Chapter Text
For most of the Order, it was the battle of the Department of Mysteries that marked the Wizarding world’s descent into chaos. It was those events – the unequivocal return of the Dark Lord, Harry’s refusal to guard his mind properly, Sirius Black’s tumble through the veil – that created the boundary between what had been life as usual, and was now war. All around the country, rules were changing. Things that had been safe and static were dangerous, fluid. Harry Potter was once more alone, and Severus Snape was hurled back into the ring: a spy once more. Dumbledore, too, found his school compromised again and again as parents lost trust in his ability to keep their children safe.
Yes, it was the battle of the Department of Mysteries, then, which marked the beginning of the end, as it were. And it was not just the faculty that felt the shift – not by a long shot.
***
It was the summer after the episode in the Ministry of Magic, and the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix was a hive of activity. At night, however, it would fall silent as all either departed or retired.
Harry tried to sleep - as everyone else seemed able to do so easily - but his eyes would not stay closed. He’d lie there for hours, in the close, dusty darkness of Number Twelve, yet every time his eyes drifted closed, he’d hear a sound, or imagine a sound, or remember a sound, and open they would spring, his heart hammering in his chest.
He turned over, and pressed his face into the pillow, but all that accomplished was to half-suffocate him. With a grunt of frustration, he flipped back over, tangling his feet in the sheets. He struggled with them for a moment, but then froze as Ron turned over and murmured in the other bed. And that wasn't fair. His insomnia shouldn’t affect Ron’s sleep.
He got up.
Outside his bedroom, the hallways were dark. Everyone, Harry thought with a touch of bitterness, was asleep. But not him. And how could he sleep?
He crept down the stairs, treading as lightly as possible on the ancient steps to avoid any creaks that, in such silence, would surely wake Mrs. Black where she slept on her canvas in the entryway. A lumos would have helped, Harry thought belatedly as he felt his way across the house - no real destination in mind - but he wasn't supposed to use magic, and he’d left his wand sitting beside his bed, anyway. The mere thought of his empty hand set his blood rushing for an instant – a reaction to being unarmed that had become all but automatic. Stupid, he thought. Did he really expect to be ambushed, in the dead of night, in the kitchen of the Order of the Phoenix headquarters?
Yes, he answered himself, as he wandered into the living room, nearly barking his shin on the edge of a coffee table. I expect to be ambushed anywhere.
One thing Harry had never learned from the History of Magic classes at Hogwarts (one thing among the admittedly huge volume of things he did not learn from the late Professor Binns) was what war really meant for those fighting it. For all the endless hours that Binns had spent recounting the Goblin Rebellions, the constant, inter-tribe wars of the Giants, and the rest of the quite bloody history of Wizardkind, he’d never once so much as hinted at what it felt like to be in the thick of it. To fight, and kill, and die. The blood pounding in your ears as you ran or charged or screamed in retaliation – the way fear permeated every thread of life until it wasn’t really fear at all, anymore, it was constant vigilance. The way your body sometimes chose for you whether you fought or fled. The terrible crash of adrenaline when the fighting was over that left you shaking and in a freezing sweat. It was, now that he thought of it, just how he felt upon waking up from a terrible nightmare. Only, in war, the nightmare was real, and it wasn’t over, only paused. And who knew how long the respite would last?
Harry could tell he wasn’t the only one who felt it – it wasn’t just because he was young. He could see the way everyone looked just as the danger subsided. He saw how Tonks and Remus looked at each other just before disapparating together to do Merlin knew what.
There was something fundamentally animal about mortal danger, and it made everything else animal, too, for a while. Harry had never been closer to casting a true cruciatus, for example, than just after an ambush in Hogsmeade not long before. He’d cornered a Deatheater outside the Hog’s Head and disarmed him, but it wasn’t until the bastard had started running his mouth off about Harry’s parents that the fury started to boil up inside him.
