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Chapter Text

The stone corridor was quiet, late enough that even the portraits had dozed off in their frames. Not that Harry could see any of that—this particular passage didn't rate high enough for decor of any kind. Given, that was because it was a secret passage and the portraits probably declined the placement since it would have entailed tattling if they saw any students out of bed. He was leaning against the cold wall of the narrow, disused hallway between the History of Magic stairwell and the lower dungeons, lazily tracing dots on the Marauder’s Map with the tip of his wand. The corridors shifted and ticked with occasional footfalls—other professors wrapping up their patrols, the Bloody Baron gliding along the fourth-floor landing. Peeves floating around the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom—Harry made a mental note to remove any pranks before his first class.

Nothing urgent. Nothing cursed. Nothing exploding. Just another quiet night.

It had been years since Voldemort’s defeat, and sometimes Harry still caught himself expecting the next catastrophe. The final battle had almost been... too easy. Not bloodless—never that—but it had ended. The kind of ending that leaves a person blinking into silence.

And then, nothing. No grand destiny. No master plan. He'd floated for a while. Spent a few weeks with Ron and Hermione doing absolutely nothing of use. Took a few tentative steps toward the Auror program, only to stall the moment he walked into orientation. It hadn’t felt right. Not after everything. He'd had enough of chasing shadows.

Then McGonagall had offered him the Defense post.

He'd said yes mostly because he didn’t know what else to say. But teaching... teaching had slotted into place like he'd been built for it. It made sense in a way nothing else had. Maybe it was because of the DA in fifth year. Maybe it was because he finally got to build something instead of breaking it. He wasn’t sure. But it worked.

A flicker on the map drew his eye—two names, just rounding a corner near the Hufflepuff common room.

Callum Vexley. Thalia Morven.

Out of bounds and heading back to safety, their dormitory.

Of course they were.

He sighed, pushed off the wall, and slipped out of the passage in time to intercept them at the next junction.

They didn’t see him at first—too busy whispering and giggling. Thalia had something in her hands that sparkled ominously.

“Having fun?”

Both students shrieked. Thalia dropped the object, which turned out to be some kind of enchanted snapper rigged to let off purple smoke. Harry caught it mid-air with a swift wave of his wand.

“I believe curfew is a few hours past,” he said dryly.

Callum blinked at him, dumbstruck. Thalia squared her shoulders like she might argue.

“Ten points from Slytherin,” came a new voice, smooth as ever. “And detention, if I find so much as a whisper of ash on the floor tomorrow.”

Snape emerged from the corridor behind them, robes billowing just enough to remind them of their place. The two students stiffened like they'd been Petrified.

“Back to the dormitory,” he said. “Now.”

They went.

Snape turned to Harry, arching an eyebrow. “Shall we find whatever trap they managed to lay before it maims a first-year?”

Harry grinned. “We could also just... leave it. See if anyone notices.”

Snape gave him a look.

“What?” Harry said. “The house rivalries are all good fun these days. Nothing like when I went here. No Dark Lords looming over one house like a bloody thundercloud.” The last came out surprisingly bitter—Harry didn't believe in carrying hatred for dead people and times past, but every once in while, the memories reared up in his mind.

Snape's lip twitched, not quite a smile. "It wouldn't do for the headmistress to find out we knew of sabotage and did nothing about it," he said, gesturing for Harry to follow as he moved in the direction of the Hufflepuff common room. Harry couldn't quite repress the smile as he fell into step beside his former professor.

"Aw come on," Harry said, murmuring a quiet "mischief managed" before tucking the Marauder's Map into a pocket of his robes. "The pranks are a great way to assess untapped magical ability."

From the corner of his eye, he caught Snape's raised eyebrow.

"Unless it's another Weasley's Wizard Wheezes product," he drawled. "That's just cheating."

"The cheaters are worth watching too," Harry said, his grin turning devious. "If they cheat now, chances are they'll cheat later."

“You look like hell, by the way,” Snape said, tone casual but too sharp to be teasing.

Harry snorted. “Nice to see you too.”

“I mean it.” Snape slowed his pace a fraction, just enough that Harry noticed. “You’ve either taken to sleeping on gravel or you haven’t been sleeping at all.”

Harry shrugged, avoiding his gaze. “Not much, no. Doesn’t matter.”

“You could have asked for a potion.”

“Could’ve,” Harry agreed, tone light. “Didn’t think the potions professor would have the time.”

That earned him a side-eye, flat and unimpressed. “You’ve been Head of House for three years, Potter. If I’d refused you a basic sedative, it would’ve made it into the staffroom gossip by Tuesday.”

Harry laughed under his breath. “I didn’t know you cared about gossip.”

“I care about not being asked idiotic questions about favoritism before breakfast.”

He paused, then gestured toward the next stairwell. “Come on. I’ll brew you a fresh dose.”

————

The potions classroom was quiet when they stepped inside, the familiar scent of charred herbs and lye still lingering in the air. A fresh stack of cauldrons sparkled along the far wall, scrubbed to a shine.

Harry gave them a snort. “Let me guess—Detention with Whitaker?”

Snape didn’t answer, but there was the faintest curl of amusement at the edge of his mouth as he retrieved the base mixture from a side cabinet. Carnelian Whitaker was one of Harry’s more dramatic Gryffindors—always trying to duel someone or sneak into the kitchens. Scrubbing cauldrons probably felt like the Cruciatus Curse to him.

While Snape began selecting ingredients, Harry wandered the perimeter. It was strange, seeing Snape brew without the looming threat of a public dressing down. Stranger still that it felt… Almost comfortable.

Much safer to pace. Harry eyed the setups laid out for the next day’s lessons. There were rows of bottled extracts, a neat list of instructions on the board in sharp block print, and a diagram halfway erased that looked like it involved slow-released antidotes.

“Fourth-years?” Harry guessed.

“Third,” Snape corrected. “The fourth-years will be working with controlled combustion mixtures. God help us all.”

Harry chuckled and leaned against one of the tables. He felt comfortable here in a way that surprised him, though maybe it shouldn’t. Snape wasn’t as sharp-edged these days, at least not around him.

It probably helped that Harry’d pulled his head out of his own arse in his final year of potions and proved it was surprisingly proficient. He’d never rival Snape, who more than deserved the title of Potions Master, but his seventh year work, earning him an O in his NEWT, had soothed the jagged edges between them well before Harry’s graduation.

The man was still bristly, still exacting—but the angles had softened with time.

As the potion brewed, Harry let himself feel how tired he actually was. The weight behind his eyes. Like his body knew relief was coming from the smell of chamomile and crushed valerian root permeating the room.

“I really didn’t think you’d offer,” he said eventually. “The potion.”

Snape glanced up from the simmering cauldron. “Because I loathe watching my colleagues fall apart at the seams? Shocking.”

Harry grinned. “No, because I figured you had better things to do than worry whether I’d finally sleep through the night.”

Snape made a low sound in his throat—not quite agreement, not quite denial. He adjusted the flame with a flick of his wand and set a timer charm to one side of the bench. “It’s a poor reflection on the staff if one of the Heads is visibly unraveling. Besides, you’re less irritating when rested.”

Harry barked a laugh, quick and honest. “So it’s selfish, then.”

“Obviously.”

Snape didn’t immediately return to the cauldron. He flicked his wand once to adjust the simmer, then turned toward Harry.

“It’ll steep for another twenty minutes. Ten to cool.”

Harry nodded, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Suppose I could go haunt the staffroom.”

“Or,” Snape said dryly, “you could have a drink.”

That earned a raised brow. “In your office?”

“In my sitting room,” Snape corrected, already striding toward the classroom door. “Down the hall.”

Harry followed without hesitation. “You have a sitting room?”

“You sound surprised.”

“I am.”

Snape’s private door was tucked behind a charmed alcove at the end of the hall, near the storage annex—out of view from the main thoroughfare. It recognized him immediately, swinging inward with a smooth rush of air.

Harry stepped in and paused.

It was... warm. That was his first thought. Not in temperature, necessarily—though the fire roaring in the hearth certainly helped—but in atmosphere. Dark-stained bookshelves lined the walls, bowed under the weight of ancient tomes and modern journals, some stacked sideways or dog-eared in defiance of what Harry had expected. A deep forest-green settee faced the fire, flanked by two wingback chairs that looked criminally comfortable. The lighting was low but golden, drawn from wall sconces that flickered like candlelight.

And the rugs—there were rugs, plush and layered and clearly meant for comfort over style. A small bar cart was tucked near the fireplace, furnished with a variety of bottles, a collection of heavy crystal tumblers and a tray of what looked suspiciously like charmed cooling stones.

As Snape stepped past him, Harry turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. “This is yours?”

Snape gave him a look that was more eyebrow than expression. “No, I’ve broken into some other professor’s private chambers for the pleasure of brewing in peace.”

Harry grinned. “I just—this is not what I expected from the dungeons.”

Snape didn’t answer. He was at the cart, selecting a bottle—no label. He poured two fingers’ worth into each glass and held one out to Harry without looking in his direction.

“Armagnac,” he said. “Don’t inhale too hard or it’ll ruin the flavor.”

Harry took it carefully. The glass was warm from Snape’s hand. He sniffed it anyway—curious—then winced and took a quick sip to cover it.

It burned, slow and steady, down the back of his throat. But the finish was soft. Deep. Like pepper and earth and something floral he couldn’t place.

He coughed once, then grinned again. “Still better than Firewhisky.”

Snape took a seat in one of the armchairs and didn’t disagree, sipping from his own glass.

Harry sank onto the settee, letting the fire soak into his bones. The Armagnac settled in his chest much the same way, warm and prickling, but not unpleasant. For the first time all day, the quiet didn’t feel like weight pressing on his shoulders.

Snape studied him for a moment over the rim of his glass before asking, “How are your classes progressing?”

Harry blinked. “My classes?”

“Your curriculum.” Snape swirled his Armagnac, the amber liquid catching the firelight. “Defense Against the Dark Arts. You’ve managed to retain the post for seven years—surely the honeymoon phase is coming to a close.”

Harry laughed into his glass. “You make it sound like I’m training a herd of blast-ended skrewts.”

Snape arched an eyebrow. “Am I wrong?”

“Not entirely.” Harry took another sip, savoring the burn. “They’re… good, actually. Better than I expected. The Slytherins especially. They’ve got a knack for shield work and spell chaining. More than a knack, really.” He glanced sideways at Snape. “Wouldn’t be shocked if they had some extra coaching along the way.”

Snape didn’t rise to the bait immediately. He set his glass down with deliberate care. “Slytherins have always been... pragmatic. Defense comes naturally to those accustomed to guarding their flanks.”

Harry smirked. “So you’re not denying it.”

“I see no need,” Snape replied smoothly. “Better a Slytherin who can disarm a hex properly than one who fumbles in panic.”

Harry let that sit for a beat, thinking about the green-robed students in his classes—sharp, clever, quick with their wands. Not like his own years at Hogwarts, when Slytherins carried suspicion like a banner. These ones were different. Or maybe Harry was.

“You know,” Harry said, softer, “they remind me more of you than of Malfoy.”

The fire popped, punctuating the silence.

Snape’s expression didn’t shift, but there was the faintest tightening around his eyes. He picked up his glass again, and Harry couldn’t tell if it was to mask a reaction or to end the conversation.

They sipped in silence for a while and Harry tried not to think about how strange it was—sitting in Snape’s private chambers, drinking decent liquor, talking about his curriculum like proper colleagues. Stranger still that it didn’t feel strange in the least.

When the timer charm chimed, soft but insistent, Snape set his empty glass on a side table.

“Reprieve is on the horizon,” he said, rising smoothly. “The brew should be finished.”

Harry drained the last of his own drink, the warmth lingering in his throat as he followed Snape back through the corridors. There was a bounce in his step that he contributed to the thought that he could finally get some rest in just a few more minutes—the classroom, the walk to his rooms, then blissful blackness.

The potion classroom was rich with the smell of steeped herbs when they returned. The cauldron on the bench shimmered faintly, the liquid inside a clear, silvery blue where the light from the torches touched it. Snape ladled it into a phial, corked it and affixed a neat label before crossing the room to hand it over.

Harry took it carefully. Their fingers brushed and he felt a warmth in his chest that had nothing to do with the Armagnac. He tried not to read into it. Tried not to look too long at Snape’s hands, or the way his sleeves were rolled to the elbow, or the almost warm look in his eyes.

“Thanks,” he said, softer than he meant to.

Snape’s dark eyes lingered on him for a beat too long before he inclined his head. “Try not to wake the entire castle with your snoring.”

Harry barked out a laugh, shook his head, tucked the vial into his robes.

At the door, Harry paused.

“Thank you,” he said again, emphatic, glancing over his shoulder.

Snape inclined his head. It wasn’t nothing.

Harry wasn’t sure why he’d said it again, except that he wanted to. Needed to. He held the silence a moment longer, then: “Night, Professor.”

“Goodnight, Potter.”

The walk back to his rooms was a blur, exhaustion rolling through him in waves now that he’d let himself admit to it. He barely managed to kick off his boots before uncorking the phial and downing it in one go. There was something bitter in the taste, but relief bloomed almost as soon as it gave way to the vague chamomile and vanilla, heavy and sure, pulling him toward the mattress.

He didn’t bother with lights or sheets.

Sleep caught him whole and fast, and he didn’t feel himself fall.

————

Severus resumed his patrol, the echo of Harry’s smile sticking to him like a burr. He shoved it aside, focusing instead on the faint hiss of torchlight and the shuffle of stone under his boots.

He didn’t get far.

The scream pierced the corridor like a knife.

He was moving before he thought, blasting open Harry’s door with a curse that splintered the frame.

