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Chapter 1: The Bottle
There wasn't even time enough to draw a wand to cast Arresto Momentum as the gleaming bottle tottered on the high shelf overhead and toppled directly into Severus Snape's path. Deftly, he caught it in one hand, shifting the jar of Melegueta Pepper he'd been bringing to the counter to be measured out. He glared down his nose at the grubby child who'd brushed carelessly against the bottom shelf in the crowded Apothecary, even now reaching toward him, its puffy eyes on the glittering green bottle, tiny fists flailing in the air.

"Pretty!" the child screamed, and Snape wrinkled his nose.

"It most certainly is not."

An incipient thunderstorm passed over the child's face at being denied the shiny, sparkling thing, cut off only by the harried witch who was obviously the creature's mother. She glanced from spawn to Snape, her arms filled with another brat, and a jar similar to the one Snape carried. "Hush, Veronica--" the mother began, eyes widening with recognition. Snape pegged the mother too, from nearly a decade ago, though to judge by her Potions marks, he couldn't guess what she was doing in an Apothecary.

"Sorry, Professor," Mrs. Bad Marriage said, reaching for the green bottle. "I'll just take that--"

Snape reflexively clenched the bottle tighter in the crook of his arm, thinking he felt something shift inside it. "That's all right, I'll return it to the shelf." She was a head shorter than he was, and the dusty shelf was a head again taller than himself.

"Want it, Mummy," the brat put in, and again the harried witch reached toward Snape as if to tug the green bottle from the crook of his arm. He recognized the 'anything to shut the brat up' glaze come over her eyes.

"It isn't for sale," Snape snapped, pulling the bottle deeper into his robes, though from what impulse he couldn't say.

The thundercloud burst on the child's face, forcing the reluctant mother to deal with the child's histrionics. Snape, quite unmoved, turned to the front of the store, still carrying the bottle. "Half a liter of this, and the bottle, please," he said, purposefully not looking over his shoulder, where he could still hear the wailing brat.

"Ah, excellent choice, Professor," said the proprietor Mr. Hassan, holding the bottle as though it were very expensive. Snape's eyes narrowed, thinking he was about to be overcharged. "Let me just shine it up for you," Hassan said, handing the jar of Melegueta Pepper to the shop assistant while he reached for a chamois cloth beneath the counter.

"That won't be necessary," Snape said, as the crying tapered off to sniffles. "In fact--" He searched his mind for another spice he might need that would allow him to discreetly put the gaudy green bottle back on the shelf. What had possessed him? He rarely decanted any of his potions in decorative bottles.

Hassan had paid him no mind, and whipped the cloth over the bottle before presenting it to Snape for inspection. The base was flared, the size of his hand span; the neck narrowed, then widened to accommodate the green-glass jeweled stopper. There were bits of glass and beads decorating the base and the neck, greens and blues predominating, but with glimpses of silver and red and yellow snaking around the neck. Snape found himself reaching for it just as another customer, not too surprisingly the woman and her annoying children, came up to the counter. She very pointedly did not look at him, angling her body so the oldest child couldn't see the bottle.

As Hassan set the bottle on the counter, Snape thought he heard something move inside it, though with the mucous-filled noises the child was making, he couldn't be certain. "What's inside it?" he asked, reaching for the stopper. Quite unexpectedly, a ripple of old magic passed into Snape's awareness, so faint it might have been his imagination.

The Apothecary shrugged expressively, and as Snape's fingers twisted the faux emerald, he realized that the stopper was quite firmly stuck. Hassan named the price, which suddenly seemed quite reasonable, and Snape found himself counting out galleons for the most useless thing he had ever purchased.

"What kept you?" Lupin said, once he was back out on the street. Lupin eyed his packages, while balancing a number of his own. "Did they have a sale on scarab beetles?" One of his packages shifted and automatically Snape reached out to steady it while Lupin hunted for something in his robes. "I got you something," he said, pulling something wrapped in brightly colored paper out of his pocket. "Well, both of us," he confessed handing Snape one of the ice lollies.

"Should have known you couldn't resist," Snape said, unwrapping the one Lupin handed him. It was pumpkin, his favorite. Lupin's mouth was already slightly tinted red from the cherry ice. "You'll be back at the Grangers with another cavity if you keep it up."

Lupin laughed, and almost dropped another package, leaving his ice lolly sticking out of his mouth while he shifted them. "Worth it--Mrs. Granger is awfully pretty," he said, once he could speak again. They jostled companionably down the street, clogged, as it always was this time of year with students buying things for the new term about to begin.

"They look younger every year," Lupin said, shaking his head. Snape, his mouth still full of pumpkin ice, made no reply. "One of these years Albus will take Defense off the curriculum and then where will I be?"

Even though the question was rhetorical, it reminded Snape of his impulse purchase. He discarded the sadly bare lolly stick and hefted one of his packages. "Oh, that reminds me--I bought something I want you to look at." He realized before unwrapping it that explaining and showing the bottle would be impossible out of doors. "Stop by before the brats arrive?"

Lupin shot him a curious look. "Sure thing."

Snape didn't unwrap the bottle right away once he got to his rooms at Hogwarts. He let the brown-wrapped bundle sit on his worktable while he put away his other Apothecary purchases. He couldn't quite believe he'd been impulsive enough to buy it. On the rare occasions when he did bottle up potions as gifts, he preferred plain glass bottles with user-friendly stoppers. Even as he entertained the idea of filling the bottle and giving it away, Snape was gripped with the urge to see it again.

He ripped the paper away, while berating himself for his foolishness. It was still as gaudy and unlike anything he'd ever bought as he remembered, and for just a moment he thought about putting it away in a cabinet somewhere. A soft thump nearly made him drop the bottle, before he realized something must have come loose inside it. He worked at the stopper, ignoring the ghostly echo of old magic around it that slithered back into his awareness.

The stopper was well and truly stuck. Snape tried several normal spells to loosen it, then, in frustration, several that were not on the approved curriculum at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. The stopper winked its patently fake green twinkle and once again Snape nearly consigned it to a cupboard. Only Lupin had said he'd look at the wretched thing, so might as well leave it out.

Snape's gaze took in the ordinary furnishings of his quarters, not sure what one did with a gaudy bauble in a place like this. Something that had looked perfectly at home in an Apothecary looked dreadfully out of place here. He tried it on the table next to his chair by the fire but it was well within elbow range and he didn't want to break it before Lupin had a chance to look at it.

The mantel then, where there would be no chance of knocking it off. There was a small cauldron of Floo powder on one end, and a framed picture on the other. Snape set the bottle in the middle. He thought he heard a rustle of-- of something--as he stepped back. What on earth had he been thinking?
Chapter 2: What It Isn’tLupin arrived after dinner, practically rubbing his hands together in anticipation. "Where on earth did you get it?" he said, when Snape handed him the bottle. "Not from that old bugger Hassan?"

"There, did you feel that?" Snape asked, resisting the urge to shake the whispery feeling of old magic off his hand like a cobweb.

"Feel what?" Lupin said, turning the bottle over in his hands.

Snape frowned. "It feels dark--" Impatiently he tugged one of Lupin's hands up near the stopper. "Here--"

"Feels a bit odd, certainly." Lupin traced all around the crusted seal with his finger. "Have you opened it?"

"Er, not yet," Snape said, unwilling to confess that he hadn't been able to.

"What makes you think it's dark?" Lupin sighted up the bottle like a telescope, peering between the rows of glass beads. They both heard the soft thump and a muffled noise as he turned it round and round.

Something settled between Snape's shoulder blades, like the prickle of awareness before a storm. "There's a--a whiff about it that reminds me of--" No sense in putting too pretty a picture on it. "Of the old days."

Lupin looked over sharply, but didn't question Snape's instincts. They had worked together too long for that. "Seems a bit, er, gaudy for that." He upended the bottle, studying the base. "Could be poison inside, dried up, but still potent. I'd be careful opening it."

"As though I'm not careful around toxins," Snape snapped.

"No maker's mark," Lupin said, righting the bottle again, with another quiet noise from inside. "Doesn't look recent though. I can time-spell it for you, if you like."

That would mean Lupin would have to take it with him, and for some reason that set Snape's hackles up. "I've got a potion that can do the same thing," he retorted, seething inwardly that he hadn't thought of it himself. Dating the bottle wouldn't prove it had been used by Voldemort, but it still might be a clue to its origins.

Lupin ran a finger around the edge of the stopper, then squinted at it. "You know, I don't think this is sealed with a spell. Looks--" He sighted along the bottle again, and they both heard the muffled thump again from inside. "Blasted on somehow." He looked back at Snape. "Have you done Finite Incantatem on it?"

Snape drummed his fingers on one arm. "Lupin, do I look like a first year to you?"

Lupin laughed. "Severus, you didn't look like a first year when you were a first year." He looked around. "Do you have more light somewhere?"

They sat down, with Lupin still turning the bottle over in his hands. "Fine craftsmanship. Doesn't look British though. Persian maybe. You could ask that Weasley boy, which one is it? One of the ones before my time teaching. Bob, or Bill or something."

Snape didn't care which dratted Weasley might know about Persian craftsmanship. The longer Lupin's hands stayed on the bottle, the jumpier he got. He was on the verge of yanking it out of Lupin's hands when he set it down between them on the coffee table.

"Going to show it to Dumbledore?" Lupin asked.

"I'm not altogether certain I'm not imagining things," Snape admitted. Now that the bottle was resting on the table, he felt immense relief, though Lupin had handled it with perfect correctness.

Lupin again laughed at that. "Don't worry, Severus. You never imagine things." He stood, carrying the bottle with both hands, and replaced it in the center of the mantle. Then he turned, and, spotting the single framed photograph, picked it up.

Snape held his breath, though as soon as he became aware of it, he huffed out a long gust of air.

But all Lupin said was, "I thought it used to move."

"I charmed it to stop," Snape replied, as Lupin set the photo back exactly where he'd taken it from.

The next morning, Snape found the bottle on the floor in front of the fireplace, rolled nearly to the edge of the hearth rug. He set it back up on the mantel, then took it down and worked the stopper again with his fingers. It didn't so much as budge. When he got back to his room that evening, the bottle was on the floor again. He nudged it with the toe of his shoe and looked around the room as if he were not utterly alone.

"You're going to break if you keep falling off," he said out loud. When nothing happened, he picked the bottle up and peered again at the tiny designs along the side. The bottle itself, beneath its coating of twinkling beads and bits of glass, seemed to be thick green glass. There were imperfections in it, now that he looked, waves and bubbles between the beads. He couldn't see anything inside though, no matter how hard he looked.

"Got it open yet?" Lupin asked, at breakfast the next morning.

Snape finished buttering his toast, relishing the quiet hum in the Great Hall before the students began arriving. "Not yet."

Lupin was heaping jam on his own toast. "You know, you could just smash the thing on the wall--put up a Shielding Spell in case there's something noxious or dead inside it--"

The idea of smashing the bottle, even as gaudy as it was, made Snape queasy for just a moment. He took a bite of toast and felt better.

"You all right, old man?" Lupin said, peering over at him. "Butter hasn't gone off, has it?" He eyed his own toast, then sniffed it, as though werewolves really did have enhanced senses.

"I won't have to smash it," Snape said, "It's trying to do that all on its own."

Lupin looked at him as though he'd gone off instead of the butter.

"It's unbalanced, keeps falling off the mantel," Snape growled, sorry now that he'd even brought it up. "Bottom must be flawed."

"That bottom is as flat as your disposition," Lupin argued, as though his own personal honor was at stake. "It must be your mantel."

Snape narrowed his eyes at Lupin, though after all these years of teaching together, the stare had little effect. "That mantel was hand-wanded by the founder of wood magic Prunus Picea over four hundred years ago."

Lupin took a significant bite of his toast. "No wonder it's warped, being so old."

A less than gentle clearing of a throat next to Snape brought both men's gazes to where Minerva McGonagall sat. "Gentlemen," she said, eying them over her square spectacles. "If we could have a few days of peace before the students arrive?"

Glares were exchanged before Lupin, mouth thankfully free of toast, stood and stretched before looking down at Snape. "Want me to have a look at the bottle again?"

Snape shrugged. "Can't hurt."

Lupin showed up after dinner, softening the blow of his intrusion with a bottle of the swill he drank in place of real alcohol, but since Snape was hoarding his own until the students arrived when he'd really need it, he joined Lupin in a glass.

There were two armchairs by the fire since Snape rarely had more than one visitor at a time. Lupin set his drink on the end table, after moving aside a stack of books, and got the green bottle down to study it. The bottle made no noise as he turned it round and round, studying it from every angle. It hadn't been on the floor when Snape had come back after dinner, which made Snape suspicious somehow though he couldn't say why.

"I thought there was something loose in here," he said, shaking it close to his ear, as though it were a Christmas present.

"There was," Snape said, overriding his own urge to snatch the bottle out of Lupin's hands.

"Too bad we don't have one of those Muggle x-ray death machines," Lupin said, setting the bottle down and taking a sip of his drink.

"What on earth are you going on about?" Snape asked, thinking the term x-ray sounded sort of familiar.

"Muggles have this machine that looks inside things. We could see what was inside it."

"Why--oh, never mind. Whatever was inside it must have dried up, being so close to the fire. Doubtless, that's why it keeps tipping off. The fluid, or whatever it was, shifted and made it unstable."

Lupin left the bottle on the end table while the conversation shifted to other things, mostly how much they both dreaded the return of students this term. Snape found his gaze wandering to the bottle as the fire light caught the beads and bits of glass, almost like an inside-out kaleidoscope.

Lupin must have caught his gaze, for he reached over and snatched up the bottle again. "It really is pretty," he said, fingers tracing one of the patterns of beads along one slope. "Though I don't really understand your fascination with it."

Snape frowned, again overcoming his itch to snatch the bottle away from Lupin. "I'm bloody well not fascinated by it--" he began, eyes following the bottle as Lupin stood and set it back on the mantle, where it seemed perfectly steady.

"It's all right, Severus," Lupin said, "Lots of men have mid-life crises." Snape sputtered while Lupin shrugged, pretending he didn't see Snape's face turning purple. "Though I don't know why you don't get yourself a trophy witch and racing broom like any other wizard."

Snape shot to his feet. "As you've done, obviously," he said, looking around as though there were a racing broom parked in one corner.

Lupin's smile was a little sad. "If I was going to have a mid-life crisis, I think I should have done it about ten years ago."

Snape froze, taking in the prematurely gray hair and the lines of tiredness around Lupin's eyes despite having been on Wolfsbane potion for nearly seven years. A different sort of man would have made a polite apology. "You're an ass, Lupin," he sniffed, and the moment passed.

Once Snape had ushered his visitor to the door, he couldn't resist looking at the sea green bottle once more before going to bed. His hand was reaching for it when his gaze sidled over to the framed photograph. There was a thin dust-free line where Lupin had set it back just slightly askew. He told himself he was just going to straighten it, though as his fingers closed over the gun-metal gray frame, he found himself picking it up. And then, because he did not seem to be able to shake himself out of this trance, he reached for his wand, muttering the unfreezing charm so that the photo could cycle through. Just once, he told himself, and then he would--

He found himself staring helplessly as the woman in the picture reached up as though getting to her tiptoes, and brush a forever silent kiss across the younger Snape's cheek. Over and over until his wand clattered out of his fingers and he sat down hard, photo still clutched in his hand, on the thick rug before the hearth. Stupid, ridiculous-- He scrabbled over the stones of the fireplace until his fingers closed over the wand, and he froze the photo back in place. Two faces looked back at him. His own was as dour as ever, and hers-- Held just the hint of the twinkle that he didn't seem to remember at all.

He was just about to stand up when the green bottle fell from the mantel, in a silent fall that would have smashed it against the stones if Snape had not been looking up at just that moment. He caught it in one hand, and put down the photo, careful to keep it on the rug.

He turned the wretched bottle over in his fingers, looking for the flaw or imperfection that had unbalanced it and kept sending it tumbling to the floor. He was peering into one of the bubbles in the glass, one that thinned the thick glass to nearly clear, when he saw something moving in the almost clear glass. Inside were two tiny eyes. Two tiny eyes looking right back at him.
Chapter 3: The Magic Words
With a cry that would have brought house-elves running if they still dared enter his chambers, Snape scrabbled back on the hearth. As it was he dropped the bottle as if burnt, and scuttled, crab-like, back on the carpet until he hit the armchair.

"Accio photo," he said breathlessly, and as the frame hit his fingers, he levitated it back onto the mantel, far away from the bottle that had rolled, nearly silently where he'd dropped it, until it was just at the hearth.

Carefully, wand out and ready, he slid back to the edge of the carpet, nudging the bottle with the toe of his shoe. There was a soft thump inside, and nothing else. He took a long draw of air to steady his racing heart and picked the bottle back up using just two fingers as if it contained acidic poison along the surface.

It took him a moment to find the tiny bubble where he'd seen the eyes, and it should have relieved him when no trace of them could be found. Only, instead of eyes, was a tiny white square with the letter "O" written on it. If Snape looked very carefully, he could see fingers holding each side of the paper.

"Oh?" he said, then did a double take as the letter vanished, then, after a moment, was replaced by a "P".

"Pee?"

And again, twice more, until the word "Open" had been spelled out.

"What do you think I've been trying to do, you wretched bottle?" he said out loud, and it was a sign of his exasperation that it seemed to make perfect sense to be talking to a bottle that had presumed mysterious origins and an unknown possessor of eyes and fingers inside.

Another pause, and another white placard. "S". "E." Another "S" until Snape was drawling each letter as it was revealed. "Open…Sesame?"

The stopper twisted around in his fingers as though greased, coming away with a faint pop and a smell like ozone or replenishing potion, just before a thin billow of pure white smoke erupted from the now open mouth of the bottle.

Clutching his wand, Snape shot to his feet, ready to perform a dousing spell on whatever was burning. But the smoke didn't appear to be spreading, shooting out of the bottle, swirling and coalescing with a sound like rushing wind, and the faint tinkling of bells. A figure took shape. An outlandish creature with untidy hair, its arms crossed over its nearly bare chest, stood before him. Vivid green eyes lowered demurely before it spoke.

"Who has summoned me from the bottle?" the creature asked.

"Immobulus!" Snape said, pointing his wand at it.

"I have come to grant you three wishes, Master Immobulus," the voice intoned, in what was obviously supposed to be sepulchral tones but sounded instead like the voice was rusty from disuse.

"Petrificus Totalus," Snape cast.

"Your wizard's magic will not work on me, Master Immobulus," the…thing said, with what sounded like real regret.

"Damn it, who are you?" he asked, though he didn't lower his wand, reaching out instead with Legilimency, only to be met with a blank wall.

"I am the genie, Hahree, Master Immobulus," it said, making a small bow. Snape heard bells tinkling again and stared.

"My name is not Immobulus, you faker, it's Snape," he sneered, now pointing his wand directly at the smooth bare chest. "Who sent you?"

"You summoned me, Master Snape," it said, the tiny bells around its bare ankle tinkling again. "I'm here to grant you three wishes," it continued, " With the standard disclaimer of course--"

Snape cut him off. "How long have you been lurking inside that bottle?"

"I don't know, Master."

"Don't call me that!" Snape said.

The genie blinked. "You are my master until you've received three wishes." He shrugged as if to question the vagaries of the universe.

"I don't need a genie," Snape said.

The genie bobbed lightly, and Snape noticed that its feet had turned slightly opaque, riding on a cushion of smoke. "I can't say I need a master either, but here we are."

Snape kept his wand trained on it. "See here, genies are swarthy heathens with long black moustaches." He swooped his wand in a circle, outlining the creature's form. "Not British schoolboys dressed up for an Aladdin pantomime."

The genie started and its feet became more solid. Glittering gold armbands snaked around its upper arms. A short green vest with no pretensions to closing in the front barely covered the thin chest. Matching gauzy green trousers covered its legs, though the waistline was scalloped indecently low on the creature's hips. The gauze was edged in yellowish gold with flecks of red and blue shot through. A rope of tiny bells decorated one ankle.

"Have you ever seen one?" Hahree asked. Before Snape could answer, it went on. "Besides, wizards are supposed to have long white beards and pointed hats with golden stars on them."

"Have you ever seen one?" Snape asked.

Hahree smiled. "You're my first."

They stared at each other for a moment while something niggled at Snape's brain. Something about schoolboys reminded him-- His eyes narrowed, looking over the intruder's face. Of all the genies in all the world-- It couldn't be.

"Potter?"

The genie just looked at him. "I am Hahree, genie of the green glass bottle, sent here to--"

"Three wishes, right," Snape said dismissively. Keeping the intruder in sight, he stepped over to the mantel and took a pinch of sparkling Floo powder and threw it onto the fire. "Lupin, you'd better get down here."

