AN: approaching the end of the already-written summer of fifth year, we shall see how updates go from here.
Enjoy!
Chapter Twenty One: Snakes and Potions
Severus Snape's reaction to the sheer enormity of the Basilisk's carcass will never be mentioned. Nor was it seen by anyone in the Warding party but one, rather singular, young man, whose unique talent for perceiving Severus Snape's emotions far outstripped any other. The utter stillness of his limbs, the faintly too wide cant of his eyes and the just visible, jerky movements of his chest were beyond his control as he stared at the two-years-dead corpse who's fangs stood proud of bloody jaws in ivory curves a foot long. The sharp, ridged scales over ruined eyes extended the length of the hideously thick, strong body in a long, serrated blade. Severus could not truly gauge the length of the beast, but the afore-mentioned sixty feet had not been exaggerated.
And this is the beast I come to harvest? He stepped warily around the head, the shocked, horrified stillness giving way to a jumble he could not translate into words; images of Harry as he had been in the Headmaster's office, of the scar on his arm, flashed ruthlessly past his eyes as he saw the broken fang, lying not far from the beast's head. It was blackened with something and he was forced to occlude, to control himself more tightly, as he realised that it was a mixture of blood, Harry's blood, and ink.
The warding party was spreading out over the room, muttering and throwing glances at the corpse but Severus could ignore them. Harry, on the other hand, he could not; the warm, steady presence next to him helped him draw the shutters over those memories.
"Looks smaller, now..." Harry mumbled; Severus nearly choked on something hot and cloying filing his chest while his face went stony and furious. The resulting string of expletives had the Twins taking notes, actual written notes. Harry's hand found its way onto his arm and gave his bicep a comforting squeeze, saying nothing but looking darkly amused. He shook the hand off, unwilling to admit how much it had helped, and whipped his wand out. It slashed through the air satisfyingly as he conjured a table and then proceeded to enlarge his case and retrieve spelled tarpaulins and jars, which landed with heavy thunks on the wood.
"Right, better get on then, Forge. Gloves?"
Right you are, Gred. Apron?"
He saw Harry shudder out of the corner of his eye as he watched them kit up with the elbow length gloves, obscenely long harvesting knives and thick, blood-proof aprons. This would not be a pretty, nor clean, process; serve the bloody creature right, thought Severus as he took a skinning hook from the roll of tools he had spread out on the bench. The curved blade was sharpened with the flick of his wand and he proceeded to strip off his robes and roll his sleeves up past his elbows; the world knew he had the mark, sensibilities be damned! He viciously dug the tip into the skin at the corner of the beasts mouth, the sharp, inner curve facing the tough hide and the blunt outer curve facing the softer inner flesh to avoid cutting open anything unsavoury.
Tugging to make sure the tool was properly placed, he adjusted his two handed grip on the large, wooden handle and began to pull, a vicious look on his face as he split the animal's cheek open. There was, in fact, very little blood, but as he got further from the venom glands, the flesh had begun to rot and the smell was... less than pleasant.
He saw Harry beat a hasty retreat to join the warders and snorted at the greenish tinge on his Weasley assistants;
"On, you snivelling excuses for adults! You, extract the fangs, the other one cut the muscles of the jaw." He growled with effort as he guided the knife along the boundary between small flank scales and the large, sharp skutes of the back before snarling again, when they still hadn't moved; "Now!"
They leapt into action, trained by six and a half years of Severus' teaching voice. Satisfied, Severus leaned into his task, working out the bubbling snarl in his chest through sheer physical exertion.
