Thresh

by Vain

SSHP slash disturbing content. Voldemort can give Severus the one thing Dumbledore will not: an opportunity. What’s a Slytherin to do? Chapters 7:20 postedplease heed the warnings.

3. And I Saw, Behold, a White Horse

Thresh
- Vain
06.24.2004

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Standard Disclaimer:
I own nothing except the plot. Harry Potter and all the elements therein are the intellectual property / registered trademarks of JK Rowling, Scholastic Books, and Warner Brothers. All the quotes preceding the chapters come from Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. If you have not read it, take the time and do so. It is an . . . experience.

Summary: SS/HP slash. Voldemort can give Severus the one thing Dumbledore will not: an opportunity. What's a Slytherin to do?

Warnings: SS/HP slash, disturbing themes, underaged-ness, violence, mature content, dubious consent, abuse of power over a minor, somnophilia, bondage, improper use of Potions, and some dubious psychological torture.

Rated: R - this is the EDITED version; links to the NC-17 version can be found at my profile.

Notes: Takes place in the middle of Sixth Year.
Snape is not a warm, fluffy, insipid sap in this: he is a nasty, sadistic, greasy, arrogant, ego-centric wanker. Welcome to the land of IC.
This is absolutely, 100 un-related to any of my other fics.
To facilitate updates, these chapters will be shorter than the chapters in some of my other fics.

This story was originally launched under my secondary pen name, "Hanakai." For convenience's sake, I have decided to streamline my fics under my original pen name, Vain. SAME AUTHOR. SAME STORY. DIFFERENT NAME. As a fic is re-uploaded under my Vain pen name, I will delete it from my Hanakai profile. Eventually, Hanakai will be deleted entirely, so please update your faves and bookmarks to reflect this.

Thank you for all your previous reviews—I saved them all—and I hope you all review again. I'm greedy.

For progress notes on the pen name transition or if you have any questions, please see my Livejournal (linked both my profiles). I hope this doesn't inconvenience anyone & thank you for your patience.

Special Thanks to my betas Apapazukamori and E.E.S. snugs V

UTERRLY A GIFT with much love to EVELIA who draws me pretty pictures.

Plagiarism is no one's friend.
Enjoy!

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Chapter Two:
And I Saw, Behold, a White Horse

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" 'As far as I am concerned, you may all go to hell, but from what I see, it's clear to me that I can't make head or tail of it; please don't think I've come to ask you questions. I don't want to know, hang it! If you begin telling me your secrets, I dare say I shouldn't stay to listen, I should go away cursing. I have only come to find out once for all whether it's a fact that you are mad? There is a conviction in the air that you are mad or very nearly so. I admit I've been disposed to that opinion myself, judging from your stupid, repulsive and quite inexplicable actions, and from your recent behavior to your mother and sister. Only a monster or a madman could treat them as you have; so you must be mad.' "

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Crime and Punishment

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It was a dream.

Snape was kneeling at Voldemort's feet.

No . . . Snape was having tea with Voldemort . . .

No . . . Tea with Lucius.

Voldemort was having tea with Lucius.

Bellatrix Lestrange was gnawing on her hands. Or maybe they were someone else's hands.

"Is it almost time, my Lord?" Lucius—who looked like Snape—poured the tea into cups. The cups were clear and the tea was blue and viscous. It looked like plumbing solution. "I am ready to act."

Voldemort raised the teacup in front of his lipless mouth and tilted it back. Blue liquid spilled down the front of his black robes and into his lap. "Impatient, aren't you, old friend?"

Lucius slowly poured his tea out of his cup and onto the table. It did not splash, instead rolling in an imprecise puddle towards the edge of the beaten surface. "I have waited a very long time, my Lord. A very long time."

"Patience is virtue." Voldemort turned away from Lucius and the edges of the world seemed to shudder as those awful red eyes focused on something they shouldn't have been able to see. "Isn't it, Mr. Potter?"

Harry woke up with a scream lodged in the back of his throat, choking on air.

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It had begun like any other day. Really, Harry had no clue exactly where things had gone so wrong. Ron woke him up and poked and prodded at him until the Seeker dragged himself out of bed and fumbled into some clothes. Hermione, who was ignoring Ron ever since Padma had kissed his cheek in Defense on Monday, sat in a frigid silence to Harry's left while the redhead spent the duration of breakfast alternately shoveling something that might have been kippers in his mouth and prodding Harry to pass inane messages to Hermione. Harry endured about ten minutes of this before his stomach began to roil and he excused himself to empty what little he'd choked down into one of the toilets in the boys' lavatory.

