A/N: Sorry for the long delay, but I made the decision towrite one of my stories (and by the flip of the coin it was TS) to a logical stopping point before switching to the other. Previously I've been flip-flopping, and it's beendisturbing my writing process. I'm NOT giving up on PB; it's just delayed. Anyway, this chapter is rather short, butchapter 13 is nearing completion. It'll come soon.
A/N2: Again, thanks to Procyon for the beta! It's amazing how fast and how well she does it.
Chapter 12
Harry walked into the room and smiled when he saw Severus curled up on his bed, long hooked nose buried in a thick tome.
"Hey," Harry said. "Did you find anything interesting?" He moved to peer over Severus's shoulder. The script was old and Harry blinked at the interspersed Latin; there was some mention of fachen's feathers and Sidhe tears and water from the cauldron of—
Severus closed the book around his finger. "Stop breathing down my neck, Frost," he snapped. "I can't concentrate."
"Sorry," Harry said. He moved away and paused as he contemplated the pale neck. Then he turned and crossed the room to his bed. It was too bad the Slytherin dormitories didn't have any desks; there were only the two beds, the hearthrug, and the fireplace. We're living like monks, he thought. "I'll need to go to Muggle London sometime soon," he said.
Severus wrinkled his nose. "For that mu—ggleborn, Evans?"
"No," Harry replied, glad that Severus hadn't said what he might have. "I need to find information on the physiology of sleep and dreams."
Severus made a disgusted sound and glanced up disdainfully. "That Muggle filth?"
"It's not filth," Harry replied evenly, though inwardly he was groaning with dismay. I'm sure we've had this argument before, he thought. "In the area of anatomy and physiology, the Muggles are quite ahead of us. Plus, they've made connection with eye movement and dreams and brain waves, which I think may be important—you know, don't you, that the brain produces electricity?"
Severus was silent for a moment, staring at his book without moving his eyes. Perhaps he hasn't even heard of electricity, Harry thought, wishing he had considered it earlier. That won't go over well…
"You're thinking," Severus spat, "like a Muggle." He looked up and sneered. "It's beyond me why you look for solutions in Muggle blunderings when an answer can only be found in the realm of magic. Muggles," he said slowly, as though explaining a fundamental principle to a five-year-old, "are inferior. They are stupid, slow, narrow-minded."
"Some are," Harry corrected. "But tell me, Severus, did you know that sleep has different phases, based on brain activity? Did you know that the human eye moves rapidly during dreams?"
"That's irrelevant—"
"It may be irrelevant, but then it may not."
Severus snorted and turned his attention back to his book. "Muggles are inherently inferior to wizards," he said coldly. "You should be thankful not to have been born a Muggle."
Harry sat there for a moment, silent. And then he pulled a piece of parchment from his book-bag and began to rip it to shreds. The parchment was different from paper: he could feel each strand of fiber and the faint magic woven within it. He scattered the pieces on the stone floor.
"What are you doing?" Severus snapped, slamming his book shut around his finger again. "Is that one of your strange Muggle rituals?"
"C'mere," Harry said. He took out a quill, put it back because it was a good one, and took one out that had a broken nib. He transfigured it into a glass rod. "Take it," he said, extending it towards Severus.
Severus looked at it suspiciously.
"Go on, I didn't curse it," Harry said. "Really."
Severus set aside his book and reached out—very hesitantly—and touched the rod with a fingertip. Nothing happened. He took it then, carefully, as though expecting it to come alive and bite him at any moment.
"Rub it in against your robe," Harry ordered.
"This is ridiculous," said Severus, holding the rod as he would a wand.
"Rub it," Harry repeated. Severus curled his lips as though to let the world know how this was so beneath him, and began sawing the glass rod over his sleeve.
"A bit more vigorously than that," Harry said, and Severus complied after muttering something irritable under his breath. "Harder! All right. Good. Now, take it and wave it gently over the pieces of parchment."
Severus climbed off his bed and knelt on the floor opposite to where Harry sat. "Go on," Harry said when Severus cast a suspicious look at Harry.
Severus waved the rod slowly over the parchment, and the parchment stirred, curling up at the rod like autumn leaves to the wind.
"It's static electricity," Harry said quietly. Severus had stopped waving. "Muggles figured it out. It's a flow of… things. In any case, the brain produces something of the same sort."
