Fic Post: Original Sin, Part 2
Original Sin, Part 2
"Do you think it's weird that we haven't seen any animals?" Potter asked, as if the conversational void needed filling. "No chipmunks or birds. Not even any lacewings or bees."
To keep Potter from reciting the entire catalog of entomology, Snape said, "Animals have no souls."
The scrambled down a hillock, following the course of the meandering stream as it widened deeper into the forest before Potter replied. "Is that what you think we are? Souls?"
The stream dipped again before starting to rise again. Ahead, Snape could hear the sound of water rushing. "I died. You, well, I don't know what happened to you, but somehow your soul ended up here."
Potter laughed. "With yours. I gave it all up for you," he said, ducking under a low-hanging branch as they climbed up the mossy hill.
"Idiot," Snape muttered.
"You're welcome." Snape was about to berate him anew for this foolishness when Potter's softly murmured, "Wow," stopped him. Scrambling up the rise he stood beside Potter on the top. The stream had widened into a pool, with water so clear they could see the glistening sandy depths. Along one side of the pool, trees grew right up to the edge, branches dipping into the pool like grazing gazelles. Across from their vantage point was the source of the water sound, a fall of water just tall enough that they couldn't see what lay above it. A narrow beach crested away from the falls.
"I'm going in," said Potter just as his shirt hit the grass at Snape's feet.
"In? In where?" Snape sputtered. Potter, in the process of divesting his jeans, merely pointed toward the crystal pool. "Have some decency," Snape managed, as the trousers slid down the boy's legs.
"But it's just my soul," Potter said with a laugh, striding down the rise toward the clear water. Snape got a glimpse of a lean back and pale arse before Potter was splashing into the water.
"Are you daft?" Snape sputtered when Potter's head surfaced. He tried hard not to be aware that the water was clear enough to see Potter's nakedness quite plainly.
"What? Not shy are you?" Potter said, his grin making him look more like the student Snape had known in school and less like the careworn young man who had joined him here. He flung the hair away from his face, sending drops skittering behind him on the nearly smooth surface of the pool.
"Sensible," Snape retorted, slipping down the rise to get a more distorted view of Potter's cavorting since he could see quite perfectly from the top of the hill.
"Fish don't have souls, remember?" Potter dove again, though Snape wasn't sure how much he could see with his glasses back on top of his clothes "No sea monsters either as far as I can tell," he continued once he surfaced. He waggled his eyebrows in a lewd fashion. "Unless you count my--"
"Potter!" Snape barked.
Laughing Potter rolled onto his back, squirting a mouthful of water over his glistening belly. "Look! My soul has a willie!" His laugh reverberated off the slope of the glade's hills, easily drowning out Snape's snort of non-amusement. "You should come in." He wiggled like a seal. "Don't you know how to swim?"
"All Hogwarts' instructors are required to know the basics of swim and rescue, magical and otherwise," Snape said, squatting on the spit of sand. At least from this angle, he could only see Potter's head and shoulders.
"What? In the lake? This is much warmer than that," he said coaxingly. "You aren't shy are you?" he asked again, "I've already seen your, um, soul. We arrived here naked, remember?"
Snape was glad he was far enough away to hide the prickle of heat that rose in his cheeks. "You didn't...look?" he asked, aghast.
Potter did a slow roll in the water, like a cavorting dolphin. "Of course I looked! I bet you did too." His glee made Snape want to throttle him but he was conveniently too far out in the water.
"Certainly not," he harrumphed, certain enough of his abilities to lie through his teeth.
Somehow Potter did not look convinced. "What if I promise not to look?" He made a show of laying his hand over his eyes, his smile very much in play. "I don't have my glasses on anyway."
Really, he was such a child. "We are not discussing this," Snape said aloud.
Potter dove again, his ankle lingering above the waterline before he surfaced. "Well, you don't want to discuss theology," he pointed out, stroking lazily to keep afloat.
Snape rolled his eyes. "There are other topics of conversation besides religion and penises."
That made Potter laugh again. Snape merely sniffed and crossed his arms over his knees. He looked away from Potter's cavorting, trying to convince himself he did not feel a trickle of sweat down the back of his neck, and besides sweat was healthy when they were out of doors. Then an idea struck him. Very clearly he said aloud, "I would like some trunks, please." He did not have to wait long to see if his experiment succeeded. Tendrils shot out of the ground right beside him, quickly forming a leafy bush. Next leaves knotted and spun into a perfectly serviceable pair of trunks. They were even black.
Potter stood waist deep in the water, scrubbing his wet face at the sight.
"And a towel," Snape added, more in mind to keep the bush busy while he stepped behind it to shuck out of the suddenly unbearably hot clothes.
"That's...really weird," Potter said, still staring. Snape took the green towel when a branch extended with a towel on it.
"One more for Potter, I suppose," said Snape, sliding the trunks up his bare legs. While the bush was still rattling leaves in the process, Snape stepped out and waded into the cool clear water. He waded past Potter who was still gaping at the bush.
"Think it could do some clean clothes?" he asked, watching as another towel dropped onto the sand beside the first one.
As he spoke, the bush shook as though a small woodland creature was preparing to burst out of it. Puffy white balls appeared among the leaves. Cotton, Snape realized, though the bush itself looked nothing like a cotton plant. Several puffs began stretching and thinning until the outline of a t-shirt was clearly evident. When the bush was done, two fresh shirts as well as trousers and pants had been created. Snape had even gotten a shirt in black, watching one of the cotton puffs darken at his request.
The bush's activity had the added benefit of temporarily shutting Potter up except for the occasional muttered, "Weird." Snape sank into the water until his hair drifted around his head. Snape preferred to float while the brat frolicked, and at least hadn't dared splash him yet. Looking up at the waterfall, Snape reflected that the afterlife wasn't so bad, even if he had to share it with Potter.
Another large hammock awaited them when they emerged, strung between trees Snape was certain hadn't been there when they'd arrived. Exhausted from all his cavorting, Potter crawled into one side and fell asleep at once . Snape lay awake, staring into the night sky that held only velvet blackness and no stars. He told himself he wasn't listening for Lily before he fell asleep.
"Magic," Potter said, when Snape tried to keep his eyes closed a few moments longer and pretend he'd had a dream about waking up in a strange garden with Potter that had all been the result of a particularly bad essay by Longbottom.
"What?" Snape said, feeling Potter leaning over his chest, all right, on his chest in his haste to explain whatever passing thought had brought him awake.
"We haven't even tested our magic," Potter said, raising his eyebrows significantly, a fact Snape could not fail to notice, since Potter's face was leering over his own.
"We don't have wands," Snape replied, closing his eyes again, as if that had ever made Potter go away.
"We could make wands," Potter said, clearly expecting Snape to congratulate his dazzling conclusions.
Snape opened his eyes again. As he could tell from the dip in the hammock, Potter had not gone away. "Have you ever made a wand?"
"Well, no but--"
"And you may only now be thinking like a wizard but I have tested my own several times since we've arrived and the only thing that works is the magic of this place," Snape said, wanting to push Potter away, but unwilling to put his hand up and push the young man away.
"Oh," replied Potter. Instead of flopping back over onto his own side of the hammock, he let his head fall, right onto Snape's chest. "We could still try--" he began, words muffled by the fabric of Snape's bush-crafted shirt.
Really, considering they had only been stranded here a few days, Potter was awfully familiar with his person. Snape had a flash of memory of Potter's pale arse diving beneath the water and moved rapidly to dump Potter lest the effects of that become evident to them both. "Do you really think Death would let us do magic? Or let us make wands?" Potter, blinking stupidly, shrugged. "And yes, I know you are eager to try, and I have no objection to it, but I intend to continue our course of action from yesterday. If I'm to spend the afterlife here, I want to know exactly how much here there is."
"I'm coming too," Potter persisted, and Severus sat up.
"Lovely," he said.
After a few lingering glances at the pool, they set out the next morning, still following the stream though it had broadened into a narrow river atop the falls. The trees thinned out as soon as they were over the rise and they didn't have to go far before the next marvel came into view. Just ahead, as soon as they climbed over the falls, two enormous trees lay on either side of the river. Both were taller than the forest around them which had retreated as in in some form of deciduous homage. Their tops intermingled, forming a bower across the river.
Even Potter got quiet as they approached the tree on this side of the river. The trunk was nearly smooth but even he and Potter with their arms outstretched couldn't have broached it all the way around. They approached in rare solemnity, entering the circle of shade cast by the huge crest of branches. No single branch was low enough to climb even had he or Potter been tempted. There was something about the trees that felt ancient, as if their garden retreat had sprung up around this very point.
"Wow," Potter said, with a typical lack of appropriate verbal skills. He was gazing overhead, his head dropping back onto his neck. Snape found himself imitating him, enraptured by the endless green carpet overhead.
"Hey," Potter said, now gazing at the trunk of the tree. Since he doubted that Potter's botanical expertise extended much further than Sixth Year Herbology, Snape stepped closer to see what had caught Potter's interest. Snape saw it immediately. On the nearly smooth trunk, just at eye level, the bark was scarred, and like another scar of Snape's acquaintance, bore the jagged shape of a lightning bolt.
They stared at it for a moment in shared wonder, though Snape doubted whether it was of the same origin.
