Chapter Text
Harry Apparated to Spinner's End in the evenings, or on overcast days. Six months of stalking Snape had taught him that the canal was the safest Apparition point; along the more desolate stretches it was rare to encounter another living soul. Teenagers loitered under the bridge sometimes, or an occasional homeless person. If any of Snape's ghosts haunted the embankment, Harry had never met them and hoped it stayed that way. He had enough of his own.
Beyond the iron railings, the city sprawled like an old, sick dragon covered in cracked, smoke-blackened scales. Snow and soot mingled to slush on the asphalt. After dark, an eerie glow rose over the slate rooftops, their shingles bright with frost.
Harry wandered the strand, half-listening to the car tyres hissing by. The icy mud crunched under his feet, and streetlights reflected off the dark water. The voice of reason in his head (which sounded embarrassingly like Hermione) urged him to pack it in and go home.
He wouldn't, though. Not until he'd seen Snape. He considered it his responsibility to make sure the bastard was still locked up tight. The argument with his inner Hermione was just part of the ritual, a sop to his conscience. Shivering with sudden loneliness as the water's quiet gurgle stirred up memories that didn't belong to him, Harry wrapped his robes tighter and scrambled up the muddy bank.
Wand out, he ducked through a gap in the railings. Rust streaked his sleeve, and he removed it with a thought. No red marks. No memories. On one corner, plastic-bagged bundles of newspapers leaned tipsily against skeletal Christmas trees, tinsel sparkling in the sweep of passing headlamps. The new year was only a few days old. Already an entire year free of Voldemort. Funny, Harry didn't feel much like celebrating. He slunk along like a hungry werewolf, soles slipping on the worn, damp cobbles.
As he turned the next corner, fog drifted down the street like smoke from a gutted building. Harry let it roll over him, willing to enter the flames head-on. After all this time, he was the only one still burning.
Stop it. There were no flames, no fire.
Silencing his - well, not conscience, maybe his sense of self-preservation - he crossed to the kerb. Stay away from the house. It always went like this. Don't do it, stay away. But the urge to trespass was overwhelming. If he didn't stop giving in to it, sooner or later he was going to get caught.
He looked forward to that, actually.
Distracted by fantasies of hexing Snape, he stuck the tip of his wand between his teeth and nibbled. Practically everyone had pointed out how dangerous this was. What if he blew a hex through the back of his head? Well, so what? Score one for his ghosts, then. The rest of them could carve FUCKING IDIOT on his tombstone.
He spat out a splinter and paused. At the end of the rundown street, Spinner's End stood shrouded in darkness save for one yellow rectangle in the upper storey glaring out at the fog. It was a tall, narrow house, dark and ugly, a perfect fit for its lone occupant. Harry craned his neck. Somewhere inside the lit room, a candle wavered. The restless git was probably pacing. Harry scooted closer to the front of the house to avoid being seen, pressing against bricks so cold they burned. He chafed his fingers, and a thorn jabbed him.
"Hey, lay off," he whispered, half in jest. "It's me." The wards crackled irritably, but the creamy scent of roses swirled up in greeting.
His ghosts chose that moment to invade his lungs. Shielding his mouth to keep the fog at bay, Harry tried to cough them out. They wouldn't go. Of course not. He'd long since given up the hope that he'd ever be rid of them.
"Alohomora."
Unoiled hinges complaining, the door to Snape's home creaked open. Knowing he'd underestimated Snape in the past, Harry waited, restoring circulation to his stiff face by rubbing it with his scarred hand. The magical residue that lingered in I must not tell lies tingled faintly against his chapped lips. With his other hand, he wrestled several lengths of balled-up, shimmering cloak from his pocket. He checked the window again, but still no silhouette.
Not that Harry needed to see it to know Snape was there. For how much longer, he couldn't rightly say. He'd decided, months before, that he wanted this window empty. Unlit. That was why he kept coming back. That was why he braved the cold and risked getting caught. He intended, someday, to extinguish it.
He swung the shining cloak over his head. The shadow of his obsession swallowed him up.
~~~~
From a creature essentially bereft of a soul, he'd inherited the guilt of a thousand mortal sins.
That night in bed, Harry dreamed of it again. He often did after visiting Snape. It had been the last curse to leave Tom Riddle's lips, his last act in this or any other life. It had struck Harry down before he could Disapparate - Harry, who had believed they'd won. Who'd believed it was over, at a cost no one had calculated yet, but over for good. Hemmed in by flames, he'd collapsed in the middle of the burning Ministry, screaming in shock, not knowing what had hit him.
Neither did the healers who toiled over him for days, weeks. Months, if he hadn't thrown a tantrum and stormed out. For a while, it had been touch and go with his sanity. He'd been so obsessed with turfing the ghosts out of his head and purging his body of Voldemort's sins. Only it hadn't worked, had it? St. Mungo's had been crap at identifying the spell derivation and its counter-curse. After weeks in hospital, the shamefaced healers had seen him off with one absolutely shitty piece of advice: get used to it. Learn to live with your ghosts.
Learn to live with the faceless wraiths hungering through him? No problem, mates. How bad could it be? No worse than being eaten alive by Thestrals.
Anger didn't help. It merely fed the bitter spirits. They craved vengeance, tormenting him in ways that would never have worked on a Dark Lord. Why would Voldemort have cared? But Harry did. They couldn't know he was innocent of their blood.
Clutching at his pillow, Harry almost smothered himself in his sleep.
The wisps of ghostly presence inside him - Merlin, those were bad enough. But what was like to drive him mad if he let it obsess him was the guilt about his mother's and father's deaths.
At least the dream was different that night. Flames still roared, like they always did, but it was Spinner's End that burned, not the Ministry. And in the middle of it all, Harry sat atop Snape, his hands around Snape's throat, and it didn't matter if they were both going to die, it had felt -
A brisk knock at the wall of his nightmare snapped him awake. Groggy and disoriented, he blinked as a head of bushy brown hair poked around the door.
"Harry? Sorry," Hermione said. "I know you got in late last night, but I was wondering if you could come to breakfast soon. I need help with Ron."
"'Kay," Harry mumbled. Only after Hermione shut the door again did Harry register the throbbing in his groin. He'd come all over his pyjama bottoms. To a wet dream about Snape.
"Merlin," he groaned in disgust, and dragged himself out of bed. Of all the jokes for fate to play on him. He pulled a dressing gown over his soiled clothes and summoned his glasses. Maybe the dream was his reward - or punishment - for having revealed himself to Snape at last. Well, not like that - revealed his existence, was all. Pretty bloody stupid thing to do, but it had been bound to happen sooner or later.
