Chapter 6

Snape wouldn't let him stay.

Harry begged him. "I promise you won't even know I'm here. When I sleep I curl up in a ball and I take a teeny tiny corner of the bed and I don't snore-"

"No," Snape said, pulling his underwear on, the sight of his now soft penis stirring something again in Harry.

"Fine," Harry said, his ego already bruised by his desperate performance in bed, his orgasm in the sheets. "You're a dick," he threw over his shoulder, walking out with his jeans in his hand and wrapping his invisibility cloak over his shoulders. But he still couldn't help smirking all the way to his room.

He knew he wouldn't be able to sleep right away so when he got into bed, he pressed the play button on the video player and lay back against his pillows to watch.

Five minutes into it, he knew he'd have to rewind it back because instead of really watching, he was screening his memory from an hour before over the wall, re-living himself and Snape moving over each other like shifting plates in the earth. He felt breathless again and laughed aloud to no one in the room, dizzy with hope.

He had his head back, lulled into a daze by the projections on the wall and the ones in his mind, when Rebecca Rickton appeared.

She was walking naked through a crowd of people that were watching and making faces, turning their heads back in disbelief, all but pointing.

She looked terrified in her face of what she was walking toward but her body moved without hesitation. She got up the first set of steps of the fountain and then the second steadily and turned around to face the crowd and rose up, like a living imitation of the statue of Eros at the top.

Harry was wide awake now, no longer sleepy, no longer happy. His skin was goosefleshed and cold. He grabbed his wand and zoomed the video into her face, trying to see the tell-tale signs of a specific spell or curse or potion. But there was nothing magical in her visage, just the raw breach of her soul in her eyes. They filled the screen and begged for life.

Harry had a hard time sleeping after that and spent most of the night rewatching the footage from before Rebecca came into the frame, hoping to catch something significant to no avail. He still couldn't bring himself to move forward in the footage to the most gruesome part, but he knew he would have to soon.

Most of his work as an Auror hadn't prepared him for anything that violent. Magical deaths were usually clean ones and he hadn't dealt with as many of those as covert missions to catch hiding Death Eaters and protecting hunted people.

Rebecca's image in the video spur him on through the night and into the morning, when he wrote a letter to Ron before leaving his room.

Ron,

I know you hate me right now and you can keep sending your 'fuck yous', I certainly deserve them. But we need to focus on putting this bewitched knife murder thing to bed.

I was watching when she first gets to the fountain last night and it doesn't look like an Imperio curse because she's aware of herself. But her body's definitely been bewitched because she doesn't hesitate.

We're better when we work together. This is bigger than us. Tell me where to meet you and we can talk. Maybe Hermione can help us with the research.

Love,

Harry

Harry sent it at breakfast with Neville's owl.

Snape didn't show up that morning. Harry was disappointed but a little relieved because looking at Snape in the light of day after what they'd done was a daunting thought.

The same night, he decided it was still too soon and he was too sober so he bought dinner in the Three Broomsticks where he could drink as much as he wanted. Madam Rosmerta gave him a charmed glass that refilled itself when it was empty so no one would notice and gossip.

He wondered if Snape was avoiding him, which made him too sick to eat, which got him drunk too fast. There was a quidditch game on and everyone except him at the bar was watching the floating screens around the place, yelling and oohing and aahing.

Watching everyone else have a good time cut Harry's spirit with loneliness. So he took his beer and sat at the bar next to a group of older men who were watching together.

One of them introduced themselves to Harry, as he knew they would.

"Hello Mr. Potter, my name's Victor Goldstein, it's a pleasure to meet you. Sorry if I interrupted your drink, I just see you in here sometimes and always wanted to shake your hand."

Harry shook hands with him and the rest of them and after a bit of awkward tribute they all paid to him, it became very casual and he got a good feeling from them all.

They were funny and bantery and were all betting galleons of gold on the game. That's when he turned his attention to the screen with them and saw the green and gold colors of one of the teams, the man called Victor's mention of "harpies" making sense now.

"Oh! Holyhead Harpies are playing," he said.

"Your girlfriend plays for the Harpies, isn't that right Mr. Potter?" said a dark haired man in their group, beer foam in his mustache. "That's why my bet's on them!" he said proudly.

"She's not-" and then there was a familiar warm hand over his mouth.

All four friends immediately stood up, pointing their wands above and behind Harry.

But it was only Snape and the moment Harry looked back and realized, Snape let go and Harry laughed.

"Don't worry, boys," Harry said. "He just likes to play rough."

Snape grabbed Harry by the collar of his robes and pulled him away from the bar. Harry's drink spilled a bit over his hand, softly soaking his shirt sleeve. Victor and his friends were still watching gravely but Harry called them off by spinning a finger by his head, mouthing "he's crazy," to them.

