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White orchid (turned blue) - chapter 3
Feb. 6th, 2020 12:18 amHis brain took a minute to register the state of his living room - the toppled armchairs, the broken cabinet, glass fragments on the floor and potions spilled, books scattered around and the shelves brought down.
Fear constricted his chest - they had been found, Harry was in danger, he had been taken, Death Eaters, they… they must have found a way to break into Hogwarts and he was not there, he was away concocting a stupid potion, while Harry was -
And then Harry emerged from behind an armchair, where he had crouched to retrieve a book.
It had been a few seconds before he figured out he was perfectly fine, that he was cleaning up the mess, that there wasn’t any danger, but to Snape, it felt like a year.
“Potter!” Snape dashed across the room to reach him without even bothering about stepping on broken furniture. “Are you hurt? What happened here?”
Are you hurt?
Well, Harry didn’t expect this. Not exactly. He had thought Snape would be furious, enraged about what Harry had done to his - their - chambers. Instead, his first reaction was… worry.
What if I care?
‘Just how much of this is him and how much is the Alpha?’ Harry wondered.
Never. You know I’ve never hated him.
It didn’t matter. Maybe.
What if I care?
“What happened here?” Snape asked again, bothered by the lack of reaction.
“I think I had an Omega outburst,” Harry finally replied, deadpan and averting his gaze. His eyes were hollow and the collar around his neck had changed into a deep blue.
“What triggered it?” Snape didn’t leave him be, gripping his shoulder as to make sure he was really there and safe.
“Uhm?”
“What triggered it? Omegas outburst are hormonal or emotional and I scented you this morning - it couldn’t be -”
It couldn’t be he was too preoccupied with restraining himself from touching the boy he didn’t put enough attention in the scenting. It couldn’t. Could it?
“Tell me what happened, Har - Potter.”
The Alpha inflection in his voice was involuntary - just a mere reflex of the urgency to know what menace, physical or mental, was bothering his Omega - but it should have worked nonetheless.
Instead, Harry recoiled. “Tell me, Potter. Train more, Potter. Be quiet, Potter” he mocked him. “For someone who says he doesn’t want to be my master, you give a lot of orders.”
Oh, so it was the emotional kind of outburst; Potter had finally caught up with all that was happening to him. Snape let out a breath, his heart slowing down as the adrenaline in his blood decreased. Not that he had any idea how to emotionally handle his student in a situation like this, but he had had to deal with teenagers for fifteen years of his life, after all, he could do it.
“I’m not your master,” Snape tried to reason with him, “but I still am your Professor, I still retain an authoritative - ”
“No, you’re not! I’m no longer a student here. I am your Omega” Harry spat the word at his feet, throwing the whole concept in the mud where it belonged. “I am your slave, am I not?”
“We have already discussed this, Potter” Snape countered dryly, trying to dampen the anger he felt rising in his chest. “Don’t play games with me, you know you’re not a slave - ”
“Don’t insult me.” Harry gripped the front of his robes, bringing him down to his eye-level “I can’t leave this rooms, I can’t see my friends, I can’t attend this school, I can own a wand only because you’re so kind to allow me to and I can write to my friends only after you’ve checked my letters and censored them, least I reveal something important. But I don’t know anything really important, now, do I? I’m just a pawn, moved where you and Dumbledore think it’s better. And right now I have just been dumped here with you. And you… you…”
“I what, Potter?” Snape asked glacial, putting a hand on his fists still tightening his clothes, as to force him to let go. He had allowed this to go on long enough, the boy needed to calm down, least he had another outburst.
“You! You hate me or you don’t hate me… hell if I know. Hell if I care! I don’t GIVE A FUCK IF YOU CARE!” And then the turmoil inside him took over; the need to crush and destroy was there again, along with his magic, confusion, and lust mixed with grief and hate for what Snape had taken away from him - his parents life, the truth and the right to know it, the right to decide to hate him and the right to decide to forgive him -, dried tears and frustration - the desire built during that month of scenting without getting enough, never enough, without being entitled to want more because it was not “right” even if his body was screaming it was and his mind was recoiling in disgust because surely it wasn’t, not with Snape, but then why it felt so? -
Harry hadn’t planned to kiss him.
He pulled him down, crushing their lips together and forcing his way into his mouth as the professor gasped surprised, sliding his tongue against his.
Snape kissed back, for the reaction had been immediate and intoxicating; his body, already on alert for the adrenaline of the fighting, had responded by producing pheromones, numbing his mind to the point it didn’t matter if what he was doing was unethical.
