Harry Potter 1. Chapter 1

"So can you do it, or can't you?" Harry demanded from the grate. "Listen, I don't exactly have all day, so if you've suddenly gotten particular, or maybe you don't think you can do it—"

Severus Snape was looking over a desk piled high with the scrolls he was grading. His personal desk in his personal quarters. Where he was never disturbed. He got to his feet and drawled to his visitor, "Anything that can be done with potions I can do, and almost anything can be done with potions, therefore, Potter—"

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Harry said wonderingly of the Severus Snape that towered over him, still fully dressed in the middle of the night. His pain-wearied brain wondered if the old sod slept that way. Probably upright in one of these affected pieces of furniture, with his wand at the ready—

"By 'enjoy' you must have been referring to yet another wounded former student who wouldn't acknowledge me in the street showing up unannounced demanding my help for a cause that I have no opinion about. Or perhaps you mean that I am specifically delighted to find the Savior of Wizarding-Kind begging at my feet," the professor was droning on in his lessons-voice.

Harry cut Snape off. "I am at your feet because I am specifically paralyzed, you bastard. And I think I broke one of my elbows dragging myself to a working floo."

There was a silence. "What happened? How long has it been?" Snape asked with what might be apology in his voice while taking in the torn Ministry-issue pajamas. Usually people dragged themselves in to avoid the slipshod medical care available to members of the Ministry army, or because they weren't members and rebels got even less attention.

Harry was describing the freak accident almost a week ago that had a stray curse shearing off a piece of a building onto his back, along with his determination not to be kept in the Ministry as an object of pity. Then he looked up at his questioner.

A strange expression that might be shame flitted across Snape's face. Then his wand was out and floating Harry to a couch that he mostly couldn't feel but its oily green velvet looked uncomfortable.

"Better?" Snape asked while directing a wet cloth and basin towards his guest. He left Harry with the cloth to cleanse the caked grime off his face. When the professor returned, a huge wardrobe was following him docilely like a pet.

"You can't have a pet dog or cat like a normal person?" Harry asked, wondering if he was delirious.

The potions master gestured and the doors opened, revealing shelves upon shelves of pots, bottles and phials. The containers rearranged themselves as he contemplated them with his wand. "My potions cupboard is concerned about you, and you'll find it more useful than a lapdog in your state." He turned around with an armful of items and set them on the already cluttered coffee table.

"But you can fix it?" Harry asked, contemplating the feet he used to know but that seemed to belong to someone else and felt very far away from his head.

"Drink this," Snape prompted brusquely, and the warrior was already strangely comforted. The old slithery bastard always knew what to do, and a spine that had been half-crushed by falling masonry should be no different than the lessons from the classes that seemed so long ago, though Harry and the majority of his peers had only dropped out a something over a year ago. The patented Snape sarcasm was a mere tickle compared to the horrors of war, he told himself.

But still, after all this time commanding troops, Harry was finding that the older man's appraising glance was making him feel less sure of himself, as it always did.

"We'll talk about it tomorrow," his host said, turning on his heel.

"What? I don't want to wait to regrow my nerves or whatever I have to do!" Harry protested.

Snape turned back. "You're in shock from overexertion in this delicate state. It's a testimony to the Ministry hospital that you were motivated to drag yourself here at all. Even I wouldn't ask you to make a decision while you're more addled than usual, Potter."

Before Harry could protest further, he was thrust into a state of suspended animation. He realized he hadn't been able to relax, truly relax, all these months he'd been in the service, not even when he was in bed at the Ministry hospital and being stared at by all those doctors and officials. But now he was being allowed to collapse at what was for him the end of the line, in the care of a conscience-less git in the filthy potion-master's dungeon. No one would believe it. Which was precisely the point.

"Nobody's going to turn me into a martyr for their cause," was the thought that had motivated Harry out of his monitored hospital cot. He'd dragged twisted body to hide in a cupboard until he could floo himself to freedom. "I made it. I made it." He let the spell take charge of his breathing, his heartbeat, the commerce of his blood, nerve impulses and thoughts. He slept.

"Have you seen Fawkes' friend?" Dumbledore asked Severus at breakfast. Hogwarts had nearly emptied during second term of last year, during which time the school huddled together at one table. Enrollment was now climbing as parents realized the school was determined to stay out of the conflict and thus safer than other alternatives for their children. The headmaster had yet to withdraw the adults to their own table, hence the code reference to Harry.

"Stumbled in, demanded to be patched up, was sent on his way without anyone being the wiser," Severus said around a strategic mouthful of toast. "Some story about a new faction developing. He didn't succeed in enlisting my collusion any more than the myriad other sides have."

"Medical treatment is not considered collusion, Severus," the headmaster remarked mildly.

Severus snorted. "They all think my collaboration is to be bought, as if my no-scruples can be had at any price."

The other professors barely looked up at the reference to his checkered past. Snape was hardly anyone's worst concern anymore.

"They'll sort it out. Young people always do," Dumbledore declared. "It must have been relatively mild or you would have dispatched him to our infirmary."

Fearing that he looked miserable in an unusual way, Severus passed a hand over his face. "A waste of perfectly good Derma-Knit elixir," he grumbled. "I'll have to go out and collect more Threadworms, and it's not even the right phase of the moon for the fungi that work best."

"I'll warn Filch that you'll be in and out," Albus replied. "I hope you gave him my best."

Severus did indeed go out that afternoon to gather the ingredients he lacked, feeling strangely on edge, though no one had bothered about him for a long while. For the hundredth time he thought how odd it was to be irrelevant after a lifetime of arousing hatred for small and large reasons, all of them good ones.

He wiped his sweaty brow on his arm before carrying his basket back to the castle. Some part of his brain still reminded him about the Mark, which was now more a paler patch where the black patch used to be, before it disappeared with the Dark Lord it bound him to.

Suddenly, Severus began to hurry towards the castle. Thank goodness for his alarm system!

"Password?" Filch demanded from the door. He was a born fascist and loved the boost the heightened security measures gave his profile.

"Out of my way, you nitwit, I forgot I left a potion on the boil!" Severus said.

After what seemed like an age, he was back in his rooms. "Stop struggling. Stop it I say!" Severus said to the form wrapped in a floating cocoon.

The first thing the spell released was the breathing, and that allowed the mouth to say, "I've been awake and under artificial respiration for almost an hour!" his patient spat. "If I'd gotten my wand over here, you would've come back to a different picture."

Severus looked at the wand on the floor a few feet between the tangle of clothing and the floating pallet, and considered the tremendous effort it must have taken to summon it that far while struggling against the Respiro spell. "I have no doubt of your capabilities for revenge, Potter," he said tiredly. "I was out gathering the necessaries for your treatment."

He examined the young man from the waist up, concentrating on the elbow that had just begun to mend itself. "Tsk, tsk, if you had cursed me with that arm, you would have undone the healing you accomplished overnight."

"Healing? Can I?" Harry asked excitedly, looking at his feet.

"No. Your pelvis and lower spine are still smashed to a powder and the nerve conduction tests I performed showed no activity."

Harry blinked, taken aback, though whether from the unaccustomed lack of sarcasm, or the grim prognosis, Severus couldn't tell.

"But that's for something that will help me," the boy gestured with his chin towards the basket on the ground.

"Yes." For whatever reason, his old professor looked ill, sicker than Harry felt, and he was the one that felt like he'd been cut in half by that piece of stone.

"Well then?" Harry had people relying on him; he didn't have time to sit there in midair, chatting in his ex-professor's quarters.

Snape summoned a class of water and used his wand to help his patient sit up. "Are you familiar with stem cell therapy?"

Harry gaped at him. This was the last thing he expected to come out of a wizard's mouth. "You're going to send me to some muggle lab? I thought those kind of treatments were experimental still."

"They are, but like many things, the wizarding world has mastered the concept somewhat earlier than our muggle cousins. There is a treatment that is known to help cases like yours, people who need to wipe the slate clean on a particular organ or limb and start over, as it were."

"If it works, let's have at it," Harry prompted.

He's used to commanding a regiment, Snape thought with sympathy. He knows to be brass tacks about everything, no matter how uncomfortable….

Realizing the man floating in his parlor was looking at him expectantly, Severus forced himself to say, "It will take a very long time, for one thing, and if we stop treatment for whatever reason, you risk losing your progress." He forced himself to meet the young man's eyes. "It's a chronic treatment, at least for a time, not an immediate cure."

"All right, so I have to choke down something revolting from that," he nodded at the potions cabinet that had been edging forward solicitously. "For the foreseeable future. I'm not afraid of swallowing something disgusting any old day."

The potions teacher appeared to be at a loss for words for a moment. "Since I am breaking Hogwarts' official noninvolvement policy with this little war of yours, I do require something in return."

"I'll give you my Gringott code, whatever, you can buy all the potions ingredients you've ever dreamed of," Harry interrupted, his good humor revealing the desperation underneath it.

"I require your commitment to this venture, which means total trust in whatever I tell you to do, and complete discretion while I hide you in my rooms," Severus snapped, disliking being on the bargaining end of Harry Potter's calculations even more than usual.

"Dumbledore doesn't know I'm here?" Harry tried to sit up and slipped back down. His pelvis wasn't knit back together enough to allow him to sit. "I thought he knew everything that happened here."

"A particular spell I've perfected makes it seem like you left." Harry's schoolboy delight in this infraction amused Severus for some reason. "We can tell him you're here any time you wish, but—"

"The faster we get started the faster I'll be able to walk out of Hogwarts and back to my life, so the fewer complications the better. Fine, Snape, I swear it."

"He called me Snape. His military directness is rather hilarious," Severus thought to himself while he fitted the boy's wand in his hand and said, "Swear this way or not at all."

They performed the Unbreakable Vow, requiring a proximity that was a continuation of the clinical procedures Severus undertaken while his visitor was asleep last night. Telling himself once again that the shattered state of Harry's lower body required drastic measures, Severus barked out a few potion names and they leapt out from the cabinet.

"Drink these in the order in which they offer themselves to you. I'll be back."

Severus took his recently gathered flowers, fungi and herbs to his laboratory. He spent some time calibrating the exact proportions of the first elixir in the regimen he'd read about in an abstruse potions journal. It was, in truth, Harry's only hope of ever walking normally again. (Though magical prosthetic limbs were always an option, though certainly not suitable for anything as athletic as broom-riding, much less full duties as a Ministry officer. What rank was this boy-soldier? Severus only trusted what he could read in between the lines of the papers, and this detail escaped him.)

When at last the liquid was cooled, Severus banished all trace of what he had been making and left in its place the residue from a harmless skin treatment. No one was interested in his experiments down here, but years of subterfuge were hard to forget.

"I'm hungry," Harry said in greeting, somewhat embarrassed, from his perch at eye level with the teacher.

Severus opened the cupboard and unveiled the broth he'd made while in the laboratory. "Use your left hand," he ordered, and Harry ate the soup clumsily but with appetite.

"This is best on a full stomach," Severus said, substituting the bowl for the large phial he'd just made. "Drink it all. It doesn't taste unpleasant," he said to Harry's cautious gaze.

"Oh, actually, it wasn't so bad. Kind of raspberry-flavored," he said, and Severus felt glad he decided at the last minute to include the raspberry leaf. "Where are you going?"

"There are some things I need to do, such as prepare for my week's classes," Severus stated. "I can't spend too much more time in my quarters without arousing suspicion. I'm leaving you this journal to make note of any sensations you may begin to experience."

Harry was quickly bored. He couldn't comfortably cast a spell with any energy using his right hand, or his elbow felt like it was going to fall to pieces. So he drew clumsily with his left hand in the notebook Snape left him, mostly defensive formations he wanted to try, and wondered how long it would be before he could get back in the fray.

To think that he and the oily potions instructor had been sworn enemies at one time. Now that everything had been revealed, people his age thought Severus was kind of an antihero badass. When everything came out in the wash in the months after Voldemort's death, almost everyone had either done something they shouldn't have, or not done something they should have. But to people of Harry's generation, Snape had stood out among the resistance as someone who had waded into—and nearly drowned in—the moral ambiguity of that era. The poncey potions adept was still not someone you would claim to admire aloud, but Snape had managed to save Dumbledore where many members of the order would have failed, and tripped up the Death Eaters far more often than the good guys.

Only someone people truly believed capable of killing Dumbledore could have faked the death of the beloved wizard. And only someone exceptionally gifted at potions could produce a near-death state to fool several doctors and then bring him back to perfect health and have him transported, under Polyjuice, to Tahiti. There he had a pleasant beach vacation, until such a time when people were rising up against Voldemort's brief but disastrous ascendancy, and then Dumbledore came riding back to save the day.

It was Dumbledore's plan all along, but Severus was the only one placed to put it into action. He endured another brief stint in Azkaban for it and spoke not a word in his own defense.

As he didn't protest when Death Eaters came to break him out.

Voldemort schmoldemort, Harry snorted at his childhood fears. All of that had been like the contests over succession between medieval sovereigns. Anyone who was smart saw that nobody was going to benefit from Voldemort winning but Voldemort, and whoever his sociopathic favor fell on any given day. The Ministry benefited from this identifiable enemy keeping everyone more or less united against a common foe, at the price of the entire wizarding world pushed itself to the brink of extinction every generation or so with its recurrent pure-blood mania.

But then there are the rare kind of wars that do matter. These are like the Spanish against the Aztecs, where one entire side is wiped out, never to rise up again. These wars between civilizations can destroy one or both sides because they are about a way of life. This was the much more pertinent conflict that had divided wizarding society of late.

All that racialist nonsense had vanished with Voldemort's death. After the smoke cleared, the true fault lines separating wizard from wizard and witch from witch began to emerge.

The Conservatives wanted to keep the wizarding world hidden, secret and more or less to the boundaries established through history. Most wanted to more or less cut off their world from the other in the name of preserving the old ways.

The Traditionalists, meanwhile, saw the muggle world as the true prize, right there within reach. Why not direct their murderous impulses at the muggles who controlled resources and territories that could easily be snatched by the more powerful magical folk, led by these young ones who were not afraid to engage with modern problems and use technology and science?

The two sides fought bitterly over points where there were doorways between the two worlds. Diagon Alley was a big one, but any place that people could enter or exit from was the site of rivalry. It became harder for magical people with no politics to get through these portals.

Families were divided over the maneuvers carried out by the more extreme factions of each side as they tried to either lock themselves further away from the world, or bite off pieces of it for themselves.

Harry had joined the Ministry forces because he thought both sides were barmy, and because he sensed that throwing himself in with the rebels would mean giving it the stamp of the Boy Who Lived—not something he wanted to give away so easily.

If Severus came back and left again, it was while Harry slept. The potions cabinet took care of the doses of his medicines and with dispensing the strong-tasting broths Severus prepared. Harry wished with all his heart that he could have contact with a house elf for some more palatable food, but then, they couldn't be trusted to keep his whereabouts a secret. The Prophet would be in there in no time, everyone would volley for the rights to use him as a martyr, and Harry knew without vanity that they would have no qualms about drawing the neutral Hogwarts into the fight.

It went on like this for four days. He knew from the marks he was making in the book, and the red-colored potion that came round every evening. And because on the fifth day, the thing arrived.

The medicines made Harry tired, though he'd rather sleep than be bored and awake. But if he'd been conscious when the thing appeared, Harry would have banished it with the left-handed hex he was working on, rather than having to stare at it with a clear head.

It had a green cushion at first, but that changed to red overnight. Harry gave a bitter smile at his jailer's concession to his old house affiliation. There was also a network of straps, no doubt because Harry couldn't sit up easily without at least a spell holding him in place. He was sure now that the cabinet was watching him and then communicating what it saw whenever Snape was in. He'd spent hours trying to figure out how the thing connected with the laboratory where his medications and meals were prepared.

The smarmy Snape took long enough to return that evening that Harry had built up on his tongue everything he wanted to say.

"Get it out," he said in the tone that had made his troops tremble. His wand hadn't done anything to banish the object, but evidently it was still good for making the other man take a step back.

"Rowing yourself around in midair on a charm doesn't give you as much exercise as the chair," Severus said reasonably. Harry hated him.

"I do not need a—"

"Wheelchair," Snape completed helpfully.

"Because you are going to fix me, aren't you, sadistic wanker?"

"Tell me, have you noticed any—interesting—sensations?" Harry clenched his fists at Snape's clinical detachment and then hissed at the pain it caused in his right arm.

"The tip of my nose tingles in the morning. How soon can I walk over there and wipe that expression off your face?"

Snape was actually taking notes, which was even more infuriating. "This 'tingle,' has it appeared anywhere else?"

"No," he ground out between his teeth. "What exactly should I be looking for?"

The professor snapped his notebook shut. "If I told you, then we couldn't be sure it wasn't the power of suggestion," he said. "You came to me for science, I assume, having had enough of the alternative offered in the Ministry hospital. If you learn to use the chair, you'll keep your upper-body strength, something you might find useful in your line of work."


	2. Chapter 2

When the cabinet told him that his charge had not only used the chair all day, but attempted some left-handed pushups, Severus came in and made dinner.

"Solid food. Careful, you'll make me feel like a human again," Harry said with anticipation.

"If you can support your weight on your left elbow well enough to exercise, I deduced you could lift a piece of meat," Severus said, indicating the plate that came cut up in bite-sized pieces. "Ah, contentment," he finished archly.

"What?" Harry asked, too happy to be eating real food to care.

"A growing boy is easy to please. You might as well make yourself at home, even if that means shoveling in your rations as in a barracks," Snape observed drily.

"How long is this going to take anyway?" If Harry could get back in the thick of things soon, he might be able to keep things moving towards peace talks.

"I don't know," Snape muttered, toying with his teacup. It had gilt edge and a broken handle, and the juxtaposition seemed so quintessentially 'Snape' that Harry suddenly felt bad at invading the man's life.

Then he belatedly felt suspicious. "Why are you helping me?"

This took Severus aback. His mouth worked for a moment. "Because there's no one else to do it." He got up to clear the table. "And Nurse Billoway, the new woman they have in the infirmary, not only wouldn't have a clue, she would be far less gracious about being called a sadistic wanker."

They smiled, a real shared smile, and then Harry piled some of the dishes in his lap and helped clean up in the kitchen.

"No one is wondering why you are eating for two?" he asked offhandedly.

He is more careful than he used to be, Severus noted. "The ingredients are being sent by owl and through a series of steps until they arrive in my wardrobe. Most students don't realize that owl deliveries are protected with the most absolute privacy, and that extends to Hogwarts, one of the most policed few acres of the realm. You could have all been ordering firewhiskey to lace in your pumpkin juice at every meal."

"Good thinking about the food," Harry nodded with that touching air of officialdom.

Severus snorted wiped his hands. "It's old habit, Potter, but no one even comes down this hallway other than me. For all they know I keep hostile students captive down here." Harry giggled, and Severus recovered the businesslike tone he'd been using to address his guest. "It's a useful image to cultivate, but I do have my responsibilities in the lab. I'll be down to check on your progress, or you can always leave me a note should there be a development."

Harry spelled himself back in the sleeping hammock, his mind somewhat at rest for the first time since his injury. He hated not being able to plan, but if he knew which of the dozens of potions were the operative factors in his cure, he'd have guzzled all of them down by now, so he went into waiting mode. The bureau seemed to have already sensed this impatience and taken to snapping its doors shut when he'd had his ration.

Harry entertained himself that evening and then the next day by lifting the various potion tomes left laying around as weights, first for the left and then, gingerly the right. And, naturally, poking into as many corners of Snape's rooms as were open to him.

The place was oddly unguarded. Certain notebooks appeared to be in a sort of code, but the lack of personal articles was odd. He found a drawer full of animated greeting cards signed Dumbledore and only Dumbledore, and Harry caught himself feeling bad. There was no danger in Severus keeping him in this dungeon because truly no one ever came to visit. He felt a sympathetic throb in his chest that was unexpectedly poignant. It was a definite tingle.

Embarrassed that a sensation would occur while he was pitying his medical practitioner, Harry threw himself into more exercises, lifting books to get at his biceps, triceps and, now, his pecs. The new exercises for his chest were unexpectedly satisfying, and Harry did as many as he dared without risking a muscle strain.

"I was going to eat in tonight, if you don't mind," Snape said behind him at the door.

"Sure, sure," Harry panted from his shirtless exertions on the floor. "I got a little carried away today. Cabinet fever or something," he said, looking at the potions wardrobe that had seemed to lean very attentively over his exercises.

"I believe the term is cabin fever," Snape corrected, edging towards the kitchen and starting a fragrant stew.

Severus watched himself being unusually talkative over the dinner that featured his own salad dressing recipe. His cooking was somewhat haphazard, but anything potion-adjacent like a soup or sauce tended to turn out well, and his condiments were little masterpieces that he'd not ever had reason to share with anyone. He was telling a few amusing stories about students' terror before his sharp tongue. Finally was simply unable to stop looking elsewhere and his eyes alighted on Harry's hand that was unconsciously rubbing at his chest.

"Oh don't mind me. I overdid it with the butterfly presses today. Nothing else to do," that patented Potter charm said from the chair that never contained anyone.

"You could read," Snape suggested. The cabinet that had been hovering nearby opened up to reveal a selection of light reading.

"Is that thing alive?" Harry finally asked. He almost didn't want to know if he'd been imagining the emotional rapport he'd been developing with his only company.

"Is it the transfigured form of an old enemy from my salad days a Death Eater?" Severus parried without thinking. He looked up from his salad, saw his humor was actually caught by his guest, and looked down, embarrassed.

"Have pudding," he ordered, eating none himself. The professor appeared to be weighing his next words the entire time that Harry ate trifle made from the tasty semi-poisonous berries that he'd learn to detoxify. Finally he came out with, "Would you like a salve?"

"Nah, I'll be all right," Harry said. But the bureau let a tube of something lemony-smelling fall off its shelf and onto his hammock as he readied for bed. Harry levitated himself into his resting spot and tried the salve. It did hurt his aching muscles, which he must have strained worse than he realized.

It didn't happen the next morning, but by lunchtime, he had used the salve twice. Five times by dinner. Exercise was his only outlet, and he didn't feel like it was the wrong thing to do, but his body occasionally said otherwise.

"What did I do to myself?" Harry asked his host when he came in that evening.

"What are you experiencing?" Severus set down the fresh bottles he'd just retrieved from the wardrobe.

Harry shucked off his shirt and his ex-professor turned away. "I'm a potions adept, not a proper doctor, Potter. A little warning next time before the nudity commences."

Harry struggled to describe the warm, tingling feeling that had been hovering on his skin all day.

"Use the salve. It will counteract any discomfort. Remember your body it attempting to regrow something, hardly a usual function."

Snape slammed himself into the bedroom, which was so heavily warded his guest couldn't get within a foot of it. Harry was finding it somewhat comforting to be around the potions master's particular brand of nasty. After everything he'd seen over the last year and a half since leaving school, he felt worn out and hollow inside. His old teacher no longer had the same scary way of looking at him, Harry thought. Snape used to gaze at him like he was a revolting but marginally interesting insect he was considering dissecting.

Oh, right. This was pity. The one person he thought was immune to that emotion that had driven him from his regiment had it too. This filled Harry with a sudden rage. Luckily there was someone to take it out on.

"Snape! What are you doing in there, wanker? Are you really turning me into a spider and wringing your hands with gleeful anticipation? Answer me, you bastard! You can't really help me, I bet! This is all to use my body parts for a potion!"

On the other side of the door, Severus was, in fact, wanking. Miserably wanking, if that mattered. "It's a side effect, merely, nothing more," he told himself. "A few inconveniences are nothing compared to what I will accomplish if this potion turns out."

There was no reason why it shouldn't. The journal articles he told Harry about had to do with regrowing a hand or a foot, which certainly involved nerve regrowth. Those studies had been limited to the few witches who were willing to put their offspring at risk while taking experimental potions to harness the regenerative power inherent in pregnancy—the main focus of the original theory. None of the infants had lived long after birth, and the procedure had been banned in the strictest terms by the ministry.

The specially induced milk, however, had done its job admirably on the women and was clearly the operative factor, to Severus' eyes.

Severus also knew that it was possible to induce lactation in a man. Everything was possible. But those few who had attempted such a thing had often ended up with unwanted female secondary sex characteristics, if not an involuntary sex change.

That wasn't what Severus required, and he was sure Harry would not want such a thing. No, the milk would be produced while the subject ingested the proper chemicals, and then extracted for use in the treatment potion, which worked by allowing the patient to give birth to himself, in a way. If he could perfect the process, Severus could at last leave the stultifying atmosphere of Hogwarts. Spinal cord injuries were for the most part beyond wizard medicine up until now, but he could have—

He came while imagining the beautifully appointed laboratory that would soon be his.

Harry yelled himself hoarse and then took a few drops of the calming tincture his host had left nearby for use before bed. Why not? He couldn't walk. Couldn't fuck. (His throat caught at the idea he did his best to banish from his mind). He had this spell system for managing his bodily processes that was infinitely better than the tubing setup they'd hooked him to at the Ministry. Why not enjoy a nice calmative? Why not two or three?

"Congratulations, Mr. Potter. I can see you are not ready to be treated like an adult. Henceforward, the cabinet will be in charge of all your potions."

Harry turned his head groggily to see Snape calmly grading papers at the desk. His vision was slightly doubled but it seemed to be the middle of the night.

"Do you h—"

"Ask the potions cabinet if it's feeling more sympathetic, because I won't give you a thing for that hangover."

Harry eventually gave up talking to the wooden box and floated himself over to the kitchen for some tea. "I take mine without anything," Snape called.

Harry floated himself and the cups back. "Why are you doing this for me," he demanded. You don't even like me. Are you going to make me into a potion and sell me for a huge profit?"

Snape laughed. It was a strange sound. Harry wasn't sure he'd ever heard it before. "Is that what's got you all hot? If you were sensible you'd suspect me of cloning as many little Boys Who Lived as I need for my infinite nefarious purposes."

The word "hot" reminded Harry of his discomfort. "May I have that salve, please?" he asked the cabinet politely.

"Let him have that one; he can't poison himself with it," Snape directed the cabinet, which nudged out the tube of liniment.

Harry grabbed it and unbuttoned his shirt to smear the stuff all over his front. "This works so well it makes me hope the rest of the treatments will, too. Thanks, Snape."

Harry spent the rest of the evening reading quietly (the Gryffindor section of a Hogwarts history) while the other man finished his grading and then read something himself.

The cabinet clattered gently and then nudged the battery of potions towards Harry just as he was getting sleepy. He took them all and then fell asleep hoping not to dream of being cut in half.

