Chapter Six of 'Anularius'- Wrong Horcrux

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Five.

Title: Anularius (6/16)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Snape
Warnings: Angst, time travel
Rating: R
Summary: Traveling back in time is safe. All you have to do is keep away from people who affect time, who are pretty rare. It's just Horcrux-collecting Harry Potter's luck that Severus Snape is one of them.
Author's Notes: A late Advent fic for thebookivore, who gave me this prompt: Harry/Snape. Time travelling Harry. As an unspeakable explains to Harry, time travel is actually very safe, because most people cannot affect the time stream except a rare few. You can tell who can affect time because they can see time travelers, otherwise "it's similar to how most Muggles cannot see magic, their minds naturally shy away from it and come up with the most incredible explanations for what they have seen". Harry knows to hide out from himself but doesn't realize that Snape can see him ...

I meant to complete this fic on time for Advent, but it got too long for me to finish on time, so I’m posting it as a chaptered story. The title is Latin for “maker of rings.”

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Six-Wrong Horcrux

“So,” said Harry, shaking out his stinging hand, “you still need to tell me what you mean about it being a coincidence that I should discover the artifact I wanted to find the moment I came back in time.”

He made his voice as pleasant as he could, and for long moments, Snape stared at him with his hand splayed across his nose as though he thought Harry would go mental again any moment. Well, at least that was what Harry thought he was thinking. He was no Legilimens, to read people’s true thoughts out from behind their eyes, but it must have seemed strange for Snape to turn around and have Harry punch him the minute Dumbledore left.

Snape had his chance to get angry. Harry was looking forward to it, honestly. His hand was right beside his wand, and he was sure that he could draw and duel faster than Snape when he had access to it. And maybe then Snape would finally give up on these equally mental plans to get closer to him and tell people they were lovers and all the rest of it.

But instead, Snape lowered his hand from his bloody nose and performed a quiet Episkey on it. Then he said, “Merely that it seems strange, no matter how good you are at sensing the presence of these things, for you to stumble across them right away. How did you know to go to Borgin and Burkes? How high are the chances that you would sense something I had just bought and it would prove the answer?”

“I went to Borgin and Burkes because Voldemort likes artifacts, and he worked there at one point.” Harry kept an eye on Snape, but eased up on the hold he had on his wand. It seemed, disappointingly, that Snape was still more invested in his bloody strange mindset about Harry being his lover than he was in getting revenge. “It makes sense that he would go back, as a spirit, to the shop and bury himself in something else.”

“It might make sense,” said Snape, and he sneered a little, which was such a comforting and familiar sight Harry would have tried to hug him, except it would have made him get the wrong idea. “If the Dark Lord were sane. And that still doesn’t mean that he would want to tie himself to that particular bowl.”

He turned and looked at the silver bowl with longing eyes. Harry snorted. “Admit it. You’re invested in not destroying the thing just because you want Salazar Slytherin to teach you Parseltongue.”

“Of course I want it,” Snape said, and narrowed his eyes at him, before a slight smile appeared on his face. “I see no point in admitting to a false desire.”

Harry wrapped his hands around his wand again, and glanced away. “I still have to destroy it.”

“I merely question how likely it is,” Snape said, sounding as if he would repeat the words for days on end like Binns if he had to, “what the chances are-”

“I know your theory,” Harry said, turning around and scowling at him. “I discard your theory. I know how to find one of these bloody things, and I found it, all right? It’s simple enough, and a reliable method. Why would I go and search out something else when I already know where it is? What it is?”

“I simply wonder,” said Snape, and his eyes were bright and glittering, and he reached out a hand. Harry flinched in spite of himself, watching it so closely that it probably seemed strange to Snape, but all Snape did was hold out his hand and extend one finger, tapping the golden cross around Harry’s neck that had brought him back in time. “Because I can feel powerful Dark magic from this little ornament, but you don’t appear to have picked up on it.”

Harry stood there for a second with his hand cupped protectively around the cross. That seemed to “inspire” Snape, who gave him a faint smile and moved his finger so it was stroking Harry’s knuckles instead. Harry jerked and ducked away, and raised an unimpressed eyebrow at Snape.

“You feel something Dark, and you immediately decide it must be the same as Slytherin’s bowl,” Harry said. “Whose powers of deduction are in question here?”

Snape moved slowly to the side, trailing his hand along Harry’s shoulder. This time, Harry refused to give him the satisfaction of flinching, and just stood and stared at him stonily. Unfortunately, that seemed to give him a different kind of satisfaction, if the way that Snape uttered a sort of purring sigh was any indication.

“It feels like the same sort of Dark magic that I associated with the Dark Lord,” Snape said, in a voice barely above a whisper. “While the magic around the bowl does not have the same taint. It feels like Slytherin magic, as in some of the old enchantments that permeate the common room and students’ beds, and nothing else.”

