Gin/Ginny- G thanks 3.
Frayedsoul- I laughed at "sev/james action"! I make no promises but I will spookily say in a Trelawney-type fashion, "I see sexual situations in the fuuuutuuuuuure!" Do a lot of fanfictioners decide to kill off Snape's mum or something? I don't want to kill her! She seems like so much more of a fun character to mess around with. (Even when she's put into fics she's only portrayed as the victim of abuse it seems. I think the relationship between Tobias and her was a little more complicated that that…)
I'm glad you liked my decision to split the povs- I was wondering if people would be thrown off. "But I can imagine sev as a great lover"- Hah! So can I! SQUEE!
Avangeline- Ah, yes. James's dad- stuff like that should put things into perspective. But it would appear like my characters are very obtuse.
Lily's not a whore. She just has very a very loose sexual morality. I sound like a politician but there you are.
As far as the threesome thing… well. Marriage certainly doesn't work like that. And I don't like polygamy. But I wouldn't call what they have now divided love… they're just really confused. Initially it could work if they all loved each other equally. But. Eventually one person will be siphoned away. Who will it be? MUAHAHA!
Audriella- Left field? Been there done that. Now I'm in the center field.
Thanks I'm glad you like the split p-o-vs. Poor silly Slytherin indeed.
I've been forming an apology in my head for three days. I have a list of things on a page of my steno notepad, of things to tell Severus I feel guilty about. Beating him up in general was bad. Putting him in the dumpster was bad too. I hope he understands I was just overreacting. I also need to tell him that he's a wonderful person. Over and over again. I find that tends to help when one is giving a good apology.
I feel like I'm writing a bloody inaugural speech. I've got all my little notes on my pad of paper on my desk. I should be working on other things but I keep adding ideas to it. My excuse is that it needs to be a good apology.
A proper apology too… not just a list of things I've done wrong but the reasons I feel bad and how I hope to make it better. My mum taught me this technique, "I feel… because I… and you… and this is what I want…" Teenage boys are never very good at revealing their emotions. She tried to teach me to be more sensitive, to be nurturing to my own feelings. Never worked, but there you are.
I feel shitty. Because I treated you like dirt for ten years. And you still hate me.
And I want…
What do I want?
Lily? Severus?
I don't have any plans for anything. I'm going to go into this head first like the Gryffindor I know I am. But there is one thing I want: for Severus to understand. For him to forgive me. For him to think of me as a friend (hopefully more than that, but I don't even know if he's attracted to me at this point).
It's hard to concentrate on one's work when one is about to lose his job anyway.
Kingsley keeps poking his head over the cubical wall at me. Whenever I catch him he walks away. His bald head is constantly in my peripheral vision. Rookwood seemed unnaturally giddy all morning (at first I just assumed he had too much caffeine but he only seems to be smiling at me). Longbottom and Dawlish keep giving me apologetic glances, as if they were told I had just contracted Syphilis.
Jesus. I don't know what to do anymore. I'm going to loose my job and there's really nothing I can do about it. Kingsley is going to kill me if he sees what I've actually been working on (a list of the times I've beaten Severus up in school). I can't bring myself to care.
When he finally calls me to his messy, poster-strewn office, I know its over.
"I want you to explain to me why you're affiliating with Death Eaters," says Kingsley.
A trickle of sweat runs down my neck. The best thing to do now is to come clean.
"Not Death Eaters. Only one, Severus Snape. And he saved my girlfriend."
Kingsley scratches his bald head and lets out a sigh, "Potter, you're a fine kid. I know you're in Gryffindor and your family has been composed of muggle-lovers for centuries and you are going out with a muggle-born and you are sworn against Voldemort. Heard you escaped him, even." I nod, feverishly remembering the night that Lily and I had escaped his hideout in seventh year. What an adventure that had been… we nearly died and Voldemort has wanted our blood for years. "But by Merlin! Why do you have to make it so fucking hard for me?"
I toe the floor with a polished brown shoe.
"I remember when I first laid eyes on you," He grumbles, scathingly. "You were a little first year with giant glasses. Every other kid was scared out of his boots, but you had your chin up, looking around at the Gryffindor table and I thought, man, that kid's going to go far." I stare at the ceiling guiltily. "And what the fuck have you been doing? Running around with death eaters? And then not even telling your superior that you've been in contact with a criminal? And then just letting him go?! Half of the auror department wants me to fire you! The other half wants you to do time! You just watched a death eater use that funky curse on a muggle and let him go?"
"I didn't know he was a death eater. I still don't!" I bark.
"So he's just some dark-arts buff who's running around in a mask, then?"
A mask? What had that black man told him?
"Sir… Severus Snape is my friend. He's an ally. He might be a little ambiguous as to where he stands… but a Death Eater? What was I supposed to do? Turn around and attack the man who just saved my wife-to-be?"
I try to ignore the fact that that was exactly what I did.
"YES!" barks Kingsley, "You should have arrested him!"
"And what about those muggles?" I feel my face flush with anger. "I heard you let them off! You let those rapists off and you want me to hunt a good guy?!"
Kingsley breathes out deep, dark African breaths. He eyes me with his dark eyes as if finally seeing how upset I am. "We're at war," he says finally.
"I know that, sir. I hadn't even the time to catch him anyway. I was too distracted by trying to stun the rest of the gang. I thought perhaps it was more important to capture the rapists. Apparently I have to rearrange my priorities."
He folds his arms, the tight, black muscles suddenly gleaming between the folds of his robes… he looks so impressionable that way. "For your information, code 4C specifically states that in that situation we should leave the prosecution and capture of the perpetrators to the muggle authorities. That law has been around since the seventeen hundreds. Do you want to go about changing it?" I scoff.
Kingsley continues, "AND! For your information I didNOT just let them off. We handed them over to the muggle authorities but since there were no witnesses of their kind," Muggles, I think to myself, but what about the black man? "as well as no proof of the encounter considering we wiped their memories, they were set free."
"That's bureaucratic bullshit and you know it. You let them go."
"You should be fired, Potter!" My jaw clenches.
"I'm sorry, sir," I murmur, "but I did what I thought was right. Apparently that doesn't fit in with the law." I turn, grab my jacket, and make for the door.
And I'm back at my desk. I'm throwing things in a cardboard box helter-skelter, heaving notebook after notebook, a box of pens, a box of pencils, five new quills, ink bottles, scrolls, my Guide to Muggle Enforcement booklet, and a sizable electric lamp that Lily had gotten me for my last birthday ("I saw it in a popular muggle crime show," she had explained, "Ought to make your desk really rugged and suave"). I rip up purple memo after purple memo, some of them pinned to my cubical wall, others still in the shape of paper airplanes. My gleaming name on a black background with gold letters blinks at me, JAMES POTTER, OUTSIDE ASSOCIATE. It had been a source of great pride when I first got it; my mother had been cooing with praise. I run two fingers over the indented letters and place it, somewhat more gingerly into the box on top of a stray copy of Qudditch Weekly. Blinking at the dark, empty, lonely desk in front of me, I am about to stick my fingers into the convenient holes on the side of the box and leave when I hear his voice.
"I've thought of a way that I can keep you on," says Kingsley, his arms folded again, leaning against the side of my cubical.
I glare at him over the rim of my glasses, gripping the box with two hands.
"I don't want to let you go, Potter," he explains, "You'd be a kick-ass auror if anyone ever gave you the chance," Doubt that'll happen, I almost mumble. "But this is department policy, you gotta understand I don't have much choice." I nod, though hardly believing that. "I don't! Rookwood's been breathing down my neck to fire your for ages, you know. I know it sounds strange but the odds were stacked up against you. Instead of three-strikes-your-out it's turned to one. And it's not just you. Other fine young men have been turned down," he meets my eyes. I can smell the saltiness of his sweat, the unusual but smooth aroma of a black man. "If you ask me, I think there's people here that don't want a lot of able-bodied young aurors around."
