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Morgaine\'s Thread	By : Escritora80 Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Snape Views: 17363 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction set in the Harry Potter universe – all recognisable characters and settings are the property of J. K. Rowling and her associates. No copyright infringement is intended. No profit is made from this work.

Chapter List
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A/N: At last, a new chapter! This one turned out short and dark, but all you fluff-lovers don't need to worry. The next chapter should balance it all out (and will be posted sometime tomorrow).

Chapter Three

The secret of Snape's true condition burned inside of Harry for the rest of the day. The only moment of commiseration he experienced was at supper when he exchanged glances with Dumbledore. Back at the dormitory, he only half-listened while Ron and Hermione squabbled over studying (Hermione was for it, Ron was against it), too busy worrying about those 'other conditions' that Snape wouldn't discuss in front of Harry. Why didn't he want Harry to know what they were? That kind of secrecy didn't bode well for him.

Hermione nudged him to get his attention. "Harry, where are those Transfiguration notes I let you borrow?"

"Notes?" Harry frowned as he tried to remember where he'd put them. "I think they're in my-"

He groaned and buried his face in his hands. He'd left his school bag in the hospital wing, propped up against Snape's bedside table. He peered through his fingers at Hermione. "Do you have to have them tonight?"

Ron snorted and looked up at Harry, shaking his head. "Do you really need to ask?"

"Well, they are my notes ..." Hermione began her defence.

Harry stood up. "Right. On my way, then."

"... and I know Professor McGonnegall is going to test us soon ..."

"Walking to the door now," Harry called back to her over his shoulder.

"... and pardon me for caring about my education, something you two rarely-"

The portrait swung shut behind Harry, effectively cutting Hermione off before she could launch into a full-blown lecture.

Harry spent the entire walk to the hospital wing volleying back and forth between excitement and dread. He couldn't tell where he stood with Snape now, so he wasn't sure how he would react to seeing Harry again so soon.

He'll probably accuse me of leaving the bag behind on purpose, Harry thought with a scowl. Snape always seemed to know just what to say to keep Harry off-balance.

He arrived at the door to Snape's private room just as Draco was leaving it.

"Come to play nursemaid, Potter?" Draco asked with a smirk. "You don't waste any time when there's fresh meat about, now do you?"

"What can I say, I'm a man-eater," Harry replied in a flat voice that matched his blank expression. He'd learned long ago that giving Draco any kind of reaction only encouraged him.

Draco's smirk wavered, but he plowed on through Harry's indifference to say, "Mulgrew will be disappointed. He's made it so obvious he'd like to be your next meal."

"I'll keep that in mind." Harry brushed past him and started to open the door, then added over his shoulder, "I admire you, Draco. Not many blokes in this school could handle that starvation diet you've been on. I know I couldn't."

He winked and left Draco spluttering behind him as he darted into Snape's room and quickly closed the door. His grin froze when he turned around to see Snape standing right in front of him.

"Does the concept of knocking before coming into a room elude you, Potter?" Snape had exchanged the hospital gown for a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt. His feet were bare, but a pair of black trainers were perched on the end of his bed along with a stack of clothes. Was that the reason Draco had visited Snape?

"Sorry, I --" Harry doubted that detailing his exchange with Draco would endear him to Snape, so he just sighed and pointed at his bag. "I forgot my bag. I just came back to get it."

"So that's your excuse?" Snape smirked and crossed his arms over his chest. "You left your bag here so you'd have a reason to come see me?"

"Yes, I couldn't wait to be back in your glorious presence again," Harry said dryly, not at all happy that he'd been right about Snape's reaction.

"You'd better be nice to me, Potter. One word from me and you'll be dodging Dementors in Azkaban."

"You wouldn't really do that," Harry said, but it was hard to keep the uncertainty out of his voice.

"Of course I would. I'm Severus Snape, resident bastard, Slytherin to the bone. A little blackmail is nothing to me. Maybe next time you'll think twice before resorting to illegal spells."