A moment later Lupin's head appeared, whirling very fast in the fireplace before he stepped into the room, still buttoning up his shirt. "What's the--" he said, catching sight of Hahree and hastily doing up another button. "Sorry, didn't know you had a visitor."

Snape pointed his wand at the creature. "It came out of the bottle."

Lupin laughed, but when no one else did, looked more carefully at the visitor. "How do you do? I'm Remus Lupin," he said politely, extending his hand.

The genie took it with equal politeness. "I am Hahree, genie of the green glass bottle, here to grant Master Snape three wishes." He took in a deep breath. "In accordance with the standard disclaimer of course--"

But it was obvious Lupin wasn't listening. "A genie?" He looked between Snape and Hahree. "You lucky sod."

Snape poked Lupin in the arm with his wand. "For God's sake, Lupin, look at it."

Slowly Lupin turned. It only took a moment before all the blood drained out of his face. "My God." He grabbed Hahree by both arms. "James?"

"Are you half-witted?" Snape said, even though he'd seen the resemblance himself. "It can't be Potter."

Lupin ignored him. "What did you say your name was, boy?"

"Hahree, genie of the--" the thing began, obviously prepared to go through the entire spiel again.

"Harry?" Lupin looked at Snape, full of joy and hope.

"The baby?" Snape asked. If he'd ever known the name of James and Lily Potter's baby he'd forgotten it long ago.

"They never found any sign of little Harry," Lupin said, patting Hahree's arms again, as if assuring himself he was real. "Little Harry."

"No one can survive a killing curse," Snape said, though the back of his neck was prickling.

"Look for yourself, Severus," Lupin said, still patting the genie's arms, scrupulously avoiding the bare skin of his chest. "He's about the right age, the very spirit and image of James. Even you thought so. And Lily's eyes." His fingers brushed through the thick fringe and Lupin froze. Snape looked over his shoulder and the prickling got worse.

There was a lightning bolt shaped scar on the boy's forehead. No natural scar, for they both felt the ripple of magic.

Lupin let the hair drop back into place. "How did you get here; where did you come from?" Lupin asked, more kindly than the creature deserved for getting his hopes up like this.

"Master Snape bought my bottle," Hahree said with a little shrug that tinkled the bells on his ankle.

"Before that?"

"Lupin, you can't possibly believe--"

Lupin looked up at him as though it was hard to stop looking at the spangled intruder. "How can you possibly not believe?"

"It says it's a genie," Snape pointed out, unwilling to believe in the face of Lupin's' own belief.

"We don't know where they come from, how the Djinn choose them," Lupin countered, turning back to the genie. "Who found you? Who raised you?"

"I am a genie, friend of my master, we do not require--"

"You are not a genie!" Snape snarled, once again pointing his wand at it. The genie blinked once and suddenly Snape was holding a snake, exactly the length of his wand.

"I am a genie," it said, and Snape's wand returned to normal. The air seemed to waver around the boy. It took a moment to realize it wasn't residual magic but ongoing, as the slender, compact form began to grow, lifting toward the stone ceiling until the top of the untidy head grazed the stones.

"Cool, it worked," Hahree said, spreading out his hands which now were the size of dustbin lids. He looked down at the two men. "Didn't get to practice this one too much in the bottle."

"Now, see here," Snape said, arms akimbo as he peered up to the intruder who was now half again as tall as Hagrid.

"It's all right," Hahree said, bobbing slightly on ankles that had gone insubstantial and smoky again. "I know what I'm doing."

Before Snape could point out that that wasn't even remotely the issue, he felt the room sway. No. Not the room. The hearth rug beneath their feet had lifted up several inches off the floor. Long, gold-banded arms closed around them, and the dungeon shimmered once and vanished.

Air rushed past them, a kaleidoscope moving too fast to see anything save colors and blurred streaks of light. Once he even thought he heard a cow moo, and his fingers scrabbled to hold onto something. Something cold slid into his grasping hand and he realized he was clutching one oversized armband.

"Don't worry," a voice said in his ear, "I've got you."

The world opened up as he opened his eyes. Desert sands stretched away beneath the carpet, glinting even under the slip of a moon. Then a light, then another, as a minaret hove into view, a flame flickering from its dark windows. More towers, interspersed with palm trees, and rows of tiny dwellings, most made out of the desert itself, some little more than canvas stretched between two poles dug into the sand.

The rug swerved to avoid the fronds of a swaying palm, swooping them high enough to see the sleepy sprawl of the midnight-drenched city.

"Where are we?" he demanded, but Lupin was shaking his arm and pointing into the night sky.

Snape looked up but didn't see anything but the moon.

"No, when are we?" Lupin said, tearing his eyes away from the crescent. "At home, the moon is nearly full; here it…isn't. And look--" He gestured to the shadowed winding street peeking from beneath the fringe of their carpet. "No motor cars. Not even a bicycle." He gestured toward one of the minarets. "No light except fire."

They both turned to look at Hahree, who smiled. "I told you I'm a genie," he said, tugging down the sides of his tiny vest as if suddenly shy.

"I never doubted you for a moment," Lupin said.

By the time they arrived back in Snape's rooms, the genie had yawned several times but Lupin was still as curious as a kitten. "Baghdad, maybe, around the turn of the millennium, or--" He looked up only when Hahree yawned loud enough to crack his jaw. "That was fantastic, Harry." Looking over at Snape he said, "We've got to tell Dumbledore."

"Not tonight," Snape said firmly.

"But Severus--"

"But Master--"

"No arguments."

"It's my first night out," Hahree said sulkily.

"Who is the master here?" he inquired. "That sort of magic isn't without a price." He held up one hand to cut off both the boy and Lupin's protests. "Even for a genie." He watched Hahree's lips tighten into a thin seam, exactly the way he remembered James Potter's had when denied something. "You won't be of much use to me, in a wish granting sense, if you're exhausted."

"Yes, Master." More sleepy than sulky now. Snape picked up the bottle, holding the top off significantly. Once the boy had vaporized into a column of smoke, he twisted the stopper back in place.

Lupin had watched the entire spectacle. "So, what are you going to wish for?"

Snape looked at the glittering green bottle then set it back into place on the mantel, fairly certain it wouldn't be performing any late-night aerobatics this evening, at least. "I've no idea."
Chapter 4: Something About Beggars and Riding
Lupin waved him over at breakfast the next morning, his mouth sporting a toast point. "Where's Harry?" he asked, once the toast was further along.

"Hahree," Snape corrected, spooning up his usual eggs. "Still in his bottle." Snape had barely glanced at it this morning, half-convinced, until Lupin had spoken, that it had all been a dream.

"You didn't let him out?" Lupin asked, voice rising a little so that Minerva looked over at them and tightened her lips.

"I don't have any wishes. Why should I release him?" Snape said, peppering his eggs.

"He's been cooped up in that bottle for who knows how long. You saw him last night, eager as a puppy," Lupin said. He waited for Snape to respond, but Snape merely began eating his eggs until Lupin made an impatient noise. "When are you going to take him to Dumbledore?"

Snape thought about the question, deciding how best to lie, but Lupin had been around him too long.

"You are going to take him to Dumbledore, aren't you?"

Snape opened his mouth, after making certain it was egg free, but Lupin didn't give him a chance to reply.

"Oh no you don't. This is the best scientific discovery since Kronos Hectate invented the Time Turner to go back and see who murdered him."

"That's a myth; it doesn't make any sense," Snape countered, trying to get Lupin to lower his voice again since Minerva had passed beyond simply looking to glowering at them.

"Neither does flying a carpet to medieval Baghdad, but we did that last night," Lupin said, throwing his napkin down on the table. "I know you want to keep your three wishes to yourself but Harry Potter, surviving all these years as a genie! Dumbledore will want to know!"

"Will want to know what?"

Of course, Snape thought, the old codger never missed a chance to make an entrance. The headmaster arrived as silently as a ghost, leaning over Snape's shoulder, the sleeve of his robe nearly dunking into Snape's tea.

"Nothing--" he said, only Lupin spoke at exactly the same time.

"Snape's got himself a genie."

"A genie you say?" Dumbledore said, helping himself to toast. Snape's toast.

"Someone who claims to be a genie, yes," Snape said, unwilling to admit the truth when it sounded so ridiculous.

"Been doing some lamp rubbing, have you, Severus?" Dumbledore inquired mildly.

"He came out of a bottle," Lupin said, obviously unable to keep silent now that he'd brayed Snape's secret to the entire school. "And that's not the best part."

The best part, it seemed would have to wait. Minerva McGonagall had gotten up from the table, openly eavesdropping on their conversation. "You've got a genie?" she said, peering down over her spectacles.

"So it claims," Snape began, only to be leveled with her glare again.

"It? Can't you tell if it's male or female?" she asked.

Lupin stood up, so that Snape was the only one still in a chair. "It's male all right, in fact--" he tried, with a barely suppressed air of anticipation.

"A genie did you say?" Flitwick said, climbing onto Lupin's abandoned chair. "I can think of a time or two I've wanted one of those."

"A person who claims to be a genie," Snape huffed, already knowing the protest was all but useless.

"And not just any person--" Lupin tried again, looking like he wanted to knock Flitwick off the chair and commandeer it himself.

"Can't you just wish for something and that'll prove--" Snape heard someone say, but since he was trying to back out of the fray, he missed the rest. Only, instead of being able to back away from what was turning into the Worst Impromptu Staff Meeting Ever, Snape backed into something solid. He put one hand back to see what had blocked his path. Something solid and hairy.

"'Ere now, what's all this about a genie?" Hagrid's great voice rose above the clatter, halting all other attempts at conversation like a Silencing Charm.

"I suppose we'd better find out," Dumbledore said in the ensuing silence, then before the rest of the staff could begin babbling again, held up one hand. "Severus, if you'll meet me in my office in an hour?"

Snape nodded, his gaze meeting Lupin's. With the distinct impression that he was going to regret this, Snape said, "May I suggest Professor Lupin join us? He may have some bearing on the inquiry."

Snape could hear Lupin exhale, but focused on the headmaster. He could tell Dumbledore was intrigued, but he only nodded and swept the knot of professors apart, allowing Snape and Lupin to escape in his wake.

Before they could make a clean break, however, Hagrid's voice boomed out. "What are you going to wish for, Professor?"

All eyes, human and ghost, and probably more than one house-elf turned toward Snape. Just at the moment though, his only wish was that he'd finished his breakfast. "No idea."

An hour later, bottle in hand, he met Lupin on the way up the winding staircase to the headmaster's office.

"How's he doing?" Lupin asked, nodding toward the bottle.

"How should I know?" Snape said, pushing open the heavy door into Dumbledore's office.

"You haven't let him out?" Lupin asked, appearing outraged, stopping short only when he realized there was someone else in the office.

"Exactly on time," Dumbledore said, gesturing toward the two remaining armchairs. "I've taken the liberty of inviting a former student, Miss Granger, whose researches on rare magical artifacts since she left our institution may be of use to the discussion."

"Miss Granger," Snape said, keeping the bottle tucked into the crook of his arm. He remembered her all too well, a boring know-it-all, who'd never managed to make any friends.

"Of course I remember Hermione," Lupin said, more warmly. "How's your mother?"

Granger smiled. "She and Father are fine."

Lupin plopped into the armchair beside her. "That bicuspid of mine didn't drive a tiny little wedge between them?" he asked, as Snape sat, more stiffly, in the remaining chair.

"Still happily married," said Granger.

"Pity," Lupin said with an exaggerated sigh.

"If we could proceed," Snape snapped, and Dumbledore's gaze dropped to the bottle still close to Snape's body.

"Is that the, er, artifact in question?" Dumbledore asked.

Reluctantly Snape dragged the bottle out for their perusal, thinking how more at home the gaudy thing looked here in Dumbledore's office than in Snape's spare rooms. Though not bidden, he handed the bottle over to Dumbledore. When asked, Snape recounted how he'd come by the thing and how he'd worked out how to open it. Dumbledore frowned at his suspicions of old magic, but kept examining the bottle through his half moon spectacles. His long fingers slid over the stopper as if to open it. Snape felt himself tense, but made no attempt to stop him.

Dumbledore handed it back over the desk as if he'd known Snape was getting jittery. "If you would?"

Snape nodded and stood up, away from the chairs, before he tugged gently at the stopper, grateful that it opened easily now without having to say, "Open Sesame". Again a thin column of greenish smoke erupted from the bottle, whirling to coalesce into what Snape had, until now, hoped was only a figment of his imagination.

Hahree's gaze swept the office, then dropped, but not before Snape had seen the delight in his face. "Good morning, Master," he said, arms crossing over his ridiculously scantily-covered chest.

Dumbledore had risen slowly to his feet, his jaw slack with shock.

Quietly Lupin said, "You see it too."

"Not James, surely?" Dumbledore said, adjusting his glasses on his crooked nose, coming around the desk to examine Hahree more closely.

"I am Hahree, good wizard," Hahree said, "genie of the green glass bottle, Granter of three wishes--subject to the standard disclaimer--to my master, Snape."

"Merlin," Dumbledore said in a low voice.

"Hahree," the genie corrected gently. Then he leaned over to whisper to Snape. "Now, he looks like a wizard."

"Mind your manners," Snape said sharply.

"Yes, Master," Hahree said, lowering his gaze contritely.

"Am I to understand," Granger said, standing and speaking for the first time since Hahree had appeared, though Snape had noticed that she'd watched the proceedings avidly. "That you believe this young man was born a free wizard and enslaved by the Djinn?"

"I don't know if I'd say enslaved exactly," Lupin said in the sudden tense silence that followed.

"What would you call it?" she asked, coming from behind her chair to where Hahree stood. Beside him Snape noticed that Hahree watched, unabashedly curious.

"Are you a lady?" Hahree asked, tearing his gaze away and looking up at Snape.

Understanding hit Snape first. "Are you asking if Miss Granger is female?" An emphatic nod of the untidy head. "Have you never seen a girl before?"

"Not in person," Hahree admitted, one hand lifting as though to touch her, but dropping quickly. "Just on genie-vision. You're very pretty, Miss Granger."

"Yes, well, thank you," Granger said, cheeks pinking.

Snape didn't bother to point out that being called pretty by someone who'd never seen a woman before was hardly a huge compliment.

"The point is," Granger went on, "You are not a slave here; you're a free wizard."

"I'm not a wizard," Hahree said, "I'm a genie."

"You were, if the headmaster is correct, born a wizard."

"I'm still a genie," Hahree said stubbornly. To Snape's alarm it looked as though he was swelling up again. Rather than spend the rest of his morning back in Baghdad, Snape cut in.

"If he's truly free, then he should be allowed to decide if he's a wizard or a genie."

Four sets of eyes turned to look at Hahree. Who at least looked normal-sized, even if his ankles were a bit insubstantial. "I'm a genie."

Snape smirked at Granger, though he could tell by the stubborn set of her mouth that the matter was far from settled.

"Can you tell us how you came to be inside this bottle?" Dumbledore interjected gently, the glittering bottle still in his hands.

"No, friend of my master," Hahree said, "I have been a genie as long as I can remember." It wasn't until they got on the subject of wishes that interest sparked in the young man's face.

"But it is an honor to grant three wishes, for the great wizard Snape," Hahree said heatedly, no longer remotely insubstantial.

"Think of the good you can do for all wizarding kind," Granger said. They'd all remained standing, and she and Hahree were toe to pointed toe.

"I'm not allowed--"

"You're free to do whatever you--"

Hahree crossed his arms over his chest, drawing himself up. "All wishes are subject to the standard disclaimer."

Lupin was smiling behind his hand, though Snape wasn't sure why. "Why don't you tell us about that, Harry?" he said gently. He was leaning against Dumbledore's desk since none of them had taken their seats again.

"I can't make anyone fall in love with anyone else," he said. "I can't bring back anyone from the dead." He looked at Snape almost apologetically. "I can't grant you three more wishes." He took a deep breath, the spangles on his tiny green vest catching the light as he moved. "And I can't grant any wish that profoundly changes the human condition. I can't end hunger or want. Only man can do that for himself."

"I'm sure I won't ask you to do any of those things," Snape said, though he wouldn't have minded if Hahree could have ended his hunger as his stomach was still letting him know about the abbreviated breakfast.

Granger looked at him curiously. "What are you going to wish for?" she asked. Snape realized Dumbledore and Lupin were both looking at him curiously as well.

Hahree, however, didn't look curious at all. He looked expectant and eager. "Is there a time limit? Will my wishes expire or something if I don't use them right away?" Snape asked Hahree suddenly.

Slowly Hahree shook his head. "No, Master."

Snape gathered up the shining green bottle, and took Hahree by the arm. "I'll let you know," he said, not looking at Granger, Lupin or Dumbledore, dragging them both out of the room.

"Where are we going, Master?" Hahree said, once they'd wound down the moving staircase to the corridor.

"You're going back into the bottle," Snape decreed firmly, working the stopper loose. "And I'm going to have a proper breakfast."

Rebellion bloomed on the boyish face. "I can do breakfast," the genie said, crossing his arms over his chest. "I can do a really good breakfast."

"And waste a perfectly good wish on food?" Snape said, but Hahree was rolling his eyes.

"Not a wish. Those are different. It's also my privilege to serve you, Master, in all that you require."

Behind the stone gargoyle, Snape could hear the winding stair spiraling down. They were about to have company. And, if his luck were holding, most likely it was Granger, fired up to lecture him on laws covering genie abuse.

"Breakfast it is, then," he said, making to grab Hahree by the arm again. Only before he got the chance, the world blinked out again, and re-formed as he opened his eyes. Green and white stripes filled his field of vision, stretching away high overhead like a circus tent.. Beneath him, Snape was lying on something soft, shaped like a divan. Lilting music seemed to be coming from someplace. More importantly, however, was the smell of something spicy and hot.

"Date?" Hahree said, proffering a tray of stuffed sweets.

"Where are we?" He took one of the dates and popped it in his mouth. "Please don't say Baghdad." He took another of the spiced dates, but almost spit it out when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. They really did seem to be in some sort of silk tent, draped in green and white. He was lying on a chaise lounge, feet propped up. Oh dear God, Snape thought, as he caught sight of his own legs, encased, not in his usual black trousers, but something gold and brocaded. His feet, although propped up, were wearing the most outlandish slippers with pointed toes. With a feeling of utmost dread he looked down at the rest of himself. A matching gold waistcoat draped either edge of the settee. Oddly enough, his linen shirt seemed to have been left alone. He turned his head to see if there was a turban perched upon it and caught sight of the damned genie. Hahree sat cross-legged on a pouf watching the newcomer--Snape nearly choked again--the parade of newcomers, now coming through a slit in the tent.

Oh, this was worse--far worse--than being suddenly dressed as sumptuously as a pasha. Three women--or houris--sailed into their tent. Though what they were wearing may have constituted clothing from whatever harem they'd escaped from, it was far from anything Snape had ever seen actual women wearing, save in the racier sort of magazine that always seemed to be passed around the boy's dorms. One had dark hair falling across her shoulders, one seemed as fair blonde as the desert sun, and the third had almost Weasley-esque ginger hair. Each girl's face was concealed by a veil that left only her heavily kohled eyes visible. Their faces however, were just about the only body part that could be considered covered in any way, as more veils made brave attempts to hold back the tide of feminine pulchritude.

The dark-haired girl made a show of kneeling beside Snape's settee, a silver tray in her tiny hands. On it were square things drenched in honey. When Snape hesitated picking one up, his server braved the sticky concoction and lifted it to his lips. Then she moved off to the head of the chaise while the fair-haired wench bent to take her place. Some sort of meat, still sizzling from the kitchen, lay on skewers. Snape took up the closest one and began to nibble on it as the ginger-haired lass knelt to offer him a flagon of something cool. Snape balked when she tried to press it to his lips and took it himself, tasting honey-wine.

"Where are we, you troublesome creature?" he said, just as a knock sounded near one of the slits in the tent. Snape slid off the lounge, conscious of the swish-swish of the gold silk trousers as he hurried to the sound.

"Your quarters, Master," Hahree said, as Snape opened the door to reveal one of the very last people he wanted to see right now.

"I see you're getting into the spirit of things at last, Severus," Lupin said, inviting himself inside. His gaze rolled around the swaths of tent silk, then came to rest on Snape himself. "Though it's very unsettling to see you in Gryffindor gold."

The houris clustered around them, proffering their delights--at least those on the trays. Lupin leered and nodded gratefully at each of them, resulting in a chorus of maidenly giggles. Snape huffed and looked over to where Hahree sat, calm as a lord, on the green and white stripped pouf.

"Get rid of --" he began, but Hahree was standing up, moving more gracefully than anyone had a right to in pointy slippers.

