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The Way of the Patronus	By : QueenB Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Snape Views: 15104 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter in anyway, shape or form. The rights of such belong solely to J.K Rowling. I do not make any money or accrue any monetary benefit on this story.

Chapter List
- 7
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- 9
Slughorn tutted. “Mr. Potter, I have to say your work these days is quite substandard. What exactly is this supposed to be?”
“Uh…” He had wanted to prove to Hermione that his success in Potions wasn’t entirely due to the Prince’s notes. Drawing on his memory of what he’d seen in Severus’s mind, he was trying to concoct an anti-anti-lust potion.
So far the result was less than brilliant. The concoction was giving off a nauseating smell and had turned an unappealing greenish-yellow color, akin to vomit and mold mixed. The other students were edging away until Slughorn cast a charm to diminish the odor. There was no way anyone would drink this, even if he could actually get it work.
“It’s supposed to be…a friend of mine is having certain…problems and I thought this would…”
A familiar drawl came from the other side of the room. “This wouldn’t be for you, would it, Potter? For the Chosen One, you certainly don’t seem to get chosen by anybody, if the rumors are true. Could it be you’re a dud in the sack?”
There were sniggers from Blaise Zabini and the other Slytherins in the room from Draco’s crack. Slughorn took no notice. He merely sniffed at the cauldron and made a face. “Definitely not a stellar effort, Mr. Potter. I wouldn’t recommend giving this to any friend of yours unless you wanted him vomiting during the night. Now you might think of adding vervaine to counteract the effects of the…”
Fumbling for his notes, Harry wrote down the professor’s suggestions and did his best to make the changes. He didn’t know why he bothered. He’d have to trick Severus into taking this and he didn’t see how. The Slytherin would be automatically suspicious of any food Harry offered.
Harry paused, his thoughts racing. Dobby. He could get the house-elf to slip it into Severus’s meals. The man wouldn’t suspect anything of food he ate in the Great Hall. Considerably buoyed by this thought, he scribbled faster and noted the changes in the potion in his cauldron.
This would work. It had to.
__________
The object of Harry’s desires was having his own problems. The libido-dampening potion did indeed work at stifling the urges of Severus’s body. It did nothing to quiet his ever-active mind. Severus frowned in near-despair when he realized he’d been staring at the homework of a gifted Ravenclaw for several minutes without taking note of anything that was written.
Thanks to his expulsion of Harry from the public class and Harry’s potions classes with Slughorn, Severus never saw the Gryffindor save for their private DADA lessons. There was the occasional run-in between classes. But Harry was rarely alone then, surrounded by his chattering friends and hanger-ons like that obnoxious Colin Creevey. Whenever he saw Creevey staring at Harry with that sickening adoration, Severus wanted to hex the photo-snapping sycophant with face-puffing boils until his eyes sealed shut.
Severus would catch the barest glimpse from smoldering green eyes. The tamped heat there was so strong, he wondered why his clothes didn’t scorch from them. But Harry was holding to their rules. He was never anything but coldly distant with his Potions master whenever they met outside of the Room of Requirement.
Mine mine mine. The thought would not leave him alone, amounting almost to an obsession until he wondered if he was the victim of Amortentia. Even if his loins were quiescent, his mind endlessly replayed their sensual encounters.
It was just sex, he argued with himself. After such a long draught, it was to be expected that any intimate touch might open the floodgates. There was also that blasted Patronus spell to consider. It was the only explanation as to why he would fixate on the son of a hated Gryffindor, a Potter.
Harry wasn’t even particularly attractive. That abominably messy hair, the thin face, emerald eyes smoky with desire, the thighs firmed by endless hours of Quidditch, the sweet brown nipples still untouched with a man’s fur, the uninhibited cries, the way the body tightened and loosened when Harry was well and truly caught up…
Damn. Severus buried his face in his hands, letting out a deep groan.
He had gone to the library after hours, trying to find out everything he could about the Patronus spell. Much had indeed been written about Patronuses and their psychic draining counterparts, the dementors. But there was almost nothing about what happened when Patronuses were compatible as his and Harry’s were. The phenomenon was uncommon enough so that it appeared as a footnote in one--one!--blasted book.
Patronuses are unique to every witch and wizard who can conjure them, though they have been known to change when the caster undergoes extreme emotional upheaval. There have been odd tales about encounters between different witches and wizards whose Patronuses assumed the male and female sex variant of the same animal. But since such meetings are extremely rare, due to the difficulty of summoning Patronuses in the first place, the stories amount to little more than hearsay and speculation.
And that was it. Try as he might, he had found nothing else. He wondered where Dumbledore had gotten his information. Perhaps they were among the books he’d seen in the old meddler’s office. But he would have to ask the Headmaster about them and he couldn’t bear facing those knowing blue eyes again.