Harry was thrashing in the bed, eyes wide and unseeing, mouth open in a howl that seemed to tear straight through his body. His hands were slick with blood, deep gouges carved by his own nails.

Severus froze. His breath caught at the sight—his potion, his suggestion, had done this.

Another scream, higher, nearly feral.

Filius burst through the ruined doorway next, wand already raised. “Restringo!” The spell snapped into place, binding Harry’s wrists and ankles to the mattress without pinning him cruelly. A second flick: “Silentium.” The raw noise cut off at once, leaving only the muffled rasp of breath.

Severus blinked, shaken back into himself. He flicked his wand, conjuring a cushioning charm beneath Harry’s skull to keep him from cracking it against the headboard with the violence of his thrashing.

“Merlin preserve us,” Filius muttered, his periwinkle night-robe catching sparks from the shattered wood.

Minerva arrived a heartbeat later, tartan nightdress flapping like battle armor. Her gaze swept the wreckage, then fixed on Severus. “What in heaven’s name happened?”

He stared at Harry, bound and bleeding, still fighting the restraints in silence. His throat felt tight. “Dreamless Sleep,” he managed. “It should have—” He cut himself off, unable to finish the obvious. It should have silenced everything.

Poppy bustled in behind them, wand already sparking with diagnostic charms. “Out of the way,” she said briskly.

They shifted back as she worked. Harry sagged at last, his body going slack, head settling against the charmed cushion. He passed out mid-struggle, collapsing into boneless quiet. Severus could only stand there, the taste of Armagnac still sharp in his mouth, staring at the ruin of a boy he had silently—privately—promised not to let fall apart again.

————

Harry came to slowly, as if surfacing from the lake. His scar was an aching, burning slash on his forehead.

The first thing he saw was the gauze wrapped tight around his hands. The second was Snape, seated stiffly beside the bed, expression just shy of fury.

“Before you attempt to speak,” he said coolly, “know that I am already aware of how very ‘not a big deal’ this all seems to you.”

Harry blinked at him. His throat was dry, raspy when he said, “I was gonna say hi, actually.”

A muscle jumped in the other professor’s jaw, but he leaned forward slightly, dark eyes sharp. “What do you remember?”

Harry frowned. “I—nothing. I never remember my dreams anymore.” He rubbed restlessly at his forehead with the mitts of his hands.

“That,” Snape said grimly, “is almost surely interference. Dreamless Sleep would not have permitted dreaming at all, let alone screaming fits. It drops the user immediately into deep sleep and suppresses the rise back to dreaming entirely. For one to break through—loud enough to wake half the castle—and leave you with nothing afterward…” He shook his head once. “It must be sabotage.”

Harry’s brow furrowed. He opened his mouth as if to argue, to demand the next step, but nothing came. The words stuck in his throat, hollowed out by exhaustion. He slumped back against the pillows, staring at the neat crisscross of gauze on his hands like the answer might be written there if he just looked hard enough.

For once, he had nothing. No plan. No next move. Just the bone-deep certainty that something had him in its grip and he couldn’t fight it, not even in sleep.

Severus watched him for a long moment, the fury in his face tempered into something quieter. Then he said, evenly, “We can investigate the matter together.”

Harry blinked, dragging his gaze up. “Together?”

Severus inclined his head, matter-of-fact. “Unless you prefer to collapse every fortnight until Pomfrey has you permanently confined.”

Despite the ache in his chest, Harry huffed out a short laugh. Relief, sharper than he expected, slipped in under the sound. “Yeah. Together.”

Chapter Text

Harry was released from the hospital wing with enough time to make it back to his classroom before his first class with the third year Ravenclaws and Slytherins. A record—his shortest stay, only four hours. His nails had been magically regrown after Snape left and the bandages on his hands removed—his arms needed more time, but that could be mostly hidden.

He made it through his morning classes by the grace of tea, adrenaline, and the sort of practiced teacher voice that could sound awake even when the brain behind it was fog. He didn’t mention the hospital wing. He didn’t have to; Pomfrey’s antiseptic charms clung to his robes like a second scent, and the older students kept sneaking glances at the bandages beneath his cuffs.

Between lessons, Snape cornered him outside the Defense classroom with two mugs of something that steamed like a potion and smelled like a patisserie.

“Drink,” Snape said, thrusting one into his hands. “You’re the color of unpolished pewter.”

Harry took a grateful swallow. “This isn’t coffee.”

“It’s better,” Snape said. “And you’ll manage not to vibrate out of your skin.”

Harry didn’t argue. He looked down at where his hands wrapped around the mug. “Pomfrey says I’ll live.”

“I had assumed as much when she failed to throw a sheet over you and start weeping,” Snape replied dryly. His gaze flicked to the corridor beyond. “After last bell, my office. We’ll begin with my collection.”

Harry nodded. It wasn’t a command, exactly. But it felt like relief.

———

Snape’s collection of books on varied subjects, vast as it was, was not limitless and they exhausted it within the week.

They began in the library’s Restricted Section on Friday afternoon with the weekend open before them and Pince’s sour expression watching them from a distance like she suspected they might deface the index with their eyes. Harry skimmed one text while Snape dismantled another with surgical focus, leaving neat stacks of notes between them and a tidy trail of parchment ribbons.

By evening they had a short list of what it wasn’t: not a standard curse-spiral, not a simple night terror hex, not a cursed object burrowed into the room. The wards on Harry’s quarters hadn’t been disturbed, the Dreamless Sleep phial had been perfectly brewed; Snape had checked it three times, like he wanted the potion to be at fault just so he could fix something with his hands.

“Could it be in me?” Harry asked, pushing back from the most recent tomb he could barely focus enough to parse. “Like a—” He gestured, and then hated himself for the vagueness.

“Possession is crude and would leave traces.” Snape set down his wand. “This reads as… parasitic. A thing that leverages your patterns and hides in the gaps.”

“‘Nocturnal maledictions,’” Harry murmured, thinking back over the massive quantity of information he’d been absorbing all week. “Cheery.”

“Most are boggarts in better outfits,” Snape said. “Harmless when named. Some, however, feed.” His finger tapped a paragraph. “On sustained repression. On shame.”

Harry’s mouth went dry. He set that book aside with careful fingers and reached for another. “Right. So: name it, starve it.”

“Not all curses yield to naming,” Snape cautioned. “But if this thing feeds on repression, an act of deliberate acknowledgement might at least starve it.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “So what, I say I’m having nightmares three times in front of a mirror?”

Snape gave him a thin look. “Not quite. But the literature suggests that some parasitic nocturnal magics can be disrupted by a simple, conscious declaration prior to sleep. Naming the fear as a construct denies it power.”

Harry leaned back in his chair, tapping the cover of his closed book with a knuckle. “So basically, bedtime affirmations.”

“Don’t make me regret involving you in the process,” Snape said, but there was no bite to it. He gathered his notes into a precise stack. “There are adjacent maladies with overlapping remedies—wards, verbal denials, physical tokens. We’ll attempt a series. Process of elimination.”

Harry tilted his head. “So I’m your weekend experiment.”

“You’re not my anything,” Snape said, voice cool, “but for the purposes of diagnosis—yes.”

———

They spent the next two days buried in tomes and scrolls.

Sometimes, Harry read passages aloud while Snape annotated with sharp, economical quill strokes. Sometimes they traded; sometimes Snape’s baritone carried through a particularly dense section while Harry scrawled shorthand in the margins.

By Saturday afternoon, they had assembled a shortlist:
-Naming denial — a clear declaration before sleep: This is a curse, not a truth. These dreams are not mine.
-Protective inscription — a rune drawn over the sleeper’s heart with ash and salt.
-Focus token — an object chosen to be held in hand through the night, charmed to act as an anchor if the mind faltered.

Harry eyed the list with raised brows. “So, affirmations, a doodle on my chest, and a teddy bear.”

Snape didn’t even look up. “You may call it what you like. We should attempt all three.”

So that evening, Harry found himself standing in his own quarters, awkward in a set of oft disdained pajamas he was grateful to have not tossed despite the stupid chibi lions disrupting the Gryffindor stripes, watching Snape set up an observation chair in the corner.

Harry rubbed the back of his neck. “This feels… weird.”

Snape didn’t look up from where he was carefully unpacking the supplies—a rune compound of ash and salt, a list of notable reactions to watch out for, a surprisingly muggle thermos that Harry assumed was filled with coffee.

“It’s just—” Harry found himself continuing, not quite sure what it just was. “I’m not used to—well—any of this.” He gestured pathetically around the room like that would explain everything.

Snape raised an eyebrow in his general direction without actually looking at him. “I’m sure groupies don’t exactly give you time to get ready before dragging you to bed,” he said mildly, almost absently.

Harry flushed, hot prickles crawling up the back of his neck. “Right, because that’s who I am,” he snapped, sharper than he meant. “Basking in the attention. Collecting conquests like Chocolate Frog cards.”

Snape finally looked up, eyes narrowing.

Harry swallowed, anger tangling with something more raw. “I’ve had people throwing themselves at me since I was fourteen—Merlin, girls, boys, none of them bothered hiding it. But I—” He broke off, raking a hand through his hair. “I never took any of them up on it. Not once. Not because I couldn’t, but because—”

His voice faltered, and for a moment he hated how small it sounded. “I didn’t want to be just another notch in someone’s bedpost. Or to start notching mine.”

Silence stretched.

Harry stared at the floor, wishing he could vanish into it. “So no, I’m not used to being watched while I get ready for bed. Or—hell—any of this. I usually just wear myself down until I pass out. It’s easier than admitting I don’t have a… normal life to come home to.”

He felt Snape’s gaze still on him, unreadable as ever.

The silence pressed at Harry’s ears until it felt unbearable. He risked a glance upward.

Snape was still watching him, but the sharpness had gone out of his expression. His eyes were narrowed not in disdain but in consideration, as though reevaluating something he’d filed away long ago and found no longer accurate.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter. “Then let’s not waste time with assumptions.”

Harry blinked. Shuffled sheepishly. Startled when a hand landed on his shoulder. He looked up into Snape’s face, surprised to find it not that far away—he wasn’t quite of a height with Snape, but he realized it had been a while since he’d had to look up at the man.

The same realization must have hit Snape. He took a step back. Harry missed the weight of the hand on his shoulder.

“Potter.” He blinked back at the older professor, not sure what was clenching in his chest. “Take off your shirt.”

“Sorry, what?” Harry spluttered, clenching his hands in the hem of the garment where it suddenly felt very protective, covering his body the way it did.

“The inscription,” Snape said evenly, gesticulating with his wand. “Ash and salt, keyed directly over the heart. Unless you’d prefer I attempt it through the fabric, although—” He paused, looking over Harry with a disdainful eye roll. “I imagine it would ruin the effect of the lions.”

Heat crawled up Harry’s ears. He tugged his shirt over his head, muttering, “You could’ve led with that.”

Snape ignored him. He dipped the tip of his wand into the small dish, the compound clinging like fine black powder. “Hold still.”

Harry sat rigid on the edge of the bed as the cool wand-tip touched his sternum. Snape drew with unhurried precision, each stroke firm but not rough. The rune glowed faintly as it took shape, a neat sigil of interlocking lines and curves that seemed to hum against his skin.

When Snape pulled the wand away, Harry exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“There,” Snape said. “One protective inscription.”

Harry glanced down at the faint shimmer before it sank into his skin. He half expected it to sting, but it didn’t. It just left him oddly aware of the space beneath his ribs, the thrum of his own heartbeat.

“Right,” Harry said, trying for levity. “One doodle done. Guess that leaves affirmations and the… teddy bear.”

He reached into the trunk at the foot of his bed. From it he drew a small, battered stuffed Kneazle, its button eyes slightly crooked and its fur patchy in places. He turned it over in his hands, suddenly reluctant to explain.

Snape’s gaze landed on it anyway. “That,” he said, “is your anchor?”

Harry cleared his throat. “Yeah. Ron gave it to me years back, when Rose was a toddler. He and Hermione had bought out half of Quality Kids’ Emporium, and this was her favorite but I blew it out of the water with a stuffed horntail that flew when she let it go.” He chuckled, running his fingers over the short nap of the stuffie. “Ron didn’t want this to get tossed with all the rest when they got disused.”

Snape didn’t comment. His silence was mercifully neutral, not mocking. He simply flicked his wand, and the Kneazle glowed faintly, keyed to Harry’s heartbeat.

“Hold it,” he said. “And the rest—out with it.”

Harry groaned, flopping back onto the pillows. “Right. Affirmations.” He raised his voice, half-mocking, half-resigned: “This is a curse, not a truth. These dreams are not mine.”

Snape muttered something under his breath—possibly “ridiculous”—but the rune over Harry’s sternum flared softly as he spoke.

Harry tightened his grip on the stuffed Kneazle and closed his eyes. He could feel Snape’s gaze like a weight, steady and clinical, from the chair at his bedside. It was mortifying. It was also… safe.

“Comfortable?” Snape asked, seating himself in the chair beside the bed.

“Like a kid on the world’s weirdest camping trip,” Harry muttered.

“Then sleep.”

Harry rolled his eyes, but surprisingly, obeyed.

———

Severus sat back in the chair, arms folded, eyes fixed on the ridiculous lion-striped pajamas. For a moment, he wondered if Potter had chosen them deliberately to bait him. But no—the embarrassment on his face earlier had been too unguarded. He truly slept in them.

The boy—no, the man—settled slowly, fidgeting with the stuffed Kneazle until his grip went slack. Severus let his gaze trace the shape of him: the length in his frame that hadn’t been there at seventeen, the breadth through shoulder and chest. Still lean, still wiry, but his muscles carried the quiet solidity of someone who no longer lived on adrenaline alone.

