ABSOLUTION
By Your Cruise Director

1. Castaways

He had hoped to be alone by the lake that overcast autumn afternoon while the students were in classes and the other staff members -- particularly the new ones like himself -- had too much preparation to do to spend time enjoying the cool air and the scent of fallen leaves wafting from the forest. But as Harry approached the water, he saw a slim, dark figure...the very last person alive he wished to see.

Though he had understood for months now that Snape had not wanted to kill Dumbledore and had only been carrying out the Headmaster's wishes, knowing that did not make it much easier to forgive what Harry had witnessed that night on the parapets when Snape had done the deed, speaking the very curse that had killed both of Harry's parents. It made things more difficult rather than easier to recall that those were also the words that had ended the life of Lord Voldemort, for it had been Harry who had spoken them.

Unforgivable. Everyone from Hermione to McGonagall to Lupin had agreed that he had no choice, no other weapon left in his arsenal; only a Dark curse could have killed the Dark Lord, even once he was reduced to a pathetic mortal with a faint sliver of soul. When Harry raised his arm, he could still feel vibrations from the energy that had shot from his wand, the green fire striking and bearing Voldemort to the ground. He had told Hermione and Ron that it had hurt. The truth was that it had not hurt; it had felt exhilarating to feel the power flow out of him with the Killing Curse. Some part of him craved that feeling, like an absence he might never fill.

Snape had been there then, too, striking down Bellatrix LeStrange to give Harry a clear path to Voldemort, and even though Harry supposed he should have been grateful to have one less person to kill, that rankled as well. Bellatrix had killed Sirius; she should have been Harry's. And the same was true of Peter Pettigrew. Maybe Snape had done Harry a favor, slaying the traitor, that filthy minion of Voldemort who had betrayed Harry's parents and killed Cedric right in front of him, but it didn't feel like a kindness. Harry had let Wormtail live when Remus and Sirius wanted to kill him, and Wormtail had repaid that life debt only by falling to Snape's wand instead of Harry's own.

The chill in the wind grew more biting as Harry approached the lake, He could see that his long-hated teacher was throwing something into the water. At first he thought that Snape was ripping up pieces of paper, destroying pages of a diary or some physical evidence of his crimes; there was no question in Harry's mind that even if Snape had been working for the right side in the war, he still had a lot to answer for. It wasn't right that he should get to cast away his secrets in the water as if that would cleanse him of responsibility for all the things he had done.

And might there have been a spell on the fragments -- something that could actually rewrite the past in a way Snape might have preferred? Harry wouldn't have put it past Snape to misuse magic that way. As the newly appointed Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor, he supposed he was obligated as well as curious to find out what was going on.

Even if Snape had thought he was helping Harry by being twice as nasty to him as to anyone else, making him work twice as hard for half the credit, forcing him to be wary and defensive, that didn't make it any easier for Harry to trust the man. He could barely tolerate teaching at the same school, though he supposed that he had no more right to blame Snape for being Dumbledore's killer than the students who whispered about Professor Potter behind his back had a right to blame him for the attacks on Hogwarts that had happened while he had been a student there. Voldemort would have tried to kill Dumbledore even if Harry had been at some other Wizarding school. He would have sent Death Eaters to Hogwarts to try to recruit Purebloods and terrify Muggle-borns regardless.

It wasn't paper that Snape was throwing into the lake, Harry could see now. It looked like small bits of bread. Some of them floated over the surface of the lake while others were gobbled down by the fish surfacing near the water's edge. Had Snape gone mental, or was this a spell Harry did not know? In either case it looked suspicious. "Hello, Professor Snape," he called out.

Snape's cloak billowed when he whirled and strands of his long dark hair whipped across his face, momentarily blocking his eyes. Apparently he had been so engrossed in his task that he had not heard Harry's approach. "Potter," he sneered, pushing back his hair. "I should think that with all your new responsibilities, you would have better things to do than snoop around in other people's business."

"Whatever you're up to, you're doing it right here in the open, so I hardly think it's fair to call it snooping." Harry was a bit winded from his walk -- his body still hadn't fully recovered from the final battle -- but he was determined to be formal and courteous with Snape; he wouldn't give the senior professor any excuse to complain about his professionalism. Stopping beside the water several feet from Snape, he caught his breath and studied the breadcrumbs as they swirled out into the lake, its far shore so distant that on this cloudy day, low fog obscured the bank. "What are you doing with those breadcrumbs?" he asked when eventually it became apparent that Snape did not intend to speak, nor to continue in his task.

"Surely even you can make it out, Potter. I was throwing them into the lake."

Cursing himself inwardly at having given Snape the opportunity to ridicule him, Harry replied, "Yes, I could see that. But it seemed like such an odd thing to be doing that I thought I'd ask." The older man made a small noise of disgust, putting his hands in his pockets where it seemed he had hidden the bread, and Harry persisted, "If you don't mind my asking, why are you throwing breadcrumbs into the lake?"

"What makes you think I don't mind you asking? Do you expect that everyone wants to cozy up to you now and share their secrets?" Snape glanced into Harry's eyes, and despite a solid year of practice at Occlumency so potent that he had learned to block Voldemort himself, Harry felt the familiar fear that he was about to have his private thoughts dragged out and examined. But Snape's accustomed viciousness seemed muted, and after a moment he looked away again, out over the water where the breadcrumbs had disappeared. "It's a tradition," he said crossly. "Not a spell, not anything you would need to know. It serves no magical purpose."

Harry studied the muddy edge of the lake where the plants began to disappear into the water. He wanted to ask, Why do it, then? but he was afraid that the question would sound rude rather than interested. "What sort of tradition?" he inquired instead.

Snape bristled, but after a moment he replied, in the same annoyed voice, "Not a magical one, obviously. It's personal." Clearly he hoped that Harry would go away and leave him alone. "I learned it from my Muggle relatives, who treated me as well as yours treated you."

Sometimes Harry forgot that Snape had witnessed so much of his childhood during their Occlumency lessons; the Potions professor had watched Harry relive many horrible memories. Flushing, he said, "Why do you keep their traditions if they treated you so badly?"

"Do you believe that I should break with everyone who ever treated me badly?" asked Snape sharply. "In that case I should not be a Wizard, either. At least, I should not be standing here today. I should have remained a Death Eater to the very end. Do you know who treated me best out of everyone I have known in my life, Potter? Death Eaters. Rodolphus Lestrange. Lucius Malfoy. Certainly not Black and Lupin and your beloved father, nor my colleagues here who never wholly trusted me."

There was still so much bitterness in Snape, so much bile; Harry wanted to hate him for it, yet in a strange way he found himself identifying with it. The Killing Curse had marked him forever; maybe it had marked Snape as well. Or maybe Snape had been more scarred from his childhood than Harry could know. He was only now beginning to understand how the Dursleys had damaged him -- how afraid he was that if he had a family, he would repeat all the mistakes Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had made, picking favorites, getting angry when he couldn't understand his own children. What if he was incapable of being fair? What if he had a child who was a squib, or obsessed with the Dark Arts? What if he had a child who hated Muggles?

"Did your Muggle relatives hate Wizards?" he asked Snape.

"No more than they hated each other." There was satisfaction in Snape's voice now, but it was sour and angry. "My father's father's family was Catholic. My father's mother's family was Jewish. Do you know what that means, Potter? My father's only relationship with his grandparents was to be told how much each despised his parents' marriage. I think he married a witch just to spite them all."

Harry had known people who were Catholic and Jewish when he was a child, but the Dursleys were suspicious of them -- as they were with anyone who wasn't exactly like themselves -- so he didn't really know what this might mean. He had instinctively sought out people who were somehow different when he was in school, but since Aunt Petunia had never let him have his own friends over to play (and Harry could hardly have invited them into the cupboard under the stairs, anyway), he seldom got to know any of the other children well enough to understand what their families and backgrounds were like. He supposed he had thought most children must have been treated more like himself than Dudley, because most children weren't as cruel and selfish as Dudley. "You mean Catholics and Jews hate each other more than wizards, then?" he asked Snape, finding it all too plausible.

"Perhaps not all Catholics and all Jews, just as not all purebloods are as hidebound as those who followed the Dark Lord. I saw my father's family only very rarely, and always separately. When I was a child, my grandfather took me to Mass once, and when my grandmother found out, she took me to a New Year service at a synagogue. That was where I learned..." Reaching out over the water, Snape dropped a handful of breadcrumbs. "...this."

Harry still thought it was an odd tradition to drop bread into the water. He remembered reading in his History of Magic class that Jewish sorcerers had been accused of cursing Christian wells during the Middle Ages and that thousands of Jews had been killed before it was understood that people did not die of plague because of poisoned water or a deadly curse. He wondered whether this strange yet harmless practice had been witnessed and believed to be a spell, as he himself had suspected. "What does it mean?" he asked.

"It's called Tashlich," Snape said sullenly, sounding as if he didn't really want to discuss it but, having been asked, he felt obligated to teach this ignorant former pupil. The word means, 'You will cast away.'"

"So you cast away bread like an offering?"

"No." Snape's mouth curled. "Not an offering. The bread represents one's misdeeds, and the casting is a request for those misdeeds to be hurled into the depths of the sea."

"Then it is like a spell," Harry said softly. Snape glanced sharply at him. "Maybe not the sort where you expect something specific to happen, but one that works more slowly."

"If it works at all."

"If you have no hope that it works at all, why would you do it?" Snape had no retort to this. Harry wondered which misdeeds the former Death Eater was trying to cast away -- not little insignificant ones, despite the size of the breadcrumbs. For Snape to be participating in a Muggle ritual, Harry understood, whatever was weighing on him must have been something he considered irreparable by magic. "May I try it?"

Snape glared at him. "It isn't a part of your history," he snapped. "And you're supposed to bring your own food. Otherwise you're casting off misdeeds not acknowledged as your own."

Harry reached into his pockets. He had his wand, a quill, the wrapper from a Honeydukes chocolate bar and a couple of galleons. "Will money work?" he asked. Snape shook his head. "Then let me help you cast off your misdeeds."

The dark eyes narrowed, but Snape appeared to think about this and after a moment he held out a fist to Harry, who raised an open palm to catch a handful of warm, stale bits of bread. "Put the crumbs in your pocket," Snape instructed him. "Then turn the pocket out."

"Why?"

"Because that's what you do," insisted Snape tersely. When Harry complied, he added, "It's meant to signify emptying yourself of the residue of your sins. For all the good that will do either of us." As Harry dropped the bread into the water, Snape muttered something else in a language that Harry did not recognize. The crumbs fell into the water and were carried a bit away to where Harry saw fish surfacing to try to capture them.

"We could catch them so easily," Snape mused. "Even though their eyes are always open. They never seem to see it coming. And then they can never return to the water." Suddenly sensing Harry's eyes on him, he looked away, following the path of the crumbs that had not been captured by fish. "What is it that you think you have to atone for, Chosen One?"

The words were not spat with their usual disgust, but Harry could not bring himself to answer the question -- not even to Snape, who, he realized, might actually understand about the Killing Curse. "Why do you do it?" he asked again instead. "You said you don't think it does any good."

Snape smiled mirthlessly. "It reminds me that there are people who believe in that kind of forgiveness." He meant Dumbledore, Harry realized. Of course, Dumbledore would have told them both that they had done the right things, or at least that they had acted with the right intentions, for all the good it had done either of them. Did it help to have a Pensieve -- to be able to cast one's mistakes aside for awhile, to forget them? Had Dumbledore felt this way after he defeated Grindelwald? Harry wished that he could ask him.

There was so much that Dumbledore had not had time to teach Harry before he died. Had he had time to teach Snape? Harry felt quite confident in his ability to teach students basic Defense Against the Dark Arts, even the seventh-years who were barely younger than he was, but he was not certain that he really knew things -- whether he would recognize all evil when he saw it, let alone whether he could teach that. Grudgingly he thought about how wrong he had been about Snape, and how hard it was to forgive Snape even for that.

"How often are you supposed to do this before it works?" Harry asked.

"Once a year, at the New Year," said Snape. "Every year."

"And how do you know if it worked?"

"If I knew that, do you think I would be out here with breadcrumbs?"

Harry did not think he had ever heard Snape confess ignorance to him before. It was disconcerting...almost as much as it had been to realize that Dumbledore had grown old and frail and that Harry himself knew things few of his teachers had studied. Perhaps one day he would ask Snape about the after-effects of Unforgivable Curses -- not because he expected Snape to have all the answers, but because it might be comforting to be told that he did not.

"Do you think I could have some more?" Harry asked.

Silently, Snape reached into his pocket and withdrew his hand. His fingers were cold against Harry's but the crumbs felt warm and dry. Harry waited until Snape had retrieved his own handful of stale bread before watching as they both let them fall into the water. Up at the castle, the great clock began to chime the hour, and then something struck Harry.

"Is today the beginning of the new year?"

"It is," grumbled Snape in a tone that suggested that much should have been obvious, but Harry for once did not feel insulted.

"Happy New Year," he said to Snape. Dark, suspicious eyes fixed on Harry's. He kept his face impassive under the scrutiny.

Finally Snape looked away. "And to you," he said. "We should be getting back. There will be students clamoring for our attention."

"In a minute."

Snape glanced at Harry, but he remained beside him until the crumbs had long since disappeared, taken by the fish or the current. The wind felt cold on Harry's face and the air smelled like the crisp clean of winter. It made him smile.

2. Deliverance

The first time he encountered the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher walking like a wraith through the corridors of Hogwarts in the middle of the night, Severus Snape asked Harry Potter -- against his better judgment -- to sit down and have a drink.

Snape didn't do it for Potter, nor because he had any desire whatsoever to spend time speaking with him. He thought of it as a favor to Minerva McGonagall. He had been unable to offer the appropriate objections to her hiring of Potter; no matter how much that decision had seemed to violate logic and reason, two things McGonagall usually championed, her invitation to Snape himself to return to teach Potions had been far more controversial. The famous names at the Ministry of Magic might have been happy to have both Snape and Potter far away from London, but for the students and staff of Hogwarts, accepting the return of the man who had killed Albus Dumbledore was a bitter potion to swallow.

