"Sever the Ties That Bind Us" - Snarry, Harry Potter -- Part 02/?
Fandom: Harry Potter
Title: "Sever the Ties That Bind Us" - Part Two
Characters: Harry/Snape, Dumbledore, Ron
Words: 3067
Rating: R ((sexuality, slight gore))
Disclaimer: If it screams of JKR, it's hers. Such a shame.
Notes: Thanks for all the wonderful and encouraging reviews, guys! Also, while "Sever" follows canon up until Harry's fifth year, it begins to diverge about a month into his school year.
Over-All Summary: "Dreams are answers to questions we haven't yet figured out how to ask." - from the X-Files
A pandemic breaks out at Hogwarts, and Harry's unwelcome fantasies are the key.
-------
"I don't need your help, Potter," Snape choked. His hoarse throat ripped words form his lungs, pitching them into the Gryffindor's well-meaning face.
He looked worse up-close, a tear down his face, patches of something wet smeared along the front of his dark clothes, and his limbs askew. Choking back his concern, Harry smirked in a way that he knew would normally aggravate his professor to no end. "Your doing so well on your own, I see," he countered, stepping back long enough to look for a wash-cloth.
A navy blanket was balled-up at the bottom of Snape’s bed, and Harry grabbed it, fighting Snape's wild eyes and anger-driven attempts to sit up. Moans were bitten between raw lips when Snape remembered who he was sitting with, only grunting as his back jerked in pain and he fell back into the crimson puddle on the ground.
Hands stroked the olive skin that threatened to shred him after every movement, caressing Severus until the blood and vomit had been cleared from his face, and the Gryffindor could see some semblance of the teacher he knew. His nose was more crooked than the incubus in his dreams, but past that, this living phantom looked infinitely better than when the dark-haired boy first stepped into the room.
Dark eyes pinned him, a ripple coursing through Snape’s throat, a sharp insult spun out instead of a gasp. Emerald eyes flitted their growing annoyance, even as he scooted closer on his knees, feeling every inch between them, every ragged breath that the older man grasped at.
"Have you called Madame Pomfrey?" Harry asked, when Snape had stopped insulting him to inhale a rickety shot of air.
"I don't need to discuss this." The potions-master bit out each word, over-enunciated, rasping. "Get out."
A hex built in his throat, but Snape's wand was too far away, skittered in a corner, probably, Harry guessed, dropped when Snape had fallen. But the potions-master was an ex-Death Eater, after all, so his spell still had an impact. A thousand groping arms grasped Harry, jerking him backwards.
Struggling to bat away the invisible caresses, Harry growled and stormed forward, shaking his head at the heavy air that hung between them.
"Don't be a git," he countered, placing the only-slightly-bloody blanket over Snape’s trembling body, fingers tucking it against the thin and writhing frame-- one that fumed with anger, dark hair plastered with sweat to a forehead that Harry found himself wanting to lean forward and lick. When the man was feeling better, at least.
"Fine," he snapped, when the next hex landed Harry a nosebleed with all the force of a stampeding hippogryph. Gryffindor sleeves quickly destroyed the blood’s trickling river, tongue straining against his top lip, touching it, curious. Copper-and slightly sour.
Shaking his head, Harry leaped to his feet, heart hammering with the sudden gasps for air that erupted between them. But Snape’s arms swatted him away, when Harry leaned in, and the Boy-Who-Lived was sick of fighting him. "Be miserable, then. It’s not like I care--You’re a greasy, stupid, worm."
Storming from the room, Harry made a note to ask Madame Pomfrey to check in on him before going to bed-all the while, praying to Merlin that Snape didn't expel him the second the professor could stand up.
---
"Potter," Snape called, fingers touching a pale shoulder at dinner, and jerking the Gryffindor from his recollection of the Weasley twins’ latest prank. "A word?"
Rivers of repressed guilt shuddered through the wall's Harry had built inside his skull, and the smile immediately fell away from the Seeker's face. Pivoting, his stomach flipped at how strongly his pale skin stood out against his dark robes, a starker change then when Harry had last seen the man.
