part2
Part II
*****
"Harry," Ron called as he caught up with him right before lunch. "I heard Snape gave you a month's detention?"
"Yeah." He pulled Ron off to one side and let several students pass them. "Dumbledore thinks we need to spend time together to get to know each other."
Ron looked properly horrified. "Bugger. That is so unfair."
"Tell me about it. But it's happening between us. I mean, I can't even think about him without wanting to be nice to him," Harry said with an over-dramatic shudder.
He stopped as two more students passed them. One of them gave Harry a strange look. "We should go outside."
Looking around at the rest of the students milling about, Ron nodded. "Yeah, no privacy here, mate."
They were silent as they made their way out to the lake.
"You were saying about being nice to Snape?" Ron said, sounding as if he could not believe it.
Well, Harry found it hard to believe even as he was feeling it. "It's the bond. I can't say or even think anything against him. Nor can he say anything to me. He gave me house points a couple of days ago."
"God, you know, I saw that. I thought it was a mistake." Ron scratched his head. "Blimey. This must be driving you mad."
"It is. I remember how much I hated him, but I don't feel it any more." Harry looked out at the lake, fancying he could see the giant squid moving just under the surface. "I only feel..."
"What? I mean, how could it change so quickly." Ron shook his head. "No, I know. It's the bond. Do you think..."
"Think what?"
"That you're going to...." Ron's face went red and he looked away. "You know."
"God, I hope not. But already the idea doesn't make me sick any more." Harry didn't want to discuss this, not right now. It was still too close. "Let's fetch some lunch."
"I'm sorry." Ron put a hand on his arm. "I mean it. This is as much my fault as it is anyone else's."
"It's either all of our fault, equally, or no one's. We did this together." Harry shrugged, hoping he looked more careless than he felt. "We can't assign blame now."
"Are you sure?" Because Ron looked like he might be willing to shoulder it, if Harry should ask that of him.
Harry shook his head. He wouldn't do that to Ron or Hermione. "No. It's done. For all that I wish it could be, it's not going to be undone. So...."
"So, you're going to have to live with it." Ron stepped back. "No matter what happens, I'm still your friend."
"Even if..." Harry could not put his worst-case scenario into words.
"Even then. You're my best mate." Ron knocked his shoulder into Harry's. "Come on, we should go get lunch before it's all gone."
Smiling at him, Harry was damned grateful to have him as a friend.
*****
Every night for the next several weeks, Harry went to Snape's office between eight and midnight. If someone else was serving detention, which thankfully wasn't that often, he was required to serve it with them, chopping, dicing, mashing or otherwise preparing potion supplies. The injustice of it did not escape Harry's notice.
Mostly, however, he spent his time sitting on the battered leather sofa in Snape's office, doing his homework.
The bond was satisfied with them in the same room without requiring more interaction than that. It suited Harry very well. He hadn't cared enough to ask how it suited Snape.
Although he tried hard not to think about Snape in any context, Harry knew he did not hate him any more. As appalling as it was to admit, even to himself, some small part of Harry had begun to think about reaching out, to get to know Snape, to find out what made him the way he was, to find common ground between them. Harry could and did ignore the inclination, but each time they sat together, night after night, the idea grew infinitesimally in his mind.
"Um..." Harry cleared his throat. They had spent yet another evening in total silence, and he was about to go mad from the lack of sound. "You haven't spoken to me all week in class."
"I have nothing to say to you." Snape's tone grated against him like sandpaper on silk, catching and pulling. "Did you require something? Conversation?"
"No." Harry shivered. He would have liked a better explanation. The silence was too much. "Do you want to... ah... talk about... anything?" God, he wondered if he could sound any more lame than that.
"No," Snape said harshly, but there was something more in his voice. What it was, Harry wasn't sure, but more than just a simple denial.
"Why not?" Harry could almost feel that Snape did want to say something.
Meeting his eyes, Snape exhaled audibly. "Because, I can no longer speak to you without giving myself and my feelings away."
He opened his mouth to ask, but decided he wasn't ready for the answer yet. "Oh."
"Articulate, as always." There was no sarcasm, no rancor, no anything behind the words. Snape's expression was mild. "Thank you for not asking."
"You're welcome." Harry tried to hold back a smile and couldn't quite manage it. "I'm not sure I want to know."
