
DEAR MINDY,
THANKS FOR THE LETTER. I AM FINE. I’M NOT REALLY LOOKING FOR A GIRLFREIND THOUGH. I PROBABLY CAN’T GET YOU BACKSTAGE AT THE WYRD SISTERS CONCERT EITHER. SORRY I CAN’T HELP. THANKS AGAIN.
HARRY POTTER
DEAR HOGSMEDIA INC.
NO I HADN’T THOUGHT ABOUT ADVERTISING AS A CAREER, BUT YES I DO LIKE PUMPKIN PASTIES. THANKS FOR THE SUGGESTION. I’M STILL A BIT TIRED AT THE MOMENT, SO I’LL LET YOU KNOW. THANKS.
HARRY POTTER
The boy is frowning in his sleep, his teeth bared. He used to sleep with one hand tucked neatly under his chin. Now his arms are stretched away from his body, his feet tangled in the same red blanket that had covered Snape when he first woke up in this house. Potter is not snoring now, but when Snape bends closer he can hear a thin whine trickling out from between his teeth and the boy’s open hand suddenly twitches closed only an inch or two from Snape’s knee.
Potter’s pale face is rosy and damp with sweat, little strings of hair sticking to his forehead, trailing into his eyelashes. Snape smooths a little of it back with a single tense fingertip. The boy’s frown deepens, and Snape steps back quickly, parchment crunching under his heel. The whining has stopped and Potter’s mouth opened a little, but he does not wake.
~
“I’m busy.” Snick, snick, snick, goes the knife on the hellebore stem. Precise, steady, three millimetres each. “The door should remain closed at all times. I cannot have you wandering in and disturbing my work. Unless of course you have it in mind that I should accidentally poison your friend Lupin.” Snick, snick, snick.
“But it’s eleven o’clock. You haven’t been out of the pantry all morning. I’ve brought your tea. It’s earl grey.”
Snape slants his gaze up for a fraction of a second. Potter is holding out a Chudley Cannons mug.
“I have no time for tea.”
“I can leave it. Maybe on –”
“Get that mug off my Potions Bulletin!”
“Fine. I’ll have it myself.” From under lowered eyelids, Snape can see Potter coming closer. He takes a sip from the mug. “Ugh. Earl grey’s so bloody weak. So which bit’s this? Is this the aconite roots?”
“Astounding.”
“It is?” Potter sounds pleased.
“It is not.”
He laughs. “Oh well, another D for Mister Potter.” He takes another sip of tea; perhaps he’ll leave now, Snape thinks, curiously ambivalent, but the boy leans against a cupboard instead. “We need some sort of system. If we’re going to –” he breaks off. “If you’re going to be staying here for a bit. So you can tell me when you want tea.”
Snape uses the blade of his knife to slide the chopped stem off the board and into an earthenware bowl, puffing a straggle of hair away from his face. He pulls another stem towards him. Snick, snick, snick.
“I am perhaps even capable of making my own tea.”
“I know – you could send up a patronus or something. Come to think of it, I’ve never even seen your patronus.”
What?
The knife comes down a fraction too acutely and slides into the flesh of Snape’s thumb, almost slow enough to watch. As the blood beads up and spills onto the board, his gaze snaps up at Potter, who is staring wide-eyed into his mug. A subtle shift of the hips and the boy glances at him, open-mouthed, flushed red as a poppy.
“Um, I mean – oh, your thumb,” he says, starting forward. The mug is left on the potions journal. Snape thinks to back away from the table, but barely manages it.
“It’s nothing. You shouldn’t disturb me in here. I could make a mistake.” He is cradling his wrist like a Muggle, stupidly. Where is his wand?
“No, just – look – let –”
The boy takes his hand, shaking a little too hard to be gentle, and pulls Snape’s thumb to his mouth. Snape freezes, pulse snapping painfully. “Potter, stop.”
Potter’s lips are damp with tea, his tongue strong and hot against the pad of Snape’s thumb. A twinge of pain in the small laceration and an answering swoop of pleasure in his belly and balls. Stop. Stop. The boy shudders a little, then a gentle suck, barely anything; Snape’s cock fills hopefully, his palms itching with the memory of the brutally soft skin over Potter’s ribs.
“Stop,” he says again, in a voice that comes out small and cut with fear.
The boy opens his mouth a fraction, enough for Snape to snatch his hand away and back up against the larder. Pressing against the cupboard door helps ease the cacophony in his chest. What’s wrong with Potter anyway? Some puerile double entendre? Perhaps killing Voldemort has finally unpegged the boy's shaky grip on sanity.
“You,” – he clears his throat – “You are being ridiculous.”
“No, I thought – but you cut yourself.” Potter points.
“Yes, because I need peace and quiet. I need to be left alone. Get out. Get that mug off my Potions Bulletin!”
Potter goes – thump thump thump – and when his breathing has calmed, Snape locates his wand and heals the tiny cut. He saves what can be saved of the hellebore stems with an unsteady hand.
~
Every siege reaches a tipping point sooner or later, when the balance of the defences totters just an inch or two beyond what will hold.
Snape is out of bed when this moment arrives. He folds one arm of his nightshirt neatly over the other, slides it under the lumpy pillow, and is suddenly filled with a sense of his own absurdity. His life is a litany of habit, of memory and things past memory. How he clings to the past and to the bitterness he has fitted around himself for twenty years. What is the use of it now with all his enemies dead, all his bonds severed?
His heart rate quickens.
On an impulse he leaves his bedroom in his shirtsleeves and trousers and hurries down two flights of stairs. It is on his the tip of his tongue to call out “Potter”; he is almost decided to open the door of the boy’s room, the door opposite the stairs on the second floor. What did you have to do? he will say, plainly, just like that, and try his hand at kindness. Perhaps he will put a hand on a shoulder – it’s a strangely exhilarating thought. Perhaps. Snape hesitates, fingers hovering over the door handle, before exhilaration curdles to panic and he swerves away and down the landing.
Behind him the bedroom door opens. “Professor? Were you looking for me?”
Snape steps hastily into the study and leans against the closed door, a little light-headed. Idiotic impulse. CRUCIO, says the paper in his pocket, and so it should. He touches a hand to it.
There’s a knocking in the small of his back. “Professor?” The boy’s voice is muffled through the door. The handle rattles back and forth. “I think the door’s –”
Footsteps down the corridor, Snape’s shoulders drop a little, then – pop! There Potter is, barefoot by Snape’s chair, blue striped pyjama bottoms, hair a riot, and a look of childish determination.
For about half a minute there is a stand-off. Potter is breathing more heavily than a ten-foot apparition warrants, but then Snape is huddled against the door, as if he were cornered by a hippogriff. Potter’s eyebrows beetle fiercely – for a smallish wizard he is good at intimidation. Even the vulnerable ridge of his sectumsempra scar has been smoothed over, the work of smitten St Mungo’s mediwitches, no doubt. Snape sneers; it’s a little half-hearted, but enough, it turns out, to spur Potter into action.
“This is stupid.”
“For once you have my complete agreement, Potter. I will move into a bed and breakfast immediately.”
“No! I mean, why can’t we – what is it you think is wrong with me? I’m a grown man –”
“Partially at least.” Snape can’t help himself.
“The whole Voldemort thing? Is that it? It didn’t leave me funny in the head, you know.”
“And yet you’ve apparently decided you want to embark on a homosexual relationship with an ex-teacher you’ve always claimed to hate. How stable of you. How well thought out.”
Potter scowls. “We already embarked, remember.” He’s blushing a little, remembering Merlin knows what absurd indiscretion.
“As I believe we’ve discussed, Potter, that was war.” Snape is assailed by his own memory of a pale arm flung across his chest in the half-dark, the jut of a hip against his belly. He presses his fingertips into the door to still his hands. “Urges may be magnified. Or unsuitably directed,” he adds, looking at Potter from under lowered brows. “You are excused from any obligation.”
“Then what were you doing outside my bedroom door? You were there – I heard you!”
While Snape struggles for an answer, Potter’s expression softens terrifyingly. He takes a step forward, then one more.
“Look, we can – there – just –”
They’re a foot apart, and just like yesterday, he takes hold of Snape’s hand – a lighter grip this time, a thumb in Snape’s palm – and slides it onto his waist, holds it there gently. Soft flesh, warm from bed, it hollows under his thumb. Potter smiles tentatively and Snape’s cock arcs upwards. Scruples alone keep him from sliding to the floor at once.
