CHAPTER 16
A/N:
GothicSidhe: Harry won't have a crush on Sonia Mukherjee. He is simply contrasting the way black robes look on different people.
---
Harry was standing in the middle of his large bedroom, wand raised.
"Expecto Patronum!" he said, then closed his eyes, summoning his magic and transferring his mental voice to the stag which errupted. It was very difficult because he not only had to speak for the Patronus but also guide its movements. The Patronus announced:
"Beware, here I come!"
"Harry suppressed a grin, holding on to his concentration. He practised for another half an hour until he started to feel tired. Then, feeling up to no good, and knowing that he was being rash, he uttered the incantation a last time and opened his bedroom door. The stag floated out into the hall and into the library. He knew that Severus liked to spend Saturday afternoons closeted with his books as he wrote an extensive research paper. Harry left his bedroom door ajar, closing his eyes and concentrating with all his might, wand hand still outstretched.
A few seconds later, the door of the library was ripped open and a flurry of robes approached his bedroom at alarming speed.
"POTTER!"
Harry's bedroom door bounced back against the wall as Severus obscured the doorway, eyes blazing with anger.
"I was just practising," Harry said innocently.
"PRACTISING? WHEN DID I EVER TEACH YOU TO MAKE YOUR PATRONUS SAY: 'HEY MAN' TO ME?"
"Ah, so you understood what it said," Harry replied calmly.
Severus gave him a withering glare and did not deign to say anything more. He turned on his heel and strode back to the library. Harry covered his mouth with his hand, trying not to laugh loudly. He sat down on the small carpet on the floor and pulled out a book on sketching.
He had just opened it when something thin and silvery floated into his room. It was an Ashwinder. Its eyes glowed at him as Severus's voice, now soft and silky, said to him:
"If you disturb me one more time, Potter, then you will be very sorry indeed."
It disappeared.
Harry discovered that he was not intimidated by the threat. He sent forth his stag with the message:
"Very sorry? Why on earth? It looks like you can discontinue the Patronus lessons and dedicate yourself fully to that complicated research paper."
Severus Snape's eyes narrowed dangerously as Harry's Patronus trotted nonchalantly into the library for the second time and talked to him.
"Impertinent," he growled after listening to it, rising and leaving his books in quest of his rebellious spouse, whom he found sitting cross-legged on the floor, reading.
"POTTER!" he roared, high cheekbones flushed with irritation.
"Oh good, you came. I wasn't sure you'd be dragged out of the library again," Harry said boldly, getting up.
Severus walked over to Harry slowly, his body language and gaze menacing. He stopped walking when their bodies and noses were nearly touching.
"And why did you have the audacity to disturb me?"
"Well…I wanted to thank you for teaching me how to produce a Talking Patronus."
Severus's stare did not soften.
"Couldn't it wait?"
"I prefer thanking my husband in person."
"Husband," Severus snarled, grimacing as if he was saying something distasteful. He continued drilling into Harry's eyes with his fiery gaze. Harry looked back steadily. Severus realised that he was so close to him that one of the unruly strands of Harry's hair was touching his forehead. He could see the tiniest part of the scar behind the messy fringe. He noticed the endless black of the pupils and brilliant green colour of the irises, and the darker circle which separated them from the white. He was looking into the face of a youth-adult, and his sensitive nostrils, so used to Potions ingredients, were inhaling the smell of Harry's freshly showered body. His mind began to separate the information his nose was transmitting to him and it also started to analyse the person to whom he was married. He averted his eyes and stepped away from Harry, now looking around the room. He had never bothered to even glance at the interior of his husband's personal architectural sphere. The room was surprisingly neat. Obviously, growing up had mercifully equipped Harry with a sense of organisation. Or was it his upbringing with the Dursleys, who, to give the devil his due, were extremely disciplined about order? Or was it being married to a no-nonsense Potions Master?
"You actually read," he stated rudely, seeing the many books on the shelves.
"Amazing, isn't it?" Harry asked sarcastically.
"Very," Severus answered coolly. He reached out and extracted the book he had lent Harry for his Patronus lessons.
"I assume that you won't need my book anymore," he added and whisked out of the room.
Harry rolled his eyes and closed the door.
The next week was eventful. Professor Mukherjee gave the students an even more interesting assignment than last time: they were to pair up and one was to draw the other's face till the neckline, and, the week after that, switch roles. Luna and Harry decided to work together.
"I'll draw you first, Harry," Luna said happily, already taking his measurements with her eyes.
"You may dress up and paint your faces –girls and boys," Mukherjee said, "but don't overdo it."
The class was delighted.
"I'm going to dress up as one of those classical music composers, with powdered wigs and stuff," someone giggled.
"I'll stay the way I am," another student said hastily.
Harry silently agreed with her, but Luna was going through all kinds of creatures of dubious existence and wondering how to apply them to Harry. They were both rescued by Ginny, whom they met after dinner and who suggested that Harry would look good as a type of seductive vampire she had read about in a muggle book filched from the twins' room.
"I really don't know," Harry said tentatively.
"Don't worry, you don't know how much make-up my roommates have been accumulating in the dorm," Ginny reassured Harry, "I'm sure the girls will lend me everything they have if I tell them whom I'm going to make up."
Luna looked delighted. Harry swallowed.
"Erm…Look…"
"Come on, Harry!" Ginny insisted.
Harry looked from bright brown eyes to dreamy pale blue ones.
"Yeah, okay, fine," he muttered, shuffling his feet.
