Chapter Text
Spellfire and machine gun fire illuminated a battlefield situated in a ruin of a city. Men and women shouted to each other. Wounded screamed in pain. Aircraft soared through the sky, battling dragons ridden by witches and wizards and people on brooms throwing spells.
The battle lines were clear. Magical versus muggle.
A muggle 50 caliber machine gun cut through the magicals, a dozen and more dropping in a matter of seconds before someone erected a shield powerful enough to throw off the bullets, then Harry stepped forward, his black dragonhide battle robes billowing around him, and he slashed his hand at the gun. He had no wand. Hadn ’t needed one in years. The gun was no match for his transfiguration as it fell apart into fifty venomous snakes that instantly set to attacking all the nearby muggles.
Harry smiled in grim satisfaction at the sound of their screams.
One of the planes overhead was hit directly by a blast of dragon fire and plummeted toward the ground. A wave of Harry ’s hand gave the burning heap a push to ensure it landed on the muggle side of this fight. The muggles were beginning to concentrate fire in his direction again, as they always did after a few minutes. He was one of, if not the most, powerful magical in the world at this point and he was extremely deadly on the battlefield. He reached out to the tarmac beneath his feet and yanked a chunk of it up in front of him as a shield. That would keep them occupied for a little while.
Once he was concealed, he disapparated, reappearing in another part of the battlefield. He had only begun to take in the situation surrounding him when the world turned to fire as a bomb must have landed very near where he ’d been standing before apparating and he was thrown through the air. His magic shielded him instinctively, preventing any serious harm from befalling him, but when he was able to gain his bearings again, he found that the battlefield was virtually gone. The fuckers had killed half their own men in the process.
He disapparated with a snarl. Live to fight another day.
Harry woke with a gasp, his stomach turning at the carnage that his dream had conjured. He’d barely even thought about it during the dream. It felt as though he’d seen such things a hundred times before and expected to see them a hundred times again. Just another day.
Merlin, that had been twisted. Even for him.
He’d been probably in his late twenties in that dream. The scar on his forehead was pale and barely noticeable but he’d collected new scars, including a nasty one stretching from his jaw to his ear. He wasn’t wearing glasses, and his eyes had been so cold. It wasn’t just indifference with which he killed the muggles. It was pure satisfaction that he’d felt as he listened to them screaming as they were attacked by snakes deadly enough to kill them within minutes of biting.
With a shudder, he pushed the demented dream from his mind. He could only assume that it was caused by the trauma of the dementor attack that had come all too close to stealing his soul last night and the way the Dursleys were treating him like he’d tried to murder their son rather than saving his life. Bastards. It could have even had something to do with the fact that he was terribly annoyed with his friends and not feeling too warm and fuzzy toward Dumbledore either at the moment.
His so-called friends hadn’t written to him all summer, Voldemort wasn’t attacking or killing anyone – which was good but unnerving – and Dumbledore had some kind of secret with his aunt. Harry could only imagine that the headmaster had threatened her in some way to get her to take Harry in or stop her from shoving him off at an orphanage. It sounded very much like he’d been reminding her of that. With the way that she’d gone pale and then insisted that he had to stay… what else could it be? It pissed him off that he’d grown up thinking that he was a worthless, loathsome, freak, not knowing that magic existed, when Dumbledore had apparently been in contact with Petunia the whole time.
Shaking off his dark thoughts, Harry glanced at the alarm by his bed. Two-thirty in the morning. Just great. He gave a moment of thought to trying to go back to bed, but he very much doubted he’d manage after that dream. Instead, he used an old jumper to cover the crack under his door and made sure the drapes were drawn over his window, then clicked on the little lamp by his bed and started reading through some of the old Prophets piled up on his desk, hoping the stupidity of the articles would get his mind off everything.
Harry fumed silently as he lay in bed listening to Ron’s thunderous snores across the room. Some people from this Order of the Phoenix had gotten him from the Dursleys today and brought him to the Order Headquarters, which was apparently Sirius’ childhood home.