My dark eyes widen, "What do you mean?"
"I mean," He hastily looks around his shoulder to make sure no one's listening. No one is, it's nearly midnight and everyone has gone home save the janitor, but he lowers his voice anyway, "I think that… He has some of his people in the department. He is trying to get involved… and there are plenty of people higher than me that he has either in his pocket, or sympathetic to his cause. Ten years ago somebody like you would have had no problem getting in this department," I feel my ego and esteem swell. I never realized Kingsley had such faith in me. "But now… son-of-a-bitch, James. I'm so sorry having to do this to you." He hadn't called me James in a long time, not since second-year when he pulled me out of a trick step at Hogwarts. "The ministry is infested. Either by his people or by people like Crouch who go by the books. You've got a good heart kid. I don't want you to believe what you did was wrong. I'm just playing a role, here."
I nod, feeling a little feeble and wet-eyed.
"But anyway. I thought of a way to keep you as an anonymous consultant. You'd get a smaller paycheck, obviously. It would just be for a few months. On an individual task."
My sweat seems to cool all at once on my forehead. "What individual task?"
"I want you to keep an eye on Severus Snape."
With a clunk, one hand drops the box, sending a spray of pens across the office floor. I put it down a flex my hand, feeling the room swirl around me as if I've just downed four pints of beer. "That's…" I can't breath. It feels like Severus' hands are on my neck, choking me. "I can't do that."
"Why not?" Kinsgley asks, "You are in contact with him. You're one of the few people close to him. He's been in a black-market potions ring for years now-"
"Most great potion masters are!" I whisper.
"If he's involved with Voldemort he's got to be one of the best!" Kingsley says, eyes alighting with earnest. "He's got to be one of the top three! The man is brilliant. He passed all his NEWTs with top marks. If he's with him, he's going to be a real asset."
"Absolutely not!" I say indignantly. "He's a friend. I can't get my personal business involved…"
"You can't honestly believe that all he does is run a potions shop and bartend?" How did he know that? Dumbledore must've told him… "James… we need to make sure he's not on His side."
"What if he is, then?" I nearly shout, "I should kill him or throw him in Azkaban?"
"Try to turn him!" Kingsley says.
"I…" Could I really if I tried? Would he listen to me if I begged him? I doubt what I have to say will have any influence on what he does. "I can't anyway. He's not talking to me anymore. We're not in constant contact."
"Befriend him! Get him to trust you!"
I thought I had, I think to myself. "Sir, this is inappropriate. I can't."
Lily could change him, I think to myself, heart pounding. I'm disgusted at myself for even considering that. "I quit."
"You can't honestly mean…"
"Yes," I say more firmly, "I quit. Good day, sir."
With that, I summon the pile of pens from the floor, set them in the box, walk out the door, and apparate home.
Tobias is driving me up the bloody wall.
The first day was worse than that time in the summer after fifth year when Mum went on holiday and Tobias was constantly trying to get me to play cricket and football with him. He just flitters in and out of my life and comes back expecting to be buddy-buddy.
He broke three- THREE- of my expensive test tubes from Bulgaria. He smoked a cigarette in the living room (said he forgot). He made us chilly for dinner (I-hate-chilly). And he won't stay out of my basement.
MY basement. The basement I'm paying for. The basement that I begged him to stay clear of. Why doesn't he listen to me? It's like he's expecting to find stolen diamonds or a collection of pornographic films or something. It's not like I'm making these rules up to be a jerk. The last time his hand miraculously landed in a bowl of murtlap essence, and it shriveled like a raison. Luckily I had been there.
He's like a four-year-old, I swear. When did I become the parent and he the child?
And he won't- WON'T- keep asking me about my relationships. Each time I say, "Dad, I don't want to talk about it." Fifteen minutes later he's asking me the same question. I keep telling him he has Alzheimer's. Doesn't work.
He asks me if I have a boyfriend. I tell him he's mad. Maybe when I said "if have a girl over or a guy it's none of your business" he took it to mean that I'm dating a man. Apparently he's far more intuitive than I thought. I'm wondering if I should just tell him about James because he's just going to keep annoying me, or to wait it out and see if he'll change the subject. I tell him I'm not dating anyone at the moment. It's the truth, so I don't feel guilty.
It's odd having him around. He gets in my way so often I feel like I'm going mad. And yet, there are moments that I'm glad he's here. Like when he packed me a sandwich for work today and when we talked at length last night about I Love Lucy. Irrelevant to my life but oddly welcome, in the same way that Barry is welcome. They're both annoying buggars to take care of, but I still grow sad when they leave. Maybe it's because I'm remembering James's father's poor memory, and I think about what it would be like if my father actually did have something like Alzheimer's. That would be terrible. I do love him deep down… I just think he should get out of my damned house.
I'm off to work in the morning. Tobias packed me a lunch, a slimy-looking salami sandwich. It looks disgusting, but welcome; I usually have to buy soggy fish and chips. I tell him I'll be home in the afternoon and shut the door behind me. It's a warm, comforting feeling in my gut- that someone will be there when I get home.
I'm already growing into a lonely, gibbering old man.
I nervously fiddle with my tie. Going through the speech I've prepared over and over again in my head hasn't prepared me for seeing Severus's door at Spinner's End again. Panicking, I'm wondering if I shouldn't have shown up here at all.
I'm here to tell him that I'm sorry¸ I tell myself again. Sorry?
Sorry for punching him in the stomach. Sorry for throwing him in the dumpster. Sorry for not trying to understand-
But he's so difficult! He's the one who-
Sorry for picking on him with school. Sorry for not giving him a chance with Lily-
I can't mention school again. That's so bloody pathetic-
But Severus mentioned it. It's obviously still bothering him.
I tug at my shirt, staring at the door.
Also to tell him that I think I might love him…That I forgive him for trying to steal Lily…
I gulp.
When I feel my own fingers raping at the door, I panic even more, entertaining the notion of running into a neighboring bush but all to soon the door opens and…
This isn't Severus…
A tall, very impressionable man licks at a spoon dipped in yogurt and leans against the doorframe. His stocky appearance, from his work boots to his leather belt to his starch-collared shirt is nothing like the Severus I know. There is an impressionable thickness in his neck, his back that Severus's feminine body conspiciously lacks. His wide, stick-like fingers grip the spoon like it's an axe. But his face is somewhat familiar. His eyebrows, his cheeks, his wide shoulders resemble Snape's to a tee.
"'Lo," says the man, popping the spoon in his mouth and slurping up the vanilla goo. I gawk, and he raises an eyebrow like how any true Slytherin would, "Selling something?"
"I'm…" I babble, heart quickening because this man isn't my love, "James. I'm here to see Severus… is he home?"
"At work," the man says, shaking his shorthaired head. "Like any good twenty-something-year-old should be."
I bristle. "Do…" I whisper, "do'u know when he'll be back?"
He shrugs as if to say, beats me.
"Didn't know that Severus had a flatmate."
The man smiles, his goatee widening as he does, and protrudes a hand, "Hardly. I'm Tobias Snape."
"His father?" I ask, shaking his hand. I thought he didn't like his father.
"Right you are," he pulls back his hand and continues to eat his yogurt. "Severus shouldn't be back 'till the afternoon, I think. But don't quote me on that. Some of his shifts are a little odd."
He eyes my frame, as if drinking me in, not quite knowing what to do with me.
"You're not one of them… loonies, are yeh?"
I stare.
"I'm a wizard if that's what you mean."
"Nah, that's not…" He shakes his head, "My wife and son are loonies in that case. I mean one of those…" He gesticulates as if trying to come up with a word, "mask-wearers. One of them weirdos?"
Is he trying to say, a death eater? I gulp. Does that mean there have been death eaters here?
"I'm not going to attack you if that's what you mean."
"Hmm," he rubs his chin. "Why don't you come in?"
I tentatively follow him into the living room. My shoes feel far too heavy on the soft brown carpet of the mat, so I toe them off, deciding that this would be more polite.