"It doesn't mean anything," Potter said as though relearning the elements of speech. "Does it?" He looked over at Snape with the expectancy of a child waiting to be told the world is safe from monsters.
Snape, however, knew they both knew monsters existed. "Of course not. This tree must be ancient. The sort of magic that formed your scar isn't confined to rebounded killing curses."
Potter was nodding, obviously eager to accept Snape's explanation for what it was-a guess, a reassuring guess or not. Before Snape could expound further, Potter's fingers reached out as if to trace the outline on the bark. Snape's grasp halted his hand.
"If it's safe-"
"Let me touch it first," Snape said, knowing full well Potter would object. Fortunately Snape's arm was longer. The bark felt exactly as it appeared-bark that had been damaged and healed. Before he could remove his hand Potter had stepped closer, laying his fingers nearly over Snape's, visibly relieved that nothing more untoward happened than their fingers brushed.
"I wonder if there's anything on the other one," Potter said, obviously unwilling to trust fate, or luck, or whatever overworked gods looked out for Gryffindors. "Maybe it's a snake," he went on, positively glinting with ghoulish glee.
Wrinkling his nose, Snape said, "I'm not overly fond of snakes at present." He touched the place where he was fairly certain he'd bled to death recently, earning Potter's immediate contrition.
"Right, sorry," he said, "I forgot for a moment." They waded across the shallow river, rolling up their trousers before starting across. No matter how much they inspected the bark, this tree appeared unmarked, at least at eye level and below. Again, the branches were far over their heads, leaves rustling slightly in counterpoint to the soft ripples of water.
As intriguing as they trees were, they waded back across and put their shoes back on, still following the lazy course of the river. It didn't take too long, however, before they came to an overlook very much like the one they had climbed over when they'd left the waterfall pool. There was, in fact, a similar waterfall at this end and a pool as sparkling and inviting as the one they'd camped beside last night.
"Odd," Snape commented, his gaze sweeping the scene with a prickling of...something.
"Are you sure we didn't double back?" Potter asked uncertainly, looking back the way they had come.
"Of course I'm--" Then his lips closed and he started. Potter saw it too. The bush, from whence their new clothes had sprung, was in exactly the same place on this narrow strip of beach.
"We did double back!" Potter said, looking behind them again in confusion. The towering trees were still clearly visible in the middle of the plain.
"We couldn't have," huffed Snape, but there was no denying the bush's placement. Now that he looked, he could see imprints on the sand from where they'd started out this morning, and the two trees that had sprung up to anchor their hammock.
They stared at each other. There was no help for it; they turned and started back, passing the enormous trees again and following the river to where it narrowed and fell over a waterfall--
The same waterfall they'd just left. In front of them was the same overlook, same falls, same gods be-damned bush.
"It can't be," Potter wailed, staring at the scene as if searching for something out of place. But it was identical in every detail. The bush even seemed to quiver with happiness to see them when they clambered down the hill, offering up bananas then fat blueberries. Snape had never considered himself a vegetarian but he did not find himself missing roast chicken with food like this at their command.
"The only way to make certain we are not going mad is to separate," announced Snape.
Potter looked horrified, or as horrified as a person could look with blue lips and a banana peel on one trouser leg. "I think we should stay together. Splitting up won't prove anything."
"Nevertheless, I wish to know," Snape said, getting to his feet and dusting himself off. "It isn't as though I have any pressing engagements."
Potter too stood up as though they were taking formal leave of each other. "What shall I do if you don't come back?"
"Death will know where to find me," Snape replied, trying not to notice Potter's determined chin.
He climbed out of the ravine, aware that Potter was still rooted to the spot, unabashedly watching as Snape left.
There was an expected sense of deja vu as he followed the now familiar course of the river, past the massive pair of trees. He was tempted to pause and rest a moment, but for the sake of not getting turned around and negating the experiment, he pressed on. He made sure to stay close to the river bank until it began to slope, just as before. Ahead he could hear the rush of water where the falls descended into the identical glade.
Except it wasn't identical. As he crested the rise, he saw Potter's face break into smiles. It was the exact same glade. Complete with Potter. "Impossible!" He looked over his shoulder at the pair of trees he was certain he had passed. Beyond their clearing the ordered forest stretched in all directions.
With a sigh he skidded down the rise. Potter was heading up to meet him, looking as though he'd transformed into Godric Gryffindor himself. "You've been gone ages," Potter said. For one terrible instant he thought Potter might embrace him. For an even more terrible one, Snape thought he might want him to.
Then they both got a hold of themselves and compared notes. "That's it then," Potter said, "this is where we're meant to be."
Snape gaped at him. "Then why weren't we just put here?"
"To make us find out for ourselves," replied Potter as though that made any sort of sense at all.
Still staring in disbelief, Snape said, "What sort of self-actualized bullsh-er, nonsense is that? Has Granger been making you read ladies periodicals?"
"No!" Potter shouted, with such vehemence, Snape knew he hadn't been far off the mark. "Well, it isn't bullshit, which you can say, by the way, you aren't my professor any more."
"You worry about your own vocabulary," Snape returned with a scowl.
"Look, we've been able to go anywhere we like, right? Except out, which is probably past that field of wildflowers," Potter said, waving away Snape's advice.
"Asphodel," Snape corrected automatically. Then something that had been niggling at his brain demanded attention. "Field of Asphodel," he said slowly. "Elysian Fields." He stared at the lightning bolt shape on Potter's forehead. "The lightning struck hero. We're in Paradise."
"I've noticed," said Potter, not sounding in the least impressed.
"Capital P Paradise. The one place we are safe from Death."
That evening Snape found sleep much more elusive than Potter who did not seem to mind sharing Paradise with Snape. An though silently Snape could admit he didn't mind putting off the fiery pit as long as he could, he couldn't help feeling he didn't deserve Paradise. Not with Potter.
He tried to let the soft distant rush of water over the falls lull him to sleep but he felt the weight of his sins more keenly in the early hours, even if technically they had no sense of time here. Each sin seemed to call him, as if by name--
"Severus!"
The whisper nearly sent him spinning out of his hammock. From the water's edge, Lily beckoned. Glancing at Potter Snape disengaged Potter's clinging arm and slipped down to meet her. All the vague guilts about not telling him about her disappeared with her smile.
"What were you thinking about so hard?" she asked, sliding one hand over his shoulder and down his arm. "I've been calling for ages."
"Sin," he admitted, unwilling to compound them by even such a slight lie.
"Here?" She laughed, leading him down the narrow beach. "Only you."
"This is Paradise, isn't it?" he asked, trying not to be distracted by her laugh.
"It could be," she said, looking at him through the fall of hair over her shoulder.
"Man was never meant to stay in Paradise," he pointed out.
She turned her head, gazing across the dappled water. "Don't you like it here?"
"Potter-" he began, then made a face. "Harry does."
"He must care for you a great deal," Lily said, sitting down on the grassy bank.
Snape made a rather loud noise of disbelief, nearly forgetting the sleeping man nearby. "He loathes me." He didn't add, "As you did" because he didn't want any reminders that they'd fallen out.
"He's willing to give up his life for you," she pointed out.
He stared down at her before lowering himself onto the bank beside her. He'd neglected to put on his shoes when he'd nearly tumbled out of the hammock. "Seems to be a family trait."
"Is that why you hate him? Because I died to save him?" She looked genuinely curious.
Again Snape could not lie. "I don't hate him."
Her expression was unreadable, though Snape thought if they'd still been close he could have. "I'd do it again, even though it meant not seeing him grow up, not being there when he falls in love."
"I don't understand any of this," said Snape, giving voice to his frustration. "Why were we brought here, why Potter-I should be dead. I am dead!"
She put her hand on his arm but he shook her off. "Even death has rules."
"Then how have I broken them?" Unanswered questions rose into his throat.
She didn't accuse him of being a drama queen this time. Instead she gave his hand a squeeze. He was, however, in no mood for her kind smile.
"Why do you only come here when Harry is asleep?" he began, but Lily gasped, staring over Snape's shoulder toward the hammocks. Potter lay, still tucked up in his hammock, but the glittering angry gleam in his eyes was clearly visible. Snape leaped to his feet. Beside him, he sensed Lily moving as well.
Potter had untangled himself from the hammock with a grace born of anger. He stalked toward them as soon as his feet hit the sand. "What are you doing?" Potter huffed, anger radiating off him like steam off a cauldron, "talking to that snake?"
Snape gasped in indignation. He whirled to offer Lily the dubious protection of his out flung arms, only to see a wavering motion through the grass behind them and no sign of Lily. "You--you saw a snake?" he asked, staring between the place where Lily had been and Harry's furious face.
"I saw a snake because you were talking to a bloody snake!" Potter shouted, running his hand through his sleep-mussed hair. "God, for a moment I thought it was...was--" For a ghastly moment it looked like he might faint. He was pale and sweat dewed his forehead when he pushed his hair away. "But it was too small to be...that snake."
Snape had spent too many years dealing with students not to recognize the symptoms of incipient hysteria. "Potter!" he cried out, voice like a whip-crack. "Pull yourself together!"
Potter's shoulders squared and color rushed back into his cheeks. He nodded once to show he wasn't going to faint. "We should find that snake."
"I'm certain the, er, snake is long gone," Snape said, before Potter asked their helpful bush for a pith helmet and started off on a serpent safari.
