A/N: There will be eight new chapters this evening. :-)
While Snape slept, Harry had a lot of time to think. He had a lot of time to stare at Snape's prone body, in all its glorious, unguarded presentation. It was way too soon to try to contact Draco and being able to draw close to Snape was the only thing that kept him from bashing his head against the wall in anxious frustration. He had taken to wearing the charmed muggle watch that he and Draco used for secret communication, but knew he couldn't rely on it. He'd sent word to Draco, via a CIUM agent, but hadn't received any confirmation that Draco was going to wear his. Yeah, the kidnapping was over, he was safe, but he wasn't home and he wasn't going to be able to feel Draco in his arms or hold his daughter for quite a while. He comforted himself by helping Ash attend to Snape's needs, which weren't much because he'd been placed under an assortment of charms to lessen the effects of long term sleeping.
After being thankful for his help and his survival, the next two days were spent simply marveling that this was the same wizard who had intimidated and bullied him so. Remnants of seventeen year old Snape flashed in his mind and as Harry stood over the bed he smiled at the disrespectful thought that popped into is mind in response.
"Seventeen year-old Snape is hot," he chuckled, with no one around to appreciate the irreverent glee that represented an end to all the things he'd had to suppress around this stern wizard. As his gaze drifted down the length of Snape, admiring how fit he appeared to be for a person his age, Harry appreciated that he was still quite attractive. That murderous seventeen year-old's rail-thin form had metamorphosed into a capable man's girth, preserved agility, honed skills, and a wiser man's restraint. But he stared too long and images of his father's wrong doing, twisted the nobility before him, into the sobs of a helpless young man.
Guilt forced Harry to look away and took away any humorous relief he had scraped up for himself. He had no right to feel good, when his father had left things in such a mess. But he was happy, because his family was safe and they'd all come out alive, and surely there was a way to hold onto that celebration while finding a way to honor Snape and all that he'd suffered at the same time.
His own arm was mending, and kept restricted against his body in a sling. It could've been healed already, with the proper use of magic, but Harry wasn't too worried about it. On one hand, he already knew he could fix it himself if he really wanted to revisit the Wheel of Life thing. On the other, his injury kept him nearer to Snape, in their shared recovery. The ache in his mangled muscles was sometimes the only thing that brought him back to the appreciation of having fought alongside Snape.
Ash attempted to coax Harry outside. "He's fine, go get yourself some fresh air. The beauty of this place is healing, that's why I moved here. Soak it all in, mate. Something tells me, peace and privacy like this, are luxuries that you're not used to. Take advantage of it."
Harry knew he meant well, but that privacy part was debatable. Between the CIUM and the Ministry, he doubted that he and Snape would ever have true privacy like normal citizens ever again. He wanted to feel useful, so he used his magic to help Ash with chores. The laundry loaded and folded itself. The mower pushed itself as Harry kept an eye on it. Ash, from where he watched Harry, on his knees plucking tomatoes from a small patch of garden he'd managed to plant to take his mind off Snape months ago, looked on approvingly. He could get used to a house-mate with magic.
On his way to a shower, Harry passed by Snape's room and peeked in. It was as if Snape lay in an enchanted state. He's going to wake up, Harry told himself, and you'll never be able to see him like this again, if he doesn't bolt and stop you from seeing him at all.
This is the excuse he made for standing in Snape's doorway too long. He also factored in the inability to turn to Draco and Iece to stabilize himself. He was being asked to live apart from his core support, of course he would seek comfort in the most familiar presence. Ash was kind, but he didn't share a history with him the way Snape did. So Harry admitted that he was being clingy and anxious as he waited for Snape to wake up every day. When he couldn't sleep, he regularly got out of bed to slip quietly into Snape's room and talk to him as if he were awake. One couldn't be too careful, he knew. Muggles had proven that people in comas could sometimes hear and remember every word spoken around them. Harry gave it a shot. If nothing else, it soothed him.