One of the youngest professors ever to receive a position at Hogwarts, Potter should have regarded his new title as a prize. Yet he had seemed miserable ever since his arrival and Snape had heard the students gossiping about whether some slow curse of the Dark Lord's was slowly consuming him. Even in the dim light of Snape's room in the dungeon, Potter looked at least ten years older than his years, very pale and much too thin. He walked with the caution of one who was wounded and held his wand arm as if it pained him.

Handing him a glass of whisky, Snape sank into the chair opposite and studied the hero of the Wizarding world. "What's the matter with you?" he demanded.

He expected some show of defiance, yet he received none. "I'm having trouble sleeping." Potter took a cautious swallow from his glass. "As you can see. And I can't always keep down my meals. You're the Potions expert; I was wondering, is there any..."

"Talk to Pomfrey."

"I did. I think I've exhausted her list of remedies." Had Potter actually acknowledged Snape as the Potions expert? The lack of fury in the green eyes told Snape that something was indeed wrong with Potter, even more so than his pallor and the awkward way he moved. "I assumed that you might know of something maybe she didn't."

"Are you asking me to break the law and provide you with an illicit palliative?" Snape asked curiously. He and Potter both knew that the ethics of the situation were not really at stake; Snape had brewed illegal potions to keep Sibyll Trelawney sober at staff meetings and to stop Horace Slughorn from talking in his sleep. "If you're unsettled, you would do better to brew chamomile, oat seed and valerian root and drink that instead of your evening tea. I was on my way to the cabinet to fetch St. John's Wort when you found me, perhaps I could..."

"I've had chamomile, oat seed and valerian root," Harry interrupted him with a ghost of a smile. "I've had every medicine known at St. Mungo's. None of it helped. There must be something stronger."

"Yes, there is, but you are not going to use one of my potions to slip into a coma, embarrass this school or kill yourself." Snape twisted his lips at The Boy Who Lived, who looked startled for a moment. Why wasn't he angry? "Is the war hero not finding himself satisfied being the darling of the Wizarding world? Or are you depressed now that your face no longer appears on all the Ministry's leaflets? I invited you here strictly to find out what was the matter, because this school has been through enough upheaval. If you think that I am going to provide you with sedatives, you have seriously miscalculated my investment in your emotional state."

"This isn't a joke, Severus." Snape frowned. Since most of the staff addressed one another by first names, Potter had the right to use his, but that didn't mean Snape had to treat him like a peer. "There must be something you can give me." The words were begrudging, at least; Snape knew that Potter would never have asked him of all people had he not been truly desperate. "People are starting to notice, I know that. Madam Pomfrey can't help me. And I won't go back to St. Mungo's. They're not keeping me locked up again!"

"It seems to me that perhaps you should be locked up if you cannot control yourself -- kept apart from students, at the very least." Snape narrowed his eyes. He suspected he knew what was bothering the hero of Hogwarts. No one ever talked about the sheer ecstasy of the Avada Kedavra curse. Dark sorcerers were presumed to enjoy it because they were evil and enjoyed watching people die, while most decent wizards never had cause to speak the words at all. To this day, Snape could not allow himself to recall the details of Albus Dumbledore's death -- not, as he knew everyone suspected, because he was wracked with guilt at having carried out the Headmaster's final orders, but because the physical response to such a powerful killing had never fully left him. The echoes in his body gave him the strength to despise Dumbledore, just enough to survive.

So it was unsurprising that none of the fawning acolytes at the Ministry of Magic had noticed that their trophy boy was wasting away here in the north. Yet Potter's arrogance had not faded; disgusted dripped from his voice as he announced, "I shouldn't have asked you. It isn't as if you ever taught me anything when you were my teacher. I don't know why I thought you'd help me."

Snape kept his voice very quiet as Potter and straightened his robes as if he planned to leave. "There are, of course, methods to control physical and mental anguish, just as there are methods to prevent an adversary from invading one's thoughts." He waited for Potter to glance back at him; then, when Potter had done so, Snape locked eyes with him and concentrated. Though Potter had become a skilled Occlumens in the year after Snape had fled Hogwarts, developing the skill to block even the Dark Lord, his former teacher knew precisely how to thwart his defenses and the Chosen One had never learned to shut him out. Ironically enough, it had saved both their lives in the final battle against Voldemort.

Snape pressed directly to the memory he wanted: Potter lying to him about his dreams of being in the Department of Mysteries. There they were in his office, glaring at one another, and Potter was flushed with the guilt of his falsehoods. "I'm not certain I could help you, since you couldn't be bothered to attend to your lessons when lives other than your own depended upon them."

Potter swallowed hard again. His expression contained resentment, but there was something else -- a begrudging relief that made Snape realize he was probably the only wizard in Europe who would dare speak to Harry Potter in such a manner. "Things have changed since then. For one thing, you finally chose a side -- the winning side." Snape bit back a retort as Potter continued bitterly, "And for another, I came here tonight by choice."

"Do you intend to let me teach you, Potter?"

Snape enjoyed both the anger that flared in Potter's eyes and the deliberate effort to hold it in. He had hoped that Potter was not so far gone that he would become passive and dull as soon as he believed relief was in sight. "I can block pain, a little. But I want to know how you stop from...thinking certain things."

"Have you tried a Pensieve? I am certain that Professor McGonagall would grant you the use of the one in her office." Snape also suspected that the Chosen One could afford his own if he wished. How entertaining it would be to sift through memories Potter had personally chosen to lift from his thoughts, the way the undisciplined boy had once plunged into Snape's memories...

Potter shrugged, looking embarrassed. "I did try. I didn't even know which memories to keep. My parents, school, girls...other than flying, none of it was really happy."

Snape bit back an impulse to mock Potter's wretchedness, finding himself intrigued instead at the comment about girls. The ones he had known Potter to date, from one of the Patils to that Ravenclaw seeker to the youngest Weasley, were perhaps not as conventionally beautiful as Potter's mother had been but they had all been acceptable students and pretty enough so far as women went. Frowning slightly, he wondered why he had paid so much attention to Potter's love life. He had certainly seen enough perverse little fantasies while mucking about in the boy's head trying to teach him Occlumency -- fantasies that Snape had found rather exciting.

Now Potter was watching him and he had to force himself to frown sternly to cover a faint blush. "One does not kill a Dark Lord without it destroying a certain amount of one's innocence, as it were."

"Does that apply to killing the only wizard Voldemort ever feared?"

"I assure you, I had no innocence left to destroy." Touché. As if they were actually fencing, Snape circled Potter, wand in his hand. "The only way to alleviate your misery is to face up to your own culpability. You've witnessed Priori Incantatem. There is a piece of the Dark Lord trapped by the killing curse inside your wand, just as there is a piece of the Headmaster in mine. We will neither of us ever be free of them."

"What do I do?" Potter's expression was wretched. "I don't want to live like this. I hate myself like this and I don't know how..."

"You grow up! You might start by admitting what this is all about. You didn't tell the Healers at St. Mungo's, did you? You liked killing, didn't you. You've had a taste of the Dark Arts and you don't want to give that up. Now you have desires and urges that you don't think a newly come of age Gryffindor hero should have, and what's more, you don't want to fight those urges. You're at a school full of children and professors in their isolated towers and dungeons and you have nowhere to unleash those feelings. Am I right?"

Potter was staring, and Snape saw abruptly that in making those accusations, he had given away far more than he had intended. He was preparing to throw the prat out and send him back to his own room with a packet of dried lavender when Potter asked quietly, "Would you like to fuck me?"

"Would I what?" There was no need to feign the astonishment. Snape thought for a moment that Potter must have been under a curse to have spoken those words.

"You heard me. I haven't lost my mind. I've been thinking about it on and off since that afternoon by the lake." The voice was artificially casual, as if much less depended on this than the potion Snape had already refused to provide -- an afterthought. "I'm not really sure if you're queer, but I thought you might want to bugger me anyway." With a mirthless laugh, Potter stepped closer, and Snape felt himself retreating involuntarily. "I've had offers from men who swore they weren't queer -- they just wanted to touch the Chosen One. You don't have any delusions about me, though. You'd tell me I was filthy and it was what I deserved, wouldn't you?"

Almost as if Potter had used a nonverbal spell on him, Snape felt his throat constricting. Whatever fantasies he might have had about using the Chosen One that way were now buried as deeply as his hatred for Voldemort had been. How had Potter known -- had he guessed, or was this actually what he fantasized about?

"Why would you want me to fuck you?" Snape did not quite manage to bring the contempt to the question that he had intended, and he thought he saw a flicker of hope in Potter's eyes. "I've fucked with your mind for years. Wasn't it enough?"

"I learned to fight because of you. It made me stronger." There was a kind of loathing in Potter's sneer, but he was not backing down; he was still moving closer. "I never bent over for Fudge or Scrimgeour. I knew my weaknesses when I faced Voldemort." Still holding the wand, Snape circled again as the Boy Who Lived continued to speak. "You've never had any expectations of me. Or if you did, you expected me to fail. You're not in the least surprised if I tell you I want this, are you? Which makes you the only person I can say this to."

It was not any sort of compliment, Snape understood. Whatever perversions occupied Potter's mind, they would cause no great astonishment here -- and Snape had seen several, back when the boy had been a teenager -- the secret erotic response to being made to stand in the toilet by his cousin, the secret pleasure of lashing out at Malfoy in the hope of being hit back just as hard. Of course Potter could not risk visiting clubs or expressing his desires to strangers. If someone were to recognize him, the news would be all over The Daily Prophet.

That much Snape certainly understood. It was one of the reasons he had lived a life of enforced celibacy for so long. Potter wasn't just asking to be fucked, that was a means to an end; he'd come here hoping to toss off the burden of being the Boy Who Lived because he expected Snape of all people to see him as anything but a hero.

"Let's try this differently," Snape said in a low, controlled voice. "If you want me to tell you that you're filthy and it's what you deserve, then ask for it. What if I accepted you just as sweetly as you asked? Is that your wish -- for me to tell you I've always secretly admired you and dreamed of worshipping your precious body?"

"No." Potter bit his lip, unfazed by the sarcasm. "I don't want you to admire me at all. I want..." His shoulders slumped, making him look younger than his years, despite the scars and injuries that Snape could see every time Potter moved. "I want you to fuck me. I should have said that in the first place but it seemed more accommodating to make sure you were interested."

Lowering his head, Potter removed his glasses, putting them in a pocket, then he began to unfasten his clothing while Snape turned over the word accomodating in his mind. "It only helps for a little while, you know," he said, half to himself. "Like any potion, even the illegal ones. You wake up the same."

"A little while would be wonderful right now." With a start Snape looked at Potter, who met his eyes. "You can do anything you want with me. Ask me -- I'll suck you. You can come on my face." Snape's prick, which had been stirring since the first query had left Potter's lips, gave a hard twitch. "Or tie me up if you want. I don't mind if you want it rough. Anything."

Snape tried to think of a reason to decline. Oh, there were the obvious ones -- they were colleagues now, it would not be wise, and Potter had been his student, it would not be ethical, plus there was the fact that they only barely tolerated one another and it was foolish, really, of Potter to trust him. But they all sounded in Snape's mind like excuses, and he did not see why he should offer an excuse when what he wanted was to bend Potter over the side of his bed and take him the way he had never allowed himself to imagine when Potter was only very slightly younger than now, denying the Boy Who Lived his orgasm or even a touch until after Snape had satisfied himself inside that forbidden body...

"If we do this, what happens in this room must never be discussed with anyone outside it." Potter's eyes widened, and the tiniest hint of a smile appeared at the corners of his mouth; Snape had conceded his willingness, now he was simply setting the terms. "I might be able to help you, Potter, but a single night will accomplish very little for either of us. If you want my assistance learning control, you will have to apply yourself with more interest than I have ever observed from you in your studies."

"I'll do whatever you say. Sir." Potter's eyes flared dangerously as the word left his lips. "If you're saying that you'll, ah, you'll train me, if you can help me..." He dropped to his knees. "I would be very appreciative and I would prove my gratitude."

Once more Snape's throat constricted, making him swallow. Potter looked unnervingly attractive there, kneeling on his floor. It was an image worth preserving. "Imagine if your little fans could see you now. I almost wish I had a camera."

He waited for Potter to bite back, but Potter said only, "Almost?" At that moment, Snape could not have spared a hand for a camera. He began to unfasten his robes, freeing the cock that was now throbbing insistently against the confining fabric beneath. Shifting closer on his knees, Potter reached up and murmured, "Let me help you with that. Sir." Then fingers were tugging Snape's clothing away, cool air drifted over his sweaty cock, heat engulfed the head...

Snape looked down to see his prick in the mouth of Harry Potter, the epicenter if not the cause of nearly all the turmoil in his life during the past several years. What would the Headmaster have said? Would he have called this an act of love -- that parody of respect, this crude contact -- no pretense at attraction, no fondness, not even a kiss first? The thought of Dumbledore, who had loved Snape very nearly unconditionally (there was the small matter of having demanded that he take his life) made Snape burn with fury. His fingers sank into Potter's hair, finding the warm curve of the scalp.

Yes, he could accept this. Potter owed it to him. And in return, Snape supposed, he owed it to Potter to teach him to survive with the forbidden desires he now understood. Maybe they could keep one another in check. Maybe they could keep one another safe...

With a howl more suited to a werewolf than a man, Snape thrust deep into Potter's throat and let go, coming with a speed he hadn't managed since he was practically Potter's age. He heard soft gagging sounds, felt hands scrabbling on his thighs, smelled semen as it spilled out of Potter's swollen lips. Snape had caught him by surprise with his orgasm, just as Potter had caught Snape by surprise with his proposition. There was triumph in the green eyes -- triumph that had driven out the haunted, helpless look.

"Stand up," Snape barked. He watched the way Potter moved, holding his wand arm very slightly away from himself the way he always did, as if it was infected with something the rest of his body might catch. The scar on his forehead had never faded and there were new ones on his throat, the back of one hand...plus others that Snape could not see but could sense, in the caution with which Potter walked, a combination of coltish youth and premature age.

A streak of wetness spilled from the corner of Potter's mouth to his chin. Wiping it up with a finger, Snape held it out as an offering and Potter sucked the fingertip into his mouth, his expression uncertain. "You will go back to your room," Snape ordered. "You will not touch yourself tonight -- if you do, I will know. You will come here tomorrow night at ten precisely. And if you have obeyed these instructions, as a demonstration of your commitment...then I will fuck you. And we will begin."

