"...chastre fut et puis moyne/Pierre Esbaillart a Saint-Denis"
("...Pierre Abelard, who was first castrated and then became a monk")
--Villon, being typically French about absence of sexuality).

Poppy Pomfrey watched Snape carefully, although she didn't come to any conclusions until the night she sat beside him at the dinner-table.

He was sneezing so hard the bench shook slightly. She noticed a certain greyish cast to the skin, beyond the usual sallowness. What had he done to himself now? It was the third cold he'd had this month, although she wasn't sure because he brewed his own Pepper-Up. Along with half the stuff she needed.

Poor Severus.

The lines on his face were more pronounced now, although he'd looked...old when he came back to Hogwarts as a teacher, and he hadn't been that much older than the older pupils. He was about forty now.

She sniffed. A sweet-sharp unpleasant smell lingered around him. Not that he was a stranger to unpleasant smells, what with the ingredients, but it reminded her of something. A Potion. Well, of course, but she had something specific at the back of her mind.

He wasn't eating particularly well either. He never had exactly pampered himself, and he'd had a nasty habit of missing food and sleep when he was hard at work, but he'd always eaten meals when he turned up to them. Nowadays, he pushed the food around his plate with his fork, ate a couple of mouthfuls, and went away again.

She watched him tapping his hand on the table. Nervous twitch.

She'd learned a lot about making diagnoses over the years, and this was reminding her of something.

After a long and tedious and useful day ending at 1 a.m., she went to look up certain side-effects in the library. She went straight to the right shelf for the book she wanted to check, but found only an empty space.

The library was fairly empty, but she could see the book she was looking for. She could tell it was that book, because she recognised the particular bookmark that went with it, because she'd picked away the corner. She couldn't see much of the book: a dark curtain of hair obscured most of it, although she got a few glimpses of the reader's nose.

She put a hand on his shoulder. He twitched away irritably, and clapped the book shut, but not before she'd seen the page it was on.

"Severus, why are you looking up the effects of Frigidus?"

"I am the Potions master at this school. Exactly what is remarkable about my keeping up-to-date with my skills?" He sounded weary rather than indignant, which was a bad sign.

"It's an odd time of night to do so, that's all. And a coincidence, because I was beginning to think that somebody at this school had been taking Frigidus long-term, and I did remember a few of the details. A smell of slinzy-fruit, particularly." It was an oily smell, with an almost-overripe sweetness mingling with touches of sourness, and difficult to mistake for anything else.

"And if they had?"

"If they had, I'd have to ask them why."

"Prurient curiosity is not among your duties."

"Not because of that," she said. "It's not all that common for somebody to decide to castrate themselves by chemical means. Not seriously. Oh, trying to remove all distractions during their exams, yes, but not many people do it long enough for the physical side-effects to show up. There's a reason to ask. Why did you choose to take Frigidus?"

Severus sighed. He hadn't even got the energy to be properly cross with her, evidently. "I see you have discarded the polite fiction." He glanced around him. "Because I was thoroughly sick of Lucius Malfoy knowing that all he had to do was waggle it under my nose and I would do anything for him and his noisome master."

She gaped at him.

"There is no need to become missish about my sexuality, madam. You asked."

"I assumed you were... but I wouldn't have thought Mr Malfoy was that..."

"You haven't been exposed to his charm at close range? He's part-Veela, unfortunately. It takes something as strong as Frigidus to knock the effect out."

"But Voldemort is dead, Severus. Lucius Malfoy is in Azkaban."

"I'd got used to the Frigidus by that time," he said quietly. "I read somewhere that the philosopher Socrates was asked, at an advanced age, what he thought about sexual desire. He said he was glad to be rid of a savage and irrational master. I appear to have increased my working hours, although I agree with you that the side-effects are undesirable."

"Severus, you're only forty. That's too young to cut part of your life out entirely."

He gave her a Slytherin Death Glare. It was much worse at close range; she'd only seen it aimed at the pupils before. She stood her ground.

The glare dimmed. "What did I do with my sexuality when it was active? Nothing very distinguished. This is just as well." Severus probably wouldn't have told her that if he wasn't ill, and tired, she decided. He might trust her and respect her enough to work with her about medical Potions, but he wasn't too forthcoming, normally.

He sneezed morosely. "As a matter of curiosity, do my motives bear inspection? I assume you were worried about some form of insanity." His tone made it quite clear that it would be a ridiculous thing to suspect him of.

"No. You're working among children, Severus. I wanted to be sure--"

Maybe I shouldn't have said that, she realised guiltily, as Severus burst into a fit of dry, unpleasant coughing. She went and got him a cup of water. "Drink this. Don't try to talk until you've drunk it."

"That particular reason hadn't occurred to me," said Severus thinly, between sips.

"It's probably the only reason I consider worth the health risks. Anybody else on the stuff long-term should wean themselves off it."

"Perhaps in the summer holiday, some year or other," Severus said vaguely, in a tone that suggested that hell would freeze over before he actually got round to it. "The consequences might be difficult."

A long finger traced along the page in front of him. She read it. "Insatiable sexual appetite, lack of actual appetite, lack of concentration, soreness of the affected organs, tiredness. It is not known how long the effects may persist; reported results have ranged from hours to months in length."

Well, she could see that he might not want to suffer the sudden return of every sexual impulse he might have had for the past few years, all at once, but surely even if it were embarrassing it would be better than all these infections one after the other?

"Do not let me detain you from your duties, Poppy."

Tomorrow she would go and see Albus. Albus would know what to do.

Snape was furious. Pomfrey had somehow confiscated every single bottle of Frigidus he had, and some of the raw materials. Oh, not all the raw materials, not the common herbs that any competent herbalist would have, just a few vital items without which he would be completely unable to create the Potion.

She wouldn't be able to get through his wards, so Albus must be in on this merry little game as well.

"Madam Pomfrey," he said icily the next time he saw her, "have you considered that some of the items you have stolen from my room are necessary for a number of different Potions?"

"If you want to create such Potions, you may come and get the ingredients from me, and prepare them while supervised. I'm only forbidding you to keep your own stores on medical grounds."

"Have you considered you may have destroyed my ability to do my job?"

"I've spoken to Albus, as you must have guessed. He's getting some of the others to take your classes."

"Over my dead--" He bent almost double with a violent fit of coughing.

"In an attempt to stop it coming to that, Severus, you are relieved of teaching duties or attendance at meals for reasons of health. We'll send somebody along to help."

"Professor Dumbledore?"

"You are permitted to call me Albus now you're on the staff, dear boy. It only took Severus about a year. Toffee?"

Harry took a toffee. It wasn't bad, but somehow he'd got three seconds into the conversation and was completely unable to speak. Always happened. He tried to batter the toffee against his teeth until it disintegrated, but didn't have much luck. Could this be one of Hagrid's toffees? They were practically granite.

The toffee was probably a good thing. It helped him listen to one of Dumbledore's completely cuckoo schemes (sometimes he really did agree with Snape) without saying what he thought.

It's starting, thought Severus Snape, wriggling uncomfortably on the bed. Not even a week to enjoy having lost that bloody cold (apart from a slight residual cough) before his unwanted libido came home to stay.

His cock was stiffening. For the first time in three years, a flood of feelings came with it. He'd had unemotional wet dreams here and there, but quite frankly that had been about as significant as pissing. He hadn't missed sex: the appropriate part of his mind wasn't there to miss it. Now it was back.

Go away, he thought.

It didn't.

There was a knock on the door.

"Go away," he said.

The door opened.

"I said, go away." Full-scale Slytherin Death Glare. It never had worked on Potter. Not since the boy was eleven, anyway.

Not that Potter was a boy any more. A man, definitely. Enough to have an inconvenient effect on him. Tempting him to run his fingers through the messy hair, to trace a finger down the scar, to part the lips and... Harry Potter had become irritating in a new and entirely different way. Fuck, he thought, only to find the thought slithering sideways in his head and transmuting into something far more literal.

He managed as much of the glare as he could.

"I've just come to help you work, Severus. Take your mind off things a bit."

"Be honest. You came to gloat over a fallen enemy." Snape wanted desperately to adjust his clothing.

"Look," Potter ran his hand through his hair in a gesture of habitual irritation, "I told Albus this would be completely useless when he told me what was happening to you."

"Oh, this is his idea, is it?" Snape slid his hand away from the tent in his robes.

"I told him I had the highest respect for his abilities," said Potter, tangling his hair up even further, "but I was not going to have anyone, even the greatest wizard in Britain, pimping for me. Even if I had been attracted to you for the last four years, and even if you were lonely, as he said..."

"He said I was what?!?" Snape threw a large textbook at Potter's head, and Potter ducked.

"You heard. You'll only throw something else at me if I repeat it."

Even the sulkiness is attractive. Snape gulped, and withdrew his hands from what they were currently doing without a by-your-leave from his mind.

"I don't find this as embarrassing as you do, you know," Potter had the nerve to tell him.

"Do tell me how it looks from the vast and lofty experience of twenty years old," Snape said softly, aware that he was ruining the carefully-judged effect by dragging his hands out of his robes at the time.

"It's not that different from sleep debt or malnutrition or something. Your body's just catching up on what it would naturally have done. It's just a bit all-at-once."

"So you've come here to force yourself on me."

"I've come here to make sure you eat, drink, sleep and don't feel too bloody miserable, you stupid git," said Potter, through gritted teeth. "What were you intending to do, chain yourself up?"

"Oh?" Snape arched an eyebrow. "If that's one of your particular fantasies I am functionally incapable of objecting to it at the moment," he added nastily. "Go ahead and rape me, I promise I'll enjoy it."

Potter looked at him, face pale and blank.

Snape wondered if he'd finally gone too far, which didn't bother him nearly as much as the suspicion that he actually cared about it.

Potter strode up to the bed and clenched his fist, clearly preparing to hit him, then wheeled round and pointed his wand at a blank piece of parchment on Snape's desk. He muttered at it. Absolutely nothing happened, to Snape's surprise. The traditional response to being angry and unable to hit someone is to set something alight, Snape thought. That's what I normally do, anyway.

He nearly jumped a foot out of his skin when Potter walked to the desk, picked up the parchment and tore it in half; showily, noisily and impossibly. He should certainly not be able to--oh, that's what the spell was for! Snape decided.

Potter grinned at him crookedly. "Gotcha," he said.

"That's the sort of trick your godfather liked at school. At least it's non-fatal, which is a sort of progress."

"Were you going to chain yourself up?" Potter asked him.

"The book implied that I wasn't going to get far enough from the bed to rape anyone," Snape explained, trying not to feel a momentary warmth at the thought that even when he was being a complete and utter bastard Potter didn't think he was going to rape anyone. "Therefore, I can get through this. Alone," he went on pointedly. "My meals are apparently going to be provided, and I don't need you."

Expecting to hear Potter flatly contradict that, he was surprised when Potter said, "Oh? When was the last time you ate something?"

"Yesterday." Snape clenched a fist into the cloth of his robe. He'd been completely prepared to counter "you need me sexually". He hadn't prepared any lacerating ripostes to deal with simple questions of fact.

"You may approve of snakes, but you don't have the same life-cycle." Potter weighed the kettle in his hand, put it on the fire and looked for a mug. "This one with the viper on it? I like the glaze. Got any coffee?"

Snape wanted to say, "I didn't buy it for you to like." Even he admitted that was childish. He didn't say anything as Potter speeded the fire up a bit. He was thirsty, and he had been thinking he couldn't trust himself with boiling water, so he supposed he was grateful. Slightly.

"The spare mug's on that table over there," he gestured. "You can get it while you're collecting the teapot and the tea. Camomile, please."

"Oh all right," said Potter resignedly.

"Make your own coffee if you want some. I just meant my stomach's not up to coping with caffeine."

The camomile was labelled. He watched Potter throw a good handful into the pot. "I'll try your noxious brew, Severus. You probably won't like the smell of coffee at the moment." Potter sniffed as he poured the hot water on. "Can't say I think much of the smell of camomile."

"It has a well-known soothing effect, Potter. People drink it or bathe in it. Sit down if you have to, it takes a few minutes to brew."

Instead, Potter ferreted around in his bag and came out with a rather crumpled paper bag. "Sandwich," he said, and tossed it to Snape.

Snape opened the bag, took out a sandwich and opened it. "I detest pickle," he said.

"One ham-and-pickle, one ham," said Potter, rather smugly.

"Do you like pickle?"

"No. But I thought I'd better give you an option to disapprove of."

Snape sighed, aimed the ham-and-pickle at the bin more-or-less accurately, and smoothed down the paper bag to make a makeshift plate. He bit into the sandwich. A plain, ordinary ham sandwich. He chewed steadily, and tried not to hump against the bed. Chewing and swallowing dry food was going straight to the remnants of his cough. He was damned if he'd choke on a sandwich just because his miscalculation in accustoming himself to Frigidus had left him uncomfortable.

When he'd finished the whole of the unwanted sandwich, his throat was tickling. He coughed.

Potter pushed a mug into the hand that wasn't under Snape's robes.

Withdrawing the hand, Snape raised the mug and gulped, trying to think calm thoughts.

Potter sipped cautiously, and nearly spat the tea out. "Having drunk it, I can see why people bathe in it."

Snape tried not to laugh, and dragged his hand away from what he was doing again. Every single time he stopped actively thinking about not doing it, his body would get on with it.

"Why do you have to be here?"

Potter got up. Apparently difficult questions required a lot of pacing.

"Even you don't deserve to be left alone like this. I do fancy you, so I wouldn't call it disinterested and noble, but I think I'd do it for anyone I knew well enough. Anyone on our side who was suffering."

"Do what? Force me?"

"No. Not even gently. You wouldn't forgive me."

"It's not as though I like you anyway, Potter," he lied. Finding Potter occasionally likeable was one of the blows an uncaring universe had rained down upon him over the years. It shouldn't have happened. According to any rational view of things, it hadn't happened.

He squelched a moment of compunction firmly.

"Well, no," Potter said, looking slightly hurt, "but I doubt you'd accept even working in the same school as me if I'd done that to you. I don't want to force you out of a job just because I think you're attractive. It wouldn't be fair."

"Things aren't. The universe isn't. Get over it."

"That's true," said Potter firmly, "but mature human beings compensate for the universe by being fair and honourable."

"Fool." As scathingly as he knew how, which was very.

"Bastard." Potter snorted at him crossly. "Why is it that after five minutes in the same room with you I want to hit you with a rock? It can't just be House differences."

"I see. You thought an argument would cheer me up?"

"Well, I do know you that well."

Snape laughed before he could stop himself. His control was rather eroded by the constant struggle he was having with the hormonal surges. He sighed. "I'm uncomfortable, and I can't understand why you don't just leave me to it."

Potter brushed his hair back again. Snape wished he wouldn't do that. It was untidy, and it was also rather too tempting for his peace of mind at the moment. He couldn't help imagining Potter's dark strong tumbled hair moving against his own hand, pushing back rather than lying in loose flat locks like his own.

"Maybe I can imagine, just a bit, what it would be like. I mean, when I look back a few years..." Potter shoved at his hair restlessly. "It was bloody awful being seventeen and having to not make a pass at you, s-Severus. Couldn't even tell anyone at the time, because you wouldn't have been exactly sympathetic, and nor would my friends."