This was the way to placate his Omega, said his feral instincts. This was how to solve everything.
Except it wasn’t.
Snape had sworn to not touch the boy, to not use him, as the O.C.A. had intended. Harry felt like a slave and doing this would only aggravate the feeling.
It took all his willpower to pull away.
“Potter,” he moaned, and no, this wasn’t the effect he had wanted, for Harry just whimpered and started licking his neck. “Potter, no, this… this is inappropriate. We can’t do this.”
Snape was trying to retreat again, to hold on to something already lost, the idea that everything could go back to normal, and Harry wouldn’t let him.
Nothing could ever be normal again. Why bother in keeping up appearances? Just to trick themselves into thinking they were still the same people they were before Harry’s presentation? They weren’t.
“Yes, we can,” Harry growled against his neck. “Fuck appropriateness! You owe me.”
“I owe you nothing” Snape snarled, trying to push him away, but Harry was immovable.
“You owe me this”, he pressed, “You own me.”
And oh, god, if that didn’t resonate with the inner Alpha inside of him. He almost growled in response.
But it wasn’t true, was it?
He may have technically owned him, but he hadn’t marked him, and he never would, because Harry would never want to be his - the Omega, maybe, but the boy, never. Potter despised him, hormones could change that perception only momentarily, but when the hormonal peak would recede, Harry would hate him even more for allowing himself to have stopped despising him.
And Snape suddenly realized he didn’t want Harry to hate him more than he already did.
He held no hope he could hate him less - damn, before this moment, he had never wanted him to hate him less, every action he had ever made in the boy’s regard, even saving his life, had projected an edge of sarcasm and loathing that Harry had mirrored perfectly, just as Snape wanted, enough for the boy to never look at him as a parental figure. To never look at him as a friendly face.
Snape had had to keep the distance to protect him. And to protect himself.
Because what else could he tell the boy that wouldn’t hurt them both? “Look, child, I was the one who killed your parents, but hey, let me make it up to you by telling you about that time when your father bullied me.” No. No, it was better to refuse to recognize him as an independent being, projecting on him his father (or his mother on some occasion), as if he could just be their exact copy. It was better for the boy to hate him and despise him and never…
… never kiss him like he was doing right now.
To his dismay, Severus realized his hands had clawed the boy’s hips, holding him still against his chest, their groins grinding against each other. He could sense Harry’s erection against his tight and he could feel himself getting harder as the boy kept jerking in his clutch.
He tried to pull away again, but Harry was gripping his hair with a hand to keep him close, as if he didn’t want to risk any distance developing between their faces, closer, as if willing to break the principle of the impenetrability of matter, making them one. He wasn’t letting him run away and Snape was losing the will to.
“Ah, I - I need more,” Harry whimpered against his mouth, trying to disrobe him with only one hand, even if the buttons of his collar put up some resistance.
Severus didn’t even try to stop him, he just looked at him, taking in every detail - the frown on his forehead as he concentrated, the trail of saliva glistening in the corner of his swollen lips… then Harry looked up to him from under his lashes and Snape could see his green eyes, lust pooled in them, pupils dilated and irises darkened - darker than Lily’s had ever been, so different he could no longer pretend he was looking at them because of her.
Harry licked his lips and Snape growled in response, kissing him, ravenous, as he grazed his teeth against the boy’s lips, nibbling them.
He pushed him, not away, but blindly driving him through the room, trying to avoiding the mess, searching for the bedroom door and settling instead when he found a wall to shove him up against.
Harry clung to him, gasping as his back hit the wall, a surge of hormones sending shivers down his spine. He should have been scared, at least, being trapped like that, instead, his mind couldn’t stop thinking anything else but “finally!”
Snape’s hand went up from his hips to his waist, sliding under the fabric of his shirt, now untucked, and yes, that was so much cleverer and faster than fighting with all those buttons. Harry pulled at his professor’s robes, so close to just ripping them off and be done with it, but melted when Snape reached with his hands over his trousers rim and gripped his ass. Snape thrust his hips against him, needing more friction, needing more, needing to take him. He could feel the texture of his saliva changing, sweetening and thickening, as his teeth were slightly elongating.
‘Not yet’, he thought, ‘I need to be inside him first’.
And then, maybe it was the last vestiges of his intellect screaming, maybe it was just a fortuitous combination of attenuated hormones, Snape regained a shred of lucidity.
He snapped out of it; horror coiled in the pit of his stomach as the realization hit him. He had been so close to marking him.
He took a step back, breathing raggedly, physically holding Harry at arm’s length.
