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Anularius	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Snape Views: 11886 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Nine—Down With a Bump
            Harry sighed and rubbed his chin as he stared at the closed door of Snape’s Potions lab. He had discovered one way that this younger Snape and the one he’d known were the same, perhaps the most important one: when they decided to throw you out of a room, you stayed thrown out.
            Harry had managed to get into the lab a few hours before, when all he’d had to defeat was a simple locking charm. He’d only had time to open his mouth and ask if they could talk before Snape had spun on his heel and gestured with his wand, and Harry had gone flying back out, nearly followed by the door. Harry had hit his head on the far wall and scrambled to his feet, shaking off the pain.
            It was the aftermath of Occlumency lessons all over again.
            Now, though, Harry really did have to go in there and get him, if he wouldn’t come out on his own. Dumbledore’s head was floating in the Floo, and he had asked Harry in a polite, pleasant voice to summon “dear Severus.” He had stayed there while Harry went over and knocked on the door of the lab, only to leap back with his hand stinging. He had never heard of a spell like that that gave no warning before it struck, but it figured Snape would know one.
            “You seem to have had a row,” Dumbledore observed patiently behind him.
            “Yeah, we did,” said Harry absently, and considered the door again. He wondered if the answer to opening the door was really as super-subtle as he was considering it. Yes, Snape knew wards and charms that he didn’t, but still…
            “I have found,” Dumbledore said, and paused until Harry turned around to look at him, “that genuine remorse is often the best way to make up for one’s part in a row.”
            Harry turned back to the door and leaned as near as he could. There were some snakes carved into the stone, and he didn’t want Dumbledore to hear the words if they happened to come out in Parseltongue. Harry still wasn’t always good at knowing when he was speaking it. “I’m sorry,” he breathed.
            There was a tremble, a shiver, and some ward or spell that Harry hadn’t noticed before, something that seemed like part of the air, dissolved from off the front of the door. Harry blinked, nodded back at Dumbledore, and reached for the handle, still half-convinced that Snape would appear and throw him out again.
            But when he opened the door, it was to see Snape standing by the far wall, near a window that looked out into the green depths of the lake. Harry leaned in, then stepped in when there was no immediate retaliation, and said, “The Headmaster wants to talk to you.”
            “He was the one who gave you the key to get past the door as well, I suppose,” said Snape, and his voice was utterly indifferent. “Since you wouldn’t try to figure it out on your own.” He looked at Harry over his shoulder, and Harry winced. The look in his eyes wasn’t as raw as the eyes of the fifteen-year-old Snape in that Pensieve memory had been, but that was the only thing that Harry could compare this one to.
            “I thought there would be a pretty nasty spell waiting for me if I tried!” Harry objected. He winced at the further glare Snape shot him, but at least he knew better how to deal with this. “You used to know some nasty jinxes and hexes.”
            Snape straightened up. “That gives me part of the answer of what happened to me in your time.”
            “What, you think you died for lack of company?” Harry snapped, and then froze. He had used past tense in the first sentence, as well as this one.
            “Yes,” said Snape, and he went on gazing at Harry. “I don’t think you killed me, though. You have a certain amount of rashness, but also a certain amount of decency. I don’t think you would have ever allowed yourself to sleep with me if you were my murderer.”
            Harry took a deep breath. “I didn’t cause your death. You can’t take too much from my words, or read too much into them. Anyway, don’t you want to go out there now and see what Dumbledore wants?”
            Snape moved a hand. “He’ll tell me when I go out there. I want to consider the phenomenon in front of me: a Gryffindor with the talents of a Slytherin, and the utter lack of tact that a Ravenclaw might have when discovering some new rare book.”
            “Sorry for what I said,” Harry said tensely, and wound his fingers around a cord on the dressing gown he’d borrowed. Snape’s, of course. “But I’m not in the habit of making false promises.”
            “You are not in the habit of making any of them, when it comes to me, are you?” Snape spoke in a flat, musing voice. Harry hoped that meant he was getting over his snit and accepting that Harry couldn’t stay for all sorts of reasons that had to do with the timeline and history and excellent things like that. “Or keeping them, if you are?”
            Harry held his breath for a second, because it stopped the angry response that he would otherwise have given right away. “I made some promises to the Snape I knew that I broke,” he said. “I kept others, and I was able to do—things that he wanted me to do. I don’t see why we need to let it control the way you think of me. After all, you keep pointing out that you’re not him, and I’m not the baby who lives somewhere in the Muggle world right now.” He kept from saying that he lived with Petunia, just in case this wild and reckless Snape decided that the Dursleys were worth a visit.
            Snape paced in front of him for a moment. Then he turned around and said abruptly, “How much are you in the habit of doing something like this?”
