The Release of Sisyphus Chapter 6/18
Sleep? What's that?
“Snape!” Harry couldn’t help but laugh. Dimitri remained frozen, his wand still raised as if he planned to attack. “It’s me! Harry!”
“Prove it,” said Snape, the accent vanished from his voice, his tone lower than before.
Eagerly, Harry unzipped his jeans. Dimitri shot up his eyebrows.
Heat seared Harry’s cheeks. “I have to take off my trousers to show you.” Hurriedly, before Snape could object, Harry pushed down his trousers and sat down. He sliced open his thigh and dug out the Polyjuice capsules, dumping them on the table. “I use these so I don’t have to drink the potion every hour.” He sealed up the wound and pulled up his jeans. “Do you have a Polyjuice antidote handy?”
Wordlessly, Dimitri reached into a pocket in his trousers and produced a small black bottle. He tossed it to Harry, who unscrewed it and took a big swig. Setting it down on the table beside him, he let the antidote wash away all traces of Ben. He pinched out his contacts, dropping them on the table. “Accio glasses!” They flew to him from the bedroom and he slipped them on. “Your turn.”
Dimi- Snape slowly slid into the chair on the other end of the table. He used magic to slip off his contacts and tuck them neatly in a carrying case. When he glanced up again, Harry’s heart skipped a beat. He’d never forgotten the intensity of those dark eyes. Snape picked up his wand and transformed his shirt and trousers into robes, although these were more form-fitting than the ones he wore before, and a deep dark blue instead of black.
“The rest?” asked Harry eagerly.
In a voice that Harry had thought he’d never hear again, Snape said, “I’m tan and I had plastic surgery.” His teeth flashed, still as white and perfectly straight as Dimitri’s had been.
Harry blinked rapidly. While Snape looked younger and conventionally more physically attractive, it didn’t feel right to look at his altered face. Harry could see bits of the old Snape, but it was like finding familiar features of a parent in a child. Besides, Snape had been sexy before, in his own odd way. Now he looked so . . . normal. What happened to the Snape who didn’t give a fuck about what society thought? It wasn’t right. Was this really the man Harry’d known those years before?
Seeing the dismay on Harry’s face, Snape explained, “I couldn’t take a risk with glamours or Polyjuice.” His dark eyes devoured every inch of Harry’s face as if he also couldn’t believe what he saw before him. “There are ways to test for Polyjuice, and I needed a flawless disguise.”
Harry’s head was spinning. Too much was happening too fast. Why was Snape in Kavala? Why was he here? Why had he warned Harry about Death Eaters? Picking through the muddled mess of questions in his brain, Harry asked the one that had been bouncing around all evening. “Why is Nik here in London?”
“You saw him?” Snape’s eyebrows rose.
Harry nodded. “We are going on a date on Thursday. He told me that the reason you warned me about Death Eaters in Kavala is because you were jealous of him.” Sexually jealous of him. Wait. Did that mean...? “Are you gay?”
“I have a preference towards men,” said Snape with a small nod of his head.
Only Snape had a hundred ways of avoiding a straight answer. “I’m pretty much exclusively attracted to men now,” Harry announced, feeling his cheeks burn.
Snape’s eyebrows knitted and Harry quickly added, “Don’t worry it’s not because I’m trying to ‘take back control from my abusers’ or anything like that. I just prefer sex with blokes.”
“And Ben?”
“A Muggle I Polyjuice into. Ron’s playing me now. Hermione and Ginny help out as well.” Snape had probably seen reports that Harry would be at the charity gala and planned his exploration whilst Harry would be occupied. Wait. Why was he even bothering with this nonsense? “How the fuck are you alive? I want details.”
“I cloned myself,” said Snape as if that were something he did one afternoon over tea. “When the Dark Lord set Nagini on me, I focused on poisoning her first, then keeping myself alive second. I put myself in a state of arrest similar to Draught of Living Death. Some idiot stuffed healing potions in my windpipe-”
Harry laughed.
“-which helped the capsules I’d earlier prepared. After I woke up in the morgue, I switched the bodies.” He held out his wand. “Accio wand!” His original wand flew to him.
Harry did the same, closing his fingers around that familiar stick of wood. It felt right. Better than his replacement. “Have you been using mine all this time?”
“It answered to me well enough. Accio Scotch!” A bottle flew out of Harry’s liquor cabinet.
“Did you go through my entire flat?” asked Harry. It was an unnerving thought, even though he trusted Snape more than anyone.
“If you hadn’t had it, I would’ve nipped off to purchase some.” Snape summoned two glasses, filled them to the brim, and pushed one over to Harry.
Not sure he wanted to drink with a spinning head, Harry stood and fetched a glass of ice. His body seemed to move independently of him, as though this were one of his dreams come to life. Maybe it was. None of this could be real. It made more sense that he was dreaming than that Snape was sitting at his kitchen table, drinking scotch. Any minute now, he’d wake up. A million questions rumbled through his head, each demanding attention. He managed to get one out: “Are you hungry?”
“No.”
