Chapter 18
"The Chance"
Severus was blind.
He did not see his seventh year Slytherins chasing a weeping Peeves through the castle. He did not see Hagrid and Hooch having a drunken snog under the windows in the Eastern wing. He did not see Mrs. Norris, even when he stepped on her tail. Nor was he aware of the time that had elapsed when he returned to his cold, dark rooms.
He needed a drink. He needed ten.
His hands were shaking so badly that the Firewhisky sloshed over his desk, dampening reports, staining the student’s scrolls and seeping into one of his notebooks. Work that seemed thousands of miles away, trivial and stupid now that he’d seen the other side, been there, bled there.
Loved Harry.
Leaving, leaving him, leaving this life, because a better one waited for him. Leaving Severus, leaving Hogwarts, leaving what could have been; what might have been. Leaving him, despite the kisses, despite the desperate, aching love in Severus’ chest, despite what they had just been through together, despite everything that had happened between them.
Alone again, Severus.
The glass shattered against the red bricks of the fire place, sending a shower of sparkling shards across the carpet and stone hearth.
No one knew how much he hid behind his sneer, how he felt inside, the pain even he, the most hated Potions Master of all, could feel. How could he possibly describe the hollow ache threatening to cave in his chest? Despite all his reservations, he had let himself become filled with Harry Potter, bane of his existence. How could he explain how much...
Merlin. How much he loved the little bastard.
Proud, tragic child; beautiful, smiling boy who cried behind his laughter, whose wings were pinioned under miles of stone. Manipulated boy who had become a wary man, unable to love, unable to live beyond the eclipsing bitterness in his life.
Just like Severus.
His fingers grasped the back of his chair so tightly he was sure the bones would break. Down the side, the arm, and then he was sitting, staring into the empty hearth littered with glass.
Empty.
"‘Professor Snape?"
His gaze shot up to find Emily Shacklebolt standing at the entrance of his rooms. He had given her the password long ago, when he was busy with his projects and had no time to trek through his rooms to lift the wards. She stood before him, her eyes clouded, lip caught between her teeth.
"Ms. Shacklebolt." His voice was despairingly thick. "Now is not a good time. Return to your dormitory at once."
The little chit should have been in Gryffindor, because without a single reservation she came to him, her tiny hand resting on his forearm, just where the dark mark had once been. "Are you cryin’, professor?"
"I am doing no such thing," he snarled, but his display of temper did not stop the child from gently touching his cheek. "Cease this, at once."
"No. You helped us when Professor Potter was bein’ mean...is he being mean to you?"
Severus found himself suddenly beset by hysterical, choking laughter. It sounded more like misery than anything else. "Ms. Shacklebolt, you are too young to understand such things, and I–"
"I am not! Cause I know you and Professor Potter are in love!" she exclaimed, the stubborn set of her lip stopping him mid rant. "And I know you’re sad because of him!"
Severus carefully glossed over that, stunned and horrified to know his reactions and emotions had been so blatant that even an eleven year old girl had caught them. Something else ripped away from you, Severus? "Ms. Shacklebolt, it is not about..loving him, or not," he said, his upper lip curling nastily. "Soon, he will be nothing but a memory."
"He’s leaving?" Emily asked, her eyes wide. "And you didn’t try to stop him?"
"Ms. Shacklebolt, you are a child. You know nothing about adult matters. Go to bed, this instant!"
Emily finally caught the warning in his tone, and she bit her lower lip all the tighter for it, her hand slipping back from his arm. "I’m little, I know, but, my daddy always said that if something was worth having, then it was worth fighting for, even if it costs you everything. I don’t know about a lot of stuff, but I know that you love him. So why are you letting him leave?"
He stared at her, shrouded in his ugly pain. She sighed at him, shaking her head as if he were a child, patted his hand and left as soundlessly as she’d come.
Worth having. Hah! He’d offered Harry–
...What had he offered Harry?
He buried his face in his hands.
He sat in front of the fireplace for hours, days. The steady tick, tick, tick of his magical clock–Harry–chimed on in time, counting minutes and hours as steadily as the breath came in and out of his lungs. He could count the number of heartbeats to the tick tock’s of the clock, each one a little more angry than the one before it; furious he was stuck here, when death had been so beautiful and so peaceful.
