CHAPTER 5

A/N: A very happy New Year to all of you!

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I was to spend the remaining holidays with you in the dungeons after the wedding ceremony. I was rather tense about that, of course. I felt that I was encroaching on your privacy, and no doubt I was. You had lived in the dungeons right from the time you had been appointed the Potions Master at Hogwarts School. You were used to having a territorial view of things. I had been high up in Gryffindor Tower, high up in the sky during the past six years. I realised that there would be no windows in the dungeons. I assumed that your quarters would be like your office and classroom – gloomy and uninviting. We assumed many things about each other back then, didn't we?

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The descent to the dungeons was one of the most uncomfortable trips Harry had ever experienced. The silence and resentment between Severus and him could have been slashed with an axe, and the paintings were murmuring, their subjects following Harry with sympathy in their eyes and gestures. Severus's jaw tautened as he swept down the stairs to the dungeons. He would have to show Harry around. He considered adding threats along the lines of, "Do not set foot in my laboratory! Stay away from my bedroom! Don't you dare touch my books! These are all my possessions!" Obviously, this would not be a very auspicious start for their marriage.

They arrived at his rooms. The door was guarded by a portrait of Morgana, King Arthur's half-sister. While many Muggles, especially men, mostly regarded her as an evil sorceress and a source of threat, as they (still) regarded the majority of powerful wise women, Morgana was well loved in the wizarding world. The painting depicted her as a stern-faced and keen-eyed woman dressed in plain dark-grey robes, a mane of dark curls falling down to her waist. She looked at Harry.

"Welcome, Harry Potter," she greeted him, inclining her head slightly; then she addressed Severus:

"Password?"

"Dies Irae," Severus said, "remember the password, Potter."

The door swung back.

"It is wizarding tradition that the younger partner of the married couple enters the house or room first. Also, kindly remove your shoes." Severus said crisply. Harry tried not to blink. He did not consider the Potions Master a stickler to marriage traditions, of all things. Sensing that Severus was making a concession by allowing Harry to access his quarters before him, he gave his husband a small smile and a nod of thanks. Severus did not acknowledge the gesture, merely opening the door a little wider – an obvious hint that Harry was to get moving. Harry bent, took off his shoes and placed them on the shoe tray just inside the room before entering. He looked around. It was comfortably furnished with modern wooden furniture and had small illuminated spheres floating below the ceiling – the wizarding equivalent of Muggle lamps. Harry, used to cleaning and dusting thanks to Aunt Petunia, found himself automatically checking whether the place was clean and dust-free – which it thankfully was. Severus opened a side-door.

"Your quarters – bathroom and bedroom," he said succinctly. Harry approached his new home.

The bedroom was enormous, and Severus saw Harry gaze around with the air of someone who has never had such a lot of space before. He knew from Harry's memories and Dumbledore's accounts that Harry had grown up in a cupboard underneath the stairs and had been moved into his cousin's spare bedroom with the utmost reluctance on his relatives' part. Probably gross exaggeration and an attention-seeking manoeuvre, Severus sneered to himself silently as he continued the tour.

"My laboratory – I do not deem it advisable or useful for you to explore this room unless there is an emergency. The library, if you are interested in cultivating your mind and reading habits."

Harry looked intently at everything with his large green eyes. Severus could see that the youth was genuinely interested in his new surroundings. His new...home.

Severus was brave and selfless when it came to spying for Dumbledoredore and saving Harry's life, but he was not used to sharing at all. He had never had anyone to share things with. He was selfish, and the fact that his quarters were now Harry's rooms as well did not appeal to him one little bit.

"So. You have seen your new residence. You may want to start unpacking your trunk – that devoted house-elf of yours has brought your things down," Severus said stiffly and walked out of the hall, heading for the library and leaving his husband standing alone and awkwardly next to a large sofa. Harry shrugged slightly and went to his bedroom. He was sorry to see that Dobby had already left.

The youth unpacked quietly and quickly, without unnecessary racket and fuss. Severus, on his way to a bookshelf in the hall, stopped and watched him for a minute or two en cachette. He noted that most of the Muggle clothes Harry extracted were overlarge and worn. He turned away from the door abruptly, striding into the library. It was disconcerting to pick out the parallels in his and Harry's early lives. Severus did not want to have anything in common with Harry – it was so much easier to be able to hate him. Sharing his rooms with Harry was difficult enough for him, and sharing certain aspects of his life with Harry was even more difficult. Sharing, after all, was something Severus was not used to. He glowered around the hall, wondering how he was going to survive with the Potter spawn in his immediate environment. It was an insult – a Potter, of all vermin, in his dungeons! Severus cracked his knuckles and flexed his fingers, grinding his teeth. His stomach roiled when he remembered the impending consummation. He would have to fuck that wretched shrimp. Well, if he was going to have to fuck, then at least he wanted a fuck worth his time. And money. With a snarl, Severus seized his cloak and strode into Harry's bedroom without knocking.

"I am going out," he barked, resenting the fact that, as a...dutiful...husband, he had to tell his...spouse...about his whereabouts. Louse, he mused, rhymed perfectly with "spouse". That was what Harry was. A louse. A nasty little parasite.

Harry merely nodded, his face polite, a set of black wizarding robes draped over his arm. Severus whisked away, left the castle and glided over the Hogwarts grounds until he left the wards. He Apparated to a particularly shady area of Muggle London and went to what he called an emergency haunt – a brothel. He could not risk showing his face in wizarding areas for obvious reasons. Angry, sullen and frustrated, he accessed the building, desperate to forget himself and his spouse-louse inside the body of another man.

The coupling was as routine as a business transaction, its sordidness and humiliation underlined by the exchange of money in advance, but it was the only outlet for a rancorous spy whose basic instincts were practically dormant, flaring up feebly every now and then.

When he returned to Hogwarts after an hour, he slammed the door of his quarters with such a bang that Harry, who was reading in his room, jumped. There was a pause, then Severus appeared in the doorway, giving Harry a dull, dead stare.

"Have you had dinner?" he snapped.

Harry nodded – he used Hagrid's flute to call Dobby, playing a note for each letter of Dobby's name, resulting in a kind of scale signal.

"Good. The more you stay out of my way, the better for you and me both," was the acid comment. The foul-tempered man left and Harry closed his book, removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes.

There were no windows in his room. The doors were closed everywhere in the dungeons. In his life.

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