"So you're imagining me quivering to pounce on you now, is that it?" Snape said, with a cold viciousness fuelled by his own misery.

"Not quite." Potter came to a stop in front of the bed and looked into his eyes. "But I can imagine what it must be like, times several, if you've been drugging yourself out of it for years. The description in the book didn't sound pleasant. Didn't sound as if a person could deal with it easily. When Dumbledore asked me, I thought of you tired and miserable and with nothing to eat, and maybe frightened. I thought that having someone to talk to might help, and I--okay, yes I did hope that if you could relax a bit you might... bloody stupid idea really! But it's mostly just to distract you. Thought I'd read to you or discuss how dim the first-years are this year. Another bloody hopeless idea, obviously." He sighed, and went towards the door.

"Thank you for as much patience as you could spare for ten minutes, Potter. It did help slightly."

Potter turned round, cocking his head. "Maybe you don't want to be on your own."

"I don't, to be honest," Snape admitted quietly. "On the other hand, neither do I wish this infernal struggle with my dignity to go on in front of you, so you're probably right to leave. And I can't blame you for deciding I'm not good company, even if it takes a typical thick Gryffindor ten minutes to realise the obvious."

Potter came back towards him, and sat down. "You're not that bad, I suppose. I can stay here, if it helps. I only wanted to leave in case it made the problem worse."

Snape sighed. "Nothing makes it worse, or better, at the moment. I will just have to wait for it to go away. Oh-for-god's-sake just talk about something else, Potter! It's bad enough having what's left of my brain disappearing down my trousers every three seconds without having to think about it consciously as well."

Potter gulped, and looked distinctly lustful. Maybe I shouldn't have said what I was thinking, but my self-control is just a little fragmented, Snape thought.

Potter recovered admirably. "So, how dim are the first-years this year? I must admit now I am a teacher myself I do understand your being a bastard to the children a bit more. I mean, when you see them trying to summon demons in the back row, and they're just one syllable off a rather nasty imp, you do--I mean, even I do--want to shout at them."

"You're giving them the wrong textbooks, Potter. Never give anyone an excuse to do a Longbottom, or they will." He cursed, and dragged his hand away from his prick. Potter politely pretended not to notice.

"I did make sure it was only the smallest level of demon-raising covered in the books. Think even that was a mistake." Potter turned his eyes away as Snape began to ride his own hand.

"Stop being so bloody considerate, Potter!" he snapped, whipping the hand away hastily.

"I'm just trying to help, s-Severus. Keeping the thin veneer of civilisation over the brute within."

"Well it doesn't help!" Snape threw his mug at the wall and broke it, and almost wanted to cry because he liked that mug, dammit, and nothing helped.

Potter reassembled the mug with a quick wand-flick and muttered spell, poured the rest of the camomile tea into it, and handed it to Snape.

"Drink that and shut up a minute."

Snape drank it. It made him feel very slightly better. Maybe there were things he hadn't ruined yet, even if just small things like his favourite mug.

"I'd come and help like this if it was something ordinary like flu, Severus. I do fancy you," the man had the gall to admit, "but I'd be here even if I didn't. Now, would it help if I went into the bathroom for five minutes and waited?"

"No."

Potter looked at him: inquiring and amused and matter-of-fact. Somehow he was sure Potter was amused with him, not at him.

"I'm not sure it would help at this stage," he admitted. "I can't seem to stop myself..." (he stopped himself, momentarily) "and I just wish I could forget it."

"Forget it?"

"I want to be back in my own head, which is like a well-catalogued library, instead of in my body, which is like a loose-paper dump. I hate this. I would rather be somewhere else. I would rather be someone else. And I'm--" I can't be frightened. I know what being frightened is like, and I'm in my own dungeon with no enemy in sight.

"All right," he said. "We can deal with this by talking to you as if you're not on good speaking terms with your body, which is no more than the truth. We will have a civilised conversation and you can ignore what your body feels it needs to do entirely. Just talk to me, and if you can't help scratching your itch I won't discuss it, or even refer to it."

Snape glared at him, with a nasty feeling that the Slytherin Death Glare had been temporarily replaced by an altogether-too-human look of shock and desire.

"I mean, it's less of an invasion of privacy than jumping on you, Severus, and it's getting boring having to cope with your being upset and embarrassed. So just pretend it's not happening. Won't be the first time, I should think."

Snape swallowed, and nodded fractionally. "I'm not using that hand-cream. It's far too poorly-made." Not just because he was a Potions expert, and accustomed to the best: that book had been very clear that he was going to end up sore by the time his libido had balanced itself out. A good lubricant was only common-sense. "Bedside table."

Potter sighed and looked in the bedside table. "This?" He held up a clear glass pot of almost-glowing golden oil, and uncapped it. "Smells nice. How old is it?"

"I made it up four years ago, but it should be all--Talk about something else, Potter. Please."

"Britain's prospects for the Cup?"

This reminded him of masturbation when he was very young, actually: the sudden engulfing torment of physical sensations that seemed to have no real connection to his ordinary life. He shut his eyes and thanked Potter, fervently and silently, for not forcing any real intimacy on him. He was embarrassed, and awkward, and graceless, but Potter wasn't making him do what he didn't want to do, and wasn't asking him about anything more invasive than...Quidditch, he remembered.

"I have no..." his hand was finding its way now, "...possible..." desperately burrowing its way into his clothes, "...interest in Quidditch," flipping his prick out and gasping at the momentary shock of cool air, "...possibly the most inane sport known to..." He trailed off, other hand dipping into the lubricant and setting to work in earnest, while he did his best to ignore what he was doing.

"No real reason to call it 'inane'," Potter said. "It's a true test of skill and judgement, actually. A clever player uses his brain quite as much as his muscles. Look at all those..."

He paused politely for Snape's long, shuddering, ecstatic groan.

As Snape finished coming, Potter went on, "...players who go on to do their NEWTS or take good jobs. Muscle-bound morons are only good as Beaters, if that." Then the conversation got technical.

Dizzy with relief and mindless pleasure, Snape let it all wash over him; specialised vocabulary and names of players as meaningless to him as a description of Potion brewing would most likely be to Potter, but he didn't care for once. Didn't care about anything...

He'd have dozed off, but Potter was pushing at his shoulder.

"Go and have a piss while the plumbing's still set on 'normal'," Potter advised him.

He managed a rather woozy glare, and staggered towards the bathroom. At least, he thought, Potter appeared to be pragmatic and unshockable. Once he'd cleaned up, he didn't bother to do up all the buttons, just drew a loose flap of cloth over his modesty while he could.

He collapsed on the bed while Potter took his turn in the bathroom. He still felt limp, satisfied and shuddery, after... had he really?... masturbating himself vigorously to a thorough orgasm, while Potter discussed Quidditch and... watched. He'd been in such a state that he'd barely noticed that at the time, but now the thought had him up for more already.

"Did I convince you of the benefits of Quidditch?" asked Potter.

"Not entirely." Though I couldn't say I didn't enjoy it. It was the most fun I've ever had during a sporting discussion. Snape wiped his face; he was sweating slightly after the exercise.

Potter's eyes met his, perfectly calmly and innocently. Just as if he hadn't...

"Read to me then, Potter," Snape said. "I'm not sure I'm capable of reading at the moment. There's a book on the bedside table."

Potter picked it up and looked at it with disfavour. "Does it have to be an academic work, s-Severus?"

"Stop whining, Potter."

Potter read to him about yield and dilutions and concentration in a bored murmur. "Doesn't even give the usual list of horrible ingredients to keep the reader awake," he muttered to himself.

Snape shut his eyes and let the words flow through him, clinging for a second to consciousness and then just taking their place in his mind. His hands slid comfortably between his legs, slowly and steadily teasing away.

"Were you listening, Severus?" Potter asked. "My turn to test you, probably."

Snape reeled off a flawless account of what Potter had said, only pausing for each sudden rush of heated sensations as, every few seconds, the pleasure increased.

He paused, "Could you warm that for me, very slightly?" and gestured at the lubricant.

Potter sighed, and waved his wand.

"And go on talking." He rolled over on his back and groped for the lubricant.

Potter sighed again, and started to read something out about time constraints in harvesting ingredients. It was something that Snape could understand with his eyes shut, and did. It felt very reminiscent of being a boy again, alone in the comfort of his bed, head full of Potions and hand full of cock, finding an uneasy equilibrium between his restless mind and restless body for once. Like that, only not quite alone.

"...nearer the spring equinox..." he heard. This time, he shook the loose flap of cloth aside and jutted his cock straight up impatiently.

"...whereas later in the year..." He took himself in hand for a good hard rub.

"...mandrakes must be harvested in their immature stage..." He sobbed with relief, coming explosively, still clinging to that voice like a lifeline of reason in a sea of insanity, words filling his brain as the pleasure filled--and overfilled--his body, spilling out over him until he was drenched in sweat and come.

"...care must be taken when freeing the mandrakes from the soil." He had a moment of shock at the subjective-time element in orgasm: he'd read that book frequently, and the paragraph about mandrakes was relatively short.

Potter read on, voice stumbling slightly.

"You missed out the paragraph about dittany."

"Oh, sorry, my eye must have skipped," Potter said. "God this is boring, how do you stand it?"

"I doubt very much that 'god this is boring, how do you stand it?' is part of the text as written. No interpolations, please."

"I still don't see why I'm having to read this out when you know it by heart."

"It gives me a reassuring sense of consistency. Whatever my body may decide to do, it's a relief to realise my brain is still functional."

Potter nodded, and read out the paragraph on dittany.

He mispronounced several of the words, but Snape let that go, for once.

"All right, you can stop reading now."

Potter did.

Snape opened his eyes and looked--really looked--at him. Tired, and randy. An expression of extreme boredom on that expressive face, a bulge in the robes rather similar to Snape's own ten minutes ago, and a patient steady determination to put up with Snape's most unreasonable demands.

Snape sighed. "Oh, this is ludicrous. Come here."

"What?"

"Put the book down on the desk. Take your wand. Remove your clothes, and mine, and come to bed."

"Why would I want to come to bed with someone who doesn't like me?" He could sulk for England sometimes, really...

Snape sighed. "Why do I want to invite someone to bed if they're so stupid they can't tell if I'm lying or not?"

He paused, waiting for the Knut to drop.

"Severus, there's only you and me here. Why would you have lied about liking me, if there's no-one here to see?"

"My pride." Snape sighed. "If your lot were right all along, and all I needed was a friend, and everything in the garden's lovely and I can go hop-and-skipping along with all the merry Gryffindor crew and forgetting all those carefully-polished grudges I've kept for years--it makes me want to spit! Even more than usual," he added. There were a lot of things that made him want to spit.

"If you started behaving like Hagrid I think I'd faint. But I won't tell anyone if you get slightly more human under stress. Why do you want me to come to bed now..." he paused, using his wand to strip both of them. Snape slipped under the blankets. "...I mean, you could have asked any time. You must have known that. Why all this elaborate..." he flung an arm out "...stuff?"

"You really don't know?" he asked, as Potter slid into bed beside him.

"If I did, I'd prefer to astound you with my brilliance." Potter's lips quirked wryly. "Yes, not that likely, is it?"

"When I realised you weren't going to take advantage of the situation, it didn't seem so bad."

Potter sniggered hysterically. "Sorry, Sev, it just sounds so damn...girly. Which compared with the look on your face is pretty bloody funny."

Snape breathed hard. "Would you mind not looking me in the face while I say this? It's difficult enough anyway. Thank you," he added grudgingly, as Potter slipped behind him and cuddled up.

"I do not mean 'take advantage of me' as a euphemism for 'have sex with me'," he went on. "I mean that you don't seem to want to take advantage of a chance situation to force me into some sort of messy and unfortunate affair where a day after it's happened both parties are disappointed. Well, you've seen me at my worst; an unpleasant, aging, miserable man suffering the results of his own bad judgement."

Potter stroked his hand.

"You don't seem to have unrealistic expectations. You don't seem to want more than I can give. You seem to be trying to help more than displaying your own ego. You seemed to be quite prepared to put up with reading what you considered an intolerably boring book while not referring to my involuntary orgasms. All you wanted to do was make me more comfortable however you could." Dry facts and deserved truth. He could cope with the facts and Potter could cope with the honesty, he decided.

He was, he realised, grinding his teeth slightly at the intolerably Gryffindor-ish turn things had taken. "I hate this kind of conversation, Potter. May I now be acceptably crass and self-serving and point out that I haven't had a cock up my arse for three years, and it's difficult to forget that with you nudging it against me like that?"

"Please do. I was beginning to run out of patience with being noble, and I've had more practice than you." Potter began to work it against him. A good, thick, dripping cock, and he wanted...

Potter stopped. "Are you sure you're doing this for the right reason? I mean, you're not just being kind, are you? Because you think I deserve something after being patient with you?" He could tell from the tone of voice that Potter wasn't teasing, but meant it.

"Potter, I am never kind." Drawing in a breath to blast his opponent with sarcasm, Snape reconsidered. "You're not very experienced in some ways, are you?"

And realised what that sounded like as Potter drew a hurt little breath behind him.

"I don't mean you're bad at it. I was thinking of my own past. It took me some time until I discovered that sodomy could be for the benefit of the passive partner." He squirmed impatiently. He'd rather not have an impromptu sex-education lesson when he wanted a fuck, but it couldn't be helped.

"He--did he hurt you?"

"No." He thought about it. "I don't mean I was raped, or that I was incapable of having an orgasm in that position, just that it seemed more like something one did to please the other man, just as he would let me do it to him to please me."

A lot of hurried fumbling hadn't helped--they'd both been eager and inexperienced at first.

"I honestly did have the impression that you took turns at getting the most fun out of it," he added, wriggling a bit.

"So it isn't like that?" asked Potter.

"At least part of it was to do with where I was living at the time. I was like you, I went straight from being a pupil to being a teacher. Hogwarts isn't the most relaxing of places for sexual discovery, there's usually a disaster, or at least Peeves, waiting to happen right round the corner."

"How did you find out?"

"One day I was having a screaming row with him, and mentioned I did more bending-down for him than the other way round, did he think coming from a better bloodline than me entitled him to have all the fun? To do him justice, he thought about it when I'd stopped doing my harpy impression. He had access to a frequently-deserted manor-house with very discreet house-elves and an excellent library, and we spent a long weekend sorting-out my misapprehension."

Potter made a disgusted noise.

"Now what's the matter?"

"Sorry. Malfoy's such a total arse that I don't like to think of his dad having a thing with you."

"Lucius wasn't a bad sort when he was younger. Frequent association with insane evil wizards had a disturbing effect on him. And probably on me."

"Severus, I didn't really think you were evil after I was about fifteen or sixteen, just a bloody-minded sod, but I'd rather talk about your sex-life. Really." Potter rested his prick firmly against Snape's buttocks.

"Well, given a lot of time to relax, plenty of good food and drink, peace and quiet and a few fairly informative books, we sorted it out. If the man on the bottom is relaxed, and randy..." he paused for a sigh, hoping this was going to be worth the torture of waiting "...and doesn't have the threat of Peeves breaking something within earshot before the pair of them have finished with the ten minutes they've set aside for sex, it can be different."

"Different how?"

