NOTE: Wow, you know I always get impatient with authors when they update late and leave a note saying how sorry they are, but now I understand what's it's like! Anyway, really sorry this took so long! I was moving from the UK back to the States, so things were a little crazy but I won't bore you with excuses! There is some significant movement and action in this chapter, so I hope that makes it worth the wait! I'm going to be going back and correcting a lot of things, especially chapter titles, so this story is not set in stone as of now, because there are a lot of things I know I need to strange. So please feel free to leave feedback because it will be really helpful! Read, enjoy, and review! :D

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,

Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;

For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Sonnet XXIX by William Shakespeare

There was a long, red mark on Snape's face that everyone stared at for the next few days in class. Snape made no mention of it, provided no information, just went on lecturing as if nothing had changed. The students avoided looking at it when they made eye contact, but Harry avoided it most of all. To him, it was a glaring reminder that what happened the other night had been real, that he'd hurt the man; a reminder of the wrong he was about to commit against him. His damage didn't usually leave so tangible a mark.

The boys kept speculating about what had happened to Snape, and Harry got so sick of it one day, he yelled "Just shut up about it!" They all gave him strange looks, thinking that he'd be the one most curious.

Realisation dawned on Draco's face. "Wait- you didn't...you didn't have anything to do with it did you?" Everyone was silent until Harry burst out laughing as if from the ridiculousness of the idea, asking "Are you mad?" The rest laughed with him and all was dismissed, although Draco still looked at Harry strangely. They never talked about it again.

There was so much noise in Harry's head. Not only had he had to deal with staring at Snape's mark for the passed week, but Theo would not speak to him. Actually, Theo wouldn't speak much to anybody. He floated on the outskirts of the gang like he might flee at any moment. Sometimes he stared at Harry like he might approach him and say something, but Harry made sure to avoid being alone with him. It would be too much to handle. He didn't want to hurt Theo more than he already had. He was a good kid.

Besides, he had other things to worry about. Like the fact that he'd cried three nights in a row after he'd left Snape's quarters that morning. And that he hadn't thought about sex since. And that he had the same nightmare, over and over. All about the same bloody thing.

"I'm sorry," Harry mumbled to Snape when he finally had the courage to stay after class and apologise. And more importantly, to continue with the plan.

Snape let Harry stand there in tortured silence for what felt like forever. "What are you talking about?" he finally asked.

"The- the scratch on your face. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you."

"Actually, if I recall correctly, that was exactly your intent."

Harry tried to keep from smiling, but failed miserably. "Okay, yeah, I suppose it was."

"Then what are you apologising for?"

Harry thought for a moment. Snape had a way of asking all the wrong questions. They always got to the heart of things. "For leaving a mark, I guess. I didn't mean to do that...well at least, I think I didn't mean to." Harry cursed himself for stumbling so much.

"You most likely meant that as well, I think." Harry didn't know how to respond to that, so he kept quiet.

"Can I help you with anything else?"

"No, I just wanted to say sorry about the mark, cause people have probably been bothering you about it, and-"

"Yes," Snape interrupted, not looking at him and the way he did it, or just that he did it at all made Harry's stomach twist in a way it never had before, "so stop bothering me about it."

Wind blew in from the small windows near the ceiling and ruffled the papers on Snape's desk. The noise of their shifting filled the room and the heavy awkwardness around them weighed on Harry more then ever. He couldn't stand it.

"Are you cross with me?" he blurted out.

Snape spared him a fleeting look. "No."

"Then why-why-" He didn't want to ramble but with the way Snape was staring at him and giving him nothing to talk about it, he was finding it hard to find a reason to stay in the room. He didn't even know why he needed to stay in the room. "Why won't you talk to me?" he finally got out.

"I am speaking to you," Snape insisted, shifting his stance and his gaze, fingers brushing the edges of his desk.

"Not like you usually do, you usually ask me loads of questions and insult me underhandedly, and, and-"

"You're nervous."

Harry stopped and sputtered, trying to take in the fact Snape had thrown at him and shake off the frustration with being interrupted again. He wanted more than anything to walk out of the room, but something kept his feet glued to the floor.

"Yes! I am-"

"Why?"

"Because I just- you make me-" Harry let out a growl of frustration he didn't know he was capable of and stormed out the room. Snape smirked after him.

Harry was breathing blue.

