Paranoid

It was 5:53 on a Monday evening, and as his feet shuffled heavily down the dungeon corridors to Snape's office, Harry Potter managed to swallow the lump of acid and bile that rose into the back of his throat. The sound of his footsteps echoed spookily against the damp, lichen-covered walls, and he struggled to suppress a shiver. He didn't want to be there, headed for certain humiliation and browbeating, but the Headmaster's wish superseded his desires. He was to see Snape once a week to learn Occlumency, the art of shielding one's mind from penetration, and though Harry harbored doubts as to the validity of this subtle science, he could not argue with its relevance. The Dark Lord was a practiced Legilimens, and there was the high possibility of him slipping into Harry's unpracticed mind. Operating at high risk was nothing new for the boy, but it was the probability of Voldemort's using mind power to manipulate the actions of an adolescent prone to angst and anger against other students that set the Headmaster on edge. He therefore set Potter on his not so merry way to the dungeon office of the resident bat for Occlumency training. Who better to teach The Boy Who Lived the art of slamming down mental walls than The Spy Who Lived and Hated It?

But in the corridor, Harry didn't feel bravery or courage. He didn't feel fortitude or anxiety to learn something new like Hermione would on a mission like this. He felt a bit like Ron when a spider was present. He wanted to squeak in fear and hide behind the nearest gargoyle. As he approached the door that would surely open to more struggle and strife, Harry summoned the last vestiges of courage he could. If anyone could dress him down and make him feel like little more than a child with a superiority complex, it was the Potions Master. That thought alone made him want to turn right around and beg the Headmaster to teach him. The sweat that prickled down the back of his neck in his dank surroundings told him that now was not that time. The hair on his arms stood on end as though in the presence of static electricity; 6:00 was nearly at hand, and there was no keeping the Potions Master waiting. That wouldn't do at all, and though the professor had agreed to take on this extra independent study, that didn't stop his ability to take house points. Harry couldn't afford to lose anymore points than he already had for his house, so he checked over his appearance one last time and cleared his throat of any pubescent cracks before raising his fist and rapping sharply three times at Snape's office door.

"Enter," came the simple reply, and for a second before he turned the handle, Harry felt a shiver down his spine that was born from neither fear nor loathing. It felt a little like cold steel on his back, a delicious chill that rippled through him in the humid and foreboding corridor. It felt a little like he was being watched. He gave a surreptitious glance around him, but finding nothing out of the ordinary, he opened the door and stepped into the office. He closed the door behind him, and it made a muffled click as he walked towards his professor.

The office itself was dark save for a bright reading lantern blazing over Snape's desk. That one light was sufficient enough for Harry to survey his surroundings. The floor was a black marble, and he noticed, cringing at the irony, that the Hogwart's crest was inlaid right in front of the exactly square and substantial desk at which Snape was scribbling comments onto a student's essay. A golden Gryffindor lion rampant on a bed of deepest maroon faced off with a smirking Slytherin serpent emblazoned on a field of emerald, and these rested closest to Snape. The other houses' mascots took a backseat ride to the rivalry embittered between the two houses at the top of the crest.

He didn't risk the smirk that threatened to come to his lips. He looked up and threw a cautionary glance around the room. Snape's office was much like his classroom. It was dark and decorated in a spartan manner with not even an extra chair in front of the desk. There were jars of floating dead things on shelves that seemed to hover, not hang, on the walls, and the smell of mold invaded Harry's nose. It made him itch, and he wondered distractedly if he were allergic. It seemed fitting. If he had an allergy, though, it was probably to the professor and not the mold. Just being in the room was making his skin crawl, and his collar and tie felt two sizes too small. However, he walked slowly forward making it a point to keep his trainers from scraping across the marble. It did not do to dwell on trifles, and it certainly did not do to keep the most punctual professor at Hogwarts waiting unnecessarily.

