Chapter Text
Chapter One – Hawthorn Berries
Defeating the Dark Lord causes many changes in the Wizarding community. Hope has returned, while Dementors are diminishing all over the country. Trials have begun, restoring the Ministry’s former glory, weeding out the liars and schemers from its midst. Witches and wizards have finally started to live and thrive again, regardless of their blood status. Slowly, normality is returning, bringing with it a serene acceptance of loss, but also a desire for good.
Hogwarts has become a scene of transformation as well, of healing and recovery. As the school has been rebuilt, with it the community was nursed back to health as well. Headmistress McGonagall did everything in her power to welcome back the children on the first of September, and as if the school meant a sort of measurement for their everyday life, people rallied behind her to help. After all, if Hogwarts is safe again, so would be the world.
Many things have changed after the war, but some remained the same.
Snape is still a fucking bastard, and Harry still hates Potions with all his heart.
“Malfoy, how many valerian roots?”
Snape is writing something in a black notebook without looking up at them, and if the absentminded tone of his voice is anything to go by, it’s not related to either their current lesson, or the previous ones. Maybe he’s contriving vivid torture plans for his next victims, Harry thinks bitterly, knowing he’ll have a taste of those designs sooner or later, as Snape’s favourite resident prey.
One would think that defeating the Dark Lord counts for something when it comes to mundane matters like respect and acceptance, but Snape made sure Harry understood that he feels no different regarding Harry as he had done in the seven years of their acquaintance.
“Five, sir.”
“Yes. Granger?”
“We need to make the potion less potent without tampering with its magical abilities, so we add some honey locust leaves. The exact measurement depends on how weak we want our potion. It could range from five to fifteen ounces.”
“Yes, correct. Weasley,” Ron squirms on Harry’s right. “Next step?”
The questioning has been going on for ten minutes. There is not much remaining of the class, but Snape has decided to instead of letting them go early, he would submit them to a quick line of quizzing regarding the previous lecture’s potion. Failing the question meant failing the lesson also, naturally.
“Add,” Ron hesitates, and Snape raises an eyebrow, but still doesn’t look up from his notes. “Add the hawthorn berries, sir.”
Snape seems surprised. “Correct. Potter,” Black eyes raise then and Snape stops writing. “How much?”
Harry feels the heavy gaze on him, but he knows the answer, so he isn’t that much worried. “Seven, sir. But if you more than double the amount, you can change the potion’s effect from a mild sedative to elevating blood pressure instead.”
That wasn’t in their textbook, and Snape hadn’t told them that either. Harry read about it in one of Neville’s books, he had borrowed for his homework.
Snape lifts his head. If it wasn’t him, Harry would think the man was stunned, but of course, emotions like that don’t happen to a man like Snape.
Harry almost allows himself a triumphant smile.
“Dried?”
Ginny opens her mouth, she’s the next after all, but Snape hisses, “Quiet, girl. I did not ask you,” without sparing her a glance. His eyes, those cold eyes are still on Harry. He waits, barely blinks even.
Harry feels his own blood pressure rise. Of course, he would be the only one getting two questions. But Snape’s not going to win. He knows the answer to this as well. Although he has a suspicion that Snape might keep asking questions until Harry fails one.
“Fresh. You need the juice.”
“Crushed or squeezed?” Eyes not moving, Snape watches him like a hawk. His lips curl up into a sneer. He knows he’s caught Harry there, because Harry blinks and looks away for a second.
It was in the text, too, Snape did tell them but this he can’t remember. He underlined the word three times, because it was important, and were the question “How do you prepare it?” been asked, he would have known, but picking one out of two likely answers confuses him suddenly.
He had worse than fifty-fifty odds, and came out winning. “Crushed,” he says with confidence.
Not this time. Lips curl into a smile, cold and cruel that makes Harry shiver. “Wrong.” Snape says and the little mark appears on the blackboard behind him, next to Harry’s name.
“Oh come on!” Harry shouts angrily. “That’s unfair! I answered two correctly!”
He knows he went too far because silence settles in the classroom, deep and deafening. Malfoy’s looking at him over his shoulder, grinning, never a good sign.
Snape stands, his movements slow, deliberate.
“Fuck,” Harry curses under his breath, avoids Snape’s gaze, looks anywhere but him as the man stalks closer, robes gently swishing on wooden floor. There’s something in his steps, light and silent, that unsettles Harry, makes him squirm in his seat.
