A/N: Full, explicit version of this chapter is on Archive of Our Own, under the same title and author. Honestly, I have a hard time making this M instead of NC-17 so sometimes I think it seems abrupt or weird when I cut out those scenes, but if people still like reading the M version, I'll keep doing it! Also this has one part that I edited since I posted yesterday, sorry if you got two notifications.

Chapter 13

Hagrid was the one he'd always turned to at school when he felt like he couldn't talk to anyone else and it was the same in the days after the attack. Snape was turning out to be terrible to him under the new circumstances. He seemed to have betrayed Harry and was working with the Aurors to switch shifts so he was never alone. The Aurors, Harry's former colleagues, were also behaving traitorously and between them and Snape, he decided he needed better friends.

When the weekend came, he told Snape under no uncertain terms that he was going to spend that Saturday with Hagrid and was ready for a fight. When Snape said nothing, Harry speculated.

"So Hagrid's alright? He's an acceptable babysitter?" They were at breakfast and Harry was trying to mumble this to Snape inconspicuously. "Brute strength is hard to beat I guess."

"Yes. Keeping magical beasts as pets tends to help too," Snape said darkly. He really was in a foul mood lately.

"They're not his pets," Harry explained, mouth full of bacon and eggs. "They're really proud and independent, they don't do his bidding. Some of them would kill for him, though. But only out of mutual respect."

It took a moment for Harry to notice that Snape was looking at him hatefully.

"What?" Harry said, defensive.

Snape went back to facing own plate, which wasn't nearly as heaped as Harry's. "You've never eaten or slept better," Snape said bitterly, picking up his knife and fork and cutting into his sausage. "It's almost as if you thrive off of life-threatening situations."

"No. That'd be-," he shook his head, not able to finish the thought as he chewed. He was acting as if the idea was absurd but he worried there was something to it as he eyed the stack of pancakes in front of Neville. As frustrated as he was that Snape and the Aurors were suffocating him with what he thought was unnecessary protection, he felt energized and awake in a way he hadn't in a long time. It was sort of like getting under a good hunt or case but better- something about the stakes being high drove Harry in a way that few things managed to do. He was annoyed with Snape for seeing it, even more frustrated with himself for feeling it.

Snape left the Great Hall before him. When he was full and ready to leave the table, Neville grabbed him by the arm.

"What was Snape saying to you?"

Harry's face crinkled, and he knew his discomfort was obvious. "Not much. Just stuff about the investigation." Harry gestured vaguely to the Aurors sitting on the far end of the table, which McGonagall extended to accommodate them. Hawthorne and Savage weren't the only Aurors at Hogwarts- the Ministry dispatched more to the school for the student population and McGonagall had had to make an announcement about the reason for their presence.

"Wild," Neville said, smiling. "You and Snape getting on."

Harry forced a grin, awkwardly. "Isn't it?" He left the Great Hall then in an unnecessary hurry.

Hawthorne and Savage were waiting for him just outside the doors. They always ate early so they could be ready for him when he was done, which Harry found very professional and irritating all at once.

"I'm going down to Hagrid's," Harry said, brisk. "It's that little hut there, see," he pointed outside of the window near them where Hagrid's home was visible, chimney belching thick clouds of smoke into the indistinguishable gray sky. "If either of you follow me, I'll hex your shoes. I know one you won't be able to find the countercurse for for quite some time."

Hawthorne looked particularly annoyed with him but Harry turned and left before either of them could get a word in. As he made it out onto the grounds, he looked over his shoulder sometimes, knowing Aurors had ways of moving silently, but they remained in the castle and were watching him from the windows like sentinels.

When Harry got to Hagrid's cabin, Hagrid gave him a hard time for not coming down to see him in so long. Harry apologized so profusely and expressed so much shame that Hagrid ended up comforting him about it in the end.

They had tea by the fire, Fang's tired and heavy face in Harry's lap. Harry told Hagrid about the killer, about how the Auror's were driving him insane and even mentioned tentatively that Snape was being hard to deal with about it as well.

"Buddies now with Snape, are yeh?" Hagrid said.

Harry thought of Neville's comment earlier and focused on scratching Fang behind the ears, looking down at the top of his smooth head. "Yeah, I guess you could say that."

"Never thought I'd see the day," Hagrid said and followed it with barking laughter. "I do see yeh walkin' out ter the lake with 'im from time to time."

Harry tried not to look startled. "Oh yeah?"

"'S nice, two o' yeh gettin' along. 'S how it always shoulda bin."