Harry clutched at the cross and said nothing. But he had to wonder. The Unspeakables had never made it clear where this cross came from. They hadn’t made it clear what kind of relationship it had to Time-Turners. They had only offered it, and said it would bring him back into the timeline, and then return him to the future. What did he know about it?

But Harry shook his head sharply a second later. “Look,” he said, taking the cross off after only a moment of hesitation. Snape showed no signs of snatching at it or trying to wreck it, anyway. His gaze was on Harry, and remained there, heavily, as Harry held up the cross on its chain.

That’s because it’s me, and not a time-travel device, that he wants.

But Harry shoved that thought away, and swung the cross back and forth. “The method I have of calling on the Dark magic and identifying one of his-artifacts,” he said, “is that I reach out with the part of me that used to be tainted with his reflected curse.” He tapped his scar. “I can still sense a sort of echo in artifacts that Voldemort used. And I sensed it right away from the bowl when I came into Knockturn Alley.”

Snape gave him the sort of infinitely patient look Harry was familiar with from his time as a student. “How do you sense it?”

“I just told you-”

“I did not mean that.” Snape’s voice sharpened a little, and Harry was glad to hear it. “Do you see an aura? Hear a sound? What identifies the object in question to you?”

“An echo,” said Harry, glad that they were back on mutually comprehensible and also snarling terms. It was familiar ground. “I can sense the direction and distance from the echo.”

“Then take the cross and put it in an opposite direction from the bowl,” Snape murmured. “Stand in the center of the room, an equal distance from each, and send out your echo again. And see which one responds.”

Harry scowled at him, but Snape only stood there and looked at him with an expression that suggested this was almost of scientific interest to him. It probably would be, the bloody bastard. Harry turned and stalked over to the table that stood closest to the door, lowering the cross. Then he moved back and tried to position himself roughly halfway between it and the bowl.

Snape’s hands fell on his shoulders and moved him. Harry stumbled a little, then turned around, ready to snap. Snape had already lifted his hands free and stood there with them outspread, a faint smile on his face.

“You looked as if you needed help,” he said.

Harry glanced off to the side and willed himself calm. He might already have caused damage by doing everything he had done. The least he could do was act in a non-volatile way.

And who knew? That might even make him less interesting for Snape, who mostly seemed to be intrigued so far when Harry did something stubborn and snappish.

“Ready?” Snape continued. If he was less intrigued, he at least wasn’t acting like it right now.

“Yes,” said Harry, and he concentrated. The world around him narrowed, as it always did when he used this bloody “gift,” to the tunnel he had to create through his scar, and the object he was calling towards. He threw those dark emotions down the tunnel, willing the bowl to respond. Of course it made sense that it was the bowl. Voldemort had always liked objects that had significance to his family line, as his choice of both Slytherin’s locket and the Peverell ring demonstrated, and-

The dark pulse came from the side of the room that held the cross.

Harry turned and stared at it. Then he moved towards it and reached out to pick it up with shaking hands. Snape walked beside him, although he said nothing. Instead, he was looking between the cross and Harry’s face with a quiet, contemplative expression.

Why did I get fooled?

Well, Harry knew the reason when he had thought about it, of course, the reason that Snape’s little questions and activities had already revealed to him. He had been fooled because the cross was so close to him. He had decided it had to be the bowl because the pulse was so strong and it was the first likely Horcrux he had come across, not because of any reasoned argument.

And until he had done something like Snape had suggested, in a rather large room, it was always possible that he wouldn’t have been able to figure out the difference between a calling Horcrux right in front of him and one around his neck.

“Why?” he whispered, although he knew Snape wouldn’t have the slightest idea of what to respond. “Why would this be a Horcrux? Why would the Unspeakables choose it to send me back in time if it was? How did he even get hold of it?”

“The Dark Lord had interesting ways to do whatever he wanted,” Snape said, and reached out and put a hand on the cross, bearing it down until Harry looked up from it and into Snape’s eyes in sheerest irritation. Snape stepped closer to him, as if he wanted Harry to focus on him and not the cross. Harry almost snorted. Of course Snape would want something like that. He always did, bloody bastard. “And who says that the Unspeakables knew? If your little test is any indication, it is hard to identify Horcruxes.”

Harry flinched at the word, and then realized he’d said it during his last little rant. He was-he was so bad at keeping secrets. They should have sent someone else back in time! Why him?

He snatched up his wand and cast the Memory Charm as fast as he could, wordlessly. His desperation was so great that he felt the magic flow out of him much more powerfully than it usually did when he tried to cast nonverbally. It was going to work-

It bounced from Snape’s shield, and Snape regarded him calmly.

