Chapter Four

xxxxx

Dark. Hot. The tug and suck, the lust for more: wetness, friction. At first it's all unfocussed, blurry and urgent, pure sensation with me at the centre. The heat slides up, slides back, slides up. I know, even though I didn't at first, that someone's sucking my dick. All the rest of me is there, but I can really only feel my dick. It keeps pushing forward and someone's mouth keeps rising to meet it, and it's bloody unnerving. Wrong somehow, but at the moment I'm too confused and horny to sort it out. The ache is so intense it's like pain, sweet pain, with an underlying scrape I'm pretty sure is a thin ridge of teeth.

My gut cramps with nervousness. I'm fucking someone's mouth, a hot living softness clamped around me, slick and sucking, and I want it, I want it so much it takes an act of will to go slow and not rut.

As if moving through water, my hands float into view and settle slowly, touching hair. I'm gathering the long, thick hair in my hands, parting it like weeds, and the sense of wrongness grows. The strands cling to my palms, and it feels weird, not light and silky, but heavier, a loose, bedraggled weight.

I know what's wrong now, even though I try not to. Even though I try to unknow.

The heat swallows me over and over. I'm panting, my chest heaving with pleasure, but I'm panicking now, my fingers crushing the coarse slippery clumps. I know they're not real, they can't be, but I do my damnedest to change the colour. To will them the same shade as Ginny's shiny smooth coppery-brightness. Not black. Stop being black, damn it.

Nothing changes, and my conscience does a bunk. I rock my hips, thrusting down the offered throat, and there's no way he can get a word out past my cock. Good, because I don't want to hear it. I don't want him drawling spiteful barbs about my compromised masculinity. I know how bad this looks, no matter how fantastic it feels, I know this shouldn't be happening, never mind his tongue touching the pulse on the underside of my prick, tasting the rolled-back ring of foreskin.

At the same time—oh God, this makes no sense—I fuck his mouth to force a sound out of him, plunge down to wherever he hides his voice, doing my best to break the silence. To root out all the things he won't say to me. His voice is down there somewhere, a dark stain dripping from the end of a quill, from the lip of a goblet, black and fuming. A memory that can never be erased or washed out. It can only be shoved into a bin at the back of my mind and eventually, some secret night, taken out and buried.

And there, I'm fighting to come, struggling in darkness, alarmed and sore with unspent desire, the intensity pushing me up toward the surface, out of the dark.

Cheeks bulging, he looks up.

Desire, disgust: we both feel it. His mouth's distorted around me, shadows sunk under his cheekbones. His eyes gleam like scary things down a well.

A hand gropes my arse, guides my hips forward, and he takes me to the hilt. I can hear the hoarse, rhythmic bubble and gasp of his breathing. The heat between my legs tightens unbearably, the throb getting deeper, but even with my prick gagging his throat he finds a way to defy me, his bony nose and cool forehead pushed into my stomach, the butterfly-brush of his lashes against my bare skin. One pulse, another, a third boosts me toward orgasm, and it's like being drunk, the world reeling around me, air snorting through his nostrils, the wet, fluttery grip of his throat. He swallows, chokes, and—

—just as I'm about to come he finds his voice, or it finds me, swirls back to me from years past, a wave of utter loneliness that snarls up through the dark.

Why didn't you come back for me?

We both shake with it, this thing I didn't do, this cry I failed to answer because—fuck, I didn't know, and I can feel him shuddering under my hands, strangled and speechless with betrayal. Silence billows around us; and no winter wind is colder, no ring of teeth around my cock more castrating.

Oh God, Snape. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I pull harder, push deeper, give him a real reason to choke. Right now you'd have to cut off my hands to make me let go. Then the dream pulls him off me and drags him up and we're kissing, and oh fuck I remember now, I remember this kiss, even though I don't know how we got from there to here, from my prick in Snape's mouth to his tongue in mine, his hair dripping moonlight and stinking of smoke, the greasy ends ragged around my wrists. I let it happen, gripping the sides of his head, knowing in my heart the drape of hair should be silky and red and smell of baby powder, knowing the body in my arms should be graceful and curvy and have breasts heavy with milk. Knowing this is wrong. Knowing he should be dead.

