"I I ", stuttered Harry and fought the desperate urge to hide his bareness. Snape had already had ample time and opportunity to see whatever he wanted to. If he wanted. The eyebrow went up in mild interest. "Yes, Mr. Potter?" Gods, that voice. Yes, he should hide, try to hide, at least, part of his body. Oh bollocks. "Am naked", he added lamely and could have killed himself right afterwards. How could he say that? Well, seemed to be the one thought that was foremost in his mind. Small wonder.

"You don't say". Mild astonishment on the face of the Potions teacher. Harry would have killed him, had he seen a chance of hitting on Snape, naked, without embarrassing himself further. It that was possible. The possibility dwindled as the minutes went along, in direct proportion, only reverse, of his bodily state. Harry felt Snape's eyes on him again and assembled all his reputed Gryffindor courage to look the man in the eye.

Snape nodded slowly. He looked at Harry as if seeing a new and not too interesting specimen of potions elixir someone had inadvertently stuffed under his nose. "Now that you say it – yes you are. I hadn't noticed." Harry snorted against his will. "You bet", he blurted out, humiliation be damned. It couldn't get worse, now could it. "I don't", said Snape determinedly. "But I admit to still owning a little measure of curiosity. Would you care to enlighten me why that is so?" The glare got harder. "Especially as you seemed so eager to convince me that you hadn't come to – talk – to me, like all the others."

Oh, all right. Harry lost all hope. If his body betrayed him like that, his mind and soul and the little brains he had, and wherever anything inside him belonged and connected with each other and what the heck. Snape wouldn't believe him anyway.

"I didn't know I was naked", he said and looked up from under his fringe. "I just - kind of donned my cloak and – went". It sounded lame, yes he knew, but it was the truth. He hadn't even thought about presenting himself naked to Snape who would then undoubtedly ravish him on the spot, make him come with a kiss and a quick hard – well, of course he had, but only in his dreams, in his dreams and while he fought the attraction. Oh, shite. Perhaps he should have listened to Hermione when she was on about something she called psychology after spending a holiday with some friends of her parents. She had been blabbering about something she insisted on calling the subconscious. He and Ron had made fun of it, and her, like every time she came up with something she took so seriously. Well, he got his reward for that, after all, it seemed. Hermione would be so thrilled.

"I see". Snape's eyes looked like they had done in class when Harry tried to convince him that he had not forgotten his homework but had been lying in the hospital wing and therefore couldn't do it. His heart sank. Snape's eyes were on him and the eyebrow looked highly dubiously. "You didn't know that you were naked, you just put on your cloak and went?" The tone was clipped, as if Snape was keen on repeating Harry's words without a fault. "Yes". Harry felt relieved. Perhaps Snape would simply let him go, out of here, out of his life, from this earth – simply – away.

No such luck. "Just indulge me a little longer", Snape said in that soft tone that was a token of his more enquiring moods – the one he used to lull you in before he came upon you like a ton of bricks. Harry knew it well, but what could he do? He shivered in anticipation. "I am not as young as I used to be, and two in the morning is not my finest hour, so let me try to spell this out – again. You were naked, put on your invisibility cloak" – Harry noticed that Snape had no problem whatsoever with the word invisibility, oh what a fool he was, had been and would always be! – "and went out of your dorm in the middle of the night. You knocked on my door, and when I opened, you slipped in unnoticed. You let me get on with what I was doing, until I found you out. But you didn't come to – talk – to me or even see me. Is that a correct synopsis of what you said?" Deceivingly soft, and oh so low. Harry felt his spine shrink and going in on itself. "Yes", was all he could say, and even to his own ears it sounded very weak indeed. Didn't help that his body was bound on counteracting his words – again. Oh hell! He was so dead. He looked down on his toes again. Even they were red as if ashamed of him, he noticed morosely.

A big warm hand was under his chin and lifted his face up none too softly. "You are lying", a deadly voice said. "Am not", cried Harry, pretending as much as he could to be as outraged as he wished to be. A thumb stroked his mouth and the creak of his chin, silencing Harry more effectively than anything else could have. "You - are – lying, Mr. Potter." Harry felt his hairs stand on end. The voice was deadly, yes, but his body seemed bound to live on as long and strong as it could. Which would only make his death more painful and humiliating, he knew it.

"No", he said weakly, driven more by his seven years as a student of this teacher, than by anything else. The thumb stroked again, in a manner that couldn't be really called a caress – but neither was it torture. Well, at least not torture of a kind heretofore known to Harry. The man had unknown depths still to travel after all these years, thought Harry and tried to swallow. He simply must. But it wasn't easy. "How do you know?", he asked against his will, lead on by the mesmerising stroking and the stare in those black eyes, completely distracted from what he wanted Snape to believe through his bodily reactions.

"Your lips moved", said Snape matter-of-factly. Harry felt the outrage these words merited only through a cotton wall. It was so nice being touched by Snape, being looked at by Snape, standing naked in front of Snape, with a body tingling with sensation and ready to reach out to higher goals. Wait. There was something wrong here. Terribly wrong.

"What?", said Snape in a voice that denoted humour with him. "No outrage? No good old Gryffindor moralistic tirade?" "No", said Harry, dreamily following the thumb with his eyes and licking his lips unwittingly. "Oh", Snape made a small sound that mirrored the cocking of his eyebrow. "You find me amazed, Mr. Potter. This is really the first time you don't object to my calling you a liar. How come?"

Harry looked at the thumb longingly. "Isn't important", he murmured. "Just get on with it." There was a sound Harry had never heard before, but decided he could live without. Snape laughed, and it was not a pleasant laugh. "Eager, are we?" Harry just about managed not to nod to eagerly. He didn't manage not to bite down on the thumb which just was too tempting for words. And so close.

"Argh", cried Snape and retraced his maltreated limb from Harry's mouth none too gently. "You are completely mad, aren't you, Potter?" Harry looked vaguely in the direction of the red and swollen appendix and nodded. Well, yes, perhaps he was. Now that he thought about it. Not that he wanted to think. Not really.

The eyes of the Potions master became dark menacing slits and came close. Very close. "Don't fuck with me, Potter". Had he thought the eyes were menacing? Well, nothing against the voice. Really. And not only menacing. Well, not completely unwelcome evil menacing, like that by Tom Riddle, for example. His body – reacted – even more. His throat constricted but not before his mind, having wound itself around the more intriguing part of Snape's speech, blew out of his mouth with something like a gurgle. "grwrbrpplease".