December 12
2:29 am

"Crucio." The command was soft, like his lover's hands.
The pain flared up through his veins, a spike of driving metal and magic that pulled an unwilling gasp through his lips. It was harder than ever to remain upright.
He stood against the onslaught in a dreadful paroxysm that made the blood trickle from his ears and eyes, and the corners of his mouth. The metallic scent and taste was enough to remind him of things he had thought forgotten.
His glasses slipped from his face in one particularly powerful wrench of his body.
The beautiful monster stood above him. Voldemort smiled and a red light played in his eyes. He licked the side of the wand and then his lips, careful to maintain the spell. When his pink tongue came into contact with the wand, magic wracked his body with its needles. Voldemort shivered and broke contact, only to once more seek the edge.
And he would not give in.
Voldemort stood before him smelling of dried flowers and nettle wine.
He looked into tearing eyes and finally, with a sigh of regret, ended the spell.
"I have waited for you."
His mouth was too clotted with blood to respond.
"Goodbye, Harry. I will miss you."
Voldemort raised the wand.
"Avada Kedavra."
A green glare flashed across his eyes and in the moments between falling, a triumphant smile passed across his lips and was arrested there by the halt of blood and breath.
He died looking at the sky.


December 4
1:13 a.m.
One week ago

Severus watched his lover sleep.
He had never been a sentimental man, but damn him if the moonlight didn't gloss off Harry's skin and send him shivering with lust.
He wanted to lick the starlight off his lips.
Severus traced the outline of the lightning scar with his eyes. The boy was scarred and so beautiful. He bit back a sigh; he was no melodramatic, bleeding-heart fool. And he had long ago stopped hating himself for loving Harry.
He stared into the quiet room laced with shadows, trying to forget the red eyes that had pinned him to the ground three days before. He had not told Harry anything of what he'd seen, or felt, but he still ached when he moved. The cruciatus curse was never an easy thing to endure, no matter how many times he was burned by it.
The meetings were getting more frequent as the war progressed. Voldemort knew-- had always known-- that he was Dumbledore's spy. He was no fool. And yet, he summoned Snape to him.
Snape ran his fingers along the sheets, imagining them red with blood. One night soon, he would leave Harry in this bed, twined around these sheets, alone.
He looked at Harry again and allowed himself the barest of smiles. "Everything has a loophole," he said softly. "Even magic." His slender fingers sought the boy's cheek and ghosted over it, denying himself its touch.
Three weeks ago, he had thought of such a loop-hole.
Shaking with dread and hearing Voldemort's silken voice still in his ears, Severus had thought to save Harry. He had spent days locked in his dungeon, ignoring Dumbledore's kind entreaties and Harry's raucous shouting from behind the barred door. He had tended his own wounds from the last meeting, and spent his time thinking. Things were coming frighteningly to a head; Voldemort would strike soon, and Harry Potter would die.
And that was when the solution had come, as suddenly and as ruthlessly as Dementors in the night. Snape had not laughed at the realization, as a less self-possessed man would have, but his lips tightened and his knuckles turned white as he clenched his hands. The answer had been before him all along.
He had begun from that moment to prepare. His eyes had glinted with a fierce, calculating light as he sliced ingredients and weighed them in his silver scales, his cauldron seething with heat in the corner.
When he had emerged a week later, pale but with that scorching look about his sharp face, and Harry had flown at him, cursing and crying and hitting, he knew he had done the right thing. After Harry had sobbed until his throat was raw and his voice ran between a whimper and a snarl-- after he had flailed his small hands against his lover's chest until they were soft as bruised peaches-- they fell into Snape's rooms and onto his bed. The springs were silent and accepted their bodies without comment. Harry had been reckless and forceful that night, tearing off Snape's potion-stained robes and moaning against his mouth.
"You bastard," he had said over and over as they made love. "You fucking bastard." Tears had fallen hot against Snape's back, rolling across scars and tender, magic-healed flesh.
After Harry had fallen asleep, Severus had whispered something into the cold air. The ceiling had begun to glitter with stars and the inky black of the night sky. Light shone off Harry's sweaty hair.
Snape had learned the trick years ago, when he had been a little boy and had been locked for weeks in his room. He smiled darkly to himself; students never questioned who magicked the sky in the Great Hall. They were satisfied merely knowing it was there. Like so many things.
"I love you." The voice broke the past apart. It was young and drowsy, as if pulled from the bottom of a wineglass. "Why have you been watching me?"
Severus' memories faded, as if trickling from a broken Pensieve. "Because I thought you were sleeping," he answered reproachfully.
"You should know better."
"Irascible child."
A yawn escaped Harry's mouth and Severus watched those soft lips catch the starlight.
"Go back to sleep."
"I was never asleep."
"Which would have been indicated, I suppose, by those dreadful snorting noises you were making."
"I don't snore!"
"I beg to differ. I was awake and ought to know."
"Well, but you love me anyway."
Snape muttered something.
There was a moment of quiet. Finally, Harry spoke, his voice barely audible. "You never say you love me. You've never told me."
Severus remained silent and chose instead to stare at the sky he had made; he admired the way the stars eased into the black canopy above the bed. If the boy hadn't figured out that he loved him by now, it was no use putting it to words.
"Do you love me?" Harry's voice was low and very, very vulnerable.
"You are a foolish child," Severus said and rolled over, his back to Harry. "A foolish boy who needs words. Words always ring hollow." It is what we do that matters, he wanted to say, but stopped himself. He had already given too much away.
Harry covered himself with the sheets and let his tears spill onto the pillow. He refused to wipe them away. "Goodnight, Severus."
"Goodnight, Harry." I love you.