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Harry watched the warding with sincere fascination; the coloured sparks he had seen earlier, while they were testing the wards had nothing on this. Great arcs of coloured light flowed from wands and onto the stone walls, reaching, flowing and spreading over the surface, sparks flew where different colours met, resisted and merged with each other. With each rippling wave, Harry felt safer, more at home as the new wards felt more and more like Hogwarts. The melodious, deep voices chanting the incantations echoed and reverberated through the tunnels and pools of the far reaches of the Chamber, over laid by Tonks' finer, faster chant;
"Ut sapiens, aptarit idonea bello. Ut sapiens,-"
She was facing the entrance and beckoning something, with flicks and broad sweeps of her wand. As Harry watched, the tunnel's mouth began to spill light onto the wet floor, gold, reds, flickers of vibrant green and blue, rising in intensity until the edges of Hogwarts' wards were pulled, stretching and bulging into the Chamber. Over laying her voice like the rumble of distant thunder was Dumbledore's, resonating through the wards all the way from their heart, in the Headmaster's Office.
The colours covering the walls were beginning to strain, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Fleur and the Weasleys all coming together to draw them towards Hogwarts' existing wards. They looked worn, tired and slightly sweaty but both determined and focused. As holder of the wards at Grimmauld, Harry empathised with the concentration it took and stayed well out of the way. Remus was pacing the edges of the Chamber, casting anti-Animagus charms over each tunnel mouth, the threads of blue left connected to his wand collecting in his left hand. Soon, he too was approaching the bulging, groaning surface that Tonks had a firm hold on and then, together, in a spray of sparks they connected their new creations to the existing light. With an almighty heave, the new wards slammed into place and the light sank into the walls.
A cool breeze he hadn't even been aware of ceased and the quiet in the aftermath of chanting rang with faint echoes. The moment was broken by a long, wet ripping noise as Severus finished dissecting off the Basilisks five foot long, three foot wide lower jaw; the warding party cringed, as did the Twins.
Harry himself shuddered at the heavy crunch of de-fanged bone on wet stone and a quick glance at Severus' face confirmed that the man was still working out some tension, with a vicious kind of satisfaction. This was the Severus Snape he remembered from school but Harry found himself still attracted to that ferocity, provided it was directed in a ... positive way.
"We're done here, Harry. We'll all pitch in to get the rest of the hide off and then it'll be back up above ground and to Headquarters." commented Remus, patting Harry on the shoulder on his way past and conjuring gloves and apron.
"Oh! Right, yeah. Well done, everyone. I have tea and chocolate if anyone needs it." He called out, fumbling for the shrunken flask and box of Honeydukes finest. Tonks appeared quick enough and he grinned at her as he handed over the chocolate she was coveting with long glances. Her boss followed soon after.
"Thanks, mate; Remus has me hooked on this stuff." She muttered through her mouthful, the hand concealing her lower face her only concession to manners.
"Dobby's idea; thank him." Harry replied with a smile, pouring tea into the mug Kingsley had conjured. "That looked like hard work, aren't you tired?" He asked the group in general. Charlie and Bill had already headed to the Basilisk with looks of fascination; Harry wondered how long they had been resisting the urge to investigate, but Fleur and 'Dung were also conjuring tea cups or mugs, respectively. He could understand the quarter-Veela's reluctance; it was a messy job.
"Zee varding can take much out of one, zee chocolat is velcome." Fleur said, gracing him with her radiant smile. Its effects were ... interesting, particularly when 'Dung began to salivate and spilled tea over his hand. Harry didn't feel them much himself, but then his relationship with Severus probably explained that well enough.
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Severus leaned over the now-overturned and jawless head, with a large scalpel to extract the second venom gland in hand. The flesh was tough where the poison had warded off decay and he had to take great care to apply just enough force to cut the ligaments of the palate without piercing the gland and causing the venom to spill. With the fangs removed, it was easy enough to track the venom ducts back, at least, and have a good idea where the gland would be.
Delicate work, indeed.
He had banished the Twins to stripping off the hide he had cut and it was noticeable when their brothers joined in; the unpleasant sound effects grew more frequent and lengthy until finally the hide was free of the muscle. The large, magic resistant sheet would take significant processing but Severus was certain it would be of equally significant value in up-coming battles.
He grunted as, poison gland now held gingerly in a square of dragon hide, he cut the last toughened suspensor. He sealed of the venom duct with his wand and a sticking charm before wrapping it up carefully and placing it next to its opposite twin.
