Ensnared by Darkness
*****
“Ten galleons and I’ll suck your cock.”
Severus Snape spun on the spot at the crude words that someone dared call to him. The amount of trips that Severus took to Knockturn Alley during the school year were minimal, yet never had he been propositioned on a trip before then.
It took Severus a moment to find the culprit, but there - a young man leaning against a slimy wall. There was a shadow covering his face, though Severus sensed the smirk that twisted his lips.
“I have no need for a whore,” Severus sneered toward the shadowed figure. “You should take your services to a brothel, boy.”
“They didn’t charge enough,” the unrepentant fool laughed. “I’m not sucking a cock for less than ten galleons.”
“Your mouth must be magic then,” Severus said sardonically. He turned his back, intent to stride off and continue his business, when the young man called his bluff.
“I’ve been told it is. One bloke said it was the best blow job of his life. He was old too, suppose that means something.”
Severus looked up at the sky. He was no saint and it was an alluring prospect. Severus hardly frequented brothels, but he was no stranger to them either.
“Ten galleons?” Severus turned back to the figure. “Am I due a refund if it is not the singular most sensual experience of my life?” he asked, blatantly mocking him.
“Sure, love,” was sneered right back at Severus. “D’you want me to tell you how pretty your cock is or how oh, yes, you’re the largest I’ve ever seen.”
They were a brat. There was no question about that.
Severus strode forward and grabbed them roughly by the shoulders, hardly pausing to note the shaggy and untamed shoulder-length black hair as he did. Severus pushed him to his knees and took his place against the filthy wall.
“I would prefer you found something better to do with your impertinent mouth,” Severus said disdainfully.
When Severus reached for his pocket for the gold, the young man was already working Severus’ belt.
“Pay me after,” he said. Severus had no true impression of his face when he looked up at Severus aside from eyes that may have been green.
“I’ll kill you if you don’t,” he added softly, a chill to his voice that had been mocking just before. Severus nodded curtly, understanding that the man meant it.
And then - because there truly were no other words for it - Severus had a religious experience right in the middle of Knockturn Alley.
“You could charge double,” Severus panted, as close to a compliment as he would give a whore. Severus fished for his money pouch with one hand while he tucked his thoroughly sucked cock back in his trousers with the other.
The giver of said religious experience stood himself up in a single motion and radiated enough smugness that Severus had the absurd urge to strike him.
“I know,” he said. He shifted in the shadows until he leaned against the wall beside Severus, the image of cold and uninterested once more. “Ten galleons,” he said while he raised a cigarette to his lips and lit it with neither a wand nor a spell.
“How old are you?” Severus asked as he passed over the gold. Severus had thought he was younger, but the small show of magic belied that impression.
“Why?” Severus could see pink swollen lips twisted in a grin from the light from the cigarette. “Bit late to unring that bell, ain’t it?”
Severus grimaced as he inclined his head in acknowledgement. If Severus had just broken the law, he would prefer to not know it. Ignorance as an accomplice, and all that.
“Wanna smoke?”
Severus smoked on very rare occasions, nearly as often as he paid for sex.
“Thank you,” Severus said when he accepted and was handed a lit cigarette. Severus inhaled and looked up at the sky to blow the smoke out in a small and even river of rings.
“You gotta name?”
Severus looked over and saw that the eyes of the mystery-whore were in fact green. They were a dark green, curious, set on a face too darkened by the night to pluck any discernible feature from.
“Yes, I do prefer to share my name with whores of a questionable age in Knockturn Alley,” Severus said with a half-hearted sneer. “And I suppose you would tell me yours if I asked?”
“Why not?” The young man blew a mouthful of smoke directly in Severus’ face. “It’s James.”
It would be James.
“Charming,” Severus said drily. “You do this frequently then?” he asked, his curiosity unwillingly piqued. Severus had no James in recent attendance at Hogwarts, yet the young man had a mastery of magic, a clear British accent - if a rough and twangy accent that Severus could not identify from a prior student. At least not a recent one… hopefully. If they truly did not recognize Severus, and Severus could place neither a James nor an accent, hopefully it meant Severus had not broken any laws.
Severus was hardly a hopeful man.
“Pays the rent,” James laughed bitterly. “The Warts Hole is cheap, I only come out here about once a week.”
Severus automatically curled his lip in disgust at the name of the sole motel in Knockturn. As filthy and rundown as the Leakey Cauldron was, it was a palace compared to the Warts Hole.
“You could stay in the Leakey Cauldron for two sickles more,” Severus informed him, a small kindness as much of a dollop of common sense. “You would get a discount for an extended stay.”
“Can’t stay there.” James flicked his cigarette away after finishing it and flashed Severus an amused half-smile. “It’s not real safe for me. Anyway, I’ll see you around, Severus.”
James had already turned on the spot and disapparated when Severus realized that the brat had known his name the entire time.
For the love of Merlin… have him be seventeen.
Because Severus knew without questioning himself that he would return in a week and pay the brat’s rent once more.
As it turned out, it was two weeks before Severus could return.
The Saturday after the first… incident… Severus was summoned to Malfoy Manor by a panicked Lucius Malfoy. Severus intended to deny the summons, Albus insisted he answer.
The Dark Lord would have been gone for seventeen years in October, yet Albus would not rest easy. When Albus was uneasy, Severus was forced to be uneasy.
Truthfully, there were… oddities… throughout the years since the fall of the Dark Lord.
It started, as all things tended to do, with Harry Potter. Potter was meant to join Hogwarts in 1991 as a first year. Instead, when his letters were mailed and never answered, the staff went to investigate.
What they found were Potter’s relatives, ignorant to his existence or disappearance. Severus himself dove deep in their minds, undoubtedly causing irreparable damage, and discovered an Obliviate so strong that there was never so much as a memory of Petunia Evans having a pregnant sister.
Severus suspected an incredibly skilled wizard to have taken the boy and erased it from the minds of the Dursleys; he told Albus as much. When Albus could not contain the boy’s disappearance, the full force of the Ministry was sent to find the boy, at best; his body, at worst. Even Alastor Moody hobbled out of retirement and took up interrogations with every man or woman with the slightest cause to have taken the boy.
Potter’s name crossed no lips, the boy seemed to have simply vanished in thin air.
To date, September first was no longer considered a day to speculate over the new students arriving at Hogwarts, but a day of memorial for a child presumed to be dead.
When Sirius Black was reported to have escaped Azkaban a week after Potter’s disappearance was discovered, the two acts were linked in official theories. Severus waited on pins and needles all through the year, waiting for one of the free Death Eaters to claim credit for taking Potter and freeing Black. When none came, Severus tried to convince himself it was a coincidence.
Severus had never believed in coincidences. Especially not when Quirinus Quirrell was murdered during a Hogsmeade weekend at the end of the same school year. Severus felt no loss at what had been called a ‘mugging gone wrong’. Though Albus had called for Severus the night he examined Quirrell’s body…
“Unless I am gravely mistaken, I believe Quirinus was possessed at the time of his death,” Albus said with solemnity. “These are troubling times, Severus, quite troubling. Do keep contact with those that you can… I sense that all is not what it seems.”
There were more oddities, more whispers of a returning Dark Lord, but nothing tangible that Severus or Albus could grasp.
Rubeus Hagrid was killed behind the Hog’s Head in 1993. Peter Pettigrew, a wizard long-believed to be dead, was found not twelve months later. Both men had their necks slit from side to side in what were reported to be some of the most gruesome murders. Pettigrew had also been branded with the Dark Mark and speculation burst over if he had it before or after his first alleged death in 1981.
