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Chapter Text

August 2, 1998

The prison cells in the basement of the Ministry of Magic stank. 

Harry’s guide—self-appointed, dressed in neon yellow robes that would have made Fleur faint from disgust, and the most annoying type of self-important idiot—held a handkerchief to his nose as he waved Harry down the hall. 

“All the high-level prisoners are down there,” he said. “Not many left after…. Well.” He coughed once, his wide, earnest face pinkening. “You know.”

Harry did know, unfortunately. 

He’d sat through all the trials that summer, even though Ron had called him barmy and Hermione had clucked over him worriedly. He’d seen Lucius Malfoy trundled back off to the new and improved Azkaban while his dry-eyed wife and son were spared—he’d seen trials for Avery and Mulciber and Peters and Hunt and Johannson and on and on and on the list went. They’d all gone to Azkaban, the votes unanimous. Imprisonment for life, no chance of parole or even escape. Harry had checked; Azkaban, free of Dementors, was revamping its security so thoroughly that it was beginning to resemble those American prisons Harry had heard about.

“You sure you want to see him, Lord Potter?” the man asked. Harry had already forgotten his name. “He’s not—well. Very nice.”

Harry snorted before he could stop himself. The man blinked, but Harry couldn’t explain to him—or even to himself—why the thought of Severus Snape’s unchanging meanness comforted him.

Maybe, he thought as he thanked the man and began his trek down the hall without a backward glance, it was because everything else was changing so quickly it was nice to know some things were constant. The Earth spun, the sun rose, and Snape was an asshole. 

Harry had become increasingly desperate for the familiar in the aftermath of the fight in May, the one all the newspapers had taken to calling The Battle of Hogwarts. Everything he’d known in his entire life had shifted in one day. Voldemort was gone, his duty was over, and suddenly, without his awareness or permission, he'd entered the realm of adulthood. He was more famous than he’d ever been and expected to go out into the world and—do something. Everyone kept asking what he wanted, like he’d had any plans for his future past surviving to seventeen. 

Harry had found it harder and harder to be around people as the summer passed. Everyone seemed to look at him differently, even more so than they had when the whole Chosen One business had come out. They all wanted to shake his hand or thank him or tell him that they’d never really believed he was a traitor while he was on the run. Or they kept asking about what he was going to do next. 

Even the people he’d known the longest, like Hermione and the Weasleys, were different. Losing Fred had scarred the whole family and it was an absence that they struggled to fill, especially with George moving around the house like a ghost. Ron and Hermione seemed to talk even more to each other, sharing in-jokes and intimate looks that he knew weren’t meant to keep Harry out, but still did all the same.

Ginny, too, was different. Her year at Hogwarts had hardened her in ways Harry mourned. He’d never wanted Ginny hurt further and it sickened him to think of what she and the others had gone through while he’d been away, relatively safe. He’d tried to apologize to Ginny for it, once the dust had settled, but she had taken his hand and told him, fierce and brusque, that he didn’t get to blame himself for something else, she wouldn’t allow it. And then she had told him she needed to go away for a while and she’d disappeared off to Romania to visit Charlie. Harry hadn’t seen or heard from her since. 

Harry took a deep breath as he approached the end of the hall. Maybe that was why he’d decided, early in July, that he needed to watch the Death Eater trials. The hubbub around them had been filling the newspapers for weeks as more and more prisoners awaiting their sentences were carted to the Ministry holding cells. It had been good to have something to do with himself, even if watching all of his former enemies go behind bars didn’t actually spark any of the relief or vindication that Harry had thought it would. Mostly, he was exhausted.

Ron and Hermione and the rest knew he was going to the trials, of course. It was difficult to keep his presence a secret anymore and the newspapers gleefully reported his every sighting. But no one knew about this little visit that he’d arranged aside from Kingsley, who had listened to his request, given him a long, hard look, and granted it without any other questions. He hadn’t told anyone because—well, because he’d assumed everyone would think he was crazy. Maybe he was, wanting to talk to someone like Severus Snape alone.

But every night for weeks, he’d lain awake thinking; about the memories he’d seen, the way Snape’s voice had cracked when he’d spat slaughter, the focus and intensity in his face in that little shack where he’d nearly died. 

He knew what the chatter was in the Wizengamot. They were planning to put Snape in Azkaban with the rest of them, the other Death Eaters. Harry knew—and they all probably did, too—that Snape would be dead in months if they did that. None of the former Death Eaters were happy about Snape at all and Harry didn’t think it mattered that they wouldn’t have wands—they’d find a way to kill him. Some of the Wizengamot likely thought it would be justice.

The hallway was dim enough that it took Harry’s eyes a moment to adjust enough to see the dark shape sitting in the corner of the last cell on the right. The cells around them were empty and quiet, so there was no way Snape hadn’t heard him approach—but he didn’t look up. Harry stood outside of the bars, taking him in.

Seeing Snape without his dark robes was disorienting. Harry didn’t think he’d ever seen Snape in another color—and the gray prison clothes weren’t exactly flattering. Snape had never looked particularly healthy but, Harry thought as he narrowed his eyes, right now he looked almost frightfully ill. His skin was much more wan than Harry had ever seen it and his hair— 

Harry’s mouth dropped open. What he’d taken for a ponytail was actually an absence—they’d shorn Snape’s hair down to his scalp. 

“Harry Potter,” Snape said without looking up. His voice was as weak as the rest of him, thinner and lighter than Harry had ever heard it. “The famed celebrity. Come to gloat?”

The words were right but the tone was all wrong, Harry thought, thrown even more off-balance. There wasn’t any spite there, no fury. Snape could have been talking to anyone. He’d never spoken to Harry like that before—from his very first year, Snape had always reserved a special hatred for him. Harry had wished for Snape’s indifference more than once in school, but now that he had it it almost felt like a slap to the face.

Whatever he and Snape were to each other, they weren’t strangers. 

“You look like shit, Professor,” he said.

Snape finally looked up. His face was haggard and too-thin and his eyes… 

“Go away, Potter,” he said. “Haven’t you tormented me enough?”

Harry scowled at him. “I saved your life.” 

Snape’s sneer was almost comforting. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Pat yourself on the back for your good deed, just like your father. Never mind that you both did it out of selfishness.”

“Selfishness?” Harry asked, aghast. “I didn’t—”

“Your father only saved me because he didn’t want his precious friends to get in trouble,” Snape spoke over him. His raspy voice gained more strength the longer he spoke. “If Remus Lupin hadn’t been the murder weapon of choice, he would have lead me to the slaughterhouse himself and smiled to do it.” Snape lifted an eyebrow at Harry. “Just as I imagine you would have, had you not wanted your revenge.”

Harry stared. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“What?” he asked, nonplussed. 

“You wouldn’t allow me the ease of death,” Snape said. “Instead, you and that damnable phoenix brought me back so I could—what? Suffer for my crimes, sit in prison for the rest of my miserable life? Be mocked and sneered at by those who were content to bury their faces in the sand rather than face the horror they were surrounded by?” Snape’s mouth twisted. “Be beaten by a bunch of thug Aurors who want to show me my place?”

Harry took a step forward. “What?” he demanded. 

Snape didn’t lean back, didn’t flinch. He frowned. 

“Don’t pretend you don’t know, Potter,” he said. “Gossip reaches even here—you are joining that illustrious order soon, are you not? What was it, a celebration of your new position, to attack the man you hate most? Some help from your new mates on exacting your revenge?”

“I didn’t tell anyone to beat you up!” Harry was so loud his voice echoed on the stone walls around them. “Why the hell would I? They really did that, are you fucking—” He scanned Snape again more closely, but it was impossible to see him clearly in the dim light. “Are you hurt? Do I need to get a mediwitch?”

Snape was staring at him, but Harry hardly cared. If anyone had asked him before May, he would have said he’d laugh while Snape got hanged, but now—every time he looked at Snape, he kept seeing the boy in his mother’s clothes saying he would be great, the young adult weeping and agonized over the death of Harry’s mother, the man who had sneered at Harry’s prophesied demise and had given up everything—including, for a few minutes, his own life—to right the wrongs he’d committed. 

Harry couldn’t hate Snape anymore, not like he had before. He didn’t know what he felt for Snape, but it wasn’t that. 

“I am not hurt,” Snape said. “They knew better than to use magic down here. They only used their fists and their feet. The bruises will heal.”

“They hit you?” Harry asked, appalled. The sheer thought of anyone actually attacking Snape was so foreign to him. Harry would no sooner try to beat up a Basilisk. “But you’re—”

“What?” Snape asked.

Harry’s brain to mouth filter had never been very good. “Scary,” he said.

Snape stared at him. Harry thought he’d sneer again, maybe even call Harry an idiot; he certainly felt like one. But, to Harry’s surprise, a sound rumbled out of Snape that, from anyone else, might have been considered a laugh. It was the most pleasant sound Harry had ever heard come out of him. Had Snape always been able to sound like that? Or was Harry just now noticing because he knew what the truth of who Snape was under the harsh veneer of the mean potions teacher?

“Yes,” Snape said, his voice still rich with amusement. “Unfortunately, it seems that none of those Aurors were ever in my Potions classroom.” He looked at Harry. “They truly did not come from you?”

“Of course not,” Harry snapped. “I know you think I’m some kind of self-centered little toerag, but I don’t go around beating other people up for the fun of it, okay! Especially not someone who—” Harry stopped.

Snape’s eyebrows were high on his forehead now. “Oh no, do go on,” he said. “Who, what, Potter?”

Harry had been about to say something about how Snape had been beaten up enough in his life. He didn’t think Snape would much like to hear that. He’d assume it was pity. It wasn’t. It was, of course, Harry’s awful understanding of flinching back from someone’s hand because you’d been hit so often you expected another hit would always be coming. It had taken years to get over that himself.

But Snape didn’t know about that, didn’t want to hear it. Harry shrugged instead.

“Never mind,” he said instead. “Did you report the attack?”

Snape shook his head. “And who exactly would I report it too, Potter? The Aurors?”

Harry faltered. “Oh,” he said, frowning. “But surely there’s someone to—They can’t get away with attacking you!”

“They would hardly be the first to do so.”

Harry couldn’t believe what he was hearing. All throughout school, Snape had seemed to rail bitterly against the unfairness he’d faced—from not getting the Defense position to having to let Harry’s escapades go unpunished. He would have thought Snape would have been frothing at the mouth to be treated like this after everything he’d done, everything he’d sacrificed. Surely Snape should be raging, demanding the Order of Merlin they’d forced on Harry. Why was he just letting them lock him up  and beat him and treating him like the Death Eater scum he’d only been pretending to be?

Unless… Harry remembered Snape’s instinctive recoil from Dumbledore talking about good in him. The hopeless despair when he’d asked after his own soul. 

“You think you deserve it,” Harry said without thinking. “You… you want to go to Azkaban?”

Snape bared his teeth. “Don’t you dare presume to think you know me, Potter.”

“I do know you,” Harry snapped back. “Your memories—”

“Do not speak of them!”

“Snape—”

“Why are you even here?” Snape sounded more like himself, forceful and spiteful, but there was a thread of exhaustion under it, a bone-deep weariness. “You did your heroic duty, didn’t you? You rescued my miserable hide! You can sleep peacefully and go on with your new, perfect life without any kind of guilt blotting your tiny, useless brain! Must you torment me with your insufferable presence?”

“Is that seriously what you want?” Harry demanded. “You know that if you go to Azkaban, it doesn’t matter what they do—the other Death Eaters in there will kill you. They hate you! Even more then they hate me! You’ll be dead in a month, Snape! You know I can’t let that happen.”

Snape’s mouth pulled into a sneer. “I see the end of the war has not cured that disgustingly determined need you have to save everyone around you.”

“That won’t work anymore, Snape!” Harry said. “You can insult me all you want, I’m not going to let it go! Just tell me—”

“I owe you nothing, you ungrateful little—”

“Snape!”

“I should have died!” Snape snarled. Harry stared at him and Snape turned away, exposing the sharp edge of his nose and the harshness of his jaw. In the dim shadows, his eyes were very dark and deep. “I was ready for it after giving you the—memories. I was prepared! But you stole that from like you’ve stolen everything else from me, you selfish brat! And for what, if not revenge?”

“I…”

Harry didn’t know what had possessed him to try and summon Fawkes. He hadn’t even been sure it would work. He’d been in a fog, still sickened and confused after watching Snape so brutally murdered, holding the vial with his tears—his memories—in one hand. He’d looked down at Snape’s empty, dark eyes and something in him had snapped. Snape, he remembered thinking, wasn’t allowed to die. Harry had been… so exhausted of death.

Fawkes had appeared within seconds of Harry's tired call. He’d healed Snape without pause, but Snape had still been unconscious when they’d left him in the Shack. Harry hadn’t even known if his mad venture had worked until after the Battle was over and he heard Snape was recovering in St. Mungo’s.

“Well,” Harry said at last. “It wasn’t so you would let them lock you up.”

Snape bared his teeth. “Go away, Potter.”

“Snape, why are you doing this? You could get yourself out of here if you wanted to—you fooled Voldemort for years! You could talk a centaur out of his bow, so why—”

Snape finally looked at him. His mouth pursed into a thin line, eyebrows drawn down.      

“Whatever you may think of my talents, very few people are willing to listen to the man who murdered Albus Dumbledore.”

Harry recoiled. It wasn't what Snape had said, but the way he'd said Albus Dumbledore in that thin, scratchy voice, as if it was a curse. He blinked, trying to get his equilibrium back. It had been over a year since Dumbledore's death. Snape couldn't be so sensitive about it still, could he?

“He made you.”

“He did nothing of the sort.”

Harry scoffed. What a crock of bullshit. Where was Snape's supposed logic now? 

“Excuse me, I’ve seen your memories." Snape glared at him, but that was hardly enough to put Harry off. He'd seen worse looks. "Not that I needed to."

"And what," Snape said in a low, dangerous voice, "does that mean, Mr. Potter?"

Didn't Snape know already? Harry had spent so many years imagining that Snape knew everything it was a little bizarre to remember that there were things about Harry he was completely ignorant about. Harry opened his mouth, closed it again. He thought back again to that confusing, terrifying night. It seemed so long ago now. 

"Didn't you wonder how I came after you so fast?" he asked. "That night?"

Snape's eyes narrowed. "You were not in that room," he said. "No one saw—"

Harry couldn't see Snape's features that well, but he could make out the way his jaw tightened, shoulders snapping back. 

"That cloak." It came out like a curse. "What on Earth were you thinking, Potter? If any of them had caught wind that you were there—"

"Dumbledore cast Immobulus on me. It wasn't until after..." Harry swallowed. "Anyway, I was there, okay? So don't pretend I don't know anything."

"You do not."

Harry wanted to shake him. "I know Dumbledore wasn't someone who'd beg for his life. I saw what he asked you to do. He wanted you to kill him." 

Harry's body was cold, his fingers numb at the tips. He could feel the rush of blood in his throat and ears. If he closed his eyes, would he see it all happen again, that whole, terrible night? He took several deep breaths, trying to calm down. It was a long time ago, he reminded himself. 

"Besides," he said without making any conscious decision to say it, "You didn't kill him." 

“Oh no?” Snape’s expression was becoming more dangerous, sharper even in the dim light of the cell. “I must have imagined pointing my wand at his face and casting the Killing Curse, then?”

“You didn’t kill him,” Harry said. Had this been why he’d wanted to see Snape all along? Harry felt oddly free, finally allowed to say it aloud. “I did.”

“What.”

Snape stood and in one, harsh movement came to the cell door. 

Harry didn’t back away as he approached the bars. It was easier to see him when he was closer, to make out the hollows of his cheeks and his wan skin, the dark circles under his eyes. The scar on his neck from Nagini had healed well, but it was still harsh, a thick knot of paler skin that covered Snape’s entire neck.

The strangest thing was the shorn hair. Harry couldn’t reconcile it, for some reason. 

“Explain,” Snape was as imperious as he’d ever been in the classroom, despite how ragged he looked. "Now."

“You know about the Horcruxes now,” Harry said. “That’s where we were that night, Dumbledore and me. We’d found one.”

Snape’s eyes were extraordinarily dark. “Elucidate. Quickly.”

“The horcrux was held in a basin full of poison,” Harry said. “I fed it to him. Dumbledore.”

“You fed it to him.” Snape shook his head. The strange, poised tension in him relaxed. “I see. And that is somehow supposed to convince me of your murderous impulses?”

Harry stiffened. “I forced him to drink it!” he said. He could still hear Dumbledore’s harsh, gasping cries, see the way he’d turned so helpless and pale. “I—I made him. He was already dying when we arrived at Hogwarts because of me.” 

Snape regarded him. He took a deep breath, opened his mouth, then closed it again. He shook his head. When he spoke again, he was as measured and reserved as he’d ever been in his classroom. 

“Mr. Potter. I have known you since you were a sniveling, snot-nosed brat. You are full of arrogance and recklessness and unearned trust. You judge easily and I will be damned if you have more than two brain cells running around in that thing you all a mind. But you do not have it in you to murder someone in cold blood. You would not poison Albus out of malice." 

Harry stilled. Snape was looking at him, mouth set. Harry couldn’t think of a time Snape had looked at him like that, like he was actually seeing Harry and not Harry’s parents. Something tender and hurt in him went quiet, calm.

"So?" Snape asked. "Why did you do it, Potter?"

Harry’s skin prickled all over with awareness, the hairs on his arms rising. He licked his lips, uncertain why his throat was so unexpectedly dry.

“Well,” he said at last. “For the same reason you cast that spell, I guess.”

“And what,” Snape said, “reason was that?”

Harry lifted his chin. “He asked.”

For just a moment, Snape recoiled. But then, slowly, he lowered his head. An acknowledgment of a blow well struck.

“Yes,” Snape said. “So I can only come to one conclusion, Potter.”

“What’s that?”

Were Snape’s eyes so dark because his face was so much paler? Or had they always been so intense?

“If you are so determined to cast off the blame for my part in Albus’s death because I was acting on his orders, you can hardly be expected to shoulder it in turn.”

“But I—”

“Followed his orders. Just as I did.” 

Harry blinked. He shifted from one foot to the other and then settled, feeling strange and emptied out. He’d held on to his troubled feelings about Dumbledore’s death for so long it felt odd to have set them loose and set aside with such certainty. Was it really okay to let go of the burden of his guilt? Could it be so simple?

"What are you doing here, Potter?" Snape asked, weary now. All of the fight seemed to drain from him. He crossed his arms across his chest. The sleeves were short and his Dark Mark was pale against the skin of his forearm, drained of color. Harry had been told that for some it may fade entirely. "You say it is not for revenge. Then, why?"

Harry shook his head. "Would you believe me if I said I honestly don't know?"

"That would not surprise me, no."

Harry snorted before he could stop himself. Snape looked surprised, eyebrows going back up to his hairline. 

"Sorry." He didn't sound it and Snape's puckered mouth said he could tell as much. “I don’t know why that’s so comforting.”

"And what, pray tell, is so comforting?"

"How much of a bastard you still are."

Harry had to smile at Snape's narrow-eyed outrage. Without all the hair in the way, it was easier to read his expression, to watch the clench of his jaw and the fine movements of his cheeks. It almost made him something approaching easy to read—for Snape, anyway.  

"I guess I have a lot of questions for you," Harry admitted. That was what he’d said to Kingsley, back when he’d made the bid to visit. "About the memories I saw. You and Dumbledore. You and... you and my mum."

"I will not speak to you of Lily," Snape said, so immediate and harsh that Harry had a feeling he'd expected Harry to come out and ask about it from the start of their conversation. 

"She was my mother," Harry said as evenly as he could.  

Snape bared his teeth. "I am aware."

Harry stared at him. Snape stared back, completely inscrutable. Harry couldn’t stop the hot rush of frustration that washed through him at hitting that stone wall of remove. It would be worse if Snape was bundled off to Azkaban, if he—Harry sucked in a harsh breath through his teeth. If Snape were dead, there would never be any chance to wheedle his way past those formidable defenses, to learn all of the answers to the questions he’d been harboring ever since seeing those memories.

Harry wrapped his hands around the bars of the cell. Snape jerked back with a start as Harry leaned against them, ignoring the clammy feeling of cold metal against his palms. 

"You asked me why I saved your life," he said. His heart pounded against his ribs, stomach twisting. He was glad it was dark because he had a feeling he was going red. It felt odd, almost intimate to admit what he'd barely been able to acknowledge to himself these past few weeks. He hadn’t wanted to face that he wanted anything from Snape, that he might have a personal stake in Snape’s life. "I think... it's because we're not finished."

"Not finished?" Snape didn't sound dismissive, just confused. "Potter, what in Merlin's name—"

"In the Shrieking Shack, I just... I couldn't let it end there, like that. And once I saw those memories, I was glad I'd done it. Because I would have hated for you to have died before I could... clear the air with you."

"Clear the air with me," Snape said in a skeptical, pointed voice. "What does that even mean, Potter?"

Harry felt inexplicably lighter with the confession off his chest. He laughed a little, leaning more heavily on the bars and regarding Snape through his eyelashes. It was a relief, to finally be able to admit that the restlessness that had plagued him the moment he'd learned about Snape's arrest could be boiled down to this. To put it into words, to be able to say it to Snape’s face. 

That was what he wanted, he realized with sudden clarity. So many things with Snape were murky, unclear, almost poisonous in how long they’d been allowed to fester. To be able to purge the wound, to say all the things he needed to say to Snape, was exactly what Harry needed. He’d lost that chance with so many other people in his life—he wasn’t going to lose it with Snape, too.  

"I thought you were the one with the flashy vocabulary, Snape," he said, giddiness making his voice light, almost playful. "Shouldn't a smart guy like you be able to figure it out?"

Snape, to Harry's surprise, flushed. At least he was still glaring, so that made it a little less surreal. 

"I have no desire to finish anything with you, Potter," he said, shoulders high and nose in the air. "As far as I'm concerned, we need not have anything to do with each other ever again."

Harry's relieved feelings dissipated like smoke. He’d forgotten; if Snape was in Azkaban, they’d never be able to finish anything. He gritted his teeth and forced a pained smile.

"I know you don't like me much, professor, but it seems a little extreme to go to Azkaban to avoid me."

"It's not about you, you brat."

"Then explain it to me, why don't you? Because there's no reason for this! You were a spy, you were working against Voldemort. You didn't even actually kill Dumbledore, I—"

“Oh, keep your self-pitying caterwauling to yourself," Snape snapped. "You saw those memories, Potter. He was already dying. You, like I, merely expedited the process."

Harry scowled at him. Bastard. "Then why—"

"It's none of your concern, Potter."

“Dumbledore wouldn’t want this for you,” Harry said. He knew he was stepping into dangerous territory from the way Snape sneered, but he soldiered on. “He’d want you to be free, now that Voldemort’s gone.”

“You know precious little of what Albus wanted,” Snape said. “And it has little bearing on what a man like me deserves.”

“Deserves?” 

Harry could hear footsteps approaching. He guessed his time was up. He leaned in closer, putting his face against the bars and adopting the fiercest expression he knew. 

“Listen, okay? You did a brave, good thing, Snape. You rescued people. Saved lives, mine included. Without you, I would never have known what I needed to do, known how to defeat him, and we’d all be fucked, still. Okay? So I’d say the only thing you deserve is to get out of this fucking cell and go live a peaceful, happy life. And you know what else? Dumbledore would agree with me if he was here. You know that just as much as I do."

Snape’s mouth was wide open. Harry would normally have cherished seeing him so off-guard, but he was already stepping back. His Ministry guide had come down the hall, stopping several cells down with a nervous cast to his round, pink face.

“Mr. Potter." His voice, tremulous and weak, echoed in the empty hall. "It’s well past your promised time. We must go.”

Harry bit the inside of his cheek. He looked at Snape, who was still staring at him like he had no idea who Harry was. Harry sighed.

“I’ll be seeing you around, professor,” he said. 

“Potter—”

Harry ignored him. As he made his way back to the Ministry official, he had already made up his mind. Snape might have resigned himself to prison, but Harry was doing no such thing. He might not like the cache his fame had given him, but he knew exactly the best way to put it to use. 

He’d save Snape. It was the least he could do after how often Snape had saved him.

Chapter Text

January 28, 2001

Severus didn’t make a habit of frequenting the Three Broomsticks. 

To begin with, it was always crowded since winter had set into Hogsmede for good, full of unwashed, loud people desperate for light and warmth during the coldest time of the year. Secondly, Severus didn’t drink, as a rule. He never had—years of living under the thumb of the domineering, alcoholic waste-of-space who Severus had once called father had beaten any curiosity about the practice clean out of him. 

There was always that little voice, too, whispering in the back of Severus’s head, wondering if he had also inherited an inability to put down the bottle alongside his father’s beaky nose and ferocious temper. During the war, the sheer idea of becoming inebriated had been ludicrous, anyway. Being drunk was being vulnerable, something Severus had never been allowed the luxury to do.

But the Three Broomsticks had a few advantages; it was only a few moment’s walk from Severus’s new shop, it was one of the few buildings in Hogsmeade to stay open at an hour that could sustain Severus’s recurring insomnia, and it was, so far, the only establishment that Severus could enter without garnering so much as a sideways look. 

It was thanks entirely to Rosmerta that that was even possible. The war had changed all of them. Every shop owner in Hogsmeade was colder, more aloof, more paranoid. They’d been through hell and it showed. For Rosmerta, the change was clear as well. Where she had once an easy-going, friendly barkeep, she now ruled her space with an iron fist. What she said went, and she’d said early on that Severus Snape would be allowed to come to her bar and stay there uncontested. 

Severus still didn’t know why. He’d done what he could to keep the Carrows and their lackeys out of Hogsmeade, but he’d had to prioritize the students. Most of the denizens of Hogsmeade—what few were left standing after the war—harbored little love for him for what had happened to them during that time. He’d gotten used to the sneers and the side-looks ever since he’d opened up his shop in late October.

Severus had questioned his own decision to buy space in Hogsmeade half a dozen times during the first month there. But the reality was that Diagon Alley would not have him, in Knockturn Alley he would be dead in a week, and there was no other wizarding shopping hub that would allow his foolish desire to open a potions shop to end in anything other than bankruptcy. Minerva had promised her protection if he settled in Hogsmeade and, much like the end of the First War, Severus had been in little position to do more than accept what was offered. 

He didn’t like it, though, and neither did most of the shop owners in Hogsmeade. Many of them still refused to sell anything to him and pointedly looked the other way when he passed them on the street.

Rosmerta was the exception. When Snape had made his way into the Three Broomsticks in November, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice, conversation had stopped the moment he came through the door. Rosmerta, working at the bar, had swept a weather eye over him, turned to the silent room watching them, and declared in a hard voice that Severus Snape was welcome there and anyone who had a problem with it could speak to her about it.

Severus, disconcerted to be so ardently defended when he knew he’d done little to deserve it, hadn’t been able to summon the courage to question her as she’d ushered him into a little corner booth to sit down for an exceptional dinner. Now, several months later, it seemed pointless. Rosmerta’s motivations were her own.

So, once a week, Severus went down the road and ducked into the Three Broomsticks. He always took one of the back booths, tucked away and relatively private while affording a full view of the room. Most of the time, he brought a book along with him. Rosmerta brought him dinner—always the house special—and a tall glass of water or pumpkin juice. 

For three hours or so, he would read and eat and listen to the mindless chatter of the people around him. It was relaxing in a way he didn’t prefer to examine. Severus had never needed to be around people and it discomforted him to admit that he found any kind of satisfaction in a crowded pub. He just liked the food, he told himself every Friday when he donned his cloak and gathered his book. That was all.

Most nights he could even convince himself it was true.

He’d been there for an hour already, reading an interesting treatise on the useful properties of metasequoia trees when he heard something familiar through the crowd. He had spent over half of his life actively listening for that voice—he couldn’t stop the snap of his head or the way he started automatically scanning the crowd for that damn hair any more than he could stop breathing. It was downright Pavlovian. 

Where, where, where? Why did the brat have to be so damnably short, his father had been tall—There! Severus rose up in his seat to see better, squinting. It made no sense, but there was no mistaking that shaggy mop; that was definitely Harry Potter at the bar, draped over the counter like a lazy housecat, face planted in the wood.

Potter’s hair was longer, shaggy and curling down to his shoulders, and he wore the scarlet and black robes of an Auror trainee. Snape’s lip curled and he studiously ignored the uptick of his heart at the sight of anything related to the Aurors. He refused to be nervous at the sight of a former student. 

He was too far away to really hear what Potter was saying, but it hardly mattered as Potter lifted his head from the bar and his expression became visible. Even across the room, Potter broadcasted everything he thought and felt on that face of his. Severus would have thought the Aurors would have beaten that habit out of him by now, but he knew better than anyone what a lost cause it was to try and teach Potter anything.