The wind whimpers in my ears. My body aches, unsatisfied, the darkness a flat pillow at my back, fading now as spears of light spread from the point where our lips meet, our chests, erections, every place we're crushed together, a light that pierces and grows, unstoppable, taking Snape away, eating through the darkness and dissolving him while it fills me with a shining awareness of the world. He melts away between my hands, his mouth fading from mine as the entire space where I float, stiff with longing, whites out.

Silence. Sunlight. I'm awake. It wasn't real.

He isn't here.

The mattress gives as I shift my arse and stretch my neck to ease the tension. Toes and fingers unclenching, I open my eyes.

The pale ceiling stares down at me, and the light of early morning filters through the peach-coloured curtains. The bed dips, sheets rustling back. I listen to Ginny moving about, leaning over Al's crib to check on him before she pads sleepily to the loo. Al's doing his whimpery, snuffly morning thing. He's not quite awake yet, but he knows it's feeding time.

It takes an effort to clear the strange, stupid lust from my mind, and I keep my mouth open so I can breathe without making a sound. My heart's pounding, a quick, jittery pulse jumping in my groin. What a fucking intense dream. I haven't had one of those in … it's been a while. Our bedroom stands as still as a pool, the deepness of sleep draining out of it.

Pyjama seam pinching my cock, I shove myself up and swing my feet to the floor. I fumble my glasses on and sit for a minute staring at nothing. Wherever he—wherever the dream touched feels heightened and tingling with remembered sensation. I can still taste him.

Getting up, I scrub a hand through my hair and cross paths with Ginny coming out of the loo. She notices my tented pyjamas. Clearly not in the mood to do anything about it, she gives my crotch the sort of fond, fending-off pat that leaves me clutching the doorframe. In the shower I spell the water hot enough to shock the dream from my pores. Lust collects in the steam, slides in beads of water down the curtains.

When I was seventeen, the bastard kissed me.

The day I made history and the war ended. The day I died. The day I would've sworn he died. The day Voldemort fell. And it was—Merlin, so many extreme and awful things happened that day, so much death, so many endings, but I think it's safe to say that Snape kissing me was without doubt the weirdest thing of all.

He burst in on us in the Room of Requirement. Me and Ginny, I mean. I don't know how he persuaded the door to open. I was there because I needed to lie down where no one could find me; needed it so badly the Room pulled itself together and found the magic to provide it. The castle stood crumbling around us, broken and smouldering on all sides, the towers like smashed teeth. There was rubble in the hallways, blocks of masonry, railings from staircases.

The Great Hall had become a morgue.

I walked the row of bodies, saying goodbye. To Remus, whom I'd called a coward. To Tonks lying beside him. Goodbye to Colin, who shouldn't even have been there. Goodbye to people I didn't know.

I wasn't ready to say anything like goodbye to Fred yet, so I turned and hugged Mrs. Weasley instead. She rocked me a little and tried to stop crying so she could say something about how I was alive and how wonderful that was. It made me feel kind of sick and helpless. Her boggart was real now, and it was worse than any of us ever imagined.

The body count and chaos and nerves and all the people looking at me helped me play my part, but the moment came when it felt like the ceiling was falling in. I couldn't stay there. I couldn't be in the middle anymore. Voldemort was dead. It was time to stop.

Ginny didn't ask, she just took my hand and we sneaked off together. A couple of floors up, we passed a window seat where Hermione sat with her head on Ron's shoulder. He'd been crying, and that started Ginny going again. I said, "We'll be upstairs for a while. In the Room, you know? Because I need to—we've got to— " and then I started crying, and we all shuffled about and hugged each other and stood wiping our eyes on our sleeves. Ron's face squinched a little at sight of his sister leading me up the stairs, but whatever he might have been thinking he had the good sense not to say it.

