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“Hecate’s paps, boy, have you forgotten how to dress yourself?”
Harry inched into the room. “Sorry. Thought you weren’t here.” He held up his clothes, wadded in one hand. “They’re dirty. I’m clean. I figured I’d sneak back up to my rooms and put on something else. Sorry for … er …” Embarrassed and amused, he indicated his bare body.
Snape got up and moved toward him; Harry swallowed and stood straighter. Don’t throw your shoulders back or take a deep breath, you twit, he’s not thinking of buying you.
“S-sir?” he managed to squeak out as Snape bent to examine his chest. Fuck. I can feel my nipples getting hard. Please don’t let him notice. Please don’t let anything else get hard. Please…
“The bath has effected some improvement already,” Snape murmured.
“Oh,” Harry said. “Good.”
Snape glanced up at him. “Cold, Potter?”
Harry felt goose bumps rise all over his body. “Prick,” he muttered.
Snape smirked and strode back to his desk.
“You’ll need to drink this amount every 24 hours for the next five days,” Snape said, holding out a small phial. “Don’t spill it. It takes a great deal of time and some rather costly ingredients to make.”
Harry took the bottle, smiled at Snape, and sat down on the edge of Snape’s desk, setting his ball of dirty laundry carefully at his side. “Thanks. Don’t mind if I do.”
Snape snorted.
“Cheers.” Harry unstoppered the phial, lifted it and downed the thick pale fluid. Warm, it tasted of nothing.
“What’s that?” Snape said.
Harry looked down as the potions master knelt gracefully to peer at the inside of his left calf. Harry quickly adjusted the towel.
“Oh. Dragon burn. Got it in Germany last year.” He reached down to rub the palm-sized patch of scar tissue self-consciously, and Snape batted his hand out of the way with an impatient sound deep in his throat.
God. Harry gulped, setting the empty phial on the side table. If he’s going to start touching me there, he damn’ well better not stop.
Snape looked up at him. “There are potions for this, you realize.”
Harry nodded. “I know. They’re pretty rare, though. Believe me, I asked.”
Snape stood. “I keep it in my private stock.” His body was stiff, seeming taller than usual as he loomed over Harry.
Harry smiled. He’d put his foot in something here, he suspected, but he wasn’t sure what. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
“But you didn’t think to ask me for help.” It was a condemnation rather than a question.
Harry felt the smile melt off his face. “I thought of it.”
Snape crossed his arms. “Too proud to ask for help from your evil old potions teacher?”
Harry shrugged at Snape’s half-accurate deduction. “I figured you’d say no.”
Snape scowled thunderously. “You what?”
With the certainty he was only digging himself in deeper, Harry tried to keep his tone light.
“Well, you know. You hate me. And after all, it was just a burn. So I thought you would … just …”
So swiftly Harry shivered, Snape blanched, lips thinning in the sort of anger Harry remembered all too well from their occlumency lessons. The rich voice shriveled into a shroudlike whisper.
“You thought I would refuse.”
Harry’s voice stuck in his throat. He could only stare back as Snape’s dark eyes burned into him.
“You thought I would enjoy telling you no. That I would laugh at you,” Snape whispered. “Mock you. Leave you to suffer. Because that is what Death Eaters do.”
Oh God. Harry felt his blood drain into his feet as he understood, in a cold sickening flash, how Snape had interpreted his revelation.
“No,” he exclaimed, jumping up from the desk. “Fuck no! That’s not it at all.” He wanted to move closer, but Snape’s anger held him back like a wall of flame. “It’s just a scar. I didn’t … it’s not because I thought you’d be cruel. It was because …” He stumbled, unable to find the words past the anger Snape radiated.
“Because I’ve always hated you, and you thought I would enjoy your pain,” Snape hissed, fingers clenched bloodless on his own elbows.
“Because you’ve never coddled me,” Harry said in a small voice, “and I thought you’d tell me to grow up and take it like a man.”
He grabbed his clothes and edged past the silent potions master to the door. One hand on the handle, he stopped and half-turned. Snape stood rigid, staring at the spot where Harry had been sitting.
Harry said, “If I really believed you would enjoy seeing me suffer, do you honestly think I would have come to you two days ago to ask you to save my life?”
He waited; he wasn’t about to storm out of there and let Snape get away with not answering, even if his answer was no more than the silence of resentful acceptance.
It occurred to him as he waited that, for all the mockery Snape cast his way over the melodrama that was his life, he himself was more dramatic than Harry could ever dream of being. Snape was a study in extremes: cold, stone-faced silences and shrieking, hex-hurling, glass-flinging rages, childish sulks and brilliant insights, pointless malice and heart-stopping courage.
Snape closed his eyes and exhaled a shaky breath. His shoulders rose, then relaxed.
“Potter…” His tone was an apology. “I…”
“No,” Harry said, pinching his lips together to prevent a smile. “Don’t say you’re sorry, sir. You’ll only make me pay for it later.”
A snort of laughter, and Snape turned to look at him.
“I am sorry,” he said, and Harry’s heart flip-flopped. “Gratis. Don’t hold your breath expecting to ever hear it again.”
Harry grinned. “Yes sir. Accepted.” He looked down at the bundle of clothes in his hand, realized he was tired and fatally hungry. “I’d … uh … I should go get dressed.”
He rejoiced to hear the snarky amusement back in Snape’s voice.
“Yes, I think you should indeed. It would be a ridiculous waste of effort for me to cure you of deglubarolente only to have you take a chill and expire on my office floor.”
Harry opened the door. “However would you explain that to Dumbledore? Not that my corpse on your floor would necessarily surprise him.”
Snape waved him away. “Go put some clothes on.” He turned back to his desk. “Be here tomorrow at 9 a.m.”