Severus dropped the rod disdainfully and sat back. "A cheap Muggle trick, that's all," he sneered. He looked a little irate. "When you compare it to magic—"
"Trick?" Why is he being so intractable? Harry thought angrily. "Muggles use it to make light brighter than lumos—"
"—it's utterly pointless, something for—"
"—and even fly, many times faster than brooms—"
"—fools to play with; it's utterly—"
"SEVERUS!" Harry roared. His voice exploded in the room, and Severus tensed and clenched his fists. "You're blinded by your prejudice. You're regurgitating what your father or mother taught you." Harry paused and the realization came that perhaps he had underestimated the strength of the deeply entrenched mindsets and prejudices."Don't you think and see for yourself? Have you even set foot in Muggle London?"
"No," said Severus, and his voice was very cold. "Your mother and father, I'm sure, raised you to appreciate Muggles."
"My mother and father died when I was one," Harry said shortly.
Severus looked up sharply. "I—apologize," he said brokenly. Harry let him flounder for words. "I… didn't mean to be so—"
"It's all right," Harry interrupted softly. He looked at the pieces of parchment. They reminded him of fragments of fallen leaves, grinded up and pitiful. "I don't remember them anyway." Except when Dementors are near. But now, I see and hear other things, too… Don't think of it. Don't think, don't remember—he looked up, trying to clear his mind of images and memories, and met Severus's dark eyes.
Severus opened his mouth, as though to say something, but he stayed silent, his eyes brooding.
Harry averted his eyes, too aware of the raw and frightening things hanging unsaid above them. He swept the shreds of parchment into his hand and felt them crinkle in his palm. He looked at Severus's fingers—fine, slender, rested gently on his robed knee—and wished he were clutching those instead.
Harry shook his head sharply and looked up. "Why are you so sure that Muggles are inferior?"
"They just are," Severus replied automatically, but his voice and face held no sneer.
Harry was still for a moment. "That's not a very good reason," he said. "Magically, they are inferior. That's pretty obvious, at any rate. But intellectually and emotionally and… other things. They're human as well. They're not that much different. That's why even the child of two Gryffindors might end up in Hufflepuff. Or Slytherin."
"That's highly unlikely," Severus said. He sat back and crossed his arms sullenly over his chest. "Have it your way, Frost. Go research Muggle things." He wrinkled his nose. "I shan't stop you."
"All right," Harry said. He smiled secretly, and some of the darkness ebbed. "Severus." He got up. "I'll have to go ask Professor Camentum if I can go to London again."
"I trust you'll avoid mentioning of your Muggle purposes?" Severus said archly, climbing back onto his bed and opening his book.
"I am in Slytherin, you know," Harry said.
Severus snorted. "Sometimes I doubt it."
Harry shrugged, though he was a bit surprised at how much the remark stung. "D'you have a book I can read?"
Severus gave him a suspicious look. "Don't you have a book of your own to read?"
"I've finished all my homework, and Lily has all the books on ancient rituals," Harry said, though he thought about the book he had found in the Bibliotheca Caeca with the pentagonal rose on its spine, wedged between his Transfiguration and Potions texts. I'll look at it later, Harry thought. When he's gone, or asleep.
"You finished Transfiguration?" Severus demanded sharply.
Harry thought back to the Transfiguration homework: more drabble on Animagi. He'd faked failure at the spiritus animans spell and so had been assigned, along with Severus, to skip the Animagi curriculum, moving on to the less complicated live-transfigurations. "Yes, I did," Harry said. "It was only to practice changing one of those gerbils into a tree, wasn't it?"
Severus sneered without replying. I suppose he hasn't done it yet, Harry thought; but Severus reached over and picked up a battered hardcover book.
Harry reached up from where he sat on the floor. "'The Enigma of Dreamless Sleep?'" he read. "Right. Sounds interesting."
Still sitting, he took out his wand and tapped the hearthrug. It twitched a bit before sprouting into a large, comfortable chair. "Excellent," Harry said, thumping one of the ample armrests.
Severus muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "show-off." Harry ignored it and sprawled into his creation, half-sitting and half-lying, one leg dangling from an armrest while his head was cushioned against the opposite one.
He opened the book and glanced up. Severus immediately looked back down at his own book.
