FIC: Reconciling Lily's Eyes 3/10
Title: Reconciling Lily's Eyes
Author: persepolis130
Pairing: Snarry
Rating: NC-17 (all over 18, fret not, LJ!)
Length: novel
Disclaimer: I answer the phones and make the coffee. JKR does not.
Warnings: explicit Snape/Harry, Harry/Ginny, spoilers for DH
Summary: Had Harry known bonding with his former professor would lead him to three different countries, a hastily-planned wedding and his pants around his ankles in Snape's sitting room, he wouldn't have quit his day job. Or... maybe he would've...
CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
"Are you sure you're a teacher? You look really young. Do you have credentials?"
Harry blinks. "I'm just filling in. I told you."
"Well," the girl replies, flipping her bleached blonde hair over her shoulder, "I don't think that's legal."
"It's just for the day," Harry tells her again. "Professor Snape will be back tomorrow. He's ill. Now if one of you could tell me what you're studying--"
"Does Mr Snape know you're filling in? Because I don't think he'd let someone else teach his class," another girl informs him. This one has short black hair. "He's a control freak."
"Well, I'm a former student of his, so it's fine," Harry reassures her. "I know all the stuff he taught. So, this is second year, and I'm guessing you're working on--"
"Do you like him?" the first girl asks. "He's really mean. Did you get an A in his class?"
"Ah," Harry starts.
"We all hate him. He gives us bad grades and lowers our self esteem," says another blonde with a face like Pansy Parkinson. "And he's ugly."
"Really ugly," someone agrees.
"Does everyone in England have really bad hair?" a voice asks from the back.
Harry blinks at its owner, who has short brown hair, glasses, and is very obviously male. "You're not a witch," he says.
A few of the girls titter.
"Haven't you ever heard of Affirmative Action?" the boy asks, looking annoyed.
"Er..."
"Mr Snape is so ugly and mean he gives me migraines," the black-haired girl interrupts. "I think I'm going to have my parents sue."
This is evidently a very clever comment, as half the class starts giggling. Harry resists the urge to roll his eyes and thumbs through their Potions text. The mixtures are very basic, but he's a bit nervous about what he'll do if something goes wrong. And from the looks of the papers he's corrected, he's fairly sure that's inevitable.
Deciding Snape will be more upset if his classroom is levelled than if his students miss a day of learning, he decides to take a different approach: distract them. "So, what classes do you all take? I suspect they're different from what we have in Britain."
One of the girls makes an exasperated noise. "You're here to teach us, and you don't even know what classes we take? Have you actually ever taught anything before?"
"I teach Defence Against the Dark Arts," he says, annoyed enough to not feel like it's so much of a lie.
"Dark Arts?" the boy in the back asks, looking interested.
"He means Magical Protection," a dark-skinned girl corrects.
"He's lying. He's too young," the first blonde girl announces with another flip of her hair, and Harry's beginning to see why Snape so dislikes this class. "I think we should demand his credentials."
"Do you even know what a credential is?" Harry asks.
A girl in the front row snorts.
"Do you know any Dark Arts?" the boy asks, probably the only one paying attention. "Can you teach us some?"
Harry is appalled. "Of course I'm not going to teach you Dark Arts! They're horrible and evil! How can you even ask that?"
The boy looks excited. "I think they're cool. My brother says there's one that kills people, just like that, Abra-Kadabra, BAM!"
"Have you ever seen anyone killed?" Harry asks, feeling anger rise in his chest. "Because believe me, it's really not cool at all. It's awful. I had friends killed by Dark Wizards in the War, and unless you want to become a Dark Wizard yourself, you'd better stop talking like that."
A collective gasp fills the classroom. "You were in the War?"
"Of course I was, I--" Harry takes a deep breath to calm himself and smoothes his fringe down. "Professor Snape and I both fought in the War. A lot of people did. And a lot of good witches and wizards died. It was not the least bit cool."
"Mr Snape was in the War?"
"No way!"
"What did he do, threaten the bad guys with his nose?"
Harry feels the vague desire to pound his head against the chalkboard. "He was a spy. Didn't he tell you?"
"A spy!? That's so cool!" the boy exclaims. "Did he kill people?"
"Probably," Harry says before he thinks better of it.
The boy looks enraptured.
