Title : “Devotion, Obligation”

Author : mistressmaraj
Rating : NC-17
Pairing : HP/SS
Disclaimer : I am playing with toys that are not mine, without permission. The Harry Potter Universe belongs to JK Rowling, her publishers, filmmakers, and whatever other lucky bastards she may sell rights to.
Feedback : mistressmaraj@gmail.com
Beta : Special thanks to my poor, beleaguered sister, boorish oaf, who doesn't even like slash, but can do a fast edit.

Summary : Harry returns from the final battle changed and refuses to speak of what happened. Snape is irritable as always, then reluctantly fulfills his obligations.

Warnings : angst, kink (references to BDSM), underage sex, vague reference to non-con
Archive : Part of the From Dusk till Dawn Severus Snape/Harry Potter Fuh-Q-Fest at http://www.kardasi.com/HPSS/storyindex.htm
Challenge : 'Not here, Not now! No magic?' challenge .  It doesn't matter where or when Severus Snape and Harry Potter meet for the first time as long as it is NOT the way it happened in the books.

A/N : I intend to post this story on my site at http://www.livejournal.com/users/mistressmaraj and I might rework it first. Also I have a Snarry PWP in the works--so stay tuned if you are interested. This is my first fanfic, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

“Potter, cease this infantile behavior at once!” Snape barks at the motionless figure for what must be the millionth time since the boy arrived two days ago. Not that he expects an answer, not at this point. Potter hasn't been doing much other than staring at the infirmary wall. If it is one of Potter's good days, the boy simply shakes his head and turns away. On his bad ones, Harry curls in on himself like a frightened child, refusing to acknowledge anyone's presence. This is not like the foolhardy Gryffindor at all. Snape finds it strangely irritating, perhaps even as much as the boy's typical hybrid of curious brashness used to annoy him.

“Mr. Potter, we need to know if you are experiencing any lingering curses.” This is Poppy's turn. When she's lucky, she wheedles more of a disgruntled sound out of him or sometimes a hoarse “go away.” Snape convinces himself that this means the boy is all right.

Pomfrey and a slew of specialists from St. Mungo's find no trace of active curses on him.

Potter doesn't seem to want to leave Hogwarts. Indeed, he refuses to venture beyond the hospital wing. He's been convalescing here ever since the final battle, such as it was. Reporters have camped outside the castle's wards with enough activity to put the festivity of the Quidditch World Cup to shame. The gates outside Hogwarts have been home to pandemonium ever since the Boy Who Lived battled the Dark Lord, as crowds wait to hear the tale first hand. Minerva is right to keep them out.

The day after the Prophet's headline read: “Boy Who Lived Defeats You Know Who” in a parody of responsible news reporting, the paper using moronic epithets to treat the news as something sensationalistic and vulgar. Snape knows this is something one would do only if they had no grasp of what either side had been fighting for. If the Dark Lord truly is gone for good, this may be the single most important event in their lives. But ridiculously enough, no one knows for sure that the Dark Lord even has been defeated. Potter won't speak of it and Dumbledore is dead.

Potter is the only surviving eyewitness.

The first indication Snape had that anything was going on was when his mark flared and then faded an hour later. Dumbledore and the boy had simply disappeared from the Hogwarts grounds with none the wiser.

The few Death Eaters who have been taken into ministry custody after a few vague and disoriented directives from Potter led to a successful raid seem more confused than anything. Even under veritaserum they cannot form a coherent narrative. The Dark Lord is gone, none of his followers have heard a word from him, and there is no corporeal body to be found.

Snape's mark lies faded and dormant on his left arm. He wishes he knew what this meant for him. How much certainty can be ascribed to the Lord's demise? He remembers his mark disappearing into near invisibility once before—and that had hardly led to a lasting state of freedom from his first and harshest Lord. Not if being chained to the dungeons of the castle where he spent years being bullied and to the dunderheaded students he has been forced to teach was his sentence. No, not freedom at all.

Potter, however, remains stubbornly unhelpful. And silent. Potter won't speak of the battle, nor of Dumbledore. He won't accept congratulations of his defeat of Voldemort from the well-wishing faculty members who have stopped by the hospital wing. Potter won't cooperate or even answer the most rudimentary of questions. Can't or won't, and Snape isn't sure which is worse.

Potter is rather selfish and childish, but Snape never expected better of him. Even when Snape fucked him all through seventh year, he couldn't stand the boy who consistently retained his particular brand of immaturity. Now, perhaps others will see past the golden persona to the brat that Snape has always singularly identified in Potter.