Harry released the breath he'd been holding. Hagrid's mention of Snape went no further than that- if he'd seen anything more than just them walking, he didn't let on.

After tea, Harry told Hagrid he wanted to be put to work.

They harvested all the last of the pumpkins of the season and put them in trollies to be wheeled up to the castle and to the kitchens. They fed some of the creatures Hagrid was keeping penned near the cabin for his Care of Magical Creatures classes and weeded his garden. When they were letting the niffler's out for a bit of a walk, Harry was struck by a thought.

"Hagrid- do you think the ministry ever uses magical creatures in Auror investigations?" A niffler was budging Harry over with its nose, keen to dig at the spot right under his foot.

"Blimey, no. Reckon wizards ar' too 'fraid to be in that much contact with a magical beast. Our Hermione, though, 's tryna change that."

"Muggles use dogs to sniff out illegal drugs and follow people's scents," Harry said. "I just wondered if anyone at the Ministry's thought to do something similar."

"Yeh'd have a harder time tamin' a magical animal," Hagrid said, smiling fondly.

But Harry was disappointed. He'd been trying to contribute to the investigation from afar all week but had to behave himself by staying put at Hogwarts. He was itching to find something, to get out and do the work or come up with ideas but it was hard already with no solid leads and exponentially harder away from the action.

When they took a break for lunch, Harry pretended to eat the hard bread with cold meat Hagrid offered him. They talked about mundane things like the weather being unseasonably warm all fall and what to do about chronic joint pain when Harry brought up that his knee was still hurting from when he fell on it last week, despite healing charms.

Then there was more work to do and he was grateful for the opportunity to exhaust himself. The last thing Hagrid asked of him before the sun went down was to weed the tops of some trees at the edge of the forest on a broomstick because something was growing there that was bad for the thestrals.

The old broomstick he was riding to do it kept stopping and starting as he saw to the trees but he still liked being in the air and seeing the sun go down. When he was finished and landing, pulling off the gloves he'd been given, he noticed Hagrid was standing outside the cabin, waiting for him to come down.

His feet touched the floor and the broom fell between them, twitching feebly. "What's up?" he said.

"Yeh got a message," Hagrid said, handing over a note.

It just said Floo me in Ron's handwriting.

"Do you have Floo powder?"

"No," Hagrid said. "Fang keeps eatin' it, stupid beast."

Harry said goodbye and rushed back to the castle, Ron's note crumpled in his hand. His stomach was in knots. Was there another murder? It made him sick to think there might have been and at the same time, a small voice inside him that he was horribly ashamed of said if there was another murder, it might mean more clues.

Hawthorne and Savage were exactly where he'd left them. They both looked furious.

"Harry, you do one of two things tonight," Savage started. Harry walked right past them to the staircase, climbing the steps two at a time. Both her and Hawthorne followed him. "You tell Snape that he is bang out of order for talking to us the way he does and that he is not our boss, as he seems to think he is," she went on. "Or you tell him in no uncertain terms that you won't have us breathing down your neck so he can't expect us to."

They reached the first landing and started on the second set of stairs. "And why can't you tell him this yourself?" Harry said.

"You try getting a word in edgewise when he's gotten started," Hawthorne said, apparenting still smarting. "He eviscerated us for not walking you to Hagrid's cabin."

Harry looked back at Hawthorne as they got to the second landing and headed to his room. "Aw- did he hurt your feelings?" He knew it wasn't their fault they were following him but he enjoyed getting back at them for it all the same.

"Ha ha," Hawthorne said, scowling. "Though I'm not ashamed to tell you he did, in fact. I know he's a war hero but the man is- well, he's downright mean."

Harry whispered the password to his room, Barry the Bear, not keen on them hearing it. "Come in," he told them. "I'll talk to Snape but right now we've got to Floo Ron- looks like he might have news."

"Maybe don't mention what I said about- about him not being our boss," Savage said, her ears reddening. "Make that sound like it's coming from you."

Harry grinned as he lit a fire in the grate. "Oh but he really should be told, in no uncertain terms-"

"Oh hush," she said.

Harry tried Ron at home first but no one was there. He tried headquarters next and Ron was there, already in front of the fire. He told Ron that Hawthorne and Savage were with him and getting his head in their fire would be easier.

When Ron appeared in the flames, Harry noticed how his eyes scanned the room, as if he was looking for something.

"It's just us," Harry said.

"We think we've found where he cast that deadening spell, magik mortus. Or at least one of the places- we're still looking for more."

