May Day Mayday.

[pekeleke]

Title: May Day Mayday.

Rating : NC-17.

Author: pekeleke

Word Count: 21181

Warnings: Er... Humour. Loads of it. Maybe too much? And first time bottoming bottom-Snape. Sorry, but I like it and I promised my friend Barb to write her some proper action in my next one-shot... ;D

Disclaimer: Don't own these characters. No money is being made out of this work.

A/N: After taking a bit of flak over the accuracy of the rite I described in my Samhain-related piece, I thought I'd add this A/N here in the hope of saving myself unnecessary stress:
Several widely accepted practices and traditional folkloric legends associated with the Ancient Fire Festival Of Beltane have been greatly harmed during the creation of this particular story. I don't claim to be an expert on the rites of Beltane and I'm not trying to portray them in a formal, authentic way, so if you happen to have some sort of deep emotional attachment to Beltane as a festival, then you are better off never reading this fic.

Summary: Severus Snape hates Mondays with a passion. Mondays are horrible days. They should be banned from all calendars forever. This one, though... this one takes the cake. And eats it.

May Day Mayday.

If there was something that Severus Snape despised more than Mondays it was having Sibyl Trelawney break into booming-toned prophecy mode at the breakfast table and focus the unwelcome visions of her much boasted about 'third eye' upon his person, which had begun to happen with truly irritating regularity since he'd followed the ridiculous instinct of coming to her aid when she was dimwitted enough to walk into the battlements of the Divination Tower in the middle of a storm and had been directly struck by a lighting bolt to the head.

He'd saved the life of the bloody woman and now she followed him around like a half-charred puppy, claiming to have 'seen' the inside of his soul and attempting to predict his future to the amusement of anyone who happened to be within hearing range.

In the last couple of months he'd been forewarned a million times that his supposed reluctance to 'embrace' his 'One True Love' was the cause of his abysmal luck. She now came down to breakfast every single day and delighted the masses with new and increasingly bizarre predictions along the lines of:
“Your stubborn refusal to share a coffee with your One True Love will lead the cosmic energy to punish your foolishness by making Mr. Loosnz, from Ravenclaw, blow up your classroom after lunch, Severus Snape!”

Now the thing that drove him absolutely spare was the fact that, no matter how utterly ridiculous her increasingly-deranged predictions turned out to be, it seemed that the gleeful willingness of the children to actually see them all become humiliating reality was aiding the accuracy of her claims to the level that, if she predicted that Mr Loosnz was going to blow up his classroom after lunch, then such thing would eventually happen, even if Mr Loosnz had no actual potions class on that particular day and, therefore, had absolutely no reason to be prowling the corridor outside said classroom at three thirty in the afternoon.

It had taken Severus the best part of last week to fix that particular mess and, after spending five long days teaching in a barely adequate temporary lab-room that lacked his state of the art ventilation system, he was more than ready to bite her head off if that bloody woman dared to predict another awful disaster happening to his beloved classroom this morn.

He'd been hardly sleeping lately, due to the fact that he'd been forced to replace, re-store and consequently re-sort most of his ruined ingredients and he was in such foul mood that even his mirror had kept quiet when he glared at his image after his shower in order to cast his Shaving Charm.

The usually depressingly scornful little bugger had taken one look at Severus' expression and obviously opted for the safety of not saying a single word about the awful dark circles that marred the pale skin under his eyes for fear that his owner might finally go ahead and curse it into little shards, never bothering to repair it after the massacre...

Staring at himself in the thankfully silent mirror Severus sighed wearily. He felt -and obviously looked- like absolute shit. He'd opened his eyes after what felt like only two hours of sleep, drank a double dose of headache remedy that would invariably cause him Heartburn before noon and was now seriously considering remaining in his rooms until breakfast was over, just to avoid encountering the blasted divination teacher... This was an outrage. An absolute outrage. He shouldn't be cowering in his bloody bathroom like a wimpy garden gnome, too afraid to walk out and confront Sybil Trelawney, of all people... She was a charlatan of the first order while he... he'd faced Voldermort himself, for crying out loud!

He was right in the middle of a rather fine mental rant when his empty stomach protested so loudly that he gritted his teeth and ended up abandoning his chambers with an aggravated growl. He stomped up the stairs like a man on a mission, only to come to an absolutely horrified dead stop at the vision that met his eyes as soon as he reached the main level of the school: Flowers...

There were flowers everywhere. The entire school had been decorated with huge garlands of magically enhanced buds and blooms, all of them were sporting that particularly ghastly mix of baby pink and white petals that Severus most despised and had been tied together by long ribbons of the kind of irritatingly bright shade of blue that hurt his eyes to the point of actual cramps every single year on the first day of May.

His sensitive nose twitched with the over stimulation caused by the overpowering aroma of too much flora being so unnaturally confined indoors while little dots of white and pink glittery confetti swirled gently in the air, turning every single person, painting and animal that he could see into a ridiculous petal-covered version of themselves that sparkled as they moved along the corridors.

Ancient folk songs were being ear-piercingly screeched to destruction without any sort of respect for either their meaning or symbolism by pimple-faced students who would have done them far more justice by never daring to actually sing them and a veritable army of school owls was sweeping down haphazardly between the moving students, busily delivering more ribbons, flowers and even petal-shaped cards that broke into loud blessings and spouted even more atrociously corny lines in the vicinity of his poor and increasingly traumatized ears.

“Merlin help me, I had forgotten all about May Day...” He muttered to himself, wondering if it wouldn't be safer for him altogether to turn around at once and hightail it straight back to his chambers, until breakfast was definitely over.

Just as he shifted his stance to face his newly decided upon escape-route his traitorous stomach had the inelegant idea of growling like a waking bear. The sigh that left Severus' frustrated lips was lost amid a loud bout of obnoxiously coy giggling coming from the other side of the corridor and he suddenly realized that he was doomed. Utterly, absolutely and most certainly doomed. Of that he had not the slightest doubt... He was way too hungry to go without breakfast and it was patently obvious that he'll never make it to the kitchens in time to nab some food with the corridors this packed. He had the horrible suspicion that it was already too late to catch at least one of the raspberry scones that were the only good thing ever to come out of a Monday morning at Hogwarts...

There was nothing for it, then. He'd have to brave the High Table and pray that the traditional importance of the date had managed to escape Trelawney's overworked 'third eye'. Maybe all this glitter on the stairs had caused her to trip on the way down and she was laying in the infirmary at that very moment, groaning to Madam Pomfrey about the unfairness of the universe, while the nurse stuffed her mouth with a triple dose of the extra-painful Skele-gro that Severus always brewed to be used only on the most recalcitrant troublemakers. The thought made him smile with such malice that the students closest to him gasped in sudden realization of exactly who was standing smack in the middle of their glittery pink world of fatuous giggling and hormone-induced, not-so-secret-notions of celebrating their recently discovered sexuality with a few romps in the astronomy tower. Thinking about that reminded him of something that he hadn't realized until that second: 'Oh, Hell...'  He couldn't believe that he had the awful luck of being put on patrol duty on bloody Beltane... The mere thought distressed him so much that he frowned thunderously.

Blessed silence fell around him slowly, radiating concentrically outwards from his position like a powerful wave meant to bring him soothing peace as every single child present took a wary step backwards, suddenly afraid of the darkly attired professor who was frowning in displeased disapproval among them.

“You will all either proceed to the Great Hall for breakfast or make your bumbling way to whichever classroom you are meant to be in for the first period. There will be no more songs being mercilessly mangled by your ham-fisted attempts to perform them in the corridors. Singing isn't allowed in the common areas, either, and I shall personally give the names of every single person I catch trying to renew the Confetti Charm to Mr Filch. I'm certain that he'll be ecstatic to be given the opportunity of teaching a few of you exactly how long it takes him to return these ancient floors to their usual pristine state...”

His softly voiced threat acted like a Vanishing Spell of untold power, clearing out the busy corridor in the time that elapsed between one lazy blink of his dark eyes and the next. He was left to enjoy the welcome absence of the over-excited brats in the now utterly silent Entrance Hall.

The pale light of the rising sun filtered through the high windows, illuminating the obnoxiously decorated room with the kind of festive glow that had the power to imbue the sober formality of the school entryway with a delicate atmosphere of hopeful joy. Severus looked around himself in the eerie quiet, allowing his eyes to admire the swirling dots of enchanted confetti still floating about everywhere.

It did look pretty, in an over-the-top-pastel-explosion sort of way, which he supposed was the whole point of May Day. Not that he cared much for the dangerous mix of flowers and impulsive, sexually-driven need to experiment that usually overwhelmed the student's randy minds during this Merlin-forsaken day. Most teenagers had the kind of terrifying ability to focus only on sex that he found frankly distasteful. He understood that they all wanted to stretch their recently awakened sexual wings, so to speak. They wanted to feel both sexy and desired, find their place among their peers and feel... wanted... in the most intimate and reassuring way possible, but... was sex really able to give them any of that? Wasn't love far more important in the end?

Love was the power that had felled the Dark Lord and, as such, it should be celebrated in some way, too. And it was. Of course it was. Valentines' day came around every year, after all. He just wasn't sure he agreed with that kind of celebration, either. But then he'd been told plenty of times that his own views on this particular topic were biased by his lack of... paramour.

“I don't think I'd like any of this nonsense any better even if I had someone of my own.” He muttered under his breath, remembering Albus' paternalistic claims with a slight frown. “Love -and sex, for that matter- are meant to be kept private, aren't they? Your heart feels the first. Your body surrenders to the second and you are meant to show both as best as you can only for the eyes of your beloved...
“What's the point of screaming out corny poetry lines for all and sundry to hear, if you aren't able to respect your partners' boundaries with the simple deference of... discretion? I wouldn't want to be made into an spectacle for the masses by my partner, of all people. I'd much prefer being treasured in private than becoming an unwilling participant in this sort of showy production. Or even worse: being asked by a trusted companion to take part in what amounts to an open-air damned orgy held under the excuse of celebrating the arrival of the Summer...”

(~*~)(~*~)(~*~)

Harry Potter's rarely used death-glare came out of retirement once again as he eyed Hagrid's meaty hand inching across the table towards the small serving plate where he'd saved the last two raspberry scones of the day. He'd had to warn off Minerva and Fillius already and his temper was starting to rise with the stress of preserving the treats intact until the object of his affections finally arrived.
“If he arrives. Which is looking less and less likely by the second...” He muttered peevishly under his breath, eyeing his wrist-watch impatiently.

“What was that, 'Arry?”

Hagrid's good natured question reached his ears almost at the same time as his eyes registered the slight shift of that huge hand away from Severus' favourite scones. He relaxed for the time being, allowing his rigidly held shoulders to slump in a defeated little hunch as he plopped both arms atop the tabletop and turned ever so slightly to whisper into his friend's ear:
“Severus. He isn't here yet and I can't believe he is late. You know how he raves about the raspberry scones every Monday...”

“Oh!” Hagrid flushed, eyeing the small plate that he'd been so obviously coveting rather guiltily as sudden understanding flashed across his gentle brown eyes.

“Maybe he's hiding in his rooms. Ne'er liked Beltane much, tha' one. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if he decided to keep away from Sybil's prophecies until the day is over. You know how they're annoying 'im no end and today she looks... extra-focused an all. I mean... today's meant to celebrate marriage and fertility, isn't it?  She could easily get up his nose by talking 'bout how he's failed to bed his One True Love an' all tha', 'Arry...”

Harry gasped, absolutely appalled by the very idea:
“She wouldn't dare! Even the blind can see that Severus is, literally, at the end of his tether. I thought she's grown fond of him but she keeps irritating him with all these predictions... It's bonkers, Hagrid. I swear that the crazy woman is going to drive Severus to drink!”

The half-giant looked at him with disarming understanding.
“Maybe she's doing you both a favour. I mean... Sev'rus is stressed, isn't he? Maybe he needs a shoulder to lean on. This could be your chance to get closer, 'Arry... You could take the scones to him, if he doesn't show. Maybe that'll cheer him right up.”

“I'm not so sure about that...”
Harry shook his head forlornly, suddenly unable to shake off the awful sense of dejection that invaded him at the mere possibility of not seeing Severus today, of all days.

It was hard enough to pine for his colleague with the kind of unacknowledged desperation that had made his situation a mortifyingly open secret among the majority of the staff and even the most observant upper-grade students. But it'd be unbearable beyond belief not being able to catch a glimpse of the object of his affections on the one day a year that was said to be traditionally auspicious to begin all serious courtships.

