Chapter 10
This is here:
"I still think this is a very bad idea," Ron muttered as the three of them crouched under Harry's rather too small invisibility cloak in front of Borgin & Burkes. "You know why? Because Snape told us to do it."
"Shut it, Ron," Harry hissed, "It'll be fine."
"Famous last words," Ron retorted without missing a beat.
Hermione jabbed both of them in the ribs and made shushing noises. It was in that moment that Draco Malfoy chose to make his appearance in Knockturn Alley.
Harry swallowed; he hadn't seen Draco since the young man had killed Ron and Hermione in a fit of insanity during their leaving feast. Since then Draco had done his best to become one of Voldemort's most valued Death Eaters as well as Regulus' sometimes lover. Harry didn't know what hurt more: that Draco had turned him down with claims of complete heterosexuality or that he was now sleeping with Regulus on a semi-regular basis.
Drawing their wands, they observed Draco enter Borgin & Burkes only to leave some minutes later, looking smug and pocketing a small brown parcel.
"What d'you reckon, should we attack him?" Ron asked.
"Hell, yes," Harry hissed, furiousness suddenly uncoiling in his stomach. He threw off the cloak.
"Oi, Malfoy!" he called out, noticing the other wizard's shock with glee. "Been shopping, eh?"
This isn't:
"Home come everyone here is gay?" Harry burst out furiously, plopping down on the sofa and glaring at Severus who was dozing in the armchair. The older wizard opened his eyes, surprised.
"I mean, why? Oliver Wood is a raging pouf, drawling every second word and having a very strange relationship with his broomstick," Harry ranted, "You are – whatever, I've always preferred to think of you as completely asexual because the alternative would simply be too disturbing. And I've apparently shagged my way through half of Hogwarts like some queer Casanova and just when I thought it couldn't get any worse Regulus Black starts holding my hand! Granted, he should be dead, but - "
"Regulus Black held your – I beg your pardon?" Severus asked, now completely awake and alert.
Harry quickly told him about their meeting and the ensuing pub visit. Then something occurred to him: "How was Germany by the way? Did you find out anything?"
Severus nodded and pointed towards a large stack of papers on the table.
"Those are copies I made of the original documents. I'll tell you later, it's nothing that would enable you to get back right this very instant."
"Oh," Harry said, looking down. He was slowly getting really homesick. It was exhausting, stumbling through a world that was painfully familiar and annoyingly strange at the same time, like being forced to act in a play without knowing the script.
"As to Regulus Black, you've always been fascinated by him, as a child and later at school," Severus explained, "He was the teacher for Defence Against the Dark Arts for a year – against his will, I might add, Lucius Malfoy more or less forced him to do it. It was the only year you never missed a single lesson in that subject; that was in your sixth year. Shortly before your birthday you slept with him -"
Harry gave a short but heartfelt groan.
" - which was not very advisable. You were still underage. He was... well, he disappeared for a while. When you joined the Order and found out that Regulus was a spy for Dumbledore... I didn't know you personally then, but you told me you fell apart. In a way, Regulus was your first real love, and he knows it, too. I suppose that Voldemort had knowledge of this whole affair, hence his trying to recruit you through Regulus."
"Does Sirius, does my mum know about this?" Harry asked.
Releasing a short bark of laughter, Severus shook his head, "God, no! Your godfather would murder you both."
"Hilarious," Harry sighed and sprawled a bit more on the couch. His body was slowly catching up with the fact that he'd been sitting on a broom for a better part of the day. He was tired, exhausted after too much training and subsequent alcohol.
"So how do I normally behave around him?"
"Like a moonstruck calf," Severus answered promptly. At Harry's indignant look he elaborated, "You blush, you stutter, you fiddle with your wand... He was probably gob smacked tonight to find out that you indeed speak in coherent sentences."
"And that doesn't make you jealous?"
Severus shrugged. "What am I supposed to do? I got you in the end, didn't I? No use crying over spilt potion, and you can't help it that you fell in love with Regulus Black the moment you laid eyes on him."
Harry yawned widely and stretched. "'M sorry," he mumbled, "Training did me in. Do I have to go again tomorrow?"
