Blackest Eyes

A/N: For future reference, this chapter is meant to be more surreal than the others.

The Blackest Eyes

One: Flawed

The hands that held his face were incredibly rough. Just patches of dry skin broken only by harsher callouses, stained and unclean. They scratched at his skin, snagging and pulling, demanding attention.

Low, heated words whispered to his ears, begging to be heard. Lips moved in his sight, shifting rapidly. He watched them through a haze that bled out their shape and sound.

But then the silent words grew ever more obscure. And the fingers on his cheeks moved ever more rough. So frantic. So desperate. His face itched from their touch. He'd give anything to make them stop; to turn his head, to avoid them.

Staring into a pair of familiar, dark, fearful eyes, all he knew were those damn hands.

They scratched and dug, and, Merlin, how his cheeks ached by their torment; leaving, returning, leaving, over and over, each time smeared more and more a deep red. And he couldn't understand any of it, until-

Ever slowly, the haze cleared. His body began to listen to his commanding pleas.

Wrapping his own hands around black-clad wrists, he forcefully stilled their movements. Finally, he could focus on something more than the agony they had created.

On something... Something like a gentle thumb caressing the corner of his lips. Like water dripping on his forehead, his cheekbone, the edge of his nose, slipping down from the jet black hair that hung above him.

What may as well have been sound trying to breach the ocean's depths shifted into clear cries of panic and confusion, footsteps scrambling, growing softer until they fell away. He smelled fire and burning things, saw strange colors flash in the background and glimpses of movement from the corner of his vision- students racing out the classroom door.

Familiar people...his friends.

Neville limping, shouldering the weight of a bloodied Draco Malfoy as he helped him walk. Ron singed and half hairless, Hermione slack in his arms; everyone rushing out, vanishing from view, leaving the room empty. Empty except for him. And the man above him, who's face he suddenly recognized.

Snape. “Professor?” His voice sounded strange to his own ears.

Unexpected relief flash in those deep-black eyes.

“What-” He tried to lift his head, to look around, to understand.

Those damn hands held him still. “Don't talk, Potter.”

It was a cold reply, devoid of anything he might have seen before...gone now.

“You'll be fine. Just...don't talk.”

He watched the man's lips move, understanding now, and grudgingly accepted the harsh change. Because it was familiar. Because it was right. Because fear and relief and warmth did not belong on the face of someone who hated him, on someone he was still supposed to hate. But when those hands finally did go to pull away, Harry felt a sudden rush of fear. He refused to let them go, clinging to them as if they alone could keep him grounded. He held on until his eyes fell heavy, until his consciousness began to slip away, and there was nothing left but their harsh touch to fill the dark.

*****