
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/7871779.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Harry_Potter_-_J.K._Rowling
  Relationship:
      Harry_Potter/Severus_Snape, Sirius_Black/Severus_Snape, James_Potter/
      Severus_Snape
  Character:
      Harry_Potter, Severus_Snape
  Additional Tags:
      Drama
  Collections:
      Ink_Stained_Fingers
  Stats:
      Published: 2005-05-07 Words: 2660
****** But Not Forgotten ******
by Hijja
Summary
     Harry finally masters Legilimency, and ends up wishing he hadn’t.
Notes
     This story was originally archived at Ink_Stained_Fingers, which was
     created in 2002 as a home for Harry Potter slash fiction. To preserve
     the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an
     Open Doors-approved project in January 2015. We e-mailed all authors
     about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached
     everyone. If you are (or know) this author or artist, please contact
     me using the e-mail address at the Ink_Stained_Fingers_collection
     profile.
     Author's notes: Humble thanks to Anne Phoenix, Isis and Ariss Tenoh
     for beta-reading. Pure clichÃ© ahead, I’m afraid :.
"If that's the best you can do, Potter, I suggest you'd throw yourself at the
Dark Lord's mercy at your earliest opportunity."
Harry trembles with exhaustion, too winded to glare properly.
"Again!" Snape demands.
"Legilimens!" Harry whispers weakly and hurls his mind forward against Snape's
shields once more, clawing at them until he can't breathe. The walls of Snape's
dungeon blur as he struggles for concentration.
Something quivers and shatters under his spell, and then he slips through the
cracks into the Potions master's mind.
He sees himself, on his knees with wide, fearful eyes, robes torn so that
white, bruised skin shows underneath. Harry looks down at his own face, finds
his lips bleeding and swollen, his glasses gone. His younger self - from less
than a year ago, but without the bitter lines around the mouth that sometimes
frighten Harry when he catches sight of them in the mirror - clings to the
tatters of his robe with both hands, clutching them to himself like a frayed
shield. There is the familiar Pensieve, standing behind him on Snape's desk.
But... it hadn't happened that way! Snape had knocked him through the room that
day, then thrown him out. He hadn't...
"That never happened!" Harry cries, pulse thundering in his ears, light-headed
from breathing too fast.
It has to be one of Snape's vile fantasies, something he's made up to mess with
Harry's mind!
Snape curves his mouth into an expression that is anything but smile, and Harry
finds himself staring right at the tip of his wand. Snape's real wand. A quick
flick breaks the link between them and flings Harry back into the confines of
his own skull like a piece of elastic snapping back into his face.
"Of course it did," Snape says, and plucks Harry's wand right out of his hand.
He makes a feeble grab for it, but Snape just sneers and throws it behind him.
Harry bites down on his tongue. He does not want to be unarmed in the man's
presence, not when Snape has such thoughts about him...
"But I can't remember-" he protests.
"Yes, I'm aware of that," Snape purrs. "That was your condition, Potter. You
insisted that I make you forget."
"What - what are you talking about?" Harry shivers under that feral gaze.
"That I make you forget what you saw." Snape nods in the direction where the
Pensieve had been sitting in his memory, and suddenly he looms right in front
of Harry, one hand grabbing his chin, the other aiming his wand at Harry's
temple. Harry freezes. His skin is prickling in irrational terror.
"Finite Incantatem!"
A thick, grey veil is pulled off of Harry's mind, and Snape gives him a
contemptuous shove back so that he bumps into the desk.
"This!" he hisses, yellow teeth bared like a snarling dog.
Suddenly, Harry finds himself back among the last images from Snape's Pensieve,
before Snape pulled him out, shaking with rage. He sees his fifteen-year-old
father, "Who wants to see me take off Snivelly's pants?" and young Sirius
laughing, "Not with the ladies present". And then Snape is floated off between
James and Sirius, upside down and still kicking at the air.
They float him through the door of the Quidditch supplies shed, and the crack
with which he falls onto his back when the spell is taken off makes Harry wince
in sympathy. His heart clenches in fear of the memory, which is not his, and
not his to see. He has never seen this. He never wanted to.
Another flash, and Snape is swaying on his knees in front of Harry's father, a
purple bruise marring the left side of his face. James's robes are pushed
aside, and he's looking slightly flushed, running one hand through his hair
while the other is working to unbutton his fly. And Sirius swaggering behind
him, swinging one of the Gryffindor Beaters' bats and ordering, "Suck him,
Snivelly, and if you so much as think of biting, I'll shove this thing up your
arse until you choke on it."
And Snape, eyes swimming with furiously unshed tears, leans forward, half-
hunched over battered ribs. He opens his mouth around James's half-erect cock,
and James hisses in satisfaction and grabs Snape's greasy black hair to shove
himself deeper...
