Series: Minor Arcana. Sequel to "Declaro" (rating R). You really need to read that first. Find it through the author link @ ff.net or skyehawke.com.

Rating: R.

Pairings: This section – pretty much SS/HP.

Notes: Second part of "Temperance". If anyone notes the time discontinuity, blame Cal – well no blame me, I had too much going on in too short a time and she pointed it out. The revised version @ skyehawke, for those of you reading the drafts on ff.net, has Snape sending the Ravenclaws back to their dorm by midnight. Which probably none of you care about at all, but obviously I do. This update is a little shorter, because, um, focused.

Spoilers: Various up to the end of Book IV. No OotP whatsoever.

Dedication: Though she's not around to see it – Chapter VI is for switchknife, who made me believe it was actually good.

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling and various corporate tentacles.

Archiving: Only where I've agreed.

Feedback/Reviews: Please, it's just plain encouraging. I'm especially grateful to people who give me some direction as to what works and what doesn't.

Pervinco VI (b): Temperance

Snape opened the door as he felt the fresh ward tingle in the corridor. He sensed the slight movement of air past him and almost thought he could smell something like Harry Potter. He mocked himself internally as he closed the door. Fanciful. He looked at his hand on the door as he locked it – locked he and Harry Potter inside his rooms at 3am in the morning. Idiot. His hand lingered at the door for a moment. He heard Potter moving in the room. Breathe and set the wards.

As Severus turned Harry's head appeared above the cloak. "Hi," he said.

That was ridiculous. Snape strode with a scowl towards the fireplace. "Now that we've enacted a range of feeble romantic clichés, what is it that you want?" He raised the fire with a command and turned to the cabinet to pour himself a drink. He would not offer any to the boy. Everything was already bad enough.

"I. . . you asked me to come," Harry said warily behind him.

"You keep saying you want some kind of explanation – so, of what, exactly?" Snape turned from the fire with a smirk that he quickly had to swallow.

The colour was entirely wrong and the fabric was ridiculous on him, the loose limbs of an adolescent draped in something meant for trained poise, but it was ridiculously erotic. Not just Harry Potter in a costume so obviously designed for sexual display; not just his beautiful self-consciousness about wearing it – one arm slid awkwardly across his abdomen as he realised he was being looked at; but it mirrored the contradictions of the boy himself. Vulnerability and power, naïveté and experience, foolishness and a singular wisdom, the blue silk robe and the metal circle lying flush against the bottom of the boy's neck, maybe also Potter's outrageous gall in being here and his shock that he was.

"Draco was right, it's hideous isn't it?" Harry said, crossing his arms over his waist. When Snape didn't reply the blush deepened a little and he shuffled on his feet. "Any chance of moving on to the white one before breakfast?"

After a moment in which Severus, for once, really wasn't sure what he was about to do, he said, "Do you want a drink?" Which was inadvisable, but not the worst thing he could have said.

Harry shook his head but then, as Snape gestured for him to come and take a seat – gestured to the lounge beside him, clearly indicating Harry should sit there – he blurted out a panicked "Yes, okay."

Severus didn't watch Harry as he came across the room and sat down. He very slowly poured a small glass of red wine. "So, what is it you think I need to tell you, Mr Potter," he said quietly. He was careful, when returning, to only obliquely look at the boy.

"You know you're right," Harry said after a moment, "I'm not sure. But all of this," Harry gestured vaguely, encompassing everything rather than merely Snape's rooms, "is confusing enough without people refusing to say what they. . . what they really want."

"Has it ever occurred to you," Severus paused to reconsider, but went on, "Harry," he let the emphasis drift and felt a slight movement in the blue thigh beside him, "that perhaps no one is so sure of what they really want?"

"Well, no one else seems to be as confused." Harry put the glass down without apparently having touched it, and Severus looked at him directly. The boy looked tired. Running a hand through his hair in a motion Severus already recognised, Harry smiled a little tentatively. "You know, sometimes it's easy to laugh at the idea that this is all some kind of dark plot, but someone just trying to kill you" – that apologetic smile, Snape thought, was horribly unsuited to someone able to make that comparison – "is certainly a lot simpler."

