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Wounds	By : KohakuShadow Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Snape Views: 11814 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, nor am I making any money off writing fanfiction for it. That's what makes it FANfiction, obviously. So leave me and my slashy little plot bunnies alone.

Chapter List
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III.
Poultice for the Heart

Severus
leaned his head down onto his desk, applying a poultice to the sore
spot that had connected with the bench when Potter had kissed him.
No, not kissed. Fell on, crashed into, nearly gave a coronary, but
not kissed. That had not
been a kiss. Certainly not. It was a lapse in his ability to think
due to a pounding headache that had made his mind use the word. He
groaned. If he had a concussion because of that idiot boy, there
would be hell to pay.

The poultice did its
work quickly. His head still ached dully, but his vision cleared and
the throbbing subsided. He tossed it on the counter and sat back,
taking a few deep breaths. Pain, he supposed, could be considered a
kind of proof that he was alive. The pain he could take. It was the
humiliation he couldn't bear. The constant and unforgiving blows to
his pride that were the most damaging.

His lips still hummed.
No, it hadn't been a kiss, but on that subject, he couldn't remember
the last time he'd kissed anyone. Had he ever kissed anyone when
there wasn't a plot involved, or something to gain? He wracked his
brain on the subject but couldn't think of one. He bit the inside of
his cheek, chastising himself for letting his mind wander in such
irrelevant directions.

The past, he'd long
since decided, was a kind of stone--an immovable object that, while
varying from one person to the next, is only a matter of
point-of-view. Like his memories of James and Sirius, and of Lily,
today's events seemed to be etching themselves into his psyche even
as he tried to force them from mind.

His
head throbbed and he snatched the poultice again irritably, pressing
it too roughly to the lump at the back of his skull with a faint
growl of discontent. In front of the whole bloody school! Well, in
front of everyone who was on campus for the summer session, at least,
which was damn close enough. By morning, they would all be talking
about his infamous lip-lock with Harry Potter. No, they wouldn't be
stupid enough to do so in front of him, but he would still know.
He would still see the staid glances when he entered the room, hear
the way conversations suddenly fell silent.

And then there was the
matter of Harry himself, who'd been insufferable since he'd slipped,
in his pain-induced rage, and called the boy by name. Not Potter, but
'Harry'. He knew that had been the start of this fiasco, somehow.
That moment could be wholly to blame for everything that had happened
since. Flying a broom around his head like that--only Potter would be
so reckless. So like his father, and...also, very much not like his
father.

Severus remembered
their Occlumency lessons too clearly. He remembered seeing the
muggles who'd raised Harry through his eyes. How they'd treated him.
Petunia--who had changed since she was a child in height alone. The
bumbling oaf of a husband she'd taken, whose cruel treatment of Harry
was seconded, it seemed, only by his own. Guilt overtook him when he
thought of it. To Harry, surely, he was no less a tyrant than this
'Vernon', or than James and Sirius had ever been to him. No, that
was going too far, Sirus especially. Sirius had nearly gotten him
killed, and laughed about it. He said he 'wasn't proud' of the way
he'd treated Snape. He'd heard it from Harry--slipped in heated
rant--but that only made it a more bitter potion to swallow. If
Black had been proud of those acts, at least it would be an admission
that they held some weight for him. But not being proud, Severus
knew, was not the same as being ashamed.

He grunted and threw
the poultice aside again in irritation, let his head fall back,
obsidian eyes tracing patches of flickering light across the ceiling.
When he was alone like this, his thoughts often ran away with him.
He kept them so guarded otherwise, always so careful to let nothing
slip, that when he wouldn't be interrupted, when there was no chance
he was being watched, he felt as if his insides erupted with emotion
until he couldn't bear the weight of them. He over-analyzed things,
thought about them too deeply and too long. He held grudges that he
thought would never die, and which overshadowed his every decision.

Death,
surely, would have been a kinder fate. Less painful than living.
'Which
is probably why I'm not dead,'
he thought. He stared at the white pouch of herbs lying unassumingly
on the top of the desk. 'Useless,'
he thought in its general direction, his head still aching, though he
doubted very much that it had as much to do with his earlier injury
than his current train of thought at this point. 'If
only there were a poultice that could ease the pains of the heart,
that
is what I really need,' he
thought bitterly.

He stood, paced around
the office with stern, measured steps. The sound of his footsteps
tapping out a rhythm on the stone eventually restored his
equilibrium. "No," he said aloud to the empty room. "What
I really need is to figure out how to deal with Potter, somehow
minimize the damage of today's disaster." He unconsciously
rubbed his left forearm. "...an impenetrable defense of some
kind."

Malfoy had been making
kissy faces for ten minutes. Batting his eyelashes. The Slytherin
table was howling in mirth. Harry's hand was clasped so tightly
around his fork that his knuckles were bleach white.

Hermoine had said,
"just ignore him" as if he should, naturally, be above such
petty rivalries. Well, he wasn't. He imagined a number of
entertaining scenarios at Malfoy's expense--one involving making his
tongue several times its normal size, another involving charming his
hair a nice, blinding shade of pink...none of them really satisfied
him, but the Slytherin table went suddenly silent as the doors of the
Great Hall opened again.

The
hairs on the back of Harry's neck prickled. He could somehow feel
Snape passing behind him with measured steps. The professor didn't
pause, and Harry found himself letting out a quiver of breath that
he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

Ron
and Hermoine exchanged a look. "Stop doing that," Harry
snapped at them. "I can see
you. I know what you think."

"Harry,"
Hermoine tried to placate him with a gentle tone. "it's
just..."

"You're obsessed,"
Ron said gracelessly. "We know Snape isn't evil, that he wasn't
working for You-know-who, but that doesn't make it your personal
obligation to make up for everything anyone's ever done to or said
about him. He's still an ass."

