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Soft the falling dew at twilight;
Ghostly the whiteness of the Lilies.
Brave the brightness of the Moon
Striking splendour in my soul.
Gentle the fingers of the night wind
Stroking strands of my moon-silver hair.
The scent of Lilies caresses my face
With the sweetness of Eden’s breath.
Passionate the memory of your mouth
Covering my own in the moonlight.
In this dreamy paleness of reality
I float on my awareness of you –
Alive from your pervading presence
Surrounding me in sacred shadows;
Gracing my being with such divinity.

'The Dreamy Paleness of Reality' by Annie Johnson

(Breathe in…)

The scent stopped him in his tracks, right there in the dingy little cobbled street.

Harry had been walking aimlessly, trying to find himself by getting lost.

He took a breath in - and suddenly he was not in York, in a tiny back street in the Shambles - he was back there, in the forest again. Harry stumbled, the hem of his red cloak swirling in the slush, as a long-fingered and invisible hand gripped his throat... He was standing in a forest of ghosts; the trees made from ripples of dark vapour, coiling into each other and smoking ominously.

(‘I want to be kissed,’ he thought, achingly.)

The scent was familiar - yet not comforting. Not the scent of home, nor of a past lover, nor of happy memories from years gone by… Instead, there was just uneasiness. The same as he felt when an unknown spell was cast: the tensing of his shoulders, waiting for the effects to unleash, or unmask, themselves…

And yet, nothing happened.

All that lingered here, in the tiny cobbled street at twilight, was the scent of woodsmoke, a spice, and… lilies.

He breathed in again, cautiously - and he was following the silver doe through the trees again, as he had a hundred times in his dreams. Watching it vaporising into the night air even as it picked its way over the uneven ground on spindly legs. Trying to walk, even as it was dissolving. He watched the corporeal mist evaporate into the watery light of the moon, and felt its loss again, as he had on those hundred nights. As if his heart had been replaced by a ghost. The haunted heart.

(‘What does a patronus smell like?’ The thought came, unbidden, to his mind.)

He looked around. He was in a clearing in the midnight forest. Mist shrouded the ground, rising in a circle all around him. The centre of a ritual site. He was being watched from the dark trees; the forest was too silent -

Then: he was back in his body in a rush, and the far-off sounds of the old streets of York city centre assailed him again - bustling, cars honking, people walking by, chattering and laughing.

(Breathe out…)

Harry wiped away a tear - then blinked rapidly, shocked to be crying in the open air. 

He glanced around, but the street was empty, and the shop windows had all gone dark. The uneasiness still lingered, like the smoky tendrils of a nightmare. He pulled his cloak tightly around him, reaching for his wand.

Had he just been cursed? Where had the strange scent, and this sadness come from; as though a dark veil had been dropped over his face, or an incorporeal cloak of moonlight, mournful and pale? That scent had told him a fairytale, with the wickedest twist at the end…

He turned.

The display window of the dingy shop, tucked into the wall, (as though it had stubbornly wedged itself in there, next to the butcher) glowed with an unearthly and spectral light.

Harry’s eyes widened.

He could see…

But how was this possible?

There was a patronus there, flickering behind the glass… Had he not just thought of the silver doe?

As Harry approached, mesmerised… he realised that it was not a patronus at all. The haunting display was just a collection of beautiful crystalline bottles, poised in mid-air. Shifting and floating, charmed to glint and glisten in the low light, they drifted into the shape of a doe… before gliding apart again. 

An eerie illusion then, nothing more.

Harry looked up, searching for the name of the shop. 

‘The Dark Artiste’.

He pursed his lips, pushed open the door - and Harry was a haunted house again.

Scent called unbidden and abortive memories to fill the desolate hallways of his mind. The walls held scratch marks, left after beautiful nightmares. A strange sentient sadness pervaded every room - standing in the kitchen; sitting at the table, beautiful and terrible. Like a spectre visiting, the morning after a death.

And, all the while, the scent of lilies lingered. 

He became suspicious even of the air. Creeping into his lungs; this airborne sadness. Haunted lungs.

(Breathe in…)

The shop interior was shrouded in gloom. As though, beyond the door, it was always night inside. Bottles glittered in the cramped alcoves and lined the shelves. The walls were covered in a strange paper that rippled and gleamed. Harry lifted a hand to feel the texture. Scales. 

“Weird decorating scheme,” he muttered.

He paused by a display table covered in mosses and fallen flowers. From the moss arose small velvet pillars, and upon those sat lacquered perfume bottles with jewelled stoppers. Harry lifted his hand to touch a bottle…

A tall man with long dark hair came through a doorway at the back of the shop. His black robes flowed like smoke around his body. He saw Harry, and stopped dead. 

Harry suddenly thought that he could smell… cinnamon? Cardamom? What was that?

Severus Snape stared at Harry with a wide-eyed look that made him appear slightly demented. Then, he let out a sigh.

(Breathe out…)

“Potter.” Snape spoke the name as one would utter a curse.

“Hullo, Snape. Are you going to kiss me now?” Harry said - then clapped his hand over his own mouth in horror.

Snape froze too. His black eyes glittered.

“Are you asking me that in your official capacity, Auror Potter?” he said, smokily.

Harry blinked.

“I don’t… know why I said that,” he muttered, face flaming. “How… long have you had this new place here in York, then?”

“A scant few months.”

Harry looked around at the rows of perfume bottles as the sconces burnt low. Snape was standing behind the counter, dour and saturnine, as ever.

“I thought myself sufficiently well hidden, this time. Clearly I was mistaken,” Snape added, his voice a soft growl.

“I’d know that scent anywhere.”

Snape’s lips quirked.

“Which scent, Potter?”

Harry paused.

“I’m not sure… The scent of your perfumes? You gave yourself away with the doe window display, too. I didn’t think you could do much magic?”

“I paid for the levitation charm - that’s hardly a crime, Potter! And that doe requires very… intimate knowledge about me in order to be revealing.”

“I think I have quite intimate knowledge of you,” Harry said, staring at him.

Snape’s cheeks mottled with ugly pink this time, and his thin lips twitched, but he made no comment.

“Aren’t you going to lock the door, now that I’m here?” Harry demanded. “You usually do.”

“What, exactly, are you investigating this time, Auror?” Snape hissed.

“Illicit activity. Yours, obviously.”

“And what illicit activity have I done now?”

“That remains to be seen, Snape. Still making perfumes, then? Not thought of going back to potions?”

“As you are aware, my magical abilities are deficient these days, which prevents me from completing most potions,” Snape snapped. “The similarities between Perfumery and Potions-making, however, are endless. The alchemical transformation of raw ingredients into a blend possessing an ephemeral power. The caress of a perfume, capturing the true essence of the subject - a seduction as powerful as a spell. A proper scent will last days, if left on the skin, and a beautiful blend can -”

“Bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses?” Harry supplied, helpfully.

Snape’s expression soured.

Harry smiled.

“I remember that loving caress in your voice from the way you used to lecture on about torture in our Defence lessons.”

Snape smirked at him through the gloom; a spider just sitting in its web, biding its time. He looked more gaunt and tired than Harry remembered.

“Ah, yes. Most delightful.”

“I’m going to need to look at your stock,” Harry said sternly, in the hope he might be able to wrestle back some authority. But Snape just rolled his eyes.

“Aren’t you just fresh out of training at twenty-four? How will you detect any evidence of illicit activity here - have the nose for it, do you? An understanding of Head, Heart, and darker Base notes? The knowledge of how to create a formula, a chord, which blends into a scent as… elusive as a ghostly nocturne? You certainly smell like an expert, Potter. What you are currently wearing stinks - like the bottle I keep behind the till for unwanted customers. It has the same compounds as… well. Needless to say, once I spray it, they leave.”

“I think it’s eau de toilette?” Harry muttered, sniffing his cloak. “What’s wrong with it?”

“You might as well spray yourself with p -” Snape broke off, sneering. “But let us not be vulgar tonight.”

“I use the same old thing I’ve had since Hogwarts. It makes me feel… It smells like home,” Harry said, defensively. “Your perfumes certainly smell like no home I’ve ever lived in.”

“My scents also do nothing but evoke a few memories, Auror Potter.”

“I…” Harry trailed off. “I noticed. Did you… How did you put all those memories into my head?”

Snape smirked at him.

“Did you enjoy a chance to reminisce? I put nothing into your head, Potter. Two people could never smell the same scent and summon up the same memory. Perfume is but an illusion; a hand holding up a mirror. I could bottle a scent that transports one wearer to an evening of enchantment that they last experienced fifty years ago - and another to the depths of despair. The breath of god, or the stench of hell. It is all... in the mind.”

“Whatever it was that I smelled, it… made me sad.”

“That is hardly my fault. Look to your own past for an explanation.”

Harry bit back a retort and, his teeth pressed hard into his own tongue, he peered suspiciously at Snape’s shelves, scanning the precisely-arranged rows of dark glass bottles. 

He did not hear Snape walk over to him - but he knew when Snape was right behind him, because his skin prickled with cold as he heard Snape breathe in…

“Thought you didn’t like the scent of my cologne,” Harry murmured, not turning around. He knew - Snape would be only a few inches behind him.

“I don’t. But the scent of you… It is as I remember. My offer still stands.”

“For a bespoke fragrance?” Harry said carefully, trying not to shiver.

He heard Snape purr softly in assent.

“Something more fitting for you than this, Potter.”

Harry swallowed, hard.

“Why don’t I just… buy one of these?” he said, shakily.

