Snape stares at him for a long hot moment, and then looks away.
"So am I."
They stand in silence. Pain pulses in Harry's hip and he shifts his weight again. Snape glances over at him.
"Your leg - will heal?" he asks, tone as if he couldn't care less, but eyes narrow with concern.
"They think so. I've got these - exercises..." he trails off. He's forgotten how to speak. A question comes upon him suddenly. "Were you in love with my mother?"
Snape drops his gaze.
"I shan't answer that question, because it is simply none of your business. And I believe I asked you to leave."
Something strikes Harry as oddly funny, even as his heart is breaking. "You're always trying to toss me out of Spinner's End."
Snape blinks at him, then presses his lips together. "You seem - inordinately attached to the place."
"It grows on a person."
"It's a hideous house," Snape says tersely, studying the kitchen table. "Not meant to be lived in. Given half a chance, it would fall down around you, crush your skull in."
"I like it." Harry pushes his hair back. "I've always liked it."
"Goodbye, Harry."
Harry thrills at Snape's use of his first name, a brief pulse of electricity. His lips are still swollen with the violence of their kiss, and his tongue tastes like Snape - smoke and bitterness and tea.
"I'm coming back," he says softly. "You're not rid of me yet."
"Colour me unsurprised."
It makes the corner of Harry's mouth curl; he remembers this man. He missed this man. He wants to press his lips against Snape's small, unhappy line of a mouth, but cannot imagine getting away with it.
"Goodbye, Severus."
Snape gives him a terse nod before looking away, still standing frozen in the kitchen. Harry leaves. For now.
Severus peers out the front window until Potter has vanished from sight. He then pours himself another cup of tea (leaving the shards of the old cup on the floor), and sits back down at the kitchen table.
It was a mistake to come here.
It was a mistake to show himself, a mistake to let himself get so close to Harry that the man could undo his glamour simply by breathing his name ("Severus..." he said, "Severus..." and Severus had wished for a brief hot moment that he was that name, so he could roll like smoke off Harry Potter's tongue.).
It was all a big bloody mistake, but what could he have done? Let the man die? It was never an option, not for a second, and the very thought makes Severus' palms begin to sweat. Even the sight of that wretched cane made him feel ill for a moment - he was so so close, another few seconds and Potter might have fallen permanently, another few seconds and he might have been lost.
'You'll quake and tremble at the thought of his death, and yet you will not touch him?' a voice in the back of his mind asks him, sinister and soft.
Severus waves the voice away.
"It is wrong," he says to himself, studying his teacup. "Surely - it is wrong."
It is wrong to still want you like I do.
In all his (vicarious) experience with infatuation, Severus learned more than anything that it was short-lived. That though a man or woman might weep and pine for the object of their desire, any great absence would inevitably cure them of this affliction. Why, then, has this not been the case with his own heart? Surely his tastes were not that bizarre, his desires that abnormal. Why did Potter still have this effect on him, even now, despite all odds and reason?
Severus should never have let him get so close. In Amsterdam he was better able to resist his pull, contenting himself with the Prophet and the occasional picture in the gossip magazines (Potter was no longer the heart throb he once was, now that the wizarding world had been gripped by vampire-mania.). These outlets had been enough. Surely they had been enough.
Ten bloody years...
Two days following, Potter returns. Severus is so flummoxed by the sight of him, so out of his head with shock and longing, that he simply opens the door and lets the man inside.
Potter still leans heavily on his cane, and Severus still feels ill about it. No sooner is the younger man through the door than he sets to work in the kitchen, as if he can charm his way back into Severus' heart with another breakfast. Which is patently ridiculous (and did not work the first time. Certainly not.). Severus immediately regrets the dingy clutter of his home, immediately wishes he had made a bit more of an effort, but had been determined to prove to himself that he did not care what Potter thought, one way or the other.
Potter makes him breakfast, like he did so many years ago, and they eat together at the kitchen table. It has been a long time.
"Are the eggs okay?"
"Acceptable." Sometimes incivility is the only power Severus feels he has. It is obscene to be thusly reduced.
"How's your tea?"
Perfect, Severus does not say. Instead, he gives a small nod of acknowledgement, and hopes Potter will let him finish the meal in silence. He occasionally becomes aware that the young man is staring at him, and in those moments he is forced to use his most convincing glare until Potter turns his gaze elsewhere, however briefly. At one point, he feels a soft pressure on his hand, and realizes Potter is touching him.
"Stop," he murmurs, jerking away. Potter snatches his hand back, as if burned. This happens more than once.
"I'm sorry," Potter says quietly, the third time. "I just do it without thinking."
"And that is different from the rest of your actions, how?"
Potter chuckles softly, shaking his head, and Severus feels warmth travel up his spine and into his hands. The young man is determined, it seems, to be bearable. The young man is determined to drive him mad.
"How long do you have to stay here?" Potter asks, finishing his toast.
"I'm sure I do not know. The Ministry apparently has questions for me, regarding my extended absence. I have to meet this afternoon with a barrister."
"The Ministry knows you were on the right side, though. I testified -"
"Good god." Of course he testified. Of course.
"I told them about the memories, and about - everything you had done." The passion in Potter's voice is surprising. "I didn't know then that the memories were fake. I didn't know until recently."
Severus waits a moment before replying. "I obviously correctly estimated how much you retained of our Occlumency lessons."
"That little faith in your teaching abilities?"
"Ungrateful brat."
Potter is thoughtful, which does not bode well. Severus waits in horrible anticipation.
"Why did you do that? All those things about my mother - it drove me crazy thinking that you - that she -"
"I told you before, I will not discuss her with you."
"It drove me crazy," Potter says again.
It strikes Severus now that Potter appears to be jealous. Jealous of his affection. The thought is so astounding that he feels tears well up in his eyes (Snivellus, they called him), and damns himself a coward and a fool. It is better to be alone than be humiliated. It is better to love in vain than to be laughed at.
The clock strikes in the sitting room, and Severus rises from the table.
"I must prepare for my appointment. Thank you for breakfast." The phrase tastes acidic.
Potter rises, starts to clear the dishes. Severus watches him for a moment. Without the cane, he has a noticeable limp, seems always on the verge of losing his balance. Severus had been later than he'd thought. I does not bear thinking about.
"I'll come back in a few days," Potter tells him, laying plates in the sink. "Make you lunch or something. I'm not the best cook -"
"Potter."
"- but I do a mean curry, and -"
"Potter."
"Don't," he says, hunched over the sink. "Just don't."
"Don't what?"
Harry turns on him, eyes slightly wild.
"I know what you're about to do. I know you, Snape. You're getting anxious and you're going to try to scare me away again. Try to make me regret -"
"I do regret it," Severus says it quickly, before he loses his nerve.
Potter looks like he's just been winded. He meets Severus' gaze, unflinching.
"You don't mean that."
"I am well aware of what I mean," Severus snaps, "I do regret it - I do - if I could take it back then I bloody would. Maybe then I would not have spent the good part of my life waiting for your return. Maybe then I would not have spent the last ten years in hiding from the only world I knew. Maybe then I could have done something of some tiny consequence -"
"You helped win a war!" Potter shouts in protest, "You saved countless lives. You've saved me so many times -"
"Saved your life, did I?" Severus hisses through his teeth, "That is remarkable, because you ruined mine."
Potter recoils as if he has been slapped. Severus has to catch his breath for a moment; his heart is racing out of control. He feels the urge to collapse trembling in his kneecaps, but frustration and despair drive him forward.
“Just one year ago I had a business, and a home, and was a respectable sodding member of the community. Had left everything behind, had left this -” Severus pulls up his sleeve, shoving the Dark Mark in Harry’s face, “behind. And now I’ve thrown it all away again, for you! To save your life, like a bloody stupid old man. I’ve sacrificed everything, given up everything, despite the fact that you - that you -”
Potter looks shell-shocked. He stands frozen by the sink, and Severus crushes the urge to comfort him as if it were an insect.
"You should leave," he says after a moment, his voice growing softer. He cannot look at the man. He thinks his heart might be about to stop; the pain in his chest can be due to no other reason, surely. "I have an appointment."
Potter still does not move.
"Evans -" Severus starts, then cuts himself off quickly. Their eyes lock across the kitchen, Potter's blazing shock and anger. "Potter," Severus amends.
"I'm sorry I ruined your life," Potter murmurs, words clipped and dull. "All I ever wanted -"
"Do not start apologizing to me, or we shall be here for the remainder of both our lives."
"You're right." Potter shakes his head. "Of course. You're right."
Again, he meets Severus' eyes, and Severus freezes in his tracks, wondering how difficult it would be to undo what he has just done, take back the words that hang over them both like storm clouds. And as he wonders, he is certain he feels the earth moving, its slow twist and ebb, carrying Harry Potter farther and farther away from him, no matter how he might try.
It's no good.
"I'll go, then," Potter whispers, and does not even give Severus a chance to reply. He hobbles out of the kitchen, walking as if his entire body is a bruise. Severus does not bother looking after him, does not even move until he hears the front door slam. It is impossible to think with the man in the same room, impossible to think with the man in the same city. He needs to get away from here, find a place where he can be alone.
It occurs to him that he has been alone all his life.
The breakfast dishes still sit in the sink, congealing. Severus throws a saucer against the wall with vicious satisfaction. The sound of breaking glass is a sound he’s heard before, one-hundred years ago, when he was an idiot professor at a school of magic, undone by a child (with his mother’s eyes).
Harry returns to Spinner's End a week later. He knows he should not. He knows he should not be there, that Snape meant what he said, and that all Harry has ever brought him was annoyance and heartache (with a probable emphasis on the former). He knows all this, and still he goes back, like a puppy or a kicked dog. One more time, he thinks, one more time to get him out of my system. One more time to forget about that mouth of his, those eyes, one more time to let him rant and abuse me and realize that I hate the bastard after all.
Just once more.
But when he reaches Spinner's End, there is no one there. The front door is open, and Harry enters, scanning for signs of danger. The house, however, is empty. Most of the furniture has been taken, the drawers and cupboards have been cleared.
Snape is gone. As far from Harry's reach as he was months ago. Except now Harry knows it.
A week later, Ginny asks him to move out.
"I want Plum to live with me," she tells him, tears running down her face (more upset about this than the time they'd both kissed other people). "I want this to work, I really do. I'm so - so sorry." She weeps, and he pets her head. It would have happened sooner or later. It had to happen eventually.
Two weeks later, Harry stands on the back porch of the house in Godric's Hollow.
("It'll need some work," the estate agent tells him. "It's been empty for a few years now. Part of the top floor missing. There was some sort of explosion, that's all I know about it, and all I want to know, mind.")
It will need some work. Harry stashes his bags on the bottom floor, seals off the top to avoid the wind and rain. For two straight weeks, he makes repairs, home renovation book in one hand, wand in the other.
Harry is in the garden, ruthlessly stabbing a spade into the still frozen soil, when he hears the crack of Apparation. He does not know what he expects, really; it could be one of a thousand people. As it is, the man who comes through the side gate is dressed all in black, and makes Harry's heart and lungs stop working for a small wrenching moment.
He rises slowly, but cannot possibly think of what to say.
"I have just met Plum," Snape mutters archly.
"Have you?" Harry's words are little more than air.
"I have. She was - most agreeable." Snape's expression conveys how little he values agreeability. "Apparently, you are now homeless."
"Well. I've got half a home." Harry gestures to the crumbling silhouette of his parents' former dwelling.
"I see that." Snape crosses the stone path to where Harry stands. He glances idly around the garden, no doubt looking for flaws. "And what will become of your precious infants?"
"I don't know," Harry admits, wiping his hands on his jeans. "Soon as this place is ready, we'll probably take turns with them. We'll have to work something out." It had been a great arrangement, perfect really, but when it got right down to it, Harry would miss his boys more than he'd miss his wand hand. More than he'd miss magic, if it came right down to it. He didn't know how he would bear to let them go, even if it was only for a while.
"We should have thought this through a little more," he continues, though he doesn't know why he's saying all this to Snape, "I guess she didn't count on falling in love."
"And you?" Snape says quietly.
"And me what?"
"Did you count on it?"
Harry wipes his hands on his jeans once again, just to keep himself busy. He laughs softly, and cannot keep the bitterness out of it. "I was already in love when we adopted the kids. I've been in love since I was - twenty years old." He hesitates. "Maybe longer than that."
Snape pauses, exhales sharply through his nose. "Have you," he manages after a second. "Longer than that, you say?"
"I was always staring at you," Harry says shakily, willing his blush not to become too ridiculous. "Surely you noticed."
Heat and emptiness seem to well up in his chest, and he cannot say anything more. He's tired of repeating himself, and tired of trying to breathe life into a frozen garden, and tired of sleeping alone, and tired of dreaming every night that a dark-haired man looms over him, trails white fingers across his chest, down his back, up his throat and deep deep into his mouth -
"Why are you here?" he asks, trying desperately to stop his current train of thought.
Snape is silent for a moment. He turns his attention to the spade at Harry's feet, and then looks somewhere far off into the distance. He opens his mouth, then closes it. Opens it.
"I was told I would always be welcome here."
"Who told you that?"
"Your mother," Snape says quietly, and it is all Harry can do to keep his hand from clutching at his chest.
"Were you in love with my mother?" he asks, not wanting to hear the answer, but needing to hear it, needing to hear it after all of these years and months and days of not knowing, not knowing -
"No, you idiot," Snape says quickly, not even pausing for breath, "I was in love with you."
At first Harry isn't sure he heard right, is positive it must have been a mistake. Snape blinks repeatedly, and for a moment Harry thinks there might be a slight trace of colour against his pale cheeks.
"She was my friend for some time, that is true. But you were - it was always -"
"You told me you regretted everything," Harry says softly, making no hasty movements. "I thought things had changed."
"Perhaps - perhaps not as much as I would have liked."
They are silent again for a long moment, not touching.
"There are many things that I can - bear," Snape continues roughly, looking everywhere but Harry. "I realize now - to spend my life without you - that is not one of them."
Harry watches him intensely. Snape covers his eyes.
"Please do not make me continue," he murmurs, "I'm hideous at this."
Harry does not trust his voice. Snape turns to face him suddenly, and the heat between them makes Harry's heart lurch. He squeezes his hands together to stop them from shaking.
"It sounds pretty good to me." Harry smiles, and Snape smiles back, a smile all shock and unexpected pleasure. It only lasts a moment, but it is worth it.
"I am very old," Snape says quietly, brow furrowed.
"So am I."
"Don't be absurd. There's white in my hair."
"There is not." Harry pauses, hands longing to run through the hair in question. "If I hadn't been in danger - would you ever have come to me?"
Snape seems taken aback. Harry realizes that they are moving closer and closer to each other, almost imperceptibly.
"I imagine there was always a limit on how long I would be able to resist you."
Harry blushes unwillingly. "You seemed to do all right for ten years."
Snape looks pained for a moment, and rubs the crease between his eyebrows. Harry stands about a foot away from him, and tries desperately to slow his breathing.
"Never think that it was - uncomplicated."
"You should have come sooner."
"I know that now."
"Can I kiss you?" Harry lifts a cold hand to Snape's face, surprised at how hot his skin feels, burning against his fingertips. Snape leans hesitantly into the hand, as Harry maps cool paths against his forehead, and down the side of his neck. Snape's lips part weakly.
"I - do not think -"
"Thirty years is long enough to wait for you." Harry smiles softly, fingers beginning to tremble, "Let me have this."
"Anything -" Snape's eyes flutter closed, a strange and delicate motion, as their mouths find each other.
It is funny, how quickly one remembers.
