The Lover’s Ghost

Well met, well met, my own true love,
Long time I have been absent from thee,
I am lately come from the salt sea,
And tis all for the sake, my love, of thee.

-

Harry had had the mark for as long as he could remember. It sat like a bruise, just above his left wrist. It could not be a bruise, though, for the shape lay watercolour like and shimmering on the surface of his skin. Harry had spent many a day locked in the darkness of his cupboard wondering what form the mark took on his arm. It could be a cluster of leaves, although the bruised purple seemed the wrong colour for those, or perhaps a scatter of fallen petals. His aunt had told him it was a birth mark. Another mark of his freakishness. 

Harry did not pay the mark much attention, beyond trying to fathom what shape it created, in the same way that he wondered what shape clouds became. Once he had begun at Hogwarts, there were far more interesting things to think about than shimmering petals or leaves on his wrist. It was not until his fourth year that the mark became of any interest at all. It was breakfast time, and Harry reached over Hermione to grab a jug of milk when her hand clasped over his arm and wrenched it towards her. Harry yelped, trying to snatch it back in confusion, but her grip was surprisingly strong. 

‘What?’ He exclaimed as Hermione ran her hands over his birth mark. 

‘How long have you had this, Harry?’ She asked, her tone somewhat awestruck. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell us you had one of these. There almost unheard of, I can’t believe it!’ 

Harry stared at her, bemused. ‘It’s just a birth mark, Hermione, what’s the big deal?’ He asked. ‘Pretty sure those aren’t that rare.’

But the mark had roused the interests of all the Gryffindors surrounding him. 

‘That’s not a birth mark, mate.’ Said Ron, his eyes wide and his mouth stuffed with cornflakes, one of which fell out of his mouth when he spoke. Hermione was so engrossed in Harry’s arm that she forgot to berate him for it. ‘It’s a soul mark.’ 

‘A what?’ Replied Harry, still not really understanding what was going on, or why practically the whole of Gryffindor table were staring at him now. 

‘Oh for goodness sake, don’t you read anything, Harry?’ Hermione asked, exasperated. 

‘You just said they were almost unheard of, so I don’t know how you think I’m supposed to have heard of them.’ Harry snapped back. 

‘Unheard of in person, yes. But as a legend, Harry, soul marks are infamous.’ Harry still looked bemused to Hermione launched into an in depth summary as if reciting straight out of a textbook. Ron rolled his eyes and she glared at him. 

‘A soul mark is a sign, Harry, that there is someone with whom your magical signature perfectly matches. These only appear on really powerful wizards, though, Harry, although I suppose that’s not so surprising, given that it’s you.’

Harry blanched, but she continued. 

‘Harry, there is a person, somewhere who has a matching soul mark on the same part of their body. Someone of equal power.’ 

‘Knowing my luck it will probably be Voldemort.’ Replied Harry despondently. ‘Equal power, right.’ 

Hermione raised her eyebrows in despair, but it was Ron who put him right. 

‘Not likely mate, the person who has your soul mark is your soul mate.’ 

‘Soul mate?’ Repeated Harry incredulously. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ron, soulmates don’t exist.’

‘Oh but they do, Harry.’ Replied Hermione. 

Harry ran his fingers over the mark, feeling his magic thrum gently beneath it, his insides warming slightly. A soul mate. The idea still seemed faintly ridiculous to him, but the idea of having someone who was his was so enticing to him that he ignored his thoughts of ridiculousness for now. Assuming that Hermione was right, and she usually was, there was someone in the world who would genuinely care for Harry as Harry. Of course, his friends did, but this was not the same. The only thing Harry had ever wanted was unconditional love from someone. But what sort of person could it be? It wasn’t Ginny, Harry realised with a slight drop in his heart at the realisation that he would never be a true part of Ron’s family, or Ron would have said about Ginny’s mark. He wondered about Cho, as well, but realised that he had seen her arms bare when he had been under the lake in February, and there had been no mark. 

-

Harry’s interest in the mark fell as the rest of the year progressed. He could not find anyone in his year who bore his mark. What if the other person lived on the other side of the world? What if they were dead, Harry thought, his heart sinking, before remembering that Hermione had said that if the other person were dead, Harry’s mark would turn grey and fade. So not dead then, but who? 

Harry’s wondering got more and more desperate the next summer, when he lay awake in his bed, his heart hammering, visions of Cedric's cold dead eyes swimming before his. Achingly lonely, Harry wished for the person who was supposed to love him perfectly to save him from the turmoil of his own mind. They did not come. 

