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The first time, for Harry, was on his birthday. He was nineteen.

Nineteen and in disguise, considering that he was also buzzing with adrenaline and arousal, stuck plumb at that time of the month when he could think of little except the stiffness of his cock (perpetual) and the slick, empty feeling of his arse (unceasing). The last thing he wanted was to be recognized in this state. The only reason he'd ventured into Diagon Alley—which was crowded—was to try to buy better Heat suppressants from Slug & Jiggers.

Nineteen and still a virgin...but holy hell was he ready for something, anything, to divest him of his innocence.

So when he ran smack into an alpha in the crowded street, and the man's nostrils flared with the pheromones that Harry was no doubt releasing in clouds as he caught Harry's shoulders to keep him from falling over…

…and he said, shockingly, "You look as if you need someone to suck you off." All while he—the alpha—was going around releasing his own provocative scent…

…chances were high that Harry would say yes. The man could have been anyone at all.

He wasn't, obviously.

But he could have been. "Are you volunteering?" Harry asked boldly.

The answer seemed to be yes, as the other wizard met Harry's eyes (they were brown right now, not green, and he'd been thinking the word "forgettable" again and again while he'd cast the glamour on his face that morning) in consideration for a moment before turning toward the nearest storefront. A commanding glance thrown over one shoulder had Harry scrambling behind.

Harry's former professor apparently had no qualms about breaking into the storeroom of Flourish and Blotts. Harry didn't either, at the moment—and probably wouldn't most of the time anyway—but it was rather surprising (and impressive) to see how quickly Snape dismantled the magical locks and shredded the wards on the bookshop's side door.

Slipping inside behind the other man's black-clad form (he was wearing a long-sleeved business shirt and trousers instead of those dour teaching robes, at least), Harry blinked at the dimness. They were surrounded by boxes of stationery and piles of books, modern bestsellers mixed with ancient tomes. "What if someone needs to get something from back here?" he whispered, glancing toward the curtain that obviously led toward the main part of the shop.

"This establishment is closed for the day," Snape said at a normal volume. "And I trust that we will attempt to leave no trace that will be detected when it reopens tomorrow."

Harry felt as if he ought to be starting to have qualms about this.

He wasn't. "I can handle that," he agreed.

Snape smirked at him.

The smirk gave Harry several uncomfortable feelings. Tightness, mostly, and dampness, and swollenness, and…achingness? Yeah, that. Even if it wasn't a real word, it was definitely a thing he was feeling.

And also. Maybe he was starting to have some qualms.

Harry rubbed at the back of his neck. His breathing was coming faster. "Um, how should we…?" He shook his head. "Maybe we shouldn't—"

He didn’t finish the thought. Snape was already dropping to his knees.

Seeing the expectant look the man gave him, Harry quickly undid the zipper of his jeans and pulled his very erect penis out. That, apparently, was all the encouragement the man needed, because Snape immediately made a satisfied sound low in his throat and set to work.

Harry's knees wanted to buckle. He threw an arm over his eyes.

He would wonder, later, why he hadn't been able to look. Why he instinctively hadn't wanted to confront the sight of how expertly his former professor and protector and enemy had taken Harry's cock into the soft sucking heat between his lips.

"You may twine your fingers through my hair, if you can manage it with any delicacy," came Snape's voice from below. The warm wetness and pressure had disappeared while he spoke, leaving Harry's cock tingling and lonely and throbbing for more.

When the slick heat returned, it enveloped him until he felt himself hitting the back of the man's throat. Harry released a gasping whimper. He also let his free hand—the one that wasn't pressed tightly over his face now—drift and hover until his fingertips impacted with the smooth black strands at the top of Snape's head, still warm from the sun.

He tried to trace some light patterns over them. Snape made a sound that might have signified approval and grabbed Harry by the hips, pulling him backward and forward like a marionette. Harry cried out and came.

He found himself sitting—half-lying—on the floor. Seemed he'd fallen over.

Snape was getting creakily to his feet and wiping at his lips. As an omega, Harry's ejaculate was thinner and less substantial than an alpha's or even a beta man's, but Harry still felt like he'd released about a bucket of it right now. Snape seemed to have swallowed every drop.

Only a small tremble and the dilation of his eyes betrayed that he was at all aroused by what they'd done.

"You haven't… What can I do for you?" Harry questioned breathlessly as he clambered to his feet. He'd forgotten enough of his reservations to grab the other man's arm, cling to it.

Snape looked into Harry's face—his disguised face—and kissed him on the lips.

The kiss was so brief that Harry didn't even get to taste himself in the man's mouth. But it made his blood pump and his thoughts rush.

He shouldn't have done this. Snape was a good man, more or less. He'd been interested in some casual intimacy with an omega he didn't know. He'd been respectful. Harry felt much better now, at least physically.

The man would be livid if he learned that he'd just given a blowjob to Harry Potter.

Not that they were on the outs. Just…the last time Harry had seen Snape was when he'd testified for the man at his trial. That had been eight months ago. If the former spy had wanted anything to do with Harry in the modern era, he'd had plenty of time to let Harry know.

Harry respected Snape, dammit. Whatever resentment still lingered from the man's treatment of Harry as a student, he'd certainly earned that respect. Without him, Voldemort would have won. Had Harry just unforgivably breached Snape's trust?

"That won't be necessary," the other wizard was saying. While Harry had been having his crisis of conscience, the alpha had guided him back into the alley outside of the bookshop and expertly repaired the lock and wards on the door.

Harry was still gripping the front of his companion's silky black shirt with all available fingers. "But don't you—" he began in a croak.

Snape cut him off by kissing him again, this time on the forehead.

"Happy birthday," he said.

Then he released Harry and disappeared out of the alley with a long and confident stride.

Harry watched him go with a slack jaw, still feeling the softness of Snape's shirt against his hands.

A week later, Harry received a package by post-owl. Carefully packed and Charmed against breakage, it contained vial after vial of single-dose Heat suppressants—enough to last Harry for nearly a decade.

Should you choose to use these, the accompanying note said in a familiar spidery scrawl, you will find them far more effective than that swill that's available commercially. The letter also listed ingredients and dosage recommendations.

Harry debated what to write back for two days. Ultimately, he only sent Snape a short note of thanks.

He'd probably die of embarrassment if he ever actually saw the man again, after all.

"No, alphas and omegas cannot accidentally bond by snogging. Bonding is not an orally transmitted disease."

A small titter swept between the tightly packed desks. In the back of the classroom, Harry scrunched farther down into his seat and wished fervently for his invisibility cloak.

Why had he decided to sit in on the Auror cadets' training that day? Right, because Robards had asked him to give a presentation on his own work to the group of fresh-out-of-Hogwarts teens. Harry just hadn't realized that their other instructor would be Snape, or that it was apparently the day when the trainees had their sex ed on secondary genders class.

And they didn't seem at all shy of their sardonic, quick-witted teacher, which was interesting—but also, from Harry's point of view, utterly mortifying.

"So, how does bonding happen, sir?" asked a girl in the front row of desks, twirling a shiny strand of hair around one finger as she stared up at Snape with a deliberately innocent expression.

Oh god. Harry didn't know if he wanted to cringe on her behalf or applaud her hutzpah. He definitely wouldn’t have had the sack to flirt baldly with the man.

Snape, thank Merlin, only scowled at the student and answered her question. "Bonding can be initiated in two ways," he explained slowly. "By a bite, or simply by attrition: when the alpha and the omega have intercourse, in the traditional manner, more than twice. In that case, they will know the bond has taken when their scents change to resemble each other and when they stop responding to sexual stimuli when not in the presence of their bonded mate."

A few groans and indignant noises arose in response to this. Snape called on the only boy who actually raised his hand.

"What about intercourse in a non-traditional manner, sir?" he asked.

Snape raised an eyebrow. "Specify."

The boy was an omega, Harry noticed. One of the first to ever be allowed into the Auror program.

He scratched at his hairline and flushed, but continued forward doggedly. "Um, when you're doing something other than the alpha, you know, rogering the omega. Like, a blowjob or something. Will you bond?"

"Silence," Snape ordered at the wave of sound stirred up among the other students by the words 'rogering' and 'blowjob'.

"Evidence has established," he explained once the classroom had obeyed him and calmed down, "that the only act that will result in an accidental bond between the pair is the entrance—and particularly the ejaculation—of the alpha's penis into the omega's vulva and vaginal canal. Does that answer your question?"

"Oh. Yes, thank you," the omega boy squeaked, looking as if he was feeling just as flustered as Harry (who hoped, but had no confidence, that he was hiding it better).

"If there are no further questions on this topic, we'll move on to a discussion of birth control," Snape said in a measured tone.

Then he blinked. "Mr. Potter," he called.

Harry didn't really know what had possessed him to lift his hand. But all eyes in the room had already turned to stare at him, so there was no taking it back.

"What if the omega never wants to bond?" he asked quietly.

He heard a few gasps at the question—but Snape, at least, met Harry's eyes levelly and didn't betray any surprise.

"Then the omega and their partner—if they have one partner, and if that partner is an alpha—would simply need to avoid a specific act, as already described. Is there anything else?"

"No," Harry said, his throat dry. "Thanks."

"Birth control," the man said, smoothly shifting his attention back to his general audience.

For Harry, the rest of Snape's lecture passed in a whirl. He could barely even hear it, given the pounding of blood in his ears.

Until Snape was drawing the Auror cadets' attention to Harry again, saying, "And now, I believe our visitor will take the floor?"

"Right," Harry said, pushing himself up to standing and approaching the front of the room.

Snape settled into the desk that Harry himself had vacated.

Standing to face the students, who seemed to be waiting raptly for whatever he would say, Harry cleared his throat and tried not to feel so nervous. He hadn't taught anything formally like this since back in Dumbledore's Army in fifth year.

"Well, it might not be as, erm, entertaining of a thing to talk about—" That won him a snicker or two. "—but I'm here to tell you about what I've been studying—researching and mapping—for the past year."

He took a deep breath. "Ley lines. What are they?"

A few hands were tentatively raised. He waved them down and answered the question himself.

"Essentially, they're the topography of magic. Faultlines of power, rivers of it. Just like the actual map, the map of ambient magic is bumpy and uneven. There's a lot of speculation about why that might be. As far as we know, the answer is that anything magical, including people, can either replenish or deplete the source material. And it likes to move around. It flows."

Snape, when Harry's gaze tracked over him, looked nothing but blandly encouraging.

Which made Harry feel more confident, actually.

"So what I've been testing in the field are the areas where the lines of power are strong versus weak, not to mention places where they intersect. We can’t see them with the naked eye, but there are ways to tell where they are and how they’re shaped by testing spell strength variability. We've never had a complete map of the ley lines of the British Isles before, but I hope to change that in the next ten years…"

The students seemed to enjoy Harry's lecture.

At the very least, they paid attention. Most took notes. A few asked for his autograph and thanked him for killing Voldemort when it was done.

When the final stragglers had left the classroom, Harry breathed a sigh of relief. He looked up from running a hand through his hair to see Snape watching him.

The other man had been putting the desks back in order. "Do you need any help with that?" Harry asked weakly.

Snape inclined his head, so they worked together in silence for a short time.

Of course, Harry couldn't keep from darting covert glances at the other man while doing so.

Given that Snape began to look back at him whenever he did this, it was probably safe to assume that Harry wasn't being quite as sneaky as he intended.

"Is there something you would like to discuss with me, Harry?" the former spy finally drawled as their eyes caught again, one corner of his lips twitching.

The younger wizard could feel himself flushing all over at this—hairline, jaw, cheeks, nose, ears, not to mention places that weren't on his face. Snape had never called him Harry before.