Harry pressed his lips together to conceal a smile, feeling his heart leap like a stone skipping over a lake. He tilted his head slightly so that the light from the fireplace would catch his neck, and he shifted, as though to make himself more comfortable, and left his legs slightly wider apart. He stopped moving, and his eyes focused at last on the first words of the introduction. I actually do need to know this, he thought.
The book wasn't uninteresting. The prose was refreshingly concise, and the introduction went over the major experimentations regarding the search for dreamless sleep. Here's Kyrus the Cruel, and Mengele, and some Alucinor fellow, Harry noted. I think Severus mentioned the first two.
His mind disconnected for a moment from the text, and his eyes strayed to the corner of the page. Severus seemed to be reading deeply.
Anyway, Harry thought, quashing a feeling of slight annoyance, there seem to have been three major experimenters. None of the experiments were really well done, though. He frowned. He could remember very little about theory behind the dreamless potion, though he could recite the basic ingredients in his sleep. He vaguely remembered that Snape had explained it when Harry had started asking for dangerously high doses. Well, my ignore-the-old-bastard techniques have come around and bitten my ass, Harry thought. If only I'd paid some attention…
His thoughts stopped. Severus was staring at him—he could feel it. Then, as he held his breath, he felt the gaze melt away.
His mind reconnected with the words, and he went halfway through a paragraph on Alucinor without being aware of a word he read. But I do remember something about dreams and magic, Harry thought, stopping in mid-sentence. And I do remember Snape calling me a dunderhead. He frowned.
"So Severus," he said and looked up. "How do you think we should go about making a dreamless sleep potion?"
Severus shifted and shut his book, though he kept a finger between the pages to mark where he had been. "I thought about it," he began. His eyes flitted from where he frowned at the ceiling to Harry's face. "Wizards and witches need dreams to keep their magic, that's what Kyrus's experiments proved. But Alucinor's experiments showed that dreams had no connection with magic. I thought, perhaps, that dreams affected magic in more subtle ways."
Harry tapped the cover of his book with his fingers and wished Severus would keep speaking, keep letting his voice spread through the room and tingle down his spine.
"I think there's a flaw in Alucinor's experiments," Harry said. He looked up and met Severus's eyes. Severus did not look away. "He showed that there was no ambient magic when wizards and witches dreamt, but it was only ambient magic of a certain sort." He paused, and for a moment, he nearly lost his line of thought as he held Severus's gaze. "There are many kinds of magic, such as elemental magic or divination magic, that ambient magic doesn't gauge."
Severus frowned. "Yes," he said. "That makes sense. If dreamlessness makes wizards lose their magic, then there must be a connection between dreams and magic." He gaze had wandered to the canopy of his bed, and then it wandered back, and their eyes met again.
A blush touched the tops of Severus's cheeks, and he looked away quickly. Then he pushed himself out of bed. "I'm going to the library," he said. "There may be something there about non-ambient magics."
"Now?" Harry said reluctantly.
"Yes, now," Severus said, and the tones of disdain returned to his voice. "The library closes in less than an hour."
Harry clambered out of his chair. "Let me go with you."
Severus, who had been fumbling in his bookbag, froze for a split second. "Why not," he said coolly, and pulled out a parchment. "Come on, then."
qp qp qp
Severus was cursing under his breath and prodding the potted begonia with his wand when Harry entered the room.
"Having trouble?" Harry asked, squatting next to Severus.
"I'm perfectly fine, Frost," Severus snapped. Harry remained where he was. The firelight cast a gentle glow on Severus's skin, and his sharp frown was softened in the warmth.
"Will you cease staring at me?" Severus said coldly, still glaring at the hearthrug. He was gripping his wand rather tightly. "I find it extremely distracting."
Harry shrugged and looked at the fire. "I was merely wondering if you would like some of my help." He paused. "I did manage to turn the begonia into a terrier on my first try."
Severus muttered something under his breath.
"You're holding your wand all wrong," Harry said. Before Severus could say anything else, Harry reached out and took his hand. Severus froze, and Harry shifted closer, feeling the warmth of the other man against his arm and neck and chest. "You have to hold it…" He reached his other hand to Severus's wand-hand and rearranged the unresisting fingers. "Like this."
Then he withdrew his fingers. "Go ahead and try it." He cleared his throat, for his voice was rather raspy.
