Harry sat up in bed. He felt extremely tired and disoriented. He'd not stayed up late doing homework last night – he'd . . . and then he remembered.

Harry slinked his eyes twice, both to force the numbing sleep that was creeping across them, and to make sure he wasn't just remembering a particularly weird dream.

Impossible and inexplicable as it seemed, Harry remembered putting on his invisibility cloak, creeping down to the dungeons, entering professor Snape's Chambers and . . . and . . .

Harry felt dirtier than he had ever felt before in his life. Even that time when Neville's ridiculous plant had squirted him with its stinksap.

But whatever could have possessed him to . . . and Snape, as Harry remembered, he didn't exactly complain when he started to . . .

Just then, Ron bounded over, fully dressed, and shouted in Harry's face. 'Come on sleepy-head! Get up, or you'll miss breakfast!'

Harry groaned and turned over. He knew he had to get up, or the others would realise something was wrong. He staggered out of bed and threw his robes on; trying not to think about whose cold stone floor they had been lying on the night before.

*~*

Sitting at breakfast, Hermione seemed rather distracted. She kept looking at Harry as if she was seeing him for the first time. 'She knows!' thought Harry, immediately chastising himself for his paranoia. Ron kept chattering away about the house Quidditch match against Slytherin later that month, but both Hermione and Harry kept quiet, answering monosyllabically, bent over their bacon and eggs.

Harry found the eating particularly arduous because of a strange and inexplicable ache in his jaw.

In the end, Harry gave in to the impulse that had been bothering him throughout his meal, and turned to look at the staff table.

There sat Professor Snape, as moody and greasy as ever. He was silently devouring a bowl of Coco-Pops (he just loved the way they turned the milk chocolatey). When he saw Harry looking in his direction, however, he held the boy's gaze and brushed his empty spoon suggestively against his lips.

Harry jerked back towards his breakfast, trying to calm his breathing, avoid the blind panic that was threatening to overpower him. That greasy git was making a pass at him! (Harry did have to admit to himself that he might have given his Potions Master . . . well . . . the wrong impression the previous night.)

Hermione had seen the entirety of this exchange, and thought she had a pretty good handle on the situation.

After breakfast, she cornered Harry, and let him know how she felt. 'Harry, I'd just like you to know that I – and I don't think I'm at all alone in this – will love you for who you are, no matter who that is.'

The vaguity of her speech confused Harry – what the hell was she wittering on about now?

'And I know that the Wizarding world is more archaic than the Muggle world in a lot of its rules, but it is very accepting of different ways of life – just look at Dumbledore's brother!'

As the memory of Aberforth Dumbledore – who lived in Wiltshire with a Shetland Pony – seeped into the front of Harry's mind, he realised what Hermione was talking about.

'But I . . . it's not like . . . how do you know?'

'I saw you leaving the common room, and I . . . well I followed you.'

'Why didn't you stop me then?'

'Well to be honest, Harry . . . you didn't much look like you wanted to be stopped.'

Knowing the truth of her assumptions, Harry lowered his gaze and started to walk on.

'But, Harry . . . why did you do that if you didn't want to?'

'I don't know,' he growled under his breath, and stalked off.

He was already dreading the double Potions lesson that he had that afternoon.

*~*

Harry sat next to Hermione in the back row of the Potions classroom. His mouth was dry and his hands were shaking – who knew what Professor Snape would try?

The lesson began with the theory of the potion they were going to be brewing – a simple enough potion for calming. This passed without much event, from Harry's point of view – he kept his gaze locked on his parchment, writing every word that escaped Snape's mouth. He'd never been such an attentive student.

And then Snape set them all to the making of the potion – as the ingredients were laid out ready for them, Harry did not have to approach the front of the classroom and simply stayed at his desk, adding ingredients, stirring and heating as the recipe required.

The lesson was soon almost over, and Harry was very relieved. As he added his cats-claw bark, however, he noticed that his potion was not the light blue of Hermione's, but a gloopy yellow gunk.

He wasn't going to draw Snape's attention to it, however – he tried to get Hermione's attention, to ask her what he'd done wrong, but as he turned to her, he heard a voice like an icy blast behind him.

'Make a . . . miscalculation, Potter?'

Harry's entire body froze. His teacher's voice was quiet – unusual, as he would normally have taken joy in sharing his least-favourite pupil's misfortunes with the rest of the class. The only other person who seemed to be aware of his presence at the back of the classroom was Hermione – who seemed to be paying even more attention than usual to her potion.

Snape came even closer behind Harry, looking over the boy's shoulder and into the cauldron.

'Stirred three times clockwise, I see . . . I seem to recall you having a better . . . grasp of the ways of the world than that, Potter.'

This was nothing more than a whisper, a breath of air brushing Harry's ear.

Snape stepped even closer, reaching across Harry and placing his hand over the boy's on the stirring rod in the cauldron. Cold, thin fingers laced through warm teenage ones, palm tight against back of hand.

As Snape moved both their arms as one, he pressed his whole body into Harry's back, and whispered, slowly, 'anti . . . clock . . . wise'.

All of a sudden, the older man seemed to remember himself and, stepping swiftly away from Harry, knocking his cauldron onto the floor.

The whole class turned to look as he said, disdainfully, 'Oh, do clear that up, Potter. The rest of you – in flagons, on my desk, be gone in five minutes.'

And he glided out of the classroom into his chamber.

Harry, of course, was left clearing up the mess he had made long after the rest of the class had disappeared. Hermione, who would normally have waited for him, seemed in a great rush to get away.

As he mopped up the last few splashes of spilt potion, Harry saw a shadow move across the ground and come to rest over him. Looking ever-so-slightly up, he saw a pair of naked feet and ankles, and then the hem of a shiny black robe with green and silver stitching.

He stood up, quickly, putting the cloth down on the table, and edging his way around his satin-clad obstruction.

'I – I've got a lot of prep tonight, sir.'

Snape slid into Harry's way, hands on the desk, one either side of the boy, trapping him.

'Nothing you can't handle, I'm sure,' he said, kissing Harry's neck.

'Really sir, I,'

'No-one's going to find us here, if that's what you're worried about.'

Unbuttoning robes. Cold hands running over naked neck and shoulders. Soft kisses on unblemished flesh.

'Sir, I really, I don't think,'

Re-buttoning of robes, trying to back away, finding strong wooden desk in resistance

'Nonsense, boy, no-one is asking you to think!'

Shoulders roughly grabbed, a fiercely possessive kiss, hands wandering, wandering,

'Stop!' A slight falsetto, a slight suggestion that the wandering hands had wandered too far – too near.

Harry fought his way out of Professor Snape's grasp, racing out of the classroom, running straight into Draco Malfoy.