For three years in a row now, Harry had made the resolution of confessing the true nature of the precious feelings that fluttered in his heart at the mere sight of the prickly potions master on this particular day and then spent the last month and a half leading up to Beltane in an agitated rush to talk himself into gathering the kind of courage necessary to make his move. He'd failed miserably every year so far, but his mind refused to shelve that old plan altogether and so he'd been bouncing between terror and hope for the last few weeks, trying to talk himself into speaking out this time around...

“Ah, there you are, Severus! There were some among us who'd already started to despair about your absence in this fine day, but my senses have been blessed with the joyful awareness of the exciting future that awaits you today, my friend! Aren't you bubbling with joy at the very prospect of becoming Hogwarts' first male May Queen?”

Trelawney's effusive greeting focused every eye on Severus' quiet arrival and he froze mid-step. Laughter broke in the next second across the Hufflepuff table until the most venomous glare that the Slytherin Head of House could muster while being so thoroughly humiliated by his Divination colleague took care of the little brats.

“I'm not really the bubbly sort, Sybil” He replied curtly, pointedly ignoring the empty seat sandwiched between her and Potter and walking stiffly all the way to the end of the table in order to put as much distance as he could possibly manage between himself and the barmy creature.

Coffee filled the empty cup in front of him in the next second and he lifted it to his lips, taking a small sip of the wonderfully aromatic brew and closing his dark eyes in brief contentment. Missing with that small action the brief flash of pained dejection that fleeted across Harry's paling face.

“The cosmos is thoroughly displeased with you right now, Severus Snape! I've been telling you to stop ignoring your 'One-True-Love' so callously, but you refuse to heed my friendly warnings!”

Sybil's high pitched voice rose over the din of the table's conversations to put an end to his brief moment of pleasure. His eyes snapped open and he glared at the woman with all the power of the unrelenting vexation that had been the only thing he'd earned from saving her miserable hide. Why, oh why, had he been stupid enough to come to her rescue that night?

“I haven't been ignoring my 'One-True-Love', as you've so charmingly decided to dub this... paragon of virtue... that has so generously set his poor, abused heart upon adoring my evil and callous self. I'm merely waiting for him to come forwards, so that we both may live from that moment on in the joyful contentment that you so... tirelessly... predict, professor Trelawney.” He informed her flippantly and was forced to bite his bottom lip in order to swallow the snort that was threatening to escape him when he saw Minerva pinching the inside of her wrist with similar intent.

Two seats to the right of the headmistress the divination professor shook her bandanna-covered head with a twinkle of glass beads.
“Your patience is misplaced, Severus. I'm afraid that your passive attitude has angered the Powers That Be. Your time to deny your feelings has finally come to an end. You'll be made to acknowledge your beloved before this day is out, my friend. Any attempts on your part to ignore your intended will be most severely punished.”

The silence that followed that shockingly blunt warning was so thick that Harry became convinced that he could touch it. Severus sat stiffly in his chair, appearing for all the world as if he'd been Petrified. His coffee cup hung forgotten from lax fingers and those unfathomable dark eyes were glaring at Trelawney so hard that Harry wondered how it was possible that the woman hadn't yet dissolved into a smoking pile of ashes.

“My intended?” Severus pronounced that last word as if the simple effort of uttering it was making his stomach churn with distaste. “I do not have, nor do I harbour any desire to ever acquire any such a thing, professor Trelawney. It will be in your best interest to cease and desist of importuning me with this kind of highly inappropriate nonsense. I will no longer tolerate your recently acquired penchant for humiliating me on a daily basis with your gratuitous insistence on predicting my future.”

The clairvoyant gaped in flustered anxiety.
“But... it's of utmost importance that you listen to me, Severus! Change is approaching you like a galloping stallion. You must be prepared to open your arms wide and embrace its welcome gifts with exhilarated joy. Love will race with wooden wings to your rescue when you finally fall from Grace and, in his arms, you will find both safety and contentment. Your forlorn languishing is at an end, my dear friend, for you are deeply loved."

Severus was so incensed that he plunked his coffee cup on the table with a careless thud and growled his response with the kind of fierceness that would have sent seasoned Death Eaters running for cover:
“Since I fell from grace so long ago that I can barely remember how it feels to be held within the safety of her thin arms, I'd dare say that my love is woefully late, Madam. Or dead. Possibly both. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have plenty of things to do before classes begin.”

Heedless of the fury she'd awakened Trelawney got to her feet, blocking off the Slytherin's path with her slight frame as he attempted to walk past.
“You can't leave like this, Severus! If you abandon this room without taking your One-True-Love's thoughtful gift you will be forced to prostrate before him like a homeless beggar.”

“Please, spare me the soppy details of this tiresome melodrama...”

“Do not ignore this warning, I beg of you! You will burn in love's enraged fire if you don't heed your heart's concerned calls.”

“My heart's calls, concerned or otherwise, are absolutely no business of yours, madam. I'd be grateful if you could remove yourself from my path and Leave. Me. The. Hell. Alone!” He growled, vexed beyond all patience and attempted to get past her only to find out that she had the actual boldness of mirroring his steps, making all dignified escape virtually impossible.

“Listen to me, please! You aren't meant to deny love any longer. You must yield to it like a delicate flower. You must surrender to your chosen, Severus. You are our May Queen...”

A veritable roar of hysterical titters rose all across the Great Hall upon hearing such atrocity and Severus' humiliation was complete. His eyes shone as cold as icebergs and the glare he directed her way should have been able to kill her with the poison of his fury.

“The May Queen is always a girl, professor. A beautiful, virginal teenager. She doesn't yield to anything. She leads the entire Beltane celebrations. She's the epitome of all the wonderful things that Summer never fails to bring us. She is sunshine and laughter. She is sweet joy. She is an angel able to inspire breathless desire. She is the final fruit of Springs' most fervent promises. The culmination of every single dream that we have ever attempted to reach out for...
“Since I have it on good authority that I'm nothing of the sort, I demand you stop spouting this kind of deranged nonsense. It'd be as easy as pie to request a mental evaluation of your faculties from St Mungo's, you know? It's becoming increasingly apparent of late that your head's... lamentable... encounter with that lighting-bolt has affected your already tenuous grasp on reality for the worse.”

She flinched upon hearing his last threat, gasping in ruffled indignation and taking an instinctive step backwards that allowed him to get finally past her. He was turning the doorknob in the next second, eager to leave behind the scene of his utter humiliation while the minds of those around him reeled with a veritable miasma of concerned worry, red-faced remorse and guilty laughter in equal measure as all eyes settled on his rigidly set back.

Harry shivered in the awful silence, feeling suddenly uneasy by the fact that Trelawney had half-turned around and was now staring at both, him and his pathetic plate of raspberry scones, with a fixed kind of dismayed horror that tangled his stomach in knots.

His fingers clenched instinctively around the rim of the small plate, thinking fiercely to himself that he'd never let her eat them. He'd saved them both for Severus. Had selected the ones with the softest, flakiest pastry very carefully and proceeded to protect them against hungry hordes for the Slytherin's benefit. These pastries were his gift for Severus. A gift that his beloved had never even seen in the chaos that had followed his arrival, a gift that he'd never accepted...

Harry gasped, wide-eyed, as soon as that thought hit him and he rose with trembling urgency, frantically calling out for Severus to turn around once more. Whether the potioneer ignored him because he never heard him, or because he simply couldn't care any less about whatever it was that Harry Potter wanted to tell him, the Gryffindor never knew. He knew only that the door was finally open and that his precious Severus had barely taken a single step outside the room when they all saw him suddenly collapse down to the floor like a felled tree.

Harry forgot the plate, forgot Severus' fury, forgot Trelawney's strange look and rushed towards his colleague in a flutter of badly fitting robes, unbrushed hair and genuinely distressed concern. He inclined urgently over the older man, hearing him groan aloud and realizing that Severus hadn't collapsed quite completely. He'd been tripped by the rogue Leg-Locking Spell that the thoroughly terrified third year who now stood frozen like a frightened rabbit just outside the door must have been casting when he exited the Hall.

“Severus!... Severus, are you all right?”

Potter's voice, crystal clear and frantic, reached his ringing ears a mere second after falling. 'Great! Just... great'  He sighed to himself, closing dulled dark eyes with a heavy sense of gloomy desolation. Not only had he been turned into a laughing stock by their divination colleague in the presence of the Gryffindor, but he had to go and allow a rather unremarkable third year student to topple him like a tower of bricks right in front of the one man he'd never managed to impress in all his years...

“Of course I am alright, Potter!” He barked out defensively, feeling so utterly ashamed of himself that he couldn't even bear to straighten back up. He had never really learned to accept horrified pity with any sort of grace and he didn't want to unleash his terrible temper on Potter. Not today. Not anymore. Not ever, if he could manage it... 'Please... oh please... don't let him come anywhere near me now...'

He'd forgotten the charlatan's claim that the Powers That Be where quite angry with him when he whispered that particular prayer and now he sighed warily, unable to remember a time when that hadn't been the case. Still... they seemed to have decided to be specially horrible to him today and, therefore, ignored his fervent plea with the kind of cruel disregard that brought Potter to his side in the blink of an eye.

The Gryffindor Head of House came to a standing position directly beside him, assessing the situation with a single -and very loud- gasp of horrified agitation. Tanned fingers parted the long curtain of hair that had fallen across Severus' face in the next second, exposing his pale and vulnerable features to the most beautiful pair of eyes that he'd ever seen in so intimate a gesture that his heart pounded with sheer longing. He looked up into those worried green orbs and felt like laughing bitterly at the unfairness of the entire situation that he now found himself in.

The unwelcome realization that he was, indeed, prostrated before his damned One-True-Love like a homeless beggar... hit him then like a ton of bricks and he flinched away from Potter's touch, recoiling in unutterable horror as his dark eyes searched for that deranged bandanna-wearing charlatan among the gathering crowd.

Sybil Trelawney stood hunched to the side, staring straight at him through huge and dazed blue eyes that looked as bright as toy-marbles behind the smudged lenses of her truly ghastly spectacles. She knew exactly how he felt towards their green-eyed colleague, of that Severus had now not the slightest doubt. She must know, there was no other possible explanation for this mornings' awful little debacle. She had used crystal-clear wording and had, somehow, managed to orchestrate this entire disaster to show him... show him what? That she had finally found him out to be the same pathetic loser that he'd always been?

His eyes closed in instinctive reaction to his whirling, awful thoughts. He felt far too wounded to even laugh at his predicament. Here he was: a middle-aged, thoroughly charmless pariah, madly in love with his gorgeous colleague in full sight of all and sundry, by the look of it.

If even an oblivious air-head like Sybil Trelawney had managed to suss out his darkest and most fiercely guarded secret what were the chances that Minerva or Fillius hadn't? What were the chances that Granger remained ignorant? What were the chances that Potter himself didn't know?

A shame so powerful that it would have managed to topple him all over again, had he actually dared to stand up, turned his already sallow skin a sickly shade of white. His chest clenched with bitter anger as a single thought screeched through his mind: 'Could my miserable life have brought me any lower than this?'...

“Severus? You look... sick. Are you sure you are alright?”

Potter's concerned question galvanized him into action and he rose to his full height in the blink of an eye. Directing such cold glare in the Gryffindor's direction that the man took a shocked step backwards.

“Of course I'm all right, Professor Potter. I survived the damned war, didn't I? There's not a chance in Hell that I'll perish on the wrong side of a juvenile Leg-Locking Spell.”

“But... you've gone so pale...” Potter whispered with his usual irritating tenacity. The man had never learned to leave well enough alone when it came to explosive situations and so he approached Severus with typical Gryffindor boldness. Raising his hand again towards the dangerously embarrassed Slytherin and attempting to pull a long, dark lock of hair away from Severus' pale face.

“Do not touch me! What part of  'I'm perfectly fine'  did you not understand, Potter?” Severus growled, retreating defensively towards the corridor only to be unforgivably chastised by a thoroughly shocked Minerva.

“Severus! Harry is worried about you, just as all of us are. There's no need to be so unpleasant.”

He turned his head around, then. Looking directly at her through eyes that seemed to burn with the primitive fierceness of hot coals. He looked at all of them in silence, wondering whether they were really so concerned about him or were laughing wildly behind his back, thinking him pathetic...
“I apologize, then, for behaving in the exact same manner that I've always behaved since I came to this school. Should any of you, delicate flowers, decide to endure my... unpleasantness... any further you are, of course, quite welcome to accompany me down to my dungeons. Otherwise, please, do allow the wild beast living among you to... make itself scarce.”

