Title: Night Watch
Author: Mia Ugly
Team: Postwar
Genre/s: Romance and Angst

Prompt: Armistice
Rating: R/Adult

Word count: 18,000 +/-
A/N, Betas: Lilywhite and Fast9s.  Special thanks to Dorothy Livesay, who provides the poem “On Looking Into Henry Moore”

Summary: You cannot say it, even to yourself.

Night Watch

It was during the Dark Times, as the period after the Great War came to be known, that Harry Potter disappeared. Under Voldemort's rule, numerous Wizards of mixed-blood ancestry were rounded up and placed in internment or labour camps, although the huge mortality rates these camps exhibited earned them various other names.(see Hocksby and Lowe, 2006) Resistance groups sprung up, and the search for Harry Potter was intense, but unsuccessful. The Voldemortian position was that the boy was dead, but many Seers protested otherwise; the price for such assertions was always death, but the rumours continued, as did the mythology surrounding the boy-hero. Despite these assertions, however, for all intensive purposes Harry Potter was gone - vanished into the aftermath of the Great War like so much smoke and dust and sunlight.

- Callista E. MacIlwaine-Smythe

from Aftermath: The Great War, and its Survivors, Quietus Press, 2010.

"It's your move, you know."

Snape looks up from his hand of cards. The boy is staring at him again, that violent green stare that makes the hair on his arms stand on end.

"What?"

"Your move."

"Oh." Snape pauses for a moment, pressing his lips together. "Three of diamonds?"

"Go fish," Potter says quietly, but there is delight in it. He is still a child in too many ways to mention. Snape, on the other hand, already has a back-ache from sitting on the stone floor. He takes a card from the stack in front of him, and sneers at it. This is ridiculous.

"This is ridiculous," he echoes himself.

"You're just unhappy because I'm winning. Ace of hearts, by the way."

"Go bloody fish."

"Thank you, I shall." The boy reaches between the cell bars with his slim wrist, and takes a card. He triumphantly sets aside another pair.

"I cannot comprehend why Muggle children are even amused by this."

"Well, they are children."

"There's absolutely no proficiency involved. None whatsoever. Plants could excel at this game."

"I myself prefer Exploding Snap."

Snape curls his lip. "How completely shocking."

Harry Potter's mouth quirks in what is almost a smile, and in the lamplight his eyes are the colour of the dark parts of the forest (a green that has never seen sunlight.) Snape will later realize that this was the moment it all started to go wrong.

* * * * *

They tried drugs at first, but it did not work. Well, Harry thought it worked bloody fantastically (he could only remember fragments from those days, brushstrokes of light and sound and colour) but apparently Voldemort disagreed. He must have felt some remnants of the drugs within his own system, and after experimenting with various kinds, various doses (during a week that was at times extremely pleasant, and at times just the opposite) the treatment was soon discontinued.

Restraining spells were out of the question, as the cell and surrounding area were heavily warded (Harry could cast a wandless, wordless spell without fluttering his eyelashes, could make it rain just by thinking about thunder.) They tried removing all dangerous objects from the cell - any material that could be shredded, any surface that could be sharpened - but he spent the day smashing his head repeatedly into the stone floor (it was not one of his finer moments, but desperate times, and all that.) If they bound his hands, he refused to eat. If they forced food into his mouth, he held his breath until his eyes rolled back into his head, until his skin prickled and his body trembled and the guards had to run for help. So it was agreed.

He had to be watched.

* * * * *

One card game per week is usually more than enough.

"Why do you think they sent you?" the boy murmurs idly from his cell.

Snape looks up sharply from A Reader‘s Guide to Magical Ailments of the Nervous System. Potter is lying back against his small and shabby cot, staring at the ceiling. His bare white feet are hanging off the foot of the bed.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I don't exactly take kindly to you. You'd think maybe they'd want someone more anonymous. Like the day bloke, Angus McSomething-something."

"I think, Mr. Potter, that this particular decision had less to do with you than it did with me."

Potter sits up at this, and meets Snape's eyes with his own. Every day the boy seems slighter and paler; Snape wonders what they could possibly be feeding him.

"How's that then?" Potter murmurs, light falling on sharp cheekbones, and a long white throat.