“This isn’t real, Potter. What happened in that hut was a pretence, a preposterous folie à deux.” There it is – the last stand of his treasured reason, and yet his hand still sits on the boy’s hip. “You needn’t prolong –”
“I’ve got nothing better to do.” Ridiculous. “Have you?”
No. Nothing.
One hand is fixed on Potter’s hip, it will not shift; Snape raises the other to the boy’s temple. Between thumb and forefinger, he lifts a shank of hair, runs the tip of his finger over the bright white strands. Potter’s hair is damp, a little greasy from sleep. What? Snape thinks; how? but cannot ask.
“We can –” the boy says again, almost a question, and he’s pulling Snape’s shirt out of the waistband of his trousers. Then down he goes, presses his mouth to Snape’s stomach, fingers curling round the waistband into the tender skin of Snape’s abdomen, and it’s as much as Snape can do to keep a hand in his hair. Everything bows to the boy’s will. So be it.
Potter’s tongue traces odd slow shapes around Snape’s navel for half a minute, his breathing hot and damp, until he appears to lose concentration, unaware of his wrist nudging tantalizingly against Snape’s trousered erection, and stands up to look him in the eye. Impatient, Snape bends and kisses him, going in teeth and tongue first. Potter’s bottom lip so tender and fleshy, it is almost impossible not to bite, and Snape applies his fingers in a tight grip round Potter’s upper arms to compensate for what seems to him miraculous forbearance.
The boy’s cheek is warm and smooth – no doubt the product of a presumptuous shaving charm – like the skin of a soft fruit pressed against Snape’s nose and mouth. He can’t help but break off and snap a little at Potter’s jaw. A soft moan whistles past his ear, and he bends Potter back a fraction, so his chest cranes over the boy’s, the cotton of his shirt a mere veil, flimsily modest, between them. Heat licks in Snape’s gut. He’s peeled from the door now and pressing forward for another kiss, but his tongue has barely slid the blissful length of Potter’s, when the boy loses his footing and they stumble sideways into the shelves. No matter, Snape presses this new advantage and pins Potter against the bookcase; the boy’s shoulders are held high and tense, an oak upright jutting into the space between his shoulderblades no doubt, but he doesn’t complain – quite the reverse, grips the shelves with both hands to keep himself in place.
That mouth. Blood red and glossy-slick, panting from a single serious kiss, just as Snape remembers. He slides in a thumb, the one with the healed cut, and goes for Potter’s neck. He has to bend down awkwardly, but the sudden jerk of Potter’s hips makes it more than worthwhile, and Snape clamps a willing palm over the boy’s cock. Two priceless books smack to the floor.
“The – sofa –” Potter gasps around Snape’s thumb.
“Agreed.”
The sofa is too narrow for comfort. Snape can fit one knee to the side of the boy’s thighs, the other leg drags off the seat, taking half his weight. Potter is on his back, wedged tight into the sunken cushions, so there are compensations. They lie cock to cock, Potter arching up, inasmuch as he can, taut-faced, straining for friction. One hand holds Snape by the small of the back, the other pulls clumsily at his own pyjamas, tugging down at the hip fabric that is pinned fast at the groin.
Potter makes a whining noise through clenched teeth, his face tucked against the arm of the sofa at some unnatural angle, nudging harder with each awkward thrust of Snape’s cock against his belly and balls. Effort and tension ratchet through Snape’s body, every touch, every glancing graze magnified, until he’s not even sure they’ll last till any clothes come off. The boy shudders hard and Snape is compelled to lean down and push his tongue into that obscene little mouth.
Small teeth scrape against his bottom lip and Snape finds himself clutching at the boy’s pyjamas himself.
“Get them off,” he snaps, and levers himself up.
Cotton, damp with sweat, is peeled down almost to the boy’s knees. His cock twitches under Snape’s greedy gaze, as he hastily flicks open the buttons of his own trousers.
To lie flesh to flesh, even only that small eager band of flesh between navel and thigh, is like the first lungful of air after a lengthy dunking in the privy. Potter gapes and tenses; a knee connects with Snape’s inner thigh as his heels slide over the sofa cushions, desperately trying to brace. Snape pins him at the hip with one palm, but the rhythm of his own hips is jerky and unstrung. They are practically lip to lip, a fog of heated breath between them and a drop of moisture falls from the tip of Snape’s nose onto the boy’s flushed cheekbone. He stretches up to bury his face in Potter’s hair, his stomach skidding over Potter’s cock and his own, and that’s it. A wheezy grunt, lips peeling back from gritted teeth, and the boy comes in four strong pulses, stretched like a piano wire against the cushions; at the last gasp Snape follows him helplessly, panting his orgasm into the side of the boy’s neck, every inch of him tight with effort and pleasure, piercingly sharp and seemingly endless.
Then silence. The thump of Snape’s retreating pulse. The creep of boneless fatigue. His torso is lifted several inches by a large inhalation. Snape raises his head, feeling more than a little dazed.
“That wasn’t exactly” – another huge breath – “what I had in mind.” Potter’s smile is disgustingly smug nonetheless.
Snape can hardly find it in himself to regret their haste either. In a minute or so he’ll be appalled to be lying spread-eagled on Harry Potter, wallowing in the stench of their aftermath, bare arse exposed to the Noble and Most Ancient Library of Black; for now, his head fits comfortably into the space between the boy’s ear and a large, badly dented purple cushion. If he can barely breathe in this position, perhaps the dizziness is to be welcomed.
“Are you surprised?” Potter asks after a bit, fingering his neck in a way that is not quite ticklish enough to force him to move.
Snape is no longer surprised at anything.
~
“What’s this?” Potter has paused in the unbuttoning to pull a little scrap of paper out of Snape’s pocket.
Snape doesn’t need to look up to see what is written on it; the sudden embarrassment at having kept it almost, but not quite, subdues the torrent of arousal in his blood.
“To-do list,” he days, aiming for dry.
Potter doesn’t seem to hear. He stares at the paper in his palm for a second or two, his face a picture of annoyance, then crunches it into a little ball. If his other hand were not on the top fastening of Snape’s trousers, perhaps he would have incendio’d it.
Truth be told, Snape had forgotten about that piece of paper. He hasn’t thought of it in a fortnight – it’s a surprise to see it shrivelled and discoloured with cleansing charms. The reminder should bring him up short, but then Potter says something sentimental about making it up to him and sets about his buttons once more. Snape is surprised to find that the well of regret he’d thought bottomless comes up dry as powdered cactus.
“Which is of course your answer for everything. Have you considered the possibility that I do not share your priapic tendencies?”
The boy looks up, satisfyingly shocked.
“I don’t have any tendencies!”
“They may say you have the power of twenty wizards, Potter, but you certainly do not have their vocabulary. I was referring to your insatiable appetite for fornication; your tastes are, as you say, highly conventional.”
“Don’t look a gifthorse in the mouth, Professor.”
“Arrogant boy.” He pinches hard at Potter’s right nipple, smirking at the hiss it provokes, the sudden hollowing of flesh under the boy’s ribcage. His own cock nudges impatiently at Potter’s dawdling fingers.
“Anyway, you’re always up for it at teatime. I think there’s some kind of potion in that earl grey.”
“And now you are disputing my potency?”
“No.” The last button comes open. Potter licks his lips intently, looking down. His cheeks are red under the black flash of his eyelashes. Snape takes a steadying breath.
“Anyway I can’t conceive what you mean by always. This – liaison – still falls decidedly into the category of temporary aberra–”
The boy fits his mouth around Snape’s cock, sucks the objections straight out of his head.
~
Dumbledore’s office – it will never be anything other than that – is eerily quiet without the symphony of ticking and squawking that used to inhabit it. It looks decrepit. The rugs are tracked with stains, some of which appear to be blood, and something has been chewing on the legs of the giant mahogany desk. Remus Lupin sits behind it looking oddly small and apologetic. A teacup sits to his left and a flask of wolfsbane potion to his right. His hand, though a polite distance from the flask, is nevertheless clearly poised to grasp, in case Snape changes his mind. Several portraits look on avidly.
Snape decides to play to form.
“I here there’s an Order of Merlin in the offing.”
“I have no intention of accepting it, Severus.” Lupin adopts an appropriately self-deprecating tone. “I have done very little that is in any measure heroic.”