He lie in bed like that, unaware, until the darkness spoke around him, shifting its fat hands and knees over him, into him. Harry, it said.

Over him, into him.

Harry. Harry...

"Harry!" Someone was shaking him awake, whisper yelling his name, the bed curtains closed around them. He gasped and started, blindly throwing his fists at whoever it was in defense.

"Ha-what are you doing? Harry, it's me, Theo! Calm down, it was only a dream! You don't want to wake everyone up do you?"

The cloud of terrorized sleep wouldn't lift in the darkness, it was smothering in its hold on him. He twisted desperate fingers into Theo's night shirt, pulling him toward him. The denseness of his body helped wring Harry back to the present. He buried his face in Theo's chest and the warm wet his tears created, the frantic heart beating beneath his ear the only thing keeping him grounded.

He made no sound at all except for the stray whimper. He fell into a pattern of waking up and falling back asleep all night until Theo moved out from the tight circle of his arms. He lay awake until dawn, realising for the first time that he'd passed three weeks worth of sleeps in this nightmarishly saturated and spare way.

Another week passed and the students at Hogwarts were becoming antsier and antsier to leave for Christmas break. Some were genuinely pleased to see their families, some were taking extravagant holidays in tropical places to get away from their families, some dreaded going home, and there were a few, of which Harry was included, that didn't have a home to miss or a family to hate.

But Harry still looked forward to Christmas for the special solitude it afforded him and the beauty that the castle seemed to develop when it's corridors were silent and it's classrooms empty.

And this year, there would be Snape. This was the main concern occupying Harry's mind during double Biology, when the class was bustling around the lab, completing the final practical assignment before the break. The lab was in the back of the classroom, and Snape sat all the way at the front, silently completing paperwork. Harry was in a group with Theo and Draco, and Draco was doing most of the work, too meticulous to trust either of the other boys to do anything right.

While leaning lazily on a lab bench, with his elbow holding his head up, Harry was interrupted from his thoughts with a hot whisper at his ear.

"Can we talk?" Theo. God.

Harry didn't spare him a look. "About?"

There was a pause and Harry smirked in the awkward fumbling that was no doubt happening in Theo's head.

"You're really going to pretend that nothing happened?" He sounded angry.

Harry rolled his eyes, absolutely sick of Theo's attention. "God, I wish you could see yourself. You're pathetic."

He heard the sound of glass clinking together, and suddenly, there were nails at his throat. Snape left his field of vision. There was an inhuman roar from above him as he crashed down to the lab floor. He felt something crack near his chest and he gasped, an excruciating pain radiating from that part of him and seeming to reach all parts.

He heard the other boys, voices indistinct, shout vaguely, but mostly it was just Theo or something terrible he'd brought out of that sweet boy, repeatedly yelling in his face "I hate you! I hate you, I hate..." his voice trembling with desperate rage. And then, Theo punched his collarbone.

Harry screamed.

When he felt like he was going to be sick, Theo was being pulled off him. He immediately turned on his side, trying not to vomit.

"Are you insane?" He heard Snape yelling. Harry looked up in time to see Blaise shove Theo into a bench. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Theo breathed hard, and said nothing, just stormed out of the room, slamming the door shut loudly behind him. Harry couldn't care less where he'd gone as it had just started getting painful for him to breathe.

Snape, and a few others were over him at once. "Where did he hit you?"

"I think he broke something!"

"Where does it hurt?"

"My-my shoulder," Harry shut his eyes tight against the pain. "I can't move my arm."

Snape looked at Blaise. "Call Madame Pomfrey."

Blaise and Draco left his bedside when Madame Pomfrey announced it was time for bed and shut the lights of the infirmary. Harry wasn't sorry because he was tired and slightly woozy from the painkillers he'd been given after the nurse had set his arm and put it in a sling. And besides that, he had plans. What Theo had done to him was incredibly unnerving- had he really turned the sweetest, most mild tempered boy he knew into a complete monster?

He waited until he was sure the woman had left and gone to her quarters, until he'd heard the last drawer and door close, the last jingle of keys. When his feet touched the floor, his entire spine seemed to shiver from the cold and made him remember the snow outside. He tried to hunch his shoulders closer together as he padded quietly out of the room, but pain shot into his shoulder and he relaxed them again.

But when he opened the door, there was dark figure there, waiting.

Harry gasped and clutched his fist to his heart.