"I'm afraid so. What I found out... well..." the other man trailed off.
Sitting up straight, Harry was now alert, detecting disappointment and frustration in Severus' face.
"What's that supposed to mean, 'well'?" he asked suspiciously, "What did you find out today?"
"The bowl, the one I have here with me, is a prototype, Harry," Severus explained, "It was still being developed when Albus Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald. As such it's a bit finicky – you can't choose which dimension you end up in, just as there is no way that would allow you to control it. There's no charm you can mutter to switch places because the workings of the bowl are based on statistics and probability."
Severus got up and fetched the object in question from where he'd kept it in the kitchen. Pointing at the shadows in its depths he said, "These shadows are flashes of other dimensions, Harry. If I were to look directly into the bowl now, and if one of my countless counterparts were to do the same – at exactly the same moment in time – we'd switch places. The possibility of that ever happening is miniscule."
"And it happened to me," Harry said, "Figures."
Clearing his throat, Severus continued, "You have to realise that every magic has its price. This bowl is one of the most magical objects in existence today. Magic this powerful requires a sacrifice of some sort: In this case it gains all its magical energy from chances missed, from when people look into it without anything happening. The amount of energy it takes is tiny but this bowl here has been storing energy from wizards and witches for sixty years now."
"And now comes the point where you tell me I can't get back?" Harry asked, "You realise, of course, that if this is the case I'll go insane, become terribly depressed and will drown myself in the bath tub."
Severus shook his head. "Of course you can get back; you and my Harry merely have to look into the bowl at the same time... and voilà."
"Didn't you just tell me that the chances of that are tiny?"
"Yes, I did. The possibility of this ever happening again are about as great as you winning the Muggle lottery each week for a year."
Harry sucked in a harsh breath and dipped a finger into the cool water of the bowl; the images were distorted now, even more unclear than before.
"But I could just spend the next couple of days staring into it. Your Harry's bound to look in it sometime, right?"
"It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid." Severus pulled a sheet of paper out of the stack of copies before him and showed it to Harry. The sheet was filled with rows and rows of numbers and letters, as well as runes. The runes changed their shape from time to time, becoming something else entirely. To Harry's horror he recognised this pattern: these runes were a topic of NEWT level Arithmancy and beyond, and Hermione had used them to narrow down possible locations for horcruxes. She'd tried to explain the basics to Harry and Ron, but Harry couldn't even read or write runes, let alone work with them, manipulating the equations into something that made sense.
"Runes of variability," he croaked, "Merlin."
"So you know what this means," Severus said, "Excellent. Then you'll surely appreciate the fact that the actions of actually deciding to look into the bowl, starting to look into it, etc., are just as important as seeing the images."
"I'll never get back, won't I?" Harry asked dejectedly.
"You could always cheat, Harry," Severus said. "It will be difficult, illegal and stretch the fabric of space and time but it is not impossible."
Harry smiled slightly, taking of his glasses and cleaning them with the hem of his robes. Putting them back on he squinted at the other man with green eyes that were trusting and not quite as empty of hope as they had been just a moment before.
Severus summoned a piece of parchment and a ballpoint pen. He drew a straight line, explaining as he did so, "You can consider this to be the flow of time... No, every time one makes a choice this line splits -" he demonstrated this, "and two different dimensions are created, the flow goes on until the next event and it splits again..."
He drew more lines until the whole thing resembled a tree. "Sometime in the past our two respective realities split. Before that, however, they were one and the same. Now, if you had a time turner and travelled back before this split occurred, taking the bowl with you, and my Harry did the same you would in fact meet each other. Looking into the bowl at the same time would not be a problem then and the change could take place."
"You do realise," Harry said slowly, "That this is one of the most rubbish plans I've ever heard of."
"It does create several problems, yes. Obtaining a time turner powerful enough to jump back several years, not to mention the danger of ripping the space-time fabric apart when you two meet. And we don't know when the split took place. All problems that can be solved with a bit of work."
"A bit of work," Harry repeated, "A bit of work? I mean, where do we even start?"
