AN: Okay, so I know I took forever to update. I could give you a bunch of excuses, but I won't :). Hope you all enjoy this, sorry if there are any mistakes, again I'm editing this at a later date. There was a bit of experimentation with this chapter so please let me know if that works for you or not in a review, I would really appreciate the feedback :D A LOT happens in this chapter, being number 7 and all, so I hope that makes up for the wait! Enjoy (hopefully)!

O me! what eyes hath Love put in my head,

Which have no correspondence with true sight;

Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled,

That censures falsely what they see aright?

If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,

What means the world to say it is not so?

If it be not, then love doth well denote

Love's eye is not so true as all men's: no,

How can it? O! how can Love's eye be true,

That is so vexed with watching and with tears?

No marvel then, though I mistake my view;

The sun itself sees not, till heaven clears.

O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind,

Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXLVIII

"Nothing feels right anymore. I feel like he's, like he's the only one that understands what goes on in my head, like he sees right through me and I never have to explain myself or hide or," Harry grips the porcelain rim of the sink with one hand until his knuckles are white and squeezes his eyes shut. Hangs his head. "or feel like I can't, like I can't breath, like right now, like- fuck-"

He trips over his words as he fumbles with his grasp of the porcelain sink and grasps again, desperate to hold in, to hold back.

There is a noise behind him.

A footstep in a damp spot on the floor, an echo, the door closing with a swish and snap. Harry immediately thinks of his incriminating red eyes. He looks in the mirror and sees Draco behind him.

"Harry?" Draco says and in retrospect it might have been that word, that godforsaken name, so pliant and used and tired from Draco's mouth that made him so angry. "What's wrong?"

Harry's response is just as instant as the question. "Mind your own fucking business."

Draco says nothing and for a moment all the noise there is is water from the facet running. Then, Harry hears the sneer in Draco's voice. "God, I would have thought what happened with Theo last week would have taught you how to be less of an arsehole."

Harry's laugh is bitter and humourless. With his next words, he feels like a snake, sinking its fangs mercilessly into tender flesh. "If fucking your dad didn't teach me that, nothing will."

He looks up and watches Draco's face in the mirror. His pale features contort in confusion. Harry's arm twitches in its sling.

"What?" he whispers.

Harry bites his lip. "I fucked your dad. Your dad fucks sixteen-year-old boys. I bet I was just one of them." He turns to face the other boy, feeling like a performer. "It was that New Year's party you invited me to last year. I remember coming downstairs right after and kissing your mother goodnight," he smiled "it was so hilarious."

Harry prepares for the pain. Draco takes longer to get to him than he expects. He grabs him by the hair and pulls him forward before thrusting his head toward the rim of the basin. Harry falls, his slung shoulder hitting the ground, hot blood shooting from his nose.

He cries out so loudly and for so long, he cannot recognise his own voice. He rolls to his other side, desperate to escape his own body, to move, to breathe. It is worse than what Theo did to him a thousand times over. It is more than what he bargained for.

But still, it was a reprieve.

He rolls again and Draco's face appears above him, blurry and far away. He spits in Harry's face and steps over him to leave.

Harry doesn't feel it. He can't feel anything.

Hermione gasps when she sees him. "Harry!"

"Hermione!" He throws back, in falsetto.

"What happened?" She drops her briefcase on the floor carelessly, and rushes to her chair across from him to get a better look at his bruised, barley healed face.

"Well, nothing really, I just got out of maths-"

She huffs and waves away his words. "You know what I mean! You broke your shoulder?" she asks, eyeing his sling.

"Fractured it," he says, "and then re-fractured it," he laughs. "Some people were a little upset with me."

"A little?" She purses her lips, still examining his face.

Harry shrugs, not knowing what else to say to her. She wouldn't understand, even if he could explain.

He stares into the fireplace at night, elbow on the arm of his chair ,and nobody speaks to him.

Except tonight. Ron Weasley sits within his field of vision, a stupid grin on his face. It's the same grin that he's been giving Harry when they pass each other in corridors, or make eye contact in class.

Harry spares him a look, but doesn't say anything to him.

"You wanna know why I'm so fucking chuffed?" Weasley has the nerve to say to him in the middle of the common room.

Harry says nothing, but turns his head toward Weasley, listening.

"Because you finally look as rotten on the outside as you are on the inside."

Harry looks back at the fire, not really seeing anything.

Harry can feel Snape resisting questioning him, and waits for the day that he will break.

It is a Thursday when he does, calling him back from the gang of boys eagerly crowding out of the classroom. Harry shivers when he hears that deep voice mold so perfectly over the syllables of his name as he calls it.

Snape shuts the door and instead of leaning on his desk as per usual, he stands in front of and close to Harry, staring at him, almost touching. Harry breathes him in.

"Who did that to you?" He's staring, hard. Angry.

"It doesn't matter," Harry gulps, overwhelmingly ashamed. He deserved everything. From Draco, from Theo...and from Snape. Especially from Snape.

Snape's eyes steel, harder then before. "You're going to tell me exactly who did that to you and after I get him expelled, I'm going to break his head open."

Harry shook his head. "I didn't tell Dumbledore who did it and I'm not telling you. I fell, okay?"

Snape's eyes widened in disbelief. "Dumbledore let you get away with that sorry excuse of a lie? A fall re-fractured your shoulder and gave you a black eye?"

"It's been known to happen."

Snape shook his head, furious. "This is unreal. There is no way any student at this school should be allowed to get away with that."

"It's real. It's happened. Get over it," Harry says, but puts his finger in the belt loop of Snape's trousers. Snape grabs his wrist and pulls him closer. "Tell me. I won't say anything. Just tell me so I know who to fail," he breaths near Harry's ear, Harry's mouth.