He found the book he'd dropped next to his bed and tossed it in a corner, knocking a few other items to the floor. It was the corner he reserved for all the things he'd stolen from Spinner's End. Mostly books. Snape was pretty skint these days, and the loss of a book hurt him like nothing else.
Out in the hallway, Harry bumped into Remus and Tonks on their way to the loo. He immediately backed up a respectful distance. His ghosts had a malicious streak and tended to use him for some literal bumping when Tonks was around.
"Morning, you," she grinned. She had a spectacular case of bed head, and her hair sported the orange-streaked magenta that always appeared whenever she and Remus had just had sex. Harry kind of wished he didn't know this. She was just so - well, bouncy about it.
"Going for a shower," Remus said, looking a bit sheepish. "Unless you need to - ?"
"I'll use the w.c. downstairs," Harry said. "Ron first, shower later."
"Won't be long," Tonks said, and they both crowded back politely while Harry sidled around them. He could just endure being touched, but he preferred to avoid it, and everyone in the house bent over backwards to accommodate him.
Just then a door banged open across the hall and Ginny darted out, already dressed for Quidditch practice. Behind her sauntered Owen Thornycroft, the boyfriend she'd acquired once Harry had finally got it across to her that when he said he didn't like being touched, he didn't mean "except for Ginny Weasley." He'd had to cast a Body-Bind on her the night she'd tried to sneak into his bed. He reckoned that had been the breaking point. But for Merlin's sake - his hands froze when he touched people, and his ghosts crept under the surface of his skin. Harry had no way of knowing what they'd do to his friends if they ever broke free.
"Hey, slug-a-beds," Ginny called out. "You'll never guess. Owen finished my portrait!"
Tonks beamed. "Congrats!"
"Cheers," Remus offered, shuffling rather urgently in the direction of the loo. Tonks snagged his arm, tugging on him to wait. Her hair was dandelion-yellow with curiosity and her ears slimmed to points and swiveled forward. "So, when do we get to see it?"
"By invitation only," Owen apologised. "Eh, love? Thing is, it's a wee bit risqué."
"Harry?" Ginny spoke right over him. "Don't you want to see it?"
"Sorry, I'm past late for Ron's feeding," he blurted, and Apparated downstairs to Scourgify himself in the loo before Ginny started pouting.
Back upstairs, he found Hermione finishing up with Ron's breakfast. She was neatly turned out in her Ministry robes and dictating notes in a happy, sing-song voice. She'd spooned most of the porridge into Ron's mouth, but some of it had ended up on his jumper, as usual, and some on the table, and pumpkin juice had splattered all over the floor. Ron moaned at Harry and drooled porridge bits.
Taking charge of the spoon, Harry smiled at Ron and made funny faces, pantomiming, "Open wide." Ron gurgled. Behind his back, Hermione stealthily pulled out her wand and cast cleaning charms, then tucked the wand away again before Ron spotted it. The last thing they needed this morning - any morning - was a screaming fit.
"Sorry to leave you alone with him," Hermione said, stuffing her Auto-Quill and parchment into a satchel. "Adrian Owled me about some fantastic old scrolls he's requisitioned from the Department of Mysteries. I imagine they're proofs relating to our latest experiments in sympathetic magic."
Hermione had got a job straight out of Hogwarts as a research assistant in a small back office stuffed to the gills with crazy Arithmantic types. She had, in fact, converted almost overnight to being a crazy Arithmantic type herself. By the time she returned home, she'd be covered in ink and chalk dust and would be spouting the most incomprehensible gibberish.
"Have you seen our resident sylph and faun this morning?" she said archly, pouring herself half a glass of juice.
"Ginny and her painter bloke? Nearly tripped over them in the hall."
Hermione grinned slightly. "Did they stampede you into the bedroom to see her portrait? It's finished, you know. Very nice, too."
Harry wiped a smear of butter off Ron's chin. "They tried, but I gave 'em the slip. Tonks was pretty keen on having a gander, I think. They fobbed her off. Kind of rude, if you ask me."
"Ginny doesn't give a toss for Tonks' opinion, that's why." Hermione set down her glass. "I know they won't rest until they've pestered you into taking a look. Prepare yourself, Harry. She's absolutely starkers."
Harry blinked at her, spoon arrested midway to Ron's mouth. "Cripes. They can't both be trying to get a leg over, can they? I mean, what's up with Owen?"
"You're the famous Harry Potter, that's what," Hermione said. "Are you sure you'll be okay here?"
Harry shrugged. "We'll be fine. Ron will help protect my virtue. Won't you, mate?"
Ron scrunched his face and grinned vacantly at the sound of his name. Hermione leaned down to plant a kiss on the top of his unbrushed head, and her wand slid about two inches out of her sleeve.
It was bad luck Ron's head happened to be turned toward her at that moment. He caught sight of the wand and bleated softly. His eyes started to roll. "Shite," Harry said as the blubbering sirened into a pathetic wail. Ron swept out his arms, and the bowl of porridge went flying.
The bedroom door burst open, Ginny behind it, and the bowl ricocheted back, catching Hermione in the breast. She cried out and staggered against Ron, and her already-jostled wand shot out. It spun as it hit the table and skated so fast it probably would have vanished out of sight if it hadn't fetched up, with a loud ding, against a Black-family china saucer.
Ron went berserk.
It took all three of them to catch him, hold him, get a calming potion down his throat, and then coax him, weeping, into bed. Ginny drew the covers over him and murmured gently. Face pale, Hermione put things to rights.
At the first opportunity Harry sat down, fists jammed in his pockets, while he listened to the crackle of burning skin. His tongue scraped against his teeth in a fruitless attempt to dislodge the taste of smoke. His memories were all of fire, but his teeth chattered with cold. Fucking ghosts.
"I'm so sorry," Hermione said for about the fifteenth time. "Is he asleep yet?"
"Yes, no thanks to you," Ginny snapped. "Stupid cow, can't even manage a proper sticking charm."
Hermione looked at her, but said only, "See you tonight, Harry."
Owen timed his moment nicely, popping his head round the door to say, "Jump your broomstick, love. We need to be off out. I told your brother I'd meet him for a sitting."
Harry didn't look up as they bustled variously out the door. Once they were gone, he shifted over to sit beside Ron and watch his sleeping, tear-stained face.
It was all bollocksed up. Back when he'd thought Ron might still be reachable, sealed up in memory somewhere, he'd wanted to try legilimency. Snape would have come in handy, if he hadn't been in Azkaban at the time. Of course, Snape would likely have dismissed Ron's condition with the same cold words he'd once directed at Hermione: "I see no difference."
