Archive of Our Own

Prologue: Five times Harry attempted to befriend Severus Snape…

28th May 1998 – Attempt 1

In Harry’s mind, it was going to go like this: Professor Snape would wake up from his coma, find out what Harry had done on his behalf, and thank him.

And then maybe not immediately, but over time, they’d strike something of a friendship before becoming friends. The kind of friend who shared jokes, who sent letters to each other while on holiday – or better, went on holiday together. Who looked to each other for advice and felt safe in speaking freely. Who chose each other, deliberately, even when there were other options. Who could rely on each other, unthinkingly, selfishly.

However, this was how it actually went: Professor Snape woke up, found out Harry had spoken up in his defence at his trial, and immediately attempted to curse Harry, with Harry’s own wand, which he’d angrily grabbed when he couldn’t find his own.

The incident had been covered up for Snape’s own good.

Harry felt a sense of resentment, but it was hard to stay that way when the only reason the curse had failed was the red, raw skin of Snape’s throat that had surprised Snape as he tried to speak. The damage might never fully heal.

Harry couldn’t stop thinking about Snape’s neck. The stark red of the healing jagged skin against his otherwise pale complexion. There was a vulnerability about it; a reminder that Severus Snape was human. It invoked a twisty sensation in Harry’s chest that felt nothing like pity and more like curiosity.

29th June 1998 – Attempt 2

Harry stayed away from the hospital until Severus’s release, since visiting only seemed to cause the man to become irritable. Harry missed watching over him. He missed the small sense of pride that came from the fact that Snape lived, and Harry was a helping hand in that. So many lives had been lost and Harry’s heart was clenched and withering when he thought of them all, but at least Snape had lived. Snape was vivid proof that Harry didn’t just get people killed. Snape was a living, breathing example that Harry could find and help people, too.

A month after he woke up in hospital, Snape was released. Harry went to visit Snape at his home the next day with a basket full of food.

This was his chance to make a difference and begin his friendship with Snape – with Severus. To start something between them that could, if handled properly, be truly meaningful.

The door was slammed in his face.

When Harry went back a few days later, Severus had left the basket of food to rot by the front door rather than accept it.

It should have been a sign to Harry that he needed to stop trying, but instead, he took it as a good thing because Severus hadn’t exploded or burnt the offering. All in all, Harry ended that attempt at getting closer to Severus with more confidence than he started.

7th February 1999 – Attempt 3

Severus’s health, not always the best after his brush with death, took a drastic turn for the worse the following year. Harry, with nothing better to do (and boy, didn’t McGonagall know it), was drafted in to cover Severus’s lessons with the lower years.

“You’re a glorified babysitter, Potter,” she instructed. “Just stop them from blowing up each other and you’ll be doing a fine enough job,” Professor McGonagall instructed Harry firmly. She was trying to reassure him in her own way, but mostly she just succeeded in making him feel more nervous than he was before. “Anything you manage to teach them is a bonus.”

“I’m happy to stay for as long as you need me, Professor,” Harry said, trying his best to hide his unease. Recruitment at Hogwarts, especially for the Defence job, had always been a sticky issue. Harry found it hard to believe that he was the best candidate for the job; but with that role, reality was that he was probably the only candidate.

The only N.E.W.T Harry had left Hogwarts with in the end had been for Defence Against the Dark Arts, which was given to him on an honorary basis for what he’d done during the war. Harry had since then put in the work going over on his own what he should have learned. From there, he’d taught himself a lot more about the topic. It gave him something to do when he was rattling around his home at Grimmauld Place, unable to decide what career he wanted to pursue.

And then there was the new Headmistress McGonagall, handing Harry an opportunity on a silver platter to actually use that knowledge.

When Severus was feeling better, McGonagall invited both him and Harry to tea one Sunday afternoon.

“Severus? Aren’t you going to tell Harry what we talked about?”

Severus, looking pale and sickly still, looked at Harry over the edge of his teacup and gave him a nod.

“Severus!” she said sharply. “We discussed this!”

“You discussed it, I listened.”

Looking perfectly fed-up and annoyed, McGonagall looked at Harry. “We’d like you to stay on and help with a few classes. The hope is that Severus may regain his health better if he had more time to rest.”

“I get plenty of rest,” Severus mumbled.

Professor McGonagall – or Minerva as she insisted he call her in private – said they could make things work around Harry’s schedule, since she knew they were pulling him in out of nowhere.

They both ignored Severus’s snort of derision; Harry was kind of with Severus on this one, it wasn’t like he had much of a life to be interrupted. Unemployed and missing a purpose, Harry thought that she was doing him the favour, not the other way around. A full-time job might actually keep Harry out of the newspapers, and out of trouble.

Minerva and Harry discussed the details and practicalities of the proposed set-up. What Harry would cover, what Severus would cover.

“He can take my extracurricular duties on board as well,” was all Severus offered up, just as the discussion was wrapping up.

Minerva raised an eyebrow, and then nodded approvingly. “Very well.”

Harry followed Severus down the spiral staircase from the headteacher’s office on their way out.

“Perhaps,” Harry said, catching Severus’s attention by putting his hand on Severus’s arm, “you might want to have a pot of tea together once I’m settled in properly?” Maybe this was it? After the other failed attempts, maybe this was how they finally became friends?

Severus took a step back, forcing Harry to drop his hand.

“I don’t drink tea,” Severus said bluntly.

“Right.” Harry let his gaze drift elsewhere. “I suppose that’s that, then.” Severus had just drunk most of a pot to himself, but what else was there to say? The words still hit harder than they had any right to given the state of things between them.

The subtext was clear: Fuck off, Potter. I will never drink tea with you alone.

12th April 1999 – Attempt 4

Harry taking on all of Severus’s extracurricular activities resulted in him running Severus’s detentions. Every. Single. One.

Harry found himself contemplating how Severus had managed it all over the years. He did his best to try and keep up with the volume, but even during Harry’s youth he couldn’t recall Severus assigning quite so many detentions as he did these days. The burden of running multiple sessions, every evening of the week, started getting to Harry pretty soon.

When Harry finally raised it with her, Minerva tutted and agreed she’d speak to Severus. Something about half of the third years having been in detention that week alone caught her attention.

Severus had also signed himself up for a multitude of extracurricular activities on the very day Harry had agreed to help him out with his duties. This was how Harry found himself running the Magical Knitting club, supervising Hogsmeade visits, feeding the Giant Squid and also zooming around the top of the Great Hall on his broom, cleaning it for cobwebs every few days.

With Minerva’s involvement, Severus was thereafter required to attend at least some of these events with Harry, under the guise of training and nurturing their new teacher. If Severus was feeling well enough to go back to brewing the school’s potions, he was well enough to assist Harry with these additional duties that he’d so keenly volunteered for.

Severus wasn’t on great terms with the new Potions Professor, purely for her chirpy and polite manner (apparently that wasn’t “how it was done”), and had requested taking back the Hospital Wing brewing himself.

“I didn’t appreciate until I joined the faculty how high the safety rating was in your classes compared to other institutions,” Harry whispered, attempting a casual tone.

They were supervising a detention together, which meant Severus was reading a book and Harry was making sure the gathered students were doing homework as directed. They were both sitting at the front of the classroom, while the students had congregated at desks at the back, as far away from their teachers as possible.

Harry was so overly aware of every movement from Severus. Every turn of a page. The way he shuffled his feet under the chair he was sitting on. The quiet, intoxicating way Severus occupied every space he was in.

Despite many other attempts to break the barriers around his colleague, Harry remained at arm’s length. But here, in their shared domain of six months, he felt up to trying again.

“We don’t need to discuss this,” Severus declared bluntly.

The calmness of the words, more than the content of them, made something hot and sharp twist in Harry’s chest. Harry finally found himself at that place he’d hoped to avoid: his breaking point.

“Why not?”

Severus ignored him and kept reading.

“Why not, Severus? Why don’t we need to discuss it?” Harry let out a huff of annoyance. “Why won’t you have a single conversation with me?”

Harry jumped when he saw that one of the students was looking up at him from his desk. They hadn’t been talking loud enough for the students to hear, but at least one of the students in detention had noticed something was up.

“I’ll listen when you actually say something worth listening to. Stop trying to suck-up. No amount of arse kissing is going to undo the past,” Severus said calmly, turning a page of his book.

“Arse kissing? What are you on about? If it wasn’t for –”

“Let me guess? We would have all been dead if it wasn’t for you?” Severus interjected. “You didn’t do me a favour, Potter. I don’t owe you anything, not even a conversation.”

Harry sat, aghast.

“I never said you did!” he said, his voice rising despite his best attempts. Sure, he’d like one, but not because Severus felt obliged!

“I didn’t ask you to save me. This act of yours, being all chummy,” Severus turned to look at Harry, glaring at him, “it needs to stop. There is nothing special between us.”

Severus’s words hit and left Harry feeling breathless.

They were survivors together, though; they had dealt with Voldemort and Dumbledore. They were both meant to die but had lived, and there was no one else who could possibly understand! How dare Snape say such an absurd thing! Harry, who had always daydreamed as a child that some unknown relatives might appear and rescue him, had thought recently that maybe he and Severus might become close. People who could talk to each other about the nightmares, the panic, the stress of living when so many others died.

“It isn’t an act!” Harry shouted, heart beating hard in his chest. It felt too pathetic to say, but he knew there was something different there.

At this point, the students definitely noticed that something was amiss.

“You can supervise the rest of this detention alone,” Severus hissed. “You’re disrupting my reading time.” He put a bookmark in his pages and stood up, storming out of the room.

If Harry had left it there, things might have been fine. But Harry didn’t always know when it was best to leave things alone. It felt like if he didn’t fight for this now, there was no further hope for the future.

By the time Harry caught up with Severus outside the entrance to the Great Hall, he was in despair.

Words were hurled by both parties. Hands clenched tighter and tighter around wands as they carried on their previous line of conversation.

It didn’t really matter who lifted their wand first, or whose curse hit first, but by the time they were both bound and subdued by their colleagues, Harry felt an emotion that seemed almost like heartbreak.

12th April 1999, Continued – Attempt 5

Minerva was disappointed in both of them. Severus took her reproach with a stone-faced look. Harry felt his neck heat with a mix of anger and deep embarrassment.

He felt like a student once more. Harry had to remind himself he wasn’t going to be expelled; this time, he might get fired.

“And you left the students in the classroom! Why didn’t you dismiss them first if you were going to run around like a bunch of toerags fighting?” She was gasping for breath between lecturing them both.

“Are you quite done?” Severus said in a bored tone.

“What is wrong with you?” Minerva asked quite earnestly, looking between Harry and Severus.

“I tried to be friends with him, that’s all.”

Severus shot him a scathing look. “He’s been trying to wage psychological warfare on me. Make me feel grateful for his heroics.”

“Only someone as twisted as you would think friendship was psychological warfare,” Harry snorted. “But don’t worry! I give up, I give up entirely. Let’s just ignore each other as you so clearly prefer.”

Minerva looked like she wanted to bang their heads together and make them go serve detention with Filch.

“Do not start this again! You put a hole in the Great Hall doors. Do you have any idea of how thick that wood is? Or how well protected it is? If magic of that magnitude had landed on either of you, you would have died.”

“It was him!” both Harry and Severus snapped at once.

Harry couldn’t, with all honesty, say it hadn’t been him. He had a very clear idea that it had been a combination of both of them, and Severus probably knew it as well.

“You two are too strong to be going around acting like this! I have never in all my time here seen something so utterly ridiculous between two members of the faculty!”

Her nostrils were flared, and Harry felt the shame was now outweighing the anger within him.

“I’ll submit my resignation if you prefer that to simply firing me, Minerva,” Severus said breezily.

