chiraldream (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lesyeuxverts) wrote2007-02-14 08:39 am
lesyeuxverts) wrote2007-02-14 08:39 am
The Savior of Valentine's Day (2/2)
Title: The Savior of Valentine’s Day (2/2)
Author: lesyeuxverts00
Word Count: ~11000
Rating: R
Pairing: HP/SS, past HP/BZ
Prompt: “Don’t fix me. I’m not broken.” Harry was in a long time relationship with Blaise Zabini, who leaves him. Severus wants to play knight in shining armor and pick up the pieces.
Betas:![[insanejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/ij-userinfo.gif)
summerborn, svartalfur
AN: Originally written for the![[insanejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/ij-community.gif)
two_broomsticks fall fic-a-thon; revised with the help of svartalfur
Disclaimer: Not mine.
(Part 1)
Severus clutched at his temples, suppressing the urge to grab his wand and magically cauterize his nose. The smell of tequila that clung to his bony fingers, the smell of the sweaty Weasley next to him, the rich buttery smell of the croissants and breakfast pastries – it all swirled through his aching skull and irritated his already queasy stomach.
Granger pulled out the chair next to him with a loud scraping sound and he covered his ears with his hands. She put a cup of black, steaming coffee in front of him. Severus eyed it with trepidation, leaning away from the smell, until she added a small vial of hangover relief potion.
“You brought him coffee?” Weasley demanded. “What about me?”
“Do you possess a single iota of compassion, Ron? The Professor needs coffee more than you do and don’t act as though you’re hurt because you have to walk five feet for a cup of coffee.”
“He would have made you beg for that potion if you were the one with the hangover,” Weasley said before he stood and slammed his chair back into the table.
Severus kept one hand on his forehead, clutching it to keep his eyeballs from being squeezed out of his head, and reached for the vial with his other hand. When he had swallowed its contents, the world around him settled into a spectrum of less painful colors and noises. The smells swirled around him for a second longer before they too settled and his stomach no longer rebelled.
“Thank you, Miss Granger,” Severus said as he reached for his coffee.
As Weasley returned with a plate full of pastries, Potter strode into the room and allowed the door to slam behind him. The aura of the Boy Who Lived sparked and infused the air with energy and subtle undercurrents. Severus had little time to adjust to the new vibes given off by Potter before he felt a spell sink into the room, permeating his skin and tingling in his nerves. He accepted a croissant from Weasley, muttering his gratitude while trying to identify the spell that Potter had cast.
“I’m glad that you could all come at this early hour,” Potter said. “It’s been awhile since we’ve met, so I thought that I could get an idea of how much progress has been made on the Valentine’s Day project, and we could reevaluate our plans from there.”
Severus blinked. Potter had changed overnight, had gone from the distraught man who’d been devastated by the loss of his lover, back to the confident forthright businessman that he had previously been. His eyes sparkled as they once had, he was energetic and smiling and sober. Some hint of the depression and sorrow that had permeated all of his actions for the past few weeks still tinted his aura, but it had been shunted aside or buried and Potter glowed again. Severus bit the inside of his lip, trying to unravel the enigma that was Potter.
“Luna, why don’t you begin? What have you been doing to forward the project?”
Severus felt the thrum of energy tighten around him, the spell dig its way into his skin and nerves and blood. The vacuous Ravenclaw, unfazed by the sudden spike of magic in the air, nibbled at a delicate éclair, eating the chocolate frosting before discarding the remainder.
“I was speaking with my father in the Quibbler’s offices yesterday,” she said, “and he asked me …” she paused for a sip of coffee. “He asked me about the Ministry of Magic’s attempt to cover up their latest fiasco, pretending that the Prismatic Fairy-Winged Unicorns hadn’t been brutally massacred by their trained army of Puffskein assassins. A lot of the readers who subscribe to the Quibbler on a regular basis have expressed interest in the article, so he thinks that it’ll have to be the front page of the next edition.”
“What about the articles about Valentine’s Day?” Potter asked, fidgeting with a coffee cup. Severus blinked to erase the image of the boy’s wet lips fixed around the rim of the tequila bottle, the convulsive motion of Potter’s throat as he gulped the alcohol.
“Well, most of their readers don’t actually believe in celebrating Valentine’s Day, you know. It’s a commercial holiday that was propagated by the Ministry-sponsored religion in the early days, and now it’s being encouraged by the florists and candy-makers and all the other commercial interests – nobody actually believes that it’s a real holiday, you see, so they don’t celebrate it.”
“And the Prophet?” Potter asked with his lips narrowed to a thin line. The boy pressed one hand to his forehead and took a long gulp of coffee.
Lovegood blinked, her eyes shining clear blue for a second before they returned to their glazed, dreamy appearance. “I’m sure they’ll come around to my point of view, eventually,” she said.
The band of magic tightened around Severus further and he fought against the urge to jump up and shake Potter, fought against the urge to press his lips to the boy’s neck and run a line of kisses along the boy’s jaw.
“Fine,” Potter said. “Work on that. Snape, how is the potion coming?”
“I …” Severus took a large gulp of his coffee as the spell tightened around him and he recognized it as a strong truth spell. He felt a compulsion to tell Potter that he hadn’t made any progress before he slipped behind his Occlumency barriers.
It was like looking at the world from the inside of an unpoppable soap bubble – everything was iridescent but distant. Potter glowed, but his glow was more subdued now. Clearing his throat and setting down his coffee cup on the table, Severus looked up at the boy. The urge to run his fingers through the boy’s tousled hair was muted. “I’m afraid that the key ingredients are still unavailable,” he said. He kept his wording vague and the truth spell relaxed its hold on him, oozing out of his skin and bones and nerves.
With a sidelong glance at Lovegood, who was now building an unstable pyramid out of croissants, Severus wondered if the others would fare as well as she had in sidestepping the spell.