"Potions, which you would know, Potter, if you ever paid any attention in class," Snape hissed, near his ear. Dark eyes had followed Harry’s, connecting with the emerald in a widened jolt of familiarity for them both, before gesturing for the ebony-haired boy to trail after the back that had preoccupied the Gryffindor's every waking thought.
---
"What you saw means nothing," the dark-haired man began, long fingers sweeping shady robes around his smooth bottom as he elegantly reclined in a dark office chair. Dark wood separated him from Harry, who was lingering, lanky limbs too tense to sit and yet unable to properly stand. He hoped his glasses hid the way the green center of his eye stroked the fibers of Severus’ outline. "What happened was none of your business. You stuck your sneaky nose where it didn't belong, and you will not repeat what you witnessed to another soul in this school building. Do you understand?"
A smirk tainted Harry’s tight, tanned skin. Where was the fun in answering him?
In his dreams, Snape would start with little games, mind games, and every answer Harry got wrong incited the phantom Severus to pleasurably jinx the Boy-Who-Lived's straining spine.
"What happened to you?" Harry’s tenor asked instead, leaning over the chair that he had the option of sitting in, even if Snape had never invited him to sit down. Objects in jars danced around the two ebony-haired souls, ingredients surrounding them in a circle of intimacy between two silent flames in dark robes.
The teacher spoke, the illusory silence shattering. "Nothing that you need to know about."
“I saw you, can’t I-“
“Do not continue, Potter. I wouldn’t confide in you if you were the last soul for kilometers.” Fingers slammed onto the wood of the desk, eyes glinting, halting Harry’s subtle attempts to escape. "Oh, and Potter?"
Pausing in the doorway, sweat drop jolting down his suddenly icy skin, the Gryffindor Seeker turned, peering through smudged glasses at the crystalline form of his affections. Dark hair, dark clothing, dark wood, as though Snape could melt into the shadows if he tried hard enough.
"You owe me two detentions, and twenty points, for breaking into my personal chambers." A flicker of his hand joined Snape's lips in their signs of dismissal-their fragile skin being most obvious sign of the pain he'd been in days ago, their chapped skin cracking in areas where blood trickled inside his lips. They smirked, and tan skin wanted to ask to feel those lips on his own. "I think tomorrow night will do just fine for them to start."
Harry didn't try to protest, despite knowing that it was right before the big Slytherin versus Gryffindor Quidditch match, and that Oliver would use his head as a bludger. No, he let it drop, because Harry saw the smirk in his professor's eyes, the gleam along his skin as the dark eyes drank in the space between them, and his olive skin, taunting the boy with their almost-private joke.
All in all, Harry knew, as he shuffled away from Snape's office, he'd escaped with his pride intact, and gotten off bloody well easy.
---
Oliver had blown a casket screaming at Harry, coming out of the locker room hoarse for all the shouting. Angelina had to hand him a cup of water to and try to massage his shoulders to keep him from popping a vein.
But the dark-haired screamee didn't care, as he let Oliver's words wash along his flushed limbs, drip along his Quidditch uniform and pool on the locker-room floor--- he had bigger concerns.
Like the reason Oliver was going wonkers on him--- Harry's chance to be all alone, late at night, with the man who's face he stoked himself off to with what was beginning to become a regularity that Harry didn't want to dwell on.
---
"Over here," Snape purred, from where he sat, legs spread, nude olive skin catching the dim light of his office window.
"I--" Aware of his pants tightening, Harry's hand began to rub through their tight fabric, slow at first, and then faster, with more insistence, as Severus stroked his own arching erection, head tilted back, dark hair pooling on his desk, where he lay, giving Harry a full-show.
"Potter," he growled, for a third time, and Harry shook his head, glasses falling askew. He righted them and glanced at the true scene-- Snape bending imperiously over a disgusting pile of cauldrons. The stack had started when Snape had gotten sick, and their ever-helpful substitute had only served to add to the pile. A smirk echoed from Harry's lips as he surveyed them--- a good half of the cauldrons were Neville's, after he failed and the teacher had to replace them. All in all, at least twenty thickly caked potions-gone-wrong.