Her eyes narrowed and Harry’s sense of approaching danger heightened.

“You think I’m letting you leave?” she hissed. “No, Severus! Both of you shall remain. Here, where I can keep an eye on you. But I will be making you sign an agreement of compliance that says you two are to remain civil and be respectful of each other and of the rules that govern our school.”

Harry swallowed. “And if we break the contract?”

The ends of Minerva’s lips turned up in a way that made Harry lean back further into his chair.

“Well, Mr Potter, you shall be the new left door into the Great Hall, and Severus shall accompany you as the right door. Do not test me!”

So, after all his efforts to try and befriend Severus, Harry found himself obliged to ignore him. Any further acts of violence would be met with a minimum month-long Transfiguration of the Headteacher’s choice.

“That is illegal,” Severus pointed out, sounding to Harry’s ear to be the tiniest bit impressed.

“This is the only power I hold over either of you, and I’m not afraid to use it. You’ll both end up in Azkaban with adjoining cells if I don’t try and stop this now, or dead.”

Harry hung his head.

“It wouldn’t have got that far,” Severus said casually. Minerva did not look like she believed him.

She nagged them both until they conceded to sign the parchment she’d put before them, in which they agreed to her suggested punishment should they break the rules.

“I really was just trying to be his friend, Professor,” Harry said earnestly, after Severus had signed and left already, claiming he had better things to do with his time. “I thought… given everything… he’s one of the few who seemed to understand.” He thought that in returning to Hogwarts there might be an instant camaraderie because of the war.

His schoolmates all went through the same thing, but their lives hadn’t been defined by the conflict in quite the same way. It haunted them – but it didn’t seem to define them.

“Give it time.”

“You think he might come around?” Harry felt hopeless.

She nudged the pen into his hand and watched as he signed on the line next to Severus’s signature.

“He might, he might not. It isn’t for you to decide in either case, Harry. Being respectful of his boundaries is the best advice I can offer. If he reaches out to you, I would be grateful if you took it upon yourself to accept, but otherwise I think cordial is the best you can hope for.”

Harry left, her words echoing. Perhaps he had been the issue all along. Harry felt rotten about himself, and everything.

As Harry prepared for bed, he was thinking about how best to apologise for his actions.

What made Harry feel really disgusted with himself was that he still believed, deep down, the two of them could be friends. That they could become comfortable mutually consoling each other with everything that had happened.

He truly felt as arrogant as Severus had ever accused him of being. Was he just being as childish as Draco Malfoy had been when Harry had denied his hand in friendship at a tender age?

Harry got into bed, tired from the day’s events.

Sleep did not come easily. Harry stayed awake thinking through everything endlessly. Thinking of the times as a child he’d so dearly wanted even just a single friend. Dudley would push them away, encouraged by his parents.

At school, Harry found Ron and Hermione, but beyond that, friendship was a little more nebulous.

Come 2 am, Harry started writing a letter to Severus to explain everything from his perspective, and more importantly, to offer his sincere apologies.

I think after seeing your memories, I found it impossible to go back to how I felt about you before. You existed as you always had, but my perspective of you had changed fundamentally. Not that it mattered – as to you, I was and am still the same petulant brat.

Why hadn’t he just said that to him at the time?

There’s no one quite like you to look up to. Someone who went through it all and still remained strong. Someone who lived life, knowing they were making a difference.

I admire you, Severus. You kept going, and still keep going, despite what everyone thinks about you. Despite what happened, you’ve managed to remain true to yourself. I want to learn to be that resilient.

I didn’t realise until recently how much this meant to me, how much I needed someone in my life like you.

I’m sorry for everything I did that caused you harm in any way.

Call on me if you ever need me; I promise I will be there for you.

Sincerely yours,

Harry Potter

Finally, feeling purged of complicated emotions, Harry felt he could sleep. These were all things he didn’t think he could bring himself to ever say to Severus so bluntly, so it was a relief to finally get them out. It also gave him some much-needed perception at last that he had been a bit self-important to think that just because of how Severus lived his life, that he had to be kind to Harry. And maybe this was something Harry just had to make peace with.

Aware of how emotionally taxing it might be, Harry had no intention of actually sending the letter. It was enough to have written it.

Unfortunately for him, there was a house-elf by the name of Noobie who didn’t know about Harry’s decision. When Noobie came to pick up Harry’s clothes from his hamper sometime in the night, he found one discarded sock near the writing table, and while looking around for any others, he happened to see the letter addressed to Professor Snape on Harry’s desk.

Quietly, efficiently, and without hesitation, Noobie followed the protocol his mentor Shippie had taught him and delivered the letter to Professor Snape’s desk.

In the morning, Harry looked for the letter and came up short. He checked the desk, his bedside table, then with a growing urgency, every space in the room. When his panic was finally settling enough to let him remember he was a wizard, he tried to summon the letter, but still nothing appeared.

Uneasy, Harry could only conclude that he had, in fact, dreamed the whole process of writing the letter. Regardless, the clarity he got from “writing” it remained. Harry would leave Severus alone for as long as Severus wanted.

And then Severus had to go and confuse it all by sitting next to him at breakfast.

***

And One Time Harry didn’t have to try to be Friends – Six Weeks Later

The Great Hall was home to a false harmony between two of the teachers. Their battleground, these days, the hallowed halls of Hogwarts.

Morning sunlight bathed the inhabitants. The students were, as the custom had become, seated at random between the tables, with friends regardless of their house. Truces between the Hogwarts houses had been informally negotiated, unlike the truce between Professors Potter and Snape, which involved a contract, signed in blood. Well, it had been signed in regular black ink, but Minerva had made it clear they should feel like it was in blood.

Monday had become Harry’s favourite day of the week. Monday mornings specifically held a special, spiteful joy. It was where two of the professors put on their best show. Harry and Severus had become experts at keeping to the exact terms of their behaviour contracts without actually keeping to the spirit of the rules.

It had started one morning when Severus chose to sit next to Harry at breakfast. This change had disrupted the status quo, forcing other members of staff to move around as well. Severus hadn’t actually spoken to Harry that morning, though, so Harry kept his self-made promise and didn’t speak to Severus first.

By the time this had gone on for a few days in silence, Harry started to see it for what it must be: a trap. It had to be a calculated move to provoke him into breaking the agreement they’d signed! It had to be.

If Severus was going to play games, Harry was going to match him. If they were going to get punished for fighting, they were going to mutually take each other down as they went. This had led to Harry’s latest policy when dealing with Severus: public politeness.

“Professor Snape!” Harry called out bright, chirpy, intentionally at his most annoying. Though it required getting up especially early, Harry had once again managed to nab the seat next to Severus’s normal place – a sacrifice entirely worth it. From this seat, Harry could enact this particularly egregious piece of theatre. “How was your weekend?” Harry was spreading marmalade on toast and it was lathered on so thickly that Severus was grimacing at it.

Severus, it turned out, hated marmalade. Even having it on toast was now a small act of rebellion and spite.

“The usual: ritualistic sacrifice followed by cocoa.”

Ignoring Harry hadn’t stopped Harry from asking his questions; it hadn’t stopped him from being overly, agonisingly polite towards Severus. Indulging banal conversation was the new path Severus had decided to try. Recently, his answers had gotten blunter and more fantastically off-putting.

“The normal, then? Well, if it was fun the first time, nothing wrong in keeping to the tried and tested methods for entertaining yourself.”

“You’re not going to ask me about the sacrifice?”

“I just assumed it was a jolly good time. Though I imagine it must have been a touch boring after the weekend before last,” Harry pondered, “when you were, what was it? Breeding horses and dragons together for that friend of yours.”

Severus cast him a gaze from the side. Harry could feel it, that Severus was almost ready to pop. That he’d soon snap and then Harry could go innocently on his day, as Severus lost his cool. McGonagall, seated two chairs down from them, was observing their interaction at a distance, as she tended to.

“No, last weekend was the underwater fencing tournament. I was, of course, adjudicating. It’s fascinating the way the water changes things up. It was an exhausting experience.”

Harry’s follow-up questions about how long Severus could hold his breath were lost as droves of owls came in on schedule to the hall to deliver their load. He watched as Severus got his usual Monday morning bundle of newspapers. The dull thud as delivery after delivery was set before him by owls eager to be rid of their payload.

Harry’s singular Quidditch magazine, by comparison, did make him feel a little inadequate. Severus’s load was undoubtedly more impressive. It’d take him most of the week to read through them all, Harry knew from observing Severus. But this was why Monday mornings were so critical in their warfare, for there was only this brief period on a Monday morning at breakfast where Severus might entertain conversation. The rest of the week, Severus hid behind his paper-and-ink armour to separate him from the chatter.

The newspapers were gathered from all over the world and dispatched to him once a week; magical, Muggle, Severus read them all. If it weren’t for the fact that this habit had only begun as Harry joined the staff and started trying to make conversation, Harry would have thought Severus was searching for something within the pages.

Severus untied the string around the biggest pile – the Muggle newspaper bundle – with a deft hand, and set them out before him. Seemingly at random, he picked one up and started going through it, holding the paper up high enough to block himself off from anyone trying to even so much as talk to him.

“Any news of escaped toasters this week?” Harry asked with an attempt at joviality.

The rustle of the paper was all the response he got. The paper shield was up, and it was impenetrable.

With his time bothering Severus over for the morning, Harry set about focusing on his breakfast. And just like that, the week would carry on with them being in the same space, while completely ignoring one another. An atmosphere not maintained by warmth, but by contractual obligation.

Harry reached for the pumpkin juice, deciding he’d have just a little more. From the little travelling he’d done in the time before becoming a teacher at Hogwarts, Harry had discovered a love of many drinks, from guava to blueberry. Pumpkin juice, specifically Hogwarts’, remained the taste of home. Severus exclusively drank tea at breakfast though, and never pumpkin juice.

Harry couldn’t say when he’d realised he watched Severus closely at meal times. It might have been a hangover of his student days, when he always suspected his professor of being up to something. These days, Harry felt he was slightly more subtle in his monitoring. His habit of watching him – subtle or not, depending on who was commenting – was exactly the reason Harry noticed something was off in Severus’s reading so instinctively that morning.

Severus’s hand stilled on a page of one of his newspapers. It wasn’t a dramatic reaction. From sound alone, Harry could tell that Severus had stopped turning the pages. Mid-motion, his fingers crumpled the side of the pages he was holding before he abruptly closed the newspaper and folded it up.

Harry started eating his porridge with gusto, carefully trying to appear as though he hadn’t noticed something was different.

With a motion so swift it was almost violent, Severus banished all the newspapers still on the table. With the one he’d folded still in hand, he stood and fled from the hall without even his usual nod to Minerva.

Harry told himself with great conviction it was none of his business. Severus Snape did weird things all the time, and it was none of his business – as per the behaviour agreement. Really, staying out of Severus’s line of sight was the smart thing to do… Yet, his eyes rested on Severus’s now abandoned tea, still filled to the brim, and Harry found himself standing. He ignored the curious looks coming his way from Professor Flitwick and headed off in the direction Severus had left.

Harry reached the doors in time to see the back of Severus heading for the nearest courtyard door. If Harry continued further on towards him, Severus was bound to know he was following him. Harry knew there was nothing that would annoy his co-Defence teacher more than being followed. It was just that the newspaper that had brought out this reaction in Severus, well, Harry had managed to get a glance at the name.

It was the local newspaper for where his mother – and Severus too – had grown up, the Cokeworth Herald. Harry could only think of one reason why looking at the back pages of that particular publication might have left Severus in a state of subtle distress. There was a particular section squeezed into the back of most newspapers, Hermione had told Harry once when they were on the run, the section you went to for both the happiest and saddest kinds of news.