"How?"

"The Department of Mysteries gave us detectors. We dispatched teams in different directions from London. There's a village in Yorkshire that made the detector go absolutely silent- it's called Robin Hood's Bay."

Hawthorne sat in Harry's desk chair and rested his forearms on his knees. "Did it seem out of the ordinary?" he asked.

Ron shook his head. "We've no idea, to be honest. The guys who went with the detector were scared shitless when it went silent- didn't want to be stuck there or attacked without being able to use magic. We're sending some people now to station themselves just outside the village."

Savage was leaning on a bed post, catching her hair between her fingers and inspecting the ends as she spoke. "Why would the killer cast that spell and then go there himself and not be able to use magic- essentially making himself a squib?"

"We think he might have a way of being immune to the spell himself. We're trying to figure out a way to do that ourselves-"

"So you don't go in there completely defenseless," Harry finished for him.

"Right," Ron said. "It doesn't help that everyone here is spooked by it. No one's exactly volunteering to go and investigate. Which is partly why, Harry, they want me to ask you something." He looked pained and angry.

"Who's they?" Harry asked.

"Some people at Interpol- magic and non-magic counterparts directing us now." Then Ron fell silent.

"Well- what do they want?"

"They want to bring you in," Ron said, his face grimacing in the fire. "Use you as bait."

"I see," Harry said. All thought left his head.

"Me and Dawlish are trying to pitch a different plan," Ron said. "Tell them to fuck off. I didn't even want to ask you but they were just going to send someone else to do it anyway." He sounded dejected.

"It makes sense," Harry said, now wishing Hawthorne and Savage weren't in the room. "There haven't been any leads in a while and with possibly everyone in an entire village being in danger-"

Ron cut him off. "Just take a day and really think about saying no, alright?" Harry avoided his eye because they both knew he wouldn't. "Seriously," Ron said, looking at him pointedly.

He nodded.

Ron disappeared.

Snape had taken to locking his Floo channel ever since the attack, so Harry had to walk to the dungeons when he wanted to see him. He watched the Marauder's map to make sure Hawthorne and Savage had gone to dinner before he left.

After saying the password to Snape's quarters, he promptly tripped after putting one foot through the door. It slammed shut behind him of its own accord and he was left in pitch blackness.

Obviously, Snape wasn't home. Harry wished he'd bothered to see where he was on the map before he'd left it in his room. He lit his wand as he got up from the floor and used it to lead the way to the nearest lamp, which he lit.

When light flooded the room, he was suddenly excited to be there alone. There was something dangerous-feeling about being in Snape's room without him. The danger was in his budding curiosity as he looked around at Snape's things.

There were so many drawers he could open, books and notebooks with Snape's scribbling all over them to be read. Besides when he was grading papers, Snape was always careful to shield Harry from what he was writing, even sometimes from what he was reading. Harry hadn't employed many tricks to get past these barriers as he knew it would be fruitless, but he still burned with an eagerness to know, sometimes. He fought it most of the time because he knew it wouldn't land him in Snape's good graces.

But this opportunity seemed too good to pass up. Snape had a few notebooks, but the one he'd been writing in often as of late, leatherbound and dark blue, perpetually with a quill wedged in the middle of it, was sitting pretty on the desk, glittering attractively in the lamp light. What sorts of useful secrets could the Half-Blood Prince have to share now that he was all grown up?

Harry walked over to the desk slowly, vaguely trying to tell himself this was a bad idea, his curiosity always got him in trouble, but his hand was reaching for the notebook anyway.

A feeling lit up his fingertips the moment his skin came into contact with the book. For a millisecond, it was unrecognizable until his brain could name it. Then he registered the searing pain, as if he'd touched fire.

"Ouch!" he yelled, glaring at it. "Git!" he said, thinking of Snape.

"That's not nice." Harry gasped and spun around to see Snape glaring at him from the dark alcove near the door. "Not nice at all," Snape said and walked into the light of the room.

"I-," Harry floundered, trying to think of a way to explain himself that didn't sound embarrassingly ridiculous. "I was- I was just curious."

"Clearly," Snape said. "You are aware, are you not, that that is a shameful excuse to go through someone's private things? Luckily, I know you well. So, I took precautions."

Harry swallowed. He wanted to be indignant that Snape didn't trust him.

"Fine. I'm sorry. It's a bad habit."

"Entitlement? That's not a habit. It's a character flaw."

Anger licked at Harry. "That's rich, you pointing out character flaws."

