Sinope's Fiction: Folly

Title: Folly
Author: Sinope at (no spam!) gmail dot com
Rating: R
Pairing: Snape/Harry
Warning: Underage sexuality.
Summary: Professor Snape's mouth always tastes of firewhisky when he kisses Harry.
Author's notes: Many thanks to Anjali and Elise, my lovely betas.
Disclaimer: This is an unofficial fan work. No profit was made; no ownership is implied.

Harry Potter has never drunk firewhisky; he's only seventeen, and Hermione always gives Ron That Look when he suggests sneaking some at the Hog's Head. Harry knows the taste of firewhisky, though. He's felt its sourish slap of heat enough times to recognize it from the faintest hint, because Professor Snape's mouth always tastes of firewhisky when he kisses Harry.

When Harry and Snape kiss, Harry thinks of claustrophobia: Snape always removes Harry's glasses first ("take those things off, you awkward brat"), so there's nothing between him and the nose that presses sticky-damp against his cheek and the heavy, curling lips that choke his breath with biting alcohol. Snape never reeks of it - Dumbledore would hardly allow an alcoholic on staff, Harry tells himself - but the vapours linger sharp on his tongue, as if the last thing that Snape did before stalking down the passage to the Shrieking Shack was gulp down a dram, neat. As if the firewhisky was a match, and the long fuse of self-control explodes when Snape slams Harry against the wall, and the suffocating burn of Snape's lips tastes like lingering sulfur in the air.

Snape's hands, so firmly efficient in class (for Harry watches them thirstily), turn impatient and clumsy at night, and Harry would blame the alcohol but for Snape's glittering eyes when Harry flinches. Harry had always thought that Snape's hands would feel controlled and cold, but they don't; they're sweaty and trembling, bruising Harry with their impatience. In the midst of his quivering gasps, Harry never stops to complain, for time is short. Snape always leaves after exactly an hour, and never a minute later.

(Harry used to wonder why, until he overheard Hermione mention that one alcoholic drink takes one hour to leave the body. He assumes now that Snape has read this same statistic.)

If this past month's foolishness has taught Harry one thing, it's punctuality. Snape leaves after an hour whether or not Harry arrives late, so Harry makes sure to arrive early, and the flicker of Snape's rising eyebrows - most likely surprise rather than respect, but Harry can dream - makes it well worth the effort. While he waits cross-legged on the bed upstairs, Harry has plenty of time to think. The awkward questions (how did I go from having a stupid crush to shagging a teacher twice my age?) only spill over into second-guessing while he's with Snape, so instead he thinks about Snape, makes up fairy-tales that he can tell back to himself in bed at night.

He takes me to the Shrieking Shack because I remind him of my father - that's why he was following him in the Pensieve memory - and he drinks first because he wants to forget that it's me -

No, he pulls off my glasses so I don't look like my father, he wants me, just me, why else would he smother me and consume me so greedily -

When I graduate, then he'll stop feeling guilty; that's why he drinks, why he comes here, so far away from Hogwarts. When I graduate, he'll have to admit I'm a man, and then -

Harry craves happy endings these days, so the stories he tells himself about Snape always finish with happy endings. He makes them up even when they're not true, but he has to be careful, lest he actually start to believe them, like he did the day he kissed Snape after class.

For one crystalline moment he tasted Snape, without his firewhisky mask, a strange multi-layered elixer of Earl Gray and ashes. Then Harry fell tumbling back into the first row of desks, wincing from the force of Snape's arms against his chest and wincing again at the steeliness beyond rage in Snape's voice.

"Do not touch me again in such an imprudent manner, child."

"Nobody else is around - it's safe," Harry glared back.

Snape's voice contracted even tighter. "I do not wish to see you like this, not here. You will abide by the terms of our agreement or I will terminate it. Do you understand?"

"No, I don't understand," Harry said sharply. "I wanted to know what you taste like when you're not smelling of cheap liquor."

"Then you are even more foolish than I feared, to think that I would ever touch you, my student, while in my own classroom and sober."

"No, professor, I am not stupid, and you're the fool here. I don't care about the rules, and I don't think you do either. You're just trying to lie to yourself and say that you're not responsible when you want this, I know you do."

"What you know of what I want is very little indeed. Dismissed, Mr. Potter." Snape bent back to his parchment, but Harry saw that his quill trembled as he dipped it in the glass inkwell.

Snape came late that night to the Shrieking Shack, and his nails bit into Harry's arms, and he used so little lubricant that Harry was sure it rubbed Snape raw, but none of that mattered, because Harry knew that he had won the argument.

Harry is serving detention one evening in Snape's classroom when Snape leaves to reprimand a pair of duelling Slytherins. Harry can't help himself; the moment the door closes, he goes to Snape's desk to read the parchments on it, the ones that Snape is always writing and scratching out and rewriting, long after his actual grading has been finished.

~~Headmaster, I feel obligated to inform you of a situation that -~~

~~Headmaster, I wish to tender my resignation for personal reasons which have recently -~~

~~I cannot excuse this behavior and I cannot stop it; therefore, -~~

~~I am aware of the trust you have put in me, and of how grossly I have violated that trust -~~

Headmaster, I must ask for your help. I find myself trapped in a cycle that is both inescapable and intolerable, and though I know that you wish for me to remain at Hogwarts, I cannot continue this. Every night I damn myself more hopelessly than I ever did under the Dark Lord. I cannot expect a child to act as my conscience, so I beg you to fulfill that duty and remove me from my position at Hogwarts. If you do not, I can make no promises for -

The dungeon suddenly feels very cold, and Harry's stomach twists in on itself, shuddering. He picks up Snape's quill, dips it into the inkwell, and places it on the parchment. At first he doesn't know what he's going to write, but the words seem to form themselves and pull his shivering fingers behind them.

When he's finished and he compares his words to Snape's elegant, careful flourishes, his own letters look uneven and small. "I love you."

finis.