Severus shifted, though neither away from Harry nor closer. He thrust his wand at the plant. It shivered and ballooned in size, then sprouted a few hairs on the undersides of the leaves.
"You're still doing it wrong," Harry said. Severus scowled and jabbed his wand again at the mutated plant. It shrank back slightly. "Don't scare it," Harry admonished lightly. "Where's your book? It says in there what to think when forcing transfigurations of dissimilarities."
"My book," said Severus, still glaring at the plant, and paused. "Is lacking. Certain pages."
"Oh," said Harry. The question—why didn't you ask to see mine?—sparked and then passed out of existence. Harry knew why. Looking at the fierce profile outlined by the firelight, he knew why. "Let me look in mine," Harry said. "I don't remember exactly what it says."
He got up to avoid crawling over the unforgiving stone, and reached into his book-bag. He hauled out his transfiguration text, and paused for a moment to cover the gray-colored book with the folds of his bag.
"Here," Harry said. He flipped open his book. "It should be—"
He stopped.
"This is strange," Harry muttered, looking at the pages. "My book seems to have… faded." The normally crisp black ink was a sullen gray. He turned to the first page and stared. He remembered there having been the title (Advanced Transfiguration, by Dr. Chang Jing) in bold letters, but now he could barely see their shadows.
Severus peered over his shoulder, and Harry swallowed at the warmth. "What happened?" Severus asked in a low voice.
"It's as though all the ink was leeched out," Harry replied, staring at the nearly blank first page.
Severus pulled the book towards him. "There could be several explanations," he said briskly, flipping through the pages. Harry watched, as Severus neared the end, the ink gradually getting darker and darker. "Where was this book?"
"In my book bag," Harry said. My book-bag. He froze.
"The entire time?"
Harry nodded, glancing reluctantly at his bag. "Yes…"
"Let me see it," said Severus, and before Harry could do anything, Severus had gotten to his feet and strode purposefully to where Harry's bag lay on the floor. Harry watched Severus reach inside—and stop. He's found it, Harry thought, watching Severus carefully take out the slate-colored book. Relax, Harry told himself as Severus's gaze scrutinized the cover, his finger moving over the cloth binding. It's not as though the book has anything in it…
Severus turned to look at the book's spine, and froze.
"Where did you get this?" Severus asked at length. Harry tried to gauge that voice; the low warmth minutes ago and the crisp interest moments ago were utterly gone. The voice was at once cautious and soft, and cool and flatly expressionless.
"From the Bibliotheca Caeca," Harry answered carefully. He let a pause ensue. "Why?"
Severus gave the back cover and blank pages a cursory glance before settling his gaze once more on the pentagonal rose. "Why did you pick it up?"
"I felt it calling me," Harry answered. "You know how the spell works." Harry watched in silence as Severus touched the pentagonal rose of the book's spine. "Why?"
Severus kept his eyes on the book and his voice low and cool when he answered. "The wild rose is the emblem of the Snape line."
"Oh," Harry said. "How…" He searched for the right word. "Coincidental. I assure you, I wasn't thinking of you when it called me." I think, he added to himself. He tried to recall what he had been thinking when he had been beckoned, but nothing in particular came to his mind. But it's most peculiar, thought Harry, that the line of Snape should have the wild rose as its emblem, that I should be summoned by a book with the rose on its spine, and that there should be a bone-carved rose upon that skeleton in the Nest. Perhaps that corpse was a Snape, one of Severus's ancestors? It was certainly possible. But what other connections were woven in this tangled web?
Harry peered anxiously at the other Slytherin's face, trying to read what he was feeling. Severus didn't even look up once. But by the hawkish profile and the sharp shadows flung out by the fire, Harry felt his heart sinking. The face spoke of suspicion.
"Was it always blank?" Severus asked.
Harry nodded, wishing he might move closer to the other man. "Yes."
Suddenly Severus stopped moving, his eyes fixed on the first page.
"What is it?" Harry asked, getting up swiftly and standing next to Severus.
Harry stared at the page. The paper was still that faintly yellow of indefinite age, but there were words there, words that hadn't been there before, and when Harry glanced at it, the last, crisp 'e' had just finished its loop. 'So you are a Snape.'