Tobias takes a seat on an old plaid couch and pats the cushion next to him, beckoning me wordlessly to take a seat. "Should be back soon," he says. "Might as well hang around here if it's important. My guess is that it is important?"
I nod, my throat feeling dry. I lower my hips onto the old cushion as slowly as one leaning over a prickly bush. Tobias grins in that same mischievous way that his son does. As if he knows something that I don't. As if he's going to play with me like a cat with a ball of yarn.
"What did you say your name was?"
"James Potter, sir."
He fingers the vanilla yogurt off of his goatee in one smooth stroke. "Potter? That's a good strong English name. You related to the Dorset Potters?"
"No, sir," I say softly. "I'm in a wizarding family, sir."
"Ah," he twists one tuft of mustache around his finger, leaning back in his chair. "Nobody I'd know then. Forgive me, you'd be one of the few wizard's I've met outside of my family," he then eyes me. "Didn't mean to offend."
"I'm not offended, sir," I tell him. "Why would I be?"
He bristles, as if the cold wind had blown across his back. A twitch goes off in his lower jaw. "Oh, it's just some of Severus' friends are a bit- techy- about their lineage."
I lick my lips, "Like who?"
"Well, like Lucius Malfoy. Blond kid… probably a few years a head of you boys…"
"I know him," I realize that one of my hands has balled into a fist around my tie.
"He's a real snob. Lil' shit. But Severus likes him, so," He throws up his hands. As if remembering himself, he slaps his knee and raises himself gingerly up. "What kind of a host am I? Would you like some tea?"
I'm beginning to wonder if it is dangerous sitting with this man, "Sure."
He smiles and ambles towards the kitchen. I look around the room in his absence, inspecting the old, mismatched furniture when a clunking sound of a teapot on a stove emits behind the wall and his voice calls, "If you're bored, there are always the embarrassing family albums on your left. Just don't tell Severus I showed 'em to you."
Grinning ear-to-ear, finally coming to like this guy, I toss a blue album on my lap and begin skimming through baby pictures. If he could see me giggling over the picture of him naked and dripping from the bath and wrapped only in a towel, Severus would kill me. My eyes strain as I keep expecting these pictures to move, but I know they don't. Muggle pictures are always odd to me. Less like animated characters on a page but more like frozen vacuums where time stops and life slows. Like memories caught in mid-action and forced to pause.
I continue to peruse, skipping a few pictures here and there. There a few years that Severus seemed to have forgotten how to smile (maybe he'd lost a few teeth and refused to show them, I think hopefully). He looks about nine.
But it doesn't get better… his absent smiles become either angry glares or blank, bored stares. His teeth weren't that bad then…
There are only a few of his smiles in this crumbling record of his childhood. I only find three. They're are all with Lily. The first is in a playground. Severus seemed to be tickling her. They are both in a fit of giggles. The second is a birthday picture- though I'm not sure who's. A large chocolate cake is in the background topped with flaming candles. Severus and Lily both smile at the camera, leaning over the cake as if just about to stick their fingers in. The third is far later in the album, when the years pass between photographs at an alarming rate. They look fourteen. He has his arms around her. They are cheek-to-cheek in glee.
As I flip through the pages, Tobias lets out a gasp of realization, sending a shock down to my toes so that I nearly jump three inches off of the chair. He sets down the tea and takes a seat.
He grins at me, looking down his nose. "I knew I recognized your name. James Potter. Used to beat the crap out of my kid in secondary school."
When he says it like that, he makes me feel like the most evil, the slimiest, violent, disillusioned villain in the whole wide world. "I… didn't mean t-"
"That's alright though. No need to apologize to me. He probably seemed like the weak on of your class, yes?" I feel sweat trickle down to my collar, and I lean against the quilted armrest. "The one that everybody picked on? The scapegoat?"
My voice fails me.
"He probably deserved to be hit, then. No son of mine is to be the weak one," Tobias leers.
I bite back the retort that that's a horrid thing to tell a fifteen-year-old.
"He always had trouble learning how to fight back," Tobias scoffs at the muggle photograph of his son. "I used to tell him all the time: If someone keeps bothering you, kick him in the nuts. Didn't listen to me! Too muggle, he'd say. Too simple. He had to come up with some grand scheme. To use his mind, when in the end he'd just get the crap beat out of him again. Didn't believe me. I mean he isn't even that weak!" Tobias complains, throwing up his arms.
He gesticulates towards me, palms outstretched, "I mean, he could probably have taken you. You're not that strong. If he just kicked you in the nuts you probably would've left him alone. Am I right?"
I nod feverishly, if only to appease this very angry man.
"I can't, he'd say," says Tobias, mimicking a scared, teenaged voice. "Four against one! He'd say. I said to just give them the old one-two. And if you can't pull out your wand fast enough, well, just stick it up their arses, damn it."
I feel myself blush, wondering if a wand stuck in my arse is in my future. I take the teacup in my shaking hands and sip it, burning my tongue, "But… sir…" I sputter, "I mean, that's not the Christian thing to do."
"Christian-Smistian. His mother kept on putting those ideas in his head," Tobias raises his index finger to the ceiling. "If someone hits you, you don't just sit there and take it, you hit back!"
I swallow, thinking that if Severus tried to beat me up, Tobias would just survey the damage and finish the job if it was not to his liking.
"He's a nancy-boy," Tobias huffs finally.
"No he's not!" I say, turning bright red because… I mean… he is. "I resent that. Just because he didn't fight back… it doesn't make him any less masculine."
Oddly enough, he smiles at me and says, "I like you. I like that you are willing to disagree. Even though you probably thought he was a nancy-boy at school."
My mind wanders back to that time, "I didn't… but I did think he was… weak… and… not worth anyone's trouble."
Tobias nods.
"But I was wrong!"
"Of course you were, our Sev is a great kid." Tobias takes a toothpick out of his pocket and sticks it in his teeth, puffing at it as if wishing it were a cigarette. "A nancy-kid though."
Heat flushes into my cheeks.
"You're in a relationship with him, aren't you?"
I don't even have time to gasp, he continues.
"I can tell by the way you're blushing, boy," He grins through his toothpick, "You blush whenever I say nancy-boy."
Damn it.
"Just don't tell Eileen. God knows, she'll have a heart attack."
"How did you…" I can feel my mouth drop of it's own accord, the tendons in my jaw letting loose. "How did you just? Did Se-"
"It's just something Severus said," mutters Tobias, chewing on his toothpick. "Something about inviting a boy over…"
And, like the wind invisibly chilling up my back, I feel the presence of another person in the room…
"What's this?"
I almost split the saucer in two when I smash the teacup back onto it. I leap out of my chair, standing up and shakily finding my lover's eyes. "Severus!"
He surveys the scene, sneering, and finds my eyes again. "What the fuck is this?"
"I… we…" I gesture to the tea, and to Tobias who is chewing his toothpick, unimpressed. "We need to talk."
Severus' thick black hair hangs in his stressed, pallid face. He's wearing muggle work clothes. His shoulders are slumped. He looks like his odd, out-of-place, eccentric, freaky, weirdo-self. And yet the sight couldn't be more welcome.
His eyes widen, as if how dare I ask that, you filthy peasant. "No! Get out of my house!"
"I've invited him in," Tobias says jovially, "We were having tea."
"Fuck that!" Severus gesticulates, throwing his hands up. "Get the fuck out of here!"
"Language, boy," Tobias growls.
I clutch my steno pad in my hands, pressing them together in prayer, memorizing that strange, high-cheekboned, calming face. I try to glimpse his eyes, but he turns to his father distractedly.
"You're the one who taught me this language, Father. Potter! I don't know who you think you are but you can't just-"
"Severus…" I whisper, "please…"
Hearing his name come from my voice may have tipped the scale in my favor. He stops his rant, mid-sentence, and glares at the floor, tongue in cheek.
"Please… I… we need to talk. I've come here to apologize," I say with my softest, most soothing voice.
