A/N:

Well, it's been a while! I'm glad to tell you that the Lioness is basically finished now, and that update rates for this should go up enormously over the next weeks. I'm not giving you a schedule, but I am very hopeful!

Have fun reading, Kayly

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Stiffening the Upper Lip

A glass of whisky, a book and flames roaring in the fireplace. Normally a good way to spend the evening, but tonight, whisky, book and fire were forgotten as Snape stared at the phenomenon that had steadily taken over his whole life.

Harry Potter. On his couch, stretched out in self-abandoned sleep. It was hard to reconcile the innocence of his pale face, the vulnerability of his sleeping body with the scene of violence he had witnessed earlier this evening.

Looking back, it seemed to Snape that each day, each hour of the past week had revealed another facet of Potter's character to him, each as unexpected and inconceivable as the next. Power, serenity, self-confidence, sorrow, love and hate – nothing of it fit together, and yet Potter inhabited these impossible contrasts with ease.

Or so it had seemed, until this evening.

Still cradling the glass of whisky, his thumb rubbing absently over the cold smoothness, Snape tried to recall when exactly this shift in his life had happened, when he had accepted Potter and the madness of his life at face value, when he had bought into his strange philosophy. When he had chosen to lower his shields for Potter and let him in.

Although, now that he thought about it, he wasn't sure if he'd ever really had that choice. There was just too much in all of this that struck home, that tore at him, made him bleed and yet made him feel more alive than he had for so many years.

He had always been a man of shadows, nuances, hairline fractures and greys. But a few days with Potter and he had stepped willingly into the full glare of sunlight. A few of his memories and he had severed the ties that had anchored his existence for decades. Had freed himself of leashes he hadn't even noticed before.

He had bound himself to this man and his friends, without knowing where all this would end up, without calculation or second thoughts.

Had bound himself to a man who was even now slipping away into the shadows.

Snape hissed angrily and downed his whisky without savouring the taste. There was no denying it, and, changed as he had been by the past week, he was still a man to face the facts.

Potter was dying. Slowly, and not without fight, but inevitably.

The rings under his eyes had turned into dark smudges, and even with the blanket draped over him (and Snape refused to consider whether it was more than duty to a patient that had caused him to fetch that blanket) his thinness was obvious.

Although deeply asleep at the moment, Potter twitched and mumbled, too low to make the words out, but his expression betrayed the unpleasant nature of his dreams. But that was better than the moments when he suddenly lay completely still, his breathing so shallow that Snape would hurry towards him, anxiously checking his pulse because only a corpse could lie so still.

He had done that several times this past hour.

"I swear, Potter, if you die on me now after all I've done…" He whispered, but let the sentence sink back into silence without finishing it. There was no threat that worked against death, after all.

"So you see it too, Master Snape."

Snape flinched violently at the sudden voice in his back, and nearly fell out of his armchair in a highly undignified manner, only catching himself in the last moment before tumbling to the floor.

When he looked up from his half sitting, half lying position, it was to meet the amused eyes of one Prince of Vampires.

"Shadow," He said, trying to nod in a dignified manner and refusing to blush. These were his own rooms, damn it. He could make a fool out of himself inside here as much as he wanted, and no one had a right to comment!

"I'm sorry. I seem to have missed your knock."

Shadow's grin broadened. "That might be because I didn't knock, Master Snape," He commented lightly, giving no other explanation for his sudden appearance in Snape's quarters in the middle of the night.

"Right," Snape answered, trying to lay all his sarcasm into the comment but not daring to say more. Shadow's teeth looked very sharp in the firelight.

Instead, he silently offered Shadow a glass of whisky and waited for the vampire to continue his thoughts.

Which he did. After a long, creepy moment during which both of them stared at Potter like the members of a demented fan club.

Snape chose not to dwell on that moment.

"They all worry about him," Shadow then said quietly, his eyes still on Potter. "Even Ayda, though you wouldn't notice it." He flashed Snape a quick smile, his eyes glowing in the firelight.

"But most of them can't even imagine that he might actually die. They are so used to Harry's surviving even the most ludicrous predicaments that the thought of his death never crossed their minds."

"But it crossed yours," Snape didn't ask. He didn't need to. He had seen his own thoughts mirrored on this immortal face all too clearly.

"I have not met many humans like him in the centuries of my existence," Shadow answered quietly, his eyes fixed on things long gone. "But they all died young."

"He will not die," Snape stated, but what he really meant was I will not let him.

Shadow chuckled and sent him a long, dark look.

"As few as I met of Potter's kind, "He then said. "Yours is even rarer, Master Snape."

Snape bristled. "I can't say that I met many Princes of Vampires before this week, either," He snapped, not caring that he sounded insolent. "Nor mad druids, nor centaur kings."

Shadow's chuckle deepened, as if he knew something Snape didn't (which was most certainly the case, but there was no reason to be smug about it, was there?). Then, it died away and his concentration returned to Potter.