"The color is not right?" he asked, addressing Lupin.

"Not that he doesn't look just fine, but his skin tones are really more suited for, er, less yellowish colors," Lupin answered, helping himself to another sticky honey square.

Hahree was nodding, fingers stroking his chin thoughtfully, until Snape whirled to confront him. The whirl was, he noted, not nearly as satisfying without his robes. "Get rid of all this," he commanded. Hahree's mouth opened as if to protest, but something on Snape's face must have convinced him not to argue. Hahree folded his arms over his chest, blinked once and the tent was gone.

"All of it," Snape said, nodding to the gaggle of succubi. Lupin grabbed two skewers of meat and another honey square before the women, too, vanished like smoke.

"You did say you wanted breakfast," Hahree said, as Snape adjusted the sleeves on his familiar waistcoat.

"And a fine breakfast it is too, lad," Lupin said, his mouth rather disgustingly full of sticky square.

"Did you want something, Lupin?" Snape asked, thinking perhaps it might not have been too amiss to have eaten more before sending the serving wenches away. He consoled himself by appropriating one of Lupin's skewers.

"Er, just wanted to see where you'd gone. Hermione's still breathing fire about slavery and misappropriation of magical beings." He shrugged and polished off his skewer, looking around for a place to dispose of the rubbish. "Don't know why Dumbledore involved her in the first place," he said, settling for tucking it in his pocket.

"Because he's an old meddler who can't resist interfering," Snape said, resisting--just barely--the urge to lick his fingers clean. They were still sticky. "Now," he said, turning back to Hahree. "We need to lay down some ground rules, young man."

"Master?"

"No unexpected trips anywhere," Snape said, "and no dressing or--" He shot a look at Lupin, who was watching with unabashed curiosity. "Undressing me." He looked around his restored quarters, fancying he could smell a whiff of Perfume Of Paradise. "And these are bachelor quarters--no unauthorized women."

Hahree looked down, but he did not look downcast. "Yes, Master."

"And don't call me--" Snape began, then reconsidered. "Never mind. I like that one."

"I knew you'd get into the spirit of it," Lupin said, so smugly that Snape wanted to poke him with a skewer.

"Don't you start," he said, working up to a really blistering diatribe, when Lupin suddenly looked as though he'd remembered something.

However, instead of voicing an urgent appointment elsewhere as Snape had been hoping, Lupin said, "Speaking of undressing--" he said, gaze darting to Hahree.

Snape frowned. Lupin remained silent. Snape's eyebrows climbed up in question until Lupin nodded significantly at Hahree.

"It's just that we've got several hundred young witches and wizards arriving in two days, nearly three-fourths of them hormonal teenagers. Do you really think he ought to be running around like that?"

Snape stepped back, but he already knew the reason for Lupin's misgivings. More of the boy was bare than not up top, and as for those gauzy trousers--they served more to fuel the imagination than suppress it. "Good point." He turned back to Lupin. "Suggestions? He's too small for anything of mine--" He saw Lupin's face change, and with an already familiar feeling of dread, waved one hand in front of his colleague's face, getting barely a blink. "He's done something, hasn't he?" Lupin nodded. "I'm not going to like it, am I?"

Instead of replying, Lupin merely grabbed him by the coat and turned him around. Hahree was dressed in an exact replica of Snape's clothes, sized down to fit. He was adjusting the sleeves, just as Snape had done himself a moment ago, and looking very smug. Really, the smug factor in the room had never been higher, even when Snape had bested Lupin in chess three times in a row one memorable evening. Snape was sure it was his imagination that Hahree's hair looked greasy.

Snape put his face in his hand and wondered if it would be a violation of the Standard Disclaimer of wishes to wish for a Time Turner to go back to before he'd ever spotted that damned green bottle.

~~**~~

That Hahree seemed genuinely confused about what Hahree called 'human fashion' didn't even play into Snape's decision to leave him in his bottle on the first day of term. The idea of facing a school full of children with a half-naked genie by his side was more than Snape could bear after the sort of week he'd had.

So, it was after the Welcoming Feast that he was greeted by his normal room--which suddenly looked quite lifeless without Hahree lounging about, all spangles and eagerness, questioning him about everything from what sort of things he liked for breakfast, to did he have any wishes, any at all?

Snape threw himself into his armchair, sparing hardly a glance toward the mantel where, even at a glance he could see the glint of the green bottle. It had been a trying day, as all first days of term are, with faces that looked younger and younger every year, while his own--

The no-doubt maudlin thought was cut off by the soft thump of the bottle falling from the mantel, landing softly on the hearth rug.

"Oh very well," he said, starting to bend over in his chair, just as the bottle rolled into his fingertips. A quick twist of the stopper and Hahree's column of smoke erupted as eagerly as any of the first years even now probably missing their own beds in four separate common rooms all over the school.

"Have you eaten?" Hahree said, folding his arms over his chest, ready to respond to Snape's any whim.

"It's a Welcoming Feast," Snape said, "Of course I've eaten."

Hahree's face fell, but only for an instant. "Was it splendid?" he asked.

"Well, there weren't any houris, if that's what you're asking. Look, you know why I couldn't let you go," Snape said. "Though Lupin is usually wrong, he's right about this. I can't let you be seen all around a school full of children dressed like that."

Hahree looked down at himself, and once again, Snape took in the almost there appearance of his clothes. Snape waved his hand dismissively over Harry's gauzy trousers. "Can't you just--"

While he watched, the gauze raised about five inches, finally covering Hahree's navel. "Better, better." He rubbed his hand over his chin thoughtfully. "Perhaps a bit, er, less snug?" As if stitched by invisible fingers, the crotch of the green trousers widened, concealing most of his sins.

"That's got the bottom, I think," Snape said, unconsciously tugging on the short hem of the tiny sequined jacket, as if working similar magic. His fingers ghosted over the depressingly flat plane of Hahree's belly, drawing a shiver of awareness that was not quite all on Hahree's part. As if he were the one working the spell, the jacket too broadened where he touched it, covering the hard brown nipples, and meeting at last in the front though there still weren't any fasteners. Snape stepped back. "Better, anyway."

Hahree wrinkled his nose but shrugged in acquiescence. "I've never seen a real child. Are they wonderful?"

Snape snorted and went to pour himself stronger than the pumpkin juice they'd served at dinner. Before he could unstopper the decanter, Hahree slipped his hand around it. "Let me, Master." Even though Snape didn't feel the slightest bit guilty about denying Hahree attendance at the Welcoming Feast, he let the genie serve him.

Hahree handed him the glass then took his usual seat, resting on his knees, just at Snape's feet. Yet another reason why the creature's appearance in the Great Hall would have been a bad idea.

"Master?"

Snape grunted.

"What are you going to wish for?"

Snape looked down sharply at the boy. Hahree had been staring at him with disconcerting intensity, but looked away and began unlacing Snape's shoes before he could stop him. "I've no idea," he said, grumpy as anyone is who actually likes having a small service performed but doesn't like to admit it.

"You could ask for enormous wealth. Emeralds and silver and galleons beyond counting." Hahree set aside one shoe beside the chair, and started on the other. "Many do, I'm told."

"I've no need of such extravagance," Snape said, wanting to protest when Hahree began kneading the instep of his stockinged foot. He looked around his small sitting room and tried to imagine himself in a pasha's palace.

"You would never have to work again," Hahree pointed out, cupping Snape's ankle with both hands, fingers brushing just under the buttoned hem of his trousers.

"What would I do instead?" He really should ask Hahree to stop because even the simple caresses were very relaxing, and Snape hated to be relaxed. Then Hahree shifted, turning his attentions to the other foot, and Snape couldn't quite deny one foot what the other had enjoyed.

"You could travel--see the world," Hahree said, his palm warming the arch of his foot.

"I've seen quite enough of the world," Snape said sharply. Hahree paused but didn't look up, then, without commenting, repeated his attentions to Snape's ankle, his hands warm on the bare skin above his sock. "Besides, I have all summer to travel if I choose."

Hahree worked in silence, shifting once so that he was kneeling between Snape's languid knees, one hand on each ankle now as his fingers glided from toe to ankle. "I can send many beautiful women to lie with you," Hahree said at last, the tip of one finger rubbing absently along the tops of Snape's toes. "A different one every night. I can't make them fall in love with you--"

"My own harem?" Snape said, "Then I shouldn't have the energy for teaching and then where would we be?"

"But Master--"

"Enough," Snape said, eyeing Hahree as though he was a recalcitrant first year. "In such a hurry to find a new master?"

Hahree looked so stricken, Snape knew he'd spoken more sharply than he'd intended. "Oh, no, Master. No hurry at all." Before Snape could refute this, Hahree laid his untidy head on Snape's knee. Snape was so startled he went still. Before he could even begin to enumerate the many reasons why this was improper, Hahree sprang back to his former position, kneeling at Snape's feet.

"Have you eaten?" Snape asked, at constant odds trying to remember that someone else--or something else--depended on him now.

"Oh, yes, Master," Hahree said, getting lithely to his feet, collecting the empty tumbler and returning it to the table. "The house-elves brought me a tray. They're very funny, aren't they?"

Snape, who had never even remotely thought the ugly creatures were amusing, merely grunted, listening to the boy straightening up behind his chair. It mattered only slightly to his mood that his feet had never felt better. He felt Hahree beside his chair, and looked over, watching him scoop up his own bottle and stopper, replacing them fastidiously on the mantel. Hahree took a step back, as if admiring the view then, as Snape watched, his head turned slowly to the other end of the mantel.

Dread gripped Snape's chest as the wretched creature studied the photo there, then began to reach for it, as if it were simply something ordinary like a photograph of just anyone. His fingers were digging into the arms of the chair, the command on his lips to banish Hahree to the bottle.

Only Hahree stopped, fingers just hovering over the simple gray frame. He turned to look at Snape. "Who is she, Master?"

"Bring it here," he found himself saying, comforting himself a moment after the words were spoken with the notion that it had been the unexpectedness of Hahree's interest that had spurred him to do it.

On soft feet, Hahree returned to the chair, kneeling before offering the photo into Snape's hands. Snape looked at it once, then down into Hahree's curious eyes. "Her name was Madeleine," he said, saying the name almost as if expecting a ghost to materialize in the room.

Hahree craned his neck over Snape's lap so he could look at the photo once more. "That's a pretty name," he said, and Snape noticed he did not say Madeleine herself was pretty. For indeed, she hadn't been. It had made her laugh, and when she laughed, Snape had too, when she'd spoken of how disagreeable they both were, both in appearance and temperament.

The certainty that Hahree wasn't going to ask him to explain eased the dread of it. "It was an arranged marriage, more common back then, than now," he said finally. "It didn't last very long--she was killed, and I--I came here to teach." There was a moment, when he could see the thin chest drawing breath for air, when he thought more questions would pour out of the curious creature's throat.

But Hahree just said, "I'm sorry you have been alone, Master." Snape set the photo aside and stared down at the exotic young man.

"I'm used to being alone," he said, surprised when the boy's face lit up, almost shyly.

"You have friends, Master, and you have me," Hahree said, slipping easily into the cross-legged position at Snape's feet that always made Snape's back groan to think of. "Not the same thing as having a wife, I know."

"Colleagues, certainly, not--"

"Professor Lupin is your friend," Hahree said, and Snape was already becoming used to the stubborn set of that jaw. "He likes you very much."

Snape gave it up as a bad job, for convincing Hahree of anything unfavorable to himself he'd already learned was impossible. "His whiskers are very funny, aren't they?" Hahree said, twitching his upper lip and crossing his eyes as if picturing moustaches there. "Do you think I should look good in them?"

Before Snape could reply, a luxuriant brown moustache, salt and peppered like Lupin's, curled over the boy's lip and down the sides of his face. A decidedly undignified noise came from between his knees as Hahree's fingers traced over the thick thatch of hair, and he rolled back, laughing so hard that he nearly fell into Snape's lap.

Next morning, there was a brief battle over how much of Hahree's midsection was showing, but Snape had but to threaten to leave him to the house-elves breakfast, and the fabric grew again, decently covering what could be covered. About the boy's looks--for he was as fairly favored as his father had been--Snape could do nothing. At least the moustache was gone.

"Is that a child?" Hahree asked eagerly, as soon as they started up the stairs for the Great Hall.

"That is a second year," Snape said, then rolled his eyes at Hahree's wide-eyed wonder. Even someone locked up in a bottle for twenty years would quickly get used to children in the cooking pot of Hogwarts' hallways. There was a swish of noise behind him, and Snape caught something black out of the corner of his eye. He turned, and found Hahree in student's robes--with a matching black hat with large green stars on it. Snape reached out to straighten it with a disgruntled frown.

They ran into Lupin, or rather, could not avoid Lupin, as he seemed to be waiting for them at the top of the stairs.

"What's this you've done to him, Severus?" Lupin said, hiding a smile behind one worn hand.

"I've done--" he began, but knew by the intake of several pairs of lungs around them, that the boy done something. He turned, to find Harry in Lupin's tweeds, down to the patched cardigan, oblivious to the gaggle of girls behind them coming up the stairs who'd stopped to gape.

"Is this better?" Hahree said, holding his arms out and looking down at himself. By now, his antics had drawn the sort of crowd Snape was horrified to be in the center of. It wasn't until he saw Hermione Granger coming down the stairs from Gryffindor tower that he felt the inevitable tug of disaster such as when one trips, then realizes the long tumble down the stairs has just begun. McGonagall must have given her a guest room up in her old digs. Granger's robes were open, and she had on a perfectly serviceable navy blue suit. Snape's mind whirled, trying to think if he could Summon the green bottle without smashing it on the stone corridors in the dungeon before--

Lupin's, "Oh…my," and the peals of laughter that rose up around him alerted Snape that it was too late. The boy had replaced his borrowed tweeds for Hermione's suit, shifting awkwardly on the sensible navy pumps. Snape was, for just a moment, heartstoppingly grateful that the standard genie-issued uniform included underwear. Hahree had hiked the skirt up well above his knees to admire his legs in the stockings.

Without thinking, Snape shrugged out of his outer robe and flung it around Hahree's shoulders, glaring at Lysander, the Slytherin Prefect, who, seemingly as mesmerized as the rest, shook himself and began herding the children toward the Great Hall.

"No, repeat, no unauthorized costume changes," Snape was hissing at an obviously contrite, if confused genie, when Granger, who'd politely waited for the children to troop by, joined them.

"I knew this would happen," she said, with a smugness Snape would envy if he wasn't still shaking with anger. He tugged the robe closer around Hahree's neck, heedless of the slight gagging noise the boy made.

"Really, Hermione? Taken up Divination again, have you?"

Snape's mouth was open, but it was Lupin who'd spoken. Snape shot him a felicitous smirk.

"Nothing so wooly," she said with distaste. "Just that I knew he had to be taught--"

"He needs to be stoppered!" Snape countered.

"Now, Severus," McGonagall began.

"No, Master!" Hahree wailed.

"He's my genie," Snape said, ignoring the Hahree's outburst, and McGonagall's shocked expression.

"But he isn't," Granger insisted. "He's a person who's grown up in a bottle and doesn't know our ways."

"I am his genie," Hahree said, sliding open the robe and letting it fall off his shoulders. He was back in his own attire, the jeweled green of it nearly shocking after the earlier display. Snape couldn't help noticing that the waistline had lowered again to show the boy's navel.

"But don't you want to know more about where you came from?" Hermione asked, though Snape noticed her eyes had widened slightly when Hahree's well-fitting costume had come into view.

"I come from the Djinn," Hahree insisted.

"You don't, son," Lupin said, quietly beside him. "I saw you the day after you were born, in your mother's arms."

For a moment something passed over the boy's face. But his chin lifted and he shook out the borrowed robes, draping them back over Snape's shoulder. "I'm his genie."

"Whether he wants one or not," Lupin said, too quietly for anyone but Snape to hear.

Snape waved Hahree away as he tried to do up the clasp. "In what way am I keeping him from learning anything he wants?"

Granger wheeled on them both. "You keep him in a bottle!"

"He lives there," Snape said.

"It's a very nice bottle," Lupin put in, as if that helped. He frowned and looked at Hahree. "I thought genies lived in lamps?"

Hahree shrugged. "All the lamps were full. Any really cramped space with a suitable rubbing surface will do."

Granger shot Snape a look that he was certain was going to be followed by the sort of comment that had made him loathe teaching, even more than usual, for the seven years she'd been at school. He cut her off by turning to Hahree. "Would you like to learn more about…about whatever it is Granger thinks you should know?"

Hahree looked up at him, green eyes unfathomable. "If it is your wish, Master."

Snape nodded. "Very well, you may have him Tuesdays and Thursdays, for two hours while I supervise detention."

"Me?" Granger squawked, and all three males looked at her. She turned to McGonagall.

Who shrugged. "It did sound like you were volunteering, dear."

"I'm starving," Snape said, as if the conversation had been about breakfast all along. "Anyone else?"

"Me, Master!" Hahree said with a laugh.

"Think you can manage to keep your clothes on long enough for me to get through bacon and eggs?" Snape asked, ignoring Granger's sputtering.

"Two helpings!" Hahree said, and linked his arm with Snape's when it was offered. In turn, he put out his elbow awkwardly to Lupin who took it with a grin. In a swirl of black robes, tweed and green gauze they escaped to breakfast.
Chapter 5: In Which the Genie Is Let Out Of the Bottle
After his first lesson with Granger, Hahree returned to Snape's quarters with a battered copy of Hogwarts: A History. Which, Snape noticed, remained untouched.

After his second lesson, Hahree returned with a note for Snape from Granger. It said, "I think Harry needs glasses."

Snape frowned at it and handed it back to the anxious genie. "Read that to me, please."

With the eager smile that accompanied most tasks Snape set out for him, Hahree took the parchment, and squinted at it. "I…think--" he began, through eyes that were almost closed with effort.

"Never mind," Snape said, snatching it back. The next day, they paid a visit to the Infirmary, and the genie looked even more like his infernal father after he'd been fitted with serviceable glasses. Hahree spent a lot of time that night looking at things, picking them up and just turning them over in his hands, looking at them from every angle. He also spent a lot of time looking at Snape, which almost caused him to order the nuisance back into his bottle.

Snape was just brooding on that fact when a visitor was announced. He and Hahree looked up with surprise, as their only visitor was only ever Lupin, and he usually checked with Snape before calling.

"Back into your bottle," Snape said, and for once, the genie obeyed without arguing endlessly with him.

His visitor was Draco Malfoy, who swept into the chamber in a flurry of rich, fur-trimmed robes, even though it was just mid-September and still fairly warm out.

Normally Snape didn't mind visits from his favored former students, but something about Draco's arrival had set his hackles up, and he found out what it was with the first words out of his mouth.

"You've got a genie!"

Snape sighed and closed the door. Before he could reply, Draco said, "May I see it?"

"Why?"

"I've never seen a genie," Draco said, as if that were reason enough. "No one has, no one I know, anyway." His tone clearly said anyone worth knowing had never seen one.

Snape could think of no reason to refuse except that he just didn't want to, and if he said that, he'd spend half an hour arguing with Draco, who'd get fussy and petulant and get his way anyway.

Draco's eyes followed Snape as he strode over to the mantel, unstoppering Hahree's bottle. "Come out, if you please."

A plume of emerald-tinted smoke erupted from the mouth of the bottle, and though Snape was quite used to it by now, he had to admit, from the look on Draco's face, it was impressive. Especially when the plume coalesced into the gaudily dressed genie, who apparently considered putting on his ankle bracelet of bells 'dressing up'.

"Who was it, Master?" Hahree said, before he realized they were not quite alone.

Draco was grinning. "'Master', is it?" The grin slid unattractively into a smirk. "That's cozy." He circled Hahree, who bobbed uncertainly. "Is that why you've got it dressed like that?"

"It--" Snape huffed in exasperation. "He came like that."

"What can it do?" Draco put out a finger as though to poke an animal in a cage.

"Anything," Hahree said, smoke now up to his knees, though the slight tinkle of bells could be heard as he bobbed in place. "Subject to the standard disclaimers."

Snape could tell Hahree was about to outline his entire genie contract and said to Draco, "Careful or you'll wind up in Baghdad."

Draco frowned. "Pardon?" he asked, shaking off his confusion with Malfoy aplomb. "How many wishes do you have left?" He was talking to Snape but he hadn't taken his eyes off Hahree. "I'm surprised you haven't wished to be as wealthy as my father."

"Since it's done him so much good," Snape said, drawing out Hahree's ready smile.

"Or to be as good-looking as my dad." Draco paused, hands on his hips, looking finally over at Snape as if assessing why anyone would choose to look as he did when given a choice.