"Why were you even talking to it?" Potter asked, clearly frustrated. "What if it had--" He glanced at Snape's neck.
"It wasn't venomous," Snape said, still reluctant to reveal the snake's other form.
"This isn't Hogwarts," Potter said, his anger rising now that his panic had been mastered. "It isn't even England. You don't know what can and can't hurt you here."
Potter's shouting wasn't doing anything to alleviate Snape's agitation at finding out Lily was a snake. Or a snake was Lily--either way he needed non-being shouted at time to puzzle it out. So he shouted back. "I don't care what hurts me. Without your ill-timed intervention back in the shack I'd already be well on my way to my eternal reward." He took advantage of Potter's outrage. "What? You expected me to be grateful you saved me?" He sneered. "Saved me for what?"
Perhaps it was because Snape had just been talking to Lily, or the creature that took her shape, that put all his memories of her to the forefront. Her child, Potter, who had ever reminded anyone who ever saw him of his father, suddenly looked more like Lily in a high dudgeon than Snape would have thought possible. Potter in his rage was Lily reborn, green eyes turning to flint. Snape had faced James' juvenile anger many times without flinching. He had faced Lily's only once.
Snape took a step back, calling on some not quite buried instinct for survival. Potter was suddenly too close, too very much like his mother--
--who had never kissed him the way Potter was doing now. His mouth was quivering, hot and needy enough not to even be trying to coax a response before it was over and Potter was pulling back, panting again. His eyes were wide as if he hadn't meant to go this far.
"Fuck! I'm sorry!" Potter yelped, turning and bolting out of the clearing.
Paradise, Snape thought, was suddenly anything but.
~~**~~
He found Potter the next morning slumped beneath one of the great trees, the one with the lightning bolt marring its bark. His knees were raised, head bowed, the very picture of dejection when Snape approached. "Go ahead and yell," he said, "I know you're dying to."
With a smirk Snape settled down beside him. "Why don't you do it for me?"
Nodding Potter recited, "I was foolish and reckless and--" He glanced up at Snape before returning to his diatribe, "Probably driven by teenage hormones that I had no business inflicting on you no matter how much I think I might...might fancy you." He heaved his shoulders, possibly to shift the no-doubt crushing weight of self pity. "Is that about right?"
"I would have left out the bit about fancying me and mentioned 'inappropriate' but as you've already pointed out, I am no longer your professor, living or dead, I think that will be sufficient."
Potter looked up, obviously trying for an expression more worldly than the leap of hopefulness in his eyes. "You don't seem as angry about this as I thought you'd be," he pointed out.
"By 'this' do you mean taking flight after an admittedly minor difference of opinion, your objection to my discussion with a serpent, or-" He found his gaze drawn to Potter's mouth.
"Or."
"Ah."
"It wasn't hormones," Potter said, color flirting with his cheeks. "I mean, it isn't just hormones. I have a--"
"Saving people thing. I've heard."
"Bit of a crush," Potter countered.
Snape gave this due consideration. "I'd just use you for sex and trample on your tender emotions," he concluded.
Potter appeared to be giving this equal consideration. "That would be all right. I've had them trampled on before." He shifted closer to Snape, close enough that their upraised knees brushed.
He looked over in astonishment. "You aren't seriously suggesting--" The way Potter's mouth found his suggested he was. "Death could appear at any moment," protested Snape, though even he realized having a lapful of Potter somewhat weakened the impact of his protest.
"That could happen even if we weren't in Paradise," pointed out Potter, sliding his hands up the front of Snape's shirt, in obvious expectation of another kiss.
Damn the boy for choosing this moment to use his brain. He didn't like appearing discombobulated in front of the young man so he gave into the urge to kiss him again. He was sure no fruit in Paradise tasted as good as Potter's mouth. Then all thoughts of things sacred gave over to thoughts more profoundly profane. Potter was clinging to him, moaning against his mouth, chest flush with Severus's, so close he could feel the shape of his cock against his own.
Snape literally felt the earth move--the ground around them shifted, stretching out to form a platform--easily the length of one reclining body and as wide as two.
"Even Paradise wants us to--" Leaves fluttered down as if dropped by swallow's wings, twisting, quilting themselves into a blanket while the lush grass rippled and meshed into sinfully soft sheets below them. "To, to--"
Since Potter seemed to have developed a stutter, Snape distracted him, tugging the shirt over his head. "This has less to do with the desires of the divine," he speculated, "and more to do with nature-ours." He'd forgotten for a moment that he was no longer had the protection of a row of buttons but a simple cotton shirt which Potter had already grasped. Obediently he lifted his arms only to hear Potter's chuckle as it came away.
"This is a fig leaf, isn't it?" the young man said, before tossing the shirt off their earthly bed.
"Apparently Death has a sense of humor," said Snape, more grateful that the chuckle had been over his clothes than at the sight of him unclothed.
"I guess he had to," said Potter, "in his line of work."
Snape silenced him with another kiss. "I don't want to talk about Death," he said, shivering at the sudden breeze that chilled them, sending them both diving under the covers. Mutely Potter nodded, confirming his own vitality by kissing Snape again. Snape dragged his hands down the sides of Potter's face, his jaw smoother, he suspected, because neither of them had had to shave since they d-arrived. He didn't want to think about what that meant, didn't want to think about anything but the way Potter felt rutting against him.
"You saved me," he said, his voice more breathy than usual. Potter nodded again, as if doing something so ridiculous made perfect sense.
"Knew you wouldn't save yourself," Potter said, heat that had nothing to do with arousal creeping up his neck. "Couldn't let you--"
"Shh," Snape said, enforcing their earlier vow of silence by dragging his fingers across Potter's mouth. Potter--Harry moaned.
"Just say you'll stay with me," Harry said, nuzzling his fingertips. He'd lost his glasses somewhere during the bed's shifting and the progression of kisses.
It was a foolish promise but surely not as foolish as wrapping around himself and sharing more kisses that tasted of the heaven they had been denied. His doubt must have been reflected on his features because Harry fondled his lower lips just as Snape had done to him. "No matter what happens," he agreed, "I'll stay with you. As long as you want me." It was just as solemn as a vow, and despite both of them being naked from the waist up, drew a nod from Harry. "We appear to be in this together," he acknowledged then there was nothing to do but seal such a promise with a kiss.
It was both heaven and hell to feel Harry's cock against his own when they were entwined as closely as grape vines, both still in their trousers. "Lean back and let me--" he began, but it seemed Harry didn't need to know what Snape needed to do. Arms still locked around Snape's neck, he rolled backwards, pulling Snape on top of him. It wasn't what Snape had been planning but it felt so bloody good he simply covered Harry's body with his own.
Harry's wail would have made the leaves overhead flutter if either of them had been looking. "Need--need--need," Harry cried.
Snape knew perfectly well what he needed but he wanted Harry's trousers off when he gave it to him. He peeled them away, certain their helpful bush would not mind the hurried mistreatment. Harry was still chanting but Snape only half-heard, focusing instead on the ripe plum of Harry's cock. It begged to be savored and Snape indulged himself for a moment before Harry's tremors sent his mouth plunging down. Harry bucked and wailed, coming like a teenager with his first--
Well.
Snape could grant that Harry had been a bit busy this last year and sex had probably been the last thing on his mind.
He kept his mouth around Harry's cock, gentling him with hands on his thighs, Harry's breathing still rapid, carrying over even the soft rush of water over stones from the river just beyond their bower. Finally he let go, once it was very nearly soft enough to slip out on its own. Harry was watching him when Snape looked up, and even from here he could see a bit of wariness in his gaze.
Perhaps gratitude was beyond the whelp but surely--
"I've wanted that for so long," Harry said, still panting. "Well, not the coming too hard part, but the other--"
"The blow job part?" Snape asked, watching Harry's blush deepen in interesting places.
"The...making love part," Harry insisted, with the adamancy of the young.
"Lusted over your professor in detention, have you?" Snape countered, quite willing to believe Harry had been horny enough to beg for it, even from Snape.
"Complaining?" replied Harry with sultriness that made Snape's still-hopeful prick twitch.
Never one to accept any sort of gift without examining the ramifications Snape eyed him dubiously. "You aren't seriously...offering?"
Harry wiggled upon the leafy bed. "Offering? I'm begging."
Possibilities, undreamed of and yet not unimagined found purchase and took root, blossoming in this place where even the air seemed fertile. Yet for all the bursting fruit and pure clean water, there was one thing he would need to accept Harry's offer Snape didn't think they could duplicate in fruit.
"I'll--I'll hurt you," he said, with the desperate urge to not even speak of the possibility. There were other ways; they would be enough.
A tendril of some plant tangled beneath their elevated bed detached itself and wove up, like a snake being charmed out of its basket. Both Snape and Harry turned to look at it, as the tip cracked and began to drip a viscous clear fluid.
"Okay, now that's kind of weird," Harry said, reaching over to rub the fluid between his fingers. "But I bet it will work."
When Snape tested it on his own fingers--and tongue to be doubly certain--it certainly felt like as fine and slick as anything he could brew. The verdict was sealed when Harry sat up, his legs still spread to either side of Snape's, and tasted it from Snape's mouth.
