AN: Okay, so I wanted this chapter to be longer and more fulfilling, but I decided that since it's been so long, I should just give it to you know and save the rest for later. Hope you enjoy, but I doubt you will, because it's just a sad chapter lol, one of those. And also, if you haven't been reading the sonnets, I recommend you read this one; it's so fitting (I always try to make them as fitting as possible) and so beautiful (they're all so beautiful!). Okay, enjoy (or not) and please review (or not)!

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty's rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory:

But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,

Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:

Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content,

And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding:

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

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

William Shakespeare, Sonnet I

He shook his head. "I did something really bad." He couldn't look at Hermione.

"Harry, Headmaster Dumbledore told me what happened. You don't have to explain, Professor Snape is the only one to blame."

This made the tears come faster. He put his face in his hands. "No! You don't understand. I lied! I lied about everything. I- we didn't even have sex! He never even let me touch him!"

There was a pause and Harry was practically panting. "I don't understand," she whispered.

Harry growled, the sound tearing angry and wounded from his throat. "I set him up," he said pathetically. "I just said those things to get him fired. I made sure we got caught."

He looked up at her. She had covered her mouth with one hand, and her brow furrowed. She moved her hand. "But...Harry. If you still had a...relationship outside of the classroom, he would have gotten in trouble anyway. Deserved to get in trouble," she finished.

"You don't understand!" he repeated. "It was so innocent. He doesn't-" he took a deep breathe "he's in fucking prison, Hermione, for kissing me!"

Harry wondered why it was taking so long for her to speak, why she was pausing so long, making him wait, wait. "Harry, are you saying nothing of a sexual nature occurred between you and Professor Snape?"

"Yes." He squeezed his eyes shut tight. "God, yes. That's what I'm saying."

She paused again, her eyebrows raising slightly, surprised but not. "Harry, I hope you realise what this means. Your false accusation could cost you your place at this school."

Harry looked at her and wished he didn't because he could see the pity in her eyes. "I don't care. I don't- I just need to make things right."

Hermione rises from her chair and stands near the window to stare out onto Hogwarts's vast grounds. She shook her head, slowly. "Harry...I can tell you feel really sorry for what you've done," she seems hesitant but plunges on. "If you want, I won't...I mean if Professor Dumbledore expels you...there's nothing left for you out there," she turns to face him "but foster families and group homes. You're really smart, Harry, you could do something with your life-"

"And just leave Snape to rot in jail for however long they decide to keep him there and then never be able to get a decent job for the rest of his life?" he spat, stomach turning in self-disgust.

"They can't keep him in prison too long if you don't press charges," she said, almost as an after thought. "But, you're right. And if you decide to tell the truth, I'll support you." She purses her lips, and her resolve strengthens. "And if you decide not too, I'd understand that too," she nodded.

Nothing in the room, or even outside made a sound, for what seemed like minutes on end.

"I can deal with foster families," he said, finally. "But I just can't bear the thought of him suffering because of me. No one deserves-" He buried his face in his hands and stopped; couldn't say more.

Harry sat by the lake the day Professor Dumbledore expelled him.

He watched the water pass over the stones and the moss on the stones and the pieces of broken trees fallen and stuck in the muck of the undergrowth. He watched the way the water lapped up the snow around it, the way water gave way to water and the rest of it. He thought about how his life had been like the lake at Christmas, iced over, quiet and still, with unbearably cold life passing, breathing, pushing underneath. Pushing to get out. Just waiting for someone to step on his weakest point. Always ready to swallow, to drown. To consume.

Ron Weasley sat beside him in the snow.

"You're so obnoxious," Harry told him. "I heard you coming from like a mile away, sniffling and stomping around. How did you even find me?"

"It wasn't very hard," Weasley said, his voice muffled by his scarf. "You're the only git sitting by the lake in a shit load of snow."

Harry could feel the other boy was examining his tear frozen face and it made him want to punch him in the face. If he had had any energy, he probably would. "Go on. Gloat about how I got what I deserved, how happy you are I'm leaving."

Weasley snorted. "You definitely did get what was coming to you. You're an arsehole."

"Wow, thanks. That totally made this day better. What would I do without you?" He rolled his eyes through the tears and resisted the urge to sniff.

His classmate ignored him, continued as if he'd never spoken. "I just never knew you knew."

Harry wanted to cry again. He felt like such a fucking girl, lately. "What does that mean?"

"You know you're an arsehole. And that's...good."

Harry wanted to laugh, but again, no energy. He was sapped of everything. "Is this your idea of a heart to heart?"

Weasley said nothing and Harry said something he thought he'd never have the balls too. But with him it seemed alright, because Weasley seemed to know nothing of him. "I really liked him," came the rushed words.

Weasley snorted. "Yeah, really shows."

It was like a slap, and Harry laughed suddenly, loudly, a short, broken burst. He tried to keep still, but his brow contorted and more tears warmed the cooled tracks on his face. He wanted to say something scathing back, but he knew it would sound too broken to really have any weight. "Can you just leave me alone?" he settles for instead. "You really have been no help at all."