Hahree's face changed, thunderclouds forming on the marred brow. Snape had visions of trying to explain to Lucius--or worse, Narcissa--why their son had been turned into a pillar of salt.

Snape stepped between Hahree and Draco. "Would you like some tea?"

Draco, being oblivious to the danger, ignored the question. "What have you wished for?" Finally, in the silence, he looked over his shoulder at Snape. "You haven't wished for anything?" Draco asked, incredulous. Without missing a beat he asked, "Can I have a wish then?"

"No!" Hahree and Snape said, at the same time. Snape glanced at Hahree, who had crossed his arms over his chest, drawing the gold arm bands tight around his upper arms.

"What could you possibly wish for?" Snape asked.

Draco's gray eyes would not meet his. "Things," was all he said.

"You'll have to get your own genie, then," Snape said, ignoring the look Hahree sent his way. He could deal with the boy's misplaced admiration later.

Before he left, Draco eyed Snape speculatively. "What are you going to wish for?"

"No idea," Snape replied and closed the door firmly.

Hahree was staring at the door when Snape turned back around. "You could wish to have no enemies," he said, looking back at Snape. "That everyone would like you."

"That is quite the most revolting suggestion yet," Snape said, sitting down in his armchair. Hahree automatically went to the sideboard, his hands fluttering over the tea things before settling on the something stronger.

"You didn't like Mr. Malfoy much, did you?" he asked, accepting the tumbler and leaning back in his chair.

Hahree sank to Snape's feet, glancing again at the closed door. "He's very pretty," Hahree said, and Snape nearly sputtered away the spirits.

"Pretty?" He studied Hahree from the rim of his glass. "You may not be as straight as I thought you were."

Hahree looked up at him and sat up higher, shoulders back. "I am very straight, Master, see?"

Snape rolled his eyes. "Not sitting up straight, you--" He exhaled heavily. "Straight as in heterosexual." Seeing that Hahree looked unenlightened, Snape said, "Your choice of sexual partner."

Hahree's normally open features clouded. "I don't know, Master. I have never lain in the scented garden with another."

He told Lupin about it over drinks the next night while Hahree was having his lesson with Granger.

"Lain in the scented--" Lupin sat back hard in the cushions of the chair. "That's going to be hard to live up to." He paused consideringly. "What did you do?"

Snape took a swallow. It was the same stuff he'd knocked back last night after Hahree's revelation. "What else could I do? I lied and told him it was perfectly all right to be uncertain." He got up to refill his glass. "Then I sent him back to his bottle."

Lupin was thoughtful. "You can't put this genie back in the bottle." Then he winced. "So to speak." Lupin settled back further in his chair as if hiding from his remark. "You should talk to him--don't you have to council your Slytherins about things like this?"

A delicate shudder went through Snape. "If you were a Slytherin, would you ask me about sex?"

"Point."

He waved his glass inquiringly at Lupin who declined with a nod. He sat back down, contemplating the tumbler. "If only there were someone who could talk to him about these things." He let that sink in. "Someone who's seen both sides of the issue."

Lupin slammed down his glass. "You evil old snake," he said, as Snape settled his feigned surprise look on his face. "I told you it was only once."

"And you were," Snape said, finger running along the wet edge of his glass. "I believe you said, drunk at the time." A sniff. "Pity."

Lupin was still glaring at him suspiciously when the door rattled and Hahree swept in, followed closely by Granger. Hahree pushed the door closed, glaring to see Granger on the wrong side of it.

"Master," Hahree said, ignoring whatever her clouded look was trying to tell him. "Professor." Lupin returned the tersely polite nod. "May I go to my bottle?"

Snape's mouth dropped open. Hahree had never actually asked to go in the bottle. "Of course," he managed, and Hahree wasted no time smoking in. Snape stood up to replace the stopper before turning to face Granger.

Who flushed as if just realizing he and Lupin were in the room. She glanced longingly at the closed door as if wondering herself how she'd gotten on this side of it. She had a book clenched closely to her chest. Without a word, Snape crossed the sitting room and held out one hand expectantly, as though she'd been discovered with something on Filch's banned list.

"Fundamental Rights of Wizards as Decreed By The Conclave of Fotheringhay," he read out loud, looking at Lupin as though he'd actually said 'I told you so' verbally. He looked down at Granger, who looked as though she'd been caught in class with a love note. "I'm afraid he needs more fundamental lessons than these."

If she thought looking at Lupin was going to aid her, she was mistaken. "Er, pardon?" she asked, when no help was forthcoming from that direction.

Snape handed her back the book. In fact, instead of looking like he was going to get Granger out of this, Lupin was hiding his grin behind his glass. "Before Hahree learns to be a wizard, he needs to learn to be a man." Yes, Granger was definitely looking alarmed now. Perhaps these lessons of hers weren't so ill-advised after all.

She looked at both men in alarm. "You don't mean a--a practical demonstration?"

Snape smiled and realized the expression might not be the best aid in his cause. "Of course not. Just that Hahree is--uncertain--about where his--his nature lies."

Lupin, seemingly unable to resist, stood up, patting Granger on the shoulder as if it were all decided. "Bring a book."

A week later Snape was pacing. He was used to pacing--he'd done it a lot before Hahree had taken up down here and would rather rub his feet than put up with his pacing. Only this time Lupin had taken it upon himself to pace too, and they kept nearly walking into each other.

"Stop it!" he said finally, halting too fast as Lupin trailed over his robe.

"What's taking so long?" Lupin asked, eyeing the firmly closed door to Snape's bedroom.

"This was a stupid idea," Snape said, hands on his hips as though they'd help him stare the door down.

"It was your idea," Lupin said, halting as well, staring at the door.

"Only because you wouldn't rise to the challenge," Snape countered.

"He's your genie!" Lupin said, looking affronted.

"What could I possibly teach him about--"

An infinitesimal noise from within and they both froze. Lupin's hand was suddenly clenching his arm as the door opened. Gruffly Snape shook him off, as Granger, her hair mussed, her eyes slightly unfocused, stepped out. She took a deep breath, and Snape noticed that the top button of her blouse was undone.

"Well?" he demanded.

Granger looked over her shoulder and sighed. "He has some very strange notions."

"You brought a book, right?" Lupin asked, following her gaze over her shoulder. "Where's the book?"

Granger straightened as though her back hurt. "I think we have found the one book Harry's willing to read." She tugged down her blouse, realized the lapsed button and primly--or as primly as she could with two hoary bachelors staring at her--did it back up.

"I think, if you don't mind, Professor, that we'll skip Thursday's lesson." One more glance over her shoulder. "So Harry can…absorb the information properly." Snape nodded absently, trying to look beyond her into his own bedroom. "I'll see myself out," she said, more loudly as Lupin stepped aside for her.

"Thank you," Lupin said.

Snape waved his hands in what could be interpreted as agreement if one was very liberal in the interpretation. As soon as she stepped aside, Snape pushed open the door.

Hahree was seated cross-legged on Snape's made bed. An opened book sat on his knees, absorbing the boy's attention. He looked up when Snape pushed the door open and blushed. But he didn't close the book.

Keeping one finger in the fold of the book, Hahree nodded as Lupin followed Snape into the bedroom. "Do you and Professor Lupin really do this stuff?"

Snape sat down beside him, feeling almost like an intruder on his own bed. "Yes, Hahree," he said, not looking at the page Hahree was holding open, knowing the book had pictures.

"Er, not together," Lupin said, sinking onto the bed as well, on Hahree's other side. "And not for a long time."

"A very long time," Snape said, fairly certain he wasn't revealing anything Lupin hadn't guessed.

Hahree nodded thoughtfully, looking down at the picture again before closing the book. "I'll try to learn all this for you, Master."

Snape resisted the urge to drop his face into his palm. "No, Hahree, you should learn this for yourself."

Hahree frowned. "Hermione said there was a chapter in here about that."

Before he could open the book again, Snape put his hand over it, his hand brushing Hahree's. "The only thing I insist upon, is that the students are off limits."

Hahree's eyes widened, and he pushed the book off his lap. With an air of great solemnity he took Snape's hand, folding the fingers into his palm then kissing the back. Snape's gaze caught Lupin's, but it was obvious he was as clueless as Snape.

Hahree straightened up and returned Snape's hand, though the back of it felt tingly. "No, Master," he said, "I am only allowed to lie in the scented--" He exhaled softly and tried again. "To do sex with you."

"What did he say?" Lupin asked, looking from Hahree then back to Snape.

Snape yanked back the hand Hahree had kissed as though the boy was still holding onto it. "To have sex," he corrected automatically.

"I'm only allowed to have sex with you, Master," Hahree said, then smiled as if satisfied he'd got it right at last.

Snape stared at him in horror. "You must see that's not possible."

"Did he say what I think he said?" Lupin slid off the edge of the bed, standing up as if to get a better view.

Hahree swung his legs around as well, pulling the book with him as he stood. "Oh no, Master, Hermione assures me it is possible. There's two chapters on that!" He looked quite pleased with himself, then frowned in concentration. "Unless you are afflicted by some disease, impotent, or incapacitated, because I assure you, if you wish it so, I can cure you."

Snape put his hand over his eyes, as much to get away from Lupin's smirk as to think of something reasonable to say in a world gone awry. "I don't mean it's not physically possible--" He looked at Lupin, thinking if the other man were privy to all this he might as well help out.

And unexpectedly Lupin came to his aid. "Such…intimate services are of no value if compelled by obligation," Lupin said, turning round to face Hahree squarely.

Snape was gearing up to point out the salient fact that he was not in fact queer and therefore not interested in the 'intimate services' Hahree had offered when the infernal creature nodded thoughtfully and said, "I understand."

Lupin brightened, as if he too had expected more explanation would be necessary, and slapped Hahree manfully on the shoulder. "See, that wasn't so bad," he said, looking over his shoulder with an overly-bright expression that made Snape want to snarl at him.

To distract them both, the next evening he set Hahree to work chopping ingredients for the Wolfsbane potion. He slid over the aconite with precise directions for the consistency he wanted to achieve. When he turned back around a moment later, however, the aconite lay in a glittering green box, decorated exactly like Hahree's bottle was. Snape peered inside. It was perfectly chopped.

He set the green box aside and dug out more aconite from his stores. Handing Hahree the pairing knife handle first he said, "No magic."

"But why? Is it not perfect, just as you asked?"

"That isn't the point." With his own knife he pointed at Hahree's untouched pile. "Doing it by hand builds character."

Hahree started on the stalks but his smile was sly. "I already have lots of character, Master."

Snape cleared his throat so that nothing as ridiculous as a chuckle would come out of it. "In your case, we'll settle for toning it down a bit." Hahree nodded agreeably and set to work with the same single-minded devotion to he set to with every task Snape gave him. "Besides, we've no idea what effect genie magic will have on this, and we don't want to hurt Professor Lupin, do we?"

Hahree looked up, startled, but began chopping very carefully. Snape handed him another ingredient, propping open his battered copy of The Moste Potente Potions so he could read his notes in the margin. Running his finger along his notes, Snape absently lit the fire beneath the cauldron. "I'm ready for those slugs," he said, dropping them into the simmering water first.

"That's the wrong dosage, Master," Hahree said, alarmed.

Snape gestured for the aconite, and Hahree slid it over. "I've had to modify it in recent years," he explained, finger stabbing into his own notes. "The potion has lost its efficacy over time." And was probably about to be modified again, Snape thought, with the school term starting and the transformations taking more out of him.

Snape repeated the ritual the next night alone, after making sure Hahree had gone sulkily to his bottle. As usual, Lupin gave his thanks, looking more tired tonight and making no effort to disguise his disgust at the potion as he had last night when Hahree had accompanied Snape on his errand.

He saw Lupin off on the third night and returned to his quarters. The moon wasn't even up, yet Lupin had looked distracted and shaggy around the ears already. He was mulling over changes to the potion as he had every few months for the last year or so when Hahree smoked out of his bottle.

"Why did you not take me, Master? I wanted to go."

Snape was not in the mood tonight for Hahree's boundless energy. "It isn't something you should see," he replied, sinking into the armchair and staring into the fire.

Wordlessly Hahree sank to his knees beside Snape's feet, leaning against his leg. As if sensing his mood, Hahree nudged his head against Snape's resting fingers until Snape began stroking absently at his hair.

Hahree made a satisfied noise. "Master, why don't you cure Professor Lupin? You are truly a great wizard, are you not?"

Snape made an indelicate noise. "Because, despite what that idiot popinjay Lockhart says, lycanthropy cannot be cured."

Hahree looked up at him, puzzled. "I can cure him, Master."

Snape's mouth dropped open. Dumbledore had said that the magic of the Djinn was different than wizard's magic. He shot to his feet, pulling Hahree up with him. "Come on." He all but dragged the boy through the hallways of the school. Then out onto the grounds where dusk was already thickening. He didn't release Hahree's hand until they were squeezing into the tunnel beneath the Whomping Willow.

"Stay close," was all he said as they wound through the tunnel. Snape went first into the Shack, setting aside the trapdoor and helping Hahree clamber up. "Upstairs quickly and pray we are not too--"

"Who's there?"

A door opened up at the top of the stairs and Remus Lupin peered out into the gloom. "Severus?" Even from the foot of the stairs, his scowl was evident. "And Harry?"

Snape started up the stairs, ignoring Lupin's ire.

"You of all people know how dangerous this is." Lupin's shirt was hanging open, his undershirt already out of his trousers.

"Do you want to be cured?" Snape asked, nearly skidding onto the landing, Hahree right behind him in a tinkle of bells.

"Severus, I insist you take Harry out of here," Lupin said, glaring at them both. "You can stay here and be eaten for all I care. Honestly, what on earth are you--"

"Don't be an ass. Do you want to be cured or don't you?" He could feel Hahree beside him but didn't look over.

"No one can cure a werewolf." Lupin's voice was dull.

"Hahree can do it."

Lupin's eyes went wide, amber already glinting in their depths. Slowly he turned his head to Hahree who nodded once. Lupin looked quickly over his shoulder, back into the shabby room, and its still-dark window.

"Okay, all right. Just hurry--"

Relief flooded through Snape as he turned to Hahree urgently. "Hurry!" he said, when the boy just stared at him.

"You must wish it, Master," he said solemnly and Snape understood that this was more than the services, magical and otherwise, Hahree performed for him every day.

"I so wish it," he said. Hahree nodded again and folded his arms over his chest.

And blinked.

Snape waited. Then he looked at Lupin.

"That's it?"

Lupin sagged against the doorjamb, but he looked no different. "If you don't mind," he said, voice edged with tension, "I think I'll lock myself in this room before the moon comes up."

"He said--" Snape looked at Hahree furiously. Hahree shrugged.

"He is cured, Master. Only the moon can prove it."

Lupin held up one hand. "We won't be taking any chances on that." The door closed firmly.

Still, Hahree looked implacable. Well, it was only a matter of time before they knew one way or the other. Snape paced in front of the door. After a few passes, Hahree, his hands clasped behind his back, fell into step behind him. Another pass, and they both looked at the door, Snape straining for any sounds within. There was a muffled rustling, then nothing more.

Snape paced some more. Surely the moon was up by now? He was on the verge of checking the night sky from one of the other rooms when the door creaked open slowly.

Lupin, still a man, stood in the doorway, the full moon clearly visible in the window behind him. He was bare except for a dingy towel. "I haven't seen the full moon--in human form--for over thirty years," he said quietly, looking again over his shoulder as if to make sure the moon behind him was no illusion. Then he looked back to Hahree.

Who rubbed his nose and bobbed slightly on nearly transparent ankles.

Lupin clasped Hahree by the upper arms, just over the golden armbands. Fortunately he'd thought to tie the grubby towel around his hips. "I can't even thank you en--"

"It was my master's wish," Hahree said, his cheeks pink.

Before Lupin could subject him to a similar indignity, Snape stepped back. "Don't even think about it."

~~**~~

There wasn't any way to keep the news secret, not when Lupin insisted on returning to Hogwarts through the village, stopping to stare at the moon through various angles. He seemed particularly taken with views through tree branches. They lingered so long outside one cottage with a spreading elm tree that Snape feared the owner, who kept peering at them through lace curtains, would come out and shout at them.

"Come on," he urged through clenched teeth. "So that we can at least be the first to tell the headmaster what has happened."

"What you made happen," Lupin said, tearing himself away from sky gazing.

Snape gathered his robes against the evening and sniffed. "Anything to get out of brewing Wolfsbane every month."

He was denied even the pleasure of rousting Dumbledore out of bed, though it was evident from the purple nightshirt that someone had.

"So, it's true then?" Dumbledore said, clasping Lupin's arm as he met them in the Entrance Hall of the school.

A hullabaloo ensued, the type Snape detested, yet lately found himself in the center of all too often. He looked over various heads to find Hahree, easily spotted in his bright green gauze by one of the marble staircases. The boy had hardly spoken since they'd started back from the Shack.

The fracas ended only when Pomfrey swept down from the Infirmary, insisting Lupin report for a thorough going over.

Hahree was silent as he and Snape made their way down the dungeon stairs. When the boy feigned exaggerated sleepiness, Snape made no comment. Perhaps the granting of an actual wish was exhausting.

All was silent as he slipped into his own bed, but he lay awake rehearsing clever remarks for the next years' worth of full moons now that he'd be able to use them. Gradually a tinny sound of another voice caught his ear, very quiet, very far away. Snape wrapped his dressing gown around him as he stepped into his slippers.

He nearly always left the stopper off Hahree's bottle now, and tonight was no exception. The droning voice was definitely coming from within, and was definitely not Hahree himself. Snape maneuvered one eye over the opening to see what was going on inside. He'd just registered the soft flicker of what looked like a telly, when Hahree, possibly alerted by the presence of a gigantic eyeball blocking the top of his bottle, peered up into the gloom.

"Master?" Hahree's body seemed to waver, until Snape realized the bottom half had turned to smoke, lifting Hahree until his miniaturized head popped over the rim of the bottle. Luckily Snape got his eye out of the way just in time.

Tiny hands gripped the edge of the green glass rim. "Have I disturbed you, Master?" Hahree released one hand from the edge, bobbing slightly as the hand waved in the air until an object appeared in it. It looked, oddly enough, like a flattened camel, no larger than Hahree's palm. Hahree pressed his thumb to the eye of the camel, aiming it back down the bottle's shaft. Instantly the tinny voice ceased.

"I won't disturb you, M--" Hahree began, but Snape waved him away.

"It's all right," Snape said, vaguely unsettled at knowing something was amiss, because Hahree had told him how much genie-vision bored him now that he'd seen the real world.
"Are--are you all right?"

Hahree's face, for just a moment, looked like normal, open, uncomplicated. Then the boyish mask fell away, Hahree himself bobbing slightly as though they were conducting this discussion on the edge of a very tiny swimming pool.

"Would you--" Hahree began, then turned shy just a moment as the thought worked its way through his head. "Would you like to come inside?"

Taken aback, Snape spoke without thinking. "Is that possible?"

The confidence was back in Hahree's face. "With genie magic, all things are possible." Before Snape could refute this he saw, as if from a great distance, Hahree blink--a significant sort of blink. Snape's body felt suddenly as if it had come down with something not normal, and definitely not British. Unlike Apparition or Floo, or other normal forms of travel, Snape's body felt insubstantial, though he could feel that he was moving, and then solidifying inside the gaudy glass bottle. For a moment his body felt too heavy, as though being smoke was his natural state and this thing of blood and bone was an error somehow.

"Welcome, Master," Hahree said, managing a sort of kneeling bow that Snape could only have managed, even at that age, under Imperio.

Instantly, Snape looked up, the way he'd come. Sure enough, the circular opening of the bottle lay high above their heads. Snape was seized by an irrational fear that someone would wander into his quarters and put the stopper in. Reflexively he patted his robe pocket, feeling the reassuring shape of his wand.

Around him lay a surprisingly--even for anyone acquainted with wizard physics--large circular room. A brocade couch, gold here where the couch was widest, circled around the room, molded into the curved wall. Pillows, in nearly every color, scattered in no particular pattern that Snape could discern, topped the lounge. The walls seemed to be made of the same brocade fabric, shot through with swathes of green toward the top where the brocade tapered off and the glittering green glass of the bottle took over. Set into the opposite wall was the muted screen that Hahree had described as genie-vision, the screen arching over the curve of the bottle.

Hahree stood--though that description was decidedly imprecise for someone mostly insubstantial below the knees--while Snape took in the single room. And because some sort of comment seemed called for, Snape said, "You've lived here since you were a baby?"

Hahree's legs reformed, down to the circle of bells around one ankle. "Oh, yes, Master, though it looked much different when I was first put into the bottle." He looked around uncertainly, as if seeing it through Snape's eyes. "More, er, toys."

