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Transformative Images - Text
Page one
“The way of the Creative works through change and transformation,
so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny
and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony:
this is what furthers and what perseveres
Alexander Pope
Page two
At first there are the dreams. Fragmented images of flying, of wings dark and terrible in their way. Ink black feathers beating against air that feels heavy, thick and oily, suffocating him rather than setting him free. He is lost, alone and searching, though he doesn’t know what he seeks.
There are dark eyes, also, eyes that see to the very heart of him, reading the sorrow in his soul.
He wakes, gasping for breath, desperately trying to hold on to his memories in the cool dawn light. He arches into the morning, grabbing handfuls of bedding to anchor himself
and yet failing, as fragments of himself, of his dream memories, spin wildly away as if on a chaotic breeze.
In the daytime he is restless; he cannot settle to anything...neither rebuilding the castle
nor spending time with his friends.
In the daytime he yearns for the night.
Then there is the itch beneath his skin, as if he is infested with tiny insects invisible and unrelenting, mindless instruments of torture that he cannot overcome.
He wraps his arms around himself, as desperate for comfort now as he was as a small child
trapped alone in cloying darkness. Tears sting at the corners of his eyes, setting his senses alight with a sharp and vicious pain. The longing he feels in his heart cannot be satisfied,
neither with friends nor with company nor yet with solitude. Nothing satisfies, except his dreams of those eyes and those arms and of safety and love.
Page three
He aches.
He yearns for arms to enfold him and wrap him close. For thin lips to kiss him, long, slim fingers to caress him, for a low modulated voice to whisper to him tenderly.
He longs for something that is as yet unknown, unknowable, unreachable...at least for now.
Something he can neither explain nor understand.
Yet, for all his yearning, he cannot bear to be touched.
His skin feels superheated and at the same time chilled. Sprays of shivery goose bumps ripple under his skin if anyone comes too close and yet it burns if anyone touches him.
Often he cannot abide clothing, is naked whenever he can be. He has never before realized how air feels against his skin; how there are tiny changes in temperature, little breezes that caress him, coming from nowhere and then vanishing without trace, as rapid as a thought.
They make him feel connected, but connected to what he cannot say. He delights in it, bathes in it...it makes him feel alive.
He sees the worry in their eyes – Ron and Hermione, his oh so loyal friends. They think he is spelled or cursed, they think he is going mad.
Is he? Could that be true? He begins to believe them, but then the wings come.
At first they are sharp bumps pushing up through the now elasticized epidermis on his back, red and inflamed, and more tender than he can describe. His skin stretches impossibly, like fists inside him pushing ever outwards, struggling to be free.
Then bony protuberances, shaped like knuckles, emerge and ripple and flex beneath the pale silky vastness of his back, emerging as if from a chrysalis, torn as if from his very soul.
Page four
And then he is in the infirmary, lying flat on his stomach, wrists and ankles tied to the metal ends of his bed to stop him from escaping and ripping away at his back. How did he get here; he cannot remember. He screams and arches, trying desperately to avoid the agony…
but he cannot get free.
He hears them whispering in another room. His hearing is sharpened, enhanced.
So many theories, so few facts. They do not know what is happening to him, they cannot explain the changes or understand what they might mean.
He is hidden away yet again, like a dirty secret. This was not supposed to happen, not to him, the hero of the Wizarding World, slayer of Voldemort.
But it seems everyone is powerless to prevent the changes that are coming over him,
as if these changes are meant to be.
He was supposed to marry and raise redheaded children, but his bride has abandoned him to his fate.
His hearing grows ever sharper.
He can hear voices all over the castle but no longer seems to understand what they are saying. There are too many, all tangled together so they resemble nothing so much as whispers in the wind.
There are mice in the castle, he can hear them scritching and scrabbling, and bats in the rafters and birds on the roofs. Far away in the forest he hears an owl hooting – it reminds him of Hedwig – and much further on still he fancies he can hear a spider spinning.
He is losing himself by degrees.
Each day the Harry of Old – what he was, what he felt, what he did – seems to fade away and is replaced by the Now, with changes overtaking his body, his mind, his senses.