Ron and Hermione had claimed that they hadn’t written anything meaningful to him all summer because Dumbledore told them not to. That had just made him angrier because he was none too pleased with Dumbledore at the moment either. He was mad at Sirius because the man had a house protected under a million wards, including a Fidelius, yet Harry had to spend half the summer at the Dursleys. He was obviously so safe there that he almost lost his soul! Again. Honestly, everyone’s attempts to protect him was going to get him killed one of these days.
He’d forgiven Ron and Hermione, of course. What else was he supposed to do? They were his best friends. Without them he’d be little more than the pre-Hogwarts Harry: Lonely and Pathetic. He still wasn’t happy with them, but he couldn’t very well hate them.
Then there was the Secret that the adults were keeping from him. Apparently he was too young and innocent to know what Voldemort was after. Some kind of ultimate weapon that would most likely end up pointed directly at Harry first and foremost. Not that he had any chance to try to prepare himself for that eventuality, of course, because he wasn’t allowed to know anything. The adults seemed to think that they could just protect him and he would be fine in his ignorance.
He snorted quietly at that idea. Yeah, like they’d kept him so safe when his Defense teacher had Voldemort on the back of his head. Like he’d been safe when Voldemort’s diary was unleashing a basilisk in the school. Like the adults had protected him so well by keeping the details of his godfather and his supposed betrayal from Harry. Like they’d kept him nice and safe throughout the Triwizard Tournament and the ritual thereafter. And just like they’d made sure he was protected when Dementors started wandering around Little Whinging.
Oh yeah. He felt totally safe knowing that the “adults” were guarding his safety and innocence so diligently.
At least Sirius had gotten him a little information, but Harry didn’t understand why the man couldn’t tell him more. He was an adult. He was not required to do as Dumbledore told him or Mrs. Weasley for that matter. So why had he so easily bowed to their demands? And Lupin was no help. All he seemed to care about was finding a middle ground and keeping people from fighting. Even if that middle ground was still fucking stupid, at least there was peace.
Right up until something killed Harry because he didn’t know to be on guard for it.
Those thoughts continued to chase each other around in his mind until he fell into a troubled sleep.
Harry’s whole body ached with need as he was teased higher and higher, but never allowed the release he so craved. Severus always knew how to torment him in all the best ways.
Finally deciding that he’d had enough, Harry growled quietly as he flexed his muscles to surge up and spin his lover around beneath him. Brilliant green eyes met sparkling black, thin lips pulled into a mischievous smirk, “Giving up already, Harry?” the deep voice purred.
“Not giving up,” Harry panted, grinding his hard cock into the one below him and earning a deep groan for his efforts, “giving you a taste of your own medicine, Love.”
Harry then spent the next hour licking and sucking and nibbling and stroking his lover’s body until the man finally broke with a harsh, “Just fuck me already, brat!”
With a triumphant grin, Harry wasted no time in sliding his way into the well-prepared body beneath him. They moaned in unison at the wonderful sensations as their marathon of foreplay finally came to an end. Neither of them were going to last long at this point.
Severus’ legs wrapped tightly around his waist and Harry kissed the older man twice before the need for air had him panting near the man’s ear as he picked up his pace.
“Not gonna last,” Harry gasped and reached between them to fist his lover’s cock, desperate to get the man off before he lost control. He rarely topped and he wasn’t about to disappoint.
Severus moaned at the dual stimulation and it took him only a dozen strokes before he sucked in a sharp breath and held it as he always did when he came.
Harry, on the other hand, groaned loudly as he finally let go of his control and felt pleasure rush through him. He managed to keep up a stuttered rhythm until he began to become too sensitive. He drew out of his lover and collapsed on his chest.
Severus laughed quietly through his still heavy breathing and wrapped his arms around Harry. “You’re not that light, Brat,” and he said “Brat” with utmost affection, as always.
“I can move,” Harry offered with no real conviction that he could manage any such thing.
He felt Severus press a kiss to the side of his head before he relaxed back. “In a minute,” he allowed.
“Yeah,” Harry agreed, and promptly fell asleep.
Harry blinked awake to find himself staring at the filthy ceiling in Grimmauld Place rather than the merely dingy ceiling at Spinner’s End. He wasn’t entirely sure how he knew that that’s where the dream had taken place, but he did.