Snape dropped him into the seat at his original table, his unfinished dinner still there. "You really like doing that don't you?"

Snape was still watching the men at the bar, looking irritated. "Doing what? Shutting you up? Saving you from the gossip column?"

"Touching my mouth."

Snape turned his attention to him and the men must have turned their attention back to the game because there was sudden hollering.

"Why aren't you at the castle?" Harry asked before Snape could deny.

He looked at Harry's cold dinner. "We had the same idea."

"Not the first time."

Then Madam Rosmerta was there, practically cooing at Snape. "You're usual, Severus?"

And then "Severus" smiled, actually smiled and said "Yes, thank you Rosmerta."

Harry looked back and forth between Snape and Madam Rosmerta's beautiful retreating figure in disgust. "Ew!" he said. He was jealous. Drunkenly, but jealous.

Snape looked at his charmed beer glass. "You drink too much."

"You don't mind your business too much." He felt his childishness deeply but couldn't be any other way.

"Right," Snape said, sitting down and looking absently at the front doors. "This is going to be one of those conversations."

"You started it," Harry said.

Madam Rosmerta was back quickly with Snape's dinner and Harry glared at her through their brief exchange.

Then he just watched Snape eat. He had a plate of steak and potatoes and a glass of red wine. He cut his meat with much more finesse than Harry'd ever personally managed to do anything in his life and didn't seem to mind being watched, watching Harry right back. Chewing his food, medium rare, wine staining his lips incrementally.

When Snape was done, he wiped his fingers and his mouth with a napkin and leaned back in his chair, still watching Harry.

Harry looked down at his own lap. He was hard. "Fuck," he mumbled.

"What was that, Potter?"

"Nothing." Harry took a deep breath. He needed to get it together, to stop being selfish, to think clearly.

"Actually- you wouldn't want to, by any chance, help me with something, would you? Not me, really, the ministry. And like, innocent people."

Snape raised an eyebrow. "What?"

Harry suddenly felt impatient. Why hadn't he thought of this before? Snape was experienced, smart, knew a lot about dark magic. "The Rebecca Rickton murder, the footage shows she was bewitched or cursed or something but I'd have to do a lot of research to figure it out on my own because Ron probably will never speak to me again after I broke up with Ginny and I could probably ask Dawlish but he's probably working with Ron on some other lead and I don't really have a lot of time. Because it's happened again in the states and it might happen somewhere else," Harry stopped. "So- would you? Want to? Maybe watch it and see if you can tell what it is?"

Snape rolled his tongue over his teeth with his lips closed, clearly considering it. "How would that help find who's responsible?" he finally asked.

"Well, you never really know if it will for sure. You just collect as much information as you can and hope it's all the right pieces to put together and make sense of it."

Snape nodded but said nothing. Harry was feeling urgency now, sobering up. "But you already know that," he said. Of course Snape knew that. His years as a spy must have taught him the difference between significant and insignificant information. "Why did you ask me that?"

"Making sure you knew it," Snape said. He leaned forward then. "And what happens when you use what've got, the pieces you've collected, and put them together to form the wrong picture?"

Snape's focus made the conversation seem important, but Harry was lost, not sure why they were having it.

"You- you retrace your steps."

"No," Snape said. "You start over. You question everything you took for granted was what it seemed."

Harry realized his mouth was open. He closed it and swallowed. "Will you come with me to watch the tapes?"

Snape's eyes were on his empty glass. "Yes."

They spent the entire walk up the hill and to the castle in silence. When Harry opened the door to his room, he felt the brush of Snape standing close behind him. He turned to see Snape checking the halls to make sure no one saw them. Harry couldn't help but fantasize. He wished they were going in there together for different reasons and that Snape would fall asleep next to him. He felt stupid and ashamed for wanting these things, especially at this very moment when lives hung in the balance.

But he wanted it anyway, wanted it so hard that he almost told Snape to leave, almost couldn't handle him being in his room for any other reason than to rip the want from him.

He didn't. He sat on his bed and Snape pulled the chair from the desk to sit next to him. He rewound the footage on the device and pressed play.

He'd gone back too far and there was some dead time, just people in the video doing this or that mundane thing.

"No one has any idea the fucked up shit they're about to witness," Harry said. He looked to see if Snape was watching and Snape was, closely, his brow creasing with concentration.

Harry waited for the first sign in the video that Rebecca was coming- a little boy, looking at her off screen, while the man he was holding hands with tried to feed him something.

She was in frame shortly after, walking calmly but her face full of terror as if her head and her body were separate vehicles, both driving to the same rewindable end.

