Harry screamed.

Out loud.

The note disappeared with a poof, as it had promised. But that was no comfort.

And every word of it was ingrained in Harry's mind.

He sprinted for the door of the dormitory, each word ringing in his ears like mocking laughter:

"Hey, Harry--

"We know you won't be any part of this, since it's YOUR misery we're talking about here, so it looks like it's up to the rest of us to avenge you, mate.

"Snape's been an absolute prick about the number of detentions he's been giving you--"

Down the stairs to the common room. No, no, NO...!

"-- and the REASONS! God, did the greasy bugger piss off a poltergeist in his room, or what? What is his PROBLEM? It's gone two continents beyond the usual that's-SO-not-fair typical Snapeiness of his tiff with Gryffindors in general and The Boy Who Lived in particular--"

Common room door. The fat lady squeaked, "Well! Of all the--" as he shoved the portrait aside, but he didn't stop to apologize.

", so we've decided, if we can't make him stop, we're going to make him good and sorry he DIDN'T.

"Remember the story Sirius told us about how the Slytherins did a number on their Head of House back in 1972? And made it look like the Gryffindors did it? Well, we figure they just might be devious enough to try the same thing twice, assuming no one'd think they'd dare... at least, that's what we're counting on everyone to believe!

"So we've been planning this for a week--"

The bloody staircase was moving! Fuck, why NOW? Come on, come on--

"--and all we've needed is the right moment, and tonight we had the perfect excuse; that wanker Malfoy bitched about feeling off-color at dinner and went to bed early--"

No, NO, NO--

"--and we've got our hands on one of his spare robes from the house-elves, and when they see all the Gryffindor things that were 'planted' about the room, it's going to be a piece of THAT they're going to find wedged on a convenient nail by the door-- at least we're betting they do! Snape'll be sure to find it, after, and he's too suspicious by half to be taken in by the fake evidence-- I mean, the FAKE fake evidence-- oh, you get what I mean."

The staircase finally made a connection he could cross, but it was going to take him five bloody minutes out of his way; should he wait for the next one?--

"So this time, it'll look exactly the way it did back then: full of evidence it was Gryffindor, but we're counting on it to look too obvious because of the history, and they'll all be looking for other clues, and then they'll have Malfoy, whose whereabouts no one'll be able to verify! Not bad, eh?"

Malfoy! Oh, Ron, you prick! Dumbledore, you conniving PILLOCK! WHY didn't you let me tell any of them?

"Just wish you could be there with us, Harry-mate. But you're off having that detention with Filch, and truth be told, you'd stop us from doing this one anyway. Just like we had to keep it from Hermione; she wouldn't think it funny by half. But it's going to serve the git right, it will. HIS fault for teaching us about invisibility potions this term, ha ha!

"Oh, and don't worry about us leaving this letter for you to find when you get back-- it's spelled so that if anybody but you tries to read it, it self-destructs. And as soon as YOU'VE finished reading it, it'll do the same thing.

"Creevey's getting a picture, don't worry! See you later--

"Ron & Conspirators. Five, four, three, two, one..." Poof.

A suit of armor lifted its visor in surprise as Harry barreled past it, saying, "Are we having a fire drill?" in a rather high-pitched, tremulous voice. He didn't answer, already halfway down the corridor.

Why, WHY had Dumbledore insisted his training sessions had to be kept secret? From even his best friends! They could have HELPED him! It was so bloody HARD having no one to share these secrets with! Oh, right, Dumbledore knew. Lupin knew. Snape knew, because they were the ones giving him the separate tutoring. And of course, Malfoy, but he didn't bloody count. You couldn't talk to Malfoy.

And Snape was the one giving Harry the bloody excuse of detention at least twice a week, so that he could spend the hours with one of the aforementioned professors without his friends growing suspicious.

Malfoy didn't need such a complicated excuse, but then, he didn't have friends. He had minions, and if he wanted to tell them to bugger off for a few hours, or give them some lame excuse like feeling under the weather, that was all he needed to do.