-

Harry was well into his sixth year when he first felt magic jolt through his soul mark. He was in the dungeons, panicking his way through NEWT level potions, and Snape had just stalked passed him, his arm barely brushing against Harry’s own. But Harry had felt it, distinctly, and his panic level and increased ten fold. But no, Harry thought, that was impossible. Snape hated him. It was categorically impossible that Snape was his soul mate. Still, at the end of the lesson, when he passed Snape his vial of barely recognisable draught of living death, Harry brushed his left wrist against Snape’s right. The feeling was unmistakable. He felt no panic this time, only resignation. Of course, he thought, it would be only fitting if his supposed soul mate was the man that, second of course to Voldemort, hated him most in the world. But still, a sense of numbness entered in the pit of his stomach as he lay awake after another nightmare that evening, realising that Snape would never wake him gently and stop him thrashing in his bed. He would never hold Harry through the tremors that followed, or stroke his fingers through Harry’s soft hair. His chest constricted through sheer loneliness and Harry realised that it was possible no one would ever do that for him, if the person who was supposed to care for him the most was in fact the person who treated him with the most contempt in the world. 

The next morning at breakfast he asked Hermione, clinging onto a final tenuous strand of hope, what happened when two matching soul marks touched. 

‘You feel the magic thrum between them.’ She said, an excited look entering her eyes. ‘Why, Harry, did you feel something?’ She asked, the pitch of her voice reaching almost unfathomable heights. 

‘No.’ He said, firmly. ‘I was just wondering. I don’t think whoever had my soul mark has been anywhere near Hogwarts.’ 

Then after a pause, in which a saving idea had entered his mind, he asked again ‘do you think it could react to other kind of marks? Like cursed scars or the dark mark?’ 

Hermione looked as if she were pondering for a moment. 

‘Perhaps, Harry. Cursed marks do hold magic in them, so it’s possible that the two could react.’ 

Harry felt relief wash over his insides. The dark mark adorned Snape’s right wrist. That was why he had felt such a jolt in his soul mark. Snape wasn’t his soul mate; how could he have ever even entertained the idea? Feeling somewhat heartened, he piled several pieces of toast onto his plate and began to spread them thickly with marmalade. That would explain why Snape has not reacted to Harry’s mark, either. Now that Voldemort was back, he assumed that Snape’s dark mark would be twinging all the time. He would hardly have noticed its reaction to Harry. 

-

Amid the drama of the end of his sixth year and the beginning of his seventh, Harry forgot he had ever thought that Snape’s wrist could hold his mark. But, mid-way through his seventh year, when Harry, Hermione, the whole host of Weasley children and most of the order had gone into hiding at 12 Grimmauld place following the temporary closure of Hogwarts, the thought returned with abandon. 

Harry had been at Grimmauld Place three nights and had spent these in the kitchen. He would go to bed with his friends and lie, too afraid to sleep, until tiredness took over, only to be plagued by the many faces of his dead. There was no purpose in trying to get back to sleep after that, so he sat, folding in on himself with tiredness at the kitchen table until the light lifted outside, when he would traipse back upstairs, only to return to the same room for breakfast minutes later. He did not want to worry his friends, or indeed the other members of the Order when it seemed as if the whole fate of this war was resting on his shoulders. It was on this third night, when Harry had been sat at the table for several hours, when he was joined in the kitchen by his least favourite professor.

Harry was somewhat horrified to see Snape skulk into the kitchen, and somehow shocked that the man owned anything apart from thick robes. Snape was wearing black silk pyjamas and a thick, deep green dressing gown. If it weren’t for the fact that his whole life seemed to have taken on an unliftable sense of brevity he would almost have found the situation funny-Snape wearing something so human, but Harry’s sense of humour had been buried under months of trauma and sleepless nights. Snape did not acknowledge Harry’s existence as he charmed a cup of tea into existence and sat in a similarly sagging position at the opposite corner of the table. Nor did he acknowledge Harry the following two nights, when they found themselves sharing the kitchen in the hazy light of morning, but Harry did find, once he had got over the initial shock that Snape was indeed human and owned things as inane as pyjamas, that having another person, even someone as inhuman as Snape, to share the endless long nights with was better than existing there on his own, even if Snape refused to look at him, let alone speak to him. 

It was two nights later when Snape returned, and Harry was standing at the countertop, manually making tea. He tightened his green dressing gown as he entered, still avoiding looking at Harry. 

‘Tea?’ Harry asked softly, wondering why he was even attempting any sort of conversation with someone as abrasive as Snape. 

‘Hmm’ came the response, and Harry took this as positive, setting a cup down next to Snape before returning to his end of the table and beginning to examine the worn grain. Harry thought of his mark again. Would it be so bad, he thought?  This Snape seemed as close to human as a man like Snape could be, and there was something in the silences. A wash of calmness that descended over Harry, cloak like, and smelled decidedly of sandalwood, and musk, and Snape. And even though he was loath to admit it, there had been something (and that was as far as he could get in describing it), when his wrist had brushed against Snape’s more than a year ago. Something sharp (so sharp in fact that he had woken that night grasping for the something he could not explain), yet warm (smothering and heavy in all the right ways).