Snape sighed, and wriggled. "I hadn't realised before that I could be so...greedy. That I could be rolling all over the bed begging him to put it in me, and not thinking about what he could do for me later. I hadn't realised I could want him to stuff his cock into me more than I wanted all the things he could be doing to my cock..." He trailed off in a throaty groan. "Part of that was the joy of prostate stimulation, of course..."

"Which?" Potter said blankly.

"Don't be a fool," Snape said wearily. "What took time was the initial realisation. Once you know something's possible you can't unlearn it--you can in fact then create the original miracle with less time and effort. What I was trying to tell you was that I can..." he was grinding himself helplessly against Potter's prick, "...want this. For my reasons. That satisfying you will be a pleasant bonus."

"So what do I do?"

"Get me ready. No, not a fingertip: properly. Stretch me. Take your time, but not too much."

Two fingers, thoroughly wetted. Potter had the sense to believe him, he noticed, and two fingers was just right to start with. He groaned.

Potter stopped.

"That was enthusiasm, you idiot. Do it again."

The fingers went in again, stretching him and rubbing him until he was frantic. That lovely, lovely cock was rubbing against his hip in involuntary rhythm with the preparing hand.

He should really wait for three fingers and a little more time, but he... "Get it in. Now."

That wasn't fingers. Mm. Potter was breaching him slowly but rather thoroughly.

"Properly."

One huge thrust, and he was very thoroughly impaled.

"Tight enough for you, Potter?" he asked solicitously, between groans.

Potter gasped, "Oh, fuck!"

"You can have a few minutes to find your stroke, but I'm probably... in as much of a hurry as you are..."

He grunted: Potter was picking up speed now, and it felt wonderful. Every stroke jolted through his prostate to his balls to his cock. That's it; harder the better! he thought, and grunted happily as Potter really put his back into it. There was after all, he thought, something to be said for all those Gryffindor-ish qualities like courage and determination. No cowardly quivering, just...

"Faster!"

Potter pounded into him, gripping painfully at his hips--not that he cared--and gave him what he needed. Two minutes of it brought him off fiercely, and he sobbed and sighed and collapsed.

He realised Potter was still rock-hard and quivering inside him. "Too fast for you?" He yawned. "Go ahead. I've had three in the last twenty minutes. I can keep awake for you."

"Sorry. Missed the psychological moment. So busy trying not to come too fast. Think I'll give up and make a cup of--"

Snape sighed again, and began to flex a few muscles.

"O-oh," said Potter, and collapsed, coming into him. "Think you can wait a minute for the tea?" He began to snore.

Snape pushed him off and out without really waking him up, and dozed off.

Part Two

He was rubbing himself comfortably against somebody warm and willing, when he woke up. This was a good way to wake up.

There was a knock on the door.

Snape mumbled something.

"That should be dinner," said Potter, disgustingly bright-and-breezy, right by his face.

Oh, he thought, slightly shocked, that's right, Potter is the warm-and-willing person. It wasn't shocking enough to stop him thrusting away gently.

He complained a little as Potter got up and opened the door.

"Dinner."

Potter thanked the house-elf, shut the door, and did some preliminary fussing-about with cutlery and a couple of plates.

"Eat up." Potter hauled him up, put a fork in his hand, and pushed a plate at him

His nose twitched. It smelled nice, but...

"I'm not really hungry." He'd...got out of the habit.

"Right-oh," agreed Potter.

Snape shot a glare at him. What was he up to?

Potter put the two plates down, and the cutlery, and stroked his hand up Snape's inner thigh, rubbing roughly at balls and cock. Snape moved rapidly from polite interest to urgent need in a matter of seconds.

Potter stopped, picked up his plate and walked across the room. "Bit peckish, actually," he said, and sat down to eat.

"That's a blatant example of manipulation," said Snape, annoyed, picking up his plate on the second clumsy attempt.

Fresh, rather tasty fishcakes, with a lightly-spiced tomato dip and a pile of chopped salad. A good meal for an invalid who wasn't in the mood to eat, he supposed. Armed only with a fork, he managed to eat all three fishcakes before they went cold, and most of the salad. Since it didn't matter if the salad was cold, and there was still some dip to make it taste more interesting, he finished his dinner.

If he says, 'Good boy, Sev', I'll hex him, he thought, lying down on the bed.

Potter's mouth quirked into a smile, but he didn't speak. Putting his plate down, he padded back to the bed.

"Dessert?" he asked politely, dangling his crotch close to Snape's face. "I've got some whipped-cream to put on that, if you like."

"If you want me to put that in my mouth after it's been up the other end, think again, Potter," said Snape. "A cleansing charm would be acceptable."

He was fascinated to note Potter was still young enough to blush.

"Oh, er..." said Potter, and went to get his wand. "Want me to clean you up as well?"

"Please."

Clean, and limp, Potter complained, "You put me off by saying that."

"Should I care?"

"Thought my being interested was part of the proceedings."

Since Potter was dangling it more-or-less within range, Snape hooked an arm round his hips, pulled him forward a little, and gulped.

As he'd thought, the embarrassment was merely temporary. "Mm," he said happily around his mouthful. It firmed up nicely. Fresh, delicious and meaty. A bit of tongue-work, first. The sort of gasp from above him that suggested he was corrupting an innocent who had no experience with the finer details. He flickered his tongue in place, got his hand into place on himself, and gobbled away at his luscious mouthful as he squeezed his fist around his prick. After half a minute, his lack of patience was rewarded, and he drank Potter down as he spurted all over his own hand.

"Now I need cleaning up again," he pointed out, gasping slightly.

"And you used to say I was a lot of trouble," muttered Potter.

"After you were in one of my classes I might have multicoloured slime to clean up. Semen's less dramatic."

Potter cleaned him up, and said, "I was going to make you a cup of tea."

"Mm," he said.

"Camomile?"

Not feeling quite so nervy after four orgasms, a sandwich, a good meal and more conversation than he usually partook of in any given month, he said, "Ginger, with a slice of lemon."

Potter prepared it.

"Oh, this one's nice!" said Potter with some surprise, drinking his own cupful.

"An easier to acquire taste? Perhaps. Come back to bed."

"Not again, Severus?" Potter pulled a comically-disbelieving face.

"I'll have you know that if I'm catching up with three years' worth of sex I've only gone through a couple of weeks so far."

Potter flung an arm over his eyes and pretended to groan, cheerfully.

"Luckily, it's not that literal. I don't have to go through every orgasm I missed," said Snape. "Actually, I was thinking that if you wish to force your conversation on me it's as well not to shout across the entire room."

"What d'you want me to witter on about?" said Potter, joining him on the bed.

"Potter, there are an infinite number of subjects you know nothing about that you can, as you put it, witter on about endlessly."

"Well, I could ask you about this damn drug you've been taking," Potter said, settling himself down more comfortably. "I think I've heard of Muggle things that ruin the sex-drive, but it's not one of those, right?"

"Mm. I did look those up at one point, to reassure myself that Muggles have it worse than us."

"What did you discover?"

"Apparently, Muggle conscripted soldiers were at one point completely convinced that the Army were putting bromide in their tea to destroy their libido. The Army weren't, and it wouldn't work if they did."

"Why the rumour, then?" Potter asked, slipping an arm round him comfortably as he finished his tea and settled down.

"To a lot of young men it was more of a comfort to believe it than to realise that if they were lonely, miserable and bone-tired they might not be able to get it up. By a natural irony that beggars belief, most popular anti-depressant drugs used at the end of last century actually did make millions of people lose their sex-drive, but nobody paid much attention."

"Because they were too cheerful?"

Snape brushed Potter's hair back absently. "The book didn't say. But Muggles actually sod things up as badly as, or worse than, we do. This was a moderate comfort to me a month or so back when I was considering the possibility of facing my life with a perpetual cold (or worse), versus the possibility of the indignity and misery of dealing with the withdrawal." After a long conversation like that, he drank up his tea in slow sips, and lay down.

"How's it feeling now?"

"Less uncomfortable than I had any right to expect. Thank you."

"So why did you start using that Potion? And what is it?"

"I didn't, at the time, expect Frigidus to be something I'd use long-term. I was just angry, and upset, at something I was doing, and I wanted it to stop."

"Something to do with their side? I still don't know why you joined them anyway, would have thought you had more sense."

"Ah. And you never made a decision you later realised was stupid?"

"Oh well, all right then, we all do that." Potter smiled cheerfully. "You must have been younger than I am now when you joined Voldemort. I'm still not sure why."

"Bitterness at somebody nearly killing me being passed off as a childish prank, for one thing. Overestimating my own intelligence. The glamour of arcane knowledge. The effect of serious flattery at close range: a lot of Slytherins join the wrong side for that reason; it's not something they're going to get in their daily lives."

"Mm?" said Potter, settling himself comfortably in the crook of Snape's arm.

"You don't seem particularly shocked by my lack of morality."

"As you said, you'd never met any Muggles. It must have been easy to believe it. So what did put you off?"

"What it was doing to us," Snape admitted quietly. "Voldemort was charismatic, but not particularly bright. I saw people--people I respected--grovelling before him and fulfilling his most arbitrary and spiteful requirements. I began to wonder why. Eventually I realised Dark Wizardry was secret not because it was cleverer than normal magic, but because it involved things that normal wizards and witches would not choose to do even if it killed them." He smiled thinly at Potter. "And all my education and skill did not stop me taking several years to learn what you knew by the time you arrived at Hogwarts without a coherent thought in your head."

"There were other things I had to learn, Sev."

Snape sighed.

"What happened then?" asked Potter.

"I expected Dumbledore to either get me killed or send me to Azkaban. In the frame of mind in which I then was, this seemed perfectly reasonable. I was rather disappointed to be recruited as a spy, but to my own surprise it suited me very well."

"You could use your Slytherin talents without actually having to be evil, or grovel to someone you didn't respect."

"Indeed. Dumbledore doesn't agree with my teaching methods or some other aspects of my behaviour, but he doesn't seem to want me to bow down."

"It still doesn't explain the Potion, or why you decided to use it so late on."

Snape sighed heavily. "Lucius."

"How you could..." Potter muttered.

"When he was younger, he was a good deal more likeable. Graceful, charming, 'an asset to wizardly society' as he was brought-up to be. More to the point in this case, he's part-Veela. You do know about the Veela effect?"

"Well, I've seen it," said Potter doubtfully, "otherwise-intelligent people falling over their feet to please someone in that silly way."

"With sexually-mature adults, in private, it's even stronger. A good deal stronger. It's not so simple as 'you want to do what they want in case they'll go to bed with you', it's more like an intense infatuation that uses your sexual reactions all the time they are with you. And it ruins your critical faculties and mental abilities."

"You'd hate that."

"I did. They were spending less time with me, in the end. Later in the war, I'm not sure if Voldemort's inner circle entirely trusted me. And in public I could use my intelligence to think things out for myself. But one thing still worked reliably, and that was the Veela effect." Angrily, he tugged at his own hair. "And I hated it. Every time I finally crawled out of Lucius's bed I would know my brain would be good-for-nothing for the next few hours. He used to use that: after having sex with me, he'd encourage me to... do things I wouldn't otherwise do, in a fuzzy haze of sexual satiation and uncritical devotion."

"Bad things?"

"Not torture," Snape snapped, "just low-grade assaults on my personal integrity. Things it made me feel 'dirty' to think of. Things that made me slightly squeamish. And, yes, considering I don't have your delicate Gryffindor stomach for malice but they bothered me: bad things."

He was surprised to feel Potter put a comforting arm round him.

"Lucius thought that brought me closer in, you see. Instead, it made me consider cutting my own balls off sooner than let him affect me."

Potter slid the arm away, and moved down to grope between his legs.

"...yes they are still there, as you've had a good deal of evidence tonight," Snape said crossly, because he was enjoying the gesture and because it was distracting him. "One particular day, I couldn't avoid a personal visit from him, and I fought my reactions for two hours, just-about managed to keep myself from rubbing up against him and begging for a fuck, couldn't think anything through, but when he left I hadn't touched him. Which, considering what Veelas are like, was a difficult feat. The worst of it was, when he rose to leave, he gave me a complacent little smile and said, 'next time, then'."

"Ouch!" said Potter feelingly. "As if he was just playing with... er, playing games with you."

"Try not to re-cast your phrases to avoid a pun," said Snape with dignity, "it merely draws attention to it."

"So then what did you do?"

"I resolved," said Snape quietly, "that the next time he tried it on me, the trick would not work. No matter what I had to do, it...would...not...work."

"I'm glad you didn't cut them off." Potter patted the items in question.

So am I, Snape thought. "I decided on the Frigidus Potion."

"What did you do then, masturbate?"

"I waited until that evening. I knew if I did it too quickly I would just fantasise about my beautiful, infuriating Lucius, and he had irritated me to such an extent that I didn't want to even think about him. So I got the preliminary collecting of ingredients done for the Frigidus Potion, measured out the quantities (and I made at least three errors, so I'm glad I checked it later), had dinner, supervised a detention, and finally went to bed."

"For your last orgasm in three years?"

"If I'd realised, I'd have taken my time." He glanced at Potter. "It worked, waiting. I didn't think about Lucius. Just about how nice it felt to have a hand sliding between my legs."

A hand slid between his legs.

"Heel of the hand just pressing my balls, not quite hurting... that's it. Making me think how good it would feel to have fingers there. Even that pressure is... Then I'd stop and get the other hand wet."

The pressure stopped. He sobbed a little, as he heard the hand getting wet.

"The other hand would slide up my thigh and rub me a bit, behind my balls, around my arse."

He shuddered as it did.

"And I'd just let a finger slide in. Hard." He gasped, as it did. "But I wouldn't forget about my prick..." he sighed, as the other hand made free of him there, "I'd get both hands in rhythm, that's it."

"Feel nice?" Potter asked, licking his neck.

"Harder!"

"Wouldn't kill you to come out with a compliment."

"A theory which I've never tested."

"Give me a compliment..." Potter nibbled his earlobe, "...or I'll stop touching you."

"And," Snape went on obstinately, "I'd feel my hands keep sliding up and in, touching myself just the way I like best, and I wouldn't have believed I could do without that for three whole years."

"Compliment."

"And I'd keep going--faster, harder, faster, harder--and..."

The hands stopped, then started again.

"And I'd do it, faster, harder, faster--" He lost his self-control completely, which meant that "--you're gorgeous!--" spurted out of his mouth at the same time. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous! his prick confirmed, in a blissful outburst.

"Well, now I know what it takes for you to give me a compliment." Potter licked his hand clean.

"Involuntary verbal tic," said Snape haughtily.

"Why did you keep on using the Frigidus? Malfoy's dad's in Azkaban by now."

"I realised how much extra time I had to deal with important things now I wasn't thinking about sex," Snape said. "Eventually the nasty side-effects caught up with me, but by then I'd got accustomed to life without a libido. It seemed to be entirely pointless to try to get it back. I could do my work, secretly combat the forces of Darkness, and verbally scarify ignorance wherever I found it. I didn't need an erection to do any of that." And considering what I did with it was go after Lucius bloody Malfoy, I don't really deserve to be put in charge of a functioning libido.

"That's horribly plausible, Sev. I still think you were a prat, mind."

"Very probably. But all I would gain from trying to get the damn thing back would be misery, followed by a waste of time."