Theo stepped into the light.

Tears filled his eyes immediately, the image, the fear, reminding him of so many things, so many nights spent waiting and watching and wondering why, why him, why then, why ever. And many more nights spent remembering. Pictures and thoughts and fear whistled through him because he was empty. Or at least he wished he was.

He punched the boy in the arm. "You scared the shit out of me!" he whisper yelled, making sure his voice didn't tremble. His heart was still racing.

Theo's eyes were red, his face pale. "I'm so sorry, Harry! I don't know what's wrong with me! I wasn't thinking."

Harry sighed. "You fucking broke my collar bone, Theo," he said, but if he was honest, he couldn't even bring himself to be angry.

"I have no idea how that happened! I didn't mean to hurt you so much, I swear..."

Harry looked at the floor. "Just shut up, okay? It's fine."

Theo swallowed. "What?"

Harry suddenly realised how much noise they must be making and stepped out of the infirmary and closed the door behind him. "I said it's fine!"

Theo paused. "Really?" he asked in disbelief.

"Yes! I was probably being an arsehole anyway. I deserved it."

Theo still looked shocked. "Really?" he asked again. "You've never..."

"Apologised for anything in my entire bloody life? Yeah, I know. Listen, I can't do this right now, okay? Can we talk later?"

Theo swallowed again but looked much calmer. "Yeah, okay."

"Thanks."

"Night."

Harry slipped off into the opposite direction and was grateful Theo seemed to know not to ask any questions or was too distracted to.

When Harry got to the corridor he'd been in before to visit Snape, he couldn't remember which door it had been. Just as he had narrowed his choices down and was deciding between two, the one just behind him creaked open. He spun around so quickly that it hurt his arm and he winced.

A sliver of Snape looked back at him through the crack in the door. They stood there, saying nothing to each other for a moment, until Snape opened the door wider in invitation.

When Harry was safely inside and the door was closed, Snape put his fingers to the plasters on Harry's throat. "I'm not the only one sporting wounds now," he said softly.

Harry smiled and his eyes darted to every corner of Snape's unconventionally handsome face as they could reach. "Yeah," he mumbled, "Can you believe what he did?"

"Depends on what you did to him."

Harry snorted and looked away. "You know me well, apparently," he said bitterly.

Snape turned away from him and went to sit by the dimming fire. "Whatever you did, I still want to ripe his throat out."

Harry suddenly felt giddy. "Really?" Then Snape shifted away on the settee when Harry sat too close and the giddiness retreated back into whatever hole it had come from.

"What did you do?" he asked.

"I told him I knew he fancied me and that he was being painfully obvious about it. Then I ignored and avoided him for about a month, and when he approached me about it, I called him pathetic."

Snape pursed his lips and nodded. "Yes, that would do it."

"I just- I didn't know it was hurting him that much," Harry said, feeling the need to justify himself.

"Understandable," Snape nodded again. "You don't even believe that anyone could really fancy you that much, do you?"

"Stop psychoanalysing everything I say! And of course I believe someone could fancy me that much, I'm fucking gorgeous!"

"If you didn't want to be psychoanalysed you would not have come here since that is practically all I do to you. And I am not referring to anything physical. Everyone's well aware that you're 'fucking gorgeous,'" Snape mocked.

"God, I hate you," Harry said passionlessly. "Ever since you stepped into this fucking school all I want to do cry and be cuddled all the time."

Snape smirked. "Everyone needs a good cuddle from time to time."

"Can we go to bed soon?"

"How presumptuous! What makes you think I'll let you near my bedroom and not send you back to the hospital wing where you belong?"

Harry huffed. "I don't have the patience for this, I thought I made it subtly clear I want to cuddle."

Snape's brow furrowed. "I'm going to skip the lecture on why nothing can be subtly clear, and just say that it would be very difficult for you to spend the night here, considering Madame Pomfrey will have kittens if she finds you gone from your bed tomorrow morning."

"I've already thought of that, I'll sneak out before dawn."

"And what makes you think I'll allow you in my bed at all?"

Harry kissed him, soft and slow and repeatedly.

Not half an hour later, Harry was happily ensconced in Snape's thick blankets as the the older man struggled with the old television he'd pushed into the corner of the room for lack of use.

"Can't believe you don't watch television," Harry said, yawning. "Greatest invention ever."

