The Savior of Valentine's Day (1/2)
Feb. 14th, 2007 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lesyeuxvertsTitle: The Savior of Valentine’s Day (1/2)
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.
Severus watched with undisguised smugness as his colleagues staggered into the room, all of them with unmistakable signs of hangovers. They held their heads with both hands, winced at every little noise – Severus scraped his chair against the floor, scooting closer to the table. He smirked at Hermione Granger’s visible grimace and ran his fingers along the cool glass surfaces of his extra vials of hangover remedy.
The reason why they had all been dragged from their soft beds at an ungodly hour on New Year's Day walked into the conference room. Severus was thankful, his employer's arrival saving him from the need to give the potions to his colleagues and appearing soft and magnanimous. Instead, he waited for an order from his employer to do so and maintained his cold-hearted bastard appearance.
Harry Potter looked worse than any of them, although he appeared to be lacking a hangover. As the door slammed shut behind him, Severus noticed that Potter didn’t wince at the loud noise. Perhaps Potter would drop his usual soft caring employer routine and forget to order Severus to provide the others with the necessary potions, giving Severus both the joy of his colleagues’ suffering and the misery of listening to their whining.
Pale skin with a sheen of sweat, delayed blinking, loss of fine motor control – even exhausted and unwashed, the boy was beautiful. His skin was almost translucent with a blue lattice of veins visible beneath it. Potter stumbled to his seat and Severus mentally prescribed him a dose of energy replenisher and a half-dose of Dreamless Sleep for this evening.
Potter blinked and made a visible effort to count heads – failed and began again – before sitting down at the head of the conference table. “Right,” he said. He conjured himself a cup of coffee with his damned proficiency at wandless magic and blinked again.
“Okay,” he said, “Luna is in charge of the press, and I mean all of it. Not just the Quibbler and the Daily Prophet, get the Muggle publications too, okay love? Once you’ve finished Britain you can start on the rest of the world.”
Another sip of coffee, and Potter’s eyelid twitched. “Hermione dear, you’re in charge of publicity, brochures and public opinion, you know the drill, don’t you? The same as you did for SPEW, but no acronyms please. Let me know as soon as you’ve got a rough draft, and I’ll look it over before we print it. Worldwide circulation, I don’t care how many owls it takes to deliver them.”
“Ron, mate, you’re in charge of the Ministry of course, couldn’t think of a better man for the job. This is probably the most important thing, because not only can they influence public opinion, they’ll be able to keep all of the annoyed businesses off our necks. Be sure to get in good with the diplomats, you know, all of the ambassadors to foreign countries. They’ll take the idea back home with them.”
Another, longer sip of coffee – Severus watched the young man’s throat muscles twitch as he swallowed. The line of his throat was elegant, and Severus felt an urge to trace it from his chin down to the first, carelessly open button of his shirt.
“Snape, you’re in charge of the schools. Start with Hogwarts, of course. It won’t be easy to convince Minerva, but you can always saturate her office with some potion to make her more suggestible. Don’t bother with her shortbread or tea or whiskey. Put a light coercion potion on a tea-light, hide it somewhere and let the fumes permeate the place. Once you’ve got her convinced, you can get her to deal with the other schools. The best way to deal with Minerva is to let her think that it was her idea from the beginning, I’m sure you already know that.
“Right, the rest of you just help out as needed, okay? No questions? Great, I’m off.” Potter finished the last of his coffee in one gulp and banished the mug wandlessly.
Severus gaped at him – the normally organized and coherent businessman who had just outlined a nonsensical plan, the normally caring employer who had failed to notice that nine tenths of his employees were suffering from hangovers – and found his voice. “Potter,” he said, “you haven’t explained what we’re to do.”
“Do? I just told you.” Potter blinked once, twice, so slowly that each time Severus saw the dull green of his eyes through dark eyelashes.
“You neglected to mention the general objective of our work, its purpose, its raison d’etre.”
“Right,” Potter said, “right. I skipped that part?”
“Indeed.” For a second Severus felt as though Potter actually saw him, that those green eyes and that short attention span were focused on Severus alone.
“Right,” Potter repeated, his gaze sweeping over everyone assembled. “The point is to eliminate Valentine’s Day. I don’t want a single person anywhere in the world to be happy. There will be no proposals or weddings or ooey-gooey chocolates and flowers. No jewelry, no dates, no hand-holding, no simpering cards or love songs. Maybe we’ll turn it into a day to remember Voldemort's victims – write that down, Hermione my love, that’s a good idea. There wouldn’t be any disgusting romance if we were all overturned with grief, visiting cemeteries and the like.”
“Harry, you can’t do such a thing,” Granger protested. Although one hand still cradled her head, she was able to think through her hangover better than any of the other cretins with whom Severus was unfortunate enough to work.
“You’re kidding me, right, Hermione? I’m sure a brilliant witch like you would never say that I couldn’t do anything I wanted to do, not after I’ve spent my entire life working for the good of the wizarding world, not after I sacrificed my entire bloody childhood to defeat a monster, and not after I spent my entire adulthood with this company, trying to make our world a better place for pure-bloods, half-bloods and Muggle-borns alike. Despite everything that I have given, all I have ever received is unwanted adulation and publicity and defamation, which have done nothing except make my work harder. It’s bloody well time that the world repaid some of its debt to me.”
Watching Potter’s eyelids twitch as the boy took an unsteady breath, Severus decided to intervene. “Very good, Mr. Potter. Why don’t you go on to your office, take care of some of the important paperwork that’s waiting for you there, and we’ll coordinate all of the tedious little details for this project, all right? We’ll make sure that everything is synchronized so that no one gets wind of the plan in time to stop it.”
Potter blinked and then smiled. “Brilliant, Snape, absolutely brilliant. I’m glad sometimes that you Slytherins are so sneaky. What would I do without you?”
Potter waved a loose dismissive hand and said, “Right,” one last time before leaving.
“He can’t do this,” Weasley said, his freckles exceptionally visible on his pale face. “I mean, I’ve already started making plans for the holiday this year. I … can he do this?”
Granger, with a blush, asked, “Did you really start making plans already?”
An echoing blush replaced Weasley’s pallor, this shade threatening to obscure his freckles. “Yeah … yeah, of course.”
“Not to interrupt the delightful starry-eyed romantic moment, or prevent your brains, small though they may be, from dripping out of your ears like so much liquefied fungal rot, shall we nevertheless turn our attention to more pressing matters?” Severus said. He watched with well-hidden glee as both lovers blushed even brighter.
“Very well, then. This is our plan: to appear as though we are focusing all of our attention on these new objectives while at the same time making no progress on them whatsoever and fulfilling our regular duties. I imagine that this should be perfectly self-evident to anyone in possession of more than three brain cells and requires no discussion other than the reminder to keep Potter from knowing anything about our duplicity – no hint of it whatsoever is to come to his ears, do you understand me? The smallest, most insignificant-seeming detail could be our undoing.”
After a chorus of “What?” and other incoherent mumbles, Severus took pity on them and passed around the vials of hangover remedy. “Listen carefully,” he said, “if that task isn’t beyond your intellectual capability. Potter, despite his delusions of grandeur, cannot afford to be known as the Boy Who Lived to Kill Romance or the Boy Who Didn’t Love or some such arrant nonsense, and we cannot afford to be working for an utter lunatic who has no credibility with the public whatsoever. It would undermine everything that he’s worked for these past seven years, everything that this company has accomplished in regards to Wizard-Muggle relations, and when Potter comes to his senses, he’ll realize that and rescind the orders.”
Severus paused to look around at faces that still were blank and uncomprehending despite the hangover remedy potion, and he caught Granger’s eye. “Miss Granger, please explain matters to these nitwits while I ensure that Potter isn’t hatching any other brainless, ill-conceived Gryffindor plans or otherwise trying to get his foolhardy neck broken.”
----------
Potter’s office had been designed by the best and most tasteful French firm that had enough wit to avoid an overabundance of red and gold and had imbued the space with a peaceful sense of purpose. It was relaxing to the spirit, and seemed to brush aside extraneous worries while invigorating the mind. Severus had often thought during long meetings that such an office would be an infinite improvement over the thick stone walls and cold temperatures that were required for brewing many of the unsafe potions.
