Ancient History
TITLE: Ancient History
AUTHOR: J Stravinski
FANDOM: Harry Potter
PAIRING: Harry Potter/Severus Snape
RATING: PG
FEEDBACK: Much appreciated. Particularly to point out blatant errors.
SPOILERS: DH
DISCLAIMER: I don't own anyone who weighs the same as a duck. Their creators are much more talented.
NOTES: Written for
snape_potter's Back To Hogwarts fest. This story finds its roots in the optional prompts: “Professor Potter confiscates an old Muggle porn magazine. Headmaster Snape is in it.” “Cross-dressing!Harry -- Harry is dared to wear a girl's uniform for a day's worth of classes and discovers he rather likes the feel of a skirt beneath his robes. Snape suspects Harry is up to something over the following weeks and finally confronts Harry only to discover a rather ... lovely surprise.” “In an Occlumency lesson, by accident, Harry gets lost inside Snape's head. He discovers unexpected truths about this man.” “Occlumency lessons-Snape sees Harry's fantasies.” “While inspecting the Gryffindor boys' dorm for contraband, professor Snape finds a very incriminating (and sexy) item in Harry Potter's trunk.” “8th year. As part of a dare with the Weasley twins, Harry agrees to make a pass at every professor at Hogwarts. He leaves Snape until last.”
Sadly some just didn’t fit...
Thank you to
accioslash for running the fest, exposing me relentlessly to Snarry until I caved, and unerring patience in reading/reviewing/counselling.
*********************
"Williams, Elizabeth," the Deputy Headmaster shouts, and then, shortly after, "Gryffindor!" the Sorting Hat proclaims. Harry watches the celebration with slightly more cheer now that the last name has been called, relieved the process is over for another year. He's sure it was probably that exciting when he was in school, and it was definitely exciting - somewhat nervewracking, but nonetheless exciting - awaiting news of the outcome of his own children's sorting. But there are only so many times, Harry's come to realise, that one can watch several hundred children sit under a talking hat before it becomes, well, boring.
He wonders how many years one can reasonably expect to do this before being permitted a night off. After all, he thinks, he's already sat through twenty-odd - by Muggle standards he'd be counting down the days to retirement by now. His hopes of respite fall, however, as his Headmistress stands - by Muggle standards, he reminds himself, she'd be already dead. He admires her tenacity, and begrudges his own impatience, and before long, the long-awaited, long-dreaded first day is done.
*****************
"Professor, it's not working."
Harry always forgets, from one year to the next, that it's not just the first years he has to worry about. Somehow it invariably turns out that the third year Hufflepuffs who were excellent at understanding hex theory are somehow incapable of even pretending to recognise a vampire bite; that the sixth year Slytherins who'd been keen to show off their skills with Fiendfyre were somehow experts at turning a Confundus Charm into a lollipop conjouring spell.
Harry feels about a hundred years old himself as he shows the third years the right way to block a Leg-Locker Curse for the sixth time that hour. He makes a mental note to ask Hermione to ensure her offspring breed more offspring, preferably a year apart, so every class forever after will have an unpaid teacher's assistant.
For now, he'll have to be contented with repeating himself (and repeating himself and repeating himself), and reminding himself that practical examples of hexes on students are strictly forbidden, no matter what the circumstances.
*****************
Truthfully, he's come to like the Occlumency classes. Not for what he finds out (although he's often wondered if Professor McGonagall would consider paying him a bonus for every petty crime he reports) but because it's his easiest hour of teaching. Not since the last of Hermione's sadly small brood has he so much as had to try to break into a mind. It's all right there, in the first days, the first weeks, and in some cases, right up until the final exams. He lets his own mind wander as a corner of it creeps into his students' heads, and barely notices their childish concentration as they attempt to shut him out.
He nearly doesn't notice, then, the scene Roberts is trying to keep from him, until a flash of bare flesh catches his mind's eye. He's nearly moved on too fast but he quickly recalls a book, a magazine, something with pages and a naked-- there. He can just see the cover, as it's shoved into a bag, and a girl he doesn't know asks what he's reading. "History book", comes the witty reply, and Harry gives up in disgust. He already knows the girl's going to shrug and walk away, but he makes a mental note to check Roberts' dorm room when he's down at Herbology - bonus or no, he's fairly sure a fourteen year old shouldn't be looking at that.
*****************
He wonders, on his way down, whether he was like that at that age. He can't really remember that age, and wonders just how much Muggle blood is in his sixty-five year old veins, that he feels like a grumpy old nanna already. He's appalled at the magazine, of course, and even more appalled when he sees the state of the dormitory. If he didn't know better he'd think the House Elves were after a pay rise, but he sullenly suspects that this is just the state a just-cleaned room gets in after a boy's been in it for a minute or two.
