Harry awoke to the all-too-familiar headache that told him in no uncertain terms how much he'd managed to overextend himself that afternoon. 'The stupidity of not knowing one's own limits,' Snape had once called it, and at the moment Harry was entirely inclined to agree. Of course, it was still infinitely preferable to having his soul forcibly extracted through his mouth....
He sat up slowly, wincing as the movement further antagonized the relentless pounding at his temples and between his eyes.
"All right there, dear boy?" asked the wizard sitting at his side sotto voce.
Harry made a soft vague sound in response and accepted gratefully the cup of anti-headache potion that Albus was holding out to him with a smile. He sipped, savoring it slowly. It tasted wonderful, like cold, sweet, lilac-scented water from a deep mountain spring. The potion dulled the hammering in his head immediately—it had been invented by a Potions master, after all. He really couldn't imagine why Snape couldn't get all his potions to taste like this instead of the bog water he usually had to drink for medicine. Unless—his mouth crooked a little at the thought—Snape had some rather horrible headaches himself on a regular basis, didn't he?
The blurring finally cleared from his eyes, and he was relieved to note by the still-fresh candles in the infirmary that only a small amount of time had passed between his last memory and his waking—unlike other such instances in the recent past.
"Professor Snape?" he inquired, already reassured by Albus' serene smile that nothing untoward had happened while he'd been recovering.
"Resting comfortably in his own chambers," Albus replied cheerfully—and before he could ask, added, "as are the other teachers and students. Thanks to your quick actions and Severus', everyone survived this day unscathed." He exchanged Harry's empty cup with another, eyes crinkling. "Ah, one of Severus' more palatable inventions, I see. I'm almost sorry that I am not susceptible to such maladies myself."
Harry winced slightly. "I hope you never have to take Professor Snape's cure for a hangover, sir," he replied dryly, "since the Professor does not often indulge in drinking." The new cup in his hand, he noted with relief, held nothing more threatening than steaming hot tea.
"Ah, moldy cheese and rotten tomatoes, was it?" Albus asked, smiling.
Harry, who to his chagrin had more than a passing acquaintance with that particular potion as well, cringed and grinned at the same time. "Boiled with old sock," he confirmed wryly.
Ron, after his first encounter with the hangover potion, had given it—and Snape—several more inventive and colorful names. But Harry privately thought that it was actually quite bearable; the trick was that you had to take care to burn the taste buds off your tongue with some super-potent firewhiskey immediately before attempting to drink it. Like all magic, it was simply a matter of finding a process that fit need to context.
Albus nodded sagely. "Then I believe I shall stick to my nightcap of warm milk and honey. Wonderfully soothing concoction." He sent the empty cup off with a tiny flicker of magic while Harry, intrigued as ever, tried to trace the spell. It was very like the pure magics of the mind performed by the elves, but he couldn't detect the energy that Albus should have expended in the endeavor; instead, it was as if the castle had borne the burden, somehow folding space within itself to send the cup to the kitchens. Absolutely fascinating.
He took a sip of the tea, allowing the subtle aromas of jasmine and apricot to warm him from the inside out, buying himself time to phrase the question that he didn't quite know how to ask. Would the Headmaster be willing to give him an insight regarding the mystery that Snape had left him with that afternoon? He took another sip, tiredly preparing himself to leap once more into the fray.
But Albus, it seemed, had other ideas. The older wizard's voice broke through his musings—quieter now, distant, as if he were recalling a story he had heard long ago. "I wonder...Harry, if you have ever heard the history of the Lios Alfar and the Svart Alfar?"
The new note in Albus' voice tugged sharply at the fog of exhaustion around his mind. "The...history...sir?" Harry shook his head a little. "The elves I studied with had many legends of the Lios Alfar—'the First Children', the elves called them, but even they thought that the stories were just stories. And I have never heard of the Svart Alfar."
Albus shook his head slowly. "No indeed, Harry. The Lios Alfar did exist, as did the Svart Alfar. We know this because of the four great acts of magic they performed before they disappeared from our world forever."
"Disappeared?" Harry asked, bewildered by the turn of the conversation. There was, however, a focused gravity on the face of the Headmaster that made him carefully set down his tea on the bedside table and try to concentrate on the older wizard's words.