December 9
11:43 a.m.

A hand snaked out and grabbed Harry's robes. A quick yank, and Harry found himself tumbling sideways into a corridor, his books sliding across the floor.
When he looked up, Draco was there.
The blond cast a quick silencing spell over the hall.
"Wh-?" Harry scrambled off the cold stone floor to face his nemesis. "Draco, what the hell are you-"
"Look, Potter," Draco interrupted sharply. "I have to talk to you." The superior smirk was gone and Harry did not understand the look that had replaced it.
"If you're planning on ambush-" Harry began again, only to be silenced by Draco's open hand as it struck his face.
A thin line of blood fell from his lip.
"Potter. Listen to me. They are going to kill Professor Snape."
Harry's arm stopped mid-swing. "What?"
"I said They are going to kill Professor Snape," Draco hissed.
"They?"
"Who do you think, Potter?" Draco snapped.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because he wouldn't listen to me."
"You spoke with him?"
"Of course. I am not here talking to you by choice. You were my last option."
"Why do you suddenly care?"
Draco pinned him with a withering glare. "Well, I won't tell you." His face flushed, and suddenly Harry understood.
"When are They planning on-on killing him?" he asked quietly.
"At the next meeting. At-- at my home. At the manor." Draco shoved Harry against the wall, his hands shaking. "You can't let him go, Potter. You have to stop him." He bit his lip until a drop of red ran across the pale skin. "He didn't listen to me. Or, he doesn't care. But you have to stop him." His lips parted in a snarl. "Save him, Potter, or how I have tortured you in the past will be nothing compared to what I will do."
"I don't need further incentive, Malfoy. If he dies, I won't care if you kill me."
Draco stared at Harry for a heavy moment, his breath hot against Harry's cheek. Finally, he stepped back, the heels of his boots snapping against the floor.
"See that you stop him, then, Potter," he said, his voice rough and raw as it echoed off the stone walls.
He left Harry alone in the hallway, still pressed against the wall, trembling until his legs gave out and he sank to the floor.


December 10
4:39 pm

"Why Arthur Weasley?"
"Just get him, Albus. Please. It's imperative that I speak with him, and soon."
Albus Dumbledore sighed. "Very well, Severus. I will owl him immediately and request that he come to Hogwarts tomorrow morning at ten."
"His sons are not to know the nature of my request. I don't want word getting out about this to..." He ran a hand through his hair. "Harry is a smart boy, it pains me to admit. He would figure it out."
Albus nodded and smoothed out the folds in his dark red robes. "I will swear Arthur to secrecy."
"Thank you, Headmaster."
Severus stood and was halfway to the door before Albus spoke, his voice almost overshadowed by the ticking of the grandfather clock in the back room. "Severus, wait..." For once, the old man was overcome by emotion. The breath was cloying and thick in his throat. "I know that you have chosen your path. Yet, there must be another way."
Severus crossed the room in three long strides that sent his black robes swirling. "There isn't enough time, even if there were another way! Don't you think I wish that the potion mixing in my cauldron, in my room..." He trailed off and bit back his tirade. Albus was no child to lecture, no Neville Longbottom to torture. "I'm leaving. There are things I must attend to."
With a slight incline of his head and a "good day, Headmaster," Snape swept from the room.
Albus stared after him wistfully, his vision blurring in and out until the world looked like a painting done in watercolors. He turned towards the blue and white gumdrop tin he kept on his desk.
Yet, try though he might, he could not see to open it.