-

They continued much in this manner as the days rolled into weeks. On the third Harry posed a question in Snape’s direction. 

‘Why can’t you sleep?’ 

There was no response so Harry continued.

‘I see the dead in my sleep. Sort of stops it from being worthwhile.’ 

Snape still did not respond, although he had lifted his gaze from the cup of tea Harry had placed by his side softly when he had entered the kitchen. 

‘Do you have nightmares too?’ Harry asked, half expecting Snape to stand up from the table to strangle him for asking such a personal question.

Snape opened his mouth as if to respond, an emotion Harry could not quite recognise washing over the older man’s face, but closed it again abruptly, his face becoming the familiar mask of impassivity Harry was used to. 

‘You owe me an answer really, you know. Given how much tea I’ve made you’ 

‘I owe you nothing, Mr Potter.’ came Snape’s clipped response. 

Harry thought this was all he would be getting, however, a few moments later Snape’s eyes found Harry’s again. 

‘Why do you find it necessary to make tea manually when you are perfectly capable, even with your somewhat deficient skill, of charming it into existence?’ 

Harry was so pleased (although he could not for the life of him think why) that he had finally been able to get Snape to speak, that his mind glossed over the insult. 

‘Gives me something to do. I am down here for several hours every night after all.’ He shrugged, before adding, ‘plus the muggles know way more about tea than wizards do’, a somewhat lopsided grin appearing on his face as Snape arched an eyebrow at this. 

‘Hmm’ came Snape’s appraisal.

They fell back into silence for several days after that. 

In fact, they did not interact at all until five nights later. Harry had awoken, coming back to reality so violently (sweating, ragged breaths clanking in his lungs) that he had slammed his forehead into a wall mounted shelf. His body was shaking and his pyjamas were drenched with sweat as he raised a hand to his throbbing head, absentmindedly wiping the blood on his snitch printed pyjama trousers as he stood and made towards the kitchen. It was barely past one o’clock in the morning and the sky was still pitch dark. Harry sighed - he had got less than an hour of sleep, which was bad even for him. He made towards the table and sagged into a chair, his head resting on its cool top, snapping back up violently as Cedric’s greying, bloodied face swam behind his closing eyes.
‘It should have been you.’ The words rattled around in Harry’s head as he got up to make a cup of tea, his eyes fluttering open and shut as he dropped the teabag into his cup. Cedric had never said them to him, and yet his voice was so lifelike in his dreams. And dream Cedric was right, Harry thought, it should have been him who died. He was responsible.
He returned to the table, setting the mug down and resting his head in his hands, succumbing to sleep, and his dreams of the dead. Cedric’s bleeding corpse returned, followed by his godfather fading into nothingness. His dead lay in front of him and all Harry could do was stare helplessly into the distance.

The next thing he knew was a hand on his shoulder shaking him violently as he was shocked back into existence, coughing as he fought to take enough air into his lungs. Once he had recovered from his somewhat unceremonious awakening, he became aware of the body attached to the warm hand which was currently resting heavily on his shoulder. His eyes widened as he wondered whether this was another part of his dreams. Snape did not strike Harry as the sort of man who roused people from nightmares. This thought seemed to come to Snape at the same time, and he snatched his hand back from Harry’s shoulder as if he had been shocked. He hastily conjured two cups of tea, and sent one to his end of the table where he retreated. 

‘It did not seem to be a pleasant dream.’ He stated. 

‘No’, Harry replied, his voice shaking. He missed the calming presence of Snape’s hand on his shoulder, but banished that thought immediately. 

‘You dream of Mr Diggory?’ he asked, although Snape did not phrase it as a question.

‘Yes’. Harry still seemed incapable of forming coherent sentences, the one word even sticking on his tongue, his mouth dry and crackling.

‘His death was not your doing, Mr Potter’ 

If he had been more awake, Harry would have swung backwards violently on his chair at the shock of Snape sending a non-barbed comment his way. 

‘Not directly.’ 

‘If we all felt guilty for the people whose deaths we may have indirectly caused, there would not be much time for anything else.’ 

‘And how good are you at taking your own advice, Professor?’ Harry countered. 

There was silence then, and Harry directed his gaze firmly to the wall behind Snape’s face at the opposite end of the table. He did not like to think about his nightmares, let alone talk about them. And even if he were going to, the last person he would have thought he would be having this conversation with was his acerbic ex-potions-professor. 