“You’ve your mother’s eyes, Potter,” the masked man had said. “Wonder if you’ve got her scream, too…”
The rage had felt like a tidal wave, and before the Deatheater had drawn breath to continue his taunts, Harry had shrieked, “CRUCIO!"
He hadn’t even heard Lupin shout his name, or notice that the man was there beside him until his hand was knocked sideways, sending the curse into the wall with a sinister crackle. Lupin, still holding his wrist, had sent a stunning spell at the laughing Deatheater, and pulled Harry away, leaving cleanup to Tonks and Kingsley. Harry’d cried, then, and hated that he’d cried. But it was the adrenaline, he'd told himself - just the adrenaline - even as Remus pulled him, shaking, into an embrace, and disapparated.
He’d been taken to Number Twelve after that, and hadn’t been allowed out since. It was ‘too dangerous,’ and he had to be ‘protected.’
Harry had wanted to kill that wizard. But not just that – he’d wanted the man to suffer. To torture him. Yet, barely a day had gone by before Harry was revolted with himself. What kind of teenager feels hate like that?
But then, what kind of teenager has gone through what Harry has?
He thought briefly of Hagrid’s Thestrals… who had the other students seen die? Grandparents, strangers? Harry had seen more death than his share, that was for sure. Been – been the cause of more death.
He brushed the edge of a cabinet with his foot just then, and reflexively leapt away from it. Bottles jostled gently against each other inside, and he looked around the room and found he’d wandered into the Black family’s private potions laboratory. The air was thick with dust there, as no one used the room for so much as a storage closet. Snape preferred the climate and light controlled nature of Number Twelve’s basement, or so he said. Harry happened to think the Potions Master simply wanted to be as far away from people as possible at all times.
Snape… Snape had changed too, Harry thought. He'd always been nasty, of course - even during the peaceful lull between wars - but there had been a noticeable shift since that day at the close of Harry’s fourth year when he’d overheard Dumbledore: “Severus, you know what I must ask of you… if you are prepared…”
Harry hadn’t known then what those few words meant, though he’d been given some vague idea by the way Snape jumped ever-quicker towards rage in the weeks and months afterwards, and the way his eyes began to have a sunken, shadowed look that did nothing to soften his already hard appearance. He wasn’t sleeping. Dumbledore, as Harry learned later, had asked Snape to resume his role as a, what, triple agent? A spy, playing a Deatheater, playing a spy. Yes, Harry could understand how sleep might elude one with so complicated a role to fill. War fostered a simmering sense of panic and fighting on both sides could do nothing but exacerbate it horribly. It broke down routine, for one thing. It was, after all, impossible to maintain a routine when any part of it could be destroyed or rendered inaccessible at any moment – when anyone could die or be tortured into madness – when anything could be taken away. You had to hold on to what you could, in times like those, but let go of everything else.
Letting go, Harry thought, padding silently through the filthy floor of the abandoned potions room, was what kept him going. He’d almost fallen apart when Sirius had gone through the veil. Had wanted to fall apart. But soon enough he realized that he couldn’t just lay down and quit, no matter how much it hurt, because too much depended on him surviving and fighting. So, he let go, and went on living ever-more alone, into his bleak, terrible future: the prophecy had, after all, ensured it would be so. It made him feel rather hollow at times, to tell the truth, crushing his pain for the sake of The Cause, but it was what he had to do, wasn’t it? He had to forget Sirius, abandon his brief memory, and carry on. But sometimes the empty space inside him filled up with thick, black guilt for the very same reasons. It roiled inside him, every day reminding him that he’d killed his own godfather – the closest thing he had to a parent - and then simply put the whole matter out of his mind.
He was plagued by it for weeks, with no relief to be found. Lupin just made him feel worse, telling him it wasn’t his fault. And Hermione and Ron didn’t know what to say to him anymore. He’d stopped writing to Hermione after the first two letters, and kept things light with Ron, who'd graciously chosen to stay with him in the gloom and mold of Number Twelve, so he wouldn’t be totally alone. It didn’t really help. He still felt alone, just with the added burden of having to act normal around him.