"N-no," he stammered. "No. But thank you. Have a nice day."

And Harry fled, wondering if he'd imagined how Snape's lip twitch had spread into a small but genuine smile at his answer.

Wondering what the future might bring.

The future, as it turned out, brought another afternoon, three years later, in the Ministry’s classroom for Auror trainees.

The classroom was empty at the moment…which was good, since Harry, who had plopped himself into the chair behind Snape’s teaching desk, was currently wearing nothing but women's undergarments, slender t-strap heels that complemented his high arches, and an elegant silver gown.

Harry didn't have his own office in the Ministry, and he'd needed someplace quiet and private to catch his breath and throw himself a well-deserved self-pity party.

It had all come about because he’d thought that maybe—just maybe—the universe might allow him the luxury of fooling around with a hot bloke like any other twenty-two-year-old.

Well, not the silver gown: that was because he'd agreed to act the part of the female lead in the play that Ginny Weasley (who was actually quite good) had written to benefit the War Orphans' Fund. Their rehearsal had been an hour earlier in the auditorium on Level Six.

But the rest of it was all the fault of the universe, and the deeply entrenched patriarchal double standards of wizarding society, and Harry's co-star, a ruggedly handsome alpha who'd just signed on for his second year with the Chudley Cannons.

They'd gone out for dinner a few times. Drinks. There'd been a bit of snogging and handsy stuff here and there.

Backstage that day, Chudley (he'd picked the Cannons because he shared their name, he'd once explained to Harry cheerfully) had been a bit more…forward than in their previous interactions. Which Harry had actually been enjoying…until he suddenly wasn't having anything resembling a good time anymore.

And he still had the indentations of the Quidditch player's teeth on the back of his hand to prove it.

The classroom door opened. Harry looked up from his wallowing, ready to make excuses. But it was only Snape.

He and his former professor had been thrown together fairly often in the last few years…so much so that Harry had stopped complaining to Hermione about how the man always used his first name ("It's the way he says it!" he'd tried to explain whenever his friend looked at him as if he'd gone barmy).

No, he'd accepted it: Snape called him Harry, even when he still called Snape nothing but Snape.

"Snape," Harry said.

"Harry," the other man answered slowly back.

His gaze had been lingering, of course, on Harry's dress, and his sparkly high heels, and his scowl. Pulling it away without further comment, he set about organizing a few stacks of paper on his desk.

"I have a class in ten minutes," he informed Harry blandly.

"Gives you a timeline, doesn't it?" Harry shot back.

"What?" the other wizard rasped, freezing in place.

"A deadline, I mean," Harry corrected himself. "Ten minutes to tell me what a dunderhead I was for believing I could let an alpha get me off without him thinking it meant he owned me for life."

Harry smacked his injured hand against Snape’s teaching desk. Then he thought about what he'd just said and added, "Present company excluded, obviously."

It was the first time, he realized belatedly, that he'd acknowledged what had happened on his nineteenth birthday aloud.

And now the man was glaring down at him from the other side of the desk. "If you wanted me to help you reach sexual completion again, you had only to ask," he said stiffly. "I believed I’d made that clear."

Harry's jaw got into an argument with gravity and lost. Also, he might have flailed a bit. Given the fact that he fell out of the chair.

When he finally found his voice again—which was after Snape had helped him to his feet and then helped him keep his balance when the unfamiliar heels almost sent Harry toppling over once more—it seemed to be stuck at an unusually high pitch. "You definitely didn't make that clear!" he yelled, flailing his arms around just a bit more.

Snape still had a grip on Harry—awkwardly, to hold him up. His eyes were laughing.

"And you have class!" Harry added, more weakly this time.

Snape nodded. "You could wait," he offered in a low voice.

Letting Harry go, he strode to the second door in the room and opened it.

"You want me to wait in a broom cupboard for an hour?" Harry wondered incredulously.

"An hour and fifteen minutes," Snape corrected.

Harry wobbled closer and peered into it. The space was small, he saw, but not cluttered. The Ministry of Magic didn't need to store shelves of Muggle cleaning supplies, he supposed.

He also supposed that he ought to have too much self-respect to try to earn sex with Snape—or whatever the man was offering—by waiting for him in a closet for over an hour. He turned to the other wizard to say so.

But Snape spoke first. "I'll make it worth your while, Harry," he promised huskily.

Harry took a deep breath. He could still feel the stinging pain from the bite on the back of his hand.

"Fine," he agreed.

Harry had first presented as an omega in his fifth year at Hogwarts.

It had been bad timing, to say the least.

Under the heading "Protect, not Respect," the Prophet had run a series of pieces about how Harry's claims regarding Voldemort's return were obviously nothing but a hormone-fueled delusion. The phrase "omega hysteria" had come up several times.

And Dolores Umbridge had had a field day with him in her little detention sessions.

He could still hear her nauseating singsong as she trilled, "The greatest joy of an omega is to serve the rest of us, given your natural inferiority! Omegas do not have opinions. Omegas speak quietly. Omegas always sit with their knees closed. Cross at the ankles, please! Omegas look down at the ground; eye contact is the privilege of alphas and betas. And remember that omegas do not pursue alphas. They all want an alpha's bite, of course, but they are never presumptuous enough to ask for it!"

She'd given him quite a few instructions about proper omega behavior during their time together. They'd usually ended up carved into his skin.

Bad luck for Umbridge that Harry, deep in his heart, had never met a rule he didn't want to smash to smithereens.

As with all of Snape's vows, making Harry's time in the broom cupboard worthwhile was one that he kept.

But not until an hour and fifteen minutes had gone by.

The good news was that Harry had discovered that, after strategically applying some cushioning charms, he actually didn't mind waiting. It gave him time to calm down.

And it was surprisingly nice to just listen to Snape talk, to let the deep melody of the alpha's voice roll over his body like waves.

The light that spilled in when the students had all left and the door opened again felt harsh. "Come inside with me," he ordered the older wizard, blinking up at him without rising. "I made the floor soft."

Snape obeyed him, somewhat to Harry's shock, kneeling gracefully in the open doorway and then crawling inside.

The door swung shut again, bathing them both in darkness.

Neither of them lit a Lumos to dispel it.

"Might I be allowed to see you in your pretty dress?" Snape asked after a moment—faintly mocking, but in a way that Harry was finding that he liked.

He closed his eyes. Didn't need them open in the darkness anyway.

"No," he said with a smile. "Come to the play if you want to see it."

"Cheeky little minx."

"It'll be pretty good. We've been rehearsing for weeks." Chudley would need to be replaced by his understudy after how badly Harry had hexed him today, of course.

Instead of answering, the other man aligned himself against Harry's body. He radiated warmth.

Harry was the one who reached out to cross whatever still divided them—that dark, quiet space.

Why, Harry would wonder then and keep wondering later, was Snape such a good kisser? Was he just naturally talented at the variation of pressure, the coaxing, the sort of kissing that broke Harry into pieces and left him keening without anything else happening at all? When had the man practiced this type of thing?

And when had he practiced the sort of kissing that he did next: with Harry's dress rucked up above his hips and his knickers ("It'll ruin the lines of the costume if you don't wear these," Ginny had told him in a tone that brooked no argument) discarded and his feet slung over Snape's back, finally un-shoed?

For all that he'd spent a huge chunk of his adolescence defying death, Harry didn't know if he would have been brave enough to let Snape do this—let Snape use his mouth down there—if the lights were on.

It was just such a private part of his body. Private, untidy, inconvenient. And it wanted so many things.

Being speared open by the hot muscle of Snape's tongue appeared to be one of them.

It also made Harry think, in a whispery part of his head, about how much better a cock—Snape's cock—would feel in that locale.

Just once, urged the whispering voice. You won't bond if it's only once…

Harry got a grip on himself and on Snape's shoulders, tugging the man away from his feast and back up until they were chest to chest. He kissed Snape messily and tasted a tart flavor that had to be from his own body.

"I was enjoying that," the man protested into Harry's ear.

"I could tell. But couldn't we just… Can't I see your prick this time?"

Hot breath curled against his cheek.

Snape didn't answer in words, but he did shift his hips back. Clothes—the man's teaching robes—rustled, and then something large and warm was pushed into Harry's reaching palm.

About twice as thick as his own, Harry assessed after circling his forefinger and thumb around it. They couldn't quite touch—and he didn't have small hands.

Heart hammering in his chest, he started to stroke.

"Yeah, baby," he whispered when the other man made what sounded like an involuntary needy noise. "Yeah, just like that."

"I'm not a baby," Snape growled back, panting.

"Oh, I know," Harry conceded with an unrepentant smile, nuzzling his face into the alpha's jawline and neck.

He also wrapped his free hand—the left one—around his own cock.

"I'll do me," he whispered into the older man's ear, "if you help me with yours?"

The former spy wasn't a talkative lover, Harry was discovering. But he felt the man's chin dip, and two hands pressed themselves against his right one, capturing it and squeezing it and moving it however they wanted up and down the thick shaft.

Harry matched the rhythm on himself, and shifted his arse back and forth to feel how it was still sloppy from his former professor's tongue, and soon they were both coming, almost at the same time.

Sirius Black was the only one who'd given him any advice when he'd been fifteen that actually made sense.

There had been a night in Grimmauld Place when Harry, unable to sleep, had wandered down past the mounted house elf heads to the kitchen, where he'd found the man slumped over the table, red-eyed and shaking and nursing a mostly empty tumbler of scotch.

"It's fine to play around," Harry's godfather had told him. "Explore what's out there. Have a good time, sow a few wild oats. You like alphas, right?"

Embarrassed, Harry had nodded. In fact, he'd discovered by that point that he almost exclusively liked—as in, felt attracted to—alphas, even if they were awful gits like Malfoy.

The ex-prisoner had pointed at Harry, his expression sharpening. "But don't forget not to let an alpha bite you. Then you'll be trapped. Stuck."

"Stuck?" Harry had repeated, confused. He'd heard a few vague—and probably exaggerated—details about omegas since coming to Hogwarts, but he hadn't paid nearly as much attention as he would've if he'd known he was going to become one.

Sirius's red eyes had narrowed at him. "Bonded. You'll be theirs for life. Want to be an Auror? Good luck finding an alpha who'll let you do it."

"I don't actually want to be an Auror—" Harry had begun to protest.

His godfather had cut him off. "Don't give in to the people who want to control your life," he slurred pleadingly. "Be your own man."

So Harry, in the years that followed, had always tried to live up to what Sirius had asked—to ignore everything that people said about his gender that didn't make sense to him and make his own path forward in life.

And here, wearing a dress in his former enemy's Auror classroom after hours, he was still trying to be his own man.

Snape looked as disheveled as Harry had ever seen him—even on the night of the final battle—when they both emerged into the light.

It looked good, actually. Made Harry want to muss him up even more.

Which he might have tried, if the man's expression hadn't absolutely forbidden it.

"Tell me who it was," he demanded, catching Harry's hand.

Oh right, the bite. Chudley's teeth had only broken the skin in a few places, which had already clotted and started to scab—but Snape must have felt the wounds while they'd been working together to jerk him off.

Harry had slid that hand between his neck and the Quidditch player's teeth just in time. Now, he pulled it away from the older man's grasp gently.

"One of the Beaters for the Cannons," he answered in a soothing voice. "But it wasn't his fault."

"How could it possibly not be his fault?" Snape's eyes were narrowed. His voice had become whip-like, dangerous. Interesting to be the cause but not actually the target of the wrath in that tone.