With a bravery he sometimes forgot he could possess, Harry opened the courtyard door. Severus was to be found sitting on a stone bench under a beautifully blossoming ornamental cherry tree. Pink petals swirled gently from the tree and were covering Severus, who sat in icy solitude. Harry’s chest squeezed at the mix of emotions the sight stirred in him.

Severus looked over eventually and locked eyes with Harry.

“Is there anywhere in this infernal castle you will leave me alone?”

“What happened?” Harry asked softly, walking forward like one might towards a skittish wild animal in pain.

Severus’s jaw tightened, as did his grip on the newspaper he’d taken with him.

“Nothing that concerns any of our joint interests. You may rest easy. This has nothing to do with you.”

“I wasn’t worried about our joint interests,” Harry admitted, walking closer still. He considered then that maybe he should have brought with him some of Severus’s untouched breakfast, or some toast in a napkin.

“It appears my attendance is required this Saturday in Cokeworth at St Mary’s Church.” He looked down at the ground.

Harry sat down on the bench next to him, not wanting to force Severus to look up.

“A church? Right, right. I suppose that makes sense,” he said, keeping his voice as neutral as possible.

“My father, you see…” Severus’s expression was shuttered. His shoulders held tension in them though, tightly wound. “Well, it pertains to him. I need to be at the church, to do things… properly. I suppose it is the proper place for him to be. I wonder if that’s why he moved back there.”

The back of the newspaper was the announcements section: births, marriages and of course, deaths. To find out about the death of one’s father from a newspaper must have been a shock, even to someone as stoic as Severus.

Harry had long assumed Tobias Snape was already dead, though as he sat there under the blue sky in the little courtyard, pink petals falling and drifting lazily over the both of them now, he didn’t know why he ever assumed such a thing. Severus wasn’t that old, even now. Harry’s own poor luck, coming from generations dying young, didn’t extend to everyone, after all.

Harry swallowed. “Do you, I mean, you probably don’t, but under the circumstances, I thought –”

“Spit it out,” Severus demanded.

“Would you like some company? Do you want me to be there with you on the day? Or just to help with getting there and back?”

Harry tensed. He didn’t know why he’d offered, but it was a singular act of kindness he’d learned after the war surrounding funerals. Friends and family would gather around to help Apparate those grieving to the funeral sites to lessen the chances of splinching. There was rarely a fireplace to Floo to and organising a Portkey was a pain.

Severus was going to snap at him any moment now. Harry wondered what possessed him.

“Yes,” Severus said simply.

Harry blinked, not quite believing Severus was agreeing. “When? Where?”

“Saturday, 1 pm, St Mary’s Church, Cokeworth.”

“And you want me to, er,” Harry paused, “transport us?”

Severus was looking off into the distance. He let the silence hang between them. “Yes,” he said with conviction, “I think it would be best if you accompany me. Formal attire,” he added. “A suit, if you own such a thing? Muggle. Black, of course.”

“Of course.” Harry didn’t quite believe it even as he said it. That he offered was one thing, Severus accepting was not something he ever thought might happen. Harry was already trying to figure out where he’d get a Muggle suit from on such short notice, but he’d make it happen.

Severus inclined his head. “That would be acceptable.”

He brushed flower petals off his robes and stood. He then walked off as if nothing had happened, the single remaining newspaper tucked under his arm.

Harry watched him go. He had no idea what would await them at that church, but no one should have to attend their own father’s funeral alone.

***

Harry stood for a moment outside Severus’s door before knocking. He’d already tried on three shirts that morning, trying to find the one that seemed most suitable, and polished his shoes up a few times. Still, he tugged at his tie, trying to make sure it was straight. It felt odd after years of formal robes to be wearing formal Muggle clothes instead. They were more structured, especially around the shoulders, than he had gotten used to. The heat of the blossoming spring hadn’t warmed their part of the country, but Harry was sure he’d come to regret the heavy woollen jacket when they made it to Cokeworth.

Severus had said formalwear, and Harry wasn’t about to argue dress code with him on such a day.

Finally, Harry gathered the courage to lift his hand and knock on Severus’s door. There was a pause, and the sound of movement from within before Severus opened the door. He was dressed not too dissimilar to Harry, though his tie was a brilliant emerald green rather than the mournful black Harry had picked up from Edinburgh the day before.

The collar of the shirt sat tight up against the raised scars Severus’s throat still bore from that fateful day when Nagini had munched on him. It wasn’t Harry’s place to ask whether the scars might hurt from the fabric rubbing; he’d leave that to Severus to decide, but that didn’t stop the thought from running through Harry’s mind. He couldn’t help but want to save Severus from any potential discomfort. Maybe unbuttoning his shirt a little, so that the collar wasn’t pulled quite so tightly together.

Severus looked Harry up and down, his eyes lingering on his perpetually messy hair.

“You’ll do, I suppose,” he said at last.

Harry huffed. “High praise.”

“You’re most welcome,” Severus said, sliding out past Harry and towards the nearest exit from the castle. In his wake, Harry got the strong scent of bergamot and smoke that tended to follow in Severus’s path these days.

He followed a few steps behind as they walked down the main path, through the large metal front gates and just slightly further from there. The journey was in their usual state of silence. Not quite uncomfortable, and more than familiar by that point. Harry knew Severus well enough by now to know this wasn’t his angry, hostile silence. This was a contemplative silence. A deliberate silence that meant Severus didn’t want to converse, not a cold silence where Severus was punishing Harry.

“I’ve been studying maps of the area, and I think I have a good spot for us to Apparate to,” said Harry as they arrived at a suitable spot.

He held out his arm, expecting Severus to take it for their joint venture out of there to Cokeworth.

“I think it will be easier if I take the lead on navigating us there. I am more than familiar with the territory.” Severus remained composed, though his gaze was fixed ahead of them.

“Are you –” Harry began, then stopped. He didn’t know how to end his question without it coming across somewhat patronising. Was he in a sane enough state of mind to safely Disapparate both of them? Harry had barely had a chance to speak to Severus in the last week, since they taught at different times of day and tended not to end up at dinners together. Besides that, Harry wouldn’t have wanted to ask after Severus publicly; to do so would have been cruel to his colleague.

As far as Harry knew, only he was aware of the turmoil Severus was going through. He intended to keep Severus’s secret forever, just as he had with anything else personal he’d ever learned about his former professor.

“I’m fine,” Severus insisted. He rolled his eyes and offered up his arm for Harry to cling to. Apparition required closeness, but this had never stopped either of them from trying to get away with minimum contact.

Severus stepped nearer and, unusually, put his other hand on top of Harry’s, as if clamping onto him. If Harry had wanted to get away, he would have struggled to free his arm.

“This will suffice,” Severus said, and that was all the warning Harry got before they left Scotland.

Severus’s tight grip kept Harry upright as they arrived in the midst of a quiet hush of woodland. Tall, mature-looking trees were spread out as far as Harry could see around them. Their shade meant the air was actually a little cooler than Scotland had been.

The wind rustled through the leaves of the trees and bushes around them, though other than that, the woodland seemed tranquil enough.

“I suppose this is the woods to the south of the church?” Harry enquired, remembering from the maps he had been looking at of the area in preparation for the day.

Severus had already begun walking away, on a path only he seemed able to decipher.

They walked through bushes and under low-hanging branches for a while until they finally hit a more defined path.

“You’ve been here before?” Harry ventured.

“Many times,” Severus said, without his usual sharp edge. “The woods were always a restful place to retreat to.”

Something settled heavily in Harry’s chest. Had his mother been here too? Had they played in the woodlands together as children? He imagined Severus younger, thinner, smaller, climbing trees. Disappearing to the woods to escape whatever he was running from. Had he shown Lily his favourite hiding spots?

Harry tried to picture this idyllic moment. Would going to the woods be a source of comfort to Severus on such a day?

Harry cleared his throat. “Must have been a good spot for it.”

Severus glanced back at him briefly. “Indeed,” he said, walking onwards.

Eventually, the trees began to thin. Warmth infused the air when the shadow of the thick canopy petered out. In the distance, Harry could see the back of a church, with a graveyard between them and the rear of it.

While Harry thought they were going to walk up to the lychgate to their right, Severus surprised him by hopping over the dry stone wall ahead of them and entering the grounds that way.

“Come along, or we’ll be late,” Severus snapped, as Harry hesitantly looked over the wall. Severus had made it appear a simple task, but the stones were piled high and the construction didn’t seem the most stable.

Harry’s grace on a broom didn’t always translate to being good on his feet. Severus made the little hop over the wall appear easy, so Harry took a deep breath and gave it a go.

Severus had the grace not to laugh as Harry landed on his arse.

“Up,” Severus commanded, surprisingly offering up a hand. Harry grabbed it and then dusted off his bottom, hoping he hadn’t got grass stains on his trousers.

They meandered their way through the headstones, not in the most direct line. Harry followed closely behind Severus. Severus paused at one and dipped his head before he walked off quickly.

Harry hung around a second to see what Severus had stopped for.

Eileen Snape the dark stone had engraved with. Beloved mother.

With some quick maths, Harry worked out Severus must have been about 19 when she died.

Was the empty stretch of grass to the side where today they’d lay Tobias to rest?

Beloved mother and noticeably nothing else. Perhaps not, then.

By the time Harry caught up with Severus, it was to find him peering behind a corner at the side of the building to the front of the church. People were milling around, standing in small clusters, chatting jovially. Their clothes were the first thing to strike Harry as odd. All the funerals he’d ever experienced, people tended to wear rather dour clothes, but this assembled lot were… well, floral, cheerful.

“Good, he’s not here yet,” Severus murmured, suddenly sweeping from behind their hiding place and into the crowd. Harry, with confusion on the rise, followed more cautiously than before.

As they stood in front of the church, a woman dressed in a light blue dress hurried up to them.

“Severus! Why I never. I thought there’d be no chance of seeing you here today!”

“Hello, Aunt Val. I couldn’t miss such a momentous day.”

“Well, yes! Sometimes bygones must be bygones.”

“When are they due to arrive?”

“You haven’t had a programme yet? Here, take mine, I’ve read it enough by now.” She rummaged through her handbag and presented Severus with a folded piece of glossy paper. “Sometime soon, but knowing your father, the car will probably break down on the way,” she tutted. “Tight-fisted in every way! Even on a day like today. He’ll be so happy to see you here,” she said in a rush. “We all are, Severus.”

“I doubt it,” Severus said sedately, opening up the programme he’d been handed.

Order of Service, it read at the top. Harry glanced at it as Severus held it open. Something about its layout felt immediately wrong. It might have been the decor of doves and hearts, but Harry went from casually looking to reading all of it.

No hymns of mourning or readings about loss were inside. No grand, stoic picture of the man of the day. Instead, all Harry could see was:

Processional.

Exchange of Vows.

Reading by Colonel Fubster

Signing of the Register.

“And who might this young man be?” Aunt Val enquired, looking towards Harry, before Harry had a chance to ask what on earth was going on.

Since when was there an exchange of vows for a funeral?

“Ah,” Severus said innocently enough, “my lover,” he said smoothly, without any hint of shame or embarrassment.

Harry’s jaw dropped, but soon Severus had flung an arm around his shoulders and pulled him in close.

“Play along or else,” a threatening voice hissed in his ear.

Aunt Val paled considerably. “I see,” she said in a voice that definitely conveyed that she didn’t. “I must be getting back to… I have people over there to talk to, you see. Farewell, Severus.”

Severus snorted as soon as she had left them, and with her on the other side of the churchyard, Severus let his arm down again.

“Ha! Pathetic,” he crowed. “The smallest sniff of queer and she’s off.”

“This isn’t a funeral!” Harry said angrily. He’d deal with the fake lover stuff in a moment, but for now, he had a different axe to grind.