Already a bit lightheaded, even though he hadn’t yet tasted his drink, Harry grabbed a tin of biscuits and sat again. He poured the scotch over the ice and took a sip. One question at a time, starting with the simpler ones. He had the feeling that if he started with the harder ones, Snape would vanish. “Were you killing Death Eaters in Kavala?”
“Yes,” said Snape as easily as if he were touring instead. “Why were you there?”
“I was trying to find whoever wrote a letter to The Scientific Wizard complaining about who we’d picked to win our annual contest.”
Snape’s eyebrows pricked. “You are in charge of that?”
Harry grinned brightly. Pulling one over on Snape felt better than winning any award, including the Order of Merlin. “I got you, didn’t I? Hermione and I started the magazine together, but we kept our names off of it. We told the others that we were worried it wouldn’t be taken seriously if the wizarding world knew we were behind it. I rigged the contest with the help of one of our Muggle chemists on staff. He was the only one who knew that the winner’s project wouldn’t work.”
Snape arched an imperial eyebrow at him. Even with his changed face, the look took Harry back. “And it never occurred to you that I might have been involved with Death Eaters?”
Harry wasn’t going to be spoken to like some naughty teenager. He finished off his glass, and poured the rest of the scotch over the ice. “You were finally free. Why aren’t you on a beach somewhere?”
“Why are you an Auror?”
“I enjoy helping people. I don’t do it because I want revenge.”
Snape made a noise of derision around swallowing his scotch.
Infuriated, Harry pressed his point, “I put them in prison. I don’t kill them.”
Snape sneered. “Prison is too good for some.”
Ugh. He’d been worried this would happen. A few minutes into their encounter and they were already on their first fight. Shaking his head, Harry took a big swig from his glass. “I don’t know why I thought this would go well.”
“You did?” Snape’s lips quirked up in amusement. They hadn’t been altered. Harry could still remember how they tasted. “I always thought that if you did manage to find me, we’d end the meeting in a fight. When have things ever been easy between us?”
He had a point. Speaking of which... “We couldn’t be honest then. What would have happened had I taken that second capsule?”
“Nothing.” Snape refilled his glass. “I’d already given it to you.” He pushed the bottle towards Harry. “Can you handle your liquor now?”
“Yes,” said Harry. He took a large gulp and refilled his glass. “I can also hold my own against you in a duel.”
“Barely,” argued Snape. “I’d have had you if the wands had worked correctly.”
“Only because I was using your wand, which has never probably obeyed me.”
“It’s stubborn,” Snape acknowledged, running his fingers down the length of wood admiringly. “You still move too much when you dodge.”
Harry snorted into his glass. “Most wizards can’t shoot and run at the same time. I have plenty of energy left. I’d love to see you race me on a broom.”
Snape glanced at him. “Do you still play Quidditch?”
“Occasionally with my friends, but work keeps me busy.” A bit hurt that Snape hadn’t bothered to keep even the slightest track of him, Harry teased, “So you haven’t been stalking me?”
“If I had, I’d have known about Ben.”
“I doubt that.” Not wanting another argument, Harry quickly asked, “What did you do after? Start the hunt immediately?”
“No.” Snape reached across the table and pulled the package of biscuits towards him. With elegant fingers, he pulled apart the wrapper and selected one. Watching him eat made him seem more real; less a ghost. “I travelled. I visited every place I’d ever wanted to see. I spent two years doing whatever I wanted. It bored me.”
Apparently it wasn’t in Snape’s nature to live in peace. “So you went to Kavala to hunt Death Eaters?”
“Not at first,” Snape said calmly, without a trace of emotion. “I started in South America.”
Harry’d hoped that Snape’s darkness had left him when the Dark Lord had, but maybe his soul had been too steeped in evil to ever wash clean. “And you killed every Death Eater there?”
Snape arched an eyebrow at him. “Why do you care about the people who tortured you?”
“They weren’t all bad,” Harry argued. “Draco wasn’t. Narcissa wasn’t. Some of them just made the wrong choices. Unless you knew them all personally, you don’t know who they really were.”
Snape looked at Harry with a peculiar expression. It was almost amusement, but not quite. “Have you ever come across an innocent suspect?”
“Not yet, but I know they’re out there.”
Snape’s gaze fell on Hadrian’s carving. “You found Hadrian.”
“I thought he was you.”
Chuckling, Snape held out his hand and the carving flew into it. His amusement was just like Harry remembered: small, sudden, and over so quickly, you might’ve missed it. Occasionally it had been longer, normally during sex.
Harry downed the rest of his glass and poured more. He wasn’t ready for this. How could he ever be ready for Snape alive and in his kitchen? He’d dreamed about that voice, those hands, and dark eyes. Seeing them in person just didn’t seem real. It was a good thing Snape had changed his face. It was a reminder that the man Harry’d known in the prison hadn’t been the real Snape at all. A stranger sat across the table. A stranger with some of Snape’s features and mannerisms, but he wasn’t the person Harry remembered.
“I like to pick someone each in town who can be confused for me.” Snape ran his fingers over carving, exploring it in detail with his fingers as though he lacked sight. “Hadrian was the best doppelganger I’ve found. Did you tell him who you were?”