"He'd been raised to think that if I asked for sex, it meant I wanted a bite as well," Harry explained. "Natural omega behavior and all. He was utterly mortified when I called him out on it."

Utterly mortified, and missing the teeth that had incited the whole hullabaloo until he managed to find the right course of potions to grow them back. Harry had thought it best to remove them until they'd gotten the misunderstanding worked out.

A surprising sound emanated from Snape's chest.

Oh. He was growling.

"You have terrible taste in men," the other man spat out.

"Including you?" Harry shot back.

Snape hunched in on himself slightly at that—and then straightened again.

He pulled a stoppered glass jar out of what must have been a wizard-space pocket in his robes, considering that Harry hadn't felt anything like it while they were rolling around together on the broom cupboard's floor.

"For your hand," Snape said stiffly, taking the stopper out of the top and handing Harry the jar. "To help it heal cleanly."

It was a salve, Harry realized as he accepted the jar, scooped some of the contents out with two fingers, and spread the ointment over the bite.

His nostrils flared. A salve with a very familiar smell.

The only reason Umbridge's 'advice' had never left permanent scarring, back in fifth year, was because of a special healing ointment that had been delivered to him by a house-elf after each session.

"You sent me this," Harry gasped, swaying slightly on his feet with the shock of the puzzle piece clicking into place. "After Umbridge got her claws into me. It was you."

Snape nodded, and then he spoke his reply to the wall instead of to Harry. "It was a failure. I had attempted to prevent her from seeing you privately at all, but I was not in a position—I was unable to succeed."

"Oh."

The other man looked pale and drawn with the admission. The apology.

Harry cleared his throat. "Well, thanks," he finally decided to say. "Otherwise I would have omegas must not eat bananas written up both of my arms."

It was a joke, mostly. Snape didn't laugh.

"You cannot persist in forgiving those who have wronged you irrevocably, you pure-hearted fool," he hissed.

Harry blinked and rocked back on his heels. That Snape thought he was a fool wasn't news, though it still stung.

"I never forgave Umbridge," he finally settled on saying. "But I did—and I do—forgive you. Severus."

The man came to the play.

The future also brought a beautiful day in Exmoor National Park. Blue skies and a playful coastal breeze and the bog flowers all in bloom.

"I'll speak a little louder. I'll even shout," Harry sang as he carefully drove through the expanses of heather, gorse, and purple moor-grass. "But you know that I'm proud and I can't get the words out…"

He was behind the wheel of a camper van. He was twenty-three.

He was the only person in sight and probably hearing distance, so he didn't worry about the open window and the reverb snare drums and peppy eighties' melody that were blaring from the radio.

"Oh, Iiiiiiiiiii, I wanna be with you everywhere." Pause for breath, then right into it again. "Oh, I(iiiiiiiiiiiiiii), I wanna—"

There—just over that ridge was the site that Harry had set out to investigate today. He pulled to a stop, set the handbrake, and cranked the window back up.

He didn't turn off the engine while Christine McVie was still singing, though.

Can you hear me callin'
out your name?
I fear that I'm fallin' and
I don't know what to say…

When he was out scouting and mapping in areas of high and unstable natural magical potential, Harry generally tried to do everything the Muggle way. Which he enjoyed, actually. It was kind of soothing. Harry loved magic, but so much of it was linked in his head with the war.

So he didn't mind doing things step by step. Driving ground-bound to his destination instead of flying or even Apparating—which he'd never managed to learn to do without feeling sick anyway.

And he typically used Muggle means for contacting the outside world as well.

"Sev!" he yelled into his neon pink walkie-talkie. "You're never going to believe this!"

No answer.

"Come in, Sev!"

Finally, the device's speakers came crackling to life with a familiar drawl.

"If you've driven into a peat bog again, you will find that I am experiencing very little difficulty in suspending my doubt."

Harry grinned. Wordy bastard.

"That was one time! Anyway, it's not me, it's the—there are seven of them! The lines at this location!"

"Be exceedingly cautious," came the voice on the walkie-talkie after a pause.

Harry waved the warning away. "It's a fascinating site," he babbled, nearly giddy with the excitement of the discovery. "Totally unique. There are three lines intersecting right here—and two more over there, and two more over there, if you can believe it." Harry lifted his thumb off the transmission button, then laughed at himself and pushed it back down again. "I know you can't see where I'm pointing," he said, just so the other man would know his brain hadn't turned (at least completely) to pudding.

"Signs of ambient magical interference?"

"Spellwork strength variability is at twelve percent. Polarization is two point six, transmogrification five point five. Oh, and I got temporal wobbling during a surge." Essentially, the magic in ley lines did three things when a spell was cast in their vicinity: altered its potency, reversed it, or caused it to go off the rails and take a form that was totally unintended.

Only the very largest and strongest of ley line intersections ever resulted in what Harry had termed "temporal wobbles": that is, wiggles in time. Occasionally, Harry would cast a spell in a hotbed of nascent magic and find himself transported a few seconds into the past, usually popping into existence right behind his former self.

Once, he'd been thrown far enough back that he'd ridden shotgun beside himself as he drove up to that day's site. That was the strongest temporal wobble he'd ever experienced. He'd had no idea what to say to himself, so it had been a very awkward few minutes before he'd popped back into his own time.

(Which had been surprising in itself, actually. He'd expected that he'd just have to remain in the past and ride it out until it connected with the present again. The mysteries of the universe were vast.)

Today's experience hadn't been quite so dramatic, despite the exceedingly high levels of magical unpredictability he was observing at this location. Harry had only been in the past for a few seconds—long enough for the two of him to try their social smiles on each other and then grimace when they realized how pointless that was.

"I'll come down," crackled out of the walkie-talkie, jarring Harry out of his thoughts.

"Thanks, I could use help with the measurements."

"I can't be there for two hours, perhaps three. If you can manage not to put yourself at risk of bodily or any other kind of harm in that time…"

Harry brushed his sweaty hair off his forehead. "That's fine," he agreed, ruthlessly refusing to acknowledge the other man's concerns. "See you then. You won't believe how cool this site is. Harry out."

The gnats were a problem.

Harry had his own personal cloud of them as he worked. When the hours lengthened enough for dusk to set in, he was almost glad to trade them for mosquitos.

Almost. He went back to the camper van to reapply bug spray, nostrils flaring at the astringent smell.

Then he stretched and cracked his neck and decided to stop working for the night. He suspected that he'd be camping here for several days, and it would be easier to start up again on his measurements and tests once daylight returned.

Since he'd be sleeping there that night, Harry decided that it would be worthwhile to set up perimeter wards for protection. This took a long time, since he had to walk far enough away from the cluster of lines on all sides that the wards would be stable.

Returning to where he'd parked, he set up a canopy outside of the van's open back doors and built a small campfire nearby.

Then he took out the Primus stove that he always brought while doing his surveying work and stir-fried some chicken and veg on it, dumping in a packet of spicy sauce. Digging deep in one of the wizard-space compartments that he'd installed in the boot of his van, he even found some sake to go with it.

He poured it into the lid of his thermos to drink, putting half of both the stir-fry and the bottle aside. As a last minute thought, he rummaged through the rucksack of his clothes and personal items and found a pair of emerald earrings that would shimmer and sparkle in the firelight. He didn't need a mirror to put them in.

Then he unfolded a camping chair and settled in with a beautiful illustrated copy of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur that he'd found while browsing a secondhand Muggle bookstore last week. He'd started to feel a certain fascination with the Arthurian legends lately, considering that Morgan le Fay was supposed to have been the first omega to Arthur's alpha.

That hadn't worked out well for the half-siblings, obviously.

Harry snorted to himself. The omega, as always, had got the sharp end of public opinion after the fact, branded as a foul seducer, destroyer of kingdoms and kings…but at least Morgan hadn't had to fight off hordes of would-be suitors whenever she went out in public. As the years passed, more and more eager alphas were springing up underfoot to try to court Harry and convince him to bond with them. "No" wasn't something that most of the alphas were remotely prepared to hear.

Lost in his musings, Harry was letting his fingers ghost over the inky words when his page fluttered in a gust of wind that also made the fire sputter and flare. He looked up to see a shadow at the edge of his camp.

He stood. The shadowy figure just beyond the firelight came closer and became Severus Snape.

"Do you find that text difficult, Harry?" the man asked with a raised eyebrow, looking down at where Harry had closed the pages over a finger to mark his place.

"Oh yeah, but the pictures are lovely," Harry explained. "And I think I've got the knack of it now."

He opened the book again and softly read, “For I have promised to do battle to the uttermost, by faith of my body, while me lasteth the life, and therefore I had liefer to die with honour than to live with shame." He looked up at his companion as he finished, "And if it were possible for me to die an hundred times, I had liefer to die oft than yield me to thee."

The other wizard gazed down at him with the firelight reflected in his eyes and an unreadable expression. Harry decided that he really didn't need to mark his place after all and carefully laid the book down on his abandoned seat.

Then he threw himself into the newcomer's arms, and neither of them let go for quite some time.

"Marry me," Severus whispered into Harry's hair.

They were sitting together on a fallen log; Harry had just been roughly pulled away from attempting to give Severus a blowjob…

—which he'd been enjoying, thank you very much, because the alpha's cock was thick and long and gorgeous, frankly. And he and Severus had only been dating (or really, bringing each other to orgasm regularly) for a few months, and Harry was still having trouble thinking clearly near the other man when he knew that such a beautiful cock was just waggling around down there in Severus's always-tasteful undergarments all by itself—

…and hauled up to sit in the former spy's lap. He'd also put his glorious cock away, to Harry's great regret.

He tensed at the words, laughing in shock and feeling a bit betrayed. He hadn't expected that Severus would become one of the alphas he'd need to rebuff.

"Sev, you know I never—I wasn't planning to bond—"

"That is not what I said."

Harry's back was itching with the fire's heat, his nose filled with the scents of heather and wood smoke and insect repellent. And he could discern Severus's natural alpha musk in there too, which sometimes smelled to Harry like comfort and safety, but also like the wind off of forested peaks.

In the dancing firelight, the man's face was turned up toward him, its expression achingly solemn.

"Just...marry me, Harry. Please."

(It was weird, maybe, that Harry liked this alpha as much as he did. Given their history. Given the way Professor Snape had treated him in school.

But that history was so easy to forget, when he was with Severus. The man had changed more since the war than anyone else Harry knew, to the point that it was sometimes hard to remember that he and Professor Snape were even the same person.

And Harry liked him. Really liked him. Didn't want to have to reject him or push him away.)

Harry looked up at the night sky wildly, then all around their camp—anywhere except the other man's eyes. "You would have an omega who never lets you—" He realized that he was blushing and charged forward anyway. "I mean, you don't even get to, you know, stick your prick up my arse!"

"I hadn't realized that my requirements for taking a husband were so...precise."

Saying this, Severus took what was obviously a calming breath through his nose. "It's a legal state," he coaxed in an expressionless voice. "One that would be mutually beneficial for us."

"Beneficial?" Carefully, Harry stood to remove himself from Severus's lap and settled down on the log next to the alpha. He needed the distance if they were going to talk about this seriously.

Severus spoke into the fire, avoiding Harry's eyes. "Your hordes of unwanted admirers would be effectively put in their place," he clipped out.

Harry scratched the back of his neck, thinking it through. This wasn't a solution that he'd ever considered—but Severus was probably right, at that.

"Well, I mean, I guess it's easier to get divorced than to dissolve a bond," he mused aloud, thinking of his godfather and stuck. Not that he could imagine himself wanting to break up with Severus anytime soon.

"But, why would you want to..." He couldn't keep the incredulity and a slight squeak out of his voice. "You really want to marry me?"