Not that he knew where it was located, but it had been Severus’ — Snape’s — home in the dream.
He shifted, then grimaced at the mess in his pants. He sat up and shook his head in disbelief as he replayed that dream in his mind. Had he just had a sex dream about Snape??
A glance at the old wind-up clock on the bedside table revealed it to be just after six in the morning. Good, he didn’t think there was any chance he’d be getting back to sleep anyway. With a shudder, he gathered up some clothes and hurried to the bathroom. He had a shower and cleaned his pants as best he could with a tissue before dropping them in the laundry bin with a wince. Well, he supposed Mrs. Weasley had had enough sons she probably wouldn’t even think anything of it if she noticed. At least, he was pretty sure she was doing the laundry.
When he was dressed, he returned to his room quietly so as not to wake anyone hoping to sleep to a more decent hour. He crawled back onto his bed and leaned against the headboard while he considered the dream. It wasn’t just a normal sex dream. He’d had those before. They were always indistinct. Pleasure and excitement and usually another body — male, generally, but definitely not Snape or anyone of that age group. This dream had been very different.
It actually reminded him slightly of the dream from a few days ago. The horrible battlefield dream. It was the same in that they’d been oddly clear and coherent for dreams. Merlin, he half felt like he’d lost his virginity having experienced that dream. Like he knew exactly what it all felt like every step of the way now, which surely shouldn’t be possible from a dream. And he’d felt entirely like an alternate version of himself in both of them. With an entirely different history. Or at least a history that hadn’t happened yet. In which battles against muggles were normal. In which sex with Snape was a frequent activity. In which he looked at Snape and thought… Thought he was beautiful. Amazing. Incredibly strong and brave and intelligent. And that somehow Harry was the luckiest son of a bitch in the world because Snape — Severus, in the dream — wanted him too.
Harry hadn’t ever felt anything like what he’d felt for Snape in that dream. The man had been his entire world.
Harry glanced down at Ginny as she wrapped her hands around his arm and leaned against his shoulder as they meandered down Diagon Alley. It had fully recovered from the war by this point, and though some of the businesses had closed and others had changed ownership, like Fortesque’s, it once again felt like a welcoming place any child would be delighted to visit.
“So where is your brooding lothario today, Harry?” Ginny inquired with a wry smirk.
Harry rolled his eyes at the description of Severus, “Home. Working. Probably at least in part as an excuse to avoid coming to the Alley with me,” he admitted with a sigh. The Alley may have recovered, but the people had become paranoid of the Dark. “He’s still attempting to live entirely between owl orders and trips directly to wholesale potions suppliers,” he explained.
“Hard to blame the man for avoiding the public,” Ginny allowed. “It’s hard for the average wizarding sheep to know what to make of a reformed Death Eater turned spy that murdered Dumbledore but on the man’s own order and then ended up dating their dashing Savior.” Her tone was desert dry.
Harry snorted and nudged Ginny lightly with his shoulder, causing her to grin up at him.
Their conversation paused as they neared an eye-wateringly bright business sporting the name Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes in huge letters across the front. Ginny let go of him to head inside first, quickly ducking as she passed through the door and a spell splashed harmlessly against the door jam over her head. Harry followed her and another spell zipped toward him from a different angle. With a smile, he batted it away bare-handed, like a troublesome fly. It looked really impressive, but really he was just casting a tiny version of a protego around his hand.
“Oi! Harry!” George complained from further into the shop where he was standing with a customer near a display of joke hats. “You’re totally missing the point, mate. The prank spells are meant to put you in the right frame of mind for your visit. I mean, Ginny, I get. She’s an inherently cold-hearted person without a lick of humor in her bones-” he cut off with a yelp when Ginny snapped a spell at him that turned his hair into writhing worms like a really humorous version of a gorgon. He palpated around his head curiously, moving more carefully around the scarred side of his face missing an ear. After a moment, he drew his wand to conjure a mirror and grinned hugely at the sight of his own head. “Merlin, Gin! Did you invent this?”
“Yes,” she responded sassily. “I used my total lack of humor.”