"Is it that miserable?"

Snape thought about that.

"Severus?" Persistent little bugger.

"It's not as bad as I expected, with something to take my mind off it."

"Even if it's my conversation?"

"Even then."

"I find it reassuring, in a twisted way, that you're still yourself."

Snape did not say anything. He too had been thinking that there was something oddly...comforting about that. Instead of the wordless, seething, sore animal he'd been assuming was waiting to swallow up everything that made him human, he'd been recognisably himself, still sarcastic, awkward, unpleasant and sane. Even Potter's conversation had reminded him of that. It had also reminded him that somebody else was there. Someone brash, lecherous, friendly to the undeserving, and not entirely stupid. He might have expected the Boy Who Lived to offer himself in a self-sacrificing way, but not the brisk-but-kindly approach that assured him of comfort but did not savage his raw nerves with forced emotion.

Let alone, someone kind enough to make, and drink, what Potter had been referring to, in the staff-room, as 'those disgusting herbal Potions', just because Snape's stomach might have been a little feeble. Snape pushed him aside gently and walked, slightly unsteadily, to the kettle. He had some leaf-tea somewhere, although it wasn't his infusion-of-choice. Sniffing it, he tried to remember which year he'd bought it, but couldn't. It smelt old and dusty. Fetching his wand, he performed a little freshness charm over it: good, it smelt of tea, now.

How could such a minor piece of magic take so much out of him? Damn. His hands were shaking slightly. He rested one hand on the table for a few moments, then went to put the kettle on. Just for once, he'd let it heat up slowly. He shook enough tea for one person into a teapot, put some blackcurrant tea into the other teapot, and went back to bed.

Potter opened his mouth, possibly to ask him if he was all right, looked at him, and closed it without speaking.

"Shall I read to you again?" Potter picked up the journal on the floor by the bed, and began to read out the letters page. It was dry, academic and technical. He did not mispronounce more than one word in ten.

Snape shut his eyes.

Potter's voice faltered, and he stopped, as if glad of the chance to give up.

"I'm shutting my eyes, not my ears," said Snape, quietly.

Potter sighed, as if put-upon, and started to read again.

Halfway through the page, the kettle boiled. Again, Snape pushed Potter quietly aside and stumbled from the bed. He used both hands to lift the kettle, and carried it carefully to the table. Even more carefully, he poured it into the pots, put the kettle down on the table (which was already covered by burn marks and stains) and went back to bed.

"You were halfway through my letter," he said to Potter.

"Which one?"

"The one calling the editor an idiot."

Potter sighed, and started to read. "'Only the most imbecilic of readers (and, apparently, the editor of this journal) can have failed to notice...'"

Snape reached out for his hand to stop him. "Wrong one."

Potter found the other letter by Snape calling the editor an idiot, and read it with no further mistakes. "I can't help noticing that none of the other academics call anyone an idiot."

"That's because they're idiots."

Potter snorted, and Snape got up to pour the tea, muttering as he realised he had to visit the cold-cupboard in his kitchen-cubicle and look for milk. Luckily, the house-elves replenished that every day since he took it in coffee, so there was some. To his surprise, he found some sugar as well, and a few ginger biscuits.

Milk-and-two-sugars, as was Potter's revolting style in hot drinks, while his own blackcurrant remained unadulterated. He put the ginger-biscuits on a plate, and brought the lot in on a tray, which he managed to put down carefully on the bedside table, to his relief.

He was glad he'd got Potter here. Tea for two had turned into a major undertaking somehow; maybe getting through this on his own hadn't been all that sensible an idea.

He picked up the blackcurrant and sipped. Pleasingly-tart, as usual, and a good comforting drink.

Potter sipped his own drink. "Gosh. It's actual tea. Didn't know you knew how to make that. Nice, as well."

"It's a liquid, it has to be carefully prepared and brewed. Of course I know how to get it right." Snape bit into a ginger-biscuit.

"Don't get crumbs in the bed," Potter advised him.

Snape gave him an I'll get crumbs in the bed if I damn-well choose, my lad! look, and ignored that.

Potter got to the end of the letters page, and began to start reading out one of the articles.

This took about three times as long as it might have, Snape admitted, because he kept interrupting to say what the hapless writer had got wrong. By the time he finished, it was about midnight.

Potter yawned. "Bed, I think. Your bedside reading is a marvellous cure for insomnia. Move over."

Snape moved over.

Potter flung an arm loosely over him, kissed him between neck and shoulder, and settled down.

"Night, Sev."

Snape fought to toss and turn as he usually did when sleep eluded him, then fought to avoid doing so. At least he could do something else if he was on his own.

He hated having to stare into the dark and wait for dawn to come, in case he disturbed someone else.

He really hated, he realised a few minutes later, staying awake because he had an erection he had no business to have. There was no rational reason to believe that Potter would react with shock or disgust, of course; that wasn't what was bothering him. He wasn't disturbed by Potter. He was very much disturbed by the thought that maybe the damn thing wouldn't settle down. If he knew masturbation would make a difference, he'd do it. What was bothering him was--what if it wasn't enough? What if he was still left aroused and sore and miserable and unable to sleep, afterwards? Who would that help?

In the darkness, it seemed an insuperable problem. After all, if all he'd already had wasn't enough to make him comfortable, what was? He stared into endless darkness until it made his eyes sore. He was worn-out, and he could not sleep. Probably, tomorrow, he would say something bad enough to offend even Harry, and then he'd be left alone. He wanted to be asleep. He wanted to come. He wished there was something to distract him.

Maybe he could try counting the time going past. Seconds made up minutes. Minutes made up hours. Eventually it would be day. It wouldn't seem as bad by daylight.

"Sev?" The voice was a whisper; breath stirring him uncomfortably.

"Go to sleep, Harry."

"Not if you can't." When did he ever do anything as sensible as sleeping quietly in bed at bedtime?

"What's the point of both of us staying awake?" He was fast approaching not being able to see the point of anything.

"So you don't need me to take care of anything?"

"No." The word transmuted into an undignified squawk as Harry spat in his hand, and put his hand on the source of all the trouble.

"Severus," said Harry quietly, "I thought we'd got past the stage of outraged modesty by this time."

Which made it easy, somehow, in the dark, to whisper: "What if it never stops? What if I'm sore, and aching, and miserable, and never find out how to give up and rest?" He paused. "I'll just have to learn to cope with it. On my own."

"I thought I was meant to be the stupid brave idiot," said Harry. "Whatever it is you need, I will give you. Whatever."

There was a long, rather worried pause.

"You don't want me to hurt you, do you?" Harry said tentatively.

"You are a stupid brave idiot," said Snape, witheringly. "I hoped you'd been broken of that habit of signing blank cheques for an uncertain future." He paused. "I don't like pain. If I did, I would no doubt be ecstatic at the thought of having to put up with your well-meaning conversation, let alone the prospect of having sore privates for a week."

Harry took his hand away. "Spit's not going to be good enough. I see why you insisted on best-quality lubricant. I'll use plenty." He put a good handful on, rolling it down the length of Snape's prick and stroking a wet palm over just the tip.

Perfect. Snape sighed softly; a sigh that eased into a low shameless wail as the nagging itch of discomfort slipped into the utter pleasure of a really good slow session. Suddenly, he couldn't remember why he'd worried about this. The thought of letting somebody wank him for hours and hours didn't seem that bad. He'd worry about it if Harry stopped moving his hand. It was an effortless delight, feeling those fingers soothe the ache out of him until he was nothing but a pool of relaxation with an erection floating somewhere in the middle of it. All the way up, and all the way down, never ceasing, cock full and greedy and swallowing up everything, and...

...suddenly the pool of relaxation seemed to vanish into his cock; everything pulled up and in, tight and tense; then all that relaxation flooded out of him and drowned him in sleep.

"'time is it?" he mumbled sleepily.

"Eight thirty. In the morning," Potter added. "You slept like a baby once you'd had enough. Kept me awake with your snoring," he added, scrambling upright and into his clothes.

Snape wished he could focus enough to glare. He also wished the glare worked on Potter.

Snoring? he thought bemusedly. He had been stupid. He ought to have remembered how impossible problems seemed late at night, when one was ill. That particular problem appears to have been far from insoluble, he decided, with a sharp, disgusted sniff at how instantly it had...dissolved, when handled.

"I need to get my books," said Potter when he was dressed. "I'm off teaching duties for a while, but I'm going to have to do a bit of 'homework'."

"Ah. So you've actually started to do homework since you left school."

"I actually did do the occasional piece, even for you, if you recall." Potter smiled.

"I remember. A Thursday in March 1995, wasn't it?"

"April. Only did it as an April Fool." Potter grinned at him, shutting the door behind him.

Since when did he get relaxed enough with me to join in with my jokes? Since when did I get relaxed enough with him to make jokes? Snape shook his head bemusedly and got up, staggering a little. He stripped the bed down, which was more of an effort than it should have been, and put the clean bedclothes on with a quick spell. The wand-flourish dragged at the air. Again, too much effort, but he'd just felt something had to be done now all that messy sex was over.

Part of his body, when reminded, wasn't entirely sure. It pricked up as he stalked into the bathroom.

Who asked you? he thought, surveying it with disfavour and almost choosing to make his shower a cold one: no, in his weakened state he couldn't quite face that.

After a quick warm shower, he went back to bed.

Just as he drew the covers back, Potter came in with a large tray and an armful of books.

The books went on the floor beside the bed, and then Potter undressed and got into bed with Snape, talking to him crunchily through mouthfuls of cereal about 'the theory's a bastard' and the amount of 'unnecessary' background reading he had to do.

Snape was silent for long enough to eat his own bowlful of cereal. Then he put the dish down, with a clatter, and explained to Potter, in great detail, why the theory was one of the more interesting things about the subject. Once you knew why it was happening, you could control it. Most Dark wizards themselves knew very little about the theoretical background to what they were doing, which made such knowledge an excellent weapon against them. Many of them got dragged down into a whirlpool of powerful magical forces, never to be seen again, because they thought that strength was more important than control. "Even Voldemort was rather like that. Judged on raw power, he might be running the world today, but he was not its master. Which is why you won and he lost."

"I didn't win. Dumbledore won." Potter smiled at him. "All that fame, and I didn't do anything."

"You were the most important thing of all of it," said Snape, with complete certainty. "What were you famous for? You lived. You kept on living, while Voldemort channelled his entire strength into a futile attempt to make you die."

Potter looked blank. It was an expression familiar to Snape from any number of Potions lessons.

"Think, Potter."

Blank.

"If a wizard doesn't know why his opponent keeps on living despite all efforts to the contrary, it's extremely bad strategy to keep on trying to kill him. All the energy, the force, the ability, goes into that spell, and he has nothing left to counter a blow coming from another direction. I would have advised Voldemort of that, if I had cared to. All he had was the energy and the instinct, and when that was poured out--nothing. If you have the theory, the strategy, to keep going when energy and instinct are no use," said Snape passionately, "you will always have a fair chance of being able to counter pure force, no matter how strong."

The strength of his convictions (or Potter's warm proximity) was giving him an erection. He ignored it, picked up the book, and started to explain how the theoretical underpinnings actually worked.

Potter looked blank.

He sighed, and started to use some rather nasty (but luckily not sapient) Dark creatures descended from cockroaches as an illustrative example. Part-way into his description, Potter 'got it'.

He looked at Potter's face, charmingly alight with sudden enthusiasm, and did his best to answer a fairly intelligent question about feeding processes in partly-magical vermin.

This is what makes him so bloody infuriating most of the time--he actually has a brain but I've hardly ever seen it function because he has the normal prejudice against Potions.

Somewhere in the conversation, he got up to find a useful quotation in one of his reference-books, noticing in passing that his body was weaker and his prick stiffer than was customary. Because he was interested, he forgot about his body and cursed about not finding the exact cite from Rhinnius he was thinking about... which turned up in the sixth book he tried, to ironic cheering from Potter.

"Shut up and learn something, you irritating child," he complained.

"Severus," Potter said, "we're wizards. An age-gap of twenty years or so here or there isn't going to make a huge amount of difference in the long run, even if you did teach me."

If Albus gets to call me 'dear boy' I get to call you an irritating child, he thought.

"Where did we get up to, Potter?"

"You called me Harry, last night."

"Under stress. Don't change the subject."

"Reinforcing charms and whether or not they drain your energy," said Potter.

He's paying attention, Snape realised. "They always do. The question is whether they drain your energy too fast."

"Mm. Depends," said Potter. "You mean, what you need is enough energy to do what you're trying to do and leave you alive afterwards."

"It's generally considered sensible to leave oneself conscious. I believe if one is running low, it's quite possible to be left in a coma for six months."

"So you want something low-drain?"

"Yes," said Snape. "Not the showy stuff that people think Defence Against the Dark Arts is all about."

"Mountain trolls. Pixies. Werewolves. Ferrets." Potter grinned, listing the more Technicolor moments of the last few hopeless cases.

Snape shuddered. "They really must have been dreadful." He paused. "Even you count as an improvement."

"Really?" Potter smiled at him.

"I don't say what I don't mean, Potter."

"Quite a handicap for a double-agent, I should think."

"All right," Snape said, annoyed: "no white lies. Just huge black evil Slytherin ones, dripping with dungeon slime and flapping bat wings as they go." He would have stretched his arms out, letting the flare of the long sleeves imitate the "bat wings"; he knew he should have dressed, it was much better for effect.

Potter almost flinched, but recovered. "Well, we always used to think you dripped hair-oil, but since last night I'm beginning to wonder..."

Snape half-choked with mingled indignation and laughter, dropped his book, and wrestled Potter into his lap. "Hair-oil, Potter?" he said silkily, and forced Potter's face down. Not that Potter seemed to be objecting.

"No," said Potter, slightly muffled. He got his mouth into a better position for speaking, and said: "Not hair-oil. Ambrosia. Nectar." He licked. "Delicious."

Mm, it is delicious, thought Snape, mind coming totally unstuck as Potter went for it properly. Suck after suck, hard and fast...

Potter pulled off, keeping a firm grip on Snape's disappointed erection. "God, I love the taste of cock," he remarked. "Can't get enough of it." He licked his lips slowly and deliberately.

"Why..." Snape trailed off.

"I like looking at you when you're drooling for it at both ends."

Snape snapped his mouth shut hastily. He tried to imagine his cock as a tap he could turn off, but suspected that wasn't much use.

Potter kissed and rubbed his balls, then went for a long slow lick up the length.

"Is that what you like?" he whispered, against Snape's shaft. "You're so wet and hard, and you taste so good."

"Shut up and suck me." He was surprised he could manage five words.

Potter handled him just short of forcefully; stroking roughly at his cock and balls with both hands and giving him occasional sucking kisses.

"Now..." he begged, on a long groan of need.

Potter slipped his mouth into place and sucked hard.

"Mm."

"Need a bit of a sleep before you consider consciousness?" the voice went on, with a laugh.

He vaguely wondered what consciousness was, and if he needed to use it for anything. It didn't seem important.

He woke up, warm and comfortable in bed. Very warm. He sighed and peeled Potter's arms from around him.

"Coffee?" he asked.