Not a night went by that he didn't thank Snape for coming out of hiding and helping him. He made a pretense of fluffing the pillows, performing basic hygiene spells, and gently giving him water by squeezing droplets between his lips so that he might reflexively swallow. Ash passed by and caught him moving Snape's limbs determinedly. Harry refused to be embarrassed. "Isn't this what they do to keep bedridden people from going stiff and needing to learn to walk again? The muscles and joints atrophy quite fast, don't they?"
Ash rubbed his forehead, standing in his bathrobe. He'd been on his way to the toilet. "I thought your magic took care of all that."
Harry shrugged, "It probably could, but why chance it? If he can't take care of his body, then I'll do it for him. What is it, twenty minutes of exercise a day?" He was awkwardly lifting and bending Snape's arm and rotating his shoulder and elbow, all while compromising his own injured arm.
"I'm not a physiotherapist, but that might lessen his recovery time," Ash mumbled before backing out and leaving the strange scene.
Harry felt he was over thinking things and micro-managing a little, but he had no other outlet for his energy, so he poured it into Snape's recovery. When he ran out of things he could do for him, he was left sitting across from him and staring. This dear man. There must be something more he could do. If there was, now was the time to do it, while Snape couldn't stop him.
And there it was. The real reason he couldn't leave Snape alone. It had taken a few days to come to the surface, but behind his every impulse to attend to him, was the irresistible urge to interfere on the most personal level. He had the power to fix this, after all. He embodied the fucking Elder Wand, didn't he? It wasn't just a matter of healing Snape's body. That would only wake him up, and Harry wasn't sure he wanted that so soon. He stood, and even as he did so, he felt himself crossing a line. He looked down at Snape's body and removed his glasses.
It took a second, but his vision shifted and the Wheels of Life shimmered into visibility. They were faint, sparking in and out of the solid room as they spun through the walls. When Harry steeled himself to really see, overcoming the fear of seeing too much, the wheels took on greater solidity. They spun in their own dimension, slipping through the molecules of his, without disturbing a thing. They arched through the ceiling, so large that he didn't even try to see the whole thing at once. Seven wheels spun like atoms, each with an individual integrity that allowed it to take up the same space as the others. If he were to tamper with this, he could mess things up pretty badly. He couldn't just pretend that he knew what he was doing just because Eileen had helped him to fix his shoulder. He could just let his ego proceed, but it was hard to hold it back because he knew in his gut that this was the way to help Snape. Not just with the hex, but with the curse, with the trauma, with everything. These fucking wheels held the power to change everything.
But if he attempted something while Snape slept, wouldn't that just be another violation? No, he had to be awake and willing, or Harry was no better than all those wizards who were maniacal in their lust to overpower others. And if what he wanted to try didn't work, or caused a worse problem, Snape would be able to accept the risk before hand. Though, Harry was sure any risk could be mitigated by opening up the wheels and trying again. They were obviously eternal and indestructible, or else how could they stay with a person, recording every event, all their lives and even between lives?
He allowed his mind to seer with the burning symbols and writings that churned over his head in a superimposed reality. He didn't see Ash pass by the door, stop and pause with a quizzical look on his face, then continue on.
That night, when he was sure Ash had gone to bed, Harry decided to test his theory before attempting to manipulate Snape's wheels. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror naked. He could've done this with clothes on, but he wanted to face his fears and not flinch at the thought of seeing what he didn't want to see. This wasn't just about fixing his arm. That was the test. If he could fix his arm, he could fix the curse. Maybe not erase it altogether, but certainly diminish the effects. He had seen what was done to Snape and, presumably, Snape had never found a way to counter the curse. If he had, he would've helped him and Draco. Harry knew he couldn't wipe the memories and pain from Snape's past, but if he could clear this blight from his present and future, then that would be some sort of atonement for his father's actions. Wouldn't it?
He looked at his body full on. He studied that part of himself that he got to keep, while Draco's disappeared and became female. His penis looked no more spectacular than his arm or hand, and yet it was attached to his identity in a way that they weren't. He knew he was more than his body, yet he couldn't lift his head at the thought of others suspecting he was somehow lacking. Why did it have to mean so much? Surely, this wasn't about pride, it was about who he thought he was. He needed to be who he thought he was, never mind that his body had been taken apart and put back together by wizards playing with it like a toy. He got lucky. He got to keep his penis in the long run, for appearances sake, but he never felt put back together again properly after that. Those wizards destroyed the solid illusion of where he began and ended. So he had clung tighter to that facade, using his dick to feel like a man whenever Draco would let him.
