Plot: Harry and his lover Severus move to Forks, following the violent culmination of the war. Friends dead, or traitorous, the two turned to each other and began a charged relationship. Severus knows something in his lover's past is secret, but chooses not to delve into the abuse as he already feels he is taking advantage of the youth. Emotionally disconnected, Harry begins high school where he meets Edward and begins to feel for the first time since the death of his beloved godfather.

When all is said and done

Chapter One: Not with a bang but a whimper.

Long, pale limbs stretched out beside him, a sheet haphazardly slung across the middle, offering little warmth but obscuring plump buttocks and lightly bruised hips. He shifted ever-closer, a strong arm drawing the body tight against his own.

The bundle of limbs made to draw away. The older male shushed his companion.

'Severus?'

'Go back to sleep.'

Snivellus, Greasy Bat, Sallow Git. He'd heard the names, but now here he lay, arms around a beautiful youth. Beautiful and broken. He sighed and retracted his hold, sitting up in the bed and reaching for a dusty tomb that sat atop a pile. His studies kept him calm, always had. His tempers had always been legendry, untameable. But this child, this boy-hero, had offered himself up to these mercurial moods, had offered a young, hard body upon which Severus could slake his lusts and furies. Potter and Black, he mused, must be rolling in their graves. So must the others.

Albus, Minerva, Lucius. All three dead, and all three surely disapproving from their final resting places, albeit for different reasons.

The Dark Lord had been swept from the Earth, like dust from the hearth. Several of the redheads had also perished in the fighting, and the know-it-all Mudblood too. He held his tongue though, just as he had held the boy as he sobbed and howled, beat the pillow and attempted to twist away from him. A good hard fuck had soothed them both.

He pushed down the guilt that rolled in his stomach, focussed harder on the page. An old text – wormwood was often replaced these days by a simple garden fern. But the vague feeling remained at his core, the niggling, gnawing discomfort that had plagued him since he had first lowered the teen down onto the cold floor of his office. In vivid detail, his mind replayed the flustered Gryffindor bursting into his chambers, as headstrong at fifteen as his unbearable father had been by eleven. The potions master had celebrated the death of the mutt privately, had held his tongue in public, but the boy knew his feelings, and eyes red and fists clenched he had stormed through winding corridors, down, down, down into the depths of his once-haven and now stood in the doorway, ready to confront, but in possession of no words. Severus couldn't with any certainty say who had moved first (liar, his heart hissed), but he had soon joined his student on the flagstone, teeth scraping against a smooth throat and juvenile, gnawed off nails ripping at his muscled back.

The guilt had set in soon after the now silent boy fled, had intensified when he noted a small limp the next day (though, truthfully, another part of him had relished this physical incapacitation, this visceral marking), and had almost overwhelmed him when, later, he began to notice scars, white threads stitching their war across thighs and shoulders, across a wide expanse of snowy back.

He lay the book back down, and turned to survey his prize. The young back, hunched even in sleep, faced him. He reached out to trace the silvery lines, but paused at the last moment. He would not wake the boy again.

He had never asked about these scars. Their story, unlike that of the lightening bolt that hid behind thick black locks, was not folklore. Severus had never heard mention of these, not from grandfatherly headmaster, nosy auburn-haired matriarch or disapproving nurse. The ball of guilt that churned in his stomach needed no provocation. It was a question left unasked. Even if, in his heart of hearts, in his darkest moments of self-loathing, he admitted to himself that few actions could leave such marks. That there were few names to describe such actions. Abuse, was a word that his stomach could not bear.

Thus, he pushed the feeling down and stood, slowly, from the bed.

He felt the bed shift, but his eyes remained closed until the telltale creaking of feet on stairs reached his ears.

The Boy Who Lived, the boy who defeated the darkest of the dark lords, in bed with Severus Snape. He suppressed the feeling welling up in the back of his throat, a feeling that would no doubt express itself as a rather manic giggle. It was funny how things changed.

He only had vague memories of their first coupling, of a horrible anger giving way to fear as he was thrown to the dungeon floor, as he had struggled futilely. His struggles had ceased though, as strong, talented hands began to stroke and pinch and tug, as his anger broke into pieces. He wasn't sure if he loved his professor, if he was even thankful to him for his actions. But he was with him, was by his side. Had allowed himself to be carried to nearly the other side of the world. Not that anything remained for him back in Blighty. Only memories - more bad than good. Cedric had died, then Sirius, and then nearly everybody else - a quick succession of heartbreaks that he had slowly stepped back from, began to ignore. By the time Hermione was hexed almost into pieces, he could no longer summon tears. When he had drained himself of all but the most basic of his powers and rained damnation down upon his nemesis, he could muster no relief, no happiness. He had crept away from the celebrations, the merriment and down into the dungeons. He had lay next to a warm body in a cold bed, and clung on for dear life. When they were discovered by his wolf, one of his last loves, he had clung to a pillow, buried his face in its familiar scent and ignored the angry words that two old enemies shouted, the thumps of flesh meeting flesh and the whispered pleas of his would-be godfather.

When Severus had suggested they leave – the castle, the country, the recriminations and regrets – he had nodded. Not uttered a single word. Just nodded. And now here they were in Forks.

The potions master enjoyed the solitude of the woods, the darkness of the skies. He began, in earnest to produce his wares, to ship them back to their forgotten world, to build a fortune. Harry knew not what he intended to do with his growing riches, but watched him with soft eyes as he diced and stirred and cursed in foreign tongues. Harry himself, no longer dressed, merely floated from room to room, draped only in a sheet. Met his lover's every physical need, and stared out of the window, at the greenness of the world bathed in pale light.

He still wasn't entirely sure how he found himself in jeans and boots and several layers of jumpers, stood in the administration office of Forks High School.