“No, I don’t suppose it is,” Severus said casually. “It has the makings of one, I dare say. This group usually only assembles for funerals; my aunt and uncle, a few cousins, and those others over there…” he waved to a selection of five who stood like statues, “I’m not clear on how we’re related, but they never miss a family event. If only because they want to be the first to take the silver candlesticks from the deceased’s home.”

“This is a wedding!” Harry was still processing.

“Quite observant today, aren’t we?”

“Severus!” Harry said angrily. “Explain yourself!”

“My father’s getting remarried. I thought to myself, what better way to let him down one last time than to turn up with my fake, much younger lover and ruin the day? He never let my mother divorce him, and died a widower, just so he could have a church wedding with his next wife. All my mother left me was her house, and he even stole that off me while I was in hospital after the war. I’m not planning to let him get away with it.”

“I am not, this isn’t –” Harry spluttered, unable to articulate his rage. He now knew he was being played, and was fully prepared to leave until Severus made a very compelling argument.

“Doesn’t the idea of pissing off a bunch of homophobes make the little Saviour happy?” Severus interjected. “Besides, if everything goes wrong, I’ll need you here as an alibi. An ex-Death Eater turns up at a Muggle wedding and causes a scene? I’ll end up in Azkaban if you leave me here alone. If the great Harry Potter is caught at the scene of a fight at a Muggle wedding, they’ll just assume you’re the victim.”

He said it with such determined conviction that Harry felt a sad pounding in his chest. Where was the lie? The authorities had never looked at Severus favourably, even after clearing him of the most heinous charges against him. They’d continued to make life difficult for him at every turn. To the point where he ended up back, teaching at Hogwarts, the one place that he could count on.

“If you’d just told me the truth from the beginning –” but that was when Harry’s eyes saw it – on the front of the programme Severus had been given: “Congratulations to TOBIAS and MARJORIE!”

Harry stopped.

“What was the full name of the bride?” An eerie, awful sense of doom was falling over Harry. These things shouldn’t happen, but Harry’s life, being what it was, they did seem to happen frequently.

Severus frowned at Harry’s expression and pulled a cutout of newspaper from an inside pocket. “Here,” he said, thrusting the scrap at Harry. “Do you know her?” Severus was looking at Harry intently, quickly figuring things out.

Harry smoothed out the newspaper clipping and read the whole thing. The name he dreaded was right there in crisp, black ink: Marjorie Dursley.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Harry groaned. “She’s my aunt, Aunt Marge.”

“Aunt? Potter, I knew your aunt. What foolish –”

“My other aunt, my uncle’s sister. They always made me call her Aunt Marge. Why – how – is she marrying your dad? She’s my biggest hater. None of this makes any sense!”

Their conversation of revelations was interrupted by the noise of tyres on gravel as an old-fashioned white car pulled up the church lane. Out of the back came a man Harry could already guess was Tobias Snape.

Tobias greeted those who had gathered outside the church warmly. He stopped suddenly when he saw Harry and Severus, standing off to the side as they had been.

“Dad,” Severus said. There was nothing warm to his tone.

Tobias gave him a short, satisfied nod. “Good,” he said firmly. “It’s a day for putting things aside, isn’t it? Not sure how you knew, but if you want to stay you’re welcome.”

Severus did not respond.

“I didn’t know how to invite you, but I wanted you to be here, Severus. You’re still my only son.”

Severus continued his stoic stare. Tobias seemed as unaffected as Harry was at this point by Severus trying to stare him down.

“Did you get a discount for it being your second time getting married here?” Severus hissed.

Tobias shifted guiltily. He chose to ignore Severus, and looking to change the topic, he latched onto Harry with open curiosity. He looked him up and down in a way that made Harry try to stand a little taller.

“And you are?”

“This is your fiancée nephew, as it happens,” Severus cut in to say, coating every word with poison, daring Tobias to bite.

“You’re Dudley?” Tobias said with some shock, while the suggestion hit Harry like a ton of bricks. “Marge will be delighted you could make it afterall. Good to meet you at last, Dudley.”

“This is Harry,” Severus cut in. “Marge’s other nephew. Or did she never mention she had more?”

While Tobias was still processing that information, Severus hit his father with the second blow, “And he is also my lover.”

The word dropped cleanly as it might have if Severus was just discussing the weather and had commented on it being a cloudy day.

“Huh.” Tobias didn’t seem to react much externally, but he looked between Harry and Severus in rapid succession.

Harry did his best not to look shocked himself, giving away the game.

“I’m Dudley’s cousin,” Harry explained, when it looked like Tobias was trapped in a loop of thought.

“And you and my son are…” he seemed stuck for words.

“Partners,” Harry said, adding to the lie. He was unsure where this was going, but if he could piss off dear Aunt Marge one last time, he figured it was worth playing along.

He’d been 13 the last time he’d seen her, as she inflated and headed towards the sky. Her words that day still burned. “And we are deeply in love. Fully committed to each other,” Harry added, feeling extra spiteful.

“Does… Does Marge know about you and your, er, type?”

“The gays? I imagine she knows about the gays,” Severus said in an aloof fashion, giving no quarter.

“The magic,” Tobias hissed in a hushed voice, eyes darting about.

“No, she has no idea about any of that, far as I know,” Harry confirmed, trying not to feel offended by how relieved Tobias looked instantly.

Tobias fidgeted, but he didn’t yell or shout, to Harry’s surprise. “Well, you’re here now,” he grunted eventually, looking unsure of himself and like he’d rather kick them out but feared the consequences. He kept looking around at the dozen or so people congregated in front of the church. “Best you get inside,” he said, gesturing to the open church doors like he wanted to hide them away. He’d probably sweep them under a rug if he could.

Harry exhaled slowly and watched Tobias walk off to greet more of the assembled guests. He got the distinct feeling Tobias was fighting everything he had not to make a scene at them being there.

Beside him, Severus’s expression had slid back to something carefully blank.

“Is your aunt a rich woman?” Severus enquired, his eyes still following his father.

“Aunt Marge? Not sure, I don’t think so?”

“My father seems to believe she’s worth millions.”

“What?” Harry said, stunned. “Definitely not that much, or I’m sure Uncle Vernon would have mentioned it. Not unless she’s won the lottery since I saw her last. I haven’t seen her for a long time, though. But how did you –” Harry stopped himself, realisation kicking in. “Isn’t it illegal to perform Legilimency on a Muggle?”

“He’s my father, hardly some random Muggle,” Severus said uncaringly. “And you aren’t a wannabe Auror anymore, so what do you care? Last time I checked, you were a mere part-time teacher. Upholding the law is about ensuring homework is delivered on time and that the children don’t murder each other.”

“Severus!” Harry hissed under his breath, feeling his blood pressure spike. “First, you lied to me about coming here –”

“I told no word of a lie, you’re the one who read into my actions.”

Severus didn’t even have the shame to look contrite. If anything, he seemed fairly proud of himself.

“You knew exactly what you were doing, didn’t you?”

“You need to stop butting into my business. Isn’t you refusing to give me my space exactly how Minerva ended up making us sign that peace agreement in the first place? Arguing in public is in direct contradiction to paragraph 4.5b of the contract.”

“Manipulating each other also goes against the terms of the contract,” Harry said with a scowl. He couldn’t believe he’d ever thought he might one day be friends with Severus.

It was a moot point arguing with Severus about any of this though. Harry knew he wasn’t going to back down, nor was Severus. And Severus’s point about being found at a Muggle wedding wasn’t without merit. They might not get on how Harry had one day hoped they might, but that didn’t mean he wanted Severus to be sent to Azkaban for doing something deserved to his own Muggle father.

While Harry was arguing with himself for and against leaving, a new car pulled up outside the church. Aunt Marge had arrived.

Tobias and the other guests went inside the church at the beep of the car’s horn, hurrying along. Only Harry and Severus remained outside.

A sickening feeling overtook Harry as a portly older gentleman got out of the front of the car. He walked around to the side and opened the door. Marjorie Dursley, dressed in splendid white netting, stepped out of the vehicle. She had to be in her fifties at least by this point, but to Harry, she appeared not much different than she had when he was a teenager.

“Thank you Colonel,” she said warmly to the man who had driven her in.

Of all the people in his life who had tormented him over the years, Aunt Marge remained a special case. She hadn’t hated him for anything related to Voldemort or Death Eaters, she hated him purely for being the son of Lily and James Potter. For being, in her eyes, everything she despised.

The two newcomers chatted among themselves as they walked up to the church. It was only as she was about to enter that Marge seemed to spot Harry outside. She stopped all of a sudden, looking startled at the sight of him.

“What are you doing here?” she spat, openly aghast.

“Marge, my dear, who is this?” The large, bushy moustache on her companion bristled in a way remnant of Uncle Vernon, and Harry had to wonder if this was some unknown Dursley relative.

“You, boy, what are you doing here?” Marge demanded again.

There was a venom in her tone that made Harry want to smile just to be contrary. Just to show that he wasn’t scared of her. That she had no impact on his psyche now that he was a mature adult.

“He’s here with me,” Severus announced, stepping in front of Harry, to Harry’s relief. Severus shielded Harry from Marge much like a Patronus in human form. “I’m Severus, Tobias’s son.”

He was staring intensely into Aunt Marge’s eyes; Harry had a good guess why that was.

Aunt Marge appeared flustered.

“Do you know each other? How?”

“We teach at the same school,” Severus said smoothly, now standing almost toe-to-toe with his future stepmother, glowering at her.

Aunt Marge looked at the gentleman with her. “I… I didn’t realise that Tobias had even invited you. He gave the impression you two were on bad terms since the matter with the house… A teacher, really? You?” She looked with open disgust at Harry, and more thinly veiled distrust at Severus.

Severus gave her a smile, projecting the air of a snake before it struck. This wasn’t the same aura Harry had sensed from his colleague in difficult times. There was no reluctance in him, just a sense of thrilling anticipation.

“How could I possibly not turn up for my father on such an auspicious occasion?” he said bitingly.

Aunt Marge had the wherewithal to look alarmed at Severus’s presence.

Harry hadn’t meant to, but in the time dear old Aunt Marge had been talking to Severus, he’d accidentally let his mind and magic wander. While it was true Occlumency had never been one of Harry’s strengths, Legilimency was at times shockingly easy to him. He’d even managed to bypass Severus’s shields a few times; breaking into the mind of a Muggle was like a hot knife through butter.

“Well! Onwards and upwards, as they say,” Aunt Marge’s company said. “Good to have more family here, isn’t it, Marge? Especially with poor Petunia not able to make it. Or that nephew of yours, with that last-minute trip to Ibiza he had to make for his, er, work.”

“This, in fact, is Marge’s other nephew, Mr…?” Severus directed at the man in the ill-fitted suit.

“Colonel,” the man corrected in a severely imperious tone, “Colonel Fubster. Margie and I have been neighbours going back thirty years now, if you can believe it. I was honoured when she asked me to give her away today.”

“That’s a shame about Aunt Petunia not being able to make it,” Harry interjected, peeking his head out from around Severus. “Is she well?”

“Just a cold,” Marge snapped. “She was kind enough to let us know two months ago she had a bad cold and couldn’t attend.”

Harry tried not to laugh. There never had been much love between Petunia and her sister-in-law.

“And Uncle Vernon?” Harry asked, wondering what his excuse was. Had he come down with the same unfortunate cold? After Harry figured out who the bride was, he’d half expected Vernon might turn up with Marge. Harry hadn’t seen him in the assembled crowd either. Had they gotten into a fight?

Marge twitched. “They never told you?” she asked with a small frown on her overly made-up face.

“Told me what?” Harry asked cautiously.

