Bonus chapter ;)

Chapter Three - To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

Morning was breaking, blackbirds were singing. Severus Snape, professor and potions master, hadn't slept since he'd lain Harry Potter back onto the sheets of his bed. You couldn't see dawn in the dungeons, but over the years he had learned to feel it – the weight of night lifting off of his back. Death Eater meetings had normally ended with the rising of the sun.

But what was he to do with the suicidal saviour of the wizarding world? A grimace crossed his lips and he attempted to shrug away the tension in his shoulders. He was going to have to talk to the Golden Boy and listen – treat him like a Slytherin and try and ignore how annoyed the boy normally made him simply by breathing, simply by looking at him as if there was hatred between them.

He smirked. He didn't hate the boy; hatred would have meant that at some point he'd cared for him. He found Potter irritating, but then, that also included most other students at Hogwarts. The older Potter got, the less he looked like James and the more Severus could stand him – it was that simple really.

Standing, he crossed over to the bed, settled on the edge and looked at the boy, looked really closely at him. It wasn't a settling sight. The ribs had to have been kicked inwards for that sort of damage, and left unhealed. There were patinas of old scars that had to be from knives, and one that looked like – spell damage? He shrugged; those were regrettable but couldn't be fixed. With a professional's gentleness, he lifted the boy's wrists; those marks were already gone, the skin pale and fragile over fine blue traceries.

Muscles tensed under his fingertips and he looked up the boy's body to see green eyes watching him, not angry or panicked but with a sort of flat, uncaring calm, as if he'd been violated so many times that it no longer mattered what was done to him, or by whom it was done. It was a look Severus Snape was well acquainted with, he saw it in the mirror every day. Although eyes his own shade suited the look better than this boy's.

"Good morning, Potter." Jade eyes met his own, and for a moment they made him dizzy. They were like something priceless that had been smashed, lovely but full of sharp broken edges. He tried not to think of where he had last seen that look – full of broken ruby red desire that could only be quenched with one thing. Potter's lips quirked for a moment, but it was closer to a rictus than a smile. "I don't make bowls for a living, professor. As I'm naked in your bed, perhaps, just perhaps, you could call me Harry," the boy paused, as if breathing was difficult, and with those ribs, perhaps it was, "and there's nothing good about this morning, sir. I'm still in it."

Bitter as limes, those eyes glared at him, and he nodded slowly. He wasn't a good counsellor – and everyone in his house knew it – but he'd listen, and try and give a true answer. He lied too much on Dumbledore's behalf to do it on his own time. "Tell me then, Harry, why my morning would be better if I'd allowed you to dive into the pool of shadowed reflections and die. What would that have gained me?"

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

That voice. Snape, he decided, must have practiced and trained to be able to use his voice like a mellow instrument; a deep toned cello played by a master. Sometimes, he lost track of exactly what the man was saying in classes because of the way he said it, but now he could listen. It was like having the finest silk dragged over an open wound; it snared his concentration and dragged in his attention.

The pool of shadowed reflections. It had seemed the perfect place, the perfect escape; after all who went there? It was in the dark heart of the FORBIDDEN Forest. He could feel it even now – the water smooth around him and not at all cold, the water weeds wrapped around him like a mother's loving arms welcoming him home – and all the time he could feel Snape's eyes on him like a touch; almost the feeling of fingers touching his aching ribs with gentle curiosity.

"Harry?" the voice again, and he had to answer, he was compelled.

"Because it would be better that way, for all of us. I was born to die." A silky caress within him almost made him arch and whimper as he spoke the words out loud, but he didn't. He had to finish. He had to explain, and perhaps then Snape would count the debt as paid. "Better I die now and get it over with than have to keep on waiting." He'd allowed his eyes to drift close, better that than have to look into obsidian eyes across the bed sheets from him and see the agreement in them.

Ahh, Harry, my darling boy. The whisper wrapped around his brain, numbing him, helping with the pain as it had done when Dudley's friend Piers had kicked his ribs in whilst Dudley looked the other way. You know them, they won't believe you, and this one especially. A traitor to every cause. A true serpent. His lids flickered upwards and he could suddenly see Snape's face, highlighted again in those whirling maddening colours. His lips were taunt, as if he was hurt? But that couldn't be right. It was Harry that was in pain, not Snape.