Snape put his hands on the shelves, on either side of Harry, his thin fingers spread. 

Were Harry to turn around, he would be trapped in Snape’s stiff, frosty embrace. He tried not to move; tried to resist the urge to smell whatever dark and enticing fragrance it was that Snape himself wore. Tried not to breathe at all, to clear his lungs of every strange scent that might be clouding his mind -

(Breathe out…)

“One of these? My ‘Venom Collection’ is reasonably popular - you have seen that range before, on a previous visit. I am also working on a small series inspired by plants with thorns. But roses are not your scent,” Snape murmured, into Harry’s ear.

“They a-arent?” Harry whispered, still trying to stop himself from shivering.

“Not for you, Potter. Something more… earthen. Animal.” Harry could hear Snape’s tongue curl as he savoured the word.

“Do you use poisonous flowers in perfume?” he asked, trying to concentrate with Snape hovering right behind him, and this strange chill that had come over his skin.

The glass bottles of ‘Venom’ perfume were all shaped like fangs. They glinted in the low light. A fatal, toothy smile.

“What would be the point, unless they had an appealing scent?” 

“It would make sense for poisonous flowers to smell good, wouldn’t it? To lure in their… prey,” Harry finished, weakly. 

“Ah. Don’t you find that… deeply romantic? Luring a lover in with a kiss of death?” Snape asked him, his voice low and ghastly.

“I think your definition of the word ‘romantic’ has gone askew, somewhere…” Harry muttered.

Then he noticed the labels on the next shelf.

“Unforgivable Perfumes? What are these, they’re new?” He picked up a bottle made of purple glass.“What’s this?”

“Imperio,” Snape breathed, into Harry’s left ear - and Harry tensed, waiting for…

But nothing happened. It was not a spell, after all. Just a word.

Harry laughed, but it came out a thin, watery sound.

“I was expecting you to sell more… You know, along the lines of ‘Amortentia’, perhaps? Perfumes that smell like the person you, I… lo-love.” Harry stumbled over the word, blushing, irritated with himself for becoming so flustered when it was just Snape. And why was he so chilled, all of a sudden?

“That would surely become rather confusing, would it not? I, for example, would wear a perfume that would smell to me like my lover, only for my lover to smell it - and it smell of, one would hope, me?” 

The way Snape whispered ‘my lover’ made the hairs on the back of Harry’s neck stand on end.

“Your lover likes the smell of Crucio in the morning?” he chuckled, weakly.

“It’s a hypothetical situation, Potter.”

“Just as well. Crucio doesn’t have its own smell.”

“No?”

“Of course not. Magic doesn’t have scent.”

(He heard Snape take a deep breath in…)

“Everything has scent, Potter,” Snape whispered. “Doesn’t a hex possess that spark, that frisson of power, of ignition when it leaves the skin and hits the air? Spark, flame, and ash, in one? Are not all wizards accompanied by the raw scent of base power, metallic and… bloody?”

(Harry breathed out, shuddering…)

To compose himself, he picked up a skull-shaped bottle labelled Morsmordre and studied it closely.

“So… you say they only stir up old memories, but these perfumes must have magical properties, too?” 

“Why would you think that?’ Snape asked, softly.

“Because they’re inspired by curses, and if you say curses have scent, then someone must have cast the curses to… But how could you capture the scent? It’s impossible,” Harry demanded. He turned around - but Snape was still right there, scant inches away from Harry's face.

Harry shivered, chilled to his bones, and lifted his mouth for a kiss as though on instinct... A hand clasped his chin, cruel fingers gripping his jaw.

“Going to arrest me, Potter, because I stuck the label ‘Crucio’ on a glass bottle?” Snape sneered. Their lips were only inches apart. Harry was so cold that… he started trembling.

He pushed Snape away with rough hands.

“So these aren’t the scents of the actual curses? Did you just make up the fragrances? Who wants to smell like Crucio anyway?” Harry sneered.

Snape merely smirked at him.

“Have you smelled it?” he asked, silkily.

“Of course not.”

“Why don’t you try it?” Snape asked, nonchalant, turning to the shelf to select a bottle that looked like it was twisted in pain.

Harry swallowed.

“Is it safe?” he whispered.

Snape raised one black eyebrow.

“When has that ever deterred you, Mr Potter? A little danger?”

Harry smirked, and his green eyes sparkled for a moment in reply.

“Spray me with something, then,” he breathed. “Perhaps one of these will end up being my new scent… although I somehow doubt it.”

“You may read about it, before you smell. I provide a brief description, for the uninitiated," Snape said prissily, and handed Harry a small, black card with pale lettering.

Snape removed the lid from the twisted bottle. He sprayed the perfume, with precision, onto a thin black card strip. Despite himself, Harry flinched, suddenly braced for the electric agony of Crucio… Snape snorted, glancing at him with those dark eyes, and merely waved the strip dismissively in the air, as though holding a wand. 

Then he lazily held it out to Harry. 

Harry… hesitated.

“It’s already in the air, Potter,” Snape whispered, mockingly.

Harry bent forward.

“Surprisingly floral,” Harry said. “I was expecting…”

“Pain. Yes,” Snape said, dark eyes glowing. “Breathe it in properly, boy!”

(Breathe in…)

“The Cruciatus Curse has been cast on me several times,” Harry said, his head spinning with the strong, dark, alcoholic fragrance. “But the body has no memory of pain, they say.”

“Nonsense,” Snape snorted. “Why do we flinch away when someone goes to cut us, then? The body remembers, and carries the lingering aftershocks of severe pain for years, as its own kind of trauma. The body and the mind must be healed as one.”

“I didn’t feel pain, the second time,” Harry said. “The Elder Wand refused to do it.”

Then, he had a memory - the Graveyard at Little Hangleton, overgrown with fetid moss and dying ivy and bare trees. The mausoleums. The catacombs. The slumped headstones. The Angel of Death, staring down at him from beneath its dark hood, like a Dementor... Harry groaned.

The scent dissipated. The memory... faded.

"That smells... I don't like it at all. How are you doing that?"

Snape was watching him, eyes hooded.

“This is definitely not your scent,” he snapped. “Perhaps you’ll… try another?” 

Harry lifted his eyes in defiance. His curse-green gaze met Snape’s unfathomable black one, and the contagious spark of a challenge there. As if the two of them were engaged in some strange sado-masochistic game…

(Breathe out…)

“Yes. Another,” Harry demanded.

Harry took the card strip from Snape - the memory ricocheted through him and was gone, like an echo: Draco Malfoy.

Dripping water, turning red, splattered with blood. The perfume itself was nothing like the scent of dank bathroom and coppery blood, the tang of rust and the soft whimpers of -

Harry shook himself.

“You know what my memory was, just then?”

“I do. Definitely not your scent.”

“Another,” Harry snapped.

“This one I’m not so worried about,” Harry said. “I’ve never suffered the full effects of Imperio.”

“You are fortunate,” Snape said, spraying the perfume onto a black strip and presenting it to Harry.

(Breathe in…)

The scent itself was subtle, gentle. Like a ghostly lover’s hand pressed gently to the small of the back… 

Harry looked up at Snape, surprised.

“I was expecting something more… coercive. Stronger.”

Snape shook his head.

“What does it feel like? Being forced to act against your will?” Harry asked softly.

“Imperio isn’t coercion, Potter, it is seduction. The subject believes that they are taking the most alluring path. One is not dragged kicking and screaming through Imperio; one goes freely. Until afterwards, when… one realises.”

Snape looked like he was having a memory of… Harry had no idea. He stood and watched the older man gaze off into an abyss of scent…

They both sighed. Snape’s breath was cold.

(Breathe out…)

“I’m sorry,” Harry said, awkward.

Snape shook himself.

“Another, I think,” he said, his expression grim. He took a bottle off the shelf, sprayed it, then held out the card strip again.

“Is this a jolly one?” Harry smirked.

“I quite like this one,” Harry confessed, breathing in again…

“A call to arms is always sweeter if everyone wants it, yes. The sandalwood is quite rare, it may be that which appeals to you. It is quite dark, earthen. I imagine you would wish to smell more… smoky, spirited, fearless and… dangerous? Rather than, say, fresh and floral?”

Harry paused.

“I’ve never given much thought to how I’d want to smell, really.”

“It also depends on the everyday use of the fragrance. You may not wish to be the same man at work as you are during your… leisure time.”

“Do you wear different perfumes, then?” Harry stared up at Snape, trying to imagine him during his leisure time, open and relaxed… He could imagine only darkness.

“No. I have one signature scent. But we were talking about you, Potter. Who is Harry Potter, in his essence? Or, more importantly, who does he desire to be? Perfume can grant you that.”

“I… fearless, yes.” Harry shivered. The air was heavy with scent, and the strange, erotic tension between them had an alchemy all of its own. Perfumes lingered in the air, swooping, hovering, like they were breathing in ghosts.

Snape quirked an eyebrow at Harry again.

“You want to be, or you are?”

Harry shook his head.

“Neither. Fear exists for a reason. I don’t know what I want to smell like.”

Snape leant towards him - Harry was convinced for a moment that Snape was going to kiss him, and he shivered - but Snape merely took down a bottle from the shelf beside Harry’s head. He held it up to the candlelight. The bottle glinted, something flickering in its depths - as though it had a heartbeat, or an electric charge.

“Are you ready to face your fears, Potter?” Snape asked softy, his tone both a taunt and… a caress.