At first, he and Draco had no idea why Draco's body transitioned on its own and his didn't. They chalked it up to all the medical spells he went through to maintain the curse for as long as he had. Harry had no such maintenance and so his natural form remained dominant, but only after he'd given birth. Every time he comforted Draco, he secretly breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn't him who'd gotten the short end of the stick. And with that admission, all the other shitty thoughts piled on. Wasn't it logical and fitting? Draco was the son of the bad guy, it's only natural that he'd get the worst part of it. Nothing to be done.
He didn't want Draco to suffer, but he couldn't see himself surviving mentally if he had to walk around with all that empty, mushy, slick space rubbing against his pants where his penis should be. He'd loose what little balance he had left and he had to face it, he hadn't come away from that curse with his full faculties. His old self hadn't survived it. Here he stood, someone new. Someone feeling along the walls of his life for balance, unsteady on his feet, and battered from one wrong decision after another. All because of an unwanted touch. The mother of unwanted touches. All because he couldn't forgive.
And he wasn't being fair to Draco, who no more deserved what happened to him than he did. Why did Draco's body express the curse, forcing him to bear female parts, while His didn't? In his heart he knew. Because Draco was no longer afraid of it. His guard against it, had been beaten down long ago. Whether it was because he was too tired to fight, when Iece needed his attention more, or whether it was because Harry kept asking him for it, claiming to hate it, unless it was Draco offering it to him. Harry had feared and despised such a deformity on himself, so much that his magic did him the service of never letting him have to look at it. So now, he decided to face it. If he was going to get through to Snape, he could no longer avoid going to the source of his fear. He could hardly ask another to forgive what he himself could not.
Glasses placed on the counter, his vision shifted. He felt himself resisting what he expected to see. The muscles around his eyes tensed as he stared at the place where his midriff tapered and darkened into a trail of wry hairs that nestled around his emerging penis. When his magic allowed him to see his organ replaced with that mysterious swell of pubis, it was like watching a holographic optical illusion. Only it was a part of him and he felt it. His heart sped up, confronted with something that squirmed like worms in his mind. He broke into a cold sweat and shook as he waited out the fight within himself to run away, to shut it down, to turn everything back to a pseudo normal that he could live with.
After two minutes, he was still shaking. He told himself that it was just his body remembering what it had endured. It wasn't this bit of alien flesh. He wasn't going to back down from a stupid body part. If Draco could do this, he could as well. What did he really think of women, if this bit of strangeness made him fall apart? That's exactly what Voldemort and Lucius were counting on. And it had worked for far too long.
This thought caused an image of Lucius confused and trapped in that blue lava and chaos ripping the cave apart. Harry didn't think he'd seen anything like Lucius's final moments, but he saw it so clearly in his mind that it gave him a sense of satisfaction and finality. If he learned that Lucius died down there, then that would be all right. More than all right. Something released and his tense defenses let go. Not all the way, but enough to let a little relief come in. Relief he hadn't felt in years.
For the firs time ever, he reached down and touched it. Slowly, his cautious fingers bypassed the surface reality for that deeper one, and he ran them gently over the cursed flesh that curved, a soft and angular mound, into a split of hidden flesh. That connection made his whole body vibrate. He had never had the stomach to explore it before, but he knew from what Draco opened up to him, that he shouldn't have anything to be afraid of.
This was no longer about sex or dignity in the face of so much shame. It was about healing himself. Accepting himself. This body was the only one he had and he might as well learn to work with it. It could still do amazing things. He was going to confront Snape with questions. He was going to ask for this level of honesty from Snape. Naked honesty, where one literally has no more layers to hide behind, to make them look better than they are.
"I want to see you that way," he said aloud to Snape, who wasn't there to hear him. He was practicing. "This curse breaks all the rules that we use to be able to face ourselves in the mirror. It's like we're not human anymore, and I've been grieving over that."
His fingers slipped along soft down as he pushed, exploring past those dark hairs.