The next year, the relatives tasked with Harry Potter were killed in their beds. Their deaths did not reach the wizarding news, regardless, Albus found them to be victims of the killing curse. Nary half a year after their deaths, Barty Crouch Junior was another wizard resurrected from death only to be found in pieces across Knockturn Alley one morning.
Albus believed all the deaths through the years to be connected. None could doubt that Hagrid and Pettigrew’s murders were committed by the same person, but to connect it to Potter, Quirrell, the three Dursleys, and Barty Crouch Junior? Severus saw it as a reach, though he did his best to pin it all on Black, who had not a hair been seen since his escape.
If Black had escaped just a week sooner…
Albus claimed to have many theories, each as unlikely as the next. Severus was privy to none of those theories, Severus was merely ordered to keep his ear to the ground and one foot in his old circle.
And Severus - ever the obedient servant - did so.
Even when there were more interesting matters he could partake in than listening to Lucius’s paranoia.
Severus arrived at Malfoy Manor with grand plans of hastening his meeting. If Severus were lucky, he would only suffer through a single drink and an hour of conversation, at the worst.
Yet, it was not to be.
Lucius skipped all of his beloved social niceties as he ushered Severus from the front door directly to his office. Severus was the one to pour them each a glass of brandy when it became clear that Lucius was too stricken by his news to do so.
It was just as likely that Lucius was being incredibly dramatic. Severus had known Lucius for a great portion of his thirty-seven years… Lucius’s affinity for peacocks was hardly arbitrary.
Severus settled in one of the leather lounge chairs in Lucius’s dark paneled office and sipped his brandy with a feigned air of unlimited patience.
Lucius gulped his drink, shuddered, and then summoned a newspaper from his desk.
“This will be released tomorrow,” Lucius said as he handed the paper to Severus. Severus raised a brow at the way Lucius’s voice very nearly shook.
Interested to learn what had the usually proper man so shaken, Severus unfurled the paper and saw it in bold headlines above a grizzly photograph.
TWO DEAD IN ROBBERY GONE WRONG!
The Daily Prophet held no qualms with releasing photographs of the reported crime scene. Severus touched his fingers to his lips as he stared around the pieces of bodies to identify the familiar location…
“Knockturn?” Severus murmured thoughtfully. If Severus were not mistaken - and a quick skim of the article told him that he was not - it was the heads of two more death eaters on pikes in Knockturn Alley.
Greg Goyle and Vince Crabbe… murdered in a nearly identical way that Barty Crouch Junior once had been. The heads being displayed was new, gruesome, but the other ticks were clearly serial.
Severus felt a tremor of unease start at the base of his spine and flood directly to his left arm. When he looked up at Lucius, he saw the discontent he would not show reflecting in the shine of Lucius’s forehead.
“They’re back,” Lucius said, his fingers tight on the empty glass he held.
“Who?” Severus asked.
Certainly not Goyle or Crabbe seniors, they were quite clearly dead.
“It has to be someone linked to Albus.” Lucius got to his feet and began pacing in an uncharacteristic show of panic. He was ranting as well, talking so quickly that Severus had to give him his full attention lest he miss something crucial.
“But why the gamekeeper?” Lucius said, walking back and forth with his cane in one hand and empty glass in the other. “The gamekeeper and the muggles must fit somehow… could it be one of us who has chosen a new side yet holds our beliefs still? It could be the older Black, Potter could have been a coincidence…”
When Lucius trailed off and seemed content to continue his rant silently, Severus cleared his throat.
“What is it that you are questioning?” Severus asked. He flapped the paper he held lightly. “If you believe Albus had this orchestrated, then I fear for your sanity.”
“Someone did!” Lucius spun around and Severus’s jab at his sanity was suddenly not far of target. Lucius looked entirely mad with wild eyes of a defenseless man facing something terrifying.
“This is not a coincidence!” Lucius said adamantly. “All these murders are connected, Severus! If you cannot see it, then you are blind!”
It was a rarity for Lucius Malfoy to agree with Albus Dumbledore. Severus inclined his head at his old friend though and conceded the argument.
A person could not argue with insanity.
“You believe they will be targeting anyone with the mark,” Severus said, understanding that Lucius’s affect was not grief but fear.
“I believe that I will be next,” Lucius said, staring heavily at Severus. “If it is one of the Black brothers—”
Severus raised an eyebrow just slightly. Sirius Black had been a suspect in the back of Severus’s mind since the disappearance of Harry Potter. Regulus Black though…
“Regulus is dead,” Severus reminded Lucius, interrupting whatever overly contrived plot Lucius was beginning to explain.
“And so was Peter Pettigrew and Crouch Junior,” Lucius snarled. “We saw no body, we were only told Regulus betrayed Him and died for it. Listen, Severus, because if I’m next then someone will need to stop the fiends…”
Severus sat for hours as he listened to Lucius describe his theory.
Regulus Black had never died, only gone in hiding to bide his time, as was apparently in fashion. Regulus took Potter then got a message to his brother in Azkaban. When the elder Black arrived, they killed Potter together - or began raising him to be the next Dark Lord, Lucius was not clear - and began ‘righting the wrongs’.
By the end of it, Severus half expected Lucius to have a map on the wall with red strings scattered about. Or perhaps even a tinfoil hat. All Lucius could offer as ‘evidence’ was a parchment that he had locked away in his desk, one with every oddity over the years.
“My God,” Severus breathed, reading the parchment carefully.
How painful it must be for Lucius to be so incredibly paranoid.
Severus read through nearly seven years worth of notes. It started with Potter’s disappearance, included Quirinius’s death, then Black’s escape. While Severus had believed the next note would be on the death of Rubeus Hagrid, Lucius believed different.
It was deathly silent as Severus read what he understood to be a confession of sorts:
1992: gave TR’s diary to GW
TR’s diary…
There was a diary in Albus’s office, one marked as the property of TR. It was discovered by Argus Filch five years ago, the same year that three students, a ghost, and a cat had been petrified. Argus discovered it in a flooded bathroom and Severus found it in his office. It had been sticky with the tendrils of dark magic and Severus took it directly to Albus.
Albus had theorized that the diary had been used to open the fabled Chamber of Secrets. It was an excellent theory as the petrifactions ended after that. Albus never could definitively pinpoint how the diary of the Dark Lord came to be within Hogwarts.
Severus looked sharply at where Lucius had slumped in his chair. Lucius held his eye contact and Severus itched to dive in his mind.
“The Dark Lord gave me a diary,” Lucius said in a raspy voice, sore from both his endless talking and drinking. “When I knew there would be a search within my home, I had to get rid of it. I did it, Severus. I gave it to the Weasley girl.”
Ginevra Weasley, the quick-tempered Gryffindor girl… that was who opened the chamber? It was surely the strangest revelation yet.
Severus catalogued that information away to share with Albus later and turned his attention back to the notes Lucius has kept. Another note that Severus paused at was Rita Skeeter’s suicide in 1996 and the death of Fenrir Greyback the same year.
Skeeter had been a suicide… the woman locked herself in her bedroom and ended her life with a cutting curse across her wrists. Fenrir Greyback had been found in the Epping Forest with his chest crudely ripped open, a likely dispute with another werewolf.
Severus finished the notes and shook his head as he handed them back to Lucius.
“Skeeter and Greyback?” Severus asked.
“Skeeter found the Blacks and they knew if it didn’t look like a suicide that people would wonder what she found that made her a target,” Lucius said immediately. “Greyback must have either found them and needed silenced or it was personal. Sirius had been close with Lupin.”
Severus considered all of Lucius’s theories that involved yet another reincarnated wizard. If they were true theories, it made Sirius and Regulus Black more cunning than the Dark Lord himself.
