Disclaimer: The snippet of poetry is mine, the 'plot' is mine, the rest, alas, is not mine at all.
Warnings: None
Pairings: None, unless you're doing some really creative thinking
Length: One shot aka. One chapter aka. This Is IT

AN: Angsty!Harry, Enigmatic!Snape, maybe a little OOC but meh I think it fits :p Oh yeah, and this is all Harry's POV - it doesn't change, just to try and avert any confusion... Enjoy.

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Soul of Darkness
Heart of Ice
Ever Yearning
Never Nice

***

When had he sold his soul? Had he sold it - had he ever actually possessed one? Was that how he'd survived the killing curse - had it rebounded from the obsidian ice that was his heart? Such an explanation surely made more sense than Dumbledore's oft repeated 'you were saved by your mother's sacrifice'. Hah, as if he couldn't see that for the guilt riddled hint that it was, as if he wouldn't understand it was just another ploy to aim the 'saviour' of the light towards its 'proper' target. Did they really think him that naive?

Even now, after the blame, the guilt, of Cedric Diggory and Sirius - oh Gods, Sirius - had been too firmly taken from him, he was not unaware that this too was another calculated move. A guilt trip, only they seemed oblivious to the concept that for a guilt trip to work one had to possess a conscience, and presumably for that one needed a soul - which he didn't have. So, no soul, no conscience, no guilt trip.

He brooded though, and let them think they knew why he was brooding, what he was brooding about.

They could play their games, constantly thinking that their pawn was dancing to their commands, but when the time came, they would discover his 'whiteness' was merely a thin veneer they had applied themselves. Was he 'black' in reality? Maybe...maybe he was grey. Maybe he was green or purple, or even a prism of colour - he didn't know. He suspected one also needed a conscience to define one's 'colour' in the world. But - as the muggles knew - grey wasn't the absence of colour...the void was black...

"Potter."

The voice, dark and familiar, interrupted his musings and brought him back to an awareness of his surroundings. He suppressed a shiver as he finally acknowledged the chill wind sweeping across the astronomy tower, though his skin was already frozen to the touch.

"Snape."

His response was perfectly even, as emotionless as he felt. He didn't stutter, though he might had his jaw muscles spasmed with the cold, but his voice was lower, as though his vocal chords were chilled to near paralysis.

Of all the people in Hogwarts, he thought Snape might be both the closest to and furthest from understanding how he...didn't feel. Couldn't feel maybe, except when one of his otherselves briefly stepped forward to laugh politely at some joke of Dumbledore's that he hadn't even heard. Snape, after all, had been inside his head, and surely there was something up there that wasn't...right...that somehow indicated his lack of soul, conscience...everything.

That at least a minute of silence had already passed since he had acknowledged the Potions Master's presence had to mean something. That Snape had merely uttered his name and not launched into a diatriabe about curfew also had to mean something.

He started as something - a cloak he quickly realised - was draped over his shoulders. The residual warmth, from which he deduced Snape had just taken it off, was almost unbearingly hot against his chilled arms, and he fleetingly wondered what had possessed him to climb to the top of the astronomy tower in only his pyjamas and invisibility cloak. Glancing down at his feet - his bare feet - next to which the invisibility cloak lay, he was unsurprised to find the flesh unhealthily pale. He couldn't feel the stones he was standing on, and yet - he glanced at the moon, barely at its zenith - he hadn't been standing there long...not really.

"The Headmaster was worried."

Snape's answer pre-empted the question that had just entered his mind, not even teetering on the verge of being spoken. He wondered, not for the first time, what Snape's real reason had been for not wishing to tutor him in Occlumency, whether that reason was the same as the reason Dumbledore had refused to do it. He wasn't stupid, and there was a reason the Sorting Hat had wanted him in Slytherin - he knew perfectly well that, had he wished to, Dumbledore could have been as ruthless as tutoring him would have required. Ironic that it was his very Slytherin lack of trust - no one ever wanted him to do something 'for his own good', no matter what they might protest - that had seen him vehemently reject the idea. Draco, Ron and Hagrid had helped, of course, there was no denying that he had, in the very beginning, whilst he was still enchanted by what seemed to be a fantastic change in fortune, been naive indeed.

"Was he now."

No longer...no longer... It had only taken a year for him to lose those dangerous blinkers. One year for him to realise that, for all the wizarding world was different, where it truly counted it was exactly the same. There was prejudice, there was discrimination, and there was injustice.

"So he would have us believe."

They stood in silence a while longer, the heat rapidly leaving the cloak draped around his shoulders. He glanced to the side - only his eyes moving - barely able to make out the Potions Master's tall form. The older wizard was dressed warmly in a thick polo-neck jumper and woolen trousers - he'd obviously either expected or been warned, or a mix of both, that he'd be giving up his cloak. He wondered whether the other students would be shocked to learn their Potions Professor deigned to wear 'muggle' clothes - black of course; he would check for the four horsemen in the sky the day he saw Snape in anything other than black...or perhaps some white.