Severus glanced sideways at him. His hands had curled into fists in his lap. "I do."

Harry reached out and caught the fists. When they loosened and opened for him, he twined their fingers together. "Why? You said it would be mutually beneficial. What's your benefit?"

"Hm," Severus said, finally twisting to face Harry again. For the first time in the conversation, his lips quirked with humor.

"I see no personal profit in informing you at this point."

Harry spluttered, half in indignation and half because it was funny. Severus was probably just too prim to admit that he wanted to take the ‘calling’ portion out of booty calls.

It would not, he decided, be so bad to be married to this man.

He felt comfortable with Severus. Trusted him. Lusted after him. Smiled like an idiot whenever he showed up.

He could do worse, a lot worse. And Severus was right: if Harry got married to someone, married like a beta or a Muggle, he'd be effectively lifted out of the bonding market without actually having to bond. It was a wonder Hermione had never suggested the idea.

He breathed out slowly, settling the notion with himself as he met his companion's dark, cautiously hopeful gaze. And it wouldn't do to forget the fact that Severus had said "please."

"Okay, you git. I'll marry you." Still holding Severus's hands, he laughed bright and loud. He'd never expected to be engaged.

A stick cracked in the campfire as it was eaten by the flames.

One of the drawbacks of being married to Severus, Harry soon discovered, was that the man habitually rose at dawn and didn't particularly respect Harry's right not to do the same.

"Leave me 'lone!" Harry groused as he found his warm, soft bedcovers Levitated away. "Don't want bre'fast."

"A laudable circumstance," came his husband's silky voice from the bedroom doorway, "as what I made for you is lunch."

It wasn't that Harry always liked to sleep until noon, but ley lines passed through cities as well as more remote areas, and his work was often easier to do at night, when most local Muggles were asleep.

In any case, it wasn't long before a surprisingly fitting revenge presented itself.

"What," Severus demanded, putting down his fork next to the so-called lunch with a clang, "is that?"

The object in question was a bright rainbow lolly that Harry had started licking as soon as he got to the table.

"Got it from St. Mungo's," he explained cheerfully. "A new way of taking vitamins and such. I'm supposed to have it right after I wake up every day. 'S a prescription."

The item in question was the long, swirly, cylindrical kind, not the jolly big circular kind. Harry pushed half of the length of it into his mouth, hollowed his cheeks as he sucked, and then pulled it out again, maintaining eye contact with the alpha all the while.

Severus, to his credit, looked equally aroused and appalled by this performance.

Harry ended up finishing his treat while straddling the older man's lap, bouncing up and down as Severus squeezed their cocks together. The food on the table went cold.

The wedding, as suited them both, had been little more than a few signatures and a kiss in the Ministry’s records office as they went out the door.

Afterwards, Severus had surprised Harry with an international port-key and the honeymoon destination of his choice.

So they spent two weeks in San Francisco, taking dinner cruises on the bay, exploring Golden Gate Park, frequenting gay bars, gently letting down the enterprising individuals who tried to pick them up (as a couple) in gay bars, riding ferries on choppy water, eating chocolate sundaes at Ghirardelli Square, riding trolley cars, and getting their fish and chips stolen by scarily aggressive seagulls. They stayed in a bed and breakfast surrounded by blackberry vines where they watched the owner's stack of Hitchcock films on VHS and made love. Harry had never, in all honesty, been happier in his life.

Of course, they'd had to go home eventually.

They moved in together, which was fun—into a large but ramshackle house outside Cardiff that Severus had inherited from a distant relation on the muggle side of his family. It even had two ghosts, who Severus treated with cordial reserve and Harry became chums with immediately. He'd liked the house as soon as he'd set foot in it and had no compunctions about giving up his flat.

He wasn't as comfortable in Diagon Alley or anywhere else frequented by wizarding kind, unfortunately.

There'd been a bit of a brouhaha on the home front over Harry and Severus's elopement, Harry learned when he got back. And a reporter—another alpha—had caught Severus as he was coming down the steps of Gringotts the day after their return from across the Atlantic.

"Is it true that you let your omega bugger you?" the man had asked boldly.

Harry had been wearing his old Glamour from the year after the war and waiting for Severus at the bottom of the steps after running his own errands. Hearing the question, a memory flooded through him. San Francisco; their cozy rented bedroom, with its white bedspread and the blackberry brambles half blocking the window outside, keeping them snug and undisturbed.

Severus had been propped up in bed watching Vertigo.

Harry, meanwhile, had come back from a jog. Full of endorphins from the exercise, he'd climbed onto Severus and kissed his way down from his new husband's lips, to his chest, to his belly and below it. When Harry had grabbed Severus's arse while nuzzling and licking at his balls, the man had responded by spreading his legs wide open.

Breathless, Harry worked a thumb in circles against the alpha's rectum. He looked up to meet Severus's hungry gaze.

The man wasn't even pretending to watch the movie anymore. "Do it," he'd ordered in a rough voice.

Harry would never get over the way the tension in his former professor's wiry frame had melted once the younger man was inside him; how the stroppy git had thrown back his head and closed his eyes and exhaled noises of pleasure at the ceiling.

Harry burned at the thought of someone trying to belittle that moment, at the idea that so many people would never understand the overlap between sacred and profane. Merlin, Severus had been so fucking trusting and…and vulnerable, his arms around Harry's back, his black hair spread out on the pillow, his lips kiss-bitten and his eyes gleaming with satisfaction…

At the bottom of the steps of Gringotts, Harry's hands were fisted, nails digging into his palms. Deny it, he thought fiercely. He has no proof. It's just a shot in the dark—

Severus only regarded his interlocutor calmly. "You don't?" he asked, raking his gaze up and down the alpha reporter. "How…dull."

Then he looked down at Harry and winked.

"He really is a good match for you," Hermione said later, after she'd read the story under the Snape, Potter's Alpha Sodomite headline in the Prophet.

Which was nice to hear, considering that Ron's mum had just sent him a Howler about proper omega behavior. Umbridge wasn't the only one of that generation who really believed in that shite.

("I should have been born an alpha!" the article ran.

…is what Harry Potter might have thought when faced with all the other lovely, nubile young omegas of his Hogwarts days…)

"Thanks," Harry said shortly, his head still buried in his hands.

"Not just because of the sex thing—I mean whatever you actually do in bed, and please don't tell me." He heard the grin in his friend's voice. "I might get jealous."

"Oy!" Ron complained loudly. Harry uncovered his face in time to see the redhead approach their corner booth, somehow managing to carry two plates of sandwiches and three lagers all at once. "I heard that!"

Even Harry couldn't help smiling at how innocent Hermione attempted to look. "No offense, mate," he offered in her stead.

"A fence?" Ron quipped cheerfully. "I don't have one, and I wouldn't know where to take it if I did."

When the groans and ribbing over the pun had died down, he pointed a pickle at Harry and added, "Even I can tell that the berk suits you, mate. And mum's just been a bit off, you know, since Fred—since the war. She'll come 'round."

"I hope so," Harry said, his temporary good humor dissipating. "Because I'll never be a good omega. Can't be anything I'm not."

Severus took him apart carefully in bed that night, as if Harry might be something fragile; otherwise, he seemed completely unperturbed by the whole thing.

They never got around to talking about it, though.

"Did you see? Harry Potter's here without his husband tonight."

"Must feel good to relax his grip on Snape's balls for a while."

"Thinking of Snape being omega-stung turns my stomach."

'Omega-stung' was a term from the Victorian age. Thanks to Harry and Severus, it had enjoyed a recent revival.

"Better than the alternative. He's so ugly. And nasty too."

"If I'd known that he was so pathetic and lonely that he'd spread his legs for any prissy omega who won't even bond him, I would've laughed in his face when he was Headmaster."

"And in Voldemort's, too?"

"Well, maybe not that…"

The voices of the two girls—ones who Harry vaguely recognized as being younger than him at Hogwarts, though he couldn't remember their names—faded and were reabsorbed into the general hubbub of the crowd.

Here, at the Ministry's annual charity gala, Harry had found a few chairs tucked away behind a large potted rhododendron and had sat in one, just to get a moment to collect himself. The gossiping young women obviously hadn't known he was there.

He was shaking, he realized. Perhaps he should find them and confront them, in Severus's defense?

But would there really be a point? He'd heard similar whispers all evening. If they weren't sneering at Severus—who'd never been popular, even after being exonerated—for not being able to master his own omega, the assembled wizards and witches were fixated on digging at Harry for being more alpha than his alpha.

He could tolerate being snubbed. Proved that the pendulum of public favor was always swinging, at least for Harry.

But Severus didn't deserve the aspersions to his masculinity, frankly. With his natural confidence and his utter lack of giving a fuck about what other people thought or mainstream gender norms, he was the single most alpha alpha Harry knew.

Maybe tonight would have been different if Severus had come to the gala with Harry, letting them present a united front. But the man had just finished taking the latest batch of Auror trainees on a five-day "survival" excursion, never with more than two hours' break for sleep.

Harry had rarely seen him looking more exhausted. Not that Severus wouldn't have dressed himself immaculately and whirled Harry around the ballroom floor until they both felt like puking if Harry had asked.

It was becoming more and more clear that Harry should've stayed home tonight, too. He should've made sure Severus ate and tried to badger him into explaining why he'd been so taciturn lately.

It probably wasn't anything to worry about…but Severus, generally, had been growing terser as the weeks of their marriage mounted. Which was really saying something, considering that he was a much quieter man than Harry would've ever guessed before knowing him so well.

And more than once, Harry had caught Severus watching him with an expression that Harry would have called fearful, if he didn't know better.

Maybe he was worried about Harry's safety or health. He'd blanched when he'd seen the small cut on the side of Harry's face that morning, reaching up to trace it lightly, even though Harry had only gotten it from a freak accident with a tooth-flossing charm.

Or maybe Severus had only been wondering how Harry could be so good at Quidditch and yet so accident-prone. Which was a great question, really, but—

"Would you like to dance with me, Harry?" came a familiar dreamy voice, cutting into his rather pointless reverie.

"Oh, hi, Luna."

Blinking, Harry clambered to his feet to greet his old friend.

In a dark blue gown that puffed prodigiously from her waist on out, the blonde young woman looked dazzlingly beautiful. Also, if Harry was any judge, a few centuries out of fashion. And there was a pyramid of turnips in her hat.

"I'm sorry, I don't feel much like dancing," Harry apologized. "Do you want to just, er, take a walk?"

"Dancing and walking are both recommended forms of exertion by physicians worldwide," Luna agreed amiably. "Let's go to the balcony."

"…There's a balcony?" Harry had rarely heard more welcome news.

Luna led him through the press of people (which parted effortlessly for her, many witches and wizards stumbling out of the way as they gaped at her hat) to a small, almost hidden door. She opened it, and then they were outside in the fresh, cool night air.

Harry felt as if he could breathe again. The balcony was large, and only a few other people had managed to find it. He claimed an empty spot on the railing and tilted his head back, enjoying the gentle stir of the wind against his face.

"There," came Luna's soft voice next to him. "Now you're not so angry anymore." Shadowed, she tilted her head. "If you were angry because you were hungry, you could have a turnip."

Harry suppressed the giggle that wanted to come out. "Oh, no thanks."

"Yes, they aren't very good raw," Luna acknowledged, subsiding into silence at Harry's side.

"How's your dad?" Harry asked.

"Oh, he's doing well." The blonde woman smiled at him and added, "He still won't print sensationalized stories about you. I'm sorry about what they said in the Daily Prophet, Harry. It's obviously not true."

"Parts were true."

