Not coward enough to let that confession pass unremarked upon, Severus lifted his head and stared down into Harry's nervous features. Harry had gone out on an emotional limb for his sake. The least he could do was acknowledge the gesture. "It . . . matters."
"But?" Potter encouraged, seeming more himself for those two hesitant words Severus had offered.
His mouth running dry, Severus gave a painful swallow and tried to explain. "The few times I've heard those words, utter disaster has followed. Each and every time. I . . . wouldn't have this, were it not for those words."
Severus held his left forearm up, letting Harry see the Dark Mark, the memento of the last time he'd been foolish enough to believe that particular sentiment. Even now, he could hear Lucius' voice saying, I want those I love there beside me, Severus. And for the sake of those pathetic words, he'd bartered his young soul away.
To Severus' bewilderment, neither disgust nor disappointment entered Harry's expression as he confessed the height of his foolishness. If anything, Harry's gaze gentled.
Harry reached up, captured his arm, and guided his forearm to his mouth so that he could kiss that hideous defilement.
Severus shuddered, as he did every time Harry pressed his lips to the skull and serpent. The few times he'd had intercourse after Voldemort's first fall, his partners had gone out of their way to avoid even looking at the mark. It hadn't been an issue since Voldemort's final defeat, for he hadn't had sex afterwards until Harry. But Harry treated the Dark Mark like just another part of his body.
"We wouldn't be here together like this, if it weren't for that. The entire Wizarding World would have fallen without the information that mark helped you obtain. I know you see it as . . . ."
"A stain on my soul?" Severus supplied. Repossessing his arm, he sat up, needing to put some room between them.
Harry followed suit. Pulling his hairy legs up to his chest and loosely wrapping his arms around his knees, Potter turned to face him. "If you like, but it needed to happen, Severus. We all learn from our mistakes, and that one helped you save millions of innocent lives."
Severus gulped. This man devastated him so effortlessly. Harry had this . . . gift for taking even the darkest events of his life and filtering them through his unique perspective so that even the worst depravities seemed . . . noble or, at the very least, errors in judgement. Harry never excused any of his mistakes, but he accepted them as though they were simply events, no different than the life choices any other of his lovers might have made. His entire adult life, Severus had been reviled and damned for a decision he'd made at seventeen. Harry was the first person who'd ever truly behaved as if everything he'd done to make up for his mistake was enough.
Severus didn't understand it. There were times like this when Harry's unconditional support convinced him that the man he was sleeping with was, in fact, utterly deranged. But . . . delusional as Harry might be, his acceptance of the unforgivable parts of his past made him all but worship him, despite that the young man was clearly mental.
"Potter . . . Harry . . . ." Severus began, and then faltered, for he had no idea what he wanted to say.
"It's all right," Harry whispered. "I know you're not comfortable with . . . declarations. I don't need them. We're here together; that's declaration enough for me. Especially after last night."
Once again, Harry used his natural talent and made everything easier for him, giving Severus a natural segue into his question, "About last night, are your nightmares always . . . like that?"
His face darkening, Harry nodded. "Pretty much."
"Can you tell me what happens in them, or don't you remember?"
Harry snorted. "I remember every fucking one of them. It's always a variation on the same theme. I've been captured and tortured by Death Eaters. They come into the cell where I'm being held, put me under Cruciatus or torture me in some other way, and . . . and rape me."
Like Voldemort had raped Harry's mind during the final battle. It was just like that sadistic bastard to do something like this, to implant a curse that would keep torturing his enemy long after Voldemort was no longer around to enjoy it.
Severus wasn't sure if he should voice his next question. It seemed far too personal, but . . . Harry's declaration changed everything, even if Severus couldn't openly admit it. Harry said lovers had rights. It was only reasonable that the arrangement work both ways. So, he asked in as gentle and unthreatening a tone as he could manage, "Is that why you don't like to be taken, because of the dreams?"