His friends don't visit, but that is mainly because the Granger girl is long dead and Longbottom was transported away from England by his grandmother as quickly as she could before fighting broke out. Potter's fan club seems too busy celebrating the Dark Lord's alleged demise to come see the resident celebrity.

Pomfrey claims that while Harry is outwardly healed, some lingering traces of the curses will take time to fade, but even then there is no guarantee of the return of his pre-battle health or mental status. No one recognizes some of the curse traces left on his magical signature or is even sure if they are still affecting him. She surmises cruciatus was used for a long period of time, but no one knows for sure. No one except for Potter, who avoids all forms of interrogation. He feigns sleep and turns away, morose and sulky.

The boy had dragged himself back to the relative safety of Hogwarts before anyone had even really missed his or Dumbledore's presence. So it is thus that the boy remains swaddled in blankets and misery, stony and silent and pale, possibly cursed with unrecognized dark magics, and no one knows how long he spent at the Dark Lord's mercy or what may have eventually tipped the scales in his favor.

Snape greatly suspects the advantage must have been Dumbledore, but how or why he was at an undisclosed location with Potter, without telling a soul —Snape hisses to himself—that part is not clear. Potter makes an art of self-recriminations and Snape is not particularly inclined to allow him to wallow in the secrets of Dumbledore's last moments.

Pomfrey, however, is in her element. She tuts, and fusses, and coddles. She informs anyone with ears, willingness to listen optional, all about her self-reported extensive knowledge of trauma.

Telling Snape to make himself useful, Pomfrey sends him back to the dungeons to brew special nutritional supplements for Potter. After all, the boy refuses to eat enough to maintain his body weight and health. He even manages to look a bit green throughout his daily histrionics.

Snape needs to know what happened that day. Dumbledore has been lost to them—the true architect of the machinations behind the war. Snape has so far maintained his neutrality and his cover by hiding within the castle walls, not yet sure what his new role will be. Is he finally allowed to declare his true allegiances and openly guide his Slytherins away from the dark, or does the war continue on and he must maintain his façade of loyal Death Eater and murderer?

***

At first, it is almost too simple to leave the boy alone, to leave him under the watchful eyes of Madam Pomfrey. Months pass. June turns to July, which gives way to a beastly August best spent underground brewing amidst the cold dungeon stones.

No one knows what to do about the boy. Term is going to start soon, and the boy is no longer a student at the school. He won't want to be ogled by every student, friends in tow, who needs to go to the hospital wing. Nor does he seem willing or able to take care of himself so Poppy is more than reluctant to let him out of her sight. He doesn't even appear to be aware that term is starting, and since he has just graduated—even if he did miss the ceremony, he no longer belongs here.

Minerva is not helpful in this regard. As acting headmistress she has final say on whether Harry be allowed to stay at Hogwarts and she protects her Gryffindor golden boy with all the ferocity of a lion defending her cub. She says simply that the boy deserves to rest peacefully in what he has long considered his home, for as long as he chooses.

When pressed, Minerva is even less helpful. “I don't know who will look after him, Severus,” she explodes one morning. “You are the one who chased his family away. This is his home now. You figure out what to do with him.”

Of all Dumbledore's harebrained notions, this was perhaps one of his worst. Ever since the disaster that was Snape picking up Harry from those boorish Dursleys when Potter never showed up on the Hogwart's Express his first year, the boy has not been welcomed back at Privet Drive. Dumbledore had been incredibly disappointed in him for perhaps the first time since that initial shame-filled night Snape had dragged himself to kneel before Dumbledore, penitent and at his wit's end, to seek the mercy of a new master. That was the moment Snape realized that even placing himself in Dumbledore's hands did not preclude the possibility of further shame and failure during the path to redemption—if such a thing were even possible for him.

***

It was quite possibly the boy's special exception allowing him summertime residency on Hogwarts grounds that was Snape's undoing. Potter was there continuously from the autumn of his first year until days before graduation on his seventh. Nor was he allowed the brief respite of a holiday visit in the countryside of Ottery St. Catchpole to visit the precociously fertile clan of Weasleys or even to see his closest friend-by-default Longbottom—not since the utter failure of the blood wards protecting the boy.

Their safety—both of theirs—was reflective of their unmatched utility to the cause and aims of the Order of the Phoenix. Their happiness was not. So it comes as no surprise that they were each just as much prisoners of the side of the “light” to be secreted away as they were tools to be sharpened against the ever increasing aggression and hunger of the “dark.”

They stood behind closed and heavy iron gates that swung open for the seasonal flood of students in and out of the castle, but neither a part of this ebb and flow. Harry Potter, though he would not admit it, knows only of cupboards, and Surrey, and the wilds of Scotland.