"Aside from the fact that Lucius Malfoy no doubt thought it hilarious to have me spend the foreseeable future playing nanny to James Potter's son," Snape begins, teeth grinding together, "I was hardly doing anything productive with my time. I outlived my - usefulness some time ago." He trails off for a moment, stares at the intricate texture of the rocks beneath his feet. He decides to omit the fact that he cannot hold a wand in his damaged right hand. He decides to omit the fact that he hasn't performed a successful spell in over eight months, that he can feel his magic bleeding and bleeding from him even as he sits and talks with Harry. "And I am not an easy sleeper."

"Wow. What a surprise, given your sunny disposition."

"Comedy, Mr. Potter, even pathetic attempts at it, will not be tolerated."

Potter grins, and brushes his shaggy hair out of his eyes. They haven't yet cut it, but Snape supposes that no one is bothered about the boy's physical appearance. Potter hasn't grown a beard, despite the lack of a razor for over six months, but has small patches of stubble on his jaw and upper lip. His eyes are growing darker and darker every day, not nearly the furious green the world was used to, but a colour like the deeper parts of the ocean (a green that has no bottom). The nails on both his index fingers are bitten nearly to the quick. There is a bruise on the outside of his left wrist, a small and shallow blue. Snape has noticed this (his right hand aches, it aches) -

Snape has noticed many things.

* * * * *

Harry flickers in between hysteria and despair. Occasionally he veers more towards one than the other, but for the most part stays comfortably in the middle, the hysteria warping his mind enough to make tired conversation, enough to forget every now and then about the state of the world.

Ginny is dead. Harry knows this. Remus is dead, struck down months ago by Greyback (he did not ask how it had happened, he did not want to hear it.) Draco Malfoy is also dead, although Harry only knows this through Snape, and he doesn't trust the bastard as far as he could throw him. Apparently Voldemort did not take kindly to the boy's failure against Dumbledore, and Lucius himself cast the Killing Curse. Typical Malfoy family values. Aside from these three, Harry does not know who is alive and who is dead, who is in hiding and who has been taken to the Camps. His dreams are full of Weasleys, soot-streaked and grey-faced, standing in long rows behind barbed wire fences

"Do try and keep the sighing to a minimum," Snape murmurs peevishly, "Some of us are trying to read."

Harry bites down on the inside of his cheek, too tired to spit out a retort. The seasons must be changing; it is getting colder and colder everyday, even in his tiny cell. He used to keep track of the days by pulling out a hair from his head every evening, but gave up on that some time ago. Now he has no idea how long it has been. It could be months. Perhaps almost a year.

The day guard, Angus, never speaks to him, aside from the occasional insult or lewd joke. Harry spends his days moving around his cell, doing push-ups and sit-ups, just enough to keep his body from freezing up (more than enough to keep Angus perpetually uneasy, har bloody har.) In the evenings he exchanges banter with Snape before falling into a restless sleep. His dreams are always tainted by the War, always running red or charred black or disfigured. He'd much rather stay awake all night, but Snape would probably choke the life from him before the night was through.

It's funny, him and Snape. He used to hate the bastard, hate him so much it would bleed through his teeth, hate him so much he'd have dreams about him - dreams about coming upon him unexpectedly in the woods or in the street, and jamming a wand through his eye, smashing the haughty expression from his face, pulling great handfuls of greasy hair from his greasy head. It was terrifying and exhilarating, that hatred. The kind of emotion that lets you know you're still alive. Harry has long since forgotten it. When Snape limps across the room, now, a mess of scars and skinny limbs and sarcasm, Harry's almost glad to see him. When he hunches his narrow shoulders and hisses all manner of insults between his crooked teeth, Harry almost smiles.

He does not know when it all changed. There was no exact moment, no sudden realization that the hate was gone. There was only Snape (tucking a strand of black hair behind his ear, looking up uncertainly) and the words pulled tight from Harry's mouth.

"I don't want to kill you anymore."

Snape's expression remained completely neutral, but Harry sensed something in his eyes, something that sparkled almost like laughter.

"You cannot comprehend the weight you have lifted from my troubled mind."

"Oh piss off."

"As you wish, Mr. Potter, " Snape replied quietly, but the sparkle was in his eyes again, so dark and sharp and liquid Harry almost feels like he was drowning in it.