“My brother died about five months ago, boy. But I suppose you’re so ungrateful you didn’t even bother to keep in touch with the family who raised you. You never did learn your place,” she tutted in a very matter-of-fact manner, letting Harry know clearly who she put the blame on for his relationship with the Dursleys.

***

Harry didn’t really remember exactly what happened after that. Severus and Marge spoke a little more before Severus guided him inside and they sat together on a pew at the back of the church while Harry’s mind was spinning.

Uncle Vernon was dead?

Harry had hated Uncle Vernon. The fearsome, menacing presence who would sooner slap Harry around the face than give him a kind word.

Why were there tears in his eyes?

Harry rubbed under his glasses, annoyed at himself for letting her get to him like that.

“Was she always so casually cruel?” Severus murmured.

“That was her area of expertise.” He considered telling Severus what Marge used to say about Harry’s mother. However, he dismissed the idea easily. Past experience had long taught Harry, though, that Severus didn’t really want to talk about Lily with Harry. No one else did either, on that count.

“We can leave if you want,” Severus offered softly.

Harry, determined, shook his head. With a new desire in his heart to mess with Aunt Marge, Harry said firmly, “Let’s finish what we came here for.”

Severus was staring at the back of his father, who was now standing before the altar at the front of the church, waiting for Marge. The church was warm inside and sparsely decorated with an assortment of flowers. The low hum of conversation filled the space with the gathered relatives nattering away, all waiting for the bride.

“So what exactly is your plan for ruining this thing? Because we do not have long to strike,” Harry asked, with his new determination to support Severus’s ruthlessness. His emotions were bubbling in a way that in his younger years would have resulted in wild magic happening around him.

Vernon was dead. Uncle Vernon was dead and Marge couldn’t even bring herself to try and tell him nicely. Harry wasn’t saddened by the news itself, he wasn’t happy either, he wasn’t sure what he was. The itch of despair really came from the fact that he would clearly never really be their family. That he wasn’t even considered worthy of telling such news to. Harry just knew he needed to do something to expel the feelings.

As if by magic, the wedding march began playing from an ancient-looking crackling tape recorder. The couple had cheaped out on hiring an organist, Harry guessed.

“I have concluded that the best course of action is to let them get married,” Severus declared in a low tone.

Marge, with Colonel Fubster accompanying her, was walking down the aisle now. Marge walked in with the kind of arrogant swagger that was more suited to someone like Umbridge.

Not once did she look at Harry as she walked up and past them. She was, as she always had, ignoring him and treating him like an invisible being of disgrace.

“Ah, you saw her thoughts as well, then?” Harry asked, already seeing where Severus was going with this.

What he’d seen when he’d let his anger take over, and he’d slid into Marge’s mind, were visions of a woman who was under the assumption – somehow – that Tobias Snape was in fact a very rich gentleman. And according to Severus, Tobias believed Marge to be wealthy as well.

“However, the two of them ended up in this situation, both have an incorrect view that the other is secretly an heir to some vast fortune,” Severus snorted. “She believes there’s a Snape Manor there, somewhere. She hasn’t realised the place my father lives now is his entire home, not his whimsical country bolthole.”

“And Aunt Marge has been letting Tobias think her dilapidated farmhouse is somehow worth something,” Harry whispered back, eyes wide. “She doesn’t even own the land it is built on, either.”

“So we let them marry, and let them discover the truth later. The Colonel over there has convinced her that real money doesn’t speak, and that’s why my father has been so private about it. The less my father said, the richer they assumed he secretly was. Now both are of the firm belief that my father is hiding the news until after the wedding to test her worth.”

Marge had reached the front of the room, where Colonel Fubster gave her a kiss to the cheek and moved to the side.

Harry looked over the assembled group. Considering it was meant to be a wedding, you wouldn’t have been able to guess from their attitude.

“This might as well have been my father’s funeral,” Severus whispered, apparently having felt the same thing. “To be a fly on the wall when they realise the truth!”

Harry let out a disbelieving laugh. “They both deserve one another. She’s one of the worst people I’ve ever met – and yes, I am including Bellatrix Lestrange in that.”

“They are perfectly matched then,” Severus declared.

“A most fitting union.”

There was something to Severus now, a gleeful sort of energy that throbbed from him.

“He drove my mother to a deep depression with his actions. Condemning her for being what she was, while also not letting her move on from her life with him. He refused to divorce her, refused to love her. If he can’t be dead, let him be hoisted by his own petard. Let him rot in that shithole of a house he said he didn’t want, and which he then kicked me out of for a second time while I was dying.”

Harry hadn’t realised until today what had happened with the house. It did explain why Severus had suddenly started spending all his time at the castle.

“Aunt Marge used to tell my aunt and uncle they should have drowned me as a baby. But at least I didn’t have to live with her,” Harry replied in kind. His interactions with Marge had been scarring, but also brief.

He and Severus both had emotional scars from their childhoods, and if they couldn’t use that to fuel the flames of disaster today, what was even the point of them coming?

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate the union of Tobias and Marjorie," the vicar began.

“You’d think one of them would have noticed something was off,” said Harry.

“They’re both ignorant, hateful people. They see the world as they wish to, without taking into account any evidence to the contrary.”

Eventually, Colonel Fubster was invited up to give his reading. When it was announced he’d be reading Corinthians 13, there was a general muttering of disdain from the audience.

“Why is it always that one?” Severus’s Aunt Val said a little too loudly, making Harry laugh.

Prepared vows were exchanged between the couple, delivered with varying degrees of sincerity. Severus actually chuckled when they reached the “for richer or poorer” portion of events.

Marge’s voice was overwhelmingly loud and firm, as if daring anyone to interrupt her. She was clearly a woman on a mission. Tobias spoke in no uncertain terms either, in his rough voice.

The air in the church seemed to tighten as they finally reached the part Harry had been instinctively waiting for. He hadn’t even realised he had been waiting for it, until it happened.

“If any person here present knows of any lawful impediment for why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Harry felt it within him before he understood it. A sudden, sharp clarity of what he could do. He glanced at Severus, but Severus did not look back.

His middle name wasn’t Chaos, if only because his parents hadn’t had that kind of foresight.

Harry stood, causing a gasp from one of the ancient relics of a relative.

“Well,” he said, clearing his throat and speaking a little louder, “I have something to say.”

The words landed like a heavy stone in water, sending murmurs out through the church. The vicar was looking very unsure of himself.

Aunt Marge at the front was going visibly lobster red. Harry thought he had maybe a few seconds before she legged it down to strangle him herself. It was probably for the best that none of her dogs were there that day, or Harry might have thought twice.

“I just want to say,” he paused to look down at Severus, who was peering up at him, obviously confused, but prepared to let Harry talk, “I am in love with this man!” Harry slid into the adjoining aisle and got down on one knee. “Severus Snape, I cannot live without you as my husband for another day. Will you marry me?”

Severus let his jaw drop open.

There was chaos in the church. Harry kept his eyes on Severus and Severus alone.

“Of course I will,” Severus said loudly, looking back at Harry now as if Harry had just gifted him the most precious, well-thought-out, heartwarming present he’d ever received.

“Oh goody. Let’s go do it now, shall we?” Harry laughed, grabbed Severus’s hand, and together they darted out of the back of the church before anyone had a chance to react.

They legged it from the church and ran back towards the woods where they’d first arrived.

By the time they stopped, Severus was stooped over, laughing.

“That was… bravo. Bravo, Potter. That was inspired.” There was a rare patch of pink on Severus’s cheeks as he looked at Harry in open admiration for probably the first time in their lives.

Harry grinned at him, feeling proud of himself. “You said you wanted to piss off the homophobes and ruin their wedding day. I hope you didn’t mind that we couldn’t watch until the very end.”

“No, no, I have to give it to you. I couldn’t have come up with a more unhinged plan if I tried. And as an added bonus, this way we don’t have to watch them, urgh,” Severus pulled a face of disgust, “kiss.”

Harry perched himself on top of the wall they’d scrambled over on their way in, feeling pretty smug.

“This way they get married,” Harry said, ticking off their accomplishments on his fingers, “get to live with the knowledge that they both have happily gay relatives, and we can sleep well knowing they’ve got a big surprise in store for one another soon enough when the truth is revealed.”

“Where was this brain of yours when you were in school?” Severus teased.

Harry felt his breath hitch at the soft look Severus was giving him.

Severus leaned against the wall next to Harry. “I wonder how they met. Do they have meet-ups for people who hate queers and magic?”

Harry chuckled. “Maybe Aunt Marge wandered into the meeting by mistake.”

“My only regret is that I didn’t get to see their reaction when they both finally worked it out.”

The church bells started to ring, interrupting their conversation. The ceremony was finished.

Harry looked at Severus with a huge grin. “Maybe now’s as good a time as any? Shall we inform them right now?”

Severus and Harry rushed to the front of the church in time to see the few guests in attendance standing outside, lined up, ready to greet the new Mr and Mrs Snape.

The wedding guests muttered among themselves as Severus and Harry approached, but dared not talk to them directly. Harry and Severus placed themselves at the end of the line of people and awaited the happy couple.

“Go away!” Marge screamed at Harry as soon as she spotted him. “You remain a disgusting mistake! I, I,” she sputtered, her face going red in a way that reminded Harry of her brother.

Harry momentarily found himself weighing up what the legal consequences might be if he blew her up like a balloon a second time.

“We wanted to apologise,” Severus said smoothly, inserting himself in front of Harry. “We were stealing your special day.”

“I think we got off on the wrong foot earlier,” Harry added with surprising ease. “That was undeniably rude of me.” He tried to put on his most innocent expression, but it was hard to stop himself laughing. Whatever was going to happen next, Harry knew he’d have fun.

Marge narrowed her eyes, and Tobias gritted his teeth.

“I’d rather you leave if you’re just going to upset my new wife,” Tobias insisted, as Marge looked like she was trying to figure out how to remove Harry’s tongue with her bare hands.

Severus inclined his head, but Harry could see his fingers itch for his jacket pocket where his wand was. “Understandable, we just wanted to apologise. It wouldn’t be right for us to just part like this.”

Tobias relaxed, just slightly. “Right, right. No need for any more unpleasantness.” It sounded like he, once again, just wished to be rid of them quickly.

“Exactly!” Harry exclaimed with as much fake positivity as he could fit into that one word. “You and Aunt Marge have the rest of your lives together to look forward to. The, er, romance was just in the air, and I couldn’t control myself. I just wish to be as happy as you are.”

“Indeed. We were inspired by you two. Harry and I also can’t wait to live a life together. At the castle.”

Marge stopped with her growling at this. “Castle? You live in a castle? I suppose it is good that you at least recognise your wrongdoings…”

“Well, yes of course,” Harry answered smoothly, slipping back into his childhood habits of being overly polite to her. At least now he didn’t have to worry that he might not get anything to eat that evening if he didn’t make it convincing.

The desire to ruin this woman’s life and any potential happiness burned stronger.

“Your castle?” she said, looking to Tobias for confirmation. “You never mentioned a castle before. What a wonderful surprise!”

“When there’s so much to talk about, small details like castles and lordships are easily overlooked,” Severus answered on behalf of his father. “People from humble beginnings find it so crass to talk about such things. You understand, don’t you?”

Severus was enjoying this, Harry was pretty sure. Enjoying unleashing his malicious side on someone who deserved it. They were toying with Marge and Tobias now.

“Where is the castle?” Marge asked breathlessly. “Tobias, can we visit? Soon?”

“Scotland,” Severus said quickly. “And you’re always welcome. We’re family now, right?”

Tobias was looking distinctly nervous. “You misunderstand them, Marge. The castle is where Severus teaches; it’s a school.”

Severus smirked, looking at his new stepmother. He was going for the kill.