Luna shook her head. "Sometimes things can be true and not true at the same time. People like to forget that." She paused for a moment, obviously considering her point. "Or maybe they don't."

Harry wanted to laugh again. A joyless bark came out.

His friend looked at him quizzically.

"Well, I never wanted to be an alpha, at least," he ended up admitting hoarsely, because this was Luna, who was so sincerely herself all the time that it was impossible to be anything but genuine with her.

"I like being an omega. Always have."

"Yes, I could tell. It's a bit of half and half, isn't it? It matches how you build bridges, bring people together."

"But…" Harry trailed off. Not knowing what to do with his hands, he stuffed them into the pockets of his fancy robes. "I'm just not quiet and submissive like an omega's supposed to be."

Luna was nodding. "And you're not going to have sex in the socially sanctioned way," she agreed cheerfully, as if they were talking about baked goods or the weather. "Me either, probably. It's great, right?"

"Er…sure." This conversation had turned embarrassing. He'd never expected that Luna would be so matter-of-fact on the subject of sex.

"Because then you'll find someone else who's not going to do it either, and no one's hiding what they really like," the blonde woman told him gently, obviously sensing how uncomfortable he'd just become. She tapped his arm lightly. "Not everyone enjoys every sexual position, Harry, regardless of the body they grow."

Harry cleared his throat. "Yeah. Well…" He was sweating again, even out here in the blessedly cold air.

"It's not actually that," he whispered, deciding to throw caution to the wind and confess one of his biggest secrets to his old friend. "I've wanted... I've thought about it a lot. Asking him to, you know, er, penetrate me. But if we started, I don't know if I'd be able to stop, and I don't want to bond."

"Oh. Why not?"

Luna had taken the revelation calmly, as was her habit. Harry remembered that she'd remained cool and calm even while escaping the dungeon of Malfoy Manor.

"Because then the asshats would have won!" Since Severus had such a wide pool of insults at his disposal, Harry had decided to increase his own vocabulary in that vein. "The idiots who say that omegas aren't complete without bonding, that we need to be protected and bitten and ignored…regardless of, you know, individual personality."

Harry scrubbed a hand through his hair and laughed at himself, forcing his shoulders to relax.

Luna, who'd been tilting her head while she listened to him rant, had a small frown on her usually placid face. She looked out into the night for a time.

Harry leaned beside her, slowly—and authentically now—calming down.

He'd almost given up hope that his companion would answer him when she spoke again.

"Well, some people might go on thinking that sort of thing." Luna held his eyes with her own clear and guileless ones.

"…but have you considered that they've won either way when you let them control what you do?"

Harry's brows knit. "I don't understand."

His friend shrugged. "I mean that, whatever you do—whether you do what they want or the opposite of what they want…you're thinking about what they want, not what you want, Harry."

She stepped close to him and kissed his cheek.

"Thank you for walking and talking with me. I was waiting for Ginny to finish dancing with the line of handsome men who asked." Mirth gleamed in the young woman's expression. "Now we can go home and she can tell me what bad dancers they were."

Luna's tone was innocuous, but…

"Wait," Harry cried out. "You and Gin?" He clutched his heart, grinning at his friend.

No matter what Luna did, the turnips that were piled precariously high on her head never fell. Even the way she nodded enthusiastically as she beamed back at Harry didn’t jostle them off.

"I think that being in love is like hearing the rain," she answered serenely after she’d finally finished nodding, catching Harry’s hand and squeezing it. "You know, after a dry period, when you've been hoping for it and listening for a very long time."

Harry decided to leave the gala after that, far earlier than its end.

He found Severus in bed, dead to the world and snoring.

Undressing, Harry momentarily entertained the idea of waking his husband with a blowjob, sweet and messy. Urgent, like he—Harry—was feeling.

But Severus needed rest far more than sex. Harry wasn't so selfish or needy that he'd deny the man the first real sleep he'd managed in a week just because he felt like they had some things—two or three—to work out.

So he climbed into the cold side of the bed and stayed there all the night.

It was a relief to get back to work—and back out into the field, where he could be alone to think everything through—the next day.

Well, he would have been alone in an ideal world.

Except that Severus, watching Harry get dressed with an alarmingly queasy look on his face, had announced that he would come out with Harry that day as well.

And as much as the other man was exactly the person Harry wanted to talk to right now, he'd also gotten a terrible night's sleep. He had a headache, and his brain was as foggy as London, proverbially. He'd decided that he wasn't ready for whatever discussion they were about to have yet.

There had been so many dreams… Chaotic, nearly feverish ones. Dreams of sex and war, basically. Sucking Severus off while he wore a Death Eater mask. Running through the maze from the Third Task, with curses being flung at him from all sides.

Then, when he reached the center of the maze, he'd found Severus's classroom for Auror cadets, with the man himself lecturing at the front. Harry had realized as he stumbled into his husband's arms that he was wearing his same silver dress from Ginny's play. It gleamed in the bright lights as Severus picked Harry up and set him on the large desk at the front of the room, fucking him there while all the trainees watched and took notes.

Anyway.

Severus insisted on driving, so Harry rested his cheek against the passenger side window and fiddled with the radio for the duration. He couldn't find any music that he liked.

He'd decided to return to the site with seven proximal lines, the place where Severus had proposed. Magic was always on the move, and he wanted to see if anything had shifted in the last few months.

As they approached the area, though, Harry realized that there couldn't have been a greater contrast to the last time he was here.

The sky was clouded, for one, with shades of dark gray, threatening a miserable soaking. The wind was high, ripping at his clothes.

And the atmosphere between Harry and his companion was markedly different: strained and short-tempered on both sides.

"Don't forget the safety precautions," the other man said abruptly as Harry was getting out of the van—the first time he'd spoken in an hour. "Take them seriously, for once in your hare-brained existence."

Harry paused with one foot on the ground, his mouth dropping open. "Hare-brained?" he choked out. Severus called him names on occasion, but never ones that reminded Harry so strongly of when he’d been Harry’s potions professor.

"Rash and impetuous," the alpha confirmed, still behind the wheel.

"That's… Am I arrogant, too? Just like my father?"

Severus looked at Harry levelly. "On occasion."

"You…" Harry took a step back, feeling hurt and trying not to yell.

"Look, if you're so worried about safety, go and set some wards for us. I'll check the lines by myself."

Severus's lips pinched together. Harry was sure he was going to protest.

But he didn't.

"Go," was all the man said, his chin dipping in what looked like defeat.

Some of his anger giving way to pure confusion, Harry closed the door, cast a last look at his silent husband through the windshield over his shoulder, and went.

The site was a surprise.

Not only had all seven of the ley lines that he'd previously mapped grown denser and more powerful, they'd also shifted uphill to the area where he and Severus had camped last time, forming a circle with its center on the spot where Harry and Severus had gotten engaged.

It took three hours of hard work to make certain of this, checking and double-checking his measurements. Harry lost himself in the familiar routine to the extent that he didn't wonder that his husband never rejoined him in that time.

Finishing the most recent set of tests, Harry wiped the sweat from his brow. It was surprisingly humid on the moorland today, and the air had taken on the green tint of a coming thunderstorm. Where was Severus?

He felt the first tinge of concern.

Forgetting his fatigue, Harry jogged back to where they'd parked the camper van. He saw that the canopy and Primus stove were set up—so Severus must’ve returned here at some point after finishing the wards.

He'd probably just needed some space, Harry decided. Or taken off on his own to give Harry space, thinking that the younger man was still upset.

Which he was, actually. Because Harry knew that he did have a tendency toward recklessness, but being accused of it in that voice had reminded him too much of when Severus had been Professor Snape.

They were the same person, of course.

Merlin's balls, he was confused.

He just… It was just…

It was just that the other man had been so good to Harry since the end of the war. Teasing Harry, traveling with him, making him come, marrying him. Even brewing him better Heat suppressants so that the quirks of Harry’s secondary gender would have less of a dominating hold on his life—which, come to think of it, he'd skipped that morning in his exhaustion and foggy-headedness.

Shit. And at this time of the month… No wonder he was starting to feel itchy and dizzy and tight in his abdomen. It was probably only another hour before he'd be hard and dripping and thinking of little except how much he needed release.

Stupid. Sapskulled and mutton-headed. Harry growled and kicked at one of the van's tires. He didn't want to have to beg Severus to get him off when they were in the middle of a quarrel.

Unbidden, he remembered the absurd thing that the two young women had sneered about Sev last night: that he was so lonely he'd take any omega, even one like Harry who wanted to make him do unnatural, disgusting things.

Harry started pacing. Back and forth, back and forth. What, he thought in a sudden surge of clarity, if what the two girls had said was the truth?

Not the parts about Severus being ugly or nasty.

And Harry would stake his life on the fact that his husband genuinely liked bottoming. He was always so atypically expressive during—and in such a good mood afterward, radiating satisfaction. Sev liked it when Harry had to work hard, and he liked it when somebody took care of him, even if the proud git would probably never admit that aloud.

Which was something that a person who'd been self-reliant and unrelentingly alone for his whole life would feel.

Well, there'd been Eileen, Severus’s mum. She'd died when he was fourteen, Severus had once said. And, of course, the man’s brief friendship with Harry's own mum. They'd never talked about that.

But it had ended in wreckage, hadn't it? So perhaps the former Death Eater and spy would be desperate, by this point, for simple human contact and affection. Which was something Harry understood, given that there'd been huge chunks of his life—his whole childhood up until going to Hogwarts at eleven, and then every summer that he'd been forced to return to the Dursleys' house—that Harry had felt desperate for simple human contact and affection as well.

Remorse flooded through him, rising up in his throat like bile.

Had he...had he been taking advantage of Severus this whole time?

Fuck.

Fuck, Harry's stomach was growling. He needed some food to help him finish thinking this through, unknotting the tangle.

With jerky, distracted movements, he set up a pot on the camping stove and started heating some tomato soup from a box on it. Hopefully Severus would be okay with that when he returned from wherever he'd gone, since Harry was in far too addled a state to make anything more complicated.

It was just so frustrating. If only Severus would just talk to Harry about whatever was bothering him. And if only the other man hadn't had such a wretched life up until the last few years.

Still brooding, Harry gave the soup a perfunctory stir. Where was his husband? Had Sev gone to meet Harry at the place where the lines intersected?

Unable to stay still once he'd had the thought, Harry put down his wooden spoon and immediately started jogging back to his investigative area.

If only Severus hadn't had to be so…so alone for most of his life, he thought as he ran. If only someone else had been there for the man at his darkest, loneliest times.

No, not someone. Him. Harry.

If only Harry—Harry as he was now, not as a child—could've been there to comfort and help the alpha in the moments when he’d had no one else by his side.

"He needed me," Harry spoke aloud. His voice cracked. "I just wish—"

He tripped.

The remaining words were snatched by the wind. It had risen, and power crackled all around.

Awareness of his surroundings returning, Harry realized with dawning horror that he'd fallen right onto the log that was in the center of the new circle of ley lines.

He thought, as the magic seared through him, that he heard Severus calling his name.

The sound of it lingered in Harry's head as he fell backwards—not to the ground, but down further, without a clue about where he would land.

Landing felt like being squeezed out of the nozzle of a toothpaste tube. Then Harry caught his breath, and the world that had gone black around him swirled and reformed.

It was a lot darker wherever he was now than it had been in Exmoor, even with the cloud-blanketed sky and evening approaching. He couldn't see what was happening until his eyes adjusted—

Am I in Hogwarts? he thought, feeling the magic of the school (he would've known it anywhere) dancing all around him.

—but he could hear it. Severus. Severus was yelling.