"I saw what my father did to you. I saw it, so maybe if I let you see me, it'll give you some closure to see for yourself that I've suffered the same fate. I don't know, sins of the father visited upon the children, or something like that."
He tried to put words to what his hand introducing itself to these intimate parts, felt like, and couldn't. It wasn't quite like touching his penis. All the surface area was folded in upon itself and those key spots of sensation had to be sought out. He explored to understand, but with it came slickness and moisture, and he stared at his glistening fingers. He was more amazed than repulsed, at how his body knew to do that. How did the curse know to act exactly like a woman preparing to let penetration occur?
In his mind, Snape stared at him coldly, unconvinced that Harry wasn't losing his mind. Harry put himself in that scene, naked as he was. "We're in the same place," he told the teacher in his mind. "The same prison. It happened much earlier to you and you seemed to have mastered it. I don't know. But if you know the way out, then show me. Teach me, professor. And if you don't, then I have to break out of here for both of us." He was talking about the curse. "I might know the way out. I can't make the curse go away, but I can live around it. I think I can help you if you let me."
If you let me, what? Undo everything his father had done? That wasn't possible. Why was he straining to want to do that?
Because he couldn't unsee what he'd seen and felt. Now that Iece was safe and his emotional resources freed, that horrific realization was rolling in like a storm growing in power. It couldn't be held back. He couldn't look at Snape and not see that seventeen year-old taking the thrusts that his father's cruelty issued.
Harry stood in a body that was cursed to experience a very specific vulnerability, and so did Snape. His dad and his dad's friends had exploited that in the worst way. If there was not a way to undo it, then there had to be a way to soothe and heal it. He knew what it was like to be trapped under a man's assaulting body. All he wanted to do, as he stared in the mirror, was invent a way to take all the pain away. Maybe he could open himself up to having a thought he'd never let in before. Maybe he could pray to something greater. There had to be a way to make things right. Maybe then, Snape wouldn't be so quick to disappear. Why would he want to hang around, when the sight of Harry's face only connected him to the most painful time in his life?
Snape was right. His arrogance was rivaled only by his father's. He couldn't let it go and simply be grateful to be alive. He had to claim the prize of being Snape's savior as well. He had to fix this. If that makes him arrogant, then for once, it's put to good use.
Suddenly, the Wheels of Life were rolling over his head in an overlaid dimension and he remembered what he should be doing. He was supposed to fix his arm, but that didn't even interest him anymore, compared to what he truly wanted to know. The more he merged with the reality of the wheels, the more they became things of solid effect around him. They sounded like generators, rising out of nothing and disappearing beyond any height he could see clearly. Again, they looked like some sort of technology that could bend skyscrapers into rings, and allow city populations to thrive inside, behind dark and lit windows. Symbols and writing burned in fire-orange tracings as equations wrote themselves and solved themselves in a kind of perpetual magic that ran the length of his two wheels. The way they moved in and out of each other's orbital pattern, created a rush of sound that reminded him of a freight train.
He waited out all the shocking elements that he'd witnessed before. The things kept unfolding, kept getting louder, but he knew that no one else in the house shared this space with them or could hear them. This was entirely his territory, like a living contract between his body and mind. He tried to remember what he'd done before, to fix his arm. He tried to recall the symbol. With it, came Eileen's words.
"Be confident. You can't come into this space unsure of yourself, you're messing with your life. If you ever have to hack the wheels, do so without an ounce of doubt. Everything is affected by your thoughts immediately here. That's why we don't ordinarily have access to this level of ourselves until we know how powerful we are. You don't need a wand. You're the magic, the wand is just for focusing your intent into a point and aiming it. Draw imaginary lines in your mind, from both sides of your temples and extend them to the symbol. Give the command."
He looked for the half-vase symbol. That's what he'd used to fix his shoulder. Surely, it could be used to help any part of his body. He made the symbol in his mind and said, "Corrigo!" The wheels came to a stop, much faster than they had before. The force of so much motion grinding to a halt slammed Harry violently in his altered state. It was as if something threw him from his body and his mind could not make sense of what happened. He had the sensation of looking up, finding himself collapsed on something that wasn't even a solid floor. The parts he was touching, looked like the bathroom floor, but as it spread out around him, it disappeared into a formless void. He looked back over his shoulder and saw his physical, naked body still standing there, staring towards the wheels. Holy shit! He was out of his body.