When he woke up, Snape was in class and Harry was surprised to feel very good. He took mental stock of himself, as he did every morning these days. Not a toe wiggle. Not an anything below the waist. His inventory kept going up past his waist and finally reached—

"Oh my—! Lotion, please! You fucking inanimate object, give me my salve!"

The cabinet shifted until it reached his bedside and the tube was uncapped in a second. When Harry unbuttoned his shirt to see what must be a terrible rash, he saw something quite unexpected.

His nipples were larger. There was no mistaking it. He should know what his own chest looked like, shouldn't he? They must have been enlarging over the last few days, hence the tingling, but it was suddenly obvious: they were larger in circumference, redder, and noticeably longer.

Oh, and exquisitely sensitive to the touch.

The medicine cabinet wouldn't answer any of his yelled questions, of course, and only deposited his usual breakfast ration of bottles, which he slammed down, hoping for relief.

But there was no relief. Harry alternated between rubbing them soothingly and avoiding anything at all touching them, but to no avail. A good portion of his half-a-body was on fire, and there was nothing to do but plan his revenge upon the ex-spy he never should have trusted.

The potions master returned somewhat late. "How's the patient?" he asked the cabinet. He must have gotten some sort of answer because Snape turned slowly towards the wand that was being pointed at him from behind the sofa.

"Patiently awaiting your return for an explanation of why I am turning into a woman!"

"Come out of there, Harry. You weren't interested in the particulars when I tried to explain them. I gave you my word that the treatment would cause you no harm, and I meant it."

Harry stayed behind the couch while he listened to the explanation of his treatment that hadn't made any sense when he'd heard a few pieces of it those confusing first days. Someone had hit on the idea that mother's milk contained many healthful properties, and, when mixed in the right potions, could act very much like stem cells, in that the person would be giving birth to himself, along with any injured parts.

"Himself, so other blokes have taken it and they stayed blokes?" Harry was still vaguely unnerved about what he was in store for, but it wasn't as bad as it could be, he supposed.

"No. No wizards have ever attempted it—only women whose fetuses suffered great harm in the process. Which is why it is technically illegal."

Harry lashed out. "Illegal? You're keeping me here to take an illegal substance that's not been tested on men?"

Snape was looking directly in his eyes. "I have no interest in turning you into a woman, Mr. Potter. I happen to have learned a very reliable and safe method for inducing lactation from a Tibetan shaman, so please do not worry on that account. A little enlargement of the, er, area, can be addressed after your treatment. You will leave here every inch of the man you came in as, except bipedal."

Harry believed him. He wasn't sure why, but he did. "So this is all science for you then?" he asked while Snape fetched him a plate.

"Yes. You're not the only one in the world who wants the use of their limbs back. With a proper laboratory I could perfect the treatment. I'd be much better suited in a placement with limited human contact, I'm sure you'll agree."

Actually, Harry wasn't finding the company too bad. They passed a pleasant evening, Harry reading in some of the potions books massed on the shelves, looking for ways to alleviate the pounding pressure in his chest.

Finally, he heard a low rumble. "What is it?" Harry asked.

"You've been reading about potions for over two hours and you haven't spontaneously combusted."

Harry laughed as well. "You know me, practical to a fault. Two parts of me feel like they're combusting and I'd like them to stop. Have you been giving me anything with Triple-edged Briny-leaf in it?"

"No. It's not part of the induction phase nor of the potion that comes out of it. Why?" Snape came over and read the passage about the elasticity-promoting effects of the leaf. "It won't hurt to try, I suppose. Perhaps we can experiment with it this weekend."

"Great. I'll keep reading tomorrow then," Harry said, feeling sleepy. "If you could bring more books that would help me, you know, know what to expect, I wouldn't mind."

"Of course, I should have thought. Watch for them in the cabinet. Good night."

"Severus?" Harry murmured.

"Yes."

"Whatever you do to experiment on me, don't turn me into a girl," Harry whispered.

"I won't."

Severus shut himself into his room. Severus. He called me by my given name. Close proximity does away with formality, he told himself as he got into his pajamas. It never ceased to amaze him though, that all his proximity with students and faculty had only the tiniest fraction of them realizing that Severus Snape was more bent than a basilisk beak.

He'd done everything he could to discourage people—faculty and, needless to say, students—from thinking of him having a private life at all. Espionage demands prudence. His occasional club forays were—fruitful—but Severus always had to go under Polyjuice to avoid the complications that would come along with his real identity. An encounter with the real him would have made civilians vulnerable to Death Eater scrutiny. The prospect of a liaison with Death Eaters revolted him. And now that that particular war was over, Severus remembered his one attempt to meet someone as himself and shuddered.

He'd never been beautiful and now he was old. That's what he saw in the eyes that picked him up and spat him back with lightning speed. And what would he do with one of the sad-looking men who made half-hearted overtures? Severus had no idea how to be nice to a person, much less be—intimate. And he was no longer able to attract anyone but the dregs for a quick encounter.

Cut to the quick, Severus returned home that night, vowing to never seek copulation without the comforting lie of Polyjuice in between. Even that seemed like too much trouble.

Potter, however, had never done anything for him. He was a child. He was still a child, judging from the tantrums he threw, according to the wardrobe's reports of what happened while Harry was alone….

Which were not nearly as bad as what Severus would throw, were he to find himself paralyzed.

All right. Potter was a young man, then. The former head of the most famous and effective regiment on any side of this confusing war. He had fought well and crawled into the parlor of his hated potions professor because he wanted to be able to return to the senseless fight that nearly killed him.

Harry was also past eighteen. And life-hardened a few years older than that. Old enough to consent to an experimental remedy. Old enough for anything and everything.

"That's absurd," Severus chided himself. "If his pheromones are already exciting me, the production should happen very soon." Nevertheless, he gave into feverish fantasies of a Harry Potter who was very much a man.

Harry was still studying some of the potions books the next day when the cabinet doors clattered discreetly. A few more books flew out and came to rest by his bedside.

"Of course! This is some kind of Vanishing Cabinet!" Severus must have checked out some books in the library, and that's how they'd appeared in the wardrobe. On second thought, Harry hoped these weren't traceable to Snape.

They were about radical healing procedures, but the books were written by madmen. These insane doctors had caused all kind of interspecies transformations in humans to cure diseases. Harry was glad his body was just going to do something chicks did. There was a book about that, too, and it all seemed pretty clinical.

When he was bored of reading, Harry exercised. He had this idea that if he kept in really good shape from the waist up, he would be less of a pathetic half-person. He did pushups and a sort of modified sit-up, and then he lifted a chair for lack of weights.

The ex-soldier worked out hard for a couple of hours at least twice a day. One day it was giving him what must be an endorphin high because he felt slightly better about his situation. Then he realized the pressure in his chest was somewhat better as well. Maybe building muscle tone would help his torso withstand the development of all those ducts and things without making him look like a chick.

Heartened by the idea that he had some control over his own situation, Harry had his lunch potions and then some of the meat-and-potatoes type food Severus must assume was soldierly. Now that he was trying to make the best of his long convalescence, he'd ask for a healthier menu and maybe a potion to help improve strength and muscle growth, Harry decided. Anything beat lying around waiting for his penis to start working again. Fuck, not being able to blow off steam by wanking was hell.

Harry's hand had unconsciously drifted to his chest, and he was squeezing lightly. Wait. That felt good. He tried the other side. Definitely good.

Desperately, he searched for something like pornography, but of course Snape wouldn't have any of that. Or it would be warded to kingdom come. Harry lay back in his cot and imagined that he was tugging on a different part of his body than the place his hands were occupied with.

The pleasure was milder, slower, but it was building. Harry had enough room in his head to consider: was there ever a Mrs. Snape? Did Snape date? The whole double agent thing couldn't have made meeting someone easy, but the potions professor was sort of ageless, and he wasn't fat. More on the skinny side. Maybe there was a nice lady somewhere who was impervious to sarcasm, Harry thought while leafing through the anatomical booklet about lactation and imagining that the ladies in the drawings had heads.

He couldn't bring himself off, obviously, and that pissed him off to no end. Then Harry spent the time until dinner trying to break into the potions cabinet.

"What have you done to my furniture?" Snape asked in horror when he returned.

"I wanted a calming potion and it wouldn't give it to me," a disheveled Harry replied. He'd left his shirt unbuttoned so that nothing touched him in the spots he'd only inflamed even more by his pulling.

"Did you spend all day trying to batter your way in? Lawrence is an heirloom, I'll have you know. I've had him since I was a child. It's very rude to hurt someone who is only concerned for your wellbeing."

Snape laid a comforting hand on the wardrobe that seemed to be nuzzling into his cloak.

"No. I exercised. A lot. And I read. A lot. But then the stubborn thought came that I am a prisoner of one of the most annoying people I have ever met. And I can't stand in order to kick his arse!"

Severus calmly opened the cabinet and retrieved a potpie. It bore the marks of a bake shop in Hogsmeade. Harry could trace most of his victuals to the town he was surprised still existed now that he never thought about it.

"And don't keep making me such unhealthy food. Do you want me to be a fat paraplegic you can roll around at will?"

His host impassively went over to the potions cabinet and whispered something to it. It shot out a couple of new bottles.

"Will these tranquilize me into not thinking about my life?" Harry demanded, staring at them miserably.

"No. one is to help you build strength as you pursue your exercise routine. And the other is an antidepressant. I won't tell you which."

He shut himself away in his bedroom, where he climaxed in short order thinking of Harry's chest.

After the initial outward development, Harry had to content himself with invisible progress towards his goal.

Far from being afraid of looking like a chick, Harry would take any measurable changes as a step in the direction towards stepping with his own two feet. But the changes in his areolae and nipples leveled off. For a few weeks there was this great commotion going on under his skin. He imagined a regiment like the one he had commanded, and the potions were lining up the troops, giving them these completely new orders, and everyone was slowly getting into formation.

The potion Severus had given him for his muscle training was certainly doing its job, so Harry worked out for most of his solitary hours. He liked to keep a good example for his men, so Harry had stayed in very good form while with the Ministry. But in short order he had a six pack and then some. His arms were bulked up because he did so much more with them. And he had well-developed pecs upon which his redder, wider and pointier nipples sat with complete naturalness. Too bad he was effectively a eunuch, Harry thought. He could sure pick up girls looking this fit.

When he wasn't exercising, Harry searched through the potions books, looking for ways to hasten his cure while using his hands to rub in more of the salve he was using by the bucket.

Snape was nowhere to be found during all this. Harry discovered food ingredients in Lawrence (as he was coming to think of the wardrobe) and he made his own food. He assumed that his host was experimenting on the potions that regularly showed up in the the cabinet told him that his charge had not only used the chair all day, but attempted some left-handed pushups, Severus came in and made dinner.

"Solid food. Careful, you'll make me feel like a human again," Harry said with anticipation.

"If you can support your weight on your left elbow well enough to exercise, I deduced you could lift a piece of meat," Severus said, indicating the plate that came cut up in bite-sized pieces. "Ah, contentment," he finished archly.

"What?" Harry asked, too happy to be eating real food to care.

"A growing boy is easy to please. You might as well make yourself at home, even if that means shoveling in your rations as in a barracks," Snape observed drily.

"How long is this going to take anyway?" If Harry could get back in the thick of things soon, he might be able to keep things moving towards peace talks.

"I don't know," Snape muttered, toying with his teacup. It had gilt edge and a broken handle, and the juxtaposition seemed so quintessentially 'Snape' that Harry suddenly felt bad at invading the man's life.

Then he belatedly felt suspicious. "Why are you helping me?"

This took Severus aback. His mouth worked for a moment. "Because there's no one else to do it." He got up to clear the table. "And Nurse Billoway, the new woman they have in the infirmary, not only wouldn't have a clue, she would be far less gracious about being called a sadistic wanker."

They smiled, a real shared smile, and then Harry piled some of the dishes in his lap and helped clean up in the kitchen.

"No one is wondering why you are eating for two?" he asked offhandedly.

He is more careful than he used to be, Severus noted. "The ingredients are being sent by owl and through a series of steps until they arrive in my wardrobe. Most students don't realize that owl deliveries are protected with the most absolute privacy, and that extends to Hogwarts, one of the most policed few acres of the realm. You could have all been ordering firewhiskey to lace in your pumpkin juice at every meal."

"Good thinking about the food," Harry nodded with that touching air of officialdom.

Severus snorted wiped his hands. "It's old habit, Potter, but no one even comes down this hallway other than me. For all they know I keep hostile students captive down here." Harry giggled, and Severus recovered the businesslike tone he'd been using to address his guest. "It's a useful image to cultivate, but I do have my responsibilities in the lab. I'll be down to check on your progress, or you can always leave me a note should there be a development."

Harry spelled himself back in the sleeping hammock, his mind somewhat at rest for the first time since his injury. He hated not being able to plan, but if he knew which of the dozens of potions were the operative factors in his cure, he'd have guzzled all of them down by now, so he went into waiting mode. The bureau seemed to have already sensed this impatience and taken to snapping its doors shut when he'd had his ration.

Harry entertained himself that evening and then the next day by lifting the various potion tomes left laying around as weights, first for the left and then, gingerly the right. And, naturally, poking into as many corners of Snape's rooms as were open to him.

The place was oddly unguarded. Certain notebooks appeared to be in a sort of code, but the lack of personal articles was odd. He found a drawer full of animated greeting cards signed Dumbledore and only Dumbledore, and Harry caught himself feeling bad. There was no danger in Severus keeping him in this dungeon because truly no one ever came to visit. He felt a sympathetic throb in his chest that was unexpectedly poignant. It was a definite tingle.

Embarrassed that a sensation would occur while he was pitying his medical practitioner, Harry threw himself into more exercises, lifting books to get at his biceps, triceps and, now, his pecs. The new exercises for his chest were unexpectedly satisfying, and Harry did as many as he dared without risking a muscle strain.

"I was going to eat in tonight, if you don't mind," Snape said behind him at the door.

"Sure, sure," Harry panted from his shirtless exertions on the floor. "I got a little carried away today. Cabinet fever or something," he said, looking at the potions wardrobe that had seemed to lean very attentively over his exercises.

"I believe the term is cabin fever," Snape corrected, edging towards the kitchen and starting a fragrant stew.

Severus watched himself being unusually talkative over the dinner that featured his own salad dressing recipe. His cooking was somewhat haphazard, but anything potion-adjacent like a soup or sauce tended to turn out well, and his condiments were little masterpieces that he'd not ever had reason to share with anyone. He was telling a few amusing stories about students' terror before his sharp tongue. Finally was simply unable to stop looking elsewhere and his eyes alighted on Harry's hand that was unconsciously rubbing at his chest.

"Oh don't mind me. I overdid it with the butterfly presses today. Nothing else to do," that patented Potter charm said from the chair that never contained anyone.

"You could read," Snape suggested. The cabinet that had been hovering nearby opened up to reveal a selection of light reading.

"Is that thing alive?" Harry finally asked. He almost didn't want to know if he'd been imagining the emotional rapport he'd been developing with his only company.

"Is it the transfigured form of an old enemy from my salad days a Death Eater?" Severus parried without thinking. He looked up from his salad, saw his humor was actually caught by his guest, and looked down, embarrassed.

"Have pudding," he ordered, eating none himself. The professor appeared to be weighing his next words the entire time that Harry ate trifle made from the tasty semi-poisonous berries that he'd learn to detoxify. Finally he came out with, "Would you like a salve?"

"Nah, I'll be all right," Harry said. But the bureau let a tube of something lemony-smelling fall off its shelf and onto his hammock as he readied for bed. Harry levitated himself into his resting spot and tried the salve. It did hurt his aching muscles, which he must have strained worse than he realized.

It didn't happen the next morning, but by lunchtime, he had used the salve twice. Five times by dinner. Exercise was his only outlet, and he didn't feel like it was the wrong thing to do, but his body occasionally said otherwise.

"What did I do to myself?" Harry asked his host when he came in that evening.

"What are you experiencing?" Severus set down the fresh bottles he'd just retrieved from the wardrobe.

Harry shucked off his shirt and his ex-professor turned away. "I'm a potions adept, not a proper doctor, Potter. A little warning next time before the nudity commences."

Harry struggled to describe the warm, tingling feeling that had been hovering on his skin all day.

"Use the salve. It will counteract any discomfort. Remember your body it attempting to regrow something, hardly a usual function."

Snape slammed himself into the bedroom, which was so heavily warded his guest couldn't get within a foot of it. Harry was finding it somewhat comforting to be around the potions master's particular brand of nasty. After everything he'd seen over the last year and a half since leaving school, he felt worn out and hollow inside. His old teacher no longer had the same scary way of looking at him, Harry thought. Snape used to gaze at him like he was a revolting but marginally interesting insect he was considering dissecting.

Oh, right. This was pity. The one person he thought was immune to that emotion that had driven him from his regiment had it too. This filled Harry with a sudden rage. Luckily there was someone to take it out on.

"Snape! What are you doing in there, wanker? Are you really turning me into a spider and wringing your hands with gleeful anticipation? Answer me, you bastard! You can't really help me, I bet! This is all to use my body parts for a potion!"

On the other side of the door, Severus was, in fact, wanking. Miserably wanking, if that mattered. "It's a side effect, merely, nothing more," he told himself. "A few inconveniences are nothing compared to what I will accomplish if this potion turns out."

There was no reason why it shouldn't. The journal articles he told Harry about had to do with regrowing a hand or a foot, which certainly involved nerve regrowth. Those studies had been limited to the few witches who were willing to put their offspring at risk while taking experimental potions to harness the regenerative power inherent in pregnancy—the main focus of the original theory. None of the infants had lived long after birth, and the procedure had been banned in the strictest terms by the ministry.

The specially induced milk, however, had done its job admirably on the women and was clearly the operative factor, to Severus' eyes.

Severus also knew that it was possible to induce lactation in a man. Everything was possible. But those few who had attempted such a thing had often ended up with unwanted female secondary sex characteristics, if not an involuntary sex change.

That wasn't what Severus required, and he was sure Harry would not want such a thing. No, the milk would be produced while the subject ingested the proper chemicals, and then extracted for use in the treatment potion, which worked by allowing the patient to give birth to himself, in a way. If he could perfect the process, Severus could at last leave the stultifying atmosphere of Hogwarts. Spinal cord injuries were for the most part beyond wizard medicine up until now, but he could have—

He came while imagining the beautifully appointed laboratory that would soon be his.

Harry yelled himself hoarse and then took a few drops of the calming tincture his host had left nearby for use before bed. Why not? He couldn't walk. Couldn't fuck. (His throat caught at the idea he did his best to banish from his mind). He had this spell system for managing his bodily processes that was infinitely better than the tubing setup they'd hooked him to at the Ministry. Why not enjoy a nice calmative? Why not two or three?

"Congratulations, Mr. Potter. I can see you are not ready to be treated like an adult. Henceforward, the cabinet will be in charge of all your potions."

Harry turned his head groggily to see Snape calmly grading papers at the desk. His vision was slightly doubled but it seemed to be the middle of the night.

"Do you h—"

"Ask the potions cabinet if it's feeling more sympathetic, because I won't give you a thing for that hangover."

Harry eventually gave up talking to the wooden box and floated himself over to the kitchen for some tea. "I take mine without anything," Snape called.

Harry floated himself and the cups back. "Why are you doing this for me," he demanded. You don't even like me. Are you going to make me into a potion and sell me for a huge profit?"

Snape laughed. It was a strange sound. Harry wasn't sure he'd ever heard it before. "Is that what's got you all hot? If you were sensible you'd suspect me of cloning as many little Boys Who Lived as I need for my infinite nefarious purposes."

The word "hot" reminded Harry of his discomfort. "May I have that salve, please?" he asked the cabinet politely.

"Let him have that one; he can't poison himself with it," Snape directed the cabinet, which nudged out the tube of liniment.

Harry grabbed it and unbuttoned his shirt to smear the stuff all over his front. "This works so well it makes me hope the rest of the treatments will, too. Thanks, Snape."

Harry spent the rest of the evening reading quietly (the Gryffindor section of a Hogwarts history) while the other man finished his grading and then read something himself.

The cabinet clattered gently and then nudged the battery of potions towards Harry just as he was getting sleepy. He took them all and then fell asleep hoping not to dream of being cut in half.

When he woke up, Snape was in class and Harry was surprised to feel very good. He took mental stock of himself, as he did every morning these days. Not a toe wiggle. Not an anything below the waist. His inventory kept going up past his waist and finally reached—

"Oh my—! Lotion, please! You fucking inanimate object, give me my salve!"

The cabinet shifted until it reached his bedside and the tube was uncapped in a second. When Harry unbuttoned his shirt to see what must be a terrible rash, he saw something quite unexpected.

His nipples were larger. There was no mistaking it. He should know what his own chest looked like, shouldn't he? They must have been enlarging over the last few days, hence the tingling, but it was suddenly obvious: they were larger in circumference, redder, and noticeably longer.

Oh, and exquisitely sensitive to the touch.

The medicine cabinet wouldn't answer any of his yelled questions, of course, and only deposited his usual breakfast ration of bottles, which he slammed down, hoping for relief.

But there was no relief. Harry alternated between rubbing them soothingly and avoiding anything at all touching them, but to no avail. A good portion of his half-a-body was on fire, and there was nothing to do but plan his revenge upon the ex-spy he never should have trusted.

The potions master returned somewhat late. "How's the patient?" he asked the cabinet. He must have gotten some sort of answer because Snape turned slowly towards the wand that was being pointed at him from behind the sofa.

"Patiently awaiting your return for an explanation of why I am turning into a woman!"

"Come out of there, Harry. You weren't interested in the particulars when I tried to explain them. I gave you my word that the treatment would cause you no harm, and I meant it."

Harry stayed behind the couch while he listened to the explanation of his treatment that hadn't made any sense when he'd heard a few pieces of it those confusing first days. Someone had hit on the idea that mother's milk contained many healthful properties, and, when mixed in the right potions, could act very much like stem cells, in that the person would be giving birth to himself, along with any injured parts.

"Himself, so other blokes have taken it and they stayed blokes?" Harry was still vaguely unnerved about what he was in store for, but it wasn't as bad as it could be, he supposed.

"No. No wizards have ever attempted it—only women whose fetuses suffered great harm in the process. Which is why it is technically illegal."

Harry lashed out. "Illegal? You're keeping me here to take an illegal substance that's not been tested on men?"

Snape was looking directly in his eyes. "I have no interest in turning you into a woman, Mr. Potter. I happen to have learned a very reliable and safe method for inducing lactation from a Tibetan shaman, so please do not worry on that account. A little enlargement of the, er, area, can be addressed after your treatment. You will leave here every inch of the man you came in as, except bipedal."

Harry believed him. He wasn't sure why, but he did. "So this is all science for you then?" he asked while Snape fetched him a plate.

"Yes. You're not the only one in the world who wants the use of their limbs back. With a proper laboratory I could perfect the treatment. I'd be much better suited in a placement with limited human contact, I'm sure you'll agree."

Actually, Harry wasn't finding the company too bad. They passed a pleasant evening, Harry reading in some of the potions books massed on the shelves, looking for ways to alleviate the pounding pressure in his chest.

Finally, he heard a low rumble. "What is it?" Harry asked.

"You've been reading about potions for over two hours and you haven't spontaneously combusted."

Harry laughed as well. "You know me, practical to a fault. Two parts of me feel like they're combusting and I'd like them to stop. Have you been giving me anything with Triple-edged Briny-leaf in it?"

"No. It's not part of the induction phase nor of the potion that comes out of it. Why?" Snape came over and read the passage about the elasticity-promoting effects of the leaf. "It won't hurt to try, I suppose. Perhaps we can experiment with it this weekend."

"Great. I'll keep reading tomorrow then," Harry said, feeling sleepy. "If you could bring more books that would help me, you know, know what to expect, I wouldn't mind."

"Of course, I should have thought. Watch for them in the cabinet. Good night."

"Severus?" Harry murmured.

"Yes."

"Whatever you do to experiment on me, don't turn me into a girl," Harry whispered.

"I won't."

Severus shut himself into his room. Severus. He called me by my given name. Close proximity does away with formality, he told himself as he got into his pajamas. It never ceased to amaze him though, that all his proximity with students and faculty had only the tiniest fraction of them realizing that Severus Snape was more bent than a basilisk beak.

He'd done everything he could to discourage people—faculty and, needless to say, students—from thinking of him having a private life at all. Espionage demands prudence. His occasional club forays were—fruitful—but Severus always had to go under Polyjuice to avoid the complications that would come along with his real identity. An encounter with the real him would have made civilians vulnerable to Death Eater scrutiny. The prospect of a liaison with Death Eaters revolted him. And now that that particular war was over, Severus remembered his one attempt to meet someone as himself and shuddered.

He'd never been beautiful and now he was old. That's what he saw in the eyes that picked him up and spat him back with lightning speed. And what would he do with one of the sad-looking men who made half-hearted overtures? Severus had no idea how to be nice to a person, much less be—intimate. And he was no longer able to attract anyone but the dregs for a quick encounter.

Cut to the quick, Severus returned home that night, vowing to never seek copulation without the comforting lie of Polyjuice in between. Even that seemed like too much trouble.

Potter, however, had never done anything for him. He was a child. He was still a child, judging from the tantrums he threw, according to the wardrobe's reports of what happened while Harry was alone….

Which were not nearly as bad as what Severus would throw, were he to find himself paralyzed.

All right. Potter was a young man, then. The former head of the most famous and effective regiment on any side of this confusing war. He had fought well and crawled into the parlor of his hated potions professor because he wanted to be able to return to the senseless fight that nearly killed him.

Harry was also past eighteen. And life-hardened a few years older than that. Old enough to consent to an experimental remedy. Old enough for anything and everything.

"That's absurd," Severus chided himself. "If his pheromones are already exciting me, the production should happen very soon." Nevertheless, he gave into feverish fantasies of a Harry Potter who was very much a man.

Harry was still studying some of the potions books the next day when the cabinet doors clattered discreetly. A few more books flew out and came to rest by his bedside.

"Of course! This is some kind of Vanishing Cabinet!" Severus must have checked out some books in the library, and that's how they'd appeared in the wardrobe. On second thought, Harry hoped these weren't traceable to Snape.

They were about radical healing procedures, but the books were written by madmen. These insane doctors had caused all kind of interspecies transformations in humans to cure diseases. Harry was glad his body was just going to do something chicks did. There was a book about that, too, and it all seemed pretty clinical.

When he was bored of reading, Harry exercised. He had this idea that if he kept in really good shape from the waist up, he would be less of a pathetic half-person. He did pushups and a sort of modified sit-up, and then he lifted a chair for lack of weights.