And then Harry sees young Snape thrown up against the wall of the shed, those
washed-out grey underpants pulled down to his knees, legs kicked apart to
spread his buttocks, and Sirius slamming into him with careless abandon. The
angry red of his erection flashes in an obscene contrast with the white flesh
of Snape's arse every time he pulls back for another thrust. Snape is sobbing
with his face pressed into the wood, his fingernails splintering as they
fitfully scrabble against the wall...
There is bile burning in the back of Harry's throat, and his stomach gives a
dry heave. He throws an arm over his face to ward off the memories, but the
images of Snape, battered and bleeding with his mouth full of James's cock,
split open by Sirius, are burned inside his eyelids with the force of a
blowtorch.
And then Snape's - adult Snape's - hand pries his arm away, and Harry squirms
because how can he look into that face ever again? And how could Snape ever
bear to look at Harry for all those years, knowing he'd see the spitting image
of-
"Did you enjoy satisfying your curiosity?" Snape asks, a near deja-vu.
Harry cringes against the table, weakly shaking his head.
"When the Dark Lord attacked Godric's Hollow, I did not warn Dumbledore," Snape
whispers, softly as a lover. The words slide over Harry's skin, cut at his
throat like a handsaw. "I goaded Black last summer, hoping he'd be stupid
enough to run out and into a trap." Yellow teeth flash in a satisfied grin.
"Are you going to rail at me for that, Potter?"
Oh, Harry wants to; he wants to scratch and bruise and rip at that evil thing
that has just confessed to having helped murder the only family Harry has ever
known. But he can't move. The memory of Sirius, "I'm not proud of it", swinging
that bat in an eloquent threat, of his father, eyes shut in self-centred
pleasure, freezes him to the spot.
"... sometimes got a bit carried away" Lupin had said about James, way back in
Grimmauld Place. Had he known? Had they exchanged those strange looks when
Harry went to confront them because they were relieved he hadn't seen worse?
Had Sirius failed to sidestep that curse in the Department of Mysteries rather
than waiting for the day Snape would let the truth slip?
There is a roughness in Harry's throat, a scream threatening to break free. He
wraps a hand around his neck to contain it.
The corner of Snape's knife-edged mouth curves down in contempt.
"End of lesson, Potter. You may leave. Get out."
The mere idea of it - that he could drag that memory, that abomination, out of
the dungeons and into Hogwarts - is nearly enough to make Harry throw up. He
can feel it fester and rot inside him already, can feel the foul seepage drip
into his soul. They have torn him apart, Snape and James and Sirius. In pieces
as he is, he cannot fight Voldemort. He cannot even live.
His "No!" dies in a croak at the back of his throat, but he shakes his head
again to make the point.
"No?" Snape inquires, a vague gleam in his eye like the first, thunderless
lightning of a summer storm. "Do you want me to take it away again?"
Harry nods.
"Please," he manages at last.
"And you expect me to do this out of the goodness of my heart, Potter, after
all you've seen?"
Harry squeezes his eyes shut for a second. There is no goodness in that heart;
he'd seen it in that shadowy memory of himself through Snape's eyes. And how
could there be?
Snape reaches out, runs his fingers over the collar of Harry's robe. Long
fingers with sharp nails against black cloth, like maggots in graveyard soil.
Harry can hardly feel the touch through the fabric, but his skin crawls as
though it were secreting acid. He opens his eyes and pries his hands away from
the tabletop.
He knows perfectly well what Snape wants, has seen it in the lovingly cradled
memory that swum at the surface of Snape's memory. Himself, wounded as deeply
as he can possibly be without raising suspicion. Dumbledore, Harry thinks
bitterly, has been given to errors of judgement before.
He unbuttons his robe, forcing the reluctant joints of his fingers to obey. His
shirt follows, and then his hands fall back to his sides again. He doesn't dare
to look up, praying that Snape will just take what he wants and blot it all out
afterwards.
The man looms over him, close enough for the sharp tang of potion fumes to
invade Harry's nostrils.
"Ask!" he snarls, the tone as acrid as the smell. Hot breath brushes the side
of Harry's face, making the soft hairs behind his ear stand on end.
Tears prick behind Harry's eyelids. He doesn't even have the words for what's
asked of him, and if he had, he couldn't bring himself to utter them. He almost
chokes on the sob he refuses to let out. But he has to - he can't obliviate
himself, and there's no one else he can go to, not with those memories.
"Please!" he repeats, barely audible, and when Snape keeps hovering, he blindly
grabs one of Snape's hands and puts it against his bare chest. It burns there,
as if the fingertips were not resting on skin, but sinking through to touch raw
flesh and muscle underneath.
With the abruptness of an adder striking, Snape grabs Harry's neck and pulls
him against his body, until Harry is only inches away from the hate-filled
face. He shoves robe and shirt off Harry's shoulders, and the distinct lack of
care with which he unzips and pulls down Harry's trousers makes Harry wince.