"My mom told me all about the war," one of the girls announces, annoyed no one's paying her any attention. "It was all the plot of a mad French wizard to force the rest of the world to wear berets and eat smelly cheese!"
Harry's jaw drops. "It was not a-- Voldemort was not French!"
"He was, it's true!" another girl chimes in. "The French are the root of all Dark Magic! I read it on the internet!"
"You're stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!" sing-songs a girl from the back.
"Look," Harry says, holding up his hands, "if everyone could just calm-"
"WHAT IN THE NAME OF MERLIN IS GOING ON IN THIS CLASSROOM?!"
Silence falls over the students at the sound of Snape's voice.
"You look like shit, sir," Harry says. He doesn't know if he should still be upset about last night, but he now realizes he is.
"Why thank you, Mr Potter, for your keen observation," Snape sneers, swaying a bit as he makes his way to his desk. His eyes are bloodshot and his hair mussed on one side, his robes wrinkled and obviously slept-in.
"Potter?" says the sing-song girl. "Harry Potter?"
The eyes of the entire classroom are suddenly upon him, and Harry swallows. "Ah…"
"It is, it IS!" yells the black-haired girl. "It's HIM!"
"I knew he looked familiar!" shouts the flip-hair blonde. "I knew it! My sister has a poster of him over her bed!"
"Oh my GOD!" cries the other blonde. "Can I have an autograph?!"
The dark-skinned girl leaps out of her seat. "Sign my book!" she demands, waving it in the air.
"Sign my cauldron!" another insists.
"Sign my bra!!" someone shrieks.
"SILENCE!" bellows Snape, wincing and gripping at his forehead. "And sit down! One more word, and you will all have detention until you're eighty."
"Professor--"
"That goes for you as well, Potter! Now out, out of my classroom," he says, going a sudden and putrid shade of green, "before your presence makes me vomit."
A few of the girls make alarmed sounds and Harry wants to stay, but Snape's mind is made up and there's nothing for it. He goes back to their flat, thumbs through an Herbology text, and watches for him out the window. He won't last an hour, Harry thinks.
He lasts twenty minutes.
"We need to talk," Harry tells him as soon as the door shuts behind his back.
"Uuuugh," he responds, and lowers himself onto the sofa, boots still on.
"What was last night about?" Harry demands.
Snape groans a little and mutters, "I do not remember."
Harry is disgusted. "What do you not remember? How three bottles of liquor ended up emptied down your throat?"
Snape moans, and Harry repeats the question, rather more loudly this time.
"Any of it…" Snape finally manages.
"Right," says Harry. "So you don't remember any of it. You don't remember trashing the flat, burning your students' essays, screaming at me like evil itself and then passing out on the sofa. None of it."
Snape shoos him with a weak wave of his hand. "That was… rather the point."
"What was the point?" Harry demands. "Forgetting everything?"
"Mmmph," Snape groans into the pillow.
Harry makes a disgusted noise. "So you're trying to tell me you don't remember threatening to kill me, to slit my throat, is that what you're saying?"
"Potter, my head…"
"Professor--"
"I don't remember. Though considering I wanted you dead before you were ever born… I can hardly say I'm shocked." He makes a face and swallows hard. "Now Summon me a bin, I'm going to be ill."
Harry does and watches Snape lean over it, breathing hard.
"Is there not a potion you could make for this?" he asks.
"This," Snape manages, spitting into the bin from white lips, "is the... price... of satisfaction..."
"Satisfaction," Harry says, scratching in irritation at the back of his neck. "Satisfaction of what? All you did was get pissed and forget who you were! What the hell is satisfying about that?"
He never gets an answer though, because Snape is puking his guts out and he has to leave the room or follow suit. It makes him strangely angry because Snape is an adult, and he's supposed to know better. Thinking about it later, Harry decides it's sad. He feels like he's been battling his entire life to figure out who he is. Why would anyone want to forget something that important? Was some part of Snape's drunken ramblings true?
He wants to write to Ginny, but he's afraid she'll just tell him how wrong he is in staying and make him feel awful again. Not that Hermione won't do the same, but he's fairly sure she'll at least answer his questions somewhere in the process.
Hermione,
I'd tell you not to scold me and tell me to come home right now, but I know you will, so I won't bother. I'm just thinking some things through, and I needed to write to someone. Please keep this between the two of us. I don't want to upset anyone, and I know you'll understand.
