average human’s Reviews > Expecto Patronum > Status Update

“What is the problem now?” Severus sighed as he entered the boys’ room.

... and immediately saw what the problem was.

“Absolute not,” Severus snapped. “Harry, where on Earth did you acquire a King Cobra?”

Potter was laying on his bed, tenderly wrapped up in the grip of a ten foot long, dark brown cobra; and he was hissing at it lovingly in Parsletongue.

“I needed him,” Potter said casually, easily switching back to English. “Timmy has a snake. So I’m going to use Stevie to kill Nagini.”

“Where did you get him?” Severus repeated, ignoring the deplorable name Potter chose.

‘Sevvie’ ‘Stevie’ ‘Mister Snoop’.

Severus wished his ward would quit mocking his name at every given chance.

He also prayed that Potter did not receive an opportunity to name any children any time soon.

“What’s going on?” Barty asked, poking his head in the room. “MERLIN! Is that a King Cobra?”

“Yup.” Potter stroked the cobras head lovingly as it hissed loudly at Severus and Barty. “His name’s Stevie.”

“He’s brilliant,” Barty sighed, eyeing the reptile with the look of a man intent upon learning all there is to know about the fucking deadly snake in their home.

“Snape he’s trying to keep it in here!” Theodore cried, huddling carefully as far from Potter as possible while still remaining in the same room. “Tell him he can’t keep a King Cobra in our bedroom! It’ll kill me in my sleep!”

“Not if I tell him not to,” Potter said. The three others watched as Potter switched to Parsletongue and began carrying on a conversation with the deadly serpent.

“He says he won’t kill you unless I tell him to,” Potter smiled at Theodore after the snake hissed back at Potter. “So it’s fine.”

“IT IS NOT FINE!” Theodore shouted. “HERMIONE WON’T COME OVER WHILE ITS HERE! SNAPE! HE IS YOUR PSYCHOTIC TEENAGED WARD- THIS IS YOUR PROBLEM!”

Severus sighed heavily as Theodore shoved past him and stormed down the stairs.

Miss Granger refusing to come back to their home was almost reason enough to allow Potter to keep the snake. If Frederick Weasley held the same qualms, it would seal the deal.

Though, Severus was quite sure that any fool who fell in love with a dangerous young man such as Potter would hardly fear one of the largest and most deadly snakes in the world.

“I think we should keep it,” Barty said as he took a few slow steps towards Potter and the snake. “It’ll be like a guard venomous snake for our family.”

“We are not a family,” Severus sighed. Although, he was beginning to feel as if he were an exhausted parent with the three mad housemates he now has.

“Exactly!” Potter beamed at Barty after rolling his eyes at Severus. “I knew you’d get it.”

Of course Barty ‘got it’. Because he was as mentally ill, and possibly deranged, as Potter was.

So now Severus had to find a way to convince Potter to get rid of the cobra.

Apparently without the assistance of the other adult in the household.

“Where did it come from Harry?” he repeated once more, quite sternly.

He groaned out loud at Potter’s suddenly evasive look and mentally corrected his previous thought;

Severus now had to find a way to convince Potter to get rid of the definitely illegally imported, cobra.

3%

HARRY I LOVE U

“Twelve,” Snape sighed after they’d toured all seven of the freshly painted and furnished bedrooms. “You intend on having us reside with ten other people if there comes a time that you must go in to hiding.”

“Uh, twelve other people,” Harry admitted. “And not if I have to go in hiding, I can handle myself can’t I? But others might be targeted.”

Particularly Snape. But Harry knew Snape wouldn’t want him to have bought a safe house based on the idea that Snape would need protected. He had too much pride for that.

“There are twelve beds,” Snape said. Harry blinked at him until finally Snape’s left eyelid twitched and he perceptively glanced towards the light blue bedroom with two beds in it that Harry planned on sharing with Theo, Fred, and Hermione.

“Are you not concerned with your personal safety if you share this location with twelve others?” Snape asked, apparently deciding not to comment on that bit of information.

“No, I trust them,” Harry shrugged. He also wasn’t concerned with his own safety, but again, that was better kept to himself.

“And who all will have access to this property?” Snape asked as he rubbed a hand across his face wearily.

Harry pointed out bedrooms as he listed off the people he planned on sharing the safe house with if the need arose.

“Sue and Lue get the purple room by the stairs, Me, Theo, Fred, and Mione get the light blue room in the middle, Neville and Blaise get the gold room on the end.” Harry shifted to point out the doorways on the opposite side of the hall. “Barty gets the private dark blue room down there, then George and Ron in the red room, Draco and Cissa will have to share the green one next to it, and that one-“ Harry pointed at the only other private bedroom that he had painted a charcoal grey, “-is yours.”

