Trespass

Snape stood across from the open chamber door. His breathing was ragged, his skin drained of colour, gaze unfocused as he grappled with a violent inner tumult, a cacophony of thoughts impossible to separate or discern. He moved at last to close and bolt his office door, and it was not until the lock had clacked that he realized he was shaking.

He clenched his trembling hands to fists and turned to march towards his desk with a sudden upwelling of purpose, dead cockroaches crunching beneath his boots, smatters of chitin and pus on the stone chamber floor. He needed to sit. He sat heavily, the last of his strength ebbing as he gave up his feet. He unclenched his fingers slowly, resting his face against his trembling palms, his elbows on his knees. He focused on breathing, on regaining his breath.

He was often angry. Anger too often simmered, prickling, beneath his skin, a familiar sensation that tinged the edges of his thoughts and tempered steely retorts, that rose hot and waspish when he attacked. He was angry now, angered beyond words. This was not his usual anger, this sick ache that pulsed hollowly in his breast and clenched his gut with nausea, this rage that left his limbs drained and heavy, that left him trembling.

He left his thoughts untouched in the Pensieve, swirling slow silver circles. He could not remember them, these events, separate from him now, but he could remember how they made him feel, the thoughts that surrounded these empty patches in his memory. He was not ready to take them back, to see the pieces of his past that, once so removed from the sanctum of his mind, had been violated.

Potter was not a child.

He was fifteen years old, on the threshold of becoming a man, in a year where he was being asked to begin making decisions to plot the course of the rest of his adult life. Potter must have known, have known clearly, that the thoughts contained within the Pensieve were those that Severus had wished no man to see. He had never explained to Potter what the Pensieve was, or asked if he knew its purpose, but in his anger he was filled with a terrible certainty. He knew at least that even unknowing Potter should have drawn back when the memory began.

His fingertips were pressed tautly against his greasy forehead. His fingers curled, dragging against the skin, and he pressed his knuckles fiercely against his brow until the ache of his skin was some distraction from the ache within his chest. He drew in a long, thin breath. He wanted to vomit, and did not vomit. He had given up tears two decades ago.

Albus had asked him to teach the boy. He understood the necessity of it, the necessity it was to their cause. He had understood what Albus was asking, the burden he had shouldered in agreeing to instruct the boy in Occlumency. He had understood clearly that he was inviting this boy who reminded him so much of James, this boy who he resented, at times, for the constant reminder he raised, and the boy's own foolhardy arrogance, was inviting him into the sanctum of his thoughts, was surrendering to him the contents of his memory, willingly: the pains of childhood, perhaps, or the terrors of serving the Dark Lord. He had put all his resentments and all their differences aside. He had laid himself open for the sake of The Cause, the one cause he believed in, the cause he put his life on the line for, constantly. He had understood the risks of training the boy's mind. He had steeled himself to the sticking point, until he was ready to share everything, should the boy crack his defenses. Everything but these. thoughts. in this. bowl. And this Potter had wounded him far more deeply than his father ever had. More deeply than James had ever had the potential too. He could not teach this boy.

He had been raped.

He understood it, now, though his mind still battled against the depths of the realization. He let the words roll through him in a shuddering wave of nausea. Examining the sensation from some pinnacle of detachment that allowed, at last, his mind to say it.

He had been raped.

He could not even face the thoughts that should have been his private shame. He had glimpsed them over the boy's shoulder, knew the strands of memory potter had brought up had not been the few of the Order's secrets he had cloistered within the bowl, but a day in his life that had tortured him for years when it had been a shame he had only had to face alone.

That boy had raped him. Far deeper than physically. Of the privacy of his thoughts. Of the precious sanctuary of mind that he had trained himself to preserve unbreached against horrors that had blackened his soul and his spirit.

He could no longer remain so removed, felt his thoughts lurch and tumble, felt the emotion of it wash over him, let himself be ill. He raised his head at last, slowly uncurled his pale fingers, stared at his colourless palms. Strands of greasy black hair curtained his face, shielded the edges of his vision as he slowly raised his eyes to the Pensieve upon the desk.

He reached out to it slowly, his hands more steady now, and drew it before him, watching the silver swirl in hypnotic patterns that choked the taste of bile to his throat. He swallowed it down and drew out his wand from the folds of his black robes. He fished the strands of thought out silently, letting them slither to fill the places in his memory left empty by their absence, the Order's secrets first and the last those thoughts that he dreaded to see again. His face was stony, his teeth clenched to the complaint of his aching jaw. His lips curled in a sneer as the memory flickered to the fore of his mind and he began to bow his head again, his shoulders hunching up, his fingers pressing the smooth wood of his wand hard into the palm of his hand, his fingernails biting the skin of his opposite hand. It was only with great effort that he drew himself up, that he squared his shoulders, as clawed fingers, fingers barely uncurled, gripped the arm of his chair.

Snape lurched to his feet unsteadily, and stilling the fury in his expression, his black eyes hardened against the long walk up from the dungeon, Snape retired to his chamber.