Chapter 9

Harry woke up quickly and calmly, just opening his eyes. The dungeons had no windows, so he couldn't tell what time it was. Every other night he'd been there, Snape was up before him and turned on the lights but now he was in a total darkness. Snape's leg was warm against his and Harry struggled not to move.

And then he saw something near the ceiling, which scaled high above their heads. He summoned his glasses quietly so he could see clearly. There was sunlight, beautiful and strange, shining through the wall, as if it were made of cracked rock. Those bits of light seemed more complete than a flood because you could see each ray, the way it traveled across the entire width of the room to illuminate the other side and everything it passed through, dust and space.

The light trickled down from the top of the ceiling until it reached the bed, the rays hitting his face. They were warm.

Snape took a sharp inhale next to him and shifted in bed, curling away from Harry, leaving him cold where they'd been touching, and lifting his pillow around him to block the light.

Harry got up then, summoning his wand to him and Flooing to his room. It was filled with light, the sky bright in the window. He could see himself now, in Snape's shirt and underwear for the third time. He had the other clothes he'd borrowed from Snape in his room still, not quite ready to give them back in case he chucked Harry out of his life and Harry needed them to fall asleep in.

He went into his bathroom to look in the mirror at himself. Would he look different? Older? Fucked? He felt hot with the thought. The thorough soreness where Snape had been inside him excited him.

But he just looked like himself. Tousled hair, glasses, maybe a new redness around his mouth where Snape's stubble roughed him when they kissed. It was slightly hidden by his own stubble but he shaved his face and then could see it clearly, a mark of what they'd done.

The memory of Snape fucking him and the noise they'd made, the bed scrapping against the floor, Harry's cries, Snape's hunger for him a rumbling growl deep inside him, aroused Harry with force and he almost gasped to himself in the bathroom and felt the rush of blood to his groin. He pleasured himself, feeling guilty for not being satisfied still, and then showered even though Snape had made them shower before falling asleep not too many hours ago. Harry was thinking fondly of that particularly neurosy of Snape's and watching the way the sunlight hit the tiles in the bathroom when he suddenly felt the need to be productive.

He got out of the shower and dressed before sitting at his desk and pulling the stack of 4th year papers to him. The fondness he felt for the still childish scrawl of one student lifted his mood and he read with energy.

In my opinion, the most unforgivable of The Unforgivable Curse should be the Imperius Curse. When someone first hears about this curse, they might think it can't be that bad if they just use it one or two times on their sibling to make them itch their butts in front of their friends, for example. However, I'm going to explain why it truly is one of the darkest of Dark Arts magic.

Harry laughed. He wrote a note to the student that he appreciated their writing style.

But he found this personality, this uniqueness, in other papers too. One student wrote:

I know that Legillimens isn't one of the Unforgivable Curses, but honestly I think it should be. I'm muggle born and in the muggle world there's a huge problem with the government spying on people's phone conversations and things like that but Legillimens is like spying on your SOUL. Imagine your crush could hear you gushing over them or your teachers could hear what you REALLY wanted to say when you actually said 'Yes ma'am' and 'I'm sorry, sir.'

Some of them were like this, informal to the point of hilarity and clever, needing to refer to themselves because they couldn't help their personalities. And some of them were overly formal, trying so hard to be taken seriously and to sound like they knew what they were talking about. Some of them wrote so little that Harry was pretty sure he should be admonishing them but couldn't because they'd answered all the questions succinctly.

Maybe McGonagall had been right to make sure he had his priorities straight. These kids were sitting in his class, learning things and thinking things, working hard on their assignments or feeling bad that they weren't working hard and really contemplating the implications of dark arts and Harry wasn't really there. He was somewhere else.

He pushed the thoughts away and got the grading done, then started to plan for lessons the next week. When he was done, he fingered the file folder with the case photos that he'd gotten the day before from headquarters and thought about what he would say to McGonagall. She'd be waiting for him to report back to her, to make a commitment or decide to leave Hogwarts. He was nowhere nearer deciding what to do and adding Snape to the equation made him want to fall back asleep to avoid all of it. Thinking about separating from him now was nauseating, like looking into a fate black as the darkness in the dungeons.