Harry didn’t think he would be returning to Hogwarts after the war. At first it had seemed a certainty that he would return after it ended to complete his NEWT exams, but now Harry was less sure. He was mere days away from his eighteenth birthday and the war seemed to stretch long and slow in front of him. Harry was certain that Voldemort wasn’t considering Harry’s ability to obtain his NEWT exams when he planned his attacks, and he was beginning to feel that it could be years before the final battle between he and Voldemort occurred. Harry knew he had to be the one to kill Voldemort, but as the war played out in front of him, while he was hidden away in the Order safe-house, he couldn’t help but doubt that he would even live to make the decision of going back to his school. Harry knew now that he was a calculated weapon in this war. He would not be allowed to fight until the final battle, and he was barely allowed out of the house now, for fear that some harm would come to him before he could complete the task that only he could carry out. 

Harry was drawn from his thoughts by Snape’s eyes, which were boring into him as if expecting him to say something. The silence was heavy and beginning to wear down on him. Of course, if Snape wanted him to talk, this would be the way that he went about it - there were never going to be softly spoken words of encouragement from the man, nor any assurances that Harry would be alright despite the maelstrom that constantly blew in his mind. Harry wished he didn’t miss Snape’s warm hand on his shoulder. He had always imagined that the man as somewhat corpselike and had never considered that the warmth that might radiate from him. Even in July the draughty kitchen at 12 Grimmauld Place had a chill, but more than that Harry missed the touch of another person, even if it was from Snape. 

Snape cocked an eyebrow then, and Harry felt compelled to continue. 

‘I dream of all the people I’ve killed’ Harry said, his voice sounding not quite like his own, his gaze resolutely somewhere behind Snape’s face. He did not like to talk about this: to display his weakness. Harry could not afford to be weak when so many had so much to lose from his fragility. ‘I see their limp bodies, their bloodied faces swimming in front of me whenever I close my eyes.’ he continued without emotion, as if he were reciting his shopping list. 
He turned his gaze to look Snape in the face then. ‘It’s kind of hard to sleep when the dead are screaming at you, you know’. There was a sort of dark, humourless bitterness in his voice.

Snape did not react at all for a moment - almost as if he was not listening to Harry. Then, a low rumbling hum of understanding came from somewhere inside Snape’s chest and Harry sighed, slumping forwards to set his gaze firmly on the grain of the table again. He was so encompassed by his own thoughts he did not see Snape sweep out of the kitchen as the morning light dappled against the windows until all that was left of him was the edge of his dressing gown at the foot of the doorframe. 

Later that night, Harry wondered if it was Snape’s own mark (assuming, of course that it was Snape who held his soul) that had caused him to so violently withdraw his arm earlier.

-

They did not speak again for a while in the dead of night, although Harry, now feeling a sense of ‘something’ he could not quite put his finger on lingering between himself and Snape, had chosen to take the seat next to Snape at the table, and for his part, Snape did not move away, which Harry supposed was some kind of small miracle. Even in the daytime something seemed to have shifted between them. Harry had noticed several times Snape’s gaze following him around the room and he couldn’t help sometimes but to stare directly back at him. He did not understand what happened since he had spoken to Snape about the constant storm thrashing in his mind, but of one thing he was certain - Snape’s looks were not those of pity and for that he was beyond grateful. They could be of understanding, Harry thought - there had to be a reason Snape spent his nights sitting in silence next to Harry at the kitchen table, and it probably wasn’t, Harry conceded, because Snape was a vampire. Harry’s view of his professor had almost entirely shifted since he had come to live with him. There was a relentless flow of other members of the Order passing through the house and sometimes Harry found himself with a whole house of Weasleys. Other nights the house was empty apart from him and Snape. Those times the heavy silence returned in the day time. Harry, despite, or perhaps because, he had allowed Snape to get an answer out of him about his nightmares had a constant sense that he was supposed to be saying something to Snape, but had no idea what it was supposed to be. 

It was several weeks after his birthday that Harry found the words. He had dragged his feet downstairs at half past three in the morning to find Snape already sitting at the table in his usual place, his back rigidly straight as a cup of black tea stood untouched by his side. Harry sat down in his now usual seat next to Snape. The first time he had done this Snape had flinched, but Harry was pleased (although he could not think why) to see that now Snape did not react as much as to move a finger away from Harry as he rested beside him. 

‘I’m sorry.’ He said finally. ‘For looking into your pensieve’ 

A short snort of air left Snape’s nostrils, but he did not turn to look at Harry. 

‘I shouldn’t have done it. It was beyond an invasion of your privacy. I regret that I know those things about you when you obviously don’t want me to, but for what it’s worth, I hate my father for what he did to you.’