"Apologize!" he barks. "Apologize?!"
Tobias's eyebrows rise to the ceiling.
"For what, Potter? For tormenting me for seven years? For beating me up at school in a regular basis? For putting me in the dumpster? What?"
My bottom lip trembles- this is not going like how I planned.
"For having tea and crumpets with my father and telling him how fucking gay I am?" He snarls, "What?!"
"I-I'm… I'm sorry!"
His hands fall to his sides and ball in to fist. He turns away, muttering, "What a pile of bullshit."
Gathering up my anger, and my pride I mutter, "Since I am the one who is more honest in my relationships, I think that I am the one to discern what is or is not bullshit."
That shuts him up. He has a look on his face like someone had cut out his tongue and replaced it with a sour lime. "Potter…" he mutters.
"It's James. Typically you call the person you are dating by his first name."
His eyes flicker to Tobias, who is staring through his album again, blushing.
"James..."
The sound of my voice on his lips makes me feel ridiculously elated. We're going to make it… we're going to be all right.
"You can't just…" he runs his fingers through his velvety black hair, glancing at Tobias through his dark eyelashes, "Let's go upstairs."
I follow him. But then I wish I hadn't… this is the same room that I had spooned up against him, the same plain, dull room that he had fucked her. My knees buckle slightly as I see the bed, not made, sheets strewn about the place. I wonder if he's washed them… probably not.
He turns and folds his arms in one elegant motion. He's wearing his work shirt and black tie again. He stares impassively, "I'm listening."
My face flushes. The list is forgotten when I say, "I am too." When Severus says nothing I grind my teeth and mutter, "Was this all really a grand scheme to get revenge for my bullying?"
There is a twitch of a sly grin on the corner of his lip, "Not really."
A little disappointed by that answer (for a reason I can't place) I mumble, "Or was it merely to shag my girlfriend? I hear you succeeded…"
The corner of his eyebrow raises, but he pulls it back quickly into his emotionless frown- he's trying to hide how he feels. I'm worried because he was always good at that. "I had sex with her, yes."
He is the most evil, disillusioned, horrible person for saying that so impassively, saying it as if he didn't love her. I feel like spitting in his face, like pulling his hair and throwing him against the wall. Or better yet, I could just walk out… leave and pretend this encounter had never happened, that it's over…
"You are a disgusting human being, Severus Snape."
He smiles.
I grimace, feeling so angry with him that I would rather punch him in the nose again than apologize for punching him in the nose.
His smile fades as the moments drag on, as if he were internalizing that statement as the truth. I disappointedly stuff my hands in my pockets. If our eyes had personas, they would be having a sword fight. We're silently telling each other that the hate between us can never, ever be changed. He's invisibly placing the mask on … the mask of the evil Slytherin. I can see his kind, sensitive soul whip it over his face until it becomes that monstrous, hate-filled expression. "You knew that already, though. So damn yourself if need be." Why must he hide his true feelings, the feelings, I know he has for me?
I only silently stare. He tears himself away from my gaze as if it were costing him too much energy to maintain the persona and paces up and down the room. "I'm surprised you haven't hexed me yet."
I survey his lean body as he steps past me, curious if he feels any guilt at all for what he's done. "Do you want me to hex you?"
Severus stops mid step, the mask cracks when he looks at me, "I don't know."
That tells me enough.
James walks up to me until we're nose-to-nose. I can see the screws in his square glasses and the stray hairs on his eyebrows. My lips purse as I try to hold in my heavy breath. His cheeks flush, the quirk in his smile showing the mischief behind his eyes. It's the same dangerous look he often got when he was about to hex me or beat me up in school… only I've never seen it this close… I now realize how positively lustful it is. I lick my lips, trying to make my body as tight and still as possible, sucking in my stomach, tightening my shoulders.
I can see the words forming behind his eyes, but he doesn't say them. The silent, Oh, really? Is that because you're sorry?
I swallow. And all of a sudden he pushes me hard in the middle. I wobble for a moment, and finally bring myself to balance when he shoves me again. This is exactly how he used to push me around in school. I feel as weak and as vulnerable as then. "Stop it," I say, annoyed. We're adults now, what game is he playing at?
I shove back. His shoulders are firm and taught in my hands as I drive him backward. He makes a noise… a half-laugh, half-giggle. He pushes me again.
"What are you…? Stop it!" I say commandingly. But he only makes that noise again and grips me around the stomach, toppling me down on to the bed.
My heart beats fast as he pushes me down with all his might, clutching my wrists in his hands. I should have expected this, even when the warm liquid of his spit hits my cheek.
I wince, staring up at him. He's straddling me with a mad gleam in his eye; a triumph.
"Feel better?" I mock, trying to wipe my face on my pillow.
"What? " he asks. His grip on my wrist tightens painfully.
"You plan on beating me up in my own house," I tell him, "to avenge your wounded masculinity. Do you feel better now that you have me at your mercy?"
"My wounded-" He gasps, looking at me scoldingly. "Snivellus. I've come to get an apology from you. For lying to me."
"Hah!" I growl. "As if that would ever happen!"
I retaliate, pushing my wrists up so that he struggles to keep me pinned down. We flip over each other, twisting and biting and sucker-punching.
So we're making amends by wrestling, are we? Well, I'll win, by God. Our smooth stomachs wobble against each other, until I wrap both my legs around him, twirling us over the sheets until he's stomach-down underneath me. I twist his arm behind his back and bite his shoulder.
"Ha-ow!" James flails underneath me, his legs moving up and down. When my other hand passes over the soft skin between his pelvic bone and stomach he squirms and giggles. I tickle him mercilessly. His odd movements affect me. His arse jumps in the air as I push his face deep into the pillow, playfully suffocating him.
"You were going to apologize?" I say with a rough twist of his arm.
He glances at the steno pad that he had dropped on the floor and lets out a soft moan. He's still trying to fight it, trying to get me to apologize first. He mutters into his sleeve, "Ishountathrewyouinthegarbage."
"What's that?"
He coughs, "I shouldn't have put you in the dumpster. I…" He meets my eyes again. Our eyes are no longer battling but dancing together, "I… overreacted."
"Overreacted," I repeat, unscoldingly and unsurprised but satisfied, "Very well. Apology accepted."
"What about me?" he asks.
I press my entire body against him, from my toes to my groin to my chest. My tongue licks the wide expanse of his cheek, dwelling on the place behind his earlobe, "What about you?"
He wriggles his bum against my hardness. "I fell for you, you know. I wasn't faking it."
It's his way of telling me that he wants his apology, and that, if wrestling doesn't work, guilt-trips will. My cool fingers find the base of his warm neck. His lips are pressed against mine. My soft, chapped lips mush against his wide, warm ones. My tongue wanders into his welcome wet mouth. He opens his mouth wider and sucks it in. I pull away with a wet sigh.
He still wants me... I can hardly believe it but he does...
"And you think I was faking it?" I nearly growl.
He twists around to face me properly, lying on his back. His glasses are askew, but his eyes shine over-bright behind them, inspecting me. There's a trickle of sweat on his forehead. His starch white shirt is damp.
My arm swings behind my back, and I flip head first in one fluid motion, landing my bum on the floor. James has me pinned to the side of the mattress, with one arm behind my back. His other arm is around my neck, and the more I flail the more he suffocates me. "Prove to me that you weren't."
My free arm attempts at retaliation by pulling off his glasses. He growls and pins my hand to the bed with his meaty calf. He brings his face close to mine. I see him, upside-down. He's blinking blindly and squinting as if trying to see me through a haze.
"You told me that you didn't love me," he says.
His breath wisps my forehead. "You're an idiot."
His eyes catch the gleam of the sunlight, his face forming a placid expression, like that of Roman busts. His grip on my neck and my arm loosens. My palm holds his chiseled face, thumb wandering over his strong chin, finger running along his long, perfect nose. I tenderly put his square glasses back.
"Are you saying that you do love me?" he asks.
