Thank you so very much for your thoughtful and detailed review!! I'm so pleased that you were affected by both the tone and the imagery: the snake image I put there as I'd been thinking about Harry and Parseltongue and how, for him anyway, he seems to need to be looking at a snake or something snakelike to speak it himself, so he was providing that image for himself.

Yes, ultimately it's Harry as an individual far more than the sex that brings Ron from the brink, but the physical aspect got him out of his head a bit.

Again, thank you so much for reading and for letting me know your thoughts.