On the bed, Harry shifted, murmured something wordless into the pillow. His brow furrowed, smoothed, furrowed again. The stuffed Kneazle tumbled as he rolled onto his side, unconsciously pulling it back into his chest as he curled in the center of the bed.

He’d stopped being a boy years ago. Severus knew it, of course, but knowing and seeing were not the same.

The past week had made that impossible to ignore. The quiet intensity Harry brought to their research—leaning over a tome in Severus’s rooms, hair falling into his eyes, lip caught between his teeth as he skimmed. The irreverent spark when he’d pointed out some ludicrous marginalia in the Restricted Section that had actually made Severus laugh, unwilling though he was to admit it. The grim steadiness with which he’d accepted the prospect of parasitic magic feeding on his shame.

Not James. Not the brash arrogance Severus had prepared to hate for a lifetime. Something else entirely.

Suddenly, Harry flopped back onto his back, the stuffed animal tucked into his armpit. Severus leaned forward to reposition the Kneazle—the spell worked best in tandem with the rune that had been placed on his chest, afterall—when the young man’s breathing quickened into a whine. Severus’ eyebrows shot up as he looked down the length of the body under the sheets.

Ah.

Severus refused to blush—it was probably a natural reaction to the Potter boy letting his guard down for the first time in who knew how long. But really, he did not need to witness any kind of nocturnal emission, even if Harry would wake up and know he’d known immediately.

But as he climbed to his feet, there was a noticeable shift. The warmth bled out of Harry’s face, replaced by a grimace. His chest heaved. His fingers scrabbled restlessly at his chest, like it was looking for the stuffie he was lying on now. A sound caught in his throat—half-moan, half-choked cry—and then became a stifled whimper.

“Potter,” Severus said sharply. No response.

He cursed under his breath. The dream had twisted too quickly, the curse winding itself around desire and choking it into terror.

Severus reached out for Harry’s wrist just as the first scream broke out of his throat. Thank God they’d put up silencing spells. “Wake,” he commanded, squeezing the bones in his grip sharply. “Now.”

Harry jolted, eyes flying open, breath ragged. He stared at Severus blankly for a moment, then sagged back in the pillow, chest still heaving.

Severus released him slowly, watching the gauze shift over half healed scratches. “What did you see?” he asked.

Harry blinked, unfocused. “Nothing. I don’t…. I didn’t know I had even fallen asleep.”

Severus sat back, expression like carved stone, but his pulse was loud in his ears. He had seen enough.

———

Harry pushed scrambled eggs around his plate with the blunt edge of a fork, eyes burning like he’d sanded them in his sleep instead of resting. The Great Hall was its usual chaos—students gossiping, owls dropping letters, someone already setting off a prank charm at the Hufflepuff table—but all of it felt far away, like he was listening through water.

His scar was still burning.

Another night, another handful of hours he couldn’t remember, and he was no better for it. His hands still trembled faintly around his fork. His head still ached. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep up the façade of a functional professor.

“Potter.”

He startled, nearly dropping the fork. Snape stood at his elbow, as unbothered by the clamor of the Hall as if it had fallen silent for him alone. He set a slim sheaf of parchment down beside Harry’s plate—notes from their research, Harry recognized instantly. His own untidy scrawl stared up at him from the margin.

“You circled this.”

Harry blinked down at the entry, his own messy scrawl underlining the phrase. “Somnia Participes Elixir.” He rubbed at his eyes, then his scar. “We dismissed it. Said it wouldn’t touch anything rooted in Dark magic.”

“We dismissed it,” Snape corrected, “because we were searching for a weapon, not a reprieve. This won’t cure you, but it will let you sleep. Which makes it useful, as this problem seems like it will take more than one weekend in the library to resolve.” His eyes flicked to Harry, sharp as ever. “Provided you value function over martyrdom.”

Harry stared at the page a beat longer, then felt something stir under his ribs—something like hope. A whole night’s rest. A morning without his head full of sand. It was ridiculous how badly he wanted it.

“I’ve got everything in my stores,” Snape continued, matter-of-fact. “It requires precision and two competent brewers. Left to me alone, a week. With assistance—tonight.”

Harry’s throat tightened. He should’ve been embarrassed at how quickly the exhaustion fell away, at how giddy the promise of actual rest made him feel. But he couldn’t help it. His heart was thudding like he’d just had three cups of coffee. “Tonight, then.”

The faintest flicker of approval crossed Snape’s face. Or maybe Harry imagined it. Either way, the parchment stayed in front of him, his underlined handwriting practically glowing, and for the first time in weeks, he felt like he could breathe.

They went straight to the potions classroom. They’d need the space afforded by the tables set up for the students.

Snape’s classroom smelled sharper than usual—sweet fennel cut with bitter copper, the bite of oak bark curling in the fire. The recipe demanded precision, which meant no shortcuts, no idling. Harry lost count of how many times Snape barked an instruction across the bench, or how often his own hands ached from grinding, stirring, holding a flame just-so while Snape adjusted the viscosity of the base.

It should have been exhausting. It was exhausting. But the thought of an actual night’s rest—of more than four broken hours—had Harry buoyant in spite of himself. His whole body buzzed with it, nerves and hope tangling until he found himself grinning at nothing while he scraped a mortar clean.

By midmorning, they’d assembled the secondary philter: a syrupy emerald liquid in a small side cauldron that hissed whenever it touched copper. Harry had to stir in opposite directions to keep it from seizing, his arm burning with the effort.

“Not so fast,” Snape warned, eyes flicking to Harry’s hand. “You’ll splinter the oils.”

Harry rolled his eyes but slowed, biting his tongue against a retort. The mixture steadied, glossing over to a brilliant sheen. Snape gave the smallest nod, and Harry felt absurdly proud.

Lunch passed unmarked, save for the sandwiches Minerva had sent down with a note in her tight hand: Do not kill each other in my dungeons. Harry laughed at that one; Snape pretended not to notice.

Afternoon blurred into an alchemy of timing. They decanted one mixture into another, strained through muslin, and then—at Snape’s muttered signal—poured the twin streams into the master cauldron at once. Steam rose, fragrant with anise and crushed chamomile, coating the air with a soporific sweetness that had Harry swaying on his feet.

Just in time for dinner, they had coaxed the potion through its final reduction. The liquid had settled into a pale violet, opalescent where torchlight struck the surface. Snape siphoned it into a crystal flask, stoppered it, and held it to the light. The brew shimmered faintly, like water rippled by wind.

“Somnia Participes,” he pronounced. “Viable.”

Harry braced both hands on the bench, sweat-damp curls sticking to his forehead. He was bone-tired, but beneath the fatigue throbbed something wild and bright. They’d done it. Tonight, he might actually sleep.

Snape’s gaze lingered on him a moment longer than necessary before he set the flask down. “It will keep until midnight. You should eat. And shower.”

Harry laughed under his breath, shaky with relief. “Yes, sir.”

He tore through the motions of evening faster than he had in years. He bolted down a plate of stew in the Great Hall, ignoring curious looks from the staff table, and made it back to his quarters for a scalding shower.

The ridiculous Gryffindor-striped pajamas glared at him from the top of the drawer—chibi lions still roaring smugly across the fabric. He grimaced, making a mental note to order something more—adult, but pulled them on anyway. Better humiliation in private than showing up half-dressed in Snape’s rooms.

Still, the thought of crossing the castle like this was unbearable. He tugged his Invisibility Cloak over his head and slipped into the corridors, ears ringing with every creak of stone as if the entire student body might catch him parading to his professor’s quarters in lion pajamas.

Snape’s sitting room was as inviting as ever, fire crackling low, the shelves casting long shadows across the walls. Harry tugged the Cloak off quickly, folding it into a bundle as he glanced around.

“Drink?” Snape asked without looking up from the sideboard, already pouring amber liquid into two glasses.

Harry took his and let the burn of Armagnac steady him. He turned toward the hearth, toward the familiar glow of comfort—and froze.

Through an open door beyond the sitting room, Snape’s bed was visible. Wider than Harry’s, draped in dark green linens, perfectly made. Their potion. Harry’s breath caught as memory sharpened. Dream-share. One pillow. One bed.

He choked on the next swallow.

Snape appeared at his side, expression brisk, holding a small vial. “Preparations are complete. I will take Dreamless Sleep; the draught will anchor you to the absence.”

Harry stared, stomach swooping. “You—what—your bed—?”

Snape’s nostrils flared. A faint, undeniable flush touched his cheekbones. “Don’t be melodramatic, Potter. The spell requires proximity, nothing more. A shared pillow is sufficient.”

Harry gaped at him, heat creeping up his own neck. “Proximity? That’s what you’re calling this?”

“Would you rather collapse screaming into my armchair?” Snape snapped, then pressed the vial to his lips. He downed it in one swallow, throat working as he tipped his head back.

Harry turned away before Snape’s head tilted down, swallowing hard. He set his glass down with a hand that trembled only slightly.

“Fine,” Harry muttered. “One pillow.”

Snape set the emptied vial aside and gestured sharply toward the open door. Harry followed, nerves taut as bowstring. The bed looked even larger up close—spacious enough to keep miles between them, if not for the damned pillow.

Harry hovered at the edge, shifting on his feet until Snape stepped up to the other side of the mattress.

“You’ve done stranger things for the sake of magic,” he muttered, tugging back the covers with a snap. A wash of color lingered along his cheekbones, betraying more than his voice did.

Harry smirked faintly, nerves spilling sideways. “Can’t argue with that.”

He took a deep breath and slipped off his glasses, setting them on the nightstand before he climbed in, tugging the blankets up to his chest, trying not to look stiff. Snape slid in on the left, precise even in the simple act of lying down, tugging his side of the covers taut. The pillow stretched between them like a truce line.

Harry dropped his head gingerly onto the very corner, as if the smallest margin of space would save his pride.

“Potter,” Snape said flatly.

“What?”

“If you fall off, the tether breaks. That means the entire day was wasted. Move in.”

Harry grimaced but inched closer, turning his head so their hair wasn’t brushing. Still, the shared space felt too close, his heartbeat drumming against his ribs.

“Better,” Snape murmured, settling back. “Stay there.”

Harry snorted under his breath, curling his knees slightly. They found a balance—shoulders angled just so, heads barely touching, breath moving in different directions. Not touching, but close enough that the warmth radiating between them was unmistakable.

The silence stretched. The fire in the sitting room crackled faintly through the door.

Harry clutched the stuffed Kneazle tighter, eyelids heavier by the second. He let out a shaky breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

It was ridiculous, it was impossible, it was… safe.

He didn’t feel himself fall asleep.

———

Severus woke to warmth.

Not the usual clammy chill of the dungeons, nor the prickling awareness of wards humming at the edge of consciousness. Warmth, soft and steady, wrapped around him as if the world had decided—for once—to be merciful.

It took him several breaths to recognize what he was holding.

Potter.

His nose was full of the scent of soap and parchment, his arm looped solidly around a lean waist, his chest pressed flush to Harry’s back. Their legs tangled under the covers as if they had spent the night fitting together by instinct.

Severus went very still.

Potter—Harry—shifted in his sleep, burrowing back unconsciously, the ridiculous stuffed Kneazle squashed between them. Severus swallowed hard. It was not lost on him that his body had chosen this moment to remind him of its baser instincts.

Of course. The inevitable, mortifying press of arousal against the curve of Harry’s arse.

He could have pulled away. He should have. And yet—he didn’t. Not immediately. His hand remained splayed against Harry’s stomach, feeling the slow rise and fall of breath beneath his palm. The intimacy of it twisted something sharp in his chest.

Fool, he told himself savagely. You’re a grown man, clinging like a starving beast to scraps of comfort.

Still, he didn’t let go.

Harry stirred again, letting out a soft, half-asleep noise, somewhere between a sigh and a hum. Severus’ throat tightened. He closed his eyes, willed his pulse to steady, and tried to convince himself it was the potion’s fault—the unnatural tether pulling them together, the enforced proximity. Nothing more.

But the warmth in his arms told another story.

Harry stirred in his arms, shifting with the boneless contentment of a cat in sunlight. Severus felt the subtle roll of his hips as he stretched, felt the faintest groan of satisfaction vibrate into his chest where it met Harry's back. For one treacherous moment, Severus allowed himself the indulgence of thinking Harry had not looked so unguarded—so young and so very alive—since before the war.

And then Harry went still. Entirely still.

Severus knew the instant of realization. The way Harry’s shoulders stiffened beneath his arm, the heat that seemed to radiate off him in a rush. The silence that followed was deafening.

“Oh, fuck,” Harry whispered.

Severus closed his eyes. Merlin’s beard.

He shifted back a fraction, only to curse inwardly when that subtle movement confirmed beyond doubt what had betrayed him. He had the dubious honor of feeling Harry’s entire body lock in response.

“Potter,” he rasped, more sharply than intended. “It is—physiological. Unavoidable.” His ears burned, traitorous, at the admission.

Harry made a strangled sound halfway between a laugh and a groan. “Yeah, I sort of guessed.”

They lay frozen in place, neither moving, the cursed pillow still binding them together while mortification pooled hot and heavy in the small space between their bodies.

Severus clenched his jaw, willing his pulse to steady. “If you would kindly refrain from commentary until I have disentangled myself—”

Harry shifted, clearly trying to edge forward out of reach, and in doing so pressed back against him. The contact was brief, clumsy, but enough to wrench a hiss from Severus’ throat.

“Bloody hell—sorry!” Harry blurted, jerking forward so hard the stuffed Kneazle tumbled to the floor.