Harry still couldn't believe that Dumbledore had decided that Malfoy was redeemable. Harry didn't care how powerful Malfoy was proving to be; his only redeeming factor, in Harry's opinion, was one with which he hoped Dumbledore had no experience.

Because that was just too revolting to contemplate.

And he and Malfoy had both been with Lupin tonight (not, as his detention had stated, Filch), refining their responses to higher-order hexes.

Which Snape knew, of course.

Ron, you hapless, well-meaning WANKER!

The dungeons. Almost there.

He should have told them anyway. Told Dumbledore the secrecy thing was bollocks, he needed someone else to vent his fears with. And no, he and Malfoy never talked about any such thing when they were alone together.

Malfoy didn't use his mouth for talking much during those times anyway.

So, since he couldn't talk to the boy he was... practicing physical relaxation with (yeah, that was a good way of putting it), and he couldn't talk to Ron, and Hermione kept trying to take up a lot of Lupin's spare time (she said it was for extra credit work; yeah, he'd just bet. Funny how she kept getting crushes on Dark Arts teachers. Well, okay, not Moody or Quirell. Just half of them, then.), that had left Snape.

And you couldn't talk to Snape either.

Oh, you could get talked at. Snape talked at him a lot. About how he didn't deserve this kind of special treatment. Didn't appreciate it. Still expected everything to be handed to him like a Quidditch trophy.

Special treatment his arse.

Harry had learned, very early on, that trying to explain (mouthing off, Snape called it) didn't make the tirade stop. It earned him more of the same.

Which didn't mean that Harry had chosen to curb that mouth of his.

No, Snape didn't like him.

But that didn't mean he deserved the kind of treatment "Ron and Conspirators" had planned.

It can't be too late, Harry thought. I can stop them. I HAVE to stop them. Snape knows Malfoy couldn't have done it! And that'll mean...

The door to the potions classroom, behind which room lay Snape's quarters, was slightly ajar. Harry didn't bother to knock.

Belatedly he realized that he could have brought his Invisibility Cloak. If he WAS too late, he could simply leave without anyone realizing he'd been there. Too late to worry about that now. He threw the door open.

Oh, bugger.

Yes, he DEFINITELY should have remembered to wear the invisibility cloak.

Harry spared a moment to be impressed, despite himself, at how accurately the Gryffindors had recreated the prank Sirius had described.

And then all such thoughts crumbled. Oh, they were doomed. Snape was going to figure it out. Surely he'd already figured it out.

Certainly, Harry thought, Snape's brain was working just FINE, what with all the blood that had to be rushing to it in that position.

"Professor?" he croaked. Never, never again going ANYWHERE without that Invisibility Cloak...

Snape just looked at him.

He didn't even waste a glare on him.

It was remarkable how much Snape could communicate with just a cool stare, even with the lower half of his face obscured by a gag, and that stare coming from an upside-down position, dangling, as he was, from the chandelier.

Oh, they were in SUCH trouble.

Now, some of it, Snape just might be able to understand, in the name of school house pranks.

Tied up, hanging upside-down from the ceiling was fairly standard fare for loathed professors. Stripped to his socks? Only to be expected. (Blue-and-yellow argyle Tommy Hilfiger socks, Harry noted with just a bit of surprise. He'd had no idea.) The red-and-gold paint, spelling out GRYFFINDORS RULE on Snape's chest, well, that was nothing personal. (Harry remembered asking Ron what the hell he was doing with two-toned edible flavored body paints, the other night. Ron had muttered and not given him an answer.)

He might even forgive them the goat in the corner, wearing a harnessy- sort of jacket reading SPAWN OF SNAPE, chewing on Snape's costly supply of rampion.

But the graffiti on his desk.

Snape's antique commemorative polished cherrywood desk.

In Neon-Magik (TM) pink paint.

That read, "I'M SECRETLY IN LOVE WITH HARRY POTTER."

No. That, Snape wasn't ever going to forgive.

Terrified to approach, yet more terrified to run away (Voldemort had nothing on a Snape in full wrath), Harry crossed the room (avoiding the goat) and gingerly pulled the gag away from Snape's mouth.