Harry and Severus exchanged a glance. And then Severus was gone, fumbling in his bags for a quill and inkpot. Harry looked back down the book, and then looked at Severus; he remembered Riddle's diary and the danger it held, and the scrapes with death he had encountered because of his callousness and Ginny's. But this… He bent closer to the words, hoping to sense some kind of magic—dark or light or…
The writing began again. The strokes were steady, and the calligraphy was rather spiky—and Harry was strongly reminded of how it resembled Severus's handwriting.
'You are not a Snape.'
Harry looked up just as Severus sat down next to him on the ground, their shoulders touching thrillingly as Severus quickly dipped his quill in the ink.
Severus read the line and paused. Then he wrote, more carefully than he scribbled his notes: 'I am a Snape.'
The handwriting appeared again. 'Not you, him.'
Harry pulled his wand out and flicked it at his book-bag. "Accio quill," he muttered. A quill (fortunately one without a broken tip) floated into his hand, and he dipped it in the inkpot that Severus moved closer to where they both could reach it.
'Correct,' Harry wrote. 'I am not a Snape. How did you know?'
The book wrote nothing for a moment, and Harry was acutely aware of Severus's quickened breathing, the warmth of their bodies touching.
Then words appeared again. 'What year is this?'
Harry briefly glanced at Severus for askance before extending his arm. '1977. Who are you, may I ask?'
The words came slowly. 'I want Snape to answer the question. Not you.'
Harry stared at the message. "Huh," he said and sat back. So it doesn't trust me, he thought, and he felt his mouth hardening. He forced himself to relax it. It's sharp, this book, he decided. But dangerous.
Severus reached out his hand and Harry watched him write a short, horizontal line—the top of an 'F' or a 'J'—before heavily crossing it out. 'He did not lie. The year is 1977.'
The words came almost instantly. 'What is your name?'
Severus glanced at Harry for a moment, and Harry caught the gaze. "Not your middle name," Harry said quietly. "Just to be sure."
'Severus Snape,' Severus wrote. He lifted his quill and waited.
'Where am I?' the book wrote.
'In Hogwarts,' Severus replied.
"Ask it its name," Harry said. "Quid pro quo."
Severus was about to write, but the words formed again. 'And you are a student?'
"Yes," Harry said when Severus glanced at him again. "Now ask it its name."
'I am.' Severus wrote. 'Who are you? Why are you here?'
The book wrote nothing for a moment, and it was silent save the faint crackle of flames and the soft hush of their breathing.
'I am a man from many years ago, a man named Christolph—or rather, his reflection. I am his journal, his memoirs.'
Harry shifted, reminded coldly of Riddle's diary. He wasn't going to let history repeat itself.
'Severus,' the diary wrote. 'Tell your friend to go away. Let me write to you alone.'
Harry felt instantly a wash of cold descend his spine. "No," Harry said. Severus looked at him sharply. "I read about a case where a diary belonging to a very powerful wizard was able to possess a young girl's soul. This can be very dangerous."
"Indeed," Severus muttered. He dipped his quill in ink and wrote, after a moment's pause. 'He's gone. What is it?'
There was no response for a long time, time in which Harry stared at the book and wished he could snatch it out of Severus's hands and run his mind over the gray covers and comb the pages for any malevolent magic. Remembering the skeleton in the nest, the strange pull in the library, he was sure this was a thing of power; and with power—danger.
'He's still there. You don't have to tell him to go very far.'
Severus and Harry exchanged another glance. The words came again.
'Severus, please. Tell your' The words stopped briefly in mid-sentence. 'lover to leave.'
Harry froze, and Severus tensed beside him. Lover? Harry thought, his heart doing all sorts of acrobatics in his chest. He was overwhelmingly aware of Severus beside him.
'No mischief will come to you, Severus, for I too am of the Snape line. I swear to bring you no harm,' the book wrote. The words formed slowly, with inexorable force and purpose. 'I am a stag of seven tines – I am a flood across the plain – I am a hawk above the cliff – I am a tide that drags to death – I am the wild rose on a hill – I am a wizard: who but I sets the cool head aflame with smoke?'
Harry stared at the words in disbelief, feeling his blood turn to ice in his veins. These words were part of the incantation of the Nest! How did it know? And—the Snape line? What was the connection? What was the meaning to all this?
Severus cleared his throat softly. "Jonathan," he said slowly, deliberately, and Harry noticed belatedly that Severus had said his first name aloud. "I think I am—capable of handling this."
