Severus squeezed his eyes shut as Harry leaned forward to place a soft kiss on the centre of his forehead. The idea of losing this was almost more than he could stand; only . . . he'd already lost it when Burke had spilled his filthy secrets. Even if Harry were somehow capable of overlooking what he'd done, Severus couldn't bear the idea of Harry knowing.
It was all just too much for him to deal with.
When Harry's arms circled him, he didn't have the strength to pull away. He needed this, maybe more than he needed the healings, maybe even more than he needed air. Shaking at the thought of what he was going to have to do, Severus let himself be weak for a little while longer.
*~*~*
"Ooooo!"
Harry rolled out of the bed at the terrified exclamation from the other side of the candlelit room. Still half-asleep and groggy from the latest healing, he stared around Severus' infirmary room.
The harsh sound that had woken him had come from Severus, who was currently thrashing around under the bedclothes as though trying to fight his way clear of restraints. That that was precisely what his lover believed himself to be doing while locked in the latest nightmare was in no way reassuring. Severus was giving him a run for his money when it came to night terrors lately.
Harry crossed to Severus' bed and perched on the side beside his lover's hips. Sweat and tears were streaming down Severus' face as he fought the tangled bedclothes. A low, hopeless moan filled the room.
Wishing he could end this suffering the way Severus had ended most of his night terrors, Harry laid a careful hand on Severus' shoulder. "Severus?"
As happened every night, the instant he touched Severus, the other man bolted awake. Wide-eyed with fear, Severus stared around the room as he flinched away from Harry's hand.
"It's just me," Harry said in a soft voice. "You're safe. It was a nightmare."
Severus blinked and croaked, "Ha-hee?"
That was the closest Severus could get to his name these days. His tongue was nowhere near regenerated enough to allow proper pronunciation.
The instant Severus heard the sounds he'd produced, his eyes squeezed shut and he clamped his mouth closed as if to hold in all other sound.
He hated how Severus wouldn't try to communicate to whatever level he could. He understood about pride, but there came a time when a person had to deal with situations the way they were. He was healing Severus as quickly as he could, but it wasn't fast enough for either of them.
"It's okay. You're okay," Harry soothed. "May I touch you?"
Severus hadn't refused him yet, but he was always careful to ask, especially when Severus was still shaking from one of those damn nightmares. Once he'd received the expected nod, he reached out to brush Severus' sweaty hair back from where it was plastered to his face. He stroked Severus' hair until some of the tension seemed to leave his lean face and then softly asked, "Can I hold you?"
He didn't always get a 'yes' to that question. Severus wasn't able to tell him, of course, but Harry suspected on the nights he received a denial that Severus was too caught up in the memories of rape. Knowing what that degenerate Burke had done to Severus, he was amazed that his lover allowed him near at all. But it almost seemed as though Severus weren't able to refuse him.
Harry released a slow, relieved breath as Severus gave another nod and shifted over in the bed to make room for him. Lifting the bedclothes, he climbed in beside Severus. He lay flat on his back.
After a momentary hesitation, Severus slid closer and settled into his arms, resting his head on his chest and carefully laying his bandage wrapped stump with its new growth on Harry's arm.
Closing his eyes, Harry breathed in Severus' comforting scent and let his hand stroke over the sweat-damp nightshirt covering that slender back. Recognizing just how soaked Severus' nightshirt was, he performed a quick drying spell on it.
Severus gave an appreciative, "Mmmm," as the no doubt clammy garment became comfortably dry again.
Harry couldn't repress a shiver at that soft sound. Gods, how he missed holding Severus every night. He was grateful that Severus trusted him enough to allow him to comfort him this way, but Harry still missed the passion that had made them combust whenever they were horizontal together. Everything was so horribly tense now. It was hard to believe that things would ever get back to normal.