“The position of Headmaster of Hogwarts naturally triggers no such scruples?”
“Scruples, yes. Still, I happen to agree that it is in the best interests of the wizarding community that Hogwarts be reopened, and the Department of Education and Apprentice Sorcery swore blind that they could find no other candidates.”
“Well that certainly puts my mind at rest.”
“You haven’t changed your mind about the Defence Against the Dark Arts position? There is no one of your calibre –”
“No, I have not, nor will I.” Snape takes a sip of his tea. That at least has improved under the new regime. Nothing else has. “In point of fact, I have decided on a change of career.”
Lupin raises an eyebrow. “Really? I am surprised, Severus. You’ve never done anything but teach. Unless you count –” He feigns a guilty look, but the slip was clearly intentional. The bastard fights back. He spreads his fingers on the table smugly. “What will you do?”
Snape toys with the idea of telling him that he’ll be spending the rest of his working life researching new ways of fucking Harry Potter. It’s a dirty job…
“I intend to write a book.” This time Lupin looks genuinely surprised. “I will be telling the true story of the war and how it was won.”
Lupin sighs. “You know that I have never asked for any acclaim that is rightfully yours, Severus.”
“Decent of you.”
Lupin opens his mouth, but pauses before asking, “How is Harry?”
“Alive,” Snape barks pointedly. He drains his cup. “Well, if that’s the pleasantries over with.” He stands up from his chair. “I will return in four weeks with your next dose. Do try not to chew on anyone.”
“Severus,” Lupin holds up a hand, “I am fully aware of your feelings. Nevertheless, I would be truly grateful for the opportunity to visit Harry. I have sent a number of owls which have not been answered. The last returned to me with several singed feathers.”
Snape tuts. “The boy can be so uncouth. Never mind, Lupin, I will talk him round. And by all means visit. Come at teatime. I’m sure Potter will be charmed.”
~
3.2.1 On Horcruxes
The making of a horcrux is in itself a simpler process and, and the magic thereof less pernicious, than many other forms of life extension. In fact, a single expulsion of dark magic via the Avada Kedavra, or equivalent fatal magical activity, is required to create and invest a horcrux, making it arguably considerably less invasive than the broadbeam reanimation, obliviation and reprogramming involved in the potion-based reversal of this basic dark sorcery.
That Thomas Riddle, in the spring of 1948, decided on this comparatively sanitary and yet nigh irrevocable form of self-preservation is a demonstration of the pragmatism that marked his early career. In Part 4.5, Riddle Unravels, I will go on to examine the more outlandish methods, such as parasitic lodging on the reverse of a man’s head, he was to go on to employ in the early 1980s.
Six of Riddle’s horcruxes are known: an early diary of his own, dating from his adolescence; a black and gold ring originally belonging to his grandfather, Marvolo Gaunt; the python Nagini, who was to be Riddle’s familiar until the snake’s destruction in 1998; a twelfth-century goblet, believed to have been the property of Hogwarts’ founder Helga Hufflepuff; a large empty locket inscribed with majuscule S, indicating, without doubt, the founder Slytherin; and latterly the half-blood infant Harold Potter, a vessel created, it is now thought, by accident during an unknown contretemps in 1981.
Only the last of these vessels was to survive until the armistice of 1999, after the removal of the invested soul. This was achieved via a double-blended datura-based potion adapted from one whose last recorded use was in 1477 (Spitte and Prankes, 1605). The ingredients and preparation of the adapted potion, together with relevant reactions and contraindications, are detailed in figure 3.2c below.
Four minutes, it takes – Snape is counting. Four minutes during which the boy’s heel clumps incessantly against the arm of Snape’s chair, where he has perched himself. Then –
“Pragmatism?” Potter’s lip is curling.
“Mm?”
“Murdering some poor bugger in cold blood’s not what I call pragmatism.”
"How surprising. And your problem, Potter –”
“Oh, do tell me what my problem is. I’m dying to hear a new one.” The pages are dropped in Snape’s lap, one slides to the floor. Potter drapes himself over the back of the chair and pretends to yawn.
“Your problem – is that you've never been able to grasp the existence of opposing points of view. Some people would consider that an impediment to social functioning."
“My name isn’t even Harold anyway.”
"A pity. Be that as it may, if you find so much to criticise, I can only suggest that you write your own book."
“Perhaps I will.” Snape is shuffling the loose pages together, when he feels a finger curling in his hair at the crown. He jerks his head away for effect, for correction, and Potter sighs. “My book will be all about how wars can be won with nothing but the resurrected spirit of Merlin, the power of twenty Dumbledores in a single wand arm, and a really really impressive patronus.”
Snape congratulates himself that not even the smallest smile escapes him. At least one of them knows a little self-discipline.
“Fiction. How invigorating.”
~
It’s midnight. There is no curtain on the window in this room; the light shines deep blue on the side of Severus’s cheekbone and the curve of his nose. He scowls in his sleep, but that, it turns out, is par for the course.
Harry smiles at him. So bloody prickly; it’s only little by little that he lets himself relax. Baby steps. Today he threw a cup against the kitchen wall, and then twenty minutes later he was barely able to hold onto his sneer as Harry crouched between his legs. And sometimes these days, when he’s tipping over into sleep, his guard falls, and Harry can slip inside his mind. He sees himself there. He might be heaving plants from the ground in that jungle of a back garden, shirt thrown off, or sleeping, or reading, which rarely happens in real life. Occasionally he’s reading with his shirt thrown off, which never happens.
Sometimes, maybe once or twice in a month, Severus dreams about him facing Voldemort. It’s a struggle for Harry to watch those ones, not that the memories are painful or even clear – at St Mungo’s they gave him some kind of obliviating draft that has smudged over about half an hour – but because it’s always wrong, he’s sure of it. The details are slightly off – Harry’s almost certain he was lying on his arse in the rubble when his wand went off. And it wasn’t a green flare, he’s doesn’t think, though the only thing he remembers clearly is a cloud of anger, and a sudden thought of Severus in the hut alone, cutting up pumpkins. The dream finishes wrong, too. Nearly always it ends with Snape coming up to him, touching his hair or his hand. Harry’ll smile at him as if it’s what he expected all along.
Harry yawns. It is not Severus’s dreams that wake him, or even his own – like the scar, they’ve all but disappeared – it is a weird sense of expectation, like he has to get up early for a journey or his NEWTs. He’ll sit up suddenly with his heart going like a jackhammer.
Another minute and he’ll go back to sleep. One more minute. He’s reaching for his copy of Quidditch Monthly when something makes Severus twitch violently and give a muffled grunt. Harry holds himself as still as possible. After a moment, the frown settles again.
He’s not even close to waking. Harry nudges him gently in the ribs just to be sure.
“Severus,” he murmurs. He wouldn’t dare say it out loud while Snape’s awake. Not yet.
title: Death Row (5+1/5+1 - COMPLETE)
pairing: Snape/Potter
rating: R this chapter
previously:
One: Malfoy Manor
Two: Godric's Hollow
Three: The Burrow
Four: Hagrid's Hut part a; part b
Five: The Manor, the Hollow, the end
note 1: it's almost a year since i posted the first chapter of this fic as a late birthday present for
fitofpique. so, um. happy late birthday again, piqueface, i love you! the whole saga really belongs to pique and to cindyjade who have so sweetly read each part and squealed in the right places. it's really all been written with you two birds in mind. <3note 2: 3 pairs of hands required for holding for this last chapter:
buckle_berry, secrethappiness and algernon_mouse. to berry and pinn especially, who've beta'd the whole enterprise, thank you so much! you've been amazing. babies in the post to you soonest. <333Epilogue: 12, Grimmauld Place
Stories never begin and they never end; it is a matter of where you open the book and where your gaze finally drifts away from the page. If Snape had hoped for his own story to end in a sullen but satisfying hermitage at Spinner's End, if he had envisaged a prickly forest of wards to keep out both the gratitude and the recrimination of the masses, he was to be disappointed.
He returned to the house of his birth the afternoon after the morning that Voldemort died, to find it sliced to the ground, a neat gap in the little terrace of houses, no fragment bigger than a five-galleon piece, and a straight view through to the shopping trolleys in the ditch behind the yard. Or what used to be the yard. Potter found him in that same ditch two days later, picking through the muggle postage stamp-sized remains of his potions library, and if he had not missed five meals in a row, he would have argued more coherently against what the boy proposed.