"Oh, you've surfaced," said Potter, in a reasonable shot at his own sarcastic tone. He wasn't sure whether to feel amused or offended, but kissed Potter firmly on the cheek and went to make coffee.

He could tell he was feeling rather better. Grinding the beans didn't make him feel feeble, and the smell of coffee made him feel happy rather than ill.

"You're whistling, Sev. All right, it's Dies Irae, but it's a step in the right direction."

Gryffindors are catching, obviously. He tutted absently, poured out the coffee, and handed a sweetened mug of it to Potter.

They spent the rest of the morning trying to master a complicated shielding spell that needed to be very carefully pronounced. Snape could get it right three times out of four, but Potter only got it right once out of four. Right, it would twist everything short of an Unforgivable back on the one who cast it. Wrong, it would produce a smell of lavender and a small grease-spot on the floor.

"'Acrinium stina', not 'stipa'!" he snapped crossly, as a choking cloud of lavender smoke filled the room. "You're not going to achieve anything except perfume like that! Do it properly."

Potter stumbled on the grease spot, and mumbled something. Eventually he did it again.

"Are you trying to asphyxiate me, Potter? The more you resent doing this, the worse it will go."

It did. An hour later, the smell was even stronger and both of them kept slipping on the floor.

Snape doggedly worked on, but was rather relieved to hear the knock on the door.

"Scrambled egg on toast for two, and a bit of bacon," Potter announced, taking the tray from the house-elf and shutting the door. He stepped very carefully back to the bed.

"I'm not hungry," said Snape. Actually, he was.

"Here you are," said Potter, and handed him a large plate.

"If I have to," said Snape, and stabbed a fork into a piece of toast.

"Do people have to learn things like that?" Potter asked. "It doesn't really seem worth the effort. I mean, by the time you'd got it right they'd already have hit you with something."

Snape launched into a ferocious closely-argued discussion about the use of that spell. Every so often, Potter would say, "Eat up," and he would pause for a mouthful of toast and scrambled-egg.

He was surprised when he realised he'd eaten all of it.

"Tea?" asked Potter.

"I never drink the stuff," he said.

"No, but I want some," said Potter, as if he hadn't been offering but demanding.

"Get it yourself," said Snape, and sat down on the bed. He still kept going weak every time he stopped talking or doing anything.

Potter didn't say anything to that, just wandered into the kitchen-cubicle and washed the pots up.

Snape looked at the book. If one used a mnemonic to keep that rather tricky spell in mind, it worked better.

He went and told Potter this. Potter said, "Mm," and went on washing the teapots. After a few minutes, he said, "shut up and let me think about that, Sev. You could clean the main room up." His tone was preoccupied rather than offensive.

Ungrateful little sod, thought Snape, but shut up and started using his best cleaning spells. His magical abilities were still not at their best, but after a bit of effort the floor was clean and the smell of lavender was dissipating.

Potter made one pot of peppermint and one of tea, silently, and held up a hand to prevent Snape from talking. Snape thought, where did he get that effortless natural authority? but to his own fury sat down and listened.

Potter reeled off the spell, letter-perfect and perfectly fluent. No lavender, no grease.

"Now, throw something at me!" said Potter.

Snape sighed, and did. He wasn't surprised, although annoyed, when the Jelly-Legs bounced back at him and he folded slowly to the floor.

"And why are you looking at me like that?" he demanded of the apologetic Potter as he was helped up.

"Sorry, Sev." Potter looked uncomfortable. "I know it's meant to do that, I just didn't realise it actually would."

By the time Snape had got to the bottom of his cup of mint infusion, he felt slightly stronger.

"I need a break after that," said Potter. "A breath of fresh air. I asked Professor Sprout if she needed any help with the herb garden, and she said maintenance was always useful, even in winter."

Snape lounged back on his bed and shut his eyes, surprised to feel a twinge of regret. It wasn't like him to spend so much time in the company of others and not look forward to being left alone.

"Get up, you lazy sod," said Potter, tapping him on the arm. "I was careful to ask her if I could have an hour or two of privacy in return for the help, because--well, I told her you were convalescing and didn't want to see anyone, and she said fine. No-one comes in apart for lessons, except for Neville, and she says she can keep him busy somewhere else."

"The most unlikely candidate to be taken on as Apprentice after he left," Snape murmured, as he dressed hurriedly and walked out.

"Sorry? Oh, of course, you never saw him being competent, did you?" Potter said cheerfully, on the way to the herb garden.

Snape thought back over the last seven years. "Never."

"He's good with plants. They almost never explode, for one thing."

Snape staggered slightly as he opened the door to the grounds and a raw January breeze smacked him in the face. Potter was there ready to help, damn him.

"Do you have to hover like that?" he snapped.

Potter snapped right back at him, "No, I'd rather drop you on your arse, you prat! Maybe I'll go and help in the garden on my own if you'd rather sulk." Potter walked away quite fast.

Snape felt irrationally cheered-up. He hated it when other people were more reasonable than himself. Catching up with Potter in the knot garden, he watched a tricky patch of serpentroot practicing a double butterfly (with optional clove-hitch) on Potter's ankle, and saw Potter free himself with a muttered spell. Serpentroot was a quasi-sapient relative of Devil's Snare, and the only entertainment it seemed to have in life was knotting.

Potter looked at him sideways.

"That was because he was nervous," said Potter reproachfully.

"If he was in my classes, I was nervous," said Snape. It had been distinctly unnerving sometimes, trying to focus his attention on what he was teaching while knowing something could explode at any minute.

"He's a lot better now."

"So I should hope," said Snape rather sternly. He could hardly be worse.

He looked down, and saw the serpentroot starting to twitch and coil again.

Potter hissed at it at some length, and the tendrils withdrew.

"That's interesting," said Potter. "You know, in the Muggle world, I'm fairly sure plants get called after things just because they look like them."

"Naming magic is powerful," said Snape. "You do occasionally get a bleed-through of attributes from the thing named. But I admit to being surprised Parseltongue works on it. What did you say?"

Potter grinned. "Told it not to tie either me or you in knots, or I'd sneak back later and iron it!"

The grin was startlingly attractive; he felt a familiar, unwelcome heaviness in his balls at the sight. He couldn't stop himself cataloguing Potter's other visible charms, either: his eyes focused carefully on the shape of Potter's lips and the shadow between them. The shadow beckoning him to slip his tongue or his cock into the warm darkness. He glanced lower, where the nipples must be, and imagined slipping his fingers into the gap at the top of Potter's robe. It suddenly seemed unendurable that he hadn't seen that body naked. He glanced even lower. He hadn't seen that, either. He'd felt and tasted every bit, but he hadn't given it much of a look; he'd been too eager to have it in him.

Ignoring it, he asked, "What on earth is there to do in a garden in the middle of winter? It's a complete waste of time." And we could be back in the dungeon fucking each other silly.

Potter looked a little upset.

"Just thought...a bit of a change might be nice," Potter mumbled.

"Whatever could lead you to believe that I could possibly want to leave the comfort of my dungeons for this?" he drawled cuttingly.

"Comfort? All those smelly slimy things?" Potter asked indignantly,

"The only smelly dirty things to spend much time in that dungeon are small boys. Everything else gets sliced and diced, boiled down, and bottled. Probably a useful strategy to use with the small boys." The thought restored Snape to a better humour, and also cooled him down slightly.

"Yes, well," said Potter. "We used to imagine what we could do with you if you got boiled up in a freak Potions accident." He sniggered. "'How many Potions masters does it take to redecorate the dungeon?'"

"'One, if sliced thinly enough,'" Snape quoted, noticing that the boyish sniggering from what was decidedly a grown man was reversing the 'cooling' effect. He was feeling rather naughty, like the Marauders, or Potter and his friends at play after dark.

"Spread thinly," Potter corrected, "and how did you come to overhear that?"

Snape snorted. "The trouble with adolescents is that they're always under the impression they've invented everything. That was an old one when Binns was a boy, probably."

"You don't seem to be bothered..."

"Believe me, Potter, if you'd been fool enough to say that to my face I would have made your life a very definite hell. Otherwise, I don't actually care."

"So you used to get some twisted satisfaction from imagining awful things happening to small children?" Not as much as I'm getting from watching you.

Snape had to think for a moment to get back to the conversation. "No, if you allow for the occasional remark about using small boys for Potions ingredients, I didn't."

"No?" Potter asked doubtfully.

"No. Filch enjoys saying, 'If I could, I'd strip the hide off 'em, and string 'em up from the walls by their wrists'. It's not really my style."

"You're such a forgiving soul, Severus." Potter grinned. The grin was even more tempting.

"The reverse of that. I brooded, and stewed, and marinated every insult I ever received in spite. Then I deliberately thought up a revenge for every enemy." He shifted on his feet uncomfortably. It was very odd to be talking about these things and not feeling vindictive.

"Never violence," he added. "When I was a boy, Goyle laughed at me when I fell off my broom, so I waited for him to forget, and then called across the Common Room, 'What are the essay titles for next week's History homework?' Goyle was right next to the notice board where it was written down. He stood there, like a log of wood, and stammered."

"He was illiterate too?" asked Potter. "His son is. I think."

"And I overheard Lupin talking to Black about a dog, and made Black's life a perfect misery talking about odour of wet dog in front of girls he was trying to impress. If I'd realised the dog was him it would have been even better." Yes. Think about hating Black. Don't think about the way you want to jump on Potter and wriggle.

"Always the one thing the person couldn't stand," said Potter. "You were very good at that."

"It's a talent I have," Snape admitted, neither praising nor blaming it. How strange to have it recognised by a Gryffindor. Potter didn't sound pleased, of course, but he seemed more accepting than Snape would have thought possible.

"Did you ever feel sorry for doing it?" Potter asked.

Snape wouldn't have answered that, except that Potter sounded curious rather than moral. "Not then." He paused. Perhaps Potter deserved the truth. "Sometimes I do now. I'm not ashamed of what I did when I was a boy. I hit back, sometimes extremely hard, when someone attacked me. Nowadays I verbally macerate children who are unable to defend themselves."

"Why?"

That was difficult. Not because he didn't know, or didn't think about it (in the dead of night when there were no distractions from the thought), but because nobody cared to or dared to ask him about it. Even Albus didn't really ask.

"It started out because I hoped they could defend themselves if I pushed them hard enough. After a while that wasn't the reason."

"Just you being an evil bastard," said Potter.

"Once I started, I couldn't stop," he explained.

"You couldn't hit out at the one you wanted to."

He didn't want Potter to have even that minimal degree of perception. He said, "And who was that?" rather forbiddingly.

As he'd suspected, Potter said, "Voldemort."

"That's far too simplistic. I was not a shining hero for a cause, Dumbledore's or any other."

"So you wouldn't have risked your life for the chance to bring him down?"

He glared at Potter. He had done so, and he was fairly sure Potter knew it. "It is safe to say I was not considering the great battle of good against evil every time Longbottom blew up another cauldron," he said.

"No," said Potter, "but I bet I know what you were thinking."

"Enlighten me," he said, in a tone which meant exactly the reverse. Potter, as usual, wasn't cowed.

"Half the Slytherins who show any promise," snarled Potter, in a good imitation of his voice, "are licking the boots of a worthless madman. I hate my job. I hate a good proportion of the people around me, and the only doubtfully-human creatures within the range of my malice are people like Neville bloody Longbottom!"

Maybe Potter understands more than I give him credit for. It wouldn't be difficult, he thought. "Yes. You left out how much I loathed Lucius Malfoy for being such a poor excuse for a lover."

"Good!" said Potter. "I wondered if you realised."

"It wasn't precisely Lucius Malfoy's fault that he was the closest to an intimate relationship I ever had, but I must admit he wasn't much use.

"Did you ever love him?"

"For three weeks, yes." Three weeks after that glorious golden weekend of sexual discovery, which had been how long it had taken him to realise that Lucius's affections were neither exclusive nor intrinsically valuable.

"I doubt Narcissa got much out of him either," he added thoughtfully.

"She got Draco," said Potter.

"Quite," said Snape, feeling his lips curve into an unpleasant smile. "Draco was an equal trial. I could never forgive him for not living up to his early promise. I imagined he would grow up clever, disliked and obsessive."

"Like you."

He nodded. "Instead of a spoilt brat."

"So you couldn't stand Voldemort or any of the Malfoys."

"You left out Albus, for putting me in an untenable position and making sure I stayed in a schoolteaching position for which I had no natural talent, and myself, for putting up with it. And you and your friends."

"I'd never done anything to you!"

"You looked like your father," he explained. "I never forgave him for saving my life."

"Normal people," muttered Potter, "never forgive people for endangering their lives."

"No," snapped Snape, "that's what I didn't forgive you for. Well, my possessions, anyway."

"I did not!" protested Potter.

"Because I tried to keep you from falling to your death off your broom in your first year, you got one of your hangers-on to set fire to one of my only two sets of clothes. By the time I noticed it, it was distinctly singed."

"Because of a misunderstanding, I got one of my best friends to--as she thought--risk her life against an evil wizard," Potter corrected. He paused. "Only two robes?" he inquired, as if diverted. "I have more than that, and I wouldn't call myself vain."

"Two was perfectly adequate," Snape said, "before I met you. When I left the school as a pupil, and joined it again that autumn as a master, I had enough money for two sets of clothes. Spats, waistcoat, socks... everything of the very best, complete to the last little button. I put protective spells all over them to protect them against Potions spills, and prepared myself to get a good deal of use out of them for the next ten years."

"Oh. Sorry, Sev."

"I should have thought about fire-proofing them." It hadn't precisely been dangerous, to a grown wizard, but it had made him feel a fool.

"Still don't see what you had against my Dad," muttered Harry.

"What did Remus Lupin tell you about all that business?"

"He said, 'We...ah...didn't like each other very much'."

Despite himself, Snape almost laughed at the flawless representation of Lupin's donnish, hesitant murmur. "He never did lie well."

Potter looked flabbergasted. "You mean he...and you..."

"I didn't really know you knew each other," said Potter carefully.

Snape hated him being sensitive. "We'd spoken a handful of times, looked at each other a handful more than that. For an unsociable sort such as myself, that seemed more significant than it can have been." It was nothing. He'd spent more time alone with... with Potter over the last couple of days than he had with Remus Lupin over the course of his life. Worrying, really.

"Were you in love?"

He glared, though he was rather pleased to stop thinking about Potter and return to the scarred-over hurts of the past.

"I was infatuated. I wanted 'eternity' without enough social abilities to manage 'next week'. I couldn't have spoken to him in front of his friends. I could barely have held a conversation with him.

"It wouldn't have stopped it being important, at the time." Potter said gently.

"Perhaps not." He hadn't realised, at the time, how vulnerable his lack of emotional experience had made him. "I imagined that because it would be so difficult to cross the invisible boundary between the Houses, because I had to plan for every glance or every word, because we both had so much to lose--it mattered more than people wanting us for what we could be to them." Remus's place as Sirius Black's Official Best Friend. What Lucius wanted, which was neither pure nor simple.

"Therefore," he added, "I liked Lupin more than I should have, and Sirius Black hated that. Then, just when I started to drop my first, tentative hints to Lupin that I should like to talk in private, Black played his little attempted-murder game. He even suggested, 'if you want to get closer to him, he's willing to meet you tonight'."

"The bastard," breathed Potter.