Defiance flared in Potter's eyes, but he pressed his lips tightly around the finger to hold back whatever retort he wanted to offer. After a minute he released it and said, "Yes, sir." Potter might be frustrated now, Snape knew, but tomorrow he would not be haunted by thoughts of the war; if he ached, if he burned, it would be with simple lust. Or perhaps not simple, but manageable.

"Now go to bed. And sleep." The nonverbal spell he used along with the word didn't always work, particularly without a wand or on a wizard as powerful as one who had defeated a Dark Lord, but Potter's shoulders sagged and his eyelids drooped, this time with what appeared to be simple exhaustion. "I will see you tomorrow."

"Yes." Straightening, Snape tugged his robes closed over his deflated cock as Potter, fumbling with his glasses, followed almost meekly to the door. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet. You have no idea what I plan to demand of you."

"Don't you understand, Severus? It doesn't matter what you plan to demand of me." The look on Potter's face was that of a man saved from the Cruciatus curse. "Tomorrow, I'll be here. And I'll do whatever you want."

That promise alone, Snape knew, would keep him sane tonight.

3. Chastening

Harry stood and looked out at the lake, remembering the last time he had stood here, with Snape beside him, feeling a sort of peace he had not felt since before the war. Snape had been right -- Harry's worries had not disappeared the way the breadcrumbs he had tossed into the water had vanished, gobbled up by fish or sunk beneath the surface. But performing the unfamiliar ritual had suggested a different path to Harry...a path that involved understanding the magician rather than his magic.

The disquiet plaguing him today was of a different nature. I asked him to fuck me, he reminded himself, feeling a thrill sparking in his groin that was half fear and half anticipation. I practically begged him to fuck me. I promised him anything. And he said yes.

The burn that started in his prick and spread through his entire body was very different from the lingering ache in his wand arm...the remembered rapture from the power of a spell. Avada Kedavra. Harry had wondered whether he would ever feel so alive again as he had at that moment, killing Voldemort. A piece of the Dark Lord would be with him forever, as Snape had said.

Snape was the only person who seemed to understand that, and he was not afraid of it. Maybe he had known all along that Harry would wind up like this. And why should Snape be afraid? He'd already outsmarted the Dark Lord. Harry was in his debt forever because Snape had protected him at the crucial moment. Nobody had been more shocked than Harry when Snape turned on his master. Afterward, so many things started to make sense, even Snape having killed Dumbledore.

The cold wind did little to silence Harry's mind, but it made it easier to ignore the tightness in his groin. He had barely slept, writhing in frustration and afraid that if he did doze off, he would ejaculate in his sleep and his fevered dreams would somehow alert Snape to his perfidy. Though he had brushed his teeth twice and sucked on a licorice wand, Harry could still taste the salty, bitter flavor of Snape on his tongue, and no amount of brushing his hair could erase the impression of Snape's fingers gripping his skull.

Should he tell Snape that he had no experience with the sort of surrender he had promised and that he was very nearly a virgin, at least when it came to successful sex with another person? Well, Snape would probably figure it out. He'd seen things in Harry's mind during their disastrous months of Occlumency lessons, no matter how hard Harry had tried to hide them -- both Harry's clumsy experiences with girls and the filthy fantasies of which Harry had been ashamed. He didn't exactly know how it worked, offering to submit to someone sexually, but he got the impression that Snape did. Maybe from both sides.

I don't have to like him, Harry reminded himself. The wind was icy and stung his skin but it cleared his head. Turning, he walked back to the castle.

At five minutes to ten Harry was on his way to the dungeon when he bumped, literally, into Sibyll Trelawney, scattering her shawls and scarves and the bottles of sherry she had hidden among them. By the time he got her picked up, trying urgently to hide the erection straining against his clothing from her inquisitive eyes, he was already two minutes late, and he knocked on Snape's door with his heart pounding and his throat closed over. The door opened very slowly, with Snape's body blocking the view inside, and for a moment Harry thought he would not let him in.

"You're late, Potter."

"I know. I'm sorry. I bumped into..." Snape's eyebrow lifted fractionally. Wrong answer. "I'm very sorry, sir. I have no excuse. I'll accept whatever punishment you give me."

After an interminable hesitation, Snape stepped back from the doorway. "Come in." He did not speak again until he had closed the door and cast a Silencing Charm on the room. With his wand he pointed at the archway to the inner chamber. "Go into the bedroom. Remove all your clothes. Stand with your back to the door and your hands on the mattress, and wait for me."

The commands were spoken in Snape's usual cold, condescending tone, yet Harry thought he could probably come without being touched if Snape ordered him to do so. His entire body felt as if someone had cast a spell to make him burn. It was a very great improvement over being aware at all times of his wand arm, the odd tingling sense of power and loss. "Yes, sir," he said and turned to obey.

He felt very exposed, bent over with his bum sticking out behind him, as he heard Snape come in, footsteps clicking on the floor while the heavy cloth of his robes made soft whispering noises. Snape did not undress but stepped up behind Harry, stroking a hand over the curve of his arse. When Harry let out a soft, involuntary hum, Snape's hand traveled upward, fingers running across the exquisitely sensitive skin at the base of his spine, then teasing just the very upper edge of the furrow that led to the place Harry fervently hoped Snape would soon be stretching open, penetrating with a hot stiff prick and fucking with hard strokes as he grunted behind Harry...

The slap that came down on his buttocks took Harry completely by surprise, jarring his body so hard that he nearly collapsed onto his elbows on the bed. "That's for being late," Snape whispered silkily. Again the hand descended, slightly off the spot that was now stinging in the cool air of the dungeon. "And that's for being so very eager. You'd let me fuck you this very moment. You thought about wanking all day today, didn't you?"

There was no help for it: Harry whimpered, nodding, and was spanked again and again. His arse was burning and his cock jerked in the air with each smack. "You had to cover your groin every time you thought about coming here, didn't you. You were afraid to take your prick out to have a piss. If I wrapped my hand around it right now, you'd come on my bed, wouldn't you?"

"N-no," Harry groaned feebly, less in disagreement than in hope that Snape wouldn't try it. He received one last smack before he heard rustling behind him, felt fabric brush his calves and wondered whether Snape intended to fuck him just like this, with no preparation whatsoever.

But Snape must have had a jar of something in his pocket, because after a few seconds Harry felt slippery fingers sliding against the backs of his balls and up along the crack. "Clean, I hope, Potter?" he remarked in that same superior voice. Harry couldn't believe how much it excited him in this context, like a nasty, oily promise.

He nodded; he had found a book in the restricted section, one of several on sex magic, that explained douching and enemas and which charms and potions could safely be used without irritating one's insides. He had expected it to be disgusting, but knowing that Snape would be filling that same portion of Harry's anatomy with semen had made it something of a thrill. One fingertip slipped in now, warm and slick, and Harry groaned and lifted his hips for more. He couldn't wait to feel Snape's prick (Snape's prick, oh Merlin, Snape's prick) invading his body.

"Impatient?" Snape purred behind him. When had Snape's voice become so arousing? With a soft shudder, Harry nodded and felt an uncomfortable stretch as Snape slid in a second finger. "Not full enough yet?" The taller man's free hand slid along Harry's side, across his chest until it found a nipple that had hardened in the chilly room. Curious fingers rolled it about, tugged and twisted it. "If you're cooperative, and you tell me how much you like it, I'll do this with your prick while my prick is enjoying your arse," Snape whispered.

"Oh -- please, sir, please," Harry babbled. The request that he talk about it, had set his tongue loose. "I want you to fuck me -- I want you to keep touching me. Your hand feels so good. Even spanking me -- I want you to do that with me in your lap. Want you all the way in me." The fingers in his arse curled slightly, stroking downward, and Harry had to stop talking to cry out. "AH! FUCK! Fuck, like that, like that, please..."

The fingers withdrew, and for a terrible moment Harry thought he had said the wrong thing, but then he heard more shuffling of fabric and the sticky delicious sound of a hand rubbing something wet up and down. Snape was preparing himself, touching himself...stroking his own prick in anticipation of fucking Harry. He felt something warm and damp bump against his arse and trembled as he realized it was Snape's leaking cock-head. Put it in, please, put it in, he thought fervently, for once hoping that Snape was reading his mind, and crying out again in pleasure when he felt the hot stiff shaft nudge between his legs and push.

It hurt, at first, more than Harry was expecting; the thickest part of Snape's cock was considerably wider than two of his fingers and Harry did not have a lot of experience with putting large objects in his arse. When he spread his legs and wiggled and pushed against the intruder, the pain eased and he found that he could concentrate on what really mattered: He's inside me, he's fucking me, that's his cock sliding out and in. Even while the discomfort lingered, it was an improvement over the ache in Harry's arm that never seemed to be satisfied -- the tingling that woke him at night making him think he'd slept on it and cut off the circulation. "Keep talking," Snape murmured, breath coming more heavily but not yet hitching.

"It's good," rasped Harry. "Your prick...bigger than I thought," Snape thrust in savagely at that and Harry shouted, but now the ache was slow and deep inside instead of the initial stretch, and Harry's prick was twitching heavily with every glide in and out. "Don't stop, please, want to feel you fucking me." He knew Snape was getting off as much from having Harry Potter beg as from the mechanics of sex, but at the moment he didn't care; Snape wasn't seeing The Chosen One, he was only seeing Harry, and maybe he had been so cruel to Harry for so many years because he'd wanted to do this but it seemed impossible.

Harry would have told Snape how much he wanted to feel him lose control, but he was afraid that Snape would refuse to do it inside him if he said the words aloud. Instead he groaned, "You're making me want to come, I don't know if I can stop, please sir let me..."

A slick hand wrapped around Harry's prick, stroking roughly up and down as Snape thrust, and after only a few seconds Harry felt his balls tighten. "I'm going to do it, sir...I'm coming..." he managed to get out before he could no longer speak, biting his lip during the final unbearable moments before he convulsed and shouted and spurted onto Snape's bed, feeling himself tighten around Snape's prick. The older man lasted another few minutes, long enough for Harry's arse to feel so overstimulated that he feared he would begin to cry out again in discomfort, but then Snape's fingers tightened on his hips and Harry felt him go still deep inside before grunting repeatedly, trying to wrench himself even further in.

Despite the drafty dungeon, Harry was dripping with sweat; he could feel the dampness soaking into Snape's clothes as they sagged together onto the bed. The softening prick slid out of his arse, leaving a damp trail along his thigh, but Snape remained pressed over him, touching his chest, and after a moment Harry realized that he was being marked with his own semen by those moving fingers.

"Satisfied, Potter? You didn't even wait for permission to come."

The voice was smug and taunting. Harry made a small choking noise. "I did warn you. I didn't realize I needed to ask for permission."

"And I didn't realize you wanted to be held and stroked like a spoiled little boy. I didn't think you came here because you'd always dreamed of going to bed with me. I thought you came here to learn how to maintain some semblance of control."

"I -- " Harry felt himself blushing hard, though he couldn't bring himself to regret anything that they had done, even if Snape thought Harry was excited by his scrawny body or greasy hair or because he'd been his teacher. Maybe Snape kept his clothes on because he knew he wasn't terribly attractive or because he thought Harry got aroused by the professorial robes. "I do want to learn control. That helped. All of it, what you said and how you punished me. If you want more..." He remembered what Snape had said about Harry asking for what he needed. "I want to keep doing this. Whenever you'll let me."

"Why?" demanded Snape.

Because you're not afraid of me, Harry wanted to say. Because I think you knew all along that my life would be like this if I succeeded in stopping Voldemort. And yours too. Snape had not much seemed to care what would happen to himself once Voldemort fell -- it was as if he was disappointed to have survived the war. There had been no gratitude, no reaction at all really, when Harry argued before the Wizengamot that because Dumbledore had insisted upon it, Snape's use of the Killing Curse should be forgiven; Harry had, after all, been forgiven himself for using the same curse on Voldemort.

"I know why the Unforgivables require a permanent place in Azkaban. It isn't only what they do to a victim. Both the Cruciatus and Imperius Curses can be broken. It's what they do to the wizard or witch who uses them," he said aloud. He could feel Snape holding very still behind him. "You don't think I'm something special -- you know what I've done. You won't make excuses for me. You'll make me earn my pleasure."

"If that is what you want, there are some rules." Harry nodded. "First, you are to stop indulging yourself. You will stop relying on remedies, potions or alcohol for your discomforts. You will bring yourself to orgasm only in this room. When you feel the need to dose yourself or to come outside this room, you will practice levitation charms until it passes. You will never arrive here before ten p.m. and you will never speak of this outside to myself or to anyone else? Is this all clear so far?"

"Yes, sir." He listened as Snape continued, telling him what preparations were expected. Strangely, his prick was throbbing again just from hearing Snape give him orders. He's going to make me come from now on.

Harry didn't think he could have done this with anyone he didn't already resent somewhat -- not a stranger, and certainly not any of the people he'd attempted to date or pursue romantically. He still didn't feel much liking for Snape, but he felt a great sense of relief. Snape didn't do things halfway. He had sabotaged their Occlumency lessons because he had felt it necessary, and he had pushed Harry as a student exactly as hard as he felt Harry needed to be pushed. He wasn't going to let Harry fall to pieces now as a matter of pride even if not personal attachment.

And as far as learning to control one's physical responses, Harry couldn't help but think that this was one of the more desirable ways to do it. He had read a little about sex magic when he went to look for purging charms. There was some danger of personal attachment, but Harry really didn't think he had to worry about that with Snape, and there was some danger of addiction, but Harry didn't see how that could be worse than addiction to the tingling ache that never left his arm.

"Tergeo," Snape said softly. At once Harry's arse felt clean, dry...empty. "Put on your clothes. I will wait for you in the other room. The bath is through the second door if you need it."

Of course Harry did not need it, after that spell, but maybe Snape thought he would wish to go through the ritual of washing, the same way Snape had gone through the ritual of casting away his misdeeds by the lake. Straightening, he looked at Snape for the first time since Snape had come into the bedroom to fuck him. He expected to see triumph in the dark eyes, satisfaction at least. He did not expect the pained expression, immediately pushed away in favor of cool indifference.

"Do you think I could have a glass of water?" Harry asked.

"I will have one waiting." Snape had already closed whatever part of his clothing he had opened to fuck Harry. He turned, seemingly invulnerable again behind the black robes, leaving Harry alone.

