Harry Potter and the Brewer Downstairs - salazarinadress - Harry Potter (2024)

Chapter 1: Enter Stage Left: The dickhe*ds

Chapter Text

It’s done for now.

Harry sighs, leans back on his stool and stretches his arms up behind his head with his eyes screwed shut. He spends hours hunched over this work table every day, yet he never notices how badly his shoulders ache until he stops. They hurt like someone’s been hammering them with a mallet now, and his spine lets out a series of satisfying clicks as the muscles pull out straight, eliciting a rumbling groan deep in his throat.

A deconstructed broom lies on the work table in front of him, parts all neatly set out in rows after a long day of classification. Separating the brush has been a right pain, but that’s par for the course when it comes to the classics. Regardless, he’s thoroughly fed up of squinting at twigs. After three entire days of tedious, repetitive and time-consuming charm identification, he finally has five neat bundles of thin sticks ready for assessment - and little will to actually do it.

Despite himself, he picks up one of the buffer twigs and flexes it in his fingers. He loves his work, loves the natural textures of the wood and the thrum of charms under his skin. It’s like flying sometimes, but with your feet safe on the ground.

Most witches and wizards assume the brush is made up of simple, ordinary sticks - that it’s the charms that “make the broom go” - but it’s Harry’s job to know all the complexities of broomsticks: the differences between brands and years, and the roles of the shaft, the squeezing bands and all the different types of brush twigs. No single part makes a broom fly, and it certainly doesn’t start and end with charms… though admittedly they’d never get off the ground without them.

He looks down at the work in front of him, frowning through thick-lensed glasses. He can already tell a lot of the twigs are going to need replacing, and for the rest there’ll be repair work before he can even think about polishing and putting it all back together again. Days or weeks of work.

And that’s only the brush. The squeezing bands have almost completely rusted away, and this is no Firebolt. He can’t walk into any old garage or garden shed and find replacement parts for a TX-1202. They made so few it’s practically a custom model - but for all its rarity, it isn’t particularly desirable either. The handle is short and twisted, making it both uncomfortable to sit on and almost impossible to steer. Its dull colour and unadorned design mean it’s not much use as a wall piece either. It’s useless and ugly - just a sad old relic of days gone past.

Harry sighs, dropping the twig back into place, and then brushes his fingers over the shaft delicately, sensing the faltering hum of old charms. Luckily for its owner, he just so happens to like ugly, sad old relics the most.

He hops off the stool and gives his back a proper stretch, then rubs his neck for the ache that remains there. Too many days in a row sat hunched over a worktable does that to a man.

He taps the table lamp with the tip of his wand, extinguishing it, and finds his way in the resulting darkness to the corridor. He casts tempus - just gone midnight - and then lumos as he approaches the door to the hallway.

He could dance around his workshop in total darkness if he felt like it, sure that he won’t so much as brush against the perilous racks of brooms, boxes or chests that fill every available inch of space. He built all of it - every table, shelf and rack - with his own hands, and no one else has touched them since. The hallway is a shared space though, and the building’s other occupants aren’t nearly as tidy as he is, what with the ongoing feud about separation of recycling between offices 12a and 12b, often resulting in them leaving rubbish outside of each others’ doors, passive-aggressive notes stuck to the side. The owner of number 4 also has a tendency to use the corridor as extra storage space for bolts of cloth when she gets big orders in. Harry has no idea who would need that many self-cleaning curtains - but he’s also not interested in useless attempts at holding a conversation, so he’s never asked.

Lit wand in hand, he lets his mind wander as he walks towards the apparition point. Apparating is banned and blocked throughout most of the building to make sure no one appears in or under dangerous bits of equipment. Harry understands the reasoning perfectly, and it comforts him to know that no one can simply pop into his private workshop, but it’s also annoying having to walk to the other side of the building every evening.

There’s usually no one else around at this time of night - part of the reason he stays so late - so he’s surprised to see light spilling from an open doorway as he rounds a corner onto the main corridor joining the East and West wings. A shadow moves across it, letting him know that the room is occupied, and he briefly contemplates dipping into the stairwell and detouring along the third floor and back down to avoid being seen.

But he’s curious by nature, so he extinguishes his light and creeps forward carefully instead. There are boxes piled up outside the room. Some are full, neatly stacked along the wall, while others lie empty and half-crushed, strewn messily down the hallway.

Someone moving in.

Harry jumps as a piece of cardboard flies past, bounces off the wall and skids along the floor near his foot. Blue light flashes inside, and Harry steps closer, one arm raised to protect his head from potential projectiles.

The workshop is smaller than his, perhaps two-thirds of the size but with ventilation shafts built in that probably make it twice as dear to rent. Lovely waxed wooden shelves have been built all the way around the room, some with dark doors leaning against them waiting to be attached. A long walnut counter stretches along one wall at about the height kitchen surfaces usually sit. Made for working while standing, it’s clearly a potions laboratory setup. He doesn’t need to see cauldrons or ingredients to know, having spent enough time in laboratories while working for his Potions Intermediary a few years ago.

A shadow falls across the doorway, and Harry jumps back guiltily, trips over a box and falls against the door of the room opposite. He steadies himself on the doorframe, straightening as he looks up to see the silhouette of a man in the doorway. It gestures, something rapid and aggressive, but Harry can’t see the details of the shadowed face.

He casts lumos again.

The wizard has dark blond hair, and Harry doesn’t recognise him - but he seems to recognise Harry. He looks surprised and then angry, and though Harry still occasionally struggles with lip reading unfamiliar people, he easily interprets the word “Potter.”

The lips move again, and Harry frowns trying to follow along. Looks like he’s saying something about a flaming duck? Or a fair maiden…? Practice, they told him at the training course, is your best friend. All he has to do to get better at lipreading, is practice as often as he can - the problem with that being, he has to actually spend time with other people. Weighing it up a year ago, he had quickly decided to stay sh*t at lip reading.

Harry taps the two fingers of his dominant hand against his ear, the British Sign Language sign for deaf. Not something he often needs to tell people, since everyone knows. It’s also one of the few signs he actually remembers without checking the book lying abandoned somewhere in his bedroom at home - sign language is also one of those things they told him he’d need to practice with others, so naturally he hasn’t bothered.

The man’s eyes widen for a moment, then he looks - inexplicably - even angrier than before. He points at Harry, moves his fingers like a walking pair of legs and points down the hall with a jab. Then, just in case Harry doesn’t get the message, he makes a very rude sign with the same two fingers.

Having had no desire for human company in the first place, Harry returns the gesture with one of his own - hitting his hands between forefinger and thumb together diagonally and pointing at the man, f*ck you - and stomps over the mountain of cardboard that lies between him and the apparition point.

Who the f*ck does the man think he Is, treating Harry - a perfect stranger - like that? Potter, he’d said, his expression clear enough for Harry to know it was spat like a curse. Yet he can’t think of anyone who dislikes him that badly these days. That’s not to say he’s all that popular or beloved - he stays out of people’s way, and they stay out of his. He’s made few enemies since his infamous school days, none of them meaningful, and Ron would message him if any death eaters got released. He’s sure he’d recognise them if that was the case anyway.

Still, he racks his brains for a hint of recollection. The potioneer had a very boring face apart from the thunderous scowl that looked like it must be permanently stuck to it. His hair was that weird shade between blonde and brown that could be described as either, and Harry can’t remember the colour of his eyes. Maybe blue or green? Even his age is hard to place, though he’s definitely no younger than 30. His manner lent him the feel of an older man though. Nothing about him strikes Harry as memorable other than his temper, but he’s still sure he’s never seen the guy before in all his life.

He feels the tingle of the anti-apparition wards on his skin as he crosses into the inner reception lobby, and smiles. It’s finally home time. Bed time. No point dwelling on some grumpy new business owner - he’ll be gone in a few months anyway. Most new businesses don’t last a year.

Chapter 2: James

Chapter Text

Harry only works a few hours on Saturday morning, as per his routine - just cleaning up the squeezing bands to see if fragments can be saved. A few pieces look alright, so he might melt them down with new material for recasting. Sometimes reusing even broken old pieces can help keep a balanced link between charms and broom. Then again, sometimes it’s the worst thing to do. The spellwork on flying objects is so incredibly complicated, not to mention variable between brands, that it’s damn near impossible to know what mistakes you’ve made until you try to recast the charms at the end.

He’ll need to spend days identifying and logging the dying spells by type, and he sets out a few scraps of parchment to start, but there are some things in life more important than work. More accurately, there is one thing more important to him.

He loves broom repair and restoration, he really does, but Saturday afternoons are what he lives for.

“Da!”

Harry grins, seeing the word form on his son’s lips as James runs clumsily over the grass to meet him. Harry picks him up by his armpits and twirls him in a long circle before tucking him onto a hip.

He carries James back towards Molly, who waves him forwards for a crushing hug. They see one another every week, but she always acts like it’s been longer. She releases him to arm’s length, still gripping his shoulders as she studies his face.

She must be satisfied with whatever she finds there, because she smiles at him again and gestures for him to follow her into the Burrow.

It’s changed a lot over the years, in that way it does - new old furniture, shelves moved or repaired, extra rooms bolted on… But its essence is the same: a glorious hodgepodge. All the things that don’t belong, belong at the Weasleys’.

Even him, on Saturdays.

He sits with James in his lap at the kitchen table, and makes what he hopes are appropriate sounds at the right times. “Oh yeah? Mmmm. I see. Wow.”

He dreads James getting old enough to need real conversation. Perhaps Harry will finally get around to properly learning sign language, but then he’d have to put James through that as well - and what if he grows to resent the time spent learning this useless language he can only ever use to communicate with his weirdo recluse father who abandoned him to more capable hands?

James shoves a toy in his face, and a robot arm goes firmly up Harry’s nose, dislodging the maudlin thoughts. Harry grins again and rocks his legs up and down, making James giggle.

Harry can very nearly imagine the way his life was supposed to be. The way it would have been, if-

He feels his smile slipping, and deftly turns James around to face the table so that he won’t have to see the tears if they come - though in truth, Harry hasn’t been much in the business of crying over the last six months. Progress. He hasn’t yet decided if that’s a good thing.

The two-and-a-half year old squirms, twisting with a distinctly displeased scowl at this turn of events, but then Molly saves them both by putting some multi-coloured plastic monstrosity on the table in front of him. The house is full of such devices, as Mr Weasley rather predictably won’t stop buying them - or breaking them in his quest to work out what makes them go. Molly knows perfectly well, but keeps the spare batteries in a secret drawer just to keep the mystique going.

This one has piano keys with animal pictures printed on, which light up in patterns when pressed. It’s the sort of thing that would have driven Harry crazy from the noise a year and a half ago, so he’s glad not to be able to hear it now. James slams his grubby hands down on the keys with violent glee.

A cup of tea appears in Harry’s peripheral vision, and he looks up to see Molly smiling at them fondly as she dries her hands on a teatowel. He makes a grab for the mug before James can reach it, pushing it out of reach and then tapping on the keyboard a couple of times until the toddler is suitably distracted again.

He busies himself with playing until James starts to squirm, clearly wanting to be let down onto the floor. Harry lowers him gently to the tiles, from whence he promptly runs into a chair and falls onto his bottom. Harry freezes, uncertain, then sighs in relief as James takes it in his stride and simply begins playing with a nearby toy train as if it was his intention all along.

Unable to put it off any longer, he turns back to Molly - though with half an eye on James, as always - and picks up his tea.

She looks tired. It isn’t easy for her, he knows, having already gone through the process of raising all of her own kids and then just as the youngest has- ah. To be thrown back to the baby stage again... She must be in her sixties now, staring down the barrel of another fifteen years of active parenthood. Still, she bears it well and without apparent grudge. Everyone loves James, and she’s the best placed to care for him.

It’s not a decision they came to lightly, but it isn’t safe for James to stay with a guardian who can’t hear him crying at night. Not yet, anyway. As soon as he’s old enough to articulate his needs, he’ll be back with Harry - though he can’t help but feel his son might be better off in Molly’s care permanently.

“How are you doing?” Molly asks, moving her lips with a slight exaggeration so that he can more easily read; an act that actually makes it more difficult. It doesn’t matter though, since he can grasp the phrase from the context.

“Fine,” he replies, and swallows a lump. He can feel the vibrations in his throat and chest when he speaks, but he worries about pronunciation, about stuttering. It’s not something he ever dealt with as a child, but he can’t seem to help it now. The more stressed he gets about talking, the more he stutters and the less he wants to talk again. Bit of a cycle. He tries not to speak at all if he can avoid it - Molly and James, and Ron and Hermione are the only exceptions. He owes them a few words here or there, for everything they’ve done. “B-busy. You?” He grimaces. Like lipreading and signing, it’s something they said would improve with practice. He just has to relearn that there’s nothing to be feared in conversation.

They said it would be gone by now, that he’d develop ways around it to keep the social life he was used to - that his life would take on a new form of normalcy sooner than he might believe... Well, it hasn’t. He can’t talk because he stutters, and he can’t stop stuttering because he won’t talk. It’s a circle, round and round.

Molly waves a hand dismissively, as if he wouldn’t want to hear any news about them. Nothing horrific ever happens here, she’s too well-practiced at mothering and grand-mothering for disasters. He can’t tell what this silence feels like to her. Is it awkward or heavy, or like the rest of Harry’s life - just… there?

James is back on his feet, begging to be let up so Harry picks him up again. Molly brings them a chopped up banana in a bowl, which James proceeds to tip over.

Harry turns his head to the side to drink his tea, while banana pieces are smooshed mercilessly into the ancient wooden surface and modern plastic toy with equal savagery. Then James holds up a gross mush-covered hand and Harry pretends to eat the banana mess with an exaggerated “om nom nom nom nom.” The unfamiliarity of the sound along with his inability to hear it makes him doubly self conscious, but James smiles and that makes it alright. He’ll save up the shame and self-loathing for midnight.

“What’s f-or lunch?” he asks Molly. He would have shortened the sentence down to just lunch but he doesn’t want to sound like a demanding dickhe*d.

She has her back turned, looking into the open oven door as she shakes a tray inside roughly. A moment later she spins, apologising, and Harry tries not to frown. The long act of apologising is usually more annoying than the things she apologises for, but it’s easier to let her do it so he smiles.

Lunch, it transpires, is a heavenly leg of lamb with veg, roast potatoes and gravy. Arthur comes in from the shed, muttering away with the most annoyingly minute and indistinguishable lip movements Harry has ever known. Luckily, George and Percy thump down the stairs to talk with him a moment later so Harry is saved the awkwardness of having to ask for repetition a few times before nodding in pretended recognition. Though if he’s honest, Arthur wouldn’t notice any more than James does. Harry often feels like one of those nodding dog figurines muggles used to have on the dashboards of their cars. Nod, nod, nod. It’s an easy way to respond. You pretend you understand and agree, they pretend to believe you. It’s easy for everyone.

After an awkward round of hellos and attempted how-are-yous - some voiced, some signed, and Harry’s contribution being a few polite nods and a worn smile - they settle into two comfortable groups around the table: the men on one side, talking amongst themselves about Man Things; and Harry and Molly with James on the other.

It’s frustrating not being able to joke around with George, trade ideas with Percy or answer Arthur’s questions about muggles. More than that, it hurts that they don’t try. Not that he blames them, or even wants them to… He hates talking, hates not understanding, but- it’s complicated. It would be awkward and slow and horrible, and he’d feel a pitiful hindrance the entire time. But gods, it would be nice if one of them would glance his way and reiterate a joke or something. Just to acknowledge that he still exists as a human being, now that he’s inconvenient.

Molly places a hand over his, and he realises that he’s been pushing food around his plate. It’s delicious, but his appetite still hasn’t fully returned. He flashes Molly another of his little smiles, uncomfortable at having been caught out. She sees right through him, as usual.

He spends another few hours post-lunch at the Burrow and insists on helping with the washing up, which Molly takes as an affront to her abilities as a wife and mother.

Sometimes James cries when Harry is leaving, but today he’s in too playful a mood. Totally focussed on his collection of muggle and magical toys. Molly has to coax him into waving, never mind clinging or crying. As unreasonable as it is, and as little as he shows it, Harry’s mood sours. It breaks his heart every week saying goodbye to James, and it kills him twice that his son doesn’t feel the same way. Then he reprimands himself, feeling guilty - it’s not that he wants James to be sad about anything, ever. Just…

He sighs. What more can he expect as a one-afternoon-a-week dad?

He apparates straight to The Enginerooms - the massive converted brick warehouse where he rents his workshop space.

He climbs up a flight of stairs, along the third floor and then down again to avoid the hallway with the angry potioneer, and then allows himself to get lost in work until the early hours of the morning.

Chapter 3: A Despicable Man

Chapter Text

Ginny laughed, nudging Harry with her elbow. “Stop worrying, don’t you think we know what we’re doing by now?” she teased, words guaranteed to bring doom in any circ*mstances. Her voice was pretty, light with amusem*nt and confidence. They slipped air purifying masks over their faces - big ugly muggle things that wouldn’t get affected by magical fields. He reached for the equally unwieldy construction-site ear protectors he’d bought that morning, but his hand froze on the way. The world slowed around him, the air thickening into jelly, pushing back against him as he tried to move.

Stray motes of dust in the air floated serenely past his immobile eyes. A yellow blossom of light unfurled slowly to his left, then flashed brighter in a sudden burst of force that threw him backwards.

Harry gasps awake, coughing and sobbing to fill his empty lungs, and then falls backwards off his stool just as he realises where he is. The back of his head hits something hard, and he grimaces - first at the sudden pain, and then at the ringing sound. Bloody tinnitus. He shakes his head, which only makes him feel nauseous.

He puts a hand up and feels around for whatever he hit his head against. Ah. The strongbox, he forgot to slide it back into place after fetching clamps for one of his side projects yesterday. Or maybe it was the day before? The box is hard as a solid iron bar, so it’ll leave quite the bump.

Too dizzy to rise, he waits for the ringing to fade, tears sliding down the sides of his face, into his useless ears.

He remembers the first time he got tinnitus, convinced it was the first sign of his hearing returning. But no, if he’d properly read the leaflets then he’d have known better. It’s an awful sound to have as the only one he ever hears.

He feels around in his dark brown robe for his wand, then casts tempus. Quarter past three in the morning. Hardly worth heading home now, when he’ll inevitably be back again in a few hours. He should string out the hammock…

No, his back is already killing him. He needs a bed, if only for a quick nap. Even half an hour in a bed would be better than a full night in the hammock. And maybe a pain reliever or two would be nice as well.

Groaning, he sits up and waits for the room to stop spinning, then does the same for standing, climbing his way up the shelves for support. He lurches to the side, throwing out a hand to catch the edge of a chest before he can lose his balance again. He must’ve hit his head harder than he thought. Groaning in annoyance, he extinguishes the lights and makes his way slowly to the door. The hallway is cool, which helps clear his head and he feels the dizziness fade. He keeps a hand on one wall as he goes, just in case, and holds out his wand in the other for light.

Luckily the hallways are all clear of junk and rubbish today - but unfortunately, it seems that the dickhe*d potioneer is still up. His door is closed, but light pours from the rectangular glass panel above it, shining directly on the ceiling and lighting up a few old cobwebs hanging heavy with dust.

He stops to weigh his options, cancelling his lumos just in case. On the one hand, it’s incredibly unlikely that the door will happen to open at the very moment he walks by, thus forcing him into another horrible social interaction with the unpleasant man inside. On the other hand, incredibly unlikely things happen to him all the time. Especially things he doesn’t want.

He re-casts lumos and turns to go back the way he came, towards the staircase - and instantly crashes into a dark figure coming the other way. He falls back with a cry of surprise, and a fresh wave of dizziness washes over him as he tries to grab onto the wall to stop himself from falling. Unlike little James, he tends not to get right back up after a fall these days.

He manages to stay mostly upright, heart hammering in his chest with such fury that he thinks it might be trying to break his ribcage open. People showing up behind him are always a frightener, considering that he can’t hear them coming. It takes him a few moments to calm down and focus.

There’s a man standing in front of him, looking equal parts worried and annoyed, and thankfully it’s not the potion brewer. He’s grey-haired, with eyes so dark that Harry can’t tell what colour they’re supposed to be. His lips move, something ending with “-more careful.”

Then he steps past Harry, bumping him rudely on the shoulder on his way. Great, another f*cking prick. Maybe it’s time for Harry to find a new building to work in.

Harry pushes himself away from the wall and steps in the opposite direction, but his sight dims for a moment and his bones turn to jelly. His wand slips from his fingers and rolls across the floor, and he barely manages to hold himself upright by grabbing the door frame again. The back of his head throbs, and he grinds his teeth against the pain.

Just as he thinks he might fall after all, fingers slipping on the painted wood, a strong hand grips his arm and yanks him upright. The sudden movement makes him feel sick, but he hasn’t eaten since Molly’s the other day so nothing comes of it.

The stranger guides him into the potioneer’s workroom of all places, where he’s dumped onto a cushioned armchair in the corner of the room. A slim bookshelf looms to his left, and there’s a small side table next to the chair - quite the nice little resting spot. Unusual for a workroom.

The grey haired man from a minute before drops Harry’s wand into his lap and leans down to look into his eyes. He waves a finger back and forth, which Harry knows instinctively he should follow, but he stares at the face instead. There’s something familiar about him - not in his features, but in his mannerisms and expression. The scowl, mostly.

The man taps Harry’s cheek a few times with the back of his hand as if to rouse him from fainting, which Harry resents as he is quite clearly conscious. He dutifully watches the finger move from side to side this time, and glances back to the man’s lips just in time to see him say “Good.”

Harry wants to ask who he is, why he’s here and who the blond man was if not the new owner of the workshop. And what is he doing here so late? And does he have any pain relievers to hand? But that would involve talking, so he doesn’t. Instead, he closes his eyes and leans back in the chair, wincing a bit as the back of his head touches the firm cushion behind. He just needs to rest up for a moment and then he’ll be on his way.

He wakes up to a hand shaking his shoulder roughly. There’s a man, a grey haired man. He’s in the potioneer’s lab. The man says something, maybe a question, but Harry can’t follow. He frowns and gestures at his ear, making the same movement as always to indicate that he is deaf.

The man looks very put out by this, twirling in his deep grey robes dramatically as he turns to find parchment on a worktable. A minute later, he hands Harry a note.

What is your name?

Harry motions for the guy to give him the quill, but he scowls even deeper and points to his mouth. Harry shakes his head and gestures insistently for the quill again.

The parchment is summoned out of his hands, and the man hunches over his work table to write a second time. The next message is longer, and Harry has to concentrate to read the tight, spidery script.

I would not have you wasting space on parchment of this quality and cost, when I know for a fact that you are able to speak. I suspect that you may be suffering from a concussion, and as such it would benefit us both that you prove me wrong so that we must no longer suffer each others’ presence. What is your name?

Hell, if he doesn’t want to waste parchment then he hardly needs to write a bloody essay just to say so. Harry grinds out his most insincere smile. “Harry,” he says. “Y-you?”

The man snatches the parchment again.

I have no plans of making your acquaintance, believe me. Where do you live?

“N-not telling you,” Harry answers. Three words. It’s the longest sentence he’s spoken to anyone bar Molly or Ron in months, and he closes his jaw tight afterwards.

A moment passes and the man doesn’t respond. Damn, he said it too fast, didn’t he? Or too loud. Harry swallows a nervous lump. The man looks at him very disapprovingly, but quickly turns away to write another note. His shoulders are bunched, his posture tense. Angry. Harry feels the same way.

I wasn’t asking out of personal interest, you self-important jackass. Do you at least remember where you live?

Harry has no doubt now that the two men he’s met are brothers. Unpleasant dickhe*d potion-brewing brothers who probably tortured animals as kids. Unwilling to waste another word, he falls back to the comfort of nodding. The man asks a few more yes or no questions, to which Harry shakes or nods his head with the smallest of twitching movements, and then the brewer declares Harry well enough to f*ck off.

Make sure to tell your fame-following bag of a wife that she will need to keep an eye on you for the next ten hours, unless she wants you even more brain-dead than you have already proven yourself to be.

Harry holds that note in his hand for a long, stretching moment, his headache growing with his frown. Who… who is this man, to make so many bloody judgements about Harry while being so obviously misinformed on even the most basic of facts? Like a balloon whose string has been cut, he finds suddenly that he doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to know the brewer, or anything about him. He is, at the most basic level any person can be, utterly devoid of good.

“She’s d-dead,” Harry says. He hopes that the tone comes out suitably caustic, but suspects his inflection to be as empty as he feels. The words at least, should make the man show some guilt - and indeed he does freeze for a microsecond. Then he scribbles on a second piece of parchment, just a scrap, and all but throws it at Harry.

It isn’t an apology. The second potioneer proves himself to be even more deplorable than previously thought.

Tell your f*cking owl, then. I’m not interested in sob stories from you.

Fine. Not interested, is he? Well neither is Harry. He isn’t interested in this conversation, nor in starting fights or feuds or arguments. He won’t rise to the bait, won’t give the man the satisfaction of it, since it’s clearly what he wants. He gets up, leaning on the back of the chair to steady himself for a second, and then steps forward and holds out the two scraps of parchment. “Tha-thank you. G-good morn-ing.”

He doesn’t have to fake the calmness, not even as his tongue stumbles its way through those four small words. It’s real. This man simply isn’t worth the energy it would take to be angry or embarrassed. Harry doesn’t owe him anything, doesn’t know him or wish to. Simply put, he doesn’t give enough of a f*ck to argue.

Without waiting for an answer, he turns and walks out of the open door, down the hall and back to his workroom. He closes the door, locks and wards it, then spells the hammock loose and numbly climbs inside. He accio’s the soft blanket from a shelf above the broom racks, pulls it up over his head.

She’s dead.

A year and a half on, and that’s the first time he’s said the words out loud without crying.

Chapter 4: Trygve Tandberg

Chapter Text

Harry wakes at seven as cold winter morning light begins to filter through the workroom’s only window. It looks out onto a quiet side street with a not-so-lovely view of the big blue wheelie bins belonging to the nightclub opposite. Harry wonders if this building is sound-proofed, or if the other craftspeople are constantly annoyed by the late night music. Then again, no one stays late enough to get annoyed except for Harry, who’s more concerned about the piles of damp cardboard and broken glass.

As expected, his back is killing him and his head still throbs. He untangles himself from the hammock. His mouth is dry.

He stands and walks around a little, testing his balance, and then fetches his drinking glass from a shelf near the workbench. He might get the entire brush assessed today if he works with enough dedication. But first things first, water.

He could aguamenti the glass full, but he’s been doing that all week and the thing needs a wash so he heads for the shared kitchenette. There are loads of people about today. Weekday morning, so the normal-hours folk are here.

He smiles as Jennifer bids him good morning, and keeps the expression plastered on as he weaves past Sid the carpenter and Crank Shiverton the silversmith. There’s a small queue at the sink caused by Rodderim, who has decided that the morning tea rush is the perfect time to swill out thirty million test tubes from his private forensics lab. Being British, no one else dares to express their annoyance to his face, but plenty of annoyed looks are shared behind his back. There are two sinks anyway, so Harry gets his turn eventually, running the cold tap for a few seconds before rinsing out his glass and running a sponge over the lip. He fills it without bothering to dry the outside of the cup, and escapes.

He passes two more wizards on his way back to his workshop, nodding at their morning greetings. When he finally gets back to his room, he leans on the back of the door and concentrates on his breathing. Steady, now. So many people. All around him, every angle. It’s impossible to keep track in a room like that. He holds a hand to his chest to alleviate the pressure there.

No one cares anymore. They don’t stare here, they don’t run everything he does to the papers because they understand that there’s nothing interesting enough to sell. Well, most of them don’t. If he starts wearing green robes and dancing around while singing songs about Salazar, they might.

He might be able to afford a more private building if he keeps getting requests like the one he’s currently working on - but he knows they’re few and far between. There are months when all he gets is repair work - or young men asking him to inspect their ‘brooms’. Har de har.

Harry puts the glass down on its safe shelf and stretches his back, which clicks pleasantly in several places, then sits down to work.

He starts with the smallest group of the five bundles on the worktable. The load balancing twigs of the brush are usually spread out at equal spacing around the others, making sure the stress and work are spread evenly amongst the twigs between them. They’re important for preventing burnout, and are usually the first thing to go on an old broom. Owners who know what they’re doing take the broom to be fixed at that point, but some fools continue to ride around, causing untold damage to the rest of the plumage - not to mention risking brush fires and their own deaths.

There are four twigs present, which according to his model chart means that two are missing. That’ll be a pain in the arse, since the Baynes manual for this model has no details at all to indicate what they're made of.

He takes what measurements he can to aid his best guess. 4mm thick, sturdy yet flexible, about a handspan long. They look to be of a dark wood, but he scrapes one with a fingernail to reveal white flesh underneath. Field-petrified willow? He shakes his head - willow’s awful for load balancing. He’ll work it out later.

Two of the load balancing twigs are almost pristine, which helps him find what spellwork is missing on the other two by comparison. He separates them by grade on his marked table, a gift from a woodworker down the hall in exchange for renewing the child safety charms on an old family heirloom. The table is currently marked with labelled rectangles for the separation of the brush, but at the tap of his wand he can change the configuration to match whatever type of work he’s doing.

Harry takes the first good looking twig and uses a wordless wingardium to set it at a hover, then grabs his Spell Lens from a nearby shelf. Looking through it, he can inspect the state of the charms, which in this case look like a twirling spring coiled along the twig. He pokes one end with his wand, and the purple runes flare brighter briefly. He tries sticking the end of his wand in the space between charm and twig, but the spellwork is still well stuck on, so it only wobbles a bit. Next, he tries a gentle binding. A yellow web of stringy light wraps itself around the twig, squeezing the charm all around. The tiny runes in the coil vibrate quickly, and a short spurt of magical energy bursts out of the end. Harry attempts several angles, just to make sure, then moves on to heat testing.

The first two twigs are A grade - nothing missing, but they’ll need renewing. One is B grade - physically sound with missing charms - and the other is D grade, having significant physical deterioration. It’ll need replacing along with the missing two, for which he carefully takes two thin glass rods from a nearby pot and places them at the bottom of the column.

There. The smallest group assessed, and it only took an hour or two. If he does nothing but this for the next fifteen hours then he might get into the groove and have them finished in a day. Then all the tedious work will be done with, and he can get on with the real stuff. Most of the brush twigs aren’t as complicated as load balancers, so they’re much faster to work through as long as he has a couple of healthy specimens to compare against.

He pauses to stretch again, noting that the ache has spread from his back up to his shoulders and neck. A little walk around the room could do no harm.

Just as Harry stands, he feels the vibration of a ward alert crawl over his skin. It’s almost identical to the feeling he gets in any situation requiring him to speak to another person, so it’s well suited for letting him know when someone is knocking on the door.

He contemplates pretending to be out, but then thinks better of it. People have seen him around this morning. Sighing, he unlocks the door and drops the defensive wards, then opens it just wide enough to see who’s there.

It’s the grey-haired man from last night, and he looks perturbed and angry to have been kept waiting outside for thirty entire seconds. He passes Harry a note through the crack, looking up and down the hall as if scared he’ll be spotted.

Let me in.

Well, he’s correctly assessed that Harry would have no intention of doing so. Harry shakes his head, and begins to close the door but grey-hair blocks it with his shoe. Harry rams it with the door, frustrated, and kicks the man’s shin to no avail. He doesn’t even seem to notice.

Grey-hair pulls another note from his pocket, frowns at it and then fetches a different one and passes that one to Harry instead.

Don’t be an imbecile, Mr Potter. I doubt you had the sense to let any of your fool friends know of your injury, and it would be inconvenient for me were you to die in the building and set off an auror investigation.

“I’m f-fine,” Harry says, hoping a couple of words will prove it. He tries the door again, then settles for holding it against the man’s foot.

Grey-hair huffs in agitation, looks up and down the hall again, and then pulls a sheaf of notes from an inner robe pocket and starts flicking through them. Not wanting to waste parchment, huh? Annoyed, Harry accio’s the notes right out of the man’s hand, and uses his surprise to finally get that damn foot out of his door and slam it shut. He leans against it and shuffles through the scraps of parchment.

They’re mostly different ways of calling him an idiot for refusing help, though Harry has no idea why the brewer felt the need to write out quite so many variations of the exact same message. co*ckolorum is a new one on him, as is mumpsimus. He understands from context vaguely what they mean. Not a single one of the notes contains anything that could even remotely be construed as an apology - not even one veiled as an insult. One message does stand out to him though:

Trygve Tandberg. I would thank you not to repeat it.

Harry opens the door again, not surprised to see the man still standing outside, and holds the paper up. “Y-your name?” he asks - and oh boy, does Grey-hair look pissed. It’s almost satisfying. “W-well?”

The man nods curtly.

Harry opens the door and steps aside, making space for him to sweep past, then locks and replaces the wards behind him. He follows Trygve into the room. What sort of bloody name is that? Scandinavian, probably, or German. He turns to find that Trygve has sat himself stiffly in the room’s only stool, uncomfortably close to Harry’s work. He concedes that there’s nowhere else for the man to sit, and lets his momentary protective anger ebb away.

He strides to a drawer and pulls out a muggle A4 notepad, finds a few biros in an old tin can. One of them is bound to work. Handing them to Trygve, who gives him a disgusted look but takes them willingly enough, Harry stands and leans against a cabinet - a safe distance away, but not so far that he can’t rush forward and thump the man if he starts messing with his workspace.

Trygve half turns in the chair, obviously looking for somewhere to lean the pad of paper, but disregards the table before Harry has need to warn him off, settling instead for his own lap.