It doesn't take long to find what he's after - it's under the mattress, of course, no doubt removed and replaced by a House Elf, and probably wiped down with stain remover at the same time, not that the boys would ever think of this as anything but their best kept secret.
He doesn't know what makes him do it, but he sneaks a peek at the cover, to see just what the boy's acquired. He snorts softly as he realises the line Roberts fed the girl was not entirely untrue - the magazine dates from before Harry's time, even, back when his parents were kids. He tries not to wonder whether his father ever saw a copy, buries the thought right to the back of his brain, but it falls away on its own as he flicks through the pages.
After a lifetime of moving pictures he's used to them by now, but the sensation he gets as the pages unfold is not unlike that when he first saw the paintings adorning the Hogwarts walls. He remembers, now, what he was like at fourteen - not since boyhood, he realises, has he ever seen pictures move quite like this.
He's caught on a page with a lad in his early 20s, his small frame muscled and moving just so, his sculpted face and fine, hooked nose framing his piercing eyes. Harry feels himself stir beneath his robes and watches as the boy - youth - man - poses in a way that somehow catches the light on his every contour, catches Harry's breath in his throat.
He's not sure how long he's been standing here, and it's only as he hears himself moan that he wakes to find his hand around his erection, and remembers where he is. He reminds himself who he is - Professor Potter - and what he's here to do - confiscate a dirty, filthy, completely unsuitable magazine from the bedroom of innocent fourteen year old boys - and determines to carry out his task. Right. Defiling innocent fourteen year old boys' bedroom with middle-aged (early-middle-aged. You're not old, Potter, you just feel old) masturbation, bad. Ensuring the dirty, filthy, completely unsuitable magazine is safely inside a trustworthy Professor's locked (sometimes locked) cupboard, good. Good.
Harry shoves the magazine inside his robe and sneaks out of the dorm room as though he's twelve years old.
*****************
He's desperate, through dinner, to get back to his room - "Marking," he tells the other staff, when they ask him to join them in the staff common room, and if they wonder why he has marking to do in the third week of term he doesn't notice - but it's his turn to supervise in the Great Hall and he watches as the stragglers fight over the last piece of pie and inwardly begs the House Elves to be adventurous and make more.
Finally the empty plates are cleared away and he all but runs to his room, triple checking the lock and settling in for a history lesson of his own.
*****************
The next Occlumency lesson is a blessing - he's struggling to stay awake during classes with all the extra reading he's been doing at night - and he takes the opportunity to doze, allowing his mind to wander in safer, more child-friendly pastures.
He's vaguely aware that it's a girl whose mind he's in, but he's not sure which girl, or what house she's from, or whether she's been there for one minute or ten. He assumes they rotate and he doesn't just read the one mind for the whole class, although now that he's thought of it, he makes a mental note to concentrate one day and make sure they don't just allocate a decoy so the rest of the class can slip outside while he's napping in her brain.
The excursion into the boys' dormitory - perhaps the excursion into the boys' fantasies - has bridged the gap between his old-man self and his own school days. As he rests inside this girl's thoughts he recalls his own failed attempts at Occlumency under the tutelage of Severus Snape. His memories of the time are tainted with Snape's presence lurking between them, and he feels the hatred he felt then, still buried under the uncertain gratitude he's felt since Snape's death nearly five decades earlier.
He tries to focus on his student's thoughts instead, and his own memories fade into memories of last Tuesday's Transfiguration class.
*****************
They're all the same, students, always thinking of classes and homework and fights between friends, and eventually his mind finds its way back to his own memories, memories of memories with someone watching on. He's curious about that - the memory of Snape's presence in his head - and as he focuses his mind on that, he catches a glimpse inside Snape's head: a fraction of a memory he didn't know he'd seen, doesn't know why he's remembered, but it's there.
He forgets to stay inside the student's mind as he turns Snape's thought around - it's a snapshot, a single frame, of an old-style camera, lighting rig, and a backdrop. Harry's not certain, if he'd never realised he'd seen this memory, why it seems so familiar, but when it comes to him, he wakes up and calls the class to order ten minutes before time.
*****************
He is racing through the halls this time, and he doesn't care who sees him, but he checks the lock four times before diving into his cupboard.
Grabbing the magazine he flicks until he finds it, the first picture he saw, the toned lad with the hook nose and deep, dark eyes. He feels his cock harden as the figure moves, and feels his stomach drop as the background falls into place.