The bottle in his fingers was a vibrant emerald green, and the putrid lightening-shock colour of it made Harry wince. He already knew what it would contain.

Harry frowned at the words on the notecard. What?

“A perfume with secret ingredients, where you only list ‘floral’ - and named like this… You’re balmy if you think you’re spraying that on me, Snape!”

Snape shook the bottle a little. Sparks of green lightening surged inside.

“Afraid?” he asked, voice low.

“Yes,” Harry said, “and not ashamed to admit it. That’s maturity for you. Spray some on yourself, first.”

“That is unnecessary,” Snape scowled. “It is just fragrance.”

“Are you willing to say its name aloud, though?” Harry demanded. “What if, in using these curses as names, one accidentally worked?”

“You have to have intent to cast a curse, idiot,” Snape said, “and magic. And... hate. Without it, they’re just words, sounds - in the same manner as this is just perfume.”

He sprayed the perfume onto a fresh stick of card, waved it three times through the air, then held it out to Harry, as one presents a flower to a lover…

Harry shook his head.

“I really must spray some on myself, or you won’t?” Snape sneered, eyebrows raised.

Harry shook his head again, his glare flinty. Snape rolled his eyes - then started undoing the buttons of one of his cuffs, rolling the fabric back to reveal his bare wrist. It felt incredibly intimate to even see skin on Snape, let alone the thought of… smelling it.

“What exactly are you afraid of, Potter? Death? You, who has already felt its kiss?”

“I have, and I also know that there are things far worse than death,” Harry said, cautiously.

He watched, mesmerised, as Snape sprayed the perfume once onto his white wrist… A burst of damp liquid hit the skin, then trickled down inside his sleeve.

Snape held his wrist out, and Harry gently took hold of the back of his hand - such cold hands, he thought - and bent to sniff, lightly.

Then he burst out laughing.

“It’s a girly fragrance! It really is florals - you weren’t joking! For the AK? You’re losing the plot, old man.”

“I thought it was an ironic juxtaposition,” Snape said, sourly. “That unexpectedness was its selling point.”

“You’re either a genius, or a lunatic,” Harry nodded. “But then, I’ve always thought that about you.”

“This from the young man too scared to smell a simple perfume.” Snape sneered at him.

“Have you sold many bottles of this?” Harry snorted.

“Yes.”

“To whom?”

“All sorts of people,” Snape said, abstractly, still holding the bottle. Harry watched a tiny flash of green light ricochet around inside it, and the sight chilled him.

“I think I need to see your workroom,” Harry said, coldly.

“To look for what, exactly? Assistants busily cursing the dried flowers? I am alone.”

“There’s more going on with these perfumes. I feel it. Like… weaving a spell. There’s too much potential for mind magic. Show me where you make these, Snape.”

Snape set the bottle down, hard, upon the counter. His face set into impassive rock.

The door to the workroom was behind a dark curtain, which Snape lifted - reluctantly - to allow Harry to precede him.

“My laboratory,” Snape whispered.

The workroom was pristine, in gold and forest green and black; a dark botanist’s paradise. Plants grew, lush and wild, from the walls and hung, dead and desiccated, from the ceiling. It was reminiscent of Snape’s Potions classroom, with oil droppers, graduated flasks, beakers, bronze weighing scales, glass phials with crystal stoppers, and cut-glass bottles in jewelled colours all glinting in murky light. There was an enormous wall of dark shelving, containing row upon row of small drawers.

Harry peered at some of their hand-written labels:

patchouli

vetiver

oak moss

oud wood

citrus

ambergris

bergamot

j asmine

lavender

lily

neroli

rose

“You have a very large collection of ingredients," he muttered.

“The raw materials of a perfume are vital - these drawers hold all my secrets,” Snape said, stiffly.

“I strongly doubt that,” Harry snapped back.

Snape opened a drawer and offered a dark, thin stick to Harry.

“Vanilla?”

“Is it cursed?” Harry demanded.

Snape flung it back into the drawer.

“Idiot.”

“How do you remember what everything smells like?”

“With practice, and skill, Potter. One can identify thousands of different smells; distinguish subtleties, learn to possess an encyclopaedic knowledge of scents. Are you satisfied that it is just a workroom, Potter?”

But Harry was already perusing the other shelves, and had begun opening the doors of the dark cabinets, letting his instinct guide him. Snape let out a squawk of irritation from behind him - a hand clasped Harry’s shoulder roughly, and Harry shuddered -

“Be careful, you little sh -”

“Wait - what on earth?” Harry whispered. He heard Snape growl softly, but the man gave no answer. The cold hand fell away.

Harry looked at the seven little bottles, their coloured glass winking at him in the candlelight: seven deadly jewels.

“'Horcrux Collection, I - VII,’” he said, disbelieving. “What is this?” He turned to look at Snape, questioning. “Whose Horcruxes? Tom’s? You know about all those? Why would you make scents out of them?” he demanded then, more and more riled up with every question, and itching to reach for his wand -

Snape just looked at him dispassionately; a stone statue. A gargoyle, like the Angel of Death from the Graveyard.

“I presume you do not wish to smell them,” he gritted out.

“I want you to explain them, that’s what I want!” Harry snarled, feeling like an explosion, or a simmering cauldron about to boil over - or a curse, the words forming, bitter and acrid, just above the tongue - 

“I have no explanation. They’re just perfumes.”

Harry seized a bottle at random, and pulled off the cap - he held it up, and watched Snape’s left eye twitch. 

“Do these contain part of someone’s soul?” Harry cried. “Is this a way to make sure you live forever; it’s disseminated into the air?”

“Potter, calm down.” 

Snape’s voice, low and grave, in his ear. Snape’s arms around him, strong and steady. Snape’s hand, taking the bottle out of Harry’s trembling fingers. 

“It’s just a scent. Smell it.”

Snape sprayed the perfume into the air, and Harry started trembling, his skin prickling with cold and fear -

(Snape’s chest pressed to his back, Harry breathed in…)

“Blackcurrant?” he whispered. 

Snape nodded.

“Very Ravenclaw.”

“I thought so.”

“The Diadem?”

“Yes.”

“If I had to pick a scent that reminds me of the Diadem, it’d be Fiendfyre,” Harry muttered.

The air was heavy with the rich, fruity scent. Harry’s head was spinning, and his hands shook.

“I have been considering a ‘Dragon’s Breath’ line - possibly the bottles flame when opened… Without evaporating the perfume, obviously…” Snape murmured.

Harry could feel his chest rise and fall, as they breathed in and breathed out…

“It’s just perfume?” Harry whispered. He rested the back of his spinning head against Snape’s shoulder, and Snape held him up, just breathing slowly, calming Harry's racing heart. Snape nodded, looking down at him, his nose in Harry’s hair, and his breath… cold.

“Better now?” Snape asked him, voice low and gentle. Harry shivered as the cold breath danced through his hair.

“Your bottles are nice,” Harry said, dazedly. “Are they all bespoke?”

“Blown by hand, yes.”

“That sounds nice,” Harry muttered to himself.

He heard Snape snort.

“Another?” Harry asked.

“Maybe you’ve had enough, Potter.”

“No. We’re looking for my scent. Another.”

“Nagini,” Harry hissed, breathing the perfume in. “I… This one’s too sickly for me.”

Snape nodded.

“Didn’t you find it too… upsetting to create this scent, Snape?”

“No. It was one of my first. When I slowly began to regain my sense of smell.”

“But didn’t it bring back… memories?”

“I don’t need to remember the attack, Potter. It lives in me all the time. Muscle memory of trauma, as I said. The body is far more sentient than we give it credit for.”

Harry sighed.

“It’s weirdly cathartic, talking about this. Smelling these. Even though I still think you’re…”

“Losing my grip on reality? Possibly. The venom damage was extensive, in all areas,” Snape whispered.

“I guessed that it might be.”

Snape paused.

“I think I need to… show you something, Potter,” he said, and suddenly the chilling, yet… reassuring presence of his body at Harry’s back was gone. Harry was left bereft, swaying slightly, clutching his cloak tighter about himself to ward off the cold.

Snape opened a cabinet at the back of the room, and took out a heavy wooden box.

“These perfumes are sensitive to light,” he said, and opened the lid. 

An ethereal glow shone out of box, as though it contained a minor star, or a tiny, captured sun.

“Sensitive?” Harry murmured, almost blinded, but he stepped closer to peer into the box.

There were two bottles inside, but only one of them was emitting the glow.

“Is that…?” Harry breathed, awestruck.

“Yes,” Snape said, stiffly.

“An Expecto Patronum perfume?” Harry’s mouth fell open as he stared at the beautiful, shimmering glow of the blue glass. A feeling of wonder and peace blossomed open like a lily in his chest at the sight of it - like coming home; like seeing the lights of Hogwarts from all the way across the lake -

“It’s beautiful,” Harry whispered. “Can I try it?”

“You may,” Snape said, softly. "It may... help you."

Harry removed the cap - and a silver mist drifted out of the bottle, luminous in the dim light. 

Suddenly a tiny, silvery doe escaped into the air, dancing weightlessly, swirling around them. Harry reached out to touch it, but she sailed through his hand, a radiant ghost. 

He noticed then that Snape had… backed away, right against the far wall. 

He looked stricken by the sight of the doe, the palms of both his hands pressed flat against the stone wall. 

The doe paused. She turned to look at Snape, and his eyes widened in terror. She approached him, sparkling, on spindly legs, and his face contorted in anticipation of… what? What did Snape fear?

