It was always the nights that made things…difficult.
When the sun shone, its Technicolor hues animating every leaf, every button, every face, he could be as was expected of him: loving husband, father, and friend. It was all effortlessly constructed, deftly maintained. The world wished him to be the icon, the Savior, and so it was done with a smile and a wink. He managed.
The night was a different beast entirely.
As the last tendrils of day left the sky, he would note the nauseating ease in which he had fooled everyone. He had never given them room to doubt the validity of his façade, but after all these many years he had hoped someonewould have figured it out, called him to the mat, and made him pay, but no one did. He had gotten away with it, with everything. The world was full of stupid people. Dunderheads as his old lover used to say.
Gazing out of the window in his comfortable bedroom, in his comfortable home, Harry smiled bitterly. Severus Tobias Snape: professor, potions master, and spy. Ten years to the day of his death and still no one realized that he was the love of the Great Harry Potter's life. Just the thought of his name felt like an invocation, that somehow thinking of the man would conjure his spirit to the mortal realm.
Yes, Snape and the nights always made things…difficult. Snape and the Nights. It sounded like a cheesy indierock band.
Bittersweet memories flashed and flickered in his mind: stolen kisses, frantic passionate couplings that made his bones ache with wanting, days spent secluded from the world's troubles. Theirs had been a secret romance. No one had ever known; no one alive, that is.
Sometimes, Harry thought it had been a miscalculation on their part not to let the world in on their secret. Honesty and openness never seemed like a viable option. Maybe, if they had just been brave, spat in the worlds face, and said 'We loved!' he wouldn't be in this situation. He wouldn't feel like he was drowning with every breath. He wouldn't have been saddled with a wife and children, being an Auror, having to conform.
How he wished …just sometimes ...that something would happen to Ginny, that she would fall or get into an accident. On the darker nights, nights when the blackness seemed suffocating, hollow, horrible, he wished to do the deed himself. He had killed Voldemort, it wouldn't be anything to kill the woman sleeping in his bed. They always say the first kill is the hardest, the second far easier. If she weredead then he could be free.
How he wished, but he couldn't.
The sun had almost finished itsslow descent, staining the sky red and purple and pink. In mere moments, it would be night, black as his lover's eyes. A rustle of sheets broke his macabre musings.
"Come back to bed, Harry," Ginny murmured softly, her hair rumpled from sleep.
There was no way in hell he could stomach crawling beside her right now. The nights were where he could be himself. Be free. To remember.
Remember loving Snape, fucking Snape, being fucked by Snape. In the darkness he could recall the near perfect joy of that time, but his lover was dead and living life this way felt like a sham, that he was dishonoring everything they had been to each other. The night was for him and Snape, to morn the loss of the other half of his soul.
"Go back to sleep," Harry ordered without a backwards glance.
Some secrets aren't meant to be shared.