Cold black eyes lifted from their perusal of the parchment and rested uncomfortably on Harry's face. He had filled out a little since returning to Hogwarts and the decent meals the kitchens afforded him. His face, squared with jaw and a high forehead drawing attention to his lightning-shaped scar, had lost a little of the gaunt look that had made his bones jut in relief. A curious smattering of blue stubble graced his chin and jaws. Upward, along the hairline and slightly to the left, the scar led downward to two brilliantly green eyes that seemed a little less sunken, a little less defeated. "That's good," Snape thought to himself. "At least he won't be battling the Dark Lord looking like the victim of a Muggle concentration camp." He didn't spread the slight encouragement, though, and he said, "Sit." Harry was about to ask where when, with a flick of Snape's dark wand, he was shoved backwards into a chair transfigured from a jar of pickled newt's eyes. It was uncomfortable and felt a bit splintery against him, but he kept his mouth shut until twin leather restraints bound him by the wrists and ankles.

"What are you doing?" he asked, suddenly afraid. What did Occlumency consist of? How was it practiced? He suddenly wished that he had asked Hermione to help him research it in the library, even if it had meant going to ask McGonagall for a pass to the restricted section. But he hadn't had the forethought. He'd been too busy fretting in his own self-pity. Now, it was too late to ask questions. Snape already had him in his grasp and with a smirk, the professor rose from his seat and walked around to the front of the desk, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared down at the young man. His dark hair fell in a curtain across his eyes making his expression unnervingly unreadable.

"What is about to transpire is not pleasant, Potter. It is uncomfortable, exhausting, and challenging. I don't want you suddenly finding yourself incapable of controlling your actions. You might strike me, or worse, grab your wand and hex me unnecessarily. Therefore, I will restrain you for this first lesson to allow you to grow accustomed to the feel of penetration. Now, where is your wand?" Harry saw the briefest quirk of Snape's lips, and with a flush of anger, he realized that his professor would relish having his student defenseless. The infernal Potter would be effectively silenced. There wasn't even the slightest give to the restraints, though for a second, Harry pulled ineffectually at them. Resistance was useless, and he gave up.

"It's in my left trouser pocket," he ground through clenched teeth. A little round muscle near his ear spasmed as he fought to keep his teeth from chattering from fear and anger.

Snape didn't comment. Instead, he leaned forward and flipped up the hem of Harry's robe. He didn't bother to hold it up as he reached underneath and fished around for the pocket. He found it, grasped the wand, and pulled it out. To Harry's fury, he smirked a little wider and flicked the boy's wand. The robe righted itself, and Harry was left red-faced and fuming in the uncomfortable wooden chair. He struggled to keep himself from panting in anger and giving himself away further as if the red face and clenching jaw weren't evidence enough.

"Anger, yes. You will experience a lot of that during the course of this…lesson. As I experience your memories, you will feel me rifling through them. Because humans beings insist on the mental plain as being private property, the anger you feel will mount and continue to mount until it has completely drained you of energy. It is not dark magic, but it will feel like it because these memories can be turned against you. The body knows this, and though it resists, the untrained mind is like an unlocked diary. It waits to be read at will by the observer who happens to find it. Might I suggest that you gather that anger and fortify it with courage, if you have any. Prepare yourself!" Harry had little more than a moment to digest Snape's silky words before the ebony wand pointed between his eyes and the incantation was spoken. "Legilimens!" In a flash, memories began to flood from Harry's mind into Snape's wand, swam through his blood, and settled into Snape's sharpened synapses.

Flashes of green light passed through his mind first. He could actually feel the hapless files of memories being opened and thrust onto the floor of his mind. He pictured the dream of his mother falling forward over the crib to save her son and felt the tightening of the death curse on spongy baby bones before waking up in the cupboard under the stairs at the Dursley's. He saw the green ink in McGonagall's spidery script like the ethereal but nearly tangible spots behind the eyelids after staring at the sun too long. He shivered through the night a second time when Hagrid found him in the shack on the stormy lake and felt once again the thrill of knowing, concretely, that he was special.

With a sneer, Snape pulled out of his mind and moved toward him. "You didn't even try to block me."

"You didn't give me the chance!" Harry shouted back. He saw the professor biting back the desire to take points from Gryffindor. The boy was already panting with effort, and Snape didn't want him to give up though he kept his face impassive and injected his next statement with sufficient venom.