“How d-d’you s-say it?” Harry asks, clenching his fists at his sides at the feel of the words. He doesn’t care what this man thinks, he reminds himself. The brewer already seems to hate him, so what does it matter if he knows about the stutter? Where’s the shame in it? Of course, forcing himself to think that doesn’t make him feel any less ashamed.

The man replies out loud, and Harry gives him a purposefully blank and unamused look. Trygve writes in the notebook, frowns and scribbles it out, then writes and crosses his words out a second time, and then shrugs and turns the paper for Harry to see.

It is pronounced T-r-y-g-v-e.

Bloody smart-arse.

Harry gave him a chance, so now Trygve will just have to live with whatever Harry decides to call him. He’s currently leaning towards Trigger, the thick-headed character from the sitcom Only Fools and Horses. He doubts a wizard would get the reference anyway.

Can we get this out of the way?

“I’m f-fine,” Harry says again, since he’s used to the words, and it’s easier to say than any good insults he can think of. There’s no point aggravating the man anyway, since the main goal is to have him out and away, not into a shouting - or scribbling - match. “You c-can... go.” He feels his chest tighten and his skin prickle.

Name, age, that sort of thing.

“B-buy a, a n-news… paper,” Harry answers, his snort of derision hopefully making up for the way he stumbles over the words. He reminds himself yet again that he doesn’t care what this man thinks of him.

Trigger - the name is stuck in his head now - scowls as the biro stops working halfway through a particularly hefty-looking paragraph. He licks his thumb and runs the pen tip over his skin, then scribbles in the margin of the page until ink starts flowing again. Huh. Probably muggleborn or half-blood, then. That’s surprising, considering he carries himself with all the pompous arrogance of any ancient pureblood family.

Allow me to assure you that I too already know the answers. I am not asking from some idiotic interest in your pathetically disappointing life, Potter. I am doing you a service by pretending to care about your health, something for which there would be no need were it not for the fact that you are totally incapable of doing so yourself.

Harry reads the paragraph and throws the notebook back into Trigger’s lap. He steps forward, holds out a hand but stops short of actually touching the man. Is it a glamour? Polyjuice? Actually, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to care, and it makes no difference. Why did he even let the guy in to start with? “Out,” he says, gesturing to the door.

Trigger starts writing again, but Harry hits the pen out of his hand and tosses the notebook to the side in an uncommon fit of childishness. “G-get out.”

The man’s face is like thunder, but he does as he’s told. His mouth moves, lips curled into a snarl as he insults Harry in a variety of no-doubt eloquently creative ways.

Once he’s gone, Harry takes a minute to let all the anger drain out of his chest. Merlin, he hasn’t felt this mad for a long while. And he doesn’t even know why. Trigger has said worse. Other people have said worse.

He’s just... tired. He breathes in slowly through his nose, out through his mouth. His chest is tight, a horrible and familiar feeling. Like a giant ghostly hand has his ribcage in its grip, squeezing and chilling his blood at the same time. At least all that counselling hasn’t gone to bloody waste - he didn’t throw a single hex. He un-clenches his hands, stretching and then wriggling his tense fingers.

He wants to scream. Wants to berserk his way through the room, throwing drawers and shouting f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck! Instead, he walks calmly to the notepad and reads what Trigger was writing before Harry threw him out.

You ungrateful litt

Yeah. He isn’t worth Harry’s time. He tears out the page and throws it in the bin, collects the pens and then puts everything back where they belong. Then he moves to his workspace to make sure that nothing has been moved. His hand stills on its way to adjusting a misaligned twig.

There’s a small potion bottle on the table. Not trusting the label, he picks it up and uncorks it, giving it a sniff. The viscous cream liquid moves sluggishly as he tilts the bottle back and forth. The colour and consistency are a bit off, but the smell is unmistakable. It’s a nausea suppressant.

He replaces the cork and turns to survey the room, looking for someplace to put it where he can ignore it and stop wondering why Trygve left it here. It doesn’t belong anywhere. He doesn’t know where it goes - either in his mind’s assessment of the brewer or in his physical space. In the end, he decides on the bottom drawer where he keeps scraps and cut-offs too big to throw away. He slams it shut with a frown, then walks back to his table and sits down with a thump.

He frowns. The worktop is the wrong height, just by an inch or so, but why-

The sad*stic bastard! Trigger must have adjusted the height of his bloody stool.

Chapter 5: The TX-1202

Chapter Text

It takes him ten hours to work through the next three groups of brush twigs. The steering twigs prove to be a particular pain since their charms are so closely tied to the shaft of the broom they’re currently removed from. A rider steers the broom by applying directional pressure to the shaft, but all that really does is relay instructions to the outer ring of twigs in the brush. When the load balancers get damaged these are always the next to go, and sure enough only twenty two of the necessary thirty remain. He categorises those, then lays eight glass rods in a little pile next to them.

No brake twigs are missing, though they’re all worn to grade B or C, with a few split right down the middle from stress. The owner of this broom tried out some crazy maneuvers, no doubt. Once upon a time that might have brought Harry a bit of joy to think about, but now it makes him feel vaguely sick. Stupid tricks like that are just one more way to get yourself maimed or killed.

He decides to finish the day on the filler twigs, which can flip between braking, steering and accelerating - but are really there to act as a buffer between the central accelerators and the rest of the brush. They’re in fairly good condition, since they’re built to be more robust than the others. Typical that the easiest to repair are the ones that never need it, Harry grouses.

His eyes itch drily, so after a while he removes his glasses and rubs the dust away, blinking. He’s grateful not to have lost his eyesight as well as his hearing, although the blast of light did enough damage that his glasses are now twice their previous thickness. He’s as good as blind without them, can’t even see where he put them down on the table right in front of him. Now he understands why characters in muggle films are always patting around on the ground for their lost lenses, when it never made sense to him before.

It’s time to finally head home and have a real rest in an actual bed. He takes the stairs without risking to check if Trigger is still about, gets safely home without meeting the potioneer or his bastard friend, and falls into bed after finding his cupboards bare of food. He’ll have to get something to eat on his way to the workshop tomorrow morning.

Of course, once morning comes the idea of food has disappeared out of his head, and he apparates straight there. His mood is dark, having dreamed about Severus Snape of all people. He’s been dead ten years, and Harry has just about managed to forget the man ever existed so the reminder puts him in a foul mood. He supposes the similarity to his new acquaintances must have resurfaced old memories. He pushes them back down into the depths, along with every other unpleasant thing that has happened to him, and walks along the halls with his head down, wondering if management would consider putting in an exception for him regarding apparition. It’s not yet six in the morning, so he doesn’t meet anyone else on the way to his unit but he’s in such an anxious and unsociable mood that even the risk of it has his heart hammering.

He spends half the day assessing the acceleration twigs - the last and most numerous bunch. They’re pretty much fine, if a little shorter than they need to be. It isn’t worth replacing the lot for a couple of millimetres though, so he shoves them all in the rectangle etched into the worktop for grade A.

Slumping in his stool, he finally recognises that he needs to eat or risk passing out from hunger. He can only survive for so long on water alone, and he’s no good at fine work with his hands shaking for want of sustenance.

He walks to the apparition point and pops into an alley just off a near-deserted road of shops in Brynmawr. It’s a small town, hit hard by the muggle recession, with half the shops empty and boarded up. He makes his way down the high street, passing a few greasy fast food places until he gets to the Weatherspoons at the end of the road. The Prince of Wales, it proclaims on the sign. It’s his regular haunt, since the wizarding population in this part of the country is so low it might as well not exist. Anyone who lives out here would be just as desirous of peace and quiet as he, so he’s never had any problems with strangers approaching him asking questions or taking photographs for newspapers.

It has the added advantage that he’s been here before, and the girl behind the bar knows that he’s deaf and what his regular is, so he only needs to hand over the cash without speaking.

It isn’t even one o’ clock in the afternoon, but she pours him a pint to go with his steak and chips anyway. No matter what time of day he comes in, that’s what he gets. She probably assumes him to be unemployed, one of the lot from the JobCentre four doors down. He hates that building, with it’s faux-cheery green plastic panels bolted onto crumbling fifties brick and concrete. The friendly photogenic faces printed on the windows give Harry the creeps.

Pint in hand, he looks about the pub’s main room for the best spot to eat. He likes having his back to the wall furthest from the windows but there’s a mother-daughter pair in his usual corner, so he opts instead for the far end near the toilets. So long as there’s no space for someone to walk behind him, it’s okay.

There are only two other people in this section of the room, both solitary old codgers long past retirement. Harry sits a few tables away from the nearest one, next to a decorative wooden screen, and settles in. The beer does nothing for his empty stomach except make him feel a bit ill. He pushes it away and waits.

Unbidden, thoughts of Trigger and his friend rise in Harry’s mind. Questions, really. From the offset, that pair has acted like they know and dislike him. But if they dislike him so bloody much, why did one of them go out of his way to make sure he was alright? He was a right git every step of the way, just to complicate matters further. The things he said about Ginny, and the way he doubled down on his insults after finding out that she’s dead… It just doesn’t bear thinking about. Then there’s the potion, left quietly behind even as Trigger was thrown out of Harry’s workroom. And the countless drafted notes he brought with him in the first place.

He cares. No one spends so much time drafting that many variants of the same short missive unless they give a sh*t about how it’ll be received. In this case, they were all insults. So he cares about insulting Harry properly?

He suppresses a groan, leaning his elbows on the dark wooden table. Who is it? An obsessed weirdo? He’s had a few stalkers in his time - but no, the brown-haired one was definitely surprised to see Harry that first night. He can still remember the man’s expression as he said Potter. It was like he thought for a moment that Harry was the one following him.

It’s possible he’s someone from Harry’s past. He made more than his share of enemies at Hogwarts and immediately after, especially Slytherins. Maybe he went to school with the brown-haired one - they do look vaguely of an age. Not Trigger though.

Or are they forgotten acquaintances or rivals from Harry’s curse-breaking days? Goodness knows he and Ginny stepped on toes climbing that ladder. Stealing bids from other contractors, bragging and insulting at events, that sort of thing.

That doesn’t make sense either though. No one from those circles can have avoided knowing what happened to the romantically adventurous curse-breaking couple of the wizarding world. No doubt some of them rejoiced, thought to themselves that it served ‘em right. Reckless, stupid pair…

He shakes his head to rid himself of the thought. They paid for their arrogance, there’s no point dwelling on it. He’s had enough of if onlys.

To be fair, it doesn’t make sense either way that Trigger didn’t know about Ginny’s death. Everyone knows. It was front page news for bloody weeks, not just in Britain but all over the world. It comes up all the time, even now. Whatever happened to Harry Potter’s spine? Why has he not returned to curse-breaking?

The two potioneers must have been living under a rock for the last couple of years to have missed it.

Something touches his elbow, making him jump, and he looks up to see an unfamiliar server with his plate of food. She asks him something he can’t follow, so he just shakes his head and she goes away. sh*t, that scared him. What’s the point getting a seat by the wall if he doesn’t keep an eye on the room?

He eats slowly, even though it’s his first meal since… whenever he last ate. He never has much of an appetite anyway, no matter how much Molly tries to feed him up every week. It’s nothing more than a rare annoyance if he gets hungry enough to stop working.

He leaves a tip on the table when he’s done, or as close to done as he can manage. The steaks are way too big here, and they come with too many chips as well. He pops into a corner shop and buys some of those Euroshopper two-for-a-pound bags of weird onion ring corn things. Next time he gets hungry, he won’t have to leave his workshop at least.

When he gets back, he works out that the twigs are made of dogwood - a particularly sturdy wood that was once used to make crucifixes, but is almost as bendy as willow when freshly cut. He didn’t think of it earlier since he’s used to dealing with the common type whose bark is red. This is the northern swamp variety, which goes dark grey with age. Luckily enough, a quick exchange of notes with his supplier confirms that they have a few branches lying around. Old sticks kept dry in the back of a shed. Perfect for his purpose. He arranges an owl for tomorrow, and spends the rest of the day cleaning and polishing what he already has in preparation.

Since there’s nothing more to be done about the brush, Harry turns his attention to the troublesome shaft of the broom. He rolls it back and forth over his lap, thinking and playing about with charms. Predictably, they don’t stick well. It’s made of alder, a tree that doesn’t produce shade leaves - as they grow taller, the trees just let lower branches die off and use only one big umbrella of leaves at the top for photosynthesis. In short, it’s a wood made for giving up, and this one has. For what feels like the hundredth time he curses the inventors of the TX-1202 and all its variants. There just isn’t a single good thing to be said about the broom - not its design, construction or materials. Not one thing. Other commercial brooms of its time had twice as many load balancers, twenty percent more filler twigs and much more practical shafts. Other brooms had adequate preservation charms. They were bloody usable.

But Harry isn’t being paid to fix other brooms. He’s being paid a lot of money to fix this one, because no one else can or will. He supposes that’s one good thing about it.

The next few days pass as he collects and prepares the new twigs. He updates his client on the progress, warning them that he can’t guarantee a great connection with the existing shaft because the wood is so old, but they insist on using the original. No replicas, it has to use as much of the original broom as possible.

So Harry is left with the same dilemma. He could always use new wood anyway, the client would never know the difference. Another broom restorer might do exactly that. Harry understands their sentiment though, so he sighs and picks up the stick. He’ll need to coax it back to life, make it care again - as strange as that is to think about an inanimate object. Nothing touched by magic is ever truly inanimate. They’re imbued with the intent of the craftspeople who made them - they want to fulfil their purpose. There aren’t many people who seem to understand that, even among artists like himself.

There are two options available to him at this point. Firstly, he can outsource to a specialist he knows in Greece. It’d take a few weeks and cost more than the client is paying him to fix the entire broom, but she could sort out the shaft for him. Or…

He could use a love potion.

It’s an unorthodox and little-known cheat, but there’s no faster or easier way to convince an old bit of wood that it loves being alive than soaking it in Amortentia overnight. The only problem is that love potions were outlawed en-masse by the Ministry six years ago after a wizard managed to slip one into the breakfasts of over half the Wizengamot, including the Minister for Magic - on the morning of his sentencing. He was officially acquitted of all crimes, and also convinced the wizengamot to have his identity expunged from all records. By the time the effects wore off, he was long gone and legally there was nothing the Ministry could do about it. Thus the long-awaited ban had come, and many thought it none too soon.

It presents a problem for Harry though. He can hardly walk into The Apothecary in Diagon Alley asking for ashwinder eggs and rose petals, nor can he trust any of the more flexible brewers that advertise in the backs of newspapers. Who knows what sh*t they’d send back?

He thinks of Trigger, then dismisses the idea. God, the man would have a field day knowing that Harry wants a love potion, and the last thing he needs is more fuel for his insult bonfire.

He has a while yet to think on it, anyway. He still has the entire brush to recharm and put together, as well as the squeezing bands to fix, before he can do anything with the shaft. Besides, he’s seeing James tomorrow so nothing else can occupy his thoughts for long.

Chapter 6: Ron Weasley

Chapter Text

“H-hello, James,” Harry says. He rubs their noses together, making James giggle, and repeats himself. “Hell…llo James. Hello Ja-James hello James. Helloooooo…. James!” He carries him into the kitchen, where Molly is busy cooking again, and asks him what various objects are called. So far as Harry can tell, most of what comes out of James’ mouth is total and utter gibberish but he knows quite a few food-related words like oven, hot, banana, cheese and fork. After a while, he starts making the same mouth movements for everything, and Harry looks up at Molly.

“W-what’s he s-saying?” He asks, wiggling a finger back and forth in the sign for what. He hates having to ask.

Molly smiles broadly and takes out her wand, quickly spelling out a word in shimmering hovering letters. Yummy. Of course.

Harry moves closer so that James can swat at the letters, making them disappear in puffs of glitter dust. The naming game is over and forgotten now, so James grizzles to be let down and free to roam about on his own. Harry obliges, glad of the opportunity for a sit down. His son is growing up fast, and it’s no longer the easy task it once was to hold him in the air indefinitely.

His tea has gone lukewarm, but Harry drinks it with a relieved sigh anyway. He doesn’t have a kettle or a tap in his workshop, so he rarely drinks the stuff but it’s always a pleasure when he’s able. He briefly considers building some kind of tank with a heater - a hot water dispenser - for the room, but there’s nowhere to put it. That, and he can’t risk keeping anything so hot next to all that dry wood.

It takes him a minute to realise that Molly is watching him, concern etched into her face. Uh oh, he knows what that means. “I’m f-fine,” he says, a preemptive strike on the coming conversation.

She pronounces her words slowly again, but he already knows everything she’s going to say. “You look tired.”

Of course he looks tired, he is bloody tired. He’s always tired, she knows that. “Big-g p-p-project,” he explains, because it’ll help no one for him to talk about how he feels permanently exhausted yet never able to sleep more than a few hours at a time.

“Have you been eating?” is another good one.

He nods. He’s eaten at least one meal since she last saw him. That’s loads so far as he’s concerned.

“Have you spoken to Ron?” No, and she knows as such, or she wouldn’t be asking.

They’re both just busy, and though they want to talk to each other properly like the old days, it’s… hard. Ron talks at a million miles an hour when given the chance, then gets overly apologetic when he notices that Harry’s lost. For Harry’s part, he tries desperately to follow along and he knows his friend’s facial movements well enough that he’s easier to lip-read than most, but it’s stressful. They’ve been meeting up less and less of late. “I’ll as-sk,” he tells Molly noncommittally, knowing full well that she’ll be expecting a report from Ron about it by Friday or there’ll be trouble for everyone come next weekend.

He stays until the early evening, helps to change James’ nappy and put him to bed. Molly jokes that it’s a good thing he can’t hear all the outraged screaming and crying, and he does his best to smile in answer but it hurts. He’d rather have James at home and crying, than be stuck in this constant silence.

Harry leaves soon afterwards, and though he’s wiped out he knows it’s far too early to sleep and there’s nothing to do at the house. He hates it there, sometimes. The emptiness.

He putters about in the workshop, not really working on anything, picking up half finished personal projects and then putting them away again. He looks through the racks, imagining the work he needs to do to get the brooms into a good enough state to sell. This one needs a replica shaft made, that one only requires new balancing charms… After a few hours of procrastinating, he finally does what he’s been itching to do since he arrived.

It’s been a while, but the combination of stress and sleeplessness, along with seeing James, make it inevitable.

He sets up the hammock, walks to a drawer and pulls out a photograph, then carries it back with him to lie down. He curls up as best he can, not an easy thing to do in a hammock, and cries. He cries, and cries and cries, great hulking sobs that shake his chest and shoulders. Tears blur his vision, sticking to his eyelashes, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need the picture to see her face.

He stares at the photograph of his beautiful, smiling, dead wife and he cries. He apologises and cries and asks her to come back, apologises again and then asks her what he should do. It helps that he can’t hear himself babbling. His door ward goes off once, but he ignores it in favour of crying some more. He’d thought that the grieving was over, but it’s never going to be over. He lost his wife and his son. He lost everything, and no matter how busy he keeps himself with work, he will never be whole again.

Eventually his energy runs out and he just lies still. Even the need for sniffling has subsided. His emotions, so overwhelming only minutes ago, have drained away to leave him empty. He falls asleep feeling nothing at all, just the yawning maw of a void as it swallows him up.

He meets up with Ron on the following Wednesday. It’s inconvenient timing, as he has to stop halfway through the final trimming process for the brush. As he waits in the pub for his mate to show up, the knowledge that there is work half finished sitting under a stasis charm on his bench tears at the back of his mind. He’s restless to get back to it.

Ron shows up ten minutes late with an apology and an offer to buy the first round, whatever Harry wants. He asks for a butterbeer, which gets a laugh, but he doesn’t want to get drunk since he’s planning on getting back to work after this. “B-been ag-ges,” he says, not wanting to explain in depth. He wills his body to relax, but it’s no use. There are people here.

“What?” Ron asks, exaggerating a movement with his hand to his ear. Harry looks around and notes that the pub is full and pretty rowdy, and repeats louder. He feels himself stuttering, even worse than usual because of the audience. A group at the next table turns to look at him, and he quickly looks away.

Bloody wizarding pubs. Why did he let Ron decide? As much as he loves the man, he’s hardly the most thoughtful person in the world. He should have waited until Hermione was available, that would guarantee a suitable venue - but then there’d be two pairs of lips to watch, and they tend to talk over each other or finish each other's sentences... Which is cute and all, but not very practical for lip reading.

Hermione is almost always busy, anyway. She’s aiming for Minister of Magic, and it’s starting to look like she might actually make it. At the expense of her social life, family and mental wellbeing, that is.

Ron claps him on the shoulder with an embarrassed grin and goes off to order the drinks. Harry tries his best to disappear into the wall until his mate gets back, aware of people staring and whispering to one another. He doesn’t dare look at any of them too closely, lest he read something he doesn’t like by accident. Once upon a time, he’d loved eavesdropping. Not so much these days. There’s only so many times he can look someone right in the face as they insult him to their friends, assuming he can’t tell what they’re saying because the room is too loud.

When Ron gets back, they trade social niceties. How are you and how’s work going, that sort of thing. They’re able to do this predominantly through sign language, since Ron is actually more proficient in it than Harry is. Neither of them can add any nuance to a conversation, but it’s easier to get a quick read this way.

Harry can tell that Ron’s excited about the case he’s working on, but has managed to reign himself in and talk about it only briefly. He’s finally on a murder, which means that someone up high has noticed him. It’s a strange thing to congratulate someone on, but Harry does so wholeheartedly with a genuine smile. They both went straight into auror training after leaving Hogwarts, but Harry dropped out after a year when Bill Weasley tempted him into a curse-breaking apprenticeship instead. It’s taken a long while for Ron to rise through the ranks, and he’s been stuck in fraud for almost four years. Homicide is a big step up for him.

They drink to his success, Harry his butterbeer and Ron something that looks substantially stronger. Harry jokes about what ‘Mione might say, but his mate laughs it off with some words Harry can’t make out. He grins and nods as if he understands.

It’s actually nice to see a friend again. It’s one of those weird things, like eating bananas - while he’s doing it, he enjoys himself and thinks woah I forgot how great this is, I should eat bananas more often. But then the next time he walks past the fruit bowl, he just never fancies the idea of it. The thought of meeting Ron in a busy pub where people will make gossip of everything he says, and he’ll probably understand half of what his friend says, and speak too loudly or too quietly and generally get embarrassed - well, it’s horrible. But the experience of it is fine. Fun, even.

Sometimes.

“Hey,” he says during a lull in the conversation, motioning for Ron to lean closer so that he can whisper over the last foamy dregs of his second beer. “D-don’t ask w-why, does G-George still make l-love po...tions?”

Ron jerks away from him. “Love potions?!” he says. So much for lowering his bloody voice. “I don’t know where you got that idea but I’m a-” The rest of the sentence is cut off as Ron puts a hand in front of his mouth. He has an awful habit of rubbing his hand over his cheek when he’s flustered, or sometimes pinching his lower lip between thumb and forefinger. It makes lipreading very inconvenient. He doesn’t seem to realise he does it.

“W-wonder...ring ab-bout the g-guy who got them b-b-banned,” Harry says loudly. Suddenly his skin is prickling and a sweat breaks out on his back. His mouth tastes bitter. He’s already turning back to his previous opinion of meeting up with Ron. It’s awful and he never should have come.

“What? No, you-” Ron cuts off what he was going to say when Harry kicks him in the ankle. He glances at the table next to them and catches on quick though. “Right, yeah. Madman, he was. Very...” Harry loses track of what his mate is saying, mostly from his own lack of focus. It was stupid to ask about it here. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The morning papers are going to be plastered with rumours.

They move back to safer territory and Harry has one more butterbeer before apologising and heading off, practically shaking. Ron says he’ll stay on, but his explanation for why is mangled. Harry just smiles.

He’s back in his workshop fifteen minutes later, trimming away at the brush with hands far too unsteady for the work. It isn’t a long job so he manages to make it home to pretend at sleep, for a few hours at least.

Approaching his workshop door the next morning, he sees that there’s something attached to it. He stops in the hallway and carefully reaches for his wand, casts a few basic identifying charms, and one to reveal any curses or hexes on the object. All clean so far as he can tell. Contents come back as paper, glass, cork, liquid. A potion, then. He can’t tell what kind without opening it, but the package is safe enough otherwise. He steps up to it, curious.

The initials TT are written in familiar handwriting in one corner. Of course. Trygve Tandberg. Naturally, that arrogant prick would think putting his name on the package would make Harry more likely to open it rather than incendio it to ash. Which he has every intention of doing... Any second now.

Urgh, fine. He snatches the thing off his door and hurries inside. He doesn’t take it to his workbench just in case, instead opting to open it on the floor in the middle of the room. With a magical shield in front of his face and chest. Trigger doesn’t seem like the type for physical violence, despite his barbed words, but he’s a bastard nonetheless so it’s worth taking precautions.

The glass vial that slips out is labelled Hangover Cure, and a second note flutters down beside it. I can make anything you like, for a price.

Well, well, well. It seems like someone has been reading the papers - and Ron’s f*cking love potions remark did not go unreported, despite Harry’s attempt at a cover-up. He’s gonna kill Ron when they next see each other. He’s going to bloody kill the man.

He throws the hangover potion into the scraps drawer with the nausea suppressant, then looks at the handwritten note for a moment longer before tossing that in as well. What price would there be for an illegal love potion? For some reason, he feels like he’s been set up somehow. It’s totally absurd, but he can’t help thinking it.

Chapter 7: No

Chapter Text

Harry tries his best to distract himself with work. The squeezing bands are going to be a pain, and he has a habit of procrastinating when there’s metalwork to be done. He spends a good few hours picking off rust and shaving away the bad bits - which amount to more of the overall volume than the good bits do - and cleans up what he has. There isn’t enough metal here to remake even one of the three bands properly, so he’ll need to buy in materials again. Judging by the rust, they’re made of plain iron with some kind of plating. He’s seen bits of gold or bronze-looking metal flaking off earlier, but confirms it with a spell. Brass plated iron.

He splits what he has into three equallish piles, weighs them and calculates how much more he’ll need. He has plenty of iron in his stores, but no brass suitable for plating. It’d be better to order too much than too little though, so he errs on the side of caution and writes out a request for a galleon’s worth. That’s enough for a kilo and a half, maybe two. More than plenty for this.

The owlery isn’t far from this end of the building, which sometimes makes up for the long walk to the apparition point. He doesn’t keep a personal owl any longer, since the space has more than enough shared owls for convenient use and he doesn’t really send letters anyway. It also stops him from getting attached.

Not that he doesn’t still absolutely adore the owls here, of course.

Stepping into the curved-top roof space always brings a genuine smile to his face. The long room is all exposed metal and thick wooden beams set with pegs and rusted hooks for who knows what ancient purpose. One side of the room is open to the outside air but there are charms to keep the wind and rain out, so the straw littering the floor is dry.

Sticking up out of it are tens of wooden perches, all different heights and shapes. One of them looks like a repurposed shovel handle, another is an old cane that reminds Harry of the one Lucius Malfoy used to carry. Posh, but scratched to bits now. It’s oddly satisfying.

And then there’s the owls. There are six of them in at the moment, and they open their beaks presumably to hoot, flapping their wings impatiently when they see him. Their eyes turn simultaneously to the derelict old dresser to the left of the door.

Bloody typical. Grinning to himself, Harry spells open the drawer that holds their treats, which has to be kept magically sealed because the birds keep finding their way inside. He grabs a handful of the smelly snacks and turns to approach the forest of perches. Owls flock around him, eager for a beakful of Eeylops Premium. Harry shares them about generously and spends some time petting his feathered friends. They have a comfortable life here, he’s sure, but he can’t imagine they’re as happy as the owls who get an owner and caretaker all to themselves. He likes to think he brings them a bit of joy, but it’s more likely the food they want. They probably don’t even remember his face.

After sending his letter with a galleon attached, he heads back downstairs, but not to his own workshop.

An unfamiliar black man in his thirties answers Trigger’s door after the second round of knocking. He looks about to say something unpleasant, but then sees who it is and settles for “You look like death.”

“L-looking for Tri- the g-grey-haired m-man,” Harry says, swallowing the fresh shame of one more wizard hearing him speak. The man rocks back on his heels, arms folded in front of his chest, and raises an eyebrow. Harry double checks the unit number to make sure he hasn’t knocked on the wrong door, but it’s definitely this one. “H-he here?” He demands, impatient.

The man steps aside, and Harry passes him watchfully. He’s just as grumpy looking as the other two, and seems to hold Harry in the same disregard.

There’s no one else in the room. The black man wordlessly moves to a row of bubbling cauldrons, stirs one and turns down the heat on another. Harry cranes his neck to watch the contents turn a pale shade of yellow. A muscle relaxant, perhaps, before the congealing phase. It looks a little different to what he’s used to, probably experimental.

“He h-hiding in a, a in a c-cupb-board?” Harry asks, turning his attention back to the man with annoyance at being ignored. If Trigger’s gone out then the guy should have just told him so; shook his head and closed the door in Harry’s face. Irritation clouds the third brewer’s features, but he carries on messing about with the potions.

Well, messing about is a strong way of putting it. Harry knows enough about brewing to see that they’re being stabilised. It’s because of this that he doesn’t mind waiting, although it frustrates him that the man hasn’t said anything. If not for his own knowledge of brewing, there’s no way Harry could know that he isn’t being ignored out of malice. Well, he probably is, but also sort of not? He shakes his head, frowning.

Harry retreats to the armchair in the corner and pulls a random book off the shelf, just to be extra annoying. Just like his friends, this third guy clearly wants to push Harry’s buttons and antagonise him - so there’s no better response than calm, measured patience. If Harry can manage it, that is.

The book is surprisingly interesting. An early nineteenth century potion manual, with all the ingredients from magical beasts and animals removed or replaced with plant alternatives. There are a few scribbled notes written in a tight scrawl around the margins, mostly disparaging of the author’s choices of ingredients and timings. Harry hides a smile, thinking how alike so many potion brewers are in their habits. They just can’t help but correct or one-up one another.

Absorbed as he is with the book, he almost leaps right out of the chair when a pad of paper is shoved under his nose. He takes it, looking up and expecting to see Trigger but it’s still only the black man. He looks vaguely disgusted, at what Harry can only guess. The handwriting is startlingly similar to Trigger’s.

Your powers of deductive reasoning - or lack thereof - do not cease to amaze me. It is no wonder that you never made the cut as an auror, with your astounding inability to see that which lies directly under your nose. There is no one else who has access to this room bar me. I have no brother and no friends. To put it so clearly that even an imbecile of your astonishing level of accomplishment could understand: I am Trygve.

Harry looks up at the man again, really looks this time. He’s standing with a straight back, looking down his nose in a superior manner. His expression is one part suspicion, one part revulsion and four parts you’re-an-idiot-harry-potter. Of course. There isn’t a brunette and an old man and a black guy who all happen to share the same mannerisms, expressions and weird combination of caring and loathing for Harry. It’s one man - or woman, he supposes - who is switching up where he gets the hairs for his polyjuice potion. Just one Trigger. Trygve, whatever.

Still, Harry realises something else that surprises him more than the revelation that three men are actually one and the same. “D-did you g-get this n-note… notebook just f-for talking t-to me?” It’s a muggle notebook like the one Harry still has back in his workroom, and it’s stuck onto a clipboard to boot.

Trigger’s expression darkens further and his ears redden. He takes the notebook back and begins writing, face like thunder.

Don’t be such a pompous arse. You may be surprised to find that the world doesn’t revolve around you. I for one, most certainly do not.

Harry does his best not to grin as he reads the latest message. It really is too much. “But d-did you, though?” he asks again, holding out the notepad. He can’t help but tease.

Trigger refuses to take it, opting instead to scowl silently. It’s strange how familiar the expression is even on a different face, now that Harry knows it’s the same man. He doesn’t have any trouble accepting that he is who he says he is, despite the fact that he’s now black and at least twenty years younger than the last time they met. The same emotions come across just as clearly through these deep brown eyes as they did through blue or green.

“H-how old are y-you?” Harry says, on an impulse - which is strange, because his impulse is usually to say nothing at all.

The man leans down, bringing their faces closer together, and Harry automatically presses himself back against the chair to maintain the distance between them. “Why. Are. You. Here?”

“A-anything you l-like, f-for a price,” Harry answers. Then realises that could be misconstrued in any number of ways. “Your n-note.”

Trigger retreats, straightening his back, then takes the notepad out of Harry’s fingers.

And what is it that the great and illustrious Harry Potter would need from the likes of me?

As if he really thinks Harry so bloody illustrious. “Y-you know. W-what did the p-papers say? Any… anything n-new?” Harry clicks his jaw shut to prevent himself from rambling. He can’t remember saying so much in one sitting before, even with Ron. It has him off balance, this whole obtaining an illegal potion everyone will judge you for if they find out thing - especially with Trigger, who seemingly exists only to antagonise him.

Trigger proves his form. “Say it,” he says. He has a strange way of enunciating, so far as Harry can tell. All the movement happens right at the front of his mouth, as if he wants the words as far from his throat as possible, keeping his tongue low and hidden like some weird secret. Not that everyone else keeps their movements at the back of the throat - lips are there for a reason - but he knows that Trigger must have a peculiar voice, even without being able to hear it.

He remembers where he is, why he’s here - not for staring. “Am-mortentia. P-please.” The last is added after a moment, more to annoy the man than appease him.

Trigger raises his brows.

“No.”

Chapter 8: Ashwinder

Chapter Text

“No.”

No?

No?

He’s the one who wrote the f*cking note. Anything you like, my arse. Harry’s temper screams at him to get up, push roughly past Trigger and leave without a second glance. He’s so bloody fed up of this man’s stupid duality. Is he secretly nice on the inside, or is he just mean all the way through? Does he care or doesn’t he? Does he actually want to help? Harry doesn’t have the energy these days for putting up with stupid mindgames. He struggles to keep the anger restrained. He’s not a teenager anymore, but damn this man makes him want to act like one.