"You--" he choked as though he'd been the one gagged-- "you all right, Professor?"

Snape still kept giving him that cool stare. "Perfect. Couldn't be better."

Harry winced.

"Do you know," Snape said, "that I've always been curious about what it would like to be a bat. In fact, if I'd studied to be an animagus, I thought I might have liked to have had a bat form. Now, however, I find my curiosity... rather blunted."

Oh, god. How was he supposed to pretend that he had nothing to do with all this after charging in here like a ferret on crack? Maybe there was some way to salvage what had happened, try to make Ron's plan work after all.

"Did-- did you see who did this?" Just like a solicitor, as Snape himself had told him, you never ask a witness the question unless you're quite sure that you already know the answer. Ron had said they'd used the invisibility potions.

"Oh, I know who did it."

Um. That hadn't been his question.

"H-how?"

"Believe me, Potter, I know."

"Oh, you don't mean the-- the Gryffindors Rule thing? That's... that's maybe a little obvious, don't you think?"

"Ah. Is that what that says. It's a bit hard to read. When it's upside down. And you're upside down. Hanging FROM THE CEILING. And it's PAINTED ON YOUR CHEST."

"Um...was that a hint?" Harry bleated.

Snape rolled his eyes. "Oh, for fuck's sake."

Hearing profanity coming from Snape like that made Harry bleat again. "Right, I suppose I should just... get you down, right? I mean, that would be the... best thing to do... Okay, I've... got my wand, and I think I can use the... the spell Dumbledore taught me to release bonds... but-- oh, if you, if you fall from there, that wouldn't be... wouldn't be good, I'll just-- maybe I should just... Um, I'm babbling, aren't I?"

Snape's _expression had remained quite fixed during this. "Potter, I have the suspicion I shall have a pleasanter night if you leave now. At least I will be merely hanging here, and not hanging here while I have to listen to your idiot ramblings."

"Right. I mean, no, not right, I mean, I'll-- go about getting you down, properly, then shall I?"

"And this is the hope of the Wizarding World," Snape side to no one in particular. "This, and that nitwit Malfoy. Kill me now, someone, please. It'll be quicker."

Harry was determined not to wince this time. "Look, just-- give it a REST, for a moment! This is a little odd to see, okay?" Absurdly, Harry realized he was blushing. He'd been trying very hard to appear to be paying no attention to that portion of Snape's anatomy; of course, trying not to look at your naked professor's most naked bits was rather like telling yourself you weren't going to think of a house-elf's tea cozy; tea cozies then became all you could think of. Similarly, he'd had a rather graphic gawk at naked Snape. All of naked Snape.

"Let me get something to keep you from falling..." He set about doing it the menial way. Despite all the training the three wizards had been giving Malfoy and him, Harry found his ability to think of a single spell that would cushion Snape's fall had left him.

He decided to push the desk the necessary few feet forward that it would take to put it just below Snape's head, which at least would give the man a shorter distance to be lowered, and would allow Harry to reach most of the way to the chandelier. He winced again as he realized he'd just put the neon-pink Harry-fancying graffiti within even shorter range of Snape's eyesight. Not that he doubted Snape had missed it the first time.

The goat bleated. Harry remembered something about how goats will eat anything, and worried that it was going to start on something else valuable of Snape's in the room... and that made him remember the planted evidence Ron had written of. Pretending he'd just noticed it, he pulled the black swatch of torn fabric away from where it was stuck, next to the door.

"Oh, my," he said, aware that it was probably going to be horribly unconvincing but appalled to realize that it had come out as a sort of yelp. "Look at this. On a nail. Piece of someone's cloak, I ... do believe. Must have been torn from the perpetrator as he fled. Surely you can... oh, god," he broke down, "you're not going to buy a word of this, are you?"

"Not. One. Single. Word."

"B-but this is a Slytherin classic!" Harry knew it was too late, yet something wouldn't let him give up completely. "They did it just this way, back in the 70's, trying to make it look like it was Gryffindor!"