Now, the delicate furnishings had been overturned, the papers and files that Potter kept in unwavering tidiness had been scattered and only the well-chosen blue and gold color scheme remained intact. The office looked as though a rambunctious toddler had designed it. Upon entering the room, Severus blinked at the disarray for a moment before noting that Potter was at the center of the disorder. The boy was crouched under his desk, the only piece of furniture that had remained in its intended position, while a whirlwind of objects spun through the air around the desk.
Severus watched a shining glass paperweight, its hollow center silvery with stored Pensieve memories, make a full circuit around Potter. The magical storm did not abate and in fact intensified when Severus stepped closer to the desk. “Potter, stop this self-indulgent tantrum immediately.”
The boy’s eyes opened, wide and green and beautiful as ever, and Severus caught his breath when he saw the pain and confusion in them.
“What?” Potter asked and then looked at the vortex of spinning objects. “Oh … right.” He waved a hand and the objects paused in midair for a second before gliding back to their habitual places.
Another hand wave, and the furniture and scattered papers were set to rights. Severus gritted his teeth at the obscene amount of power displayed by the cheeky brat. He’d taught the boy nothing, apparently. Despite all of their lessons, his cautions and warnings, Potter hadn't learned to refrain from displaying his vast power in front of lesser wizards. Severus tried to count small blessings, such as the fact that Potter hadn’t yet destroyed anything irreplaceable or killed himself.
“Sit down, Snape,” Potter said from under the desk. Snape’s favorite chair slid across the floor to him at the prompt of another casual gesture by Potter. “What can I do for you today?”
Unsettled by a moment of déjà vu and the memory of another powerful wizard who had often asked him the same question in a comfortable office, Severus sat without argument.
Regaining his mental equilibrium, he said, “I see that you’ve decided to conduct business underneath your desk instead of at it, Potter. I can’t wait to see the Daily Prophet headlines. Perhaps before that charming rag of a paper is published, you will inform me of the addlepated Gryffindor reason behind your excessive use of wandless magic? Or shall we wait until every news hawker in the country has made you into a pariah and defamed you as the next Dark Lord?”
“Albus always …”
Severus felt his face darken at the mention of his late mentor. “Albus Dumbledore was a revered, sainted man in this community and after his defeat of Grindelwald, he could do no wrong in the public eye. Do you understand why, Potter? Do you realize the nature of the differences between Albus and yourself?”
He continued without waiting for a response. “Albus was untainted, whereas you have the misfortune of known Dark connections, past curses and your Parselmouth ability. Albus was publicly only a Headmaster, however privately influential he may have been. He did not agitate for social change, never threatened the status quo with the same flamboyant disregard for consequences that is your hallmark. Unlike you, he took great pains to appear less dangerous than he was and concealed all of his controversial actions with more care than you have ever used in your entire life. Do you finally understand me, you imbecilic boy, or will you persist in this effort to get yourself killed?”
“Snape, I …”
“I’m not interested in your puerile lackluster excuses, Potter. Either name for me one – just one – wizard in history who used wandless magic openly and came to a good end, or start using a wand like a normal wizard.”
“Albus,” was the only word the boy said.
“What? You imbecilic …”
Potter waved a hand and silenced Severus. “Same insult twice in a day, Snape, you’re definitely losing your touch. No, Albus met with a good end. He died at his own choice, a dignified quick death instead of choking out the last moments of his life with that poison in his veins. He was respected and loved to the end, as you just pointed out, and he died to save people, just as he had lived.”
“Potter,” Severus said when the brat removed the silencing spell from him, “as I have already pointed out, you are not Albus and if you think that I’ll be convinced by that argument …”
“Of course not, Snape. You’re right, just as you always are, you insufferable git, so why don’t you do me a favor and pop over to Ollivander’s before lunch? See if you can convince him to come here as I’d rather not be mobbed in Diagon Alley today, if it’s all the same to everyone.”
Severus paused for a moment to ensure that he had understood the wretched boy. “Potter, are you implying that your wand …”
“Right, it’s broken, and no, I don’t want to talk about it.” The boy under the desk sounded sullen and resolute.
“You are such a blind sulky child, Potter, that you are utterly transparent, even compared to the usual rubbishy wizards that graduate from Gryffindor. Perhaps you won’t explain to me the connection between your broken wand, your new penchant for hiding under your desk and causing magical storms in your office, and your sudden desire to ban Valentine’s Day. Rest assured that whether you explain it to me in melodramatic detail or not, I will know all of the details in the end and publicly humiliate you at my leisure.”
“You’re too much of a Slytherin to endanger your job and everything you’ve worked for these past years with me, Snape. Remember that you can’t fool me with your bluster anymore and, valuable as you are to this company, I will sack you if you cross the line. Now take your sarcasm out of my office and ask Ollivander nicely if he will come here.”
Severus stopped by Granger’s office before he left, finding her in a worried conversation with Weasley. “Should we firecall your mum?” she was asking him.
“No, you know how she worries. She’d be bound to smother Harry, and fuss, and let something slip, and then Harry would be angry at her for fussing over him and us for telling her.”
“Surprising insight from you, Weasley,” Severus said, cutting into the conversation. “I agree that no one outside of this company should know of Potter’s mental breakdown. The longer we keep it out of the papers, the better.”
“Mental breakdown, sir? Is it that bad?” Granger asked him.
Severus raised one eyebrow in his practiced ‘Do not question me, impertinent Gryffindor’ look. “If neither of you have any additional information about your friend’s mental health, I shall question Mr. Zabini. No,” he said, raising one hand to forestall any protests. “It is better that I question him, as neither of you speak Slytherin or are subtle enough to obtain information from him without revealing far more than is desirable. Remain here, try to prevent Potter from leaving and doing anything far more foolish than is his usual wont, but do not disturb him if it is not truly necessary.” Severus glared at both of them until they agreed, and then swept out of the office with his trademark flourish of robes.
----------
Ollivander was eager and obliging, but Zabini was decidedly less so. He responded to Severus’s oblique inquiries with a curt, “I don’t know anything about Potter and I’m more concerned about my great aunt’s cat’s arthritis than I am about that self-righteous bugger. Sod off, Snape.”
When Severus returned from his errands to the shining modern building that housed Potter’s company, he glared at the bird-brained secretaries as he stalked down to the laboratories. The world was full of simpering brainless idiots, and foremost among them was Harry Potter – idolized by the world as the epitome of Gryffindor, but the blind fools never realized how often Gryffindor behavior brought Potter close to death. The positive reinforcement he received from his adoring fans ensured that Potter would never make an effort to change – not that he would ever realize that his former professor would sleep better with the knowledge that the idiot boy wasn’t risking his neck in yet another foolish escapade.
Severus stopped short in front of his large pewter cauldron. He watched his mirror image frown in the polished metal surface. How was it that Potter continued to affect his sleeping patterns? After years of watching over the boy in his infernal invisibility cloak after curfew and another year on the run from his righteous vengeance, it seemed absurd that Potter, no longer his responsibility, still kept him sleepless at night.
“It’s none of my business in the end if the boy chooses to kill himself,” Severus told his reflection. He busied himself with preparing the ingredients for his experimental potion, enjoying the distraction of mortar and pestle, the sharp scalpel, the familiar smells.
Zabini was hiding something, Severus decided as he chopped the aconite into fine strips. The Slytherin was too intimate with Potter to be unaware of his partner’s mental state. Potter was too open-hearted and Gryffindor to keep secrets from his little lover, even knowing that the Slytherin refused to reciprocate with similar trust.
Severus had chopped too much aconite – he brushed the excess to the side and began preparing the cauldron. He was irritated by his incomprehension. There was a link between all of today’s events, some causal tie that Severus didn’t see.
The water in the cauldron was boiling, and he began the potion, an experimental attempt to generate an improved version of Wolfsbane – Potter’s philanthropic idea, of course, as the boy had no notion whatsoever of the work involved in that particular potion.
The boy was brilliant at delegating and managing the business, Severus had to admit, not that Potter shouldn’t have been competent after his sojourn in the Muggle universities. As much as he still despised him and his reprehensible Gryffindor behavior, he had to concede that the boy was no fool. After the defeat of Voldemort and the completion of Potter’s education, the notion of starting a company with the purpose of improving Wizard-Muggle relations had been sound and had come at the right moment. Potter wasn’t the dunderhead he acted, as much as it galled Severus that he wasted his intelligence with such Gryffindor glee.
