#boylived

he freezes, coming face to face with harry —– private moments together had been few. but the pale visage haunts rhaegar still, certainly the other shares these feelings, eyes slitted and red, filled with hatred that'd make the devil shake in his boots. and if it weren't for nagini's thunderous roar overshadowing all else, gaunt was certain lord voldemort's enraged yell would haunt him still. ❝ you —– ❞ how dry his throat was all of a sudden. faced with the boy who lived an old scorn gripped his heart, entirely alien to him.

❝ how do you fare? is your recovery going smoothly? ❞

One thing that could be said about Hermione Granger is that she loves breaking the rules just as much as she enjoys following them. It's simple logic, really. Rules are only ever deserving of her respect if they make sense. They're important, but they're fallible. Created by humans and therefore, subject to being a load of absolute rubbish. And then some rules? Well, they just stood in her way.

He had to hand it to Scarhead; Potter never wasted time with pleasantries. Straight to being insufferable, as always. And the worst part? Draco almost always took the bait. He’d regret it later, of course, but in the moment… resisting was impossible.

“Projecting, Potter?” Draco drawled, shifting on the wooden bench with a creak. He stretched out, uncrossing his legs and draping an arm lazily over the backrest, as though Potter weren’t even worth sitting up for. For once, the Boy Who Lived had come alone, no Weasel, no Granger, no one to chime in on his behalf. Curious.

Maybe Potter thought he could win something out of him, some scrap of information, some clumsy Gryffindor scheme he thought was clever. Laughable, really. Still, Draco smirked; he could twist this to his own advantage. “You don’t sound half as sure of yourself as you usually do,” he remarked, his pale eyes narrowing with amusement. “Wonder why that is.”

the question caught him off guard, really; the additional gesture torwards nagini and a possible correlation with his height even more so. and he was about to give an equally quippy answer —– but then rhaegar stopped to think. gaunt was never really short, but he did hit his final growth spurt shortly after his sixteenth birthday, coincidentally months after he had turned nagini into his horcrux. the power of a dragon nigh unrivalled / the unexpected benefits of giving the she-beast a shard of his soul were many. who was to say that growing was not one of them? ❝ i mean —– maybe? ❞

he said so casually. ❝ it would not be the only thing she rubbed off on me. ❞ he'd look at the winged mountain and see himself, at times nagini was more him than he was.

he protecc, he attacc - accepting.

Severus Snape did not sigh. He inhaled sharply - which was a very different thing - and schooled his gaze into the carefully cultivated disdain that had gotten him through a war, seventeen years of adolescent idiocy, and a lifetime of catastrophic personal choices. His arms folded across his chest, black robes cascading around him like a funeral shroud he hadn't quite gotten around to donning properly.

Potter had said it like a death sentence, and the words fell between them like broken glass. Of course the boy would toss that particular emotional grenade into the middle of their already-fractured peace, and stand there blinking at him like a kicked puppy. He did not immediately answer. Silence, after all, was a language he spoke more fluently than comfort.

Snape turned away, just enough to give himself a second to arrange his features into something less revealing than horrified recognition. Because Merlin help him, he knew that tone - the bleak resignation of someone who'd already pencilled in their own downfall and was just waiting for the ink to dry.

When he turned, he regarded Potter with the same expression he might reserve for a particularly difficult potion - something volatile, inevitable, and entirely his problem now, dark eyes sharp enough to open veins. His unwitting charge stood before him - rain-soaked, fever-eyed, stubborn to the last - and Severus Snape felt, for one hideous moment, the unbearable temptation to lie; to say something soft, something that would smell suspiciously like hope.

Instead, he allowed a breath to scrape out of him - slow, tired, scathing.

"You say that as though you've cornered the market on reckless sacrifice." he said at last, his deep baritone like ruinous velvet. "At this rate you'll become a self-fulfilling prophecy."

It was easier to be cruel than kind. Always had been. Kindness was exposure, it bared the throat. He'd rather swallow glass than admit how deeply it shook him, hearing that tone in his voice, knowing the hideous truth Albus had oh-so-kindly kept from him all those years he dedicated himself to the survival of the boy. It didn't escape him that the last time someone had said those words, Snape had killed the only person in the world who knew him. And this time--

Well. He was already dead, wasn't he?

"But you're not a bloody prophecy." he said at last, quieter. His lips twisted, something bitter roiling in his breast.

"Save you--" He prowled a step closer, slow and calculated, as if approaching a dangerous, wounded creature - which, in fairness, he was.

"You think salvation is what I offer you?" Snape went on, voice dipping into something softer, tainted. "No. I offer you survival." a temporary lie of one. "Ugly, clawed, bloody survival."

The kind that leaves you standing while the better parts of you rot.

The fire hissed in the grate behind him, spitting sparks like accusations. Snape let his gaze rake over Harry Potter - the gaunt, dirt streaked cheeks, the feral gleam of defiance beneath the exhaustion - and something inside him shifted unpleasantly. Some old scar aching with the memory of sunlit fields it had once dared to want. He could not save Harry Potter. He could not even save himself. All he could do was hold the bloody line, teeth bared, until the end. He could taste the approaching end like rust on his tongue.

are you intimidated? - accepting.

bottoms up! - accepting.

Severus paused, the rim of the glass still pressed lightly against his lower lip, dark eyes narrowing into slits as he considered the-boy--now man-who-lived with barely concealed disdain. So what if Potter saw the indignity of Snape letting himself go? It didn't matter anymore. His mission was over, the façade torn away. The shadows of Spinner's End draped around him like a comfortless cloak, thickening the oppressive silence that hung between them.

Snape looked older now - not aged, but weathered in the way ancient ruins are, stone eroded by decades of unforgiving elements, but still standing out of sheer, spiteful defiance. His sallow skin had taken on a greyish pallor beneath the low light, and the hollows beneath his eyes were deeper than they'd been at Hogwarts -as if grief had crudely carved them out with a steady chisel. His hair had grown past his shoulders, streaked with silver and pulled back at the nape in a haphazard tie that suggested neither vanity nor effort. He looked like a man unbothered by appearances, or perhaps too exhausted to care. Dark yet faded robes hung on his sparse frame less like a uniform now and more like a shroud. His posture, though as rigid as memory recalled despite the liquor, carried the subtle weight of someone who'd long since tired of holding himself upright for anyone's sake.

"An adequate amount." he drawled, the low velvet of his tone tinged with biting sarcasm. "Precisely enough to make your presence here marginally tolerable. If you intend to stay, Potter, I'd suggest you have a drink yourself - though I daresay even Ogden's finest has its limits."

Snape tilted the glass toward him in a mocking salute before knocking back another mouthful. He allowed the burn of Firewhiskey to scorch way down his throat, settling in his chest like an ember he'd dearly wish would ignite him entirely. He regarded the stubborn prat once more, the alcohol doing precious little to soften his critical gaze. Potter's misguided attempts at reconciliation, or pity, or whatever infuriatingly earnest impulse drove him to haunt his doorstep, grated on his frayed nerves more than usual.

"Tell me--" Snape finally asked, setting down the empty glass, further leaning into the armchair. "are you always this concerned, or am I uniquely cursed with your attention?"

He arched a sardonic eyebrow, daring Potter to answer, though he feared he already knew the truth: Harry Potter had an alarming tendency to cling to lost causes.