Harry felt a violent jerk above his navel: Back in Snape's office he found Snape, older and returned to normal, back behind his desk, hunched with his back to Harry. For several minutes they stood as they were, Harry's eyes opening and closing rapidly in attempt to prevent he didn't know what from happening. Outside he could hear students gathering outside the dungeon doors, waiting for them to be pushed open and class to begin. From the relatively stress-free sound of the voices, he assumed there were a good number of Slytherins in the group which, after all that had just occurred, he still found himself grimacing at.
"I realize you…. I realize that you need to get to class, Potter," Snape finally said, speaking in a whisper that sounded as self conscious and terrified as the whisper of his younger self had sounded just moments ago. He did not turn around. "Are you okay?"
Stopping down to pick up his bag from the floor, Harry focused on a slight feeling of hunger growing in his stomach. He found himself praying Ron had thought to grab him something, after concluding that Harry would not be making it to lunch.
"Fine," he answered, stepping towards the door separating Snape's office from the classroom.
"I would like to show you more. Of my memories. Of your father." Snape turned his head off to the side, but did not look at Harry. "Please."
Without stopping to think, Harry spoke. "Yes. Okay."
"Tonight?"
Harry nodded, though still, Snape was refusing to look at him, to turn around and face him.
"Tonight."
After dinner, Harry handed his things to Ron and, ignoring Ron's insistent questioning and pleas to go see Dumbledore, he made his way down the twisting corridors of the school to Snape's office. Inside the pocket of his robe, his hand clutched at his wand, shoving deep into the meaty part of his thigh. All day, he had kept his head down and his mind blank. Still, images of his father and Snape, young and quiet, sitting on a couch before a fire kept jutting into his thoughts. It repulsed him, the way car accidents had repulsed him as a kid, or fights between Dudley and his father. He was disgusted, unable to resist going back for more. He hated the memory Snape showed him, and he hated himself for wanting more, desperately.
Opening the heavy stone door to the classroom, he tried to reason with himself, offer his exhausted brain the reassurance that it was just his dad he wanted to see. His father about whom he knew next to nothing, had not seen for years. Over and over again he told himself that he just wanted to hear his dad's voice, that once he could remember it, he would stop going to see Snape, that once he could imitate the way his dad held his head and moved his fingers, he could tell Dumbledore everything.
He knew though, even as he hesitated outside Snape's office door, that none of that was true.
"Potter."
Snape sat at his desk, the Pensive swirling in front of him, his wand lying a few inches off to the side. Harry moved a few steps closer but did not close the door. He felt his breath clench in his chest, and he bit his tongue in anger at the longing swelling suddenly within him, a longing to jump into another memory Snape had of his father.
"Hi," he finally murmured, his voice dry and crackly.
Snape lowered his gaze down to the silvery matter before him and said, "Are you still… alright?"
Harry nodded. "Yes."
Minutes of silence. Above him, through the stone, Harry could hear the sounds of the student body shifting. People were coming from the Dining Hall, returning to dormitories or stumbling off to the library or the infirmary or a classroom. A single set of footsteps hurried past the closed door of the classroom, probably a Slytherin taking a little known short-cut to his or her dormitory.
At last, the sense of longing unbearable now, Harry asked, "May I see another… another memory, Sir? Of my father?"
Snape didn't answer at first; finally he whispered into hands folding before his mouth, "Of course. Of course."
Harry closed the office door and stepped closer to the Pensive, then closer, and closer still until he felt the now familiar suction feeling in his stomach, and he was in another memory.
All Harry could see at first was a mass of dark green cloth, waving and crunching in on itself in a light breeze. As his eyes adjusted to the relative dimness of the room, he realized that he was in the Slytherin dormitory, a window was open, and he was staring up into the canopy over Snape's bed. Snape's fingers were twisting themselves on his stomach; after a few moments he sat up, tensing, his eyes straining frantically to see who it was that had entered from the opposite end of the room.
Harry's father came into view, dressed in a set of obviously filched Slytherin robes. In his right hand he held his wand, lit up to illuminate his way; in his left he held a book, his own by the looks of it: It did not bear the familiar Hogwarts Library tag.
Snape stood off the bed. "James." He smiled.
