HP/SS Song Drabbles

[Wherein boredom gets the best of me]!

The Rules:
1. Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like.
2. Turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle.
3. Write a drabble/ficlet related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. No lingering afterwards!
4. Do ten of these, then post them.

[Kind of disregarded the whole 'time frame of the song to write the drabble. I wrote ficlets. It took me listening to the songs through TWICE to write these out!]

Do you really want to Hurt Me- Violent Femmes

Harry stood nearest the exit to Severus's private quarters; an obvious attempt to physically barricade the door, close Snape in, and keep his lover from leaving.

"Move, Potter."

"Oh, so it's 'Potter' now, sir?"

"You know quite well-"

"No, I don't! I don't know well. I'm still perplexed as to why you are doing this! I've been here and you've been here and we've been making it work. I'm not giving up on you now." A tear slid noticeably down his cheek as he spoke. "Damn-it!" He cried in response as he wiped it off his face forcefully.

Snape froze.

"Why are you doing this Harry?" He asked softly, voice less than inclined to argue. He sounded almost lost, though it did little to deter Harry.

"Because, you git, I love you. You don't get to hurt yourself by pushing me away. I know you may not believe me, but I'm not going anywhere. You can accept it. I take no no's."

Snape snorted disbelievingly. "Arrogant Gryffindor."

"Yup, as persistent as ever. I'll be here blowing up your Floo"

Neon Bible- The Arcade Fire

"You never had a choice, Harry."

Severus whispered into his hair. Several tears stung his eyes as he held a nearly catatonic Harry Potter, cradled tightly under his chin.

Several weeks had passed since the final battle. Having collected a distraught and completely drained Harry from the battlefield and apparating away to a secluded cottage in the South of France had done little move Harry from the same position he had been in. He had held Harry tightly at all hours: morning, noon, and night. He held him as he bathed him and as he spoon fed him. Harry hadn't uttered a sound since speaking the words that destroyed the Dark Lord for good, and unintentionally anyone still having been branded with the Dark Mark. Snape's had been hacked off by his own hand, removing muscle and sinew and flesh in fear of his life after having been exposed as a spy. Draco Malfoy, Harry's lover of many years, hadn't been so lucky. Whenever he lets Harry go, Harry screams and the sound is something Snape cannot bare to hear coming from the boy he grown so deeply to love.

"I left him in the morning when he was still fast asleep." Harry whispered almost incoherently, in an unused voice so raw it tore at Snape's heart. Harry attempted to speak again, wanting desperately to elaborate but his voice got caught in his throat and he chocked. Severus tightened his grip as Harry sputtered.

All Harry hears is an ocean of noise, which even the actual ocean cannot calm. Only Severus Snape's heartbeat is capable of such a feat. With his head tucked beneath Snape's chin, the roaring stops. Images of violence stop racing through his mind. He stops reliving his agony ever second of every day. His failure. His loss.

Snape has his reasons.

Harry has his reasons.

Unwell- Matchbox Twenty

Harry took off at break-neck speed, intent to catch up to whoever had walked away with whatever it was he had dropped, only to be held back by someone gripping his collar.

"Uh, thievery? Persona-space invasion? This place is starting to wear on my nerves!" Harry said with a small, grumbling sigh. He turned back to look at whoever was still restraining him. There was no one there.

"Pah! Potter, get a hold of yourself!" He turned sharply toward the voice.

"Huh?" He said, upon seeing no one. He felt himself being prodded only to see no one doing the prodding. He turned again, sharper this time, only to hold out his hands. His skin began to sizzle and spark. He could see it blistering.

He began to search his pockets.

"Where the hell did it go?"

"Where did what go?"

"My water. To put out the fire!"

He heard hysterical laughter. "You really should have caught that damn thief!"

"Harry!"

Harry yelped, unaware of his surroundings. He jumped when a hand reached out to feel his forehead.

"Shhh, It's just me, Severus."

"Huh? What's going on?" Harry said as he lifted his head from where it rested against the round table top where he had apparently fallen asleep. His cheeks were flushed a pale scarlet and his eyes were glazed over. His hair was soaked with sweat and when he went to scrub at his cheek with his hand, his fingers trembled.

"You look unwell," Severus said, voice lightly layered with concern. "How long have you been sitting here?"

"Ah? When did I stop teaching classes for the day?" He asked, before his eyes slid slowly out of focus as Severus caught his body from doing the same thing. Snape sighted deeply. As Harry's eyes snapped back into focus, he started keening in discomfort. Snape could feel how hot Harry's skin had become as he easily lifted Harry into his arms bridal style.