The ex-soldier worked out hard for a couple of hours at least twice a day. One day it was giving him what must be an endorphin high because he felt slightly better about his situation. Then he realized the pressure in his chest was somewhat better as well. Maybe building muscle tone would help his torso withstand the development of all those ducts and things without making him look like a chick.

Heartened by the idea that he had some control over his own situation, Harry had his lunch potions and then some of the meat-and-potatoes type food Severus must assume was soldierly. Now that he was trying to make the best of his long convalescence, he'd ask for a healthier menu and maybe a potion to help improve strength and muscle growth, Harry decided. Anything beat lying around waiting for his penis to start working again. Fuck, not being able to blow off steam by wanking was hell.

Harry's hand had unconsciously drifted to his chest, and he was squeezing lightly. Wait. That felt good. He tried the other side. Definitely good.

Desperately, he searched for something like pornography, but of course Snape wouldn't have any of that. Or it would be warded to kingdom come. Harry lay back in his cot and imagined that he was tugging on a different part of his body than the place his hands were occupied with.

The pleasure was milder, slower, but it was building. Harry had enough room in his head to consider: was there ever a Mrs. Snape? Did Snape date? The whole double agent thing couldn't have made meeting someone easy, but the potions professor was sort of ageless, and he wasn't fat. More on the skinny side. Maybe there was a nice lady somewhere who was impervious to sarcasm, Harry thought while leafing through the anatomical booklet about lactation and imagining that the ladies in the drawings had heads.

He couldn't bring himself off, obviously, and that pissed him off to no end. Then Harry spent the time until dinner trying to break into the potions cabinet.

"What have you done to my furniture?" Snape asked in horror when he returned.

"I wanted a calming potion and it wouldn't give it to me," a disheveled Harry replied. He'd left his shirt unbuttoned so that nothing touched him in the spots he'd only inflamed even more by his pulling.

"Did you spend all day trying to batter your way in? Lawrence is an heirloom, I'll have you know. I've had him since I was a child. It's very rude to hurt someone who is only concerned for your wellbeing."

Snape laid a comforting hand on the wardrobe that seemed to be nuzzling into his cloak.

"No. I exercised. A lot. And I read. A lot. But then the stubborn thought came that I am a prisoner of one of the most annoying people I have ever met. And I can't stand in order to kick his arse!"

Severus calmly opened the cabinet and retrieved a potpie. It bore the marks of a bake shop in Hogsmeade. Harry could trace most of his victuals to the town he was surprised still existed now that he never thought about it.

"And don't keep making me such unhealthy food. Do you want me to be a fat paraplegic you can roll around at will?"

His host impassively went over to the potions cabinet and whispered something to it. It shot out a couple of new bottles.

"Will these tranquilize me into not thinking about my life?" Harry demanded, staring at them miserably.

"No. one is to help you build strength as you pursue your exercise routine. And the other is an antidepressant. I won't tell you which."

He shut himself away in his bedroom, where he climaxed in short order thinking of Harry's chest.

After the initial outward development, Harry had to content himself with invisible progress towards his goal.

Far from being afraid of looking like a chick, Harry would take any measurable changes as a step in the direction towards stepping with his own two feet. But the changes in his areolae and nipples leveled off. For a few weeks there was this great commotion going on under his skin. He imagined a regiment like the one he had commanded, and the potions were lining up the troops, giving them these completely new orders, and everyone was slowly getting into formation.

The potion Severus had given him for his muscle training was certainly doing its job, so Harry worked out for most of his solitary hours. He liked to keep a good example for his men, so Harry had stayed in very good form while with the Ministry. But in short order he had a six pack and then some. His arms were bulked up because he did so much more with them. And he had well-developed pecs upon which his redder, wider and pointier nipples sat with complete naturalness. Too bad he was effectively a eunuch, Harry thought. He could sure pick up girls looking this fit.

When he wasn't exercising, Harry searched through the potions books, looking for ways to hasten his cure while using his hands to rub in more of the salve he was using by the bucket.

Snape was nowhere to be found during all this. Harry discovered food ingredients in Lawrence (as he was coming to think of the wardrobe) and he made his own food. He assumed that his host was experimenting on the potions that regularly showed up in the cabinet.


	3. Chapter 3

One day Harry banged on the bureau. "I can't take this feeling of pressure for one more second, do you hear me, Snape? You think you can just leave me like this with a gallon of salve and some empty promises?!"

Obediently, the cabinet door swung open and a device with an instruction manual was released into Harry's hand.

"No, never mind, I don't want—" he said while Lawrence looked at him expectantly.

The first few tries with the suction mechanism were horribly embarrassing. The next two days of seeking relief with it were maddening. Harry found that he craved the draw upon these two areas of his body, but it only caused the pressure/pain feeling to build and build with no end in sight.

Harry was either working out or tugging at himself for almost two weeks that were a blur of pleasurable torture.

Finally, he tried to drag himself into the potions cabinet to seek out the unknown passageway that connected the rooms with Snape's laboratory, whereupon he would use his new strength to pummel the scrawny potions master into spitting out some answers.

"You wished to speak to me?" Snape drawled, taking in the new, ripped Harry Potter with the nipples standing out pleadingly from his chest…. which looked scratched and raw.

"What have you done to yourself?" The potions master sprung into action, murmuring to Lawrence and selecting several unguents. "I thought all this time you were using the suction device because it was inducing small amounts. That soon I would be able to start brewing the potion."

"Small amounts? Try no amounts! I am going to fucking cut them off if you can't make them do something or stop hurting!" Harry was clenching his hands by his side.

Severus mixed two gels together and began working them into one nipple. "Oh, god. That's a little better." The potions master added some lotion to his other hand and rubbed both sides together. "Oh! That's heaven. Don't stop."

Listening to the unashamed sighs of relief coming from Harry, Severus kept his eyes focused on the inflamed areas while trying not to be aroused by his fantasies made flesh. He massaged Harry for a long time while fighting against the knowledge that the perfection springing under his fingers would be his masturbatory fodder for the evening.

"Do you see? Harry, do you see?" Severus pointed excitedly to the drop of white.

"I did it? I'm going to walk again?" They each squeezed a nipple excitedly but only got a drop or two from each side.

"Yes, I think we're on our way." Severus had the feeling he'd forgotten his pants or something but then realized he was smiling a genuine smile, the reflection of Harry's. Except Harry was surely not smiling thinking of his brand-new child-free laboratory.

Lawrence was clattering next to them and Severus opened him up to reveal some butterbeer.

"You're right, Lawrence. Alcohol wouldn't be a good idea, but we both deserve some refreshment after getting this far," Severus said, retrieving the bottles. The hinges squeaked closed in response.

"That is so freaky," Harry said after a frosty swallow.

"Since every fetus starts out female, deep in your genetic makeup this ability already existed. Still, it is quite exciting—"

"No, that your best friend is a piece of wood," Harry specified.

"And you're a lump of flesh and bone," Severus snapped. "Lawrence has never judged me and never let me down. Ask yourself how many people in your life you can say that about."

Severus swept himself into his bedroom with a proper flounce and slammed the door.

He came with one precise maneuver upon his penis, and with the scent of Harry in his nostrils.

Harry must be spending too much time cooped up, because he could swear he was beginning to sense emotions coming to him from the cabinet. He could feel the almost motherly concern from the piece of furniture warring with a fierce protectiveness of Severus, which made the doors swing open sharply on him at times.

Out of concern for Lawrence, his constant companion, Harry decided to be nicer to Severus. After all, his host was up late every night experimenting upon the odd drop Harry was able to produce. They communicated through notes transmitted through Lawrence's shelves, mostly. Harry submitted a precious drop or two in the phials left to him for that purpose, and he imagined all the things he would be doing soon when his body worked.

Ron and Hermione also worked at the Ministry, though Hermione felt deeply torn about all these machinations going on behind muggles' backs. She felt like muggles had a right to know who had been behind a so-called "terrorist plot" sponsored by the Traditionalists, and she and Ron fought sometimes about her desire to get more politically involved. Harry was right up there, front and center, a target for both warring factions, and he'd naturally distanced himself a little from them for their safety.

He did have a best mate in the army. Martin Rees, a Welshman the same age as he. Hilarious fellow, fearless, not at all freaked out by the whole Boy Who Lived thing. He and Marty and cursed each other out many a time. It was a ritual they performed before new recruits to get people un-star struck. It was Marty who made sure Harry had his wand hidden in a secret place for the escape he knew his friend must be planning.

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do, ya wanker," he grinned the last time Harry saw him in the hospital. Being now unable to shape his own fate meant being the Boy Who Lived full-time, forever. While the Ministry was thinking of how to spin the mischance of a ton of stone falling on their boy wonder, Marty winked at Harry and disappeared.

There were a lot of people from school who had chosen sides. Draco Malfoy had gone with the ones wanting to reconquer muggle territory. Malfoy's parents, as well as Luna and her father, were Conservatives, wishing to shut themselves off from conflict and take refuge inside a simpler life. It would make a class reunion awkward, certainly.

Harry did have the feeling that he had left something undone by not graduating. Maybe he'd take a certificate when he got back on his feet. Maybe he'd travel. Meet some nice girl somewhere exotic.

Thinking of girls was dangerous, however, because Harry had developed a bad case of phantom-penis. All he could do was stimulate his chest and delight in the novel pleasure these manipulations produced.

Pleasure, but very little else. One day Harry overshot a wand-induced flight to the top of a bookshelf and hit his head on the ceiling. It was a little thing, but he flew into a frenzy at his uncooperative body. "I'm a paraplegic with teats! Is that what you want, Snape? You bloody pervert! Where's my potion, dammit?"

Snape returned to his quarters that night, gliding unwillingly into the room in response to the message about Harry's snit from Lawrence. "As I wrote to you, Potter, the combination of potions and manual expression is the only known way to accomplish this feat."

"Can't you take time out from your busy schedule of being a miserable bastard to spend five minutes doing it for me?" Harry complained. "It works better when you do it."

"Oh yes? I hadn't noticed," Severus responded vaguely. The cabinet door opened and there was a rustling of the log book they used to keep track of progress. "Yes, I suppose you're right," Severus said, shooting a grimace at Lawrence for proving what Severus already knew. The potion master's eyes were looking anywhere but the sweat-stained torso of earthly delights.

Lawrence nudged out a tube of lotion and Severus uncapped it.

"Oh, oh, look!" A few droplets were scattered on Harry's skin. "You didn't even touch me yet. That's good, right?"

"Yes," Severus lied. Never would he have wished for this to come to pass.

There was a powerful olfactory link between the milk provider and the milk consumer. Everyone knew that being in proximity of a habitual suckling can cause an involuntary letdown of fluid. But this link was entirely unscientific and also inconvenient. Potter had to learn how to produce on his own if he were to need maintenance doses. He couldn't stay here—such an idea was ludicrous, Severus thought as he bottled the fluid with his usual precision.

"What's the matter?" Harry asked dreamily.

"I was merely planning on making a full test batch with this good sample," Severus said with forced distance in his voice. "Now that your body knows it can do this, you should find the device and eventually your own fingers to be effective at eliciting this ingredient for your treatment."

"This is great, Severus. I haven't really thanked you. For working on potions night and day, and putting up with my bad moods, and well this." Harry looked down at the fingers that knew just how to use the right kind of pull to produce a decent stream of white into a test tube. "There's not too many people I'd trust to do that, mate, but you're brilliant at it."

Severus drew out the last drop and corked the phials. "You're not going to stay for a butterbeer?" Harry asked. Lawrence already had the bottles out.

"This is exactly what I needed to take things to the next step in the lab," Severus said and was out the door.

In the laboratory where he had been sleeping, he warded the door. Then he yanked himself into a climax while thinking of the bizarre image of him pulling essence of Boy-Who-Lived out of a chest worthy of a Greek god.

Resolved not to interfere anymore with his experiment, Severus spent every spare moment in the laboratory and dispatched the trial potion several days later.

Two days after that, Lawrence let him know that Harry had him at wand-point.

"Make. It. Happen." Harry ground out between his teeth. "Or Lawrence gets it."

The wardrobe was shivering.

"You think I won't kill a cripple, Potter?" Severus crooned, looming over Harry with every ounce of his old menace. "Kindly promise to take any future grievances up with me directly, rather than with my associates."

"You don't come when I call. Your machine doesn't do what you say it does. Your bloody miracle potion hasn't caused the slightest tingle below the waist, which might be because they've all taken up permanent residence in my chest!"

He ripped off his shirt, which was already damp. "You're the operative factor. You take care of it."

Severus was staring at the painfully engorged nipples standing out from the well-muscled pectorals. Harry gave a few futile tugs but barely produced a drop.

The potions professor gave a gentle pull on either side and pressed a phial under the resulting stream. Harry gave a cry and pressed himself forward. "Get it out. Help me get it out."

Severus swore (and Lawrence later confirmed) that he merely froze in place. It was the nipple that came at him. The nipple that invaded his mouth. And then a deep, ancestral urge overcame every thought of science, every moral consideration.

The hand strayed into Severus' hair as he did his work, inducing the stream by the action of his mouth and then capturing the majority of it in phials.

When they were done, Harry started tea. Severus found cups. They drank in a companionable silence, as if something had grown larger than the parts of themselves that were embarrassed at what had just happened. Because they were able to sense that in each other, too, another thing they didn't expect to have in common, but did.

"You won't try to stay away again, just to prove a point?" Harry asked warmly.

"The potion will need some adjustment, but soon it will merely be a matter of time until you feel its effects," Severus responded by way of no, and knew Harry understood.

Severus slipped into his bedroom and threw up a ward worthy of a Gringott vault.

Thinking of the hand in his hair, the first gesture of its kind (though caused by a hormonal imperative) directed at him for years, and which would soon be gone, Severus wept.

But when in Harry's presence, he couldn't worry about anything. Severus gave a good stab at melancholy, but he couldn't manage it within that pheromonal cloud. The men were the two reagents in a most exciting calm together. Severus was now mostly in the waiting phase with the experimental potion he'd been giving Harry now that he had all the ingredients, so he told himself there was no reason to keep sleeping in the laboratory. He graded his papers in his parlor and had as many meals in as he thought was prudent. But for Severus, all the motions of school were only important because they led him to the moment when he could open the door to his rooms.

Harry went about shirtless these days for practical reasons. The shirts Severus had obtained for him upon his arrival were too small, and neither of them called attention to this fact enough to do anything about it. But Harry had taken to unconsciously stroking and pulling at his chest—again, for very practical reasons, as the idea was for him to be able to express his crucial potion additive on his own, though this still remained elusive.

When Severus walked in the door every day, he saw a young man tugging at himself in cocky anticipation of being sucked off. That the locale in question was different didn't matter. The potions master had been young once, frustratedly young, and he was aware of what it meant to someone of Harry's age to face life without sex. It was one of the reasons he'd agreed to this long treatment in his own quarters—his own taking of the Mark at Harry's age had ruined any possibility of a relationship for Severus, and he found it difficult to watch such a waste in someone else.

Riding high on optimism, hormones and a relocated sense of virility, Harry seemed to have no qualms about their situation. He had little control over his production while alone, but the patient managed to be barechested and right at the brink when Severus walked in so that his host could see the white spurt on its own accord to greet him.

They repeated the process two or more times during the night. Severus slept on the couch sometimes and woke to a warm feeling of contentment trickling down his throat or running across his face. Harry liked spraying his face—obviously reliving practices he'd engaged in with girlfriends—and Severus, so help him, he loved the dominance of the gesture. He got caught up in the unspoken fantasy that Harry's penis (which was promising-looking though stubbornly inert) was the thing making Severus' knees buckle in anticipation of closing his mouth around it.

There were whispers in his classroom. School was coming to an end, and the potions master was unutterably glad. He looked up without interest from his desk. "Yes?"

"Robertson did exactly what you told us not to," a Slytherin pointed to a boy who was covered with red goo. "His potion is spoiled, and you told us if we—"

"If someone were to ruin their experiment they would earn my undying enmity," Severus completed. "Clean yourself up, Robertson, or I'll do it for you."

Everyone, not just the Slytherins, seemed disappointed that it didn't escalate farther than that. But since he'd stopped being evil, demoted to only a symbol of evil for children, Severus didn't even enjoy sneering anymore. He'd been withdrawn into himself at mealtimes for a year, and knew Dumbledore was allowing him this time alone. To reflect on a difficult, wasted life now over, and consider what was left, if anything, for his remaining years.

"You are not even 40, Severus," Dumbledore said fondly on more than one occasion. But he left it at that. The old man knew what it had been like to be an adult reporting to a kindly warden whose good will was the only thing keeping him out of prison. Dumbledore said nothing of consequence to him as a rule, and no one else had ever troubled themselves about Severus Snape.

That day, however, someone remarked at the meal table, "Severus? You look well. Have you done something to your hair?"

Dumbledore replied very naturally, "Of course, Severus, that potion you were testing on yourself for wound repairs must be good for the hair as well. Your complexion does look well, besides."

Severus glowered at everyone at the table, excluding Dumbledore. He didn't want to know what the old man had suspected of causing this supposed change, but Albus had just made it clear that he respected his old charge's privacy enough to cover for him.

He was helpless to see what physical differences people were referring to. Perhaps his hair had edged towards lustrous rather than greasy. His skin was still pale, but the circles under his eyes were notably diminished despite his long hours in the lab. But what Severus saw staring back at him in the mirror was the look of hope in his own eyes. It didn't belong on his face, and it would be gone soon enough when the potion worked.

It would be any day now.

He came back one day to a Harry in front of a stack of books. "Plotting my demise, Potter?" Snape asked in a voice that came out more craven than commanding.

"Come see," Harry ordered, with his back turned.

Severus approached and found Harry grinning at the effect his new, longer nipples were having upon his old potions professor.

"Lawrence brought me the ingredients. It was that three-edged leaf and a few other things," Harry said proudly.

"You shouldn't experiment on yourself," Severus said hollowly.

"You do it all the time, Lawrence said. The idea is for me to use that machine on myself, isn't it? I was thinking that maybe it's not been useful because I can't get a good grip," Harry said. "Go on, let's see." Instead of picking up the device, Harry's hand beckoned to the man in front of him.

This time, Severus forgot to funnel away anything into the glass tubes. It was easier for him to latch on and even easier for his mouth to stay there until Harry was dry. There were two notes in the noises of pleasure accompanying the act.

"I shouldn't—" he began after there was no more to be had.

"You should," Harry said, wiping off Severus' mouth. "Now rub me with the salve."

Severus applied the ointment worshipfully, allowing himself to stroke other parts of Harry's torso besides the experimental zones. Harry lay back and enjoyed being admired. "Very good. I'll call you when I need you again," Harry pronounced in his army voice.

Severus withdrew as if he were used to be ordered around every day. He pleasured himself in his bedroom, wishing that the day would come when he could do this in front of Harry. When Harry could do this in front of him. When…

Severus was awoken by Lawrence tapping at his door. It was time for another pleasurable collection session.

It went on like this until the end of term and into the beginning of the summer. Severus' unspecified experiments were his excuse for staying at the castle, and no one seemed to expect otherwise after all these years.

"Don't work too hard," Dumbledore smiled at him before leaving on a journey.

Severus was looking forward to long, uninterrupted hours with Harry. Observing him, helping his healing, and…every pleasure that entailed. They'd started talking about themselves over meals, or sometimes Harry was talking while looking down at Severus' busy mouth and fingers. The hand wandering in his hair…

He was returning to the castle with some new additions for the base potion. Harry was looking noticeably stronger but there was still no sensation below the waist. The antidepressant seemed to be helping Harry with his impatience, but Severus knew that they were both anxious about seeing results—Severus for more than one reason.

The potions master closed his door behind him and was Stunned against the wall.

Harry wheeled over with one hand while keeping the other pointing a wand at the older man's throat. "Admit it," Harry gnashed and then let Severus fall to the floor.

"What-what?" Severus had plenty of things to admit to on nearly any subject, but his stomach was in knots. "What are you on about, Harry?"

They'd started using each other's given names interchangeably with their surnames. It was one of the many things that had happened gradually. Only the import of all of these changes between them seemed to have hit Harry all at once. That they had gone from eating a polite dinner across the table from one another to Severus absorbing some part of his nutrition from Harry's body had snuck up on Severus as well, but he was too hungry for affection not to have realized how much he enjoyed it.

"What I am referring to, Snape, is the fact that you are a cock-hungry slut," Harry pronounced clearly as if explaining a maneuver before his regiment. "What I mean, Professor, is that you haven't managed to cure me at all, but you have masterfully engineered every revolting way imaginable to put your hands and mouth all over me!"

"Who told you?" Severus asked stupidly before realizing that this was seemingly an admission to being something more than just homosexual. "Lawrence, not you!" It must have been a chance note in one of his books referring to the love life he'd never had. A slight indication of his tastes that had otherwise been banished behind closed doors the first night Harry slept in his quarters.

The cabinet was hunching away into a corner, guiltily.

Some last childhood trust in his steadfast wooden friend was withering while Severus listened to the words lashing at him from Harry's direction. The Harry who refused to lower his wand.

"I don't have much to do all day, 'Severus.' I mostly read about this miracle cure, how it's supposed to work and mostly WHEN it will work. All of the studies I've read would say I should have had a tingle in my little toe. Something by now. But I had faith in you. Mine was a radical injury; I appreciated that we could be honest about that together. 'Ol' Snape's not so bad in an emergency," I thought. 'Glad I ended up in his fireplace instead of underneath a train.'"

The reference to suicide was not surprising, hence the antidepressant. Snape had begun to put together what happened next. He sent a sympathetic glance to Lawrence, who squeaked a door miserably.

"Since I have so much time, Lawrence and I talk. Yes, I'm a wheelchair-bound shut-in—what's your excuse for talking to the furniture? Anyway, we got to talking about what you were like when you were younger. Before you became big bad Snape, headliner in the nightmares of little boys."

Snape raised an eyebrow but Harry ignored him.

"Lawrence had some old things of yours. There weren't really many childhood pictures of you—no more than there are of me," Harry's voice softened for a moment and then regained its hardness. "But there were some adorably pretentious notebooks full of ideas for curing all kinds of illnesses—or causing them, depending on your mood."

"As an adolescent who is pointing his wand at my head with noticeably murderous intent, you're one to talk," Severus shot back from where he had sunk into a chair.

"A simple charm revealed the margin notes. I hope you became better at subterfuge in your spy days than to rely on a simple Invisio to hide your secret messages. And what did I see? You had a crush on half of Hogwarts—the male half, specifically. My godfather? A certain Adrian? Barry? John? Dixon? How many boys did you set your spotty sights on, Snape? They crowded right off the page. The fantasies about them were disappointingly prosaic for you. I would have expected some elaborate and cruel form of seduction such as you practiced on me when I really needed a friend!"

"If I was guilty of any self-interest in proposing this scheme, it was in hoping to make a name for myself and get out of this school once and for all," Severus said, and his truthful note surprised both Harry and himself. He sounded like a prosaic old man, which came out worse than the idea of seduction. "And now that I am a free man, I have been trying to understand why I threw so much of my life away at exactly your age. I didn't want you to grow up without hope, having lost your dreams for some stupid reason. I didn't want you to end up like me."

Harry paused a moment before resuming, "Well, it's not a pretty picture, you pederast."

This was taking it too far. Severus' quiet voice made the room temperature drop by a degree or two. "I have never taken advantage of a child, or any man. That is not to my taste. I draw the line at mere murder. More to the point, you are an adult. Or do you need a parent or guardian's permission before you tell your regiment of sweaty young men to drop and give you fifty?"

"Oh, so you've fantasized about me as an officer, have you? I'm not a schoolboy fantasy, don't ever forget that, 'Severus.'" Harry made the sibilants hiss.

Not sure what Harry was getting at, Severus tried to calm his patient. "Be reasonable, Harry. Why would I create a treatment that needs me to be there in order to put it into effect? I can hardly make a marketable cure in this way, and what should I do, point out the benefits of an adult breastfeeding relationship to prospective patients? It's done wonders for my hair, it seems."

Harry had noticed that Snape was looking less greasy. He and Lawrence had talked about it. "Severus has nice hair. I like that he's growing it a little longer," was what he'd said. The cabinet had nudged a hairbrush onto his lap, and Harry had thought about brushing the other man's hair as he….

"You did this because you get off on it," Harry said, pointing at the dribbles on his chest caused by even thinking about it.

"You are a beautiful young man, Harry," Snape said quietly, making Harry look up sharply. "That I am not unaffected by your charms is one of those things that happens in life. I have plenty of experience with doomed attractions. As you get older you will understand how these things are not factored into your hopes or expectations. A distraction easily ignored."

A cruel smile was spreading across Harry's face. "If you've been too distracted to make me a proper treatment, then I have a treatment for you."

Severus should have said no. He could have stood up to Harry then and there. But he intuited then, and became more sure as time went on, that what Harry was truly angry about was not the slowness of his cure.

He was furious that Severus had been getting sexual pleasure out of their situation, when Harry was denied release.

"It's time for my extraction," Harry said brutally. He levitated himself into an armchair and watched Severus enact the motions he had done before, but this time the erotic subtext had risen to the surface.

Frequent exercise had given Harry powerful arms and shoulders. He held Severus' mouth away for one long moment and the other man thought he might kiss him. "Bring yourself off while looking at me," he ordered.

Gazing at the body that was sort of his, that would never be his, that would soon be gone, Severus pulled himself over the edge.

"Was that good for you?" Harry asked scornfully.

Severus whimpered.

"Now back to the lab, bitch, and fix my legs. The next time your motivation might not be so nice."

The potions master had done all the equations hundreds of times. He was facing the sinking idea that there was some variable in women's milk that was different than men's. Of course, there was no way to test this, and he'd already written to several wizard scientists with vaguely worded questions, but to no avail. Naturally, any mention that he was trying a modified form of a banned treatment would be foolhardy in the extreme. As a last resort, he started his own control experiment to see if his first results were even replicable. Mostly, Severus sat in the laboratory and tried not to be curious about what Harry had in store for him that night.

At least life had attained a bizarre kind of simplicity in his rooms. There, a series of orders left him floating in some sort of pleasurable mindlessness:

"You want it, so take it," was how Severus was greeted at the door. "Make my dinner, bitch." "Fetch me something to read." "Tell me a story." This was how Severus' summer was turning out.

Severus Snape liked it so much he looked it up to make sure there was nothing illegal about it.


	4. Chapter 4

Sadly, Severus' romantic exploits were rather few, but Harry enjoyed hearing about them in minute detail in the story hours that now supplemented their evening reading time The young man was fascinated by the things that Snape found arousing (Severus had a particular interest in clavicles, and was surprised that this was not a usual predilection).