Harry had an idea that Ron was telling Hermione all about it, as he spent long stretches of time scratching away at scrolls of parchment, which he gave to members of the Order to post. Sometimes it made Harry angry. Everyone was talking about him behind his back. Everyone was looking at him, watching him, worrying about him. It made him want to disappear. Sink into the floor. But no, he was in prison for his own safety. The only other resident of Number Twelve that seemed unable to leave at will was Snape, who skulked about in various rooms and kept mostly to himself.
Snape was always ready to abuse him at even the slightest provocation, and for some reason, Harry found that he craved it. He wanted to fight, sometimes, and everyone else treated him like glass. Not Snape.
That was what Harry seemed to need. He needed someone to see that he was worthless and stupid; that his hubris had killed his godfather. Snape saw him. Snape reminded him that he was foolhardy, reckless, a thoughtless child. But did Harry know that was why he insisted on provoking Snape at every chance? Of course not.
But Severus himself did know. Oh yes, to Severus it was quite obvious.
Potter had a way of intruding at the most irritating, most detrimental, most important moments. The more concentration Severus was devoting to the addition of an ingredient or the precise number and frequency of strokes of the stirring rod, the more likely Potter was to burst into the room with some excuse. The more absorbed Severus was in his own ruminations or the maintenance of his mental defenses, the louder Potter crashed about the house. It was infuriating. But then, it was meant to be infuriating, wasn’t it? It hadn’t taken Severus long to deduce the motivations behind Potter’s increasingly disrespectful behavior. If every time Potter provoked him, he retaliated in the usual manner, and Potter continued to provoke him, then it must be that the boy wished to be retaliated against. It was not unusual to punish or abuse oneself in response to emotional trauma such as the loss of a loved one, and even less unusual in children. Potter was simply using Severus as his whipping post.
At first, that unspoken arrangement was perfectly tolerable from Severus’ perspective. He never had to act more irritated than he really was, and after a while, Potter would go. After a good week or two, however, Severus began to find it… not upsetting, exactly, but... unsettling. Potter just kept coming back – like a kicked dog that couldn’t help but return to its master.
Severus had thought he would stop on his own, once the initial shock had passed. But it only got worse. His intrusions more frequent, and at madder and madder hours of the night. And it was more than that; Severus didn’t like the way he felt after those encounters. Tense, unsatisfied, and on edge. He was being sucked into Potter’s game, and he knew it, and he could ill-afford to lose his composure.
And so, when Harry predictably invaded his concentration with insolent demands to stop making the whole house smell like rotting corpses (Severus was, in fact, brewing a particularly odious infusion designed to disorient and confuse), Severus was not in the mood to indulge him.
“Get out, Potter,” he said simply, as the boy ostentatiously pinched his nose against the smell.
“You can’t tell me to leave my own house.”
It was one of his favorite retorts. Severus took a deep breath and turned to look at him, eyes steeled.
“I have no desire to indulge your need to be punished tonight,” he said. “So if you would be so kind, do find another method of self-flagellation and leave me in peace.” Harry went pale, then scarlet, and clenched his hands into fists. Severus could see clearly that he had struck a nerve that was very raw indeed.
“You think I want you in my house? You think you deserve to be in my house? You’re nothing but two-faced, traitorous filth, Snape!”
I will not be provoked, Severus thought, I will not indulge him. But Harry continued, launching into a tirade against Severus’ character that, though infantile, managed to do what it was meant to: It infuriated him, despite his best intentions to remain aloof. If he was to dissuade this boy from his path toward self-destruction, he was going to have to learn to control himself. Potter was too good at incensing him. It was a gift.
“Cease this insanity at once!” he demanded, but Harry hardly listened.