He turned around abruptly, so set on making it impossible for Minerva to have the last word in this particular confrontation, that he never heard the softly whispered charm that Harry placed on his retreating back with such delicate tenderness that it settled upon him like fairy dust.
“Protego Ti, Severus...”**

(~*~)(~*~)(~*~)

Severus gasped as the cauldron exploded, drenching him from head to foot in magically resistant sea water. His nostrils flared with impatient irritation and his hands curled into fists out of sheer exasperation with the particularly inept and now seriously petrified student responsible for this morning's latest and frustratingly annoying set back.

He'd told the class repeatedly not to add the powdered starfish before the base had turned completely blue. How blind where these witless Hufflepuffs? Hadn't it been obvious to them that the brew had just turned a dark shade of lavender? Taking a deep breath he vanished the mess from the ruined cauldron, but was unable to clean either table or floor. Such was the nature of magically resistant concoctions. Once they affected a surface they couldn't be countered with magic.

“What are you expecting to achieve by standing there like a lump? Get yourself into your extra set of robes, then find a mop and dry your work-station before I return to this classroom, Mr. Lisigns, or you'll spend the next three months learning to do just that under Mr. Filch's supervision. Have I made myself clear?”

The brat shot out his chair, obviously galvanized into action by his sharply delivered directions and Severus turned around on the spot with the intention of reaching the change of clothes that he kept inside a warded cupboard in his office for emergencies just like this one. He'd barely taken three steps towards his destination when the door to his classroom suddenly flew open, banging against the wall just behind it with an almighty clang.

Severus' wand was out of his holder and pointed directly at the heart of the unexpected intruder so fast that it was only the sound of Potter's shout of warning that saved the idiot from a most unpleasant Hex.
“Severus! It's me, Harry, er... I mean Potter. Professor Potter. Your DADA colleague.”

Severus blinked, uncertain about what was happening but worried out of his mind about whatever disaster had led Harry Potter to his dungeons in the middle of class. No one ever dared to interrupt one of his classes. Least of all in such unusual and forceful manner. Fear coiled around his gut as Potter's intriguingly pointless explanation came to a witless halt. The man kept looking at him in a most disturbing manner, leading Severus to the terrible certainty that, whatever had brought him here, must have been horrible enough to addle the Saviour's mind...

“What is it? Has something happened to the castle? To Minerva?” He voiced aloud his two greatest fears in a harsh and frantic whisper, hoping to jolt the other man out of whatever trauma was currently paralysing him.

Potter frowned, looking for all the world utterly confused.
“Nothing has happened to anyone, Severus. But you... why are you wet?”

Now it was Severus who couldn't make any sense of the situation. What did Potter mean? Why was he even here if nothing had happened at all? Why on Earth would he be at all interested on a thoroughly unremarkable episode of magically resistant drenching?

“I'm afraid that I don't understand what's going on here, Professor Potter” Severus finally answered, trying his best to appear calm despite being uncomfortably aware of the fact that their increasingly ludicrous exchange had the riveted attention of a classroom full of four year Hufflepuffs.

Inexplicably, Potter blushed to the tips of his ears.
“I came rushing to your rescue. I was certain that you... were in danger.”

Severus' befuddlement reached new heights with every word he heard.
“To my rescue? Whatever made you think I needed that sort of assistance? I haven't left this classroom since I entered it.”

The Gryffindor's eyes became as round as marbles. He'd been quite obviously frightened by the thoughtless prank that some as of yet unnamed student must have played on him. Going as far as to tell Harry Potter that another member of the staff was in danger was unconscionable. The moment he had a second of free time he'd hunt down the perpetrators and teach them the kind of lesson that they wouldn't forget in a rush..

“I placed a charm on you this morning, Severus. My wand activated in the middle of my lecture and I... I didn't stop to think, I guess. I just... reacted.”

Severus blinked, aghast. He was so shocked that he couldn't even dredge up enough ire to react for a whole minute. Then a powerful wave of absolutely outraged indignation swept his reedy body from head to foot.
“You. Placed. A. Monitoring. Charm. On. Me? How dare you, Potter?”

“Severus...”

“Leave!”

“Listen to me, please... You looked so pale after your fall that I...”

“You were trying to look after me? Who the Hell do you think you are, my mother?”

“No, of course not, but I was worried...”

“You had no right, Potter!”

“I was frightened, OK? I thought something else might happen to you while you were so obviously weakened. I didn't want you to get hurt in any way, so...

Utter shame plunged Severus under wave upon wave of ferocious resentment.
“I tripped, for Merlin's sake! How would that have weakened me to the point of needing rescuing from my own bleeding classroom?”

Potter looked ready to cry. Or to throttle him. Or both.
“You were too pale. I thought you were more hurt than you admitted at the time. We've been talking about how tired you've looked these last few days. We are all worried that you've been pushing yourself too hard, trying to fix up your ruined classroom on top of your regular duties, Severus. You didn't even accept Minerva's offer to give you the week off so that you could concentrate only on the re-building work and now... Look at you! You are drenched from head to foot and it's obvious that you don't even have enough energy to cast a measly Drying Charm. You have begun to show the first signs of magical exhaustion but you are too stubborn to admit it. Let me take you up to the infirmary, please...”

Severus' temper rose with every single remark until he felt so ready to explode that he bit his bottom lip as hard as he possibly could in a conscious attempt to keep himself from uttering the scathing retort that was climbing up his throat. He didn't want to rant at Potter but, by Merlin!, how was he expected to take this sort of humiliation lying down?

Desperate to avoid the entire discussion now that he could clearly see it only going down hill from here, he decided to return to his original plan of heading straight for his office and change out of his sopping wet clothes.
“I have no intention of going anywhere with you, least of all to the infirmary, Potter. I have a classroom full of students who require close supervision. Now, if you'd excuse me, I have something quite urgent to look for in my office...”

“Severus..."

He ignored the gryffindor's call grimly, firmly determined to cross the classroom as fast as he could in order to avoid screaming at his... his... crush... like a deranged banshee.  

“Severus, please, listen to me! I'm worried sick about you...” 

Refusing to even acknowledge so fantastic a claim Severus continued walking forwards until a rather unexpected whoosh startled him into looking up. A clearly conjured black rose had managed to get past the opened door to his classroom and was now quivering right before his widening eyes. It's designated original flight-path must had been disrupted by the obstruction of Severus' height, bringing the poorly executed Howler to an unintentional and badly-timed stop midway towards its intended destination.
'Oh...no...' Severus thought, watching the clumsy magic unravel into quivering jerks of angry emotion that ended up screeching at him angrily: 

“How dare you toy in this manner with the green-eyed monster? You are constantly flirting with that mushy Gryffindor in front of the entire school and you expect me to do nothing about it? Well... You are mine, do you hear me? Mine! And I don't allow what's mine to behave like a third-rate slut and walk away, unpunished!”

Severus lifted his wand at once, ready to cast a light Shielding Spell, but was jolted out of his concentration by the sudden sensation of powerful magic swirling around him like a peeved mother dragon. Something odd was happening here, something was already trying to shield him with such strength that it triggered the magic of the Howler all the faster, enhancing it quite dangerously and making it explode ahead of time into a single shot of fierce, half-formed fire.

Severus was thrown backwards against the wall, blinded by the white-hot flash of light that shone into his face like an impossibly bright beacon. His head hit ancient stone with a loud crack and the last thought in his head was that Trelawney had done it again. That demented charlatan had somehow managed to make another of her ridiculous prophecies come true. He hadn't been heeding his heart's concerned calls, had he? That's how he ended up burning in love's enraged fire...

(~*~)(~*~)(~*~)

Severus groaned, opening his eyes to a roomful of gaping students and Potter's frantic emerald gaze. The magical blast had left him slumped on the floor in a most undignified position and he tried to straighten himself up only to become still almost immediately when the back of his head started pounding ominously.

There was a strong and rather unpleasant smell of charred clothing all around him and it didn't take a genius to arrive at the unwelcome conclusion that it was coming from him. 'Wonderful, just... wonderful' He thought bitterly as his mind finally grasped the ramifications of his new and wholly embarrassing predicament.

He'd shown himself to be less than perfectly capable of protecting his precious dignity from the hormone-driven machinations of his own students once again. He couldn't actually believe that he'd allowed himself to become the victim of a teenager's poorly executed attempt at designing a Howler. But the truth was as plain as it was painful: he'd been unable to cast a simple Protego and had ended up being hurled across his own classroom like a lump of meat as a result, leaving him to feel unendurably humiliated for the second time that morning, right in front of the man of his dreams...

'Damn my dismal luck!' He grumbled inwardly, attempting to ignore the discouraging suspicion that he must be looking like a singed Grindylow while Potter -gorgeous, dreamy Potter- was obviously becoming worried enough to risk inclining over him even further in a thoroughly unwelcome bid to look at him up close...

“There's no need to hover over me quite so annoyingly, Potter. You are taking up all my air!” He grouched, forcing himself to straighten up, regardless of whether his head pounded or not. He would not, could not, allow Potter to take a good look at his already charmless features now that he looked like a drowned rat, on top of everything else...

“Severus!  You shouldn't be siting up so soon. You need to lie down for a little while longer to make sure that there's no concussion or something. You hit the back of your head very hard and I...”

“Oh, for Salazar's sake... Stop that irritating whining, Potter!  I'm perfectly fine. I've hit my head plenty of times before, you know?  I'm not some kind of ridiculously fragile little primrose who is desperately in need of your tender loving care. I'm very busy right now, in fact. Way too busy to continue arguing with...”

“Severus! Are you all right? Whatever happened in your classroom made your Teacher's Well-being Alarm trigger in my office...”

He turned around: sopping wet, sporting all the signs of having being unmistakably burned by some kind of magical backlash, and now most certainly and utterly humiliated to stare directly at Minerva, who was rushing through his classroom doorway with Sybil Trelawney in tow.

'Things are getting better and better... aren't they?  I wonder how this drama could get any worse...'
He realized almost immediately that he should have never, ever, been idiotic enough to even dare thinking like that. He'd just opened his mouth to answer the Headmistress' comment when there was a startling 'pop' right next to him and Poppy Pomfrey materialized in front of his incredulous eyes, clutching the hand of the infirmary house-elf.

“Thanks so much, Heely, I wouldn't have been able to get down here in time without your help...” The school nurse enunciated clearly to her small companion only a second before her terrifyingly focused gaze settled over Severus with the kind of determined look that never failed to give him the chills.

“We have to get rid of all your clothes at once, Severus...” She proceeded to inform him, lifting her wand up in a very clear indication that she'd planned to divest him of his robes on the spot, without so much as a by-your-leave.

“What's wrong with him, Poppy?” Minerva wailed, approaching the nurse in a rush of ugly brown tartan and motherly concern.

“Severus' Health-Monitoring Alarm started shrieking a moment ago, Headmistress. His condition is deteriorating by the second and he is in desperate need of urgent care. I'm afraid that I don't have enough time to explain the situation fully...

“He hit the back of his head...” Potter added his little golden grain of truth to the bizarre conversation while Trelawney shook her head back and forth from the doorway and opened her mouth to shriek:

“You will topple like an oak during a blizzard, Severus Snape! The Powers Beyond Us are frustrated with your dithering. You've allowed your cold mind to reject love's gentle warmth for the last time and now you'll be pushed into its arms by fair means or foul. Fate's designs aren't meant to be ignored. They are meant to come true and so they shall. You must follow your heart today for it will lead you to your destiny. Failing to do so will land you in a heap of trouble.”

“Oh, for goodness sake... What is she doing here, anyway? I. Am. Perfectly. Healthy!  I don't know what's gotten into the lot of you, but you all have interrupted my lesson plan most rudely.
“Poppy, you should go back to the infirmary and double-check your Health-Monitor Alarms. Their parameters might need fine-tuning, by the sound of it. Minerva... why don't you take that woman away from here before she irritates me into committing a veritable atrocity in front of all these children? And you, Potter... I have no words to describe how utterly intrusive I find your daring to cast an unsolicited Protego upon my person. None of this would have happened if you haven't taken that particular liberty. Now off with the lot of you! I have better things to do than wasting my precious time with this kind of nonsense.”

“You really need to get out of those clothes, Severus...” Poppy tried to wave her wand in the standard pattern of Disvestio but he was way faster than her and a hell of a lot more peeved.

“Get. Out. Of. My. Classroom!” He growled, at the end of his tether, while blocking her charm-work off with a sharply toned Finite. 

“Severus!” She gaped, bizarrely appalled by his reaction and attempted to step closer, muttering urgently all the while: “You must listen to me, my friend, you are suffering from...”