But he'd bought some time from McGonagall and he was determined not to let thinking about it spoil his productive mood.

He got dressed, feeling the soreness of his entire body quite keenly after sitting at his desk chair for so long. He'd woken so early that by the time he was ready to leave his room, breakfast in the Great Hall would just be starting.

He could hear a chorus of singing before he was even inside the Great Hall. When he arrived, it was clear; today was the first Quidditch match of the year.

"Bloody hell," Harry said and the Muggle Studies professor, Charity Burbage, who'd walked in at the same time as him, laughed.

"What, Harry? Did you forget what today was?" Charity asked.

"I definitely did," Harry laughed as a fizzing ball of yellow smoke passed between them from the Hufflepuff table. He couldn't believe he was as out of touch as all that.

When he got to the staff table, he saw Neville was wearing Hufflepuff colors and face paint. The closer Harry got, the more he could make out the outline of a badger on his face. They laughed as they saw each other.

"Are you really supposed to be showing favoritism that way, Neville, when Hufflepuff isn't even your house?" Harry said as he sat down next to the yellow clad man.

"Maybe not," Neville admitted. But Pomona Sprout was a Hufflepuff and I'll always be loyal to that woman."

"Fair enough."

Harry turned to Professor McGonagall, sitting at the center of the table, and made a point to say good morning to her as if to say, I'm at breakfast, see?

While Harry was taking his first sip of coffee, he saw Snape enter the Great Hall over the rim of his cup. Harry's heart beat wildly, until he could feel it in his throat. Snape was as intimidating as ever, his usual black robes moving around him the way no one else Harry knew could manage, his gaze indifferent and annoyed all at once at the general good cheer in the room. He was tall and intimidating and scared Harry to the edge of arousal. He looked tired. Harry thought he would die if he thought too hard about how he had something to do with that.

When he took his seat next to Harry, Harry was terrified to speak because he was sure he would never in a million years be able to form the right words.

He almost jumped out of his skin when he heard Snape say, under his breath, "What is wrong with you?"

"I've no idea," he said, and it was true. He didn't know why suddenly his body wouldn't let him take a full breath in and he was struggling to go through the motions of putting food in his plate to seem normal and swallowing his coffee was difficult now because his throat closed up-

"HOT," Harry stood up out of his seat, hunching his back to get away from the scalding hot coffee that was dripping all over his hand and was currently burning through the front of his shirt.

"Potter!" Snape was holding his napkin to his thigh where Harry dripped on him and glaring, hard. Harry couldn't look anywhere but at him but he heard the sounds around him like someone had taken the volume control and turned it all the way down. There was laughing, in the background somewhere, and a student saying "Oh, silly Professor," fondly. Neville chortled.

"Sorry," Harry said, breathless.

Snape made a point to only clean himself up with his wand and Harry had to put the cup down and wipe his hands in order to get his wand out to cast a spell, thinking Snape was an asshole the whole time.

"What are you going to do to him when Slytherin is playing Gryffindor, Harry," Neville said, tongue in cheek.

Harry pursed his lips at Neville, who was clearly enjoying making the situation worse.

"With the state of the Gryffindor's team, I doubt they'll even make it to a match with Slytherin," Snape said.

Harry gaped, turning to Neville to share the outrage but Neville was smiling sadly, and nodding his head in agreement. "He's got a point there."

"There is no way," Harry said, "No way."

When Harry saw Slytherin play, he thought if the Gryffindor team lacked skills and coordination, that would be the least of their problems in a game against their major rival. All the students on the team were fast, experienced flyers, and though their seeker was young, he was talented and reminded Harry of himself. He was one of Harry's third year students and Harry quite liked the boy because he was funny but in a quiet way and it was hard not to be charmed by him.