Snape put on a face, feigning surprise. "Do you mean because I have so many of them?"

"That is in fact what I was suggesting, yes."

"What a keen observation, Harry." Snape's irritation didn't appear to be as bristling as it seemed moments before.

"Oh Harry, is it? Are you always so familiar with the students you're reprimanding?"

Snape's eyes glittered. "If you don't want to be treated like a schoolboy, stop behaving like one."

"I never know what you're thinking," Harry said, licking his lips and noticing, for the first time since Snape entered the room, how dirty Snape was. "You're always hiding everything, as if the war is still on."

"You don't get to know what I'm thinking unless I decide to share it. That's how having a right to privacy works." Snape took off his robes and tossed them over the back of his desk chair. The earthy, metallic smell of potions ingredients wafted at Harry.

"I don't have privacy with you. You're a Legilimens, you can just know what I'm thinking whenever you please."

"One doesn't have to be a Legilimens to know what you're thinking. It's not my fault you wear your thoughts on your face."

"Oh please, I see you reading me all the time. Probing for answers, looking to see if I'm lying."

"If you want to know something, you could just pluck up some of that Gryffindor courage and ask." Snape was patronizing him to annoy him and it was working.

"Avoiding my accusations- interesting." Harry said, reaching out a hand to touch the wool of Snape's hanging robes.

"I tell you the truth," Snape said. "I wouldn't have to look to see if you were lying if you paid me the respect of doing the same."

"No one tells the truth all the time," Harry said, something occurring to him. "And isn't that my right? To lie in order to keep something from you if I wanted to? Isn't it just as entitled to use your powers to see if I'm being honest as it was for me to try to read what you're keeping from me?"

Snape was silent and swept past him into the bathroom.

"Ha!" Harry said, jumping. "I bested you!"

"You did not," Snape called and closed the door. Harry heard the water come on.

"The fact that you had to respond to that means you know I did," Harry yelled at the door, wanting to make sure Snape heard him.

By the time Snape was out of the shower, Harry had changed clothes and was ready to grin at him knowingly from the bed.

"Shut up," Snape said venomously.

"I just like beating you at your own game," Harry said, resting his hands behind his head.

"By admitting you're a liar?" Snape whipped his wet towel at him, still naked. Harry caught it and used it to pull him into bed.

They kissed. Harry held his breath the whole time. They'd stopped absconding to broom closets in the middle of the day since the Aurors arrived and every kiss now felt especially new and wet.

"You smell like Hagrid," Snape said into his hair, when they pulled apart.

He felt dazed, in that foggy way that came over him when he and Snape were a tangle of limbs. "You still smell like potions. What were you brewing?"

"Trying to brew, more like. A sort of antidote for magik mortus."

Harry gasped and pulled back fully to look at Snape. "Because charms wouldn't work. You clever devil."

Snape took his face in his hands and moved the hair back from his forehead, as if to help him see Harry clearly. It immediately made Harry think of all the things he wanted to keep from Snape. He tried to shove his thoughts down, imagining them swirling down a flushing toilet.

Especially the one about him being bait. He wasn't quite ready to have that conversation yet. When he felt it was safe, he met Snape's eye.

If Snape saw he was hiding something, he left it alone for more mundane matters. "What do you want for dinner?"

Harry moved his head further back. "You tell me, Legilimens."

Snape kept holding his face, looking at him intently, quiet for a moment.

"Ice cream," he finally said, blankly, letting Harry go.

The next morning, Harry left Snape's bed early, intent on avoiding Aurors and going flying. His short, stuttered flight on Hagrid's old spare broom gave him a hankering for his newer Firebolt. And he needed to think.

Snape had grabbed his wrist in the dark to ask him where he was going and Harry told him the partial truth, which was that he was going to his room.

When he was outside, he welcomed the cold. The sun made appearances once in a while between occluding clouds, its warmth feeble. The newer Firebolt models were set to keep the rider warm but his cheeks still burned in the wind and his eyes watered.

He started by going high, almost high enough to touch a cloud. And then he dived, only pulling out of it when he was mortally close to the ground. The freezing air torched his lungs as he took heavy breaths and continued to fly so low that he was touching the blades of grass on the quidditch pitch with his fingers.

He left the pitch and started making loops around the lake- deep, fast circles that tested the strength of his grip on the broom in his hands and between his legs. He liked turning his body sideways in the bends so the water was right under him and all he could see in his periphery was its shining surface on one side and the open sky on the other. He liked to imagine that gravity worked in more random ways and he had just as much chance of falling into the clouds as he did the water.