His arse felt sore as he dressed. Snape had not used a remedial charm. After all the Crucios that Harry had endured, he had never imagined that he could welcome any sort of pain. He had not wanted to think that pain might be necessary for him to heal.

4. Expurgation

It would be far too easy to get used to this, thought Severus Snape as he watched Harry Potter begin to unbutton his robes. Snape had not had to order him to do so, for Potter's fingers had gone to work practically the moment the door had shut behind him. He had offered only a cursory duck of his head and a "Good evening, sir" to Snape. He had not appeared to notice the small owl on a perch in a corner of the room, hooting softly and huddling protectively over its injured wing.

A scant three and a half weeks had passed since the start of these clandestine meetings. During that time, there had been only two nights when they had failed to see one another: once when Potter had been summoned by the Ministry to display as their trophy at a gathering of educators, which the Headmistress had insisted over Potter's objections that he attend on behalf of Hogwarts, and the past night, when Snape had been obligated to sit up late with McGonagall talking to a first-year Slytherin who had tried to run away from the castle, believing that he must be a squib after being ridiculed for his incompetence at transfiguration. Potter had been frantic after the last missed evening, arriving at an indiscreetly early hour under the pretense of wishing to discuss changes in the Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum being proposed for all Wizarding schools. He had tossed aside his formal robes and begged Snape to fuck him before Snape had even finished casting a silencing charm. Then he had come in Snape's lap as Snape punished him, the smack of a hand emphasizing Snape's words as he berated Potter for his lack of self-control.

It was therefore hard to say whether or not matters were improving. Potter no longer walked through the halls looking as if unseen monsters were assailing him. He made some effort to eat, he was more conversational with other colleagues. Yet Snape suspected that Potter had merely replaced one unhealthy preoccupation with another. Instead of putting most of his concentration into what must have been overwhelming duties as a newly hired teacher, Potter found excuses to visit the dungeons during the day. He had moved his seat beside Snape's in the Great Hall at meals. More than once he had asked Snape if he fancied a turn around the Quidditch pitch, and over the past weekend he had invited Snape to have a drink with him at the Three Broomsticks, or -- when Snape pointed out that he never went into the Three Broomsticks -- at the Hog's Head. And Potter had had the temerity to roll his eyes when Snape explained that he never went there either.

This evening Potter had arrived at the appointed time, red-cheeked with eagerness and making no attempt to hide it. He already had an erection that he did not bother to disguise either, standing with his legs spread in a pair of tight trousers as he tossed his teaching robes aside. Apparently Potter believed that a sound fucking would cure all his ills. "What do you think you're doing?" Snape asked him.

"Taking off my clothes. Sir." Green eyes regarded Snape owlishly from behind the glasses that Potter had not yet removed. When he reached up to do so, Snape shook his head. The beginnings of a smirk crossed Potter's face, though he caught himself quickly. "Are you going to make me watch you or something?"

"No, but you will need to be able to see clearly for what I have in mind." Snape paused, savoring the moment he had planned the night before while listening to a sniffling child insist that he couldn't do things he had not yet tried. "This evening, the activity I have planned does not involve either of our pricks." Potter's cheeks were still pink, and now a faint frown puckered his brow. "As flattered as I might be by your apparent belief that being buggered by me will restore balance to your life, it doesn't work that way. How is your arm?"

Potter's eyes dropped to it immediately. He knew which arm Snape meant -- his wand arm -- though he was not holding the wand at the moment. There was no outward sign of injury to the limb; Snape had studied it very thoroughly, with his tongue and cheek as well as his eyes and fingers. "It's fine," replied the younger man, shrugging slightly, though he used the gesture to move the arm out of contact with his torso. "It isn't bothering me so much. I think the..."

"Good. You'll need your wand," Snape replied shortly, seeing disappointment as well as curiosity in the slant of the eyebrow cocked at him. "I think a bit of a reminder might be of assistance. There are many wizards among us, Aurors as well as criminals, who have put their uses of Unforgivable Curses into the past without requiring regular subjugation."

"It seems to me like you've been enjoying the subjugation," Potter shot at him, but he drew the wand out, shaking both the wood and the arm that held it. Shortly after the war had ended, there was some talk at the Ministry about asking Potter to burn this wand. The Deletrius spell did not always purge all evidence of previous magical workings, as Snape knew well, for he had watched the Headmaster's ghostly form emerge from Snape's own wand to demand Snape's exoneration for murder long after a Prior Incantato should have been impossible. McGonagall had told Snape that shortly after Potter's return to Hogwarts, he had talked to her about exchanging wands, but she had advised him to keep the one he had. It had been thought by the Minister of Magic that whatever echo of Voldemort might remain could best be contained by his slayer.

Snape could see Potter's unease, but he had no intention of risking contact with whatever ghostly fragment of the Dark Lord still existed in that wand; he was more concerned with the darkness in Potter himself. With a gesture Snape indicated the injured owl, which gazed at them warily but calmly. It trusted Snape, who had been feeding it for the past several days and had caught himself engaging it in the sort of absurd conversation that people have with pets. "Wilhemina Grubbly-Plank tells me that the wing and talons can never properly heal," he explained to Potter. "The bird tried to make off with an ashwinder egg."

Harry reached out cautiously toward the little owl, which tilted its head but made no attempt to bite him. His expression was somber and troubled. "If Professor Grubbly-Plank says it can't be healed, I don't know how to help it, sir," he said softly. "Are you trying to make me think I'm like the bird and have to get used to..."

"The Killing Curse isn't the only way to cause immediate death, you know." As Snape spoke, Potter turned away from the owl, nose wrinkled in confusion. "It may be untraceable to Muggles, but it's not the most efficient. It requires conviction to cast effectively. And it certainly isn't the most satisfying if you're a bloodthirsty wizard who likes to make his victims suffer. You can't lose your temper and use it on someone who's accidentally hit you with a bludger -- not unless you really hate that person already." Not like Potter's use of Sectumsempra on Draco Malfoy, which might have been just as fatal as Avada Kedavra had Snape not arrived in time to heal Malfoy's wounds.

The owl hooted softly, picking up a half-eaten insect in its beak and dropping it on the floor as if it wished to share. Smiling a little, Potter bent over and lifted the food back to the bird, which cocked its head again, studying him, and took the insect back. It was a game the bird had tried to play with Snape as well. An odd feeling moved through his stomach. "You said you understood why the Unforgivables would earn you a one way ticket to Azkaban," he snapped, making Potter turn quickly to meet his eyes. "Explain it to me."

Potter chewed his lip as he thought about this. At least he was no longer smiling. "Like you said, there are other ways to kill people or manipulate them into doing what you want. I think it's because wizards who have cast those spells look for reasons to keep using them."

Now Snape smiled, although he took no delight in this triumph. "And why would that be, Potter?"

"Because they're..." Snape watched him search his mind for a word that was both accurate and acceptable. "Easy. Well, not easy, like you said -- you have to mean them. But powerful. Like nothing else."

"Would you describe the Killing Curse as pleasurable?"

"That curse killed both my parents!" Potter's face twisted in anger and betrayal. Absurdly, he had not expected this from Snape.

"I wasn't asking how you felt about the curse in the abstract. As a wizard who has used Avada Kedavra to take a life..." Snape remembered well the fascination the words had held for him the first time he had heard them, a twist on the Muggle joke-magic he had often witnessed in his childhood, Abracadabra. He had practiced the curse on insects, then on rats and birds not much smaller than this one, until the night when a prophecy repeated from his own lips caused the curse to be used against this boy's parents. Dumbledore's death had been only one of many unforgivable things he had done, no matter what the Wizengamot might have ruled. "How would you define the experience? Enthralling? Addictive? Ecstatic?"

"I didn't want to do it. I had no choice. Yes!" Fury had replaced every other emotion on Potter's face. "And you'd know it just as well as I would, wouldn't you!"

"Turn around." Snape pointed at the wall, uncertain whether Potter would now insist on railing at him instead of obeying, but despite his trembling wand arm, the boy faced the owl again. "Look at that pathetic creature. It is never going to fly again. It is just going to sit there ducking its sad little head and making those miserable noises. End its suffering."

"I already told you, I don't know how. I haven't got any special powers. Of anyone I never expected to ask me to play the Chosen One..." The owl hooted, interrupting, and Potter turned a ghastly shade as he looked at it. "Oh. You can't mean...you don't want me to..."

"You know exactly what I mean. You've been preoccupied with that curse, haven't you? It's changed your entire demeanor. This is another kind of control -- you need to face your fear. The bird isn't a human being. You can put as much power into those two words as you want..."

"You're mental." Harry's skin had turned from white to greenish. "You're vile. You can't think I'd do that!"

"Then why am I wasting my time with you, Potter? You promised to do whatever I told you."

"I didn't promise to do anything you told me! I wouldn't start a fire in a dormitory or drink the blood of a vampire! We weren't talking about dark magic!"

"Dark magic is exactly what we have been talking about! Did you believe you would recover from the most powerful curse known to wizards by way of ecstatic punishment? Orgasm is a diversion, not a cure." Indeed, Potter had not refused any sexual demand; the more extreme Snape's efforts, the more passionately Potter responded. "I have not asked you to do anything dangerous. You came to me because you felt out of control. You need to master this compulsion. The physical distraction you feel with me will fade and then you will not be safe."

"Maybe it won't fade."

"It will, and I cannot always be here." Potter looked stricken, and Snape felt momentary surprise at the discovery of how much he liked that. But tempting as it might have been, he knew better than to try to encourage such an attachment. Potter's interest in himself was entirely utilitarian. "I am your teacher, not your keeper. Do as I say and put the bird out of its misery. Show me that the Ministry was not wrong to let an untrained boy wander free after using the Killing Curse. If you cannot face your deeds, they will control you."

Potter straightened defiantly. His lips pressed together in a thin line. His arm was shaking so hard as he raised the wand that Snape would have feared for any objects in the vicinity, if he had owned anything he valued.

Setting his chin, Potter looked at the owl, which again cocked its head and made a small warbling noise. "Do it," Snape urged.

Potter whirled so quickly that Snape could not penetrate his thoughts. Perhaps the reluctant student had finally learned to block him, or perhaps Snape had grown overconfident. In either case, he landed hard on his back, his entire body stinging, eyes blinded from the spell that had shot out of Potter's wand.

"Severus!" Snape could hear before he could see clearly, listening to Potter drop his wand with a clatter, feet racing over to where Snape had fallen. "Oh fuck. I didn't mean -- "

"Didn't you?" Snape croaked out. Potter's arms went around his back, pulling him to a sitting position. For a moment the room swam nauseatingly and Snape clutched at Potter's arm to regain his equilibrium.

The arm was shaking...Potter was shaking. Trembling with rage, and also crying, tears streaming beneath his glasses, though Snape wasn't even certain that the younger man was aware of it. "How could you...how could..." Potter began twice, as he was pulling Snape to his feet, fingers digging into his shoulders. "HOW COULD YOU ASK ME TO DO THAT!"

"You didn't do it," Snape replied mildly. He felt a deep, gratifying sense of accomplishment, exacerbated perhaps by the lightheadedness still afflicting him from being hit by Potter's spell. "If you had succeeded, then we would both know exactly how much you had been affected by that Avada Kedavra that ended the war. Since you did not, now we know that you haven't been compromised by it. You can't even perform a mercy killing."

"Not like you." Potter's watery glare was savage nonetheless. Their eyes locked, and once again Snape knew an instant too late that he'd underestimated The Chosen One -- the room blurred, his thoughts swam, and he was suddenly on the parapets watching a bolt of green light shoot from his wand, its power searing gloriously up his arm as the Headmaster flew into the air...

Snape had no memory afterward of summoning the spell that flung Potter against the wall, frightening the little owl which squawked in alarm. The younger man's cry brought him back to his senses. "Satisfied?" Snape spat. Still dizzy from hitting the floor, he checked to be certain that Potter appeared to be unharmed -- or could stand on his own, at least, since Potter shoved Snape's hands away, then wrapped both his arms around himself.

As angry as the Occlumens felt at having had his thoughts invaded, his sense of accomplishment remained; he did not think that Potter would be stained by the Killing Curse any longer. Not like Snape himself. "Well?" he demanded.

Potter did not answer, or perhaps he could not. His body heaved with silent sobs. His glasses had slipped down his nose and fallen to the floor. After another moment, Snape stepped close, took Potter's wrist, pulled him across the room and sat him down on the sofa. Broken, the boy looked both pitiable and rather fetching.

"Quiet now. It's over."

"You fucking bastard. You had no right. You had no right!"

"Should I have let you use a safeword?" Snape inquired without venom. The query was bitter enough. When it failed to provoke any reponse, he slid his fingers into the dark hair and turned Potter's face to look at him. "My back would be less sore if I had. Potter, the war is finished. Put it behind you and move on."

Tears were still spilling out of the green eyes but to Snape's surprise, there was no shame in the glare he received. Not so broken, after all. Leaning in, he kissed the boy's mouth. "Stop it," choked Potter, lifting his arms and clinging to him.

Snape kissed him again. "Do you really want me to stop?"

The tears were slowing; Potter was kissing him back with wet, salty lips. "I-I hate you." His eyes were shut.

Brushing his mouth across the long dark lashes, Snape brought up his other hand to stroke Potter's chest. "Do you." Damp fingers stuttered their way up his shoulders, holding him close. Still kissing the wet face, he moved his hand to Potter's cock, which was already hard. The firm young body arched toward him, breathing in and out in small gasps.

Oh, yes, Potter wanted this -- wanted to be kissed and stroked and coddled. There was no trace of a Dark Lord in him. The idea was very nearly comical. "Please," he mumbled, straining against Snape's fingers. "Oh god. Don't. Stop. Please."

"Shh," Snape told him again, silencing him with his mouth. Soft lips parted for him, admitting his tongue, which was stroked and sucked. Warm arms locked around his neck and Potter made a small needy noise. Ahh...as revenge went, this was better than hitting him. The bulge beneath Snape's hand was already leaking, warm drips in the trousers that he could feel seeping through the fabric. He unfastened and tugged down Potter's clothes, fingers gliding over the smooth skin of the stiff cock.

Potter's mouth broke free to breathe. His nostrils were still clogged with tears. "Please," he moaned again. "Don't, stop, please, don't stop, Severus, I'll die, please..."