“Your cold mind refuses to accept your heart's need of care and warmth!” Trelawney screeched again, interrupting Poppy's explanation most rudely “You must accept the affection that is your due this instant, Severus Snape or you'll collapse through lack of strength directly into sweet love's healing embrace...”

“Sybil! What was I telling you just now about your disruptive tendency to cast this sort of threatening prophecies upon Severus' person? You must stop that at once.”

Watching Minerva finally lose her patience with the wacky charlatan was the only amusing thing to have happened to him all morning long and Severus allowed himself a single, gleefully malicious smile.
“Wonderful! Now that the most relevant issue in this whole drama has been finally addressed to my satisfaction I must ask you all to leave. I am really, really, behind with this morning's lesson plan and...” 

“Severus, you must...” Poppy started to protest, but he never actually heard whatever words she said next. The small counter-spell that he'd uttered a mere minute earlier to stop her from undressing him seemed to have drained his energy so completely that he wavered in place even as he turned to face the students. His head pounded so strongly that he tilted it to the side in an instinctive bid to ease his growing discomfort and a wholly unpleasant weakness took his body hostage in the space between one blink and the next.

“Minerva, I don't feel very we...” He started to whisper a warning that he'd never managed to finish verbalizing. Blackness filled his entire consciousness, no matter how hard he fought against it, and the last thought to cross his mind as he finally lost this new and horrifyingly humiliating battle with his own body was that he hoped someone thought of casting a Cushioning Charm before he hit the floor. He'll look even more awful if he managed to break his nose again... 
 

(~*~)(~*~)(~*~)

“Why isn't he awake already, Poppy? I thought you said that his condition was bound to improve rapidly as soon as he was out of those wet clothes...”

“I just cast the warming charm, Minerva. You know how hard it can be to heat Severus back up once he goes into actual Hypothermia. I don't understand why he didn't change immediately when he is perfectly aware of how dangerous it is for him to delay such things...”

Severus heard Poppy's disapproving tone and would have flinched if he had the energy to do so. He groaned inwardly to himself, realizing that he'd be in for an hour-long lecture as soon as he managed to open his eyes again. He'd been trying to do so for the last five minutes with no visibly result and was growing increasingly frustrated with both himself and the situation. Powerlessness, particularly his own, had never really appealed to him. He despised the awful feeling something fierce...

“Er... I might have interrupted him on his way to his office when I showed up. I noticed that he was wet, but didn't paid much attention to it. I just... Could either of you explain to me what happened here?  I still don't understand why he fainted like that...”

Potter's voice sounded disturbingly close to him. So close in fact that Severus could have sworn that he felt every word vibrate against the left side of his body, like the approaching rumble of thunder. 

“The Dark Lord often punished Severus' inability to give him more reliable information about Albus' plans by placing him under the Cruciatus Curse for dangerously long periods of time, Harry. The curse affects the nervous system of a victim in a number of ways which depend on the amount of total exposure, the level of skill of the caster, and the personal ability of the recipient to withstand physical torture...”

“Please don't tell me that his mind is damaged like the Longbottoms', Poppy. Severus would detest the very idea that he is meant to lose it slowly.”

Potter's voice sounded genuinely distressed. His tone had lowered to a thickened raw whisper and he spoke with the kind of stutter that made him sound exactly like a man on the verge of crying. Or one gripped by the sort of profound pity that Severus knew would be the most damaging weapon that this particular Gryffindor could ever wield against him.

Severus was reasonably certain that he could probably endure being the sole focus of everybody else's compassion. Had been forced to do so immediately after the end of the war, in fact. But to go through the horrible ordeal of having to force himself to look into the eyes of the man he was in love with and accept that there was nothing there beyond sympathy would be too bitter a pill for even him to swallow...

“No, Harry, please do not distress yourself with such thoughts. Severus' mind is virtually untouchable. You know that, don't you? He is one of the best Occlumens alive... No. The Crutiatus Curse affected his body's ability to regulate its own temperature. Severus is literally unable to detect the symptoms of incipient Hypothermia, you see? Add to that the fact that he has always been extremely resistant to cold and you get a man who tends to disregard its dangerous effects on the body. I've told him to be more careful a million times already, but you know him... He is as stubborn as Aberforth's flea-ridden goats when he wants to be.” 

“Oh... Then why is he even allowed to teach the Magically Resistant Drenching Solution? Isn't that potion too risky to brew in his condition?”

Now Severus was so incensed that he tried his very best to open his eyes. How dared this little Gryffindor menace imply that he was less than perfectly capable of teaching any potion he desired to a bunch of pimple-faced teenagers?  He was a Master of his craft, for Merlin's sake! 

“Have you ever seen Severus Snape surrendering to any weakness, Harry?” Minerva's quiet question reached his peeved ears, just as he'd started berating the brainless stupidity of his own stubborn eyelids. Why were they even refusing his command to just... lift up?  Weren't they meant to follow his mind's orders anyway?  He wanted to open his eyes already and he wanted to do so this second. He was wide awake, for crying out loud!  There was no reason for his treacherous body to have bailed out on him quite this badly.

“No. I've never seen him surrender to anything.”

“That's because he can't. He is a very complicated man, you see? He dislikes depending on others, so he... doesn't. He'd sooner resign than change his study plan to accommodate his own vulnerability. His day-to-day life is littered with small decisions just like this one. Every one of them is like a rebellious repetition of the same stubborn statement: He stands alone. He survives all by himself, day after day. He doesn't need anyone...”

“But that... That's so heartbreaking, so selfish... He might not need anyone but what about the people who need him?  Is he even aware that there are those among us who'd give up our right arm just to have him notice that we exist?”

“Here we are now, Harry. Let's agree to worry about Severus' blindness once we have him safe and sound back among us, shall we?  Why don't you put him on that corner bed while I get some potions ready for him?  He'll be quite sensitive to light for a few hours and I'd prefer him not to be facing the windows directly when he regains consciousness.”

“No. No. You can't put him on that bed! Severus will never recover his strength with regular potions, Poppy. Don't you, people, understand what's going on?  He's supposed to be the May Queen, for Heaven's sake!  He spent all spring long fighting his growing passion for his Green Man. He's becoming heartsick from constantly enduring the unrelenting misery of his unacknowledged desires. He'll continue to deteriorate until he surrenders to his own emotions and agrees to enter a hand-fasting with his One-True-Love. You must lay him on a bed of flowers and make love to him all night long, Mr Potter...”

Appalled silence followed that particularly laughable demand until the Gryffindor's shocked “What?” forced their very own resident lunatic into further flights of fancy:

“You are the maiden's Green Man, don't you see? You are meant to romance him all day long, then convince him to walk through Beltane's blessed fire with you, before laying him on a bed of assorted petals and regaling the entire world with the energizing power of magical love fulfilled...”

That horrifying new set of rather disturbing instructions had Severus breaking out into a cold sweat with the unwelcome realization that Sybil Trelawney, the dangerously demented source of every single one of his most recent misfortunes, had now become a direct threat to him. Her little predictions had stopped being harmless digs that hurt him deeply due to the existence of his own unvoiced affections to become serious attempts at ruining not only his reputation but whatever pitiful dregs remained of his battered dignity.

“Sybil... I know that you are as concerned about Severus' health as the rest of us, dear, but your particular brand of advice is frankly unhelpful at this point. You must let Harry place Severus on the bed. I can't do my job when the two of you keep squabbling like children over Severus' well being and the fact that he is taking so long to wake up is starting to worry me...”

Severus recognized the crisp enunciation of a thoroughly frustrated Poppy as soon as he heard her speak again and a wave of blessed relief swept through him, making him sag against what felt suspiciously like... a pair of muscled arms.

“I think he's coming around, Poppy. He just... snuggled... against my chest like a sleepy kitten.”

Severus was so startled to realize that he was, indeed, being quite... lovingly cradled in Harry Potter's arms that he jerked violently awake. Potter attempted to keep a careful hold on him, but his motion was so wild and unexpected that the Gryffindor couldn't manage to secure the embrace, allowing him to fall partially onto one of the infirmary mattresses.

“Severus Snape! Don't you dare to give me such a fright ever again!” Poppy thundered into the shocked silence that followed and he was relieved to have been granted a reason to turn his head towards her, thus avoiding having to look directly into Potter's inexplicably hurt expression for a single second longer.

“I'm sorry. I'm not used to being... carried... and I panicked. You must realize that a regular Levitation Charm wouldn't have been affected by my instinctive reaction, Poppy.”

“I don't like Levitation Charms. They are far too impersonal for my taste, professor, and since I'm the one who brought you here, I'm the one to blame for having caused you undue distress with my obviously unwelcome handling of your person.” Potter growled, sounding most peculiarly irritated.

Severus had no other option but to look at him then and his mind reeled as he finally confronted those green orbs that he loved past all sense of decorum or even self-restraint.

Harry's gaze brimmed with so much hurt that its usual vibrant colour had acquired the dullness of powdered sage, bringing a thoroughly unwelcome sense of bottomless guilt to Severus' pounding heart. He had the unreasonable certainty that he'd been the one to put that unbearable pain within those emerald depths. But he couldn't, for the life of him, imagine how he'd done it. Or When.

He'd been trying so hard lately not to allow his awful temper to touch Potter that he simply couldn't cope with the idea that he'd failed at it so abysmally. He couldn't have done this. He'd been so careful...
“I wasn't blaming anyone for anything...” He muttered, attempting to erase that horrible wounded look with calm-toned reassurance, but Potter refused to be appeased in any shape or form.

The Gryffindor laughed so bitterly that even Minerva took a hasty step backwards as the youngest ever Dada Professor to teach at Hogwarts bent over, ever so slightly, in order to manhandle Severus into the middle of the infirmary bed with the kind of impersonal touch that felt both uncomfortably clinical and uncharacteristically formal for a man who had always been far too tactile for Severus' liking.

“Of course you weren't. You were just so traumatized by the horrible experience of waking up to find yourself in Harry-Bloody-Potter's arms that you couldn't help protesting, could you? Hell... You couldn't even wait to make sure that you'll land somewhere safe. You'd rather crash to the floor than remain in my embrace a single second after you regained consciousness... I don't even want to imagine how badly you'd have hurt that stubborn head of yours if I'd been standing a step further from the bed and all of it for what? I wasn't going to hurt you! I'd never, ever, hurt you, Severus...”

The potioneer blinked, utterly appalled at his colleague's irrational display of temper, but Poppy managed to react a lot faster than he did.
“Harry! Severus has just woken up after a very worrying fainting spell. He's probably both frightened and disoriented. I don't think this is the right moment to get into this sort of argument with him.”

“I'm sorry. I'm just...” Potter's anger dissolved like a stain under cold water and his expression turned contrite in the blink of an eye. “Here... Let me steady you, Severus. I hate watching you struggle so hard when I'm right here, ready to help you as soon as you give me the chance...”

To Severus' never-ending astonishment Potter brought a trembling hand forwards, placing it with such delicate gentleness upon his shoulder that he felt the touch burn him clear to the bone. He became utterly still, unable to move away, unable to either accept or reject this immensely comforting contact. Unable to look up into those disarmingly apologetic eyes, lest he failed to veil his own desperate longing from the very man who inspired it. Unable to even breathe, lest he opened his foul mouth and said something so horrible in protective self-defence that he brought this precious instant to its inevitable conclusion.

“That's more like it, Harry! You must enthrall your queen's senses. Seduce him with your earthy masculinity. Bowl him over with the irresistible charms of your undeniable youth and beauty. Make him dream all day long about how marvellous it will be to finally open up to your passionate invasion and sigh with smitten desire every single time that you rescue him from the perils that will continue to fall upon him, for as long as he denies you the full ownership of his body..."

They sprung apart like guilty children caught red-handed on the Astronomy Tower, turning with equal jerks of horrified shock towards their widely smiling divination colleague.

“Sybil! I've asked you repeatedly to stop that ridiculous habit of predicting Severus' misfortune.”

“But their union isn't a misfortune, Minerva, it's a blessing from the Heavens! The May Queen's surrender to her young lover marks the beginning of Summer. All that is warm and fruitful and meant to flourish shall be blessed by the powerful energy released during their long awaited coupling. There can never be warm hearth without hot passion. There can never be marriage without hand-fasting and there can never be a hand-fasting if they never go a-maying...
“The Powers That Be have been waiting now for years for their union, but Severus is resisting Fate's design so stubbornly... Every single one of his misfortunes has been of his own making. He must welcome sweet love's touch or he'll be...”