"Oh," Harry said helplessly. A silence lapsed. A few moments later he got up, took several well-measured steps back, and sat on his bed. He felt another twist at his heart when Severus shifted around on the flagstone floor so that Harry could not see the words being written.
Spy on him, Harry thought immediately, watching Severus read the words with a slight frown wrinkling his forehead. See what that filthy little book is saying. He could probably pull it off, so long as he made sure Severus didn't get suspicious. I can probably bend my mind into Severus's, Harry thought calculatingly, watching Severus write, the muscles and tendons of his forearm working under the sallow skin. There's a spell—one that's quite impossible to detect…
Severus shifted on the floor, and Harry watched spots of colors appear on the other Slytherin's face. Then the colors faded into a deep scowl.
Harry got up and went to the other end of the bed, making sure his movements were natural, with nothing at all to attract suspicion. Wandlessly, he decided, propping his back against the headboard and turning his eyes onto Severus and focusing all his power—
Severus. From where he sat, the firelight seemed to fall over Severus's face like a haze of warmth, cascading down his neck to where the tattered robe folded over a shoulder. I love him, Harry thought suddenly, and his resolve to thrust his mind into Severus's mind vanished, melted like thin spindles of ice in the blazing glory of the sun.
And then, Severus shut the book. A moment later, he looked up, and there was a frown, a gloom, over his features.
"What did it say?" Harry said, springing off the bed.
"Nothing," Severus said dismissively. But Harry saw the way it was affected, the way a troubled air made Severus stare down at the fire and avoid Harry's eyes. Nothing my ass, Harry thought.
"Well—what was nothing?" Harry asked. He wondered if the words of what was written were still in the book. Probably not, he thought. He looked up searchingly at Severus's face, but Severus was still looking at the fire.
"Nothing was nothing!" Severus snapped. He got up, leaving the book on the floor. "It was just some nonsense about our being—lovers, that's all." Severus snatched up the hairy begonia and stormed to his bed, where he plopped the trembling plant onto the blankets and aimed at it with his wand.
Harry reached for the gray book where it lay shut on the hearthrug. For a moment he wanted nothing more than to throw it in the fire, but he quelled the urge and opened it to the first page. As he expected, it was blank.
Harry looked up at Severus, who seemed absorbed in mutilating his half-transformed begonia. Then he reached down and picked up his quill, dipping it in Severus's inkpot. 'Hello,' he wrote.
There was no response.
'I don't suppose you'll tell me what you told Severus.' Harry waited; again there was no response. Harry heard Severus mutter something, and from the corner of his eye, Harry saw the begonia twitch spasmodically. Harry thought a moment, and then wrote: 'Did you suck the ink out of my Transfiguration text?'
There was no response.
Harry looked at the page, brilliantly blank in the light of the fireplace, and ran his hands over the edges of the cover. Still keeping the book open the first page, he flipped through the rest of the book, letting his fingers feel—feel for whatever magic that there was. He felt… an undercurrent, almost: tightly coiled under a mask, a shield. He dug at the shield, but it was like scratching the face of a rock. There was nothing.
But just as he was about to shut the book, the writing began again, this time with an almost flowing script, without interruptions for thought:
'I See my life go drifting like a river
From change to change; I have been many things—
A green drop in the surge, a gleam of light…'
"Severus!" Harry shouted. "Look."
Severus swung off his bed and squatted down next to Harry—but they did not touch, Harry noted in some distant, restless part of his mind.
'…Upon a sword, a fir-tree on a hill,
An old slave grinding at a heavy quern,
A king sitting upon a chair of gold—
And all these things were wonderful and great…'
"Yeats," Severus said in a flat, expressionless voice.
Harry glanced up briefly. "What?"
Severus stayed silent, watching intently the words form.
'…But now I have grown nothing, knowing all.
Ah! Druid, Druid, how great webs of sorrow
Lay hidden in the small slate-coloured thing!'
Harry stared at it and read it quickly once more, then slowed himself down and went word by word, muttering under his breath and committing it to memory. But then, the letters began to fade, and the ink turned to gray, and then to nothingness.
Severus got up.
"Wait," Harry said, shutting the gray cover with a soft thud. "What did you say? Yates?"
