Cold, by
Seeker
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His eyes
were the color of the killing curse.
Snape
hadn't noticed that until the moment he saw both at the same time. The vivid emerald green of
Harry Potter's eyes and the shadowy reflection of Avada Kedavra. The same color Lily's eyes had been. Perhaps it wasn't his mother's love that
saved him from Voldemort that day.
Perhaps
it was within him, that which he defeated. Curse calling to curse.
Death defeating death.
Standing
ankle-deep in corpses in the final battle, Snape caught his breath, looked from
the Death Eaters in ranks around him to the wizards and witches defiantly
encircled by them, and wondered why he never fully
understood the meaning behind the color of Harry Potter's eyes.
This,
then, was what it came down to at the end.
A choice, an unveiling, a nakedness he'd not felt since he was a child
himself; brought about by and for the protection of the curse incarnate. A tiny voice in the back of his mind laughed
hysterically.
He'd
known the Potter brat was trouble the moment he'd walked into his classroom ten
years before.
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"Brat? You're calling me a
brat?"
Snape
rolled his eyes, thankful though he wouldn't admit it under torture that Harry
was leaning over his shoulder and couldn't see the expression on his face. "Are my memoirs now being written by
committee?" he asked dryly.
"As
if," Harry snorted. "If I had
my druthers it'd all be -"
"I
know," Snape interrupted. "Sex, potions and Muggle rock."
Harry
was too busy laughing to notice when Snape turned on him and handily tipped him
over his lap. Then he was too busy
gasping as Snape flipped his robes up and dove into his shorts. Then too busy moaning and coming to talk at
all.
When
he'd finally worn the brat out enough to send him on his merry, muzzy way,
Snape sighed, shivered, adjusted his own neglected erection with one hand and
picked up his quill with the other.
"Want
some help with that?" Harry asked breathily.
Snape
licked his lips, tasting salt and bitter, smiling slightly. "I thought we just established that I'm
more than capable of both writing my own work and dealing with any distractions
that come up along the way."
Harry
snorted, a ridiculously attractive sound, and said sleepily, "Was talking
about the distraction. Or is it some
kind of Snapish self-torture endurance test to write with a hard-on?"
"I
find my enjoyment where I may, Harry," Snape sighed. "Now do go away."
A kiss
to the side of his face, a muttered "Come find me when you're ready to
come!" and his pest finally did just that.
Snape shook his head, tried to control the grin that threatened to
spread all over his face, and cast his mind back the previous year.
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Voldemort
laughed, a creakier sound than the frightening cackle he
was no doubt attempting, and raised his wand.
Tossing a quarter century of infiltration and observation out the window
with one considered if insane move, Snape threw back his hood, stepped forward,
and took the entire force of the curse against his chest.
Unfortunately,
at the time, though to his great good fortune in the long run, it turned out to
be Cruciatus, not Avada Kedavra. At the
moment it hit, his entire focus was on Voldemort. Even as he tried to tell Potter to move, to
do it, to kill the bastard, he heard Sirius Black screaming the words he
couldn't force past pain-constricted throat muscles. Thankfully, he wasn't alone in his defense
and his distraction, his sacrifice, was enough.
Barely.
"Now!"
called Dumbledore, and spells flew from a score of
wands, concentrated on the Death Eaters forming a human wall around Voldemort.
Dimly,
over the rush of blood in his ears and the harsh thumping of his heart in his
chest as it came close to bursting from the agony of the curse, Snape heard
snarling first beside, then over, then beyond him. The werewolves must have joined the battle,
because no human could make those sounds.
Screams broke out, high-pitched and abruptly
cut off, as more wizards fell.
A figure
he recognized broke from the ranks of the Death Eaters, the sun shining in his
soft blond hair as he knelt beside Snape's writhing body. Young Malfoy's expression was torn. The ambivalence there was a testament to
Snape's efforts over the years to show the lad another path, even if in the end
Lucius had won.
"I
never knew," Draco said. The only
way Snape could discern the words was to read his lips. Astonishment, betrayal, pain, anger; these
things he could accept. "How could
you hide this?"
I did
what I had to do, Snape thought, hoping his own resignation could show through
the tears hazing his eyes. I wish you
had known. I wish I could have trusted
you.
I wish I
could have saved you.
Before
another thought could force its way through the static in his brain, Draco
arched, his head flying back, his mouth falling open, as green light ripped
into and through him.
As green as Harry's eyes.
What a
foolish thought to have fixed in his mind as he faced death, but Snape couldn't
shake it free.
Draco's
body weighed nothing as it fell across Snape's, and the convulsions quickly
threw him off anyway. An
ephemeral presence, in death as he had been in life. Above him, Voldemort continued to rage, and
the agony continued to pour over him.
It went
on forever. His skin shriveled on his
limbs, his eyes liquefied in his skull, his skeleton shattered. He was utterly astonished to find himself
intact when the energy flowing through him abruptly ended. Surely he was dead?
The sun disappeared from his bleary
field of vision, displaced by a pale, sweating face with black hair falling
over it and wide green eyes staring urgently down at him. The world was eerily silent. He couldn't even hear the screams any more.
"Harry,"
he asked, wondering why the boy didn't answer, "why
is it so cold?"
Not
Snape, that was for certain.
A second
obstruction joined the first, this one framed with flowing white hair that
looked pewter gray in the fading light.
Dumbledore asked him a question - he was always asking questions - but
since Snape couldn't hear him he didn't bother answering. Then strong hands, old and young, reached out
toward him.