Snape looked for a pillow-less spot on the couch, finally tossing two blue ones aside, before he sat down. Then he realized he might have waited for an invitation, but Hahree seemed to know less about having visitors than Snape did about owning a genie.

Hahree bowed again, then made as if to assume his customary position at Snape's feet before Snape stopped him. "No, you should--" He tossed a purple and red pillow out of the way and gestured for Hahree to sit. "It's your home."

"My home is with you, Master," Hahree said, but he sat, though stiffly, as if committing some breach of genie etiquette.

"About tonight--" Snape began.

"You are a very wise master, to cure Professor Lupin," Hahree said.

"You cured Lupin," Snape said, and Hahree looked at his hands crossed across his lap.

"As you wished."

"Are you sorry I asked you to?" Snape asked, probing for the reason behind the sense of discomfort he'd sensed in the boy.

"Oh, no, Master," Hahree refuted, "I would have done it on my own if it were possible. It was only your wish that allowed me to."

"Yet, you seem troubled," Snape said, gratified when Hahree's alarmed gaze lifted his head.

"I don't mean to be any trouble--" he said, then looked uneasily into his lap, posture still rigid as though still wanting to sit at Snape's feet.

"No, I just meant," Snape began, then reconsidered, "well, of course you're no end of trouble." As Snape expected, Hahree brightened at this. "I only meant, I thought you might be, well, pleased to have gotten through the first wish."

"I am very happy to have served you," Hahree said, though the tone was flat.

Snape should never have begun this. He had no map of any human heart save his own, and his was pitted like a half-finished cloved orange. "Two more then, and you'll be off to your next--" And then of course it didn't take the boy's low moan of distress to tell him he'd been right.

He never should have begun this.

Every Slytherin that had come through Hogwarts in nearly the last two decades had learned quickly that Snape did not put up with sniveling. So when he reached over this was merely an arm reaching out in manly solicitude, and not an invitation to burrow into Snape's side like a homesick first year. Hahree curled into him, face just beneath his shoulder, fingers scrabbling at the edges of his robe.

Snape fumbled for a handkerchief before remembering he was still in his nightshirt and dressing gown, though his fingers did brush against his wand. A single syllable of a Summoning spell slipped out before Snape stopped himself, visualizing a human-sized handkerchief--as nearly all of Snape's were--getting stuffed in the neck of the bottle, trying to obey the summons issued by temporarily genie-sized Snape.

Snape covered Hahree's seeking hand with his own to prevent further damage to his dressing gown, realizing all at once that Hahree was not, in fact, crying, though emotion shivered out of him like rain over stones.

So, he did the only thing he could think of, stroking Hahree's hand, then the back of his head until the shudders slowed, then stopped.

"I am a very bad genie," Hahree said, voice muffled by Snape's armpit.

"And I would be a very bad master to allow you to say such a thing."

Slurs to Snape's character, even by Snape himself, always ignited Hahree's passionate defense. "You are a very good master," he said, face turning up. It was mottled but, as Snape had suspected, dry.

"Then you are quite a good genie." Hahree quivered as if to refute this, but he merely shifted below Snape's arm. When Hahree seemed to have no inclination to move away, Snape glanced down, startled by the contentment in the young face. The idea of himself giving comfort to anyone was quite as startling as finding oneself with a genie.

Thus trapped, his gaze landed on the mutely flickering screen across the lushly patterned carpet, images of weird eastern cities, rich with mosaics paraded past his eyes. Hahree settled himself more comfortably beneath Snape's arms, his knees tucked onto the sofa so that only his slippered feet hung over the edge.

"Travelogue of Islamabad," he said.

"Two hundred years ago, perhaps," Snape said, though he didn't want to think how anyone could get camera footage from two centuries before.

"Rerun, anyway," Hahree said, shrugging, but they watched anyway.

Snape knew he should be thinking of things. Like how unexpectedly powerful the magic of the Djinn was, or how Hahree's childhood with endless reruns of travelogues of Baghdad and Islamabad for company must've been even lonelier and odder than his own had been.

Instead he found his mind thinking how Hahree had turned to him for comfort, as though Snape knew anything about it. Even Madeleine, in their brief marriage, hadn't needed comfort from him. Her plainness had made her self-reliant, just as his own had done.

Snape took the only solace he could in the knowledge that he was simply Hahree's master, his first master, and that Hahree would learn to rely on others.

"What happens--" he began, breaking the not uncomfortable silence, "when the third wish is granted?"

Hahree's hand slid from the warmth it had found between the folds of Snape's dressing gown. "The bottle goes somewhere else to await my next master."

"Could I choose to give you to someone?" he asked, thinking of Lupin, though he'd been granted the greatest wish of his life tonight. Albus, perhaps, though it made Snape shiver to think of what havoc their headmaster would wreak with three wishes.

But Hahree was shaking his head. "That power rests solely in the hands of the Djinn."

"And if I never make the third wish?"

"You will, Master." Hahree spoke quietly, still tucked into Snape's side, fiddling with one of the buttons on his dressing gown. "For it is the nature of mortals to wish for what they cannot have."

Snape hadn't, until that moment, quite remembered that the Djinn were rumored to be immortal. The idea that Hahree would live on for centuries, forgetting his first master, startled him so much that he nearly missed the rest of Hahree's words.

"Perhaps it will be a long time before your next wish," he said, sounding sleepy.

"I'm sure it will be," Snape said, wondering if he'd have a chance to get his arm back tonight, as Hahree's head nestled against it. "After all, what do I possibly have to wish for?"
Chapter 6: In Which Snape Breaks His Promise
Two owls perched in front of Severus Snape's breakfast plate, nipping at the platter of bacon on the table. The fact that not one but two undisciplined birds were being allowed to nibble unchecked was probably due to the fact that Snape had never had an owl, let alone two waiting for him at breakfast.

Between the two unrepentant birds lay a folded lavender-colored envelope. Snape suspected it would also smell of that unfortunately useful potion ingredient. He knew it was from the headmaster even before he flipped it open and scanned the note.

"We have been summoned to tea," Snape said, handing the invitation to Hahree in a waft of lavender scent. He looked over and nodded tightly to the headmaster before he shoved the owls away from the bacon.

"I should like that, Master," Hahree said, taking his own seat and smiling over to Dumbledore, rather more warmly than Snape had.

"I doubt it." He heard McGonagall's sharp intake of breath as he gingerly took the Howler from the sharp-eyed owl. "Disarm this for me?"

"Yes, Master," Hahree said, wiping his hands before taking the red envelope.

Snape opened the second envelope after shooing both owls away. "You've had quite enough," he told them, opening the worn envelope.

"Dearest Cousin Severus," it began, "This is your cousin Cordwainer Bede, and I'm hoping you remember with the same fondness as I, the happy family get-togethers when we were both boys."

Snape--certain he would have hexed any cousin named Cordwainer had he happened to have actually attended any happy family gatherings--read on.

"--sure family gossip has branded me a madman or worse, but the curse that has befallen me has more to do with the moon than any frailty of the body--"

"Here you go, Master," Hahree said, handing him back the Howler, which was now chirping softly as though starlings had nested inside the red envelope. He peered over at Snape's other missive. "Is that another invitation to tea?"

"Of a sort." He folded it up. "We will not, however, be attending."

The Howler chirped at him when he opened it, "For Merlin's sake, if you can cure one werewolf, why didn't you just cure them all?" It went on in the same vein with several more chirps, but Snape folded it back up.

"I could not have, Master," Hahree said, reading over his arm. "I cannot grant any wish that profoundly changes the human condition."

"People who write Howlers and letters to editors seldom have any sense," Snape replied, touching his wand to all three missives and watching with satisfaction as they went up in a puff of lavender-scented smoke.

Snape and Hahree were not, however, the last to come down to breakfast, merely the most owled. Remus Lupin, with a nauseatingly beatific smile on his face, was sliding along behind his colleagues, stopping for renewed congratulations and ridiculous amounts of back slapping. He looked like he'd gotten even less sleep than Snape, though he'd probably been gazing at the moon rather than spending half the night on a genie's couch.

Snape glanced at Hahree, eating his eggs and owl-nibbled bacon with relish. There was no sign of the emotional turmoil of last night, though that could have been the eggs. There'd been only a slight uncertainty of his greeting this morning, when Snape, who'd finally made it to his own bed, had wakened him for breakfast. It had been easily remedied when he'd asked for some trivial service, and Hahree had bounded off eagerly to comply.

It hadn't been anything, and more importantly Hahree hadn't noticed anything. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, unaccustomed guilt trickling up his spine. It had been the closeness, the comfort. Any unfortunate physical manifestations of that comfort could happen to anyone who'd been alone a long time. And Snape had been alone a long time.

It was nothing to feel guilty about. He didn't feel guilty about it. And he'd hardly thought about it at all since last night.

Fortunately he was interrupted from this maudlin reverie by Remus Lupin. Unfortunately it was a no-doubt comradely slap on the back that sent Hahree's pumpkin juice spewing from his mouth.

By the time the mess was mopped up, Lupin had discovered his own invitation to tea and Snape's own moment of discomfort was forgotten. Or so he tried to tell himself.

They spent the afternoon until tea time with Lupin. Not because Snape had any crying need for anyone's company, least of all a vacantly smiling ex-werewolf. But because there didn't seem to be any way to get rid of him.

Lupin's excuse for invading Snape's quarters was that he'd dug out the abridged version of Hogwarts: A History, the one that Snape himself owned, though it had been tucked away on his bookshelves practically since he'd gotten it.

"See, all you do is tap it with your wand," Lupin said, "You can use mine."

Snape closed his eyes at the idea of Hahree with a wand, but as no explosions followed, he opened them again. Lupin and Hahree had made themselves comfortable on the hearthrug, as though Lupin too felt the need to kneel at Snape's feet. The book was open to a blank page near the back.

"Albus Dumbledore," Lupin said, guiding Hahree's hand to tap the page with the wand. The page shimmered and a smiling, bewildered young man with untidy auburn hair wavered into view.

"Is that really--?" Hahree said, peering at the scruffy boy.

"Of course," Lupin said, "but what I really wanted to show you was--" He slipped the wand from Hahree's fingers. "James Potter."

Snape wrinkled his nose in distaste as Potter Senior hove into view. Determinedly he buried his nose in the book in his hands.

"Is that my dad?" Snape glanced up as the boy's fingers dropped onto the page, tracing the frame, rounding the Gryffindor crest that had appeared along with it.

"Yes," Lupin said, attention riveted to Snape's charge.

"He looks so young," Hahree said, frowning.

"Well, he was a bit older when he had you."

"Do I look like him?" Hahree looked up at Lupin.

"The very image. With your mother's eyes." Lupin tapped the page again. "Lily Evans."

Potter's wife swam up next, all red hair and mischief that sparkled from the page, even from Snape's vantage point. "Your mum," Lupin said.

"She's pretty." Snape was sure only he saw Hahree's gaze flicker to the end of the mantel, then back to the photo in the book. Snape forced himself to look away, lest the boy catch his guilty moment.

"Do you see how I knew it must be you and none other when I first saw you?" Lupin said. "We all thought you--" Lupin swallowed hard. "I saw the house," he said, looking up at Snape. Snape had seen it too, that night. "I've no idea how you survived."

"I suspect," Snape said, no longer pretending not to listen, "that's what Dumbledore intends to find out this afternoon."

Lupin nodded as if the idea had occurred to him. Hahree took the wand again, tapping the page as he'd seen Lupin do.

"Severus Snape."

Snape cringed as the pale, resentful photo he'd always disliked replaced Evans's. At least, Snape thought with relief, Lupin hadn't summoned Black's photo to show the boy. Hahree's unfortunate godfather had died in prison after escaping a few years ago to try to kill again. He'd only managed, in that case, to kill a student's pet rat, laughing once more as they'd taken him back to Azkaban.

"God, you were thin," Lupin said. Snape was about to comment which of them could currently stand to lose a few pounds when he saw Hahree's fingers reach out, touching the portrait. One finger traced over nose and lips, down the front of Snape's school robes, then round the Slytherin crest. Then he looked up at Snape, the real one, as if comparing. Surely the boy was finding him wanting, compared to his father, or even Lupin, who'd aged more but at least had been more comely in his youth.

"How old were you, Master?" Hahree asked, his fingers never leaving the page.

Snape gave a mock shudder. "Seventeen."

Lupin snorted good naturedly. "You were never seventeen. You were always going on forty."

"Better than seventeen going on twelve," Snape countered and Hahree laughed. Tapping the page again, Lupin's picture appeared, looking, if possible, even younger than Snape's. Snape made a face at it, changing it only when he noticed Lupin had made nearly the same face.

"What is that clinging around your neck?"

Lupin mumbled something, and it was only when Hahree prompted him, that he repeated it, "Bandana." His cheeks pinked. "I'd been reading about American west and wanted to be a cowboy."

Snape snorted.

"What did you want to be, Master?" Hahree asked.

Snape settled back in his chair with a smirk. "Always fancied myself the owner of a genie."

Hahree toppled over sideways laughing, nearly creasing the page of the book. The young, bandana'd Lupin looked startled and fled the page. The elder smiled, grateful, Snape supposed to be talking about anything besides his unfortunate choice of neckwear.

"Looks like you got your wish," he said.

~~**~~

He shouldn't have been surprised to see that Granger was joining them for inquisition-cum-tea. She had a slim folder, not the usual book, and it occurred to Snape that she actually looked odd without a book clutched to her chest.

She'd asked immediately about their adventures last night, and Snape deferred to Lupin, feigning boredom. Instead, he turned to Hahree, tugging on the never-quite-meeting-in-the-front edges of the green jacket.

"Aren't you cold?" he asked irritably, as the swirling staircase deposited them at the headmaster's door. Hahree shivered slightly as Snape touched him but didn't reply.

"Come in! Come in!" Dumbledore called, getting them all settled as he served the tea himself. "Very sorry for the Howler, Severus," he said, handing him a cup and saucer. "We let them into the Great Hall for the students," he said, looking over at Hahree, who had been dissuaded from taking his customary seat at Snape's feet. "But usually direct ones for the teachers to the staff room." He smiled. "I've redirected the others."

Snape's cup rattled. "Others?"

Dumbledore handed Hahree his cup, along with the sugar bowl. "There have been six others for you." He nodded toward Lupin. "And about that for Remus."

"It's a sad commentary on our society," Granger said, "that whenever something good happens to someone, it arouses so much jealousy and derision."

"Shall I have Hahree disarm them?" Snape asked. "He's quite good at it." Hahree smiled shyly.

"That would be helpful. Thank you." His own smile encompassed them both. "Recent events have suggested that perhaps it's time to delve into the mysteries of Hahree's origins before--" He paused and took a sip of his own tea.

Snape, knowing his employer's love of dramatic pauses, merely waited.

"Before they become of interest to other parties," Dumbledore said.

Granger was the slowest to catch on, but Snape forgave the lapse, since she alone hadn't lived through the last war. Her history, however, was up to scratch. "You mean followers of You Know Who?"

Dumbledore looked like he wanted to award House points. "All we know of his demise is that on the night he killed the Potters--all save one as we now know--his power was broken. I'm sure I'm not insulting your intelligence to admit the incident in your first year, Miss Granger, with Professor Quirrell was not the first sign that Voldemort was merely broken but not destroyed."

Lupin leaned back in his chair. "I suppose it isn't a far stretch to think that any power that can cure a werewolf might be able to bring back a former Dark Lord back to life."

Snape had expected much of this conversation. Instead he watched Hahree to see how much of this he was following. To his surprise the boy looked interested, but not lost.

"This wizard who killed my parents is not dead?" he asked.

"His body was destroyed," Dumbledore explained, "but his soul was scattered in an attempt to preserve his essence."

"I would not bring such a man back to life," Hahree declared, frowning.

"But if you were commanded to--" Dumbledore looked at Snape. "Not by Severus, but by followers of Voldemort. If one of them got your bottle and wished for you to do it?"

Hahree had gone pale. "Then I would have to," he admitted, his voice rough. "I can refuse no wish by my master."

Awkwardly Snape patted the boy's knee, because it seemed some sort of gesture was called for. Dumbledore stood over them, one hand sliding over the boy's shoulder. Hahree looked up.

"Professor Snape is your first master?" Dumbledore asked gently.

Hahree nodded. Snape pointedly cleared his throat to remind him of his manners. "Yes, sir," Hahree amended.

"And when he became your master, was it your first time out of the bottle?"

"A genie is only allowed out to please his master," Hahree said. Somewhere beside them Snape heard Granger's outraged intake of breath. Dumbledore quieted any potential outbreak with a look that had been quelling children longer than any of them had been alive.

"And you've no idea how you came to be in that charming green bottle?" Dumbledore went on.

"None, sir."

Dumbledore nodded. Snape knew none of this was unexpected--they'd asked similar questions the first time they'd questioned Hahree back before term started. Dumbledore looked over toward Granger. "Miss Granger?"

Granger looked self-conscious about her chastisement, but, as Snape expected, soldiered on. "There aren't any recorded cases of wizarding children taken by the Djinn. The last known wizard to own a genie--" Her nose scrunched in distaste as she consulted her notes. "--was a Fijian wizard, Aieia Toku, who, according to contemporary reports just after the last Muggle World War, found the bottle washed up on his beach. It isn't known what Mr. Toku wished for, as his entire island vanished off the maps one week later."

"Descended upon by recently discovered relatives, no doubt," Snape said while Lupin hid his smile in his hand.

Granger smiled thinly. "We'll never know. The island was only recently rediscovered by Muggle satellite technology, causing great excitement at the Royal Geographical Society." She consulted her notes again. "The last documented Muggle to possess a genie lived even longer ago. His descendents currently rule a small oil-producing nation in the Mid-East."

She neatened up the stack of notes, the bulk of the contents of which, Snape was relieved they were not going to explore. "The records before that are even sketchier." She sighed, as if from some personal affront. "It's long been suspected that there is a…pattern to Djinn interaction in our world, but without more evidence--" She shrugged.

Lupin had pushed his chair onto the back legs, giving the appearance of being deep in thought. Snape suspected he was merely trying to make up for last night's lack of sleep, when the chair thudded back on all four legs. "Well, I've got a question." He looked over at Hahree. "If our Harry went into the bottle as a baby, who--or what--raised him?" He made a face as if just working it through himself. "I mean there's magic, and then there's someone who's got to change the nappies."

"Oh, that is easy," Hahree said, "I was raised by the great Brothers Djinn."

"Brothers--" Snape said.

"Djinn?" said Dumbledore, as both men exchanged looks. Hahree nodded, then took a serene sip of his tea.

"You've seen the Djinn?" Granger asked, pulling out a sheet from her notes. At Hahree's nod, she said, "No one has seen the Djinn. Only their representatives, the genie. And Muggles even deny that."

"The Djinn take care of all the genies," Hahree added helpfully.

"When was the last time you saw them, child?" Dumbledore asked.

Hahree didn't hesitate. "A few weeks before I came here, sir. To tell me that at last I was going to get my first master."

Snape felt the weight of several stares boring into him. As any good school teacher would, he ignored them. He turned in his chair toward Hahree. "Could we meet them, Hahree? Will any harm come to you if you call them?"

"No, Master."

"Must I wish it?" Snape asked, thinking there were many worse ways to use up a wish.

"No, this I may do, if you think it is all right."

"I do."

It was the first time Snape had seen Hahree hesitate once given permission. He reached over and laid one hand on Hahree's arm, squeezing reassuringly. It must have been enough, or Snape was getting the hang of the comfort thing, for Hahree got to his feet, stepping a little away from the others. He folded his arms across his chest and blinked. An object appeared, about half a meter square. Snape recognized it by the two wire protrusions, bent in the shape of a palm tree. It was Hahree's genie-vision set, hovering in mid-air.

Hahree adjusted the screen, so that it was facing their group, then frowned, and blinked again. The odd flat camel device appeared in his hand. Hahree aimed it at the screen and pressed the eye of the camel. Instead of a travelogue, the screen wavered, black and white lines crisscrossing across the surface.

Hahree dropped to his knees and prostrated himself in front of it, forehead low enough to touch the carpet, arms stretched out in front of him, his tiny rump facing them. "This unworthy one wishes to speak to the great Brothers Djinn."

The lines on the screen whirled faster, spinning hypnotically until Snape wondered if the tea hadn't been doctored. Then Snape blinked. The lines seemed to have formed a mouth.

"Hang on, Hahree," a strangely-accented voice said, "and let me pull my worthless brother out of--" An odd noise followed, then an unmistakable yelp. Hahree sat back on his heels. The mouth on the set started to shrink, or the genie-vision set seemed to enlarge; Snape wasn't sure which. Two hands with rings on every finger, clutched at the edges of the screen from inside, and a frightful looking head appeared, all dark moustaches, and gleaming black eyes, and long, long black hair. The rest of the torso emerged, though the creature was pure smoke from the knees down. He was followed immediately by another, and it took Snape a moment to realize their features were so alike, they must be twins.