She got to within two feet of him - before vaporising into the air. Harry watched, confused, feeling the familiar pang of loss as the doe faded away. 

(Breathe in…)

“It… smells of… lilies,” Harry choked out, and something inexplicably painful clenched in his chest, before loosening again - opening up once more, the blooming of a ghost flower. He found himself staring longingly at the place where the doe used to be.

Snape was still stuck to the wall. He sagged a little, head bowed. Harry found himself stepping closer to Snape, to the table; to anything real and tangible in this unsettling, haunted place.

“Do you think we ever really get over loss?” Harry asked, softly.

Snape threw him a withering look. He sighed, and it sounded bone-deep.

“You carry nothing with you through this life that you won’t one day lose, Potter. The one certainty is this: nothing lasts. Not even the ones we love.”

Harry let out a soft sigh, too.

(Breathe out…)

“What do you remember when you smell lilies, Snape?”

Snape shook his head: a refusal to speak.

“Did you use a memory of my mum, when you were making this? Is there… Patronus in the perfume, somehow?”

Snape shook his head again.

“Why won’t you talk about it? I’m not angry - I wish I had some way to memorialise the memories that I have, without losing them - either they stay in my head and degrade, or they live in a Pensieve and I never think of them -”

“You should never try to keep anything,” Snape snapped. “If I were trying to preserve something, why would I choose scent, which is gone in a matter of hours?”

“Is that a safer way to relive painful memories: fleetingly? So you know that, soon, they will evaporate and be gone?”

“‘To wear fragrance is to wear an invisible cloak; to take a twilight walk through a beautiful garden.’” Snape said, wistfully. “Or - a place more painful. There is beauty in sadness too, Potter.”

“I know that. I suppose creating perfumes is like a sort of… like a Pensieve?”

“No. Pensieve memories can be viewed by anyone and appear the same. You and I smell this,” Snape said, holding up the bottle from which the doe escaped, “and we both get something completely different. Dark and light.”

“I don’t think we do. I think we both get darkness - we are so similar - wait, what is that?”

Now that the glowing bottle was out of the box, Harry could see the other bottle that had lain beside it. This bottle was jagged and sharp, in green and black glass, and with a skull for a stopper… 

“We’ve done AK already… I can’t think of any other curse that would look so… unwelcoming.”

Snape picked up the bottle in his thin fingers… 

Then, he paused. 

“You don’t need to smell this, Potter,” he said. “This is not your scent. I am telling you.”

“Why not? Let me try it, at least? You attempting to put me off something is only going to make me suspicious, I’m afraid. Where’s best to spray it - here?” Harry asked, lifting the inside of his own wrist; holding it out to Snape.

Snape looked down at the bottle, hesitating again. He stared at Harry’s wrist as though Harry had bared his chest to him, in sacrifice…

“I would rather not,” he said, flatly.

“What happened to ‘they’re just perfumes’?” Harry demanded - and he snatched the perfume bottle from Snape’s grasping fingers.

“Stop,” Snape snapped, reaching for it.

“You realise you’re probably confessing to… some sort of crime, by refusing to let me try it?” Harry said - and Snape’s expression hardened. “What’s this one called?”

Without waiting for Snape’s answer, he held the bottle over his wrist and impulsively pressed the skull. The burst - the caress - of fragrance was strong, heady, and breathtaking -

(Breathe in…)

“NOT HARRY! NOT MY BABY, NO - TAKE ME INSTEAD, SPARE HIM, PLEASE!”

Harry was taken aback - he staggered as his mother’s voice, the voice of a ghost, whistled through him in a caustic vortex, gutting him. He gasped for breath - and he was in the Forbidden Forest again, the tall, forbidding spines of the trees stretching up towards the desolate sky. He knew instantly where he was, even though the forest all looked the same at night: on the path, walking to his own death. He looked around for his mother and father. Instead, there stood the glowing stag and the doe, watching him silently, their bodies dissolving. He stepped towards them - and they bolted, hurtling away between the trees, and he was chasing but they were too fast, they were evaporating before his eyes. He was calling out desperately, his voice barely echoing, smothered by the forest -

Harry choked - then realised that his face was wet with tears.

The scent itself was not foul, but he would have preferred that it were. He felt so raw now, hollowed out and weakened, as though an aching sadness had clasped his face and kissed him, full on the lips…

There were arms around him, and he recognised it now; the scent of cardamom and lily and wood smoke. This was the scent from the street, and it was also -

“This is the perfume that you wear?” Harry whispered. “Why?”

He had to stop himself from burrowing into the scent, so dark and seductive… Harry ripped himself out of the earthen coldness of Snape’s embrace, and stood there, shivering, rubbing his eyes.

“God, how stupid I am,” he spat, wiping his face dry.

“No, it… it should make you cry,” Snape whispered.

Harry glared at him, aching.

“Do you like it?” Snape asked, in wonder, gazing down at Harry penetratingly. “Is this… your scent, too?”

Harry scowled.

“No. You’re seriously trying to tell me there’s no magic in these? What kind of morbid essence have you tried to capture? I was just there, with my mother, I heard her -”

“Scent unlocks memories, Potter. There is a deep well of sadness in you. I never noticed it before.”

Harry backed away, trying not to breathe.

“Tell me what you’re doing with these perfumes,” he whispered. 

Snape tilted his head, studying him.

“It’s just scent,” he finally said, and Harry barked out a bitter laugh.

“Right. Well, I’m going to have to close your shop down. Get it tested for curse exposure - get myself tested for curse exposure.”

“The fuck you will,” Snape snarled.

“What’s the point of these perfumes, Snape? I thought perfumes were for seducing people? Who’s going to be seduced by ‘Dementor’s Kiss’?”

“Haven’t you just been? Crying in my arms, just now? Don’t the cruel names spark that love of the deep dark in you? I could probably fuck you across the floor, right now; isn’t that what you long for? Beautiful sadness, exquisite agony? Should I rename this scent ‘Little Death?’ You strike me as one who becomes mournful after orgasm, Potter.”

Harry stared at him, blinking, repulsed. 

“Do you like that scent, Potter?” Snape whispered, prowling closer, his robes rippling in animated shadows. “It’s the last gasp before the flower dies. A bit of decay. What you’ve picked up on is the indolic note inside the jasmine. There is something magical about a flower, just before it dies. Lilies, in particular, give off this… last breath, where the scent is the most beautiful, and the flowers look their saddest. Like they’re giving you a departing kiss…”

Their mouthes were but a few inches apart.

Snape’s breath was so cold, and there was the scent of him, so bewitching, deep and arcane -

Harry wiped his eyes again. “You’re twisted,” he muttered. “And I thought we were the same, I thought I was answering some romantic call… I thought your darkness and my darkness were cut from the same cloth - but mine is just loss, and yours is made of something more sinister.”

“You think you can leave lights burning in all my dark places, Potter?” Snape growled. He was looking at Harry’s mouth as he spoke.

“I’m going to go,” Harry said, curtly. “I’ll send someone tomorrow for samples of all these, to be sent to my office,” and he took out his wand, casting a spell over Snape’s front door. “Try to trade until we come back… and you’ll be sorry.”

“How long is that going to be? This is my income, Potter.”

“I’ll be back in a couple of days. Maybe,” Harry snapped. When he got to the door, however, he turned. “What is my scent, then, according to you?”

“Ah,” Snape said, eyes blazing. “When you return, I shall have created a personal scent for you. Erotic, earthen, with spice and smoke, perhaps like a… whisper of sweat, or a lingering kiss. Does that sound good, Potter? A perfume is a kiss, after all. One is naked, even fully clothed, without scent,” he hissed.

Harry suddenly felt very naked. He swallowed hard. Snape became serious, then took out a long black quill and began to write. In the gloom, his dark robes appeared to swirl like floating ink, and he looked up at Harry with that intense black stare and it was... disconcerting.

Harry couldn’t stand it any more, and withered under the gaze, and made his escape.

It wasn’t until he burst outside, into the open air, that he felt he could breathe again. And he realised how cold it had been inside Snape’s shop.

(Breathe out…)

-

He got lost on the way home. He couldn’t stop shivering. He Apparated to the wrong place twice, and was so flustered that he walked the last mile home, rather than try magic again. He couldn’t seem to get warm; he ran himself a hot bath and sat in the steaming water, still trembling. He cast warming charms on the water until his skin turned pink, then got out.

He did remember to take a blood sample and place it under a ‘stasis’ charm - common practice after potential exposure to… Harry wasn’t sure what.

Unforgivables? The Dementor’s Kiss? Surely not… 

It was just perfume, as Snape had said.

As the hours wore on, and he sat in his bed, chilled to his core, he wondered what Snape had done to him. He could smell the scent of cardamom and lily all the time, and something burning, acrid and damp and pungent. 

He drifted into sleep, his dreams perfumed by the scent of lilies. 

Hermione woke him, two days later. She fed him soup and sat with him in silence, until he was able to talk again.

“I found Snape’s shop again,” he said, finally.

Ron and Hermione exchanged a look. (Ron had noticed the three jumpers Harry was wearing with a frown.) Then Ron looked away, gazing strangely at the fire, in silence. Hermione worried her bottom lip between her teeth; a new habit, when she was trying not to chastise either of them.

“What?” Harry asked them.

“I thought we agreed you weren’t going to go looking for him, anymore.”

Harry scowled at the side of Ron’s face. His friend was still not looking away from the fire.

“I didn’t go looking - I was in York, on that University case, and I smelled his perfumery from the street -”

“Then why didn’t you walk on past?”