Snape was trying to plug the thing in. "Bloody stupid contraption," he mumbled. "Why am I doing this again?"

"It comforts me."

Snape rolled his eyes and turned on the telly, approaching the bed with the remote. Q.I. was on. He turned off the lamp and climbed in behind Harry, who was lying on his good side. Harry budged backwards until he felt Snape flush behind him, which made him think of sex.

Which reminded him of how strange this situation was. "I used to- I used to sleep in the living room when I lived with my family," he said slowly, as he watched Stephen Fry present some puzzle involving a triangle. "When I could, because there at least all my uncle could do was hit me."

Snape kissed his neck. "Is your uncle here?" he asked.

Harry's brow furrowed and he reached blindly to grab Snape's arm and put it around him.

"What are you talking about?"

"Is your uncle here with you now?"

"No," Harry said and saying it made him feel good.

"Then why on Earth does he matter?"

Harry twisted around and pulled Snape down toward him, kissing him fiercely. They fumbled awkwardly around Harry's shoulder, but that made him all the more randy. Snape snaked a hand between them and under Harry's pajama shirt. It stayed there for a while, running over Harry's ribs, playing with his nipples, his belly button. It raked over his heart and even went up to throat where Snape grasped and controlled, sure movements pushing the barriers of the fragile goods it handled.

Snape's mouth was still like a hot rod at his neck half an hour later, his body still pressed close and exquisitely smothering behind him. Snape's hands pulled at him, Harry pushed back into him, searching for and finding that wonderful hardness. They breathed together, rocked against each other, and it was neither hasty nor desperate, just comfortable and completely, completely delicious.

"I really like," Harry sighed, "the way you touch me."

Snape said nothing, just hummed into his skin, and that was better. Harry had tried multiple times to reach behind him for Snape's cock, but Snape wasn't having it. He was still almost unbearably frigid when it came to sex.

When Harry finally spends himself and fumes inside over the fact that Snape hasn't, and probably won't while he's around, he asks him petulantly, "Why won't let me?"

"Oh, stop whinging," Snape said, exasperated. After a moment, he finished, "You know why."

"So stupid," he complained.

"I don't like that word being used in reference to me," Snape cut in icily.

"Then stop doing stupid- no, no, I'm kidding!" Harry broke in laughing and grabbed Snape to keep him from moving further away from him, still in a daze from his particularly good orgasm.

Harry split his attention for the next few hours of the early morning on the telly and on Snape, whose eyes and body had quickly begun to droop. The sun was coming up cold, lighting up the frosted windows.

Harry didn't want Snape to fall asleep, feeling as though something terrible would happen the moment he drifted off, so he asked "Have you ever done something really, really terrible?"

Snape's eyes stayed closed. "Irredeemably terrible?" he said slowly.

"Yeah, like that."

A pause. "Yes."

"What did you do?"

Snape shifted beneath the covers, curling away from Harry. "I'd rather not discuss it."

"Have you gotten over it?"

"Yes, I think so. Must we talk about this now?" Snape seemed both genuinely uncomfortable with the subject and very, very sleepy.

Harry persisted. "How?"

Snape sighed deeply and it became a yawn. He was silent, and for a moment, Harry thought he wouldn't answer. Then, he said, "I gave up expecting life to be a certain way."

Harry's brow furrowed and he brought his hand around to touch Snape's face, carefully, afraid he might bite. "I don't understand."

"That's the way it seems to be with these things. You never really understand until you get it for yourself. I think what you're asking," Snape yawned again, "is if I forgave myself."

"Yes," Harry breathed, tracing the shape of Snape's strange nose.

"I did."

Harry shook his head, thinking of himself, thinking of Theo, of Draco, of that boy he'd terrorized into wanting to leave Hogwarts, thinking of Snape, of every sorry soul that had the misfortune to come across his. "How could you?"

"It was the only logical thing to do."

"How d'you mean?"

Snape finally opened his eyes. They glittered, sleepiness all but gone. "I tried not forgiving myself for a long time, and I was miserable. I tried to make it up, I tried to give back, I tried to sacrifice, until I was sacrificing too much, until I wasn't living for myself anymore. And it was either keep doing that until I'd been withered to nothing or forgive myself and move on."

Harry's hand retreated from Snape's face. His throat burned. "What if you deserve to whither to nothing?"

Snape lifted the remote and turned the television off. "Then you still haven't forgiven yourself."