"What do you think?"

He was still watching, from the corner of his eye, and he saw nothing that might have indicated confusion - or surprise - at the sudden change of topic, of mood, though he knew without a doubt that the Potions Master knew his question was not related to their previous words. He also knew the Potions Master knew he was watching him, knew he knew he knew...

"I think either could use you - the question is, do you want to be used? Azkaban takes a lot, but did it truly take everything?"

He had to wonder at that. He couldn't throw the unthinking - the easy - response of 'you don't know anything' at him; he knew better, and besides that, the Potions Master had been to Azkaban - as an inmate. True, it hadn't been for the two years that he'd had the honour of serving, but still, it had been for long enough...long enough.

Had the Potions Master seen something in his mind - maybe something of one of his otherselves? Or maybe the other wizard had inferred something from his observations - no sane person went from blank to laughing to blank again in the space of a few seconds after all. It was...nice...though, that he didn't try to influence the decision at all, not as anyone else would have. But that was Severus Snape for you - honest to a fault, even brutally so. When you realised just how honest the man was, you had to marvel at the fact that he could be a spy. But his honest was what had kept him alive thus far, his honesty so that there were no lies to detect, and his skill with words and meanings so that he never had to lie.

His thoughts had strayed - a common thing these post-Azkaban days - and he struggled to bring them back to the original topic. Had Azkaban taken everything? No...no, he knew it hadn't - some things perhaps, compassion, mercy, sorrow, regret, love... But the rest, the anger, the amusement, the hate...no, hate was too strong, dislike was about all he could muster now, when he could be bothered. His emotions weren't at question here though. He didn't blame anyone for his time in Azkaban; he had killed Bellatrix Lestrange - albeit semi-accidentally - without remorse, two years were what he had deserved. He hadn't thought that at the time of course, he'd been quite irate that he was being sent to prison for killing a wanted Death Eater, but now he had served his time he had emerged a changed man and he considered the lessons he'd learned during his incarceration to have been beneficial, to him at least. He no longer had the burning desire for revenge against Voldemort either; yes, he'd killed his parents, but really, he couldn't say he'd known them to actually miss them. So, there were no compelling reasons for him to fight for - or against - either side, not any more.

"And you?"

There was a long silence after his question, only emphasised by the quiet moaning of the wind as it began to pick up. A storm was coming, the signs obvious to those who knew what to look for, what to sense.

"Come."

The quiet order, given over Snape's shoulder as the Potions Master headed for the stairs, was an answer in and of itself. The older wizard had made his bed twice; first on the day he became a Death Eater, and again the day he became a spy for Albus Dumbledore - he would lie in that bed until the end, tied there by chains of his own making. The wind gusted again, catching at the edge of the cloak around his shoulders and ripping it free. He made no move to stop it, watching with careless eyes as it was whisked away into the darkness. Maybe he would catch hell from Severus for losing it, maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he would catch hell for the bed he had decided to make for himself, maybe he wouldn't live long enough to do so...

Either way, a storm was coming...

***

AN: Hmm... post-posting randomness... And no, this doesn't continue beyond this point, it's entirely up to you to decide what 'bed' Harry decided to make for himself, and what the consequences were *smirks* yes, I know I'm evil ;p

AN: Just to clear up a few points that may be bugging people:
'Perlucidus' is (my poor) Latin for 'colourless'
Sirius' death is the only one for which Harry truly feels any responsibility, but his stay in Azkaban has made his guilt/regret more pragmatic; his response towards accusations that it was his fault would be something along the lines of: "Yes, it was my fault - what do you want me to do about it now? He's dead, it's not like he can be brought back. I made a mistake, Sirius paid the price - I won't make the mistake again."
Harry has spent two years in Azkaban (yrs 6 and 7) for the killing of Bellatrix Lestrange. He killed her not with magic, but with a 'lucky' throw of a steak knife during a Death Eater attack on Hogsmeade. He feels no resentment towards the light side for sending him to Azkaban, although he no longer trusts them not to do it again - or find a more permanent solution - when/if he kills Voldemort. Although he was by no means 'naive' after the incidents of his first year at Hogwarts, it was only after his release from Azkaban that he became apathetic to both sides, realising that both sides want to use him for their own purposes.
Harry's 'otherselves' are not, per se, true personalities, they merely feel like it because of the sense of detachment that accompanies them. He can still express certain emotions - laughter, sympathy, empathy etc. - but whilst at the time they feel genuine, when he looks back on them he does so with a clinical detachment that makes them feel like he is/was experiencing them through someone else.
Severus' reason for not wishing to teach Harry Occlumency is simply that doing so inevitably forms a bond between teacher and student - hence why the two can follow each others trains of thought so easily, and why Severus can pre-empt a question that has literally only just occurred to Harry. Dumbledore's reason for refusing to teach Harry Occlumency is the same.