At first it is tentative, nearly chaste, with Snape's lips so thin and dry, and his hands barely daring to touch Harry's back, or his shoulders, and it's good - so good - but Harry knows he can do better, and he opens his mouth to Severus Snape, lashes out with his tongue and twines his fingers through oily strands of black hair (shot through with white) until Snape is trembling in a different sort of way, until the heat between them seals their bodies together, until Harry tears his mouth away to bite hot kisses up Snape's jaw line while the older man pants against his neck, his pulse jumping beneath Harry's lips in a staccato rhythm, a tarantella.
"Shall we - do you want to -?" Harry murmurs with swollen lips, gesturing vaguely toward the house. Snape kisses him one more time, eyes half-closed and foggy, before pulling gently away. He keeps his hands clenched in the fabric of Harry's jacket.
"I thought - perhaps - I might stay here. For a bit. Watch you gardening."
Harry is taken aback by this, but his heart still pounds with pleasure.
"Watch me gardening? Why?"
"Because now - there's time."
And at the small and innocuous phrase, Harry feels himself become inexplicably shy. There is time now, isn't there? Finally and at long last. He feels as though a weight has been lifted from his chest, and he can finally breathe again. Or perhaps for the first time.
“I went to Spinner’s End, you know. What -”
“Oh.” Snape has a strange, unexpected look on his face. “You came - I did not think -” He stops, shakes his head, almost in amazement.
“Where were you?”
Again, Snape shakes his head. “I was at a hotel, if you must know. The lawyer I met with the last time we - saw each other, has lessened my regret about returning to England. As it turns out, I’ve been left quite a large amount of money. By a great aunt you might recall.”
“She’s rather hard to forget.”
“You’re using that trowel completely ineffectually.”
“Perhaps I need a demonstration of - proper form.”
They end up crushing Harry's flower beds, soil in their hair and in their clothes ("oh god - Harry, oh -").
Perhaps it is a form of gardening.
Perhaps it does not matter.
There is a time much later, much much later, when Harry Potter will ask Severus Snape how to end it.
They will sit in the conservatory together, and Severus will finally acquiesce to reading Harry's letter, finally take the creased and yellow pages, skim the words he was meant to see years and years ago. The boys will be with their mother, and Lily will be upstairs (finally, finally) napping.
Severus will read the letter once, twice, and once again.
"You've improper punctuation in the second paragraph. There should be a period after the bracket."
And Harry will kiss his husband then, a long slow kiss (it is not right to still want you like I do) that speaks of endless summers, and torn off buttons, and "git" and "brat" and lips to scars and fingers. And when they finally part, Harry will ask him.
"How do you end this story? How can you possibly?"
The beginning seems so simple, now. The beginning could be anywhere - could be the locking of eyes across a hall full of first years, could be a rainy night in a pub playing Christmas carols, could be a single mother on a train from Manchester to London, writing fine lines of desire between two people she has not met, drawing green eyes and hooked noses and "Look... at... me... (look at me, damn you, let me have this, just this -")
How do you end this story?
Severus folds the letter neatly in his hand. "You don't."
He kisses Harry, and the story doesn't end. It never ends. In fresh air and sunshine, or spelled out between hard covers, it is all the same.
Sunlight dims and vanishes. Pages brown and crumble.
Love leaves a mark.
How does it happen that our lives can drift
far from ourselves while we stay trapped in time,
queuing for death? It seems nothing will shift
the pattern of our days, alter the rhyme
we make with loss to assonance with bliss.
Then love comes, like a sudden flight of birds
from earth to heaven after rain.
It was not until a week following the ceremony that he was released. A day later, he stands in front of Spinner's End, leaning heavily on a cane (They say it should only be a few weeks before he's off it. It's rather embarrassing, really.). The windows of the narrow brick house are boarded up (one is broken), and it looks like no one has lived here in years. Harry is not convinced.
He limps up the cracked front steps (it doesn't seem so long ago, not really), and knocks on the door.
There is no answer. He had expected as much, and knocks again. There is the sound of movement from inside, and Harry's heart twists and clenches, Harry's hands raise self-consciously to his face, Harry's throat goes dry and his lips part weakly
The door opens a crack, and a dark, heavy-lidded eye peers out at him. There is a small hesitation, and the door slams shut.
Harry winces (no one said it would be easy), and knocks again. Unsurprisingly, no one answers, but Harry keeps knocking and knocking until his knuckles are split and swollen, back of his hand smudged with blood. At long last, the door opens again.
Severus Snape stands there, wrapped in a ragged dressing gown, ten years older. And alive. Harry feels as if he has been stabbed; the man is so gorgeous it is difficult to keep his eyes open, and not squint like he is staring at the sun.
Snape looks briefly from Harry to the cane and back again, before turning on one heel and disappearing into the house. He does not slam the door in Harry's face, however, which Harry takes as an engraved invitation to follow.
Snape is sitting at the kitchen table, hand covering his eyes, back hunched like he cannot possibly support his own weight. He's gained a bit since last Harry saw him, but it looks good; the Potions Master was always entirely too skinny, all ribs and elbows. Harry kissed those ribs, once. Knew the small size of Snape's body by touch alone.
It is strange to see Snape again, the way they always knew each other. The Snape from the past (or Severus, wasn't it? once, it was Severus) was skinny and pale, but he did not radiate the damaged-ness of the Snape that sits before him. Young Snape did not have eyes nearly that dark, eyes the colour of dried blood, surrounded by circles so deep they were nearly purple. Young Snape did not have cheekbones that stuck out at such sharp angles, or collarbones that could have been knives. And young Snape wasn't remotely as beautiful. Not anywhere close. No comparison, really.
It occurs to Harry then, as he is thinking his former professor beautiful, that perhaps he's been in love with the man for much longer than he originally thought. Perhaps none of this was new. And how ridiculous, how unfair, that he never realized until now.
"You're alive," Harry whispers, willing his voice to remain steady. He has not actually said the words out loud yet, not even in the privacy of his rooms, and he is amazed that he manages them.
Snape says nothing, and keeps his hand firmly in place. He could be a statue, were it not for the vein that twitches ever so slightly against his neck.
"You're - alive," Harry says again, getting used to the phrase.
There is no response, and he is not that surprised by it. He feels the desperate urge to keep talking (the urge he always feels when he is nervous), wants to fill the air with words, sounds, anything to absorb the silence that twists like glass into his palm. He latches onto courtesy.
"You saved my life," he says quietly. Snape makes a sound deep in his throat (it could be a cough) but does not remove his hand from his eyes. "I would have died at the ceremony, if you hadn't been there."
Snape does not move. Harry takes a shallow breath, feeling dizzy and bone-tired.
"Thank you. For that. And for -"
"Go away, Potter." Snape's smooth voice breaks Harry's concentration, and he falters over his words. Snape has not changed position, but there is a tightness in his mouth, a trembling in his hands that was certainly not there before. Harry realizes he has not heard the man's voice in years, and something deep within him caves, releasing a rush of warmth and weakness.
"You're alive," he says again, the wonder of the words still fresh as a wound.
"Is it your intention to inundate me with the obvious?" Snape looks up suddenly, eyes flashing. Harry wants to crouch at the foot of Snape's chair, and smooth away his frown lines and kiss the dark circles under his eyes. The want builds until it overwhelms him, makes his hands start to shake.
"Where have you been," he whispers, hating the weakness in his voice, "for ten years?" He waits for Snape to tell him it is simply none of his business.
"Amsterdam," Snape says instead, and Harry is shocked to the soles of his feet. Both by the answer and the fact that he got any answer at all.
"Amsterdam?" he repeats. "Doing what?"
"That is simply none of your business." Snape cannot keep the edge from his voice. Harry waits, and after a moment of silence, Snape shudders and hisses, "Potions."
"Why didn't - why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you -"
"And why would I have done that?" Snape snarls at him. "I read the bloody Prophet. You married Ginevra Weasley and have two delightful children. I have my own shop, and an undamaged reputation, and a comfortable life. Why in Merlin's name would I have sought you out?"
"You sought me out a few days ago," Harry says quietly, and two spots of colour appear high on Snape's cheekbones.
"That is - altogether different. I had not intended on being taken in by Aurors, nor kept against my will in England. I had not counted on my new life becoming irreparably damaged and impossible to resume. I had not counted on any of this, although, knowing you were involved, I should have predicted the worst outcome possible," he finishes in a rush, then bites down on his lips.
Harry will gladly take anger over silence; with anger, he is on familiar ground.
"I thought - I thought you died." Just the small sentence makes heat pulse like tears in Harry's skull. "And I thought it was my fault."
"It largely was your fault, if I remember correctly." Snape bites down on his lips again, and Harry gets the impression he is trying to stop himself from speaking.
"How did you survive?"
Snape gives him a completely disdainful look, the type meant to make Harry melt into a hideous puddle and crawl back out the door. Harry does not melt and crawl, however, he is not afraid. What is there to be afraid of anymore? He thought Snape was dead. Nothing could be worse.
"Antivenin," Snape sighs after a moment. "And a Blood-Replenishing potion. Dumbledore was always ridiculously insistent that I carry them on my person."
Harry feels his chest cave slightly, feels his heart stutter beneath his skin.
"He was?"
"Yes, he - why in Merlin's name are you looking like that?"
"No reason. Nothing." Harry thinks he might need to sit down before his legs give out. He shifts his weight, leans on his cane. Snape notices this, and stares at him for a moment, before squeezing his eyes tightly shut.
"I am a colossal fool."
Harry's breath catches in his throat. "You forgot stubborn and self-important."
Snape is not amused. "You are - the spitting sodding image of your father. You could be his bleeding twin. And the scar - the scar -" He covers his face with his hands again.
"Severus?" Harry asks softly, after a moment.
Instantly, Snape rises from the table, knocking off a teacup, which shatters on the floor.
"Your bloody scar," he hisses, eyes wild. "The world knew about the scar, the sodding world. I cannot believe I did not even think - not for a second -"
"Why would you?" Harry cries out, desperately wanting the man to stop blaming himself. "Why would you have ever thought that? I lied to you -"
"You damn well did," Snape spits, looming closer, "You have quite the talent for it - hit your sodding head, what rubbish. And I believed you, I, like a halfwit and a fool -"
"You lied to me too," Harry retorts, anger rising in him inexplicably. This isn't how it's supposed to be, they aren't supposed to be screaming at each other, not yet. "You were going to just die without telling me, telling me anything! How could you do that?"
"How can you even ask this question?" Snape snarls, heat rushing to his face, "What could I possibly have said, Potter? What? When? Should I have approached you, perhaps, as a young boy of eleven, convinced you of the great and tragic love affair that had yet to happen between us? No, no, surely I could have restrained myself until you were, say, twelve. I can imagine the conversation we would have had at that particular point in time very well. Can't you?"
"Stop -"
"Or maybe I could have waited until sodding sixth year, confessed my utter and witless devotion to you while I was murdering Albus Dumbledore, or perhaps moments after that, when you were hurtling Unforgivables at me -"
"That's not fair!" Harry retorts. "That is not fair! I thought all these things about you - all these horrible, nasty things - because you made me. You made me, even though you knew, you knew -"
"What did I know, Potter?" Snape shouts into Harry's face, his voice booming in the tiny kitchen. "What could I possibly have known?"
Harry cannot think, can only act, so he grabs Snape's ridiculous bathrobe and kisses him. Let the bastard feel what he feels; let Snape understand what Harry cannot put into words. He kisses Snape, a bundle of stinging nettles and self-righteousness, forces his tongue into Snape's mouth, and though the man leans back at first, soon he is clawing at Harry's clothing, pulling him flush against his body, and biting deep searing kisses on his mouth. Snape presses Harry up against the doorframe in the kitchen, yanking at his hair and sucking on his neck, and Harry will be black and blue, he knows it, but this is what he wants, what he's wanted for years -
Snape suddenly jerks free from Harry's grip, and is halfway across the kitchen before Harry can remember how to speak. He is off balance, and his cane has been kicked to the floor somewhere, and his bad leg crumples underneath him, sending him falling to the ground.
Snape does not move.
Harry tries to find his cane and right himself with the minimum amount of shame. It does not help that Severus Snape is staring at him, hand pressed against his mouth and face gone very white.
When Harry is finally on his feet, Snape drops his hand.
"Get out of my house." His voice is level, and deathly serious.
Harry tastes blood on his upper lip. He runs his tongue over it, and sees Snape flinch slightly.
"Get out," Snape repeats himself, "go back to your wife."
Harry's body goes cold all over. He has no idea how to set things right. He has no idea where to possibly begin.
"Ginny and I, we aren't -"
"Stop," Snape raises his hand, stopping him. "I have no interest in the sordid details of your love life."
"We aren't together," Harry says it anyway, in a rush. "We haven't been for a long time. We're only married because - she wanted children and - but she's seeing someone else - and I -"
"And you what, Potter? You've been waiting your whole life for me, is that it, pining away in miserable solitude?"
It is indeed a way to put it. Harry does not know how to respond, so he simply looks at Snape, wishing the man could reach in and squeeze the truth from his wasted heart.
"I am expected to believe that?" Snape sneers, taking Harry's silence as his reply. "Do not mock me, Potter."
"I'm not mocking you," Harry protests. "For me - it was only a few years ago. It's all still fresh. I still feel the same -"
"Well, it was more than twenty years ago for me," the older man spits, teeth clenched together. "So you can imagine how my feelings might have changed."
Harry is certain that more than just his lip is bleeding. Surely there should be some wound, some visible mark left behind by an injury of this magnitude.
"I named my son after you," he murmurs, foolishly.
Snape snorts. "So I've heard. How charming."
"There's been - no one else."
Snape looks slightly alarmed, but quickly replaces the expression with a sneer. "It was years ago," he says roughly.
"Yes, yes, you're very sorry, I'm sure." She eyes the locked room, from which a loud pounding is emanating. "I take it he's in there?"
"He won't speak to anyone," Crumb sighs, "Nearly injured one of the Mungo's staff members with a dinner tray. I thought - perhaps - a friendly face..."
"I'm sure you did," she mutters to herself. "You may as well unward the door."
"Have you - got your wand?"
"Of course, of course." She stands near the door, flanked by Aurors, as Crumb performs several unlocking spells.
A young mediwitch gives a small sob of fright, and McGonagall eyes her critically.
"Calm yourself, you silly girl," she snaps, reaching for the doorknob.
"Good luck," Crumb tells her, taking a cautionary step back.
"Luck?" McGonagall snorts softly. "With Severus Snape, one needs more than luck." She steps inside, and closes the door behind her.
The room is very white, with one bed in the far corner, and a tall, ranting man in the other. Ten years, she thinks, ten years since she chased this young man from his own school, ten years since that great bloody snake ripped his throat out and left him bleeding out in the Shrieking Shack -
She feels tears spring to her eyes.
Snape hardly spares her a glance.
"I must see him. I must. Do you understand me?"
"Who?" she asks, stupidly. She knows the answer, or would know the answer, was she not so overcome with the length of Snape's hair and the lines around his eyes.
"Who?" Snape sneers, nearly shrieks. "Harry sodding Potter, that's who. Do you realize, Minerva, that he could have died today? Does anyone in this useless excuse for a place of medicine realize that? If I do not see him - if I do not make sure -"
"He's awake."
Snape stops pacing, stands shocked and still by the small barred window. And in that moment, Minerva McGonagall realizes something. Something perhaps she should have realized years ago.
"Awake? How is he? Has he been ill, at all? Difficulty breathing, or -"
"Apparently, he's doing quite well." She pauses, at a loss for the specifics. "Perhaps I should fetch a mediwizard."
Snape snorts with disdain. "Do not trouble yourself. They are all completely incompetent." He resumes his pacing, muttering to himself. "Ridiculous...failed to recognize...what sort of useless facility..."
"Severus," Minerva says quietly, trying to regain his attention. "What - happened to Potter? How did you -"
"How did I - what?" Snape's eyes flash furiously at her. "How did I utilize the skills that even a dim-witted first year should possess?