“… my father was right about you, and so was Sirius! And now they’re both dead. Seems pretty coincidental, doesn’t it? Dumbledore thinks you’re trustworthy but I know the truth. You’re a traitor. A bloody COWARD to go back to Voldemort to save your own–"
It was that word - coward - that snapped Severus’ self control. How dare that insolent brat question the sacrifices Severus had made to save his worthless little hide? After all he had done? How dare he? And so, in an instant, Severus had taken the four long strides to the entryway where Harry was standing, and grabbed his wrist, meaning to throw him bodily from the room.
“Get your hands off me!” Harry demanded, wrenching his arm free with no little effort. But Severus’ judgement was clouded, and he seized the front of Harry’s shirt, and slammed him up against the wall.
“Silence,” he hissed, and Harry’s mouth snapped shut with an audible click, the breath knocked out of him. “You listen to me you little monster. You speak of my right to be in this house, but understand this: I am forced to stay in this filthy pit – to work day and night to keep you and your foolhardy entourage alive another day. Merlin knows what level of hell I will end up in when I die, but I cannot be far from it now with you invading my every moment with your incessant, masochistic need to be abused!” There he paused, and noticed three things all at once: Potter’s breath – fast, shallow; the flush across his face; and finally, his own sudden, inexplicable use of physical violence. He had never, not ever, laid hands on a student before. No, no, Severus didn’t even want to contemplate how quickly his reaction had been to throw the Gryffindor up against something solid, and trap him there – how having Potter immobilized and powerless felt, all at once, like something intensely addictive.
Severus blinked, and released his white-knuckled grip on Harry’s shirtfront. But the boy didn’t say a word. Didn’t run, didn’t move to curse or strike him. He stayed pressed against the wall - hands flat on the stones - his chest rising and falling with a rapidity that reminded Severus of a trapped animal, and he had the fleeting but powerful thought that the boy’s heart must be racing.
“Get out, Potter,” Severus said, and heard in his voice a timbre that he hadn’t intended. He placed one palm on the wall beside Harry’s head as if to steady himself. “Before you get in far, far out of your depth.”
Harry seemed to awaken from a daze, then, and still without saying a word in retort, he edged out from between Severus and the wall and fled, letting the door bang shut behind him.
As the door closed, Severus found that his own heart rate was rather elevated - his own breath coming just a bit faster than usual.
Hopefully, he thought, turning back to his potion, rubbing a hand absently across the back of his neck, Potter has learned his lesson.
***
If Severus had really hoped that Harry had been scared out of his poor behavior by that encounter, he was to be sorely disappointed. For it did not take longer than two days for the Gryffindor to demonstrate that - far from being dissuaded - he was even more unrelenting in his efforts to provoke a response from his Potions Master.
The day after Severus had been pushed to use force, the headquarters had been briefly inundated with nearly the entire order. Severus, for his part, had known that he would be restricted to the house after the meeting. He could not risk coming and going more than absolutely necessary. And so, when the members of the Order went their separate ways, Severus was left, once again in Number Twelve, to deal with Potter’s behavior as soon as the rest of the residents were asleep. That was, after all, when Potter began trolling around the house, looking for distraction from his insomnia.
It was the first night with less than half of the bedrooms full, then, that Severus found himself once more making nothing short of a heroic effort to rein in his temper. It hadn’t taken him much contemplation to realize that to indulge in physical retaliation again would be... unwise in the extreme. To his consternation, however, Potter would have nothing of his stoicism.
“What’s the matter, Snape? I thought you liked abusing students.”
Severus did rather well, he thought, at controlling himself. He withstood a veritable torrent of insults and jibes without offering much more than his usual cold retorts. It wasn’t until Potter threw the knowledge of Severus’ most painful memory at him, though – his torment at the hands of Potter Senior and the mutt, Black – that he truly lost his temper – that he was pushed right past verbal sparring. After weaseling his way into the pensieve - after violating Severus’ privacy in that way - to bring it up now - without fear-
“You INSOLENT-" he shouted, but broke off, unable to conjure a word that could express his rage, and raised his hand without thinking, as if to slap Potter backhand across the face. Harry flinched away, and Severus was able to restrain himself at the very last moment. He snarled in disgust and made a fist instead, forcing his hand back down to his side and clenching his fingers together.