Snape seemed to consider this for a moment, and then said ‘You should not hate your father. Much as I am loath to say it, he became a good man: he was good to your mother and he was a good father to you. He changed. I am afraid I cannot forgive him, but this does not mean that you should not.’

After a short pause, he continued. ‘I suppose I should apologise also for assaulting your mind so violently as I did. I did not wish to hurt you, but your father, and that was wrong.’

Shock was an understatement for what Harry felt. He had thought it was more likely that he would begin a love affair with Hermione’s hairy excuse for a cat than that Snape would ever apologise to him.

‘That’s ok.’ He said lamely, lost for words. He was not sure why he did it, but he edged his hand (the one attached to his unmarked wrist) towards Snape’s, which was lying flat on the table until the edges of their little fingers were touching. Snape started at the contact, albeit slightly, so Harry went no further, shocked that Snape did not pull away.

As the nights passed they drew closer into each other. The silence now between them had lost its heaviness and almost had an undertone of the comfortableness between two people who understood each other deeply. Somehow, in the dead of night, Harry always found the courage to slip his hand closer to Snape’s. At first he left it at merely touching the edges of his fingers to Snape’s, but as the nights became colder and summer turned to winter he began covering Snape’s hand with his own and drawing Snape’s heat into him. They talked, too, now. Not about anything of any consequence, certainly not about the war. Some nights Harry would talk, more to himself, about Quidditch whilst Snape’s eyes rested, half open. Other nights Snape would indulge Harry in the misapprehension that he could understand potions and talk about brews he had been altering. Harry pretended he understood. He could not comprehend the compulsion he felt to touch Snape. His need had transferred to the days now, and he found it hard to restrain himself from taking Snape’s hand under the table at order meetings, or brushing his fingers against his as he passed him in the long corridors. The only reason he did not, he decided, was because Snape would undoubtedly hex him into next week if he made any attempt to do so. He was sure that Snape saw touching as vulnerability, and while the realisation of this it sent something sharp and warm through Harry’s stomach at the thought that Snape trusted him enough to display this with him, when he was sure he hadn’t with anyone else in living memory, the other side of him felt the pain of anticipated loss once Snape snapped back to reality. War did strange things to people. Certainly, other members of the order were drawing into each other as much and Harry and Snape were, but Harry wished that his professor would not draw his walls back around himself when the fighting was over. If they were both alive by that point, Harry thought. One thing he was certain of, though, was that if he were to turn Snape’s right wrist over, he would find a mark matching the one on his left.

-

‘Do you dream about your father?’ Harry asked one night in March, his hand curled around Snape’s, their thighs a hairs breadth from touching. He felt Snape’s hand clench beneath his own and his leg draw away from him. Harry took this as a victory – he had been expecting that Snape would storm out or curse him. He did not answer, though, so Harry filled the silence that had regained the heaviness it had held the first night they had spoken.

‘I dream about Uncle Vernon sometimes.’ He said, matter-of-factly.

‘The walrus-like man?’ Snape replied.

Harry hummed an affirmative response. ‘I dream about the cupboard I slept in when I was younger.’ He admitted. He had long since stopped wondering why he felt so compelled to confide these things in his Professor.

There was a long silence from Snape then, as if he were considering. Then, ‘I do dream about my father.’ Snape averted his eyes from Harry, as if expecting this admission of weakness to drive Harry from the room, but Harry only tightened his grip on Snape’s hand, as if urging him to continue.

‘My father was not a pleasant man, but you know that, Potter. You have seen inside my mind. Why are you pressing me about this?’

‘I want to know why you spend all your nights in the kitchen with me. Must be pretty bad if you think my company is better than whatever is going on inside your head, seeing as how you hate me and all.’ Harry joked, cocking an eyebrow.

‘I do not hate you, Mr Potter.’ Something in Harry’s chest jolted at this admission.

‘High praise.’ Harry shuffled closer so that his leg was pressed against Snape’s. ‘Will you tell me about your dreams? I’ve told you about mine, after all – It’s only fair.’

‘I don’t think fairness really comes into it, Mr Potter.’ Snape replied, but his voice was not harsh, nor did he draw his leg away from Harry’s.

‘Will you at least use my actual name? Merlin, we’ve spent almost every night sitting together at this table for a year, you’d think we’d be on first name terms by now.’ Harry said.

‘Fine.’ Snape conceded, ‘What I dream about is none of your business, Harry.’ He punctuated the last syllable quite viciously, but Harry was not deterred.

‘Maybe not, but I’d like to know anyway.’ Harry countered.

The silence was so long after this that Harry thought he had lost. But Snape spoke.

‘You are right that I have always dreamed of my father’ Snape conceded. ‘He was a violent man and he was not fond of my wizarding heritage. Tobias Snape was a concert pianist, and with that came all of the undesirable traits of someone who lives for passion.’