Minerva is silent, and Snape continues.
"The signs of Paramuris in the system. Loss of consciousness. Inexplicable bruising. Yellowish tint to face and hands."
"I -"
"I read the sodding Prophet, I saw those bloody pictures of him, coming out of Mungo's after the staff sent him on his merry way. And because I am not completely witless, I wondered why anyone would feel the desire to inject Harry Potter with a completely harmless substance, days before the anniversary celebrations?"
Minerva wracks her brain for the effects of the potion in particular. Parum Muris. Little mouse.
"There is - another potion," she says slowly, horrified realization beginning to dawn. "Isn't there? A potion that - if you combine the two -"
"They become fatal, yes." Snape pinches the bridge of his nose, obviously still distraught. "It is my belief, now, that second potion was the gas which came out of the crate."
Minerva raises her hand to her heart.
"They were going to murder him after his speech." Snape does not look at her. "In front of everyone."
They are silent for a few moments. If there was another chair, she would have felt the need to sit down. As it is, she stands by the door, wringing her hands, over and over again.
"It was lucky you were there," she murmurs, and Snape scoffs.
"I was very nearly too late." Snape seems to realize the truth of this statement after he speaks it, and a look of utter despair comes over his face. "I might have - he might have -"
"You did well." Minerva takes a few steps closer, the desire to touch the man's shoulder overpowering her common sense. Snape realizes her intention and flinches, even though she is still halfway across the room.
"You did well," Minerva says again, staying where she is. "You were not too late. He is alive. You have saved his life for the hundredth time, I imagine."
Snape lets out a short, scornful laugh. "Precious little thanks I've had for it."
The man must be nearly fifty, but Minerva still sees a teenage boy when she looks at him - awkward and short-tempered and fiercely protective. It occurs to her that there are things to say. Things she wishes did not need to be said.
"The last time I saw you -"
"Oh, for Merlin's sake."
"Do not interrupt me, Severus Snape. Let me say my piece, and then you may hiss and spit all you like. Only give me that."
Snape glares at her from across the room, but says nothing. Minerva steels herself.
"The last time I saw you, I - truly believed you had betrayed the Order. Betrayed Albus. I chased you from your school."
Snape crosses his arms, staring out the tiny window. "It was my job to be convincing," he says, so quietly she almost doesn't hear him.
"Some of us - should not have been so easily convinced."
They are silent. Minerva watches his profile, still strong, still sharp, despite the space of ten years.
"Could you ever forgive a blind and foolish old woman?"
Snape considers this, heat rising to his face. Never comfortable with kindness, was our Snape.
"I - may be persuaded," he says softly. He looks up, suddenly, and fixes his bird-black eyes on her. "Tell them to let me go."
Minerva is startled. "But - I was told you were injured. Your shoulder -"
"Dislocated, yes. Unpleasant, but easily mended."
"The boy - he will want to see -"
"I have spent too many years concerned with the desires of Harry Potter," Snape spits. Minerva watches as his face grows even more flushed. "And I have no wish to see him. I want to go home."
Minerva presses her lips together. "Where is home for you?" She pauses, frets a bit. "Where have you been?"
Snape sniffs. Stares again out the window. "Away."
"I will - see what I can do." Minerva moves back toward the door. "Try not to abuse too many of the staff members while I am away."
Snape says nothing to this, only stares in silence at the fragment of blue sky visible through the curtains.
"And Severus," Minerva begins uncertainly, hand on the doorknob.
He glances briefly at her.
"It is good to have you back." She opens the door, and leaves him alone with his window.
It takes a week for Harry to find the man.
("Gone? What do you mean, gone? He can't have, he - why didn't -"
"He was released within hours of your arrival here. His injuries were largely superficial."
Harry clutches fiercely at his hospital gown, his bed sheets.
"Where - where is he?"
The mediwizard takes pity on him, revealing far more than he legally should.
"He is in the country, if that is any help. The Ministry has insisted he stay in England. For the present.")
They would not let Harry go, however. The poison in his system had started to spread by the time Snape gave him the antidote, and even in those brief seconds it had wreaked havoc on his body. The left side was the worst; Harry could barely lift his arm, and his leg just twisted underneath him whenever he tried to walk. The Mungo's staff was doing the best it could, and gradually he regained feeling in his limbs, could almost hobble from one side of his room to the other.
The day of the anniversary celebration dawns warm and bright, under a wide cloudless sky. Harry nervously shuffles his papers, reading his speech over and over, while Ginny and the boys wait in impossibly long lines for ice-cream and face-painting. The statue is every bit as frightening as Harry could have hoped, though he isn't so heartless as to be completely unaffected by it. Against its base is affixed a large plaque, listing the names of those killed in both wars. He stands before it for a long moment. James and Lily Potter. Albus Dumbledore. Remus and Nymphadora Lupin. Fred Weasley. Harry's heart pounds in his chest and he reaches down, brushes his thumb briefly across the tiny mechanical font: Severus Snape.
Ex-Headmistress McGonagall smiles at him from across the sea of people, and Harry smiles back. She looks the same as she ever did, except maybe a bit less tired. Retirement will do that to a person. She is wearing one of the commemorative jumpers Ron was so keen on, though she does not look that pleased about it.
Hagrid gives him a back-breaking hug, eyes already red with weeping. James is quite in love with the giant man, and follows him everywhere, clutching the hem of Hagrid’s manky old coat and listening enraptured to stories about dragons and spiders and great hairy beasts. As long as the boy isn’t trod upon or eaten by Fang, Harry’s fine with it.
Ron is off with George, trying to scam their way into free merchandise, and Harry spots Hermione alone under the shade of a tree. Or as alone as anyone can be in the middle of a jostling crowd.
"You'll be brilliant, by the way," she tells him when she sees him. She has apparently forgiven him for the dinner incident.
"I think I'm going to be sick."
"Come now, Harry. You defeated the most powerful Dark Wizard of all time. You can surely handle a bunch of politicians and their families."
“I don’t know. They are slightly more terrifying. And there are altogether more of them.”
Hermione laughs and leans against him for a moment, before frowning. She squints into the sunlight.
“Your wife is coming,” she murmurs, a strange look coming over her face. “I should go find Ron before the speeches start. Good luck.”
Harry waves after her. Something happened with her and Ginny, some fight or something, because the two have been acting strange around each other for years now. They’re rarely in the same room, if they can help it, and hardly speak when the other one is present. It makes for very awkward dinner parties.
“Ello, handsome.” Harry scoops Albus out of her arms and gives him a kiss. He is disturbed to see the boy has a painted lightning bolt on his forehead and black circles like spectacles painted around his eyes.
“Down,” Albus shouts, “down down down -”
“He’s been wanting to run around all day. But there are far too many people here. He’d be off like a shot.”
Harry tosses his son in the air, and the boy shrieks in delight.
“It’s fine for you to throw him around, but try carrying him for hours in this heat.” Ginny sighs, relaxing for a moment, while Albus tries earnestly to break Harry’s glasses. “How is Hermione doing?”
“She’s fine. She -”
They are jostled apart by a heavily breathing Edmund Honeycutt, who appears as suddenly as if he Apparated.
"I'm so sorry to interrupt, truly I am, but we are almost ready for you, Mr. Potter." The man beams, wiping sweat from his brow with a spotty handkerchief. "If you would be so good as to follow me to the stage."
Harry widens his eyes.
“You’ll be fine,” Ginny laughs, as she grudgingly hefts the one-year-old back into her arms. "You're Harry bloody Potter."
"I bloody well am." Harry grins at her (still somewhat unconvinced), and hurries after Honeycutt.
When they reach the platform, a slight hush has descended over the vast crowd. There is a large crate on stage, from which Harry can hear a vague cooing and fluttering of wings.
“You have your wand on you?” Honeycutt asks him, and Harry nods.
"The top will lift off as soon as the bindings have been severed," the man murmurs, motioning to the crate. "If you would be so kind as to do the honours, following your speech."
Harry nods, a bit shaky on his feet.
“You needn’t worry, Mr. Potter. You are the Boy Who Lived. It’s you they want to see.”
With a wink that speaks to far more personality than Harry would ever have expected from the man, Honeycutt moves to the podium, mopping his brow before casting Sonorus and speaking..
"Ladies and gentlemen." He smiles his average smile. In the audience, Harry sees Headmistress Singh, looking unimpressed. She will be speaking later, no doubt. Harry also spies Ron and Hermione near the front, with George Weasley, who seems a bit worse for wear. The rest of the Weasley clan is around somewhere, and the occasional burst of red hair in the crowd is enough to alert him of one’s presence.
He forgets for a moment that Honeycutt is speaking. Harry’s hands are clammy and he rubs them on his trousers.
"It is my great pleasure and privilege to welcome you to this most special event, the Tenth Memorial Day celebrations. Ten years ago today, You-Know-Who’s reign of fear and chaos was ended, here, at this very school, and it is that event that we gather here to recognize every year. Most of you probably recognize my face, but for those of you from elsewhere, I am Edmund Honeycutt, Head of Public Affairs. Before we begin today's festivities, I would like to welcome Mr. Harry Potter to the stage, to say a few introductory words. Mr. Potter, if you would."
Harry's stomach sinks into his feet, and for a moment he forgets how to walk. Each step to the podium feels like his body is made of lead, and a sea of eyes fasten on him. Something is going on at the back of the crowd, and Harry strains to make it out. If someone's pissed and rowdy already (he just prays it isn’t a Weasley), it is going to make for an interesting party.
"Hello," he murmurs after casting his own Sonorus, and his voice booms over rows and rows of people, slightly distorted. He swallows. "I'm - very pleased to be here at the Tenth Anniversary Celebrations and Memorial Day. I'm especially pleased to be here for the unveiling of this commemorative statue, the -" He squints at the name Honeycutt jotted down for him. "The - Heaviest Wand."
There is a polite smatter of applause from the crowd, and Harry frantically scans his notes, trying to make sense of them. His hands are sweating so badly the ink is starting to run.
“Being here, with all -” He squints to make a word out. Smears of ink spread wherever he touches. “Being in your -”
This is ridiculous. Harry folds his notes, puts them into his pocket. Behind him, he hears Honeycutt make a slight choking sound.
“I can’t read my notes,” he says softly, and there is a gentle murmur of laughter from the crowd. A couple of people are still pushing each other, far in the back. “But I still want to say - being here, with all of you, makes me realize exactly what’s important. Makes me realize how -” He struggles. “- how good it is that Volde -”
The crowd goes very silent. He can see Hermione staring up at him with wide, nervous eyes. He sighs.
“Voldemort,” he says deliberately, and there are nervous whispers from the gathered audience. Again, Honeycutt makes a not completely happy noise, deep in his throat. “It’s just a name. It doesn’t have any power. And the bearer of that name no longer has power, either. He was just a man. And we defeated him.”
He can see his son sitting high on Hagrid’s shoulders. Hagrid blows his nose with a sound like a foghorn, and James smiles delightedly. At the back of the crowd, someone shouts something inaudible. Harry continues.
“In the end, we defeated him together. With courage. And skill. And - love.” In his mind’s eye he sees Snape, biting down on his lips to keep from smiling. He sees Snape’s dark pyjamas, buttoned tightly at the throat.
"We - all of us - lost people we cared about. And this fine school lost a Headmaster. Lost - two Headmasters. But I'm sure if - if everyone on that plaque were here today, they would know how worth it their sacrifices had been. And how loved, and missed they are." He hears Hagrid let out a loud sob. James is petting his head.
"I should keep this short, so you can start enjoying yourselves. I just hope you know that - I'm so very grateful I can be here, with all of you today. To honour and celebrate and - miss - those who cannot be." In his mind, Severus Snape is sitting across the kitchen table, white fingers wrapped around a teacup. Snape is sitting on the front steps beside him, frowning down at his hands. Snape is standing in the rain, though Harry has an umbrella.
"Thank you," Harry concludes, and there is another brief polite smattering of applause. Well, it wasn't the best speech he'd ever heard, but at least he didn't throw up. He casts a Quietus on his booming voice, and steps back.
"Mr. Potter, if you would." Honeycutt's gets to his feet, and Harry lifts his wand. The commotion at the back of the crowd seems to be making its way closer to the stage; someone is shouting, but Harry cannot make out the words. He sees several Aurors leave their posts by the stage to investigate.
"Go on, Mr. Potter," Honeycutt says, rather impatiently, and when Harry hesitates again, the older man has his wand out in an instant, severing the bindings on the crate. The lid rises, and someone in the crowd yells something ("Potter!") and the crate bursts open with a flash of smoke.
Smoke that shouldn't be there. Harry opens his mouth, and suddenly feels a tingling in his skin, the kind of feeling you get just before a part of your body goes numb. Something is wrong... he knows something is wrong, but he doesn't much care, the ground looks so soft and he could sleep for a thousand years, if they'd let him, sleep until he looked like Dumbledore, and there is a flashing light at the corner of his eyes, before someone flies at him, knocks him off the stage.
"You must drink this," a voice hisses in his ear, and Harry can barely see, only white hair and dark fabric, "drink this you bloody - stupid -"
Cold glass is pressed against his lips and something bitter is running down his throat, and Harry chokes and gags and struggles to get away -
"If you spit this up -" the voice threatens, and spells are flying around them, back and forth like fireworks, and people are screaming (people are screaming) and the warm weight is suddenly thrown off him, the stranger sent flying backwards.
Harry struggles to his feet, dizzily, each step nearly a fall. Where are his children - he cannot seem to remember their names - and there is an older, white-haired man lying crumpled a few feet away . As Harry approaches, the man suddenly looks up, going very pale and hissing "Honeycutt, it's sodding Honeycutt," and Harry turns just in time to see Honeycutt brandishing his wand like a knife ("Avada Kedavra!") and the white-haired man shouts "No!" ( a no Harry feels in his teeth, in his fingers, which are shaking, which are multiplying -)
Something is very wrong.
Without any conscious intention, he stumbles to the left, barely missing Honeycutt's curse, and the white-haired stranger scrambles upright, searching desperately for his wand. Someone has disarmed Honeycutt, who is laughing horribly, and as the world spins around Harry, as Harry falls dizzily to his knees (there is something wrong with him, there was something in -), the Head of Public Affairs waves to the panicking crowd.
"Don't move!" a random Auror shouts, but Honeycutt just laughs more wildly.
"The Mark rises! The Mark rises!" he cackles, before lifting his hand to his mouth, and swallowing something quickly. He immediately begins to scream, grabbing at his throat, and the stage is swarmed with Aurors, and someone is carrying the white-haired man away, who is shouting "Wait! Wait, let me -"
And without any proof, without anything more than an approaching misty unconsciousness, and a feeling so sharp it stings, Harry reaches out as the man passes, whispers, "Severus," like he has never said the name before, whispers, "Severus," like the title of a song or a poem, reaches out with his hand and his mind, pushes -
The man flinches, and there is another shout from the crowd, and an explosion of light, and the last thing Harry sees is white hair growing longer and darker, nose and eyes and mouth shifting like clay before his closing eyes.
There is a small crowd of mediwizards and witches around a closed door. Two of them are crying. From inside the room, there is a loud crash, and the crowd flinches slightly.
"Where is he - I must see him - do any of you imbecilic - witless - incompetents realize that - let me out of here at once!"
Down the polished hospital hallway, an old woman approaches. She is wearing a very fashionable jumper, and a few of the younger staff members nudge each other.
"All right, I'm here, I'm here."
Barnabas Crumb, a large dark-haired Auror, steps forward to take the woman's hand.