If it was false, as Severus believed it was, then Lucius was a sick and scared man grasping at straws.
“You are paranoid,” Severus said bluntly. “You have decided that these are all connected and forced them to be so.”
Severus stood up and looked pityingly down at a man who had made his choices nearly two decades ago and spent every year since paranoid over when he would be forced to face consequences.
“When I’m gone, take care of Draco,” Lucius said flatly, his eyes dull. He held Severus‘s eyes until Severus finally conceded with a jerk of his chin.
“Be careful, Severus,” Lucius called as Severus made for the exit. “You might mock me, but you are in the same danger I am.”
Severus was in no danger. Severus had the protection of Albus Dumbledore and, in the incredibly unlikely circumstances that the deaths were caused by the Black brothers, Severus had the upper hand in magical power.
Severus was also not a paranoid fool.
And, in hindsight, perhaps Severus should have adopted just enough of Lucius’s paranoia. Perhaps that would have saved him in the end.
Severus told Albus all that he learned that evening before fetching the Crabbe and Goyle boys from the seventh year dorm. It was an exceedingly long night as Severus and Albus broke the news of their fathers’ deaths to them. Once they were informed and sent to be with their mothers, Albus called for Molly Weasley to fetch her daughter for a full examination at St. Mungo’s. If the girl had been in contact with a dark artifact that gave her the knowledge on how to open a chamber and petrify children, she needed an examination.
Nevermind that it was five years too late.
An exceedingly long night became an exceedingly long week.
While Severus had brushed off much of Lucius’s paranoia, Albus seemed to be constantly thinking it over. There were multiple evenings that week where Albus would call for Severus only to rehash old memories.
They watched the day that the Dark Lord announced Regulus Black’s death. They watched every meeting Severus had ever attended, paying close attention to the death eaters who were dead and the ones that had been recently killed.
Severus pressed Albus for a theory that made a modicum more sense than Regulus and Sirius Black being responsible and Albus would not provide one.
“At this point, I believe no theory is too far-fetched,” Albus murmured a week after Severus‘s appointment with Lucius.
Severus allowed Albus five more minutes of his time after that before excusing himself. Albus was yet another man to tell Severus to be careful and Severus curled his lip in annoyance.
It was a whore that Severus had a meeting with, not one of the alleged serial killers targeting death eaters and muggle families alike.
Severus loitered through the back alleys of Knockturn and took note of their sense of abandonment. When Diagon Alley began quieting at night, Knockturn came to life. There were peddlers, whores, and the homeless to fill the dingy streets.
And on that night there was not so much as a rat scurrying around or a hag with woes of unfair discrimination.
There was one figure lurking in the shadows, sticking to the walls like the dirt that stuck to him. James, for it was the same irksome voice and smug smirk from before, called out when Severus saw him watching Severus.
“Knew ya’d come back,” he said.
As if it were a foregone conclusion that Severus would pay for his services again.
“Did you?” Severus asked. When Severus stalked closer, he saw the brat was in worse condition than he had been a fortnight ago. Severus reached out quickly and grasped James’s chin.
James maintained a look of utter indifference as Severus strained his eyes in the dark to see a split lip and black eye.
Possibly.
It was dark enough and the brat was filthy enough that it could be a trick of the light.
Severus dropped his hand, disgusted with himself as much as he was the filth that covered James.
“Professional dispute,” James said with a crooked smile. He dropped his head some, hiding his eyes from Severus, and shrugged thin shoulders up. “I can’t stay at the Warts Hole anymore, but I didn’t go quietly, did I?”
Severus scowled at the waif feigning warrior.
“Where are you staying?” Severus demanded, thinking of the murders that were committed in Knockturn the prior weekend.
‘Here and there’ was the unsatisfactory response Severus received.
James became cagey after Severus pressed for more details. He tapped a finger on his thigh and looked anywhere except directly at Severus.
“Look, if you wanna talk, find a friend,” James said, too physically agitated to pull off the tone of annoyance he used. “If you wanna spend twelve galleons…”
“Twelve?” Severus asked, knowing he would pay just that. “Inflation, I presume?”
James cocked up one side of his mouth in a humorless grin.
“I gotta pay for a muggle motel now, they’re’a bit pricier.”
Severus bit back a sigh.
“That would be the definition of inflation, yes,” he drawled.
Severus made a careless ‘get on with it’ gesture and was once again threatened to pay or die.
As neat of a trick as it was for James to light his cigarette with neither wand nor word, the boy also had a split lip that magic could heal instantly. Severus was no more scared of the boy killing him than he was a newborn crup.
Severus would have offered to heal the injuries, but he rather liked seeing that split lip when it was swollen after sucking his cock.
“Don’t come lookin’ for me again,” James said after Severus paid him and they once again shared a smoke.
It was a filthy habit, forgivable considering the questionable ethics involved in paying a willing whore for oral sex.
“Egotistical,” Severus said, the heat in his barb absent. “Will you be retiring on your twelve galleons?”
James laughed and when he shifted against the wall, his side pressed against Severus. Severus remained still, though he did not shift away.
“I’m takin’ my talents to the muggle world,” James said. He sucked in on his cigarette and blew out slowly. “You heard they’re sayin’ there’s a killer out here? I don’t want ya to come lookin’ for me and get chopped up, Severus.”
Severus would have made his opinion on a third person questioning the likelihood of Severus Snape being bested by a killer lurking in shadows known, but he became distracted. It was the reminder that the boy knew his name that set Severus off course.
Severus graduated Hogwarts at eighteen and he returned at twenty-two as a professor. There was not a student in the last twenty-six years in Hogwarts attendance that Severus did not know. Severus was certain he had never taught the boy, and he was certainly not homeschooled.
Homeless, perhaps.
“You never attended Hogwarts,” Severus said, a statement.
“Nope.”
Severus turned his head enough to give the boy a piercing stare that worked well on his more erroneous students.
“You know who I am,” Severus said. “Explain.”
James was unable to hold Severus‘s gaze and he looked down at the ground. When Severus followed his gaze, he grimaced at the disgusting and holey trainers the boy wore.
“I followed you last time,” James said in a childish rush of words. “One of my mates, Angel—”
Severus translated ‘mates’ to mean a fellow whore.
“— she pointed you out, said you were a teacher and I just thought… I thought maybe if you were interested then a teacher wouldn’t- wouldn’t be too rough, ya know?”
Severus could have laughed at such naivety. As if teachers were exempt from acts of cruelty. The boy made his sneers and his taunts while admitting to his own idiocy- an enigma.
Severus did not laugh; Severus pulled his wand and ordered James to look at him. When the fool did it, too trusting, Severus healed his lip.
And then, without questioning his own motives too deeply, Severus took him home.
Spinner’s End had a sense of abandonment and Severus did not apologize for it. Severus pointedly sent James toward a shower while he set about making the house habitable for a limited time.
Severus could send a note to Albus, claim he was poisoned by bad dragon spores in the potion shop he frequented… Severus could receive two or three days off… days he could spend seeing if James’s arse was as pleasurable to sink his cock in as his mouth was.
It was an excellent plan, truly. It was likely one of Severus’s best plans. James would be putty in Severus‘s hands. A kind word, a hot meal, and the boy would offer himself up with enthusiastic consent.
It was an excellent plan.
Until James walked in the room and Severus saw him under bright lights without filth covering him for the first time.
The boy had not lied, his name was James.
Severus stared across the kitchen of his childhood home at Harry James Potter.
Harry Potter stood in Severus’s home with only a faded towel wrapped around his waist.
Sickeningly, Severus’s first thought was absolute relief. Not that Potter was apparently not dead, but that he was absolutely an adult.