Harry scoffed slightly at this, but Snape shot him a look so fierce for almost interrupting that he dared not speak.

‘Concert halls did not invite back soloists who got drunk before they went on stage, nor those who assaulted the stewards.’ Snape clarified. ‘He took his musical failures out on my mother and he took them out on me. But that is not why I spend my nights sitting at this table with you. I have long since worn out those fears which plagued me as a child. I am here for the same reason you are.’ Snape said softly, his head bowing slightly at this admission. ‘Whenever I close my eyes I see the faces of those I have killed, yes, but more damningly, the faces of those people I should have saved.’ Snape finished, his tone surprisingly even for a man who was not used to sharing his thoughts with anyone, although Harry felt Snape’s hand quiver beneath his own and he squeezed it slightly.

Harry considered for a moment, and then asked, ‘Can you play the piano?’.

Snape looked incredulously at him. ‘From all of that, that is your most burning question?’

‘Do you?’ Harry asked again.

‘I do.’ Snape admitted.

‘I think I should like to hear you play.’ Harry said, wondering if this admission that he wanted to continue his somewhat friendlier relationship with Snape after the war would anger Snape, but it did not seem to. He merely replied,

‘Perhaps.’

Harry got up to make more tea then, turning his back on Snape to face the worktop. When he turned back to the table, Snape had stood up to leave the room so that now he was face to face with Harry, his mouth so close Harry could breathe the air Snape exhaled (hot and spiced) into his lungs. It drew him in, and he hovered, centimetres from Snape’s lips, not daring to press himself to them, but too far drawn in to the charged atmosphere to pull back. Harry’s breath came brokenly into his lungs, his mind so preoccupied with the fact that he had never wanted to do anything more than he wanted to press his lips to Snape’s. Harry’s experience of kissing was somewhat limited. He doubted that kissing Snape would be as wet as kissing Cho had been, and he had never felt drawn into an atmosphere like he was now when he kissed Ginny. Until a few seconds ago, he had never truly considered the possibility of kissing another man, but in this moment, it seemed like the only thing he could ever do. Harry caught Snape’s eye, as if asking permission, but something akin to horror and realisation flashed over his face. He broke the space between their lips and swept out of the room. Harry felt as if the air had been ripped from his lungs.

Later, when he was back in his bedroom, he was finally able to consider the fact that he had so desired to taste Snape’s lips. Was he sexually attracted to men, then, he pondered? He had never really thought about the sex aspect of his soul mark. Perhaps more importantly, was he attracted to Snape. Until tonight he had thought that the weaving of their fingers together and the pressing of thighs came more out of his need for human contact than anything else, but now he was not so sure. He never thought he would feel turned on by merely breathing the same air as someone else, but that was exactly how he felt tonight.

The look that had come over Snape’s face as he flashed out of the room came back to Harry later, and something clenched painfully in his stomach. It had looked like revulsion. At Harry, he wondered, or at himself?

-

Snape did not return to the kitchen the next night, nor the next. Harry supposed that, following the almost kiss, nightmares were preferable to Harry’s company.

It took Snape eight days to return, and when he did, he sat at the opposite side of the table again. He did not speak to Harry, and averted his gaze almost ridiculously.

‘Will you just talk to me?’ Harry sighed, exasperated, two weeks later, when Snape was still avoiding him.

Snape continued to avert his gaze, so Harry strode over to Snape’s end of the table, something bubbling violently near the surface of his emotions, although he was not quite sure what.

‘Look.’ He continued, his voice raised now ‘I am fully aware that you hate me, but would you at least do me the courtesy of looking me in the eye now and again, seeing as we spend half of our lives in the same room.’ Snape still ignored him. ‘I’m sorry about what happened, but you know,’ Harry’s voice was raised almost to a shout now, ‘you’re just as much to blame as I am. I didn’t create that situation any more than you did, Snape will you fucking look at me?’

Harry grabbed Snape’s face and wrenched it to face him at this last.

Suddenly, before Harry had processed what was happening, Snape had stood up viciously from the chair and was pressing Harry against the wall. There was another second where Harry could feel the weight of Snape’s breath on his lips, before Snape’s own crashed down upon him. The kiss was not precise, but there was something about it that caused Harry’s body to weaken, and he was sure that had Snape not been holding him up so forcefully against the wall he might have wilted to the floor with the sheer presence of his mouth. Snape’s tongue was running over Harry’s bottom lip and he opened his mouth to allow it to enter. This caused a surge of arousal in Harry so deep that he felt it sharply in his stomach and he moaned into Snape’s mouth, pressing his body against Snape’s dressing gown, moaning again as the thigh Harry was so used to pressing his own leg against came to rest under his crotch and between his legs. He arched his back as he ground into Snape’s leg, lifting his hands to tangle his fingers through Snape’s hair (soft beneath his calloused fingers as they grasped at it, desperate, longing, needing).