Page five
Finally, amid the cacophony of noise from all around him, he can concentrate on just one sound. It seems more important than all others, crucial to his transformation. In the depths of the castle there is a heartbeat... steady and slow. It calls to him and he arches towards it,
farther and higher than he has before, calling on his magic, reaching for it...but it slips between his fingers, lacking focus, lacking substance, like smoke.
“Please,” he begs, though for what he knows not, his voice now deep and sonorous
with a grating edge of desperation. “Please, please let me go.” The heartbeat is still calling him. It is everything now, echoing in his ears, resonating in his own heart, till he is sobbing in desperation.
The smells of the castle have overwhelmed him too. The scent of the bedding newly washed, the stink of his sweat, bitter and sour. He can smell bread baking in the kitchens
and the scent of spring flowers on the breeze. He can smell an aroma that is purely Hermione; he knows it as well as he knows anything, though he could not say when he learnt such a thing. And beneath her scent, much sharper and unrelentingly male, is Ron.
They still wait for him, his friends, wait for ‘whatever this is’ to be over. But what he was no longer exists, only what he is becoming; he is different now, a creature of feeling, of emotion. His thoughts are foggy, insubstantial. He knows a transformation is coming,
he can sense it, feel it, though what he will become he cannot tell. All of him is yearning, wanting something...no, someone. Someone he cannot name but someone who is mate,
companion, lover, friend. Someone who is all of these things, who is his everything, and yet someone he only knows as a heartbeat, far away in the depths of the castle, out of his ken.
His own heartbeat grows faster and his breath becomes shallow as pain rips through him once more. Pain that is beyond imagining, beyond endurance as the skin on his back rips open, white hot agony that sears him to his very soul.
Page 6
And Harry screams. His head is thrown back, his eyes blind to anything but his suffering,
yet his ears still fill with the beat of a heart that isn’t his, a beat that matches his own. He knows he is calling, can hear the high pitched keening, which sounds like nothing of this earth, like nothing he has ever heard before; surely this monstrous sound cannot be coming from him.
The images he sees are fragmented now, disjointed. He feels hands upon him, trying to still his thrashing, to calm him. But they are burning him with their touch. He screams again and tries to move away, but he is too well fettered, too well secured. His screams grow both in pitch and volume as if screaming alone can take away the pain.
He is calling. Calling for his mate.
Page 7
His skin splits with molten flame.
Once.
Twice.
And now he knows nothing but his agony.
Pain that is all encompassing. Pain that defines him, that is washing away everything that was before and will never be again, leaving only what will forever be his fate.
He pulls again at his bonds thrashing and keening. He is dimly aware of pain elsewhere now, in his wrists and his ankles, but it is nothing to the pain that has heralded the birth of his wings.
He feels them rip out of him, pulling him apart. They are beating, beating... pulling him upwards, still covered in blood and gore.
“For Merlin’s sake untie him!”
The voice is like silk and molasses; it resonates to his very soul. The heartbeat is familiar.
He knows it. It calms him. It is mate...And of course, Harry knows him, has always known him. His soul starts to sing.
“Free him! Quickly! He’s going to be torn apart.”
The voice is familiar. The pain is still there, but Harry relaxes into it, stops fighting it... now that He is here. Then hands are upon him again, still painful, still burning. And yet they are releasing him so he does not fight them; he does not resist.
He is being pulled backwards, upwards by the beating of his wings. Dark they are and terrible and beyond his control. But the hands are holding him, pulling him back down to the bed. They are strong and soothing, controlling him, keeping him safe.
Harry croons in satisfaction. It is a noise he didn’t know he could make, strange and birdlike,
beyond his control.
He allows himself to be corralled in strong arms, enfolded in an embrace for which he didn’t know he was yearning, which feels like coming home.
Page 8
His eyes had been hurting, too blurred to see, changing like the rest of him, by degrees.
All at once his vision clears. He peers upwards through his lashes to see dark eyes and a solid jaw, a countenance that he knows as well as his own.