“Have you been making an effort to get these key ingredients, Snape? What are they, and why are they unavailable?”
The truth spell tightened around him again, a stream of molten iron running down his veins, along his nerves, squeezing his skull. His Occlumency faltered under the attack. “I doubt that you would understand the intricacies of potion-making, Potter,” he said with a sneer, trying to gain time to restore his mental shields.
“Try me,” Potter said. “Or have you done nothing? Did you even find a suitable potion to use, Snape?”
“I … ah,” Severus said, gasping under the weight of the spell.
“Harry, stop,” Granger said. The girl was on her feet and tugging at Potter’s arm, Severus noticed through the haze of pain that had overtaken him. “Stop it, Harry, you’re hurting him.”
The pressure eased and Snape heard the faint echoes of Potter’s voice dismissing the others, heard the faint click of the door as it was shut. A warm hand rested on his arm. “Snape?” Potter said. “Are you all right?”
“What the fuck have you done with the pinprick-sized organ that you Gryffindors have the audacity to call a brain, Potter? Did you expel it from your echoing skull when you sneezed?” Severus asked. He shook the hand off his arm and began rubbing his temples. “Do you have some deep-seated desire to convince everyone that you are in fact planning to become the next Dark Lord? While you’re at it, Potter, just go ahead and turn into a Dark Lord already. It’s not as though you could make my job any more difficult than it already is.”
“Your job is to brew potions for me, Snape, not meddle with my life or decisions.”
“My job is to save you from yourself, Potter. It has been all along, as you would have known if the congenital Gryffindor denseness hadn’t blinded you to the facts. I should have written it in large gold and red letters on the back of your eyelids, but perhaps that is still too subtle for you to understand.”
Potter wrapped his fingers around the arms of Severus’s chair. He leaned down until his nose was an inch away from Severus’s nose and when he spoke, his breath hit Severus’s lips in warm spurts. “You are not my keeper, Snape. Try to get rid of your fascination with your own self-importance, because I can assure you that I don’t need you watching over me or protecting me from anything.”
Severus grasped Potter’s wrists and forced him to release the chair, pushing him away so that Severus could stand. “Do not presume to trespass into my personal space, you impertinent whelp. You would have been a bloody, broken mess your first year in Hogwarts if not for me, and again a dozen times since, and you’ve never once had the common courtesy to thank me.”
“I didn’t have the courtesy to thank you for saving your own arse from Dumbledore’s anger? You prance around and pretend to save me, you’re acting as though you’ve never made a mistake, as though everything I do is wrong and you’re the only one with the power to fix it. Well, you’re wrong again, because I don’t need to be saved or helped by you. Don’t fix me. I’m not broken.”
Potter paused for a second, breathing quickly, his eyes flashing, and continued. “I don’t know what’s going through your mind, assuming that I’m some fragile, broken thing that needs to be saved. The ease with which you forget your own Life Debts to me is astounding, Snape. I’ve saved your hide as often as you’ve saved mine, and I’m no wide-eyed eleven-year-old anymore.”
“Then act your age, damn you. If you’re such an adult, then give over this petty scheme and stop working for your own destruction like a spineless, witless fool.”
Potter’s eyes flashed a dark green that was almost black. “Natter on about my responsibilities all you like, you bastard. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve done my best for the world all my life and I’ve got nothing to show for it. The wizarding world, Muggles, the army of lice that’s taken up residence on your scalp – I don’t owe anything to anyone.”
Severus pulled away from Potter, drew himself up to his most intimidating height, and sneered at the man. “Really, Potter, and how do you think I felt before I sold my soul to the megalomaniac that was the Dark Lord?”
Potter gaped at him for a long moment. Severus turned on his heel and strode from the room.
----------
Severus watched Potter fidget with his coffee cup, lacing his fingers in complicated patterns around its gray sides. “Did you perhaps have a reason in summoning me, or did you simply assume that I have nothing better to do with my time this morning?”
“I … Professor Snape,” Potter said, staring at his coffee cup. “I … I want to apologize.”
He looked up at Severus but did not quite make eye contact. “I shouldn’t have cast the Truth spell on you yesterday. Hermione’s already reminded me of the hundred and two side effects it has on Occlumens, and I … the truth is, I did know about them, but I wasn’t thinking. It was careless of me, and it was wrong to take such risks.”
Severus watched the boy fidget for long moments before speaking. “I will accept your apology, Mr. Potter, on the condition that you agree to dismantle your plan to kill Valentine’s Day.”
Potter made eye contact with him now. “It’s not as though it was working anyhow, was it, with you lot sitting on your arses and doing nothing? Consider the plan canceled then, you sneaky old Slytherin.”
Severus watched the muscles in Potter’s throat twitch as he swallowed a gulp of coffee. The man seemed to be sober, coherent, and lacked a hangover for the first time in weeks. “What prompted your outburst against the holiday?”
Potter’s gaze swept over to the small glass paperweight, its hollow center filled with Pensieve memories that swirled with the agitation of strong emotions.
“You don’t remember, do you?”
“I – I remember most of it,” Potter said. “It was … Blaise told me that he wanted his wedding to be on Valentine’s Day. It wasn’t until … afterwards … that he told me he’d meant his and Ginny’s wedding.”
The Pensieve memories gleamed in their glass confinement and Severus stared at the paperweight, mesmerized by the rapid silver swirling. “You needn’t have taken my earlier offer literally,” he said. “Perhaps I was too specific when I offered to brew you potions to recapture Mr. Zabini’s affections. There are a large number of slow-acting, untraceable poisons that could be at your fingertips within hours. Some of them are fatal, while others merely render the victim uncomfortable for a set period of time.”