The day of the anniversary celebration dawns warm and bright, under a wide cloudless sky. Harry nervously shuffles his papers, reading his speech over and over, while Ginny and the boys wait in impossibly long lines for ice-cream and face-painting. The statue is every bit as frightening as Harry could have hoped, though he isn't so heartless as to be completely unaffected by it. Against its base is affixed a large plaque, listing the names of those killed in both wars. He stands before it for a long moment. James and Lily Potter. Albus Dumbledore. Remus and Nymphadora Lupin. Fred Weasley. Harry's heart pounds in his chest and he reaches down, brushes his thumb briefly across the tiny mechanical font: Severus Snape.
Ex-Headmistress McGonagall smiles at him from across the sea of people, and Harry smiles back. She looks the same as she ever did, except maybe a bit less tired. Retirement will do that to a person. She is wearing one of the commemorative jumpers Ron was so keen on, though she does not look that pleased about it.
Hagrid gives him a back-breaking hug, eyes already red with weeping. James is quite in love with the giant man, and follows him everywhere, clutching the hem of Hagrid’s manky old coat and listening enraptured to stories about dragons and spiders and great hairy beasts. As long as the boy isn’t trod upon or eaten by Fang, Harry’s fine with it.
Ron is off with George, trying to scam their way into free merchandise, and Harry spots Hermione alone under the shade of a tree. Or as alone as anyone can be in the middle of a jostling crowd.
"You'll be brilliant, by the way," she tells him when she sees him. She has apparently forgiven him for the dinner incident.
"I think I'm going to be sick."
"Come now, Harry. You defeated the most powerful Dark Wizard of all time. You can surely handle a bunch of politicians and their families."
“I don’t know. They are slightly more terrifying. And there are altogether more of them.”
Hermione laughs and leans against him for a moment, before frowning. She squints into the sunlight.
“Your wife is coming,” she murmurs, a strange look coming over her face. “I should go find Ron before the speeches start. Good luck.”
Harry waves after her. Something happened with her and Ginny, some fight or something, because the two have been acting strange around each other for years now. They’re rarely in the same room, if they can help it, and hardly speak when the other one is present. It makes for very awkward dinner parties.
“Ello, handsome.” Harry scoops Albus out of her arms and gives him a kiss. He is disturbed to see the boy has a painted lightning bolt on his forehead and black circles like spectacles painted around his eyes.
“Down,” Albus shouts, “down down down -”
“He’s been wanting to run around all day. But there are far too many people here. He’d be off like a shot.”
Harry tosses his son in the air, and the boy shrieks in delight.
“It’s fine for you to throw him around, but try carrying him for hours in this heat.” Ginny sighs, relaxing for a moment, while Albus tries earnestly to break Harry’s glasses. “How is Hermione doing?”
“She’s fine. She -”
They are jostled apart by a heavily breathing Edmund Honeycutt, who appears as suddenly as if he Apparated.
"I'm so sorry to interrupt, truly I am, but we are almost ready for you, Mr. Potter." The man beams, wiping sweat from his brow with a spotty handkerchief. "If you would be so good as to follow me to the stage."
Harry widens his eyes.
“You’ll be fine,” Ginny laughs, as she grudgingly hefts the one-year-old back into her arms. "You're Harry bloody Potter."
"I bloody well am." Harry grins at her (still somewhat unconvinced), and hurries after Honeycutt.
When they reach the platform, a slight hush has descended over the vast crowd. There is a large crate on stage, from which Harry can hear a vague cooing and fluttering of wings.
“You have your wand on you?” Honeycutt asks him, and Harry nods.
"The top will lift off as soon as the bindings have been severed," the man murmurs, motioning to the crate. "If you would be so kind as to do the honours, following your speech."
Harry nods, a bit shaky on his feet.
“You needn’t worry, Mr. Potter. You are the Boy Who Lived. It’s you they want to see.”
With a wink that speaks to far more personality than Harry would ever have expected from the man, Honeycutt moves to the podium, mopping his brow before casting Sonorus and speaking..
"Ladies and gentlemen." He smiles his average smile. In the audience, Harry sees Headmistress Singh, looking unimpressed. She will be speaking later, no doubt. Harry also spies Ron and Hermione near the front, with George Weasley, who seems a bit worse for wear. The rest of the Weasley clan is around somewhere, and the occasional burst of red hair in the crowd is enough to alert him of one’s presence.
He forgets for a moment that Honeycutt is speaking. Harry’s hands are clammy and he rubs them on his trousers.
"It is my great pleasure and privilege to welcome you to this most special event, the Tenth Memorial Day celebrations. Ten years ago today, You-Know-Who’s reign of fear and chaos was ended, here, at this very school, and it is that event that we gather here to recognize every year. Most of you probably recognize my face, but for those of you from elsewhere, I am Edmund Honeycutt, Head of Public Affairs. Before we begin today's festivities, I would like to welcome Mr. Harry Potter to the stage, to say a few introductory words. Mr. Potter, if you would."
Harry's stomach sinks into his feet, and for a moment he forgets how to walk. Each step to the podium feels like his body is made of lead, and a sea of eyes fasten on him. Something is going on at the back of the crowd, and Harry strains to make it out. If someone's pissed and rowdy already (he just prays it isn’t a Weasley), it is going to make for an interesting party.
"Hello," he murmurs after casting his own Sonorus, and his voice booms over rows and rows of people, slightly distorted. He swallows. "I'm - very pleased to be here at the Tenth Anniversary Celebrations and Memorial Day. I'm especially pleased to be here for the unveiling of this commemorative statue, the -" He squints at the name Honeycutt jotted down for him. "The - Heaviest Wand."
There is a polite smatter of applause from the crowd, and Harry frantically scans his notes, trying to make sense of them. His hands are sweating so badly the ink is starting to run.
“Being here, with all -” He squints to make a word out. Smears of ink spread wherever he touches. “Being in your -”
This is ridiculous. Harry folds his notes, puts them into his pocket. Behind him, he hears Honeycutt make a slight choking sound.
“I can’t read my notes,” he says softly, and there is a gentle murmur of laughter from the crowd. A couple of people are still pushing each other, far in the back. “But I still want to say - being here, with all of you, makes me realize exactly what’s important. Makes me realize how -” He struggles. “- how good it is that Volde -”
The crowd goes very silent. He can see Hermione staring up at him with wide, nervous eyes. He sighs.
“Voldemort,” he says deliberately, and there are nervous whispers from the gathered audience. Again, Honeycutt makes a not completely happy noise, deep in his throat. “It’s just a name. It doesn’t have any power. And the bearer of that name no longer has power, either. He was just a man. And we defeated him.”
He can see his son sitting high on Hagrid’s shoulders. Hagrid blows his nose with a sound like a foghorn, and James smiles delightedly. At the back of the crowd, someone shouts something inaudible. Harry continues.
“In the end, we defeated him together. With courage. And skill. And - love.” In his mind’s eye he sees Snape, biting down on his lips to keep from smiling. He sees Snape’s dark pyjamas, buttoned tightly at the throat.
"We - all of us - lost people we cared about. And this fine school lost a Headmaster. Lost - two Headmasters. But I'm sure if - if everyone on that plaque were here today, they would know how worth it their sacrifices had been. And how loved, and missed they are." He hears Hagrid let out a loud sob. James is petting his head.
"I should keep this short, so you can start enjoying yourselves. I just hope you know that - I'm so very grateful I can be here, with all of you today. To honour and celebrate and - miss - those who cannot be." In his mind, Severus Snape is sitting across the kitchen table, white fingers wrapped around a teacup. Snape is sitting on the front steps beside him, frowning down at his hands. Snape is standing in the rain, though Harry has an umbrella.
"Thank you," Harry concludes, and there is another brief polite smattering of applause. Well, it wasn't the best speech he'd ever heard, but at least he didn't throw up. He casts a Quietus on his booming voice, and steps back.
"Mr. Potter, if you would." Honeycutt's gets to his feet, and Harry lifts his wand. The commotion at the back of the crowd seems to be making its way closer to the stage; someone is shouting, but Harry cannot make out the words. He sees several Aurors leave their posts by the stage to investigate.
"Go on, Mr. Potter," Honeycutt says, rather impatiently, and when Harry hesitates again, the older man has his wand out in an instant, severing the bindings on the crate. The lid rises, and someone in the crowd yells something ("Potter!") and the crate bursts open with a flash of smoke.
Smoke that shouldn't be there. Harry opens his mouth, and suddenly feels a tingling in his skin, the kind of feeling you get just before a part of your body goes numb. Something is wrong... he knows something is wrong, but he doesn't much care, the ground looks so soft and he could sleep for a thousand years, if they'd let him, sleep until he looked like Dumbledore, and there is a flashing light at the corner of his eyes, before someone flies at him, knocks him off the stage.
"You must drink this," a voice hisses in his ear, and Harry can barely see, only white hair and dark fabric, "drink this you bloody - stupid -"
Cold glass is pressed against his lips and something bitter is running down his throat, and Harry chokes and gags and struggles to get away -
"If you spit this up -" the voice threatens, and spells are flying around them, back and forth like fireworks, and people are screaming (people are screaming) and the warm weight is suddenly thrown off him, the stranger sent flying backwards.
Harry struggles to his feet, dizzily, each step nearly a fall. Where are his children - he cannot seem to remember their names - and there is an older, white-haired man lying crumpled a few feet away . As Harry approaches, the man suddenly looks up, going very pale and hissing "Honeycutt, it's sodding Honeycutt," and Harry turns just in time to see Honeycutt brandishing his wand like a knife ("Avada Kedavra!") and the white-haired man shouts "No!" ( a no Harry feels in his teeth, in his fingers, which are shaking, which are multiplying -)
Something is very wrong.
Without any conscious intention, he stumbles to the left, barely missing Honeycutt's curse, and the white-haired stranger scrambles upright, searching desperately for his wand. Someone has disarmed Honeycutt, who is laughing horribly, and as the world spins around Harry, as Harry falls dizzily to his knees (there is something wrong with him, there was something in -), the Head of Public Affairs waves to the panicking crowd.
"Don't move!" a random Auror shouts, but Honeycutt just laughs more wildly.
"The Mark rises! The Mark rises!" he cackles, before lifting his hand to his mouth, and swallowing something quickly. He immediately begins to scream, grabbing at his throat, and the stage is swarmed with Aurors, and someone is carrying the white-haired man away, who is shouting "Wait! Wait, let me -"
And without any proof, without anything more than an approaching misty unconsciousness, and a feeling so sharp it stings, Harry reaches out as the man passes, whispers, "Severus," like he has never said the name before, whispers, "Severus," like the title of a song or a poem, reaches out with his hand and his mind, pushes -
The man flinches, and there is another shout from the crowd, and an explosion of light, and the last thing Harry sees is white hair growing longer and darker, nose and eyes and mouth shifting like clay before his closing eyes.
There is a small crowd of mediwizards and witches around a closed door. Two of them are crying. From inside the room, there is a loud crash, and the crowd flinches slightly.
"Where is he - I must see him - do any of you imbecilic - witless - incompetents realize that - let me out of here at once!"
Down the polished hospital hallway, an old woman approaches. She is wearing a very fashionable jumper, and a few of the younger staff members nudge each other.
"All right, I'm here, I'm here."
Barnabas Crumb, a large dark-haired Auror, steps forward to take the woman's hand.
The day of the anniversary celebration dawns warm and bright, under a wide cloudless sky. Harry nervously shuffles his papers, reading his speech over and over, while Ginny and the boys wait in impossibly long lines for ice-cream and face-painting. The statue is every bit as frightening as Harry could have hoped, though he isn't so heartless as to be completely unaffected by it. Against its base is affixed a large plaque, listing the names of those killed in both wars. He stands before it for a long moment. James and Lily Potter. Albus Dumbledore. Remus and Nymphadora Lupin. Fred Weasley. Harry's heart pounds in his chest and he reaches down, brushes his thumb briefly across the tiny mechanical font: Severus Snape.
Ex-Headmistress McGonagall smiles at him from across the sea of people, and Harry smiles back. She looks the same as she ever did, except maybe a bit less tired. Retirement will do that to a person. She is wearing one of the commemorative jumpers Ron was so keen on, though she does not look that pleased about it.
Hagrid gives him a back-breaking hug, eyes already red with weeping. James is quite in love with the giant man, and follows him everywhere, clutching the hem of Hagrid’s manky old coat and listening enraptured to stories about dragons and spiders and great hairy beasts. As long as the boy isn’t trod upon or eaten by Fang, Harry’s fine with it.
Ron is off with George, trying to scam their way into free merchandise, and Harry spots Hermione alone under the shade of a tree. Or as alone as anyone can be in the middle of a jostling crowd.
"You'll be brilliant, by the way," she tells him when she sees him. She has apparently forgiven him for the dinner incident.
"I think I'm going to be sick."
"Come now, Harry. You defeated the most powerful Dark Wizard of all time. You can surely handle a bunch of politicians and their families."
“I don’t know. They are slightly more terrifying. And there are altogether more of them.”
Hermione laughs and leans against him for a moment, before frowning. She squints into the sunlight.
“Your wife is coming,” she murmurs, a strange look coming over her face. “I should go find Ron before the speeches start. Good luck.”
Harry waves after her. Something happened with her and Ginny, some fight or something, because the two have been acting strange around each other for years now. They’re rarely in the same room, if they can help it, and hardly speak when the other one is present. It makes for very awkward dinner parties.
“Ello, handsome.” Harry scoops Albus out of her arms and gives him a kiss. He is disturbed to see the boy has a painted lightning bolt on his forehead and black circles like spectacles painted around his eyes.
“Down,” Albus shouts, “down down down -”
“He’s been wanting to run around all day. But there are far too many people here. He’d be off like a shot.”
Harry tosses his son in the air, and the boy shrieks in delight.
“It’s fine for you to throw him around, but try carrying him for hours in this heat.” Ginny sighs, relaxing for a moment, while Albus tries earnestly to break Harry’s glasses. “How is Hermione doing?”
“She’s fine. She -”
They are jostled apart by a heavily breathing Edmund Honeycutt, who appears as suddenly as if he Apparated.
"I'm so sorry to interrupt, truly I am, but we are almost ready for you, Mr. Potter." The man beams, wiping sweat from his brow with a spotty handkerchief. "If you would be so good as to follow me to the stage."
Harry widens his eyes.
“You’ll be fine,” Ginny laughs, as she grudgingly hefts the one-year-old back into her arms. "You're Harry bloody Potter."
"I bloody well am." Harry grins at her (still somewhat unconvinced), and hurries after Honeycutt.
When they reach the platform, a slight hush has descended over the vast crowd. There is a large crate on stage, from which Harry can hear a vague cooing and fluttering of wings.
“You have your wand on you?” Honeycutt asks him, and Harry nods.
"The top will lift off as soon as the bindings have been severed," the man murmurs, motioning to the crate. "If you would be so kind as to do the honours, following your speech."
Harry nods, a bit shaky on his feet.
“You needn’t worry, Mr. Potter. You are the Boy Who Lived. It’s you they want to see.”
With a wink that speaks to far more personality than Harry would ever have expected from the man, Honeycutt moves to the podium, mopping his brow before casting Sonorus and speaking..
"Ladies and gentlemen." He smiles his average smile. In the audience, Harry sees Headmistress Singh, looking unimpressed. She will be speaking later, no doubt. Harry also spies Ron and Hermione near the front, with George Weasley, who seems a bit worse for wear. The rest of the Weasley clan is around somewhere, and the occasional burst of red hair in the crowd is enough to alert him of one’s presence.
He forgets for a moment that Honeycutt is speaking. Harry’s hands are clammy and he rubs them on his trousers.
"It is my great pleasure and privilege to welcome you to this most special event, the Tenth Memorial Day celebrations. Ten years ago today, You-Know-Who’s reign of fear and chaos was ended, here, at this very school, and it is that event that we gather here to recognize every year. Most of you probably recognize my face, but for those of you from elsewhere, I am Edmund Honeycutt, Head of Public Affairs. Before we begin today's festivities, I would like to welcome Mr. Harry Potter to the stage, to say a few introductory words. Mr. Potter, if you would."