Neither had anywhere else to call home, although Snape did leave the castle in his role as spy. But protective custody is never a luxury afforded to the happy or carefree, so they never approached the prospect with anything like grace or gratitude.

Potter was a stalwart, a hero, a celebrity—yes, it is true he was just as often reviled as celebrated—but he was no ordinary near seventeen-year old boy flitting about bored, lonely, oppressed, and resentful during his holiday breaks. Offer a man of dubious honor too much temptation—well, Snape is not displeased that Dumbledore never found out about their illicit liaison.

For a time, the feel of Harry's sweaty back pressed against his chest was something akin to a benediction. Moments shared between them stretched out late into the night when the castle was quiet but for cooling, settling stones. He had thought, at the time, that he no longer seemed to mind Harry's intrusion into the dungeons. When Harry cried out and spurted on himself in long, hot pulses, Snape milked his shaft until it went limp in his hand and Harry shuddered from over-stimulation. Merlin help him, when he slid balls deep inside the boy, he had to think of Filch and his cat to keep from coming from the tight, delicious clench of muscles and whimpers Harry let escape as if Snape himself had no more self-control than a teenager.

It hadn't always been like that. The first time Harry came to him, on a midsummer night, he was furious at Dumbledore for the renewal of their occlumency lessons. He was furious at Snape too, for good measure. He demonstrated his pitiful adolescent rage through barbs that had Snape alternately bristling and scowling; he kept pushing and pushing until Snape broke.

Snape broke all right—right through Potter's meager mental barriers, and into that shockingly plebian mind of his. He kept right on pushing until he saw a vision of himself fucking a bound and willing, if his mammoth erection were any indication, Potter bent over his desk. Well .

This was most illuminating.

The tight virgin heat of James Potter's son was a twisted absolution, for unfulfilled desires and revenge of the first generation met in the second. He hadn't meant to hurt Harry, that was inevitable in the frantic fumbling attempt that was fingers, cocks, teeth—Harry's first time and Snape's first taste after a nearly two decade long dry spell. If he was perhaps too excited, and Harry too naïve, to provide proper gentle preparation, then who was the wiser?

What was surprising was the way Harry coveted that particular burn. The way he cried out and whimpered and begged him to stop in great, heaving, shuddering sobs while thrusting backwards for more. How he would clench around him when Snape applied the hard biting teeth of the metallic clamps onto his nipples until neither remembered the body count headlining that morning's Prophet. And the sounds, the rending sounds he made as the delicate, metal rod was pushed inside the tiny eye of his urethra—Snape was certain that was the end of that liaison, until the next night, and the next.

How quickly Snape could make him beg and pant and want so desperately that he forgot the cold of the dungeons, forgot that it was the old, greasy git that he was in bed with. Potter liked any position so long as he was pierced, taken, and well-used. If he was bound and gagged, so that his only means of communicating were through body jerks and the seeping wetness at the tip of his cock and the corners of his eyes, then all the better for them both.

Potter was an absolute sexual marvel, whimpering and obscenely spread across the Slytherin green of Snape's four poster bed. For once, Snape found appropriate use of his mouth and hands, found redemption in a willing orifice that he could fill to the point of pain, so that Potter might know what it was to be possessed fully, to forget himself in pain, pleasure, release.

The boy would come down after classes, usually for an unfairly assigned detention, except for that last summer when they had all day long, and chop roots alongside Snape while he worked on experimental potions. And later there would be tongues, and teeth, and bruises that needed healing as Snape repossessed and marked this boy that was owed him.

Sometimes he would lie there, literally broken by orgasm, and feel a similar exhausted form wrapped around him and he would fall into a rare dreamless sleep.

***

Snape really shouldn't be surprised that one indecently hot day in late August Harry stirs awake, finally leaves the security of the snug infirmary walls, and follows him to the dungeons. The analogy to a lost puppy would not be lost on Snape but it reminds him of that infernal mutt Black and he steers clear of those bitter memories.

He finds Potter in his private potions laboratory, preparing ingredients as if he owns the place. The boy has not dared seek Snape out since the day of their argument. Under the surface, Snape seethes at the boy's audacity. Maintaining an icy exterior, he decides to ignore the boy. After all, Potter is being silent, and if Snape doesn't look at him, he won't even have to acknowledge him. Harry is only chopping ginger roots—nothing dangerous or expensive—so, yes, best to leave him be.

But only just for now , he can't help but think darkly.

Snape remembers the day they split. Well, Snape would like to say he recalls that last, horrible argument they had, after which Potter finally stopped coming down to the dungeons.