“What?” Harry asked confused, but Snape didn’t reply, lost in his thoughts.
‘Fuck! When I think I can’t sink any lower I keep proving myself I can,’ he thought, ‘Look at me, rutting against my owned fifteen years old ex-student Omega slave, ready to mark him.’
Reaching for his magical core, Snape looked him in his eyes and did what he felt the need to do from the moment he entered his rooms just to find them wrecked with Harry standing amidst the chaos.
“Legilimens!”
The world stilled and froze.
At first, Snape couldn’t go in, Harry’s mind was too numbed by the pinkish sweaty fog of pleasure and lust. Not unexpected, but at least a good sign that whatever Snape had been ready to do - bite him, mark him, bound them together for life - hadn’t had a great impact on the boy, if he ever noticed at all.
After a moment, though, the fog thinned out and he could reach Harry’s memory.
It was some weird head-aching mirror trick, looking Harry looking at him. But somehow it made all much clearer about what had happened in that room.
Harry had been in his Pensive, he had seen it all, every single memory he had wanted to keep for himself, every single secret he had so carefully guarded, every damn moment of shame and every proof of his guilt, of his role on his life and more, everything Dumbledore had ever told him about the boy, information that could cost them the war.
“Why did you do it?” Harry asked so thrown off he couldn’t even feel anger yet, just shock.
But Snape was still trying to turn his mind around the implication of what had happened, what that could mean, how everything could have been screwed up. He had been stupid to leave the Pensive in his room, warded, yes, but more out of habit than true concern because he - he had trusted the boy to not look and he… he had looked.
“How dare you?” Snape spat, “You - you - YOU LOOKED!”
“I did.”
“Out.”
“What?”
“I said ‘out’, get out! Get OUT!”
“Where? In the middle of the corridor? In the Slytherin dungeons? So that everyone would see who is my Alpha?”
“I - You -” Snape looked like he was about to have a seizure.
Distancing himself from that damn wall, the professor paced the room trying to clear his mind. He couldn’t think with his nostrils still full of Omega’s scent.
Harry leaned against the wall. “You should have told me.”
“You shouldn’t have pried!” Snape snapped, “It was none of you damn business!”
“Yes, it was! It IS! There’s a fucking prophecy on my life. It is my damn business!”
“Not everything is about you, Potter! There were things you were not supposed to see! You know nothing about -”
“Yes, I know nothing! I never know anything, because no one ever tells me things so I have to figure them out as I go and I make a mess everything, and I get people killed! If I had known about my connection with Voldemort maybe Cedric would still be alive!”
Survivor’s guilt. How fitting.
“That’s unlikely.” Snape should have told him it wasn’t his fault, but Harry wouldn’t have believed him. Besides, it would be pretty hypocritical of him to try to sell to the boy the same things he deemed as crap when he was on the receiving end. “And sometimes ignorance is bliss.”
“But knowledge is power.”
“And what did you do to obtain it?” Snape gestured the destructed room, “Debris is what is left in the search of power. Or do you really think I wanted your mother to die when I reported that prophecy?”
Snape closed his eyes and looked away.
“You feel guilty,” Harry realized. “You don’t hate me, you hate how I make you feel.”
“Every time I look at you… You have her damn eyes and I killed her. I was stupid and I didn’t reflect on what it would mean to tell him that fucking prophecy. As you haven’t reflected on what it would mean for us all if the Dark Lord were to gain knowledge of what we know through your mind.”
“It’s hard to reflect when you don’t know the shit you’re supposed to reflect about!”
“Oh, please, Potter, spare me, if you want to self-pity do it in your own room.”
“I wasn’t self-pitying!”
“Good. Because self-pity would hardly help us.”
And yes, Snape was right, his remark had been childish and not helpful at all. Besides, he had known he was wrong in violating his privacy.
“Then what do we do, now?” he asked, instead of keep arguing.
Snape looked lost for just a second but it was enough for Harry’s heart to clench as he recognized the ‘I don’t know’ in his features - and that scared him most than any prophecy.
Because if Snape had that face, maybe he had screwed up really bad.
Snape absent-mindedly passed his thumb over his lips as he pondered. Then he turned and took a handful of Floo Powder, throwing it in the fire pit, before putting his head in the green flames.
Harry couldn’t discern what he was saying, but he could hear him talking with someone. The conversation went on for a few moments, and when Snape got out his face was unreadable.
“I’m not sure I could be your Alpha anymore.”
Then Snape grabbed his arm and threw him in the flames.
When he stumbled out at Dumbledore’s feet, the flames had changed back from green to red, closing the passage.