The kiss came to an end as abruptly as it started. Snape pulled forcefully away from Harry, and Harry almost whimpered at the loss. Snape looked at him with what was as close to a dumbfounded expression as he could manage, Harry thought, but did not say anything. Snape had backed away and looked as if he wished to leave the room and never return, but something kept him.

Harry stepped forward to take his hand, but Snape ripped it away as if Harry had burned him. Beneath his pyjama top, Harry’s soul mark throbbed with magic.

‘We cannot do this.’ Snape said simply, running his hands through his hair as if it was anything but simple.

Harry opened his mouth to protest, but Snape had already left the room. It was only then that Harry realised he was still throbbing through his pyjama trousers.

There was no doubting who held his soul mark now, nor was there any doubting that Snape knew just as much about it as he did. However, Harry resigned himself, for the moment there was no chance that Snape would acknowledge it.

-

Harry was surprised to see Snape in the kitchen the next night and taken aback when he took his seat next to Harry at the table. But Harry realised, as he noticed the dark bags under Snape’s eyes, and the slight shake of his hand as he laid it on the table that perhaps Snape’s nightmares were so bad that he needed the calming silence more than he hated what had happened between them the previous night. When Snape’s hand did not stop shaking, Harry, very tentatively, slid his hand over so their fingers barely touched at the edges, but it seemed to calm Snape, and Harry relished the warmth as Snape shifted towards him to close the distance between their legs.

As spring turned to summer, so Harry and Snape pressed closer to one another during the nights, although there was never a whisper of the kiss that Harry replayed in his mind every night. His lungs ached for Snape’s breath and his lips longed to taste him.

-

Moody had been explaining blackboards covered with battle strategy like a crazed general for weeks when the call for the final battle came. Harry was always flanked by Moody, Snape and Ron in these diagrams, although the formations of the others changed from diagram to diagram. The four of them trekked out into the forest warily in total silence. The brevity of the situation weighed so heavily on each of them that even Ron had stopped his usual constant monologue. When they had reached the clearing Moody had assured them that Voldemort would appear in they took their assigned places and waited for Lupin’s signal. Harry leant back against the tree he was stationed by and closed his eyes, just for a second. He was almost twenty now, and he had still yet to confront Snape about their marks. He was resigned to the fact that he would probably die in this battle. That he might have to in order to properly get rid of Voldemort. He just wished he could have known for certain. He looked over at Snape, just for a second and saw, something, in his eyes. Harry looked away. He could not know now. 

It was several hours before Voldemort appeared in a flash of blackness, flanked by four of his most favoured death eaters. Harry and the three others ran at them together, brightly coloured curses flashing through the air in front of them. The whole thing had happened so fast that Harry had no time to feel anything as he shot curse after curse at the five hooded figures, but the air was heavy with smoke around him. They were outnumbered, but Harry thought that Moody and Snape, at least, were far more accomplished and powerful than any of Voldemort’s death eaters. The sharp hiss of spells echoed around his head as his heart beat violently against his ribs. He could not bear to think about the thrumming in his wrist. It had been at least fifteen minutes of constant spells flashing through the air when Moody and Snape shot killing curses at the two death eaters that stood either side of Voldemort. They crumpled in heaps of black robes at Voldemort’s feet and something akin to hope flashed through Harry’s veins. He knew, what Voldemort wanted - for he and Harry to be alone together before he killed him. But if he, Snape, Moody and Ron killed his followers first, there was some possibility that the four of them could get out of there alive. Harry was so caught up in the thought that perhaps he could overcome Voldemort, that he barely noticed the green flash that struck Moody down. An anger surged in him so powerful it was unlike anything he had ever felt in his life. He hurled yet more curses at the three black figures in front of him, his voice hoarse from shouting. He saw Voldemort’s right hand rise once again, saw him begin to form the beginning of the killing curse. The green light flew from Voldemort’s wand towards Snape and the throbbing in his wrist became so pronounced that he could act in no other way. All sound seemed to disappear from the world save the insurmountable ringing in his ears as he flung himself in front of the green light that was so close to Snape now, forcing his bare pounding wrist atop Snape’s, their soul marks colliding, flesh on flesh. Harry had to grip onto Snape’s other arm to keep them together as a force so overwhelming he thought he might pass out emanated from where their two marks had touched. The force of it pushed him forwards so violently that he fell and landed on top of Snape, breathing heavily, darkness threatening to overcome his vision.