Weasley stood up from his spot, and Harry spared a look at the fresh snow he's crushed under him. "It's getting dark," he said as he wiped himself off. "We should go up."

He was right. The sky was that crisp azure you only see in deep sea water. But Harry wasn't ready to face Hogwarts yet. Hogwarts, his only true home, and now it was expelling him, like a parasite being flicked off its host. Only a matter of time, he thought bitterly.

"Just go away," Harry told him. Weasley listened without much pause.

Hermione's home was warm, and very, very clean. Harry knew that if he'd turned over everything in the apartment, he probably wouldn't find a speck of dust. Everything in the kitchen, where they sat in the winter sunlight that came in from her small windows, shined. The silver spoon sitting near the sugar bowl on the tea tray was spotless.

"I'm sorry," she said into the silence between them. "You, leaving, that must have been hard."

Harry smiled. "You must pity me so much. To have helped me like that, and everything." Hermione had visited Hogwarts much more than was required of her the last week of school before the holidays and before Harry was due to leave for good. She'd helped him pack his things, even helped him settle into his new group home in Edinburgh, where she lived.

Hermione scoffed. "Oh, Harry! That is so bloody ridiculous! Why does someone being kind to you have to mean that all the time?"

"It's not that it has to mean that, it just does," Harry said, looking away from her, eyes trained to the way the sunlight hit the table. It was warm and beautiful, but Harry felt so old and rotten inside. He felt disconnected from everything, like he was watching the way the world worked from the outside, a bored, numbed spectator.

Hermione reached for his hand. The feel of her skin against his, human contact, made him think of his cold bed back at the group home, how he had to fend people away from it and him, being so disgusted as he was with everyone but Severus Snape. Her hand over his, like a boulder holding him in place, made him want to cry. But he was a tapped out well. There was nothing left.

He said it. "There's nothing left." Small, raspy.

"Harry," Hermione pleads, "Harry, please don't say that! It's not true! There's just something so good about you, that's why I helped you. That's why you intrigued me like no one else. There's just something about you, Harry. Please, you can't give up hope." She started to cry. Weep, really.

Harry finally looked her in the eye. His chair scarped violently against the kitchen floor as he rushed out of it to wrap his arms around Hermione. "What is wrong with you?" he muttered into her bushy, brown hair. "You don't even know me. Why are you crying for me, you silly girl?"

"Because," she chokes out between sobs, "because you're so brave. You're so brave, Harry."

Harry tightened his grip on her and froze. He wanted to believe her.

Slowly, he realised the pain that the awkwardness of their position has caused him, and he straightened up out of his crouch and sat back in his chair. Hermione hastily wiped the tears from her face, obviously embarrassed. "God, I'm sorry," she mumbled and sniffled.

"I suppose what I'm trying to say," she plunges on, "is that I get why you did what you did. Even though it was horrible and unfair to Snape, I get it. You were getting back at the people in your past-"

"Don't you dare try to dissect me," Harry shot back, his anger spiking for the first time in weeks. "Its more complicated than all that. I'm more than just a fucking abused teenage case study." I love him, he doesn't say.

"I know, I know, I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to sound that way. Just- listen. I have an offer for you."

Harry raised an eyebrow at her. He was weary, but his interest was peaked. He liked Hermione, despite her irritating earnestness. "Go on."

"Well," she started, and looked away, "I need a roommate."

About a month later, Harry was sleeping in Hermione's extra bedroom.

One evening, after a particularly long bout of application filling in Edinburgh's shops and restaurants, he came home and the disappointment and the cold had seemed to seep through his jacket, soaking him, a wetness and a crushing ache, bone deep.

He could already sense Hermione was out as he walked through the dark, flicking on any light he could, making all the noise he could, so sick from the emptiness of the apartment in the dark night, he could vomit. He opened the one dinky light in his own bedroom, and the sight of it was so sad he almost had to turn his face away. Him and Hermione had pushed one of her couches into the center because of it had a sofa bed. Harry couldn't afford a mattress, much less a bed frame. Or anything, actually. The sofa bed was perpetually pulled out, and there were some clothes and shoes strewn here and there. Otherwise, everything else was bare. The walls, bare.

Harry usually dropped into bed the moment he came in the door, so he wouldn't have to stare at the sheets too long. Their whiteness, the creases in them, the way they looked so damn abandoned all the time. They reminded him of Snape.

He shut the light off again almost immediately, just the smallest glimpse of white sheets sending him back. But he knew it was no use. He stumbled to the bed, tripping over himself in his rush, and surrendered to the cold sheets, burrowing his face in them, not even bothering to take off his shoes or coat or anything. He just got under the blankets, trying to remember.

Snape...

His skin was threatening to forget the feel of his, melding and bending into the memory of a hundred other men's touches, memories Harry would give up in an instant to be able to feel Snape breathe half a breath over any part of him, to hear Snape give voice to one vaguely endearing thought, to once again be the object of such genuine and subtle affection, to move and be moved by a man so seemingly immovable.

He grabbed the only pillow he had, smothering his face in it and screamed; heaved dry, dry sobs, suddenly grateful that the flat was empty.