He breathes. “Why n-not?” He can’t tell if it comes across level-headed, but he doubts it from the bite he feels saying the words.

Trigger looks taken aback, probably having expected Harry’s first instinct to explode. That makes two of them, then. He adjusts the clipboard where it rests against his stomach, and writes.

You may not remember this, seeing as it was only one of the key potions required to pass your NEWT, but ashwinder eggs are an ingredient of Amortentia.

Harry shrugs. He’s done exams far more advanced than NEWTs now, but he leaves that out. “W-what’s wrong w-with a-” he stumbles, convinced he’s going to say asswinder by accident “-w-with them?”

Trigger gives him an outraged look, but Harry is used to it by now - even on this new face, it registers as nothing more than background noise on Trygve. Outrage is to him what a neutral expression is to others. It hasn’t taken long to figure that one out.

What does take a long time is the next note. Harry is fully expecting a page-long tirade on the reasons he’s an idiot, but when it finally comes his idiocy isn’t the subject.

Ashwinders, as you would know if you had the ability to remember even the most fundamental of facts, are born of deadly, raging forest fires. They cannot be bred in captivity (nor do I believe they should be) and only fires spread out of control can birth the chaos that is an ashwinder snake. Their eggs are highly sought after and expensive, and humans are ruthless.

Have you any idea how much of the Amazon rainforest has been burnt so that teenagers can have their love potions? They’d have you believe it’s all muggles clearing land for agriculture, but I’ve been there myself. The lungs of the Earth are being destroyed for the sake of childish whims such as your own. Even when the regulations tighten, they simply move operations to Australia or Spain. Muggles lose their lives and their homes. Animals are displaced, endangered species lost and the entire world suffers for our greed.

Anything you like, for a price. That is what I offered, but is the world a price you are willing to pay?

Oh god, the man’s an environmentalist. Harry has never met one before, and he doesn’t know how to react for a second. Suddenly the vegetarian brewing book makes sense. He schools his features quickly, only too aware of the self-righteous anger this lot are capable of. Anything to make themselves feel superior. “So y-you’re a v-vege...t-tarian?” He waits impatiently as another long note is scribbled.

As much as he finds talking stressful, it’s the sitting and waiting while Trygve writes that jangles his nerves. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He puts them in his pockets, then decides he looks like a petulant teenager, and clasps them together on his lap instead. He picks at some dry skin at the corner of his thumbnail. After an eternity, the notebook is passed over again.

Precisely so, although your inevitable misconception of the word’s meaning forces me to clarify. Traditional use of it describes a vegetarian as one who abuses no animal products whatsoever, but over time this was eclipsed in use by the more common ovo-lacto vegetarians, forcing true vegetarians to use the term vegan. If you do not know what ovo and lacto mean, then there really is no helping you.

It’s like reading a textbook - one that thinks you’re an idiot.

“V-vegan, okay,” Harry says, getting up. “W-well, thanks f-for your t-time.” He’ll just have to find someone else who can brew it for him. There are any number of dodgy brewers out there who could do it, and suddenly a slightly less than ideal brew seems pretty good compared to whatever vegetables Trigger throws together here. He’s glad he didn’t drink either of the potions the brewer made for him before.

Trigger steps in front of him with a belaying hand-wave, all but forcing Harry back into the chair to avoid them bumping together. He is suddenly aware of how much taller than him the other man is, at least in that body. In fact, Trigger has been taller than him in all of his bodies. Around the same height each time. Of course - he wouldn’t want to go changing around the height of his cauldrons or workbenches every time he switched victims, and he’d want to keep the reach as similar as possible so that he can work without thinking, pick things up without looking.

It’s his first clue as to the man’s real identity. This has to be his actual height, or close to it.

Trigger stands so close that their legs almost touch, ensuring that Harry can’t move again while he writes another diatribe. Harry tries to sit further back in the chair, but the only way to stop his knees from touching the other man would be to spread his legs. Which would be worse, obviously.

Eventually, the notebook is passed back to him.

Stop being a reckless, illogical halfwit and think for once. Why are you so intent on amortentia, when it is certainly one of many possible solutions to your problem. As a retired curse-breaker you should know that you can’t solve puzzles by putting the coach in front of the thestral, or in this case the love potion as a solution ahead of the actual problem it would solve in whatever foolish hair-brained scheme you’re cooking up.

Harry grits his teeth. He doesn’t have to listen to- read this. He doesn’t need to sit here and get abused by a man he barely knows. “Not f-foolish. It’s n-not... for a p-person.”

Trigger rolls his eyes and begins writing again. He looks almost like an inspector with that clipboard. Harry tries again to somehow curl his knees up inside themselves and give himself some space.

As loathe as I am to admit anything of the sort, I would never suspect you as the kind to run around throwing love potions on the object of your affections. In fact, I imagine that you have no intention of taking another lover after the demise of the Weasley chit. You are the very paragon of stubbornness, and as such will insist to your dying breath that she was the one and only love of your entire long, lonely and probably quite depressing life. Do not think me a fool. I know you, Harry Potter.

Harry reads it through twice, cataloguing the insults and hurts, the derogatory term used for his dead wife and the assertion - no matter how accurate - about his future. He reads it calmly, suppressing the tension that coils just under his chest.

Then, without thought or awareness, he finds himself out of his chair. Trigger stumbles back, might have fallen except that Harry grabs the man’s collar with one hand. With the other, he grabs the familiar-unfamiliar face. “Who a-are you? What do, do y-you think you n-know ab-bout me? Who’s-s in there, y-you from Hogw-warts-s-slytherin, t-trying for a - a bit of r-revenge? Come to k-kick the g-great Harry P-Potter when he’s do- down, is… is it?”

The words spill out, a torrent of them, and he has no idea how intelligible they are but they tumble off his clumsy tongue like heavy stones.

He knows it’s stupid trying to feel another face under the one he can see. It’s not a glamour, and polyjuice doesn’t work that way, but he can’t seem to help himself. His pale, bony hand works over the dark skin of Trigger’s cheeks and his forehead as if he can somehow work it out by feel. He pushes the man backwards at the same time with the fist at his throat, stepping across the room until they reach the far wall. “Or you j-just some ra… rand-dom f-f*ck with a s-psychol… psych-cology d-degree who’s r-read all the ex-exp-posés and th-thinks he knows everyth-thing that’s in- in m-my head? Well, you d-don’t. Y-you don’t know the b-b-bloody half, the half of, of-“ He coughs, his throat finally giving out, and his grip weakens.

Trigger knocks him back, breathing hard as if he’s the one who’s been shouting, then he descends on Harry. Grabs him by the shoulder and all but throws him to the floor. Harry lands with his back against the leg of the armchair, the remaining air bashed out of his chest. They stare at one another for a minute, Harry with his hands balled up against the cold linoleum floor, Trigger with his knuckles white from tension. Neither of them speaks, and Harry can’t hear the huffs of their breaths but he can see Trygve’s chest moving as quickly as he feels his own.

His chest constricts, making it harder to breathe, like a snake slowly coiling around him. Harry gasps and pushes down the feeling of panic that fills his stomach.

He breaks eye contact, looking down at his sprawled legs instead. “S-sorry.” He feels exhausted, suddenly. “I c-can’t judge y-you for wanting p-privacy, but-” he sighs, can’t think of a delicate way of putting it. “You’re j-just… such a, a d-dickhe*d. I sh-shouldn’t have at-attacked you.” God, he has to stop talking now. Why is he still talking? He never talks this much, not even to Molly. His chest hurts .

The notebook pokes under his nose, forcing him to look up again.

What do you need?

Harry shakes his head. Trigger evidently has no self-control when it comes to pushing Harry’s buttons, and Harry apparently has none when it comes to physical assault. He doesn’t even know why he came in the first place. Every time he sees Trygve, he ends up thinking something along those lines - why am I even here?

A finger taps the margin of the notebook, drawing his attention to another sentence.

I’m not hurt, you overly sentimental moron.

Hah. Maybe he really does know Harry as well as he says. Harry sighs and meets the man’s eyes. Now that he looks past the surface anger, the scowls and disgust, he fancies he can see something deeper in that face. Certainly not sympathy, but maybe there’s a sort of understanding there.

He sighs again. “R-repairing a b-broom. The shaft is al...alder, charms w-won’t st-stick so…” He’s very aware of how stupid it sounds, but he might as well come out with it. He gets up as he speaks, backing up onto the chair so that he can put his hands on his knees and get a grip of himself. “N-need to m-make it l-l-love the b-brush ag-gain.”

Trigger doesn’t move or say anything for a moment, and Harry is afraid he’s about to burst out laughing - but of course, he isn’t the sort to laugh. He flips to the next page of the notebook and writes instead.

I had resolved to tone down my derision of your mental faculties, but you are not doing yourself any favours.

Harry weighs up if it’s worth elucidating, decides against it. He doesn’t have the energy. But then Trygve insists:

Explain.

With some miraculous level of understanding, Trygve hands Harry the pen so that he can write down his reply.

I don’t mean the wood itself, rather the magic. It’s imbued with the intent of its creator but the strength of the charm depends on the inherent characteristics of the material.

Harry pulls out his wand and waits for Trigger to read what he’s written so far. Wands are the one example people seem to actually listen to when it comes to material personalities, since they can actually sense it when they cast spells. He holds it against the clipboard as he writes again:

My wand is made of holly, which is known for being volatile and protective. It likes angry wizards, chooses them. It’s not just wands though. Any piece of wood imbued with enough magic will show its character over time, they’re just harder for normal people to notice. My problem is that the shaft of the broom I’m currently repairing is made of alder, which has a habit of giving up at the first sign of trouble. Hence the need for a love potion. It’s just the easiest way, and it wouldn’t have been a problem a few years ago - but in case you didn’t know, some loon went and drugged the entire Wizengamot to wriggle out of a prison sentence, and now I can’t get a supplier for either the ingredients or the finished potion.

He stops, realising that he’s gone off on a rant, and hands the pen back. It’s been a very long time since he communicated anything that long or complex to another human being, and Trigger probably thinks he’s insane now, on top of everything else. Still, it feels good as well. He can’t help but notice that people treat him like he’s stupid just because he can’t talk in sentences, but he’s not stupid. Okay, so he’s not all that smart either, but he’s not a total imbecile, and he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to brooms. It’s good to have a chance to prove it.

Trigger regards him, and he starts to feel self conscious, which makes him think of the other reasons he has to feel self conscious.

“S-sorry, was I… l-loud? Earlier.”

Trigger starts writing. Seems like a long paragraph, but the clipboard is tilted away from Harry. Then he scribbles it out and writes again and turns the notepad for Harry to read.

Yes, but it’s fine.

Those are the only words that aren’t scribbled beyond recognition. After a moment, the man adds:

The room is soundproof .

Harry should probably soundproof his own room. It hasn’t been high on his list of concerns, obviously, but he does have the occasional tantrum that wouldn’t come across well were someone to overhear from the hallway.

Harry rubs the corner of his mouth with a hand. “Do I… H-how do I s-sound?” He thinks Trygve might give him a more honest answer than he’s used to.

Trigger frowns slightly, probably thinking of a kind way to tell Harry that he’s totally unintelligible. After a moment, he writes:

Your stutter is pronounced - particularly over certain sounds, as you probably know. I have had no trouble understanding you clearly, however.

Surprisingly, the negative feedback doesn’t make Harry feel awful. Perhaps because it’s straight-forward and honest, it doesn’t feel like he’s being judged or pitied. Or maybe it’s because it comes from Trygve, and he’s used to the man trying to make him feel like sh*t.

“C-can you help me? With the b-broom, I m-mean.” Harry asks. He doesn’t need help with his speech - he already knows the solution to that problem is simply to speak. He just refuses to follow the advice of medical professionals who want him to do things he doesn’t want to do...

Trigger considers. A good thing about brewers, Harry thinks, is that they never put their hands over their faces - unlike Ron. You only need to get horklump juice in your eye once for that lesson to kick in. It’s just a shame Trigger uses super long words Harry doesn’t know the meanings of, or he might actually become easier to lip read than his best friend.

Trigger speaks with his mouth: “For a price.”

Of course, anything for a price. “How m-much?”

Back to writing:

I haven’t decided yet. I have not attempted to make a vegan love potion before, and so it may take some time.

Harry eyes the man suspiciously. “Are we t-talking m-money?”

“Probably not,” Trigger says.

So he wants a promise of something in the future, as yet undecided. That could be anything. It’s totally ridiculous - what if he wants Harry to kill someone, or to talk in public or something? Seeing Harry’s hesitation, Trigger writes another line:

I sincerely doubt that it will be anything you are unwilling to give.

Yeah, right. Then again, it isn’t like he has all that many choices and… Well, he trusts Trigger. For whatever absolutely ridiculous reason. He holds out a hand for the man to shake.

“Fine, b-but if you use the lo-love potio-n on me, I’ll g-go to the m-ministry. I d-don’t mind imp...implic-cating myself in a c-crime, for r-revenge.”

Chapter 9: Ugly

Chapter Text

Another Saturday comes to brighten Harry’s life. Sometimes he thinks the only thing that keeps him going through the week is knowing that James is waiting for him at the end of it.

His son is ill and grizzly today, having caught a flu that’s doing the rounds. Molly’s nose is red and runny too, but she’s otherwise as energetic and motherly as usual. Harry spends most of the day with James sleeping in his arms, rebuffing his mother-in-law’s every attempt to make him put the baby to bed and give his arms a rest. There’s a trail of snot and saliva drying in a line down his right shoulder, and crusty mashed potato covers the left half of his chest. He gently rubs James’ back every time he coughs or cries. It feels good to be here for his son, even if it’s only for a little while.

“You seem more…” He doesn’t understand the next bit of what Molly says. He doesn’t think it’s a word he’s seen her say before.

“M-more what?” he asks, tapping his ear unnecessarily.

She spells out the word in the same shining letters as before. CONFIDENT. “You seem more confident in your speaking,” she says. “More words and less stuttering or mumbling.”

He frowns over his teacup. “You sh-should have told me,” he says. He knows that he’s been messing up his words all this time, but it annoys him that no one said anything about it before. What else don’t they tell him?

Molly waves away his words. “You would have stopped talking.” He concedes that she’s probably right. “Are you going to speech therapy again?”

Harry shakes his head. “B-been p-p-practicing.”

“Made a bread?” No, friend not bread. And she means more than a friend. She has that little glint in her eye.

“Not l-like that,” Harry answers, appalled. She gives him a look that is both knowing and innocent, as if she sees right through him while simultaneously not having any idea at all what he could possibly mean. “R-really. I… I w-wouldn’t,” he insists.

She reaches a hand across the table to touch his elbow. “It’s alright, Harry. She’d want you to-”

He looks away, not ready or willing to see the rest of that sentence. He never will be. It just isn’t going to happen. Molly squeezes his arm reassuringly and gets up to refill their mugs.

If Trigger’s right about anything, it’s that Harry fully intends on living the rest of his life in solitary misery.

Inevitably, by Tuesday he has started to show signs of James’ flu. Should have listened to Molly. He closes himself in the workshop to avoid infecting anyone else, hammering away at the iron bands on a small anvil he’s levitated into the middle of the room. It’s tiring work, especially for an ill person, but he can’t not work. It’s the only thing that keeps his mind busy. He keeps going, and by mid-afternoon he’s shivering so badly that he hardly recognises the feeling of his door ward as it buzzes over his skin.

Damn, he was supposed to meet Trigger today to work out the right ingredients for the bespoke love potion. He sways on his way to the door, thinking that perhaps he should have worked on something less strenuous. Like literally anything else other than rebuilding the squeezing bands.

The man outside is a few inches taller than him, with straight ginger hair that reminds Harry of Bill. It’s tucked behind Trigger’s ears as if it annoys him. His eyes are a deep, sparkling green - and absolutely furious. No doubt at all, this is definitely his new friend slash partner-in-crime, not some other random angry stranger. No one else can work up that much anger in just a second and a half.

Trigger looks Harry up and down, then glances into the room and looks even more angry. “You’re working?”

Harry frowns up at him. “C-course I’m-” his croaking voice breaks and he’s forced into a throaty coughing fit. Damn, he didn’t realise it was that bad. It sets off a bout of dizziness, and he clings to the door.

Trigger grips his shoulder. “Where is the sick?” he asks. Harry frowns. So far as he knows, he hasn’t been sick. “The sick,” Trigger repeats, mouth wider. Harry frowns in confusion. “The broomstick?” Oh, stick.

Harry points in the direction of his workbench, which the shaft is leaning against, and Trigger strides into the room to snatch it up. He also takes Harry’s water glass and the blanket he uses when sleeping in the hammock, then pauses at the door and points at Harry’s chest. “What’s that?”

Harry looks down. Oh. “P-potato,” he says stupidly. He must have been really out of it yesterday morning to have put the dirty jumper back on. He pulls it off over his head, yanks his t-shirt down to cover his exposed stomach and lets Trigger wrap the blanket around his shoulders.

He doesn’t question it when Trigger leads him through the halls to his own workroom, closing the door behind them. He should really have questioned it, shouldn’t he? He frowns. “You l-look k-kind of like B-Bill Weas..sley,” Harry says, when they’re safely locked away inside the lab.

Trigger transfigures the armchair into a reclining position, not quite a bed, then all but pushes Harry onto it and gives him the water glass. Then he strides to his workstation and opens a cupboard, revealing a hidden, steaming cauldron with a rack of vials behind it. He selects one, ladles a portion of the potion into a porcelain cup and tips the vial in. He drinks it down with a grimace. Within seconds, his skin starts to bubble, a tan blossoming to cover up the freckles on his cheeks. The ginger hair grows longer and darker.

Before the transformation has even finished, Trigger takes a second vial from the rack, empties its contents onto the floor and incendios them. The smell of burning hair fills the room, and it leaves a small black stain on the grey linoleum.

Yeah, comparing Trigger to a Weasley apparently does not go down well at all… Still, it’s one more clue to his identity. His aversion to Bill makes it more likely that he’s a disgruntled ex-curse-breaker whose toes Harry has stepped on in the past. Or is it a general Weasley aversion, meaning he was a Hogwarts student of the same generation? Harry feels light-headed and a little delirious.

Trigger now sports long black hair, and Harry can’t stop himself from saying “You m-made it worse... You l-look like S-sev-verus S-Snape now.” Realising that this is an unkind thing to say, and also that the man has a normal-sized nose, he adds: “But n-not as ug...ly.” There, that makes it better.

Trigger doesn’t seem to think so, throwing open drawers and cabinets as he looks for something, a thunderous scowl twisting his features. He approaches Harry with a small brown bottle and a spoon, pouring out a measure as he walks. “Drink this,” he mouths, holding out the spoon. The liquid is pale blue and pearlescent, quite pretty really.

Harry obligingly drinks the potion, which has a wonderful and instantaneous soothing effect on his throat. As Trigger goes to take the spoon back, Harry grabs his hand. “I’m s-sorry if I off-offended you, and... and th-thank you.” He says. Trigger doesn’t like it when he’s rude, so he has to be polite... He blinks slowly a few times, suddenly feeling sleepy. Some kind of sleeping draught, then. He quickly asks the last question on his mind, wanting an answer before he falls asleep. “What d-do you l-look like, re...eally?”

Trigger pauses, glancing down at their joined hands, then pulls the spoon roughly out of Harry’s grasp. It takes Harry a moment to process and understand his reply.

“Ugly. Exactly as ugly as Severus Snape.”

Chapter 10: Regression

Chapter Text

Harry wakes to a sweet smell kind of like oranges.

His glasses have slipped off his face and he’s in an unfamiliar bed - no, a chair. A familiar armchair. How does he keep ending up here? He finds his glasses, puts them on and sits up slowly. His head feels stuffy and his throat is sore. His joints also ache. James’s bloody flu, he thinks grumpily, rubbing his head. He hates being ill, not being able to do anything.

There are smudge marks on his glasses so he takes them off again, gives them a wipe on his t-shirt and then has a look around. As suspected, he’s in Trigger’s workroom. That keeps happening recently. A man with dark shoulder-length wavy hair stoops over a nearby bench, stirring a cauldron. There’s something familiar about him from behind, though Harry can’t quite place it. The hair, the dark robes. His mind supplies that the hands are all wrong - tanned and short-fingered - but he can’t conjure up what his brain is telling him they should look like instead.

He feels around for the blanket, which must have fallen off him as he slept, and hits a glass instead, knocking it over. It splashes water across the floor and rolls around. Thankfully it doesn’t smash, but he stumbles forwards to grab it anyway.

Another hand beats him to it, and Harry blinks, sitting back. “Thanks,” he mumbles, though his throat feels like a cheese grater so who knows what actually came out.

Trigger speaks, his mouth moving too quickly for Harry to follow.

“What? S-slow down, I h-have a, a head-ache...” He rubs his forehead again, frowning to demonstrate that it hurts.

Trig summons the notebook with a put-upon expression, and Harry gets to see the now-familiar sight of Trigger angrily scribbling across the page, mouthing the words to himself as he writes. Is there anything the man doesn’t do angrily, furiously, crossly or thunderously? It’s like he thinks that every action is some great and terrible affront to his being, which he is forced by an unjust universe to take.

I was attempting to explain what actions someone in your position might take were they not a thick-headed nitwit, but now that I stop to consider it I'm not certain why I bothered. Would it pain you so very greatly to lie in the chair and do as you’re told?

Oof, it looks like the truce is already over. Trigger’s been kind of nice to him lately. Or neutral, at least… Well, only mildly offensive. That didn’t last long. “What h-have I b-been t-told?” Harry asks tiredly, since he genuinely can’t remember.

Drink this and sleep.

Harry is about to ask what he’s supposed to drink, but Trigger stalks to the cauldron he’s been stirring and spoons out a measure into a thin vial, bringing it back for Harry. A special custom-made potion, lucky him - if only the man would lay off the scorn for five minutes, everything would be lovely. Harry doesn’t argue, drinking down the potion without question. He’s already done it once, and if Trig was going to poison him then he’d have done it already. Probably. Unless this is all some elaborate plot to gain his trust, only to turn around and betray him at some critical moment. But then, Harry doesn’t really have critical moments any more. Just a lot of normal, depressing, everyday moments to make up the monotony of a… God, he’s feeling maudlin.

“Th-anks,” he says. His throat is already feeling much better, and the potion quickly starts clearing up his stuffy head. His nose gets runny though, and he gestures maniacally until Trigger accio’s a roll of muggle toilet paper from who knows where. “B-better. Y-you l-looked at the sh...shaft?”

More scribbling on the notepad.

I should like to have done so, but unfortunately I was rather preoccupied with ensuring your good health, since you have once again proven yourself to be utterly incapable of doing so. Is it any wonder that you lost custody of your son, if this is how you demonstrate your ability to live responsibly?

Harry opens his mouth to retort, then bites back what he was about to say. It’s one thing to insult Harry, and a step too far bringing Ginny into it, but James… James is most certainly off limits. And there’s no way Trigger doesn’t know it. He’s being a bastard on purpose, for no reason Harry can possibly fathom. There’s just no reason whatsoever to bring James into the conversation. It doesn’t justify a response, doesn’t deserve one.

Harry leans back, turns over onto his side and pulls the blanket over his head. If Trigger wants to go around hurting people for no reason, then he can leave Harry out of it. Whatever’s got the man riled up is none of his business.

After what must be an hour of resolutely thinking about broom reconstruction and charms, the spike of pain and anger slowly dissipates, leaving him feeling sleepy once again. He has a second nap, then wakes up to find that he feels almost back to his normal self.

He peeks out of the corner of the blanket, watching Trigger’s back as he brews, unwilling to reveal that he’s awake yet. He’s not ready to forgive or forget what was said, and he knows the man won’t apologise either, so it’s a stalemate. He closes his eyes every time Trigger seems like he’s about to look in Harry’s direction. It’s childish and stupid, he knows, but then you’re allowed to be silly when you’re ill.

Trigger works methodically, as expected, but there’s also a sort of rhythm to his movements, a satisfying flow that’s almost musical. He slides his way back and forth along his workspace, never taking a step more than required. Harry catches glimpses inside the cupboards, and although he can’t tell exactly what the organisation system is, the space is being used very economically. An efficient man then, despite the inordinate amount of time he spends writing notes to Harry, always using twenty words when three would suffice.

Ingredients are stacked up in drawer-trays that roll out of the cupboards to maximise space usage, reminding Harry a bit of those Ikea sliding wine-rack cupboards, and various stirring rods and knives are stuck with charms to the wall above the cauldron space. Did Trygve design the system himself? Back at Hogwarts, all the ingredients were kept stacked in single rows on shelves around a pantry style walk-in cupboard, and Harry has seen that setup repeated in other laboratories throughout the country. Then again, there’s space for it in a castle. This is efficient by necessity.

Trigger pulls a fresh cauldron from underneath the workspace, a thick-bottomed copper one, and sieves water from a jar full of yellowish green leaves into it. They look a bit like the tall wavy plants that grow at the bottom of the Great Lake, but it’s only the water he wants apparently, as he sets the rest aside and lights a flame beneath the cauldron. In the meantime, he chops something long and grey-brown into thin slices and sets those aside as well, then writes on a scrap of parchment. Keeping notes?

The note hits Harry in the face, so fast he has no time to react. He pulls it off, blinking, and reads:

If you’re going to watch, at least try to be useful. What type of alder is it?

Is he working on the love potion already? They haven’t even talked about it yet. Oh well. “Just c-common alder. The b-brush is dog...d-dogwood. Um, N-northern Swamp v-variety. B-b-bands are iron with b-bronze plat...ting.” It’s a bit of an information dump, but hopefully it’ll save him from other questions later.

Trigger simply nods, back still turned, and carries on working. After a while, Harry wraps the blanket around his shoulders and walks over to get a better look. He isn’t a potions master himself by any means, but he got a much better grasp of the subject once Gringotts paid for the mandatory intermediate level qualifications. There’s a surprising amount of advanced potionery in curse-breaking, something he was very annoyed to find out at the time. Snape probably turned in his grave when Harry was awarded his Intermediary certification. Just one (massive, impassible) step away from becoming a potions master, if he wants.

Once he’s sure Trigger isn’t going to tell him off for getting out of ‘bed’, he steps right up to the worktable and peers into the cauldron. The contents are a deep purple, even though the ingredients used so far have all been green or grey. Curious, he turns a nearby jar around to inspect the label, but Trigger slaps his hand. Alright then, no touching allowed. He puts up his hands to show surrender, stepping away again.

Must be gurdiroot extract, he thinks. It’s green when cold, but turns a cabbagey reddish purple when heated up. Horrible tasting thing though, hardly what he’d expect from a love potion. Maybe Trigger isn’t working on his project after all. Then again, there’s another jar labelled “alder flowers, common - female”, so who knows.

Harry stands around, feeling a bit useless, and generally has too much time to think. “Y-you, um…” he begins, then swallows as his throat protests. “You sh-shouldn’t bring, bring up James like you d-did. I know I’m a b-bit, useless. T-total mess, if I’m… Ah. B-but I’m doing m-my best. I just wa-want him to be safe b-b-because I l-love him, and it tears- it- um. So say whatever you l-li…like ab-bout me, but would you…”

He notices that Trigger is holding a note over his shoulder while tipping rose petals into the cauldron with his other hand. Harry takes the note, a bit perturbed that the man can’t even be bothered to turn around and face him.

Shut up, I’m concentrating.

Right. Fine. Harry rolls his eyes. He’s such a bloody dickhe*d.

Chapter 11: Reading

Chapter Text

Harry stalks back to his corner of the room and transfigures the armchair back to how it was before, selects a book from the shelf at random and sits down to read. Least Trigger could do is apologise, but noooo - and Harry isn’t even allowed to be angry at him, because the guy has taken care of him and brewed him a potion for this damn flu especially, and is now working on another potion that he needs for work. He feels the ball of frustration in his stomach tighten, with nowhere to let it out, but chooses to ignore it in favour of whatever this book is… Colloway’s Basics of Botany. Ugh. He remembers skipping through it a few years ago.

He’s halfway through the fourth chapter when Trigger’s notebook is shoved under his nose again. He bats it aside with a frown since he’s still annoyed, and in the middle of a paragraph:

-native bluebell Hyacinthoides non-scripta, most commonly known to muggles as the English Bluebell and to us wizarding folk as Jobberknoll Skirts for the colour it shares with the Nation’s favourite blue-speckled bird. There are many known uses of this variety in potion brewing, and it is considered far superior to its Spanish cousin Hyachinthoides hispanica in all but one of these. The Spanish bluebell can be used as a replacement for Lacewing Flies if ever you find yourself short, unlike our English blossom, thanks to its higher durability and alkaline content.

He can see Trigger’s foot tapping impatiently as he reads the paragraph, then the man turns to leave and Harry quickly drops the book. “Alr-right, w-what?”

He practically has to wrestle the notebook out of the man’s hands. There are just four words written on a fresh page:

Do you read often?

It’s… not what he was expecting. Now he feels bad for keeping Trigger waiting, when he was obviously trying to, what, start a conversation? Make small talk? Maybe it’s his way of apologising. Damn, but this bloody man is so hard to understand.

“N-not as often as I’d l-like,” Harry replies carefully, looking up. Trigger isn’t looking at him, staring instead over his shoulder at the bookshelf with a scowl so fierce it might set the pages alight. Harry keeps his tone light, or at least thinks he does. “I enjoy l-learning about s-stuff - anything, r-really. H-history, da-dark arts, p-potions, herb..her… herbology . Just not ar… arithm-mancy.” He’s starting to get the hang of conversing again, he thinks. Talking back and forth, saying more than two words at a time. It’s more ok than he thought it would be.

He holds up the notepad and Trigger takes it, still without looking at Harry. He writes what would be quite the mighty paragraph, but tears out the page and starts again with a look of frustration. His cheeks blow out in what might be a huff. Then he crosses out his newest words and begins a third time. Harry tries to keep his most patient expression plastered on. The notebook is finally handed back. Under a mass of words scribbled out so entirely that the paper is torn in places, there’s one sentence:

I didn’t have you down for the sort.

Harry snorts. “A-and here I th-thought you knew all ab-bout me ,” he answers, then taps the spine of the book he was reading earlier. “This, this is one thing y-you won’t f-f-find an..anywhere in the p-papers. I’m an av… avid reader - and I know a th-thing or two ab-bout potions too, so you’d, you’d better w-watch out.”

Trigger’s expression is priceless. Shock and incredulity war over his face. “You-” He doesn’t finish whatever he’s about to say, and instead twirls on his heel and returns to his cauldrons.

Harry grins to himself as he spends the next few minutes squinting at the notebook to see if he can discern any of the crossed out words. They’ve been totally obliterated by the pen nib, so he can only make out a few. ‘ School’ is in there, as well as ‘ intelligence’ after what Harry thinks might be ‘ diminutive ’, but he isn’t sure about that last one.

It seems that they’ve come full circle back to truce territory, and Harry wonders again what set off Trigger’s bad mood.

Oh well, now that the secret is out, he thinks maybe he should help prepare some ingredients or something. He strolls up to the counter. “C-can I chop s-something for you? L-least I can do.”

Trigger gives him a look that perfectly communicates: keep your oafish hands away from my precious ingredients, or there will be trouble. Harry wriggles his fingers. “I’m a c-craftsm-man. P-precise hands.” Trigger shakes his head.

Okay then. Harry purses his lips, leaning on the worktop with his elbow. He swallows, preparing both his throat and his mind for a long stream of words. He’s going to try this whole talking thing, properly. Here goes nothing.

“I read a r-really g-good ar-article in P-potions Quarterly the other, uh, w-week,” he says in what he hopes is a conversational tone. Trigger gives him a sceptical look, but he can’t tell if it’s from disbelief over Harry having read the article, or doubt that there are any good ones published in that particular journal. “L-last year’s Autumn ed-dition, I’m a, a bit b-behind. That Ukrainian p-potions master, the n-n-nightshade pu-purist, you know the one? A-apparently he discovered a, a method for p-powdering clab-b-bert pu… ah, pustules w-without m-making them useless in the p-process. Sh-should be pretty g-game changing, d-don’t you think?” Harry rubs his fingers against his palms, nervous, and looks sideways at Trig.

Trigger gives him a dark look. “I wouldn’t know,” he says slowly, and gestures to the ingredients laid out on the side.

Of course. He’s vegan. Can’t go around stealing pustules off the foreheads of poor little clabberts now, can he? Stupid , Harry berates himself. Of all the topics to bring up. Clabberts! Even if they are horrible little things with pointy teeth. Invasive species, too.

Okay, attempt number two. Why is he trying, again? Oh yeah, he doesn’t bloody know.

“Ha-have you th-thought about writing an... an article ab-bout all this, this v-vegan stuff? Or a b-book, or s-something? You have one on the shelf, b-but you’re w-working on m-much more ad-a… advanced st-tuff.” Harry tries again. He’s consciously trying to use full sentences without skipping unnecessary words, which makes everything ten million times more stressful.

Trigger’s just doing busy work now, moving ingredients around and adjusting this or that, pretending to be too busy to chat while his potion stews. Harry follows him with his gaze, watching him open drawers and needlessly inspect ingredients before replacing them on the shelves.

The man pauses, crouching in front of a low cupboard he was pretending to dig around in. He stands after a moment and reaches up to the highest shelf instead. He pulls down an old muggle tin advertising Scottish shortbread and tugs off the lid, revealing a wad of papers, then rifles through them before pulling a few out and handing them to Harry.