Harry listened to Ron snore and put his face in his hands. He wasn't going to think about Snape.
~~~~
The household had hung together for not quite a year. Ten months, tops. Long enough for Harry to wonder, sometimes, if he'd made a mistake. Not in Ron's case, obviously, but for himself. He hadn't realised how hard it would be to tolerate other people while he was a walking grab-bag of Voldemort's guilt.
It had sounded so brill, the idea that they should all live together. Ron needed to be taken care of, right? So did Harry, come to that.
With the Burrow still under repair, Molly and Arthur had signed off on Ron's release into Harry's - no, Hermione's custody. Harry hadn't been considered mentally fit enough to be responsible for another person's welfare. At the last minute, Harry had persuaded Remus to board with them, in exchange for helping out with Ron. It was like a two-for-one sale. Ask for Remus, get Tonks free.
With one week to go, Harry had consulted Kingsley Shacklebolt on a troublesome clause in the St. Mungo's guidelines.
"Patient R. B. Weasley's magic unstable and sympathetic. Liable to be affected by proximity to Dark intent."
Kingsley had raised his eyebrows at all the dark corners and Darker artifacts and the constant scrutiny from soot-darkened paintings. Generations of Blacks had sowed spells in the secret corners of Grimmauld Place, specifically designed to escape notice. They'd made an art of pitting magic against itself in long-forgotten, often lethal, ambush. Their history, and therefore their house, bristled with feuds, paranoia, and hideous practical jokes.
"You're going to need a specialist for this."
Well, when he put it like that. Harry grimaced. No wonder Sirius had been such a dab hand at devising cruel pranks.
"I know someone who enjoys a bit of a challenge." Kingsley had polished off his firewhisky and stood to take his leave. "A bit on the raffish side, but I think magical affinity counts for something in these cases. I'll owl you her contact information."
~~~~
On the appointed day, a clack of heels in the parlour had signalled the sudden landing, portkey in hand, of Senior Class Warden Odile Lalique. Harry fumbled with the leather wallet she presented. He'd meant to glance politely at her credentials - Kingsley had vetted her already, so surely there was no need? - but such a flurry of miniature scrolls greeted him, squeaky testimonials breaking into disembodied clamour, that he practically threw the wallet back into her hands.
The Warden turned from him in a swirl of robes slit up the sides. Harry trailing behind her, she stalked from room to room in calf-length black boots, stroking surfaces and pressing her ear to the floorboards, casting spells that provoked crackling from alcoves and furious buzzing from drab-looking splotches of mildew. In no time at all she detected a number of active layers infesting the walls, newest upon old upon ancient.
"Positive nest of snakes, 'mid lots of rusty old snakeskins," she murmured. The opal stud in her left nostril sparkled fire. Her russet hair was rolled high in a stylish bun, held in place with a double-serpent clip, her nails immaculate, red-tipped except for the index fingers of both hands, which were black as beetle wings.
Bugger. Kingsley had sent a Slytherin to bail them out.
In a brisk voice, she ordered everyone out until the buried frictions in Grimmauld Place could be isolated and their raw spots cauterised.
"Hard to believe this place hasn't gone up like a bloody volcano by now," Odile remarked as Harry joined her at the foot of the stairs. "There are invocations here that oughtn't to abide in the same historical moment, let alone co-habit beneath the same roof."
They stood by, watching Remus and then Hermione and then Remus again shepherd Tonks in and out of the Floo. Remus looked harassed; they'd only just finished moving in the week before, and it was a bit much to have to move right back out again. Tonks kept popping back in with one of them in tow, chirruping, "Don't mind me. Won't be a minute," scattering fireplace ash on the carpet before ricocheting upstairs to fetch yet another misplaced possession.
A dimple fleeted by on the Warden's face, and Harry would have bet a year of detentions that it telegraphed silly bint. His temper flared. Merlin's maiden aunt, did all Slytherins smirk?
Odile turned, caught his sullen glance, and interrogated him with an eyebrow. Harry immediately added eyebrow-cocking arrogance to his list of Slytherin traits. Unless -
"Did you study under Sna- I mean, uh, where'd you go to school?" he blurted. On the basis of her name alone, she could just as well have been a Beauxbatons student who'd never had to deal with House divisions.
"You don't do subtle, do you, Mr. Potter?" the Warden said, not missing a beat. "Refrain from making Sonorus-level assumptions that can be heard all the way down in Diagon Alley, and you may actually merit an honest answer."
She studied him for a moment, then her gaze swept the entrance hall. It snagged briefly on the covered portrait of Mrs. Black.
"If you must know," she addressed the heavy red drape, "I took my N.E.W.T.s at Hogwarts, class of '89. My former Head of House was a brilliant Dark wizard with a stiff wand lodged up his skinny white arse. At any rate," wry fondness flashed across her face, a sly mockery of herself as a besotted student, "that was the consensus of the dim twits who provoked his right bastard of a temper. Which, I'm sure it will astonish you to hear, was pretty much the lot of us. Now he's shunted away - this is about Professor Snape, I take it? Trapped like a basilisk by the Ministry of Magic, for," her head jerked, and a dazzle of rainbow flamed her cheek, "the crime of unexpected heroism. Had the gall to pull their bleedin' stones out of the fire still sporting Voldemort's Mark, the stupid git."
She wheeled suddenly to face him. "Mr. Potter."
Forget hexes; the contempt in her eyes could have knocked Harry off his feet at fifty paces.
"Out of respect for the immense service you have done us all in offing the Dark Lord, I shall gladly pass your case to another Warden who might better suit your unspecified … preferences. I can promise you at the very least a Ravenclaw. You may Owl him at your earliest convenience."
"No!" Harry said. "I didn't mean - it's just, the eyebrow thing reminded me of - "
"Did it now?"
Back straight (Harry suspected she'd also got the wand-up-the-arse thing from Snape), Odile smiled, displaying a top row of gleaming white teeth. Harry blushed, resisting the urge to back away.
"I do believe I'll take that as a compliment," Odile purred. "That is, if I'm not misreading your intent and may still expect you to honour our contract?"
"Please," he nodded vigorously and gestured towards the walls. "Carry on with whatever you were doing."
The dismantling precipitated days of strife, of shrieking and groaning throughout the house. Shadows frothed down the walls like potions catastrophes. Staircases creaked. Chandeliers went berserk, their cut-glass ornaments dinging and rattling. The drape slid to a heap beneath Mrs. Black's frame, followed by the painting itself when the Sticking charm let go and the whole thing crashed to the tiles.
With a lazy, lounging stride, Odile strutted over and stood with arms folded, grinning down as the old lady shrieked abuse.