“It’s you,” he gasps, startled but unsurprised, as if he’d always known this would be the case. Then he buries himself against a firm chest, feeling hard buttons and rough cloth against his cheek. He nuzzles in contentment as he breathes in the scent he’s been so desperately seeking, and relaxes on a sigh.
His eyes close, too heavy to keep open, and he ignores the pain that has now subsided to a dull ache.
Harry’s arms snake around a waist. His waist. And his fingers clutch the fabric beneath them as if there could be nothing else they might seek. Wish to seek, ever again.
Safe. He is safe.
He listens to the heart that beats steadily inside the man who has come to claim him
and to the voices that speak all around him though he does not wish to contribute.
“He is Veela,” his lover says. Not that they are yet, not that they have been. But it will come, Harry knows it as surely as he knows anything.
“Dark Veela.
As am I.
I felt it coming upon him, the evolution of my mate.”
Harry hears the word Veela gasped on what seems a multitude of voices.
Page 9
“So why didn’t you come before now? He’s been suffering so long.” It’s Hermione’s voice;
she sounds like she’s been crying and Harry wonders what on earth she was crying for.
“I never dreamt it could be him, otherwise, of course, I would have been here sooner.”
“Yeah, right, because you’ve always cared so much about him!” Ron’s voice is sharp and angry, causing Harry to flinch; a movement his lover soothes with a gentle touch.
“Appearances can be deceptive, Mr. Weasley. I merely had my part to play, as did everyone else.”
“Well, you certainly seemed to enjoy yourself. You’ve been cruel to him for years.
What makes you think we’re going to trust you now?”
“What makes you think I need or want your trust?” Snape sneers. “I shall not hurt him.
I cannot hurt him. He is mine, as I am his.”
Ron’s voice grows louder. “He isn’t yours, you greasy bastard!”
“Yes, I am,” Harry interrupts firmly, barely turning from where he is snuggled, breathing in the heady scent of Severus Snape.
“But how do you know?” Hermione’s voice is almost a whine.
“I just do,” Harry breathes.
Harry is dimly aware of a heated argument, with angry and sarcastic words. A small part of Harry is confused, the rational part that was once fully human does not quite understand all that has happened.
He is being held by Severus Snape. This Harry wants to pull away and run screaming from the room.
But Harry is Veela now.
Page 10
The Veela inside of him wants to lie back against the crisp white sheets and beg for kisses.
That other part is shrinking and will soon be gone forever. In the time before, he lay in the cold, cruel darkness all alone and in pain.
Uncertainty, confusion, fear filled his being.
But Snape’s arrival has changed everything. The past is gone and no longer matters;
the future is yet to be, without form or substance. What matters is the here and now.
He is a creature of instinct and emotion, intellect subsumed.
Only his mate matters now. Snape fills his senses and he sees and hears only him.
Snape is his world... and all is as it should be.
It is much later and Harry is aware of time having moved on again, a quantum leap; no longer linear, it is behaving in a way Harry cannot comprehend.
Hermione and Ron have gone, though he never saw their leaving. It is just Harry and Snape now, alone in a comforting darkness – their protector, keeping them safe from prying eyes.
They lie entwined on a warm soft surface, Where they are, Harry neither knows nor cares.
He is on his back and Snape is leaning over him. The thick cloth of Snape’s robe brushes against Harry’s skin, rough, abrasive and yet welcomed, another new sensation amongst so many. He feels the warmth of the other man, the quiet strength that comforts him.
Harry doesn’t question it. This is so right, like coming home from the midst of a ravaging storm. And if he doesn’t understand it all yet, he knows eventually he will.
Strong slim fingers card through his hair, catching up the curls, each one in its turn,
and pulling them gently outwards before releasing them to fall back again, untamed amongst the rest of his tangled mane.
Page 11
A kiss falls on his head and he sighs in contentment, nuzzling against the sweet tasting skin
at the nape of his mate’s neck. The tip of Harry’s tongue cannot resist tasting, just a tiny taste, a kitten lick.
Snape shivers and Harry can’t help a smile of satisfaction. Now Snape is stroking his hair.
Placing gentle kisses along Harry’s jaw. Growling promises of ravishment.