He wonders if it's magic or just stupidity, how someone could have a memory of one's nemesis, one's teacher, in a pornographic photo shoot in one's brain for fifty years without knowing it was there.
His mind's racing almost as fast as his heartbeat, as his eyes watch the moving figure and his hand finds its way beneath his robes. He's not sure whether to watch this, this boy - lad - man - Snape - doing this thing he does so well, or to trawl through his memories for more, memories of the real Snape doing it for real.
In the end it's a combination of the two, as the images before his eyes and those in his mind merge until Harry's behind the camera, writhing and stroking and thrusting with a young Severus Snape, until he moans and gasps and comes harder than he's sure he has before.
*****************
There’s a boy in his fourth year Ravenclaws, a little shorter, quieter, gawkier, smarter than all the others. He commonly bears the brunt of the teasing, and as unteacherly as it might be, Harry usually ignores it until he can sense tears. Today, as the boy succumbs to a Tarantallegra, begging the laughing crowd to make it stop, Harry looks at him and wonders whether this boy might not after all have some capacity to make something of himself.
What, Harry replies to his own thought - a porn star, a war hero, a lover or father or faithful friend?
Returning to his room after class, Harry intends to further defile an ancient manuscript, but instead finds himself simply staring at the moving figure, lost in thought. He knows he has just come close to apologising to Snape, for himself, for his parents and their friends, for the life in which Snape grew up. As he stares at the lithe figure he realises that maybe Snape doesn’t need nor want an apology - Severus did make something of himself, several somethings, as best he could in the circumstances.
After all, Harry thinks, what might any of us be but for circumstances? What might George have been if Fred had lived; what might Harry have been if his parents had lived; what might the wizarding world have been if Tom Riddle had been drowned at birth?
Harry looks at himself, at his own war-hero miserly-teacher status, and half shrugs a shoulder. He, Harry, has never been a porn star...
Harry decides that the best apology he can grant Snape is to accept Snape’s choices, and to accept his own as openly.
He glances down at the magazine, and begins to feel the moving snapshot have its usual effect.
Accept Snape’s choices, he decides, and honour them, he adds, in any way he can.
This entry was originally posted at http://strav.dreamwidth.org/47878.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
AUTHOR: J Stravinski
FANDOM: Harry Potter
PAIRING: Harry Potter/Severus Snape
RATING: PG
FEEDBACK: Much appreciated. Particularly to point out blatant errors.
SPOILERS: DH
DISCLAIMER: I don't own anyone who weighs the same as a duck. Their creators are much more talented.
NOTES: Written for
snape_potter's Back To Hogwarts fest. This story finds its roots in the optional prompts: “Professor Potter confiscates an old Muggle porn magazine. Headmaster Snape is in it.” “Cross-dressing!Harry -- Harry is dared to wear a girl's uniform for a day's worth of classes and discovers he rather likes the feel of a skirt beneath his robes. Snape suspects Harry is up to something over the following weeks and finally confronts Harry only to discover a rather ... lovely surprise.” “In an Occlumency lesson, by accident, Harry gets lost inside Snape's head. He discovers unexpected truths about this man.” “Occlumency lessons-Snape sees Harry's fantasies.” “While inspecting the Gryffindor boys' dorm for contraband, professor Snape finds a very incriminating (and sexy) item in Harry Potter's trunk.” “8th year. As part of a dare with the Weasley twins, Harry agrees to make a pass at every professor at Hogwarts. He leaves Snape until last.”
Sadly some just didn’t fit...
Thank you to
accioslash for running the fest, exposing me relentlessly to Snarry until I caved, and unerring patience in reading/reviewing/counselling.
*********************
"Williams, Elizabeth," the Deputy Headmaster shouts, and then, shortly after, "Gryffindor!" the Sorting Hat proclaims. Harry watches the celebration with slightly more cheer now that the last name has been called, relieved the process is over for another year. He's sure it was probably that exciting when he was in school, and it was definitely exciting - somewhat nervewracking, but nonetheless exciting - awaiting news of the outcome of his own children's sorting. But there are only so many times, Harry's come to realise, that one can watch several hundred children sit under a talking hat before it becomes, well, boring.
He wonders how many years one can reasonably expect to do this before being permitted a night off. After all, he thinks, he's already sat through twenty-odd - by Muggle standards he'd be counting down the days to retirement by now. His hopes of respite fall, however, as his Headmistress stands - by Muggle standards, he reminds himself, she'd be already dead. He admires her tenacity, and begrudges his own impatience, and before long, the long-awaited, long-dreaded first day is done.
