How Severus Spends His Summer Hols

DISCLAIMER: JKR owns everything that is in reference to the Harry Potter world if it is in one of my works of fiction. If it is not found in one of her creations, then it is mine unless otherwise stated. I am not making any profit from the writing of this story.

A/N~ Okay, I may irritate some people here, but we are about to see a side of Harry that has been there, but has been bubbling under the surface. Severus, being the typical male, stirs what he should or shouldn\'t and well....Harry tosses a major wobbly, but it is one that needs to happen.
My thanks to both empathic siren and golden snitch, without them, this chapter would have been dramatic yes, but a monstrosity.
Kleenex warnings for upcoming chapters.




Severus looked down at the sweetly sleeping form of his husband, sighing as he thought about what he needed to talk to him about. As much as he would rather not say a word about Lucius Malfoy’s upcoming visit, he knew he was going to have to explain some things to Harry. With a sigh of regret, he gently shook his younger husband awake.

“Harry, love, wake up, I need to talk to you,” he said softly, trying not to startle the younger wizard. Harry opened one eye and looked up at his husband, closing it again; he pulled the blanket further up around his ears and snuggled deeper.

“Nu-huh,” he grunted with a crooked little grin. “You come and lie with me.” Severus only raised an eyebrow at that and tucked himself in behind Harry’s lean frame. With his arms wrapped tightly around him, he began to talk.

“Harry, Lucius and Draco are coming to visit,” he said softly, wincing inwardly as he felt Harry stiffen in his arms. He knew that there had been no love lost between Draco and his husband during their years at Hogwarts, but he had hoped the animosity had died down a bit in the years that had passed.

“Yes Husband. May I ask why?” he asked. He really had no desire to see the younger Malfoy anytime soon. The nasty little bastard had always made his school days a living hell, the last thing he wanted was him in his house.

“They are delivering a sort of gift to me,” Severus said carefully. He’d caught the note of irritation in Harry’s voice. He ran his hands soothingly over his lover’s arms.

“Severus don’t dance around the issue, just tell me why they are coming,” Harry sighed in frustration. “I am not going to go to pieces over their visit, so just tell me.”

Surprised at Harry’s outburst, Severus decided to do just that. If Harry thought he could handle it, then as his husband, he owed him that respect.

“They have located Morgan Taylor, they have him in custody, and they are bringing him here for me to deal with, Harry,” Severus said calmly as he heard Harry suck in a breath and then stop breathing. The trembling began almost unnoticeably and quickly grew so bad that Harry nearly pitched himself off the chaise.

“Here? They are bringing him here?” he whispered. “They know? They know what he did?”

Severus tried to keep the younger wizard in his arms, but Harry fought like a wildcat to get away. Snarling and sobbing in his shame, he had never wanted anyone to know what he’d been through at that man’s hands. And now, now his husband was telling him that two of the people in the world that despised him more than most, knew of his shame. Suddenly he stopped in his flight across the room, whirled around and stared at Severus with huge emerald eyes.

“Oh gods now you know too,” he moaned and spun back around to run out of the room and through to the kitchen where he slammed out the backdoor.

Severus was on his feet a moment later to go after his husband, cursing himself now for telling him. Oh hell, he was outside. Harry didn’t know the area, didn’t know where it was safe to walk and where there was loose rock. He didn’t see him anywhere, where was he? The older man stood in the backyard for a moment, turning this way and that, his hands in the air, feeling completely helpless. His husband was lost on the mountainside.

“HARRY!!!!!” he screamed again and again. Panic building when no answer came to any shout. What if he’d fallen into an abandoned well? What if he’d fallen and knocked himself out? Severus knew his life would be over if anything were to ever happen to the younger man. Turning in a full circle once more, running his hands distractedly through his hair, wondering where his husband had gone to.

Seemingly from nowhere a walnut crashed against the back of his skull. He whirled around in time to have another walnut hit him in the shoulder. Looking up, he spied his husband in the boughs of the black walnut tree a little to the left of him. From the looks of him, he was not a happy wizard.

“Harry you have to come down, we need to talk,” Severus said patiently as he stood there and looked up at his young husband.

“Go away!” Harry cried as he threw another walnut. “How could you do this? How could you?” The younger man climbed higher in the tree as his husband watched from the ground. Walnuts were pelted down at the older wizard as the younger one sat higher in the tree and screamed obscenities at him at the top of his lungs.