Severus had been lost in his thoughts and had forgotten to add the angelica until two minutes too late. He gave the potion an extra ten counterclockwise stirs to compensate for the error.
“Logically, now,” Severus said out loud, filling the silence with his own voice. There had to be some connection between the strange events, and he refused to relinquish the puzzle until he knew the answer. “Potter broke his wand sometime in the interval between Christmas and today, probably more recently because even old Ollivander would have made an exception for the Boy Wonder and opened during the holidays. The event was probably traumatic, more traumatic than breaking a wand usually is, unless something else sent him into hiding under his desk.”
Severus added the toad spleens and stirred twice more counterclockwise. The potion smoked with its usual hazy gray fumes and Severus sighed. This experimental batch was no more successful than the last one – damn Potter for setting him such an impossible task. He poured the failure down a special drain, where the house elves would neutralize and dispose of it.
Setting the cauldron back down on the worktable with a soft clatter, Severus froze and then cursed himself for not seeing the connection earlier. The pained look in Potter’s eyes, the uncontrolled magic setting off a whirlwind, the sudden desire to eradicate Valentine’s Day, Zabini’s professed indifference – it all made sense. Severus whispered into the silent room, “Potter’s upset because Zabini broke up with him.”
Granger and Weasley were still in her office – whether chatting about their broken-hearted friend or their own sappy romance, even the practiced spy and actor that still lurked somewhere in Severus couldn’t have pretended to care. “Your party last night,” he said without preamble, causing the two of them to jump apart like guilty schoolchildren. “Were Potter and Zabini there?”
“At the beginning they were,” Granger said – she was always quicker to compose herself than Weasley, who was still red in the ears and neck. “They left rather early, didn’t they, Ron?”
“Yeah, of course. They wouldn’t have stayed last night, that was … oh shit,” Weasley said.
At an impatient glare from Severus and a verbal prod from Granger, Weasley shook himself out of his daze enough to continue. “Harry told me that Blaise had planned a romantic dinner for the two of them, and he thought – Blaise had hinted, that is, that he was going to propose, you know … the romantic ring in the glass of champagne at the stroke of midnight, followed by a New Year’s kiss?”
“But if Harry’s dead set against all romance and trying to prevent Valentine’s Day from happening, it can’t have gone very well, can it?” the ever-practical Granger asked, twining her fingers with Weasley’s fingers.
“Indeed. I suspect that they may have put an end to their relationship,” Severus said. There was no harm in sharing his conclusions with Potter’s best friends, although the boy should have told them about his grief in the first place. “Mr. Zabini was less than polite when I approached him, and he most succinctly expressed his lack of interest in Potter.”
“This is good, though, isn’t it? I mean, not that they broke up,” Granger corrected herself with alacrity. “But if Harry’s new Valentine’s Day project is just due to the bitterness of a bad breakup, it means that he will abandon the project as soon as he’s romantically happy again.”
Weasley sat up straight. “Charlie’s home from Romania for the holiday, and Mum would love to see Harry marry into the family.”
“Absolutely not, you mustn’t set the two of them up, Ron,” Granger said. “Harry’s never liked redheads since he broke up with Ginny. His type is dark, handsome and Slytherin, or didn’t you notice Blaise, and the bloke – oh, I forget his name – the one before Blaise?”
Severus ignored the emotion that curled up in his stomach at their discussion of Potter’s love life – nodding curtly to them, he strode out of Granger’s office. There was very little that he could do in order to set things right, it would be best to let his friends tend to the unstable boy.
----------
After three consecutive mornings of slamming Potter’s office door and walking with deliberately loud steps to ascertain the severity of Potter’s hangover before dosing him with the appropriate potion, Severus had had enough of the boy’s self-destructive wallowing. He decided to intervene in spite of his resolution to let Granger and Weasley deal with the matter. Stalking into Potter’s office after eating dinner in the employee cafeteria, he found the brat still working, a glass of something colorful, alcoholic and fruity-smelling already on the desk next to a stack of papers. Severus banished the contents of the glass and removed the ring of discoloration left by the dripping glass on the beautiful wood desk, but Potter didn’t notice him or the spell until the next sip of his drink.
The boy looked up at Severus, blinking, and the older man repressed a sudden urge to wipe the confused look off his face, wash the ink smear off his cheekbone, and fuck him against the desk or … what in Salazar’s name was he thinking?
“I was drinking that,” Potter said, interrupting his thoughts.
“Drinking before you Apparate home, Potter? Apparition under the influence will earn you a pretty fine, even if you are the Boy Who Lived.”
Potter stood and walked over to the bookshelf near the window, his gait still unaffected by the alcohol. Before the boy could reach the bottle of vodka that sat innocuously between a photograph of Potter’s last Quidditch game at Hogwarts and one of his Muggle business management texts, Severus raised his wand and cast a modified child-repelling spell. Potter jumped back at the electric shock surrounding the bottle and turned to Severus.
“You’re not my bloody minder,” he said. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
One arched eyebrow – Severus was proud of the control he still had over his facial muscles – accompanied the response, “Potter, I’m so fond of your witty repartee, I couldn’t bear to be without it. With the paucity of brain cells that you customarily exhibit, I felt that you couldn’t afford to lose any to overindulgence.”
With a glare and a wave of his fine-boned, delicate hand, Potter said, “Finite incantatem.”
That was the wrong counterspell, was all Severus had time to realize. He launched himself at the boy, knocking him into the floor and shielding him from the broken glass. Potter’s head hit the square of carpet that protected the hardwood floor from the chair but it was still a hard knock. Severus felt the back of Potter’s head for any sign of injury or concussion, ignoring for the moment the fact that he was lying on top of the boy.
Potter stared up at him, green eyes wide and free of the haze of intoxication. “Snape?” he asked.
Severus pressed his long impatient fingers through the boy’s tangled hair, massaging the scalp with his fingertips as he felt for injury. “You’ll do,” he said, “if only because you’ve got the thickest skull ever known to mankind, Potter. Merlin knows you wouldn’t survive half of your escapades without it.”
“Umm … Snape?” Potter asked again.
Severus became aware of the curve of their bodies together, the pulse that echoed from Potter’s breastbone into his, the warm sweaty soapy smell of the boy, the fact that while his flowing robes could hide all evidence of an erection, they wouldn’t prevent Potter from feeling his stiffening prick if they remained in this intimate contact … Severus couldn’t have stood faster if the floor had been covered with hatching Basilisk eggs. He offered Potter a hand up, felt the dry warmth of the boy’s skin against his skin, and released the hand so quickly that Potter almost fell again.
He didn’t look at Potter, didn’t want to see the disgust written on his ex-pupil’s face at being touched by his hideous old professor, the loathing in his eloquent eyes for a washed-out Death Eater.
“Snape? Are you all right? Fuck, Snape, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t even thinking. I should have known better than to use Finite Incantatem, I’m … Snape, are you hurt?”
Swallowing, and adjusting his cuffs so that they were even at his wrists, Severus said, “Not at all.”
Without looking at Potter, he flicked his wand at the broken glass and spilled alcohol and banished them. He held his hands at his sides, hidden in the folds of his robes, and kept his spine straight, his posture perfect, as he left the office. It felt as though a shard of glass had worked its way into his robes, itching at his spine and prompting him to turn back to look at Potter – Severus resisted the impulse and hurried away before he could regret it.
----------
The next morning, after a long evening spent brewing simple potions that were ruined when the sense memory of Potter’s body pressed against his intruded into his concentration, Severus strode into Potter’s office and slammed the memo down on his desk. “This ludicrous behavior has gone on for long enough, Potter.”
“I beg your pardon?” Potter looked up at him, shadows highlighting his cheekbones. “I specifically told the secretaries to make enough coffee, Snape. You can’t go blaming me again.”
Severus shoved the memo toward Potter and waited while the boy read it.
“It is perfectly reasonable to suggest that you change suppliers to get the ingredients for the coercion potion for Minerva. It’s central to the plan, Snape, surely you can see that.”
“The plan is ridiculous, inane, and beneath even your limited intelligence. You didn’t found a million Galleon company devoted to improving wizard-Muggle relations only to throw it all away in a fit of pique because you had a tiff with your lover.”
