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"It's going to be fine," said Neville Longbottom in a soothing voice.

"It's going to be a disaster."

Harry Potter caught himself running his hand through his hair, mussing it, after he'd spent fifteen minutes trying to make it look respectable. The fact that Neville obviously felt like he needed to calm Harry down just made Harry more anxious. He wondered how Neville had felt on his first day at the front of a classroom at Hogwarts. The Neville whom Harry had known as a student would have been petrified, but it was hard to associate the boy who couldn't control his broom with the man who looked so comfortable and dignified in his teaching robes, standing now at Harry's side and regarding him with something like pity.

To be fair, when Professor Longbottom had started teaching at Hogwarts, he hadn't been the most famous wizard in the world, even if he'd had a bit of celebrity for his role in Voldemort's defeat. Whereas everyone was going to be paying attention to Harry Potter: students, teachers, staff, parents, the Ministry of Magic, The Daily Prophet, and especially the headmistress who had convinced Harry to take the post. What had she been thinking when she asked him to teach Potions? And what had he been thinking when he said yes?

Harry sighed softly. This growing panic had come out of nowhere. He had been quite happy the evening before, sitting in the Great Hall for the first time at the long front table, smiling at the cheers when McGonagall had introduced him as the new Potions master. Returning to Hogwarts felt like coming home; even after five years of living at Number 12, Grimmauld Place, first with Ron as a housemate, then alone after Ron and Hermione's wedding, Harry still thought of it as Sirius's house.

Since Neville had become the head of Gryffindor, one of the youngest Heads of House in Hogwarts history, Harry had been given an office and bedroom at the top of the North Tower in the rooms that had been occupied by Professor Trelawney while Harry was a student. It would have been a long walk through the castle down to the dungeons and the Potions classroom had Harry not discovered a secret staircase behind the fireplace. Without the oppressive heat of the fire that Trelawney had kept burning at all times, the rooms were quite pleasant, since they were very private and afforded a spectacular view of the castle grounds.

So why was he nervous about facing a room of first-years? He'd addressed the Wizengamot, the Department of Magical Games and Sports, even the Hogwarts Board of Governors. How silly that stepping into a classroom and filling students with enthusiasm about Potions should seem like an insurmountable task. While it was true that he only had been a passable Potions student before he discovered the Half-Blood Prince's notes, he remembered everything he had learned in that classroom in far more detail than he recalled anything from Charms or Transfiguration. It was absurd to think that he might still have something to prove to Severus Snape; the man had been dead for more than half a decade.

Which did not explain why Harry's lecture notes made reference to bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses and putting a stopper in death. Snape had been wrong about that last, anyway. When Voldemort had decided to murder Snape, there had been nothing that Snape -- or Harry -- could do to save him.

"Start them off doing something fun instead of talking," suggested Neville. "Those are always the best classes, anyway. Remember Lockhart with the pixies?"

Harry gaped at Neville in astonishment. If Neville could recall that class as fun, he had changed even more than Harry had guessed. "I suppose I could start off with the Forgetfulness Potion -- then, if everything's a disaster, I can tell them all to drink it," he sighed.

Neville laughed and Harry realized his friend thought he was joking. He smiled sheepishly. Neville clapped him on the shoulder. "Look, just pretend you're back with Dumbledore's Army. You were brilliant then. When I told McGonagall --"

"You told the headmistress?" Harry asked, turning away from the unhelpful mirror.

"Well, yeah, I knew you were a little --" He cleared his throat before continuing. "At loose ends," he finished diplomatically.

Harry had been drifting, he supposed, since Auror training hadn't held the same appeal once he'd spent a year on the run, in training to defeat the Dark Lord. "So if I bollix this up --"

"Don't say 'bollix'," Neville put in quickly, "Or 'bloody' or anything you wouldn't say in front of the kids. If you start doing it in private, you'll be less tempted to blurt something out in front of your classes. And believe me, you'll want to." He smiled reassuringly. "And you won't mess up. As long as they know more coming out than they did going in, you're a success. Look at it this way, they've got to learn more under you than we did under Snape."

"I learned a lot from Snape," Harry replied, feeling oddly defensive.

"Well, at least you won't terrify them so much they bungle things," amended Neville.

Standing outside his dungeon classroom, Harry wondered how Snape had done it -- morning after morning, managing to look menacing, as though he could fend off dragons or dunderheads with his wand tied behind his back and still pound potions instructions into young skulls.

And by the end of the day, Harry was just wondering how Snape had survived combined Slytherin and Gryffindor classes. It was all he could do to trudge up the stairs to his tower quarters. Even with the hidden staircase, Harry was cursing the lack of Apparition and thinking perhaps he could stash a broom back here to get up and down the endless stone steps.

He had just flung himself into an armchair and Summoned a pouf when a knock sounded at the door. With a groan, he got up to answer it. He was half expecting Neville, come to see how he'd made out.

"Headmistress!"

"Minerva," she insisted, holding out a bottle of brandy. "Please. On my first day of teaching, I nearly turned a first year into a teaspoon. And not by accident. Only the idea of facing my old Transfiguration teacher stayed my hand."

Harry had stepped aside, inviting her in. "Dumbledore?" he guessed, taking the bottle and finding two glasses while she settled in the armchair. He poured out two measures of the brandy before sitting across from her on the settee. She nodded. "You still miss him, don't you?"

"Every day." They clinked glasses lightly in an unspoken toast. "Though there are days I want to kill him myself for what he put dear Severus through."

"Dear Severus?" Harry said, trying to reconcile the stern, bitter man with anyone's dear.

She smiled around her glass. "He doesn't like it when I call him that," she admitted.

Harry had only had a sip of the brandy, and he was not nearly tired enough to miss the present tense. "He...doesn't?" he asked, perhaps more intently than he realized.

Her smile was wistful. "His portrait, I meant."

Swallowing the disappointment that Harry hadn't been aware of until the bitterness of it filled his mouth, he sat back on the settee. "I didn't know Snape had a portrait."

McGonagall was nodding. "A small one, in my office."

"I'd like to see it sometime. I could use his advice, now that I'm teaching Potions."

He could feel McGonagall's eyes on him. "Severus wasn't often someone to whom you turned for advice when you were a student."

"I didn't really know him when I was a student. Did you?" Harry hadn't meant to get defensive, but he could hear the frustration in his own voice. "When I told you he'd murdered Dumbledore, you believed me."

He glanced up at McGonagall, expecting her to be taken aback at his tone, but she only looked regretful. "You're right, Mr. Potter. I didn't really know him, though he was a colleague for many years whom I also considered a friend. If I had known..." She paused to clear her throat.

"Not Mr. Potter," Harry reminded her when she did not continue. "You can't expect me to call you by your given name if you're going to call me that."

"Quite right, Harry." A faint smile crossed her face.

"Then you'll let me talk to Snape's portrait?"

The smile vanished. "You know how Severus can be," McGonagall said, glancing away evasively. "He may have been Dumbledore's man, but he's still -- difficult."

"If I'm supposed to be able to manage a classroom of sullen third years, I think I can manage a cranky portrait." He paused, wondering what Snape might have said about him to McGonagall. "Does he know I'm here? And that I'm teaching Potions?"

"He knows."

Harry had the impression that McGonagall was trying not to smile. "He told you that it was a mistake," he guessed.

"Not precisely." McGonagall pursed her lips. "I do think it would be a mistake for me to allow you to speak to Severus's portrait without his permission. But I suspect that he would tell you what I am about to tell you, which is that you have no need of instruction about how to be an effective teacher. What you need is more experience, and a good night's rest." With a brisk nod, she stood up. "I've taken up too much of your evening already."

"I'm glad you did. I think the basilisk might have been less intimidating than a roomful of Ravenclaws rolling their eyes at me."

As she handed him back the empty glass, McGonagall smiled again. "You were always resourceful as a student. I've no doubt that you'll find creative ways to overcome any obstacles you might face as a teacher." She stepped toward the door. "Besides, you saved Hogwarts. I believe the castle itself will want to help you succeed."

It was a daunting prospect. As Harry settled into his bed that night, he became aware, as he'd only ever done before on a broom when he'd felt the currents swirling about him like living things, of the stones around him. Magic was a funny thing, he mused, sleepily, thinking almost that he could hear the echoes through the stone of children and students, ghosts and perhaps a headmaster or two. If the castle did indeed want him to succeed it was no more than Harry wanted -- to prove that he had a legacy beyond violence and destruction.

If he'd been fully awake, he might have felt foolish. As it was, his eyes drifted closed and he found himself saying, very softly, "Help."

His second day of teaching was, if anything, worse than his first. He suspected his O.W.L. class was humoring him and his N.E.W.T. students already knew more about potions than anyone but the Half-Blood Prince. Once he'd survived the evening meal in the Great Hall, all he could think of was that long trudge up the stairs back to his room. Perhaps he could transfigure some bathwater into brandy.

Before he reached the tower stairs, however, he heard Peeves' taunting voice. "Ickle firstie far from home, hasn't paid the tax."

"I-I thought my dorm was this way," a quavering voice said. Harry wheeled toward the voices just as the voice went on. "Say, aren't you a ghost?"

Harry groaned and hastened his steps.

"Ghost!" A rush of wind blew down the corridor just as Harry came up behind the student. "Never have I been so insulted! Well, actually I have, but not since them Weasleys was about."

"Peeves," Harry called out, motioning for the first year -- a girl whom Harry thought he remembered as being sorted into Hufflepuff -- to get behind him.

"Help," she said, her face white.

"Did you hear what this ickle Puff firstie called me?" Peeves demanded as though he had every right to be the injured party.

"Pick on someone your own size," Harry gritted out, eyeing the spinning bowler hat with some concern. To the student he said, "Get back to your dorm." He gestured with his wand and she took off.

"Ain't no one my size, Potty," Peeves cackled. Harry smelled the first dung bomb before it hit, banishing it just as the next one whizzed out of the bowler. He chased Peeves, deflecting dung bombs, down two corridors and up a flight of stairs. Biting off an expletive Neville would not approve of, Harry felt the staircase begin to shift. He lost sight of Peeves by the time the staircase came to a halt.

It took a moment to get his bearings, but he realized with a start that he was facing the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, just across from the Room of Requirement. There was no sign from here of the damage caused by the Fiendfyre that had raged within. Harry wondered if the castle had repaired it or had just sealed off the room entirely.

That thought brought to mind McGonagall's assertion that the castle itself wanted him to succeed. Could it have led him here?

If so, what did the castle think he required?

A real Potions master, Harry thought ruefully, conjuring up the image of Snape -- not the last horrible sight of the dying man, but the way he'd looked when Harry had been as young as that first year he'd just sent scurrying back to her dorm. He considered asking the room, if it was still active, to show him that portrait that the headmistress refused to show him. Then, with a grin, he got a better idea.

He walked back and forth in front of the stone wall three times. "I need to see the Half-Blood Prince's copy of Advanced Potion Making," he chanted with each pass.

The door appeared, just as it always had for him when he'd called Dumbledore's Army to secret meetings here. He stepped inside nervously, hoping the Room of Requirement bore him no ill will for the curse that had sent the fiery conflagration through it when he had last been inside.

If the Fiendfyre had done any permanent damage, Harry could see no evidence of it now. The Room had transformed itself not into the great cluttered space where he had hidden his Potions book, but into a laboratory at least twice the size of the one where he taught in the Dungeons. Flasks and beakers bubbled on a table atop fires that had no apparent source. A large cauldron in the center of the room gave off sweet-smelling steam. Along one wall, an enormous open pantry held dozens of jars of ingredients.

Standing at a desk near the back, holding what looked like an animal's tail in one hand and a wand in the other, stood Severus Snape. He did not look quite as young and stringy-haired as when Harry had first met him, but neither did he look as old and ghastly as when Voldemort had finished with him. Harry wondered whether the Room had picked up on his own unspoken wish to see Snape's portrait, after all.

Even though he knew this couldn't be real -- it was more like looking into the Mirror of Erised than encountering a living, breathing Severus Snape -- Harry had rarely been so happy to see anyone in his life.

Snape's eyes widened. He set down whatever unpleasant ingredient he had been holding and regarded Harry with an expression that bordered on outrage. "What are you doing here?" he barked.

The Room had certainly got Snape's personality right. Harry smiled in spite of himself. "I might ask you the same question. I only wanted to see your Potions book."

For a moment Snape looked puzzled, then his expression turned triumphant. "You must mean the purloined textbook that allowed you to learn my innovations and impress Slughorn with your second-hand skills," he accused. "I'm afraid I have bad news, Potter. That book was destroyed when you provoked Crabbe into using Fiendfyre."

"Provoked!" Harry objected, growing angry in spite of himself, then willing himself to calm down. This wasn't really Snape. It was only the Room of Requirement's attempt to recreate what Harry had expected. If the book was gone, that explained why Snape was here; unable to provide the Half-Blood Prince's textbook, the room had instead provided the Half-Blood Prince.

Maybe the Room did bear him some ill will for the Fiendfyre.