Potter looked… Severus gritted his teeth against the odd surge in his stomach, something twisting and uncertain. 

He looked older, Severus thought. He’d lost even the barest traces of adolescent chub he’d had the last time Severus had seen him. His cheekbones were sharper, his jaw more defined; he was an adult now and his face reflected it. It suited him, or it would have if he didn’t look so unwell. Severus took in the wan skin, dark circles, and rumpled hair with keen eyes, frown deepening with every new detail. The dull glassiness to his eyes and the looseness in his hands as he waved them at Rosmerta said he’d already been drinking hard. 

Severus put his book down on the table, bookmarking his page with a finger. No, he thought, unease growing. This wasn’t right at all. He watched Potter chat with Rosmerta for several long moments, trying to understand the knot in his stomach. It wasn’t just that Potter looked tired, he realized. Severus had seen Potter look just as sleep-deprived several times during his time at Hogwarts. Potter wasn’t just tired—he was unhappy. Severus could see it as plainly as he could sing the rings on Rosmerta’s fingers.

Severus had spent most of the last decade watching Harry Potter closely. He knew, more than almost anyone else, his unique moods; he’d seen Potter angry and laughing and depressed and defiant—and everything in-between. Watching for a little longer only solidified Severus’s guess; the Potter sitting at that bar, unsmiling and tense, with little furrows in his brow, was not just stressed or tired. He was miserable. 

What the fuck.  

That wasn’t supposed to happen. Severus had seen, with no little amused disgust, all of the stories in the Prophet over the past year or so detailing Potter’s various scandalous exploits—his tumultuous relationship with Ginerva Weasley, the various spurned lovers, his rising career with the Aurors, his partying lifestyle. Every other day it seemed like Potter was getting into a fistfight or having yet another young lady sob about how he’d broken her heart. Potter had turned around to become exactly the kind of wastrel Severus had always expected the moment he had a breath of freedom. 

And that was exactly what he was supposed to do. Potter was finally free to live his life, free of expectations or burdens. Severus expected him to have his irresponsible, crazy adventures and live a boisterously untroubled existence. He was supposed to marry that Weasley girl, grow old and fat, and die peacefully in his sleep well into his hundreds without so much as a worry in his tiny brain to trouble him. 

But the Potter across the room didn’t look like someone who was living a carefree life. Hell, he looked even worse than the washed out, weary Potter from two years ago and he’d clearly been spiraling into some kind of nervous breakdown.

Severus tapped his finger on the table in a smooth, even rhythm, still watching Potter at the bar. Truth be told, Severus had done his best to put that summer out of his mind. 

The entire time following the Dark Lord’s demise had been a blur of pain and misery—from waking up to find out he wasn’t actually dead to his dubious recuperation in St. Mungo's under guard, to being officially arrested and stuffed away in a dank little room with only his murderously angry former comrades and sadistic Aurors for company. By the time the trial he knew would be a sheer farce approached, Severus had just been so tired—it had felt like all twenty years of spying and running for his life had been catching up to him at once. He’d just wanted some peace and quiet and he’d felt that if it took Azkaban to get it, then... After all, his hands had not been clean since he was a teenager—perhaps it had been time to accept his fate. 

And he would have—if it hadn’t been for Harry bloody Potter.  

His trial had been a blur, one face after another outlining his atrocities over the years. Severus had barely cared to listen. He’d stared at the dark wall ahead of him and retreated into the safety of his mind, keeping only the vaguest awareness of what was happening around him.

Until he’d heard Potter speak. That had snapped him out of his haze with embarrassing swiftness.

“Members of the Wizengamot,” Potter had said. 

He had stood in the witness box, dressed in plain dark robes. He’d looked just as tired and ill as he had when he’d come to visit Severus’s cell, pinched lines on his wan forehead and dark shadows purpling the skin beneath his eyes, lips chapped and harsh. Whispers had still exploded out from the crowd watching the trial, of course, and Severus had noted that every person on his so-called jury sat straighter.         

“Mr. Potter,” Amelia Bones had said. She, at least, had not looked star-struck. “You are speaking on behalf of the plaintiff?”

Severus’s heart had seized, despite himself. If Potter was there to speak against him, that would have been the end of it. But Potter had smiled, mild and almost sheepish.

“No, Mrs. Bones,” he’d said. “I speak on behalf of the defense.”

Severus’s breath had left him in a hard whoosh of air, leaving him dizzy and wrong-footed. He remembered wondering what was wrong with the brat and why in Merlin’s name—

“Order!” Amelia Bones had barked out of the rising sounds of people’s exclamations all over the hall. “Mr. Potter, your… relationship with the defendant has been publically antagonistic. Yet you speak on his behalf? You would argue this man—whose dark deeds we have heard tales of for almost thirty minutes, who confessed to the murder of my friend and your mentor—does not deserve Azaban?”

Potter had looked at Severus then. Severus had been weathering those eyes since Potter’s arrival to Hogwarts, and it had always been easier to stand them when  they were spitting fire at him, angry and hateful. The strange, lingering watchfulness that day had made prickles break out along Severus’s neck. For the first time in a long time, he had had no idea what Harry Potter would do next.

“If you asked me four months ago, Mrs. Bones, I would have agreed with you,” Potter had said, finally turning away. “Professor Snape did everything he could to make me believe the worst of him. But I believe differently now.”

Amelia Bones’s eyebrows had raised. “Why is that, Mr. Potter?”

Potter had leaned forward. “Let me tell you a story.”

Severus had listened with agonizing embarrassment and something else—something more difficult to name—as Potter had outlined the whole bloody story he’d seen in Severus’s memories to nigh on one hundred strangers. The brat had also had the gall to offer them as evidence when Bones had demanded veracity! 

Severus bared his teeth at the memory of it, still ashamed to this day of so many people hearing of the secrets he’d cherished for so many years just because one idiot couldn’t keep his damn mouth shut. He could still feel the pitying eyes of the jury on him, their whispers. 

That Potter’s testimony and verification had surely kept him out of Azkaban was no matter. Potter should have kept his nose out of Severus’s business. Not that the brat had ever been very good at keeping his nose out of anyone’s business. 

Severus’s mouth pursed. And now he was here, wafting beer fumes and looking centimeters away from death. What could have happened? Severus tried to think back over the last month or so of headlines, but there was little he could reasonably connect to Potter’s obvious misery. Perhaps the Weasley girl had finally given him up for good? 

It was difficult to wrestle down his curiosity, which wanted to know why Potter, the nation’s darling, was miserable and alone. Yet another part of him, however, wanted nothing to do with Harry Potter, whose life Severus had been tangled up in for so bloody long. What should it matter to him, after all, that an old, disliked student was drowning his sorrows?

Severus wrestled with both impulses for a long moment before the indignation won out. He turned back to his book with a sniff and forced himself to forget that Potter was even in the room. He would no doubt leave soon or be joined by his little cohort. Surely they wouldn’t leave him alone, if he were so unhappy.

He tried to read. He was self-aware enough to recognize that he was failing to take in the book as thoroughly as he had been before he’d noticed Potter. He skimmed paragraphs and kept one ear out, despite himself, for Potter’s little group of friends, sure that they would join him at any moment and he would become the merry, useless idiot Severus had spent so many years ensuring he would grow up to be. 

But his friends never came. An hour passed and Potter stayed at the bar, getting progressively drunker. Several people came up to speak with him or shake his hand, but Potter always waved them off after a few minutes. 

Severus gave in after an hour and a half. He couldn’t stand his own divided attention. He closed his book with a hard snap and stood in one swift motion. Hating himself already, he marched to the bar. He got Rosmerta’s attention and pointed to where Potter was sitting at the other end.

“Pumpkin juice,” he told her. 

She looked between him and Potter and nodded, going to fill a mug without comment. Severus looked over at Potter and scowled. Not for the first time, he cursed Albus. How was Severus meant to resist so many years of being conditioned to look out for Harry bloody Potter? Sighing, he strode down to where Potter was sitting and slid onto the stool next to his. 

“Mr. Potter.”

Potter’s head shot up. He swayed, nearly falling out of his seat, and turned huge eyes toward Severus. Severus forced his face to remain neutral.

“Snape?” Potter asked. His voice was slow and slurred. It raised memories that were not good for Severus, but he ignored them. “What—Are you—” He squinted, nose scrunching. “Are you actually here?”

“I do hope you are not experiencing hallucinations, Potter,” Severus said. “It hardly makes one feel safe when Aurors think themselves delusional.”

“That’s him,” Potter said, more to himself than to Severus. “But—This is the Three Broomsticks.”

Severus’s lip curled. “I am aware,” he said.

“It’s a pub.”

Merlin grant him patience. “Do I look like an imbecile to you, Potter?”

“But you’re a teacher,” Potter said forlornly. 

Severus stared at him, taking in his wide, betrayed eyes and disapproving pout. He found that he was biting the inside of his cheek not to stop some caustic remark but against the grudging laugh that wanted to escape. He remembered experiencing a similar shock the first time Minerva had invited him to her office for whiskey. 

“I do not drink, Mr. Potter,” Severus said, controlling the inexplicable mirth bubbling up in his chest. “But the food here is quite good. Regardless, I am hardly a professor. Where I spend my Friday nights is of little consequence anymore.”

“Yeah,” Potter said. He shook his head, clearly attempting to focus, though it didn’t do him much good. He blinked up at Severus. His eyelashes were crimped, long and dark against his cheek. “But you’re… here.”

“Mr. Potter, please do not make us go through this inane line of reasoning yet again—”

“No, I mean. Here.” Potter pointed at his own chest. For the first time, Severus noticed he was wearing dark fingernail polish, chipped around the edge of the nail. There was a wide, silver ring on his right thumb, polished to a shine.  “Talking to me.” Potter squinted at him. “I thought you never wanted to see me again?”

Severus recalled saying something like that after his trial had ended. He had been escorted out of the courtroom, dazed by the unanimous vote of parole instead of Azkaban, and Potter had been in the hall outside, talking to a much older and tougher looking Hermione Granger. Severus had pulled away from his guard for the moment it had taken to spit how little he’d appreciated Potter’s intervention in his face and vow to never be in his presence again. Potter hadn’t looked surprised or even annoyed. Severus remembered being enraged that the brat had actually rolled his eyes.

“Well,” Snape said. He shifted in his seat, cursing the uncomfortable stools, and braced his arms against the bar. “Let’s just say my curiosity has been stirred.”

“Curiosity?”

“The great Harry Potter alone at the pub, getting completely inebriated.” Severus straightened his shoulders, sneering down his nose in a way that was both familiar and a little nostalgic, even if Potter was no longer a snot-nosed brat in his Potions classroom. “What’s the matter, Potter? Not finding enough fawning sycophants in the Auror corps to satisfy your ego?”

Potter’s face crumpled. Severus heard a muffled curse and turned to see Rosmerta setting down a mug of pumpkin juice at his elbow. Severus took it, looking between Rosmerta’s indignant face and Potter’s miserable expression. Potter met Severus’s eyes for a moment and turned away, taking such a  long, full pull of his beer it seemed as if he wanted to drown himself. 

“Now you’ve done it,” Rosmerta hissed as she reached to pat Potter gently on the shoulder. Potter sagged, looking pathetically grateful at her touch. “I’d just managed to get him to forget about it. Mr. Snape, you have no tact at all.”

Severus frowned at her. “Forget about what?” he asked.

He looked back at Potter, but he’d planted his face against the bar counter again. It sounded like he was mumbling out curses. What on Earth?

Rosmerta gave him a look that called him the world’s worst idiot. “It’s not my story to tell,” she said. “I’ll go get you some chips. Harry, get your face off that counter. You’ll get a rash like that.”

She disappeared into the back room. Potter lifted his head, looking as miserable as Severus had ever seen him; mouth a mournful moue and eyebrows drawn down severely. Severus frowned. He turned to fully face Potter, trying to convince himself that he was simply interested in solving a mystery. He’d left behind his own investment in Potter’s well-being after the war. He did not care. He was just curious.

Severus could almost feel Albus’s ghost laughing at him. Damn old man.

“Life with the Aurors not as rosy as you dreamed, Mr. Potter?” he asked, drinking from the pumpkin juice. It was sweet and deep, a little nutty. “Are they not treating you as your celebrity status demands? Not enough famous cases and ego stroking to suit you?”

Potter was, to Severus’s disbelieving amusement, pouting like a toddler. His shoulders were up, chin tucked toward his chest as he glared hard to the bar. 

“Life with the Aurors,” he muttered, “is a fucking nightmare.”

Still grumpy, he took a long swig from his mug. Severus didn’t know exactly what face he was making, but as Potter lowered his drink he peeked over through his fringe and his scowl deepened. 

“Oh, don’t be so smug,” he said. He rubbed hard at his cheek, scrubbing his hand up to run through his hair. He really did have ragged fingernails—it was no wonder the polish had chipped away. Did he bite them?  “How was I supposed to know it’d be terrible? Everyone’s always said it’d be perfect for me!”

Severus forced himself not to sigh. “You have always been far too easily swayed by other people’s opinions, Potter. You listen too closely to what everyone around you says and not closely enough to your own brain. Not that there’s much to listen to, I suppose.”

“I do not.” 

“Oh? Don’t you?”

Potter was pouting again. He did have a lush mouth. It was unconscionable, really, that kind of mouth paired with those cheekbones and eyes. Severus traced the sharp edge of his cheekbone, the smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. He’d grown up well, all things considered. But then, Lily had been beautiful and even the boy’s father hadn’t been a troll—in looks, anyway. 

“Not about important things.” Potter dragged a finger around the rim of his glass, collecting condensation. “Didn’t listen to anyone else about the Weasleys or about muggle nonsense or Voldemort—” 

Severus scoffed. The little idiot actually believed the nonsense he was spouting. He turned to face Potter entirely, bracing his side against the bar. 

“And yet,” he said silkily, “you were perfectly happy to drink in all the nonsense about Slytherins without so much as a protest.”

Potter opened his mouth, closed it again. His brow crumpled, a discontent wrinkle between his eyes that Severus found almost as distracting as his mouth. Severus took a long pull of his pumpkin juice, content that he’d managed to make Potter actually think for a moment. It wasn’t until Severus set his drink back on the counter that Potter spoke again, slow and thoughtful.

“Yeah. I guess I just… trusted Hagrid. And Ron.” He gave Severus a side-long look, mouth curving up a little, that little wrinkle easing. “Not that you really did anything to change my mind, you know. Between you and Draco, it’s kind of a miracle I didn’t hate Slytherins more.”

Severus blinked, taken aback. “He’s Draco now, is he?”

“When you save someone’s life enough, you get to call them by their first name,” Potter said. He tilted his head, probably trying to give Severus some kind of look but all he could manage was some rapid blinking. “He’s not so bad, honestly. Always thought he was evil, but he’s mostly just a prat.”

“And how did you come to this startling discovery?”

“He’s been getting to know Teddy. We’ve talked. A bit.”

Teddy? Severus cast around and remembered Lupin and Tonks’ orphaned brat. Ah. That explained Narcissa’s new connection with her estranged sister and why Andromeda’s name was coming up so much in her letters. 

“I see.” Severs considered Potter’s face and then sighed. Well, it wasn’t like he was a spy any longer, was it? There wasn’t any harm in revealing the opinions he’d been concealing for so many years, especially since Potter wasn’t likely to even remember this conversation tomorrow. “I can agree that Mr. Malfoy is not a sterling example of the Slytherin house,” he admitted.

Potter stared. Someone had finally convinced him to get rid of his glasses during the last two years, letting the full effect of those eyes through. They were still extraordinary despite the pub's dim light and Potter’s intoxication. 

“Maybe you are a hallucination,” he said at last. “I didn’t think you’d ever say something like that.”

Severus shrugged, skin prickling. He was no longer a spy, he reminded himself. It was harmless to admit his own indifference to a student, even if that indifference would have gotten him in trouble not even two years ago. He took another long swig of his pumpkin juice to cover his anxiety. 

“Is there any reason you seem to think you’d be making a hallucination of me, Mr. Potter?”

“Well, you’re—” 

Severus turned to watch, a little intrigued, as a blush climbed up Potter’s smooth throat and chin. He looked away from Severus, back at the bar and swallowed. Something strange settled in Severus’s stomach, clenched and dark. 

He cleared his throat, suddenly unsure what he was going to say. Potter was still blushing, shoulders hunched. Thankfully, Rosmerta came out again with a basket of chips in one hand and a hearty pot roast in the other, interrupting them. 

The chips she set down in front of Severus, the pot roast in front of Potter.

“You need to eat,” she told Potter, one hand going to her hip as she poked in his face with a stern finger. “I’ll not have you passing out drunk in my bar, Harry Potter!”

Potter smiled at her, relaxing a little as he propped up his chin in one hand. Even three sheets to the wind, he had a charming smile. Rosmerta, despite being at least fifty years older than the lad, flushed a little. She pushed his grinning face away with a mock-disgusted sound.

“Don’t try to use that face on me, kid.” She smiled as she turned away, though. “Severus, anything else?”

“No, thank you. This is more than enough.”

Rosmerta winked at him. “Well, thank you,” she said. “With you here to keep an eye on this troublemaker, I can get back to my real job. Harry, that’s your last drink.”

“Oh, Rosie—” 

“I’m not so old I can’t take you over my knee, young man.”

Potter’s charming smile gained a strange, mischievous edge. “Do you promise?”

Severus nearly spat out his drink. Rosmerta flushed and then laughed, throwing back her head.

“You get more and more like your godfather every day,” she said. “Now, get on with you. Try not to drive Severus mad.”

She disappeared to the end of the bar as someone called out for her. Potter’s warm smile drooped a little and he sighed, looking without interest at the pot roast. Severus examined him as he picked up a chip. 

Rosmerta was right, he thought critically. Potter needed to eat. He'd never been particularly robust, especially when he was a child, but he looked thinner than normal. Severus remembered Potter stuffing his face often in the Great Hall, but he’d never seemed to put on weight like some of his classmates—perhaps that was why he was so skinny? Severus could see the bones in his wrist. 

Potter was living alone now, as far as Severus knew. He wondered who was feeding Potter now—did he still eat at the Burrow? Did he even know how to cook? He had to be eating something.

It was none of his business, Severus reminded himself, suddenly realizing the ridiculous direction his thoughts were going. 

“You seem to know the Madame well,” he said, trying to distract himself.

“Well.” Potter didn’t look at him as he shrugged. “I’ve been coming here a lot. Rosie’s good about keeping everyone off my back here and she’s… she’s a good listener.”

Hm. Why would Potter need someone to listen to him? “And your little friends are not?”

Potter glanced at him, blinking with surprise. Severus was surprised he’d asked too, but he just frowned to cover it up. 

“It’s not that they’re not,” Potter protested. He was still playing with the pot roast, not eating it. Hadn’t anyone taught the boy manners? “They’re just busy, you know. Hermione’s trying to work her way up in the DMLE and Ron’s been helping with George at the shop and Luna’s away on that research trip in Brazil—”

“Potter, are you actually going to eat that?”

“What?”

Potter looked at the pot roast and then back at Severus. He’d gathered some of the meat on his fork, but he was just idly pushing it around the plate. Severus frowned at him.

“Your pot roast. You’ve not touched it.”

“Oh.” Potter looked down at it and his mouth pursued. “I’m not really hungry, to be honest.”

Severus sighed. “Mr. Potter, surely the Aurors have taught you the numerous benefits of healthy nutrition.”

“Well, sure.” Potter sounded bemused. “But it’s not like I’m not eating or something. I’m perfectly healthy.”

“I would beg to differ.” Severus examined him. His eyes narrowed at Potter’s little scowl. That was the face he made whenever Severus had caught him doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing, the little bugger. “When was your last meal?”

Potter grimaced. “Well. Okay, I guess I haven’t eaten since… since breakfast.” At Severus’s look, he held up his hands, his fork still in one. “But it was a really stressful day!” 

Since breakfast? Severus scowled. He must not be eating at the Burrow—Molly Weasley would not have stood for something like that. Running around all day in those ridiculous robes and he wasn’t even feeding himself properly? Severus had always known he was an idiot, but this was taking things to new heights. 

“Mr. Potter, need I remind you of the numerous benefits to a steady, well-balanced diet and that most normal adults manage to eat several times a day—”     

“Yeah, yeah, all right,” Potter said with a mutinous side-eye. “Merlin, you may not be a professor anymore but you sure lecture like one.”

Severus opened his mouth and closed it again, suddenly appalled. Yes, he thought to himself, what was he doing? Satisfying his curiosity was one thing, but it was hardly his job to care if Potter was eating enough or had enough people to talk to, was it? Merlin. Severus could feel the flush trying to make its way to his face and ruthlessly squashed it down. 

“Well,” he said, standing. “I suppose I’ll leave you to it—” 

A hand grabbed his forearm before he could retreat. Severus blinked down at it—small palmed, long-fingered, with the chipped black nail polish. Someone—Potter?—had painted a tiny golden snitch on the thumbnail, bright against the black. Potter’s hand was warm even through Severus’s sleeve.

“What?”

“Sorry,” Potter said, withdrawing his hand. He flushed, eyes darting over to the people that had been staring at them since Severus had first sat down next to him. He licked his lips, making them red and slick. “Sorry, I just—Um.”

“Mr. Potter—”

“D’you mind if I sit with you?”

Severus stared. Potter shifted under his eyes. Even his ears, just visible through the wild mess of his hair, were red. 

“Excuse me?”

“You have a table, yeah? Can I sit with you?”

Severus had to admit—he was mystified. 

“I cannot see why you would want to,” he said.

Potter smiled a little. It wasn’t the charming, cheeky grin from earlier but something much softer and shyer. Severus’s hands clenched. He forced them to relax.

“I just… could use some company, I guess.” Potter glanced out at the crowd again and his shoulders went up. “And a little privacy would be nice. If you don’t mind, that is.”

Why on Earth would Potter want Severus’s company? Severus nearly said no out of spite, but he caught sight of Rosmerta behind Potter’s turned back, giving him a hard, threatening stare. He was also very aware of all the people who were doubtless listening in to their conversation—it would do Severus’s reputation no favors to turn down the precious Chosen One. And, finally, he thought of Potter’s untouched pot roast. If Severus left him here, he probably wouldn’t even eat it. Severus couldn’t abide wasted food.

“Oh, very well,” he said.

Potter lit up. Severus refused to acknowledge anything so plebeian as a response to such a sight and so ignored the tightening of his heart and the churning in his stomach. He turned rapidly on his heel and marched back to his table with his basket of chips and pumpkin juice, not looking over his shoulder even as he heard Potter swear and fumble to follow him.

He swept into his side of the booth just as Potter nearly ran into the table, pot roast in one hand and his last ale in the other. He set them both down on the table and tumbled into the booth opposite of Severus, panting a little. His hair was sticking straight up from his mad dash, uncontrolled as ever. Potter pushed an impatient hand through it to try and manage the chaos, but it didn’t do much good. 

“These robes,” Potter muttered and began to tug them off with hard, annoyed movements. 

Underneath, Potter was dressed in a thick, knotted green sweater that could not have been warm enough for the weather, as its wide, open neck exposed Potter to his collarbones. The skin of his neck was smooth and unblemished, sweat collecting in the hollow of his throat. Severus looked down at his chips. Picked one up and ate it with one swift, harsh bite. 

“Eat,” he said. 

“You’re still bossy,” Potter observed even as he picked up his fork. “Still prickly, too.”

Severus rolled his eyes. “How astute,” he said dryly.

“But you’ve grown out your hair.”

Severus didn’t touch his hair. He could still remember the Aurors holding him down, the one who had cackled to shear it off of him. 

“My hair is none of your concern,” he said.

Potter didn’t seem to hear the icy remove in his voice. “It looks nice,” he said. “Better than before. You should always wear it long.”

Something hot crawled up Severus’s neck. “Mr. Potter—”

“You can call me Harry, you know. If you’re not my professor, I’m hardly your student anymore, am I?”

Appalled, Severus looked over, but Potter was determinedly staring at his pot roast. He had taken some bites of it, at least. The steady flush hadn’t left his cheeks. He darted a glance at Severus through his ridiculous eyelashes and Severus suddenly had quite enough.

“You said ‘everyone’ before,” he said, abrupt. Potter blinked at him. “About the people who told you being an Auror was perfect for you. Who exactly is everyone?” 

“Oh, that. I meant everyone. Ron, Hermione, Lupin, McGonagall, Shacklebolt—”

Severus didn’t sigh, but it was a near thing. “An auspicious list. If everyone seemed to think it was such a good match, why is it a nightmare?”

Potter’s eyes narrowed. He was probably trying to look suspicious, but he was still so inebriated he just looked like a dazed rabbit, mildly confused and grumpy about it.

“Why d’you care, anyway?”

The question of the hour. “Call it idle curiosity,” he said. 

Potter grimaced and set down his fork. Severus made a hard sound and Potter picked it up again with an annoyed look. 

“Well, it’s not all bad, I guess? Dean’s there and the other Aurors are all—all right. The work is—I mean, it’s fine. I helped catch one of the rogue Death Eaters last week. I’ve learned how to do the paperwork and my partner is good at her job and it’s—it’s satisfying.”

“Hm. Sounds idyllic.” Severus kept a keen eye on that fork. The blasted boy had better eat his food. His collarbone was much too defined and his wrists were practically bony. “And yet here you are, drinking yourself into a stupor all on your lonesome.”

Potter’s mouth twisted, shoulders going up. “It’s fine,” he said again, more forcefully. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. They’re fine, everything’s fine. This is all I’ve wanted to do since fifth year and I’m good at it.” Severus must have made some kind of sound because Potter looked at him with a fierce expression. “I am. I know you don’t think much of my—my talents, or whatever, but I was the top of my class in training. That never happened before.”

“I believe your Defense professors would disagree,” Severus said. He didn’t realize what he’d said until Potter blinked at him with clear surprise. He cleared his throat. “They always seemed content to sing your praises.”

“You were my Defense professor.”

Severus bristled. “Yes, and I never quite understood all the fuss,” he snapped, though that was a lie. 

Potter was not particularly studious and his essays had always been… lackluster, but it had been immediately clear to Severus that he had talent in Defense that he utterly lacked in Potions. Not that he would have ever told Potter so. Between his own dislike of complimenting James Potter’s child, the necessity of keeping his cover under the watchful eyes of Death Eater children, and his duty to make sure Potter’s overinflated sense of competence didn’t get himself killed, he’d had no reason to let Potter in on the fact that he had the sort of innate talent with Defense that really only came by once every few generations.

Potter didn’t take offense. He rolled his eyes, but there was a strange smile playing at the edge of his mouth.

“Figures,” he said. “You want to tell some of my coworkers that?”

“Whyever would I do such a thing?”

“Most of them are all right,” Potter said. Severus was beginning to get sick of that term and especially the way Potter’s voice tightened as he said it. “The old Order members, you know? They know me, they know I’m not... “ He sighed. Picked up his fork, but he didn’t eat. “Some of them just—I dunno. Think I’m some kind of... “

“Chosen One?”

Potter flinched. Severus blinked, surprised. He’d seen Potter bear up under the brunt of his celebrity more times than he could count when the brat was still at Hogwarts, some times with more finesse than others. But he’d never looked so miserable about it. He examined Potter’s face closely, discontent at the hard wrinkles in his forehead and the twist of his mouth.

Potter stabbed fiercely at his roasted potatoes. “I’m not,” he said to his plate. “I didn’t do anything—anything special, not really. Dumbledore just pointed me in the right direction and I got lucky. Without Hermione and Ron, without all of the others... “ He glanced up, something completely inscrutable in his eyes. “Without you, I would have died years ago. It was all luck. But none of them realize that. They keep expecting me to be—I dunno. Something I’m not.” 

Not all luck, Severus thought but didn’t say. He didn’t think many fourteen-year-olds could escape the Dark Lord’s grasp without losing several limbs or survive an encounter with Death Eaters long enough for help to arrive. He doubted many teenagers at all would have been able to do what Potter and his little gang had accomplished during the year before the final battle. He tried to imagine some of his other students—Ernie Macmillian or Penelope Clearwater or, Merlin forbid, Draco Malfoy—in Potter’s place and thought that Potter was giving himself too little credit. Luck had always been a tool in Potter’s pocket, but it was hardly the sole reason he’d survived as long as he did.

But Severus was never going to say that to the brat’s face. He may not have to pretend to hate him as violently as he did at Hogwarts, he may even owe him his life—but that hardly meant Severus was going to start acting as his bosom companion. 

Besides. It wasn’t anything Potter was going to listen to right now. Severus contemplated Potter’s hunched shoulders. He found that he didn’t like seeing Potter like this, tired and unwell and miserable. He’d told Minerva that she was making a mistake when she’d explained her decision to help Potter enter the Aurors, but she hadn’t been interested in hearing any dissent. Severus would take some pleasure in being proven so right, but it was difficult to do with Potter radiating unhappiness across from him.