The way Snape kept harping on Harry's 'criminal' behaviour was starting to really frustrate him. "I did what I did to help you. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

Snape pressed his lips together, as if biting back his next retort. He raked a hand through his long, lank hair and looked away. "No one asked you to play Saviour, Potter."

"How can you be such an ungrateful git? Not once have you said anything to me resembling a thank you for saving your life." Harry turned back to open the door, forgetting in his anger the very bag he'd come to fetch, but Snape grabbed Harry by the arm and prevented him from leaving.

"You truly don't understand the magnitude of what you did," Snape murmured, his expression caught somewhere between amusement and exasperation. He slowly reeled Harry back in, sliding his hands up Harry's arms to his shoulders and holding him in place. "You did me a favour, hmm? I should be grateful?"

So close to Snape, hearing him speak so softly, Harry wasn't sure of anything anymore. He clung stubbornly to his earlier anger, the only safe emotion that Snape provoked in him. "Isn't that the usual reaction when someone saves your life? To be grateful?"

"Grateful," Snape repeated, staring stone-faced at Harry for several seconds before a sly grin curved his lips. He chuckled to himself and gave a short nod of his head, as if he'd come to some secret decision about how to respond to Harry's claim. He relaxed his grip on Harry's shoulders, taking on a lighter, conversational tone as he said, "Would you like to hear how Morgaine's Thread got its name?"

Harry eyed Snape warily. "Why the sudden history lesson?"

"The spell's namesake, Morgaine, was an illegitimate half-blood," Snape carried on, ignoring Harry's question, "raised in her father's household as little more than a servant, but secretly instructed in sorcery by her grandmother, a direct descendant of Morgan Le Fey. Morgaine's mother killed herself in front of her child when Morgaine was only six, and her father barely acknowledged her presence except to express disgust at bringing a 'half-breed' into the world, so you can imagine the sort of childhood she endured."

Life with the Dursleys doesn't sound too bad in comparison, Harry thought.

"She had no status, no true possessions of her own, and no parental love to ease those hardships, but she had beauty and wit and an extraordinary talent for magic. By the age of sixteen, she was as powerful and cunning as any witch or wizard of that time, but life had twisted her, and the death of her grandmother, her sole ally in her father's household, ripped the last shreds of humanity from her soul. She struck out on her own -- leaving behind a poisoned step-mother, two suffocated half-siblings and an eviscerated father -- and took work as a seamstress."

"I'm starting to think there's not going to be a 'happily ever after' at the end of this story," Harry said with a strained smile, deeply disturbed by the gruesome tale Snape was telling him but trying not show it. He shrugged Snape's hands off his shoulders and walked a few steps away, feigning an interest in the stack of books on the bedside table. "So the spell is called Morgaine's Thread because she was a seamstress? Is that it?"

Snape leisurely followed him, drawing up close behind Harry, his lips only inches from Harry's ear. "In part, yes. You see, Morgaine was adept at manipulating men, but she had no faith in them. She had watched her mother be thrown away by her father, seduced then abandoned, and she had no intention of allowing her own lovers to follow suit. Falling back on her grandmother's teachings, she crafted a spell that would bind her lovers to her forever ..."

Harry swallowed hard at the bile rising in his throat. His hands itched to cover his ears and block out Snape's voice. He didn't want to hear the rest of Morgaine's story, but Snape seemed determined to torture him with every last detail.

"She would paralyse them in their sleep, when they were most vulnerable; a simple Body-Bind Curse and they would be helpless. Then she would take her needle and thread and sew their eyes and mouths shut, trapping them in a world of darkness, unable to scream or call for help. Then came the carving of the brands -- you were merciful, Potter, to use your wand; Morgaine preferred to use an ordinary kitchen knife -- and finally the binding spell itself, a bond that imprints itself so deeply on the soul that the weaker of its victims feel driven to obedience, mere slaves to their bondmates."