"Shhh," He said softly. "I know it hurts love. We have to get you to bed before I can make it feel better."

Snape noted the distinct trust thinly veiled by fever induced fear the barely lucid Harry had in his eyes. He hugged him lightly to his chest and made his way to their bedroom.

You- Switchfoot

Harry only sees the stars now when Severus holds him in place, detailing them onto his skin, mapping out constellations onto his bare flesh with his fingers. Harry can't remember the last time he heard quiet. He can feel the sound of silence, but he cannot understand it like he used to. Only when Snape trails designs along the ridges of his spine does he understand hope in its most basic form. He cannot say 'I love you' despite his intact tongue and mouth. He cannot speak the meaning through his now unseeing green eyes. He cannot hear the soft words he knows Severus is saying. Snape still, to this day, holds Harry's hand to his mouth when he can see, with Harry making no sound, keening in heart breaking intensity. Severus doesn't speak words aloud despite being fully capable of speech, choosing instead to mouth everything into the palms of Harry's hands and onto the tips of his fingers

Harry forgets about the hope he feels, but is reminded as Severus traces the unspoken words onto his tongue with his own. He can feel the hope being spoke as Severus's lips moving against his own. They speak like that when things get desperate, despairing, almost melodramatic in Snape's opinion. Ever loving of his Harry, he gladly wills away any of Harry's doubt by affirming his love with the touches he shares with him alone.

Far gone are the tears of what once was, prior to the final battle having left Harry blind and deaf and mute. Even farther gone are the days wherein Snape could hope for something different.

He speaks to his Harry to get himself through the days too. When the weight of his isolation from the wizarding world and his potion making hits him full force. When his post-Voldemort status as barely that of a squib cuts him like nothing else.

"It's not in me where I find strength, Harry." Severus mouths, breath hot against Harry's lower back. "It's in you."

Rainy Days- Ryan Adams

When Harry sees the rain, he attempts to count his blessings, to keep him grounded in his confusion. When Severus sees the rain, he keeps his eyes on Harry.

When Severus sees the rain, he looks for Harry. But sometimes Harry gets distracted from the shared potions work Snape insists they do on rainy days and wanders off. Severus always sets out on foot to find him, and never fails to actually do so. He always finds Harry, eyes glued to the mantle in their usually uninhabited den. He always carefully pries him away with gentle hands, with a small, spoken reminder that they can always go out for a stroll later; out into the wet country side, to visit his friends who pictures the rain always reminds him of.

When Harry sees the rain, he visits those he cares for. On very rainy days, he is usually found leaving flowers on graves. He sighs, but smiles in a manner that never fails to remind Severus that he wishes he could just 'buck-up' and move forward like he thinks he needs to. Severus quietly tells him, every single time, that loss is dealt with differently for everyone, and that Harry's loss was quite great. And that he thinks he's making great progress. Harry always plays it off with a scoff, and they head home.

When Harry sees the rain, he never cries. He figures that the universe is crying in his stead. Allowing him a small reprieve.

When Severus finds Harry, lost in the rain of reminders of lost friends and war wounds, he cries silently to himself, unable to do anything to consol his lover.

The Naming of Things- Andrew Bird

"I'll tell you a secret in exchange for one of yours."

"Ha! Harry, you are an open book. You have no secrets. At least not kept from me."

Harry scrunched up his face in a mildly annoyed fashion. Severus continued to drink his tea. Severus hadn't even had the chance to blink before Harry's expression smoothed over into one of determined defiance, obviously intent upon debasing Severus's apparently concrete belief system.

"I am not James's father."

"Yes you are." Snape replied without need to process the thought.

"Excuse me?" Harry spluttered. "I think I would know if I had or had not engaged in sexual relations with Ginerva Ann Weasley within the sixteen months prior to her giving birth. The thought actually hadn't crossed my mind at the time of her pregnancy, if you'll forgive." He said, somewhat hysterically.

"The pediatric healers thought he might actually have a genetic disorder. They scanned both Ginny and myself for hereditary imperfections. James and I do not share the same DNA. He isn't my son."

Severus's face was stretched with a crude, almost disbelieving, but slowly comprehensive expression.

"But she let you name him. . ."

"My name is down on the birth certificate as 'father' too. And I wanted to name him Sebastian. She insisted that naming him after my father would be a lovely tribute."

Severus could clearly hear the bitterness ringing in his words.