They all begin with the words

Dear Mr Tandberg,

Thank you for your submission, however…

It seems like no one’s interested in making potions that are almost as good as the ones they already make, but with an air of moral superiority... Not that Harry blames them, he’s always been sceptical, himself. He still is. But Trigger’s different from the other whack jobs who fall in for that kind of thing. He isn’t some unwashed preachy do-gooder whose actions - and potions - never live up to their words. He’s a clean preachy dickhe*d with a very obvious skill for brewing.

“You c-could self-p-publish,” Harry says, though he doesn’t really believe it. Trigger rubs two fingers against his thumb in the universal sign for money . “D-do you h-have a ma-manus-cript, then..? Can I r-read it?”

Trigger snatches the papers out of his hands and shoves them back in the tin, then throws that onto the top shelf where the shorter Harry can’t reach. There’s a larger box up there, maybe that’s the manuscript? He doesn’t push it.

Why does he care, anyway? It’s not like Harry gives two feathers about beetles getting their eyes cut out or crushed up or whatever. No one else with any sense cares either. It does seem like a waste of the man’s talents, though.

For whatever reason, Harry just can’t let the subject lie. “Why n-not apply for p-potion mas-stery? You could w-write whatever you l-l-like and people would f-flock to read it.” It’s true - Havolty Bramblepodge’s book is one of the top ten most purchased potion tomes of all time, despite the fact that any wizard worth their salt knows it to be total and utter bollocks. She published it as a satirical piece of social commentary about the stupidity of today’s readership, but the ironic thing is that the sarcastically simplified language makes it more popular than any of its more sensible competitors. It’s an easy-to-read joke, one that will forever be attached to her name.

As usual, the answer to Harry’s question comes to him a second after he asks it. There’s a set of eight of the world’s most complex potions that any prospective potion master has to demonstrate making successfully at least thrice each in order to complete the first round of consideration.

After completing his Intermediary, Harry had taken one look at the master level list and promptly decided that it wasn’t worth his time. Ginny had tried for a while, successfully brewing five of the potions once each, but she never got the hang of Wolfsbane. That potion turned out to be Snape’s biggest legacy, more so than anything he did during the war. It changed lives every day.

Not a single one of the eight potions is vegan, and it would take a true genius to make potent enough versions of them that are. Trigger finally takes the bait, and accio’s the notebook and pen from across the room. Harry reads over his arm as he writes so that he can’t scribble it out or change his answers.

It may come as a shock to you, the famous Harry Potter, but not everyone requires the recognition and adoration of the masses in order to consider a pursuit worth following . My convictions are more important than a gilded piece of paper with my name on it . I thank you, however, for your apparent esteem in my abilities.

Harry turns his mouth into his best approximation of a smile. “Think I’ve h-had enough f-fame for one l-lifetime,” he says honestly. It’d be really nice if he could go to the pub with a friend, and not have every word recounted to the paper. It’d be lovely if he could get on with grieving the death of his wife in private, without the public casting judgement or aspersions about his ability to cope or raise his son. Fame never suited him, right from the very beginning, and it suits him even less now.

Trigger starts writing again:

Your throat sounds hoarse. It would benefit us both if you would refrain from speaking again for

He stops writing for a moment, considering, then finishes with:

the foreseeable future.

Harry laughs, startling both Trigger and himself. He can’t recall the last time he laughed. The feeling is instantly smothered with guilt.

Chapter 12: Go

Chapter Text

Trigger graciously allows Harry to help with some of the simpler tasks, once he’s had another dose of the flu potion, and though he still makes a show of doubting Harry’s abilities, he doesn’t complain about anything he produces. He looks like he wants to though, so Harry is extra careful to slice, grind and chop everything as if he’s in an exam. Nothing less than perfection will do, and he has to hide a growing grin every time Trygve gets visibly annoyed at having nothing to complain about.

Harry remains mute, a state he falls into comfortably. He’s not sure if he should feel proud for having spoken so much lately. Is it another sign of progress, or is he going mad? Does he even want to be making progress? There’s a knot in his stomach that says no. No, he shouldn’t be progressing. It’s unfair, not when Ginny doesn’t have the same chance. He shouldn’t even be al- ah.

He decides to look for clues while he has free reign of the workshop. The best place to look would be that top shelf, but he knows better than to try it, so he inspects the work area while he’s here.

It’s certainly a distinctive setup, between the plant-based ingredients and the uniquely compact storage. Everything is sorted alphabetically by Latin name, though, in contrast to the other more modern aspects. It’s old-school, but not particularly uncommon so far as Harry is aware. His own workshop is sorted by frequency of use, with the materials he most often needs being closer to the table, and the things he almost never uses sitting in mixed-up drawers near the door.

When Trigger doesn’t give him anything else to do after finely slicing an ounce of staghorn mushrooms, Harry excuses himself back to the bookcase to snoop there instead. None of the books he chooses at random bear an inscription inside the covers, so he steps back and inspects the bookcase as a whole.

There’s nothing illegal or restricted here. That shouldn’t be a surprise, since most of the population have no reason to hoard knowledge about dark magic. It’s only the old families that still have that sort of thing lying around, passing libraries down the generations. Harry ended up with a good chunk of the Black literary fortune from Grimmauld Place in that way.

Trigger would definitely be the type to hold onto books like that, so the fact that he doesn’t have any - not even one - in his private workroom means that he probably isn’t from such a family. Added to the fact that he’s so comfortable using a biro, Harry guesses muggleborn. Maybe halfblood to some ordinary wizarding line or other.

It isn’t much more to go on than he already knows, and seeing no further avenues for investigation, he returns to the workbench. Waiting for him is a knife and a short stick of ash in need of shaving.

It takes them a week, on and off, to make a working batch of the potion. The trickiest part is finding a replacement for the ashwinder eggs, which serves two functions: firstly, to provide the raw energy and hunger of a raging fire; and secondly to act as a binding agent like any other egg. The latter is resolved simply by using the water from a tin of chickpeas, which Trigger buys from a muggle supermarket for thirty pence. The man informs Harry that the liquid can also be used to make meringues, but he has a hard time imagining Trigger baking. The former is a little more difficult, and forces them to start over several times. Charcoal soaks up and nullifies the effects of the acidic ingredients, while other forms of captured fire prove far too volatile. They even try fire-whiskey, despite Trigger’s best judgement, and end up with a congealed, lumpy mess.

In the end, they settle on firefly-trap heads. Something about the plant growing quickly and being very desirous of the glowing lights of the bugs they feed on. Harry refrains from commenting that partially-sentient carnivorous plants should hardly be considered vegan, seeing as they’re at least as intelligent as beetles.

Regardless, here it is a week later, probably finished. A week of occasional insults and bickering, but mostly of long silences. Harry spent most of the time preparing the broom for reassembly, only joining Trigger in the evenings. The man never seems to sleep, or maybe he’s a vampire who sleeps in the daytime. Do vampires actually do that? Harry’s somehow never managed to meet one, at least so far as he knows.

Presently Harry stands near the door of the workshop, overly aware of the large glass jar of highly illegal love potion in his hands. Trigger has been agitated all afternoon, even more difficult to deal with than usual, his jibes particularly vicious and verbose. He’s stopped short of mentioning Ginny or James though, for which Harry is grateful. Not that it should be anything to be grateful about - it’s common courtesy, after all.

“Are you s-sure you don’t w-want to be there to see it all come t-together?” Harry asks for the third time. He feels like Trygve should be there, after all the work he’s put into it.

Trigger waves an annoyed hand at him as he writes in the notebook. He has bags under his eyes, the first sure sign of tiredness Harry has seen in him. They’ve already gone through it all. He doesn’t want to be there if Harry spills the stuff all over himself and decides to fall in love with the closest convenient human being. Or worse, if Harry spills it on Trigger instead. A fate worse than death, if the brewer is to be believed. Harry can’t imagine Trigger in love.

He’s wearing the appearance of a middle aged black man today, hair greying at the temples and a neatly trimmed beard covering his jaw, which seems to irritate him. It’s Harry’s new favourite look. He seems to be rotating through the hairs on his rack. Trigger never chooses to appear female though, which probably means that he’s really a man. Unless that’s what he wants people to think. Again, Harry feels that he could have learnt so much more by now if only he could hear the man’s bloody voice.

Trigger straightens up and turns to Harry, passing him the clipboard. On it is a neat table of ingredients used and their costs, with a total at the bottom of the page, and a note.

Consider this your invoice for materials. Since you somehow manage to run your own business despite the odds being stacked against you with regards to both arithmetic ability and general perspicacity, I shouldn’t need to give you any direction as to its use.

Harry glances through the list to check he hasn’t been ripped off for any of the ingredients, but if he’s honest it’s all below market value so far as he can tell. Trigger doesn’t have the space to buy in bulk large enough to get these sort of prices - not that Harry is complaining. Just one more little mystery to add to the pile. “And the c-cost of your time, the secret p-price of helping me out? H-have you d-d-decided on that y-yet?”

Trigger nods slowly, then pulls a second piece of parchment from a robe pocket. It’s folded up and sealed with a tiny blob of unadorned green wax. Harry takes it nervously, sidelined by the sudden formality.

“Do I have to op-pen this l-later?” he asks, feeling along one edge. It’s quality parchment, creamy and soft under his fingers. Probably expensive. If that isn’t cause for worry, he doesn’t know what is.

Trigger makes a gesture sort of like a shrug, and raises his palms. He doesn’t care either way. “So long as you follow the directions,” he says.

“S-said I w-would, so I will,” Harry replies defensively. He’s not about to break his word, especially not to Trigger. They’ve… become friends, of a sort. He’s someone Harry can talk to without worrying about his stutter, or of coming across stupid and annoying. Trig already thinks he’s both those things, so it doesn’t make a difference. It’s easy between them. Easy for Harry, at least.

With clammy hands, Harry breaks the seal and unfolds the letter carefully. The writing is the neatest he’s ever seen from Trigger, so it’s obvious he’s taken great care. There are probably ten more drafts of it somewhere in this room, if Harry knows the man by now. Makes for easy reading, any…way...

Oh.

He reads the note through, then stares at it for a second longer. He looks up at Trigger, who has turned away, and back down again. Oh.

“R-right,” he says faintly. Okay.

A little dazed, he opens the door and walks back to his own workshop, staring at the floor the entire way. Once safely inside, he places the jar clumsily on his worktable and slumps onto the stool. He reads the letter again, confused, as if the words might be different now that he’s safely in his own domain.

The price is thus:

I do not exist. Do not speak to me again, do not look for me or attempt in any way to investigate my true identity. Do not speak of me to your friends or in-laws.

If you see me, and I will endeavour to ensure that you do not recognise me if you do, then take all reasonable efforts to pass by without acknowledgement or communication.

Thanks in advance,
Trygve Tandberg.

P.S. You may stick the balance due for materials to my door, or leave it for me at the building’s reception.

Harry can’t make heads nor tails of it. Trigger did nothing but say belittling and derogatory things about him all week, sure, but he still got the feeling the man liked him. Maybe even enjoys the company, the opportunity to think up creative new insults. He says mean things, but they come across almost reflexive - just the words of a prickly man who doesn’t know how to let anyone close, or have friends or be nice. They’re the words of a total prick, but a prick who until now seemed to be enjoying Harry’s company. Even if he never admitted as such.

At least, he didn’t ask Harry to go away until now. He’s been kind of welcoming, in a way. So… so what the f*ck is this?

It doesn’t make sense. And worse, it doesn’t need to make sense because Harry already agreed to it. Then again, when Harry agreed to ‘any price’, this really wasn’t anywhere near the radar of expected outcomes. In fact, he’d feared the opposite - that Trigger would ask him to be his slave for a week, or request a kiss as payment or something weird like that. His worst case scenario was that he’d be asked to spend more time with the man, essentially.

So why does it bloody well hurt so much to be told to f*ck off?

Chapter 13: Anniversary

Chapter Text

“You seem low,” Molly says, demonstrating the last word with a hand on the table. She has those annoyingly knowing eyes trained on him, and probably thinks that he’s been dumped by the girlfriend she made up in her head. He still can’t understand how she’d think he could do that. It’s been barely a year and a half.

“I’m fine. I’ll b-be fine,” Harry says. His throat is still a little sore from his cold, that’s all. He turns to James, who is attempting to climb up his leg, and picks him up. “I’ll b-be fine, w-won’t I Jamesy? Won’t I, Jamesy J-Jamesy b-boy? I’ll b-b-be fine, fine, f-fine...” He jiggles his son up and down on his knee.

Molly pats Harry’s shoulder as she walks past to the oven, but Harry keeps his eyes down. So long as he has James in his arms, he really is fine.

The rest of the week, he sits alone in his workroom getting the finishing touches ready on the TX-1202. As much as he thinks they’re rubbish, he has to admit to a small amount of liking for the model now. There’s something a bit Luna-ish about the twisted, unusable shaft and the old-fashioned twiggy brush. It’s ready to ship on Wednesday, but he doesn’t hand it over until Friday for fear of having nothing else to do, and because he’ll probably never see another in such good condition for the rest of his life.

He spends the second week at home in his library, and by the third he’s gotten used to being alone again. Or so he tells himself, anyway. Trigger spoiled him in giving him someone to talk to.

There are plenty of other people about of course, but it isn’t the same. It wouldn’t be the same. Strange as it might be, Trig was so much of a bastard that he was easy to talk to. Harry didn’t have to worry about offending him or saying the wrong thing, because he knew that even if he said the exact right thing, it’d still be wrong. There’s an odd sense of freedom in that, the comfort that anything he does wrong isn’t really his fault.

He gets used to not talking again for real over the next few months, much to Molly’s disappointment, and it’s worse this time because he remembers what they said about the stuttering. It makes him self-conscious when he hasn’t spoken all week. He gives her short answers or nods and shakes his head, and doesn’t meet up with Ron, no matter how much they try to guilt-trip him. It’s fine like this, though. Better, even. He doesn’t have to worry about other people if he never sees them.

He skips a Saturday.

It’s not a proud moment, and he regrets it within an hour of making the decision, but he’s already sent the owl to Molly claiming to be too busy and he gets the idea stuck in his head that they don’t want to see him anyway. It feels awful. The entire afternoon, the night, the week until he sees James again, he is dying of guilt and shame and loneliness. He flip-flops between angrily telling himself it’s for the best if James doesn’t have a useless dad like him hanging on, and furiously beating himself up for the stupidity of that kind of destructive thinking. He doesn’t miss a Saturday again though. He can’t.

He gets busy, this time with a trio of fire-damaged Nimbuses, and time begins to fly by. It’d be cheaper for his new client to replace them on the quite active second-hand market since all three models were popular in their time. Like all his clients though, she has a special connection to the ones she has. All the better for Harry anyway, and replacement parts are easy to come by. No faffing about with anvils and potions. Besides, it’ll be nostalgic to work on a Nimbus 2000. His first ever broom.

He doesn’t have the space in his workshop to take apart three at once, so he’s already warned her it’ll take some time. That would normally send any potential client off to a bigger repairer’s shop, but some friend of hers got a stand repaired here and was very pleased with the work.

Harry can’t remember it, but it was piece-work and he does a lot of it so that’s no surprise.

In March, Ron and Hermione force him out for a meal after he turns down too many invitations for drinks. It’s stressful to say the least, because they speak over one another so frequently that Harry can’t keep up. Switching focus between the two of them gives him a headache, and he misses bits and pieces of the conversation. Then he’s missing the context he needs to interpret the next lip movements and it all spirals from there until he’s just pretending to follow along.

“Not saying it was all down to me, Dow--the arrest but if I hadn’t found the cigarette butt-“

“-to the muggle detective shows he’s been watch-“

“-don’t watch that -- only…” Ron begins listing off what Harry presumes are the names of tv shows, but the words bleed together.

Harry smiles at them as often as he thinks necessary and eats his roast pepper pasta dish. He’s not sure why he went for the vegetarian option, and he eyes the bacon bits in Ron’s carbonara with envy.

It’s difficult to eat and watch his friends at the same time. Whenever he wants to scoop something from his bowl, he has to look away from their faces and inevitably miss something, and they don’t seem to understand at all, carrying on as if he can still hear them talking. By the time he looks up again, a sentence has gone by. It always seems to be the sentence with the context he needs to understand the conversation, though that might be a simple lack of focus on his part. It doesn’t help that the more anxious he gets over it, the harder it is to concentrate and the less he understands.

After a longer than usual pause, Hermione reaches across the table and lays a hand on his. “And how are you?”

Her expression is all smiling friendly concern, but Harry fancies he sees pity underneath. He can imagine just the tone she used to say it.

“I’m f-fine,” he assures her, the way he does with Molly every week.

He glances over at Ron, whose mouth has begun moving, but he’s just eating with his mouth open. Ah, no wait, he’s talking with his mouth full. Lovely. “-manage to get that love potion, then?” He gestures at Harry with his fork, elbow on the table.

Harry looks hurriedly around but they’re in a muggle restaurant and no one is paying them much attention at all. “N-needed an, an ing-gredient f-for g-glue,” he lies, not that the truth is any less innocent but it’s better not to implicate his auror friend in anything less than legal.

Ron puts his hands up with an alarmed smile. “Alright mate, leave your sense of humour at the door, did you?”

Harry apologises. Something must have been wrong with his tone. He sees Hemione nudging her husband under the table, and Ron carries on as if nothing happened but Harry barely dares to put two words together again.

It’s hell.

The days tick by, and he sees surprisingly little of Trigger. He’s probably switched up all his polyjuice victims. Harry walks around doing Trigger-spotting a few times, trying to guess if any of the people passing in the hall are him. There are a few who might be the right height, but none of them look suitably angry. If not for the light he sees coming from above the door at night, Harry’d think that Trigger has packed up and gone elsewhere.

He considers moving again - there are plenty of workspaces available around Britain. He chose this one in Manchester because the rent is cheap, but apparition means he could go pretty much as far as he likes. He’s tempted to take up space abroad somewhere warm and sunny, but the extra paperwork and portkey fees put him off. Besides, he spends all his time inside so there’s no need for a nicer climate.

Before he knows it, May 27th has come around. His friends ask if he wants company, then try various methods of guilt-tripping or forcing him into socialising but he says no. Molly offers to bring James round the house, but he doesn’t want her to see the state of the place - it’s just where he goes to sleep, so he doesn’t bother with cleaning often, and hasn’t opened the curtains once in the last two years. There’s still shredded up bits of old newspaper all over the kitchen from a tantrum he had over a year ago, and his bedroom floor is covered with a layer of dirty clothes. He cleans things as he needs them. Except when he forgets to clean them first.

They’re all so bloody persistent about it that he’s forced to close the floo and cast a ward to repel owls from the house. He sleeps most of the day, which helps pass the time more than any awkward, emotionally-loaded chatter could.

Two years. An anniversary, they call it. The anniversary of her death, as if it’s something to celebrate. It’s just a Thursday, and tomorrow will be Friday and the world carries on and no one needs to stop. The world didn’t stop when Ginny died. It didn’t pause in its rotation to show the significance of her passing, the ground didn’t shake when she collapsed to the floor, clutching at the blood pouring from her chest. The universe didn’t collapse with the dreadful sight of her terrified eyes as she looked up at Harry and realised that there was nothing they could do to stop it.

The world carried on. Clocks ticked, the sun rose and fell and seasons came and went.

But for Harry, there’s still a part of him stuck in that moment. They say the grief never goes away fully, that there’ll be good days and bad days - and it’s true. No one told him about the piece of him that would be missing forever though. The piece that turns existing into living, turns the action of inhaling and exhaling into breathing. The piece that gives food its flavour and light its brilliance.

Yeah, there are good days and bad days, and the 27th of May will always be a bad day, from now until forever.

He stays in bed for the full 24 hours, napping and crying in cycles, curled up in a ball under a pile of three duvets. He knows he’s being selfish. He’s not the only one in mourning, and all the Weasleys want is to mourn together, but Harry can’t hack it. Knowing that Molly lost a daughter, that James lost a mother, that she was a sister and a friend to countless others… It doesn’t help at all. He doesn’t want to sit with them and pretend their understanding makes anything better.

At midnight, as the seconds tip him unceremoniously into the 28th, he gets up and showers, puts on a clean-ish set of clothes and apparates to the workshop just to have something to do with his hands.

Chapter 14

Chapter Text

There’s a nasty surprise in the Nimbus 1000 that sets him back a couple of weeks - he already knew it to be one of the earlier releases of the broom, but after taking the brush apart he finds the corroded remains of a tightening coil amongst the filler twigs - although calling them twigs at all on this kind of professional broom seems wrong. They’re so fine and numerous they give the broom the look of a paintbrush. The first Nimbus was a game changer in that way - until ‘67, brooms were rough looking things with no more than fifty thick bent twigs in the brush. Then along came Nimbus with their sleek 1000-strong brushes. Boom.

Brooms changed forever.

The tightening coil was applied halfway into the brush to help keep it all together, but only for the first two years of production, after which they invented a new stable charm for the job. The part is almost impossible to find in good condition except by pulling apart an existing broom, and Harry doesn’t believe in the idea of ‘donor’ brooms unless they are well and truly f*cked - that whole concept works on the assumption that there are brooms out there not worth saving. Ones whose only value is in the parts they can offer other more worthy brooms. He refuses to believe that about anything.

Except possibly himself...

He’ll have to make the part from scratch, which is no easy feat with his equipment.

On the positive side, he has plenty of crosslin silk leftover from another project - a material with especially good strength and flexibility, made from the silver webs of crosslin spiders. Weak to fire though, which is unfortunate in this case. As he inspects the brush more, he can see singe marks wrapping the filler where the silver coil fizzed in the flames.

Still, it makes the work more interesting and that’s something he needs right now. Distraction. He’s taken to reading again, mostly while lying in bed at night. He’s been finding it harder to sleep since the anniversary, so he needs something to keep him in bed and resting instead of working twenty four hours a day. He catches up on his periodicals, reads Tina Munford-Tripe’s autobiography of her illustrious career as a world-renowned curse-breaker, and works his way through a nicely bound collection of ‘Classics’ - outdated or disproven books that were ground-breaking in their time. Some of them are as dry as Binns’ history classes, and Harry keeps hoping that one of them will put him to sleep.

Maybe he can convince someone to record one of Binns’ lessons for him.

The hammer slips in his hand as he’s trying to batter the crosslin silk into submission, and he sits back with a sigh. He’s so bloody tired. He’s so tired all the f*cking time, but he can never get to sleep. It’s like his entire consciousness is… waiting. For something - he doesn’t know what. He feels like he did on that last day before he died at the Battle of Hogwarts, like his body knows something is coming. He’s a pressed spring, a bundle of nervous energy trapped in a bottle.

It makes him think dark things he hasn’t been in the habit of thinking for a while. He tries to push it back, but Merlin... He’s tired and it seems so bloody pointless - not just the lack of sleep, but existing in general. He doesn’t want to do it. He sighs again, scrubbing his hands over his face as if to wipe away the thoughts. He has James to think about. Isn’t it bad enough that Harry’s gone six days a week? Not that James would notice or care if-

Stop, he reprimands before he can get too far. His arm aches from swinging the hammer and his hand is cramping from gripping it too hard, but he wants nothing more than to continue through the pain. To keep going until he passes out from exhaustion, and doesn’t have to worry about trying to sleep. The crosslin silk glitters up at him, apparently unaffected by his efforts so far, and he realised that it’d be pointless. It’s time to finish for the day, go home, pretend to sleep. He gets up, groaning at the ache in his back.

He’s on his way to the apparition point when he smells something strange. Smoky and sweet, it’s faint but grows stronger as he approaches the stairwell. He takes the stairs to avoid Trigger’s door so automatically that he’s pretty much forgotten it ever being normal to walk in a straight line to the public area. Their friendship was brief and seven months gone, so his life has carried on. He barely thinks about the man at all. Why would he?

He pauses halfway through the door to the stairs. The air is much cleaner out here, which means the smoky smell is coming from the hallway outside of Trigger’s workroom. It’s probably nothing, he tells himself. He agreed to stay away. Trygve is the kind of guy to have things under control, a smoky smell is nothing. Probably nothing to do with him at all.

Harry gets halfway up the stairs before turning back around with a frustrated growl. Why is he so damn curious all the time? Can’t he smell something weird and then walk away like a normal person? The building is always filled with strange smells, from burning to perfume to wood pine and mud. It’s a space designed for people to do weird things in. There really is no need for concern, he’s just being stupid.

But it doesn’t hurt to look, does it? So long as he doesn’t talk to Trigger or anything.

The smell gets stronger again as he rounds the corner, but there’s no visible smoke or sign of flames. He’s not sure what he was expecting, but the emptiness has him disappointed. There’s no fire, no grey tendrils seeping out from under a doorway. Probably just someone burning incense.

He passes Trigger’s door and then pauses for a second time. Something tickles at the edge of his mind, something missing. He turns and looks at the door. It’s the same as it ever was, the same colour, same wood grain, same everything. His eyes slide upwards to the little window above it. The light’s always on. No matter what time of day or night, he’s never seen it extinguished - until now.

The room is dark.

No, not quite dark - pale, diffuse light flickers briefly against the glass pane as Harry watches.

Smoke. It’s bloody smoke!

The hallway isn’t full of smoke because the fireproof door is keeping it contained. What about the extractors? The room has extractors, doesn’t it?

Thinking quickly, Harry pulls out his wand and feels the door with his spare hand. The wards pulse under his fingers. He catalogues them automatically. Nothing particularly strong or dangerous, just the same generic wards on his own door. They’re nothing to a curse-breaker, and he slices through them with a single deft motion. The door blows open.

He coughs as smoke pours out around him, and curses himself for not casting the bubblehead charm first. He banishes it as he enters the room, giving himself enough time to find the source before the room quickly fills up again.

He spots Trigger - white-blond and deathly pale - lying on the ground a few paces away. sh*t. He doesn’t have time to wonder how long he’s been out, breathing this smoke or not breathing at all. Harry lunges forwards and grabs the man’s ankles, dragging him out the door into the hallway.

In retrospect, a levicorpus would have done just as well.

He banishes the smoke again, this time with a capping spell prepared for the cauldron it’s billowing out of. The pressure builds up quickly, straining the magical lid, and he doesn’t have time to sort it out. Better to just banish the whole thing, even if it leaves him without the ability to analyse it later. Better than an explosion.

And much better for Trigger if he was working on something illegal that no one should know about. With another wave of his wand, the cauldron pops out of existence.

He returns to Trigger’s unconscious form, and isn’t too surprised to find two witches kneeling over him. Once Harry opened the door, it must have released a giant cloud of smoke that was a bit harder to miss than the slight odd scent that lured him to the scene. He kneels down, pulls Trigger’s head into his lap and feels for a pulse. His skin is sallow, but Harry doesn’t know if that’s normal for this body or not.

She had no pulse. Not that he needed to check, with all the blood… Oh merlin, it was- it was all over his hands, oh god. Ginny.

It’s weak, but present. He leans down to listen for the man’s breath automatically, then remembers he can’t hear it and puts his hand under Trigger’s nose. He can’t - wait, the chest is moving. It’s moving.

Her chest was covered with it, dripping red down the front of her pale pink chiffon shirt. He put his hands over the wound, pushed the blood back as if putting it back inside her would bring her back.

He casts Rennervate, then a couple of other lesser known reviving spells, and taps Trigger’s cheek. “Hey. H-hey, Trig.”

Come on Ginny, wake up. C’mon, wake up Gin. Ginny. I need you to wake up now.

One of the witches points her wand at Trigger’s temple and casts a spell he doesn’t recognise - a rare thing, that. It flashes yellow - he was thrown back by a flash of yellow light - and then Trigger gasps awake, almost headbutting Harry as he sits up suddenly, then slumps. “Trigger,” Harry says, trying to catch the man’s attention. His eyes focus slightly. “Trig, you’ve b-b-breathed in a l-lot of smoke. I n-need to know what’s in it. What w-were you w-working on?”

What did you think you were doing? You think this is all fun and games, do you, playing curse-breaker without taking proper precautions? I trusted you to look after each other. I trusted you to look after my little sister.

Harry shakes his head violently. Why’s he thinking about that now? His hands are shaking.

Trigger grips his arm, pulling him back into the present. “Simptus root,” he says. Then his eyes fall shut again and he goes limp.

Harry hands him off to one of the witches, who looks positively panicked. “What did he say?” she asks.

He frowns, she should know better than he does. “Simptus r-root. I’ll l-look,” he says, and then turns to the second woman. She seems a bit more sensible, at least. “You n-know the air p-purifying charm Cae… C-Callimun…m-mundares?”

She nods, and he’s grateful that the building is full of people who work with volatile ingredients on a daily basis. It isn’t a charm most of the population would have any reason to know. “G-go down b-both ends of the hall, then come b-b-back and-” He waves a hand at the laboratory to indicate what he means, frustrated at his clumsy mouth.

Harry strides back inside, conscious now of the evaporated simptus root he’s probably breathing. Relatively harmless in small doses, but in a big enough concentration it damages the throat and lungs. He racks his brain trying to remember where he saw the fool stools - the most effective remedy - while helping out before. He can’t for the life of him remember the Latin name. Damn it! Something-stultus, he thinks.

He throws open the first ingredients cupboard and starts pulling out trays at random. No. No. No.

It has to be here somewhere… He opens another cupboard, and another. The top of the polyjuice potion is congealed, ruined, but that isn’t high on his list of concerns right now. Neither is the tin of personal effects on the top shelf, though he’s briefly tempted by it.

He kicks himself when he finally finds the jar of fungus sitting right there on the side. Ascomycota stultus, the label says. Trigger must have known there was a risk, and had it out just in case. Harry claws open the jar, grabs a whole ball and puts it in his mouth. The taste is bitter and powdery, making him choke.

He races back to Trig, pulling a stool into bits on the way, and hands the witch a piece - the two women will only need a small amount each since they didn’t breathe in the smoke directly. She makes a face at it, and properly gurns once it’s in her mouth. “Oh, g-grow up,” Harry snaps. He doesn’t have time for bloody dramatics, no matter how bitter it tastes.

He tries coaxing the unconscious Trigger into chewing a piece, but no luck. “Here, t-take this for your friend. I’ll take him to my- my r-room.” He levitates Trigger, then points his wand inside the workshop to minimise and accio his armchair, since Harry has nothing comfortable in his own room.

Once he has Trigger lying safely on his armchair in Harry’s workroom, he rushes to a drawer and pulls out his respiration mask, unscrewing the bottle attached to the front of it. He empties the jar of fool stools into it and then sets them alight and screws the bottle back on. Smoke to battle smoke, as it were.

He straps the contraption onto Trigger’s face and waits tensely until a small puff escapes the side vent. He’s breathing. Okay. One less thing to worry about.

He transfigures the armchair into a better shape now that he has the time, and summons his stool from across the room. He also places his blanket over Trigger’s long legs, though he can’t really say why, other than a need to be doing something. It’s weird, after the number of times Trigger looked after him last year, to be returning the favour. The difference being that Harry actually cares. Something he’d thought Trig did too, until- Ugh. Stop.

He isn’t the world’s best mediwizard, nor has he studied that area of magic in his spare time, but he picked up one or two things in the field. Curse-breakers are all-rounders by necessity, knowing just enough of everything to survive (almost) any scrape until real help arrives. In this case, he isn’t too sure Trigger would appreciate getting dumped at St Mungo’s.

Considering that he spends every second of his life polyjuiced into a selection of other people, he probably has good reason to hide his identity. It’s possible that he escaped Azkaban like Sirius, in which case nothing short of looming death would send him running into the ministry’s hands. If anything, the likelihood that he’s a criminal should make Harry more likely to hand him over, especially after their less than ideal interactions. But he won’t do that.

Harry takes out his wand again and conducts the best examination he can of Trigger’s neck and chest. It would be useful if he could inspect the real tissue for discolouration, but he has no way of cancelling out the effects of polyjuice so spellwork will have to do.

Trigger is breathing more shallowly than is normal - unless he’s actually much smaller than his apparent size, or has a previous lung injury, or is in fact very old - so Harry taps the respirator with his wand. It pressures the air a little, potentially causing some discomfort as it forces Trigger to expand his lungs to their fullest and make sure there’s no simptus residue left hiding in the tissue.

The throat is a more curious matter. Harry can’t tell any specifics from the spell, but there’s massive damage here - all scarred over. Trigger must have had his throat ripped out or maybe slit to cause this much scarring. It’s a wonder he’s alive, and that he’s able to speak at all. The wound is at least five years old, probably more like ten but Harry can’t know without seeing it with his own eyes. He reduces the pressure on the respirator again, not wanting to aggravate the old wound.

Other than that, there’s nothing he can do but wait. Now that the immediate panic is over, he wishes he’d installed that water heater after all - he’s going to need a lot of caffeine to get through the night.

Chapter 15: Muted

Chapter Text

Trigger stirs awake two hours after Harry takes off the mask, just as he’s beginning to wonder if he shouldn’t wake the man with a charm in case he’s slipped into a coma or something. A frown slides onto the wizard’s face as he begins to regain consciousness, and he rolls onto his side facing Harry.

Then his eyes snap open and he jumps back, almost falling off his chair in an attempt to put space between them. A hand reaches up to his face, checks his throat.

“The po-polyjuice hasn’t w-worn off yet,” Harry assures him. “Your b-batch is ruined. Surface ca-congealing, p-prob-bably reacted with s-something in the sm-moke. Here.” He holds out his hand, on which lies a plain black ring. “It’s charmed to m-make your face l-look li-like D-dolores Umb...Umbridge. Sorry.” He was surprised to find it in the miscellaneous drawer earlier, a Christmas present from the year before last.

“Why?”

“D-don’t speak.” Harry admonishes, pressing the ring into Trigger’s hand. He could interpret the question any number of ways, but he knows what the man means. “I’m p-private too. Least, I would b-be if I h-had the choice. If I could g-go around every day p-polyj-juiced so no one would... would r-recognise me. B-bloody hell I wouldn’t need a s-second to consider it.”