Then she's up and the knife is there and there's her soul in her eyes, the part Harry couldn't get past. The cause of his one hour sleep, his dead weight in the dawn.

His finger pressed pause of its own accord.

"I'm sorry," he said, gathering his knees. "I- I haven't been able to watch this part."

Snape, without Harry telling him how to work the video, used his wand to enlarge Rebecca's face as Harry did hours earlier. He studied her frozen countenance.

Harry watched him. "You didn't look like that," he said. "When you were dying." The truth of it pained him, the way sometimes the cold hurts you more than you thought it would or the way Ginny was suffering now, living with his honesty.

"Of course I didn't. I wasn't afraid."

"Why weren't you afraid?"

"I told you," Snape said, edging impatience. "I was prepared for it. I saw it as a solution."

"Do you still want to die?"

Snape didn't respond.

It felt like he was staring into a vast darkness and he was strangely hungry. But it wasn't a hunger that steak and potatoes could feed. It was a terrible, pitless hunger that left him starving but at the same time made him feel like he would never want to eat again.

Then he was angry. "So you have a death wish, still? Do you think if you die, you'll be in heaven with my mum or something?"

Snape scowled. "I don't believe in heaven," he said, as if he were insulted Harry would for a moment think that he did. "And if I thought it worked that way, I would have killed myself the moment she died."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"I don't need to answer your question," Snape said, turning his gaze from Rebecca's face to Harry's. "I don't need to tell you if I have a death wish or if I'm suicidal or if I believe in heaven or hell or God or mercy."

"No, just tell me you hate me for saving you and let's leave it at that, that's a really wonderful thing to do to a person."

"Oh, I've wronged you? You stole eternal numbness and bliss from me and you're the one that gets to be upset about it?"

"Oh my God," Harry said, hearing his own voice ring in his ears. "Is that what you think death is? Bliss?"

"Oh please, Potter, as if you'd have any more idea about it than I do!"

"I might, actually! I was in limbo, you know, with Dumbledore. I almost died too. And let me tell you, I really don't think it would be your cup of tea because I suspect it's just more life on another plane. Or it could just be, oh I don't know, eternal darkness and fear and being alone and not numb or blissful at all! It could just be black, like falling into an endless black space, does that sound good to you? Or you could wake up and be this whole other person, with the whole existence and idea of who you are now gone. Severus Snape, Hogwarts' resident asshole that actually saved everyone even while they hated him is gone never to be remembered by you or anyone else you know in your stupid, new, less important, not-as-special world. The whole point is, we don't know, so- what are you doing?"

Snape was standing up, next to him on the bed, stepping in between Harry's legs. He leaned forward, pressing Harry in with his weight, holding his shoulders down and moving his hands up, fingers inching into their favorite position around Harry's throat.

"I would love to be someone else," Snape said, right in Harry's face, shaking him a little. "I would love to be someone else so that I didn't want you."

Harry was confused. He was hard again, with Snape pressing in in just the right places, but his eyes filled with tears and he tried to hide it by looking down instead of forward into Snape's black eyes, which he was afraid would look so like the death he pictured.

"Fuck you," he whispered, and he didn't know if he was crying because Snape hurt him or because he still wanted to kiss Snape anyway but he did kiss him, softly, and Snape kissed him back with equal gentleness. As if to say, I'm sorry.

Harry's tears dripped down into his hair. Snape was wiping them away, pushing his fringe from his forehead, deepening their kiss in pausing parts. When he pulled away, Harry still couldn't stand to look at him, knowing the tears would be uncontrollable if he did.

"I-" Snape started to say.

"No," Harry interrupted. He wanted to seem strong and to stop falling apart. "Don't, it's alright. Let's just watch the tape."

Snape let go of him, moving away and sitting back in the desk chair.

Harry pressed play.

They watched Piccadilly Circus multiply Rebecca's images and reflect them onto herself, her picture broadcast on every screen surrounding her. Then the knife and Ron, Harry and Dawlish struggling with it.

"Go back," Snape said.

Harry obeyed and paused when Snape told him to. It was the first time the knife appeared. Snape enlarged the image. "Does the ministry have the knife?"

Harry shook his head. "It disappeared."

"It looks mangled in the video, but it's hard to tell from the quality of the picture. Do you remember it being damaged?"

It was hard for Harry to remember a detail like that when there'd been so many other ones at the time that seemed more pressing. "I don't remember what it looked like in person but maybe, when they examined the body-"

Harry got up from the bed and searched through the scarlette folders of notes on his desk, looking for a copy of something Ron sent him days ago.

He found what he was looking for and handed it to Snape. "Autopsy report. The wound wasn't clean- it was uneven, like the knife was bent out of shape or dull. Or both."