Every Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff is looking down, even the ones who have nothing to fear. Only the Slytherins are perked up, listening, waiting.
Snape stops right in front of Harry. He waits and Harry knows he’ll wait as long as he needs to, so he raises his gaze, looks at the black eyes.
He feels furious. Mad with anger. The whole unfairness of the situation irritates him to no point. Why is it always him? Why?
That cold gaze doesn’t let him look away as Snape says, “Can anyone tell me what is the difference between adding squeezed or crushed hawthorn berries to our potion?”
Oh, he's furious too, but still his tone remains soft, gentle almost. His voice has a deep enough rumble to wake Cerberus in the Underworld.
Harry wants to scream; he hates it so much. He’d rather Snape shouted, yelled at him, cruel and scathing, he’d take anything over this controlled hatred.
Hermione stirs two seats away. She knows the answer, of course she does, she always knows, but she doesn’t put up her hand. No one dares to move, his classmates don’t even flinch. The flicker of the candle’s flame can be heard in the stunned silence.
Snape doesn’t look around, he doesn’t need to, he knows no one will volunteer to give an answer. No one is brave enough.
“Miss Granger, care to enlighten your friend?” He asks softly, as if Hermione had a chance to say no. Everyone knows she has the correct solution, even Snape.
She fidgets, hesitant. It’s practically the first time someone asks her a question and she doesn’t reply straight away, but she can’t do it now, without giving the mercy blow to Harry. Snape could have picked anyone to answer, Harry was sure others knew the answer, too, but Snape picked the girl purposefully, so she has to humiliate Harry, or fail the lesson too.
Hermione swallows hard, opens her mouth and Harry tenses. He still hasn’t looked away from Snape, and he seems to catch a glimmer of triumph that adds fervour to the cold eyes.
“Squeezing the hawthorn berries extracts the juice only, while crushing them you would add the flesh, too…” She hesitates and Harry shuts his eyes and turns away from the hateful gaze because he knows the answer suddenly. It’s all so clear, he wants to bang his head against the desk. “The flesh reacts badly with the potion and makes it indigestible for human consumption. It… it turns the potion to poison.” Hermione finishes quietly, then adds as nothing but a whisper, “Sorry, Harry.”
The silence buzzes around them. No one dares to move, even Malfoy looks wary.
Snape’s presence in front of Harry’s desk is all but threatening, like a dark cloud just waiting to crush Harry with a rainstorm.
“You failed today’s lesson, of course.” Snape says calmly and Harry’s hand fists around his wand under the table. He feels utterly wretched and humiliated and he longs to curse Snape, more than anything.
Snape leans on his desk, his voice quiet enough that besides Ron and Hermione no one would hear him. “And put that away before you do something stupid, Potter.”
Harry lifts his head then, lets the hatred and fury he feels settle on his face as he glares at Snape and pulls his wand from beneath the table. He wants Snape to know just how much Harry hates him, to feel the heat of his anger.
Long fingers curl around Harry’s wrist, grip painfully firm, trying to force Harry to let go.
Instead of pain, however, something else shoots to the base of Harry's spine, something awfully familiar, something he most definitely isn’t supposed to experience when Snape’s hand touches him.
He feels the electric surge of desire flare up in him and he lets go of his wand out of sheer surprise.
Harry’s mouth opens, a soft “Ah…” slips out and all he can hope is that Snape, who’s still watching him, will not comprehend what it means, will take it as a gasp of pain instead and not of desire.
His wrist is dropped and Harry yanks it away, hides it under the table, before it could happen again.
“You will stay behind to discuss your detention.” Snape hisses, the first signs of his anger finally slipping through then twirls around. “What are you all looking at?” He shouts and his voice, like a whip, cracks in the silence. “Why aren’t you taking notes? You’re lucky I’m not failing the whole damned class!”
During the remainder of the class, Harry doesn’t take notes, he doesn’t look up, he doesn’t answer Hermione’s softly spoken inquiries. He keeps resolutely staring ahead, dreading the moment he has to be alone with Snape.
The base of his spine still tingles, and so do other parts of his body. His wrist, where those thin, cold fingers have wrapped around him, like fire burns as if nettle has stung the sensitive skin. No matter how much he rubs the place, he can’t scrub away the feeling of Snape’s hand there. The memory, like a looped sequence of images, plays in front of his mind over and over again.