No, not Severus. Severus was a man who Harry had met after the war, a man without a past.

The yelling was coming from Professor Snape.

It would have to be Professor Snape, because he could also hear another raised voice. An eerily familiar one.

A jar shattered against the wall. With a feeling of panic growing in his chest, Harry realized where—when—he was.

And now that Harry's vision had adjusted to the dimness in the modified storeroom where he'd been given Occlumency lessons, he could see the Pensieve cabinet with its doors hanging open.

And he could see the man who he would eventually marry shaking with rage as the fifteen-year-old Harry Potter made his escape and the door behind him slammed closed.

Oh, Harry thought faintly. I am so entirely fucked.

But he wasn't. At least, not at first.

With the younger Harry Potter gone, the potions professor bent double with his hands on his knees, gasping—a marionette with its strings cut.

Harry felt sick. He also felt like a voyeur. He must've appeared in the most shadowy corner of the room, considering that Snape hadn't spotted him yet.

Hating to see the man's familiar, frequently kissed features twisted with so much pain, Harry was about to rush to his side…but the vulnerable posture only lasted a split second before the professor was straightening again, rigid and stone-faced.

With sharp movements, he approached the Pensieve and extracted the glimmering, sluggy shapes of memory after memory, tipping his head to feed them back in.

Did he remember all those when they were out of his head? Harry wondered for the first time. If personality was constructed through layers and layers of experience, had Snape only had the worst half of his personality during their lessons?

And oh good, the man had finally finished. Now to announce his presence in a calming, gentle manner…

Harry sneezed.

Faster than he'd thought Snape could move, Harry found himself pressed back against the wall with the tip of a wand pushing into his chest.

The man stared into his face. "You!" he spat out in tones of abject loathing.

The wand, despite the venomous inflection, disappeared back into his sleeve.

"Um," was all Harry could think to say for a frozen moment.

Then he managed to cobble together a few of his wits again. "Um, you...you know me?"

"Should I not?" The wand was back, poking at Harry even harder this time. "Who are you?"

"Er, I'm Harry Potter," he answered softly. "Just...you know...from the future? When I'm your husband?"

The other man swayed—very slightly—at this pronouncement. His eyes glittered dangerously. "Absurd."

"It's true! You can give me Veritaserum if you don't believe me." Harry raised his hands to the alpha's shoulders, grabbing and squeezing them for emphasis.

The professor sneered at him again—but he finally retreated, jerking back out of Harry's grip. Against the wall, Harry sagged…

…and kept sagging until he was sitting in the floor, his knees pulled up to his chest.

Snape looked down at him for a moment, and Harry looked up. Too fucking surreal, he thought dizzily. He looked just like Harry’s husband, only younger and greasier-haired and less comfortably dressed and more haggard.

Then the man spun, strode to one of the shelves on the wall, snatched up a vial of clear liquid, and stalked back.

"Drink," he commanded, holding it out.

Well, he had already given his consent, Harry supposed.

He took the potion and swallowed it all. "Go ahead," he whispered when he'd finished.

"I do not require permission," the professor hissed. He'd crouched next to Harry. "Who are you?"

Harry closed his eyes. He suddenly felt very, very tired. "Harry, like I said."

You can do this, he told himself. You may be completely unprepared and, oh yeah, about to go into Heat…but you can do this. Whatever it is you're supposed to do.

Harry opened his eyes again.

Snape seemed to have been waiting for this before asking another question. "How did you come to be here?"

"The lines. I fell into the spot where the lines of power intersected. It's a temporal wobble, just a lot…more. Surprised me too, just so you know."

The Veritaserum was making him candid—but the petulance in his tone, Harry suspected, was 100% a native element.

"I hope I pop back home soon. Would be beyond awful to have to go through it all again."

"All of what?"

"The war. Everybody dying. Hedwig, Fred, Sirius, Dumbledore, Mad Eye Moody, Tonks 'n Professor Lupin... Not you, though. We're married."

The other man had blanched paler and paler as Harry recited the list. "The Dark Lord?" he demanded.

Harry let out an authentic-sounding gasp. "No! You think I'd marry him?"

His reaction was staged, obviously. Snape needed to learn to be more precise with his questions.

Unamused, the other man was baring his teeth at Harry. "Has he been defeated, you aggravating whelp?"

Harry bared his own teeth right back. "Yeah, I killed him. He's gone."

Snape's fingers spasmed. The man took a breath and then released it slowly.

"Good," was all he said.

True silence unspooled in the small dungeon classroom for the first time since the shouting match that had been taking place when Harry—the adult Harry—had arrived.

And something had shifted, Harry suddenly knew.

Because this person—Snape, or Severus, or whatever Harry wanted to call him—was on Harry's side. He'd always been on Harry's side.

So maybe he was also the man who would grow to become Harry’s husband after all.

"Sorry about that thing with the Pensieve," Harry said after a moment. "You need to learn not to throw jars at me. But I shouldn't have peeked."

Not daring to look at his companion's reaction to the apology, he thudded his head back against the wall. "I make so many mistakes because I can't learn to Occlude..."

"Tell me no more," came the voice across from him sharply. "Or I will be tempted to alter the natural course of events."

"Oh." Harry chewed his lower lip. "Okay."

He shivered. He’d forgotten how cold the dungeons could be.

He heard the man release a huff of breath and mutter, "You're far too tractable like this." Opening his eyes, Harry saw that there was now another potion vial—a new one—in his hand.

The alpha was holding it out of Harry's reach, though. "If you and I are married, why aren't we bonded?" he asked.

Oh. Now that was a tricky question to answer.

The Veritaserum compelled him to tell the truth…but what was the truth? Harry had sort of made a promise to Sirius that he wouldn't ever let an alpha bond him, obviously, but that had never been the reason. Not really.

"I said I wouldn't," Harry explained slowly. "I just…never wanted to be such a good omega. I mean, I like my body and I never wanted to not be an omega—" Even in fifth year, this had been true. "—but…" He felt himself grinning crookedly. "I guess I always just wanted to be a bad omega, not a good one."

Severus considered him. His brow wrinkled. "But you are a good omega," he replied.

As Harry hadn't remotely expected that response from his ex-professor, it startled a giggle out of him. "No," he countered, shaking his head.

"You're a good person—disturbingly, ill-advisedly so—who is also an omega." Saying this, the man held out the second potion.

"Oh. Thanks, I think?" Harry accepted the potion and handed back the empty vial when he was done.

He could feel the antidote to the Veritaserum kicking in almost instantly. "Don't be so nice to me tomorrow in class," he warned. "Fifteen-year-old me, I mean. You weren't, so you can't."

"I'm still incandescent with rage, Mr. Potter." The man helped him to his feet. "Can't you tell? I should spank you."

"That sounds fair."

"Impertinent little wretch."

"You can do what you want with me, Sev." Harry shrugged. "Unless I say no."

The other man dropped his hand as if it were slimy, which rankled Harry a bit.

So Harry continued to bait him. "C'mon. I'm not fifteen any more. Don't you want to, I don't know, teach me a lesson I've long deserved?"

The man took a few paces back. "Laying it on a bit thick, aren't you? What a gull you must believe me to be."

Ignoring Harry, he began closing up the Pensieve and setting the broken jar of cockroaches to rights.

"I'm not... Severus. Your life is awful right now. Just—just let yourself enjoy something for a goddamn minute!"

Harry realized only as he spoke that he had, in the last few seconds, become entirely sincere. He really was offering himself to the other man, in whatever capacity, within reason, that might be desired.

The professor rounded on him. "And this is exactly what I wanted to enjoy. A brat who can't be away from his husband's cock for an hour without propositioning the nearest likeness of it he can find!" he sneered.

Harry inhaled. "You're my husband, you—you utter bastard!" he choked out, knowing that he shouldn't feel hurt and betrayed and feeling nothing but hurt and betrayed anyway.

"I am not." The alpha had stalked close to him again, looming. "Have I vowed my allegiance or fidelity to you, Harry?" The name was spoken mockingly. "No. And is he in the unenviable position of facing a wretchedly heroic, abysmally short-sighted, tormentingly cute omega who is still a child every day without thinking any impure thoughts that can be detected by the not one, but two powerful wizards who will later be shuffling through his brain? No, he is fucking not."

Severus stood still after this tirade, breathing hard. "What?" he demanded after a moment, seeing Harry's face.

"Cute," Harry repeated, deadpan.

"What?" the other wizard asked again, seeming to be genuinely confused this time.

"You said I was cute."

"I did not."

"Agonizingly cute?" Harry tapped his chin. "No, it was tormentingly." He grinned. "Cute."

"Every time," the man groused, crossing his arms over his chest. "It turns out like this every fucking time."

Harry had no idea what that was supposed to mean…but finding out wasn't among his top priorities at the moment.

"I'm going to kiss you," he said.

"If you must," Severus answered, sounding pained.

He was still—already—a great kisser, Harry was soon in an excellent position to find out.

A transformation seemed to have come over the alpha during their kiss, Harry observed. He held Harry tightly to his body now, his grip fierce.

"My bedchamber is down the hall, around the corner," he panted against Harry's ear. "If you can be trusted to—to Disillusion yourself—and keep yourself from humping my leg the whole way—"

"Is it over there?" Harry wondered, mentally drawing a map and gesturing at the wall opposite the Pensieve, perpendicular to the door.

"Yes."

Pulling out his wand, he blasted a hole in it.

"Faster like that," he said sweetly while the potions professor was still spluttering and the dust was settling down.

The man had turned a livid white. "You will fix this and— You will clean it all up, you overpowered pup—" he hissed.

Ignoring him in favor of leading the way into the opening he'd made, Harry found himself caught from behind, his arms pinned at his sides.

Liking it, Harry pressed his bottom back against the man's groin, hard.

Severus's hands left his arms and clutched at his hips instead. "Do it," Harry ordered, in unconscious imitation of something Severus himself had once said to him. Complying, the professor shoved Harry's denims and pants halfway down his thighs.

Hobbled, Harry managed to get one leg free, spinning halfway around to face Severus again in the process. Arresting his progress, the alpha picked him up by the thighs, pants and a jean leg still dangling off of one of Harry's calves, and lurched them both into the remainder of the wall, impacting Harry against it and kissing him again.

Harry keened.

At some point—maybe right now—his shirt had been ripped open. Kneading one of Harry's buttocks in each hand, Severus tore his mouth away from Harry's so that he could lick and suck hungrily at the nipple that had been exposed.

They overbalanced.

Harry ended up on the uneven, rubble-strewn ground. Severus staggered away and leaned on something inside of his quarters—a bureau?—with his back to Harry, obviously trying to regain self-control.

Harry clambered to his feet, finally kicking off the last dangling leg of his denims and his underwear. He limped toward the alpha.

"Sev? What's wrong?"

The man shot him a bleak look. "I won't be able to hate you enough. And if I can't hate you, I can't protect you."

His breathing was harsh. It was a bureau that he was leaning against: a dark and stately one that matched the rest of the furniture in here that Harry could see, including a peek, through another open doorway, of a green-and-silver accented bed.

"The one who's here," the man clarified after a moment, his voice almost too quiet to hear. "The one who's mine."

"He isn't…"

Isn't yours, Harry had been about to say. And also, Why am I not the one who's yours?

He decided not to say either of those things, the second because the answer was obvious. Instead, what came out was, "He doesn't know how you feel."

Harry laid a careful palm against the other man's shoulder.

"The things you feel that aren't hating him, I mean," he added with a small smile.

Severus finally looked at him again, shooting him a glance that was somehow both despairing and amused. "Thank god."

