Author: Ithilwen C. Malfoy

Rating: PG-13

POV piece: Snape

Summary: Analysis is one of Severus' strengths. And Harry is not handsome or beautiful, nor even pretty

Disclaimer: Characters contained in this story are property of J. K. Rowling, Warner Bros, et al. No infringement of copyright intended, no profit being made.

It is dawn now, and I am awake. You sleep on, and I dare not move lest your eyes open and you begin to talk again with that idiotic, childish mouth. I would rather you use it to breathe, warm and moist against my lips. At least then it cannot lie.

We lie so close that I could count your eyelashes, if I wished. Instead, I make careful study of your face, as if answers are written on your eyelids, and wisdom on the curve of your cheek. You are not handsome. Nor are you beautiful, nor even pretty. You are too young, and too thin, and there are three freckles on the right side of your nose. Your eyelashes lie like smudges of dirt against your cheeks when your eyes are closed. Your hair is too long and unkempt, there are dark hollows beneath your eyes, and the recent break on your nose has healed badly. You are not beautiful. And yet, and yet, you fascinate me.

Once, when you were childish and petulant and I had lost my patience, I asked you how old you were. Remind me of your age, Potter, I snapped, and there was a moment of silence before you replied. I think you too had forgotten that you were still barely more than a child – a child fighting a man's war.

Like a child, you once thought you could hide things from me. You thought I would fail to notice the scowls at Lupin during Order meetings, or the way you tried to persuade him to blame me for Black's death. But I saw, and when you began to watch me, I felt it, too. At first I bore it with indifference – thought it an ill-conceived ruse to unnerve me, or a new manifestation of your hatred – but now, three years later, I find myself uncomfortable without it.

It is ten minutes since the sun rose. Soon I will have to wake you. There is a tiny scar on your chin from a shaving mishap in your seventh year. The one on my index finger is a souvenir of the knife with which you tried to stab me a year earlier. You have since apologised – probably because I thought you foolish for failing to rid yourself of me – despite my understanding you for trying.

The long scar on your neck was caused by McNair with a misapplied severing curse, and the one across my shoulders with a flaying hex. You take your tea with two sugars, I like my bacon slightly burnt. You hum under your breath when you are nervous, you sometimes talk in your sleep, and your favourite word is 'ubiquitous'. When you were sixteen you told Weasley you were in love with him and he gave you a black eye. Your skin tastes like salt and firewood and your mouth tastes like the copper tang of blood. Soon this arrangement must come to an end, before I begin to need it. You are so young and so breakable, and I am far too old for this.

I have often shared your tent on field missions and in the mornings, before you are awake to see, I study your face, as though it would give me the answers I desire. It has never mattered that I cannot find them.

You are not handsome, nor pretty. Neither are you beautiful, except that you are mine.