Author's Note - Here's where it gets Rated R, folks.

It was an easy matter following Seamus down the corridors to the dungeon. Seamus was still not reaccustomed to what noises were natural in a drafty castle and what noises were caused by the pad of footsteps and the slide of fabric against the floor.

Remus's protests rose to Harry's mind once or twice as they went. Snape was back to help, of course. He was still considered part of the Order, even if he had run away. Whatever was in those potions Snape fed Seamus couldn't be what Harry was thinking. It just couldn't.

Remus could be gullible at times.

He followed Seamus into the dungeons, where the cloak became doubly useful against the drop in temperature. Seamus navigated the corridors easily and soon stopped and spoke a charm to open a door. Wandless, too. Harry absently wondered how he did it. Snape must have set the door to recognize his voice.

Seamus entered the room and looked around for a few seconds before he turned to shut the door. Harry had plenty of time to slide in around him.

Snape wasn't in sight. Seamus went towards the kitchen.

Harry took in the heavy furniture, the dark woods and rich greens and blacks, and his eyes widened. Nice. Much nicer than the dorms. There were things there, pillows, candles, things that were more luxury than necessity. He never would have thought it of Snape. He had expected spartan walls and a concrete bed. Or a coffin.

The door behind him burst open, and he jumped and darted out of the way as a glowering Snape came in. There was fury in those black eyes.

"Where are you?"

Seamus came out of the kitchen. His eyebrows were raised but that was the only surprise he showed at Snape's tone. "Right here. I just got back." Seamus had an empty goblet in his hand which he raised with a faint smile. "Thanks for leaving it."

Harry moved to hug the wall as Snape passed on his way to Seamus, and moved around them to watch from further inside. He saw Snape grab the goblet and peer in, as if making sure Seamus had swallowed the full dose. Black eyes narrowed then relaxed, and Snape set the goblet on the table. He moved through a doorway without a word or a glance at Seamus.

Seamus followed, and Harry was on his tail fast in case the door got shut. He bit back a surprised sound when he saw the rich and ornate bedroom, the large pillowy bed and grounded tub. Half of him wanted to simply walk around and explore where Severus Snape spent his time. But his mind stayed on his mission, and he faced the two men again.

"You look tired," Seamus said.

Snape released the clasp of his robe. He shrugged the black fabric off and started undoing the cuffs of his shirt. "I don't know why he bothers with these talks. It's the same as it ever was. He can cluck and offer sympathy and lemon drops, but he's useless to actually solve anything."

Harry's hands curled into fists.

Seamus sat on the bed. "Severus, he's not the one giving you trouble."

"He's the one keeping me here."

"He can't change their minds anymore than he could change yours."

Snape's eyes flashed. "I don't keep you here to argue with me, boy."

Harry's eyebrows flew up.

Seamus smiled. "And he doesn't keep you here to ensure you get tormented by people who can't handle the fact that not all of the good guys are bright and likeable people."

Snape's eyes went to Seamus. "I'm not bright?" he replied with one eyebrow arched.

Seamus stood up. "You know what I mean. All golden and noble."

"You mean like you." Harry could hear the mockery in Snape's voice. He wondered how Seamus could listen to it and not explode in anger.

Seamus's hands went to Snape's waist. "No. I mean like Harry. Or any of them, really. I'm just as flawed as you. I never had that Gryffindor bravery they're so proud of."

"You're the bravest person I know."

Harry blinked at the sudden softness of Snape's voice. Still low, still cool, but there was something different in Snape's tone when he spoke to Seamus. Something Harry hadn't noticed until just then.

Harry moved around the other side of the bed so he could see them both. Snape's expression was softer. His pale hand came up and, with surprising gentleness, lay fingertips against Seamus's cheek. "And one of the wisest."

Seamus softened all over, laying his hand on Snape's outstretched arm. "Just the life I've lived, I suppose. I've been through a thing or two."

"No more than I have," came the argument.

"Much less than you have," Seamus agreed.

Harry studied him, looking for any sign of glaze in his eyes or hesitation, any hint that the words he spoke were induced by whatever potion he had taken.

But Seamus glowed, an openness about him that felt almost invasive to look at without being invited, and that almost made Harry uncomfortable.

All he could see was adoration on his former classmate.

"But there's a difference between us, Severus. The things I've been through have been left behind. You...you still live those bad years. You keep yourself buried under those emotions and you keep being affected by people for what they did years ago. You haven't gotten past it, Severus. I wish I could help you, because it would make this easier for you."

Snape shook his head, and Harry saw the oddness of a smile tilting his mouth. Not sharp, not a smirk. Not crooked or sarcastic or snide. A smile. "We're all living in the past here, Seamus. You may be the only true grown-up in this castle." There was irony in his voice - gentle, though, and if Harry had to call it something he would have called it warm.