“I will kill the Dark Lord with my bare hands before I reside with this many people,” Snape said as he curled his upper lip in annoyance. Harry chuckled at his dark look of irritation and ignored his threat, he knew that wherever he went, Snape would go too.

“We’ll see,” Harry grinned. “Ready to set the spell then?”

“Do you understand how to cast it?” Snape asked.

“Yep.”

“Excellent.”

Snape watched as Harry cast the spell and then he calmly and confidently spoke the correct words for Harry’s magic to cast him as the keeper of the home that actually was now invisible to all others.

“This truly was an insightful plan,” Snape told him when they went back outside to set the perimeter of the spell. “You came up with this yourself?”

“Sure did,” Harry said proudly. “It’s practical, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Snape told him, his dark eyes gleaming with approval after they cast the final spell of the secret keeper ritual together. “As is this- this morning I myself visited Gringotts and formally named you my heir. If anything should happen to me then you stand to gain my vault, which contains as much research as it does coins, annual royalties on the potions I have published, and all trademark rights to those potion recipes.”

Harry froze where he stood, stunned as he studied Snape’s face closely for any sign of a lie.

“You- you actually made me your heir?” he asked in a voice only slightly louder than a whisper. “Like... like you would have if I were actually your son?”

“Precisely,” Snape said calmly, his eyes firmly locked on Harry’s and no sign of this being a cruel joke. “Although I admit that the Snape name comes with no obstinate jewelry nor any true weight to the name,” he added drily.

“Oh I dunno about that.” Harry gave Snape a small and uncharacteristically shy smile, feeling oddly touched at the man’s gesture. “I think the ‘bravest Slytherin in Hogwarts history’ and Witch Weeklys third most eligible bachelor carries a pretty important name,” Harry teased him before adding on, “A name I’m happy to carry on.”

“Heir Potter-Black-Snape is quite an absurd mouthful,” Snape said, hiding his own parental affection towards Harry behind a smirk of amusement.

“Potter-Snape-Black,” Harry corrected him. He couldn’t put Potter anywhere but first in the lineup, as it carried the most weight within the Wixen world, but he’d definitely put Snape ahead of Black.

Snape’s eyes softened and in the front lot of Invisibility Way he laid a gentle hand on Harry’s shoulder, “I am quite proud to have you as my heir.”

Harry only responded with a nod, not wanting to speak in case the tightness in his throat affected his voice, but he knew they understood each other anyway.

4%

The first Sunday back at home, a week into his break, Harry was cleaning his Firebolt after a vigorous practice session he’d had in his backyard when he was suddenly joined by Susan and Luna.

“You look so sad Harry,” Susan said as she threw herself to the ground next to Harry.

“Er... I do?” Harry asked her, confused at her mischievous smile and off the mark assessment of his mood.

“Very much so,” Luna said with an equally mischievous grin as she folded herself gracefully to the ground on Harry’s other side. Harry felt a little bit trapped by them, and unsure of what the two witches had planned.

“Don’t worry though, we have the perfect plan to cheer you up,” Susan said brightly, throwing her arm over Harry’s shoulder.

“What’s that?” Harry asked suspiciously. Susan’s idea of cheering someone up usually involved trouble. Not that he was opposed to trouble, as long as it was worth it though.

“Movie night!” Susan declared excitedly. “Me, you, Luna-“

“Hermione.”

“Ugh.” Susan groaned at Luna’s interruption. “And apparently Hermione. We can get candy, popcorn, junk food, and just go to my place today and camp out in the sitting room and watch movies all night long.”

“Done.” Harry quickly finished off the polish on his broomstick and packed up his kit. He didn’t know if the girls knew about his jealousy last weekend when they’d done this without him, though he suspected Luna did, but either way this was a perfect plan in his opinion. “Let me check with Snape then we can find Mione, yeah?”

“She’s in your and Theo’s room,” Luna said confidently as she got to her feet and offered Harry her hand. “And Snape will say yes.”

Harry didn’t need the nargles to tell him that, Snape rarely said no to anything Harry planned with his friends.

Hermione however, was a different story.

“Movie night?” she squinted at Susan’s offer warily up in Harry and Theo’s room. “With you guys?”

Harry knew that Hermione sometimes felt excluded in the gang, but it was still silly of her to think they wouldn’t want to include her. Her and Susan bickered the most in the group, but Susan would still kill anyone who would ever dare to hurt her.

“It’s a girls night,” Luna said winningly. “We can watch those Disney movies you like and gossip and eat terrible food that your parents would never approve of.”