“Basically.” Harry sighed. “I asked him if he knew my mother - Lily. I had him carve that.” He’d been an idiot.
“And Nik knew you went to Drama?” Snape set the carving to the side and sipped from his drink.
“He gave me the list of people who could be an ‘old friend’ of mine. You weren’t on it.” Perhaps it was the scotch, perhaps it was the circumstances, but he suddenly felt dizzy, as though he’d been drinking on an empty stomach. “I’m getting Chinese.” He stood and fetched the phone and a menu and pencil from beside the fridge. “Before you ask, I decided to live half Muggle to be more efficient at work. I’ve been working most of the cases involving Muggles because many Aurors are pants at pretending to be them, and we’ve had an upswing in cases involving them because of the war.”
“How would the war have affected that?”
Work was a good topic. It didn’t send Harry’s head spinning. “Some Death Eaters had the brilliant idea of hiding in the Muggle world. Some of them lived how they thought Muggles should live - we caught most of them the first year. Some of them blend in really well. When we catch one, they normally talk to get a better deal, so we spend years tracking down an ever growing tree of names of Death Eaters alleged to be alive and still living here.” He circled the dishes he wanted and passed the menu to Snape.
Snape took the phone, dialed the number on the menu, and ordered in Chinese. He gave Harry’s address from memory, then hung up the phone.
“Show off.” He couldn’t put any real heat in it. He wanted Snape to try to impress him.
Snape set down the phone and picked up his glass. His eyes drifted over Harry’s upper body, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he saw before him.
Under that intense gaze, Harry wanted to rip off his shirt and invite Snape to explore him with his hands and mouth as well. He blinked and looked away. Where the hell had that come from? It couldn’t be healthy to be so eager to return to how things had been between them.
“Is the account published in the Daily Prophet actually written by you?”
Harry risked a glance back at Snape. “Yes. I killed Voldemort and Lucius. They didn’t include the part where I insisted that they revive you, and they sedated me because I cut open my arm to get out more healing potions. Did you know that I lived when you left?”
“Yes.” Snape poured himself more scotch. “When did you take my wand?”
“Narcissa gave it to me after Voldemort failed to kill me. She said that you’d want me to have it. I originally put it in your grave, but I had you exhumed a few years later because I didn’t believe you were dead.”
Snape’s eyes fixed on Harry’s. In a quiet voice, he asked, “Why?”
“Because it was you. You knew that he’d try to kill you. You knew that the wizarding world wouldn’t believe your innocence. You knew that the Death Eaters would want revenge. I, your best character witness and the only person who could’ve saved you, was a confused, damaged child who’d been through a terrible ordeal and probably suffered from Stockholm. Death was the smartest option, but you were also too stubborn and clever for it to be your only option.”
In a quiet voice, Snape asked, “Did you think you suffered from Stockholm?”
Harry let out a sigh and ran his fingers through his hair. Meeting Snape’s eyes, he answered, “I know our relationship wasn’t healthy and it probably contained a bit of that. That’s why I waited before searching for you. I had to be certain. I just . . . had to know you lived. It wouldn’t have been right otherwise. Oh!” He jabbed his finger on the table. “You never showed up in your portrait.”
“I have a portrait?” It might’ve been his new face, but Snape looked more surprised than Harry had thought possible.
“Yes, and you never popped up and started lecturing me through it, no matter how much I taunted. It’s in the Headmaster’s office if you want to see it.”
“I’d rather not face Minerva,” said Snape, his lips twitching.
Harry laughed. “I can imagine the lecture.”
The doorbell rang and Harry jumped to his feet to answer it. He paid the delivery boy and turned around to find Snape standing a few feet behind him, his glass in one hand, his wand subtly clutched in the other.
“Let’s eat in here,” Harry said, nodding towards the sitting room. “I can show you some videos if you are interested.”
As he followed Harry into the room, Snape summoned the scotch and Harry’s glass. He set them on the table in front of the sofa, then disappeared back into the kitchen. Harry unpacked the cartons, pushing the ones he didn’t recognise towards the other end of the table from where he sat. Returning with plates and utensils, Snape sat down on the other end of the sofa and plopped spoons in the cartons near him. “Where are your chopsticks?”
“I don’t know how to eat with them,” admitted Harry.
Snape gave him a look of disapproval as he bent forward to add spoons to Harry’s dishes. His arm brushed past Harry’s, his robes soft, nearly silk. He smelled different than before. Less like potions and more like earth.
Snape is sitting on my sofa, eating Chinese with me. Unable to move, Harry watched in frozen silence as Snape put rice on his place and took a bit of food from each carton, either oblivious to or ignoring Harry’s division. He settled back on the sofa and transfigured a fork into chopsticks.
What are you doing here? Did you ever love me, or was it always about my mum? What do- Harry cleared his throat and managed to get out a question, “What is that?”
“This?” Snape held up the chunk of food on the end of his chopstick. “Fried shrimp. Try one.” With nimble fingers, he plunged his chopsticks into a carton and pulled another one out, dumping it on Harry’s empty plate.
“It still has eyes.” A thin layer of fried batter did nothing to hide the black eyes on the fully intact shrimp.