"Tastes a bit like apples," he said, laying a tentative hand over the fronts of Snape's trousers. "You can't say no now. Please don't say no." Snape didn't think no was even in his vocabulary any longer. His permission was a silent nod, but it was all Harry needed. He had Snape's trousers undone within seconds and Snape himself undone a moment later. Clearly Harry knew how to stroke a cock even if the only one he'd practiced on had been his own.
Harry rolled back down willingly, groaning his approval while Snape gathered the slippery stuff on two fingers. When Harry's cock stirred and rose at the attention Snape bent forward to encourage such youthful resilience with his tongue. He looked for and got permission before they went further than he could undo. Harry, it seemed, did not wish to hold back. With more confidence than he'd ever shown in class, he lifted his legs around Snape's waist.
Nothing seemed to stir around them, no leaf or vine, nor cold breeze nor whisper of a serpent's passing. Snape caught and held Harry's gaze, gaining the last permission he could, guiding himself inside Harry's arse as slowly as he could manage. Harry fit around him like an apple around a core, eager and not about to let Snape go as slowly as this, urging with his legs, his arse, and those breathlessly needy moans. Almost shyly he reached for his own cock, as if uncertain whether it was proper to get hard again. Snape managed a nod and Harry's hand began moving.
Snape had never seen such wanting, not directed toward himself and the sheer bliss of it nearly took him over the edge. With a groan he held on, waiting until Harry's own bliss caught up to him, pulling Snape in, urging him to share it.
In a word, Paradise.
He had to close his eyes lest the joy of it be too much to contain in the sensitized vessel of his body. Harry's eyes were wide open, however, when Snape's shudders had ceased. He rubbed a foot along Snape's back as though it had been all right--perhaps even better than that--maybe even really good.
"That was brilliant," Harry said.
All right, better than really good.
Then an odd expression crossed Harry's features. Snape shifted around, following the gaze that had suddenly shifted upward. Or, in this case, tree-ward. Snape saw what had commanded Harry's attention at once. The tree above them was covered in fruit, red and ripe and surely not there when he had discovered Harry at the foot of the tree. The branches were so heavily laden they bent low over their heads. Harry reached up and one of the glossy fruits fell right into his hand. Smiling in delight, he turned, holding out the prize to Snape.
Only to be halted by a discreet but nevertheless quite firm cough.
"You can't eat the fruit," Death said.
Snape and Harry were both naked, the fruit clenched in one hand as they stared. Death was no longer alone. A snake twined up the scythe, its head resting on the arched curve of the blade. At Death's pronouncement it swept its head from side to side as if in agreement.
Harry looked at the apple in his hand. "But we've eaten lots of fruit here," he argued, before Snape could warn against arguing with Death.
One bony finger pointed up, into the red-dotted canopy of leaves. "Not from this tree." Death shrugged. "I know, crazy, right? But it's a rule." Death made a noise that might have been a chuckle or the cry of a soul in torment. "The boss is a little weird about this tree."
In what was clearly meant to be an undertone, Harry said, "Death has a boss?'' But he lowered the hand holding the apple.
"Looks like it's time to send you back," intoned Death. The snake's tail was undulating slightly against the scythe. Dread clenched at Snape. He couldn't decide whether he was glad to have the memory of being with Harry to comfort him in the afterlife or sorry that he would have only the single memory of it to torment him for eternity.
"What? No," Harry said. "I'm not going back." His fingers clutched Snape's arm as if to pin him to the makeshift bed.
"You must," Snape insisted, though he knew Harry would ignore this admittedly half-hearted attempt to persuade him.
"I won't," Harry said, pulling himself up as if he could take on Death itself, naked and wandless. Snape wondered how his late master had ever thought he'd stood a chance. "We go together, we agreed."
"Of course," Death said, settling on the edge of the bed. Luckily it was a large bed. The snake still peered at them from the top of the scythe. "You'd be denying him Paradise."
"What? No," Snape said, taken aback. "I'm not going to heaven, I'm going to--"
The snake shook its head. "Not according to my records," Death said, tilting the cowl toward Harry, "And yes, Death has records."
"Absolutely not," said Snape, more forcefully. If there was one thing he could do with the gift he'd been given, it was ensure Harry's affection survived to be gifted on a worthier soul than his.
Death made a non-committal noise, or what probably was one even though it sounded like bats swooping over a graveyard. "It does have to be your choice, of course, but you could stay here..."
Both Harry and Snape looked at the end of the bed. "Here?" Snape asked, looking toward the snake. Even though snakes had no eyelids, this one seemed to wink at him.
Death pretended to examine its nails, though on the fleshless white hand the gesture looked a bit more contrived. "Sure, lots to eat as long as you don't miss roast chicken, lots of room, helpful bushes..." The large shoulders heaved into a sigh. "Of course Harry has to go back. It's not even close to his time yet and destroying the balance of souls in the universe could lead to rending of the universe sorts of cosmic cataclysm. Really don't want to get into that." The snake shuddered.
Harry was looking daggers at him. "You promised," he said with that stubborn set of his chin that came from neither his mouth or father but probably some distant Evans or Potter that had been difficult against impossible odds.
"Those aren't the only two options," came a clear female voice. Snape's chin jerked up, away from the all too enticing sight of that stubborn chin and at Lily, who stood just past Death's knees. "Tell him."
"Tell me what?" Snape asked, looking between Death and Lily. The snake, he noticed, had vanished.
"Who are you talking to?" Harry asked, blinking in his confusion but no less stubborn.
Snape turned to look at him. "Don't you see--"
But it was Death who answered. "He doesn't. He only sees the other form."
"The snake?" asked Snape, while Harry was looking more determinedly stubborn.
"Of course I see the snake," he insisted, "What I want to know is--"
Snape clapped a hand over his mouth. "Tell me what?" he asked again.
Heaving a great sigh, Death said, "I can, since Harry, and-and...others--interdicted for you, send you both back. You weren't precisely dead, after all."
In his arms, Harry ceased his struggles and listened to what Death was saying. Only it was Lily who spoke up. "You can stay here, or go on. Or go back. Death gets your soul either way."
Sepulchral tones echoed from the depths of the cowl. "The when only matters to you, not to me."
Pursing his lips against Snape's hand, Harry finally got him to slide his fingers away. "Wait, you aren't going to send him back to just before he almost died, are you? With his throat--" He swallowed hard and pointedly did not look at Snape's bare throat.
"You have a very suspicious mind," Death said, managing to sound hurt and impressed all at once.
Harry shrugged, "Well, are you?" Snape had never seen him back down and he was not disappointed this time. "If you do, I'll-I'll do something drastic. Your boss won't like that after all the trouble you've been through about this."
Lily had gasped, holding her hand to her chest. She looked at Death, who said, "I daresay you're right." The cowl fluttered, moving between them. "You have to choose, Severus."
Snape looked at Lily, who looked a bit scaly in the light. And at Potter who looked as fierce and brave as ever. "I think I already have."
"Hang on, then," Death said, getting to its feet. The white hand tightened on the scythe. "I'm not used to sending anyone back." He seemed to find this quite amusing.
"Wait," Snape said, nodding toward their clothes. "May we at least get dressed first?"
Death, still sounding quite amused, shifted the scythe and they were back in the Muggle clothing Death had provided before, right down to the fig leaf. "Don't fancy playing Adam and Steve when I send you back to Hogwarts?"
"Back to--"
But the scythe was moving again and with a whoosh, the tree and the leafy bed and Lily disappeared around them. Harry was hanging onto him, arms clinging to his neck as air rushed around them as though they'd been swept up in a Portkey.
They materialized in the Great Hall-though from an angle Snape had never seen it from before. He realized they were standing atop the teacher's table, Harry's arms still wrapped around him. He realized too that he was not bleeding from a fatal snakebite to the throat and that their arrival had been met by a dreadful silence, then the distinctive noise of dozens of wands being drawn. Leave it to Death to force them to make an entrance.
Then whispers and soft cries echoed across the hall, of "Potter" and "Harry" and once even his own name in a tone softer than a whisper. It looked as though a terrible battle had raged through the school, which, Snape supposed, there had.
Something was pressing into his back, something clutched tightly in Harry's hand. The apple, he realized with a start. Harry had never let go of it. Slowly he slid his arms from around Snape's waist, though he kept one arm loosely on his hip as a veritable flock of his friends approached.
"We made it," Harry said, grinning up at him.
Instead of chastising him for his atrocious penchant for stating the obvious, Snape thought it more prudent to step away from Harry's hand on his hip, since, to judge by the expressions on not a few Gryffindor faces, Harry was about to be protected, whether he wished it or not.
Harry's glasses too had made it. He blinked at Snape through them, resisting Snape's efforts to pull out of his arms. "It looks like just a few minutes after I left," Harry said, glancing around the Great Hall, "I told them all what you did, what a hero you were-are."
Even the Malfoys had got to their feet, moving together as if afraid to let a family member wander off alone, heading toward the head table. Behind them, Minerva, looking dour and contrite all at once, too started toward the front of the Great Hall.
"I'm not a hero," Snape countered, feeling it might be too late to persuade Harry to let go of him. He did not even seem to be able to protest when Harry kissed him in full view of the entire hall.
"You are to me," insisted Harry. Mischief lit his eyes. "I know, crazy, right?" More whispers were building up around them but Harry hadn't let go. "You gave up Paradise for me."
Snape merely held on, as they prepared to face the gauntlet of Harry's friends and their friendly suspicion. He didn't bother to point out that no place was Paradise without Harry in it.