For weeks Snape had watched Harry and Draco making eyes at each other across the Great Hall. He knows what it is to be seventeen. He knows better than to think that brute Uncle of his would not have a detrimental effect on the boy, would not imbue Harry with unsavory desires easily fulfilled by a broken old man.

Snape spent days determining the soundest, most irrefutable way to end their affair. He finally settled for hurting the boy's dear sensibilities. One cold, “Mr. Potter, your services, delightful as they may be, are no longer required here. I do believe you know the door—” and with an angry snarl and a slam, Potter left. Had he met Potter's eyes, and detected a modicum of hurt buried beneath the desperate rage, it would have only made things harder.

Next evening, Potter was unconscious in the infirmary and Dumbledore was gone.

He is clearly convinced that this argument and subsequent separation was for the best because Potter was a terrible distraction. The boy lost him what sleep the dark lord left him, and a man of his position could not afford the gross negligence of sleep deprivation that might lower his rather formidable defenses at a crucial moment.

Furthermore, the boy's recklessness is a danger to anyone involved with him, but even more so to a spy and traitor whose mind was regularly traipsed through by a dark wizard with a direct mind connection to said boy. Thinking about it, the whole situation seems rather ridiculously inappropriate. And what did he expect? Him, a known Death Eater, sleeping with the bloody Boy Who Lived! Their liaison would have ended when the boy left school, and anyway, they could never have allowed anyone to find out. Who would believe the golden boy would bow so low as to get on hands and knees before his greasy bastard of a potions professor? Who would even believe that he was doing so of his own free will?

He had discovered a vile, shameful need in Potter, to be filled and used. And Snape—once a traitor, always a traitor—had betrayed the covenant of trust placed upon him by the headmaster. He had used and filled and fucked this boy right underneath their noses until he knew no power on this earth could possibly redeem him. It would be best for them to forget it had ever happened.

Snape must not allow himself to think of it as anything but final. He had planned to sever ties with the boy come graduation in any case. This was simply convenient.

Imagine Snape's surprise later that same day when he returns to his apartments for lunch—no sense visiting the Great Hall when it is only four of them remaining so close to term—and Potter actually follows him! This calls for immediate and decisive action.

“Potter, what in Merlin's name are you doing!” It is doubtless a question, yet remains as commanding as any imperative.

He receives one of the boy's trademark innocent, shell-shocked expressions—which Snape simply thinks make the boy look stupid.

“I…I wanted to…” Potter looks vaguely uncertain now.

“Astute as always, Mr. Potter. Any other stunning revelations? Have you anything else to say for yourself?”

“Why do you always have to be such a bastard?” Definitely angry now.

“And why does spoiled Potter think he should always get what he wants? What right do you think you have to my home anymore?”

Snape can not mistake the surprise he sees in the boy's eyes. He's trembling now, but perhaps not in anger. He looks like he might be ill.

“Wha-what... what? No. What do you mean?”

Could he possibly not remember? Snape does not fancy going through the entire messy process of breaking it off yet again, for Gryffindors who cannot pay attention. Or for boys who refuse to hear words they do not like.

“Harry,” he tries again, more soothing this time. “What do you remember from your abduction? And from the night before?” He can see it, the tense lines around the now eighteen-year old's eyes, the way he draws his shoulders inward as he withdraws from the conversation. “Potter! I need to know.”

Potter shakes his head, and trembles. Snape takes a step toward him and then another, the boy retreating until he bumps into the wall behind him. “Harry, tell me.”

And suddenly his arms are filled with boy, a boy clutching Snape's starchy black cloak and tunic, seeping wetness against his breastbone. “Oh god,” he whispers. “I wanted so much to die. It—It was unendurable. ”

“It's all right, Harry,” he says, the words awkward on his tongue. He strokes the boy's back with the palm of his hand.

“You don't understand! I begged him to kill me. I just wanted it to end. I didn't care about anything anymore.”

“Harry, no one will blame you for that. Greater men than you have done far worse under torture. But I have to know: what happened to the Dark Lord, Harry? Is he dead? Who killed him?” he insists.

“NO! No no no. Don't talk about him. Just don't. Please. ” Harry always did beg so prettily, but this is a matter of no little importance.

He looks at Harry, intending to give him the same look that startled those fourth-year Slytherins last year into handing over their supply of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes. Harry apparently sees the gathering storm, for he blinks and swallows hard, and when his eyes open again there is something dead in them.

When Snape starts for his apartments again, the boy is practically attached at his hip, all wetness and mucus and misery. Potter follows him inside and Snape allows it. Snape isn't sure, but he thinks later he will blame himself for this weakness.