"Apparently it was merely that she thought 'James' would make the child's paternity harder to decipher if anyone came a callin'." He said this with a slight hand wave in Severus's direction.

Harry scrunched his face again, with a different emotion behind it this time. Pain.

"She made me feel so horrible for leaving her. She alienated me from my best friends because I couldn't continue living the lie of not loving you. She estranged me from my 'adoptive family'. She cheated on me before I had even raised the idea of the two of us separating."

Severus could hear the anguish in Harry's words, he could practically feel it pealing off of him in waves.

"I was impressed by your persistence." Severus said, enveloping Harry lightly in his arms.

"What?" Harry asked, completely confused.

"I was impressed by your persistence in pursing me. That is my secret." He paused, kissing the crown of Harry's head. "And bully for Ginerva Weasley. That whore."

Harry laughed out loud at Snape's quiet admission.

Hugging My Grudge- The Boy Least likely To

They can no longer tell where the grudge that was once there actually ended and began. And they never question when 'Potter' became 'Harry' or when 'Sir' became 'Sev'. It just is, despite a past of rockiness and indecision. They live in the present. Day-by-day. They try not to look back.

Harry keeps what few memories he wishes to keep of his youth in a shoe box beneath their bed.

Within Harry's box there is the ticket stub from the Quidditch World Cup he attended with the Weasleys before his fourth year. And a small DA medallion from his fifth. A set of rainbow cufflinks he had received from Luna in his sixth, who had been aloofly supportive when he had been outted by some ass-hole, snoop of a Gryffindor who had caught him and Draco snogging in an abandoned corridor one uneventful evening. Nothing had been uneventful from that night on, and in a whirlwind of heinous event after more heinous event, the war had abruptly come to a close. Harry had defeated Voldemort, too late to have saved his lover from being murdered for his deference from the Dark. He kept the picture of the two of them face down in the box, rarely ever upturning it, already having blotched the page with him tears time and time again.

Harry pretends Severus doesn't know his box of keepsakes is there, nestled beside a small collection of muggle novels [Harry's] and a large stack of Potions Journals [Severus's] and Severus pretends that Harry doesn't notice when the journal he periodically frequents. Published in his youth, the book is marked at an article he wrote in response to his detailed findings in experimentation on Wolfsbane at the age of nineteen. The book mark marking his work: A faded photo of Severus and Lily Evans, before she became a Potter through marriage. The two are smiling, Lily more so than Severus, whose lips are merely quirked, The inscription on the back, in a small, swooping handwritten print, says 'Stop scowling! If you smile like this more often, the chances of you finding a man worthy of your love will increase ten-fold. Love, Lils'.

There life is good, never lacking in love or affection, or proper snark, sarcasm, or witty banter. Neither would ever dare to mention the pieces of their hearts they left behind, or that of which they hide beneath their bed. Some things are too painful to speak of and rehash. Some things just need to be left to mourn.

So Long, Darlings- Agent Sparks

Harry repeated the mantra in his head as he walked slowly to his death.

'It's not my time. No, it's not my time. No, it's not my time to die.'

Harry tossed, fitfully, scratching as his face, clawing at the faded remains of his lightning bolt scar. He mumbled first, before reaching a blood curdling scream as she bellowed the words "It's not my time. No, it's not my time. No, it's not my time to die."

Severus entered from the kitchen, early morning light a subtle grayish blue easing into the now open door behind him. "Harry!" He barked, loud enough to cause a disturbance.

Severus had come to learn, after many nights after the war spent in Harry Potter's company, that soothing sounds and subtle caressing would NOT wake Harry from his ever persisting nightmares. That hushing only lulled him deeper into the depths of his horror, coddling only making them all the more severe. Quick, sharp, almost hostile, and most importantly loud acknowledgements of Severus's awareness of his dreams pulled him immediately from any flashback or intricate interweaving of brutal memory.

"Have I fallen far?" Harry asked brashly, upon recognizing the state of which Severus had found him in. "Severus?"

"Harry," Severus said softly. "I know you are hesitant to leave this place, the one place you've ever called home. But staying here is killing you." He said this as he eased onto the bed, picking up a cool cloth from Harry's nightstand and delicately dabbing at the wounds Harry had inadvertently inflicted upon his own forehead.

Harry sat in silent contemplation, before looking up at Severus, his eyes wide and full of unabashed sorrow. "What do I tell them? So long, darlings?" He said this, his hushed whisper barely off of his lips before Severus wrapped him tightly, almost painfully, within his arms.