"Potter, your friends were doomed before you showed up. Even invisible, they hadn't the cleverness to remember that every Hogwarts house has its own unique password into the Potions Classroom. I'm quite sure that was Mr. Weasley's voice I heard shouting 'Wollstonecraft' just before that wave of invisible schoolboys crashed into here like some toffee-breathed lynch mob."

Harry sat down miserably and put his head in his hands. "They didn't know! They didn't know the detentions were all an excuse! Dumbledore wouldn't let me tell them! Oh, god...!"

Snape didn't answer. Harry knew any other protests would only seem more and more pathetic. "You're..." He stopped, gulped. "You're going to take off a lot of points from Gryffindor for this, aren't you?"

"ALL of them."

Another wince, despite his resolve. "All of them?"

"All of them. Every single point Gryffindor HAS. Every single point it could possibly EARN. PROACTIVELY. For the REST OF THE YEAR."

Harry turned, aghast. "Can you-- DO that?"

Snape fixed him with a baleful eye.

"Right. Stupid question."

"And don't think you can make me change my mind about it, Potter. I don't care if you leave me here all night, and I know you're still too Gryffindor to do anything to me that's truly despicable, while I'm in this position."

Harry stood. "How do YOU know?" he said, affronted and not quite knowing why.

Again, that look.

Again, Harry's wince.

And then, a thought.

Harry gulped against a throat suddenly gone dry. No. He couldn't...

Yes, he bloody well could. He was never going to get a chance like this again, ever.

How long had he waited for a chance like this?

He focused on looking as pathetic as possible. (He figured he didn't have far to go.)

"Professor... there's really no way to change your mind on that? You're going to take every point from Gryffindor?"

"Believe it, Potter."

"Oh, I do believe you. It's just..."

He walked the few steps necessary to bring him face-to-face with the inverted Snape. And the height of Snape's suspension meant they were, exactly, face-to-face.

"It's just if you mean it... then I guess I finally have nothing to lose, do I?"

And Harry kissed him, full on the mouth.

He had a moment, before Snape demonstrated that he'd processed what was going on, to assess how it felt. He'd imagined it would feel electric, but it was nothing of the sort. It was soft and irresistible and made his knees want to buckle in a way that felt more like a warm fuzzy blanket had been thrown over his head, rather than because of any zinging nerve impulses.

"MMMMPPH!"

Harry pulled back. "Oh. Oh, my. That... Professor, I think I'm going to have to do that again."

"Don't you even think ab-- MMMMPPPPHHH!"

Harry was in a state of supreme bliss. He no longer cared about points, about the exhaustion of the extra training, or about the goat, which was, indeed, trying to eat the scrap of torn cloak he'd dropped on the floor.

He was kissing Snape, at last.

Oh, there had been plenty of reasons to be provoking the man, over the years. Pity that the provocation had never gone quite the way he'd wanted it to.

He'd just have to make up for lost time.

He'd never known how...interesting it was to kiss someone upside down. Both partners got to suck on the other's lower lip at the same time; how perfect was that?

Though Snape wasn't sucking anything just at the moment.

But at least he wasn't biting. Harry broke the kiss again to see the _expression on his face.

It was impressive. And this was Snape he was talking about.

"What in the seven hells are you...DOING, Potter?"

"Well," and Harry grinned for the first time that night, "right now, not kissing you. I'd say that was a real pity, wouldn't you?"

"Are you COMPLETELY insane?"

"For having a crush on you for years? Probably."

"Oh, I get it." Snape's _expression suddenly became an extreme version of his famous sneer. Sort of like sneer-on-Pepper-Up-Potion. "This is the product of your limited little mind to come up with something to appall me, yes? Well, it's NOT going to work, Potter."

Harry blinked.

Then laughed. "You know, Professor, I guess I AM completely dim. You're right. Completely, utterly right. I am an idiot." He leaned closer. "Because that idea never even crossed my mind."

He leaned in and kissed Snape again, this time taking advantage of his professor's slightly open-mouth gape to slide his tongue inside. Oh... that was very odd, though not at all unpleasant: feeling the weight of Snape's tongue falling onto his by virtue of gravity, before Snape quite realized what was happening and tried to pull it away in indignation, but Harry didn't care; he kept exploring the depths of the other man's mouth as if this was a much better way of asking what a person had last eaten: sesame noodles and chocolate, if Harry was any judge.