One was dressed all in white, the other all in black, with flared trousers and too-tiny vests that left their enormous chests all but bare. On each huge head--for the Djinn towered over everyone in the room, including Dumbledore--sat a matching fez. They were wearing not just more jewelry than Snape had ever seen on one person, but more than he had ever seen in one place. Rings on every finger. Armbands, bracelets, huge hoops of golden earrings hanging from each ear, even golden ornaments through various body parts that, due to their unusual costumes, Snape could not help but notice.

"How you doing, Hahree?" the Djinn in black said, pulling Hahree to his feet and engulfing him in a smoky sort of bear hug. The grinning boy was passed to the Djinn in white, whose hug was no less exuberant.

"I am well, oh great Djinn," Hahree said, his grin still in place despite the bruising hugs.

"How's the master working out?" the Djinn asked, letting his head rest on the top of Hahree's head from behind. Snape suppressed an irrational surge of jealousy as the heavily gold-laden arms reached around beneath Hahree's armpits, like a Hindu god, and plucked the glasses off his face, bringing them up to its face and squinting.

"I am well pleased, oh great Djinn," Hahree said, his eyes crossing from trying to look up.

"You must be the werewolf," the creature in black said, circling Lupin, the smoke-trail of its lower half streaming out behind. "Or ex-werewolf," it added.

"Er, yes," Lupin said, extending one hand. "You know about that?"

The Djinn shook his hand vigorously. "Oh, yes, we were quite proud of our Hahree's first wish," he said, looking over his shoulder.

"Quite proud," his brother echoed, picking Hahree up, though Snape was at a loss as to how he accomplished this without any visible feet.

"I am Levi," the djinn still gripping Lupin's hand, "greatest and most beloved of the Djinn." He gestured over his shoulder, finally releasing Lupin's hand, "and that worthless one there is my brother, Leroi, humblest and weakest of our kind."

"Hey!" Leroi said, peering at his brother through Hahree's glasses. He still had his nearly bare chest pressed close to Hahree's back. "He is jealous," Leroi said, pretending to speak only to Hahree, in a voice that carried easily.

He untangled himself from Hahree, much to Snape's relief, and floated over to Lupin, taking his abused hand and bowing over it. "I am Leroi, good sir, kindest and wisest of the Djinn." He ignored the snort from his brother.

"This is my master, oh great Djinn," Hahree said, coming to stand beside Snape. Snape resisted the urge to straighten up as the brothers exchanged a look and circled the pair.

"This is the worthy, Snape?" Levi said, stroking one end of his long black moustache.

"It is," Snape answered for himself, as Hahree's mouth opened to reply.

"You are taking good care of our Hahree?" Leroi asked, shouldering his brother out of the way.

"Rather the other way round, I should think," Snape said, crossing his arms over his chest. The brothers exchanged another look before Dumbledore interrupted.

"It is an honor to meet two such powerful and wise Djinn," Dumbledore said, as another round of introductions commenced.

"Well, one, perhaps," Levi said, ignoring the glower from his brother, as he bowed over Granger's hand. "One powerful and wise and the other sadly, a faint light in his brother's shadow."

"Perhaps the great wizard Dumbledore has asked the two unworthy Djinn here for a reason?" Leroi asked, bobbing slightly on his indistinct lower half.

"Indeed I have," Dumbledore said. They'd all remained standing because they'd run out of chairs to offer the Djinn, and Snape wasn't sure creatures who were insubstantial from the knee down would appreciate the offer.

"This foolish one is not too much trouble?" Levi said, his hand sliding protectively onto Hahree's shoulder. Without looking over, Leroi repeated the motion on Hahree's opposite shoulder, the jewels in their rings nearly blinding.

"Oh, no, not at all," Dumbledore said, before Snape could say anything. "Though it is because of Hahree here that we were interested in meeting you."

"Ah," Leroi said, "I thought this day would come."

Levi frowned. "You did not."

"Did so."

"You always said, 'got away with it clean, we did'."

"That was before--" Leroi nodded significantly at Snape. He raised his black brows. "Bound to come out it was."

"We've all been," Dumbledore said, "most interested to learn how our Harry Potter became the genie Hahree."

"Doesn't happen very often," Levi said, squeezing Hahree's shoulder with a tinkle of bracelets before letting go.

"It's never happened," Leroi said.

"No need to train up wizards," Levi said, ignoring his brother. "Not when they've got perfectly good--"

"If slightly inferior," Leroi added.

"Magic of their own." Once again they'd ended up standing on either side of Hahree. "So when this one's mother summoned the Djinn, it was more curiosity than any idea what was to come."

Levi again squeezed Hahree's shoulder. "The fair lady, Lily--" He stopped and rolled his eyes. Leroi too had moved to the center of the room, only now he sported a shoulder-length red wig, his white fez still perched on top. In his arms he held a rag bundle that Snape assumed represented Hahree. Or Harry, he supposed, in his pre-genie days.

"She told us of the evil efreet Voldemort who sought, by foul means, to murder her only son." He snatched off his fez and clutched it to his chest. "How could our hearts be unmoved by such a tale?"

Leroi laid his be-ringed hand upon his forehead, symbolizing, Snape supposed, woe. Rag-bundle Harry seemed to be dangling by a tuft of blanket.

"Yet," Levi went on, "what could we, humble Djinn, do about this perfidy? We, who do not interfere with the affairs of mortals--" On the floor of the office, Leroi made a strangled sound. Levi cleared his throat. "Er, too much, save where our lowly brothers the genie are sent to serve them."

He put a hand on Hahree's shoulder. "It was this one's mother who beseeched a boon, not for herself, oh no--"

Leroi was holding his hands up pleadingly as if begging such a boon. Rag-bundle Harry had fallen to the floor.

"But for her son to be made a genie."

There was swift silence in the room. Not even the clank of jewelry marred the moment. Until Granger spoke up, "Yes, but why a genie of all things?"

And Snape knew. "Because wizard magic doesn't work on genies." Hahree had told him that himself on his first night out of the bottle. "Evans was clever--she probably found that out and--" He looked again at Hahree.

Dumbledore was stroking his beard so hard Snape thought it might fall off. "So, the Killing Curse--" He stepped in and brushed the fringe away from Hahree's forehead. Leroi got to his feet, as Rag-bundle Harry and the frowsy red wig disappeared.

"Bounces off," Snape said.

Dumbledore was frowning now, just as fiercely as he'd been stroking his beard. It was Lupin though who voiced the question. "Are you telling us that Lily sold Harry? Because if you are--"

Levi held up one hand. "My brother's tongue is as clumsy as ever. No, no, good wizards--" He glanced at Granger, "--and witch, the bargain was to make Hahree a genie, with a genie's powers, until he reached the age of eleven and would be sent away to school. The lady Lily would then serve her son's term as a genie if nothing had happened to either of them. We did not know we would have to return only the next night to complete the bargain. To be honest, considering the number of nappies I had to change--"

"You had to change?" Leroi sputtered.

"If genies are truly impervious to our magic, especially to Dark Magic--" Dumbledore said in a low voice to Snape.

Snape looked over to Hahree, fiercely protected between the two brothers, now arguing over who'd changed the very worst nappy.

"Might we have him destroy…certain objects we've been uncertain about how to disarm?"

Snape's first response was no, that if he and Dumbledore hadn't figured out how to disarm the Horcruxes without killing themselves, then there was no way he was exposing Hahree to that level of danger. He glanced over again. The tuft of hair was still sticking straight up, where Dumbledore had combed through it, the lightning bolt scar faint but recognizable.

"Hahree?" he said, crossing his arms over his chest. Obediently Hahree squeezed between Levi and Leroi and trotted over to Snape.

"Yes, Master?"

"I'd like to ask you to do something," Snape said, distantly aware that the brothers had stopped rowing and were looking over at them.

"Of course, Master."

Snape was distinctly uncomfortable, asking for something, wishing for it, in front of others. But Dumbledore was right. There was no better way to use the gift he'd been given. "The wizard who killed your parents, his essence was divided the night he died."

"So you told me, Master."

"Divided and hidden into seven powerful cursed objects, six of his own making, and one of ours," Snape said.

"There was, at this school, a few years ago--" Dumbledore began, "in Miss Granger's first year, in fact, a teacher who took a part of that magical essence into his own body. Fortunately, we were able to thwart his attempts to find another outlet for Voldemort's return, by encasing him in the very object he sought to steal."

"The Sorcerer's Stone wasn't destroyed?" Granger asked. They'd all moved closer around the desk, including Levi and Leroi, who again, flanked Hahree.

"Ah, I thought you'd guessed," Dumbledore said, smiling. "No, with Severus's aid we were able to trap the piece of Voldemort inhabiting Quirrell into the stone itself. Fitting irony, don't you think?"

"The other objects?" she asked, clearly on the scent now.

"Historical artifacts that the Dark Lord turned into reliquaries for his soul. I've managed, again with Severus and Remus's aid, to collect them and keep them from being used. They are however highly dangerous and, we suspect, lethal, even fatal, if disarmed. In the wrong hands--"

"It is your wish for me to destroy these objects, Master?" Hahree said, and Snape thought it might only be his imagination that heard the quaver in the young man's voice. Only last night he'd all but promised not to wish for anything for a long time, but surely Hahree could see how important this was.

"It won't be murder, Hahree," Snape said. "Voldemort's body is already destroyed. But if these objects are safely disposed of--" Doubt and uncertainty at what he was asking the young man to do crept in. "He is allowed to do this?" he asked, looking up at the Djinn.

Leroi tugged on his white vest, chest thrust forward proudly. "Smiting of enemies is an honored genie tradition."

"I will do this for you, Master," Hahree said.

"For yourself, Harry," Dumbledore said. "You don't want this wizard coming back to life or back to power."

"Truly I do not." Hahree's lips had taken on a stubborn cast that lent Snape to think he might have to spend another night on the genie's couch. "But my master must wish it."

"Be specific," Leroi said.

"Use examples," said Levi.

"Do you have to be in contact with the objects, Harry?" Dumbledore asked, looking uncertain for the first time. "It was too dangerous to keep them all in one place."

"Smiting is much more fun in person," Leroi said with a shrug.

"But it can be done if the master Snape wishes it," said Levi with an expression that said he too would prefer a more personal sort of smite.

Snape looked at Dumbledore, who'd taken up a quill and was scribbling furiously on parchment. "Here are the locations of all seven objects, Harry," he said at last, handing the genie the list. Hahree glanced at it, then up at Snape.

Unlike the wish with Lupin, Snape was reluctant to say the words. He could think of no better use for his wish than this, and no fitter source of Voldemort's irrevocable defeat than by Lily's cunning and Hahree's power. But it was his second wish, the one he'd practically promised he wouldn't make for a long, long time.

"I wish for Hahree the genie to destroy these magical artifacts, and thereby the soul of his parents' murderer, Voldemort," he said, feeling some formality was called for.

Hahree crossed his arms over his chest, needing only a long black moustache and a mint's worth of jewelry to be a miniature of the Djinn. Snape was expecting the simple blink, and exhaled when it was accomplished.

"Good job," he said, squeezing Hahree on the shoulder.

"That's it?" Granger asked, clearly disappointed.

"The magic of the Djinn is not as showy as the magic of wizards," Leroi said, a bit defensively, it sounded like to Snape.

"Clearly," Lupin said.

"It's really--" Everyone looked at Dumbledore. Whose face was full of dawning wonder. "Over?"

"It really is," Snape said. He leaned over to whisper, "Though it couldn't hurt to check on where you left certain things in the next few days." Dumbledore nodded.

Snape turned to the sound of a large hand hitting a back, as both brothers were congratulating Hahree.

"See, two wishes down, and you'll be off to a new master in no time," Leroi said.

Snape caught Hahree's attempt at a brave smile, but also something in Levi's expression. He looked like his brother had said something untoward, but Snape had always known he was but Hahree's first master, and could make no sense of it.

"There are so many things I want to ask you," Granger said, rifling through her notes.

Leroi looked up with a horrified air, but Levi, Snape noticed, leaned down to say something privately to Hahree. The boy nodded, but still looked he'd been given the date of his own execution.

"How is the power of the Djinn passed onto genies and--"

"It's been lovely, really," Levi said, shaking Dumbledore's hand vigorously. "We really must do this again." Leroi yanked Hahree in front of him, scrunching down as though hiding. More handshakes, though Levi avoided Granger's. Since the chit was still asking questions, ignoring their leave-taking, the snub went unnoticed.

"You know how it is, places to go, wishes to grant," Levi said, with obviously feigned regret.

"And just who decided on three wishes?" Granger said, gaze still on the notes in her hand.

Levi turned next to Snape. "You'll take care of him?"

It was an odd question, and odder still for being the second time the Djinn had asked it.

"As long as he's in my charge," Snape said.

The answer seemed to satisfy the Djinn. He joined his brother, stopping to press a kiss into the top of Hahree's head and murmur a low goodbye. Smoke swirled around their knees, blending into twin plumes of smoke, and vanishing into the still-hovering genie- vision set.

Granger blinked. "Oh." She closed her folder, looking almost as morose as Hahree. Another blink, this one from Hahree, and the genie-vision set vanished. Even Dumbledore didn't seem to know what to say.

Later that night, Snape lay awake a long time, listening for any sound from the other room, any hint of distress from the mantel. But he heard not a sound.
Chapter 7: The Scented Garden
The next morning, Hahree wasn't waiting when Snape got up for breakfast. That in itself was enough to make him peer down into the top of the bottle. But the bottle too was empty. He had a momentary unreasonable panic when he thought perhaps he'd wished something in a dream and Hahree had granted it, then gone away.

His fingers clutched the bottle, trying to remember if any of Granger's usually useless information had said anything about a genie staying with the same bottle. Vaguely he did recall Hahree himself saying he was the genie of the green glass bottle. And if Snape had made a wish in his sleep, wouldn't something be different? Unless he went outside his rooms and found all the children were suddenly brewing flawless potions, he wasn't sure what else--

There wasn't anything he wanted, was there? Snape put down the bottle. The ideas that had swirled around in his brain last night as he was listening to see if he would be needed were just that, ideas. Possibilities.

He sat down beside Lupin at breakfast. He'd noticed immediately that Hahree wasn't at breakfast. Snape sighed. "Have you seen Hahree this morning? He's not in his bottle."

Lupin looked up from spreading jam on his toast. "Saw him with Hermione this morning." He took a bite of the laden toast. "Say, that reminds me, I asked him if he'd like to learn a bit about Quidditch before--well, anyway, he's going to meet me this afternoon after classes, if you'd like to pop round."

Snape took a sip of something that might have been tea but tasted off. "Certainly." He added something to his cup then made a face as he took a sip. "Granger, you said?"

Remus smiled, hiding it behind his own tea cup, though Snape didn't know why he seemed more smug than usual this morning. "Yes, down by the lake."

Snape abandoned the tea. "Right. See you this afternoon then." And he was leaving the breakfast he had no interest in anyway, and why on earth was Lupin still smiling? Perhaps he'd spent another night gazing at the moon.

He spotted Hahree right away, under one of the trees down by the lake. Fortunately he was alone as Snape walked up. Hahree started to stand until Snape waved him back. Hahree was sitting cross-legged on the ground.

Snape was not about to sit on the ground, so he crossed his arms behind his back, and peered down at his charge. "I missed you at breakfast."

"I'm sorry, Master," Hahree said, looking down into his hands.

"No, I'm not--" Snape sighed, and sat down on the ground beside Hahree. "I'm not chastising you." A gold quilt appeared beneath his legs and Snape nodded gratefully. Hahree said nothing, and Snape didn't know what else to say, so they sat silently for a few moments, gazing over the lake.

Then, Snape cleared his throat. "I heard you were speaking to Miss Granger earlier. Can you tell me what that was about?"

Again Hahree dropped his gaze into his lap. "I am ashamed to say it, Master."

"I hope you know by now that you can tell me anything, Hahree," Snape said.

Hahree nodded, though for a moment he didn't speak. "I wanted to ask her how long those other genies, the ones in her notes, stayed with their masters."

He not only sounded miserable, he looked it, but this time Snape did not know how to offer comfort. "What--" He cleared his throat again. "What did you find out?"

"Not enough information to draw any conclusions," Hahree said, in a fair imitation of Granger's tone.

"A new master will provide you with more interesting adventures," Snape said, "More interesting wishes."

"I am a wizard too, Master," Hahree said, looking up at last, the shining green of his eyes exactly matching the glass of his bottle. "Is it wrong to want to stay with--among my own kind?"

"Is that what you wish?"

Hahree's face turned away. "A genie is not allowed to wish for himself. Only to grant those of others."

Snape taught his classes that day, but it may not be said that his mind was fully occupied on the task. So much so that when Annabel Midgen bollixed up her Switching Potion, Snape merely, "tssked, tssked," and strolled on by her smoking cauldron.

Once his classes were over for the day, he stopped by his quarters, still noticeably bare of genie, for his heavier cloak, as it was drawing into Fall, and the air had turned chilly. Hahree and Lupin had already dragged out the bloody great box of balls used to play Quidditch, when Snape found a seat in the stands, near the ground. Hahree's easy smile at the sight of him warmed him more than the cloak. Perhaps things could go back to the way they'd been--with no messy dramas interfering. Snape didn't have anything else to wish for, not really, and truly he'd gotten used to the dratted boy's presence in his quarters. It would be…inconvenient to lose him so soon after modifying his living arrangement to include someone else.

"Ah, this is the smallest and slickest of the all," Lupin was saying, "the Snitch, bane of many a Seeker." He tossed up the quiescent Snitch and caught it in one hand. "Now, the object of the game--"

Snape pulled his cloak tighter around him. Across the field his own Slytherin team was lining members up for broomstick sprints, races to increase speed and accuracy in turns. Across from him, several hardy students had also gathered to watch the practice, but at least they were alone on this side of the field.

Hahree held his broomstick awkwardly, and at Lupin's nod, watched the Snitch fly out of sight. Lupin mounted his own broom and raced off after it. For a moment Hahree watched him, while Snape watched Hahree. Leave it to Lupin not to explain the object of one on one Seeker to the boy properly. Snape himself was about to leave his seat and instruct the boy himself, when he heard Hahree say, "Come to Hahree, oh mighty Snitch."

The little gold winged ball smacked into Hahree's hand and he smiled, strolling finally over to where Snape sat. "This is a very odd game, Master."

By then, Lupin must have realized his prey had escaped and he was landing back at the box of balls on the field.

"It's a wizard's game, Hahree," Snape said. "If you want to learn about wizards, sadly, this is a fundamental component of that knowledge."

"Harry," Lupin called, propping his broom up against the battered ball crate. "I don't think you've fully grasped--" He strode over to the stands where Hahree presented him with the Snitch, now with its wings folded back. Lupin sighed. Snape smirked. Then he noticed that Hahree, still in his unsuitable gauzy green clothes, shivered slightly.

"Here," he said, pulling off his own cloak. "I'd have thought you'd have more sense--" It was Snape's turn to sigh. Then he noticed Lupin smirking. Snape narrowed his eyes, but ignored the smirk in favor of making sure Hahree was buttoning up the cloak properly.

He rolled his eyes, suspecting that Hahree, judging from his own clothing, had little experience with buttons. "Come here," he said, unbuttoning the mismatched buttons and doing them up correctly. Running one hand down the front, he made certain his own handiwork was true before straightening away from Hahree's grateful smile. "Off with you now, and let Lupin explain the proper way to chase a Snitch."

After Hahree had humored Lupin for over an hour, they landed, and Lupin sent Hahree off to store away the ball box, while he gathered up the broomsticks to take back to the broom cupboard inside the castle.

"Not bad," Lupin said, once he was close enough to Snape to be heard. "For his first try at it."

Snape searched Lupin's face for any sign of that lingering smirk he'd had ever since breakfast, but the chilly wind must have blown it out of him. He pursed his lips, hands still deep in his pockets since he'd given away his heavier cloak. "Do you think it might be…kinder to wish for something--anything--and send him away before he gets too attached?" he asked, looking toward the archway where Hahree had vanished into. It had been one of the possibilities that had come to him last night, though he'd initially dismissed it.

"Oh?" Lupin said, shouldering both brooms. "Because he's so unattached now?" Drat, the smirk was back. Snape had feared it might be.

"I'm simply his first master," he said, voice roughened a bit from the cold.

"Severus, you're his first everything." One of his own hands dug into his pocket. "His first teacher, first master." Lupin wasn't smirking any longer. "His first crush."