His once clear bench was now covered in jars and wrapped and sealed packages; teeth and fangs glinted menacingly, the sharp, bony scales of the back filled a small chest and had proven as hard as the tools he had tried to pry them off with. Long strips of liver floated in preserver, as did the gall bladder and absurdly large spleen; the already overly large jars had had to be further enlarged to hold them.
Severus straightened and threw his contaminated gloves to the bench, arching backwards to stretch his spine. How Harry could put up with the age difference, he didn't know and he had found himself grumbling over Harry's ability to sleep in strange positions without seizing up a number of times over the last week; on sofas, hippogriffs, even Severus himself.
Speaking of the brat... a cup of hot tea was held out in his peripheral vision and he took the transfigured mug greedily. His glance at Harry's expression showed a combination of amusement and disgust at the state of Severus' apron.
"The warding went well?" he asked, mug poised for a sip and a singular eyebrow raised.
"Yeah. Only the very oldest wards reached down this far. There was quite a lot to cast." Harry was screwing the lid back on his bottomless flask as he spoke, "They got through it all in the end though. You nearly done?"
Severus caught Harry's glance at the carcass and sighed, "Indeed, feel glad you have avoided this particular task."
"Well, yeah, it looks pretty disgusting, but I feel bad just watching." Severus quieted him with a Snape glare and Harry's expression turned sheepish. "Fine, fine, I concede; even I'm not that noble..."
Severus eyed him in mock distrust for a moment before returning to his tea. "We are, in effect, finished in any case. The rot has contaminated what is left."
Understandably, Harry grimaced; the rot in question had spread forwards from the creatures vent, reaching perhaps half the great serpents length. The harvesting had carefully avoided the oozing, suppurating flesh and gone only for the parts protected by the creature's venom and impervious hide.
"We should burn the remainder down to the bones." Severus said, turning away from the sight of all that Weasley hair clashing violently with the Slytherin green of the lights. A quiet 'hmm' sounded from his right as Harry watched in morbid fascination as the second and last piece of hide came free with another great ripping sound.
XX*XX*XX*XX*XX*XX*
"Thank you, Mrs Weasley; that was exactly what we needed." Harry remarked with a smile as he sat back in his chair and rested one hand over his stomach. The table was very much dominated by the red-headed clan, with only Percy missing. Remus and Tonks were the only ones left of the Warding party. Severus was to his left again, and Arthur on his right, but the hierarchy had otherwise broken down and Ron was next to his dad, and Remus with Tonks and the twins at the far end. The table was littered with the remnants of a thick stew and the accompanying fresh bread, which they had ploughed through quickly. With Hermione arriving in a few days and the Weasley's properly moved in, Harry was content. He did... there were moments when he would find himself choking on the empty space at the foot of the table, or the dog hair that refused to come out of the drawing room sofa, but it was not so explosive any more, not so prone to flinging him into something uncontrollable.
He looked over at his Professor and felt that bit of peace come back, how Sirius would have raged, but by Merlin, it was a beautiful thing. Mutual understanding, comfort, and trust; they had fallen into it so... casually, accidentally, that Harry still found himself surprised at their camaraderie and closeness. Severus' eyes were focused off in the middle distance; it wasn't easy to guess what he was thinking about, but Harry suspected it had to do with the plethora of rare potions ingredients they had just acquired.
It had taken the twins almost an hour to reappear from the bathroom after the mess of the Chamber and even Harry had wanted a shower. Severus had similarly vanished into his room, and remained there until dinner had appeared. Harry had enjoyed the familiarity of being trounced by Ron at chess, by the fire in the Library while his hair dried in ragged spikes and curls; he been both surprised and amused when he'd found a potion labelled 'shampoo' in Severus' distinctive handwriting on his chest of drawers. It was nice, smelled of cinnamon still, but smoother and easier to use than soap. It hadn't made any difference to the kinks and curls that his hair insisted on producing when it dried, though.
Severus hadn't noticed yet, and Harry was sure he would, eventually, and he could already imagine the tiny tic of an eyelid that would betray the man's frustration.