Harry spun around, looking almost as wretched as he felt. "I didn't know--"

"Morgaine would keep her lovers blind and dumb until she achieved complete dominance over them," Snape cut him off, a fiendish amusement marking his expression. He was clearly enjoying tormenting Harry with the gory origins of the binding spell. "They were kept sightless, starved into submission, and Morgaine became their entire world -- her voice at their ears, her touch on their skin, her bond like a chain around their hearts. In some cases, her victims starved to death before she could break them, but there would always be another man, another soul to ensnare. Her lovers became known by the scars on their eyes and their mouths, and the crimson brands on the palms of their hands. She never kept them alive for long -- ironically, Morgaine was just as fickle in love as her father -- but their devotion to her was deep and obsessive. Morgaine's Thread is the darkest kind of magic, Potter. It's a violation, a rape ... and you would have known that if you'd taken the time to research the spell thoroughly. Did you even once stop to wonder why someone who used that spell would be punished so severely?"

Harry couldn't think of anything to say. He was horrified by this new information, but in the back of his mind lurked a terrible uncertainty about whether he would have done anything differently even if he'd known what Morgaine's Thread really entailed. He told himself that he would have found another spell to use, another 'last resort' method of saving the people he loved, but if he were back in that hallway right now, watching Snape die with only Morgaine's Thread as a way to save him, what would Harry do? Would he go ahead and sacrifice Snape's freewill just to keep him alive and at Harry's side? These were questions he couldn't bear to ask himself.

That hint of sadistic glee in Snape's eyes shifted to a stronger emotion as he backed Harry up against the wall. "You spoke the words of the spell so readily, so sincerely, but do you even know what Arakalë means?"

Hearing that word on Snape's lips sent a shudder of pain through Harry's body, and he pressed one hand against his chest where the ache was at its worst. He shook his head and gritted out a reply, "No, I never looked it up," his eyes darting from side to side in search of an escape route, looking everywhere but at Snape's face.

"Arakalë means you are mine," Snape whispered right before he kissed Harry.

Harry was too stunned to react, too stunned to even feel anything during those three seconds that his lips and Snape's lips were touching. When Snape pulled back, he had that same dark intensity to his gaze, but Harry's silent, wide-eyed response to the kiss killed whatever emotion had been lurking in his eyes and his expression turned mocking.

"You should see your face, Potter," he said with a sneer.

He turned his back on Harry and walked over to the bed, grabbing a book from the top of the pile on his bedside table and plopping down onto the mattress. He wrapped up his 'history lesson' with an air of indifference. "The spell was passed on by a small sect of those who practiced the Dark Arts, improved on and perfected over the years, but when the minimum punishment for casting it was raised to life in Azkaban, it fell out of popularity among modern wizards and witches. The usual motive given today by those who use Morgaine's Thread is unrequited love. Some people just can't take 'no' for an answer. There, I've educated you. Now, get out. I'm tired of playing teacher."

Another tremor of pain rolled through Harry's chest. Hearing the truth about Morgaine's Thread had been traumatic enough, but that joking kiss that Snape had given him -- a kiss that even now burned on his lips -- was too much for him to take in. He grabbed his schoolbag and almost ran to the door, but even in such a chaotic state of mind his curiosity got the better of him. He paused with his hand on the doorknob and glanced over at Snape.

"What happened to Morgaine?"

Snape looked up from his book, suddenly grim as he answered, "She fell in love -- truly in love -- but her bondmate resisted her to the very end. He hanged himself to be free of her. The pain of their severed bond drove her to madness, and Morgaine slit her wrists with the same knife she'd used to carve the brands into her lover's palms."

It was a fittingly tragic end to such a macabre story. Harry clutched at his chest with one hand, all too aware of the pain there that was now fading to a dull ache. What had Snape said that morning? Morgaine's Thread leaves a scar that never goes away. That scar had cost Morgaine her sanity and her life. What would it cost Harry?

He took one last look at Snape and hurried out of the room.
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Morgaine\'s Thread