Trigger looks at him questioningly and makes a writing motion with his wrist. Harry accio’s the notebook, flips through a few pages of work notes and then waits for Trigger to finish coughing before handing it over. Trigger writes slowly.

You’re not in the least bit curious?

“You’ve b-been out for a few hours, p-put the ring on b-before you ask q-questions,” Harry warns, but the man taps the sentence with a finger insistently. Harry sighs. “Yes, of c-course I’m curious. Y-you’ll l-leave and w-we won’t ever speak ag-gain and I’ll n-never know. Live out the rest of my l-life regrett...ing that I n-never found out why y-you’re such a massive d-dickhe*d.”

Pure histrionics.

Trigger pauses before adding:

Your throat sounds sore.

Harry swallows. It feels sore, too. “I’m fine,” he says. It’s his bloody catchphrase at this point. “The s-smoke - ch-chewed a stool so I’m g-good. Had you on the, ah - r-respirator.” He nods to where it sits on a nearby shelf. His eyes itch - a combination of the smoke and his increasing exhaustion. Thinking is like playing quidditch in a pool of custard right now. He really has to concentrate to read Trigger’s words on the page:

It is fortunate that I had them so close at hand, then. I was thrown back in the blast before I could reach them.

Harry huffs a laugh, then recounts his frenzied search for the fungus everywhere except where it was. “I was about to g-give up and apparate us all to an a-a-ap… ap-poc… shop w-when I saw it s-sitting on the side.” Trigger doesn’t laugh or smile, but Harry thinks he’s at least a tiny bit amused by it, if only for how much of an idiot Harry is. It’s probably easier for him to think about that than the fact that Harry saved his life.

Not that Harry expects any thanks. Trigger probably considers their temporary return to being on speaking terms thanks enough.

Harry gets up to spell them both some water, and they fall into silence. It’s getting harder to keep his eyes open. Trigger still hasn’t put the ring on, which is a bit nerve-wracking - it’s not like Harry wants to see a man with Professor Umbridge’s face, but the thought that he might finally find out who Trygve is makes his stomach flutter weirdly. What if Harry still doesn’t recognise him? What if he really is just some weirdo who read too many newspaper articles? And what if he’s not?

Trigger tips the notebook towards Harry again, who blinks. He doesn’t remember seeing the man write. He must have fallen asleep momentarily.

I cannot speak.

Harry jumps up, steps closer but then stops. He can’t - won’t touch Trigger, but he holds up his hands anyway as if he might do… something. “W-what? Should have said s-something, it took so lo-long to g-get the m-mask on you, we sh-should get you to-“ He finally decides to grip Trig’s arm ready to pull him off the armchair, but doesn’t get that far.

Trigger shakes him off with a typical scowl, pulling his arm out of Harry’s hands so that he can write again.

I have not been able to speak for the last twelve years, Potter.

He lets Harry read it, then adds:

It was not necessary to tell you before, and I do so now only to prevent you from worrying after my health.

“But- you s-spoke to me,” Harry argues, dumbfounded. “When w-we met, you said ‘P-Potter’ and then, don’t know, just- w-words.” He flaps his hands in the air in a vague gesture, but Trygve cuts him off with a raised finger. Harry watches him write:

I knew that you were deaf and that you could lip read. I did not anticipate how utterly abysmal at it you would be, though in retrospect I should have known better. I should also add that I had no knowledge of the circ*mstances of your injury or the fate of Ginevra Weasley at that time, nor that you were working in this building. You must know that I never had any intention of being found or of finding you.

Harry stands up again. He doesn’t know why, but he just needs to be up off the stool. But as soon as he is, he can’t think where he might go, so he sits back down again with a thump. He stares at Trigger, looks right into his eyes - green, for the moment - and sees absolutely nothing. “W-who are you?” He asks.

Trigger looks right back at him, and says - or rather, mouths:

“You will see soon enough.” Then he closes his eyes and turns away.

Harry prods him in the arm. “C-come on,” he says, incredulous, and is ignored. The bastard.

As it turns out, the polyjuice doesn’t wear off in the next hour, nor the hour after that. Whatever vegan concoction the man uses, it’s longer-lived than the traditional version. Or it’s all a big joke, and this is his true form. Trigger sleeps again for a while and Harry watches, annoyed that he refused to say more on the topic of his identity. If he’s so bloody resolute that he won’t wear the ring, then what’s the point in hiding his name any longer? Just for the sake of a dramatic reveal.

That’s what it feels like. Trigger simply doesn’t want to spoil a good bit of drama - and he accused Harry of histrionics!

And he’s mute. There’s no way Harry could have known, but he still feels stupid for it. He can see the clues in retrospect. The peculiar way Trygve moves his mouth as he speaks isn’t a weird facial tic or anything like that - it looks strange because he isn’t actually talking. That, and he hasn’t spoken to anyone for twelve years.

Harry groggily tries to imagine what that would be like. He’s gone two years being unable to hear, but at least he can still speak. He’s isolated himself, much like Trigger likely did, but for only a fraction of the time. And he has Molly and James, and sometimes Ron and ‘Mione. Suddenly, he feels like a massive dick for avoiding his friends these last six months. They’re the only reason he’s still around to avoid them in the first place, and he hasn’t shown them even the smallest hint of gratitude for putting up with all his sh*t.

He doesn’t want to think what he’d be like after another decade of avoiding everyone, existing alone in his depressing house and silent workshop. Surely he’d be desperate for friendship before then? Hell, he feels lonely after only a week without James. After a day, even.

So why did Trigger send him packing, after he’d finally found someone he could talk to? After more than a decade without conversation, why would he want to put a stop to their budding friendship? Just who is Trygve Tandberg?

Harry feels the exhaustion of the night wash over him again. He’s been dropping in and out of sleep, shaking himself awake every time he notices, but he can’t carry on much longer. Dawn light starts to filter in through his window. It was late when he found Trigger, late enough that he was on his way home to sleep, and they’ve been sitting here for goodness knows how many hours since then, and now…

He fights to stay awake, to keep watch and make sure that Trigger keeps breathing, but the adrenaline that’s been keeping him going is long gone.

He falls asleep crouched forward in his chair, and wakes up to find Trigger and his armchair gone, along with the notepad and biro. If not for the respirator on the shelf, Harry might be tempted to believe it was a dream.

So much for “you’ll see soon enough.”

The window still isn’t bright enough for full daylight so he can’t have been resting long. Not long enough to deal with this new development, anyway. Still, he stands quickly and rushes to the door, rubbing the gunk out of his eyes. As he hurries through the hallways he passes more people than usual, mostly gossipping and standing around, or pointing Harry out to each other. There’s nothing to look at since there was no actual fire, but it’s evident that the two ladies from last night spread the news. Harry avoids looking at anyone as they speak.

Trigger’s door is closed but unwarded and unlocked.

Harry tells the few people nearby to f*ck off, for once not caring about his image, then knocks and enters without waiting for a reply. For all he knows, the room will be empty.

It isn’t.

Trigger is busily shrinking ingredients into a box, his back to the door, but he turns as Harry steps into the room.

A greeting dies on Harry’s tongue. “But-” he says. “You’re… Y-you’re d-dead, I watched- I… I saw-”

Severus Snape tilts up his chin to display the scar on his neck. The scar Nagini left with her bite. It’s white and shiny, with tendrils reaching up to his ear, down under the collar of his black robes and up onto his cheek, almost to his left eye.

Potter. Of course, only Snape would have said that with so much venom in his expression on the evening they first met. Harry can recall a thousand other clues now - he’s a halfblood, and good enough with potions to make f*cking amortentia with none of its key ingredients. All the personal barbs about Harry’s inability to learn, all the insults he wasn’t taking too personally before but now feel all the more real - because this is Snape. A real bastard, not just someone pretending to be one so that no one gets too close. Not a man who covers his real, human insecurities with distancing comments on Harry’s mental abilities, he is...

Exactly as ugly as Severus Snape. Oh god, oh Merlin.

And he is. He’s bloody ugly. His hair has grown much longer, but it’s as greasy as it ever was. His brows shadow dark eyes with that permanent scowl - another clue Harry missed - and his beak-like nose hangs like an overgrown stalactite in front of it all.

“Say it, then.”

It takes Harry a moment to register seeing Snape’s lips move, then another to process. He can’t help his idiotic, shocked reply. “S-say what?” What has he missed?

Snape spreads his hands. “Anything. Whatever you must.”

It’s so much easier to lip read him now, like it is for Ron. As if Harry’s brain never managed to forget the way Snape looked as he spoke, like it’s been waiting for his return.

Harry doesn’t have an answer. He’s addled. “You’re… C-can-? I don’t-“ He puts a hand to his head. This isn’t happening - he’s dreaming. Hallucinating. Random moments come back to hit him, all the snide comments, the… The understanding between them, the way it all ended. Of course Snape didn’t want to be friends with him. And he’s- Severus Snape is vegan. How? Since when?! He can’t think of anyone less likely to give two sh*ts about animal welfare or the environment. And the man is dead. He’s dead. Harry’s finally gone and done it. He’s cracked.

“Are you... r-real?”

Merlin, he must sound stupid. He feels stupid. He takes a step forward, falters and then keeps going until Snape is right there, right in front of him. He reaches up and touches the man’s robe. It’s made of fine charcoal-grey wool, soft to the touch. Nothing about Snape is supposed to be soft, but the robe is, and somehow that confuses Harry more than anything else. Do hallucinations feel real to the people who have them? He runs a hand down the edge of the robe, then lays his hand flat against Snape’s chest. His very real, very alive chest.

“Y-you’re alive,” he says, looking up. Snape’s eyes are dark. They suck him in.

“An astonishing observation,” Snape replies, and Harry wishes he could hear it. That deadpan, smoke-like voice that’s gone now, not only to him but to everyone. He rubs a thumb over the wool again. It’s real. It’s bloody real.

Harry laughs. It’s just a small, disbelieving giggle at first, but once it starts he just can’t get it to stop. He grips Snape’s robe with one hand as he laughs himself to tears. Then the tears overtake the laughter and he bends his forehead to Snape’s chest. “Y-you’re alive.” He doesn’t know why he cares. He felt bad about Snape’s death, of course, and for the misunderstandings and arguments, but it’s not something that’s haunted him. It’s not like he’s thought about Snape much at all in the last decade, so why is he crying now?

To his credit, Snape doesn’t move or push him away, he just stands there and lets a grown man sob all over him.

He’s got to pull himself together. Harry gulps in a series of calming breaths, grounds himself in the texture of the cloth bunched in his fingers. After a few minutes, he steps back. Through tear-blurred eyes, he takes in the half empty shelves and the stacked up cauldrons. “Y-you’re l-leaving.”

Of course he is. Why would he stay? He has no reason to stay.

Snape points to the ceiling. “Upstairs. The…” Long word. Harry shakes his head.

“I’m sorry, I d-don’t-“ he begins, but Snape has already accio’d his notebook. The pages are slightly yellowed. He said upstairs, right?

It’s a far stranger sight seeing his old potions teacher writing with muggle implements than it was with Trigger. They stand in the same way, hold the pen identically and have the same expressions, but at this exact moment it’s difficult to reconcile the two. Trigger always looked angry, but it wasn’t an actual indicator that he felt that way. With Snape, Harry can’t help but feel that he is angry, despite his newfound knowledge that it isn’t necessarily the case.

The ventilation shaft was blocked. Considering that their negligence almost killed me, the powers that be have graciously taken it unto themselves to offer me a month rent-free in one of the larger spaces until they have resolved the issue.

“T-top floor?” Harry asks. Those are the good units, almost four times the size of these ones, or so they say, with an inbuilt kitchenette and en-suite so you never have to use the building’s less private facilities. There’s even a rumour that they have private apparition points. He’d have gotten one for himself, except that even for all his internal complaining, he doesn’t really need the space. “I’ll help you p-pack then. G-gotta see this for, for mys-self.”

They spend an hour shrinking everything down, and it’s quiet and awkward. Harry thinks that he should have more to say than he does, but it all seems hollow. There’s no point apologising for being a prick back in school - he was young, a different person, and Snape was way more of a bastard than Harry anyway. He says it in his head a thousand different ways, tries to guess what Snape would say.

Snape. f*cking Snape.

Ingredients go into the compartments of a travelling case sorted by type, and Trig- Snape won’t let him help with that part after he sees the mess Harry made while looking for the fool stool.

To be fair, there was an injured - possibly dying - man outside the door at the time.

Once they have everything packed up, the only problem left is how to sneak Snape up there without anyone seeing him. He outright refuses to wear the Umbridge joke ring, which is understandable, so Harry apparates home to grab his old invisibility cloak. He feels eyes on him like a physical force as he walks through the building: surveillance like he hasn’t known since the war. It prickles on the back of his neck and makes him feel cold.

When he returns, Snape is leaning against the empty worktable looking through his tin of papers. He slides the notebook out from under the pile as Harry approaches, sighing softly in relief that his old teacher is still here.

This is everything that remains of Severus Snape.

Chapter 16: Upstairs

Chapter Text

This is everything that remains of Severus Snape. Being dead, I could not return for my possessions, meagre and miserable as they may have been.

Harry stands at the man’s shoulder, peering around his arm at the papers. He can make out a muggle birth certificate, as well as a slightly singed Certificate of Potions Mastery and what looks like a hand-made Gobstones prize. Snape holds this up and turns to face Harry, who steps backwards out of their sudden closeness. It’s weird, he has the stupid feeling that he has to stay close, like Snape might disappear if he doesn’t, but at the same time he wants to rush back to his room and pretend none of this is happening.

“My mother was team captain,” Snape says.

Harry looks again at the Gobstones prize. Eileen Prince. The words are written in the slow, deliberate capital letters of a child trying to be tidy. Somehow it makes her a real person, this pencil-coloured, slightly glittery and dog-eared piece of card. And by extension, it makes Snape more real too. Harry drops his gaze, sees that he still has the cloak in his arms and holds it out. “The cloak,” he says, needlessly.

Snape nudges him with a knuckle somewhat awkwardly, to make him look up again. “Your father would not approve.”

Harry smiles, empty. “D-doesn’t matter, he’s dead.” So many bloody dead people. Ginny; his parents; Dumbledore; Sirius; Remus and Tonks. Fred, too. His entire family died, and then just as he was making a new one, it happened all over again.

The urge rises again to touch Snape, just to check. With all the people who went and died, it feels unreal, fake, for one of them to be standing right here in front of him now. He can’t help but think - why this one? Out of all of them, why is it Snape that turns out to be alive? Why not his God-father? Why not Ginny?

It’s unfair, but… Well, it kind of sucks.

At the same time, he can’t shake this feeling; his hand itches to clutch Snape’s sleeve, to hold on and make sure he won’t disappear again. What would have happened if Harry hadn’t gotten here in time last night? If he’d decided to carry on walking up the stairs, if he’d never left the workshop in the first place and slept in his hammock? He would have lost something he never knew he had. He would have lost someone again, both Trigger and Snape.

He realises that Snape is waiting for him to pass the cloak over, and he does so with a grimace. He needs to get out of his own head. “G-got everything?” Harry asks, looking around. The room is bare, not just of ingredients, but the shelves are gone too. The only things left are two empty cupboards holding up the long worktable, and the faulty extractor fans. Everything else has been shrunk and packed away into two manageable boxes, apart from the tins of personal effects which Snape holds onto with pale, bony fingers.

Snape pulls the cloak around himself so that everything but his head becomes invisible. The cloak is just about long enough, making Harry frown a bit because it always seemed too short after his brief growth spurt at 16. Is it resizing itself, and if so why didn’t it do so for him earlier? He tucks this away as yet more proof that magical items have minds and characters of their own.

Harry picks up one of the boxes experimentally. Not too heavy, he can probably do both at once since Snape won’t be able to carry one. He drops the first box onto the second, and is just picking them up when they levitate out of his arms. Snape gives him a pointed look, and Harry grimaces again.

He opens the door, checks both directions and finds the hall to be quite busy. There isn’t much to be done about it though, so he tries to look more collected than he feels as he walks towards the stairwell, invisible Snape presumably in tow.

He checks the stairwell more carefully, since Snape will have to hold the cloak up to walk up the steps without tripping. Not a soul, luckily, and he takes the steps two at a time, flashes of Snape’s legs appearing beside him as the man keeps pace. Pretty spry for an old wizard. Well, old-ish.

Harry slows to catch his breath - probably the effects of the simptus root - on the fourth floor, and then pauses, glancing suspiciously into an empty corridor to his left. There’s a familiar… something. A changeable, glimmering quality to the air a few feet away. It moves slightly, and Harry double checks with a pat of the hand that Snape is standing to his right.

He turns away, lowering his arm with a mock expression of relief - and drops his wand out of his sleeve. “You can f-f*ck r-r-right off, or they’ll be washing you off the b-loody banisters,” he says, suddenly raising the wand and casting revelio and ventus in quick succession. A gust of wind roars down the hallway and a man appears; brown dapper suit, small bowler hat - with a camera in his hands. Annoyingly, it flashes before blowing out of his fingers and tumbling down the hall behind him. “G-go on!” Harry warns, sending the reporter scurrying off after it.

He’d be quite pleased about the whole thing, except that he felt his tongue stumbling over the words. Threats never sound quite so bad when you stutter like a kid in a school play.

They get to the top floor without any more trouble, though Harry’s extra vigilant and annoyed. People sell him out wherever he goes, it’s just a fact of existence, but expecting it doesn’t make him feel any better when it happens. He’s suitably distracted once Snape unlocks the workshop though, and glad to be back in a private space. He decides to check every nook and cranny before relaxing completely however.

There are windows in the room, big tall ones, all along one wall. And a door out onto a little balcony looking out over- well, a road of shops with a council estate behind. Hardly some beautiful city skyline from a film, but still. The room itself is long and wide, and there are two doors leading to a kitchenette and a small bathroom. It could easily be used as an open-plan apartment for living in, except probably for the licensing.

The room is suddenly thrust into pitch blackness, and Harry casts Lumos without a thought, twirling to face the newest danger with his heart in his throat. Snape stands a few paces away, wand out and pointed towards the windows, which are now blocked out. He turns to Harry. “Windows,” he says, his face incredulous. As if he can’t believe the audacity of the building’s managers for giving him a room with such an obvious flaw. His face is pale and drawn, as if the idea of windows genuinely terrifies him.

Harry relaxes, rolling his shoulders and looking around for a light switch. He can’t find one, so he settles on casting a glowing charm on one of the ceiling panels instead. Snape has already moved on, apparently unbothered by the gloom, inspecting the long work table that runs along the shorter side of the room. Not that it’s short by any means, though his expression is distinctly displeased regardless.

Harry decides to investigate the kitchenette instead. It’s pretty basic, just a sink with a draining board, and a tiny two-hob oven. He opens a cupboard, finds a kettle, three mismatched mugs and a single teaspoon laid out neatly on the bottom shelf. Another cupboard yields half-stocked jars of muggle teabags, coffee granules and sugar. The last cupboard is a fridge, empty. The light comes on as he opens the door, but it isn’t cold so it can’t have been switched on too long ago. He doesn’t question the presence of a muggle implement - it’s less maintenance than a chilling charm, and there’s hardly space for a pantry. “You n-need milk,” Harry calls into the other room. Ah. “Or w-whatever you vegans drink.”

Severus Snape. Vegan. He shakes his head, still disbelieving - that’s going to take some getting used to. Hell, Severus Snape full stop is going to take getting used to. He’s alive. He’s here, right now. With Harry.

His chest tightens, and he takes the kettle out to fill it up by way of distraction. Snape. Trigger was bloody Snape, all this time.

How did he not see it before? It’s so obvious. He looks back through the doorway, half expecting to see the man gone or lying dead on the floor. He’s surprised to find that Snape is looking right at him, but then he turns briskly away, long hair whipping round behind him.

Harry puts the kettle on the hob, frowning again. What… What was that look about? He can’t decide if Snape actually wants him here or not. He was definitely staring, but why? Trying to work out how to make Harry leave? Not knowing makes him uncomfortable, self conscious.

He hides behind the door until the kettle boils, then brings out two milkless cups of tea. Snape is too busy unpacking his stuff to drink, but refuses all help with the ingredients so Harry gets the armchair out and has a sit down instead.

Severus Snape, he thinks, drinking his tea and watching the man set up his laboratory. Severus bloody Snape.

Chapter 17: Armchair

Chapter Text

Even once Snape’s done setting up everything there is to set up, the contents of his old room take up only one length of wall. Excepting the armchair Harry has been napping in on-and-off, of course. By the time it’s all done, he’s feeling somewhat human again, but no more stable for it. If anything, he’s having even more trouble processing it all now that he’s rested.

Snape stands and pushes both his hands into the small of his back, leaning backwards to stretch with a grimace... Which is something he can do, because Snape exists and is alive, and because he’s a real human person who gets a backache after leaning over for too long. Which is totally fine and normal. Then he turns around and sees Harry sitting in his armchair, and looks shocked for a moment, though Harry can’t think why. It’s not like he’s moved much all morning.

“You need to g-get a sec-cond chair,” Harry hesitantly offers, not really sure what their dynamic is supposed to be now, or whether Snape is about to throw him out. Aggravating him on purpose is stupid, but Harry can’t help himself.

Snape frowns - or rather his existing frown deepens. It’s not at all flattering. “And why would I need another chair?” he asks, raising his eyebrows. He doesn’t try to move his mouth slower in a misguided attempt to help Harry understand. He doesn’t look like someone trying to talk to a deaf person at all, and Harry is grateful for it.

He forces a grin. “You’ve g-got nowhere to sit.”

Harry has no time at all to react before Snape pulls his wand out of a pocket and casts Flipendo on the armchair.

Harry is thrown back, spinning unceremoniously onto the floor. His breath bursts out of his lungs at the impact, winding him. He only just manages to roll away before the chair thuds onto the carpet where he was lying a moment earlier. Jesus Christ! He thought they’d last at least another half hour before getting into a duel.

His wand already in hand, he wordlessly casts Expelliarmus and sends Snape’s wand flying. It bounces off the ceiling and lands neatly in one of the empty cardboard boxes behind him. Another heartbeat and Snape is wrapped a full-body bind, his eyes wide with surprise.

Triumph floods through Harry, rapidly followed by dreading fear. “S-sorry, I didn’t mean to-” He wasn’t even thinking, it was automatic - just old reactions kicking in. Of course, he has no reason to be sorry since Snape is the one who almost crushed him with an armchair. He quickly dispels the binding spell, embarrassment flooding his cheeks with heat.

Snape walks to the box and picks up his wand, brushing off his robe. He examines the wand, then turns and strides up to Harry, his expression dark and ominous - but instead of stopping at Harry’s feet, he walks past and sits down in the armchair. He doesn’t smile with his mouth, but he has the posture of a smug cat. He pulls his long sleeves down neatly over his hands - another clue Harry missed, the distinctive robes - then looks up, feigning a small expression of surprise as he returns his attention to Harry. “It seems that you are in need of a chair,” he says.

Harry gapes at Snape just sitting there, cool as anything as if he hadn’t just lost a duel. Where did he find the confidence in the last few hours?

He’s overcompensating. It’s another shock, a jolt as Harry realises once again that his old professor is a person, the same way Harry is, and that he probably feels just as awkward as Harry does about everything that’s happened between them.

He grits his teeth, tightening his grip on his wand. Harry can’t stand Snape thinking that he’s won, even if it’s only some weird awkward game that neither of them knows the rules to. He makes a snap decision - second chair it is, and there’s nothing Snape can do to argue because it’s his own bloody suggestion. Harry huffs and apparrates out of the room.

He appears behind the bins in the corner of a tarmac parking lot, stunned for a second that it actually worked. So they really do have private apparition. He feels a brief spike of jealousy for Snape’s new workspace, which fades only a little as he remembers the man only has it for a month. Then back to boring old normal workspaces for him - but in the meantime, Harry fully intends on taking advantage as much as he can of the amenities.

He double-checks that no one’s looking before stepping out from behind the industrial bin. Being outside like this makes him nervous - he’s spent most of his time as a deaf man in his own workshop or house, where no one can sneak up on him. No cars or people to worry about, and nothing to miss by being unable to hear. Out here he’s exposed, and it puts extra pressure on the need to see everything. Just walking along the edge of the car park makes the hairs rise on the back of his neck. No matter how many times he glances over his shoulder, he’s still sure a van is going to come out of nowhere and hit him from behind.

There are only a few muggles about - an elderly gentleman optimistically trying to fit a double mattress folded in half into the back of his tiny Citroen Saxo; two mothers with prams chatting outside the cafe next door; and a brown-haired woman in a blue uniform taking a fa*g break, leaning against the wall a few feet away from the entrance.

A large sign over the door reads “CRAFT” in faded blue 3D letters. It’s where Harry comes any time he needs reclaimed wood for a shelf, or brackets and door handles, that sort of thing. It’s a big bric-a-brac shop, but because it’s in the middle of nowhere - another Welsh countryside town with a name Harry wouldn't dare attempt to pronounce - it’s often empty enough that he can shrink down what he needs without having to carry it outside first or worry about being seen. Their stuff technically comes from the tip; odds and ends, furniture saved from certain doom at the recycling centre so that people like Harry can grab them for a bargain price.

He pulls out his wallet as he walks inside, counting up the cash. He doesn’t top it up very often so it’s not unusual for him to be carrying around a hundred pounds or so: about a years’ supply. He only has fifty quid today, but it probably won’t matter.

The armchairs and sofas sit on the left hand side right next to the entrance, and his eye is instantly drawn to the. most. outrageous. chair he has ever seen in his life. It’s orange. An orange cube. A monstrosity. He knows instantly that he must have it, just for the expression on Snape’s face.

He goes straight to the thing and has a sit-down. There’s a gross yellowish white patch on the left arm, which he avoids, but otherwise it’s… well, it’s not the most comfortable armchair on the planet, but it’s not uncomfortable either. He stands up and flips over the tag.

On the plus side, it’s only forty-five pounds. It does kind of say it’s been sold though. Awaiting pickup by its new owner.

He tries out a few other chairs - a brown stripy one, an olive corduroy loveseat that is genuinely quite lovely, and a leather thing he has to jump straight back out of because it’s sticky. Then he nonchalantly walks ten steps towards the electronics section and looks left and right.

A shop assistant behind the counter appears to be writing up tags, standing directly in line of sight of the armchair - but before Harry needs to think of a way to get rid of her, a little old lady in a pretty hat starts determinedly but slowly stalking towards her. Just the distraction he needs. Harry picks up a yellow-grey computer keyboard and turns it over, eyeing them both as he pretends to inspect the cable. They chat, and the worker looks confused. Then the old biddy looks confused. Then they come to some kind of understanding and walk off together towards the second room with all the cutlery and second-hand clothing.

Now’s his chance. He does a full 360-degree turn to make absolutely sure there’s no one else about, then surreptitiously casts a sticky nox - one of Ginny’s inventions - on the CCTV camera… and hesitates.

It’s not theft, he tells himself. He did, after all, drop his fifty quid on the floor and kick it under the armchair before leaving the area, so technically so long as a member of staff gets there before a customer does, they’ll get paid for the thing. Even if it was meant for someone else. And to be honest, he’s saving that stranger from a terrible decision. It’s awful. A truly horrible, horrible chair.

Before he can change his mind, he shrinks and accio’s the orange armchair and then apparates out, his heart absolutely banging in his chest.

He lands not inside the nice warm workshop as expected, but on a windy platform right up against a pane of black glass. For a moment, irrationally, he thinks he’s somehow apparrated onto the side of Azkaban. He steps back reflexively, which gives him a view to the side and he is suddenly aware that he’s a few stories up - outside the Engineshed. The black glass means it must be Snape’s workshop, but he’s been locked out. The bastard!

He raises a hand and knocks angrily on what he can now see is a sliding veranda door.

A moment later, it slams open. Harry is about to make a comment about getting locked out, but sees that Snape has also opened his mouth to say something, and they both close their jaws at the same moment. Then Snape huffs, a movement that carries through his shoulders almost like a shrug, and steps aside to let a foolish-feeling Harry in.

A few more ceiling panels have been lit, giving the room a more even glow, though it’s not as bright as the sky outside. Snape’s armchair has been moved into a corner, and the bookshelf and side table are set up alongside it exactly like they were in the old room. Harry reckons that if he moves the table just a tiny bit closer, there might be juuust about enough room to squeeze his surprise between that and the kitchen door.

He looks over at Snape, just to make sure he has the best view of the wizard’s face when he unshrinks the armchair.

“I thought you-” Snape starts, and then: “What in the devil is --”

Harry can’t discern the rest of the sentence, but he doesn’t need to. The face says it all. “Y-you asked me to g-get a se-second chair, d-didn’t you?” he asks innocently, keeping his expression as neutral as possible. “I know it’s a b-bit big, but…”

He nudges it with his hip, pushing it into the side table, which starts to tip over. Harry grabs it in time, as well as the notepad that was on top of it. The biro escapes, rolling across the floor.

Like a flash, the notebook is snatched out of his hand. He lets go, alarmed, but the feeling melts into amusem*nt as words on the page catch his eye. He only has time to read the first few, but it’s enough.

I apologise if

Harry puts his hands up in a gesture of surrender and pretends not to have seen anything, thinking quickly. “D-do you r-really hate it that much?” he asks, bringing Snape’s attention back to the orange beast by sitting on it and leaning casually on the arm. The- aw f*ck, the arm. The yellow-crusty-stain arm. God.

Snape stares for a moment, clearly stunned and definitely still angry. Harry can see his jaw move as he grinds his teeth. Then he accio’s the biro from the floor and writes for a good minute - after tearing out the sheet with the apology on it first. That goes safely into his pocket.

It is singularly the most sickening, garish example of an armchair (or object in general) that I have had the unmitigated displeasure of setting my eyes upon in decades. It is deplorable. It has not even one saving grace. You must understand that I am putting my best efforts into finding words in the English language that might adequately describe the sheer depths of my disgust. I can only come to the conclusion that there are none. I am not at all surprised to find that your taste is as terrible as many of your other traits.

Chapter 18

Chapter Text

Her chest was covered with blood, dripping red down the front of her pale pink chiffon shirt. Harry put his hands over the wound, pushed the blood back as if putting it back inside her would bring her back. He called her name, shaking her shoulders, and shouted over his shoulder for help but no one knew they were here. They weren’t supposed to be here. “Hold on Ginny,” he said. Hold on.

He turned his hands up slowly, taking in the red. There was so much. Oh merlin, it was- it was all over his hands, oh god. Ginny. Her chest was covered with blood, dripping red down the front of her pale pink chiffon shirt. It was all over his hands, oh god. Oh merlin, it was- it was all over his hands, oh god. Ginny.

Come on Ginny, wake up. C’mon, wake up Gin. Ginny. I need you to wake up now. Ginny. Her chest was covered with- it was- it was all over his hands, oh god. He turned his hands up slowly, taking in the red, oh god. Oh merlin, it was-

Harry wakes up breathing hard. He’s covered with sweat and his legs are tangled in the duvet. He swallows, sits up gasping, then looks down at his hands. They’re clean. He knows they’re clean.

He extricates himself from the bedding and stumbles into the bathroom. There’s a grimy layer over everything, and the edges of the sink and side are dusted with tiny bits of shaved stubble. He turns on the tap and lets the water run over his hands, just breathing. They’re clean. He can see that they’re clean. He lets the water run over them anyway, but resists the urge to scrub.

He looks up at the mirror. It’s dirty as well. The whole house is a stinking mess and he just wants to burn it down. It’s the stupid coward’s way out - a simple incendio would be far easier than sorting out his life. He just wants to do it. Make it all go away.

There are dark bags under his eyes, almost like bruises. The kind of bags he’s sure are only supposed to exist in comic books. With the tap still running, he picks up the cordless shaving razor, probably the only muggle device he owns that he manages to keep charged up, and presses it along his cheek. Two-day stubble rains down to join the rest.

It’s the middle of the night, and he has no idea why he’s suddenly having a shave. His heartbeat still hasn’t calmed after the nightmare - the memory - and his hands are unsteady.

Oh merlin, it was- it was all over his hands, oh god.

He fumbles but manages not to drop the razor into the sink, and notices it’s all filled up. “sh*t,” he says, slamming the tap shut and stepping back just as the first slosh comes over the side. Blocked. Why is it-?

Is he really f*cking shaving over the damn sink, surrounded by six months’ worth of stubble, wondering why the bloody drain is blocked?

He returns to the bedroom to grab his wand, trying to remember an incantation he read in a house maintenance leaflet while waiting in the hospital to find out if Ginny was going into labour or not. There were a lot of false starts with James. The mediwitches took pity and let him wait outside in the lobby to get away from Ginny’s temper, and he wishes now that he’d stayed, that he’d been there through every second of every false alarm. That he’d never snuck off to the pub with Ron on Fridays or wasted his Saturdays playing quidditch. That he’d gone to those stupid brunches and the pottery classes and all the other faffy relationship stuff he couldn’t be bothered with at the time.

It’s easy to wish for all of that now.

He casts what he thinks is the right charm, and at first it seems to work - the pipes gurgle promisingly and then-

He leaps back a second time as murky yellow water sloshes out the underside of the sink basin. “sh*tting- f*ck!”

He can’t deal with this. He skips out of the bathroom and closes the door behind him. The carpet goes damp under his toes and he makes a face, scarpers to the bed, wiping his feet on old t-shirts and other floor detritus on the way. He climbs up and sits cross-legged on the mattress. He really, really, really can’t deal with this.

Is this his comeuppance? Is this the price for Snape being alive, for him being happy about it? He puts his head in his hands, screwing his eyes shut. f*ck. He just… wants it all to be over, already. He keeps trying. Hasn’t he been trying? Didn’t he try hard enough today, yesterday, whenever?