“Girls night?” Hermione perked up at that. “Are you inviting Ginny?”

Harry barely repressed a scowl at that, still unhappy with the friendship Luna struck up with Fred and Ron’s younger sister.

“No,” Luna hummed thoughtfully. “Her and Harry don’t get along just yet.”

“Harry?” Theo looked at Harry and raised his brows. “Is Harry one of the girls?” he snickered.

“He is,” Susan said simply, ignoring Theo’s annoying chuckles at their inclusion of Harry in the plans. “Are you in Mione?”

“Well...” Hermione glanced guiltily at Theo, who grinned and nodded slightly at her. “Alright then,” she beamed, her brown eyes bright with her happiness of being invited. “I’m in. Girls night!”

Late that night, as a musical number from a film nobody was paying attention to filled the room with background noise, the four of them were having more fun than Harry had had in a while with his friends.

Just easy, relaxed, teenage fun. Normal teenage fun, which Harry thought might be much more relaxing than the typical fun him and his friends have.

They all laughed as they gossiped and talked about their lives. Susan told them about sneaking around with Johnny, and her plans to ‘explore her sexuality’ this year. Hermiones face turned a dark shade of red when she told them all about how her parents nearly caught her sneaking back in from Theo’s early one morning. Luna casually mentioned two people who expressed interest in being in a courtship with her, though she refused to say who they were, no matter how much the other three begged her. And Harry?

Harry just smiled happily as he listened, laughed, and felt a long carried heavy weight of responsibility and stress melt off him in favor of being a normal teenager for the night.

8%
Oh my goodness Fred and Harry are the sweetest

“Yess,” Harry moaned, well past caring what he sounded like around Fred.

Fred who was so soft and warm.

Fred who was funny and bright and loyal.

Fred who knew his body rather well by this point.

Fred who didn’t care that his skin was marred and mangled- who didn’t think his scarred outside matched the broken mess on the inside.

Fred who loved him.

Loved him.

“Use your words Darlin’,” Fred whispered huskily against Harry’s chest as his mouth roamed around Harry’s torso- seemingly aimlessly. “Should I move lower?”

“Fuck. Yes.” Harry ran his fingernails up Fred’s back lightly as Fred moved his body lower until only his chest was hovering over Harry’s legs. “Please.”

“Are you sure?” Fred whispered, his fingers tracing the top of Harry’s pants as he looked over Harry’s face closely. “We can stop.”

Harry knew that usually they stopped by now. Normally they didn’t do more than kiss and explore one another with their eyes, hands, and occasionally their mouths, but he wanted to do more than that.

He wanted to experience with Fred what he knew other people his age experienced within their relationships.

“I want to,” Harry told him truthfully. “Do you?”

“God yes,” Fred laughed. “I love you Harry.”

Harry hummed, unsure of whether the affection he feels towards Fred is love or not and unwilling to lie.

“You’re gorgeous,” Fred whispered, kissing Harry’s hip bone and slowly freeing Harry from the remainder of his clothes. “Absolutely-“

Harry, who had closed his eyes in anticipation as Fred had been breathing against his navel and hip as he spoke, refocused on Fred since he abruptly quit talking.

“Harry, we can stop,” Fred said in a gentle tone that was out of place in the current mood. “I’m sorry, am I pressuring you?”

“No, why’d you stop?” Harry cocked his head curiously at Fred’s shift in his tone and the way he was slightly drawing away from Harry’s body.

“I don’t think you’re really in the mood then,” Fred said, snagging their discarded clothes off the side of the bed and offering Harry his with a sweet smile. “Which is fine,” he went on, “I don’t want you to do something you don’t want to.”

“I bloody well do,” Harry protested, the previous desire filling him twisting in to annoyance. “I’m not a liar.”

“Darlin.” Harry followed Fred’s eyes to where he sent a pointed look to and blushed for an entirely new reason.

“What the fuck?!” Harry twisted off the bed and hit the floor with a soft thud. “That’s... that’s not right,” he protested. “What the fuck.”

Harry didn’t have a lot of experience with his own body, most of the time he tried to forget he even had a body as much as he constantly disliked it, but he was positive that all the wanting he was experiencing should have had some sort of effect on himself. But where the hard proof of that desire should have been was just... flat.

“I- Jesus Christ.” Harry was certain that he had never once in his life been as embarrassed as he currently was, and that was saying something. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled as he hastily snagged his sweatpants and pulled them back on, skipping his pants entirely in an effort to quickly hide his dysfunction.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Fred said easily, now wearing his own pajama bottoms and stretching out lazily on Harry’s bed. “I’m sorry, I should have realized you weren’t in to it.”