"Add this to my payment," she instructed, stubbing the toe of her boot against the canvas.
Odile also took it upon herself to offer Harry practicals in ward structure and the magical equivalent of breaking and entering.
"Here, feel this," she urged, the tip of her wand teasing nimbly along the joins between stone blocks. She put away the wand and performed a scooping motion, easing back with a length of - well, nothing, in her arms.
Harry humphed. Way to make an impression.
Without warning, the thing she was holding thrashed wildly, nearly lifting the Warden off her feet. Blimey! Harry started forward, but Odile's scowl drove him off. The breath hissed between her teeth, and a black flash of Parseltongue zigzagged through Harry's mind.
The next second, the vestibule wall bulged outward, accompanied by an ominous rumble. The entire house shook. Harry reached for the wall to steady himself. Gritty fragments of rock drizzled from the upper mouldings and bounced across the carpet. With a splintery, ringing report, cracks started to spread, their black lightning-bolts splitting stonework and wallpaper.
Harry had his wand out before he realised it. Mentally, he slagged Kingsley for not vetting this witch more carefully. A rush of frigid wind sucked his hair back and drove his glasses hard into his cheekbones.
Darkness descended with a bang. The house groaned. A black hole in its gold rococo frame, the tarnished mirror started to glow. Frantic, Harry glanced around. Every shadow, every bit of moss and mould, every ineradicable stain in Grimmauld Place was oozing into the front hall. Prisms rippled through the black sludge, refracted from the opal in Odile's nose.
Braced, intent, she stood hugging an armload of writhing cables. Or so Harry supposed; he couldn't tell if his eyes were playing tricks or not. Shiny snake-like veins strained out of the walls, dislodging bits of marble and mortar.
Just as Harry was about to yell, "Stop!" Odile staggered. Her snake clip came flying loose, skipped off the stair railing and fell to the rug. A knot of hair uncoiled after it, spiraling down her neck as if alive. Face rigid in a feral grin, she gave a yank, and a large splinter of something shot out of the wall, just missing her face. It clattered across the floor and rolled to a stop.
She wasted no time wrestling the coils of ward fibre back into the shuddering bones of the house. Wand pinning them in place, she raised one boot and stamped. The walls boomed upright. Cracks dried on their surfaces like water stains.
Every bloody candle in the room snapped alight. Harry, who'd been about to investigate what had come whizzing out of the stones, couldn't control a flinch or the impulse to shade his eyes.
Odile pirouetted, agile fingers re-winding her bun. With a single stride she bent and snatched up her hair clip, shoving it haphazardly onto her head as she Summoned whatever the Wards had spat out in such fury.
"What was that?" Harry said.
She glanced up, red streaks of excitement just fading from her cheeks. A cracked, twisted wand lay in her hands.
"Foundational magic of the house. Nasty stuff. Best leave that to fester in peace, you agree?"
"Yes, ma'am," he said, reaching out. "Do you mind if I - ?"
A knowing eyebrow made him withdraw his hand quickly, as if she'd caught him reaching for a wank mag. Smiling and shaking her head slightly, Odile pulled a thin, filigreed tube from her toolbelt, slid the wand inside, and snapped it shut.
Every nail on her hand glittered black. Where before there'd been an opal in the arch of her nose, now burned a ruby.
"Tell you what," Odile said. "Let's not report this, shall we? Just for the time being. And if we find another one, it's yours. Agreed?"
In the end, they unearthed three ancient, gnarly, magic-laden wands. Odile kept two of them. Harry's was currently stashed upstairs with all the things he'd stolen from Spinner's End, the things no one else knew about.
From Odile, Harry gleaned everything he knew about sabotaging Wards. He learned to weave, smother, disembowel, subdue, and forge magical signatures in a variety of castings. Not without setbacks: he had to Firecall her one night because he'd created a vortex in the upstairs loo.
But he also wondered why. Had someone close to Scrimgeour instructed the Warden to lure him under her professional wing? In the wrong hands, this kind of knowledge was a weapon. Was she waiting for him to use it? Was the Ministry of Magic?
~~~~
Ron came home on March 1st. By July, Harry was searching for excuses to get out of Grimmauld Place. Everyone else had jobs and a routine; he had to devise his own escapes.
At the time of Snape's trial, Harry had still been in hospital. Reading about it later, he snorted at the headlines. "Albus Dumbledore's Snake-in-the-Grass!" "Death-Eater Redux!" "Murderer or Martyr?" "The Spy Who Betrayed Them All Six Ways from Sunday!"
Culling through pages of lucrative hysteria, Harry had cared about only two things. One, Snape hadn't been sentenced to Azkaban. Two, the house where he was shut away from the world was warded.
Not bad. Perfect, in fact. After all, he needed a challenge.
~~~~
The first time he laid a finger on Spinner's End, he half-expected a Petrificus Totalus to knock him flat on his arse.
Thorns sliced through his palm. Shocked, Harry stopped the bleeding. Then he drew his wand and ran some tests before he touched the bricks again. The minutes ticked by. Silence, stillness, were his only companions. Before he knew it, it'd gone an hour. He pulled his hands out puffy with welts.
No Aurors accosted him. No one at all. Snape was a sitting duck.
For weeks, Harry kept at it. The thorns savaged him at first. Before Apparating home, he always spent a few minutes tidying the torn skin.
He got into the habit of watching for Snape's shadow at the window. The scent of roses touched him, the submissive kiss of elusive perfumes. Harry pressed in deeper, until his hands ran with blood. Always, he got his roses. Always, he pushed as far as he could go.
Slowly, in the darkness, with a single light blazing at the window, he wormed his way into the heart of Snape's solitude.
One night the briars parted, and Harry stepped through.
He told no one. Spying on Snape was his secret. Concealed beneath his father's cloak, Harry broke into Snape's house, sprawled on Snape's chairs, prowled Snape's hallways, and, when the mood was on him, stole Snape's books.
Mostly, though, he watched.
Snape was still Snape. He practiced elementary potions using a battered, blackened saucepan and anything else he could scare up, including, on enough occasions to be worrisome if Harry were inclined to worry, his own blood. Harry thrilled with disgust every time Snape's skin split under the knife, every time he stretched his pale, smeared arm over the hissing potion. He held his breath and watched, fingering his own scars. Every batch ended up dumped down the sink. Or else Harry watched Snape cook elaborate meals, using every pot and pan and utensil and spice in the cramped, lino-tiled kitchen, only to turn off the burner and bin the lot, so savagely the container hit the floor with a crash. Food splattered the tiles. Not much of a one for eating, was Snape.