"No! I never said that…"
He kisses me. My lips are on his again. It's awkward at first, his tongue and lips are right side down. But… it feels so good to kiss a man… the strong scent, the welcome stubble. He opens his mouth wantonly. I lick his full, velvety lips and the soft back of his tongue.
When we separate, I stare into his big, kind brown eyes.
"I just want you to be honest with me."
"Honesty is merely a matter of perspective," I tell him. It's always been my excuse. Trust me to make a Star Wars quote one of my moral standbys.
"Well then, what's yours?"
I sigh and bring myself upright until I'm lying, side-by-side with him on the bed. We stare at the ceiling. I say, "I hate you."
James looks annoyed. "I suppose I should have known that already."
"No," I say, "you don't understand. I really hate you."
"Thanks."
I bite my lip, trying to come up with a way to explain it. Trying to get him to stop looking at the white ceiling as though it hates him too. "No… you don't get it. I… I hate you more than I've loved anyone else."
That came out way more pathetic than I thought it would. His eyebrows stretch, and he stares at me in shock and disbelief and pity. And a blush, a tiny one, but it's there, graces his cheeks. "I was thinking about it the other day…" I plow on, before I blush too, "and… I mean… Had I not been so pissed off at you, I would have never called Lily a mudblood."
"Oh. So it's my fault that you fucked up your relati-"
I cut him off, "Let me finish. I was so busy being mad at you that I never gave Lily the respect and love she deserved. I was always trying to get back at you. I mean… in a way we've been obsessing over each other for years."
"You've been obsessing over me you mean."
"Don't pretend you didn't have an unhealthy fascination with pull-the-pants-off-the-slimy-Slytherin."
James smiles. "You were my favorite slimy Slytherin, I'll give you that."
"Anyways, I've been trying to get at why my relationship with Lily never works out. She just…" I grimace, "And it's not because your relationship with her is any better." I feel like I'm finally vocalizing the ball of tightness in my chest, to somebody who I never thought I could. He lays there, passively, calmly. Just listening. "It's never been easy for me to be intimate with her. Not since school. I don't necessarily mean physically," I say to respond to his look of disbelief, "I just can't open up to her in the same way. I always feel like an idiot. And," I feel myself tearing at the roots of my hair of my hands' own accord, "it was just so easy for me to open up to you. My sworn enemy! I felt like I was closer to you than the person I was supposed to love more than anyone else!"
James blinks. He looks away as though someone had temporarily stunned him and slowly finds my eyes again. "Why's that?"
"Because I've always hated you more than I've loved her."
Twin emotions flutter across his visage. The first seems like elated joy, the love he feels that he's the more important in my life, and the second is anger, for Lily. How did I get to this point? Where I practically know what he's thinking merely by a glance? "And you want me to be flattered by that?"
"Not… flattered. You told me to be honest. I'm being honest."
James nods, not happy but seemingly content, academically satisfied.
"And it was stupid of me to go after you. Lily's right... I used you. I could have found another way to get back with her, instead I ruined my relationship with her again. Now she just thinks I'm even more dishonorable and disgusting," I sigh. "I wanted to go after you. I just... I don't know why. It felt right. At the time."
"Your right. It did," he whispers. Warmth fills the ventricles of my heart. We stare at each other for a moment, and my hands wander to touch his body.
"Mind being honest with me, sometimes?" His form is jagged, rough and smooth. My hand wanders just above the waistband of his trousers. I feel the muscles in his abs harden. It's so different, so stronger, than Lily's jello-like belly. When I touch her it's always like I'm afraid to break her. When I touch him I want to break him. I want him to break me…
James continues to stare up at me with a small grin tugging at his lower lip, "I'm always honest."
"'Course you are. Idiot Gryffindor." I'm only touching his stomach through his shirt and my heart is beating faster than it ever has. I might be falling for my schoolyard bully. The irony in my life astounds me. I want to tell him I love him. Right now. But I love Lily. This is mad.
His brown eyes twinkle… He knows.
"I'm sorry I beat you up," he says.
"When?" I ask.
"Whenever," James says, pulling me into a proper embrace, tugging his arms around me, "I meant when I put you in the dumpster. But whenever…"
I scoff at him. "Surely you should know better than to expect me to forgive you for seven years of pure hell in one sitting."
He sighs, and looks at the curtain-covered window, "I know. But I thought I'd start small." He gives a meaningful glance to the stenopad on the floor and curiosity burns in my brain as I scoop it up off of the floor and flip through the pages.
He dives, making a disparaging noise and tries to rip the notebook from my fingertips. I wrestle with him one-handed, tickling him until he's trapped, facedown, underneath my midsection.
"What the hell is this?"
Severus flips through. As his smile widens from page to page my blush grows redder. He sniggers at one sentence. I put my face in my hands, like a Hufflepuff girl whose crush is reading her diary. He flips the pages, and frowns at one point too. When he gingerly shuts the volume a calm smile graces his lips. "You're adorable."
He pockets the book and kisses my cheek.
"And what about me? Don't I get a book of apologies?"
Severus's hands are wandering up and down my back. I'm relaxing, melting as we lay on his bed together. "No," Severus says. I gasp. "I'm not really sorry. Even wrestling with you in the alley was sort of entertaining…"
"Severus…"
"Double-crossing you might have been bad, alright? But I love who I love… surely you can relate to that." My heart suddenly feels twice its size, beating twice as loudly. "But I am sorry for saying I never loved you. And you didn't deserve it. Nobody deserves that."
"You," I clutch at his hands and pull them to my chest, I feel as overdramatic as a silent film star and as giddy as a five-year-old, "love me? I thought you said you hated me..."
He blushes from all of the undue attention. "I do hate you. Idiot." My eyes are as wide as galleons. His jaw clenches and unclenches as though aggravated by my dense need to point out and highlight what he had been planning to skate over.
"You love me." A grin splits my face in two. He looks at me shrewdly.
"Now how in Merlin's name do you know that? I just double-crossed you, did I not? How do you know I'm not going to continue to go after your girlfriend as you fall head-over-heels over me? How do you know that I won't jinx you right now in a million pieces, put you in a box, and ship you to your desk at the ministry where you will spend your life as a paperweight?"
"Because you love me." My smile is as wide as my shoulders, "And you can't send me to my desk at the ministry because I've lost my job."
He looks like someone hit him over the head with a very large paperweight.
"Lost you job?" He mumbles. I nod, still not loosing my smile as he panics. "You lost your job because you lied about me?"
I nod.
"And you still came here to apologize?" He asks squeakily.
I nod.
"You really are an idiot!"
"An idiot whom you love!"
"So help me God."
He bites his lip. "I'm sorry…"
"I quit, really. You don't have to be sorry," I squint, "And you don't have to say that you love me if you don't want to," I say, huffing and puffing into the ceiling.
"I feel like that's something I should say by my actions," Snape snarls.
"Because nothing says I love you quite like shagging a bloke's girlfriend."
Severus stares hard into his pillowcase, as if trying to scrunch it with his eyes. His eyebrows are so close they nearly form one thick black line. He is silent. I was thinking he would defend himself but he just guiltily hugs his arms around his middle and frowns.
"I just don't want you to have to pretend around me anymore," I say, leaning across him to divert his eyes from the ever-fascinating pillow. "I mean… you're right. There's nothing stopping you from turning me into a paperweight and stealing my girlfriend. I mean, Gods!" I throw down my arms into the heaps of sheets. "I don't even know if you're attracted to me. What with your bloody aphrodisiacs…"
"Aphrodisiacs?" Severus asks. "What are you on about?"
I growl at him over the rim of my glasses, "Your alleged birth control pills. Did you honestly think I wouldn't figure it out? You poisoned yourself so that you would get hard around me, to egg me on!"
Birth control pills, he mouths the words but no sound comes out. He looks quite confused.
I point to his bed stand, on which a heaping stack of pill bottles is piled up.