“That’s how you know it’s fresh.” Snape bit the head off of one of his, the loud crunch filling the room.
Of his coworkers, Harry was known as the adventurous one. He wasn’t about to let Snape scare him off. He bit into the back end of his shrimp and chewed carefully. Snape watched closely, his dark eyes shining with amusement.
“It’s good.” Harry bit off more of the shrimp, leaving the head behind. He snagged another one. “Did you go to China?”
“For a year.”
Harry didn’t want to know if he’d been there to hunt down Death Eaters. “Have you been to Australia?”
“No. Have you?”
Regretfully, Harry shook his head. “Not yet. After the war I took a bit of time for myself, but I didn’t feel comfortable leaving with so much work to be done. I had a lot of trouble getting this holiday, and I didn’t go very far.”
“I should think that overworked Aurors wouldn’t be successful.” Snape shifted forward to scoop more food onto his plate. He moved exactly how he had before: confident, elegantly, and with slow, but exact steps. Not an action wasted.
“I had to prove myself.” Harry tried to replicate Snape’s elegance as best he could. “Everyone, even the Ministry, viewed my becoming an Auror as an act of charity, even after I passed the three years of training with high marks. Kingsley let any participant in the Battle of Hogwarts begin Auror training, and there was such a glut of applicants that they had to divide us into groups instead of treating us as one class. Those of us in Dumbledore’s Army were all the in the same group, and our whole group did exceptionally well compared to the other two, so some people claimed bias. The department didn’t reintegrate the class until the third year, so most of the people who left never worked with me, and rumors flew about that I was just taken on as a pity case since my marks were suspiciously high. They were partially right; I do think Kingsley and Robards treated me with kid gloves at first. I used to get the most boring, simple cases, so I busted my arse, and took on extra cases with people like Ron who trusted my judgement. I still feel the need to prove myself, especially after what happened at the fifth year anniversary.”
“What did happen?”
Harry had just assumed that Snape knew, since he seemed to know everything. “They did a reenactment of the Battle of Hogwarts. It was . . . embarrassing. I can show you a video Hermione made if you’d like.”
“Is it accurate?”
“As far as I know, it doesn’t show anything that didn’t happen.” Setting his plate on the table, Harry jumped up from the sofa and fetched the video. He started it, then sat back down. The video had just begun, but already his cheeks burned hot. He’d glanced over the script and made sure it was accurate, but they’d still managed to portray him as some sort of saviour. The reenactment began with his speech to his friends the night before the Battle. He’d refused to share any details about his time in prison, including how he escaped. It had led to endless speculation and rumours, but he doubted anyone would believe the true story anyway. The bloke who played him stood dressed on a raised platform in a room full of upturned and inspired faces. His robes were impeccable, his hair subdued by gel, and each word filled the room with confident inspiration.
Slowly clearing his plate, Snape watched the video with the same sort of impenetrable expression Harry remembered all too well. He didn’t even blink when they showed Harry being given a private room to change into the robes for the ceremony. The scene switched over to Snape’s death. Narcissa had given the few details she knew, so much of the scene had been improvised. As Nagini sank her fangs in Snape’s neck, he smashed a potion bottle against her side.
His eyes fixed on the screen, Snape set his empty plate down on the table and refilled his scotch glass.
Unnerved by the heavy silence, Harry asked, “Did you kill her?”
“Yes,” said Snape simply.
Harry refilled his own glass, unable to take his eyes off of Snape as he watched the fight with Voldemort and the melee in the castle. In the portrayal, it seemed so orderly, as if everyone knew exactly what to do at every moment. The chaos, the confusion, the instinct had all been wiped away. The Harry Potter on screen was a confident soldier whose spells landed perfectly, and whose movements brought him closer to the enemies he wanted to kill or disable. He exhausted himself, not trying to save Snape, but in fighting until he could barely move.
It was not the most embarrassing portrayal, but it was the one that he most hated. The others were so cruel and hateful, only those who already disliked him believed them. When he was shown as the golden child who could do no wrong, a disconcerting proportion of the population believed it, and of those that rightfully didn’t, a very vocal percentage questioned his abilities as an Auror. He didn’t blame them. If the video and articles from the Prophet were all he’d seen of a colleague, he’d be wary of them too.
Why had he even shown this to Snape? The man had always accused him of having an over-inflated ego. The Harry Potter in the video was exactly what Snape had always sneered about. Harry’s head spun from the drink and Snape’s overwhelming silence hung oppressively thick over the room. He needed to get away. To think. To pinch himself to make sure this was real. Too many memories - both good and bad - left him unable to function. Harry jumped to his feet. “I’m going to bed. I have to work tomorrow. The guest room is the third door on the right.” Leaving the food, the alcohol, and Snape behind, he marched to his bedroom and shut the door.
Again, he was running. Suddenly his bedroom didn’t seem far enough. For the first time in a long time, he wanted to take a spin on his broom to clear his head. Bloody hell, what was it about Snape that destroyed all his defenses and left him paralyzed? It was too much to digest. He could ride around the planet twice and he wouldn’t be much closer to sorting out his feelings. He needed to rest and deal with it in the morning with a clear head.