"It's no problem, dear. Just a bit of stew." Mrs Weasley said as she bustled around the kitchen to some purpose that Harry couldn't identify. He sent her a happy grin and wrapped his hands around his mulled cider. His mind drifted to his evening studies as he stared down at the steam rising from his mug; the swirling mist dissipated just above the rim of the ceramic, as intangible as the trance he had been trying to achieve. A letter to McGonagall hadn't helped, she had just told him to keep trying, and Severus was equally useless; he had never wanted to become an Animagus. Sirius' notes were... He took a deep breath and hoped no one would notice the sudden tension in his knuckles. Sirius's notes weren't as helpful as they could have been.
Each evening, before occluding, he would try and try to slip sideways and leave concious thought behind, to ride the currents of his simple, animal mind; that basic, central part of humanity that was a relic of times long past. It was inevitably too much and each time some feeling or memory would rear its ugly head and he would retreat down into Occlumency and sleep.
It was so rare that he slept without Occlumency now, since the first round of dreams would inevitably wake him up. He was left with two options; occlude again and risk being unable to sleep, or get up. Buckbeak helped, admittedly. As did Severus, though the man was adamant that Harry remain in his own bed for the most part. He did understand this, logically, but all the same, Harry would have liked to sleep next to that warmth and solidity more often. But... that ran the risk of sleeping on without Occluding, and hence risking both Severus' life and the hunt for the Horcruxes. Perhaps the man's propriety would serve a greater purpose after all.
Harry took a sip of his hot cider to chase away a bit of the horrifying chill that thought had brought, letting his mind wander to other thoughts.
"Professor, who, legally, is my guardian?" He asked absently; as the Dursley's had thrown him out and the action had been recognised magically, it was possible that he was actually free of them.
Severus took a drink of his coffee before answering, "Your flamboyant retreat from Privet Drive was accompanied by the Dursley's disappearance; I do not believe any one has noticed their rejection of guardianship yet. This may persist the year, leaving you free as an adult." He said, looking blank, as though he was thinking about something quite apart from Harry's question.
"So, if someone looks, I don't have a guardian?" Harry confirmed, leaning in slightly as an idea occurred; one of those many-birds-with-one-stone type ideas.
"Quite. There are charms on the records of a minor that prevent the casual observer gaining sensitive details, however. There is little risk of a court case." Severus said, perking up slightly at the look on Harry's face; one he was unfortunately familiar with, recognising it from the moment before a cauldron had exploded in Harry's second year. "What exactly is your purpose in such enquiries, Potter?"
Harry frowned slightly, making it clear that he was quite serious in this mischief; "Sirius would have been legally obliged to take up the role of my Guardian, if we had proved him innocent," Harry crushed his grief mercilessly, just to hold it back long enough to get his point across. "But, since he was a wanted convict, wouldn't it be the place of Narcissa Malfoy, née Black to take up that role?"
Severus' eyes darkened in anger and alarm, his face going stony, "What are you suggesting, Potter?" He snarled. Harry winced slightly at the second use of his last name in as many sentences;
"What I'm getting at is that if I manage to be emancipated in secret, and I'm pretty sure I won't need a hearing to convince the WCS, then you could report to the mighty Lord Moldy Shorts that Narcissa has a claim on me." Harry said in a rush, hoping to bush Severus' bad mood to the wayside, "You get something interesting to report, we tie up the Malfoy resources in the courts, and when the plan fails a few months down the line, Bellatrix takes the flack."
Severus sat back thoughtfully, ignoring the cries of indignation from down the table as the twins sprung a shape-changing prank on Ron. Harry stood to let him mull it over, knowing that Severus would see the how's and why's, as well as the flaws. He simply hoped that they could make use of something he was planning on doing anyway. If it remained secret. One could hope, he thought as he slid into a seat opposite Ron's chair, which currently held an angrily bawling seal pup.