Severus’s fingers twitched at the thought of brewing those potions, the addictive curl of Dark Arts twisting his stomach.
“What happened to your attempts to prevent my becoming the next Dark Lord, Snape? Surely you haven’t given up already.” The half-smile on Potter’s lips looked soft and kissable. Severus leaned forward an infinitesimal fraction, bringing himself closer to those lips, closer to the warm puffs of air that passed through those lips.
“Of course I haven’t given up,” was all he said.
Potter stared at him, green eyes widening. “I … Do you …” His incoherent beginning was cut off when an owl flew through the window to perch on Potter’s desk and hooted for attention.
Scanning the note briefly, Potter stood. “Hermione needs my help for a few minutes – something to do with her project to convert magic and electricity. I … I’ll be back.”
Severus nodded, and watched the man’s retreating figure. His form retained its adolescent slenderness, but had lost all of the awkwardness. The long, smooth lines of his body were visible even under his robes.
Blinking, Severus turned to Potter’s desk and the Pensieve memories in the paperweight. Had the man deliberately left him here alone? Had he forgotten that the memories were out and accessible, or did he have a discreet ward surrounding them?
He leaned closer to the paperweight and checked quickly for wards before reaching out and touching the slippery, wispy thoughts.
It took Severus a moment to orient himself and realize that he was at Granger and Weasley’s New Years party. The noise level was horrendous and the room was densely packed with dancing wizards and witches, many of them passing through his insubstantial form. Potter was pressed against a wall, Blaise Zabini hovering over him, and Severus crept closer to the pair of them in time to see Zabini feed a luscious champagne-dipped strawberry to Potter.
Potter’s pink lips stretched open wide to take in the large berry, and his tongue flicked out to caress Zabini’s fingers. “Let’s go upstairs, shall we?” he asked after he had licked off the last of the champagne.
“Certainly, love.”
Severus followed the two of them into the library upstairs, where he perused Miss Granger’s excellent selection of books in an attempt to distract himself from the sight of Potter with his tongue down Zabini’s throat and his hands down Zabini’s trousers. He was not watching them, he told himself.
Zabini trailed his hands down Potter’s spine with languid caresses, arriving finally at Potter’s arse, which he pulled toward him. “You’ve wanted me all evening, my little slut,” he said. “Haven’t you?”
“Oh, Blaise,” Potter said in a breathy low voice when Zabini attached his lips to Potter’s throat and began moving toward his collarbone.
Severus stopped pretending an interest in Granger’s Transfiguration books and turned to watch them as the clock began to chime midnight.
Zabini pressed a long, fierce kiss to Potter’s lips before pressing him back against the desk. “Your wand,” he said. “Give it to me.”
Potter handed it over without question and Severus blinked, enraged by the boy’s stupidity. Zabini continued to kiss Potter while unbuttoning his jeans.
“Blaise,” Potter panted, “need you so much.” Potter’s lips were dark pink, swollen, decadent, and Severus ached with need for him. His pale hands, clawing at Zabini’s back, his tousled hair, his dilated pupils – Severus admitted to himself that he wanted to have Potter, wanted to fuck him and care for him and love him as Zabini had not.
Zabini cast a lubricating spell with Potter’s own wand and began to insert it into his lover’s opening. Severus gasped in spite of himself, jealous and wanting, his cock aching and hard. He needed this, needed to have this with Potter.
Zabini slid the wand further into Potter, angled it until Potter gave a loud cry, demanding more. “Take me, Blaise, fuck me now, I need you.”
Severus circled around the perimeter of the room until he could see Zabini’s face. This was the denouement, he was almost certain, the moment when Zabini broke Potter’s heart, and he was right.
Zabini pulled away from Potter, pulled out of the needy embrace and laughed. The sound echoed through the room and Severus shivered to hear it.
“You think I’d take a little slut like yourself, Potter? A half-blood tramp, a clingy and sentimental waste of magic? You could do so much with yourself, you have so much power and you fritter it away on your ridiculous company instead of using it to take your rightful place in society. I’m disgusted by you, disgusted by your weakness and stupidity.”
Zabini reached towards Potter and grasped the wand that he had left inside him. With shining eyes and a vicious grin, he deliberately snapped it. “We’re as over as your glory days are, Potter. Don’t expect an invitation to my wedding – it’s pure-bloods only.”
Zabini left Potter there, the broken wand still dangling from his arse, and let the door slam closed behind him. Severus had only a few seconds to observe Potter, pale and motionless, half naked on the desk, before the memory ended and he found himself again Potter’s office.
He blinked at the sudden change, and then he saw Potter standing frozen in the doorway.
Severus wondered if he had exited the Pensieve into a world where time ran more slowly. After an awkward moment, Potter finally moved to his desk and sat down. “You saw everything, I suppose,” he said.
Severus nodded, the small movement of his neck paining his tight, constricted throat. There were no words for this trespass, no apologies, no possible recompense.
“Why?” Potter asked, staring at his hands. There was no tone of righteous anger in his voice, no hostility in his slumped posture.
Severus hesitated for a moment and then crossed to the other side of the desk, kneeling in front of Potter and tilting his chin to look at him. “Because you can’t keep something like that closed off from all of your friends and pretend that you’re healing. Because it’s my job to save you, whether you think you need it or not.”
Hyper-aware of his body, the pulse through his veins and the blood that flowed into the fingertip that was touching Potter’s skin, Severus paused. “You’ve every right to be angry with me, Harry. You would have been furious with me if I had done something like this before Blaise left you.”
“I’m the one who left it there for you to look at.”
Severus let his finger wander along Potter’s jaw, brushed against the rough stubble, traced the sharp bone. “That’s not the point, Harry.”
Severus felt a thrill run down his spine. The risk of taking these intimacies with Potter, the danger of rejection by a boy who saw him still as an ugly old professor, the possibility that he would take advantage of Potter’s wounded emotional state ... Severus withdrew his finger from the boy’s chin.