"Oh!" James started, then returned the smile. He rushed over to Snape's bed and, dropping the book on the night table, wrapped his arms enthusiastically around Snape's shoulders. Harry watched as he turned his head to kiss Snape's mouth, tenderly and with obvious desire.
They stumbled onto the bed, still entwined in each other. James pushed Snape under him and raised himself up with his arms, grinning wildly.
"And how are you this fine, fine evening?" They both laughed; there was none of the hesitancy, none of the fear and dwindling shame that had marked the last memory Harry had observed.
"Good." Snape grinned, blushed, and the sight of Snape's face reddening still startled Harry. He found himself for a moment gazing intently at Snape, forgetting his father altogether. "How are you?"
"Good." James fell back on top of Snape, his mouth working furiously on Snape's, his fingers reaching up to tug at the tips of Snape's hair which was, again, uncharacteristically clean. "I've missed you. I can't believe I'm your dorm. I can't believe I'm in your bed. I can't believe I'm with you, finally. Two weeks is too long."
The James of this memory contrasted so starkly against the James of that morning's memory that Harry had trouble connecting the two.
Snape's arms wrapped themselves around James's waist, and his fingers grabbed at James's robe, pulling it aside to tighten around the hem of James's jeans.
"We don't have long," he whispered. "An hour, maybe a couple minutes more. It was the best I could do."
Harry felt himself being yanked out of the memory as the sound of James and Snape's breathing began to fill the room. Snape's face wore a look of unprecedented pain and he continued to gaze longingly down into the Pensive, which no longer held any distinguishable images, long after Harry had picked himself up off of the stone flagging.
In the silence, Harry allowed a few things to sink in. His father had once had an affair with Snape. Possibly more than an affair. In this memory, his father had looked older, his body stronger, more muscular than in the previous memory. He was older: the relationship had continued long enough for a substantial growth spurt to hit.
Snape finally spoke. "Are you—" he began, but Harry interrupted.
"That was disgusting." But his voice lacked conviction.
Snape closed his eyes and left them closed when he spoke again, his voice tiny, weaker than Harry had ever heard it.
"But I made him happy. I made your father happy."
Harry clenched his teeth, lifted a foot to vigorously scratch his calf which didn't itch. "I don't—" he began, but he knew he didn't mean it, and he stopped. He wanted to go someplace and cry, but he could not have said why, or for what.
"Of course you care. I would never have shown you these memories if I thought you didn't." There was an edge of bitterness to his tone now. "There is certainly no disputing your disparity from your father though." He paused; what he said next seemed more for his own benefit than for Harry's. "Let's watch the ending of this memory."
Again, the tug, and then the darkness of the dormitory.
James lay beside Snape; both underneath a heavy black blanket, standard Hogwarts issue. Their clothes littered the floor around the bed, a T-shirt hanging precariously from a post on the headboard. Snape snuggled his face into James's neck.
"You should probably go," he whispered. Sweat matted his hair and gave his face a healthy sheen unfamiliar to Harry, and probably to Snape as well.
"What if I don't want to?" James murmured back, his voice easy but with a definite sincerity to his tone. "What if I just stay here… here in your bed. Forever."
There were a few moments of silence before Snape finally answered, his voice cracking, "I would give anything… for that to… for that to happen." He closed his eyes.
James exhaled, closing his eyes as well, and he sat up, bending over Snape. "Hey," he whispered. "Look at me."
Snape looked, and for a few seconds all they did was look at each other. The sincerity of the moment made Harry angry, it made him want to cry, to throw himself against the baseboard of the bed and scream, just open his mouth and scream. Anything to break the thickness of the silence his father and his Potions professor were sharing so intimately.
"Someday," James whispered. "Someday I'll come, and I won't leave. I promise."
The two boys sat up, and James reached up to take the shirt off of the headboard. As he pulled it on, he said, "The book is on the table there. Take your time with it; I don't need it until next quarter."
"Thank you."
They dressed in silence, and then James finally walked down the length of the room to the door. "Goodbye, Severus," he said, and Snape, still standing beside his bed, looked up, wide eyed.
"Bye, James."
James left the room, and Harry was tugged out of the memory.