Work Text:
Harry hasn’t seen it coming in a million years.
When he and Neville round the building he is dead sure that they are running into yet another dead end. That the house will be empty, just like the last time, and that this will be just another wasted night. They enter the house in textbook manner, Neville in the front and Harry watching their backs. They silently creep through the narrow hall, clear the kitchen and living room, and then make their way upstairs. The house is dark and still and Harry’s posture starts to relax as the adrenaline wanes, and just then a booming crackle and the force of a hex throw him off balance, sending him to the floor. And when Harry scrambles back to his feet, when the dust lifts, Harry detects Neville further down, out cold on the dusty carpet, and a Death Eater standing by his feet.
And Harry recognises him at once, because this right here is not just any Death Eater. It is Snape. The man who killed Dumbledore, who tortured students and hexed George’s ear off. The biggest traitor under the sun. Four years have passed since the night on the Astronomy tower, four years since he’s last seen his former Professor, since things have gone down the drain and the world was upended into chaos and anarchy, and yet the rage starts to boil Harry’s blood as if it has just been yesterday.
“You!” Harry screams like a man possessed, lunging forward, throwing hexes in Snape’s direction. Snape parries at first, but quickly resorts to curses and jinxes and Harry gives him a triumphant smirk as he shoots a bodybind curse at him. Because the last time Snape has duelled him, and won, was four years ago and Harry has grown powerful in that time. Has trained and practised and driven himself higher and further each time. He is a machine, steeled for the war, created for his one purpose: to kill Voldemort. And he is angry.
Snape stumbles backwards, swooped off his feet by Harry’s repelling charm, and the next thing Harry knows is his knee digging into Snape’s chest as the man helplessly scrambles for support against the carpet.
“Give up,” Harry pants, stabbing the tip of his wand against the cold silver of Snape’s grotesque Death Eater mask.
How exactly they made it from there to frantically clawing at each other, kisses that are more bites than tender caress, Harry later can’t seem to remember. He does remember taking the mask off of Snape’s face, looking down on him with contempt, with pure hate churning in his guts. Remembers Snape spitting insults at him, his cheeks blotchy red with rage. Remembers grabbing him, pulling him into a sitting position only to slam him against the ugly wallpaper of the Muggle home Snape has been hiding in. And he most definitely remembers the dangerous glint in those black eyes, the cool derision despite Snape’s dire situation, the daring challenge in that gaze as if there wasn’t currently a wand digging into his temple.
But somehow, Harry must've kissed him, and somehow, Snape must’ve grabbed his jacket to pull him closer, and somehow Harry’s wand dropped to the floor so he could fist handfuls of lanky black hair instead. And he was hard, and Snape was hard, and it was all madness, with Neville lying unconscious just an arm’s length away from them. It’s all very blurry in Harry’s head when he tries to replay it in his mind later, but he does remember long fingers on buttons, and interlaced hands and stifled moans, and he does remember that he came first, and that Snape didn’t bother with a cleaning charm afterwards. He remembers musky smell on his fingers and glaring hot shame, and fury when Snape stood up, hand against the wall, and sneered at him. And Harry could only stare after him as the man walked off, down the stairs. Then there was a quiet pop, and after that there was nothing. Only silence and the drumming of Harry’s pulse in his ears. How he made it out of that house, how he managed to close his trousers and lift Neville up, walk down the stairs and apparate back to the ministry, Harry cannot, for the life of him, remember.
Upon regaining consciousness Neville proves clueless who exactly they have encountered and Harry writes a lengthy report about their detection of an unknown Death Eater that has unfortunately managed to flee. It ruins Harry’s arrest streak, but even worse, it ruins what little restful sleep the war has left him with.
The second time it happens, they’re at a dingy muggle pub somewhere in Dublin.
Earlier that day, an owl had delivered a note to Harry. A note that held no more than apparition coordinates and a time, and then incinerated itself as soon as Harry had jotted the information down.
He sits at the bar so he has a good view of both entrance and back door, nursing a butterbeer and feeling thoroughly on edge. It’s been three months since the incident, as he likes to call it in his mind, and he’s not sure what exactly Snape could want from him. Half expects this to be a trap. That any minute a crowd of Death Eaters or Voldemort himself will appear and hex the living daylights out of him. But nothing of the sort happens, instead, as soon as the clock at the wall chimes, the front door opens and Snape steps inside.
Only ten minutes later they’re in the loo, and Harry is propped up on the sink, one heel digging into Snape’s arse as he pulls him closer, and suddenly nothing is close enough. Snape’s mouth is like a wildfire and his breath smells of alcohol, but Harry has never felt more alive. And then Snape’s lips are around his prick and Harry’s mind turns into mush. He comes down Snape’s throat, fingers curled around narrow shoulders, and watches breathlessly as Snape wipes his mouth and stares at him.
“I’m willing to provide information,” he says.
Harry nods, reaching out, kissing, biting, devouring the cruel mouth, one hand pushing against the bulge in Snape’s trousers. “Why?” he asks between ragged breaths. Snape doesn’t reply, instead he grips Harry’s hand and squeezes it around his cock, grunting as he arches into the touch. “Get me off,” he demands, and Harry postpones the question without a second thought.