Meals between them are quiet affairs, a dance of scraping chairs and clearing throats. Snape knows he is no social maestro, but whatever his personal failings, Potter is ten times worse. He seems to forget Snape, his most unwilling host, for long stretches of time, eating and drinking slowly, looking up only occasionally through hazy green eyes.

The house elves, ever sensitive to a new arrangement, promptly prepare his spare room for a guest and bring down Potter's belongings.

He sleeps a worrisome amount, which is most likely a side effect of an unknown combination of dark curses. Some mornings he wakes before Snape and is in the lab preparing ingredients by the time Snape emerges bleary-eyed from the lush dark of his bed chamber. Other days he does not rise at all, not to feed himself, nor perform his daily ablutions, nor to bathe. He is often chipper or withdrawn, by varying and confounding degrees, unexpected torrents of emotion and rage followed by chilling disconnect or confusion.

***

He almost cannot bring himself to ask again. Almost.

“Harry, I have to know what has become of the Dark Lord. How was Dumbledore killed?”

But no matter how he asks, his questions find no answers.

***

When he wakes in the middle of the night, he knows immediately that something is wrong. Then he hears the sound—a sort of keening wail coming from Harry's bedroom. It is almost the same whining protest he used to spend hours wringing from the boy before, with clamps and cock cages, dildos enchanted to move or vibrate or enlarge on his command, or any number of other toys. When he arrives at Harry's door and opens it, he sees the boy thrashing about, twisted and pinned in sweat-soaked sheets. His face looks young and delicate, and pale in the light of Snape's lumos. Here, in the middle of the night, Harry alone and small and hopelessly tangled, the noises are distressing rather than alluring.

He places his hand on the moistened forehead, over the scar, the boy's arching back the only thing twisted off the bed.

“Potter,” he murmurs.

“Potter!” Louder still.

After this he tries shaking him by the shoulders until Harry wakes with a gasp and pulls away, seeming to choke on his breaths they come so quickly and painfully. He huddles in the corner of his bed, curled into fetal position, panting or sobbing with fear—Snape can no longer tell—and Snape does not know what to say.

He tries for a hand on the boy's forehead, but this does not work as well when he is awake for the boy jerks out of his reach with a startled “don't touch me!”

Snape is exhausted, the hour is ungodly, and he has an entire infirmary to brew and restock tomorrow. Besides, Potter seems calmer now, more alert and aware of his surroundings as he emerges more fully from the shadows of his dream. If he doesn't want Snape's assistance, then he can consider the offer rescinded.

Snape wearily makes his way back to his bedroom, steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the demons Potter may face in the night.

***

The next morning Snape finds Harry in his workroom barely past dawn. Harry's eyes are glazed. Snape waves a hand in front of him with no response.

“Potter!” he snaps. Nothing. He shakes the boy rather vigorously. Not one to become concerned easily, he tries a “finite incantatem” before a handful of floo powder has Madam Pomfrey apprised of the situation and on her way over. Poppy brushes soot off her blouse and gestures at Harry who is giving them an odd look. “Well, what's the matter with him?”

Honestly, Snape cannot help that his eyes are narrowed and the look on his face rather livid. “What were you doing just now, Potter?” he asks with a hint of steel in his voice.

“Slicing valerian root, sir.”

“And why did you not answer me when I called you?”

“I guess I didn't hear you, sir.”

“And when I shook you?”

“Um…You were shaking me?”

“You don't have any idea, then?” he sneers. “Is this a regular occurrence for you?”

Harry cannot seem to resist a blush. “Sometimes I zone out a bit.” He shrugs, as if having someone shout in his face and not notice is a daily event. Perhaps it was, once upon a time, when a young boy spent the bulk of his time unwanted and in a cupboard.

Snape's childhood had its own flaws, and pity was never a characteristic cultivated in him nor one he will allow the boy. “That is not normal!”

“Well pardon me for not being your definition of normal, you greasy-haired bastard!”

Perhaps Pomfrey finally decides she has heard enough. “Gentlemen, you are acting like children! I will run a few scans on Harry, just to make sure he is all right.” She moves her wand in a series of complex undulations whilst muttering spells under her breath.

“All clear as far as I can tell. But Harry, you really should pay better attention while you are chopping with a knife in hand.” She gestures to the drops of blood adorning the table. She has already healed the deep cut that neither Snape nor Harry had noticed.

After Potter assures her that her admonitions will be heeded, Pomfrey floos back up to the infirmary, leaving the dungeons with an odd sort of quiet.

Shortly after, Potter gets up without a word and puts himself to bed.

***

Snape finds himself brusquely roused sometime after half past two in the morning. After his eyes adjust and his brain catches up to his currently unfortunate state of consciousness, he sees glowing bespectacled eyes staring at him mournfully. Harry's mouth makes little movements as if to speak, but no sound comes out.