He whispered into Harry's hair, soothing this time, much more to his own preference.

"If it means you get to live, I do not think those who loved you would mind."

He could not stand brutally waking the man he'd come to love in response to his night terrors instead of soothing him. He held him tightly, attempting to compensate.

"Okay." Harry whispered back, and Severus smiled for the first time since prior to final battle.

Her Morning Elegance- Oren Lavie

Harry cannot stand it when things he sees as out of place are in their socially acceptable places within the home he purchased and shares with his lover, Severus Snape.

Harry figures that if ever he wants to play his cello in the bathroom, it should be there, in easy accessibility. That is why it sits in a cupboard there, next to the extra hand towels and tea cups, boxes of green tea, and hypoallergenic bar soap.

Harry figures that if effort he exerts himself in their garden, there should be somewhere in very close proximity that he can rest his aching joints upon. That is why there is a queen size bed on a brass frame, periwinkle blue comforter treated with a weather repellant charm [spelled by Severus] nestled beside the bed of lilies and baby's breath.

Harry figures that at some point or another he is going to need something and would, in no way, ever like to be in a situation where he would be lacking. This is why there is a small refrigerator in their bedroom, a functioning bathtub in their attic, a wardrobe in their kitchen, and a multitude of framed photographs lining the back of their house, facing Harry's garden.

Harry and Severus's home doesn't actually have a cupboard under the stairs, as, upon moving in, Harry's first remodeling project consisted of filling it by hand with bricks, cementing it shut, and going over it with the same wall paper they had used to paper the entire entrance hall to their home.

And every light fixture has a chain long enough to pull even if Harry were to find himself on his knees, or back. He checked each one individually, lying on the floor with his bare back to the plush grey carpeting.

Harry copes with losing his magic in the process of destroying Voldemort in the final battle by gardening. He wants to build a green house with glass walls and climate control fixtures as to grow plants not capable of growing in the South of France. It distracts him from what he is incapable of doing. It makes him feel capable of something else entirely.

Severus doesn't have to 'cope' with Harry's idiosyncrasies because he doesn't cope. He revels in that Harry retains passion for anything at all. He breathes in the beauty at which Harry moves things for future use, should the mood strike him. He finds him most elegant when he leaves his clothing, carefully folded and discarded in random parts of the house, for future wear, opting at any present time to go completely bare. And he basks in the immensity that Harry welcomes him with open arms into his private world where no one else is allowed to tread.

Easy Lucky Free- Bright Eyes

"Um, you abducted me from my place of work, Severus. Pretty sure my coworkers are scattering right now considering they're all MUGGLES and you APPARATED me out!" Harry said this somewhat forcefully, but his unseeing eyes shown with sparkling amusement.

Harry could tell that Severus was smirking at him from his position behind the wheel of the convertible that had been sitting a block away. Harry had grumbled a bit about how Snape could have just walked up to his office on the sixth floor and retrieved him.

"It is called a surprise reprieve, Harry."

"Yeah." He said a tad sullenly, despite his broad smile. "And I guess we can always go back and blank the memories of those who saw you pop in and the both of us pop out."

"If the ministry doesn't get there first."

"Yes, if the ministry doesn't get there first. I know. We both know they won't give us crap. I just hope I don't get fired for missing work. It's only Wednesday." He said dramatically, before shaking with almost silent giggles.

Severus shook his head fondly, eyes to the road. He was an extremely conscientious driver, and Harry smirked at him, knowing from experience that his hands were at ten and two on the steering wheel.

"You won't be fired, Harry." Severus said, his voiced stressing his insistence. "I left a time release note stating that you are dealing with a 'family emergency' and would not be back to work until the following Monday. You are also their best editor."

"Efficient editors of Braille texts are difficult to find these day." Harry said with a small, self-indulgent laugh.

"So, where are we headed for this surprise reprieve, Sev?" He asked, genuinely curious, but completely at ease.

"We are just going to drive right now, as I know you enjoy aimless drives on freeways with the windows down."

Harry's face took on a look of light reminiscence. He spoke softly.

"It makes me feel free, you know. Like flying did once. Sort of an odd, muggle resemblance."

"Mmmhmm." Severus hummed quietly. He reaching out a hand, uncharacteristic of him as he usually kept both of his hands on the wheel for the duration of any driving he did. He reached out and took Harry's hand.

"I love you, Harry. You make me feel free."

"So sentimental today." He responded softly.

Fin