They
didn't leave his side all the way back to Hogwarts. Snape didn't remember much of the aftermath
of battle, but he did remember that.
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The
first indication he had that the present was again intruding on the past was
when those same strong hands suddenly lifted the hem of his robe and scrabbled
to part his thighs.
"Harry!"
he protested, not as strongly as he might be expected to, but as firmly as he
could given that Harry's mouth was sucking the end of his prick and he could
feel his brain cells dying off in clusters.
He steadfastly refused to admit his protest was actually a weak breathy
whine. A man had some pride.
Not
much, though, when it came to mind-blowing sex from a lover who knew every
single weak spot on his body. Strong
suction to the tip, the flick of a tongue along the ridge, pushing back the
foreskin and lapping at the sensitive skin, and Snape gave up the unequal battle
and pushed back his chair.
Harry followed. On his knees. Still sucking.
"Holy...
augh ... ah, shite," Snape gave up on any attempt at verbalization as
Harry sped up his movements. Staring
down at the shaggy black head, hair intersected by his own long pale fingers
clenched in it, bobbing up and down over his lap, and Snape's self-control
dissipated completely. He arched against
the back of the chair, babbling under his breath, and came so hard he went
light-headed.
When he
got his breath, and his composure, back, he glared at his troublemaking
love. "I realize the concept of
'work to do' is foreign to your nature," he began.
Harry
cut him off with a sloppy kiss. Snape
licked back and forgot what he was going to say. Eventually they broke for breath, before
Snape could get dizzy all over again.
"You're
welcome," Harry told him with admittedly deserved smugness.
"Brat,"
Snape grumbled. Still, it was impossible
not to return his own pale shadow of the sunny grin Harry gave him.
"Right,
then," Harry told him cheerfully, "You get back to your tale-telling
and I'm off to practice."
"Don't
fall off the broom," Snape told his retreating back as he headed out the
door. "
Harry
froze in his tracks and shot a glance over his shoulder, bright eyes gleaming
at him in anticipation. It struck Snape
again how close the color was to the killing curse, and yet was the antithesis
of death. The truest and best life he
ever could have hoped to attain.
"Promise?" Harry teased.
"Threat,"
he answered, as always. The salacious
expression fixed on Harry's face as he left was his own promise that the night
ahead would be well worth the anticipation.
It
always was.
Trying
not to think of how bloody lucky he was, since he was a firm believer in
jinxing oneself, having done it often enough, Snape turned back to his memoirs
with determination.
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The
infirmary was chaos. Too many had not
made it through the final battle, and more were in need of medical
assistance. Pomfrey, limping from her
own injury, flitted unevenly from bed to bed.
Mediwitches and mediwizards he'd never seen before leaned over a cot
here, a bed there, comforted and healed and supported the wounded.
Snape
wanted to be back in his dungeon.
Harry
still hadn't let go.
Needing
to gain control in any way he could, Snape gathered himself and gave Harry a
modified glare. While grateful for the
support, he would not allow himself to be an object of pity to anyone, particularly to a young man he'd been trying to
teach to defend himself since he was a boy.
More particularly when the only reason he was IN the infirmary is
because his efforts had failed and he'd had to physically throw his body in the
breach to keep the man alive.
Pathetic. The
act of a Gryffindor, not a self-respecting Slytherin. Simply pathetic.
Not that
Harry seemed to find it so, of course.
Having relied on blind courage more often than brains so often in his short
life, it seemed he was impressed with Snape's idiocy. Snape hastened to correct any
misapprehensions he might have.
"That
was the most inept piece of work it has ever been my misfortune to
witness," he attempted to growl.
What actually came out was "That was the mommph!" as Harry
leaned forward over the bed, held him down with one hand with ridiculous ease,
and planted a kiss on him the likes of which Snape had never been privileged to
share.
When he
was finally allowed the use of his mouth, Snape could find no better use for it
than to hang agape as he stared at Harry.
That earned him the first wide, unshadowed grin he'd ever gotten from
that quarter.
"Your
bark won't fool me again, Professor," Harry told him softly. "I've seen who you really are, now. I'm not going to forget it, no matter how
much you growl and scowl at me. You were
willing to die to save my life."
Snape
worked his jaw, trying to find a way to dismiss the evident truth, but all that
earned him was another reality-shifting kiss.
Harry licked him one last time across the lower lip and smirked.
"You
may not realize it yet," he whispered, "but you're mine
now, and I don't let go easily. Or at all, for that matter.
Now that I know what's under that frosty exterior, I've seen who you
really are. I've got you now, and I'm
never letting you go."
It took
a year to convince him, but eventually Snape realized Harry meant what he
said. For the first time in his life, he
wasn't defined by the masks he wore. He
was seen for who he was, and loved for it, to his absolute astonishment. No matter how hard he tried, and he did try,
Harry never gave up. And Snape wasn't
left out in the cold any longer.
Harry
made sure of that.
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"Always
will, you know."
Harry's
voice drifted though his mind, and Snape smiled. Laying his quill beside the parchment, he
blew across the ink until the shine was gone, and slowly rolled it up. The past was where it belonged now. He could concentrate on the now, and the yet to come, and let the burden of the past
fall away. Placing the scroll in the
tray with the others, he turned his back on it.
He was
warm now. Close proximity to Harry
Potter could do that to the coldest fellow.
And since Harry was determined not to go anywhere, and reassured Snape
on that fact every chance he got, Snape had the feeling he would never be cold
again.
End.