They remain there, staring at one another warily, until Snape concedes with a sigh and pulls back his comforter, allowing Harry to climb in.

Potter generates a lot of body heat even if he is all flailing limbs and whimpering noises that pull Snape out of sleep several times throughout the night.

The next morning over breakfast he is too quiet and Snape thinks he knows what parents mean when they say how worrisome it is to have an inquisitive child off doing something only to become suddenly quiet. He wants to ask Potter what sort of mischief he is up to now but can't see much point in asking. Potter doesn't look like he'd know the answer anyway. His eyes have taken on that glassy look again, and even if he continues spooning porridge into his mouth, his jaw seems rather slack.

“Potter!”

“Whaa?” Is he slurring?

“Are you all right?” There. No one can ever say he is an unkind man. Well, actually they can, and probably come up with lots of supporting evidence…

“I feel strange.” And no matter the prompting, the boy won't elaborate, or can't.

Then he gives a strange little jerk, goes rigid for a moment, and then pales considerably for one already so fair. His hand goes to cover his mouth and Snape is suddenly concerned that he is about to sick up all over the breakfast table.

Snape grabs his upper arm to steer him to the loo.

“Don't touch me!” Harry screams. Apparently enjoying his voyage to the land of the illogical he continues with: “I don't fucking want that! Get away from me!”

Not used to physically assisting people to the loo in the first place, Snape has long ago retracted his hand from Harry's arm. He's not quite sure how to further extricate himself from Harry, but at the moment, is not entirely opposed to trying. He remains standing where he is though, while Harry is the one to stagger backwards. Harry is panting and clutching at the wall, looking not a little bit mad.

“God…don't touch me.” Potter is a little more subdued and is finally looking back at Snape, so he gives a nod of acquiescence to the boy. “I…I-I'm going to take a bath,” he manages after a while of the two of them staring at each other wordlessly.

“You aren't too dizzy for a bath? I really think I should get Madam Pomfrey to look you over again.”

“Just leave it! There's nothing fucking wrong with me! She didn't find anything yesterday.”

When Snape warns him to not lock the door, just in case , and to splash around or otherwise make noise so Snape knows he hasn't gone all funny again and slipped underneath the water, Harry complies without a protest. He seems to have no trouble making all kinds of water induced noises for over an hour, and finally emerges freshly scrubbed a lobster red.

Snape has a growing suspicion that is unable to find words or voice. So Potter heads to his bedroom for a lie down, and Snape does the same, feeling suddenly weary.

Some horrified part of him hurts inside his chest and forms an uncomfortably tight sensation in his throat so he takes a potion for digestion, but it doesn't help.

Later that afternoon he finds Harry in his laboratory dicing roots and hellebore into pieces too small for use.

Harry acts as if nothing of any significance has occurred.

***

That night Snape finds Potter in his bed once again. The boy has focused in on him like some sort of deranged homing beacon, and there is no escape. The night is long and there is no end to his moans of “Dumbledore, no! Get your bloody hands off of him.” He stirs restlessly. “No, please…I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, headmaster.” These phrases spark Snape's curiosity, but the words only rise to Harry's tongue when he is fast asleep.

Most disturbing of all are the ones that involve shrieking. Or when Potter starts pleading with his captors to lay off him. When he sobs, “don't you fucking touch me!” and writhes and thrusts against the sheets.

Potter no longer touches Snape like they once did, sucking nipples into his mouth or taking his professor's prick into his hand. Nor does the boy wake up aroused in the mornings; Snape can tell that his prick is flaccid and uninspired. Snape wonders if this means that Harry has regressed to a child somehow, or if this bespeaks of an entirely different type of horror.

***

The nightmares grow in frequency and duration, and occasionally Snape finds it impossible to wake the boy. He has trained himself to be a light sleeper—one of the pitfalls of being a Death Eater, he supposes—and while Harry may be a restless sleeper, he is certainly a deep one. Once, Snape tried to wake him and took a fist to the eye instead. It had swollen to something painful before he managed to calm Harry down enough to pick up his wand and heal his eye.

Harry likes to chant denials in his sleep and to weep for release from this endless nightmare. They have exhausted reasonable usage of Dreamless Sleep long ago.

Snape starts suffering from insomnia, his mind so hyperaware of the possibility of being startled awake by a face peering over his vulnerable sleeping frame, that he is almost too tense for slumber. He remembers a long bout of insomnia back in his first year of teaching and again when the Dark Lord was resurrected in Potter's fourth year. He used to have tea in the headmaster's office, always Earl Grey, no sugar or milk, unless Albus insisted upon the soothing properties of chamomile.