“I have Occlumency shields powerful enough to hide secrets from the Dark Lord himself,” he said. “If I did not think so, I would have killed myself the instant I realized he was not fully dead.”

Harry stared, taken away from his own internal drama for a moment. “Killed yourself?”

“Because I would rather die than suffer what I would if the Dark Lord found out I had betrayed him, and he was alive to cast the curses,” Snape said simply. He shifted forwards and reached out to touch Harry’s brow, smoothing his hair back from his scar. “You may trust my discretion.”

Harry shook his head. “But I can’t trust mine. And it’s not what you might say that I don’t trust. It’s what you’ll do.”

“Ah,” said Snape. “But if the timeline was changed, then you should have also changed, correct? Because you are a product of the future, standing in the past. If you had done something that affected your destiny so profoundly, you would have ceased to exist the moment you did it.”

Harry hesitated. He had to admit, that was one point of the theory that the Unspeakables hadn’t really explained to his satisfaction. He had asked about loops and paradoxes and so on, but they had assured him that the method of time-traveling by the cross was safe, and that he was extremely unlikely to stumble into someone who could change history and see him in the first place.

Because I should have known them and known to stay away from them, Harry thought, and held back a sigh. “I don’t know,” was all he said. “I was making excuses and telling myself that it didn’t make that much difference, but I have to do what I can to keep my presence here a secret.”

“You would also have to Obliviate Albus, now,” said Snape calmly. “And even if you explained to him the nature of the timeline, he is more likely to let you think you had successfully performed the Memory Charm, and then cause trouble later.”

Damn it. Harry folded his arms and turned away. He knew that Snape was right. Dumbledore meant well, he always did, but Harry thought he would probably preserve the memories and look at them later, and who knew what that could do?

“Let me tell you what I think,” said Snape, drawing Harry’s unwilling gaze back to him. “I think that you have spent too much time thinking about this. I think that the Unspeakables would not have given you such an artifact lightly, and that if the timeline was that easily damaged, they would indeed have sent someone else-at least to accompany you, if they truly had no other method to detect Horcruxes.”

Harry grunted. “At least I wouldn’t have blurted out what they were with a minder.”

“I knew what they were,” said Snape.

Harry turned and stared at him, wondering why in the world that had happened, or whether the memories he had retrieved from the dying Snape had simply concealed Snape’s prior knowledge instead of flaunting it. Snape caught his eye and gave him a smug smile. “Your hints about the Dark Lord having artifacts that kept him alive were enough to let me figure it out,” he said. “That book you saw me reading the other night was about them.”

Harry sighed. Hermione, you should be the one here, not me. If nothing else, he thought Hermione would have been smart enough to avoid attracting Snape’s notice in the first place, and she wasn’t the one whose mum Snape had been in love with. That was the only way Harry could really explain this fascination, Snape’s transferring his obsession.

“Fine,” he said. “Then I’ll destroy the cross with Fiendfyre and the spell you taught me, and you can have the bowl.” He looped the cross around his neck again, shuddering a little. He wondered what would happen when it was destroyed. Would he be able to return to the future?

Or would it be better to simply return to the future and destroy the bloody thing there?

Harry relaxed with another sigh. Yes, of course that was the best solution. And it could prevent any more issues with time travel. Among other things, he would make sure that he had a future to return to.

“Thanks for helping me figure it out, Snape,” he said, with a nod. “Let me-” He turned to the door, and frowned. The door had just locked with an audible click, and an easy motion of Snape’s wand.

“I find that I am not willing to let you go so easily,” Snape said in a drawl, his eyes shuttered and his arms folded.

Harry faced him, glad there was something here he could be angry about without damning himself for it. “Let’s say that we did become lovers, the way you seem to hope,” he said, and put as much acidic sarcasm in his voice as he could muster. “What would happen after that? It’s temporary, remember? Anything I do here is. I would always have to return to my own time.”

“If anything you do is temporary,” said Snape, not looking as if he relished the word, “then so are the kisses. So is the information you tell me, and any actions that I might take as a result.” He reached out and curled harsh fingers around Harry’s arm, tugging Harry towards him. Harry went with it because it would prevent a bruise, and perhaps convince Snape that Harry was a fool and he himself was a bastard sooner. “So is this,” Snape said, in a voice that had a hint of the lash to it, and bent down.

Harry watched him flatly. If Snape tried to cast a spell on him or break his neck, he was going to find out in a hurry how prepared Harry’s Auror training had made him for this kind of close struggle.

But Snape only kissed him on the neck, and then bit down.

No one had ever done that before-and Harry would hardly say he was inexperienced. He found himself on his toes, gasping, his head tilting back and the cords in his neck standing out before he even thought about it. What he knew was that he wanted more of this, and he reached up and tangled his fingers in Snape’s hair to communicate that.