"Oh!" Severus's eyes light up, "Oh! Birth control pills." He laughs in a sharp aha. He rubs his chin with a thumb and forefinger, "Why that's absolutely sinister and evil, James Potter! - I should have thought of that one!"
I wish he would stop demeaning my feelings. It's getting annoying, "You mean you hadn-"
"They're not aphrodisiacs, you silly boy. It's medication."
I fold my arms and stare blankly into his eyes, giving the best impression of my mother's you-are-in-trouble stare. "For what?"
"Birth control."
I roll my eyes, "For what?"
"It's not important. Are you going to keep bothering me until I tell you?"
"Erm…" I look mock-pensive, rubbing my chin, "Yes. Obviously."
Severus takes a deep breath, as if trying to siphon away his annoyed expression and replace it with a serious one. "It's lupus medication. I have lupus."
"Lupus?"
"It's not a big deal."
"Not a big deal?!"
"No, James. It's not."
I feel my face slacken. Something in my gut clenches. How many times have I seen Snape at school, sitting down, walking, and picking up books like a ginger old man? He would frequently rub his knuckles and kneecaps as though sore. His movements were always slow, rickety and smooth… like a twitchy old cat or a spider. It makes so much sense. I just assumed his slow-running and wrist-rubbing was a part of his personality.
"If it's not a big deal then why didn't you just tell me?"
So that's why he never got into sports… it's wasn't because he was a bad flyer (or it wasn't only because he was a bad flyer) but because he couldn't over-exert himself…
"Because if I told you you'd just make that… that… isn't-that-horrible-you-have-a-terminal-illness face. Like the one you're making right now."
I blush, trying to amend the frown that's still lining my face. "I'm sorry… it's just… does it hurt terribly?"
He rubs his hand through his hair and I catch sight of his swollen elbow. "No."
I bite my lip, trying to prevent from shouting out a thousand more annoying questions at Severus. Questions I'm sure he doesn't want to be asked. I didn't know young people could get it. I don't even know that much about the disease, just that it just takes a while to diagnose. I'm bursting with morbid curiosity and unhelpful concern, but at the look on his face, that tired, please-don't-pretend-you-care look, I stifle those feelings and try to look unimpressed.
His eyes glitter, as if knowing that how worried I am and he assures, "I have plenty of wizarding and muggle drugs to take care of it. Certain ones are used at certain times, like if I have an outbreak. Nothing to worry about."
"Do you get sore after sex?"
The question blurts out of my mouth before I can stop it. Both my mother and Lily pop into my mind at the same time. The first scolds me for asking such a question, the second just smirks, wantonly. It's a sickening combination.
Severus raises his elegant black eyebrow, one eyetooth peeking between his lips when he smiles. "Well… since I've only lost my virginity mere days ago, I have not had the experience to assess such matters."
I grin.
Suddenly he stops grinning. The dense irises in his eyes narrowing in suspicion, "Well? Aren't you surprised?"
"About what?"
"That I was a virgin!" He exclaims. "I'm divulging something truly embarrassing about myself and you act as though you knew." Jeez... he acts as if this is a more important revelation than having lupus...
"I did know!" I say defensively, "Didn't you tell me that…" I trail off, realizing as slowly as sand through a sieve, that Severus had never told me he was a virgin. I only knew because he had told Lily in bed "And that's how I always hoped we'd lose our virginity". Bugger. How am I going to get out of this one?
"Noooo," Snape says disparagingly, "I told you I never had a girlfriend. That doesn't mean I've never had sex."
He pouts his lips at my silence, and clutches his middle again. He seems really angry. "You just assumed I was a virgin. Here I thought you would be shocked. Ah, well."
"Well, erm. Congratulations."
He rolls his eyes. "Whatever. I was probably a bumbling idiot at it anyway. I'm not much competition as far as Lily's concerned. I mean. I probably wasn't very good."
"Yes you were!"
Oh, Merlin. Oh, God. I'm so dumb.
His jaw loosens. He looks as though he's seen a walking, talking corpse. "Whaaat?" He caws like a crow. "What do you mean? Did you and Lily compare notes or something?"
"She showed me what happened."
"Showed you?"
"In my father's pensieve."
His face slackens even more. "S-s-s-she s-s-showed-"
"You've got nothing to worry about. I would've given it a O for Oustanding."
He doesn't even grin. He begins to pace the room back and forth. "That was private! I can't believe she would- Did you make her or something?"
"No, she told me that I had to see to 'understand what happened'."
"I can't believe it! I lost my virginity. She has no right to make that into a porn movie!"
"I was jealous," I supply.
"Of me fucking her or of her getting fucked?"
"Erm. Both."
He's too distraught that the woman of his dreams sold him out to notice that I just said I would gladly bottom him. "I can't believe she would…" he mutters to himself, pacing and dragging fingernails through his long hair, "I can't believe it!"
I kiss him to shut him up. His back loosens a bit. Our tongues entwine for half a second. "It's ok. I won't tell anybody how awesome you were at your first time."
"Thanks." He sighs into my neck. "At least I'll feel like less of a whore."
"I'm not saying I didn't get off on it."
Severus arches an eyebrow, his fingers find the loops of my trousers, "Oh?"
He pulls me close, until our groins touch the fabric of our pants. "Came in my pants," I admit, turning red despite myself. My cock stirs with interest, both at remembering Severus' hot sweaty body in action and by the close proximity now. Severus rubs himself against me, every inch of our bodies touch. I can feel his nipples peak through his thin work shirt, the warmth pooling at his naval. His fingers begin to wander to my arse.
"I bet you did." He gives the muscles of my backside a good squeeze. "You pervert."
"Mmm… Severus…"
He nips at my neck, giving me tender little love bites. I squirm as his canines dig into my flesh, marking me. "What?" he asks. He licks the bite marks, leaving a wet trail from my collarbone to behind my sensitive ear lobe. His whole body is pressed against me.
"Missed you," I whisper, shivering as his cold hands brush against the small of my back, as he pulls my shirt out of my trousers, undoing my belt. Icy fingers ripple up and down my spine, sending feeble little electric shocks towards my fizzy brain. It's true. I did miss him... and how alive I felt when he touched me... am I perverted?
I play with his tie, tugging it loose and throwing it on the floor. "Nothing like you," I whisper against his lips as out tongues battle for dominance. I'm just as satisfied when his tongue wins, thrusting into my mouth rhythmically. The world around my close eyelids rocks around it's core. My groin swells as he fucks my mouth with his tongue. I give an appreciative little moan. After throwing my tie on the floor, he pulls my shirt above my head, and I get to work on his buttons. They are tiny, difficult to work with, and many, so I'm at first too distracted to see that the Lily on his breast is gone. But when I rip the shirt off his shoulders I palm at the empty space on his chest, fingers spanning where the flower tattoo once was. I let out a disappointed sigh. "You got rid of it…" I mutter, running my pinky nail over his nipple.
He shivers. "Shouldn't you be glad?" He says, voice thick with lust.
"No. It looked good on you…" He had kept some of the vines that circled his arm, but the beautiful flower is gone. Not even singed flesh remains. Just pale, naked skin.
He flitters a soft butterfly kiss on my lips, "It's alright," he says with a smile, "I was getting bored of it, anyway."
"Are there any other important tattoo changes I should know about?"
"Well, you're going to find out soon. Be patient."
I grin as he tugs the belt out of the loops of my trousers, palming my hardness through the fabric. I claw down his back, seeing that the Momentum Mori tattoo hadn't changed.
When he falls to his knees in front of me, kissing his way down my taught, tattoo-less stomach I see that the dragon on his back has changed. It is no longer a winged, fire-breathing dragon but a handsome, swirling Chinese fireball, void of movement, surrounded by swirling cloud. I run my hands along it as he nips at my belly button. It's a beautiful oriental decoration, vividly black on his pale skin. "You're beautiful," I say.