Do you think it's possible to dislike yourself so much that you do things to purposefully hurt yourself? I don't mean so much physically, but more emotionally. Do you think some people would rather be no one at all than be who they are? It sounds strange, but it makes me worry. Do you think that to become someone new, you have to forget who you used to be?
Give Ron a good snog for me, and tell Ginny not to miss me too much. I think she does sometimes.
Thanks for everything,
Harry
He goes to bed that night feeling restless, wishing he were back at Grimmauld Place with Ginny beside him in Sirius's bed, Kreacher puttering down in the kitchen, and Auror training in the morning.
He wakes up screaming.
The vision has already faded, masks and snakes and blood blurring into the darkness of the night, but the terror remains, and he can feel it pulsing through him as though he were face to face with Voldemort again, life hanging in the balance. Gasping and covered in sweat, he struggles to rise and finds strong arms holding him down.
"Breathe," Snape says. "It will fade. Just breathe."
Harry does, and the fear eases, replaced by the sitting room in the dim glow of night time Muggle Salem, leaving him exhausted and cold. "I want to go home," Harry says, and it sounds pitiful, like a little boy, in his ears.
Snape rubs his shoulders soothingly and Harry squints up at him, thinking he's not half as bad when he's soft around the edges like this. "So do we all, Mr Potter," he says tiredly. "Now drink some milk before going back to sleep. The distraction will keep the thought from returning."
Harry fumbles for his glasses on the coffee table as Snape stands, his strangely comforting hands pulling away. Sighing, Harry shuffles into the kitchen, still feeling off-centre. Snape has locked himself back into the bedroom, and Harry stares at the door as he drinks his glass of warm milk. Taking a look at the clock, he sees it's just past two.
He puts the empty glass back in the box and knocks on Snape's door, wondering if he's still up. Tomorrow's a Saturday. "Professor?" he ventures.
"To bed, Mr Potter," Snape says.
Harry sighs and returns to his sofa. He sleeps surprisingly peacefully until morning.
Hermione's response comes the second week of November.
I think anyone who wants to forget who he is needs to be reminded how much people care about him, she writes. Please come home for Christmas, Harry.
"I want you to come home for Christmas," Harry tells Snape over morning coffee.
"Absolutely not," Snape answers.
"No, really. Mrs Weasley's fixing about twenty hams," he urges, exaggerating only slightly. "You can stay at my place if you want--"
"You are wasting your breath," the man informs him.
"I'm not going to be able to go without you," Harry warns, peeved.
"A pity," Snape replies, his expression assuring Harry he considers it anything but.
"I don't understand, why don't you want to see anyone?" Harry prods. "The Weasleys have always been friendly--"
"It is truly sad that you consider the pinnacle of social achievement to be the friendship of Weasleys," Snape sneers, tipping the last of his coffee down his throat.
"I don't know how you can drink that black," Harry tells him.
"I am not leaving for Christmas," Snape repeats.
"We'll see," Harry says.
"We will not," counters Snape.
They scream about it every other night.
It's almost comforting, having Snape's face in his, spitting mad and awful. It sends an odd tingling though Harry to have him that close, to possess his unfaltering attention, his dark, cold eyes stabbing into Harry's as if nothing else exists. As if no one else matters.
Harry's glad Christmas is coming because he thinks all this isolation is really starting to get to him.
One night, they throw dishes. Another time, they throw hexes. Yet another, Harry ends up barricaded outside the flat, banging on the door and screaming obscenities that would likely give poor Mrs Weasley a heart attack.
He thinks the pretty blonde Muggle Studies professor who lives under them must think they're insane.
He can't say he disagrees.
The afternoon before he's supposed to leave, Harry picks a fight. Snape's not going, there's no doubt about that, but somehow that doesn't matter. Harry's wondering if, after he leaves, he'll have the strength to come back, and he's itching for that disdainful sneer to convince him.
"Would it kill you to do a single thing I ask?" he demands, rather out of the blue.
"As a matter of fact," Snape responds, eyeing him scornfully over a stack of Honors Potions essays, "I think it just might."
"You're selfish," Harry informs him, as haughtily as he can manage. "The only person you care about is yourself!"
"Yes, well that is the definition of selfish, is it not?" Snape says, and picks up an essay.
Harry snatches it out of his hand. "You're going to listen to me, damn it!"