Harry's aversion to being in the submissive role was more than simple dislike. The few times Severus had tried to penetrate Harry with even his fingers, Harry's body had turned to organic ice. Harry hadn't refused him or asked him to stop – Severus suspected that was due to his Gryffindor lover's sense of fair play – but Harry's obvious lack of enjoyment had made him wary of forcing the issue.
Harry gave a slow nod, his cheeks warming. "Yeah. That's lost me just as many relationships as the nightmares."
Reading Harry's complete discomfort, Severus softly offered, "Fortunately, that will never be an issue between us. I'm . . . more than satisfied with our current arrangement."
"It's not fair to you, though. You should be able to . . . ." Harry faltered and looked away.
"Why don't you let me worry about what is and isn't fair to me?" Severus suggested. "As you have noted many times in the past few months, I'm hardly a silent sufferer."
As he'd hoped, a smile twitched at Harry's full mouth and he turned back to him.
"Now about these nightmares . . . ."
Harry sighed. "Hermione says that I'm suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome. It's something a lot of Muggle soldiers get after a war ends. Counselling and certain medications might -"
"They'll do nothing," Severus interrupted. "You're not suffering from any kind of Muggle mental problem. You're suffering the effects of a powerful dark curse."
"What?" Harry nearly yelped, looking at him as though he were insane.
"Last night I was asleep when you were dreaming. I was holding you. My shields were down and I . . . well, I sensed Voldemort's presence moving through the room," Severus confessed.
"Vold . . . but he's dead. As dead as if a Dementor had kissed him," Harry protested, an uneasy light in his eye, no doubt caused by the idea that he might be wrong.
"That's true," Severus confirmed.
"But then how . . . ?"
"That final battle was fought in our minds. It's my belief that while Voldemort was . . . ." not quite sure how to address the rape of his memories that Harry had endured that day, Severus softly continued, ". . . searching your thoughts for a weakness he could use against us, I think he implanted a curse deep in your subconscious to cause these dreams. I believe he buried it so deeply that the only time it's detectable is while you're undergoing an actual nightmare. If it weren't, then I would have sensed it long before now."
"I'm . . . not going crazy, then?" Harry whispered.
Severus reached out and laid his hand on Harry's shoulder. "No, you're not. Although, after enduring these horrors for nearly nine years, you'd have every right to be."
Harry gulped noisily. "I've never heard of a curse like this before."
"Like yourself, Voldemort was adept at instantaneous magic. He could create a spell or a curse with a thought," Severus reported.
"That's where I get it from, then. Who do you think the mage fire came from – Albus or Voldemort?" Harry asked.
"What?" Severus blinked at the non sequitur.
"I got the Parseltongue ability and the instant magic from Voldemort. Did Albus give me the mage fire?"
"What do you mean 'you got the Parseltongue ability and instant magic from Voldemort'?" Severus asked, beginning to reconsider his protest of Harry's sanity.
"When Voldemort tried to kill me as a baby and my mother's . . . sacrifice made him fail, I absorbed some of his powers," Harry explained, his voice and face so troubled and serious that Severus knew his lover couldn't possibly be joking about the preposterous suggestion.
"Magical power isn't like a lost quill. Someone can't simply pick it up and use it, nor can they stockpile it indefinitely. You're the DADA teacher. You should know that better than anyone. Where did you get such a ridiculous notion?" Severus snapped.
"Professor Dumbledore told me," Harry said, truculent as a child.
"Albus told you this nonsense? When? Why?" Severus questioned.
"In second year I . . . had questions after I opened the Chamber of Secrets. That's when Professor Dumbledore explained about the Parseltongue. The other stuff he told me in first year, after . . . what happened with Professor Quirrell. What do you mean 'nonsense'?"