The younger man would take these bits and pieces of an erotic miseducation and weave them into naughty fantasies. All so that he could jealously watch the long-boned man in front of him perform the male functions his injuries had cruelly taken away from him. Snape's very good imagination was what had sustained him through lonely years, but it was nothing compared to that of a man who couldn't function as one.

"You like that one, do you?" Harry asked, watching the other man's gasps of release after their recent extraction session/story hour.

"Yes," Severus said. When he was in his laboratory—away from Harry—he'd understood how embarrassingly simple his enjoyment was. The lesson he reenacted with Harry every night was clearly that Severus had wedded himself to two masters, the Dark Lord and Dumbledore, because he had been unable or unwilling to find this—whatever this fantasy world was—with a man. Anyone he could have ensnared would have been far less furious and attractive than the one in front of him, surely.

"Good. I'm glad you got off," Harry said, his mouth an inch away from Severus'. One day, they would kiss. One day, this show of dominance would include an acknowledgement that Harry liked it, that he had some use for his filthy ex-professor. That they were in this together—

Harry launched a look at Lawrence, who inched over to him. Since they'd been spending so much time together, the cabinet had started siding with him over Severus, it seems. Lawrence was obviously of the opinion that the tall drink of misery that was Snape was severely and chronically underserviced. Ever since Harry had been vicariously attaining release through his host, the wardrobe had practically been purring at him.

The outside world had fallen away for Harry long ago. He'd been in this one sitting room/kitchen/study with adjoining bath for so long that Harry had stopped thinking about the people he knew, or the war, or anything. Snape had seen him in his humiliating, unmanned state. Snape was the one he did these strange and delightful perversions with. This couldn't happen anywhere else.

The small jar was nudged off Lawrence's shelf into Harry's lap. The fantasy that had been gripping him for days began unfolding. "Take this," he barked. Severus accepted the container dumbly. "You've been throwing yourself at my feet for long enough, I might as well have you."

"You—you felt something?" Severus ventured with his new, tentative voice.

"No," Harry stated flatly. "I don't feel a thing. Which is why you will."

"Lawrence!" Severus was aghast that his cabinet had taken this object out of the secret place where he'd locked this predilections away from Harry.

Harry crossed this taboo while staring at Severus' face until he discerned what felt best. His own face was flushed. His eyes fixed on the black eyes staring at him in wonder. For the first time, Harry's one hand touched the body in front of him, examining it while the drama took its course.

In truth, it was not Harry's only experience with a man. But the other didn't count. He and Marty were thick as thieves—you had to rely on someone when your civilization was threatening to come apart and sometimes the people you rounded up for sedition were people you knew. It was a dangerous time to be alive, and Marty was a great fighter and a great friend. Who else would he occasionally bring himself off with?

It had started one day early on, after Harry had seen the Traditionalists nearly out the entire Wizarding World with a foolish attempt to seize Big Ben—the sort of in-your-face gesture that group liked as the terrorism most befitting their concept of wizard. A few muggle tourists had taken the Cruciatus directed at Harry's band. It was ugly and senseless and afterwards, Harry retired someplace for a discreet wank.

"The more the merrier," a Welsh voice came from a little way's down in the darkness a ways off from their camp. "All the lads do it, Cap'n. Blow off a little steam here and there."

"Yeah? Why didn't anyone clue me in so I could've included the ol' one-handed pull-up in the Ministry's list of recommended exercises?" Harry asked good-naturedly, still giving himself a good tug while Martin loomed up closer, evidently doing the same.

It became their thing to do, the nights they could get away: talking and wanking, both activities seeming to make the other easier and better, somehow. Marty came from a Pureblood family fallen on hard times, not unlike the Weasleys, but where Ron and all them were salt of the earth, Marty's family had been some of the first to join the Traditionalists.

"Not my style, y'know, Harry?" he confided after telling of the loss of most of his family to the fanatics.

"What is your style, mate?" Harry had asked, trying to figure out what made his friend fight to passionately without seeming to possess any sort of politics.

Marty's other hand strayed to Harry's groin and started helping him stroke. "I sort of make my own way, always have."

It had been a few months since Harry had had a girl. The women in his company were strictly off limits, and it was too tiring to figure out if the girls he met on the outside had a hidden agenda. Harry thrilled to feel someone's touch other than his own. And it was Martin. He was utterly and completely normal, a part of the scenery. It was the Ministry nodding and smiling at his getting off, first on a wank, and then from a polish from his friend. Instead of "Lie back and think of England," it really was as though Harry was being reaffirmed by the best of Wizarding Society, a best that was in short supply.

Harry had never reciprocated more than a left-handed assist. But he liked Martin. He respected that someone could be so completely cheerful and undemanding. His sexual encounters with girls had always been full of worry and clumsiness, Harry realized at some point. But with Marty it was just easy.

It became obvious over time that Marty fancied Harry, and didn't fancy girls. He was still the toughest, most foul-mouthed son of a bitch to ever pick up a wand, so they found a rhythm of mutual pleasure and mutual silence about the pleasure.

When Marty came to see him in the hospital, Harry saw no pity. He saw the same thing that had always been looking out of those blue eyes—a love that needed nothing in return. "I never—" Harry began from where his half-body was twisted under the sheets.

"You didn't have to," Marty said, touching a finger to his own lips and pressing it to Harry's. Till the end, he knew what Harry meant—this time, that he'd never thought to kiss Martin. "You can count on me for the maneuver, Cap'n. Don't do anything I wouldn't do." The hospital escape would have been impossible without the ever-helpful Martin paving the way.

Harry had never kissed Marty because, well, he didn't feel like he had to. Girls expected that sort of thing, didn't they? He'd been afraid of doing so and finding their easy friendship shattered by an awkward or disgusting lip-lock with fumbling tongues.

This experience had nothing at all to do with Harry's life, post-Snape. The potions professor was not someone he especially liked or respected. And there he was, swanning about with a working penis that didn't seem to interest him as much as other postures.

Harry stopped his actions and looked down to where Severus lay there, panting. Waiting. Wanting whatever he had to dish out.

It was a thoroughly despicable attitude, Harry thought.

Activities that would have never occurred to his actual member had Harry's phantom-penis at full attention. Harry, young, strong (and broken) was claiming a willing, novel (and old-male-Snape) partner. The fact that Severus had wanted him so much as to hide wanting him aroused both pity and a scientific interest that Harry would not have been able to maintain with his actual member involved.

One day, when Harry was busy watching how far he could push this man's body with his own half-a-body, at that moment Harry felt it.

A tingle. In his left little toe.

After feeling nothing below the waist for so long, it registered like a shot, so that when the man in front of him climaxed at the same moment, it was as though the ecstasy and the surprised cry were his own.

Exhilarated with hope, Harry kissed Snape as the only one handy with whom to celebrate his return to the world of the walking. Though something kept him from giving Severus this background. He was too jealous of this one twinge to share, just yet.

The kiss took Severus aback, however. It made him angry. He considered putting something in his charge's rations to make his hair fall out or give him a hunchback. What right did Harry Potter have to kiss his throwaway toy? Gestures like that, and the hand in his hair, the intensity with which Harry chased all of Severus' little fetishes and pleasure points, filing them away with some unfathomable scientific interest—

It was beyond cruel. Even for a boy afraid he would never walk or make love again.

But to kiss him while doing it was personal.

Severus would be weeping with rage that his lonely life was being tantalized in such a way by someone who wasn't even his type (he liked uncomplicated, short-term, age-appropriate paramours). Except he was now very concerned that the potion hadn't shown signs of working.

Snape tried to keep himself away from these dangerous little games he'd fallen into with his guest by remaking the potion again and again with the abundant supply of fluid and then working on his control experiment. He had so many versions he'd lost track of which he might have used on a given day. He tried varying the potions that Harry ingested, which affected the fluid's qualities.

The stuff had to have some regenerative qualities, because Severus looked in the mirror and saw someone stupid enough to be falling for someone who didn't even like his gender, much less him. And he had been far too jaded to do something like that for almost two decades.

Severus had never been admired. Getting off with a stranger was like performing a very simple mathematics: I like this, you want that, if we run into each other on the street some day, this never happened.

But with Harry, there was no place to run. They talked and talked about secret interests. The hours flew. There were caretakers in various parts of the castle, but no one paid any attention to the few faculty that spent usually only a week here and there in between summer travels. Severus made it known that he was making his own meals, but he left out the part about who his endlessly stimulating meal partner would be.

"Pretend isn't good enough. I want to really do it," Harry said one day over breakfast.

The tone in his voice made Severus looked up. Harry's inability to engage in real sexual relations—and who he might like to do that with-was everything that their games helped avoid.

"You'll get better, Harry. I've told you that your rekindled interest in sexual matters is a sign that nerve growth is beginning."

Severus believed it. He had to explain away this oddly wonderful erotic relationship that clearly had little precedent for Harry. There wasn't much precedent in Snape's own life, either.

"You think like some of the books I've been reading. That sexual response is set at an early age, and that if I haven't sought out guys to sleep with before now, I won't once I have the choice."

Harry's adult directness was unnerving at times. Snape fumbled with his napkin. "If I were to get a hold of some of your schoolboy scribblings, a decoding charm would hardly find you obsessing about Draco Malfoy."

Harry shrugged. He wasn't sure how to classify Marty against his all-girl sexual history. And he'd done a lot of things with Snape that were most likely out of desperation or convenience, but the all-knowing penis did not lie about what it liked. And his was as silent as ever.

He had another waffle. Eating for two was time-consuming.

The owl came after Midsummer.

"No one has heard from Fawkes' friend for so long they fear the worst. But in case you do hear from him, please convey this news,' Dumbledore's cramped script said. The clipping from a page of Ministry stationery was the only other thing in the envelope that Severus handed to Harry.

"What are you looking at! Get away! I can't think with your simpering face always around!" Harry cried after scanning the page for a moment.

Left alone, he confided to Lawrence, "I knew the Ministry sometimes kept it quiet when someone went down in the line of duty, but this is just crazy. Maybe Traditionalist family killed him so they could use Marty as a reason to enact revenge on the administration, maybe not. But one thing I do know is that Marty wasn't part of any of these games."

He took a deep breath. "He was only 18. The world makes no sense. I mean, I had to be there because everyone bloody well expected me to fight. But him, he could've done something else. Everyone could be doing something else other than this fighting that's become a habit."

Harry wept. The wood edged over to him and the bureau door was warm when it touched his shoulder.

Severus came back later with a bottle of wine. "Since my potion hasn't done a thing, there's no reason why you can't have a drink," he announced. "I'd been saving this for our success and then to drown my own failures, but you have far greater worries this evening," he said of his companion's tear-stained face.

And then the potions master shut up. They drank the wine and then switched to some grassy-tasting spirit. And said no more than two sentences an hour. Harry had to admit he liked that about old Snape. To listen to him drone on in the front of the class, the man loved to hear himself talk, but in person he was rather quiet. Lost-seeming, now that his personal war was done.

"Do you miss it?" Harry asked in one of the long silences.

"The fighting?" Snape grasped immediately. "Not that. But, having something solid to react against. It's very difficult to proceed without that."

A small smile played around Harry's lips. "That's why you like a—"

"Don't be disrespectful. This is a wake," Snape said with that thing flitting back behind his eyes the way it did sometimes.

"So Dumbledore knows I've been holed up here all this time if he's sending my mail to you."

"He's known all along, I'll wager. He's busy trying to prove to me that he sees Severus Snape as a free man."

"Then that means he knows Marty and me!" Harry yelped, finally understanding how the old man would have known to send that particular classified document to him.

Severus' eyebrow inched up his face until it was in full-on "You interest me in spite of myself, you worm" mode.

"We weren't together," Harry faltered. "We did things sometimes. Or he did."

"And you were there for moral support?" Snape asked with a coldness that surprised them both.

"He was my best mate! And we were under a lot of pressure. We would blow off steam, like." He reddened under Severus' glance. "He would blow off, more like. It was fun. I never had to think about it because he was always there."

"You seem to have a knack for attracting men who are always there and don't need to be thought about," Severus said before he thought better of it.

"Assuming Lawrence is really a bloke, so do you," Harry shot back.

The wardrobe shuffled in the direction of one man and then the other, unsure of who to comfort.

"I have something for you," Harry said in a new tone.

The suspicion warred with the hope of something deliciously nasty on Snape's face, along with the awareness that Harry saw the whole tawdry show.

Harry went about barefoot all the time, since shoes were an unnecessary hassle. He looked at Snape's nose for a full minute.

"You must be drunk if my nose is suddenly so fascinating," Snape said drily.

"Look at my little toe, idiot. It's not easy to do."

Severus leapt up and spilled his wine. "It's working! This just happened now?"

"No, it happened over a week ago." Harry held Severus' gaze steadily. "I wanted to make sure it wasn't my imagination."

Which both of them knew to mean, "I wanted to carry on with our games without having to think about the future."

"Severus," Harry said softly. "Come here." He drew the head with its long, silky dark hair towards his chest. "I want you to make me feel good. Like you know how."

Severus performed all the actions he had so many times before, this time with the tinge of drink making them hold on to each other so that Severus could exercise a warm, private ability that might soon end.

When it was done, Harry lifted up the mouth and kissed it. For real, because he could say he was just drunk tomorrow. For real, because he would do the same if it were Marty with him in these walls that had imprisoned him for so many months.

Severus kissed him back, though he was sure to regret it.

"Now that your cure is coming along, there is a lot of training to be done. I hope you don't expect to simply lie around and be pleasured while your nerves grow back, Potter," Snape said tipsily, but with some of the nastiness of old. He smiled. He could still be a bastard when he wanted to!

"I've read the books. It's going to hurt like hell. This week hasn't felt good for a moment here and there."

"Why didn't you tell me? I could have done something." He faltered. "As you read, there is little to do about the pain. But I could have been there."

Severus gathered Harry up and brought him into the bedroom, where they slept the rest of that long night together.

"What?" Severus asked, his wand at the throat of the person who had just screamed even before he could open his eyes. "By Merlin, Harry, you shouldn't have a hangover after the potion we took before bed. But now I have as good as one."

Harry was crying and babbling. "My legs! The pain! Give me something, dammit!"

The perverse little idyll in which they'd lived had come to an end. Severus had to re-ward his suite to make sure the shrieks couldn't be heard by anyone passing by. He hated to leave Harry alone to his hell, but he urgently needed to rework some of his pain potions so that they afforded some relief while not totally anesthetizing the patient. And he was the potion master's patient once again. Harry had to relearn how to control his legs, teach them to hold his own weight, to walk soon.

Severus didn't want to dwell on it in his head, much less aloud, but none of these things were guaranteed by nerves that were beginning to conduct electricity again.

The women who'd used the banned treatment had regrown their limbs, but their level of control over them varied, no doubt because they lacked proper physical therapy. The scientists had been most concerned by the perfect formation of the limb itself, not how well it worked.

Severus was prepared to help Harry's brain become the master of his legs, which required them to be not as anesthetized as his patient wanted them to be.

The curses Harry leveled at him were no longer for fun. Lawrence placed himself between the volley of insults and Severus, as if trying to absorb some of their venom.

"You miserable cunt! Give me some more of that potion! The one that bloody well does something, bitch! Not the other fifty that just taste like shit!"

His legs only moved when Harry didn't want them to. They neither looked nor felt like his own, and these alien tentacles scared the hell out of him, after all this waiting for something to happen.

He wept with rage while trying to push against Severus' hands with his thighs. "You didn't make it right! Do it again!" He would banish the other man from his quarters so that Severus could have a few minutes of quiet before he had to pry Harry off of Lawrence.

"He can get any of your potions! I want the good ones. You're trying to keep me here because you can't find anyone like a normal person, you pederast!"

Severus let even that go. He had to restrain Harry after he started hurting himself in an effort to get something stronger than an analgesic. It became impossible to offer Harry any physical comfort because he was wracked by pain. The lactate was essential for maintaining what Severus knew to be progress, so while Harry was bound, several times a day the potion master used the device while rubbing his body with a soothing lotion. It had to be done quickly, because the endorphins naturally released during the act did little to overcome the other physical sensations.

"Why haven't you fixed the most important spot below the belt yet? I'd think that would be the first thing your freakish arse would have been interested in," Harry said with a quiet fury that was worse than all the screaming. "You've been lying to me. You can't fix it at all, and that's why you thought I would want what you had to give—a place as your nursemaid in this miserable apartment I can't wait to be shut of!"

Severus was so exhausted he wasn't sure whether the nerves in Harry's crotch were indeed behind schedule or not. He was fine-tuning the repaired bones at the same time, especially in his spine and pelvis, and this had required even more rigorous submission to the uncomfortable braces Harry had been using in strategic spots to make sure everything knit itself up properly.

And now that Harry's body was trying to re-take control of its own functions, certain incidents were the final insult to a proud young man who had endured so much. Luckily, Lawrence was there in all the ways Harry wouldn't have tolerated Severus to be.

The number of indignities involved in a miracle cure were staggering. Severus had started taking the antidepressant as well. He wished he could offer something to Harry so that he would be less anguished. Finally one day, Harry had shouted himself hoarse. He'd stood on his left leg for nearly a minute before it kicked out from under him. He'd suffered every possible agony and humiliation, he refused to eat, and all he could do was sob.

"Harry, I have a surprise for you," Severus said, telling himself that it was the only thing left.

"If it's not heroin, I don't want it," Harry said wearily, staring at the ceiling.

"I've tried most known intoxicants, and I'd say this was better," Severus said, taking off his shirt, as he'd avoided doing all this time that his control experiment was in the works.

They reversed roles, and the effect was miraculous. For Harry, there was no genetic therapy contained in the fluid produced from Severus' chest, but the simple creature comfort afforded by the exchange had Harry calmer than he had been since the potion kicked in. Severus had tested his liquid first on himself, and found that strangely, something produced from his body was not toxic. Quite the opposite—like Harry's stem-cell regenerative effect upon himself, Severus was feeling quite energetic.

"That looks good on you. You did this for me?" Harry asked, surveying the visual effect.

"To make figure out why your potion wasn't effective, yes, but it turns out that the full effect kicks in without warning. I've been wracking my brains for no reason."

There were new pleasures and explorations to be had now, and it was during one of these experimentation sessions that Harry felt it.

Months' worth of arousal flickering on and off in that one lingering gap in sensation below the waist.

Eventually, Harry's member began expressing its interests, and Harry didn't think there was any doubt that it was beginning to point at the Severus before him.

Harry was fumbling with his trousers. "I told you so," he said joyfully.

"Oh, thank Merlin," Severus breathed at the sight, grazing the skin with a fingertip. He knew some men endured dysfunctions in that region for no good reason, and that there was often no cure.

"Who told you to do that!" Harry jumped as well as he could within all the braces at the electric shock caused by the contact. "Holy Hell, can't you give me some time before you manhandle the goods?"

The pain in his tender tissues brought back the swearing and pleading at times, but at others, the two of them stared at each other with stupid smiles on their faces. Soon, nothing could keep them apart.

The first act was an exercise in restraint as Severus tried to keep the stimulation he was providing on the side of pleasure rather than pain.

After it was over he looked up nervously. Harry looked down and there was a silence. Then he began to laugh. He laughed so hard that Severus was terrified it was hysteria due to overstimulation.

"You, you, hooked up with guys under Polyjuice for years?" Harry finally gasped.

"Yes."

"And then the blokes whose hair you borrowed went around not knowing any better?" Harry asked.

"I suppose not. Do you need a calmative?" Severus asked.

"I was just imagining these chaps not having a clue why they were getting accosted in bars and back alleys by your previous partners demanding a repeat performance." He glanced at Severus' uncomprehending face. "One that puts every amateur who's ever given me one to shame."

"Are you calling me a professional, Potter?" Severus' clothes were settled in an instant and he was looking at Harry coldly.

"I'm saying you can't put a price on perfection," he said, staring at the other man wonderingly. "That was beyond words."

"You haven't been laid in nearly a year. You'd say that to a knot-hole," the older man sniffed.

Harry caught his hand. "You were wasted on your life, Severus. And me, maybe I won't be after all. I can't believe it! I'm a man again."

"You've always been a man to me," Severus said distantly.

Though he still could not walk with any accuracy or stand for any length of time, Harry was eager.

"I want to do it for real," he pleaded.

"Every time has been for real," Severus said with that snappishness that was coming out more and more frequently.

Harry enjoyed getting closer to his partner than ever, but still he had the sense that Severus was slipping through his fingers.


	5. Chapter 5

Right before school started, Harry was well enough to walk with crutches. An accomplishment that Severus took much of the credit for, because Harry, if left to his own devices, would have spent his entire time catching up with another sector of his body.

"Your regiment will be very surprised to see you," Severus observed as he dressed, fighting against this too-long-postponed conversation. Harry had been giving himself a crash course in the news he'd lost touch with while fighting his personal demons. What was going on in the Wizarding world wasn't good. "It may be inconvenient, but you need to keep expressing a couple of phials full every day to mix with the base potion that can be owled to wherever you are."

"Owled?" Harry set down his paper. "What do I need an owl for?"

"I'd imagine you will be too busy to be stopping by Hogwarts for a top-up."

"I will." The two of them stared at each other. "I thought when you finally wrote to Dumbledore about me you gave your notice."

This had happened when Harry's cure was a sure thing, a few weeks ago. Dumbledore had written back a terse, "My felicitations," and that had been that. Harry expected they would all meet to talk about things, but he was far too concerned with restarting his life.

"My what?" Severus was gaping at him.

"They won't let you keep rooms here when you're not teaching, idiot," Harry said. "You can put things in storage until everything's settled. Lawrence is the sticky matter, but we've talked about it—"

"Will you say what's on your mind, you insufferable boy!" Severus lashed out.

"You're going to leave with me." A look of shock came over Harry's face. "You didn't think I was just going to leave you, leave this? For what? Things weren't all that great before, Severus."

"And the army will simply let you carry along your male sex-slave for whenever you have a spare moment off from saving the world to service me?"

"Well, I thought the medical unit would be stupid to turn down your expertise. I made a few discreet inquiries through Lawrence, but I wanted the letter to come from you. If you wanted to primarily work on the potion on your own, we'd still see each other." Harry faltered, "I didn't want to push you either way, knowing that you'd have to deal with the Ministry either way, and you get touchy about that."

Harry and Lawrence were both leaning towards Severus' reaction.

Who got up, walked calmly over to Harry and slapped him. The bureau shuffled back.

"What you have put me through at points is unnamable! I realize you have suffered greatly, but you have never once given me any assurance that this was more than a fling. Do you have any idea what it is like for someone of my age and history to find a shred of happiness dangled in front of them with no promises for months!"

He gathered up his cloak and slammed out of their quarters.

When Severus didn't return, Harry did the only thing he could think of. He flooed himself to Dumbledore's office.

"You look very well," the headmaster observed as Harry walked quakily to the first piece of furniture and hung onto it.

"I'm still working on my strength and coordination, but I still can hardly believe it," Harry exulted. "Severus is a genius, you know."

"I know. The next potions instructor seems serviceable but altogether dull."

Harry felt guilty. "I'm sorry to take away an instructor with so little notice."

"Little notice?" Dumbledore laughed as he sorted through his traveling bags open in the room until he found some sweets. "I've had someone on standby since Severus was no longer legally obligated to stay here as part of his commuted sentence. I'm shocked he waited this long to run off. Tea?"

Harry accepted the cup absently. "How much do you know about us, Professor?"

"I know you both well enough that Severus couldn't pass up a challenge like your injury, and that you would rather die than have your condition dissected by the papers. It was natural and good that you would work together on your problem." The old man dipped a biscuit in his tea.

Harry opened his mouth.

"And that fulfillment has been known to improve someone's physical and mental health, though never their skin and hair to such a remarkable extent."

Harry shut his mouth for a good, long, blushing moment. "I've never had anything like—that—this—with anyone. Which may explain why I didn't realize I had to tell him I don't want to end it."

"I wouldn't worry. Severus has things he's been bottling up for twenty years he'd like to tell me. I keep expecting the next step outside the door to be a furious Severus Snape telling me off for every way I've ever annoyed him, but—"

The door flung open. "Just as I expected. Nattering about your poncey potions professor? Or ex-professor, as the case turns out to be." Severus flounced into the room in a billow of cape, hair and dramatic entrance.

"Severus, you never disappoint," Albus crowed. "You look—"

"Ravishing," Harry gulped.

"Healthy," finished Dumbledore.

Severus sulked over to a velvet chair and frowned into the cup floated over to him. "One can't throw everything over without a proper suit for the occasion," he muttered.

Harry was at a loss for words. Severus was wearing a new suit of clothes, and he looked gorgeous. And very young. Almost Harry's age. Did seeing someone every day for months make you not catch a slow but significant change like that?

Severus was wearing a velvet jacket, a sort of modified frock-coat, in a dark moss green. His collarless shirt was a darker green, and his pants were of a slender cut.

Harry had never thought of the lanky man's gestures as effeminate, and he still didn't. But now he could clearly see the tangle of sexuality and, he might put it, passion, behind all of his unpleasantness. All along he had been a dark, sultry kind of twink, craving attention and domination, perhaps, but also aware on some level of his devastatingly long eyelashes, his creamy white skin, the haughty movement of his long hand pushing back the dark, shoulder-length hair from his eyes.

"I was just saying I don't know what I'm doing with you," Harry said throatily. "I mean!" Severus sent him a look of death. " I know that I want to be with you, but I don't know how to do it properly. And I'm not sure why you're wasting your time while I figure it out."

"That's grand. I am stunted emotionally as well, so you would have kept your intentions from me until I'd thrown myself in the lake," Severus grumbled.

If Harry noticed the accumulated changes in Severus, the net effect on Dumbledore, who hadn't seen them all summer, had the old man unusually speechless while he studied the lineless face.

"If you're concerned about the talk, Severus, I wouldn't wor—" Dumbledore began.

The potions professor wheeled on the old man. "Talk? Whatever could you mean? The nearly twenty-year age difference? The fact that the Boy Who Lived has to admit to being in some small fraction queer?"

"It's not a small fraction!" Harry objected.

Severus tossed his head and then said through gritted teeth, "I've written and rewritten the gossip column for the Daily Prophet in my head every night."

Both of them broke off when they saw the box floating towards them. "I happened to come across one of these in my travels this summer," Albus was saying. "You may take it out, Severus, but don't swallow it until you hear me out."

Severus took wafer of what looked like amber out of the box. "Where did you find this? They're uncommonly rare."

"And a good thing, because a world where everyone assumed a new identity would be very confusing."

Harry was looking from one to the other, definitely confused.

"This is a piece of Chinese Honeyed Anthracite, petrified and then un-petrified by a painstaking process. It will allow Severus to stay himself, but for others to not recognize him. It is perfect for the rare occasion in which the person has no major problems with his life, only with the way he is perceived by others. Though of course he can make exceptions for anyone having tactile contact while he consumes the treatment."