“You need to talk to your friends about what happened,” he said. “You need to stop putting your memories in a Pensieve in order to have a normal day, and you need to stop drinking yourself into oblivion. Stop wallowing in this unhealthy self-pity, Potter, because even a dim-wit like you should realize that Zabini isn’t worth this anguish, and move on with your life.”
Potter leaned forward, licking his pale lips. “I … won’t you help me, Professor?”
Severus, his pulse throbbing, began to pull away from the boy, but Potter caught his elbow. “Isn’t it your job to save me … Severus?”
“I can’t – I – I have to go,” Severus said, and he pulled his elbow from Potter’s grasp and left the room before Potter could stop him.
----------
The conference room had been spelled to the cold temperature that Severus preferred, and there was a cup of coffee and a hangover potion waiting by his usual seat. Severus looked around for his colleagues and tried to blink his migraine away when he realized that the room was empty.
Potter entered, carrying a tray with muffins and a cup of coffee. “Good morning, Professor Snape.” He perched on the table next to Severus, offering him a blueberry muffin.
Severus was looking at the vial of hangover potion on the table and not the delectable curve of Potter’s arse, he told himself. The potion looked as though it might have been slightly off in color, a few hues too pale.
Potter uncorked the vial and passed it to Severus, letting his fingers linger on Severus’s hand for an instant too long. “I thought that you might need this,” he said.
“Tell me what’s happening in that vacuum that you call a brain,” Severus said, “so that I can start to run damage control as soon as possible.”
With a smile, Potter tilted his head to the side and touched Severus’s shoulder, let his hand wander up Severus’s neck to his jaw. “I wanted to talk to you before the meeting, that’s all.”
“How much have you had to drink?”
“Coffee? It’s only my second cup this morning, but I’m coherent, I promise.” Potter reached for his cup, but Severus intercepted it and sniffed the contents to verify that Potter hadn’t started to lace his coffee with alcohol.
“I’m sober, I really am. I – last night, after we talked, I realized that you were right about everything … well, almost everything.”
Potter leaned toward Severus, and he could smell the coffee on Potter’s breath, could almost hear Potter’s heartbeat. “I think that you can help me,” Potter murmured in Severus’s ear.
“I am …”
Potter’s fingers traced lazy whorls along Severus’s neck. “You’re the only person who’s always been there to help me, these past seven years, the only one who saves me when I insist that I don’t need any help, the only man who makes my heart beat faster.”
“I can’t let you make this mistake,” Severus said and tried to pull away.
“You can’t let me make the mistakes that I was making alone, you mean,” Potter said, his palm holding the back of Severus’s neck and holding him there. “You know I was miserable, drinking myself into a stupor every night and engaging in questionable Apparition. I need you there to stop me from doing such foolish things.”
Potter’s lips were an inch away from Severus’s lips, Potter’s breath was mingling with Severus’s breath. “I think I’ve needed you all along, Severus. Without you, I’m just broken. You save me and fix me and hold me together. I need that, I need you.”
Severus closed his eyes. “You can’t be …”
Potter leaned forward, his lips pressing against Severus’s lips, and his mouth was warm and wet, and Severus tasted the bitter coffee, felt the sharp outline of Potter’s teeth. Potter’s fingers ran through his hair, Potter’s hands cradled his neck, and then Severus had a lapful of Potter, warm and heavy and squirming.
Potter broke the kiss and Severus opened his eyes. “Please,” Severus said, his hands on Potter’s back, his shoulders taut with want and need. An unsettled, bubbly feeling had crept into his stomach, and he clutched at Potter as an anchor.
Potter splayed his fingers on Severus’s shoulder-blades and ran his hands up and down Severus’s back. “Severus,” he said with a sigh, resting against him.
Severus felt the man’s heartbeat thud against his breastbone and he put careful gentle hands on Potter’s back, cradling his spine, soothing his shoulder-blade, holding him there.
They sat there, pressed together and holding each other for long moments, content to breathe the same air and share the same space. Potter’s breathing against Severus’s skin slowed, and Severus gentled the small strokes of his hands on Potter’s back, let him drift off into sleep in his arms.
When Granger and the others began to enter the conference room, he waved them into silence, but Weasley’s yelp at seeing Potter on Severus’s lap woke him. Potter blinked and gave Severus a sleepy smile, leaning in for a kiss.
“Mr. Potter,” Severus said, and pulled away from him. Harry caught him, both hands around his neck, and gave him a sultry look and a long, lingering kiss. Potter’s lips were warm and moist against his lips, the kiss felt delicate and precious and entirely necessary, and Severus almost managed to forget that they had an audience.
Potter winked at Severus and turned around to face the other employees. Severus repressed a gasp at the feeling of Potter’s arse wriggling in his lap. “Right, well, thank you all for coming here at this early hour. I wanted to tell you all that the Valentine’s Day project has been canceled and you can all go back to working on your regular projects.
“Well. Right, that’s all. Thank you all for coming and you can go now.” Potter waved a careless, fine-boned hand and pushed them all out of the room, closing and locking the door before he turned back to Severus for another kiss.
Severus matched him in the kiss, each electric tingle at the brush of tongue against tongue shared equally between them, each caress reciprocated, each man echoing the other man’s moans. This, with Potter warm and squirming in his lap, with Potter’s hands caressing his neck, with Harry’s tongue in his mouth, this was a perfection that could never be broken. Severus wrapped his arms around the man and held him close, stilling their kisses to feel Potter’s breath against his lips and Potter’s pulse against his fingers.
Potter’s green eyes were impossibly smug as he ran his fingers through Severus’s hair. “You’ll always be here when I need you, won’t you?”