Part of the forest obscured Hagrid's cabin from view, but he could make out puffs of smoke coming from his chimney from between the winter-bare trees. He thought about going to tell Hagrid what Ron told him last night, get his advice. But he knew what Hagrid would say, knew Hagrid would be angry at what he'd been asked to do, like Ron was.

Harry knew he should be angry too. He should have felt the urge to tell Snape the news last night, to commiserate and exchange hateful thoughts together about the ministry and magical law enforcement. But it seemed to him he wasn't capable of feeling anything at all. It was like overhearing his aunt and uncle talking about how they wished they were rid of him or finding out he was a Horcrux. These things happened to him and gave him a sense that people attributed all sorts of meaning and personality to him that couldn't be real- because that would also mean that he was equipped for it or he'd done something to deserve those things. It would mean fate was on everyone's side and not just a random commanding hand of chance.

Harry felt this was a burdensome secret only he knew. He pretended to be equipped so people could stay under this spell of delusion and enjoy their lives costfree of reality for a little longer. He pretended he wasn't still just a little boy inside, who'd lost something very essential early on that made his life wrong, a series of tragedies that sounded funny when you put them all together in a sentence.

He could have thoughts like this, when he was flying. He could make a pact with himself that he wouldn't think about it anymore when his feet touched the ground.

He got back to the castle before breakfast started, but Hawthorne and Savage were still there at the entrance to meet him, glaring at him lividly.

"Good morning," Harry said cheerfully, for their benefit.

"Yes, a very good morning. Waking up to seeing you flying around the grounds without a care in the world is just what a girl needs to get her day started," Savage said.

"I would love to have this argument with you both for the hundredth time, but we have to talk. Go get Snape and meet me in my room."

Hawthorne looked apprehensive. He opened his mouth but Harry stopped him. "His room is in the dungeons, he can't have seen me. Second door on the right after the potion's classroom." Right after he'd said it, Harry hoped they didn't think it was odd that he knew that.

Hawthorne nodded and turned on his heel. Savage followed him after giving Harry one last dirty look.

Harry was sitting in the armchair by the fire when the knock came at his door, names appearing in the wood.

"Come in," he said. He'd discovered this command was enough to let guests in. Snape was last inside and closed the door behind him.

Harry conjured chairs for them around the fire, his nervousness leading them all to be different styles and sizes, but chairs nonetheless.

Snape sat across from him and Harry met his eye, forging on. "Ron told us last night they found a village that probably is under magik mortus. It's in Yorkshire, somewhere called-"

"Robin Hood's Bay," Hawthorne finished for him, looking distinctly like someone eager to please. Harry remembered his comment last night about Snape's meanness and smirked.

"Right," Harry said. He wiped his hands on his jeans. They were the same ones he wore to Hagrid's the day before. He looked at the dirt staining the knees as he spoke. "Ron said Interpol is fully controlling this thing now and they've asked me to go to Robin Hood's Bay."

"As bait." Snape said it, because Harry wouldn't.

"Yeah." Harry looked up from his knees. Snape looked like he was edging around his anger.

"And, excuse the wild conjecture, it hasn't occurred to you to say no?"

"No, not really," Harry said softly. He was glad he'd decided to tell Snape in front of others. "So I wanted to tell you two," Harry looked at Hawthorne and Savage, who were both shifting in their chairs uncomfortably, "That I'm going and I'd be honored if you both went with me. And Severus," Harry said, using Snape's given name to make him look at him instead of the fire, "I was hoping you could come with me to tell McGonagall and help her plan for my absence."

"She'll have to plan for both our absences."

Harry took a deep breath.

Hawthorne must have sensed Harry's impending refusal of Snape's help."Of course, we'll come with you Harry," he said, looking to Savage for confirmation. She nodded promptly. "And I think it would be really valuable to have someone like Professor Snape there with us. Given his background."

Harry laughed, humorlessly.

Snape looked at Harry and nudged his head at Hawthorne. "He's right."

"Come on, as if I care what he thinks," Harry said viciously, unable to take much more. "And all you care about," he turned to Hawthorne, "is putting this on your resume- working a case with the famous Severus Snape, I bet you think that'd look good. No matter if he gets mutilated by a psychopath or, or dies," the word caught in Harry's throat, his breath coming short, "surviving one war just to be killed in another."

Hawthrone looked ashamed. Harry was glad.

"I watched you die once already," Harry said to Snape. "I'm not going to let you play with your life."