Chapter 7
“Snape!” Harry couldn’t help but laugh. Dimitri remained frozen, his wand still raised as if he planned to attack. “It’s me! Harry!”
“Prove it,” said Snape, the accent vanished from his voice, his tone lower than before.
Eagerly, Harry unzipped his jeans. Dimitri shot up his eyebrows.
Heat seared Harry’s cheeks. “I have to take off my trousers to show you.” Hurriedly, before Snape could object, Harry pushed down his trousers and sat down. He sliced open his thigh and dug out the Polyjuice capsules, dumping them on the table. “I use these so I don’t have to drink the potion every hour.” He sealed up the wound and pulled up his jeans. “Do you have a Polyjuice antidote handy?”
Wordlessly, Dimitri reached into a pocket in his trousers and produced a small black bottle. He tossed it to Harry, who unscrewed it and took a big swig. Setting it down on the table beside him, he let the antidote wash away all traces of Ben. He pinched out his contacts, dropping them on the table. “Accio glasses!” They flew to him from the bedroom and he slipped them on. “Your turn.”
Dimi- Snape slowly slid into the chair on the other end of the table. He used magic to slip off his contacts and tuck them neatly in a carrying case. When he glanced up again, Harry’s heart skipped a beat. He’d never forgotten the intensity of those dark eyes. Snape picked up his wand and transformed his shirt and trousers into robes, although these were more form-fitting than the ones he wore before, and a deep dark blue instead of black.
“The rest?” asked Harry eagerly.
In a voice that Harry had thought he’d never hear again, Snape said, “I’m tan and I had plastic surgery.” His teeth flashed, still as white and perfectly straight as Dimitri’s had been.
Harry blinked rapidly. While Snape looked younger and conventionally more physically attractive, it didn’t feel right to look at his altered face. Harry could see bits of the old Snape, but it was like finding familiar features of a parent in a child. Besides, Snape had been sexy before, in his own odd way. Now he looked so . . . normal. What happened to the Snape who didn’t give a fuck about what society thought? It wasn’t right. Was this really the man Harry’d known those years before?
Seeing the dismay on Harry’s face, Snape explained, “I couldn’t take a risk with glamours or Polyjuice.” His dark eyes devoured every inch of Harry’s face as if he also couldn’t believe what he saw before him. “There are ways to test for Polyjuice, and I needed a flawless disguise.”
Harry’s head was spinning. Too much was happening too fast. Why was Snape in Kavala? Why was he here? Why had he warned Harry about Death Eaters? Picking through the muddled mess of questions in his brain, Harry asked the one that had been bouncing around all evening. “Why is Nik here in London?”
“You saw him?” Snape’s eyebrows rose.
Harry nodded. “We are going on a date on Thursday. He told me that the reason you warned me about Death Eaters in Kavala is because you were jealous of him.” Sexually jealous of him. Wait. Did that mean...? “Are you gay?”
“I have a preference towards men,” said Snape with a small nod of his head.
Only Snape had a hundred ways of avoiding a straight answer. “I’m pretty much exclusively attracted to men now,” Harry announced, feeling his cheeks burn.
Snape’s eyebrows knitted and Harry quickly added, “Don’t worry it’s not because I’m trying to ‘take back control from my abusers’ or anything like that. I just prefer sex with blokes.”
“And Ben?”
“A Muggle I Polyjuice into. Ron’s playing me now. Hermione and Ginny help out as well.” Snape had probably seen reports that Harry would be at the charity gala and planned his exploration whilst Harry would be occupied. Wait. Why was he even bothering with this nonsense? “How the fuck are you alive? I want details.”
“I cloned myself,” said Snape as if that were something he did one afternoon over tea. “When the Dark Lord set Nagini on me, I focused on poisoning her first, then keeping myself alive second. I put myself in a state of arrest similar to Draught of Living Death. Some idiot stuffed healing potions in my windpipe-”
Harry laughed.
“-which helped the capsules I’d earlier prepared. After I woke up in the morgue, I switched the bodies.” He held out his wand. “Accio wand!” His original wand flew to him.
Harry did the same, closing his fingers around that familiar stick of wood. It felt right. Better than his replacement. “Have you been using mine all this time?”
“It answered to me well enough. Accio Scotch!” A bottle flew out of Harry’s liquor cabinet.
“Did you go through my entire flat?” asked Harry. It was an unnerving thought, even though he trusted Snape more than anyone.
“If you hadn’t had it, I would’ve nipped off to purchase some.” Snape summoned two glasses, filled them to the brim, and pushed one over to Harry.
Not sure he wanted to drink with a spinning head, Harry stood and fetched a glass of ice. His body seemed to move independently of him, as though this were one of his dreams come to life. Maybe it was. None of this could be real. It made more sense that he was dreaming than that Snape was sitting at his kitchen table, drinking scotch. Any minute now, he’d wake up. A million questions rumbled through his head, each demanding attention. He managed to get one out: “Are you hungry?”
“No.”