A hint of insecurity, of recent heartbreak, cracked Potter’s voice, and Severus soothed it away with another kiss. His whisper, “Of course,” was swallowed up and shared between their lips and tongues.
fin
Author: lesyeuxverts00
Word Count: ~11000
Rating: R
Pairing: HP/SS, past HP/BZ
Prompt: “Don’t fix me. I’m not broken.” Harry was in a long time relationship with Blaise Zabini, who leaves him. Severus wants to play knight in shining armor and pick up the pieces.
Betas:
summerborn, svartalfurAN: Originally written for the
two_broomsticks fall fic-a-thon; revised with the help of svartalfurDisclaimer: Not mine.
(Part 1)
Severus clutched at his temples, suppressing the urge to grab his wand and magically cauterize his nose. The smell of tequila that clung to his bony fingers, the smell of the sweaty Weasley next to him, the rich buttery smell of the croissants and breakfast pastries – it all swirled through his aching skull and irritated his already queasy stomach.
Granger pulled out the chair next to him with a loud scraping sound and he covered his ears with his hands. She put a cup of black, steaming coffee in front of him. Severus eyed it with trepidation, leaning away from the smell, until she added a small vial of hangover relief potion.
“You brought him coffee?” Weasley demanded. “What about me?”
“Do you possess a single iota of compassion, Ron? The Professor needs coffee more than you do and don’t act as though you’re hurt because you have to walk five feet for a cup of coffee.”
“He would have made you beg for that potion if you were the one with the hangover,” Weasley said before he stood and slammed his chair back into the table.
Severus kept one hand on his forehead, clutching it to keep his eyeballs from being squeezed out of his head, and reached for the vial with his other hand. When he had swallowed its contents, the world around him settled into a spectrum of less painful colors and noises. The smells swirled around him for a second longer before they too settled and his stomach no longer rebelled.
“Thank you, Miss Granger,” Severus said as he reached for his coffee.
As Weasley returned with a plate full of pastries, Potter strode into the room and allowed the door to slam behind him. The aura of the Boy Who Lived sparked and infused the air with energy and subtle undercurrents. Severus had little time to adjust to the new vibes given off by Potter before he felt a spell sink into the room, permeating his skin and tingling in his nerves. He accepted a croissant from Weasley, muttering his gratitude while trying to identify the spell that Potter had cast.
“I’m glad that you could all come at this early hour,” Potter said. “It’s been awhile since we’ve met, so I thought that I could get an idea of how much progress has been made on the Valentine’s Day project, and we could reevaluate our plans from there.”
Severus blinked. Potter had changed overnight, had gone from the distraught man who’d been devastated by the loss of his lover, back to the confident forthright businessman that he had previously been. His eyes sparkled as they once had, he was energetic and smiling and sober. Some hint of the depression and sorrow that had permeated all of his actions for the past few weeks still tinted his aura, but it had been shunted aside or buried and Potter glowed again. Severus bit the inside of his lip, trying to unravel the enigma that was Potter.
“Luna, why don’t you begin? What have you been doing to forward the project?”
Severus felt the thrum of energy tighten around him, the spell dig its way into his skin and nerves and blood. The vacuous Ravenclaw, unfazed by the sudden spike of magic in the air, nibbled at a delicate éclair, eating the chocolate frosting before discarding the remainder.
“I was speaking with my father in the Quibbler’s offices yesterday,” she said, “and he asked me …” she paused for a sip of coffee. “He asked me about the Ministry of Magic’s attempt to cover up their latest fiasco, pretending that the Prismatic Fairy-Winged Unicorns hadn’t been brutally massacred by their trained army of Puffskein assassins. A lot of the readers who subscribe to the Quibbler on a regular basis have expressed interest in the article, so he thinks that it’ll have to be the front page of the next edition.”
“What about the articles about Valentine’s Day?” Potter asked, fidgeting with a coffee cup. Severus blinked to erase the image of the boy’s wet lips fixed around the rim of the tequila bottle, the convulsive motion of Potter’s throat as he gulped the alcohol.
“Well, most of their readers don’t actually believe in celebrating Valentine’s Day, you know. It’s a commercial holiday that was propagated by the Ministry-sponsored religion in the early days, and now it’s being encouraged by the florists and candy-makers and all the other commercial interests – nobody actually believes that it’s a real holiday, you see, so they don’t celebrate it.”
“And the Prophet?” Potter asked with his lips narrowed to a thin line. The boy pressed one hand to his forehead and took a long gulp of coffee.
Lovegood blinked, her eyes shining clear blue for a second before they returned to their glazed, dreamy appearance. “I’m sure they’ll come around to my point of view, eventually,” she said.
The band of magic tightened around Severus further and he fought against the urge to jump up and shake Potter, fought against the urge to press his lips to the boy’s neck and run a line of kisses along the boy’s jaw.
“Fine,” Potter said. “Work on that. Snape, how is the potion coming?”
“I …” Severus took a large gulp of his coffee as the spell tightened around him and he recognized it as a strong truth spell. He felt a compulsion to tell Potter that he hadn’t made any progress before he slipped behind his Occlumency barriers.
It was like looking at the world from the inside of an unpoppable soap bubble – everything was iridescent but distant. Potter glowed, but his glow was more subdued now. Clearing his throat and setting down his coffee cup on the table, Severus looked up at the boy. The urge to run his fingers through the boy’s tousled hair was muted. “I’m afraid that the key ingredients are still unavailable,” he said. He kept his wording vague and the truth spell relaxed its hold on him, oozing out of his skin and bones and nerves.
With a sidelong glance at Lovegood, who was now building an unstable pyramid out of croissants, Severus wondered if the others would fare as well as she had in sidestepping the spell.
“Have you been making an effort to get these key ingredients, Snape? What are they, and why are they unavailable?”