* * * * *

Overall, Potter's accommodations are not entirely uncomfortable. He has a fair amount of room inside his cell, and enough blankets and sheets to satisfy even Snape, who has a perpetual chill. Indeed, Potter has a much more comfortable situation than his guard, who is reduced to spending his nights in a stiff, hard backed chair. He can read, if he wishes, but with only dim lamplight to guide him, Snape's eyes tire quickly. He can vaguely make out the boy in his small bed, but intricate black type takes its toll.

Snape has been provided with a communication device, some sort of hand-held Muggle contraption with which he can contact the guards several flights up. In case of any complications. No complications have arisen since the boy started to be supervised around the clock, but one can never be too careful. He could choke on some food. He could slip and fall and hit his head. (Snape had to practice using the device several times before he could operate it successfully. He is sure Potter would have been amused, if the boy had been speaking at the time.)

"They tell me you have not been eating," Snape murmurs idly. The last chapter of Magickal Maladies: A Compendium is progressing very slowly, and his eyes are starting to ache.

"Why Snape, I never knew you cared," Potter says harshly, lying on his bed.

"Rest assured, Mr. Potter, I do not. I only wish to point out that you have been this route before, and it did not serve you well."

"Well that's bloody excellent. Another spot-on piece of advice, thank you so much. I don't know how I survived this far without you." Harry stretches slightly and Snape catches a short and violent glimpse of bare stomach, a white-hot half-moon sliver of bare stomach, before the boy's shirt settles back into place.

Within minutes Potter is snoring softly, his chest rising and falling like an easy sea. Snape closes his book, and rubs the bridge of his nose (he will give his eyes fifteen minutes, and fifteen minutes only.) Something tastes bitter, burnt, along the roof of Snape's mouth, and Harry Potter rolls over in his sleep, pulling the mass of filthy sheets and blankets down on top of him. Snape feels like the worst kind of voyeur, as he often does, and tears his eyes away from the boy in his bed.

It isn't the job he minds so much. Much better than the outside world. The War may be over, but the Dark Lord is surrounded by pieces in need of picking up; to be locked away in some remote underground cell is a blessing in itself, a brief respite from the endless chaos of "victory". Not that Snape would be much good at anything else (in a few more months though, he thinks bitterly, remembering the words of the Death Eater physician, "a few months of rest and recovery, and you'll be right as rain.")

No, it isn't the job he minds. It's the company that seems to be having the strange effects on him. Seems to be keeping him up all hours of the day or night, seems to be slowly occupying more and more space in his small routines, and private rooms, and the rare occasions that he dreams.

He is very tired.

Sometimes Snape hears stories from the Camps, hears other Death Eaters laughing about the death of that Mudblood or this, children he has taught, families he has known. Sometimes Snape wanders through the extensive libraries, touching book after book, trying to recall its scent and texture. Sometimes he locks himself in his room and stares at his right hand, willing it to twist, to clench, to tremble.

And sometimes he thinks of the boy inside his cell. The boy with his dark hair and light eyes, lying alone on his shabby cot. This sort of thinking changes nothing, and accomplishes even less. But it is a distraction, and a pleasant one. Much better than the scent of the dungeon that lingers on his body (the smell of something violent and unfamiliar: cold stone floors, and lamp lit pages, and skin the colour of milk and winter.)

He is very tired.

* * * * *

Harry cannot remember the night they brought him in. He can remember sitting in Grimmauld Place with the rest of the Order, when they received news of Voldemort's attack. He can remember the feel of his broom in his hands, each rough grain, each whorl, as he sped through the air to the small Irish village the Death Eaters had targeted. He remembers touching down outside the village, the smell of smoke and scorched earth, and the grass - wet and shining underneath his feet. Kingsley, smiling at him from the corner of his eye. Someone touching him on the back. The taste of his bottom lip in his own mouth, as he bit down so fiercely he drew blood.

This is where it leaves him. The next thing he remembers is waking up behind bars. After that, everything is clear; days spent in the cell are all laid out like clear little calendar-boxes. But nothing in between. Not even in his dreams.

He asks Snape.

Snape glances up warily from the pages of some book (it looks older than bloody Hogwarts, and Harry does not think it could possibly be interesting.) Snape's eyes take on a strange, hunted quality, and he looks away quickly.

"What? Why that look?"

Snape does not answer. Harry realizes he should have expected as much; really, Snape barely tells him anything. He clears his throat softly, but Snape does not even seem to notice. Fine, then.

Harry flops back down on his bed, just as Snape starts to speak.

"I was not there. That night. I was not there."