Harry's stomach sinks into his feet, and for a moment he forgets how to walk. Each step to the podium feels like his body is made of lead, and a sea of eyes fasten on him. Something is going on at the back of the crowd, and Harry strains to make it out. If someone's pissed and rowdy already (he just prays it isn’t a Weasley), it is going to make for an interesting party.
"Hello," he murmurs after casting his own Sonorus, and his voice booms over rows and rows of people, slightly distorted. He swallows. "I'm - very pleased to be here at the Tenth Anniversary Celebrations and Memorial Day. I'm especially pleased to be here for the unveiling of this commemorative statue, the -" He squints at the name Honeycutt jotted down for him. "The - Heaviest Wand."
There is a polite smatter of applause from the crowd, and Harry frantically scans his notes, trying to make sense of them. His hands are sweating so badly the ink is starting to run.
“Being here, with all -” He squints to make a word out. Smears of ink spread wherever he touches. “Being in your -”
This is ridiculous. Harry folds his notes, puts them into his pocket. Behind him, he hears Honeycutt make a slight choking sound.
“I can’t read my notes,” he says softly, and there is a gentle murmur of laughter from the crowd. A couple of people are still pushing each other, far in the back. “But I still want to say - being here, with all of you, makes me realize exactly what’s important. Makes me realize how -” He struggles. “- how good it is that Volde -”
The crowd goes very silent. He can see Hermione staring up at him with wide, nervous eyes. He sighs.
“Voldemort,” he says deliberately, and there are nervous whispers from the gathered audience. Again, Honeycutt makes a not completely happy noise, deep in his throat. “It’s just a name. It doesn’t have any power. And the bearer of that name no longer has power, either. He was just a man. And we defeated him.”
He can see his son sitting high on Hagrid’s shoulders. Hagrid blows his nose with a sound like a foghorn, and James smiles delightedly. At the back of the crowd, someone shouts something inaudible. Harry continues.
“In the end, we defeated him together. With courage. And skill. And - love.” In his mind’s eye he sees Snape, biting down on his lips to keep from smiling. He sees Snape’s dark pyjamas, buttoned tightly at the throat.
"We - all of us - lost people we cared about. And this fine school lost a Headmaster. Lost - two Headmasters. But I'm sure if - if everyone on that plaque were here today, they would know how worth it their sacrifices had been. And how loved, and missed they are." He hears Hagrid let out a loud sob. James is petting his head.
"I should keep this short, so you can start enjoying yourselves. I just hope you know that - I'm so very grateful I can be here, with all of you today. To honour and celebrate and - miss - those who cannot be." In his mind, Severus Snape is sitting across the kitchen table, white fingers wrapped around a teacup. Snape is sitting on the front steps beside him, frowning down at his hands. Snape is standing in the rain, though Harry has an umbrella.
"Thank you," Harry concludes, and there is another brief polite smattering of applause. Well, it wasn't the best speech he'd ever heard, but at least he didn't throw up. He casts a Quietus on his booming voice, and steps back.
"Mr. Potter, if you would." Honeycutt's gets to his feet, and Harry lifts his wand. The commotion at the back of the crowd seems to be making its way closer to the stage; someone is shouting, but Harry cannot make out the words. He sees several Aurors leave their posts by the stage to investigate.
"Go on, Mr. Potter," Honeycutt says, rather impatiently, and when Harry hesitates again, the older man has his wand out in an instant, severing the bindings on the crate. The lid rises, and someone in the crowd yells something ("Potter!") and the crate bursts open with a flash of smoke.
Smoke that shouldn't be there. Harry opens his mouth, and suddenly feels a tingling in his skin, the kind of feeling you get just before a part of your body goes numb. Something is wrong... he knows something is wrong, but he doesn't much care, the ground looks so soft and he could sleep for a thousand years, if they'd let him, sleep until he looked like Dumbledore, and there is a flashing light at the corner of his eyes, before someone flies at him, knocks him off the stage.
"You must drink this," a voice hisses in his ear, and Harry can barely see, only white hair and dark fabric, "drink this you bloody - stupid -"
Cold glass is pressed against his lips and something bitter is running down his throat, and Harry chokes and gags and struggles to get away -
"If you spit this up -" the voice threatens, and spells are flying around them, back and forth like fireworks, and people are screaming (people are screaming) and the warm weight is suddenly thrown off him, the stranger sent flying backwards.
Harry struggles to his feet, dizzily, each step nearly a fall. Where are his children - he cannot seem to remember their names - and there is an older, white-haired man lying crumpled a few feet away . As Harry approaches, the man suddenly looks up, going very pale and hissing "Honeycutt, it's sodding Honeycutt," and Harry turns just in time to see Honeycutt brandishing his wand like a knife ("Avada Kedavra!") and the white-haired man shouts "No!" ( a no Harry feels in his teeth, in his fingers, which are shaking, which are multiplying -)
Something is very wrong.
Without any conscious intention, he stumbles to the left, barely missing Honeycutt's curse, and the white-haired stranger scrambles upright, searching desperately for his wand. Someone has disarmed Honeycutt, who is laughing horribly, and as the world spins around Harry, as Harry falls dizzily to his knees (there is something wrong with him, there was something in -), the Head of Public Affairs waves to the panicking crowd.
"Don't move!" a random Auror shouts, but Honeycutt just laughs more wildly.
"The Mark rises! The Mark rises!" he cackles, before lifting his hand to his mouth, and swallowing something quickly. He immediately begins to scream, grabbing at his throat, and the stage is swarmed with Aurors, and someone is carrying the white-haired man away, who is shouting "Wait! Wait, let me -"
And without any proof, without anything more than an approaching misty unconsciousness, and a feeling so sharp it stings, Harry reaches out as the man passes, whispers, "Severus," like he has never said the name before, whispers, "Severus," like the title of a song or a poem, reaches out with his hand and his mind, pushes -
The man flinches, and there is another shout from the crowd, and an explosion of light, and the last thing Harry sees is white hair growing longer and darker, nose and eyes and mouth shifting like clay before his closing eyes.
There is a small crowd of mediwizards and witches around a closed door. Two of them are crying. From inside the room, there is a loud crash, and the crowd flinches slightly.
"Where is he - I must see him - do any of you imbecilic - witless - incompetents realize that - let me out of here at once!"
Down the polished hospital hallway, an old woman approaches. She is wearing a very fashionable jumper, and a few of the younger staff members nudge each other.
"All right, I'm here, I'm here."
Barnabas Crumb, a large dark-haired Auror, steps forward to take the woman's hand.
"Ms. McGonagall, I -"
"Yes, yes, you're very sorry, I'm sure." She eyes the locked room, from which a loud pounding is emanating. "I take it he's in there?"
"He won't speak to anyone," Crumb sighs, "Nearly injured one of the Mungo's staff members with a dinner tray. I thought - perhaps - a friendly face..."
"I'm sure you did," she mutters to herself. "You may as well unward the door."
"Have you - got your wand?"
"Of course, of course." She stands near the door, flanked by Aurors, as Crumb performs several unlocking spells.
A young mediwitch gives a small sob of fright, and McGonagall eyes her critically.
"Calm yourself, you silly girl," she snaps, reaching for the doorknob.
"Good luck," Crumb tells her, taking a cautionary step back.
"Luck?" McGonagall snorts softly. "With Severus Snape, one needs more than luck." She steps inside, and closes the door behind her.
The room is very white, with one bed in the far corner, and a tall, ranting man in the other. Ten years, she thinks, ten years since she chased this young man from his own school, ten years since that great bloody snake ripped his throat out and left him bleeding out in the Shrieking Shack -
She feels tears spring to her eyes.
Snape hardly spares her a glance.
"I must see him. I must. Do you understand me?"
"Who?" she asks, stupidly. She knows the answer, or would know the answer, was she not so overcome with the length of Snape's hair and the lines around his eyes.
"Who?" Snape sneers, nearly shrieks. "Harry sodding Potter, that's who. Do you realize, Minerva, that he could have died today? Does anyone in this useless excuse for a place of medicine realize that? If I do not see him - if I do not make sure -"
"He's awake."
Snape stops pacing, stands shocked and still by the small barred window. And in that moment, Minerva McGonagall realizes something. Something perhaps she should have realized years ago.
"Awake? How is he? Has he been ill, at all? Difficulty breathing, or -"
"Apparently, he's doing quite well." She pauses, at a loss for the specifics. "Perhaps I should fetch a mediwizard."
Snape snorts with disdain. "Do not trouble yourself. They are all completely incompetent." He resumes his pacing, muttering to himself. "Ridiculous...failed to recognize...what sort of useless facility..."
"Severus," Minerva says quietly, trying to regain his attention. "What - happened to Potter? How did you -"
"How did I - what?" Snape's eyes flash furiously at her. "How did I utilize the skills that even a dim-witted first year should possess?
Minerva is silent, and Snape continues.
"The signs of Paramuris in the system. Loss of consciousness. Inexplicable bruising. Yellowish tint to face and hands."
"I -"
"I read the sodding Prophet, I saw those bloody pictures of him, coming out of Mungo's after the staff sent him on his merry way. And because I am not completely witless, I wondered why anyone would feel the desire to inject Harry Potter with a completely harmless substance, days before the anniversary celebrations?"
Minerva wracks her brain for the effects of the potion in particular. Parum Muris. Little mouse.
"There is - another potion," she says slowly, horrified realization beginning to dawn. "Isn't there? A potion that - if you combine the two -"
"They become fatal, yes." Snape pinches the bridge of his nose, obviously still distraught. "It is my belief, now, that second potion was the gas which came out of the crate."
Minerva raises her hand to her heart.
"They were going to murder him after his speech." Snape does not look at her. "In front of everyone."
They are silent for a few moments. If there was another chair, she would have felt the need to sit down. As it is, she stands by the door, wringing her hands, over and over again.
"It was lucky you were there," she murmurs, and Snape scoffs.
"I was very nearly too late." Snape seems to realize the truth of this statement after he speaks it, and a look of utter despair comes over his face. "I might have - he might have -"
"You did well." Minerva takes a few steps closer, the desire to touch the man's shoulder overpowering her common sense. Snape realizes her intention and flinches, even though she is still halfway across the room.
"You did well," Minerva says again, staying where she is. "You were not too late. He is alive. You have saved his life for the hundredth time, I imagine."
Snape lets out a short, scornful laugh. "Precious little thanks I've had for it."
The man must be nearly fifty, but Minerva still sees a teenage boy when she looks at him - awkward and short-tempered and fiercely protective. It occurs to her that there are things to say. Things she wishes did not need to be said.
"The last time I saw you -"
"Oh, for Merlin's sake."
"Do not interrupt me, Severus Snape. Let me say my piece, and then you may hiss and spit all you like. Only give me that."
Snape glares at her from across the room, but says nothing. Minerva steels herself.
"The last time I saw you, I - truly believed you had betrayed the Order. Betrayed Albus. I chased you from your school."
Snape crosses his arms, staring out the tiny window. "It was my job to be convincing," he says, so quietly she almost doesn't hear him.
"Some of us - should not have been so easily convinced."
They are silent. Minerva watches his profile, still strong, still sharp, despite the space of ten years.
"Could you ever forgive a blind and foolish old woman?"
Snape considers this, heat rising to his face. Never comfortable with kindness, was our Snape.
"I - may be persuaded," he says softly. He looks up, suddenly, and fixes his bird-black eyes on her. "Tell them to let me go."
Minerva is startled. "But - I was told you were injured. Your shoulder -"
"Dislocated, yes. Unpleasant, but easily mended."
"The boy - he will want to see -"
"I have spent too many years concerned with the desires of Harry Potter," Snape spits. Minerva watches as his face grows even more flushed. "And I have no wish to see him. I want to go home."
Minerva presses her lips together. "Where is home for you?" She pauses, frets a bit. "Where have you been?"
Snape sniffs. Stares again out the window. "Away."
"I will - see what I can do." Minerva moves back toward the door. "Try not to abuse too many of the staff members while I am away."
Snape says nothing to this, only stares in silence at the fragment of blue sky visible through the curtains.
"And Severus," Minerva begins uncertainly, hand on the doorknob.
He glances briefly at her.
"It is good to have you back." She opens the door, and leaves him alone with his window.
It takes a week for Harry to find the man.
("Gone? What do you mean, gone? He can't have, he - why didn't -"
"He was released within hours of your arrival here. His injuries were largely superficial."
Harry clutches fiercely at his hospital gown, his bed sheets.
"Where - where is he?"
The mediwizard takes pity on him, revealing far more than he legally should.
"He is in the country, if that is any help. The Ministry has insisted he stay in England. For the present.")
They would not let Harry go, however. The poison in his system had started to spread by the time Snape gave him the antidote, and even in those brief seconds it had wreaked havoc on his body. The left side was the worst; Harry could barely lift his arm, and his leg just twisted underneath him whenever he tried to walk. The Mungo's staff was doing the best it could, and gradually he regained feeling in his limbs, could almost hobble from one side of his room to the other.
It was not until a week following the ceremony that he was released. A day later, he stands in front of Spinner's End, leaning heavily on a cane (They say it should only be a few weeks before he's off it. It's rather embarrassing, really.). The windows of the narrow brick house are boarded up (one is broken), and it looks like no one has lived here in years. Harry is not convinced.
He limps up the cracked front steps (it doesn't seem so long ago, not really), and knocks on the door.
There is no answer. He had expected as much, and knocks again. There is the sound of movement from inside, and Harry's heart twists and clenches, Harry's hands raise self-consciously to his face, Harry's throat goes dry and his lips part weakly
The door opens a crack, and a dark, heavy-lidded eye peers out at him. There is a small hesitation, and the door slams shut.
Harry winces (no one said it would be easy), and knocks again. Unsurprisingly, no one answers, but Harry keeps knocking and knocking until his knuckles are split and swollen, back of his hand smudged with blood. At long last, the door opens again.
Severus Snape stands there, wrapped in a ragged dressing gown, ten years older. And alive. Harry feels as if he has been stabbed; the man is so gorgeous it is difficult to keep his eyes open, and not squint like he is staring at the sun.
Snape looks briefly from Harry to the cane and back again, before turning on one heel and disappearing into the house. He does not slam the door in Harry's face, however, which Harry takes as an engraved invitation to follow.
Snape is sitting at the kitchen table, hand covering his eyes, back hunched like he cannot possibly support his own weight. He's gained a bit since last Harry saw him, but it looks good; the Potions Master was always entirely too skinny, all ribs and elbows. Harry kissed those ribs, once. Knew the small size of Snape's body by touch alone.
It is strange to see Snape again, the way they always knew each other. The Snape from the past (or Severus, wasn't it? once, it was Severus) was skinny and pale, but he did not radiate the damaged-ness of the Snape that sits before him. Young Snape did not have eyes nearly that dark, eyes the colour of dried blood, surrounded by circles so deep they were nearly purple. Young Snape did not have cheekbones that stuck out at such sharp angles, or collarbones that could have been knives. And young Snape wasn't remotely as beautiful. Not anywhere close. No comparison, really.
It occurs to Harry then, as he is thinking his former professor beautiful, that perhaps he's been in love with the man for much longer than he originally thought. Perhaps none of this was new. And how ridiculous, how unfair, that he never realized until now.
"You're alive," Harry whispers, willing his voice to remain steady. He has not actually said the words out loud yet, not even in the privacy of his rooms, and he is amazed that he manages them.
Snape says nothing, and keeps his hand firmly in place. He could be a statue, were it not for the vein that twitches ever so slightly against his neck.
"You're - alive," Harry says again, getting used to the phrase.
There is no response, and he is not that surprised by it. He feels the desperate urge to keep talking (the urge he always feels when he is nervous), wants to fill the air with words, sounds, anything to absorb the silence that twists like glass into his palm. He latches onto courtesy.