"Well, maybe he's
an ass because no one's ever given him a chance to be anything else,"
Harry rebuffed irritably under his breath, stabbing his toast, which
he'd by now mauled with his fork but made no real efforts to eat.

Hermoine
pursed her lips. Harry steeled himself for what he was sure would be
another 'I know better than you so shut up and listen' speech.
"Harry," she said, "what is this really
about?"

Harry
blinked at the question. What was
it about? He didn't know if he could possibly articulate half of
what he was feeling. "I just...it's just..." he stumbled,
grip on his fork finally loosening enough to let blood back into his
fingers. How was he supposed to explain even a fraction of what was
going through his mind? "...that could have been me, you know?"
he said at last. "He...and ...also me..." he stumbled
awkwardly over a sentence that didn't want to form. "If things
were just a little bit different, maybe I would have turned out to be
exactly like Snape."

"You're
nothing
like Snape," Ron declared as if he couldn't believe a word of
what Harry's saying. "You're just tired, mate. The heat's
getting to you. It's getting to everyone."

"It's
not the heat!" Harry snapped. "It's...it's
just...everything!"
He stood abruptly and stormed out of the Great Hall without having
eaten any breakfast, leaving Ron and Hermoine to exchange confused
looks. He still wasn't giving them any answers. It seemed as if
maybe he didn't know how to explain. "We'll just have to trust
Harry," Hermoine said at last. "This is important to him."

"What
in the hell is 'this',
anyway?" Ron grumped.

"Sorry, Ron,"
Hermoine said, glancing at the large doors that Harry had just
slammed behind him. "I haven't the foggiest, and for once, I
don't think the library is going to help clear it up."

Severus frowned at the
calming draught he was holding. He didn't think he was going to get
through this day without it, and wondered if he ought to take it
sooner rather than later, just to be safe. No, he didn't need it.
He was a grown man and fully capable of controlling his emotions now!
But even in the privacy of his own mind it sounded like the blatant
lie it was. If his emotions were in control, he wouldn't be pacing
his office, glaring at the clock as if he could will time to stop
before his next class--the one with Harry Potter in it. He'd
actually had a dream last night about slipping Forgetfulness Potion
into the water to wipe from existence that horrifying incident at the
Quidditch match. And it would have seemed a good idea if he could
pick and choose just what a person might forget. He scowled to
himself and tucked the vial of calming draught into his pocket. No,
he wouldn't take it. He would just keep it on hand...in case of an
emergency.

'Control
yourself, Severus. You're a fabulous Occlumens, aren't you?
Voldemort never caught on, and Dumbledore always said so. Deep
breaths. Okay. Just act as if everything is perfectly normal. Right.
Normal. Okay.'
He stepped out of his office, resigning not to think about how one
idiot teenager could so easily unhinge him just by existing.

He thought, surely,
Potter would be on his best behavior today, since he didn't know how
he would react to their first real encounter since the snitch
disaster. Clumsy, perhaps, but he doubted the boy would go out of
his way to cause trouble. He'd thought wrong. The boy had never been
more obnoxious. He was juggling potion ingredients when Snape
entered. Badly. A small jar of frog eyes smashed right over Snape's
boot when he stopped only long enough to threaten the boy into
behaving. He had a suspicion that Harry might have done it on
purpose. His potion was letting off the most wretched
smell--something between alcohol and rotten eggs, and Snape could
tell he wasn't even trying to follow the formula, just throwing
whatever he felt like it in the cauldron to see what would happen. He
turned his back only for a moment, and heard a yelp. When he spun
about again there was a slop of green goo on the side of Draco
Malfoy's head and the Weasley boy was looking at Harry like he'd just
lost his mind. Granger too, had been leaning over, wide-eyed to hiss
something at him.

"Are
you trying
to get detention?!" Hermoine chastised Harry when Snape crossed
to Draco to clean up the mess that Harry had left on his head. A red
welt was left behind, and Snape was scrawling out a quick note so
Malfoy could go to the infirmary to get it taken care of.

"That's the
general idea, yeah," Harry whispered back. But Snape docked
Gryffindor 50 points, vanished his potion, and continued the lesson
without further ado. Harry looked disappointed. Why was it when you
were going out of your way for a detention, you couldn't get one, but
when you really wanted to do something, three or four of them came
slamming down on you at once?

When the class was
leaving, he lingered. Snape had been packing up his own things and
didn't notice immediately. That had gone well. Perfectly normal,
even. Nothing to worry about, but just as he turned, Harry was
standing right in front of him. "Why are you still here, Potter?
If it's about that pitiful excuse for a potion, I won't be letting
you make it up this time."

"So, you're mad,
then," Harry blanketed.

Something in Snape's
jaw gave a little twitch. "After your behavior in class today,
I should think I don't need to answer that, do I?"

"Not about that,"
Harry waved it off as if it were nothing. "About the Quidditch
thing. You know when I ki--"

Snape didn't let him
finish. "I am above such petty grievances," he stated,
though they both knew petty grievances seemed to be what kept him
going in life.

"Right,"
Harry answered, smirking a bit. He didn't believe a word of that and
they both knew it. "So you're head's alright then?" And he
reached up a hand as if to touch the back of Snape's head.

Snape
swatted it away before it could get too close, as if it were
something vile. "Detention, Potter!" he snapped before he
could stop himself. "Tomorrow evening. My office. Do not
keep me waiting." He stalked out of the room, muttering curses
under his breath. Damn it. He hadn't wanted to do that. Detention
meant time spent alone with the boy. And that--he instinctively
knew--was very, very bad.

Harry's face broke into
a bright grin at his professor's back. "Yes sir," he
answered. "Wouldn't dream of it."
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