The suffocating weight of his life; spying for Voldemort, hated by his peers, despised by the brats he taught, indulged by one Albus Dumbledore who was totally off of his rocker, was catching up to him at last.
He gasped, grasping his chest as everything he was--everything he had stopped being for three precious hours while in the Veil--settled down into his gut and turned it to stone. He felt his heart, which had been stunned awake, lie down dormant again where it could be protected, where shields would keep it from hurting anymore. He had endured too much heartbreak in his time.
Or had he?
If he listened hard enough, he could almost hear the click of Harry’s suitcase shutting on his memories. Murmured words to Hedwig, the whisper of goodbye from his young lips. Severus wrenched on the radio to drown out the silence, fingers shaking so hard it took him three tries to do it properly.
Could Severus really be surprised over the young man’s decision? Could six years be forgotten in so short a time? Had Severus honestly thought he could make Harry love him--somehow forgive him for all that he had crushed under his boot?
The clench in Severus’ chest was too much to bear. The stopper on his well of nightmares was uncorking and he felt as though a single crack moved down the center of his soul.
It trailed down the glide of his torso to catch in the clench in his belly as if it belonged there under the long black wool of his thin jumper. It churned in his gut, as though to burn a hole straight through him and fill him up with searing pain and loss.
It was misery. Sheer, unspeakable, incomprehensible, misery.
And so he drank. He drank until the Firewhisky ran low, until it matched the churning in his belly, the acid in his throat. He drank, wishing nothing made sense anymore, wishing he could drown in his own agony.
He did not need love. He would make do with a cold bed, cold sheets and cold life. He would find his pleasure in his work, in the insufferable parade of miscreant misfits he taught, in the joys which teaching the precociously annoying Emily Shacklebolt could bring. He would go back to a world where Harry Potter did not exist; where he was nothing more than a memory and a secret, unvoiced desire, for which he yearned more than the world itself.
He would be alone. And he would be happy.
Had he been any other man, had he not been Severus Snape, bastard extra ordinaire and sarcastic, sneaky Slytherin, he would have wept aloud like a child. The ball of pain was there in his throat, threatening to suffocate him–the burning in his nose and the back of his throat, his eyes, certainly spoke of the need for it.
Severus had stopped crying many years ago. Tears did not bring anything but more pain, and Severus had enough to be going on with. If he wept, the tide of emotion he was keeping back through sheer willpower would break, and everything he had kept locked tightly at his core, everything that made up the man he was would spill free. He would not be Snape anymore, he would be Severus, and he wasn’t sure the world was ready for that man. He wasn’t sure he was ready for that man, to live without his emotions held in cold, hard check, where he would be more than a sneer and big nose.
Where he was more than the most hated Potions Master on Earth.
His door creaked.
On the radio, a fresh, gentle young voice sang, ‘But in an unexpected way, on this unexpected day, could it be that this is where I belong? It is you I have loved all along.’
He hadn’t bothered changing. He was still barefoot, filthy, and bloody. He looked absolutely wretched. But Harry Potter stood in his doorway, wearing an expression of misery. Severus, wallowing in self pity and Firewhisky, spoke first. "Come to twist the knife a little more, Potter? Like the taste of blood? I'm sure that you’ve the strength to pierce me again. The ideal spot would be through the spine between the shoulder blades and the neck, but you've never been much for following instructions."
"What? Oh..." He shifted uneasily from foot to foot, and even from his hazed, partially drunken state, Severus could see Harry’s adam’s apple bob. "I’m not here to...Severus, I–"
"Don’t."
He stopped. "What?’
"Don’t presume to come to my rooms with your martyred Gryffindor nobility and call me by my first name." The whiskey took the place of his common sense, and Severus climbed to his feet. "Get out. You were so anxious to before, weren’t you? Already packed? Come to give me a sweet goodbye kiss?" His sneer felt ugly, even to him.
"No...well..yes, but I.."
"But what, Potter? Don’t tell me your endless Gryffindor courage is leaving you now." The sneer intensified as he staggered across his room, with his aching feet and tight muscles and breaking heart. "You’ve come down into the bowels of Slytherin country, to the unwelcoming rooms of Severus Snape, without a single ounce of fear. Don’t you have the unmitigated gall to go further?"
"Just...shut up a second, you’re....you’ve been drinking," Harry said in a soft voice, his emerald eyes flying wide just when he realized what he’d said. "You’ve been drinking!"