Severus disentangled himself with all the grace of someone escaping a snare trap. He sat back sharply, the covers askew, face schooled into stone while every nerve in his body still thrummed traitorously. He retreated to the far edge of the mattress, spine rigid, staring very hard at the wall.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Then Harry shifted again, this time stretching like a man who’d just discovered muscles existed. He groaned low in his throat and Severus turned in time to catch a flash of abs as his arms reached overhead, face slack with honest pleasure.

Severus’ jaw clenched. God save me from Gryffindors.

Harry flopped back against the pillows, hair wild, expression sheepish. “Uh. Sorry. For—y’know. Everything.”

Severus schooled his expression with practiced ease.. “So long as you’ve retained the capacity for embarrassment, I will count us fortunate.”

Harry gave a quick, crooked grin. “Yeah, well. Embarrassed or not—I feel amazing. First proper night’s sleep I’ve had in… I can’t remember how long.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, then looked over. “Thanks, Snape. Really.”

Severus inclined his head once, slow, the acknowledgment as formal as he could make it. The thanks lodged uncomfortably in his chest.

Harry swung his legs over the side of the bed, reaching for the stuffed Kneazle, and stood. “Guess we’d better get ready for classes.”

“Indeed.” Severus rose more carefully, smoothing his sleeves as if the day were already underway. He did not miss the way Harry glanced back once, face still flushed and open with warm gratitude, before heading for the door.

Left alone in the quiet, Severus allowed himself a single exhale. Then he straightened and set about donning his armor for the day.

———

Harry hadn’t realized how much of himself he’d been living without until he had it back.

By midday, he was nearly giddy. The world had edges again. Food tasted like food instead of ash; the droning complaints of second-years sounded almost funny; he even had patience for a Ravenclaw who tried to argue her way out of homework. It was absurd what a night of sleep could do.

And yet.

Every time he let his thoughts drift, his body betrayed him.

Because he remembered the heat of Snape at his back—the solid press of an arm looped around his waist, the faint rise and fall of breath against his neck. Just for a moment, before reality crashed down, it had felt good. Too good. Safe in a way Harry hadn’t realized he craved until it was gone.

That memory had no business following him into the Great Hall at lunch, and yet there he was at the staff table, stabbing half-heartedly at shepherd’s pie while his trousers grew uncomfortably tight. He hunched forward, trying to look engrossed in conversation with Hagrid, and prayed no one noticed.

When he finally risked a glance sideways, Snape was watching him over the rim of his goblet. Expression flat. Eyes sharp.

Harry grinned, reckless with rest. “Enjoying the view, are you?” he muttered, low enough for only Snape to hear.

Snape’s eyebrow rose by the smallest fraction. “Your delusions are more concerning than usual, Potter.” But there was color high on his cheekbones, and Harry counted that as a win.

The rest of the week ate him alive. Exams to prepare, essays to mark, a detour into minor chaos when Peeves turned the Charms corridor into another swamp. It also turned out that being as tired as he’d been, he’d been letting a lot of things slide in class—when he was refreshed and awake, he found himself handing out detentions like Dumbledore had always handed out candy.

A thing he regretted by Friday, when he found his energy reserves flagging with another set of troublemakers queued up at the classroom door when he got back from dinner.

Tarquin Nightshade and Felicity Widdershins. They’d apparently been passing notes back and forth for most of the year already and when Harry had first caught it, he’d put it up to flirting and let them alone with it. By Wednesday, when the giggling had started to grate after another restless night, he’d snatched up the paper and assigned them the Friday night detention.

It wasn’t until after class that he’d looked at the note.

They weren’t flirting—they’d filled an entire roll of parchment with fanfiction. About their professors.

Two professors in particular.

Harry had shoved the parchment so far into his desk that he didn’t think he’d be able to find it later but the flush lingered on the back of his neck all through the rest of the week. Anytime he found himself in Snape’s presence, he’d had to concentrate on his hands so he didn’t stare too hard or remember too much.

Detention was mercifully quiet—at first. Tarquin on one side of the classroom and Felicity on the other. They wrote lines, Felicity with almost cheerful efficiency, her quill looping I will not distract my classmates during lessons across the page in neat, rounded script and Tarquin hunched over his chicken scratch.

Not quite chicken scratch—on the note, his handwriting had been almost as eloquent as Felicity’s.

Harry squeezed his eyes shut hard.

Harry sat at the front with a stack of essays, the back of his neck still prickling with the memory of that parchment stuffed into his desk drawer. Every tap against an inkwell set his teeth on edge.

Half an hour in, Felicity’s quill paused. She glanced up through her lashes. “Professor… about that note—”

Harry’s head snapped up, his voice sharper than he’d meant. “You will not get it back.”

She blinked, feigning innocence. “It was just an assignment we were—”

“It was a waste of parchment, a distraction from your studies, and,” Harry cut in, letting his voice drop into the kind of deadly quiet Snape had perfected, “wildly inappropriate material. If you’re fool enough to think I didn’t have a look, you’re welcome to think again.”

Both students froze. Even Tarquin straightened over his parchment, wide-eyed.

Harry leaned forward, lowering his voice further, just shy of a hiss. “You want to write? Write about something real. Put that effort into your essays. Not into—” His lip curled. “Fantasy.”

The silence rang.

Felicity bent her head without another word, cheeks blotched pink. Tarquin practically shrunk into his chair. It was clear which one was the ringleader.

Harry sat back, pulse still thrumming, a strange satisfaction in his chest. He knew exactly where he’d found that edge—he’d heard it in Snape’s voice often enough. And for once, he didn’t feel guilty borrowing it.

When the clock finally struck the hour, he dismissed them with a curt wave. Felicity all but bolted; Tarquin muttered a stiff “goodnight, Professor” before scurrying after her.

Harry packed away the essays with slower hands, shoulders sagging now that the sharpness was fading. He felt wrung out, his earlier spark of triumph drowned beneath the familiar drag of exhaustion. What he really wanted was a drink, or maybe a wall to lean against until morning.

The staff room was nearly empty when he pushed through the door, most of the professors already gone to their quarters. The fire burned low. Only Snape remained, seated near the hearth with a book balanced on his knee, the very picture of composure.

Harry dropped into the chair opposite, too tired to make a production of it. He might have let the silence be—until Snape looked up, and his expression flickered.

“You look like shit again.”

Harry managed a grin, thin but defiant. “Guess you’ll just have to fix me.”

Snape closed the book with deliberate care, eyes dark and intent. “Then tonight, lets stop circling the issue. I’ll see what hides in your dreams myself.”

Chapter Text

Severus had known where this road would end the moment he suggested it.

The boy—the man—was running himself into collapse, and Severus’ own mistake with the Dreamless Sleep draught still burned too vividly to allow further delay. He’d told himself that stepping into Potter’s dreams was simply the next logical progression. Necessary. Clinical.

And yet.

Now, standing once more in his chambers, he felt the same resignation coil tight in his chest, spiked through with anticipation. The bed waited, covers turned back, a single pillow anchoring the tether. The last time they’d shared it, Severus had woken to an armful of Potter, warmth pressed along his spine, desire an unwelcome traitor.

He would not think of that.

“Ready?” Potter asked quietly. The absurd Gryffindor pajamas were back, lions and all. His hand tightened on the stuffed Kneazle, jaw set as if bracing for a duel.

Severus braced himself mentally, then inclined his head.

They arranged themselves with more efficiency than the first night, the awkward shuffle already familiar: shoulders angled just so, breath angled away, careful not to brush against each other though the heat between them had a different edge now.

The stuffed Kneazle was clutched tight in Harry’s hands, the ridiculous lions stretched across his chest rising and falling with every breath.

For a long moment, neither spoke. The fire in the sitting room popped faintly through the open door.

Then, so low Severus almost missed it, Harry murmured, “I’m scared.”

Severus turned his head, studying the tension around Harry’s mouth, the way his eyes stayed stubbornly fixed on the ceiling. He let the words sit for a breath, then answered in a voice pitched steady, certain.

“Fear will not break you. It never has. And you are not alone in this.”

Harry’s throat bobbed. He gave the smallest nod, still staring upward, but his shoulders eased by a fraction.

Severus allowed himself no more than that—no touch, no softness. Just the truth, enough to anchor as darkness wrapped them up together.

———

The dream solidified around him like stone settling.

A chamber—broad and dim, shadows seeping into the corners, lit only by a wavering glow from sconces along the walls. It had the shape of a bedroom but not its warmth: a vast bed draped in dark sheets, edges too sharp, air too still.

Severus found himself pressed into the far corner, half-concealed by shadow. He knew at once he had no voice here, no way to move closer than the tether allowed. He was meant to see, nothing more.

On the bed, Harry writhed against another body. Younger—sixteen, perhaps seventeen—his face still carrying that softness of unspent years. His lips were red from kissing, his hands clutching desperately at the shoulders of whoever held him.

Severus’ jaw clenched. Heat, sharp and unwelcome, cut through him. It was obscene to watch—obscene to want to look away but find his eyes dragged back again. Harry arched, breathed out a sound he had no business making, and Severus’ teeth ground together. He felt like a voyeur, worse: a perverse interloper pressed to the glass of a window he had no right to look through.

The other boy’s face stayed maddeningly out of reach, half in shadow, a smudge of cheek and jaw, dark hair tumbling forward. All Severus could see was Harry’s surrender—the way his body opened, clung, begged. The bed creaked with it, low and rhythmic.

And then—nothing shifted, and yet everything did.

The air thickened. The shadows writhed. From nowhere came the sound of whispering—chanting in a language too old and too cold to be human. Severus’ nape prickled.

The boy—no, the man—grabbed Harry’s wrists, binding them against the headboard with invisible tethers. Harry gasped but didn’t struggle, even as the hiss of snakes slithering into the periphery drowned out the sounds of sex.

Severus moved forward instinctively—his hand reached out, and passed through empty air. He could not touch. He could not stop it.

The figure leaned back, and the shadows peeled away.

Riddle.

Younger, radiant with cruel beauty, his smile slow and predatory. His eyes glowed as he conjured a knife from nothing.

“No,” Severus snarled, but the sound died in his throat.

Riddle sank himself deep. Then, the blade traced across Harry’s skin, scoring lines, carving runes that bled too vividly. Harry arched, writhing, caught between ecstasy and agony, cries breaking from his throat as Riddle cut deeper, slower, savoring. The chanting grew louder, filling every crack of the chamber.

Severus slammed his fists against the wall of the tether, desperate, his voice silent in his own ears. He watched, helpless, as the knife slashed across Harry’s chest, directly over the heart, too deep for dream or reality.

Riddle pressed his mouth to the wound, drinking, the final syllables of the chant spilling like poison into the air.

Harry screamed, thrashing in ropes that wouldn’t break. Severus’ vision blurred red with rage, with horror, with helplessness—unable to stop any of it, forced to see as the dream consumed him whole.

Riddle leaned back, exultant with his climax. “Pudorem sanguine signo,” he hissed to the ceiling, blood dripping from his chin. “Ex desiderio, damnatio.”

———

Harry woke with a jolt, chest heaving, sheets damp with sweat. Not screaming, not thrashing—just trembling all over, the kind of deep shake that started in his bones and refused to stop. His head felt like it had been split open along the line of his scar, like the sweat on his brow was blood streaming from a fresh wound there.

For the first time in years, he remembered something. Not clearly—not the faces, not the words—but flashes. The press of a hand pinning his wrists. Shadows that moved like snakes. A voice, velvet and cruel, whispering in a tongue he half-knew, half-feared. And pain—bright, searing pain over his heart, the echo of it lingering even now beneath his skin.

He sucked in a breath, clutching at the stuffed Kneazle as though it could anchor him.

A shadow shifted beside the bed. Snape. Seated, watchful, gaze fixed on him like he’d been waiting for this moment.

Harry swallowed, throat raw. “I… I saw it. This time. Just pieces, but—Merlin—it was real, wasn’t it?”

Snape’s expression was carved from stone, but his eyes betrayed something sharper. He leaned forward, fingers steepled. “Tell me everything you remember. Every fragment.”

Harry closed his eyes, breath hitching, the fragments slithering at the edges of memory. He spoke anyway.

Harry swallowed, forcing the words out. “There were… bindings. My hands. And—” He pressed his palm over his chest, just above the thrum of his heart. “Something here. Like it burned.”

Snape’s eyes flicked to the spot, the muscle in his jaw tightening. “Runes,” he said curtly. “Carved into you. Not simple cuts.”

Harry’s breath stuttered, but he nodded, grateful for the clinical steadiness in Snape’s voice.

“And there was someone,” Harry whispered. “I never saw his face properly. Just—dark hair, and—”

“Young,” Snape finished quietly. “Radiant, in the way only monstrosities are. Riddle.”

The name landed like a weight in Harry’s gut. He squeezed the Kneazle tighter. “It felt… real. Too real. And there was chanting. Latin—I think? I couldn’t catch all of it.”

Snape’s gaze sharpened. He leaned forward, voice low, deliberate. “Two phrases. I will give you them exactly as I heard them. Pudorem sanguine signo.” His eyes did not leave Harry’s face. “And the second—Ex desiderio, damnatio.”

The syllables crawled over Harry’s skin, familiar even if he didn’t fully understand them. His pulse thudded hard in his ears.

“What do they mean?” he asked, throat dry.

Snape’s mouth pressed into a line. “I seal the shame with blood. And—” He exhaled, steady but grim. “From desire, damnation.”

Harry shut his eyes. The trembling hadn’t stopped, but now it felt sharper, like his own body was rejecting the words.

When he opened them again, Snape was still watching—unflinching, relentless, waiting to anchor him back to solid ground. Harry’s fingers dug into the Kneazle’s fur, knuckles white. His breath came quick, shallow, like he was bracing for the chant to echo back at him again.