Snape's eyes widened, but Hahree was bounding back to them, the flaps of Snape's coat trailing along behind him. "Is it time for dinner, yet, Master? I think I could eat a camel!"

That evening Snape paced in front of his fire, the muffled sounds of Hahree singing a rather off-color song about Ali Baba and an Ever Expanding Number of Improbably Named Thieves from the bathroom. Snape stopped in front of the photo of Madeleine and picked it up, expecting to see something accusatory on her plain features. He resisted the urge to turn the photograph around, thinking it had faced as much if not more humiliation than he was contemplating in the next moments over the years. Instead she looked as she always did, frozen in that brief time they'd been married.

Snape was still pacing when Hahree emerged from the bathroom, dressed as he always was, in his green gauze costume, though his hair was wet and his glasses still had a bit of steam clinging to them.

"Shall I run your bath, Master?" he said, taking off his glasses and rubbing them against his vest. When Snape didn't answer right away Hahree put his glasses back on. "There's fresh soap--the lime scented one you like. I can scrub your feet." His voice had taken on a wheedling tone.

"I'd like to speak to you, Hahree," Snape said.

The boy froze then nodded gravely. If he'd been a student, he would have been preparing himself for detention.

"Sit on the couch with me," Snape said, taking one end hastily, and patting the cushion beside him. Silently Hahree obeyed, though visibly making an effort not to sit on the floor at Snape's feet. He looked ill at ease, hands folded tightly in his lap.

"I've been thinking about my final wish," Snape began, and Hahree paled but still didn't speak. "And I've thought perhaps there might be a way to have you stay a bit longer here, if you wish it."

Harry's face studied the fingers knotted in his lap. "A genie is not allowed--"

Gently Snape untangled his fingers. "There is a thing that I would wish for, that may allow us--allow you to stay, but I must know if you desire it as well."

Emotion returned to Harry's face, an oasis blooming swiftly after the rain. "I do, Master." Snape found Harry's fingers still in his, and squeezed them reassuringly before returning them to their rightful owner.

"I think we may assume that your mother, like the Djinn, did not truly expect the bargain to be met so swiftly." Snape made a face. "I find myself in unfortunate agreement with Granger that you should be given more choice about your own fate than a genie is allowed." Harry looked puzzled so Snape went on. "But with the threat of the final wish hanging over your head, I don't believe you'll take advantage of your time here, always waiting for the axe to drop."

Snape could stand it no longer, and stood up, pacing in front of the couch. "I thought perhaps to wish for something harmless--an everlasting store of potions ingredients, or for Albus to finally put on the weight he should from eating all those sweets, but that would simply take you away to an uncertain fate, and no guarantee that your next master will care that you were ever a wizard."

He stopped, looking down at Harry, who'd been looking more and more puzzled, then smiled when he mentioned Albus. Snape sat back down again. "Lupin said--" He cleared his throat, thinking if Lupin was wrong, Snape's final wish would be to turn him back into a werewolf. "Lupin said that you might care for me?"

"I do, Master," Harry said earnestly, "If I had but a single wish--"

"Would you lie in the--" Snape couldn't believe he was actually going to ask this, "Lie in the scented garden with me?"

Instead of looking pleased, as Snape had hoped, Hahree was looking alarmed. That settled it; Lupin would be a werewolf again within the hour.

"You wish me to turn into a woman?" Hahree said, clutching the back of the sofa as if already contemplating some maidenly virtue to protect.

"No!" Snape said, blinking. "Of course n--Wait. You can do that?"

Hahree nodded, then closed his eyes as if indeed waiting for the axe of femininity to fall.

"No, no, a wizard you were born, and a wizard you shall stay."

One eye behind the glasses opened. "I cannot make you fall in love with me, Master, for that is not within a genie's power." The other eye opened. "Wisely, I suppose," he added a little sadly.

"We needn't be in love," Snape said. He hadn't been, with Madeleine in the beginning, though they had managed to fumble their way through sex. He wasn't perfectly certain he'd been in love with her when she'd been killed, though everyone who knew the steps he'd taken to avenge her had believed it must be so.

Comprehension dawned on Hahree's face. "Oh!" His cheeks flushed. "If you yearn to lie with me, Master, you may. It is not forbidden." He patted Snape's hand reassuringly.

For just an instant, as his face dropped into his palm, Snape considered turning Lupin back into a werewolf just for getting him started in this whole awkward business. Except that it hadn't really been Lupin and his tiresome certainty that Hahree was enamored of Snape that had got him started and Snape was honest enough to admit that.

"Harry," he said, huffing into his wrist. "What I'm proposing is that my final wish is for you to make me…queer." He lifted his face out of his dampening palm. "And for you to stay with me as my lover until we tire of each other. But it must be what you want and not because you think it's what I want."

Hahree's eyes were very wide behind his glasses. "Wishes are to please masters, not genies," he said, as if by rote.

"Did it not please you to cure Professor Lupin? Or to avenge the murders of your parents?"

"Those things did please me, Master," Hahree admitted.

"And this would not?" Snape demanded.

"This would please me most of all."

"Then that is my wish." He'd said it before he could change his mind, could think any more the thoughts that were driving him round and round.

"Then it is done," Hahree said, his gaze sidling away.

Snape sat back suddenly, coming up short against the armrest. "Just like that?" Hahree nodded. "What if I didn't phrase it properly or something?"

"Do you desire me?" Hahree asked, and surely his voice had never sounded quite so husky. Wordlessly, Snape nodded. "And I have not been whisked away in my bottle to await my next master." He shrugged.

Snape himself didn't feel any different, save for the sense of relief that his wishes were at last no longer hanging over his head, and the overwhelming desire to kiss Hahree. Though that last felt as though it had been lingering in the back of his brain somewhere, and had just learned it might be welcomed.

It had been so long since Snape had kissed anyone of either sex, he wasn't certain how to accomplish it. He hadn't thought much past using up his third wish at all. He studied Hahree who looked, if anything, more uncertain than Snape himself.

"Would you like to--" he began.

"Yes," Hahree said, a little breathlessly.

"Come over here then," Snape said, sliding his leg so that his knee no longer lay between them. Hahree slid over at once, his thigh coming flush with Snape's. Snape waited to hear warning bells as he tilted Hahree's chin up, angling softly for just the barest brush of his lips against Hahree's, some indication that his libido was outraged. His libido was indeed checking in, but outrage was not on the list. He let his mouth linger when he lowered his lips again, feeling something uncoil in his belly when a soft noise escaped Hahree's mouth.

Admittedly Snape was as inexpert at this as he was at giving comfort. But, he reasoned, any two dunderheads could kiss, to judge from his midnight forays to the Astronomy Tower. He moaned softly when Hahree responded, his fingers sliding into the folds of Snape's robes. He welcomed the arousal flooding into his system, welcomed the lease his own fingers had taken to stroke Hahree's cheek, his throat, pausing to savor the heady pulse beating there.

He drew back to look at Hahree, not because he was uncertain of the boy's reactions, but because he wished to, and he was used to his wishes being fulfilled. Color rode high on Hahree's cheeks, his lips damp and still parted, awaiting the next kiss.

Which Snape, who found he enjoyed granting wishes as well, bestowed. It seemed very natural to coax those soft lips apart, tongue trailing along Hahree's bottom lip before slipping inside. His hand dropped from Hahree's shoulder, gliding down the silken skin just above the golden armband. He had a sudden vivid image of Hahree sprawled on his bed with nothing but those armbands, and his tongue surged unimpeded into Hahree's mouth. Hahree made a noise, but since he clenched the front of Snape's robes even tighter, he concluded it was not distress, or at least not the sort he should worry about.

Snape pulled back again, the vision in his head still glimmering with the possibility of it. Hahree's eyes opened, misty with unmistakable desire. "And I may stay with you until you tire of me?" he asked, voice low and breathless.

"Or you of me," Snape said, wondering if it were the wish or his own neglected social life that made the former possibility seem as remote as ancient Baghdad.

"Of course," Hahree said quickly, but Snape hadn't missed the glint of humor in the guileless green eyes. No matter, the boy would learn soon enough how wide a field his choices encompassed. "I like this wish very much." He kissed the end of Snape's chin, then dragged his cheek against the slight roughness of his jaw.

"I thought you might." He combed his hand back into Hahree's unruly hair, urging him to explore. "And we haven't even gotten to the good bits yet."

Hahree seemed fascinated by their faces brushing against each other, but eager as well. "Show me more."

He kissed his way down Hahree's neck, licking the pulse he'd touched earlier, feeling it speed up beneath his tongue. His hands parted the tiny sides of Hahree's jacket, for the first time widening the gap between the edges to expose more of that smooth, flat chest. There was hair here, swirled lightly around each nipple, and Snape felt it springing beneath his bottom lip as he drew circles around one with his mouth.

He could feel Hahree's heart below his cheek and wondered about his own fascination with the evidence of blood flowing through his veins. Genies were only another sort of magical human, he reasoned, but did not resist the urge to pause and listen to the strong beat there.

Again he managed to draw back, pausing to see how Hahree fared. Hahree's eyes opened dreamily as Snape surveyed his handiwork. The jacket nearly off the boy's shoulders, his glasses tilted slightly askew. The gauze trousers, which Snape had long mourned as showing everything, did indeed show everything. It was only then that he became aware that Hahree's erection was not the only one in the room.

"Will I be permitted to see you as well, Master?" Hahree asked, levering himself as though Snape's assault had left more than his glasses askew.

Frowning, Snape said, "If we are to continue, I won't be your master here."

"Yes, Severus," Hahree answered and Snape nearly laughed at the boy's readiness.

"Besides, you've seen me in the bath," he said, watching as Hahree surrendered the spangled jacket, leaving him bare, save for those armbands, above the waist.

"But only seen," Hahree said, reaching eagerly for the buttons of Snape's robes. He worked quickly and didn't stop until the long outer robe fell open exposing the simple white shirt below. "Or scrubbed," he added with a grin. He'd got the first few buttons of Snape's shirt undone. "Never tasted," he said, voice lowering, mouth following, lips flowing over the first bit of exposed skin. "Never suckled." He'd pushed Snape's undershirt aside to get at a nipple, leaving bits of Snape's clothing--as he himself had done to Hahree--deliciously askew.

Snape's breath hitched at the first eager touch of lips, for there was nothing tentative in the caress, as though Hahree's instincts had simply been awaiting permission.

"Is this one of the good bits, Ma--Severus?" the imp said, leaving a damp spot on the front of his undershirt. "Because it seems very good to me."

With that, Snape couldn't disagree. He couldn't recall this much pleasure in fondling and being fondled and wondered again if it was the result of his wish and his new orientation.
Whatever it was, it felt good, then better as together they piled most of Snape's robes and shirt onto the floor beside the couch. He'd been harder than he could ever remember without touching himself, but as Hahree reclined back onto the plush cushions, pulling Snape down with him, it was not his own cock he wanted to touch.

Without planning it, he tugged the flimsy waistband down, letting his hand trace over the beguiling shape in Hahree's underpants. He watched his own hand as though it belonged to someone else, fingers slipping into the chaste pants, feeling the heat of Hahree's cock surge into his hand.

"Master," Hahree sighed on a long breath, and Snape could not correct him. Not when he needed to kiss Hahree so very badly.

If he could have let himself think beyond the wish, and Hahree's answer, he was sure he'd have envisioned a stately progression toward the bed, dispassionate disrobing, invigorating exploration of the body entrusted to him for pleasure, and a well-earned climax.

Only now, with the boy's urgent pleas pressing into his skin, and the unspoken but just as vehement thrusts of his hips against Snape's, there was just no time for thoughts of planned, well-thought out seduction.

"Severus, Severus, Severus," he breathed, every word a kiss, though most often not on Snape's mouth. Snape stroked and twisted Hahree's cock, his palm slick with pre-come, no longer able to deny the urgency Hahree's body had communicated to his.

Hahree's hand fumbled for Snape's trousers, but Snape jerked himself upward. "Just press hard," he said, craving the feel of Hahree's hand anywhere he could get it before it was too late.

Hahree moaned, but did as he was bid, and Snape rode the palm of his hand while he stroked Hahree, joining their mouths together just before the long breathless moment that preceded climax made the sharing of breath a necessity.

Regret, keener than any he'd even known slammed into him. "Harry, I'm so sorry," Snape said, his forehead resting on Hahree's. The chest beneath his, heaving nearly in tandem with his, stilled at once, then a fine tremor went through Hahree.

"I'll go--go back to my bottle, then," Hahree said, voice just barely above a whisper. Snape shifted his soaked fingers on the boy's cock and heard his soft gasp. "To wait--to wait--"

Snape lifted his head, looking down at Hahree in alarm. "You are not going to your bottle," he said, though the momentary thought of them both sprawled out on Hahree's infinitely roomier couch did warm his thoughts for a moment. He saw at once that he'd phrased his regret badly.

"I'm not sorry about what we did." They were still touching everywhere they had been during those short, frantic moments. Slowly, he rubbed himself back through Hahree's fingers, knowing he was probably spreading the wet spot, but he'd had worse on his trousers and had a good potion for it. "Only that I wish it had been better for you." His own hand was squashy with cooling semen. He had the oddest urge to lick it clean, though he could honestly say that was the very first time such an outlandish thought had ever entered his head. He tangled his fingers in the wild curls nesting Hahree's cock.

"It gets better?" Snape nodded while Hahree's face reflected a quiet wonder. Since they'd never gotten Snape's trousers open, Hahree's hands were only marginally damp. He framed Snape's face with them, the musky scent still lingering. "Truly Severus, it was not the pleasure but that you wished to bestow it."

The boy's generosity made him feel worse. "Hahree, it was your first time and I--" They'd done little more than rut against each other. True it had been really good, rutting against each other--his body still moved against Hahree's slightly, unwilling to give up the sweet tingle it gave him. Still, Snape thought he could do better.

Hahree blinked and Snape's wet hand was dry, though too, the scent lingered here as he stroked Hahree's cheek.

"It was your first time too," Hahree pointed out, with a gravity that did not reach his eyes. Snape righted his glasses with a smirk.

They cleaned up in Snape's bathtub, Hahree, as he'd done countless times, ran his bath, though Snape rather thought this was the first time he'd done it topless. Snape himself had turned round to shed his wet trousers and pants, and watched Hahree from the safety of his dressing gown. Surely the waistband of the jewel-green trousers had never ridden so low on the boy's hips? It was the wish, and his altered inclinations, he was certain, that increased his appreciation for the sweet curve of Hahree's arse.

Once the tub was filled Snape settled back against the rounded edge, then beckoned for Hahree to join him. He was all knees and arse, settling back against Snape's chest, the water sloshing between them. It was an awkward position to kiss in, but Hahree wanted the practice so Snape obliged. By the time he reached for the jutting prick, Hahree was quite good at kissing, wanting only the finer points an excess of repetition could attain. Snape had the leisure of watching this time--his own body being slower to rekindle their passion than Hahree's.

He watched the boy's lips part, reflecting what a pretty little mouth he had and had he really only wanted to kiss it just lately? Hahree's head lay back against Snape's shoulder, a rivulet of sweat marring the elegant line of his throat. Snape licked it, letting his tongue flicker over Hahree's lips. The boy's eyes slitted open, dark with arousal, but closed again when the kiss went no further.

Snape wanted to watch, shifting in the warm water so that Hahree was snugly between his knees. Initially he'd only wanted to see if he was doing this right. He'd never stroked any cock save his own, never wanted to. Now it was to see what Hahree's body was telling him. How the taut belly sucked in when he stroked just so, how his lungs made that whimpering sound when Snape pressed his balls up around his cock. How close he had to be to his peak before his hands dug into Snape's shoulder, leaving little half-moon welts.

So, that when it came, Snape gloried in every moment. When the desire came again to raise his hand to his lips he did it without thinking. Essence of Hahree mixed with bathwater, salty and soapy all at once.

He watched the boy's eyes open slowly and didn't mislike what he saw there. The next kiss was irresistible though it was not until their tongues slid together that he remembered the essence lingering on his tongue. Hahree, it seemed, did not seem to mind.

Beneath the water, Hahree reached for Snape's prick. Though he was half-masted, Snape demurred. "Not yet." Hahree nodded then shifted, sloshing more water until he went smoky below the knees. Snape lay back as Hahree reached for a flannel. His arms lay flush against the sides of the tub while Hahree floated over him, bathing every inch. Accommodatingly Snape spread his legs, knees lifting so Hahree could soap his cock and balls. And if his hands lingered there long, or if there were kisses among the soapsuds, Snape was not wont to complain, not averse to the practice himself.

After Hahree resolidified they traded the bathroom for the bedroom. Sliding in naked beside Hahree, Snape was uncertain how to communicate his desires.

Turning in his arms so he could see Snape's face, Hahree said, "The great Djinn Levi was right."

Snape recalled the private words the elder genie had spoken to Hahree in Dumbledore's office. "What did he say?" Their bodies were very close, Snape's hands trailing down the curve of Hahree's hip.

Hahree's hand slid down Snape's bare chest, thumb lingering around a nipple. "That my wish would come true." Snape combed his fingers through the bath-damp hair, while
Hahree's smile held promises of delights. "Right now I wish to please my master," he said, mouth following fingers, covering Snape's chest with kisses, so that Snape had no heart to correct him. Soon Snape was flat on his back, watching, and when that became too much, head thrashing back into the pillows.

He had to open his eyes when soft lips swiped the head of his cock. Hahree was smiling expectantly, assuring himself of Snape's attention before he lavished another kiss on the wet crown. "This would please you, Severus?" Hahree said, though Snape's cock has already signaled its approval.

"Very much, "Snape said, knowing normally the eagerness in his voice would have embarrassed him. He couldn't hold back his reaction when Hahree's mouth closed over his cock. He had no words, no experience with this, for he had never known how to ask, and had not known it would be so worth it to try. He had to clench his fingers in the sheets to keep from shoving Hahree's tentative mouth down all the way. It was inelegant and inexpert, but Snape was far beyond caring.

When he trusted himself, he slid his fingers back into Hahree's hair, needing the contact to believe that this was real. Hahree smiled up at him from around the head of Snape's cock. Looking utterly pleased with himself, he swiped more fluid onto his tongue. Then down the line of his prick, tongue eager still against the soft skin of Snape's balls.

His hips bucked, Hahree's name escaping his lips in a long hiss. Hahree murmured something, then closed his mouth along the length, hand folding tenderly around Snape's balls. Nothing could have held back the climax that shuddered out of him.

Snape didn't open his eyes until Hahree settled beside him, his face a mixture of eagerness and uncertainty. Another kiss flowed between them, musky and strange, the bitterness overlain with the sweetness of Hahree's mouth.

When they settled together, Hahree's arm across his chest, Snape's hands tangling again in the unruly hair, he noticed Hahree was nearly aroused again.

"Now that I have lain in the scented garden," Hahree said, tracing arcane patterns on his chest, "I don't think I'll ever wish to leave it."

Snape was quiet a moment. Then he kissed the top of Hahree's head. "Now that I've lain here with you, I don't believe I'll ever be able to let you go."

~~**~~

Snape tried to stretch when he woke up, but found his movements hindered. Instead he breathed in the lingering scents of sex and bathing and Hahree, letting his body decide if the restriction of having someone twine around him in sleep was worth it. Not unsurprisingly, his body had made up its mind before waking him for his vote.

He knew he should be thinking more philosophical thoughts, pondering the portentous turn his life had taken, or how one enigmatic genie had upset so many well-ordered beliefs. But Snape had spent a number of years waking up alone and pondering the weightier thoughts of life and too few with a willing partner. Hahree stretched against him, mumbling something with about the right amount of esses to make him think it was probably his name.

"We should get up for breakfast," he said into the messy thatch of hair stirring below his shoulder. Then Hahree stretched again against him, the pressure of a heavy prick against his hip and knew they'd most likely not make it in time for breakfast. He remembered a fruit cake in his desk, still in its holiday tin from last year, hopefully with a preserving spell on it. It would have to do.

He'd discovered last night that becoming aroused had less to do with body parts than the enthusiasm of the person seeking to arouse him. He was just languid enough to enjoy the slow creep of desire through his veins and just interested enough to see if he could make Hahree feel the same way.

"I can do breakfast," Hahree said, awake enough to speak, and apparently, to tease. "I can do a really good breakfast."

Their sleep-fuzzed mouths were too horrid for kisses, Snape thought, as Hahree left a trail of them down his chest, on his way to investigating the hillock in the duvet.

Only Snape had other things in mind for this morning, and tugged at Hahree's shoulder until he looked up, the eyes slightly unfocused without their glasses. Working together they guided Hahree's legs up to the head of the bed. Snape ran his hand down each one, glad that for this, Hahree's ankles remained solid.