Severus tried to muster up a snarl. "I'd not say my life is perfectly peachy."

"So you see, a Harry Potter who returns to the army after a miracle cure with a man who looks not even twenty-five in tow will be reabsorbed into the fold in short order," Albus was saying to Harry.

"He does look amazing, doesn't he," Harry said, brushing the hair out of Severus' face with one hand while the other poised upon his thigh.

"I don't look that good," Severus snapped, making no move away from this first show of affection.

"There's not a thing you can say about your image, in the mirror or elsewhere, that has ever made any sense to me at all, Severus." Albus said with the air of having a tedious conversation sustained many times before. "You are an attractive man. As a man in love, you are extremely fetching. Though I have cautioned you many times about testing your potions on yourself, it turns out that this experiment has taken many sorrowful years from your shoulders."

He had summoned a mirror and Severus was gazing at his reflection with a paranoid look on his face, going so far as to move his hand slowly so he could track its movements in the mirror.

"Your cure happened rather suddenly," he said musingly to the Harry who edged into the reflection.

They sat there for a moment. They looked good together. "You shouldn't use yourself as a control," Harry said fondly.

"I've been telling Severus that for years, as I have also been telling him that sometimes things go wrong on their way to going right," Albus said with great affection in his voice.

"No wonder my tailor was so willing to whip up all these suits in short order. He'd been wanting to dress me 'less lugubriously,' he said, for years, and that's why he was so enthusiastic, I thought." He turned his face this way and that. "I look like my life never happened to me."

Dumbledore took them in hand. "Now, Harry may have assumed too much when he thought you were naturally going to come with him when he was healed, but now the ball is squarely in your court. What would you like to do?"

For the first time ever, Harry saw Severus at a loss. "You would do this for me? Forget all the years we have shared, for the sake of my starting again?"

Albus reached his hand over and tipped up Severus' chin. "I'd lose all the years that I don't remember as bitterly as you, for you to have the happiness you deserve."

Severus gave a faltering look to Harry. "You really want to tie your fortunes to mine?

Harry stood up falteringly and made his way over to sit in Severus' lap. "I want you. People will be so glad to have their Ministry poster-boy back, they'll stop looking at this bonus gorgeous guy that comes as part of the package."

Severus' face was going all splotchy. Harry kissed him.

Severus kissed back for a goodly amount of time.

Albus had out a large purple spangled handkerchief and was blowing his nose. "Just out of curiosity before I forget what you tell me, are you going to focus on the treatment that has obviously healed you and Harry so thoroughly? Or do you want to join the army in some potion-making capacity, or something else entirely? It's your new identity. I know Harry will support you either way."

A small tear quivered in the corner of Severus' eye. "As much as I do want to help others facing a traumatic injury like Harry's it will be very difficult to make the Ministry view it with an open mind. Let's take our battles one at a time."

"You don't mind that I want to go back?" Harry asked. "I mean, I didn't ask you if—"

"A healer can an and do his work in any country, especially during wartime. One of the things I've realized these months with you is that I need that kind of involvement, even if none of the causes particularly mean something to me."

"Why don't I leave the room and come back to meet you again?" Dumbledore stood up. "I might find it confusing if I'm taking tea with a stranger."

"Of course," Severus got up. He held out his arms and Albus stroked his hair for a moment. "I'll always know what you've done for me."

Albus left the room, the tea-tray and cups trailing behind him.

"Let's do this, love. Let's be young together." Harry put his well-muscled arm around Severus' slender waist and put one hand on his cheek. Severus took the wafer and let it dissolve on his tongue.

"Quick! Do you remember my name?" Severus asked after a moment.

"Severus bloody Snape, and I know that you're a virtuouso with your—" Harry began.

"Why Harry, so nice of you to drop by—and your healing is progessing so nicely," Dumbledore said, beaming. "And who is this fine fellow?"

"This is Severus," Harry said proudly, squeezing the other man close. "He's the one that fixed me."

"Is that so? You'll have to tell me how you managed it sometime, Severus," Dumbledore said while pumping the dazed-looking young man's hand warmly.

"You'll be seeing a lot of him. We're going to be seeking partner housing in the military," Harry said, rubbing the small of Severus' back.

Albus betrayed not a bit of surprise, leading Harry to believe that at least one person had known about his sexuality all along. "A fine match, if I do say so, Harry. I've never seen you look so whole, though I think there may be a little jealousy—on both counts—to contend with. Shall we have tea?"

Severus sat and listened to Dumbledore trot out all the usual anecdotes he would use on a first-time listener. He seemed very old and lonely all of a sudden, to Severus' eyes. He hadn't anticipated missing the dark cloud of fate that rose up between two people who had plotted together over years.

"I was very involved in the last conflict, you see, but neither I nor this school can take anything but nonintervention at this point," Albus was saying.

Severus got up hurriedly, flung on his cloak and swept out of the room so he could master his emotions.

"Bit tetchy, isn't he?" Albus asked, dunking a biscuit.

"You'll see that he has quite a flair for the dramatic," Harry agreed. Severus' gestures made so much more sense in the young body he had now. It's as though he'd been frozen in time around when he took the Mark, and all that need to be seen as beautiful, to be taken in a firm hand and loved, had been crying out in the mountain of misery that had built up around it.

They talked a little bit about ways to help ease a newcomer into the British Ministry's healthcare system, and then Severus came back into the room, his face a little pale. Harry imagined he'd charmed away the redness in his eyes.

"Better, love?" he asked, pulling out Severus' chair.

"Yes, thank you."

"We were just saying that you should use my card by way of introduction," Dumbledore said, floating one over. "Where did you learn your potion-making, young Severus?"

"I had an exclusive apprenticeship on the Isle of Man with a hermit who has since passed away," Severus said with the part of his brain that automatically had a back story for any lie.

They talked a little more about people to contact and then Severus could take Harry's discomfort no more.

"It was lovely meeting you, sir, but Harry's recovery is not yet complete," he said smoothly, running a hand up Harry's arm.

"Thanks, Dumbledore, this has been more wonderful than you'll know," Harry said. "I plan on visiting more often."

Then they raced down to Severus' quarters. "We've got to get out of here before someone wonders why there's a stranger living in the dungeons," Severus hissed. "Filch will have a conniption."

"First there's a little thing to take care of," Harry muttered urgently.

Severus had a hard time getting in his rooms because the wards didn't recognize him, but then he started the packing process with a volley of spells that had everything assembling itself, compacting itself, and then jumping inside Lawrence.

By the time they had harvested their last potion additive they would collect in the suite that had seen so much, a very confused Lawrence was standing in the middle of an empty space.

"All right, Lawrence, now it's the laboratory. Quick," and Severus shrunk the cabinet to a pocket size so they could grab all the precious potions ingredients from the lab.

Harry stood watch outside the door. The banging and clattering in the laboratory was just beginning to diminish when Filch came around the corner.

"Harry Potter! What are you doing down here?" the old man snarled. "And what's going on in there?"

"Oh! Nothing, I was just showing my friend around the old alma mater, sort of," Harry said, kicking the doorjamb as a warning.

Severus emerged, looking somewhat flushed. "I don't know what you were on about, Harry. There's nothing in that room."

Filch peeked in behind him and surveyed the gleaming surfaces. "Well, you don't belong down here, neither of you," and he insisted upon escorting them to the front door over their protests that they'd been Dumbledore's guests for tea.

"I don't know how you were supposed to have gotten in, because I was at the door all day and I never saw the likes of you before," Filch said, his eyes skimming Severus' form a little more closely than necessary.

Harry laughed and threw an arm around his companion's waist. "Thanks for the guided tour, but we've got places to be." He leaned heavily on Severus.

"Harry, we can't—" Severus began.

Harry was steering him away from the gate towards the secret spot where Ministry officials could apparate from on Hogwarts grounds.

"You can if you're with me. Hold on tight, babe."

They reappeared in a Ministry office that Severus might have been in once years ago.

"Captain Potter!" someone exclaimed after they'd stopped pointing their wands at him.

"Almost, Major Adams, almost," Harry said, sinking into a chair that someone had produced for his trembling body.

"I could have told you not to apparate yet, idiot," Severus whispered.

"And who is this?" a uniformed soldier demanded with his wand pointing at Severus, along with the rest of the room.

"He's the one that patched me up, and anyone that raises their wand at him will answer to me," Harry said in a voice much stronger than his precarious aspect at the moment.

"That didn't take as long as I expected," Harry said, laying his head back on the cot exhaustedly in a room hastily assigned to them.

Severus thought it took an age. Fist Harry had to submit to tests confirming that he was himself, though the Ministry wards that allowed him a conduit from Hogwarts into the officer's hall wouldn't have let in anybody else. Then he had to tell the story he'd rehearsed over the months until it was perfect: that he he'd been delirious with shock at his poor prognosis, wandered out on the street and been picked up by a kindly young friend who had painstakingly nursed him back to health on his secret island in the Outer Hebrides.

They'd not totally convinced the Ministry of exactly who this Severus Snape fellow was, given that everyone with the slightest bit of magic in them had been catalogued in the last couple of years by a Ministry hoping to either exploit their cooperation or predict their collusion with the enemy. And there were zero records of Severus.

It was only on their next mandatory stop, at the infirmary, that Severus earned a grudging concession of respect.

"It's miraculous," the doctors said after examining Harry. "He wasn't going to walk again. You must tell us what you did."

"Harry has a very strong will—all I did was provide some potions and encouragement," Severus said quietly. He then carried on a technical conversation for as long as he had to in order to establish that a) he wasn't a complete fool when it comes to potions and b) there really wasn't a miracle cure.

"If you don't mind, Harry needs his rest," he eventually said. Severus was about to say he'd find his own lodgings somewhere, when Harry spoke up in that authoritative voice that made him thrill.

"If you don't have couples housing set up here at base, we'll take a single for now," Harry grinned. "Curled up tight we won't fall off the bed."

With a minimum of fuss, the officers' barracks found a single and jammed in a second cot right next to the first.

"That's lovely. I'll be there at first call in the morning, though don't expect any leg lifts from me any time soon," Harry said graciously.

The soldiers backed out of the room, taking the last bit of shock with them.

"Did you see their faces?" Severus laughed. "The Boy who did not turn out as they expected."

"That one private was eating you for dinner with his eyes," Harry said, running his hands down Severus' back. "Those trousers are awfully tight. Are you sure you have Lawrence in there?"

Severus extricated the wardrobe and turned it back to normal size. "I'm very sorry, old friend. I didn't have time to explain we were going on a journey." The cabinet slid into a corner in a huff. "We'll be in a nicer room soon, but for now can you manage?"

The door squeaked open and their regular bed linens flung themselves out. Severus busied himself with making the beds as comfortable as possible while Harry took grateful stock that at least one part of his anatomy was not tired. "You're going to make me injure myself just to spend time in the infirmary."

"I haven't asked them if they'll take me on. There will be a test of some sort to make sure I'm not the enemy come to poison them with subpar Skelegro." He took a new outfit from the wardrobe and laid it out next to the stack of uniforms provided by the Ministry so that he could get rid of the wrinkles.

"Severus?"

"Yes?"

"As much as I love watching you be domestic," he began.

Severus came over and let himself be pulled onto the bed with less force than he would have hoped from a captain returning to his regiment the next day.

Afterwards, Harry whispered to him, "I love that we're finally out of school. You don't know how much bigger the world is outside of Hogwarts, but you'll feel grand in a day or two when it hits you. We made it, together."

And Harry fell asleep.

The next morning, Harry opened his eyes early. "You don't have to get up, love," he said into Severus's hair after they'd performed some necessary gestures.

"I probably should," Severus said, glossing over the fact that he'd been up for hours.

"What are you going to do today? See what's up with the hospital dispensary?" Harry asked from the shower.

"I might look around at the other double quarters and get a sense of curtains and things for when they assign us," Severus improvised, amazed that Harry could be so naive. It's what he'd worried over all night—Severus Snape had forgotten not one jot about the world beyond Hogwarts, and he knew they had only "made it" out of the frying pan and into an inferno of intrigue.

Therefore, Severus had dressed for the part of mysterious concubine. He was wearing another new suit, a black one with a more modern jacket and a slim cut. The shirt was a brilliant dark sapphire and he wore a matching ribbon tying back his hair in a long braid.

"Oh, you look good enough to eat," Harry emerged from the bathroom in a towel, which he dropped promptly. "Let's do it once more for good luck," he begged.

"I want to, Harry, but don't you need to factor in extra time to get to roll call this morning?" Severus asked, helping Harry into the uniform.

"You're right, love," Harry said, full of good humor. "I'm going to bring that cane just in case, as you asked. Sure you won't come to breakfast?" he inquired as a bell rung somewhere far off in the building.

"No, Harry, I already ate," Severus said with a twist of his lip.

Harry hurried out, leaning heavily on his cane.

Severus heard him greet another soldier on their way to the dining hall. His wand was in his hand when they came to get him a few minutes later.

"Why don't you come for a little chat?" was the rhetorical question from the ministry employee, a stooge by the name of Reynolds that Severus had met once in his spy days.

"I'll do whatever you like, but if you try to Obliviate me afterwards, this ribbon is charmed to turn black," Severus said with a smile. "Then I'll know and then Harry will know. You'd hate to spoil the homecoming of your golden boy with the knowledge that you got rough with his paramour."

Reynolds and the other two men nodded, smiling. "Someone's been around the block," one of them said sotto voice as he followed them to a portal. The ribbon was made with a special pattern woven into the fabric, making it impossible to replace. He'd had a similar system with his socks during his Death Eater years, when it paid to be more discreet about his suspicions. Now, he planned on keeping the ribbon as a prominent reminder that he trusted no one.


	6. Chapter 6

The Ministry employees escorted him quite a ways down well-patrolled hallways. Severus had been all around the administration building by virtue of his double-agent status. Voldemort's army was constantly worming their way into the many secret passageways that had been carved out over the centuries. Unity had never been a strong point among the Wizarding world, so that nobody had ever been willing to do without their own personal escape hatch. As soon as a portal was discovered and found to be compromised, a new one would spring up.

Except for his brief imprisonments in Azkaban, the former spy had managed to avoid the Ministry's official interrogation rooms like the one they led him into. In his former incarnation, nobody wanted to publicly admit that they needed something from him, though more than one high-ranking official had found Severus' knowledge about potions and other subjects instrumental at times.

"Have some tea and scones," a Ministry official offered.

"I'd rather have my Veritaserum neat, if you don't mind." Severus smiled at the reaction that remark elicited. He had no idea if the food was drugged, but had heard of it happening before. The phial was placed in front of him by a potions officer while Reynolds whispered with the interrogator. "Do you wish to test me for antidotes? Slippery Beech? Ethereal Cypress Bark? Midnight Borage Extract?"

He listed nearly a half dozen more known ways of cheating Veritaserum before he hit upon one they didn't know about. "You've never heard of Devilweed Sap Tincture? I'll show you how to concoct it sometime," Severus said politely to the ministry employee in charge of dispensing potions. The thin little man with sandy hair and a goatee was in his early forties, and thus, Severus addressed him as a peer. The man resented this familiarity from a young stranger and willed his initial look of interest into displeasure at being caught not knowing the latest in counter-truth technology.

The center of interest waited calmly for them to take a blood sample and cast a number of revealing charms on it.

"He's clean," the potions person said with some disappointment.

Of course he was. Fear of Veritaserum had possessed Severus night and day when he first became a spy. Relying upon any of the known methods for controverting the serum was too dangerous, as the ministry always got wise to them eventually.

No, Severus Snape had developed an immunity to the stuff over the years. It was an extremely rare ability, or rather, people who were smart enough to have done it didn't advertise the fact. His method was a combination of his body becoming accustomed to a regular exposure to the drug, and him learning cognitive tricks for when he had been dosed. The first was simple for any potions adept.

For the second, some people had trained themselves to recognize a sensory cue, such as a particular color green they only saw when dosed. For Severus, Veritaserum caused an almost imperceptible lag in people's movements, meaning that their mouths got slightly out of sync with their voices. It was impossible to mistake once you got over the panicky feeling of wanting to divulge your worst secrets. Severus had learned that when he suspected he was under the influence, he could talk himself out of the urge to spill his guts. Practice with Dumbledore in the role of interrogator had him feeling completely poised. For a moment he was distracted by missing his old friend and their many schemes they'd cooked up together in the quiet of Hogwarts nights.

"Please state your name." The order pulled him back into the present.

"Severus Snape," he said truthfully. That was about the only truth he uttered for the next hour and a half. The fact that the ministry had been unable to find any antecedents for this newcomer had them on high alert. But then, it was far from the first time Severus was thought to be a spy.

The only thing that could truly hurt Severus would be to claim someone like Dumbledore knew him when they'd forgotten about him. Instead, the part of his brain that was used to remembering elaborate lies constructed a minimal past for him, complete with a family (all dead, that much was also true) and private tutoring (with instructors who were sadly also dead or out of the country).

Since he was no longer hiding an allegiance to a Dark Lord, it was a rather amusing exercise. He ended up having the scones (excellent) and the tea (a bit weak).

"Could you warm the pot if we're going to be here awhile?" he asked in a pause between questions.

"What do you want here, Mr. Snape?" the interrogator asked in frustration.

"I'd like to be with Harry, and to dedicate my potions ability to the Ministry if possible."

"Why should we let someone walk in off the street, not even claiming an interest in our cause, to brew our remedies?" the man scoffed.

"A person with no politics can be trusted not to fall sway to political extremes," Severus said in something like his superior professor voice. "When you're able to see that, let me know that you have a space for me in your laboratory. In the meantime, it will grieve me to have to tell Harry that his chosen side is making his lover feel unwelcome. Getting back to the fight was the foremost thing in his mind all these months. Just as I'm sure you never stopped looking for him during that time."

The interrogator raised his eyebrow. "I'm sure that Mr. Potter's outlook is a concern to everyone in this room."

"Good, I'm glad we're on the same page then," Severus said brightly. "When do you estimate we'll get our permanent quarters? I'd like to measure for curtains."

The interrogation had helped Severus to divine which direction Ministry was expecting sedition to come from. In short, everywhere. It was the most floundering interrogation Severus had ever witnessed. Two opposing fronts and they didn't seem to have a clue. He felt rather sorry for the state of their intelligence, and vowed to look more closely for the inevitable leaks within the management.

A lackey took him around to the wing that had been set up for officers with partners and/or families, while the rank and file men and women lived in barracks or housed in town when need be. Severus made a show of taking measurements of the different varieties of windows, all the while making it a point to use some of the catch phrases Voldemort's side had "wired in" to the nooks and corners. Occasionally he got a hit, and the windowsill or a flagstone would glow or move slightly, indicating that it was still under the control of one of hundreds of spells he knew of.

"Is there anything else Mr. Snape would like to measure for?" the soldier asked drily. "Cushions? A loveseat?"

"I would very much like a laboratory space, but until that can be arranged I have my own provisional equipment," he said. Another true statement. Severus had to keep making batches of Harry's potion to keep his recovery going, and he'd also like to start producing some samples of his own remedies to submit for analysis by the Ministry hospital.

Severus was more excited than he expected at the chance to circulate some of the recipes he'd made in his years of solitary work before the cauldron. At last, he was no longer in a dungeon challenging himself to find a better remedy for pox-related curses or memory charms. He'd caught the look in the eye of the potions officer this morning while he was showing off—"If this fellow's for real, I'd kill for his formulary." Maybe Dumbledore was right, and people had been more open to him all along, or would have been without the negative associations to his name.

It probably didn't hurt that he was now an eminently screwable 22-year old. The couple of wives he'd met in the officer's quarters had given him calculating looks as if marking their territory.

"May I go out for awhile?" he finally asked when the soldier was hovering around the door to his and Harry's temporary room.

"Out? Out where? There's a war on, you know," the young man said as if he weren't standing before someone with more than enough notches in his hide to deserve some respect. "No one's free to follow you about while you do your shopping. Harry means a lot—a lot of different things—to different people, and you'll be in the spotlight."

"I think you'll find I can take care of myself," Severus returned evenly. "What's the transit to Diagon Alley like today?"

"The Conservatives mucked up most of the ways in but we've corrected the wall from the tavern," the soldier sighed. "I'll have the door keyed with a temporary recognition spell allowing you back. You're still under probation until decided otherwise, mind you."

Severus was delighted to get away from the Ministry building, which held so many memories that no one else remembered it was almost suffocating.

The moment he stepped out of the administration building and above ground his memories were brought up short, however.

"There he is!" The blond woman with garish lipstick came running over to him, photographers in tow. "Severus Snape! Hello! You're even more fetching than your reputation. What do you do for such healthy hair? Me, myself and I want to know."

"It's—er—genetic," Severus said, which was strictly true about his own transformative fluids, and that of Harry, he supposed.

"I love that color blue on you. Rita Skeeter," she pumped his hand. "So dramatic against a pale complexion. Mr. Snape, can I get the background story on you and Harry Potter? How did you bag a military hero and a hunk like that? I hear he benefited from what must be very capable ministrations all this time."

"I'll give you a hint, Ms. Skeeter, it rhymes with 'hex,'" he drawled.

"Oh, dishy." It was so odd, talking with this woman whom Severus had dreaded finding out about him and Harry, and she was only titillated by the "whirlwind romance." Now that he was up close with the Prophet's star muckraker, he was able to see her as a much more salacious interrogator. He thought of Azkaban all the while and managed to keep his nerves under control, even with the constant snap of the cameras.

When Harry came back from maneuvers, he was exhausted. "Let's not go to dinner," he begged.

"It's best to face the other families sooner rather than later. Think of first days at school," Severus said gently while Harry lay back for his extraction and then swallowed the long line of potions before dinner.

They slipped into the officer's dining hall right before the second gong. The room went quiet. "You're right, this is shades of school," Harry whispered. He scanned the faces as they found a seat across from each other. "What did you do, Severus?"

"Why do you assume I did something?" the unwilling center of attention asked testily while fearing the worst. They've concocted some proof that I'm a spy, they're banishing me from Harry's sight—

A stray copy of the Prophet had been left nearby, and Harry snatched it. "'Harry's Healing Sex-capade,'" he guffawed and then noticed some of the families with children glaring at him. He lowered his voice. "'Beauty Secrets from the Sultry Severus Snape.' This sounds promising. 'Harry Potter's come out with a delectable bon-bon of a beau who goes by the seductive name of Severus Snape. It's easy to see why our favorite hero fell for the raven-tressed coquette. Read on to learn how to achieve the same porcelain complexion and fashion-forward style as the Captain's concubine.'"

It was so absurd that Severus was laughing along with Harry for some minutes before they noticed that much of the rest of the room had joined in. It felt so good to have that worry about the public exposé he'd obsessed over for months out of the way, and perhaps laughter was the best way to make the rest of the officers feel at ease about their star soldier's new facet.

"If I had a mind to I could have plugged my potions as hair tonics and skin treatments," Severus remarked, accepting a roll that someone passed him. "That Skeeter woman needs a tonic of some sort."

"She needs something," a man muttered, and Severus thought he recognized him from some "Me, Myself and I" column, though he couldn't remember the subject. He shot a sympathetic look to the man.

"You make your own products?" a woman next to him asked. "I'm Brianna, by the way."

"No, I've never given a thought to cosmetics," Severus answered. "With good reason. What one consumes contributes a great deal to one's exterior, I'm afraid."

He'd been talking of vitamins and tonics, but Harry kicked him under the table at the inadvertent double entendre. "But he could bend your ear for hours about joint-mending potions," he said, having listened to Severus thinking aloud about Harry's own treatment over many meals.

The dinner wore on and it was actually somewhat enjoyable, to Severus' surprise. People were curious about Harry's match but not invasively so. The main thing he learned from socializing in polite society was that the top brass was plainly relieved to have Harry back—as both a symbol and a leader, judging from the deference with which people listened to the young officer.

It only took a few minutes for the practiced spy to pick up on the ground rules: no one talks of maneuvers or other specific intelligence in front of the spouses and children. Maintain the official upbeat attitude at all costs. But still, people naturally were drawn to current events. They spent a long time talking about the psychology of the two rebel groups.

"Which side do you think are the ones to watch?" a woman who had been admiring his clothes asked him, a little too candidly, Severus thought.

"Both groups are guilty of vastly oversimplifying their rewritten history of the magical society, and I tend to think any utopia can be dangerous," he answered, aware that the listening device that had been planted in the candelabra floating directly overhead was transmitting his words to all interested parties. Severus had long been in the habit of spelling one of his shirt buttons into a revealing charm for common surveillance devices. He'd felt a little connecting current leading upwards as soon as he'd sat down.

"Some might say a person who believes in nothing is even more dangerous," said a man who had been less than pleased by the interest his wife had taken in the attractive newcomer. Everyone would have him sorted soon enough, he supposed.

"I have certain values that I am prepared to defend," Severus said, stroking Harry's hand with the very tip of his finger as he reached for a slice of lemon for his tea.

The smoldering look he was exchanging with Harry was cut short by an unwelcome question. "So you're schooled in warfare, then?" a bulky young officer asked with a glance that seemed a shade too evaluating to Severus' eye.

"You wouldn't want to meet this one in a dark alley," Harry interjected, evidently feeling the same way about the boy's interest.

"I prefer to make my contributions from the laboratory," Severus said with a calming smile around the table. It was true. All that he hoped was to use his genius that had been moldering away in a provincial school.

"If everyone opted to spend this conflict behind a cauldron, then where would we be?" the young officer pursued with a demeaning note to his voice.

"If push comes to shove, I my laboratory experience might come in useful, including my special interest in compounds that can be used for counter-espionage efforts," Severus said in a clipped voice, and regretted it immediately. He hated it when people dismissed potions science as anything other than the deadly knowledge that it was, and it made him forget himself.

"I'm smart enough to be afraid of you, love," Harry said.

Severus sent him a grateful look and then saw the exhaustion on the other man's face. "Thank you for the lovely meal," Severus said to no one in particular. He moved to be next to Harry when he stood with some effort, and they walked, arm-in-arm, away from the table.

"Can you make it to the doorway?" Severus whispered.

A small grunt was Harry's only reply. As soon as they left the room Severus performed the charm that he'd used when Harry was convalescing and needed to float without holding up his own weight.

"You shouldn't have done that," Harry panted when they got back to their room. "People don't want to see their heroes unable to stand."

"The couple of guards in the hallways would have been more shocked to see you fall over," Severus retorted. He didn't like to see how precarious his lover's wellbeing was. "You mustn't strain yourself tomorrow like you evidently did today. Either you sit for all of tomorrow, or I bring the chair out from where Lawrence is holding it."