Helping Snape move, talking, existing. Being fine, not feeling like a hollow doll. Didn’t he manage that? But it’s not enough.

He gets up suddenly, grabs a t-shirt from the floor and scourgifies it clean. Pants too, then trousers and socks and a jumper. He gathers up a full set of clothes and changes into them, sits at the edge of the bed to do up his shoelaces, and then apparates to Snape’s veranda.

It’s f*cking cold. He steps up close to the railing, hoping the low wall that separates him from a long fall will also protect him from the wind. It doesn’t do much. He puts one hand in his warm armpit, raises the other to knock on the glass, then lowers it again without doing so. The wind is sharp and damp, spitting tiny droplets of rain at him and making him shiver. Snape’s probably not even in. He must have gone home by now. There’s no one here and even if there is, what will he say if the door slides open? He doesn’t even know why he’s here.

Why hello there Severus Snape, I had a nightmare and for some f*cking reason I decided that coming here would help, or something, probably because I’m scared you’re dead even though you’re a bastard who I should really hate. Won’t you let me in for a cup of hot chocolate and a cuddle?

He paces back and forth three times, shivering in his thin jumper, then with a growl he apparates back onto his bed. It’s warm, and he picks up the duvet to wrap himself in the residual heat of his nightmare. It occurs to him that he probably looks crazy, standing up on his bed fully dressed with shoes on, one half of his face shaved and an old duvet wrapped around his shoulders as he clutches his wand in a white-knuckled hand. Hell, he feels crazy.

He apparates to the veranda a second time, then instantly home. Twice more, he apparates there and back for the barest second. Stupid. He’s even crazier to go there like this. It’s… “f*ck.”

“f*ck, f*ck, f-f*ck.” It’s far less satisfying saying the words when he can’t hear them, but the vibration in his chest is harsh and shouting makes his throat hurt, and that’s enough. He stands on his bed, in his duvet, and shouts f*ck over and over and over until he doesn’t have the energy to do it anymore.

Then he slumps, curling up into a ball with his wand pressed against the side of his neck.

It’s only when he’s blinded by a rectangle of bright light that he realises he’s back on the veranda, and that Snape is standing in the open frame of the sliding door. It’s not the first time Harry has apparated without thinking, but it’s the first time he’s been caught.

It strikes him how similar this is to the first night they met. “Potter,” Snape had said. Like the word was poison. He can’t see Snape’s face this time, and doesn’t want to. How would he say it now?

Potter. It would be nice for Snape to say it with something like relief or gladness. Potter, thank goodness you’re here.

Hah. What a laugh.

The silhouette moves back into the room, and Harry realises that he’s been staring without saying anything. Without explaining, not that there’s an explanation anyway. He gets up quickly and follows Snape inside, closing the door behind himself. The room is warm against his numb face.

Snape is wrapped up in his own blanket, which trails on the floor behind his bare feet as he walks towards a small bed that presumably used to be his armchair.

“You s-sleep in y-your w-workspace?” Harry asks, then wishes he could snatch back the rude words. He doesn’t know Snape’s circ*mstances - and besides, Harry’s standing here in his duvet after sleeping outside on the balcony so it’s not like he’s in any position to judge.

Snape sits, looking up blearily at Harry. He blinks slowly, frowns and then lies down without responding. Harry walks up to him and sees that he’s fast asleep already. Maybe he was never awake to begin with. That’ll make things awkward in the morning.

Snape’s frown slowly relaxes away until he just looks like an ordinary man - well, as ordinary as a man with Snape’s face can get. The silver scar covers his neck and cheek, smooth and almost blueish in the light. With the opportunity to look freely, Harry notes the full extent of Snape’s crow’s feet and the frown line that stays between his brows even when they’re not knitted together. He tries to remember the man’s age - he was in the same year as Harry’s dad, which makes him twenty years older, right?

Harry doesn’t recall turning 30 yet so he must still be 29 years old. Which makes Snape 49, or maybe 50 depending on his birthday. It’s funny: in his head Snape was fifty or sixty all along, but when Harry started at Hogwarts the potions master wasn’t that much older than Harry is now. He doesn’t even feel like an adult yet. Not a functioning one, anyway. He keeps waiting for the sign that he’s become wise or settled, but it hasn’t appeared to him so far.

Merlin, why is he staring? He pulls the duvet higher up his legs and turns to his own armchair. It’s only as he’s twisting round, trying to find a comfortable position on the infernal thing, that he realises something small but unexpected.

Snape sleeps with the lights on.

Chapter 19: Crosslin

Chapter Text

It’s difficult to tell when morning comes, what with the blacked out windows and the constant glowing of the ceiling panels. Harry wakes slowly, aching all over. His left arm has pins and needles and his feet are damp inside his shoes. It’s one of the most unpleasant awakenings he’s had in a while, at least physically. Mentally it’s pretty chill. He can’t help but groan as he turns over in the chair, wriggling down a bit to try and find a better position for his neck.

Everything hurts. Life is pain.

When he’s finally sure the aches aren’t going to fade away on their own, he risks taking the corner of the duvet off his face. Ugh, it’s bright. He groans again, then cautiously stretches an arm into outside-the-duvet air. Not cold. Acceptable. A prickling sensation goes down the back of his neck, making him look towards the other armchair.

Snape is staring at him.

The man’s eyes are open but slightly glazed, and his expression is still the neutral one he has during sleep. Harry stares back, trying to work out if he’s actually awake or not. Sleeping with his eyes open is just the kind of creepy thing Snape would do.

Snape closes his eyes, appears to breathe in through his nose slowly, then opens them again. Still looking at Harry. The frown descends. “I’d hoped it was a dream,” he says. At least he doesn’t use the word nightmare. That seems promising. Then he closes his eyes again as if to ward off a great pain, and turns over to face the other way.

Harry watches the back of his head for a while longer, although there’s nothing much to see. Just long black hair, let loose from its ribbon. It spills over the cushions, spreading out like a dark, wavy cobweb.

After a minute, he shakes himself and finds his wand to cast tempus. Despite the disruption to his routine these last few nights, and the sleeplessness he’s suffered for much longer, his body has woken him up at the usual time of 6am.

Not wanting to make too much sound, and conscious that he won’t know if he does, he gets up and carefully drapes the slightly-rain-damp duvet over the armchair. This serves two purposes: to let the duvet dry, and to cover up the god-awful orange chair. It’s too early in the morning to look at anything of that horrendous headache-inducing shade.

He slips into the bathroom to piss, then to the kitchen, and considers popping the kettle on with the lid open so that it won’t whistle. Then again, he’s never needed caffeine to wake up before. With nothing else to do, he goes back to the armchair to consider his next move.

He needs to work. He missed an entire day yesterday because of the fiasco with Snape, and he was already behind because of the crosslin tightening bands on the Nimbus 1000. He should go downstairs to his workroom, but he finds himself reluctant to leave. He realises that he’s staring at Snape again, and forces himself to look out at the workroom instead. Without any cauldrons bubbling away, it’s empty and still. He imagines it must be quiet as well. But it isn’t lifeless - just waiting.

Snape will surely start working on his potions again once he gets up. Like Harry, he’s probably got work to catch up on - moreso, since many potions take days to brew. Then again, if there was anything desperate then he’d have started last night, and he doesn’t have rent to pay this month...

Why am I even worrying, Harry thinks angrily. He’s a potions master. There’s really nothing to worry about - it’s not like a second accident is likely. It’s Snape. He wouldn’t have survived all this time if he wasn’t careful. Harry goes through this reasoning several times before deciding that it’s not going to work.

He treads carefully up to the door and takes out his wand, casting another glance over at Snape, who still appears to be sleeping. He hasn’t moved, at least.

Harry keys himself into the wards. They’re a bit more advanced than the ones downstairs, and in an emergency he reckons it would take five or ten seconds to dismantle from the other side without being keyed in. It’s a gross misuse of his magical abilities and the guilt has him on edge, but if he ever needs to get in for… for whatever reason, at least he knows he can now. Unless Snape finds out and resets the wards. Which he won’t, because he is sleeping and there’s no reason at all for him to check.

Harry goes back and writes in the notepad.

Gone to work. Thanks for letting me stay here last night. Please don’t throw out the armchair, it cost me £50.

Harry.

Signing it with his name is a bit unnecessary in retrospect, but it just seems more letter-y that way. Less like the little notes he used to leave Ginny on the hallway mirror. He props up the notepad on his armchair so that Snape can’t possibly miss it, and then with nothing else to procrastinate with, he slips away to his own workshop.

It’s almost surreal, working on a broom again. It’s only been a day and a bit, but in some ways it feels like a lifetime ago that he put down his hammer for the night and saved Snape’s life. If he’d decided to stay just ten minutes more…

He takes up the hammer again. Even though it doesn’t look like he’s made any progress at all, working with crosslin is like stirring cornstarch into a sauce - it does nothing for a while, so you keep stirring and stirring and stirring, and nothing happens, then all of a sudden it’s all sticking to the spoon and you have a nice thick onion gravy.

Merlin, that takes him back. Cooking, the thought of it hasn’t even come to mind in the last two years. Thanks to a very capable mother who liked to do everything herself, Ginny never learnt to cook and so Harry was their house chef. His lip twitches into a smile thinking about the Shepherd’s Pie she tried making for his birthday a few years back. She burnt the onions while frying them, then added the meat and vegetables to the pan, burnt those… Popped it in the oven with mashed potatoes spread over and managed to burn the top as well. It was the most burnt thing Harry had ever eaten, but eat it he did. Sometimes it’s the horrible things you love the most, just for the memories.

Like that orange armchair. Snape’s face! Priceless. Harry will remember it until the day he dies.

His smile slips as he remembers that Ginny will never cook him another terrible pie again, and that the memories are all he has. James will grow up never truly knowing how awful a cook his mother was.

The little section of crosslin flattens suddenly under his hammer, driving other thoughts out as he jumps into a race against time to get the rest of it flat and wrapped around the brush before it resets its shape. It takes hours of hammering to create just one small weakness in the silk, and once that’s done there’s a window of about thirty minutes to spread the fault along the thread. Then an additional twelve to fifteen minutes of malleability to get the wrapping done.

The fingers of his left hand hurt from straining to hold and move the silk in time to the pounding hammer, but even when he reaches the end he can’t rest.

He trips on his way to the half-reconstructed broom on his workbench, folds over one edge of the wire with a pair of pliers he left out ready and hooks it into the brush. It’s a bit of a faff trying to keep the whole thing stable as he wraps the bristles, and he makes a note to pre-wrap the brush in something disposable next time. By the time he’s got the right pattern laid in all the way around, the silk has started to stiffen up in his hands. He grabs the pliers again in desperation, and just about manages to twist the two ends together and fold them in before the whole thing flashes silver. The wire pops out into its original cylindrical shape again, pulling the brush in tight.

He steps back, inspecting his handiwork. It’s a job for two people, really, but he’s never fancied the idea of having an assistant in here touching or moving his stuff, or walking around behind him. No thanks.

There are a few twigs askew, which he expects considering that he didn’t have time to straighten anything up before the crosslin activated. Not too bad, considering. He’ll just have to straighten them out with the pliers. So long as they function correctly, it doesn’t matter what they look like - there’s another three layers of bristles to pop around these so they’ll be covered well enough. Then it’s just a matter of trimming and he’s done with the first of the three Nimbuses.

He drops onto the stool, massaging his sore hands together until they feel almost normal again. He reckons there’s a bruise coming at the base of his left thumb where he accidentally hit himself with the hammer, but it doesn’t feel fractured or anything. He really wasn’t hitting very hard at the end there. His armpits are sweaty and he considers going home for a shower, then remembers the bathroom disaster. He hasn’t even gone back to check if the water’s still gushing. His house could be under a foot of dirty water by now, and he wouldn’t know.

He doesn’t want to know, so he gathers up the broom, the rest of the brush twigs and a few little tools into various pockets and a bag, then heads back upstairs.

It’s silly, but now that his mind isn’t occupied by the activity of his hands, he has this horrible creeping feeling that something might have gone horribly wrong.

Chapter 20: Balm

Chapter Text

Harry shifts the bag of twigs into his left hand, holding the broom awkwardly against his chest, to knock on Snape’s door. He’s suffering from a strange mix of nerves - some of them caused by the possibility that Snape won’t answer because he’s dead, and the rest by the possibility that he will. Especially considering that Harry has brought with him what is clearly his work, and the intention to finish it off in Snape’s room.

Is it not enough that you invaded my space to sleep, he imagines as he’s waiting for Snape to answer, but you must also force your presence upon me during the day. A full minute passes, and he feels the first kind of nervousness start to overtake the second. He counts to ten before knocking again, wondering if he’s doing it loudly enough to be heard. He raises his hand a third time, but then stops himself - what if he’s been knocking too hard and Snape isn’t answering because he’s annoyed about it? What if he’s focussing on a potion, and Harry is distracting him?

He feels like he’s back in school, waiting outside the classroom when a teacher is late, wondering if he should go in or not.

Snape probably just needs some peace. Despite this, Harry knocks a third time to make sure, frowning at his hand as he concentrates on finding the right volume. Still nothing… He’s dead, isn’t he? Or injured. Lying on the floor with his last breaths escaping while Harry stands here stupidly on the other side of the door.

Trigger gasped awake, almost headbutting Harry as he sat up suddenly, then slumped back, a strand of white-blond hair falling across his forehead. His eyes were unfocused.

No. It’s fine. Snape is fine. What on Earth can he have done in just one morning to get himself injured again? He’s probably gone out to get supplies to replace what was damaged. Or maybe he’s buying milk. Not-milk. Whatever.

He’ll just take a quick peek, to make sure.

Harry leans the broom against the wall, with the bag beside it. Then he pulls out a thin bristle and taps his wand against the tapered end, muttering a spell. The world shifts around him and he sees his own face staring blindly back at him. The colour drains from his cheeks as nausea washes through him at the dizzying sensation. He shifts his attention to the door, stepping forward. The world lurches oddly, and he braces himself with a hand against the wall. The wards welcome him, but he doesn’t instruct them to open. If Snape really is in there, then letting himself in would be the worst idea.

If he’s gone out, Harry will just have to go back downstairs. All he wants to know is that the man is safe. He persuades the ward to let the thin stick through the tiny gap between door and frame, plunging himself into darkness in the process. The detached eye technique is necessary knowledge for any curse-breaker who does his own dungeoneering, and though he’s not practiced in a long while, Harry manages to wiggle the stick through so that his ‘eye’ sticks out the other side.

The room appears around him. He freezes.

Snape is standing right in front of the door. Just looking at it. At Harry, probably. One-way transparency spell, if he’d have to guess. The brewer’s gaze moves slowly to the side, where the twig is peeking through the frame.

Harry’s heart leaps into his throat as their eyes meet. He’s been caught red-handed, there’s no doubt about that. He doesn’t move when Snape opens the door, just stands there with a wand in one hand and a brush twig in the other. He becomes aware, under Snape’s critical eye, that he never got around to shaving the other half of his face. And that he stinks.

He ends the spell wordlessly, blinking to focus his eyes again. “I w-was afraid th-that…” he begins, but the end of the sentence sounds stupid so he lets it taper away. What exactly was he afraid of? That Snape was dead? It’s so idiotic that he can’t even bring himself to think it now.

Snape doesn’t reply, just quietly turns and puts a hand on the door. After a moment, his gaze flickers back to Harry with a slight frown, and away again. Then he turns and walks back into the room, leaving the door open.

Harry’s knees go slack. f*ck. Hesitantly, he steps up and touches the door. The wards pulse, recognising him. He isn’t thrown down the hallway by a repelling jinx, or set on fire or turned to stone... He stands there for a second longer, stunned. Snape checked the wards, didn’t he? Isn’t that what that look was about?

Then why is Harry still keyed in? Why did Snape not say anything?

He grabs his stuff, kicking the door shut behind him as he walks into the room. His duvet is gone, along with Snape’s blanket, but the ugly armchair is still there. He lets out a small breath of relief. There’s been no evidence so far that Snape intends on forcing him away again - the opposite, actually - but somehow seeing the armchair calms his fear. There’s even a couple of narrow shelves stuck to the wall above it, making it seem almost like it belongs. As much as something that horrendous can ever belong in a room.

The rest of the space has changed as well; clearly, Snape has been busy. The two walls adjacent to his potions setup have been set up with the framework for more workspace, forming a U around that side of the room that wouldn’t be possible if not for the fact that the windows have been covered with protective wooden boards. It’ll be a pain to pull down again, so he must be planning to increase production and rent the space long term.

To be honest, Harry would do the same if he could, and it’s easier to scale up brewing potions than fixing old brooms. His jealousy returns, and he has the childish thought that he’s been renting a workshop in this building for much longer than Snape and if anyone deserves a nice big private space, it’s Harry. He shakes off the feeling forcefully.

“W-want some help?” he asks, even though he should be fixing the broom right now. It’s low-key disturbing him that Snape hasn’t said anything yet. Is he angry? Annoyed? Or is he just busy concentrating on what he wants to get done today? It’s so bloody hard to tell.

He doesn’t know Snape at all. Sure, the man taught him at school for years and was - is - a total dickhe*d. But no adult shows their true selves to children; and besides, people change. Harry certainly has, so why not Snape? He’s a bloody vegan now, for one thing, and still a genius at potions despite that fact. He’s clearly a practical, physically capable man, which is something Harry often finds the intellectual types to be lacking. Independent, obviously. Solitary, even. Because he’s a bit of a bastard? Or is he a bastard because he wants to be solitary?

Snape crouches under one of the new units, where two sets of rails have been screwed into the side, and doesn’t answer.

Nosy and nervous, Harry props his broom against a counter and goes to have a look at what the man is doing. “That’s b-backwards,” he says, crouching and climbing into the next section over. There aren’t any sides on the units yet, so he can crawl along the inside easily. He points to the section of rail in Snape’s hand. On the others, the little wheel is at the back facing up, but Snape is holding this one facing down and to the front. It’s a stupid mistake, not one he expects of the man.

Snape looks more annoyed than grateful at being saved from the error, frowning to himself as he spins the piece around to match the others, and lines up the screw holes with crosses marked in pencil on the wooden frame. He pulls out a black muggle cordless drill from under his leg, and Harry holds the rail in place for him.

Harry doesn’t bother asking why he’s using muggle implements to build the shelves, since he already knows from experience that it’s safer. Nothing will fall apart from a stray magic-nullifying effect or pulse of power, or a misaimed finite ending all the sticking charms. Knowing doesn’t make the image of Snape holding a power drill any less strange though.

“Where d-do you k-keep all this stuff, anyway?” Harry asks. He hasn’t seen it before, despite having helped Snape pack up everything from the lab. Vibrations go up Harry’s arms as a screw is drilled into the first hole. He sees Snape’s jaw moving as he lines up the second screw, this one at the back of the unit. Harry lowers his elbow so that Snape can reach over his arm more comfortably. “What d-did you say?”

Snape turns, his hair brushing against Harry’s wrist in the limited space. “I said that it is none of your concern,” he mouths with a stern look. Oof, okay. Harry waits for him to turn away again, then sarcastically signs a small circle over his chest with his spare hand - sorry.

Snape drills in the second screw, and Harry can see even from this angle that he’s still scowling. With no further need to hold up the rail, he pulls back his hand - but Snape unexpectedly grabs a hold of his wrist to stop him. He’s so preoccupied staring at the place where their hands meet that he misses the first half of Snape’s words, looking up just in time for the ending. “—do that.”

He follows the man’s gaze back to his hand, where he can now see a gigantic purple bruise has appeared. “Oh. H-hit it with a, a h-hammer,” he explains, shrugging. “It’s fine.” Can Snape feel his pulse racing? He must be able to, with his fingers pressed against Harry’s pulse point. A flush crawls over his skin as he remembers that he has half a beard and probably smells of sweat and sharp, metallic crosslin dust. God he’s determined to embarrass himself today, isn’t he?

Snape looks out into the room, his grip still a vice around Harry’s wrist. A small glass jar flies into his other hand and he places it on the floor so that he can unscrew the lid one handed.

“It’s r-really fine,” Harry insists, gaining enough presence of mind to pull his arm back, twisting his wrist away gently so as not to offend.

Snape lets go. His mouth opens in what might be an “ah.” He already has a blob of healing balm on his fingertips, but he swipes it away on the lip of the pot before pushing it in Harry’s direction. He lowers his other hand, placing it palm-up on his knee.

He seems as unsure as Harry about what to do with the parts of them that were touching. It feels strangely unreal. Snape feels unreal, still. An imaginary friend to accompany him through his midlife crisis. Harry takes the lead by pulling his jumper sleeve down, and Snape wipes his hand on his robe, and neither of them says anything.

The balm has a quick cooling effect, fading as the skin goes numb. “Thanks.”

With the awkward briskness of people who want to pretend nothing of significance has occurred, they set about fixing up the wall units again and the afternoon passes in a stilted, awkward kind of peace. Still, there’s an uneasy feeling that won’t leave Harry’s stomach, no matter how resolutely he ignores it.

Snape disappears into the kitchen sometime in the early evening, returning a few minutes later with sandwiches. He must have gone out to get supplies after all.

There isn’t a dining table or anything, so they sit in their armchairs to eat. Harry tries not to make it obvious that he keeps glancing sideways at his companion. He’s used to silence - hell, it’s his entire life - and surely Snape is the same way. That doesn’t make it any less awkward though.

Snape looks as annoyed as ever. Maybe that’s his happy face? No way of knowing. There must be some kind of spell that tells you how someone is feeling. Snape could have just thought of a great joke, laughing himself silly on the inside, and Harry would have no idea.

Harry finishes his sandwich first and takes his plate through to the kitchen to wash up. There’s only the plate, a knife and a chopping board to clean, but he takes his time, wiping crumbs off the surface and putting away the tub of margarine that Snape left out on the side. He doesn’t seem the type to leave a mess in the kitchen, but Harry’s already been proven wrong about a lot of things when it comes to Snape.

He opens a cupboard to put the plate away, sees Snape standing in the doorway out the corner of his eye, and jumps in surprise. Snape holds out his plate, and Harry takes it to cover his nerves.

“I didn’t mean to starty you,” Snape says. Starty? Startle. Who uses the word startle in real life?

“It’s fine,” he replies quickly, turning away to run the plate under the tap. By the time he’s done, Snape is gone and he lets out a little sigh. What the f*ck is wrong with him?

Snape’s being too polite, that’s what it is. It’s freaking him out. Harry turned up in the middle of the night and was let inside without a word. He brought that ugly chair in, and it’s still here - and it’s been cleaned. He noticed that on his way to the kitchen. The crusty stain is gone, along with Harry’s duvet. He even keyed himself into the wards without asking permission first - a massively creepy dick move that would have Harry running for the hills if their positions were reversed - and again, no repercussions or complaints.

And there’s the healing balm and the sandwiches and the overwhelming normalness of it all. Building cupboards and drawers together like it’s ordinary. Like that’s just a thing Snape and Harry do of an afternoon.

Spending the day with Severus Snape should never feel this normal. The day before yesterday, he knew with absolute certainty that the man was dead. As in, not of this world, doesn’t exist anymore, dead. He was just Trygve Tandberg, some guy Harry was briefly friends with before he was told to f*ck off.

With that memory, it all clicks into place and he knows exactly why Snape is being so nice. Back then, when he was Trigger, it happened before… He started acting all polite, holding back his acerbic comments and jibes, and why?

Because Snape uses mean words to push people away. When he stops, it’s because he’s already decided on another way of getting rid of them so he doesn’t need to be rude any more. That’s why Harry feels so uneasy. Snape knows how he’s going to throw Harry out again, so he’s acting like nothing’s wrong. It’s all fine to him because he has an exit strategy planned.

But Harry has no idea what the plan is, and no way of finding out. All he can do is watch and wait for the signs - and decline to make any more open-ended deals.

Harry dries his hands and returns to the main room. Snape is putting up cupboard doors and doesn’t seem to need any help - in fact he looks resolute on ignoring the fact that Harry is here - so he sits down on the floor next to the bag of brush twigs and sets to work straightening them up.

He’s so focussed on putting the broom back together that he doesn’t notice that Snape has gone to bed until he’s finished his work on the brush. He looks up to show the other man his triumph, and sees that he’s lying on the transfigured armchair, already safely tucked away under his blanket.

Damn. Harry was hoping to find out where that blanket gets hidden in the daytime. It only feels like ten o’clock, but a tempus spell reveals it to be two in the morning, and Harry has no idea how he kept going for so long without taking a break. No wonder Snape went to sleep.

He could have said something though, a goodnight or whatever. Maybe he did and Harry didn’t notice. He sits back, stretching out his folded legs. He’s getting far too old to sit on the floor for six hours, but it’s worth it.

The Nimbus is a thing of beauty. Sleek, beautifully trimmed, without a single hair crossing out of place. It looks brand new.

He moves it to the side, gives it one last admiring look and then throws all his tools into the bag and puts that aside too. The carpet is littered with tiny pieces of trimmed bristle, reminding him of the bathroom sink back home. It takes a while to banish them all, and he’s tempted to just finish it off in the morning, but is put off by the thought of Snape waking up to the mess.

Finally, bleary eyed and sleepy, he falls into the armchair to rest.

Chapter 21: Sink

Chapter Text

There’s something stuck to his face. He opens his eyes, blinking wildly, and sits up frantic. All he can see is dark yellow. Swiping at the thing, he discovers that it’s a page from a notepad. He feels around on the floor for his glasses, frowning through his sleepy haze.

Snape is gone, his blanket abandoned at the bottom of the transfigured armchair. The bathroom door is closed, so Harry surmises that that’s where he went. Having a shower? What a ridiculous thought - no one gets hair like that if they know how to use a shower.

Harry yawns and returns his gaze to the page in his hand.

If you absolutely must insist on sleeping in my workshop every night then please for the love of Salazar have the decency to do so fully dressed. There are some horrors for which even a full night of rest cannot prepare me.

Harry grimaces, vaguely recalling having kicked off his jeans sometime in the early hours when they were pinching at his knees. He hasn’t slept in pyjamas since Hogwarts.

Having done the important job of reading the note, he takes his time stretching. The armchair is definitely not made for humans to sleep on. Tonight he’ll have to transfigure it into something more comf-

Tonight.

Tonight, tomorrow night, the rest of his life. Is that the plan? Just… sleep here forever? He doesn’t even have a toothbrush or a shaving razor, or a towel or clean clothes. He still stinks, and tomorrow is James day.

He has no choice, he’s going to have to deal with his bathroom sooner or later. He turns the notebook page over and scribbles on the back. Gone home to shower. Don’t lock me out.

He gets dressed as quickly as he can, not wanting Snape to walk in on him leaving, and steps out onto the veranda. The fresh air helps him breathe. It’s still early, and he sticks around despite the rush of a moment earlier, to admire the growing orange streak on the horizon.

It’s his first sunrise in forever. Without conscious decision, he watches it until the sun is halfway up and too bright to look at, then apparates home. He intentionally lands on the bed, just in case the floor is flooded with a few inches, but the carpet and his discarded clothes look dry. He steps down, walking cautiously towards the bathroom. The floor doesn’t squelch under his trainers, which is another good sign. There is a distinct standing-water smell though.

A tiny wave rushes out as he opens the door, along with a stronger unpleasant odour. He banishes the sitting water and casts an air-purifying charm, then while he’s at it he banishes the hairs as well. He scourgifies the sink, then the mirror and the toilet. The shower, the floor, the walls. Even the ceiling lamp. It doesn’t make them clean exactly, still stained from the grime, but he feels better for it.

It’s a burden he wasn’t aware of carrying, released. He crouches down by the sink and sees the pipe that popped loose, spilling water everywhere. It smells of mildew and rot. He sticks his wand inside, wincing, and tries to banish as much of the hair and gross gunk as he can. It’s not really how you’re meant to do it, but he’s learnt his lesson from trying half-remembered household maintenance charms. He casts aguamenti to check that the blockage is gone. Nothing comes back up, so he shoves the pipe back in the hole it popped out of. The casing of the bottle trap is cracked, so he casts reparo on it, screws it back on properly and then stands up to run the tap.

It doesn’t leak, and he’s stupidly pleased about that. This two-minute job feels like a much bigger victory than the weeks of work he’s done on the Nimbus 1000, somehow. He’s fixed the sink, and the idea of coming home again won’t fill him with dread. Well, not as much dread.

He shaves his crazy half-beard to a smooth, even stubble, then showers and brushes his teeth. His towel smells weird so he spells himself dry and takes it to the utility room. There’s a washing machine, half-muggle half-magic, which he’s sure he must have used at least once in the last two years. He pops the towel inside and goes to find it some friends.

His bedroom is a goldmine of things that need washing, way more than one load’s worth, so he picks out two pairs of trousers - who needs more than two? - a half dozen t-shirts, three jumpers and as many pants and socks as he can find. He can see bits of the actual carpet afterwards, and is surprised to remember that it’s cream, not dark grey. He finds a second towel hidden at the bottom of the bed, scrunched into the gap between the mattress and the frame, so he takes that as well. It’s a good armload. A bit smelly.

With the washing machine spinning and shaking the house down, he braves the kitchen. The fridge is a no-go, and he knows that already - it’s sealed shut with a spell from a few months after… after Ginny died. When it was a lot more difficult to cope with the mountainous burden of rotten vegetables and old eggs. Even now, he thinks it might be better to just banish the thing and buy a new one. Not quite as extreme as burning the house down, which seemed like a good idea until a few hours ago. Progress.

He wants to tell someone about it. That’s a revelation in itself. He wants to go and tell someone about how much better he’s doing today, how he’s washing his clothes in the machine instead of casting cleaning charms over and over again with diminishing returns. But there’s no one to tell. He can’t imagine trying to describe it to Snape, who has no idea about the filth he’s been living in for the last two years. He doesn’t want Snape knowing about that. He’s one of the only people who doesn’t treat him like a broken doll to be carried carefully from one place to another, lest it fall to pieces.

He resolves to tell Molly about it tomorrow. The basics, at least. She probably thinks he’s been back to doing-the-laundry levels of functioning adulthood for a while, and he doesn’t want to worry her with details, but she’ll understand.

He selects a wide pan suitable for risottos and casseroles, a couple of knives and a wooden spoon, and shrinks them down so that they fit in his dressing gown pocket. He grabs his bathroom essentials as well, then looks for a really small box to put them in. He must have one somewhere, one of those little ones for carrying nails.

There are a thousand small tasks to keep busy with until the washing is done, but he starts to feel tired so he carries his newly-found fist-sized plastic box into the utility room and sits opposite the washing machine with his legs crossed, watching it spin.

Is he being too presumptuous? Almost definitely. He could still get back to the unit and find that Snape has locked him out. Or thrown out the armchair, or… His worries resurface. Snape has some kind of plan to get rid of him, and if he has any common sense at all he’ll scarper beforehand - so why is he doubling-down instead? He should be relieved.

But he’s feeling better than he has done in ages, and maybe Snape’s a part of that. A catalyst for wanting to prove that he’s capable, that he isn’t the kind of person who’s going to spend the rest of his life sleeping in a room with black mould on the walls and curtains that haven’t been opened in forever.

The washing machine beeps, pulling him from his thoughts, and he opens it up. His nose fills with the smell of flowery clean laundry, an unfamiliar but welcome scent. He pulls out the clothes one item at a time, spells them dry, folds and shrinks them, and then puts them in the box with everything else. If it doesn’t seem like the right time, he’ll just hide it behind the armchair for a while.

He apparates back to the veranda and clicks the lid of the box shut before tentatively pushing at the door, afraid that it might not let him in.

Snape has his back turned to Harry with four cauldrons on the go. He stirs one with his left hand while adjusting the temperature of the flame on another with his right, then steps to the right twice and pulls down a clean glass stirring rod. It’s the same dance Harry has seen tens of times before with Trigger.

“I’m back,” Harry says, though Snape must have heard the door open, and gets a brief hand wave of acknowledgement.

Just a little wave. As if it’s totally normal for him to be here, an unextraordinary event.

He hides the box behind his armchair while Snape is distracted. Harry’s duvet is gone again so he hunts for it in the kitchen cupboards - mostly because they’re the only place he can think of, since there’s no storage space in the bathroom. It must be shrunk away and hidden somewhere. He checks under the armchairs, down the side of the bookcase, nothing. Oh, well. He’ll find out eventually. Most likely when Snape throws it off the veranda.

He takes the broom back downstairs to wrap it in brown paper from a roll behind his workshop door, then hauls it back upstairs to the owlery. The walking makes him breathless, and he curses the simptus root he inhaled. It’s going to really piss him off if it has long-lasting effects on his health.

He writes a note to the client requesting the second Nimbus, and attaches it to the package along with a pre-printed card on broom care and what to expect from refurbished products. He selects one of the larger owls, affectionately known as Sir Barnaby, and bribes him with three treats. “Wait ar-round to see if she w-wants to send the other b-broom back with you, alright?”

He has nothing else to do today, so he stands around for a minute, uncertain of where to go. Then he decides that he’s spent enough time away from Snape, and his workroom is on this floor anyway. Fewer stairs, better for Harry’s injured lungs.

No matter how many times he does it, there’s still a thrill to walking in and out of the workspace as he likes. That takes trust, doesn’t it? Absolute trust. He can’t think of anyone he’d key into the wards of his own workroom - unfairly, definitely not Snape. Especially not Ron. Perhaps Hermione, though there’s no reason to. She would always put things back where she found them, he’s sure.