“I can’t walk past, not if I suspect a crime is taking place -”

“How are you feeling? You’re cold again, I can see that. Did he still have the same horrid perfumes based on poisons?”

Harry nodded.

“And some… new ones. He calls them the ‘Unforgivables’. They’re all there. Crucio, Imperio. Even AK.”

Ron did turn then, and he looked concerned.

“What?”

“I still can’t understand what he’s designed them for,” Harry sighed. “It feels like they contain the curses - but I don’t know how it’d even be possible. Curses don’t smell. Magic doesn’t have scent.”

“Well… it could have,” Hermione said, thoughtfully. “Have you never thought that you smell burning?”

“He said that, too. Maybe it does, and we’ve just never noticed?” Harry asked.

Ron frowned.

“I don’t know, Harry. If all magic has a scent, that means his perfumes could contain curses. And worse - it brings up the question of how he’s managed to infuse them with the scent of magic. I thought all his magic was destroyed by Nagini’s venom? Did you at least take samples of the perfumes for testing, this time?”

“Someone should’ve visited him today to get them, I did a request. He can’t trade or anything until I return,” Harry said confidently - but Ron just sighed.

“You always say that!” he snapped, exasperated.

“I had to get out of there, it was so bloody weird - oh! I did take a blood sample after I left his shop! I forgot - Hermione, can you test it now?”

He bolted out of the room, and returned with the red phial.

Hermione took it from Harry’s fingers, unhappily. She peered into the swirling liquid, then shook it, and laid one of her cards flat on Harry’s table, casting a spell. Then she carefully dripped ten droplets of blood onto the card. The droplets sank into the paper, and then… nothing happened.

Hermione cast another spell.

“Nothing?” Harry snapped. “But I’ve potentially been exposed to Crucio, Morsmordre, Imperio, AK, all at the same time - with no trace?”

A single black line appeared on the paper, and Hermione frowned at it.

“The… what? This is positive for… the Dementor’s Kiss? Surely not!” she whispered. “There are no Dementors left! This test is clearly ridiculous, that must be wrong!”

Harry stopped breathing.

“I… the last one…” he gasped. “He did have a perfume called ‘Dementor’s Kiss’! You’re telling me that one… was real?”

“You’ve been exposed to something, Harry. I can’t understand how.”

“It would be an ingenious way to curse someone. Using scent, which is so fleeting, so as to leave little trace,” Ron nodded.

“But why would Snape not just curse you directly? Why do something this… insidious?” Hermione whispered.

“I can tell you why,” Ron muttered. “Bloke’s fucking creepy. Has he truly lost his magic? What if he’s… trying to get it back through other means?”

Hermione nodded.

“And these… pale facsimiles of magic all that he can do? Snape without magic would still be just as lethal.”

“Yeah,” Harry sighed. “I don’t know… Snape is as elusive as one of his scents. Especially since the war.”

“Did he explain at all how he was extracting the scent of the magic?”

“No. He said it wasn’t the scent of the actual magic. I don't know what he’s up to.”

“I don’t like it. How come it’s only you that finds him, Harry?” Ron said.

“Maybe because I recognise the scents, now. They… have this… beautiful sadness, it… speaks to something in me.”

Hermione was looking at him, seriously.

“The Dementor’s Kiss… That’s such a weird name for a perfume. The purpose of The Kiss was to take the soul, Harry. A kiss that extracts the essence of a person, rather than gives or bestows affection, is such a sinister subject to choose… What if… what if, every time you smell the perfume, he takes a little more from you, syphons away… something?” Hermione breathed.

“What? Like my soul? My magic? How would he even do that?” Harry snorted. “Perfumes that make you sad, and steal your magical essence? If he could hear us, he’d start laughing. He said… all that the perfumes did was ‘evoke memories’… Perhaps his perfumes bring the memories to the surface, then the human brain does the rest?”

“Why would he want to do that to anyone? Make people suffer, like that?” Ron snorted.

“Why does Snape do anything: he’s a bitter, angry man,” Harry said. “Maybe that’s what suffering is, to be trapped forever inside our own head?”

Ron just looked at him.

“Yes,” he said. “It probably is.”

“He’s doing something nefarious, anyway, and I’m going to investigate him. Tomorrow.”

“Do you think you should go back? Maybe send someone else? I’m sure I’ve read of a potion that can siphon the magical essence of wizards nearby, you don’t want to risk it -”

“No, it has to be one of us: I don’t know what we’re going to do about explaining some of them. He also had seven perfumes, for all the Horcruxes - Voldemort’s Horcruxes were supposed to be a secret, we can’t let that become common knowledge.”

Hermione was sat up straight.

“Did you smell them all?”

“All what? All his Horcrux perfumes? No.”

“Well, the seventh Horcrux was… you, Harry. So, what does the seventh perfume smell like?”

“I… I didn’t think. I’ve got to go back and find out,” Harry nodded.

“You haven’t,” Ron said. “Please don’t. If you smell ‘Dementor’s Kiss’ ever again, my advice is that you run.”

“It’s just sad memories, Ron,” Harry snapped.

“This is Snape,” Ron snapped. “Everything he does is potentially deadly, even breathing.”

Harry left Hermione pouring through her books, and went home.

He sat in the cold darkness, without even wand-light for company, and watched his breath turn to smoke and mist as it escaped out of his mouth.

He thought about kissing.

In the dream, he had no form, until it finally occurred to him that he… was the perfume.

He was watching Snape’s memorial service, the day when they found out that Snape wasn't actually dead.

First he watched from above, and then...

he was

e  v  e  r  y  w  h  e  r  e . . .

He was the fragrance of the lilies that overflowed from every surface.

Everyone attending had heard the story of Snape and his sad love, and had… sent lilies. Apart from the name, it was ridiculous, of course - lilies were for requited love, not… for men like Snape. Harry saw himself, his arms overflowing with the bulbous white blooms, dripping orange pollen that clung to his fingertips. Of course he too had brought lilies. Of course. The mourning flower. Perhaps the scent of it was burned indelibly into his brain after that day - the perfume so heady it was dizzying; a ghastly, cacophonous choir of scent.

The lily’s lament.

So many lilies. And Snape hadn’t even been dead.

Harry, his arms full, (‘I brought you the flowers from your funeral,’ he didn’t say) staring at the still body of... a living man. He had seen Snape after Nagini's bite, in St Mungo’s, and Harry remembered little except that the room was very dark, and was full of lilies, and that Snape's hand was cold.

When Harry had returned, he was told to his deep consternation that Snape, newly woken up, had gone. As though he had evaporated into thin air. The Mediwitch complained that Snape had been so chilled, despite all her efforts. She had even shed a tear. She looked like she was relieved that he had disappeared. 

Harry stood beside the empty bed.

All that remained in Snape’s room was the scent of lilies.

If Harry had to say when his urge to be kissed by Snape began, that was the moment. 

He awoke with a gasp.

“I’m back for my kiss,” Harry said, as Snape opened the door to him. The sign in the dark window said ‘Closed’. There were no floating bottles today.

Snape stared at him, and Harry blushed again. Snape looked… awful. Exhausted, careworn, his cheeks hollow and gaunt, and with great dark circles under his eyes. Harry still wanted to kiss him.

“You look like shit, Snape. What happened?”

“All this talk of kissing made me unwell,” Snape sneered.

“Been feeling a bit under the weather, myself. But then, that won’t be a surprise to you. Cursing people with perfumes; giving them an ‘invisible cloak’ of unhappy memories to wear. It’s not right.”

Snape stared at him.

“You have not returned purely for your bespoke scent then, Auror Potter?”

Harry shook his head. 

Snape’s eyes flickered towards the door - but he simply pursed his lips and nodded, as though entirely unsurprised.

“You’re not going to disappear, this time,” Harry said. “I’ve seen your full collection. Perfumes inspired by a few poisons are one thing - but horcruxes? The Dementor’s Kiss? You’re potentially a danger to society.”

“They’re just perfumes, Potter.”

“Why am I still feeling sad and cold then, after I saw last you?” Harry demanded.

“Your emotional state is no concern of mine,” Snape snapped.

“I want to know something else, too.”

“I told you, I won’t kiss you, Potter!” Snape sneered at him.

Harry swallowed hard, because he did want that, desperately. But, first, he had to know:

“I… I want to know your choice of scents for the Seventh Horcrux perfume. I can tell from the look on your face, you know that one was me.”

“No,” Snape gasped. “Arrest me, now. This is all just pointless time-wasting.”

“I want to smell it. I want to know how my… essence comes across, to you.”

“Why?” Snape sneered. “It smells of shite, Potter, there.”

Harry stepped closer.

“Show me. Where is it?” he murmured, and Snape stared down at him, momentarily spellbound by Harry’s closeness... 

But Snape stepped back.

“In the workroom - but there are delicate processes happening in there this time, Potter - I’ll not have you interfering.”

“Sorry,” Harry said, unapologetic, and he pushed past Snape through the doorway, and was immediately spellbound by... scent.

(Breathe in...)

Laid out on the long table were wide, flat trays of flowers. The blooms were arranged in fastidious rows, stuck into a white, solidified butter. 

Harry stepped closer, even though from the scent in the room, he already knew.

Lilies. 

There were other flowers, too; hundreds and hundreds of rows of blossoms, pressed painstakingly into the pale, oily butter by precise fingertips. Jasmine, he recognised, but also plants that he was sure were poisonous: hellebore, hemlock, wisteria, henbane, wolfsbane, belladonna -

“This is what you didn’t want me interfering with? What’s happening here?”