Snape's nails rake down his sides and dig into his hipbones, bird claws
tightening in greed.
Potion-stained hands swivel him around and shove him face-first into the desk.
He pulls up his arms to cushion his head from the rough wood.
Trapped there between guilt and pain, Harry understands now the source of his
blinding, irrational hatred for the man he'd felt ever since that fateful
evening when he'd peered into the bastard's Pensieve. He wonders, as Snape
rudely kicks his feet apart - like Sirius! - and pushes his upper body down
flat against the desk with one hand while fumbling with his robes with the
other, whether Snape left that Pensieve standing there unsupervised as a lure
in the first place.
The first sharp invasion forces Harry onto his toes and he muffles a cry
against his folded arms. Snape's... thing is coated with something cold and
slick, but it still hurts, a raw scrape that seems to run up Harry's nerves
till he can feel it on the insides of his skull. He wants nothing so much but
to curl up, or scream and fight tooth and nail, but he keeps lying over the
desk, trembling like some small, caught animal, trying not to tense and failing
miserably as it goes on and on.
This is not his penance, he knows, as he writhes in near-soundless pain under
the onslaught in which Snape takes revenge on his father and godfather. But the
sheer agony of ill-prepared flesh stretching his insides, and the occasional
spark that forces a gasp from him whenever the pain falters, serve to scour the
images of young Snape's suffering and the callousness of those Harry had
thought he loved most from his mind.
He can bear this, he has survived it before, and yet he feels his fingernails
splinter as he digs them into the desk, against the pain but even more so
against the sheer vulnerability and humiliation of it all. And then he just
goes limp, allowing the pain to wash over and through him until Snape's vicious
thrusts echo through his skull. Let Snape take and remake him in his own image.
Even if Harry might not deserve this kind of retribution for his moment of
impulsive curiosity, Snape might, for a lifetime of acid sloshing around in his
brain. Not his penance, but perhaps Snape's catharsis.
There is a grunt of triumph when Snape comes at last, and he grips Harry's hips
as if he wants to snap them in two. It hurt less, towards the end, but the
sudden wetness in the most vulnerable parts of Harry's body fills him with even
greater disgust than Snape's prick forcing its way into him. Harry wants to
dissolve through the table and take shelter underneath until the monsters go
away. He wishes, at least, that he could escape the sound of Snape pulling out.
Harry's voice is muffled against the tabletop as he asks, "Have I managed to
break into your mind before?"
Snape's long body drapes itself over Harry's back like a blanket, robes
scratching against his skin. Snape's chin comes to rest atop Harry's shoulder
as he bends forward to whisper in his ear.
"Every week's Legilimency session since the beginning of term, Potter."
Harry buries a nod that might be a sob in his still-folded hands on the
tabletop. He recalls mornings waking up with fuzziness creeping through his
brain, an oily taste on his tongue, and a variety of aches in his lower body
that he has blamed on the exertions of Quidditch practice after almost a year
without sitting on a broom.
When Snape grabs his shoulder and pulls him to his feet, he shoves his fist
into his mouth to muffle a scream. His arse burns as if Snape was still lodged
inside. He throws his head from side to side, unable to stand without Snape
holding him upright. He tastes blood in his mouth, and realises he's bitten
down on his knuckles.
After the worst trembling in Harry's knees has subsided, Snape lets go and
pulls a small stoppered vial from the pocket of his robe. He never even took it
off, and the string fastenings have already been redone. Snape looks like he
always does. It's only Harry who's out of order, hunched over, bleeding, naked
but for his trousers dangling around one foot.
"Drink, and put your clothes back on," Snape orders, gaze fixed on Harry's
despoiled form until Harry can't hold back tears of sheer mortification.
Snape's eyes drink them in with even more greed than he'd shown when he'd
waited for Harry to beg for him.
The vial is suddenly in his hands, the stopper off, and Harry feels the sickly-
sweet taste of a Restoration Potion on his tongue. There isn't very much of it
- Snape must know by now he can leave Harry with lingering aches because he'll
just rationalise them away. It takes three attempts to get back into his
trousers with trembling hands, and he gives up after doing two buttons on his
shirt and just throws his robe over it, pulling it close around his shoulders.
"You've bought yourself another week of blessed ignorance, Potter," Snape
murmurs, lifting his hand.
Harry cringes, and shrinks away in terror. If Snape touches him now, he'll come
apart, he knows it. He wants nothing more than for someone to hold him, craves
it so much that the very nerves under his skin are prickling. But forgiveness
would break him. Forgetting will not.
But it's Snape's fist, curling around his wand, that is reaching for him, not
his fingers. Harry screws his eyes shut in anticipation, tightly enough to
hurt. Only when he feels the wooden tip touching his temple, the invisible fist
around his heart begins to loosen, just a little.
"Obliviate!"


                                   ~ finis ~
 
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