Snape leaned forward in his chair. "It's not up to you. I'll speak to Interpol, let them decide. You seem to find them so trustworthy."

He rose and left the room. Savage offered to Floo Ron and tell him and Hawthorne left after Snape, saying something about needing a walk.

When Savage got her head out of the fire, she pointed behind Harry's head at the window. Harry turned to see an owl pecking there. It seemed to have been pecking for a while by the frustrated cadence of it.

Savage left the room as Harry let the owl in. It was a short note, in Hermione's rushed yet elegant hand. She hadn't bothered with an introduction.

Harry, don't. Please don't. They'll never stop asking you.

-Hermione

Later that night, they had dinner together again in Snape's room.

The most they talked about what had occurred in the morning came from Snape when he told Harry that he'd learned something about him that day. He told him that in the past, when Snape purposefully misunderstood him, he thought Harry played the hero for attention- now he thought Harry did it for love.

There was no way to respond to this or at least a way Harry knew how. He pushed the plates aside from where they were eating on the floor and crawled to Snape wordlessly.

Before long, they ended up in bed, on their sides, facing each other.

They were in that part of having sex that Harry liked to think of as the "just the two of us" part. It was the point that made Harry understand the lover's cliche of feeling the rest of the world disappear. It was when Snape didn't have that far away look in his eye and he didn't look like he was thinking of something else. When Harry felt brave enough to say his first name and look straight at him.

When Harry felt he could say all sorts of things. "I love when you look at me like that," he said, panting.

"Like what?" Snape's hand traveled from the top of his thigh to behind his knee, avoiding touching the part that hurt inexplicably, and pulled Harry's leg up further on his hip.

"Like you want me."

"I do want you," Snape said and he latched his teeth to Harry's throat and inhaled deeply.

"Fuck," Harry said. Then his mouth was open and soundless.

"I want you now, even while I'm having you," Snape said.

It was so good that it occurred to him he might never recover from this, if it were to stop happening and this feeling became a distant memory. The things Snape said to him would swim in his head and never leave him alone.

He wanted more suddenly, so much more that it felt like nothing would ever be enough.

"Talk to me," Harry said, forcing himself to breathe slower.

"And say what?"

"Anything."

Harry couldn't read the look on Snape's face, but he thought maybe Snape was trying to read him as well.

"I can't," Snape said, resolved.

"Try," Harry demanded.

"I could maybe do it- but it'd be- you wouldn't like it," Snape said and leaned forward to place one, clean kiss on his lips.

"I'll tell you if I don't like it," he said, pulling on Snape's wrists so he'd come down for another kiss.

Snape obliged and Harry's mind went blank.

And then, there was no other way to describe it, he knew what Snape was thinking. He knew, like he knew his own name, that Snape was wondering if he'd been with anyone the night him and Hermione went out.

"There was- there was no one. I couldn't," Harry said, driven to desperation to make him understand because Snape's deep, pitless jealousy filled him with no reprieve in sight. "I c-couldn't," Harry said again, barely forming the words.

The jealousy wouldn't let up and Snape's thoughts were making him sad and at the same time made him unbearably horny.

Snape didn't believe him.

"How could you fucking think that I want anyone but you?"

"I think if you were with someone else-" Snape stopped, unable to go on. He put his hand back on Harry's hip, his grip tighter, his fingers flexing.

"Finish telling me. If I was with someone else, you're sure of what?"

They looked at each other and the jealousy was there in Harry's head again, a gash of feeling. He knew Snape couldn't say it out loud, what Harry wanted him to say. He felt the murkiness of more thoughts beneath the surface of what Snape was showing him, but couldn't tell any one thought apart clearly.

The thoughts disappeared abruptly. Snape had shut his eyes, screwing them closed tight as if he was in pain, breaking the connection. "I can't," he said again.

He lay on his stomach beside him. "Are you okay?"

Snape kept his eyes closed and was quiet for a long time. Harry was afraid, bracing himself to be thrown from the room and barred from ever returning. He shouldn't have pushed so hard, gotten so comfortable driving Snape to the edge of his limit.

Finally, Snape spoke. His voice was calm, his eyes were open. He was looking at the ceiling. "It's like a dam," he said. He let his head drop to his side to look at Harry. His expression was unfathomable. "You don't have to stay."

Harry frowned. Because they weren't fucking? Because it wasn't fun anymore? "I'm not going anywhere," he said, low.

"Alright," Snape said, sitting up. "Alright," he said again and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.