Already a bit lightheaded, even though he hadn’t yet tasted his drink, Harry grabbed a tin of biscuits and sat again. He poured the scotch over the ice and took a sip. One question at a time, starting with the simpler ones. He had the feeling that if he started with the harder ones, Snape would vanish. “Were you killing Death Eaters in Kavala?”
“Yes,” said Snape as easily as if he were touring instead. “Why were you there?”
“I was trying to find whoever wrote a letter to The Scientific Wizard complaining about who we’d picked to win our annual contest.”
Snape’s eyebrows pricked. “You are in charge of that?”
Harry grinned brightly. Pulling one over on Snape felt better than winning any award, including the Order of Merlin. “I got you, didn’t I? Hermione and I started the magazine together, but we kept our names off of it. We told the others that we were worried it wouldn’t be taken seriously if the wizarding world knew we were behind it. I rigged the contest with the help of one of our Muggle chemists on staff. He was the only one who knew that the winner’s project wouldn’t work.”
Snape arched an imperial eyebrow at him. Even with his changed face, the look took Harry back. “And it never occurred to you that I might have been involved with Death Eaters?”
Harry wasn’t going to be spoken to like some naughty teenager. He finished off his glass, and poured the rest of the scotch over the ice. “You were finally free. Why aren’t you on a beach somewhere?”
“Why are you an Auror?”
“I enjoy helping people. I don’t do it because I want revenge.”
Snape made a noise of derision around swallowing his scotch.
Infuriated, Harry pressed his point, “I put them in prison. I don’t kill them.”
Snape sneered. “Prison is too good for some.”
Ugh. He’d been worried this would happen. A few minutes into their encounter and they were already on their first fight. Shaking his head, Harry took a big swig from his glass. “I don’t know why I thought this would go well.”
“You did?” Snape’s lips quirked up in amusement. They hadn’t been altered. Harry could still remember how they tasted. “I always thought that if you did manage to find me, we’d end the meeting in a fight. When have things ever been easy between us?”
He had a point. Speaking of which... “We couldn’t be honest then. What would have happened had I taken that second capsule?”
“Nothing.” Snape refilled his glass. “I’d already given it to you.” He pushed the bottle towards Harry. “Can you handle your liquor now?”
“Yes,” said Harry. He took a large gulp and refilled his glass. “I can also hold my own against you in a duel.”
“Barely,” argued Snape. “I’d have had you if the wands had worked correctly.”
“Only because I was using your wand, which has never probably obeyed me.”
“It’s stubborn,” Snape acknowledged, running his fingers down the length of wood admiringly. “You still move too much when you dodge.”
Harry snorted into his glass. “Most wizards can’t shoot and run at the same time. I have plenty of energy left. I’d love to see you race me on a broom.”
Snape glanced at him. “Do you still play Quidditch?”
“Occasionally with my friends, but work keeps me busy.” A bit hurt that Snape hadn’t bothered to keep even the slightest track of him, Harry teased, “So you haven’t been stalking me?”
“If I had, I’d have known about Ben.”
“I doubt that.” Not wanting another argument, Harry quickly asked, “What did you do after? Start the hunt immediately?”
“No.” Snape reached across the table and pulled the package of biscuits towards him. With elegant fingers, he pulled apart the wrapper and selected one. Watching him eat made him seem more real; less a ghost. “I travelled. I visited every place I’d ever wanted to see. I spent two years doing whatever I wanted. It bored me.”
Apparently it wasn’t in Snape’s nature to live in peace. “So you went to Kavala to hunt Death Eaters?”
“Not at first,” Snape said calmly, without a trace of emotion. “I started in South America.”
Harry’d hoped that Snape’s darkness had left him when the Dark Lord had, but maybe his soul had been too steeped in evil to ever wash clean. “And you killed every Death Eater there?”
Snape arched an eyebrow at him. “Why do you care about the people who tortured you?”
“They weren’t all bad,” Harry argued. “Draco wasn’t. Narcissa wasn’t. Some of them just made the wrong choices. Unless you knew them all personally, you don’t know who they really were.”
Snape looked at Harry with a peculiar expression. It was almost amusement, but not quite. “Have you ever come across an innocent suspect?”
“Not yet, but I know they’re out there.”
Snape’s gaze fell on Hadrian’s carving. “You found Hadrian.”
“I thought he was you.”
Chuckling, Snape held out his hand and the carving flew into it. His amusement was just like Harry remembered: small, sudden, and over so quickly, you might’ve missed it. Occasionally it had been longer, normally during sex.
Harry downed the rest of his glass and poured more. He wasn’t ready for this. How could he ever be ready for Snape alive and in his kitchen? He’d dreamed about that voice, those hands, and dark eyes. Seeing them in person just didn’t seem real. It was a good thing Snape had changed his face. It was a reminder that the man Harry’d known in the prison hadn’t been the real Snape at all. A stranger sat across the table. A stranger with some of Snape’s features and mannerisms, but he wasn’t the person Harry remembered.
“I like to pick someone each in town who can be confused for me.” Snape ran his fingers over carving, exploring it in detail with his fingers as though he lacked sight. “Hadrian was the best doppelganger I’ve found. Did you tell him who you were?”
“Basically.” Harry sighed. “I asked him if he knew my mother - Lily. I had him carve that.” He’d been an idiot.