“SILENCE!” Every single one of them jumped a mile high when Potter fairly barked that one word with enough ferocity to bring a charging Chimera to a shocked standstill. “You will not threaten Severus again in any way, shape or form, do you hear me?  If I so much as catch a single whisper predicting anything horrible happening to him before the day is out, I swear that I'm going to wrap your damned tongue around your throat, Sybil Trelawney!”

“Potter... What the hell do you think you are doing? I don't need to be protected from this lunatic like some sort of fragile maiden. I'm perfectly able to deal with this situation all by myself.” Severus began berating the Gryffindor's high handed attitude only to become the new focus of the riled lion's temper.

“Well I'm damned sick of hearing all that nonsense, too!  So what if you are some sort of amazing, all-inclusive, one-man powerhouse?  I want to help you even though I know that you don't need it, OK? I want to... protect you... and carry you in my arms like an old-fashioned knight because, even if you aren't precisely the maiden that this crazy woman keeps on describing, I happen to be pathetic enough to wish that you actually were!  There... I've finally said it and I... I'm... Oh, gosh... I'm loosing my mind, Severus. I just need to...”

To the Slytherin's absolute shock, Potter's trembling hands rose to cradle his face gently. Gorgeous green eyes looked down at him with truly breathtaking tenderness and the man who featured heavily in each and every one of his nightly fantasies stared at his quivering lips with such visible hunger that Severus could literally feel his skin catching fire.

His mouth dried and he had to part his tightly clamped lips, moisten them with a nervous pass of his tongue-tip, while his heartbeat pounded like a war-drum against his every pulse point and he felt faint with a dizzying inability to either breathe or think.

“Oh, no... Please... don't do that if you are going to reject me, Severus.” Potter pleaded in an intense little whisper. His voice had gone rough with the very same kind of passionate emotion that was setting his eyes ablaze with incredible desire as he cradled Severus' whirling head even more firmly, digging those glorious fingers of his into Severus' soft mass of flowing dark locks and gasping under his breath:
“Now I'll have to kiss you. You, stubborn, beautiful, idiot. Don't you know that I can barely resist jumping your bones when you are looking right through me? There's no way I can leave your mouth unkissed when its calling for my touch so desperately...”

It was that crystal clear allusion to his own hopeless longing that managed to return Severus to his senses in the nick of time. He jerked his head violently away at the last possible second, forcing Potter's uninvited kiss to land on his rapidly flushing cheek instead of on his mouth, as it had been meant to do.

Awful silence settled all around them as the boy's daring caress became so obviously thwarted. Potter closed his eyes, as if in deep pain, yet his lips remained glued to Severus' reddening cheek for a veritable eternity. It felt almost as if the Gryffindor couldn't bear the thought of actually pulling away from him, of letting his skin go. Of... facing him.

When he finally did so, those green eyes looked beyond shattered and that still roughened young voice had become both weak and wobbly with the kind of humiliated sorrow that Severus couldn't bear to have caused him.
“I'm sorry, Severus. I'm so sorry...”

“Don't, Mr. Potter. Just... don't say another word, please...” Unable to continue speaking, Severus pushed the still uncomfortably close Gryffindor away from himself and attempted to stand up.

“Severus! What on Earth do you think you are doing?” Poppy tried to restrain him, but he carefully side-stepped her, reaching out to retrieve his wand from Minerva's lax fingers.  

“I can't stand this. I'm returning to my classroom. I'm... sorry.” He offered uncomfortably into the increasingly tense silence and then turned around determinedly, heading towards the doorway as fast as his legs would carry him.

“Severus!  You can't leave this room just yet, please...  Harry must lay you down on a bed of flowers before you leave or you'll be too weak to stand before the hour is out. You haven't recovered enough strength to go back to your classes yet and you've just rejected your king's touch. Your fall from Grace is now inevitable, my friend. Why can't you turn around and face your feelings?  They will be cherished!  They will be welcomed. They will be genuinely celebrated like the precious gift they are... Why can't you see that your heart's truth can no longer be denied?   You'll be forced to expose the beauty of your emotions before the day is out, anyway. Falsehood is a weapon that can no longer shield you...”

“Falsehood?” That one word, when applied so carelessly to either himself or his personal choices, had the power to rile Severus Snape to the point of livid fury. He turned around, directing such fierce glare in Trelawney's direction that she should have self-combusted on the spot, if looks alone held any sort of power.
“I've been 'false' for many reasons in my life. All of them have been directly related to the boy you call 'my king'. Yet I lie not when I tell you that I have absolutely no intention of being humiliated a single second longer either by you or by him.
"I have no time for the crazy designs of your damned third eye. I do not believe in fate. I make my own destiny, Madam, and if your mighty friends up there, in the clouds, are so set on watching me become the laughing stock of this ancient institution, then I welcome them to look down on me and watch me do exactly what they say I can not do!
“I. Stand. Alone. I have no need for love. Love is irrelevant in my life. I do not need it to survive this day or any other. Love has never kept me safe nor has it managed to make me happy. Love has failed me at every turn and I have learned the hard way that I don't need it in my life in any shape or form. I don't want to feel it or surrender to it. I don't want to either deny it nor acknowledge it. I want... nothing... whatsoever to do with that utterly infernal emotion!”

(~*~)(~*~)(~*~)

Severus groaned as he rushed across the length of the third floor corridor towards the stairs. He'd been so immersed in his reading that he'd forgotten to check the clock and now found himself with barely enough time to rush back down towards the dungeons in order to reach them before his evening round of detentions was due to start.

The entire afternoon had been an exercise in endurance as he attempted to do both: hold fast onto his increasingly fraying temper and stick to his stubborn resolution to remain as active as any other day.

He felt tired down to his bones, though, and the fact that he couldn't rationally explain why that might be the case to his own satisfaction had driven him to the library in search of answers as soon as his classes were over. He remembered mounting up the stairs like a charging war horse, fiercely determined to prove to himself that there was a perfectly sane explanation for his current situation that he'd, somehow, failed to consider before.

Now, though, after having spent the best part of three hours literally buried under a heap of books in the forbidden section he had come to the horrifying realization that professor Trelawney: crazy, air-headed, Sybil Trelawney, might have been onto something all along...

His head pounded by now so fiercely that he couldn't bear thinking about the risible predicament he now found himself in and ended up closing his eyes with a weary sigh as he finally reached the mouth of the corridor.
He'd think about all of this more calmly once he reached the safety of his own rooms. If he reached them. No, scratch that, he'll take a double dose of Dreamless Sleep, leave an entire bottle of his unregistered version of extra-strength, twice distilled, Pepper-Up Potion on his bedside table -just in case he couldn't make it to his bathroom when he woke up- and leave everything else for the morning.

He'd have to go down to speak to both Pomona and Hagrid before he even dared to accept anything that he'd just read as a reasonable possibility. It was insane. All of it sounded precisely like the kind of cheap melodrama that Lockhart used to write entire books about.

Magic didn't work without direction. Magic didn't bend over itself to accommodate the impossible dreams of middle aged professors. Magic followed its own purposes for everything. It was logical and practical. It liked to follow patterns and it tended to be predictable, even when forced to twist out of its original intent by human interference.

Trelawney's claims made absolutely no sense and yet she'd been awfully... accurate... when it came to her predictions about him since the night he'd saved her and now he wondered if it was at all possible that his actions at the time had somehow focused her erratic foretelling ability upon his person, just as she'd always claimed.

Then there was the problem of the books... The undeniable proof hidden in the bowels of the obscure Arithmancy formulations that he'd been driven to calculate from scratch in a corner of his Great Treatise Of Predestined And Unfulfilled Astronomical Events Of The Twenty First Century, fifty-seventh edition, because he simply had been unable to believe what he'd seen with his own eyes.

Potter and him... They were... linked. They were a predestined couple. A hand and a glove. A stag and his doe. A hero and its shield... They were both firmly entrenched within the constrains of those roles. Each one as necessary to the other as the air is to the lungs and both equally able to protect their counterpart from most magical danger...

They were supposed to be madly in love with one another. They had been born to... belong... to one another. The very idea had shocked Severus to the bone. He'd been battling his own emotions for so long now, thinking them utterly impossible and attempting to prevent them from either growing deeper or becoming shamefully apparent, that he couldn't bring himself to even accept that he might have been wasting his time all along. It had to be a mistake. It. Had. To. Be!  Potter didn't love him. How could he?  The very idea was absolutely preposterous... Wasn't it?

As soon as he realized the true nature of those equations and the... events... they described, Severus had set out to prove them wrong with almost frantic desperation, unwilling to allow himself the mistake of holding on to the dangerous weapon of hope. Yet, no matter how hard he tried to prove his certainties correct, his sharp intellect had failed to deliver him the comfort that he'd been shamelessly seeking.

He hadn't been able to find a single error in the entire mathematical sequence used by the great Arithmancy masters since times immemorial and had ended up seating there, blinking dazedly in the gloomy shadows of his library retreat, utterly speechless with astonished shock as the numbers before him corroborated Trelawney's wild predictions for this particular day and year. For this particular location. Foretelling the long awaited hand-fasting of a couple of individuals whose added birthday dates happened to be the very exact combination of both himself's and Potter's...

Could he really be meant to become Hogwarts first (and only) male May Queen?  The very idea made him shudder with both indescribable distaste and something far more dangerous: elation.

The story of the May Queen was one of happy endings. Of passions being returned. Of eternal love fulfilled... Was there any chance whatsoever, no matter how small, that Potter might have been harbouring anything even approaching genuine affection towards him all along?  And even if he had... Was there any hope that he might still be feeling anything of the kind after Severus' own temper-fuelled assertion that he didn't need love in his life in any shape or form?

'Of course not. He was just surrendering to his own curiosity, you idiot. Trelawney's not so subtle insinuations were putting crazy ideas in his head and he was momentarily fascinated by the romance of the old legends... Harry doesn't love you. He didn't really want to kiss you. He'd been ready to bash you on the head with a heavy object just a second before that happened...'

These dismal thoughts depressed Severus so much that he felt he couldn't breathe. His wand fell from suddenly listless fingers just as he stepped on the stairs, clattering loudly against the top most step and triggering the random bouts of magic that allowed the entire staircase to jerk violently away from it's current location. Bent over, as he was, atop the first step in order to collect his wand from the floor, Severus lost his footing when the staircase shifted away and ended up having to reach out blindly for purchase among the thick picture frames that dotted the entire wall of that particular section of the corridor. The steps moved relentlessly away from him, leaving him literally hanging, sans dignity and sans wand, from the awfully ancient painting of Grace, The Ungraceful.

As soon as his eyes informed him of the identity of the portrait Severus felt his very blood freeze in his veins. His eyes closed with the kind of despair that he hadn't experienced since the end of the war and a strange and awful feeling of dizzying impotence filled his entire consciousness with the most dreadful sense of defeat. He was wandless, exhausted and afraid. He was hanging by his fingertips from 'Grace' and he'd already heard that crazy old charlatan, Trelawney, predict twice today that he'd fall from Grace before the day was over...

Feeling now utterly sick with the terrible awareness of how close to his actual demise he might have already come, Severus looked down, attempting to measure the distance to the floor. What he saw didn't reassure him in the slightest and he quickly came to the conclusion that he was, most certainly, doomed beyond salvation.

Without the assistance of his wand to cast either a Feather-Light or a Cushioning Charm he'd break his neck if he let go of his perch before someone else happened by, but judging from the fact that he had been able to hear the raucous laughter caused by the children's illegal Beltane celebrations out in the front lawn from his table in the library and the speed at which his arms were feeling the strain of holding onto... Grace... he knew in his heart of hearts that he'd fall head first down the staircase hole long before anyone traversed this particular corridor on their way to the library.  

'Now all I really need for this ridiculous day to become even more bizarre would be for Potter, -gorgeous, dreamy Potter- to charge to my rescue out of literally nowhere, mounted on that showy broom of his while dazzling me with the beauty of that smile full of dimples and the sheer size of his bulging biceps...' He thought to himself scornfully as he closed his eyes with exhausted desperation. 'Although, now that I think of it, I could always summon an elf, get him to lower me back to the floor or, even better, Apparate me directly to my bedroom and bring me the potions I need. Yes. That would work. No one will ever know that I once found myself in this embarrassing predicament...'

“SEVERUS!”