“Enfleurage,” Snape said. “A process of extracting scents from flowers. I like the technique, despite its laborious nature, as it… extracts the flower’s ephemeral spirit; its aromatic breath. The soul of the flower.”

Harry looked at the lilies.

“Is it magic?” he whispered.

“In a way,” Snape muttered. “I am… experimenting.”

“I like a man who takes his time,” Harry murmured. “Now, Snape, where’s -”

“Is that supposed to be provocative?” Snape interrupted him, sharply.

“What?”

“‘I like a man who takes his time’,” Snape sneered, his impersonation of Harry high-pitched and sour. 

“You were the one who said ‘hand-blown’, last time,” Harry reminded him.

“I was referring to glass!” Snape said, exasperated.

“So was I.”

Snape rolled his eyes. As he turned away, Harry heard him mutter to himself. 

Then Harry noticed… something else.

In a smaller tray of the white butter, in the corner of the room, was an item that was definitely not a flower. 

“Is that a wand?” Harry asked, bewildered.

Snape said nothing.

“What scent are you trying to extract from that? Whose wand is it? That’s not yours. I thought you couldn’t do magic?” 

Harry peered at the wand. There were tiny tendrils of black smoke leaking from it into the butter... 

“You know your obvious discomfort is an admission of guilt?” Harry snorted.

Snape spun around, incensed.

“You don’t know what my wand looks like, Potter!” he snarled. “Perhaps I burnt it, it's useless to me now!”

“Are you trying to extract the scent of magic, in some way? Dark magic? Have you been caught in the act, Snape?”

Snape shoved him back against the work table, gripping Harry’s robes in his fingers. Harry felt like he had been plunged into cold water; he gasped. His skin chilled almost instantly, and a constricting ghostly fist enclosed long fingers around his heart…

“Do you think it’s possible to extract the scent of magic straight from the skin?” Snape growled. “If magic, like the flower, has a scent, a trace, an echo - how might a man get at the essence, the soul of… what he wants more than any scent on earth?”

Harry lifted his jaw, giving Snape access to his neck - and Snape pushed his nose into the skin, inhaling deeply, even as Harry’s fingers scrabbled at his back, trying to pull him closer - 

The feeling of cold was intense now; Harry breathed out a cold mist, like dragon’s breath; like smoke curling out of his mouth.

“Kiss me,” Harry groaned, and his request broke the spell between them. Snape stilled. Then he stepped back, eyes burning, lips twisted in disgust.

“Why not?” Harry demanded, reaching for him, but Snape moved out of his reach. “You’re the only one who knows how I need to be kissed, I feel it -”

“You don’t think that,” Snape whispered. “It cannot be me, Potter.”

“Why not? I feel like you understand me; we share the same shadows -”

“We do not.”

(Breathe out...)

Harry’s gaze hardened.

“Alright, have it your way. Then I want to smell my Horcrux perfume, now,” Harry snapped.

He watched, heart pounding, as Snape turned away - but, instead of going to the cabinet where the Horcrux perfumes were stored, he stormed over to the back of the room, his black robes billowing. Harry recognised the glowing box with the ethereal light as Snape placed it on the edge of the table.

“Open it,” Snape said, very softly.

“What’s in there?”

“Your perfume.”

“You made something bespoke? For me? When did you make this?”

“Last night.”

"What about my Horcrux perfume?"

"I threw it away. It wasn’t right for you, I know that now. This would be... what I would replace it with."

Harry drifted closer to the box, and opened the lid.

Light flowed out, pouring around him like water, like laughter, like a babbling brook - and he saw Snape step back again, retreating to the rippling shadows on the other side of the room. 

Harry carefully drew out... a beautiful crystal bottle in shimmering blue. It seemed filled with light, and had a topper in the shape of a stag’s head, with proud silver antlers.

Harry paused, his ghost-soaked heart clamouring for relief, looking at the way the bottle glowed with that ethereal light. He felt... less cold. Even the bottle was warm, as though it had been lying in direct sunlight.

“You wrote a description?” he asked.

“No.” Snape voice sounded like it came from beyond the grave.

“Please.”

Snape scowled, but he produced a card from one of the shelves and took up a quill. He paused, the quill poised in his fingers...

Then he wrote something in a rush, and shoved the card roughly into Harry’s fingers, turning away with a face like thunder.

Harry unstoppered the warm bottle, his hands trembling - and out sprang the stag, soaring into the cold air. Delicate, majestic; sparkling with light, like the moon presiding over a frosted landscape. Harry had never felt so comforted before, as he did from the sight of it.

He sprayed the perfume liberally onto his own neck and collarbones, eyes closed...

(Breathe in...)

He took a deep, deep breath… and his vision filled with tears, like crystals flowing from his eyes. Blinded by the ghosts.

Bliss and light and joy flooded though him - kissed him on the lips with a desperate, forlorn passion - please, please, please -

He was back in the forest again, but the trees were white and sparkled, dripping with dancing dewdrops and thawing water, and haloed in sunlight! He was running between them with his hooves barely touching the earth. By his side ran the doe. Smaller, glistening in silver, made more of smoke than light. He was happy, so happy -

“I feel like I’ve been kissed,” Harry said breathlessly, wiping away the tears, and the ghosts that were clinging to his eyelashes like frost. Frosted ghosts. Cobwebbing of ghosts -

Snape would not look at him. His face was twisted with disgust. Instead of looking at the light, he was facing away, into the shadowy darkness. As though he could barely stand to behold it, nor to behold Harry’s happiness.

“You must have done magic here - this has magic in, right? Patronus charm magic? How? I want to know what memories you used to make this,” Harry whispered, giving him a small smile. “It… reminds me of you.”

Snape turned from the shadows then, and just… gaped at him. His thin face, illuminated by the ethereal light, looked pale and haunted.

“You smell this and it reminds you of… me?” he hissed, almost disbelieving.

“I feel so much better,” Harry sighed, spraying more liberally onto his neck and wrists. “Is it like an… antidote to the perfume Dementor’s Kiss? I’ve been hearing my mum again. What have you been doing to me?”

“They’re perfumes, not curses,” Snape repeated, flatly.

“The wand in butter over there says differently,” Harry murmured.

“It’s refined coconut oil, not butter,” Snape corrected him. 

Harry was about to put the stag bottle back into the box, but Snape made a noise of disapproval.

“For you, Potter. I am… glad that it helps,” he said. “May it chase away the darkness during your lonely hours.”

Harry sprayed the scent again, and Snape shuddered. Watching him from the shadows, forbidding and predatory.

“You don’t like it?” Harry asked him, curious.

“It doesn’t agree with me, no.”

Harry stepped closer to him, as though approaching a dark creature, still holding the glowing bottle.

“Your darkness is… I find it soothing. But why don’t you try some of this? It might help you, too. We can have both darkness and light in us - aren't most people made of both?”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Snape hissed, from the shadows. “What if… I am the darkness, Potter?”

“Severus Snape: haunted house. Don’t the ghosts ever get a night off?”

“No. I don’t know where I end and they begin,” Snape told him, hoarsely. “Take the perfume and get out, Potter.”

“I’ll need to confiscate that,” Harry said, pointing to the wand in butter. “Whether it’s yours or not. If I check it for curses cast, what will it show me?”

“I have no idea,” Snape spat.

Harry felt a surge of spitefulness, then.

“I’ll need to take all these too,” he said, waving a hand at the flowers.

“They’re just flowers,” Snape protested, his wild eyes luminous in the dark. “There’s hours of work here. And the raw materials are very expensive.”

“I don’t believe they’re just flowers; nothing with you is ever as it seems,” Harry snapped. “I’ll have my team box it all up, tonight.” He marched over to the flowers and drew his wand, but Snape interposed his body between Harry and the table, snarling down at him.

“Not my workroom,” he ground out. “All my ingredients! It’s all carefully preserved - be reasonable, boy -”

“It’s probably all infused with dark magic,” Harry spat. “Your business needs to be closed down.”

“You’re trying to ruin me because I won’t kiss you,” Snape sneered, and Harry advanced on his angrily, holding the perfume up to spray some onto Snape -

Snape shoved him back: a slap of cold so hard that it made Harry breathless, like being plunged into a glacier lake.

“Physical assault against an Auror, Snape,” Harry gasped out, almost dropping the glowing bottle.

“I’m unarmed,” Snape protested. “A Squib, practically.”

“Sure you are,” Harry sneered. “I believe that in the same manner that I believe your perfumes just made me a bit sad.”

Snape sneered back - then he pushed Harry hard, hurling him backwards into the shelves. Bottles fell to the floor, smashing across the stones. Stunned, Harry groaned, only dimly aware of drawers of dried flowers bursting open, raining petals around him. Were these poisonous flowers? The scents were overpowering - rose, vanilla, lavender, lily, jasmine, oud - and the other scents, the residues of old spells?

(Were all the flowers infused with them? Where did the spells end and the perfumes begin?)

Head spinning, a thousand ghosts all clamouring for a voice, Harry fumbled for his wand.

Snape grabbed him. He ripped Harry’s robes open, his boots crunching on the broken glass as though it were frost.

Harry’s wand was in his hand, but then - a patronus burst into the room, brilliant and bright - Hermione’s Otter! 

Snape cried out in horror - and backed off, covering his face with his cloak.

“Harry, I found you,” the Otter wailed. “There is a potion for siphoning magic, and it contains cardamom -”

Snape darted across the room - and sprayed the patronus with Dementor’s Kiss. The sparkling Otter dissolved instantly, breaking apart and melting away into the air.