"Oh yes," Albus sighed a little. "It was a very long time ago, when mankind first learned to channel magic through wands and by doing so became the equal of the other magic-wielding races who lived in the world. But we were not content to live at peace with each other or with the other races, and soon wars for domination and power raged around the land. Finally, there came a time when Man became arrogant enough to challenge the Elder Races, and a terrible war was fought, which we ultimately lost. The two Elder Races, the Lios Alfar and the Svart Alfar, met to decide their course. The Svart Alfar argued for the destruction of all humankind. But the Lios Alfar prevailed over their kinsmen to allow Man to live, so that we may choose to learn from our mistakes.
Millennia passed, and humankind grew stronger and spread across the earth even as the Alfar declined. Inevitably, Man challenged the Alfar once again—but this time, the Elder Races lost. The leaders from each race met once more, and over many bitter disputes finally chose to leave the earth behind.
According to legend, the Lios bequeathed two gifts to those who remained. The first was an ancient talisman, a weapon against the darkest magicks. The other was a set of thirty-six harp strings, shaped out of the Lios' grief and beauty and left as a remembrance of their love for the earth. Those harp strings were placed into Bard Taliesin's harp, and with it he played melodies so beautiful, so sorrowing, that those who heard it wept tears of joy and loss, and yearned to hear that bittersweet voice again until the day they died..."
A faraway look flitted across Albus' face, and he trailed off for a moment. Harry stayed silent until the Headmaster began to speak again. "The Svart Alfar cursed humankind with two bitter curses, which they bound into the earth itself with their shed blood and the memories of their dead. The first curse was the curse of mortality, which marked all of mankind to death from the moment of their birth. The second, and perhaps more terrible curse, was one laid upon the unicorns, which man had slaughtered almost to extinction for their power in the war. The usage man devised for unicorn's blood you know, and was discovered only later. But the unicorn's heartcrystal is too a thing of great power, for anyone with even a shard can use it to channel his magic, and by doing so augment it far beyond what he is capable of alone. The Svart Alfars' curse left an indelible mark on the soul of any who thus used a unicorn's heartcrystal, dooming that soul to live forever as half-man, half-shadow, consumed by a despair so profound that it steals happiness from all within its influence. That is the price set by the Svart Alfar for the innocence and beauty lost at the death of a unicorn."
"The dementors," Harry murmured, and shuddered a little with an echo of the cold that had touched him that afternoon.
Albus nodded gravely. "That is how the dementors came into being. Men who have sought power, and ignored the price of that power..." He sighed, and his voice seemed weighed with a terrible sadness. "...or, perhaps, men who believed themselves to have no other choice."
After a moment of silence, Harry blinked and shook his head. He looked down at his fists hidden beneath the sheets, then up at Albus' knowing gaze. "Sir..." he began, and took a deep breath. "I have accepted Professor Snape's decision to no longer work with me. I would like to be assigned a new partner. Permanently."
Albus' attentive expression didn't change. "Do you distrust him...even now?"
Harry, unable to find a completely truthful response, looked away.
"Without him we would never have found the horcruxes," Albus said softly.
The diary. Slytherin's locket and ring. Hufflepuff's cup. Ravenclaw's pendant. Five destroyed, two remaining. He knew that, actually. He knew it extremely well— the myriad clues they had pieced together, the long, patient waiting, the sacrifices... And Snape—Snape...
"I think that it is he who does not trust me, sir," Harry finally replied.
He had almost expected a reproach. But Albus smiled and laid a hand upon his shoulder. "More than you think, my dear boy. More than he would allow himself to show."
Harry shook his head, surprised at the depth of frustration welling up within him. "He doesn't. He gives away nothing. He gives me...nothing. Even though I try! Even though I'm trying! I can't—I can't—!"
Albus didn't remove his hand. "You were born with the gift, Harry, of drawing people to you wherever you are. They know instinctively that they can look to you for help, for warmth on a cold day, for hope that they themselves lack the means to produce. Severus...was not. He was never given the opportunity to rely on strength other than his own. Do you see? It is a difficult thing to fall and trust another person to catch you."
"Then what should I do?" Harry asked.
Blue eyes twinkling, Albus suggested helpfully, "I have a box of Belgian chocolates stashed in my cupboard for emergencies..."