Harry sits sharply back up. He notices Snape is rubbing his right hand, grimacing in discomfort.

"Where were you then?" Harry asks softly, afraid that any interruption will be long enough for Snape to change his mind.

"I - where I was is irrelevant. But I have heard - details. It was quite the event, Mr. Potter. Even in defeat, you cause a sensation."

Harry would have rolled his eyes, were he not too nervous about what was going to follow. Snape lets go of his ruined hand, and stares off into the distance.

"Lucius - Malfoy was there to witness your capture. He was quite fond of the story, never missed an opportunity to recount it before he was Obliviated. Although, as I'm sure you are aware, this particular storyteller is rather fond of embellishment."

"Yeah, just look at his wardrobe."

Snape seems momentarily shocked that Harry has spoken, and a tight frown briefly crosses his face. It is a very strange expression - almost like pain, but not quite. And then Harry realizes it; Snape was repressing a smile. He had almost made Snape laugh. The fact is so extraordinary that Harry briefly forgets what they are talking about.

"Quite," Snape replies, as if the word costs him something, "Malfoy had said that you - you were hurt."

"I'm sure I was."

"Your forces were failing. All the Order members had been - were - badly injured." Harry knows instantly that Snape is lying. "The Death Eaters surrounded you, and the Dark Lord cast the Cruciatus."

Snape pauses for a moment, and Harry waits. He has an infinite amount of patience, despite his age. Getting information out of Snape is like coaxing a wild animal into your home; you must kneel, and beckon, and wait.

"And then you both fell. You both started to scream, and thrash, and the Death Eaters looked on."

"And that's when they realized -"

"They might have realized it sooner. You had been hurt badly in the battle, but the Dark Lord was similarly injured. He may have mistaken your pain for his own."

Harry wets his lips. He cannot remember any of this.

"So we both fell."

"Yes. And when the effects had worn off, the Dark Lord raised his hand and shouted that no one was to touch you. And no one did."

"Wow," Harry murmurs. He notices Snape's hand is clenching his book so tightly that his knuckles have turned white. "And then I was taken here? That was it?"

"Yes," Snape says quietly, and then shifts his gaze slightly, "No. No, you started to laugh."

"What?"

"Malfoy said that you - you started laughing. Just after the Dark Lord spoke. You started laughing, and no one said anything more. Everyone else was silent, and you laughed until you lost consciousness."

For a second, Harry has a brief dizzy spin of recollection; for a moment he can taste blood pulsing up into his mouth, and laughter so harsh and painful he may as well have been screaming. It fades just as quickly as it came.

"No wonder Malfoy liked that story."

Snape nods, in awkward agreement. He waits a moment longer, then turns his attention back to the book in his lap. Harry lies back down again, and squeezes his eyes shut. So Kingsley is probably dead. And Tonks. And Moody. Either that, or something else too horrible to think on. Either that, or -

"Snape," Harry says quietly, tilting his head upwards.

Snape meets his eyes from across the room, and Harry is surprised by how old the man looks. Not that he ever thought Snape was a young, strapping thing - quite the contrary. Something about the light, however, illuminates the creases in the man's face: the lines around his mouth, the darkness beneath his eyes. His lips are so pale they are almost white.

"Thankyou," Harry murmurs.

Snape opens his mouth to speak, and then rapidly closes it. He shakes his head.

"Never thank me, Mr. Potter."

* * * * *

The boy is asleep when Snape next arrives.

This does not happen often, but on occasion Snape is allowed a brief respite from awkward lines of questioning and card games meant for one-year olds. It is blissful. He spends these evenings reading, or writing, or occasionally being lulled by soft murmuring sounds, the steady breathing of the boy in his bed. It is like rain against a roof. Like waves on the shore. Snape cannot remember the last time he listened to someone breathing as they slept, at least someone who had a choice in the matter. It must have been years and years ago.

Tonight the quiet sounds become a little much, and Snape is forced to retrieve a book from his robe pocket. He reads for a short amount of time but finds his gaze repeatedly drawn to his prisoner. He cannot make out any great detail in the dim light of the cell, except Potter's slightness. The boy must be half-starved; he is nothing but a heap of limbs, a mess of sharp angles and straight lines. At one point, Potter cries out softly, seemingly in the grips of a nightmare, but his breathing gradually returns to normal as the dream fades. The night passes slowly, uncomfortably, as Snape turns and shifts on his stiff wooden chair (his hand aches) and tries to immerse himself in The Healing Properties of Arraroot: A Critical Introduction. He is shockingly unsuccessful. For the most part, he remains lost in his thoughts until the sound of footsteps on the stone staircase shakes him into awareness. A short time later, the day guard arrives (Angus McSomething-something, as Potter so aptly puts it) and grunts his acknowledgement.