“What a silly little misunderstanding. As if my father would own a castle! It was kind of you to marry him despite his being so in debt. You must be in love to marry despite all the constraints. The court orders and multiple bankruptcies."

“Tobias?” Marge said, looking at her new husband sternly now. “What is he talking about? What debt?”

“Let’s talk about this later, shall we? No need for, ahem, further unpleasantness today.”

Harry stepped closer in, lowering his voice as part of his act. This had to seem natural and not like he was trying to cause trouble.

“Aunt Marge, don’t let us cause any further disruption. And whatever the case may be with Mr Snape, your love seems strong enough to get you through the stormiest of seas! It only shows how much you must care if you were prepared to get married even after finding out everything about him.”

Marge’s lips thinned, her small eyes sharpened with suspicion.

“What is the meaning of this, Tobias?” She was clearly unsettled.

“Marge, maybe we need to talk in private… I may have forgotten a few of the details, but it’s just small stuff! Let’s enjoy our day.”

Her face was going slack with dawning horror. “You’re not denying it?”

“Well, the horses, you see, I had a sure thing on a couple of bets, but –”

Colonel Fubster came to the fore and stood threateningly over Tobias. “Now you see here, you told Marge you had money!”

Tobias was looking shaken now.

“I, I distinctly remember I did no such thing,” he stuttered.

“How are we meant to pay off all those unpaid taxes if you aren’t rich?” Fubster roared. “And the new tractor for my land!”

“What unpaid taxes?” Harry chipped in, looking at Marge calmly. “Aunt Marge, if you needed money, you should have let me know,” he started, before really going all in at rubbing salt in her wounds. “You know both my parents were beyond wealthy, that’s why they didn’t work.” It wasn’t really a required thing to the ploy, yet Harry felt some vindication in revealing the truth about his parents.

Marge probably wouldn’t care or change her worldview based on it, but there was some comfort in speaking this truth to her. His inner child was comforted by the idea after all the slander he’d heard from her based on nothing but lies.

For a moment, neither Marge nor Tobias spoke.

“Unpaid taxes?” one yelled.

“Gambling debt!” the other shouted back.

It didn’t take long for it to all fall apart.

“How could you deceive me! Betrayal! Betrayal! How could you do this!”

The other guests, having sensed everything had gone tits up, gathered around to watch the newlyweds lose it with each other. If there had been a cliff around, Harry reckoned they both would have been shoving the other off it by that point.

It was beautiful. It was exactly what they deserved.

“I love you, Marge! You said you were marrying him for the money, but he has none!” Colonel Fubster loudly announced, entering the fray. “You said once you were married, we’d take him for all he had as soon as he died! You said we could be together then!”

“He’s younger than you, you idiot!” Marge bellowed at Colonel Fubster.

“Well, I’m not wasting a perfectly good wedding breakfast,” Severus’s Aunt Val said loudly to everyone not involved in the fight.

Harry had the sudden urge to grab Severus and flee, using the cover of chaos Marge and Tobias were creating to make their break. He took Severus’s hand with that in mind, to ensure they weren’t parted in the crowd. However, he found Aunt Val grabbing him by the sleeve instead. Severus wasn’t fighting it, so Harry didn’t either.

The next thing he knew, they’d both been shoved into the back of a Vauxhall Astra and were being driven by Aunt Val to the reception venue in a pub a few miles away.

“You’re not angry with us then for ruining the wedding?” Severus asked his aunt while she turned onto the main road from the car park. He sounded far more composed than Harry felt.

Aunt Val started cackling from the driver’s seat. “That might have been the most entertaining wedding I’ve ever attended, thanks to you two. Your father has been unbearably smug about marrying into money. I’m glad to see him put in his place!”

Then, much to Harry’s surprise, she added, “I guess welcome to the family, Harry. At least one Snape caught himself a rich spouse.”

Harry blinked again, trying to keep up with the fact that he’d apparently managed to lose an uncle and yet somehow gain a new aunt that afternoon.

***

Severus and Harry found themselves at the reception surrounded by half a dozen other guests. Noticeably absent were the bride and groom themselves, as well as Colonel Fubster. The wedding breakfast buffet had already been set out by the time they arrived, along with a small amount of free alcohol.

Severus grabbed them each a bottle of sparkling wine without remorse. They wandered away from the party and into the garden adjoining the reception room. Discreetly, Severus used his wand to take the corks out of both bottles, which they clinked together before drinking deeply.

“Well that went about as well as we could have hoped for,” Harry said with a laugh.

“If by well you mean unmitigated disaster, I am in agreement.”

“I still can’t believe you let me think your dad was dead,” Harry huffed, once they were out of earshot of anyone else. He was still feeling slightly used in that regard. “You must think I’m so easy to control.”

Severus let out a snort. “You? Easy to control? Have you ever met you?”

“Then why me? It wasn’t because of Aunt Marge, that’s for sure.”

Severus sat down on a patch of grass under a large willow tree and leaned back against the tree. Harry, with nothing better to do, sat down next to him.

“Wait…” Harry had a slow revelation, just as Severus was being stubbornly silent. “Is it because you trust me?” When Severus looked like he was about to refute it, Harry started ticking off events on his fingers. “You said I was your alibi in case things went wrong, which at least implies a little trust!” Severus scowled at him. “And you trusted me to be dumb enough to come in the first place.”

“I knew you were the only person with whom I could make today work,” Severus said plainly.

Harry beamed at him. He wanted to celebrate as this was pretty much the confirmation he'd been seeking.

Somewhere in the stream of thoughts swirling through Harry’s head, something else hit him for the second time that day. “My uncle is dead.” Harry halted, struck once more by the thought. Not sad, in a way that made him feel equally uneasy. Should he feel sad?

“You really had no idea about that, I take it?”

Harry shook his head and took another glug of what had to be one of the worst faux champagnes he’d ever tried. It was far too sweet and warm, but he didn’t particularly care. He wiped his mouth on the back of his cuff and tried to bring the thoughts together.

“He was always unkind. Unloving. Towards me, anyway,” Harry muttered. With everything that had gone on with Voldemort, sometimes that aspect of his life just didn’t feel real. Harry sometimes struggled to view himself as both a war hero of sorts and a boy who was once locked in a cupboard multiple times a week.

“A not-unfamiliar-sounding familial relationship,” Severus eventually added. “My father was always like that with my mother and me. To the rest of his family, he is a different man entirely. The magic though… he never did get over it. I can’t imagine he’ll ever forgive me this time.” With that, Severus tipped his head back and necked much of the rest of his bottle down in one.

“I would have come with you to the wedding if you’d just asked. There really wasn’t a need for the whole act.”

Severus tilted his head back against the tree and closed his eyes. Harry looked at his face, relaxed, almost unguarded. Pained.

“That letter you sent me –” Severus began.

“Letter?” Harry interrupted. “What letter?”

Severus cracked an eye open, looking at Harry with something between suspicion and disbelief now. “The night after Minerva made us sign the behaviour contract?”

Harry’s heart sank. That was real? He had been so sure it was a dream. How had it even gotten to Severus? He held his breath, expecting Severus to lay into him any moment now. The only thing saving Harry seemed to be that Severus hadn’t realised he hadn’t meant to actually send it!

“Ah, that letter,” Harry bluffed in the end. It was probably for the best Severus never found out the truth! Choosing his words carefully, he added, “And I did mean it. I just… I know I was a bit ridiculous in it. Emotional like a teenager, but I did mean it.”

Severus closed his eyes again and leaned his head against the tree bark.

“You were so painfully earnest in it,” said Severus, and Harry grimaced.

“I can’t believe you read it.” If it was real, why hadn’t Severus just thrown it straight in the fire? Why had he read it?

Severus was quiet for a moment before he spoke again. “Several times, in fact. It played on my mind, as I thought you were trying to be cruel. I tried sitting next to you at breakfast soon after, but somehow you perceived that to be a malicious act. I started to think that maybe you did really mean all of it, from the heart. I considered, from your perspective, your claim that your view of me had changed that day we both almost died.” He paused, his brow furrowed, and then, almost reluctantly he went on, “But you need to understand, I don’t know how to be friends with people; I know how to make use of people, I know how to endure them, I do not know how to be their friend.”

“Yes, yes you do,” Harry insisted. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes, Severus. You and McGonagall are definitely friends!”

“What you see between Minerva and myself is years of work to be collegial. We used to be closer, I admit, until I murdered Dumbledore,” Severus clarified, somehow terrifyingly calm. He refused to look at Harry when he did finally open his eyes again, and chose instead to stare off across the pub garden. “Friends tend to either betray me, be betrayed by me, or end up leaving when the sexual tension is gone. Or, a combination of the latter, met with the firm conclusion of death.” He let his words hang in the air a moment, before adding, “We’re better off as we are: coworkers who sometimes say hello at breakfast.”

“So you just avoid having friends?” Harry asked, aghast. “That sounds miserable.”

Severus shrugged. “It isn’t that much of a sacrifice. I've gotten used to being self-sufficient.”

Harry’s gaze drifted off into the distance, where Severus too was looking out with the same, thoughtful look.

Harry hesitated. Then he took a breath, like he was about to step off a cliff.

“That’s not how it has to go,” he said, almost pleadingly.

Severus was quick to dismiss him. “It is, in my experience. Definitely the most peaceful way to live.”

Silence stretched on between them. What more was there to say if Severus was insistent on this wall between them?

“Besides that, the other issue I have with you is that you claim to want friendship, yet your behaviour towards me of late has been… inconsistent, at best, with that outcome.”

Harry frowned. “Meaning?”

Severus fixed Harry with a harsh, evaluating stare. “You form attachments quickly and intensely.”

Harry wanted to argue, but it was only on reflex. He didn’t have a leg to stand on in that discussion.

“And not always platonically,” Severus said, finally getting to his point. “Beyond Granger and Weasley, I’ve noticed you seem to befriend people, sleep with them, and then keep them at a safe distance thereafter, all while claiming friendship.”

“Hey, that’s not –”

“Ginny Weasley, Oliver Wood, Justin Finch-Fletchley… need I go on?”

“Just how much have you been stalking me exactly?”

“Potter, it’s not difficult to find out your whereabouts. When I suggested to Minerva that we ask if you could help cover for me –”

Harry felt like he’d been shoved by some invisible force. “You suggested me for the job?!”

Severus waved that aside. “Unimportant right now. The newspapers and magazines were following you so closely, as you seemed to be jumping from here to there, unable to find any stability. I came to the conclusion that for you friendship and dating were an intermingled experience.”

Harry flushed. “Well, that’s not quite true.”

“How many of your so-called friends have you slept with before discarding them?”

Just how much attention had Severus been paying Harry’s personal life? Harry knew Severus read a wide array of publications, but he didn’t think Severus would have paid attention to what was being reported about Harry of all people.

“Er, I mean, um…” Harry realised it was probably more than he thought at first. In his mind, there was Ginny, of course Ginny… but Severus’s list was incomplete. Harry had to do something with his time between getting rid of Voldemort and working at Hogwarts!

Things hadn’t worked out with him and Ginny, sure, but they’d remained friends! Well, as much as they had been before things. And now that Harry thought about it, outside of Ron and Hermione, maybe he did have a tendency to befriend his exes. Oliver, that weird blip with Justin and most recently, the Muggle bloke, Rick.

“If satisfying your curiosity about any ambiguity between us helps us reach a period of stability, then I think the most efficient course of action is to just plunge through to the endgame: a relationship of mutual respect and ignoring each other.”

Harry let out a short, disbelieving breath. “What are you saying?”

“We should have sex. Exorcise the sexual-desire aspect upfront. You’ll lose interest in me, and I’ll be like one of your many other past conquests thereafter.”