[[center:***]]
Harry looked around a bit guiltily as he took the stairs that led down into the dungeons, feeling remarkably like a student sneaking out of his dormitory after curfew. He shook his head, wondering sourly if he would ever be able to convince his subconscious that he was allowed to wander the castle now any time he wanted. Filch might glare at him, and mutter under his breath in a manner uncomfortably reminiscent of Kreacher about uppity former students thinking they could take over his territory, but he certainly couldn't make Harry polish all the armor in the castle anymore.
Albus, cheerfully disregarding Madame Pomfrey's gimlet glare, had managed to extract him from the infirmary after obtaining his solemn promise to rest. All three of them had known that he wouldn't—not immediately, anyway—but Albus had been quite insistent that he would sleep better in his own bed, and since there was really nothing wrong with him, Pomfrey had been forced to let him go. Harry shook his head again, resigned.
"Belgian chocolate..."
Thankfully, there was no one in the dungeon corridors at this late hour; the students were in bed, and even Filch and Mrs. Norris had taken to avoiding him these days. He rather thought it might have had something to do with the Confundus Charm he'd thrown at Mrs. Norris that night that she'd leapt out at him when he'd been on his way back to his rooms half-asleep. She'd driven Filch to distraction for weeks afterward, suddenly veering off the hunt to go chasing imaginary mice. He really couldn't be blamed for misjudging the strength of his spells after three days without sleep, could he?
Harry sighed, and shivered a little, almost surprised that his breath didn't mist in the air. The darkness of the dungeons was oppressive tonight. He barely stopped himself from casting a lighting spell, which, small as it was, would have drained his magical reserves even further and just might have triggered another nasty headache. He slumped a little when he finally reached Snape's door, feeling fatigue radiate from his every pore.
He raised a hand to knock and paused, unsettled by the unaccountably speeding rhythm of his heartbeat and the quivery, clouded quality of his thoughts. He was exhausted, physically and magically, but everyone was safe, weren't they? There was absolutely no reason for the persistent chill that sent strange tremors through him when he thought about the evening's conversation with the Headmaster. No reason...so why this bewildering melancholy that seemed to have wound its way around his heart like devil's snare around a crumbling marble statue in some abandoned sunless garden?
Harry shook his head impatiently, cursing himself. If he could only fix what he'd so blithely broken with one thoughtless prank. If only he could build again that hesitant truce he and Snape had slowly created between them after so many years of mistrust and resentment. It had seemed so easy that afternoon—only a few hours ago, he thought with a slight shock. They had read each other's mind as effortlessly as twin blades aligning to the same lodestone. Could they have done it without trust? Could they have survived without putting their lives in each other's hands?
There was a light touch, the slightest brush of magic against his hovering hand. He looked up, startled out of his reverie. Cool strands of dark green light from the wards on Snape's door swirled against his fingers and palm like some curious, half-blind creature from the depths of the Hogwarts lake. They curled up to his wrist, then retreated back to the main warding spell overlaid like the finest weave of green spidersilk over the rough wood of the door in a pattern as complex and seemingly impenetrable as the wizard who had created it. Harry moved the tips of his fingers down through the fabric of the spell, feeling the strands slide between his fingers smoothly. The door knocker had not awoken at his presence. Snape's wards were responding to him tonight with curiosity, not hostility, and that, as much as anything, gave him a hint of hope.
He took a deep breath and tapped on Snape's door, knowing even before the snake lifted its head and hissed a tired-sounding "Enter" that Snape would be awake. That much had been in his eyes...those frozen black eyes...which had stolen his breath away with the depths of their secrets even in his dreams....
Harry stepped into the room, and the door closed with a quiet click behind him. He looked around curiously. Before him was a large room decorated with austere simplicity. A fireplace dominated the center of the room; in front of it was a pair of armchairs and a matching black leather couch placed around a low blackwood table. At one end, a closed door guarded the entrance to Snape's private chambers; at the other, a forest of tall goldenoak shelves stood sentinel to a wide desk strewn with quills, scrolls, and books. The extinguished scones along the walls left the dungeon rooms in a tomb-like gloom, and the air swirled with the pungent ghosts of a hundred herbs whose potions had long ago expired into air. Harry scanned the room, picking out and discarding unmoving, insubstantial shapes in the darkness. He finally detected Snape's lean form in the dark bulk of the armchair in front of the fireplace, limned by a brief flicker from the embers as he leaned forward to pick up a glass in one hand.