George blinked, then hurried over to begin prodding her for details so that he could incorporate it into a prank product. Ginny was grinning as she began negotiating a cut of any sales of such a product.
Harry chuckled amusedly at them as he began browsing the wares. He didn’t have much occasion for pranking and he knew Severus would kill him if he ever tried any such thing on his lover, but George had a surprisingly diverse range of products, from designer pets to beauty products in addition to his pranking things. He also still ran a defense line, though it wasn’t anywhere near as extensive or popular as it had been during the war.
Harry was fascinated to discover a shelf dedicated to health and wellness products. He was reading the description on a “complete male carrier fertility kit” when a commotion drew his attention in the form of several people stomping into the shop, seemingly in a hurry.
“George Weasley, you are under arrest for suspicion of Dark magic use!” a strident man’s voice declared.
Harry dropped the product and spun quickly to see half a dozen uniformed aurors presenting George with what was presumably an arrest warrant while Ginny stood half in front of him with her wand drawn but not raised.
“What is the meaning of this?” Harry demanded as he approached them quickly.
Every one of the aurors shrank back at his approach, but they didn’t back down. “Mr. Weasley is under arrest for suspicion of Dark magic use,” the lead auror, a Gryffindor a few years older than Harry that had kept his head down through the war, spoke up as though Harry might have missed what he’d just said.
Harry scoffed angrily and moved to look at the arrest warrant. It all looked in order, unfortunately. He knew without the shadow of a doubt that George wasn’t guilty of doing anything morally questionable, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was innocent. Recent laws were so severe on Dark magic that using it for any reason could be a jailable offense. Sadly, Harry wasn’t sure that George wouldn’t use Dark magic in his pranks if it worked. In most cases, Dark magic wasn’t morally offensive unless one wished to use it that way, but everyone was so afraid of a repeat of Voldemort and his followers…
“Don’t worry, George,” Harry assured. “Just don’t say anything. I’ll call my solicitor right away.”
George nodded thankfully, looking a little shaken as he allowed the aurors to bind his hands in the magic suppressing cuffs.
“I’ll watch the shop!” Ginny promised as her brother was led outside.
As soon as they were gone, Ginny wrapped herself tightly around Harry and he could feel her trembling. Their family had never quite recovered from losing Fred. They couldn’t lose George.
“Don’t worry,” he assured her, rubbing her back lightly. “George is going to be fine. You just take care of things here.”
She pulled back and he gave her a significant look, which she returned with a nod and he knew that she’d be going through the workshop and getting rid of anything even slightly questionable. She quickly drew herself up with determination and he squeezed her shoulder encouragingly before leaving the shop. No point calling his solicitor, really. The office was just down the street.
Merlin, he hated that his family still wasn’t safe. Why did people have to be so fucking stupid?
The trial went both better and worse than Harry could have hoped. First of all, he’d been tried in front of the full Wizengamot, which was something only done for adult wizards for really serious crimes. Trying a minor that way basically means the Ministry considers them to have had an adult understanding of their actions. It was incredibly absurd to at once declare someone as responsible as an adult for their actions, and yet seek to punish them for casting magic while too young to be trusted with it.
And Dumbledore had shown up to defend him but he’d neither looked at Harry nor said a word to him, which had been very uncomfortable. He could only think that Dumbledore was really mad at him for what had happened with Cedric at the end of last year. He hadn’t been much of a hero then, letting Cedric die like that, nor was it very courageous to run away. Harry knew it was the only way he could have survived, but maybe Dumbledore had expected more of him.
He tried not to dwell on it, instead focusing on the relief of having been cleared of all charges.
They bumped into Mr. Malfoy talking to the minister on their way out. According to Mr. Weasley, Malfoy was bribing everyone he could to make things go his way. Not terribly surprising, but extremely frustrating to learn.
The return to Grimmauld Place was quite festive. Everyone was visibly relieved that he’d been cleared while assuring him that they knew it all along.
Ginny, Fred, and George were doing some kind of strange victory dance while chanting, “He got off! He got off! He got off!”