Without thinking, Snape reached out—just a hand, firm against his shoulder. “Potter.” His voice was steady, quieter than he intended. “Breathe.”

Harry startled but obeyed, sucking in air. The trembling eased a fraction.

“We can use that, right?” Harry said quickly, latching on. “The words. They mean something—we can track it, break it—”

“Yes.” Snape kept his hand where it was, an anchor. “Language is structure. Structure can be dismantled.”

Harry let out a shaky laugh, too loud in the hush of the dungeons. “Merlin, I could kiss you.”

The words hung.

Color flooded Harry’s face, as though he’d just hexed himself. “I—I didn’t mean—just—y’know, thank you—”

Snape drew his hand back, spine stiffening. Harry could see the spark of familiar thought in his eyes: Of course. The idea is repellent. He watched Snape’s lips curve in a thin, mocking line. “Relax, Potter,” he said silkily, turning more fully away. “Your virtue is quite safe. I hardly inspire such desperate gratitude.”

Harry winced, the flush crawling hotter up his neck. But instead of shrinking, something sparked inside him—determined, stubborn.

He hugged the Kneazle closer, lifted his chin, and said, steady despite the burn in his cheeks, “We’ll sort this out. One way or another.”

Chapter Text

The weekend felt almost normal.

Almost.

Harry threw himself into work—with his mind running on all cylinders for once, he caught up on his grading ahead of the upcoming testing cycle. He was devoted when he sat with Snape, running through even more obscure books than they’d started with, this time on spell and cursework older than anyone alive would have thought about playing with.

He was aware all through Sunday, even catching Peeves before the poltergeist could collapse half the Astronomy Tower stairwell, something he never would have managed half-asleep.

But normal life at Hogwarts had a way of grinding down even the well-rested. Monday saw a whole new stack of essays. The upcoming exams promised to double them within the week. Grading blurred his evenings; patrols ate the edges of his nights. He and Snape still combed through their lists every free minute, in the staffroom or in the potions master’s chambers, but progress was glacial.

By Tuesday evening, Harry couldn’t take it anymore. He’d gone four days without sleep, longer than he had since Snape first brewed the Somnia Participes Elixir, and his body was buckling under the strain. His students had noticed — his third-years whispering as he fumbled the chalk mid-lecture, his Gryffindors eyeing him with something dangerously close to concern. He’d nearly nodded off marking essays in the staffroom, jerking awake to find three sentences of commentary scrawled diagonally across the margin in handwriting that wasn’t even his.

So he gave up.

He found himself in the dungeons near curfew, heading for Snape’s chambers. He barely thought about it, which was the problem.

The door to the potions classroom was open a shade, light spilling into the corridor. He didn’t notice the voices until he’d shouldered it all the way.

“Snape, I need—”

He drew up short, eyes darting from Snape’s empty desk—where he’d expected the professor to be grading—to the table at the back, where said professor actually was. Standing over a student, directing the boy’s efforts in cleaning a rather stubborn looking cauldron.

Callum. Good to see the potions master spread that acerbic teaching style around fairly.

Harry had the presence of mind to keep his curse behind pinched lips.

“Professor Potter,” Snape bit out and Harry couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “I am in the middle of something.”

Heat crawled up Harry’s neck. “Right. I—sorry. I’ll—”

Snape’s expression didn’t flicker, but there was iron in his voice. “This is almost done—please see yourself to my sitting room and we can discuss whatever it was that led to this intrusion there.”

“Yes, sir.” The word slipped out before Harry could stop it, automatic as breathing. His stomach lurched the instant he heard himself, but the damage was done. He ducked his head and escaped without another word, pulse hammering as he paced the distance to Snape’s quarters.

The door clicked open at his wandless gesture, the wards tugging reluctantly aside. Harry let himself into the sitting room, shutting it firmly behind him.

The fire had been banked low; the shadows climbed higher than usual, dancing up the walls of lined bookshelves. Harry hovered awkwardly near the hearth for a moment, then gave up and dropped onto the sofa. His eyes skated everywhere but the door. The silence pressed heavier than he expected.

This was stupid. He shouldn’t have come down here in the middle of a detention. He shouldn’t have—

The door banged open.

Snape swept in, his expression thunderous, robes snapping like a storm. “What in Merlin’s name was that?”

Harry flinched upright. “I wasn’t thinking—”

“No, you weren’t,” Snape snapped, advancing on him. “You barge into my classroom in the middle of a punishment, announce my name like a herald, and expect—what, precisely? That I’ll drop everything to coddle you in front of a student?”

Harry flushed so hot he thought he’d combust. “I didn’t mean— I just—” He broke off, fists clenching uselessly in his lap. “I need to sleep. And this—” He gestured vaguely toward the adjoining bedroom. “This is the only way I can.”

The words fell between them, raw and desperate, sharper than he’d intended.

Snape stopped, breath clipped, black eyes raking over him. It was a long moment before Harry felt the release, even if nothing about Snape’s stance or expression actually changed.

It was just in the air between them.

“Well,” he drawled, voice like a blade through silk, “if the Golden Boy requires his beauty rest, far be it from me to stand in the way of a national treasure.”

Harry flushed, sitting up straighter. “I didn’t— That’s not—” He broke off, pressing his fingers to his eyes. He was too tired to spar properly, and they both knew it. “Fine. Whatever.”

Snape’s lip curled faintly, but he didn’t press the advantage. Instead he crossed to the cabinet and pulled out a familiar phial.

“Since you’ve already derailed my evening,” he said, shrugging out of his outer robes, “I should like to be in bed before sunrise. Unless you intend to make a spectacle of your preparation.” His gaze flicked to Harry’s rumpled trousers with pointed disdain. “You’ll have to suffer through them. I’m too bloody knackered to wait for you to fetch your ridiculous lions.”

Harry barked a laugh before he could stop himself, tired and edged with embarrassment. “Yeah, fine. Pants’ll do.”

“Good,” Snape said shortly, already striding for the adjoining room. “Try not to drool on my pillow.”

Harry muttered something about no promises, shoved himself off the sofa, and followed. Relief still buzzed sharp in his chest.

———

Harry woke warm.

It took him a moment to place why — the dungeons were never warm, not really, and his own rooms always carried a draft no matter how many charms he tried. But here, under thick blankets and with another body pressed close along his back, heat soaked into his bones.

Snape’s breathing was slow, even. Asleep, or close enough. His arm was a solid weight along Harry’s side, not quite around him but near enough that Harry could imagine it was.

And there — unmistakable — the press of Snape’s arousal against the curve of his hip.

Hard and aching, Harry stilled every muscle in his body. His heart hammered loud in his ears. For a wild, impossible moment, he let himself think it’s because of me. Because of the warmth they shared, because Snape’s body wanted what his mind would never admit.

Then reason slammed back in. Don’t be stupid, Potter. Morning wood, nothing more. The idea that Severus Snape could want him was—ridiculous.

Still… he let the fantasy hang there in the dark, unacknowledged, greedy. Just long enough to feel how much he wanted it to be true.

So he stayed still, eyes shut, pretending sleep. Taking what he could: the weight, the warmth, the sharp pulse of want he’d never voice, until the inevitable shift behind him told him Snape was waking.

The arm along his side twitched, withdrew a fraction. The steady breath against the back of his neck hitched.

Harry’s heart slammed in his chest. He kept his eyes squeezed shut, trying to look convincingly asleep, though every inch of him burned with awareness. Snape was awake. Snape would know.

The hard press at his hip shifted too, and Harry bit down on a sound in his throat. He wanted—Merlin, he wanted. Instead he schooled his face blank against the pillow and prayed Snape wouldn’t notice the tension singing through his body.

A pause. Then a familiar, dry voice, rough-edged from sleep: “If you intend to drool on me, Potter, I’ll hex you back to your own bed.”

Harry startled, breath catching, but forced himself to mumble thickly, “Wasn’t drooling.” He shifted just enough to roll onto his back, blinking up at the ceiling with an exaggerated yawn, as if he’d only just been stirred awake.

Snape was sitting up already, pulling his arm back, his expression unreadable in the dim light. Harry’s skin still burned everywhere they’d touched.

“Morning,” Harry said, voice cracking on it despite his best effort at casual.

Snape was already standing, pulling on his outer robes with brisk efficiency. He snagged Harry’s discarded shirt from the arm of a chair and tossed it across the bed.

“Get dressed,” he said shortly. “You need to be back in your own rooms before the castle wakes. I won’t have you wandering to breakfast in the same trousers you slept in.”

Harry fumbled with the shirt, heat climbing back into his cheeks. “Right. Yeah. Of course.” He tugged it over his head, trying not to look as though he minded the dismissal.

Snape’s gaze flicked over him once, unreadable, before he turned away. “Out, Potter. And do try to manage your hair before class—your students already suspect you of nocturnal habits.”

Harry grumbled something unintelligible, but he obeyed. He always did.

The door clicked shut behind him.

———

Severus sank back onto the edge of the bed, the silence heavy in Harry’s absence.

For a moment—just a moment—he let himself feel it again. The warmth of another body tucked against his, steady breathing at his hands, the soft weight of trust so close he could almost believe it was earned.

It had been… almost easy. Almost natural. As if mornings like that could belong to him, if the world were different.

He pressed his palms to his knees, forcing the thought away.

Foolish fantasy. He had no business wanting it, let alone keeping it.

But still, the echo lingered: what it might be to wake without shame, without dismissal. To open his eyes and find the boy—no, the man—still there, wanting.

Severus exhaled sharply, stood, and set about tidying the room with clipped precision. Better to bury it in habit than entertain dreams he had no right to touch.

The week wore on, and with it, Potter.

All through Wednesday, the brightness he’d stolen from a night’s proper rest shone on the rest of the faculty and students. But by Thursday, the shadows under his eyes had returned, faint but deepening. By Friday—Severus’s mouth twisted at the sight—Potter looked worse than he had before they’d begun this absurd experiment.

Severus said nothing, not outright. Sarcasm came easier.

“You’ve mastered the art of impersonating a ghoul.” Wednesday evening, at dinner, when Harry had tried to pass down the wrong carafe to Minerva.

“Try not to drool on your lesson plans in front of the children.” At breakfast on Thursday, when Harry had looked too bleary to actually get a fork in his mouth.

“Do you intend to sleepwalk through staff meetings as well as classes?” Thursday again, at lunch. Snape had just caught two of his Slytherins snickering over the fact that he’d tried to teach their fifth year class a second year lesson.

Potter rolled his eyes, grumbled, smirked tiredly. He never heard what was beneath it.

And in the evenings, they still worked. He’d let Potter join him over their mountain of texts, their slow crawl through dead languages and darker theory. He told himself it was practical—two minds accomplished more than one—but the truth was he had grown used to Potter’s presence. The quiet intensity as he read, lips moving faintly; the sharp irreverence that sometimes tugged Severus’s mouth into a traitorous smile.

Until Friday night.

Potter’s head drooped over a priceless tome, his lashes low, the lines of exhaustion carved into his face. He swayed once, twice, and Severus’s blood turned to ice. The book in front of him radiated with latent wards, curses bound into its very parchment—fall asleep on it and it would happily write Potter’s name into its maledictions.

Severus snapped the book out from under his hands with a crack.

Potter jolted upright. “Oi—”

“Enough.” Severus’s voice cut like a blade. “This is idiocy. You will kill yourself through stubbornness if nothing else.”

Harry blinked at him, still muzzy with exhaustion. “I just… I thought I could push a little—”

“No.” Severus slammed the book shut, fingers tight on its spine. “You thought you could martyr yourself on my floor and I’d allow it. You were mistaken.” He leaned forward, voice low, final. “Nine o’clock. Every night. My rooms. If you’re late, I won’t wait. Do you understand?”

Potter stared at him, wide-eyed, lips parting like he might argue. Severus’ traitorous eyes traced the shape of them and he knew he’d never get that picture out of his mind. Then Harry shut his mouth, the smallest nod jerking his chin.

“Good.” Severus forced himself upright, sweeping the cursed tome back into place with precise, shaking hands. He didn’t trust himself to look at Potter again, not with the mix of fury and relief clawing his chest.

The week settled into a pattern neither of them acknowledged aloud.

Nine o’clock each night, Harry turned up at Severus’ door. No hesitation after the first time. No grumbling. He would step inside, hair still damp from a quick shower, lesson plans tucked under his arm, and fall into their unspoken routine. A glass by the fire. An hour of grading, parchment exchanged between them with sharp comments and half-smiles. Then research until Harry’s eyes grew heavy and Snape all but herded him toward the bedroom.

It was absurd. Intimate. Domestic in ways that made Severus’s teeth ache. And yet, he didn’t stop it.

The effects were undeniable. Harry’s color came back; the sarcasm in his voice regained its bite. He caught up on his grading for the first time all term, even offered—half-serious, half-smirking—to help with Severus’s backlog so they could focus more time on the cursework. Severus had snapped something about not trusting him near Potions essays, but the next evening found Harry dutifully marking second-year quizzes while Severus ground through the rest.

For a full week, it almost felt like progress. The books yielded fragments, enough to give them hope. Harry laughed more, teased more, and Severus pretended it irritated him when really it kept him sharp.

Then, on the seventh night, the balance broke.

Harry’s head slipped off the shared pillow, just enough to skew the anchoring charm. Severus stirred at the movement, reached to adjust him—too late. The shift tore right through the potion’s effects and Harry was screaming in moments.

Snape caught his hands grimly and pinned them to the mattress, using his free hand to slap Harry awake as gently as he could. The moment the screaming eased, the words came.