“And Nik knew you went to Drama?” Snape set the carving to the side and sipped from his drink.
“He gave me the list of people who could be an ‘old friend’ of mine. You weren’t on it.” Perhaps it was the scotch, perhaps it was the circumstances, but he suddenly felt dizzy, as though he’d been drinking on an empty stomach. “I’m getting Chinese.” He stood and fetched the phone and a menu and pencil from beside the fridge. “Before you ask, I decided to live half Muggle to be more efficient at work. I’ve been working most of the cases involving Muggles because many Aurors are pants at pretending to be them, and we’ve had an upswing in cases involving them because of the war.”
“How would the war have affected that?”
Work was a good topic. It didn’t send Harry’s head spinning. “Some Death Eaters had the brilliant idea of hiding in the Muggle world. Some of them lived how they thought Muggles should live - we caught most of them the first year. Some of them blend in really well. When we catch one, they normally talk to get a better deal, so we spend years tracking down an ever growing tree of names of Death Eaters alleged to be alive and still living here.” He circled the dishes he wanted and passed the menu to Snape.
Snape took the phone, dialed the number on the menu, and ordered in Chinese. He gave Harry’s address from memory, then hung up the phone.
“Show off.” He couldn’t put any real heat in it. He wanted Snape to try to impress him.
Snape set down the phone and picked up his glass. His eyes drifted over Harry’s upper body, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he saw before him.
Under that intense gaze, Harry wanted to rip off his shirt and invite Snape to explore him with his hands and mouth as well. He blinked and looked away. Where the hell had that come from? It couldn’t be healthy to be so eager to return to how things had been between them.
“Is the account published in the Daily Prophet actually written by you?”
Harry risked a glance back at Snape. “Yes. I killed Voldemort and Lucius. They didn’t include the part where I insisted that they revive you, and they sedated me because I cut open my arm to get out more healing potions. Did you know that I lived when you left?”
“Yes.” Snape poured himself more scotch. “When did you take my wand?”
“Narcissa gave it to me after Voldemort failed to kill me. She said that you’d want me to have it. I originally put it in your grave, but I had you exhumed a few years later because I didn’t believe you were dead.”
Snape’s eyes fixed on Harry’s. In a quiet voice, he asked, “Why?”
“Because it was you. You knew that he’d try to kill you. You knew that the wizarding world wouldn’t believe your innocence. You knew that the Death Eaters would want revenge. I, your best character witness and the only person who could’ve saved you, was a confused, damaged child who’d been through a terrible ordeal and probably suffered from Stockholm. Death was the smartest option, but you were also too stubborn and clever for it to be your only option.”
In a quiet voice, Snape asked, “Did you think you suffered from Stockholm?”
Harry let out a sigh and ran his fingers through his hair. Meeting Snape’s eyes, he answered, “I know our relationship wasn’t healthy and it probably contained a bit of that. That’s why I waited before searching for you. I had to be certain. I just . . . had to know you lived. It wouldn’t have been right otherwise. Oh!” He jabbed his finger on the table. “You never showed up in your portrait.”
“I have a portrait?” It might’ve been his new face, but Snape looked more surprised than Harry had thought possible.
“Yes, and you never popped up and started lecturing me through it, no matter how much I taunted. It’s in the Headmaster’s office if you want to see it.”
“I’d rather not face Minerva,” said Snape, his lips twitching.
Harry laughed. “I can imagine the lecture.”
The doorbell rang and Harry jumped to his feet to answer it. He paid the delivery boy and turned around to find Snape standing a few feet behind him, his glass in one hand, his wand subtly clutched in the other.
“Let’s eat in here,” Harry said, nodding towards the sitting room. “I can show you some videos if you are interested.”
As he followed Harry into the room, Snape summoned the scotch and Harry’s glass. He set them on the table in front of the sofa, then disappeared back into the kitchen. Harry unpacked the cartons, pushing the ones he didn’t recognise towards the other end of the table from where he sat. Returning with plates and utensils, Snape sat down on the other end of the sofa and plopped spoons in the cartons near him. “Where are your chopsticks?”
“I don’t know how to eat with them,” admitted Harry.
Snape gave him a look of disapproval as he bent forward to add spoons to Harry’s dishes. His arm brushed past Harry’s, his robes soft, nearly silk. He smelled different than before. Less like potions and more like earth.
Snape is sitting on my sofa, eating Chinese with me. Unable to move, Harry watched in frozen silence as Snape put rice on his place and took a bit of food from each carton, either oblivious to or ignoring Harry’s division. He settled back on the sofa and transfigured a fork into chopsticks.
What are you doing here? Did you ever love me, or was it always about my mum? What do- Harry cleared his throat and managed to get out a question, “What is that?”
“This?” Snape held up the chunk of food on the end of his chopstick. “Fried shrimp. Try one.” With nimble fingers, he plunged his chopsticks into a carton and pulled another one out, dumping it on Harry’s empty plate.
“It still has eyes.” A thin layer of fried batter did nothing to hide the black eyes on the fully intact shrimp.