"You saved my life," he says quietly. Snape makes a sound deep in his throat (it could be a cough) but does not remove his hand from his eyes. "I would have died at the ceremony, if you hadn't been there."
Snape does not move. Harry takes a shallow breath, feeling dizzy and bone-tired.
"Thank you. For that. And for -"
"Go away, Potter." Snape's smooth voice breaks Harry's concentration, and he falters over his words. Snape has not changed position, but there is a tightness in his mouth, a trembling in his hands that was certainly not there before. Harry realizes he has not heard the man's voice in years, and something deep within him caves, releasing a rush of warmth and weakness.
"You're alive," he says again, the wonder of the words still fresh as a wound.
"Is it your intention to inundate me with the obvious?" Snape looks up suddenly, eyes flashing. Harry wants to crouch at the foot of Snape's chair, and smooth away his frown lines and kiss the dark circles under his eyes. The want builds until it overwhelms him, makes his hands start to shake.
"Where have you been," he whispers, hating the weakness in his voice, "for ten years?" He waits for Snape to tell him it is simply none of his business.
"Amsterdam," Snape says instead, and Harry is shocked to the soles of his feet. Both by the answer and the fact that he got any answer at all.
"Amsterdam?" he repeats. "Doing what?"
"That is simply none of your business." Snape cannot keep the edge from his voice. Harry waits, and after a moment of silence, Snape shudders and hisses, "Potions."
"Why didn't - why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you -"
"And why would I have done that?" Snape snarls at him. "I read the bloody Prophet. You married Ginevra Weasley and have two delightful children. I have my own shop, and an undamaged reputation, and a comfortable life. Why in Merlin's name would I have sought you out?"
"You sought me out a few days ago," Harry says quietly, and two spots of colour appear high on Snape's cheekbones.
"That is - altogether different. I had not intended on being taken in by Aurors, nor kept against my will in England. I had not counted on my new life becoming irreparably damaged and impossible to resume. I had not counted on any of this, although, knowing you were involved, I should have predicted the worst outcome possible," he finishes in a rush, then bites down on his lips.
Harry will gladly take anger over silence; with anger, he is on familiar ground.
"I thought - I thought you died." Just the small sentence makes heat pulse like tears in Harry's skull. "And I thought it was my fault."
"It largely was your fault, if I remember correctly." Snape bites down on his lips again, and Harry gets the impression he is trying to stop himself from speaking.
"How did you survive?"
Snape gives him a completely disdainful look, the type meant to make Harry melt into a hideous puddle and crawl back out the door. Harry does not melt and crawl, however, he is not afraid. What is there to be afraid of anymore? He thought Snape was dead. Nothing could be worse.
"Antivenin," Snape sighs after a moment. "And a Blood-Replenishing potion. Dumbledore was always ridiculously insistent that I carry them on my person."
Harry feels his chest cave slightly, feels his heart stutter beneath his skin.
"He was?"
"Yes, he - why in Merlin's name are you looking like that?"
"No reason. Nothing." Harry thinks he might need to sit down before his legs give out. He shifts his weight, leans on his cane. Snape notices this, and stares at him for a moment, before squeezing his eyes tightly shut.
"I am a colossal fool."
Harry's breath catches in his throat. "You forgot stubborn and self-important."
Snape is not amused. "You are - the spitting sodding image of your father. You could be his bleeding twin. And the scar - the scar -" He covers his face with his hands again.
"Severus?" Harry asks softly, after a moment.
Instantly, Snape rises from the table, knocking off a teacup, which shatters on the floor.
"Your bloody scar," he hisses, eyes wild. "The world knew about the scar, the sodding world. I cannot believe I did not even think - not for a second -"
"Why would you?" Harry cries out, desperately wanting the man to stop blaming himself. "Why would you have ever thought that? I lied to you -"
"You damn well did," Snape spits, looming closer, "You have quite the talent for it - hit your sodding head, what rubbish. And I believed you, I, like a halfwit and a fool -"
"You lied to me too," Harry retorts, anger rising in him inexplicably. This isn't how it's supposed to be, they aren't supposed to be screaming at each other, not yet. "You were going to just die without telling me, telling me anything! How could you do that?"
"How can you even ask this question?" Snape snarls, heat rushing to his face, "What could I possibly have said, Potter? What? When? Should I have approached you, perhaps, as a young boy of eleven, convinced you of the great and tragic love affair that had yet to happen between us? No, no, surely I could have restrained myself until you were, say, twelve. I can imagine the conversation we would have had at that particular point in time very well. Can't you?"
"Stop -"
"Or maybe I could have waited until sodding sixth year, confessed my utter and witless devotion to you while I was murdering Albus Dumbledore, or perhaps moments after that, when you were hurtling Unforgivables at me -"
"That's not fair!" Harry retorts. "That is not fair! I thought all these things about you - all these horrible, nasty things - because you made me. You made me, even though you knew, you knew -"
"What did I know, Potter?" Snape shouts into Harry's face, his voice booming in the tiny kitchen. "What could I possibly have known?"
Harry cannot think, can only act, so he grabs Snape's ridiculous bathrobe and kisses him. Let the bastard feel what he feels; let Snape understand what Harry cannot put into words. He kisses Snape, a bundle of stinging nettles and self-righteousness, forces his tongue into Snape's mouth, and though the man leans back at first, soon he is clawing at Harry's clothing, pulling him flush against his body, and biting deep searing kisses on his mouth. Snape presses Harry up against the doorframe in the kitchen, yanking at his hair and sucking on his neck, and Harry will be black and blue, he knows it, but this is what he wants, what he's wanted for years -
Snape suddenly jerks free from Harry's grip, and is halfway across the kitchen before Harry can remember how to speak. He is off balance, and his cane has been kicked to the floor somewhere, and his bad leg crumples underneath him, sending him falling to the ground.
Snape does not move.
Harry tries to find his cane and right himself with the minimum amount of shame. It does not help that Severus Snape is staring at him, hand pressed against his mouth and face gone very white.
When Harry is finally on his feet, Snape drops his hand.
"Get out of my house." His voice is level, and deathly serious.
Harry tastes blood on his upper lip. He runs his tongue over it, and sees Snape flinch slightly.
"Get out," Snape repeats himself, "go back to your wife."
Harry's body goes cold all over. He has no idea how to set things right. He has no idea where to possibly begin.
"Ginny and I, we aren't -"
"Stop," Snape raises his hand, stopping him. "I have no interest in the sordid details of your love life."
"We aren't together," Harry says it anyway, in a rush. "We haven't been for a long time. We're only married because - she wanted children and - but she's seeing someone else - and I -"
"And you what, Potter? You've been waiting your whole life for me, is that it, pining away in miserable solitude?"
It is indeed a way to put it. Harry does not know how to respond, so he simply looks at Snape, wishing the man could reach in and squeeze the truth from his wasted heart.
"I am expected to believe that?" Snape sneers, taking Harry's silence as his reply. "Do not mock me, Potter."
"I'm not mocking you," Harry protests. "For me - it was only a few years ago. It's all still fresh. I still feel the same -"
"Well, it was more than twenty years ago for me," the older man spits, teeth clenched together. "So you can imagine how my feelings might have changed."
Harry is certain that more than just his lip is bleeding. Surely there should be some wound, some visible mark left behind by an injury of this magnitude.
"I named my son after you," he murmurs, foolishly.
Snape snorts. "So I've heard. How charming."
"There's been - no one else."
Snape looks slightly alarmed, but quickly replaces the expression with a sneer. "It was years ago," he says roughly.
"I'm surprised you remember my name."
Snape stares at him for a long hot moment, and then looks away.
"So am I."
They stand in silence. Pain pulses in Harry's hip and he shifts his weight again. Snape glances over at him.
"Your leg - will heal?" he asks, tone as if he couldn't care less, but eyes narrow with concern.
"They think so. I've got these - exercises..." he trails off. He's forgotten how to speak. A question comes upon him suddenly. "Were you in love with my mother?"
Snape drops his gaze.
"I shan't answer that question, because it is simply none of your business. And I believe I asked you to leave."
Something strikes Harry as oddly funny, even as his heart is breaking. "You're always trying to toss me out of Spinner's End."
Snape blinks at him, then presses his lips together. "You seem - inordinately attached to the place."
"It grows on a person."
"It's a hideous house," Snape says tersely, studying the kitchen table. "Not meant to be lived in. Given half a chance, it would fall down around you, crush your skull in."
"I like it." Harry pushes his hair back. "I've always liked it."
"Goodbye, Harry."
Harry thrills at Snape's use of his first name, a brief pulse of electricity. His lips are still swollen with the violence of their kiss, and his tongue tastes like Snape - smoke and bitterness and tea.
"I'm coming back," he says softly. "You're not rid of me yet."
"Colour me unsurprised."
It makes the corner of Harry's mouth curl; he remembers this man. He missed this man. He wants to press his lips against Snape's small, unhappy line of a mouth, but cannot imagine getting away with it.
"Goodbye, Severus."
Snape gives him a terse nod before looking away, still standing frozen in the kitchen. Harry leaves. For now.
Severus peers out the front window until Potter has vanished from sight. He then pours himself another cup of tea (leaving the shards of the old cup on the floor), and sits back down at the kitchen table.
It was a mistake to come here.
It was a mistake to show himself, a mistake to let himself get so close to Harry that the man could undo his glamour simply by breathing his name ("Severus..." he said, "Severus..." and Severus had wished for a brief hot moment that he was that name, so he could roll like smoke off Harry Potter's tongue.).
It was all a big bloody mistake, but what could he have done? Let the man die? It was never an option, not for a second, and the very thought makes Severus' palms begin to sweat. Even the sight of that wretched cane made him feel ill for a moment - he was so so close, another few seconds and Potter might have fallen permanently, another few seconds and he might have been lost.
'You'll quake and tremble at the thought of his death, and yet you will not touch him?' a voice in the back of his mind asks him, sinister and soft.
Severus waves the voice away.
"It is wrong," he says to himself, studying his teacup. "Surely - it is wrong."
It is wrong to still want you like I do.
In all his (vicarious) experience with infatuation, Severus learned more than anything that it was short-lived. That though a man or woman might weep and pine for the object of their desire, any great absence would inevitably cure them of this affliction. Why, then, has this not been the case with his own heart? Surely his tastes were not that bizarre, his desires that abnormal. Why did Potter still have this effect on him, even now, despite all odds and reason?
Severus should never have let him get so close. In Amsterdam he was better able to resist his pull, contenting himself with the Prophet and the occasional picture in the gossip magazines (Potter was no longer the heart throb he once was, now that the wizarding world had been gripped by vampire-mania.). These outlets had been enough. Surely they had been enough.
Ten bloody years...
Two days following, Potter returns. Severus is so flummoxed by the sight of him, so out of his head with shock and longing, that he simply opens the door and lets the man inside.
Potter still leans heavily on his cane, and Severus still feels ill about it. No sooner is the younger man through the door than he sets to work in the kitchen, as if he can charm his way back into Severus' heart with another breakfast. Which is patently ridiculous (and did not work the first time. Certainly not.). Severus immediately regrets the dingy clutter of his home, immediately wishes he had made a bit more of an effort, but had been determined to prove to himself that he did not care what Potter thought, one way or the other.
Potter makes him breakfast, like he did so many years ago, and they eat together at the kitchen table. It has been a long time.
"Are the eggs okay?"
"Acceptable." Sometimes incivility is the only power Severus feels he has. It is obscene to be thusly reduced.
"How's your tea?"
Perfect, Severus does not say. Instead, he gives a small nod of acknowledgement, and hopes Potter will let him finish the meal in silence. He occasionally becomes aware that the young man is staring at him, and in those moments he is forced to use his most convincing glare until Potter turns his gaze elsewhere, however briefly. At one point, he feels a soft pressure on his hand, and realizes Potter is touching him.
"Stop," he murmurs, jerking away. Potter snatches his hand back, as if burned. This happens more than once.
"I'm sorry," Potter says quietly, the third time. "I just do it without thinking."
"And that is different from the rest of your actions, how?"
Potter chuckles softly, shaking his head, and Severus feels warmth travel up his spine and into his hands. The young man is determined, it seems, to be bearable. The young man is determined to drive him mad.
"How long do you have to stay here?" Potter asks, finishing his toast.
"I'm sure I do not know. The Ministry apparently has questions for me, regarding my extended absence. I have to meet this afternoon with a barrister."
"The Ministry knows you were on the right side, though. I testified -"
"Good god." Of course he testified. Of course.
"I told them about the memories, and about - everything you had done." The passion in Potter's voice is surprising. "I didn't know then that the memories were fake. I didn't know until recently."
Severus waits a moment before replying. "I obviously correctly estimated how much you retained of our Occlumency lessons."
"That little faith in your teaching abilities?"
"Ungrateful brat."
Potter is thoughtful, which does not bode well. Severus waits in horrible anticipation.
"Why did you do that? All those things about my mother - it drove me crazy thinking that you - that she -"
"I told you before, I will not discuss her with you."
"It drove me crazy," Potter says again.
It strikes Severus now that Potter appears to be jealous. Jealous of his affection. The thought is so astounding that he feels tears well up in his eyes (Snivellus, they called him), and damns himself a coward and a fool. It is better to be alone than be humiliated. It is better to love in vain than to be laughed at.
The clock strikes in the sitting room, and Severus rises from the table.
"I must prepare for my appointment. Thank you for breakfast." The phrase tastes acidic.
Potter rises, starts to clear the dishes. Severus watches him for a moment. Without the cane, he has a noticeable limp, seems always on the verge of losing his balance. Severus had been later than he'd thought. I does not bear thinking about.
"I'll come back in a few days," Potter tells him, laying plates in the sink. "Make you lunch or something. I'm not the best cook -"
"Potter."
"- but I do a mean curry, and -"
"Potter."
"Don't," he says, hunched over the sink. "Just don't."
"Don't what?"
Harry turns on him, eyes slightly wild.
"I know what you're about to do. I know you, Snape. You're getting anxious and you're going to try to scare me away again. Try to make me regret -"
"I do regret it," Severus says it quickly, before he loses his nerve.
Potter looks like he's just been winded. He meets Severus' gaze, unflinching.
"You don't mean that."
"I am well aware of what I mean," Severus snaps, "I do regret it - I do - if I could take it back then I bloody would. Maybe then I would not have spent the good part of my life waiting for your return. Maybe then I would not have spent the last ten years in hiding from the only world I knew. Maybe then I could have done something of some tiny consequence -"
"You helped win a war!" Potter shouts in protest, "You saved countless lives. You've saved me so many times -"
"Saved your life, did I?" Severus hisses through his teeth, "That is remarkable, because you ruined mine."
Potter recoils as if he has been slapped. Severus has to catch his breath for a moment; his heart is racing out of control. He feels the urge to collapse trembling in his kneecaps, but frustration and despair drive him forward.
“Just one year ago I had a business, and a home, and was a respectable sodding member of the community. Had left everything behind, had left this -” Severus pulls up his sleeve, shoving the Dark Mark in Harry’s face, “behind. And now I’ve thrown it all away again, for you! To save your life, like a bloody stupid old man. I’ve sacrificed everything, given up everything, despite the fact that you - that you -”
Potter looks shell-shocked. He stands frozen by the sink, and Severus crushes the urge to comfort him as if it were an insect.
"You should leave," he says after a moment, his voice growing softer. He cannot look at the man. He thinks his heart might be about to stop; the pain in his chest can be due to no other reason, surely. "I have an appointment."
Potter still does not move.
"Evans -" Severus starts, then cuts himself off quickly. Their eyes lock across the kitchen, Potter's blazing shock and anger. "Potter," Severus amends.
"I'm sorry I ruined your life," Potter murmurs, words clipped and dull. "All I ever wanted -"
"Do not start apologizing to me, or we shall be here for the remainder of both our lives."