            “What? Time travel?” But Harry sighed and yielded when he saw the way that Snape stared at him. “Sleeping with chance-met people? Not much. But I did—do—want you, and what you said was very convincing.”
            “Ah.”
            Harry looked at him sharply, because Snape had said that in a voice that made him worry, but Snape just looked off into the distance with his eyes half-lidded and waved a hand at Harry when he tried to say something. “I’m concentrating,” he said, and spun away from Harry to cross into the outer room where Dumbledore waited.
            Harry rolled his eyes and followed. At least he wasn’t the only one who was baffled and a little uncomfortable here, although he wished that Snape’s discomfort hadn’t gone in the direction of actual pain.
*
            “How soon will you need this potion?” Snape spoke in a quiet voice that made Harry look up.
            Dumbledore and Snape had been talking about potions in an abstract way. Harry had tuned them out a little while ago, and picked up a book from the end table that was, miraculously, not about brewing. It seemed to be about ways to combine wards, and while Harry couldn’t get deeply into it, it served to distract him from a conversation that had long ago gone past his own elementary knowledge.
            Now, though, with the way Snape narrowed his eyes at Dumbledore and Dumbledore smiled back in that gentle manner that Harry knew from his own time when he wanted to put someone off the scent…
            “Tomorrow,” Dumbledore replied.
            Snape jerked up, cursing. “When I have to find ingredients in the Forbidden Forest, dry and pickle them, and make sure that the fire is hot all evening?” he demanded. “Are you out of your mind, old man?”
            “Oh, no,” said Dumbledore quietly. “I think it would do you good, my boy. And in the meantime, I could entertain young Mr. Cantor so he didn’t get into trouble while you were brewing.”
            Harry perked up a little. Although keeping the truth from Dumbledore might be difficult with all the twisty questions he would probably ask—he was worse than Snape, in his way—it would be nice to talk to someone else. And he could get used to seeing Dumbledore alive again. Apologize, maybe, in a way, for doubting him, the way he had right after Dumbledore died and he was thinking that his plans were wild and useless. He started to nod and say that he wanted to do that, since he was pants at Potions anyway.
            “I will require Mr. Cantor’s help to get your potion finished on time, Albus,” said Snape, in a freezing voice that iced over all future discussion. “And I do not trust you with him.”
            “My dear boy,” said Dumbledore, shaking his head with a quiver of amusement in his voice. “I promise you, while Mr. Cantor is a beautiful young man, I’m past that time of my life right now. And I have no intention of entering into rivalry with a friend,” he added, sounding a little more serious.
            Harry flushed utterly red. “Listen, neither of you need to do anything,” he said as hastily as possible, drawing Snape’s snarling attention and Dumbledore’s smile. “I’m perfectly fine on my own for a few hours while Severus does what he needs to do.” It was an effort of concentration to get Snape’s first name to come out instead of his last, but at least he remembered to do it.
            “No, you’re not,” said Snape, and stepped in front of him, reaching down and cupping his chin with one hand. “Not when I want to talk to you.”
            Harry reached that the touch didn’t affect him like this. It still sent warm currents racing through his blood, and he had to clear his throat and look away. Snape was smirking when he did turn back, probably proud that he possessed the ability to make Harry do that.
            “Well, then, in that case, I can see that my help isn’t needed,” said Dumbledore, and he reached out as if he was going to close the Floo connection from his side. “By noon tomorrow, remember, Severus.”
            Snape nodded fiercely at the fireplace, as if he wanted Dumbledore to simply go away, and then turned back around and frowned at Harry.
            “What is this potion?” Harry asked. “And why do you think I need to stay with you?”
            “I don’t want you to tell things to Albus that you refuse to tell me,” Snape said, folding his arms and giving Harry a frown harsh enough to make him flinch again. “I want to talk to you. And I want you to help me brew.”
            “Look, I don’t think you know exactly what I’m good at,” said Harry, raising his hands in self-defense. “But Potions isn’t one of those things. If you want me to help, then the poor person who needs this potion is going to be vomiting for the next seven days.”
            Snape laughed harshly, and bent down so that he could put his big nose right in Harry’s face. Harry let his eyes cross, and Snape drew back, although he left one hand cupped in the air as if he was going to grasp and twist something invisible.
            “The potion is a healing one,” said Snape. “Albus told me that a friend of his, one who’s lived a long time, has acquired a stubborn infection. Unfortunately, the magic that preserves his life means he can’t take most ordinary potions.”
            Harry blinked. “Would this person be Nicholas Flamel?”
            Snape froze for a second, and Harry wondered if he would berate him for knowing the secret, even though Snape ought to be happy that he did. Instead, he laughed and pulled Harry out of the chair.