XX*XX*XX*XX*XX*XX*
The ground was... a long way away, for being closer than he usually observed it from. How weird. His feet absolutely refused to hold him up and his knees, well... he didn't even know where they had gone! There were feathers, lots of feathers...
He gave an ungainly squawk as long hands wrapped around his body and he flailed helplessly in an attempt to get his balance. Soon, his arms (no, that's not quite right...) were pinned against his body in a way that was strangely comfortable and he let his legs hang limply. His now-beady eyes followed the red-headed devils responsible for his current predicament, his head snaking on a long neck with an uncanny ability to keep stationary despite being hefted and tucked into voluminous black robes. He squawked again, snapping a pleasingly sharp beak at a freckly hand that ventured too close, and kicked his absurdly long legs at the offending individual.
After a long glare, he gave a final disdainful squawk and buried his head in Severus' robes.
XX*XX*XX*XX*XX*XX*
Severus had to admit a certain respect for the Twins; it was rare that you could slip anyone familiar with them something anymore, so they managed to make their targets take it themselves. It was a strange, twisted way of pranking that reeked of some sort of mind control that Severus was quite sure did not exist.
In any case, Harry had taken the little gray pastille of his own accord and promptly began to shrink. His clothes and hair turned gray and feathery, his thighbones shortened and his calves and foot lengthened and turned yellow. One of his toes turned backwards and his neck elongated to an ungainly length, upon which a small head with a very pointed beak sat.
Severus had to restrain his amusement as it became clear that Harry was not only turning into a heron but a juvenile heron; his new feathers were as unkempt as his hair, downy and filamentous. They stuck vertically upwards from his head, which was itself staying eerily still in space as Harry tried and failed to stand up with knees and ankles that no longer had the range of movement he was used to. Broad, tatty wings were flailing disturbingly close to the chair that Harry had been sitting on before the prank had taken effect and so, with a long suffering sigh, Severus leant down and gathered the fragile appendages into their natural arrangement against Harry's flank and held them down, despite the squawking and kicking. With that done, he noticed with a certain smugness, Harry calmed down and gave a sharp beaked glare to the twins. Carefully pinning him against his side, Severus wrapped his upper body up in the trailing folds of his robes to keep the wings Harry had no idea how to use safe.
Severus was sure that Harry had expected to turn into a cat and to be in this ungainly, unmanageable body was much less agreeable to him, as evidenced by the sharp jab of his beak when Twin Two went to touch him. As Twin One was holding a large, irritated seal pup and teasing the thing mercilessly, Severus was able to escape out of the kitchen when Molly bore down on her sons with all the inevitability of the giant squid.
Once in Harry's room he unwrapped the avian bundle, carefully extracting Harry's head from up his sleeve. Merlin only knew how it had gotten up there, but Harry let out an undignified squawk as his feathers where rubbed the wrong way. Dumped safely in a feathery pile on the bed, Harry moved more cautiously than before to get his limbs arrayed in a usable way while Severus watched on from the tidier side of the bed. He had put Harry in the middle of the duvet so that if he did fall over he was in no danger of falling off, and he was able to sit back comfortably smirking at his less than successful efforts.
"Birds walk on their toes, Potter, stop trying to put your heel down." He said in his teacher-talking-to-an-idiot-student voice, earning himself a malicious glare that was surprisingly effective from beady little black eyes over a viciously sharp beak.
Nonetheless, Harry managed to fold his absurd and twiggy legs appropriately and make it to his feet. There was much flapping and his nearly fully developed wings helped him balance, losing a few downy chick feathers in the process. At his first step, however, he stumbled again and landed indignantly on his muscular chest, wings spread untidily.
Severus snorted at the ungainly sight and settled back with his hands laced over his stomach. Unless he was very much mistaken, a certain seal pup was being carried up stairs to the bathroom; if the noise was anything to go by, Ronald was still furious and Mrs Weasley equally so. It was fortunate the boys had held their prank until after dinner, or the woman would be incandescent.