"Since it's impossible to find good help these days, and you seem willing to offer your services," Snape said, righting himself and stepping within a sphere of influence in Harry's skin, his presence simmering beneath his tensions. The Gryffindor had no idea how he'd survive the detention, licking his lips and wondering how the blood from Snape's chapped lips would taste. Or, better yet, what his come would taste like, it's heat surging down Harry's eager throat.
A rag was handed to him. "You'll scrub them all, until I can see your dunderhead in each and every reflection."
---
Severus had seated himself by a crackling fire, grunting every few moments in dissatisfaction and slashing away at a paper in front of him. For the most part, Harry longed to shove away the papers and fuck him in the chair of his classroom.
Instead, he polished each cauldron with all the passion he wished he could be stroking Snape's angled body with.
Swishing the paper aside, Harry watched from the corner of his steamed glasses as Snape grunted mid-movement, grabbed his arm, exhaled with a twitch that spun up from his left arm and down to his heels.
Abandoning the cloth, his Quidditch hardened hands were pushing Harry into a standing position before his logical mind could catch up with him. His fingers were resting on the starched fabric of Snape's robes, less soft in reality than in Harry's dreams, and he whispered, "What's wrong?"
Dark eyes snapped, scissoring with pain as he jerked his arm away, arms brushing arms, fingers brushing fingers, the heat emanating from Severus' body burning through Harry's pants and flushed face. "What makes you think I would tell you?"
It was a growl, lips contorted, his left hand twitching with the same jerks that had claimed it before, Harry's legs touching Snape’s, the Gryffindor fighting with himself to prevent his legs from rubbing up against the professor's.
He still had some dignity left, after all. Even if his lips were leaning in, if his hips shrieked when they touched his knees, Harry's robes brushing against Snape's, fingers reaching out again, touching the professor's chin.
"Go to hell," he bit out, jerking his chair backwards and attempting to get out, before shivering into the bookshelf, falling like a leaf as blood spurted from his mouth in gut-destroying retching.
Harry's fingers held back his dark hair, and Snape never said a word when he stayed by Potter's side, shaking for ten minutes, at least, before getting up and silently storming away.
---
"Is it just me, or has Snape lost weight?" Hermoine asked, her voice a hushed whisper in the back of the Potions classroom. Snape was seated near the front, not pacing with his usual menace.
"Maybe." Ron was squinting at an instructions page in their textbook, all but ignoring the rolls of her eyes that Hermoine sent his way.
"You didn't even look."
"Yeah," Harry intoned, breaking up the fight before it could start. Snape had lost weight-- stopped eating as often, and, until that moment, Harry had almost managed to convince himself he shouldn't ask about it. "Yeah, he's lost weight."
His tone, the breathy quality, dragged Ron's gaze from deciphering the list inches from his nose, and Harry pointedly ignored his friend's questioning stare. Instead, he ran a hand through his hair and began crushing the suramac that they would need for the day's work.
---
When he'd gone back for his second detention, the following week, Snape hadn't been there-- as absent as he'd been from Harry's dreams.
Hollowness stung the Boy-Who-Lived while he waited, allowing half an hour to tick by before giving up on seeing the ebony-haired man from his dreams.
---
Severus was laying in his bed, shivering, and when Harry approached him, nude, and tried to climb into bed, he noticed that Snape had cut off his left arm, blood reaching out between them and attempting to swallow Harry whole.
That night, Snape appeared in Harry's dreams for the first time in two weeks.
---
It was the same room as before, only a different book had been abandoned in the chair. Harry didn't have his cloak-- he'd forgotten to grab it the last time he'd gone to Severus' personal chambers, and the man had never bothered to return it.
So he'd just walked right in, stomach burning holes in his insides. Harry had woken from his dream with nausea in his gut, and his feet taking him not to the bathrooms, but to Snape's room. It seemed to be a habit, the ebony-haired Gryffindor mused, his tired eyes brushing over the pristine nature of the room.
No spurts of blood-- that was somewhat reassuring, Harry thought, letting his footfalls ring throughout the room.
This time he anticipated the squeak from the bedroom door, but not the bile that rose in his throat at the smell of Snape's chambers.
Or the lump lying in Snape's bed-- something that Harry rushed too with all the speed of a dying Hippogryph.