Harry cried out, and went to spray Snape again, but Snape was too quick - he snatched away the bottle, and then Harry was being lifted bodily, sharp fingers like talons gripping his shredded cloak. 

He was shoved down across the worktable, dropping his wand - and he was cold again. Cold from Snape’s touch, and also the chill of the solidified oil slicking through his ruined shirt, sticking it to his back. Heart hammering, Harry struggled, sliding about in the lily-scented oil, melting it under the heat of his body. He tried to push himself up, but his hands slipped and smeared him with flower petals; crushing them, releasing the heady scent of lily pollen into his air, sticky and cloying -

“Snape,” Harry groaned, chest heaving, shivering, as Snape picked up a handful of oil with a ‘squelch’ and slapped it onto Harry’s chest, smearing it into the skin.

They stared at each other, Harry’s chest heaving.

(Breathe in…)

“Kiss me!” Harry demanded, but Snape closed his eyes, trying to step back, to extricate himself from Harry’s grasp.

“I can’t…” he groaned.

Harry reached for Snape’s coat, sticky hands smearing oil all over Snape’s buttons as he struggled to undo them. 

“Off,” he growled, and he began to tremble under the icy chill, but he couldn’t stop - and nor, it seemed, could Snape.

Snape unbuckled Harry’s belt and tugged at his zip, then scooped up another handful of oil and petals and smeared in into Harry’s groin - the oil seeped into Harry’s trousers and boxers, and god he was so hard -

His cock was already slick when Snape pulled it out. He tried to get Snape’s ruined coat off, but Snape slapped his hands away and pushed him down. The rest of Harry’s clothing was ripped off, shredded, and he was crushing all the petals with just his body - there was oil in his hair, and the ruin of flowers, and Snape threaded his fingers in and pulled his hair until it hurt.

“What can I do?” Snape demanded.

“A-anything,” Harry groaned, his skin prickling with cold. "If you won't kiss me, then... Anything else."

Snape sucked in a breath through his teeth.

“Careful, saying that to me, Potter,” he said, fathomless black eyes smouldering, portals to the underworld.

“Wreck me, then,” Harry moaned.

Snape’s eyes flashed. He sprayed a perfume onto Harry’s skin, and smirked at Harry’s sudden gasp -

Transported by scent, Harry lay naked upon the table, looking up at the light, which was turning to lilacs and golds. All around him, the flowers were giving off their perfumes, giving up their very essences, as if knowing this was their last chance. And then, there was Snape - Severus - standing in the over him with his arms full of smouldering roses, and his face… His face was blank, ghastly, and his mouth was open, and there was darkness drifting out between his lips like smoke…

Harry groaned, his body smeared down to every last inch with flowers and oil.

Then Snape was biting the inside of his knee. He trailed his oily mouth up the back of Harry’s thigh, then slid his palms up and pushed Harry's knees up to his chest, situating himself between the V of Harry’s legs. Then there was a mouth - oh! Harry groaned as a sharp tongue speared into him.

Harry could only wail brokenly in response.

Snape, his coat ruined with oil and flowers, hooked his forearms underneath Harry’s hips and lifted Harry’s backside towards his face with both arms. Harry ended up with his arse in the air, as Snape brought it towards his face and began eating him out like a man who was starving. Oil dripped into Harry’s eyes as Snape tongued into him, the tip of his tongue around his rim, the flat of his tongue licking all the way from his bollocks up to his tailbone, and then the muscle of his tongue pushing inside Harry like he was fucking him. Harry moaned, starting to shake with cold, but he had never been feasted on as if he were delicious before - his cock was painfully stiff. Snape had a handful of arse cheek in each palm and squeezed, kneading, spreading Harry open wider, pushing his thumbs and fingers in one at a time alongside his tongue. Harry was shivering, and dripping with oil and saliva - 

“If you were mine,” Snape grunted out, “you wouldn’t want to sit down much - from overuse of this,” he added, sticking his tongue back inside Harry.

Harry found himself bent naked over the worktable, his face crushed in the slop of oil and flowers. Snape was currently four fingers and his tongue deep inside Harry’s arsehole.

Then he heard a spell which he hadn’t heard since his school days...

“Wait, what? But that’s magic! How are you doing that? Engor - what?”

“Doesn’t your generation do that before sex?” Snape smirked. “I forgot how tame young people are these days.”

“I… no!” Harry blinked, turning to blink over his shoulder at Snape, who had his trousers open, and was gripping his own swollen erection and smirking. “Wow… Does it wear off?”

“Of course it does, eventually. This size would be extremely… irritating if it were permanent.”

“Not to me… God. It’s so thick. Your generation always was fucking nuts,” Harry snorted, looking appraisingly at it.

“If you’d rather not?” Snape asked, bending forward to lazily smear the head of his fat, engorged cock over Harry’s hole.

“I never said that. Did you extract magic from me to do that, somehow?” Harry groaned, pushing his arse back, his knees parting.

”Do you care?”

”Do I get the magic back?”

”I’ll show you what you do get,” Snape growled. He pushed the smooth nozzle of a bottle carefully into Harry’s hole, squirting oil liberally, directly into him. Harry felt his hole clench as it was removed, and some of the oil trickled down his thigh.

“Don’t push it all out. Clench your arse muscles - while you still can.”

“I wasn’t doing it on purpose,” Harry sniggered. “I asked to get wrecked, didn’t I - just fuck me, you bastard.”

Snape fucked him, and it smelled like lilies.

He felt the undignified squelch as Snape slowly - painfully slowly - pushed his cock in, luxuriating in the oil squirting out and down the backs of Harry’s thighs, smearing it into Harry’s skin with his fingers…

“Ahh,” Harry gasped, trembling. “Are you going to… make a perfume of this?”

Snape pushed in harder, and Harry shivered with cold. Where was his stag bottle? He couldn’t quite reach it, and he was so chilled. He needed the burst of sparkling light again, to counteract the darkness that was spreading through him like venom -

“Take it,” he heard Snape growl, and Harry bit his lip and pushed himself down until Snape's large cock bottomed out inside him. Harry groaned, freezing, cursing, clawing at the flowers. So stretched. He could almost feel the head of Snape’s cock coming out of his mouth, it felt so huge inside him - if he were to come, Harry imagined it spurting out of his own mouth, like a fountain; vomiting out a cascade of lily blossoms.

“Come on,” Harry groaned, teeth chattering, spitting angrily. “Harder, fuck’s sake!”

Soon Harry was on his front, trying to hold himself up with slippery hands as Snape pounded into him mercilessly. Snape was bent over his back, shoving into him with gorgeous long thrusts, so deep and hard, that made Harry’s eyes roll back in his skull… 

“You can… take… quite a pounding,” Snape snarled. 

“Yeah,” Harry panted. “Oh God, your cock feels so enormous...”

“Too late to worry about that now,” Snape grunted.

“Not. Worried. Wreck. Me…” Harry groaned, pushing his arse back, cold to his very bones now and filling up with darkness, almost overflowing - he could see the darkness pouring out of his fingertips and mouth; out of his skin, flowing out all around them like haunted mist…

Harry cried out, his teeth clenched and jaw taut as Snape hammered into him. Snape’s thin fingers dug furrows into Harry’s bare hips. Snape thrust in, hard - and then he was coming, shaking and groaning with spasms of pleasure, gripping Harry’s hips like a vice, fucking Harry ruthlessly; as though this would be the one chance he ever got, as Harry’s body milked him dry… 

Harry knelt there on all fours in the gathering darkness, legs spread, head down, his oily curls hanging around his face as he panted for breath, his arms trembling as they barely held him up…

And then, finally, Severus’ hand was on his cock, and it took only three pulls on Harry’s straining and oily prick before he was coming too. He felt as though his soul was pouring out of his body, pulsing into the mess of oil and flowers and darkness that he was sinking into. He collapsed onto the table, groaning with bliss, his whole body saturated with the scent of the lilies...

Snape’s body, crushing him. 

Snape’s scent, infused with Harry’s now; impossible to tell where Snape’s ended and Harry’s began.

The cold intermingling of their breath…

One of them breathed in…

The other breathed out…

One of them sighed. 

Suddenly, a burst of light - Snape had sprayed Harry with the stag perfume, and the warmth of sunlight was caressing his morbid, chilly flesh. 

Harry, too exhausted to move, lay still, panting with relief. Feeling the sun warming his skin, chasing away the shadows.

(Breathe in… Breathe out…)

Snape pressed his nose into Harry’s hair, and breathed him in, deeply, as though filling his lungs with the scent of Harry.

Harry trembled.

“I think you are my scent,” Harry murmured, eyes still closed.

“I think so, too.” Snape’s voice against his skin - and then he hissed, as though in pain. Harry looked up, to see patches of sunlight smouldering on Snape’s sallow skin - the perfume had burnt him, somehow? Still, Snape did not move away. He just took the pain, and carried on holding Harry tightly.

“Are you trying to siphon my magic using perfume, like Hermione says?” Harry whispered. He could see his cold breath on the air.

“The scent of cardamom, you mean? You are aware that cardamom is an ingredient in transformative potions of all kinds?”

Snape’s arms tightened around him, crushingly. As though Snape was almost trying to pull him inside his body; to nestle Harry next to his heart and lungs, next to the ghosts… Perhaps Snape had been right the other day, when he’d talked about ‘a little death’. 