“He’s not my lov…”
“He could be again, Potter. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten my abilities. Do you want his love? Do you want his faithfulness? Do you want Zabini stretched out on your bed, wanton and pleading only for you, unable to find satisfaction from another? Is there someone else you want, anyone at all? You hired me for my skills. Stop sulking like a five-year-old who dropped his ice cream cone and act like the adult businessman you are.”
Potter was on his feet, tossing the memo back onto the desk. His eyes shone with a light that had been all too absent these past weeks. “I don’t know what’s going through your potion-rotted brain, Snape, but stop sniffing the cauldron fumes. I can’t believe you have the gall to come here and speak to me like this when you know full well that I kept you out of Azkaban and I’m the only one around who’s willing to hire you. I put up with a lot of shit from you, and I don’t expect you to be Miss Happy Sunshine, but the least you could do is respect me after everything I’ve done for you.”
Severus clenched his hands into fists – he would not strike Potter, he would not shake the insolence out of the man, he would not grab Potter and slam him against the desk. “I don’t need your charity, you stupid little boy.”
Severus turned to leave, but Potter slammed the door closed and locked it with a flick of his wand. “You wouldn’t know what charity was if it bit you on the arse,” Potter said.
“Yes, Potter, of course I’m prepared to respect you for your incredible maturity and grasp of one-syllable words.” Severus smirked when he saw Potter’s hand tighten on his wand.
“At least I don’t use big words to build a wall between myself and the world – or is it cozy in the dungeons with your dictionaries and cauldrons?”
Severus drew his wand and pointed at the door, tried to remove the spell and failed. Aiming his wand at the expensive French-designed door again, he said, “I’m warning you, Potter, I will …”
Potter grabbed his elbow and spun him around. Severus looked down at the impudent hand and then glared at the boy, but Potter left his hand on Severus’s arm, the heat of it soaking through the linen sleeve. “Snape, I – I’m sorry I said that, okay? It isn’t true and it isn’t charity, you know that. You just – you just treat me like I’m still eleven and blowing up cauldrons in your class.”
Potter shook his head, messy hair falling into his eyes and looked away from Severus. After a moment, the boy took his hand from Severus’s elbow and gave a negligent wave at the door before slumping back down into his chair. “You may go, Snape,” Potter said. “Let me know when the coercion potion’s ready for the project.”
Severus put his fingers under Potter’s chin, feeling the sharp rigidity of the bone and Potter’s neglected downy stubble. He jerked the boy’s head up to look at him, losing a fraction of his roughness when he saw the lack of sparkle in Potter’s eyes. “I assure you, Mr. Potter, that I was entirely serious when I offered you a potion to regain Zabini’s affections or secure the interest of anyone else.”
Potter pulled away from Severus’s touch, slumping further down into his chair. “You don’t understand.”
“Explain it to me, then.”
Potter looked up to see Severus’s quirked eyebrow and the boy’s lips twitched. “You never said that to me when I was eleven.”
“Perhaps you deserve it now as you did not deserve it then.”
Potter watched Severus for a long moment. The boy took his lower lip between his teeth and held it there. Severus could see a faint white line of teeth and watched Potter’s bitten lip turn red. The same lips, the same teeth had wandered over Zabini’s body to mark and claim and caress.
“Why do you even care?” Potter asked.
“Why don’t you care? You poured your life into this company for the past seven years, some weeks barely having the time to see Zabini at all, and now you’re …”
Potter stood and waved a negligent, fine-boned hand at Snape as he walked over to the bookshelf by the window. “Spare me the lecture on my responsibilities to the world and my inappropriate juvenile behavior. I don’t have any responsibilities to a horde of useless whingers who sit around and wait for me to save their arses when every little thing falls apart. I’m done with all that.”
Potter returned to his desk with a bottle of tequila and two glasses. Golden liquid sloshed onto a stack of scrolls as he passed an overfull glass to Severus.
Severus waited until Potter had finished his first glass before asking, “What did Zabini do to make you so bitter?”
Potter dropped his head down onto his arms and Severus swapped their glasses, trading his full glass for Potter’s empty one.
The boy’s hair, once so untidy, was now immaculately styled into a deliberate disheveled look – Severus imagined that the stylist hadn’t been able to do anything else with it. Severus’s fingers twitched at the thought of the stylist who’d had an opportunity to run fingers through that silky dark hair. He clenched his hands in his lap and suppressed an image of his fingers wrapped around the soft vulnerable throat of the man who had touched Potter’s hair.
“Potter?” Severus asked when the boy’s head remained buried in his arms. “Potter, what did he do?”
“Nothing he didn’t learn in dear old Slytherin House, isn’t that right, Snape?” Potter’s fingers wobbled through the air, coming to rest on his glass of tequila. “You all learn how to lie and cheat in the dungeons, do you? Are there special classes in it?”
“Potter,” Severus said. He reached out to touch Potter’s hand, but the boy shook off his touch and took another gulp of tequila.
“He had me fooled the entire time, he certainly did. The shopping trip, the box, the champagne alone together at midnight … Did you know that it’s backwards?”
“You’re making less sense than usual,” Severus said, raising his wand to cast a sobering spell.
Potter blinked and gestured, collecting Snape’s wand with an unspoken Expelliarmus. Neither seven years of peace nor seven ounces of tequila could make a dent in Potter’s war-honed reflexes. Severus blinked, trying to brush away the dizzy, swirling feeling that he had been the one to drink all of the tequila.
“Muggles – they believe that the first person you kiss in the New Year will be with you all year, while to wizards it’s a sort of goodbye. Blaise said that it’s a way to get the person out of your thoughts, that was …” Potter paused for another gulp of tequila.
“That was the last thing he said before calling me a half-blood tramp, a clingy sentimental waste of magic.”
A third gulp of tequila, and Potter drained his glass. He gave Severus an unfocused half-smile and set the glass down on his desk.
“That’s sentimental tripe, Potter. You spend the year with the person you choose, and one sloppy, inebriated kiss has no power to dictate your future.”
Potter’s tongue flicked out to wet his lips. Severus imagined the taste of the last drops of tequila combined with the sweaty, salty taste of the Boy Who Lived. He lifted the empty glass in front of him to his own lips and ran his tongue along the rim of it, but there was no taste of Potter left on the glass from the boy’s earlier sips.
“He proposed, you know,” Potter said, mellow and talkative as he started in on his third glass of tequila.
“Even Mr. Zabini is not foolish enough to call someone a half-blood tramp and a clingy sentimental waste of magic before proposing to him,” Severus said. It was foolish of Zabini to insult a wizard of Harry’s power under any circumstances and it had been foolish of him to relinquish his hold on Potter’s affections and Potter’s lithe young body, but even he was not foolish enough to give insult before proposing.
“He proposed to Ginny Weasley,” Potter said.
“Oh, for the love of Merlin’s great-granddaughter’s pinkie finger, Potter, grow up. Your all-consuming self-pity will suffocate your over-large ego if you don’t stop wallowing. Your lover dumped you to marry your ex-girlfriend, but it’s hardly the end of the world.”
Potter lost the unfocused, drunk expression and snarled at him. “Have you any idea of what that feels like, you greasy old bastard? Have you ever even had a lover, or does your big nose frighten them away? Fuck, you’re such a callous heartless old sod, I don’t think you’ve ever had your heart broken. You have no idea how much it hurts, Snape. Don’t you dare belittle or mock my pain or you will regret it, do you understand?”
Leaning into Potter’s personal space, holding his face close to Potter’s face and looking into the boy’s dilated green eyes, Severus said, “Don’t imagine that you can insult me with impunity because of your inebriation, Potter. I don’t subscribe to the philosophy that the world revolves around you and your petty woes and you decide that I’m a heartless bastard? Forgive me if I remain unimpressed with your maturity and importance.”
Potter set the tequila bottle onto his desk with a clunk and reached out to grasp Severus’s chin. The young man reached his other hand out to tangle it in Severus’s hair, combing his fingers through it. “Not all that greasy,” Potter said. “It’s …”
“Is there no limit to your presumption, boy? Do not touch me with such familiarity.” Severus jerked backwards, away from Potter’s grasping hands.
“Snape,” Potter said. “Snape, Snape, Snape. You’re too sober for my drunkenness, Snape. Have some more tequila.”