"Listen," Harry began again. "I don't know how much you know about what's happening at Hogwarts..."

"If you are asking whether I am aware that the Headmistress has apparently lost her mind and appointed you to teach Potions, the answer is yes."

Harry wondered whether it was his own imaginary version of Snape or Hogwarts Castle itself that thought McGonagall might have lost her mind. He swallowed. "I came here looking for your help," he said, trying not to sound as desperate as he felt.

Snape sneered as though he smelled something bad in one of the cauldrons. "I stopped caring about whether you needed my help a long time ago," he announced, turning back to the strip of fur that could either have been a tail or a rather furry snake.

Harry's outrage blossomed. The Room couldn't just lead him in here then not give him what he needed, not when the entire illusion was so perfect. "Look --"

"You look, Potter, you will never be as good at Potions as I am, nor even as good as Slughorn, though that isn't saying much, so you might as well pack up your little brooms and fly off to play Lord Bountiful someplace else," Snape replied, glancing at him over the desk, making a little shooing motion with one hand.

"Lord --" Harry felt as though he had steam coming out of his ears, though he hadn't taken any Pepperup potion. "I'm trying to ask for your help," he bellowed, realizing raising his voice was probably not the best way to get his request across. Tamping down on his temper -- and really, why was Snape, even in this artificial form, making him so angry? -- Harry gripped the wide desk. "I know I'll never be as good at Potions as you or Slughorn. I just want to not be as horrible as I am now."

Snape's gaze narrowed at him, as though he was trying not to look like he was paying Harry the slightest bit of notice. "You should have thought of that before you came back here to teach," Snape pointed out, in what, for Snape, was probably a reasonable tone of voice, Harry felt his anger rising again. Only this time it was directed at himself.

"Oh God, what's the use? Must be a symptom of how horrible I am that I'm asking advice from a figment." He pushed off the desk and started striding toward the door of the Room of Requirement.

"What are you talking about?" Snape called out, obviously too curious to let Harry make his dramatic exit. The Room had even got that right.

Harry waved his hand around the room, currently stuffed to the rafters with everything needed to make potions, including one very realistic master. "You're a figment, a creation of the Room of Requirement," he explained, taking a measure of savage joy in explaining. Snape might not have been interested in cooperating with him, but Harry didn't have to accept it nicely. He jerked his head toward the door. "I asked for your book to help me out. McGonagall gave me this load of rubbish that the castle wanted to help me --"

Amusement replaced the curiosity on Snape's expression. "And you believed her?"

Harry rolled his eyes. The castle had mocked him twice now -- once by luring him in here and again by having Snape point out that Harry had been duped. "Well, if you weren't such a stubborn figment, it might have worked."

Snape straightened, frowning. "Potter, I am no more a figment than you are."

"Right," Harry said sarcastically. "You're real, and all of this is real -- " He gestured around at the elaborate Potions laboratory. "And you could walk down to dinner in the Great Hall any time you wanted, or teach Potions if you wanted, for that matter."

"Why would I want to waste any more time surrounded by irritating, ungrateful students? Why do you want to teach them?"

"I like teaching." Harry wished he didn't sound so defensive, particularly now that he knew this particular version of Snape had been deluded about what he was. Harry supposed it wouldn't have made sense for the Room of Requirement to create a Snape who knew that he was dead outside these walls; for one thing, it would probably make Snape even crankier than he was already, and for another, it wouldn't be Snape as Harry remembered him if Snape had philosophical thoughts about his own unreality.

Snape's sneer looked real enough. "You like teaching, so you thought that giving students a mediocre education in Potions would be an appropriate career choice?" he demanded.

"Potions wouldn't have been my first choice, but Defense Against the Dark Arts wasn't available." McGonagall had persuaded Elphias Doge to take the post several years previously, and while Neville didn't think he was the best teacher ever to hold the position, Doge was nonetheless a clear improvement on Gilderoy Lockhart. "You know that I taught my friends how to defend themselves against the Death Eaters while Umbridge was here. I think I was pretty good at it. But the N.E.W.T.-level students probably know more about Potions than I do."

"Unquestionably," Snape agreed, though there was less venom in his voice than before. "What do you have them working on now?"

"We've been reviewing the Draught of Peace," Harry said, blushing because he'd been an utter failure at producing that potion in Snape's class. "I thought about starting Felix Felicis --"

"Have you gone mad?" Snape interrupted. "You can't put Felix Felicis in the hands of students. It's more dangerous than Amortentia -- it's invariably employed to help the user lose his virginity."

"I won a flask of Felix Felicis from Slughorn when I was a student, but I managed to keep my virginity for years," Harry said before he stopped to think. Snape's eyebrows shot up, then he smirked. "My point is, students can learn to be responsible." He blushed again, thinking of the Marauder's Map and the Invisibility Cloak safely hidden away in his room in the tower. "Why, what did you teach the N.E.W.T.-level students?"

Snape's expression darkened. "Why would you want the opinion of a figment?"

Harry was sorry he'd ever told Snape that he wasn't real. "I was angry when I said that. Of course I want your opinion."

Snape rattled off a list of potions, then scowled when Harry made him repeat it so he could copy them down. "Did you bother to do an iota of research before you leaped into this position?" grumbled Snape as Harry's borrowed quill raced over the parchment.

"Um --" Harry said, glancing over the desk.

"I thought so," said Snape, crossing his arms over his chest, dragging the ends of his robes across one edge of the desk. The movement, so familiar from endless Potions classes, sparked something else, not a memory, but for a moment, Harry couldn't place it. Then he realized that flash of raised skin along Snape's neck has not been there before, scars that had healed but, in a component of magic Harry had never understood, could not be eradicated.

The Room of Requirement had thought of everything. Or the castle had, he supposed, though Harry didn't know enough about magical theory to ascertain how all this worked. Frankly he wasn't sure anyone knew exactly how the Room worked. "I was smart enough to think of asking you -- or at least your book -- for help," countered Harry, enjoying himself for the first time in several days. The ache and exhaustion and frustration of his first few days of classes had melted away, though Harry supposed they would come roaring back when he had to climb up the North Tower.

"That's the only sensible thing you've done since you started working here," replied Snape, who was peering at Harry's list from the other side of the desk. "You've spelled 'asphodel' wrong."

Harry squinted at his purloined parchment and crossed out the offending letter. "How do you know what I've done since I've started here?" he asked, trying to remember the last potion Snape had rattled off.

"You aren't the only one who has postprandial visits with the headmistress over brandy." For a figment, Snape sounded unbearably smug. Harry looked up, puzzled by the idea of a portrait, or whatever Snape was, having brandy. "Postprandial," Snape explained with a sneer, "It means after --"

"I know what it means!" snapped Harry. "Why are you checking up on me when you could do ten times a better job yourself?"

"Twenty," Snape asserted, "and I'm hardly checking up on you since I can't help the topics some people deem appropriate for after dinner conversation." He waved a hand in the direction of Harry's all but filled in lesson plans. "I told you, I don't care in the least how you're doing. If you want to waste your life --"

"How did you know I was wasting my life, then?" Harry asked, rubbing the end of the quill under his chin.

Snape glared at him. "I do have other things to do, you know," he sniffed.

"Ha! Like what?" Harry shot back, forgetting for a moment that it wasn't a good idea to antagonize the only help he'd found in Potions.

"Some of us have moved on," Snape pointed out.

Harry felt himself grow pale. How like Snape the figment to allude to Snape the deceased. Though since this Snape didn't believe he was a figment, maybe he didn't actually understand that he was dead. On impulse, Harry reached out and wrapped a hand around Snape's arm.

Snape felt very much alive. Even through the robes, Harry could feel the warmth of his body. He could feel the muscles bunching, too, as Snape tensed, yet Snape didn't try to shake his hand off, though he did stare from Harry's fingers to Harry's face. "What do you think you're doing, Potter?"

"I'm trying to see if you have a pulse or you're just as heartless as ever." It was a ludicrous thing to say to a figment, but Snape felt so real. And good -- it made Harry absurdly happy to touch him. He wondered whether perhaps Snape had been right earlier when he'd said Harry had gone bonkers. He was tempted to...

Then Harry did something truly mad. He tugged at Snape's arm, pulling him halfway across the desk, and leaned in to kiss him.

Snape made a small noise of surprise, but he was apparently so shocked that it didn't occur to him to jerk free. When Harry opened his eyes with his mouth still pressed against Snape's, he could see through the distortion of his glasses at such close range that Snape was staring at him in astonishment. Slowly Harry stepped back, letting his hand fall away.

"You have lost your mind," Snape murmured. He sounded too stunned to hex Harry, which Harry had thought that he might do, though he wasn't certain how much damage a creation of the Room of Requirement was allowed to do to a wizard.

Snape's lips had been softer than Harry had imagined -- had he imagined? Oh fuck, he had -- and tasted of something sugary, maybe the same thing that was making the sweet-smelling steam in the cauldron at the center of the room. Harry thought that Snape must be right, because the overriding thought in his head was not how mortified he should be nor how he probably should check himself into St. Mungo's, but how much he wanted to kiss Snape again.

"Potter?" demanded Snape in a voice that plainly added, explain yourself at once.

"I'm -- bloody hell -- I'm sorry," Harry choked out. He had the presence of mind to grab the list of potions off the desk before he fled, feeling Snape's eyes on his back as he raced to the door and out into the corridor facing Barnabas the Barmy. How appropriate, he thought grimly, pacing back and forth in front of the Room of Requirement, thinking with all his might please not to let Snape say anything to McGonagall about Harry kissing him, if indeed it was true that this fictional Snape had brandy with her.

He didn't dare go back inside; he didn't trust himself not to make an even bigger arse of himself than he already had. His hand was shaking as he stuffed the list of Potions lessons inside his pocket --

Since when could things created in the Room of Requirement be taken out?

Perhaps the Room's magic made an exception for parchment and ink, thought Harry as he began the long trudge to the tower. Or maybe someone kept the Room stocked with real parchment in case someone who'd come in for help had a brilliant idea that needed to be written down. Or it was possible that the Room's magic had changed after the Fiendfyre.

If that were the case, did that mean it might actually be possible for the Room to create a Snape who could do all the things this one claimed -- a Snape who could go to the Great Hall for a meal or walk into a Potions classroom? A Snape who was almost real?

No, Harry told himself, that hope was even more insane than kissing Snape had been. He simply had to acknowledge that he'd made an utter fool of himself, and probably alienated the one person, albeit a figment, who could help him as a teacher.

He patted the pocket with the parchment, feeling the reassuring crinkle. Still there, so if it wasn't real, whatever it was made no difference. It occurred to him that magic wasn't just weird, sometimes it was diabolical. He pulled out the parchment to make sure the writing hadn't disappeared or turned into Sanskrit or some arcane secret code decipherable only to a true Hogwarts Potions Master. To his relief, the list was exactly as he'd written it, and he tucked it back into his pocket.

Though Harry scarcely slept at all that night and was even more nervous the next day, Snape's suggestion that Harry teach Everlasting Elixirs went over quite well with the sixth year students. Despite Snape's warning, he decided to start Felix Felicis with the N.E.W.T.-level students -- if even one of them got it right, Harry thought, maybe he would ingest enough luck from testing it to feel more confident about his teaching. He did have an awkward moment when one of the students asked whether he had personally ever brewed Felix Felicis, which he had not, but he told them the story of winning the vial from Professor Slughorn for excelling at the Draught of Living Death, and that seemed to keep them entertained.

It would have been a pretty good day had a Gryffindor prankster not spilled his Swelling Solution all over four other second-years. Only then did Harry discover that there was no Deflating Draught prepared in the pantry. He had to ask for help from Madam Pomfrey, and by the time the Slytherin student whom he had dispatched to the infirmary returned to the classroom, the story was spreading all over the school.

"Things like that happen to everyone," Neville said sympathetically when they left the Great Hall together after dinner. "My first year teaching, a Fanged Geranium bit me in the middle of a lecture about safety, and I screamed. You learn to laugh at yourself." Harry had no trouble envisioning this, but he had trouble finding it amusing. "You look like you could use a good laugh, anyway," Neville went on. "You haven't seemed yourself since you got here. Do you miss Ginny?"

Harry looked over in surprise. He and Ginny had broken up more than a year earlier, and though they still talked on occasion, they hadn't got past the awkwardness of it. "Not as a girlfriend," Harry said honestly. He took a deep breath. "Neville, I'm gay." He'd never actually said it aloud to any of his old friends, though Hermione had figured it out and all the Weasleys knew.

"Oh," said Neville as though Harry had just told him he'd developed an interest in competitive Gobstones. "Well, do you miss someone else?"

"I wasn't dating anyone before I came to Hogwarts. Not even interested, really." Absurdly, he thought of Snape. That kiss had been the first one in months that had really made Harry want another.

McGonagall was waiting for them by the bottom of the stairs, so there was really no way to escape from her, though Harry had done his best to avoid her since the aforementioned kiss. "I hear that you were quite popular with the sixth year students," she told him.