Severus sighed and steepled his fingers under his chin. Well. There was still time to turn things around, thankfully. Though why he was even bothering was still a mystery to him. 

“Well,” Severus said as Potter picked miserably at his potatoes. “I can hardly voice any surprise that you’re struggling to adjust with the Aurors.”

Potter’s shoulders tightened. “Don’t—”

“Anyone who thought they’d be a good fit for you was clearly daft.”

Potter glared at him. His eyes were clearing up a little now, though he was still flushed. His hair curled at his temple, damp with sweat. He desperately needed a haircut—his hair was much too wild to be worn long. It was a tangled mess down his neck, falling into his eyes. Severus tried to imagine him chasing down criminals day after day, and bit back on a laugh. Minerva had been so caught up in her feud with Umbridge, she had clearly been delusional. 

“What, because I’m too stupid to ever be good at it? I didn’t get a fucking O on my Potions OWL or whatever, so—”

“No, you idiot,” Severus said with the most scorn he could muster. “Because it was clear to anyone with eyes you belonged at Hogwarts.”

Potter’s mouth dropped open. It was flushed red too. Had he been biting his lips? His teeth were white, mostly even except for one near the front that was the tiniest bit crooked. 

“What?”

Severus leaned back in his chair, forcing his eyes on the bar. He had no idea why he was telling Potter this even though he’d believed it for years. Maybe it was just that seeing Potter like this, drunk and miserable, made something itch under his skin. He didn’t spend so many years living his life on the edge, constantly in fear for his life, just so Potter could waste his adulthood being unhappy. 

Lily’s son was supposed to grow up to be stupid and obnoxious and unfettered. Severus had not sacrificed so much for anything less. 

“You mean… what, like a professor?” Potter’s brow was crumpled with confusion. He looked like an idiot but that didn’t mean it wasn’t also a little endearing. He clutched his fork in one hand like he was using it as a lifeline. “But I’m—You really think—I’m not smart, you know!”

Severus sighed. Merlin save him. He was really going to have to spell it out for the idiot, wasn’t he? Was every other person in Potter’s life blind?

“Chasing down criminals day in and day out was never going to satisfy you, Potter,” he said. “You must be an utter fool to believe it would. You’re the kind of idiot who rescues house-elves you don’t know and trusts mass murderers despite all evidence of their guilt. Did you honestly think you’d find peace as an Auror?” 

Potter stared at him. “I…” He opened his mouth, closed it, jaw working. “But that doesn’t mean I could be a teacher. I don’t know the first thing about teaching! You’re daft!”  

“Potter, did you or did you not teach the majority of your fifth-year class defensive magic?” Severus asked with exaggerated patience.

Potter’s eyes widened. “Wait, you knew about—”

“Of course I did, you idiot. Who do you think maneuvered that odious toad woman’s little lackeys away from the seventh floor?”

“What? But you—You hated me. Us, I mean.”

“Potter, you explained the memories I showed you in excruciating detail to a whole roomful of people, so I know that you witnessed them. Do I really need to remind you what my real duty was at Hogwarts?”   

“Looking after me, yeah,” Potter said. He sounded surprisingly casual about it. “But I didn’t think that meant… So hang on, if you were watching the whole thing, how’d we get caught?”

“I am not omniscient.” Severus was actually still rather annoyed with himself for the whole slip-up, though he could have told Potter that allowing anyone to join without more strident measures to keep their silence was a mistake. He wasn’t sure which of Potter’s little friends had put that hex on their sign-ups, but at least they’d had the right idea. “Considering how careless you all were, it was a miracle you didn't get caught sooner.”

He’d spent a lot of long nights on the seventh floor, keeping a weather eye out. The Room of Requirement was likely one of the safest places in Hogwarts, but that had been Voldemort’s first year back and Severus had been on edge. He’d shadowed Potter more that year than any other year combined. 

Potter frowned. “Okay, but then you know it wasn't like I was… teaching them by myself, right? Hermione helped and Neville and—”

“Yes,” Severus said. His patience was wearing thin. Was Potter seriously so daft? Where was that ego Severus had always assumed existed? “And yet, under your watchful eye and express tutelage, your class became one of the most powerful and well-versed in Defense magic of the entire school… enough that they were a constant thorn in my side during my brief tenure and managed to help protect Hogwarts despite many of them not yet being of age.”

Potter’s mouth was wide open now. Severus caught a glimpse of something shiny against his tongue. He ignored the voice in the back of his head wondering when Potter would have even found time to get a tongue piercing. It was hardly his business how the boy chose to mutilate himself. 

“But that’s not because of me! I just… I dunno. Tutored them a bit, that’s all. Gave them some tips, pointed them in the right direction.” 

Severus finally gave in to the urge to roll his eyes. “How many of them were capable of producing a Patronus, Potter? How many could use Expelliarmus at will or throw up a shield charm without pausing?”

“Well.” Potter seemed to be thinking about it, at least, if that wrinkle in his brow was any indication. Did using his brain hurt him so much, that he had to make all those faces when he did it? “Um. Most of them, I guess?”

“And how many could before those little sessions of yours?”

“Okay, but I had help—”

“Yes, because most fifteen-year-olds can’t quite manage to teach a full-blown class on their own!” Potter stared at him. Severus shoved down his aggravation. “Eat your potatoes, you dullard. Clearly everything I’m telling you is going in one ear and out the other.”

Potter, who had never followed an order once in his life, obediently bent his head. Alcohol made him more pliable, at least. Severus was beginning to regret ever getting up to go to the bar, regardless of how curious he’d been and regardless of the fact that this was the most conversation he’d gotten in months.          

They sat in silence for several long moments. Severus picked up his book, quite prepared to ignore Potter’s existence again until he shuffled away, when Potter spoke again, awkward and hesitant.

“But I can’t… I mean. I’m supposed to be an Auror.”

Severus almost snapped at him but then he caught sight of Potter’s uncertain face. He was gnawing on his bottom lip, picking at his ragged fingernails. The golden snitch on his thumb caught the light for the briefest moment. 

“Potter—”

“No, you don’t get it,” Potter said. His voice was starting to get manic, high and quick. “I’m supposed to be—this was the plan, Snape. Since fifth year, this is what I’ve planned for. I can’t just… just suddenly decide to change my entire future. I’ll be throwing everything I’ve done in the last year away. This is what I’m supposed to do!”

“Potter.” 

Severus was reaching out before he could stop himself. Potter’s hand was warm and smooth under his. His restless fingers stopped twitching, going utterly still beneath Severus’s touch.

“I can’t just throw everything away,” he said again, more quietly. “I can’t. You’re not supposed to just… do that, are you?”

Severus sighed. “I wouldn’t know, Potter. My path was set for me the moment I left school.”

Potter darted a glance at him. “The Death Eaters,” he guessed.

Severus did not want to talk about this. “Yes,” he said shortly. “And I had little choice in my own profession once I went to Albus.” He took in Potter’s tense shoulders and ducked head. “You may have guessed this yourself, but I was not particularly pleased or… adept at being a professor.”

Potter’s head shot up. He stared at Severus. “Well, yeah,” he said. Severus bristled even though there wasn’t anything particularly mean or cruel about Potter’s unselfconscious honesty. “But I thought that was just…”

“Yes.” Severus wouldn’t pretend he wasn’t guilty of taking a little bit in pleasure in being severe on his students. Some of the little idiots had deserved it. “I was not meant to be a professor, Potter. I suffered through it because I had no other choice.” He braced against his own squeamishness for anything regarding sentiment, gritting his teeth to say the next part clearly. “You, however, have a choice.”

Potter couldn’t have looked more surprised if Severus clocked him across the face. Then, strangely, he smiled. It was the cheeky one that exposed his eyeteeth, the dimple in his cheek. Severus hated that smile. 

“Looked like that hurt coming out, Snape.”

Severus withdrew his hand. He ignored how his palm felt colder, trying to get his rising flush under control. Damn the fool, anyway. This was Severus’s punishment for being too curious for his own good. 

“Oh, very well then,” he said crossly. “Stew in your own misery, you infuriating brat.”

He picked up his book and opened it to a random page, seething to himself. He stubbornly kept his head bent even as the silence at the table stretched on. He was not going to look, he told himself. Potter was clearly a masochistic little shit and if he wanted to go on being miserable at a job that didn’t suit him for the rest of his life, it was no skin off Severus’s nose. 

 “Snape.”

Severus didn’t look up. “What.”

“You seriously think that I could do that? Be a professor?”

Severus stared at the paragraphs in front of him without reading them. He was thinking of Potter in his fifth year, running around looking like an actual teenager for once with his little friends as they planned and plotted and made their makeshift lesson plans. He’d seen glimpses of the lessons in Potter’s mind during their Occlumency lessons, felt Potter’s warm pride and focus for all of the students he’d worked with. The happiest Potter had ever been that year had been teaching his classmates. 

He finally looked. Potter’s wan face and anxious eyes greeted him. 

“You are never going to find any satisfaction chasing dark wizards, Potter,” Severus said. How did the boy not know this? “You will be good at it, that I have little doubt of. But it’s not what you want.”

Potter’s laugh was low and a little hollow. “Yeah? And what is it I want, Snape? Since you seem to know?”

Severus tsked. “Don’t be tiresome, Potter. You want Hogwarts. That’s all you’ve ever wanted and any fool with two eyes could tell you that.”

Potter rubbed a hand over his eyes. At some point he’d eaten most of the pot roast, Severus noticed with no little satisfaction. He was still going to have a hell of a hangover tomorrow, though. 

“Hogwarts, huh?” Potter muttered. “I can’t just change my entire life like that, Snape.”

“Oh.” Severus intentionally adopted a mocking tone. “Oh, I see.”

Potter’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“It’s just… well, I assumed a Gryffindor wouldn’t be easily scared off.”

Potter’s open outrage was a balm to his soul. It almost made up for this whole, surreal evening. Severus basked in it, smirking at him. 

“It’s not about being scared!” 

Potter was loud enough to attract attention from the nearby tables. Severus ignored them, examining Potter’s face.

“No? Then what’s stopping you?”

Potter opened his mouth, closed it again. Slowly, the outrage drained from his expression, replaced with something much more thoughtful. Severus ignored the steady hum of his own satisfaction, watching instead as Potter’s mouth firmed, chin coming up. His restlessness and anxiety sloughed off of him, leaving him focused and eager.

“Nothing,” he said and the eyes that met Severus’s were exactly as they should be. “Nothing at all.”

Chapter Text

March 25, 2002

Harry loosened his tie as he made his way out of the Great Hall. Ron had boggled at wearing a suit to a job interview, but Hermione had been firm and since Harry didn’t like to wear robes more than he had to, he’d decided it was fine by him. The dark suit had been Fleur’s choice, so it was stylish and too expensive for Harry’s taste, but at least wearing it made him feel more like an adult than a kid playing at one. McGonagall had seemed suitably impressed, anyway.

The interview had gone well, Harry thought, though he didn’t have much to compare it to. He’d never been interviewed before—even the Aurors had just let him join training without so much as a chat beforehand after the war. Hermione, ever thorough, had given him a rigorous rundown of what to expect, complete with a week full of mock-interviews, so Harry had felt pretty prepared as he’d approached Hogwarts that morning. 

But as he’d made his way up to the Headmistress’ Office, he’d been struck by a sudden bout of unexpected nerves that he hadn’t been able to explain. There wasn’t anything to be nervous about, not really. After all, he was just going to speak with McGonagall, and she was like a grandmother to him. Plus, he’d been pretty sure she was going to give him the job from the moment he applied—as far as he knew, there wasn’t anyone else raring for a go at it, even though the curse had supposedly been lifted. 

Even knowing that, and despite all the preparation, he’d still been sweaty and uncomfortable during the entire thing, running on autopilot and blurting out answers to the questions McGonagall had asked without any actual input from his overwhelmed brain. The whole thing couldn’t have been more than a half-hour but it had felt more like three. McGonagall hadn’t been much help; she’d been entirely professional, which only meant that Harry had no real idea what she was thinking behind that cool expression on her face. 

Still, it was over now. Harry let out a breath as he made the trek across the grounds. Over and done and mostly, he thought, okay. He could hardly believe it.

He felt strange, almost unbalanced. He’d spent so long thinking and preparing for the interview that he was almost giddy to have it over with, his heart was beating double-time and full of jittery restlessness. He felt like he could run a kilometer or go three rounds with a dark wizard, caught up in a rush of delayed euphoria at actually doing the stressful thing he’d been obsessing over for months now. 

Harry caught sight of the Forbidden Forest out of the corner of his eye and flinched, his adrenaline-fueled energy taking a sharp nosedive. He turned away from it and made his way towards Hogsmeade instead—right now he needed a walk, something physical to clear his head and get rid of some of the energy sparking beneath his skin. He could go to the pub, maybe, or try the new ice cream parlor that had opened just last fall. It was a warm day, for March, and something sweet sounded nice. 

Harry slowed as he entered the town, looking around at the mostly abandoned streets. Hogsmeade was still quieter than he remembered during his school years. Much of it had been rebuilt or repaired—it looked very different than it had last fall, the last time Harry had been out this way. The storefronts had been repainted, for one thing, and someone had decorated each street lamp with spring flowers, blooming bouquets that made the whole area smell green and fresh.

Harry made his way to the Three Broomsticks, still thinking idly about ice cream when a sign caught his eye just off the main road. Hand-painted and old-fashioned, it showed a dark cauldron wafting multicolored fumes. Pair Ceridwen hung underneath, written in familiar, spidery handwriting.

Harry paused. His heartbeat ratcheted up, thrumming against his chest like a hummingbird’s. His fingertips began to tingle. 

It was Snape’s shop. 

Rosmerta had given him the name when he’d asked last year. Before he’d officially left the Aurors, Harry had done a little digging, full of curiosity and a little lingering suspicion about why someone like Snape, who had never much liked people, had decided to become a shop owner. 

He’d found nothing suspicious—the shop had been doing well for its first year, apparently, and Snape had all his proper licenses. What had surprised Harry was how many “routine” checks Snape had been forced to go through since his opening by the Aurors—one almost every month, more than any other shop owner in Hogsmeade. They all turned up empty of any contraband, though. Harry’s put the file away, a little sheepish at his own distrust, and put it out of his mind. 

Harry hadn’t had the nerve to visit. He should have, really, especially after Snape had all but shoved him in this direction last year. But every time he thought about it, his chest would seize and his stomach would turn. He’d woken up after that night in Hogsmeade hungover and completely bewildered—he’d been half-convinced it was all a very convincing dream until he’d popped in the next day and Rosmerta had told him all about it, laughing. Harry had been embarrassed, of course—he hated the thought of Snape seeing him like that, so pathetic and weak. The thought of facing him after that, even to show him that Harry was actually following his advice, made Harry blush.

So Harry’s only concession to acknowledging their strange night at the Broomsticks was the short note he’d sent that week, after agonizing over what to say for days— Sorry, H.P.

He’d never gotten a note back. Harry had taken that as its own answer.

But now, facing the shop and fresh off the interview for the job that Snape had all but pushed him to take, Harry hesitated. He was curious. It had been over a year since Harry had seen Snape and, strangely, he found that he wanted to see him, talk to him. Wanted to show him what he’d done, prove that he wasn’t some idiot who didn’t know what to do with his life.

Maybe he was going crazy.

Before he could change his mind, Harry ducked into the shop. The door didn’t have a bell, but he could feel a shift in the wards as he passed through it. 

Inside, the shop was dim and cool. Harry had been half-expecting something like Snape’s office—lines and lines of creepy things in jars—but it looked a lot more like the potions shop in Diagon Alley. 

The left wall was lined with counters and drawers displaying every kind of potions ingredient know to wizards, all labeled with the same spidery handwriting that was on the sign—bat’s ears, mugwort, beetle wings (black), and the like—and a carefully organized section of potions equipment covered the far corner. On the right were shelves full of pre-made potions, a startling variety of colors, all also neatly labeled. A long, dark counter took up the opposite end of the room and it was from the door behind it that Snape came in, pulling gloves off his hands. 

“You’ll have to hurry, I’m in the middle of a—” He froze as he looked up. Harry so rarely got the drop on Snape that it almost made him smile to see his old professor’s naked surprise. “Potter.”

“Wotcher, professor,” Harry said brightly. 

He was, for reasons he couldn’t even really explain to himself, inordinately happy. The restless anxiety that had driven him to Hogsmede in the first place was already fading under Snape’s hard stare and frown. Harry cataloged the differences in him; longer hair, tied back in a simple ponytail, and a healthier flush to his cheeks than Harry had ever seen at Hogwarts. He wore black robes as always, though Fleur’s tutelage must be paying off because Harry could tell the fabric was nicer than Snape had ever worn before.

Altogether, he looked good. Really good. 

“It should hardly escape your notice, since we are currently standing in my shop, but I am no longer your professor, Potter.” Snape’s lips twisted. “Of course, you have been extraordinarily thick before.” 

Harry snorted and moved further into the room, approaching the counter. It was rather cold in the shop and the only lights were very dim fairy lights set up in each corner. To protect the ingredients, Harry supposed. He’d never been very good at potions, but even he knew that strong light and heat could destroy several important potions ingredients. 

“You spent too many years making my life hell if I called you anything else. I don’t know if I can break the habit.”

Snape put his gloves down on the counter. “I believe I can count on one hand how often you addressed me by a proper title,” he said, dry instead of angry. “Now, get to it.”

Harry braced one hip against the counter. Had Snape always been so tall? Harry had to tilt his head to look into his eyes. “Get to what?”

“It.” Snape waved a hand with one sharp, elegant motion. “Whatever it is that brought you to my little shop, Potter. You’re hardly in need of any potions ingredients and I would think that, whatever else their faults, your fellow Aurors would frown upon you lazing your day away.”

Harry frowned. Didn’t Snape know that Harry had left the Aurors? For some reason, he’d just assumed Snape would already be aware, even though he’d been careful to keep it out of the papers. 

“I—”

“Unless you are here on… official business?”

Snape’s voice was low and controlled. Harry’s frown deepened and he straightened out of his casual slouch, eyeing Snape carefully. Snape was always so stone-faced that it was usually impossible to understand what he was thinking—and Harry had long since figured out that even if he thought he knew what Snape was thinking, he was often wrong. So he couldn’t tell what Snape’s tight expression really meant. It wasn’t until he caught Snape’s eyes flicking briefly, almost imperceptibly, over his shoulder, as if searching for someone else to come in, that a light flicked on in Harry’s head. All those checks by the Aurors, the over-thorough reports. 

Harry forced down the instinctive rush of anger. Snape wouldn’t thank him for it.

“I’ve come from Hogwarts,” he said instead. Snape blinked. Harry was watching closely enough that he saw some of the tension fall from his shoulders. “All the repairs are done, finally. McGonagall’s going to open the school again in September.”

Snape had always been brilliant. He relaxed against the counter as he scrutinized Harry. Harry fidgeted. He’d felt fine about his suit and green tie until just this moment. He squirmed. He had ironed his shirt, hadn’t he? He resisted the urge to check.

“The Defense position,” Snape said at last. “You’ve applied for it, then.”

If he had been bitter or angry, Harry would have called it a day and left. He didn’t have any interest in dealing with Snape’s malicious temper. But his voice was only thoughtful. Harry rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. He could feel the heat of a blush there and he knew it was probably spreading over his face. He didn’t know why he felt so odd and shy. 

“Well, I would have tried taking Divination or History of Magic, but I was never very good at them.” Harry shrugged and took a quick peek at Snape’s face through his eyelashes. Finding only careful consideration there, he licked his lips and took a chance. “Besides… someone told me I’d be good at it.”

When he risked a full-on look, Snape’s expression had twisted into something strange, mouth quirked even while his eyes remained inscrutable. 

“Do you know, Mr. Potter,” he said, “that this might be the first time you’ve ever listened to me without an extraordinarily taxing amount of manipulation?  

Harry blinked, taken aback, then grinned, relaxing. “Well you can hardly blame me,” he said. He braced his hands on the counter so he could lean into Snape’s space, catching the slightest hint of herbs and an undertone of spice. Snape’s collar was left unbuttoned, revealing the scarred hollow of his throat. “You were always a prat when I was in school.”

The strange expression soured. Harry cursed himself as Snape turned away from him, busying himself with a stack of papers next to the old-fashioned register. Harry watched the movement of his long, elegant fingers, amused, for a moment, to see that Snape’s fingernails were as unkempt and ragged as Harry’s. He also had several bright blue stains on his hand—from a potion? 

‘Then why, pray tell, are you here visiting me now?” Snape asked, drawing Harry’s attention back to his face. A dark eye considered Harry balefully. “Here to rub your victory in?” 

“My victory?”

“Now that the curse is gone, you will doubtless be the first Defense professor to last longer than a year—and your students will certainly like you more than they ever liked me.”

Harry frowned. “I don’t know about like,” he said. “They’ll probably treat me like…” He winced.

“The Chosen One?” Snape’s drawl was full of sardonic amusement. 

Harry scowled at him. “I still can’t go out of my own house,” he said. He slumped against the counter, letting it take most of his weight, deliberately melodramatic. Maybe if Snape was taking the piss out of him, he’d forget to be so prickly. “Even Diagon Alley is—well. My Auror mates, they got over it eventually, but to everyone else, I’m not even a person, you know!”

“Yes,” Snape said, still heavily ironic. At least he was turning back to look at Harry now. “I can’t imagine what that’s like.”

Harry flushed. “Oh, all right,” he muttered, straightening up. “I know, I know, I’m hardly the only one. It’ll just be a pain to get the kids to adjust, that’s all. Who knows what they’ll try before I can get them in line.” He considered Snape and grinned a little as another idea to get that pissy look off of his face occurred to him. “Got any tips?”

Just as he expected, Snape turned a thousand-yard-stare directly on him. Harry’s grin widened. It was almost like being back in school, he thought, a little nostalgic. He’d never thought he’d miss being looked at like a bug that needed to be crushed, and yet.

“Potter,” Snape said, so slowly he might as well have been talking to a baby, “I’m sure anyone you ask would agree that I was one of the worst teachers they ever had. Why in Merlin’s name would you ask me for advice?”

“I mean…” Harry shrugged. “You were the nastiest teacher we had,” he agreed without apology, ignoring Snape’s scowl. “But the worst? Pretty sure that was Trelawney. Or Binns. Or Umbridge. At least you still taught me something about Potions, even if I hated you when you did.”

Snape’s eyebrows were at his hairline. “You cannot be serious.”

“I guess not.” Harry smiled a little, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m a little out of my depth, though. I mean, I took the course at university but I don’t really think a few months learning about lesson planning is really enough to prepare me for teaching seven years of kids.”

He had misgivings for months, actually, ever since he’d dropped out of the Aurors. Everyone had told him he’d get used to the teaching, he’d figure it out, but Harry still couldn’t quite believe that he’d go into a classroom and be listened to. He wasn’t sure why he was telling Snape about his concerns, though. There was just something about Snape that made Harry want to tell him things. Maybe knowing that Snape already thought he was a useless moron, so it wasn’t like there was anything he could say that would make him look worse in Snape’s eyes.

Besides, Harry thought. Snape was the one who’d told him to do this in the first place. If he failed, at least he could lay the blame directly at Snape’s feet. The thought—and especially Snape’s face if Harry ever voiced it—cheered him up a little.  

Snape snorted. “If it consoles you, I did not even have that luxury,” he said. 

Harry winced at the thought of it. He wasn’t sure how much he’d really learned during his course, but at least it was something.

“Dumbledore really just dumped you in the deep end, huh?”

He expected an eye roll or a grimace, but Snape froze up instead, his expression going bleak. Harry winced. He’d forgotten that Dumbledore was likely as much of a sore spot for Snape as he was for Harry—but Harry, at least, had the luxury of friends who were willing to listen to him talk about it.    

 “Sorry,” he said.

“Do not apologize.” Snape’s sneer, at least, was marginally less hateful than it could have been. “I despise pity, Potter and I hardly need it, least of all from you.”

There was a soft chime from somewhere behind Snape. He cursed, reaching for his discarded gloves. They had bright blue spots on them too. What kind of potion was Snape working on? Harry didn’t remember any potion that color.

“Are you actually going to buy anything or are you just here to torment me?” he asked. “I have a project in the back that requires my undivided attention.”

Harry was surprised to find that he didn’t want to go, not just yet. All of his restless anxiety had stilled around Snape, his rapid heartbeat becoming even. He felt—steadied, even though he had no idea why. He bit his lip, eyeing Snape’s harsh expression. Maybe if he offered…? 

“D’you want any help?”

Snape stared. Harry wanted to flush but he forced himself to hold up his head and throw back his shoulders. He was an adult now, Snape’s… well. Equal, maybe. He wasn’t going to be cowed like he was still some fifth-year taking the piss. 

“You want to help. With potions.”

“Well. Yeah, if you want some.”

“Mr. Potter, you are a reasonably attractive young man. I have been assured of your dubious social charms more times than I can count by your professors. You have a gaggle of admirers that stretch from here to Edinburgh.”

Harry was a little stuck on that reasonably attractive young man bit. It wasn’t a compliment, not the way Snape half-sneered it out, but it sure felt like one. 

“Yeah, so?”

“So,” Snape said with contrived patience, “I am sure you can find something better to spend your time on than a washed-up ex-professor.”

Harry blinked at him. “You really think I’d rather… what, go bask in the weird fans who try to take bits of my hair and kiss my feet than do some potions with you?”

“I would have thought you’d rather be skinned alive than do potions with me ever again.”

“Well, yeah, but that was before—”

Snape’s eyebrows rose. The chime sounded again, but he didn’t seem to hear it. 

“Before what, Mr. Potter?”

Before Snape had looked at him, drunk and miserable without knowing why, and told him that he could change his future if he wanted. Before he had pulled Snape out of the darkness he’d been determined to drown in. Before the memories. Before he’d looked into Snape’s eyes and watched him die. 

Harry didn’t often change his mind, not about people. He’d been accused by Hermione more than once of being stubborn, even prejudiced. And, once upon a time, he’d thought he’d known exactly who Severus Snape was. But that had changed and Harry was no longer that boy anymore, just as Snape could no longer ever be just his hated professor.

“Before,” Harry said again, more finally.

Snape eyed him. The chime sounded more, more urgently, and he let out a swift, harsh breath through his nose.

“Oh, very well,” he said, sounding exceedingly unhappy about it. “But only because this potion is tricky enough to require a second set of hands, however useless they might be.”

Harry grinned. He liked to think he was a little better at understanding Snape than he had been before and even he could tell that Snape wasn’t protesting as much as he could’ve been. Snape might not like him very much, but he clearly didn’t hate Harry as much as he’d always said. 

Snape lifted the partition in the counter and Harry followed him through the back door. It led to a set of stairs that descended into a cool, dimly lit potions room full of bubbling cauldrons surrounding a wide, lacquered worktable. Ingredients of all kinds were scattered over the table, some clearly in the middle of being processed. A potion near the far end of the table was glowing acid green, wafting smoke and smelling strongly of mint.

Snape cursed again and stopped at the door to put on a heavy work apron. He handed an extra pair of gloves and an apron to Harry without even looking at him.

Harry shrugged into them. They were clearly Snape’s—the apron was too long and a little too tight in the shoulder, and the gloves’ fingers were just a touch too big for Harry’s hand. They smelled of oil and smoke, almost sulfurous. Harry followed Snape to the table.

“Don’t touch anything,” Snape muttered to him, his full concentration clearly on the troublesome potion. He was dropping in several rat tails at timed intervals, which made the potion flash aquamarine. There was a heavy furrow in his forehead as he focused. “I have to stabilize this, then I can worry about babysitting you.”

Harry made a face at him but didn’t protest. Despite all the tricks he’d learned from the Prince—from Snape, and that was still weird to think—and the few months tutorial he’d gotten with the Aurors, he wasn’t going to kid himself about his Potions expertise. He was lucky Snape had even let him in the room if he was honest.

As Snape worked, Harry looked around curiously. The room wasn’t much like the potions classroom at Hogwarts—it was much tidier, for one, and the cauldrons were all very well made. He wandered over to one of the other potions, clearly under stasis, and examined it. Its pale, smoky appearance seemed oddly familiar to him, though Harry felt that way about most potions. He’d taken so many of them over the course of his time at Hogwarts that he could often vaguely identify far more potions than he could actually make.

“There,” Snape said. “Potter, stop dawdling and get over here.”

Harry turned away. He bit the inside of his cheek. At some point, Snape had put on a pair of wide, dark goggles. Harry understood why as the potion began to gleam and waft blue smoke so heavily that Harry had to squint just to make his way back to that part of the table. Snape promptly gave him his own goggles and a heavy knife. 