Snape regards him for a split second as though he's gone mad. Then he sets his jaw and stands, his chair scraping loudly across the kitchen floor. "I have had enough. I am to my absolute limits with your infantile behaviour! Go home! Go home and eat your Weasley ham and shag your Weasley girlfriend!"
"Don't you talk about her, you bastard!" Harry shouts, blazing with anger. "Don't you dare!"
"About whom, your little whore?" Snape mocks.
"Shut up!" Harry screams. They've never argued about Ginny, and it enrages him more than he would've thought. "Don't you call her that! You have no right!"
"Just where do you think she learned it all?" Snape demands. "She fucked half the school before she got to you!"
"Shut UP!" Harry bellows, ripping the essay in half and throwing it at Snape's face.
"I bet you like it, don't you?" Snape taunts with a nasty sneer. "You like all the things they taught her, Corner and Thomas and--"
"You shut your fucking mouth!" Harry screams, fisting his hand in Snape's robes.
Snape grabs onto Harry's jumper, pulling him closer. "Got herself trained up before she went for the House Cup, didn't she! Only the best for the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, the--"
"Shut the fuck up!" Harry howls, and clenches Snape's robes so hard it hurts.
Snape bares his yellow teeth, narrows his hateful eyes, and pulls Harry so close he can smell his awful breath. "Why don't you make me!" he spits.
Harry's heart skips a beat. He can remember the last time they got angry like this, close like this, and what happened after, and he can only think Snape's said it on purpose. But he won't give in.
Not this time.
Snape's lips are hard against Harry's, his mouth every bit as cruel as he remembers. Harry grabs him by the hair, yanking it and shoving Snape back against the hard edge of the table. Snape jerks and lets out a grunt of pain into Harry's mouth and hits at his chest, but Harry doesn't care. He can tell Snape is livid, choking around Harry's tongue, but he deserves it.
I'm right, Harry thinks furiously, I'm right and you know it! To prove his point, he bites down hard on Snape's lip.
Snape is ready though, his tongue trying to force its way between Harry's parted lips. Harry makes an angry noise, wrenches at Snape's hair and nips viciously at his tongue, but Snape slides a knee up firmly between his thighs, and Harry can do nothing but gasp, his mouth falling open. Harry's hard, oh God painfully hard, and he doesn't understand and it makes no sense but he is, and it's the most obvious and horrible thing in the world when they're pressed so tightly together.
There's no way he can win this now.
Snape knows it, using Harry's shock as a chance to twist in his grasp. Harry's eyes fly open, catching sight of Snape's blurred form as he's shoved across the room, his back smacking hard against the pantry door. Snape's tongue is hot and insistent in his mouth, and Harry claws at him, pulling at his hair, but his head is swimming and it's no use and his arms end up wrapped somewhere around the man's neck.
With their bodies this close, Snape's hips pinning him to the door, Harry can tell it's not only him. Snape's hardness is pressing into him through his robes, and it sends a jolt of shocked pleasure through him. The feeling is so strong, wanting and needing and very nearly having, and he finds himself pushing back, hips jerking of their own accord, breath catching in his lungs.
And then Snape makes a moaning noise into Harry's mouth and it's all a blur, all hot and wet and blissful pressure against Harry's cock, and Snape's slick tongue is moving in his mouth and Harry's is moving back and they're kissing, and Harry can't fathom how he didn't recognize it in the first place, but it's kissing and God it's perfect.
Out of nowhere, he feels something that's been building inside him catch, spark and ignite, like tinder under flint and steel, and Snape's mouth catches his scream as he arches and comes, so hard the edges of his vision go dark.
He's panting wetly against Snape's neck when the world stops spinning. His eyes still half closed, body heavy and sated, he feels more than sees Snape shift, sliding Harry's hands down from his neck and pulling away. Harry makes a sound of protest and tries to stop him, a thread of spit tying his lips to Snape's pulse point.
"Mmm, don't…" Harry murmurs, pressing his mouth to Snape's jaw and snaking an arm around the man's waist.
He is quite suddenly slapped across the face.
Snape's wide, dark eyes hold an expression which can only be described as terror. "Get out," he whispers. There is a bloody bite mark on his bottom lip.
Harry gasps, and the enormity of what's just happened comes crashing down on him. He and Snape just--in the kitchen-- against the pantry-- Snape just made him-- "Professor. Professor, I--"
"Get OUT!" Snape shrieks.