If was one of the few perfect moments of Snape's life, listening to the Chosen One beg freely. "I'm not stopping," he assured Potter in a low voice. "Not until you come."

The boy in his arms cried out and clutched at him. Potter's fingers jerked roughly in his hair but Snape ignored them as hot spurts spattered his chest and hand. He milked Potter's cock dry, proudly, brutally, feeling the same numbing sense of accomplishment as when he had watched the Dark Lord fall.

By the time the spasms had stopped, Potter was flushed and trembling slightly. His arms were still around Snape's neck and his lips were swollen from kissing. "You need to sleep," Snape told him softly. "Come on. Off to bed with you."

The long dark lashes fluttered. "What about you...?"

"Stop arguing with me. Get up."

Meekly, all the fight gone out of him, Potter followed when Snape took his hand and led him to his bedroom. He sat quietly as Snape cleaned him up and fetched him a glass of water. He did not speak until Snape turned his legs onto the bed and pulled the covers over them.

"You're letting me sleep here?"

"You're in no state to be wandering through the castle."

"But it's your bed."

"So you had better shove over. I'll be back after I've cleaned my teeth and taken care of the bird."

"Wait! About the owl. You're not going to..." Potter paused, his mouth twisting. "Promise me you won't. I'll take it in the morning."

"You will do no such thing. As you would know if you had ever paid proper attention in my classroom, owl pellets are vital ingredients in a number of potions. That bird works for me."

Potter's lips were still opening and shutting like an idiot's. "You knew I wouldn't kill it. You weren't ever going to let me..." He laughed, a strange, terrible sound like a cry. "You knew I wouldn't kill it."

Dull pain moved through Snape's throat, forcing him to swallow. "I knew you wouldn't kill it," he agreed. "Now lie down."

Potter did not lie down. He shifted to the edge of the mattress and reached up to unfasten Snape's robes.

"What do you think you're doing?" But from the feel of the nose and chin nuzzling his groin, it was already obvious, and Snape chose not to protest any further.

Potter sucked him as though he'd missed his supper and was frantic for a mouthful. It was messy, because his nose was still stuffed and he kept sniffling and slurping to allow himself to breathe, but no less pleasurable for the lack of finesse. I didn't realize how much you craved this, Snape thought of taunting him, but there was no need; it was victory enough to feel Potter's desperation.

He thought about pulling out and coming on Potter's face, announcing to the boy that it was all he deserved after such a pathetic display -- his face was already wet, after all -- though this might be the last time, after all, maybe Potter would pull himself together now. Admittedly Snape did not want to stop. To teach Potter proper control, he could have put a harness on him and wanked over his restrained prick. Or spanked him with a plug inside. Or maybe it would have been enough to let Potter clutch at him just like this, as if the privilege was the best thing that had ever happened to him, mouth stretched wide and eyes straining to meet Snape's own, still rimmed with red but wanton and grateful...

Snape grabbed Potter's hair and poured himself down his throat, muttering, "Fuck, Harry. Fuck!"

Within minutes of guzzling Snape's ejaculate as if it were Felix Felicis, Potter was asleep like a child, lowered and rolled onto the mattress by Snape's sated, resting weight. The boy's lips parted and twitched upward as he began to dream. Rising, Snape went to retrieve Potter's glasses as well as his wand, which was still lying where it had been dropped, forgotten. Picking it up, Snape conjured a dead mouse from behind the dungeon wall and Scourgified the floor beneath the bird's perch.

The owl bobbed its head up and down and puffed its feathers out. "Happy now?" Snape asked it. A soft hoot was his reply.

When he returned to the bed, Potter rolled toward him, murmuring something under his breath. "Hush," Snape told him, waving the candles out and feeling the warm body beside him fall still. Lying on the far side of the mattress, he let a bitter smile curve his lips.

5. Appeasement

"What are you doing here?" Snape demanded when Harry arrived the next evening and walked through the door without being invited in. Perhaps Snape hadn't anticipated seeing him that night. Earlier Harry had been summoned once again by the Minister of Magic, this time to witness the historic passage of Educational Decree Number Thirty-Eight, which would in theory protect children from recruitment by groups like the Death Eaters; in practice, it would prevent Harry from teaching any really useful Defense Against the Dark Arts strategies because they might make students aware of why the Dark Arts were alluring in the first place. None of the smiling, congratulatory officials at the Ministry had listened to any of Harry's objections.

When he'd returned to Hogwarts, Harry had taken a walk down by the lake, where the wind had been icy and his hands had grown numb, deadening both the humiliation of being ignored at the Ministry and the deeper shame of his behavior the night before. All day he'd wavered between itching to talk to Snape and feeling too mortified to face him. Now it was a respectably late hour, and Harry was pretty sure Snape's irritation at seeing him was more performance than real displeasure. Tossing Snape a grin in response to the question about why he was there, he began to unbutton his robes, only to stop short when his gaze fell on the far side of the room.

"Where's the owl?"

"In the Potions laboratory. I'm sick and tired of listening to him whoop all night." Harry smiled again at this. Snape had called the owl "it" rather than "him" for all of the previous evening. He wondered whether Snape had given the bird a name. "You still haven't answered my question, Potter. What are you doing?"

"Taking my clothes off so you can fuck me. Sir." Just saying the words sent a searing ache to Harry's groin that overwhelmed any residual loss of composure. "Would you rather that I left them on? I wouldn't mind if you wanted to bend me over your desk, pull my trousers down and put it in."

He felt lightheaded, as he had all day, since he woke in Snape's bed with the older man's body curved alongside his own. Maybe the wooziness had come from hitting his head against the wall the night before, after Snape had hurled him halfway across the room with a spell, but that hadn't worried Harry when he woke. The little owl had indeed been hooting softly, but hearing the bird had made Harry feel safe. In the warm, narrow space between Snape and the rumpled blankets against the wall, Harry could think of no more peaceful place to lie drowsing before the candles all flared to life at once at the appointed hour.

If he hadn't been uncertain of his welcome, Harry would have rolled over and sucked Snape awake in gratitude for the calm in his mind and body that came with understanding his own weakness. His mouth had tasted sour and thick with the remains of Snape's come, a flavor that was humiliating and satisfying all at once, just like Harry's memories of the night before. He hadn't cried like that since the end of the war. Everyone expected him to act the part of the hero and he'd felt selfish just thinking about how unhappy he was.

Snape was glowering again, but Harry didn't think he was going to throw him out, even though he had been extremely cross with him that morning after the confused greeting ("Harry") with which he had blinked himself awake. They had ended up seated next to one another at breakfast and Snape had slammed the salt shaker onto the table when Harry asked him to please pass it along, emphasizing his vicious mood. By contrast, his current tight-lipped glare seemed almost subdued. "I thought we agreed that these nocturnal visits were not particularly helpful to you."

"We didn't agree. You never asked for my opinion. I think they are helping me. Besides, isn't it obvious I still need to learn control? I knocked you flat on your back. And I broke into your thoughts, even though I swore to myself when you used to do it to me that if I ever learned to do that, I would not do it to anyone else."

"All of which means that I cannot be an effective teacher, nor is this an effective method." Snape had his lips pressed together, his arms crossed and his eyes narrowed, making him look more compact and self-reliant than Harry could imagine anyone being. Snape's hair was stringy, his skin sallow and all in all he looked just as sexy as he'd looked kissing Harry the night before, when Harry even hadn't wanted to want to kiss him.

Of course, Harry had been unable to help himself; he'd spent too much time imagining Snape kissing him just that way, as if Harry was his lover instead of the most wretched pupil he'd ever had. "I told you, it is helping me," he insisted. "You don't have to teach me anything. I learn something anyway every time you touch me."

Snape's expression turned distinctly uncomfortable and he shifted his gaze away. "If you are no longer consumed by the events of the war, then I've done what I can for you, Potter..."

I'm not the only one here consumed by the events of the war, Harry wanted to say, but he didn't dare take that approach. Instead he asked, "Are you saying you don't want to fuck me?"

Got you. Harry allowed himself a single moment of gloating during the momentary hesitation when Snape looked like he might throw him down and fuck him right there before the cool mask of indifference settled over his features. There was a fine line, Harry knew, between convincing Snape of his power over the Boy Who Lived and making himself so pathetic that Snape wouldn't see that as a victory. "Come on, humiliate me. Or I'll think you've gone soft because you made me cry." He went back to removing his clothes. "Oh. I want 'wormwood.'"

"You know that using the Draught of Living Death to procure a partner's sexual passivity is against Ministry..."

"I can't believe you're citing Ministry regulations about sex at me. And I didn't mean I literally wanted wormwood." Naturally, Snape had immediately snapped into teacher mode; the diversion was working, and Harry kept stripping off as he talked. "You asked if you should have let me have a safeword. I didn't really know how those worked, so I looked in a couple of books. Too bad we can't add protective sex magic to the Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum -- it's something it would be very helpful to know. Anyway, I thought 'wormwood' would be a good safeword because who in their right mind would be thinking about Potions during sex?"

"A reasonable supposition," Snape granted in a voice that was somehow more menacing than impressed. "But perhaps too easy to forget. I would prefer to hear 'mercy' instead."

"What if I don't want to ask for mercy?" asked Harry, turning as he folded his trousers so that Snape couldn't miss seeing that he was hard.

"What if I don't want to end whatever I'm doing until you're kneeling on my floor again crying like a little boy?" enunciated Snape carefully as he approached, finally allowing a smirk of satisfaction to cross his face at Harry's blush. "I will stop when you say, 'Mercy.' Not before."

At least Snape wasn't pretending that he didn't want this. "Whatever you say, sir," granted Harry, unable to keep a bit of scoffing from his voice.

"You don't sound very appreciative. Did you have a difficult day at the Ministry of Magic? Wasn't your arse licked sufficiently?"

For all Snape's contempt for the Wizarding Examinations Authority and other divisions of the Ministry concerned with education, Harry realized, Snape was angry that Harry had been invited while he had not. He was jealous! "My arse was hardly licked at all, so there's no need to get possessive of it," Harry announced. "Though if you want to finish the job..."

"Perhaps those officials have finally come to their senses. The last thing you need is any more arse-licking than you receive already from your grateful admirers. I preferred you last night, when you were so meek and desperate to suck my prick." Despite all the layers Snape wore, Harry could see that the organ in question was growing stiff, and he reached out to begin to open Snape's robes. "Speaking of which..."

"You liked that, didn't you?" accused Harry, though he went to his knees on the rug as he peered up with a smirk. "You're not turning vanilla on me?"

"I'm not the one who started bawling," Snape began, but he didn't finish right away, since Harry had reached into Snape's trousers to take out his cock. He licked the shaft, then rubbed the head of it against his cheek, gazing up at Snape with an expression that said, You like this as much as I do.

"I think you lied to me, Potter," hissed Snape. "I think your arse has been licked far too often, by Ministers, by students, by teachers, by colleagues..." Rather than reply, Harry brushed his tongue over the tip of the swelling cock. It was gratifying to taste Snape's arousal, just as it had been the previous night. "This is too vanilla. After a long day at the Ministry of people falling over each other to kiss your feet and tell you how wonderful you are, do you know what I think you need to keep your head on level?"

"No." Harry grinned up at him, rubbing his nose up and down against the shaft. "What do I need to keep my head on level?"

Snape reached down, pushing Harry's fingers off his prick and replacing them with his own. It was so mesmerizing to watch that hand slide up and down, squeezing the thick shaft and making the head turn purple, that Harry did not realize Snape meant for it to be humiliating until the cock batted him across the face. It wasn't a hard slap, but it was still something of a shock, and Harry let out a surprised yelp.

"Like that, do you?" Snape growled. Harry wanted to see his expression, but he did not want to look away from the swollen cock that Snape was pleasuring so aggressively over and against his face. So intent was his stare that only Snape's strangled, "Close your eyes!" prevented him from being blinded by burning semen when a jet suddenly spurted up his cheek, over his lashes and into his hair. Groaning loudly, Snape spattered his face again and again, sagging forward until his knees touched Harry's chest.

Harry's heart was pounding; he couldn't remember the last time he had been so excited, not even the first time Snape had fucked him. "Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck," he chanted, reaching down to stroke himself.

"Stop that. I didn't give you permission to come. Maybe I'll leave you tied up all night like this and send you back to the Ministry tomorrow with my filth dried on your face. Who'd kiss your pretty arse then?"

Still not daring to open his eyes, Harry licked his lips, tasting the bitter fluid. "You might be surprised," he panted. "They might pretend not to notice. I'm the Chosen One, remember?"

"Chosen to serve as my personal receptacle," agreed Snape. "A role that suits you. Don't you think you should show me your appreciation for all I do for you?"

"I was about to when you decided you'd rather have a wank." Leaning forward, Harry took the head of Snape's prick in his mouth again, licking the bitter drips of seed from around the crown. Again he reached down to tug on his own swollen cock, not stopping until Snape bent down to pull his hand away. The older man wiped Harry's eyes clean with part of his robes, but Harry did not stop trying to suck him enthusiastically. You want appreciation? I'll show you appreciation.

"Stop that!" Snape's prick was always very sensitive after being sucked. "Get on the bed. On all fours." When Harry did not obey instantly, Snape barked, "I said stop."

Harry's mouth slurped off the cock it was teasing. "You didn't say 'mercy.'"

"Get on the bed," roared Snape, "or I will send you back to Gryffindor Tower like the whingeing little boy you are!"

The astonishment in Snape's eyes was evident as Harry rose, took Snape's face between his damp, dirty hands and gave him a long, hungry kiss that made the room spin. When Snape finally managed to pull away, wiping at the corner of his mouth with his hand, Harry batted his eyelashes at him. "Oh, sir, don't send me away! I'll cry, sir, to think of you all alone down here in your dungeon with only an owl for company..."

"Shut up!" Something flared in Snape's eyes, and for a terrifying, thrilling instant, Harry thought he was going to be hurled against the wall again before the implacable armor of Occlumency descended. "Get on the bed, or fix your clothes and leave."

Withdrawing his hands, Harry turned slowly and crossed the room, discarding his remaining clothing carelessly as he walked. When he reached the foot of the bed, he leaned over with his hands on the mattress. It had been tempting, for a moment, to start rebuttoning his clothes, just to see what Snape would do...but there was a good chance that Snape might have let him leave, so it was simply not worth the risk. Still, he couldn't help asking, "Would you really rather be spending this evening alone, Severus?"