Barely.
“Oh fuck.”
Severus was broken from the shock that froze him in place when Potter - Harry? What was the etiquette for names when one person had a memorial and had placed the other person’s cock in their mouth? - turned on his heel and ran directly back toward the bathroom. It only took Severus a few seconds of further surprise before following him.
“I’m leaving, okay?” Harry - Severus paid him for oral, surely they were on a first name basis - called from behind the closed door. “Lemme just get dressed. I thought you wanted to - I mean, I wanted to - Nevermind! I’m bloody leaving and if you try and stop me then I’ll k-kill you!”
Severus turned the doorknob and simply opened the door. Harry looked up immediately as he hopped around to pull up his stained sweatpants. Severus only refrained from looking below the boy’s face by a lifetime of iron willpower.
“Stand back!” Harry yanked his bottoms up with one hand and held the other out. Severus watched both Harry’s trembling chin and the weak and flickering green light covering his palm with interest.
Was that meant to be an imitation of the killing curse?
“I really will kill you,” Harry said.
“Before or after you cry?” Severus asked. Severus’s question made the unshed tears in Harry’s green eyes shine all the more and Severus sighed.
Harry made a strangled sound, quite a pathetic picture in the moment. The coy act, the cold comments, all the disguises he wore in Knockturn were as gone as the dirt that had hidden his identity. And as sure as Severus had been about his identity in the kitchen, it was cemented then. There were Lily Potter’s eyes sparkling on a face very like James Potter’s. If the boy moved his wet hair, Severus knew there would be a scar shaped like lightning.
“That was unnecessary,” Severus admitted, as much of an apology as he would give. Certainly more than any other had received from him.
“Just let me go,” Harry begged. The green light in his hand continued to flicker. “Please?”
“I am not holding you captive,” Severus said. He stepped backward from the doorway, proving his words. “Though I find myself curious as to what you fear from me.”
Severus thought he was the ‘kind schoolteacher’, the one that Harry expressed wanting to do something with.
A very quiet voice attempted to argue against Severus’s further ideals of fucking the boy. Severus silenced that voice as it was both unreasonable and unwarranted.
“You- I know you - you’re one of the crazy people!” Harry all but screeched, a pain to Severus’s eardrums. “You wanna kill me or - or torture me! Or send messages to your friends so they can do it! I’m not - never aga— please, I’ll give you back your money if you just let me leave. Don’t tell anyone, please.”
Interesting.
Severus considered the offer, then he made a counter-offer.
“I will not harm you,” Severus said, the calm to the boy’s hysteria. Harry’s chin wobbled as badly as his words did, though Severus was quick to note that the boy did not shed a tear.
A mental fortitude caused by whoever put the fear of the Gods in him?
“I have stew on,” Severus said, a cajoling offer to the boy with visible ribs. “Come, eat. If you decide to leave, I will not stop you.”
To prove his point, Severus turned his back on Harry and walked calmly to the kitchen where he made a point to scrape his chair that he pulled away from the table. When Harry arrived only a few minutes later, fully dressed in rags that negated the shower he took, Severus levitated a bowl of stew to them both.
Harry looked down at his, up at Severus. He opened his mouth, snapped it shut. He reached for his spoon, yanked his hand back.
“This could be poison,” Harry said.
“It could be,” Severus agreed. He reached out and traded the two bowls only for Harry to stop him with a hand on his wrist.
“Unless you knew I’d say that since I don’t bloody trust you. So you poisoned yours so I’d eat it.”
When Severus raised an eyebrow and Harry raised his chin with stubborn determination, Severus appeased his paranoia.
“Better?” Severus asked after taking a bite from each bowl.
Harry jerked his chin in a nod before attacking his food. Severus watched him as he ate, cataloguing every visible scar on his bared arms, face, and neck.
There were plenty to see.
Severus would call them an occupational hazard if it were not for Harry’s earlier rant.
“Quit staring at me,” Harry muttered. He glared at Severus through his fringe. “Just- go back to acting how ya did before you saw that scar.”
“Fine,” Severus agreed, as if he could. “Where have you been for the last six years?”
Harry scowled even deeper and picked back up his barbed demeanor.
“Here and there,” he spat through gritted teeth.
Severus waited patiently. When Harry saw that he could not goad Severus in an argument, he sighed.
“I don’t talk about it,” Harry said flatly. He pushed his empty bowl away and Severus saw the tiredness in his slumped posture.
“Stay,” Severus offered. Not an impulse; a need.
Severus could not have Harry Potter in his grasp then lose him.
Severus could not come so close to sweet-talking the boy out of his clothes and fail.
“Why?” Harry curled a lip up while his arms wrapped around himself. “So you can fuck me to sleep and when I wake up there’s a dozen strangers in my face?”
Harry named off both Severus’s desire and his duty.
Duty led the last twenty years of Severus’s life and it never had red lips, bright eyes, and a young body to pleasure him with.
“I will call for no one,” Severus said.
It would place Severus in a precarious position…
“I brought a whore of a questionable age home to fuck. Imagine my surprise when it was Harry Potter.”
The explanation only worsened when Severus added ‘your honor’ to the end of it. There was likely no age of consent when it came to boy heroes risen from the dead.
Harry paused for a moment and then slowly smiled at Severus in a way that was quite nearly shy.
“You didn’t say you won’t fuck me to sleep,” he said, just as sweet as Severus knew he would be after a hot meal and small kindness.
Severus smirked slowly. “No, I did not,” he agreed.
It was a secret thrill to make James Potter’s son moan his name that night. It felt like closure and vengeance and every wish Severus never knew he should have coming true at once.
Harry woke before Severus and was bare-legged in the kitchen with just one of Severus’s old shirts covering to his thighs. There was a bite mark on the side of Harry’s neck, a mark Severus would not heal until forced to do so.
“Oh. Did I wake you up?” Harry turned and the sleeve slipped off his shoulder, showing a collarbone that Severus had licked every inch of the night before.
There was a teapot on the stove, one already beginning to whistle. Severus wondered how stale the teabags he had were, but knew he would drink it regardless.
“You did not,” Severus said. Only a moment after Severus sat at the table, chair turned at an angle to watch Harry brew, Harry brought Severus a cup of tea.
Sex, petty revenge, and tea in the mornings. It was a routine that a man could get used to.
“I was going to leave, but…”
“But you are still here,” Severus said, watching Harry as he sat across from Severus. When Harry ducked his head, Severus made his pleasure at it known. “I am glad. It saves me from tracking you down.”
And Severus would have. Severus would have had to track the boy down to the ends of the world with every auror and member of the old order that could be spared. In addition, if word leaked that Harry Potter was still alive, there could be followers of the Dark Lord that crawled from the woodwork to investigate. Though, Severus sensed that the boy had ran afoul of those same people before.
“Yeah?” Harry raised his chin, only showing Severus more of his marks on his fair skin. “I’ve been hiding for years and nobody found me before.”
“Interesting, that,” Severus said mildly. “Why have you been hiding?”
What are you afraid of?
Severus itched to dive in the boy’s mind and root out his secrets. He could be patient though, there was no need to scare away a warm and eager bedmate.
“I told ya before, it’s not real safe for me most places,” Harry said with an admirable stab at nonchalance that Severus saw through easily. Harry’s eyes shifted away and his fingers twitched, nearly dropping the tea cup he held.
“And before?” Severus asked. “Before the world became unsafe for you, where were you?”
Harry did drop the tea cup then. He jumped from his chair when it hit the ground and shattered. Apologies spilled from him in a desperate rush as Severus pulled his wand.
“Fuck. I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!”