"That's nice of them to say." Did she purse her lips just a bit? Merlin, had Snape told her? He remembered Snape saying that she had been teasing Harry when she suggested that the castle might want to help him. There was no possibility now that Harry was going to ask about seeing Snape's portrait in her office.

"If you need any assistance, Mr. Potter, you should feel free to ask for it." Harry wasn't sure whether McGonagall meant from herself or from the castle, but he nodded stiffly and fled as quickly as he could.

The castle did not seem to want to help him at all. Just as he stepped onto the stairs that would have taken him to the hidden passageway to the tower, the staircase began to move. It deposited him on the opposite side, leaving Harry to circle the sixth floor corridor.

As he walked, he pulled out the crumpled parchment with his notes from talking to Snape. At least he knew what he would be doing with the fourth and sixth years the next day. Maybe he'd get up early and watch the Gryffindor Quidditch team practice; that ought to improve his mood.

He looked up, thinking he must be near the entrance to the tower, when a familiar tapestry came into view. Barnabus the Damn Barmy. Wildly Harry looked up and down the corridor. Yes, he was in front of the blank wall of the Room of Requirement.

Apparently the castle still wanted to 'help' him.

"All right, tell me what it is I still need." The wall remained solid. "Okay, okay," he said, remembering the ritual that accompanied entrance. "Have it your way." He paced back and forth three times, concentrating on what he needed, even though he wasn't sure exactly what the castle thought that was. When he halted, he was a bit dizzy and the wall was stubbornly solid.

"Look," he said, huffing in exasperation and pointing a finger at the unyielding stone, "I've had a really bad day, actually more like a really awful week, and on top of it all, the last time I was here I snogged Severus Snape so hard that he'll probably be waiting to hex me in the afterlife when I finally kick off, so if you don't have any further --"

The wall dissolved in front of him.

Sighing, Harry stepped through. The scene looked nearly exactly as he had left it except that Snape was seated at the desk, his head buried in his hand. He looked up as the door closed behind Harry. Then he let out a groan.

"How do you keep getting in here?" He looked around, spotting his wand on the desk beside his hand and shaking it as if checking for defects. "I specifically warded you out."

"Trust me, I don't want to be here any more than you want me here, but the castle has something --"

Snape scowled. "Still on about that? Have the students driven you barmy after so short a time?" He snorted. "Even Dark Arts professors last longer than this."

"Technically, it's Defense Against the Dark Arts," Harry pointed out.

"Potter," began Snape, then he shook his head. "Are you sure you aren't a figment?" He waved one hand vaguely in the air beside his head. "Aren't I entitled to a quiet evening at home without being quizzed and --" He wiggled his fingers in the vicinity of his mouth, leaving no doubt that he was referring to the ill-fated kiss, "assaulted by random persons."

"Well, I like that," Harry said hotly. "It's not like you never had a stray thought yourself about snogging me first." Snape's eyebrows shot up practically to his hairline. "I noticed you didn't try to get away."

"I was attempting to assess the extent of your derangement," huffed Snape.

"I know you didn't tell McGonagall because she didn't ask for my resignation. Does that mean you think there's hope for me?"

Snape rolled his eyes elaborately. "Perhaps you would like to explain why you --" He gestured toward his mouth again.

Harry shrugged a bit. "Curiosity," he said.

Something horrified flickered through Snape's gaze before his face settled back into the familiar sneer. "Ah. So pleased to be able to assist in your attempts to satisfy those lingering questions about your sexuality."

"What? No!" Harry took the chair opposite the desk, something he never would have done willingly as a student. "I know I'm gay." In his more lucid moments last night he'd tried to analyze what had made him do such an impulsive -- and frankly stupid -- thing as kiss Severus Snape. The only conclusion he could reach was the Room of Requirement was giving him a chance he had never had in life. He only hoped figments couldn't hex his balls off. "Curiosity about you," he admitted. "You never would have let me do that as a student."

"Potter, may I point out that I didn't let you do it now that you are what passes for a professor, either," Snape retorted, apparently having given up on getting Harry out of the laboratory.

"You didn't stop me," said Harry.

"I was...curious." Harry was just about to smirk when Snape went on. "About whether you were still as arrogant as when you were a student."

Though his first instinct was to protest, honestly won out, and, inwardly at least, he could admit he probably had been a bit arrogant. So he changed the subject instead. "I tried the Enchanting Elixirs on my class and they didn't blow up the castle."

Snape's eyes narrowed suspiciously but he didn't force the topic back to Harry's childhood arrogance. "Longbottom notwithstanding, even the most ridiculously thick student at this school is capable of following simple directions, even if you are administering them."

Harry's mouth dropped open at this patently un-Snape-like statement.

Snape shrugged. "Under threat of the proper duress of course."

Even though he wasn't positive Snape wasn't joking, Harry laughed. "What sort of duress?" he asked.

"Surely such an inventive and curious mind such as yours can think of something," replied Snape.

"They aren't scared of me, the way we all were of --" Snape's smirk was nearly insufferable. Harry blew a breath of air into one hand. "I'm not sure I really want them to be scared of me, I just want not to have them run unchecked all over me."

"You mean your natural arrogance and reputation as the Chosen One don't guarantee that?"

Apparently Snape did not intend to let Harry off the hook. "I'm not as arrogant as I used to be," he allowed. "Besides, Malfoy was a dozen times more arrogant than I was, but you liked him."

Snape's prominent nose wrinkled in distaste. "As you know, I had compelling reasons to make him trust me. I don't suppose he could help being as snobbish as his parents. And he was the best student in Slytherin of your year -- even you must admit that."

"Happily, as long as we both agree that Hermione was the best student in the school of my year." Pausing, Harry waited for Snape to incline his head, if not quite nod, before he continued, "Anyway, my reputation as the Chosen One is probably more of a hindrance than a help with students. You know how it is when you're young -- you assume you know more than everyone else, and that anyone who's famous is probably overrated." He remembered his own skeptical reaction to both Lockhart and Fudge -- when these students had been quite young, Harry's picture had been in the Daily Prophet even more often than that of the Minister of Magic.

"That's because anyone who's famous probably is overrated," Snape announced in a rather smug voice. "Surely you know that better than anyone."

"You made it clear when I was eleven years old," Harry shot back. It felt surreal to be having this conversation with Snape. Harry had to keep reminding himself that this wasn't a real person, only what the Room of Requirement believed Harry needed. The real Snape had been dead for years. Harry himself had seen him die.

The imaginary Snape across the desk from him crossed his arms and regarded Harry sternly. "Whatever I might have thought of your arrogance, I had my reasons to be certain you lived up to your reputation as the Chosen One. You still haven't told me why I should care whether you become the worst Potions professor ever to stand at the front of a Hogwarts classroom."

Harry thought it was probably a good sign that he hadn't been told he already was the worst Potions professor ever to stand at the front of a Hogwarts classroom. "I'm happy to tell them I learned everything I know from you," he said.

"From my stolen textbook," clarified Snape.

"Not just your textbook. I actually quoted you, my first day, about how Potions can bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses." Harry felt his cheeks growing warm. "I've done everything I can to keep your memory alive. I told the Ministry, back after the battle, that you --"

"Keep my memory alive?" Snape looked like he was going to laugh. "Oh, that's right. You believe that I'm a figment. Why on earth would a figment care whether or not one more generation of students shows any respect for his teaching?"

Without a doubt, Snape was the most argumentative figment Harry could have imagined. He wondered how Hogwarts could possibly think he needed this after a long day of teaching. "All right, then -- help me because my mother wouldn't have wanted me to become the worst Potions professor ever to stand at the front of a Hogwarts classroom," he said.

Snape's lips pinched together and his eyes bulged. "I no longer owe your mother anything," he spat.

This was not the reaction Harry had been expecting. He'd known the demand might make Snape angry, but he'd thought Snape would say that Harry wasn't worthy of Lily's talents. "I thought you liked my mother," he said. "In fact, I thought you were in love with my mother."

Now, he thought, Snape would probably throw him out. But if Harry had been confused by Snape's response a moment earlier, he was left completely befuddled when Snape burst out laughing. "In love! We were friends once. We were children. She stopped speaking to me around the same time she discovered that I was as queer as you are."

Snape was clearly trying to rattle him, which, for a figment, was a pretty filthy trick. Harry decided to counter braggadocio with confidence. "Precocious, weren't you?" he replied, doing his best not to look surprised at the frank admission. "I didn't figure it out until I was out of school." It wasn't the complete truth, but truth, like potion making, was complicated. He crossed his arms over his chest, only realizing after he'd done it that he was imitating Snape's pose and it was too late to change it now without looking foolish.

He might have known Snape was just waiting to pounce. "No boyish crushes on male teachers?" The knowing smirk was so infuriating that Harry had no trouble lying.

"No."

"Ha!" Snape dropped his arms, solely, it seemed, so he could point an accusatory finger at Harry. "You did everything but write 'Mr. and Mr. Half-Blood Prince all over your schoolbooks. I'm surprised you didn't start dotting the i's in your Potions essays with sparkly hearts."

"Ha!" Harry snorted, this time consciously imitating Snape. "You think I had a crush on you?" He drew out the last word as though it was the most ridiculous word ever spoken.

"If I'd ever kissed you once --" Snape began, jabbing the finger against Harry's shoulder.

"Flatter yourself much?" Harry countered when Snape hesitated a fraction, doing that looking at Harry's mouth thing that had always driven Harry crazy during Occlumency lessons, that thing that made him think Snape had thought about kissing him.

"Not at all," hissed Snape, but he was still looking at Harry's mouth, now looking more like he was trying to talk himself out of kissing Harry. If he accused Snape of thinking about it, then it would look like Harry had started thinking about it first. Then he was looking at Snape's mouth too and it was a sign of how much this befuddled him that he was thinking perhaps this was why the castle wanted him here.

Because it wouldn't count, would it, since Snape was a figment?

Harry solved his dilemma by grabbing a handful of Snape's robes and pulling him into a kiss which, under other circumstances, would have made him start thinking of sparkly hearts over the 'i's' in his Potion essays, but instead made him think it was a good thing Snape was just a figment so this couldn't go any further.

Harry groaned, though he thought the groan had begun in Snape's mouth. He tried to press closer but felt only the unforgiving side of the desk between them. "You'd think the Room would provide a bed," he mumbled.

"What are you talking about, Potter? I don't sleep with my potions, you know." Snape's eyes were satisfactorily dark and unfocused, though he looked cross at having the kiss interrupted. "My bedroom is through there." He pointed to a door half-hidden by the shelves behind him. Harry wasn't sure it had been there before, but it was entirely possible that he simply hadn't noticed it, having been too focused on Snape himself.

Apparently the Room of Requirement did think of everything. And apparently it was trying to tell him something, since Snape was now tugging on Harry's sleeve, pulling him around the desk. "You're taking me to your bedroom? I thought you warded me out."

"If you prefer to leave..." Snape grunted in irritation.

Harry still had a handful of Snape's robes. He tugged, pressing Snape against himself, and though Snape might have been a figment, his erection felt quite solid. "Not a crush," he clarified when he drew back for air. "I didn't think about you marrying me. Fucking me, maybe."

"Then you must have had some small clue that you were queer, if you were thinking about your most despised professor buggering you. Unless you were trying to punish yourself for your arrogant, self-righteous..."

The only sure way to shut Snape up was to kiss him again, and grind against him so that their cocks rubbed together through their robes. He felt his sleeve tear as Snape yanked too hard, pulling Harry in the direction of the door. "What's your excuse for wanting to fuck me?" Harry asked breathlessly. "Pure wickedness, since I was your student? Or you think you deserve my sorry arse, since you had to keep it safe?"

"It must be masochism," muttered Snape, touching the door in some funny pattern to make it open. How odd that the Room of Requirement would require a spell to open the bedroom door of a figment, thought Harry, though such paranoia was typical of Snape. "Look there. I have a bed. Satisfied?"

For an instant Harry thought that Snape was merely trying to prove that he didn't sleep with his potions -- that Snape had no real intention of taking Harry to bed. Maybe figments couldn't, Harry thought bitterly; maybe the Room of Requirement had been designed to preclude sex, lest Hogwarts students should have found it even more tempting than the Mirror of Erised.

But then Snape's mouth was on Harry's again, greedy and demanding. "Definitely not satisfied," Harry moaned, thrusting against Snape's thigh to make absolutely clear what he meant.

"Still think I'm a figment?" Snape panted, dragging Harry through the door.

"More than ever," replied Harry, wondering why the Room of Requirement had put the bed so bloody far from the door. "The real Snape hated me. He never would have wanted me like this." Snape's bed was high enough that once Harry bumped against it, he could scoot up onto it without any loss of valuable kissing time.

"Then you're more of an idiot than I thought," Snape said, and Harry whimpered because he had to pull his mouth away from Harry's to speak.

"See, that's exactly what a figment would say," gasped Harry, thinking that since sex with a figment didn't count, neither should insults.