*****************
"Professor, it's not working."
Harry always forgets, from one year to the next, that it's not just the first years he has to worry about. Somehow it invariably turns out that the third year Hufflepuffs who were excellent at understanding hex theory are somehow incapable of even pretending to recognise a vampire bite; that the sixth year Slytherins who'd been keen to show off their skills with Fiendfyre were somehow experts at turning a Confundus Charm into a lollipop conjouring spell.
Harry feels about a hundred years old himself as he shows the third years the right way to block a Leg-Locker Curse for the sixth time that hour. He makes a mental note to ask Hermione to ensure her offspring breed more offspring, preferably a year apart, so every class forever after will have an unpaid teacher's assistant.
For now, he'll have to be contented with repeating himself (and repeating himself and repeating himself), and reminding himself that practical examples of hexes on students are strictly forbidden, no matter what the circumstances.
*****************
Truthfully, he's come to like the Occlumency classes. Not for what he finds out (although he's often wondered if Professor McGonagall would consider paying him a bonus for every petty crime he reports) but because it's his easiest hour of teaching. Not since the last of Hermione's sadly small brood has he so much as had to try to break into a mind. It's all right there, in the first days, the first weeks, and in some cases, right up until the final exams. He lets his own mind wander as a corner of it creeps into his students' heads, and barely notices their childish concentration as they attempt to shut him out.
He nearly doesn't notice, then, the scene Roberts is trying to keep from him, until a flash of bare flesh catches his mind's eye. He's nearly moved on too fast but he quickly recalls a book, a magazine, something with pages and a naked-- there. He can just see the cover, as it's shoved into a bag, and a girl he doesn't know asks what he's reading. "History book", comes the witty reply, and Harry gives up in disgust. He already knows the girl's going to shrug and walk away, but he makes a mental note to check Roberts' dorm room when he's down at Herbology - bonus or no, he's fairly sure a fourteen year old shouldn't be looking at that.
*****************
He wonders, on his way down, whether he was like that at that age. He can't really remember that age, and wonders just how much Muggle blood is in his sixty-five year old veins, that he feels like a grumpy old nanna already. He's appalled at the magazine, of course, and even more appalled when he sees the state of the dormitory. If he didn't know better he'd think the House Elves were after a pay rise, but he sullenly suspects that this is just the state a just-cleaned room gets in after a boy's been in it for a minute or two.
It doesn't take long to find what he's after - it's under the mattress, of course, no doubt removed and replaced by a House Elf, and probably wiped down with stain remover at the same time, not that the boys would ever think of this as anything but their best kept secret.
He doesn't know what makes him do it, but he sneaks a peek at the cover, to see just what the boy's acquired. He snorts softly as he realises the line Roberts fed the girl was not entirely untrue - the magazine dates from before Harry's time, even, back when his parents were kids. He tries not to wonder whether his father ever saw a copy, buries the thought right to the back of his brain, but it falls away on its own as he flicks through the pages.
After a lifetime of moving pictures he's used to them by now, but the sensation he gets as the pages unfold is not unlike that when he first saw the paintings adorning the Hogwarts walls. He remembers, now, what he was like at fourteen - not since boyhood, he realises, has he ever seen pictures move quite like this.
He's caught on a page with a lad in his early 20s, his small frame muscled and moving just so, his sculpted face and fine, hooked nose framing his piercing eyes. Harry feels himself stir beneath his robes and watches as the boy - youth - man - poses in a way that somehow catches the light on his every contour, catches Harry's breath in his throat.
He's not sure how long he's been standing here, and it's only as he hears himself moan that he wakes to find his hand around his erection, and remembers where he is. He reminds himself who he is - Professor Potter - and what he's here to do - confiscate a dirty, filthy, completely unsuitable magazine from the bedroom of innocent fourteen year old boys - and determines to carry out his task. Right. Defiling innocent fourteen year old boys' bedroom with middle-aged (early-middle-aged. You're not old, Potter, you just feel old) masturbation, bad. Ensuring the dirty, filthy, completely unsuitable magazine is safely inside a trustworthy Professor's locked (sometimes locked) cupboard, good. Good.
Harry shoves the magazine inside his robe and sneaks out of the dorm room as though he's twelve years old.
*****************
He's desperate, through dinner, to get back to his room - "Marking," he tells the other staff, when they ask him to join them in the staff common room, and if they wonder why he has marking to do in the third week of term he doesn't notice - but it's his turn to supervise in the Great Hall and he watches as the stragglers fight over the last piece of pie and inwardly begs the House Elves to be adventurous and make more.