Or Harry watched him stand at various windows with arms folded, staring out into the street or the back lot. Since this happened every time he visited, it was a fair bet Snape did it every day. He watched him pull books from shelves and read and take notes and read and mutter and read and close the books and rest his cheek against their covers. He watched him pace. And drink. And throw things just for the pleasure of seeing them shatter. This was Snape, after all. Not books, though. Harry never saw him throw a single book. He watched him refuse to clean up, so that the broken pieces were still there the next time he snuck in. But later he watched Snape clean obsessively, wash and dust and scrub and knock cobwebs out of corners. In private, Snape rolled his shirtsleeves up, and the Dark Mark banded his left forearm like a bruise. Once, Harry caught him opening the door, thrusting his hand forward, saw him snatch it back, swearing, and stick his bleeding fingers in his mouth. He watched him practice Accio over and over without a wand.
He watched Snape fail, and he smiled.
He didn't watch him undress. Or follow him into the loo. He wasn't so far gone yet that he'd creep in at night and watch him while he slept. Or wanked, if he ever actually did, which Harry doubted.
For this, Harry incurred not a single reprimand. Not the slightest indication that the Ministry was aware of him or bothered by the news of someone breaking in. Hermione asked him once about his bloodshot eyes. Ginny let fly with a few childish remarks about tomcats prowling back-alley fences. But if an Auto-Quill were jotting details of his visits onto Ministry parchment, Harry had yet to see the forces of Light come racing to investigate.
It was January now. Six months, and he'd finally been caught at it.
~~~~
Fresh from their shower, announcing their appetites as they came through the door, Remus and Tonks found Harry still hunched over beside a sleeping Ron. They offered to take his place while they ate. Still tasting smoke, Harry filled a glass with pumpkin juice and retreated to his room.
He locked his door and lay back on his bed. He wasn't going to think about Snape.
He put a hand down his pyjama bottoms. Or maybe he was.
He closed his eyes and stroked himself idly and dreamed, half-awake, about the previous night.
Fog and freezing bricks and squealing hinges. Invisible, Harry had stepped inside. Woolly puffs of fog followed him in, and he smiled. In this guise he could very nearly pass for a ghost. He liked to imagine himself haunting this building, driving Snape mad with small displacements of household items and terrible noises while he slept. Tormenting Snape the way his own ghosts tormented him.
Harry glanced back at the brooding silhouette of the mill chimney before clicking the door shut. For a moment it was pitch-black, and he stood listening, wand drawn, before casting a silent Lumos.
The room smelled, as always, both cozy and stale: snuffed candles, calf-leather and hippogriff bindings packed on sagging shelves, a breath of damp in the dour curtains and threadbare carpet. There was a scatter of Muggle circulars and newspapers on the sofa, alongside a small, dim stack of books. Snape had been diligently researching, Harry wasn't sure what. He nicked one of the books and slipped it in his pocket.
On Featherlight feet he crossed to the wall of imposing bookcases, and tapped one open with the tip of his wand. It creaked in a surly manner to do his bidding, then swung shut behind him with a raspy snick.
Harry waited again, the wand's halo of light picking out the bottom step of a wooden staircase carpeted by a moth-eaten runner. It climbed up, shrouded in dusty shadow, to quarters once occupied by Wormtail.
To the left was another open portal. This one led down into impenetrable darkness, so still, so utterly unbreathing, it resembled a plunge to an underground cave.
As always, Harry's heart started to canter, quick and thudding. His phantoms coagulated around his pulse points. The cloak rippled with his fast, shallow breaths.
He nudged one foot forward and began the descent, pushing against the subtle spell that implied he was going the wrong way, that he was approaching the edge of a bottomless pit, that his next step would not meet the tread of a stair and he would topple through a gap in the earth, in the fabric of reality, falling ever downward, flailing, helpless to stop, his body bouncing off stones and shearing against invisible walls, tumbling forever.
He thrust his foot out and kept going.
Eventually the stairway ended, and Harry inched forward along a short, dark corridor, hand reaching for the doorknob. His armpits and behind his ears were damp with sweat, the light wobbling at the end of his wand. Erasure marks streaked the wall ahead, where the view disappeared behind wrinkled cloth.
At the moment of opening the door, Harry always smelled burning, fire, smelled wood streaming with acrid smoke.
He ducked around the door and pulled it to, then glanced around the upper-floor hallway. He'd been baffled by this spell at first, disturbed by the sensation of falling, and confused to find himself on the second floor. Now he knew what to expect. It was clever of the old bat to throw off pursuers by making it necessary to go down in order to go up. Harry still had no idea how it worked, but he didn't care. All that mattered were the cracks of light burning around a far-off door, a faint, spooky gleam in the corridor's darkness, empty but for a marble-topped end table.
Music rolled in great swells along the walls. Muggle music, to Harry's surprise. Some nights, lush, lonely notes traveled serpentine paths through the darkness. Other times, earsplitting guitar riffs would hammer the stairs, singers screaming their throats hoarse as if trying to be heard from deep inside a prison cellblock.
Let Snape do his bloody best to rage against his fate. Let the music do his begging and screaming for him. It wouldn't change a thing. It sure as hell wouldn't bring Dumbledore back.
Tonight, though, was different. Through the wood grain sifted a melancholy chorus, voices like bells, dissonant and strange. Checkered with duets and echoes, the softly sung tides washed forward and back. Harry wasn't used to beauty, and Christ, this was - it was almost unbearable.
He shut his eyes, and his chest began to ache. Flames started weaving behind his eyelids, and he blinked them open. He felt very alone and knew he shouldn't be here, pressed against the door like this. His fingernails pulled splinters from the paneling.
Something was breaking free inside him, swelling to terrible proportions behind his ribcage, something that threatened to burst forth in waves of fire. The dead souls within him crowded forward, divining their own histories deep in the music: the echoes down wells, the cries for mercy. A shiver of bereavement swept down Harry's spine, passing a thrill of pleasure on its way up.
This was it, then. Tonight. Tonight he would finish it.
He pushed the door open and sucked in a breath.
Snape was standing right in front of him, inside the door, arms folded, eyes black as canal water. At the sound of Harry's gasp he struck, snake-quick, and with a harsh yank snatched the cloak from his head.
For a long, paralyzed moment they stared at each other. Then Snape's lip curled, just the way Harry remembered.
"Do come in, Potter," he drawled, and to Harry's astonishment, turned his back.
Harry would have bet half the galleons in his vault that Snape would advance upon him at once, snarling vicious slurs and spitting condemnations. But his former professor merely walked away. He tossed the invisibility cloak onto the bed in passing, and then stood with head bowed in front of a cabinet, paying no further heed to Harry's presence until the tide of voices ebbed.