"Ridiculous, thick, idiotic --" The tirade was muffled by breath-stealing kisses, though Harry wasn't certain how a figment, strictly, could be breathing, or have such a hefty cock, if the feel of it pressing against Harry's was anything to go by. Perhaps the castle was sensing his fantasies or his needs or --

Oof! Snape had fallen or thrown himself rather heavily onto Harry. He felt solid and real and hard, but Harry had trained the DA in this room and knew the magic inside could do amazing things.

"It would serve you right if I were a product of your overwrought brain, Potter," grunted Snape. His fingers were under Harry's shirt, and how could anyone think with a thumb pressing one nipple and Snape's mouth scraping the edge of his jaw?

"Why -- oh fuck -- why, because you always wanted to do this and you never could until now?" panted out Harry, grabbing fistfuls of Snape's robes and trying to tug them up, off, anything to feel more skin against his own.

"I don't think I'm the only one," came the breathy reply, as they both reached for Harry's shirt with that symbiosis of thought that the desperate get, which determines whatever might be the easiest goal to achieve. Such proved the case, though Harry's fingers still reached for some portion of Snape's clothing that might yield under assault.

"Fine. You're not the only one. Do you think next time the Room could provide some new robes with a few dozen less buttons?"

"Next time? You don't even know whether you'll enjoy this time." Snape muttered something that sounded like a spell and suddenly every button from his sleeves to his collar had popped open. He let Harry pull the robes away, watching him warily. "We aren't all young and wealthy with accounts at robe makers."

"I put most of my inheritance in an account for Teddy Lupin. And I don't really care what you wear as long as I can take it off you." He slid his hands over Snape's chest, wondering whether the scars were based on the original or were there because Harry had expected them to be. Snape had lots of wiry hair on his chest and his cock was bigger than Harry's, rising from a thick nest of dark curls. "I don't know about you, but I am expecting to enjoy this."

"So am I," grunted Snape, tossing Harry's pants over the side of the bed and sitting back on his heels to look at Harry, who blushed under the scrutiny. At least Snape looked pleased by what he saw, though Harry knew that particularly since he'd stopped playing Quidditch he wasn't very impressive to look at. "I'm going to fuck you, Potter, and I'm going to enjoy every moment of it."

Having Snape talking to him that way was almost enough to make Harry come without any further stimulation. "Oh fuck," he groaned, reaching up to pull Snape on top of him again. "Yes. Please. Wait. Call me Harry."

Snape's mouth had latched onto the skin below his earlobe, biting and sucking none too gently, and Harry whimpered when he felt the pressure ease. "Why should I?"

"Because this is my fantasy and you're my figment and I want you to call me by my proper name!" It was uncanny how perfectly the Room had recreated Snape's contrariness, though somehow it had also known that Harry would want to have his throat marked and his nipple pinched and his thighs pressed apart by the weight of Snape's body. No one had ever been so aggressive with him -- even in bed, people treated him like the bloody Chosen One -- and to be touched like this, by Snape, was the most arousing thing Harry could imagine.

"Pardon me, I had forgotten than I exist only to serve your whims." Snape sounded amused, though his voice was muffled by Harry's shoulder as he licked and sucked his way downward. "Very well. I'm going to fuck you, Harry, and if you wish to call me by my name, I expect to hear you shouting it when you come for me."

"Yes, oh fuck, make me come, want you to touch me!" Harry wasn't usually this vocal or this demanding, but being with Snape was driving him utterly mad. Perhaps in a literal sense as well as an erotic sense, since he didn't think it was normal to be this desperate for a figment, but he decided to worry about that later. Much later. Snape's fingers wrapped around his cock, giving it one long stroke, and he wailed and bucked mindlessly. "More!"

Snape seemed pleased by this reaction and repeated the stroke before swiping his tongue over Harry's cock as his fingers curled around it. Harry watched this for a moment before he couldn't bear it, arching back on the bed, using his feet, his legs, the tips of his fingers to touch Snape.

"So eager for a product of your imagination?" said Snape, sounding more pleased than he looked already -- quite an accomplishment considering he was the picture of smugness -- aroused but smug nonetheless. Very deliberately he added," Harry," in a tone that was nearly a purr and vibrated along every nerve ending Harry possessed. Since he was speaking around a mouthful of cock, Harry wondered if the ancient castle was some sort of stone perv or if Harry had wanted this and Hogwarts had somehow known.

"Knew you'd be like this," gasped out Harry, rubbing the side of Snape's face, feeling the slight evening stubble dusting his jaw. "Driving me mad. Saying things, doing things to me." He became aware, suddenly, of a cock rubbing against him and shifted a bit so he could rub his leg against it.

After a groan, Snape snapped his hips away. "Oh no, not like that. Next time." He pressed back against Harry, teasing them both. "Perhaps. Provided you prove a better lover than a professor."

Leave it to Snape to use sex as a teaching moment.

"Show me then," insisted Harry. "Show me what you like, do everything to me the real --"

"Potter, I am --"

"Not Potter! Harry. You said it before." He rubbed one foot along Snape's leg, toes just brushing the upraised head of Snape's cock.

"If you've ever had a figment do this to you, I'll stand up in the Great Hall and swear you're the most competent Potions master Gryffindor has ever produced," Snape said, leaning up not just to speak but to Summon the lubricant. Harry no longer questioned that the room was prepared for all manner of sexual acts, though he did note that the lubricant looked like it came from the same bottles Snape favored in his own brewing.

The idea of that made Harry smile, or perhaps it was the push of Snape's slick fingers where he wanted them the most. "Wait a minute, exactly how many Potions professors has Gryffindor --"

He heard the rich vibration of Snape's chuckle from between his legs and decided he didn't really care about past Potion teachers, Gryffindor or not. "Not a single one who could brew the Madidant potion as well as this," Snape told him, working a finger in deeper and stroking expertly over the spot that never failed to make Harry wail in pleasure.

The castle was definitely reading his mind: no one else had ever known so completely exactly what Harry would want. Perhaps it was dangerous to surrender so completely to a figment but Harry didn't care. "Oh fuck, do that again!"

"Such language," Snape said between licking and sucking his cock, even though Snape had been the one to say he was going to fuck Harry and thus made Harry so frantic to get on with it. "I suppose you haven't had proper exposure to discipline and hard work since leaving school."

Harry had worked plenty hard at the Ministry of Magic, but he wasn't in the mood for arguing the point. "Discipline is overrated," he moaned. "I need to come! Hard! With you!"

Snape did something with his hand against the backs of Harry's bollocks that made him levitate halfway off the bed. The fingers inside were still teasing as they stretched him, nudging the perfect spot, then sliding away. "Not without my prick inside you."

"Please," Harry nearly sobbed. "Hurry, oh God, you know I want it there!"

Even the figment Snape liked hearing Harry beg. With a smirk, he sat back, sliding his fingers free for long enough to rub some of the lubricant onto himself. Watching this was painfully exciting, and Harry moaned and wriggled again. Snape raised his eyebrows. "Has it been so very long?"

How long wasn't the issue; Harry had never wanted anyone the way he wanted Snape right now, and, now that he was admitting it, for a long time before. It was certain he shouldn't have been aching for a figment, but he felt more alive than he had in months, maybe years. "I just want you," he whispered. "Now. Please."

It would have been just like Snape to make him wait longer, or even to announce that he didn't want Harry after all. For a moment Harry was terrified that even the figment would do just that. But this was the Room of Requirement, and the castle must have understood what Harry required because Snape pressed forward, positioning himself between Harry's thighs, and pushed inside him.

Such sweet, wonderful torment, the slow slide of Snape's big cock in deep. Shuddering, Harry raised his legs up around Snape's hips, pushing down on the welcome intruder until it nudged him just where he wanted it. He clenched his muscles involuntarily and heard Snape gasp. "Is that good?"

"Oh, yes." Harry had never heard Snape's voice so ragged. He felt Snape's fingers clutch at his hips as he squeezed again, deliberately this time. With a groan, Snape shifted his weight and began to thrust, the sting of entry fading as he pressed again and again just where Harry wanted him.

Harry didn't think even a product of his overwrought and perhaps slightly fevered imagination could last long under such an erotically frantic assault. Raising one hand, he grabbed for Snape, though whether to slow down the rush of pleasure or simply to hang on, he wasn't certain. His fingers found a handful of Snape's hair, brushing the heated skin of Snape's neck as a gasp blew over his ear. Whatever he did, it made Snape move faster, slowing only to shift one hand as if to slide between them.

Harry shook his head, keeping his knees tight against Snape's body. "Just...oh god, move," he managed, squeezing again to emphasize that it was all right just like this.

"Fuck...Potter..."

It felt so good to hear his name, any part of it, in that voice that Harry had imagined Snape could sound like when aroused but never thought actually to hear, that it mitigated the misuse of his surname. He arched, his own cock moving between them with each heated thrust. "Fuck, yes, Snape, just like --" His fingers clenched skin, feeling the moan between them building until there was no room for it to go but out, like the needy thing it was, dragging pleasure out of Harry in waves that plastered him to Snape. He might have cried out his name, or it might have been the echo of the castle, but it was so good Harry didn't care if the castle had overhead.

Snape shifted again, leaning up, still moving inside Harry but now looking down at him, dragging Harry's legs around his waist and pumping a few more times before nearly swaying off the bed. From this angle Snape wasn't the only one who got to watch and Harry was instantly entranced by the ecstasy that swept over the usually harsh features.

"If you say a word --" Snape panted, his eyes opening only slightly beyond a slit, "A single word --" He laid a finger over Harry's mouth before Harry could open it further. "-- that sounds like 'figment,' I will hex you out of this room without your clothing and ward this room so tight you won't even be able to find the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy."

Harry shut his mouth. He hadn't been about to say anything about figments...he didn't think. Swallowing hard, he tried catch his breath as Snape slumped over his chest.

"Not a word," Snape said again, the sound all but muffled by Harry's shoulder. Snape's breath felt as hot and moist and real against his skin as Snape's cock had felt. Did that mean the castle still thought he needed something else? Had Snape only wanted him because Harry had needed Snape to want him, or was it part of something larger that Hogwarts was trying to show Harry he required in his life?

Snape's cock slipped out of him and Harry felt strangely bereft, even though he was pretty sure he was going to be sore later; it had been longer than he wanted to think about since he'd been fucked and never like that, so completely unrestrained, with no concern whatsoever about hurting or angering the bloody Chosen One. His own cock gave a feeble twitch recalling that first glorious thrust of Snape inside him, and he remembered something else. "You said 'next time.'"

"What?" Snape's head lifted, letting his dark eyes glare down at Harry.

"When I tried to touch you, before. You said, 'next time.' Does that mean there's going to be a next time?"

"Right now?" demanded Snape incredulously. "Potter, I am many years older, and you are the most self-indulgent --"

"No, not right now!" Harry very nearly laughed. "Unless you have some kind of potion, I can't recover this quickly, either. Tomorrow?"

Snape's cheeks reddened faintly, though with embarrassment or flattery, Harry couldn't tell. "Perhaps tomorrow a handsome Quidditch player will visit the school and you'll lose all interest in seeing me."

"I've met plenty of Quidditch players and never wanted to go to bed with a single one of them." Well, there had been Ginny, but Harry assumed that Snape meant men and his own reasons for dating Ginny had been much more complicated than attraction. Sometimes he still wondered whether he'd be happier if he'd married her and had a family and been able to call Ron and George and Bill his brothers. It wasn't as though he could tell any of his friends that he'd just had the best sex of his life with Snape in the Room of Requirement.

Snape was studying him, frowning. "I'm not certain that a next time would be a good idea for either of us," he said. The bereft feeling intensified, but then Snape said, "Harry --"

"Yes!" he yelped triumphantly. Snape's eyebrows shot up as Harry grinned at him. "You wouldn't be calling me 'Harry' if you didn't want to do it again." He decided not to mention the fact that Snape would have said absolutely not if a next time were an impossibility, since Snape could only do what the Room of Requirement permitted.

Figment or not, Harry had every intention of seeing him again as soon as possible. He lowered his voice conspiratorially.

"I won't use the, you know, 'f' word." He waggled his eyebrows, but Snape still looked blank. Harry lowered his voice further to a whisper, "Figment."

Snape closed his eyes. Harry could see them moving restlessly against the lids. "Are you absolutely certain the Dark Lord didn't --" Snape waved one hand and his eyes opened. "-- didn't fall and hit his head?"

Harry frowned. "What are you talking about?"

Snape had stretched out beside him, pushing his toes into the tangle of covers. He looked over at Harry. "Because I don't see how anyone with your limited mental faculties dispatched him," replied Snape.

Harry barely refrained from saying that that was exactly what a figment would say. "Git," he said instead, and kissed Snape's cheek.

The soreness the next day was a pleasant reminder of the evening before. He passed the corridor on the seventh floor on the way to the Great Hall for lunch and smiled to himself. He wondered what excuse the castle would give him tonight to come back -- whether he would have to chase Peeves or the staircases would shift so that his only path would lead him back along this corridor.