He sat in the staff box for the game for the first time. He waited consciously till others were seated so he could scope out a spot next to Snape, and he had a feeling that maybe Snape had done the same but then immediately dismissed it as wishful thinking. He felt good sitting there, felt proud the whole game that they were sitting next to each other and the whole school was together in one place, watching the spirit of Hogwarts play out on the field.

It was a really good game. Harry had been in and out of his seat the entire time, cheering and booing both sides, laughing his head off eventually with Neville, who was sitting behind him, when eventually their cheers became synched and they thought it was the funniest thing in the world.

When Slytherin won 210-200, Snape didn't applaud, but just looked knowingly satisfied and it made Harry happy to see it. He liked that Snape got joy, still, out of simple, stupid things like this and he hoped that maybe it wasn't all the time that he regretted Harry saving him.

On their way back from the pitch to the castle, Harry was freezing so bad that he thought no amount of warming charms would do the trick. Snape was strides ahead of him and he wondered what the man would do with the rest of the day- tomorrow was Monday but after the excitement of the match, it was hard to want to do anything they were supposed to.

When he got back to his and remembered that he'd planned for the rest of the week early in the morning, he tore a piece of parchment and wrote a note to Snape, hoping he was in his room too.

You can come here and fuck me, if you like.

He felt hot writing it, his heart beating as fast as it had that morning in the Great Hall, but he Flooed it down before he could change his mind and was filled with embarrassment the moment the slip of paper disappeared in the flames. Horror creeped in when he thought what if it ends up in someone's else's fireplace?

He didn't have to worry for long though, because Snape was there faster than the anxiety could build up and Harry's whole body felt touched all at once in that moment, his skin singing, his mind racing around the image of Snape headed straight for him with a stride full of power and doom.

When they collided, it was like they hadn't just been together this way less than 24 hours before. It was like a reunion with weeks, months between.

Snape was ripping the robes and clothes off him with steady hands and Harry was weakly trying to do the same to him, only managing to push Snape's robes off between short and rough kisses but it was okay because Snape was focused enough for both of them.

"You want to again?" Snape said, his voice raspy while his hand ran up Harry's middle and settled around his neck.

"Yeah," Harry said, and it sounded like something between a laugh and a sob.

They kissed and fell in Harry's bed, Snape on top of him and the weight crushed him in so sweet, cramed him into the tiny space of their intimacy so good that he started to cry while they were lip locked.

"What's- what's wrong?"

Snape's whisper, his breath and his hair in Harry's face, sucked his strange sadness to the surface and he cried more.

"Nothing, don't stop," Harry said. Gravity cleared his eyes quickly, dragging his tears down his temples and he looked at Snape clearly, kissing him with open eyes.

Snape gave in. And then it wasn't sadness anymore Harry was feeling, just greed.

They raged through their need. Feverish, skin on skin, teamwork to get the right position, more pain than pleasure, Harry begging Snape to go faster, Snape telling him to shut up.

Harry liked it face to face because he could watch Snape instead. Usually his features were as controlled as his voice was when they were this way, but sometimes, in between Harry's gasps, there were fleeting feelings in Snape's eyes that he could see and prolong with a twist of his hips or if he wriggled or struggled enough in the right way.

When they were finished, they collapsed against each other and then pulled apart, breathing hard.

Harry saw the edges of his vision lighten. He turned his head to look at Snape.

"Sev," he said, "I'm going to pass out. Don't be scared."

The world fell away.

When he came to, Snape was slapping him in the face.

"Potter, wake up this instant."

Harry blinked to get the light out of his vision and focus on Snape.

"Finally." Snape looked irritated. "Eat this," he said and Harry opened his mouth unquestioningly around whatever Snape offered.

It started melting in his mouth and he tasted chocolate.

"Mmm," Harry said, trying to unstick his tongue, the sugar lifting his fog. "Fanks."

Snape glared at him as he got off the bed. "You are not welcome."

Harry laughed. "Are you mad at me for fainting?"

Snape was shaking his head as he looked for his clothes. "It's just the sort of thing you would do."

"Just the sort- it's not like I could help it!" Harry laughed again. "You're unbelievable." He tried to sit up in bed and cover himself since he felt more naked the more clothes Snape got on himself. "You blame me for absolutely everything that happens to me."