Forcing his mind to calm with the iron discipline that had cloaked his true thoughts from the Dark Lord for years, Severus managed to work his way through the abysmal efforts that passed for homework. Many a Gryffindor dunderhead suffered a slather of red ink. That brought some satisfaction, at any rate.
He would brew. That would ease his jangled nerves. Curiously, his usual remedy for his overheated brain bought none of the expected relief. After only two hours, when he realized he’d added a pinch too much wormwood and spoiled the potion, he banished it in disgust.
He had masturbated in the shower; he had run through every single pile of homework; he had retreated to his lab, his sanctum sanctorum. Severus had done everything he thought of to exhaust himself so that he would fall asleep at once. Nothing remained now except to take a draught of Dreamless Sleep and he hesitated to go that far.
Contrary to what a few suspected about him, Severus wasn’t an addict to his own potions. Potion creation was an art, one he refused to taint by careless imbibing or the poisoning of others. Years of prostituting his talent to Voldemort’s warped ends had cured him of any desire to have others suffer from his work. Neither would he tipple from his own cauldron unless dire need dictated it. But if there was ever dire need, this was it.
The libido-quelling potion had worked its way out of his system; there would be no harm in taking the Dreamless Sleep Draught now. He simply would have to be sparing in its use lest he become too dependent on it for relief.
Severus drank, ignoring the brackish taste. He conjured a gray nightshirt for himself; he was loath to go to sleep naked these past nights lest he give in to…temptation.
There was nothing for it. It was late and his barren bed awaited him. He resisted casting a Warming Charm on the chilly sheets; cold linen would be a most effective deterrent against nocturnal emission.
“Nox,” he muttered and waited for the unyielding darkness to weigh down his eyelids.
He idly wondered what Harry wore to bed.
Damn.
__________
Harry waited until the Gryffindor common room had lapsed into silence, punctuated only by the ceiling-rattling snores of Neville Longbottom. Bloody hell, that boy snored like an elk. Wasn’t there a charm for him that would fix that?
He slipped his hand under his pillow, cupping the little bottle that lay there. Slughorn had fixed his potion, declaring it would have the desired effects. There had been a look of pity in the watery eyes that had riled Harry more than Draco’s continued snide comments. This was just great. Now everyone would believe that the Boy Who Lived was the Boy Who Couldn’t Get It Up.
Well, sod that. He’d grown up with ridicule, scorn, contempt and fear from people around him before and he’d learned to shrug it off. Whatever rumors Slughorn and Draco started among staff and students, he would handle it. Knowing the fickle memories of people, they’d forget about it in a few days anyhow.
He stroked his fingers over the glass, once more wondering if this were the right thing to do. He had lied about why he wanted the thing, after all. Well, maybe it wasn’t a total lie but it was close enough. Slughorn had concocted the potion thinking that it was meant to cure a condition, not that it was to counter another brew. Under such circumstances, might it not accidentally poison Severus instead?
Maybe it might be better to talk to someone about this. He could confess to Hermione and Ron about who his mysterious boyfriend was. Even if it was betraying Severus’s trust, he knew it would go no further than those two.
He had trusted them with his life and his secrets. Why not this? They might have good advice about the problem--well, Hermione would. He wasn’t sure Ron would recover; he was still reeling from the my-best-mate-is-gay revelation.
No, Hermione would be dead set against using the anti-anti-lust potion. She would say it was dishonest, wrong and a plain bad idea. Ron would agree, if only because he didn’t want to see Harry wasting his time with the greasy git.
Reluctantly withdrawing his hand, he decided there was no hurry either way. He would think about this in the morning when his head was clearer.
__________
His head was no clearer. And the latest rumor to sweep the castle was just as bad as he’d feared. Whispers followed him. He intercepted various considering stares at his crotch and pitying looks were everywhere.
Oddly enough, the attention from girls increased. He had all sorts of females fluttering around him, each one promising that she and she alone could be the one to cure his little “problem”. He would never understand girls, no matter how often Hermione explained.
As to be expected, the Slytherins speculated in loud voices about how much of a limp prize he was between the sheets whenever he was around them. Harry ignored them all. There was only one Slytherin who truly worried him for those shadowed eyes missed nothing.
The man knew very well he wasn’t impotent. Sooner or later he would corner Harry, demanding to know the source of the gossip, and Harry would have to come clean or invent a plausible story to explain it. Then again he could just shrug it off as a wild tale invented by Draco Malfoy. During second year, everyone had thought he was Petrifying people and that had turned out to be a total crock.
He had to get rid of that potion before Severus found it on his person. The man wouldn’t search him but accidents had a way of happening. With Harry’s luck, he’d drop it or it would fall out of his pockets. Severus would snatch it up and quickly figure out what it did and who it was for. He wasn’t a brilliant Potions master for nothing.