Then he pressed a switch. Steely silence chopped off the sound. To Harry's surprise, the music's source was a Muggle CD player, a cheaper model than the one Dudley had been given for his birthday, was it six years ago? No, that couldn't be right. It was more like an eternity.
Still not bothering to glance at him, Snape dropped into the black leather armchair he'd evidently been occupying before Harry's intrusion. It was seamed and cracked-looking, scuffed grey in places. The brass buttons dimpling the upholstery were so scratched the tin had worn through. On the nightstand beside it rested a squat glass containing a residue of dark liquid, a thick, ivory-coloured book, a platter displaying a cheese rind, an apple core, a tiny, sharp knife, and a dessert cup holding olive pits. A napkin flung over one arm of the chair exhibited the fastidious traces of Snape's lips. Whatever he was drinking had bestowed a purple stain, still visible on his mouth. For some reason this made Harry uncomfortable.
Snape rested one temple against two fingers and glanced up. "Gesualdo."
"Sorry?" Having seen Snape try his hand at wandless magic, Harry was poised to throw himself from the path of an unknown spell. But this merely sounded as though Snape were calling him a first-rate tit, in a language entirely lost on him. "None of that," he raised his wand. "I'd be careful what I say, if I were you."
Shadows deepened under Snape's brow, though nothing in his face moved save his lips. "Carlo Gesualdo," he said drily, "Prince of Venosa. The composer whose music had you scratching at my door." Two knife-edges of shadow slit the outer corners of his eyes. It was the faintest, most humourless concession to a smile Harry had ever seen. "A musical prodigy, Potter. Famous for murdering his wife and her lover while they lay abed, recuperating from their latest bout of cuckoldry."
Harry wasn't sure he knew what 'cuckoldry' meant, but the word 'murder' was a snap. He snorted. "Figures."
For an instant the smile lines cut to the bone, as though Harry had done exactly as expected. Then Snape sighed and sat up, rubbing one restless hand over the other as if washing them under a tap. "Spit it out, Potter. Why are you creeping around my house?" One eyebrow spiked in contemplation of Harry's wand. "Carrying out a little vigilante justice, are we? Against an unarmed man, no less. One who must bow to the power of your superior wand. But of course, the Gryffindor code of honour always did favour unfair odds."
"I've been watching you," Harry retorted, his voice hoarse. He felt a right hooligan. A curious thing was happening as they talked. Harry had invaded Spinner's End a dozen times before now, surely he'd had the leisure to get used to Snape's diminished appearance.
It was just - Snape wore a dressing gown over his clothes.
Such a mundane Muggle item should have been incongruous. Harry regretted for his own sake the loss of Snape's teaching robes, so impregnated with the fumes of a thousand boiling cauldrons, the creepiness of the dungeons slithering in their every fold. The black billowing sweep of their passage had increased Snape's menace by a magnitude of nightmare, endowing him with the kind of negative charisma not often granted to skinny, bitter men.
Now, staring at the gaunt man seated in the shabby leather armchair, a candelabra flickering and twinkling on the cabinet behind him, a four-poster bed with its frayed, soiled counterpane inhabiting the opposite wall, Harry felt the spectral lodgers within his body float to the surface of his skin and line themselves up, as if pressing against glass. Behind this ghostly layer, the flames and falling timbers of the Ministry roared, distantly echoing. He saw Snape wreathed in flames, sitting alone in his high-collared white shirt, a belted, burgundy-velvet dressing gown hanging down over the seat cushion, long black narrow trousers, one black boot planted on the worn floorboards, the other, his leg crossed at the knee, tapping a slow beat upon the air.
He appraised Harry's condition in silence. Then with a grimace Snape rose, gave the cabinet a disgruntled look, and disappeared through a back-corner doorway that led to the loo.
Harry heard splashing and clinking and the sound of Snape muttering an oath. A moment later he returned with a tooth-rinse glass, snagged a decanter from a tarnished silver tray and examined its contents in the flittering candlelight before pouring a shot. He left the tooth glass on the cabinet and refreshed his own tumbler, which was fashioned from the same clunky, chipped glass as the decanter. Subsiding into his chair again, he raised his drink in ironic acknowledgement.
"The other's for you," he said. "Take it or leave it."
Harry marched over to the cabinet, picked up the improvised shot glass, and stiff-armed the air with his glass. "Gesualdo," he mocked Snape's pretensions, and quaffed it. A tongue of wet fire with a sweet aftertaste, the drink speared his sinuses. He gasped like a fish.
"Port," drawled Snape, as if Harry ought to know better. "Not cough medicine," he added, as Harry cleared out his windpipe with a bark. For years Harry had been holding his nose and knocking back a variety of utterly foul potions concocted by this man. How else was he supposed to drink anything handed to him by the likes of Snape?
"So you've been watching me," Snape took up the gauntlet at last. His eyes never left Harry's, even while he savoured his port, spacing out each sip and touching his tongue to his lips with odd delicacy.
Harry wondered whether the bastard had any inkling of the ghosts coiled inside him, quivering at their proximity to this ripped and damaged soul, or of the flames stirred in him by the kindred heat inside Snape's bony, sallow exterior.
"I wasn't aware that it was part of a Gryffindor's make-up to watch," Snape murmured. "I would have thought it more your style to blunder in, announcing your presence in a fashion calculated to draw the most attention. But then," arching his foot back, he examined the toe of his boot before fixing his dark gaze on Harry again, "try as I may to repress the memory, Pettigrew will come to mind. Now there was a Gryffindor for whom sneaking and spying were obviously their own rewards."
Harry snorted. "You're one to talk, Snape, seeing as how you spied your life away."
Even at this distance, Harry could see the murderer's eyes dilate, black swallowing black. But all Snape said was, "It would be pointless to deny it. Especially," the port glass hovered at his mouth for an exaggerated sip, "in the face of your conviction that you have divined every nuance of my motives," another lip-licking pause, "every Slytherin-style intricacy, every," long, slow swallow, "niggling ramification.
"I imagine," Snape purred, "the Daily Prophet would enjoy plastering news of its saviour's voyeurism all over its front page. Miss Skeeter and her quick-quotes quill could be on my doorstep tomorrow, I wager."
"Don't fob your perversions off on me," Harry choked. He was astonished to note that he wasn't the least bit cold any more, despite his ghosts. "So I've been checking up on you. Are you surprised? You may be enjoying house arrest--"
"Enjoying." Snape turned his head away for the first time and raised a hand to his high-buttoned collar. He squeezed, as if protesting its tightness. "Go on."