"Long night?"

"Interminably."

The large man stares at Snape blankly, but Snape does not feel like clarifying. Potter stirs at the conversation, and Snape turns to see the boy blinking sleepily, shaking the remnants of a dream from his soft gaze (Harry Potter's eyes are green beyond all reason.) Snape turns away stiffly, gathers his belongings, and begins his long trek up the winding staircase that will bring him to the outside world.

Later, in his rooms, he clenches broken fingers around his wand.

He holds his wand outstretched in his hand (damn you) trying to calm his trembling. He turns his wrist slowly, unsurprised to feel the familiar ache pulse through his arm. He tries again (for god's sake) twisting purposefully, relaxing his fingers, relaxing his arm all the way up to his shoulder, breathing out fiercely through his nostrils.

"Lumos," he whispers, barely a breath against the stone walls of his bed chamber.

His arm pulses again, this time with pain - sharp and fast and rust-coloured.

"Lumos," he repeats himself, moving slowly, carefully. Lumos, bloody fucking Lumos, goddamn it -

When he sleeps that afternoon, he dreams of candlelight - candlelight that springs forth at a word, that hangs at his lips and runs hot wax down his throat, while Harry Potter lays quiet and soft and (always, always) sleeping.

* * * * *

They hose down his cell the next day. Harry along with it. There is a drain in the floor, and a bucket for Harry's daily business, but it is still rather pleasant to get rid of the smell that the walls and floor were starting to acquire. He wonders if Voldemort can feel it when the blast of water hits his skin. For the rest of the day, the floors are slick and wet, and Harry's body feels like one giant bruise.

"The scent in here is distinctly less offensive," Snape sneers when he arrives, "They must have let you bathe."

"Not hardly." Harry's skin is red and raw, and his hair stills hangs damply against his face. "They washed the cell. I got in the way."

Something in Snape's face changes at this piece of information, but Harry can't be bothered to wonder what it is.

"The Dark Lord will not be pleased," Snape murmurs after a moment. "I am certain it was something he did not enjoy."

"Yeah, well, I hope not," Harry spits, "I hope he felt every second of it, every drop of freezing water in my eyes, every blast that nearly knocked me down. I hope he felt every fucking second of it."

Snape is watching him carefully. Harry feels inexplicably close to tears, and it isn't from the pain. It's from the fact that Snape is looking at him with pity - Snape, Snape of all people, Snape the one who should be on the other side of these bars, Snape the Death Eater piece of shite that has been weak, and snivelling, and pitied his whole bloody life. Snape pities him. It's almost too much. He can read the 'I hope so too' in the man's bloody eyes, he can see it there, plain as if Snape had said it out loud.

Snape opens his mouth to speak. Harry cannot bear it.

"Piss off," Harry says quickly, with not nearly enough heat as he would have liked. At first Snape seems rather surprised, but then he rolls his eyes.

"Of course, Mr. Potter. A pleasure, as always." Snape turns to his book, and Harry collapses on his bed. The rest of the night goes by much too slowly, and he does not sleep until morning.

* * * * *

Snape decides to bring a bottle of wine. It isn't as if he should spend the evening completely without entertainment.

At first, Potter just eyes the bottle suspiciously as Snape settles himself into the loathsome chair. He searches his robe pocket for his current book ( An Annotated History of Wandless Magic, Vol. II) and in his peripheral vision notices Potter gradually start to sit up.

"Bloody hell," he mutters from his bed, "What's the occasion?"

Snape ignores the boy, and produces a wine glass from his sleeve. He hears Potter laugh softly at the sight.

"Magic," the boy murmurs, and something in Snape clenches tightly, like a fist. He has to wait a moment before speaking, until the tightness subsides.

"Not hardly," he finally replies, pouring himself a substantial glass. It is a tolerable vintage, a bit sweet, but not bad. He savours the slow burn of it sliding down his throat. He waits, unbearably conscious of the boy watching his every moment. Bloody hell. "Don't you have some sort of tin cup in that cell of yours?"