"You're right." Potter shakes his head. "Of course. You're right."
Again, he meets Severus' eyes, and Severus freezes in his tracks, wondering how difficult it would be to undo what he has just done, take back the words that hang over them both like storm clouds. And as he wonders, he is certain he feels the earth moving, its slow twist and ebb, carrying Harry Potter farther and farther away from him, no matter how he might try.
It's no good.
"I'll go, then," Potter whispers, and does not even give Severus a chance to reply. He hobbles out of the kitchen, walking as if his entire body is a bruise. Severus does not bother looking after him, does not even move until he hears the front door slam. It is impossible to think with the man in the same room, impossible to think with the man in the same city. He needs to get away from here, find a place where he can be alone.
It occurs to him that he has been alone all his life.
The breakfast dishes still sit in the sink, congealing. Severus throws a saucer against the wall with vicious satisfaction. The sound of breaking glass is a sound he’s heard before, one-hundred years ago, when he was an idiot professor at a school of magic, undone by a child (with his mother’s eyes).
Harry returns to Spinner's End a week later. He knows he should not. He knows he should not be there, that Snape meant what he said, and that all Harry has ever brought him was annoyance and heartache (with a probable emphasis on the former). He knows all this, and still he goes back, like a puppy or a kicked dog. One more time, he thinks, one more time to get him out of my system. One more time to forget about that mouth of his, those eyes, one more time to let him rant and abuse me and realize that I hate the bastard after all.
Just once more.
But when he reaches Spinner's End, there is no one there. The front door is open, and Harry enters, scanning for signs of danger. The house, however, is empty. Most of the furniture has been taken, the drawers and cupboards have been cleared.
Snape is gone. As far from Harry's reach as he was months ago. Except now Harry knows it.
A week later, Ginny asks him to move out.
"I want Plum to live with me," she tells him, tears running down her face (more upset about this than the time they'd both kissed other people). "I want this to work, I really do. I'm so - so sorry." She weeps, and he pets her head. It would have happened sooner or later. It had to happen eventually.
Two weeks later, Harry stands on the back porch of the house in Godric's Hollow.
("It'll need some work," the estate agent tells him. "It's been empty for a few years now. Part of the top floor missing. There was some sort of explosion, that's all I know about it, and all I want to know, mind.")
It will need some work. Harry stashes his bags on the bottom floor, seals off the top to avoid the wind and rain. For two straight weeks, he makes repairs, home renovation book in one hand, wand in the other.
Harry is in the garden, ruthlessly stabbing a spade into the still frozen soil, when he hears the crack of Apparation. He does not know what he expects, really; it could be one of a thousand people. As it is, the man who comes through the side gate is dressed all in black, and makes Harry's heart and lungs stop working for a small wrenching moment.
He rises slowly, but cannot possibly think of what to say.
"I have just met Plum," Snape mutters archly.
"Have you?" Harry's words are little more than air.
"I have. She was - most agreeable." Snape's expression conveys how little he values agreeability. "Apparently, you are now homeless."
"Well. I've got half a home." Harry gestures to the crumbling silhouette of his parents' former dwelling.
"I see that." Snape crosses the stone path to where Harry stands. He glances idly around the garden, no doubt looking for flaws. "And what will become of your precious infants?"
"I don't know," Harry admits, wiping his hands on his jeans. "Soon as this place is ready, we'll probably take turns with them. We'll have to work something out." It had been a great arrangement, perfect really, but when it got right down to it, Harry would miss his boys more than he'd miss his wand hand. More than he'd miss magic, if it came right down to it. He didn't know how he would bear to let them go, even if it was only for a while.
"We should have thought this through a little more," he continues, though he doesn't know why he's saying all this to Snape, "I guess she didn't count on falling in love."
"And you?" Snape says quietly.
"And me what?"
"Did you count on it?"
Harry wipes his hands on his jeans once again, just to keep himself busy. He laughs softly, and cannot keep the bitterness out of it. "I was already in love when we adopted the kids. I've been in love since I was - twenty years old." He hesitates. "Maybe longer than that."
Snape pauses, exhales sharply through his nose. "Have you," he manages after a second. "Longer than that, you say?"
"I was always staring at you," Harry says shakily, willing his blush not to become too ridiculous. "Surely you noticed."
Heat and emptiness seem to well up in his chest, and he cannot say anything more. He's tired of repeating himself, and tired of trying to breathe life into a frozen garden, and tired of sleeping alone, and tired of dreaming every night that a dark-haired man looms over him, trails white fingers across his chest, down his back, up his throat and deep deep into his mouth -
"Why are you here?" he asks, trying desperately to stop his current train of thought.
Snape is silent for a moment. He turns his attention to the spade at Harry's feet, and then looks somewhere far off into the distance. He opens his mouth, then closes it. Opens it.
"I was told I would always be welcome here."
"Who told you that?"
"Your mother," Snape says quietly, and it is all Harry can do to keep his hand from clutching at his chest.
"Were you in love with my mother?" he asks, not wanting to hear the answer, but needing to hear it, needing to hear it after all of these years and months and days of not knowing, not knowing -
"No, you idiot," Snape says quickly, not even pausing for breath, "I was in love with you."
At first Harry isn't sure he heard right, is positive it must have been a mistake. Snape blinks repeatedly, and for a moment Harry thinks there might be a slight trace of colour against his pale cheeks.
"She was my friend for some time, that is true. But you were - it was always -"
"You told me you regretted everything," Harry says softly, making no hasty movements. "I thought things had changed."
"Perhaps - perhaps not as much as I would have liked."
They are silent again for a long moment, not touching.
"There are many things that I can - bear," Snape continues roughly, looking everywhere but Harry. "I realize now - to spend my life without you - that is not one of them."
Harry watches him intensely. Snape covers his eyes.
"Please do not make me continue," he murmurs, "I'm hideous at this."
Harry does not trust his voice. Snape turns to face him suddenly, and the heat between them makes Harry's heart lurch. He squeezes his hands together to stop them from shaking.
"It sounds pretty good to me." Harry smiles, and Snape smiles back, a smile all shock and unexpected pleasure. It only lasts a moment, but it is worth it.
"I am very old," Snape says quietly, brow furrowed.
"So am I."
"Don't be absurd. There's white in my hair."
"There is not." Harry pauses, hands longing to run through the hair in question. "If I hadn't been in danger - would you ever have come to me?"
Snape seems taken aback. Harry realizes that they are moving closer and closer to each other, almost imperceptibly.
"I imagine there was always a limit on how long I would be able to resist you."
Harry blushes unwillingly. "You seemed to do all right for ten years."
Snape looks pained for a moment, and rubs the crease between his eyebrows. Harry stands about a foot away from him, and tries desperately to slow his breathing.
"Never think that it was - uncomplicated."
"You should have come sooner."
"I know that now."
"Can I kiss you?" Harry lifts a cold hand to Snape's face, surprised at how hot his skin feels, burning against his fingertips. Snape leans hesitantly into the hand, as Harry maps cool paths against his forehead, and down the side of his neck. Snape's lips part weakly.
"I - do not think -"
"Thirty years is long enough to wait for you." Harry smiles softly, fingers beginning to tremble, "Let me have this."
"Anything -" Snape's eyes flutter closed, a strange and delicate motion, as their mouths find each other.
It is funny, how quickly one remembers.
At first it is tentative, nearly chaste, with Snape's lips so thin and dry, and his hands barely daring to touch Harry's back, or his shoulders, and it's good - so good - but Harry knows he can do better, and he opens his mouth to Severus Snape, lashes out with his tongue and twines his fingers through oily strands of black hair (shot through with white) until Snape is trembling in a different sort of way, until the heat between them seals their bodies together, until Harry tears his mouth away to bite hot kisses up Snape's jaw line while the older man pants against his neck, his pulse jumping beneath Harry's lips in a staccato rhythm, a tarantella.
"Shall we - do you want to -?" Harry murmurs with swollen lips, gesturing vaguely toward the house. Snape kisses him one more time, eyes half-closed and foggy, before pulling gently away. He keeps his hands clenched in the fabric of Harry's jacket.
"I thought - perhaps - I might stay here. For a bit. Watch you gardening."
Harry is taken aback by this, but his heart still pounds with pleasure.
"Watch me gardening? Why?"
"Because now - there's time."
And at the small and innocuous phrase, Harry feels himself become inexplicably shy. There is time now, isn't there? Finally and at long last. He feels as though a weight has been lifted from his chest, and he can finally breathe again. Or perhaps for the first time.
“I went to Spinner’s End, you know. What -”
“Oh.” Snape has a strange, unexpected look on his face. “You came - I did not think -” He stops, shakes his head, almost in amazement.
“Where were you?”
Again, Snape shakes his head. “I was at a hotel, if you must know. The lawyer I met with the last time we - saw each other, has lessened my regret about returning to England. As it turns out, I’ve been left quite a large amount of money. By a great aunt you might recall.”
“She’s rather hard to forget.”
“You’re using that trowel completely ineffectually.”
“Perhaps I need a demonstration of - proper form.”
They end up crushing Harry's flower beds, soil in their hair and in their clothes ("oh god - Harry, oh -").
Perhaps it is a form of gardening.
Perhaps it does not matter.
There is a time much later, much much later, when Harry Potter will ask Severus Snape how to end it.
They will sit in the conservatory together, and Severus will finally acquiesce to reading Harry's letter, finally take the creased and yellow pages, skim the words he was meant to see years and years ago. The boys will be with their mother, and Lily will be upstairs (finally, finally) napping.
Severus will read the letter once, twice, and once again.
"You've improper punctuation in the second paragraph. There should be a period after the bracket."
And Harry will kiss his husband then, a long slow kiss (it is not right to still want you like I do) that speaks of endless summers, and torn off buttons, and "git" and "brat" and lips to scars and fingers. And when they finally part, Harry will ask him.
"How do you end this story? How can you possibly?"
The beginning seems so simple, now. The beginning could be anywhere - could be the locking of eyes across a hall full of first years, could be a rainy night in a pub playing Christmas carols, could be a single mother on a train from Manchester to London, writing fine lines of desire between two people she has not met, drawing green eyes and hooked noses and "Look... at... me... (look at me, damn you, let me have this, just this -")
How do you end this story?
Severus folds the letter neatly in his hand. "You don't."
He kisses Harry, and the story doesn't end. It never ends. In fresh air and sunshine, or spelled out between hard covers, it is all the same.
Sunlight dims and vanishes. Pages brown and crumble.
Love leaves a mark.
How does it happen that our lives can drift
far from ourselves while we stay trapped in time,
queuing for death? It seems nothing will shift
the pattern of our days, alter the rhyme
we make with loss to assonance with bliss.
Then love comes, like a sudden flight of birds
from earth to heaven after rain.
Przez pewien czas nie będzie mnie 'na' Internecie. Na czas rozłąki polecam video z filmu Good Bad Weird. No a co do szablonu... Dopóki nie obejrzę filmu, nie zmienię!
Zdaje mi się, że z przyjściem drugiej klasy nauczyciele przyspieszyli z jakimikolwiek formami pytania. Mam za sobą jakieś 8 kartkówek i kilka przepytań. No po choler-cię im się tak spieszy? Ech... Żeby jakoś sprostać im komicznym wymaganiom trzeba by siedzieć w książkach cały czas. No, albo mieć bardzo pojemną pamięć. Której, rzecz jasna, mam mało.
Ktoś z pierwszej ekonomika nakapował na naszą nauczycielkę od historii. Jeśli dowiem się, co to za gieroj, to wyrwę mu flaki i zrobię z nich struny do basu! Babka była spoko. Przyszło się, kilka zdań do zeszytu, rachu ciachu i lekcja zrobiona. A sprawdziany proste. I dało się ściągać. Strach, co teraz jej strzeli do głowy...
No i mamy nową od polskiego. P. Nowel choruje dłużej, a Kuczyński-sensei już nie chce nas do domu zwalniać. To dał jakąś tam na B. Przyszła dzisiaj na matmie oznajmić nam, żebyśmy w poniedziałek przynieśli stare zeszyty, obecny, Makbeta i podręcznik. Fu... Trochę nas zastraszyła. Bo tak weszła, sztywno, wrzaskiem mówiła, a jak poszła to gwizła drzwiami. Podobno niczego cię nie nauczy, z sprawdzianów dostaniesz pałę a maturę oblejesz. Pożyjemy. Zobaczymy.
Wczoraj oglądałam Epokę lodowcową trzy. Nie do końca, bo musiałam już wracać do domu, no ale jednak trochę zobaczyłam. Ogólny wniosek - to już nie to samo, co na początku. Zaczyna się dziwacznie, później jest coraz dziwniej. nie ma jus takiego polotu, jak w jedynce. O dwójce wcale nie piszę, bo już nie pamiętam, co tam było. Żarty się takie płaskie zrobiły. Po prostu stało się to samo, co z Shrekiem, Piratami z Karaibów, Matrixem i wszystkimi innymi filmami, które posiadają liczbę sequeli większą niż 1. Stworzone po to, by dalej ciuciać kasę, pozbawione fabuły, dziwne twory. Jasne, są filmy, których kontynuacje są ok. Ale, szczerze, ile ich jest? Gdyby Piraci zakończyli się na trójce, to byłby jakiś koniec świata? Chyba nie. No ale w końcu kasy brakło, to kręcimy czwórkę! (Tak, jest czwarta część. Jakaś 'Tajemnica Czasu'. Nie wiem na razie o czym).
A oglądaliście kiedyś Upiora w operze? Ja dwa razy. Drugi raz bodajże w czwartek tego tygodnia. Piękny. Tvn 7 się pokwapił dać wersję bez lektora, z napisami. I dobrze, bo musicale lektorowe wypadają karykaturalnie. Po prostu nie można usłyszeć śpiewu, lecz suche słowa lektora. Historia harlekinowa. Ale jednak coś w tym jest. Co - nie powiem. Sama nie wiem, co mnie ciągnie do tego tytułu. Może muzyka. Bo jest piękna. No to pewno wiecie ,czemu ta piosenka u górze jest ;)
Jestem chora. Jestem, kurwa, poważnie chora... Leżę w łóżku i uskarżam się na ból brzucha, najlepszy kumpel serwuje mi konska dawkę tabelet, a ja sobie myślę, że jego piękne dłonie mogłby zająć się czymś innym... Ludzie, ale jestem popierdolona >.>
I w ogóle - co to za pomysł, żeby facet opiekował się mną? Wiem, trochę komiczny. No ale samo zaoferował pomoc, to jak mogłam ja odrzucić? Przyszedł... i posprzątał mi biurko, które było zagracone od początku wakacji. A potem czytał mi na głos nowe ff yaoi ~.~ I, kurde, wczuwał się w rolę tak, że nie raz zakryłam się kołdrą. Bo mi się tak jakoś duszno zrobiło i przez to wykwity na policzkach dostałam. Tja.
Bo ja w ogóle boje się nawiązać jakieś relacje z chłopakami. No wiem, wiem, jak z nimi nie będę mieć do czynienia to zostanę starą panną niewydaną. No ale... tak jakoś ciężko mi się z nimi rozmawia. Nie wszystkimi. Ach, nie wiem, niecierpię tego wszystkiego.
Bajzel, nie notka, ale w końcu nie wszystkie muszą byc zrozumiałe.
Muzyka 'Housowa'. Czemu 'Housowa'? Jak ktoś ogląda MD House to wie ;p Słuchałam tego do upadłego, w pewien wieczór. Po dwóch latach, w którymś tam z rzędu odcinku ww serialu puścili to. Mimo wszystko, ładna to piosenka. Wyciskacz łez, ha, ha, ha.