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(Part 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:
summerborn, svartalfurAN: Originally written for the
two_broomsticks fall fic-a-thon; revised with the help of svartalfur.Disclaimer: Not mine.
Severus watched with undisguised smugness as his colleagues staggered into the room, all of them with unmistakable signs of hangovers. They held their heads with both hands, winced at every little noise – Severus scraped his chair against the floor, scooting closer to the table. He smirked at Hermione Granger’s visible grimace and ran his fingers along the cool glass surfaces of his extra vials of hangover remedy.
The reason why they had all been dragged from their soft beds at an ungodly hour on New Year's Day walked into the conference room. Severus was thankful, his employer's arrival saving him from the need to give the potions to his colleagues and appearing soft and magnanimous. Instead, he waited for an order from his employer to do so and maintained his cold-hearted bastard appearance.
Harry Potter looked worse than any of them, although he appeared to be lacking a hangover. As the door slammed shut behind him, Severus noticed that Potter didn’t wince at the loud noise. Perhaps Potter would drop his usual soft caring employer routine and forget to order Severus to provide the others with the necessary potions, giving Severus both the joy of his colleagues’ suffering and the misery of listening to their whining.
Pale skin with a sheen of sweat, delayed blinking, loss of fine motor control – even exhausted and unwashed, the boy was beautiful. His skin was almost translucent with a blue lattice of veins visible beneath it. Potter stumbled to his seat and Severus mentally prescribed him a dose of energy replenisher and a half-dose of Dreamless Sleep for this evening.
Potter blinked and made a visible effort to count heads – failed and began again – before sitting down at the head of the conference table. “Right,” he said. He conjured himself a cup of coffee with his damned proficiency at wandless magic and blinked again.
“Okay,” he said, “Luna is in charge of the press, and I mean all of it. Not just the Quibbler and the Daily Prophet, get the Muggle publications too, okay love? Once you’ve finished Britain you can start on the rest of the world.”
Another sip of coffee, and Potter’s eyelid twitched. “Hermione dear, you’re in charge of publicity, brochures and public opinion, you know the drill, don’t you? The same as you did for SPEW, but no acronyms please. Let me know as soon as you’ve got a rough draft, and I’ll look it over before we print it. Worldwide circulation, I don’t care how many owls it takes to deliver them.”
“Ron, mate, you’re in charge of the Ministry of course, couldn’t think of a better man for the job. This is probably the most important thing, because not only can they influence public opinion, they’ll be able to keep all of the annoyed businesses off our necks. Be sure to get in good with the diplomats, you know, all of the ambassadors to foreign countries. They’ll take the idea back home with them.”
Another, longer sip of coffee – Severus watched the young man’s throat muscles twitch as he swallowed. The line of his throat was elegant, and Severus felt an urge to trace it from his chin down to the first, carelessly open button of his shirt.
“Snape, you’re in charge of the schools. Start with Hogwarts, of course. It won’t be easy to convince Minerva, but you can always saturate her office with some potion to make her more suggestible. Don’t bother with her shortbread or tea or whiskey. Put a light coercion potion on a tea-light, hide it somewhere and let the fumes permeate the place. Once you’ve got her convinced, you can get her to deal with the other schools. The best way to deal with Minerva is to let her think that it was her idea from the beginning, I’m sure you already know that.
“Right, the rest of you just help out as needed, okay? No questions? Great, I’m off.” Potter finished the last of his coffee in one gulp and banished the mug wandlessly.
Severus gaped at him – the normally organized and coherent businessman who had just outlined a nonsensical plan, the normally caring employer who had failed to notice that nine tenths of his employees were suffering from hangovers – and found his voice. “Potter,” he said, “you haven’t explained what we’re to do.”
“Do? I just told you.” Potter blinked once, twice, so slowly that each time Severus saw the dull green of his eyes through dark eyelashes.
“You neglected to mention the general objective of our work, its purpose, its raison d’etre.”
“Right,” Potter said, “right. I skipped that part?”
“Indeed.” For a second Severus felt as though Potter actually saw him, that those green eyes and that short attention span were focused on Severus alone.
“Right,” Potter repeated, his gaze sweeping over everyone assembled. “The point is to eliminate Valentine’s Day. I don’t want a single person anywhere in the world to be happy. There will be no proposals or weddings or ooey-gooey chocolates and flowers. No jewelry, no dates, no hand-holding, no simpering cards or love songs. Maybe we’ll turn it into a day to remember Voldemort's victims – write that down, Hermione my love, that’s a good idea. There wouldn’t be any disgusting romance if we were all overturned with grief, visiting cemeteries and the like.”
“Harry, you can’t do such a thing,” Granger protested. Although one hand still cradled her head, she was able to think through her hangover better than any of the other cretins with whom Severus was unfortunate enough to work.
“You’re kidding me, right, Hermione? I’m sure a brilliant witch like you would never say that I couldn’t do anything I wanted to do, not after I’ve spent my entire life working for the good of the wizarding world, not after I sacrificed my entire bloody childhood to defeat a monster, and not after I spent my entire adulthood with this company, trying to make our world a better place for pure-bloods, half-bloods and Muggle-borns alike. Despite everything that I have given, all I have ever received is unwanted adulation and publicity and defamation, which have done nothing except make my work harder. It’s bloody well time that the world repaid some of its debt to me.”
Watching Potter’s eyelids twitch as the boy took an unsteady breath, Severus decided to intervene. “Very good, Mr. Potter. Why don’t you go on to your office, take care of some of the important paperwork that’s waiting for you there, and we’ll coordinate all of the tedious little details for this project, all right? We’ll make sure that everything is synchronized so that no one gets wind of the plan in time to stop it.”
Potter blinked and then smiled. “Brilliant, Snape, absolutely brilliant. I’m glad sometimes that you Slytherins are so sneaky. What would I do without you?”
Potter waved a loose dismissive hand and said, “Right,” one last time before leaving.
“He can’t do this,” Weasley said, his freckles exceptionally visible on his pale face. “I mean, I’ve already started making plans for the holiday this year. I … can he do this?”
Granger, with a blush, asked, “Did you really start making plans already?”
An echoing blush replaced Weasley’s pallor, this shade threatening to obscure his freckles. “Yeah … yeah, of course.”
“Not to interrupt the delightful starry-eyed romantic moment, or prevent your brains, small though they may be, from dripping out of your ears like so much liquefied fungal rot, shall we nevertheless turn our attention to more pressing matters?” Severus said. He watched with well-hidden glee as both lovers blushed even brighter.
“Very well, then. This is our plan: to appear as though we are focusing all of our attention on these new objectives while at the same time making no progress on them whatsoever and fulfilling our regular duties. I imagine that this should be perfectly self-evident to anyone in possession of more than three brain cells and requires no discussion other than the reminder to keep Potter from knowing anything about our duplicity – no hint of it whatsoever is to come to his ears, do you understand me? The smallest, most insignificant-seeming detail could be our undoing.”
After a chorus of “What?” and other incoherent mumbles, Severus took pity on them and passed around the vials of hangover remedy. “Listen carefully,” he said, “if that task isn’t beyond your intellectual capability. Potter, despite his delusions of grandeur, cannot afford to be known as the Boy Who Lived to Kill Romance or the Boy Who Didn’t Love or some such arrant nonsense, and we cannot afford to be working for an utter lunatic who has no credibility with the public whatsoever. It would undermine everything that he’s worked for these past seven years, everything that this company has accomplished in regards to Wizard-Muggle relations, and when Potter comes to his senses, he’ll realize that and rescind the orders.”
Severus paused to look around at faces that still were blank and uncomprehending despite the hangover remedy potion, and he caught Granger’s eye. “Miss Granger, please explain matters to these nitwits while I ensure that Potter isn’t hatching any other brainless, ill-conceived Gryffindor plans or otherwise trying to get his foolhardy neck broken.”
----------
Potter’s office had been designed by the best and most tasteful French firm that had enough wit to avoid an overabundance of red and gold and had imbued the space with a peaceful sense of purpose. It was relaxing to the spirit, and seemed to brush aside extraneous worries while invigorating the mind. Severus had often thought during long meetings that such an office would be an infinite improvement over the thick stone walls and cold temperatures that were required for brewing many of the unsafe potions.