Severus was so startled by that almighty screech that he jerked instinctively around, loosing his precarious purchase on Grace's frame. He had no thought in his head as his body arched backwards and he began free-falling towards the floor at a truly frightening speed. His widened dark gaze focused with a kind of dazed horror on the astonishingly unappealing face of Grace, The Ungraceful, and he felt irrationally comforted in the knowledge that she'd been uglier than him as he plummeted down towards either his premature death or irreversible disfigurement.

Five slow blinks of his eyelids later he realized that his fall had been slowed down by magical means and it took him another second after that to cotton on to the fact that the strange whizzing sound that he kept hearing wasn't coming from his ears. It was coming from Potter's damned Firebolt Tornado HP. The Gryffindor must have had the presence of mind of summoning the awfully noisy thing, right after startling him into falling, and was now sweeping heroically upwards on his... wooden wings... wasn't that what Sybill had predicted?

'Love will race with wooden wings to your rescue when you finally fall from Grace and, in his arms, you will find both safety and contentment...'

Weren't those the exact words that she'd used to describe his supposed fate? Severus' heart hammered against his ribcage like a wild thing bent on stampeding back to safety just as he felt his rescuer's arms close around him, gathering him bridal-style in mid-air and settling him atop the broom with all the aplomb that only Potter could have brought into the kind of crazy situation that seemed to follow him around like a lost puppy. 

“I've got you, Severus. You are safe...”

“I noticed” Severus grumbled, peeved beyond words by the fact that he'd been so spectacularly saved when he hadn't needed saving in the first place.  

Potter blinked, apparently unable to deal with a 'maiden' that hadn't yet spouted a single rapturous declaration of undying admiration towards his ridiculous bout of pointless heroism. The man could fly. So what?  Severus would have never actually fallen dawn from... Grace... if Potter hadn't startled him with his hysterical yelling.

“Are you mad at me?  But I've just rescued you, Severus!  You could have died. Died. You were plummeting towards the ground so fast that I thought I'll never get to you in time...” 

“I wouldn't have fallen if you hadn't screeched like a Banshee, Potter. I was about to bring myself to safety when you decided to intervene. I did not need rescuing at all.”  

The Gryffindor looked crushed. And contrite. Those lovely green eyes of his became darker, deeper, brighter... until they shone like a beacon of beauty in the middle of a suddenly ashen visage.
“I was frightened out of my mind when I saw you hanging from that painting, Severus. You were so high up that I just... freaked out. I shouldn't have screamed like that and I'm sorry that I panicked. I'm not hewn from granite, you know?  I thought you were going to die and I don't even want to imagine what I would have done if I had been forced to watch that happen all over again...”

Potter exhaled that last sentence with such a stricken little whisper that Severus' breath caught. Their eyes clashed in the growing silence and there was such distressed despair in the Gryffindor's emerald gaze that the simple truth he'd just spent the entire afternoon trying to deny began to take root in his astonished mind, begging for a single chance to flourish.
“You care about me for real...” He gasped in dazed wonder, marvelling at the incredible sight that was Harry Potter blushing like a schoolgirl while jerking his head clumsily in unmistakable assent to what should have been a very risible idea.

“Yes, I do. And I'm... here. I want to help you even when you don't need it, Severus. I worry about you even though I'm fully aware that you are a very competent wizard, one who'd probably outmatch me in a battle of wits. One who has protected me for far longer than I have ever been allowed to protect him. I know that you don't have a particularly great opinion of either myself or my abilities to do anything right, but I... I can't bear the idea of failing you in any way, Severus. I called Hermione after you left the infirmary this morning and she thinks that there is a chance that Sybil Trelawney isn't making any of this May Queen thing up.”

Severus squirmed uncomfortably, loath to admit that he'd come to that very same conclusion during the course of the evening. It was one thing to accept the possibility of something so crazy happening to him in an abstract sort of way, but to do so here, while being cradled against Potter's broad and masculine chest as they spiralled slowly atop his broom in a gentle descent towards the ground was a different matter altogether.
“I bet she laughed until her voice turned hoarse...” Was all he managed to comment and ended up feeling like a heel when Potter visibly flinched.

“She didn't laugh at all, Severus. She is worried sick about this. There are some sort of obscure Arithmancy formulas that have been foretelling the joining of the Strongest Wizarding Couple for about four centuries now. This supposed 'joining' is meant to strengthen the magic of the castle, which has been growing weaker since its founders died...”

“I've heard all that before, Potter. The idea that the school was built using the power of love and that, therefore, only a strong an everlasting manifestation of the very same emotion can be used to reset it's ancient wards is an intriguing, but rather flawed, theory that has been used plenty of times to avoid having the ministry's Unspeakables messing with the castle's protective charm work. Trust me when I tell you that Hogwarts doesn't need saving anymore than I, myself, needed it.” Severus muttered.

He shot out of the broom as soon as it reached the floor and turned his face away, in order to hide his dismayed disappointment from his colleague's earnest gaze. Straightening to his full height proudly he then whirled around, intending to make an immediate and clean escape, but ended up having to scrap that hastily plotted plan when he didn't immediately recognize their current location.
“Where on Earth are we? Why didn't you take me to the Entrance Hall or, even better, my office? I have detentions to supervise and patrol-duty right after that.”

“Pomona offered to take those over for you, so that's your one good excuse gone down the drain, Severus. We need to talk about what's going on with us and I didn't think you'd enjoy doing that somewhere more public, so I brought you here. This is one of the west wing's abandoned courtyards. We are a couple of turns short of the Serpentine Corridor, if you must know. I spent the entire afternoon warding the place myself, so this conversation will remain completely private.” 

“Since I have absolutely no intention of actually participating in it, it should also remain fairly short, professor Potter. Now, if you would excuse me...”

Potter grabbed him by the wrist, halting his impatient attempt to leave with an urgently whispered plea.
“You've got to listen to me, Severus!  Hermione said that Hogwarts' began to celebrate May Day annually around five hundred years ago as a way to top up the castles' weakening wards while they waited for the joining of this predestined power couple to occur. Apparently the practice fell into decline with the rise of the Dark Lord. She told me that this 'unavoidable period of neglect' was also foretold. There's an entire chapter dedicated to the topic in 'Hogwarts, An Uncensored History'...”

Severus gaped.
“You can not possibly be seriously telling me that Ms. Granger genuinely believes that I'm predestined to become Hogwarts' first post-war May Queen. The entire idea is an outright aberration, Potter!”

Harry smiled ruefully, raising a visibly trembling hand to push a long lock of Severus' dark hair away from his sweaty temple before palming his forehead rather ineptly in a bid to check his temperature.
“You aren't all that cold, but you look pale, Severus. You are sweating way too much and you haven't even tried to summon your wand. It's in my pocket, by the way... You are sick, aren't you? Just like Trelawney said you'd be... You walked out of the infirmary before anyone could stop you and whatever you took to boost up your magical strength is finally leaving your system. Pepper-Up can only do so much for the May Queen, can it? I'm meant to lay you down on a bed of flowers but I haven't managed to do so yet and your body is beginning to shut down...”

“No!  Absolutely not. I refuse to be carried out of this castle like a blushing virgin in full view of every single student not currently asleep in their beds. That's the kind of humiliation that will haunt me at every corner for the next fifty years, Potter!”

Fierce green eyes pinned him to the spot with such frustrated desperation that he shivered from head to foot, suddenly wary.
“How does it humiliate you to be carried around like a prized treasure by a man who'd be willing to lay down his own life to save yours? If I can survive the heartbreak of having everyone find out that I'm in love with a man who finds the emotion abhorrent then, by Godric, you'll have to find the strength to endure the shame of becoming my May Queen for one miserable evening, Severus Snape!”

“I don't find the emotion abhorrent, for Merlin's sake!  I wish I did. I was furious out of my mind when I said that, but the truth is that I... I... This won't work for us, Potter.  It can't!  I'm going back to my rooms.”

Astonishingly Potter refused to let go of his arm when he attempted to pull himself free. The gryffindor took a single look at Severus' mutinous expression and sighed with explosive frustration.
“You are suffering from a dangerous bout of poorly treated magical exhaustion that is being compounded by the negative backlash of an unresolved prophesy, you, stubborn idiot!  I don't know what else to do and you keep brushing me off and attempting to do everything your way...
"You didn't eat either breakfast or lunch and you didn't show up for dinner. Unless you had something brought to your office you haven't eaten anything all day. You barely recovered from a dangerous bout of Hypothermia and you've spent the afternoon fighting extreme physical weakness. You are running around on empty, Severus, and you are shunning all offers of help!” Potter ranted, pinning him to the spot with the kind of desperately worried look that Severus had seen plenty of times directed at other people but had never, ever, been on the receiving end of. 

“What the Hell do you want me to do, Potter, allow you to take me to the kitchens and feed me like a small child? I'm old enough to do that for myself” Severus growled, utterly vexed by now with the entire situation.

“Now you are being unnecessarily obtuse, aren't you, Severus?” Potter retaliated, looking shiftily towards the floor while blushing charmingly right to the very tips of his ears.“We both know that none of that is going to help you, don't we? I already told you that I've been talking to Hermione about this, and when you failed to show up for dinner I went looking around for you. I saw you checking out those equations in the forbidden section. I was there with you, hiding under my invisibility cloak, for a long time. I heard most of your mumbling and I've been waiting all evening long for you to come to terms with what you learned, Severus. That's why I brought you here, to this place where we can be... together.”

Severus gaped, then paled and took a hasty step back.
“Potter... Sybil's charming little solution won't work for us. You can't just pick me up and drop me in a quaint meadow somewhere with the intention of returning me to full magical strength. That's just... fairy-tale garbage. And, even if by some miracle there was the smallest grain of truth to that particular part of the legend there are a few key requirements that we'll never manage to fulfil.”

Potter crossed those damned bulging arms of his across the kind of athletic chest that only veritable Quidditch nuts ever managed to develop without magical enhancement and glared at him ferociously.
“What requirements?”

“The green man's power to heal the May Queen comes from the fact that he loves her desperately. They both need one another like the air they need to breathe. They don't walk through blessed fire in jest. They don't enter their hand-fasting with the idea that they'll go their separate way once the trial period of a year and a day is over. They both mean every word, every look, every touch and action that leads them to that bed of flowers, Potter. Neither of them would ever dare to use halfhearted declarations of love in order to fulfill the requirements of some godforsaken prophesy for the good of an ancient castle, no matter how attached they happen to be to it!” Severus protested grimly, fiercely determined not to have anything whatsoever to do with the Gryffindor's heroic quest to sacrifice himself for the good of the school.

Severus had no intention of surrendering neither himself, nor his often neglected emotions, to the needs of the castle, no matter how many treatises on the magical warding of Hogwarts' insisted on the necessity of their supposed union. He was tired of giving up his dreams, his sanity, his very safety for 'The Greater Good'. He'd done his part during the war. He'd fought so hard... he'd given everything that Albus had asked of him and more. But that was all done and dusted. He had nothing else to give. At least not freely.

He wasn't willing to expose his heart's very real fragility for anything less than genuine commitment. Fate wasn't good enough for him and sacrifice on Harry's part would only lead them to both to a bitter parting.

Severus was in love. He wanted love or nothing. He refused to become this man's bride for a year and a day just to fulfill some obscure little May Day prophesy. He wasn't willing to put himself through the torment of having to endure living what would amount to nothing short of a cheap mirage of his most precious desires just to strengthen the school's wards. He wouldn't walk down that soul-destroying path. Not even for Hogwarts...

Potter smiled wistfully instead of recoiling, looking right at him with knee-weakening adoration. Gentle fingertips ran all along the clean-shaven line of Severus' jawbone, making his breath catch. Giving him goosebumps. Forcing him to look directly into the darkening green eyes that seemed to have acquired the unique power to still his whirling thoughts.

“Whatever makes you think that I don't love you like that, Severus?  Whatever makes you imagine that I'd tie myself to anyone for the sole purpose of resetting Hogwarts' wards? Don't get me wrong, I will protect the castle if I have to. I'll even participate in a general regenerating ritual, if my help is ever needed, but I won't give up my freedom for the benefit of the school alone ever again. I've done all of that already and now my battles are fought with the intention of defending one thing and one thing only: You.
“I'm still here because this affects you directly, Severus. Your safety, your happiness, your very health is being threatened and Trelawney swore to me that you'll get better as soon as I manage to lay you down on a bed of flowers, so that's what I'm going to do. I'll conjure a garden for you right here, in this very courtyard, and then I'm going to pick you up in my arms and set you on soft grass, so that you may recover some of your strength. I don't even care if you don't love me back, I just... You've got to let me do this for you, Severus.”