“I trust you recognize these?” he asked.

Harry glanced down at the ingredient Snape was pushing toward him—shriveled and pearly white beans. 

“Sopophorous beans?” he asked with surprise. “Is that the Draught of Living Death, then?”

He couldn’t see Snape’s eyes through the goggles, but his sneer was clear enough. “Don’t be daft, Potter. This is my own creation. I need the bean juice but don’t cut them. You need to—”

“Crush them with the flat of the knife, right?” Harry asked. 

Snape paused. “That… is correct,” he said, a furrow in his brow. “I know that fool Slughorn didn’t teach you that.”

Harry had to bite back a smirk. “You taught me that.” He pulled the first bean toward him and crushed it carefully, catching the juice in a small pewter dish. “Or the Half-Blood Prince did, I guess.” 

“Hm,” Snape said. “I’m surprised anything managed to stay in that empty cavern you call a head.”

Harry shrugged, crushing another bean. “I dunno. It was a lot easier, for some reason.” He glanced up. “Why didn’t you ever write a potions book, anyway? Yours was loads better than the actual textbook.”

Snape snorted. “That textbook has been the required one since Albus was a student, Potter,” he said. “The Board of Governors does not allow much leeway for mandatory texts in the core subjects.”

“They did in Defense!” Harry protested. “We had a million different textbooks for that!”

“Did you?” Severus raised his eyebrows. “I believe The Standard Book of Spells was always on that list, regardless of your professor, was it not?”

Harry groaned. “Don’t remind me of that old thing.” 

“Precisely. It has also been required for longer than you or I attended Hogwarts. However, you aren't entirely wrong that Defense was a bit of an anomaly. Considering how much work was needed to lure in professors every year, certain leniencies were given to interested applicants regarding their curriculum. Which was why it was always such a disaster.” 

“Not always,” Harry argued. “Lupin was fine!”

“Lupin taught you far too much about magical creatures,” Snape said. “Especially considering there is already a course about magical creatures.”

“Well—”

“The Defense course is meant to be focused purely on defense against dark arts, Potter.”

“But students need to learn to defend against dark creatures, don’t they?”

“Be that as it may—Oh, Merlin, give that juice, it needs to go in right now—”

Harry handed it over. The smoke stopped abruptly as Snape slowly stirred it in. Harry watched, intrigued as the potion turned an even brighter blue until Snape turned back to him.

“Chop the bat wings,” he said, pushing them over to Harry. “Finely. No wider than the width of your pinky finger.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Harry figured that was the end of the conversation. He was surprised when Snape spoke again, a moment later.

“To answer your original question, even if I desired to share my improvements with a bunch of nitwits who wouldn’t properly appreciate them, I hardly could have. There wasn't a publishing house in the wizarding world that would have been insane enough to publish a book written by me.”

Harry frowned. “Oh. But couldn’t you have shared it with us, at least?” He chopped one bat wing, grimacing. He'd always hated doing the animal parts. "I mean, used your recipes in our classes?"

“Potter," Snape said. "What makes you think I didn’t?”

Harry stopped mid-chop to blink at Snape’s annoyed face. “What?”

“Did you think I wrote those recipes out on the blackboard each class for my own amusement?” Snape asked. “Not that it ever seemed to make a difference. Too many of you would still follow the textbook's recipe or get the steps mixed up anyway or prepare the ingredients so terribly it hardly mattered what I did.” He huffed, still stirring the potion steadily. "How you all could bungle up something so basic remains beyond me."

Harry was listening with half a mind, thinking back to all of his potions classes. Snape had written an awful amount of his recipes on the board instead of having them check their books. Not that it had mattered to Harry—Snape’s handwriting had always been monstrously difficult for him to read, especially after he got in the habit of sitting in the back of the class, so he’d always had to use his book instead. 

“Merlin,” he said, bemused. 

Snape made an exasperated sound. “Never mind that. Chop those wings, Potter. After that, you can de-thorn the roses.”

Harry bent his head to his task, mind still spinning, and they worked in silence for a while. 

It was odd, working with Snape. For all the years he’d been their teacher, Harry had never actually seen him in action. He’d guessed, from the way Snape talked and then from the changes the Prince had made to his potions recipes, that Snape really was a potions genius. But it was very odd to actually see it, to watch as Snape added ingredients, stirred, and moved around the room with the nonchalance and mastery of a veteran ballet dancer in the middle of a well-known performance. He didn’t consult a recipe, never hesitated on amounts or timing or stirring directions. Watching his lithe grace made Harry’s skin prickle with a strange heat—he tried to stay focus on the ingredients he was given to prepare so he could ignore it, whatever it was. 

Harry did the best he could not to fuck up his ingredients and they must have been up to snuff because Snape only gave them the most cursory of glances before throwing them into the cauldron. It was almost more disconcerting to be making potions and not have Snape snap at all of his mistakes. 

It took barely twenty minutes to finish the potion. Snape put it under a stasis charm, where he said it would wait for three days until it was finally complete. 

“Well,” he said, pulling off his gloves and shoving the goggles back into his hair. He had a streak of bright blue soot along his cheekbone. “It turns out you were less useless than I thought you’d be, Potter.”

That really wasn’t a compliment and yet Harry’s heart still glowed a little. He took off his own goggles, blinking rapidly to adjust to the dim light. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. He glanced at the potion. It had dimmed to a pale blue over the course of their work and smelled faintly sweet, like a berry. He was kind of curious about what it was supposed to do, but he figured Snape wouldn’t tell him. He tried a different question instead. “Why’s it need to rest for three days, anyhow?”

Snape sighed, shrugging out of his heavy apron. “Potter, sometimes I do wonder if you heard anything I said in your class. It needs to rest in order for the ingredients to combine thoroughly. Most potions require a resting period of at least a day but this one needs three due to the somewhat unstable elements included, such as the porcupine quills and ashwinder venom.” Snape put his apron on the table, cocking a hip and leaning against it as he crossed his arms over his chest. He had a rather nice chest, Harry noticed. Huh. “Of course, some argue that it’s possible to age potions in the same way one can age wine—that the longer they are held in stasis, the more effective and potent they will be. It’s utter rubbish, of course—all potions have a deterioration point where their full effects will begin to decline and any moron who has made even the most basic Pepper-up Potion should know that.”

Harry found that he was smiling. Snape’s face was just so intent as he explained, thorough and clear as Hermione ever was when she started talking about something she was researching. If he’d been a little more like that in his classroom, Harry might not have minded him so much as a teacher. 

“You know,” he said. “You’re really smart, Snape.”

Snape’s eyebrows snapped up. He straightened to his full height. 

“What?”

“I mean—” Harry didn’t know why his heart was suddenly beating so quickly. He resisted the urge to hunch his shoulders or look away. It was just a compliment, wasn’t it? No need to make it awkward, even if it was Snape he was complimenting. “You’re just—you know so much. About everything, really, not just potions, but with potions…. I mean, all of those recipes you changed in my book and you were younger than me!”

Harry had no idea what to make of Snape’s expression—harsh eyebrows, mouth a thin line, but steady redness climbing up his neck. Was he angry? 

“And you made up those spells, too!” Harry didn’t know why he kept talking. It was like his mouth was running on its own. “ Muffliato was one of the most useful spells I ever learned at Hogwarts.”

“Potter—”

There was a soft, distant chime like a muffled bell. Snape looked up and scowled before looking back at Harry. 

“Customers,” he said. “Stay here. Don’t touch anything.”

“But—”

Snape was gone before Harry could say anything more, disappearing up the stairs. Harry sighed, drooping a little against the table and dropping his face in his hands. Why had he been saying all of that stuff? It was true but it wasn’t anything Harry had ever wanted to admit straight to Snape’s face. 

But it had been weirdly nice to watch Snape’s expression. Harry had never seen him look flustered like that before, in a nice way instead of an angry, screaming rage kind of way. He’d been blushing, eyebrows furrowed and mouth pursed, kind of squirming a bit where he stood. It had been almost a little...

Harry rubbed hard at his eyes and groaned. It was a strange day if he was admitting that he found anything Snape did cute. 

He sighed and lifted his head. The room was quiet and still without Snape there, smelling faintly of herbs and earth. Without much else to do, Harry returned to the work table and began organizing their loose ingredients, gathering them up into piles so that Snape could put them away when he returned. 

He’d been at work for about five minutes, feeling oddly peaceful despite how boring it was when he felt an odd shiver down his spine. Harry glanced around, frowning. There weren’t any windows down here. Why would there be a breeze? Maybe he’d just imagined it?

The cold feeling got stronger. Harry focused and realized it wasn’t a breeze—it was magic he was feeling. Snape’s magic? Was that even possible? Harry glanced up, frowning. Snape had said there were customers, hadn’t he? Why would Harry be feeling his magic if he was just helping some customers?

The cold breeze became an icy gale. Harry swore, shivering. The reason didn’t matter right now, he thought grimly. Clearly, Snape needed help. Harry put down the ingredients and made for the door.

The cold feeling persisted all the way up the stairs. Harry was shaking as he reached the top. 

He could hear Snape through the door, voice low and harsh. He sounded like he had at Hogwarts and it gave Harry enough of a surprise that he paused with his hand on the handle of the door that led to the shop.

“If you do not want to buy anything, you are welcome to leave.”

A woman spoke, voice high and soft. She had the faintest lilt to her accent, almost French. She didn’t sound angry or harsh. Harry frowned. Maybe he really had imagined the feeling, then? But he was still cold now, fingers going numb. 

“Now, now, Severus. Where are your manners? I am a customer, after all.”

“Customers generally purchase merchandise.”

A tinkling laugh. “You are rude as ever, aren’t you? Lucius always assured me you had such promise. Never mind his looks, he’d whisper to me. Never mind his filthy blood. That mind of his is something else. Look where that faith got him—bundled away to Azkaban while his pet half-blood flaunts his unearned freedom in his little shop.” 

“Patricia—-” 

“Do not address me by my first time.” A harsh click, something hitting the front counter. “Merlin, Severus. It’s like you never learned anything about the rules. Even a mongrel half-blood should know better than to address his betters with such familiarity.”

“When my betters have shown themselves, I shall endeavor to be more polite.”

“That mouth of yours was always getting you in trouble. You forget—I may not have worn the mark, but my husband did. I went to all the gatherings, the parties. I remember what the Dark Lord used to do to you. How you screamed. You can hardly hope to intimidate me after that.” 

“Madame, I have a store to run.”

Another click. “In fact, I remember what you used to do, Severus. All those people you hurt, the lives you took. You gave yourself over to the darkness as much as any of us. And yet you walked out of those trials with a slap on the wrist and my Montgomery…” A low hiss. “I almost couldn’t believe it when they told me what you really were. Blood always shows, doesn’t it? You traitor. You coward. If you had half the spine Lucius Malfoy said you did, you would have done us all a favor and rid the world of your odious presence by now.”

Blood rushed through Harry’s ears. He turned the door handle and stepped into the room, nearly running into Snape. His body was still cold but it tingled with energy, and he found he could only focus on a few things at a time, taking in details in scrambled order.

The woman in the shop was alone. She was older, with maybe fifteen years on Snape. Pale hair, elegantly pulled back from her face in a way that reminded Harry of Narcissa Malfoy. Pale eyes too and expensive robes. A pureblood witch from an old family. Harry would have been able to tell even if he hadn’t heard a thing.

He turned. Snape looked back at him. He was pale, mouth a thin slash in his face. He still had some of that bright blue soot on his cheekbone. He was radiating chill so strongly that Harry could almost see fog coming off of him. 

“Mr. Potter,” Snape said in a low voice. “I told you to stay downstairs.”

Harry bit the inside of his cheek. “I heard voices,” he hedged. 

“Well, well,” the woman said. She tapped a folded up umbrella against the counter. “Isn’t this a surprise. Does the famous Harry Potter spend his time in your back rooms, Severus? Perhaps there is an explanation for why everyone believed your little sob story.”

Harry’s hands curled into fists. Snape must have seen something in his face because he reached out and gripped Harry’s shoulder. His hand was firm, almost punishing, but it was a solid point against the rush in Harry’s ears. He noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that several of the bottles on Snape’s shelves were trembling. 

“Lady Dolohov. I think you had better leave.”

Dolohov. Harry heard something shatter as if from a distance and Snape’s soft curse. He ignored the sounds, focusing on the pale woman. She was watching him without even a hint of fear, expressionless and poised. Harry’s hands were beginning to go numb from the cold. He took a step forward.

“Dolohov,” he said. “You’re related to Antonin Dolohov?”

There was the faintest flicker in her face. “My brother-in-law.” 

Something else shattered. A firm hand gripped the back of Harry’s neck. Snape’s touch was shockingly warm against Harry’s clammy skin. 

“Mr. Potter, if you destroy anything else in my shop I will not be responsible for my actions,” Snape said in an undertone. Harry shivered and some of his building fury abated. “Cease this temper tantrum. Lady Dolohov was just leaving.”

Mrs. Dolohov was not leaving. She was staring at them with raised eyebrows. Suddenly, she laughed again, raising her hand to her mouth.

“My, my,” she said. “I’d heard that Potter defended you at your trial, Severus, but I thought that was some insane rumor.” Her pale eyes looked them over so lasciviously that Harry almost flinched, taken off-guard. “You must share your secret, Severus. How did someone like you reel the Chosen One into your bed?”

Snape’s hand tightened painfully on Harry’s neck, but Harry hardly felt it. His face felt like it was on fire. The chill in his body began to disappear, leaving him flushed and overheated, wrong-footed. 

“Hold on!” he sputtered. “We’re not—!”

“Oh?” Mrs. Dolohov looked mocking and amused, mouth open a touch too wide to be genuine and eyebrows high. “Oh my. I see. Well, I suppose that makes rather more sense. What would a spry young thing like you see in someone like Severus?”

Her tone was needling and mean-spirited. Harry knew she was provoking him, the same way he’d always known that Draco was. It didn’t stop him from seeing red, though. He tried to step forward, but Snape still had that grip on his neck. 

“What d’you mean by that?” he demanded. “There’s nothing wrong with Snape!” 

Her tinkling laughter grated on his ears. He gritted his teeth.

“Well, you’d certainly be the first to think so, Lord Potter. I’ll admit he can make some excellent potions, but he’s hardly what anyone with taste would call a catch. Isn’t that right, Severus?”

Harry twisted his head. Snape’s hand moved from his neck to his shoulder in clear warning but his face was a stony mask, completely unreadable. There wasn’t a hint of embarrassment or upset there and that almost made Harry angrier than he would’ve been if Snape had shown any vulnerability. He bared his teeth as he twisted back to face Mrs. Dolohov and didn’t mind admitting to himself that her little jump was kind of satisfying. 

“Well, those people are idiots,” he said through his clenched teeth. “Snape’s worth more than any of them put together.”

“Come, come, Lord Potter. Severus has no illusions about himself, I assure you. What would he have to offer anyone? A mongrel half-blood with no money or looks to speak of. A traitor who would turn on his own for filth, betray his Lord—”

There was a feverish light in her eyes that Harry didn’t trust. She had to be a little crazy to say things like that to him. She couldn’t know that he wouldn't report her—and if he did, she would be locked up without fanfare. The Ministry was taking even the slightest hint of Voldemort sympathizing more seriously than they had for the entire war.  

“He’s worth more than any of them.” Harry’s voice was loud enough to echo in the quiet room. “He saved my life.”

Snape’s hand spasmed on his shoulder. “Potter—”

“Oh, this self-delusion is precious,” Mrs. Dolohov said. “Is that how he convinced you, Lord Potter? He pretended that he was some kind of white knight, riding in to save the unfortunates? Merlin help us—surely even you can’t be so naive. He may have saved your life, but he let far more die. Did he tell you about Charity Burbage? Faith Rhine? Timothy Blackwood? There were so many during that last year. And our dear Severus stood by and watched them die just like the rest of us. He may have pulled the wool over your eyes, but you shouldn’t fool yourself; he is as dark a wizard as any Death Eater. His hands are just as bloody.” 

She took a step forward until she was pressed against the counter. This close, Harry could see the fine wrinkles around the corners of her eyes and on her forehead. She tapped her umbrella against the wood against, making a hard rap that echoed in the quiet shop. 

“Of course, all the bloodshed in the world couldn’t make him truly one of us. We did try. We took him in, half-blood though he is,” she said with a disgusted grimace. “Feral and unpolished, practically a mongrel—his mother’s good, pure blood tarnished by the filth of his muggle father. And yet, we welcomed him. Our Lord gave him the honor of his faith and trust. We invited him to parties he would never have attended, gave him connections he would never have had. Treated him as one of our own. And how did he repay us?” Her eyes flashed. “With disloyalty. He turned on us despite all of our goodwill, despite all we gave him. It’s as Montgomery said—blood always wins out.”  

Harry stared at her, disbelieving and outraged. That she could stand there and say such filth with so much conviction was completely outrageous. That Snape’s silence meant he might even believe it beyond belief. Harry couldn’t stop himself from saying anything anymore than he could stop himself from breathing—the weight of his fury was nearly physical, pressing down on him from all sides.  

“Are you serious?” he asked, speaking so quickly he was almost spitting the words out. Mrs. Dolohov flinched minutely. “ Loyalty? What kind of loyalty did he even owe you, huh?” Harry couldn’t stop seeing that kid behind his eyes, his ill-made clothes and skinny shoulders. He could hardly breathe. “He was alone and you lot, you swooped in like the great, hungry vultures that you are and you just—used him. You told him how worthless he was over and over and you just expected that he’d—what? Kiss your pureblood boots and thank you for it? It’s hardly Snape’sfault you were such prejudiced arseholes that you couldn’t figure out what was going on!”  

Her face reddened, the first sign of her actual anger. She sneered. “You speak as if he did something to be proud of,” she said. “Don’t lie to yourself, Lord Potter. He is little more than a useless half-blood grunt who survived by sheer luck and knowing exactly what drivel fools like you will swallow. He’s a disgrace to the name of Slytherin.”

“ You’rethe disgrace,” Harry sneered back. “He’s the one who lied to your precious Dark Lord for years.” He made his smirk as hard and mean as he knew how, dredging up his memories of Draco and Dudley and even Snape himself, who was being suspiciously quiet despite his steadily increasing grip on Harry’s shoulder. “You want to know something funny, Dolohov? Voldemort didn’t even know. Most powerful Dark Lord in years, master Legilimens, Slytherin extraordinaire and I had to tell him to his face that Snape was a spy. And guess what?” He leaned in. “Even then, he didn’t believe me. So tell me again who’s the useless grunt. Who’s the disgrace to Slytherin. Go on.” 

Her glare was murderous. “He’s a worm, Potter. We always knew that. The only thing to do with something like him is put him out of his misery.”

“He’s not a worm, he’s a snake.” The bottles on the shelves were shaking now. Several had already fallen over, spilling their contents on the floor. “And he’s probably the bravest man I’ve ever met. So you can take your—your opinion and shove it.” 

For a long moment, he seriously thought she was going to hex him. But there must have still been some kernel of self-preservation under all that hatred because she took a step back instead. The fury and hatred were gone from her face as if they had never existed, the only hint that she’d been snarling like an animal the faintest redness in her cheeks. She smoothed back her hair with one elegant motion, spine straightening.

“Well, Severus,” she said, icy and removed once more. Harry, still raring for a fight, felt off-center from her sudden retreat. “It seems you’ve gained quite the little white knight. You were always good at getting other people to fight your battles for you.”

Harry almost opened his mouth to argue with her again—Snape had always fought his own battles, as far as Harry knew—but Snape’s hard squeeze made his jaw snap shut again. 

“Mr. Potter has never needed any help from me in losing his temper at inconvenient times,” he said. His voice was smooth and cold. He sounded utterly unaffected by the conversation they’d had, as if it hadn’t been all about him. Harry wanted to look at him, but he didn’t dare look away from Dolohov. He didn’t trust her poised remove at all. “He speaks his own mind. As always.” 

Her mouth pinched. “I see. Well, Severus. You should enjoy the support. We both know it won’t last.”

“Of course it’ll last—!”

Another squeeze. Harry’s shoulder was going numb from the pressure. He’d have a bruise tomorrow. Mrs. Dolohov didn’t react to his outburst at all. Her eyes were fixed on Snape. 

“And you know what will happen when that support falters, Severus,” she said. Her voice was so light and removed it took Harry a moment to understand the threat. “We may be few, but our memories are long.”

“I understand, Madame.”

She looked at them both for one long moment, lip curling. Then, without another word, she turned and marched out of the shop without looking back.

Harry let out a huge sigh as she left, relaxing. “Merlin,” he said. “What a nasty piece of work.”

Snape finally let go of his shoulder. Harry looked around the shop and winced when he realized that a lot of the ingredients had been overturned. His magic had a bad habit of making things shake or shatter when he was upset—it had to have been him. 

“Sorry,” he said, turning. “I can help you clean—”

He froze. Snape, still standing right behind him, stared at him. His face was empty, mouth soft and relaxed. But there was something about the brightness of his eyes that reminded Harry, strangely, of that night in the Shrieking Shack. Harry shrank back, unnerved, and began to flush as he suddenly became fully aware of all the things he’d said. They were true, of course, and he was hardly going to let some ex-Death Eater march in here and call Snape a coward, of all things, but— 

Harry cringed. Merlin. His embarrassment was so potent it almost felt like it had a physical form. 

“Sorry,” he choked out. “I know we’re not—You don’t—” He forced himself to look at Snape again. Still odd and expressionless. Harry almost felt more embarrassed not knowing what Snape was thinking. He straightened, blustering to try and cover the humiliation burning under his skin. It wasn’t like he’d been wrong, was it? “Okay, fine, I’m not sorry! She was wrong and stupid and—and mean!” Merlin, he wished something would swallow him up so he could die in peace. “I couldn’t let her just say those things about you! Right to your face!” 

Snape opened his mouth, closed it again. To Harry’s utter surprise, he huffed out something that might have even been a laugh. Harry sputtered. Snape wasn’t allowed to laugh at him, the great git!

“What! I couldn’t!” 

Snape huffed again and closed his eyes, pressing his hand to his forehead. His shoulders began to shake. Harry frowned, concerned, and leaned forward. It wasn’t until he saw Snape’s trembling mouth that he realized Snape was actually laughing, full-on body laughter. Harry stared. 

“I’m glad you think it’s so funny,” he said, torn between indignation and awe. He’d never seen Snape laugh like this before. “She did kind of imply you’re going to get attacked if we’re not friendly, right?” 

Snape lifted his hand from his face and opened his eyes. Harry’s breath caught. Fresh off of laughing, sloe-eyed and smiling, Snape looked younger, soft and open in a way that Harry would never have dreamed was possible when he was a student. He looked… 

Harry swallowed hard. 

“Yes, I did understand that threat, Potter. Patricia was never particularly skilled at subtlety.”

“She did seem kind of unhinged,” Harry agreed. 

Snape looked at the closed door, expression turning to something thoughtful. “Her husband went to Azkaban for life and her brother-in-law was killed,” he said. “She has no other family, I’m given to understand.”

Harry resisted any pull of sympathy. “That doesn’t mean she can come in here and shout things at you and hand out threats,” he muttered. “She had no idea what she was talking about and she can’t just—spew that kind of vile stuff because she wants to!”

Snape was smiling now. Merlin, it was weird. Harry wondered if Ron would even believe him if he told him. He found that he didn’t even really want to tell Ron. It felt oddly private to see Snape like this. 

“You always were a bull in a china shop, Potter,” he said. “Are you so desperate to fulfill that savior complex you’ll get in a shouting match on my behalf?”

“She was wrong,” Harry said stoutly. “You’re not—a coward or a traitor or a disgrace to the name of Slytherin. I meant everything I said.”

Snape blinked at him. For a long moment, they stared at each other. Snape’s eyes were so deep, darker than Harry would have guessed. His lips parted.

Snape coughed and looked away. Harry blinked, strangely off-balance. 

“Look at the state of this place,” Snape said. “A bull, indeed. Could you not have defended my honor without breaking everything in my shop?” 

“I didn’t break everything!” Harry looked around guiltily. It was messy. There were ingredients scattered on the floor and several shattered bottles. He winced. “I’ll pay to replace any ingredients I damaged.”

“You’d better.” Snape rubbed a hand over his chin. “Well, go on Potter.”

Harry’s stomach dropped. Oh. Of course Snape would want him to leave after all that. Harry bit his lip and ducked his head. 

“Right. Right, well I’ll just get out of your hair then, shall I? Sorry again about—”

“What are you on about? Go on, get a broom. We need to get this mess cleaned up before anyone else comes in and sees it.” 

Harry straightened. “Oh! Oh, I mean—we can’t just use magic?”

“Use magic? Are you daft? These are potions ingredients, Potter. Did you learn nothing after seven years of schooling? Applying magic could irreversibly change their properties, making them inert or dangerous. For Merlin’s sake, it’s like you never retained a single piece of information—”

Harry took the broom Snape held out to him and grinned to himself even as Snape continued to go on about how little Harry had managed to learn at Hogwarts in between bouts of explaining the need for handling potions ingredients without magic. 

Harry stepped out from behind the counter. A hand gripped his elbow, light enough he could barely feel it. He glanced back at Snape’s dark, watchful eyes. 

“It wasn’t necessary,” he said, voice low and soft. “But nevertheless—thank you, Potter.”

Harry’s heart shivered and started to race. He felt lit from within, as if he had a miniature sun under his skin. He grinned at Snape, all of his fury and indignation swept away.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Let me just help you clean this up, okay?” 

Snape nodded and released him. Harry stepped out from behind the counter, broom in hand, and he couldn’t remember ever feeling so content.       

Chapter Text

December 21, 2002

Severus stared at his reflection in the mirror with a dour sneer. It did not change nor did the mirror speak to him. Severus had never held much with that talking back nonsense—after years of listening to mirrors despair over his hair, his skin, and his unfortunate nose, he’d quite lost any patience he had for the blasted things. 

If he had a talking mirror, he had no doubt it’d be talking up a storm. He grimaced and his reflection grimaced with him. It did not make any marked improvement on his looks, which were still as sallow and big-nosed as they’d ever been. 

Severus had considered, in a brief moment of insanity, actually using some of those ridiculous cosmetic charms that promised whiter than white skin and teeth, flawless foundation, fuller lips, darker brows, and everything in-between. The lunacy had passed when he’d imagined, stomach tightening with an embarrassment so deep it bordered on humiliation, how his decision to sink to such levels would be immediately and unmistakably noticeable to anyone who saw him tonight.

Severus had built an image around not caring about his looks because the moment he cared about his looks he had to face the fact that he was unquestionably lacking in them. Not caring took less effort and afforded less pain, overall. But it meant that if he deigned to lower himself to actually take pains with his appearance, everyone would immediately notice—and no doubt draw their own conclusions on why Severus Snape might want to actually look handsome for once in his life. Severus couldn’t abide that, couldn’t stand the idea that any of the people at this pointless ball would dare to make pointed comments about his sudden increased interest in his appearance. 

So he left his face as it was, plain and hideous and unrefined. He did nothing to hide the bags under his eyes or the wan pallor to his skin or the yellow tint to his teeth. Severus had come to terms long ago with the fact that no one would ever look at him and call him attractive. His sole concession to the fact that he was about to attend one of the biggest parties of the year was that he had coerced his hair into something resembling style.

Not that it meant much. Severus’ thin, fine hair had been a constant source of annoyance for him since he hit puberty. Even when he showered regularly, it would grow greasy and limp again quickly, especially around the temples. It looked its best directly out of the shower, but given a few hours, it would hang uselessly on his face and cheeks. He’d experimented once or twice with ponytails and even braids when it had grown long enough to be distracting, but they never seemed to hold, forever slipping out of place and driving him mad. Eventually, he’d decided it was useless and had just given up on doing anything with it altogether.

The spell he’d found had helped. The single, heavy braid he’d chosen was tightly woven, a three-tiered plait that looked much fancier than it actually was. It was pleasant to have his hair pulled away from his face, even if he could already see how it was beginning to go flat at his temple. Still, at least it was somewhat presentable—and doing this small bit with his hair was much less obvious than trying to do something to fix his face.

“Are you done in there?”

Potter didn’t sound impatient, merely amused. Severus scowled at the mirror again, ignoring the way it bunched his wrinkles and exposed the harshness of his jaw. Damn the boy and damn Minerva too, for being the cause of this discomfort.

The newly opened Hogwarts had decided to celebrate its triumphant return—as well as encourage donations from wealthier alumni—by hosting a Yule Ball. Potter had wailed on about Minerva’s requirement that all teachers attend and act as chaperones—apparently, word had gotten out about Potter’s attendance and he’d been inundated with offers almost from the moment of the announcement. His whining had been marginally amusing the first month and then had turned pathetic. Pathetic enough that Severus had finally offered, driven by irritation, to attend as Potter’s companion.