"He is slipping away from us," He said, his eyes feeding on the pale face of his would-be son. "He has always done that. Crawl back into himself like a hermit crab, hide everything vulnerable inside. When I got to know him, I thought he was a spectre, or someone without normal human feelings, so little of him was left on the surface."

He smiled, but it was a sad smile, the one Snape had seen Order members smile when they looked at old photographs on which everyone but themselves was dead and had been so for years.

"His choice to make peace with himself, to let the hate and the anger go was a good one, back then, but it certainly has drawbacks."

"What do you mean," Snape asked, although he knew the answer already.

"He is unwilling to fight for himself. For others he will rip himself apart, but when the choice is up to him, he will prefer giving in, accepting what is hurled at him."

His eyes darkened, and he looked up at Snape with a sudden motion of his head that, a week ago, would have made Snape draw his wand in panic.

"He will cooperate as long as the threat of Voldemort hangs over this world, Professor. But if you find out that Voldemort was dead already when the split happened, I'm not sure whether he will let you treat himself any further. Perhaps he will decide to slip away peacefully, and vanish into the nothing. It's not a concept that would frighten Harry Potter."

"Perhaps he will surprise you, Sape offered after a long moment, thinking about darkness, and shame, and Bella's face. "Perhaps all this will change him."

"You mean change him as much as it changed you?" Shadow asked without looking at Snape, and Snape felt irritation bubble up inside him.

Really, what was it with Potter's friends? Could they not accept a single personal boundary?

"No, Master Snape," He then continued, not noticing Snape's anger or simply not caring. "If anyone should surprise me in this, it will be you."

And without a nod or another word, he vanished as silently as he had come.

Snape took a deep breath, raised his whisky glass and entrusted it with a few choice words about vampires. He then added a particularly fitting sentence about the nature of aristocracy, moved on to meddlers and busybodies and closed with several brilliant but rather pessimistic observations about the world in general.

He felt better after that.

"Don't believe everything Shadow says, Professor," Potter said softly, and Snape nearly fell of his chair for the second time. "He is a vampire, after all."

"Well, I think it's rather being your friend that makes him so irritating," Snape sneered. "It seems to be a common theme."

Potter smiled, but the smile didn't reach his eyes and the shadows lingered on his face.

"I know," He whispered, sounding old and broken. "And I'm very…"

"Don't you dare say that you're sorry, Potter," Snape snapped. "You are not the centre of the universe. People make their own decisions for purely selfish reasons all the time, and if you happen to benefit from them, it is merely a coincidence."

Potter's smile reached deeper this time, but it still lacked the easy warmth and serenity that had driven Snape mad time and again these past days.

"Of course, Profess," Not the self-confident, teasing tone he was used to by now.

Snape resisted the urge to reach for the whisky bottle again. Potter was changing in front of his eyes, and it wasn't just the illness that caused it.

Soon, every single light will go out and leave me in darkness, he had said. And the darkness had come. Powerful as ever. It was swallowing him hole.

Snape cleared his throat uneasily.

"When I was seventeen, I killed for the first time," He began without preamble. "I was unprepared for it, but too frightened to refuse orders. I wanted to be a Death Eater back then, I needed to. And it was clean, quick, very easy in a way. That's the most horrible thing about it. I don't remember her name or face or whether she was a witch. Just how easily she was killed."

"You don't have to tell me that," Potter whispered hoarsely.

"I know," Snape answered, but what he really meant was that he was not the man to console or cuddle Potter, that he wouldn't offer something he himself had always refused.

I don't know much about light, Potter. But there's a lot I know about darkness.

He cleared his throat again, uneasily aware of it but unable to help himself. Time to change the subject.

"So tell me Potter, why wasn't I aware of your little excursions in sixth year?"

Potter chuckled weakly, but some of the tension was gone from his face.

"I assume because the Headmaster expected a not so favourable reaction from you," He answered. "Even I can remember several very impressive monologues on the subject of my rule breaking, and I assume he had to listen to more of them."

"And there was good reason for them," Snape said, eager to be on safe ground again. "Letting any student run wild like that would be unforgivable, but given your special situation…"

"Well, the Headmaster considered my 'special situation' reason enough to send me out on missions with the Order. And then there were all those training sessions of course."

"Which were probably multitudinous in nature, accounting for your abysmal grades that year," Snape mused. "Another thing I didn't know about."

"I'm afraid there's rather a lot you don't know about my sixth year, professor."

"Glad to see that you haven't lost all your irritating character traits," Snape drawled in answer." I think I can live without the dreadful cheer just as long as you refrain to answer my questions in a comprehensive manner. Perhaps you would like to add a little Arthurian reference?"

This time, Potter grinned outright, and one could nearly mistake him for a non-moribund.

"Well, if you're asking so nicely, Professor…" He began, mischief in his eyes.

Snape growled, refusing to admit his relief even to himself, and rose from his chair. He collected another vial of the strengthening potion, and handed it to Potter with a first-class sneer.

"Here, drink this. And if I'm very lucky tonight, you might choke on it."

And Potter smiled, and drank the potion.

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