Potter just looked back at him, his face blank and his gaze flickering once between Severus' fist and his eyes.
Severus exhaled slowly through his nose. There was a moment of silence. And then Potter spoke.
“Go on, Professor,” he said. “Hit me. I know you want to. I probably won’t even feel it.” He took a step forward. Severus took a step back. “Hit me,” he repeated.
“Potter,” Severus started, holding out both hands. He didn’t know what to say. I’m sorry? Stay back? I’ll jinx you to high heaven if you say another word?
“I can see it in your face,” the boy continued, pursuing him further into the room. “I’m just standing here, I’m not fighting back. I know you want to.” He'd backed Severus almost against the cold basement wall, and gave a soft chuckle that had no mirth in it at all. “I don’t even have my wand,” he said, and shoved Severus hard in the chest. “Hit me!”
Severus felt his mouth go dry. Potter didn’t sound angry, he sounded… aggressive. Desperate.
“Potter," he said, voice low. "You’ve lost your mind.”
“Me?” The boy almost laughed again. “I saw the way you looked at me before. When you had me against the wall. You want to hurt me. So do it.” He fisted his hands in the front of Severus' robes. “Hurt me.”
“Unhand me!” Severus growled, goosebumps prickling fiercely across his arms and the back of his neck. “Potter-”
Harry’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a feral sneer.
“Make me,” he demanded.
Severus panicked.
He seized one of Potter’s wrists and twisted hard, forcing the boy’s fingers to release. As soon as they did, he turned Potter around, slamming him face first into the work table, one hand twisting Potter’s wrist up between his shoulder blades, the other pressing his opposite shoulder into the wood. He was held fast, finally still, and Severus pretended that Harry’s gasp of pain didn’t hit him like a punch to the gut.
“Control yourself, Potter,” he hissed.
Harry’s twisted arm flexed and his fingers twitched. His face was turned to the side, his lips parted. “Get yourself under control, Professor.”
For a long moment there was only the sound of their breath and the distant ticking of a clock. Potter’s feet shifted apart.
Severus could feel the movement where they were pressed together. Could feel Potter’s muscles tensing and bunching, as he … spread his legs. Could feel him lift ever so slightly up onto his toes as if seeking more contact.
Severus leapt away as if burned.
“Good god, Potter, get out of here,” he breathed, backing away as Harry sagged against the table, his twisted arm falling limply to his side. And he made a noise.
A. Noise.
“Potter,” Severus continued, “please, go back to bed. Please.”
Harry slowly straightened - using his other hand to lever himself up off the table - and when he turned around, there was a small bruise blooming visibly on his cheekbone. His eyebrows furrowed, and he touched two fingers to the spot.
“Yes, Professor,” he said. And went.
Severus felt his knees go weak as soon as the door had swung shut. He leaned heavily back against the stone wall and covered his face with his hands.
This was a problem.
This was a big problem.
***
The next morning, when Severus had worked up the courage to leave his rooms, he bypassed the kitchen in favor of going directly to his basement lab. He could send for food later. As he passed, he heard a bit of breakfast chatter, and paused for a moment at the sound of Potter’s voice.
“I had a nightmare,” he was saying. “I fell out of bed. It doesn’t even hurt.”
“I can heal it for you, dear,” Mrs. Weasley replied. “It’ll only take a minute.”
“That’s ok, Mrs. Weasley. It’s not bothering me.”
It must be his face, where he’d hit the table.
Where Severus had forced him into the table.
He crept past the kitchen door as silently as he could manage, and fled down to the basement, telling himself that he didn’t want to see how it looked. And he didn’t. He didn’t want to see anything.