Lucid

Snape always dreams lucid dreams. These days, he places himself in Hogwarts: a quiet, ancient Hogwarts. Freed from the chatter of children and the constant murmuring of house-elves, portraits, and ghosts, the stately castle comes to the forefront, soothing Snapes's mind with its solid, Gothic walls. The Library and the Potions laboratory never work quite right, even after all these years, so instead Snape walks the hallways and thinks of nothing: a forced but tranquil emptiness.

Once, while sleeping at Malfoy Manor, Snape met the Dark Lord walking through the hallways of his dream. He had surveyed Snape and the empty castle scornfully. "You dream of pettiness, Severus."

"I dream of a day when I need not pander to blood traitors and Muggle-born brats, my Lord," Snape replied smoothly.

The Dark Lord's laughter rang high and cold in his wake. Snape spent the rest of his dream that night in the Astronomy Tower, feeling the wind ruffle his robes. Stars, like books, are too difficult to reproduce, but he stared at the starless black sky until his eyes ached.

~~-^-~~

Snape has a clear enough memory of Gryffindor Tower; during the summer holidays, he walks freely through the student quarters, filling in the empty spaces in his mind's map of Hogwarts. As he even concedes to Minerva, Gryffindor's wall tapestries are very fine. Tonight, then, Snape rests in an armchair before the fireplace, watching the licking flames.

Well into the night, breaking the rhythm of crackling wood, shallow rasps of breath echo behind Snape. A boy crouches on all fours on the floor, shivering tensely. Another moment passes before Snape realizes that the crimson stain beside the boy's right arm is not firelight but blood.

Snape knows who the boy is; he knows, which is why he cannot allow himself to crouch and see the boy's face. Instead, he searches for safe thoughts, innocent thoughts: he contemplates that, with his shaggy black hair and skinny shoulders, the boy could be a memory of himself.

This is a dream, however, so Snape allows himself a luxury: he forgets that he knows who the boy is, and he kneels so he can stroke the boy's back. To comfort him, of course: yes, only in comfort, and the boy's breath comes easier and slower before Snape laughs quietly at the thought of offering this boy comfort, or indeed of having comfort to offer.

Remembering himself and the fact that this is his dream to control, Snape rises and leaves the room. He does not encounter the boy again that night.

~~-^-~~

Thursday: five hours later. After the fifth-years begin to trail out of the classroom, leaving burnt, congealed, evaporated, and otherwise useless Petrification Potions in their wake, Snape calls Potter back. The boy mutters something to his two cohorts, finally walking back to Snape, resentment transparent in his face. "Yes, sir?"

"That's the third potion you've ruined in as many lessons thanks to your careless chopping, Potter." The boy starts to snap back, but Snape cuts him off. "If you continue to come to class unable to work, then you have no one but yourself to blame for your upcoming failed OWL." He hands Potter a small flask. "This salve will remove that scar tissue from your hand - though I'm afraid it can do nothing for the disfigurement on your head. Use it. If next week's ingredients are not precisely prepared, then I shall be forced to resort to actual remedial Potions. Do you understand, Potter?"

He nods, takes the salve, and looks at Snape for a moment. Once again those glittering green eyes rise to offend Snape, and he can feel the furrow in his brow deepening. Potter's eyes narrow, and he hurries away.

~~-^-~~

The emptiness of Hogwarts, when Snape dreams, feels pregnant: the silence of footsteps barely halted, of voices recently silenced. Snape walks without specific direction, ascending staircases and stepping through motionless portraits into narrow, tilted hallways. When he reaches Gryffindor Tower, he is neither surprised at his destination nor at the fact that he has (intentionally, always intentionally) forgotten his route or goal. The Fat Lady is silent, swinging open at a touch. Inside, crouched in a chair with his face pressed against his knees, waits the boy.

The boy's face remains shadow-covered, but Snape can see that his right arm is smooth and tanned, marred by neither blood nor scar. He walks closer. From a foot away, he can watch the boy's breathing: swift and deep, exhaling just too quickly to be asleep.

This is only a dream, of course, and Snape can not see the boy's face, and he will not let himself attach a name to any of this. This is only a dark-haired boy, and the memory of this dream will be quiet and anonymous. The heat of the boy's back, warming Snape's hands: this is anonymous, as is the boy's sharp hiss of breath in response, the subtle movements of muscle as the boy presses his back up into the touch.

When Snape's face is close enough to breath in the boy's glossy hair, a scent of spices and warm earth that makes Snape inexplicably thirsty, something wrenches in his stomach, so hard that he backs away. He pulls his hands from the boy's back, and words suddenly well up in bright red on Snape's own right hand: I must not tell lies. The pain stings, but not nearly as much as the shock that this dream - his dream - could do harm. For one unnerving moment the letters refuse to fade, no matter how much Snape wills it, and then he is on the Astronomy Tower, his hand startlingly painless.

Snape watches the sky that night, and he decides to dream about the Hogwarts dungeons in the future.

~~-^-~~

Monday: six o'clock. Potter's eyes are green and opaque when he returns the salve. "Thank you. Sir."