"I do not lodge with Gryffindors, Potter."
"I'm staying at the Burrow. You'll hardly even see me."
"I'm staying at the Burrow, Professor."
At that point, Snape had staggered on a shard of shelf and come over a little faint. When he came to himself again, he was on a sofa under a faded scarlet blanket, with a ham sandwich next to him, and the argument was more or less moot.
~
1st November 1999
The Boy Who Lived Twice: Could Harry Potter be the Second Coming?
Harry Potter, subject of some suspicion in the past, but now widely acknowledged to be the Saviour of the Wizarding World as we know it, is this month at the centre of fresh rumours that he is the reincarnation of the Most Revered Lord Merlin.
Potter, who has been lying low for two weeks since the glorious vanquishing of the dark wizard Tom Riddle, self-styled Lord Voldemort or the “Dark Lord”, is said to have used no more than an ordinary Ollivander’s wand, holly, size two, to reduce He Who [Up Until His Recent Demise] Must Not Be Named to a small glutinous yellow blob. A source close to the Chosen One reports that: “It was amazing. A single flick. Swish. Just like that, and blimey, there he was – You Know Who – just a splodge on the ground. You could have trodden in him. Amazing. No. No, I wasn’t there,” leading to rampant speculation that the nineteen-year-old boy wizard has powers far exceeding those of any auror or mage within the last half-millennium.
The mystery that surrounds Mr Potter’s own parentage has further fuelled speculation that he is the living embodiment of the Great Sorcerer’s deathless soul. The Quibbler has received letters from a number of readers who claim to have handled the shards of a broken Nimbus 2000, said to belong to Potter and currently housed at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes in Diagon Alley, London, and have subsequently been the recipients of great good fortune in their personal and professional lives.
The Boy Who Lived was unavailable for comment.
A good thick stack of Quibblers makes a very heartening fire, it turns out. A fire that burns in the kitchen hearth all through the morning until lunch, which is a bowl of thin tomato soup. Snape eats in his shirtsleeves at the long kitchen table. It's a pale sunny day today, showing up a thick fuzz of dust on the piles of plates and mugs stacked on the dresser opposite him. Snape is economical in his own routines. His bowl and spoon are scourgified when the soup is finished, and left tidily on the side for tomorrow, but he sees no need to touch what does not concern him.
The house itself is lulled and dumbfounded. The dust has settled over everything since the departure of the Order, and, stripped of the majority of the dark magic that had thrummed through its walls and floors and the small beings that had crept among its furnishings, Grimmauld Place seems old and forgetful. There is hardly anything left to be disturbed and yet Snape walks through the place cautiously; there are memories if nothing else, bitter pureblood memories and his own more recent ones of the thoughtless rampaging of Gryffindors with mops and shouting.
That the tiny library remained untouched is an irony not lost on Snape. Here he sits, apart from the rest of the house, with the grimoires and a hundred species of dark vermin who scuttled in to avoid the purge. There are two seats in here; a short sofa with an arm missing and mismatched purple and green cushions, and the chair that Snape chooses, stiff and upright, faded black, with tightly stuffed arms, fabric scratched and frayed. His fingernails snag on the loose threads, and the balls of his feet press against the bare floorboards. For the first half hour, he sits like a spider in the corner of the room, like he’s crouching, waiting for a reason to leap up.
There’s a torn scrap of paper in his inside pocket that says CRUCIO in big messy capitals.
At teatime, an owl comes with a letter addressed to "Severus Snape, care of Harry Potter". It is unrolled with enough force to nudge Snape's sandwich plate to the very edge of the side table, and to produce a large tear through the sender's address.
My dear Severus,
I hope you are settling in well at Grimmauld Place. I must admit I was surprised to hear that you had moved in with Harry – I know how you two have always disliked each other. Am I to understand that the straitening events of the war have brought about a more lasting truce between the two of you? Severus, I have to say that nothing would give me greater pleasure.
Be that as it may, I have a proposal to make to you which I hope may alter your living arrangements favourably. The Ministry has decided that in a bid to raise morale, Hogwarts is to be reopened as soon as possible, and with some reluctance, I have agreed to take up the position of Headmaster. It will take a lot of work to return the living quarters to a habitable state – I believe the Slytherin dormitories are still largely hexed and entirely flooded – and there is substantial investment required to restore some of the more valuable losses from the Restricted Section of the Library. Nevertheless I am hoping to be able to welcome the first students back in March. This brings me to the first part of my proposal: I would be delighted if you would return to Hogwarts to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts. I believe there is no better man for the job, and although I have not yet mentioned this possibility to the Ministry, I assure you I am more than willing to speak to them on your behalf, should objections be raised.
The second part of my proposal is a more selfish one. The position of Headmaster is mine on condition that I undertake extensive structural repairs to the Shrieking Shack and that I stick to a strict monthly regime of wolfsbane potion. Naturally, although I do not share the Ministry's less generous attitude towards your defection two years ago, I understand entirely that circumstances made it impossible for you to continue to brew the potion for me. I would be honoured if you would consent to resume this work now, and will of course reimburse you in whatever amount you deem fit from my – humblingly generous – Ministry stipend.
We have always been friends, Severus. I do hope you will consider –
When the small fire has flared and settled into a pile of ash in Snape's empty teacup, he takes up his sandwich again. The bird nudges pointedly at his wrist and is batted away.
"You," he says with some force, "should consider yourself fortunate that I've left you your feathers."
~
There is a thunderstorm easing off the next day when Snape wakes up. He’s taken a low-ceilinged bedroom on the top floor which is devoid of portraits and looks like it hasn’t been slept in for decades, unless it was by some sort of animal. Half a day’s cleaning of straw and dried muck made it minimally habitable. Still it has barn-like qualities: the smell of compost, and the racket that comes through a rattling window, which this morning is the hiss and spatter of rain.
A different sound drifts up the stairs, as he heads, barefoot, for the bathroom. The house has been so deathly still and quiet that it stops him cold for a moment.
"Make Kreacher clean the kitchen, will he? Make him scrub the blasted floors until his hands fall off? Make him polish the windows with his own pillowcase?”
Snape cranes over the banister, leaning on his knuckles, but there’s no response. He’s wrapping his robe around himself, about to descend, when there’s a sudden shriek of “Mudblood!” and footsteps are thudding up the stairs at a steady jog.
Potter is breathless and pink when he reaches the top. He is smiling.
“There you are!”
Snape feels the need to say something quelling at once. “Ever observant, Potter,” he manages, for want of something better. “More to the point, there you are. And why precisely are you there?”
“Things got a bit awkward at the Burrow. I’m, um. I’m moving back.” Potter fingers the newel post. “If that’s okay.”
“It’s your house. I am here on your sufferance. I daresay my vote would be a little tokenistic.” And with just a glimpse at Potter’s look of surprise, Snape retreats.
After half an hour of sitting on the bed watching the rain trying to fight its way in through the window, Snape is beginning to feel ridiculous. He has a potion that needs seeing to.
“You’ve got a potion that needs seeing to, I think,” Potter says, gesturing with a mug towards the pantry, when Snape appears in the kitchen. The elf is indeed polishing the windows, accompanied by a dull hum of invective. The sun has come out and is beaming in now, refracting through the rain drops on the window, and lighting swathes through the dusty air. Potter is pale in this light, and there are two small patches of shocking white in the thick black hair at his temple. Snape stares at him for a moment or two, looking for anything else that might give some hint of what the boy’s done. He is still smiling.
Finally: “Have I?” Sarcasm has always covered a multitude of sins.
“Smells like wolfsbane.”
Snape turns back. “How would you know?”
“I made it once last year. Just to see, you know. We were out in the field – there wasn’t much in the way of – caging – available.”
Snape’s eyes must be goggling. “And?”
“Apparently it didn’t pass muster. Professor Lupin had a sip of it to be polite, but –” He shrugs.
Snape laughs, a single loud and humourless guffaw. “Potter, wolfsbane is a potion far beyond the capabilities of most of the fellowship of the Wizarding Society of Tincturists and Master Blenders. You didn’t even make it to NEWT-level.”
“Actually I did.” He’s indignant now. The mug clunks onto the table.
“Well you shouldn’t have.”
Perversely Potter follows him into the pantry. “I did really well in sixth year.”