"And I plan to do quite a bit more before this night is over, Mr. Potter," Severus smirked and grasped a handful of the boy’s hair. Such warm, soft, beautiful brown hair.
He slammed the door shut with the flat of his hand, the other letting go of all that warm hair and snagging hold of Harry’s slender young wrist. With the last of his good sense, what little of it there was to begin with, he used his body to shove Harry against the wood, a smirk curling his lips. His voice, low and silky with drink and misery, murmured menacingly into Harry’s ear, "Well, Mr. Potter, as you did save us all from endless peril and likely doom, I’m sure I can grace you with this one, last, sweet request."
He canted his head and dove.
Fire exploded between them, hardening him instantly, and made the breath hitch in his lungs. The ferocious need inside Severus leapt up to claim that innocent, fumbling mouth and drive it to a submission that nearly pushed him to the brink of insanity. He wanted. Merlin, how he wanted. His mind raced, arousal spiking deep in his gut to burn through the sadness in his chest and leave him in agony.
The heat of the kiss turned the boy in his embrace to mush while hardening him against Severus’ thigh. More, faster, harder, quicker. Different angle, different thrust, more, he needed it all and soon and now. He drove Harry hard against the door and thrust into his hips just to feel the young body buck against his own.
This kiss was not sweet, or clean, or wholesome as it had been before. This kiss was about fire and passion, hatred and love, pain and pleasure. There was no middle ground, no place to recover, no place to catch a breath. This was plain, simple fever, the need to have, the need to mate, the need to love and take and reach for nirvana. There was no hesitancy here for Harry, no gentleness, no caresses or murmured words.
This was danger.
Harry bucked against him, once, twice, and cried out into the sharp bite of his lower lip as he came.
And then Severus stepped back with a smirk, leaving the boy panting against the wooden door. A taste of what could have been. A taste of what he would never have. "Well, would you look at that," he sneered, eyeing the wet spot on Harry’s jeans with an arched brow over his shoulder. He turned on his heel and stalked back for the glass of whiskey to calm his nerves and drown out the world. The erection between his thighs could have chiseled diamond and the taste of Harry, cinnamon and dirt, blood and youth, made him pour another drink.
Something clattered to the floor beside him, and he froze, looking back at what had made the sound.
The tyro pin.
The boy shuddered, a blush staining his cheeks as he looked at the pin, and then Severus. "That’s what I came to tell you," he whispered, his voice breaking. "I don’t want to leave. I thought, I tried, but...I can’t, Severus. I can’t. I’m so tired of being alone."
Severus turned and was met with Harry’s compassionate eyes, Harry’s rumpled clothes, bare feet and pallid cheeks. The emotional rampage loomed on the horizon, threatening to drown out his already challenged common sense. "Mr. Potter, I do not take part in pity fucks, nor do I want anything to do with a, as Mr. Weasley would so politely put it, ‘hit for the road’."
"I didn’t come for a pity fuck," Harry whispered, and the voice drew Severus’ eyes back to him. Harry leaned down for the pin, taking it in hand and holding it tight. "I came...because I love you. I’ve loved you since I was seventeen years old...I’ve l-loved you for so long that I don’t know how to stop loving you. I tried, God help me. I love you even when it destroys me. I love you, because you complete me, even if you’re the most insecure bastard I’ve ever met. I love you, and I won’t let you shove me away. Not again."
Something fierce and needle-sharp came up to choke Severus’ harsh words before they could be spoken. "You’re a twenty four year old boy. You know nothing beyond orgasms and self pleasure."
"I don’t normally have orgasms," Harry whispered, so softly that Severus felt like sobbing. Harry’s hooded eyes fixed on the floor. "Dumbledore came to see me, after you left. He told me that Godric and Salazar’s test of faith was for us to kiss–to realize we loved one another. To trust one another, even after we’ve done things to one another that are untrustworthy. I do, Severus–I tried to push it away, to leave. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even go to my rooms. Hogwarts is my home." He stuttered silent, before, "You are my home."
Severus almost listened to the words. Almost. "How can you presume to come into my rooms and tell me this, hmm? Did you not stop to consider that I am happy being alone, that I would rather not have a relationship with anyone, let alone you?"
"Severus, you’re drinking Firewhisky alone at seven in the morning, after the night we vanquished Voldemort," Harry murmured, quietly, from the door. "I’m young, not stupid."