We went as far as we could go and still be inside the castle. I wasn't sure the Room even still existed. But the door opened for us, and we went in. Smoke drifted from the corners, and the burnt walls crackled with hot spots, all the hidden things charred and blackened by Fiendfyre. But the Room's magic welcomed us. Candles lit, and a bed took shape, a big soft cushiony thing with red draperies, inviting us to crawl aboard and sink into sleep. We lay side by side, holding hands. I don't know about Ginny, but my head no sooner hit the pillow than I was out. I slept like the dead. When I woke up, I was still thinking about dying. I remembered my mum and dad, Sirius, Dumbledore. Lying there staring up at the canopy, I wondered how I'd found the courage to come back. The strength to say goodbye and leave them all behind.

For fuck's sake, I was a kid. It didn't feel like it then, but I was.

I look at Jamie now and think I'd go off my nut if someone tried to make him bear that. Make him responsible for saving the world. I'm not sorry for myself—I had friends, I had help, and other people died who were never offered the choice I had to come back. But it's one reason I don't fancy being treated like a hero. Don't call me the Boy Who Lived. Don't remind me. Because, damn it, I was a boy. Now that I'm not anymore, I realise how fucked up it was for them to put me through that.

But I didn't think that way then. I was too tired to think. Downstairs, the Dark Lord lay under a sheet. The nightmare that had messed up my life—over.

It was over.

Except, not really. Not with all those bodies down in the Hall. Friends. Family, some of them. Ginny woke up sleepy, and I watched her remember. She put her arms over her face and I held her while she cried again. Downstairs, the rest of her family was sitting vigil, watching over Fred. Over George and Molly, too, in case—well, just in case. Arthur had understood about Ginny going with me. "Get some rest," he'd said. The way he stroked Ginny's hair, as if she was incredibly precious and he was afraid she might break. "One of you can sit with him later." He hadn't looked behind him at his sons. It was probably the last time there'd ever be confusion about which one he meant, Fred or George. And Fred's face, almost smiling. Fred, Christ, none of us could believe it, not Fred.

The Room gave us wine, and we both got a little drunk. Like we'd checked into some posh hotel in some other universe. It felt a bit like circling an invisible drain. After that we kind of fell into kissing, and when Ginny put her arms around me—God. I didn't know I needed to be held like that. I'll always love her for being there to comfort me that way.

It was weird and achy and happy-heartbroken all mixed up together. Things went on from there. Looking back, I wish we'd waited. It was like we were doing it more to forget than anything else. Which, you know. Be careful what you wish for.

Not an ideal first time, but still. It's not something you want taken away.

And I'd seen Snape die. I had no doubt he was dead, as dead as the Dark Lord, his throat ripped open and the Shack floor spattered with his blood. I'll never forget the haunted way he looked at me. He saw my mum in my eyes as he was dying, and I saw my mum through his, through his memories, pretty Lily Evans, young and kind and loved by so many. Absolutely normal, in spite of her magic. And there was Snape, anything but normal, trying and failing to be her friend.

I hadn't wasted much time trying to deal with it yet. All that anger was still pent up inside me with nowhere to go.

Then, sodding hell, he appeared out of nowhere, looking like an explosion waiting to happen, and my first thought was, "He's going to kill me."

Wrong. He kissed me instead.

He was my professor, and a Death Eater, or he had been, and he hated me, and he was dead, only he wasn't, and he was a man, a dark, spiteful, fucked-up bastard (his blood on my hands, his cruelty all over my childhood), a man kissing me when I'd never even thought about men doing that, when I'd hardly had a chance to kiss girls, for fuck's sake, and he kissed me like it was the only thing he could do, the most important thing on earth, like it was his last sane act before he completely lost it. Like it was what he'd come back for. Only, when he pulled away from the kiss he was his old self again, all sneering and cold, and I felt like I was the one who'd lost it.

I let him do it—Snape with his hooked nose and creepy teeth, and it's not like I'm a great kisser or anything, but neither was he—because I reckoned this was the kiss he'd never been able to give my mum. That it wasn't for me but something he'd saved for her.

Only once he finished, I wasn't so sure about that anymore.