Harry ducked into the boys’s loo and let out a yelp. Floating in mid-air was Moaning Myrtle. She had been staring hopefully at the door until he entered. Her shoulders slumped in disappointment when she saw him. “Oh, it’s only you,” she muttered in dreary tones.
“Myrtle! What are you doing in the boys’s bathroom?” Harry asked. “Is the girls’s loo flooded or what?”
“I travel all around the castle, as you know, Harry Potter,” she retorted, her lips pulling down in a frown.
He flushed. He vividly remembered her intrusion during the second challenge in the Triwizard Tournament. Having a girl in the prefects’s bathroom with him while he’d been naked had been really embarrassing, even if she was dead.
“I know. But this bathroom is for boys. What are you doing here?”
“None of your business,” she answered sullenly.
Her disappointment struck him. “You were waiting for someone else, weren’t you? One of the other boys. Why?”
When it was clear he wasn’t leaving, she sighed. “Not all boys think I’m ugly, dreary or boring, you know. This boy is rather nice.”
Harry tried to think of a boy, any boy, who would tolerate the presence of Moaning Myrtle. “Is this boy another ghost, Myrtle?” he asked. He’d never heard of a boy ghost. All of the other specters haunting Hogwarts were adults, not counting the poltergeist Peeves.
She glared at him. “No. He’s very much alive. He’s handsome, sensitive and he’s not afraid to cry. He’s got a roblem and he confides in me. He doesn’t avoid me like I’ve got the plague.”
Harry blurted, “He isn’t imaginary, is he, Myrtle?” He didn’t know if ghosts could go cracked after they died. Nearly Headless Nick seemed all right although he would look at people consuming food with an intensity that was a little scary. Maybe long years of haunting a bathroom could do funny things to the mind.
This time her glare was positively murderous. “He’s NOT imaginary! I told you, he’s a real, live boy! He’s not a meanie, like most. He’s funny, smart, sweet and he’s in real pain. He understands what it is to suffer and be friendless and alone.
She could have been describing him before he came to Hogwarts. Except for the funny, smart, handsome bits. “Who is he, then?”
Myrtle opened her mouth before snapping it shut again. “I can’t tell you. H-He made me promise not to let anyone know about him.”
“Know that he was crying? Yeah, not the sort of thing boys would want anyone to know.” Harry shook his head. He felt a kind of kinship with this unknown boy when he thought about himself and his Prince. Seemed silent suffering among blokes was the form at Hogwarts.
He glanced at the hovering ghost in front of him. Myrtle had been a real wet blanket when she was alive. Death had sealed her in her mopey personality, condemning her never to grow up and haunt the watery plumbing of Hogwarts forever. What must it be like, to be trapped in such a miserable situation forever?
She was ignoring him, once more staring at the door with hopeful anticipation. He cleared his throat and when she glanced at him he said, “Myrtle, I’m sorry I haven’t been around more.”
“That’s all right,” she said in hollow tones. “I’ve learned not to trust boys.”
“I mean, I want you to know that I understand. I know I might not be dead or crying, but…I get it.” He shrugged, shifting from one foot to the other.
She gazed at him without answering, her eyes behind her misty glasses blank and impenetrable. Then she resumed her vigil.
Feeling that he was intruding on her, he edged out of the bathroom. It wasn’t until he was on his way to Transfigurations that he realized he had forgotten to empty out the potion.
__________
“Harry,” Hermione whispered. “I found out about her.”
“Her who?” Harry blinked. He was alternating between tucking in his turnips and trying not to stare at Severus. The man was his typically forbidding self at the Head Table. His face looked drawn and thinner but maybe that was Harry’s imagination.
“Eileen Prince. I looked her up in Nature’s Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy.”
“Sirius’s folks are in that book, aren’t they?” Ron asked.
Hermione nodded. She told Harry, “Eileen Prince married one Tobias Snape, a Muggle…”
“What?!” Ron yelped, nearly choking on a piece of steak. Harry glared at him and he swallowed hurriedly.
Hermione barreled on. “They had only one child…guess who?”
“Severus Snape,” Harry answered dully.
She nodded. “That’s right.”
“So the Half-Blood Prince…is Snape?” Ron shot an involuntary glance towards the Head table.
At that moment, Severus looked up and caught Harry’s eye. If a look could be said to hold a thousand conflicting emotions, this was it. The man wanted him. Wanted him and hated that he wanted him. Severus suffered and doped himself up and kept himself at a distance because he thought it was wrong to want Harry.
Part of Harry accepted that it wasn’t his fault, at least not entirely. A bigger part whispered this was no more than what he always got. He had been hated at home but that hadn’t prevented Uncle Vernon from raping him until the threat of an escaped convict for a godfather had caused him to back off.