“If I remember rightly, Potter, it was I who did well in sixth year. You merely showed an unwonted interest in reading.” Snape cannot account for the sudden gloominess he feels. He doesn’t look at Potter, but stares instead at the cauldron sitting over a small conjured fire in the back corner of the pantry. The potion is smoking a little, which may be due to the damp air. It’s a good rosy colour and smooth as silk – ready in a day or two, certainly, but it will keep. He’ll make Lupin wait.
The boy breaks the silence.
“Professor Lupin told me he was going to ask you to start making wolfsbane for him again. Does this mean you’re going back to school?”
“Certainly not. I would not work for that man if he held the last remaining key to Silas Fishbinder’s Wholesale Herb and Rhizome Warehouse. However, I happen to agree with the Ministry that an undosed werewolf is an unfit headmaster.”
“I think you’re being unfair. Remus helped us win the war after all. He deserves a leg-up. And he’s always been a good friend to me. I remember the stories he –” Potter breaks off, rubbing a hand against his jaw and frowning.
“A leg-up? I can only assume it has slipped your mind that he tried to kill you. He tried to make me kill you.”
The boy looks up at him, peering round to try and see right into his eyes. It’s unsettling. “I tried to kill myself – have you forgotten that?”
“No.” Snape points his wand at the fire under the cauldron, reducios the flame. “Now get out of my laboratory.”
“My laboratory.”
Potter leaves just the same, hands in pockets.
When Snape emerges, Potter is still in the kitchen, leaning against the worktop by the sink. The washing up has been done, and apparently without a screaming fight – Potter must have done it himself. The elf is no longer anywhere to be seen; the boy on the other hand, is resolutely hanging around.
“How are you, anyway?” Potter asks, almost before the pantry door is closed.
Snape is aware of the slight friction of his fingers sliding slowly off the iron door knob. He gestures at himself, a small downward sweep of both hands, consciously brisk.
“As you see.”
“Still alive.”
They’re both still for a moment, then Potter begins to tap his palm on the worktop, drumming, impatient. “And how am I?”
Arrogant child.
“Still alive?” Snape moves towards the fire. The conversation is proceeding awkwardly. I’m fine. You’re fine. Slaughter of Dark Lords notwithstanding? The question Snape will not ask is practically itching at his palate. “Tea?” Surely that’s enough of a concession towards civility.
“I’m doing a lot of sleeping, as it happens.” Snape lifts the lid of the kettle as if he hasn’t heard – there’s already enough water for two, thankfully. He looks sideways at the sink, where Potter is crossing his ankles. “They knocked me out cold at St Mungo’s for three days.”
“So I read. I am an avid reader, as I’m sure you’re aware. And I see from today’s paper that you’ve ‘moved to dissociate’ yourself from ‘several nascent cults’. My congratulations.”
Potter huffs, but brings his mug over regardless. “Two sugars in mine, please.” The mug is handed over.
“Two now? How revoltingly typ– ical,” Snape finishes flatly as, for a moment, three neat fingertips press against the heel of his palm, clearly intentional.
They are gone before Snape can look up, and Potter is bending over the kettle himself, lifting the lid with a surprisingly steady hand. Two white spots beam from his temple like splotches of paint or the puff of dust from a burst flour bag.
~
It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. Every fibre in Snape’s body is crying out for a cup of earl grey and a slice of bread and butter, but there are boys in the kitchen, apparently unaware of his presence, and so he is forced to stand at the pantry door, listening through the crack, ladle in hand. To be evermore at the mercy of auburn visitors.
“Mum’s worried, obviously. And Ginny’s still in that gigantic sulk – she bat-bogeyed Malfoy again this morning. That didn’t go down well.”
Snape can imagine.
“But the people have gone?”
“More or less completely. Dad’s put a sign up saying you’ve left. We’ve got a pretty good collection of omnioculars now, though. Every-flavoured bean boxes too.”
“Sorry.” Potter sounds sullen.
“S’alright, mate. All more or less back to normal. How’s things here?” Weasley lowers his voice. “How’s he?”
There’s a pause. Snape is tempted to lean forward, peer through the gap, but there is the danger of a creaking floorboard. Instead his fingers drift to his chest, press a little over his inside pocket. The workings of his body seem to still as he listens, yet he can hear nothing.
“I should bloody well hope not!” Snape almost jumps. “Mate, that’s foul!”
“Oh right. And what about you and Malfoy?”
“That’s diff–” The scraping of a chair. “No, wait. Wait. Okay, I see your point.”
“At least he’s not a pointy-faced little shit.”
“No. He’s not. He’s a greasy sadistic wanker – oh come on!” Clattering; something smashes. “All right, calm down. I didn’t – well, I did mean it, but anyway, I shouldn’t have said it. But you shouldn’t have said that stuff about Malfoy either.” More scraping, then there’s silence for a bit, and finally a sudden burst of laughter from Weasley, then Potter, that seems to go on and on. Snape grips the ladle till it cuts into the fleshy parts of his palm.
“Oh – my god.” Potter’s words come with difficulty. “How is Malfoy anyway?”
“He’s okay. Miraculous recovery, you might say. Mum’s got a bit of a soft spot for him, which was weird to start with, but she’s got a thing for orphans, I suppose. He likes to talk about how I killed his dad sometimes. I just sort of put up with it.”
“Such a freak.”
“Oy.”
“Sorry.”
“Actually I tried to bring him with me, but he kept wandering into the paper shop on the corner. I thought he was just being difficult at first – well, you would. Turns out it was the Fidelius. He couldn’t get anywhere near the place, old Dumbledore never let him.”
“Ha!”
“Still, at least you know you’re safe here. Safe for ever with Professor Snape.” Snape can practically picture the expression on Weasley’s face, the grasping hands of a pantomime lecher.
“Shutup,” Potter hisses. “Shutup!”
~
It has rained on and off for two days. Snape forgets that it used to seem silent here. A good twenty minutes of screaming from the portrait in the hall – and what is Potter doing, poking it with a stick? – has been succeeded by the tapping of one owl after another on the study window. Potter is constitutionally unable to exist anywhere without bringing a farrago of noise and confusion with him. Even his bouts of sleeping, which – he is right – are frequent and inconveniently situated, involve a maximum of snoring, grunting and twitching. And now here he comes thumping up the stairs for the third time in ten minutes. Snape huddles back into the chair and pulls his book tight into his stomach. The footsteps are past the door, when Snape surprises himself by calling out.
“Why don’t you just go outside?”
Thump thump thump. The door opens, and Potter stands there smiling, eyebrows high. He’s in jeans and an old grey jumper, frayed and frilled at the bottom, and he has an apple core between the thumb and forefinger of one hand.
“It’s still raining. Besides there’s a couple of women out there. I saw them through the letterbox.”
“How terrifying.”
“They used to hang around at the Burrow as well. They must’ve followed Ron when he came the other day, I suppose. Of course, they could actually see the Burrow, so that was probably worse. What are you reading?”
“History.”
“Hogwarts: A History?” He’s such a child. “Hermione was always trying to get us to read that.”
“Miss Granger was a diligent student.”
“She was a diligent everything.” He’s leaning on the doorframe, with his feet crossed one over the other. “I miss her.” It sounds ominously like the opening to a much longer conversation. Snape looks down at his book.
“I’m certain you do. Perhaps one or other of your ladies outside would be happy for you to tell her all your war stories.”
“Perhaps.” Potter is quiet for a moment or two. His expression might almost be called thoughtful. “Why don’t you tell me yours?”
Clearly the boy is to be satisfied only with some sort of humiliating scene of shared confidence. Doesn’t he ever feel rebuffed? Snape closes his eyes. Is that the beginning of a headache?
“There’s nothing I could tell you that won’t be thoroughly hashed over by the Ministry in due course.”
“I’d like to hear it anyway. I just think, if we’re going to –” Snape’s eyes are open now. Several useful words appear to be irrevocably stuck on his tongue. “Anyway, I don’t really want to talk to anyone else about mine. Definitely not girls. I like – well, you know.” He gestures gingerly with the apple core, which swings precariously on its stalk. Potter steps a little closer and Snape eyes the apple, as if it is a threat to his book.
“You like what?” Snape swallows as subtly as he can manage. “Ageing authority figures?”
Potter laughs, surprised. “No!”