Harry curled up on the branch and clung to the trunk, sobbing. His world was folding in on him. Things had been so good, and now, now it was all shite. All because of the bloody Malfoys and Morgan Taylor, what on Merlin’s green earth had possessed Severus to consider bringing that filth into their new home?

Severus put his hands on his hips and leaned back to look at his husband, he really didn’t want to climb the tree after him, but he supposed he would if he had to.

“Talk to me Harry.” Severus called up at the sobbing man, dodging a well aimed tree branch. The older man pulled his wand out and was ready to cast a levitation spell just in case his husband turned monkey slipped from his perch.

“Now everyone knows Severus! Everyone knows what kind of a sick whore I really am. Why did it have to be the Malfoys? Draco hates me!” he sobbed as he flung more tree debris down at his husband. “How could you do that to me?”

“No one knows anything Harry. Lucius and Draco are bringing him to me for disposal. I just wanted you to know why they were coming,” the older man called back as he started to climb the tree after his husband, since it didn’t look like he was planning to come down anytime soon.

“Stay down Sev, I’m warning you!” Harry yelled as a hex flew past Severus’ shoulder. Gritting his teeth and shaking his head, the raven haired man continued to climb. Silly brat was going to kill them both because of what some madman had done to him.

“Harry, stop it before I cast a body bind on you,” he growled as he neared the precarious perch. Harry just hurled more obscenities and nuts at the man he loved and scooted further out on the narrow branch. Severus watched him with growing concern; he was worried more and more that the branch would give under Harry’s slight weight. He stopped a branch below Harry and waited as he seemed to calm down a little bit.

“Harry, move back to the center of the tree. You don’t have to come down, but please move back to where it’s safer,” Severus pled as he watched his defeated looking husband stare down at the ground and chew on his thumbnail. Slowly he shook his head. No, he didn’t want to be safer, nowhere was safe anymore. Morgan Taylor was coming there. He looked down at the ground again through all the branches. How had he gotten so high up?

“I never wanted you to know, Sev. I never wanted you to know what I did,” he said almost woodenly as he began to swing his legs back and forth while he sat on the creaking limb. Severus swallowed hard to get his heart back down out of his throat as he began to hear the creak and pop of the protesting tree bough.

“Harry, it wouldn’t have changed the way I feel about you,” he said gently as he started to edge his way out on his limb to try to get under Harry. The younger wizard just stared at him incredulously. Severus had no idea what he was talking about. He had worked so hard to make sure no one would ever know of his shame, and now everyone would know. He knew Morgan Taylor well enough to know that the man would be crowing about every depraved act he\'d made Harry participate in during the time he had been with him.

“Seeing pictures of the things I did wouldn’t have changed things?” he asked and Severus could definitely hear the hysteria that was just below the surface and threatening to break through. Harry hung his head and leaned against another branch and sobbed quietly. There were so many pictures, so much depravity captured for all time, he\'d tried to forget about those. Now everyone would actually have a chance to see him being used by several men at once, by animals, all the things that bastard had done to him were going to come back and take away all the good in his life now. He had nothing left. Not even his baby was going to want to admit she was his child, and he wouldn\'t be able to blame her at all.

“Harry,” Severus began gently as he tried to think of something profound to say that would make things all better for his husband, he was trying and was failing horridly. “In all honesty Harry, I want to torture that sick bastard for everything he did or ever thought about doing to you.”

Harry didn’t say anything, but his bony butt inched closer to the tree trunk as he listened.

“I should have told you what I had planned to do Harry, but at the time all I was thinking was retribution for you,” Severus continued, his eyes following his husband’s movement on the branch.

“You are such a fuck, Sev! You are bringing that man into OUR home! That is something that is pure for me, something he’s never touched,” Harry hollered as he kicked at Severus who was sitting below him. He wasn’t aiming at him, but it still made him feel better. Severus dodged his husband’s scuffed trainer and looked up into the scowling face of the man he loved so much.

“Would you have rather I didn’t tell you at all and did it behind your back?” Severus asked quietly, reaching up and wrapping one long fingered hand gently around Harry’s slim ankle. He smiled when he didn’t feel him pull away or kick at him. “I almost didn’t tell you, Harry, but I respect you enough not to try to dupe you. I was just going to have Allie or Grant keep you away from here for a couple of days and never speak of it, but I couldn’t do that to you.”