In the short amount of time it took Severus to repair the glass and have it sitting neatly on the table, Harry was against the wall with a defensive hand raised. A defensive hand with the same flickering pea-green light covering the palm.
Severus very nearly smiled.
“Someone once told you, or perhaps you read, that the killing curse is green,” Severus commented, still in his seat. It was a guess, but Severus was certain that Harry taught himself two spells — wandless fire and a light he could use as a threat.
Harry very slowly lowered the arm he covered his face with and skittish eyes glanced at Severus and then the repaired cup.
Then back at Severus.
“I’ve seen the curse,” Harry said. He dropped his arm to his side and did not move away from the wall. The green light covering his palm faded and Harry wrapped his arm around his stomach.
“And so you decided that the only two parlor tricks you needed would be the ability to light cigarettes and a scary green light?” Severus asked, mocking him lightly.
It was an excellent facade, the color was only a few shades too light for a wizard more experienced with seeing it. Harry may have been able to trick an errant customer with the light, anyone with experience would laugh in his face.
Harry did not blush, he dropped his head and shrugged.
“I didn’t exactly get to go to your bloody magic school, did I?” Harry muttered. “Everything I know I had to learn to do myself.”
“Which brings us to why you were not at Hogwarts, though you were extended an invitation,” Severus said, watching Harry closely.
Multiple invitations, actually. It must have been a shocking experience for Petunia’s family to open their eggs and find a dozen letters to a boy they had no memory of existing.
Harry glanced at Severus quickly and Severus saw furrowed brows and twisted lips. He had no idea then.
“How old were you when you were taken?” Severus asked him bluntly when Harry said nothing.
“Taken?” Harry’s head popped up again and he was the image of wide-eyed startle. Severus stretched a leg out to nudge Harry’s abandoned chair, an invite to sit.
“Who- who told you I was taken?” Harry asked as he watched Severus and slowly stepped to the table. Severus was pleased when Harry bypassed his chair and instead sat on Severus’s lap. Though, Severus became somewhat distracted by a soft set of lips on his neck and the fact that Harry was entirely nude beneath the shirt he wore as a sleep-gown.
“I went to find you,” Severus said, twisting the truth just a hair. “It would have been around your eleventh birthday. Your relatives, Petunia and Vernon, had no memory of you.”
“Cause someone took me and erased me from their minds,” Harry confirmed with his lips just a quarter of an inch from Severus’s neck. Severus slid his hand between his lap and Harry’s bared bottom on his lap.
The boy was reluctant to talk, Severus thought he could otherwise distract him and see if he could loosen him up in more ways than one. Harry gasped in a warm rush of air when Severus turned his body so he straddled Severus’s lap before sliding a finger inside him.
Harry moaned and hid his face in Severus‘s shoulder as Severus slowly worked him open. The boy had to be sore, Severus had not been gentle the night before, but he still moaned so wantonly.
“Who?” Severus asked, curling his finger. “Who took you?”
“I don’t -” Harry was panting and twisting his hips, trying to speed Severus’ languid pace. “- I dunno, they didn’t give me a name.”
“One person?”
“Wore - a - mask.”
Severus added a second finger and Harry began bucking his hips, fucking himself back on Severus’s fingers. Harry whimpered and had his head tucked against Severus so sweetly while moving like a whore.
Perfect.
“How long?” Severus asked. Harry moaned and Severus repeated himself. “How long were you captive?”
“Long time,” Harry said breathlessly. “Mm, quit talking and fuck me.”
Gladly.
Severus and Harry spent most of the day in a similar routine.
Severus fed him, fucked him, interrogated him carefully. For Harry’s part, his only interest was Severus’s cock and the school he was cheated out of attending. Severus asked what happened the day Harry was taken; Harry asked how a school for magic was ran. Harry asked what Severus did and did not like about his position at Hogwarts; Severus asked how Harry came to be freed from the people who took him from his relatives.
Harry laughed when Severus told him he despised children and Severus frowned when Harry said that he managed to escape while his captors fought.
“Captors as in plural?” Severus asked, considering. They were in Severus’s bed once again and Harry had his cheek on Severus’s bare chest. It was getting late… Severus would need to reach out to Albus soon, inform him of his impending absence.
One more day to spend in the closest thing Severus had to peace in quite some time. Sex, secrets, a sweet boy.
Then Severus would need to tell Albus that Harry Potter was not dead and Severus’s life would turn to utter mayhem. Until then, Severus wanted to learn as much as he could about how Harry came to be… naked… on Severus’s chest…
“Mm,” Harry said in a monotone hum. “Who did you lot think took me? Bloody Santa Clause?”
If Harry were a student, Severus would take points. Harry was not a student though and so Severus smacked his bare ass hard and then kissed the top of his head when he yelped.
“Tell me if the name Sirius or Regulus sound familiar to you?” Severus asked carefully. Not carefully enough, Harry went tense immediately and Severus was quick to rub his back.
“Tall? Black hair?” Harry asked after a fashion, his voice choked in all the confirmation Severus needed.
“Yes, hush,” Severus said, closing his eyes in sweet victory. It was Black. Sirius or Regulus mattered not, where one was- the other would be. “Sleep now.”
“Tell me about Hogwarts?” Harry murmured. “A magic castle is… it’s bloody brilliant.”
Severus sighed and then did just that. Severus talked about the lake that reflected the moon. He told Harry about the forest filled with creatures. Harry whispered a half-sleep-slurred question about why can’t anyone find it and Severus bored him to sleep as he discussed wards, runes, and the history of Hogwarts.
As soon as Harry was snoring on Severus’s chest, Severus quietly called for his patronus to send a message to Albus.
“I will be absent tomorrow and will return Tuesday morning,” Severus said in a low tone with an arm wrapped around the Boy-Who-Lived-Then-Was-Incorrectly-Presumed-Dead. “I have taken ill.”
With that, Severus sent off his patronus and settled in to sleep soundly for a second night in a row…
Severus was woken again with the sight of a half-dressed and humming Harry. When Severus sat down at the table, he was offered a plate of fried eggs.
“Hotel California?” Severus asked, focusing on the tune Harry hummed. Harry grinned in a relaxed manner as he sat down at the table.
“One of my friends likes it,” Harry explained.
“Ah. ‘Angel’?” Severus asked, recalling the ‘friend’ that Harry mentioned before.
“Mhmm,” Harry said. The boy had an appetite, one that Severus was rather smug over as he dug in his food.
They had worked rather hard the day before.
“I hope she’s okay,” Harry said, suddenly frowning down at his plate. “There’s - well… I dunno… there were dead bodies and people said a lot of rubbish about it not being safe… I guess it’s happened before.”
“It is not safe,” Severus said, cutting Harry off immediately. Severus would not allow Harry to run off to Knockturn to check on a whore, not while Severus was the only one to know of his life. If Harry died…
… Severus would be blamed.
It was self-preservation, not attachment.
“So there is a serial killer?” Harry looked at Severus through his fringe with wide eyes. “I should warn her! I don’t want her to—”
“There is no proof it is serial,” Severus interrupted. He fixed Harry with a steely gaze that allowed for no disobedience. “You will not risk your life by going back there. You will remain here, where it is safe.”
“But… my friend…” Harry’s eyes watered and his lower lip quivered. “She - she needs me.”
“Harry.” Severus reached across the table and placed his hand on Harry’s arm. He squeezed it while holding eye contact, swearing the truth to the boy. “Albus and Lucius, a friend of mine, believe that all those deaths in Knockturn Alley are connected. I am not so similarly convinced.”
“Oh.” Harry did not seem reassured by that. With his brow furled and the way he continued to tap his finger on the table, he was simply too easy to read.