“Potter, we are not going to anything. If you are referring to what you perhaps thought you felt in that hovel at Hogwarts the night before you were very likely about to die, I would remind you that you are a nineteen-year-old boy.” Snape tries to put a hard emphasis on the word ‘boy’. “Nineteen-year-old boys have some very particular modes of behaviour. Besides which, I don’t flatter myself that you have had many alternative outlets.”
“I have a few now. I get letters.”
“I am well aware of that.”
There’s a pause. “They don’t really know who I am.” With a soggy inevitability, the apple core finally detaches itself from its stalk and drops to the floor. Snape waits while the boy bends to pick it up, then rubs at the sticky mark on the floorboards with a socked toe.
“And I do?”
“Well. Don’t you?” Potter looks up with a shyness he is barely entitled to.
Snape closes the book with a thunk, careless as to creased pages. “As it happens, I do, Potter. I know exactly who you are, just as I know exactly who I am. And what a surprise: we are – who we are, just as we have always been. No childish regret of yours can change that.” Potter is beginning to scowl. It’s just as well.
“You would be better served answering your owls,” he calls out, as the boy stamps out of the room. Snape watches him go – there is a large hole in the heel of his right sock – and for a minute or three after the door has slammed shut, he stares blankly at the bottom panel of it, before opening the book again at the wrong page.
~
In the middle of the afternoon, Potter is asleep on the living room sofa, one arm hanging over the side of it. On the floor, next to his open palm, is a half-empty mug of pumpkin juice and several scraps of parchment. Out of curiosity, Snape stoops to read.
DEAR MINDY,
THANKS FOR THE LETTER. I AM FINE. I’M NOT REALLY LOOKING FOR A GIRLFREIND THOUGH. I PROBABLY CAN’T GET YOU BACKSTAGE AT THE WYRD SISTERS CONCERT EITHER. SORRY I CAN’T HELP. THANKS AGAIN.
HARRY POTTER
DEAR HOGSMEDIA INC.
NO I HADN’T THOUGHT ABOUT ADVERTISING AS A CAREER, BUT YES I DO LIKE PUMPKIN PASTIES. THANKS FOR THE SUGGESTION. I’M STILL A BIT TIRED AT THE MOMENT, SO I’LL LET YOU KNOW. THANKS.
HARRY POTTER
The boy is frowning in his sleep, his teeth bared. He used to sleep with one hand tucked neatly under his chin. Now his arms are stretched away from his body, his feet tangled in the same red blanket that had covered Snape when he first woke up in this house. Potter is not snoring now, but when Snape bends closer he can hear a thin whine trickling out from between his teeth and the boy’s open hand suddenly twitches closed only an inch or two from Snape’s knee.
Potter’s pale face is rosy and damp with sweat, little strings of hair sticking to his forehead, trailing into his eyelashes. Snape smooths a little of it back with a single tense fingertip. The boy’s frown deepens, and Snape steps back quickly, parchment crunching under his heel. The whining has stopped and Potter’s mouth opened a little, but he does not wake.
~
“I’m busy.” Snick, snick, snick, goes the knife on the hellebore stem. Precise, steady, three millimetres each. “The door should remain closed at all times. I cannot have you wandering in and disturbing my work. Unless of course you have it in mind that I should accidentally poison your friend Lupin.” Snick, snick, snick.
“But it’s eleven o’clock. You haven’t been out of the pantry all morning. I’ve brought your tea. It’s earl grey.”
Snape slants his gaze up for a fraction of a second. Potter is holding out a Chudley Cannons mug.
“I have no time for tea.”
“I can leave it. Maybe on –”
“Get that mug off my Potions Bulletin!”
“Fine. I’ll have it myself.” From under lowered eyelids, Snape can see Potter coming closer. He takes a sip from the mug. “Ugh. Earl grey’s so bloody weak. So which bit’s this? Is this the aconite roots?”
“Astounding.”
“It is?” Potter sounds pleased.
“It is not.”
He laughs. “Oh well, another D for Mister Potter.” He takes another sip of tea; perhaps he’ll leave now, Snape thinks, curiously ambivalent, but the boy leans against a cupboard instead. “We need some sort of system. If we’re going to –” he breaks off. “If you’re going to be staying here for a bit. So you can tell me when you want tea.”
Snape uses the blade of his knife to slide the chopped stem off the board and into an earthenware bowl, puffing a straggle of hair away from his face. He pulls another stem towards him. Snick, snick, snick.
“I am perhaps even capable of making my own tea.”
“I know – you could send up a patronus or something. Come to think of it, I’ve never even seen your patronus.”
What?
The knife comes down a fraction too acutely and slides into the flesh of Snape’s thumb, almost slow enough to watch. As the blood beads up and spills onto the board, his gaze snaps up at Potter, who is staring wide-eyed into his mug. A subtle shift of the hips and the boy glances at him, open-mouthed, flushed red as a poppy.
“Um, I mean – oh, your thumb,” he says, starting forward. The mug is left on the potions journal. Snape thinks to back away from the table, but barely manages it.
“It’s nothing. You shouldn’t disturb me in here. I could make a mistake.” He is cradling his wrist like a Muggle, stupidly. Where is his wand?
“No, just – look – let –”
The boy takes his hand, shaking a little too hard to be gentle, and pulls Snape’s thumb to his mouth. Snape freezes, pulse snapping painfully. “Potter, stop.”
Potter’s lips are damp with tea, his tongue strong and hot against the pad of Snape’s thumb. A twinge of pain in the small laceration and an answering swoop of pleasure in his belly and balls. Stop. Stop. The boy shudders a little, then a gentle suck, barely anything; Snape’s cock fills hopefully, his palms itching with the memory of the brutally soft skin over Potter’s ribs.
“Stop,” he says again, in a voice that comes out small and cut with fear.
The boy opens his mouth a fraction, enough for Snape to snatch his hand away and back up against the larder. Pressing against the cupboard door helps ease the cacophony in his chest. What’s wrong with Potter anyway? Some puerile double entendre? Perhaps killing Voldemort has finally unpegged the boy's shaky grip on sanity.
“You,” – he clears his throat – “You are being ridiculous.”
“No, I thought – but you cut yourself.” Potter points.
“Yes, because I need peace and quiet. I need to be left alone. Get out. Get that mug off my Potions Bulletin!”
Potter goes – thump thump thump – and when his breathing has calmed, Snape locates his wand and heals the tiny cut. He saves what can be saved of the hellebore stems with an unsteady hand.
~
Every siege reaches a tipping point sooner or later, when the balance of the defences totters just an inch or two beyond what will hold.
Snape is out of bed when this moment arrives. He folds one arm of his nightshirt neatly over the other, slides it under the lumpy pillow, and is suddenly filled with a sense of his own absurdity. His life is a litany of habit, of memory and things past memory. How he clings to the past and to the bitterness he has fitted around himself for twenty years. What is the use of it now with all his enemies dead, all his bonds severed?
His heart rate quickens.
On an impulse he leaves his bedroom in his shirtsleeves and trousers and hurries down two flights of stairs. It is on his the tip of his tongue to call out “Potter”; he is almost decided to open the door of the boy’s room, the door opposite the stairs on the second floor. What did you have to do? he will say, plainly, just like that, and try his hand at kindness. Perhaps he will put a hand on a shoulder – it’s a strangely exhilarating thought. Perhaps. Snape hesitates, fingers hovering over the door handle, before exhilaration curdles to panic and he swerves away and down the landing.
Behind him the bedroom door opens. “Professor? Were you looking for me?”
Snape steps hastily into the study and leans against the closed door, a little light-headed. Idiotic impulse. CRUCIO, says the paper in his pocket, and so it should. He touches a hand to it.
There’s a knocking in the small of his back. “Professor?” The boy’s voice is muffled through the door. The handle rattles back and forth. “I think the door’s –”
Footsteps down the corridor, Snape’s shoulders drop a little, then – pop! There Potter is, barefoot by Snape’s chair, blue striped pyjama bottoms, hair a riot, and a look of childish determination.
For about half a minute there is a stand-off. Potter is breathing more heavily than a ten-foot apparition warrants, but then Snape is huddled against the door, as if he were cornered by a hippogriff. Potter’s eyebrows beetle fiercely – for a smallish wizard he is good at intimidation. Even the vulnerable ridge of his sectumsempra scar has been smoothed over, the work of smitten St Mungo’s mediwitches, no doubt. Snape sneers; it’s a little half-hearted, but enough, it turns out, to spur Potter into action.
