A Question of Etiquette XXII:
Falling Away
headers and warnings

Harry hadn't seen much of Snape for the rest of the winter hols, and once classes started back up, he was drawn into the whirlwind of NEWTs and study tables and revising and revising and revising. It seemed like time simultaneously slowed to a crawl and sped up to breakneck speeds, never enough of it to get done what he needed to do and not fast enough to the end of the year, when he'd finally be able to be, well, with someone, anyway.

He was starting to doubt that someone would be Snape.

"Ten points from Gryffindor. Do I have to send you back to First Year, Potter, or do you think you can remember the difference between beetle eyes and whole beetles for the duration of one entire class?" sneered Snape during Potions on one dismal spring afternoon.

Harry sighed, heart going leaden. "No, sir, I mean, yes, sir," he said dispiritedly, not even bothering to argue that he'd been rearranging the jars in their case while Hermione gathered their ingredients.

Snape snorted derisively and swooped on to tell a Ravenclaw she ought to have been in Hufflepuff, if she was still afraid to kill a few slugs. "Don't worry about him," said Hermione softly, patting his arm. "He's been on a tear all week, I heard he even took points from Malfoy once."

"I'm sure that's just a rumour," said Harry dismally, putting his kit away and looking at Hermione's line-up. "Aren't the salmon eggs supposed to go in before the flying fish eggs and after the quail eggs?" he asked, pointing to the jars.

"Oh, you're right!" she said, her perpetual surprise at his recent forays into competence nearly worn away. She switched the jars and they both began to measure and ready ingredients, Harry taking a turn at preparing the base of ostrich egg whites and tincture of black cohosh, then floating a pool of evening primrose oil on top. He brought the heat up slowly so as not to actually cook the egg before it sufficiently mixed with the other ingredients, adding a tiny spark of his own magic as he'd been taught.

"Right, beetle eyes and finely chopped wormwort, to be added together," said Hermione briskly, sliding the bowls over to him.

Harry waited until what felt like the right moment and then dumped in both, using a whisk to get the mixture to work, amazed as always when the herb dissolved and the eyes seemed to glimmer at him in suspension as their magic blended together. "I don't know why we're making a fertility potion anyway," said Harry, slipping in the ostrich egg yolks that Hermione had fortified with the juice from a luck lime.

"Because the complex blending of similar yet disparate ingredients is, as I have said on numerous occasions and in a plethora of ways, an art which is required for all advanced potions," said Snape. "Five points from Gryffindor. You're on a roll today, Potter."

Harry winced, nearly missing his cue to add the tiny, slippery mirror minnows to the cauldron. "Yes, sir," he said miserably, watching the potion take on a silvery, reflective sheen.

"It's also on the NEWT study list," said Hermione sensibly. She'd finished prepping and was busying herself with cleaning the bowls they'd already used, while Harry counted off twenty-three seconds before adding the quail eggs, salmon eggs and flying fish eggs in quick succession. He started the hourglass going for nine minutes and thirty-three seconds gratefully, then turned to help Hermione put ingredients away.

"I suppose you're right," said Harry with a shrug. He watched Snape swoop down on the class's lone Hufflepuff with terrifying glee, and tried to remember that there were times when he wasn't horrible. That at one point he'd liked Harry enough to kiss him.

Those times seemed very far away as Harry watched the sand fall through the hourglass, Male Mountebank Mushrooms at the ready.


A few weeks later, Saturday came around far too quickly and Harry lay in bed staring at the ceiling and wondering where all the time kept going. He had thirty inches due in Charms on Monday, forty due in Potions, and he was supposed to have managed to Transfigure himself into, well, anything at all, which he hadn't yet.

When Snape's owl came at breakfast, instructing him to dress down and meet Snape in his quarters, Harry did something unprecedented. He sent back a politely-worded refusal, with a hastily-scrawled postscript explaining that, no, he wasn't practising, he really did need the day to revise. He sent the owl back and left before he could see Snape's reaction, something cold and heavy settling in the pit of his stomach as he headed for the dorm. Not dread, precisely, though he thought Snape might be angry with him, but more a leaden resignation that right now his Defence NEWT was more important than polishing up his social skills.

He showed up in the library a few minutes later with a stack of books and a dark expression. "Started Potions yet?" he asked dully, sitting at Ron and Hermione's table.

"You're not done with that yet? Oh, Harry, how ever will you get everything finished in time!" she exclaimed, passing over her notes with a pitying expression that turned puzzled. "Wait, why aren't you heading off to your Etiquette lesson?"

"I begged off," he said with a shrug. "This is more important, isn't it?"

Ron snorted. "I'd take lessons in getting," he paused and glanced at Hermione, "er, dates, over revising any day."