“I was in to it!” Harry said hotly, his face burning as he sat on the edge of his bed and stared at the wall instead of Fred himself. “I don’t know why that happened. Or, didn’t happen,” he corrected himself.

“Are you sure?” Fred asked quietly. “Because you aren’t going to hurt my feelings, I only want to go as far as you want to.”

“I wanted to,” Harry assured him, laying back on the pillows but continuing to avoid eye contact, still mortified as his bodies lack of a physical reaction. “I just... I dunno, maybe I’m tired?” He didn’t feel tired, but he wasn’t sure what other explanation there was besides just another way he was freakishly broken.

“Hey, Harry, look at me.”

Harry reluctantly, very, very reluctantly, turned his head slightly so he could see Fred’s face.

“You know it’s normal, right? This isn’t a big deal.”

Harry could hardly doubt the sincerity in Fred’s voice when it rang clearly in every syllable he spoke. His eyes, Harry’s favorite thing about him physically, were clear and deceit free. But just because Fred thought it was normal didnt mean it was true.

“It’s not normal,” Harry mumbled, still embarrassed, and ashamed, of his malfunctioning body.

“Course it is,” Fred said, adjusting his position on the bed so he laid on his side, his head propped up by his hand, while he talked easily to Harry.

As if Harry didn’t repulse him with even further proof of his brokenness and inability to function normally.

Harry would never trade his magical power for anything, he relished in the ability to feel special within this world, but there were times that he would kill just to feel normal. Not ‘one of a kind’, but normal.

“It’s more common in Wizards because we have more outside elements that can mess with our systems, much more than Muggles deal with,” Fred said in an uncharacteristically factual manner. “My mum told me that.”

Harry’s bleak outlook on this conversation cleared for a moment-

“Your Mum talked to you about... about...” he broke off and made a vague gesture with his hand.

“She did,” Fred said with a solemn tone that was belied by his newly sparkling eyes. “She called it ‘the sex talk’ and it was traumatic Darlin’. I may need a kiss from a handsome bloke to truly erase the memory from my mind.”

Harry scoffed at him as he puckered his lips up. “Too bad,” he said unsympathetically. ”Snape gave me the ‘sex talk’.”

Fred’s mouth popped open and he looked horrified for a moment until both of them started cracking up with laughter. The talk with Snape hadn’t been funny, not in the slightest, but with some time having passed since then Harry felt he could laugh about it now.

“So he told you that there’s lots of reasons that happens and none mean you’re not normal, right?” Fred asked after their laughter died down to just fond smiles.

“Er...” Harry scrunched his brows down as he tried to remember Snape ever mentioning any reason that Harry could feel his body filling up with pleasure on the inside and yet remain entirely unaffected on the outside. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Welllll... there’s stress, which I’m sure you know nothing about,” Fred joked. “And illnesses, of course. But I think the most common in Wizards is old age and potions. So clearly this is happening because you’re old now.”

Harry pulled the pillow from behind his own head to smack Fred with.

“I’m not old,” he said with mock outrage. “I’m young and planning on staying this way forever.”

“You and every witch in her twenties,” Fred laughed.

Harry grinned over at him and felt warmth bloom in his chest as Fred leaned over and pecked him lightly on the nose. This was truly the one thing that he liked the most about Fred: his relentless cheer could calm Harry almost as well as occluding did.

Harry had thought that Hermione and Theo were a perfect match, as terribly alike as the two of them were. But he didn’t need someone by his side who was as shifty with their moods as he was, he needed Fred. Dependable, optimistic, calming Fred.

“So... potions then?” Harry said after they’d been comfortably quiet for a few long moments. “That’s what’s causing... this?”

“Could be,” Fred said, seemingly unconcerned with what Harry considered to be a pretty terrible personal failure. “But I’d say it could be stress too if you aren’t taking any potions on a regular basis. Or you could just not be feeling it love, it’s really not a big deal.”

God damnit.

That potion.

Of course his potion would ruin this too. It took away the addictively euphoric feeling of mania, and now it’s taken away Harry’s feeling of manhood and control of his body.

Fucking manic-depressive illness.

Fucking messed up brain.

“It’s potions,” Harry sighed, twisting to lay on his back and stare dejectedly up at his bedroom ceiling. “It’s always that damn illness.”

Harry could almost practically taste Fred’s attempt to remain casual as he mentioned his ‘mental illness’ aloud to him for the first time.

“What illness?”

Harry remained flat on his back, his arms folded behind his head as he followed through on his subconsciously determined decision to trust Fred with at least as much as two of his friends knew about him.