Severus couldn’t find an appropriate, scathing comment to that, so rather than look at Harry’s green eyes, his beautiful face, the tragic line of his forehead, he swallowed another mouthful of whiskey and prayed for patience, restraint, and courage. Merlin help him, he needed it.
He was so busy thinking about it, in fact, that he didn’t hear Potter’s words, at first. "What?"
Harry’s voice was very small. "I said, don’t you love me, too?"
Severus still thought he hadn’t heard correctly, and stared at the idiot boy for a moment before the second glass of the night slipped out of his fingers and smashed against the stones. He walked around it and snarled to hide his trembling voice. "That is the most inappropriate question you’ve ever asked, Potter, and that’s saying something when everything that comes out of your mouth is totally truculent. You insulting whelp, get out of my rooms," he snarled and threw the doors open to let him go. His soul, he was sure, bled.
Harry stood there; so stubborn, so resistant, so bloody mature. "Did you ever love me, Severus?"
"How..." He gaped. "How dare you! Not only do you think yourself important enough to call a man twenty years your elder by his first name, but...but you’re attempting to pry into my feelings." Severus sneered. "And here I had assumed you were over your ‘brainless idiot’ phase."
If he backed up a little, it wasn’t his fault.
Harry for his part, took another step forward. "Did you ever love me, Severus?"
"What did I just bloody tell you?" Severus snarled, backing up again, and then again when Harry prowled after him.
"You didn’t tell me anything; you laughed because I had the nerve to ask such a thing," Harry said calmly and arched a brow when Severus finally backed up into his desk, and sent ink wells shattering against the stone floor. "Tell me, Severus." Those enormous eyes, those bloody eyes. "Did you ever love me?"
"Of course I loved you," Severus hissed, his voice a croak. Horror, that. "I’m not a lifeless beast, I have a heart in my chest."
Harry tipped his head, and he was close, so close; his eyes awash. "At first?"
The tears catching in Harry’s eyelashes haunted Severus down to the marrow. He couldn’t believe...and yet, he could. Harry was laying his soul bare, devastation in his expression, agony in the tense line of his body, but honesty in those endless green eyes.
And Severus, though he was a sarcastic bastard, could not let that go unnoticed. If there was one thing that strummed a note within him, it was honesty.
"At first...it was revenge."
"Against my father?"
"Against your father. What was better than knowing I would have James Potters’ son underneath me, begging to be taken by me?"
Harry tipped his head, pain in the tight line of his mouth. "When did you realize it was more than that?"
Merlin. Merlin. "The morning you wore your new glasses to school. Such pleasure over such a mundane thing, but you...you treated it as if it were the best gift you’d ever received."
Severus couldn’t manage to look away when the first tear trailed Harry’s cheek.
"When did you love me?"
To his intense and profound horror, Severus felt his throat clog up with wet, tight, biting something that made swallowing impossible. It stung his nose, burned his eyes, and made him want to retch. "When you let me, your abhorrent teacher, touch you."
Harry was so close...so very close. Severus could count every eyelash, watch the sparkling gold mix with the green in his eyes, could see the very light freckles sprinkled over his nose and cheek bones. Severus could smell Harry’s sweet breath, taste it in his mouth, and finally, feel the body easing against him so that Severus had no choice but to lean against the desk as his only lifeline to the sane.
Harry whispered, so softly that only the two of them could hear. "Do you love me?"
The stinging burn leapt up until Severus could barely breathe through it, until he felt the sob of misery scrape out of his throat, "Damn you, you know that I do."
This time, when their lips met Severus thought he would die.
Hesitant at first...gentle, sweet, and oh-so innocent. A mating of lips, careful and slow. Severus had no idea what to do about his hands, which felt too big and clumsy, or with his body which felt awkward and lanky.
Harry grasped his waist, hands sliding up his back, and Severus was lost.
He wrapped his arms tightly around the young man’s chest and crushed their bodies together. He gave a sob, clinging like a man lost and Harry was his only scrap of hope. He buried his face in the crook of Harry’s neck and held on as tightly as he possibly could. "I’m so sorry for all that I’ve done to you. How can you ever forgive me, Harry?"
"We’ll work on it. All the worthwhile things in life are worth working on," Harry said into Severus’ hair. "Tell me, Severus. I have to hear it...if we’re to build our lives together, you have to tell me."