Cold touch and even colder eyes and yet Harry’s body burns. What has Snape done to him? What magic, what curse could elicit such a response from him?
He doesn’t hear the bell, barely sees his friends pack up their belongings, barely hears Ron's whispered, “We’ll be out there.” He does not hear them at all, until nothing is left to hear, only the soft sound of feet touching the ground, of black cloak swishing on worn wood as Snape slowly walks closer.
Hand still in his lap, heart pounding, Harry stares in front of himself, eyes carving a hole into his desk.
He feels that dark gaze burn him and only becomes more desperate. How could that icy stare he knows so well singe him like the touch of a spell? He dares not look up, afraid of feeling that surge of heat all over his body again, but he knows he cannot avoid the inevitable.
“Are we to stay here until the end of times, Mr. Potter?” Snape inquires softly.
Harry swallows, but doesn’t look up at the man. “When? Sir.”
No one else would notice the small huff, but Harry does and he all but sees the smirk tugging Snape’s thin lips and it infuriates him even more.
“So eager for detention. If only you applied that enthusiasm to your studies, we would not be doing this… once again.”
Harry’s gaze snaps up driven by sheer hatred. “If only you –“ He starts heatedly, but bites his tongue and averts his eyes before he would get himself into an even bigger mess. Hermione would be proud of him, but Harry only shakes with reserved fury.
Snape leans onto Harry’s desk. Long, pale fingers fan out on dark wood, filling Harry’s vision. His wrist burns again, and so does half his body. Unfortunately, it’s the lower half.
“Yes? Do go on, Mr. Potter.” Snape drawls.
Harry likes to think that he grew into a calm, mature young man during the war, that he managed to rule his emotions along with his magic in the past year. He likes to think that after the war, with all the killing and torture, a mere conversation with Severus Snape cannot make him upset, won’t make him seethe with rage and indignation.
Harry couldn’t be more wrong, of course.
He places his hands on the desk, too, as he slowly stands up and glares at Snape dead in the eyes. He absentmindedly notices that their hands are touching, that his careless fingertips brush cold skin and the heat he suddenly experiences because of that only infuriates him even more.
“That was wildly unfair and you know it!”
Snape doesn’t back away. Harry can feel his warm breath on his face as he asks in a soft tone, “Six years of teaching you and you couldn’t even learn that I care not about being fair. Let’s hope the seventh will be the charm…”
Harry grunts, jaw clenching. He wishes more than anything that he had his wand in hand. He would press it against Snape’s neck, dig it into the scarred skin until he heard Snape hiss. These violent images do nothing to quell his boiling blood.
“I did as well as anyone in here, better still. Give me a pass, I earned it, you bastard.”
He expects the insult to send Snape raging, but the professor merely lifts an eyebrow. Only his tone gets slightly colder, as he hisses, “Don’t make the mistake of thinking you have any privilege in this class because of your wartime efforts, Mr. Potter. Others might treat you differently but I will not.”
“Oh, that didn’t even occur to me, Professor,” Harry snarls.
Snape scoffs. “You will spend your detention with the Headmistress tonight. She’ll expect you in her office at seven sharp,” the professor says, then the next moment, fast like a striking snake, Snape leans closer, fingers once more around Harry’s wrists, nailing him to the desk. The touch is now hot, but still firm enough to break bones. “And threaten me with a wand one more time, Potter…” he leaves the sentence unfinished but Harry’s short-circuited brain can’t shut up.
The words have to fight their way through his clenched throat and be loud enough to be heard over his thundering heart, but unfortunately, they slip out audibly. “And what? What will you do?” His glare is but a challenge.
Cold gaze assesses him, and for a split second Harry expects Snape to get physical, to use actual violence, but the man only sneers as he spits, “Something I will greatly, greatly regret, Mr. Potter.”
Then Harry’s let go, and Snape marches out of the classroom without even another word, black robes like a flag slapping around him.
Harry falls back into his chair, heart still beating a mile a minute, hand shaking. His wrists burn, but there’s no sign of the forceful touch there, and he knows those cold eyes didn’t singe his skin either.
When Ron and Hermione come back into the classroom, they cannot see the marks left behind by Snape’s scathing words and scorching touch. But Harry feels them, the fire in his veins, his hard cock between his legs, the taste of desire on his tongue – and they make him feel more confused than ever.