Don't panic. Stay calm, stay calm, he told himself. He'd done something wrong. He couldn't remember the sequence from before. He'd rushed it.
What do I do, what do I do?
Get back in your body, his instincts told him.
He started to rush to it, but stopped. He was held still by the complete clarity and knowing that, not only was he out of his body, a thing that he wasn't sure if it had happened before, but to be alive and in control from this perspective, was a very powerful position to be in. It seemed crucial that he stay calm and avoid any desire to return immediately. The way his body stood there, balanced, as if there was enough life and awareness in it to control the motor skills, let him know that some part of himself was still connected to it. He turned to look at the wheels. They represented every experience he'd ever had, right? They held his life and tied him to this world. Surely, between him and his magic, they understood him.
"Show me the curse."
He lifted. Such was the sensation of rising to the topmost part of the wheels. Everything else became a blur as his awareness was brought face to face with his request. Whatever moved him, moved through and all around him with boundless momentum. All the writings and symbols slipped, indecipherable, from his view and he came face to face with markings on a panel that moved like a formation of circles, moving in a spidery crawl that spread from the center to the edges of the panel. He strained to be sure of what he was seeing. It was as if thick lines of glistening tar had been sprayed from an oozing can that shaped it into black worms. Each line was placed at an angle that all together formed a circle of them. They moved. They wriggled and crawled. They slithered to the edge of their circular form and slipped over the edges of the panel, only to be joined by more black works pooling onto the panel from the center. At no point was the panel empty. Before those nasty looking things disappeared over the edge, there were always more ballooning forth from the center.
Harry thought this was the worst of it. It was disgusting, but not as bad as he had expected. He thought he understood something about the regenerative nature of the curse, how it sustained itself, just by watching those worm symbols crawl like living organisms. He was deciding on how best to try to interrupt the sequence, when that panel suddenly split open from the center and that tar stickiness bubbled, bursting open to reveal a deep enclosure of slithering, boiling, greasy black things inside, as all the tar things were knotted together at their core and source. He saw them crawling over each other, lit from within by an ember orange source. Its light peaked out of their oozing forms, before being covered again by the infestation.
It's not real, he insisted. It's just a representation of the curse. My mind is translating it this way because it disgusts me.
The cluster of things slithering before him, was not something he wanted to touch. He withdrew, unable to make sense of how there was an odor and film of gelatinous mucus that spilled through the knotted worm-things. He so wanted to rise above his disgust, but his instincts told him that he must not try to be brave. This was advanced dark magic and he'd need to tackle it cautiously. He could show this to Snape through his ability to cast his memories into the air without a pensieve. They'd tackle it together, just like with the queen and the cave.
Another idea occurred to him. The curse is far too complex. He'd fixed his arm by using a symbol like a dial. Could he use that symbol on any part of himself? He remembered it and planted it firmly in his mind. "Show me that symbol."
Again, the wheels screeched into motion and picked up speed. When they stopped once more, compartments opened onto glowing calculations and unknown languages that hovered in magical arrays above his head. He waited out all the little windows and panels expanding to reveal the symbol he'd used to reset his shoulder. There it was, the half-vase, half hexagon. He knew he had to be very specific and intentional. He stared at the symbol until it glowed in response. At its brightest point, it lost all shape and melted into a pool of ambiguous shapes until it rearranged itself into a circle.
He remembered now. The symbol became a dial and all he had to do was move his wand clockwise or counter to change the effect on his body. But would that work for the curse? It was easy enough to imagine the Elder Wand in his hand like he did before, but how to be sure that this symbol would know what to affect? In his doubt, an idea came to him. He raised his wand hand and beckoned the symbol to come to him. That circular thing appeared to swell from its surface and eject a ghostly replica of itself towards Harry. Because his mind could not conceive of any other way, he used his magic like a leviosa spell to float the symbol to his naked body. He needed to see it directly in contact with the part of him that he wanted to heal. This thought process canceled out all illusion of time and distance and he saw his body up close and not as if he were miles in the sky at the top of the wheels. When the ring hovered, superimposed over his pubic area, he held firm to his decision.