Now, the delicate furnishings had been overturned, the papers and files that Potter kept in unwavering tidiness had been scattered and only the well-chosen blue and gold color scheme remained intact. The office looked as though a rambunctious toddler had designed it. Upon entering the room, Severus blinked at the disarray for a moment before noting that Potter was at the center of the disorder. The boy was crouched under his desk, the only piece of furniture that had remained in its intended position, while a whirlwind of objects spun through the air around the desk.
Severus watched a shining glass paperweight, its hollow center silvery with stored Pensieve memories, make a full circuit around Potter. The magical storm did not abate and in fact intensified when Severus stepped closer to the desk. “Potter, stop this self-indulgent tantrum immediately.”
The boy’s eyes opened, wide and green and beautiful as ever, and Severus caught his breath when he saw the pain and confusion in them.
“What?” Potter asked and then looked at the vortex of spinning objects. “Oh … right.” He waved a hand and the objects paused in midair for a second before gliding back to their habitual places.
Another hand wave, and the furniture and scattered papers were set to rights. Severus gritted his teeth at the obscene amount of power displayed by the cheeky brat. He’d taught the boy nothing, apparently. Despite all of their lessons, his cautions and warnings, Potter hadn't learned to refrain from displaying his vast power in front of lesser wizards. Severus tried to count small blessings, such as the fact that Potter hadn’t yet destroyed anything irreplaceable or killed himself.
“Sit down, Snape,” Potter said from under the desk. Snape’s favorite chair slid across the floor to him at the prompt of another casual gesture by Potter. “What can I do for you today?”
Unsettled by a moment of déjà vu and the memory of another powerful wizard who had often asked him the same question in a comfortable office, Severus sat without argument.
Regaining his mental equilibrium, he said, “I see that you’ve decided to conduct business underneath your desk instead of at it, Potter. I can’t wait to see the Daily Prophet headlines. Perhaps before that charming rag of a paper is published, you will inform me of the addlepated Gryffindor reason behind your excessive use of wandless magic? Or shall we wait until every news hawker in the country has made you into a pariah and defamed you as the next Dark Lord?”
“Albus always …”
Severus felt his face darken at the mention of his late mentor. “Albus Dumbledore was a revered, sainted man in this community and after his defeat of Grindelwald, he could do no wrong in the public eye. Do you understand why, Potter? Do you realize the nature of the differences between Albus and yourself?”
He continued without waiting for a response. “Albus was untainted, whereas you have the misfortune of known Dark connections, past curses and your Parselmouth ability. Albus was publicly only a Headmaster, however privately influential he may have been. He did not agitate for social change, never threatened the status quo with the same flamboyant disregard for consequences that is your hallmark. Unlike you, he took great pains to appear less dangerous than he was and concealed all of his controversial actions with more care than you have ever used in your entire life. Do you finally understand me, you imbecilic boy, or will you persist in this effort to get yourself killed?”
“Snape, I …”
“I’m not interested in your puerile lackluster excuses, Potter. Either name for me one – just one – wizard in history who used wandless magic openly and came to a good end, or start using a wand like a normal wizard.”
“Albus,” was the only word the boy said.
“What? You imbecilic …”
Potter waved a hand and silenced Severus. “Same insult twice in a day, Snape, you’re definitely losing your touch. No, Albus met with a good end. He died at his own choice, a dignified quick death instead of choking out the last moments of his life with that poison in his veins. He was respected and loved to the end, as you just pointed out, and he died to save people, just as he had lived.”
“Potter,” Severus said when the brat removed the silencing spell from him, “as I have already pointed out, you are not Albus and if you think that I’ll be convinced by that argument …”
“Of course not, Snape. You’re right, just as you always are, you insufferable git, so why don’t you do me a favor and pop over to Ollivander’s before lunch? See if you can convince him to come here as I’d rather not be mobbed in Diagon Alley today, if it’s all the same to everyone.”
Severus paused for a moment to ensure that he had understood the wretched boy. “Potter, are you implying that your wand …”
“Right, it’s broken, and no, I don’t want to talk about it.” The boy under the desk sounded sullen and resolute.
“You are such a blind sulky child, Potter, that you are utterly transparent, even compared to the usual rubbishy wizards that graduate from Gryffindor. Perhaps you won’t explain to me the connection between your broken wand, your new penchant for hiding under your desk and causing magical storms in your office, and your sudden desire to ban Valentine’s Day. Rest assured that whether you explain it to me in melodramatic detail or not, I will know all of the details in the end and publicly humiliate you at my leisure.”
“You’re too much of a Slytherin to endanger your job and everything you’ve worked for these past years with me, Snape. Remember that you can’t fool me with your bluster anymore and, valuable as you are to this company, I will sack you if you cross the line. Now take your sarcasm out of my office and ask Ollivander nicely if he will come here.”
Severus stopped by Granger’s office before he left, finding her in a worried conversation with Weasley. “Should we firecall your mum?” she was asking him.
“No, you know how she worries. She’d be bound to smother Harry, and fuss, and let something slip, and then Harry would be angry at her for fussing over him and us for telling her.”
“Surprising insight from you, Weasley,” Severus said, cutting into the conversation. “I agree that no one outside of this company should know of Potter’s mental breakdown. The longer we keep it out of the papers, the better.”
“Mental breakdown, sir? Is it that bad?” Granger asked him.
Severus raised one eyebrow in his practiced ‘Do not question me, impertinent Gryffindor’ look. “If neither of you have any additional information about your friend’s mental health, I shall question Mr. Zabini. No,” he said, raising one hand to forestall any protests. “It is better that I question him, as neither of you speak Slytherin or are subtle enough to obtain information from him without revealing far more than is desirable. Remain here, try to prevent Potter from leaving and doing anything far more foolish than is his usual wont, but do not disturb him if it is not truly necessary.” Severus glared at both of them until they agreed, and then swept out of the office with his trademark flourish of robes.
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Ollivander was eager and obliging, but Zabini was decidedly less so. He responded to Severus’s oblique inquiries with a curt, “I don’t know anything about Potter and I’m more concerned about my great aunt’s cat’s arthritis than I am about that self-righteous bugger. Sod off, Snape.”
When Severus returned from his errands to the shining modern building that housed Potter’s company, he glared at the bird-brained secretaries as he stalked down to the laboratories. The world was full of simpering brainless idiots, and foremost among them was Harry Potter – idolized by the world as the epitome of Gryffindor, but the blind fools never realized how often Gryffindor behavior brought Potter close to death. The positive reinforcement he received from his adoring fans ensured that Potter would never make an effort to change – not that he would ever realize that his former professor would sleep better with the knowledge that the idiot boy wasn’t risking his neck in yet another foolish escapade.
Severus stopped short in front of his large pewter cauldron. He watched his mirror image frown in the polished metal surface. How was it that Potter continued to affect his sleeping patterns? After years of watching over the boy in his infernal invisibility cloak after curfew and another year on the run from his righteous vengeance, it seemed absurd that Potter, no longer his responsibility, still kept him sleepless at night.
“It’s none of my business in the end if the boy chooses to kill himself,” Severus told his reflection. He busied himself with preparing the ingredients for his experimental potion, enjoying the distraction of mortar and pestle, the sharp scalpel, the familiar smells.
Zabini was hiding something, Severus decided as he chopped the aconite into fine strips. The Slytherin was too intimate with Potter to be unaware of his partner’s mental state. Potter was too open-hearted and Gryffindor to keep secrets from his little lover, even knowing that the Slytherin refused to reciprocate with similar trust.
Severus had chopped too much aconite – he brushed the excess to the side and began preparing the cauldron. He was irritated by his incomprehension. There was a link between all of today’s events, some causal tie that Severus didn’t see.
The water in the cauldron was boiling, and he began the potion, an experimental attempt to generate an improved version of Wolfsbane – Potter’s philanthropic idea, of course, as the boy had no notion whatsoever of the work involved in that particular potion.
The boy was brilliant at delegating and managing the business, Severus had to admit, not that Potter shouldn’t have been competent after his sojourn in the Muggle universities. As much as he still despised him and his reprehensible Gryffindor behavior, he had to concede that the boy was no fool. After the defeat of Voldemort and the completion of Potter’s education, the notion of starting a company with the purpose of improving Wizard-Muggle relations had been sound and had come at the right moment. Potter wasn’t the dunderhead he acted, as much as it galled Severus that he wasted his intelligence with such Gryffindor glee.