Snape pondered that in his whiskey glass. Really, it was time to get the boy out of here and go to bed. "If you ask me a question I will endeavour to answer it."

"But no guarantees of course," Harry said lightly.

Snape didn't contradict him.

Harry took up his glass and drained it too quickly.

* * *

Snape had pointedly not offered Harry any more wine. He hadn't indicated that he wanted him to leave, though Harry had so far not managed to phrase a question he could stand to hear himself ask – it really had been easier in writing and from a distance – there hadn't been any further gestures of hospitality either. They just sat there, Harry fermenting embarrassment and Snape sipping his drink. Harry wished he could manufacture some real outrage at that but instead, forcing back some kind of lump in his throat, he rather feebly said, "Is Draco in love with you?

The calm progress of Snape's glass hesitated. "You need to ask Mr Malfoy that."

"Hah. He says less than you – or rather he says a lot more, but almost all of it is lies."

"Perhaps this is a conversation you actually want to have with him."

"No."

Only a foot or so away from him, Harry noticed Snape's shirt slip out through the unbuttoned collar of his robe and pull back in again as he moved his arm. He flushed as his cock clearly twitched, and told himself a little frantically that Snape couldn't tell. Not all of him was convinced. But, why had he been asked here? Surely Snape would kiss him, touch him? Of course, maybe he would send him away embarrassed and horny instead, but right now Harry couldn't help being slightly thrilled by the anticipation and by, he laughed at himself, glimpses of Snape's shirt.

"No," Harry said again. "Are you in love with Draco?"

Snape seemed genuinely surprised. "I can't imagine ever fancying myself 'in love' with anyone. It reeks of banal sentimentality, and is too often a fool's excuse for recklessness."

"I have no idea, you know, if that's an answer."

"It's a no, Mr Potter," Snape replied emphatically.

"A qualified no," Harry ventured.

Snape swallowed a glass of whatever it was he was drinking, and said "And are you in love with Draco Malfoy?"

Harry almost laughed, but held it back. "I don't think so."

"Now that, Mr Potter, is a qualified no."

Harry laughed abruptly and felt the circle shift against his skin. He put a hand to it, just above the open neck of the embarrassing robe, running a finger between the strange metal and his skin – maybe the ring was better, this form was so public, and invasive.

He saw Snape move before he felt his hand. Snape ran a finger along the flattened surface of the circle – it shifted, not rigid as metal should be, and yet hard to the touch.

"It feels rather strange," Harry managed to say, but his heart was already beating rapidly as Snape ran one and then several fingers along the curve and crest of the circle against Harry's neck.

"The circle?" Snape said, softly, flattening his whole hand across it, in a caress that covered Harry's skin as much as the Chalybs. "There are some interesting books on it, if you care to look."

"No, I meant you touching me," Harry said. Snape's hand lifted away, and Harry caught it with his own. "Touch me some more."

In the briefest pause Harry's was intensely aware of avoiding Snape's gaze, and then Snape wrapped the hand around Harry's neck and pulled him closer, kissing softly at his mouth and face. The softness was shocking and thrilling, he hadn't expected. . . A long hand drew his glasses away and the slight loss of focus seemed to fit the situation perfectly. Snape ran the hand across Harry's neck and then, pressing more firmly, across his chest, curving round a pectoral muscle and resting a thumb across his nipple, which peaked under the slippery cloth. The sensation was more disorienting than the loss of his glasses, more intimate than the hand on his throat.

Harry made a noise like a sigh and slid a hand into Snape's hair. He put the other to Snape's face, guiding the man's mouth back to his own, flicking his eyes up to catch Snape looking at him with those darkly intense eyes. Embarrassment, excitement, and something hotter and brighter spread down and out through his body as Harry pressed a kiss to Snape's mouth and, when it opened slightly on an audible breath, slid his tongue across Snape's lips and, his stomach clenched, into Snape's mouth.

A hand slid across his thigh. It was hot through the silk, which was fine enough to let him feel the added roughness at Snape's fingertips. Harry pressed closer and concentrated on sliding his tongue around Snape's. A much better kiss, some part of his mind cheered.

Then Snape's hand rucked the silk back up his naked leg and Harry threw his head back in a gasp at the sensation and the exposure. Snape's mouth descended on his throat.