He’d trusted Fred before, with other secrets, and as far as he knew Fred never shared them with anyone. And it made Fred happy to learn more about Harry, which made Harry happy. So it was a risk, but not an uncalculated one.

“It’s called Manic-Depressive Illness,” he said. Harry was pleased his voice was so even considering he was internally sweating over if Fred would want to be dating someone whose brain was also so obviously broken. “I have to take a potion for it. Every month. So...” he trailed off and would have shrugged if he weren’t lying on his bed, “so that’s probably what’s wrong.”

One.

Two.

Three.

Harry was taking his fourth slowly measured inhale when Fred responded.

“What’s manic mean?” he asked, his voice lacking the biting disgust Harry had feared he would hear. “I mean, I know what depression is, but I’ve never heard of manic.”

Harry turned his head to see Fred’s face and felt a weight shift off his chest once he did. There was no pity there, no disgust, no obvious cringing away from Harry’s brokenness. He just looked curious.

“Manic is brill Fred,” Harry admitted with a wry smile. “It’s like... like flying, but better. Everything in your head is sharper and better and brilliant.”

Fred chuckled quietly at Harry’s reverent tone while Harry considered the bad part of the mania.

“Makes me impulsive too,” he admitted. “Snape hates it more than the depression I think.”

“Impulsive like attacking a dragon with a sword?” Fred suggested wryly. Harry grinned at Fred’s accurate guess.

“Exactly like that.”

“I’m starting to feel like the ‘manic episodes’ are worth it if the potions going to mess with... you know.” Harry blushed, unwilling to put the problem in to words but knowing Fred understood his meaning anyway.

“Oh I dunno about that,” Fred disagreed. “Because it’s not just feeling like you’re flying, right? It’s depression too?”

“Yeah,” Harry grumbled, unhappy with the reminder of the bleakness that depression forced him to wallow in. “That parts a bitch.”

Fred laughed, as he usually did at Harry’s casual cursing. “Charlie used to get depression real bad,” he said as he readjusted himself to put his head by Harry’s and twining their side by side legs together. “It looked terrible, I can’t imagine you’d want to deal with that on a regular basis.”

“Your brother Charlie?” Harry asked, surprised. He knew Theo had depression, they’d somehow bonded over their similar difficulties when Theo shared that information with him, but he couldn’t imagine why Charlie did. Charlie had a huge family that, besides Percy, all seemed to love and support each other constantly. Just- constant love and hugs and affection and acceptance. “What’s he got to be sad about?” he asked with a small amount of bitterness in his voice. “He’s got a great life, yeah?”

“It’s more than just ‘being sad’,” Fred told him gently. “I don’t think it mattered how his life was, his brain just worked differently, didn’t it? He’d have these horrible times where he’d just lay in bed and refuse to get up. Sometimes he’d burn himself ‘just to feel alive’ he said, it was terrible. Mum and Dad did their best to try and fix it, but I don’t think it really got better until Charlie left for Romania. That’s why Mum didn’t really kick up much of a fuss when he left Hogwarts a year early.”

9%

It took Harry nearly three days after what he dubbed ‘The Incident’ with Fred to work up the courage to talk to Snape about it. Not about the Charlie stuff, there wasn’t really much to say about that, Harry just decided to try and be a bit friendlier to Fred’s older brother the next time he saw him, but about the... problem he’d had physically.

Finally, one morning during their customary early breakfast together, long before Barty or Theo would be awake, Harry squared his shoulders and cleared his throat.

“C-can I ask you something?”

Snape sat his paper down and calmly met Harry’s nervous gaze.

“Of course you may.”

Harry took a deep breath, counting his inhale and exhale time to slow his racing pulse, and fought through his embarrassment to get a definite answer.

“The potion I take, does it have any... s-side effects?” Harry grit his teeth, annoyed at his own shaky speech. This shouldn’t be so embarrassing, if Fred could talk about things like this with his Mum then Harry certainly could with Snape.

Snape had never once in all the time Harry had known him ever laughed at anything Harry said to him. And Harry had once asked if Snape thought he looked charming or not.

Snape’s brows furrowed over his eyes for a split second. “Aside from the ones you previously experienced when you first began this regimen?”

“Yeah.”

“Such as what?” Snape asked him.

Harry sighed in exasperation.

“It’s broken,” he said bluntly, gesturing to the affected area. “So... is it a side effect of the potion, or am I just broken?”

Snape stared at Harry for a long moment, unblinking, before his left eyelid abruptly twitched.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “When did you first notice the dysfunction?” he asked in a clinical sort of tone.

“Three nights ago,” Harry said with a furious blush as he admitted to his nighttime activity.