Snape did not dignify the question with a response. Removing his own clothing, he sat on the bed and pulled Harry across his lap. Now that Snape knew how much it excited Harry to be hit, the spankings were harder than they had been at first. Usually Snape wanted to fuck him more than he wanted to slap him, though if Harry was disobedient he would do it anyway, insisting that Potter had earned the red arse that Snape was going to give him. Tonight, however, since Snape had already come, he was willing to indulge Harry more thoroughly.

This sort of humiliation was a comfort after having been reduced to tears the night before. The memory of how much it had aroused Snape when Harry had come in his lap mid-spanking only made it better. He shouted breathlessly, losing the count, rubbing himself against Snape's thigh. By the time the hand finally ceased to punish Harry's receptive backside, pausing to stroke and tease before offering another smack, Snape was hard again. Harry could see that his face had grown flushed with a combination of fury and lust.

"Get on your hands and knees," Snape wheezed, unable to conjure the proper vehement tone. As a Potions Master, Snape surely knew that saliva was an entirely unsatisfactory lubricant, but that was all he used, reaching around Harry's hip to yank roughly on his cock.

"Oh god -- yes," gasped Harry, even though it hurt to be penetrated with so little preparation and his arse was still smarting from the slaps. He shifted, trying to adjust, and Snape slid in deep, opening Harry up as his hand continued to stroke demandingly. It was exactly what Harry had wanted, that demanding sort of claim. "Severus, fuck me..."

"Shut up, shut up," Snape chanted, his thrusts stabbing and uneven. Usually he was more controlled than this -- particularly since he'd come already, it often took him longer to recover.

Harry's voice caught, and he sounded like the tearful boy of the previous day when he began to beg. "Please, let me come, please. Oh God...wanted this all day, please..."

"Don't," gasped Snape, who started to say something else, but what came out was, "Shh. Yes. Come," and then Harry did, pulsing in and over his hand, knees buckling so that Snape very nearly collapsed on top of him. "Harry," he heard Snape moan behind him, burying his face in Harry's hair as if he hadn't meant to let the name escape his lips.

Snape's muscles tensed, regaining control, and Harry wondered through the haze of pleasure whether Snape was afraid to thrust for fear of causing him pain. It would be just like Snape not to want to make Harry use a word to stop him; he would consider it not a failure on Harry's part but on his own. He slid in and out hesitantly, panting harshly, as Harry caught his own breath. "Come on, finish what you started," he panted. "Fuck me."

This was not temptation that Snape could resist, Harry noted, even though Harry had given Snape an order rather than the other way around. The older man thrust hard, grunting with his mouth open so that his breath heated Harry's ear and no coherent words could escape. By the time he came, Harry was whimpering with every movement, face buried in a pillow to muffle the sounds. Snape pulled out quickly but stayed draped over him for several minutes, and when Harry let out a helpless little grunt of discomfort, Snape shifted, looked down and sucked in a breath.

"Am I bleeding?"

"No, but you're very swollen. Let me get my wand." Whatever healing charm Snape used relieved Harry instantly, the mess and the stink disappearing along with the pain. He wanted to press back against Snape and fall asleep again in that space between the wizard and the wall where it didn't matter what he had done or what anyone else expected of him.

After a minute he felt Snape combing back his hair with his hands, the thick unruly locks smoothing between his fingers. Whether he meant it as a mark of possession, an apology of sorts for hurting Harry's arse or only because he liked the feel of the hair in his hands, Harry didn't know or care. Even if Snape barely spoke to him out of bed, refusing to acknowledge that they were colleagues now, he was one of very few people -- perhaps the only person -- who both understood what Harry had been through and didn't bother with admiration or gratitude or expectations, real or feigned.

"Did you give the owl a name?" he asked sleepily.

Snape stiffened. "Yes."

Apparently that was all the man intended to say on the subject. Harry yawned. "Why won't you have a drink with me in Hogsmeade?" he asked sleepily, wariness muted by satiation.

He felt rather than heard Snape sigh, shifting away, and was sorry that he had picked this moment to ask. "I warned you that you were confusing this with something it isn't."

"Then what is it, Severus?" There was no immediate reply. They were no longer embracing, yet still lying very close together, and Harry could feel Snape's body tensing. "You're right, you know. You were never going to put my life in order with your prick. But that didn't stop you from letting me come here."

"Perhaps I shouldn't have."

"Bollocks. What do you think is going to happen if we sit down and have a normal conversation? I suppose I might bore you, but I'm not as dull as a staff meeting and you seem all right at those."

Snape made a funny little sound like a laugh. "What do you hope to accomplish? The war may have changed your perspective on yourself, Potter, but I assure you that it has not changed me. Everything you found loathsome about me while I was giving you Occlumency lessons still applies."

With a guilty start, Harry understood that Snape knew exactly what Harry had thought of him, not only as a teacher -- he had not been at all shy about expressing that -- but his appearance, pale, bony, greasy, hook-nosed, and the unpleasantness of his personality and his voice -- Harry not having imagined at the time that he would come to find that voice and its coolly barked commands arousing. He flipped over, facing Snape, whose eyes dropped to a spot on the mattress. "As you were so fond of telling me, I was an immature, arrogant, undisciplined little prat."

"And you aren't any longer?"

That made Harry smile. All afternoon at the Ministry, he had been faced with people insisting earnestly that they valued his input and treasured his contributions, all the while ignoring the things he actually had to say. At least with Snape he knew exactly where he stood. "Probably I am, but at least I admit it now. The point is, I don't find you loathsome. If I could forgive you for telling me how ignorant and useless I was all the time, I'd think you could forgive me for whatever you dug out of my thoughts a few years ago. You don't want to stop fucking me, do you?"

"Potter. Last night I flung you against a wall. This evening I had to use a healing spell. And I don't mind telling you that my spine hasn't quite recovered from your knocking me to the floor yesterday."

"Then we'll have to control ourselves better. Severus, you're not convincing me that we should stop. All you're proving is that you need it as much as I do, and if we're too dangerous for each other, considering that we're probably the strongest surviving Legilimens and Occlumens left, how are we ever going to be safe for anyone else?"

"Even presuming that I wished for this to continue indefinitely, we have a great deal of unpleasant history. You have a unique talent for infuriating me and I made it my life's work to catalogue every weakness of yours that You Know Who might have exploited. Do you really think 'wormwood' will make us safe for one another?"

"That's why I've been trying to get you to have a drink with me," Harry said wearily. "It's why I've been trying to talk to you about teaching, and Quidditch, and whatever else we have in common that isn't unpleasant. Do you think I have some soppy romantic delusion?" He waved a hand dismissively in the air.

"Do you?" At first Harry was sure Snape was joking or that the question was meant to humiliate him. But when he sat up to glare, he saw that Snape was looking at him calmly and earnestly. "People don't just wake up one day and discover they've grown fond of someone they've spent many years despising."

"Does that mean you never despised me?" he demanded. Snape sat up too, wincing slightly. He hadn't lied about his back being sore, and apparently he'd been too proud to go to the infirmary. "If you think we can't be honest enough with each other to take the risks we've been taking, then let's stop that part. Can we try just fucking for a week? Because I know you don't want to stop fucking me -- you would've said so the second I asked you -- you just ignore the question."

Sighing softly, Snape said, "Yes." And then, after waiting for Harry to smile: "I do think you have some soppy romantic delusion."

Annoyance rose in Harry, but it wasn't strong enough to overwhelm the other feeling that had been eating at him all day, the urge that was almost desperation. "You know what? I don't care what you think. If you want to feel condescending and superior, that's fine. I still want you to fuck me and let me sleep in your bed and tell me what I need to keep my head on level. I don't care if you do it for me, or for you, or because you're afraid I'll embarrass Hogwarts if I fall apart. Let's just try it."

The silence lasted so long that Harry thought Snape would refuse him or refuse to acknowledge his request. And when Snape finally spoke, it was only to say, "I need to feed the bird." He had risen, put on a robe and stepped into his shoes before Harry understood that he was not being asked to leave the bed.

"Severus."

"What?"

"You never told me what you named him."

Though Snape was half-turned toward the door, Harry could still see his face, scowling with a kind of triumph. "I call him Elitus."

It took Harry a moment to understand. "You named your owl 'The Chosen One'?"

"I had to call him something. You both deserved that." Snape's voice was harsh as ever, gloating. Without another word he swept out of the room in a whirl of black.

In the morning, thought Harry, settling on his side near the wall to wait, he would have no qualms about waking Snape with his mouth. Or even using it on him that night...but he was asleep when Snape returned, sensing only warmth spreading out beside him, rocking close to him in dreams.

6. Blessing

"What precisely have you been doing with Potter, Severus?"

Severus Snape froze in his tracks, his face a mask and all his skill as an Occlumens concentrated on blocking Minerva McGonagall. But she did not have him fixed with an accusatory glare. In fact, she was smiling, and she nodded a bit as if to show her approval. Had the Boy Who Lived actually told the Headmistress of Hogwarts that he and Snape were -- what? Shagging? Dating?

While Snape struggled to find words that would both place the blame for such indiscretion squarely upon Potter and at the same time allow himself to deny any involvement whatsoever, McGonagall stepped closer and patted him on the arm. "I know that you don't wish to admit to having done anything kind for James Potter's son. But the change in him is remarkable. I was afraid he wouldn't last the year."

"Ah. So was I," Snape said shortly. There -- Minerva had given him an excuse, which was the same one Snape had told himself when he first invited Potter to sit down and explain why the successful conclusion of the Wizarding war had affected him so adversely. Snape certainly had not expected that evening to conclude as it did. In fact, Snape had regarded each encounter with Potter as an anomaly that was sure to end when Potter pulled himself together.

But McGonagall was looking at him now with shrewd eyes that had always seen too much. "You've been spending quite a bit of time with him," she said slowly, as if she had just recognized this fact. "I noticed that the two of you have been sitting together at meals..." Snape lamented the main table in the Great Hall, which made it impossible to disappear in a group as at the student tables. "...and did I see the two of you in Hogsmeade last weekend?"

That was really none of McGonagall's business. "It was Potter's idea," Snape bit out.

"It seems to have been a good one. He looks much more at ease, and if you don't mind me saying so, so do you, Severus. I worried about you, too, after the war. I was afraid you were continuing to blame yourself for a situation you could no more avoid than Potter could evade his destiny..."

Shut up, Snape thought angrily. This was really none of her business. "Since Potter and I are now both quite well-adjusted, I suggest we focus on the upcoming N.E.W.T. schedule," he snapped.

But he must have betrayed himself, because Minerva had lowered her glasses and was studying him closely. "I'm sure I don't have to tell you that in many ways he's still just a boy. Do be careful, Severus. I trust you to be discreet, but we cannot afford to lose either of you."

Now that was really crossing a line. "I am not Potter's keeper," Snape growled. Indeed, Potter was spending the afternoon visiting with his friends Granger and Weasley, both of whom were working for the Ministry in some capacity or other.

Snape sincerely hoped that the boy was doing a better job of keeping his nocturnal activities from his associates than Snape was doing keeping them from the Headmistress, for McGonagall did not appear to be fooled. "Happiness suits you," she said quietly. "I don't know why I didn't notice before."

The afternoon did not improve matters. A third-year Ravenclaw exploded a cauldron and rained Shrinking Solution over most of the class; it took all of Snape's efforts to reverse the effects before he found himself in a classroom of screaming toddlers. Then one of the sixth-year Slytherins decided to make off with some puffer-fish eyes, wishing to create a Swelling Solution -- for which portion of his anatomy, Snape could too easily guess -- only to arrive in the Potions office wailing in pain and begging for a Deflating Draught. He had made such a racket that the incident was the talk of the Great Hall all through the evening meal, which was even noisier and more boisterous than usual.

Snape's temper was already short when Potter arrived late that night, having remained among his friends through supper. And Potter's overenthusiastic greeting was not particularly welcome. First he insisted that Snape should have come along to see Granger and Weasley ("Hermione always asks how you are, and Ron said that if you stopped me from hurting, that's good enough for him"). Then Potter insisted on repeating every detail of their dinner conversation to Snape, who would very much have preferred that Potter to put his tongue to some other use. When Potter finally did stop talking -- because Snape had kissed him, which never failed to distract the boy from whatever blather was coming out of his mouth -- he rolled on top of Snape, sat up over the older man's hips and began to wriggle out of his clothing.

"I was thinking that tonight I could be on top," he announced.

"No," Snape replied immediately.

"Why not?"

"Because I have no intention of bottoming, and it doesn't appear to me that you intend to fuck anyone else tonight."

Potter's eyes bulged behind his glasses, which he had not yet removed. "You'd rather me fuck someone else than bottom to me?" The image of Potter fucking anyone else actually made Snape want to pour Shrinking Solution over whoever it was and leave the screaming prat kicking on the floor, but he did not reply to Potter's question.

After a few moments, Potter went back to removing his clothing, still sitting over Snape's lap. "You've done it that way before, haven't you?" he asked. "It's all right with me if you haven't, I mean -- I'd only done it a couple of times before we did it, and never on top. Except with a girl but that's obviously not the same thing."

Snape was still spluttering from the initial question, which he had no intention of dignifying with a response. "I thought you said you liked that I didn't let you overstep your place."

"I said I liked that you helped me with control when I'm pushing. Don't you think this would be a good exercise in control? I'm not saying I expect you to let me do it all the time. I just want to try it."

There was, thought Snape, a certain perverse logic to this. His prick had perked up the moment Potter admitted he'd never been on top; the idea of being Potter's first time even in this isolated way held a definite appeal. But he felt maneuvered and he didn't like that a bit. "You're changing the rules," he snapped.

"I didn't know we had rules about this." Potter, smiling, shifted his bum on top of Snape as he began to unfasten the older man's robes, letting him know that he knew Snape was hard. "Come on. Just once. If you tell me afterward that I'm going to bottom from now on, I won't ask again -- I like it on the bottom. I just want to know what it would feel like to fuck you. Please."