It was never too late to have a chat with the headmaster—he always seemed to know when Snape was about to arrive and had tea prepared to Snape's exacting standards. Dumbledore kept long dedicated hours for his staff, his students, even half of the incompetents at the ministry who came to him for advice for they were no wiser than the children still under the headmaster's care.

But Albus was not the stereotypically strict, old school marm like Minerva occasionally presented as. Indeed not. Albus was the greatest wizard of the age, and could have been Minister of Magic if he had so chosen. He did not. He preferred the gentle role of benevolent, meddlesome grandfather, with care given to maintain a certain less threatening persona: ever barmy, with a twinkle in his eye. Most who truly understood power would not be comfortable with anything other than Dumbledore's mask.

No, Minerva made an excellent deputy headmistress because it was all discipline and paperwork. She will even be an effective administrator as headmistress. However, she lacks the imagination to guide the future of the wizarding world unless the fundamental lessons are ones of decorum and industriousness. Hell, she is a Gryffindor; she may have courage to pass on as well. But doubtless, she lacks the power and wisdom of Dumbledore to know when to think and when to act—and when to sit and pull strings.

She will never appear to have the answers to all the questions Snape cannot ask, like he once believed Albus did. He will never go to her in the middle of the night for a cup of tea, never send her wordless gratitude for appearing to understand the unforgivable deeds that weigh heavily upon his soul.

Instead, Potter kicks his shins while he lies awake.

***

“Potter. I need to know what happened to the Dark Lord.”

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

***

Snape entertains the thought of leaving Hogwarts as he longed to years ago when he first began his teaching post. He is not particularly fond of children or nosy headmistresses.

Potter—Potter grows stranger by the day. He rots away in Snape's chambers, still alive, but perhaps becoming less aware. Albus rots in the cold unforgiving ground after a memorial that was more lip service to a befouled ministry than a tribute to the greatest and most terrible man Snape has ever known, or loved.

Most celebrate the Dark Lord's demise.

There is little remaining for him in the castle or even in the wizarding world beyond. All has been duty and obligation for so long—trips to Diagon Alley for potions ingredients to fill the infirmary, or to brew horrors for the Dark Lord: poisons and corrosive mixtures and potions that bind a man to slavery and suffering, ones that will make the cursed rue the day he was born. There was supervision duty in Hogsmeade, not because he wanted to go, but because it was required of him. When was the last time he left the castle's wards behind for some purpose, some trip, that was his own?

He should pack up and go far away where he will be left alone. Perhaps he will find peace.

He could start an owl order potions business: the most exacting, challenging blends for discerning clients from a very discrete potions master. He once imagined himself in such a niche before Albus molded him into the role of professor for which he was so clearly unfit.

***

The new term starts tomorrow and Snape is not entirely sure what to do with Potter. All but the first years attended Hogwarts along with him, and rumors of Potter's whereabouts and health are bound to be contagious, numerous, nasty things. Even if he never emerges from Snape's quarters, the students will somehow find out…they always do.

Snape is now so tired and irritable that his bladed tongue manages to draw tears from a first-year Hufflepuff during the Welcome Feast, a first even for him. Minerva gives him a look, which he returns. Let the old bat try firing him.

He has no idea how Potter entertains himself the first day of classes. He is no longer very communicative. It is not too difficult to surprise a few sentences out of him here or there, but he no longer initiates any kind of verbal contact. At night, when the boy inevitably crawls under the green duvet and curls against Snape like a young child, no words are exchanged.

Pomfrey insisted on speaking with Harry alone, then insisted on specialists looking him over again. Clean bill of health. Whatever curses the boy may suffer from, he will not say, if he even knows.

Extended cruciatus is still a possibility—one never knows precisely what the effects of prolonged usage will be…especially if the reaction is more along the lines of the psychological damage inflicted while suffering long hours of torture, and is not simply a matter of nerve damage.

Snape wants to add sexual assault to Pomfrey's list of possible aggravating factors, but to tell her seems like a betrayal of the trust he was barely granted himself.

He wonders if Potter's decline is permanent, irreversible. If one day he will wake to find a breathing corpse beside him, and no trace of the boy that once was.

On the second day of classes, Potter almost causes an explosion well beyond Longbottom proportions in Snape's workroom. If he hadn't been looking for the boy at the time, and stopped him from adding the levisticum officinale …

“It doesn't matter,” Potter says. “It won't turn into a potion for me anyway. You need magic to do that.” Snape wonders at the last time he saw the boy do magic. He hasn't even had a wand since his abduction. Is this another effect of a dark curse draining the essence out of the boy?