“This is stupid.”
“For once you have my complete agreement, Potter. I will move into a bed and breakfast immediately.”
“No! I mean, why can’t we – what is it you think is wrong with me? I’m a grown man –”
“Partially at least.” Snape can’t help himself.
“The whole Voldemort thing? Is that it? It didn’t leave me funny in the head, you know.”
“And yet you’ve apparently decided you want to embark on a homosexual relationship with an ex-teacher you’ve always claimed to hate. How stable of you. How well thought out.”
Potter scowls. “We already embarked, remember.” He’s blushing a little, remembering Merlin knows what absurd indiscretion.
“As I believe we’ve discussed, Potter, that was war.” Snape is assailed by his own memory of a pale arm flung across his chest in the half-dark, the jut of a hip against his belly. He presses his fingertips into the door to still his hands. “Urges may be magnified. Or unsuitably directed,” he adds, looking at Potter from under lowered brows. “You are excused from any obligation.”
“Then what were you doing outside my bedroom door? You were there – I heard you!”
While Snape struggles for an answer, Potter’s expression softens terrifyingly. He takes a step forward, then one more.
“Look, we can – there – just –”
They’re a foot apart, and just like yesterday, he takes hold of Snape’s hand – a lighter grip this time, a thumb in Snape’s palm – and slides it onto his waist, holds it there gently. Soft flesh, warm from bed, it hollows under his thumb. Potter smiles tentatively and Snape’s cock arcs upwards. Scruples alone keep him from sliding to the floor at once.
“This isn’t real, Potter. What happened in that hut was a pretence, a preposterous folie à deux.” There it is – the last stand of his treasured reason, and yet his hand still sits on the boy’s hip. “You needn’t prolong –”
“I’ve got nothing better to do.” Ridiculous. “Have you?”
No. Nothing.
One hand is fixed on Potter’s hip, it will not shift; Snape raises the other to the boy’s temple. Between thumb and forefinger, he lifts a shank of hair, runs the tip of his finger over the bright white strands. Potter’s hair is damp, a little greasy from sleep. What? Snape thinks; how? but cannot ask.
“We can –” the boy says again, almost a question, and he’s pulling Snape’s shirt out of the waistband of his trousers. Then down he goes, presses his mouth to Snape’s stomach, fingers curling round the waistband into the tender skin of Snape’s abdomen, and it’s as much as Snape can do to keep a hand in his hair. Everything bows to the boy’s will. So be it.
Potter’s tongue traces odd slow shapes around Snape’s navel for half a minute, his breathing hot and damp, until he appears to lose concentration, unaware of his wrist nudging tantalizingly against Snape’s trousered erection, and stands up to look him in the eye. Impatient, Snape bends and kisses him, going in teeth and tongue first. Potter’s bottom lip so tender and fleshy, it is almost impossible not to bite, and Snape applies his fingers in a tight grip round Potter’s upper arms to compensate for what seems to him miraculous forbearance.
The boy’s cheek is warm and smooth – no doubt the product of a presumptuous shaving charm – like the skin of a soft fruit pressed against Snape’s nose and mouth. He can’t help but break off and snap a little at Potter’s jaw. A soft moan whistles past his ear, and he bends Potter back a fraction, so his chest cranes over the boy’s, the cotton of his shirt a mere veil, flimsily modest, between them. Heat licks in Snape’s gut. He’s peeled from the door now and pressing forward for another kiss, but his tongue has barely slid the blissful length of Potter’s, when the boy loses his footing and they stumble sideways into the shelves. No matter, Snape presses this new advantage and pins Potter against the bookcase; the boy’s shoulders are held high and tense, an oak upright jutting into the space between his shoulderblades no doubt, but he doesn’t complain – quite the reverse, grips the shelves with both hands to keep himself in place.
That mouth. Blood red and glossy-slick, panting from a single serious kiss, just as Snape remembers. He slides in a thumb, the one with the healed cut, and goes for Potter’s neck. He has to bend down awkwardly, but the sudden jerk of Potter’s hips makes it more than worthwhile, and Snape clamps a willing palm over the boy’s cock. Two priceless books smack to the floor.
“The – sofa –” Potter gasps around Snape’s thumb.
“Agreed.”
The sofa is too narrow for comfort. Snape can fit one knee to the side of the boy’s thighs, the other leg drags off the seat, taking half his weight. Potter is on his back, wedged tight into the sunken cushions, so there are compensations. They lie cock to cock, Potter arching up, inasmuch as he can, taut-faced, straining for friction. One hand holds Snape by the small of the back, the other pulls clumsily at his own pyjamas, tugging down at the hip fabric that is pinned fast at the groin.
Potter makes a whining noise through clenched teeth, his face tucked against the arm of the sofa at some unnatural angle, nudging harder with each awkward thrust of Snape’s cock against his belly and balls. Effort and tension ratchet through Snape’s body, every touch, every glancing graze magnified, until he’s not even sure they’ll last till any clothes come off. The boy shudders hard and Snape is compelled to lean down and push his tongue into that obscene little mouth.
Small teeth scrape against his bottom lip and Snape finds himself clutching at the boy’s pyjamas himself.
“Get them off,” he snaps, and levers himself up.
Cotton, damp with sweat, is peeled down almost to the boy’s knees. His cock twitches under Snape’s greedy gaze, as he hastily flicks open the buttons of his own trousers.
To lie flesh to flesh, even only that small eager band of flesh between navel and thigh, is like the first lungful of air after a lengthy dunking in the privy. Potter gapes and tenses; a knee connects with Snape’s inner thigh as his heels slide over the sofa cushions, desperately trying to brace. Snape pins him at the hip with one palm, but the rhythm of his own hips is jerky and unstrung. They are practically lip to lip, a fog of heated breath between them and a drop of moisture falls from the tip of Snape’s nose onto the boy’s flushed cheekbone. He stretches up to bury his face in Potter’s hair, his stomach skidding over Potter’s cock and his own, and that’s it. A wheezy grunt, lips peeling back from gritted teeth, and the boy comes in four strong pulses, stretched like a piano wire against the cushions; at the last gasp Snape follows him helplessly, panting his orgasm into the side of the boy’s neck, every inch of him tight with effort and pleasure, piercingly sharp and seemingly endless.
Then silence. The thump of Snape’s retreating pulse. The creep of boneless fatigue. His torso is lifted several inches by a large inhalation. Snape raises his head, feeling more than a little dazed.
“That wasn’t exactly” – another huge breath – “what I had in mind.” Potter’s smile is disgustingly smug nonetheless.
Snape can hardly find it in himself to regret their haste either. In a minute or so he’ll be appalled to be lying spread-eagled on Harry Potter, wallowing in the stench of their aftermath, bare arse exposed to the Noble and Most Ancient Library of Black; for now, his head fits comfortably into the space between the boy’s ear and a large, badly dented purple cushion. If he can barely breathe in this position, perhaps the dizziness is to be welcomed.
“Are you surprised?” Potter asks after a bit, fingering his neck in a way that is not quite ticklish enough to force him to move.
Snape is no longer surprised at anything.
~
“What’s this?” Potter has paused in the unbuttoning to pull a little scrap of paper out of Snape’s pocket.
Snape doesn’t need to look up to see what is written on it; the sudden embarrassment at having kept it almost, but not quite, subdues the torrent of arousal in his blood.
“To-do list,” he days, aiming for dry.
Potter doesn’t seem to hear. He stares at the paper in his palm for a second or two, his face a picture of annoyance, then crunches it into a little ball. If his other hand were not on the top fastening of Snape’s trousers, perhaps he would have incendio’d it.
Truth be told, Snape had forgotten about that piece of paper. He hasn’t thought of it in a fortnight – it’s a surprise to see it shrivelled and discoloured with cleansing charms. The reminder should bring him up short, but then Potter says something sentimental about making it up to him and sets about his buttons once more. Snape is surprised to find that the well of regret he’d thought bottomless comes up dry as powdered cactus.
“Which is of course your answer for everything. Have you considered the possibility that I do not share your priapic tendencies?”
The boy looks up, satisfyingly shocked.
“I don’t have any tendencies!”
“They may say you have the power of twenty wizards, Potter, but you certainly do not have their vocabulary. I was referring to your insatiable appetite for fornication; your tastes are, as you say, highly conventional.”