The truth spell tightened around him again, a stream of molten iron running down his veins, along his nerves, squeezing his skull. His Occlumency faltered under the attack. “I doubt that you would understand the intricacies of potion-making, Potter,” he said with a sneer, trying to gain time to restore his mental shields.
“Try me,” Potter said. “Or have you done nothing? Did you even find a suitable potion to use, Snape?”
“I … ah,” Severus said, gasping under the weight of the spell.
“Harry, stop,” Granger said. The girl was on her feet and tugging at Potter’s arm, Severus noticed through the haze of pain that had overtaken him. “Stop it, Harry, you’re hurting him.”
The pressure eased and Snape heard the faint echoes of Potter’s voice dismissing the others, heard the faint click of the door as it was shut. A warm hand rested on his arm. “Snape?” Potter said. “Are you all right?”
“What the fuck have you done with the pinprick-sized organ that you Gryffindors have the audacity to call a brain, Potter? Did you expel it from your echoing skull when you sneezed?” Severus asked. He shook the hand off his arm and began rubbing his temples. “Do you have some deep-seated desire to convince everyone that you are in fact planning to become the next Dark Lord? While you’re at it, Potter, just go ahead and turn into a Dark Lord already. It’s not as though you could make my job any more difficult than it already is.”
“Your job is to brew potions for me, Snape, not meddle with my life or decisions.”
“My job is to save you from yourself, Potter. It has been all along, as you would have known if the congenital Gryffindor denseness hadn’t blinded you to the facts. I should have written it in large gold and red letters on the back of your eyelids, but perhaps that is still too subtle for you to understand.”
Potter wrapped his fingers around the arms of Severus’s chair. He leaned down until his nose was an inch away from Severus’s nose and when he spoke, his breath hit Severus’s lips in warm spurts. “You are not my keeper, Snape. Try to get rid of your fascination with your own self-importance, because I can assure you that I don’t need you watching over me or protecting me from anything.”
Severus grasped Potter’s wrists and forced him to release the chair, pushing him away so that Severus could stand. “Do not presume to trespass into my personal space, you impertinent whelp. You would have been a bloody, broken mess your first year in Hogwarts if not for me, and again a dozen times since, and you’ve never once had the common courtesy to thank me.”
“I didn’t have the courtesy to thank you for saving your own arse from Dumbledore’s anger? You prance around and pretend to save me, you’re acting as though you’ve never made a mistake, as though everything I do is wrong and you’re the only one with the power to fix it. Well, you’re wrong again, because I don’t need to be saved or helped by you. Don’t fix me. I’m not broken.”
Potter paused for a second, breathing quickly, his eyes flashing, and continued. “I don’t know what’s going through your mind, assuming that I’m some fragile, broken thing that needs to be saved. The ease with which you forget your own Life Debts to me is astounding, Snape. I’ve saved your hide as often as you’ve saved mine, and I’m no wide-eyed eleven-year-old anymore.”
“Then act your age, damn you. If you’re such an adult, then give over this petty scheme and stop working for your own destruction like a spineless, witless fool.”
Potter’s eyes flashed a dark green that was almost black. “Natter on about my responsibilities all you like, you bastard. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve done my best for the world all my life and I’ve got nothing to show for it. The wizarding world, Muggles, the army of lice that’s taken up residence on your scalp – I don’t owe anything to anyone.”
Severus pulled away from Potter, drew himself up to his most intimidating height, and sneered at the man. “Really, Potter, and how do you think I felt before I sold my soul to the megalomaniac that was the Dark Lord?”
Potter gaped at him for a long moment. Severus turned on his heel and strode from the room.
----------
Severus watched Potter fidget with his coffee cup, lacing his fingers in complicated patterns around its gray sides. “Did you perhaps have a reason in summoning me, or did you simply assume that I have nothing better to do with my time this morning?”
“I … Professor Snape,” Potter said, staring at his coffee cup. “I … I want to apologize.”
He looked up at Severus but did not quite make eye contact. “I shouldn’t have cast the Truth spell on you yesterday. Hermione’s already reminded me of the hundred and two side effects it has on Occlumens, and I … the truth is, I did know about them, but I wasn’t thinking. It was careless of me, and it was wrong to take such risks.”
Severus watched the boy fidget for long moments before speaking. “I will accept your apology, Mr. Potter, on the condition that you agree to dismantle your plan to kill Valentine’s Day.”
Potter made eye contact with him now. “It’s not as though it was working anyhow, was it, with you lot sitting on your arses and doing nothing? Consider the plan canceled then, you sneaky old Slytherin.”
Severus watched the muscles in Potter’s throat twitch as he swallowed a gulp of coffee. The man seemed to be sober, coherent, and lacked a hangover for the first time in weeks. “What prompted your outburst against the holiday?”
Potter’s gaze swept over to the small glass paperweight, its hollow center filled with Pensieve memories that swirled with the agitation of strong emotions.
“You don’t remember, do you?”
“I – I remember most of it,” Potter said. “It was … Blaise told me that he wanted his wedding to be on Valentine’s Day. It wasn’t until … afterwards … that he told me he’d meant his and Ginny’s wedding.”
The Pensieve memories gleamed in their glass confinement and Severus stared at the paperweight, mesmerized by the rapid silver swirling. “You needn’t have taken my earlier offer literally,” he said. “Perhaps I was too specific when I offered to brew you potions to recapture Mr. Zabini’s affections. There are a large number of slow-acting, untraceable poisons that could be at your fingertips within hours. Some of them are fatal, while others merely render the victim uncomfortable for a set period of time.”
Severus’s fingers twitched at the thought of brewing those potions, the addictive curl of Dark Arts twisting his stomach.