And what the hell was he doing brewing potions unsupervised? He'd ask him, but Harry rarely has answers these days. Perhaps that ridiculous house elf will watch him while Snape is in class.

***

The issue resolves itself quickly enough, because soon Potter won't leave Snape's apartments, not even for the ten yard walk along torch-lit hallway to his workroom and laboratory. Snape fears that this trend will continue and one day he will wake and find a Harry who refuses to leave Snape's bed or chambers, even for the loo.

Snape tries to lead him to the laboratory where he usually spends his early evenings so that he might better supervise the boy. Occasionally his presence is enough to coax him from the shadowed room, but other days he whimpers, “Nonono, safe. I want to stay here. Home.” And he will not be persuaded.

“He's getting worse,” Snape tries again. He is so tired he can barely think, can barely supervise the incompetents they thrust upon him each year.

“I know,” Minerva answers. This is the first time she has acknowledged it.

“What are we going to do?”

“I'll figure out something.”

***

“Who are they?” Harry asks, bewildered and not taking the time to stop cutting those blasted roots. Snape has managed to connect a smaller workroom directly to his apartments and the boy will venture there, for now at least.

“Harry,” Minerva attempts gently, “these men are from St. Mungo's. They're here to make sure you receive the best care you can in order to get better.” This had been decided the day before without Snape's input, he thinks sourly. What they think they can accomplish there, with their so-called dark arts specialists and consultants who know no more than Snape himself—all they will manage is more stringent safekeeping of the boy.

Potter seems to think this over for a moment before a look of profound distress, or possibly disappointment, crosses his features. “No” is all he says, but the look he sends everyone seems to clearly state that a hysterical string of “nonononono's” are not far off.

The two men in cloaks with the St. Mungo's crest whisper reassuring words as Potter backs himself into a wall, literally this time, although there is no end to figurative meanings to those words in times past. “No!” he shouts. “Don't touch me!”

Snape hears “no” and “please” and all possible variations of that theme long before Potter is sitting on his arse, propped against the wall, and clutching at himself.

“Snape,” he chants, a litany, a plea. The help me is nonverbal, written in desperate eyes.

“Severus,” he chokes.

And suddenly, everything is clear. This isn't about getting rid of a pest and returning to the solitary life of potions brewing, this is about the fact that these men are touching Potter, are hurting and frightening him. He swore to protect the boy. He swore to Dumbledore on his bloody honor or whatever is left of it, to watch out for Potter, wanting or willing or not.

Snape has been paying for the sins of his youth for his whole life. He could not forget this one last obligation to Albus that ties him to the boy.

“Stop,” is his powerful command and it permeates the chaos of the room, the flurry of hysterical action that had gone unnoticed to him as he stood deeply enmeshed in thought.

“Stop,” he says, and the men release Potter who is writhing and squealing like a piglet up for slaughter and looks about three seconds away from employing teeth and claws like a cornered animal. Potter, who has tear tracts up and down his face that feel sticky as Snape brushes them off with his fingertips.

Minerva is disapproving but Snape doesn't care, can't care; she is no Dumbledore, and he knows her brand of narrow-minded approval, what it would cost him. He doesn't covet that.

More importantly, her opinion can't matter as she could never understand the type of darkness he has seen, has become, nor the type of dark Harry has been privy to.

“Stay” is all he says as he strokes the fine black, messy strands on Harry's head.

“Stay” is all he whispers when the boy follows him to bed that evening, trapping warmth between them, latching on before falling to sleep—the analogy of a parasite not that far from Snape's consciousness, Potter's mouth making a little “o” as he exhales warm little puffs onto Severus' chest.

It will have to be enough.

“Shush,” he murmurs into his hair, petting him as he begins to stir. “You're safe. The Dark Lord is gone, Harry. He can't hurt you anymore.”

He can only hope he is telling the truth.

Warm, surrounded by frail life and a beating heart, Snape imagines there is truth in what he says. Harry is safe and at ease here in the dungeons, more so than he would be anywhere else. That boy is his anchor, his home, his penance and absolution.

Snape gazes at his faded mark, at once fierce and aching, hoping the inky black imprint is at long last dead. Wishing to never again feel it flare hot and searing against his skin, calling him back into the bonds of servitude.

fin

* ginger roots are used in the Wit-Sharpening Potion.

* valerian roots are used in the Draught of Living Death.

* hellebore is one of the ingredients in the Draught of Peace, and is also used in protective spells to guard against evil.

* Levisticum officinale, or lovage, is often used in Confusing and Befuddlement Draughts.

This information courtesy of The Harry Potter Lexicon at http://www.hp-lexicon.org/index-2.html