Severus' outraged gasp sounded louder in the gathering darkness. He was absolutely incensed with the Gryffindor, unable to allow himself to believe a single one of Potter's ludicrous claims.
“How stupid do you think I am? I've never, ever, managed to inspire anything other than loathing in you, Potter. You've despised me your whole life. You disrespected me as a professor, distrusted me as a member of The Order and rarely ever manage to bring up enough civility to address me with a minimum of courtesy since you became a teacher.
“Isn't it rather convenient that the second you discover that I'm to play the loathsome role of sacrificial lamb for the benefit of the school you decide all of a sudden that you love me passionately?”

“I. Do. Love. You! You: frustrating, pigheaded, dolt!  What have I ever done to imply that I wouldn't walk over hot coals for you, Severus?  So what if I try to talk to you and become so tongue-tied that the only way to save my poor, battered, dignity is to run away sheepishly?  I've become so damned obvious when it comes to my affection towards you that even the students tease me about it, dammit!  I'm the joke of the entire castle, for Heaven's sake!
“I've been living in a vacuum of affection for a long time, waiting for you to pull that clever head of yours out of your piles of books and bubbling cauldrons so that you might finally see what everyone else has spent at least a year hinting at whenever you are around. I've been embarrassed to within an inch of my life in every single staff meeting and other casual gatherings for months on end. Haven't you ever noticed how Minerva always insists on sitting us next to each other?”  

Severus blinked:
“I assumed that was her revenge against me for winning the House Cup last year.” 

Potter's eyes darkened with unutterable pain.
“Well that's... charming. I don't get what's so wrong with me that you can't seem to find a single thing to like about my personality. I've just... I've been trying to please you for so long that I don't know what else to do, Severus.
“I know you won't believe me, but my life has been circling around yours for a log time. I agree that I didn't like you all that much when I was a kid and it's definitely true that I spent the majority of the war believing you were a traitor. I should have trusted Albus' judgment there but I didn't and, although I'm truly sorry about it now, there's nothing I can do to change the past. That doesn't prove that I don't love you now, though. It just explains why you don't trust my feelings.”

“Potter...”

“No. You've got to hear me out. I don't know when, if ever, I'll find the courage to speak to you about this again, so... I'm going to take this chance: I came back to Hogwarts because this is where you are, Severus. I became a teacher for the sole purpose of existing near you. I've rejected suitor after suitor because none of them came to within ten miles of ever becoming half the man that you already are.
“No one else has ever managed to move me the way you can. No one else can even hope to earn a single shred of my affection because all of it belongs to you. I'd lay down my life to save yours. I'd give up my very magic for you. I've been praying all day long that Trelawney turns out to be right about this, so that I may have the chance to convince you that I can be what you need. Exactly what you need. If you have enough courage to take me up on my offer...”

“You can't possibly be serious. I... Are you really planning on going through with something as... binding... as a May Day hand-fasting?” Severus blinked, feeling suddenly lightheaded.

“You love me too, don't you? Hermione said that you must feel at least some sort of tender regard towards me or none of this situation would have even been possible... The May Queen spends all spring shying away from her determined suitor, believing his affection to be false, refusing him at every turn and driving him to distraction. But she does love him desperately, too. She is just... wary of his apparent joviality. Of his youth and strength. She doesn't want to get hurt, just like you... You have been mine all along. Haven't you, Severus? We've been surrendering our very happiness to unnecessary insecurity for months...”

“This is too surreal to be true, Harry. I'm afraid that the romance of this legend has caught your imagination and it's driving you to make a choice that you'll regret tomorrow. Look at me!  Cast the most powerful Lumos that you can possible conjure and allow yourself to see me without the veil of those rose-tinted spectacles that you've been wearing all day long. You can't possibly tell me that...” 

Harry seized him by the shoulders, shaking him slightly with angry frustration.
“But I am!  I am telling you that I most definitely love you and I'm being perfectly sincere. I'll swear it under Veritaserum if you need further proof, Severus.”

“This is insane!”

“Love as an idea is always insane. Love only ever makes sense when viewed as an emotion. A wonderful and deeply humbling emotion. A gift that should be both given and received in good faith. A blessing in and of itself. A lifetime of magic...”

Cautious hope began to warm the cold recesses of the Severus' wary heart as those green eyes that he so adored looked up towards his face with the kind of sobriety that no Gryffindor knows how to fake.
“I don't need to see you any more clearly than I already see you, Severus. I've been aware of both your strengths and your weaknesses for a very long time and I love them all equally. I want to walk through blessed fire beside you, my love. I want to place my heart in the palm of your hand, knowing that I shall never receive it back in this lifetime. I want to lay you down on a bed of flowers and see you recover your strength as if it was never weakened. I want to unveil your pale body to the wonder of my gaze and pour my every dream and hope for the future over your skin, like a balm or a blessing. I want to caress you until my hair is white and my voice is hoarse and I've lived my entire life safe inside the warmth of your courageous heart, Severus Snape.”

Severus swallowed with difficulty, now thoroughly overwhelmed by the powerful words that were so very slowly, so very relentlessly, dismantling his battered shields.
“Harry...”

“No. Listen to me, please: I want to be... your choice. Your Green Man. Your May King. I want to be not only your betrothed but also your fate. I want to be your... everything. Don't turn me away from you, Please. Let me hold your hand in mine and entwine our very futures with the same strength that will entwine our fingers. Let me hear your acceptance of my vow tie us together for eternity.”

Severus' onyx gaze burned as he heard that barely whispered request. He had read it on a book not so long ago. Had stared right at it with a fierce hunger. With unrelenting longing. With the horrible heartbreak of a man who knows himself unfit to ever hear it spoken aloud to him.

Now he stood in this starlit courtyard, drinking in the image of the man he loved to distraction whispering it to him while his heart pounded wildly, victim of about a million half-formed fears. Despite the calculations that he'd scrawled on a hastily conjured piece of parchment he hadn't dared to believe that it could be real. He'd never been on the receiving end of luck like this. He'd never had his dreams come true. Never dared to imagine that his love was meant to have this sort of happy ending...

His throat felt dry and raw. He was terrified of waking up and finding out that he'd dreamed the entire encounter. That it wasn't real. That his dreams were still as doomed as they had always been...
His heart was hammering like a war drum inside his ribcage and his every protective instinct was currently screaming at him to just... retreat. Turn around. Find a way to escape this courtyard and return himself to the safety of his classes, his potions, his books and unacknowledged desires, his dreary, loveless life...

Yet those eyes of green that he'd loved so very dearly indeed shone bright and full of hope, brimming with heartfelt sincerity. With unmistakable and patient desire, with the very same sort of hungry longing that he himself had seen a million times reflected in his own mirror. He could not turn away from Harry any more than he could rip his pounding heart from his own body. 

“What...? What is the wording of your vow, then, Harry Potter?” He questioned in a small, wavering whisper, afraid of raising his voice for fear of shattering the fragile thread of whatever ancient magic had managed to manhandle them both into sharing this one brief instance in time. This unusual moment of complete and utter sincerity. This last gamble for their happiness...

“I will give you all you care to take from me, my precious May Queen. I will live the rest of my life not for myself, but for you. I want to spend the rest of my existence dedicated to provide you with sheer pleasure. I will strive to give you joy. Contentment. Safety...
"I want to know no other touch but yours. Feel nothing but love for you. Dream not dreams of my own making but dreams of... us. I want to become whatever you may shape me out to be. Whatever you may need. Whatever might complete you. Will you now walk through Beltane fire with me, Severus Snape?  Will you take my hand, allow me to lay you down on a bed of flowers and surrender your body to the strength of my own, beloved?”

Severus' eyes widened when Harry waved his wand and the entire courtyard beneath his feet became a veritable field of gently swaying blooms. Soft, green grass appeared everywhere and a beautiful Cherry Tree grew tall and heavy with flowering branches that shone a delicate silver under the bright moonlight.

A small arch came into existence right beside them, filled to bursting with small little torches that provided more than mere illumination. Severus could smell the acrid aroma of different ancient woods, all of them crackling at their own pace within small glassy receptacles that had been clearly designed to contain their blessed flames. He could smell Hawthorne, Birch, Rowan... the sacred trinity of all Beltane fires and it didn't take a genius to understand that Harry had built this particular archway to protect their small piece of paradise from accidentally burning to ashes.

Severus looked around the exquisite little garden that seemed to have come into splendid life as if ripped from his own most intimate dreams and a bubbly sort of joy began to unfurl inside his heart, his mind, his soul, giving him the strength to try and seize the promise of the future he desired.
“Yes. I... I will walk through Beltane fire beside you, Harry Potter. I will allow you to lay me down on a bed of flowers. I will play May Queen to your Green Man on this night of old magic. I will hold fast to your hand under these stars...”

“Thank Merlin!” Harry whispered fervently, smiling with delighted glee before rising as if in slow-motion on his tip-toes to place a single, heartfelt, kiss upon Severus' trembling lips. He then held out his trembling left hand and waited, clearly nervous, until Severus clasped it with his own. Their fingers entwined, allowing the ancient magic of their whispered vows to create a single cord of golden-coloured magic that started coiling delicately around their joined hands, tying them together over and over with every step they took under their small archway of Blessed Fire.

It wasn't until they had crossed it completely and the entire cord that united them had been fully wrapped over their pulsing skin that Harry bothered to speak aloud again. His eyes shone as bright as the green grass beneath their feet and his voice rose in the silence with a powerful finality.
“I won't accept this bond for a year and a day, beloved, since that won't satisfy my soul-deep craving for you. I won't survive loosing you ever again. I have adored you in silence for years now. I feared I wouldn't have you for far too long. Wanting you to the exclusion of all else, of all others, but never daring to believe this day would ever come... I refuse to accept this dream knowing that it's all meant to end in a mere year, Severus Snape. I want to be your eternity. I demand forever or nothing.”

The binding magic wrapped around their hand froze on the verge of sinking into their skin, reacting to Severus' shocked jolt of surprise. This wasn't a part of the ritual. This was... wish magic. This could create the strongest link known to man or destroy them both for attempting to trick the Powers That Be with feeble declarations of affection that were not strong enough to live up to their claims. If he accepted Harry's vow and the bond found either them or their feelings unworthy of such commitment they'd end up neck-deep in a magical backlash...

Widened midnight-coloured eyes searched their green-tinted counterpart with wary trepidation.
“Are you sure about this, Harry?” Was all he dared to ask and the sheer reverence that gazed right back at him was enough answer for him. “Then you shall be my everything, Harry Potter. I will place my heart in your hands so that you may hold it in safety for all eternity, beloved.”

The thread uniting them strengthened, acquiring the bright tonality of a golden ray of sunshine in the blink of an eye. It burned itself into their skin with a cold, indelible fire, drawing them together with a will that was their own, yet it was also stronger and more powerful than either one of them had ever been or could hope to ever become.

Power swirled around their forms in a wide arch, sinking down to the ground as slowly as summer rain. They stood beside each other throughout it all, gazing into one another's eyes with dazzled wonder as their magic coiled and rushed all around them, through them, atop and below them, weaving in and out around their still bodies like the thread that had united their hands had done before, tying them together with cords made out of... themselves. Of their very own magic. Of the promises they had both given and received in this night.

By the time it was all said and done they were left all by themselves in their small little garden. There was quietude and calm here. A sort of peacefulness the likes of which Severus had never, ever, felt in his entire life flowed through his every vein, soothing all his fears. All past hurts, all doubts and all insecurities regarding this decision.

Harry's bubbly laughter finally broke the silence, ringing in the abandoned courtyard like a bell heralding joy. Severus smiled shyly, blushing ever so slightly when Harry's arms gathered him like fragile glass, cradling him against that wide and athletic chest that he'd so admired over the past few years before lifting him up bridal style without apparent effort, in order to settle him like a delicate orchid atop the soft green grass.

Severus' dark eyes shone as he looked up, nervous breath trapped somewhere between his lungs and his throat as he inhaled the intoxicating aroma of the sweet blooms that surrounded them like a colourful cocoon.
“Harry... You do realize that I have never been... The Queen? I've never trusted anyone to hold this kind of power over me, not when it came to sexual matters. I... I've never been the one to...”

Harry kissed him silent at that point, placing the most tender of all kisses on his lips and demanding a response that Severus had no intention of denying him. They kissed for a very long time. Exploring each other's mouth unhurriedly, with nothing but sheer longing guiding their languid caresses, until breathing became an issue and they had no other option but to part away ever so slowly, looking directly into eyes that burned with desire. Seeing not the stars, nor the blooms all around them. Smelling not the blessed fire that still blazed not so far away from them, but each other's skin and the aroma that defined them. Both enthralled but also liberated by the knowledge that they held everything that they had ever wanted between the palms of their shaking hands.