December 12
1:47am

"Severus?"
"Potter."
"Severus, you've got to promise me."
"I will do no such thing."
"But Draco..."
"Forget him. He is a fool. Like father, like son."
Harry's eyes narrowed. "His father isn't stupid." He turned to face his lover. "What are you hiding?"
Snape silently berated himself for his false step. Under normal circumstances, he would have been painting circles around Harry. "Harry, matters are escalating. You do not understand." They will kill you this time, he wanted to hiss into the boy's face. But no sound came; he was too weary to lend strength to the exclamation.
"Make me understand."
"Go to sleep."
"No! Something's going on, and you aren't telling me what it is!"
"Harry..." Severus was so tired, too tired to fight, for once in his life. Earlier that day, after his meeting with Arthur Weasley, he had gathered his possessions together and marked what was to be done with each item. He had never felt more acutely than at that moment how few and how shallow were his relationships. Most of his things now bore a scrap of paper with Harry's name scrawled across the curling sheet.
After his few possessions had been labeled and folded away into small chests, Severus had gone to his office to straighten his affairs. He had opened his potions cabinet and stood breathing in its musty fragrance mingled with herbs and the odor of cedar. A small ruby bottle had gleamed at him from its place on the front shelf, and he had slid it into his pocket for later use. He had then set about organizing and polishing the already immaculately kept potions, his hands lingering on each jar and vial with a touch deeper than any he had ever used.
He had gone to his desk, then, and marshaled his thoughts into writing a letter. It had taken no longer than a minute; he had known for some time what he was going to say, and was not about to let matters dissolve into sentimental mush and proclamations of adoration. He placed the letter into an envelope and carefully penned Harry's name across its surface.
He spent seven minutes attending to the potion bubbling in his personal laboratory, carefully stirring and adding a few ingredients. He stared at it until his black eyes were cold and in-tune with each change of the darkening liquid. It would be ready the next day.
"Severus?" That voice again. A child's voice, sixteen and sweet still.
Severus shook his head. "What?"
"I was talking to you."
"And I was ignoring you."
Two green eyes were staring at him when he opened his eyes. Green into the black of night; colors of Slytherin, minus the silver and grey of Draco's eyes.
"Something is going on and I want to know."
He picked at a stray hair that had fallen onto Harry's nightshirt. "Sleep, Harry. We'll talk about it tomorrow." It was a lie, but he had always been good at such things.
"But-"
Snape reached for the bottle at his bedside table, shining white in the starlight. He looked towards the ceiling, barely visible beyond the magicked sky, before pouring the cool water into a glass.
"Here, Harry. The water will help you relax. It always does."
Harry sat up and rested his head against Snape's shoulder. He accepted the glass of water and took a sip before offering it to Severus.
Severus shook his head. "You finish it. I detest eating or drinking before bed."
"I know. Just thought I'd ask." He wiped his mouth and handed the glass back to Severus.
As they lay down again, Harry snuggled closer to his lover. He draped an arm around Snape and felt his chest rise and fall. A sudden weariness overtook him and he yawned.
Severus moved away from Harry and, at the muffled protest, said, "No, not like that." He changed their positions until his arms were around the boy and his body curled around him. "I want to hold you until you fall asleep."
Harry wondered at the sudden affection, but his eyes were too heavy to open. "Do you love me?" he asked, voice slurred and drowsy.
Severus smoothed back the boy's black hair with his thin, careful fingers. As sleep overtook Harry on a wide, ruby wave, Severus brushed his lips against the boy's cheek and whispered, "Foolish boy. I've loved you all along."