Severus smiles up at me, halfway through sucking at on of my hard abs. He doesn't respond, but silently nibbles at the hem of my trousers, pulling the button open with his teeth. He fumbles with the zipper for a moment and then my pants are crumpled at the floor around my ankles.
His hot breath steams through my briefs, where my manhood is straining to break free. He pulls my pants and socks off and pushes me to take a seat on his comfortable, cover-strewn bed.
Slowly… ever so slowly… he pulls the rim of my underwear down. The elastic band reveals the head of my cock (which is leaking precome already) and then my shaft, and then the base, and then my sac. His eyes darken lustly as he exhales his hot breath on my overheated hardness. He pulls my briefs down my thighs onto the floor and my dick twitches contentedly, "Hmm… Sev."
This is mad. And dirty. And I really shouldn't be doing this. I should go back to Lils. I shouldn't trust him...
But, sitting on the crumpled edge of his bed, I can't gather the emotional or physical strength to tear him away from my body. Even though it's him on his knees, palming his cool hand around my hard cock, I feel like he's the one with all of the control. I'm at the mercy of his every tight, cold finger, of his every glance. My heart tingles gently at his not-so-coy smiles, as if a little man were dusting the very dirty, gritty center of it. He looks at me through long black lashes that are somehow not even a little bit feminine. His chiseled nose and his pasty forehead is making me so hard. It's the same Snape that I tormented. And suddenly with him in control, I feel more free than I ever have. It feels so... right...
Just like what Severus said.
After a hesitant look of trepidation at my cock he licks the head, pulling his rough, cat-like tongue over the slit. He worships it with his eyes, palming the shaft tenderly. "You're big…" he whispers, admiring the length with a swipe of his tongue. He's probably never swallowed something so big before.
I hum in thanks. He begins to suck gently on the head. He smoothly rubs me with one hand as his tongue explores other territory. He moistens the soft skin of my sac with his tongue and runs a finger along my perineum. I let out a gasp, fingers clawing into his sheets…
…when voices, one male one female, arise up the stairs.
"SEVERUS!!"
"You don't DESERVE to-"
"It was FAKE wasn't it?"
"You have no right!"
"This is my house too-"
"AND HE IS MY SON!"
Crack!
A woman pounds at Severus' door, her shrill voice screaming, "Let me in, now Severus! We have to talk."
His lips, funnily enough, are making a perfect "oh" shape in complete shock. It's the perfect shape for me to shove my penis in his mouth. I restrain myself.
His eyes look up at me in pure horror. "Mum…"
My cock begins to deflate at Severus' mother's shrieking banshee voice; "SEVERUS! Get out here right now!"
He stands up, wobbling as the excess blood in he groin fights gravity to reach his brain, and begins to thrust my socks, underwear, pants, shirt, into my hands. "Where's the fucking fire, Mum?" He grips me by the shoulders and steers me toward his darkened closet in the corner of the room.
"Back in the closet?" I whisper with a smirk.
He merely grimaces darkly and pushes my naked bum down to sit on an arrangement of shoes. He shuts the door, bringing my world into blackness. I lean back. His many thick robes tickle the side of my face. Severus really needs a better wardrobe- all he wears is black! One of his coats falls on my head.
"What bloody took so long?!" Severus's mother struts into the room. I push the coat aside. I can only see the hem of her thick wooly skirt that comes passed the knee, and her tucked-in blouse and the top of her black, greasy bun through the cracks in the closet door. I move my head around, trying to catch the rest of her figure as she paces the room. "Get a shirt on! Why are you half naked? And make your bed!"
"Mum! I was napping…"
"Why is your father here?"
"He's asked me-"
"Did you say that he could live here?"
"Yeah, I-"
"Does he think he can just barge in here and take over your life?"
"I know but-"
"So now we're divorced, you never want to see me again, is that it?"
Severus holds in a breath, trying to calm himself, "NO! I-"
My mouth drops. They say all this within five seconds. They sound like a pair of twittering birds. Or at least Mrs. Snape sounds like a bird. Snape hasn't really gotten a word in…
"I raised you. You're my son! Tobias was never ever there for you and you know it. How could you just let him into your life like that? I'm your mother! I've looked after you your whole life and all I get is shit! And if you let your father live here I swear I'm never speaking to you again!"
Severus, who I can see just barely through the cracks, slowly sits on his messy bed, heaving out a breath as if he was the one who was just yelling his lungs out. He points his finger about to say something when she cuts him short again… I sigh and start to attempt to find my underwear in my bundle of clothes.
"And don't tell me you're just trying to keep the family together. You should have known that we were going to get separated. You're the only reason we stayed together!"
That's a horrible thing to say… I tell myself firmly.
"We've been on the rocks since you left Hogwarts, and you knew that. So don't act so surprised. I might have told him that I was cheating on him and I wasn't. I might have faked it! ALRIGHT? YOU GOT ME. But I don't bloody-well care. If that's what it takes to get your father off my back than so be it! And you let him in here as though he's the poor victim. As though I didn't have to deal with his abuse for twenty years. And YOU DID TOO. Don't pretend like you didn't. So what if he's cleaned up his act? So what if he hasn't had a drop of alcohol in ten years? He's the same bloody bastard that used to hit you- and me- you shouldn't take pity on him!"
I swallow, trying to take in at least some of this coming-at-me-too-fast information as I pull on my socks. So Tobias drank a lot, huh? He was a mean drunk. He didn't seem like the type of guy who would hit his wife or son. Or at least he doesn't now. Perhaps he roughhoused them a bit… tried to get his son to fight back…
Severus exhales again, gathering up his courage as if he were twelve again and not twenty-two. "Mum," Severus says slowly, childishly, "have you taken that anti-menopause-symptoms potion I gave you?"
I snort, pulling my underwear up my thighs.
"THAT'S NOT FUNNY!"
"I wasn't laughing!"
"I HEARD YOU SNIGGER!"
I stifle myself, jaw cracking as I stuff my fist in my mouth.
"YOU THINK MY ANXIETY ATTACKS ARE A JOKE?!"
"NO!" Severus bursts, standing up. "Mum! Breathe for God's sake. You're hysterical."
"I'M NOT HYSTERICAL! YOU ARE TAKING YOUR FATHER'S SIDE!"
My ribs hurt as I try to stop myself from laughing.
"Mum, please," Severus begs. "Just calm down…"
"I AM CALM. YOU HATE ME. YOU'RE TAKING YOUR FATHER'S SIDE AND YOUR ANGRY AT ME FOR RUINING THE FAMILY."
Severus retreats to his bedside table. I hear the rattling of pills as he paws through his pile. I, awkwardly, pull my pants up and fasten them, trying not to kick the door or knee anything out of place. Mrs. Snape continues to banter until he hands her a blue phial.
"I AM NOT A BAD MOTHER! I DID ALL I COU-"
"Drink that," Severus says, handing his mum the phial.
"WHAT is it?"
"Calming draught."
She drinks the content in one swig. "AND YOUR FA-ther… you…" She looks dazed. I finally catch a glimpse of her face (pointed hawk's nose and dark hooded eyes) as it turns from angry and squished to mildly euphoric. "Wow that one was good," she says.
"I would hardly call it 'good', Mother," he says in good humor.
She sways a bit, with a calm smile spread across her face. "I really got going." She settles herself on the bed, folding her legs neatly. Her posture has changed from tight and straight-laced, to lose and helter-skleter.
"You scare me sometimes, Mum," Severus whispers, passing his fingers through her black hair, which is lined with white streaks. He looks down at her, fondly.
I toss my shirt on, only to realize that it's inside-out. Hastily I try to flip it. Wait- where's my tie?
I see the door crack open, where Mr. Snape is peeking his head around the corner. "Is it over?" He asks this like he is a survivor of a hurricane.
Mrs. Snape points at him without looking at him, "Just because I'm calm now doesn't mean that I won't kick you in the nuts given the opportunity."
Tobias takes that as an invitation to enter the room, albeit he stays about five feet away from Eileen, eyeing her wearily. He spots my tie, which is laying peacefully on the floor, and points at it, "Where's James?"