"The Dark Lord will not give you a chance to prepare either. Your files are almost too easy to find." Harry jerked his head upward; he thought the files had been a clever metaphor. That's how he pictured his mind, an endless array of tall filing cabinets with large signs on them with dates and subjects. It allowed for easy memory access on his part, but if Snape had seen the files, too, he was most certainly in grave danger. That meant anyone with basic skills could penetrate his mind and see anything they wanted, and a skilled Legilimens could do so without him even feeling it. "Surprised, Potter? I can see your mind as you see it. Do you know what that means?" He leaned forward, bracing himself against the arms of the chair. Harry was face to face with the man he hated most after Voldemort. His black eyes were nearly all pupil, and Harry found himself lost in them. He couldn't answer. If Snape were interrogating him for the Dark Lord, Harry would have failed miserably at all attempts to block his mind from the onslaught. "That means the Dark Lord can too, and I am nearly as accomplished in Legilimency as he is."

Harry swallowed the second lump of the evening in his throat. This one felt as though it were made of lead, and it settled in his stomach like a stone. "What do I do, sir?" he asked meekly, his shuddering body betraying his growing exhaustion, and the hour still had three quarters more to drag onward.

"I was wondering if you'd allow that thick head of yours to do some thinking." Snape straightened and stood at his full height to tower over the seated boy. "You must clear your mind, make it carefully blank and impenetrable. A more astute pupil could show an invented image, something that the Dark Lord wants to see, or he could choose from any array, no matter how disjointed, of experiences, string them together, and form a coherent memory that appears real, and the viewer would be none the wiser. I think, at present, that you should concentrate on making the floor of your mind a blank space. Think nothing. Feel nothing. Clamp down on the penetration that can overtake you if you let it."

"Yes, sir," Harry answered and found he had just enough give in his wrist restraints to grip the arms of the chair. He clutched at the splintery wood until his knuckles were white and shut his eyes.

"Once again, Potter." Harry tensed visibly, his upper body trembling with his grip. "Legilimens!" This time, though the floors were slightly less cluttered with filing cabinets, Harry felt Snape travel slightly further before lighting on a cabinet that featured a placard stating, simply, "X-Rated." Snape smirked and wondered what he might find there. In response, the boy struggled to clamp down, to stop his professor from opening the drawer and finding what he desperately wanted to hide, but though he tried, Snape was stronger and was able to snap the boy's defenses as though they were spaghetti noodles about to join boiling water.

Warmth flooded through his chilled body like the spray from a shower, and though his mind screamed at him for leaving this out for someone to find, his body betrayed him with the quickening of his heart and a stir in his groin that shamed and aroused him. There was the unbelievable fantasy he'd experienced when he first noticed Hermione was a girl and not a brain on two legs. He felt the smoothness of her imagined thighs around his hips as he entered her, and he throbbed at the recollection. He felt Snape go a bit deeper, and he uncovered worse. "No!" Harry whimpered hoarsely. It was a dream he'd had midway through his fourth year right after the Christmas ball. He'd seen Hermione with Viktor Krum, and they'd danced their way off the floor and into his unconscious mind. With a shudder, he watched with Snape as the fantasy played itself out. In it, he was sandwiched between the two of them, buried between Hermione's legs and forced downward by Krum's insinuating presence behind him. Snape shifted uncomfortably in the boy's mind and continued hoping against hope that Harry would stop him, shove him out, block the memories. He wasn't sure if they were real or if they were imaginary, but he was sure that, to the boy, they were all the same. Adolescents often had vivid minds, and the imagination could often produce scenes that appeared real especially where sex was involved. Harry felt Snape move onward to a second dream he'd had, and this one had him shoved face first against a wall with an unseen assailant clamping a strong hand over his mouth to stifle his screams. He felt, along with the boy, the expectancy and the fear as the hand on his mouth gripped tighter. There was a rush of air on sweaty legs as his pants were ripped away, the harsh grip of the assailant's free hand on his hip, and the thrust upward that choked boy and professor alike. Within seconds, the dream Harry clamped his teeth on the hand at his mouth and climaxed with a strangled cry. Snape retracted and gasped for air. As he stumbled backward, he just managed to grip the edge of the desk and prop himself on it. He tried to catch his breath. The boy had a vivid imagination, and this did not bode well for future lessons.

Potter had slumped in the chair, unconscious, his chest heaving with effort. "Ennervate," Snape said quietly, and Harry stirred.