"Neither do I, Mr. Potter. I suspect these ignominies will come, one way or another. No matter how much we wish they would not." Snape's demeanor was, if not exactly friendly, then certainly not hostile either.
The whole conversation was starting to make Harry nervous. "Do you still want to humiliate me?"
Pushing his lank hair away from his face, Snape shook his head. "I can remember what I felt before, when I took great joy in it, but I no longer feel that way."
"Me neither." Harry wasn't even sure he wanted to feel that much hatred for anyone. Some part of him still blamed Snape for Sirius' death, and a host of other crimes, but he couldn't muster the anger. It was as if all the intensity of his negative emotions had been bled out of him, leaving only the husk, and the memory. "Has anyone said anything to you about it?"
"About what?" Snape asked, putting down his quill and gathering the papers he was working on into a pile. He focused on Harry.
Which Harry found more than a little disconcerting, but then, no more than anything else that had happened. "About the fact you're not speaking to me in class."
Snape actually chuckled, his eyes truly holding a trace of humor. "I've told anyone who dared to ask, and few are brave enough to do so, that I can't tolerate your insolence any longer."
"They accept that?" Harry found that hard to believe. "I mean, you didn't have to let me into advanced potions."
"I could hardly have kept you out with your OWL scores as high as they were." He said it matter-of-factly, as if he were the most fair and reasonable of teachers.
That went against every single thing Harry knew about Snape, but instead of being able to dwell on it, he had to move past it without consideration. "Would you have, if you could have?"
After a moment's hesitation, Snape shook his head. "No. Probably not. Anyone who does well enough on their OWLs has a right to be in my class, even if I don't like it."
"Nice to know you're fair about something," Harry said before he could pull the words back and regretted them as he saw something akin to pain cross Snape's face.
"Life is not fair, Mr. Potter. I would have thought you'd realize that by this point in your life." Snape's tone had taken on a churlishness that had been absent earlier, but it wasn't what Harry had come to expect when Snape was angry.
Almost before it could manifest itself, Harry's annoyance died out again, disconcerting him. "No," he said quietly. "I realized that a very long time ago."
"Ah. Tell me about your life in with the Muggles." Snape's dark eyes were clear, with even a hint of curiosity in them.
If there had been a sneer or even the slightest bit of mockery, Harry would have bristled and refused to answer. As hard as it was to believe, Harry could see he actually wanted to know and for some reason, Harry wanted to tell him.
"They didn't want me and made sure I knew it from the time I was old enough to understand such things." Harry didn't know what else to say about it. "Dudley was their son. He got everything."
"You received nothing?" Again, there should have been a sneer in his tone, some kind of ridicule. It was as if Snape knew this was the truth and accepted it.
"Nothing first. Nothing Dudley wanted. Nothing I wanted. After a while..." Harry looked away, a wave of bitterness crashing through him. "I stopped--"
"What? Asking? Wanting?" Snape looked over at him with startling sympathy in his eyes. "Didn't you resent it?"
"I just wished that --" Harry took a breath. "I never understood what it was about me--" He stopped, unable to go on. The bond compelling him to answer and he didn't want to sound more pathetic than he felt. Looking at Snape, he found wasn't above begging. "Please. I can't --"
"Then don't." Rising from his desk, Snape moved to sit beside him. Close, but not touching him in any way. "You have every right to be angry with them. To hate them."
Harry closed his eyes tightly, not wanting to see the pity in Snape's expression. "I don't hate them. I want to. But I don't. They don't owe me anything."
"Oh, but they do, Mr. Potter. They are your family and they have treated you abysmally." Snape sounded angry on his behalf.
Some part of Harry appreciated the sentiment, more than he could find the words to say. However, he still hated to talk about the Dursleys. "What about your family? What were they like?"
"I have little family left. A few distant cousins." Snape looked away and something crossed his face that Harry could not begin to fathom. "All of whom are in league with Voldemort and I don't see them."
"Don't they think you're part of that circle, too?" Harry would have thought that would make Snape more acceptable to them.
His manner changed to disdain. "Yes. That does not make them care for me nor me for them."
"Oh." Harry felt a ridiculous urge to put his arms around Snape and offer what comfort he could. He looked away instead. "Neither of us has much in the way of family, then."