Reaching out a hand, wincing at the stabbing pain in his ribs, he touched the potions master's face in a way that he remembered Hermione touching him shortly after Cedric had died. "It would be better, Professor, if I'd never been born." He smiled. This, he was certain, would win the point with Snape. He had to agree, wizards debt or no. "Look how many have died and suffered so I could live, so I could become a weapon in Dumbledore's arsenal. His golden child – that isn't. The boy who lived to be trained to kill." He felt his lips curve into a smirk that he'd copied from the man in front of him and Malfoy, as well as countless other Slytherins, as he met black eyes squarely. "What a wonderful use for a dying mother's love."

It was a surprise when one of the long-fingered potion master's hands came up to touch him in return – no one touched him kindly – and he felt himself flinch, despite the gentleness of the touch, as Snape's long, fine fingers wrapped around his throat. They didn't squeeze, just remained there – brushed against his pulse – and he felt as if a circuit had completed, as if some sort of switch had been thrown in his mind, and he relaxed for the first time in … he didn't know how long.

Snape's voice floated to him, a gentle glissando of deep sound. "So, Harry, you want to die. You don't value your life." He nodded, letting his eyes close with a sigh, feeling his body slump slightly into the sound hold Snape had on him, not caring if it cut off some of his air. It didn't matter, not at this moment in time, as Snape's voice hissed into his ear, "Then you'd give it to me?" His professor already owned him, but he felt like he was drowning in narcotic pleasure. Nothing was too much trouble. He nodded again. "Say it P…Harry."

He felt his head loll back and the word slipped out, "Yesssssss..." Parseltongue or human speech, he didn't know, nor did he care.

Firm hands pushed him back and he could see the smile at the corners of Snape's mouth and he let himself smile back. "Excellent, Harry. Then all I ask for now is that you take this." Snape handed him a delicate vial, suddenly all business. The liquid within was the colour of a morning mist. He took the vial without a moment's hesitation, and drank it in one swift swallow. It tasted like violets against his palette, and darkness – that welcoming warmth – spread through him and dragged him under.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Severus looked down at the boy, a victim of the nasty sleeping potion he had palmed before beginning the chat. In the name of Merlin, the boy was fucked up. He'd lain there in a stranglehold and looked as if he'd been granted a date with the girl of his teenage dreams.

Born to die.

The prophecy could be interpreted like that, which meant, of course, that Albus had told the boy all of it, not just edited highlights. Stupid old fool. Potter hadn't been through a war like the rest of them, hadn't killed with his bare hands – but he had seen death, perhaps too much too soon – and Dumbledore had been training him over the summer. That was why he was here earlier than the other children of his age…

He stood, lifting his fingers away from Harry's face with something that wasn't reluctance, walked to the fireplace and flung some powder into it. "Albus Dumbledore."

For a moment, it was silent, and then the Headmaster's face appeared in the flames. "Severus."

He nodded and looked into fire eyes he knew were blue and twinkled. "Albus, I have your boy here."

One of the Headmaster's eyebrows rose. "Harry?" He nodded again, feeling a little like a donkey at a Muggle seaside resort. "And why is that, Severus?"

He felt a twitch in his cheek, irritation – as if he'd deliberately hurt a child – so he decided to be uncharacteristically blunt, "Because I found him floating in the blood-stained waters of the Pool of Shadowed Reflections."

For a moment, he thought the Headmaster might just understand him – he could see shock painting itself in the widened eyes. "He was attacked." No, he was obviously still being too subtle.

"No, Albus, he attempted to kill himself." What have you done to him, told him, tried to make him into? Tell me now…

"Ah," the Headmaster's voice was soft and surprised. It was a sound of pain as well as comprehension. "Severus, I'm coming down."

He shook his head, the boy was sleeping now. But there was power coiling, waiting to explode. He was safe from it, especially with the boy's oath binding his magic, but Dumbledore wasn't. "I'll come up." And he stepped into the fire without another word.

Reviews will bring love and chocolate-covered Lucius! Or Tom! XD

AN – All of the chapters have been subtly re-written thanks to excellent beta-ing from Batsutousai go read her fic… she is MUCH better than me!