“But people are looking, ain’t they?” Harry asked Severus, lifting his eyes so that Severus could see his worry shining. “Someone has to care?”
“People do,” Severus said. He squeezed Harry’s arm and then pulled his hand back. “It is nothing that an untrained wizard needs to concern himself with. What the incompetence of the Ministry is unable to find, Albus will.”
A perfect segway to the conversation that was long overdue: Severus would need to return to the castle the next day and Harry should go with him.
A losing battle.
Harry point blank refused to go to Hogwarts —
“I’m too old.”
“I’ll look bloody stupid.”
“I don’t want to.”
Until Severus reached the root of Harry’s refusal —
“I’m fucking scared, alright?” Harry had began pacing irritably around the sitting room they retired to. He scowled at Severus at the admission and then crossed his arms. “I don’t even want anyone to know I’m alive! They will find me, Severus! I’ll be - I’ll be the next body in pieces!”
“I will have to tell Albus what I know,” Severus told him calmly. “I risk everything by keeping it to myself.”
“Tell him.” Harry’s face went carefully blank aside from the cold look in his eyes. “I’ll be gone when you get back. One last fuck, love?” he sneered.
Severus was on his feet in an instant. He crowded the brat against the wall and gripped him hard by the back of his neck. Harry bared his teeth and Severus did as well. If it would be a fight of wills, Severus would win.
“You will not leave,” Severus hissed in his face. “You will meet with Albus, gain his not insignificant protection. You will get a wand, learn magic. Am I understood?”
“You missed the part where you keep me around to warm your cock,” Harry hissed right back. “And the part where your Albus won’t wanna protect some - what’d you call me? Oh - some bloody whore?”
Severus’s grip hardened and Harry made a reluctant whimper.
“Albus will protect you,” Severus told him. “As will I.”
At those words, Harry’s entire body relaxed, catching Severus off guard. Severus released his neck and Harry slid to the floor with his knees to his chest.
For all his crude words and threats, it was not a difficult task to see that Harry was scarred by his past and scared to move forward. Severus sighed in pity before crouching down and placing a soft hand on top of the boy’s head.
“We will do this slowly,” Severus told him, planning as he spoke. “I will wait to inform Albus, you need not leave. I will send school books and food for you and return on the weekend.”
“Promise?” Harry asked Severus. “Promise you won’t tell anyone? I - if they could find… I just…”
“Hush.” It was an unnatural thing to do, but Severus still pulled Harry forward and wrapped his arms around him. “They will find the men who took you and you will know peace.”
Because Athena herself knew that it was a concept that should be strived for whenever possible.
Severus debated on breaking his word to Harry and telling Albus about the Boy-Who-Actually-Did-Live and how he slept in Severus’s clothes in Severus’s home. In the end, he did not.
A mistake, in hindsight.
Severus did as he said and gathered up the standard texts for first and second years. They were added with an ample amount of foods from the kitchens and sent along to Harry. Severus was sure to include a book on the history of Hogwarts, as Harry had a childlike fascination with the castle.
Then Severus suffered through four of the longest days of his life. It had been… not unsatisfactory… having someone to share his bed and his thoughts with. It was absurd and would end once Harry saw the immense number of witches and wizards that a boy of his age and fame had to choose from, but it was a novelty that Severus did not relish relinquishing.
It was how a month slipped past Severus in a routine of work, Harry, work, and Severus had yet to inform any other of Harry’s existence.
Harry had a routine as well, one Severus teased him of on their weekends. Harry read every book that Severus sent, quickly reaching the standard texts for fourth years, he wrote down questions for Severus — “Is lumos my green light?” — and he cleaned.
Severus had felt an unfamiliar warmth in his chest when Harry told him he did not want ‘their home’ to be so gloomy.
“Our home?” Severus had asked.
For as long as he lived, Severus would never forget the startled and bashful look Harry adopted or the way he stammered about it being only Severus’s home.
The boy was lovely and Severus wished he could tuck him in his pocket just as he was. As much as Severus knew the boy belonged in Hogwarts, learning and socializing, it would be a swift end to their current situation. Of age he might be, if he were a student, Severus could not touch him.
And Severus was quickly becoming addicted to touching Harry and receiving his touch in return.
It was to give Harry peace that led Severus to reaching out to Lucius for a favor he could not explain. Severus requested any information Lucius could find on the Black brothers.
Severus had a wild fantasy of being the one to find them, kill them, and telling Harry that he was safe. Harry would understand that capture was not enough, only death. The boy would be safe, Severus would be the one to give that precious gift to him.
Lucius was eager to collect the information Severus requested, likely under the false assumption that Severus believed his crackpot theories. Severus planned to fetch the information before returning to Spinner’s End - to Harry - on a Friday after classes.
Minerva, nosy witch, believed Severus had a paramour he spent his weekends and she smiled knowingly when Severus left the castle one evening. Severus only allowed her beliefs as Minerva was willing to take his weekend detentions for him.
Harry was… a type of paramour. A consort, at a minimum. It was more than the sex that started their peculiar connection though. No other had ever listened to Severus so raptly, cared so much of his thoughts and opinions on every possible subject. They rushed in the sexual aspect, the rest of it was slow, sweet, charming in its own way.
Severus allowed himself a small smile when he thought of seeing the brat again before he turned on his heel outside the gates of Hogwarts and traveled to Malfoy Manor.
*****
When Severus returned to the place he absently thought of as home, it was with blood on his hands and ice in his heart.
Harry jumped from where he had been curled up on the sofa, a book in his hand, and rushed to Severus when he walked through the door.
“Severus? Oh, fuck. Are you okay? Are you hurt??”
Harry’s hands began roaming freely on Severus’s body, searching for an injury. Severus shook his head, blinded by shock, and grabbed Harry by the wrists to still him.
“It is not my blood,” Severus said, hardly hearing himself. “It is Lucius.”
Lucius’s body… drained of blood through a cut that stretched across his neck… the blood was endless, forever staining the office where Severus found him. There were house-elves too, two of them, both dead.
Someone - Black - killed Lucius and left behind no witnesses.
Severus alerted Albus, Narcissa, and the Ministry - in that order. Narcissa was at dinner with the Rosiers, fawning over their newborn child. Albus had arrived first and vouched for Severus when the aurors arrived. Narcissa fetched Draco from Hogwarts and left him with her sister, keeping him safe and out of the Ministry’s grasp.
Severus only had time for a quick search of Lucius’s office and found his notebook of theories in a desk drawer. The heavy and intricate wards Lucius used for privacy died when he did, Severus could only hope that Lucius had found something of note on the Blacks before his death.
When Severus found the person responsible…
Severus shuddered in rage and Harry rubbed his arms with a look of great concern.
“A hot shower, yeah?” Harry suggested sweetly. “C’mon, you can’t stay in that…”
Severus allowed Harry to lead him like a child on a leash to the bathroom. Harry’s fingers trembled as he unbottoned Severus’s robes. His lips were warm where they pressed small kisses to the skin he exposed.
The warmth washed away some of the chill of Lucius’s death —
“I believe I will be next.”
— and Severus undressed Harry with slow and measured movements.
Severus held Harry with gentle care in the shower when they moved as one beneath the hot spray. Harry’s grip was tight, desperate, and Severus buried his face in the soft curve of Harry’s neck.
The water washed Lucius’s blood down the drain as Severus cried Harry’s name out as a prayer.
Harry was as quiet as Severus was the rest of the evening. They ate a meal that Harry had prepared and then laid in bed together, both absorbed by their own separate thoughts.
“I can’t lose you,” Harry whispered in the dark of night. “I just - I can’t.”