“It would have to be you, Potter,” he says. “Only you.” He tugs at Harry’s curls again,
a sharp but delicious pain. “You were born to annoy me, you little brat, to turn my life upside down.”
He bites the lobe of Harry’s ear; his fingers are hard, digging into Harry’s flesh, giving no quarter and yet...yet, Harry can feel the tenderness behind his actions, the sugar behind the sharpness of his words.
“You care about me,” Harry whispers, his voice full of wonder.
“Nonsense,” Snape tells him firmly, nibbling at Harry’s plump lower lip. “You are the bain of my existence. You are no more to me than an annoyance, a trial of my strength.”
Harry chuckles, the sound rich and low, resonating in his chest. He wants to shout his happiness to the heavens, he wants to spread his wings and fly.
His wings feel too heavy and he is unbalanced, but he isn’t worried anymore. Balance will come; he knows this is a thing he will conquer, as his mate already has.
Page 12
Harry pulls back away from Snape so he can study him more closely. He wonders how he could have ever thought the man ugly. His face holds nothing but strength. “You’re beautiful,” Harry breathes softly.
Snape chuckles, “You’re deluded, you silly child.”
Harry smiles. He isn’t deluded, not any longer. All his pain is gone and only the memory remains. For weeks past he has not been in control, the changes coming too rapidly,
but now he is strangely calm. Snape is here holding him safely in strong arms and, for the moment, that is all Harry seems to need.
For too long his life has been about strategy, often being no more than a pawn in a game he couldn’t understand. Now this feels right, like it is meant to be; Harry gives in and lets go of the part of him that still clings to things he no longer needs or wants.
He knows Snape now, sees into the very heart of him; he cannot be fooled any longer:
he has always been safe with this man.
Then Snape is kissing him, his mouth demanding, commanding, taking control. He tastes of cinnamon and of something else, tea and brandy and faintly of mint.
Harry opens.
He relaxes into the other man’s embrace, his wings feeling less cumbersome now. He still doesn’t know what to do with them, where to let them lie, but he is confident the knowledge will come.
He shivers deliciously as Snape traces long, sharp fingers against Harry’s wings, as if reading his thoughts. He toys with the feathers, smoothing them down tenderly, almost lovingly
and Harry gasps. The gasp is stolen by Snape as he nips at Harry’s lip and then covers his mouth with his own once more.
Part 13
Quick, clever fingers, insistent fingers, stroke his feathers in a pattern of movements
that feel like ritual, both familiar and yet unknown. His impossible, impossible wings,
those interlopers which sprang from nowhere and caused him such agony, suddenly feel as much a part of him as if they had always been there.
“Are you grooming me?” he asks, astounded.
“Hush,” Snape tells him. “You are a dirty and unkempt boy; your feathers are as messy as your hair.”
Harry can’t help himself, he begins to chuckle. “You <i>are</i> grooming me!”
He can feel Snape’s glare burning into him, but he doesn’t, <i>can’t</i> care... he feels heady with happiness.
Snape tuts and continues to comb through Harry’s feathers; it is delicious, Snape is delicious.
In a wave of need and desire he cannot control, a thought invades Harry’s being:
his mate is over-dressed. The need is pressing, primal, the need to feel Snape’s skin against his own, to map it as Snape is mapping his. He reaches up and pulls at the other man’s collar.
“Off,” he says urgently, tugging again to underline his words.
Snape pulls back a little and stares at him with a cool, level gaze for several long moments
before nodding once, acquiescing. Slowly Harry begins to undo what seems like an endless row of buttons down the front of Snape’s robe. They are covered in cloth and each is a mirror image of the other; Harry’s fingers tremble as he works his way down the row.
Snape covers Harry’s hands with his own. They are larger, the fingers longer and slimmer.
It is the hand of an artist, musician, Potions Master. It is warm and firm and strong.
Such simple observances, Harry is filled with wonder; how is it he has never noticed any of these things before? He becomes aware of other things he has failed to notice in the past,
such as the milky smoothness of Snape’s skin, the dark bristles, a rough shadow, that run long his jaw line, the sensuous curve of his lower lip.