            Harry caught his breath. Being this close to Snape was dizzying, even with his head bent down so he was looking at Harry from beneath his chin this time. Still, he was smiling, and his fingers were exploring casually down Harry’s shoulders and sides.
            “Another thing you know,” Snape whispered. “Another thing that you have no business knowing, and that I won’t ask you about.” His fingers tightened on Harry’s hips for a second, and Harry’s face flamed as he remembered the way Snape had held him there while he thrust into him.
            If Snape was interested in embarrassing Harry, however, he didn’t let on as he released him and retreated a few steps. “Yes, it is Nicholas Flamel. And the potion is simple to brew, in a way. At least, I can do it quickly. But I meant what I said about needing the multiple ingredients from the Forbidden Forest and needing time to prepare them.” He sighed a little. “You’ll come with me because you can at least pick what I tell you to pick, dice what I tell you to dice, and provide me company.”
            “And that way, I won’t sneak off and try to destroy the Horcrux and return to my own time while your back is turned, right?” Harry muttered. It made sense. He just didn’t know why he had to suffer through this. Snape’s weird obsession.
            Snape raised his eyebrows and nodded. “If you think you could return to your own time safely or happily while this business between us is still unsettled, then you are considerably less intelligent than I thought you were.”
            “Maybe I am,” Harry said, and met Snape’s open stare. “I’m not nearly as special as you think I am, anyway. You’re mistaken if you think that I could do half the things you believe I can, if you want more from me than a few hours of athletic sex.”
            Snape gave him a serene smile. “And why would I pay attention to that when you tell it to me? Either you are telling the truth and so are too stupid to realize your own value, or you’re lying and trying to convince me to let you go so you can return to your own time without guilt. Either way, I have no reason to listen.”
            “Listen,” Harry snapped, flushing even as he did so. “I’m not my mum. I can’t be. There’s no way this can be healthy, even assuming that I wanted to stay and let you do whatever you wanted to me.”
            “You speak as though I would cut you up and deposit your body parts in some unnamed potion,” Snape murmured, his hand briefly closing on Harry’s hip again. “I won’t, I promise you. The potion would at least have a name, and be one that needed the finest ingredients.”
            “Snape—”
            “You haven’t said my first name sincerely yet, you know,” said Snape, and looked steadily at him for a moment. “I’d like you to.”
            “Why? So you can replay it in an embarrassing way in front of Dumbledore?”
            Snape smiled again. Harry wondered why all his attempts to infuriate the man and make him let go only ended up amusing him. Harry was sure that wouldn’t have been the case if he had tried to sound this way in front of the younger Snape. “I hardly expect you to moan it. I want to hear what it sounds like, and nothing else.”
            Harry rolled his eyes. It was all too clear that he wasn’t getting away right now anyway, promises of horrible havoc wreaked on potions or not, so he nodded reluctantly and muttered, “Severus.”
            Snape’s breath caught, and his eyes brightened, and for a single moment, he looked dazedly at Harry, as though that had been spoken in the heat of sex after all. Harry stifled the temptation to wave a hand in front of his eyes and make him snap out of it.
            “That was something I wanted to hear,” Snape said, and then moved away from Harry towards the door of the room, cocking his head. “We need to go into the Forbidden Forest first. Will you come of your own free will, or do I need to draw you?”
            Harry frowned, considered for a second what that might mean, and then shrugged and caught up with Snape. “You’re still strange. Even if you don’t turn into the man I knew, I thought you ought to know that.”
            “Strangeness,” said Snape, still walking as steadily as a machine through the corridors of Hogwarts towards the outer gates, “might get me what I want where convention would not.”
            He caught Harry’s eye. Harry looked away with his gut churning, and made sure that he made no noise when Snape’s hand fell on his wrist, as if accidentally.
*
            Snape’s list of ingredients seemed to cover most of a scroll, even though Harry hadn’t seen him write anything down when he was talking to Dumbledore. The scroll was just suddenly there, in his hands, as they worked their way through clumps of thicket, groups of trees standing so close to each other that Harry didn’t know how a shadow could get through them, and green trails of moss.
            Snape saw him looking at the trails, and pulled Harry away and towards a large tree, almost an oak, that he bent down and gathered a white piece of bark from. “Don’t follow the trails,” he warned him.
            “What made them?” Harry took another look at the trails, wondering. They were all completely smooth and green and the same width. He would have thought it was the wheels of a Muggle vehicle if he didn’t know better.
            “Serpents.”
            Harry blinked and turned around. “Some kind that my Parseltongue wouldn’t save me from?”