Harry blinked a few times, then blushed a bit at that particular phrasing. Merlin, were they really too innocent to recognize the double entendre? And since when was he not?
Looking at the three of them reminded him of the previous night’s dream and he withheld a shudder at the memory. A disfigured George arrested. Fred apparently dead.
He didn’t know why he was having these dreams, but he didn’t like them. He resolved not to think about it.
Mrs. Weasley finally had to scream at Fred, George, and Ginny to shut them up before she set about stuffing Harry with as much food as she could manage given how he’d picked at his breakfast.
And he hadn’t been expelled.
The cemetery in Godric’s Hallow was a rather pretty place, Harry noted without much feeling as he watched Hermione’s coffin lowered into the ground. Her parents hadn’t ever recovered their memory of her. They’d never know of the daughter they lost at such a young age.
Hermione Jean Granger, the headstone read. September 19, 1979 to October 3, 2006. Beloved Daughter, Devoted Friend.
Barely twenty-seven years old. She’d fought so hard for justice. For peace. Only to end up one of the first casualties of the war.
Ginny was sobbing so hard that Luna was supporting most of her weight, her own eyes shining with unshed tears.
Unable to watch any longer, Harry turned into Severus, resting his forehead against the man’s shoulder and closing his eyes. He just breathed in Severus’ spicy, masculine scent.
Severus’ strong arms encircled him and pulled him close.
Harry could not believe Hermione was dead. Hermione was gone and the world was at war. He would dearly miss her counsel going forward.
“I don’t know what to do now,” Harry admitted quietly.
“Now,” Severus deep voice rumbled in his chest, “we go home, hold our children, and pray.”
Harry huffed a humorless laugh. Pray. Neither of them were very religious.
It did seem like the way to go, though. He had no better plans.
As they turned to leave, Harry spotted another shock of red hair half behind a tree, as though he wasn’t sure he was welcome. The rest of the Weasleys had turned up. Harry was kind of glad Ron hadn’t totally skipped the funeral, even if he and Hermione hadn’t talked in years.
He tried to catch the red-head’s eyes as they passed, but Ron kept his gaze averted.
With a sad sigh, Harry held more tightly to Severus and let his husband apparate them home. They didn’t need to find privacy to do that anymore.
When Ron turned up with the prefect badge, Harry couldn’t help but feel a little hard-done by. He hadn’t really thought about it at all to be honest, but if he had, he’d have thought he had a good chance at it. Or maybe Dean. Neville was definitely too timid to be a prefect and Seamus had figured out that water to wine spell last year... Between Harry and Ron though, Harry would have definitely thought he had a much better chance. Harry never quite knew what to do with the first years, but he never bullied them. Ron wasn’t terrible about it, but he liked to shove them about and tell them little lies to scare them or call them demeaning nicknames, usually referencing their size. It’s probably just that he liked being bigger than someone after being the youngest boy in his family, but, objectively, it was bullying. Harry had been bullied enough in his pre-Hogwarts life to know.
It didn’t take Harry too long to brush aside those thoughts though. After the previous night’s dream… Hermione’s funeral. Ron’s estrangement… Harry was studiously not thinking anything to do with Snape in there, but the rest… He knew it was only a dream, however strange of one, but it still made him feel so grateful to have his friends alive and well and getting along. He didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that, like being childishly jealous.
Remembering that dream made it easier to enjoy the party despite all the Order members either talking shop in voices not quite low enough to remain private, or Kingsley and Mr. Weasley discussing why Dumbledore would pick Ron over Harry.
Still, after Moody showed him the picture of all the Order members from the last war, and explained how most of them had died horrific deaths before turning twenty-five, Harry decided to turn in early.
On his way up to bed, he found Mrs. Weasley trapped by a boggart that kept switching between all of her family’s dead bodies each time she tried and failed to cast riddikulus. Harry stayed in the corridor, watching in numb horror as his own dead body appeared. It was horrifying even as it was heartening to know that he ranked so obviously among her loved ones.
Luckily, it wasn’t long before more Order members showed up and Lupin got rid of the boggart and comforted Mrs. Weasley. Harry went to bed with the image of his dead friends dancing in his mind, the memory of his dreams haunting him. Fred and Hermione had both died in his dreams, and Snape had apparently murdered Dumbledore on the man's own order?