His scar was throbbing dully.

Seamus—who had been hiding most suspiciously in one of the adjoining stalls—immediately bounded to his Quidditch co-captain's aid and spent a good five minutes rubbing his back. . . . And then thought it would be brilliant to move to rubbing other parts of Harry's backside which earned him a less than playful shove into the loo. He was just lucky Harry had flushed beforehand.

After Harry had fled his friend / sexual assaulter, he burst into Transfiguration ten minutes late, thereby losing ten points. "By Sixth Year you should know better, Potter!" Then the snake he was supposed to be turning into a vase refused to cooperate and Malfoy started to goad him. He insulted Malfoy, but forgot to switch from parseltongue back into English and Thisby—his snake—figured out that the white human was hassling the scarred human (whom he'd become rather fond of over the past ten minutes) and attacked Malfoy. By the end of it, Malfoy had gone to the Infirmary screaming that Harry was a madman and would kill them all, Ron's snake was a golf club, Harry's snake hissed and spat at anyone who even breathed near his newly adopted human, Gryffindor was down forty points for inciting violence, and Neville had somehow accidentally transfigured both Hermione's ears into teacup handles.

Then was double Defense Against the Dark Arts. Hermione arrived late (having had to have her ears fixed by Professor McGonagall), and startled Professor Tonks, who promptly tripped over her own two feet, fell down, and accidentally hexed a desk to turn into a wild hippogriff. Three more students were off to the Infirmary along with Tonks, had been knocked unconscious before Ron and Harry calmed the hippogriff and Hermione turned the desk back to its natural state. This of course turned into yet another bout of bickering between the two which was ended by Harry diplomatically screaming, "Shut the hell up and bloody shag one another already!" and then storming out of the room.

He knew he should have just gone to bed then and told the rest of the world to bugger off, but Dobby popped out of nowhere to summon him to the Headmaster's office. With Snape having been MIA for the past week, Harry had rather hoped to enjoy his unusually potions-free period ensconced in his bed with Quidditch Through the Ages and a cruller, but when Dumbledore called, you had to answer. So off he went to the Headmaster's tower. And that was when the day turned bad.

Because who should be sitting in front of the Headmaster's desk (in Harry's usual seat, no less), but Severus Snape. Harry paused in the door, eyed the dour looking man with unabashed loathing, and then promptly flounced in and sat as far as humanly possible from Snape without actually sitting inside a wall. Snape snarled like a rabid pit-bull, Dumbledore gave them both a stern frown that was completely ignored, and Fawkes cooed at nothing.

The Headmaster pointed his wand at Harry's chair and the boy squeaked as the seat slid across the floor until it was next to Snape's in front of the large desk. Snape leaned away from him, glaring into a teacup that Harry hadn't noticed, and the old man beamed at his protégé. "Good morning, Harry! How are classes going? I heard that you were having some difficulty with a snake this morning."

Harry blushed and slouched. "He didn't want me to transfigure him."

"Understandable. I think the being a vase would be rather dull. Now slippers, that's the life for me! Or perhaps a good pair of glow in the dark toe socks—you know, the ones with the toes separated. Muggles are so very clever."

Harry didn't know, actually, but that didn't matter because Snape, true to form, had no interest in allowing the Dumbledore to expound.

"If you please, Headmaster!" The teacup and saucer were set on the desk with a loud click. "If you insist on having the brat here, at least move this along a bit. I for one would like to relax for a bit after this . . . fiasco."

The Headmaster instantly wilted and Harry was seriously tempted to bludgeon Snape to death with the teacup . . . or at least pour the tea on him.

Dumbledore leaned back into his seat and tugged on his beard, looking sad. "Quite right, my boy. Forgive me."

Snape sniffed. Harry twitched.

Dumbledore sighed. "Harry, the reason Professor Snape was . . . detained . . . so long this past week was because his position has been discovered. I'm afraid we rather underestimated the Malfoy family."

Green eyes slid over to Snape, scanning the man for any hint of wounds or pain before he remembered that this was Snape and the man probably rightly deserved to be spread on the rack or whatever it was the Voldemort had done to him. Still, he couldn't suppress a small thrill of glee at having put the ferret in the Hospital Wing for the morning, however unintentional it had been. It was, after all, all in the name of the cause.