Seventeen. And he was thirty-eight. I feel strange, sometimes, thinking about it.

He never said a word to me. I just assumed it was because he was furious I'd left him for dead. Why didn't you come back for me? I still wake up with my heart trying to claw its way out of my chest, and it takes me a moment to remember he's alive.

I found out later that the Shrieking Shack burned right down to the ground.

I left him there, right? Just like Dumbledore had left him. He'd served his purpose, so I forgot all about him. About bringing him home. I didn't mean to.

But he was alive, and—damn it, I wish he'd Obliviated me, too.

Well, no. I wish I wished that. Sometimes. It'd be easier. Mostly I try not to think about it.

I didn't forget, though, and if anybody ever really tried to take those memories away, I'd—well, to be honest, I don't know what I'd do.

xxxxx

You know something's wrong when you start the day thinking: I can't wait to go back to that prison.

A Muggle shrink would rake me over the coals. But it's the first thing—assignment—no, thing that's interested me in weeks. Months, even, if you don't count Al. The Ministry has to find a replacement for Azkaban, and the new prison's a smashing example of the sort of magic that still takes my breath away. Weird and beautiful the way magic always used to be. Either they're doing something right or something really, really wrong there. And I want to be the one to find out.

The smell of flowers gets into my mouthful of porridge as Ginny manoeuvres behind my chair. "Shall I fetch the scones out? Mum sent lemon curd."

"Not for me, thanks."

"Cream?"

"No, I'm good."

Ginny circles the table again, carrying Al in a sling. She refills Jamie's juice and summons the scones from the kitchen. They're a bit singed. Pink-faced with annoyance, she sends them right back.

"Gin, you haven't eaten a thing yet. We're fine. Sit down and have a cuppa before I head out?"

She pulls her hair away from Al's grabby fists, narrows her eyes because she thinks I'm being critical, then catches herself, sighs, and plops down in a chair. She hardly ever eats breakfast anymore.

It's noisy at table. Al's constipated or colicky or something. Cranky, anyway. Usually he's much better-behaved than Jamie ever was. I stir brown sugar into my porridge as if nothing's wrong. Not to be outdone in the fussing department, Jamie starts in acting like a prat. He still shows no sign of accepting that Al's here to stay. He'll come around eventually, but in the meantime he's like some diabolical house elf: "Babies is stinkers! Jamesie not liking stinky baby!" I hide my laugh behind my hand. It just encourages him, Ginny says.

She's right. The next second he starts capsizing cups and throwing dishes off the table. The crash makes Albus howl like a Fwooper, and tiny crow's-feet tighten the corners of Ginny's eyes. I pull Jamie onto my lap for a stern talking-to, then hunker over my coffee while Ginny casts Reparo on the mess and wipes Al's mouth.

She empties the cream pitcher into her mug, sips her nearly-white coffee, and eyes me over the tilted rim. I risk a suggestive eyebrow. Her expression doesn't change. She used to snicker and there'd be mischief instead of tension lines in her face and we'd both struggle not to be the first one to blink or look away. I was pants at it, but I made up for it with a nice bedroom tackle. I've learned a lot about kissing since—well, since the day Snape put his tongue in my mouth.

"Harry? Look, I know we've been over this, but why don't you let me take the three o'clock feedings? Better all round, I should think."

"Better how?" My mind had wandered off, but this brought it right back. "I like sharing. I know you don't believe me, but really, I don't mind getting up."

She jiggles Al a bit and lets her head loll back so that her hair spills down the chair rungs. It's so silky. I love touching her hair. I'm glad it's not black.

"Right, then do me a favour. No moping the next morning at breakfast."

We have these tiffs. Mild ones. They go down nice with toast, I suppose, because lately we can't start the day off without one. I was daydreaming, not moping. There's a difference, but never mind. And really, compared to Jamie's first year when the little bugger had us stumbling around at all hours catering to his every need, Al's a pushover. For what it's worth, I like being awake when the house is dark, everyone else is asleep, and I can snuggle our new baby to my heart's content.