"Yeah, well," said Harry with a shrug, opening the book to the chapter on Deadly Interactions and pulling Hermione's notes closer. "I have to live through NEWTs before I can worry about that, don't I?"

Ron nodded sympathetically and they all set to work, passing books and notes around with murmured thanks as the clock ticked on toward lunch.


"Bugger!" said Harry as pain lanced through his head, shaking it dully to clear his vision of stars.

"Language, Mr. Potter!" said Professor McGonagall reproachfully.

One glance in the mirror proved that the headache was all he had to show for his attempt at self-Transfiguration, and he nearly swore again. "Sorry, Professor," he said, brows knitting. "I just can't figure out why this is so hard."

"It's very advanced magic," she said sympathetically.

"That's boll- uh, not really an excuse," said Harry, annoyed. "I mean, look!" He Transfigured his notes into a live raven, which squawked and ruffled its feathers, then glared at him with the same expression as McGonagall. He transformed everything back flawlessly, though there was a stray doodled feather in one corner that he wasn't positive was his own doing.

Hermione patted Harry on the shoulder. "I'm sure it will come to you," she said distractedly. She'd Transfigured her own hair into a nest of hissing snakes, most of whom appeared to be complaining about her choice of bath products. "It's bound to be on the NEWT, anyway."

Harry didn't find that at all comforting.

"If you can't manage it at all, I'll have to give you a zero for the day," added Professor McGonagall briskly. "Honestly, you've had three weeks!"

Harry rolled his eyes and sighed. Maybe if he started with something simpler. He changed the colour of his eyebrows to blue and back again, then his hair into feathers, still black and still hopelessly rumpled. Then he turned it back and started the spell one last time, trying to give himself the head of a bird, like one of those Egyptian gods.

When he woke up in the Infirmary, he still had the headache, his own familiar face, and a note from Snape saying that points would be deducted for turning in his essay late.

Harry groaned, and wished he was living someone else's life for a while.


Harry dreamed he was falling.

The wind rushed all around him and it was almost peaceful until he realized he didn't have a broom, or any idea of how far he was going to fall, how long he'd already been falling, or why. He looked up and it was nothing but stars, and somehow he couldn't bring himself to look away, look down, to anticipate the sudden stop at the end.

He tried to find constellations but the stars were unfamiliar, no Orion's belt or Little Dipper to orient himself on. He widened his search and suddenly he could see it, all around him, a leering skull and writhing snake.

He woke, sweating, before he could hit the ground.

"Bugger."

He flopped back onto the bed in exhaustion, and was back asleep in moments. He had the dream seven times that night, and each time it seemed the ground loomed closer, and the stars were more green.

He went to see the Headmaster before breakfast, wondering what it meant.


"You could do this a month ago!" yelled Snape, frustrated and angry. "What has gotten into you, boy?"

Harry flinched and sighed, rubbing his aching forehead. "I don't know! I just... freeze up somehow." He buried his face in his hands, pressing his palms against his eyes until he saw sparkles, then came up with a gasp. "It's the dream."

"What?" said Snape, confused.

"The dream. I'm falling in the dream, don't you see? And now I'm afraid again, when before I could fly and it was all right."

"That clever, evil... We're going to have to work harder to overcome it. And you'll have to go flying more often, you haven't been since you had the dream, have you?"

Harry shook his head mutely. "I haven't had time. I don't have time, honestly. I've got more to do than I could manage even with a Time Turner."

Snape glared. "We'll make time."


Harry hadn't seen the twins since Christmas, and he had almost grown used to the constant gnawing want for sex, for company, for someone who smiled and held him and even just for the press of lips against his own. He easily fended off the few offers he got by citing his own busy schedule and uncertain future, though it seemed to make him something of a romantic figure among a certain segment of the female population. Around Valentine's Day he'd almost been tempted to out himself just to get relief, but by this time of year even that small trickle of attention had dried up.

Harry felt rather pathetic for almost wishing it hadn't.

"Today," said Snape, pulling Harry out of his wallowing and back to the lesson at hand, "I will start teaching you the art of epistolary courtship."

"What?" said Harry, wondering if Snape did this on purpose, just to see him looking confused.

Snape smirked, and Harry sighed. "Love letters, Potter. We will be writing to Fred and George."

Harry groaned. He'd had an essay due in every single class this week, and was full up with writing. "Can't I just send them a greeting card or something?" he asked piteously.

Snape's expression frosted over. "If you do not value the skills I am attempting to impart to you, you can stop the lessons entirely."

"No, no, that's not... I'm sorry, I'm just very stressed. NEWTs are coming up and I've had so many essays to write that I'm nearly out of parchment, not to mention revising and nightmares and wondering if V- You Know Who will mess it all up the way he did my History OWL," said Harry, one long string of helpless excuses.