"Severus?" he asked, crawling along the ragged edges of a blanket that Harry recognized from the last time he'd crawled into Severus' room. Acrid decay and mold curved a hole straight into Harry's senses, and grew the closer his fingers got to the lump in the covers.
When Severus didn't answer, his fingers graced the stale blankets, peeling them back with baited breath and a shocking amount of tears being batted back behind his eyes.
Snape was lying there, eyes focusing on nothing in particular, but blinking at the sudden light that had been uncovered. Shaky hands traced sweaty, bloody olive cheeks, and Harry curled down by Severus Snape, the man who had stalked his dreams, as cognizance dawned in his appearance.
"Potter," he mumbled, eyes focusing and unfocusing, fingers on his only hand clutching and unclutching the fabric that had bunched around Harry's shoulder, where it rested. A shiver dragged through Harry, and he bit back the nausea that shrieked through his spine at the rough stump that was attached to Snape where his arm used to lie.
The arm that stroked him in dreams, stroked himself, graded papers, snapped his wand.
Wiping a bit of sweat that was attempting to drip into Severus' glazing eyes, he pulled the shuddering lump closer and closed his eyes. Taller than Harry or not, the Gryffindor tried to tuck the older man into him, at least until he stopped shaking long enough for Harry to get Dumbledore, or Madame Pomfrey, or someone.
---
McGonagall just sat there, lips pursed, asking Harry again to recount how he'd found Snape.
"It's as I thought," Dumbledore murmured, pacing his office, where he, McGonagall, and Harry were lingering in a deafening silence. "He hasn't been well for some time, I'm afraid."
"Too stubborn," McGonagall snapped, finally standing and pacing to the window, peering out at the wind and grounds below the castle.
Harry just sat, still bloody, not wanting to change, just running to Dumbledore, and refusing to leave until he'd been told something-- anything at all, really, about why the man who Harry had wanted to fuck for the past three months had torn off his own arm.
"How many of our secrets do you think it saw, Albus?" McGonagall echoed, voice strictly wrapping around the trio across the rooms distance and drawing them closer to one another.
"It?" Emerald eyes shifted from adult to silver-haired adult.
"The worm, Potter." Irritably, she turned back towards the window, shaking her bunned hair.
"What worm?" Harry was staring at her, and when she didn't answer, turned his anger onto Dumbledore. He was still pacing, robes dripping down near his ankles, as he gave it a final back-and-forth before dropping into his seat.
"Only time will tell, Minerva," he answered, steepling his fingers and gazing over the top of them, voice grating through the distance.
"What worm?" Harry emphasized, shouting now, body stiff with drying blood and other liquids he didn't want to think about, but that were suspiciously green.
"The one that had taken up host inside Severus' body," Dumbledore answered, exhaling his sigh as Harry's mouth hinged open, more questions on his tongue. Gesturing towards a chair, Dumbledore waited until the Gryffindor had taken a seat to continue his explanation.
"Spy worms were common many years ago, when Voldemort first started his attacks. Slipped into tea, food, potions, they were portable, smart creatures, which ate through their host-bodies, exploring their minds. Oftentimes these worms were able to relay their information to a dead host, which would then report it to a death eater. It was an extreme method, but not an uncommon one," Dumbledore finished, wrinkled hands wiping his brow.
Harry's stomach dropped, and his nausea rose. "And Snape?"
"Yes, it would appear he's had one for some time now."
Which, Harry realized, would place the entire Order in danger. Sirius, the Weasley's, everyone. Not to mention Snape's shaking, fragile body--
"His arm--" Harry had tripped over it on his way off of the bed, when Snape had stopped shaking. It's hollow form, and stifling bone shrieked to the forefront of Harry's mind.
"Was removed, once Severus managed to deduce the source of his recent illness."
McGonagall snorted, shook her head. "If he'd have seen Pomfrey sooner--"
"Yes, Minerva, it's a pity."
A tremor that Harry hadn't known was inside of him jerked through his body. A worm, eating him, tunneling through Severus's soul; it explained the hole that Harry's jittery, wide eyes had seen in the shredded top of Severus' arm, it's blood coating Harry's sickened frame-
Shuddering, Harry barely managed to double-up before he was vomiting his dinner all over the headmaster's glimmering floor.