"It would seem not. You seem to have chosen your family from amongst your friends." For some reason, Snape didn't sound like he disapproved as much as Harry would have expected.
"The Weasleys sort of adopted me." While they drove him mad on occasion, Harry loved them all dearly. It surprised him that Snape could understand that.
"Such that they are." Snape did manage to sneer, but it sounded a little too good-natured to truly have the desired effect.
"Oi. None of that. They are good to me. Mrs. Weasley gave me my first real Christmas present." She also was the closest thing he'd ever had to a mother. Nothing had touched him more than her and Charlie showing up two years ago at the tri-wizard tournament.
"The famous jumpers?" Snape had a smirk on his face, but it wasn't unkind. "Surely you've had better than that?"
"Not before I got the first one. I got a twenty-five pence piece from the Dursleys that year. I think they thought they were being generous." Harry could hear his bitterness in the words, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to mute what he was feeling when talking to Snape. "Perhaps we should go back to not speaking to each other?"
"I don't know that we can. We've pushed it as far as it will let us, I think." Snape didn't sound as if he wanted to go back to silence now that they'd managed to move past it.
Harry was afraid he was right. The truth was that he wasn't sure he wanted to go back to that either. He was... curious about Snape. "What are we going to do about class?"
"I'm going to continue not to speak to you, and you will do the same. I'll also continue to give you detention."
Just when he thought Snape might be human, he said something that reminded Harry of every bitter feeling he'd ever had. "I have no say in this?"
"Do you wish to have a night off?" There was that look of... almost concern in Snape's expression.
He couldn't believe it as his option reversed itself again. If Snape didn't stop changing so fast, Harry was sure he'd be dizzy by the end of the evening. "Now that you mention it, I haven't seen Hermione or Ron at night for more than a month."
"Perhaps I should give you all a detention?" He looked like he liked that idea a lot.
"I'd rather have a couple of nights off." At Snape's expression, Harry smirked at him. "You don't want to do that? God, you're starting to like me, aren't you?"
"I'm afraid that happened sometime ago." Something in the way Snape said it made him wonder.
His smile got wider. "Tell me when?"
Shaking his head, Snape looked... could that be embarrassed? "I'd rather not answer that."
Even though he knew he should, Harry couldn't make himself let it go. He wanted to know. "Oh, I think you should tell me."
"Fine, brat." He said it kindly and he had that almost smile on his face again. "Sometime in your fourth year."
"Really? You still treated me like crap." Harry glared. He knew he should be annoyed by that, but Snape's sheepish look was... something he could not describe. "Especially after last year."
"You deserved it after..." Snape trailed off and looked away. "Why would I do anything differently? I have a reputation to maintain, and suddenly deciding you were slightly more tolerable than I had originally thought is not a reason to stop acting as I had." Spoken like Snape of old. But he added, "It would have drawn too much attention to me, to us."
That did make sense, in a Snape kind of way. "You're treating me differently now."
"Worse, by most people's standards."
Harry nodded. He supposed that having a teacher not speaking to him would upset him greatly under other circumstances. "I expect you're right. About that night off?"
Looking at him almost dolefully, Snape nodded. "I'll give you a few days before the next detention."
"I suppose that's as good as I can get." Harry was pleased that Snape was going to be decent about it after all, but he was still annoyed to be getting more detentions for no reason.
"Trust me. You don't want to go too long." There was something too knowing in Snape's look and Harry could tell that wasn't a good sign.
"Or what?"
Snape raised an eyebrow at him. "Do you truly wish to find out?"
Part of him did, and part of him knew it wouldn't be good. "What will happen?"
"I think you'll be compelled to seek me out, to spend time with me as we have been. The bond may invoke a compulsion to do it."
"That's what I thought." Harry shuddered. "Give me a night or two, okay?"
"As you please."
*****
After the animosity between them, no one found it that unusual that Harry spent the last two months of his sixth year in detention with Snape. Sometimes they talked, and sometimes they simply sat with each other. Harry stopped thinking about how much he once hated Snape and started to think about how much he enjoyed his company.
That the bond was causing this change was not a question, Harry understood that, but he didn't care any more. It was good to have someone to be with whom he knew wanted him, even if it were the bond causing it.