"You are going to be able to protect him," Harry reassured. "We win because of you, Sev. I'm still alive because of you."

He took the risk of stepping even closer and easing his arms around the professor's waist from behind.

Severus twisted to face him, resting his head against Harry's shoulder and shuddering.

In all their interactions—their odd friendship and marriage—the alpha had never done anything like that before. Never leaned on Harry to cry.

Not that Severus was exactly crying…but it was close. And it made Harry realize… It made Harry want to...

"It's okay, baby," he whispered into the greasy black strands of his future husband's hair. "It'll all be okay. I'm here for you now."

The professor had melted against Harry's body—but his voice, when he spoke into the crick of Harry's neck, was still flat and unyielding.

"You will call me sir. And if we go forward with this…encounter, you will allow me to spank you and then fuck you."

Harry blinked. Well, if that was how he wanted to get it done…

Harry understood, actually. Severus needed to keep being able to compartmentalize; he needed to be able to think of it all as just sex—rough sex, and not…anything softer.

"Yes sir," he complied, heavy-lidded.

"Your resemblance to your teenage self is weakening," Severus said, straightening and holding Harry at arms' length to look at him suspiciously.

Harry smiled at him. "Maybe."

"Maybe what?"

"Maybe. Sir."

He batted his eyelashes and saw the tremble that went through the man.

Harry couldn't help kissing him again.

He felt himself being maneuvered as they snogged, walked backward. One side of Severus's green and silver bed swam into view.

Carefully, his companion guided Harry down onto it. Pulled away slightly.

Severus met his eyes trepidatiously, obviously having second thoughts. Harry quirked a smile at him. Caught the hand that was closest and kissed the back of it. Closed his eyes and turned his face away, rolling from his back onto his stomach.

He felt Severus running his hands from his shoulders down his back. Felt the first sharp smack.

"Ohh," Harry said.

"As your young counterpart will not be receiving this punishment that he so rightly deserves, you will be held to bear for his infractions."

"Like what?"

Another blow. "Looking in my Pensieve, for one. And stealing my potions ingredients." A third blow rained down.

Harry spread his legs wider, breathing heavily.

"Hexing me. Being disrespectful and disobedient in class."

Two more spanks—and then Severus gripped Harry's buttocks, rolling them, one in each hand.

"Never thinking about the danger of a course of action before throwing himself into it headlong."

Harry moaned aloud.

Severus began spanking him again, and Harry kept making needy noises, shifting his hips up and down with each of the blows.

He knew he was hard…and he felt like he was leaking his natural lubricant copiously from out of his entrance. This was confirmed when the blows finally stopped…

…to be replaced by something smooth and thick and long, laid into the center of the valley in Harry's arse.

Harry's slickness meant that Severus's prick easily slid up and down the crease as they both rocked their hips, Harry pressing willfully back against him with each surge.

When the cockhead caught and tugged on the rim of Harry's hole, Harry cried out. Enough was enough.

"More," he demanded, pulling up his legs to flip over onto his back.

"More what?" Severus asked silkily, climbing atop Harry.

Harry wrapped his legs around Severus's waist and his arms around the man's neck. "You know what."

Severus kissed him. Then he winked.

Harry could feel the tip of the alpha's erection nudging at his sweet spot again, this time with more pressure as it started to push inside. He also heard the man furiously working a hand up and down the part of his shaft that wasn't nudging into Harry's arse.

Harry cried out as Severus gave a breathy growl and popped the cockhead all the way into him—

—only to pull it back out again and paint what felt like liters of semen on Harry's rear and the backs of his thighs.

Harry fell back against the pillows, gasping and infuriated.

"How dare y—ah!"

Severus had lifted his legs and was licking at his recently deflowered (sort of) entrance as if ravenous for it. Meanwhile, the hand that Severus had just used to wank himself to completion was providing the same service for Harry's prick.

Harry tumbled over the edge with his thighs probably crushing Severus's ears and his fingers twining themselves through the alpha's hair.

He likes that, he thought, a strange moment of insight regarding a long-ago time in the back room of Flourish and Blotts. He likes when people do that to him.

That seemed important. Hopefully he'd remember it when he got back home.

"He's a fool," was the first thing the other man said post-coitus, mumbled into the bedcovers where they'd both collapsed. "It will be like needles in his skin."

"What?" Bemused, Harry lifted his head from his well-deserved vegetative state. "Who?"

The professor's eyes were still closed. "My future self. Marrying you without a bond."

Harry frowned. "He respects my wishes."

"An unappealing fate."

Incensed, Harry sat up. "We're married, and he's not... We have sex in lots of ways, if that's what you're talking about."

The other man rolled over onto his back, finally opening his eyes to look up at Harry.

"I don't relish bearing ill tidings, whatever you may think of me, you beautiful ninnyhammer... But for him—me, I suppose—it will be far more complicated than that."

"How?"

In contrast to Harry's new state of adrenaline, Severus was still supine, his voice slow, drained. "Your nearness, unclaimed as my mate, will be as constant a test of my mettle and fortitude as was ever set for me by Albus or the Dark Lord."

Harry jumped off the edge of the bed to his feet, Summoning his jeans and yanking them back on.

"I am not like Voldemort." He ignored the other man's flinch at the name. "And I'm not much like Dumbledore, either. So what the hell do you mean?"

The alpha didn't answer.

"You want to bond me?"

Harry's companion finally reacted, scowling…and flushing as well.

"To distraction," he said.

Harry backed up against the bed chamber's far wall. "You never told me!" he exclaimed.

Something was happening, he realized. The wall against his back was becoming less substantial. The vision of the half-clad man on the wrecked bedsheets in front of him was fading.

Harry floated for a moment.

Then he felt like he was being squeezed back into a tube of toothpaste, and he could smell the wind from the sea.

He was on the ground. The dark-bellied storm clouds of the sky above Exmoor swam into view.

Severus—Harry's husband, Severus—was saying his name, leaning over him.

"You never told me!" Harry repeated, voice breaking like a wave against a rocky shore.

"I did not," the alpha answered slowly. He had taken his wand out and was casting a series of diagnostic spells over Harry. They flared green—green for good—every time.

"Can you stand?" He pulled Harry to his feet. "I am aware that remaining silent on the matter of your wanderings through time was an unforgivable breach of your trust."

"Not that!" Harry pushed the other man in the chest. "You never said that you wanted to bond!"

Severus's expression betrayed nothing but bafflement at this accusation.

Well, that wasn't true. It was easy, looking into the harsh lines of his husband's face, his shadowed eyes, to see what a bleak time Severus had been having for the latest while.

Harry took a breath and glanced at their surroundings. Same purple moor-grass all around. Same rusty old camper van parked nearby on the hill, only its top visible from here.

A lot of things that Harry had been wondering—for years, or only recently—were starting to fall into place. How Severus had picked Harry out in the crowd on his nineteenth birthday despite his Glamoured face, for one: he already knew what Harry smelled like when he was aroused.

And he understood now why Severus had stared at the clothes he put on that morning and the cut on the side of his forehead: he'd recognized that today would be the day that Harry would fall backwards through time.

Even the lectures the man would give him on occasion about how the past couldn't be altered, even if "some irresponsible little hellion goes traipsing through it" (Severus's words) were starting to make more sense. Harry had just thought that he was harping about that time in third year with Hermione's time turner and the Dementors and Buckbeak.

The alpha had looked so terrified leading up to today… Of course, he wouldn't have known, after what had happened in the dungeons, if Harry would even make it home safely.

"Severus. I—I'm sorry I had sex with you when it wasn't you yet, exactly. I mean, it was, but..." Harry spread his arms. "Why didn't you tell me that was going to happen?"

The heather to their left rustled as a small animal scurried through it. From a distance above, a hovering skylark trilled.

"I might say that I find any time travel...sinister in its potential ramifications," the former spy finally said.

He shook his head and didn't elaborate. "My deepest apologies. For my silence, and for taking advantage of your generosity."

"Generosity?" Harry repeated, confused.

"In allowing me to use you for my selfish pleasure."

Harry frowned. "I don't know if you remember, but I was a fully willing participant—"

Severus spoke over this protest. "You have more than adequate grounds to seek a divorce, and I won't contest it," he said with finality.

Harry's blood started to boil.

Which might not have been the reaction the other man had foreseen.

"Won't you?" He'd taken a few steps back during their argument, but now he stepped into the man's personal space again. "Will that also be like needles in your skin?"

Lips thinning, Severus lifted his chin and stood his ground. "My somatic responses to being rejected by a potential mate are not your concern."

"Like hell they're not!" Harry wanted to shove him again, or maybe just shake the man until he stopped being such a self-sacrificing idiot.

Magic, he realized suddenly, was buzzing all around.

Shit! They were still inside of the circle of ley lines.

Severus seemed to have that same epiphany, since he abruptly turned, stepped over the log on which they'd agreed to marry, and led the way back up the hill toward the van.

"Harry, I am fully aware that you married me as a convenient buffer against the unwanted advances of other suitors," he called over his shoulder. "We discussed it, remember?"

He was striding so quickly that Harry had to struggle to keep up.

"Yeah, I did—but that doesn't mean I don't love you!" he panted, trying to announce it passionately, from a few steps in the other man's wake.

Severus's shoulders seemed to stiffen, but otherwise he didn't stop or respond.

"I've loved you—at least a bit—since you wished me a happy fucking birthday!" Harry tried again when they'd reached their van and camp.

"...That isn't what I said," was all the other man muttered as he turned off the gas on the camping stove, which apparently had been lit this whole time.

"You know what I mean!" Harry shouted. Maybe volume would get the truth of what he was saying through his husband's thick skull.

No such luck. "Your soup's ready," Severus answered in a measured tone.

Harry threw his hands into the air, admitting defeat for now. "Yeah? So?"

The alpha's eyes were even darker than usual as they glared into Harry's.

"If you think I'm going to receive your declarations on an empty stomach..."

"Stay married to me."

"I'll fill the bowls, shall I?"

"Fine."

The tomato soup was good…although Harry mostly didn't taste it because he was so busy being surly about the whole thing. Plus sitting in one of the camp chairs they'd brought out was uncomfortable because his arse was bruised and still had come on it, which itched.

Severus, for his part, kept shooting Harry wary but somewhat speculative glances out of the corners of his eyes.

They hadn't bothered with a fire this time, since the evening was so humid, with so much electricity in the air.

"Finished?" the man asked, standing and holding out his hand for Harry's empty bowl.

"You're the soul of patience," Harry grunted, passing it over.

Severus took the empty bowl without comment and cleaned it in a cursory manner.

Watching him, Harry took a breath. "You really are, aren't you?" he said.

It was a heavily pregnant moment.

And then the man walked back toward Harry, sat down again, and said, "You needn't think I haven't enjoyed your companionship thus far. I'm not a martyr."

Oh, thank god Severus was actually going to talk to him now. So many of their problems as a couple could've been avoided if they just weren't both so bad at communicating.

"You said life with me would be miserable if we didn't bond."

"At a time when I couldn't conceive of existence as anything but."

Harry exhaled slowly. In the distance, thunder rumbled.

"I sort of thought that the whole thing—up until the end of the war, I suppose—had been that way for you. Miserable, I mean."

Severus looked down at his own lap, his hair swinging to partially cover his face. He was actually smiling a bit.

"There were certainly years that were. I even recall seven of them in a row."

He looked at Harry pointedly, then added, "I suppose I never told you about the other parts. I wanted to be an ornithologist as a child, did you know that? I sketched and memorized the calling patterns of every bird in Cokeworth. And I amused myself by writing dirty poems and spreading them around the school anonymously as a teenager… In my mid-twenties, I ran away from Hogwarts every summer to play with a Muggle rock band in France. I played keyboard and sang backup vocals."