Still, a few weeks ago, he hadn't believed he'd ever have Severus back alive at all. He knew how lucky he was. Telling himself that it was just going to take some time, he recommenced rubbing Severus' back. When he heard Severus' breathing change into the deep, steady rhythm of sleep over an hour later, he pressed a kiss onto the crown of Severus' head and closed his own eyes, even though he knew he wouldn't sleep again now.
He hated watching Severus suffer this way.
More than anything, he wished he could erase what had happened. If he could just have been in Diagon Alley with Severus that day, Burke never would have gotten hold of him and none of this would have happened. But it had happened, and it wasn't like he could change time . . . .
Harry's thoughts froze on the words 'change time'. While it was true that the only time turner he knew about had been destroyed, he'd experienced what going back in time felt like. He was intimately familiar with magic that pushed at reality until reality gave, allowing a wizard to affect his will upon previously unalterable conditions.
Could changing the past really be all that more difficult than healing Severus?
He had no idea how to make a time turner, but there was a part of him that knew he could recreate that magic if he tried. It wouldn't be easy, but . . . it would spare Severus this agony and that was all that mattered.
Resolved to give it a try, he rested his lips against the crown of Severus' head and tried to sleep.
*~*~*
Deciding to alter time was quite different from actually doing it; Harry was forced to admit three days later as he sat at his desk in his room contemplating his last two attempts. The power requirements were . . . exorbitant, and he still had to heal Severus afterwards.
The most frustrating part was he had no way of knowing if he'd succeeded. For the last two days, he'd pushed at the fabric of time with his considerable power. Something had seemed to give, but . . . he was sitting at his desk, in a room with no Muggle timepiece, so he had no way of determining if he'd gone back in time a minute, an hour, a day, or not at all. Since he didn't end up sitting in his own lap, he suspected that nothing had happened both times, even though he'd felt as if something had.
Today, he was going to be smarter about it. Taking a piece of blank parchment out of his top drawer, he tore it in two and left it sitting on the blotter before him. This way, if the paper were gone after his latest attempt, he'd at least know that something had happened.
Even as he started to draw on his powers, he knew how completely illegal what he was doing was. Time manipulation was strictly forbidden, for good reason. No sane person meddled with time. But . . . Harry knew he was far from sane.
Mental or not, the illegal experimentation was taking its toll on his nerves. For the last two days, he'd felt like someone was watching him when he was doing his time experimentation. If he let his concentration drift, he swore he could feel an intensely powerful wizard in the room with him. But thorough searching had turned up not so much as a house ghost. He was totally alone in his chambers. And, yet, he still had that palpable sense of being watched while power danced along his skin like heat lightning across the horizon.
Deciding it was merely a guilty conscience, he set to work.
Taking a deep breath, he concentrated on going back to a time before he tore the paper, focusing all his energy on pushing time until it gave. He threw so much power at it this morning that he wasn't sure he'd have sufficient energy left for Severus' afternoon healing.
Just as had happened the last two mornings, Harry felt that same strange sense of disassociation that he'd experienced the one time Hermione and he had used the time turner in third year.
Opening his eyes, he stared around the room. The weak light of the grey January day outside his window looked very much the same as the light had when he'd started, only . . . .
Only, when he looked at his desk, the parchment he'd just shredded was nowhere in sight – which meant he'd either gone back to a time before he'd shredded it or had moved forward to after the house elves had cleaned the mess up.
Truly excited, Harry bounced to his feet. He'd done it! But done what? He had no idea . . . when he was.
There had to be some way of telling how far he'd gone back. Remembering that Ron had a subscription to the Daily Prophet, he rushed to the open door that connected the Weasleys' and his sitting rooms.
As usual, there was a clutter of old newspapers on the coffee table, interspersed with quidditch magazines and Hermione's neat piles of books.
Harry grabbed up the paper on top of the pile. The date was two days ago.
That didn't necessarily mean anything, he tried to tell himself, quelling the burst of triumph that shot through him. It was entirely possible that Ron had left the other two papers in the loo or brought them down to the DADA classroom with him. All he'd proved with this experiment so far was that he could change time.