Having hair beneath his fingers was not nearly as disconcerting as he'd thought, not when he was contemplating still more masculine aspects of Hahree. He let his hands explore first, not having got his fill of touching him last night. Lazily he contemplated the angle they would need. Hahree was shorter, but his youth made him more flexible. The lean muscles of Hahree's thighs trembled slightly as Snape's slid a fingernail down the inside of one, almost giving over to fancy and saying, "Open Sesame."

Hahree's cock had long since filled, thin and sleek, already glistening. This close Snape could smell the salty musk, sweeter on Hahree than on himself, but speaking of masculine mysteries he wanted to explore.

Still he used his hands, swiping through the trickle of dew, lifting his finger to his mouth and sucking before he was quite aware of wanting to. It was then that he realized Hahree was watching him.

Far from being idle himself, Hahree had draped himself over Snape's legs, fingers combing through hair much as Snape's had done. But he'd stopped when Snape had touched him so intimately, the green eyes slitted with anticipation.

Fully aware of being observed now, Snape bent to taste, tongue swirling over the crown, no longer marveling at how very much he wanted to taste more. Hahree groaned as mouth followed tongue, spurring Snape to heights of exploratory delights he'd never imagined.

He'd liked it last night when Hahree had licked down his shaft into the springy hair nesting his balls. Snape groaned himself when Hahree's mouth copied the act, settling in for what promised to be a thorough investigation.

Only to be startled out of it by a loud knock on his door. Together, their heads raised, looks exchanged. Hahree looked wistfully at Snape's cock, while Snape's brain turned over the possibilities. And more importantly, whether he could ignore any of them.

The knock sounded again, more persistent this time. Hahree, with obvious reluctance, curled up out of the bed. Snape, already sliding into his slippers before belting on his dressing grown, was grateful for its heavy folds.

It had better--he thought, opening the door, customary suspicious glare in place in case it was House business demanding his attention.

--not be Hermione Granger. Snape stared down at her, hoping she was a figment of whatever heterosexual impulses he might have left, ganging up on his cerebral cortex for one last try.

"Professor!" she said, with a suspiciously bright smile. "I was hoping to catch you up."

Snape's hands went to the belt of his dressing gown before he realized what she was on about.

"Miss--Lupin?"

For, appearing in the still open door was the dratted ex-werewolf, looking surprised that the door was open.

"Severus, you missed breakfast," he said, nodding with polite surprise at Granger. "Is everything all--"

He stopped, eyes widening with the sort of shock Snape usually appreciated. Only this time he knew exactly the cause, for he'd heard the bedroom door creak open.

Granger's jaw had dropped, mid-smile, giving her a sort of mannequin expression and Snape guessed that Hahree looked appropriately tousled. With a private wistful inner sigh, Snape turned around. He was glad that Hahree had, at least, dressed, and that he did indeed have the look of one interrupted during coitus, or at least mid-fellatio. The dressing gown was not one Snape had seen before, and nearly exactly like Snape's own, save that it was jewel-green, and only came down to mid-calf.

"Good morning, Professor," he said to Lupin, voice still a bit dreamy, as he repeated the greeting to Granger.

"Well," Lupin said, though it did not appear that he had an actual thought to follow it up with. He looked again from Snape to Hahree and said, again, "Well."

"I--" Granger began, then cleared her throat. Snape was grateful to see that her cheeks had pinked. The throat clearing, however, seemed to have given her the impetus she needed to speak. "I've done some research and--"

"Doesn't look like you're the only one," Lupin said, with the barest pretense to an undertone.

"Is that toast?" Hahree asked, nodding toward a stained napkin in Lupin's hand.

"It is indeed," Lupin said, unwrapping the napkin and proffering it in Hahree's direction. "Looks like you'll be needing to keep up your strength."

Before Snape could yell, "Enough!", Granger forged ahead. "I know what your third wish should be."

All eyes in the room turned toward her. She pinked again.

"Not necessary, I assure you," Snape said, once more adjusting his belt, before taking a piece of the toast. Sometimes Lupin wasn't completely brainless.

"No, really," Granger said, looking very excited now. "There's nothing against it, and Hahree can become a real wizard again."

"How?" Lupin asked, talking around a toast point.

Snape was about to point out the unnecessary nature of this information when Granger smiled again. "Simple," she said, "Professor Snape can set Hahree free."

"Free?"

Snape looked down at Hahree, for it had been his voice that had spoken.

"Free," Granger said again. "A genie has the power to become mortal, but only if the master wishes it. It's a very elegant check and balance. All you have to do is--"

"I've already used up the third wish," Snape said again, wiping a bread crumb from the side of his mouth.

"What? On--" Lupin's mouth opened again and he looked at Hahree.

Snape too was looking at Hahree. "I'm sorry," he said, though he wished it could have been for Hahree's eyes alone.

"I am not." Hahree darted a glance at Granger. "Actually--"

"But that's not possible," Granger said, looking between them. "Why is Harry still here then? No genie can remain after the third wish. Another check and balance."

"Unless I wished him to," Snape said, as Hahree took a step closer. "And I wish him to."

"But it's impossible, I'm telling you," Granger insisted, looking very much like she wanted to stamp her foot. "After the third wish, if he was still a genie, he should have been sealed back in his bottle and whisked away to a new master."

"Actually--" Hahree said again. Snape turned to him, caught short by the unexpected misery on Hahree's face. "It is I who am sorry, Master, for I have deceived you."

"Deceived?" Snape said, then he nearly staggered. He hadn't actually seen Hahree blink last night, hadn't really felt any different, well, except for that whole 'wanting to make love to his genie' part, hadn't really voiced the wish formally. "But we--"

Snape had done his best to cause misery in the students under his care, but he didn't think he'd ever seen anyone as miserable as Hahree in that moment. "It is as Hermione says, Master," he said, looking away. "No wish, even one for me to stay, would allow me to while I am still a genie."

"It doesn't work that way, I told you," Granger said, but Snape ignored her, even though he could have happily strangled her.

"I thought if I deceived you, I would have time enough to--"

"Time enough for what, Harry?" Lupin asked gently.

"It is not allowed for a genie to wish," Hahree said, bobbing slightly with every word now that his ankles had gone to smoke.

"Even genie magic has rules," Granger said, but Snape kept his attention fixed on Hahree.

"To wish for what, Hahree?" he asked.

"For my master to love me."

Lupin was looking at him now and even Granger had shut up.

"Hahree, this wasn't necessary," Snape said, mouth thinning to a straight line.

"I know," Hahree said, looking, though Snape would have sworn it wasn't possible, even more miserable. Snape looked at him for a long moment, but Hahree didn't look up. His knees were now insubstantial, and it looked like the dressing gown was hanging over a pillar of white vapor.

"What will happen to him if I wish him free?"

Granger shook herself and replied. "He becomes mortal and loses his genie powers."

"As a wizard?"

"I think so, yes."

Snape narrowed his eyes at her but even he knew that no amount of glaring at her would produce facts where there was only conjecture. No one spoke for a moment.

"What are you going to do?" Lupin asked.

"Talk to Hahree. Alone." He looked pointedly at Lupin.

"Severus, you won't--" Lupin began, looking from Snape to Hahree.

Even Granger looked distressed. She bit her bottom lip. "You won't be--won't be cruel?"

Snape crossed his arms over his chest and did not choose to answer, save with a glare. Lupin took her elbow and guided her out, not without a backward glance at Hahree. Snape made sure the door was firmly closed behind them before he spoke.

"It was very wrong to deceive me," he said sternly.

Hahree, whose misery seemed to have robbed him of speech, merely nodded.

Snape exhaled sharply. "Tell me what made you think I was…amenable to such a deception?"

Hahree looked up, pale and shaken. "You have been alone so long, Master, and I thought even the comfort of one such as I--"

"Comfort?" Snape sneered. "Did you think this was merely about physical pleasure? That I would ask you to stay with me merely for a tumble or two?"

"Then what--" Hahree said, looking so genuinely confused that Snape relented.

"If you are to stay with me you must never deceive me again," he said.

"Stay?" Hahree's entire body solidified, "I may stay with you, Master?" He took a step closer, but Snape held up one hand and his face fell. "We do not have to lie in the scented garden again, Master," he said.

"That part was…not objectionable," Snape said, "but I do have one condition."

Hahree braced.

"That I use the third wish to set you free."

"But Master! We don't know if I am freed if I will remain here with you. I could end up anywhere."

Snape bridged the gap between them, standing as close as he could without touching Hahree, no longer surprised by how much he wanted to. "So, your objection is simply to leaving me and not to becoming mortal?"

Hahree rolled his eyes.

"You'd have to learn to be a true wizard," Snape pointed out.

"Lot of good that will do me if I wind up in Fiji with no wand and only a green glass bottle to my name."

Snape smiled, cupping Hahree's chin and tilting it up. "I would come to find you. But I don't think the Brothers Djinn will take you away." He thought about Levi's last words to Hahree, how it had sounded more like goodbye.

Hahree rubbed his cheek on Snape's hand. As tempting as the offer was, Snape insisted that they both get dressed, bathing separately despite Hahree's unsubtle offer to bathe him. When he sent Hahree grumbling off to his turn in the bathroom, he sent word up to have someone cover his first class.

He assumed from Albus's reply, which said, "I've a sudden urge to refresh my own potion skills, and insist upon taking your classes all day," that Lupin had got there first.

Together they sat on the couch and worked out the wording, which in the end, turned out to be very simple.

"I wish the genie, Hahree, his freedom."

Snape, who had never met life with his eyes closed, watched as Hahree blinked. "Did you do it?"

Hahree nodded. Then he looked at his hands as if expecting them to be different. "I am still here." He ran his hands down his green jacket as if to make certain. "Wish for something," Hahree said excitedly.

"I wish you and I were lying on a beach in Fiji," he said quickly. Which was quite, he reflected, the most ridiculous thing he could have wished for, considering it had an outside chance of coming true.

No," Hahree said, though Snape supposed he would have to start thinking of him by his proper wizard's name. Then, without warning, he launched himself at Snape, knocking them both over into an undignified heap on the couch. "I wish to do something else." Just what else became immediately evident as warm lips met his own.

Snape didn't bother to point out that he wasn't actually, queer, as since he was kissing back eagerly, it didn't seem quite relevant. They settled together as though they'd spent more than one night in each other's arms, Harry on top, legs moving restlessly against each other. There was something about knowing what was to come that made it seem less queer, though Snape didn't want to think about that.

Between one kiss and the next Harry shrugged out of his vest, so that bare skin met Snape's hand when he dragged Harry closer. Bare skin and nipples stroked quickly to peaks.

Snape had never felt that he was wearing too many clothes, not with the cold dungeons climate. Except now, as he and Harry tried to get them off. Harry looked like he was about to shout with triumph as Snape's shirt came open just before Snape swallowed the noise with a deep kiss.

Then Harry was helping him up, untangling sleeves of shirt and coat, then running his hands up one of Snape's bare arms. Snape had always been aware of his own shortcomings--his thinness, the sullen pallor of his skin. He had never felt adored until Harry touched him. Even with his wife, he'd never felt worthy.

"It still goes, you know," he said, the silk of his voice unraveling slightly with arousal. Harry had pushed him back down into the pillows of the couch without reaching for his trousers, straddling him like a camel. A camel with a decidedly odd hump, Snape mused. "You're free to leave whenever you--" He rolled his eyes at his own brain. "Whenever you wish." Regardless of the phrasing, he had to make sure Harry understood that he was no longer bound to serve anyone. Snape cherished his own freedom too much to allow anyone in his care to not take advantage of theirs.

Snape had no doubt who had taught the boy that smirk. Harry leaned forward, rubbing his chin around one of Snape's nipples. "Once I learn to work wizard's magic, you may wish to be rid of me," he said, tongue flicking like a snake's over his nipple.

"Only then, hmm?" he said, sliding his fingers into Harry's hair, careful not to knock the glasses askew.

Harry frowned in concentration, though whether at the conversation, or which nipple to lick next, Snape didn't know. "It does seem complicated," he said, choosing them both by gliding his palms over Snape's chest. "All that foolish wand-waving." He waved one hand dismissively, then dropped it back onto Snape's chest, bracing himself as he leaned down to kiss Snape.

"And there is much I wish to learn in the arts of lovemaking, if we are to be spending time in the scented garden." No houri in Paradise had ever looked more beguiling.

"Anything in particular you'd like to learn?" Snape asked, one finger trailing down Harry's cheek.

"Yes, Master--" Harry flushed again. "I mean, Severus. I should like to learn about copulation." Snape's eyes widened, but Harry wasn't through. "I was about to suggest it this morning but Hermione--" He shrugged, and kissed Snape again.

Snape thought his sexuality was less in question now than ever when his own cock twitched in anticipation. "Which, doing or being done, Hahree--Harry?" he asked, as Harry's lips trailed down his throat.

"It does not matter, Master--Severus," Harry said, nose burying into the hair bunched close to Snape's ear. "There is nothing I do not wish to do with you."

"Then we should--" Snape began, meaning to suggest the bed, but Harry was grinning wickedly.

"Get naked, I know." He clapped his hands over his forearms and blinked.

Nothing happened.

Harry looked bewildered, then something Snape had never seen on the young face, frightened. "Truly, I am--" His hands slid forward, Harry collapsing against his chest, seeking, not sex, but comfort.

Snape stroked his hair. Harry's body was as slack as a child's. After a while Snape said, "Did I do wrong?"

Harry's head tilted up at last so Snape could see his face. His eyes were bright but dry. "No, Severus." His fist unfurled and his palm rested again against Snape's bare chest. Warm. "I have never been without magic before."

"We'll get you a wand," Snape said, fingers stilling just a moment against Harry's scalp. "We'll go into Diagon Alley and get you a wand." His fingers moved again, stroking down Harry's neck. "And some clothes." Not too many, he thought, not at first. "I'll teach you, and Lupin. Even Granger." Harry's palm was running idly down Snape's chest, down to the waistband of his trousers, then back up.

"You have magic," Snape went on, thinking, even now, of ways to keep Harry with him if it turned out he didn't. But Snape was confident that no son of Lily Evans and Potter, Sr., could turn out to be a squib. Voldemort wouldn't have gone after the child if there'd been any doubt about his magical ability, Snape reasoned. Gone now, Snape thought with a smirk, defeated by his own arrogance. And perhaps, just a trace of help from the Djinn.

His hands still played idly with Harry's hair. How had he kept his fingers out of it, these last few months? "Can you reach into my pocket?"

"I think so." The imp's fingers brushed the bulge in the front of Snape's trousers as if by accident. For though they weren't moving frantically against one another, their hips still nested, Harry's legs splayed over his. Harry patted his pocket.

"Take out my wand," Snape said, and at the impudent smirk, went on, "My real wand."

Harry gave an exaggerated sigh, but slid the wand out of Snape's trouser pocket where spells kept it safe. Harry had two fingers gingerly holding onto the hilt as though it would start sprouting curses at him.

"Grip it--" Snape guided the boy's fingers around the base, then curled his own on top. "Like this." Together they traced idle patterns in the air, as Snape let Harry get used to the feel of it.

"Foolish wand-waving," Harry said, head turned to watch.

"Sometimes not so foolish," Snape said. "You'll learn Transfiguration." Four rapid flicks of the wand, and a murmured spell and the lounge started to grow and change around them. The back of it folded away from them, expanding the surface and smoothing out, the end nearest their head plumping up like pillows, the armrest at their feet elongating to form a credible frame for the bed. McGonagall wasn't the only person around here who could extemporize transfigurations, Snape thought with satisfaction.

Harry was still holding onto Snape, and still onto the wand, but followed the lounge's progress with delighted interest. "Let see, Charms," Snape went on. Two downward strokes of the wand this time and Snape's coffee table buckled in the middle, arching and elongating to form an upside-down U shape. Harry stared at it, puzzled, then looked at Snape inquisitively.

"Herbology," Snape said with another flick of his wand. The wood of the table seemed to be growing fur--purple fur. Then purple buds sprouted and bloomed until the makeshift arbor was thick with scented lilacs .

Snape surveyed his wand-work critically. "Well, it isn't much of a scented garden, but it will have to--" Harry silenced him with a kiss that left no room for words, or thought really.

Snape's fingers loosened over Harry's and the wand clattered to the floor, though their hands still entwined. Harry was straddling him again, kisses sweeter than any wish trailing down his chest. He slid each button on the placket of Snape's trousers open, nuzzling his nose into the space between, mouthing the shape of Snape's cock beneath his pants. Snape heard him inhale deeply, and he was glad he'd insisted they bathe. He'd always been vaguely uncomfortable with the omnipresent musk between his legs until he'd smelled it on Harry yesterday.

Harry was sliding trousers and pants over his hips, down his legs, patiently tugging off shoes and socks until Snape was naked and wishing he'd thought to summon a blanket. Then he saw the heated appreciation in Harry's eyes.

Harry wiggled out of his decidedly less complicated green gauze trousers before straddling him again, bringing their cocks together, thrusting lightly against him.

"Oh, yes, how could I have forgotten?" Snape said, ignoring the breathless catch in his voice. "Potions." He found his wand and summoned a vial of something that usually stayed in the drawer beside his bed.

Harry's hands were on his shoulders as he arched over for a slow, deep kiss. Snape slipped one hand between his legs, slick fingers cupping the heavy balls, tracing the space behind them.

"I think I like this kind of magic very much," Harry murmured, as Snape fingers stroked into the sleek crease of Harry's arse.

Snape's smile was languid. His finger tipped inside Harry, tentatively until he realized Harry's breathing had sped up.

"I'll teach you hexes if anyone else knocks on that door," Snape said, teasing deeper, his finger nearly sucked inside. Harry moaned softly, the little thrusts he was making with his hips against Snape's cock more frantic now.

Harry nodded and to Snape's surprise began to move on top of his finger. He moaned again as Snape withdrew it, coating another finger before sliding back into the damp cleft. Watching for any signs of distress, Snape let Harry rock himself on two fingers. It was obviously not distress when Harry's eyes shot open as Snape rubbed over something rounded inside him. Snape did it again, more deliberately now, and Harry's mouth opened soundlessly, eyes wide with wonder and delight.

"Slick me up," Snape instructed, voice rough with anticipation and arousal. Harry kept rocking against him, never letting Snape's fingers pull more than one knuckle out. His hands were fast and hot, as if he'd guessed how little it would take to send Snape over the edge.

Only then did Harry lift up so that Snape's fingers came free. Together, their hands slippery, their movements unsure but determined, they levered Harry into place over Snape's cock. Snape had one hand on the curve of Harry's bottom, one circled around the base of his own prick, steadying himself as Harry lowered himself down. There was no spell for the gasp of surprise as the head breached the slick, tight opening. But Snape waited, telling himself and his prick that there were other routes to pleasure if this one was barred to them.

"We don't have to--" he began, but Harry was already easing down, inch by blissful, bloody intoxicating inch.

"That's--" he tried, but he didn't have the words for how hot and tight and right this felt.

"Perfect," Harry said, his own voice holding a dreamy tone as they adjusted to the way their bodies had sealed together.

"Perfect," Snape agreed, but it wasn't because suddenly it was impossibly more perfect because Harry had lifted up, mouth moving voicelessly as he slid back down. Snape wanted to just watch, wanted to brand forever the way Harry sought the pleasure Snape's body was giving him. The way sweat dewed his chest as he rose and fell, how the ends of his untidy hair wisped silently with every movement. The little gasp he made as he angled himself to brush that spot inside him.

But he didn't just watch. He had watched life too long and wanted the sensation of it again. That he wanted that with Harry no longer made any difference. Still slick fingers curled around Harry's cock, thumb gathering the freely flowing moisture along the head before pulling, tugging, finding a pace that matched the one Harry had set.

Eagerly Harry thrust into his fingers, and against him. Snape's balls were tight, shifting against his body. Harry's hand fumbled for his free one, twining their fingers as he thrust hard into the sheath of Snape's fingers. Snape did watch this, the heated spurts coating his hand, the smile on Harry's face as though he'd invented the act.

But he watched only for a moment as Harry thrust faster on top of him and not displeased when Harry watched him as avidly as Snape had done, through his own climax. Watched as Snape's breathing slowed until he lifted up, separating them, wrinkling his nose at the damp mess.

"We'll be sticky later and itchy," Harry said, snuggling down beside Snape on the makeshift bed, unconcerned with various wet spots. "I think we should take another bath." He wriggled until he was beneath Snape's shoulders, fingers threading through his hair.

Now was certainly not the time to bring up cleaning charms. "I don't think the lilac will fit in the bathroom."

Harry laughed and Snape could feel the vibration of it against his chest. "It does not matter. The scented garden will always be where you are, Master."

Snape, sleepy and sated himself, did not bother to correct him.