Accept This Gift, Accept This Heart by winoniel Title: Accept My Gift, Accept This Heart Author:winoniel Pairing: Snarry Rating: R (for non-violent gore) Word Count: 2860 Warnings: Gore Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. The characters and their worlds belong to their original writers and no copyright infringement or offense is intended. No money was made from this story. Summary: Genres: Horror, Angst. Based on Prompt #5—“Severus took a deep breath and closed his eyes, his heart breaking.” Severus doesn’t know what to do with the gift of a heart (well, besides rendering them for potions ingredients, but well, um, that’s not always appropriate). A/N: #1. Thanks WLL, for the extremely, extremely 12th hour beta and the S*s* Mods for, well, everything they do, bless them. #2. Ok, this started somewhere totally different, but I decided to look at the prompt more concretely, and this is what happened. This is not my normal type of writing but I thought, ‘Why bloody not?’. Poor Severus, he comes out to play and gets angsted….
Accept My Gift, Accept This Heart
Severus hurried up the stairs to the fourth floor, breathing shallowly through his mouth. He could ignore most of the numerous problems with the block of flats that he called home—problems like the vermin that were barely kept at bay, the noise, and the less than pristine conditions. However, on some days the stale, sharp odors of old meals of boiled onions or cabbage combined with whiffs from the sticky, mildewed carpet, dank wood, and faded wallpaper in the shadowy hallway, assaulted his sensitive nose every time he moved along the staircase.
Reaching his apartment, he gasped a deep breath of fresh air, flung his keys into the bowl near the door and left the small bag next to the bowl while shrugging out of his pea coat. He then placed the small parcel on the kitchen table and sat heavily in the chair. He already knew what was in the package. He’d expected it, though he refused to think about its implications. A similar parcel came every year on the same day.
It was alarming, if one stopped to think about it, which Severus resolutely tried not to do. Someone knew exactly where he lived. Even when he’d moved, several times in his early years in the Muggle world, a ‘gift’ always appeared on his doorstep every year. It had been ten—no, he thought, it had been eleven years now. Severus paused, for a moment forgetting the ominous package and counting backwards. Had it really been that long? Yes, it had.
It always arrived on the anniversary of Severus’ awakening from his coma. He’d been amused that he’d returned to the world of the living on St. Valentine’s Day. Apparently, upon suffering the trauma of Nagini’s rending bites and venom, his body had put itself into stasis. It had been gradually getting weaker, while the healers were no closer to a cure.
Then, on one day that hadn’t been measurably different from any of the ones preceding it, Severus suddenly came out of the coma and demanded something to eat. The healers were clueless about his recovery, but while his muscles lacked definition and tone, the rest of him had been completely restored. He’d recuperated quickly, and left the wizarding world soon after, for good.
Sighing, he took his penknife and with a steady hand—though a dozen kneazles and krups seemed to be battling in his belly—severed the twine deftly encasing the wrapping. The paper fell away to reveal a dragon-hide box, small enough to be covered by one hand. The box last year had been huge in comparison. Severus took another deep breath before his finger found the rather sophisticated unlocking mechanism along one side, and depressed the switch.
With a whoosh of sound and air, the box unhinged, its sides dropping away to reveal a dripping, beating, extremely alive heart. Severus released the deep breath he’d been holding. He allowed a few moments of fascinated horror to wash over him. He couldn’t believe that he still experienced the suddenly dry mouth, the quivering that threatened to take over his whole body, or the paralyzing fear. When the reaction threatened to become a full-blown panic attack, he swallowed down the choking fear, forced back the paranoia while he took several deep breaths, steadied his nerves, and reached for a magical zoological anatomy book.
A couple of hours later, Severus had determined that the heart was from a Chimaera. He got down an appropriately sized jar, partially filled it with a liquid preservative, and removed the magical apparatus that had been keeping the organ functioning. He didn’t have to look at it. He knew from examining the ‘gifts’ of previous years that it supplied fluids, nourishment, and oxygen, removed waste products, and emitted a steady pulsating electrical current to keep the heart beating.
Removing the last wire, he swiftly thrust the heart into the fluid, holding it in trembling fingers beneath the surface of the liquid until its pulsing quivered to a halt. Why was he preserving it? He asked himself this question every year, and still had no good answer. He certainly wouldn’t use it as potion ingredients: he hadn’t brewed once since leaving hospital; in fact, he’d never even gotten his wand out of his dresser drawer.
He refused to think about his irrational behavior anymore, simply capped the jar and added it to the collection on the back bottom shelf of his refrigerator. Though a frisson of terror skittered up his spine every time they caught his eye, he found himself unable to rid himself of the jars and vials of varying sizes and shapes. With their contents cold and still, they reminded him that someone was always watching, always knew where he was, always let him know that he would never escape his past completely.
Severus opened the scotch that he’d bought on the way home from work. He didn’t bother to get a glass. Lifting the bottle in disgusted acknowledgment to his collection in the refrigerator, he took a drink, wiping his mouth as the smoky liquid scored down his throat into his stomach. After a few more generous drinks, a gentle warmth suffused his tensed muscles, allowing him to relax and forget.