Harry paused, unconsciously holding his breath, briefly mesmerized by the smooth motion of a black-clad arm, the dance of light as faceted crystal caught and magnified a golden spark, the glistening moisture on half-parted lips as the glass fell again, the arc of a pale throat as the man swallowed....
Because we are alone. He recalled Snape's words, and suddenly wondered how many times, while he talked, joked, laughed with his friends in the light-filled upper reaches of the castle, had Snape been in these entombed rooms, sat here like this, alone in the dark...?
He must have made some slight noise, because Snape acknowledged, "Potter," in a remote, inflectionless tone that seemed somehow bleaker without its usual sneering edge. Harry shivered, and wondered how it was that he had never before heard the music in Snape's voice. ...melodies so beautiful, so sorrowing, that those who heard it wept tears of joy and loss, and yearned to hear that bittersweet voice again until the day they died... Never heard, or never acknowledged? He truly couldn't say.
Harry blinked, abruptly realizing that he had stood staring at Snape's shadowed profile for far too long. He approached slowly, studying the fierce tension that gripped the long form in its stillness. Snape took another sip from his glass, and Harry closed his eyes briefly to wrench at his scattered thoughts. He moved to sit in the chair facing the Potions master, on the other side of the blackwood table that contained Snape's half-filled glass. Snape, limp hair falling curtain-like around his expressionless face, still had not looked at him.
Harry swallowed dryly, wishing desperately for a glass of whatever Snape was drinking. Not tea, surely. Something fiery enough to scorch the fog from his mind and lend him courage enough to speak his mind. He had known that talking to the other man would not be easy...but at least Snape had let him in, hadn't he? After weeks of only frosty silence, he was finally being given a chance.
"I—I wanted to thank you. For this afternoon," he stammered, and bit back a snarl of frustration. That was not what he had wanted to say. But at least Snape had turned to look at him now, with that familiar sneer that somehow seemed too thin here, too worn.
Snape turned away again after only a moment. "If you think yourself the only resident of the school who would raise a wand to defend it, Mr. Potter, you are, as usual, quite egotistically mistaken," he snapped.
"I...know," Harry replied quietly. He was seized with an urgent desire to return to the sunlit field of the afternoon, when they had communicated without any need for imprecise, obfuscating words. Nevertheless, he struggled after them like a wing-trimmed falcon limping after its prey. "Professor..." he tried again, and hesitated, not knowing how Snape would take the suggestion. "If you want someone to teach you the Patronus Charm..."
Snape barked a hollow, bitter laugh. "Potter. Your premises, while logical from your admittedly limited knowledge, are faulty in both generality and application. Not unlike your usual shoddy scholarship."
Harry froze, the insult slipping past unnoticed in the pain of the burgeoning hurtful thing clawing up his throat. His mind flew back to a memory he had not touched in a very long time—himself, facing Snape in the dungeon office—
"Protego!"
—images crowding into his unshielded mind—memories not his: a small boy cowering in the corner of the room while his father screamed into his mother's face, knowing even then that he must not make any noise when he cried; an undersized eleven year-old struggling awkwardly to climb unto a broom for the very first time, shame burning acid in his stomach at the derisive laughter of his classmates; a lanky teenager sitting in the darkness, aiming curses at stray flies, loneliness and loathing fighting a bloody, pyrrhic battle within; James Potter and Sirius Black laughing, taunting him, humiliating him for not having their shining charisma, for being slower and clumsier and uglier and too—bloody—alone—
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
Snape's lunge caught him by complete surprise. The glass of amber liquid shattered on the floor as Snape's long fingers dug into his shoulders and pressed against his windpipe.
"Pity, Potter?" Snape asked silkily, breath puffing warmly against his ear, nails digging painfully into Harry's back even through his cloak. "Pity for old greasy 'Snivellus'?"
The flare of anger surprised Harry with its strength; it was almost with relief that he allowed it to burn away the lingering melancholy. He shook Snape's hands off his shoulders roughly and took a step back to stare into Snape's glittering eyes.
"One would think that you'd know how to recognize pity by now, Professor," he snapped. A distant corner of his mind still capable of irony noted how easily the insults came to them both even when words failed them.