And then there were those green eyes again, imploring eyes, deep eyes, Gryffindor eyes, and Severus honestly didn’t think he could ever think of that word again and not feel a smile tickle his lips. "You won’t give up until I do, will you?"
Harry, for his part, heard the resignation in his voice, and a smile touched his lips. "Nope."
"Well, then." He cupped Harry’s face between long-fingered, potion-stained hands, and tilted it up the smallest bit so the green reflected in the candle light. His hands were trembling. "You are creamy nougat to be savored. Toffee tasted, Chocolate Frogs craved, Sugar Quills sucked until there isn’t a trace left. You are the white chocolate to my dark, where there’s warmth and heat and bitterness. You melt on my tongue," Severus whispered, tongue tracing Harry’s soft lips. "You make me remember what it is to be alive. You make me hate you for manipulating me so effortlessly...you make me love you for letting me fall under your spell."
"Silver-tongued devil," Harry murmured.
"Tell me you aren’t lying."
"I’m not lying," Harry whispered, his voice thick. "I’m not lying, Severus."
Severus ran his fingers through the dark hair, cupping the warm head to his shoulder. "Let me please you, Harry. Let me touch you as you deserve to be touched."
Harry looked up at him. "That and more."
There were times I ran to hide, afraid to show the other side. Alone in the night without you. But now, I know just who you are, and I know you hold my heart. Finally...this is where I belong. It is you I have loved all along.
- =- = -
The sun, high and lovely in the sky, shone gently down from the charmed windows in Severus’ bed chamber. It reflected husky, dust mote light over the grey stone and green sheets drawn back over the duvet, pooling light over damp, glistening skin, lighting soft, shy smiles and shared kisses in clear, bright winter light.
The cries and laughter of the occasion were a far away annoyance through the stone walls around them, as distant as the moon. This was their time, and in pleasure, in joy, they loved.
As clichéd as it sounded, which he whispered into Harry’s amused little ear, their clothes melted between them like hot chocolate, until their were only gasps, and pleas, and finally, finally, moans. Elbows, bellies, nipples, mouths. Lazy exploration of miles and miles of flesh that bowed under caresses and strokes, that fit into curves and angles.
Harry did not seem to mind that Severus’ body was not that of an Adonis; that he wasn’t golden and angled with muscle, that he wasn’t beautiful. He bared Severus’ flesh as if finally unwrapping a badly wanted gift, his pleasure so obvious that Severus couldn’t quite find it in himself to be ashamed of his body when it was clear that his skin had brought such joy to those green eyes.
The bed was full, soft, and quiet when they shifted onto it. Cool silk was warmed by the delightful friction of lovers building upon their arousal, sliding towards ecstasy with no qualms, no bitterness, no hate.
Harry’s body was young but strong, already marred with memories that Severus took great pleasure in mapping with slow, careful caresses of his mouth. Long scars ran over Harry’s body, bisecting his hip and falling down his thigh–the wound that had given Harry his limp.
It tasted like Eden under his tongue.
The fever rose, swelling between them, heightening the pleasure in their unhurried lovemaking. They rolled across the sheets, tasting, experimenting, touching in curiosity and lust of this new joy. Harry’s hands were endearingly unsteady, and Severus did his best to guide them over his flesh, young fingers to more experienced skin.
Who knew that a particular touch to Harry’s thigh could make him jump and twitch, or that licking his left nipple could make his erection rise full and proud against his belly? How could Severus have ever known that his body, after so long, after so much loneliness and misery, could sing like a violin under Harry’s tender, unskilled hands?
How could he have ever imagined Harry’s dark hair fanned over the pillow, his eyes lit with pleasure, his body tensing under his, and the heat spreading between them?
How could he have possibly fathomed that when his body joined with Harry’s, when he sank into his young lover, sweet and beautiful, that he would complete the inner workings of himself?
It was simple. He couldn’t. He could have never understood the sweet friction, the moans, and the glorious race to climax that they could build between them, sacred, without experiencing it first hand. His fantasies could never hold a candle to the real thing, the heaving body under his, the tight grasp of ankles around his hips, the cries for more and faster and please underneath him, around him, through him.
When Harry cried out his virgin climax, Severus chased him into oblivion.
And smiled.
OR
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