            Snape snorted, looked at his list again, and rolled the scroll up with a snap of his wrist, depositing it in his pocket again as he made his way towards the depths of the Forest. “They might listen to you and laugh at you for a bit before they lunged. But no, I don’t think anything in the bloody Forest is safe from them.”
            And he refused to say anything more about the snakes, no matter how Harry pestered him. He just had to look at the green trails and wonder as they left them and went more and more into the lightless part of the Forest.
            Harry cast a nonverbal Lumos as soon as the darkness got too thick. Snape tensed ahead of him, and Harry wondered if that had been the wrong thing to do. He’d been in the Forest plenty of times, but not during this time period, and he might not have gone this deep.
            Snape cast his own light spell too, though, and turned around. Harry tried to avoid the sight of his face, so strange and shadowed with the way he held his wand.
            “You have no idea what it does to me,” Snape whispered, “to see you more curious about the animals that made those trails than curious about me. The man you slept with. The first man you slept with, if I’m reading your signals aright.”
            Harry scowled. “You’re the only person I know who would try to set up some sort of competition between those things.”
            “Nevertheless.”
            Harry rolled his eyes. “This is another one of those questions you just want me to answer because you want the answer, right? Because you’re so interested in hearing it? Like the way you were interested in hearing me say your first name?”
            Snape didn’t move. He only stood there with his wand blazing away and his eyes on Harry.
            Harry told himself he was giving in because, with Snape so distracted, something was more likely to sneak up on them and try to make a meal out of them, but honestly, he didn’t know the reason why for certain. “All right. I’m curious because I haven’t seen that kind of snake before, and I wanted to know if I could do something about it if one of them attacked me. But you—I know there’s nothing I can do to make you hurt less than you do.”
            Snape’s eyes fluttered fast. Then he said, in a deep murmur, “You have an interesting notion of what you can and cannot do. And what matters.”
            “You either want me to stay with you, which I can’t promise,” Harry continued relentlessly, “or you want me to leave and come back, which I can’t do either, and which probably wouldn’t satisfy you. Be honest, Snape—”
            Snape lifted his head, and as irritated as Harry was, there was a pride in that motion he had to acknowledge.
            “Fine, Severus, be honest,” he said, and tried to ignore the pleased, close-mouthed smile Snape gave him. “That wouldn’t satisfy you. Some kind of permanent relationship would, but I’ve explained the reasons why I can’t give you that. And a fling wouldn’t be good for either of us. It’s best if I leave now, now that we’ve slept together and had that one experience.”
            Snape’s eyes were distant, as though he was listening to someone else, maybe Dumbledore, and not Harry at all. “You will not remain a little longer and give me the chance to convince you some more?”
            “No offense,” said Harry, and Snape stiffened in a way that meant he was probably going to be offended anyway, “but I think sex can’t be better than the time we already had. So more sex isn’t going to convince me.”
            Snape gave a small, pleased sound. “I was not talking about that. I was talking about conversations. Doing things like brewing potions together and seeing how well we fit. Letting me into secrets that you might as well reveal because you’ve revealed so much already. All of that.”
            Harry flung his arms up. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you. I already told you that I’m not good at brewing, it’s not something I enjoy, and it’s not something that’s going to bond me further to you. And I’ve already been an idiot. Telling you more secrets would just involve me being an idiot some more. Why should I do that?”
            “Because,” said Snape, his voice deep and calm, “you don’t want to hurt me. I don’t think you want to hurt anyone,” he added, as Harry opened his mouth to argue that, “but I am the one in front of you. And you owe me for the jarring end that you put to our interlude earlier.”
            Harry blinked for long moments. He wondered what he would say, what he should say. All that reasonable, common-sense arguments seemed to make so little sense, at least when it came to the way that Snape was approaching things. Harry looked at him and his common sense went out the window.
            As if I didn’t know that already.
            Harry opened his mouth. He thought he could try appealing with Snape’s first name, not under protest, and seeing whether that would win him anything. If Snape affected him, he ought to be able to affect Snape.
            But that was when Harry’s earlier guess proved right, and something large and black and cat-like leaped out of the Forbidden Forest onto Snape’s back. As it pinned him to the ground, it raised one paw that seemed designed to grab his throat and bend his head back and choke him.
            Harry charged into battle. And the traitorous thought jumped up and down in the back of his mind.
            This is one way to avoid brewing a bloody potion, anyway.
*
Sera21: I think that shows Snape’s obsession, more than anything else. That he happened to be right is mostly irrelevant.
Severus1snape: Thanks! I hope that you continue to enjoy. And yes, poor Snape.
LeaniaSTL: Severus was hoping for more time to convince Harry, yes, but he also thought Harry would be more affected than to utterly reject him that way.
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