"Hnh?" Harry said groggily as he came to, his head slumping with the drunkenness of pleasure. He seemed to remember himself, and he snapped back to attention with a look in his eyes that was at once aroused and accusing. "That was personal!" he shouted.

"And the Dark Lord will uncover much worse, I can assure you. He will not hesitate to use your preferences," he spat out the word with uncovered distaste, "against you. If you aren't careful, Potter, and he captures you, he'll make sure these dreams will become a reality, and your dreams will pale in comparison to the measures he's willing to take to ultimately betray you. There will be only pain, no pleasure and certainly no release."

Harry squirmed in quickly cooling wetness. He knew that the professor was right, and he'd have to try harder the next time. "But you didn't have to do that during my first lesson!" Harry continued to rage. He couldn't mask his anger; the professor so coolly occupying the edge of the desk in front of him had seen things he hadn't yet told his closest friends. The resulting sneer Snape gave him knew he had overstepped his bounds.

"Ten points from Gryffindor." Snape stood up once again. "Need I remind you that you are in my office on my time, Potter? Or have you conveniently forgotten? I am disappointed in your lack of control. You have only yourself to blame for my invasion of your privacy. If I see anything of that nature again, I will obliviate you myself if only to keep my mind free of your lasciviousness." He pointed his wand at Harry again, who promptly began to tremble with anger and fear.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, his voice carefully neutral.

"You should know, Potter. Scourgify!" The sticky wetness disappeared, but the tingly feeling left after climax stubbornly remained. A second later, the restraints dematerialized, and Harry rubbed his hands over his sore wrists. His body was stiff and tense from his attempt to brace himself against Snape's onslaught, but it wasn't nearly as sore as it should have been. He knew what the professor meant now about him attacking. If he'd been free and he'd had his wand, Snape would have ended up crucified on the wall behind his desk which, on closer inspection, was no wall at all but bookshelves that reached all the way to the ceiling. "I expect you here at the same time next week, Potter, and do have a care. That file will be missing when we reconvene. Have I made myself clear?" One eyebrow quirked; Harry knew better than to say anything other than what was expected.

"Abundantly, Professor." He spun on his heels and stalked out of the office, hands clenched at his side. As soon as the door closed, Snape slumped into the chair Harry had just vacated and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with the forefinger and thumb of his right hand.

"Damnable boy," he whispered. He had barely contained how shaken Harry's images had made him, but now the boy was gone, he allowed himself a second look. He did not dwell long on the remnants of Harry's memory. It was quickly and mercifully fading from his mind, but he remembered the bite of the hand, and he shut his eyes to remember it. The hand itself was callused, the palm small and the fingers long, spindly. There was a good chance that, had the image been a real memory, the other man wouldn't have even felt the grip of Harry's teeth through those calluses. It reminded him rather of his own hand, and in a fit of realization, he looked at the hand that would have done the deed. It was free of marks; he was not (yet) the man in Harry's mind.

But the seed had been planted and was now festering. An itch, barely perceptible, nibbled his palm.

There wasn't much left of Harry when he stumbled into the Gryffindor common room. He was so tired that his knees trembled, and he barely made it to the nearest squashy chair. His body still thrummed with pleasure, and the arousal mingled with sleepiness made him feel at once light and heavy. Shaky hands threaded through a shock of unruly black hair and trailed slowly downward until they knocked off the little round glasses on his nose. Within seconds, he was asleep, and the Weasley twins, who found him, carted him off to his room with the other fifth years.

He dreamed, and in that dream, as in every other dream he'd had since the beginning of the school year, he was walking down a corridor, passing doors on either side. He stopped at one of them because the dreams before dictated that he must. It looked familiar, but recognition hovered just out of his grasp. He didn't know why, but standing outside this door, watching light shift through the gaps at the top, bottom, and sides, he began to grow excited again. As his hand reached out to turn the handle, a shiver shuddered through him, and he awoke with a muffled moan. His sheets were wet, and his body was trembling with a second exhausting climax.

"Great. I can't even dream about corridors now," he said dejectedly and wondered how he'd ended up in his bed when he didn't even remember how he'd gotten there. His wand was where he'd always laid it, and he scourgified himself before going back to sleep.