It made Seamus grin. "In that one way only. And that's not saying a lot." His hand slid to skim down the front of Snape's shirt.

Snape...Harry would never think of him as a man. He would always be...just Snape. But he thought if he looked at him in just the right way he could see him without the slime around him. Whatever it was, potion or insanity or whatever, that kept Seamus there, it seemed to make just a little more sense as Harry saw how Snape looked at Seamus.

Merlin knew, Snape wasn't handsome. His face was lined, his hair greying. His nose was too large, his eyes too black. But right then his expression was soft and the lines were reduced. His eyes were black like the velvet midnight of the heavy drapes around the bed.

He was handsome at that moment. Was he drugging Seamus to keep him around? Maybe. Harry thought so. But was he doing it out of malice?

Snape felt for Seamus, it showed all over his face. But how much of it was love, and how much was the simple need of a bitter and lonely man to have someone young and handsome under his control?

Snape stroked Seamus's face, and black eyes seemed to darken even more. His smile faded. "I want you tonight."

Seamus's glow vanished just like that.

Harry frowned, studying him suddenly more intensely.

"Severus. "

"Don't argue." Snape's voice was gentle but the words were a command.

The sick feeling in Harry stirred at Seamus's response, a downturned nod. There was tension all over Seamus's body that he was unwilling to - or simple couldn't - fight off.

For a moment Harry had wanted to be wrong about Snape. But this was a crack in the facade.

Snape's fingers moved under Seamus's chin, nudging his eyes up. "Trust me."

Harry could see misery in Seamus's normally unclouded eyes, but with a small shake of his head Seamus made it fade, and his smile returned. "I do."

"Then don't act as if I'm asking to rape you."

Seamus laughed shakily. He leaned up to bring himself closer to Snape. But no kiss, not yet, just closed eyes and shared space. Preparing himself somehow?

Harry should have stopped it right then.

Seamus lifted a hand and slid it through short, strange, salt-and-pepper hair. "Severus." His voice shook.

Snape's smile returned.

Harry let out a breath. It looked as if the potion had kicked in at full strength.

"It's not like you to worry. Relax." Snape's voice was low; soothing, in an odd way.

Seamus nodded. "Make me." His face tilted up.

Practiced, ever-skilled pale fingers moved down Seamus's shirt, unfastening and revealing golden skin.

Harry bit his lip, backing against the nearby stone wall and averting his eyes. He should have left. Snape wouldn't hear the front door open and shut.

What other option did he have? To stay and watch his friend being...doing something unwilling, even if the potion made him think he wanted it?

Bloody fuck, what was Harry going to do about Snape? He still needed him. Or did he?

He turned bleak eyes back to the pair. In silence they undressed each other. Seamus was left clad in a pair of green trousers, and he was pushing at Severus's shirt to nudge it off his shoulders.

Harry's grim speculation vanished under morbid curiousity. He was getting a look at the beast himself, the man who had haunted him since his first year at Hogwarts.

Reedy and ribbed and long. Scarred, down his chest and arms. Harry was surprised - he had always assumed Voldemort tortured solely with magic. The Dark Mark shone black and hideous, but it took Harry a moment to realize what it was. It was deformed somehow, surrounded by scar tissue, angry red in spots where a Mark was normally a cold, inkish black.

It looked as if layers of it had been removed, only to reveal that the Mark was as deep as vein and tissue.

Seamus let the starched white shirt fall. He seemed to be breathing deeper, and slowly his hands came up to lay flat against that pale chest.

Harry's eyes were drawn by a gleam of silver, and he moved in a step closer to get a better look at the charm around Snape's neck. Jewelry didn't seem to be in his nature, but there it hung from a long chain. He had never seen it, so Snape must have worn it under his clothes. It seemed plain enough, a small circle of thin silver. It didn't even seem to be magical at all.

His attention hiccuped when Seamus's hands moved, fingers sliding down, stroking over curve and muscle and bone. Harry's stomach clenched when Seamus touched Severus's ribs, stroking with fingertips only.

The silence in the room was odd, uncomfortable for Harry. He glanced towards the door again with another admonission that he should leave. But the stone was solid against his back, and who knew what sort of noises he might make leaving that would thunder through the room and get him discovered.

It occured to him for the first time how dangerous it was being there. Snape was snappish when asked how he was doing - he considered that a foul invasion of privacy. What Harry was doing would get him killed if Snape found him.

"Seamus."

Harry's eyes jerked back to them at the strained sound of Snape's voice. Seamus still wasn't doing much of anything, just touching. Those fingertips skimmed up and down against his back. He stepped in, his face vanishing in the curve of Snape's shoulder.

