Prisoners of Azkaban, Probationary Diaries August 2009, Prisoners #19-09-1979 and #09-01-1960

Please note: this chapter contains "diverse" sexual situations according to the story's rating.

oooOooo

August 6, 2009

The first time can be excused; we were not ourselves, or rather, even less than we normally are now—the wine, the past, the pain…

The night overshadowed the day.

To the point I couldn't bring myself to put it in writing. Today I feel I must.

I'll never forget Severus' empty eyes when he—well, started fucking me. He touched me in all the right places, in all the right ways, and my body, touch-starved as it must be (after eleven years or 135 months or 587 weeks or 4112 days, or—Draco did a Calculus spell for me—then around 98,699 hours), my body responded willingly. More than willingly. Wantonly.

But he never looked at me.

Even when Draco embraced him, he didn't react, and I know this is not his usual inclination—although he has endured the touch of men before.

Only when he climaxed, he returned.

Just in time to hear Draco moan Harry's name.

I froze—my heartbeat still pounding in my ears from my own orgasm. Even wandless, Severus is a dangerous man.

Nothing happened, though.

After breathless, paralysed minutes we disentangled ourselves and spent the rest of the night as far away from each other as possible, and the following day, too, mostly occupied with simple domestic tasks. We bathed; first in cold, cliff-sheltered sea water, then in a hot tub in Draco's kitchen. Draco and Severus cut off their beards and shaved. Draco cooked. Severus and I wrote our diary entries. His has ink-splotches—Veritaserum—

[Here the quill has slipped from the line; the writing continues in the middle of the next line, disorderly, frantic]

—one—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—nine—ten—eleven…letters—

And when the sky blushed with dusk, we climbed the spiral staircase again. Standing in front of the bed, we stared at each other.

The sunset is golden here.

(I can't remember if that's normal or extraordinary; no sunlight ever reached my cell.)

We looked as if drenched in Felix Felicis.

That night, we made love.

And I am writing this down now so I will never forget: Even after eleven years or 135 months or 587 weeks or 4113 days in Azkaban, I can still love.

I can kiss and be kissed.
I can caress and be caressed.
I can smile and be smiled at.
I can cry and dry my lovers' tears.

I can love and be loved.

Maybe, in time, I will even remember how to live.

This morning, Draco took us to a wandmaker on the Orkney Islands, on Eynhallow. Master Manannan Lear uses driftwood. His cores are magical flotsam and jetsam, and apparently his mother's hair. At least that's what he said when he thrust two wands at us. "Them's for ye. Mither's hair. Ye need it." Obviously he doesn't subscribe to Ollivander's philosophy of wands choosing their wizards. Severus' wand is ash, mine is elm.

Afterwards, Draco Apparated us to Scotland. We're in Hogsmeade now, in a small upstairs chamber at the Three Broomsticks.

We have wands.

And 25 days to find a home, a job, and someone to vouch for us.

oooOooo

A/N: Many thanks to Ayerf for beta-reading and to Juniperus for helpful suggestions and hand-holding.

Further notes:

# OBVIOUSLY both Severus and Hermione are resisting the Veritaserum in the quills.

# Eynhallow is the Holy Isle of the Orkneys; Muggles think it is abandoned (http:// www. orkneyjar. com/history/eynhallow/index. html).

# "Manannan Lear" is an allusion to Manannán mac Lir, a sea god of Irish-Celtic mythology

# "The Mither o' the Sea" is Orcadian folklore, the benign force of the summer sea, granting life to every living thing, bringing warmth to the oceans and calming the storms. See: http://www. orkneyjar. com/folklore/mither. htm.

# The new wands: according to Norse mythology, the first humans were formed out of two pieces of driftwood, an ash and an elm. Elm is sacred to the Great Goddess and symbolises, among other things, healing, rebirth, and the passage from one life to the next. Ash is the wood of Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life, for protection, balance, justice, and the marriage of opposites. Sources: http://www. bardwood. com/woods. htm and http://www. 2020site. org/trees/ .

(Take out the spaces for all URLs.)