Severus had been lost in his thoughts and had forgotten to add the angelica until two minutes too late. He gave the potion an extra ten counterclockwise stirs to compensate for the error.
“Logically, now,” Severus said out loud, filling the silence with his own voice. There had to be some connection between the strange events, and he refused to relinquish the puzzle until he knew the answer. “Potter broke his wand sometime in the interval between Christmas and today, probably more recently because even old Ollivander would have made an exception for the Boy Wonder and opened during the holidays. The event was probably traumatic, more traumatic than breaking a wand usually is, unless something else sent him into hiding under his desk.”
Severus added the toad spleens and stirred twice more counterclockwise. The potion smoked with its usual hazy gray fumes and Severus sighed. This experimental batch was no more successful than the last one – damn Potter for setting him such an impossible task. He poured the failure down a special drain, where the house elves would neutralize and dispose of it.
Setting the cauldron back down on the worktable with a soft clatter, Severus froze and then cursed himself for not seeing the connection earlier. The pained look in Potter’s eyes, the uncontrolled magic setting off a whirlwind, the sudden desire to eradicate Valentine’s Day, Zabini’s professed indifference – it all made sense. Severus whispered into the silent room, “Potter’s upset because Zabini broke up with him.”
Granger and Weasley were still in her office – whether chatting about their broken-hearted friend or their own sappy romance, even the practiced spy and actor that still lurked somewhere in Severus couldn’t have pretended to care. “Your party last night,” he said without preamble, causing the two of them to jump apart like guilty schoolchildren. “Were Potter and Zabini there?”
“At the beginning they were,” Granger said – she was always quicker to compose herself than Weasley, who was still red in the ears and neck. “They left rather early, didn’t they, Ron?”
“Yeah, of course. They wouldn’t have stayed last night, that was … oh shit,” Weasley said.
At an impatient glare from Severus and a verbal prod from Granger, Weasley shook himself out of his daze enough to continue. “Harry told me that Blaise had planned a romantic dinner for the two of them, and he thought – Blaise had hinted, that is, that he was going to propose, you know … the romantic ring in the glass of champagne at the stroke of midnight, followed by a New Year’s kiss?”
“But if Harry’s dead set against all romance and trying to prevent Valentine’s Day from happening, it can’t have gone very well, can it?” the ever-practical Granger asked, twining her fingers with Weasley’s fingers.
“Indeed. I suspect that they may have put an end to their relationship,” Severus said. There was no harm in sharing his conclusions with Potter’s best friends, although the boy should have told them about his grief in the first place. “Mr. Zabini was less than polite when I approached him, and he most succinctly expressed his lack of interest in Potter.”
“This is good, though, isn’t it? I mean, not that they broke up,” Granger corrected herself with alacrity. “But if Harry’s new Valentine’s Day project is just due to the bitterness of a bad breakup, it means that he will abandon the project as soon as he’s romantically happy again.”
Weasley sat up straight. “Charlie’s home from Romania for the holiday, and Mum would love to see Harry marry into the family.”
“Absolutely not, you mustn’t set the two of them up, Ron,” Granger said. “Harry’s never liked redheads since he broke up with Ginny. His type is dark, handsome and Slytherin, or didn’t you notice Blaise, and the bloke – oh, I forget his name – the one before Blaise?”
Severus ignored the emotion that curled up in his stomach at their discussion of Potter’s love life – nodding curtly to them, he strode out of Granger’s office. There was very little that he could do in order to set things right, it would be best to let his friends tend to the unstable boy.
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After three consecutive mornings of slamming Potter’s office door and walking with deliberately loud steps to ascertain the severity of Potter’s hangover before dosing him with the appropriate potion, Severus had had enough of the boy’s self-destructive wallowing. He decided to intervene in spite of his resolution to let Granger and Weasley deal with the matter. Stalking into Potter’s office after eating dinner in the employee cafeteria, he found the brat still working, a glass of something colorful, alcoholic and fruity-smelling already on the desk next to a stack of papers. Severus banished the contents of the glass and removed the ring of discoloration left by the dripping glass on the beautiful wood desk, but Potter didn’t notice him or the spell until the next sip of his drink.
The boy looked up at Severus, blinking, and the older man repressed a sudden urge to wipe the confused look off his face, wash the ink smear off his cheekbone, and fuck him against the desk or … what in Salazar’s name was he thinking?
“I was drinking that,” Potter said, interrupting his thoughts.
“Drinking before you Apparate home, Potter? Apparition under the influence will earn you a pretty fine, even if you are the Boy Who Lived.”
Potter stood and walked over to the bookshelf near the window, his gait still unaffected by the alcohol. Before the boy could reach the bottle of vodka that sat innocuously between a photograph of Potter’s last Quidditch game at Hogwarts and one of his Muggle business management texts, Severus raised his wand and cast a modified child-repelling spell. Potter jumped back at the electric shock surrounding the bottle and turned to Severus.
“You’re not my bloody minder,” he said. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
One arched eyebrow – Severus was proud of the control he still had over his facial muscles – accompanied the response, “Potter, I’m so fond of your witty repartee, I couldn’t bear to be without it. With the paucity of brain cells that you customarily exhibit, I felt that you couldn’t afford to lose any to overindulgence.”
With a glare and a wave of his fine-boned, delicate hand, Potter said, “Finite incantatem.”
That was the wrong counterspell, was all Severus had time to realize. He launched himself at the boy, knocking him into the floor and shielding him from the broken glass. Potter’s head hit the square of carpet that protected the hardwood floor from the chair but it was still a hard knock. Severus felt the back of Potter’s head for any sign of injury or concussion, ignoring for the moment the fact that he was lying on top of the boy.
Potter stared up at him, green eyes wide and free of the haze of intoxication. “Snape?” he asked.
Severus pressed his long impatient fingers through the boy’s tangled hair, massaging the scalp with his fingertips as he felt for injury. “You’ll do,” he said, “if only because you’ve got the thickest skull ever known to mankind, Potter. Merlin knows you wouldn’t survive half of your escapades without it.”
“Umm … Snape?” Potter asked again.
Severus became aware of the curve of their bodies together, the pulse that echoed from Potter’s breastbone into his, the warm sweaty soapy smell of the boy, the fact that while his flowing robes could hide all evidence of an erection, they wouldn’t prevent Potter from feeling his stiffening prick if they remained in this intimate contact … Severus couldn’t have stood faster if the floor had been covered with hatching Basilisk eggs. He offered Potter a hand up, felt the dry warmth of the boy’s skin against his skin, and released the hand so quickly that Potter almost fell again.
He didn’t look at Potter, didn’t want to see the disgust written on his ex-pupil’s face at being touched by his hideous old professor, the loathing in his eloquent eyes for a washed-out Death Eater.
“Snape? Are you all right? Fuck, Snape, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t even thinking. I should have known better than to use Finite Incantatem, I’m … Snape, are you hurt?”
Swallowing, and adjusting his cuffs so that they were even at his wrists, Severus said, “Not at all.”
Without looking at Potter, he flicked his wand at the broken glass and spilled alcohol and banished them. He held his hands at his sides, hidden in the folds of his robes, and kept his spine straight, his posture perfect, as he left the office. It felt as though a shard of glass had worked its way into his robes, itching at his spine and prompting him to turn back to look at Potter – Severus resisted the impulse and hurried away before he could regret it.
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The next morning, after a long evening spent brewing simple potions that were ruined when the sense memory of Potter’s body pressed against his intruded into his concentration, Severus strode into Potter’s office and slammed the memo down on his desk. “This ludicrous behavior has gone on for long enough, Potter.”
“I beg your pardon?” Potter looked up at him, shadows highlighting his cheekbones. “I specifically told the secretaries to make enough coffee, Snape. You can’t go blaming me again.”
Severus shoved the memo toward Potter and waited while the boy read it.
“It is perfectly reasonable to suggest that you change suppliers to get the ingredients for the coercion potion for Minerva. It’s central to the plan, Snape, surely you can see that.”
“The plan is ridiculous, inane, and beneath even your limited intelligence. You didn’t found a million Galleon company devoted to improving wizard-Muggle relations only to throw it all away in a fit of pique because you had a tiff with your lover.”