Potter stares at him for a moment. "I do, in fact. But you can't mean -"

"I can, in fact. If you produce your cup, you can taste your first 1974 Beaujolais."

The boy almost laughs. "1974. A good year for wine. Among other things."

"As if you would know, infant." A tin cup skitters along the floor, to rest at Snape's feet. He retrieves it, and pours Potter a generous amount of wine, given the circumstances. Snape kneels at the bars, and slides the cup through, resting it on the stone floor.

Sometimes Potter is like a strange, wild thing. He waits until Snape has returned to his chair, before leaving the bed, and examining the cup slowly.

"You aren't trying to poison me, are you?"

Snape snorts.

"Because if you are, just let me know. I don't know if it would be my preferred method of death, but it's a start."

"Oh for god's sake, Potter, drink your wine."

A sly smile slides across the boy's face, and he takes a hesitant sip.

"Not bad," he murmurs, after a moment, "Not bad at all. A bit sweet for my taste, but not bad."

"Your praise is overwhelming."

"Do you think Voldemort will feel it if I get pissed?" Potter asks, taking another, deeper drink of the wine.

Snape stares into his glass, presses his thin lips together. Fuck it.

"There is one way to find out," he says quietly, and Potter laughs. Really laughs. It is the first real laugh he has given since being taken by the Dark Lord, the first laugh Snape has heard from his lips in years. There is something important in that laugh, something important in the way it makes Snape feel instantly too drunk and much to sober. He cannot imagine, however, what that 'something important' might be (you cannot say it, even to yourself.) His chest constricts, and his throat burns, from what has to be the wine.

* * * * *

Harry starts to sleep more during the day. For no particular reason.

"What would you be doing?" he murmurs from his bed, "If - things had turned out differently?"

"If what had turned out differently?" Snape drawls in his bored, superior tone. Harry can hear him turning pages every so often, and occasionally taking a sip of wine (the bottle has nearly become a weekly occurrence.)

"You know. This. The War, and Voldemort, and - everything."

Snape takes a deep swallow of his drink, and grimaces. "I would probably be begging for mercy at the hands of the Wizengamot. And then I would be sentenced to Azkaban, where I would live out the short and painful remainder of my useless life."

"My, aren't you a ray of sunshine tonight? Even with alcohol in your system, you're a downer." Harry tosses the rest of his wine back in one motion. He looks up to find Snape's eyes resting on him, before the man shifts them quickly away. It is a strange, unfamiliar discovery.

"My apologies if my answer didn't suit your taste," Snape continues, seemingly unconcerned, "You were expecting something more along the lines of backpacking across Europe, the great American novel, that sort of thing?"

Harry pauses, but decides to let it go. "More or less."

"Sorry to disappoint. We can't all of us have the world on a string, like the great Harry Potter."

Sometimes Snape is so bloody ridiculous it's almost funny. Harry's lips quirk, and Snape frowns.

"What?"

"You forget," Harry murmurs, "You won. I no longer have the world on my string, as you so nicely put it. I, in fact, am presumed dead by the greater part of the Wizarding world. I, in fact, would have been killed long ago in ways too horrible to mention, had it not been for one teensy tiny little fact."

"Teensy?" Snape sneers, "And they had me believe that your mind had not yet gone."

Harry is momentarily stopped from ranting, and seconds later a quiet huff of laughter escapes his lips. It is terribly embarrassing. Snape does not seem to notice, because seconds later his face turns white and flinches with a sudden pain. Harry stops laughing immediately, and watches as Snape clutches his right hand to his chest, his eyes fluttering shut for a brief moment. Harry knows this look - know this expression and this gesture as if it were his own, as if he'd lived with it for years. He waits until Snape has relaxed slightly, and is slowly rotating his wrist, before speaking.

"What happened?"

Snape looks up blankly, as if he had forgotten he was not alone.

"What?"

"To your hand." Harry frowns, disappointed with himself for actually wanting to know. "You never talk about it."

Snape pauses, wets his lips. "The War, I suppose. I do not believe there is a single person it did not leave its mark on."

"And who marked you?" Harry continues, surprised at his own daring. Snape seems surprised as well, for his lips go very white and his right hand flinches again.

"That - Mr. Potter - is perhaps a question for another day."