‘Foolish boy’, he heard Snape murmur, as Harry pressed his face into the crook of Snape’s neck, inhaling him. Only then did he realise that Snape’s arm was wrapped around him just as tightly as his own, before succumbing to the darkness.

-

Severus had not woken next to anther warm body in so long he considered that perhaps he as his current self never had. And yet, when he woke in the hospital wing three days later, he did not feel he wanted to remove the arm that was resting over his stomach, nor the leg that was entangled between his own. He opened his eyes slightly, the bright light an unpleasant reminder that he was indeed still alive, although he could not fathom why it was that he was in the Hogwarts hospital wing, when he had not properly stepped outside Grimmauld place for over a year. Nor could he begin to imagine who the warm body curled against him was. He turned his head slightly to face his bed partner and blanched in horror, pulling himself backwards as far as he could go, which, given that he and Harry were sharing a single bed, was not very far at all. But Snape was at a total loss to explain why he was sharing a bed with the golden boy, until he looked down and saw that their wrists had been bound together. And then, with the weight of several tonnes of bricks that had been lain upon him, Severus remembered exactly why he was sharing a bed with Harry Potter.

In reality, the man supposed, he had known for longer than he had liked to admit that Harry bore his mark on his left arm. Severus had not paid much heed to the notion of soul marks, or soul mates for that matter for the majority of his adult life, having decided, when it had not been at all obvious to him that anyone he had ever met had had the mark that he did, that the idea was wholly ridiculous. But now, faced with a ‘soul mate’ (even as he used that expression in his mind Severus recoiled in repulsion) half his age, and one as asinine as Harry Potter, he almost wished that the bloody thing was just as fabled as many thought it to be.

But Severus had no more time to think upon this, for the small (and Harry’s form was alarmingly small, Severus noted) figure beside him was stirring and as he did, burrowed further into Severus’ side, murmuring something he could not decipher. And Severus had to still his mind and very firmly remind himself that Harry Potter was not, nor would he ever be, cute.

Harry woke then, and stared, his eyes hooded with sleep, straight into Severus’ own, as if he had been waking up next to him his whole life. And then, as if all at once realising where he was, drew back in trepidation.

‘We didn’t have sex, did we?’ he asked, his eyes wide, and this was so far from what Severus was expecting that he laughed, pressing his face slightly into the pillow beneath them.

‘I can assure you, Mr Potter, that if that had occurred, my performance would not have been so insipid as to allow you to forget it.’ Snape drawled.

‘Didn’t know you were capable of laughter, Snape.’ Harry replied, his eyebrows raised in quite a good impression of the Professor before him. Then he continued, his voice somewhat smaller ‘then why are we here then?’

Snape took an appraising look at Harry (no, not Harry, Potter)’s face and sighed, not really knowing where to begin. ‘Do you remember the final battle, Potter?’ he asked, and at Harry’s seemingly blank expression he continued, with more gentleness than he was aware he was capable of. ‘You threw yourself in front of an Avada Kedavra which was meant for me.’ Snape explained, and as he was doing so thought that if you had told him this information when he had first met Harry eight years ago, that he would have replied that it was more likely that one of Hagrid’s flobberworms would sacrifice their life for cruel Professor Snape than the boy who lived. ‘And in doing so,’ he continued, ‘you pressed our soul marks together.’ Stating these words, and by doing so acknowledging that he was indeed in possession of some sort of soul bond with Harry Potter of all people, took almost as much strength from Snape as leaving the dark side. For why would Harry Potter, golden boy and societal sweetheart desire to be bonded to him in any way at all?

What Snape had not expected was that at being reminded of this, Harry would smile in the most unreserved way he had ever seen.

‘I saved your life.’ He said, stating the obvious, his eyes glinting.

‘Yes, yes you did, Mr Potter.’

‘Harry.’ He replied firmly. ‘If I saved your life, we are definitely on first name terms.’

‘Need I remind you that I have saved your life countless times before this.’

‘If anything that just proves my point further, Severus.’ He said, saying the last word rather pointedly.

Severus merely sighed, fearing he was not going to win this battle. And anyway, he knew what Harry (and there was no point now denying that that was his name) was really alluding to was that now that they had both acknowledged that they held this ridiculous bond, formality was out of the window.

Seemingly placated for the time being, Harry scooted himself back towards Severus and entwined their legs once more, laying his head on his chest, just above where his heart beat, closing his eyes with a more contented sigh than Severus could rationalise.

‘I’m glad it was you.’ Harry murmured into Severus’ nightshirt several moments later, somewhere along the line between sleep and wakefulness. ‘I always hoped it was you.’

And really, Severus did not know what to say to that.

-

I might have had a king’s daughter,
And fain, she would have married me,
But I forsook her crown of gold,
And tis all for the sake, my love, of thee.