"Because you are to blame." Snape was sat on the edge of the bed now, pulling on socks.

"You should be flattered," Harry said, feeling very content, leaning back against his pillows. "You literally fucked me into unconsciousness." He laughed again but Snape didn't seem to think it was funny.

"It's probably because you don't eat anything, " Snape said. "You're too thin."

It made Harry feel shy and he crossed his arms in front of his chest even though Snape's back was to him.

"Well, that was mean," he said, bitter.

"No- I -" Snape turned to look at him. "Don't make me compliment you."

"Don't leave," Harry said, reaching out a hand. Snape kept looking at him for a moment and then swung his legs onto the bed, propping himself up on the pillows next to Harry. Harry was glad he was under the blanket now because Snape was almost fully clothed.

"Would that be so bad?" Harry said.

"What?"

"If you complimented me."

Snape pursed his lips. "I knew you were fishing."

"So what if I am?"

Snape didn't say anything.

"What if I give you one?" Harry said, laughing again, thinking how easy it was to laugh after double orgasms.

"Don't you dare," Snape said, which made Harry laugh harder.

"I like your dark hair and your dark eyes," Harry said, channeling Lavender Brown circa 1996. "They make me feel like I'm going to be pulverized through the mattress."

Snape was pulling off Harry's hands, which jokingly clawed at him.

"Come on," Harry begged, "Just one thing. I'll keep complimenting you if you don't. I like it when you get all Snape-y and serious and you ask me for consent," Harry went on, loving the way this obviously needled Snape and made him squirm with discomfort.

"Fine, stop." But Snape stayed quiet for a long time. Harry felt like if he moved an inch, Snape would change his mind and be out of there faster than Crookshanks chased after Scabbers.

But Snape asked a question. "Why the need for compliments?"

"I think I'm just crushing hard on you." It was impulsive but Harry assumed Snape already knew, could glean the thoughts from his mind easily enough.

"What does that mean?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Now you're fishing."

"No, I'm just not 21."

"23," Harry corrected, but neither of them liked being reminded of it. "It means I like you." Then quietly, "And I want you to like me."

Snape was looking at Harry like he'd never seen him before.

"Your approval is a hard thing to come by," Harry added, trying to fill the awkward space.

The more Snape looked at him, the closer he came to asking him to leave but then, of course, Snape was talking.

"I like your eyes."

Harry froze. "I'll kill you if you say one more word."

But Snape must have known it was an empty threat. "I like everything about them. The color, the shape, the way I can read every thought in them, so clearly, like right now."

"Oh yeah? Can you read fuck you in them? And I fucking hate you?"

"No," Snape said, shaking his head, clinical. "Just pain."

"I bet you like that," Harry said, wanting to be cruel back, but his voice was weak at the edges, like wet paper. He couldn't look at Snape anymore, but he felt Snape hesitating.

"You know I don't."

"Why did you say that?"

"How could I not? Aren't you wondering why this," Snape lifted a hand to gesture between them, "is happening?"

Harry floundered. "No. Maybe! Yes." But Harry didn't want to know.

He really didn't want to know.

"Is that why you're doing this? Do you-" Harry stopped thinking but the words followed on their own, quietly, "do you just look at me and see her?"

Snape looked emptier than anything, but Harry knew that was his Occlumency, and he realized Snape's mind must be full of thorns, full of secrets that he kept from others and ones he kept from himself, to be convincing. Harry was seeing now how dangerous it was, to want this kind of man, this kind of person who had to lie and lie to survive and didn't know himself and might never know how to. It was like looking into the deceptive blackness of the Forbidden Forest at night- a darkness you feared because it looked empty, looked like nothing, but was really so full of unknown terror.

"What if I do? Could you live with that? That ugly thing?" Snape's voice lifted around an anger, a menace.

But Harry was relieved that it still might be a question in Snape's mind instead of an absolute truth.