“That’s how you know it’s fresh.” Snape bit the head off of one of his, the loud crunch filling the room.
Of his coworkers, Harry was known as the adventurous one. He wasn’t about to let Snape scare him off. He bit into the back end of his shrimp and chewed carefully. Snape watched closely, his dark eyes shining with amusement.
“It’s good.” Harry bit off more of the shrimp, leaving the head behind. He snagged another one. “Did you go to China?”
“For a year.”
Harry didn’t want to know if he’d been there to hunt down Death Eaters. “Have you been to Australia?”
“No. Have you?”
Regretfully, Harry shook his head. “Not yet. After the war I took a bit of time for myself, but I didn’t feel comfortable leaving with so much work to be done. I had a lot of trouble getting this holiday, and I didn’t go very far.”
“I should think that overworked Aurors wouldn’t be successful.” Snape shifted forward to scoop more food onto his plate. He moved exactly how he had before: confident, elegantly, and with slow, but exact steps. Not an action wasted.
“I had to prove myself.” Harry tried to replicate Snape’s elegance as best he could. “Everyone, even the Ministry, viewed my becoming an Auror as an act of charity, even after I passed the three years of training with high marks. Kingsley let any participant in the Battle of Hogwarts begin Auror training, and there was such a glut of applicants that they had to divide us into groups instead of treating us as one class. Those of us in Dumbledore’s Army were all the in the same group, and our whole group did exceptionally well compared to the other two, so some people claimed bias. The department didn’t reintegrate the class until the third year, so most of the people who left never worked with me, and rumors flew about that I was just taken on as a pity case since my marks were suspiciously high. They were partially right; I do think Kingsley and Robards treated me with kid gloves at first. I used to get the most boring, simple cases, so I busted my arse, and took on extra cases with people like Ron who trusted my judgement. I still feel the need to prove myself, especially after what happened at the fifth year anniversary.”
“What did happen?”
Harry had just assumed that Snape knew, since he seemed to know everything. “They did a reenactment of the Battle of Hogwarts. It was . . . embarrassing. I can show you a video Hermione made if you’d like.”
“Is it accurate?”
“As far as I know, it doesn’t show anything that didn’t happen.” Setting his plate on the table, Harry jumped up from the sofa and fetched the video. He started it, then sat back down. The video had just begun, but already his cheeks burned hot. He’d glanced over the script and made sure it was accurate, but they’d still managed to portray him as some sort of saviour. The reenactment began with his speech to his friends the night before the Battle. He’d refused to share any details about his time in prison, including how he escaped. It had led to endless speculation and rumours, but he doubted anyone would believe the true story anyway. The bloke who played him stood dressed on a raised platform in a room full of upturned and inspired faces. His robes were impeccable, his hair subdued by gel, and each word filled the room with confident inspiration.
Slowly clearing his plate, Snape watched the video with the same sort of impenetrable expression Harry remembered all too well. He didn’t even blink when they showed Harry being given a private room to change into the robes for the ceremony. The scene switched over to Snape’s death. Narcissa had given the few details she knew, so much of the scene had been improvised. As Nagini sank her fangs in Snape’s neck, he smashed a potion bottle against her side.
His eyes fixed on the screen, Snape set his empty plate down on the table and refilled his scotch glass.
Unnerved by the heavy silence, Harry asked, “Did you kill her?”
“Yes,” said Snape simply.
Harry refilled his own glass, unable to take his eyes off of Snape as he watched the fight with Voldemort and the melee in the castle. In the portrayal, it seemed so orderly, as if everyone knew exactly what to do at every moment. The chaos, the confusion, the instinct had all been wiped away. The Harry Potter on screen was a confident soldier whose spells landed perfectly, and whose movements brought him closer to the enemies he wanted to kill or disable. He exhausted himself, not trying to save Snape, but in fighting until he could barely move.
It was not the most embarrassing portrayal, but it was the one that he most hated. The others were so cruel and hateful, only those who already disliked him believed them. When he was shown as the golden child who could do no wrong, a disconcerting proportion of the population believed it, and of those that rightfully didn’t, a very vocal percentage questioned his abilities as an Auror. He didn’t blame them. If the video and articles from the Prophet were all he’d seen of a colleague, he’d be wary of them too.
Why had he even shown this to Snape? The man had always accused him of having an over-inflated ego. The Harry Potter in the video was exactly what Snape had always sneered about. Harry’s head spun from the drink and Snape’s overwhelming silence hung oppressively thick over the room. He needed to get away. To think. To pinch himself to make sure this was real. Too many memories - both good and bad - left him unable to function. Harry jumped to his feet. “I’m going to bed. I have to work tomorrow. The guest room is the third door on the right.” Leaving the food, the alcohol, and Snape behind, he marched to his bedroom and shut the door.
Again, he was running. Suddenly his bedroom didn’t seem far enough. For the first time in a long time, he wanted to take a spin on his broom to clear his head. Bloody hell, what was it about Snape that destroyed all his defenses and left him paralyzed? It was too much to digest. He could ride around the planet twice and he wouldn’t be much closer to sorting out his feelings. He needed to rest and deal with it in the morning with a clear head.
Chapter 7