This time, when Harry gave him his mouth back, Snape finally got around to spluttering. "You have gone completely around the bend, Potter."

"Probably." He brushed his lips over Snape's cheekbone in a light little kiss. "Chalk it up to being a hormonal teenager."

"My ARSE! You're getting enough from that rutting little pretty boy Malfoy, I should think!"

"Malfoy?" Harry shook his head, not caring that Snape knew about that, but caring very much that he understood how things stood between Draco and him. "Malfoy's a boy. His idea of foreplay is to say, 'Sorry, was that too fast?' while he's picking pubic hairs out of his teeth. He's got no sense of art at all. And he's a total bottom. What I want is a man." He licked Snape's mouth. "A man like you."

Snape made a gagging noise, and Harry could tell it had nothing to do with the lick. "Oh, PLEASE."

"Don't tell me you have no idea," Harry said, and he was surprised to find that he could sneer as disdainfully as Snape, when he had the need. "I've had six years of this. Six years of 'How dare you display such cheek, Mr. Potter.' 'You're a pathetic excuse for a wizard, Mr. Potter.' 'Perhaps Mr. Potter would like to tell the class what he finds so amusing. Five points from Gryffindor for such disrespectful behavior.'" Harry got his eyes right on Snape's topsy-turvy gaze. "All delivered in a sultry bedroom inflection that has gotten me hard from the first day I heard it. Believe me, Snape, it's your fault that I'm like this."

"The nerve of you! How dare you imply--"

"Oh, that's good, Snape. That's just the way I like it." He kissed the angry mouth, quickly. "Call me insolent brat."

Once again, completely out of character for him, Snape had been rendered speechless by Harry. Then: "No!"

"Impertinent boy."

"No!"

"All right, then, call me treacle-tart sugar plum."

Snape made a noise like he'd just swallowed a quaffle.

Harry kissed the tip of Snape's long nose. "No, you couldn't say that, could you? And that's fine. That's just the way I like it."

Not waiting for a response, Harry crawled up onto the desk, not caring if the paint on it was still wet or not. He got on his hands and knees directly in front of Snape's dangling form.

"Would you like me in this position, Professor?" Harry smirked. "All that talk of Filch's about 'proper punishment, back in the good old days'... do you know how desperately the thought of that drives me inSANE?" Crouching slightly so he could still look Snape in the eye, he said, "I'll bet it does you too. You'd like that, wouldn't you, giving me some old-fashioned discipline? What would you use, Professor, instead of these silly house point subtractions and wussy little detentions?"

"You have become completely demented."

"What would you use?" Harry repeated softly.

"Stop this RIGHT NOW, Potter."

"Make me."

"Goddammit, Potter, I'm going to thrash you within an inch of--"

Snape stopped. Harry smiled.

"I knew you wouldn't disappoint me, Professor."

Harry got up from his crouch and set his tongue on the red R in the word RULE painted upon Snape's chest. He started licking. Mmm, currant.

"'M sure," he said between licks, as he started to work on the entire slogan, "that you've had just as many fantasies as I have about that sort of thing. Was I in them, Professor? Is that why you think it's such fun to scream at me?" The gold paint had the flavor of buttered toast, oddly. "Did you ever have something specific in mind? Me bent over your desk, for example?"

Snape might have been ready to say something, but just at that moment Harry had begun to tongue his nipple, and now it was his turn to bleat. Harry sighed and nuzzled more firmly. "I'd do it, you know, " he murmured. "Waiting for whatever you decided to pull out of your desk drawer-- I'm thinking a switch or a ruler, what do you say?-- sick with the anticipation, hoping you're going to count the number of whatever it is you're going to inflict on me just so I can hear that incredible voice of yours. Wouldn't you like to do that to me?"

Snape inhaled in a hiss, but still didn't grace Harry's narration with an answer.

"Don't you think I deserve it? Haven't you always? For this... let's see, what would you call it...brazen act, if not anything else? Come on, tell me you want to." He'd almost completely licked the slogan away.