Potter’s face when he’d said it had been amusing, at least, and had distracted Severus from his own immediate panic after. He still wasn’t sure what had come over him, only… Well, he’d been tired of hearing Potter rant on and on about the flock of people desperate to go with him. It had burned him to hear of it, enough that he had let the offer slip without quite thinking it through. 

Potter had leaped on it immediately, of course, the little opportunist. He’d refused to let Severus take it back and had escorted him to a little boutique in Diagon Alley to buy an outfit. He’d also demanded to come over before the great event itself to ensure Severus wouldn’t, in his words, ‘chicken out’ on him. 

“Yes, I’m coming,” Severus called through the door. He eyed his appearance one more time and then sighed. Nothing more to be done about it, he thought cynically. At least Potter had seen him in worse states than this over their strange year of tumultuous friendship. “What time is it now?”

He opened the door. Potter was turned away from it, examining the clock on the far wall of Severus’s living room. Severus took the quickest moment to admire the breadth of shoulder afforded by Potter’s unusual half-robe, bottle green silk embroidered with golden dragons at the cuffs and a high collar. Potter wore sinfully tight dark pants and the heavy leather boots he’d acquired during his time as an Auror to complete the outfit. Between his sharp haircut, the earring in his right ear, and his outfit, he looked more suited to a night out in Knockturn Alley’s clubs than a ritzy gala. 

“Minerva will have your tongue for wearing that,” Severus said, more amused than scolding. He couldn’t argue that the look didn’t suit Potter, who had been waifish and uncomfortable in the traditional robes he’d worn at his first Yule Ball years ago. This look, with its tapered waist, rich colors, and a hint of an edge,  was a much better fit. “You look like a hooligan.”

Potter snorted. “Minerva is forcing me to go to this stupid thing, but she can’t tell me what to wear. Besides, Fleur and Cho agreed that this style is all the rage on the continent.”

He turned. 

Severus braced himself for mockery, even though he knew now that Potter was not the sort for it. But Potter didn’t mock or make a little disparaging comment. His mouth dropped open, eyes widening. His hands flexed. Severus frowned at him, taken aback by the unexpected reaction. He looked down, but he was still wearing the robes Potter had bullied him into buying, dark as night with winding serpentine patterns embroidered along the edges in a smoky gray. The robes fit better than the ones he’d used to wear at Hogwarts, and the fine cloth was much more expensive than he would have usually spent on an outfit, but overall it wasn’t such a difference that Potter should act so shocked. 

Severus raised a hand to his braided hair. Ah, perhaps…?

“I didn’t want it to be in my face,” he said. He did not want to admit to the vanity of wanting it to look good—better to dress the sudden change in style to practicality, which could not be mocked. “Shall I undo it?”

“No!” Potter’s shout made Severus jump. Potter was flushed now. “I’m sorry, don’t, it’s just—You look…” 

Severus grit his teeth. “I have offered to let you find another companion, you—”

“Good! Severus, you look good.”

Severus blinked at him. “What?”

Potter was still flushed, but he was smiling a little now. “You clean up nice,” he said. “That hairstyle suits you, too. You should wear it like that more often.”

“I’m—I don’t think it would be particularly professional.”

“Keeping your hair tied back is always professional. That’s what Donners used to tell me, anyway, when my hair was getting long in training. The robes look great, too.”

“The—What?” Severus had never felt more off-balance in his life. He looked down at his dark robes again. “You’re the one who picked them out.”

“I know. I just didn’t expect them to suit you so well. I think Fleur’s been rubbing off on me; I’m not nearly as rubbish at clothes as I used to be.”

Potter’s wardrobe had seen a marked improvement over the course of the school year, though he still seemed to largely prefer muggle clothes to robes. Severus couldn’t pretend that he really minded, especially when Potter would sometimes show up to their bi-weekly meetings in dark jeans and a leather jacket. Not that he would ever tell the brat that, even though he knew now that Potter, unlike his odious father, cared very little for his personal appearance and largely seemed to walk through life utterly untroubled by what he looked like. Severus had never been afforded that luxury, but Potter’s indifference was still preferable to any vanity he might have rightly been justified to.

“Well,” Potter said. “Ready?”

“Ready to be surrounded by twittering fools who will stare all night?” 

Potter grinned a little. It was crooked and exposed a sharp eyetooth and a dimple in his right cheek. Severus really wished they still hated each other sometimes. 

“If they’re staring, it’s only because of how good you look.”

Severus snorted. “Do not try your hand at empty flattery, Potter. I have no interest in it and there is little you can use it for to persuade me to do your bidding.”

“Persuade you—?” Potter shook his head. “One of these days, I’m going to get you to answer a compliment with thank you. That’s only polite, you know.”

“Thankfully for both of us, I have never been accused of being polite. Are we going or are you going to stand there all night vexing me?”

“All right, all right. Come on, it’s brisk out there.” 

“Warming charms—”

Potter opened the door for him even as he rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. You are a wizard, Potter, however much you might dress otherwise .” His impression was, Severus admitted grudgingly, getting quite good. They really had been spending too much time together. “I just don’t like how they feel, that’s all.”

Severus watched him shiver in the biting cold as they came out onto the mostly empty streets of Hogsmeade. The entire town had been decorated with wild extravagance for Christmas and the Yule Ball, as was their wont in the years following the war. Huge pine trees laden with lights and decorations lined the main boulevard and every storefront had spared no expense to bring in the Christmas cheer. Severus, as a rule, didn’t care much for the holiday, but he had to admit that it was, despite its indulgence, a rather pretty walk, especially at night.

He saw Potter shiver again. Severus sighed.

“Oh, come here,” he said and took out his wand.

Potter stayed obediently still as Severus ran his wand over him from hair to toe, casting the most subtle warming charm he could. When Severus was finished, he looked into Potter’s face and was surprised to find those bright eyes fixed on him with a strange intensity. Severus’s skin prickled, hairs standing on end. His stomach twisted. Potter really did have such unnatural eyes. They no longer reminded Severus entirely of Lily—hers had been beautiful but Potter’s were more intense, more scrutinizing. Lily had never looked at him like she was seeing him in his entirety and wanted to see even more. Severus sometimes wondered if Potter looked at everyone like that or if in this, as in many things in Potter’s life, Severus was an exception.

“Come on,” Potter said and turned away, breaking their gaze and letting Severus breathe easily again. “Minerva will skin me for a rug if we’re late.”

“I’m coming,” Severus said and followed Potter up to the castle with his heart in his throat.

Hogwarts was just as lavishly decorated as Hogsmede, practically dripping with Christmas cheer. Huge trees lined the entrance to the Great Hall, topped with stars and angels and heavily laden with decorations and lights. Little animated choirs of angels were suspended in the air, tinkling out Yuletide carols and Severus spied more than one sprig of mistletoe. 

Heads turned as they entered, of course. Severus had expected it from the moment he’d agreed to come as Potter’s escort, though having so many eyes follow him was already making his skin crawl. They checked in with the house-elf near the entrance (and Severus ignored Potter’s muffled laugh at the way it squeaked at his name) and made their way through the milling crowd to the Great Hall.

It was already quite crowded, though the festivities weren’t to officially start for another ten minutes. Unlike the Yule Ball during the Triwizard Tournament, this party was open to literally everyone in the Wizarding World—Minerva, Severus suspected, had wanted to show off Hogwarts’s recovery and so had sent open invitations to practically every wizarding household in the United Kingdom. Not everyone had chosen to attend, of course, especially not with the actual holiday so close, but from the way the Great Hall was bursting, it seemed that more people had accepted the invitations than not. 

The press of so many people was already making Severus feel a little dizzy and vague in the head. He’d never liked crowds and noise and that had only gotten worse during the last few years when his solitude had become so absolute. Aside from Potter, he’d rarely seen more people than could fit in the Three Broomsticks on a Friday evening and he’d spoken to far less. 

“Come on,” Potter said. He had to stand close and speak directly into Severus’s ear to be heard. Severus suppressed the instinctive shiver. “Let’s go get something to drink and let Minerva know we’re here.”

Potter led him to the long table laden with food, drinks, and sweets of every kind imaginable. Potter took up a sweet ale for himself and offered Severus some of the mulled pumpkin juice. Severus took it, surprised, as usual, when Potter remembered little details about him. He always seemed to pick out Severus’s drink order without needing to ask or remember to bring him a lemon tart from the bakery down the road when he came for lunch. Severus didn’t know what to do with someone who so artlessly remembered all of these details about him—it had been years since he’d allowed anyone access to even the most innocuous personal information.

“Do you see her?” Potter asked.

He was very warm against Severus’s shoulder, standing close enough that his hair was tickling Severus’s cheek. He smelled of skin and sweat with the faint undertone of the warm, citrusy cologne he’d taken to wearing. Severus’s entire body heated, blood thrumming. That was the other conundrum of Potter, of course. Did he even realize what he was doing or was he being as thoughtless about this as he was about everything else?    

“It’s far too crowded to see anyone.”

Potter made a disgruntled sound against Severus’s ear. “We need to find her before the end of the night.”

“Why the urgency?”

“Because she’s spent the last three weeks saying I wouldn’t show and I want to show her how wrong she was!”

Severus turned. This close, his nose brushed against Potter’s. His eyelashes were thick and dark, curling sharply upward. Someone had brushed silver glitter against the corner of his eyes, lightly enough that it was nearly invisible unless you were close. 

“Competitive little monster, aren’t you,” Severus said.

Potter smiled. “I’d rather say determined.” His breath was minty and warm against Severus’s cheek. “Besides, I think Minerva just refused to believe you’d ever drag yourself out of your lab to come to a party.”

“I have been known to go out every once in a great while,” Severus said. He was well aware of the reputation he’d cultivated while he was a professor, but the necessity of it didn’t make it any less aggravating. “I am not a hermit.”

“Going to read in a book by yourself in a corner at the Three Broomsticks isn’t going out, Severus.”

“That’s hardly—”

“Harry!”

Severus took an immediate step back, out of Potter’s personal space. Just in time—Hermione Granger grabbed him in a ferocious hug not moments later. Severus forced his heart to slow down as he saw she was trailed by her husband, whose plate was already stuffed with food.

“You look so nice!” Granger pulled away to give him a thorough check. “But that’s a bit edgy for a professor, isn’t it? With the earring and all. And those robes!” 

“He’s the cool prof, Hermione,” Weasley said. He put a comfortable arm over her shoulders. They were to be married soon, according to Potter. A spring wedding. “That’s why all the little sprogs love him.”

Potter grinned. “I’ve got a reputation to keep up,” he told Granger happily. “Minera said we had to wear robes but she didn’t say what kind.”

Trust Potter to find a loop-hole. “I doubt this ensemble is what she had in mind,” Severus said and tensed at the surprised looks from Granger and Weasley.

He’d been seeing Potter socially for months now and he’d yet to spend any time with his extended group of friends. It was partly chance and partly a deliberate choice—Severus had no real desire to get to know any of his former students and few of them had the time or means to visit Potter anyway. Now, faced with their scrutiny, he wondered what exactly Potter had been telling them about him. They didn’t seem surprised to see him, but neither were their looks particularly warm. 

“Miss Granger, Mr. Weasley,” Severus said, cautious. 

“Professor Snape,” Granger said. “I didn’t think Harry would get you to actually come.”

“He is, unfortunately, as stubborn as he ever was in school. I wasn’t left with much choice. Although I, at least, managed to outfit myself in appropriate attire for the occasion.” 

Harry turned toward him with an eye-roll. “They’re robe-like!” he protested. He gestured to himself “They make me look wizard-ish, don’t they?”

They made Potter look edible, though he probably didn’t realize that. Severus ran a considering eye over him. To his satisfaction, Potter went pink, eyes narrowing.

“Asking anything you wear to make you look like less of an idiot would be a difficult task,” he said.

He’d almost forgotten Granger and Weasley were there—Granger’s sharp intake of breath, nearly a gasp, reminded him. He forced his face to remain still and relaxed. It was easier when Harry laughed, throwing his head back.

“You’d think I’d look like an idiot if I was wearing the robes of the Head of the Wizengamot,” he said.  

“In that hypothetical, I’d be right. That headdress makes everyone look like an idiot.”

“Well, the kids have all seen me wear way worse than this,” Potter said. “I mean if they can handle me in jeans and a button-down, they can handle this. Honestly, I think they’re more likely to drop dead of shock seeing me in any kind of robe, even this one.”

“Harry, you really shouldn’t be wearing muggle clothes to teach!” Granger cut in, brow furrowing. “It’s not professional.”

“Merlin, don’t you start. I get enough of that from Severus.”

Potter threw an arm over Severus’s shoulder, tipping into his side. He smelled, as ever, vaguely of citrus. His warmth and closeness made Severus tense, very aware of Potter’s best friends watching them. 

“Severus hasn’t liked the muggle outfits since the beginning,” Potter said in a conspiratorial voice, as if he were sharing some great secret. “What did you say about it, Severus?”

Gentle pressure against his arm encouraged Severus to turn so Potter was in his eye line. He focused on Potter’s easy smile and some of his discomfort eased. 

“I believe the word sloppy was used,” Severus said dryly. “Ragamuffin, perhaps.”

Potter laughed. “He can’t appreciate my excellent sense of style,” he said.

“And what style is that, Potter?” Severus asked. It was much easier to talk normally when he was just looking at Potter. “Washed up punk rocker mixed with a homeless man who has a fetish for sweaters?”

Potter’s mouth dropped open in mock offense, but Weasley’s bark of laughter caught him off-guard. Severus turned to look and stiffened. Weasley was still laughing, eyes crinkled up, but Granger was watching them with a thoughtful crease between her eyebrows. She had always been too smart for her own good, that one. 

“He’s got you dead to rights, Harry,” Weasley wheezed out.

Severus could hear the pout in Potter’s voice. “I don’t wear sweaters that much.”

“Mate, that’s such a lie. Ever since you convinced my mum to teach you to knit—”

“Shut it!” Potter said, glancing at Severus.

Severus smirked at him. “You knit, Potter?” he asked. “How charming .”

Potter scowled at him. “Your idea of a hobby is reading weird potions books,” he said. “So I’d be a little less judge-y.”

“That’s called expanding my mind, Potter. You might be unfamiliar with the concept—”

“Just for that, I’m throwing away the scarf I’m making for you.”

Severus paused, taken aback. “What?”

“To cover your throat,” Potter said. He was so totally matter-of-fact that it took Severus a moment to realize that he meant to keep Severus’s scar covered. “Since you don’t like people looking.”

Idiot boy. Severus stared at him, thrown off-guard enough that he had no idea how to respond. Granger, thankfully, stepped in.

“Are you going to stay long tonight, then?” she asked, looking between them with a little wrinkle between her eyebrows. 

“I dunno,” Potter said. “Severus doesn’t much like people, so I doubt it.”

“Oh? What will you do tonight, then?”

“I dunno. Maybe we’ll go back to the Broomsticks? Or Severus’s flat.”

Severus’s neck heated. Did Potter even know that he was talking about them like they were a couple? He couldn’t, surely. Potter had no interest in someone like him for romance and Severus knew that all too well. He met Granger’s assessing graze evenly, hoping his own embarrassment wasn’t visible.

"You assume I'll still want the pleasure of your company after this, Potter," he said.

Potter sputtered. "But I thought—!"

“I'm sure you two will figure it out. Well, we just wanted to say hello, Harry.” Granger was smiling but her voice was a little odd. “We’ll leave you two to enjoy the rest of the ball, shall we?”

Weasley’s confusion exposed her subterfuge. “But Hermione weren’t we—”

She pulled him away before he could say anymore more, waving merrily to Potter as they were swallowed up in the crowd. 

“That was strange,” Potter said, sounding a little bemused. “Hermione said she wanted to stay together at the ball. And what did you mean? I thought we were going back together after this!"

Severus shrugged off his arm. "You should know better than to try thinking. It never works well for you."

Potter frowned at him, but low, instrumental music began playing before he could speak and the crowd, large though it was, quieted. The long table that usually housed the staff at dinner was gone, replaced with a wide stage. Minerva stepped onto it, dressed in a traditional tartan robe, straight-backed and proud under the uproarious applause that began the moment she came into view. 

“Witches and wizards,” she began. Her voice, enhanced by sonorous, echoed clearly even in the back of the hall. “We are pleased to welcome you on this night, so close to the darkest time of the year. In a few minutes, the festivities will begin in earnest and yes, they will include everything you have come to expect from a ball at Hogwarts—dancing, music, and, of course, enough food to make any waistline burst!” Scattered laughter. “If you will indulge an old woman, I have a few words to say before the opening dance begins.”

She paused, looking out over them all. Severus could still remember her as he’d first seen her, eleven years old and terrified but too proud to show it. She’d seemed so tall to his childish eyes, practically a giant—a stern, unsmiling figure who had immediately cowed and impressed him. She was much older now than she had been then, with hair going steadily whiter at the temples and deeper lines at the corners of her eyes, but she was still so proud and tall, utterly indomitable. Severus was glad, not for the first time, that she had not been among those that had died. 

“In the old days, when the Founders were still just talented witches and wizards themselves, Yule was a time to bring warmth and light to a time when it seemed light might never come again. And in these past few years, it did indeed seem that light would never come again.” Fingers dug into Severus’s forearm. He stole a quick glance of Potter’s riveted face, teeth digging into his bottom lip and wide eyes fixed on Minerva. “My friends, we have somehow made it through that dark wood and have come at last into a time of peace. It has been a hard road and we have lost so many along the way. But we made it. So while this night is to celebrate Hogwarts’ successful reopening this year, it is also a reminder—that even the darkest of nights give way to sunlight.” 

She raised her drink. Around the room, goblets went up. 

“To the fallen,” Minerva said without so much as a crack in her voice. “To light always returning, even when we least expect it. To Hogwarts!”

The cry was echoed throughout the room as everyone in the room toasted. As Severus lowered his drink, his eyes caught on Potter’s. His green eyes seemed brighter and Severus couldn’t quite figure out what strange emotion was flickering in them. 

“Thank you all so much for coming to celebrate with us,” Minerva said and some of the heavy tension lifted from the room. “Please join us now on the floor for the opening dance.”

She bowed her head as applause thundered throughout the room again and made her exit off the stage as an orchestra began filling in the stage to take her place. Severus heard Potter let out a sharp, harsh breath. 

“She always could give a mean speech,” he said. 

“For such a practical woman, she has a surprising touch for sentimentality,” Severus agreed.

Potter laughed a little. “Something else you two have in common, then.”

Severus turned to stare at him, ignoring the curl of his eyelashes and the way his teeth had left soft imprints in his bottom lip from where he’d bitten it. 

“Minerva and I do not have anything in common.”

Potter’s eyes twinkled. Had he learned that from Albus? 

“Oh, come off of it,” he said. “You can’t fool me anymore - Minerva’s probably the only friend you have, other than me. You two are two peas in a pod.”

“You know how I feel about trite cliches—” 

“Yeah, yeah, they’re overused and bland, blah, blah.”

“Perhaps if you actually cracked open a book more than once every three years, you might learn to cultivate more color in your—”

“D’you want to dance?”

Severus stopped mid-sentence. Potter stared back at him, dark eyebrows raised expectantly. 

“What?”

Potter gestured to the dance floor, where couples had begun to turn each other to a brisk waltz, a flow of skirts and robes. The orchestra was rather good, not a mistuned instrument among them. Severus didn’t recognize the song they were playing.

“Dancing,” Potter said. “You know, that thing people do when they move together to music?”

“I am familiar with the concept of dancing, thank you.”

“Well, do you want to try it?”

“With you?”

Potter’s eyes darkened, mouth puckering. “Yeah,” he said in an oddly low voice. “That’s kind of what I had in mind, Severus.”

“But—” 

Severus couldn’t explain why it was baffling him so. The sheer idea of taking Harry Potter out onto a dance floor, where dozens of people would be able to see them together, was incomprehensible to him. Potter taking him to the ball was its own oddity—Severus could only really reconcile it as flicking his nose at all of the admirers who had been so hellbent on getting his attention—but dancing together was another thing entirely. Potter had to know what that would look like! 

“If you don’t want to, you can just say so,” Potter said. He turned away from Severus, looking out at the sea of dancers. His jaw was tight, a muscle ticking in his cheek. “I get it. It’s not like I’m that great at it.”

“Yes, I remember your last disastrous attempt,” Severus said, trying to grasp at normalcy with the banter that had come to exist between them. “You can hardly blame me for being cautious.”

Instead of laughing, Potter’s shoulders tensed. Severus only realized he’d taken a step away when his body felt a little colder. He shivered a little, at a loss. Potter had become so accustomed to Severus’s brusque way of talking that it was disconcerting to have him suddenly take offense to a comment that should have made him laugh or toss back his own quip. Why would the brat be sensitive about this?

“Never mind, then,” Potter said. His voice was forcefully casual. “No problem. Let’s go find Minerva, shall we? We can congratulate her on her speech. You can tease her all you like about being sentimental.”

“Potter—”

“Come on, Severus.”

Severus cursed as Potter began making his way through the throng of people around them, making his way toward the front of the room near the stage. Most of the crowd had migrated to the dance floor, but it was still packed enough that Severus nearly lost sight of Potter more than once as they dodged around chatting groups and rowdy students roughhousing. Potter moved at a surprising clip for such a short person and by the time Severus finally caught up with him, he’d already managed to find Minerva. 

“—beautiful speech.”

“Thank you, Harry.” Minerva sounded warm and amused. She was smiling at Potter as Severus pushed his way through the last of the crowd between them. “I thought Severus was joining you? You’ve certainly been crowing about it enough this month.”

Severus couldn’t see Potter’s face, but he noticed the way his shoulders were still high and tense. Severus frowned and he saw Minerva’s pleasant expression change to something considering over Potter’s shoulder. 

“He’s here,” Potter said. There was that fake cheerfulness again. Potter was such a bad liar still, it was almost embarrassing. “Wait till you see his robes.”

Minerva caught sight of him then and her eyes widened, eyebrows raising. Severus could feel a flush building up his neck but forcefully ignored it. He hardly cared what Minerva thought about any… improvements to his appearance or what she might think of Severus braiding his hair after snapping at any pointed remarks about styling it during his tenure as a professor.

“I was under the impression I was here to be your companion for the night, not to be abandoned at the dessert table,” Severus said in his snidest voice as he reached Potter’s side.

Potter glanced at him out of the corner of his eyes. The tips of his ears grew red and he looked away again quickly, scowling. Severus blinked at him. His stomach twisted into tight enough knots he felt almost nauseous. He hadn’t realized how comfortable their repartee had become to him, how much he’d grown used to conversing easily with Potter, until this moment, when it was taken away without any warning.

“Sorry,” Potter said, gruff. “Thought you could keep up, with those legs of yours.”

What was the matter with the man? He’d seemed perfectly content when they’d arrived, until all that nonsense about dancing— 

“Well, well, Severus,” Minerva said. Most people didn’t particularly look like their Animagus forms, but sometimes Severus could almost see the cat in Minerva’s smug expressions. “Don’t you clean up nice. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you so polished, even when you were back in school.”

Severus scowled at her. “Don’t be so smug, Minerva. Potter bought the robes, not me.” His chest tightened at the idea she might guess he might have put far too much effort into how he looked tonight. He didn’t like the implication that he cared about what he might look like. “He was very tiresome about the whole affair.”

“I just thought you might try wearing some other colors than black,” Potter said with a little less tension. He even managed a cheeky smile at Severus. Some tension sloughed off of Severus’s back that he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying. If the brat still could tease him, he couldn’t be that upset. “That sales clerk agreed with me. You didn’t have to have a whole temper tantrum about it.”

“I am not a toddler, Potter. I do not have ‘temper tantrums.’” 

“Could’ve fooled me,” Potter said in a sing-song, sotto voice. 

Minerva covered her smile with a hand, eyes twinkling. “Oh, dear,” she said. “Whatever did Severus do, Harry?”

Potter turned the wide, imploring eyes that had gotten him out of so many mishaps as a boy on her. The guileless look came disgustingly easily to him and suited him far too well. Severus disliked him and his glistening eyes immensely. 

“The poor sales clerk was just showing him some different color choices! But Severus took one look at them and began telling him how terrible each one was… and then he started in on the clerk! He left that poor kid nearly in tears.” 

“Oh, dear. What did he say?”

Potter cleared his throat. That obnoxious pantomime came out as he said, “Perhaps if you applied half so much attention to your own wardrobe as you are attempting to do mine, you would not die an unfulfilled, useless member of society. Who knows? You might even find someone to share your bed, unlikely as that may be.”

Minerva’s shocked laughter did little to stop Severus’s desire to strangle Potter. “That is not precisely what I—”

“You’ve gotten quite good at that.” Minerva spoke over him, her twinkling eyes on Potter. “It sounds like he was a handful.”

“I’ve never seen a grown man throw such a fit over some robes.”

Severus gritted his teeth. He hated them both. “He tried to sell me robes in neon green, Potter. Not to mention the canary yellow and the obnoxious purple—”

“Poor kid was just trying to do his job,” Potter said mournfully to Minerva, as if the little brat hadn’t set up that clerk to try selling those robes to Severus knowing exactly how Severus would react. Potter, despite his honest face and kindness, had a wicked streak in him like nothing Severus could have guessed. “I think Severus traumatized him.”

“He was perfectly fine when we went in for the fitting,” Severus said. This was really going too far. “He even thanked me for my patronage!”

Potter grinned at him. “He couldn’t even look at you, Severus. I think he’d been crying.”

“Oh, cease the melodramatics—”

“Excuse me?”

They all turned to see a wizard dressed in aqua blue robes standing behind them. He couldn’t have been that much older than Potter, with wavy brown hair and a classically handsome face. He was smiling directly at Potter. Severus’s stomach churned. The tension he’d managed to let go returned with a roaring vengeance. 

“I’m so sorry to interrupt,” the stranger said. He swept into a low bow. “Matthew Raines, at your service.”

“Nice to meet you?” Potter sounded bemused. 

Raines straightened and beamed. “Mr. Potter, the next dance begins soon.” He held out his hand. The tightness in Severus’s stomach became a writhing snake, bringing his forgotten nausea back. “Would you do me the honor?”

“I’m sorry?” Potter blinked at him and then down at his outstretched hand. Severus watched, his throat closing up, as comprehension dawned and Potter flushed. His eyes flickered to Severus for the briefest of seconds. “Oh! You want… to dance? With me?”

Raines laughed. It was a perfect, charming laugh, warm and deep. Severus hated it. His fingertips were beginning to go numb from how tightly he was clenching his hands but he ignored it. He kept his eyes fixed on an increasingly flustered Potter, watching as his teeth dug into his bottom lip and the flush began to spread to his ears. 

“Yes!” Raines said. “Doesn’t everyone want to dance with you?”

Severus couldn’t stop the little rush of vindication that went through him at the way Potter winced at that thoughtless line, the way it took any pleasure from Raines’s offer. He thought that would put an end to it—Potter had certainly never been shy about turning down any people whose main interest in him was the fame attached to his name—but to Severus’s surprise, Potter glanced at him again and licked his lips.

“Will you be okay with Minerva?” he asked.

Raines looked between them as Severus tried to get his own stricken emotions under control before they could show on his face. He felt like he’d been dunked in extremely cold water with no warning. Raines’s eyebrows bunched together as he presumably recognized Severus.

“Mr. Snape,” he said with frigid cordiality. No surprise there—that was how most people greeted Severus, if it wasn’t frothing rage. “I didn’t realize you were attending.” He glanced back at Potter. “As your date, Mr. Potter?”

“As my friend,” Potter corrected lightly. 

There was, as ever, the rush of sheer bewildered happiness at Potter saying something like that so baldly, a shot of sunlight directly into Severus’s bloodstream warming him up from the inside. This time, though, brought a sour note along with him—as if he’d bitten into a fruit with unexpected mold. Friends. The only thing Potter would ever be with something like him.

“I see,” Raines said. “Well, if Mr. Snape can spare you for a dance or two…” 

His smile was wide and condescending. Severus ground his teeth, jaw tightening enough that he felt it creak. Potter glanced between them, teeth catching on his bottom lip. Severus noticed it and noticed Raines noticing it at the same moment. Severus’s stomach hollowed out with a sick swoop as if he’d just jumped from a great distance. 

“Sure,” Potter said at last. He darted one more look at Severus. “Sounds nice. I’ll be back, okay?”

Severus couldn’t breathe. He watched Raines lead Potter away to the dance floor, one hand braced at the small of his back. Before the crowd swallowed them, Severus caught a moment of Potter’s startled, crinkly-eyed smile directed up at Raines.

His fingers felt numb and bloodless. He forced himself to stretch them out of their clench, to make his shoulders loosen. 