Only after his last class and dinner, Harry found his steps planted on the stair to the North Tower with no impediment. Experimentally he went up a flight, but the way ahead was perfectly clear. He opened the door and listened for the sounds of mischief to pursue or miscreants to discipline.

Discouraged, Harry leaned against the stone wall outside the stairwell, wondering if this was the castle's way of telling him he didn't need Snape anymore. The slight soreness that lingered wasn't enough to make him wince, but it did convince him that despite the castle's lack of cooperation, he wasn't done with his figment. Determined, Harry climbed the stairs to the seventh floor on his own.

The room let him in without demur. Snape wasn't sitting at his desk, but he looked resigned when Harry came through the entrance.

"I did suppose it was too much to ask that you might be a figment of my overstimulated libido," Snape said, pouring them both a drink from the decanter on the sideboard. Harry took it, smiling.

"Maybe the castle is telling both of us something then," he said, taking a sip of the amber liquid. He ignored the roll of Snape's eyes in favor of studying Snape. He'd left off the robes this evening, clad instead in trousers, shirtsleeves, and waistcoat. His hair looked like his fingers had combed through it more than once since last night. He looked thinner than Harry remembered, but perhaps that was an effect of the shedding of a layer of robes.

"The only thing this castle is telling me is that I was an idiot to move back into it," grumbled Snape, tossing back some of his own drink.

"To move back?" asked Harry, puzzled. He'd thought Snape would believe that he never left, since he hadn't officially resigned as Headmaster when he'd flown off into the night like a bat. That was something Harry really wanted Snape to teach him, but in all probability, it was something Snape had learned from Voldemort, who was the only other wizard Harry had ever seen who could fly like that. He wondered whether the Room of Requirement had recreated Snape's memories from the portrait in McGonagall's office or from whatever Snape had put in the Pensieve. "How come you did move back, then?" he asked casually.

"Where was I going to go? The Ministry had confiscated my home and all my belongings. The surviving Death Eaters considered me a traitor, and the families of the members of the Order of the Phoenix would have demanded a trial. If Molly Weasley knew I was here, don't you think she'd hex my ear off?"

Harry had to smile at that. While he thought that Molly had probably forgiven Snape for the things he had done as a Death Eater once she found out he was Dumbledore's man, she would never have let Snape off the hook for what he'd done to George, though Harry doubted she'd go so far as to hex him. It felt strange that the castle knew so much about Snape's life, probably more than Harry did, and it seemed almost like a violation of Snape's privacy to hear it discussed aloud. Harry wondered whether the Room of Requirement would have provided such a good replica of the Chosen One if someone had come in looking for advice about fighting dark lords out of some misguided notion that Harry Potter knew more than anyone else. It wasn't an idea he relished.

"And then there were the parents of the students at Hogwarts while I was forced to keep the Carrows on the faculty," Snape continued. "I think every one of them would have liked to use the Cruciatus curse on me. It was much simpler to remain hidden."

The figment spoke so much as if he believed he were the real Snape that it gave Harry a funny feeling in his chest. "Aren't you lonely, though, with nobody but me knowing you're here?" he asked.

"Minerva visits me regularly," Snape said, his brows furrowing as he sipped his drink.

"You mean, your portrait?"

"I mean that she sits in the armchair right over there nearly every afternoon before dinner." Snape gestured at the chair, and Harry sat, feeling even more confused. If McGonagall had needed Snape's advice, then it stood to reason that the Room of Requirement would have brought him back for her just like it did for Harry. But did they see the same Snape? It sounded as though the figment had consistent memories, just like a real person.

"Do you have feelings?" Harry blurted out.

Snape made a small spluttering noise, swallowing his drink. "Potter, if you expect me to fall in love with you after a single erotic encounter..."

"I don't expect anything," Harry interrupted hastily, blushing. "It was a stupid thing to ask."

If anything, Snape looked even more surprised at that. "It's hardly the first stupid thing you've asked me," he retorted, but the vicious tone he'd often used with Harry as a student was absent, which made Harry bold.

"Can I ask something else stupid, then?" He got up from the chair, setting down the empty glass on a table where nothing was brewing at the moment.

"What?" Snape looked wary.

"Can we try another erotic encounter? I want to make sure it was really the best I've ever had."

Snape looked startled, which Harry had expected, and also troubled, which Harry had not. Snape set down his glass. "Teachers are permitted to leave the castle," he explained with a patience he had never shown as an actual teacher. "Perhaps not every evening as your libido apparently --"

Harry kissed him. "Please?" he asked, "I know all that, and it isn't my libido or some weird guilt thing."

"Weird guilt thing?" asked Snape, looking a bit startled again. But he kissed Harry back. "What am I going to do with you?" he asked, slightly breathless from the longer kiss. When Harry opened his mouth to repeat his request, Snape put a finger on his lips, stilling them. "Remind me to explain the finer points of rhetorical questions." Harry licked his finger. "After our erotic encounter."

Harry's grin spread over his mouth even while Snape replaced his finger with his lips. "Slowly this time," Snape cautioned. "I want you aware of whose cock it is you're asking for."

"Begging," Harry corrected, "I can do slow; slow is good." Snape's mouth was brushing over his. "Slow is sexy." He slid his arms around Snape's waist, kissing him in the most non-rhetorical way he knew how.

"Not sore from yesterday?"

Harry shook his head, spreading his fingers over the top of Snape's arse. "A little this morning, but I made one of those healing potions for tea."

If he thought Snape would at last offer praise for his potion skills, he was bound for disappointment. "We could, for the purposes of your erotic peace of mind --" Snape made a little gesture with his finger, sort of like a figure eight on one side. Harry felt him push back a bit on his outspread fingers. "Switch around."

For a moment Harry thought he really was as thick as Snape had been claiming because it took that long to comprehend what Snape meant, and it was only the pink stain spreading over Snape's cheeks to finally convince him he had it right. Harry exhaled. "Rubbish potion, really, didn't work at all. Oh God, let's go." He stepped back and tugged on Snape's hand, trying to move toward the bedroom.

For a figment, Snape was still as heavy as ever. "Slowly, I said," he repeated. "It's been a while since I've --" The pink had turned a dull red.

If this castle thought this was exactly what Harry needed, then Hogwarts -- even though Harry was more than a little convinced it was a big stone perv -- was right. "Gentle as a kitten, I swear," Harry promised.

Snape made a face. "That isn't a very erotic image," he grumbled but he was moving toward the bedroom so Harry didn't bother trying to think of a better one. There was a lot more kissing as they got each other's clothes off. Harry wondered, between kisses, whether the real Snape had been this romantic. He remembered being mostly terrified of Snape, though parts of that had been that he was terrified Snape would find out about Harry's inclinations and use that to torture him even more.

"Where do you keep that lubricant stuff?" Harry asked breathlessly. Snape Summoned it silently, though Harry noted that it flew out of a drawer in the table nearest the bed. He let it drizzle over his fingers, anticipating the feel of Snape's arse around them -- oh fuck, if he thought about it too much, he wasn't going to last long enough to feel it around anything else. He rubbed his fingers around Snape's balls, feeling their weight against his palm.

"I could turn over," Snape said, eyes lowered, looking like he felt self-conscious with his legs half-raised in the air.

"Oh, no. I want to be able to see you. You said you wanted me aware of whose cock I was asking for, right? Don't tell me you want to be able to pretend I'm someone else."

Snape harrumphed faintly, making his belly jiggle. He was hairier all over than Harry and very pale, but in pretty good shape considering his age, not that that had saved him from Voldemort. At least he wasn't as pale as the last time Harry had seen him in life.

"Anyway, I like looking at you," Harry added, teasing the tight pucker behind Snape's balls.

Snape hissed faintly, making Harry worry for a moment that he was hurting him. "Do you enjoy gloating about your comparative youth?"

"I like seeing you alive and enjoying yourself." He felt Snape relax, then squeeze around his finger a bit, so he nudged the tip inside. "I know you don't like how I look, since I look like my dad..."

"Do not ever talk about your parents in bed," interrupted Snape, pressing down on the finger. "You resemble them less than you once did."

That was likely because Harry was now older than they had ever been, but he decided to refrain from mentioning it as he felt the heat of Snape's body opening to him. He rubbed at an angle, seeking Snape's prostate, watching the rise and fall of his chest. He had watched Snape stop breathing on that awful day in the Shrieking Shack and there had been nothing he could do, no spell he knew to stop the bleeding or suspend time to keep Snape alive.

Something must have shown in his face, because when he refocused on Snape after this unhappy thought, Snape was frowning. "Do you really believe I would go to bed with you if I found you unattractive?" he demanded.

"I guess not." Harry let himself smile a bit, even though he knew that wasn't the real Snape talking -- that was Snape as Harry needed him to be, the Room of Requirement's Snape. "I could say the same thing, though. I like looking at you because it makes me hard to see you like this."

Snape groaned, arching off the bed, and Harry knew he'd found the right spot. "Keep doing that," he ordered.

"Fucking you with my fingers, or telling you you make me hard?" He pushed a second finger inside, wresting another moan from Snape.

"Harry!"

Whichever it was, Snape liked it and Harry liked the way he sounded when he liked something Harry was doing -- needy and aroused and still a little forceful. With Snape writhing around his fingers, it was impossible not to imagine how good it would feel when Snape did it with Harry's cock inside him. Harry groaned, sinking his fingers in a last time before easing them out.

Snape's eyes opened, practically black with arousal. "Both." His eyes closed again as he slid the lubricant toward Harry's uncertain fingers.

A whimper, needy and aroused, shuddered out of Harry's mouth while he poured more of the slick stuff over his own fingers. Snape's eyes fluttered open and Harry could not resist a slow stroke of his cock purely for show.

"Get that inside me or being on top will become yet another figment of your overwrought imagination," commanded Snape with a rasp.

Still on his knees, Harry scooted in closer, his cock bobbing as he moved. He noticed that Snape's gaze was fixed on it, but he didn't show off any further, not wanting to risk the ire of even a figment, not when he was barely holding onto his control as it was. Figment or not, Harry definitely needed this from Snape, and he needed it now, curling his fingers around his cock, guiding it against Snape's arse. The thin, hairy legs slid around Harry's waist, not quite in impatience, but with gratifying eagerness.

Heat engulfed his prick. Harry groaned at the same moment Snape did, no longer looking drowsy or languid but watching Harry. He didn't wait to be commanded to begin to thrust, hips snapping several times before he pushed in at just the right angle to make Snape buck against him.

"Fuck, Harry, more!" came the hoarse shout. Mindful, Harry reached for Snape's prick, only to have his fingers batted away. "Just...just fuck me, please," Snape moaned, his own fingers replacing Harry's.

Harry was about to protest, but the feel of Snape's arse clenching around him and the sight of Snape touching himself stole his breath away. Instead he groaned, sinking in deep, pulling back so that he could see Snape's hand moving in long steady strokes. How could the Room of Requirement know so precisely that watching Snape wanking would make Harry wild with lust? Harry hadn't even known it before.

It was like being with a Snape who not only knew everything the real Snape had known about Potions and teaching and Hogwarts, but who was also a pornographic fantasy version of Snape, and -- even better -- a Snape who liked Harry, who moaned his name, squeezing his cock inside slippery heat that felt better than anything Harry could ever remember. "Harder," this Snape muttered, impaling himself on Harry, angling his hips to take Harry in even deeper.

"Let me touch you," begged Harry, needing to feel that hard prick in his hand...to know that it was real, even if only while Harry was in this room. Snape let him slide his fingers between Snape's own, guiding his hand up and down on warm skin that moved with their strokes. There was no way of knowing whether Snape had memories of doing this before, with other people, or if the Room allowed him to know only what Harry wanted.

The times Harry had been with men, there hadn't been much intimacy involved; it had felt good physically, but none of his partners had known him well and he'd hadn't sensed much emotional connection to the act. This was something else...intimate and passionate in a way Harry had begun to think might only exist in stories.

Oh fuck -- he was falling for a figment! How could Hogwarts possibly think that was what he needed?

Snape was looking at him, mouth open, eyes black and penetrating. At least a figment couldn't use Legilimency on him, thought Harry, not without some regret. No sooner had the idea crossed his mind than the bed began to shimmer before his eyes, and images swam through his mind like a discolored film. He was twelve years old, sitting in Snape's classroom, watching him sweep between the desks to glare into Harry's cauldron...he was fifteen, shaking as Snape ordered him to leave the dungeon and never return to his Occlumency lessons...he was seventeen, heart pounding as Snape flew into the night...

"You still haven't learned to keep your mind closed," Snape gasped, bringing Harry back to the present with the words and the tight grip of Snape's muscles around his cock.

"Never could with you!" Harry's hips were still snapping and his hand hadn't stopped moving on Snape's cock. Maybe he hadn't wanted to. Maybe he'd wanted one person who really knew him, even the things he didn't dare tell Ron and Hermione, the things he hadn't wanted to tell Dumbledore. Snape had seen things Harry had never spoken of to anyone else. And this figment seemed to know them all.