“He’s not my lov…”
“He could be again, Potter. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten my abilities. Do you want his love? Do you want his faithfulness? Do you want Zabini stretched out on your bed, wanton and pleading only for you, unable to find satisfaction from another? Is there someone else you want, anyone at all? You hired me for my skills. Stop sulking like a five-year-old who dropped his ice cream cone and act like the adult businessman you are.”
Potter was on his feet, tossing the memo back onto the desk. His eyes shone with a light that had been all too absent these past weeks. “I don’t know what’s going through your potion-rotted brain, Snape, but stop sniffing the cauldron fumes. I can’t believe you have the gall to come here and speak to me like this when you know full well that I kept you out of Azkaban and I’m the only one around who’s willing to hire you. I put up with a lot of shit from you, and I don’t expect you to be Miss Happy Sunshine, but the least you could do is respect me after everything I’ve done for you.”
Severus clenched his hands into fists – he would not strike Potter, he would not shake the insolence out of the man, he would not grab Potter and slam him against the desk. “I don’t need your charity, you stupid little boy.”
Severus turned to leave, but Potter slammed the door closed and locked it with a flick of his wand. “You wouldn’t know what charity was if it bit you on the arse,” Potter said.
“Yes, Potter, of course I’m prepared to respect you for your incredible maturity and grasp of one-syllable words.” Severus smirked when he saw Potter’s hand tighten on his wand.
“At least I don’t use big words to build a wall between myself and the world – or is it cozy in the dungeons with your dictionaries and cauldrons?”
Severus drew his wand and pointed at the door, tried to remove the spell and failed. Aiming his wand at the expensive French-designed door again, he said, “I’m warning you, Potter, I will …”
Potter grabbed his elbow and spun him around. Severus looked down at the impudent hand and then glared at the boy, but Potter left his hand on Severus’s arm, the heat of it soaking through the linen sleeve. “Snape, I – I’m sorry I said that, okay? It isn’t true and it isn’t charity, you know that. You just – you just treat me like I’m still eleven and blowing up cauldrons in your class.”
Potter shook his head, messy hair falling into his eyes and looked away from Severus. After a moment, the boy took his hand from Severus’s elbow and gave a negligent wave at the door before slumping back down into his chair. “You may go, Snape,” Potter said. “Let me know when the coercion potion’s ready for the project.”
Severus put his fingers under Potter’s chin, feeling the sharp rigidity of the bone and Potter’s neglected downy stubble. He jerked the boy’s head up to look at him, losing a fraction of his roughness when he saw the lack of sparkle in Potter’s eyes. “I assure you, Mr. Potter, that I was entirely serious when I offered you a potion to regain Zabini’s affections or secure the interest of anyone else.”
Potter pulled away from Severus’s touch, slumping further down into his chair. “You don’t understand.”
“Explain it to me, then.”
Potter looked up to see Severus’s quirked eyebrow and the boy’s lips twitched. “You never said that to me when I was eleven.”
“Perhaps you deserve it now as you did not deserve it then.”
Potter watched Severus for a long moment. The boy took his lower lip between his teeth and held it there. Severus could see a faint white line of teeth and watched Potter’s bitten lip turn red. The same lips, the same teeth had wandered over Zabini’s body to mark and claim and caress.
“Why do you even care?” Potter asked.
“Why don’t you care? You poured your life into this company for the past seven years, some weeks barely having the time to see Zabini at all, and now you’re …”
Potter stood and waved a negligent, fine-boned hand at Snape as he walked over to the bookshelf by the window. “Spare me the lecture on my responsibilities to the world and my inappropriate juvenile behavior. I don’t have any responsibilities to a horde of useless whingers who sit around and wait for me to save their arses when every little thing falls apart. I’m done with all that.”
Potter returned to his desk with a bottle of tequila and two glasses. Golden liquid sloshed onto a stack of scrolls as he passed an overfull glass to Severus.
Severus waited until Potter had finished his first glass before asking, “What did Zabini do to make you so bitter?”
Potter dropped his head down onto his arms and Severus swapped their glasses, trading his full glass for Potter’s empty one.
The boy’s hair, once so untidy, was now immaculately styled into a deliberate disheveled look – Severus imagined that the stylist hadn’t been able to do anything else with it. Severus’s fingers twitched at the thought of the stylist who’d had an opportunity to run fingers through that silky dark hair. He clenched his hands in his lap and suppressed an image of his fingers wrapped around the soft vulnerable throat of the man who had touched Potter’s hair.
“Potter?” Severus asked when the boy’s head remained buried in his arms. “Potter, what did he do?”
“Nothing he didn’t learn in dear old Slytherin House, isn’t that right, Snape?” Potter’s fingers wobbled through the air, coming to rest on his glass of tequila. “You all learn how to lie and cheat in the dungeons, do you? Are there special classes in it?”
“Potter,” Severus said. He reached out to touch Potter’s hand, but the boy shook off his touch and took another gulp of tequila.
“He had me fooled the entire time, he certainly did. The shopping trip, the box, the champagne alone together at midnight … Did you know that it’s backwards?”
“You’re making less sense than usual,” Severus said, raising his wand to cast a sobering spell.
Potter blinked and gestured, collecting Snape’s wand with an unspoken Expelliarmus. Neither seven years of peace nor seven ounces of tequila could make a dent in Potter’s war-honed reflexes. Severus blinked, trying to brush away the dizzy, swirling feeling that he had been the one to drink all of the tequila.
“Muggles – they believe that the first person you kiss in the New Year will be with you all year, while to wizards it’s a sort of goodbye. Blaise said that it’s a way to get the person out of your thoughts, that was …” Potter paused for another gulp of tequila.
“That was the last thing he said before calling me a half-blood tramp, a clingy sentimental waste of magic.”
A third gulp of tequila, and Potter drained his glass. He gave Severus an unfocused half-smile and set the glass down on his desk.
“That’s sentimental tripe, Potter. You spend the year with the person you choose, and one sloppy, inebriated kiss has no power to dictate your future.”
Potter’s tongue flicked out to wet his lips. Severus imagined the taste of the last drops of tequila combined with the sweaty, salty taste of the Boy Who Lived. He lifted the empty glass in front of him to his own lips and ran his tongue along the rim of it, but there was no taste of Potter left on the glass from the boy’s earlier sips.
“He proposed, you know,” Potter said, mellow and talkative as he started in on his third glass of tequila.
“Even Mr. Zabini is not foolish enough to call someone a half-blood tramp and a clingy sentimental waste of magic before proposing to him,” Severus said. It was foolish of Zabini to insult a wizard of Harry’s power under any circumstances and it had been foolish of him to relinquish his hold on Potter’s affections and Potter’s lithe young body, but even he was not foolish enough to give insult before proposing.
“He proposed to Ginny Weasley,” Potter said.
“Oh, for the love of Merlin’s great-granddaughter’s pinkie finger, Potter, grow up. Your all-consuming self-pity will suffocate your over-large ego if you don’t stop wallowing. Your lover dumped you to marry your ex-girlfriend, but it’s hardly the end of the world.”
Potter lost the unfocused, drunk expression and snarled at him. “Have you any idea of what that feels like, you greasy old bastard? Have you ever even had a lover, or does your big nose frighten them away? Fuck, you’re such a callous heartless old sod, I don’t think you’ve ever had your heart broken. You have no idea how much it hurts, Snape. Don’t you dare belittle or mock my pain or you will regret it, do you understand?”
Leaning into Potter’s personal space, holding his face close to Potter’s face and looking into the boy’s dilated green eyes, Severus said, “Don’t imagine that you can insult me with impunity because of your inebriation, Potter. I don’t subscribe to the philosophy that the world revolves around you and your petty woes and you decide that I’m a heartless bastard? Forgive me if I remain unimpressed with your maturity and importance.”
Potter set the tequila bottle onto his desk with a clunk and reached out to grasp Severus’s chin. The young man reached his other hand out to tangle it in Severus’s hair, combing his fingers through it. “Not all that greasy,” Potter said. “It’s …”
“Is there no limit to your presumption, boy? Do not touch me with such familiarity.” Severus jerked backwards, away from Potter’s grasping hands.
“Snape,” Potter said. “Snape, Snape, Snape. You’re too sober for my drunkenness, Snape. Have some more tequila.”
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(Part 2)