Snape crossed his arms and glared down at him, black cloak pooling like broken wings at his feet. "And I suppose the great Harry Potter has never looked down his nose at anyone, never felt such a base emotion as pity." Snape took a slow step forward, a tall shadow exuding a menace that prickled against the edge of Harry's shields. Harry ignored the warning this time and stood his ground as Snape drew closer, stopping near enough that he could feel the heat radiating from Snape's body. He shivered involuntarily as Snape leaned in close once more, exuding the faint, haunting scents of fresh, sharp cedar and sunless, secret caverns and the smoky essences of a hundred different potions. "No," Snape continued softly, "of course he hasn't. Perfect James Potter and his perfect son—the heroic Gryffindors who could do no wrong. Of course they would never laugh at anyone behind his back, not even at one foolish, pathetic Potions master they despise."
Harry's fingers clenched around the back of his armchair, but he forced himself to not look away. He could not pretend that he didn't remember those words, even after eight years. "I was a child," he said steadily. "What else would you have had me be?"
"And a child, Mr. Potter, you remain," Snape replied, sounding suddenly very tired. "I believe you know your way out." He turned with a flare of his cloak and walked away.
"I'm sorry," Harry said to the other man's back, not moving from his spot behind the armchair. "I'll say that I was wrong and I'm sorry, even though I wasn't the one who started it. Can't you accept that I had no intention of hurting you?"
"No—intention..." Snape repeated, turning slowly with a glazed, sleepy look in his eyes. "This has nothing to do with who 'started it', Potter. Not when you squandered the only real advantage you had against the Dark Lord on a prank. Oh, I assure you, the Headmaster and the entire school was most diverted. No intention—of course. Your father would have been proud—" He cut himself off, lips pulling back in a sneer.
Harry had moved before he registered movement, feeling only the white-hot frustration, the confusion, the overwhelming need to pound the pain he felt into Snape's mask of indifference until it shattered, until they tore at each other with bared teeth and claws so that truth poured from their wounds like blood. "You petty, vindictive bastard," he shouted, his fists clutching bunches of Snape's robes. "My father has been dead for twenty years—twenty years! Wasn't seven years of humiliating me in your classes good enough for you? Wasn't it revenge enough? Or do you want to curse me with formidilosus, so that I'll tremble with fear every time you walk past, or excorio, to flay the skin from my flesh? Or would you rather try aduro, lacer, perseco?"
"Don't tempt me," Snape hissed warningly, lips curling into a snarl, dark eyes blazing.
Harry's voice dropped down to a whisper, the growling predator in him coming to the fore in response to the menacing hunter he had aroused in the other man. "Or would you prefer to use the Cruciatus, and watch me writhe here on the floor until I screamed and begged you for mercy? Would you feel pleasure at my pain? Would you be able to conjure a Patronus afterwards?"
Snape moved so fast that Harry barely had time to draw a breath before he was slammed against the wall so hard that for a second he saw spots in front of his eyes. "Shut up!" Snape was screaming himself. "Shut up. Shut up!"
Harry closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the adrenaline dissipating with a rush and leaving him light-headed and sore. His father had bullied the young Severus Snape without mercy and without concern for another person's suffering. His father had laughed while tormenting someone who had never had the strength of friends to lean on. His father had been a loyal friend to Remus, to Sirius, to Pettigrew, to countless others. His father had died protecting his mother and himself. His father had gambled those lives on the friendship of Peter Pettigrew. His father's ghost had defended him against Voldemort. His father had been one of the reasons a young Slytherin had joined the Death Eaters.
He tilted his head, looked up slowly into Snape's wild eyes. "Do you think it's possible for any person to remain innocent after casting the Avada Kedavra? Or to snuff the life out of someone's mind like a candle?" he asked softly. "My father didn't live in a cupboard for the first eleven years of his life, Professor. Do you think I don't have my ghosts?"
Snape loosed him abruptly and took a step back. "There are far, far worse things."
Harry followed. "I have never been my father. Won't you see that?"
Snape turned away. "What do you want from me, Potter?"
His hand lifted and fell, shifting shadows helplessly. "To...not hate me so much...." he replied softly.
Snape made a harsh, derisive sound like a crow's cawing laughter. "Oh, I assure you, Mr. Potter, I have always loathed you, and I always will," he sneered.
"Then...let it be as it was before," Harry replied tiredly. "Working together."
Snape looked back at him, lips twisted unpleasantly. "A Potter asking a Snape for help? What, I wonder, would your eminent grandfather have said to that?"