Snape changes their meeting point each time, and Harry only finds out once a quiet sizzle comes from his pocket, announcing the appearance of a message on the charmed paper he’d been given at the end of their first meeting.
Every few weeks, they meet up in some pub, and on one occasion a dubious Chinese restaurant. Sometimes they eat and talk first, Snape providing Harry with bits of insight on The Dark’s operations, which more than once lowers the number of casualties during confrontations. Both sides are struggling, after years of war raging on, wreaking havoc on their numbers and morale, and Snape seems just as tired of it as Harry. Each time, no matter if they talk first or not, they end up in a restroom eventually, or a back alley, sometimes a shabby motel room. And each time, as soon as the door closes behind them, they tear at each other like madmen, hands and mouths and tongues and teeth until it all turns into groans and moans and slick sounds between frantic motions.
Once they’re done, once their burning, illogical desire for each other has been sated, Snape will talk. He tells Harry things he’d rather not hear, like a confessor seeking relief and forgiving, but Harry has none of those on offer. So he will simply listen when Snape says things like “I murdered Scrimgeour,” and “They killed two muggle children with the poison I brewed.” When he tells Harry that he used to know his mum, that he loved Lily until the day she died. That he hated James Potter like no other man in the world, and that he wishes he could see him now, fucking his son. Harry simply listens, raking his fingertips across the sallow skin of Snape’s back, and doesn’t speak. He thinks of the day he will have to go and kill Voldemort, and how strange it is that he’s more scared of what will come after than of the actual task.
“I will not survive,” Snape tells him.
“I know,” Harry says. “I know.”
The day comes only three weeks later. The paper in his pocket sizzles and Harry reads the spidery handwriting with an odd calm. He sends a confirmation back and sets things in motion. Calls Kingsley and Remus, and visits his parents’ grave one last time, hidden away under his Invisibility Cloak while Ron squeezes his hand. He pays Hermione a visit in the Janus Thickey ward, but she lies just as still and motionless as ever and Harry can’t bear to stay more than five minutes. He gives Kreacher minute instructions, just in case, and even finds the time to shower. Only briefly he thinks of Snape, while the hot water pelts down his back. About that strange, irritating man that is nothing like Harry has thought he’d be. Wonders how it must feel to live a life in which not a single soul actually knows who he is. He feels no pity for Snape. That saying about making the bed and lying in it comes to his mind, and Harry thinks it might be true. And why should he mourn, fight the inevitable, when Snape himself seems to accept it readily? He could’ve fled or changed sides at any point, but Snape has always been full of mysteries and obscure decisions. Perhaps it simply isn’t for Harry to understand, to judge.
He is still calm when they attack Riddle Manor. Neville by his side, Harry storms up the steps, flinging curses left and right, dodging and sidestepping like he has been born for it. And he was, after all. This is his purpose, what he’s made for, and tonight he will finally fulfil his destiny.
The battle, once he makes it to the top floor, is fierce, dust and fire and fractured bones, blood down his face and seeping into Voldemort’s robes. More and more people appear, and fall, and Harry is distinctly aware how much quieter than expected it all is. Death, after all, is silent, he realises. He stumbles over bodies, trips over severed limbs and blood-splattered robes, and only stops once Voldemort’s ashy face freezes, once the snake-like eyes go wide and then roll back, once his form collapses to the ground, nothing more than one of the dead bodies that tint the floor red.
Afterwards, while reinforcements arrest the Death Eaters that haven’t died or fled the moment their master fell, Harry can’t pause, can’t sit down and celebrate, until he’s scoured the premises up and down. Until he steps into what used to be a library, and turns every single corpse over. Until he walks over to the window and pulls Dawlish’s lifeless body from another. Until he finds Snape.
He must’ve gotten a clean Avada, for there is not a trace of blood on him. His hair is tangled on the floor, the vile mouth soft and silent, his face peaceful. Harry bends down and kisses his cold lips, and hopes that Snape has finally found his peace.
At the funeral it’s only him and Pansy. She sobs quietly, nothing like the gut-crawling weeping that had shook her during Draco’s funeral. “He wasn’t the monster everyone thought him to be,” she says.
“I know,” Harry says. Then he reaches out and takes her hand in his. “I know.”
Once a year, Harry comes to Cokeworth. He will stand by the gravestone under which Snape is buried alongside his parents, and smile to himself.
Because while no one ever got to hear about what Snape has done, that it was him who ultimately tipped the Aurors off, Harry knows. He doesn’t claim to have truly known Snape, but he’s fairly sure that he at least knew him better than most people. That he at least got to see something from Snape that the man trusted no one else with.
He will think of all the horrible confessions Snape made, during his afterglow, sweaty and sticky and sated, and how crooked his teeth were and how long his fingers. How he used to detect glimpses of a real human being beneath the harsh, abrasive facade. The fire within that cold man, flames and passion and greed, and hungry teeth in Harry’s throat.
Once a year, Harry will stand by Snape’s grave and smile to himself, and when he leaves he kisses his fingertips before pressing them to the tombstone, and whispers “I forgive you.”