A raggedy, feathered head landed on his stomach and Harry used it to lever himself to his feet again. The glare was gone, for now and he seemed to be enjoying himself which was, of course the aim of the exercise. There was splashing echoing up the stairs and through the open bedroom door, Severus smirked at the image of Ronald Weasley, seal pup, getting his soggy own back on his brothers. William's voice, back from courting the half-Veela presumably, joined the ruckus, recognisable by its deeper timbre.
He smoothed down the feathers on Harry's new neck absently as he wobbled, trying to keep balanced on his new legs. "I do not believe this is your natural form; even you could not be quite so inept." He commented quietly. Rather than the glare one might have expected, Harry looked relieved, much to Severus' amusement; it wasn't easy to tell what one's Animagus form would be, so early in the process because it wouldn't become fixed until the wizard had brewed the Disambiguo potion. Severus had the powerful and insidious suspicious that Harry's form would be as powerful and as war like as the Gryffindor himself; the Twin's arbitrary allocation of 'heron' looked absurd in comparison. This, he supposed, was the point.
As he mused, Harry pulled away and tottered carefully up and down the bed beside Severus' outstretched leg. Where he of a mind to spend his evening patching up bitten fingers, he would have taken Harry down to the bathroom to dispense justice on the Terrible Twins, but he was content to sit and watch Harry wobble. Though... a coffee would not go amiss;
"Dobby!" There was no answering crack as the elf stuck his head out of Harry's bathroom, Severus was only mildly surprised as the elves had a habit of being where you don't expect them to be, but the leprechaun-green hat was its own brand of shocking.
"Yes Master Potions Master?" was the chipper answer, as the hat shifted to orange. Severus sighed and made his request, the accessory fading most distastefully through orange to livid purple.
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The following morning, Harry took advantage of his early habits and exacted his revenge; the Twins spent the day unable to speak without belching large green bubbles which drifted around, silent until they popped, at which point their words were released in a jumbled mess. Unable to do magic, he had borrowed Severus' lab to mix the necessary potion and then sprayed the resulting mist onto the twins during particularly impressive inward snores.
He'd then gone to wake up Ron and they'd watched the twins with massive grins as they tried to speak. Severus had swept past the room with his usual stern expression but Harry had found the potions vial he had used in his revenge later, labelled with a large "A" in Severus' cursive, along with a note about the grinding of his valerian root. Severus had stubbornly said nothing when asked about this after lunch, directing Harry instead to an array of ingredients that had been placed in no particular order on the bench and telling him to brew the appropriate potion.
Half an hour later, Harry had worked out what the potion was and settled nervously to brewing it. Unlike his prank, which had been a simple tincture of plant matter, this potion contained a broad range of ingredients so there was a step change in the level of complexity. While he had brewed this potion before, he had failed, so he was rather on edge.
He double checked the instructions, and the interactions diagram he had scribbled out, and the ingredients and then put the cauldron over the heat, which he also rechecked. Severus' amused snort from behind his own bench earned him a glare but spurred Harry on enough to begin grating the bezoar into the mineral oil warming quickly in the cauldron. It took some delicate work to grate the stone but not his fingers and he was glad when it was done. He knocked the grater with his stirring rod to get the last of the stone dust into the oil before he added the fluxweed.
A lick of bright red flames and a round of vigorous stirring later and the mineral oil was greenish brown and ready for the next step, much to Harry's relief. The xantham arboretia needed chopping within half a minute of being added to the potion, so he started on that, double checking that his knife was clean. He was fairly sure that it was the slime off a toad skin, left on his knife, which had spoiled his Featherweight Draught in the autumn term of last year.
Chop, grind, add, stir, heat, drizzle, stir, cool... On and on, Harry looked at the instructions so frequently it bordered on the obsessive and he felt the spirit of Hermione Granger at his right elbow. Thinking of which, he was reminded that she would be arriving on the day after tomorrow and the momentary distraction was enough that about half a gram of the purified salt he was dropping into the cauldron went into the flames instead, sparking bright orange. His heart raced and his eyes went wide as he looked up at Severus; the loud crackling of the big crystals couldn't have been missed, but the man looked calm and motioned for him to keep going. Since the salt had to be added all at once he couldn't just get more, so he moved on the next, and rather urgent, ingredient despite the mistake and continued until he had five minutes of steeping time in which to scribble down some calculations and work out how to fix it.