2:03 am

Severus carefully untangled himself from Harry.
Now that the boy was asleep, his task would not be so difficult. He would have loathed it if Harry had been sobbing and clinging to him like a mewling kitten as he tried to leave. He did not think he would have been able to go; no, he would have climbed back into bed and kissed away the hot tears and made love to him again, until they had both fallen asleep satiated and comforted. He would have...but no. It was no use entertaining such futile daydreams.
He stood at the side of the bed and looked down at Harry. The starlight was glancing off his hair and the dim glow of the moon lit half his face and cast the other half in shadow.
Severus picked up his wand from the bedside table and whispered "Caelum Proprius." A glimmer of magic wound itself about the ceiling and coiled there for a moment before disappearing. Now, the magicked sky would stay forever inside their chambers, brushing their canopied bed. He wanted Harry to wake to it, since he would no longer be there.
He drew the letter he had written from a drawer in his closet and put it next to the vial that had held the ruby potion, the bottle, and the water glass. Harry would recognize the vial for the sleeping draught that it was and know that Snape had helped to ease him off to sleep. Severus wanted to make sure Harry realized that there was nothing he could have done to prevent him from leaving.
Snape held his wand towards a corner of their bedroom, hidden by darkness, and commanded, "Accio Recordatio!" An object detached itself from the wall and floated to his hand. He turned the Muggle device until its red light was facing him and looked into the circular lens, as Arthur Weasley had instructed him. "Harry, I expect you will know how to use this confounded contraption and make it regurgitate the images I have saved for you. Damned if I know whether or not it saved anything at all. The images are, as you will find, of tonight. I want you to have something of ours. And do not snicker at me, Mr. Potter, I am not turning into a blubbering, sentimental idiot." Snape paused and adjusted the device so that he could glare down into it. "I do not want you to mope. You will miss me, I suspect, for a while. But I have given the Headmaster strict instructions not to let you mope about our chamber like a little lightning-bolted rain cloud for longer than you must." He looked to the side for a minute at Harry as he slept. "Well, that's all I intended to say. Where I will be..." Snape looked ill as he tried to force out unwilling words past lips that had rarely spoken in kindness or unguarded honesty, "I suppose-- I suppose I shall be missing you, too. Goodnight, Mr. Potter." Then, cautiously, as if dealing with one of Hagrid's monsters, Snape pressed the 'stop recording' button on the Muggle device. The red light blinked out like a dead firefly. Severus opened its hinged mouth and removed what Arthur Weasley had excitedly called a "tape" and placed it, along with his wand, atop the letter for Harry. The Muggle device he tossed into the chest he had set aside for Harry, along with a few other items that he had left up in his chambers to pretend that nothing was amiss.
Without another look at the sleeping boy on his bed, Severus left their chambers and closed the heavy door behind him.


2:16 am

Severus ladled the simmering potion into a clean beaker. He stirred it for a moment and then dropped in the final ingredient. The sliver drifted towards the surface and broke it with the strength of a feather on the breeze.
He shook his head and allowed himself a triumphant smile as the potion turned Gryffindor red. He had maintained the hypothesis that such a colour would be the result.
Severus looked fondly about his laboratory, at the cauldron in the corner, the cabinet of supplies, and the beautiful mahogany desk with its high-backed chair.
Then, potion in hand, he went to see the Headmaster.