Page 14
Snape takes over unbuttoning his robe and Harry traces the contours of his lips instead,
moving on to his cheek bones and his nose. “You’re beautiful,” he says, his voice full of the wonder of it.
Snape snorts, but his eyes betray something that Harry has never seen in him before..
vulnerability.
“You are!” he insists.
“You’re deluded, boy,” Snape snaps, his voice harsher than before. “You can’t help it.
It’s the mating heat that’s overtaken you, that’s all. We’ll fuck and this will be over.”
“No it won’t!” Harry insists loudly. “Aren’t Veela, erm... don’t they mate for life or something?”
“That’s swans, geese, albatrosses. Birds and fairytales, not Veela, you foolish child!”
Snape is berating him as usual, but there is no sting in his words.
Harry remembers how he spent his adolescence hating this man, then admiring and mourning him, then, after he’d miraculously returned from the dead, avoiding being in his company because he didn’t know what to say.
Now, though, he knows with absolute certainty, and to the very depths of his soul,
that he never wants to be apart from his mate again. His blood is singing in his veins
and there is lust and want and need, need, need. But there is something else, too.
“No,” he says and his voice is firmer now. “This is more.”
Harry is the younger of the two of them, with no experience in lovemaking or relationships,
but he knows instinctively and with certainty that Snape is what he’s been yearning for,
needing, his everything. “Can’t you feel this bond between us?” he asks.
Snape’s fingers still on his buttons. He isn’t looking at Harry anymore, but Harry notices how his eyelashes flicker and the slight flush mounting his cheeks.
“Severus?
As Snape lifts his head his vulnerability is naked, laid bare for Harry to see.
“Do not joke with me, Potter! I will not be trifled with. We have to do this, instinct compels us, but it need not be more than that.”
Page 15
“Then it stops here,” Harry shouts, scooting up the bed away from Snape. The words hurt him but the physical distance between them hurts even more. His skin crawls, itching madly
as he pushes away from the other man. He feels like he is coming apart. Burning heat flares through him as if he would turn to ash.
“Don’t be ridiculous. We have to do this. I have to fuck you or you’ll not complete the transformation; you’ll die, you bloody idiot.”
“I don’t care!” Harry screams. “It’s more than that... for us at least. Can’t you feel it? There’s...” but the words fade away.
He gropes around, desperately searching for the words he needs, but his brain feels foggy
and words are becoming increasingly beyond his reach. His vision blurs, his blood is pounding in his ears, his whole body is screaming at him to touch Snape, to get closer,
to do whatever needs doing to ensure his transformation is completed.
He feels increasingly dizzy. The further away he gets from Snape, the worse it is. Now they have made initial physical contact it is imperative they consummate the bond and complete the transformation.
He needs to touch Snape. In desperation he shoves his hands behind him, entangling his fingers in his feathers, clutching at them as if holding on for life itself.
“It’s more than that,” he finally says in near panic
He is shaking, his teeth chattering; he feels himself breaking apart.
Page 16
“Harry, come here, please.” Snape’s tone is even; he is talking to Harry as if he were a small child or a frightened animal.
Harry curls closer to the headboard as far away from Snape as he can get. Snape sighs and runs a hand over his face as if in despair. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
Then, all at once, Harry knew. “That’s what happened to you, isn’t it?”
Snape won’t look at him.
“Oh God, it is!
But it can mean more. You were not meant for him; you are, and always have been, meant for me. We are meant to be... together for all time. I know this, I feel it. Believe me... believe in me. I will not leave you!”
“That will do!” Snape bites out. He stands and turns away.
Harry whimpers pitifully and looks away. He can’t bear to watch if his mate leaves him.
The shivering is worse now and he hurts all over.
Suddenly Snape is there again, stroking Harry’s hair, stroking his feathers.
“No!” Harry tries to pull away, though he has no strength left with which to fight the man off.
Snape holds on tightly and murmurs to him, firmly, insistently. “Stupid, stubborn, difficult brat.
Okay, you get your way. We’ll see what happens, we’ll try. I can’t say more than that.