“As much as I would desperately prefer to not know the answer to this, I cannot tell you if it is a side effect of your potion or not if you do not answer honestly,” Snape said. “Prior to three nights ago, were you functioning normally? Becoming stimulated sexual-“

“I dunno,” Harry interrupted him, his blush somehow becoming even brighter at the question. “I hadn’t, er, tested it before then.”

Snape covered his eyes with one hand as he rested his chin in his other hand.

“When was the last time you absolutely remember having a natural erection- in the mornings, sexually stimulated, or otherwise?”

“Valentine’s Day in my third year,” Harry said quickly, having already considered that question himself.

Snape’s hand flew off his face as he stared at Harry incredulously.

“You have not been sexually intimate with Frederick, or anyone, since that date?”

“No. We just... uh... kiss... and cuddle,” Harry mumbled.

Harry sorely wished he could wipe this conversation from both his and Snape’s minds once it was done.

Embarrassing.

“And you are quite positive that you have not had an erection at all since then?” Snape asked with disbelief.

“Positive,” Harry sighed. “So it is broken forever.” Harry interpreted Snape’s shock as a worst case scenario and slumped down in his seat. “Fuckin’ brill.”

Just one more thing about himself that was different from everyone else.

One more broken aspect of himself.

“Harry,” Snape’s voice lowered in to a soothing tone. “Did you not think it was odd? You live in a male dormitory nine months out of the year, surely you knew most males your age have frequent erections?”

“Not really,” Harry said flatly, disappointed and annoyed now. “I never needed it for anything until-“

“Stop.” Snape held a hand up as he interrupted Harry. “I would prefer to not know the specifics that drew this dilemma to your attention as long as it was safe and consensual.”

“Course it was,” Harry rolled his eyes. “Not that it matters now that I’m some sort of freak who can’t get it up.”

Snape muttered something that sounded like a colorful curse, before silently summoning a potion.

“You are not a freak, I would prefer you to never refer to yourself in such a way again,” he told Harry sternly. “Erectile dysfunction is a common side effect of your potion, one I will attempt to adjust the properties of to account for. This,” he held up the sky blue potion and tilted it from side to side, the sunlight making the vial send light rainbows across the table top, “will work in the meantime.” Snape held the bottle out, but when Harry reached for it, he pulled it back slightly.

“Are you happy with your relationship with Frederick? Do you feel as if you are equal partners in all aspects?” he asked Harry, his eyes scorching in to Harry’s as he waited an honest answer. Which Harry would give him, since it seemed like Snape was doing him a huge favor with this potion and adjusting his monthly one.

“Yes, and yes,” Harry said decisively after thinking the question over carefully.

“Very well.” Snape handed over the potion and gave Harry a faint smile as he quickly pocketed the bottle. “One mouthful ten minutes before you would like the desired effect to take place. And despite any embarrassment you may feel, you must inform me immediately if you have an erection that lasts longer than four hours, understand?”

“Yes,” Harry said, leaping to his feet in an effort to get some space from one of the most mortifying conversations in the world.

“Safe, consensual, and pleasurable for both parties!” Snape yelled after Harry, reminding him of the other mortifying conversation they’d had last summer as he booked it from the kitchen.

“Thanks Sevvvv,” Harry drawled loudly and irritatingly as he ran up the stairs.

Snape being embarrassing aside, at least Harry had an actual solution to his current problem.

Why couldn’t every problem in his life be easily fixed with a potion?

***

“You’re sure?” Fred whispered.

It had taken Harry a couple of days to find a way to subtly kick Theo out of their room for the night. The dividing wall and privacy charms were fine for most nights, but not tonight.

Tonight was going to be special.

Harry invited Fred over again and made sure he had the potion Snape gave him on hand, ready to follow through with what he desperately had wanted to do a few nights ago.

Harry looked up at Fred’s face, his own vision slightly blurred from the overwhelming desire he had been feeling even before taking the potion and he nodded.

“I’m sure,” he said, his voice breathless but confident.

Fred lovingly ran his hands down the length of Harry’s body, ending on his hips as he raised them up.

“If I do something wrong, or you don’t like it, tell me,” Fred said.

“I will,” Harry agreed.

“Promise?”

“Fuck. I promise.” Harry would have probably promised anything right now to get some sort of release from the teasing build up Fred put him through.

Fred grinned down at him, his hair stuck to his forehead and his eyes as bright as Harry had ever seen them.

“Slowly then,” he said.

He’d already prepared Harry, a move that might have been embarrassing if it hadn’t felt so bloody good, so now he simply lifted Harry’s hips up and slowly, painfully slowly, pushed inside of him.

“Ooh.”