The school term was about to end for the summer and Harry was faced with a forced separation.
"Tell me again why I can't stay with you this summer?" Harry knew he sounded petulant, but the thought of the Dursleys made his stomach turn over.
"Because you must go back to them at least for some part of the summer." While Snape's tone was patient, there was ever so slight an edge of warning to it. He wouldn't be pushed on this.
Harry had heard this before from Dumbledore. His mother's family and the supposed protection of his mother's love for him. Part of him wanted to believe in that, but he knew the Dursleys too well. "Well, they certainly don't protect me."
"How bad was it last summer after half the Order threatened them with bodily harm?" Snape asked, his expression showing his concern.
"Not as bad as it had been, I'll grant that." Harry conceded to himself that it could have been a great deal worse. "They didn't speak to me."
Snape looked at him and grimaced. "I expect that is better than active hostility?"
"Only slightly." Harry sighed louder, knowing there wasn't a choice here. "If I must."
"I am afraid you must. I promise I shall see you after a few weeks have passed." He made it sound like an oath.
Smiling, Harry glanced at him, playing his one trump card. "What about the bond? Is it going to let us be apart for that long?"
"We shall see, won't we?" Snape didn't sound very happy about it either.
"I don't think it's a good idea." Harry felt more than a little worry at being apart from Snape for any length of time.
"The reason we've spent so much time together these past weeks is to allow the bond to settle in. It should not be threatened by a few weeks of separation. It will be okay." Snape's voice was gentle and reassuring.
"Except that I have to see the Dureleys." Harry shuddered dramatically. Going back to them filled him with too many memories, all of them painful in one way or another.
"There is nothing we can do about this. You must return to your family for at least part of the summer." Snape sounded concerned about him, and Harry was pleased to hear it, even if it didn't help that much.
"I know that," Harry said, squaring his shoulders and trying to smile. He did understand, but whatever the reason, he didn't want to leave. Somehow Snape had come to mean comfort to him in a way no one else did. "Well, if you're here and I'm there...."
"We shall cope." Snape stood, motioning for Harry to stand as well. "I don't expect it will be easy, but try not to fret."
Harry looked up at him. He'd grown a little over the school year, but Snape was still several inches taller than he was. "I'll try."
Closing his eyes, Snape took a deep breath and then opened them again. "This is wrong on so many levels. I should not allow it, but...." He slid his arm very gently around Harry's shoulder and with only the faintest amount of pressure, allowed Harry to step into his embrace. Sighing softly, his head rested on Harry's. "I can't help it."
Sliding his arms around Snape's waist, Harry held on, his face buried against his shoulder. Harry inhaled. Snape smelled good, like cardamom or some other exotic spice. He wasn't sure what it was.
When Snape finally tried to step back, Harry didn't want to let go. His eyes closed tightly, trying to memorize the moment, hanging on for one more second, before releasing him.
"I shall come for you as soon as it's possible for me to do so." Snape reached out as if to touch his hair, and then pulled his hand back without making contact. He shook his head. "No. I must not."
"Why?" Harry looked at him. "I mean--"
"I know what you mean." Snape blew out a breath, his expression troubled. "There should be no contact between us."
"How can that be? I've seen teachers touch students. I mean, it's not..." Harry's face heated and he still couldn't say it. The thought didn't bother him as it once did, but he could not think about that yet. Although he acknowledged to himself, it no longer seemed completely impossible.
Snape folded his arms over his chest, and instead of it being intimidating, it seemed more a protective gesture. "It might not be sexual, but it's still inappropriate."
Harry started to reach out again, but a look at Snape's wary expression stopped him. "You've got some weird, over-developed sense of propriety, don't you?"
"This will only become more difficult over time. If I were to give in to it now, I have no hope of surviving with my integrity intact."
"That's important to you, isn't it?" Harry didn't have to ask. If he'd discovered nothing else about Snape, he knew the man had a great deal of personal integrity. Given how he'd been forced to live his life, Harry suspected that at times it was all he had.
"Very much so."
"All right." Harry stepped back, away from him, already missing the comfort of Snape's embrace. He wondered how he would get through the coming weeks. "For now."
"For now, is all you need do." Snape moved to the door. "I shall see you in a few weeks."
Harry went out the door and then turned for one more look. Snape nodded and closed the door.