“Well, well.”

“What?” 

Severus couldn’t bear to look at Minerva. He kept his eyes on the crowd, searching for a glimpse of Potter and Raines on the dance floor as the quartet struck up a new song. 

“You know, I’d always rather thought green was your color, Severus. But to be honest, it doesn’t suit you.”

It was nonsensical enough that Severus finally looked at her. He frowned at the strange, inscrutable way she was surveying him, mouth pinched and forehead dense with wrinkles. He hunched his shoulders, crossing his arms over his chest and scowling back at her.

“What are you dithering on about now, you old cat?” 

She sighed and looked pointedly in the direction Potter had disappeared with his new paramour. “You cannot seriously think Harry has any interest in that fool.”

“Why should I care how Potter chooses to entertain himself?” 

Severus wished his voice was haughtier. He sounded a little too wounded and it made him shrivel inside to reveal such vulnerability, to let his own insecurity show even for the briefest of moments. Minerva’s eyes widened and she sighed again, more explosively.

“Idiots,” she said. When she was truly annoyed, her brogue thickened, making the word sound even more scornful. She rapped Severu’s shoulder with one finger. “Both of you. Harry’s been nattering on about you coming to the ball with him for weeks, Severus.”

Severus ignored the brief warmth that overcame him at the thought. “And so?”

“And so? Merlin help me. He went to several shops to find those accursed robes of his and even more to find some for you. He’s been getting letters left and right from Fleur Weasley. Last weekend he asked for a substitute for his Monday morning class because he was late coming back from a trip to China.”

Severus tilted his head, perplexed. “China? What was he doing there, for Merlin’s sake?”

“From the smell of the bag he brought back with him, I’d say he was getting some very rare potions ingredients.”

Severus straightened, arms falling back to his side. He remembered Potter’s sudden and uncharacteristic interest in rare potions ingredients after Severus had complained about the expense of having them shipped. Severus’s own international visa was suspended for another year and he doubted he would ever renew it—he had a feeling there would be rather more trouble when it came to travel than he was willing to expend. But some ingredients—especially, Severus realized with dawning warmth, those from Eastern Asia—were difficult to obtain and expensive to procure outside of the country. 

They’d discussed it months ago. Severus had been annoyed at having to re-order another shipment of metasequoia leaves for the aging potion he was experimenting with and he’d detailed, at length, to an amused Potter his frustration at having his access to rarer ingredients so leashed. 

Had Potter seriously remembered that?

He turned back to look at the dance floor. He could see Potter there now, being twirled around in Raines’s arms. It gave pause to the strange bubbling rising through his chest.

“I’m sure it has nothing to do with me,” he said.

Minerva scoffed. “I’ve always had a high opinion of your intelligence, Severus. What a shame to find out how little you deserve it.”

Severus’s skin prickled. He picked at the cuff of his robe. “Minerva, I do not know what you are trying to imply—”

“Harry spends a lot of time in your shop and your flat and your presence.” Minerva pressed a hand to Severus’s elbow, a shockingly warm grip even through the fabric of his robe. Severus stilled at the unexpected contact, looking back at her. “He talks about you all the time. He’s defended you more than once against some of the upperclassmen.”

“Yes,” Severus said because he could hardly deny it. Harry had stomped into his shop more than once to complain, at length, about scolding another seventh year for the way they talked about Severus. He sometimes held the knowledge of Harry’s unexpected, bewildering regard close to himself in the middle of the night when the feeling that he was going to go through life utterly alone overwhelmed him. “But that hardly means he’s… That hardly merits these insinuations you’re making.” 

“Mother Mary, give me strength.” Minerva removed her hand from his elbow. Severus watched as Potter laughed at something Raines said before they turned again, obscuring his face. “Severus, that boy is enamored with you. If you’re too stupid to see that, then there really is no hope for you at all.”

Severus couldn’t look at her. His extremities tingled with little, shocking pinpricks of heat, as if he’d just touched something charged with static shock. 

“He is not—” His voice cracked and he cleared it forcefully. “Minerva. We are, through some odd twist of fate and Potter’s own bullheadedness, friends. Nothing more. He is barely 25 and I—”

Severus was a washed-up ex-Death Eater. He had neither personality nor looks to recommend him to anyone, let alone someone like Potter. Potter was beautiful and outgoing and friendly. He could have anyone he wanted. Severus had long since come to terms with the fact that while Potter had indeed become his only, perhaps even his best, friend, Potter hardly considered him the same. Potter had dozens of people who were far more important to him than Severus ever could be, so it hardly mattered that Potter spent so much time with him or sent him letters or liked to while away his weekends with Severus. 

Severus was never going to be the most important person in Potter’s life and he knew that. He’d never been the most important person to anyone before, so it was hardly something new. Severus had had a long time to come to terms with forever coming second to someone else. He was impervious to the pain of it by now.

“We’re not muggles, Severus,” Minerva said, waspish. “You’re not even fifty—you’re in the prime of your life! Do stop making out like you’re two steps away from death.”

“It’s not about age, you nosy furball.” Minerva made a scandalized sound, but her eyes were twinkling a little when Severus looked over at her. Severus relaxed a little. He cleared his throat, hating to even talk about this even to someone like Minerva, who he knew would not use it against him. “He is attractive and charming. He has options. He wouldn’t… there’s no reason to choose someone like me.”

“Oh, Severus.” There was Minerva’s hand again, on his shoulder this time. “I do wish you could see yourself as I see you.”

Severus chewed the inside of his cheek. He didn’t look at her. “And how is that?”

He was braced for everything but the soft squeeze of her hand and the tenderness in her voice as she said, “A good, brave man.”

Severus scoffed to cover the way he wanted to duck his head and hide at the naked honesty she was showing. “I am not good and certainly not brave.”

“Oh, I beg to differ. And Harry would certainly have some words to say on the subject if you tried to ask him about it.” She sounded amused. “You found yourself an ardent defender. It’s sometimes difficult to believe after watching you two when he was in school.”

“It’s even more difficult for me, I assure you,” Severus said.

Minerva laughed. For several minutes they were quiet, watching the dancers on the floor. Potter looked relaxed in Raines’s arms, smiling and flushed. The light caught on the gold dragons on his robe, the lightning bolt earring he’d purchased on a dare and taken to wearing, the silver ring on his thumb that he never took off. Severus watched the bunch and shift of his arms, the twist of his waist as he turned. He was clumsy and off-beat. He nearly ran into several other dancing pairs. 

He was beautiful.

Severus breathed in, breathed out. In your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which I cannot touch because they are too near... He shook his head, forcing the echo of poetry to the back of his mind. He might be more foolish than he'd ever realized about Potter, but he was hardly going to be so sentimental as to fall into verse over the idiot.

“If you’re determined not to say anything, that’s your business,” Minerva said at last. “But, for what it’s worth… He’s happy when he talks about you. And I’ve certainly never seen you so happy as you are around him. You would be good together.”

Severus glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She was still watching the dance floor, eyes hazy and mouth soft with consideration.

“We would drive each other insane,” he said. “He already tries my patience more than can possibly be healthy.”

Minerva’s expression focused as she turned on him with a smile. “Oh, don’t pretend you don’t give as good as you get, Severus,” she said. “I saw the fallout from that prank he pulled on your storage cabinets.”

Indignation made it easy to straighten and throw his shoulders back. “He rearranged them, Minerva. By how disgusting he thought they were! It took weeks to fix. And he charmed the door to sing out that odious Weasley is Our King song every time I opened it. I could tan Draco’s hide for coming up with that.”

“And you charmed that earring of his to recite dirty poetry at mealtimes,” Minerva said in her driest voice. “Quite traumatized some of the students. Harry almost drowned himself in the bath out of sheer humiliation. And need I even begin about the lovesick Hippogriff that followed Harry around for three weeks?”

That one had been inspired. Severus still remembered Potter stomping indignantly into his shop, a Hippogriff trying to nuzzle in his hair, with great fondness, though it had been hell on the shop’s front room.

“But that’s what I’m talking about. Before Harry, I wouldn’t have guessed you could play pranks, Severus,” Minerva said. “At least, pranks that didn’t end in bloodshed. He brings out a side of you I haven’t seen since your own days at Hogwarts.” Her eyes crinkled at the corners, cheek softening. “He’s good for you. And you’re good for him—he needs someone who can focus him as you do.”

The room was getting too warm. Severus blamed the sheer amount of people around them as he pulled at his collar. It had been less than an hour since their arrival and he already longed for his dark, quiet flat and a nice cup of tea.

“You’re entitled to your opinion, Minerva,” he said shortly. “Not that it matters. Mr. Potter is, through Fate’s strange humor, my friend. I have no desire to ask for more from him.”

“Severus—”

“If you’ll excuse me, I think I’d like to get something to eat.” 

“Severus!”

He ignored Minerva’s indignant call as he strode away. What he needed was some of Hogwarts’ excellent food—that was sure to fix the uncomfortable churning in his belly. 

He did not look at the dance floor again. 

“So this is where you’ve been hiding.”

Severus jumped. Potter looked down at him with amused tolerance, arms crossed over his chest. On the veranda outside of the Great Hall, it was dark except for the light of the moon, but Severus could still make out the sharp definition of his forearm and bicep under the tight fit of his robe. The dragon on his cuffs snarled at him, its tiny eyes fearless.

“I needed some fresh air,” Severus admitted. He made room on the bench before he could consider it properly, but Potter was already sitting down next to him, close enough that Severus could feel his body heat and smell the clean, citrus shampoo he favored. “Have you been abandoned by your paramour already?”

“What, Matthew?” Severus’s stomach twisted at Potter’s laugh. “He wanted another dance, but I said no.”

“Oh?” Severus looked away, out at the dark grounds covered in snow. “You seemed to be having a good time.”

Potter was silent for long enough that Severus risked looking at him. He tensed when he realized Potter was already staring at him, head tilted and mouth pursed. Severus frowned at him, uncomfortable by his scrutiny.

“What?” he snapped. 

“I’m sorry.”

“If you are attempting to apologize for forcing me to accompany you to this nightmare, it’s far too late.”

Potter huffed, mouth softening. “Bastard. No, I mean… Earlier when I asked you to dance. I didn’t mean to make you—uncomfortable. Or something.” 

“Or something,” Severus mocked, partially to hide his own surprise.

“Shut up, I’m being sensitive and empathetic.”

“Hm.”

“Oh, what ?”

“I’m just wondering how long it took you to learn what empathetic meant. Was it two days? Three?”

Potter laughed. Severus watched the line of his throat as he threw his head back, hair shifting in the cold wind. 

“I know I don’t have your vocabulary, but I think I can manage something like empathetic,” Potter said. He was still smiling when he looked at Severus again, but his eyes were serious. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you avoiding the conversation, Severus.”

Once upon a time, Potter would have been so angry at having his intelligence slighted he would have missed Severus manipulating him. That had been a simpler time. Severus sighed, shifting a little. The bench was hardly big enough for two people, not that Potter seemed to notice or care. He radiated heat at Severus’s side, a welcome buffer against the increasing chill.

“Don’t trouble that thing you call a brain, Potter. It didn’t make me uncomfortable.”

“Oh. Okay.”

They were pressed close enough together that Severus could feel every minute shift Potter made. After several minutes of increased fidgeting, he lost his patience. He reached out and grabbed Potter’s twisting hands, gripping his warm palms firmly. He could feel the cold weight of Potter’s ring, the soft fragility of his inner wrist and the sharp jut of his knuckles.

“Stop that,” he said through the sudden dryness in his throat. “Out with it, Potter. What useless triviality is making you act like an impatient toddler?”

Potter glowered at him. “I’m not acting like a toddler .”

Severus gave him a speaking look. Potter rolled his eyes and sighed. 

“Oh, fine. I know you don’t want to talk about it, but. Severus, I’d like to dance with you.”

Heat surged up Severus’s arm. He dropped Potter’s hands, but the warmth didn’t abate. He cleared his throat, looking away and out at the silent grounds in front of them. The sky was heavy with clouds; it would probably snow soon. 

“I… I see. I was under the impression you were not fond of the practice.”

Potter had groused at length about dancing over the past month since he’d apparently been roped into helping the students practice with the other professors. Severus had listened to his long, winding diatribes with no little amusement. 

“I’m not.”

Severus frowned, turned to glare at him. Potter hardly even looked ruffled by it, of course. Irritating brat. 

“You’ve already danced with Mr. Raines,” he said, ignoring the twist of his gut at remembering Potter smiling at that twit. “I would have assumed that would cure you of any desire to dance for the evening.”

Potter ducked his head. Severus assumed the pink in his cheeks was from the cold, but the way it was spreading up his neck and ears implied otherwise. Severus’s own face felt a little flushed and he hoped Potter would also attribute it to the cold, especially when he glanced over at Severus through those eyelashes of his. Why were they so damnably long, anyway? 

“He, uh… He didn’t dance that well, to be honest. I’d like to try with someone else.”

Severus squashed the surge of vindictive glee. “And you’re choosing me?”

Potter looked directly at him at that. He was still pink-cheeked, biting down into his lip, but his eyes were clear, focused. 

“Who else would I choose?” 

Severus’s heart squeezed. He fought to keep his expression even to hide the way his stomach felt like it was trying to heave its way out of his body. 

“I’m hardly a proficient dancer, Potter,” he said after a long pause as he got his control back. “You’d—” Damn, his voice had creaked. He cleared his throat. “You’d make a better impression on that crowd in there with someone else.”

Potter’s expression flickered, mouth parting. Severus had the distinct impression that he’d given something away, though he had no idea what. In the next moment, Potter smiled at him, eyes crinkling at the corners.

“I dunno, Severus. I’d think someone as graceful as you would be pretty good at dancing.”

Did Potter mean to look coy when he said that? Severus nearly choked. But he didn’t have a chance to say anything before Potter leaped to his feet, turning to offer a hand to Severus. 

“But if you’re that worried about it, we can just dance out here!”

Severus looked from his outstretched hand to his beaming face. 

“Out here?” he asked, suspicious. He looked around the empty veranda, covered in fallen snow and quiet except for the faint strain of music and chatter coming from the doors behind them. “You cannot be serious, Potter.”

“Oh, I’m dead serious, Severus. We can still hear the music fine, right? Let’s dance out here.”

Severus stared up at him. Potter’s bright, confident look began to fade and his shoulders came up in an awkward hunch the longer Severus remained quiet. 

“I mean—Unless you really don’t want—”

Severus sighed in the most put-upon way he could manage. He could only hope it covered the hard, irregular beat of his heart. “I suppose if you are so determined,” he said and reached out to take Potter’s hand.

Potter’s palm was smooth in Severus’s and he pulled Severus to his feet with one sharp tug, bringing them chest-to-chest. This close, Potter’s bright smile was difficult to look at directly. Severus clenched his teeth and leaned back, trying to get some space. 

“The next song’s starting,” Potter said. “Lead or follow?”

“I’ve only ever led,” Severus said. How long had it been since he last danced with someone? “Will that suit you?”

“Guess all that practice with the kids will come in handy,” Potter agreed cheerfully. “You’d better not step on my feet like Jacob Weathers did, though.”

“I shall endeavor to be more skilled than some seventh-year brat,” Severus promised.

He could hear the music well enough through the door and settled his hand on Potter’s firm, warm waist. He felt it shiver as Potter laughed and began to think this might have been a terrible idea indeed as Potter put a hand on his shoulder and looked up into his face with gleaming eyes. Severus bit the inside of his cheek hard and reached for Potter’s free hand, clasping it loosely in his. Even the simple touch made his whole arm tingle, sharp pinpricks that made his skin feel tender.

“Shall we?” he asked.

Potter’s mirth drained away, though his eyes were still warm and a smile still playing at the corner of his mouth. But he wasn’t laughing anymore. He seemed focused, almost intent. The glow of his eyes was unnatural in the dim light, almost like a cat’s. 

The music began, a soft, sweet melody that Severus almost recognized. He took a deep breath, collecting his thoughts. He was in control, he reminded himself. It was only a dance, a simple dance. That was all. 

He let the breath out in a rush and began to turn.

The last time Severus had danced with anyone had been during his own time at Hogwarts. They’d had a Yule Ball during Severus’s sixth year. It had mostly been a blur aside from the pain of watching Lily dance with James Potter. He’d shared an unremarkable and awkward waltz with the sixth year girl he’d bribed to be his date with the promise to tutor her in potions. She had been dour and unimpressed the entire evening and they’d parted ways with mutual relief the moment they were able.

This dance was nothing like that. Potter’s bright eyes were focused entirely on Severus, monitoring his every move with the intensity of a hunting hawk sighting prey. Severus could hardly bear to look into them; with every slow glance, he would think your eyes have their silence and be awash with self-recrimination. Every turn Severus made, every tiny movement, was followed with such immediacy and intuitiveness it was like Potter was reading his mind. Severus gained slow, sure confidence as they turned and turned on the veranda without pause or misstep. 

Potter’s body was warm and solid in his arms. He’d gained weight and muscle during his tenure and he no longer had the waifish, underfed look that had plagued him during his time with the Aurors. But he was still so pliable, moving wherever Severus moved him without the slightest hint of resistance. 

It was unnerving and heady, to have him so close and relaxed, to touch the silk of his robe and linger on the solidity underneath. To feel Potter’s firm touch on him in turn, pressing into Severus’s shoulder and grasping his hand. They were so close, pressing chest-to-chest with every turn and twist. Potter was so warm. Severus’s body was so sensitive that the sheer amount of touching was making his skin prickle with heat.

“You’re better at this than you give yourself credit for,” Potter said. His voice was hushed, almost a whisper. “Have you been practicing too, Severus?”

“Some of us are able to claim innate talent.” Severus delighted in Potter’s snicker. “You have improved as well. Though that is not saying much.”

“Hey!” Potter was still laughing, though. “I was fourteen, you know. Who’s good at dancing at fourteen?”

“I recall several of your classmates didn’t struggle nearly as much.”

“I had a lot on my mind!”

“Poor Miss Patil. I recall she had her feet stepped on several times…” 

“Git.” But Potter was smiling up at him as he said it, eyes crinkling and dimple showing. “I’m better now, aren’t I?”

Severus pretended to think about it. Potter’s outraged expression made his mouth quirk, though he was careful not to actually smile. They had made their way to the end of the veranda, so he directed their path back toward the doors again, turning and turning in an ever faster whirl. The world around them faded into a swirl of color. There were only Potter’s warm eyes and cheeky smile, the way his head tilted up so he could look directly at Severus and never wavered. 

“I suppose,” he drawled at last. 

“One of these days, I’m going to get you to outright admit that I’m good at something, Severus.”

“It’s good to have dreams, Potter, but shouldn’t you aim for something more attainable?”

Potter laughed again. Severus turned them again and Potter moved with him easily. The music was coming to an end inside, gentling. Severus mourned it even as he knew it had to happen. The longer this went on, the more likely it was that he would embarrass himself somehow. But the thought that this might be the last time he would ever touch Potter like this made his throat close up with longing he couldn’t let himself think about. 

The music stopped. Severus allowed himself the luxury of one last turn before he stopped as well.

For a long moment, he and Potter looked at each other. Potter was breathing a little harder, cheeks much pinker. His smile was wide enough to expose his eyeteeth and crinkle his eyes. His hair and eyelashes were sprinkled with snow; it had begun to fall again in a soft haze as they’d danced, though Severus hadn’t even noticed it until this moment. As Severus looked at him, his smile faded into something darker, more intent. His mouth parted, lips chapped and soft. 

Nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing...

Severus stepped back. Enough with the poetry, enough with the sickening vertigo twisting his stomach, enough with the way his heart felt like it was going to hammer directly out his chest. He had to put a stop to this. He cleared his throat. Potter blinked, eyes hazy. 

“We should go back inside,” Severus said. His voice sounded wrong, dark and hoarse. He coughed, looking back at the doors that led into the Great Hall. “I’d like to say goodbye to Minerva before I go.”

“You’re—Oh. You’re leaving?”

Potter’s voice was low too, almost rough. Severus’s fingers tingled at the sound. 

“I’ve had my fill of company for the night, I believe. It’s almost midnight.” 

“Oh. I guess I’ll… I should probably stay.” 

Damn the brat. Why did he have to sound so disappointed? Anyone else would be glad to be rid of Severus, relieved to be free of him. Severus scowled at the doors and damned himself for being as much of a fool for being unable to handle the brat’s annoying disquiet. He had to force the words out of his throat. 

“If you are amenable… That is to say.” Severus had no desire to expose how much he wanted Potter to come home with him. Even the thought of exposing that desire made every warm and tingly feeling in his body shrivel. “I still have your books. From last week.”

“My books?”

“Your uninspired and under-researched books on lycanthropy’s origin—”

“They’re not under-researched—! Hermione gave me those, you know how she is about sources!”

“Half of what they say is wild conjecture and the other half is simply pure fantasy.”

“Just because you don’t agree with them doesn’t make them wrong, Severus. And they make a lot of interesting points that could help you with the work you’re doing on a cure—”

“The point is, I’ve finished them. So.”

“So?”

“So you should come and collect them.”

“Collect… them?” 

Severus finally made himself look. Potter stared back at him. He had even more snow in his hair, the twit. Something in Severus’s face must have revealed him, damn it, because Potter’s expression cleared and he grinned, shoulders straightening. 

“Oh! Yes, you’re right! I’ll just come back to your flat and get them, shall I?” 

“If you must,” Severus said, relieved that he wouldn’t have to voice that he wanted Potter to come. 

Potter would come in and then make himself right at home like he did every time he came to visit Severus—he’d lumber around the kitchen and make tea and lounge on Severus’s sofa to make idle conversation and throw things at Severus’s head when he wanted his attention. There wouldn't be any charged moments or snatches of love verse in the back of his mind; it would just be the comfortable intimacy they'd built these last few months. Severus felt quite content at the thought of it, shoulders relaxing. 

Potter came to his side and, to Severus’s surprise, reached for his arm and linked their elbows together. He put his warm, broad hand on Severus’s forearm, fingertips just brushing the exposed skin of his wrist. Severus shivered. 

“All right, let’s go. But we need to get more food first. Have you tried those little lobster puff things? I could eat twenty of those.”

Listening contentedly to Potter’s nonsensical chatter with half an ear, Severus led them out of the darkness and into the light.

Chapter Text

May 2, 2003

“Your speech was hardly awful enough to warrant running away to become a hermit in the woods, Potter.”

Harry didn’t open his eyes at the familiar, welcome voice. He smiled instead, tilting his head. He could hear the faint rustle of grass at the far edge on his left, feel the swift, clear movement of Severus’s magic. It felt like a balm against his senses, that magic, a cool hand pressed to his feverish mind. He let out a slow, uneven breath. 

“I’m not going to live in the woods,” he said. His voice was slow, almost slurred; he felt like he was hearing it from outside of his body. “I just needed some peace.”

Rustling grass. “And you couldn’t find peace somewhere without all this blasted mud?”

Harry opened his eyes. He had to blink out dark spots in his vision as he tilted his head up to look into Severus’s scowling face. His arms were crossed over his chest, hair tied back in a loose braid that spiraled over his shoulder. Some of the icy blankness in Harry’s chest thawed at the sight of him, the panic that had threatened to claw its way out easing. 

He didn’t know when Severus’s presence had become something soothing instead of hated, but some days just the knowledge of him being around was enough to make an anxious restless Harry never realized he had fall away entirely.

“It’s quiet here.”

Severus’s eyebrows rose. He really could say a lot with those eyebrows—Harry could read what kind of new idiocy is being planted in your minuscule brain this time  loud and clear.  He relaxed further, the shivering unease in his bones becoming more and more distant. Hermione would probably have something to say about how Severus’s mockery comforted Harry, he thought wryly. 

“You did always have a strange affinity for this blasted forest,” Severus said. “I never quite understood that Gryffindor-ish desire to run around and roll in the mud.”

“It’s not an affinity. And you come here too, to get potions ingredients.”

“I come here out of necessity. I have never once thought that spending the day in a forest, getting leaves in my hair and burrs on my clothes was an idea of a good time. Like some people I could mention.”

“I was looking for ashwinders, you prick.”

“I can hardly take the word of someone who likes picnics seriously, can I?”

“Plenty of people like picnics!” 

“Plenty of people also like ham sandwiches and going to parties, but that hardly means they’re correct in their opinions.”

“Snob.” 

“If snobbery is having the good sense to eat my food indoors as is right and proper—”

Harry laughed. The weightless, drifting feeling that had plagued him the moment he’d sat down in the clearing was going away. For the first time since he’d stepped up to the podium in the Great Hall that afternoon to give his speech, he felt almost normal. 

He wished, not for the first time, that he could tell Severus that just being around him made Harry strangely, indescribably happy. But Severus never wanted to hear it. He could handle the teasing and the bickering well enough and Harry was slowly wearing him down on accepting the casual physical affection that Harry himself had had to learn through Ron, but every time Harry dared to actually talk about how much he enjoyed spending time with Severus, it ended badly. The last time, Severus had avoided him for three weeks. 

It was fine, most of the time. Harry didn’t particularly like talking about his feelings either, especially when his feelings were—confusing. He knew Severus cared about him, even if they never really spoke of it. 

“The ceremony can’t be done yet,” Harry said. “Weren’t you supposed to give a speech?”

Severus’s mouth twisted and he looked away from Harry for the first time, over at the treeline above his head. Harry frowned, concerned. That dark look was never a good sign. Severus only wore it when his self-loathing overcame him. 

“Minerva’s idea of a joke,” he said in a distant voice. “I was a Headmaster in name only.” Harry watched the slow movement of his chest as he inhaled deeply. “And the atrocities that happened under my tenure… Even if I had a desire to speak, I have no right to do so.”

“Minerva knows as well as I do that you did what you could,” Harry said, vehement. It was always best to logic Severus out of these guilty spirals. “You’ve spoken to Neville and Ginny and the rest. They don’t blame you.”

Severus shook his head. He looked back down at Harry, mouth still thin and unhappy. He didn’t like to talk about what had happened at Hogwarts during his seventh year, though Harry now knew most of the details from the stories his students would tell. Severus preferred to leave them in the past, though Harry was never sure if it was because they were too painful or because he was afraid hearing too many gory details would make Harry abandon him. 

Harry’s hands curled into fists on his thighs. Too many people had abandoned Severus already, he thought fiercely. And Harry had always been too stubborn for his own good.

“Ginerva seemed well, last time she came to visit.”

Harry let him change the subject. He smiled a little relaxing. “Keep calling her Ginerva and she might actually hate your guts again.”

“She stayed in England for quite a while this time.” Severus shifted from one foot to the other. “Almost a full month.”

Harry frowned. Severus sounded light enough, but he almost never made small talk, especially not with people he knew didn’t care about it—like Harry. And he didn’t like Ginny much, though every time she’d joined them for a drink at the pub in March he’d been an utter gentleman, coldly polite. Harry had figured Severus just didn’t care for most people in general and hadn’t thought much of it. He wondered if he should have. Severus’s tone was a little odd talking about her. 

“Well, Hermione’s pregnant.” Still the weirdest thing Harry had ever said aloud even if it had been four months since they broke the news to him. Sometimes, when he came round to see them at their little flat in London, he would catch sight of Hermione’s swollen belly and get swept away by how surreal it was. “Ginny wanted to stick around, help her pick out baby clothes, that kind of thing. They’ve always been close.” Harry laughed a little. “Not that Hermione did any clothes shopping with her—she doesn’t really care about that kind of stuff. Ron does, though, so he and Ginny went crazy when she was here. That kid’s going to need a walk-in closet for their wardrobe.”

“Hm. More Weasleys.”

“Weasley-Grangers. You know that, I told you about the fight they had about it.”

“Did you?”

Harry almost fell for it, but when he looked up there was the tiniest quirk at the corner of Severus’s mouth, the one that said he was suppressing a smile. Harry scowled at him accusingly, ignoring his own amusement. Typical Severus. Instead of admitting he wanted to help, he always had to bait Harry out of his bad moods somehow. 

“You’re trying to wind me up.”

Severus smiled down at him. His smile never ceased to be a thing of amazement for Harry. In school, he’d never once looked like that—warm, a little soft around the edges, open. Harry would never have once guessed that Severus Snape, gargoyle of the dungeons, the menace to teenagers everywhere, could ever look like that. Especially around him. It never failed to make his heart shiver, just a little, and this time was no different. Harry swallowed hard and looked down at his lap, carefully examining his fingers to try and make his blush go away. 

“Is it working?” 

Harry sighed. He also would have never guessed that Severus was secretly kind of a mother hen. Sometimes he felt like he was dealing with Hermione or Ron. He didn’t know which of them nagged more about Harry’s emotional health—or his actual health. Catching a cold earlier in the spring had been uncomfortable for than one reason; between his best friends and Severus, he’d been so aggravatingly well-looked after he’d almost threatened to lock them all out of his rooms more than once.   