"Do you think it's weird that we haven't seen any animals?" Potter asked, as if the conversational void needed filling. "No chipmunks or birds. Not even any lacewings or bees."
To keep Potter from reciting the entire catalog of entomology, Snape said, "Animals have no souls."
The scrambled down a hillock, following the course of the meandering stream as it widened deeper into the forest before Potter replied. "Is that what you think we are? Souls?"
The stream dipped again before starting to rise again. Ahead, Snape could hear the sound of water rushing. "I died. You, well, I don't know what happened to you, but somehow your soul ended up here."
Potter laughed. "With yours. I gave it all up for you," he said, ducking under a low-hanging branch as they climbed up the mossy hill.
"Idiot," Snape muttered.
"You're welcome." Snape was about to berate him anew for this foolishness when Potter's softly murmured, "Wow," stopped him. Scrambling up the rise he stood beside Potter on the top. The stream had widened into a pool, with water so clear they could see the glistening sandy depths. Along one side of the pool, trees grew right up to the edge, branches dipping into the pool like grazing gazelles. Across from their vantage point was the source of the water sound, a fall of water just tall enough that they couldn't see what lay above it. A narrow beach crested away from the falls.
"I'm going in," said Potter just as his shirt hit the grass at Snape's feet.
"In? In where?" Snape sputtered. Potter, in the process of divesting his jeans, merely pointed toward the crystal pool. "Have some decency," Snape managed, as the trousers slid down the boy's legs.
"But it's just my soul," Potter said with a laugh, striding down the rise toward the clear water. Snape got a glimpse of a lean back and pale arse before Potter was splashing into the water.
"Are you daft?" Snape sputtered when Potter's head surfaced. He tried hard not to be aware that the water was clear enough to see Potter's nakedness quite plainly.
"What? Not shy are you?" Potter said, his grin making him look more like the student Snape had known in school and less like the careworn young man who had joined him here. He flung the hair away from his face, sending drops skittering behind him on the nearly smooth surface of the pool.
"Sensible," Snape retorted, slipping down the rise to get a more distorted view of Potter's cavorting since he could see quite perfectly from the top of the hill.
"Fish don't have souls, remember?" Potter dove again, though Snape wasn't sure how much he could see with his glasses back on top of his clothes "No sea monsters either as far as I can tell," he continued once he surfaced. He waggled his eyebrows in a lewd fashion. "Unless you count my--"
"Potter!" Snape barked.
Laughing Potter rolled onto his back, squirting a mouthful of water over his glistening belly. "Look! My soul has a willie!" His laugh reverberated off the slope of the glade's hills, easily drowning out Snape's snort of non-amusement. "You should come in." He wiggled like a seal. "Don't you know how to swim?"
"All Hogwarts' instructors are required to know the basics of swim and rescue, magical and otherwise," Snape said, squatting on the spit of sand. At least from this angle, he could only see Potter's head and shoulders.
"What? In the lake? This is much warmer than that," he said coaxingly. "You aren't shy are you?" he asked again, "I've already seen your, um, soul. We arrived here naked, remember?"
Snape was glad he was far enough away to hide the prickle of heat that rose in his cheeks. "You didn't...look?" he asked, aghast.
Potter did a slow roll in the water, like a cavorting dolphin. "Of course I looked! I bet you did too." His glee made Snape want to throttle him but he was conveniently too far out in the water.
"Certainly not," he harrumphed, certain enough of his abilities to lie through his teeth.
Somehow Potter did not look convinced. "What if I promise not to look?" He made a show of laying his hand over his eyes, his smile very much in play. "I don't have my glasses on anyway."
Really, he was such a child. "We are not discussing this," Snape said aloud.
Potter dove again, his ankle lingering above the waterline before he surfaced. "Well, you don't want to discuss theology," he pointed out, stroking lazily to keep afloat.
Snape rolled his eyes. "There are other topics of conversation besides religion and penises."
That made Potter laugh again. Snape merely sniffed and crossed his arms over his knees. He looked away from Potter's cavorting, trying to convince himself he did not feel a trickle of sweat down the back of his neck, and besides sweat was healthy when they were out of doors. Then an idea struck him. Very clearly he said aloud, "I would like some trunks, please." He did not have to wait long to see if his experiment succeeded. Tendrils shot out of the ground right beside him, quickly forming a leafy bush. Next leaves knotted and spun into a perfectly serviceable pair of trunks. They were even black.
Potter stood waist deep in the water, scrubbing his wet face at the sight.
"And a towel," Snape added, more in mind to keep the bush busy while he stepped behind it to shuck out of the suddenly unbearably hot clothes.
"That's...really weird," Potter said, still staring. Snape took the green towel when a branch extended with a towel on it.
"One more for Potter, I suppose," said Snape, sliding the trunks up his bare legs. While the bush was still rattling leaves in the process, Snape stepped out and waded into the cool clear water. He waded past Potter who was still gaping at the bush.
"Think it could do some clean clothes?" he asked, watching as another towel dropped onto the sand beside the first one.
As he spoke, the bush shook as though a small woodland creature was preparing to burst out of it. Puffy white balls appeared among the leaves. Cotton, Snape realized, though the bush itself looked nothing like a cotton plant. Several puffs began stretching and thinning until the outline of a t-shirt was clearly evident. When the bush was done, two fresh shirts as well as trousers and pants had been created. Snape had even gotten a shirt in black, watching one of the cotton puffs darken at his request.
The bush's activity had the added benefit of temporarily shutting Potter up except for the occasional muttered, "Weird." Snape sank into the water until his hair drifted around his head. Snape preferred to float while the brat frolicked, and at least hadn't dared splash him yet. Looking up at the waterfall, Snape reflected that the afterlife wasn't so bad, even if he had to share it with Potter.
Another large hammock awaited them when they emerged, strung between trees Snape was certain hadn't been there when they'd arrived. Exhausted from all his cavorting, Potter crawled into one side and fell asleep at once . Snape lay awake, staring into the night sky that held only velvet blackness and no stars. He told himself he wasn't listening for Lily before he fell asleep.
"Magic," Potter said, when Snape tried to keep his eyes closed a few moments longer and pretend he'd had a dream about waking up in a strange garden with Potter that had all been the result of a particularly bad essay by Longbottom.
"What?" Snape said, feeling Potter leaning over his chest, all right, on his chest in his haste to explain whatever passing thought had brought him awake.
"We haven't even tested our magic," Potter said, raising his eyebrows significantly, a fact Snape could not fail to notice, since Potter's face was leering over his own.
"We don't have wands," Snape replied, closing his eyes again, as if that had ever made Potter go away.
"We could make wands," Potter said, clearly expecting Snape to congratulate his dazzling conclusions.
Snape opened his eyes again. As he could tell from the dip in the hammock, Potter had not gone away. "Have you ever made a wand?"
"Well, no but--"
"And you may only now be thinking like a wizard but I have tested my own several times since we've arrived and the only thing that works is the magic of this place," Snape said, wanting to push Potter away, but unwilling to put his hand up and push the young man away.
"Oh," replied Potter. Instead of flopping back over onto his own side of the hammock, he let his head fall, right onto Snape's chest. "We could still try--" he began, words muffled by the fabric of Snape's bush-crafted shirt.
Really, considering they had only been stranded here a few days, Potter was awfully familiar with his person. Snape had a flash of memory of Potter's pale arse diving beneath the water and moved rapidly to dump Potter lest the effects of that become evident to them both. "Do you really think Death would let us do magic? Or let us make wands?" Potter, blinking stupidly, shrugged. "And yes, I know you are eager to try, and I have no objection to it, but I intend to continue our course of action from yesterday. If I'm to spend the afterlife here, I want to know exactly how much here there is."
"I'm coming too," Potter persisted, and Severus sat up.
"Lovely," he said.
After a few lingering glances at the pool, they set out the next morning, still following the stream though it had broadened into a narrow river atop the falls. The trees thinned out as soon as they were over the rise and they didn't have to go far before the next marvel came into view. Just ahead, as soon as they climbed over the falls, two enormous trees lay on either side of the river. Both were taller than the forest around them which had retreated as in in some form of deciduous homage. Their tops intermingled, forming a bower across the river.
Even Potter got quiet as they approached the tree on this side of the river. The trunk was nearly smooth but even he and Potter with their arms outstretched couldn't have broached it all the way around. They approached in rare solemnity, entering the circle of shade cast by the huge crest of branches. No single branch was low enough to climb even had he or Potter been tempted. There was something about the trees that felt ancient, as if their garden retreat had sprung up around this very point.
"Wow," Potter said, with a typical lack of appropriate verbal skills. He was gazing overhead, his head dropping back onto his neck. Snape found himself imitating him, enraptured by the endless green carpet overhead.
"Hey," Potter said, now gazing at the trunk of the tree. Since he doubted that Potter's botanical expertise extended much further than Sixth Year Herbology, Snape stepped closer to see what had caught Potter's interest. Snape saw it immediately. On the nearly smooth trunk, just at eye level, the bark was scarred, and like another scar of Snape's acquaintance, bore the jagged shape of a lightning bolt.
They stared at it for a moment in shared wonder, though Snape doubted whether it was of the same origin.
"It doesn't mean anything," Potter said as though relearning the elements of speech. "Does it?" He looked over at Snape with the expectancy of a child waiting to be told the world is safe from monsters.