~*~*~*~*~
Severus awoke to a pounding headache. Lifting his head from the kitchen table, he glanced at the clock and groaned. It was seven o’clock in the morning. Fortunately, if was Saturday, and he didn’t have to go to work. Standing, he began to search for the paracetamol, and then realized the throbbing wasn’t just in his head. There was someone hammering on the door to his flat.
He flung it open. “What,” he growled, “do you…” His voice faded.
“Hello, Snape,” Harry Potter said, smiling shyly.
Severus’ jaw dropped. The appearance of his ‘Valentine’s Day gift,’ his drinking binge and subsequent hangover, capped by the presence of someone he hadn’t seen in over ten years so confounded him that he was temporarily immobile.
Potter pushed passed him into the flat, looking around curiously. “Wow, I knew that you were raised in the Muggle world, but I had no idea that you would ever return to it. You always seemed like the epitome of a wizard.”
That caused a bark of angry laughter from Severus. “’Epitome?’ Your terminology has improved over the years, Potter.”
“Why, thanks, Severus. May I call you Severus?” Potter asked hopefully.
“No,” Severus said abruptly. “In fact, don’t call me anything at all. Just leave.” He moved to the side, motioning to the still open door. “You may throw about a better quality of vocabulary, but you are still the same arrogant, selfish, pushy brat you were in school. I had to put up with you then, I do not now. Leave.”
“But—”
Severus gnashed his teeth. If the little imbecile wouldn’t leave on his own, there was no way that Severus, in his current condition, could make him. Severus could still sense magical power, and Potter was reeking of it.
In addition, Severus remembered hearing that Potter had had some type of psychotic episode in the year following his defeat of the Dark Lord. If it was true, Severus could hardly fault the boy, given the pressures he’d been under during the year he’d hunted for Horcruxes. However, it made Severus doubly wary. Here was Harry Potter, probably slightly insane and certainly the most powerful wizard in Great Britain, standing in Severus’ flat. Sighing, he allowed the door to swing, shut, gently.
“What can I do for you, Potter?”
Potter had been roaming about the room. He turned at that, a smile bright on his face. “Tea, maybe? I’ve been traveling a lot in the past couple of days.”
Defeated, Severus guessed that the sooner he let Potter have his little visit, the sooner he would be gone. He motioned to the table, putting the kettle on the hob, getting out the teapot and cups, sugar, and milk. He found a half-opened box of biscuits, sniffed to determine if they were still fresh, and then shrugging, shook them out onto a plate.
Potter beamed. “So what have you been doing with yourself, Severus?”
“Working. Staying out of trouble. Living my life. And you?”
“The same, I guess. Why are you living in the Muggle world?” Potter asked, apparently suffering from the delusion that he could maintain a civilized conversation.
Severus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Potter, what… do… you… want?”
Visibly nonplussed, Potter blurted, “I just wanted see how you were getting on.”
“After we haven’t had contact with each other in about twelve years?” Severus was unconvinced, but was hoping to move the boy along in this visit, or better yet, out of the house. “I suppose after your little mental breakdown, you were unable to sense the passing of time?”
Ignoring the second part of Severus’ statement, Potter frowned and said, “But we have had contact! Didn’t you get the hearts I’ve been sending you?”
Severus’ body froze, though the snitches fluttering in his stomach, the waves pounding in his ears, and his heart thumping against his ribcage made him feel as if he were quaking. He tried to swallow several times, eventually giving up and asking, his voice rasping, “The hearts? You…?”
Potter stared at him in the sudden silence. Several expressions flitted across his face, too fast for Severus to read. “What did you do with them?” he asked, his voice rather ominous in its calmness.
“Do with them?”
“The hearts,” Potter said, his voice growing chillier as the air in the room grew more charged.
“I-I-I preserved them. They’re in the refrigerator.”
“What?” The disturbing quiet broke. Severus realized it wasn’t his own disquiet that he’d felt, but rather the monstrous, horrifyingly vast amount of power surging from Potter. There was a fiendish look to his eyes. His pupils, dilated so much that there was only a thin line of green around deep pools of flat black, were fixed to Severus’ face as Potter moved closer.
Severus, remembering the reports of the young man’s instability, tried to move back, but found his feet bound to the floor. The pounding in his ears and chest and stomach felt as if it threatened to explode through his muscles and skin. He’d spied on the Dark Lord, had been threatened with death, Azkaban, and the Dementor’s Kiss, but he’d never felt the utter terror he was feeling now.
Potter moved until his face was only inches away. His panting breath gently blew a few of Severus’ hairs into his face. He tried to close his eyes, but they too, were under Potter’s command. Severus felt his mind flying over the events of the past few years, finally stopping at the memory of his waking up in hospital.
