the marriage stone (Discontinued)

Chapter 55 - Legal Maneuvers

And if he was ruling out marriage as a deterrent, he supposed he'd have to consider the two Vectors - Professor Vector was very attractive, and her husband, who worked at Gringotts, equally so. Either one of them could be a possibility. Or both. . .though Harry had a hard time getting his mind around that concept. There was a rumor floating around Gryffindor Tower about someone in Hufflepuff being involved in a threesome, but most of the students had dismissed it as hearsay - how likely was that for a Hufflepuff?

Regardless, Harry had not yet seen any behavior that would lead him to believe that Severus had any interest in his fellow professors. And he was never around anyone else - except on Hogsmeade weekends.

Harry no longer went to Hogsmeade, not since the day he'd been attack so many months ago. The risk was too great - and with the press always lying in wait for him, it would be pointless to go. The only time he even stepped outside Hogwart's wards these days was for his weekly Apparating lessons, but those were done under the strict supervision of several trustworthy Aurors.

Severus, however, often left the castle on the weekends to go down to the village. Harry supposed it was entirely possible that he was meeting someone there. Either way, he was certainly being discreet about it - which had probably been the whole point Severus had been trying to make when he'd accused Harry of carrying on Lavender and Parvati.

Not that he cared of course.

He didn't.

Severus could do whatever he wanted. The fact that the thought twisted something inside Harry's stomach and made him want to kick things was completely coincidental. He didn't care at all what Severus chose to do in his private life - as long as he was discreet about it. Harry thought he was being very mature about the whole thing - stupid Slytherin!

If Severus had just answered his dumb question, he wouldn't be left wondering about such things. Not that he was going to ask again - how humiliating had that been! 'Are you having sex?' He wanted to hide in shame every time he thought about that moment.

Stupid Slytherin! The man never should have kissed him. If he hadn't kissed him, Harry wouldn't be wondering about any of this. Certainly those disturbing dreams he'd been having would not now be featuring the distinctive form of Severus Snape instead of some nameless, faceless man who'd been far easier to accept. And sword lessons had been hard enough before the incident - now they were fraught with new traps and pitfalls as he wondered each time the man touched him if there was something more behind the contact. Life would be far simpler if he could go back to the way things were before when the two of them simply hated each other - except he rather liked the idea of belonging to a family and was finding the idea of ever giving that up less and less appealing.

Stupid Slytherin!

"What are you thinking about, Harry?" Sirius voice caught him off guard and he looked up to find both Sirius and Remus staring at him curiously. "You're glaring awfully hard at your shoes. Did they do something awful?"

Harry blushed. "No, of course not," he said quickly. "I was just thinking about. . ."

"About?" Sirius prompted. "Homework? Detention? Flobberworms?"

"Summer!" Harry said, surprising both of them. "What am I going to do this summer?"

Sirius frowned at that. "Most students look forward to summer."

"I meant am I going to be going back to the Dursleys?" It was actually something Harry had thought a lot about - and considering the direction his thoughts had been going lately, it was a concern. What did Severus do during the summers? Did he hurry off to some exotic location and have affairs with mysterious people?