“I was right,” Harry gasped. “It’s me. It’s always been me.”

Severus stilled. “Explain.”

“I—” Harry swallowed hard, eyes wild and wet. “I thought I was… I thought I was gay. Always knew, I think. First time I ever tried—first time I let myself—” His voice cracked. “It was Colin. Creevey. He kissed me and it was—Merlin, it was good. And then—” He broke off, dragging both hands over his face like he could claw the memory away. “Next day he was dead. The Battle. He never even got another chance. And I—” He choked on it. “I couldn’t. Couldn’t ever again. Every time I thought about it—touching anyone—it was like I’d cursed him. Like I’d killed him just for letting myself want it.”

Severus listened, pulse thundering but face still, drawing in each jagged word like a puzzle piece snapping into place. The shame, the repression, the way the curse had festered—it all fit.

Harry’s voice dwindled to a hoarse whisper. “So when it grabbed me—when it used it—I didn’t fight. I couldn’t. Because part of me thought… maybe I deserved it. For wanting.”

Silence followed. Heavy.

Then Severus leaned forward, catching Harry’s wrists in a grip that brooked no argument. His voice was low, steady, cut sharp as a blade.

“Enough. You are not cursed for desire, Potter. You are cursed because something saw the crack in your armor and wedged itself inside. It feeds on repression, on shame. Not truth. Not you.”

Harry blinked at him, stunned, as if he hadn’t dared hope for anyone to say it aloud.

Severus released one wrist only to set his hand flat over Harry’s sternum, just above the frantic thud of his heart. His touch was deliberate, grounding. “You are not damned for wanting. Do you hear me?”

Harry nodded, a tremor shuddering through him.

“Say it,” Severus pressed.

“I’m not—” Harry’s throat bobbed. “Not damned for wanting.”

Harry’s breath steadied under Severus’s hand, though the tremor in his voice lingered. “It’s hard to believe, you know. That I’m not damned for it. When no one’s ever… wanted me. Not me. Just Harry Potter. The savior. The prize. The story.” His gaze flicked up, sharp and wretched all at once. “Never just me.”

Something in Severus’s chest stuttered. Fool boy—fool man—for laying it bare like that.

He masked it the only way he knew. “What, then? You’ve been waiting for a prince charming to sweep you off your feet?”

The corner of Harry’s mouth twitched, weary but real. “No. Just someone I could trust.” His eyes held fast to Severus’s, steady now despite the rawness. “Like I trust you.”

Severus drew back at once, spine stiffening, mouth curling into its familiar shield. “Dangerous words, Potter. You should be more careful where you place your faith.”

Harry gave a small, wrecked laugh, the sound catching in his throat. “I’m not worried. You don’t have any aspirations of bedding the Boy Who Lived. You hated me too much for too long.”

The words landed heavy, more wretched than flippant, and for once Severus found no reply.

Instead, he heard the truth beneath it—the certainty that he was unwanted, unworthy, that trust was the only coin he had to offer.

Something in his chest lurched.

For a moment, Severus’s mind weighed the odds—the very real chance that if he moved, if he dared, he would make a fool of himself. That Harry would recoil, laugh, regret every word just spoken.

But his heart—traitorous, fluttering thing behind his ribs—already knew.

Slowly, carefully, Severus leaned in, giving Harry every chance to pull away.

He didn’t.

Harry’s breath hitched when their mouths met, not tentative, not clumsy—hungry. Severus’s hand slid up, fingers curling hard in his hair, angling him just so, swallowing the sound Harry made as if he could drink it straight out of his throat.

Devious satisfaction curled low in Severus’s chest. Not the savior. Not the prize. Just Potter. Warm, real, wanting beneath his hands.

Harry gripped at his shoulders like he’d drown without the hold, body arching into Severus’s with desperate urgency. Years of repression burned off in the press of lips and teeth, in the frantic drag of breath between kisses.

When Severus broke away, it was only to trail down the sharp line of Harry’s jaw, catching the pulse at his throat with a scrape of teeth. Harry gasped—wrecked, beautiful—and Severus thought savagely that he’d earned this. That he had claimed what the world worshiped only in effigy.

And Harry was kissing him back.

Kissing him.

Harry surged up against him, needy, reckless. The sharp edge of his teeth caught Severus’s lip, and Severus groaned low in his chest, fisting harder in Harry’s hair until the younger man arched like he’d come apart from the touch alone.

Their mouths crashed together again, wetter this time, all breath and urgency. Harry’s hands roamed—down Severus’s arms, gripping at his pajamas as though to tear them off, then lower still, clutching at his hips. The sheer greed of it made Severus’s pulse pound.

He answered in kind, long fingers sliding under Harry’s shirt, skimming over the planes of his stomach, feeling every tense breath and jump of muscle. Harry shuddered, moaned into his mouth, and pressed closer.

“Merlin—” Harry gasped when Severus’s hand slid lower, cupping him through his trousers. His hips bucked helplessly, shamelessly, and Severus thought viciously, So this is what you’ve been starving for.

“Yes,” Severus breathed against his mouth, voice rough. “Take it.”

Harry’s answering whimper tipped into a growl as he shoved a hand down between them, wrapping around Severus with equal greed.

The world shrank to heat and friction—Harry’s fist pumping, Severus grinding into his grip, both of them rutting against each other with frantic abandon. The kiss turned sloppy, desperate, teeth clacking, mouths open as they swallowed each other’s sounds.

Harry gasped, “Wanted this—wanted you—” and Severus nearly came from the words alone.

“Greedy boy,” Severus hissed, thrusting into his hand, reveling in the sheer hunger of it. “Don’t stop.”

They didn’t. Couldn’t. They writhed against each other until every movement blurred. Severus sunk his teeth into Harry’s shoulder, muffling his swear there when Harry’s grip tightened and he knew the boy was close, so close—

“Oh, God—Sev—”

And that was all it took, as Severus felt Harry seize beneath his hands and his body answered, responding to his name on those damned lips. The sight, the sound, the sheer need of him tore through Severus’ vaulted control like a hot knife through butter—he came hard in Harry’s hand, a rough cry breaking loose from his throat.

For a long, shaking moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing, their bodies still tangled, still clinging.

Harry was smiling—wrecked, open, greedy even in the aftermath.

And Severus, against all his better judgement, wanted to kiss him again.

He got up instead, shirking the shirt he’d only been wearing in deference to Harry’s presence. He muttered a quick cleansing charm over them both—practical, brisk—but the gesture carried a surprising gentleness, the barest brush of his wand skimming Harry’s shoulder where his teeth had marked.

Harry slumped back into the pillows, hair plastered to his damp forehead, eyes half-lidded. “Mm. Don’t stop moving or I’ll—fall asleep right here,” he mumbled.

“You reckless brat,” Severus said, voice rough but steady again. “You already are. And you’ll drool on the sheets.”

Harry’s lips curled in a dopey smile, eyes shut. “You’d hex me awake if I did.”

“Without hesitation,” Severus replied, though his hand lingered on the coverlet as he slid back down.

By the time his head touched the pillow again, Harry was already snuffling toward sleep, boneless and utterly unguarded. He made a pleased, unconscious sound when Severus shifted closer, and when Severus looped an arm around him properly this time—spooning, deliberate—Harry burrowed back into the warmth without hesitation.

Severus closed his eyes, cursing himself in silence even as his body settled. Reckless, foolish, inevitable.

And Harry slept, safe and snug against him.

———

Harry woke boneless. Every inch of him thrummed like he’d finally, finally been allowed to breathe after years underwater. His body hummed with the memory of touch—hot, greedy, real—his muscles loose in ways they hadn’t been since before he could even remember. Merlin, he hadn’t felt this good since—ever.

The warmth at his back made him smile, eyes still closed. Severus’s breath stirred the hair at his nape, steady and close, the weight of his arm still heavy across Harry’s middle. And Harry—idiot that he was—let himself bask in it. In the press of another body, in the remembered scrape of teeth at his shoulder, in the echo of his name torn rough from Snape’s throat.

His cock stirred at the thought, eager for another round, and for one glorious moment he thought maybe he’d have it—that maybe wanting wouldn’t end in ruin this time.

But then the rest of the night filtered back in. His confession. The dream twisting to horror. The curse gnawing at his shame, at the very thing that had kept him celibate and clenched since Colin Creevey’s kiss.

Colin’s face, young and bright, flickered unbidden behind his eyelids. And the high that had carried him through the night dimmed, not gone, but shadowed.

Harry swallowed hard, staring at the darkness behind his lids. He’d gotten what he wanted—touch, release, proof he wasn’t damned just for wanting—but the curse was still there. Waiting. Feeding.

The weight of Severus’s arm tightened slightly in sleep, pulling him closer. Harry breathed in, shaky, and let himself sink back against it anyway. Just for a little longer. Just until the world came rushing back.

The arm around him shifted; Severus made a low sound in his throat, somewhere between a groan and a growl. His voice came out rough with sleep, thick and cutting even half-mumbled: “Merlin, Potter—it’s far too early for your fidgeting.”

Harry froze, caught like a kid sneaking biscuits. Heat shot up the back of his neck. “Sorry,” he muttered, though the corners of his mouth twitched in spite of himself.

Severus’s breath huffed warm against his nape. “Apologies at dawn. How novel.”

Harry rolled his eyes where Severus couldn’t see, then shifted again—slowly this time, cautiously. He twisted under the heavy arm until he was facing him, close enough that his knees brushed Severus’s beneath the covers.

For a moment he just looked. At the tumble of dark hair not quite disciplined by grease or scorn, at the lines that seemed softer in half-light, at the man he’d spent years despising and weeks relying on.

“Better?” Harry asked, voice quiet, almost shy.

Severus’ eyebrow twitched and he lifted an eyelid reluctantly. His swift eyes took in the lingering heat in Harry’s face, the opened and soothed features—and the drawn edges at the corner of his eyes. Harry could see it all in the way his mouth parted on a sigh and shifted, settling on his back and dragging the younger man to drape across him.

“As I foresaw,” he said drily, one hand skimming down Harry’s back. “Not dead—rather well rested, actually. Orgasms do that, even when they come in the middle of the night after a bit of a shock.”

Harry huffed a laugh against Severus’s chest. “So you’re admitting it was worth the shock, then?”

Severus gave him a long-suffering look, but his hand didn’t stop its slow path down Harry’s back. “Typical Gryffindor—reckless enough to run a seduction campaign with cartoon lions roaring all over his chest.” His other hand reached up, pushing his long hair out of his face. “And smug enough to gloat in the morning.”

Harry grinned, tilting his head up. “Not gloating. Just… pointing out you don’t sound particularly sorry.”

He shifted deliberately, sliding a thigh over Severus’s hip. The press of his morning hardness against Severus’s thigh was unmistakable. Harry watched color creep high into Severus’ cheekbones, but the other man didn’t move away. If anything, he pressed closer, voice low with temerity. “I told you—orgasms do that.”

Severus’ hand splayed across Harry’s lower back, his long fingers brushing against and then beneath the waistband of his ridiculous Gryffindor pajama pants at the dip of his spine.

Embarrassingly, Harry whined and thrust forward like the gentle touch was a steel band forcing him against the long line of body in front of him. The fingers on his back twitched and he was sure Severus was smirking.

“Insatiable,” he murmured, deftly turning them over so he could cover Harry.

Severus’s weight pressed him into the mattress, broad shoulders framed above him, hair falling loose around his face. Harry couldn’t look away, struck suddenly by the fact that Severus was bare-chested—he hadn’t noticed last night, not properly, too far gone to clock it. Now the sight of all that pale, lean muscle, skin mapped with faint scars and the hard lines of age and endurance, set his pulse hammering.

Merlin, Severus Snape was half-naked and pinning him to the bed.

The hand at his back shifted to his hip, holding him in place, while the other drifted up to the buttons of Harry’s pajama top. Deliberate. Unhurried. Each button slipped free with agonizing precision, and Harry found himself arching into every flick of Severus’s fingers, chasing touch like something starved.

By the third button, Harry was already panting. By the fifth, he had his hands buried in Severus’s hair, tugging shamelessly.

“Severus,” he gasped, hips jerking up against the weight holding him down.

The man hummed, a sound maddeningly satisfied, and finally spread the shirt open. Cool air kissed Harry’s flushed chest—then Severus’s hand, hot and steady, splayed wide over bare skin. Harry swore under his breath, nearly coming undone at the first real press of palm to skin.

Measured, damn him. So bloody measured.

And Harry unraveled anyway.

He shoved at the waistband of his pajama bottoms with one hand, the other still anchored in Severus’ hair. Severus caught them halfway, dragging them off the rest of the way with sharp efficiency before pinning Harry back down with his hand splayed lightly across the plane of his belly.

Then there was nothing left between them. Bare skin to bare skin, chest to chest, thigh to thigh. The shock of it hit Harry like a hex—this was what he’d wanted for years, what he’d denied himself, and now it was happening, Severus pressed to every inch of him.

“Please,” Harry groaned, shameless, grinding up into the heat of Severus’s body. “God, please—”

The response was a low curse muttered against his throat as Severus rolled his hips down, slow at first, then sharper when Harry clawed at his shoulders. They found a rhythm—urgent, messy, rutting against each other until slick heat built between them, every thrust making Harry’s vision spark white.

He clung, panting, dragging Severus closer until he could feel teeth at his jaw, the surprisingly soft brush of hair against his cheek, the solid reality of the man above him. He didn’t last—couldn’t. With a desperate cry he bucked hard, release tearing through him in a rush that left him shaking apart.

Severus followed, grinding him down into the mattress with one last thrust, his own voice breaking on something raw that Harry thought was his name.