Snape relented only a little, melting enough to tap the salver of writing paraphernalia to send it back to the mantle, then calling the tea service to replace it. "You are becoming overwrought. Have there been more dreams?" he asked, passing Harry a perfectly made cuppa.

Harry shivered, but shook his head. "No, it was just that one night, like... like he figured out what we were doing somehow."

"That may well be the case," said Snape with a nod.

Harry sipped the tea and sighed, letting it relax him a little despite that awful thought. "Is it hard, writing to someone like that?" he asked. In truth, he found the whole prospect both daunting and terribly romantic, in a way he hadn't thought himself capable of. As if he could write to Severus as though he were a distant love who needed wooing back to Harry's side, rather than merely hidden behind Snape's unpleasant exterior, and rediscover the passion that had fuelled his efforts all through the summer and autumn, and kept him warm in his lonely bed this winter.

"It can be difficult to find the right balance between honest sentiment and saccharine foolishness," said Snape, obviously a man who preferred the former, if he had to have anything at all.

"Well, can you use the same, I dunno, tricks and stuff as you would when you're talking?" he asked, setting down his now-empty teacup.

Snape, apparently sensing that Harry was feeling properly fortified, refilled the cup and began his lecture again. Harry took prodigious notes, and they agreed to wait and write their letters next week, when most of Harry's classes would have quizzes instead of essays.


The dreams came again, but flying with Snape made it better. Snape booked the pitch for the two of them twice a week, just half an hour sometimes when they were both particularly busy, but it was enough. Enough to rise up in the sky on his trusty Firebolt, to see Snape across from him on a wobbly old school broom, enough to share those few moments of freedom.

Harry started making progress again, and the relief was palpable. He had to cancel his Etiquette lessons twice more, but the scorching letter he got from Fred and George in response to his original, awkward missive motivated him into practising enough to garner Snape's forgiveness, if not approval.

He felt like his brain was overly full, but everything was starting to fall into place, facts strung together by repetition and sheer determination until he could see the progression of shielding spells to counterspells dancing behind his eyes whenever he went to bed. At the very least, it was an excellent way to clear his mind, letting the seventeen types of purgatives melt into an empty blue sky before he slipped into slumber every night.

That was, of course, when Harry managed to bollix it all up, with no one to blame but himself.

"Where's Linfold's Curses and Curatives, Harry?" asked Hermione, shuffling through their stacks of books late one night, sharing the common room with several other groups of desperate fifth and seventh year Gryffindors.

Harry poked around, then swore. "I left it in the library, remember, when I was getting those Herbology books from the bibliography."

She sighed, looking around to see if anyone else happened to have a copy. "I don't suppose you got his list of fatal fungi of the far east before you did?" she asked, without much hope.

Harry shook his head. "Look, it's my fault, I'll go get it," he said, standing up and stretching. "Otherwise Pince'll re-file it in the morning, and someone else will check it out, and then where will you be?"

"Oh, Harry, no," she said, though it was unconvincing.

Ron shook his head. "Go on, he's got the cloak. I'm sure he'll be fine, as long as he stays out of the Restricted Section."

Harry slipped away before Hermione could protest again, snagging his cloak from the dorm room and coming back down with it on so she wouldn't know it was him until the portrait opened by itself. He nipped down to the library and found the book just where he'd said, Hermione's markers still in place and everything. He tucked it under one arm and headed back to the dorms as quietly as he could, taking the long way just to enjoy the thrill of freedom for a few extra minutes. He wandered through the castle corridors with his mind miles away, confident that his cloak would keep him from casual detection.

That was, of course, when he rounded a corner and ran straight into Snape.

"I cannot believe you're still up to your old tricks!" said Snape, once he'd picked them both up off the ground. "What is it this time, the Dark Lord hiding in the castle laundry?" he said cruelly.

"No, sir," said Harry, deflating. "I forgot a book in the library, and H- I need it to finish my Potions essay." Which was mostly true, though Hermione needed it more. Harry had already taken down most of his own notes for it, and had moved on to the Herbology references he'd been getting when he'd left the book behind.

Snape glared. "Detention, and twenty points from Gryffindor," he snapped, dragging Harry up toward Gryffindor Tower. He escorted Harry all the way into the common room and announced loudly, "An extra ten points from Gryffindor for not discouraging this behaviour. From each of you."

Everyone in the room groaned, and Harry shrank into himself. Eighty points in one night, and detention besides. His housemates were going to kill him.


The worst part, aside from the shunning his housemates gave him, was that Snape didn't even bother to supervise Harry's detention himself. Instead, Harry had to give over his entire Saturday helping Professor Sprout fertilise the Rare and Deadly Plants display in Greenhouse 2.