Harry himself wanted to know more, to see and learn about -- oh god, could the Room do that? Show him? An image flickered at the side of Harry's vision, infused with the pleasure of the acts he was committing with Snape, and yet apart, insistent. For a moment he was afraid the Room itself was shifting, turning into something else, a place with a Pensieve perhaps. Instead he saw Snape: pacing outside the maze during the third task of the Tri-wizard Tournament, delaying Umbridge by lying about not having Polyjuice Potion to use on Harry, reaching for Harry with bone-white fingers, blood flecking his sleeve, wanting Harry to be the last thing he saw before --

"Fuck!" Harry cried, as the image swirled away and the real Snape, or the version of him Harry was fucking, looked up at him with shock. Harry's hips bucked helplessly, trusting Snape to move his hand while the room grayed out as the most exquisite pleasure Harry had ever known flooded through him. Distantly he heard a shout and felt the fingers slowing before he could open his eyes again.

Snape's eyes had closed, or rolled back in his head, his lips damp and slightly parted. Harry leaned down, though it was more of a topple, and rubbed his mouth over Snape's, not sure he could manage anything as complicated as a kiss. When he pulled back, Snape's eyes were open and a bit uncertain.

"Not all of your memories of me are...unpleasant," he said, voice rougher than it had been a few moments ago.

"Nor yours of me," declared Harry with a grin. His fingers were sticky and wet and there was sweat running down his back, but he felt even better than the first time they'd done this.

"On the contrary," replied Snape, stretching without dislodging Harry's cock, which was still sheathed within him. "Playing nursemaid to you was uniformly unpleasant." But his mouth had curved into one of those smirks that looked sexy when they were like this.

Harry couldn't be made to feel guilty that Snape had helped keep him alive, even if Harry hadn't realized how many occasions there had been until he was older. "Aren't you glad you did?" He was soft enough to slide out, but had no more energy once he did save to flop beside Snape in the bed. "Otherwise we'd both be doing this with figments."

"Potter --" Snape began with a warning tone in his voice.

Harry kissed his cheek. "I won't say 'figment' if you won't say 'Potter'," he murmured.

Looking disgruntled, Snape replied, "Very well," sounding even drowsier than a moment ago. "Though you may wish you had disavowed such intimacies later."

In the midst of trying to burrow below Snape's shoulder, Harry frowned. "I have your come drying between my fingers and you're trying to discourage intimacy?"

Snape was still a moment, then he sighed and shifted so that Harry could lie in the crook of his arm, turning slightly to be able to see him. "You are no longer the child in those memories, so you know there are greater intimacies than those of the flesh."

Hearing Snape say things like that made his cock give a brave if feeble twitch. Had his mind been that unguarded, or was this just something the castle thought he needed to work through? "Do you mind?"

Snape didn't pretend to misunderstand. "You're daft."

"You already knew that." Snape's elbow had bent around Harry and now he could feel Snape's fingers combing through his hair. "Am I daft now for thinking you'd mind, or for wanting those things in the first place?"

"Yes." Snape's voice slurred as it dragged out the sibilant sound. The fingers slid down Harry's back as though Snape couldn't summon the strength to keep his hand in place. He did not speak again, and after a few moments his breathing grew steady and even.

"It's your fault if I fall in love with you," Harry said softly, not certain whether he was talking to Snape or to the castle, not wanting to think about it too much lest he ruin the peaceful pleasure lulling him to sleep in Snape's arms. If he had died and Snape had lived, he wondered whether Snape would ever have sought him out in the Room of Requirement and what sort of figment-Harry the Room would have created for Snape. Maybe one who would fall in love with Snape, and treat him the way Snape should have been treated instead of believing he was a traitor and hating him.

Maybe the figment Snape -- who believed he was the real Snape -- thought Harry was the figment. Or maybe, Harry thought with a smile as he drifted to sleep, Snape was right and Harry was a figment, and this was all a fantasy created by Snape's mind, and even if Harry disappeared in the morning, tonight for perhaps the first time in his life he was exactly where he wanted to be...

A hand was shaking Harry awake, pulling him out of a pleasant if bizarre dream in which he was flying on the back of a giant bat. "You're going to be late for breakfast, Harry."

The name brought Harry back to consciousness faster than the warning. He blinked sleepily at Snape, who was still lying next to him in the bed. At least the castle had provided an alarm. "I don't care if I miss breakfast," he said, clearing his throat. "I don't suppose you have tea?"

"Of course I have tea." Harry sat up as Snape swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Though it would be unwise for you to skip breakfast so early in the term -- your colleagues will speculate on your whereabouts." Snape padded off in the direction of the loo. Stretching, Harry looked around for his clothes before it occurred to him to wonder about this. He'd known the bathroom was there from the previous time he'd made love with Snape, but having a figment require a morning piss was verisimilitude with which he hadn't realized the castle would bother.

"What exactly do you do all day?" he asked when Snape returned, passing him as Harry got up to take his turn in the loo. He could smell that Snape had used toothflossing stringmints.

"You know the answer to that. I read. I brew potions. Occasionally I assist the headmistress with a thorny situation."

"Like guiding newly-minted Potions instructors through their first week teaching?" Harry asked, hoping to sound jaunty. Yet Snape was frowning. He was still naked -- Harry supposed the Room of Requirement was warmer than the dungeons. This Snape seemed more comfortable without his clothes than Harry had imagined, or would have imagined, if he'd ever -- sod it, he was even confusing himself now.

"If you think I am letting you bugger me as some sort of orientation program for young professors --" Snape began in a tone had never boded well for Harry's marks in the classroom.

"I didn't mean it like that!" Harry protested.

"I think you should go," replied Snape, getting stiffly to his feet. Harry debated arguing, but he'd never won an argument with Snape, alive or dead.

Harry collected his shirt, tugging it down. "I'll come by tonight, all right?" he asked.

Snape had turned his back, unaware, Harry was certain, of how enticing his backside looked, or how tempting it was to bury his face in the hair flowing over Snape's shoulder.

"I believe there is a meeting of an unauthorized defense class taking place tonight," Snape replied tightly. "All of the figments have been requested to amuse themselves elsewhere this evening."

Harry stood just behind him. "Would it help if I told you you're very sexy when you're sarcastic?"

Snape glared over his shoulder. Harry didn't push his luck and made it to breakfast, even managing to transfigure his shirt so it didn't look like was wearing the same shirt from dinner. He was the last to arrive but Neville always saved him a seat.

They were both reaching for bacon when Neville said, "Wow, looks like teaching agrees with you."

Harry lowered his face, pretty sure the memory of why he looked and felt so good was making him blush.

"My first week, I looked like I'd been wrestling with a Hungarian Horntail," Neville confessed. He slid a few more pieces of bacon onto his plate. "Actually I think I did wrestle a Venomous Tentacula," he mused with a shrug. "Come out with me tonight for a drink and tell me your secret."

"M-my secret?" asked Harry, frantically trying to think of how he might have given himself away.

Neville rolled his eyes. "Have some tea, mate," he chided, pushing the floral teapot toward him. "You're not as awake as I thought."

Grateful for the excuse, Harry filled his cup. Tea made him think of the tea he could have had with Snape, which made him think of the best sex he'd ever had...with Snape. Who was he kidding? Until the last couple of days hardly any physical act he'd performed, alone or with a partner, even remotely counted as sex now.

"For settling into the job," Neville clarified, once Harry had had a few sips of tea.

"There's no secret, really," Harry began, trying to think of a reason to cry off. He couldn't say he was tired -- Neville had just told him how fit he looked. It was too early in the term to have lengthy homework to grade. Before he could think of anything, Neville sputtered and rolled his eyes, thankfully not at Harry this time but at the Gryffindor table.

"Singh is trying to turn the pumpkin juice into rum again, better go sort it out before he gets the entire Fifth Form tipsy." He pushed back away from the table. "I'll meet you after your last class," he called back, striding toward the student tables before Harry could protest.

After that inauspicious beginning, it was not Harry's best day since arriving to teach at Hogwarts. He had two separate classroom disasters -- a spill by a Ravenclaw second year and a minor explosion by a NEWT-level Gryffindor, in a class with two Slytherin students who made certain the entire school had heard before suppertime, even though nothing was destroyed besides a cauldron, a couple of textbooks, and the student's shoes. McGonagall asked Harry somewhat testily how his classes were proceeding, to which he had replied just as testily that he thought he and the students were learning from each other.

He had almost managed to forget Neville's insistence that they have a drink together, but when he emerged from his final class, wanting nothing more than to drop in on Snape and insist that the castle had deposited him there, Neville was waiting. "I think we should go into Hogsmeade," Neville said. "Sometimes it helps to get off campus during the week. Reminds you that now that you're an adult, you can have a life outside Hogwarts."

A life outside Hogwarts wasn't something Harry wanted to think about at the moment. After all, he'd only just arrived, and in spite of all the things that had gone wrong since he began teaching, he was more comfortable here than he'd felt living at Grimmauld Place or even hanging out with the Weasleys. "I've only been back a week," he reminded Neville. "I haven't really had time to get tired of the place."

"Maybe not, but you've been spending a lot of time alone. It'll be good for you to be around other people."

Of course, Neville had no way of knowing that Harry hadn't exactly been spending his nights by himself. Harry realized that they were heading not toward the main doors but the greenhouses, and wondered how much time Neville spent alone with his plants. Maybe it wasn't Harry but Neville who needed company. "Listen, if we're going to Hogsmeade, I know a faster way," he said.

Neville's eyes lit up. "The secret passage?"

"Exactly." For a moment Harry considered that if they wanted to go to the Hog's Head Inn, it would be quickest to use the secret passage through the Room of Requirement, but he wasn't going to risk walking in there and having Neville see his secret standing right there, furious. "Honeydukes is still open, right? There's a passage that leads right into the cellar. We can easily get from there to the Three Broomsticks." Harry didn't think he was up for facing Aberforth Dumbledore tonight.

Neville followed him to the statue of the one-eyed witch in the third floor corridor, which was deserted at this hour. He grinned as Harry said, "Dissendium" and they began the trek that would lead them to the candy shop.

"I feel like we're students again," Neville said cheerfully. "At least Professor Snape isn't around to give us detention for a year if we..."

"I wish he were around. I wish he were here right now." At Neville's stare, Harry wished he hadn't spoken quite so fervently. "You know he was on our side all along. And think of all the things he could teach me about Potions," he added.

"I bet whatever you lack in knowledge you make up for in personality," Neville replied, shuddering a bit. "I was too scared to remember anything in Snape's classes. Anyway, you were going to tell me your secret -- how did you hit your stride teaching so quickly?"

It figured that Neville was the one person in the school who hadn't heard about Harry's disaster of a day. "McGonagall helped," he said offhandedly. "She pointed me toward the Room of Requirement."

Neville stopped in the passage. "That's odd," he mused, though he looked suspicious. "I was told that the Room of Requirement had been completely destroyed in the battle. I tried to get in a couple of times, but no amount of pacing and thinking made the door appear. McGonagall told me that she didn't think it existed anymore."

"Right," Harry said, backpedaling furiously, "Pointed, er, in the sense that it was up to me to find out what I required." He shrugged, urging Neville to start walking again. He did, grudgingly, still eyeing Harry with uncertainty.

"Like that Muggle psycho-psychomacology stuff?" Neville asked as they began the gradual ascent up to the floor of the sweet shop.

"Exactly," Harry agreed. "You know, stuff like pace myself and try to understand the needs of the students, that sort of thing," he extemporized. He tried to hurry Neville along without seeming to be doing just that. "Really, uh, cleared my head."

Neville still looked unconvinced but since they were climbing at a steady pace, he didn't comment further, especially since Harry shushed him when the wooden panel of the door overhead came into view. Since it wasn't a Hogsmeade weekend, the shop overhead was quiet, so they had to keep silent in case anyone was in the basement. When Harry gave the signal, they Apparated just outside the pub.

It was quiet inside the Three Broomsticks too, which pleased Harry. He'd worked out that he could have a nice quick drink with Neville and, even walking back the way they'd come, be inside the castle early enough to make an unsuspiciously civil call on Snape.

The barmaid tonight was not Rosmerta, but a pretty young witch Harry didn't know but whom Neville apparently did. She greeted them both when Neville introduced her as Amilla, mumbling Harry's name so that it was all but inaudible. Amilla didn't seem to notice, though, taking her time filling their pints with quite a bit of unnecessary -- to Harry at least -- swishing of her skirts. Harry initially asked for butterbeer, which he normally preferred over ale or stout, but both Neville and Amilla looked at him after the request as though he were a student who'd managed to sneak into the pub after school.

Sighing, Harry took a pint and drained it, having no interest in flirting with Amilla, especially since Neville's amiable chatter did not seem unwelcome to her. She automatically brought Harry another one while Neville was still lingering over his first. Eventually her attention was diverted by other customers as the pub filled up. Neville turned back to Harry. "See, wasn't this a good idea?"

"I really need to be getting --" Harry began, only to see Neville's expression fall. "Er, another round?" he finished instead. Neville brightened at once and signalled for the proposed round, though they both had to drink up to finish off the existing one.