Harry sighed, too drained even for anger. "It's so much easier for you to believe that everyone hates you and that you reciprocate that feeling, isn't it? And you make it so simple for them and yourself." He ran his hand across the top of the armchair absently, staring at Snape's hands digging ferociously into the back of his own chair. "And yes, I hated you. Hated you for being an unfair bastard who only saw my faults and then pointed them out for everyone to laugh at. Who mocked all of us for our failures. Who I blamed for Sirius' death for so long that I could almost convince myself of it...."
"Sirius," Snape hissed, and Harry looked up sharply.
"Yes, Sirius," he repeated, meeting the dark blaze in Snape's eyes squarely. "Sirius, the only father I knew for however short a time. Everyone offered me comfort as if I were some broken thing, but you never did. You didn't care. You made it so easy for me to hate you—but that's what you wanted, wasn't it? Hate—revenge—I could live on that, when I couldn't live on grief." Harry's fingers stilled on the armchair. His voice was soft but steady as he continued, "But I'm not sixteen anymore, Professor. I can accept that you've protected me, and that you've saved my life. And I can accept that you hate me too. But in spite of that you sometimes see so far into me that you frighten me. I want to trust you—I've been wrong so many times before. I want you to trust me. And you were right about my squandering the advantage of surprise, and I should have been more careful. But I think it would be even more to our advantage if you and I could work together again—and besides, if Voldemort ever learned of it, he'd probably die from a heart attack on the spot, so what do you say?" Harry closed his mouth with an almost audible click, uncomfortably aware that in a few more moments Snape would likely accuse him of being soused with Babbling Beverage.
Snape slowly moved to sit in his chair, all the while staring at him with a gaze as hypnotizing as a python's. "And why, Mr. Potter, would I want to work with an insolent, foolhardy brat with such total disregard for his own life that he would go charging at an army of dementors, pray tell?" Snape asked poisonously.
Harry copied Snape's movements and smiled a falcon's thin predatory smile before he answered, "Because no one else knows that instead of going back into the castle when you had the chance, you came back to face those dementors with me. You wouldn't want to set an example like that for your Slytherins, would you? Just imagine the sort of precedent that would establish."
Harry raised an eyebrow as Snape spluttered with rage and nonchalantly levitated two glasses from Snape's cabinet, filling both with golden liquid from Snape's bottle. The effort of landing the glasses on the blackwood table without spilling anything sent one searing stab of pain through his head from one temple to the other, but he kept smiling impudently, bluffing for all he was worth.
Snape took his glass and sipped. "Don't think you can win this battle so easily, Potter." Snape's voice was as scornful as ever, but the slight trembling in his hand betrayed an exhaustion that mirrored Harry's.
Harry met the Potions master's eyes over the top of his glass. "Of course," he smirked in a passable imitation of Snape's own sardonic expression. He took a sip of his drink. A smooth blend of smoky summer rain, hot midnight embers, and exotic bittersweet herbs swirled about his tongue and burned a trail down his throat. Warmth whispered insidiously through his body as he watched the other man silently take another drink from his own glass, hard tension leaving the lanky body in degrees as it slowly relaxed into the embrace of his armchair.
The alcohol had lent Harry's mind a much-appreciated fuzzy warmth when Snape spoke again. "Don't count on that heart attack, Potter," he advised quite solemnly. "He's probably sliced it out of his chest and hid it in an Unbreakable jar somewhere."
Harry snorted and raised his empty glass, pretended to gaze into it thoughtfully. "One Dark Lord's heart. Black. Salted."
"Twenty galleons," Snape added.
"What!" Harry protested, thumping his glass down on the table. "That's a rip-off! It'll ruin all your potions, not to mention my dinner!" Then he slumped right off the armchair onto the floor and howled.
He'd been rolling on the floor for a good ten minutes with tears streaming down his face and his arms around his stomach when Snape, finally exasperated with him, took out his wand and cast a Calming Charm on him.
"Oh, thanks for that," Harry gasped, clambering to his feet. Unfortunately, the spell had not affected the state of his inebriation, and he stumbled forward, catching himself on the arms of Snape's armchair with effort. Merlin only knew what Snape would do to him if he had managed to fall onto him.
"Erm." He suddenly flashed back to the feel of the hard heat of Snape's body behind him on the broom that morning, and flushed hotly. Snape never initiated physical contact with anyone unless it was an absolute necessity. Absurdly grateful for the uncertain light of the fire, he carefully pushed himself upright and fumbled his way back to his chair. "Sorry 'bout that."