"The knife's important somehow. Whoever it is is clearly obsessed with iconography. Choosing one of the most public and recognizable places in London, the painting and the message on the wall, doing this to celebrities. The knife was old, small, not large or practical enough to kill a person- damaged, even. He was making a point of using it, it was specific."

"Holy shit." Harry's stomach dropped. It was the combination of looking at the zoomed in focus of the knife and Snape's word, celebrity, calling back to him from his first year, Snape sneering it at him. Snape practically hunting him in the hallways at night, confiscating little trinkets from him like Zonko's toys or the Marauder's Map.

"That's my knife," Harry said, shaking. "Sirius- he gave it to me in my 4th year, it was a penknife that was charmed to unlock doors. I remember it," he said, pacing the room now, feeling outside of his body. "I remember being so annoyed at the thought that you would find it and take it from me."

"Don't jump to conclusions, Potter. Those types of knives are absurdly common. What would make you think this would be the very knife you owned and seemed to have lost almost 10 years ago?"

Harry's heart beat was loud in his ear now. He shook his head. "That's the thing. I didn't lose it."

Snape waited with no patience for him to get the words out. "Then what? Spit it out!"

He was scared, terrified. "I tried using it in the Department of Mysteries, when we went there because I thought Voldemort had captured Sirius. I tried to unlock a door with it and-"

"It melted," Snape finished. He looked frozen with the truth of it.

"Yeah," Harry nodded. He leaned against the wall behind him, part of the video projecting onto his body.

The air was heavy with that they wouldn't say.

"I have to talk to Ron," Harry said, almost to himself.

"I'll go with you." Snape said it fast.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"You're not going alone," Snape said.

"Well," Harry started. He felt sick. "Ron- um, wouldn't exactly be pleased to see either of us right now."

Snape's eyes widened. "You told-"

"I didn't! Ginny did! And don't worry, Ron won't tell anyone. At least I hope he won't," Harry said, cringing.

"Yes, secrecy, famously a Weasley family strength," Snape said, but Harry was lucky because their recent discovery seemed more pressing to him, at least for the moment. "You're not going alone," he said again.

Harry's chest warmed. "Alright. It's late, he's probably home by now. I'll go inside and you wait at the front door."

Ron and Hermione lived in a very muggle neighborhood, so Harry suggested they derobe before they left. When they got to the front door of the apartment building, Harry's last impression of Snape as he passed him to go up the stairs was that he looked exposed.

He knocked on their door and he knew Ron would let him in to avoid making noise in the hallway where the neighbors could hear.

Ron was glaring at him, clearly not asleep yet, but in his underwear and ready for bed.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, fuck me," Harry said. "Listen. I just realized something. The knife that killed Rebecca- do you remember it looking weird, like it'd been crushed and then reshaped again?"

Ron was frowning, hard, but listening. He nodded.

"It was my knife, Ron. From 5th year, remember when we were in the Department of Mysteries and it got melted by that door I tried to unlock?"

Ron wasn't looking at him, but he knew Ron remembered.

"Ron, I think it's the same one. What if the person we're looking for works in the ministry? What if they have access to the Department of Mysteries? We know exactly who walks those halls. I can't recall the names of five people who have clearance to be down there on a daily basis."

Ron was nodding.

"Yeah?" Harry needed assurance.

"Yeah," Ron said. "It's a good lead."

Harry breathed deeply, relieved. "I can check it out with you tomorrow morning if you like."

"No, it's alright. I'll send you word if we need you."

"Okay. Goodnight," Harry said and turned to leave.

"Harry!" Ron whisper-yelled. "Are you alone?"

Harry wanted to smile but didn't. Ron was worried about him. "No."

As they were walking back to the castle, Snape was trying to separate.

"You get ahead of me and I'll come in after you. We shouldn't be seen together."

"Alright but can you come to my room?"

It was dark and easy to ask for things he wanted when he could blush and suffer in hiding. Snape's boots were crushing the leaves and the earth as they walked, the sound deafening to Harry.

"What would I do that for?"

"To protect me from the big bad serial killer," Harry said, feeling only a little ashamed at using the situation to his advantage.

"No."

"You love that word," Harry said bitterly.

"And you love to try your luck," Snape said.

"Come on," Harry went on, proving Snape right, "You said it yourself that I shouldn't be alone. And I haven't had a good night's sleep in weeks and being terrified that a serial killer is after me is not going to help matters."

"Firstly," Snape said, taking long strides ahead of him, dodging knots from trees in the ground, "that is not my problem. Secondly, you're not scared at all. That would require you to be a person that takes danger to their physical person seriously, and you, as the past has taught us to believe, have no such qualms."

So Harry tried another tactic, which was just to shut up and follow Snape to his room. It worked.