Both of them moaned at the feeling as Fred moved what seemed to be a centimeter at a time; slowly filling Harry.

“Bloody hell,” Fred groaned, his body still as he waited for Harry to adjust to the much wanted intrusion. “This is good?”

“So good,” Harry said, clenching a fistful of the sheets. “Fuck. So, so good.”

Fred let out a breathless laugh and gazed at Harry with eyes filled with wonder.

“I love you,” he told him for the twentieth time that night. “Stop me if I do something wrong.”

Harry nodded absently, marveling at the sensations that were so entirely different than he’d expected. He thought he might feel exposed, uncertain about baring himself so completely to Fred, but how could he doubt the way Fred saw him when it shined through his every word and action?

Harry felt his breath leave in a dramatic huff as Fred began pulling out and thrusting back in; a slow and steady rhythm.

“Good?”

“Yeah.”

“Faster?”

“Yesss.”

Fred threw his head back and the two of them lost themselves in the moment, Fred building up speed as Harry focused on the feeling.

“Fuck Harry, you feel amazing.”

’You feel amazing.’

Harry clenched his eyes shut, the building desire in him twisting uncomfortably.

’You feel amazing.’

Harry had a sudden jolt of fear shoot through him, his body freezing as it rocked through his entire body.

His previously pliable limbs tensed up tightly, every nerve in his body fraying as they did.

Could he move?

He couldn’t.

He couldn’t move and he couldn’t breathe.

There was a ringing in his ears, not loud enough to drown out the moan of pleasure that he could hear, but loud enough that Harry had no real sense of any other noises around him.

Which was bad.

He needed to be able to hear because if he couldn’t then this guy could try and add more people which would mean more hands on him, more people in him, more people owning him and less of him owning himself.

Harry couldn’t breathe.

He was going to suffocate to death with this man inside of him. Touching him. Breathing on him.

Or the man was going to kill him.

“Stop. Please.”

It was a whisper, one Harry knew would go unnoticed. Nobody cared when Harry said stop. No one. Stop was a word that nobodies like himself could shout from the rooftops and not a soul in the world would hear it.

So why did he stop?

Why did he pull himself out as soon as Harry whispered his plea and scramble away from Harry, his skin no longer burning Harry’s where it touched him.

“Harry?”

Harry kept his eyes screwed up as his breath came out harsh and ragged.

Why did he stop?

“Harry, open your eyes. Please? I’m sorry. It’s me, it’s Fred. I stopped. Merlin I’m sorry.”

Fred?

Harry curled up on his side, keeping his eyes screwed shut, as his brain whirled and he tried to figure out what was happening.

It’s soft here.

Which was odd. Because motels aren’t this soft.

Do they usually smell like this?

Like citrus and caramel and a sort of clean scent where Harry buried his nose in the sheets.

And it’s quiet.

Except it isn’t, not really. There’s someone talking gently to him, an incomprehensible string of words all coming out in a tone that seems meant to soothe rather than scare. Which... didn’t make much sense. But there’s a distinct lack of noise in the background now that the buzzing is gone from Harry’s ears. There’s no car horns, or people screaming on the sidewalks. It’s a peaceful silence broken only by the soothing voice.

It was the soothing tone that made Harry finally open his eyes, no real concept of how much time had passed and struggling to make sense of what was going on.

“Harry?”

Harry flicked his eyes around the room (bedroom, this is his bedroom in his home) quickly and frantically before landing on the source of the voice.

Two wide blue eyes, creased with worry but steady in their gaze, met his.

“Hey, it’s me. It’s Fred.”

Fred.

Harry gulped in air like a man breaking out of the waves would: desperately and without true relief in the action.

“Fred?” he croaked, his voice raspy as if he truly had been drowning.

“Yeah, it’s Fred.”

Fred raised one hand, then lowered it immediately when Harry cringed away from it.

Which was a stupid thing to do.

Because this was Fred.

And Harry was nearly an adult now, and he’d been free for years. Nobody could own him now, nobody could hurt him like that. He didn’t have to barter for food or a bed anymore.

He had wanted to do this for no reason other than simple desire. He wanted to be with Fred in this way.

Fred.

Who was watching him as his eyes flickered and his mind whirled.

“Don’t cry,” Fred murmured, his eyes softening and his brows furrowing down with worry.

Was he crying?

Harry felt his face and was startled to feel the proof of his panic streaming freely down his cheeks.

“Get out,” he abruptly whispered.

Harry didn’t know when his mind caught up to his body, but he could feel a tremble working it’s way from his core to his limbs and pressure building behind his eyes. He knew he had maybe a minute before he was a shaking, snotty, mess and it wasn’t about to happen with Fred staring at him.