Snape said something, but it was a smug murmur, and Harry didn’t bother concentrating to make out the words. He turned his head, and this time Snape’s lips met his, and Snape tugged forwards and turned them sideways.

That pinned Harry up against the wall. Harry didn’t care. He paused, and then his clarity came back, and he shoved Snape away from him and shut his eyes.

Snape went with reluctance, his gaze narrowed as though against a raging fire. He reached a hand up and felt at his lips, and then lowered his hand and smiled at Harry. “The more memories you can give me,” he said, “the more I can carry into the future.”

Harry swore and closed his eyes. He wanted to say something, but he was afraid his voice would come out hoarse and shaking, and he was so tired of being weak, of being pathetic, like that.

Then Snape murmured, “How do you know that I didn’t simply conceal this interaction from your future self? I am rather good at Occlumency, and I frequently use Pensieves. Why would I have told you about any of this? If you were a child, and it’s your adult self I slept with, I would have no reason to tell you at all.”

“I told you and I’ve kept telling you,” Harry said, massaging his forehead. “It’s not what you said to me. It’s what you did. What if I’ve influenced the way that you tried to help me or go against me in the future? The way that you had to help or go against Voldemort?”

“Time travel is probably part of the same unchanging flow of history,” Snape said. “Or it’s a loop. You were always here, you were always meant to be here, and you might have increased both the protectiveness and the resentment I was prepared to feel towards your child self. I don’t think it changes anything.”

How Harry wanted to believe that, that he hadn’t doomed himself and all the other people of his future to oblivion because he couldn’t control his mouth. Then he thought of something that Snape had left out. “But Dumbledore knows now, too.”

“Yes,” said Snape. “Isn’t that interesting?”

Harry jerked his head up. “You knew he was coming, this morning,” he said flatly. “Bastard. And you let him in and let him see me anyway.”

“Yes,” said Snape, and gave him an unapologetically hungry look. “I told you. I think that you’ve been seen by two people who could affect history, but have excellent methods of making sure they don’t. And that means you might as well-”

“Listen,” said Harry, and pushed himself away from the wall. “I get that this is a way to sleep with me, to you, but this is my life. I located the wrong Horcrux. But I know what the right one is now, and it doesn’t even have to affect the bowl and the Parseltongue that you might learn from Slytherin’s spirit. I can go away and do what I came to do and this is the end of it. Why would you want to risk more than that?”

Snape stepped back from him and stood there looking at him for a second. Harry didn’t know what to make of the dark, serious expression on his face, and so waited. Snape finally nodded and began to speak in a soft, distant voice, as if he was answering the most important exam question of his life.

“Do you know how long it has been since I wanted something?”

“Er.” Harry felt disgusted saying this, but it was pretty obvious, at least to him. “I had the impression you wanted my mum.”

“Yes.” Snape focused on him again, with alarming intensity. “But I have known for years that I couldn’t have her. Even the plea I made to the Dark Lord to save her life was more out of old, lingering desire than present desire. And now I have found out. And I want you.”

“For reasons that make no sense!” Harry threw up his hands.

“For reasons I do not understand yet and want to figure out,” Snape corrected him with some severity. “And in the meantime, there is every reason for you to stay and let me help you. I can help with more than the destruction of the Horcrux.”

“With what else?” Harry was getting a headache that had nothing to do with the lingering echoes of sensing the Horcrux, which sometimes caused one, and everything to do with the git of a man in front of him, who was going to destroy the timeline for his cock.

“With figuring out whether it would be best to destroy the cross here or in your original timeline,” said Snape simply. “And whether your actions so far have the potential to damage the future, as you fear, or if I am right and everything has simply been bent into a loop that will contain any ill effects.”

Harry hesitated. It was true he was almost sick with worry, and this would enable him to put his fear to rest. But it was also true that what Snape wanted and what he wanted hadn’t coincided, yet.

“I figured out what Horcruxes were from simply sensing the Dark magic around one, and reading a book in which they were not even directly mentioned,” Snape reminded him. “I told you the truth instead of letting you destroy the bowl and then go home-although I could have done that, and left you with a motive to return to this time. So. I suggest you trust me.”

Harry snorted a little, but he was thinking clearly again now that both his pulse and his racing thoughts had calmed down. If Snape honestly didn’t help him or wouldn’t, then he could go to Dumbledore. And Dumbledore would probably know more about time travel and Horcruxes than Snape did and could hide the information better.

He could still make this work to his advantage. And he doubted that there was such a line between damaging the future and saving it so simultaneously thick and thin that he hadn’t already crossed it but would with one more action.

He was in too far to back out now, because of his own stupid fault. He owed it to the future to at least try to salvage it.

“All right,” he agreed, and saw the way Snape’s eyes flared with delight when he smiled.

Chapter Seven.

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