Finally the empty plates are cleared away and he all but runs to his room, triple checking the lock and settling in for a history lesson of his own.
*****************
The next Occlumency lesson is a blessing - he's struggling to stay awake during classes with all the extra reading he's been doing at night - and he takes the opportunity to doze, allowing his mind to wander in safer, more child-friendly pastures.
He's vaguely aware that it's a girl whose mind he's in, but he's not sure which girl, or what house she's from, or whether she's been there for one minute or ten. He assumes they rotate and he doesn't just read the one mind for the whole class, although now that he's thought of it, he makes a mental note to concentrate one day and make sure they don't just allocate a decoy so the rest of the class can slip outside while he's napping in her brain.
The excursion into the boys' dormitory - perhaps the excursion into the boys' fantasies - has bridged the gap between his old-man self and his own school days. As he rests inside this girl's thoughts he recalls his own failed attempts at Occlumency under the tutelage of Severus Snape. His memories of the time are tainted with Snape's presence lurking between them, and he feels the hatred he felt then, still buried under the uncertain gratitude he's felt since Snape's death nearly five decades earlier.
He tries to focus on his student's thoughts instead, and his own memories fade into memories of last Tuesday's Transfiguration class.
*****************
They're all the same, students, always thinking of classes and homework and fights between friends, and eventually his mind finds its way back to his own memories, memories of memories with someone watching on. He's curious about that - the memory of Snape's presence in his head - and as he focuses his mind on that, he catches a glimpse inside Snape's head: a fraction of a memory he didn't know he'd seen, doesn't know why he's remembered, but it's there.
He forgets to stay inside the student's mind as he turns Snape's thought around - it's a snapshot, a single frame, of an old-style camera, lighting rig, and a backdrop. Harry's not certain, if he'd never realised he'd seen this memory, why it seems so familiar, but when it comes to him, he wakes up and calls the class to order ten minutes before time.
*****************
He is racing through the halls this time, and he doesn't care who sees him, but he checks the lock four times before diving into his cupboard.
Grabbing the magazine he flicks until he finds it, the first picture he saw, the toned lad with the hook nose and deep, dark eyes. He feels his cock harden as the figure moves, and feels his stomach drop as the background falls into place.
He wonders if it's magic or just stupidity, how someone could have a memory of one's nemesis, one's teacher, in a pornographic photo shoot in one's brain for fifty years without knowing it was there.
His mind's racing almost as fast as his heartbeat, as his eyes watch the moving figure and his hand finds its way beneath his robes. He's not sure whether to watch this, this boy - lad - man - Snape - doing this thing he does so well, or to trawl through his memories for more, memories of the real Snape doing it for real.
In the end it's a combination of the two, as the images before his eyes and those in his mind merge until Harry's behind the camera, writhing and stroking and thrusting with a young Severus Snape, until he moans and gasps and comes harder than he's sure he has before.
*****************
There’s a boy in his fourth year Ravenclaws, a little shorter, quieter, gawkier, smarter than all the others. He commonly bears the brunt of the teasing, and as unteacherly as it might be, Harry usually ignores it until he can sense tears. Today, as the boy succumbs to a Tarantallegra, begging the laughing crowd to make it stop, Harry looks at him and wonders whether this boy might not after all have some capacity to make something of himself.
What, Harry replies to his own thought - a porn star, a war hero, a lover or father or faithful friend?
Returning to his room after class, Harry intends to further defile an ancient manuscript, but instead finds himself simply staring at the moving figure, lost in thought. He knows he has just come close to apologising to Snape, for himself, for his parents and their friends, for the life in which Snape grew up. As he stares at the lithe figure he realises that maybe Snape doesn’t need nor want an apology - Severus did make something of himself, several somethings, as best he could in the circumstances.
After all, Harry thinks, what might any of us be but for circumstances? What might George have been if Fred had lived; what might Harry have been if his parents had lived; what might the wizarding world have been if Tom Riddle had been drowned at birth?
Harry looks at himself, at his own war-hero miserly-teacher status, and half shrugs a shoulder. He, Harry, has never been a porn star...
Harry decides that the best apology he can grant Snape is to accept Snape’s choices, and to accept his own as openly.
He glances down at the magazine, and begins to feel the moving snapshot have its usual effect.
Accept Snape’s choices, he decides, and honour them, he adds, in any way he can.
This entry was originally posted at http://strav.dreamwidth.org/47878.html. Please comment there using OpenID.