"No!"

Harry wanted to believe he didn't hear real conviction in that word. "Please?"

"Would you ENJOY it?" Snape said between clenched teeth.

"Oh, yes."

"Then NO!"

"But I could pretend NOT to. I could beg and plead, or I could bite my lip and cry and look like I was sucking it up and taking it, like a good little schoolboy..."

"Why, precisely, would a 'good' little schoolboy need disciplining?"

"You're dis-CUSS-ing it!" Harry singsonged joyously. "Oh, good, I knew I was on the right track! Speaking of which..." Rising up on his knees, he clasped his arms about Snape's waist and licked up the man's breastbone and past the pointed end of it to come within an inch of Snape's navel with his tongue. And in this position, that wasn't far at all from...

Oh, he wasn't going to stop now. No way.

"You know something, Professor, I always imagined--"

"So help me, Potter," Snape snarled, "if you make ONE pun involving the word 'hung,' not only will I scream rape so loud that it'll bring half the castle, but as soon as I get the chance I will jam that broomstick of yours so far up your fundament that even Accio won't get it out!"

Oh. "So. You mean you... weren't planning to scream rape otherwise?" said Harry happily.

"I most certainly--"

Snape didn't get farther than that with that sentence. And Harry also had nothing further to say just at that moment, as he showed Snape that he did, after all, understand some Latin terms quite well.

Snape, in turn, showed Harry that his use of profanity wasn't that rare a thing after all. "Fuck...!"

Harry hummed contentedly, mouth around six inches of Snape's rapidly-engorging flesh. Yes, this was quite different in this position as well. He couldn't use his tongue quite so easily on the underside. So he improvised as best he could.

Snape got back a little more articulation. "Of all the unmitigated--! You presumptuous--! Son of a BITCH!" he degenerated again. "Potter, you ballsy little fuck, I'll have you drawn and quartered for this!"

Harry didn't answer. Unless rapid little licks counted as an answer.

Snape tried again: "Do you honestly think I'll let you get AWAY with this?"

And a minute later: "I shan't forget this, OR forgive!"

And a minute later: "You lamentable numbskull, haven't you EVER done this before?"

And a minute later: "Mind the TEETH!"

And yet a minute more, said very hoarsely, "Dear god, DON'T stop doing that."

*****

"ALL of them?" squealed Ron in dismay.

"All of them," said Harry morosely.

"B-but the cloak! The-the obviousness of the Gryffindor theme! Snape wouldn't possibly believe--"

"Oh, sod off, Ron." Harry said. "It was a STUPID plan. And you cost us the House Cup for it. We can win all the Quidditch matches we have, and you and I and Hermione can whip Voldemort's arse at the end of the year again and have Dumbledore try to single us out for it-- which, if you think about it, is really perverse: 'Nice job at not being killed, kids, here's a bunch of points'-- and it won't make any bloody difference. Gryffindor's total House points at the end of the year will stand at zero."

Ron looked at Harry with the sort of large-eyed, small-mouthed _expression he hadn't made since he was twelve. "I'm sorry, Harry. We-- I was just trying to stick up for you. Well... and get Snape. Bugger deserved it."

Harry exhaled heavily, ran a hand through his hair. "I know, Ron. Look, let's just not talk about it anymore."

"You still going to talk to me?"

"Don't be a git."

Ron exhaled in the same heavy way.

"So," he said after a few moments of silence. "You want to study with me and Hermione tonight."

"Can't," Harry said. "Detention."

"Wh-- from Snape?" said Ron, eyes wide.

"Yup. The first of a series."

"B-but that's not fair! You didn't do anything! It was--"

"Ron." Ron stopped at the hardness of Harry's tone. "Don't."

After a moment, Ron swallowed, and nodded. "Who with?"

"Who do you think?"

"Aw, hell, Harry, I-- I'm sorry."

Harry had to bite back the Don't be that wanted to escape. He'd never looked forward to anything so much in his life.

Particularly since Snape had promised him that a ruler and a switch would be only the beginning.

-fin