Severus glanced at the clock. "I suggest we start by going to bed. Finding out where our dimensions separated is definitely high on the list. I know of a potion that could help with that."
"Finally!" Harry snorted and got up, "Finally you mention the p-word. I was starting to think that you don't have anything in common with my Snape except the name and the nose."
Severus' eyebrows rose. "Why, thank you for the compliment. I'll wait for you after training and we'll go to Diagon Alley together to buy the ingredients if that's amenable to you."
"Sure," Harry said, "Good night, Snape."
"Good night... Harry Potter."
Despite being exhausted from a day spent flooing international distances and polishing up his rusty German to make himself understood, Severus couldn't sleep. The bed was by turns too cold or too warm; opening the window only made things worse as the sounds of the night were now added to the creaks his old cottage full of magic made.
The space beside him was achingly empty. Harry's pillow was fluffed up and gleamed white in the moonlight.
Severus missed his lover and he supposed that this was the real reason for his insomnia. He missed Harry, the mess he made of the bedroom each and every single day. He missed the soft and even breathing – interrupted by the occasional snore – next to him at night and the disgustingly cheerful "Good morning!" Harry was used to calling out of the bathroom.
Of course Severus was used to living alone, sleeping alone: he'd done so for years before Harry had moved in and his lover was often gone for weeks, playing matches abroad.
Still, this was different. This was not sentimentality, a reminiscing smile made possible by the certainty that his lover would be back in some days. This was gnawing and growing pain, a slight jolt each time looked at Harry and saw no fond recognition in his eyes.
Severus huffed and got out of bed, pulling a tee shirt over his head. Softly entering the guest room he sat down in the chair facing the bed and contemplated this other Harry's still form.
This is ridiculous, he told himself, Watching him sleep like some lovesick witch!
And therein lay the problem: He was lovesick. He'd never told Harry that he loved him, just as Harry himself had used that particular verb exclusively in conjunction with Regulus Black.
What they had was comfortable, in a way. It was a relationship, it offered security, at least for Severus. Harry was a companion, and that was a blessing in itself because he'd always had a way of alienating everybody around him. He'd fully expected to live his life alone, surrounded by odd magical trinkets, the monotony of his days only interrupted by the occasional visit from Remus Lupin.
Sometimes he asked himself what Harry got out of this little arrangement: A place to live, a not overly attractive lover and the ire of nearly all of his family and friends. Harry was handsome, popular – he could have anybody. Yet he'd chosen Severus, despite the love and hurt that flickered over his face whenever the topic of Regulus Black came up.
When this other Harry had mentioned Regulus today, told him about their meeting, Severus' heart had started to beat more quickly, jealousy worming its way through his throat. He knew that Harry had loved Regulus, adored him – he'd seen pictures of Harry during that summer when Black had disappeared. The boy had looked miserable, like some darkness had touched him – and in a way, it had.
Nowadays Harry avoided the other wizard at all costs. He skipped Order meetings because of him, not because he didn't want to see Sirius or his mother. If they did meet Harry was achingly polite, never touching Regulus, never letting his eyes rest on him. When Harry had found out – Regulus had reported it during an Order meeting, his method of gathering information, he'd said – that he was sleeping with Draco Malfoy, he'd sat completely still, not reacting until they'd got home to his flat. There the young man had proceeded to break every single glass in the house through accidental magic. All of his photo albums and books had burst into flame, but Harry himself hadn't uttered a word, only staring at the floor.
He'd moved in with Severus a week after that.
Severus had never talked to Harry about this particular incident again but it had been the first – and so far only – time when he'd been afraid of his lover.
Today's meeting would have devastated him, Severus was sure of it. As the man in the bed moaned softly and turned around, the blanket now a tangled mess between his legs, he was absurdly glad that this Harry, strange and sarcastic as he might be, had never got to know Regulus Black. He hadn't even been aware of what the other man should mean to him.
Thinking back to Harry's question, "And that doesn't make you jealous?", Severus clenched his fists.
Of course it made him jealous.
Showing that jealousy would make him lose Harry, however, and that was something he was not prepared to risk.