Previous Installment
Title: "Sever the Ties That Bind Us" - Part Two
Characters: Harry/Snape, Dumbledore, Ron
Words: 3067
Rating: R ((sexuality, slight gore))
Disclaimer: If it screams of JKR, it's hers. Such a shame.
Notes: Thanks for all the wonderful and encouraging reviews, guys! Also, while "Sever" follows canon up until Harry's fifth year, it begins to diverge about a month into his school year.
Over-All Summary: "Dreams are answers to questions we haven't yet figured out how to ask." - from the X-Files
A pandemic breaks out at Hogwarts, and Harry's unwelcome fantasies are the key.
-------
"I don't need your help, Potter," Snape choked. His hoarse throat ripped words form his lungs, pitching them into the Gryffindor's well-meaning face.
He looked worse up-close, a tear down his face, patches of something wet smeared along the front of his dark clothes, and his limbs askew. Choking back his concern, Harry smirked in a way that he knew would normally aggravate his professor to no end. "Your doing so well on your own, I see," he countered, stepping back long enough to look for a wash-cloth.
A navy blanket was balled-up at the bottom of Snape’s bed, and Harry grabbed it, fighting Snape's wild eyes and anger-driven attempts to sit up. Moans were bitten between raw lips when Snape remembered who he was sitting with, only grunting as his back jerked in pain and he fell back into the crimson puddle on the ground.
Hands stroked the olive skin that threatened to shred him after every movement, caressing Severus until the blood and vomit had been cleared from his face, and the Gryffindor could see some semblance of the teacher he knew. His nose was more crooked than the incubus in his dreams, but past that, this living phantom looked infinitely better than when the dark-haired boy first stepped into the room.
Dark eyes pinned him, a ripple coursing through Snape’s throat, a sharp insult spun out instead of a gasp. Emerald eyes flitted their growing annoyance, even as he scooted closer on his knees, feeling every inch between them, every ragged breath that the older man grasped at.
"Have you called Madame Pomfrey?" Harry asked, when Snape had stopped insulting him to inhale a rickety shot of air.
"I don't need to discuss this." The potions-master bit out each word, over-enunciated, rasping. "Get out."
A hex built in his throat, but Snape's wand was too far away, skittered in a corner, probably, Harry guessed, dropped when Snape had fallen. But the potions-master was an ex-Death Eater, after all, so his spell still had an impact. A thousand groping arms grasped Harry, jerking him backwards.
Struggling to bat away the invisible caresses, Harry growled and stormed forward, shaking his head at the heavy air that hung between them.
"Don't be a git," he countered, placing the only-slightly-bloody blanket over Snape’s trembling body, fingers tucking it against the thin and writhing frame-- one that fumed with anger, dark hair plastered with sweat to a forehead that Harry found himself wanting to lean forward and lick. When the man was feeling better, at least.
"Fine," he snapped, when the next hex landed Harry a nosebleed with all the force of a stampeding hippogryph. Gryffindor sleeves quickly destroyed the blood’s trickling river, tongue straining against his top lip, touching it, curious. Copper-and slightly sour.
Shaking his head, Harry leaped to his feet, heart hammering with the sudden gasps for air that erupted between them. But Snape’s arms swatted him away, when Harry leaned in, and the Boy-Who-Lived was sick of fighting him. "Be miserable, then. It’s not like I care--You’re a greasy, stupid, worm."
Storming from the room, Harry made a note to ask Madame Pomfrey to check in on him before going to bed-all the while, praying to Merlin that Snape didn't expel him the second the professor could stand up.
---
"Potter," Snape called, fingers touching a pale shoulder at dinner, and jerking the Gryffindor from his recollection of the Weasley twins’ latest prank. "A word?"
Rivers of repressed guilt shuddered through the wall's Harry had built inside his skull, and the smile immediately fell away from the Seeker's face. Pivoting, his stomach flipped at how strongly his pale skin stood out against his dark robes, a starker change then when Harry had last seen the man.