“What if I want more than your magic, Potter? What if I want your soul? What if I want you in your very essence?” Snape hissed into Harry’s ear, his breath cold and damp on Harry’s neck, clinging to Harry’s frosted skin like ice.

“Is this… you trying to be romantic?” Harry murmured. “It’s quite creepy, you know.”

“You’ve trashed my workroom,” Snape groaned. He released Harry abruptly, as though he had to tear himself away, and stood.

Harry rolled over to watch him. Snape, half-dressed and covered in oil, was looking down at himself. There were patches of white light sizzling on his arms, like burns.

“Are you alright?” Harry asked him. 

Snape scowled, and began to pick his way through the wreckage, looking disgusted.

“Wait - was all that some kind of magic?” Harry demanded, trying to sit up. He looked around at the mess. “Are you going to make perfume out of this?” he asked - and then Snape was at this elbow, holding a steel palette knife and a glass bowl. 

Snape proceeded to scrape the fatty, oily, flowery mixture off Harry’s skin, and slop it into the bowl. 

Harry remained still, even though he had not been asked to. He wondered what he was donating to Snape; whether he would miss it, whatever it was Snape was taking from him. 

Whether it was just scent, after all.

“Will you sell this perfume?” Harry asked.

“No,” Snape hissed. “This… is for me. You had best leave. Use your perfume if you feel too… unsettled, but be frugal. That is the only bottle I will be… able to make for you.” And he retreated into the shadows.

Harry sat up.

“Can’t you make more, if I run out?”

“No. You shouldn’t come back here. You won’t find me again.”

Numbly, Harry got to his feet. He stood there, naked and covered in flowers, shivering.

“Oh, for -” Snape swore, and the next thing Harry knew, his own red cloak was being settled about his shoulders, covering his nakedness. Snape did up the clasp, looking down at him.

“Aren’t you going to kiss me?” Harry asked, eyes luminous, his body still shaking.

“I already have, Potter,” Snape whispered, sadly.

“Not properly. Why won’t you?” Harry pressed, reaching up with his mouth…

“This is the only type of Kiss I can give you, Potter,” Snape hissed, and his cloak whipped up around him, rippling like flowing poison, and his face was changing, becoming more hollow, and his eyes were black holes, and his mouth…

Harry could see the mouth of the Dementor as it leant down to Kiss him… 

And he would have kissed the abyss if he could, sucked up the darkness; connected his mouth to Snape’s and felt the bleak nothingness pouring between them -

He pulled back, horrified.

“You can’t kiss me because… you’re a… you’re a… But how did this happen?” he gasped out.

Snape curled in on himself, in the gloom; a living ghost, a haunting in the shape of a man.

“One found me in the Shack, Potter. That is what they do, is it not? Make others like them,” Snape whispered.

“But… they didn’t… take your soul?”

“Not all of it, no. I still have an amount to cling to, to keep me vaguely human. But all I can create are olfactory expressions of... darkness.”

“So you can’t kiss me on the mouth because -”

“It would steal your mortal soul. Yes.”

Harry stared at him in despair.

“There must be a way to help you - you can’t live like this!”

“There is nothing that anyone can do. I am lucky I was not kissed into madness.”

“But I… why do I feel that strong urge to kiss you? I never felt that with real Dementors!”

“Perhaps… there could have been love there. We shall never know, now. Scent is all I have, in place of love, Potter. The kiss of perfume is the only way I could ever linger on your skin.”

“You touched me, earlier.”

“You are wearing the patronus perfume, I imagine it protects you. And you will suffer for what I have done. You will, I hope, recover. With time.”

Harry reached for him, but Snape retreated so far into the shadows that he almost became them.

Harry went to pick up his glowing perfume bottle, and paused.

“How did you make that, if you are part-Dementor?”

“At great personal cost,” Snape hissed, his voice hoarse and hollow and his eyes blinded with ghosts. “But… it was worth it, to touch you. I will never be able to make another bottle, however. It has… taken too much out of me.”

Harry stared at him, cowering in the shadows, and he felt so cold. He looked down at the stag bottle, at its ethereal glow.

“If I were to cast a patronus, a shield charm… would it protect me enough to be able to kiss you properly?” Harry asked him, suddenly.

Snape stared at him out of the dark abyss.

“It might also finish me off, if there is not enough of my soul left…” he said, softly. Then, he stood. “We shall attempt it.”

“No, no - not if there’s a risk of you not surviving it,” Harry protested.

“It is worth the risk, to me,” Snape scowled. “Cast!”

“I’m not sure I can summon up a happy enough memory to -”

“Cast it now, Potter!” Snape snarled, stepping closer, angry and terrified and terrifying all at once. “If I cannot kiss you, what have I left anyway?” 

Harry stared at him: his dark love, wrapped in shadows, and the darkness he saw was enough to bring forth... light.

“Expecto Patronum,” he gasped out, and his wand glowed white-hot, so hot that he almost dropped it. The stag burst free in blinding light, a white Avada Kedavra - Snape cowered against the wall on sight of it, but there was nowhere to hide, not one shadow left in the room. The stag swallowed them all up, stripped them bare, blasting the room with light, brighter than the stars.

Harry’s shield charm wrapped itself around him like a second skin; glowing with warmth and light, leaving him all aglow, his skin shimmering. Glowing antlers sprung out of his hair, then faded, and he stood there, sparkling with joy and warmth and sunlight.

Snape looked… terrified, as though were beholding the face of death. He was wincing, trying to shield his face, but then he saw Harry, and stood, as though taking his life, his soul, into his hands… 

Snape squared his shoulders and stepped forward, into Harry’s arms, into the ring of light…

(Breathe me in…)

Harry kissed him deeply, breathing in Snape’s scent, absorbing him into every pore, clinging to him as if he could become Snape’s shadow, if only he held on tight enough. Snape pressed his thin lips to Harry’s in a desperate kiss, the kiss of a starving man. The last earthly act of a ghost, to pour the vestiges of their soul into the one thing that they loved…

The kiss went on and on. The air around them dancing and sparkling, their breath shimmering. Harry tried to breathe some of his own soul into Snape; to leave it there, with him… The stag soared around them, glittering on the air, the light making Snape tremble with fear and clutch at Harry, and kiss him with all he could, as though pouring out his own tattered soul, too.

Don’t hurt him! Harry kept thinking, trying to tell the stag, but there were ghosts hiding behind his teeth, and he could not speak. Please don’t hurt him! Why can’t you heal him, instead, please?

There was not an ounce of darkness anywhere, if darkness could be weighed - only the never-ending kiss, and their breathing as one, and the light, the light, the light -

-

When he awoke, Snape was gone. The stag was gone too, and all was dark. The workroom was bare, yet the scent of the lilies still… lingered.

Harry sat up, feelingly oddly disconnected from his body. He had been cleansed by something: his skin was scoured and raw, and every last inch of the oil was gone.

Where was Snape?

There was a sharp mournful cry - ‘Harry!’ - and he turned, shocked at hearing Snape’s voice come out of thin air. 

He fumbled for his wand. 

Also gone.

Was Snape still alive? Had he taken something of Harry’s essence with him - or had he dissolved in light himself?

The room was empty and still; yet Harry could hear strange, ghostly breath, and the crunching of feet on the frozen ground of the Forbidden Forest. The sounds of his parents, walking with Harry to his own death? Harry wiped away a tear, scowling. He tried to summon up the urge to dress himself, but there was a deep sadness permeating everything, and his limbs felt leaden and heavy.

“Some Kiss, Snape,” he groaned. “I still have my soul, though. I think so, anyway.”

He glanced over at the counter. 

The Stag bottle sat there, gleaming in the dim light, lit with its own ghostly glow. 

Had Snape left it for Harry on purpose? Surely he had. He must be alright if he could leave the bottle out for Harry?

Harry seized it in both hands, spraying himself over and over - then he remembered that this one bottle was all he had. 

Still, it brought him some relief - the sounds of ghostly footsteps receded. He could still smell the lingering scents of cardamom, smoke and lily; stronger now, like the perfume was emanating from his very skin, or drifting out of his mouth on his breath, a ghost in the throat… 

What was worse, he still had that overwhelming feeling that he needed to be kissed… Apparently kissing Snape - Severus - had not assuaged it at all. In fact, it was stronger, and more urgent than ever.

Harry sighed, frustrated, frowning as he looked down at his half naked body. 

Where had Severus gone?

He dressed in mournful silence, then looked around the workroom. He found just one other thing: the bottle of ‘Dementor’s Kiss’ still lay in its box. Forgotten? Or... left on purpose?

Harry picked it up, looking at the wicked glint of the sharp glass, and the soulless eyes of the skull. He could spray it, and oh to smell the scent of Severus again, to relive the memories so powerfully - but he would also feel that cold sadness, even more deeply. He could summon back the memory of Severus' kiss... but there would be a price to pay.

(He breathed out.)

“Come back and kiss me, you bastard,” he whispered. “I can join you in the dark sometimes, or help you to live in the light, I know it. We can find some way to be together.”

He was sure that, one day, he and Severus could again have something more tangible of each other than just the lingering, fading scent of woodsmoke, cardamom, and the dying perfume of the lilies.

But until then... 

“Severus,” Harry whispered. A prayer, a spell. A curse.

Harry lifted the bottle of Dementor’s Kiss up to his neck, alive with beautiful sadness and longing. Ghost-hearted, and aching for that kiss...

The hiss of the spray.

The chill, caressing his skin.

The mournful kiss of the lily.

(Breathe in…)

Fin.