Before Harry could even figure out how to reply, Severus continued, “Potter, you keep looking at me like you want to undress me. You’ve been taking every opportunity to flirt with me and get closer to me, to compliment me and spend time with me. And in many situations, it may read like friendship, but with your history, I would argue that point.”

Harry rubbed his eyes under his glasses, as if that might change what he just heard.

“That’s not – I mean, it isn’t – right but…” Harry trailed off. The worst part of this conversation was that Harry had a sinking feeling Severus might not be wrong.

Did Harry just befriend people to sleep with them? But he was friends with them even after they had sex! Well, he had maintained a friendship with Ginny. Since realising he preferred sleeping with men, that had resolved some matters between them.

Was there a change in Harry’s desire to get close to them from before to after the sex, though? Severus couldn’t be right about this, could he?

“And if after we…”

“Copulate?”

“Yes, that, if after we do that –”

“So you are interested?” Severus said slyly, smugly.

Harry flushed. When he brought his eyes to look at Severus again, he found his gaze locked onto Severus’s lips. Just how long had he spent looking at those lips in the past? Wondering what Severus’s skin would feel like under his fingertips. Wondering things about Severus that were not particularly platonic.

“Well, yes. You might have me there. But what if after that, I still want to be friends with you?”

Severus considered this point. “I don’t think you will,” and as he could see Harry was gearing up to argue, he added, “But, if you do, then I shall consider it,” Severus agreed.

He was definitely considering it. Harry exhaled, not realising he’d even been holding his breath.

“I think you and I could be very good friends, Severus. And we did get engaged today, right? Probably be odd if we didn’t have sex at this point,” he joked, hurriedly trying to lighten the atmosphere.

Severus looked at him with the faintest flitter of a smirk. That was all the confirmation Harry needed.

Harry took Severus by the hand and led him into the pub, on a mission now to find the nearest bed.

Harry’s deep desire to get closer to Severus was developing fast. Harry had always been quick to think in times of danger, and wasn’t possibly losing all chances with Severus a type of danger?

They meandered through the pub full of Severus’s drunken relatives, with no bride or groom in sight, looking for a staff member to talk to about bedrooms.

“What do you mean she ran him over with the car and fled?” Harry heard Aunt Val exclaim.

“Now the police are after her,” one of the relatives who arrived late to the reception replied. “Proper car chase! I had to go give a witness statement. I'm telling you, Val, Tobias might not make it out of this one. He whacked Marge’s friend over the head with a flowerpot, knocking him out.”

Harry ignored it all, and them. None of that mattered. Marge, Tobias, the whole lot of them didn’t matter.

Harry was half-hard already, the thrill of finally fixing his problems with Severus was so close now.

They’d sleep together, and then they could finally resolve all these thoughts Harry had been struggling with and move on to something even more meaningful.

“Which room are the bride and groom meant to be in later?” Harry asked the staff behind the bar when they finally found someone. “We just wanted to decorate a bit, you know, surprise them, if we could get the key?”

It must have been a stroke of the so-called Harry Potter luck that the barmaid just looked at Harry like he was the sweetest thing and handed over a large key with a room number on the attached wooden tag. Apparently, she hadn’t heard that the not-so-happy newlyweds were on the outs already.

“Waste not, want not,” Harry said, with more confidence than he actually felt.

They barely had the door shut and locked with both a key and magic from the inside before Severus had Harry up against the door of Room 7, face just a few inches away.

Harry didn’t even have time to consider much further if this was a bad idea. It might really be a bad idea. They’d each had a bottle of sparkling wine, and were running on emotional fumes from dealing with family.

“If it is terrible, at least it is consistent with how things usually are for us.” Severus’s voice was lower, hotter. Harry felt himself heating up in ways that voice shouldn’t be making him feel.

Harry swallowed, nodding, realising for the first time just how much he did want this. “Right.”

He hesitated for only the briefest moment before closing the distance between them.

With everything that had happened that day, somehow having Severus kiss him in what should have been Aunt Marge’s honeymoon room wasn’t even up there for the most unlikely.

For a moment after that first kiss, neither of them spoke.

It was good. It was better than good. It should have felt awkward or unnerving, when it just felt oddly right. Like all of Harry’s curiosity was being answered at once and everything was saying yes.

“What else did you notice about me that I never noticed?” Harry asked, panting, needing a second to breathe before he lost his mind entirely to desire and need.

Severus grinded down, his pelvis against Harry’s, hands placed firmly on Harry’s arse, keeping him still.

“That Quidditch magazine of yours,” Severus panted into Harry’s ear, “when the pin-up of the month is a woman, you barely spare it a second. Whenever it is a bloke though – umph – you spend half your breakfast looking at it.”

“Oh,” Harry said softly. He hadn’t even realised that himself.

Severus dragged Harry closer and then shoved him onto the bed.

“Also, I heard you shagging Oliver Wood at the Ministry ball back in the summer.”

“You mean you heard about me shagging him?” Harry asked, desperately.

Severus gave a little shake of his head, smirking.

Harry cringed and let out a little displeased noise. “Was there anyone who didn’t witness it? We thought that the cupboard was soundproof, in my defence.”

“Doubtful. I confess, I am slightly curious if I can make you moan louder than he did. It did cross my mind: does Harry Potter just moan loudly or is Oliver Wood some sort of sexual genius?”

Harry flushed. Powered by Gryffindor bravery and free booze, he powered on through the initial embarrassment.

Getting shirtless with Severus was easier in their Muggle clothes than it might have been with robes.

Harry went for the belt around Severus’s trousers. Most of his dalliances hadn’t worn a belt, they remained uncommon in wizarding wear. Harry smoothly undid Severus’s and pulled it out, throwing it somewhere on the ground.

His mouth watered at the sight of Severus’s bare, soft cock sticking out from where Severus had undone the buttons of his trousers.

“Oh,” Harry said, suddenly startled at his own behaviour.

“What?” Severus huffed.

“I think you’re right…”

“About?” Severus snapped.

“I think you’re right,” Harry slid to his knees in front of Severus, “I have been looking at you like I wanted to have sex with you, haven’t I?”

Harry held the base of Severus’s cock and wrapped his lips around it.

Severus slid his fingers through Harry’s hair, playing with the silky strands as Harry brought him to an astounding hardness.

“I’m glad we can agree.” Severus rolled his hips slightly, testing Harry’s ability to take what he was giving.

Harry took what he couldn’t fit in his mouth into one hand and firmly stroked the shaft while licking the smooth, engorged head of Severus’s cock. His tongue traced around it, hardly daring to believe who was behind this magnificent hardness.

Severus was almost silent. The only indication he was even aware of what was going on was from how his fingers tightened and moved through Harry’s hair.

Harry tested the limits for what he could take in and down his throat, cautious not to make himself choke. Somehow, he didn’t think the coughing would do anything to improve how Severus saw him.

Even if this entire incident was a one-night-only thing, Harry wanted it to be his best shot. Sucking cock well might not have been the basis of most friendships, but Harry figured it certainly wouldn’t hurt or hinder theirs.

It was a really, really nice cock, to be fair. If their entire relationship was centred around this, Harry figured he would find ways to make it work.

Severus pulled him off and dragged Harry up the bed to kiss him some more. At some point, they had both gotten fully naked.

Severus’s lick-slicked cock rubbed up against Harry’s equally straining erection.

Harry lightly cupped one of Severus’s testicles in his palm and tried to gauge just how sensitive they were. Did Severus like them touched delicately, firmly, or did he like them tugged and twisted?

“You don’t shave,” Severus commented. He was looking off elsewhere, expression set firm.

“Neither do you,” Harry said back lightly. It made a change to previous conquests. Had all the blokes around him at one point read in some magazine that they had to remove their pubic hair?

Whatever the case, Severus hadn’t gotten the memo, and it was delightful. Perfection.

He wanted Severus’s cock in his mouth again, wanted to feel the scratch of his coarse hairs against his face as he took him in so deep it would feel like he might not be able to breathe.

“No, no, you had your fun,” Severus said, stopping Harry from squirming down to try and suck some more. “It’s my turn.”

Severus moved them around until Harry’s head fell against the pillows at the top of the bed, and Severus moved further down the bed so he could kneel over Harry.

“Uh, is this okay?” Harry’s breath hitched as Severus placed a hand around his cock. He was now fully hard, almost entirely just from sucking Severus off.

“Adequate,” Severus declared. His tongue whipped out and pressed firmly against the side of Harry’s cock. “More than,” he confirmed, as Harry’s cock twitched.

Harry clenched his hands by his side, trying not to grab the back of Severus’s head and push it closer to his pubic bone.

This was a man who obviously knew how to tease and entice a cock. This was a man who should have been teaching the art of cock-sucking.

Harry’s breathing was coming out in shuddering gasps as he tried to process everything happening to him. He attempted to make a funny, encouraging remark and just ended up groaning, “Good, fuck, good!” in place.

It was a more powerful, harsher suction than he’d ever been used to. Severus’s tongue was everywhere, his clever fingers manipulating Harry’s foreskin to maximise the sensation.

“But I want to suck you,” Harry whined. He was close to coming and if he didn’t make a change soon, he was about to end up showing his worst to Severus.

“Tough shit,” Severus huffed, still showing Harry’s cock the utmost tender care. “You’ll come again, I won’t.”

Harry started thinking as many unsexy thoughts as he could, determined he wasn’t going to give it up that easily.

Severus lightly glided his bottom teeth over Harry’s cock as he withdrew it from his mouth.

“Do you have a preference?”

“Yes,” Harry answered firmly, nodding. “I like men.”

Severus was moving Harry’s dripping cock through a tunnel he’d made with his finger and palm.

“You don’t say,” Severus replied dryly, running his thumbnail over the hole at the top of the fattened cock in his hand, making Harry squirm. “I mean topping or bottoming,” Severus explained, when he discerned that Harry really hadn’t understood.

“Both!” Harry said enthusiastically.

“Ah…”

Harry frowned. “What?”

“Same. So how do we continue…?”

Harry had been relying on Severus to guide things along now they were in the bedroom, and that had worked so far. Now though, Harry had to step up and figure the problem out. Usually when he was in a pinch, his natural instinct seemed to do the trick, so why not this time?

“Can we both not just go at it at the same time?” Harry pondered. “Or take turns?”

If it involved Severus and sex, Harry was finding himself amenable to a multitude of outcomes.

“A sixty-nine?”

“What’s that?”

Severus paused at this and then kissed Harry quickly on the lips. “Seems I do have a few things left to teach you, hmm?”

Harry found himself being moved, limb for limb. He wasn’t quite clear on the final vision until he found himself under Severus, who was on top of him with his head towards Harry’s feet now.

It should have felt more awkward to have his ex-professor’s cock bobbing about for the taking near his chin, but of all the unexpected situations Harry had ever found himself in, this one only excited him more.

Soon Harry celebrated the return of Severus’s cock to his mouth. In a move only someone as brilliant as Severus could have masterminded, Severus was soon resuming his own leisurely teasing, sensual suck of Harry’s penis.

He hadn’t exactly set out that day anticipating this, but Harry wasn’t one to look a gift erection in the mouth.

Maybe he could fuck Severus, or Severus could loosen him up and use his hot, hard cock to remind Harry where his prostate was, or maybe they could just stay like this forever. Giving and taking simultaneously – and oh Merlin, how did Severus know just exactly where to put his tongue to make Harry want to come like there was no tomorrow?

He didn’t know how long they went at it. At some point, Severus’s cock in his mouth seemed to become impossibly hard.

“I’m close,” Severus rasped, barely taking Harry out of his mouth to speak. Harry rubbed Severus’s cock against the roof of his mouth, sliding it to the back of his throat, and back and forth.

“I said I’m close!” Severus repeated, this time sounding almost pained.