Who would Harry lose before this was all over?
On the train, Harry watched Ron and Hermione head off to the prefect cabin without him and he firmly reminded himself of how lucky he was to have them, something he’d taken to doing whenever he felt jealous or left out for not being a prefect.
With a sigh set out on his own. Happily quickly met up with Neville and Ginny and found a compartment. Wandering around alone trying to find someone to sit with hadn’t sounded fun.
They stepped into the cabin and Harry stopped cold at the sight of the cabin’s sole occupant.
Luna. Ginny called her Luna.
She’d been in Harry’s dream. An older version of her. Ginny had been crying all over her and Harry remembered thinking of her as Luna. A close friend.
What the hell?
They're just dreams.
Neville bumped into his back and Harry forced himself to move into the compartment, trying not to stare at the strange girl who was wearing a necklace made of butterbeer caps. She’d been wearing something very similar in the dream. He must have seen her around Hogwarts, he assured himself as he awkwardly responded to her announcing his name to him like he might not know it.
He inwardly sighed with relief at this explanation. Of course, they’d been going to Hogwarts together for years. He’d seen her around the school, even if he hadn’t paid it attention at the time. But her name and everything had been in his mind, so his subconscious must have just pulled it up to use.
That was all.
He relaxed and tried to put it from his mind for the rest of the trip.
Harry’s first day at Hogwarts wasn’t great. Finding out the Daily Prophet had been calling him a deranged liar all summer had not been great, but finding out how much of the school believed it, despite having actually met him, was more than just sobering. He’d always known that most of them would turn on him given any incentive, but it was the Daily Prophet. It printed lies every single day. How did people not begin to cotton on?
Cho going out of her way to have meaningless little chats with him, twice already by the second day, was heartening. It was good to know that at least she didn’t judge him, even though he wasn’t quite sure that he was that interested in her anymore. Romantically. She was pretty and all, but… Well, he really didn’t want to give credence to his dreams, but it was just hard to credit the faint interest in felt in her when weighed against what he’d felt in his dreams, and not just the sex dream. Even the dream Snape hadn’t been in, the way he’d felt when they talked about him had been a million times anything he’d ever felt for anyone. He wanted to feel that in real life.
“Settle down,” the smooth drawl sent a shiver down Harry’s spine before he could stop it and he immediately chastised himself for even thinking of that stupid dream.
“Before we begin today’s lesson,” Snape began as she swept over to his desk to have a proper vantage point to stare them all down, “I think it appropriate to remind you that next June you will be sitting an important examination, during which you will prove how much you have learned about the composition and use of magical potions. Moronic though some of this class undoubtedly are, I expect you to scrape an Acceptable in your OWL or suffer my… displeasure.”
Harry wetted his lips uncomfortably as he tried to avoid focusing on the potions professor because what the fuck? They were just dreams, yet somehow looking at the greasy git didn’t fill him with the normal hateful loathing. Rather, he couldn’t help but notice that he was rather attractive, if one looked past the greasy hair and crooked nose.
“After this year, many of you will cease studying with me,” Snape was going on, and Harry made the mistake of looking at the man again, only to find him looking directly back. No doubt he was trying to illustrate how he expected Harry to fail, but having those dark eyes focused on him was doing something other than angering him for once. Harry forced his eyes away and let out a covert breath when the man continued talking.
He really needed to get a handle on this because feeling attraction rather than loathing when confronted with Snape was just wrong.
Harry spent the rest of the lesson focusing his complete attention upon his potion in order to prevent himself from thinking of anything else. The result was, shockingly, a passable Draught of Peace. Perhaps it was his focus and perhaps it was that the finicky potion had the Slytherins focusing on their own potions instead of ruining his for once. Likely the two facts worked together, but the result was that his potion was nearly as good as Hermione’s. The only one more shocked than Harry was probably Snape.