Sometimes Harry wonder if he will be 'Mr. Potter' for the rest of his bloody life, no matter how old or ridiculous or hopeless his situation has become.

"Isn't it just," he murmurs, without smiling. Snape meets his gaze for one small second, and in that second the room seems to shift slightly. Something tightens, or changes shape, Harry does not know what precisely. But something changes.

Snape looks away suddenly, and retrieves his book from the arm of his chair. Harry waits for a few minutes, to see whether Snape will respond to this last comment. When he does not, and instead continues with his reading, Harry slouches back in his bed. He wonders, not for the first time, how far below the earth he really is. He wonders how many people know that he is still alive, if any of his friends know, or anyone cares enough to come looking for him. He wonders if Snape knows the answer to these questions.

It is a frightening thought process, this. Out of sheer boredom, Harry starts to drift in and out of a restless sleep. His dreams are usually the same - war and death and bloodshed - only this time there are a pair of wide dark eyes, that meet his gaze, then quickly look away.

* * * * *

Snape takes to bringing a bottle of wine more and more often. It makes for a much more interesting evening.

"Hello," the boy sighs quietly, after Snape has not even been seated for ten minutes.

"Are you this sociable to your other guardian, or am I the only lucky one?"

"No, just you. But don't spread it around. I don't want feelings to get hurt." The boy sits up, and shakes himself awake. "Then again, you're the only one who brings me wine. I feel as you've earned it."

"The wine is primarily for myself. To make the company a little more bearable."

The boy chuckles. "Decent wine glasses, or do I still have to drink from my begging cup?"

Snape rolls his eyes. "The cup, if you would be so kind."

Harry retrieves the tin cup from the ground by his bed, and rolls it underneath the bars to Snape. Snape twists the cork out of the slim bottle, and fills the glass, slipping it through the bars to Harry. He is very careful not to let any part of their hands touch.

"I've decided what I would do," the boy murmurs, taking a sip from his glass. "By the way, this is bloody marvellous. Red's always been my favourite."

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"What I would do. If things had turned out differently."

"Besides be a permanent feature in Witch Weekly."

"Well that kind of goes without saying. Didn't really feel like bringing it up."

Snape takes a drink from his glass, and savours the slow burn. "Do enlighten me, Mr. Potter. I scarcely know how I will think of anything else."

"A Glamour." The boy looks obscenely pleased with himself.

"A Glamour?"

"A permanent Glamour. Or at least one that didn't have to be reapplied too often. I know it can be done - well, I mean, I've heard of it."

"It can be done," Snape murmurs non-commitally, "A Glamour of whom, may I ask?"

"Of no one," Potter practically beams. "That's just it. Someone that no one would ever recognize. Someone that didn't exist. And I could tell my friends, maybe, but no one else would know. And that'd be it. No more Harry Potter."

"Very clever." Snape takes another swallow of wine. "What would you look like, do you think? Some strapping young lad, I suppose, to win the heart of many a fair maid?"

"Now that sounds just like me, I don't think." Potter shakes his head. "No, nothing like that. Someone completely ordinary. John Smith, that sort of thing."

"John Smith is so inconspicuous, it's conspicuous."

"Well, John Smitherson, if that makes you happier. I doubt it will be something I'll have to worry about in the near future."

"I should say not."

Potter pauses and studies the metal cup in his hand. The lamplight reflects dully off the thick metal.

"Do you think - do you think they'll be able to sever it soon?"

"Sever it?"

"This connection. Whatever it is."

Snape frowns. "I could not say."

"Because they'll kill me then. You know that."

"I do."

Potter pauses again. This time there is much more meaning in it. Snape finds he cannot meet the boy's eyes.

"I never knew whose side you were on, really," he says quietly, fluidly, "I guess I never will."

"I thought you'd have figured it out by now, given the position you're in," Snape hisses, and the words cost him something. He doesn't realize this until they have already escaped his lips, and hang sharply in the dusty prison air.

"You'd think so, wouldn't you," Potter murmurs. "But -"

He does not finish his thought. They do not speak for the rest of the night, and Snape finds himself drinking his wine more quickly than usual. Nerves, he tells himself. Always nerves.

* * * * *

Some nights are better than others.

"No wine tonight?" Harry asks, looking casually up from his bed.

Snape shakes his head. "No."