He manifested a faint outline of the Elder Wand and touched the tip to the ring, turning it clockwise. As he did, he watched his male body. He focused on that most private of places to see how it would change. His male genitals receded gradually as his nerve and courage grew. At their most imperceptible point, female organs took their place. This was no longer a phantom, astral overlay of both genders, one dominating the other, depending on his shifting vision. This was physical. He saw details of his skin. From the soft veins of his resting, hanging penis, as it shrank into him, to the puffed cleft that enfolded the head as it became a hidden clitoris. Even outside of his body, he felt the painless transition and rearrangement. He tapped the dial and kept tracing it in clockwise manner, then counter, just to test the strangeness of it all. Just to steel himself against his own horror and amazement.
Seeing the transition of his organs, from male to female, once, wasn't enough. He kept turning the dial, repeating the impossible. He'd lived in utter torment over the curse for so long, he marveled at this achievement. It unraveled all of his anxieties and fears. He looked at what he was doing as a kind of mastery, a triumph. He now had control of something that used to have control over him. Was it obscene? Yes, but it was also freedom from a psychological cage.
If he could do this with the curse, could he also do this for Draco? For Snape? It doesn't get rid of the curse, but it gives one control. Obviously Draco's magic and emotions had adapted and given him some measure of control, but this might allow them all to live their lives as if the curse had never happened. Right?
He held himself so long in that altered state of consciousness, that he felt an involuntary pull and knew he'd return to his body whether he wanted to or not. The soul seemed to have a safety mechanism for this kind of out of body experience, if he could call it that.
He told the wheels, "abscondam mysteria mea." Hide my secrets. He barely had time to think this before he hit the subatomic particles that made up the substance of his body. Spirit and matter docked into one another and that seal made a sound in his ears, leaving him feeling buzzy and heavy as he held onto his balance. His body remained standing but stumbled as his soul rushed back into it.
With heightened sensitivity, his magic tingled, raising hairs all over his skin. As he suspected, interaction with the wheels gave him a surplus of energy and left him feeling almost invincible. Don't get cocky, Eileen had warned him. It was like having the most fantastic, impossible dream and then opening your eyes to the real world, without the buffer of sleep. In one world, you were intensely involved in unimaginable activity and in this one, you have the normalcy of the bathroom, the tiles, toilet, hand towels, but all that energy and activity is still coursing through your veins. It made him shiver.
He stared at his naked form in the bathroom mirror now. A young man's body faced him and he couldn't help but feel proud of it. Even the cursed layer beneath, revealed nothing of the female form. He pulled lightly on his penis, cupping it, reassured by its presence. While it may not be anything close to the most important thing in the world, it was his contract with life. It was his role and he relied on it. He needed it. He knew who he was with this symbol. He knew who he was without it.
He'd forgotten all about his arm. Hadn't he come in here to try to heal it? Filled with confidence, he tested his suspicion by visualizing the ring from his wheel. In his mind, he placed it over the reflection of his arm in the mirror, did a mental tap and turned the dial. His magic obeyed, fusing the marrow together in all the crushed places along his humerus. Tenderness along his arm dissolved in minutes. He couldn't help but gasp. Even though he'd healed himself before, it was as if he'd achieved some sort of super power. Emotion bubbled in his stomach and he choked on his relief. It wasn't about his arm, he knew he'd fix that. It was about the thing haunting him for the last two years.
Just to give it one final test, he positioned the dial in his mind, over all the convergence of dark hair trailing to the center of his body. There, in the density of his pubic hair, his elongated penis receded until it became invisible. He used his fingers to feel for the soft folds of skin that had taken its place. Satisfied that everything was there, he moved the dial and watched his penis grow back into place while mounds of flesh returned to the weight of his hanging testicles. He inspected himself, supremely satisfied.
Now he finally had something to give to Snape. It wasn't a cure, but it was some measure of healing. But how to get that iron-headed wizard to let him past his defenses?