Severus's eyes widen. I gulp.
"James who?" Eileen asks, wiping her brow.
"On'tday Aysay Amesjay," says Snape.
"What's that?" Tobias asks, "I'm no good at pig latin."
"Never-bloody-mind."
"Where'd he go?"
"He flooed home."
"No he didn't. He would have been downstairs…"
"Well then he must've went out the front door.'
"Then I would have seen…"
"Then he apparated."
"Wouldn't he have made a noise?"
"Dad! SHUT UP!"
Eileen looks in between them, glancing back and forth as though this was a thoroughly entertaining sitcom.
There's nothing to be had. I leap out of the closet, as though that's what I had intended to do all along, throwing up my hands.
"BOO!"
The Snapes leap four feet in the air, save for Eileen, who is wearing a five-year-old smile. Tobias's face is as white as a ghost. Severus looks horrified.
I continue to wear my shit-eating grin, "Did I scare you?"
Eileen laughs and claps her hands, swinging side to side in unsteady euphoria. Tobias clutches his heart and gives me a smirking, scolding look, "That was quite a prank!" Severus glowers at me, one eyebrow raised, doing a fine impression of McGonnagal after one of the Marauders' glorious pranks.
Ever the extrovert, I protrude a hand for Mrs. Snape to shake, "I'm James Potter. How are you?" I say politely.
"Oh! Mary's son?" She shakes my hand with a limp wrist, "How is she? I'm Eileen Prince. My son has no manners."
"I see that," I smile. Severus's expression doesn't waver.
"It's Eileen Snape until I sign the paperwork," Tobias says disparagingly. "Stop that."
"And you'll sign it or I'll have your head on a silver platter by next week," Mrs. Snape says out of the corner of her mouth. She then turns to me, waving off her husband. "This is my husband Tobias."
I nod at him to indicate we've met.
She smiles, her wrist flicking and then landing back on her lap, "He beat me."
My eyes widen.
Tobias turns bright red, mouth agape in shock. He sputters, "What? What are you-?" It can't be true… could it? Eileen would never come out and say it if she was a victim of abuse… but Tobias sure looks embarrassed. "IT WAS ONE TIME! I had too many drinks! You hexed me back!"
My jaw is unhinged.
"He's an alcoholic," her smile only widens.
I don't know what I can possibly say to that.
Tobias rolls his eyes heavenward, muttering under his breath, "I gave up gin for this woman." He gestures toward her, eyeing me warily. "Haven't had a drop since Severus went to school."
"He's treated me like shit for twenty years."
"Eh? And you didn't?"
"We're getting a divorce," she says.
I nod, wide-eyed.
Severus has his face in his hands, long hair billowing between his fingers. He's swaying back and forth as though going mad. I gape at him. I try to hide the pity in my gaze but I can't.
"We hate each other," Eileen says.
"And why are you pointing out the obvious?" Tobias asks.
I feel myself shrinking uncomfortably as they glare at one another, feeling suddenly like a very small child. Fearful. In wonderment. By Severus's posture, it would seem that he feels the same way, until he stands up, clicks his heel together and lifts his chin. He barks, "OUT!"
His parents merely stare.
He straightens his back as far as he can, and points toward the door. He looks tall. Like a parent... "OUT! BOTH of you! GET OUT. NOW!"
Tobias begins to argue, "Now you can't just-"
"I'M RENTING THE HOUSE OUT! IT'S MINE! I WANT YOU BOTH OUT!"
Eileen lets out a "hmph" and Tobias shakes his head. Mrs. Snape makes to stand and wobbles dangerously. Mr. Snape is by her side instantly, one hand on her hip, the other in hers. "Don't let her apparate, Dad," Severus odders, "She'll splinch herself. I put too much dragonwood in the calming draught."
"Right," Tobias grumbles.
"Don't touch me," growls Eileen.
"It hurts me more than it hurts you," Tobias retaliates.
He steers her out of the door, doing a strange sort-of dance so that he doesn't bump her into the wall. Eileen growls into his ear, just loud enough for me to catch, "If you push me down the stairs, I'll come back and haunt you."
"So would I," Tobias whispers back vehemently.
When their bickering finally retreats down the steps, I sheepishly grin at Severus, who grimaces back. He paces the room and tosses his shirt on over his shoulders. His parents didn't even notice the new tattoo, or the lack of the old one. I gingerly attempt to lay a hand on his covered shoulder as he is bent over to retrieve my tie. "Severus…" It's hard to tell whether he's blushing from embarrassment or from the exertion of bending over. He doesn't push my hand off, but kindly pats the back of my hand twice as if to say, "it's ok, you can let go." He loops his tie underneath his collar and hands me mine.
"I've got to go do some brewing," He says softly, knotting the tie underneath his chin. "Potions, you know."
"Right," I heave a great sigh. "I'd better go, I guess."
He leaves a soft, quiet, little, unobtrusive kiss on my lips. The kind of kiss that only lovers do when they have to say goodnight. "Do you want to talk about it?" I ask.
"Huh?" he asks, looking happy and windswept.
"About your parents' divorce," I whisper, clutching his elbow and giving it a soft squeeze, trying to say with my eyes, I'm always here, you know.
"Nah," he says, too quickly, "I'm fine."
"Right." I fondle my wand through my pocket, "Mind if I apparate from here?"
He shakes his head. He stares at the floor in a defeated air.
"But before I go… There is a galla. This Friday. I want you to come with me," I rustle his shirt into place. "I told Lily that after seeing that memory we should spend some time apart… and I can't very well go alone."
Severus folds his arms. His jaw slackens. "And if I go with you…" He muses, "What am I to introduce myself as? Your boyfriend? Your sex toy? Your double-crossing lover? Someone who is sleeping with both fiancés at the same time?"
"You don't have to say we're anything. We could just go as friends, I don't care. Just as long as I don't have to suffer through one of Muriel's stories alone."
"Why not ask Sirius then?"
I sniff, "I don't want Sirius. I want you. And the last time he went to one of these things he stuffed cheesecake down his trousers."
Severus's lips crack for a moment, and then return to their steely frown. "What about your parents?"
"Severus I want –you- to be there. My parents will be there but…" I take the opportunity to kiss him. His cool lips and five o'clock shadow skate over my mouth. Nibbling his lip tenderly, I ask, "Please?"
"I hope you know what you're doing."
"Suppose so. Meet me at my parent's house? At five-o'clock?"
"Where is this bloody thing anyway?"
"Forlong square. In Godric's Hollow. Right down the road from my house."
"Fine."
"Does 'fine' mean you'll do it?"
"Alright. Don't know what I'll wear but fine."
I kiss him again, rubbing my nose against his overlarge one. "You make me very happy."
"Dunno why."
My final kiss of the day is long and languid, soft and smooth. I clutch his neck and he nips my bottom lip. "Bye, Sev," I whisper, and I'm gone with a pop!
I stare at the place where James just was, scratching my arm in a melancholy way, wondering if he realizes that I'd gladly go to this stupid thing on Friday, and that, in fact, I'm really happy he asked. I feel buoyed after my parents had just embarrassed themselves, each other, and me in front of my boyfriend. Thankfully, James takes everything in stride. I know he's far more worried about the whole "hitting" thing than he lets on. He's kind and polite and he hides it. But predictably I can picture him now, going to both his elderly parents and asking them about family abuse. Perhaps they'd discuss the matter over tea and crumpets while Mrs. Potter plays with his hair and Mr. Potter talks about a few years back, and a family he used to know…
The brat.
Feeling suddenly lonely at the prospect of an empty house, I thud down the stairs, the hard soles of my feet hitting the cold wood. When I land on the bottom stare, I catch a glimpse of two figures lying on the couch, snuggled together, humming as they kiss…
"MUM! DAD! DEAR GOD! THAT'S DISGUSTING!"
I leap back up the stairs two at a time.