Snape's voice emerges colder than he intends. "Next time, you will inform Madame Pomfrey of any physical problems, rather than exhibiting Gryffindor arrogance in your attempts to ignore them. Now. Let us begin. One - two - three - Legilimens !"

Potter, nibbling on a plasticy cheese sandwich while his cousin shovels piles of birthday cake into his mouth. Potter, struggling against a ferret-faced boy while his cousin punches his stomach repeatedly. Snape glides through the memories, following some strains of thought and weaving past others. With his eyes, he sees Potter twitching in frustrated jerks. Potter, sitting atop a school jungle gym and suddenly being pelted with clods of dirt. Potter, wincing at his cousin's words: "Who's Cedric - your boyfriend?" The sneering words unsettle Snape, just long enough for Potter to force out an Expelliarmus! and send Snape's wand flying. One part of Snape notes that the boy responded impressively quickly this time, seizing his falter. The other part - no. After the moment it takes to regain absolute control, there is no other part.

Potter is shaking but standing. His wand glistens with sweat, and his eyes flash with bitter triumph. Snape retrieves his wand, watching the boy coolly. "A satisfactory use of the Disarming Charm, Potter, but you must not rely on charms and jinxes for your defense. When you are asleep, when the Dark Lord slides into your thoughts from many miles away, charms will do you no good. Now, this time, use your mind - what little of it you have. Stop the thoughts before they rise to the surface."

"Yes, sir."

Snape waits this time, examining Potter's face as the boy relaxes the muscles of his forehead and cheeks, his eyes growing distant. "On three. One - two - three - Legilimens !"

Potter, opening his eyes to banging and a shrill voice, blinking up at a tiny, dusty closet. Potter, staring at a boy with sleek black hair and a strangely outdated Hogwarts uniform. Snape's movement through the strands of thought becomes unexpectedly sluggish, and the thoughts themselves become dimmer, fading half-memories. A smile drifts past Snape's lips, and he focuses harder. Potter, hurdling toward a Quidditch pitch filled with Dementors. Potter, being mocked by an amused Snape. Potter, fiddling with his fork as the Chang girl's eyes fill with tears. Potter, -

"STOP!" Potter cries. He kneels on the floor, chest heaving from exertion, and a spectre of deja vu washes over Snape.

"Better," he says, not offering his arm as Potter pulls himself up. "You will continue your exercises every day, and you will return on Wednesday at the usual time. Do you have any questions?"

"Yes - sir." The boy has composed himself quickly, but his still-ragged breath betrays his face.

"Speak."

"I only see some kinds of memories - bad ones, frightening ones, embarrassing ones. Why do I have to relive them, instead of happy memories? Sir."

Snape watches him. Something in Potter's face at the moment reminds him disquietingly of the black-haired, strangely dressed boy in his memories. "I need not remind you that our - relationship - has never been close, Potter. As you already manage to make a fool of yourself weekly in Potions without my interference, the Headmaster and I judged that reliving similarly embarrassing memories would do you less harm than allowing me access to your most pleasant recollections. Moreover, the Dark Lord is far more likely to attack you through fear and shame than through seduction. Is that all?"

"No." Snape opens his mouth, irritated at the impertinence evidently encouraged by Potter's minor victory, but the boy hastily adds, "Sir. Professor - why can't I just take a potion or something to stop me from dreaming? Nothing that I've done here seems like magic at all."

Snape's eyes narrow. "Potter, if a Muggle attempted to create a Polyjuice Potion, with access to all the correct ingredients, do you know what would happen?"

"Nothing?"

"Precisely. The magical blood in your veins is why Potions can be made by neither Muggle nor machine, and why your ability at Occlumency could give you protection far beyond what any Muggle could achieve - were you to actually exert yourself occasionally. Your all-too-visible irritation at the moment is but one example of the little attention you pay to the powers within your reach."

Potter's face reddens further, predictably, but he says nothing.

"Very well. By Wednesday, I hope to see that some of my words have actually been heeded."

Potter nods and turns to leave the office. When candlelight glints off his hair, Snape's skin prickles with the memory of a scent.

~~-^-~~

This time, Snape finds the boy waiting in his office, his back to the door and his arms curled around his legs, watching the empty fireplace. "This is my dream," Snape hisses, not daring to come closer than the doorway. " Why do you keep appearing?"

"Clearly you want me here, Severus." Snape can hear the smile in the boy's voice, sharpened by unveiled sarcasm.

"You know nothing of what I want," Snape retorts.

"Severus." The boy pauses, as if to savor the word, still without turning his head. "I am your dream; I am what you want, nothing more or less. I am whatever you want."

"What I want is some peace from you - your cockiness, your damned green eyes, and your neverending stream of miserable childhood recollections that seems designed to make me pity you."

"You're wrong, Severus," the boy replies softly. "You want a different life - a life in which these thoughts of yours, our shared memories, could result in something more than constant enmity. You want it, but you've despaired of having it, so instead you dream about it. Isn't that right?"