"Thankfully," the Headmaster continued, "he was able to escape uninjured with the help of—"

Snape cleared his throat.

"—a friend," Dumbledore covered without missing a beat. "Unfortunately, it seems that the situation we feared has at last come to pass." He paused, eyeing Harry sadly for a moment. "Do you remember what we discussed at the beginning of the term? The possible necessity of a safehouse?"

Harry's eyes narrowed. At the beginning of the term, Dumbledore had called Ron, Harry, and Hermione up to his office and explained to them that Voldemort could possibly attempt to attack Hogwarts. With the Ministry finally admitting the Dark Lord's return, there was no need for the man to stay in hiding any longer. The Death Eaters' attacks had become bolder and more audacious than ever before. An evacuation plan had been set for Harry then—something that could quickly and safely remove the Boy-Who-Lived to a secure location known only to the Headmaster. Not even Ron and Hermione would know where he went. They had only attended the meeting to be sure that, should worse come to worse, Harry was safely and quickly delivered to the Headmaster's office for transport. If the school came under sudden attack, there would be no time for the heroics for which Harry was so well known. Haste would be of the essence.

But why all this talk of an evacuation now? Though Harry hadn't had a single vision since the Headmaster had taken over his Occlumency training, he'd still have felt something if Voldemort was close enough to actually harm the school. Right?

The silence stretched on between the three of them, punctuated only by Snape retrieving his teacup and taking another swallow of the steaming liquid.

Harry frowned at Dumbledore in confusion. "I thought that that was only in case of attack . . .?"

The Headmaster said nothing for a while and Harry looked back and forth between the two adults. Snape, he noticed uneasily, had a waxen appearance to his skin and dark circles beneath his eyes. The teacup in the man's hands seemed to tremble slightly.

"Harry . . ."

The boy turned back to the Headmaster, something like panic stirring in his belly at the exhausted tone in the other man's voice.

Dumbledore set his lips in a firm, unhappy line. "Harry . . . Azkaban was taken at 7 o'clock this morning. There were living vampires, werewolves and giants fighting along side the Death Eaters. It was only the distraction of taking the prison that allowed Professor Snape to escape."

All the blood drained from Harry's face as the implications of the fall of Azkaban hit him. "No . . ."

The Dark Creatures had sided with Voldemort . . . And now Lucius Malfoy . . . The Dementors . . . The last of the Death Eaters . . . Even the common criminals—the ones who felt wronged or railroaded by the Ministry, or were just plain mad or greedy . . .

Dumbledore nodded, looking older than Harry had ever thought possible. "Yes," he said sadly. "The Dementors betrayed the Ministry. All of the prisoners have been turned loose. Even the ones who did not join Voldemort—" Snape flinched "—have been freed. They are roaming the countryside and causing a tremendous amount of discord. The Ministry is at its wit's end trying to keep the fugitives concealed from the Muggles and trying to control the flow of information."

The boy thought back to the calm normalcy of breakfast and classes with wide eyes. "But how come no one knows—"

"I've filtered the post and blocked the fireplaces, Harry." Confusion contorted the boy's brow and Albus sighed. "We cannot risk the student body panicking, my boy. The world outside these walls is in utter chaos. People are calling for Cornelius Fudge to step down and Wizarding London is in an absolute frenzy. The Daily Prophet released a news report this morning, one sadly grounded in fact: the French, Belgian, and German Ministries are refusing to act because they desperately wish to remain neutral. They consider this an internal affair of wizarding Britain. The U.S. Congress of Wizards in the States is still debating over whether or not to send their Aurors and Hit Wizards to help. Everyone seems to think that Voldemort will be content to stop at the Channel and the shore. We are alone in the fight against Voldemort and the realization, coupled with this latest strike in Voldemort's favor, is causing a wave of terror to sweep the country. If the students were to find out, the halls would be in utter bedlam. We must protect the students, no matter what."

Harry twisted in his seat to look back at Snape, but the other man merely continued taking measured, controlled sips of tea.

The boy turned back to the Headmaster. "No one will help us?"

Fighting Voldemort was one thing, but fighting an entire army with only the help of the disorganized Department of Magical Defense, the Order, and the few allies the Order had managed to glean was another thing entirely. From what Harry had been told, the Order had been assured external help from the other nations.

"What about the U.N. Auror Guard?" he demanded. "The European Protection League?"

Dumbledore remained silent.

"What about the bloody Interpol Aurors?"