"No," Harry buries his face in Snape's neck, and it hurts a little, but it's still so good. "All that shit I went through to get Dumbledore off my back will be for nothing." And you'll hate me if you know what I did to him, he doesn't say. What I'm about to do to you. "But I might tell you if you let me come to your room tonight," he says slyly, insides churning.

Snape moves away. Harry's stomach flutters nervously. Snape looks him in the eye. Right through me.

Then, he snorts. "I'm surprised you asked and didn't just come barging in like the last time."

Harry's shoulders relaxed and he smirked. "I did not barge."

Snape runs his thumb over the tip of his nose in what Harry thinks is an impulsive movement. He walks back to stand behind his desk. "Around 8 o'clock?" he says, nonchalant.

Harry smiles, burning inside. "8 o'clock."

"Harry?"

When, Gregory comes to him just before he is to see Snape, Harry is in the Great Hall, thinking, thinking.

"Harry!" He finally snaps out of it and sees Gregory's large hand waving in his face. "Sorry," he mumbles and lets the other boy take him aside, away from the other boys. "So. What did he say?"

Harry blinked. "Yeah, yeah I'll be in his rooms. 8 o'clock."

"When do you want me?"

"Fifteen minutes past" he replied. He didn't want to give himself time to change his mind.

Gregory nodded and hesitated before leaving him. "Harry...are you sure you want to do this? There's still time..."

Air seems to fill his chest and he is tempted to call everything off, to forget it happened, to forget everything. Then, he remembers what it feels like when he hasn't seen Snape in private for more than three days, the brief flash of hatred on Draco Malfoy's reflected face, the familiar comforts of loss and failure and suffering.

"No. Do it."

"What was Mr. Goyle saying to you at dinner?"

They're entwined on the settee, and Harry wishes he'd told Gregory to wait longer. "Nothing. Why?" Harry said, kissing his forehead to distract him from the lie and the jolt he felt when Snape mentioned Gregory's name.

"You seemed upset."

Snape's face is in his neck. His breathe, his soft, almost nonexistent kisses sends chills down his spine, so he presses closer to the man, trying to get rid of that feeling. He lets out a sound that's part giggle, part moan, part whimper.

The noise Harry releases makes Severus's cock twitch and his heart sing.

He extracts himself from the imprint his made in Harry's arms, his body, and kisses him. Harry pants hard around his face for a second and does a strange, excited jig in his lap. It makes him even harder, and reminds him of stupid, childish things that make people happy like puppies.

He grabs one bent, slim wrist, pale with the winter. Tightens his grasp for control. Over himself, or Harry, he can't be sure. His student breaks away from his lips and gasps harshly, like his been burned and rolls his hips and Severus couldn't ask him what was wrong even if he tried.

He rises from his seat, taking Harry with him, fumbling, tripping under his weight at first, with Harry squealing and hastening to locks his limbs around him in surprise, then smoothly striding to the bedroom. When he lays him down, he can tell Harry thinks this is the moment, this is when they'll fuck, but Severus knows better, thinks he knows everything.

Ah ha, Harry thinks, only half-triumphantly as Snape lays him down. This is the moment he'll be proven right. When Snape will be just like the rest. Harry reaches for the man's belt and undoes it.

A hand comes around his wrist. "You will not be getting lucky tonight, Mr. Potter," is mumbled into his mouth as Snape hovers over him to kiss him, back hunched, keeping their bodies apart. Harry is taken by surprise for a moment, taken adrift.

Then, he remembers. His eyes snap open, and he pushes himself up and against Snape to look at the clock on the wall, never breaking their kiss and it hurts some because their teeth clink. Gregory will be prompt. And he has fifteen seconds.

He takes three seconds to savor what Snape's body feels like against him. Pinned, pried open, deprived. The way he makes him feel with his words. With his looks.

Then, he turns his head fast, breaking their kiss, wriggling and twisting out of Snape's hold. Snape tries to hang on, but eventually lets go. Harry bounces and climbs off the bed and his bare feet scrape and press into the wooden floor. He sprints and hops to just outside the threshold of the bedroom. Snape is watching him, he can feel it.

He looks at him one last time, while things are still normal and cool and fine. Snape is standing, and the look on his face halts every beam of energy in Harry's body. He stands still, watches the terrible way Snape smiles at him while lines of confusion and questions crease his forehead. He watches and regrets.

Then, there is a knock on the door, three to be exact. Short and concise, and Harry feels them like a knoll in his body, full and everywhere.

The knock on the door freezes the smile he'd been vulnerable enough to let slip.

He sees Harry's face look away from him, sees the turn in the pad of his foot against the floor, prepared to run. For a second he cannot believe even Harry could be so careless.

Harry disappears from the doorway and Severus grabs a bed post, propelling himself forward and after him, yelling "NO!"

But when he slips quickly outside the bedroom, Harry is already at the front door, hand turning the nob, twisting, the sound like knives in Severus's ear.

The door swings open and reveals Albus Dumbledore and Gregory Goyle, who Severus, in a bizarre manner of delaying facing reality, recalls is always three seats back and two to the right from Harry in his class, and fails all his tests, and...

Was speaking to Harry at dinner in the Great Hall. He remembers the flare of unwarranted jealousy, as he leaned close to his precious student, remembers the look on Harry's face.

He feels Dumbledore's eyes roaming his figure, his and Harry's disheveled clothes and hair, his half undone belt...

He does nothing but stare at Harry the entire way out, Albus's hand like a clasp at the back of his neck.