Harry knew people would want to fuck him. They just couldn’t bring themselves to love him or care. Why should Severus Snape be any different? He’d had Lucius Malfoy, for Christ’s sake. Why would he want Harry?
In spite of his assurances to Harry, actions spoke louder than words. Harry had seen the love and need in that young Severus when he was with Lucius. There was none of that with Harry. Pleasure given and shared but with a heavy heaping of loathing and guilt ladled in did not make for a happy relationship.
Harry broke eye contact. Ron was still wallowing in the discovery of the Prince’s true identity, too stunned to claim any triumph over Hermione. Hermione however was looking at him with that narrow concentrated stare that told Harry she was coming to some very uncomfortable conclusions. She smiled at him but said nothing more.
Suddenly Harry heard a familiar voice hiss at Ron. “Budge over, Ron. I want to talk to Harry.”
Ron glared at his little sister, the effect spoiled by the fact that his cheeks were bulging with food. “Watfor, Giddy?”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Ron. It’s really not attractive to the ladies,” Ginny smirked. She elbowed her brother in the ribs. He spluttered and spat out a chunk of potato. It made him flinch away and Ginny took the opportunity to slide in between him and Harry.
“Harry, first off I want to say I’m sorry about the Amortentia. I-I just wanted you to notice me. It wasn’t meant to be permanent or anything.”
Harry shrugged. He understood Ginny’s motivations. Hadn’t he planning a similar ploy on Severus? Ron wasn’t so forgiving.
“You should be sorry. If Mum ever found out, she’d send a Howler so bad your ears would be ringing for a week!”
“Ron, go suck face with Moaning Myrtle!” Ginny spat. Hermione choked back laughter but Ginny didn’t notice. The redheaded girl turned back to Harry. “I’ve been hearing the stories around the castle…”
His cheeks flamed. This, he did NOT need. “Ginny, it’s rubbish, okay? I’m not impotent.”
“If you say so.” She ran a critical eye over him. “But if you really do have problems in that area, I want you to know I’m willing to help.” She laid a hand on his arm and he fought back a shudder. He didn’t want to offend Ron by shoving off his little sister. But obviously Ginny didn’t know about his gay status and he wasn’t sure what he could do to discourage her without telling her the truth.
Ron hissed in his sister’s ear. “What about Michael Corner? I thought you were keen on him.”
Ginny’s mouth twisted in distaste. “Michael drools when he kisses. Besides, he snores.”
Ron’s eyes became comically wide. “How do you know he snores?!?”
“That’s none of your business, Ron,” Ginny shot back. Her smile at Harry was dazzling and she leaned over to wipe away a speck of jam on his cheek. “You don’t have to give your answer right away, Harry. Just give it some thought. Okay? The offer’s on the table.”
“Oh, no, it’s not and neither is my sister,” Ron growled.
Ginny turned a deaf ear to her brother, graced Harry with another smile and left to return to her place.
Her absence left a void of silence. Harry gave Ron a pleading look. “Ron, you know I’d never do that with Ginny. I’ve already explained…”
“I know, mate. I just wonder when my sister turned into the Hogwarts broom,” Ron answered with such a vicious stab at his potato it jumped off his plate and went skidding on to the table.
“Ron, when are you going to accept that your sister is growing up? She hasn’t been with a bunch of boys, only two, and she’s had a crush on Harry since she was 10. If this really bothers you that she’s latched on to him, maybe you can take her aside and tell her the truth. That is, if you don’t object, Harry?” Hermione added.
“Why should I?” Harry asked wearily. “What’s one more story about me after all the other ones flying around? With my luck, the news about my playing for the home Quidditch team would be the one thing no one would believe. Feel free, Ron.”
Ron turned a peculiar shade of green. “Have a discussion with my little sister about my best mate’s sexuality? Like hell I will, Harry. You can tell her yourself.”
Harry sighed. Months ago, Ron had been in a half-hearted relationship with Lavender Brown, trying to get experience at kissing. His efforts had put a severe strain on his friendship with Hermione and, by extension, Harry as well. Having tired of Lavender’s clinging, sugary attentions, Ron had finally managed to get rid of her but not without a terrible row with the disappointed girl. Naturally, he wouldn’t want to have another talk with an amorous female, even if that girl was his own sister.
Stifling a grimace, Harry thought about how screwed up love made people. Fighting Voldemort would be a hell of a lot less complicated than all this.
The subject of love turned his thoughts in a predictable direction. He wanted to look at Severus again. But with both Ron and Hermione staring at him he didn’t dare. He therefore missed the expression of thunderous fury on the DADA professor’s face.
If he had seen it, he would have realized no anti-anti-lust potion would have been necessary.

TBC
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The Way of the Patronus