They stilled together, breath ragged, sweat-damp and trembling.

Harry blinked up at him, dazed and wrecked, and then laughed—bright and breathless, so full it startled even him. “Merlin,” he panted, grinning wide. “I could do anything today.”

Harry was still catching his breath, grin splitting his face wide, when Severus’s hand caught his jaw. Long fingers tilted his head, firm enough to command attention.

“Good,” Severus said, voice low and rough, every syllable dragged through gravel. His dark eyes burned down at him. “Because we have a curse to break. And I’ll be damned before I let Riddle have another piece of you from the grave.”

The words cut through Harry’s laugh, leaving him stunned and speechless.

Before he could fumble out an answer, Severus’s mouth crushed against his—hard, searing, as if to brand the promise into him. It wasn’t gentle, but it was sure. Possessive. A kiss that said more than any admission could.

When Severus finally drew back, Harry stared up at him, chest still heaving, lips tingling, pulse racing. He’d thought the sex was the high—but this? This was something else entirely.

“Severus…” he breathed, but the older man only raised a brow, expression daring him to turn it into a declaration.

Harry shut his mouth, smiling helplessly instead.

Ten minutes and two more searing kisses later, he stumbled into the bathroom still buzzing, lips tingling. He’d expected cold stone and sharp corners, some sterile utilitarian space—but of course it wasn’t.

The tiles were black slate, the edges softened with age. There was a tidy stack of shelves crowded with stoppered bottles and jars on one wall, the shower on another, loo and vanity directly across from the door. When it shut behind him, he found a corner cabinet with a stack of crisp towels folded with military precision, and tucked on top, absurdly, a small tin of mint pastilles. The air smelled faintly of bergamot and cedar—his smell, Harry realized with a little swoop in his gut.

He grinned to himself, reckless, and started snooping as the shower warmed. Behind the mirror, rows of shaving salves, liniments, a tin of burn balm rubbed nearly empty. As the room filled with steam, he found other surprises: the mirror stayed cleared, charmed against fog; the towel rail over the toilet radiated warmth when he dropped a towel on it.

By the time he stepped out, flushed and clean and luxurious, he was loose and alive all over again, smiling like a fool.

When Harry stepped out of the facilities, towel low on his hips, he found Severus waiting with a cup of tea for him. “I took the liberty of having Dobby bring down a change of clothes for you,” he said as the porcelain changed hands.

The swoop hit Harry in the gut once more, sharp and hot this time. Dobby was his friend—loyal to a fault, but in that particular way that meant he didn’t understand the idea of Harry and privacy. Which meant… everyone who took their Saturday tea in bed would know about this before the first pot was empty. By lunch, half the castle would know.

He should have panicked. He should have been mortified.

“You know he’s going to tell everyone, right?” he asked, stealing the rye little smirk right off his former professor’s face as he caught Severus’ eye from beneath his lashes. He could almost hear the "little minx" that flashed in the other man’s eyes.

Severus’s brow arched, dry as ever. “I’d estimate he lasted—what—three minutes before bursting into the kitchens with the tale? By now the entire castle knows you’ve taken up with the greasy git of the dungeons.” He sipped his own tea as if the words were nothing. “If secrecy was your aim, Potter, you should have considered it before you accepted a permanent post under the same roof.”

Harry blinked at him, tea halfway to his lips, caught between a laugh and a groan. “So what—you’re saying my last chance to quit this was… yesterday?”

Severus’s mouth twitched—just enough to betray satisfaction. “Roughly twelve hours ago. Perhaps less. At present, you may as well accept that the damage is irreparable.”

Harry tipped his head back, laughing outright now. “Good. Because I don’t want to quit.”

That earned him a long, measured look over the rim of Severus’s teacup—sharp, appraising, and far more fond than he ever would have expected.

They finished a cup of tea each and Severus disappeared into the shower while Harry dressed, surprised to find himself so at ease as to wander around in the nude just the morning after his sexual debut. But he felt like he was humming with energy, vitality, from the sleep and the touching and the knowledge that this was going to continue to be a thing, even after the task at hand was completed, given that the whole school would know and no one would ever leave it alone again.

That thought made him chuckle just as Severus was stepping out of the bathroom, armor already donned. He rose a snarky eyebrow as Harry took in his imposing figure, all sweeping black robes, with a dopey grin.

“And what is so amusing, Mr. Potter?” he asked silkily.

“Oh, I was just thinking about what the students are going to say.” Harry flushed and rolled his eyes. “You know some of them were already writing fanfiction about us?”

To his surprise, Severus blushed brightly, the color shocking and almost indecently delicious on his cheeks.

“Ah…” Severus said slowly, voice low. “Has Callum been saddled with detention on your end of things as well?”

“Callum?” Harry asked blankly, distracted by a sudden vision of Snape, flushed like that all over against the backdrop of the bed just behind him.

“Callum Vexley,” Severus said, coughing softly to clear his throat. “I’m afraid he’s a bit of a ringleader in interhouse communications. There’s a… writing group, you see.”

Harry blinked. “A… writing group?”

Severus cleared his throat, the flush refusing to leave his cheekbones. “It began as some kind of… peer-support exercise. Callum Vexley thought the upper years suffered from a lack of ‘imaginative outlets.’” His lip curled faintly, though the effect was somewhat ruined by the color still in his face. “What began as overwrought tales of dashing Gryffindors and clever Slytherins has… metastasized.”

Harry leaned forward, grinning like a wolf. “Into what, exactly?”

Severus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Into precisely what you implied just now. A… Potter–Snape society. Thinly veiled drivel that borders on libel. Half the fifth years and above are members.” He made a helpless flick of his hand. “They do, at least, provide competent peer review of one another’s essays, which is more than I can say for most study groups.”

Harry stared at him for all of three seconds before bursting into helpless laughter. He doubled over, dropping onto the arm of a chair with tears threatening at the corners of his eyes. “Merlin—oh, God—you mean it’s official? And here I thought Tarquin and Felicity were being cheeky when I caught them passing notes.”

The tips of Severus’s ears went scarlet. “You assigned them detention.”

“Friday night,” Harry choked out between peals of laughter. “They’d written a whole bloody scroll about us, Severus. I shoved it so deep into my desk I may never see it again.”

Severus shut his eyes briefly, as if reconsidering every life choice that had led him here.

Harry wiped at his face, still grinning like a loon. “Thank God it’s Saturday. No one’s going to bother looking for us in the library.”

The look Severus leveled at him could have cut steel—but there was no real heat in it. “Then perhaps you can direct some of that energy into actual research, rather than cackling like a fourth-year with contraband dungbombs.”

Harry beamed, reckless, as he pushed back to his feet. “Lead the way.”

———

The library’s Restricted Section saw them through the morning. Pince’s suspicious glances seemed to bounce off Harry now, the grin plastered on his face unshaken even as they paged through dry treatises on obscure cursework. Harry read aloud at one point, faltering only when he tripped over a line of Latin so badly that Severus’s snort of laughter echoed through the stacks. Harry threw a crumpled scrap of parchment at him in retaliation, and for a moment, it felt like the war and the years between them never existed.

By the time the lunch bell rang, Harry was ravenous, and Severus was still pretending not to be amused.

They ate quickly in the Great Hall, Harry practically vibrating through the meal, and then returned to the hunt. It was only an hour later that Harry, cross-legged on the floor with a tome balanced precariously on his knees, stilled.

“Severus,” he said, voice low.

The Potions Master looked up from his own volume.

Harry tapped the page. “This.”

It was an ancient text on parasitic dream-constructs, the ink faded but legible. The description fit too neatly—the feeding on shame, the progression of repression into night terrors, the way the curse hid until prodded awake by proximity or desire. And the cure: complex, layered, but possible.

By dinner, their notes filled half a table in Severus’s sitting room. Harry leaned back, staring at the neat columns of ritual steps they’d transcribed, feeling wrung out and alive all at once.

The breaking would require all of it:
-Inscription — a rune circle
-Anchor — a token
-Verbal denial — spoken aloud
-Shared tether — two minds: one witness, one afflicted.
-Blood key — twin cuts, a willing offering to replace the forced one.

Harry whistled low, tapping the last line. “That’s… a bit more than ‘bedtime affirmations,’ isn’t it?”

Severus leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “It was never going to be simple. But it is possible.”

Harry caught his eye, pulse thrumming with that same viral certainty that had carried him all day. “Then we do it.”

The silence between them felt less like hesitation now, and more like agreement.

Chapter Text

Harry was loath to disturb the peace he’d found and that Severus had cultivated in the potions master’s rooms, so he suggested they use his disused bedroom in the east wing.

They prepared the space with the caution of a dueling ring. Minerva signed off on a special permission ward to dampen sound; Filius layered a restraint charm into the bedframe that would hold without bruising should things… escalate. Poppy left a tray of emergency draughts on the bureau and a note in her pinched script: Wake me at once if there’s bleeding or breath-locking. Don’t be heroes.

Severus chalked a string of anchoring runes into the floorboards around the bed. The pillowcase had been dipped in ash, shaken out and then redusted with a mixture of ash and salt once it was settled back on the bed. They’d expanded the bed, as the single Harry had formerly been using would never hold them both, even if they could find a way to fit themselves together atop it.

On the bedside table, Harry place the battered Kneazle, a lone and lonely sentry over the proceedings.

Finally, Severus slit his own palm with clean precision, handing Harry the blade in silence. Harry’s cut was clumsier but no less willful. Over the edges of the bed, where the top sheet was draped almost to the floor, they drew fortifying charms in their own blood, then pressed their hands together tightly as they slipped underneath it.

“Rules,” Severus said, tone clipped but softer than Harry expected. “If you panic, say Anchor. If you feel pressure in your chest, say Surface. If you recognize external speech—mine or otherwise—say Here. I will respond. If you do not respond, I will wake you. If I do not respond—”

“You’ll wake,” Harry said, mouth quirking. “You’ve already brewed a back-up plan for a back-up plan.”

Severus didn’t deny it.

They lay on the outer edges of the mattress, bodies nowhere near touching, temple to temple by necessity on the shared pillow. Severus murmured the charm—soft and old, almost gentle:

“Somni communio per pulvinar.”

All the tethering spells in the room brightened, glowing enough to force their eyes closed, and then fell quiet.

———

It was like stepping off a cliff into water, only there was no splash, no rush of cold. Just a sudden drop, a weightless plunge, and then stone beneath his feet.

Severus blinked, vision resolving in muted grays. The room was the same as before: vast, shadowed, a bedroom arranged like a stage. But Harry lay alone on the bed, chest rising in steady rhythm as if asleep.

He looked—wrong. Too still. Too smooth. The lines of his face blurred in the half-light, features precise but… flat. A facsimile. Severus’s gut twisted. This was not Harry—this was the effigy the curse fed on.

The true Harry was beside him, not on the bed. He stood rooted, eyes wide, taking it in with a tremor of horror that Severus could feel even without the tether humming between them.

And then the air shifted.

Tom stepped into the dream like an actor through the wings, young and beautiful and terrible. His smile was indulgent, predatory. He crossed to the figure on the bed, fingers trailing down the imitation Harry’s throat—yet his eyes cut sideways, sharp as knives.

“Ah,” he said softly, though the voice carried to every corner of the stone chamber. “Not alone tonight.”

The shadows stirred. The walls of the room seemed to shiver, bend. Snakes slithered at the edges of the floor, scales whispering over stone. Beyond them, the dreamscape cracked open into endless corridors of black stone, yawning doorways rushing past like Tom was rifling through Harry’s mind by hand, tearing at the corners.

And still, the script played out—the doppelgänger Harry arching helplessly beneath Riddle’s touch, the false seduction rolling forward like a grotesque pantomime. But overlaying it all was Tom’s hunt: searching for the source of the disruption, for the real Harry.

Severus felt Harry at his side, the younger man’s breath sharp, uneven.

“Stay behind me,” he muttered, even though he knew distance meant nothing here.

The effigy cried out, and Tom’s smile sharpened, the dream cracking wider around them.

The dream writhed like a living thing.

Tom’s knife carved into the mannequin-Harry’s chest, blood running in runes that shimmered and burned, while his voice twined with serpentine hisses: pudorem sanguine signo… ab desiderio, damnatio… The walls of the room rippled as if they were paper over flame. The snakes writhed towards them, a sinuous wave along the floor pulling shadows behind them.

Severus moved like a storm, wand cutting arcs of defense that bought moments but never stopped the progression. Every time he struck, the dream refolded itself, the same ritual resetting again. He could protect, but he couldn’t end it.

And Harry knew it.

He stood apart, the weight of the anchor warm in his fist, feeling the tether hum against his temple. His own body lay on the bed, butchered like it had been for years, shame and desire twisted together until he couldn’t tell them apart.

He clenched his jaw. “No.”

Tom’s head snapped up. Those eyes—flat and red and smug. “You always say no, Harry. And still, you come back to me. Because you know—this is all you are.”

The knife flashed again, and Harry surged forward, chest heaving. His voice cracked but carried. “That isn’t me. Not anymore.”

The words hit like fire through the tether. The runes across mannequin-Harry’s chest flickered. Tom snarled, twisting the blade deeper, but Harry shouted over him, louder, truer.

“This shame isn’t mine. You don’t own me!”

The room bucked. The snakes screamed.

Severus staggered, hand pressed against the wards, watching Harry stand straighter, the glow of the rune on his own chest blazing through the dream-skin like a second heartbeat.

Tom lunged—but this time, Harry didn’t flinch. He caught the knife by the blade, blood welling but steady, and ripped it from Tom’s hand. The curse wanted his silence. He gave it the opposite.

“I want.” His voice rang, steady now. “I desire. I trust. I claim.” His gaze found Severus, unwavering, as the dream buckled around them. “Him.”