“What happened to your attempts to prevent my becoming the next Dark Lord, Snape? Surely you haven’t given up already.” The half-smile on Potter’s lips looked soft and kissable. Severus leaned forward an infinitesimal fraction, bringing himself closer to those lips, closer to the warm puffs of air that passed through those lips.
“Of course I haven’t given up,” was all he said.
Potter stared at him, green eyes widening. “I … Do you …” His incoherent beginning was cut off when an owl flew through the window to perch on Potter’s desk and hooted for attention.
Scanning the note briefly, Potter stood. “Hermione needs my help for a few minutes – something to do with her project to convert magic and electricity. I … I’ll be back.”
Severus nodded, and watched the man’s retreating figure. His form retained its adolescent slenderness, but had lost all of the awkwardness. The long, smooth lines of his body were visible even under his robes.
Blinking, Severus turned to Potter’s desk and the Pensieve memories in the paperweight. Had the man deliberately left him here alone? Had he forgotten that the memories were out and accessible, or did he have a discreet ward surrounding them?
He leaned closer to the paperweight and checked quickly for wards before reaching out and touching the slippery, wispy thoughts.
It took Severus a moment to orient himself and realize that he was at Granger and Weasley’s New Years party. The noise level was horrendous and the room was densely packed with dancing wizards and witches, many of them passing through his insubstantial form. Potter was pressed against a wall, Blaise Zabini hovering over him, and Severus crept closer to the pair of them in time to see Zabini feed a luscious champagne-dipped strawberry to Potter.
Potter’s pink lips stretched open wide to take in the large berry, and his tongue flicked out to caress Zabini’s fingers. “Let’s go upstairs, shall we?” he asked after he had licked off the last of the champagne.
“Certainly, love.”
Severus followed the two of them into the library upstairs, where he perused Miss Granger’s excellent selection of books in an attempt to distract himself from the sight of Potter with his tongue down Zabini’s throat and his hands down Zabini’s trousers. He was not watching them, he told himself.
Zabini trailed his hands down Potter’s spine with languid caresses, arriving finally at Potter’s arse, which he pulled toward him. “You’ve wanted me all evening, my little slut,” he said. “Haven’t you?”
“Oh, Blaise,” Potter said in a breathy low voice when Zabini attached his lips to Potter’s throat and began moving toward his collarbone.
Severus stopped pretending an interest in Granger’s Transfiguration books and turned to watch them as the clock began to chime midnight.
Zabini pressed a long, fierce kiss to Potter’s lips before pressing him back against the desk. “Your wand,” he said. “Give it to me.”
Potter handed it over without question and Severus blinked, enraged by the boy’s stupidity. Zabini continued to kiss Potter while unbuttoning his jeans.
“Blaise,” Potter panted, “need you so much.” Potter’s lips were dark pink, swollen, decadent, and Severus ached with need for him. His pale hands, clawing at Zabini’s back, his tousled hair, his dilated pupils – Severus admitted to himself that he wanted to have Potter, wanted to fuck him and care for him and love him as Zabini had not.
Zabini cast a lubricating spell with Potter’s own wand and began to insert it into his lover’s opening. Severus gasped in spite of himself, jealous and wanting, his cock aching and hard. He needed this, needed to have this with Potter.
Zabini slid the wand further into Potter, angled it until Potter gave a loud cry, demanding more. “Take me, Blaise, fuck me now, I need you.”
Severus circled around the perimeter of the room until he could see Zabini’s face. This was the denouement, he was almost certain, the moment when Zabini broke Potter’s heart, and he was right.
Zabini pulled away from Potter, pulled out of the needy embrace and laughed. The sound echoed through the room and Severus shivered to hear it.
“You think I’d take a little slut like yourself, Potter? A half-blood tramp, a clingy and sentimental waste of magic? You could do so much with yourself, you have so much power and you fritter it away on your ridiculous company instead of using it to take your rightful place in society. I’m disgusted by you, disgusted by your weakness and stupidity.”
Zabini reached towards Potter and grasped the wand that he had left inside him. With shining eyes and a vicious grin, he deliberately snapped it. “We’re as over as your glory days are, Potter. Don’t expect an invitation to my wedding – it’s pure-bloods only.”
Zabini left Potter there, the broken wand still dangling from his arse, and let the door slam closed behind him. Severus had only a few seconds to observe Potter, pale and motionless, half naked on the desk, before the memory ended and he found himself again Potter’s office.
He blinked at the sudden change, and then he saw Potter standing frozen in the doorway.
Severus wondered if he had exited the Pensieve into a world where time ran more slowly. After an awkward moment, Potter finally moved to his desk and sat down. “You saw everything, I suppose,” he said.
Severus nodded, the small movement of his neck paining his tight, constricted throat. There were no words for this trespass, no apologies, no possible recompense.
“Why?” Potter asked, staring at his hands. There was no tone of righteous anger in his voice, no hostility in his slumped posture.
Severus hesitated for a moment and then crossed to the other side of the desk, kneeling in front of Potter and tilting his chin to look at him. “Because you can’t keep something like that closed off from all of your friends and pretend that you’re healing. Because it’s my job to save you, whether you think you need it or not.”
Hyper-aware of his body, the pulse through his veins and the blood that flowed into the fingertip that was touching Potter’s skin, Severus paused. “You’ve every right to be angry with me, Harry. You would have been furious with me if I had done something like this before Blaise left you.”
“I’m the one who left it there for you to look at.”
Severus let his finger wander along Potter’s jaw, brushed against the rough stubble, traced the sharp bone. “That’s not the point, Harry.”
Severus felt a thrill run down his spine. The risk of taking these intimacies with Potter, the danger of rejection by a boy who saw him still as an ugly old professor, the possibility that he would take advantage of Potter’s wounded emotional state ... Severus withdrew his finger from the boy’s chin.