"Potions, which you would know, Potter, if you ever paid any attention in class," Snape hissed, near his ear. Dark eyes had followed Harry’s, connecting with the emerald in a widened jolt of familiarity for them both, before gesturing for the ebony-haired boy to trail after the back that had preoccupied the Gryffindor's every waking thought.
---
"What you saw means nothing," the dark-haired man began, long fingers sweeping shady robes around his smooth bottom as he elegantly reclined in a dark office chair. Dark wood separated him from Harry, who was lingering, lanky limbs too tense to sit and yet unable to properly stand. He hoped his glasses hid the way the green center of his eye stroked the fibers of Severus’ outline. "What happened was none of your business. You stuck your sneaky nose where it didn't belong, and you will not repeat what you witnessed to another soul in this school building. Do you understand?"
A smirk tainted Harry’s tight, tanned skin. Where was the fun in answering him?
In his dreams, Snape would start with little games, mind games, and every answer Harry got wrong incited the phantom Severus to pleasurably jinx the Boy-Who-Lived's straining spine.
"What happened to you?" Harry’s tenor asked instead, leaning over the chair that he had the option of sitting in, even if Snape had never invited him to sit down. Objects in jars danced around the two ebony-haired souls, ingredients surrounding them in a circle of intimacy between two silent flames in dark robes.
The teacher spoke, the illusory silence shattering. "Nothing that you need to know about."
“I saw you, can’t I-“
“Do not continue, Potter. I wouldn’t confide in you if you were the last soul for kilometers.” Fingers slammed onto the wood of the desk, eyes glinting, halting Harry’s subtle attempts to escape. "Oh, and Potter?"
Pausing in the doorway, sweat drop jolting down his suddenly icy skin, the Gryffindor Seeker turned, peering through smudged glasses at the crystalline form of his affections. Dark hair, dark clothing, dark wood, as though Snape could melt into the shadows if he tried hard enough.
"You owe me two detentions, and twenty points, for breaking into my personal chambers." A flicker of his hand joined Snape's lips in their signs of dismissal-their fragile skin being most obvious sign of the pain he'd been in days ago, their chapped skin cracking in areas where blood trickled inside his lips. They smirked, and tan skin wanted to ask to feel those lips on his own. "I think tomorrow night will do just fine for them to start."
Harry didn't try to protest, despite knowing that it was right before the big Slytherin versus Gryffindor Quidditch match, and that Oliver would use his head as a bludger. No, he let it drop, because Harry saw the smirk in his professor's eyes, the gleam along his skin as the dark eyes drank in the space between them, and his olive skin, taunting the boy with their almost-private joke.
All in all, Harry knew, as he shuffled away from Snape's office, he'd escaped with his pride intact, and gotten off bloody well easy.
---
Oliver had blown a casket screaming at Harry, coming out of the locker room hoarse for all the shouting. Angelina had to hand him a cup of water to and try to massage his shoulders to keep him from popping a vein.
But the dark-haired screamee didn't care, as he let Oliver's words wash along his flushed limbs, drip along his Quidditch uniform and pool on the locker-room floor--- he had bigger concerns.
Like the reason Oliver was going wonkers on him--- Harry's chance to be all alone, late at night, with the man who's face he stoked himself off to with what was beginning to become a regularity that Harry didn't want to dwell on.
---
"Over here," Snape purred, from where he sat, legs spread, nude olive skin catching the dim light of his office window.
"I--" Aware of his pants tightening, Harry's hand began to rub through their tight fabric, slow at first, and then faster, with more insistence, as Severus stroked his own arching erection, head tilted back, dark hair pooling on his desk, where he lay, giving Harry a full-show.
"Potter," he growled, for a third time, and Harry shook his head, glasses falling askew. He righted them and glanced at the true scene-- Snape bending imperiously over a disgusting pile of cauldrons. The stack had started when Snape had gotten sick, and their ever-helpful substitute had only served to add to the pile. A smirk echoed from Harry's lips as he surveyed them--- a good half of the cauldrons were Neville's, after he failed and the teacher had to replace them. All in all, at least twenty thickly caked potions-gone-wrong.
"Since it's impossible to find good help these days, and you seem willing to offer your services," Snape said, righting himself and stepping within a sphere of influence in Harry's skin, his presence simmering beneath his tensions. The Gryffindor had no idea how he'd survive the detention, licking his lips and wondering how the blood from Snape's chapped lips would taste. Or, better yet, what his come would taste like, it's heat surging down Harry's eager throat.
