Harry stood just behind the door, the tingles radiating off it into his back. His breath heaved his chest faster than he would have it and he willed it to go smoother and softer. When he thought he could trust his breath to obey him, he lifted his eyes to the king of the dungeon.

Dark silky menace. Eyes, hair, clothes. Harry gulped. The Potions master loomed over his desk, a stack of paper on either side, a quill in the left hand that just now decided to drip a bright green spot onto the desk. The pale brooding face darkened even more, the creak between the brows becoming more visible, the mouth set into a thin line.

"You", he growled, trying to wipe away the smear, "are a completely superfluous presence in this room, Mr. Potter, look what you did now."

Harry couldn't help grinning. The man had found fault with him from the first day they met. It couldn't escape even him that Harry was not the one holding the quill. "I'm not the one to blame if I make you shiver, Sir", he said with his lowest voice.

The black head jerked up, the dark eyes narrowed and the mouth set. Harry managed to hold his stand, but it was not easy. He knew he was not the one to blame for that, he knew it he knew it – what exactly was it that he knew? He shivered. "Cold inhere", he added completely superficially.

The mouth set even more, the teeth must be clenching so hard it hurt, thought Harry. The lips opened, then closed again, when the dark eyes discovered that even more ink was dripping on the paper. Eyes became nearly invisible and a hiss escaped clenched teeth which made it even harder for Harry to stand. A movement with the hand not holding the quill followed, and the paper in question went up in smoke and shrieks. Harry thought he heard Neville's voice, stumbling about the ingredients of a potion. He raised an eyebrow in an uncanny imitation of the other man, clearly not even Snape could just burn the papers of students? Well, yes, it seemed so. Snape gave him a defying stare that Harry recalled having seen in a Muggle movie once, on a Sheriff who had cut the hero with his sword, telling him that now they were even.

Then the man was up and around his desk, his cloak billowing about him and stopping just inches away from Harry. "Pity", he said with that voice the boy remembered just too well, "I'm devastated that my rooms don't meet your requirements, Mr. Potter."

"You bet", said Harry, a little breathless. Well, who needed breath anyway? Was a much overrated experience anyhow. He had survived in a cupboard after all, and there had not been too much air in that one.

"I fail to see the reason behind your madness, Potter", the dark seducing voice growled. Harry had yet to fathom how it could be that something was so frightening and arousing at the same time. But he didn't really care enough to work it all out. There was perhaps a reason behind it all, lying deeply rooted in his childhood, but he couldn't care less at the moment. Knowledge, book knowledge at that, was not exactly what he expected to learn from this teacher. He cocked a questioning eyebrow at the man, whose frown deepened as his own weapon was pushed against him. "I'm sorry that I overestimated your thinking capacities, Potter. My fault, entirely. In all the years I had the indefinite pleasure of teaching you, you never gave me reason to think highly of the thing you have between your ears. And I don't mean those eyes which some people, especially your fans out there, might term endearing."

Harry broke the eye contact to hide his blushing. A compliment wrapped in pure venom – a gift that only Snape could give that freely and perfectly. "You were saying?", he asked rather stubbornly. "Assuming that you were saying anything at all, other than only listening to your own voice berating me, something you should have grown tired of by now."

Ha! Harry couldn't suppress a smile. That had done it nicely. The thin mouth gave a curl that was involuntary, it just had to. "Do you mean to come into my own rooms which seem not to be meeting your approval as does my conversation, to tell me what I should have grown tired of?"

Harry squirmed. "Not exactly", he mumbled. "Quite on the contrary, if truth be told."

The frown on the other man's face grew deeper. The dark eyes narrowed until they were only slightly larger than a pinhead. "And as you are a Gryffindor to the bone, you are as compelled to tell the truth as you are to save the world, are you not, Potter?" The voice had been coated in honey, but there was pure venom behind, so deadly a basilisk would have been envious of it.

Harry had a hard time. There were so many ways in which he could do himself in, in only answering that question. Snape always did that. Slamming completely contradictory sentences together, mostly down-putting remarks about the intruder's character, and framing them as an answer. And if you did indeed answer, after making out the different ingredients, it was only to utter a "yes" or "no", or to begin trying to defend yourself. Every action left Snape as the master of speech and the other interlocutor as a victim to his tongue.

Harry would not have it. He had known the man for quite a time now. He knew all his tricks. Didn't mean they weren't working on him, too, but he wouldn't make it as easy for him as he had in first year. Stammering wouldn't do, admitting you didn't know the answer wouldn't do, defying the man wouldn't do.

He stepped a little closer, trying to just not breathe in too deeply. The smell of the teacher just added to his becoming a small lump of goo in his presence. And that was not what he wanted, just now. Just not now now. A little later, perhaps.

"No, I'm not a Gryffindor to the bone, Professor Snape, and you know it. You know as well as I that I'm not compelled to tell the complete truth when not under Veritaserum. And you know as well that I'm equally not compelled to save the world but am made to do so despite my wish of being left alone in peace and live a normal life."

Oh God! He had done himself in again. He knew it from the sardonic hint of a smile that curled Snape's lip. He swallowed. He had got taken away. The beginning had been good enough, but then. He suppressed a whimper, as the other man swooped closer, his black robes slithering about him, touching him. They seemed to have a life of their own. Hot, and cold, stern, and floating. Harry gulped again.

The eyes came closer and closer, the hawk-like nose nearly hit his own smaller one, filling his vision almost completely. There was room for eyes and mouth and a little hair, though. The mouth opened to breathe onto him. Harry shivered.

"And why is it, then, Potter, that you come here to me, disturbing my peace and freedom, to pester me with your presence? How can doing that possibly add to your living a normal life in peace and harmony and all that?"