Good Night
By: Unscathed
Disclaimer: They're not mine. I just knock them over and play with them, and dress them up in funny clothing and make them talk in high-pitched accents. They belong to J.K. Rowling and her gang of heartless publishers. (Just give me the fifth book and I'll forgive all past sins…until I'm finished with it.)
Warnings: Umm… Read this one how you will. It has slash (Men with Men) tendancies, but there will be no sequal (I think). If you don't like that stuff, don't read it, or it's hypothetically nonexistant sequal. If you write me nasty letters, the more fool are you.
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A hard hand wrapped around Harry's waist, wand tight around his throat like a knife, and he was dragged back into the shadows. Harry didn't scream, his eyes widening minutely in the sudden darkness. He faught to swallow, painful against the hard wood digging into his neck.
"You present an admirable target, Mister Potter,"a gruff voice said in Harry's ear, cool breath ticking at his hair. It took Harry a moment to place the voice, and when he did he almost cried with relief.
"Professor Snape," Harry said, the wand making his voice scratchy. The arm around his waist tightened, dragging his thin shirt up to reveal a scrap of abdomen to the chill October air. Foreign cloth brushed against skin, Snape's robe, harsh and black.
"Don't call me that," Snape hissed. He dragged Harry back further, stopping with a jerk when he reached the alley's wall. "What are you doing here, Potter?"
"Presenting an admirable target," Harry hissed back, touching the hand that held the wand to his throat. He didn't reach for his own wand, tucked down the side of his jeans. Snape's wand was electric against his skin. "They told me you were dead."
"And you believed them," Snape said. It wasn't a question. Harry was glad for the shirt he wore, which was dark enough to pass in the deep shadows. He nodded. "Fool boy," Snape growled. "One would expect you to lead the strike force, not play target."
Harry laughed, silently and mirthlessly. His throat hurt from the pressure from the wand. "I am the target, Snape. The target." Harry leaned his head back, feeling a sharp cheekbone against the back of his head. "I can only expect attack, because it always comes. I cannot hide in the darkness, I cannot ambush. They always know where I am, we use that to our advantage."
"You're going to get yourself killed."
It was unreal, pressed back against Severus Snape in an anonymous alleyway, a wand against his throat and an arm around his waist. But for the bite of the air against his side and the pressure of the wand, Harry would have thought himself back at his flat, asleep—or as close to sleep as he ever got during wartime. Dreamlike. "I'm hard to kill," he said, dropping his hand.
"I noticed."
They were both hard to kill. "What are you going to do?" It was war, bloody, confusing, mixed-up war and no-one knew who the spies were anymore. No one knew whose side was whose anymore. Muggles died, their world was one long funeral procession. Wizards died. No one knew one from the other when they wore jeans and a tee and walked the streets of London. It was just blood and death, and Golden Boy Harry Potter, presenting an admirable target on a cold October night. He touched his side, feeling for his wand.
There was a shrug in the silence where Snape did not answer. Harry wondered at it. "What side are you on?" he asked before he could stop himself. It was a tacky question, childish. It assumed Good and Evil where there had become only grey in varying shades of disrepair. There were no sides anymore. One side killed without mercy, the other side killed without mercy. Blood and death. Wizards died, muggles died.
The wand against Harry's throat jerked, chokingly tight, and he found himself suddenly with his back against the wall, Snape's eyes staring down into his own in the darkness. Face to face. He could feel the man's breath on his mouth, Snape's hair brushing against his cheeks. The wand had shifted position, tip digging into the hollow of Harry's neck. It stung his skin, crackling without light or heat, electric, alive. Harry had his own wand in his hand, somewhere in the shuffle he'd pulled it out, but he couldn't remember conciously doing it. It was pointed at Snape, digging against flesh, but Harry couldn't see where it was beneath the bulk of Snape's body and robes. For all he knew it could be pointed at the man's thigh. "Who's side are you on?" he asked again, wanting a simple answer. Wanting the simplicity of his childhood back.
"Yours," Snape said, inches away from Harry's face, and the wand relaxed against his throat. Snape stepped away, seeming to sink back into the shadows, leaving Harry with his wand pointed vainly at the darkness of the alley, eyes wide and feeling suddenly cooler. He remembered his first innocent years at Hogwarts, always with Snape hovering over him. It had been easier then, when Snape had personified evil, there had been no confusion. Snape had presented the immediate target where Voldemort was just a shadow of a nightmare, Snape had consolidated Harry's side. He had been the Evil to Harry's Good, presenting the admirable target for Harry's rage. He had made the battle simple where now it was simply war.
Harry stared at the darkness for a long time, back up against the wall. No one bothered him. No enemies tracked him down, no feinds slipped out of the shadows to rob him with wand or knife. He had found a haven of safety in the darkness. After a while he pulled up his wand, which he had never sheathed, and murmered a spell into the wood. "Go home," he told the spell, watching its lightless color slip around his knuckles. "There will be no deaths tonight. We can do nothing. The mission is over." He pulled the enchantment away before they could argue, watching the colors slide away into darkness once more.
The haven of safety followed him home, though the shadows thinned and dawn pulled her weary head over London.