"If you weren't sure. If maybe you did but maybe you didn't, I could live with that." He might have been lying, but he said it anyway.

"You're pathetic," Snape said.

It stung, but Harry didn't rise to the bait.

"Why are you getting nasty with me? You brought this up."

"Look at who you chose." Snape rose from the bed and picked up his robe from the floor, patting it down. "It should matter to you, if I'm so sick in the head. This is why you'll never be happy. Because of your choices."

"I was happy when you were fucking me," Harry said.

"Because you think it's love. But it's not. It's nothing. What animals do. Or it's worse. It's love stolen from someone else. Someone not here for me to give it to."

Harry felt nothing but his magic boil up out of him without permission. The mugs on the desk for tea flew at Snape, but Snape was ready and they slowed and turned to sand when they reached him, some of the particles glittering in Snape's robes. Harry focused on that as he threw other things at Snape from around the room. Books, paper, ink bottle, chair, all of them stopping at Snape and hovering around him like an aura.

And then Harry's wardrobe caught fire. And his curtains. And then the bottom of the blanket that was still on top of Harry. If he couldn't hurt Snape, he'd hurt himself.

"Potter, control yourself," Snape said his voice wasn't so steady and the things Harry tried to throw at him fell around him weightlessly. The fire was climbing and Harry watched it numbly as it started to reach him. He wanted so badly to feel the burn. To feel something other than the hatred for himself and for Snape that threatened to eclipse him and his mind, that would surely send him into a madness.

Then Snape was casting water at him but Harry wanted to hurt, so the fire wasn't disappearing so easily, kept renewing itself under Snape's spray.

"HARRY!" Snape was roaring now and he looked scared and Harry liked that. But he couldn't see him much anymore after that, because the fire had grown around him faster than Snape could fight it and when the first lick of flame touched his skin, he passed out for the second time that day.

When Harry woke up, he knew immediately he was in the hospital wing. The shape of the windows and the texture of the light were easy for him to remember and he felt like a student again.

"I thought you'd be in here less now that you're a professor," Madam Pomfrey said. She was at his side, lifting bandages from around his arm. His ankles were covered in gauze.

"I managed," Harry said, his speech slow, "till October."

Madam Pomfrey gave him a disapproving look. "I gave you something for the pain and the salve I'm putting on the burns will heal them soon but you should rest here for at least a day or two before trying to move. Do you remember what happened to you?"

Harry did. He didn't want to but he did. He wished he could tell Madam Pomfrey where else it hurt, that she might numb him there instead.

"Can you give me something to help me sleep?" Harry asked.

Madam Pomfrey smoothed the covers around him gently. "Alright, dear."

Harry stayed in the hospital wing for two days, as Madam Pomfrey asked him to, and she looked at him rather strangely like she was wondering why he was being so compliant. But Harry didn't feel much like moving and it was convenient for him there, where he could convince Madam Pomfrey to give him potions that Snape wouldn't.

Some of his students shyly visited him and it was sweet but hard for Harry to have to pretend to smile. He made jokes about burning himself but didn't feel them. Some sent him chocolate which was wasted on him, because he didn't eat.

When he left, he went straight to his room to work steadily through the papers he left the students to complete in his absence and check his messages. The bed and the curtains looked like they normally did, not a singed edge anywhere. There was a letter from Ginny, or forwarded from her, really. Their building management was asking them to remove what was left in the flat. There was a proper letter from Hermione that he put to the side to read later. Ron sent him a short note to say they hadn't had a break in the case yet. McGonagall had sent a card with her well wishes and wondered what Snape told her because she asked no questions.

There was nothing from Snape and Harry didn't know he was hoping for something until the disappointment gripped him and wouldn't let go.

He tried to push the feeling away and focusing on the stack of student papers helped. When he got through them, he looked at his lesson plans he'd made from the weekend and decided there was nothing left to do, which scared him because it meant he'd be alone with his thoughts. His thoughts which were fogging up his vision lately and made it hard for him to pay attention when people spoke.