"Yeats," Severus said condescendingly. "Y-E-A-T-S. An Irish poet. That was an excerpt from one of his poems." He gave Harry a cold and critical look. "I would have thought that you would know. Yeats was a Muggle, after all."
"I've never heard of him," Harry said. Severus said nothing in reply, and climbed back onto his bed and rummaged through what seemed to be a pile of ink-splotched Transfiguration notes.
Harry sighed, tossing Christolph's diary onto his own bed. He laid his quill on top of it, and then picked up Severus's inkpot and quill.
"These are yours," Harry said, moving to stand next to the other Slytherin.
Severus gestured vaguely at the floor next to his own tattered book bag. "Put it somewhere there," he muttered, pulling out a sheet of parchment with a small sketch of a begonia.
Harry complied. He stood up, and paused. "Severus," he said. "What did the book say?"
The shadow from Harry's form submerged half of Severus's face in shadow. "I told you," he snapped, staring down at the scrawled lines and words and pictures. "Nothing."
"Severus," Harry said slowly, sternly. "What did it say about me?"
Severus slapped parchment on the bed and the begonia jerked back. "Nothing!" he snarled, eyes flashing. "Nothing at all! I told you already!"
"If it had been nothing, you wouldn't be this mad," Harry replied coolly.
Severus picked up his wrinkled parchment and glared at it. "Let me be," he growled. "Please find someone else to pester, Frost."
"Severus," Harry said again. He stopped.
They were alone in this room, this room of firelight and shadows. Alone. There was no window, and the door was swathed in darkness; the orange and red and yellow of the flames were all that existed.
Alone. I love him, Harry thought.
He reached out a hand and deliberately touched Severus's shoulder. Severus tensed instantly, and Harry made no other move, just waited. There was the sound of the fire cracking, and their breaths, shallow and quiet in the stillness of the room. He lifted his hand from the shoulder and moved it closer to the sallow face. It brushed past the curtain of hair and—touched…
Severus turned away.
Harry withdrew his hand. He took a step back and turned. The air was oppressively still. Then he moved to his side of the room and climbed onto his bed.
"It's a Hogsmeade weekend tomorrow," Harry said after a long silence stretched between them.
"I know," Severus said at last. His voice was slightly raspy, and he cleared his throat quietly after speaking. He set down his parchment and pulled the potted begonia closer.
"Do you have anything you want me to buy?" Harry asked. He kept his voice casual.
Again, a long pause. "Yes," said Severus. He stared at the begonia's flowers, which Harry thought vaguely resembled a terrier's pleading eyes. "I'll make a list."
Harry watched Severus for a long while. "All right," he said, and reached blindly over the side of his bed for a book to read.
qp qp qp
Harry went into the room quietly. His cheeks were flushed from the brisk wind, and his shoes were splattered with mud.
"Hey," he said as he shut the door behind him. "The weather was terrible today, but I got you everything on your list."
Severus, lying like a shadow on his bed with a book in front of him, grunted a reply.
Harry sat and pulled off his boots. The heat within the room was kneading the cold from his face and neck, and even the stone of the floor was slightly warm.
"Did the house-elves light the fire?" Harry asked, pulling off his socks.
Severus flipped a page. "No," he said absently.
"We should find out why they're avoiding our room," Harry said without conviction. He set his boots and socks in front of the fire. It occurred to him that Dumbledore hadn't descended upon him yet, even though the house-elf that had presumably been sent to spy on him had practically disappeared. I suppose Dumbledore thinks everything is fine, Harry thought, pulling off his cloak. Let him think that.
"Where do you want me to put your things?" Harry said, taking the tiny jars from his inner pocket.
"Just put them next to my bed," Severus said, looking up from his book so that the firelight glinted on his eyes. He looked down and added, "Please."
Harry bent down and set the jars on the ground. "Finite Incantatem," he muttered, and with the slight sound of glass scraping across stone, the jars grew to their previous size.
"How much did it cost you?" Severus said from his bed. "I'll need to pay you back…"
"Oh, don't bother," Harry said, and then wondered immediately if that was the wrong thing to say. "Um. It was five galleons and twelve sickles, and—"
Severus lurched forward. "Five galleons?" he demanded. "What did you—did you go to the place I told you? Master O'Bliquus, next to Bathory's Bath Shop?"
Harry looked over the jars: he had gotten what Severus had wanted, he was sure of that. "Er. Yes?"
