Author's note: This being fanfiction, the standard disclaimers apply. I'm not sure how bad or good this is, but if anyone reads it, they're welcome to tell me.
RED
Say it's Christmas break at Hogwarts, say Ron and Hermione are at the Burrow or somewhere else making out like rabbits, not necessarily with each other; say the Fat Lady is too drunk to notice anything amiss about letting a ( Slytherin! ) teacher entering the ( Gryffindor! ) boys' dormitory in the wee hours of the morning. Harry imagines Snape saying the password – "Exploding Bonbons" – with as much distaste as he does the ones for Dumbledore's office.
Say we skip the malicious banter and lines being crossed and all that. Jump forward to:
Harry's hands clawing at the pillow he's kept since first year, and Snape pounding into him, and the exquisitely spaced seismic tremors that must follow. ( Harry, after ten years in a cupboard and six in a dorm, is quiet; Snape is quiet period ) And don't forget, since that's the point of it, that this is the Gryffindor dorm.
Harry won't ask if the profusion of red and gold gives Snape a bloody headache. It's delicious, ( inappropriate! evil. sofuckinggood. ) taking Harry "the boy who lived" Potter in his own dorm and on his own bed, and Snape is, among other things, a vile, petty bastard.
" It's part of your charm, " he tells the Potions master sweetly. Savours the sight of a bead of sweat inching its way so slowly down the steep slope of Snape's nose. Snape won't say anything, and soon they'll begin again.
This time they'll bruise each other.
Snape will roll away and glide off the bed, shrugging off the warm crimson sheets irritably. As he dresses, quick but not fumbling, ( never fumbling ), Harry will speak for the second time.
" You'd look good in red… Professor. "
And it's perfect, because, as if on cue, an angry blush tricks its way onto Snape's ( not so sallow ) face.
" Shut up, Potter, " he'll spit out, ( those are the Three Golden Words – he won't say any other, there are no endearments like that hiss of defeat/rage ) and leave.
Suddenly, an image in his mind's eye, so clear that it could almost not be ten years old, ( Harry's wide eyes peering over Dudley's massive back at the T.V. screen, at ) : the bull, glossy black bulk turning like an errant thundercloud, nostrils flared, demon-eyes fixed on the toreador's bloodred cape.
Harry laughs till his sides ache, and the whole dorm is echoing with his laughter, drowning in a sea of red.
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