The argument lost, Harry is left with no other option.
CHAPTER FOUR
Author: persepolis130
Pairing: Snarry
Rating: NC-17 (all over 18, fret not, LJ!)
Length: novel
Disclaimer: I answer the phones and make the coffee. JKR does not.
Warnings: explicit Snape/Harry, Harry/Ginny, spoilers for DH
Summary: Had Harry known bonding with his former professor would lead him to three different countries, a hastily-planned wedding and his pants around his ankles in Snape's sitting room, he wouldn't have quit his day job. Or... maybe he would've...
CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
"Are you sure you're a teacher? You look really young. Do you have credentials?"
Harry blinks. "I'm just filling in. I told you."
"Well," the girl replies, flipping her bleached blonde hair over her shoulder, "I don't think that's legal."
"It's just for the day," Harry tells her again. "Professor Snape will be back tomorrow. He's ill. Now if one of you could tell me what you're studying--"
"Does Mr Snape know you're filling in? Because I don't think he'd let someone else teach his class," another girl informs him. This one has short black hair. "He's a control freak."
"Well, I'm a former student of his, so it's fine," Harry reassures her. "I know all the stuff he taught. So, this is second year, and I'm guessing you're working on--"
"Do you like him?" the first girl asks. "He's really mean. Did you get an A in his class?"
"Ah," Harry starts.
"We all hate him. He gives us bad grades and lowers our self esteem," says another blonde with a face like Pansy Parkinson. "And he's ugly."
"Really ugly," someone agrees.
"Does everyone in England have really bad hair?" a voice asks from the back.
Harry blinks at its owner, who has short brown hair, glasses, and is very obviously male. "You're not a witch," he says.
A few of the girls titter.
"Haven't you ever heard of Affirmative Action?" the boy asks, looking annoyed.
"Er..."
"Mr Snape is so ugly and mean he gives me migraines," the black-haired girl interrupts. "I think I'm going to have my parents sue."
This is evidently a very clever comment, as half the class starts giggling. Harry resists the urge to roll his eyes and thumbs through their Potions text. The mixtures are very basic, but he's a bit nervous about what he'll do if something goes wrong. And from the looks of the papers he's corrected, he's fairly sure that's inevitable.
Deciding Snape will be more upset if his classroom is levelled than if his students miss a day of learning, he decides to take a different approach: distract them. "So, what classes do you all take? I suspect they're different from what we have in Britain."
One of the girls makes an exasperated noise. "You're here to teach us, and you don't even know what classes we take? Have you actually ever taught anything before?"
"I teach Defence Against the Dark Arts," he says, annoyed enough to not feel like it's so much of a lie.
"Dark Arts?" the boy in the back asks, looking interested.
"He means Magical Protection," a dark-skinned girl corrects.
"He's lying. He's too young," the first blonde girl announces with another flip of her hair, and Harry's beginning to see why Snape so dislikes this class. "I think we should demand his credentials."
"Do you even know what a credential is?" Harry asks.
A girl in the front row snorts.
"Do you know any Dark Arts?" the boy asks, probably the only one paying attention. "Can you teach us some?"
Harry is appalled. "Of course I'm not going to teach you Dark Arts! They're horrible and evil! How can you even ask that?"
The boy looks excited. "I think they're cool. My brother says there's one that kills people, just like that, Abra-Kadabra, BAM!"
"Have you ever seen anyone killed?" Harry asks, feeling anger rise in his chest. "Because believe me, it's really not cool at all. It's awful. I had friends killed by Dark Wizards in the War, and unless you want to become a Dark Wizard yourself, you'd better stop talking like that."
A collective gasp fills the classroom. "You were in the War?"
"Of course I was, I--" Harry takes a deep breath to calm himself and smoothes his fringe down. "Professor Snape and I both fought in the War. A lot of people did. And a lot of good witches and wizards died. It was not the least bit cool."
"Mr Snape was in the War?"
"No way!"
"What did he do, threaten the bad guys with his nose?"
Harry feels the vague desire to pound his head against the chalkboard. "He was a spy. Didn't he tell you?"
"A spy!? That's so cool!" the boy exclaims. "Did he kill people?"
"Probably," Harry says before he thinks better of it.
The boy looks enraptured.
"My mom told me all about the war," one of the girls announces, annoyed no one's paying her any attention. "It was all the plot of a mad French wizard to force the rest of the world to wear berets and eat smelly cheese!"