"You idiot!" Severus snapped. "I could've gotten them for less than two galleons—one, if it was a good day. What possessed you buy them at the price he first gave you?"
"The first—I… didn't know," Harry said helplessly. He sat back onto his heels, looking up as Severus glared down like a gargoyle from the lip of a cliff. "I've never done bargaining before." It was true: the Dursleys had never let him handle money, and after his inheritance he had never needed to be frugal; too often he had had to deal with the other end of the spectrum, with starry-eyed gift-givers or sellers who knocked down their prices for the Harry Potter.
"You've never done bargaining," Severus echoed in disbelief.
"Is it that hard to believe?" Harry asked shortly. "Muggle stores all had fixed prices, and it's not as though I bought my own things a lot."
"What?" Severus sneered. "Did you steal them?"
"No," said Harry.
"Then what? You had a mysterious benefactor who bought you everything you needed?"
"Actually I was locked in a cupboard too often to buy things," Harry said dryly. "My aunt and uncle weren't very nice people."
Severus snorted. "Right." But the look he gave Harry was laced with skepticism.
Harry forced out a chuckle. "Right, I was only kidding." He glanced down at the jars and wondered why he brought it up. It was utterly stupid, and now Severus would be suspicious. "D'you know what I saw today?"
"What?" Severus said flatly.
"Malfoy getting a haircut. A botched haircut." Harry managed a strained grin. "I saw him come out of that one shop on the same street as Madam Rosmerta's, and his hair was cut in a very interesting bob. He was wailing as though his mother had just died."
"Mm-hmm," said Severus without expression, looking down at the jars. Harry scrutinized the face, but found nothing.
"Lestrange was there also," Harry continued. "He managed to get the barber to give Malfoy a better cut. He looks like one of those Muggle musicians now."
Severus curled his lip in contempt. "Really," he said, withdrawing into the shadows and returning to his book.
Harry found himself wondering almost feverishly what it was that had caused hostility between Severus and Malfoy. But he couldn't ask, not now. The air was almost tingling with unsaid things. Perhaps it was nothing—a schoolboy's grudge, and Merlin knew Severus could keep a grudge. But perhaps it was something else.
"You'll hurt your eyes reading without better light," Harry chided.
"No I won't," Severus said shortly. "There hasn't been a Snape who hasn't had perfect eyesight. It's part of the bloodline."
"Genetics," said Harry.
"What?" Severus asked irritably.
"Nothing," Harry said. "Did the book tell you that?"
Severus's voice was colder than the wind-whipped rain. "No, actually. I do know quite a bit about my family, Frost. And I'd appreciate if you kept yourself out of my business."
"Your business?" Harry said incredulously.
"Yes," Severus replied without looking up from his book. "My business."
Well, Harry thought after it sank in. I just won't mention that I found the book and brought it here. He wondered if the book had been conversing with Severus while he was gone. I wish I hadn't gotten it! Harry wished savagely, and felt a thirsting desire to see the thing burn.
"Where is it?" Harry said. "The book, I mean."
"In your book-bag," Severus replied shortly.
"And by the way, I found that fellow of yours."
Severus glared up irritably. "Fellow of mine?"
"Yeats. William Butler Yeats," Harry said. He reached into his clothes and took out a tiny book. "Finite Incantatem," he said, and the book burgeoned to its former size. "The storekeeper seemed very enthusiastic about my buying it."
Severus snorted. "Muggle-lover," he muttered, almost too quietly for Harry to hear.
But Harry heard it. "Your ancestor was quite a Muggle-lover too," Harry said, making sure to keep his voice calm and level. It sounded steely to his ears. "He managed to quote the entire last stanza. Imagine that."
Severus said nothing.
Harry went stiffly to his own bed. The air felt suffocating. The flickering warmth from the fire had lost its comfort. It was stifling. Harry peered into his book-bag and saw the gray book, wedged between his Transfiguration and Potions texts. He took it out and set it aside on the stone floor. He wanted to rip its pages out and see them flutter into the fire and curl up and turn black and the gray covers and pentagonal rose to vanish into mingling ashes and be swept away by a cold wind. He sat back on his bed and flipped open the book of Yeats's poetry with a heavy sigh.
"The woods of Arcady are dead,
And over is their antique joy;
Of old the world on dreaming fed;
Grey Truth is now her painted toy…"