Snape, however, knew they both knew monsters existed. "Of course not. This tree must be ancient. The sort of magic that formed your scar isn't confined to rebounded killing curses."
Potter was nodding, obviously eager to accept Snape's explanation for what it was-a guess, a reassuring guess or not. Before Snape could expound further, Potter's fingers reached out as if to trace the outline on the bark. Snape's grasp halted his hand.
"If it's safe-"
"Let me touch it first," Snape said, knowing full well Potter would object. Fortunately Snape's arm was longer. The bark felt exactly as it appeared-bark that had been damaged and healed. Before he could remove his hand Potter had stepped closer, laying his fingers nearly over Snape's, visibly relieved that nothing more untoward happened than their fingers brushed.
"I wonder if there's anything on the other one," Potter said, obviously unwilling to trust fate, or luck, or whatever overworked gods looked out for Gryffindors. "Maybe it's a snake," he went on, positively glinting with ghoulish glee.
Wrinkling his nose, Snape said, "I'm not overly fond of snakes at present." He touched the place where he was fairly certain he'd bled to death recently, earning Potter's immediate contrition.
"Right, sorry," he said, "I forgot for a moment." They waded across the shallow river, rolling up their trousers before starting across. No matter how much they inspected the bark, this tree appeared unmarked, at least at eye level and below. Again, the branches were far over their heads, leaves rustling slightly in counterpoint to the soft ripples of water.
As intriguing as they trees were, they waded back across and put their shoes back on, still following the lazy course of the river. It didn't take too long, however, before they came to an overlook very much like the one they had climbed over when they'd left the waterfall pool. There was, in fact, a similar waterfall at this end and a pool as sparkling and inviting as the one they'd camped beside last night.
"Odd," Snape commented, his gaze sweeping the scene with a prickling of...something.
"Are you sure we didn't double back?" Potter asked uncertainly, looking back the way they had come.
"Of course I'm--" Then his lips closed and he started. Potter saw it too. The bush, from whence their new clothes had sprung, was in exactly the same place on this narrow strip of beach.
"We did double back!" Potter said, looking behind them again in confusion. The towering trees were still clearly visible in the middle of the plain.
"We couldn't have," huffed Snape, but there was no denying the bush's placement. Now that he looked, he could see imprints on the sand from where they'd started out this morning, and the two trees that had sprung up to anchor their hammock.
They stared at each other. There was no help for it; they turned and started back, passing the enormous trees again and following the river to where it narrowed and fell over a waterfall--
The same waterfall they'd just left. In front of them was the same overlook, same falls, same gods be-damned bush.
"It can't be," Potter wailed, staring at the scene as if searching for something out of place. But it was identical in every detail. The bush even seemed to quiver with happiness to see them when they clambered down the hill, offering up bananas then fat blueberries. Snape had never considered himself a vegetarian but he did not find himself missing roast chicken with food like this at their command.
"The only way to make certain we are not going mad is to separate," announced Snape.
Potter looked horrified, or as horrified as a person could look with blue lips and a banana peel on one trouser leg. "I think we should stay together. Splitting up won't prove anything."
"Nevertheless, I wish to know," Snape said, getting to his feet and dusting himself off. "It isn't as though I have any pressing engagements."
Potter too stood up as though they were taking formal leave of each other. "What shall I do if you don't come back?"
"Death will know where to find me," Snape replied, trying not to notice Potter's determined chin.
He climbed out of the ravine, aware that Potter was still rooted to the spot, unabashedly watching as Snape left.
There was an expected sense of deja vu as he followed the now familiar course of the river, past the massive pair of trees. He was tempted to pause and rest a moment, but for the sake of not getting turned around and negating the experiment, he pressed on. He made sure to stay close to the river bank until it began to slope, just as before. Ahead he could hear the rush of water where the falls descended into the identical glade.
Except it wasn't identical. As he crested the rise, he saw Potter's face break into smiles. It was the exact same glade. Complete with Potter. "Impossible!" He looked over his shoulder at the pair of trees he was certain he had passed. Beyond their clearing the ordered forest stretched in all directions.
With a sigh he skidded down the rise. Potter was heading up to meet him, looking as though he'd transformed into Godric Gryffindor himself. "You've been gone ages," Potter said. For one terrible instant he thought Potter might embrace him. For an even more terrible one, Snape thought he might want him to.
Then they both got a hold of themselves and compared notes. "That's it then," Potter said, "this is where we're meant to be."
Snape gaped at him. "Then why weren't we just put here?"
"To make us find out for ourselves," replied Potter as though that made any sort of sense at all.
Still staring in disbelief, Snape said, "What sort of self-actualized bullsh-er, nonsense is that? Has Granger been making you read ladies periodicals?"
"No!" Potter shouted, with such vehemence, Snape knew he hadn't been far off the mark. "Well, it isn't bullshit, which you can say, by the way, you aren't my professor any more."
"You worry about your own vocabulary," Snape returned with a scowl.
"Look, we've been able to go anywhere we like, right? Except out, which is probably past that field of wildflowers," Potter said, waving away Snape's advice.
"Asphodel," Snape corrected automatically. Then something that had been niggling at his brain demanded attention. "Field of Asphodel," he said slowly. "Elysian Fields." He stared at the lightning bolt shape on Potter's forehead. "The lightning struck hero. We're in Paradise."
"I've noticed," said Potter, not sounding in the least impressed.
"Capital P Paradise. The one place we are safe from Death."
That evening Snape found sleep much more elusive than Potter who did not seem to mind sharing Paradise with Snape. An though silently Snape could admit he didn't mind putting off the fiery pit as long as he could, he couldn't help feeling he didn't deserve Paradise. Not with Potter.
He tried to let the soft distant rush of water over the falls lull him to sleep but he felt the weight of his sins more keenly in the early hours, even if technically they had no sense of time here. Each sin seemed to call him, as if by name--
"Severus!"
The whisper nearly sent him spinning out of his hammock. From the water's edge, Lily beckoned. Glancing at Potter Snape disengaged Potter's clinging arm and slipped down to meet her. All the vague guilts about not telling him about her disappeared with her smile.
"What were you thinking about so hard?" she asked, sliding one hand over his shoulder and down his arm. "I've been calling for ages."
"Sin," he admitted, unwilling to compound them by even such a slight lie.
"Here?" She laughed, leading him down the narrow beach. "Only you."
"This is Paradise, isn't it?" he asked, trying not to be distracted by her laugh.
"It could be," she said, looking at him through the fall of hair over her shoulder.
"Man was never meant to stay in Paradise," he pointed out.
She turned her head, gazing across the dappled water. "Don't you like it here?"
"Potter-" he began, then made a face. "Harry does."
"He must care for you a great deal," Lily said, sitting down on the grassy bank.
Snape made a rather loud noise of disbelief, nearly forgetting the sleeping man nearby. "He loathes me." He didn't add, "As you did" because he didn't want any reminders that they'd fallen out.
"He's willing to give up his life for you," she pointed out.
He stared down at her before lowering himself onto the bank beside her. He'd neglected to put on his shoes when he'd nearly tumbled out of the hammock. "Seems to be a family trait."
"Is that why you hate him? Because I died to save him?" She looked genuinely curious.
Again Snape could not lie. "I don't hate him."
Her expression was unreadable, though Snape thought if they'd still been close he could have. "I'd do it again, even though it meant not seeing him grow up, not being there when he falls in love."
"I don't understand any of this," said Snape, giving voice to his frustration. "Why were we brought here, why Potter-I should be dead. I am dead!"
She put her hand on his arm but he shook her off. "Even death has rules."
"Then how have I broken them?" Unanswered questions rose into his throat.
She didn't accuse him of being a drama queen this time. Instead she gave his hand a squeeze. He was, however, in no mood for her kind smile.
"Why do you only come here when Harry is asleep?" he began, but Lily gasped, staring over Snape's shoulder toward the hammocks. Potter lay, still tucked up in his hammock, but the glittering angry gleam in his eyes was clearly visible. Snape leaped to his feet. Beside him, he sensed Lily moving as well.
Potter had untangled himself from the hammock with a grace born of anger. He stalked toward them as soon as his feet hit the sand. "What are you doing?" Potter huffed, anger radiating off him like steam off a cauldron, "talking to that snake?"
Snape gasped in indignation. He whirled to offer Lily the dubious protection of his out flung arms, only to see a wavering motion through the grass behind them and no sign of Lily. "You--you saw a snake?" he asked, staring between the place where Lily had been and Harry's furious face.
"I saw a snake because you were talking to a bloody snake!" Potter shouted, running his hand through his sleep-mussed hair. "God, for a moment I thought it was...was--" For a ghastly moment it looked like he might faint. He was pale and sweat dewed his forehead when he pushed his hair away. "But it was too small to be...that snake."
Snape had spent too many years dealing with students not to recognize the symptoms of incipient hysteria. "Potter!" he cried out, voice like a whip-crack. "Pull yourself together!"
Potter's shoulders squared and color rushed back into his cheeks. He nodded once to show he wasn't going to faint. "We should find that snake."
"I'm certain the, er, snake is long gone," Snape said, before Potter asked their helpful bush for a pith helmet and started off on a serpent safari.
"Why were you even talking to it?" Potter asked, clearly frustrated. "What if it had--" He glanced at Snape's neck.
