When Seamus awoke he announced it by turned his head and pressing lips against Severus's chest.

Severus brought a hand up to stroke through his hair. "Alright?"

"Mmm."

Seamus squirmed against him to get closer in a way that sent pleasant shivers through Severus's body.

"And no more silly cracks about your libido," Seamus murmured through heavy lips.

Severus chuckled.

Seamus's head lifted off his chest and turned up to look at him. "How did it go this morning, since I slept right through it?"

Severus waved a hand, grimacing. "Pointless. A cute story, at least so Granger seems to think, but nothing that could help us."

"Oh." Disappointment flashed through Seamus's eyes. "I'd hoped..."

"I know," Severus petted through his hair again. "But as we have neither a way to study high elf magic nor the ability to grant Potter the magic of house elves, it's completely irrelevant."

Seamus cocked his head, studying him. "But...well, is that what you were looking for? A stronger magic?"

"One that Potter is actually capable of would be nice."

Seamus frowned, turning his head and laying back against Severus's chest. "I guess I had the wrong idea."

Severus cleared his throat. He could hear Seamus's defeated tone, and though he usually had no patience for coddling, he recognized that Seamus was entirely out of his depth surrounded by magic he no longer used and problems he knew nothing about.

He glanced at the downturned face, seeing just a glimpse of skin past wild hair. "What was your idea?" he asked.

"I guess that the house elves still use magic like they would have used in the old days. No wands or words or anything, they just use what's there without filtering it at all." He shrugged awkwardly against Severus.

Severus nodded.

"Their magic is based on pure emotion rather than the effect they want it to have. It's more important to them why they're performing the magic than what they're actually attempting, and that..." He sighed, warm against Severus's skin. "I figured that must be how wizards used to do it."

Severus looked up at the ceiling, stroking fingertips up and down Seamus's back. "That's interesting."

"It's silly. I should have known-"

"Tell me why you saw the similarities there." Snape cast his tone more like the Professor he had been.

"You told me about the wizards before Merlin, the first ones. You said magic wasn't some ancient wonder passed down by the very first man, as some wizards like to think. It was an accident, right?"

Severus nodded.

"There were stories when I was growing up of normal Muggles who could do things that seemed like magic. An old mam in my town once held up a fallen beam from her roof to keep it from falling on her sick husband. She was feeble, but she did what few able-bodied young men could have done, until help arrived. My mam told me that she was maybe a witch who had never gotten a letter or a real education in magic. But I think she was an ordinary Muggle who tapped into magic somehow."

Severus smiled, unsurprised. "That sounds like something you would think."

"But that's magic, isn't it? And if a Muggle could make it work for her, and wizards back in the old days could move mountains with it, than it must be stronger than people think."

That was a point. People spoke of Old Magic as some strange awe-inspiring beast that had little in common with the magic of today. But magic itself didn't change; only how it was used.

"Go on," he said after a moment.

"Well, back in the old days, if they didn't know magic existed than they couldn't have been focused on what it was going to do. They made things happen simply by feeling so strongly and wanting so hard that they drew the magic in, right? They moved a mountain not by wanting a mountain moved, but by being so terrified of what would happen if that mountain stayed where it was that they couldn't help but get magic involved. "

It was more complicated than that, but Severus knew the basic idea was correct.

"So the difference is that back then they used magic based on emotion and need, and now we use magic based on convenience and expectation." Seamus looked up. "Right?"

"Right."

"I guess that's why Poddy's stories struck me. The reason the house elves make magic happen is just because they love and they care so much. They don't want what we want, they just love us so hard that the magic happens regardless. They control it more now than they used to, I imagine, but wouldn't it still be basically the same?"

Severus frowned. It was simplistic, that was the problem. Severus didn't trust simple answers. There was also no decent way to translate what house elves did to something that Potter could learn. He said as much out loud after a moment.

Seamus bit his lip, studying Severus's face as if the answer was there somehow. "But it doesn't need to be learned, does it? It's just what happens when you feel deeply enough."

"Seamus." Severus made his voice more gentle than he was used to. "Potter can't go to the Dark Lord's cell and simply hate him dead."

Seamus flushed. "You're right. I just..."

"There is nothing incorrect in anything you said," Severus added. "You understand a great deal more than you think you do. But if hating someone were enough to kill them, Potter would be dead ten times over. I've seen the Dark Lord. I know how he hates."

Seamus sighed and curled in to Severus. "It's a shame he hates so hard. He might have learned that hatred isn't the most powerful emotion to have towards someone."

Severus already knew the answer before he asked the question. "And what do you suppose the most powerful emotion is?" He sat up, letting Seamus extricate himself. "Care for tea?"

Seamus sat up after him, stretching his limbs langorously. "Yes, thanks." He smiled and scruffed a hand through his hair. "Love. Obviously."