2:19 am

Minerva McGonagall answered the door.
Snape's eyebrow twitched upward.
"I..." Minerva looked almost sad. Her lips puckered in consternation. "I wanted to be here to give this to you. It is, as you will see, flawlessly done. As requested." She held out an eleven-inch wand.
Snape inspected it, before grudgingly nodding his agreement. "It will do."
Minerva hovered in the doorway. Her worry was almost a separate presence in the room.
"Minerva, do you mind?" Severus snapped.
"What?" She looked confused for a moment, caught in the act of trying to subtly wring her hands. "Oh, sorry, Severus." She moved aside and let him enter.
"Aggravating woman," he muttered.
Albus Dumbledore was standing a few feet behind Minerva. Snape almost bowled him over as he stalked into the room.
"Everything is ready, Headmaster," Severus said. He pointed to the beaker in his right hand. "If I may..."
"Yes, Severus, go ahead." Dumbledore was crushing his velvet robes in his hands as he nodded towards the back room, his private chambers. His blue eyes were as lackluster as Snape had ever seen them. "And Severus? Preparations have been made for...after. We will join you at the Manor, once you have completed your task."
Severus sneered at the heavy pall that had seemed to drape about the room, boxing up his emotions with the bitterness and anger he had cultivated since boyhood. It came to him naturally now, when he most needed it. "Would the two of you dispense with the theatrics, if you don't mind," he said harshly, his voice matching his sneering face.
Albus straightened then, and released his crinkled robes. He seemed to understand what Severus was trying to do. He resolved to cloister away his feelings, if only for the time that Severus was with him. "You are right, Severus. I am sorry."
"Yes. As am I," Minerva added, looking less than sorry. She made an attempt to smile, but as it did not come easily to her, her efforts fell flat. She busied herself instead with looking at a particularly odd portrait the Headmaster had on his walls and tried to will away the moisture forming at the corners of her eyes.
Severus rolled his eyes and disappeared into the Headmaster's bedchamber. The grandfather clock ticked loudly at him as he downed the potion in a gulp. Distantly, he wondered how Albus slept with that racket.
And then, abruptly, all thoughts were torn out of his head as the potion took effect.
Biting back a growl of pain, he fell to his knees, hands wrapped around himself as he writhed, willing himself not to throw up on the Headmaster's carpet. He felt a scalding sensation in each limb as the potion seared its way across his body and it tightened and snapped like a burning bridge falling away.
It was much, much worse than he had anticipated.

When he came back into the main room, two pairs of eyes snapped to his face.
It had taken five minutes for the potion to seep across his bloodstream; Severus had counted the strokes of that damnable grandfather clock as he convulsed on the floor.
"...Severus." Albus gave up wrestling with his traitorous tears and let them spill down his face. They splashed into his beard and disappeared.
Minerva was speechless for once. She turned her back to him and began studying the painting again with tearful determination.
"Goodbye, Minerva," Severus said shortly, without drawing near her. He wanted no part in hugging or touch.
"Goodbye, Severus." She kept her back to him.
"Albus," Snape said, looking up at the old man, as if about to ask him for the time. "Goodbye."
The Headmaster sighed deeply and closed his eyes for a moment. Tears dripped from their sides. He knew Severus did not want to make this any more sentimental than it already was. His hands slid to his desk and lighted on a blue and white tin. It was all he could do. "Gumdrop?" he asked softly.
A smile flickered across the younger man's face. "Thank you." He took a candy and popped it into his mouth.
Before Albus could close the lid, Severus was gone, his shadow skimming the wall and shrinking until it faded completely from view.


2:24 am

Harry's eyes snapped open.
He stared around the room, disoriented. He had been dragged from sleep by the strangest sensation that he could no more identify than recall.
He blinked and rolled over to ask Severus if he had felt something.
The bed was empty.
Harry, now fully awake, sat up and thrust aside the covers. Severus only left in the middle of the night if he had been summoned.
Hands twitching with worry, Harry cast about in the dim light for his glasses. They brushed up against something cold before falling upon the round wire frames.
Harry shoved on his glasses and got out of bed. "Severus?" he called, then louder, "Severus?" The panic rose in his throat like vomit.
Through the dim light of Severus' magic stars, he saw a tape sitting on the bedside table. Beneath it was an envelope with his name on it, and Severus' wand. A bottle of half-drunk water, a vial, and an empty glass lay off to the side.
Shaking with horror, Harry pushed the tape and wand aside and tore open the envelope. It was written in the tight, orderly script that used to be the chief characteristic of his returned homework assignments.

Harry,
Know that what I did was for all, not only you.
If this atrophies the guilt that I know you will level
needlessly upon yourself, then let it stand
as my reason.
I have begun this end.
I know you will finish it well.
Severus

Harry crushed the letter against his chest, terribly confused and near the point of panicking. Obviously, Severus did-- was doing-- would do-- something that would prevent him from coming back. The water bottle and the vial slid into his mind. The letter smashed in one hand, he picked up the vial and squinted at the label. "Somnus" was written in Severus' precise handwriting across the front.
In those two syllables, Harry understood.
Rage flared up in his chest and he hurled the vial at the wall. Severus had drugged him so that he could slip out and face Voldemort in some stupid scheme that would probably wind up getting him killed! He had gone on a fucking suicide mission and had left Harry Potter, the Boy Who Always Fucking Lived behind.
Snatching his wand from the drawer, Harry tore out of the room.