Albus shook his head gravely. "There are plans and committees, but no one expected Voldemort to raise an army this quickly. The Guard is far too thinly spread as it is. Most of their people are in Kosovo, the Ukraine, and Russia right now. The E.P.L. is reluctant to send wizards off the continent, and Interpol and the Ministry have never worked well together." He closed his eyes and for a moment looked on the verge of collapse. "We all thought there would be more time."

Snape snorted and Harry's head whipped around, helplessness and frustration contorting his brow. "What are you doing here anyway?"

The Potions Master slowly turned his head and sneered at Harry with an expression of loathing. "How do you think the Headmaster became privy to most of this information, Potter?" He spat the boy's name out like it was something vile. "While you were gazing off into space and no doubt causing far more trouble than you're worth, some of us were out there trying to protect you, you ungrateful litt—"

"Severus, please," the Headmaster interrupted. "We do not have time for this; especially not now." He turned his sharp gaze to the Gryffindor. "Harry, for the last time, Professor Snape has been instrumental in this fight and he has paid dearly for his service. You will respect him and give him the consideration he deserves." His eyes flickered back to the other man. "And Severus, we have discussed this before. Regardless of what has occurred in the past, time is too precious for you to antagonize Mr. Potter right now. Particularly given the circumstances."

Harry frowned. "What do you mean?"

Snape suddenly looked away, the muscle in his lower right jaw working angrily. He glared at nothing in particular and took another rigid sip of tea.

The Headmaster settled back into his seat heavily. "Harry, spies are in the student body and it is no longer safe here. It is imperative that both you and Professor Snape be removed from the school until these threats to your persons can be neutralized."

Harry blinked and the words seemed to swirl about in his mind for a moment. He latched onto the first idea he could grasp: Dumbledore wanted him to leave. "Why? Isn't Hogwarts supposed to be safe?"

"Hogwarts is safe, my dear child. For now. However, I cannot allow the student body to be endangered unnecessarily. A traitor and the Boy-Who-Lived make far too tempting a target. I will not put others at risk; nonetheless, I am loathe to send you either of you away alone for an indeterminate amount of time. Harry, you will need someone to protect and teach you during your sabbatical. Professor Snape is ideal for that job. He is a skilled wizard and has been looking out for your interests for a very long time."

For a moment there was silence as the Gryffindor looked back and forth between the two adults. A variety of emotions danced over his face. Finally, he seemed to settle on incredulity. "You can't really be serious, sir?" He leaned forward, as though moving Snape out of his line of sight would make the man vanish entirely. "He hates me. I hate him. We'll kill each other."

"I am perfectly capable of controlling my baser instincts, Potter," Snape hissed from behind him. "If you think you can do the same . . ." His tone of voice clearly implied that he held no such hope.

Harry twisted angrily in his seat and glared hatefully at his Professor. "You're a fine one to talk about baser instincts, Snape. As far as I know, there's only one person with the Dark Mark in this room."

Snape went white.

"Enough!"

Harry jumped slightly as the Headmaster stood. He turned with wide eyes to the angry countenance of his mentor. He'd never actually heard Dumbledore raise his voice before. Even Snape seemed cowed.

The elderly man glared at them. "I have had enough of this bickering. There are no other alternatives. Severus has agreed to this and now so shall you. You will go to Snape Hall and you will obey Professor Snape. Until the threat has passed from Hogwarts, you will be his ward. I will not hear another word on the issue. You are to leave immediately."

"But—"

The Headmaster shook his head dismissively. "Dobby will help you pack an overnight bag. You may write Ron and Hermione a letter, but you cannot tell them where you are going and whom you are with. There will be no post between you for the duration of your hiatus. It is too much of a security risk. Dobby will bring you back here in forty minutes to portkey off the grounds."

Harry looked down, feeling utterly ashamed of himself for actually driving Dumbledore to shout, and pushed himself up to trudge out. Dobby ushered him off to Gryffindor Tower and drove Harry to distraction alternately weeping and nagging him to move a bit faster. Then he was swept back up to the Headmaster's office where Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall saw him off.

Before the portkey (a ball of glow in the dark toe socks) was pressed into his hands, the Headmaster leaned down and shocked Harry with a surprisingly fortifying hug. "Be strong, Harry. And try to get along with Professor Snape. Everything will work out for the best," he'd whispered into Harry's ear. And then there was a tug at his navel and they were gone.