Harry swore. He thought for sure the hated wheelchair had gone away for good. "You know how to drive a hard bargain," he said, and then swallowed the battery of potions he was assigned to take before bed. "But so do I," he resumed, moving the other man's hand to the only part of him that was, thankfully, completely recovered.

They made love while sniggering like teenagers about various interested parties from dinner imagining their activities. Then Harry fell asleep while in the middle of their private pastimes.

All in all it had been a good day, Severus thought as he stroked Harry's hair. He'd forgotten that someone in their early twenties with no diploma wouldn't seem to be very knowledgeable about potions, or particularly intelligent in general. He was already Marked and miserable by his early twenties the first time around, but a young Severus who was well-dressed and well-serviced must now look more like a dandy than a deadly adversary. A useful confusion, he mused.

The only person who really took his potions ability seriously was the potions officer who'd endured his grandstanding this morning. And that man, seated at another table, had said little during the meal. Severus had never suffered fools easily, and he didn't expect he'd suddenly learned how to leave the impression that he played well with others.

One useful thing that came out of dinner was the idea that women might buy his potions. It was sort of degrading to be reduced to making wrinkle creams, but this might be just the way to demonstrate his skills without starting to create weapons-grade compounds with no imprimatur from the Ministry.

"Are you going to laze about all day like a kept piece?" Harry was asking fondly the next morning.

"I was making potions in my head all night, I'll have you know," Severus replied. "What do you suppose they'll do if I take over a broom cupboard for a provisional laboratory?"

"They'll give you everything you want or they'll hear from me," Harry said, adjusting his uniform before the mirror in Lawrence's interior.

"That uniform does thigns to me," Severus admitted,. "But if you don't swallow your morning potions and then swear to sit for the rest of the day, you'll be the one weak in the knees. Don't cross me, Potter, I have my own ways to put you in line. I haven't an ounce of shame in front of any Ministry personnel, start with that concept."

Harry slugged down the requisite liquids and gave Severus an appraising look before whirling towards the door.

"Take the cane!" Severus called and Lawrence waylaid the soldier at the door so he would obey.

Dressing in a dove-gray collarless jacket and dark gray trousers, Severus wove his ribbon into his hair and decided to have breakfast out.

The ministry-appointed tail did a decent job of being subtle. It took Severus over a minute to pick her out from the throng of people on the street. He considered offering to buy the woman a coffee and then decided against it. He had his meal while rehearsing the potions he'd made in his head the night before. Then he dealt with the routine annoyance of trying to get to Diagon Alley. Damn these rebels.

"She could make herself useful," he thought of the woman talking on her cellular while watching him. Eventually he tried a long-disused charm to get through the wall and got to the Alley. "These Conservatives need to keep relying on the classics and I'll get through every time," he observed, having been around for 40 years' worth of codes.

While the ministry woman was coming through, he quickly moved to the apothecary. "Hello, Bill," he called before he caught himself.

"Er, hello," the shopkeeper with whom he'd had many a cup of tea, and whom he'd sold many marginally legal compounds, said with a quizzical air. "Looking for anything in—"

Severus recited the long ingredients list without drawing a breath.

"Oh, well, I'm not sure if I have all of those," Bill said, obviously torn between cultivating a new professional customer and selling Raw Berylwood and Dragonbone Marrow, for starters, to a stranger.

"You may not know me, but we have a certain friend in common. Someone whom I shall not name because he has sadly fallen into disrepute," Severus said with a certain nostalgia for his old reputation. "I can be a very good friend to you, as anyone who knows true discretion can be useful to know."

Then Severus did start talking with the ministry surveillance to distract her from watching his order be packed.

"What's all that for?" the woman, whose name was Niamh, asked suspiciously. They walked out together after the package had been shrunk to pocket size.

"If I don't have at least one potion on the hob, I get twitchy," he answered truthfully, indicating his hands.

"We'll find out who you really are," she said conversationally in her Irish accent. "No one spends 22 years in the Outer Hebrides, leaves no trace of an education anywhere and knows a still-working code to get on the Alley," Niamh said as he considered a shop window full of cellular telephones. "You must have a muggle education, as well. I bet you're one of those wizards from an Old Family whose decided to bring back the Golden Age for our civilization."

He decided against the phone for now. Now that he had Harry to care about, he was abruptly terrified about everything he didn't know about the current conflict, and internet access was more convenient through a telephone. "Yes those are the worst," he said quietly, thinking of how successfully Draco Malfoy had created that mold of revolutionary. "But I assure you, Niamh, neither breed of upstart would have much of a use for me. I'm not a natural joiner, you see."

"Yet you want to join our cause," she said and then they were interrupted by a layer of cobblestones rising up out of the street and forming the outline of Draco Malfoy.

"Rise up and claim what is within your reach!" the figure said before the stones drove themselves into one of the border walls, pushing it a foot or so farther into muggle territory.

Severus watched the other magical folk go back to their shopping. They were used to these gestures, as they were accustomed to the transportation obstacles placed by the Conservatives. He, for one, didn't think the Traditionalists' discontented youths would keep up these small-scale hoodlum antics for long. Diagon Alley was already larger than it used to be by a whole street, which were more empty than ever because people were less inclined to linger in their business.

He nodded at one of the restaurants run by a witch he'd known for 20 years, Serena. Then the potions adept realized the ministry woman was still waiting for an answer.

He laughed. "I want to work, that's all. I have a skill, I wish to apply it to something I like to call real life. The Ministry is real life, nothing more, nothing less. You may join the army or prefer to complain about the whole lot over your morning tea, but at least that gives you an advantage over the other two sets of dreamers, who aren't even aware they're in a cage. Me, I'm quite aware that the real enemy is, or should be, sickness, old age, death. You may think that our magical medicine is invincible, Niamh, but it is far from it. A diagnosis of pancreatic cancer can still kill you dead almost as quickly as a letter bomb, wizard or no wizard."

A small knot of Conservatives began handing out leaflets, hawking the green buttons that indicated you've taken the pledge to only buy from Wizarding merchants. "Support your kind; Money to Magic!" "In these tough times, we have to be self-sufficient!" The second argument meant a lot more to people than the first, he noticed. A few women, children in tow, stopped to buy a button. He saw the concern with which they tracked their children's movements and felt a stab of sympathy for anyone raising children in uncertain times.

Severus was aware all of his reactions were being meticulously tracked. Luckily he'd not been forced to tell an outright lie yet today. He pressed in to the shop and forced himself not to send some cutting remark to the old acquaintance who'd never stopped her bitchy rejoinders to him. Serena had never stopped serving him no matter what kind of complaints she'd gotten over the presumed spy through the years. He saw a man using a prosthetic leg limp across the restaurant.

"If they push Harry too hard again today I have my methods of making my feelings on the subject known," he said off-handedly as they picked up their menus. Severus had the offerings memorized, and chose the daily curry with a side of Sorrelseed Juice, the only way to comfortably eat something so hot. The waitress scanned his face but he wasn't any regular she'd ever met.

"Harry obviously thinks highly of you," Niamh said over lunch. "And I don't mean just that he can't take his eyes off you."

Severus felt what must be a blush and then scowled at himself. He was really becoming a silly thing. "He knows me," he said seriously. "I don't allow that. Ever."

He took her glance for what it was—a hope that she could place him at last. "Give Harry Veritaserum if you like. He'll tell you I'm Severus Snape," he challenged her. "But in the meantime, I'd love to offer you some of my hair tonic." Actually he would. Her hair was a mass of flame-colored split ends and unruly curls. "You're not afraid, are you?"

"Of the kept boy of the Boy Who Lived? Not a chance," she said with bravado.

If his first day as a cosmetician were anything to go by, Severus would earn his own keep quite nicely. The stay-at-home wives, and one of the two stay-at-home husbands, were very curious about what Severus was cooking up in the broom cupboard he'd emptied without a by-your-leave.

He'd not thought about how his science smelled before, but he had to make a last-minute adjustment before anyone would go near the closet, much less consider using his pomade. But the dramatic success in taming Niamh's locks spoke for itself.

"This is better than anything on the magical market," one women marveled after trying it for herself.

Severus thought it was extremely amusing. Ugly little Severus, being pressed for beauty advice. He only knew how to dress like himself, and he'd never bought women's clothes, so could be no help that department. He was used to making potions to save lives or end them, to twist minds to his will or desperately protect himself from such an eventuality.

What would Dumbledore say? The idea had him in stitches until he realized he was wondering what was going on at school and this kind of weakness angered him. Since when did he think fondly of anything?

That evening's Daily Prophet had a magical photograph of him making an effeminate gesture with his wrists. "What in Merlin's name were you doing?" Harry asked.

"I was illustrating my hands' eagerness to work," Severus said drily. "Evidently my desire to perfect the existing anti-Confundus technology is something deeply effeminate."

It turned out he didn't like the persona the Skeeter-creature was crafting for him after all. Severus Snape was anything but a toy. He was intelligent and mean and had stepped over enough corpses to live this long that no one cared one whit what got him hot.

Or they didn't before. Mentally concocting several potions Rita Skeeter would find anything but cute, he flipped through a ministry newsletter being handed around, reading between the lines for potions needs.

"Severus, don't take it seriously. Really love, if I listened to all the lies that have been written about me through the years" Harry tried the gentle approach for over half an hour but Severus merely scowled. Finally, he got tired of hoping for his evening off of work to start. After all, he was exhausted from putting a brave face on things all day long, and he had come to expect his time with Severus to be a rare chance to be himself.

His body might be weak, but his captain's voice rang out clearly, laying out how their evening would progress. Under his leadership, things went without a hitch.

"At ease, Snape, you can speak now," Harry said after they lay in a tangle on the uncomfortable bed.

Severus nuzzled closer but remained in silent post-coital bliss.

"Who knew a spy would have a thing for a uniform," Harry mused.

"Don't psychoanalyze me; they're already busy doing that in the papers," Severus finally said. "You already know me to be a paragon of mental unhealth."

The officers' mess did not disappoint. One of the unfailingly friendly table-mates leaked Severus' comment about anti-Confundus potions to the papers. He was then reminded that there are worse columns to end up in than Rita Skeeter's.

Severus noted that he now had three people following him on his next jaunt to the apothecary. "Hi, Bill," he said.

"Er. Hello," Bill replied, though he knew quite well who Severus was by now. He simply disliked the showiness with which this undeniable potions talent was being paraded in women's magazines. A true professional doesn't swan about, was what the shopkeeper's eyes said. That only made Severus like the man more.

"I need more Topsy-worms. Nice fat ones now, the anemic ones you have in that cabinet aren't worth a damn," Severus admonished playfully. Few things made him feel so happy as being in the potions shop, becoming the person he used to be.

This time his shopping list included ingredients for a real potion, rather than a beauty treatment. He was going to see if that potions officer, whose name was Lenox, could be enticed to analyze his proprietary anti-Polyjuice revealing potion. Anyone under Polyjuice who came in contact with the stuff, either by ingesting it, or from a handshake or a mist, would revert momentarily back to their true form. Severus had had it for years but had been too terrified to tell people about it, lest its use become so widespread as to prevent his ever having another romantic liaison.

Now he didn't have to skulk about. He had a lover, one who wasn't afraid to assert his ownership in public or private. A smile around his lips, Severus retrieved his packages and went out onto the street.

When he was assailed by butterflies.

The large, iridescent wings harmonized with his dark-red shirt and ribbon of the day. There was no mistaking it, they were meant for him.

All of Severus' romantic daydreams shattered with the movement of wings surrounding him. Everyone took the spectacle for exactly what it was and shrank away.

His war-hardened heart sank. The last few attempts had been general enough but this one was unmistakable.

Unmistakably directed at him.


	7. Chapter 7

Severus cast a charm so that passersby couldn't see the butterflies pulling his hair in every direction, and another to calm them, but they kept getting loose and making his hair look all flyaway. Naturally the Prophet's Beauty section (they'd inclusively renamed it that after the many new gay readers protested) snapped a photo of him looking like that on his walk home.

Nothing happened that afternoon upon returning to the Ministry building, however. Nor at dinner. That didn't stop his mind from racing most of the night, making and unmaking plans.

Severus had a hard time tuning in to the light-hearted needling at the officer's mess the next morning. Harry had come in very late and gone to sleep, and was out again to eat breakfast with his troops. Something was happening, was the clear undertone at the dining hall.

But Severus had known that since yesterday with the butterflies.

It had been damn difficult to get them off. He had to hand that to Draco's movement. Their spellmaking was rock-solid. Snape's former student had rightfully realized that was important. New charms not only required good magical understanding to undo, they sent a message that their technology was reflected their side's untapped abilities. Trying to live in the past won't be enough, the many street stunts said.

And the butterflies were specially chosen for him, rather than some of the meaner and more harmful pranks that had been employed to shame or pressure someone into joining. "Look at this pedestrian—they've already joined the Traditionalists!" similar spells would say. Eventually, enough stunts and people would believe that a given man or woman was indeed a rebel, and they'd be pushed into the only arms that welcomed them.

Because there were only so many people who wanted to throw everything over without a push, and Slytherins had an innate knowledge of how to produce that push.

No, the butterflies were lovely, reflecting admiration. Severus was sure of it. Like his father before him, Draco had shown all signs of being very appreciative of the potions master no one else gave the time of day to. It had happened a few times while he was a spy—someone on either side finding him attractive for reasons he himself couldn't fathom. Severus had used these crushes, especially in Malfoy the elder's case, so he couldn't complain. Lucius was a family man, through and through, and very stuck on a narrow definition of what it meant to be a wizard, so he'd never act upon the favoritism he'd shown the dirty spy right up until the end.

Draco was from a younger generation. The professor had noticed the boy watching him and thought it much more dangerous than the father. If he had favored the boy it was because he saw clear indications that any sense of rejection might have gotten him a one-way trip to Azkaban on false charges of interfering. Severus had no intention of going back to that particular Hell for a besotted schoolboy's crush.

When Draco turned sixteen and there would be no more chance of a statutory charge, Severus breathed a sigh of relief. After the Slytherin dropped out around the same time as Harry in the first wave of those drawn into the fray, Severus had had to resort to the old "I don't want to take sides against a family I think so highly of" to avoid the two overtures Draco had made, inviting him over to his cause.

Severus was almost beginning to miss the old whiff of failure that followed him everywhere and could be clearly discerned on his arm.

Because whatever quality Draco had so desired in him as a decrepit almost-forty-year-old, was now imminently acquirable as a 22-year-old dandy. Or so Draco must have thought.

The former master of espionage had lain awake the previous night, wishing he could talk about his fears with Harry, but the longstanding enmity his Gryffindor lover held for his former Slytherin bully would make Harry apoplectic.

Besides, Harry was the only one who knew exactly why the Traditionalists were everything that Severus loathed.

It had started one evening, early on in Harry's treatment. The paraplegic had an outburst of paranoia about Snape's motivations and the fact that the cure was taking so long. Severus knew that Harry was no slouch when it came to human nature, and obviously he'd figured Snape's motivations to be more predictable than anyone usually grasped. He was exactly the vain, self-centered ill-humored man he appeared to be, and little else. Otherwise, the desperate young man would have put himself into a different grate.

"You're different than I thought," Harry said after Severus misted a soothing vapor over his patient to calm the extended tirade against everything he found unjust in the world. Which was at this moment, equal to all the Slytherins who tormented him in his youth.

The teacup clashed in the saucer as Severus handed it to him. This he didn't like.

"How can I un-disappoint you, Potter? Better victuals? More sarcasm? You'll have to spill your potion like you used to in my class and see what happens. I deserve time off like everyone else," he finished more softly than he intended.

"I've been here for weeks. We've debated about what's going on in the papers. You've pontificated about the right way the make a good bone repair potion versus Skele-gro, and many, many other tirades about the superiority of your unlisted medicines over the approved potions list." Severus laughed, though he knew what was coming. "And you've said nothing about your past or your present. This is you, this is you relaxed, and you still have nothing to say about yourself. Show me the Pensieve if you can't bear to tell me. You must have brainwashed yourself to forget your past."

"I have forgotten exactly nothing. Just as I won't forget this attempt to invade my privacy after I have been so kind to you." Severus was more hurt than he realized, and Harry caught it. "After all is said and done, I am merely a dull, empty person. Adulthood is all about disappointment."

Harry was undeterred. "I don't understand how your wardrobe works, but I swear we have telepathic conversations, and he doesn't seem to think so."

"I am glad you are finding the company of my furniture agreeable, as a friend with true discretion is very rare." And the potions master had slammed himself in his bedroom. The memories he'd learned to push away were crowding around by his bed where he lay with calm, wide eyes while he listened through the door to Harry sweet-talking a Lawrence that kept sliding away.

It took the advent of their true sexual intimacy, after the second kiss (Severus forgot nothing) for him to start telling Harry unprompted one day over dinner.

"You know that I am from muggle ancestry on one side of course," Severus said. There had been an incident with one of his old schoolbooks falling into Harry's hands. It seemed so long ago, their eyes said to each other.

"Yes, I know." Harry let the silence stretch as long as he needed.

"I gather that your muggle family is not full of enviable specimens of humanity." Harry had told him all about it during their long hours together. "But you may not be aware of the particular brand of nasty that English muggles become when they get bitten by the mystical bug."

"You mean like religious fanatics?" Harry inquired.

"I mean spiritualists, occultists, and all the dark fairy tales that are more properly an excuse to indulge their urge for power. Have you ever heard of the Society of the Golden Dawn?" Harry shook his head. "Picture a group of muggles led by a good facsimile of Voldemort. Except what they, what not even their leader knew was that magic is real. That even their cheesy rituals could, very rarely, tap into some hidden gene and make a table levitate, for instance, A sudden breeze to overturn a tarot card. They were helpless to replicate the results, if they were results. But in the meantime they were indiscriminately fucking and doing anything else they pleased. 'Do what thou wilt' was their snide little refrain to justify swindling and stealing the peace of mind from the vulnerable and doing all manner of regrettable acts."

"And your muggle parent was like this."

"He was my father, and yes, he was one of that sect. The rare kind of lunatic that could keep it together perfectly, bowler hat and 8 hours at the bank, five days a week. But when he left those walls he was obsessed with bending the universe to his will with a mishmash of incantations that probably never meant anything to anyone."

"And your mother?"

"She was a thoroughly normal and lovely witch who had the misfortune of being something of a clairvoyant. Occasionally a very determined muggle would hear of my mother's well-deserved reputation as the genuine article. She was normally very selective and only helped good causes. People wrongly accused of a crime, or an orphan trying to locate a lost relative. Legitimate magical historians, and the like. Whereas most people with her talent were practically owned by the Ministry, something she was very careful to avoid. 'Never sell yourself to any side, Severus,' she told me. 'Only work for yourself.' This one piece of advice saved my life, as it turned out."

"Why would she help your father, then? Couldn't she tell what he was like?" Harry pressed.

"She fell in love. I think she'd seen his face in one of her visions and that was why such a beauty had remained alone, patiently waiting for him to appear until the age of 25. He showed up at one of her exclusive appearances and said he wanted to know some rubbish. What the true meaning of some Egyptian chant was that could grant him special powers. She had enough sense not to tell him, but not enough to refuse his invitation to dinner."

"She didn't tell him about magic!" Harry exclaimed, correctly deducing what such a person would do with that knowledge.

"Give my mother some credit! Besides, have you ever tried to tell a muggle about magic?"

"I've talked with Hermione's parents before," Harry said.

"Who have a very powerful binding charm preventing them from disclosing our world, just like every muggle in the know." He burst out laughing at Harry's expression. "Yes, your precious Ministry maintains very precise but very close audio surveillance to protect this world. Else the secret would have been out long before now."

Harry's brow knit as he tried to take that new information in. "And if I tried?"

"You, like my mother, would find yourself unable to pronounce the words. You'd say, 'The other day I was out picking gooseberries," where you'd meant to say you were casting a spell. She found it very amusing and thus, effortless, to have these dinners among my father and these other people who had the most curious ideas."

"And any regular muggle would have smelled a rat immediately," Harry completed.

"Yes. My mother avoided entanglements with all the perils our magical society had to offer, but she was unprepared a creature like my father. Luckily, she was canny enough never to give up her home in Magical London. Right on the Alley, we used to be. What snapped her out of every young witch's dream of a new family was when I was born. She came into the nursery in the home they shared in the Muggle part of London, and my father was apparently splashing some liquid on me while a couple of his mad friends were chanting and dancing."

"It was some kind of ritual?" Harry asked.

"Yes. They splashed so much of some supposedly magical oil to almost choke me on it, she said. When she snatched me up they were all looking at her with this queer expression. 'What have you gotten in your foolish muggle heads this time?' was what she meant to say. But instead they heard a certain expletive, the Ministry's monitoring spell never intending to interfere with the expression of free speech."

"'He's our Magickal Childe,'" her husband said. 'He's destined to greatness, our son; he'll be the latest in a long line of magicians just like' and here they mentioned the name of their pet prophet."

"'Oh yes? Well I'm close cousins with Nicholas Flamel, and you don't hear me bragging about my magical abilities while nearly drowning my son in oil!'" she retorted.

"Are you really?" Harry asked then, to relieve the tension.

"My pedigree could have gotten me through any door in magical society, at one time," Severus admitted.

Now that he'd started, he couldn't seem to stop his tale. "She apparated with me in her arms, right there, and once she explained the circumstances, the Ministry wouldn't even levy a fine for violating the Magical Subtlety Act in doing so. And it was the Ministry itself that told my mother about my father's threats to take her to muggle court for visitation rights. They did everything they could to prevent my father from having contact with this unhinged muggle who could be very dangerous for me, and our world, though my mother was too stubborn to listen to everyone's advice until it was too late."

"When did you meet him?" Harry asked.

"On my tenth birthday. I don't believe he really would have taken my mother to court over the child he had no interest in whatsoever. It was some tatty little prophesy he'd read somewhere about some 'Magickal childe' coming to lead their flagging movement in the year I turned ten."

"He can't have been very nice," Harry said, as if he wished to lance that boil and find out what had really happened.

"He wasn't bad. Bad never is, Harry. Evil is completely disarming. The next time someone makes all of your misgivings go completely silent, that's when you should have your wand ready for the attack. He was different than anyone I knew; he gave me muggle toys; he was my father. Up until this point my mother had tried to give me a more normal family life by scuttling me off to her extended family for summers and holidays. Sometimes she joined me, sometimes she didn't. I could have done without all that conviviality, as you can imagine," Harry giggled. "She and I were perfectly happy together on our own. But I can make nice when needed, and that's what I thought she needed. Lawrence was there, to save me packing up my things all the time, and that made it easier."

Harry nodded seriously. "But you figured out he was crazy."

Severus scoffed. "Children are much quicker to pick up on these things than parents. But fatally, they are much kinder. They see this game that the disturbed person is playing with rules no one else can catch, they feel sorry for the adult and try to play along with them to keep them company.

"After two months of weekend visits with sweets and trips to the park, when my mother had gotten used to getting me back in one piece, all of a sudden one day she didn't get me back at all."

Harry's eyes widened.

"It wasn't the worst year of my life, Harry. These so-called magical societies are simply an unwholesome combination of the ineffable and the British genius for systematization. They have members in the highest places—people who aren't content with their already considerable power. This means they had the money and the access to keep a ten-year-old boy hidden from the Ministry and a mother who could be quite formidable when she had to be."

"But how could they? I thought she was psychic?" he protested.

"My mother could tap into things at will, and this element of will is what kept her from her own potential for madness. She knew which doors to open and which to leave closed, usually. As far as I knew, this gifted clairvoyant actively avoided finding out things about her family members' destinies or world political events. I found out later that she second-guessed herself only once, and that was in relation to my father, and thus me. If she'd looked ahead, she might have prevented some things. But at the same time, she would have been expecting them, and that would have been worse for me, I think."

"But, but, she didn't try to find you?" Harry demanded.

"She did, Harry. But this must have been my destiny, this year of captivity. Because no matter how hard she concentrated, my mother's visions never led her to me. As luck would have it, these people surrounded me with so many confusing and contradictory symbols from their so-called philosophy, that my mother's vision of me being near the sea was actually of me held underground in a ritual space whose walls and ceilings were painted too look like the sea. These people loved their cheesy symbolism. You get the idea."

"Did they—" Harry asked in a small voice.

"They never used me for any of their sexual rituals, some of which went on near me. But they did a frightful lot of naked dancing in enactments of ancient Egyptian myths and invocations of these queerly named angels. During which I was often naked, or clothed in a loincloth, which was worse somehow."

"I'm sorry," Harry faltered.

"They didn't beat me most of the time, though I could have used more regular food and the chance to walk outside, instead of being drugged and carted around between secret rooms all over London."

Severus could see Harry relaxing a little from his worst fears. "The truly damaging thing they did, besides keep me from my mother and my society, was that they looked at me like an object. A child picks up on this immediately: someone looking at them like one of those vending machines that if you turn it upside down and shake it right, you might be able to get a free packet of candy. Except they wanted something from me I was absolutely powerless to understand or to speak, for that matter.

"For ten months I shouted, 'Tell me the spell and I'll try to cast it! I'm not very good yet, but I can do a Leviosa and a rather good spell for cleaning a room.' And instead, because of the binding spell, they heard a load of nonsense, such as 'I can sing God Save the Queen while standing on my head and crossing my eyes, want to see?'

"When they got tired of my admittedly strange responses, sometimes I got a backhand. Or my clothes were taken away during non-ritual hours. Or they'd dock me a meal or two." Severus made an exasperated noise at his listener's horror. "Compared to the misery lived by some children, it was nothing, Harry. No broken bones. No—other physical injuries. I did learn that without a wand, one type of magic still open to me was potions. Through trial and error, or what you might call more accurately desperation and natural aptitude, I made something out of the ingredients in one hiding room that made my father's hand cover itself with boils when he hit me. It only worked for a few days, but it was enough to send them back to the drawing board, trying to make me do the magic they were convinced I was able to do."

Severus took a breath and softened his tone. "You'll learn, Harry, that there is nothing so strong as the truth. I come from a long line of very capable magical folk, and I'd already been using a training wand since I was a toddler. I am, in fact, magical. They desperately waned some sliver of magic for themselves. It was the perfect recipe to keep them turning me upside down forever."

"But then your mother found you," Harry prompted.

"My mother died, some would say from grief, while I was imprisoned. I did see notebooks full of her visions from that time that were, as I say, accurate but never good enough. But as you may be aware, nothing will divert those Hogwarts letters from reaching their destination." A light came into Harry's eyes. "And a drove of envelopes and birds found me where not even the Ministry could. The authorities and three of my more frightening uncles came to rescue me that August before school."