Harry tried not to look impatient, but the pub was filling up and he'd already had more drinks than his bladder could hold, and Neville seemed to have grown roots on the bar stool. And he wanted Snape.

Pushing off the bar stool, Harry clapped a hand on Neville's shoulder, meaning to say he was off, back to the castle, but what came out instead was, "Loo."

Neville nodded abstractedly; Amilla was bending down to retrieve something from under the bar, to more admiring glances than just Neville's. Harry took a step, trying to pretend it wasn't a stagger. He gripped the end of the bar, swaying uncertainly before releasing his comforting grip on something solid before lurching toward the gents.

Once inside the stall, he leaned his head against the door and swore at himself. He was more intoxicated than he'd been the night he'd had his first sexual encounter with a man -- he'd needed the courage the alcohol had provided even though he'd known, or thought he'd known, what he wanted. What he wanted now was Snape.

He'd explain to Neville, or make up something tomorrow, Harry thought, leaving the dubious security of the stall door. He Apparated back to the border of Hogwarts, head still swimming but feeling more secure now that he'd done a fairly complex spell. He strode -- oh all right, lurched -- through the gates, bracing against one of the winged boar columns for support. Snape was inside the castle, he thought, gathering his remaining composure and heading inside.

It was later than he'd realized. There weren't any students lingering in the forecourt, nor any near the Great Hall as Harry contemplated the stairs. Why did the bloody castle have so many stairs? Snape, Snape, Snape, he thought, managing each footfall that brought him closer. By the time he reached the seventh floor he was out of breath and begrudging every ounce of alcohol ever fermented.

He nearly cried when he saw the entrance to the Room of Requirement, and needed no urging to practically shout out his requirement. "Snape!" Somewhere between "Sna-" and "-pe!" the wall fell away and Harry was inside.

"Really, there's no need to shout," Snape said, in an exasperated tone, looking up from his chair.

Harry sagged against the stone wall. "You're not angry with me?" In the fume-soaked recesses of his brain, he thought perhaps the Room had reset Snape to before their quarrel this morning.

"That you have the nerve to show up here after hours, reeking of alcohol and apparently as randy as a schoolboy?" Snape asked, setting down a slim leather book. "On the contrary, I intend to hex you into next week. When you've sobered up, and I can enjoy it more." He smirked. As when Harry had indeed been a schoolboy, it was unpleasant to be a victim of that smirk. But also, somehow, arousing.

Snape started to stand, but Harry's self-defense instincts had always been strong. As he swayed and the room went dark and he felt himself slumping to the floor, his last thought was to wonder, how had Snape known he was randy as as schoolboy?

"Drink this."

It was much too bright, and someone was speaking much too loudly. Harry groped around desperately for something to pull over his head.

"Sit up and drink it, Potter. I will not have you vomiting in my bed."

With a helpless groan, Harry forced his eyes open a crack. Snape was standing over him, yanking him none too gently into a semi-vertical position and shoving a cup against his mouth. Harry's stomach lurched.

"Swallow it, or I shall administer it to you as an enema." Harry had no doubt that Snape meant it. He took a hesitant sip, hoping he would be able to keep down whatever Snape was forcing between his lips. It tasted terrible, but after a moment his stomach stopped trying to push into his throat. Another sip and his head stopped pounding.

"What time is it?"

"Half past two in the morning." Harry glanced around and felt sheepish when he realized that what he'd taken for a painfully bright light was in fact a small bedside lamp. "When I suggested that you might occasionally leave Hogwarts for your entertainment, I did not realize you would take it as license to get stinking drunk..."

"I only meant to have butterbeer." Wrapping his own hands around the cup Snape was still holding to his mouth, Harry took a larger swallow, and the previous evening came clearer. "It's Neville's fault I got drunk."

Snape's eyebrows shot up practically to his hairline. He looked like he might be planning to blow something up...or someone. "Longbottom got you drunk?" he roared.

Harry winced. Apparently the excruciating effects of sound lingered longer than those from the dim lamp. "He didn't mean to. He just wanted company to go see a pretty barmaid."

Snape did not look completely mollified, but he did lower his voice. "So I suppose you had to match him drink for drink? Is everything a competition to you, Potter?"

"It's Harry. And it wasn't a competition, I was just trying to be friendly to an actual colleague."

Again Snape looked murderous. "Instead of a figment?"

"That's not what I meant." Putting down the cup beside the lamp, Harry rubbed his forehead. "I work with Neville. He's my best friend on the faculty here...my only friend, really." Though Harry greatly admired Professor McGonagall, he did not think of her as one of his mates. "You yell at me every time you see me."

"Did I yell at you when you turned up in my home too drunk to stay on your feet?"

Harry tried to remember, but he only remembered Snape smirking, and himself getting hard even though he was so drunk he couldn't walk. "I guess not, but you've never begged me to come out and have a drink with you. The entire time I was out with Neville, the only thing I could think about was how badly I wanted to come back here and have you fuck me into this mattress!"

Snape looked -- for Snape -- startled by this, though whether it was the bold directness of Harry's statement or the hungry look that accompanied it, Harry couldn't be certain. Snape -- being Snape -- covered his surprise by leaning back, eyes narrowing.

"Your bout of alcoholism has rendered you into a state too delicate for vigorous fucking," replied Snape, crossing both arms over his chest and peering down at Harry. Harry's cock, which apparently had a less clouded head than its owner, liked the way Snape said vigorous fucking. He started to protest that he felt fine, or at least much better now that the potion had absorbed the alcohol in his system, but Snape was peremptorily shushing him. "And it's a bit late, or, I suppose, irregularly early, to ask you out for a drink."

It took Harry a moment to remember about the drink part -- the earlier part of the evening with Neville seemed like weeks ago, and telling Snape he should ask him out was before Snape had said 'vigorous fucking.' Again, he started to speak, but Snape uncrossed his arms with such deliberation that Harry was certain he was about to be tossed out bodily.

Instead Snape settled himself in the middle of the bed, straddling Harry's hips with the same determination. "What concerns me, of course, is what sort of drink you and I would share," he drawled with the casual air of a waiter whose sole concern was taking Harry's order in a restaurant. No waiter, however, had ever reached for Harry's shirt, tugging it up over his head. "We've already ascertained you have an appallingly low tolerance for alcohol and I have no desire to ogle barmaids, pretty or otherwise," added Snape, running his hands over Harry's bare chest.

"A-anything," Harry managed, fairly certain that though his brain might not be up for the conversation Snape seemed bent on having, his body wasn't having any difficulty with the non-verbal part.

"Coffee would be problematic because there isn't anyplace in the village that sells the stuff, since it never caught on with any but the most recent generation of witches and wizards," Snape went on, sliding backwards along Harry's legs, taking hold of trousers and pants and dragging them along too. Harry's cock sprang up as if proving it had indeed been paying attention to the conversation.

"There are lots of places --" Harry began again, distracted when Snape, having finished undressing Harry, stretched himself out between Harry's legs. He lay his cheek on one thigh, finger tracing the seam that separated Harry's balls.

"There's always that abominable tea shop in Hogsmeade," Snape said, ignoring both Harry's feeble attempt at conversation and his groan of pleasure. "Though rumors would abound that Harry Potter, boy hero of the wizarding world, was paying court to a figment."

There were so many things wrong with this assertion that Harry's brain, never at its finest around Snape -- especially when he was naked with Snape -- nearly shut down. No, it was when Snape swallowed his cock that Harry's brain shut down. It wasn't fucking, but it was vigorous.

Harry, who even at the best of times couldn't hold out under Snape's pleasurable assault, barely had time to clench his fingers into the sheets, bucking into the enthusiastic mouth. Pathetically, he tried to shift around to see if it was possible to mount a similar assault, but both of Snape's hands covered his hips, pressing him flat against the mattress. The black sweep of Snape's hair moved between his fingers as Snape's head bobbed on his cock.

"Fuck, that's so --" Harry tried, just before his brain switched off any attempt at conversation to focus on pleasure. His hips tried to raise off the bed as he howled and spurted down Snape's throat.

When he opened his eyes, Snape's mouth was sliding off Harry's softening prick, satisfaction in his dark eyes. "You have a low tolerance for that as well," he commented, licking at one side of his mouth.

"Only with you," said Harry, eyes fixed on that tiny tip of tongue before it disappeared with a trace of Harry clinging to it. "Whatever you do to me is better. More intense."

Snape's head was back on Harry's thigh. "I'm certain you say that to all your figments."

"I've never said it to anyone else, figment or not." Harry was torn between tugging Snape up beside him, or over him, and just lying still, enjoying how Snape's hair felt between his fingers and how Snape's cheek felt against his skin. "I've never felt this way with anyone else. If you weren't a figment, I'd ask you to come up to the tower with me."

Snape's head lifted, making Harry whimper softly at the loss. "Have you considered that that's precisely why you find this so intense? Because you don't believe I'm real? You think the castle created me specifically to your requirements, with no obligation on your part in return. You show up here tired or drunk or wallowing in self-pity and presume that I will provide whatever is necessary to mollify you."

Listening to Snape talk was so mesmerizing that Harry could nearly overlook the bitter edge in his voice and almost ignore the accusation in his words. "That's not why it's intense," he replied, struggling to find words through the fog of alcohol and sex still clouding his mind. "I have all these memories of who I thought you were, while I was a student and when I was hiding, when I kept telling myself that if I ever saw you again, I was going to kill you. And then I have all these memories that aren't even mine of who you really were, and understanding finally why nothing you'd done ever made sense to me, and questions that I never got to ask, because you died."

The grief of it washed over him as though it were a new loss, not something that had happened years ago -- something he'd believed he'd come to terms with the way he'd come to terms with losing Lupin and Tonks and Fred and Cedric -- something necessary for Voldemort's defeat and the safety of the world. He'd never really mourned Snape, whose death had been one of so many when their world had almost ended and Harry himself had almost died. Tears stung his eyes, but he tried to ignore them, certain that Snape would only ridicule him if he noticed them.

Snape's head had drooped again, though he wasn't resting against Harry in the same contented position as before. "What do you think would have been different if I'd been there after the battle?" he asked tersely. "With half the Ministry plotting my execution and the parents of every Hogwarts student wishing to finish the job, while you were being celebrated around the world as the savior of all? Do you honestly think we'd have fallen into each other's arms?"

"Maybe not right away, but we'd have talked," Harry said, relieved that his voice didn't shake. "I'd never have let them execute you -- I insisted that they grant you a formal pardon for Dumbledore's death even though it didn't matter any more. Maybe it wouldn't have taken me so long to sort out why I always had intense feelings about you."

"You hated me," Snape reminded him.

"Hate's an intense feeling. I used to lie awake at night feeling betrayed by you -- I thought about that a lot more than I wished I was with Ginny, all those months on the run. After the battle, I couldn't figure out why I didn't feel anything the way I thought I would...not happy, not even relieved. I convinced myself it was because we'd lost all those people and I was still in shock, but nothing's really been right since you died. Not work, not sex. Nothing."

"So you thought you'd come back to Hogwarts to teach Potions and see if that revived you?"

Snape's voice was skeptical but he was looking right at Harry, a sort of look that revived Harry's cock. "It did revive me," Harry said, feeling slightly breathless. "You revived me. This is the most real thing in my life, so you can stop wondering whether I only find it intense because I think it isn't."

There was a soft groan from between his legs and Snape shifted over his thigh. Then there was another sound, one Harry hadn't heard before when he'd been in this room.

"Was that --" he began, but before he could finish the question, Snape was sitting up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. The sound repeated. "-- a knock?" Harry finished. Snape, who had only removed his shoes when he'd crawled in between Harry's legs, was slipping them back on.

Harry sat up. "Someone who wants to use the Room of Requirement?" Harry asked, gathering up the sheets around his lap. "At this hour?"

"Stay out of sight," Snape ordered, striding toward the bedroom door.

"But --"

Harry had never understood the magical theory behind the Room of Requirement. It was different than wizard magic or elf magic and every other kind he had heard of. Not that he had heard of all that many, but even Hermione had gotten glassy eyed trying to work it out, the times they had spoken of it. As soon as the bedroom door had closed behind Snape, Harry reached for his jeans, tugging them on and opening the door again.

"Severus." Professor McGonagall stood in the outer doorway. Owing to the late hour, her hair was gathered down her back in a braid and she wore a tartan shawl over dark robes. "I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour, but I have Professor Longbottom up in my office and he's very concerned about -- Potter!"

Harry gaped. The room hadn't undergone any transformation when Professor McGonagall stepped into it. Neither had Snape, through he was practically in the hallway as he stepped aside to admit her. She had called out his name as soon as she'd seen him standing between the two rooms. Snape shut the door behind her as she looked between them, eyebrows lifting. The corners of her mouth twitched as she looked at Snape. "Potter?"

Snape turned away from the door slowly as if afraid of what he'd find when he looked up. With a sigh he confirmed, "Potter."

"I was just, um --" Harry began, running a hand through his hair. He was too dumbfounded to make up any sort of reason for being here without his shirt. He was sorry to have worried Neville, and knew that he would have to find him and apologize tomorrow.

