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Harry Potter and the Expert Potions Master	By : SickPuppy Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Snape Views: 21304 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter universe. I make no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 13
- 14
- 15
Chapter 13 - Revelation and Response

February had given way to March.

With the advent of Spring proper, the grounds felt more welcoming. The trees began to look green, rather than stark, forbidding dark branches; the soil underfoot stopped feeling like iron and became bouncier as grass grew and water seeped under the ground; the sky glowed bright blue, seeming warm and pleasant. Any time spent outside was swiftly curtailed, as the bitter wind soon made people shiver and scurry indoors to seek warm fires and cosy arm chairs.

March seemed to bring with it a whole slew of Death Eater trials, which Harry was often called upon to be a witness at. He resented the way the trials interrupted his education and gave him extra work to get class notes and private study tasks and somehow complete them in a waiting room that sometimes held a great number of people all waiting to give their statements. For three uncomfortable days he had shared the space with Ron as they had both been called to testify at the Malfoy trials. Harry had argued for leniency in his comments as he knew that Lucius and Narcissa had been Death Eaters for a long time, but that they had only obeyed Voldemort at the end out of fear. Draco, too, as much as he had loathed the ferret at school, had been placed in an untenable position thanks to the Dark Lord.

The two weeks beginning March 15^th Harry didn't once set foot on Hogwarts grounds and had to content himself with lots of reading of text books, practising practical skills and developing theoretical understanding, and wanking. Lots and lots of wanking.

When Harry at last returned to Hogwarts on Monday 29^th, he felt that so much had happened that the school should somehow have changed. In reality, he had been the one to change. Since the letter from Snape that had made him question his sexuality, Harry had avoided writing again, trying to work out if he was gay, or if his sudden unexpected strange fantasies were just a phase he was going through at an incredibly inconvenient time. Not that he imagined there was a convenient time to have same sex dreams.

With a heavy heart he thought he probably was gay. That wasn't to say he didn't like girls, he did, and a great number of his private sessions had begun with his imagining soft rounded breasts and wondering at how they would feel under his palms, but all too soon the breasts seemed to vanish and he was left with a flat, hard chest that was infinitely more appealing to him. It was frustrating, annoying, and frankly disturbing that he had been able all his life to hide something so fundamental from himself. He wondered sometimes if Snape had done this to him, as one last cruel joke: made him gay. But he couldn't credit it, and besides, he didn't think a spell existed to do something like that. You couldn't turn someone gay or straight. At least, Harry didn't think so.

Was all this a result of having lived his life so thoroughly to other people's standards and expectations these last few years, he wondered when he thought about his future and his past. Both seemed equally lonely. He had lost his parents before he had even known them, had lost surrogate parents, friends, girlfriends, and now he looked to live a lonely life as an adult – how could he dare to open his heart to someone when he was Harry Potter? How many people would be able to resist the temptation to tell all?

One person he could tell and know that that man's opinion of him would not change, was Severus Snape. Harry felt a slightly hysterical laugh bubble up that he had so little left in his life that Snape was his only option. But, even if he had had all of those people still in his life, how many would he have been able to tell this final, awful secret to?

Dear sir,

I know it has been a long time since I last wrote. Knowing you, you are probably glad that you have been left in peace for a while.

School work has been demanding, and I have been testifying at a number of trials of suspected Death Eaters. Unsurprisingly, they have all been found guilty. What worries me though, is that there are still some who have evaded capture: Dolohov, Mulciber, and Travers. I'm uneasy at the thought of them off somewhere plotting some horrible crime.

More importantly, however, I have been considering what you last wrote and being honest with myself. For the first time in my life I am not bound by prophecies or supposed futures; even if the wizarding community still expects great things from me, I could vanish from it now and know it would still heal. So, it is that for the first time in my life I am able to decide who I am and what it is I want.

How can it be so difficult to admit something to you that I have finally accepted in myself?

Harry stopped writing. That one question would give Snape enough information to understand what Harry was unable to write. Harry was unable to admit it on paper not just because it meant so many of his own ideas about himself were wrong, but because he was afraid of someone seeing this letter before it was finished, or after, if someone intercepted Trouble.

Other than wrestling with that personal dilemma, I have not done much apart from work.

Have you had any opportunity to consider the research completed about a personal shield charm? I have the feeling, if my new-found self-revelation becomes common knowledge, that I shall be in need of one!

Yours,

Harry.

It was odd that even getting that implied confession out into the open made him feel better. Snape, he knew, wasn't gay, but he could be trusted to keep his peace and keep Harry's secrets. And at least there was one person who wasn't judging him and finding him wanting, well, no more than Snape had always done. It was natural that the one person he could let see his dirty secret was the one person who had never thought much of him as the great 'hero' Harry Potter.

Other than Ginny's vindictiveness, Harry had no fears that the wider wizarding world would learn of his 'unnatural' longings.

Severus Snape sat in a chair, a short letter still held in one pale hand. He was considering a great many things, not least the revelation that Lily's son was gay.

Lily's son...

But Harry wasn't just Lily's son, he was his own man, and a man, moreover who had faced more than anyone should ever do, and who had looked into his own soul and discovered something unexpected and accepted it.

Harry was more like Lily than his father, despite Harry's appearance. Lily too, had had that capacity to face unpalatable truths, even if, Snape hated to admit it, one of them had been about him and where he was heading. She had known that his future was dark, and that she couldn't have been a part of it, no matter how he would have tried to convince the Dark Lord.

He had loved Lily since he had first seen her. Idolised the pretty red-haired girl with bright green eyes and smiling face. She was so completely his opposite – light where he was dark, open where he was shut off, loving where he was full of hate. Of course he had been drawn to her, helpless, entangled in her mesmerising magic. Not the magic of wandcraft, but that magic that was her: her kindness, her love, her hopefulness.

And that feeling had never gone away, Even after her death he had been unable to let go of what he had lost because if he had, what would have been left for him? His world had been so black, but with his heart still holding some love in it for a long dead woman, he hadn't felt himself beyond redemption. Through all the endless days of servitude at Dumbledore's side, forever watching for the Dark Lord's return, and once he was trying to reappear, doing all he could to stop it without seeming traitorous, it had been his love for Lily that had made him feel human, even if only for brief moments.

And now, what did he feel? He had been willing to sacrifice himself to save the wizarding world, and it had only been the unwelcome intervention of Lily's son that had stopped him dying alone in the Shrieking Shack. A world which he had not felt connected to his entire life would not have mourned him. Except, apparently, for one young man who just doesn't know when to let go.

Not content with saving Snape's life, Harry had someone made it his mission to save Snape from his own loneliness. How the younger wizard felt knowing how passionately his mother had been loved by someone not his father, Snape did not know and could not find a way to ask. Giving those memories, when he had been sure he was dying, had merely been to tell Harry what he needed to know to be able to face the Dark Lord at the end. He had never intended Harry to see so deeply into his soul.

But perhaps it had not been entirely dreadful. With that self-revelation, Snape had let go of something he had held to himself for too long, something he had been unwilling to admit he had to let go of, and it had given Harry the chance to see who Snape really was. And from there, they had somehow been able to build a friendship.

Snape hesitated as he thought the word. A friendship? But, yes, by almost any definition, he was the other man's friend. And, having learnt how to be a friend with Lily, and after getting it so very wrong, he knew how he needed to behave to maintain this fragile link he had with one other human being. Finally, after he should have died, he finally had something to make him live.

And something to strive for again.

He looked down at the letter and his mind began plotting. Reaching for a quill, he made some notes before beginning a response to Harry Potter.
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Harry Potter and the Expert Potions Master