"We could come down to your rooms, Harry. I do think Professor Snape's taste in lighting is quite inspiring," Luna remarked.
"I'd love to see what his rooms look like," Ginny said interestedly, "Fred and George are going to be mad at me having got the privilege instead of them."
"Well, Severus – Snape – said that I'm to keep my friends only in my bedroom."
Luna seemed disappointed.
"I'll ask him. I mean, they're my rooms as well, he's just not used to, er, sharing after living alone for such a long time."
Ginny and Luna nodded gravely, but Harry knew that they probably knew that he was just being polite about Severus's reclusive habits. Still, true to his word, he explained the assignment to Severus and asked him whether Luna could sketch him in the hall because the effect of shadow and light were more interesting than in his bedroom.
Severus shrugged.
"Three teenagers in my quarters. How lovely. I don't want any racket or running around. They are not to speak to me. And therefore no silly questions from that eccentric Lovegood girl concerning fictitious Potions ingredients," he said.
"As if you are not eccentric," Harry remarked. Severus icily ignored this observation and retired to his library.
On Tuesday evening, Severus raised a slim eyebrow as loud laughter erupted from Harry's room. There was a pause; the bedroom door opened and the three friends emerged, Harry in the middle. Severus stared.
Harry was dressed in the usual wizarding black robes; but Luna and Ginny had rimmed his eyes with black eye shadow, mascara and kajal. His face was covered with powder, and the tips of his hair were green.
Severus's mouth quivered slightly, and he brushed his knuckles across his mouth, managing to regain his composure.
"Miss Lovegood and Miss Weasley, what in Merlin's name have you been doing with my husband?" he asked, forgetting about not wanting to have any interaction with them.
"Ginny helped me to give him a vampiric touch," Luna explained in dreamy tones.
"Vampiric touch?" Severus said incredulously.
"We thought fangs would look a bit trashy, though," Ginny said brightly.
Severus eyed Harry critically, savouring the long-suffering look in the green eyes.
"You may want to take off most of that awful powder. Also, lining the inner rims of the eyes with that black stuff is extremely unhealthy. However, since this is hopefully just the one occasion, it shouldn't harm him. You may want to rouge his mouth a little, though," he addressed Luna and Ginny.
All three teenagers blinked.
Severus raised both eyebrows this time.
"Rouged lips, my dears, are said to be most sensual in both muggle and wizarding fiction, even if it may not correspond to the facts. An androgynous look is very popular in literature, art and other domains. Call it…artistic license."
Harry flushed underneath the white powder coating his face. Sensual? And the way Severus had pronounced it. Sensual…
"Oh, I think I've got a small pot of red lip gloss with me," Ginny said, bounding back to Harry's room.
The black eyes studied Harry keenly again.
"Which of you chose those green highlights for your hair?" he asked.
"Ginny did," Harry said, smiling.
"I bow to your impeccable hair-styling taste, Miss Weasley," Severus said, inclining his head gravely towards Ginny as she returned with the red paint. "Now, what about that rouge?"
It was in a state of complete astonishment that Ginny, Luna and especially Harry accepted Severus's involvement in their project. Severus himself dabbed rouge on Harry's mouth with a pencil. He had scrupulously disinfected it beforehand with a Cleaning Charm which had caused a few hairs to fall out of the brush. For some reason or the other, Harry discovered his cheeks growing very warm indeed as Severus gently dabbed a tiny amount of crimson colour onto his lips. Ginny in the meantime removed the white powder from his face. Once she had finished touching up his make-up and hairdo, she had to leave for Gryffindor Tower and do her homework. Luna and Harry settled down, and Severus retired to the sofa, alternately reading and watching Luna sketch Harry with crayons.
Finally, the drawing was accomplished. Severus remarked that he was no artist but that Luna's painting looked "quite passable". Beaming, Luna thanked Harry with a kiss on his powdered cheek, politely said bye to Severus and drifted out of the dungeons, humming with her portfolio underneath one arm and her bag over her shoulder.
Severus's black eyes swept over Harry's face.
"I have got something which will remove all that paint," Severus said, summoning a jar and a mirror. Instead of handing them to Harry, he murmured a Cleaning Charm over his hands and dabbed the fragrant contents of the jar over Harry's face.
"It smells so good," Harry said, inhaling the scent deeply.
"It contains magical evening primrose, among other things," Severus murmured, gently working the milky cream into Harry's skin, "now close your eyes."
Harry obeyed and felt Severus touch his eyelids.
"Look up at the ceiling and don't blink."
He applied some of the cream to the blackened inner rims of Harry's eyes.
Then, with a flick of his wand, he Vanished the cream, and Harry's face was completely unpainted.
Severus held up the mirror.
"Wow! Brilliant!" Harry said. "How come there's no cosmetic range of yours on the market, Severus? Something like Snape Deluxe…"
Severus snorted and paced back to his cherished sofa.
"Magical accidents involving facial paint are very common," he remarked. "It is a perfectly standard tool. I make it at least once every two weeks for Pomfrey's stores."
"Yeah, but you make it."
Severus didn't really know what to say in return. He buried himself into his book instead.
When Harry was back in his bedroom, he lowered the tome.
"Snape Deluxe...!" he muttered, shaking his head. His thin lips, however, curved into a faint smile.
In his room, Harry was grinning to himself.
"Sensual," he laughed, shaking his head as well. And it was odd how Severus had fairly spat out the word "husband" during their staring match and then asked his friends what they had done to "my husband". Harry pensively drew out his sketchbook.
---