“Good?” Harry replied, confused. “Isn’t that the point?” He took Severus back into his warm and inviting mouth.

Severus let out a laugh, which reverberated through Harry’s cock. “God, fuck,” Severus grumbled, “fuck.”

He thrust his hips for the first time, violent and harsh, ramming his way into Harry’s mouth. Harry gasped and did his best to accommodate.

Breathing didn’t matter, pain didn’t matter, Harry’s entire world had contracted down to pleasing Severus Snape.

Hot, tangy come flowed in juddering, harsh contractions from Severus’s cock into Harry’s willing throat.

As he was doing his best to swallow down, his own balls contracted and Harry found himself emptying what felt like his very soul into Severus’s waiting mouth.

While he hadn’t actually planned for his climax, Harry couldn’t help but feel some loss he hadn’t been able to come all over Severus’s scarred neck; a passing fancy of a thought that he quickly suppressed. He would have liked to have seen that.

Panting for breath, debauched, sweaty and flushed, they manoeuvred themselves and each other until they were lying side by side on the bed.

“That was…” Severus trailed off.

Harry peered over. His glasses had been lost at some point during undressing, but at this distance, it didn’t matter, he could see Severus well enough.

“Good?” Harry suggested, feeling hopeful.

Severus turned to look at Harry, looking relaxed but confused. “Why did you swallow?”

“What? What’s the other option?”

Severus put his hands over his face and turned away, muttering, “Other option?”

Harry waited, wondering how to ask what he’d done wrong.

“Just spit it out! Direct it elsewhere!”

“You can do that?” None of Harry’s other experiences had suggested such a thing was possible.

A complicated mix of emotions passed over Severus’s face.

“Next time I promise I’ll spit it out, if you prefer?” Harry offered, trying to recover the jubilant mood he’d felt when he’d managed to pleasure Severus to completion. If Severus agreed this had gone well, maybe there could be more – which was definitely a new thought to Harry post completion.

Maybe they could eventually end up being the kind of people Harry had envisioned in that time he’d spent with the comatose Severus. Who had dinners together and took walks around the Great Lake after dinner. Maybe they’d even get to spend Christmas together.

Someone with whom Harry could talk to about the past. Someone who would also share with Harry if he was having a bad day. Harry wanted to be a person Severus could rely on, emotionally, and after today, maybe more.

“Do we get to do this again sometime?” Harry dared himself to ask, more directly.

Severus had a pained look on his face. “I’m not a nice person.” He sounded so dejected. It made Harry want to hug him.

Harry shrugged. “You don’t have to be nice to be good. There’s plenty of nice people in this world, and most of them aren’t as good as you.”

Severus distracted himself with Harry’s left nipple while he thought. He was pressing a thumbnail into the erect tissue, playing with it as he pleased.

After he had Harry squirming, ready to go again, Severus made up his mind. “I could be amenable to future attempts.”

Harry kissed him to seal the deal.

***

Five Months Later

The Great Hall was home to a false disharmony between two of the teachers present.

Morning sunlight bathed the inhabitants. The students were chatting as they tended to do, interrupting Harry’s happy musings about the weekend just past.

Mondays had become Harry’s favourite day of the week. Monday mornings specifically held a special joy.

Harry and Severus had become experts at keeping to the exact terms of their behaviour contract without actually keeping to the spirit of the document and rules. This act of rebellion was displayed at its best on Mondays when Harry was coming off two days of enjoying himself with Severus.

Somewhere along the way, the chaos between them had settled into something steadier, and yet all at once needier. They had woken up together that morning, caught up in the softness of the bed and each other’s warmth. Severus looked particularly tired that morning, which was entirely Harry’s fault for how long they’d stayed up together, indulging, touching and worshipping one another.

Well, maybe not entirely Harry’s fault, Harry thought a little smugly. Severus was more than a willing participant in events.

They had travelled that past weekend to a few sites across Ireland where Harry had helped Severus gather materials for a potion he was working on. The excitement of getting it all (for free, no less!) had put Severus in the mood to celebrate. And celebrate they had, until it was almost time for them to get up for breakfast.

Even though Severus assigned far fewer detentions than before, they still continued to spend many evenings together. Harry watched Severus brew many times, learning more about the subtle art of potions than he possibly had as a student.

Apparently, under the right circumstances, Harry could perfectly dice any ingredient. The circumstances being Severus behind him, leaning in, his arms around Harry, helping him get the right sort of chopping motion.

Back at Monday morning breakfast, Harry spotted Severus. He had said he’d wait a bit before following Harry to the Great Hall, out of caution. They didn’t want to be caught entering at the same time, after all.

“Professor Snape!” Harry called out bright and chirpy, intentionally at his most annoying as Severus arrived at the seat beside him. “How was your weekend?”

Severus stole a slice of toast off Harry’s plate – blessedly marmalade-free and intended for stealing – and replied, “Fine. I almost had a brush with a vampire. Must have been a subspecies though, as it wasn’t my neck he wanted to suck.”

Harry snorted and shot Severus a side glance as he tried not to laugh too loudly. Getting to know Severus, getting to know his perverted sense of humour, had been a great joy to Harry recently. The summer holidays had flown by at a pace Harry had never experienced before. Time truly did fly when having fun, it seemed. And things were only continuing to get more intimate now that school had started again.

“Glad to know you made it out in one piece.”

“Quite.”

“I could probably do with a refresher on dealing with vampires, and all that.”

“We’ll have to put something in the diary. Can’t have one of the Defence teachers struggling with their knowledge of purposeful impaling, can we?”

Severus’s usual library of newspapers and magazines arrived midway through breakfast. He directed the owls who brought them (bribed with some toast crust) to deliver them to his rooms.

Having breakfast with Severus, even with everyone around, was such a nice way to start the week. Harry was happy, very happy.

“Severus, Harry, if you have some time, I’d be grateful if you’d come see me in my office briefly during lunch," Minerva informed them after she finished eating.

Harry nodded, trying to hide his disappointment. He’d been hoping to use his lunch hour to take a nap, but Minerva’s tone suggested she was only being polite for now.

Severus was already in the Headteacher’s office when Harry arrived, working his way through a scroll.

“Ah, Harry, please come and take a seat,” Minerva greeted him. “I’ve called you both here today because I’ve been contacted by Beauxbatons. Their Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher requires maternity leave, and they want someone to cover for her for the next academic year. They heard we have two teachers and wondered if I might be willing to spare one.”

Harry’s eyes shot open.

“I cannot handle a full class load,” Severus said quickly, his expression intense. “My health, as you know…”

“Has been fully restored, as far as I heard from you last time we talked about it, I believe?” Minerva replied with a small frown. “Are you saying you lied to me?”

“I’m not confident enough to teach all years by myself, Minerva,” Harry tried. “I’d be lost without Severus’s guidance on dealing with the students.”

Minerva sat back and looked at each of them in turn, scrutinising closely.

“Not long ago, I thought you two might try and kill each other, despite everything we’ve all been through. Now it sounds like you… want to be here together, co-teaching?”

“The arrangement had been mutually beneficial.”

Minerva’s intense gaze was making Harry fidget in his seat. They weren’t doing anything wrong!

“We haven’t broken any of the terms of your additional contract,” Severus stated plainly.

“Not even the one about not having sexual relations?” she asked.

“That wasn’t in there,” Harry said a little too quickly. “Was it?” He turned his head to look at Severus, who was wincing.

“So you can throw the Imperius Curse off like it is nothing, but a little digging from Minerva and you crumble?” Severus said with a sigh. “But no, it wasn’t in there. We’re not breaking any rules, and if anything, we’re exemplary members of staff.”

Minerva considered them both, closely.

“So, do you require an amendment for staff in a relationship?”

“We’re friends now!” Harry exclaimed, very happily in fact. He’d kind of wanted to show off his new friendship to Minerva.

Severus, who treated him still with contempt at times, obviously trusted Harry despite that. They complained to each other, they commiserated one another. They hung out. They were sharing a life together, in fact.

“So… relationship amendment?” Minerva tried again.

Severus looked hesitantly at Harry.

Harry blinked.

“Ron and Hermione, how long have they been going out for now? A few years?” Minerva asked.

“Yes?” Harry answered, confused.

“They’re friends, correct?”

“Of course.”

“Right…” She continued to look between Harry and Severus. “So you can see that people can be friends and date? Date and spend romantic weekends in Ireland before smuggling illegal ingredients into Scotland, even?”

Severus rested his chin on steepled fingers and continued his silent, one-sided staring contest with Minerva.

“They weren’t illegal,” Harry said again, far too quickly.

“Admit you’re dating and I’ll link your bedroom fireplaces,” Minerva offered.

“How much are you due to win if we admit it?” Severus said eventually.

“Enough to make it worth my time having this conversation with you,” she answered with a smile.

“Is there even a job going at Beauxbatons?”

“Yes, but I already turned it down. I told them I’m not giving up either of my professors. It turns out Defence teachers are secretly very social creatures and should be kept in pairs if you wish them to thrive. Who knew?”

Harry’s mind was still processing the bit about the fireplace.

“If we sign a relationship addendum, we’d get Floo access?” That was not a terrible idea, and it wasn’t like it would have to mean anything if they didn’t want it to. Minerva apparently already knew everything they were up to anyway…

“Harry, she’s lying,” Severus said, very sure of himself. “I was Headmaster for a time. I think I would have known if that was a real thing.”

“Ah…”

“I’m happy for you both,” Minerva said with a smile. “I can’t say I saw it coming, but it suits you both, whatever this is, however you want to define it. But,” and here she pointed her finger at first Severus and then Harry, “if I ever have to lie to the Ministry ever again about you both being here all weekend, we shall be having words. Many, many words. They have surveillance of you being, shall we say, amorous, at the Portkey centre. They wrote to me this morning to ask for permission to come on school grounds to talk to you and give you a warning. I told them that it couldn’t possibly be my staff, for they were here all weekend, so they were denied access.”

Harry left Minerva’s office with just one thing in mind, besides the guilt that she’d had to lie for them.

“Are we dating?” Harry asked Severus, the first opportunity he got to talk to him in private, later that day. He held his gaze for longer than usual before going back in for more kisses, until he felt breathless with it all.

They had ten minutes left of their lunch break and had chosen to spend it in Harry’s bedroom (as it had been the closest), letting off some steam.

“We’re friends,” Severus said, voice wavering with hesitation.

“Are we friends who are also dating?” Harry asked again, panting and shivering as Severus kissed up his neck.

“Yes, I think so. We can be whatever you want us to be,” Severus said, equally breathless and desperate. “Truly, the terminology doesn’t matter much to me, so long as we keep doing this.”

“Cool, let’s just, yeah, let’s just –” Severus was undoing Harry’s belt. “Let’s just do that then, shall we?”

Severus swallowed Harry’s cock down whole, which Harry took to be his agreement in the matter. Harry’s rapidly hardening cock was pleased with whatever it was Severus was trying to say with his actions. Harry’s heart was equally happy and more content than it had ever been.

Maybe the lust between them would cool after some time, even if right now it felt like it would burn like the sun for as long as they lived. And even if it didn’t, Harry felt seen with Severus. More importantly, he felt interested in something and someone.

For too long after the war, Harry had given up feeling anything particularly purposeful about much of anything, except for Severus. He was a riddle and the answer all in one. He made Harry want to try, want to experience life. He made him want to explore all there was to explore in the world.

All of this felt like the most intentional thing Harry had ever done in his life. Every action now was a choice he made to bring him closer to Severus, in friendship, in romance, and perhaps even in love.

Whatever their relationship was now, Severus wasn’t pushing Harry away, and Harry had no intention of leaving. More than anything, it felt like a beginning, and one that Harry happily welcomed.