On his circuit around the room, Snape barely glanced at Hermione’s potion, as was his usual method, lest he be forced to admit she’d done well. Then he came to stop at Harry’s cauldron and peered into it, no doubt gearing up to explain exactly how stupid he was. He went very still as he observed the shimmering silver vapor drifting over the surface. After a moment, he looked up at Harry suspiciously, as though he might be able to detect the guilt that meant Harry had cheated. After a moment, he just silently sneered before moving away to be even harsher than normal to the rest of the Gryffindors.
Harry let out a quiet breath and looked at his own potion, impressed despite himself. A glance at Hermione showed her looking just as surprised and impressed. He could only shrug in response.
In divination, they were going to start divining the future by interpreting their dreams.
He wasn’t sure his dreams needed to be interpreted. They were just plain telling him the future in detailed scenes.
Merlin, he wished he’d taken any class besides divination. Even the huge amounts of required reading and long essays Hermione talked about for Arithmancy and Ancient Runes would be better than this.
Needless to say, when it was time to pair up and discuss their dreams, Harry was not the slightest bit willing to talk about his dreams. The ones that weren’t strange and impossible future dreams tended to be nightmares about graveyards or Cedric’s death or his friends getting killed.
Before the class ended, Trelawney set them homework of keeping a dream diary for a month. Harry supposed he’d be practicing his creative writing this year because he was not telling her or anyone else about his dreams.
That thought was firmly reinforced by that night’s dream.
Harry couldn’t help but let out a startled laugh when the older man abruptly rolled them so that Harry was on top of him. “What are you doing?” he demanded between kisses.
“I thought I’d lie back and think of England while you did all the work,” Severus smirked at him.
Harry pulled back to give him a speaking look. “Okay, one, if I’m doing all the work, you’d damn well better not be thinking about England.”
Severus laughed helplessly at him.
“Two,” Harry continued with a grin, “Since when are you lazy in bed?”
“Ah, I suppose you must be rubbing off on me, Mr. Potter,” he said archly.
“Rubbing, am I?” Harry grinned, suiting words to action and sliding their naked pelvises together, eliciting a moan from both of them. “Well, if you insist…”
Once, Harry had been foolish enough to think he’d get used to this with time. That it would still be enjoyable, but not so all-encompassing. He had, of course, been horribly wrong. He would never get enough of Severus in every single manner he was allowed to have him. “Merlin, I love you,” was out of his mouth before he quite realized he was speaking aloud.
They both stilled in the aftermath of that confession and Harry squinted cautiously at the older man’s face, wondering if he was about to be forcibly expelled from the bed, the house, and Severus’ life. Not that he didn’t think the man loved him, too. He certainly acted like it. Severus just wasn’t much into verbalizing feelings.
Severus did look rather startled, but Harry felt the man’s cock jump beneath him, so he couldn’t be entirely displeased. Then his dark eyes softened and he ran a hand through Harry’s hair before trailing it gently down the side of his face. “I suppose it must be, hadn’t it?” was his reply.
Harry swallowed back the obscene urge to cry as he processed the meaning of that and then he leaned back down to capture those delectable lips for a searing kiss.
Their coupling this time was as passionate as ever, and Severus did end up on top despite his earlier profession of laziness.
In the aftermath, they lay in a heap of sated limbs as Severus repeatedly carded his hand through Harry’s hair. “I do love you, Harry,” he said softly and Harry damn near melted in the man’s arms.
Harry’s first detention with Umbridge passed in a blur of rage and pain. She was torturing him for detention. There was no way that was allowed. Filch was always bemoaning how he couldn’t do it anymore, so it must not be allowed. Surely Snape would have made him do something horribly painful if he could have with how much that man hated him.
Still, he couldn’t refuse to do the punishment. He spent the entire time fantasizing about the look on McGonagall’s face when he told her. And the hopefully swift sacking of Umbridge to follow. If he’d been a little more confident that it would work, he would have stormed out of the detention to do it, but with the way everyone was treating him this year… With the way Dumbledore wouldn’t even look at him.
By the time he left her office it was after midnight. The most absurdly long detention of his life and that was discounting what she had him doing.
Come morning, he didn’t bother waiting for Ron and Hermione. He got ready and headed straight for McGonagall’s office. It was a lucky thing he went so early because she was just on her way out, opening the door before he could knock.