"You've always been a troublesome brat," Snape murmured, without rancor this time, as Harry refilled both their glasses with one last gargantuan effort. A soft, unfocused look had entered his eyes, making them seem so depthless that Harry could almost imagine himself following them down into the hidden corridors of Snape's mind...until... Until what? Harry blinked and looked away. What welcome could he ever find there?
Shaking away the strange, inexplicably heated, alcohol-muddled thoughts, Harry put on a thin smile. "I'm sure Riddle agrees with you. It's so invigorating to know that I can make someone's day hell just by being alive."
"Blood comes through once more," Snape rejoined sardonically.
An indeterminate amount of time later, long after the last of his drink had smoothed its way down his throat, Harry roused from his reverie, reluctantly aware of the fact that he needed to return to his own rooms for some much-needed sleep before he attempted to teach his classes in the morning.
He stood, and glanced over at Snape. The Potions master was asleep in his armchair, dark hair falling into his face, which was furrowed even now with whatever dreams plagued his sleep. In the flickering light of the last embers from the fireplace, Snape's hand with its slender, elegant fingers seemed oddly vulnerable as it lay on the curled tightly around the glass on the table—too motionless, as if had long ago learned to resign itself to stillness in the face of its inability to reach for what it wanted.
No, Harry corrected himself. Not inability. Self-denial, perhaps, or pride, or...fear.
Harry took a step forward and stopped, hesitating. Snape, too, needed to sleep in a real bed tonight. But he somehow doubted that the professor would appreciate being levitated about like a sack of potatoes. He needed to go, he knew it, but still he stood rooted, wrestling silently with himself.
He couldn't afford to risk his second chance with some foolish gesture that Snape would never accept or believe. If he left now, they could start again in the morning. They could learn how to rebuild the trust that grown slowly between them during the last year.
If he could walk out the door. If he could leave that proud, difficult man to hide his loneliness with such bleak desperation alone in his darkness. If he could ignore the sweet, knife-edged ache constricting so tightly within his chest that he almost couldn't breathe....
Harry closed his eyes for a long moment. Biting his lip, he slowly approached the slumbering professor once more. He kneeled in front of Snape's chair and looked up quietly for a long moment. Snape didn't stir. Harry reached out and unwrapped the long fingers gently from their death grip on the empty glass. Then, with a softly whispered word, he cast a warming spell upon Snape's cloak, set to dissipate when he awakened.
He stood and stepped back. It was all that he could do—all that the other man would permit him to do. Damn his irascible stubbornness anyway. Then Harry smiled. How could he imagine the man any other way? He drew a hand across his eyes. "Good night...Professor..." he whispered, and left to fulfill that promise to rest.
A last thought before he fell asleep made him chuckle softly, though it came out rough-hewn at the edges—maybe that hangover potion will finally stop tasting like troll piss. Ron would be ecstatic.
[[center:***]]
He dreamed that night of an enormous harp, strung with harpstrings that gleamed like strands of starlight in the semi-darkness. He walked to it, and traced his fingers down its silver-chased, intricately carved frame, scattered with rubies like tiny scarlet suns. He brushed against the taut strings, closing his eyes as golden, sorrowing notes soared from the quivering strings, wordless, lovely, ethereal.
"Taliesin's harp," Harry murmured wonderingly. And then as the shapeless melodies intertwined into a single tapestry of sound, he was swept away into darkness, into a moonlit clearing where the Lios Alfar, fairest children of the woods, wove tears and starlight into the thirty-six strings of Taliesin's harp as they danced their last dance in the bittersweet world they had loved.
Gradually Harry became aware of other shapes slipping through the darkness of the forest to join him: a fairy flying on a faint trail of moondust, a great snowy owl with unblinking golden eyes, a salamander glowing with muted fire, creatures that he had no names for, creatures that no longer existed... All of them watched the Lios in silence, stood witness as the First Children danced like graceful, ethereal flames of silver and gold and sang their heartbroken, joyful farewell to the night.
"How can they make it be so beautiful...?" Harry whispered, the pain of loss—both his and that of the Lios—trickling liquid down his cheeks.
"How is it that joy can be distilled from sorrow, and sorrow from joy?" the blazingly white creature beside him replied.
"Is it magic?" Harry asked.
The unicorn gazed back at him out of ancient eyes of deep sapphire. "What is magic, Harry Potter?"