So he left Hogwarts. He went to his flat and started moving his stuff into boxes that he conjured. He didn't do anything else with magic though, partly because he was still tired from his intentional, spontaneous wandless magic two days ago and partly because it helped keep his mind from his thoughts.

Packing was a little too easy because Ginny had gotten rid of much of the furniture and her things were gone. He made it more involved, more distracting by weeding through his belongings carefully, looking for things to toss and declutter. He created piles and got to work, even though it was painful to move in some ways because his wounds were red and sensitive under his clothes.

The living room was done quickly because most of it was gone already and he and Ginny had never been very decorative people. He worked through the bedroom steadily, not caring when it became 11 o'clock, midnight, or one in the morning because he knew he wouldn't sleep anyway without some help that he wasn't going to get.

When all his boxes were gathered in the living room, he decided he'd come back the next day to transport them and go home while he still had some energy.

He almost left without thinking about the kitchen. He was getting ready to Apparate and it was taking him longer to focus on his destination than usual because he was tired and Hogwarts was far, so far. But he almost had Hogsmeade formed in his mind well enough to do it when his eyes caught something, something in the kitchen. He was thinking he'd just leave that for tomorrow too, when he realized what he was looking at in the kitchen was new. Something that shouldn't be there.

It was a picture on the fridge. But it wasn't of him, or Ginny, or anyone they knew. It was like a print of a painting. He'd never seen it before.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he was very aware of the silence of the room suddenly, the way the wood under his feet sounded when he moved closer to the photo.

He took his wand out and cast a spell around the flat, checking for intruders. There was no one.

The photo was stuck to the fridge magically. Harry unstuck it. He knew the painting. It was Children's Games, from Rebecca's flat. But it wasn't the whole thing. It was a closeup of a group of children from the original, enlarged.

This part of the painting depicted a group of children surrounding one child. Several of them were grabbing the boy's legs, others his arms. They were laying him across what looked like a raised wooden surface and the children looked gleeful but the boy being held looked scared.

And scratched into the boy's forehead, in the tiny space of the painting above his right eye, was a scar like a thunderbolt.

Harry Apparated, the paper tight in his hand.

He went to headquarters to show Ron. Ron was there, circles under his eyes, looking about ready to collapse. They made copies of the photo and distributed it to everyone there. Harry took one and left the original with Ron for them to test.

But he had a hard time leaving, Ron trying to insist he didn't leave their sight.

"I'll be safest at Hogwarts," Harry said and waited for Ron to nod before he disappeared.

He went to Snape's quarters, knowing that the password wasn't different.

A light was turned on. Snape was awake, in bed with the sheets tangled around his legs and a notebook in his lap. He closed it around the quill he'd been holding when he saw Harry.

He looked tired. Like he didn't have his walls up because he was feeling something and Harry could tell. He looked sorry and weak.

"What's that?" Snape was looking at the photo in Harry's hand.

Harry folded it into a small square and stuck it in his robe pockets. He didn't want to tell Snape about that yet.

"I'll tell you tomorrow." He took off his robe, his jumper, his trousers.

He climbed into bed next to Snape and Snape turned off the lights the moment they touched. Harry put his back to Snape's chest and Snape wrapped his arms around his torso, clinging to him.

Then Snape was whispering to him in the dark.

"I like your belly button. It's sexy."

He wrapped both his hands around Snape's forearm, the one resting on his chest.

"I like the noises you make. I like the way you cry easily because I wish I could do that. I wish I was so strong."

Harry almost did cry then, but he fought it. He wanted Snape to go on, go on saying sorry.

"You surprise me all the time. I liked when you burned me with your magic. I even like fighting with you. I like when we drive each other mad."

Then, a small kiss pressed just near his ear. "I like you," Snape said and then went quiet and held Harry tighter as he shivered.

He didn't sleep for a long while. He was more scared than he'd been when he saw the photo on the refrigerator, more scared than he'd ever been his whole life. Because he knew he'd never done anything as dangerous as this, never been closer to losing his soul than he was now, with his heart laid bare as shining skin in the sun, in Snape's arms, falling asleep, falling in love.