A rag was handed to him. "You'll scrub them all, until I can see your dunderhead in each and every reflection."
---
Severus had seated himself by a crackling fire, grunting every few moments in dissatisfaction and slashing away at a paper in front of him. For the most part, Harry longed to shove away the papers and fuck him in the chair of his classroom.
Instead, he polished each cauldron with all the passion he wished he could be stroking Snape's angled body with.
Swishing the paper aside, Harry watched from the corner of his steamed glasses as Snape grunted mid-movement, grabbed his arm, exhaled with a twitch that spun up from his left arm and down to his heels.
Abandoning the cloth, his Quidditch hardened hands were pushing Harry into a standing position before his logical mind could catch up with him. His fingers were resting on the starched fabric of Snape's robes, less soft in reality than in Harry's dreams, and he whispered, "What's wrong?"
Dark eyes snapped, scissoring with pain as he jerked his arm away, arms brushing arms, fingers brushing fingers, the heat emanating from Severus' body burning through Harry's pants and flushed face. "What makes you think I would tell you?"
It was a growl, lips contorted, his left hand twitching with the same jerks that had claimed it before, Harry's legs touching Snape’s, the Gryffindor fighting with himself to prevent his legs from rubbing up against the professor's.
He still had some dignity left, after all. Even if his lips were leaning in, if his hips shrieked when they touched his knees, Harry's robes brushing against Snape's, fingers reaching out again, touching the professor's chin.
"Go to hell," he bit out, jerking his chair backwards and attempting to get out, before shivering into the bookshelf, falling like a leaf as blood spurted from his mouth in gut-destroying retching.
Harry's fingers held back his dark hair, and Snape never said a word when he stayed by Potter's side, shaking for ten minutes, at least, before getting up and silently storming away.
---
"Is it just me, or has Snape lost weight?" Hermoine asked, her voice a hushed whisper in the back of the Potions classroom. Snape was seated near the front, not pacing with his usual menace.
"Maybe." Ron was squinting at an instructions page in their textbook, all but ignoring the rolls of her eyes that Hermoine sent his way.
"You didn't even look."
"Yeah," Harry intoned, breaking up the fight before it could start. Snape had lost weight-- stopped eating as often, and, until that moment, Harry had almost managed to convince himself he shouldn't ask about it. "Yeah, he's lost weight."
His tone, the breathy quality, dragged Ron's gaze from deciphering the list inches from his nose, and Harry pointedly ignored his friend's questioning stare. Instead, he ran a hand through his hair and began crushing the suramac that they would need for the day's work.
---
When he'd gone back for his second detention, the following week, Snape hadn't been there-- as absent as he'd been from Harry's dreams.
Hollowness stung the Boy-Who-Lived while he waited, allowing half an hour to tick by before giving up on seeing the ebony-haired man from his dreams.
---
Severus was laying in his bed, shivering, and when Harry approached him, nude, and tried to climb into bed, he noticed that Snape had cut off his left arm, blood reaching out between them and attempting to swallow Harry whole.
That night, Snape appeared in Harry's dreams for the first time in two weeks.
---
It was the same room as before, only a different book had been abandoned in the chair. Harry didn't have his cloak-- he'd forgotten to grab it the last time he'd gone to Severus' personal chambers, and the man had never bothered to return it.
So he'd just walked right in, stomach burning holes in his insides. Harry had woken from his dream with nausea in his gut, and his feet taking him not to the bathrooms, but to Snape's room. It seemed to be a habit, the ebony-haired Gryffindor mused, his tired eyes brushing over the pristine nature of the room.
No spurts of blood-- that was somewhat reassuring, Harry thought, letting his footfalls ring throughout the room.
This time he anticipated the squeak from the bedroom door, but not the bile that rose in his throat at the smell of Snape's chambers.
Or the lump lying in Snape's bed-- something that Harry rushed too with all the speed of a dying Hippogryph.