Severus thought of the deaths Harry heard of, the one Severus brought home a tale of. Severus thought of how the men who held Harry for years were the same ones Lucius had suspected for an even dozen deaths then.
And Severus thought of the single note in the back of Lucius’s notebook - #12 Grimmauld Place, London.
Severus pressed a kiss to the top of the head of the first piece of the puzzle he alone would solve.
“You will not,” Severus swore.
Severus knew that duty required he inform Albus of his suspicions. Duty required that Severus check in with the boy who he swore to look after if Lucius were killed. Duty required that Severus did not part from Harry on Sunday night with a heated kiss and a quiet look that filled Severus with unfamiliar emotions.
Duty could go to hell and Sirius and Regulus Black would soon follow.
Severus found the home that Lucius wrote the address of. It was not a certainty that it belonged to either Black, not until Severus fought through what felt to be a century of wards to gain entrance.
The first thing he registered was surprise.
While the outside of the townhouse was muggle, ordinary, dirty; the inside was warm and gleaming. The foyer led to a dining room, a kitchen to the right and sitting room to the left.
It was… practically cozy.
Severus kept his wand gripped hard as he moved from room to room, searching for any current inhabitant. Homenum Revelio has revealed no one, but it could be fooled. Severus’s eyes could not.
There was clearly someone living in the house. The house obviously belonged to one of the Black brothers - another dead wizard returned to life or the one that escaped an unescapable prison? Severus could find no evidence to suggest which brother - both? - used the house.
A green painted room with Regulus’s initials on the door revealed a bedroom that was cleaned and immaculate. A Gryffindor red bedroom with photographs of the Marauders and posters of bikini models in equal measure was just as immaculate.
Severus turned to leave Sirius Black’s bedroom when a photograph tacked to the wall of photos caught his eye. It was a small photo, a muggle Polaroid, and it was recent.
Severus’s breath caught in his throat and his heart rate was surely the cause for fingers that shook as he pulled the photo down.
In black and white, in physical form… stood Sirius Black and Harry.
Severus’s Harry.
Harry could only have been twelve, if that. They were outside what Severus thought might have been a muggle hotel, one with a swimming pool, and Black had his arm around Harry’s shoulders while they smiled at the camera.
It was a sentimental photo, clearly. A touching memory between Godfather and Godson.
It cracked Severus’s chest in two and he crumbled the photo in his hand.
Harry lied to Severus. About how much? Severus could not be certain. He lied about a great deal, that much was obvious.
Severus dropped the crumbled photo to the floor and turned his emotions and thoughts off as he began truly searching the home.
Would he find anything that exonerated Harry or further evidence against him?
If he left then, could he receive a reasonable explanation from Harry?
Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps?
Severus ripped apart the bedroom he stood in with his bare hands. Drawers - full of clothes for a small man - were dumped. A closet - full of books on wandless magic and magical history - was emptied. When Severus flipped the mattress from the frame, he found another notebook.
Not one written by Lucius Malfoy, outlining the steps of a killer.
But one written by Harry Potter, outlining the steps of a killer.
Severus saw his own name on the first page of the notebook along with several others. Some, like R. Hagrid and ‘Dursleys’, were marked out in red ink. One name, Sirius Black, was marked out in black ink with ‘Pettigrew’ jotted beside it, another name marked off in red. Severus’s name was unmarked, as was Albus’s.
It was a hit list.
Severus was only able to flip through a few pages when he heard a noise from downstairs. Severus pocketed the notebook and crept silently through the room to step out in the hallway.
Severus stood at the top of the stairs.
Harry stood at the first landing.
Their eyes met in a clash of one-sided fury, hurt, pain - and Severus could find no words before Harry turned and ran.
Severus chased after him, down the stairs, through the main floor, out the front door. It was dark and cold, yet Severus would not stop running.
If Harry owed him nothing else, he owed an explanation for - for everything.
“Harry!” Severus yelled the boy’s name when they ran through a crowd of Muggles on a busy road. Harry looked over his shoulder at Severus and then veered right- directly in an alley with only one exit that Severus was quick to block.
Severus casted a silent charm to keep notice off them while he slowly stepped toward Harry. It took seven steps before Severus saw the look of emptiness on Harry’s face.
Harry was not scared of Severus, he did not fear facing what sins he committed. Harry stood still as a statue and did not so much as blink when Severus stood across from him and raised the notebook.
“Lucius?” Severus asked. It was the worst of it in Severus’s mind and his heart. As irksome as Lucius could be, they had once been as close as brothers.
Harry was unrepentant and ready to confess.
“Yup.”
Severus felt the nonchalant tone like a blow to the chest, though he did not let it show.
“You killed Greyback? And Quirrell? Hagrid?” Severus asked, listing off the names that had always bothered him.
“Technically, I killed Voldemort who was hiding inside that bloke,” Harry said with a small and cruel smile. “Hagrid was me, Greyback was done by a friend of mine.”
“Black’s doing?” Severus guessed shrewdly. They could have been discussing magical theory for as even as their tones were. Severus showed none of his pain and Harry showed no emotion at all - if the boy even had emotions.
“Knew you were smart,” Harry quipped.
“THEN WHY AM I LISTED WITH DEAD MEN?” Severus roared, finally breaking. He shook the notebook of evidence at Harry, not relinquishing it even when it jerked hard with a silent and wandless summoning charm.
Severus sent Harry books on first year spells.
How humiliating.
“Because you ruined my life,” Harry said, heat beginning to fill his face and his voice. “Everything I could have had, everything I lost, EVERY MOMENT I HAVE SUFFERED IS BECAUSE OF YOU!” Harry yelled. “YOU WANTED TO BE THE DARK LORD’S FAVORITE PET AND YOU DESTROYED MY LIFE BEFORE I WAS EVEN BORN!”
It all came back to that.
Severus knew it would, he had known it in his heart when he saw the photograph of Black and Harry together. How Black knew it was Severus who heard the prophecy, Severus would never know. Harry knew though, and Severus needed an opportunity to explain.
If he could just explain.
“Does it count for nothing that I regret it?” Severus asked quietly, as remorseful as he could portray.
Harry laughed then, a mocking and cold laugh that filled Severus with a true sense of fear. Despite the yelling and the mad laughter, Harry was entirely in control.
That control was what placed fear in Severus’ very bones.
“Regret counts for nothing,” Harry spat at him. “You had to have known this was coming, Severus. You had to know that if the life that you condemned me to didn’t kill me, that I would kill you.”
“Do it then,” Severus dared him in a whisper. “If you feel nothing for me, take my life.”
That froze Harry in place for a moment. Harry’s face went blank, his eyes unfocused. When they refocused, Severus stood still as Harry slowly approached him.
“I…” Harry stood just out of Severus’s reach and he blinked at Severus. “What’s that mean?”
Severus wanted to reach for him, assure his lover that he would never hurt him, never betray him, and work for always to give him the life he deserved.
“I love you,” Severus said, pained by the admission.
Severus did.
Damn it all, Severus had fallen for Harry in a way that he never knew possible.
“I love you,” Severus repeated, the words twisted by the ferocity of his knowledge in their truth.
“You… love me?” Harry’s eyes filled with tears and Severus saw them glistening as Harry moved two steps closer.
Severus could touch him then and Hecate herself could not stop Severus from grabbing Harry by the waist and pulling him flush against himself. When Harry’s arms slowly creeped up to wrap themselves around Severus’s neck it was not confinement, but forgiveness.
If not forgiveness then trust. Trust that Severus’s regret was true and the relationship they had did not need to be broken by the past.
“I do,” Severus swore. The rain began to fall and raindrops hit Harry’s face when it was tilted upward to gaze at Severus.