“Quit worrying. I’m fine.”

“Of course,” Severus drawled, looking unimpressed. “‘Fine’ people always retreat to a dangerous forest to sit on the ground and panic for nigh on half-an-hour.”

“It wasn’t half-an-hour—”

“And I believe ‘fine’ people always run out of celebrations in their honor without telling anyone where they’re going, causing a great deal of worry and upset.” Severus’s faint smile had disappeared. “You’re absolutely correct, as usual, Potter. That sounds like anyone’s definition of ‘fine.’ Except, perhaps, a dictionary’s.”

“Oh and you’re one to talk.” Harry ran a hand through his hair, grimacing. “Looks at your hands, Severus. You’ve been making potions instead of sleeping again and you want to talk to me about ‘fine’?”

Severus, as always, looked annoyed to have Harry throwing rocks at his glass house. He looked down at his hands—clean as usual, but stained with green paste near the right pinky and bright red on the index finger—and scowled. He pushed them into the pockets of his dark robes. 

“Brat,” he muttered, as he always did when Harry managed to one-up him. “Very well. If I admit to being…” He licked his lips. Harry ignored the flutter of heat at the base of his spine at the sight. What was up with his body today? Harry blamed stress. “... less than fine, will you at least do me the courtesy of admitting you feel the same?”

Harry relaxed a little. Just like Severus’s smile, his decision to compromise instead of shout himself bloody was always a welcome surprise. 

“All right,” Harry said. “I guess… I’m not entirely fine either.” He sighed. Time to face the music, he guessed. He winced. “Was Minerva pissed?”

“She was concerned. She never ceases to be concerned, when it comes to you. An annoying habit of hers I remember vividly from your school days.”

Harry smiled. “Yeah,” he said. 

Severus was trying to look casual. He was terrible at it, which Harry always found funny. Big bad spy, but making him talk about things like feelings and he was as awkward as first-year Slytherin telling their first real lie. 

“Your speech was better than I expected,” he said. “Until the part where you turned green and ran out, of course.”

An open invitation to explain. Severus wasn’t looking at Harry again, clearly uncomfortable in his role of confidante, so Harry allowed himself to smile warmly up at him without hiding any of his fond affection. Severus was prickly and blunt and bad at emotions, but his obvious, uncertain care was dearer to Harry than he could ever really put into words. 

He looked around the clearing. He hadn’t meant to come here when he’d run out of the Great Hall. He hadn’t even known where he was going until he was already walking the path in the Forbidden Forest. His panic had made the walk there almost worse—with every step he’d get a flash of that horrible night, almost as if he was walking through time. 

When he’d reached the clearing, he’d expected it to be worse. But when Harry stopped at the tree line, staring at the circle of grass, it hadn’t inspired the same flashbacks. It had seemed smaller. The grass had been tall and thick, spotted with wildflowers and noisy with insects. There had been no sign at all that it was where Harry had died five years ago. 

A strange sort of peace had fallen over him. He’d sat down in the exact center of the clearing, closed his eyes, and drifted until Severus had come to collect him. 

Harry looked around again. The clearing was still quiet except for the faint hum of insects. It was so totally unremarkable. Harry blinked and for a moment the calm, peaceful scene around him rippled. He could see it as it had been that night; the Death Eaters, Hagrid’s anguished face, Voldemort’s ghoulish smile. The pale wand lifting, the flash of the green light—

Warm hands cupped his face. Harry dragged in a shaky breath, returning to the present. The clearing was empty. It was sunny and warm with the faintest breeze. Severus crouched down in front of him, holding his face, lightly cupping the back of Harry’s skull. 

“Harry,” he said. 

“I’m fine.” Harry looked away. He knew that Severus was scowling at him and the thought comforted him a little. It's just Severus, he reminded himself forcefully as panic threatened to overtake him again. He could confess the truth to Severus. He was safe. In a rush, before he could lose his nerve, he admitted, “I couldn’t do it. The speech, I mean.”

“It seemed difficult for you.”

Severus’s fingers curled. His pinky brushed the edge of Harry’s ear and he shivered, sparks igniting down his spine. 

“They wanted me to… I dunno. Talk about the noble sacrifices or whatever. Make the whole thing sound like some kind of necessary hardship we endured together.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“It wasn’t necessary.” Harry gritted teeth. Severus would understand, he told himself as he forced the words out. “It sure as fuck wasn’t noble. It was a nightmare, Severus. Sometimes I’ll think about that night and I can’t believe I’m even around to remember it. It was horrible and everyone there wants me to… to pat us on the back and make it out like we did something heroic that day. Like I did something heroic.”

“Harry.” The lightest pressure on his cheek. Harry reluctantly turned to look Severus in the eye. “You knew this when you agreed to come.”

Harry heard the unspoken question. He sighed. 

“I thought I would be fine,” he said. “I’d just power through it and it’d be done. And Minerva needed my help and Pavarti kept freaking out in the bathroom and—” He shook his head. “It’s been years. I should be stronger than this.”

“Typical Gryffindor,” Severus said, though the insult lacked its usual bite. “I would have thought you’d know by now that strength has nothing to do with it, Potter. Surely there are some brain cells in that head of yours.”

Harry relaxed. If Severus was ribbing him, that meant everything was fine. He even managed a smile. 

“Aren’t you the one always telling me my head is empty?” Severus scowled. Harry took heart in that expression and managed to continue. “When I got up to the podium, there were just so many people watching me. I couldn’t stand it.” 

“Hm.” Severus finally removed his hands. Harry’s face felt colder. He shivered. “Why come here, then?”

Harry breathed in, breathed out. Talking about this felt almost… taboo, sacrosanct. Harry had buried that night in the darkest, deepest pits of his mind for a reason. Excavating it, letting it see the light of day was… painful. Difficult. 

But this was Severus. He would understand.

“Well. This is it.”  

“It?” 

“Where I…” Harry cleared his throat. The words hurt coming out, more than Harry had expected them to. “Where I died.”

Severus made a low sound, almost pained. Harry looked but Severus was taking in the clearing, a frown between his eyebrows. Harry smiled a little at that concentrated look, so familiar to him now. Severus made it at potions or an annoying customer or Harry when he was being obnoxious. He clung to that comfortable familiarity to balance out the racing unsteadiness of his heart. 

“Here?” Severus asked. 

“Yes.”

There was the distant sound of birds through the trees, the rustling of leaves. Harry could smell green things and soil and the bright, sweet scent of flowers. It was a pretty place to die, really. 

“Is there any particular reason you would choose to retreat here?” Severus asked. His voice was distant, almost ironic. “Aside from your obvious morbidity?”

Harry’s laugh didn’t sound much like one, choked and rough as it was. Trust Severus to make a dark joke about the whole thing. 

“I don’t know. I just…” 

Severus didn’t speak as Harry thought it through. He would’ve, not too long ago—Severus was not what anyone would call patient when it came to dealing with other people and he tended to interrupt more than he should. But he’d become much better at it with Harry and he tended to wait to let Harry think over what he wanted to say more and more often.    

“Hagrid called me brave,” he said at last. He’d teared up when he’d said it, looking at Harry with such warm, open pride. “Hermione said it was a heroic sacrifice. Even Minerva…”

She’d talked at length about how so many of the people who’d died that night had exemplified humanity—and then she’d looked right at Harry and called him the best of them. Thanked him for his sacrifice.   

Severus sighed. “If this is going to be some tiresome, modest speech about how you weren’t brave after all—”

“I wasn’t, Severus.” 

Merlin, this hurt to say. Harry’s insides felt scraped and raw, tender as a bruise. Harry looked down at his hands, his ragged fingernails. He’d painted them black that morning, concentrating on each coat with the kind of focus he’d seen Severus devote to complicated potions. He’d added tiny mementos to each finger—a moon for Lupin and a bright star for Sirius and a duck’s nose for Tonks. Something to remember them by. 

“Potter—”

Harry shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about this. He wouldn’t have, except that it was Severus who was asking, Severus who was looking at him with that familiar concentrated focus, as if Harry were a particularly tricky potion. Severus had somehow become, despite all their bad history, a safe harbor for Harry’s secrets. He still wasn’t quite sure how it had happened. 

“That’s why I came here, I think.”

Severus considered him. His head tipped to the side, braid sliding over his shoulder. He looked like nothing so much as some kind of curious bird. 

“To remember,” he murmured at last. “You needed to see it again to remember how you felt.”

Maybe the reason Harry kept telling Severus his secrets, giving him the pain he’d carried silently for so long, was that Severus always took it and examined it and accepted it without judgment or recourse. He always could understand, more than anyone else in Harry’s life. He’d seen as much shit as Harry—more, even. Ron and Hermione, they knew what it was like because they’d been there in the mud with him, but sometimes there were things they just couldn’t know, couldn’t get. Severus always did. 

Harry wasn’t sure he knew how thankful he was for that. How much Harry loved him for that. 

Probably not. Severus never really seemed to believe anyone was capable of forgiving him, let alone loving him.

“I wasn’t afraid,” Harry said. It felt so good to say this, to let it out. Like getting rid of something poisonous. “That night, I mean. Not really. But it wasn’t this… this noble sacrifice. I was  exhausted, Severus. I heard Dumbledore say I needed to die and all I could feel was…” Harry’s throat closed up.

“Relief,” Severus murmured. Harry reached out and grasped his forearms, digging his fingers in. “Yes. I understand.”

If anyone would, it would be Severus. Harry remembered his distraught face in the cells under the Ministry, the way he’d shouted that he’d wanted to die. Harry hadn’t been able to acknowledge the understanding he’d felt at the time, too raw and unstable, still hurt from the aftermath of the war. But he could acknowledge it now. 

For several long moments, they breathed together in silence. Severus’s arms were taunt and bony under Harry’s fingers, his skin warm. Alive, he reminded himself. Severus was alive and so was he. 

“It took me a long time to be okay with that,” he forced himself to explain. “And to hear everyone in there paint it as this grand gesture, I just—”

“Quite. I believe I have the full picture, Harry.”

Harry shivered. Severus called him by his first name so rarely, it always felt a little taboo. Which was crazy, of course. They were friends now, it was hardly—weird or intimate to call your friend by their first name. And it was even weirder to get so heated from hearing it. Harry took his hands back, suddenly embarrassed by how long he’d been holding on, clinging. He cleared his throat. Why did his skin suddenly feel flushed and tender? What was wrong with him?

“The ceremony will be over by now.” 

“Oh?” Harry looked up, trying to seem like a normal person whose body wasn’t staging some kind of weird rebellion against him. The sun was much lower than it had been—it must be mid-afternoon at least. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Severus let out a harsh breath. Harry realized too late that that had been a pointed remark and not just an idle observation. Harry smiled, his agitation and embarrassment fading away. If there was anything that could make him feel normal, it was winding Severus up. It had become Harry’s favorite hobby for the past year or so. It was much more fun than it had been in school because Severus only got grumpy at him instead of furious.

“Oh?” he asked, deliberately stupid. “Was there something you wanted, Severus? You know we’ve talked about using your words before—”

“Just as we’ve discussed your irritating patronizing tone when you think you’re being funny,” Severus said without any actual heat. He rolled his eyes. “Come on, you twit. You need real food.”

He stood and made a soft sound as he stretched his full height. Harry tilted his head, blinking up at him. Damn bastard was too tall, he thought for the hundredth time. How Severus had managed to get all that height eating as he did was a constant mystery. Harry suspected potions. Still, the long length of him, wiry and lean, was— 

Was nothing, Harry thought. Merlin. 

A hand in his face. Harry blinked at the long, elegant fingers, the colorful stains that spoke of a  night working instead of sleeping. He followed the arm up into Severus’s expectant face. 

“Your legs will have fallen asleep like that,” Severus said. 

He didn’t withdraw his hand. Harry smiled, warmth blossoming in his chest and spreading to his fingers and his admittedly numb toes. He reached up and grasped Severus’s hand. Severus pulled him to his feet in one smooth movement, bracing him with another hand under Harry’s elbow as Harry’s knees tried to give out on him. He really had been sitting for too long, he thought as pins and needles raced up and down his legs. 

“Thanks,” he said. 

He meant for more than the hand up, which Severus probably new. Severus probably knew everything, he thought sometimes—even the sneaking, embarrassing thoughts Harry sometimes had about the length of his hair or the darkness of his eyes. Of course, if Severus new and was staying quiet, that said all he really needed to say for Harry to keep his mouth shut. And they were just—thoughts, that was all. Nothing remarkable about them, really. It was perfectly normal to think about the shape of your friend’s lips.  

Severus didn’t pull away. He smelled, as always, of herbs and earth. Harry had come to find comfort in that smell, to even crave it. He gave in to temptation and allowed himself one moment of weakness, pressing his head against Severus’s shoulder and breathing for a long moment. It felt nice. Severus always felt so much nicer than Harry would have ever guessed.

“Come,” Severus said. His voice was low and deep. Harry shivered. “I was not joking about needing food. You look like a stiff breeze could knock you over.”

Harry’s tension released all at once as he laughed. He pulled away, not without reluctance, and managed to stand on his own, though his legs still felt weak, especially at the joints. He grinned up at Severus, hoping it would cover up his flush.

“Mother hen,” he accused. 

“Take that back, you little idiot,” Severus hissed. 

“What else should I call you? Papa bear?” 

“Morgana’s tears, no. Do you get some kind of joy out of tormenting me?”

“You know I do.”

They walked together to the treeline. Harry looked back, just once. The clearing was as quiet and empty as it had been when he’d arrived. Nothing special. He released the pent-up breath and followed Severus on the path back to Hogwarts.

It wasn’t a long walk back to the castle. They bickered for most of it, distracting Harry from any memories that might have cropped up. He wasn’t even really paying attention to where they were walking, which was why he was surprised when Severus just—stopped without warning. Harry nearly ran into his back.

“Severus?” he asked, peering around him. “What—?”

Harry followed Severus’s gaze. Ah, he thought as he stared up at the Whomping Willow. He hadn’t realized they’d drifted so close to it. 

He looked back at Severus. He didn’t look like it bothered him, but the way he was staring, quiet and still, spoke volumes. Harry touched his elbow.

“Do you want to go see it?”

Severus came back to himself quickly, shaking off Harry’s hand. “Don’t be absurd, Potter. You’ve gone through enough moody introspection for both of us, today, I think.” Harry frowned at him. Severus glanced back and caught it, rolling his eyes. “I mean it. The Shack is in Hogsmeade, you know. I pass it several times a day.”

“Right.” Harry eyed him. “It’d be okay if you weren’t okay,” he said finally because he could hardly not say it. “I mean, you died. I get it.”

Severus looked at him with a strange light in his eye. “Yes,” he said after a long pause. “I suppose you would, wouldn’t you?”

Harry smiled. “We should make a club,” he said. “We could get t-shirts.”

“And what would they say?”

“I conquered death and all I got was this measly t-shirt?”

Severus turned his snort into a cough, but Harry heard the laughter in his voice as he said, “We’re reduced to muggle cliches now, hm?”

“You know, you should feel honored,” Harry told him, adopting a stuffy voice that he knew annoyed Severus to no end. “You’re joining my elite ranks. Only the best of the best come back from the dead.”

“I shall endeavor to remember,” Severus said, dry as bone. “Come on, Potter. They’ll run out of food by the time we get there.”

Harry let him lead them away from the Willow. He wished, not for the first time, that Severus felt like he could confide in him. Severus always kept everything he felt and thought under tight lock and key, even after so much time together. His iron control was nice when Harry felt like he was untethered, an immovable rock for Harry to lean on, but Harry knew that there was a lot of stormy waters under that mask. He wanted Severus to trust him enough to fully remove it, to be vulnerable or weak in front of him, but he didn’t know how to ask him for it. Harry barely even knew how to voice what he wanted to himself let alone make a fool of himself asking Severus.

Severus might never be able to do that. So many years keeping everything locked away might mean he’d lost the ability to expose himself like that. But that didn’t mean Harry couldn’t try, right? Even if he didn’t know how to do it.

“I really would listen,” he murmured as they approached the Great Hall. Severus didn’t stop walking, but he tipped his head toward Harry. “If you want to talk about it, I mean.”

Severus’s lip quirked up. “Stop being such a busybody, Potter. Not everyone feels the need to gush their feelings all over the place.”

“I don’t gush—”

“However. Should I feel the desire, I will… keep your offer in mind.”

Harry blinked. Oh. Oh! He grinned. “Oh will you?”

“That’s what I said, Potter—”

“Oh, Harry! Harry, wait up!”

“Merlin,” Harry groaned. He adopted a painful smile as Dennis Creevy, just as tiny as he’d ever been at Hogwarts, came running up to him with a camera in hand, followed by a floating quill and parchment. “Hello, Dennis. I didn’t know you were covering today.”

Dennis pushed his mousy hair out of his face. Every time they met, Harry got a quiet pang in his chest; Dennis looked quite a bit like his older brother. 

“Yeah, well,” Dennis said. “I usually cover anything about the celebration. Everyone else has off and I… well, it’s better to be working, you know?” Harry did know. Dennis smiled at him. “Speaking of work—can I get a statement from you before I go? It’d be a real coup if I got some words from Harry Potter!”

“Oh, well… Dennis…” Harry was uncomfortably aware of Severus watching them. “I don’t really—I mean—”

“It doesn’t have to be much, just a few words—”

“I believe he isn’t interested, Mr. Creevy.”

Dennis looked over and his mouth dropped open. He must not have noticed Severus until just then. Harry watched, a little amused, as Dennis went stark white, eyes huge. Severus always did leave an impression. 

“Professor Snape!” Dennis squeaked. “I mean! Mr. Snape! It’s uh… It’s good to see you looking so well, sir!” 

Severus gave Harry a speaking look. “Yes. Thank you. Shall we be going, Potter?”

“You’re going in with him?” Dennis asked. He must have seen Harry stiffen because he backpedaled quickly enough. “I just meant—I heard some rumors and stuff, but I didn’t think they were actually true! You hated each other so much in school!”

“It’s been five years, Dennis,” Harry said, rubbing the back of his neck. He glanced at Severus, but he just looked a little amused, the bastard. Harry could feel his face heating up. “People change.”

“Wow,” Dennis said. “I guess miracles can happen. But Harry, about that statement—”

“Perhaps Potter could say a few words about his noble sacrifice,” Severus cut in. Harry gave him a sharp look and Severus smirked at him. Harry’s eyes narrowed. Trust that bastard to needle Harry with his own vulnerability. “Or say a few words on his auction donation? I believe it is a signed copy of his… biography?”

Harry glared at him. He cursed Romilda Vane and Minerva for having the nerve to bribe him into signing it so that they could sell it at the auction taking place tonight. He hated that book. 

“Oh!” Dennis squeaked. “I’ll keep an eye out for that one! It’s such a good book, don’t you think, Harry? She really captured your Hogwarts years!”

That was such a blatant lie. Harry transferred his glare to Dennis. He could see Severus smirking out of the corner of his eye and an idea occurred to him that would wipe that look right off his face.

“You know what? I do have a statement,” he said. He could see Severus’s blooming suspicion, but he focused on Dennis’s eager face. “Can you take it down directly as I say it?” Dennis nodded and his quill practically quivered in excitement. “Today’s victory was hard-won,” he said, paraphrasing some of the speech that he hadn’t been able to say. It was strangely easy to do now, under Severus’s narrowing eyes. “And it couldn’t have happened without the help of so many good, courageous people. There are almost too many to name. But there is one man without which that night would have ended much differently.” Harry turned to look at Severus directly. “Severus Snape.”

Dennis squeaked and Severus jerked, mouth dropping open. Harry kept his own face composed even as he bit the inside of his cheek so he wouldn’t laugh. 

“Severus’s goodness, compassion, and bravery were instrumental to defeating Voldemort,” he said with relish. “He is truly a good man. I consider him an honorary Gryffindor.” Severus’s indignation had faded into something less obvious and Harry was starting to find this whole thing less funny and more unnerving. Maybe he’d made a mistake. “And a friend.” He met Severus’s eyes and added, a little less certainly, “Without him, the war would have been lost. I’m grateful to him—and,” he added, a little belatedly, “to everyone who worked so hard to bring Voldemort’s reign to its end.” 

Dennis was staring at him. His quill was hanging limply in the air, not taking down any notes. Harry cleared his throat pointedly and Dennis jumped.

“Right!” he said. “Right, of course! I’ll add your comment to the article, Harry!” He cleared his throat several times. “Yes! I’ll add it! Thank you!” 

He scurried away before Harry could say anything else. Harry frowned after him, confused why he seemed so jumpy, when Severus coughed lightly.

“An honorary Gryffindor?” he quoted, voice poisonous as acid. 

Harry grinned. That was the reaction he’d been looking for! But Severus’s face was still strange when he looked back, eyes bright and mouth soft. 

“What?” Harry asked with mock innocence. “You’d look good in red, Severus.”

“I look terrible in red.”

“Not true. It suits you.” Harry reached out and tugged gently on the end of his braid. Severus scowled at him. “Don’t pretend you didn’t wear that scarf I made all winter.”

“As if I would choose to wear that atrocity. It just happened to be the first scarf on hand.”

“For three straight weeks?”

“If someone didn’t pout at me every time I didn’t wear it—”

“I made it with all the love in my heart, Severus. All of my skill and hard work!”

“That might explain why it turned out so terribly.”

Harry snorted. “Next year I’m putting lions on it.” 

“Brat.” Severus looked back at the castle. “You’re going to get in some hot water, saying the things you did about me.”

Harry eyed him. Severus’s pride in his control was well-earned, but there were times when he was such an open book it was almost funny. Harry took in his flushed cheeks and haughty chin tilt fondly. Silly twit. He still seemed to think Harry would go back to calling him names and thinking he was the devil incarnate, as if Harry hadn’t burrowed his way into Severus’s life and made a comfortable home there. As if Harry had ever given up on any of his friends before. 

“We’ve been over this before,” he said. “I said it because I believe it. If you hadn’t given me those memories, we would’ve all been fucked. You saved me. And everyone else, too.” 

Severus made a sharp, dismissive noise. “Sentimental fool. I did my duty.”

“Gryffindor.” 

“If you do not cease your blasphemy this instant—”

“Is that any way to talk to someone who just sang your praises to the biggest newspaper in the Wizarding World?”

“Oh for Merlin’s sake.”

Harry linked his arm with Severus’s, enjoying the warm weight of him against his side. “Come on,” he said. “You’re right, they’re going to be out of food before we get inside.”

Severus muttered under his breath the whole way in, but he didn’t let go of Harry’s arm. Harry breathed in, listened to the brazen beat of his own heart, and followed him through the doors, content to be alive and with Severus.

Chapter Text

January 9, 2004       

“I can’t believe it’s your birthday and you won’t even have one drink!”

Severus eyed Harry’s flushed, pouting face with no little amusement. Those green eyes were glassy and unfocused and the pub was hot enough that sweat beaded his brow, making his hair curl against his temple. Someone had put eyeliner on him again, smokey and thick. 

“I think you’re drinking enough for the both of us,” Severus said. “You’re turning into a lush, Potter. You’ll get a beer belly and then who will the first years twitter about in the halls?”

Harry groaned. “Merlin, don’t remind me. It’s so weird. They keep leaving these little letters on my desk and it’s all about the bottle green of your eyes or the inky black of your hair or stupid stuff like that. I’d laugh if it wasn’t so fucking embarrassing.”

The first years, idiots though they may be, weren’t exactly off, Severus thought. Harry’s coloring had always been a particularly striking combination, even when he had been nothing more than a spotty teen with baggy clothes and unfortunate glasses. Now, grown into himself and totally, unselfconsciously comfortable, he was breathtaking. 

Not that Severus had any plans to tell him so. It had taken them a long, winding path to make it to the kind of comfortable friendship that allowed Harry to lean into Severus’s side on a night out at the pub, for him to want to take Severus out for his birthday, to come round to Severus’s place most nights of the week. Severus knew better than to burn this particularly precious bridge just because he sometimes got caught on the cut of Harry’s jaw or the thick-softness of his hair. 

“I daresay you could be more appreciative,” he said. “After all, it’s not every day someone writes an ode to your wonderous, peach-like arse, is it?”

“Oh my God.” Harry dropped his face into his hands, ears going red. “I told Minerva to take that to her grave! I’m going to kill that mangy old cat!”

Severus finally laughed. Harry peeked at him through his fingers, disgruntled and amused. 

“All right, take the piss,” he said. “But that was a seventh year, not some harmless eleven-year-old. I had to actually sit down like an adult and have a full, fucking conversation about boundaries and age gaps and why he should be hitting on people his own age. I think killing Voldemort was more fun.”

“Well,” Severus said thoughtfully, “I can admire his sheer nerve if nothing else. Even if it’s not the most inspired of metaphors.”

Harry lifted his head out of his hands to blink at Severus. Even well on his way to drunk, those eyes of his were difficult to look at directly. Severus sternly told his heart to get control of itself as Harry leaned forward over the table to grin at him, the cheeky one that said he was about to do something to try and make Severus sputter or roll his eyes. He seemed to get some perverse joy out of riling Severus up.

“Oh? And what kind of metaphors would you use to talk about my arse, Severus?”

The room was definitely too hot. Too many people. Severus coughed into his fist, looking away toward the bar counter. Rosmerta was busy tonight, that was for certain. Even now that the new term had started, everyone was out celebrating.

“Severus!” Potter sounded far too delighted with himself, the brat. “You’re blushing! Come on, I know you can come up with something better. I read that poem you wrote in my first year, you know!”

Oh Merlin, that thing. Severus cringed to think about it now. He had thought so highly of it at the time but looking back it really was a hideously simple riddle. It was little wonder an eleven-year-old Hermione Granger had been able to figure it out, even if his younger self had seen it as a hideous insult at the time. 

“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you I have little interest in describing your… rear.” 

Severus had far more interest in touching. Not that he couldn’t say he hadn’t come up with his own rapturous phrase or two when Harry wore those damn muggle jeans he liked so well, the ones that always seemed too tight around the thigh. But those verses were hardly appropriate to share when Harry was clearly gearing for a joke. 

Harry eyed him. His smile was a little tight at the corners. “Just as well,” he said. “If I have to read any more poetry dedicated to me, I might lose it, a bit.” 

“If you’re that interested, I know a fascinating set of poems by Catullus you might find interesting—”

Harry eyed him. “Is this going to be like that time you convinced me to read that Auden poem and it turned out to be basically porn?”

“I was expanding your plebian tastes,” Severus said with perfect primness. Harry’s face had been absolutely delicious when he’d stormed into Severus’s shop to rail at him about it. “It’s hardly my fault your reading material comprises sports history and those insipid romance novels—”

“Romance is fun!” Harry protested. “And… fuck, what was it?” He thought for a moment. Severus refused to find his glassy-eyed confusion endearing in any way. Harry snapped his fingers. “Right! ‘A perfectly justifiable genre with a wide variety of tropes and deep themes whose veracity has been challenged solely because of misogyny.’ Or something.”

“Mrs. Weasley-Granger?”

“Oh yeah. She joined my book club last month. You’d think she didn’t spend the first week complaining about romance novels and their unrealistic portrayals of courtship, or whatever.”

Severus had been invited to join this so-called book club many times, but he had no desire to spend any time or have any extended conversations with the likes of Fleur Weasley, Cho Chang, or Dean Thomas. 

“Anyway, romance novels are better than poetry,” Harry said. “It’s all so—I dunno. Stuffy.”

“You didn’t think "The Platonic Blow" was—”

“I told you, that was basically porn set to meter! Not the same thing!”

“If you’d just read some of the poets I’ve recommended, you might change your mind.”

“Nah. You’ll just have to be the poetic one between the two of us.” Harry ran a hand through his hair. It was growing out of its usually sharp cut; he would need to go to the barber again soon. The rough look suited him, as almost every look did. Severus would envy it if he was not so embarrassingly infatuated. “I’m getting another drink. You sure you don’t want one?”

“I’ve told you—”

Harry slid out of the booth and stretched, shoulders bunching and thick red sweater riding up just the slightest on his hips. Severus watched the unselfconsciously graceful movement and bit the inside of his cheek. Harry was smiling as he finished, rolling his neck from side to side to loosen it. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. He reached out and poked Severus in the forehead, so gently that Severus only felt the barest brush of his finger against his temple. Severus shivered. “Stop scowling, your face will get stuck like that and that would be a damn shame. I’ll get you something to eat, okay? You worked through lunch again.”

Severus’s breath was coming in short. He could feel the ghostly press of Harry’s finger still, as if he’d left a brand. 

“It had better not be cake,” he said. “If you think I will allow any kind of nonsense like people singing me happy birthday…”

Harry grinned. “I promise I won’t get you any cake,” he said. Severus relaxed but Harry winked at him. “ Rosie, on the other hand—”

“Potter!”