Harry's jaw drops. "It was not a-- Voldemort was not French!"
"He was, it's true!" another girl chimes in. "The French are the root of all Dark Magic! I read it on the internet!"
"You're stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!" sing-songs a girl from the back.
"Look," Harry says, holding up his hands, "if everyone could just calm-"
"WHAT IN THE NAME OF MERLIN IS GOING ON IN THIS CLASSROOM?!"
Silence falls over the students at the sound of Snape's voice.
"You look like shit, sir," Harry says. He doesn't know if he should still be upset about last night, but he now realizes he is.
"Why thank you, Mr Potter, for your keen observation," Snape sneers, swaying a bit as he makes his way to his desk. His eyes are bloodshot and his hair mussed on one side, his robes wrinkled and obviously slept-in.
"Potter?" says the sing-song girl. "Harry Potter?"
The eyes of the entire classroom are suddenly upon him, and Harry swallows. "Ah…"
"It is, it IS!" yells the black-haired girl. "It's HIM!"
"I knew he looked familiar!" shouts the flip-hair blonde. "I knew it! My sister has a poster of him over her bed!"
"Oh my GOD!" cries the other blonde. "Can I have an autograph?!"
The dark-skinned girl leaps out of her seat. "Sign my book!" she demands, waving it in the air.
"Sign my cauldron!" another insists.
"Sign my bra!!" someone shrieks.
"SILENCE!" bellows Snape, wincing and gripping at his forehead. "And sit down! One more word, and you will all have detention until you're eighty."
"Professor--"
"That goes for you as well, Potter! Now out, out of my classroom," he says, going a sudden and putrid shade of green, "before your presence makes me vomit."
A few of the girls make alarmed sounds and Harry wants to stay, but Snape's mind is made up and there's nothing for it. He goes back to their flat, thumbs through an Herbology text, and watches for him out the window. He won't last an hour, Harry thinks.
He lasts twenty minutes.
"We need to talk," Harry tells him as soon as the door shuts behind his back.
"Uuuugh," he responds, and lowers himself onto the sofa, boots still on.
"What was last night about?" Harry demands.
Snape groans a little and mutters, "I do not remember."
Harry is disgusted. "What do you not remember? How three bottles of liquor ended up emptied down your throat?"
Snape moans, and Harry repeats the question, rather more loudly this time.
"Any of it…" Snape finally manages.
"Right," says Harry. "So you don't remember any of it. You don't remember trashing the flat, burning your students' essays, screaming at me like evil itself and then passing out on the sofa. None of it."
Snape shoos him with a weak wave of his hand. "That was… rather the point."
"What was the point?" Harry demands. "Forgetting everything?"
"Mmmph," Snape groans into the pillow.
Harry makes a disgusted noise. "So you're trying to tell me you don't remember threatening to kill me, to slit my throat, is that what you're saying?"
"Potter, my head…"
"Professor--"
"I don't remember. Though considering I wanted you dead before you were ever born… I can hardly say I'm shocked." He makes a face and swallows hard. "Now Summon me a bin, I'm going to be ill."
Harry does and watches Snape lean over it, breathing hard.
"Is there not a potion you could make for this?" he asks.
"This," Snape manages, spitting into the bin from white lips, "is the... price... of satisfaction..."
"Satisfaction," Harry says, scratching in irritation at the back of his neck. "Satisfaction of what? All you did was get pissed and forget who you were! What the hell is satisfying about that?"
He never gets an answer though, because Snape is puking his guts out and he has to leave the room or follow suit. It makes him strangely angry because Snape is an adult, and he's supposed to know better. Thinking about it later, Harry decides it's sad. He feels like he's been battling his entire life to figure out who he is. Why would anyone want to forget something that important? Was some part of Snape's drunken ramblings true?
He wants to write to Ginny, but he's afraid she'll just tell him how wrong he is in staying and make him feel awful again. Not that Hermione won't do the same, but he's fairly sure she'll at least answer his questions somewhere in the process.
Hermione,
I'd tell you not to scold me and tell me to come home right now, but I know you will, so I won't bother. I'm just thinking some things through, and I needed to write to someone. Please keep this between the two of us. I don't want to upset anyone, and I know you'll understand.