It’s remarkably easy to slot into Snape’s work, just as it was with Trigger. Obviously that’s because they’re the same person, but something holds them separate in his mind. Snape silently slides a chopping board and a jar of knotgrass over for Harry to strip. Making a new batch of polyjuice, then. That’s almost disappointing - he’s not exactly pretty to look at, but Harry reckons he might miss the real Snape when he turns back into Trygve.

Chapter 22: Feel Wheel

Chapter Text

Molly notices right away that he’s in a better mood than he has been for months - and wastes no time in asserting what she thinks the reason might be.

“Got her back, then?” she asks, as soon as she spots him sitting down at the kitchen table. No ‘hello how are you’, no questions about work or his eating habits today. Right into the meat of it. As if Harry couldn’t possibly have any other reason to be happy than a bloody girlfriend. One that exists entirely in the imagination of his dead wife’s mother, no less.

“It’s a m-man,” he replies in an attempt to stop her up short, then quickly adds: “He’s just a f-friend.” He doesn’t want her to take his statement the wrong way, although she’s proven plenty of times in the past that she’ll take any statement any way she likes, thank you very much.

Molly doesn’t pause for long - having brought up the twins, there’s very little in the world capable of shocking her. She puffs up her cheeks, waving a hand in the air. “Well, so long as he makes you happy. Just look at you-- --that smile been hiding all these months?”

Harry blinks, his turn to be taken aback, and puts a hand to his cheek. He hadn’t noticed.

It’s disturbing that not even the fact that it’s a man will stop her from being convinced there’s romance involved in his slow recovery. “It’s n-not- he’s t-twenty years ol…older th-than m-me,” he tries, all too aware that being flustered is making his stutter worse. His desire to communicate that Severus Snape is absolutely not his boyfriend overrides the fear of judgement however - even as he’s aware that every sentence longer than a grunt is only adding to Molly’s conviction. “The s-same age as m-my, my dad w-would be.”

Molly brings him a cup of tea and sits opposite him at the long table. The mug has Number 2 Dad painted on it in chipped paint. She looks at him seriously over her own mug. “Harry. That’s the most I have heard you speak in over a year. For all I care he could be a death eater. He’s a bloody--”

Well, that takes another of his arguments off the table. He holds up a hand to stop her rambling. “I didn’t- sorry, I m-missed the l-last bit.”

She takes out her wand and charms shining letters in the air between them. I don’t care if he’s a death eater or even Voldemort returned from the dead, he’s a bloody miracle worker and I would kiss him myself if I could. The glittery words blend together, dispersing quickly.

That’s an image he could do without.

Harry doesn’t think he’s been that bad anyway. At least, not in front of Molly. There’s no way she can know any of the worst things, and definitely nothing that should make her think that Voldemort could be a good match for him. He has no choice but to give up convincing her though - if she’d accept the dark lord himself, then what can he say about Snape to put her off? He makes a last feeble attempt. “He’s not my- we’re… We’re n-not even f-friends, really. He’s p-planning some w-way to get r-rid of me.”

She gives him a pitying look. “I’m sure it’ll work out, dear.”

Augh, she’s insufferable!

Before he can say anything else, she looks left with her eyebrows raised and smiles. “That’ll be James,” she says, getting up hurriedly.

She brings out James a minute later, who is obviously in a foul, tired out mood but insistent on not going back to bed. He wriggles sluggishly in her arms, trying to escape the possibility of being taken back to his cot while tears and snot run down his face. “He’s been like this all week,” Molly explains, passing him awkwardly into Harry’s arms. He’s glad to feel useful. “Arthur is absolutely useless, I-- --forgets he ever had children.” She shakes her head sternly.

Harry keeps James occupied with an animated dragon toy, getting him to laugh in bursts between stretches of very determined grizzling. He is totally stubborn, and refuses to change his mood no matter how many times the dragon farts in Harry’s face.

Regardless, there’s no such thing as a bad afternoon with James so Harry says his goodbyes in even higher spirits than when he arrived. He feels like a different person from last week. Someone who can talk, who has things he wants to say. Someone who maybe doesn’t have his life together yet, but might just be getting there. Someone with the will to hear and understand the people around him again.

If only he could understand Snape.

What he needs, he thinks as he walks backwards towards the garden gate, waving goodbye to James and Molly, is some way of knowing. Some kind of… magical mood ring, or something. He pauses at the gate. Yes, that’s precisely what he needs, and he knows exactly where he might find one. He rushes back to Molly. “Is G-George home?” he asks, to which she nods and gestures up the stairs. Harry gives her a smile as he passes her in the doorway, wriggles his fingers at James.

Harry bounds up the familiar stairs. George is lounging on his bed, door open, tinkering lazily with a cube of coloured lights held over his face. He looks up, grins when he sees Harry. It’s a slow, easy grin: his trademark. “Alright?”

“Is there s-such a thing as a m-magical m...mood ring?” Harry asks, then quickly explains what it is when it’s clear that George hasn’t heard of them before. “A small m-muggle toy that l-looks like a ring. It changes c-colour d-dep... based on the m-mood of the w-wearer. Or in this case, the m-mood of someone else.”

The grin widens. “Harry, my boy, my old friend. Don’t tell-- --a woman!”

Harry suppresses the urge to roll his eyes, slightly offended that George would think him unable to tell the mood of a girlfriend - Harry was always very good at telling when Ginny was pissed off. Not that she made it difficult. “Can you m-make s-something like that?”

George shrugs, lowering his toy. “I don’t know about a ring or a stone, but I have a couple of feel eels here somewhere. Changes colour, you said?” Harry nods, and George squints at the ceiling, trying to remember something. “Yeah yeah, green for calm, orange for angry. I know what you mean.”

That sounds exactly as Harry remembers them from his childhood. He didn’t get many toys - mainly Dudley’s broken bits, but even Aunt Petunia couldn’t argue against buying some 50p tat every now and then.

George looks thoughtful. “You do brooms, yeah?” Harry nods. “Okay. Yeah, okay, I’ll tell you what…”

And so Harry leaves the Burrow half an hour later with a small circle of paper, a set of instructions and a faulty Firebolt to diagnose. He’d have done the latter for free anyway, especially since he’s still waiting on the next Nimbus to come in, so he’s pleased with the deal overall.

Standing at the end of the lane, he looks over the instruction sheet of moods and their corresponding colours, and suspects that the tiny square sheet was nicked directly from a muggle toy box. The colours are exactly the same:

Black - Stressed

Red - Nervous

Orange - Angry

Yellow - Tired

Green - Active

Light Blue - Relaxed

Dark Blue - Romantic

Violet - Calm

Now all he has to do is get the thin paper Feel Wheel - not a feel eel - stuck somewhere on Snape’s skin without the man noticing. Then, according to George - who doesn’t have the best reputation for telling the truth, admittedly - with the right incantation, it should absorb into the skin and turn invisible to everyone but Harry.

With what he knows so far, he fully expects the thing to be orange all day every day. So long as Snape doesn’t find out, there’s nothing to lose from checking though. He ignores the fact that Snape has found out everything he’s done so far.

Snape is reading in his armchair when Harry arrives, the Feel Wheel guilt-hot in his pocket. “Good evening,” he says, and Harry waves in reply. He’s done a lot of talking already today and he likes the idea of a bit of quiet reading, so he props George’s broom against the wall near the door and walks up to the bookcase.

He finds the copy of Colloway’s Basics of Botany he picked up months ago, when Snape was Trigger, and settles into his armchair with it. Every now and then, he glances up to check if Snape looks like he’s going to fall asleep yet, but he seems content and alert - or rather, he seems awakely angry instead of sleepily angry. Luckily enough Harry is a champion at not sleeping, so it’s only a matter of waiting long enough.

Other than a brief dilemma in which he debates the legality of waiting until someone has fallen asleep to put a magical toy inside their forehead for self-serving, privacy-ignoring and frankly weird purposes, the evening goes smoothly and he gets three chapters of useless information into his head before it finally happens. Snape stands, stretches and then saunters off to the bathroom. When he returns, he’s in his pyjamas - almost indistinguishable from his daytime clothes in that they are black and cover just as much of him, except for his bare feet. Pale and bony, with long spidery toes. They’re exactly the feet he’d have imagined on Snape.

His hair has been released from its ribbon again. Harry’s not sure what this fascination he has with Snape’s hair is about. Maybe he’s fixating on the noticeable differences between the current Snape and the one he knew back at school. There’s nothing cool or special about a wizard with long greasy hair. They’re a dime a dozen, the world is packed with them. Regardless, he takes note of the way it flicks up at the ends, just under Snape’s shoulder blades. It’s clearly been brushed, as it lies mostly flat down the man’s back, with the odd kink here or there to hint that it’s naturally wavier than this.

Snape turns to face him. “Would you stop staring when I am trying to prepare myself for bed?”

Harry looks back down at his book hurriedly - then once Snape’s back is turned again, his eyes flick up once more. He watches the man transfigure his armchair into the now-familiar cot, and finally finds out where the blankets go in the daytime. There’s a false book in the bookcase. He can’t read the title from here, but it has a dark green cover and lives on the top shelf. Snape opens it up and pulls out the duvet and the blanket, throwing the former to Harry and half covering the book he’s now only pretending to read.

“Thanks,” he says, looking up properly with feigned surprise.

“Good night,” is all Snape says in reply. Harry can almost imagine the short, clipped tone. Why does he even tolerate Harry being here? He never acts as if it’s what he wants, and he’s downright bloody grumpy every time they talk. Yet here Harry is, under the warmth of his duvet not two feet away from Snape’s bed.

He waits a good hour before getting up and sneaking the three steps over to Snape’s armchair. It would be really convenient if he could hear - with a nose like that, Snape must surely snore horribly - but as it is, he just has to guess. Snape’s expression looks serene and calm, which must be a good sign. Harry gets the circle out of his pocket, takes a step forwards... and then chickens out again.

His heart is thundering way too hard. What if Snape wakes up? Harry has the book in his hand, so he can pretend to have come over to put it back on the shelf, but that wouldn’t explain why he’s so close to Snape’s head.

He decides on a tactical retreat, just to work up his courage. Retrieving the box of personal effects, he tip-toes to the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face. He changes into a clean t-shirt, boxers, and a pair of jogging bottoms. They’re the closest thing to pyjamas he has, since he’s always just slept in his underpants in the past.

With nothing else to distract himself, he puts his things away again and sneaks back to Snape. This is a bad idea, he thinks. A very bad idea that could go horribly wrong. It’s also just morally, irredeemably, totally a bad thing to do.

Snape’s expression hasn’t changed. As Harry watches, his chest moves up and down in a slow, even rhythm. Nothing at all suggests that he might be awake - although how he can sleep with lights this bright and nothing covering his face, Harry hasn’t a clue.

He only just washed his hands, and his palms are already sweaty. If he’s going to do it, it has to be now. There’s no way he’ll be able to work up the nerve another night if he can’t today. Without stepping any closer, he leans forward and holds the white circle of paper about an inch over Snape’s forehead. He holds his breath as he lets go, waiting for a reaction from Snape when the paper touches his skin.

Nothing, not even a snort.

Phew. He mutters the spell as quietly as he can, with barely half a breath, and the paper sinks into Snape’s forehead edges-first. It stays white for a few seconds, and then slowly turns a vivid shade of sky blue.

Harry consults the leaflet - relaxed. Seems about right. Mission success. He almost can’t believe it as he returns to his own armchair and curls up in the duvet. Tomorrow is going to be one hell of an informative day.

Chapter 23: Blue

Chapter Text

Harry wakes up first, mostly due to nerves from realising what he’s done. The circle is still light blue when he gets up, so Snape is asleep. Merlin, what if George lied? What if Snape wakes up and goes to brush his teeth and sees a big blue circle right in the middle of his forehead? Does Snape even brush his teeth? A lot of wizards don’t seem to.

Maybe he’ll spare Harry’s life, as a sort of repayment for Harry saving his... Oh Merlin, is this how it ends?

Harry paces for a while, then sits down and opens the botany book but he can’t find the place he left off last night, and it’s difficult to concentrate anyway. To make matters worse and really complete his morning, it seems that the simptus root is coming back to bite him, making every breath a laborious task. His chest feels tight and he can’t seem to get enough oxygen. He escapes onto the veranda, where the biting morning air is easier to inhale. He should have put himself on the respirator for a while too.

With his focus on saving Trigger, he failed to consider the long-term effects of the smoke inhalation on himself. Really, if shouldn’t be affecting him at all but there was always going to be the chance. He’ll just have to hope it fades over the next week or he might have to see a mediwitch afterall. And then they’ll ask him why he only showed up to three sessions of speech therapy and only one of CBT. And they’ll want to know if he’s made any progress on learning sign language, and he’ll have to explain that he doesn’t know anyone who uses it, and how the different sentence structure confuses and overwhelms him - how everything overwhelms him, and he constantly feels just a hair’s breadth from falling into an abyss.

He leans over the rail, using the sharp chill of the metal to push back unwanted thoughts. He’s just here to witness another beautiful sunrise.

Distant clouds threaten rain later, but for now it’s a dry and crisp morning. The sky turns vivid shades of orange and pink, and the first white edge of the sun is just starting to peek up when he feels a wave of heat at his back. He looks over his shoulder and his heart skips a beat as he sees Snape standing in the open doorway.

Oh f*ck, oh f*ck, he knows. He must know.

But Snape simply steps outside and slides the door shut, careful not to spill the contents of the two mugs of tea in his hands. He holds one out to Harry.

The forehead circle is dark blue. Harry almost drops his mug as he remembers the meaning of the colour - romantic.

But then, it doesn’t always have to be romantic, does it? Just… passionate. He looks out at the horizon again, avoiding Snape. It’s beautiful. That’s what it is. Even Snape is moved by a beautiful sunrise. Harry suddenly feels stupid for having entertained any other thought.

They stay outside for a long while, watching the city wake up, though the peace Harry felt earlier has been replaced by a weird jangly nervousness. It’s a good thing he’s not the one with the Feel Wheel on his face.

The odd thing is that throughout the week, the circle insists on staying dark blue through large chunks of each day. Either the reference paper is wrong, the wheel is broken, or the product is… well, a bit crap. By Wednesday, he finally admits that the mood rings he had as a kid weren’t great either. They often got stuck on a particular colour, and he has no reason to believe that the magical version is any better.

Overall, the project is a failure - and now he just has to find out how to get the thing back out without Snape noticing.

Harry takes apart George’s broom and finds the reason for its dodgy steering - some of the braking twigs are bent, probably from performing too many high-dives and loops. The bent twigs have pushed the rest of the brush out of alignment. It only takes him an afternoon to sort it out, but he keeps the broom longer in retribution for the dodgy Feel Wheel.

The only times the thing isn’t dark blue are when Snape is sleeping, brewing or reading. Then it turns light blue, green and violet respectively. Harry doesn’t spot so much as a speck of angry orange all week, despite the fact that Snape looks angry all the time. His brows remain firmly knitted together, and the scowl only deepens every time he looks Harry’s way.

Then again, he manages not to insult Harry even once. Snape doesn’t comment on his lack of intelligence, nor complain about the bits of broom spread out all over his carpet. In fact, Harry returns from the owlery on Thursday afternoon to find that all his stuff has been moved onto a spare worktable, laid out in exactly the same configuration as he left it. There’s even a couple of little hooks on the wall for hanging the broom. It’s almost as if-

As if Snape planned from the very first day for Harry to move in. Well, maybe not sleep here like he does, but definitely in the work area. It makes more sense the more he thinks about it - there are only so many potions one man can monitor without an assistant, and he’s not about to hire one any more than Harry will, so adding all these extra units does nothing to scale up production and help Snape pay rent on the bigger, more private room. But if Harry were to share the space, they could probably afford it together.

It does make sense. What doesn’t, is that Snape hasn’t mentioned it at all. Not so much as a single probing comment to check if it’s something Harry would want. He simply went and built the units, assuming that it would all work out, or not.

All in all, it’s a very confusing week for Harry. It doesn’t help that Snape isn’t being himself at all, isn’t trying to scare him off with his foul temper, but he also doesn’t appear to be planning for Harry to leave by some other means. It’s utterly baffling, and it has Harry on edge.

There’s another explanation, of course. It could be that they don’t argue because they don’t have that many conversations at all. Just a few every day. It’s like… they’re both existing in their own worlds - Snape with his potions and Harry with his brooms - and they just so happen to be doing it in the same room. Harry helps out with ingredient preparation at least once a day when he has time to spare, and Snape makes jam sandwiches for dinner every evening, but otherwise they only share greetings and small, nervous chatter in the evenings.

Without knowing any better, Harry might be tempted to believe that Snape is as afraid of messing up their new friendship as he is. But that’s stupid... right?

By Friday, Harry can’t take it anymore, escaping to his downstairs workshop for the day. It’s a convenient time to use the anvil to straighten out a metal band from the Nimbus 2000. There hasn’t been anything significant to do on the broom so far, so although it’s nostalgic working on a model that means so much to him personally, it also has him bored. His attention is only half on the work; a simple job he’s done a million times before.

Everything’s going fine until the band slips in his hand - should be using a vice, really - and slices a long cut along his palm. He snatches his hand back with a hiss, dropping the hammer, feels the vibration of it thumping on the floor. The cut isn’t deep but blood wells up in thick globules, spreading out over his palm. He pinches his wrist with his other hand and looks around for a-

Oh merlin, it was- it was all over his hands, oh god. Ginny. Her chest was covered with it, dripping red down-

Harry gasps, flicking the blood off his hand. It sprays in a thin line of droplets over the floor. He needs- there’s no tap in here. He fumbles for his wand, but suddenly his hand is shaking so badly he can hardly hold it. His ribcage is pushing in on his lungs, forcing him to take quick, shallow breaths. He feels sick and his vision blurs.

Her chest was covered with it, dripping red down the front of her pale pink chiffon shirt. He put his hands over the wound, pushed the blood back as if-

He presses his hands against his chest. Can’t breathe. Warm blood from the cut soaks into the thin t-shirt material, making it stick to his skin. He sits down on the floor to stop himself from falling. Blood keeps dripping from his hand, and he knows it’s not serious but his brain has gone numb. All he can see is red, blood all over his hands-

Oh merlin, it was- it was all over his hands-

He can’t think. This is wrong, it’s not happening. It’s been over two years. It’s only a cut. It’s his own blood. Can’t breathe.

Oh merlin, it was- it was all over his hands- it was-

“It’s just m-mine,” he says, and manages to tear his eyes away from his hand. The floor is littered with dark red droplets so he looks up at the ceiling instead, blinking hard. “It’s just mine,” he repeats, forcing air in and out of his lungs. His heart is running at a manic pace, pounding so hard it hurts. “It’s just mine, it’s j-just mine.”

He can’t hear the words, not sure who he’s trying to convince, but he keeps saying them anyway. He shoves his uninjured hand into a nearby drawer without looking, feeling for a rag. He finds something, pulls it out and wraps his hand in it before climbing to his feet and staggering to the door.

When he steps into Snape’s room, he can’t remember the journey there. He knows he must have climbed the four flights of stairs, but the memory just isn’t in his head. He slams the door shut behind him as if he’s being chased by a horde of angry pixies, leans against it and slides down to the floor. He’s breathless and his eyes sting with tears. He can’t bring himself to look down.

Snape appears, kneeling in front of him, his mouth moving but Harry doesn’t feel right. He can’t concentrate to read the words, and all he can think about is how the circle is red and black. He can’t remember what that means but they’re angry colours and he can’t deal with Snape’s anger on top of everything else.

“I’m s-sorry,” he says, screwing his eyes shut. “I’m sorry.” And then he’s just repeating it, stuck in a loop he can’t escape. No matter how many times he says it, or how much Snape’s lips move, there’s no sound except for the cantering beat of his heart. Just his heart and the harsh vibrations in his throat, and the throbbing pain in his hand. He’s isolated inside his own head.

Snape grabs his wrist, unwraps the cloth as Harry tries desperately to escape his grip. He turns his head to the side, eyes closed, but a hand on his chin forces him to face the man.

“For goodness’ sake, Harry. It’s a cut,” Snape is saying. The circle on his forehead swirls black, red, orange. “It’s a cut, stop being such a bloody—“

Harry recoils as his hand is thrust in front of his face, but the skin is clean and white, not bloody at all. The cut has already crusted over, just a thin sliver of bright red showing where the skin is stretched. Snape must have cast a cleaning charm for the remaining blood.

Snape lets go and Harry’s hand falls into his lap.

“S-sorry,” he repeats softly. He’s not sure if it actually makes a sound. He’s made a right fool of himself, a pathetic idiot. The terror of his old memories fades quickly, making room for shame. He’s so bloody stupid.

Snape disappears and comes back holding out a small potion bottle. He puts a hand on Harry’s knee to get his attention. “Harry, drink this. It’s a calming draught.”

Harry starts to reach for it, but his gaze is drawn up to the circle on Snape’s forehead. It’s all red now, with a dot of black right in the middle. Like a demon’s eye, accusing and angry. He pulls back his hand, using it instead to scramble up. “I’m f-fine” he claims stupidly, and half runs to the bathroom without looking back. Stupid, childish...

He washes his hands, careful not to reopen the cut, and then splashes water over his face as well. Snape’s towel is the only one hanging on the rack so he uses that to pat his face dry. It smells of citrus fruits, not a scent he’s associated with Snape before.

Then he sits on the toilet with the lid closed, staring piteously at the cut in his palm. The really quite small and insignificant cut in his palm, which Snape now thinks he’s a melodramatic idiot for worrying over.

It’s only after a long period of calming down that he remembers - black for stress, red for nervousness. He groans, putting his head in his hands as a fresh wave of shame washes through him. Stress and nerves - Snape was worried, not angry. Of course he was bloody worried, wouldn’t Harry have felt that way if their situations were reversed?

He can’t take existing in his own head any longer, and finally leaves the bathroom. Snape looks up instantly as he enters the workroom. He’s sitting stiffly in his armchair, a book in his hand as if to read, but the cover is closed. He’s just holding it and scowling.

“I’m fine n-now,” Harry assures him as their eyes meet. The feel wheel is all nervous red, and Harry is glad for the first time that he put it there because otherwise he’d have no way of knowing from Snape’s expression that he isn’t absolutely livid. “That do… doesn’t happen often, d-don’t w-worry.”

Snape nods tensely and some of the stiffness falls away from his posture. The feel wheel swirls through an indecisive mixture of colours before landing once again on dark blue, with just a thin border of red around the edges.

Chapter 24: Guilt

Chapter Text

It feels like almost no time at all has passed between visits to the Burrow, though enough has occurred that he wants to have a few words with George. It’s somewhat fortunate then, that George bounds down the stairs mere seconds after he’s shared greetings with Molly and James.

Harry looks up just in time to see him say “Is that Harry?” with a grin.

His heart flutters and he can’t stop a mirroring grin from appearing on his face. It’s the first time since the incident that anyone has looked that pleased to see him, and it even seems like he’s been waiting for Harry to arrive. The feeling melts away his worries. This. This is what it used to feel like whenever he met up with his friends. The thing that’s been missing every time he had drinks with Ron in the last two years.

Harry holds up the broom but George sits at the head of the table, leaning forwards on his elbows, and accio’s a mug that Molly is still in the process of filling. It sloshes about, tea narrowly missing his long fingers. “You didn’t tell me it was a guy,” he says, making a mock-hurt face before sighing exaggeratedly. “If only I were a few years younger.”

God, they’ve been talking to each other. “It’s not l-like that,” Harry says quickly, though he knows it’s pointless. He contemplates the possibility of never coming back to the Burrow again. How long can he survive without seeing James? Thirteen days is the most he’s done so far, and it was awful. Speaking of which, “Is James s-sleeping?”

Molly passes Harry his tea as he joins George at the table. “I’ll get him up in a minute. We thought it might be nice to have some adult time.” She glances at George, the other half of ‘we’, for support.

Harry shakes his head, putting his hands up in the air. “No. W-whatever you think, I really… You’re t-totally wrong. I’d n-never-”

Molly rolls her eyes to the side, a cue for George to take over. “Look,” he states, his face suddenly serious. He gestures and mimics emotions as he speaks: “I know what you’re feeling. The kilt” - guilt - “is real. I’m the bloody king of survivor’s guilt, and I’m telling you - she would want you to be happy.”

This is so far out of the realm of Harry’s expectations that he doesn’t know what to say. George takes his silence as assent to continue.

“If you’re not ready, that’s fine, but don’t miss out on something good… by thinking that you don’t deserve to do the things she can’t. She’s dead.” He says. Harry’s stiff, patient smile slips, and he sees Molly turn away to the kitchen sink from the corner of his eye. “You’re allowed to fall in love... My sister would want you to.”

Again, Harry isn’t sure what to reply. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out. It’s so… George is far, far off the mark with what he thinks is going on in Harry’s life, but he’s also on-point with the sentiment. Harry doesn’t want to fall in love again, he doesn’t want to try and build a new life and play happy families with a new girlfriend. He doesn’t want to have another wedding, a honeymoon, or children. He doesn’t want to grow old with a wife who isn’t Ginny, make plans to retire together or have a dog or a garden full of begonias and a little white border fence. He doesn’t want to live out the dream he thought would be realised with her, with someone else. He doesn’t want James to have a step-mother who will never quite be the same, or that he won’t get along with - or even one he will, and not even miss his actual mother.

He doesn’t want any of that, because those are the things he promised Ginny, things that they’ll never do together. How can he start over with someone new, share himself the way he did with her? And how can he do new things with someone else, things they never had the opportunity to do together?

It certainly would present a problem, if he were ever to fall in love again… But he has no plan whatsoever of doing that, so he thinks of the quickest way of making this conversation not a thing. “Thanks,” he says, and tries to sound sincere. “I’ll th-think about it.” George recognises it for the no it is, but lets it slide.

The rest of the afternoon progresses much as usual, with the addition of George who drags Harry outside to test out the broom. Harry won’t ride it, but he watches the twirls and dives, George doing the exact maneuvers that probably caused the problem in the first place. Since it’s a nice day, Harry plays with James in the grass and they watch Uncle Silly do his tricks.

“That’s absolutely brilliant, Harry!” George exclaims as he lands in front of them, his grin all but splitting his face. “Better than it’s ever been.”

Considering that the Weasleys have always gotten their brooms second hand, and then passed them down from brother to brother - and eventually to Ginny - it’s no surprise that it’s never ridden so smoothly before. Harry accepts the compliment with a nod. No point being humble when they both know how good he is at his craft.

George looks towards the house, then sits with his legs crossed next to Harry and shuffles close. James totters over to him, and he says: “Yes, it’s me. Unky silly. And who is that?”

James turns and points at Harry. “Da!” Or possibly “Ba!” They both congratulate him on being very smart, and Harry’s heart swells a bit.

George does a little wave with his hand to catch Harry’s attention. “How did it all go with the-” he glances at the house again, probably checking to see if Molly is listening in. She undoubtedly is, albeit with good intentions. “The Feel Wheel?”

Harry shrugs. “I d-don’t know…”

“Did you get it on?”

“Yeah, right here,” Harry answers, pointing to the middle of his forehead. “D-did it while he was s-sleeping.” George raises his brow at that, making Harry realise how that could be construed. Gods, the last thing he wants is anyone thinking he’s sleeping with- with Snape! It’s unimaginable. “He f-fell asleep while r-reading,” he lies quickly. It’s not always a lie, since Snape often naps in the evenings, this or that journal lying forgotten in his lap.

He doesn’t have a way of knowing the exact sound George makes in reply, but it looks a lot like a purposefully unconvinced “Uh-huuuuuuuhhhh...”

“And an-nyway, I d-don’t know if it even w-works,” Harry continues, plucking a blade of grass and tickling James’ nose with it. “His face always l-looks s-so annoyed. E-every time he l-looks at me, he seems so… so angry. But the f-feel wheel is blue!” He throws his hands up in exasperation, letting go of the blade of grass, and looks at George again. “I just w-wanted to understand him better, b-but…” He shrugs to convey the vastness of such an impossible task.

George, being of the single-track-mind variety of wizard, raises his eyebrows. “And would that be a light blue, or a dark blue?”

Harry looks away again, pretending to be distracted by the fistful of daisies James is batting against his ear. He can feel his cheeks heating though, made only worse by the embarrassment of knowing that George can see right through him. He grabs James’ hand and blows a raspberry on it, causing him to let go of the daisies with a giggle.

George just looks at him, waiting patiently. His eyes betray his amusem*nt.

Finally, Harry breaks. “He d-doesn’t... H-he’s not the kind of m-man who…” He can’t think of a way to convince George that Snape doesn’t like him like that, and throws his hands in the air again. Bloody Weasleys! “L-look, if you knew w-who it was, you’d b-believe me. This guy would never l-love me. Or anyone. He’s just… p-pa...passionate.”

Ugh, that was the wrong word to use - but George latches on to something else. “I know him?” he asks, leaning forwards curiously. sh*t. f*ck. The redhead rubs his hand over his lips, the same way Ron does when he’s thinking, but he takes his hand away before starting to talk. His expression is disgusted. “If it’s Lucius Malfoy then I don’t want to know anything about it…”

Harry laughs, but doesn’t say anything else. There are only a limited number of people they both know in the age bracket Harry described to Molly last week, so he can’t afford to give any more clues.

“Mum’s calling,” George says suddenly, tapping Harry on the arm. “Dinner - and look, maybe you’re right. But you don’t fall asleep around people you hate, and you don’t hang around with people you’re angry at. If the feel wheel turns dark blue then you have to consider-”

Harry quickly picks James up, not wanting to see the rest of that sentence. “I’m n-not wrong,” he says, and that’s the end of that. There is just no universe in which the possibility of Severus Snape being in love with Harry Potter exists. Not the remotest chance in hell.

Dinner is a delicious chicken casserole, and Molly insists that he take some home to eat with his friend later, which means that Harry has to explain that his friend is vegan and can’t eat it. He’s pretty pleased about being able to slip that one in, because even if it were to get out somehow that Snape is alive, no one would ever put the two together. His joy is short-lived however, as Molly gets up and announces that she will quickly make him “a little something so he knows he’s always welcome.” An offer Snape will never hear, as long as Harry lives.

He escapes an hour later, a tupperware full of red lentil dahl clutched in his hands. Molly catches him at the door for a prolonged hug, and the pressure of it squeezes the air out of his lungs. He gasps and coughs. “Alright there?” she asks as she releases him to arm’s length.

He nods. “F-fine. Just b-been having- trouble with my chest, b-breathed in smoke,” he explains.

“Ah,” she says, raising her chin. “I saw it in the paper. Harry Potter, saving lives again, hm? You should see hung devil about it if you’re having problems.”

Hung devil? That seems a bit extreme, so he cycles through the possibilities before falling on some variation of young Neville.

Harry waves her off. “I will,” he answers before leaving. It’s not a bad idea - definitely better than St Mungo’s, although he’s not sure how much of Neville’s medicinal knowledge comes from the very real study of botany, and how much from Luna’s rambling theories. It’d be nice to see them both again, either way.

Chapter 25: Derision

Chapter Text

“This is from M-Molly,” Harry says by way of greeting, waving the tupperware of yellow goop at Snape as he walks into the kitchenette to put it in the fridge. “It’s vegan,” he adds, calling over his shoulder. The fridge is otherwise bare apart from the two jars of jam they use for sandwiches - one strawberry, the other blackcurrant. Despite the citrusy smell of his towel, Snape is no fan of marmalade, or oranges in general.

Snape steps up beside him, making him jump, and waits for Harry to look up properly before pointing at his own chest with a questioning look.

Harry shrugs, busies himself nonchalantly with putting the knife and chopping board in the sink, and wiping the crumbs off the side. Snape keeps his workspace obsessively immaculate, but he just doesn’t seem to care about kitchen cleanliness whatsoever. It’s quite galling.

“N-not you, really. It d-doesn’t matter, it’s vegan so y-you should eat it,” he explains, then pauses when he sees Snape’s face. The Feel Wheel is red: worried. Great. That’s no help at all. Worried about what? Harry sighs, leaning against the counter and looking at Snape properly. “She thinks I h-have a... g-girlfriend. I told h-her I don’t, but you know what she’s l-like so I just…” He waves a hand and hopes that’s adequate because he doesn’t want to go into details. He’s already had enough from the Weasleys today, without Snape joining in as well.

He has to concentrate on keeping his gaze at eye-level as the Feel Wheel twirls, mixing the red with new streaks of black. Stressed now, is it? What has Snape got to feel stressed about? It’s a bloody dahl, not a Norwegian Ridgeback. Harry resolves to get rid of the circle sooner rather than later and reprimands himself for not having asked George about it today. It’s causing him more confusion than it’s worth.

“I have nothing to heat it in,” Snape says with a scowl, as if Harry should have thought about that before accepting unwanted food on his behalf.

Harry holds in a frustrated huff. Is that what he’s so stressed about? It’s so easy to go out and buy a pan. He could even use one of his cauldrons if he likes - Harry is almost sure he saw Snape making tea in one a few days ago.

He remembers the pan he brought from home. “H-hang on, I might have s-something.”

He collects the box from behind his armchair and opens it up on the kitchen counter. His tiny clothes are all mixed up with the bathroom and kitchen things, and it takes a minute of careful finger-flicking to find what he’s looking for. “Here.” He engorgio’s the wide pan back to its natural size, placing it on the unused hob, followed by the sharp knife and stirring spoon. “I thought y-you’d have eating utensils already b-but I can p-pop home tomorrow to g-get some.”

Snape frowns, as is customary, and then reaches out and tilts the box towards himself to look inside. Harry’s clothes tumble to the left. Snape looks back up at him, and Harry holds his breath.

Then the black circle swirls, brightening to its default colour of dark blue, and Harry’s heart starts beating again. He thinks: he really, really needs to get rid of that thing. It is seriously messing with him big time, and if this carries on much longer then he might start thinking that George is right. Which is totally absurd.