You are an idiot... you realise this... but I guess you need it.” His voice breaks a little, “You need me.”
Harry doesn’t comprehend most of what Snape is saying – his head seems full of fog –
but the tone is soothing and the arms feel secure so, with a sob of relief he gives in and lets himself be soothed.
Page 17
“Impossible, impossible child. You live to annoy me, to make my life difficult.” As he speaks Snape continues to unbutton his robe; he shrugs it from his shoulders while pulling Harry ever closer.
Harry sighs and lets the feel of Snape’s skin on his soothe away the shivers that were tearing him apart. The fog is clearing and Snape is kissing him again, claiming him.
“Wait,” his mate murmurs softly. Snape stands, leaving Harry lying in a tangle of feathers and limbs.
Harry watches as Snape unbuttons his trousers and slips them down his hips, followed seconds later by his underpants. He stares avidly at exposed tight, high buttocks and long, slim thighs.
On Snape’s back are images of wings. They curve out and round his shoulder blades
and then down and in towards his spine.
“Oh!” Harry gasps, sitting up and reaching out, touching the images, tracing the dark lines etched into the skin with the tips of his fingers. The lines ripple beneath his explorations,
the winged shapes almost seeming to move.
“Are those?”
“They are my wings,” Snape says simply. “This will happen to you too, when you learn to control your transformation.”
“How...?”
“I will teach you.”
Harry snorts loudly, unable to help himself. They have not had the best relationship as teacher and pupil... he and Snape.
“I will teach you,” his mate replies again, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly. “I will try, Harry, I assure you that I will.” The words are so much softer, almost tender this time.
It is like an apology, a promise of better things to come.
He smiles eagerly as a naked Snape climbs back onto the bed and gently pushes him down against the pillows, claiming his mouth once more, stopping any reply he might make. Long, slim fingers trace an outline along his ribs, briefly brushing a nipple and causing him to shiver again, deeper this time. Snape’s touch is cool and soothing against his superheated skin. He sighs deliciously.
Page 18
“Finally, you are quiet,” Snape whispers. “I’ve waited years for this. Look at you, all laid out for me. You are beautiful.” Then so softly that Harry barely hears him, “You are mine.”
“Yes-s-s!” Harry hisses. “Oh yes!, Please.”
Snape’s mouth is working its way along Harry’s torso, licking and kissing as Harry had done earlier to Snape’s neck. It is wonderful, incredible and wonderful. Harry is nothing but feeling now, every touch, every kiss, every caress subsumes him, sinks into his soul.
Snape’s hands caress his hips now, lifting him, turning him onto his front. Gently, so gently, so unlike the Snape Harry thought he knew, he curves his hands around Harry’s arse and places a kiss at the base of Harry’s spine. Harry lays on his front, waiting, shivering once more, surrounded by feathers, buried beneath his wings.
Snape’s touch is tender, gentle. His fingers trace intricate designs on Harry’s skin. They seem formless and Harry doesn’t understand them, and yet he does know what they are. Snape is muttering under his breath, the words as formless as the patterns on his flesh and yet they have the cadence of a prayer. Harry’s sigh of contentment comes from the very depths of his soul.
He curls his toes and his fingers as if desperately trying to hold on to feelings that as yet he does not fully understand, these waves of pleasure he has never known before, never even knew existed.
Yet within him there is a growing need.
He is being touched by his mate, surrounded by the scent that is uniquely his, being kissed by his lips, caressed by his fingers, lulled by his presence.
The tingling, almost a burning sensation, starts at the base of his spine and travels outwards along his ribs, along the delicate framework of his wings. Snape is speaking to him but the words no longer hold any meaning for Harry, carried along as he is on waves of sensation
that dominate his thoughts to the exclusion of all else.
He begs, relying on instinct, trusting that he is saying the right thing to make his mate understand.
Page 19
“Please, please, please, please.”
Snape’s fingers circle his hole, pushing inside the superheated channel of his arse
and he hisses at the feel of it. Those long, sharp, insistent fingers fill him with something cool and slick. Harry wiggles at the sensation, tries out the control of muscles he has barely noticed before.