Abruptly, Severus understood. This man had beaten the most malignant, powerful wizard of their age while still in diapers. From that horrible night in Godric's Hollow, Albus had been determined to protect Harry Potter from himself. Dumbledore had abandoned the child to those awful Muggles to keep the boy from learning what he was, and had done everything within his power to convince Harry that he was a normal wizard child, no different from any of the other Hogwarts students. But no other child in the history of all of Wizarding had ever defeated a Dark Lord while still a baby.
Severus had always questioned the wisdom of those deceptions, but now he wondered what he would have done in Albus' shoes when young Harry came to him for answers. What did one say to an eleven year old who had defeated the combined forces of a Dark Lord and a Dark Arts expert? Or to a twelve year old who spoke Parseltongue and had killed both a monster and a dangerous incarnation of the Dark Lord? Or a thirteen year old who'd raised a Patronus shield powerful enough to stave off dozens of Dementors? Or a fourteen year old who'd survived a duel with the fully restored Voldemort? The list went on and on with Potter.
Did one tell the truth, that the boy was a terrifyingly powerful force that they were hoping to mould into a weapon to be used against the ultimate evil? Or was it wiser to make up plausible explanations that kept the child in the dark, unaware of his own potential and the danger he presented to those around him? Apparently, Albus had chosen the latter course. For all Severus knew, Albus might actually have believed these fairy tales. There was, after all, no true explanation as to how two wizards of average power like Lily Evans and James Potter had produced a child this powerful.
"Severus, what did you mean?" Harry repeated, interrupting his thoughts.
What to say now? Severus wished he had Albus' wisdom when it came to handling human emotion. He didn't want to hurt Harry, but he couldn't foster these fantasies, not with a full grown man who needed to come to terms with his abilities.
Severus chose his words carefully, "You know that magical power isn't . . . transferable. If it were, why would we bother spending years teaching children magic, when we could simply share the ability? Several wizards can link minds and combine their powers to achieve a common goal, which is what we did in the final battle, but . . . you can't gift another wizard with your powers or abilities. Providing you had the power to achieve them, I could teach you how to levitate, or use Legilimency, or an Unforgivable, but I couldn't transfer that talent to you if your magic were too weak to accomplish it on your own."
"But . . . when I was a baby -" Harry began and stopped.
"You defeated a Dark Lord so powerful that no one dared stand against him. No one will ever know what happened that night," Severus softly answered.
"My mother -"
"Sacrificed her life to give you the strongest protective wards she could raise. But she wasn't a formidably powerful witch. The best she could have hoped for was to slow Voldemort down, not . . . turn his spell back upon himself or any of the other explanations that Albus offered up at the time. Blood magic has protected you your entire life, but . . . it didn't gift you with your abilities. They were your own, from birth."
"But I speak Parseltongue. I opened the Chamber of Secrets, just like Tom Riddle did fifty years before me. Only the heir of Slytherin could do that," Harry protested.
"What's your point?" Severus asked, starting to lose his patience.
Harry's voice was equally sharp. "I had to get that from Voldemort as a baby. How else could I have done it?"
Severus sighed. "There was a Muggle detective who used to say that when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
Harry nodded, "The Sherlock Holmes maxim. He wasn't a real person."
"That's hardly important. We've already determined that a transfer of abilities was impossible. What other possibilities remain?"
Potter was silent for a time. "You're saying that I really was . . . am Salazar Slytherin's heir?"
"Doesn't that seem more logical than the unnatural transfer of . . . magical power and genetic markers? Being Salazar Slytherin's heir doesn't make you evil, Harry; any more than being James Potter's son made you a bully."
Severus waited for Harry to spring to his father's defence, but he didn't. Potter seemed to digest the idea for a time, then he softly asked, "But I used Godric Gryffindor's sword to kill the basilisk. Only a true Gryffindor could do that."
Realizing that he was challenging Harry's view of who he was in the world, Severus softly answered, "And you are a true Gryffindor. For all we know, you could be Godric's heir as well. These men lived a thousand years ago. There's no telling who their heirs are these days. Purebloods can trace direct descent, but . . . ."