Trying not to look at Snape, he looked around the laboratory again -- the room that had not changed when the headmistress had entered it. True, she had needed to find Harry and here he was, but it was also clear that she could see Snape. And had done before. Just as Snape had always maintained. Snape had been trying to let Harry know all along.

"I believe I can see what you were doing," she said with a smirk nearly the equal of Snape's. "I suppose this means I can reassure Professor Longbottom that you haven't wound up unconscious in a ditch?"

Sheepishly Harry shook his head. "I'm, um, fine." Snape was still by the door, not looking at Harry.

"Rather more than fine, I imagine," McGonagall said, patting Snape's arm. "Shall I see you tomorrow at the usual time for tea?" she asked, glancing at Harry. "Or will you be...busy?"

Jerking upright away from the door, Snape said, "I will not be busy."

Once she had gone, Snape finally looked at him, though Harry wasn't sure what to make of his expression. "You're real," Harry said, still standing in the bedroom doorway.

"Pardon me? No nonsense about how the castle, ever attentive to your needs, must want you to think I'm real now?" retorted Snape as he folded his arms across his chest.

Wordlessly Harry shook his head.

"Wouldn't you like to perform some tests? Perhaps dissect me?"

Clearly Snape intended to keep goading him...because it was Snape, not because the Room of Requirement thought that Harry would expect to be goaded. "Why didn't you tell me?" he burst out.

"I have told you that I am not a figment more times than I --"

"Not that! I don't mean now. Why didn't you tell me that you were alive and well and living at Hogwarts? Five years ago, while I going to the Ministry of Magic to insist that they formally pardon you, even though you were dead? And that they award you the Order of Merlin posthumously?" He hadn't meant to shout, but anger was slowly replacing his shock at the realization. "I know you never liked me, but did you have to punish me for being my father's son by letting the entire world believe you were gone?"

Snape was staring at him as if they were back in the Potions classroom and Harry had just used Chinese cabbage when the ingredients list called for Hellebore. "Must it always be about you, Potter? I hid my survival because even now there are adversaries from both sides who would be happy to finish the job of ending my life. As you would realize, if you took one moment to consider what my existence has been like since the Dark Lord first returned. Only three people know I survived -- two of whom had to be told because I would have died without their care."

"Madam Pomfrey?" Harry guessed. "And probably Professor Slughorn." He felt strangely betrayed by them, and by McGonagall as well, though it wasn't as if he'd seen Madam Pomfrey more than a couple of times since returning to Hogwarts, and he'd scarcely kept in touch with Slughorn at all, even though Slughorn still invited Harry to all his Slug Club reunions. "I suppose you swore them to secrecy. I'd think that after everything, you might have trusted me."

"Trust had nothing to do with my decision. I must confess that in all this time, it never occurred to me that you might have any fond nostalgia for me."

"I watched you die! I felt responsible!"

"Yet you left me there on the floor. Don't get me wrong -- if you had tried to move me, that might have been disastrous. Abandonment was necessary for my survival. It was precisely what I expected of you."

The tone was mocking, but Snape's expression was more like the one he had worn when Harry had called him a coward on the awful night of Dumbledore's death. Harry supposed he hadn't treated Snape any better than Snape had treated him; had treated Snape far worse, in fact, considering that Snape had saved his life.

"I wanted to talk to you as soon as I knew the truth," Harry said, lowering his voice. "When I saw your memories and knew you'd been on Dumbledore's side all along...on my side. Everything looked different once I understood that, but I thought it was too late." He swallowed hard. "I wish I'd known. I'd have done a lot of things differently, if I had known."

Snape did not actually snort out loud, but he looked like he wanted to. "Such as what? Making me parade in front of the Ministry as Harry Potter's very own reformed Death Eater?" Snape sounded angry too, so Harry tried to control his own temper despite the stab of rejection he felt. Lashing out wouldn't serve him here, not when Snape was the expert at inflicting pain.

"I only did that because it was the only way I knew to honor you and what you did," explained Harry.

"I don't want your honor --"

Harry strode out of the doorway, hoping he wasn't about to get the hexing he'd been promised earlier. At least Snape didn't step back when Harry stood directly in front of him. "I only meant, if I'd known, we might have had five years together already instead of just a few nights." He'd startled Snape. Actually, he'd startled himself a bit with how much he wanted that. "And don't --" He laid two fingers over Snape's lips, "Don't say anything about figments, please. I feel thick enough already." He moved his fingers when Snape pressed his lips together in agreement. "Maybe we could --"

He shrugged, suddenly aware of his bare chest and lack of underpants beneath his hastily donned jeans. And the presence of Snape so close.

"-- I don't know, start over? Real person to real person." He stuck out one hand. "I'm Harry, Harry Potter, and I think you're dead sexy."

There was a moment -- perhaps the longest in Harry's life, save the span of breath following his final Expelliarmus spell that had finished the Dark Lord -- when Harry thought Snape would refuse him. Then Snape's hand closed around his. "You may call me Severus, and while I do not find you as endearing as you seem to find yourself, I do think you have a very fine arse that I would like to know better."

Harry glared at him but didn't let go of his hand. "Ha bloody ha," he retorted. Then uncertainty washed over him. "It's not just the sex, is it?"

Snape did snort that time. "Do you honestly think I'd be having this ridiculous conversation if it were just about sexual congress?"

Harry stepped into his arms. "Do you know you're really sexy when you say 'sexual congress'?" There was another long moment, this time of eager kissing. "That, um, just meeting for the first time thing? We don't have to extend that to sexual congress, do we?" He ran a hand down Snape's chest.

"Not unless you have some perverse desire to lose your virginity again," Snape agreed, smirking a bit.

Harry's cock throbbed in pleasure at the thought of losing his virginity to Snape -- if Harry had known Snape was alive, it could have happened that way -- but at the moment he was just as happy to have some experience so there was no need for timidity. "I'm game for whatever perverse desires you have, but since I'm recovering from a recent accident with alcohol, I think for now we had better stick to simple things like you fucking me into the mattress," he said hopefully.

Snape let out a small groan as his hips bucked, pressing him against Harry. "Are you certain you feel sufficiently recovered from your drunken stupor?" he asked.

"Completely recovered." Just to prove the point, Harry thrust against the hard cock nudging into him. "Recovered enough to get on all fours for you, or put my legs in the air, or spread out on my --"

"Fuck!" The word exploded out of Snape as his hands clenched around Harry's bum. "Get back on the bed. Didn't I tell you to stay there?"

"No, you told me to stay out of sight." Unable to manage to mimic Snape's smirk, Harry grinned. "I could hide, if you wanted, and you could come find me..."

"No hiding," ordered Snape emphatically. He was shuffling Harry back toward the doorway into the bedroom. "And no more disappearing so that the headmistress comes knocking on my door in the middle of the night, either."

"All right, as long as you stop trying to ward me out. I'll knock next time." Even through his lust-addled brain, Harry found other thoughts trying to surface. "This isn't the Room of Requirement any more, right? Neville said it hadn't worked since the fire. I think you tried to tell me that, too, when I first came looking for your Potions book."

"This is not the Room of Requirement." Snape nodded, nudging Harry through the bedroom doorway. "That magic could not be repaired. But the spells on the door were not completely destroyed. No one can enter this room unless he or she is specifically seeking its occupant."

That was brilliant -- it meant that Snape had been completely safe here, because no one would have thought to look for him except for the people who already knew he was alive. But Harry was still puzzled. "How come it let me in?"

"Perhaps because..." Snape threw his weight forward, knocking Harry backward on the bed. "...the castle knew that you were looking for me."

Harry gaped at him. "You mean Hogwarts actually did try to help me?"

Snape gave him a proper smirk, reaching for the zip on his jeans. "How do you know Hogwarts wasn't helping me?"

With a happy sigh, Harry tugged Snape's shirt up. He didn't mind in the least if the castle had been trying to do Snape a favor and not himself, particularly when things had worked out so well for both of them. "Will you come outside?" he asked. "Once we've made sure it's safe, I mean. I don't want to have to act like you're a secret." He paused with his hands on Snape's chest. "Or a figment."

At least the word 'figment' made the corners of Snape's mouth twitch instead of his hexing fingers. "If you can think of something more entertaining to do than moon over pretty barmaids," Snape said, rolling so that Harry's hands, busy tugging at his trousers, could do their work.

"Lots of things," admitted Harry. "Some we can even do in public." He pushed his face into the thatch of curly dark hair between Snape's legs and inhaled before letting himself be pulled up for a kiss.

"I have been out, you know," admitted Snape, "Not often and not as myself, but I haven't spent the entire time up here."

Harry smiled and rubbed his lips over Snape's. One leg draped over his, bringing their cocks together. "I want you as yourself; I want all my friends to know about us."

"Even if you have to tell them how we met again after so many years?" asked Snape, rolling Harry onto his back, his own knees bracketing Harry's legs.

Laughing, stretching back into the pillows Harry said, "We can fudge a little on that. And anyway, they'll be so amazed that you survived, they won't ask too many questions."

Snape looked openly skeptical, but since he looked openly skeptical with lubricant on his fingers, Harry didn't mind. "After running the gauntlet of Weasley good will on your behalf, you may wish I really had been a figment."

Harry groaned, partly because he knew Snape was right and partly because one slick finger had just sunk inside him. He shook his head. "Oh no, I want you just exactly like this. Hot and sexy and --" Snape was looking at him strangely, but Harry went on. "You know how I feel about you. About this." He splayed out his fingers on his chest, sliding them down toward his erection. "Intense."

"It may not always be," Snape said, and though his words were cautious, his fingers moving inside Harry were not.

Harry gasped as pleasure spread from the touch inside him. "I don't think we'll mind if we have lazy weekend morning sex or sucking each other off after a long day sex or --"

"Potter --" Snape growled.

Harry grinned. "Harry, or I keep telling you all the ways I want to have sexual congress with you."

"Harry." The name was dragged out as Snape was sitting up, close enough so that Harry could squeeze out the lubricant and coat his cock himself. "I didn't mean you should stop, only that I might come before the actual erotic encounter can progress to the point where we both --"

"Oh God, you'd better fuck me or I won't last either," Harry begged. He lay back, spreading his knees wide. "I want to be able to see your face this time. Next time you can have me on all fours or with a pillow under my --"

"Harry." Whether the word was meant as a distraction, or an demand, or a plea, Harry couldn't have said, but he could feel Snape's cock pushing up against him and then inside him and it was all good, even the burn of entry, even the momentary ache in his hip as Snape's fingers gripped down hard.

"Severus!"

"Look at me," ordered Snape, thrusting in, and Harry obeyed, though he knew what would happen. It took only a moment for the room to begin to swim, even with Snape's cock inside him and Snape's hand on Harry's cock keeping him anchored in the sensations his body was experiencing. Every time Snape had used Legilimency on him in school, Harry had been focused on blocking him, but this time he tried to focus on showing him specific things: how badly he'd wanted him in the bar earlier and the night before and his first day of teaching when he'd wanted Snape's textbook so badly because he hadn't thought there was any way he could have Snape.

He heard Snape groan, but Snape hadn't looked away, and Harry pushed with his mind the way he was pushing insistently into Snape's fingers with his cock. He saw himself in a Daily Prophet photo as Snape tore it out of the newspaper, saw himself receiving the keys to the Ministry as Snape -- in the body of a shorter, squatter man -- watched from the back of the crowd.

"You didn't expect me to let you throw your life away after I gave my life up to keep you alive?" Snape demanded, cheeks flushed, bringing Harry back to the present where Snape's cock was thrusting hard into his very enthusiastic arse.

"I didn't expect, oh fuck, anything!" wailed Harry, shifting his hips to get more friction both inside and out. He couldn't concentrate on anything beyond that, couldn't even keep his eyes focused, and a particularly perfect twist of Snape's wrist tugged his cock just right and made everything disappear -- the past and the present both.

Dimly he heard Snape moaning. "Told you I wouldn't last," Snape panted in his ear.

"Not like I did, either." A grin pushed across Harry's face. "Anyway, that was pretty good for a figment."

Snape kept his weight on one elbow. He looked down at Harry. "I hope you won't be disappointed when you realize I am only a man and not a tailor-made creation for your erotic requirements."

"I will never be sorry to have the real you instead of some fantasy of you. Even when you remind me what an idiot I am." Harry was still smiling.

"I would do that in any case, either as a figment or myself," replied Snape, dragging a finger around the circle of Harry's nipple.

Harry looked away briefly then back up to meet Snape's gaze. "You won't mind if I fall for the real you, then? Because after that --" He pressed his lips together, too uncertain to clarify if he meant the revelation of Snape's being alive, the memories he'd shared or the sex. "I don't think I can help it."

Snape eyed him, but he looked untroubled. "Have you made any effort to resist, even when you thought I wasn't real?"

Shaking his head, Harry said, "None."

Harry decided he loved the way the corner's of Snape's mouth twitched when he was close to smiling. "Neither have I, and I knew you were real."