It would have become degrading to continue to protest if Snape had any intention of allowing this to happen...which it seemed he did. So he did not reply, merely letting Potter open his clothing and free his by-now-rigid prick. "Someone's happy to see me," Potter snickered, stealing Snape's breath by rubbing his own prick over it in what seemed to Snape to be an obscenely intimate gesture. Watching Potter pleasure himself was one of Snape's favorite activities. Sometimes, before he even touched Potter, Snape would order him to sit in the middle of the bed with his legs spread and wank, and although Potter certainly did need to work on his control, Snape usually let him come just for the pleasure of seeing Potter's face at the moment the eruption burst out of him.

Potter was young enough that his recovery time was usually measured in minutes. "Are you planning to ejaculate on me?" asked Snape somewhat hoarsely, watching Potter continue to rub against his prick. Whether or not he intended to allow Potter to fuck him, he thought it might be clever to let him come now; Potter might be satisfied and lose interest in the idea, or he might at least take his time preparing Snape instead of rushing to plunge in.

Groaning softly, Potter wrapped a hand around both their pricks, watching as he used Snape to stimulate himself. "Would you like me to?" As always, Potter took silence for acquiescence, and after what seemed to Snape to be a ridiculously short interval, he groaned again, convulsed and sprayed a warm flood over Snape's prick and belly. His eyes opened, unfocused and dreamy behind the glasses, and Snape was momentarily overwhelmed by the reflection of his own image there -- not an actual mirroring, but a drop in Potter's defenses that invited Snape in.

"You're pushing, Potter," he murmured, though that wasn't completely true. His onetime student might have refused to use Occlumency against him, but they both knew that it wouldn't ever have been necessary if Snape didn't look so deeply. Legilimency with Potter was unlike with anyone else; Snape had the impression of veils deliberately drawn aside, the sense of falling freely toward a thought or memory that wanted to be found, though there were a great many distracting recollections along the way, some quite painful and involving himself. It was unnerving, and he didn't know how to keep it from happening, since apparently he was somehow initiating it.

"And you're still calling me 'Potter' in bed," chided Harry, who had been complaining about that for several days. With a happy sigh, he slid bonelessly off Snape onto his side, pulling the older man around to face him. "My name's not difficult. Unlike yours, which takes concentration -- if I get distracted at the wrong moment, it makes me come."

"Harry," said Snape, blushing furiously at both the thick groaning sound in his voice and the way his prick twitched when he said the word. At least this made Potter smile and finally take off his glasses, putting them aside so that he could take Snape's face between his hands and kiss him thoroughly.

Snape had never been with anyone who kissed like this, like his tongue was a cock to be sucked and his lips were an arsehole to be coaxed open and his cheeks were to be licked and his chin cupped and stroked and fuck, everything Potter did made Snape want to fuck him -- every time he put his spoon in his mouth at dinner, every time he fidgeted during a staff meeting, every time he looked up and smiled. "Say it again," he moaned, rutting along Snape's thigh, already getting hard again, and Snape obliged him, wondering whether he could possibly be under Imperius since he gave in so easily. It was pure pleasure -- harmless pleasure really, since there was no Dark Lord left out there to require them to be on guard -- this boy had seen to that. Yet the need for caution never seemed to fade.

"Could we..." Snape did not appreciate having the kisses interrupted, but Potter was smiling at him, shyly and a little wickedly. "Could you maybe...would you mind spanking me?"

Mystified and not a little frustrated, Snape squinted at him. "I thought you wanted to fuck me! And we agreed to stop hurting each other. Are you changing the rules again?"

Blushing, Potter shook his head, then let his chin fall and nodded. "I don't want you to hurt me. I don't want the whole...not like you're punishing me for something." He kissed Snape again. "Or really, I don't care. You never did it like a beating no matter what you were saying. I just want your hand. It helps me focus. And..." He kept kissing Snape in between sentences. "It helps if you know I need it. Or if you think I deserve it just for wanting it..."

Snape dragged Potter over his lap. His prick had grown so hard it ached from that request. He could feel the percussive thrumming of the taut body against his as he smacked it, Potter's groans and cries reverberating in Snape's own chest...he did not count even in his head, and when Harry moaned, "Enough, oh God, please...", Snape shoved him off his lap and crawled onto the bed on all fours so Potter couldn't see how excited he was.

Part of him hoped that it would hurt when Potter entered him -- virgin enthusiasm was flattering, and if Snape could face the boy afterward in sincere pain, he would be able to insist that he didn't want to do it again with unassailable conviction. But Potter obviously had been paying attention when Snape fucked him; he covered his fingers with Snape's own potion, stolen from Snape's own drawer, and teased his arsehole thoroughly, first on the surface, then carefully touching and easing and stretching inside, until Snape would have begged for more if Snape had ever in his life been the sort to beg for anything.

Then Potter was behind him, on his knees, pushing. There was a keening wail that for a moment Snape feared had come from his own throat, but it was Potter, who had pressed the entire head in with the first thrust, apparently unable to resist...Potter who then held still, trying to wait for Snape to sway backward for more or forward to slow him down.

Back he went, even though it had been so long, the feeling was as unfamiliar as if he'd never done it at all, and maybe this was something new because that smooth body arching behind him felt so welcome and fit so perfectly to his own. There was a hand on his cock -- not his own hand, both of which were balled on the bed to help keep his balance, clutching at the sheets -- he could feel testicles against the curve of his arse, a touch as intimate as the cock stroking fire inside him.

"Harry," he choked out. The pace was too fast but there was nothing he could do to slow it down, it felt too good, he wanted too much, he was spurting over the hand and clenching around the cock...he heard Harry calling out at the same moment he did, the room disappearing in the colors of that cry.

When Snape came to himself again, Harry was lying over him, lips against his shoulder, stroking his hair. A streak of wetness was cooling on the back of his thigh beneath the softening prick that rested there. The heartbeat pounding against his back was as rapid as his own.

When had Potter become "Harry"?

He must have tensed, because the boy he had once despised said softly, "Thank you. Please...let me stay for a bit."

Whether Harry meant in his room or on his back, Snape neither knew nor cared. "That was what you wanted?" he demanded gruffly. He referred to the spanking, not the fucking; only an idiot would have wondered why Harry had wanted to try the latter. But to be hit like that, not because he needed punishment but because he liked the sensation...Harry had likely not grown up with an adult who understood the need for discipline without anger, with affection. It seemed absurd that he would have chosen Snape for such a role, yet Snape grudgingly understood craving the impression of pain and the cessation of it without wanting to be truly hurt. Sooner or later the boy might break if he wasn't careful, and Snape didn't want him broken -- sobbing in his arms on occasion, perhaps, now that he had experienced that guilty pleasure, but not broken.

Harry sighed in contentment, breath cool against the sweat on Snape's shoulder. "It was perfect. You're very good to me." He shifted, sliding so that his arm and one leg were still wrapped around Snape but their heads were side by side, noses practically touching. "Severus."

Snape was quite certain that he had used no Legilimency. Harry's mind should have been closed to him. Yet the words rushed at him before Harry's mouth had opened again. "Don't."

"Why not?"

"Just don't."

"You already know what I'm going to say. Why does it matter if I say it?"

"Because those are powerful words and you take unnecessary risks and you're absurdly masochistic," Snape announced, despite the fact that his heart was racing again. "Suppose I decided to tell the world..."

"You want to brag? Go ahead. Make our relationship public." Harry dove forward and kissed him fervently. "You've been making quite the spectacle at breakfast, anyway. You glare at me and slam plates on the table when what you really want is to slam me over the table and slam yourself into my arse, and other people notice. Professor McGonagall came to see me today and you know what she said? She said it was good to see me looking so well and then she said the same thing about you."

The Headmistress' meddling into his private affairs was really becoming quite intolerable. "The next time you see her, you may tell Professor McGonagall that I have no intention of becoming another name on your list of lovers and admirers."

"My list?" asked Potter incredulously. "My 'admirers' are people who've never met me -- they admire a scar and a story. You're my only lover. If I knew any of this was going to happen, I would've waited to have sex." It was absurdly flattering to hear that; Snape tried not to let his pleasure show on his face. "You gloat, and you taunt me, and you don't really expect me to control myself," Potter continued. "You've been inside my mind -- you've seen my filthiest fantasies. And if I push back, you enjoy it -- it just means you're getting to me. I hope you spend all your spare time thinking of perverted things you want to do to me. You know I'll keep coming back for more."

"Until you finally realize that I've cured you." Snape said the words offhandedly, with the smugness of one who knew he would succeed, but he felt something akin to claustrophobia, imagining the day when Potter would conclude that Snape had succeeded in exorcising his past. The Boy Who Lived would go out into the world secure in the knowledge that he could play his proper role, leaving Snape behind these dungeon walls to live out a tedious denouement.

Though he believed his thoughts to be secure from intrusion, one glance at Harry's face told him that he had given that last one away. "You think I want this ever to end?" Potter demanded. "Is that what you think I want -- to stop? Don't you know anything?" Snape opened his mouth to object to being spoken to in such a manner but Potter ignored him. "I don't expect you to cure me, because you made me realize that besides being really fucked up from things I've done and from having grown up the way I did, there's nothing wrong with me. And you're the same. We're perfect together."

Snape didn't know which was more mortifying -- his intense desire to believe those words or the fact that Harry could see it. "Shut up, for a change, and let me finish," the impossible boy added when he saw that Snape was trying to speak again. "I know you're going to try to talk me out of this for one reason or another, but you've never denied that you want me and we've never talked about what started all this." He paused only long enough to take a breath, speaking so fast that Snape couldn't cut him off. "This is about Dumbledore."

"Harry -- "

"I know it is. I was there, on the roof, remember? I saw everything. I know Dumbledore wouldn't want you to spend the rest of your life throwing breadcrumbs into the lake. He'd go on about how love is the most important thing and then he'd wink at you."

"Yes, he would." The image in Snape's mind was searingly clear -- almost as clear as the memory of Dumbledore during those last moments, Severus, the curse. A painful weight was crushing Snape's chest -- it wasn't Harry, who had sat up beside him and was looking at him with concern. "I'm sure I don't have to explain to you that not even Albus could live up to the ideals he taught. And certainly nobody else could." Albus had believed that the entire world had paid for his own failure to love an abandoned eleven-year-old wizard. He had not made the same mistake with Snape; he had repaid treachery with affection, and in doing so he had made Snape his creature instead of the Dark Lord's.

"You don't have to explain anything to me." A smaller weight fell on Snape's shoulder, distracting him from the tightness in his chest. Potter's hand. "Just stop acting like any day now you're going to say this experiment is over, I'm fine -- now get out. Just let me stay."

Snape lay still for a long time. Harry's fingers felt good on the back of his neck, brushing away the sweaty hair and kneading the muscles. The weight slowly lifted from his chest, but a different heaviness clung to his arms and legs and eyelids. "I need to feed the bird," he muttered, though his lips did not want to move.

"I'll do it." Something brushed Snape's cheek just before he heard bare feet shuffle away from the bed. He was almost asleep when the mattress heaved again and something warm and wet moved against his thigh, wiping away the stickiness. He forced his eyes open to look up at Harry, who smiled at him while he rose to put the cloth aside. "There. You're clean."

Snape knew that he would never be clean. Unlike Harry, whose sins had already been hurled into the depths of the sea even if the boy didn't fully believe it. No matter the errors of Potter's youth, he should not have had to atone for anything after defeating a Dark Lord and saving the world. How absurd it had felt to Snape to hand him breadcrumbs that afternoon by the lake, realizing that the Chosen One thought they had something in common.

He'd go on about how love is the most important thing and then he'd wink at you.

Albus Dumbledore had been manipulative, overconfident and occasionally ruthless, but on the whole he had been successful. Voldemort was gone. Harry was still here and so was Snape. Dumbledore wasn't, but that had been his choice...his sacrifice to make, as he had told Snape many times.

Those breadcrumbs had been the residue of Snape's sins. And Harry had offered to help him cast them off.

We're perfect together.

Reaching down, Snape pushed aside the blanket and slid over to make room. "Since you are going to stay, get in already," he told Harry.

7. Atonement

That Severus did not want to attend the meeting with the Board of Governors of Hogwarts was made evident by the sour look on his face, which settled in like a permanent scowl the moment McGonagall informed him and Harry that their presence would be required. Harry assumed it was because Severus expected to be bored. Neither of them much enjoyed listening to the conflicting demands of the trustees, some of whom felt that the students should be taught to defend themselves in the event that a new Dark Lord should arise and others of whom insisted that children should be kept free from such unhappy concerns. Regardless of their positions on the topic, none of the members of the board seemed interested in the opinions of a young Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, nor those of a professor who had been absent from Hogwarts for many months while awaiting trial for the murder of its Headmaster.

So Harry anticipated an unpleasant meeting even before it started. What he could not have predicted was the expression of loathing on the face of recently appointed Governor Quintus Fenwick, followed by the declaration, "I'll not sit at a table with the man who murdered my cousin."

Harry thought that Snape's tight-lipped look of revulsion was justified, even restrained. Several times during the meeting, he glanced sympathetically at his lover, trying to catch his gaze, though Severus was sitting very still and stiffly, eyes narrowed, barely disguising his longing to flee the oppressive room. McGonagall seemed unusually stern and snappish as well, ignoring both Snape and Fenwick, which wasn't difficult; she was preoccupied with working out a compromise on the issue of charges of favoritism among House Quidditch captains.

After the meeting broke up, Severus chose to forego dinner, sweeping from the Great Hall toward the dungeon, and Harry gobbled down his shepherd's pie before hurrying after. Severus wouldn't want his sympathy but he might well want to work out his frustration with a hard fuck. The thought made Harry grin as he knocked on the door.

"Not now," came the muffled, irritated voice from within.

Still grinning, Harry knocked again. Not once since the first time had Severus refused him; he had on occasion been too tired or too preoccupied for sex, but he had never stopped Harry at the door. Twisting the knob, Harry discovered that it was not locked despite the unambiguous reply. "Just long enough to ask a question?" he persisted, and, when he was not ordered to go away, pushed the door open.

Severus sat in his desk chair, though he was facing away from the desktop, holding something in his hand which he quickly palmed when he saw Harry come in. "I am quite busy this evening," he announced.

"Even so, I think you could use a little diversion between that horrid meeting and work," Harry interrupted, offering a hint of a smile. "Or maybe I can help you relax while you work."

"Must I be blunt? I wish to be alone."