He was unaware of Snape's monitoring eye but it was there, curious as to how well he would compensate.
In the end, the potion was a shade pinker than purple as the added poppy and slightly reduced Icelandic Adder scales changed its colour, but with luck the potions cooling effect would still be as strong. Hopefully.
Severus had been at his shoulder since he finished the final heating stage and, now done with decanting the small cauldron into a vial, Harry slumped against the Potion Master's side, turning slightly on his stool and leaning his head against the man's ribs. Said ribs heaved with a sigh against his temple and a long fingered hand, warm from Severus' own brewing, landed on the juncture between his neck and shoulder.
"Were it not for your mistake that would have been an O. Concentration is key." Harry could feel the rumble of Severus' voice against his forehead and the man's thumb was rubbing soothingly up and down his neck.
"But I corrected it," he whined, arching his neck into Sev's hand. "Don't I get any credit for that?"
Severus snorted and patted Harry on the shoulder as he stepped away; "In practice? Yes. A fever reducer that reduces fevers is all to the good. But a mistake should not happen in the first place and you will lose marks for that in an exam."
Harry gave a little huff, partly at the admonition and partly at the fact that Severus had stepped away. "Well, whatever this Slughorn bloke's got going for him, at least he's not a hard to please as you."
"A mistake is a mistake, Potter!" Severus said, though Harry caught the amused glint in his eye as he glared at his... oh.
Harry, rather than rising to the bait, turned back so he was sitting straight and slouched slightly as his face creased in consternation. What exactly was Severus? It had been bugging him for some time. They were nominally 'in a relationship', certain people knew that there was a 'them', but Harry shied away from the term boyfriend, with all its juvenile nuances. The term 'lover' would be wholly inaccurate since the few times they had been in bed together, they had done nothing but sleep, admittedly in faintly compromising levels of snuggle, but sleeping nonetheless. Severus was nothing if not an honourable man and he had not pushed Harry into something he was not ready for. Sixteen and not ready Harry thought, Some teenage bloke I am. He snorted to himself and leaned into the heavy black robes and warm arms that had surrounded him as he brooded.
Age of consent or not, he felt so naive, and so small next to Severus; the things he had seen, death and pain and fighting had taken his childhood away; a childhood that had only really gotten going when he was eleven, with Quidditch and Ron and Hermione and illegal dragons and rivalry with a Malfoy, and killing his Defence professor and trying not to die... and, and, and...
"Severus? Can you grow up without having a childhood?" He asked and, listening to his own voice, felt as old as he felt young. "I've become an adult without noticing, but how can I-"
"Yes, Harry, you can. I would know." Severus said, riding over him and cutting off his confused words and Harry held on tight as memories so brutally stolen came to mind. That one moment, where Snape Senior loomed over his Severus, his mother shouting out of sight, was enough for Harry. "I'm no paedophile, Harry Evans Potter, and I see you, sitting at the head of that table and facing a war that you've been fighting year on year, since before many even noticed it was still there. No one can see that and imagine that you are still a child, I am no exception."
Harry couldn't be reassured so easily, but he did laugh at the incorrect addition to his name. "Severus Snape, with your attitude to teaching, I seriously doubt you could be called a paedophile."
Severus' only answer was a deep, neutral hum that didn't tell Harry whether Sev agreed with him or not; a 'we shall see'.
"As for the war, that's just how my life is. I'll just have to... keep the damage to a minimum, wont I?" he said, leaning against Severus' chest and staring into the middle distance. Sirius' face swam into the front of his mind, and Harry let it come and allowed the tears to stream down his face without protest. That was what he'd been trying to do that pivotal day, even though he had failed and fallen into Voldemort's trap. He was sharper now and he had Severus beside him; a mind mage capable of holding back Voldemort without him even realising it. He would not make the same mistakes twice.