Harry stumbled. "You still, um, can't be trusted not to break the wards and run. See, I've figured out how you've been spending your time. All those books. I've seen them, the ones on sympathetic magic. Don't try to tell me that doesn't violate your terms of parole."
"Acquittal, Potter. Do not make me lecture you on the difference." His glare stopped Harry from launching into a tirade. "And you see evidence all around, do you not, of the progress I've made in liberating myself? Permit me to suggest that you are an imbecile and that this interview is at an end. You may escort your fire-breathing sense of justice and your self-righteous idiocy off the premises."
With that Snape slammed his empty glass down on the nightstand by his chair and wrapped his long fingers around the thick volume resting there. Vellum-bound and bordered in gold leaf, it reminded Harry of the Restricted Section in Hogwarts' library. Snape settled the book in his lap and let it fall open to a section marked with a greasy, green velvet ribbon. On both pages, from what Harry could see, hand-tinted drawings of roses were surrounded by geometric designs and arcane symbols.
He pointed his wand. The book shot off Snape's lap and flew across to strike Harry hard in the chest, making him grunt as he trapped it in the sling of his robes.
"Be careful with that, you fool!"
Right. Time to see how he liked it for a change. A spark of glee kindled in Harry at the sight of Snape riled but helpless to do anything about it. So the bastard was capable of self-restraint. All it took was a reversal of the odds, a plunge into powerlessness.
Harry pushed aside his memory of the three Marauders ganging up on a swotting, greasy stringbean in a shapeless school uniform; ignored the fact that Snape had crawled at the Dark Lord's feet, risking the Cruciatus, shredding his soul, earning the hatred of the Wizarding World, all because - well, because he was incurably Dark, he was born that way, right -
Because Albus had asked him to.
No, damn it. Harry banished that thought like a bloodstain. This was bad. Even he was starting to believe the lies, and he'd been there.
The nighttime fires that so often tormented him burned at his core, and a strange flutter passed over his skin. His ghosts were panting. They were eager. Harry walked forward, the book held in the crook of his arm. His body felt warm and relaxed, his upraised wand humming with power.
"The Ministry underestimates you," he said, looking down. "But not me. I've no doubt you could break the wards if you put your mind to it."
"So the celebrated Potter has faith in me," Snape sneered. "Will wonders never cease. I do so hope for the enlightenment to guide me in the proper way to live down to your expectations."
He sat back, inch by inch, leaving clawmarks in the leather where his nails had sunk in. "But you in turn underestimate the Ministry. In theory, I could find a way to break the wards, even without a wand. Would I get far? No."
"That's right, because I'd come after you." Harry shifted the book from arm to arm, before he remembered to Shrink it and stow it in his robes. Then he put the end of the wand in his mouth, watching Snape's eyes narrow as he sucked on it casually and pulled it out. The candlelight kindled a wet golden point. Smiling, Harry rolled the wooden shaft between his fingers, letting it drift like a compass needle in Snape's direction.
"I'd find you," he purred, feeling the Shrunken book in his breast pocket thump against his heart. "And there'd be nothing the Ministry could say about the tactics I'd use to stop a fugitive Death Eater."
"Oh, spare me the rape threat, boy." Shocked, Harry almost dropped his wand. "Your faith in yourself hasn't diminished one whit, has it, Potter? As always, it falls on me to bring your ego to heel. Because I promise, you wouldn't catch me. No one would." Snape's lips tightened, barely parting in a short, unpleasant laugh. "They wouldn't need to."
Outraged, Harry shouted him down. "You think you could outsmart us all? You think you're superior to the entire Order, Aurors and everyone, and that nobody could crack the secrets of your devious mind?"
"It's not a matter of who. It's what." Snape hesitated. Then, stiffly, he rested his head against the back of the chair and began unbuttoning his collar.
What the bloody hell was he doing? Snape had worked four buttons loose and was spreading the wings of his collar wide apart. Meticulous fingers gathered up stray hanks of stringy hair and drew them aside, tucking them behind his shoulders. His face was stony. His Adam's apple and jugular vein were exposed.
Harry got a stare on. "Shite."
Tattooed into the skin of Snape's throat was a band of intricate runes, ornate and almost decorative in appearance. From a few paces away, one might easily mistake them for a crocheted choker or a brocade collar made of onyx and jet and lace. They were black as ink against his pale skin, disappearing into the long, dark hair at the nape of his neck.
"So you see," Snape spoke quietly, shoulders shifting as if pinned, "no matter what I do, I am destined to be marked to the end of my days." He shut his eyes, one hand sliding up to cover the runes, stroking them with minute brushes of his fingers.
Fascinated, Harry approached. With his eyes blotted out like that, Snape looked dead. Harry had seen so many dead faces, Cedric's, Dumbledore's, Fred Weasley's, so many of his old classmates lying stark and cold in the wake of a curse, he could easily imagine Severus Snape with the life sucked out of him.
Those deaths had been casualties of war. Snape had only been obeying orders. None of these things mattered to Harry. He'd brought his own angels of death into the room, angels of ghosts and fire.
For a moment, he feasted on the exhaustion haunting that hated face, the long, sharp cheekbones untouched by kindness, the long, hard hands, wasted now to something approaching beauty.
Eyes still closed, Snape said, "I imagine this must please you, Potter. I'd hoped . . . but I was obviously mistaken. I suppose I should be used to it by now." He raised his head, freezing almost imperceptibly when he saw Harry bent over him, as if he sensed Harry's desire to put a hand around his throat, to hold him utterly still. "Apparently freedom is reserved for those, like you, with nothing to regret."
Harry wanted to slap him. Who was Snape to say what he regretted or not?
Instead he reached down to trace the skin revealed by Snape's unbuttoned shirt. Only when the chair leather squeaked in Snape's grip and he twisted sideways out of reach did Harry truly notice what he was doing - extending his wand hand, taking alarming liberties that would have Snape believing he'd gone spare.
But no, he could read in Snape's face that he'd expected this, punishment, degradation. He'd expected the wand's sharp tip digging into his throat, the Chosen One gloating over his shame.
Hastily, Harry withdrew and switched hands, passing the wand to his left, an awkward and somewhat ridiculous move considering that the chances of Snape permitting Harry to touch him in such a vulnerable spot were nil.
To touch him at all, come to think of it.
But he wanted to. The cross between revulsion and need made him dizzy. It had to be the ghosts. In Snape's presence, in Snape's room, Harry had gone from feeling perpetually cold to almost feverish. It was as if the frozen spirits of the dead had thrown themselves into a cauldron of hot, crackling memories. From the sudden hiss of steam arose warmth. Arose life.