So it's not that. Really. I just woke up with a hard-on and a head full of memories.

I can't tell Ginny it's because I had one of those dreams. She'd say, what dreams? Visiting the prison yesterday is probably what stirred it up. God, that sounds like a filthy joke. So some things I'm better off not sharing. Too many secrets hark back to a sore point between us, signified by the letters R O R.

I never told her. I let her believe I did that to her, took away her memory of the two of us that night in the Room. It's something else to hate Snape for. He made me choose between betraying him or betraying Ginny. I don't think he even realised he was taking revenge. Since it was pretty obvious I owed him his life and probably for mine, too, I did the honourable thing. I kept his bloody secret. In return I got stuck with a lie, a speck of rot that spread through my marriage. It infects how Gin feels about me to this day.

Not that she's ever said so. Maybe I'm too thin-skinned about it.

The dream left me aching inside, I don't know why. Sad because Ginny's beautiful and impatient and doing her best—sunlight all over her hair as she paced in front of the windows, walking Al back and forth while he nursed. Every line of her showed through the sheer nightgown, every curve in the early sun. It's a touchy subject, the fact that she's not in tiptop competitive shape anymore. She looks so young in white it almost scares me, and I want her to have everything in the world, whatever makes her happy. Right now I'm not sure I know what that is.

A Quidditch contract, for starters. But having James and Al meant swapping her Harpies career for a sports column in The Daily Prophet. "Indefinitely," we said when she announced her retirement. Ginny's not fooled. She knows it means "forever."

This morning I had a moment of wanting to fling back the covers, jump up and take them all in my arms. My family. Mine. But Ginny looked too cross to be touched, so I didn't. Sometimes I love her so much—I mean love her, which was supposed to be enough—but I'm like a stupid bystander. I don't know what to do so I end up doing nothing, the next best thing to useless.

We're no Molly and Arthur, that's for sure. It's something we try not to blame each other for, the fact we both figured this out too late. Too late meaning we'd already had James.

"You're about fifteen minutes from being on the clock," Ginny says out of the blue.

"Oh, shite." Startled, I shoot out of my chair.

"Daddy!" Jamie squeals as I get him squared away on the kitchen floor and Accio my work robes with my free hand. Little bugger's super quick on his feet. Quidditch reflexes, according to Charlie. He darts away from me, and just as I'm straightening up a burnt scone zigzags out of the kitchen and lands me a right smack on the cheek.

At first I think nice and frown at Ginny, but she's looking back at me, just as astonished. So then we give Jamie the same bug-eyed smile.

"Daddy!" he cackles, pointing a finger at me. "Language!" and Ginny curls forward over Al and starts to giggle. For a second we get to share it, this joy at being parents of such a magical little bloke. It's moments like these I think we'll turn out all right.

I brush the crumbs off my face and say, "Well, that certainly woke me up. Thanks for that, you loon. Maybe your mum should go do my job and I should stay here so we can have a scone fight. What d'you think?"

Abruptly Ginny turns her face away and rests it on Al's curly-dark head. She goes straight from giggling to rocking back and forth and shutting me out. Oh bugger. What did I say? Moments like these, I think I'll never get it right. So I chatter quietly to Jamie and let him pretend-help me with my Auror robes.

Me and Ginny, we had it all sorted: she'd be like her mum, only more athletic and, what's the word, ornamental. I'd be like Arthur, only—I don't know, more of a celebrity. Christ, I almost missed out on having this. Being a dad is overwhelming and incredible and … I'm sort of donkey's bollocks at knowing what to do next. Never had a chance to be a son, is why. Everybody knows and is very nicely not saying it, despite that I was sort of counting on a close-knit family being the answer to my prayers, which, yeah. Selfish. I see that now.

But I didn't know it was a fantasy. I thought it was real. I didn't know it was selfish, holding onto this promise of unconditional love as my reward for—well, never mind. We all made sacrifices.