“Don’t look a gifthorse in the mouth, Professor.”
“Arrogant boy.” He pinches hard at Potter’s right nipple, smirking at the hiss it provokes, the sudden hollowing of flesh under the boy’s ribcage. His own cock nudges impatiently at Potter’s dawdling fingers.
“Anyway, you’re always up for it at teatime. I think there’s some kind of potion in that earl grey.”
“And now you are disputing my potency?”
“No.” The last button comes open. Potter licks his lips intently, looking down. His cheeks are red under the black flash of his eyelashes. Snape takes a steadying breath.
“Anyway I can’t conceive what you mean by always. This – liaison – still falls decidedly into the category of temporary aberra–”
The boy fits his mouth around Snape’s cock, sucks the objections straight out of his head.
~
Dumbledore’s office – it will never be anything other than that – is eerily quiet without the symphony of ticking and squawking that used to inhabit it. It looks decrepit. The rugs are tracked with stains, some of which appear to be blood, and something has been chewing on the legs of the giant mahogany desk. Remus Lupin sits behind it looking oddly small and apologetic. A teacup sits to his left and a flask of wolfsbane potion to his right. His hand, though a polite distance from the flask, is nevertheless clearly poised to grasp, in case Snape changes his mind. Several portraits look on avidly.
Snape decides to play to form.
“I here there’s an Order of Merlin in the offing.”
“I have no intention of accepting it, Severus.” Lupin adopts an appropriately self-deprecating tone. “I have done very little that is in any measure heroic.”
“The position of Headmaster of Hogwarts naturally triggers no such scruples?”
“Scruples, yes. Still, I happen to agree that it is in the best interests of the wizarding community that Hogwarts be reopened, and the Department of Education and Apprentice Sorcery swore blind that they could find no other candidates.”
“Well that certainly puts my mind at rest.”
“You haven’t changed your mind about the Defence Against the Dark Arts position? There is no one of your calibre –”
“No, I have not, nor will I.” Snape takes a sip of his tea. That at least has improved under the new regime. Nothing else has. “In point of fact, I have decided on a change of career.”
Lupin raises an eyebrow. “Really? I am surprised, Severus. You’ve never done anything but teach. Unless you count –” He feigns a guilty look, but the slip was clearly intentional. The bastard fights back. He spreads his fingers on the table smugly. “What will you do?”
Snape toys with the idea of telling him that he’ll be spending the rest of his working life researching new ways of fucking Harry Potter. It’s a dirty job…
“I intend to write a book.” This time Lupin looks genuinely surprised. “I will be telling the true story of the war and how it was won.”
Lupin sighs. “You know that I have never asked for any acclaim that is rightfully yours, Severus.”
“Decent of you.”
Lupin opens his mouth, but pauses before asking, “How is Harry?”
“Alive,” Snape barks pointedly. He drains his cup. “Well, if that’s the pleasantries over with.” He stands up from his chair. “I will return in four weeks with your next dose. Do try not to chew on anyone.”
“Severus,” Lupin holds up a hand, “I am fully aware of your feelings. Nevertheless, I would be truly grateful for the opportunity to visit Harry. I have sent a number of owls which have not been answered. The last returned to me with several singed feathers.”
Snape tuts. “The boy can be so uncouth. Never mind, Lupin, I will talk him round. And by all means visit. Come at teatime. I’m sure Potter will be charmed.”
~
3.2.1 On Horcruxes
The making of a horcrux is in itself a simpler process and, and the magic thereof less pernicious, than many other forms of life extension. In fact, a single expulsion of dark magic via the Avada Kedavra, or equivalent fatal magical activity, is required to create and invest a horcrux, making it arguably considerably less invasive than the broadbeam reanimation, obliviation and reprogramming involved in the potion-based reversal of this basic dark sorcery.
That Thomas Riddle, in the spring of 1948, decided on this comparatively sanitary and yet nigh irrevocable form of self-preservation is a demonstration of the pragmatism that marked his early career. In Part 4.5, Riddle Unravels, I will go on to examine the more outlandish methods, such as parasitic lodging on the reverse of a man’s head, he was to go on to employ in the early 1980s.
Six of Riddle’s horcruxes are known: an early diary of his own, dating from his adolescence; a black and gold ring originally belonging to his grandfather, Marvolo Gaunt; the python Nagini, who was to be Riddle’s familiar until the snake’s destruction in 1998; a twelfth-century goblet, believed to have been the property of Hogwarts’ founder Helga Hufflepuff; a large empty locket inscribed with majuscule S, indicating, without doubt, the founder Slytherin; and latterly the half-blood infant Harold Potter, a vessel created, it is now thought, by accident during an unknown contretemps in 1981.
Only the last of these vessels was to survive until the armistice of 1999, after the removal of the invested soul. This was achieved via a double-blended datura-based potion adapted from one whose last recorded use was in 1477 (Spitte and Prankes, 1605). The ingredients and preparation of the adapted potion, together with relevant reactions and contraindications, are detailed in figure 3.2c below.
Four minutes, it takes – Snape is counting. Four minutes during which the boy’s heel clumps incessantly against the arm of Snape’s chair, where he has perched himself. Then –
“Pragmatism?” Potter’s lip is curling.
“Mm?”
“Murdering some poor bugger in cold blood’s not what I call pragmatism.”
"How surprising. And your problem, Potter –”
“Oh, do tell me what my problem is. I’m dying to hear a new one.” The pages are dropped in Snape’s lap, one slides to the floor. Potter drapes himself over the back of the chair and pretends to yawn.
“Your problem – is that you've never been able to grasp the existence of opposing points of view. Some people would consider that an impediment to social functioning."
“My name isn’t even Harold anyway.”
"A pity. Be that as it may, if you find so much to criticise, I can only suggest that you write your own book."
“Perhaps I will.” Snape is shuffling the loose pages together, when he feels a finger curling in his hair at the crown. He jerks his head away for effect, for correction, and Potter sighs. “My book will be all about how wars can be won with nothing but the resurrected spirit of Merlin, the power of twenty Dumbledores in a single wand arm, and a really really impressive patronus.”
Snape congratulates himself that not even the smallest smile escapes him. At least one of them knows a little self-discipline.
“Fiction. How invigorating.”
~
It’s midnight. There is no curtain on the window in this room; the light shines deep blue on the side of Severus’s cheekbone and the curve of his nose. He scowls in his sleep, but that, it turns out, is par for the course.
Harry smiles at him. So bloody prickly; it’s only little by little that he lets himself relax. Baby steps. Today he threw a cup against the kitchen wall, and then twenty minutes later he was barely able to hold onto his sneer as Harry crouched between his legs. And sometimes these days, when he’s tipping over into sleep, his guard falls, and Harry can slip inside his mind. He sees himself there. He might be heaving plants from the ground in that jungle of a back garden, shirt thrown off, or sleeping, or reading, which rarely happens in real life. Occasionally he’s reading with his shirt thrown off, which never happens.
Sometimes, maybe once or twice in a month, Severus dreams about him facing Voldemort. It’s a struggle for Harry to watch those ones, not that the memories are painful or even clear – at St Mungo’s they gave him some kind of obliviating draft that has smudged over about half an hour – but because it’s always wrong, he’s sure of it. The details are slightly off – Harry’s almost certain he was lying on his arse in the rubble when his wand went off. And it wasn’t a green flare, he’s doesn’t think, though the only thing he remembers clearly is a cloud of anger, and a sudden thought of Severus in the hut alone, cutting up pumpkins. The dream finishes wrong, too. Nearly always it ends with Snape coming up to him, touching his hair or his hand. Harry’ll smile at him as if it’s what he expected all along.
Harry yawns. It is not Severus’s dreams that wake him, or even his own – like the scar, they’ve all but disappeared – it is a weird sense of expectation, like he has to get up early for a journey or his NEWTs. He’ll sit up suddenly with his heart going like a jackhammer.
Another minute and he’ll go back to sleep. One more minute. He’s reaching for his copy of Quidditch Monthly when something makes Severus twitch violently and give a muffled grunt. Harry holds himself as still as possible. After a moment, the frown settles again.
He’s not even close to waking. Harry nudges him gently in the ribs just to be sure.
“Severus,” he murmurs. He wouldn’t dare say it out loud while Snape’s awake. Not yet.