"They must've killed your father when they got a hold of him," Harry said hopefully.

"No, they didn't Harry. It would have caused an international incident and they didn't want to touch such a creature, besides. Don't worry. They Obliviated all of the muggles in that branch of that particular sect. It was done so thoroughly that they, my father included, ended up drooling on themselves in a back ward for the rest of their lives. It wasn't the last I saw of my father's side of the family, however."

"You went back? After all that?" Harry asked incredulously.

"Not exactly. My school career started off on a bad foot, as you can imagine, and I had little interest except in learning to defend myself from a hostile world. But one day I was in Muggle London for some reason, probably to eat some of the muggle food I'd grown to rather like. An elderly lady was sitting in the park and she looked up at me as if she's seen Father Christmas. It was Christmas time, and I was pretending I had somewhere specific to be, instead of an ignored place at the table of whichever of my relatives had drawn the short straw. 'Severus?' she asked in wonder, stretching out her hand as if to an apparition.

"My grandmother had seen pictures of this purported grandson from my father, but she'd never met me in person. Still, was able to recognize the ten-year-old me in the much angrier fifteen-year-old that my other relatives had a hard time recognizing. This must have been why I went back to see her, though I knew how upset my family would be by these visits. She gave me a real Christmas¬—until she looked up from the meal and started calling me by my father's name. She was suffering from advanced dementia, you see, and probably never realized that her imaginary grandson for whom she'd been knitting sweaters for fifteen years was actually there."

"She was nice, then?" came the hopeful question.

"She was very, very nice. My gran left little cakes for me all over her apartment, the way you would to attract fairies. She never grasped what age I really was but had no trouble with me showing up out of nowhere, as I learned to apparated very young. I started charming one of her wardrobes to connect with Lawrence, much as I did with the cupboard in my laboratory at Hogwarts. She made my favorite foods and they'd appear in Lawrence here at school. It was quite lovely for a time; exactly what I needed. When she died a year later I had nothing left, or so I thought. Voldemort reminded me of my father: it was a clear madness that I felt I had to excuse by trying to play along myself. In the end it seems so simple, something so easily avoided, but as I said, it is the absurd things in life that catch you and keep you."

It was the best explanation Severus had for his failed life, and one that sounded very hollow to his ears. Harry hadn't protested the narrative at all, to Severus' surprise. The young man sat very quiet and still for some long minutes. Finally, he asked, "Is he still alive?"

"My father? He was in an asylum somewhere until he died three years ago, from what I gather. I never went to see him."

As if wanting to fill the desolation of Severus' life, Harry suggested, "You said you had a big family. There must be some relatives still around."

"Oh yes. You've met one of them many times." Harry looked up eagerly. "Cornelius Fudge was my first cousin. I stayed at his house several times a year as a child."

He spit out his tea.

"My mother was a Fudge, though she deemed her mother's maiden name, Courtenay, to be more melodic and fitting for a medium. Unfortunately, it didn't suit me."

"That is a lovely name. You could have taken it rather than your father's," Harry said gently.

It was Severus' turn to spit tea. "Do you know what Courtenay means?"

Harry shook his head.

"It's French for 'short nose,' idiot. To anyone with any French at all it would be like introducing myself, 'Hi, I'm Severus Staunch Heterosexual,' or 'Hi, I'm Severus with the Not-at-all-Fluctuating-Alliances."

They laughed. They'd gotten through something together.

"None of them will even look at me to this day, not even after the pardon and the lukewarm commendation," Severus resumed placidly.

"Why not? Most of the lads my age think you had a lot of balls to survive as a spy for that long."

"They what?" Severus bolted out a guffaw and soon his listener joined him. They laughed until they wept.

"That must be why we get along. You're a Boy Who Lived as well," Harry said softly. They clinked teacups. Then Harry thought for a moment. "You were like the Lindbergh baby!"

"More or less. To those in the know, the comparison is very apt. But if you were to look in the old issues of the Prophet, all you'd find would be a mention that Severus Snape had rejoined his mother, the medium Aurelia Courtenay, after living for a time in the muggle world. The ministry did a splendid job hushing it up. No, I'm not afraid to give credit where credit is due. They rescued me and then tried to hush the scandal. I had less reason than anyone to be angry with the authorities, Harry. They did all that they could and I never blamed them, but they imagined my entire sordid life to be one public exercise of blame. Perhaps they feel as though they could have done something more to prevent it. If they weren't decent people we would have got on better, basically. In another reality I never lost all my family, and things turned out better, I like to think sometimes."

"But the Death Eaters were a family of sorts. I saw the way some of them killed themselves rather than turn out their comrades. You never turned on any of them, either."

"I know so many secrets, Harry, that only a great fool such as you could stand to be around me," Severus said wryly. "And yes, there was that about my sometime-companions from Voldemort's circle. I've always preferred to stay on the sidelines, but I like having something warm nearby to dip my toes into, or rebel against, as the situation calls. Preferably more than one thing."

He let Harry look at him after this long speech he'd never had with anyone. "So you're all right then?" the young man hazarded.

"I'm far from the best case scenario, but also not the worst, I like to think," Severus replied primly.

"No, Severus. Do you know none of the people my age think you're the worst?"

"Did something happen to wizarding society in your generation to make all of your heads go soft? Why do you say that?"

"Because you fought for something that couldn't be reduced to a side. You were you, and not what anyone tried to make you," Harry struggled to articulate his peers' estimation.

Severus was irate. "That's because my life can't be understood by anything so comprehensible! I was desperate! That's all. Don't make me a symbol of adolescent rebellion!"

"And what were you after you didn't have to be desperate?" Harry asked, smiling.

"Desperate for desperation. Which has been in short supply," Severus scowled.

"Is that why you like a firm hand?"

"I think being in a relationship with someone nearly 20 years my junior is the very definition of desperation."

"You can hate on yourself if you like, Severus. I won't stop you," Harry said, glancing over at Lawrence, who had come over to lend his support.

Severus had merely nodded. He was exhausted and wary about having talked about his most precious dark corners. When over the next two days, Harry showed absolutely no signs of treating him differently, Severus finally couldn't stand it anymore.

"Go ahead and say it!" he burst out.

"What?" Harry looked up from his exercises.

"Whatever grotesque thing you've been dying to say!"

"What are you on about, Severus? I've got a lot on my mind, no offense."

They left it at that until dinner, when Harry said, "If you'd tried pitying me for a second I would have socked you one. But you didn't because your head is screwed on right, like it or not. Just because I'm young doesn't mean I'm stupid. I find the supposition that it is to be rather 'grotesque.'"

"Fair enough," Severus had said.

And then they'd spoken no more about it. But something had changed between them, and Severus wondered whether it was just trusting someone enough to talk about his past, or whether it was specifically Harry. But of course it was Harry.

Their lovemaking became immediately deeper, more free and yet more delicate. They talked about the occasional newspaper articles on the missing Captain Potter, and they both knew what it was like to be a symbol. Harry even seemed less cynical about the Ministry he worked for.

Severus had hoped his many tales of Ministerial duplicity would have sunk in better, but if he made it easier for his partner to deal with the ambivalence any thinking person felt about their government, then that was all right, he supposed.

"I always wondered why you were so hard on me," Harry said out of the blue one day when they were in bed.

"You must be joking!" Severus sat up. "Though you claim to not be stupid, you think I singled you out? That I was exceptionally cruel to you." Harry was nodding his head slowly as if Severus were finally recognizing something obvious. "I was the only one to treat you normally! You did something annoying, I was annoyed. You didn't answer a question properly on a test, you got marked down. There was no differential grading based upon your fame. I wanted you to have a chance to be normal, to be prepared, if anything." He took in Harry's skeptical look. "I notice you've not made any move to contact Dumbledore, though he's right upstairs. You chose my grate because I have proved myself trustworthy, though I may be an inveterate liar. As is our mutual friend, I might add."

"He's like a father to me." Harry surveyed their current state within the sheets. "I don't want him to 'understand,'" here he did a good rendering of Dumbledore's toleration. "I want him to really understand. And I don't want him to see me this way," he indicated the still-shrunken legs. "He'll try to help, and it will be horrid."

"Albus is a beloved friend, but Lawrence has never once looked at me like a Problem To Be Solved," Severus agreed. The cabinet wandered over and he stroked the side. "You've not seen him be firm with me. Lawrence made sure I looked at myself every day so that at least I understood the choices I was making and what each of them did to me. It was not an easy sight."

"You must not have looked in the mirror recently," Harry observed, stroking his hair. "You could go out somewhere and pick up your choice of guys." He watched closely for Severus' reaction.

"Lovely. Seduction was always a sorely missed tool in my spy's arsenal."

"Maybe you should. Just so you know you can," Harry had said casually.

"I don't want to seduce, stupid boy. I'm too old for all that. I want a good, stern seeing-to."

"You're as old as you feel, Severus, and I'd say you've got much more life left in you than you've been allowed to show."

Severus was seen to that night in his dungeon quarters, all right, but Harry knew he meant that he wanted to be loved.


	8. Chapter 8

It was the one day that no one had been watching Severus run his errands. The ministry tails were already busy dealing with the Alley having moved a whole foot in an instant. No muggles were hurt on the other side, but it was the most audacious annexation of London territory yet. Unlike other such encroachments, the Traditionalists seemed to have left more muggles free of the Oblivius curse they usually used on everyone in the vicinity, save the one signaled crackpot to spread panic. The building was evacuated pending structural examination, Severus found out later. Nothing more.

Severus went back to his laboratory and thought very carefully while he dealt with the butterflies tangled in his hair and clothing. They seemed so playful. But everyone knew about these Traditionalist tricks. For anyone without the ability to construct their own spells, the butterflies—or more likely, something less pleasant. There had been news of people afflicted with a swarm of angry badgers, someone who had suddenly become magnetic and was eventually killed by an unlucky nail, and all manner of public annoyances that were not easily reversed.

It was exactly like school, the ex-professor thought. The people targeted by these spells were literally surrounded by a cloud of suspicion. Why would the radicals want So-and-so? People thought. The Ministry had set up clinics where people lined up trying to be relieved of the pigeons that insisted on nesting in their clothing, but only someone with a solid background in magical theory could decode these puzzles. The Ministry was much more skilled in prying into people's backgrounds, so anyone showing up for treatment was assured an excruciatingly thorough investigation into their lives and those of their families, trying to figure out why, indeed, they had been singled out by the more anarchic of the rebel sects.

Being approached by the Conservatives was very different, Severus knew. It was a little like the Death Eaters, in that there was an awful lot of archaic custom and snobbery involved. But the intelligent thing about these people longing for simpler times was that you needn't join at all. They had naturally approached the brilliant potions adept, making it clear that these days, "wizard" was a state of mind, not a pedigree, though Severus' excellent bloodline on his mother's side didn't hurt. When he professed no interest in politics, they'd transitioned to commissioning certain specialized potions, which a less paranoid person could have supplied and probably left it at that.

The Conservatives could politely ask a shopkeeper to open up an old tunnel underneath their shop, allowing Conservative forces passage around whatever blockade they'd set up that day. People didn't mind looking the other way occasionally because, at heart, everyone loved their Wizarding World and wouldn't mind protecting their culture from a Ministry widely regarded as Severus saw it: that relative you've never loved but can't get rid of.

By contrast, revolutionaries were made, not born, in Severus' opinion. He should know: he was a retiring person at heart, and everything he'd ever done in his sordid life was to curl even more tightly into himself and around a tiny bit of stasis, which up until recently, was only his potions and Lawrence.

That's why all of his instincts were screaming at him do a runner. "No one knows you," his brain counseled while his hands concocted a skin treatment. "One more public charm and they'll move you into their mental file for 'Radical.' Everyone knows how it works, you twit: once society is afraid to talk to you, you'll go running straight into the welcoming arms of the Traditionalists who engineered the whole thing."

Severus shuddered in the tiny broom cupboard and almost upset a beaker of fish gills waiting to be added to the cauldron. The look in their eyes, these men and women who'd been forced into joining Draco Malfoy's cause.

It reminded him of his father's group. Dead-eyed and calculating at the same time.

His hands were steady as they diced and stewed. With equal calm he could worm his way out of London, out of Britain, towards yet another fresh start.

Harry. Now that he had someone to care about, Severus couldn't simply leave. Which was why he was about to do the unthinkable.

"Niamh," Severus said, having located the girl in some dreary office sector of the building. "I have a favor to ask."

Her hackles already up from being hunted down far from the officers' residences, she stood up and followed him out.

"What's this about, Snape? If this is about your room assignment, I've told you, the 'romance of our times' is at the top of the list for a double."

"Actually, I need a guinea pig." She rolled her eyes. "Would you mind if I gave you pockmarks? Purely on a temporary basis so that my potion can remove them. There's virtually no risk. Your hair is looking lovely, if I do say so myself."

Her hand strayed to her tamed locks and Niamh followed him to his provisional lab.

The woman wasn't half-bad. She jammed herself into the narrow space and then dropped the act. "What's happened?" she demanded.

He showed her the couple of butterflies he saved in glass jars and explained the invitation he'd gotten from the Traditionalists. "A curse on me, they must have mistaken my general cynicism—distorted by that dingbat at the Prophet-with being jaded with the Ministry in particular."

"And you're not?" Niamh challenged.

"No, foolish girl, of course I'm not. Otherwise, why would I be telling you, the Ministry's operative?"

"Because it's to your advantage," she smirked, inspecting a bottle of pickled gryphon claws.

"It is, as it turns out," Severus replied, knowing his misgivings were hidden under his advanced degree in espionage.

Somewhat more triumphantly than he thought necessary, Niamh marched him to see a top official. "Tell him what you told me."

The elderly man, Morris Lipswitch, was a Fudge on his mother's side. Severus was busy trying to remember family gatherings at which they had coincided years ago while the related the spell and produced a jar full of butterflies that flailed against the glass in an effort to embed themselves in his hair once more.

"And you do not wish to join?" Uncle Morry asked when he was through. (Don't call him that, Severus, he'll think you're mad…)

"Of course not!" Severus cried, genuinely aggrieved. "I'm not a fanatic! But let's be candid, they have their ways of recruiting people. And I don't think you want your precious Harry Potter to be used as leverage in this particular contest."

"We don't. We most assuredly don't," Uncle Morry said placidly over his tented fingers.

Severus waited for the offer of protection he'd decided would be best for himself and Harry, for the time being.

It didn't come.

Instead, the old spy felt the ground shifting underneath him, the way it did when he'd made a grave miscalculation.

"No one else saw you come here?" the official was asking while studying Niamh.

"No sir. I used one of the recently discovered secret passageways. None but my security detail knows about it."

Severus allowed himself a light snort about the passage known to every former Death Eater, but no one paid any attention.

"There's only one thing left to do," the official said, and Severus began to relax.

"You'll say yes of course. We've been trying to find our way in to their organization for months, but no one can seem to hit the right notes. But you—young, attractive." Uncle Morry looked him up and down before saying, "Somewhat—indeterminate, past even more indeterminate—you're a perfect Traditionalist."

"I have no hatred of muggles!" Severus cut in.

"Then you won't mind saving a few," Lipswitch replied. This might have been the uncle who gave the young Severus dreary history books in his Christmas stocking from the age of two. He'd have to ask Lawrence.

"You can't force me into espionage!" Oh Mother, not again.

"We have your boyfriend, and whatever you give him is obviously not as important as his work," Niamh said nastily. "Otherwise you'd still be in the Outer Hebrides or wherever you were."

"He won't take kindly to my being extorted by the Ministry!" Severus spluttered.

"You can tell him everything," Uncle Morry said in that detestable even tone. "We'll all have a nice off-the-record chat about your mission. No one wants to interfere in the love story of our time."

With his fate suddenly out of his hands, Severus planned to spend the afternoon cooking up an untraceable letter-borne toxin to give Rita Skeeter a nice long bout of laryngitis for coining that little phrase about his relationship with Harry.

Harry was called into the office and did a good job hiding his concern to find a scowling Severus there with a few Ministry officials.

"After all I've done for you, you little bitch. See what you look like without my beauty treatments. You were a blotchy mess before you tried my Scandalously Supple Skin Salve." Severus was taking out his anger at himself upon the ministry operative, who was looking smug.

"We'll still see plenty of each other, sweetie. You can bring me that deodorant I like when we meet for debriefings," Niamh replied.

"The only one who debriefs Severus is me," Harry said with a thin veneer of humor, going over to scan Severus' face from up-close. "What have they done to you?"

"We've found a better use of your partner's talents than skin treatments," Uncle Morry said.

"They've hired you on for potions detail? How marvelous!" Harry tried to put his arm around Severus and then flinched away from the back rigid with tension.

The handful of other ministry representatives who had joined them in the room began explaining the plan. Harry interrupted, "You can't make him do anything. It's against what we're about. It's everything we fight against."

"We can't provide the type of protection your partner needs," and even if Severus didn't have a history with Morris he would have known the man was lying. "If they want him, they're going to hound him until he says yes. Using you as leverage, if necessary. What are the chances that they don't have some kind of ballast against you, Harry? You've lived your life in public, after all."

Obviously thinking of Malfoy's many offensives from their school days, Harry mumbled, "None whatsoever. But they run some kind of brainwashing camp over there. I don't want that to happen to Severus."

The two of them exchanged a look laden with knowledge about Severus' painful history with cults.

"Severus has proven he can handle himself," Morris declared.

The spy-to-be grimaced. "Apparently not," he mumbled about his predicament.

"There's not a person in this building, apart from you, Harry, who knows exactly what to think of your mystery-boyfriend," his uncle said. "He has no history that we've been able to discern. No ties. He's a made-to-order spy. And we are not in a position to turn up our noses at this opportunity."

Harry directed a brief look of utter sympathy at his furious lover. "I like to think that Severus was made for me, and I for him. What guarantees can you give me for his safety, or are you in a position to give me up as well? I noticed the army was a bit smaller when I came back after my long absence."

Severus' approving glance promised a very enjoyable evening, should they ever get out of that room.

"We're putting our trust in this Severus, the full weight of the Ministry behind him, our agent across enemy lines. What greater thing can we give?"

It was a mere parry, a mere bargaining chip, but Harry looked frightened at this chance phrasing and its effect upon someone whose family hadn't trusted him for almost 30 years.

"When you put it that way," Severus spat, "What can I do but oblige?"

"How often do I get to see him?" Harry asked, stroking his shoulder as if it were about to be snatched out from under his hand.

"The idea is that he will be recruited, but no one expects such a love story to be so easily ended. Severus will arrange for meetings in neutral territory, and the Traditionalists will see his continued feelings for you as an opportunity to recruit Harry Potter as well."

"Such a heartbreaking story should sell a lot of papers," Niamh said archly.

She recoiled from the dual glances of hatred from Severus and Harry.

"And how do you know that I won't go turncoat the second I'm out from under your watch? How do you know I haven't been selling secrets all along?" More than anything, Severus hated how he'd lost his sense of control.

"It's the balance of what you do, not the particulars, that matter to the ministry. Perhaps as you get to know us better you'll understand our way of doing things," Uncle Morry said in much the same tone as the boy Severus remembered the man upbraiding him for hexing his cat.

Severus stood and then pronounced in a quiet but clear voice, "I know the ministry better than it knows itself, apparently. And that is the best insurance I can ask for."

It was a truly majestic flounce-slam, Harry assured him later. He found Severus extricating things from Lawrence and throwing them around their narrow room.

"All my old blackmail material is no good. I should have thought." He was crouching on the floor next to the hovering Lawrence. "All the scandals that fell into my lap were rewritten without me in the timeline." He looked up at Harry. "How do you think I had the mental wherewithal to keep going, post-Voldemort, if not the assurance that I had enough dirt on the ministry to make them pay, and that they knew I did? A lifetime of duplicity to build up this dossier, and it's crumbled into dust. There was something in it about every member of my extended family who worked at the Ministry, including Uncle Morry somewhere. I'm sure."

He let the clippings sift through his fingers, sobbed once, jumped a little at the sound. And then hunched into himself.

"Severus, love. Look at me." Severus looked into Harry's eyes and jumped again. "You see how furious I am? You're not alone in this. I would never have brought you here just so people could order you about again."

"You must have not been listening to anything I've ever said if you're surprised about your precious Ministry," Severus retorted.

Harry withdrew the hand that had been stroking the other man's hair. "This isn't about confirming your worldview, Snape! I don't want to hand you over to Malfoy the Younger like a sack of potatoes. Ministry or no, they want you. Minister Lipswitch said you'd had a couple of other incidents—the rose on your table in a restaurant growing into a big bouquet, for one. Why didn't you tell me sooner? We could have strategized together."

"There was the minimal possibility that those flowers and other gestures were from a different sort of admirer, given that the Prophet receives inquiries from interested male parties from time to time," Harry looked at him sharply. "Which I have told them to destroy." Severus put his head in his hands. "I thought I could handle it."

"Sometimes you're very stupid." Harry's hands were all over him. "They may stop short of deliberately sacrificing my lover, but I can assure you there is no ministry department dedicated to Harry Potter's sexual satisfaction."

Severus made a skeptical noise but continued what he was doing. "All right, there might be, but nobody does it like you."

Harry leaned back for some minutes as if memorizing a certain rhythm.

"The replacement boyfriend they'll find for me won't be half as good at this," Harry moaned "Ow!"

"Shut up," Severus said. "Shut up."

He tried to reach Harry, to let himself be reached, but they were swimming in opposite directions. He lay there afterwards and felt filthy. He'd never wanted politics to intrude upon a relationship. And somehow association with the completely baggage-free Severus Snape, had placed them both in danger.

Afterwards they lay quietly together.

"And to think that we'll never get couples' housing," Harry said mournfully. "I had really looked forward to having a home. The draperies alone would have been magnificent after all your research."

The bureau leaned towards them. "You'll have a home as long as you have Lawrence," Severus said deliberately. "That's how I've always felt with him."

"No, I couldn't," Harry protested. "What if you need your potions gear? You have your entire life in Lawrence."

Severus got up and looked around their bare room. "The medicine cabinet will have to do," he muttered.

"What are you on about?" Harry asked tiredly. "Come back to bed."

"No, Harry, get up—the spell involves tactile recognition. Please join us, old friend." Severus murmured a shrinking spell and the big wardrobe managed to wedge itself in the bathroom.

"Is the medicine cabinet going to come alive?" Harry asked in wonder.

"No, silly, that's something peculiar to Lawrence. My Hogwarts storeroom was spelled to connect with my bureau in the same way as Lawrence was once linked to a closet at my grandmother's. This way I can keep mixing your essential potions and pass them to you while you need them. We'll be able to communicate somewhat, but let me teach you an encoding charm."

Severus was used to disappointment, but even so he was chagrined at the turn of events that had Harry learning to second-guess his every move. They slept fitfully but Severus watched Harry get up and put on all of the things society expected of him. In the middle of taking his morning remedies, the soldier turned around as Severus emerged from the shower. "Wear that green jacket I like," he said as if it were any ordinary day.

For the Figurehead of Wizarding-kind, any day of putting on a brave face was an ordinary day. Harry put his arm around his lover's waist and they walked to breakfast as usual, Harry without his cane.

If the mood of the room was anything to judge by, nothing was different. They sat down next to the people with whom they were friendly. There had been a photo of Severus' "bad hair day" in last evening's paper, and he was getting a good-natured ribbing about it since they'd missed dinner the night before.

"Have a good day, love," Harry said, kissing Severus on the cheek.

The once-and-current-spy smiled easily. "Good or bad, it's sure to be in the evening paper."

Then Severus finished his fruit while carrying on some perfectly inane conversation. He casually mentioned that he would be going out for more potion containers. The hair and skin of Wizarding Britain would have to go straight back to hell without his products, he thought, darting a look at the soon-to-be blotchy and frizzy Niamh.

His walks into town were already the most surveilled in the country, but this day Severus noted at least five people lingering over their breakfasts so they could leave at roughly the same time as he.

Flash! was what greeted Severus when he emerged onto Diagon Alley on that damp morning. "If it isn't the ever-scrumptious Severus Snape!" Rita Skeeter gushed. "Does our style icon have any fashion advice today?"

"Schadenfreude is a habit-forming brew," was the first thing out of his mouth, having glimpsed Niamh's smug face across the street. The last thing he needed was this harebrained journalist narrating his descent into the bowels of moral relativism for the second time in his life. The Traditionalists' spell could come from any direction…

"We know that Harry likes brains with his beauty. How is our favorite hero these days? Any words of inspiration for other young people in these uncertain times?" Rita Skeeter was panting alongside him as he walked.

"This age is no more uncertain than any time," he said scornfully, and then tried to soften it by continuing, "Perhaps a society must have a short memory to continue with the work of living."

"A wisdom beyond his years," Skeeter gave him a penetrating look. Severus could only imagine how odd his almost four decades of bitchiness looked coming out of his 22-year-old mouth. He stalked ahead and halfway through a large puddle.

"Allow me," the puddle said to Severus when he was in the middle of the water, which turned into a rippling carpet with the visage of Draco Malfoy. "Your steps are the ones to watch, after all."

Draco's face chased him along the shop windows. "Severus Snape is a bewitching mystery, the papers say. Where did he come from? Where do his sympathies lie?"

Severus kept walking, stone-faced while the passersby gawked. "But we all know that this studiously neutral potions adept can be wooed." A rain of spangles surrounded him and settled on his clothes so that Severus was covered in sparkles.

"Or was it he who was doing the wooing?" a series of bills pasted on a wall asked with Draco's face. "It would take some sort of powerful charm for a staunchly heterosexual Hero to turn his sights on another man, no matter how lovely."

The crowd that was gathering murmured at this argument.

"But our side has always been able to recognize a jewel among the rabble. Every witch and wizard is cultivated to be the best he or she can be, with the Traditionalists. That's what sets him apart, no matter how Severus Snape tries to hide behind modesty or mockery. Severus Snape has already tasted of the freedom that is right with in the reach of every magical person."

The pasted bills tore themselves into shreds and blew into the hands of the crowd, letting them know what every one in the Wizarding world knew by now: how to join the secretive magical society that had claimed so many of the young and the talented.

Severus looked at the fragment of paper floating invitingly before him. He withdrew his wand. There were gasps and flashbulbs.

"Magic is ours, and so shall the world be." He mouthed the slogan on the flier and Draco's face winked at him before exploding into a burst of light.

When Severus next opened his eyes, he was looking up at his former student, who was stretching his hand out and pulling him to his feet in some underground chamber. "You're going to be fun," he smiled. "Freedom of will," the Traditionalists' leader said, his hand lingering on the newcomer's sleeve. "No artificial limits. If you can take it, have it."

The pale blond hair and pale eyes washed like a bucket of heartless cold over Severus' head. "I've had enough of the Ministry to last me awhile, so any change of pace will be welcome," he managed to say.