Pausing, Severus glanced at Harry to gauge his reaction.

Harry, given the sudden surge of pure, unadulterated lust that was coursing through his body, was struggling for words.

"Oh my god," he cried out. "Can't I convince you to fuck me?"

He felt better—as if he'd gotten something off his chest—as soon as he said it. But why did Severus have to look so astounded at the words?

Harry couldn't help shrinking back a bit at this reaction. "I know I said I wouldn't, but...I've been thinking about it a lot," he tried to explain. "And I'd really like to give it a try. I'm aware it's not your preference—"

"Whatever gave you that idea?"

Harry had never seen the other wizard look so sincerely flabbergasted before.

"Um, 'how dull'?" Those were Severus's most definitive words on the topic, weren't they?

The man scowled. "Evil in all forms must be ruthlessly mocked, Mr. Potter. Evil, in that case, being small-mindedness."

Harry concentrated for a moment on taking deep breaths. Sweat from the warmth of the burgeoning night prickled on his face, under his hair, in the creases of his elbows. He didn't know if he was being rejected or not.

Severus had risen to his feet. Harry looked up at his husband pleadingly.

"For god's sake," the man rasped. "I've never seen anyone look more the incarnation of frustrated virginity."

This startled a burst of laughter from Harry, despite his trepidations. "I'm not a—"

But his companion was pulling him to his feet, catching him when he tripped forward.

Not letting him go.

They climbed into the back of the van together. It was already set up with a nest of blankets and pillows, since it was where Harry often slept on rainy nights while out mapping and adventuring.

He also kept an LED lantern on a hook to one side. Somewhat shyly in its dim light, Harry pulled down his denims. He'd left his pants somewhere in 1996. His shirt was already unbuttoned and halfway off his shoulders.

Severus, in a similar half-clothed state, bent to turn Harry's arse toward his face and examine the mottled skin and the tracks of dried alpha semen that still covered it.

"You left that for yourself to find," Harry guessed.

"Obviously."

"He was good at it." Harry smiled down at his husband. "Good at making me feel it. Making me feel like he'd never want anyone but me."

Severus seemed to be having a hard time regulating his breathing. "If you could just try to be quiet while I assess you for injury, you aggravating little fiend—"

"But I like you better," Harry interrupted, nearly purring—or maybe it was singing—the words.

It wasn't like the first time. Any of their first times.

Harry actually got what he wanted in this iteration, for one thing—what he'd been working his gradual way toward wanting for years: his former most-hated professor's thick alpha cock pushing into his arse, stretching his entrance, spearing him open as it slid inside.

It felt just as amazing as he'd never quite been able to keep from imagining it would.

And also, it wasn't like any of the other first times because it felt…easy.

Admittedly, Severus had worked hard to get Harry's entrance loose and relaxed and slick enough that he wouldn't be hurt when he was skewered by his husband's oversized prick.

But still. Easy.

And it wasn't the sex position, Harry was fairly sure. It was that he was seeing Severus so much more clearly now, the good and the bad, the man as a whole person.

A whole person who Harry's whole person liked and respected and esteemed…and craved beyond comprehension, at times such as this one right now.

It was when the alpha pulled out of Harry's arse without coming yet, presumably to add some variety to the coupling by shifting them both, that Harry's willpower broke.

"Please, Sev!" Harry heard himself entreating. "Baby, oh god, don't stop. I need—I can't—"

"What do you need?" The man crowded down on Harry to look into his face intently.

Harry turned said face, which was blushing, away. So his husband nosed the side of it as Harry cried out and lifted his hips and came, bucking, all over Severus's groin and thighs and stomach.

He forgot to breathe for a bit. And generally pay attention to anything that was happening in the world.

When Harry returned to himself, Severus was still poised over him, kissing his slack lips again and again. Harry gulped at the air and then kissed him back properly.

Severus made a high noise into his mouth. Harry broke away from his lips and gasped, "I'll die if you don't come inside me this time, Sev."

This, perhaps unsurprisingly, made Severus look furious. "You—you will not die, you wretched, lying, insatiable little rogue!"

"Not if you come inside me this time," Harry answered reasonably.

Air hissed from between Severus's teeth. His face was blotchy and red, his hair hanging lank in Harry's face, tickling it.

"Do you want me to impregnate you, boy?" the man whispered menacingly. "To fill you so full of semen that your belly swells with a litter of five of my babes at once?"

The whole thing—and maybe a bit of the lingering post-orgasmic bliss—made Harry want to snicker. "Um, maybe? Though five's a lot." He wrinkled his nose. "And I've actually been on birth control for months."

Severus stared down at him, mouth agape.

"It's one of the ingredients in those lollies I have every morning? I told you they were a prescription."

Harry's husband blinked down at him some more, then started to convulse with rusty-sounding laughter.

Harry was torn between grinning and pouting at this sight. He wasn't going to get what he wanted right now, he supposed. Not if Sev wanted to laugh instead of ejaculate wildly.

"Serves me right," he quipped in a mournful tone, mostly to himself. Pulling himself upright, Harry pretzeled his legs on the bedding and waited with his chin on his hand for the other man's merriment to subside.

Severus collapsed next to him, wheezing, and flung his arms around Harry's waist. Harry leaned down and kissed the tip of his ear, unable to keep from smiling too.

Both men being much too tired to drive home that night, they slept tangled together in Harry's nest in the camper van. The wards kept them hidden and safe, and the windows were open for cool air.

And in the morning, Harry's patience was rewarded.

With a pre-dawn glimmer coming through the closed and curtained windows, still encased in their bedding to stave off the chill, he awoke to his face on Severus's bare chest and the feeling of one of the older man's fingers stealthily sliding up and down the crease of his buttocks.

Happily, Harry began licking at and suckling the nipple that he'd found next to his mouth (and seemed to have already drooled on a bit). Severus gave a throaty chuckle and plunged three fingers at once into the hidden tunnel that he'd been seeking. Harry moved to the other nipple once the first grew swollen and inflamed.

"Knees," the alpha said hoarsely, by which Harry decided—mostly because it was what he wanted to do—that his husband was asking him to roll onto his belly with his knees tucked up under himself. He shifted, and Severus threw off the top blanket, exposing them both to the cold, and positioned himself behind Harry so that their thighs were pressed together.

With the older man's hands anchoring his hips, Harry felt pinned—which wasn't, at the moment, such a bad thing. A shiver ran up and down his spine, his exposed skin (like Severus, he'd fallen asleep naked) turning to gooseflesh. The tip of Severus's cockhead—the man was rubbing it in circles around Harry's hole—felt burning hot in comparison to Harry's shivering body.

Pushing back against it, Harry felt it nudge into just the right spot. "Mmm," he moaned as Severus eased his shaft the rest of the way in, stretching him wide as it went.

Harry was glad that he didn't have to try to get up or move, since most of the man's weight was on his back. "Mmm-hmmm," he confirmed as Severus's cock, still radiating heat, reached its deepest seat, letting Harry feel downy pubic hair and the soft impact of the man's balls against the curve of his arse.

"I'm not trying to fuck you back to sleep," Severus grunted, sounding amused.

Harry didn't deem this worth a response, since he was feeling so warm and happy and sleepy again now.

Contrary to his words, the alpha pumped in and out of Harry in a remarkably lazy manner this time, seeming to relish the stillness between thrusts more than the thrusts themselves. He had also let go of Harry's hips to run his palms up and down Harry's bare back.

"When're we going to bond?" Harry wondered aloud into his bedding, slurring slightly. "You should just bite me already."

Severus's hands froze for a second, then resumed the warm circles they'd been making on either side of Harry's spine. "Impossible," he said. The pace at which he was fucking Harry picked up a notch.

Harry was about to protest—was the man being self-sacrificing again?—when his husband added, "You were unmarked, the other times."

It took Harry a few heartbeats to process this.

"...Other times?" he squeaked, craning back to see Severus's face.

It was still too dark, unfortunately, to make out more than the man's jawline, the fine arch of his brow, and the fact that he was looking down, his hair a dark curtain on either side of his cheekbones, at where his cock was being swallowed to the roots by Harry's bum. "I...apologize preemptively," he said in a deeper voice than normal.

"Oh my god," Harry gasped.

Severus petted Harry's arse in a gesture that was obviously meant to be soothing. At the same time, he slid his shaft halfway out and then emphatically back into younger man, probably to keep Harry from wriggling away. "What was occupying your thoughts when you fell into the confluence of lines, Harry?" he asked.

Harry looked down at the bedding again, thinking back. He was concentrating so hard that he barely noticed when his husband rolled them both onto their sides and lifted up one of the Harry's legs so that he could start using Harry's tender hole in earnest.

"I was picturing you," Harry tried to explain. "Making—sort of making a wish that I could've been there for you in the past whenever you needed me the most, whenever you felt the most alone. Oh my god."

Although whether this last exclamation was in response to the conclusion he'd just drawn or the fact that Severus had just managed to find a particularly good angle in his thrusts, even Harry didn't know.

"How thoughtful of you," Severus deadpanned. He was pounding into Harry now without reprieve, and the hand that wasn't on Harry's thigh had snaked around to fondle Harry's prick.

"If it's any consolation, you always had the appearance of approximately your current age. Given that—and—what I imagine—the limits of the residual effects—of contact—with the ley lines—to be—I would estimate that—any further slips in time—will happen within the next month."

Despite his verbosity, the man had grunted the words between harsh pauses for breath. And he finished them by leaning forward and licking the spot on Harry's neck where a bond bite would go, even teasing it with the edges of his teeth.

Feeling feverish and absurdly close to climax, Harry tried not to whimper. "How many—how many times?" he managed to demand.

Severus gave a last desperate surge and finally started to come, pumping his seed into Harry in wave after wave.

"I'll write you a list, shall I?" he said.

The storm in the sky over the moorland, surprisingly, had held off all night. As Severus spoke, Harry heard the first drops of the rain pattering down on the roof of the camper van, washing it clean.

The Great Hall was boisterous, each student competing to introduce themselves in the most impressive way to the firsties and yelling about summer hols to their housemates down the bench. Green and silver banners sparkled above their heads in the candlelight.

Wobbling out of his own time again, Harry indulged in swearing profanely to himself, seeing as it was too loud in here for anyone else to hear.

They'd talked about little else for the last few days, but Severus, maddeningly, had refused to clarify some of the details about Harry's visits to him in the past. "When I was six, you built me a tree house," was all he'd revealed directly. The man had held firm that there was no way Harry would be able to stick to any script he was given.

So it was a bit of a surprise that Harry was finding himself here in boxer shorts with a toothbrush dangling out of his mouth. He'd appeared in the shadow of one of the wall alcoves near an exit, thank Merlin.

What wasn't so much of a surprise, by contrast, was that the first eyes that seemed to notice Harry's arrival were a dark pair that had, an instant ago, been fixed fumingly on an eleven-year-old who was currently sitting at the Gryffindor table for the first time.

Harry—the adult Harry—waved to say hello.

If anything, the wrath in Severus's glare only intensified at the sight of him, not to mention flickering with all sorts of interesting emotions as he noticed Harry's bare chest and toothbrush and underwear.

The younger Harry Potter pressed a hand against his lightning-bolt scar. The older Harry Potter pointed toward the door that exited on a little-used side corridor, just to let Severus know where he was planning to go for privacy.

Then he ducked away from the feast and waited...

...not contentedly, exactly, because he was nervous, and also excited, but feeling surprisingly at peace with the world despite all that...

...to be found.