"Harry!" said Neville cheerfully, when he saw Harry trudge through the door at the painfully early hour. "I didn't know you had such an interest in Herbology."

"He doesn't," said Sprout, emerging from the back with an armful of bottles. "He's serving detention."

"Oh," said Neville, in the sort of tone that's both scandalised and apologetic for having brought it up at all.

"It's all right," said Harry with a shrug. "I deserved it, I suppose." He turned to the table, where Sprout had laid out dozens of different bottles, bags and buckets, none of which smelled in any way pleasant.

She smiled grimly at him, and then more kindly to Neville. "Longbottom, you'll supervise. This way, I can do those Battybush cuttings that Professor Snape has been pestering me for, and we'll both have an easier time of things. You know what needs doing, just make sure you watch Harry." She shot him a meaningful glare. "He does not."

Harry refrained from commenting until after she'd bustled off, since he knew very well she was right. "My marks aren't as bad as all that, but she's right, I've no idea what to do with any of this stuff," he said, gesturing toward the display. "Well, except the Danger Daisies, but that's just because of the one you gave me."

Neville laughed. "It's not so bad. First we mix up the fertiliser for whatever plant we're working with, and then we apply it." He gave Harry an amused smirk. "You can do the ones that require dodging."

"Gee, thanks," said Harry, moving up to the table with Neville. First Neville acquired an empty bucket, and then he dug his hands into one of the sacks, coming up with what looked and smelled like shit.

"What is that stuff?" asked Harry, appalled.

"Dragon dung. Welsh green, specifically," said Neville, dropping it into the bucket and dusting off his hands. "Hand me that bottle of Hippogriff semen, will you?"

"Sure," said Harry, snagging the labelled bottle of milky yellow-white fluid. "Wait, what?" He nearly dropped it when he realised what he was holding. "Do I even want to know how they get this?"

Neville laughed and poured a generous splash of it over the dung, making the whole thing smell even worse. "Probably not," he said cheerfully, capping off the bottle and snagging a handful of half-rotten leaves out of a different bucket.

"You volunteered for this," said Harry weakly, as Neville kneaded the mixture together into a disgusting brown morass.

"And you get to spread it over the roots of the Venomous Tentacula," said Neville, washing his hands under the tap and then casting a Scourgify on them for good measure. "Spread, don't pour, and don't let it bite you. We don't have a lot of the anti-serum."

Harry knew he looked nearly as green as the plants as he picked up the bucket and got a closer whiff of the contents. "No wonder these are rare, if this is what you have to do to keep them alive," he said, trudging over to the display. The plant was deceptively quiet, its tentacles dormant, curled protectively around the gently pulsing seed pods at its centre. Harry tried to pretend he didn't see the skeleton half-buried in the earth around it, some small animal that had been unfortunate enough to wander into its reach.

He got a good handful of the muck, and eased his way into range. "I've got some lovely Hippogriff spunk for you right here, now be good or you won't get all your dragon shit," he said in a singsong voice. Then he dodged a striking tentacle, and slapped some of the fertiliser up near the roots. "Naughty, naughty!" he said with a laugh, repeating the action around the other side. By the time the bucket was empty he had muck on his face, a venom-burn in one sleeve of his student robes, and a new appreciation for the strenuous life of the Herbologist. But there was also a fairly solid layer of the stuff over the ground around the vicious plant.

He brought the empty bucket back to Neville and submitted to a thorough magical cleaning. "Might as well take the robe off," said Neville, sprinkling what Harry sincerely hoped was not actually Yeti urine over the second batch of fertiliser. "You'll only get it snagged on more things." Harry did so with a sigh, turning back to find Neville holding out the second bucket, which certainly smelled as though something had peed in it. "Bury the roots of the Sleeping Roses in it. I'll make up the next batch." When Harry hesitated, he added, "Don't worry, I'll keep an eye out and Ennervate you if you do get stuck."

"Urgh," was all Harry said, glad that at least he hadn't had to ask which was which so far. He had a sinking feeling, as he tried to pile fertiliser up around the exposed roots of the rose bush without becoming a Sleeping, uh, Boy, that it was only going to get worse from here.

A Question of Etiquette XXIII: End Times


Title: A Question of Etiquette XXII: Falling Away
Author:
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Harry Potter/Severus Snape/Weasley Twins
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Slash, underage (16), twincest, threesomes, BDSM & general kinkiness
Summary: The school year marches on, and Harry begins to lose his grip on hope.
Acknowledgements: Thank you to everyone who's beta read, audienced, encouraged or otherwise helped with this fic. It's a long road and miles to go, but I'm getting there!



All of the works contained herein are labours of love, unauthorized by those who hold the rights to such things, and no profit is made from them. No harm is meant, and hopefully no offense given.