"Yes." Snape paused. "That was why I hated your father."

"But my Dad wasn't anything to do with that!" said Potter, surprised.

"Exactly," Snape said quietly.

Potter looked blank. After a while, he said, "Oh go on, tell me now you've started!"

"I could have borne dying for love, or being killed in a tragic accident, or being killed by my enemy. Being saved, at the last moment, by a well-meaning stranger who saw my face...when I would rather have died..." Last time he'd opened that particular emotional cupboard, his feelings had roared up at him like a boggart the size of Hogwarts crammed into Filch's filing cabinet.

They must have faded with time: now he was far more aware of his prick and balls pressing tightly against the crotch of his trousers. Now he didn't get that momentary discomfort at seeing Potter's familiar face. When had this Potter become "Potter" to him?

"Yes, well," said Potter, with a sharp, startling green glance that impaled him ('impaling' was another thought he shouldn't be bothering with), "we don't always get the choice about whether to live or not."

"You're not telling me you've been suicidal?"

"Not exactly. But being famous, and loved, and venerated for something I did when I was one, without knowing about it--let's just say, I never felt I deserved that. I didn't deserve the nasty things either, but I didn't feel it was right." Even the morals aren't putting me off, Snape thought, watching Potter's dark silky hair curl on the back of his neck as he turned away for a minute to gather another handful of painful leaves.

"I'd forgotten how priggish Gryffindors get about survival," said Snape dryly.

Potter went pale. "Bastard," he muttered. The paleness went attractively with the dark of his hair.

"That was an observation," said Snape. "I could be much worse if I tried."

"That's right," Potter agreed. "You usually are." He paused. "I suppose I can't really blame myself for surviving."

"Well, if I can't blame you for that, I don't see why you should."

"S'pose not."

There was an odd, sideways charm to the conversation. He thought back over his last few talks; Filch, Malfoy (D), Malfoy (L), Dumbledore, Madam Pomfrey... No, there had been none of that quality in those. Nor, of course, had he felt he was trying to make himself heard over the commotion in his trousers.

Potter moved away for the next thing, pruning the Stingleweed. This should have eased Snape's reactions a bit. In fact, the steady movements of those hands were working him up.

Potter complained all the way at the pain the leaves were causing him. If he wants to do something agricultural he can come over here and plough me into the ground, Snape thought, crossly. God, he wanted it. Hard, fast and soon.

"Brambles, next," said Potter. "Last thing I need after having my hands stung."

Snape followed him. He probably knew any number of soft fruits that grew on thorny bushes, Muggle- or wizard-grown. Loganberry, blackberry, whiteberry, boysenberry, girlsenberry, sunberry... Everything had a use. It was remarkably difficult to think about something sensible like that.

It was very difficult to ignore his unruly prick.

Potter was still complaining about being stabbed in already-sore fingers, even though Snape was making some vague attempt to keep the thorns out of his way.

"What are these?" Snape asked, not having come to any conclusion about what someberry-or-other was called. "Surely it would be less trouble to use a darning needle if you merely want to get your hands punctured?"

"Ha bloody ha," said Potter. "You haven't changed a bit, and that's not a recommendation."

Potter had changed quite a lot. Somehow Snape could remember his hands quite well, when he'd been a boy. Small dirty hands, and he could see every detail in his mind's eye, with bitten fingernails and an ink-stain from writing where the nib rested. Potter had used to rub at the ink-stain unconsciously, with a nervous fingertip, when under stress. He was doing it now. Not that it was stained any more. Only Snape's memory of that movement showed it as a stress reaction: now it was smooth and gentle and slow. Now Potter's hands were strong and steady, while he was shaking. And how dare Potter--how could Potter--want to be calm and slow when he was going silently mad? Remus Lupin had done that to him as well. But he didn't remember Lupin putting him into this sort of trance by simply existing in front of him.

He was fairly sure, also, that the younger Potter hadn't subtly presented his crotch by the way he was standing.

Surely he hadn't been deliciously, magnificently fuckable when he'd been the bane of Snape's existence?

Snape didn't remember those firm strong legs. He certainly didn't remember noticing what nestled between them.

Even some statement along the lines of "You never made any allowances for me so I'm damn-well not going to for you!" would have been a relief, but Potter didn't seem to notice his condition. It wasn't that Potter was asexual (in fact Snape was trying not to notice he was half-hard), but it was a torment to see that Potter could simply put it aside and get on.

Here he was, almost faint with lust, and Potter was standing there, ignoring his own erection (and Snape's) and getting on with what he was meant to be doing.

With the last of his pride, and the last of his strength, he held back what he was thinking, and sat down as Potter dealt with the rest of the Stingleweed.

As if slightly tired, he lay down on the ground, propped up on one elbow like an ancient Roman having dinner.

Potter turned towards him and faced him. "I got some of the leaves from the Stingleweed in this bag," he said. "I know you use the venom."

Snape felt annoyed, wishing he could keep his mind properly on gardening, or anything but sex. Stealthily, he twitched his wand delicately out, as if not really doing anything, and kept his clothes firmly in mind as he cast Disiunctis. Softly, his clothes dragged open and aside beneath him.

It was lovely, wicked, arousing to feel his prick secretly drag against the cool grass while his body remained respectably-dressed. Here he was, six foot of impatient animal prodding and pawing at the earth, and it was hardly visible at all. Maybe he could even manage to come this way.

He looked up at Potter. Aroused, fairly definitely, but in control. He envied that fiercely: he remembered what it was like to want sex but not have this blurry-eyed shaking fit of need that destroyed your mind.

Suddenly, it wasn't satisfying at all just pressing himself into the grass. He wanted teeth sinking into his neck and cock sinking into his arse; he wanted enough weight on top of him to pound him into the ground; he wanted to be fucked.

Potter was still ignoring his sexual reactions. He wasn't sure whether that helped, or the opposite. Actually, he was sure it didn't. At least, if there had been two of them in it, he'd have a companion in misery, and then in sexual satisfaction.

More weeding, and more collecting. Since there wasn't much of a botanical element to Dark-Arts teaching, that was probably for his benefit. He wished he felt grateful.

He shut his eyes. He couldn't even pretend he was feeling either calm or normal.

Silence. More silence.

"Move a bit, I can't reach you like that," said Potter matter-of-factly, landing on the grass with a thump and nudging up to him in a sort of crawl involving his back and buttocks.

Snape scrambled to his hands and knees, head swimming and brain seizing up completely. Potter dived a hand under him, and--a hand wasn't what he needed. Instead of pressure and weight on him, instead of wetness inside him, a dry thumb scraped almost painfully across his cock-head. He gasped, his heart thumped in his chest, and his prick spurted come almost irritably.

Now he was just the shell of an ageing failure, emptied out, fallen on the grass.

He hadn't even enjoyed the orgasm all that much.

Potter said something.

"Go away," he replied, burrowing his face into the crook of his arm.

"Shan't," said Potter. "It's my fault, and I'm going to get it right."

"What d'you mean, it's your fault?" Snape muttered indignantly. "You didn't do anything."

"Exactly."

Fools rush in... Snape thought. He's probably hoping I'll ask him what he means. Resolving to do no such thing, he shut his eyes.

"I shouldn't have played that game with you when you were in that state. It was irresponsible, and I'm sorry."

Snape did not say, "What game?"

Into the silence, Potter said, "It's fun if you're in the right mood, to pretend you have no idea the other person wants sex. It's unfair in...in this situation. The more distressed you got, the more I was rubbing your nose in having no self-control."

Snape felt a very slight lifting of his spirits.

"Shall we fuck now?" asked Potter.

"No."

"Why not?" Potter demanded indignantly.

It was easy, to his surprise.

Potter took his wand out and tapped it very delicately on the back of Snape's neck, tracing it down his spine. Suddenly he felt cold. He was naked. Instead of clothes, he could feel the tickle-and-itch of myriads of long long threads moving against him. His collar was still normal, but everything else just fell around him in a thin black waterfall.

"We haven't brought any..." Snape muttered, already rising to the thought.

Potter fumbled in his pocket. "Just to destroy any illusion you may have of me not having planned this..." He brought out a little pot of lubricant. "I rather fancied the idea of shoving you down on the grass and doing you."

Snape moaned a little, and rolled on his back on the grass and whatever Potter had left of his clothes. He could feel threads and cool grass moving against his skin, and he could feel the ache of his sore-but-wanton prick burning against the air.

"Good. I want to be able to kiss you," said Potter.

Kissing seemed too intimate, too complicated for the vast simplicity of his reactions. He could ask to be bitten or sucked or pounded. That was for now. Kissing would take time (a good kiss did take time. Even he knew that); and he did not want to think of time stretching out from past to future as they breathed each other's breaths.

The reluctance lasted until Potter seriously tried to kiss him. His mouth opened to say 'no', and suddenly it was full of tongue. Suction. Pressure. Wet heat. Just what he needed, and he took it. He was so greedy for it he was faintly shocked, and he caught himself thinking, fleetingly, that he could always be ashamed later, if necessary. A minute or so of that, and he was aware that his hands were empty, and he didn't want his hands empty. He reached out blindly--found solidity--clawed--grabbed. There was a little shock of recognition as he remembered that this was Potter beneath that cloth, in his hands and mouth, but he didn't care it was someone he shouldn't want, didn't care about anything but having this. Hands and mouth full, he needed to fill his arse.

Impatiently, he dragged at Potter, meaning "Now!" without wanting to stop kissing. His hands scraped at cloth and tried to tear it, but couldn't. He should be able to do that with magic, if he could think. At all. Hated. Not being able to...

Potter broke his train of thought, such as it was, by slipping out of the kiss and saying, "Give me a minute to undress, Sev." He felt a moment of pure, stupid, unjustified fury, because he didn't want words, didn't want to be reasonable, didn't want to think. Then he sighed, relaxing all at once and listening, as blankly as possible, to Potter getting out of his clothes and warming the lubricant between his hands.

Snape opened his legs. Potter's hand bumped gently against his inner thigh as if knocking for admission, and the skin all over him prickled every hair on his body with startled excitement. He pushed himself open wider, impatiently, drawing his legs up. The hand was pressing against him now, then a finger sliding into him. Oh he wanted to come so very much it nearly hurt. Another minute or so, and he'd do it.

The hand slid away, and he moaned. He felt far too empty with nothing on him or in him.

"All right," said Potter. "I won't make you wait." He gave a puff of surprised breath as he landed practically on top of Snape, probably harder than he meant to.

"That's...good," Snape croaked, enjoying the feel of it. Potter wasn't exactly fat, but he'd put some flesh on since he was a small and thin boy. Now Snape was in the mood to feel weight on him, and it was satisfying. Particularly when Potter reached to kiss him.

Mm. Naked, heavy, delicious weight on top of him, and a slick quick tongue to feast on. Only one thing he needed, and it hurt just enough going in to stop him coming too fast. Skin-to-skin, tongue-to-tongue, satisfying his hungry skin and mouth as he was filled. His legs were going to hurt. He didn't care. It wouldn't hurt as much as it had hurt not getting this. Thrust, and thrust, and he was there, his mouth was free to shout, and he pulsed his climax effortlessly into the mere shadow's width of space between them as Potter came into him.

After some minutes, he opened his eyes. Potter looked just as debauched as he probably did. Good.

There was something on Potter's lips.

"You bit me. I didn't notice until now," explained Potter.

Snape reached out a hand, vaguely surprised it didn't shake, and brushed the trace of blood away. "I usually bite when I'm trying to," he said, and kissed Potter very softly.

He twitched irritably as a breeze made free of what was left of his clothing. "Still at your tricks ruining my clothes," he said.

"Not in the least," Potter said, and told him to roll over.

Snape did. He felt the faint electric trace of power as Potter's wand slid up his spine, gathering threads together, and then suddenly he was fully-dressed, if sticky. "Where did you get that one, Potter? I'm impressed."

He didn't hear Potter answer him; once he was warm enough, he simply fell asleep just where he was on the grass.

Potter shook him by the shoulder and said it was dinner-time. He was vaguely shocked to smell the food: some house-elf had crept up on them with a tray of food, and he hadn't even noticed.

Beef stroganoff, which wasn't exactly odourless. His nose should have twitched when the elf was several paces away. He didn't need his conscious mind to help him react to events, dammit!

"Should have had my throat slit for incompetence years ago," he muttered, and had to explain that to Potter.

"You're not a spy now, Severus," Potter told him.

He cursed himself silently for forgetting: he'd spent far more years spying for one side or the other than not.

"Paranoia is a survival trait." Now he thought about it, Potter probably hadn't done a few basic tricks to keep himself safe; he'd do something about that tomorrow.

"I bet you've had a good sleep now, though." Potter grinned conspiratorially at him from behind a tangle of hair.

Snape yawned, stretched, began to dig into his bowlful of beef hungrily--only then realising that his behaviour could be construed as agreement. He pretended not to notice it.

Part Three

The next day, after the first bout (which he engaged in without really waking up), and after having a quick clean-up and breakfast instead of an afterglow, he looked at Potter's reliably-messy fringe, and said, "You need a hair-cut."

Potter snorted. "That was fairly high on the list of sentences I didn't expect to hear from you. Never thought grooming was high on your list of priorities."

Snape glared at him. "And you're teaching children magical defences."

"Yes. Not hairdressing."

"Shut up and sit down on that stool. This requires silence."

Potter obeyed, for once.

Potter still had that vague, unjustified confidence in the world, Snape noticed, as Potter shut his eyes, with a little sigh, and leaned his head back. He was tilting over slightly too far on the stool; only Snape was keeping him upright

In the interests of letting him know that paranoia was perfectly justifiable, Snape stepped swiftly backwards for a moment.

About a second before Potter would have dashed what there was of his brains out on the stone floor, Snape looped a cushion of air under his head, so that he only scraped his hand on the floor.

"And what was that in aid of?" Potter muttered resentfully.

"A lesson in misplaced trust."

Potter sighed, scrambled upright, and leaned his head back. He looked just as relaxed as before, to Snape's annoyance. His lips moved.

Snape couldn't hear what Potter was whispering, but determined to repeat the lesson until it took. This time, as he stepped backward, his foot caught in something, and he stumbled.

"What was that?" Snape asked, gasping a bit as he fended the floor off with his hand and stood up again.

"A lesson in underestimating me," Potter said, and leaned backward again. This time, partly reassured that Potter had a few defences, Snape held that deceptively-delicate body between neck and shoulder. He was trying to work out what Potter had used: turbationis pedis, perhaps: was there such a spell?

As he moved, he felt the soft tickle of Potter's hair against his fingers, suddenly aware of it and rather sorry some of the undisciplined tumble of hair would have to go.

"People've tried sorting m'hair out before," Potter mumbled. "Never worked."

"Be still. This isn't to make you look pretty." He pushed Potter forward a bit and carded through the dark hair tensely with his fingers.

"Ow," said Potter, sounding a lot more awake all of a sudden. "Mind telling me what is the point?"

"Magical defences. Your area of expertise, I would have thought."

Potter sighed. "You know," he said, "I do sometimes wonder why I'm doing this job. While I was growing up, it was... well, it was the coolest job in the school. Everyone wanted it. Now I'd probably be more use if I'd taken up professional Quidditch."

"Everyone wanted it," Snape repeated flatly.