"It wasn't venomous," Snape said, still reluctant to reveal the snake's other form.
"This isn't Hogwarts," Potter said, his anger rising now that his panic had been mastered. "It isn't even England. You don't know what can and can't hurt you here."
Potter's shouting wasn't doing anything to alleviate Snape's agitation at finding out Lily was a snake. Or a snake was Lily--either way he needed non-being shouted at time to puzzle it out. So he shouted back. "I don't care what hurts me. Without your ill-timed intervention back in the shack I'd already be well on my way to my eternal reward." He took advantage of Potter's outrage. "What? You expected me to be grateful you saved me?" He sneered. "Saved me for what?"
Perhaps it was because Snape had just been talking to Lily, or the creature that took her shape, that put all his memories of her to the forefront. Her child, Potter, who had ever reminded anyone who ever saw him of his father, suddenly looked more like Lily in a high dudgeon than Snape would have thought possible. Potter in his rage was Lily reborn, green eyes turning to flint. Snape had faced James' juvenile anger many times without flinching. He had faced Lily's only once.
Snape took a step back, calling on some not quite buried instinct for survival. Potter was suddenly too close, too very much like his mother--
--who had never kissed him the way Potter was doing now. His mouth was quivering, hot and needy enough not to even be trying to coax a response before it was over and Potter was pulling back, panting again. His eyes were wide as if he hadn't meant to go this far.
"Fuck! I'm sorry!" Potter yelped, turning and bolting out of the clearing.
Paradise, Snape thought, was suddenly anything but.
~~**~~
He found Potter the next morning slumped beneath one of the great trees, the one with the lightning bolt marring its bark. His knees were raised, head bowed, the very picture of dejection when Snape approached. "Go ahead and yell," he said, "I know you're dying to."
With a smirk Snape settled down beside him. "Why don't you do it for me?"
Nodding Potter recited, "I was foolish and reckless and--" He glanced up at Snape before returning to his diatribe, "Probably driven by teenage hormones that I had no business inflicting on you no matter how much I think I might...might fancy you." He heaved his shoulders, possibly to shift the no-doubt crushing weight of self pity. "Is that about right?"
"I would have left out the bit about fancying me and mentioned 'inappropriate' but as you've already pointed out, I am no longer your professor, living or dead, I think that will be sufficient."
Potter looked up, obviously trying for an expression more worldly than the leap of hopefulness in his eyes. "You don't seem as angry about this as I thought you'd be," he pointed out.
"By 'this' do you mean taking flight after an admittedly minor difference of opinion, your objection to my discussion with a serpent, or-" He found his gaze drawn to Potter's mouth.
"Or."
"Ah."
"It wasn't hormones," Potter said, color flirting with his cheeks. "I mean, it isn't just hormones. I have a--"
"Saving people thing. I've heard."
"Bit of a crush," Potter countered.
Snape gave this due consideration. "I'd just use you for sex and trample on your tender emotions," he concluded.
Potter appeared to be giving this equal consideration. "That would be all right. I've had them trampled on before." He shifted closer to Snape, close enough that their upraised knees brushed.
He looked over in astonishment. "You aren't seriously suggesting--" The way Potter's mouth found his suggested he was. "Death could appear at any moment," protested Snape, though even he realized having a lapful of Potter somewhat weakened the impact of his protest.
"That could happen even if we weren't in Paradise," pointed out Potter, sliding his hands up the front of Snape's shirt, in obvious expectation of another kiss.
Damn the boy for choosing this moment to use his brain. He didn't like appearing discombobulated in front of the young man so he gave into the urge to kiss him again. He was sure no fruit in Paradise tasted as good as Potter's mouth. Then all thoughts of things sacred gave over to thoughts more profoundly profane. Potter was clinging to him, moaning against his mouth, chest flush with Severus's, so close he could feel the shape of his cock against his own.
Snape literally felt the earth move--the ground around them shifted, stretching out to form a platform--easily the length of one reclining body and as wide as two.
"Even Paradise wants us to--" Leaves fluttered down as if dropped by swallow's wings, twisting, quilting themselves into a blanket while the lush grass rippled and meshed into sinfully soft sheets below them. "To, to--"
Since Potter seemed to have developed a stutter, Snape distracted him, tugging the shirt over his head. "This has less to do with the desires of the divine," he speculated, "and more to do with nature-ours." He'd forgotten for a moment that he was no longer had the protection of a row of buttons but a simple cotton shirt which Potter had already grasped. Obediently he lifted his arms only to hear Potter's chuckle as it came away.
"This is a fig leaf, isn't it?" the young man said, before tossing the shirt off their earthly bed.
"Apparently Death has a sense of humor," said Snape, more grateful that the chuckle had been over his clothes than at the sight of him unclothed.
"I guess he had to," said Potter, "in his line of work."
Snape silenced him with another kiss. "I don't want to talk about Death," he said, shivering at the sudden breeze that chilled them, sending them both diving under the covers. Mutely Potter nodded, confirming his own vitality by kissing Snape again. Snape dragged his hands down the sides of Potter's face, his jaw smoother, he suspected, because neither of them had had to shave since they d-arrived. He didn't want to think about what that meant, didn't want to think about anything but the way Potter felt rutting against him.
"You saved me," he said, his voice more breathy than usual. Potter nodded again, as if doing something so ridiculous made perfect sense.
"Knew you wouldn't save yourself," Potter said, heat that had nothing to do with arousal creeping up his neck. "Couldn't let you--"
"Shh," Snape said, enforcing their earlier vow of silence by dragging his fingers across Potter's mouth. Potter--Harry moaned.
"Just say you'll stay with me," Harry said, nuzzling his fingertips. He'd lost his glasses somewhere during the bed's shifting and the progression of kisses.
It was a foolish promise but surely not as foolish as wrapping around himself and sharing more kisses that tasted of the heaven they had been denied. His doubt must have been reflected on his features because Harry fondled his lower lips just as Snape had done to him. "No matter what happens," he agreed, "I'll stay with you. As long as you want me." It was just as solemn as a vow, and despite both of them being naked from the waist up, drew a nod from Harry. "We appear to be in this together," he acknowledged then there was nothing to do but seal such a promise with a kiss.
It was both heaven and hell to feel Harry's cock against his own when they were entwined as closely as grape vines, both still in their trousers. "Lean back and let me--" he began, but it seemed Harry didn't need to know what Snape needed to do. Arms still locked around Snape's neck, he rolled backwards, pulling Snape on top of him. It wasn't what Snape had been planning but it felt so bloody good he simply covered Harry's body with his own.
Harry's wail would have made the leaves overhead flutter if either of them had been looking. "Need--need--need," Harry cried.
Snape knew perfectly well what he needed but he wanted Harry's trousers off when he gave it to him. He peeled them away, certain their helpful bush would not mind the hurried mistreatment. Harry was still chanting but Snape only half-heard, focusing instead on the ripe plum of Harry's cock. It begged to be savored and Snape indulged himself for a moment before Harry's tremors sent his mouth plunging down. Harry bucked and wailed, coming like a teenager with his first--
Well.
Snape could grant that Harry had been a bit busy this last year and sex had probably been the last thing on his mind.
He kept his mouth around Harry's cock, gentling him with hands on his thighs, Harry's breathing still rapid, carrying over even the soft rush of water over stones from the river just beyond their bower. Finally he let go, once it was very nearly soft enough to slip out on its own. Harry was watching him when Snape looked up, and even from here he could see a bit of wariness in his gaze.
Perhaps gratitude was beyond the whelp but surely--
"I've wanted that for so long," Harry said, still panting. "Well, not the coming too hard part, but the other--"
"The blow job part?" Snape asked, watching Harry's blush deepen in interesting places.
"The...making love part," Harry insisted, with the adamancy of the young.
"Lusted over your professor in detention, have you?" Snape countered, quite willing to believe Harry had been horny enough to beg for it, even from Snape.
"Complaining?" replied Harry with sultriness that made Snape's still-hopeful prick twitch.
Never one to accept any sort of gift without examining the ramifications Snape eyed him dubiously. "You aren't seriously...offering?"
Harry wiggled upon the leafy bed. "Offering? I'm begging."
Possibilities, undreamed of and yet not unimagined found purchase and took root, blossoming in this place where even the air seemed fertile. Yet for all the bursting fruit and pure clean water, there was one thing he would need to accept Harry's offer Snape didn't think they could duplicate in fruit.
"I'll--I'll hurt you," he said, with the desperate urge to not even speak of the possibility. There were other ways; they would be enough.
A tendril of some plant tangled beneath their elevated bed detached itself and wove up, like a snake being charmed out of its basket. Both Snape and Harry turned to look at it, as the tip cracked and began to drip a viscous clear fluid.
"Okay, now that's kind of weird," Harry said, reaching over to rub the fluid between his fingers. "But I bet it will work."
When Snape tested it on his own fingers--and tongue to be doubly certain--it certainly felt like as fine and slick as anything he could brew. The verdict was sealed when Harry sat up, his legs still spread to either side of Snape's, and tasted it from Snape's mouth.
"Tastes a bit like apples," he said, laying a tentative hand over the fronts of Snape's trousers. "You can't say no now. Please don't say no." Snape didn't think no was even in his vocabulary any longer. His permission was a silent nod, but it was all Harry needed. He had Snape's trousers undone within seconds and Snape himself undone a moment later. Clearly Harry knew how to stroke a cock even if the only one he'd practiced on had been his own.