Fred had seen enough.

Harry hadn’t just ruined what was supposed to be a special night together- he’d freaked out. He’d lost his mind completely and Fred had seen it.

“I don’t want to leave you like this. You’re upset,” Fred protested quietly. “Let me get Snape or someone first, then I’ll go if you want me to.”

“I’M FINE! JUST GET OUT!” Harry screamed desperately, his throat tearing with the effort.

“Don’t yell at me,” Fred said evenly, his voice semi-calm as he quickly pulled his shirt over his head and yanked his trousers on. “You aren’t fine, I don’t have to be here but you shouldn’t be alone.”

Harry pulled the heavy grey comforter over himself, feeling more secure with the soft touch of the blanket covering his body and he turned his face in to his pillow.

“Just go,” he said, his voice muffled by the pillow but still legible.

Harry listened keenly as he pressed his face in to his pillow. He could hear Fred’s soft breathing before he let out a huff of a sigh.

“I love you,” Fred said softly from beside the bed. “I’ll leave you alone, but I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay? I’m sorry.”

Harry didn’t know why Fred was apologizing to him, Harry was the one who ruined everything, but he counted Fred’s footsteps as he left the room and sat up when he heard the door close.

”Complete silence,” Harry ordered his magic hoarsely, pulling his knees to his chest.

Once he knew his magic heard him, and his bedroom wouldn’t let out a single sound to the rest of the house, Harry inhaled deeply...

...and screamed until his throat truly did tear and he felt the trembling in his body turn in to bone deep weary exhaustion.



When Theo returned home less than an hour later, after having Fred beat down Ron’s bedroom door to wake him up telling him Harry needed him, he saw Harry wearing multiple layers of warm pajamas and sleeping fitfully in his bed.

***

Harry avoided Fred for the next few days. Not necessarily avoided, but...

Well, yes, avoided.

Harry spent a lot of time during the day at Invisibility Way, flying over the backyard field there. He wasn’t training as much as he was just replaying the events of their night together and thinking.

He also spent a lot of time at night thinking; not sleeping much as it kept bringing him the intrusive thoughts he’d once buried deeply inside himself. When he did sleep, he did so fitfully, tossing and turning, unknowingly crying out as he sweat his way through another nightmare.

And when he woke up, gasping for breath, he clenched his red handled penknife and just stared out the dark window and thought about it all.

He’d wanted to be with Fred intimately, and instead he’d freaked out. He entirely fell apart and couldn’t even do this one normal thing; a thing that everyone else seemed to do with no problems.

Theo and Hermione had sex, Harry knew that. Theo didn’t talk about it really, but he’d borrowed Sevvie when he ordered birth control potions (‘I am not asking Professor Snape for them,’ he’d said stubbornly) and Harry wasn’t an idiot.

Susan had sex. She’d told Harry the morning after she’d lost her virginity. She had said it was a bit awkward at first, but enjoyable by the time they were done.

And Harry suspected that all of Hogwarts knew that Blaise had sex. Theo might keep pretty quiet about his private life, but Blaise bragged in the dorm room about the witches and wizards he’d been with.

And none of them ever mentioned having some sort of panic attack, because Harry recognized now what it was, which meant this was a Harry only thing.

A freaky thing that just highlights how different he is from everyone else, how completely broken in one of the most fundamental ways.

Harry soared over the trees, watching the way the green leaves diminished in to specks as he rose up in the sky, and considered that.

So he was broken. That wasn’t a new thought for Harry. He had a broken mind which required a potion that caused a broken body that matched his broken scars.

But he was also a fucking freak. And it didn’t matter if Snape told him to ‘never refer to himself that way again’ because it was true. Harry couldn’t even do this one basic thing with his boyfriend without turning in to a shaking, screaming, sobbing freak. It was pathetic.

And...

And Fred didn’t deserve that.

So Harry flew for three days, telling the others at his house that he just needed some time alone, and he avoided Fred while he thought about the future.

This went on until finally, the fourth morning after what was meant to be a special night for the two of them, Harry had made a decision as he got dressed.

“I’m going to Fred’s,” he told Snape after breakfast that morning.

“Thank Merlin,” Snape sighed. “I was beginning to fear that you and Frederick would continue to play hide and seek all summer. Be safe brat.”

Harry nodded in distracted acknowledgment as he got in the floo. He knew Fred kept popping by to talk to him, but he hadn’t been ready before now so he just told Snape to tell him he wasn’t in.

But as the green flames spit him out in Sirius’ old bedroom, one of the many private floo’s in Grimmauld Place, Harry squared his shoulders for what he needed to do; because he thought about it, and he was ready to talk now.