The mannequin shattered like glass. Tom screamed, a sound of breaking wards and shrieking wind, before dissolving into nothing. The blood on Harry’s hand burned gold, sealing the tether, answering the cut he knew Severus had mirrored in the waking world.

The scream of Tom’s dissolution faded, leaving only silence. The shadows thinned; the snakes were gone.

Harry stood with his hand still bleeding, breath ragged, staring at the ruined bed where his mannequin-self had writhed. The sheets were torn, the headboard gouged with phantom restraints. The stink of blood lingered.

Severus moved to his side, voice low. “The curse is broken.”

Harry shook his head, chest tight. “Not yet.”

He stepped forward, pulling Severus with him by force of his determination. The mattress dipped as he pressed his palm, bloody and shaking, flat against the linen. The stains spread, not black but gold now, the wound transmuted by the tether and the runes scrawled in the waking world.

“This,” Harry said hoarsely, “is mine now. Ours.”

He looked up, meeting Severus’s eyes—dark, wary, but burning—and leaned to catch him with his clean hand, pulling him down to the mattress until the air vibrated with the choice.

Severus’s breath ghosted against his mouth. “A rechristening, then.”

Harry nodded once. “Yeah.”

The kiss was not desperate like before but sealing, deliberate, mouths pressing together with all the weight of a vow. When Harry’s bloodied fingers curled in the sheets, the stains flared brighter, rippling outward, washing the dream-bed clean until it gleamed with something new.

Not shame. Not curse. Claimed.

Severus guided Harry onto his back, one hand braced above his head, locked into the kisses like a man in a gallow’s noose. Except it wasn’t dread that hollowed him out, it was want. It was slow, heavy with something that wasn’t expectation, giddy with something that wasn’t base excitement.

In a dreamscape, things could be obscenely simple.

It was a moment’s thought to will what clothes they’d been wearing away, to bring them skin to skin. Harry shuddered, his bloodied hand clenching in the now golden sheets, setting them to glowing faintly as his mouth opened under Severus’ questing tongue.

Harry gasped into the kiss as Severus devoured him—slow at first, deliberate, tongue stroking deep as if to taste every hidden part of him. Then faster, hungrier, until it was a clash of teeth and breath, their mouths slick and desperate.

Severus broke away only to drag his lips down Harry’s throat, biting hard enough to leave a mark, soothed with a searing sweep of tongue. Harry’s back arched, pressing himself closer, legs spreading instinctively, pleading without words.

The air shimmered with their want. The sheets burned brighter under Harry’s fists as Severus’s hands roamed—long fingers pressing bruises into his hips, sliding lower, spreading him open just enough to promise.

Harry’s whimper was unguarded, filthy, wrecked. “Please—”

Another thought and glass coalesced in Severus’s hand, full of slick that gleamed in the golden light. He let Harry see it, the corner of his mouth curving in wicked satisfaction, before setting the vial aside and slicking his fingers.

“You’ll be properly prepared,” he said, voice raw, reverent. “I won’t have this spoiled by haste.”

Harry’s breath hitched, his whole body quivering as Severus’s hand slid up the inside of his thigh like a burning torch. When he traced light over the skin behind his sac, Harry moaned, kicking one knee up and out, opening himself fully to whatever the other man would do to him now.

The kiss that followed was savage, catching Harry’s moans as Severus teased him, circling over the tense rim of him in gentle, ghosting passes, applying steadily more pressure each time. When the kiss broke, Severus leaned back with a wicked gleam in his eyes and speared Harry with the tip of one finger, letting it insinuate itself slowly while Harry writhed.

He had to admit—it was the most glorious picture he’d ever seen.

Harry Potter. Flushed pink from head to toe on a shining, golden bed, backlit like some kind of profane and consecrated angel. Gleaming with the fine sheen of sweat, chest heaving as he undulated, begging for more with every motion and flutter as Severus’ clever fingers worked him open. Hard and weeping against the plane of his perfect abdomen.

Severus’ breath stuttered, his composure fraying as he watched what he was allowed to do to this man. It was blasphemy and benediction, his hands on that body.

Harry’s thighs trembled with the second finger, his mouth dropping open though his voice was caught somewhere in his throat. He threw his head back against the scattered pillows and gave in.

“More,” he managed, the word half a sob and half a demand.

Severus curled his fingers, stretching and massaging instead. He lifted Harry’s cocked leg, brought it over his shoulder and kissed the inside of his knees lightly as he pulled his fingers back and slid in again with three. He ached with patience, steadily working him into a shaking, guileless mess.

The heat of him, the slick resistance and the way he yielded, nearly undid Severus outright. His jaw locked as he curled his fingers, and Harry keened—a sound so raw and open that Severus had to grit his teeth against the answering surge in his own body.

It was obscene, it was holy, it was unbearable. He had Harry Potter trembling apart on his fingers, and the thought that this might be enough—just this—raked through him like fire.

Severus drew back slowly, fingers slipping free, and conjured more of the clear, glistening slick with a flick of his hand. He pressed the head of his cock against Harry’s entrance, letting the heat of it rest there, unhurried.

“Breathe,” he murmured, voice almost a rasp. “We will go slowly.”

Harry nodded, but the wildness in his eyes said otherwise. He clenched at Severus’s shoulders, grounding himself against the breadth of him. And then, with a desperate roll of his hips, he pushed back—taking Severus in far faster than intended.

Severus bit out a curse, freezing with his length half-buried, every muscle locked tight against the instinct to move. Harry gasped, clenching around him, trembling with the stretch.

“Reckless fool,” Severus managed, his voice frayed but still low, still steady. His hand cupped Harry’s jaw, thumb brushing the flushed cheek. “You’ll break yourself.”

Harry only shook his head, eyes squeezed shut, panting. “I can take it,” he whispered. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

Severus coiled every muscle into stillness, but still dragged his fingers slowly, reverently, over the sweep of Harry’s cheekbone, back and forth. Back and forth. Then down the length of his neck, feeling his Adam’s apple bob and his pulse thunder. Down the gorgeous, flat planes of that Seeker’s body, up and down. Up and down.

Until he could feel the tension in Harry’s body loosen, lulled into submission by the methodical touches.

And like a snake, he struck.

In one powerful motion, Severus thrust all the way in, settling his hips against the plush swell of Harry’s arse as the hand that had mollified him so soundly wrapped around his cock like a vice.

Harry cried out, sharp and startled, back bowing clear off the bed. His hands flew to Severus’s shoulders, clutching hard enough to bruise. For a moment his whole body shook, suspended between shock and surrender, his chest heaving as though he’d been winded.

Severus stayed stone-still inside him, jaw clenched, one hand digging into Harry’s hip. The other working Harry’s cock, steady, relentless, pulling the tension into focus while Harry’s body adjusted around him.

“Breathe,” Severus murmured, voice low and rough in his ear. “Breathe, Potter.”

Harry’s eyes fluttered open, green blazing, and he let out a shuddering exhale. Then another. His muscles shifted leg slipping off Severus’ shoulder to flex around his hips and, impossibly, he pushed back.

“Merlin—” Severus bit off the curse as Harry rocked again, reckless, needy, forcing the rhythm before Severus could. He caught his breath on a ragged laugh. “You’ll be the death of me.”

“Then die with me,” Harry gasped, and arched into the next thrust.

That undid the last thread of Severus’s restraint. He moved—slow at first, careful, dragging the full length of himself out and back until Harry’s nails raked down his arms. Then deeper, harder, each stroke driving Harry higher, until the boy—no, the man—was writhing beneath him, desperate sounds spilling unchecked from his throat.

The rhythm built, bodies slick and straining, Severus’s control eroding against Harry’s insistent greed. Each thrust drew another gasp, another plea, until Harry’s voice was breaking on Severus’s name.

It was a spiral, inevitable and consuming. Harry clutched him close, wild and wrecked, and Severus buried his face in his neck, teeth scraping as he drove them both toward the brink.

When Harry shattered—hot and convulsing around him, a cry torn from the depths of his chest—Severus followed, pulled under by the sheer force of it, spilling with a hoarse groan that broke against Harry’s skin.

Harry lay sprawled, boneless, his chest still heaving, Severus draped over him like the last tether keeping him on earth. For a long, heady moment, all Harry could hear was breath—theirs, mingling—and the furious hammer of his own pulse.

Then he noticed the air.

Not dank stone and shadows anymore, but warm, fragrant, sweet. He turned his head, blinking through the haze, and realized the walls had vanished. They lay in the middle of a glade, grass whispering in a soft breeze, the bed sunk into green as though it had always belonged there. Overhead, the sky was painted in the first golds of dawn, the moment where night finally yields to morning.

Harry huffed out a laugh, dazed and awed. “Guess the dreamscape approves.”

Severus shifted against him, one long arm wrapping around his waist, pulling him closer as though to anchor him in place. “A predictable transfiguration,” he said, voice dry but softer than Harry had ever heard it. “Shame transmuted into… sentiment.”

“Lazy Sunday,” Harry murmured, grinning into Severus’s hair. “Not bad.”

They fell into silence again, tangled together in the hush of birdsong, the warmth of the new morning brushing over bare skin. It was absurd, impossible, and Harry wanted to bottle it—this peace, this proof. He drifted under with Severus’s weight a steady comfort against him.

———

Harry blinked awake to sunlight streaming across the bed in the uncertain familiarity of his own rooms. His limbs felt heavy, pleasantly wrung out, his mind buzzing with a giddy disbelief that hadn’t faded with waking. He turned to find Severus watching him, hair mussed, mouth faintly curved—like he might even be smiling.

Harry swallowed a laugh. “Were you watching me sleep?”

“I was watching the last of the charms burn off—you just happened to be in the way,” Severus murmured, deadpan but with the faintest flush creeping high.

Before Harry could do more than snort, green fire roared to life in the hearth and a sharp Scottish voice cut through: “Severus Snape! Harry Potter!”

They both froze.

Minerva’s face appeared in the Floo, lips pursed, tartan dressing gown pulled tight. “You’ve been locked in Potter’s quarters for nearly thirty-six hours. Do I need to secure coverage for your classes, or will you be functional by second bell?”

Harry buried his face in Severus’s shoulder, biting down on hysterical laughter.

Severus pinched the bridge of his nose, looking more beleaguered than he had through the entire war. “We’ll manage, Headmistress.”

“See that you do,” Minerva said briskly, and vanished.

The fire went quiet.

Harry’s shoulders shook with muffled laughter. “Thirty-six hours,” he wheezed. “We missed a whole day—”

“Potter,” Severus growled, but the corners of his mouth twitched.

Harry couldn’t stop laughing. He tried—Merlin, he tried—but every time he caught Severus’s eye, the corners of his mouth betrayed him. His whole body felt alight, buoyed by the lingering glow of their triumph, the dreamscape, and the sheer fact of what they’d done.

Severus kissed him once—quick, fierce, searing—and then shoved him toward the bathroom. “If you are late to your own class, I will not provide cover, Potter.”

Harry snorted, pressing a hand to his flushed face as he stumbled inside. “A kiss and a threat. Classic.”

“Get dressed,” came the muffled reply.

They made it by the skin of their teeth, robes flapping, Harry’s hair wet and dripping into his collar. But Harry didn’t care—he hadn’t felt this alive, this light, in years.

It turned out saving someone from a parasitic dream curse ate more time than either of them had realized. Between stacks of neglected essays, a dozen Hufflepuff third-years who seemed to have coordinated to melt cauldrons in unison, and two Gryffindors accidentally setting off fireworks in Charms, both Harry and Severus had catching up to do.

They still saw each other—passing notes in the library stacks, trading quips over teacups in the staff room—but not like before. No shared bed, let alone dreamscapes—they both spent a few days sleeping at their desks if they slept at all. Harry told himself it was fine. It was just the catch up after a studious endeavor that any academic would have applauded.

But he missed Severus.

Which was ridiculous—it only lasted four days.

By Thursday evening, Harry had everything sorted out on his end. His grading was caught up a reasonable amount, although he would need to sacrifice some weekend hours to completing the last of it before weekend homework rolled in on Monday. And he’d had to schedule a Saturday detention—the seventh years got cheekier with every new term—but he figured that would be a good chance to get the grading wrapped up.

So it was with lightness in his heart, if not some mild anxiety in his mind, that he met Severus just outside the doors of the Great Hall. For once, they weren’t running late.

Harry rubbed the back of his neck, awkward but earnest. “Sorry. I’ve been buried. I feel like I’ve barely—” He trailed off, meeting Severus’s gaze sheepishly.

“I know,” Severus said quietly. “So have I.” His hand flexed at his side, then—hesitant, deliberate—reached out.

Harry caught it, squeezed.

The air between them softened, something unspoken shifting into place. Harry leaned in and up, shifting his weight onto his toes just enough to—

The library doors banged open upstairs.

A flood of students poured down, parchment clutched in their hands, laughter echoing off the stone. At the front: Callum Vexley, Tarquin Nightshade, Felicity Widdershins, Thalia Morven—leading the pack of upperclassmen with gleeful, unholy shrieks.

And there was no hiding it now.

“Professor Potter!” Thalia exalted. “Professor Snape! Oh, this is even better than anything we’ve written!”

The group dissolved into pandemonium, quills already out, inkpots clattering as they scrambled to capture the scene.

Harry froze, Severus’s hand still locked in his. Their faces so close, lips nearly brushing.

Severus muttered, deadpan but very faintly pink, “If you kiss me now, Potter, you’ll start a literary riot.”

Harry grinned, wild and reckless. “Worth it.”

And then he closed the distance, applause and shrieks of laughter crashing down around them.