Harry walked off laughing. Severus slumped back in his seat, scowling. That brat seemed to delight in winding him up in the most impossibly insufferable of ways. If Severus were less of an idiot, he’d stop letting him, of course, but he had long since resigned himself to being compromised when it came to Harry Potter. 

He watched as Harry approached the bar, swallowed up in the crowd for brief moments. It was a popular night at the Three Broomsticks and Severus had almost said no to Harry’s insistence that they go out. He’d wanted… Severus turned his scowl to the table, feeling flushed. He’d wanted to ask if Harry would be all right staying in instead, to have dinner with just the two of them. But even the thought of asking that made panic sidle up his throat, white-hot and intense. 

He knew that Harry would have said yes. Harry might not even have thought anything of it—they’d whiled away enough hours together in Severus’s little flat that it wasn’t even that strange for them to spend an evening alone together there. But Severus could never stop the little voice in the back of his head that would whisper that this would be the time Harry finally saw what so many of his friends and family seemed to realize—that Severus, despite all sense and reason, desperately wanted him. 

He’d weathered the glares from the various Weasleys and the stern talking to from Hermione Weasley-Granger. He’d endured Minerva’s teasing and the odd looks from Neville Longbottom whenever he came to visit Severus’s shop. He’d even taken Narcissa and Draco’s increasingly incredulous letters in stride. What he wouldn’t be able to abide, could not even force himself to think about for too long without beginning to feel ill, was Harry finding out.

Severus had come to know Harry rather well over the past few years. He knew that Harry would never throw him out of his life, wouldn’t just drop their friendship even if he did find out. But Severus dreaded the gentle rejection he knew he would get, the withdrawal of Harry’s soft, easy touches and nonchalant skinship. If Harry knew, he wouldn’t smile at Severus so openly or put an unthinking hand on his elbow or shoulder when he was showing Severus something he was looking at. He wouldn’t tumble into Severus’s side when they sat together on Severus’s low sofa or drape himself over Severus’s back on the mornings he stayed over, muttering sleepily about not burning the bacon for the thousandth time. 

Severus had never once had anyone invade his life as thoroughly as Harry had. His want was a desperate, deep thing, so strong that it almost had its own will and mind, but he would rather kill it than risk losing Harry’s camaraderie.    

He glanced back at the bar and frowned when he realized he’d lost sight of Harry. He searched for a long moment cursing, as always, the height that meant Harry was forever getting swallowed up in crowds, until he found the familiar head of hair at the end of the bar. He almost relaxed, until he realized Harry was being chatted up.

Severus’s hands curled into fists in his lap. It was hardly the first time it had happened. Harry was beautiful and famous—more than one young man or lady had tried their luck with him. At least this time he was across the room and not sitting next to Severus. Those were always the most infuriating. The way Harry apologized after, red-faced from embarrassment, never really helped.

It was a young man this time. Tall and lean, blond hair cut short. Something about him seemed vaguely familiar, though Severus couldn’t see his face well enough to figure out what. He was wearing a shirt that showed off the breadth of his arms and pants that drew attention to his trim waist. A good-looking young man in the prime of his life. 

Severus bit the inside of his cheek. Harry had never taken any of his potential paramours on their offers before. Hell, as far as Severus knew, Harry hadn’t been involved with anyone since his ill-fated romance with Ginerva years ago. All of the rumors that followed him were, according to Harry’s vehement diatribes on the subject, just rumors. He’d hardly shown any interest in anyone and had always seemed perfectly content with his hermit-like existence, spending time with his friends and students.

But the day would come, Severus knew. Harry was a young man, fit and inexperienced in love. Surely he wanted… Surely he wanted to sow his seeds. Experiment, meet people. Severus hadn’t at his age, but Severus had never had the excess of options that Harry had or any real desire for people in general. He’d loved Lily and that had been that; when she’d died, he’d put those feelings in a box and been mostly content. He’d had dalliances, when stress dictated, but hardly anything more than a night’s worth of pleasure. They had hardly been any more interested in sticking around than Severus was in having them do so.

But Harry was different. He liked people, understood them on a level Severus couldn’t. He wasn’t as sociable as his parents had been but he had a lot of friends, people he cared about. He had a way with people that Severus never had and surely, sooner or later, that would translate into finally getting attached to someone. Surely he  wanted a lover to spend his nights with, someone to share his life with. 

The young man touched Harry’s shoulder, leaning into him as he laughed. Severus found it difficult to breathe and he forced himself to release the fist he was making before he damaged his hand. He let out several long, steady breaths past the knot in his throat.

The young man was good-looking, friendly. Harry deserved that, he reminded himself sternly, deserved to have someone he could be himself with, take out without shame or discomfort. Someone without a painful history or awkward manners, who could treat him in the manner he should be treated. Severus gritted his teeth. Knowing that Harry deserved it didn’t make it any less painful to give it to him.

He forced himself to look. The young man was in Harry’s space, cozying up into his side. Severus flexed his hands and looked at Harry’s face. He’d expected it to be red, for Harry to be making the same flustered, amused face he’d been making when Severus teased him about the poetry his students were writing about him. But that face… Severus straightened, his own pain forgotten.

That was Harry’s smile of polite distance, the one he wore whenever they met some of his old Auror colleagues or anyone from the Ministry. That little crinkle between his brows was the one meant he was distressed and trying to hide it. His jaw was tight, chin jutting out. 

Severus was halfway across the room before he’d even made the decision to stand. It wasn’t until he was nearly upon them that he saw the young man’s face clearly enough to recognize him. Severus faltered, pausing in the middle of the room, hidden in the boisterous crowd as his mind churned.

That man was Richard Macmillan. He’d had a cousin at Hogwarts Severus vaguely remembered, a pompous Hufflepuff, mediocre at Potions and prone to trying to weasel his way out of his bad grades with mentions of his family’s wealth. Severus would have hesitated to intervene for the family name alone—the Macmillans were one of the wealthiest in the Wizarding World—but Richard Macmillan was also one of the front-runners for the Minister’s seat that year. Powerful, wealthy, and influential enough that angering him would potentially be dangerous.

Shit. 

Severus could turn back. The last thing he needed was to get in the way of someone who could topple his carefully built life with the right whisper in the right ear. Harry was not an awkward teenager anymore, he was a grown man. He’d always been capable of rescuing himself. Severus would just go back to the table and wait it out and listen to Harry’s pained explanation afterward—  

He caught sight of Harry’s uncomfortable face again. Severus gritted his teeth. He would leave it, he told himself savagely. Then Macmillan reached out and tucked Harry’s hair behind his ear, laughing. Harry flinched.

Oh for fuck’s sake.

Severus came up with his plan as he made his way to the corner of the bar they were sequestered at. Quickly, he cast a nondescript glamor on his face, obscuring his more recognizable features into something bland and unremarkable. Macmillan might notice he was wearing one, but at least this way he’d have enough anonymity that he wouldn’t have to worry about getting in the way of a scion of a powerful pureblood house. With any luck, he’d be able to squirrel Harry away from him without Macmillan being any wiser to who he was. All that it would require was some smooth talking on Severus’s part and, hopefully, Harry’s cooperation. 

He took a deep breath and slid into the seat next to them without fanfare, jostling Macmillan in the process. He ignored the annoyed look he could feel on the side of his face and focused his attention on Harry, who turned to frown at him in confusion. This next part was going to be the hardest, but Severus set aside his own discomfort as best he could. If he seemed awkward or uncomfortable, that would ruin the whole ruse. At least, he thought with some dark humor, he had a lot of practice at playing a part.

“May I buy you a drink?” he asked in his lowest, silkiest voice. 

As he spoke, he brushed against Harry’s mind with the barest trace of Legilimency. It’s Severus, he thought and watched Harry’s eyes widen. Play along.

“Um!” Harry’s voice was several octaves higher than it should be. Severus gave him a warning look and he swallowed. “I’m sorry, but… I can buy my own drinks.”

“Harry, darling, is this man bothering you?” Macmillan asked.

He was draped against Harry’s side, blocking him in. Harry sent a panicked look at Severus, mouth tight.

“I believe I was speaking to him,” Severus said in a cold voice. Now that his face was safely protected, he felt a little more confident speaking his mind. “If you don’t mind.”

Macmillan scoffed. “That’s sweet and all, but Harry isn’t going to waste his time with the likes of you .”

“Shouldn’t you let him decide that?”

“He is right here,” Harry cut in, sounding more like himself. “And he is just waiting on the drinks he ordered before he goes right back to his table without either of you.”

“C’mon, Harry, don’t be like that,” Macmillan crooned. “We could have some fun together.”

"I don't..."

"Spend the night getting frisky in the sheets." Macmillan seemed think his eyebrow wriggle was somehow charming. "You look like you could use a good tumble."

Harry’s eyes darted to Severus. “Thanks, but no thanks,” he said stiffly. 

Macmillan’s face darkened. Sensing an outburst, Severus cut in smoothly. “Is it any wonder he’s saying no, when you ask him like that?”

“What’s that?” Macmillan frowned at him. “I’m asking just fine.”

Severus scoffed. “Honestly. You really think you can hold anyone’s attention like that?”

“I’d like to see you do any better,” Macmillan said. He crossed his arms over his chest, which at least meant he wasn’t draped all over Harry anymore. “Go on, show me how it’s done, then, if you're such an expert."

Exactly as planned. Severus released a small breath and glanced at Harry's crumpled face. He risked another brush of Legilimency. Play along.

Harry tipped his head, considering, and then gave the smallest nod. Relaxing, Severus turned toward him. He had to make this look convincing enough that Macmillan would give it up as useless to try anymore. Of course, that would be easier to do if Severus had flirted more than once or twice in the last decade. He tried to remember what Lucius had done with the Slytherin girls before he’d started officially courting Narcissa. He just remembered a lot of flowery words and discrete touching. 

Well. Touching he could do. Severus told himself sternly that this was purely for a ruse as he reached out to press his fingers lightly to Harry’s hand. Harry jumped a little, eyes widening. 

“You have lovely hands,” Severus said. He locked away any embarrassment he had as he put on the mindset that had let him do all kinds of uncomfortable things during the war without flinching. Not that touching Harry was distasteful—quite the opposite, in fact. "They're beautiful."

“Um,” Harry said. His voice was rough. “Thank you?”

Macmillan scoffed. “Is that the best you can do?”

Severus shot him an annoyed look and then turned his attention back to Harry. Harry still looked tense and uncomfortable, his face heated and eyes darting to look everywhere but at Severus. Hm. What else should he try that would be enough to get Macmillan to back off? Severus remembered Harry’s rueful smile at the thought of more poetry and heat lanced through him. If it was poetry... If it was poetry then—

“Taking the hands of someone you love." Severus's heart drummed against his ribs. "You see they are delicate cages.” Harry’s eyes shot toward him. Severus took a chance and rubbed his fingers slowly against the groves between Harry’s fingers. “Tiny birds are singing in the secluded prairies, and in the deep valleys of the hand.”^[1]

Severus could feel the rush of blood in his ears, the adrenaline pumping through his body. He felt as if he’d just stepped off a high cliff. Harry licked his lips, flush deepening on his cheeks. 

“Oh,” he said softly. Something flickered in his eyes and a bit of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You know some poetry, I see.”

“Some,” Severus said. He didn’t allow himself to acknowledge the gratification of watching Harry shiver at how dark his voice had come out. “Would you like to hear more?”

Harry’s smile deepened. “So long as there aren’t any odes to my peach-like arse—”

Severus took Harry’s cheek in his palm. It was pleasantly heated under his hand, smooth and silky. He tapped lightly at the thin, fragile skin under Harry's left eye.

"I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens," he said. Harry's eyelashes fluttered; Severus felt them brush his fingertip. "Only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses." ^[2]

Then, gently and hardly believing his own daring, he lowered his thumb to press against the curve of Harry’s bottom lip, plump and wet. Harry shivered.

“Your mouth’s light, no redness can match its horizons,” he murmured. “Your mouth, the light and shadow of a rose. ” ^[3]

Harry’s mouth parted and Severus could feel his hot breath against his fingertip. He kept it there for one beat longer before he took his hand away, swallowing roughly. He could still feel the exact texture of it against his finger. Harry tracked his hand as he put it back on the counter and Severus realized, a little shocked, that his pupils were wide and dark.

“That’s—” Harry cleared his throat. “That doesn’t sound like any poetry I know.”

“Not all poetry is stuffy nonsense,” Severus said. He felt like he was watching this all happen outside of his own body. “Good poetry—the best poetry—is built on seduction.”  

Harry’s fingers twitched. He was leaning into Severus, eyes focused on his face. His hair curled against his temple, damp with sweat. 

“Oh?” he asked. “I don’t know if I believe that.”

Severus’s eyes narrowed. That sounded like a challenge—and if there was one thing Severus never turned down, it was a challenge. He leaned in until their noses brushed. This close, he could see the faint freckles along Harry’s face, the uneven curl of his eyelashes. His eyeliner was smudging at the corners. 

“I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair,” he said. Harry went so still that Severus wasn’t even sure he was breathing. “Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day. I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps. ” He took a deep breath, heart beating a steady drum against his ribs. “I hunger for your sleek laugh, your hands the color of a savage harvest, hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails. I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.” ^[4]

For a long, breathless moment it was as if all sound in the pub had disappeared. There were only Harry’s wide eyes and flushed face, his warm, red mouth. Severus couldn’t feel his legs, his fingers. Harry’s pupils nearly eclipsed the green of his irises, so wide and dark. 

A whistle shattered the moment. Severus threw himself backward, heart hammering. Harry was still frozen in place, dazed. 

“Well, well.” Severus had never hated anyone like he hated Macmillan at that moment. “I guess you do have some moves. I can see when I’ve been beaten.” He clapped a hand on Severus’s shoulder, heavy and hard enough to jolt him. His eyes were hard but his mouth was wry. “No hard feelings, right? See you around, Harry.”

He disappeared into the crowd. Severus watched him go because he couldn’t bear to look at Harry. Silently, he dispersed the glamour he’d been wearing. 

His self-loathing and fury were mounting. He’d been so careful, he thought savagely. He’d kept everything locked away as was proper, as was right, and how he’d tipped his hand. What had possessed him? Had his self-control eroded so entirely that all it took was the flimsiest of excuses to allow all of his held back feeling to come hurtling out of him? 

He dared a look. Harry was staring at the bar, his shoulders hunched. His teeth were set in his bottom lip, biting down hard.

“Harry—”

Harry stood abruptly. Severus watched with rising horror as he looked everywhere but Severus, rubbing his arm and shifting from foot to foot.

“I think!” he said. His voice was low and hoarse. He cleared his throat. “I think I need some fresh air. I’ll be—I’ll be right back.”

“Severus!” Severus looked at Rosmerta, who scowled at him, several mugs balanced in her hands. “Why’s Harry look so upset, then? What’d you do?”

“I—”

Rosmerta’s eyes narrowed. “Hm,” she said. “You’d better go after him.”

Severus almost protested—all he wanted to do was slink back to his flat and pretend this night had never happened—but he found himself nodding and standing. He made his way for the door, ignoring the rough pushing of the increasingly rowdy crowd, and exited into the still, cold night air. 

It took him a moment to find Harry. He was crouched against the exterior wall of the Three Broomsticks, head buried in his hands. Severus’s heart dropped to his toes.

“Harry?” he asked, stepping towards him.

Harry jumped, shooting to his feet. His eyes, to Severus’s horror, were shining with tears. Severus took another step forward, stomach twisting uneasily. Had he hurt Harry in some way? Upset him? He’d never seen Harry cry before and the sheer thought of it unnerved him.

“Severus!” Harry sounded rough, uneven. “I’m sorry, but I think I’d better go home—”

Severus reached for Harry’s elbow, capturing it before he could start walking away. Panic was descending on him. 

“What is wrong with you?” he demanded, sounding much angrier than he felt. 

Harry’s back straightened. “What d’you mean what’s wrong with me?” he snapped. “Weren’t you a part of that scene back there?”

“It was just a bit of harmless flirting, Harry,” he said, hoping his steady voice would hide the lie. At least Harry didn’t look like he was about to break down anymore. He rather looked like he wanted to kick Severus in the head now. “I hardly think it’s worth this—this fuss you’re throwing!”

“Fuss!” Harry glared at him with complete outrage. “Fuck you, Severus! You know—I—And what were you trying to pull, anyway? Swooping in like that, making that ridiculous bet with that guy!”

“I was simply trying to help you, you dullard. Did you even know who that man was?”  

“Some prick politician, who cares—”

“He’s a frontrunner for the Minister, Harry! You might not care, but he certainly could have made your life difficult if you upset him by turning him down without cause. This way—”

“Oh, come off it, he was hardly going to do anything like that!”

“Powerful men do not respond well to being rejected! This way, at least, he could place the blame on someone safely anonymous!”

Harry bared his teeth. “So that’s all it was, was it? Part of the con?”

“Well—”

“Holding my hand and whispering—whispering poetry at me and telling me how beautiful I am—it was all just  to make your clever ruse work, Severus?” 

Severus shifted uncomfortably. He could hardly tell Harry the truth, could he? He cleared his throat.

“It had to be believable, of course—”

Severus jumped as Harry suddenly pushed at his chest, a hard shove that almost sent him teetering backward. When Severus didn’t let go of him, Harry did it again. 

“Fuck you, Severus!” he snapped. “I know I’m just some stupid kid to you, but I have feelings too, okay? You don’t get to just—use them against me like that! I thought we weren’t doing stuff like that to each other anymore!” 

“What are you going on about?” Severus caught Harry’s swinging fists with one hand, trying to keep them from raining down on him. “And stop pushing me, you feral little—”

“What I mean is pretending to say all those nice things and calling me beautiful and not meaning any of it, that’s—Merlin, Severus, that’s cruel, even for you.”

“Cruel? I was helping, how is that—”

“Because I’m in love with you, you idiot!”

Silence. Severus felt frozen in place as if someone had cast a spell on him. Harry’s wide, outraged eyes and downturned mouth filled his vision. He could only hear the rush of blood in his ears. 

“What?” His voice sounded thin, far away. “What did you say?”

“Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know.” Harry glared at him. His hair was curling against his temple, falling into his eyes and his cheeks were wet and pink from the cold. “I knew you weren’t interested, Severus, but rubbing my face in it like this is—” He sniffed and blinked rapidly. “It’s mean, okay? Merlin, I can’t believe—”

Severus had no words for the feeling that was bubbling up in his stomach, something so warm and light that it felt like he’d swallowed the sun. It spread to his chest and arms until even his fingers and toes seemed to tingle. He wasn’t sure what his face was doing, but Harry stilled when he looked up, mouth falling open. 

Severus moved his hand to cup Harry’s cold, wet cheek. Harry stared at him. His ridiculous eyelashes were clumped together, dragging across the delicate curve of his eye-socket as he blinked. His nose was pink. 

“Harry,” Severus said tenderly. “You are the stupidest person alive.”

Harry’s mouth dropped open in outrage. “You—!”

Severus dipped his head and kissed him, swallowing the building tirade. Harry gasped, mouth softening under his. His lips were slick and pliable and tasted faintly of mint. Severus cradled his face in his palm, feeling the minute shiver of his skin and the jump of his cheek. Harry’s hand, still on Severus’s chest, curled into his robes tightly enough that Severus could feel the sharp points of his knuckles against his collarbone. 

Severus didn’t know how much time had passed before he lifted his head. It felt like it could have been hours or seconds. Harry’s eyes were closed, his eyelashes inky against his cheek. His mouth was flushed, still parted. Severus swept his thumb over that sweet bottom lip and Harry shivered. 

“Only an idiot would believe me to be indifferent,” Severus said. His voice was hoarse and low. “But, to be fair, I’ve known you to be an idiot for years.”

Harry’s eyes opened. Severus’s heart did something strange, a leap or a stutter. Harry’s eyes had always been beautiful, but they were practically lit up from within, so bright it hurt to look at them directly. 

“You really…?” 

Severus pressed his mouth to Harry’s brow, cold and smooth. Then again, gently, just above his eye. 

“I really,” he said. “How could you not know it?”

“But if you—if you really—Severus, why keep quiet about it this whole time? I thought I was going mad!”  

Severus shook his head. “Harry, I have never thought—I would never have dreamed—” He cleared his throat. “I believed you wished to be my friend only.”

“What?” Harry couldn’t seem to make up his mind if he wanted to be indignant or deliriously happy. It made him sound giddy. “And you’re calling me an idiot?”  

Severus pulled back to look down at the brat’s irritating, endearing face. “I beg your pardon.” 

“Severus.” Harry gave him a patronizing stare that was belied by his twitching mouth. “I went to China for your Yule present. I spend almost every day at your flat. I made you be my date last year for the ball and I wanted you to dance with me. I learned potions for you.”

Severus frowned. “You never said anything.”

“Neither did you.”

“Did you seriously believe I would let just anyone invade my life the way you have, Harry?” Harry’s eyes flashed. “Or touch me as much as you do? All of your little friends seemed to realize my feelings!” 

“What?” 

Severus smirked. “Mrs. Weasley-Granger was quite explicit in what should happen to me if I hurt you,” he said. Harry’s mounting outrage was hilarious. “I admit to being impressed by her ruthlessness. Did she really set my robes on fire during your first year?”

“She did,” Harry said. “And I’ll tell you all the other rules she broke too, because I’ve decided we’re breaking off our friendship immediately.”

“Now, now. Don’t be so hasty.”

“She could’ve told me! I’ve been whining to her for over a year about—” 

Harry stopped short. He flushed again and looked away from Severus’s face. Severus smiled. That odd, warm glow hadn’t completely left him—he felt, for the first time in many years, like he was truly invincible. He leaned in again, running a careful hand through Harry’s hair, reveling in actually being able to put action to a thought that had been hovering in the back of his mind for so long. Harry shivered, eyes going lidded. 

“Over a year, you say?” Severus asked. 

“Don’t be so smug,” Harry snapped at him. He was pouting a little. “I didn’t really know what it was until recently, anyway.”   

“Ah yes. Miss Weasley warned me that you might be rather oblivious to any romantic advances. She did advise me on several strategies—”

“Oh my god.”

Severus laughed. It felt good to do so, freeing. When he looked back down, Harry was smiling up at him, eyes crinkled at the corners. He was beautiful and open and there. Severus could hardly believe it wasn’t a dream, some fantasy that would fade upon waking. 

“I did not take her up on it,” he said. “I did not think… I had any right to this.”

Harry’s warm expression shifted. Carefully, he reached up and ran a soft, reverent finger from Severus’s temple to his chin. He lifted his face and Severus met his mouth in a gentle kiss. Harry looked bright again as they parted and tapped his finger against Severus’s jaw. 

“You know, you still haven’t told me exactly what this is,” he said. 

Severus blinked. “What are you talking about? Obviously—”

“I’m just saying, I declared my love and devotion for everyone to hear and you just called me an idiot.”

Severus gaped, outraged, but Harry’s sly smile betrayed him. What a cheeky little sod, Severus thought with mixed amusement and indignation. Well, two could play at that game. 

“How rude of me,” he said in a dry voice. Harry nodded sagely, eyes twinkling. “Shall I rectify things?” 

He dipped his head until his face hovered just over Harry’s, their noses brushing. Harry’s pupils dilated, mouth parting. Severus smiled and heard Harry’s breath catch.

“Harry Potter,” he said, lowering his voice to a silky whisper. Harry shivered. “You really are… the biggest idiot I’ve ever met.”

Harry broke into laughter. Severus planted a swift, sharp kiss on his mouth, pulling back with a smirk. 

“So that’s how it’s going to be, huh?” Harry asked, still laughing. “Slytherins! You wouldn’t know romance if it bit you on your—”

“Harry.” Severus took his chin. “It seems I’ve developed a great fondness for idiots.”

“Is that right?”

“For one idiot in particular.”

“Oh, yeah? I wouldn’t happen to know this idiot, would I?” 

“He looks rather like you,” Severus said. Harry’s mouth trembled even as he pretended to look serious. “He’s annoying and cheeky and he has no imagination about potions whatsoever. He tries my patience every day and insists on ordering me birthday cake when I’ve specifically said I don’t want birthday cake.” Severus took a deep breath. “The fact that I love him anyway must be a sign that I was a saint in another life, truly.”

He couldn’t look directly at Harry’s beaming face. He cleared his throat instead, looking over his shoulder.

“Rosmerta will wonder what’s become of us,” he said.

“Oh shit.”

Severus whipped around. “Harry?” 

Harry rubbed at his cheek. “We have to go back inside,” he said apologetically. “Um. Probably right now.”

Severus’s eyes narrowed. “...Dare I ask why?”

Harry’s faux innocent look was not particularly reassuring. “Someone may have ordered a cake for you and Rosmerta may be bearing it to our table so we can sing a certain birthday song—”

“Potter!” 

Harry danced out of Severus’s grasping hands, laughing. “Come on, Severus, it will do you good to celebrate your birthday like a normal person! And it’s a strawberry cake!”

Severus glowered. He should never have admitted a weakness for strawberry to Harry in passing. The little brat acted nice, but he had all the ruthlessness of a war general. Harry inched closer, looking a little mischievous. His eyes darkened.

“If you do this,” he said in a soft, wheedling voice, “we can go back to your flat after.”

Severus’s heart picked up speed. “And whatever would we do there, Mr. Potter?” he drawled.

Harry pressed a lingering, affectionate kiss to Severus’s cheek. “Practice poetry,” he whispered.

(In the dimness of his bedroom, Severus pressed a kiss to the small of Harry’s back, tracing the scattered freckles there with his tongue. Harry swore, squirming. 

“My body in your body,” he whispered against his warm, sweaty skin. “Spring of night, my tongue of sun in your forest.”^[5]

“I hate you, I hate you—” 

“Oh? I thought you wanted to practice poetry, Harry?” Severus lifted his head. Harry glared at him over his shoulder, so flushed he almost looked feverish. “I’m simply trying to give you what you asked for.”

“You bastard, get on with it—” 

“Let me have thee whole, all, all, be mine. That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest of love, your kiss—those hands, those eyes divine. ”⁶

“Severus!” 

Severus smirked. “I’m just dedicated to giving you a thorough education,” he said and bit lightly at the base of Harry’s spine. 

Harry cried out, squirming. “Fucking asshole —!” 

“You say such sweet things in bed, Harry,” Severus murmured. “Your body will haunt mine—tender, delicate, your lovemaking, like the half-curled frond of the fiddlehead fern in forests, just washed by sun.”^[7]

Harry twisted. “If you keep whispering poetry in my ear instead of fucking me, I’m going to go find that Macmillan bloke—”

Severus slide up his back and bit his earlobe, just hard enough to make Harry shudder. “Hush, I’m not finished,” he said. “Now, where was I?"

Harry turned to press his mouth against Severus’s, twining their tongues into a messy, wet kiss. Severus breathed into him, drank him in. He still couldn’t really believe it was happening. As Harry pulled away, gasping, Severus kissed the sweet curve of his ear.

“I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,” he whispered against the delicate skin there, “or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as one loves certain obscure things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.”^[8]

“Severus,” Harry said, fervent and feverish. “Severus.”

Poetry, Severus decided, could wait.)

Severus’s flat was quiet and dark as he padded into the kitchen. He wore only a light robe and shivered at the cool air leaking in through the cracks of the window; the temperature had dropped overnight and he could see snow falling even more thickly outside. He paused by the window to re-cast the warming charm that kept the chill at bay and found himself watching the snow for a long moment.

There was a time, not so long in the past, that he would never have thought he would live to see another birthday or have enough peace to simply watch snow fall. He thought of Harry, still sleeping in bed and his heart thrummed. So many changes.

Severus braced his head against the cold glass. The streets below were abandoned and dark. This late, it almost felt like he was alone in the world. 

“I wonder what you’d think, Albus,” he murmured to himself. “Of what I’ve become.”

He didn’t know how long he stood there, watching the snow. At some point, he heard soft footsteps behind him. He didn’t turn or acknowledge Harry until a warm body draped itself over his back, Harry’s chin digging hard into the meat of his shoulder, his soft hair tickling Severus’s cheek.

“All right?” he asked, voice low and rough, sleepy still. “You’ve been gone a while.”

Severus turned and caught him in the circle of his arms. Harry stayed there without struggle, blinking up at him. He had red marks on his cheek from the pillow and the love bites on his neck were going purple already. His hair was a terrible mess. Severus smoothed it out with one hand.

“I’m quite all right,” he said. 

Harry smiled at him. “Okay,” he said. “Come back to bed, Severus. It’s cold without you.”

Severus pressed a kiss to his forehead, lingering there to breathe in the scent of his skin. 

“Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, let’s go.”

Harry took his hand and led him back to bed.