Ginny and I both reckoned we'd be Weasleys in the grand tradition. But we're not, just earnest and a tiny bit stroppy with each other. I can't figure out what else she thinks I want. And I can tell she's worried that she's not Apparating over the moon about Al. She's happy and all, sure. But she thought she'd turn hey-presto into her mum once she got knocked up.

'Knocked up' —her words, not mine.

Family was always my dream; now it's my reality. It doesn't have to be perfect. Anybody who says otherwise, Ginny included, is just being daft.

Jamie squeezes two of my fingers in a sticky grip, and I announce, like it's some kind of big deal, "Time to go." Ginny stands up at once, no sign of secret unhappiness, but no happiness, either, and they all follow me to the door.

Merlin, why doesn't she understand? I got what I wanted. This is what I want.

Never mind. I'll firecall Hermione later and maybe we can pop down to the Hay and Hoe. It's easier to talk surrounded by Muggles who don't give a crup's fart about who we are. Ginny and Ron followed us there once, suspicious. God, I hope they never live that down. Thinking we were, I don't know, sneaking around behind their backs, having a slice off a cut loaf. For loving us so much, they sure are short on trust. I guess it looked a bit off, the two non-Weasleys in both marriages nipping down to a Muggle pub to drink and sound off about—marriage to Weasleys, imagine that.

Chipper as can be, I give my broom a twirl on my way out, hoping Ginny will understand my change of mood as a plea for forgiveness. Bloody hell, it was nothing more than a bad dream. Well, a good dream but a bad memory. Or a good memory but a very bad idea. All right, a fucked-up memory and a horrible idea and nobody's business but mine. Well, and Snape's, wherever the hell he is.

Which is why Ginny's better off not knowing.

The front of our cottage glows white, like it's just been washed. Light bounces off the windows, and the clean air is bracing. One side of my face is in shadow, the other's practically blinded.

I sling a leg over my broomstick. Kingsley wants my report on the new prison delivered in person. I have loads to say, especially about the magic-suppressing part of their proposal. I might even ask for assignment to the regular monthly inspection, assuming the Ministry decides it's better off contracting out its prisoners than rebuilding Azkaban. Which, in spite of my reservations, is the course I'll recommend, because Azkaban? Total public relations disaster. And the proposed facility's a pretty fascinating place.

"Firecall if you're flying home late," Ginny says, leaning in the doorway.

I hover my broom. I can see myself reflected in the kitchen window, broken up into smaller pieces. "Why would I be late?"

She shrugs, lifting Al to her shoulder in spit-up position. "Just give me some warning, is all I'm saying. I might want to invite Mum over for company."

Better postpone having a pint and a moan, then. "Invite Mum over" is Weasley-speak for needing a chin-wag with the child-rearing expert and world's best homemaker; or, in truly dire moments, a shoulder to cry on. I love Molly, but her constant presence is like proof I'm not holding up my end.

"I'll be home on time," I say.

Ginny's freckles have faded a bit. She's not out in the sun as much since she quit the Harpies. I drift closer, focusing on my favourite spots. After I kiss one or two, she pushes me away, and I rotate in easy circles, the broom's shadow sweeping clockwise over the grass. Jamie shrieks, and we pretend it's all meant in good fun. Ginny's smile is forced and kind and I can tell she wants me to go. She invites her old Quidditch pals over for tea when I'm not there, which is fine. I'd like to be included more often, but hey, I'm not always around.

I take the broom up a few feet, then yell back down, "No reason to leave your Dad out of it, is there? Invite them both over for dinner. If you want a sit-down with your mum, I'll lure him out to the garden for a man-to-man chat about those crazy Muggles."

She pretends not to hear me and softly shuts the door. I lean back, jerk the nose of my broom, and skyrocket upward until the wind almost hoicks my glasses off. The broom bucks and swerves under me. It's one of George's experimental prototypes. Every year he sends me his latest, with instructions not to fall off. I can feel the sun burning both sides of my face. They're always a bit eager, these racing models.

Once I'm high enough, buffeted by the wind, I shout, "Damn it!" three times with all my might, and then tilt my broom down, gasping as the air pressure wallops the tightness in my chest.