“Mr. Potter?” she asked in surprise.
“I need to talk to you,” Harry said uncomfortably.
She lifted an eyebrow at him, but obligingly returned to her office.
Harry followed her in and closed the door behind him, taking a breath and trying to figure out how to say it.
“Well, Mr. Potter?” she asked rather impatiently.
“It’s about Umbridge,” Harry began uncertainly.
And McGonagall frowned at him like it was all his fault. “Yes, I heard. A week of detentions. Honestly, Mr. Potter, you cannot let her provoke you.”
“I’m trying,” Harry said through gritted teeth, “but she’s obviously out to get me-”
“Enough,” McGonagall said tiredly. “I am well aware that the Ministry is not a fan of yours at the moment, Mr. Potter. That’s why it’s so important that you keep your head down.”
Harry flinched, taken aback by her manner. “Okay, and I’ll try, but her detentions-”
“There’s nothing I can do about that, Mr. Potter. She is a teacher in this school. It is within her rights to give you as many detentions as she sees fit.”
“Well, sure, but that wasn’t-”
“Potter, she has the backing of Minister Fudge. There’s nothing I can do. There’s nothing the headmaster can do. You need to avoid her.”
Harry stared at her, feeling his hopes shrivel up and die. She wouldn’t help him. Dumbledore wouldn’t help him. He was alone. As fucking always.
“Right,” he said blankly and let himself out of the office, ignoring her attempt to call him back and then the call of five points from Gryffindor. Who even cared anymore? They worked so hard to keep him in the dark, preventing him from adequately taking care of himself. And then they refused to help when he actually tried to go to an adult.
He blinked away the sting of tears and stormed off to the Great Hall, bound and determined to never go to an adult for help again because it was obviously pointless.
A cacophony of noise surrounded him. Moans and weeping and crying for help intermixed with healers speaking above it as they did their best to help people and the angry interjections of the patients’ loved ones trying to get more help or faster help for those injured. Harry stood amidst the madness that had spilled out onto the street in front of St. Mungo’s doing what he could. He was an accomplished battlefield medic, but not much more. Still, it was more than these people knew.
While the healers did what they could, Harry moved among those not yet seen to, casting the spell he’d recently learned to clean people and objects of dangerous levels of radiation. “This lot came from France?” Harry asked of one of the medi-witches measuring potions doses nearby.
“Yeah,” she sighed angrily. “East fucking China just hit them again. St. Batholmew’s was destroyed. The remaining clinics can’t handle all the radiation cases, so they’re shipping them everywhere that’ll take them.” She glanced nervously at the sky. “Just hope East China doesn’t get a bead on us, too.”
Harry shook his head quickly as he moved on to the next patient, “No, we’ve upgraded the warding almost once a week since they started. They’re holding just fine.”
“Thank Merlin for you, Potter,” the mediwitch sighed in relief before moving away to begin doling out doses of the potions Harry knew that Severus was inside brewing in bulk right now.
Harry didn’t bother explaining to the mediwitch that there were dozens of people working on the wards, improving and strengthening them all the time. Harry was just adding some muscle to them and hardly deserved that much credit. He’d learned over the years that people wanted to be able to put all their faith in him. They wanted to believe he was Merlin’s second coming. And in these dangerous times, maybe they deserved an icon, even if Harry did have to endure being the face of it.
“Voldemort had it right,” the middle-aged man Harry was working on professed. “And Grindelwald, too. Should have wiped out the fucking muggles decades ago.”
Harry sighed tiredly and just nodded. “Yeah. I know.”
Harry woke with an almighty gasp, lurching up in bed and scrambling out of his covers like they were restraining hands. His chest heaved and it took him a long moment to orient himself. That dream had been the same as the others, and yet so much worse. That hadn’t just been a battle or ministry corruption. He’d been thinking of global war, something called East China was dropping nuclear weapons on any concentration of magicals they could find, regardless of the collateral damage.
Harry wrapped his arms around his knees and buried his face in them, trying to keep his sobbing as quiet as possible. He just wanted these dreams to stop.