"Well, you certainly did!"

Snape did his best to convey contemptuous silence.

Potter looked defensive. "Well, it's not that stupid an idea. Is it?"

Silence.

"You like to be..." Snape watched Potter discard, probably, such terms as admired, looked up to and liked, and settle on "...respected, even by people you don't respect yourself."

Another of the magnified flaws of his later life. It wasn't comfortable to have someone else recognise that, especially since he didn't much like it.

When he compared his more recent undignified scrabbling for recognition with how he'd been at twenty, eager to measure up against minds he respected (all three of them), he couldn't shake the feeling he'd got things wrong somehow.

He glared at Potter. "A pleasant by-product. So many people look down on my work for the wrong reasons, having it admired for the wrong reasons would be amusing. But surely even you cannot be obtuse enough to assume I wanted the Dark-Arts position for public adoration. I certainly didn't want to take time away from my real work."

"Well, why did you want it, then?" Potter asked.

He let his irritation show.

"I did not want to do the job. I wanted to prevent other people doing it."

"Anyway," said Potter, "why the hair-cut?"

"Protective magic," said Snape.

Potter said, "But Voldemort's gone."

"It occurred to me, when you were mocking me for being paranoid, that Moody had a point about 'constant vigilance'. He was insane, to say nothing of 'not himself', when you met him, but that doesn't mean he wasn't right. Apart from the power vacuum, and the probable rise of any number of people who want to be Dark Lords themselves, there will be loyal followers who will do anything to avenge him. Therefore, a few simple protective measures are in order."

The spell didn't take too long, as these things went. He prowled round Potter, chanting in a soft murmur as he went and occasionally prodding Potter with a finger to stop him going to sleep. After half an hour establishing the basic parameters, he pulled his sharpest smallest scissors out of their pocket in his sleeve and rested them, open, against Potter's neck for an instant while he measured a lock of hair.

Potter kept quite still. Good. There were a few issues of trust in this magic, and being able to lay a naked blade against someone's neck was a suitably-primitive demonstration.

He cupped his hand beneath the lock, and snipped.

Right round the back--snip, snip, snip, as he went--and some of the fringe.

Then he put the cut hair on a small metal plate on his desk, and told Potter to hold his hand out.

Potter did.

"Palm down." Snape put a cloth over Potter's lap. He took the hand gently, and began to cut the nails, chanting as he did so.

Potter held out the other hand without being asked.

When ten little white crescents had fallen, Snape tipped them out of the cloth to join the hair, and set fire to them.

He began to chant again. His nose itched; the smoke was unpleasant. He continued chanting without even pausing to rub his nose.

Potter waited politely until the ashes were consumed and the spell closed-off, then said, "I don't quite see how that's meant to work.

Snape told him of the many nasty little Dark spells that used little physical cast-offs that way. "Hogwarts has always had fairly poor security. If someone ever tries it with you, they won't get very far. If they cut your hair, they will discover it has been bound into protection before they can bind it into harm."

"I'll write some notes up tonight," said Potter.

"Your next class? It would only give them ideas."

Potter shuddered. "I know."

Snape raised an eyebrow at this curious thirst for abstract knowledge.

"I won't be the only one they'd be after," said Potter. "I need to do that on you."

"No," said Snape firmly.

"Look, if I can trust you enough to realise you don't mean me any harm when you cast something that looks rather like a Dark spell on me, you can damn-well--" said Potter hotly.

"I didn't mean I don't trust your intent, I don't trust your execution," said Snape. "Write it down for me, the spell and as much of the theory as you can remember, and I'll consider letting you near my hair."

Potter curled a strand of Snape's hair round his finger. "It isn't as if the greasy stuff isn't reviled throughout the school."

"Which wouldn't put off a Dark wizard."

"Right, I'll give you the paperwork tomorrow and you can let me loose on it after that." Potter paused. "Anyway," he went on, "I bet you'd rather have a fuck now." Like all the best performative magic, the statement became true. Snape had just about enough time to wish this wasn't happening before he sank into the flood-tide of his own mismanaged biology and loved it too much to care.

The next day, Snape realised he must, in fact, be getting better. His erection seemed (on tentative prodding followed by visiting the toilet) to be the normal result of needing to urinate rather than needing sex.

He had a long, thorough bath and even washed his hair.

Potter smiled sleepily at him from the bed as he stalked back in, clean and dressed.

"I shall not be requiring your services for this no-doubt-distasteful duty of yours, Mr Potter," he said smoothly.

Potter looked disappointed. Even rumpled, unshaven and bleary, he looked attractive. "Are you sure?"

If Snape had not been intent on displaying his mastery over his reactions, he might have considered going back to bed. As it was, he said, "Isn't it slightly insensitive of you to ask me that now I have returned to normal?"

"You didn't mind yesterday. Several times," said Potter mildly.

"That was forced on both of us."

Before Potter could get up, Snape turned to the door and opened it.

"Where are you going?"

"I," said Snape, "am going down to breakfast, since this is a normal day."

He collected his share of funny looks on the way down to breakfast. After checking the front of his robes obsessively several times, he decided that was due to his unexplained (he hoped) absence.

Madam Pomfrey said, "I'm glad you're feeling better, Severus." He checked the tone of her voice for double-entendres, leering, or humour, and decided she passed.

"Thank you," he said politely.

Dumbledore said, "So am I. You look much restored, Severus." As usual, Severus could not quite decide whether Albus's tone was neutral, a private joke played on him or a private joke shared with him. He ignored it.

The rest of them muttered good-mornings and hope-you're-betters in tones which made it clear that they thought he'd been ill, grudgingly hoped he was better, and the less they heard about it the more they'd be pleased. Then they got on with their conversations as if relieved.

This suited him much better than genuine concern.

He managed all right at first, telling himself he must not give way.

Later in the morning, the whisper of his mental voice became a shout: MUST...NOT...HAVE...SEX! A wave of heat and weakness washed over him at the thought. How was he going to endure life without sex?

He was facing away from the classful of little nuisances, luckily. He suspected that they were unobservant enough not to notice. Look at their work, it's not as if they ever look at it...

Five minutes later, he fluffed a phrase in an incantation over a set of bottles he was cleaning up. He never made that sort of mistake. Nobody noticed, of course, but it was the principle of the thing!

As he turned to the blackboard and reached up to erase the notes he'd put on the top left corner, a patch of cloth pulled tight across his groin, and that felt almost as good as masturbating. Heat sizzled along his nerves. He wondered if he could carefully disguise his actions and just casually, stealthily, tug at his trousers near the waist so that he could feel the pressure tighten in just the right place. Then he could just move a little, a few fractions of an inch, and it would finish him off...

He must be losing his mind, and there was still the whole second half of the day to go. Thank Merlin it was nearly lunch-time.

As the herd of idiots thundered into the middle distance to stick their snouts into the noontime trough, he groaned silently and reached under his robes with a shaking hand. At least he could touch himself. A couple of buttons fell beneath the onslaught, but soon he had himself more-or-less out. Not quite in the open, just the swelling of his prick and his hand seeking each other out under all that black cloth.

He was royally pissed-off with the physical miseries he was enduring, and he didn't even have the concentration to manage the walk back to his room. If he walked, he might just have to fight his orgasm off there in the corridor.

The satisfaction of having his hand there was very fleeting. He gripped harder--too hard--savagely trying to obliterate something. This was not what he wanted. What he wanted was...

He let go as the door opened, drawing his hand out. It was only Potter, but it could easily have been anyone else. It would finish his career if he was caught wanking in the classroom, probably, although when he thought of the eccentricities Dumbledore had turned a blind eye to...

"I hate this," he snarled.

Without answering, Potter came up to him, dropped to his knees by Snape's chair, and pushed the loose black cloth away. Then he gulped Snape down in one instantaneous moment. Snape howled and came, shoving desperately.

He might have blacked out for a minute. Potter must have stood up.

"Good?" Potter asked, smiling tenderly down at him.

Well, the orgasm had been good, but all the peripheral details had been missing. It hadn't been nearly enough.

"No," he said forbiddingly.

"I know," said Potter rather sadly. "Not the optimal conditions for sex. I'll have to wait and do the job properly tonight." Snape was furious to notice that the thought gave him an erection already.

Standing by the door, Potter stopped and said, "Oh--almost forgot. I have a present for you."

Snape said nothing. Fumbling round his neck, Potter unclasped a thin little silver chain with a tiny green jewel glinting on the end. "Saw Flitwick throwing this away and asked him what it was. He intended to make it up for a Slytherin, so it's in your House colours. I said it was pretty, and could I have it?"

"What is it?"

Potter grinned. "It was meant to be imbued with a contraceptive charm, but it was rather too good." He made the universal 'droop' gesture with one arm.

"Does it work?"

"Yes. I certainly tested it by coming here and dealing with you." Potter ran the chain through his fingers. "I felt randy, but I couldn't get it up." He dangled the chain in front of Snape, who made a grab for it.

Potter weaved away. "Not until you promise me you'll take it off for me tonight, when I ask you." His voice made all sorts of promises, and Snape's erection leapt eagerly for each of them.

"Do I have to?" muttered Snape. "I might have marking to do." Well, I might! he assured himself defensively, when he couldn't think of a single solitary example.

Potter said, "Well, if you'd rather not..."

Snape snatched the necklace. "All right, I promise," he said hastily, looping it round his neck and fastening it quickly.

Ease. Calm. Limpness. Spreading blessedly through each hot aching inch of his prick and leaving it in a condition that might have been mistaken for peace. It was a very uncanny sensation when it left him still desperately randy, but he could cope with his appalling reactions as long as they weren't visible.

His work was much easier for the rest of the day.

Fifth year was trying, very trying, as usual. Today they were trying to create fruit bowls of thin glass by painting it with Concavity Potion.

He held a small private bet with himself that Martissa Norgate would reverse the effects by mistake, and watch in horror as the fruit bulged slowly upwards from her Convexity Potion. Not a lucky bet: her Potion resulted in an unexpected Klein bottle instead. He swooped down on it, very pleased: about the only containment option for dimensional Potions, and very difficult to find.

Norgate looked at him nervously. "Is it dangerous, sir?"

"No. Very occasionally, mistakes can have useful side-effects."

She looked doubtful. "So it was a good thing?"

"My dungeon's ceilings are pitted and scarred with past mistakes, and my dungeon's ceilings are generally less fragile than pupils." He paused. "One in a thousand mistakes have a useful rather than dangerous result, but that does not mean they are to be encouraged." He glared at her, although he did mentally remove her from the running as this year's, as one might put it, 'Longbottom candidate'. Neville Longbottom himself had never done anything useful, however unintentionally, in his classes.

As he turned away, Larwood said, "What did that mean, Tissie?"

"I think he said it was useful, but don't do it again. Which would be fine if I could remember what I did," she added doubtfully.

Snape thrilled, for a moment, at having been able to experience sudden emotion without needing to masturbate. He was still extremely aroused, but that wasn't so bad now. The involuntary orgasms had been the severest trial; he had a good deal of experience in hiding discomfort, but a hidden erection threatening to burst out and, well, burst, in front of people was much worse.

His command of his face had been schooled and tested and perfected over forty years. During most of those years, he hadn't had to think about commanding his prick.

Only the Impotence Charm made the rest of that day tolerable. He coped well with the idiocies of the children, overhearing no worse said about himself than the usual insults. He almost smirked at that; considering what he'd been afraid of when the side-effects started popping up again, 'sour-faced old git' (for example) was familiarly and reassuringly comfortable.

Maybe he should smirk. It would give one or two of them heart-failure.

That evening, he had a light meal and a good wash, followed by certain other preparations, then went to lie on the bed and check Potter's revision notes on the protection spell using hair-clippings.

Does the boy have no sense? he thought to himself.

With a sigh, he accio'd his quill, which was sipping ink quietly across the room. It arose with a spatter of black droplets. Without bothering to pick it up, he wrote: "Do you honestly think I will permit you to perpetrate this atrocity on me? You have got four words wrong, and a number of undesirable side-effects will follow." He watched the quill trace across the parchment as he thought, and finally add his signature with a menacing flourish.

There was a knock on the door. He pulled up his robes, not quite exposing his bare arse but making such a later action easier. Relaxing, he rested his chin in his hands.

Potter came in, whistling some appalling Muggle thing.

Snape looked at him disapprovingly. "Wizard culture usually catches up to Muggle culture in its own way later. On past reckoning, we are due to get 'stone music'..."

"...rock music..."

"...in a hundred years or so. I see no need to hasten that event."

"Killjoy."

"Not entirely," said Snape. Sooner or later, Potter was going to realise he was talking to a man lying on the bed, naked but for his robe. Although judging by how long it had taken him to realise certain other facts, Snape wasn't holding his breath.

He let the parchment fall gently to the floor: he could give that to Potter later.

Maybe time to hasten things along a bit. He bunched his fists in the loose cloth at his sides, and wriggled as he dragged it upward.

"Mm," said Potter. "Maybe not quite a killjoy."

Snape groaned a little. "I need to..."

"Oh, so do I," murmured Potter, low in his throat, and undid his trousers.

"Please," murmured Snape.

"Yes," said Potter. "I have to sink into you right now."

He did. Slow and deep, all the way down until his balls kissed softly against Snape's skin. It was wonderfully satisfying, even without an erection.

Snape felt the cool secret kiss of the necklace against his skin at the same time as the hot spike of sex in his guts. He writhed, twisting to get more sensation. His prick, limp and smooth and warm, pressed sensually into the softness of the sheets as he moved. Sheer hedonism. If this was what women felt, without the tyranny of that single organ, he rather envied them.

He rolled away from Potter's seeking hand as it tried to reach underneath him. "I said I'd wear the necklace until you asked me to take it off. I'm still wearing the necklace."

"Why on earth...?" muttered Potter.

"I wanted to feel what it was like." Snape indulged himself voluptuously again, rubbing himself along the sheets. "It's like being permanently on the point of coming...without needing to come."

Potter's hand got in at last, tracing a fingertip round the tip, and Snape moaned disgracefully. "I wonder how long I can make it last," he said, getting up awkwardly onto his hands and knees to let Potter fondle the whole thing.

"I'm going to stop," Potter whispered, touching him, "unless you let me take it off."

"Take it off me," Snape managed.

He felt the fingers of Potter's left hand on his neck, felt the clasp slip, and--

"Ow!" said Potter, "I think you've broken my fingers coming up that fast."

"Well, you've sprained my prick!" Snape retorted.

He moved gently, becoming rather less interested in blame. "They don't feel broken to me," he said, thrusting into Potter's hand.

"You don't feel sprained," said Potter, stroking him.

Snape groaned. The sound seemed to come up from his toes, or possibly his balls. He felt the blood prickle as it stretched sensitive flesh. It had been a luscious passive weight beneath him. Now he was thrumming with bursting-tight tension.

"All right, Sev," Potter whispered, and squeezed him.

He understood that he was being permitted to take what he needed. Potter rammed it in vigorously, and squeezed him hard, and he came fiercely. He yelled and shuddered as the orgasm stabbed wild heat through his prick and arse. After he'd been waiting for it all day, the pleasure was excruciating. This time, it ebbed slowly, leaving him still held safely in Potter's hand, warm and satisfied beneath Potter's weight.