Harry rolled back down willingly, groaning his approval while Snape gathered the slippery stuff on two fingers. When Harry's cock stirred and rose at the attention Snape bent forward to encourage such youthful resilience with his tongue. He looked for and got permission before they went further than he could undo. Harry, it seemed, did not wish to hold back. With more confidence than he'd ever shown in class, he lifted his legs around Snape's waist.
Nothing seemed to stir around them, no leaf or vine, nor cold breeze nor whisper of a serpent's passing. Snape caught and held Harry's gaze, gaining the last permission he could, guiding himself inside Harry's arse as slowly as he could manage. Harry fit around him like an apple around a core, eager and not about to let Snape go as slowly as this, urging with his legs, his arse, and those breathlessly needy moans. Almost shyly he reached for his own cock, as if uncertain whether it was proper to get hard again. Snape managed a nod and Harry's hand began moving.
Snape had never seen such wanting, not directed toward himself and the sheer bliss of it nearly took him over the edge. With a groan he held on, waiting until Harry's own bliss caught up to him, pulling Snape in, urging him to share it.
In a word, Paradise.
He had to close his eyes lest the joy of it be too much to contain in the sensitized vessel of his body. Harry's eyes were wide open, however, when Snape's shudders had ceased. He rubbed a foot along Snape's back as though it had been all right--perhaps even better than that--maybe even really good.
"That was brilliant," Harry said.
All right, better than really good.
Then an odd expression crossed Harry's features. Snape shifted around, following the gaze that had suddenly shifted upward. Or, in this case, tree-ward. Snape saw what had commanded Harry's attention at once. The tree above them was covered in fruit, red and ripe and surely not there when he had discovered Harry at the foot of the tree. The branches were so heavily laden they bent low over their heads. Harry reached up and one of the glossy fruits fell right into his hand. Smiling in delight, he turned, holding out the prize to Snape.
Only to be halted by a discreet but nevertheless quite firm cough.
"You can't eat the fruit," Death said.
Snape and Harry were both naked, the fruit clenched in one hand as they stared. Death was no longer alone. A snake twined up the scythe, its head resting on the arched curve of the blade. At Death's pronouncement it swept its head from side to side as if in agreement.
Harry looked at the apple in his hand. "But we've eaten lots of fruit here," he argued, before Snape could warn against arguing with Death.
One bony finger pointed up, into the red-dotted canopy of leaves. "Not from this tree." Death shrugged. "I know, crazy, right? But it's a rule." Death made a noise that might have been a chuckle or the cry of a soul in torment. "The boss is a little weird about this tree."
In what was clearly meant to be an undertone, Harry said, "Death has a boss?'' But he lowered the hand holding the apple.
"Looks like it's time to send you back," intoned Death. The snake's tail was undulating slightly against the scythe. Dread clenched at Snape. He couldn't decide whether he was glad to have the memory of being with Harry to comfort him in the afterlife or sorry that he would have only the single memory of it to torment him for eternity.
"What? No," Harry said. "I'm not going back." His fingers clutched Snape's arm as if to pin him to the makeshift bed.
"You must," Snape insisted, though he knew Harry would ignore this admittedly half-hearted attempt to persuade him.
"I won't," Harry said, pulling himself up as if he could take on Death itself, naked and wandless. Snape wondered how his late master had ever thought he'd stood a chance. "We go together, we agreed."
"Of course," Death said, settling on the edge of the bed. Luckily it was a large bed. The snake still peered at them from the top of the scythe. "You'd be denying him Paradise."
"What? No," Snape said, taken aback. "I'm not going to heaven, I'm going to--"
The snake shook its head. "Not according to my records," Death said, tilting the cowl toward Harry, "And yes, Death has records."
"Absolutely not," said Snape, more forcefully. If there was one thing he could do with the gift he'd been given, it was ensure Harry's affection survived to be gifted on a worthier soul than his.
Death made a non-committal noise, or what probably was one even though it sounded like bats swooping over a graveyard. "It does have to be your choice, of course, but you could stay here..."
Both Harry and Snape looked at the end of the bed. "Here?" Snape asked, looking toward the snake. Even though snakes had no eyelids, this one seemed to wink at him.
Death pretended to examine its nails, though on the fleshless white hand the gesture looked a bit more contrived. "Sure, lots to eat as long as you don't miss roast chicken, lots of room, helpful bushes..." The large shoulders heaved into a sigh. "Of course Harry has to go back. It's not even close to his time yet and destroying the balance of souls in the universe could lead to rending of the universe sorts of cosmic cataclysm. Really don't want to get into that." The snake shuddered.
Harry was looking daggers at him. "You promised," he said with that stubborn set of his chin that came from neither his mouth or father but probably some distant Evans or Potter that had been difficult against impossible odds.
"Those aren't the only two options," came a clear female voice. Snape's chin jerked up, away from the all too enticing sight of that stubborn chin and at Lily, who stood just past Death's knees. "Tell him."
"Tell me what?" Snape asked, looking between Death and Lily. The snake, he noticed, had vanished.
"Who are you talking to?" Harry asked, blinking in his confusion but no less stubborn.
Snape turned to look at him. "Don't you see--"
But it was Death who answered. "He doesn't. He only sees the other form."
"The snake?" asked Snape, while Harry was looking more determinedly stubborn.
"Of course I see the snake," he insisted, "What I want to know is--"
Snape clapped a hand over his mouth. "Tell me what?" he asked again.
Heaving a great sigh, Death said, "I can, since Harry, and-and...others--interdicted for you, send you both back. You weren't precisely dead, after all."
In his arms, Harry ceased his struggles and listened to what Death was saying. Only it was Lily who spoke up. "You can stay here, or go on. Or go back. Death gets your soul either way."
Sepulchral tones echoed from the depths of the cowl. "The when only matters to you, not to me."
Pursing his lips against Snape's hand, Harry finally got him to slide his fingers away. "Wait, you aren't going to send him back to just before he almost died, are you? With his throat--" He swallowed hard and pointedly did not look at Snape's bare throat.
"You have a very suspicious mind," Death said, managing to sound hurt and impressed all at once.
Harry shrugged, "Well, are you?" Snape had never seen him back down and he was not disappointed this time. "If you do, I'll-I'll do something drastic. Your boss won't like that after all the trouble you've been through about this."
Lily had gasped, holding her hand to her chest. She looked at Death, who said, "I daresay you're right." The cowl fluttered, moving between them. "You have to choose, Severus."
Snape looked at Lily, who looked a bit scaly in the light. And at Potter who looked as fierce and brave as ever. "I think I already have."
"Hang on, then," Death said, getting to its feet. The white hand tightened on the scythe. "I'm not used to sending anyone back." He seemed to find this quite amusing.
"Wait," Snape said, nodding toward their clothes. "May we at least get dressed first?"
Death, still sounding quite amused, shifted the scythe and they were back in the Muggle clothing Death had provided before, right down to the fig leaf. "Don't fancy playing Adam and Steve when I send you back to Hogwarts?"
"Back to--"
But the scythe was moving again and with a whoosh, the tree and the leafy bed and Lily disappeared around them. Harry was hanging onto him, arms clinging to his neck as air rushed around them as though they'd been swept up in a Portkey.
They materialized in the Great Hall-though from an angle Snape had never seen it from before. He realized they were standing atop the teacher's table, Harry's arms still wrapped around him. He realized too that he was not bleeding from a fatal snakebite to the throat and that their arrival had been met by a dreadful silence, then the distinctive noise of dozens of wands being drawn. Leave it to Death to force them to make an entrance.
Then whispers and soft cries echoed across the hall, of "Potter" and "Harry" and once even his own name in a tone softer than a whisper. It looked as though a terrible battle had raged through the school, which, Snape supposed, there had.
Something was pressing into his back, something clutched tightly in Harry's hand. The apple, he realized with a start. Harry had never let go of it. Slowly he slid his arms from around Snape's waist, though he kept one arm loosely on his hip as a veritable flock of his friends approached.
"We made it," Harry said, grinning up at him.
Instead of chastising him for his atrocious penchant for stating the obvious, Snape thought it more prudent to step away from Harry's hand on his hip, since, to judge by the expressions on not a few Gryffindor faces, Harry was about to be protected, whether he wished it or not.
Harry's glasses too had made it. He blinked at Snape through them, resisting Snape's efforts to pull out of his arms. "It looks like just a few minutes after I left," Harry said, glancing around the Great Hall, "I told them all what you did, what a hero you were-are."
Even the Malfoys had got to their feet, moving together as if afraid to let a family member wander off alone, heading toward the head table. Behind them, Minerva, looking dour and contrite all at once, too started toward the front of the Great Hall.
"I'm not a hero," Snape countered, feeling it might be too late to persuade Harry to let go of him. He did not even seem to be able to protest when Harry kissed him in full view of the entire hall.
"You are to me," insisted Harry. Mischief lit his eyes. "I know, crazy, right?" More whispers were building up around them but Harry hadn't let go. "You gave up Paradise for me."
Snape merely held on, as they prepared to face the gauntlet of Harry's friends and their friendly suspicion. He didn't bother to point out that no place was Paradise without Harry in it.