Harry stopped scowling as he heard the naked honesty in his older husband’s voice. He couldn’t imagine anyone having respect for him after what things he’d been forced to do, but yet he could hear it in the other man’s voice. He took a deep breath and sighed, he knew he had to face this. Although he’d never be over it, he could work past it hopefully so that it would no longer overshadow his everyday life.

“Thank you for not lying to me Husband,” he said and leaned down to run his fingers through the other man’s hair. Both men startled when the branch Harry was sitting on cracked and dropped a few inches under his bottom. Severus immediately had his wand out and trained on Harry, chanting a levitation spell to safely take the younger man to the ground. He carefully guided him out of the branches and then down nearly forty feet to the grass below.

“I’ll be right down Harry, stay put,” Severus called once he could breathe again. It never failed, that man would end up causing him to have a heart attack with some stunt or another. Harry waited as he had been instructed as his husband climbed carefully down the tree. Merlin, he was not a teenager anymore and he was definitely going to feel this in a few hours. Once his feet were on the ground as well, Harry came forward and just looked up into the severe face that he had fallen in love with years ago. Reaching up, he gently touched one of the welted bruises that was rising in a nasty purple knot on Severus’ cheek from one of the thrown walnuts.

“I’m not sorry Severus. I am still mad, but I am going to get over being mad,” Harry said as Severus stood and allowed him to touch and press each wounded spot in some sort of claiming. That yes indeed, he had fought back against his Dom, his husband, and he had not been beaten or worse for it.

“I don’t want you to be sorry Harry. I probably deserved it,” Severus said as he reached down to pluck a twig from Harry’s hair. “But I need you to understand why I am doing this.” Harry just looked at him in question; his green eyes were wide open and full of naked emotion.

“I need this bastard out of my life as well. As long as he still walks, he is still in our lives and he affects us both. I don’t want him in our marriage any more, he isn’t welcome. I don’t know the atrocities that you were forced to live through at the time, but I see what it does to you each day,” Severus said quietly but forcefully as he folded one hand over his husband’s.

“Him being gone won’t make me all better Husband,” Harry said as he leaned toward his mate, getting closer, but not yet touching. “The memories will still be there.”

“But you will know that he will never be able to hurt you again, Harry, and he won’t be able to hurt anyone else. He’s threatened Draco’s daughter, Lucius has to get him out of the Manor as soon as he can,” Severus explained as he closed the last bit of space between them and just let his Harry rest against him. He heard Harry’s sharp gasp and he knew that had struck home.

“When?”

“Lucius and I are planning to do this by the end of the week. We are going to use one of the out buildings, so he will never be in our home, beloved, never,” he murmured as he lifted his hand up and stroked a few stray tendrils back from Harry’s face.

“I want to be here,” Harry said as he looked up defiantly at his husband. He was ready for a battle and would willingly fight it. He felt that he’d earned the right to be there when the son of a bitch paid. Severus looked down into those deep emerald eyes and started to argue, but instead simply nodded.

“I want you to hurt him Husband, I know you were a Death Eater, you can make it worse. Hurt him for me, please,” he said viciously as he leaned up on tiptoe and kissed his husband’s thin lips. Severus looked down at his husband and sighed, he was not looking forward to the next thing he was going to have to ask.

“Harry, do you think you can tell me what you went through while you were with him?” he asked gently as he tipped the younger man’s face back up to meet his. He could see the uneasiness and pain flitting through his husband’s eyes; he stepped back and shook his head.

“No Sev’rus, I can’t, but my mind is open to you. You know how to go in and find what you need to, I won’t try to stop you,” Harry said as he reached out and took his husband’s hand. “But later, okay? I’m tired and I’m hungry.”

Severus stared down at him for a long moment, his black eyes taking in everything; the quiet dignity, the strength, the resilience, the love; and he resolved to do nothing that would harm his mate. If he had to use Occulmency to look through those awful memories, then he’d be certain Harry was mildly sedated beforehand so he didn’t become distressed. He might even ask Grant to sit with him to help keep him calm as layers were revealed, for honestly, Severus had no idea of what kind of Hell he was about to enter.

“Grant’s expecting us for dinner, Harry. Are you ready?” he asked as he led the way to the truck and helped the younger man in. On the drive back to the farm, Severus kept Harry’s hand tight within his, almost as if afraid to let him go.