Do you think it's possible to dislike yourself so much that you do things to purposefully hurt yourself? I don't mean so much physically, but more emotionally. Do you think some people would rather be no one at all than be who they are? It sounds strange, but it makes me worry. Do you think that to become someone new, you have to forget who you used to be?
Give Ron a good snog for me, and tell Ginny not to miss me too much. I think she does sometimes.
Thanks for everything,
Harry
He goes to bed that night feeling restless, wishing he were back at Grimmauld Place with Ginny beside him in Sirius's bed, Kreacher puttering down in the kitchen, and Auror training in the morning.
He wakes up screaming.
The vision has already faded, masks and snakes and blood blurring into the darkness of the night, but the terror remains, and he can feel it pulsing through him as though he were face to face with Voldemort again, life hanging in the balance. Gasping and covered in sweat, he struggles to rise and finds strong arms holding him down.
"Breathe," Snape says. "It will fade. Just breathe."
Harry does, and the fear eases, replaced by the sitting room in the dim glow of night time Muggle Salem, leaving him exhausted and cold. "I want to go home," Harry says, and it sounds pitiful, like a little boy, in his ears.
Snape rubs his shoulders soothingly and Harry squints up at him, thinking he's not half as bad when he's soft around the edges like this. "So do we all, Mr Potter," he says tiredly. "Now drink some milk before going back to sleep. The distraction will keep the thought from returning."
Harry fumbles for his glasses on the coffee table as Snape stands, his strangely comforting hands pulling away. Sighing, Harry shuffles into the kitchen, still feeling off-centre. Snape has locked himself back into the bedroom, and Harry stares at the door as he drinks his glass of warm milk. Taking a look at the clock, he sees it's just past two.
He puts the empty glass back in the box and knocks on Snape's door, wondering if he's still up. Tomorrow's a Saturday. "Professor?" he ventures.
"To bed, Mr Potter," Snape says.
Harry sighs and returns to his sofa. He sleeps surprisingly peacefully until morning.
Hermione's response comes the second week of November.
I think anyone who wants to forget who he is needs to be reminded how much people care about him, she writes. Please come home for Christmas, Harry.
"I want you to come home for Christmas," Harry tells Snape over morning coffee.
"Absolutely not," Snape answers.
"No, really. Mrs Weasley's fixing about twenty hams," he urges, exaggerating only slightly. "You can stay at my place if you want--"
"You are wasting your breath," the man informs him.
"I'm not going to be able to go without you," Harry warns, peeved.
"A pity," Snape replies, his expression assuring Harry he considers it anything but.
"I don't understand, why don't you want to see anyone?" Harry prods. "The Weasleys have always been friendly--"
"It is truly sad that you consider the pinnacle of social achievement to be the friendship of Weasleys," Snape sneers, tipping the last of his coffee down his throat.
"I don't know how you can drink that black," Harry tells him.
"I am not leaving for Christmas," Snape repeats.
"We'll see," Harry says.
"We will not," counters Snape.
They scream about it every other night.
It's almost comforting, having Snape's face in his, spitting mad and awful. It sends an odd tingling though Harry to have him that close, to possess his unfaltering attention, his dark, cold eyes stabbing into Harry's as if nothing else exists. As if no one else matters.
Harry's glad Christmas is coming because he thinks all this isolation is really starting to get to him.
One night, they throw dishes. Another time, they throw hexes. Yet another, Harry ends up barricaded outside the flat, banging on the door and screaming obscenities that would likely give poor Mrs Weasley a heart attack.
He thinks the pretty blonde Muggle Studies professor who lives under them must think they're insane.
He can't say he disagrees.
The afternoon before he's supposed to leave, Harry picks a fight. Snape's not going, there's no doubt about that, but somehow that doesn't matter. Harry's wondering if, after he leaves, he'll have the strength to come back, and he's itching for that disdainful sneer to convince him.
"Would it kill you to do a single thing I ask?" he demands, rather out of the blue.
"As a matter of fact," Snape responds, eyeing him scornfully over a stack of Honors Potions essays, "I think it just might."
"You're selfish," Harry informs him, as haughtily as he can manage. "The only person you care about is yourself!"
"Yes, well that is the definition of selfish, is it not?" Snape says, and picks up an essay.
Harry snatches it out of his hand. "You're going to listen to me, damn it!"