Potter’s hand came up to caress Severus’ cheek. Ignoring the older man’s flinch, Potter crooned, “You don’t remember any of it, do you? You don’t remember how I came to you eleven years ago and fed you the heart of a Manticore? It had enough magical power, as well as the power of will, to bring you out of your coma. But, well,” a rueful smile flashed, and instead of a dreaded demonic creature, Severus caught a glimpse of Lily Evans in James Potter’s face. “Well, your magical core had been drained fighting Nagini’s venom, which was the reason your body had shut down. But I’d tracked down a Colombian shaman who could help me with your condition. He was the person that recommended I feed you the heart. He got an extra large tip on top of his fee for that.” Potter reminisced.
Shaking his head, he pulled Severus over to the sofa, and straddled his lap. Using both of his hands to hold Severus’ head still, Potter rubbed his cheek against that of his former teacher. “The shaman said that your core could only be restored slowly, by judicious feeding of the hearts of various other magical creatures over the years. I told you all of this that evening,” he said, sighing, “But I guess I should have checked to see if you were really conscious.”
Severus found he was able to move again, though Potter’s weight on his legs and the hands grasping Severus’ head still kept him rather immobilized. As he thought of the ease with which Potter had performed Legilimency, Severus tried to shift surreptitiously out from under the boy. “I suppose I wasn’t in any condition to retain any information. I thank you, though, for what you’d done to help heal me. Getting my magic back is not so important now, though,” he said cautiously. “I’m used to this life, really. I wouldn’t want to go back to the wizarding world.”
“Uhn-uhn,” Potter said, with a lighthearted smile, while shaking his head, “You’re not getting away from me that easily.” A cold wash of fear swept done Severus’ spine at the playful tone. He was gradually convinced that all was not well with Potter. His emotional swings were dizzying.
Potter continued, his voice now grown sad. “I know that you never liked me. I had hoped—well, no matter.” Again, there was a fleeting smile that Severus had begun to dread more than the anger. “I owe you a huge debt and I mean to repay it, whether you want me to or not.”
Potter slid over so that he was sitting next to Severus, who tensed as their shoulders rested against each other. “I am going to make sure that your core is restored. If you want to return to the wizarding world, you could, and if you want to stay here among the Muggles, you may. Same difference to me.”
Potter, with another mercurial emotional shift, stood and began pacing, muttering to himself. Severus held himself still, but began to mentally measure the distance to the door, thinking to escape while Potter was distracted. The little dolt hadn’t harmed Severus yet, but that somehow wasn’t as reassuring as it could be. There was no guessing what was going on in that insane little mind. Severus shifted in anticipation of dashing to the door.
He never saw the wave of magic that was casually flung in his direction.
~*~*~*~*~
Potter entered the flat, carrying his parcel carefully. “Hello, Severus, how are you feeling?” He looked over to where Severus was reclining on the sofa.
Severus’ eyes lifted. Potter had decided that in light of Severus’ misunderstanding about the function of his Valentine’s Day gifts, ‘they’ needed to accelerate the process. The former Gryffindor had given up his overly romanticized idea that Severus and he would become close friends. He now, with chilling efficiency, focused on discharging his debt and ensuring Severus’ core was restored.
Potter opened the package, and turned, the beating heart in his hand. “Graphorn heart, this time.”
Severus nodded slightly, not being able to move much. Potter smiled, bright and happy, and removed the tube that kept Severus fed. He then removed the wires from the Graphorn heart.
The tubes that fed Severus, removed his bodily wastes, kept his muscles stimulated, and basically, kept him alive, corresponded exactly to those of the apparatus on the many hearts that he, and later Potter, had opened and unwrapped. However, it was Harry’s magic that kept Severus imprisoned on the sofa, prone and unable to ‘disturb’ the process of returning his magic.
Severus obediently opened his mouth. Potter began slicing off small bits of the heart and placed them delicately in Severus mouth. Severus’ tongue quickly slipped out and licked the warm gobbets of meat and blood from between Potter’s finger, not missing a drop, and Potter laughed delightedly. Severus was satisfied that the slices were kept quite thin, and he was watched as he chewed, and that care was taken to keep him from choking, and even worse, from dribbling.
Severus was a proud man, and even though there was no one else there, in fact, he hadn’t seen another human being in over two years, he was kept quite clean, and his skin and teeth and hair cared for. He was fed and talked to, caressed and cosseted every time Potter visited. Unfortunately, as the Master of Death, Potter was often elsewhere, taking his responsibilities seriously. So he was really only with Severus on the days he brought another magical heart.
With another smile and a quick caress, Potter cleaned up after the feeding. He returned Severus’ feeding tube, chatted a bit more, and with a jaunty wave, left the flat. Severus looked around from his place on the sofa. He’d memorized every crack in the plaster, every smudge on the windows, every speck of dust on the books and tables and mantelpiece.
Soon, though Potter had told him, he would have enough magic to leave the flat and return to the magical world. However, right now, the only magic in his life had just left. Severus took a deep breath and closed his eyes, his heart, and the many other hearts beating within him, breaking.