“That’s mad,” Harry breathed. He slid one hand to cup the side of Severus’s neck and the other hand tangled gently in his hair.
“Is it?” Severus asked quietly. He held Harry with reverence and awe. Severus had once nearly had Harry killed, as inadvertent as it was. Harry had planned to kill Severus.
It was an unconventional start, yet it was fitting for the spy and the assassin.
Harry grinned slowly, shyly, and his lips parted.
“Yeah,” Harry breathed, “It is.”
When Severus bent his head to press a kiss to Harry’s red lips, Harry slid his hand across Severus’s throat.
When Severus gasped at the pain, Harry took a step back without ever breaking eye contact. When Severus fell to the ground and his blood mixed with the rain that poured down on them, the last thing he saw were green eyes that were as beautiful and cold as emerald.
Harry bent down and Severus thought he would have a final word - but Harry only took the two notebooks from Severus’s pocket before turning away walking off.
Another name off his list.
Severus was only one more job for the boy who dedicated his entire childhood to revenge.
*****
Harry watched as Severus Snape - death eater, spy, traitor - lay in the dirty streets and choked on his own blood.
It was a fitting end for the man who once sent the Dark Lord directly to Harry’s parents and tipped the first domino in the ruining of Harry’s life.
They all had fitting ends…
Truthfully, Harry had gotten a touch dramatic a few times, but he had spent nearly four years in Knockturn Alley to learn all he could and plan before it began. Harry left no stone unturned as he carefully cultivated his list and began executing plans that had once been daydreams.
Quirrell, who the warlocks whispered about in a pub…
“… twitchy since Albania…”
“… Marlos said You-Know-Who was last seen there, you know…”
“… smelled like garlic, they said… possessed?”
“Can’t believe Albus hired him, barmy bastard.”
Quirrell spilled his stuttering soul to Harry, told him about his godfather that escaped prison and the danger Harry was in. That was when Harry stopped hiding from the suspicious dog that followed him, but trapped him instead.
Sirius told Harry about the night his parents died. Sirius said that he tried to take Harry, but a man named Rubeus Hagrid insisted he be taken to Albus Dumbledore instead… Sirius also told Harry about a man disguised as a rat, one of two names on Sirius’s own list.
“I want Pettigrew,” Harry had said, bargaining hard. Harry had been a child, Sirius had been mentally insane; they were a good match in their early days of getting to know each other.
Sirius stared at Harry for a long time before he shrugged his thin shoulders up.
“Fine. Greyback is mine though, kiddo.”
The Dursleys were something Harry dreamed about for years. He wanted to drag it out, make them suffer. In the end, the sheer sight of them had choked him with anger and the green light burst out much more quickly than they deserved.
There were a few surprises, moments where impulse overtook Harry as he had to kill or be killed.
The crazy man who tried to take Harry and ‘rebirth his master’.
Sirius dealt with Rita Skeeter after she found them one day. Skeeter had been investigating the crazy man that Harry left in pieces. She was smart, she said she knew all the murders were connected and she wasn’t wrong.
Her reward was a forged suicide note.
Sirius wanted to leave after Skeeter. It had been too close and he said he would rather die than see himself and Harry be locked up one day.
Sirius went to Majorca, Harry promised to join him when he was finished. There had only been one more name left on Harry’s list, but the crazy man - Crouch? - had told Harry enough to add another. When Harry asked Sirius about it the day he opened up his childhood home for Harry to use while they were separated, Sirius told him everything.
Severus Snape.
Lily’s childhood friend, James’s rival.
When Snape heard the prophecy that put Harry’s parents at risk, he ran to tell the Dark Lord.
“He works for Albus now,” Sirius said, clearly disgusted. They were walking through the house he intended for Harry to use and found a house-elf hiding in a cupboard.
“Speaking of vermin,” Sirius snarled after the elf insulted them both in some of the most creative ways Harry ever heard. “Time to join the legacy of headless elves,” Sirius told the elf. “I can’t risk you running off and mentioning Harry, accidentally or not.”
Harry paid no attention to Sirius dispatching of the elf. Harry was distracted by thoughts of yet another name he had to add to his list.
Severus Snape would be difficult, Harry was sure of it. Harry couldn’t be sure how to best end his life.
Painfully, obviously.
But he was close to Dumbledore and Harry knew he needed as much ammunition against Dumbledore as he could get.
Would Snape the death eater be brought in by a show of power? The crazy man - Sirius called him Barty - had begged to follow him when he saw what Harry could do. It had been tempting, though Harry ultimately declined a split-second before killing the man.
Would Severus the potions professor be tricked by the pitiful child act? It worked on Hagrid when Harry needed to lure him out of the pub he had been in.
Would it be the intrigue of solving a mystery? Quirrell had been too easy to attack when he saw a single glimpse of Harry and followed him to an alley.
When Harry stalked Snape during the summer and the rare trips he made out of the castle, the answer came easily. Harry saw how he sneered at the working witches, the ones that Harry chatted up for information after they had clients and he protected when someone tried to hurt them.
Angel said that Snape always sneered at her and — “That’s the type that’s so sexually repressed he thinks we’re disgusting even while he dreams of touching us. Mommy issues out the arse there, James.”
So Harry took a shot that hit the target directly. Harry wasn’t a stranger to sucking cock, he had to feed himself somehow before Sirius arrived like a fairy godmother with gold and a house. It made Harry want to die to put Snape inside his mouth, but it worked.
Snape fell for it so easily that Harry laughed himself sick. Two blowjobs, one faked injury, and mentions of how unsafe Knockturn was with a killer on the loose and the man took Harry back to his house! It wasn’t as if Harry didn’t have to put work in though, it wasn’t all hysterical letters to Sirius about joining him soon.
Harry had to play it perfectly. Harry had to show how scared he was - just an innocent boy - and he was so hesitant to trust anyone - he didn’t want hurt. Harry was the shy and sweet lover inside a defensive shell that kept Snape from losing interest. Harry was just so vulnerable and scared and needed a big strong wizard to keep him safe. Harry was so traumatized and broken, couldn’t someone make themselves feel good by fixing him?
It was a shame Harry couldn’t force himself to actually cry, but he did imagine Sirius dead to at least make his eyes water at times.
Snape told Harry about Dumbledore’s routine after Harry carefully peppered in questions about how wonderful Hogwarts must be? Snape told Harry about his friend, Lucius Malfoy, and how he had connected all of the murders just as cunningly as Skeeter had.
Then Lucius confirmed that Snape never told him about Harry’s existence just before Harry slit that man’s throat. Harry held Snape the same night and pretended he was so scared that he or Snape would be next.
“I can’t lose you,” Harry had whispered.
“You will not.”
Snape was so desperate for affection and validation, it was pathetic.
That weakness was what killed him in the end.
The slip up over Grimmauld Place was a shock, but Harry didn’t need to return and the only two who knew Harry stayed there were both dead. Or, one dead and one dying in the streets. There were many times Harry considered killing Snape in his sleep, but there was something Harry couldn’t resist about the fear that publicly displayed bodies brought on.
And so Harry watched Snape slowly die from the shadows. He frowned when his body attracted an unlucky someone much too soon.
“I’ve got a pulse!” the woman cried as she staunched the wounds with her hands. She turned to yell at the man she had been with. “Hurry! Call for help!!”
It was regretful, having to kill her and the man both, but Harry needed Snape to be a finished job. It would have ruined the final task Harry had if Snape was able to share all he knew with Dumbledore.
One more job and Harry could go join his godfather.
One more job and Harry could see the beaches that Sirius described in his letters.
One more job and Harry would be free.
*****