But that in itself was a major miracle.
Bursting with excitement, Harry knew he had to share this discovery with someone. He had to tell Severus about this.
His mind already plotting how he'd intercept Burke out in front of the ice cream parlour, he hurried down the stairs from Gryffindor Tower to the infirmary.
He paused inside the infirmary door. The place wasn't empty. The main ward had a couple of third years who'd collided in the latest Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw quidditch match peacefully sleeping on beds near the door. He was pretty sure that the pair had been released a couple of days ago, which was encouraging as far as being consistent with the timeline.
Harry quietly crossed through the ward, eased open the door to Severus' private room, and froze in the doorway at the sight before him. Severus was sound asleep in his bed, but he wasn't alone. They'd obviously just finished a healing because Harry himself was lying unconscious in the bed beside Severus. The blue shirt he was wearing seemed to confirm that it was, in fact, two days ago, for that was the shirt he'd worn on Monday when he'd first started messing with time.
It abruptly occurred to him that he'd forgotten something very important. Going back in time from the future didn't erase the Harry that was already living in the past. Recalling how adamant Hermione had been in third year about not meeting themselves, he quickly stepped out of the room as Severus' eyelids flickered as if they might open. He couldn't be sure that Severus didn't see him as he withdrew.
Damn, how could he have forgotten that he'd be here in the infirmary with Severus? What was he thinking?
Panicking at the thought of someone seeing the duplicate him, Harry hurried back up to Gryffindor Tower. Fortunately, class was already in session and he passed no one in the halls going back.
Once he reached his quarters, he locked the door behind him and pretty much collapsed into the nearest easy chair. That was close. He couldn't imagine how upsetting it would have been for Severus to open his eyes and find two Harry Potters in the room. Considering what Burke had done to poor Carl Westfield, Harry wouldn't have been surprised if Severus had thought it was his abductor playing more mind games on him.
Appalled by the consequences his rash action could have had on Severus, he sat there berating himself for an utter idiot.
Deciding that this had been a really bad idea, perhaps the worst idea he'd ever had in a life of hare brained plots, he hauled himself up and moved to his desk with the thought of undoing what he'd done and returning to when he'd started the experiment, only . . . as he sat down at his desk, he didn't know if he could pinpoint his return to the correct day and time. He'd had no control at all over where he'd ended up going backwards. What was to say he'd have any more success travelling forward?
Granted, all he'd been thinking about when he'd used his magic to turn back time was returning to a point prior to when he tore the parchment. Theoretically, if he concentrated on arriving two days hence, he should return to the correct day. But after this morning's close call with Severus in the infirmary, he was afraid to try going forward. What if he miscalculated and ended up appearing in the room when Hermione or Ron were in here with him? How would he ever explain that? Hermione would murder him.
Or what if he overshot the date entirely, and rematerialized a hundred years in the future?
This was a nightmare.
Harry racked his brain, attempting to find a foolproof way to end up where he wanted to be. He came up blank. Magic was accomplished as much through belief as the exertion of power. He knew that these doubts he was experiencing on his ability to safely return to his own time would sabotage his attempt as readily as a lack of power, which left him with only one alternative.
There was only one way to guarantee that he didn't mess things up any more than he'd already done, he was finally forced to acknowledge. The safest way of getting back to his own time intact was to stay out of sight and wait the two days out. Theoretically, as soon as he vanished to test his time changing theory, he should be able to step back into his own reality without creating a time when two Harry Potters coexisted. Fortunately, this morning's efforts had only brought him back two days. It was a long time to hide, but he was very conscious of the fact that he could have ended up two years back or two thousand.
Waiting had its own risks, of course, for there was a greater chance of someone stumbling upon him during those two days than if he'd only been here for a brief visit, but . . . he really couldn't see any other alternative.
Venting a resigned sigh, he stared around his empty quarters, realizing that it was going to be a very long two days.
*~*~*
"Harry?"