Flashes of his dream heightened the tension in his cock, now pushing against the underpants that were all he could really wear under this robe. The words 'magically heated' rattled through his brain as one of his hands started scrabbling for the fastenings at the front of Snape's robe. He bit off a nervous giggle and then flushed all over, but Snape didn't seem to notice, working the drape of the silk robe up Harry's legs and sucking and nipping fiercely at his throat above the circle which, god, merlin, whoever, felt so good. Harry lifted his hips into the pleasure and one of Snape's hands pushed him back down.

Back back stop, Harry screamed in his mind. Not this, not now, not again. Trelawney naked, he thought desperately. Oh, not gross just funny – he fought back another giggle, swallowing it painfully, and the rush of humiliation at the idea of him giggling and blushing and humping the air was more than enough to drag him back from coming.

"Now is not the time to start thinking," Snape whispered against the side of his face, and suddenly there was a hand helping him with the black linen robe, and another working at the buttons on Harry's shoulder. As soon as he could he put his face to the white cotton of Snape's shirt, breathing it in once more. As the outer robe was pulled away Harry, with at least a heartbeat of hesitation, undid the next button on the shirt and pressed a wet open kiss to Snape's collarbone.

He felt Snape breathe out against the back his neck. An arm around his waist and another at his now exposed hip dragged him across the lounge and across Snape's lap. His now heavy cock, pressed against the cloth of his pants, pressed also into Snape's body. Part of him wanted to struggle for more nakedness, but the rest of him more desperately wanted to press and rub and kiss.

Somehow the buttons on his robe were undone, and with a strange noise Snape ran a hand across his exposed stomach. Harry shivered, rocking back, and the sensation in his cock was incredible. Not Trelawney, he thought; suddenly the repression charm came to mind and he tried to begin it, but Snape's hand was on his arse under the fall of blue silk hanging from his arms, pushing him forward and up. Snape was pressing against him too, and another arm firmly brought Harry's mouth back to his.

He kissed his lips, which were not hard, and kissed into Snape's hair, which was fine and soft. He tried to get his hands, loosely around Snape's neck and grasping his shirt, to do something more – particularly something to draw that quiet almost shocked noise from Snape again – but his skin crawled with electric sparks and his eyes wouldn't open. He ached for more friction and harder, to be somewhere else where he could just let Snape do this to him, or maybe do something else entirely. A hand ran up his back, fluttering the silk, and Harry moved slightly faster as it urged him to do. The come seeping through his pants made them wet and he wanted them off but he had to press harder. Snape tightened a hand on his arse, fisted a hand in his hair pulling his head back to growl across his neck and thrust against Harry hard. The circle spectacularly throbbed and with a sob Harry arched and came.

The stretch of time in which Harry lay, straddled across Snape's lap and draped across his body, breathing hard and then more slowly, was one of the longest Harry could remember. He blinked his eyes and wished for his glasses so he could see what they must look like, dark blue silk hanging down his back and over Snape's legs, Harry's naked torso held against Snape's half-open shirt, his black hair pillowed on Snape's shoulder.

The man shifted beneath him and, suddenly mortified, Harry tried to drag himself off. He expected to stumble, but didn't. His back turned to Snape he tried to close the buttons that crossed the front of his robe, but his fingers seemed clumsy. From behind him and without a word Snape fastened the ones at his shoulder and, breathing carefully, Harry closed the others as they easily fell into place.

The fire was down to glowing coals now, he felt cold and uncomfortable.

"Let me show you where the bathroom is," Snape's voice said.

* * *

At the door, Snape put a hand on Harry's arm. He turned without looking up and the Professor placed a small vial in his hand.

"My version of Pepper-Up," the Professor said. "You'll probably need it before class."

"Thanks." Five minutes staring at himself in the mirror hadn't really helped him feel less like someone who was not Harry Potter, or less like someone who'd. . . just done what he'd done.

Snape was clearly directing him to leave, even handing him the invisibility cloak and saying something about where Filch would be.

"I know," Harry said quietly.

"Of course you do."

There was another awkward silence.

"Goodbye," Harry said as he left.

* * *

tbc