Where else could it have come from, this longing to press his palms to the white skin beneath Snape's jaw, the slightly sunken throat that testified to Snape's weight loss, the delicate juncture where neck greeted shoulder, where the black band drew its decapitating line? He felt an urge to cool his hands there, the way you'd douse a burn in a bucket of water.
Alone in the air between them, his hand hovered. Snape watched, tracking where it would land. He was poised to lash out. He would rather fight, Harry realised, than let himself be touched.
Abashed, he jerked the offending hand up to adjust his glasses, raked his fringe back, then slipped his hand out of sight in a pocket, hiding the evidence.
Evidence? More rattled than he wanted to let on, he blurted, "Erm. So. They use it to - to track you down, is that it?"
A short, disbelieving silence, then Snape knotted the belt of his gown and sat straighter. For one agonising second, he reverted to the sardonic potions master baiting his dimwitted, owl-eyed student. "Potter. I would have thought even you could draw the obvious conclusions. It doesn't take a leap of intellect, for Merlin's sake. Look again. Does it remind you of anything?" His eyes were searching, but Harry jerked his head aside. That was all he needed right now, for Snape to catch wind of his ravenous thoughts. "Perhaps if I were to roll up my sleeve."
"The Ministry's using the Dark Mark?"
Snape winced at Harry's yelp. "Very good, oh saviour of the Wizarding World. At this rate, few could deny that Hogwarts erred in awarding you passing grades." He stared coldly at Harry's gaping confusion, annihilation of house points written all over his face. "Of course they share a principle, you incorrigible dolt. Yes, Potter, you have indeed uncovered the truth. All your heroics were for naught and the Ministry's now a hotbed of Death Eater activity. Prepare yourself to wage the war all over again. Only this time, count me out."
Harry wrenched his mouth shut and powered up his glare.
Snape snorted at this pathetic challenge. "As I started to say, this," he made a throat-cutting gesture, "shares certain properties associated with the Dark Lord's design. Though British Wizarding authorities, in their infinite wisdom, have declared it needn't be deemed Unforgivable. Presumably because they're not forced to wear it."
He lapsed into silence, tracing the symbols at his neck. Harry wondered if the calligraphy raised strange, warm welts or whether Snape's skin was smooth to the touch. Oh Merlin, why did he care? Repressing the urge to find out, he pocketed his wand and took off his glasses, squishing each eye around in its socket with the heel of one hand. He ought to go home. Not that he wanted to. To be honest, he couldn't think of anything he wanted. Well, maybe one thing.
Shut it, he told himself.
He blurted the first words that came to mind, "So if they call you by means of that thing, you'll have to go? Like when Voldemort summoned you to Death Eater meetings?"
Snape studied him with predatory malice. "Potter, it's a collar, not a leash. Apparently the Ministry's not interested in dragging me back to my kennel, should I prove intransigent. They're waiting, you know. Hoping I show my true colours by bolting for freedom." Snape slitted his eyes like a cat, seemingly in a dark good humour at his own expense. "Frankly, I'd assumed you had a hand in it. House arrest, Merlin's arse. Condemned to wither away in solitary confinement, is more like it."
He stretched, and then was suddenly on his feet, startling Harry. With terse, stabbing motions of his fingers Snape did up the buttons of his shirt, radiating disgust for the room, for Harry, for the situation in which he found himself trapped.
"I spent years coming to terms with this despicable house. Making my peace with the past. Now I'll be obliged to learn to hate it all over again." His cold gaze raked over the dingy wallpaper, the spiders in corners, a squat, gap-toothed bookcase missing several volumes. "Because if I ever take leave of my senses and run screaming into the street, I've approximately five minutes in which to regain my sanity, repent the error of my ways, and get myself back inside the safety of these misbegotten walls. Assuming," his brow furrowed, "that the Wards have been spelled to let me back in. Otherwise - "
He stepped forward and pulled Harry to him, close enough that each could smell port wine on the other's breath. Harry cringed in anticipation of a ghostly riot. But nothing happened other than Snape's brisk, brutal hands rummaging in his robes and emerging victorious, the Shrunken book cradled in his palm.
"Otherwise," he repeated, "I will be condemned to stand outside the door and choke to death. Now, Potter, if you please?" He opened the miniature volume and held it out in one hand.
Momentarily bested, Harry drew his wand and tapped the spread pages, returning the book to normal size. Snape eased it shut with infinite care and laid it gently on one corner of the mattress. His fingers lingered on the cloudy binding. Without looking up, he said to Harry, "Now go."
Harry bristled. "You can't order me around, Snape. I'll drop by whenever I damn well please."
"As a form of slow torture, I'll be bound. The Ministry does know how to inflict the chafing irritations and inconveniences minus which no prisoner's life is complete."
Annoyed, Harry Accio'd his cloak. Snape intercepted it with a startled reflex. "The Ministry knows nothing about me being here," Harry whinged, knowing he sounded like a petulant child.
Crushing a handful of silk to his face, Snape sniffed. He pulled a length of the iridescent fabric through his fingers, examining the cloak with professional interest. "Don't be daft," he muttered. "The Ministry's had you pegged from the moment you first breached the Wards. It merely suits their purpose that you be left free to torment me as they see fit." He tossed the cloak at Harry. "Ever the innocent. Is it real or an act, I wonder?"
Right, that was the outside of enough. Harry blazed up. "Innocent? Fucking look at me, Snape!"
Snape looked. "Legilimens!"
This time Harry didn't hide, didn't jerk away. After a moment Snape inhaled, saying evenly, "You're right. I misspoke. You have indeed brought death into the world. Consider yourself one of the fallen, Potter."
When he could stand the sharp probing no longer, Harry squeezed his eyes shut, the flames so bright inside him he couldn't have seen Snape clearly anyway. His lashes were wet with pain.
But the flickering veil that had sprung up between him and the world didn't save him from the dry, lethal scrape of Snape's voice: "Perhaps I should have guessed. Don't hold it against me, boy. I didn't know." Harry could have sworn he heard a moist lick of tongue on lips, a weary swallow, imagined the microscopic contraction of the runes inking the forty-year-old skin. He could almost smell the perfume of Snape's hair, burning.
"I never thought I would be saying this to you," the grudging voice went on, and the smokiness of it snaked sudden warmth into Harry's crotch, a stroke of burgundy velvet around his bollocks, "but - welcome to Hell, Mr. Potter."
Eyes startled open, Harry took less than a second to get his bearings before Disapparating in a panic. The last sight he carried with him from that dim-lit room was of Snape's hand, bone-white, tapering and strong, knotted so tightly around a bedpost, if it had been a living thing he would have snapped its neck.
~~~~
Gasping at the memory, Harry came in his hands, imagining them knotted hard around Snape's collar.