5040

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/53807.

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandom: Harry Potter - Rowling
Relationship: Harry Potter/Severus Snape
Characters: Harry Potter, Severus Snape
Additional Tags: Romance, Smutlet, Don’t copy to another site
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2004-11-04 Words: 999 Chapters: 1/1
 5040
by Resonant

Summary

It was on the morning of Harry's third day hiding in the dungeons that the bells began to ring.
It was on the morning of Harry's third day hiding in the dungeons that the bells began to ring.

A jar of powdered spleen slipped from Snape's hand and shattered, unnoticed, on the stone
floor. "That's it, then. It's over," he said in Harry's general direction.

Harry came out from under the table and dropped the cloak and stood, listening. He didn't
know how long it had been since he'd moved. Maybe he'd been crouched under the table
since it had happened. The far-off chimes were joined now by slightly louder ones -- that
would be the Hogsmeade town bell -- and then by another, a mellow, deep bell, almost
overhead. "What is it?"

"Helga's bell," Snape said. He spoke in his usual sharp tone, as though he wasn't aware that
there were tears on his beaky face. "I've never heard it. They say it rang a peal when
Grindelwald was defeated."

It didn't stop. "They'll have found the body, then."

"And Malfoy's Ministry will have stepped down or been driven out." The sound was growing
louder. "They're ringing the end of the war, boy."

Other bells were joining in, until it felt as though the air were throbbing with the sound, as
though his very blood were swelling with it. "How long -- " He raised his voice. "How long
will they go on?"

"A peal," Snape said, and when Harry just looked at him, "Five thousand forty changes make
a peal. It's a number of great arithmantic significance. It will take several hours."

It was hard to think straight with the air full of bells, sounding as if they were saying, over
and over, Free, free, free, free --

"It's over, boy," Snape said, grasping his shoulders. "Over." He didn't sound happy, exactly.
He sounded the same way Harry felt. Terrified. Harry's hands grasped his arms, and through
the close-fitting practical sleeves they were warm, alive, muscles shifting. An ordinary
human body, fragile, enduring. Harry surged up from his crouch and caught Snape up in his
arms.

Snape struggled, pushing at him, and Harry held on, because he couldn't bear to lose the
contact. Snape mumbled, "Let go, you fool. I'm trying to --" and shifted them somehow so
that one of Harry's arms slid up to the back of Snape's neck, and then he tilted his head and
pressed his mouth down on Harry's.

He was rough, grasping, hungry rather than sensual, but that was all right. Harry wrestled
him down onto the floor and spread himself out on top of him and kissed him wildly.

When Snape grabbed his hair and pulled his head away, Harry felt himself ready to fight, like
a dog held back from its food. But Snape only rolled them over, saying, "Have you never
learned to kiss properly?"
Harry started to say that he'd hardly had the time, but Snape's mouth was on his again, still
harsh but slower, drawing him out until his lips were vibrating with pleasure, and then
abandoning it to lick and bite at his chin, his jaw, his ear, his neck -- to tear away his clothes
and suck stinging kisses onto skin that no one had ever touched while the bells shivered the
air around them and Harry came with a cry that not even he could hear.

Snape knelt over him, hauling off his own clothing with jerky, impatient movements, and
Harry jackknifed upright, speared by the shock of all that ordinary skin, sunken belly and
stringy black hair, brown nipples rising in his mouth before he'd even registered that he was
moving, sac dragging softly over Harry's thigh as he maneuvered to get closer. Snape's chest
vibrated under Harry's mouth, but if there were words, Harry couldn't hear them.

He couldn't crouch low enough to get Snape's cock in his mouth until Snape tipped them
back onto the floor again, and Harry squirmed awkwardly into position and sucked it
clumsily, gagging in his eagerness to get it all, until Snape's hand left Harry's shoulder and
came down to grasp at the root of it and offer only the tip, and at the sight of that, Harry was
hard all over again.

When the bells fell silent, he was kneeling behind Snape, fucking him slowly as they both
clung to the edge of the table. In the sudden quiet, he could hear Snape panting. The sound
raised gooseflesh on his thighs, and his hips began to thrust more sharply even as he
muttered, "D'you want me to stop?"

"Fuck, no," Snape said, and the unexpectedness of the word sent Harry into spasms far
sooner than he expected. Beneath him, Snape's chest heaved -- he was wheezing out a rusty,
unused sort of laugh. After a moment, Harry laughed, too, and Snape eased them apart and
flung himself down on his back on the wreckage of their clothing with a gusty, satisfied sigh.
He was still hard, but he didn't seem to be in any hurry.

"Did we just -- er -- for three solid hours?"

"We and a good percentage of the wizarding world, I should think," Snape said, adding in an
irritated tone, "Oh, lie down, Harry; it's a bit late for decorum." Harry lay down beside him,
wondering why, under the circumstances, it should feel so odd for Snape to call him by his
first name.

With his head on Snape's bare shoulder, he could look across his naked body and see the
spatter of browning spleen and broken glass where Snape had dropped the jar. It wasn't like
him to leave a mess. Or perhaps it was. "D'you feel any different?"

Snape stretched; the muscles under Harry's cheek tightened. "I feel shagged out, rather
thoroughly mauled, and completely relaxed for the first time in several decades," he said. "I
smell rather foul, though. I suppose that will begin to matter again, now."

Harry sniffed his own body and wrinkled his nose.

"Welcome to the new era," Snape said, and closed his eyes, and after a moment Harry did the
same.
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