. . . Which was how he came to be standing over the toilet in the bathroom of the White Room (which most certainly lived up to its name), trying to urinate while a House Elf stared at him with enormous, unabashed eyes. Somehow, this situation ranked nowhere even remotely near "the best" in Harry's book.

The boy let out a noise that was somewhere between a grunt and a growl and thrust his hips forward as though the motion could somehow impel his uninterested bladder into action. He tried to keep as much of his penis as humanly possible covered with his hands. Somehow, the idea of Snape's overly loyal Elf staring at his bits in rapt fascination was . . . distressing.

"Is the Little Master done yet?" the Elf squeaked, obviously thinking there was nothing wrong with blatantly staring at the flesh exposed by his Master's open fly.

"The Little Master is most certainly not bloody done yet!" he snarled in response. He'd known Flicker for an hour and already wanted to kill the little vermin. He now understood how the Malfoy family could beat a House Elf.

Flicker did not seem to be the least bit deterred by his Master's ill tempered response and continued staring at Harry in wide-eyed adulation.

The Gryffindor shifted his hand slightly in a futile attempt to hide his shame and looked anywhere but at the Elf. The bathroom—like the bed chamber—was large and white. Entirely white. White ceramic tiled walls, white marble floor, white porcelain sink and bath tub, white toilet . . . Simply white. Even the candlesticks on the walls and the soft, magical light on the ceiling were white. The bathtub was to his right and was more than large enough for a small car to fit in it comfortably. It was about five and a half feet deep, most of which was sunk into the ground, though there was about a foot and a half raised up from the floor. There was a small step leading up to the tub—complete with a white bathmat—and more steps inside the tub leading down. Two surprisingly comfortable-looking seats were formed by depressions in the tub walls and the faucet was an ornate fluted bit of sculpture which consisted of two rearing ivory stallions on either side of a white porcelain spout. There was no showerhead.

The sink—another large, ornate affair—was to Harry's left, and above it was the vanity. The mirror, thankfully, had yet to make a comment. Prancing ivory colts, frozen in the midst of play, adorned either side of the fluted faucet, and the basin of the sink was shaped like a half moon. The ceiling was high and arched and archaic-looking silver runes ran along the walls like a border. When Harry had first entered the room, he felt a curious tight sensation in his head and sinuses and the runes had lit up. Now, however, they were pale and dormant. A mural cut of ivory was on the wall behind the boy and more startlingly life-like horses were frozen in the midst of cantering about. At first he'd wondered why none of the art seemed to move, but then decided that the last thing he wanted was a dozen horses watching his every move every time he used the loo. Flicker was bad enough.

It rather made him wonder how highly privacy was valued in the Snape household. If the door was anything to go by, he'd have to say not much. The door was to his left and it was not actually a door at all—it was a white marble gate. The bars were formed from coils of vines and small nymphs and fairies hid between the frozen stone hewn leaves. Currently, it stood open to the White Room. Like the bathroom, the chamber was almost painfully white, however—unlike the bathroom, which was a rectangular shape—the White Room was perfectly circular. Since it was located in the West Tower that rather made sense.

There was something unnervingly feminine about the room (though thankfully the horse motif seemed limited to the bathroom). All of the furniture that was against the wall was curved. The dresser, the armoire, the vanity, the head of the bed . . . All of it was shaped to press flush against the wall. Even the door—an actual door this time—was curved, though it didn't appear to be from the outside. The vanity was most definitely for a woman. There were crystal jars and dishes for makeup and powders and small, expensive-looking crystal bottles of amber and ruby colored perfume.

All of the decorations in the room seemed to be colored to fit into the white motif and varied from ivory, to marble, to a strange white wood, to crystal. More runes, similar to the ones in the bathroom, were along the walls of the bedroom. They appeared to be made of white stone—maybe more marble. Small crystal stars, moons, and planets were magical suspended from the high, slightly arching ceiling, forming an entire rotating model of the solar system that would have had Professor Sinatra drooling with envy. As far Harry could tell from what little he recalled from Astronomy, the model on the ceiling was a perfect replica of the stars and planets' current positions. Even the Earth—a small bluish sphere two orbs away from the large, clear ball of the sun—was rotating at a minute, agonizingly slow pace.