"All right, you can let go now." He felt a faint regret as the hand released him.

"I trust you enjoyed yourself," Potter said.

"Mm," Snape murmured. "Still am," he admitted dozily. Even now he'd come, he liked the way it felt rubbing his internal flesh.

"I must have been a good fuck if I drive you to sentence-fragments and grammatical errors," Potter said mildly, and began to thrust with slow determination.

"Mm," said Snape, wriggling welcomingly and enjoying the pressure. He seemed to be getting miniature pseudo-orgasms of quiet internal rapture with every move. The last one, as Potter filled him enthusiastically, was strong enough to make him groan and quiver.

"Did you...again...?" murmured Potter rather doubtfully.

"Don't know. Don't care," Snape mumbled, stretching all the way from toes to nose and sighing voluptuously. "Want to sleep."

"Oh, I'll get going then..." Potter said agreeably enough, easing out and cleaning them up with a quick spell.

Snape rolled onto his back.

"Good night," Potter said, leaning over to kiss him.

"Shut up." Without opening his eyes, Snape hooked an arm out in Potter's direction, settled into a positively unbreakable cuddle, and went to sleep.

The next few days were much more tolerable, with the Impotence Charm during the day and Potter at night.

A week or so later, he realised that he could dispense with Potter's services and return to normal.

Normality seemed to have lost its savour somewhat.

He tried not to notice that his rooms seemed a bit...quieter in the evenings nowadays. He ate, read, wrote, tended his sexual needs or mused to himself in morose silence. Absolutely no difference from normal. The odd thing was that he noticed it, however hard he tried not to.

He had very little patience with idiots, which reassured him. That was very normal.

Two weeks after his withdrawal from the Frigidus, there was a knock on his door, in the evening, while he was waiting for his pot of herbal infusion to brew.

"Come in," he called. The door opened.

Potter cocked an eyebrow. "Expecting to see a friend?" Snape cursed mentally, realising he had absent-mindedly set out two mugs on the table.

"No. Albus has better sense than to drop in on me unannounced for a friendly chat. The only people who do drop in on me are Slytherin pupils who don't have any other options. It isn't a frequent occurrence." Slytherins, himself included, did not take well to admitting they couldn't cope with anything.

Potter went straight to the kettle.

"There's no tea," Snape pointed out. "You finished the last lot, and I don't keep it for myself."

"Because you prefer fruit infusions that taste like watered-down cough-mixture or herbal infusions that taste like dried grass mixed with water, I know. Got any of that ginger one, that's halfway decent?"

"As you ought to be able to smell, I've just made a pot of it."

"Mm." Potter poured out two mugfuls, and handed one to Snape, before looking round slightly helplessly. There was only one chair and Snape was in it.

"Either sit on the bed or prop yourself against the wall," said Snape. "Just don't make a fuss about it."

Potter sat down on the bed.

"Now, what do you want?" Snape asked briskly, once they'd finished the tea.

Potter said, "Nothing. Well, I thought I might as well go through some more books with you since you're better on theory than I am, and I want to make it clear from the first that I'm not..." Potter looked lingeringly at Snape's mouth, blushed, and said, "...well, not that I wouldn't, er... I'm..." Potter put down his tea mug and went on, "I won't even refer to... if you wouldn't... sorry, I'm making a total balls-up of this, aren't I? Sorry! I mean, since it's all over, and I'm not even going to mention..."

Potter had a teeth-gratingly noble look on his face. Snape got up, and sat down on the bed beside Potter where he wouldn't have to look at it.

"Stop blithering and kiss me." Snape took off Potter's glasses, folded them and put them aside carefully.

"I--you--"

"You're still blithering." Snape pulled at the sleeve of Potter's robe gently and drew him closer.

Snape could feel when Potter gave way to the kiss: the whole shape of his mouth twisted, gave, shook with greed. Potter's tongue stabbed and sucked at his. Potter trembled. Snape showed no mercy whatsoever, but pulled Potter on top of him, dragging his robes up.

What a time to be fully dressed! Does the boy have no sense? Snape thought, and made the best of a bad job by shoving his own black-clad leg tight between Potter's trousered ones. Meanwhile he continued kissing, deep and hard, and groped Potter's buttocks with vicious fingers. Hard enough that his assault could probably be felt even through a veritable obstacle-course of cloth. Potter snarled into his mouth, went rigid, and came, shaking against him.

Crawling off him, Potter collapsed on the bed, facing away from him. "Sorry."

"What makes you imagine I mind?" Snape asked, curiously.

Potter muttered something about self-control.

"My lack of self-control is a sore trial to me, Potter. Other people's is more of a comfort than otherwise. I'd hate to be worse than everyone else."

"I feel stupid," said Potter.

"You look stupid. The back of your neck is blushing. Get on with it."

"I'd forgotten how much of a bastard you are. All right, I fucked up. Leave me alone."

"Really, if I'd realised you could be this much of a drama queen, I'd have given you a gag to wear while you were with me. The parameters of this relationship do not include adolescent sulking, self-pity, over-dramatising, excessive sentiment, or the striking of attitudes, Gryffindor or otherwise."

"It's news to me we have a relationship."

"Harry," Snape began, "you are the only person who accepts my unpleasant personality and appears to like me for who I am rather than what he can make me. I am the only person who does not fall at your feet and froth with hero-worship about either Quidditch or your legendary abilities." Harry rolled over and appeared to be about to speak, but Snape went on, "We enjoy each other sexually. Last but not least, we are stuck together by a selection of unpleasant secrets we have no intention anyone else ever find out about. Of course it's a relationship. What else would it be?"

"A fuck-up," muttered Harry. "Well, all right, you've obviously guessed I've fallen for you a bit, but I already knew it was a bad idea and you would want to forget about it entirely."

"As it happens, I did not have much idea about your feelings for me." It was an interesting, and possibly useful, part of the puzzle, Snape thought.

"Oh hell..." Harry said. "Look, just tell me about your feelings for me, if any, and then at least I know."

"Serious," Snape said. He thought a minute, and added, "inconvenient."

Harry paused. "That's it?" he demanded indignantly.

"Of course, if your Gryffindor courage fails you at the thought of being involved with my manifold unpleasantnesses, I shall understand."

"No. Not, actually," Harry said thoughtfully. "It's a dirty, rotten, awkward, bloody annoying job, to be in love with Severus Snape, but someone has to do it and I don't see anyone else queuing up. I still don't see why... well, I thought I knew you well enough to guess you'd want never to refer to it again."

"I considered that," said Snape. "What could I do to expunge my aberration? Well, I could kill you, I suppose."

He watched Potter glance at his empty tea mug. Doesn't the boy have any sense?

"Apart from the point that your taking tea with me was a last-moment decision so it would have been difficult to plan for it, I came to the conclusion it would be a futile waste of time. As Voldemort discovered, one thing you are really good at is living through attempted murder, by whatever means. That left Memory Charms, which I have a prejudice against since spending a year as Gilderoy-the-Gormless's colleague. Otherwise, there might be some sort of tedious and upsetting break-up where you, Harry, would try to be rational and discreet--which meant that everybody else would find out and gossip about it, making our jobs intolerable. So I decided I'd rather put up with it."

Apart from anything else, he'd been sorting through it in his mind at the dead of night, and he'd realised not only that he didn't want to kill Potter, but that he didn't hate Potter for seeing him vulnerable and getting so close to him. He was no sort of authority on love, but he thought that meant something.

"I wasn't going to pursue you. You'd made something intolerable more comfortable than it otherwise would have been. You had the right to forget about it if you chose."

"You mean, I wouldn't have realised I was in a bloody relationship with you unless I dropped in?" said Harry indignantly.

"If you're interested, learn to cope. If you don't want to, go away."

"Is this as good as it gets, Sev?" Harry was smiling.

"Probably."

"All right, Sev. Shall I do that hair-and-nails spell?"

Snape considered the last notes he'd received from Potter. Word-perfect on the incantation, to start with. Since Potter wouldn't have copied it straight out of the book (for a Gryffindor complex of reasons involving ethics and not 'cheating'), that suggested he had it right. Even the theoretical details he'd put in sounded correct.

"If you like." Snape went to sit on the stool. It felt odd to sit there, vulnerable. I am about to let Potter use a sharp knife while I sit here with my eyes shut, he thought. The oddest thing was that he was in a position he should have hated, and he should have had every nerve in his body screaming at him not to put himself in somebody else's hands, and he...didn't.

Potter reeled the spell off quasi-effortlessly, of course. Apart from stroking Snape's hair affectionately, which wasn't part of this spell, he performed flawlessly.

"Well, we've seen to your magical 'armour'. What shall we do now?" Potter asked, when he'd finished.

"We may have a halfway-intelligent conversation about magical theory, and a cup of our infusion-of-choice, if you can fetch some tea in," Snape said, going to lounge on the bed which was much more comfortable than the stool.

"Your opinion of my brain is improving. Halfway," said Potter, perching on the side of the bed and looking down at him.

"I might have been referring to my half of the conversation being intelligent," Snape said.

Harry reached out and traced his lips with a finger. If I hadn't been smiling, thought Snape, that insult would have been more convincing.

"It's a pity I wore you out sexually," said Harry.

"If that remark was intended to inspire me to chase you round the bed..." drawled Snape, "it's working!" he concluded more forcefully.

Harry gave an undignified yelp as Snape's hand rapped him on the bottom, and he made a creditable attempt to 'struggle' as Snape tried to grab him.

"You like to be on top sometimes?" he asked.

"You consider me submissive?" Snape replied to that, slightly dangerously, rolling Harry under him. "I was merely curious about what this..." he stroked impatiently at Harry's prick, "...could do for me."

Harry grinned up at him. "You found out."

"I did. Would you like to find out what I can do for you?"

"Mm. Why didn't you fuck me when you were suffering from the withdrawal?" Harry asked, rather breathlessly.

One of the reasons had been that once he'd been Harry's teacher. Age-gaps were much less important among wizards than Muggles, but going from mentor to sexual-partner was still a major step. He gave a mental snort: it wasn't as if he'd exactly been Harry's mentor when he was supposed to be. Now that Harry was an adult, Snape found it rather easier to teach him things.

In any case, the thought of plunging, rough and careless, into the body of someone he should protect... no. Never. He did have a few limits.

"Sev?"

"I was greedy. I wanted your cock, and your hand, and your weight, and everything." That had been the other reason, and it was slightly easier to admit. He'd been desperate for as much sex as he could get, and he hadn't wanted to feel the cold of nothing-but-air on his back or the emptiness in his arse. "I wanted to be full. To have enough."

"Good. I was worried I might have been pushing you around," Harry said.

"Stupid. Or do you have a sudden attack of passivity when you're being fucked?"

"Bastard."

"Since that's the preliminary endearments out of the way, shall we find out?" Snape nibbled, very gently, at Harry's lips, and kissed him.

"Mm," said Harry. "You're quite convincing, for a bastard."

"Good," Snape purred. "Not too stupid to prepare yourself when required, are you?" He got up and sat down on the chair.

"This wasn't anticipated," Harry told him.

"Improvise. You know where I keep my lubricant."

Harry got up, and made a quick, exciting strip-tease out of getting undressed: boots kicked aside, trousers and underwear skinned-out-of; a supple rippling stretch that made it clear that he was naked beneath his robe; and then the robe parted as Harry shed it like a snakeskin.

Snape was rather impressed and very dry-mouthed. He was glad it (presumably) didn't show. Harry looked doubtful, which meant he looked blank, which meant he had won this round.

Harry found the lubricant, set it with a flourish on the bedside table and opened it. Stabbing two fingers in, Harry drew them out suggestively, and moaned. "This feels so good on my fingers, I'm not sure I dare try how it feels on the rest of me."

He did try, of course; lying down on the bed and sliding a fingertip over his own cock as his face contorted into a mimed moan. Snape's blood pounded in heart and prick.

It was, he supposed, merely necessary for Harry to dilate himself. Did he really have to cry out softly, and writhe suggestively on his own fingers?

Reaching the bed in a soundless predatory stride, Snape murmured into Harry's ear, "If that little demonstration was put on for effect, you have just made a very large mistake."

Harry groaned. "Get on with it!" he snapped, in what sounded like a good imitation of one of Snape's own tones of voice.

Spreading Harry more comfortably for access, Snape removed the fingers and replaced them with himself. Slowly. He might have been given implied licence to go at it like a maniac, but he never took anything on trust.

A sudden clench stopped him dead.

"Damn," muttered Harry.

"Bitten off more than you can chew?" Snape asked, waiting.

"I've done this before. More than once," Harry said, in a tone that suggested he meant "twice".

"Not recently?" inquired Snape coolly.

"No. Look, give up and stop going on about it!" Harry snarled into the pillow.

"You know precisely how rotten a fuck I was when I was sixteen or so," Snape said, as clinically as he could manage. "Exactly what gives you the right to try to enact a melodrama instead of solving the problem?"

"Well, we haven't got a bloody library of sex-manuals in bed with us!" snapped Harry.

"You have got an older man with considerably more experience than you have. Try asking me."

"It's obvious," said Harry crossly, "we need to stop."

"I," Snape said haughtily, "need sex." Over the sound of Harry muttering, indignantly, "Heartless bastard," Snape began to stroke Harry's sides very tenderly, and hummed the only lullaby he could remember. He doubted "Sleep, Little Serpent" had ever been heard in the Potter household. All to the good, of course; childhood songs might have an emasculating effect in the wrong context. Combining it with soft caresses and slow kisses to the sensitive back of Harry's neck, he soon felt an appreciable easing of tension.

He waited, and worked on gently.

Even more easing of tension. Harry began to move back on him.

"Sev?"

He went on stroking.

"'M sorry I called you a heartless bastard."

"Good," Snape said absently. Damn. Now he knows I minded it...

"Please, Sev..."

Too randy to notice, evidently. Snape began to thrust, firmly and steadily.

From the noises Harry was making, he wasn't doing badly. He angled himself in properly, hard, and Harry yelped.

"Did that hurt?"

"Not sure," said Harry rather shakily. "Sort of...jolty. Do it again just to see?"

This time, in the interests of accuracy, Snape gave him a much smoother thrust at the same angle, and Harry moaned, "Again!"

He did it again, and Harry repeated the plea.

After a couple more repetitions, Snape kept thrusting without waiting to be begged. He reached out, jerkily, and got a handful of lubricant, which he slapped around Harry's cock.

A few more thrusts, and he couldn't have stopped if he'd wanted to. One last grinding stroke, a shout, and he was there, flooding and pounding into Harry ecstatically just as Harry came.

"That good enough?" Harry murmured sleepily, as Snape wiped and inspected him.

"No. We both need a good deal of practice to get it right. Shall we try for 'passable' next time?" Snape lay down beside him.

"Bastard," Harry said lovingly.

"Your bastard," Snape murmured on a breath and an impulse.

"My own personal bastard, and don't you forget it!"

"Idiot," Snape said affectionately.

"Am I your own personal idiot, unlike any of the other twits?" Harry asked.

"Only an idiot would think to ask. Of course you are."

It was, Snape decided, an unconventional declaration. They were unlikely to find Valentine's cards addressed TO IDIOT FROM BASTARD. He dozed off planning to make his own. Harry would find it hilarious.