Snape regards him for a split second as though he's gone mad. Then he sets his jaw and stands, his chair scraping loudly across the kitchen floor. "I have had enough. I am to my absolute limits with your infantile behaviour! Go home! Go home and eat your Weasley ham and shag your Weasley girlfriend!"
"Don't you talk about her, you bastard!" Harry shouts, blazing with anger. "Don't you dare!"
"About whom, your little whore?" Snape mocks.
"Shut up!" Harry screams. They've never argued about Ginny, and it enrages him more than he would've thought. "Don't you call her that! You have no right!"
"Just where do you think she learned it all?" Snape demands. "She fucked half the school before she got to you!"
"Shut UP!" Harry bellows, ripping the essay in half and throwing it at Snape's face.
"I bet you like it, don't you?" Snape taunts with a nasty sneer. "You like all the things they taught her, Corner and Thomas and--"
"You shut your fucking mouth!" Harry screams, fisting his hand in Snape's robes.
Snape grabs onto Harry's jumper, pulling him closer. "Got herself trained up before she went for the House Cup, didn't she! Only the best for the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, the--"
"Shut the fuck up!" Harry howls, and clenches Snape's robes so hard it hurts.
Snape bares his yellow teeth, narrows his hateful eyes, and pulls Harry so close he can smell his awful breath. "Why don't you make me!" he spits.
Harry's heart skips a beat. He can remember the last time they got angry like this, close like this, and what happened after, and he can only think Snape's said it on purpose. But he won't give in.
Not this time.
Snape's lips are hard against Harry's, his mouth every bit as cruel as he remembers. Harry grabs him by the hair, yanking it and shoving Snape back against the hard edge of the table. Snape jerks and lets out a grunt of pain into Harry's mouth and hits at his chest, but Harry doesn't care. He can tell Snape is livid, choking around Harry's tongue, but he deserves it.
I'm right, Harry thinks furiously, I'm right and you know it! To prove his point, he bites down hard on Snape's lip.
Snape is ready though, his tongue trying to force its way between Harry's parted lips. Harry makes an angry noise, wrenches at Snape's hair and nips viciously at his tongue, but Snape slides a knee up firmly between his thighs, and Harry can do nothing but gasp, his mouth falling open. Harry's hard, oh God painfully hard, and he doesn't understand and it makes no sense but he is, and it's the most obvious and horrible thing in the world when they're pressed so tightly together.
There's no way he can win this now.
Snape knows it, using Harry's shock as a chance to twist in his grasp. Harry's eyes fly open, catching sight of Snape's blurred form as he's shoved across the room, his back smacking hard against the pantry door. Snape's tongue is hot and insistent in his mouth, and Harry claws at him, pulling at his hair, but his head is swimming and it's no use and his arms end up wrapped somewhere around the man's neck.
With their bodies this close, Snape's hips pinning him to the door, Harry can tell it's not only him. Snape's hardness is pressing into him through his robes, and it sends a jolt of shocked pleasure through him. The feeling is so strong, wanting and needing and very nearly having, and he finds himself pushing back, hips jerking of their own accord, breath catching in his lungs.
And then Snape makes a moaning noise into Harry's mouth and it's all a blur, all hot and wet and blissful pressure against Harry's cock, and Snape's slick tongue is moving in his mouth and Harry's is moving back and they're kissing, and Harry can't fathom how he didn't recognize it in the first place, but it's kissing and God it's perfect.
Out of nowhere, he feels something that's been building inside him catch, spark and ignite, like tinder under flint and steel, and Snape's mouth catches his scream as he arches and comes, so hard the edges of his vision go dark.
He's panting wetly against Snape's neck when the world stops spinning. His eyes still half closed, body heavy and sated, he feels more than sees Snape shift, sliding Harry's hands down from his neck and pulling away. Harry makes a sound of protest and tries to stop him, a thread of spit tying his lips to Snape's pulse point.
"Mmm, don't…" Harry murmurs, pressing his mouth to Snape's jaw and snaking an arm around the man's waist.
He is quite suddenly slapped across the face.
Snape's wide, dark eyes hold an expression which can only be described as terror. "Get out," he whispers. There is a bloody bite mark on his bottom lip.
Harry gasps, and the enormity of what's just happened comes crashing down on him. He and Snape just--in the kitchen-- against the pantry-- Snape just made him-- "Professor. Professor, I--"
"Get OUT!" Snape shrieks.
The argument lost, Harry is left with no other option.
CHAPTER FOUR