“You don't have to be the bottom, unless you want to, Severus. I think the whole thing about you being The Queen had more to do with your resistance to surrender to your feelings than with whichever position you prefer during lovemaking. I don't mind giving you this, you know?  I'll be happy enough just having you in whichever way makes you feel safer...”

Severus looked up into those eyes he adored beyond reason, seeing nothing inside them but his reflection. He had never been gazed upon with such limpid adoration and the very idea that he may ever come to believe that he had reason to protect himself from this man's loving touch repulsed him completely.
“I don't need to feel any safer with you, Harry. I've already reached safety here, in your arms. Who will ever hold me through my weakness if you don't?  I... I need to be yours like this. I want to be yours like this.”

“Oh, Severus!” Harry kissed him once more, reverently this time, while calloused hands seized the front of his robes, fumbling wildly with the long row of small buttons that kept them firmly closed. “Must you wear these awfully fussy fastenings all the time?” Harry complained, pushing and pulling on the dark cloth until he managed to extricate him from both shirt and robe at once.

Moonlight bathed Severus' ghostly pale skin, turning it an eerie shade of white and he squirmed self-consciously, attempting to hide himself, close his dark eyes and never confront the disappointment that he was certain must be painting shadows across Harry's gorgeous eyes...

“You are so beautiful...” Those four words broke a chain of painful memories like a hot knife cuts through butter, liberating Severus from a thousand small hurts and insecurities that had always harmed him the most in moments such as this one.

He could not contain a shocked gasp of wonder when Harry's mouth dove towards his neck, laving it hungrily, descending ever so slowly towards his clavicle before reaching his torso. His exposed nipples were kissed quite thoroughly, mouthed over and over with little delicate licks that set Severus on fire, refusing to grant him any sort of respite from the pleasure that invaded him like an enemy and yet conquered him not thorough pain and torture, but through relentless and indescribable ecstasy.

His skin burned with every touch that Harry bestowed upon him while his long fingers itched with the longing to finally touch all that gorgeously tanned skin that he'd dreamed about caressing for so long. He needed to see Harry bare, he needed to touch him just like this, he needed to feel the Gryffindor's warm skin under his palms, under his fingertips, against the inner skin of his arms, atop his chest... He needed to feel Harry's flesh covering each and every single pore that he possessed, but the Gryffindor's cumbersome clothing defeated him at every turn, refused to grant him the access that he craved, attempted to stand between them...

“All right, all right... I'll just vanish the entire lot” Harry laughed breathlessly and that was the moment when Severus finally realized that he'd been murmuring his thoughts against Harry's reddening ear all along. His wishes were granted in the next second and he found himself suddenly vulnerable, helplessly nude from head to feet, holding desperately onto an equally nude Harry.

They both froze as their skins came into full and unmistakable contact for the very first time. Their eyes closed, relishing the moment with twin groans of soul-deep contentment and their entire world became a narrow patch of moonlit grass surrounded by bright blooms. A body that accepted each touch, each kiss, each encouraging nip, nibble, tickle and scratch until their ears could hear nothing but increasingly heavier breathing, long tortured moans and sweet nonsensical whispers...

By the time Severus realized that Harry's fingertips were wet with conjured lube, he'd been already gathered in strong arms and was being cradled against a wide chest like a frightened doe. He was being rocked, soothed, with a gentleness that broke him. He was being kissed and reassured like a priceless, beloved partner. He was being breached with the kind of exquisite tenderness that only a lover who is engaged right down to the very soul could possibly have had the patience of bestowing upon him.

That first fingertip felt so strange, so alien, as it inched inside him that he stiffened against his will, exhaling a hissed gasp of outright rejection. The contact felt so utterly invasive, so foreign to his senses, that he feared he'd move away instinctively, expel it out of himself in frightened repudiation and refuse to submit to his chosen partner in this way ever again. Then Harry whispered a four-word question against his tensing shoulder:
“All right, my love?”

And all sense of being invaded against his will abandoned his conscience. He could not respond coherently to that query, but started rocking softly against Harry's sheltering chest, driving himself ever so slightly downwards until he was fucking himself quite deliberately on that single and careful digit that was so delicately attempting to... connect... him to his Harry like the metal link of a newly formed chain.

Harry groaned against the side his neck, dropping a sweaty forehead over the pale skin that covered Severus' heart and curled that invading fingertip ever so slightly first to the right and then to the left. It took just a small deepening jolt before Severus' entire body arched backwards, suspended in a web of white-hot fire that enthralled him with the unshakable bonds of raw pleasure. Sheer desire washed over him like an unrelenting tide as his lover pushed against his prostate with the focused dedication of a ruthless Casanova.

One single fingertip became an entire digit and soon there were two and then three teasing him mercilessly. All of them pushed and pulled within him, opening him further. Turning him inside out and back to front, making him dance to the tune that Harry played. Forcing him to gasp, groan, plead, writhe... Making him blind and deaf and mute to anything and everything that wasn't Harry Potter.

Finally those fingers left him and he looked up towards the starry night sky while Harry coated himself shakily, caressed Severus' pale leg from ankle to hip and then came to hover right over him in such away that he blocked off the distant stars, the opalescent moon, the dark turrets of Hogwarts.

“Are you ready, my love?” The question broke the quiet and Severus simply smiled. Raising a single, certain hand to caress the stubbed cheek of his fierce lion. He had never accepted a lover with this kind of... contentment. With this lack of wariness. Without having his battered old heart filled to burst with the vague wistful longing for it all to be different tainting every encounter with regret.

He'd never before failed to curse himself for a fool while taking a total stranger to bed with the plain and simple purpose of reaching orgasm as quickly as possible. Wondering in the back of his head about how long he'd have to stay before he could leave. Planning his exit already, even as he drove himself relentlessly inside the body of a man he'd either paid for or lured into his bed with promises of a free brew...

This was a totally different experience. This was... bliss. There was no guilt in his heart as he looked up into Harry's gorgeous eyes. There were no regrets. No wistful longing gnawing at his conscience while he took what he could while knowing all the while that it wasn't everything he wanted.
“I've never been more ready, Harry...” He whispered this one undeniable truth quietly as he opened his legs wider, allowing the man he loved enough room to move between his thighs and lift his hips off the soft grass. To separate his arse-cheeks and uncover the one place that no one else had ever seen or touched. The one place that had always belonged to Severus alone and will now belong to Harry, too.

Penetration felt quite different from the other side of the tracks. It was both uncomfortable and pleasurable. It was... easy and difficult to endure at the same time. He had never been particularly fond of... opening up, and it showed in his initial resistance to the experience. In the clench of a pale hand against a tanned shoulder. In his constant desire to close his eyes, turn his head away, bring this unbearably slow unravelling to a premature end by pushing forwards harder, faster, as ruthlessly as he could...

He persevered, though, unable to bring himself to rob Harry of the pleasure of loving him as he would. Unable to destroy this instant through fear, unable to accept that he had something to hide from this man, from these eyes, from this body that was so carefully claiming his own, reverently trying to own him.

It wasn't until Harry was fully sheathed within him that he finally understood that this wasn't a surrender. He wasn't yielding, no. He wasn't submitting, either. He was putting all his trust in Harry's hands and letting him look after them both because he knew that he would find no disappointment here. He was finally allowing himself the exhilarating freedom of... letting go.

He began moving then, seeking to offer as much pleasure as he'd been given and, upon hearing Harry's groan, felt himself powerful. He now held this beautiful creature firmly tethered to himself, he was now the sole recipient of their entwined forms. He had become the very embodiment of... them.

Harry's hand curled around his cock at that second, enclosing him in a thoroughly possessive gesture that left him breathless. Fierce joy coiled around his senses as he surrendered completely to the callused slide of those careful and frantic fingers and he attempted to utter a plea that he never managed to voice.

Pleasure rocked his entire world, rushing right through him and bringing him to a powerful orgasm that flayed him alive, branded him like fire, broke him and reformed him into someone he had never been before. Someone who could now never go back to being the same Severus Snape he had always been. Someone who had finally known... surrender.

Harry stiffened right over him just at that moment, gasping loudly and calling his name with a shaken sort of delight before shattering like a dandelion right in front of Severus' dazzled eyes and then falling atop his chest, exhausted and exposed, trusting him so completely that Severus couldn't help the awed gratitude that filled his entire body with the unshakable desire to protect this beautiful creature from all harm. From all sorrows, always...

After a few quiet moments Harry stirred in his arms, whispering a sleepy cleaning charm before looking right into his eyes, searching their depths quietly.
“Are you all right?”

Severus swallowed with difficulty, smiling through the veritable storm of overwhelmed affection that was trying to come forth all at once, pour itself over his lion, drive him to offer everything and anything that this man could ever care to demand from him.
“Yes. I am all right, Harry” Was all he managed to say, but it seemed to have been enough, since his Gryffindor smiled, sighed in utter contentment and settled against his side, cuddling him sleepily.

“Maybe we should move, though. Go back to our rooms and spend the rest of the night on a proper bed, under soft blankets...” Severus whispered after a while, carding through his... bonded's... soft dark hair with gentle fingers.

Harry sighed, looking up towards the stars with a small, pleased smile.
“Maybe we could Accio those blankets instead. I don't want to spend our first night in my bedroom. Or yours. I don't want to take the risk of waking up tomorrow to find out that I've dreamed all this. This is real for as long as I can see the stars and the moon and all these blooms of ours. This is real as long as I'm not in my own bed, wishing so hard that you were there with me...”

“But I am here with you, Harry. I'll be there even if you wake in your own mattress, or mine. I've got no intention of letting any of this become just wistful thinking ever again. We are together for eternity, remember?”

“Eternity... Now that's the one word I'm going to like even more than I like your own name, Severus.”

Severus snorted, fished his wand out of Harry's robe pocket, and Accioed a couple of thick blankets from somewhere. Attempting to settle them more comfortably in their fairy-tale courtyard, since he was fully prepared to indulge his dreamy-eyed Gryffindor's desire to sleep under the stars.
“As long as you don't start cooing some ridiculous pet name like The Eternal Severus where everyone can hear you we should be fine...”

Harry choked, looking at him wide-eyed.
“The Eternal Severus?”

 Severus blushed.
“Well, you tend to be insufferably... poetic, Potter.”

“Insufferably poetic? Now you've just earned yourself an entire month of being called The Eternal Severus every time I catch you in the Great Hall, my love.”

“You wouldn't dare!”

“Don't push it, sweet-cheeks, I have it on good authority that I'm insufferably poetic.”

Laughter echoed around the courtyard when Severus simply gave up.
“Oh, Merlin... you are planning to be hard work, aren't you, Potter?”

Harry grinned, kissing him softly on the lips before whispering in his ear.
“I'm planning to be... eternally yours, Severus. Nothing more. But also nothing less. I think the hard work comes with the territory. We are both stubborn, aren't we? We'll fight like cat and dog. Scream at each other until our voices run hoarse and then remember exactly why is it that we can't live without this passion that unites us. We'll be us. Just us, Severus. That doesn't sound like such a bad thing, does it?”

“No, it doesn't” Severus agreed quietly before adding with unholy glee “It just sounds... insufferably poetic, Harry.”

“Oh... shut up!” The Gryffindor mock-growled, tickling Severus under the blanket with a playfulness that neither of them had ever felt safe enough to enjoy before with a different partner. Severus giggled helplessly, writhing willingly under his lover's ruthless fingers and filling their little conjured garden with the simple sound of softly twinkling laughter, wild blooms blowing in warm breeze and them, just them. Together at long last.

 

The End.

A/N: ** Protego Ti is a play of words based on the regular JKR's Protego Charm. By adding the Italian word 'Ti' to it I thought it could, in theory, come to mean that Harry is directing the charm towards Severus, instead of casting it upon himself.

  

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Comments

[shadownitewolf]

Awwww this was so adorable and cute to read...I have to honestly say I skipped over a little bit of the description but I was watching the news and my brain was just not focusing correctly >.o Sorry!

But I still loved this fic. Severus was just the perfect amount of stubborn, Sybil the correct amount of annoying as hell and Harry just stubborn in getting his Severus *snickers*

[pekeleke]

Hello there, shadow! :D

I'm glad that you enjoyed this story so much. Thanks for taking the time to both read and review. Hearing from you again made my day a lot brighter.

[shadownitewolf]

Hi! :)

Yes you'll be hearing from me more frequently now that I'm back home and have time :)