The bed was similar to those at Hogwarts in that it was rectangular, curtained (though the curtains seemed to be some sort of thick, white velvet), and so soft, Harry had actually sunk into it a bit when he sat down on it. That was where the similarities ended, however. Compared to the bed at Hogwarts, this one was enormous, and it was raised up on a dais with two steps leading upwards. A downy white comforter covered its surface and milk white silk sheets were pulled up over the pile of white, soft pillows at the head of the bed. There were two night stands on the dais at either side of the bed—each with a single drawer and a magical lamp atop it. Several more lamps were on the walls at regular interval, alternating with clusters of thick, white candles set in three piece, wall mounted crystal candle holders. Currently, however all the lamps were extinguished.

On the side of the wall opposite the door was an enormous window seat that took up nearly half the wall. Late afternoon sunlight poured into the room, reflecting off the white in a surprisingly beautiful way. A plush white cushion was set on the seat and the view overlooked a field and a distant forest. When the sun set, Flicker said, light flooded into the room and hit the crystals scattered about the room, turning it all into a rainbow of color. He had said that the light show made the White Room the most beautiful room in the Hall.

Harry spied the edge of his reflection on the standing mirror in the center of his chamber floor and looked away. He looked ragged and pale.

"Now is Little Master done?" Flicker squeaked, still shamelessly staring at the boy.

Harry sighed and leaned forward, one hand pressed against the wall. He dropped his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut and desperately wished he could just pee already and leave. Or kill the Elf—at this point in time one or the other would do. "No, Flicker."

Flickered leaned forward a bit and reached out. "Would Little Master like Flicker to he—"

"No!" Harry stood bolt upright and felt the unease in his stomach coiled even tighter.

Flicker had jumped backwards at his cry and looked worried and put out.

Harry stalwartly looked straight ahead at one of the smaller ivory cuts above the toilet and wished he were somewhere else. "Look, can't you just wait outside or something?"

"Master said—"

"I know what Snape said," Harry snapped, trying to furtively switch hands without the Elf staring at his penis like it was the Holy Grail or something. "But I can't . . ." He trailed off.

How the hell was he supposed to explain the urinary tract of a human? . . . How did the urinary tract of a human even work? Did House Elves even have to pee? Ever?

Bugger. Harry glared at the bit of sculpting in front of him. This wasn't going to work.

Flicker apparently came to the same conclusion because he seemed to perk up for an instant and beamed at his young Master. "Flicker will help!" he declared before vanishing with a soft 'pop.'

Harry sighed and it seemed as though something inside him loosened and relaxed. He looked down and shifted slightly so that he was standing over the bowl. Without the Elf, it seemed he had absolutely no problems using the loo. Thank God . . .

And then there was a boom as the door to his chambers burst open and Snape suddenly swirled into the room. "What have you managed to destroy now, Potter?"

Unfortunately, the dramatic entrance badly startled Harry and he jumped like a startled horse . . . While he still using the loo.

There was splashing.

Hot, liquid, wet splashing . . . all over his clothes, the loo, his chin . . . It was disgusting. It was wet. It was sodding warm.

And it was in front of Snape.

The boy shied back away from the older man, too startled to do anything and his hands reflexively flew down to cover himself. The action caused him to lose his balance and fall right onto his bum on cold, hard floor. Shame burned through him as the continued to feel of warm wetness seeped down from the crotch of his pants to taint his thighs and shins and it was painfully, horribly, appallingly obvious, even with the flimsy cover of his robes, that he'd utterly lost control of his bladder.

Snape looked down at him with an unreadable expression on his face and Flicker peered into the room from behind the man. Frozen with mortification, Harry held still, head bowed, hands still over his exposed penis, and a slow, faintly yellow puddle of liquid oozing over the sparkling white floor out from beneath him. A scream lodged in his throat and his eyes stung. Time seemed to stretch on to infinity as he waited for the soul-flaying insult the bastard no doubt had prepared.

But it never came.

For a moment, Snape merely watched him in silence, and then the man turned to the sink. There was the sound of running water and then a quiet "Accio washcloth." He gestured to the Elf. "Help him clean up." Those black eyes turned back to the red faced teenager on the floor and he tossed the washcloth, now warm and wet, to the boy. "Wipe your face. Dinner will be served in the dining hall in twenty minutes." Then he spun on his heel, robes flaring, and left as abruptly as he'd come.

Harry could have sobbed. Instead he sat on the floor in his own urine, leaned back against the wall of the enormous tub, and wished he were dead.

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Chapter Three:
Keep the Big Door Open

"Does this look like a school to you, Potter? No. You are my ward, not my student. And I will do as I please."

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