“You need to talk to your friends about what happened,” he said. “You need to stop putting your memories in a Pensieve in order to have a normal day, and you need to stop drinking yourself into oblivion. Stop wallowing in this unhealthy self-pity, Potter, because even a dim-wit like you should realize that Zabini isn’t worth this anguish, and move on with your life.”
Potter leaned forward, licking his pale lips. “I … won’t you help me, Professor?”
Severus, his pulse throbbing, began to pull away from the boy, but Potter caught his elbow. “Isn’t it your job to save me … Severus?”
“I can’t – I – I have to go,” Severus said, and he pulled his elbow from Potter’s grasp and left the room before Potter could stop him.
----------
The conference room had been spelled to the cold temperature that Severus preferred, and there was a cup of coffee and a hangover potion waiting by his usual seat. Severus looked around for his colleagues and tried to blink his migraine away when he realized that the room was empty.
Potter entered, carrying a tray with muffins and a cup of coffee. “Good morning, Professor Snape.” He perched on the table next to Severus, offering him a blueberry muffin.
Severus was looking at the vial of hangover potion on the table and not the delectable curve of Potter’s arse, he told himself. The potion looked as though it might have been slightly off in color, a few hues too pale.
Potter uncorked the vial and passed it to Severus, letting his fingers linger on Severus’s hand for an instant too long. “I thought that you might need this,” he said.
“Tell me what’s happening in that vacuum that you call a brain,” Severus said, “so that I can start to run damage control as soon as possible.”
With a smile, Potter tilted his head to the side and touched Severus’s shoulder, let his hand wander up Severus’s neck to his jaw. “I wanted to talk to you before the meeting, that’s all.”
“How much have you had to drink?”
“Coffee? It’s only my second cup this morning, but I’m coherent, I promise.” Potter reached for his cup, but Severus intercepted it and sniffed the contents to verify that Potter hadn’t started to lace his coffee with alcohol.
“I’m sober, I really am. I – last night, after we talked, I realized that you were right about everything … well, almost everything.”
Potter leaned toward Severus, and he could smell the coffee on Potter’s breath, could almost hear Potter’s heartbeat. “I think that you can help me,” Potter murmured in Severus’s ear.
“I am …”
Potter’s fingers traced lazy whorls along Severus’s neck. “You’re the only person who’s always been there to help me, these past seven years, the only one who saves me when I insist that I don’t need any help, the only man who makes my heart beat faster.”
“I can’t let you make this mistake,” Severus said and tried to pull away.
“You can’t let me make the mistakes that I was making alone, you mean,” Potter said, his palm holding the back of Severus’s neck and holding him there. “You know I was miserable, drinking myself into a stupor every night and engaging in questionable Apparition. I need you there to stop me from doing such foolish things.”
Potter’s lips were an inch away from Severus’s lips, Potter’s breath was mingling with Severus’s breath. “I think I’ve needed you all along, Severus. Without you, I’m just broken. You save me and fix me and hold me together. I need that, I need you.”
Severus closed his eyes. “You can’t be …”
Potter leaned forward, his lips pressing against Severus’s lips, and his mouth was warm and wet, and Severus tasted the bitter coffee, felt the sharp outline of Potter’s teeth. Potter’s fingers ran through his hair, Potter’s hands cradled his neck, and then Severus had a lapful of Potter, warm and heavy and squirming.
Potter broke the kiss and Severus opened his eyes. “Please,” Severus said, his hands on Potter’s back, his shoulders taut with want and need. An unsettled, bubbly feeling had crept into his stomach, and he clutched at Potter as an anchor.
Potter splayed his fingers on Severus’s shoulder-blades and ran his hands up and down Severus’s back. “Severus,” he said with a sigh, resting against him.
Severus felt the man’s heartbeat thud against his breastbone and he put careful gentle hands on Potter’s back, cradling his spine, soothing his shoulder-blade, holding him there.
They sat there, pressed together and holding each other for long moments, content to breathe the same air and share the same space. Potter’s breathing against Severus’s skin slowed, and Severus gentled the small strokes of his hands on Potter’s back, let him drift off into sleep in his arms.
When Granger and the others began to enter the conference room, he waved them into silence, but Weasley’s yelp at seeing Potter on Severus’s lap woke him. Potter blinked and gave Severus a sleepy smile, leaning in for a kiss.
“Mr. Potter,” Severus said, and pulled away from him. Harry caught him, both hands around his neck, and gave him a sultry look and a long, lingering kiss. Potter’s lips were warm and moist against his lips, the kiss felt delicate and precious and entirely necessary, and Severus almost managed to forget that they had an audience.
Potter winked at Severus and turned around to face the other employees. Severus repressed a gasp at the feeling of Potter’s arse wriggling in his lap. “Right, well, thank you all for coming here at this early hour. I wanted to tell you all that the Valentine’s Day project has been canceled and you can all go back to working on your regular projects.
“Well. Right, that’s all. Thank you all for coming and you can go now.” Potter waved a careless, fine-boned hand and pushed them all out of the room, closing and locking the door before he turned back to Severus for another kiss.
Severus matched him in the kiss, each electric tingle at the brush of tongue against tongue shared equally between them, each caress reciprocated, each man echoing the other man’s moans. This, with Potter warm and squirming in his lap, with Potter’s hands caressing his neck, with Harry’s tongue in his mouth, this was a perfection that could never be broken. Severus wrapped his arms around the man and held him close, stilling their kisses to feel Potter’s breath against his lips and Potter’s pulse against his fingers.
Potter’s green eyes were impossibly smug as he ran his fingers through Severus’s hair. “You’ll always be here when I need you, won’t you?”
A hint of insecurity, of recent heartbreak, cracked Potter’s voice, and Severus soothed it away with another kiss. His whisper, “Of course,” was swallowed up and shared between their lips and tongues.
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