"Severus?" he asked, crawling along the ragged edges of a blanket that Harry recognized from the last time he'd crawled into Severus' room. Acrid decay and mold curved a hole straight into Harry's senses, and grew the closer his fingers got to the lump in the covers.
When Severus didn't answer, his fingers graced the stale blankets, peeling them back with baited breath and a shocking amount of tears being batted back behind his eyes.
Snape was lying there, eyes focusing on nothing in particular, but blinking at the sudden light that had been uncovered. Shaky hands traced sweaty, bloody olive cheeks, and Harry curled down by Severus Snape, the man who had stalked his dreams, as cognizance dawned in his appearance.
"Potter," he mumbled, eyes focusing and unfocusing, fingers on his only hand clutching and unclutching the fabric that had bunched around Harry's shoulder, where it rested. A shiver dragged through Harry, and he bit back the nausea that shrieked through his spine at the rough stump that was attached to Snape where his arm used to lie.
The arm that stroked him in dreams, stroked himself, graded papers, snapped his wand.
Wiping a bit of sweat that was attempting to drip into Severus' glazing eyes, he pulled the shuddering lump closer and closed his eyes. Taller than Harry or not, the Gryffindor tried to tuck the older man into him, at least until he stopped shaking long enough for Harry to get Dumbledore, or Madame Pomfrey, or someone.
---
McGonagall just sat there, lips pursed, asking Harry again to recount how he'd found Snape.
"It's as I thought," Dumbledore murmured, pacing his office, where he, McGonagall, and Harry were lingering in a deafening silence. "He hasn't been well for some time, I'm afraid."
"Too stubborn," McGonagall snapped, finally standing and pacing to the window, peering out at the wind and grounds below the castle.
Harry just sat, still bloody, not wanting to change, just running to Dumbledore, and refusing to leave until he'd been told something-- anything at all, really, about why the man who Harry had wanted to fuck for the past three months had torn off his own arm.
"How many of our secrets do you think it saw, Albus?" McGonagall echoed, voice strictly wrapping around the trio across the rooms distance and drawing them closer to one another.
"It?" Emerald eyes shifted from adult to silver-haired adult.
"The worm, Potter." Irritably, she turned back towards the window, shaking her bunned hair.
"What worm?" Harry was staring at her, and when she didn't answer, turned his anger onto Dumbledore. He was still pacing, robes dripping down near his ankles, as he gave it a final back-and-forth before dropping into his seat.
"Only time will tell, Minerva," he answered, steepling his fingers and gazing over the top of them, voice grating through the distance.
"What worm?" Harry emphasized, shouting now, body stiff with drying blood and other liquids he didn't want to think about, but that were suspiciously green.
"The one that had taken up host inside Severus' body," Dumbledore answered, exhaling his sigh as Harry's mouth hinged open, more questions on his tongue. Gesturing towards a chair, Dumbledore waited until the Gryffindor had taken a seat to continue his explanation.
"Spy worms were common many years ago, when Voldemort first started his attacks. Slipped into tea, food, potions, they were portable, smart creatures, which ate through their host-bodies, exploring their minds. Oftentimes these worms were able to relay their information to a dead host, which would then report it to a death eater. It was an extreme method, but not an uncommon one," Dumbledore finished, wrinkled hands wiping his brow.
Harry's stomach dropped, and his nausea rose. "And Snape?"
"Yes, it would appear he's had one for some time now."
Which, Harry realized, would place the entire Order in danger. Sirius, the Weasley's, everyone. Not to mention Snape's shaking, fragile body--
"His arm--" Harry had tripped over it on his way off of the bed, when Snape had stopped shaking. It's hollow form, and stifling bone shrieked to the forefront of Harry's mind.
"Was removed, once Severus managed to deduce the source of his recent illness."
McGonagall snorted, shook her head. "If he'd have seen Pomfrey sooner--"
"Yes, Minerva, it's a pity."
A tremor that Harry hadn't known was inside of him jerked through his body. A worm, eating him, tunneling through Severus's soul; it explained the hole that Harry's jittery, wide eyes had seen in the shredded top of Severus' arm, it's blood coating Harry's sickened frame-
Shuddering, Harry barely managed to double-up before he was vomiting his dinner all over the headmaster's glimmering floor.
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