Snape's hands came up and moved under Seamus's arms and lay against his back, holding the younger man in something like a hug. Harry could despise Snape and still admit that those long hands were graceful and strangely elegant. Deft when cutting into potion ingredients, formed perfectly for the slice of a wand through the air. Long, slender fingers; he could imagine they were good for more than just magic.

He grimaced when he realized what he was thinking.

Something was wrong here. Something didn't quite piece together.

Seamus stirred, the soft sound of kisses against skin reaching Harry's ears. Seamus moved up Snape's neck and to his jaw, pulling back after a moment.

They locked eyes, and Harry felt the change in the air. Snape was a master, truly, if a potion could make Seamus radiate what he did right then. His eyes were bright, face open in a way Seamus had never been able to shake. Harry couldn't reconcile it - he had never seen that expression before, not on anyone. Directed at a monster like Snape it was incongruous. Wrong.

Snape's eyes slid all over that face, intense and studying. Memorizing the look, Harry thought, and better that he did. He wouldn't see it for long.

When they finally came together and their mouths met, Harry actually sighed. He bit his lip, berating himself for getting caught up in such a sickening, false moment.

Merlin, it didn't look false. Seamus's body pressed in to Snape, and he made eager noises against the other man. A flash of tongues between them, hands sliding over Seamus's back.

They moved together back until they reached the bed. Snape sat, his hands never leaving Seamus, never allowing their mouths to part. Seamus knelt on the mattress, straddling Snape's legs. Never once losing contact.

It was then that Harry noticed a silver chain swinging from Seamus's neck. It looked exactly like the one Snape wore, and he frowned. Another method of control, perhaps?

Harry dragged his eyes from them to the door. His escape, and he had to make it. He didn't know what should have bothered him more - not stopping what was happening, not leaving, or not thinking it completely repulsive. He swallowed and tugged the cloak closer around him.

He looked back to see voracious kisses and quickening hands, and his heart pounded so loudly he couldn't believe they didn't hear it. He moved a hand over his chest as if it would mute the sound. Thoughts of escaping and disgust vanished.

He wasn't the most experienced person. He had been with a total of two girls, and neither time had felt comfortable. He didn't recognize this he was looking at. The sounds they made against each other were hungry, and the way they tore themselves away to gasp in a breath and dive right back in felt bizarre. They were at each other like food...like Dudley when dessert came.

He felt a flash of something like loneliness as Seamus urged Snape down on his back and began feasting on throat and shoulder and collarbone. How was it that someone could look at Snape so adoringly when no one had ever looked at Harry that way? How could Snape deserve that?

He didn't deserve it, Harry reminded himself sternly. He created it. He forced it. Every smirking lecture Snape had ever given on love potions came to Harry's mind, letting him feel anger instead of stirring or self-pity. How dare he?

Unspeakable bastard.

But it was hard to reconcile that to the tenderness on Snape's face and the gentleness in his hands as they threaded through Seamus's hair. The color in his cheeks suited him, Harry thought, and hated himself just a little more for it.

Seamus moved downwards, exploring as if unable to move on until every inch of the body beneath him was mapped out and sampled. Harry caught the flicker of tongue and whiteness of teeth, and heard Snape's breathing shift and bend. A bite over the left nipple made Snape's back arch. His hands clenched in Seamus's hair.

"Careful," he breathed out, his low voice a croak that made Harry flush. "No blood."

Seamus met his eyes for a moment and smiled, adoring as before. He nodded.

Harry was hit with a sharp wistfulness, and that more than anything made him look away as Seamus's hands reached for Snape's slacks. To witness this was bad enough, but to envy it? To want it for himself?

He would never force anyone. He would never bed anyone who was drugged or under suggestion, even if it made them so ardently, somehow coherently worshipful.

Soft sounds and rustles against sheets made him blush, and the need to look back was so strong he fisted his hands to fight it. He wasn't some voyeur. He had come out of concern, out of a need to know. He didn't have to see this. He knew.

He didn't need to stay. There was little doubt in his mind that Snape wouldn't notice him leaving.

A gasp from Snape, a helpless noise, made him look. His face went red, but he couldn't turn away. He was paralyzed by something stronger than imperio and more insidious because it came directly from himself.

He hated himself for the ache in his groin. He was painfully hard as he watched and listened, and though at times he managed to look away, for the most part he was a wrapt, uninvited, unwelcome audience.

When it was over they both slept. No sheets to cover them, no modesty in that room. Bare skin damp with sweat, gold lay sprawled across porcelain white. Slender fingers in blond hair, and swollen lips pressed against a thin chest.

Harry left, unheard by the pair.

The corridors felt different around him as he walked away from this strange world and back to somewhere that, even if it felt colder now, was still more familiar.