Snape's feet have moved him closer to hear the boy's quiet voice, and he forcibly jerks back the hand that was drifting toward the boy's hair; compromising, he rests it on the nape of the boy's neck. The pale skin and wisps of hair feel soft as a mouse-skin.

"You can do more than that if you like, you know," the boy says. "I'm only a dream. Your dream."

"Dreams are unsafe. You, of all people, should know this."

"Severus, you know well the guards you have set in place. What are you afraid of?"

Snape pauses. He feels the folds of his black robe rustling over the hair of his legs: safety, protection. Without moving any closer, his hand still sparking from the connection to the boy's spine, he speaks. "When I was fifteen, your father caught me off guard and stripped me naked in front of the whole school. I was embarrassed and furious. The next day, I cornered him away from his friends, sealed us into a classroom, and did the same to him. He looked so pathetic, huddled pale-skinned in a corner, his wand lying at the other end of the room. I laughed and asked him why I shouldn't slip him a traceless, slow-acting poison and finally free myself of him. He smirked and said I'd miss him when he was gone. I couldn't prove it for another ten years - but he was wrong."

"Why didn't you kill him, then?"

Again, Snape waits before replying: the words must be chosen carefully, and the thoughts even more so. "I told myself that a true attack on the school's golden boy, no matter how guarded, would be unwise. In retrospect, though - I had dreams then, you see. I dreamt of a world in which magic would make heroes of men, where witches and wizards would proudly rise above the Muggle hordes. Potter, as much as I loathed him, exemplified the life I coveted for myself; I was jealous, yes, but how could I actually kill this hero ?"

Snape's hands have slid down from the boy's neck; lightly and precisely, they stroke his back in wide circles. For a few minutes, there is no sound but the rustling whisper of fingers on fabric. The rhythm gives Snape something safe to focus on, up until the throaty hum in the boy's chest becomes too audible to ignore.

"Mmm . . ." the boy exhales in a breathless, sated voice Snape is certain he has never exhibited in Potions. "That feels lovely, Severus."

Snape resists a clenching, painful urge to claw the boy. "Don't you understand, child? I cannot afford to become fond of you, whether in thought, word, or deed. The more of you that lingers in my head, the more memories we share, the more I gratify myself with trivial fantasies like this - not only do I run the risk of this fancy becoming suspected, I risk your liking me - and that, I will not allow."

Suddenly, muscles move beneath fabric and the boy turns. Snake green eyes pierce Snape and he shudders despite himself, willing himself not to recognize this face, not to stay here, not to give in to this folly that possesses him. "You are troubled by many things, Severus - and for good reason. Here, though: here is safe. You are strong enough to keep this secret - aren't you?"

Snape does not answer, but when the boy reaches up to brush a strand of hair out of Snape's face, he knows that, in this dream, he has given himself only one choice.

~~-^-~~

Wednesday: fifteen minutes into Occlumency practice, Potter has actually pulled himself together and repelled - indeed, redirected - Snape's mental assault. A crude, heavy attack, of course, but an improvement; the boy even penetrated his own memories, though Snape fervently hopes that the child did not recognize the green almond eyes of the girl who had mocked him. Silence stretches between them, a curious look mounting in Potter's eyes, dangerously close to pity.

"Let's try again, shall we?" Snape finally speaks. The boy stands in place, several feet away, too far to touch. "On the count of three, then. One - two - three - Legilimens !"

This time, when Snape feels himself slipping into Potter's mind, instead of the usual tangle of sentiment and memory, he finds himself in a barren plain. A cold, high, familiar laugh echoes through Snape's head; urgently he tries to pull away, but he cannot move, cannot shut the laughter out despite every ounce of willpower.

"This boy is for my use, Severus," a hissing voice slithers through Snape and echoes distantly. "Find yourself another plaything."

Just as abruptly as it had disappeared, Snape's office snaps back into view. Potter lies on the floor, trembling, but when he opens his eyes, they glitter for a moment with hungry triumph, and once again Snape remembers the dark-haired boy in his - no, Potter's - memories. Though the look fades with each of Potter's confused blinks, this sight disturbs Snape even more than the Dark Lord's taunts.

"Explain yourself!" he shouts, watching Potter's eyes harden, knowing that each moment of coldness severs further any hope of friendship, and taking a cruel delight in that knowledge.

The boy falters, muttering some excuse and not meeting Snape's eyes. As his words tumble out, confused and tired and slightly resentful, Snape is struck by how utterly unlike the boy of his dreams this adolescent is, and a surge of unexpected anger thrills through him. Everything is right for this boy, from his youthfully handsome face to his admittedly impressive duelling to his quiet, subversive defiance; yet with all that, he manages to be entirely beyond Snape's control, beyond his understanding.

Snape's eyes finally blink back open to retort. "You are not working hard enough!" He is tired, tired, and he speaks all the more harshly as he considers how very much he desires to sleep, and how very little he can afford to dream. When Potter's cool green eyes begin to burn with bright, primary reds and yellows, a twinge of victory curls Snape's lips. Distantly, he realizes that tonight, his Hogwarts will be empty once again.

Finis.