Severus moved across the room to grab his robe. He glanced at the tub he had filled as he first went in that morning. It was still steaming with charmed water. "Clean yourself if you want."

Seamus glanced at the tub and grinned. Severus watched with a smirk, then turned to go to the small kitchen and his teapot. "I'm not sure you're right about that," he said as he moved.

"Why not?" The sounds of splashing water came through the doorway. A groan followed, as throaty and pleasured as any noise Severus could wring out of him.

Severus chuckled and set water in the pot to boiling, waving his wand at cups and saucers to get them loaded on a tray. "Because whenever I have seen a wizard do something extraordinary, it was always done out of hatred. Not love."

He waved the tray out the door back to the bedroom. "Love leads to sonnets and charmed valentines. Hatred leads to great and powerful things."

Seamus, sunk in the tub down to his chin, studied him. "You believe that."

Severus gestured the tea tray to the table nearest the tub as he slid his robe off. He approached and climbed into the water, sighing as the warmth made his limbs tingle.

Seamus shifted, moving in to him with a sponge in his hand. He set to work, taking Severus's right arm and gliding the soft sponge to his shoulder and back down. "Do you know what I think?"

"I can guess," Snape answered, his voice a murmur as he sank against the stone and tilted his head back.

Seamus moved to the other arm. "I think hatred can make you do big things. But without love there wouldn't even be hate. I think love is a hundred times more powerful."

"That's because you're a silly child."

The soft thwack of a sponge against his chest made him smile without opening his eyes.

"No. Because it's true." Seamus slid the sponge down, and Severus felt it tickle over his stomach and back up. He sighed.

"Without love, hate can't exist. Do you know who taught me that?"

Severus's eyebrows rose. "I can't imagine."

"You did, eejit."

His eyes opened. He looked at Seamus in quiet surprise, snorting more out of reflex than anything.

Seamus smiled, sliding in close and tangling his legs with Snape's to reach around and wash his back, gentle and firm. "When I was on my own before you found me, I felt hatred for the Death Eaters who killed my parents. I didn't feel any hate towards them for what it had done to me. I didn't hate the wizarding world for leaving me behind and never even coming to look for me. I didn't hate the people I fell in with, though there were some I really should have hated."

Severus nodded. The soft tickle of sponge went down his lower back and soothed over the top of his arse, but it was just a pleasant tingle in the background.

"Once I met you and loved you, I changed. I got happier in so many ways. I also began to hate those Death Eaters for taking me away. I began to hate the Ministry for not investigating and finding me. I despised some of those people in Belfast. And do you know why I started to hate?"

Snape didn't bother answering. He studied his young lover, taking in his quiet earnestness.

"Because you made me start to love myself again. And only when I could love myself could I muster up the energy or will to hate the people who hurt me. I hated my parents being killed because I loved them, but I didn't love myself enough, not for a long time after. When you don't love anything, you don't hate either. You resent, or get annoyed, but the power behind hate comes from the power of love."

Severus shook his head after a moment. "I have hated. Before you, I hated."

"You love yourself, Severus. And I'm glad of it. You love yourself because no one else ever had, and you hated them for it. But if you hadn't cared about yourself you wouldn't have hated them for teasing you in school, or You Know Who for having power over you."

"It's not that easy."

"Of course it is. If you see a stranger being hurt, how do you feel? Sorry, maybe, or disgusted, or sympathetic. But if you see someone you love being hurt...you feel rage and hate, and you would do anything to make it stop. Right?"

He thought about it. His eyelids slid shut as Seamus's attention went back to his front, the sponge sliding over his hips to his thighs. He decided to go along for the time being. "And whom does the Dark Lord love? He hates enough for a hundred people; who could he love enough to cause that?"

Seamus hesitated. "I don't know. The only things I've heard of him were the horror stories we were all told as children. I don't know anything of his life, back when he had one. He was normal once, and had regular emotions. Something must have made him what he is now, but I don't know what it is."

Severus shrugged. "He wouldn't speak of his old life to us, except to express his hatred. None of us ever dared try to learn more than he would volunteer."

"Still and all, for us normal human beings I'd say that love still wins out over hate." Seamus leaned in to Severus, drawing a hand up his chest. "I mean, look at us. I'll not go into too much detail, since I know you can only handle so much romantic rubbish in one day, but. I'll never feel anything stronger than what I feel for you. Not any emotion towards any person."

Severus raised his eyebrows, looking down at the boy nestled against his neck. "You can't know that."

"I don't have too long a life ahead of me, Severus."

Severus's arm moved to lock around Seamus's back, holding him in. The water shifted around them, a warm cocoon.

"There are some things I'm certain about. I'm certain I don't want to die with any regrets. I'm certain that the only thing I would ever regret would be losing you."

Severus shook his head, silent and wondering.