So it was going to be like that. "All right, then, I'll just sit on your bed and read.

He had started to cross the room when Snape stood up. "'Alone' means 'not in the same room.'" It wasn't unlike Severus to tease him, using that imperious tone, because he knew it excited Harry, but there was no triumphant gleam in the dark eyes, no speculative tilt to the head. "As I am certain you noted, it was a very long afternoon and now I wish to rest. By myself."

Snape really must have been upset if he was too cranky to let Harry distract him. "Is this about what Fenwick said? If that bastard really..."

"Be quiet, Potter!" Blinking at the unexpected use of his last name, Harry started to speak again but found himself cut off. "This is not your business. I have no wish to listen to your assumptions about matters of which you know nothing."

Fenwick had really got under Snape's skin. At first Harry was startled, because it was so unlike Severus to care what anyone else said about him, but he guessed that perhaps this was discomfort at having had Harry witness such a scene. "It's not like I haven't heard worse accusations about you," he pointed out. "I'm good at ignoring them."

"That is because you are a foolish boy who lets his mind be ruled by his prick," Snape spat at him. And the world suddenly shifted.

Moody had said the Aurors only ever found bits of Benjy Fenwick. It was one of the more brutal Death Eater killings that Harry had heard described. He had never considered that Severus might have had something to do with that. Or with Caradoc Dearborn, or the Bones family...

Of course Harry had suspected that it was possible. There had been a time, in fact, when he had wanted to believe that Snape was guilty in every single Death Eater atrocity. But since the war had ended, Harry had been only too happy to accept the ruling of the Ministry that Snape had ultimately acted in everyone's best interest. He had argued for Snape's pardon. Still, that couldn't change the past.

"Is it...Severus, do you mean..." The castle around them seemed unnaturally quiet, with all the students still upstairs feasting in the Great Hall. Harry drew in a breath. "Are you telling me that what he said is true?"

Snape said nothing. Uncharacteristically, he was fidgeting with whatever he had in his hand, though he was still holding it in such a way that Harry couldn't tell what it was. After a few moments of standing awkwardly, looking at the older man who remained perfectly still except for the occasional movement of his fingers, Harry sat down on the floor near the corner of the desk. He could feel the chill of the dungeon stones creeping through the rug.

It had to be better to know, he thought, than not to know. To imagine. He rubbed his knuckles against the cool fabric of the rug. "How many?"

"Seventeen."

For a relieved minute, Harry thought he must have misunderstood the answer, or Severus must have misunderstood the question. There hadn't been all that many members of the original Order of the Phoenix in the photo that Moody had shown him, and Voldemort had killed several of those personally. Plus Bellatrix Lestrange had killed Sirius, Dolohov had killed the Prewetts...it was impossible that Snape had killed seventeen...

"Perhaps I should not include Emmeline Vance," Severus added in an odd flat tone as he sat back down in his chair. "I did not cast the fatal curse, but her death was my responsibility. I anticipated that she would be gone before the Death Eaters arrived."

The words floated into Harry's ears and past them as if they came from a recording, like a speaker in a Prophecy from the Department of Mysteries. "You're saying you murdered sixteen people," he muttered, waiting -- hoping -- for Snape to contradict him.

"It was certainly more than that." The voice remained strangely detached, though now Harry could hear the strain in it. "I was asked to produce potions without being told to what purpose they would be put, but I could guess. Why ask for Death-Cap Draught if you weren't planning to kill someone?" There was abrupt vehemence in Snape's tone. "I can name seventeen for certain, including Vance. Fenwick was the fourteenth." His head swung up to look at Harry. "Now you know."

Harry's stomach was churning. He was very sorry that he had eaten any dinner. He wished he had chosen a spot to sit where he could lean on something, but it was just as well that he had not decided to settle against Snape's desk. Where Snape had fucked him, two nights before, on the scratched wooden top with a hand between Harry and potential splinters, sweating on his back and grunting in his ear, stroking his cock until Harry had come all over...

Simultaneously, his prick twitched and his stomach lurched. The rug, the floor, felt icy cold beneath his hands and legs. He tried to concentrate on that. "In fact, you knew already," insisted Snape in a voice bitter with satisfaction. "Even if you didn't go poking in my memories to learn my crimes, you must have had some conception. What did you think, Potter, that except for the Headmaster's own instructions, my hands were clean?"

Harry recognized the expression on the shadowed face. It was the same look of loathing he had seen on the rooftop as Dumbledore pleaded with Snape...pleaded for release, Harry understood now, though at the time he had thought Dumbledore was begging for a rescue that was no longer possible. "I knew your hands weren't clean," he replied hoarsely.

"Yes, that is why you came to me, isn't it. Suffering under the weight of your little sins, wanting to find out how I could ever forgive myself so you could do likewise." The words were spat the way Snape had once spat dueling instructions, demanding that Harry learn to keep his mind closed while he was blocking Harry's furious, futile attacks. "There is no clemency for me, haven't you realized? Fenwick was only speaking the truth."

"How..." began Harry, and swallowed. They only ever found bits of Benjy Fenwick. "How" wasn't really what Harry wanted to know. "Why? You were under orders?"

"Not precisely," said Snape. His eyes lifted, staring away from Harry, into the past. "Benjamin Fenwick was a skilled combatant. Rookwood couldn't have stopped him and Malfoy was preoccupied with the raid. If I hadn't acted, Fenwick would have killed all of us."

"You're saying you were defending yourself?"

Snape looked back at Harry, and then he laughed, a terrible sound. "I killed him without a second thought while we were preparing for a much larger attack on a group of wretched Muggle-lovers," he replied. "Fenwick, at least, was a wizard capable of fighting back. My first murder was a helpless Muggle. It was how the Dark Lord tested our resolve before sending us into combat. Not everyone could bear it -- Regulus Black, for instance, and it was fortunate for Draco Malfoy that there was no time to test him before the school term began. We brought in Muggles who would never be missed. Mine was a drunk like my father."

There had been stories, rumors about what the Death Eaters did, vile whispers about how they got their name, but Harry had never wanted to believe...it had been enough to know that they killed enemies of Voldemort. "He asked you to kill an innocent stranger and you did it?"

"If I had not, my own life would have been forfeit as well. That Muggle never had a chance. He was fortunate -- he'd had too much to drink to understand what was happening to him. The curse worked the first time I tried it on a human being, For some Death Eaters, it took several attempts."

"I'm going to be sick," Harry heard himself say faintly. The floor came up to meet his hands as he lurched forward, trying to miss the edge of the rug, but when he vomited up his supper, the filth ran out the corner of his mouth down his chin, onto his robes and in a pool that reached his hand. The Scourgify that Snape cast silently, whipping out his wand with such speed that Harry thought for a moment he was going to be punished, removed the mess and the stain but not the stink that lingered in his nostrils and throat.

He glanced at Snape, expecting to see disgust on his face, but the older man wore the same expression of barely contained agony that Harry recalled from two years previously. "The first wasn't the worst," he said softly, opening his fingers. Resting in his hand was a chipped hair ornament in the shape of a flower with many bits of glass missing from the pattern. The tarnished clasp shone greenish against Snape's skin, which had turned red from pressing the thing into his palm. "I killed a Muggle child. I didn't intend to do it, but she got in the way..."

"Stop this," Harry said. His throat was still thick with acid and his voice broke on the words. "You told Dumbledore, right? When you came back?" He was positive that whatever Dumbledore had said must have been more meaningful than anything he could come up with, particularly since what he wanted was to beg Snape to pretend it hadn't happened. "It was a long time ago."

"In Muggle law, there is no statute of limitations on the crimes I committed. And I was never tried in a Muggle court. Dumbledore vouched for me with the Ministry and cleared my name, but he cannot acquit me. Nor can you." Snape's eyes were on the thing in his hand. "You should go."

"I don't want to go." It was very cold on the floor. Harry's fingers were practically numb; he found it difficult to move. I did know, he told himself, shivering uncontrollably. Even if he hadn't known the details, or hadn't wanted to know. "It doesn't...what do you think this changes?"

Bracing his hands on the floor, he pushed himself to his knees. He wanted to walk over to Snape but didn't quite trust himself to stand. Instead he shuffled over beside the chair, wondering whether he looked to Snape like some pathetic crawling animal. His glasses had fogged up and he took them off to wipe them on his robes.

"There's more, you know," Snape said in a hushed, reflective voice. "It's all here." He tapped his forehead. "Unlike the Headmaster, I have rarely afforded myself the comfort of filtering my memories in a Pensieve. You have some skill as a Legilimens; eventually you would see the rest."

Raising his hand, Harry reached out to touch Severus, but the fist holding the child's barrette pulled away from his own. "Go," Snape ordered again.

"Why do you want me to leave?" There was no reply. "You want to be alone with your guilt, is that it? Or you don't want to cry in front of me?"

"When have you ever known me to cry?"

"Must've been some reason my father called you 'Snivellus.'"

Harry couldn't have explained what he was hoping for by saying that. Certainly nothing good. His father was one of those topics between himself and Severus, like Severus' past as a Death Eater, which had seemed destined to remain unspoken and unresolved. Snape stared at him, mouth half-open. The hand holding the hair clip moved to place it on the desktop.

"Your father called me 'Snivellus' because he wanted to," he said in a voice that was barely above a whisper yet somehow filled the room. "Your father used hexes and curses on whoever got in his way, and called them pranks, and insisted all the while that he was better than those of us who admitted to studying the Dark Arts. Your father was capable of violence and torture and I've no doubt murder in the name of the Order of the Phoenix, all while claiming that his hands were clean." The hiss rose steadily as he spoke until the last four words were spat like staccato profanities. The loathing in Snape's eyes flared outward, pure fury focused straight at Harry. "Now get out."

The last time Snape had said those words to him in such a tone, exploding jars of Potions ingredients to emphasize his mood, Harry had turned and fled. And people had died as a result. Did Snape believe he was still that child?

"I'm not like my father," he said shakily -- shakily, because whatever Severus had done, whatever Severus had been, Harry did not know how to imagine his life without him. "I know my hands aren't clean."

"You destroyed the Dark Lord." Snape didn't say killed. Maybe he believed they had all done that -- Snape himself, Dumbledore, Hermione, Neville -- one by one, as they destroyed the Horcruxes, and Harry had only put an end to the shell in which Voldemort lived his stolen life. Maybe in some ghastly, twisted way, Snape believed that Harry's hands were clean, even though his arm still ached sometimes from the guilt and forbidden pleasure of the Killing Curse. He could not imagine how Snape could contain the memories of all those deaths without wanting to tear at his own skin.

Perhaps Snape did want to tear at his own skin, and that was why he wanted Harry gone. Or perhaps it was why he had wanted Harry there in the first place, though for the past many nights there had been no pain, only a haze of desire, satisfaction and happiness. "My hands are not clean," Harry repeated. His cold fingers found Snape's, still warm from clutching at the barrette.

"You saved the world."

"And you saved me."

"There can be no comparison." Snape was trying to let go of his hand, though Harry wouldn't let him. Likely Snape had believed all along that once Harry fully understood what he had done as a Death Eater, Harry would call it unforgivable. After all, Harry had believed things to be that simple, a few years ago -- one fought for good or for evil, and those who chose too late got what they deserved.

His throat was closing over -- he was going to cry, he thought, even if Snape wasn't, even if Snape never did. "Those things you did. Are you sorry?"

The glare Snape turned on him was so filled with abhorrence that Harry braced himself to be flung into the wall, just as Snape had done when Harry broke into his thoughts. But there was no spell, only an instant of dizziness as the room blurred. Then it was worse than being hurled against stone. He was alone in a dungeon with the faces of the dead, half-rotted monsters who pointed accusing fingers at him as they advanced, and they would never stop, they would not be silenced by work or alcohol or self-justification, not until he died...

"Yes," Snape said aloud, a bitter, hateful word, as if it tasted like bile in his mouth. It broke the connection between them and Harry found himself back in this dungeon where he had learned to feel safe. "Do you think Albus Dumbledore would have allowed me to teach the Chosen One if he had not been certain of my remorse? Of course I am sorry, you fool."

It was an astonishing thing to hear aloud, a terribly intimate admission from a man whom Harry sometimes thought thrived on pride and anger, despite the breadcrumbs of repentance he had thrown into the lake. Swallowing and blinking rapidly, Harry nodded. "You saved me," he said again. "I don't ever want to leave."

Severus had never let him say the rest; somehow he always knew when Harry was about to speak the words and stopped him, insisting that they should not be said aloud. The excuses had ranged from the power inherent in verbal utterances to the foolish sentimentality of the phrase, and Harry had wondered whether Severus simply did not want to be put in a position of having to choose whether to reciprocate or accept the consequences for refusing to do so. But maybe Severus did not want to feel the power of that particular declaration. Maybe he believed he couldn't accept it.

Passive fingers still lay in Harry's own, quite warm now from the contact. Shifting closer, laying his free hand beside Severus on the chair, he said, "I love you. Wait," for Severus was opening his mouth, clearly planning to silence him, "I don't mean in a soppy romantic delusional way. I mean, whatever you still haven't told me, I won't want to leave you for it. I'm sorry you can't change what you did but I accept it. Will you accept it, please? Don't you at least love me enough to want to try?"

It was more than Harry would have asked if he had been thinking clearly, and he had not guessed how completely the lowered head and nod he received from Severus would unravel him. "Shh," Severus huffed almost crossly, pulling Harry up into his arms. Harry's tears always both annoyed and aroused Severus for reasons Harry didn't think he wanted to understand -- whether it was because they made Severus feel superior or because they were a weakness he didn't allow himself -- but he found himself being kissed and stroked even as he was ordered to silence.

They didn't make it to bed; the desk was right there, an unavoidable temptation, and to Harry's surprise Severus offered to bottom, gripping the far corners and crying out harshly. Harry heard the barrette fall to the floor and studied the hands that clenched the old wood, hands that had taken life, as had his own. None of his classes at Hogwarts had taught repentance for such transgressions. They were surrounded by centuries of mistakes and dark magic and death. Yet Dumbledore had always smiled and told Harry that the capacity for love was his greatest gift.

"Not leaving," he gasped, bent over the damp back crossed with scars he hadn't dared to examine. He felt a groan rise from within Severus, making them both quiver together. If it was not purgation, it was still enough to make the past recede where it belonged.