There is something more to that answer, hiding just behind Snape's clenched teeth and frosty disposition, but Harry decides not to explore further. He watches Snape settle uncomfortably into his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him. The man looks older every time Harry sees him.

"Been a long day?" Harry comments, and Snape winces.

"Don't you have anything to read?"

"Course not. Might slit my wrists with a scrap of paper."

"Hmm." Snape unfolds a thin paperback from his robe pockets. Harry squints to make out the title, but it eludes him. He has obviously lived too long in darkness.

"Good book?"

Snape sighs one of his famous, put-upon sighs, and glares in his general direction.

"I am not yet sure. Perhaps I could establish an answer were I given more than fifteen seconds of silence at a time." He sounds angry, but there is no heat in it. Harry lets him go back to his reading, for awhile at least. He stares up at the ceiling, stretches out his stiff back. He thinks about the colour of Ginny Weasley's hair, red gold and flashing in the sunlight. He thinks about the way that he never loved her, and the way she always knew it.

Snape's hands are shaking.

Harry blinks his eyes and looks closer. It's true, Snape's hands are shaking around the small book that they hold. Harry lets his gaze travel to Snape's eyes, and he can read the pain in them, coming in short sporadic bursts, like pulses of blood through the heart. Snape rolls his right shoulder and grimaces.

"You okay?" Harry asks after a minute, despite himself.

"Quite," Snape hisses. If the word had been metal, Harry's throat would have been slit. He perseveres nevertheless (brains were never his strong suit.)

"It's your hand again, isn't it?"

"Of for god's sake, Potter, it's always my hand. Don't you have revenge plans to be hatching, or some equally ludicrous thing?"

Harry frowns, wets his lips. "You know," he starts quietly, "I took a bit of mediwizardry. While the war was still on."

"You must be very proud," Snape does not spare Harry a glance, but keeps his eyes focused on the page in front of him.

"And I studied some of that - whatsit - reflexology. Actually. You know, the bit about the pressure points and the pain relieving -"

"I am well aware of the meaning of the word. This conversation is now at an end."

"Dammit, Snape, you are so bloody ridiculous. All I was trying to do -"

"I know damn well what you were trying to do," Snape hisses, eyes suddenly flashing, book on the ground, "Damn well. Offer your services to your poor crippled prison guard? Try to ingratiate yourself into my twisted, dried up old heart? Well it will not work. I do not need anyone's pity, least of all yours. You can spare me -"

"It's not pity," Harry retorts, suddenly furious. And it wasn't pity, it really wasn't. Snape was an absolute bastard; how could anyone pity the man? And yet -

"It's not pity," he says again, "It's just - I thought I might help you. Give your hand here."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Oh come on, Snape. Don't be such a baby. I promise not to offend your delicate sensibilities. It's just your hand."

"As I said before, Mr. Potter, this conversation is finished."

"Snape," Harry murmurs.

Snape will not meet his eyes. He stares at the floor, the walls, looks anywhere but into the cell.

"Snape," Harry repeats.

Snape looks very torn for one brief second, and then murmurs something under his breath. Harry strains to listen, but cannot make the words out.

"What did you say?"

"I said if you promise to shut up about it."

Harry grins, pleased when Snape rolls his eyes yet again. "Of course. Come here."

He watches as Snape stiffly rises from the chair, and gets to his knees beside the bars of Harry's cell. After a moment he shifts in a cross-legged seating position, his bony knees sticking sharply out beneath him.

"Let's see your hand."

Snape waits a second before extending his right hand through the cell bars, white fingers unfurling slowly. What was that saying, you could tell someone's age by looking at their hands? If Harry had to judge by Snape's hands, he would guess the man was mid-twenties, tops. Certainly not the hunched, dark-eyed wizard that sat before him. Aside from the nails, slightly yellowed and bitten here and there, Snape's hands were lovely. Ugh - and that thought was enough to put hair on your chest.

"Shall I just continue my reading?" Snape interrupts sharply, and Harry realizes he had been staring into space.

"Oh. No. Here." He grips Snape's hand in both of his, surprised at once by how cold his skin is. He strokes upward with his thumbs and Snape makes a small sound under his breath, but does not take his hand away.

"Did that hurt?" Harry asks.

"No more so than usual."

Slowly, Harry navigates his thumbs to the palm of Snape's hand. He presses down there, in short strong pulses. He hears Snape breathe out through his nose.

"If any of this feels too bad, you have to let me know."