Snape is speaking again, but Harry truly cannot understand what the man is saying; he has a vague impression that he is asking Harry if this is okay, but Harry can no longer parse a sentence or make a request, instead he pushes backwards, impaling himself further on Snape’s fingers.
Snape makes a sound Harry thinks he recognises as a laugh but he doesn’t care.
When this is followed by another stream of meaningless words, Harry wiggles harder, clenching his arse and sucking the man in more deeply.
Then finally, finally, something larger, blunt-ended, and impossibly hard is pushing inside him and Harry roars his approval. The sound he makes is high and keening, avian.
It is not human, this sound; it is fully feral, totally untamed.
There is no more fighting, no trying to be logical, no thinking this through.
There is only need and sensation. Harry pushes back, again and again, whimpering and trembling until Snape finally gets the message. His thrusts increase as Harry’s needs increase, pushing in ever harder and faster.
It is almost brutal in its intensity, but Harry is alive with sensation. His blood sings in his veins and his very bones thrum with magic, the magic that cements his transformation,
that allows him to become what he is.
The sex anchors him to earth but his mind is awash with alien images… a different way of seeing.
Page 20
Harry has flown before, but never like this. Now he knows why flying on a broomstick
has always been second nature to him; gliding through the heavens is where he was always meant to be. In his mind he is flying high above the castle, soaring through the air on powerful, black, arching wings.
He shouts out to the heavens again and again, powerful, wanton, free of all that was fettering him… and then he is coming, long and hard. His blood pounds in his ears once more, the sound of a drum, resonant and insistent.
All at once he is flooded with warmth and liquid passion as Snape comes too. He screams as Harry did and to Harry’s ears it is the sound of triumph, of possession, of release. Then Harry is falling, down from the stormy skies, down, down, down into his lover’s arms and Harry knows no more.
All night long Snape whispers to him, joins him in his dreams. They walk together in a world which feels strange and different and yet which unfolds before Harry like a dimly forgotten memory.
Page 21
It is, however, familiar and resonant and in the morning Harry knows. In the morning,
when Harry wakes he feels safe and rested and hopeful for a future he never could have imagined even in his wildest dreams. In the morning his wings are gone.
He wonders if his back is etched with markings as Snape’s is. He rolls his shoulder blades,
tentatively checking for pain, for soreness, but there is none.
His wings are there, within reach, and he could spread them if he wished to, but for now he is content.
With his head resting on his lover’s shoulder, he watches as Severus sleeps. His mate’s features are far less severe in repose; he looks younger somehow.
The castle is quiet, its residents asleep. In the kitchens he hears the house-elves stirring,
getting ready for the day ahead; sparrows wake in the eaves and welcome the dawn.
But he has control now. His senses are so much more powerful than they have ever been before and yet, since the events of last night, he can control them, turn them down when he needs to.
Page 22
He sighs in contentment and snuggles closer to his lover.
Snape awakes.
He comes to awareness slowly, his hair awry, his eyes clouded with confusion and Harry smiles.
“Good morning, Snape,” Harry says, his voice sounding rusty and unused to his ears…
even though he is sure he could speak only last night.
For the beat of a heart Snape is solemn, his expression as sombre as it ever is. Then his eyes crinkle at the corners and he smiles; it is a small and tentative smile almost shy and it makes him look impossibly young.
Snape reaches up and cups Harry’s cheek, staring at him with those dark, dark eyes.
But there is a warmth within them that Harry would never have suspected was in the man,
at least not until last night.
They don’t need to speak to understand each other. There is so much more between them
now that they are bound, tied together, intimately entwined; nevertheless Snape does speak.
“It is Severus, Harry,” he says, and Harry’s name sounds like a benediction on his lips. “My name is Severus. You called me by my name once before, call me that now.”
Then he pulls Harry towards him and claims his mouth in a kiss.
Page 23
Everything has changed this night,
everything is new and Harry feels reborn, remade
and nothing, nothing will ever be the same again...
and thus, glorying in the touch of his mate,
Harry accepts his destiny.
“I am Veela!”
Finis
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