"They'll screw anyone over except their Golden Boy," Draco said, alluding to his career-that-wasn't among the administration. Lucius had even asked his old spy friend for advice, but Severus had little leverage to help nudge the angry young student to use his talent for scheming among the official outlets. "But you were the one to screw the Boy Who Lived."

"The Ministry is predictable to a fault," Severus observed drily, trying to avoid the Harry question.

"We're going to benefit from your sources," the other young man said shrewdly. "But no one would think to interfere in the Love Story for these Uncertain Times."

With his arm twined in Severus' a little more tightly than necessary, the Radical leader steered him towards a doorway. "Come, meet the other firebrands and malcontents."

In a language Severus hadn't heard before, Draco uttered a charm, and with a flick of his wand, a doorway opened in the stone.

"Witches and Wizards, meet our new recruit, if he hasn't been working for us all along, freelance," Malfoy said.

The mostly under-thirty troops looked up from various pastimes, most of them involving old books and spells in the works.

Their eyes reminded Severus of his father's. The new soldier greeted the others calmly, "Hello. I hope you have a decent laboratory for me, at least."

"Anything you like, Severus." His hand slid almost imperceptibly along the velvet of his jacket. "Let the others shilly-shally about, gilding what they want with what appears to be good. We believe in cultivating true talent, that's all."

The hair on Severus' neck stood up. It was an almost textual citation of one of his pep talks he'd been occasionally required to give as head of Slytherin house. What do you say to a group of eagerly amoral faces turned up at you, year after year? A spy would naturally try to teach children that you have to rely on yourself, and not society's shifting idea of what is good, to guide you.

Those pale eyes were on him. "That's my philosophy precisely," he murmured and let himself be led to his new quarters.

"The first time I saw you in the papers I recognized a kindred spirit," Draco said.

Severus was steady but he felt the shrunken cabinet in his pocket tremble.


	9. Chapter 9

"All right, you lot, we're patrolling London Sector 7 today," Harry said to his assembled troops.

There were murmurs and his voice rang out strong and true. "That's right, it's defensive spells until we're told to go on the offensive, and we're going to do our jobs because the boring shite is what we're fighting for."

The complaints died down. "Building detail will be doing what they do best with their reinforcement charms."

The group moved to one side and busied themselves with adjusting their muggle clothing for the operation.

"You potions chaps and chapettes." Harry paused one second to master the emotion that the mention of potions always aroused in him, and there was a chorus of "aye Cap'ns" in response. "You'll continue wafting about all your spell-repellants and diagnostic powders and all those other things you drone on about when given half a chance."

There was laughter and banter from the troops. "And while you're at it, use any sinks and lavatories you come across to make sure the water supply is clean for another day. You symbol-specialists, I'm counting on you to keep a sharp eye for the smallest rune or squiggle to indicate the groundwork for a hex. This seems to be how ol' Goldilocks gets his kicks these days." He was drowned out by catcalls and insults directed at Draco Malfoy. "So be vigilant."

It was the same routine every day, but Harry knew that his most important contribution occurred during these morning pep talks. He made it all mean something. He was used to people living vicariously through him, but was unprepared for the outpouring of sympathy from the ranks when the _Prophet_ printed the photograph of Severus publicly changing sides on the front page.

He'd had to start issuing demerits for people who tried to scare away the newspaper's hacks who hounded him on a daily basis. What they didn't realize was that he let himself be found. It would be worse for people to not hear about their favorite wizard at all, and if he didn't say something whatever they'd make up would be worse.

The soldiers' protectiveness made him realize why people joined the radicals, in a way. It was the opposite of the business-as-usual attitude Harry had to endure, breakfast and dinner, from the mostly-older Ministry officials who'd sold Severus out. It was changing him into the harder, leaner person he caught in the mirror sometimes. His regiment was all under 35, most in the early-twenties range, and there was a sense that their band of witches and wizards, that most of the army, was a haven away from the calculating five percent who survived every regime change and were working to ensure they'd survive this possible revolution.

The young people all knew someone who had joined the Traditionalists for reasons they couldn't fathom. There was an unspoken feeling that if Wizarding Society had been less quick to distance themselves from someone dogged by Draco Malfoy's face at every turn, maybe they could have been saved.

Harry's group had proven that refusing to give in to the grown-up Slytherin taunts from Malfoy's side would eventually make them lose interest. He had three people he'd managed to hold onto after they'd been targeted, and after an average of five months they'd been let alone. A good ten hadn't been so lucky. If there was one thing Harry was proud of, it was that his making his own stance about the "Malfeasant"—as someone had dubbed those chosen by Malfoy—had encouraged the rest of the army to follow suit in protecting its own, though the official policy was ambiguous in such cases. He was gratified to learn how much power the army did have when they took it. The question was only when the right moment could come for the armed forces to take their stand.

The witches and wizards were still receiving more detailed instructions from their team leaders when Harry boomed out suddenly, "Singh, first, and Samuels, you're my second, Ellis, you're third."

Singh and Ellis walked quickly to their leader's side and stood there proudly. It was deemed an honor to be chosen to accompany the captain in his patrol, but in reality Harry chose the soldiers who would ride at his right, left and rear at random.

Samuels, however, was standing stock-still and red-faced. He'd been sent to the infirmary yesterday with a miniature snowstorm hanging above his head. Luckily they'd removed this first overture from Malfoy, but no doubt the young man felt as though he was being kept watch over in case of any more incidents. When actually, the days were so much the same to Harry since Severus left almost six weeks ago that he'd forgotten Samuels had been snowed on only yesterday.

To cover his mistake, Harry turned to the tried-and-true. "Samuels! Don't stand there blushing! I didn't ask you out on a _date_, but merely for the pleasure of your company on flying patrol." Samuels blushed an even deeper shade of red. "If you would do me the honor of flying at my left and keeping a lookout for all the new ways that the world is going to hell, I can say that is a good way to get on my good side, so there's hope. If, however, you have something better to do than go out there and protect a bunch of people who will never know your name or the fact that you kept a building from going all arse over elbow on them, then by all means, continue to waste this entire regiment's time!"

Samuels reached out his hand and his broom thwacked against his face, such was his zeal to summon it.

The majority of the troops apparated to their assigned sector. Harry led the three people who would surround in him in the sky out of the barracks they inhabited in the abandoned tube station. They reappeared in a secure spot and, under the protection of a cloaking charm, began to fly over the city.

He wasn't sure if his comrades realized it, but Harry had moved to aerial surveillance because he still wasn't strong enough to walk around all day. Flying was great for perspective on any number of levels, though.

They flew to the Alley first, since Diagon Alley was such a point of contention. Along the way he noticed some people clustering around some of the entrances and exits to the Alley that had been mucked up by the Conservatives again. A line had started forming at Gringott's because the Conservatives had also found some new way to complicate the exchange of galleons to pounds, which had gone on seamlessly before due to Goblin ingenuity.

Thanks to Harry's tirade, everything was back on normal footing again. That day's guard took turns casting spells to reveal any new seditious activity and making note of any potential anomalies, leaving their captain's mind free to float and let the impressions come to him.

He was going to write to Severus about his little show of domination today, though his voice had rung false to his own ears. He wrote every day, telling his lover the spy about some detail that would bring them closer together.

It had hurt him at first that Severus didn't send him a note via Lawrence every day. And that the messages he did receive were mostly spells he saw the radicals in his hideout cooking up. (Severus had said from the outset that he was not yet trusted enough to leave his current location in some location he had yet to pinpoint.)

Severus nearly always had a list of potions ingredients that he either couldn't access or didn't want to admit to using. Harry followed the multiple-owl shipment system his lover had set up to prevent any possibility of deliveries being traced to Harry, and thereby arousing questions about how physical objects were being passed back and forth. The Ministry merely accepted that the two men had arranged some mechanism to communicate and didn't ask for the particulars of what Harry did on his solitary walks he took every evening after dinner.

Painfully alone among his peers at the officers' quarters, Harry took every spare moment to think about his situation. When they were together their attraction smoothed everything out, but with

Severus gone, Harry had begun to wonder if he knew this new, businesslike person he obtained salamander-tails for at all.

Their relationship had begun so easily, without thinking. Much like his sort-of-relationship with Martin. This ease with men must be another way of saying "sexual orientation" for the slow-to-catch-up like himself. Part of the wonder of it had been watching Severus' years melt away before his eyes. It had happened slowly, and was most likely due to their combined biologies having a purely biological healing effect on Severus' system. But in the back of Harry's mind, he had felt like it was him, it was his own caring doing at least part of it, reaching this imposing man in a place that no potion could soothe.

Watching Severus' guard come down and gates go up had been like witnessing a frost in reverse being slowly lifted from a countryside. It was in the way Severus moved, going from the regal bearing all the students had made such sport of, this grace becoming something supple, something susceptible.

The potions master was still a mass of knotted-up fury, but this had been the perfect match for Harry's own frustrated convalescence at the time. He liked not worrying about having to hurt someone; it was liberating knowing that Severus would never spare his feelings and would likely put something in Harry's tea should he displease him.

Now Harry treasured the occasional bitchy remark that appeared in his medicine cabinet. "Potter, will you kindly return your 'empties' along with your contribution to your remedy? I didn't have the foresight to hook Lawrence up with a wardrobe conveniently located at a sandy beach so that we could blow our own glass," Severus sniped one day.

Under other circumstances the staccato notes would be a fascinating glimpse into Wizarding espionage forged over the last 25 years. What unnerved Harry was that he couldn't make much more sense of the personal parts. There were words he'd never heard of, and a sort of stream-of-consciousness that he gathered was Severus thinking out loud, trying to figure out the psychology, and the magic, that made the Traditionalists run. Most of all, Severus was puzzling over how to get out of where he was, having been told cryptically, "Everyone is free to come and go as they please, but only those who truly want to get out will find the door."

Harry remembered watching the morose professor stewing over some private rancor at Hogwarts mealtimes. He'd thought it was superiority, or maybe some sort of social disability, that kept Professor Snape silent and aloof at the meal table.

He was coming to understand that after awhile, the spy had become an island unto himself, seeking no one's company because it was impossible for anyone to retrace all of his convoluted steps and reach him. Harry feared that he was witnessing from afar that frost taking hold of the maliciously brilliant, the neurotically sensual, the hard and soft person with whom he'd so easily gotten in so deep.

Harry relayed the Ministry-directed sections to the administration and enjoyed watching their surprise at how knowledgeable and efficient his lover was. The strange words and ramblings he kept to himself, trying not to think of the Traditionalists' knack for sending people to St. Mungo's.

The only key that Severus had left him was a recurring focus on his childhood. "My father was right," Severus wrote yesterday, and Harry was sure that couldn't mean anything good.

Severus and Lawrence settled into their new existence, protecting each other as they always had. The human was careful to keep the wardrobe in a carpet bag ostensibly containing clothing and potions equipment, so that no one knew it was a Vanishing Cabinet, and a sentient one at that. Lawrence was constantly offering his owner things that might make him more comfortable, ranging from calmatives to pleasure reading.

Severus accepted the fairy stories from his youth but seldom used the calming potions. Following his mother's advice, Severus used Dreamless Sleep only rarely. "Dreams are the way fate speaks to us," she used to say. He'd never gleaned anything useful from his dreams, but they were a very useful gauge of his psychological ill-health. Right now he was in a moderate state of panic.

That he was having nightmares about his childhood year of captivity made sense, given that he was, for all intents and purposes, a prisoner of the Traditionalists.

There was little to do but watch his compatriots in the house, and they didn't seem to mind. They were all busy. Excited. Their ship was about to come in. A spell that would cause panic across Britain, and which only the Traditionalists could remove—on their terms of course—was just around the corner, they seemed to think. The other inhabitants didn't notice the bland and none-too-plentiful food. (One of the first messages he sent to Harry was that the Traditionalists had difficulty in their supply line.) They didn't see that the place was desperately in need of a few cleaning spells, which Severus took care of first thing.

The building was a stately old house that had been commandeered by the Radicals in what might be Chelsea, judging from the architecture. The windows were sealed with charms that must make it seem to outsiders as though nothing untoward was going on inside.

It was also impossible for the inhabitants to see out. Nobody but Severus paid attention to this, of course. Everyone else was able to leave, most likely to try out their spells upon the unsuspecting. They were far too distracted to accomplish errands, he'd found out. The few times people remembered to come back with the potions ingredients he asked for, it was often the wrong thing entirely. But what's a potion to clean the household laundry when they were shortly to take over the world?

The members of this amoral sect chattered endlessly about how far could they push their magic, how they could impose their will upon the world. Sharing quarters with people completely lacking in a conscience was unpredictable at best. One night someone had blasted through all the wards to Severus' room, simply to look for a container to use for some ghastly compound she'd cooked up.

Since higher motives were in short supply, everything in the household had to be tediously bargained for. Luckily Severus had many useful skills. He scraped together the makings of a potion to counteract the spell that had backfired on one young man and left half of his body covered with fur. The boy and his girlfriend had felt it was worth their while enough to warrant switching rooms.

Severus' original argument that he could better prepare the potions and food everyone accepted from him if he had access to a room with his own sink hadn't registered with the household. His new basement room with the private bath was a luxury, but the stone also seemed cleaner, more resistant to the coating of dirt and fanaticism Severus fancied contaminating him elsewhere in the abode.

A potions master is naturally paranoid about being poisoned, and Severus had to use all his mental tricks not to constantly give in to the urge to banish every surface from any toxins. He also forced himself to rely on the rations delivered every few days (it would be kippers all day, or beans, with the inevitable porridge) as a way of forcing himself to divine how to get out of the place.

"If it is your will to exit, you will find the door," Draco had smirked at him when dropping Severus off at his new revolutionary cell, as he insisted upon calling it.

It was Severus' will to go to the nearest fish and chips shop, but no matter what charms or potions he tried, there was no getting out.

When he asked his fellow revolutionaries what this meant, they merely spouted the same sort of mystical nonsense from the Draco-authored leaflets that appeared more regularly than the food. Listening to these people claiming to be on a first-name basis with gods and goddesses all day long made him ant to scream. And when they weren't talking about restoring the magical world's ascendancy, they were making the queerest sounds.

The sound was the real reason he finagled a room in the basement. The stone absorbed most of the noise from the three other rooms down there, and Severus tried to tell himself it helped his sleep. He couldn't stand to hear the language these lunatics babbled while waving their wands. It set his nerves on edge while awake and seeped into his nightmares while asleep. He was quite positive he'd never heard it before, but the spellcraft these people accomplished was undeniable. And frightening.

As if he had been dropped in the middle of an alien race, Severus forced himself to listen for patterns. He sent phonetic renderings off to Harry as if in doing so he could banish the offending syllables from his ears. Perhaps Harry, with his unlimited access to books, could make sense of it.

Even in the basement room, the nightmares got worse. Every time he closed his eyes he heard these voices clamoring all around him. In his dreams, Severus was paralyzed and they were babbling and chanting and singing.

One night he lay there on his pallet, staring at the ceiling and trying to suggest a nice evening he'd shared with Harry as alternative to the subconscious that insisted upon coming up nightmares. When he saw it.

A hint of blue.

Not caring whether anyone noticed, Severus cast as many illuminating and restoring charms as he knew upon the flaking stone surfaces that made up his dwelling. He could barely make out the remnants of a seascape. The misleading pattern that his mother had seen when she tried to envision where he was being held. The blurry figures of supposed sacred symbols clinched it. This was the blue-painted surface he'd stared at as a captive child of ten.

The knowledge that he was literally reliving his childhood terrors should have been enough to keep him awake for days, but he eventually fell asleep. Making this connection helped Severus dredge up the sounds of the rituals he's witnessed with his father. The muggles had mangled the pronunciation, but he began connecting the words they'd spoken three decades ago with the sounds mouthed by the people now surrounding him. There were rising and falling notes like Chinese, which must have made whatever transliteration his father's brand of lunatic had been working from inadequate.

Severus greedily soaked up the letters Lawrence delivered from Harry, so much so that by the time he reached the end he was so full of this boy who had adopted him that didn't know how to reply. He had to trust in the humor and normalcy of the messages penned in that familiar scrawl the way he trusted that both sides of everyday London still existed somewhere beyond those walls.

Finally, one day Severus hit upon just the right combination of nonsense syllables. He found himself on the street. He was in Paddington, and none of the buildings were remotely similar to the one he'd been living in. Well, well. A hideout that not even the residents could give away. That was like something he would think of.

The freed potions master walked to the nearest fish and chips shop in a daze and then went into a lavatory to pen a letter to Harry and transmit it through the cabinet that never left his side.

_Captain Potter,_

_Are you free this evening at 7? I am. _

_I'll be at the west entrance to Diagon Alley barring any unforeseen circumstances. _

_Yours, _

_S_

Then he added a longer list of potion ingredients than he usually requested, though he was going straight to the apothecary's as his next stop. Finally, he could give up the pretense of using up a hidden cache he'd brought in.

Harry saw the narrow figure in a black suit standing as if in its own bubble among the pedestrians. All the witches and wizards were giving the known Traditionalist a wide birth. Harry's throat caught. This is the Severus he used to know, the one with the indelible distance separating him from others.

The Ministry's favorite captain strode forward and shattered this illusory gap. "Hi, Severus."

Severus stood very still but caught one of Harry's wrists "Hello."

Harry ran a hand down the other man's back. "You feel more knobbly," he observed.

"Compared to what?" Severus asked. "One of the soldiers you've taken under your wing?"

Harry was somewhat gratified at Severus' jealousy about his occasional stories about looking after his one or two "Malfeasant" warriors. "I mean that Severus Snape, I'm going to take you to a decent meal."

"I'm dying for a curry at Serena's," he admitted.

They apparated to the restaurant and were greeted by murmurs in the establishment before the owner came out to seat them personally. Severus did have a craving for flavorful food, but he also knew that Serena was fully capable of enforcing her legendary unallied stance at wandpoint if necessary. Anyone could eat at her cafe as long as they didn't bother anyone else.

While they waited for their food, Severus drank two glasses of juice in quick succession and they talked easily about neutral topics, such as his fear of scurvy without access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Finally Harry leaned forward and asked, "I have the strangest sensation, as though my eyes are playing tricks of perspective on me. One moment I feel as though I'm pressed right up against you, and sometimes you seem very far away."

The veteran spy returned his gaze. "Very well said; I've never been able to describe it to myself that way before, what it's like to move between worlds. I've always thought of it as a radio with a faulty dial that you can't keep on the station."

And though they were both admitting to seeing each other as a stranger at least some of the time, Harry felt he'd crossed another threshold with this complicated man. Severus was suddenly not alone in an ambivalent place no one had ever shared with him.

"Harry, I—" Severus' trouser-leg delivered its message of tantalizing friction to Harry's leg, but his hand never reached its mate across the table.

Flash!

"If it isn't the Tragedy of our Times, with love attempting to bridge the divide between politics and parties!" gushed Rita Skeeter alongside a battery of photographers.

"What a relief to be upgraded to a tragedy; romance is such an insipid genre," Severus remarked to Harry as their plates arrived.

"Is the passion burning as bright as it once was? Are you still exclusive?" the woman asked.

Severus turned to the journalist, "Put whatever words you like into my mouth, you nit, so that I can consume my meal with my chosen companion." He gave a sly lilt to the end of the phrase so that it sounded like Harry would be next on the menu.

"Don't take any pictures of me with my mouth open, Paul," Harry said good-humoredly to one of the photographers and proceeded to alternate eating with talking.

Severus watched his lover say the minimum with maximum charm over a few minutes, and then the nuisance was gone. "That woman has used up all of my scarce goodwill since we've been together, and you can treat years of her invasiveness with civility?"

"It's habit," Harry smiled. "Most reflexes aren't personal." He rubbed his knee against his partner's, and they both trusted that this one instinct they shared would be enough.

They got up to leave and the Ministry surveillance that had appeared at the bar at some point got up to follow them out.

When they were on the street, Severus reached into his jacket pocket and the security team's hands were on their wands in an instant.

"It's the deodorant you asked for." Severus handed over the container to Niamh with a smirk, but the girl shrank back. "Don't worry—it's not tainted in any way. Simply my own formulation for freshening those flowers of the Wizarding world who have a tendency to clamminess."

He moved the container a few inches forward and the Ministry group had their wands pointed at his head. His eyes scrutinized her frizzy hair. "Too bad I didn't think to bring any of that pomade that does such wonders for you, but here's an incantation that will tame hair in a pinch."

Severus slowly put his mouth to Niamh's ear and whispered, "If the Ministry keeps relying on the press to watch over your Boy Hero, you may tempt me to defect back to your side and care for my beau myself. It took over ten minutes for you to show up in the restaurant. For a security detail your level of suspicion is a disgrace—more a mild unease, I'd call it."

He drew back and smiled at the side he would have been so much more comfortable resenting, had everything gone according to his original plan. "Until we meet again," Severus remarked and drew Harry's arm through his.

"What did you tell her? Niamh's smirk went all cockeyed," Harry inquired.

"I told her they didn't need to keep wasting their time worrying about whose side I was on, because it should be obvious by now." It was a rare flirtatious look from the older man, and Harry rewarded it as well as he could on the street.

They walked on, Harry talking of matters of little consequence while trying to melt some more of the frost he'd seen inhibiting Severus' movements and expressions. They went into the bookshop so that Severus could search for some history books that might shed some light on the Traditionalists' magic.

"How am I doing?" Severus asked casually as his purchases were rung up.

Harry was caught off guard by the humility of the question, not sure if this referred to Severus' undercover or out of cover self. "Splendidly," he assured him.

"Lawrence has been quite concerned about me. I keep finding the oddest assortment of books and articles from my past ejected onto my pillow to wake me up." Harry gave him a look as they left the counter. "I'm not sleeping well."

"You'd never know it," Harry confided. "You look delectable." It was an invitation. Only they knew how literal.

"I took the precaution of reserving a room when I was on my errands today," Severus said quietly. "The _Prophet_ wouldn't dare camp outside a hotel in an unassuming neighborhood if we behave ourselves."

"That's too bad," Harry said, and Severus' well-controlled disappointment made his heart leap. "I reserved a suite in Soho, and we don't have to behave ourselves all that much."

He led the way to the very nice corner. "Fancy a drink?" Harry asked at the bar.

"Yes, stupid boy, but I seriously doubt they serve it in there," Severus said, his eyes raking up and down Harry's body. With a sly grin he stalked ahead of Harry to the elevator.

They had both had to live with their own manual efforts to maintain the supply of the secret ingredient that had done them both so much good. But both men agreed that it was like bringing yourself off, versus having someone do it for you. Their hands and mouths were all over each other, pulling and probing, several times over until they were at last satisfied.

Harry stroked the shoulder of the young man who was his, the one he alone had the power to bring out. Severus' silky hair was strewn across the pillow, and his face wore a clever, sated expression.

"Any thoughts I had of you getting it on with your adoring recruits were clearly part of my paranoia," Severus murmured. "Your enthusiasm was most welcome."

Harry's mouth marked its territory once more, briefly, in each of the spots that had been tormenting him in his solitary bed. "You're the only one I don't have to pretend in front of," he said seriously. "And you aren't telling me everything."

"It's this language of theirs, it pushes their spellcraft far beyond what the average wizard or witch thinks of as magic," Severus replied. "It's just as I told you. As soon as I know more you'll be the first to know."

"I'm glad you got out; it took you long enough. Made me wonder whether you were passing around what's mine. Or have you forgotten?" His tone was gradually moving towards the one he used on his soldiers. "Do what you're good for," he barked.

Severus slid under the sheets and gave in to the luxury of not thinking, of being told what to do and complying with the oral pyrotechnics he was even more gifted at than sarcasm. The hand pulled away the sheets and then strayed into his hair, caressed his haunch, breached him until there was no more room for the doubts and worries that he so easily accepted as reality.

"Spy sex isn't half bad," Harry said when they awoke early.

"Never say that again," Severus flounced into the bathroom and locked the door, forcing Harry to charm the door open to join him in the shower.

"There are some things even I am unwilling to fetishize, apparently" the taller man said with his face to the wall, allowing himself to be thoroughly soaped.

"I'm sorry," Harry said, apologizing even more thoroughly. "Of course I'd rather you were with me in some nice double room and I didn't have to hate the leadership so much. Your uncle has stopped taking his meals in the dining room with the others. I think my looks of hatred were giving him indigestion."

Severus got dressed, buttoning up the deep sapphire shirt that set of his skin and hair. While he adjusted his jacket he remarked casually, "We could go away you know."

"Away? But Malfoy—"

"Is the head of a particularly nasty movement, but the Ministry is good for exactly one thing—quashing rebellions. This isn't my fight, Harry, and it doesn't have to be yours. What's the good of being wizards if we can't remake our lives as we wish? Dumbledore has more contacts than you can imagine, and you see that his strategic exit did the whole society a world of good."

Harry was studying him in the mirror. "A few months ago, I would have said no, but now—what's brought this on?"

If he could transmit the feeling of dread that suffused his waking and sleeping hours, Severus would speak whatever words were required. "Think about it, Harry. I've always got at least five escape plans going. Together we could—" His voice failed him again. "Keep having salacious evenings in anonymous beds. Next time is my choice. There's something to be said for seedy."

They left separately and Severus returned to the area of Paddington where he'd emerged from his revolutionary quarters the day before. Feeling like a fool, he intoned the syllables that had worked the last time.

A few of his housemates looked up from their experimentation, but most didn't. Satisfied that nothing major had happened in his absence, Severus was about to go down to his room.

"Master Draco requests the honor of your presence," a girl said without glancing away from the potatoes she was turning into ill-tempered rats.

"Pardon?"

"Master Draco requests the honor of your presence," she said. Then she looked up, "Oh good. He asked that you wear the blue shirt that he likes."

Some syllables were glowing on the wall in his room. It took quite a few tries, but he finally managed to say them correctly.

Severus appeared in several locations across London in quick succession before ending up in the open space where he'd met Draco right after defecting to his side.

As a professor he'd sometimes called the young boys "master" to be sarcastic, but the young man who greeted him was far from what he'd been at Hogwarts. "Sorry about that—sometimes I don't get people here on the first try. "

The old Slytherin student would never have been aught dead admitting a fault, but the pale boy with the pale hair smiled with complete confidence.

"You're learning more quickly than anyone yet," he said, motioning to one of the mismatched antique chairs. "Anyone who's not had any help, and you've scarcely spoken to your housemates, it seems."

"My social skills are limited to offering to feed and clean up after my peers," Severus said drily while trying to place the architecture.

"Oh I know," Draco leaned towards him. "I know you, better than you know yourself."


End file.