Ludzie są podli! Prosiłam Gacusia, by poszła ze mną na grzyby. Nie, bo musi pilnować dzieci. Prosiłam, by pojechała ze mną do Ostrza na festiwal pasztetów i wyrobów drobiowych. Nie, bo ona nie lubi pasztetu. Ostatni raz prosiłam, by poszła ze mną do Marzenki. Z resztą - Marzena też ją zaprosiła. To nie, bo nie chce. Ach, dostałam jeszcze wytyczne, że może iść ale najprawdopodobniej w poniedziałek od 14 do 15, lub też w piątek o tej samej godzinie. Tja, niech się gryźnie, ja nadal w szkole będę. Nie wiem czemu mnie to tak wkurzyło. Jakoś samo z siebie wyszło. Po prostu hm... obiecała mi kiedyś, że pójdzie. Że pojedziemy i wystartujemy w tym głupim konkursie 'ile pasztetów zjesz na czas'. A tu wyjechała mi z tym. Już o Marzenkę i grzyby tak bardzo mi nie zależało, jak nie na pasztetnikach. Może to trochę głupie. No, ale to w końcu ja.
Szkolne sprawy przyspieszyły. Z impetem walnęły w mur czasu wolego. Zburzyły go. Nowy plan, obowiązujący od poniedziałku, mam tak walnięty. Mino, że mam na dziewiątą muszę jechać autobusem o siódmej. Bo potem nie ma żadnego -.- No i dwa niemce pod rząd. I polaki, wuefy, ekonomiki... Trzy dni do trzeciej, a i tak sobie sama zrobiłam dodatkowy dzień. Bo chcę iść na zajęcia z obróbka zdjęć, a to jest w poniedziałek po siódmej godzinie. Zobaczę, jak mi się nie spodoba to zrezygnuje. No i przydałoby się zapisać na dodatkową matmę... Albo chociaż prawo. Ogólnie - jeszcze nie szłam do szkoły według planu, a już go nie cierpię.
Wczoraj było kocenie, czy tam otrzęsiny klas pierwszych. Na dwóch matmach było. Oczywiście, cała klasą nie mogliśmy iść, tylko przedstawiciele. No ale w końcu uciec można. I tak, jestem głupia. jestem głupkiem, bo wolałam zostać na tych matmach. I uczyć się o okręgu i kole na układzie kartezjańskim! Uh! A i tak będę musiała wysłuchać, jak wychowawczyni będzie rugać uciekinierów. No bo co? Wyjdę sobie wtedy z klasy? Tak to jest, że zasługi odnoszą tylko jednostki, a porażkę cała grupa. Bo porażki się nie rozdziela na imiona, tylko lepiej tak grupowo. łapiecie, o co mi chodzi?
No i to tyle. Chyba. Jestem obolała po biegach wczorajszych. Sześćdziesiątka i osiemset mnie. męczą. Bardzo.
Ach, uprzedzę pytania, czemu sama robię szablony i czemu są takie dupne. Bo lubię. Bo chcę mieć na blogu własną pracę. Inaczej nie umiem, a te, które są w galerii nie podobają mi się.
Właściwie to chciałam napisać, jaki paskudny ten świat jest. Jaki potrafi być okrutny i bezwzględny, taki bezduszny, wysysający siłę do życia.
Baka, moja kochana Baka. Szykowałam się do niej od czerwca. Zaczęło się od Mizu i jej przekonywań: 'Hej, jedźmy na jakiś konwent razem'. Właściwie - czemu nie? Nigdy jeszcze na takiej 'mass imprezie' nie byłam. Zapaliłam się do tego pomysłu. Czytałam jakieś stare opisy spotkań, jakieś filmiki na yt oglądałam. Ba, nawet chciałam zrobić CP. Pożyczyłam trochę ciuchów, pozszywałam je i strój wyszedł. Teraz to nie ważne, kim chciałam być. Ważne, że chciałam? Nope. Sama nie wiem.
I możne przez Bakę poszłam na sezonówkę. Cholernie było gorąco, potem padało i zrobiło się zimno. A ja nadal rwałam truskawki, jakieś porzeczki czy jagody. Wszystko jedno, co się robi, żadna płatna praca nie hańbi. Uciułałam na wejściówkę i bilet i wydatki i w ogóle. A teraz mi mówią, że nie ma. Co, kurna, nie ma?! Po cholerę to wszystko? Okey, nie ich wina. Chyba. Wina buraków siedzących na ciepłych krzesełkach i wymyślających co rusz nowe poprawki do ustaw. No ale czego się oni boją? Że co, że jak Hidan będziemy ich mordować w imię nawracania się niewiernych do Jashina? Albo że zrobimy zbiorową orgię i potem zabraknie Rządowi na wypłacanie becikowego?! To po prostu żałosne! Żałośni ludzie, żałosne pomysły, kurewskie problemy!
Żałosny dzień. Godny politowania dzień. Szary dzień. I smutny dzień.
Wolność - pojęcie względne - gdzież ona jest? Gdzie nie spojrzysz - jest, i nie ma jej. Wolność jest jak dziewictwo - nie może być w połowie, albo jest, albo go brak. Wmawiają, że ludzie są wolni... Kto wmawia? Wszyscy. Wszyscy innym i samym sobie. Nie powiem, wygodne to jest. Mówiąc sobie 'jestem wolnym człowiekiem', nie skupia się na ograniczeniach, jakie być mogą. A są. Gdzie jest wolność, której szukam? Czym jest wolność, którą chcę? Jedyna wolność zaznam po odejściu.
Bierzmowanie - ważny dzień w życiu chrześcijanina. A ja nie czuję ani zaszczytu, żem bierzmowana, ani honorów, nic. Siedziałam w ławce, z imieniem 'Gertruda' na klapie marynarki, z kartką i świadkową z boku. Po prostu siedziałam. 'Szef' wygłosił kazanie, szanuj drugiego człowieka, powściągnij swój język, usłysz głos aniołów, nie profanuj życia ... Jednym słowem - rób dobro, dąż do idealnego zjednoczenia się z Tym Na Górze. Al... Bierzmowanie minęło i, właściwie, nic się nie zmieniło. Świat pędził szaleńczo jak zawsze. Ludzie i ich karcący wzrok się nie zmienił. Tak,gdyby nie było bierzmowania, świat tak samo by biegł. Więc po co ono było? Chyba by wiarę pogłębić. Ale i tak niewiele się zmieniło. Żeby nie powiedzieć nic.
Praktyki mam mieć w starostwie. Znaczy, w poniedziałek dowiem się, co z tym. Agu ma miejsce tam na sto procent, ja już na mniej. Daria mówiła, że dwa miejsca już obsadzone, jedno tylko zostało. Kto wie - może dla mnie miejsc zabraknie? Zdarza się. Ewelina do PKO się nie dostała.
W poniedziałek będziemy jeździć i się prosić. Czy też 'żebrać'. Jeśli nam się nie uda - wyśle nas szkoła. Ale do pierwszego lepszego miejsca. I to być może Ostrzeszów, Ostrów a nawet daleki Kalisz. I co wtedy? W mieście brak znajomych, dojeżdżać nie ma jak.Żeby się dostać, trzeba kupić dwa bilety, na dwie miejscowości. Cóż... Ostrzeszów mały nie jest, ma kilka firm. Ale miejsca dla praktykantów z mojej działki jest mało.
Ano i ... taka notka dziwna, bo teraz jest dziwnie. Witek ma wesele, to sobie puszcza fajerwerki i nie dają mi one spokoju.
Żadnego szablonu z Itasiem i Madarą. No żadnego! Do czego to doszło... W poprzedniej wersji myla była duża pula szablonów, a teraz tyle, co kot napłakał. Znowu będę musiała kombinować, ażeby jakiś ładny layout wyszedł. Chociaż jestem gniotem i nic ładnego nie wykonam.
Na dworze pochmurno, a w mieszkaniu zimno. Palić w piecu to wstyd, jeszcze nie ma zimy. Więc marznąć muszę. Nigdy tego nie zrozumiem. Owinęłam się kocykiem, ale co to daje... Właściwie, to jest jeszcze lato. No to gdzie to słońce?
W szkole jest inaczej. Znowu na nowo trzeba się przyzwyczajać do ludzi. Mam nową nauczycielkę od matematyki. Jak na razie - ok, rozumiem, nie wszystko, ale więcej niż z tamtą poprzednią. Chociaż po miesiącu będę mogła dopiero ocenić ją. Teraz miałam tylko kilka lekcji, wszystkie powtórzeniowe. Nauczyła mnie, jak rysować prostą za pomocą samej funkcji, bez robienia tabelek.
Nowymi przedmiotami są: biologia, geografia i technika informacyjna. Biologii jeszcze nie miałam, bo w palnie występuje godzinka w wtorki. Geografię mam z babką. Widać, że przedmiot kocha i go zna. Przynajmniej wiedziała, gdzie leżą wioski, z których moja klasa jest. Nie to, jak w gimnazjum, gdy powiedziałam, że mieszkam w Hubach pod Zajączkami, a facet się spytał: 'A gdzie to jest?'. Dostaniemy 2oo obiektów do nauczenia się, i w listopadzie sprawdzian. A w listopadzie być nie może. Czemu? Napiszę później. No i została informatyka. Na razie czyściliśmy komputery. Mam kompa siódmego, szczęśliwego. Chyba psuć mi się nie będzie...
W listopadzie praktyki. Od 2 do, bodajże, 20. Nie wiem, gdzie ja je mieć będę. Myślałam o Fumo, ale nawet nie wiem, co ten zakład robi! Coś tam spawają, blacha, chyba kontenery wytwarzają. Ale i tak moja 'posada' tam nie jest pewna. Ewelina szuka w WBK i w policji. Marta pójdzie do Trasko. Kinga chce do jakiegoś banku. A Iza odradza pocztę. Podobno na poczcie segreguje się tylko list, parzy herbatkę i niczego pożytecznego się człowiek nie nauczy. No, może jak wypełniać blankiet o wysłanie paczki czy też przelew. Ale ja już to umiem...
Trzeciakowa mówiła, żeby dostać się do duuużej filmy. Takiej, w której coś się dzieje. Tja, łatwiej powiedzieć, gorzej zrobić. Niektóre filmy nie chcą praktykantów. Boją się przecieku informacji. Wygląda to tak, że praktykant od 8 do 13 parzy herbacię, układa dokumenty, roznosi pocztę i idzie do domu, a po 13 pracownicy zaczynają naprawdę pracować. Kopa w du za taką praktykę. A z drugiej strony taki praktykant potrzebuje osoby, która by go pilnowała. A filmy nie potrzebują dodatkowych wydatków.
Cóż... jakoś to pójdzie. Praktyki to najmniejszy pikuś.
(ed)
Wolałam z edytować notkę niż napisać nową. Chłopaki zdecydowanie są bardzo ciekawym gatunkiem. Robią na złość ewolucji. Na spotkaniu do bierzmowania, na które chodzę, znów mieliśmy próbę chóru. Straszne, kiedy ta kobieta i ten ksiądz nauczą się, że szkarady z mojej byłej klasy niechętnie śpiewają? Że wolą posiedzieć w ławce, pogadać o 'dupie Maryni' i wrócić do domu, bo meczyk leci? Całą tę próbę można było podsumować jednym słowem. Żałosna.
Cóż mogę powiedzieć? Droga do szczęścia wybrukowana żarzącymi się węgielkami jest.
Gadu skasowała mi wszystkie numery. Wrednota rzeczy martwych. Półmartwych. Wpisywane danych ponad stu ludzi jest zajęciem niezbyt przyjemnym. Zajmuje za dużo czasu. I tak wszystkich nie linknęłam. Mam zbyt wielkiego lenia.
A otwarcie nowego roku szkolne do złych nie należało. Głupio było, gdy ten starszy pan przemawiał, a z tyłu jakieś buce hałas tworzyły. Takie to było... niekulturalne. Mogliby chociaż stworzyć pozory, iż słuchają pana starszego i szeptem rozmawiać. Później, gdy spotkaliśmy się w klasie... Jak ci ludzie się pozmieniali. Tja, nasza pani wypiękniała ;) Miło jest znów widzieć osoby, które są do ciebie przyjaźnie nastawione. A nie, postrzegają cię jako wroga, insekta czy też jakąś przeszkodę. Następnie cała klasa poszliśmy pod obelisk na mszę. Cóż, co z tego, że po drodze większość uciekła, i stan faktyczny naszej klasy wyniósł trzy osoby? Zdarza się nawet najlepszym. Już po tym byłam zmęczona. No, ale musiałam wrócić do szkoły po zaświadczenie, skoczyć do Biedronki i 'jakoś' do domu powrócić. I wróciłam - obolała, z odciskami i spuchniętym palcem wskazującym.
Jestem tak padnięta, że nawet nie mam sił na wymyślenie jakiejkolwiek sensownej wymówki, by nic nie robić. Jeszcze tak nie miałam.
Mam do obejrzenia 4 odcinki Nabari no Ou, 2 KHR i jeszcze jakieś. Znowu będę w tyle z anime. Heh, nic nowego.Dobrze, że z mangami jest lepiej. Szkoda, ze Metropolis Platinum ogłosiło upadłość.Skąd ja teraz wezmę świeżutkie, przetłumaczone na mój język ojczysty rozdziały Real? Albo 20 Century Boys? Chyba sama sobie będę musiała tłumaczyć. A nowe grupy skanlatorskie powstają jak grzyby po deszczu. Akuma Love, Dangai Team, Remanji... No ciekawe, ile wytrzymią. Miesiąc? Dwa? A może i mniej.
Czemu znów piszę? Sama nie wiem. Możliwe, że chcę uporządkować swoje myśli. To, co czuję, a to, co robię - rzeczy odmienne. Muszę, muszę, mam poczucie, że muszę gdzieś to zapisać. A jakież inne miejsce lepszym nie jest, niż Internet? Ta anonimowość jest wygodą. Z drugiej strony - pamiętniki są dla rozochoconych licealistek, których nudne życie składa się z chłopaków, plotek, nieudanych umizgów i dyskotek. Aż dziw, że te licea kończą.
Ale odeszłam od tematu. Tak to już mam, że zaczynam pisać, myśli się kumulują, kłębią i bum! Pisząc o Australii opisuję florę Niemiec ;) Taki żarcik. Okej, teraz będę poważna.
Mam piękne 17 lat, za pół roku czeka mnie osiemnastka i kochane, znienawidzone życie dorosłe. Dorosłe... phi! Kiedyś strasznie chciałam dorosnąć, a teraz jakoś nie spieszy mi się za bardzo. Jak człowiek pozna, ile musi udźwignąć stając się coraz starszym, to woli nie rosnąć. Zatrzymać czas. Zatrzymanie czasu w mym wydaniu nie istnieje. Szkoda.
Często filozofuję. Ostatnio myślałam nad Shippuudenem. I tak wpadło mi do głowy, że Danzo i 'Madara Uchiha' to mogą być te same osoby. Tobi ściągnąć maskę, i pokazując Sharingan Sasuke powiedział, że jest Madarą. A z kolei ktoś (kurczę, nie pamiętam kto) powiedział, że Madara miałby na karku już dużo lat. A i prawdopodobnie nie żyje. No. To jakim cudem chodzi w płaszczyku w czerwone chmurki? Kurka, Danzo by pasował jak ulał. Ma Sharingan w prawym oku. Też ma takie... hm... zmarszczki, jak Tobi. A gdy był na spotkaniu wszystkich Kage, mógł zrobić klona i jego wysłać na spotkanie z Naruto. Albo na odwrót - on poszedł spotkać Naruto, a klon przybył na zebranie Kage. Cóż, zostaje czekać, aż p. Kishimoto pokaże cała twarz Tobiego, i wyjaśni, jak to naprawdę jest. Na razie moja tezę podtrzymuję.
ps. Jak Itaś ładnie z nim wygląda *o*