He tries to see some hint of it in Snape’s eyes, but they’re unreadable and dark, shadowed under his brow. Snape blinks, and he starts. f*ck, how long was he- Harry busies himself in putting the cooking utensils away in cupboards, resolving never to look Snape in the eye ever again.

Thankfully that’s the last embarrassing conversation of the week, and he manages to avoid anything related to romance for the rest of the evening and all of Sunday.

The Nimbus 2000 is pretty much done, but he has to keep it a little longer to justify the amount the owner is paying him to fix it. The honest and good thing would be to send it off early and take the excess off her bill, but if there’s anything that Harry has learnt about himself since becoming self-employed, it’s that he isn’t nearly as good a person as he used to think.

That bloody circle in the middle of Snape’s forehead is a stark reminder of this fact. It has more seriously dawned on him how much of an invasion of privacy it is, for a man who goes to such great lengths to hide his emotions. He remembers his own sh*tness every time he looks at Snape. Which is far more often than necessary, thanks to the silly ideas the Weasleys have gone and put into his head.

It’s not that he thinks about it all day, or anything. He helps Snape with a batch of dreamless sleep and they work seamlessly without distraction. It just pops up at odd moments. When he looks up to ask for a fresh knife and catches Snape staring, and the man does a guilty little jump, the Feel Wheel flashing with a spot of angry orange. Or when he sees the brewer writing long notes, only to cross them out and tell Harry the short and non-insulting version. Well, the slightly less insulting version. Or when he catches a glimpse of the tiniest hint of a smile while Snape is eating the food Molly made for him, using a spoon Harry brought over from his house. Which Snape then leaves on the side as if a house elf is going to pick it up after him. And Harry obliges.

These he can live with, because between them are the more ‘normal’ Snape interactions. The continued lack of faith in Harry’s ability to do anything more than chop ingredients, and the scornful scoffs he gets when he tries to offer his opinion on an article or book. As if it’s not even worth Snape’s time to tell him the ten thousand myriad ways in which he is woefully uninformed or outright daft if he really thinks that R.R. Scotwell’s study on tripodine spores as a preventative against atrophic curses has any merit whatsoever. He also keeps telling Harry off every time he so much as kicks off the duvet with his stomach exposed. If Snape really did like him in some romantic or physical sense then surely he wouldn’t try so bloody hard to make Harry feel sh*t about being accidentally exposed in his sleep? That helps, in a weird way. The anger, the mini tantrums and despairing looks. They’re not the worst he’s had to live with.

And then on Monday, everything changes again.

Harry wakes from the strangest dream - almost a sequence of memories from his married life, but all twisted up so that Snape was there too as some sort of live-in gardener. Always there in the background, never taking part in any conversations, in a way that’s creepy to the conscious part of Harry’s mind but totally normal and natural in the dream. And Ginny is walking around naked in every single memory, which is also normal in the dream.

He’s only half awake, vaguely aware of the cotton duvet cover brushing against his face, when he senses something new and different. He blinks himself fully awake with a shock, sits up and makes a sort of tent over his head with the duvet. In the relative privacy of his armchair hideout, he looks down and sees his first erection in over six months. It is especially significant because it’s the first one he’s gotten unprovoked. It just happened all on its own. He feels a strange surge of pride for it. Go you, little guy.

But he can’t even do anything about it because Snape is right there. He casts tempus. 5:39am. The other man won’t be close to waking for another two hours, and not fully aware of his surroundings for half an hour after that.

Harry lifts up a corner of the duvet to peek out just in case. He can’t see Snape’s expression without his glasses, but the light blue blob speaks for itself. He’s sleeping.

He should go to the bathroom anyway, Harry tells himself, even as he ducks back into his den and slides a hand down his stomach, spreading his legs. The thing is, he’s comfortable here, and it’s his first time in ages, and if he gets up then the last residues of the dream will be gone. If he’s quiet, surely…

He sighs. sh*t, he mustn’t- he gathers spit in his mouth and licks it onto his right hand, then covers his mouth as well just in case of more sighs. He doesn’t remember ever being a loud masturbator, not like some of the guys back in the Gryffindor dorms who were always whimpering and gasping.

He closes his eyes, conjuring Ginny back from the dream, and wraps his hand around his co*ck.

f*ck. Yes. He starts as slow as he can, long strokes to get him properly hard, as he maps out her curves in his mind. f*ck, she’s so- God, he misses that body, the feel of her. He keeps stroking, biting into a finger and breathing through his nose. It’s harder than he remembers to keep quiet, maybe because it’s been so long since he did this, or since he’s had to care how much noise he makes.

He swipes his tongue over his finger, sucks it into his mouth like she used to do. She used to suck off his finger as if it was- f*ck. God, f*ck. He quickens the pace of his wanking hand, pushes two fingers down to the base of his tongue as he sucks them, and his back twists, pushing his thighs into the wide cushioned arm of the chair. Pushing his thighs onto her shoulders…

He groans, unthinking; blinded by the fantasy.

He stops, freezing with his right hand at the end of a stroke and his tongue mid-swipe along the gap between his index and middle fingers.

It’s absurd for him to lie here, still as a stone, listening out for a sign that Snape has heard him. He’s bloody deaf. But he lies still anyway, waiting for some unknown result of the sound he knows he made.

He has no idea how Snape would react, and is too terrified to lift the cover and check. He’s almost definitely asleep, but... what if he isn’t? Maybe he’s ignoring it; rolling over and putting a hand over his ear for the moment, planning to write a scathing diatribe about it later. There’s no way he’d put himself through the embarrassment of confronting Harry right now, while he’s in the middle of it.

He’d never get up and take those two steps up to Harry’s armchair and rip the duvet off in a burst of outrage, his face full of disgust while the Feel Wheel pulses dark, dark blue.

“Oh God,” Harry mutters, and he throws his left hand down with his right, pressing down on his erection as if to stop it from reacting to this imaginary Snape whose dark eyes are full of proud derision.

No.

No, no no-no-no-no-no… Stupid George and his stupid Feel Wheel and his stupid words and- the saliva from his left hand is cool against the tip of his- oh God, no. No. He tries to force his brain back to Ginny, but she’s so distant and dead, and Snape is so alive and real and here.

It only takes a few shame-filled pumps of his hands to make him come, under the mocking gaze of an imaginary Snape. When it’s done, he covers his eyes with his forearm and tries not to think about it for a minute. Putting off the inevitable moment when he’ll have to process what just happened with a mind unmuddied by sleep and arousal.

He’ll have to realise that he came to the mental image of Snape.

Chapter 26: Cribbo

Chapter Text

After a very long shower and an hour sitting on the veranda resolutely thinking about broomsticks - no not those broomsticks - and beautiful women and how exceptionally straight he is and always has been, Harry has just about succeeded in convincing himself that nothing happened.

He doesn’t fancy Snape, or think he’s handsome or even that likeable - although he does maybe like Snape, as a person, in general. He can concede that. Couldn’t live with the man if he didn’t. They’re good together. Not together-together, obviously - near to each other geographically. It is nice being geographically close, but not too close, to Severus Snape. Conversation between them is engaging when it happens, but otherwise they’re both happy to exist in the same room in total silence. Not looking at each other. Just existing and doing nothing at all. Nothing.

By the time the real Snape appears for their morning ritual of watching the morning sky and drinking tea, he feels totally normal again. Absolutely fine.

As usual, the Feel Wheel fades from red to deep blue when Snape sees Harry. Which is also fine, because it’s not romantic blue. It’s just… default. Default blue, Snape’s background colour, which it changes to after he stops being worried. And he stops being worried when he sees Harry because-

Well, it doesn’t matter why. He imagines that if he woke up one morning and Snape wasn’t there, he’d be pretty worried too. And then upon finding Snape safe and sound, a hypothetical Feel Wheel on his forehead would turn blue. Light blue, of course, because Harry isn’t the kind of passionate person who goes around with dark blue as his default colour.

Merlin, this is stressful.

When Snape joins him on the veranda, nothing happens - especially not as their eyes meet. Nothing at all. Harry doesn’t feel a damn thing, it does not affect him one. tiny. bit. He doesn’t fumble while reaching for his cup of tea, and nothing untoward comes to mind as their fingers touch - like they’ve done dozens of times before - on the handle. Everything is fine…

He closes his eyes briefly.

Everything is not fine. Oh Merlin it is so not fine. Why is he blushing? His face is so warm, why is this happening. Snape is going to notice, and he’s going to think there’s something wrong with him, and then he’s going to look at Harry like- not like that.

He keeps his gaze straight forwards, staring at the top of a telephone mast about a mile off in the distance. He is Harry. He is straight. One little wank does not a gay make. It is all fine.

Snape touches his elbow, and he all but leaps away, putting a good foot of distance between them and spilling tea down his leg. Understandably, this is somewhat alarming for the other man, who is used to the much more normal response of Harry turning his head calmly to the side in order to read what Snape has to say.

“S-sorry,” he says, trying to get his shoulders to relax. “I was m-miles away.”

The Feel Wheel stays red, but Harry doesn’t need to see it to know that he hasn’t convinced anyone. “I’m going inside,” Snape tells him, pointing. “Don’t stay out too long, it looks like rain.”

It’s such a normal, everyday thing to say that Harry doesn’t know how to respond. He gapes.

All morning, he’s been preparing himself mentally for the moment Snape finds out what happened. But he doesn’t know. So far as he’s concerned, nothing happened at all.

That helps put things into perspective for Harry, or rather it allows him the opportunity to force another perspective on himself: at the end of the day, it was just a wank. He was half asleep and already hard before the thought of Snape even came into his head, and he’s probably jacked off to weirder stuff in his life, even if he can’t think of anything right now.

He steps forward as Snape is turning away. “I’ll c-come help. G-got nothing else t-to do anyway.”

The order of business for the morning is an incontinence remedy and a salve for slowing baldness. Harry can’t help but wonder if they’re for the same customer, though he knows that Snape wouldn’t be so unprofessional as to tell him.

There’s a new addition to the workspace, which Snape must have set up first thing this morning because it’s the first time Harry’s noticed it. Then again, he was kinda distracted earlier. A rectangle of small paper notes are charmed stuck to a high cupboard door, each with a short message.

“Sorry” catches his eye immediately because it’s not a word Snape uses, and next to it is the more useful “thank you”, proving that the man isn’t utterly devoid of politeness. Others include “would you stop that”, “I mean it”, “don’t touch” and “you’re making too much noise”. Harry’s eye lingers over the last one for a long moment.

He smiles looking at what Snape thinks are the things he says most often, mostly because he’s wrong. For one thing, there aren’t any notes for “sandwich?”, “tea?”, “we need bread”, or “put a jumper on if you’re going out”.

Snape sets him to task deskinning dried cribbo beans, an incredibly boring job that nevertheless needs careful attention to do correctly. Normally he’d find some excuse not to, but today he’s grateful for something to focus on.

It also helps to hang around Snape while he’s brewing, since the Feel Wheel stays a steady green the entire morning. Active, the sheet calls it, reminding Harry of the way he was always confused by its meaning as a kid. Sometimes his mood ring would stay green even after an hour of lying still in the cupboard under the stairs. After watching Snape work though, he understands much better. It doesn’t mean physically active, so much as “I’m thinking, don't annoy me”.

So Harry does his best not to, staying over his end of the counter, peeling beans and minding his own business.

At around three o’ clock, Harry apparates home to find his muggle bank card. He knows it must be in a drawer or some other “safe place”, but it remains safe from him for a long while before he remembers he can simply accio it into his hand along with the slip of paper holding his PIN. He copies the four numbers onto the back of his hand with an invisiquill, grabs a bag-for-life and heads to the supermarket. A place he usually avoids, because it’s impossible not to get rammed by someone’s trolley or run into by tiny children someone else might have been able to hear coming.

But now that the pan is out of the box, he might as well use it. All those jam sandwiches can’t be good in the long term - this coming from a man who hardly ate at all before said sandwiches. It seems like the consistent daily meal is bringing his appetite back though, and he’s damned if he’ll live off blackcurrant jam and bread for the rest of his days.

Besides, Snape’ll be so surprised when he finds out Harry can cook. It’ll be another face worth seeing- his hand falters on its way to picking up a three-pack of white onions, but he rallies quickly.

It was just a wank, he reminds himself sternly. No need to make a mountain of a molehill. It’s not like he declared his love or had sex with the man.

Merlin, what’s he thinking about. Garlic, he needs garlic. Mushrooms, peppers, courgette, green beans... He skips over aubergine, it’s a cursed vegetable and he hates it. Without having the option of chicken breast, he reluctantly picks up a plastic-wrapped cube of pressed tofu and drops it into the basket, narrowly avoiding a collision with a petite brown-haired woman in his distraction.

He ends by grabbing a few herbs and spices, a small bag of pasta and another of risotto rice. Paying goes smoothly - he pops the card in the machine as calmly as if it’s something he does every day. He gets the PIN right first time thanks to the writing only he can see, just under the faded scar: I must not tell lies. After entering the PIN, he waits nervously. He knows he has money in the bank, but he didn’t check specifically in the last half hour so the doubt creeps in. Then the receipt comes out and he breathes a small sigh of relief. He waits for the cashier to hand it to him, even though his hand is closer to the machine than hers.

Snape doesn’t look up as Harry reenters the workspace. He’s intent, so Harry puts the groceries away in peace.

Chapter 27: Letters

Chapter Text

The evening is a time when Harry would usually settle down to read a book. He doesn’t want to go anywhere near his armchair at the moment though - he’s been actively avoiding it all day - and there’s nothing else to do in the workspace so he takes the Nimbus 2000 downstairs to wrap in brown paper. He sends it off with a note to say that there was nothing seriously wrong and so he’s finished it early. He’d rather lose a few galleons than spend another day with nothing to do. A new piece of work will sort him right out.

While he’s finding things to occupy himself with, he decides to meander over to the building’s front desk to collect his post. Luckily, Madam Cassel is still at her desk despite the late-ish hour. She smiles as he approaches, peering through glasses almost as thick as Harry’s. They’re roughly of an age despite her title, and she has a pretty, round face. He smiles back and she blushes - she’s always had a bit of a crush on him, which is why he only collects his post once in a blue moon. He’s in need of some feminine attention today though, so he gives her some time to chat at him.

He asks for his junk letters, in the fewest words possible, since he has nothing better to do than sort through it all. She smiles again, then asks “Shall I have them sent up to the sand bug unit?”

Sand bug? What on Earth is the sand bug unit?

“I noticed that you’re keyed into the wards on the system,” she explains after he looks at her with genuine confusion. The… oh, the Tandberg unit. Trygve Tandberg, of course.

“R-right,” he replies quickly. He didn’t realise anyone else would know about it. “Um, yeah. Thank y-you.”

By the time he gets back upstairs, the large cardboard box of yellow and white envelopes is already sitting outside the door waiting for him, along with two letters wrapped in a thin note:

These just came in this afternoon.

He brings them inside, gives Snape a bright smile. “Fan l-letters have arrived,” he says. He doesn’t know why he’s trying so hard to appear happy and fine, but the boredom has him on the wind-up. Or maybe he’s trying to prove that Snape doesn’t like him, by embodying the parts of him he’s sure Snape hates the most. “It’s tough b-being a celebrity.”

Snape predictably rolls his eyes at that, and a streak of orange momentarily swirls through the dark blue circle before disappearing again. Huh. So it really is possible to make him angry. What would Harry have to do in order to make the Feel Wheel go completely orange? A hex would probably do it. Make all his hair fall out. He instantly regrets thinking that, as if the thought might make it happen all on its own, because he quite likes Snape’s hair.

Maybe suggesting that Snape wash it properly would do the trick - make the Wheel go orange, that is. Not actually getting him to do it. He can’t even imagine what the man’s head would look like after a good wash.

Harry sets the box down on his workspace and pulls up his stool. Well, his second stool. He prefers the one downstairs in his real workspace, even though this one is more comfortable, more sturdy and just better suited to the height of the table. It would be a horrible betrayal to like this one more simply because it happens to be objectively better.

He puts the two new letters aside, along with a thick envelope of ‘real post’. That’ll be correspondence from clients and people he really knows, while the rest is a mixture of junk, fan and hate mail. He filters through the box to find any he thinks might be love letters, pulling them onto his lap as he goes. Ones with little animated hearts on the envelopes, or his name written in glittery red writing, with a heart instead of the ‘o’ in his surname.

He flips through the pile quite quickly to find them, then pauses. Goes back a handful. This one… He’s not sure why it stands out, but he finds himself staring at it, brows furrowed. It’s just a plain cream envelope, nice parchment but not ornate or special. It looks like any other letter, except that the address is missing. On the front, in tidy cursive writing, is simply written:

Harry.

He puts that in with the hearts and perfumed envelopes because it hits him as oddly personal. Whoever it’s from, they hand-delivered it at some point in the three months since he last chucked out his non-client post.

After going through the pile twice, he has sixteen in total - though there are probably more made to look like ordinary letters. Now for the fun part. With a wicked grin, he drags the stool over to Snape’s side of the room and selects the first letter to read. Snape glances up at him, down to the letters, and then away in disgust.

Harry opens the first letter - one with both animated hearts and glittery writing. Perhaps he should save it for last, but he’s not sure how many he’ll get through before Snape hexes him. “D-dearest Harry P-Potter,” he reads, then picks out a few choice sentences from the two-page letter. “W-whenever I see your smile, m-my heart skips a b-beat. Your b-bright g-green eyes shine with the l-li… the light inside your soul.” He stops to laugh, looking up at Snape for agreement that this is the most ridiculous crap he’s ever heard.

Snape is pretending to concentrate on his potions, stirring and looking in on this or that, but Harry can tell he’s listening - if only to give himself something to be annoyed about. The Feel Wheel, still mostly green, has an outline of black. So hearing about how great and beautiful Harry is doesn’t make him angry - it just stresses him out? And yet he looks just as furious as always. Or… Actually, if he looks close, and maybe squints a bit, he thinks he can maybe see the stress. It’s there in the angle Snape’s eyebrows come together at, and the way his lips are ever so slightly more pinched together than usual, indicating a clenched jaw. Yeah, and now he’s spotted that, he can see a heap of other changes too - the man’s entire stance has morphed. His movements are subtly jerkier, quick and twitching instead of smooth.

Now he’s seen it, he wonders how he could have missed it before.

Harry opens a second letter. “My d-dearest Harry. I know you d-don’t know me yet - yet! - b-but I know you.” Nice creepy start to that one. He scans through the rest, then laughs incredulously. “P-please meet m-me at the address b-below on the night of April s-sixteenth so that we may b..begin our l-life together! Oops, I s-suppose I missed that. Haven’t p-picked up the post in m-months.”

The Feel Wheel swirls red, and Snape’s eyes tighten almost imperceptibly. Harry watches him for a few moments.

“You’re stirring that p-pep… pepper… that potion the wrong way,” he notes aloud, more to himself than to Snape. He’s stirring a potion the wrong way. That’s quite a big mistake to be making just because someone is getting on your nerves a bit. The Wheel goes orange at the edges, making Harry’s heart skip a beat. Is this it, did he finally make the man angry?

But Snape simply takes the stirring rod out, wipes it clean on a rag and places it carefully down in front of the cauldron. He turns to face Harry properly and leans against the counter with his hip, arms crossed. He says nothing, and Harry realises quickly that he’s not angry because of the letter reading - he’s angry at himself for the mistake.

Harry hurriedly picks another letter, too aware of himself now that Snape is apparently paying attention to his antics, but unwilling to back down. “Y-your eyes shine l-like em-emeralds in the… the w-warm sun. I’ll be your-” Next Ginny, it says. He drops that one on the floor in disgust. Next in the pile is the Harry envelope. He opens this one more carefully than the others, but he can’t say why.

You ought to know that I love you.

That’s all. Harry flips over the paper to check the back, but there’s nothing more. “Weird, this one j-just says-'' He looks up and sees Snape’s face. “I’m s-sorry, I’m making you un...c-comfortable.”

Snape looks it. Even without the Feel Wheel - which is a pool of inky blackness all the way across - Harry can tell. Hell, if Snape was any more stressed his shoulders would be all the way up on his ears. “S-sorry,” Harry says again, folding up the letters into a neat pile and then raising his hands to show that he won’t read any more.

He gets up to put the letters away, but a tap on his shoulder stops him halfway across the room. Snape stands back, putting distance between them as soon as he has Harry’s attention. “I am not angry,” he states.

Harry pushes away the impulse to frown. “I know,” he answers. The Feel Wheel is spotted with red now, but Harry can see the clues around the man’s eyes just as clearly. He’s not angry at all. What a strange revelation.

Snape looks taken aback for a moment, as if he was expecting an argument, and Harry feels a momentary spike of guilt about the Feel Wheel. The man nods, stepping away again, and some of the tension falls away. The Wheel pulses with blobs of his usual dark blue.

Despite the peaceful resolution, they both go awkwardly back to their own workspaces. Harry puts the stupid love letters into a “To Bin” pile. Then for some inexplicable reason, he takes the strange one out and puts it in his pocket. It’s silly, and he’s never been moved by either his fan mail or his equally passionate hate mail before. Regardless, there’s something so simple and straightforward about it.

You ought to know that I love you.

It feels honest, meaningful. He can’t throw out a letter like that.

He retreats to his armchair with the pile of real post, not in the mood to go through the remaining junk. He reads a letter from Ron telling him to stop being a miserable sod and come out for drinks already, and one from Hermione apologising for Ron’s rude letter but reiterating that it would be nice to see him again. The next three are requests for repair quotes, for which he writes replies to send in the morning. Two of the jobs don’t seem worth doing for the price it would cost to fix them, but the third - a shaft split in half lengthways - is actually something he’s capable of fixing up rather cheaply.

He’s surprised to find the last letter is from Neville - though he shouldn’t be, knowing Molly. She was probably in a firecall with Luna as soon as Harry left the Burrow on Saturday.

Hey Harry,

I know it’s been ages, sorry I’ve been a bit rubbish. Getting the practice off the ground, you know? Not that it’s any excuse not to be there for a friend. I guess I’m here now, which should count for something.

Molly mentioned you’ve been having trouble with your breathing recently. I can understand why you wouldn’t want to go to St Mungos, but you should really have it checked out sooner rather than later. Lung stuff tends to get worse on its own, not better.

If you’d like, we would be happy to check it out for you. I’m a qualified practitioner, if that helps. We have an opening tomorrow (Monday) at 2pm. You don’t need to reply, just think it over and turn up if you want. We’re quite relaxed here.

Luna sends her love.

Kindest,
Neville, Luna and Daffodil.

Harry scratches a hand through his hair. He might as well go, though it worries him that Nev is so wishy-washy about it. And who is Daffodil? It sounds like the kind of name Luna might give a pet - one that Neville would acquiesce to, anyway - but then who signs a letter with the name of their dog?

Harry laughs. Luna is who.

Chapter 28

Chapter Text

Harry turns up at three minutes past two, half hoping the three minutes will make all the difference and that Neville won’t have time to see him any longer.

Although his old friend runs a legitimate medical practice, there’s no waiting room or anything, so Harry stands outside the Longbottom house to knock. A few stray leaves blow past in a growing breeze, and he wraps his hands around himself despite the warm jumper Snape all but forced on him before letting him leave. It smells of citrus, a familiar scent by now.

The door flies open and Harry reflexively drops a hand to his wand, stepping back into a defensive stance. The man in the doorway is unfamiliar. He smiles at Harry, friendly and open, so Harry returns an embarrassed grimace for so obviously going for his wand.

The man’s head is a mass of golden yellow curls, and his eyes are that shockingly bright shade of blue. His cheeks are freckled, reminding Harry of Ginny a little, but his jaw is square and masculine. “Harry. Harry Potter, welcome. Please— —expecting you.” He speaks with an easy, relaxed posture that Harry finds strange after spending so long with Snape.

“Hi,” Harry says, unsure if he should know who the man is, so he doesn’t ask. He’s led down the hall, through the kitchen and into a pleasantly warm conservatory where he finds Neville sitting at a sturdy wooden table, fingers dirty with soil from the various potted plants scattered about.

The blond man circles the table, puts a hand around Neville’s shoulder and briefly kisses his cheek, murmurs something Harry can’t distinguish and then saunters to a tall wicker chair in the far corner of the room. The afternoon sunlight makes his hair and his eyes seem to shine even brighter.

Harry tries to get a measure of the situation from watching Neville, but the man looks comfortable, laughing softly at whatever the blond said to him. It almost looks like… no, the letter was signed by Neville and Luna, so surely they haven’t divorced. And even if that were the case, Neville isn’t- He wouldn’t be with a man. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, just…

“Suprised?” Neville asks, grinning. Harry draws up his shoulders, caught. He’s not amazing at hiding his emotions at times, he knows that. Still, he knows better than to have let the shock show on his face. “This is Daffodil.”

Not a dog, then. A human. Harry balls his hands in his trousers, plastering on a smile as his chest tightens. He has no idea what he’s supposed to say. He doesn’t want to keep this a secret from Luna if he’s asked, but he doesn’t want to tell her either.

As if summoned by the thought, Luna appears in the doorway. “Harry!” She exclaims, “I’m so glad you decided to pop by, the-- such a fuss!” Harry forgives himself the words he doesn’t understand, as he’s fairly certain she made them up. His stiff smile turns genuine as she pulls him into a hug, and he lets himself soak up the warmth of it. The only people he really hugs are James and Molly, and he finds unexpectedly that he misses it. Misses the closeness. Maybe he’ll surprise Ron and Hermione the next time he sees them - he can’t remember when they stopped touching one another, but he hasn’t so much as shook hands with Ron in over a year.

They separate, and Luna looks into his eyes with an intensity that would be uncomfortable from anyone else. A slight furrow appears between her brows, and she looks sideways at Neville but keeps her head facing Harry as she speaks. “There’s a lot inside his head, bunny. Lots and lots, and he doesn’t want it to come out.”

Harry opens his mouth to object that he’s right here - but then, this is Luna, so he lets it slide. “I’m n-not here about m-my head,” he says gently instead, stepping out of her embrace.

“If you say so,” Luna responds politely. “I’ll leave you to it, shall I? Tea?”

“Please,” Neville says, after making a small waving motion that draws Harry’s attention. With a swish of his wand, he slides a wooden chair across the floor towards Harry, though it isn’t recognisable as such until the plants covering it levitate onto a crowded shelf nearby. “Why don’t you sit and tell me what’s up?”

Harry glances at Daffodil, lounging sideways on the wicker chair. The blond catches his look and smiles. “I’m a mediwizard, would you like to see my qualifications?” His expression hints at innuendo, but Harry can see a crumpled St Mungo’s robe hanging on the back of the wicker chair. Not wanting to cause any offence, Harry shakes his head quickly.

Neville makes the hand motion again. “Daff is quite good, but if you’d rather a private session then-”

“N-no, it’s fine,” Harry says, brushing a scattered crumble of dry soil off the chair before sitting down. “I was j-just surprised.”

His old friend smiles indulgently. “Of course, how silly of me. Daffodil is Luna’s other partner. We get along quite well. Does that bother you?”

Harry shakes his head, but it does. Bother him, that is. So Daffodil is Luna’s partner, not Neville’s? How can Neville be okay with Luna having another boyfriend, right here in his house? Not even secretly, just a straight-up second guy. And how can Luna say she loves Neville, how can they stay married, while she’s in love with someone else? Or have sex with them, or… Harry can’t imagine how they can possibly be happy, but from the few minutes he’s seen it’s clear that they are. They’re happy and comfortable, more so than he can remember being.

“Good,” Neville replies, leaning back in his chair. He reaches under the table and brings out a leather bound notebook, and Harry thinks about what Snape would have to say about that. Leather. “Molly mentioned that you’re having trouble with your chest. Do you mind telling me what happened while Daff listens to your breathing?”

Harry nods, looking between the two carefully. They really do look totally at ease with each other, not a hint of jealousy or competitiveness. Daff waves. “I’ll just cast a charm on your chest.” He points his wand at Harry to demonstrate. “If you want to stop, let me know any time.”

Harry nods again, and then realises he hasn’t spoken out loud for a bit, and maybe they’ll think it’s because he’s being weird about their relationship. Which he is, but still. “That’s f-fine,” he says, pressing his hands together on his lap. The spell presses on him like a cool cloth, not uncomfortable exactly, but demanding his awareness.

Neville prompts him to speak, so he gives them a brief rundown of the simptus root incident, missing out the details about Snape.

It makes him feel weird, thinking about Snape while talking to these two. Their situations are really not at all the same, but considering what everyone assumes about him and Snape, and his enduring love for Ginny, he imagines that Molly might think-

Ah. Realisation dawns on him.

Molly set this up on purpose. She wants to teach him that… what? That he can love two people, that loving someone new wouldn’t- His fingers dig into the denim on his thighs.

A twig hops onto his lap, making him jump, and he looks up at Neville quickly. “Right. S-sorry, I was… Uh. Then I p-put him on the respirator b-because he couldn’t chew. I d-didn’t th-think I’d need it, but I’ve b-been getting short of b-breath since.”

Daff waves. “Could you lift your arms over your head for me, and then keep talking?”

Harry does as he’s told self-consciously. “What d-do you w-want me to say?”

The blond shrugs, looking to Neville, who answers only once Harry is looking at him. “Tell us what it feels like. Can you describe what happens when your chest hurts?”

Harry wants to respond that Neville has just described it. When his chest hurts, it just hurts. What else is there to know? Clearly, something more is expected of him so he tries to formulate an answer. “I… I g-guess it s-starts with a f-feeling all over m-my body. Tension, maybe? Like, all over my s-skin, and then my chest hurts and th-then I get a headache s-sometimes. It’s hard to think.”

Neville writes a few notes, which Harry has to stop himself from trying to read upside down. “Could you describe the chest pain for me?” he asks. Again, Harry wonders how he’s supposed to describe a pain in his chest without just saying that there’s a pain in his chest. “Does it come on fast or slow? Is it— — by pointing to the part of your chest that hurts.”

It seems a bit condescending, but Harry puts a hand over the left side of his chest. “Here. S-sometimes it f-feels like there’s something s-squeezing m-my heart, and it’s h-hammering so hard. And then my ribs j-just…” He squeezes the sides of his ribcage to demonstrate, then remembers he’s supposed to have his arms in the air and raises them again. “It’s not just my l-lungs, it’s my whole b-body. My head, I get l-l-light...headed and then I can’t, can’t think s-straight. It… it f-feels like I’m d-dying.”

“Do you feel frightened?” Neville asks, his expression professional and neutral, but Harry flushes anyway.

“Of course,” he snaps. He puts his arms down again, wanting to cover himself a little. “S-sorry. I just… Of c-course it’s scary. I can’t b-breathe. I feel l-like I’m d-dying, my heart going like c-crazy, and my b-brain goes mad just thinking all th-this stupid stuff.” Harry stares at his legs for a minute, calming himself. Why is he talking about this? They already know what’s causing the issue. He’s told them about the simptus root.

When he looks up again, Neville’s just sitting there patiently, giving him time. Harry feels an irrational burst of anger at how quietly accommodating he and Daff are being. Signalling before talking, facing him, telling him about spells before casting them on him. Waiting for him to be ready, all without comment, without saying we’re doing this because you’re deaf. It’s everything he could want, but it’s making him angry instead of happy and he has no idea why.

“What kind of ‘stupid stuff’ do you think about?” Neville asks. His quill hovers over the page of notes, and he catches Harry glancing at it because he smiles reassuringly. “All confidential, don’t worry.”

Harry jerks his head to the side in a sort of shake. “I don’t w-want to t-talk about it. It’s not really r-relevant, is it?”

Neville gives him an unreadable look. “I think we can end the spell now, if that’s alright with both of you.”

It’s not like Harry has any reason to say no, and he recognises his inclusion as a courtesy so he suppresses the urge to say that no actually, he rather thinks that they should keep monitoring his vitals indefinitely. The spell fades slowly, in contrast to its sudden appearance. Daffodil stands up and hands a piece of parchment to Neville, surprising Harry because he didn’t notice him taking notes. Neville reads the page, nodding thoughtfully, and then looks up. “I think we’d better get Luna in here.”

Daffodil pats Neville on the shoulder companionably, squeezing for just a moment before trailing his hand across Nev’s back on his way to the door. Harry tries not to stare. Didn’t Neville say that Daffodil is Luna’s boyfriend? It almost looks like he’s Neville’s partner too, if that’s possible. Harry vaguely recalls mentions of such things - polyamory - during late night chatter in the common room. It was usually mentioned with derision or mocking, though. Not like real relationships.

This is so awkward.

Harry feigns interest in a nearby plant, which has a large orange flower and deep green, leathery leaves that make him think it’s from a warm country. It might be some magical variety of Stifftioideae, and he considers asking Neville but then decides he doesn’t care enough.

Luna steps back into the room, Daffodil on her heels. She waves to catch Harry’s gaze, and without preamble says “I knew there was a lot in your head.”

Harry is halfway out of his chair, to do what he isn’t sure, when Neville puts up a belaying hand. “Luna, that wasn’t appropriate.”

“It’s n-not in my b-bloody head,” Harry says angrily. Although a lot of things would make a lot more sense if that were the case - Snape’s behaviour, mostly. Him being some kind of delusion or imaginary friend.

Neville drops his head into his hands, the first sign of reason Harry’s seen out of any of them, and it puts him oddly at ease to see the man struggling. “Okay,” Nev says, lifting his face again to meet Harry’s eye. “This is what we know. Your lungs sound fine. There may well be some damage, that’s to be expected. There’s nothing to indicate anything expensive-” extensive, Harry corrects himself “-enough to cause the symptoms you described though.”

“I c-can’t be imagining it,” Harry argues insistently. Do they think he’s thick, or something? “I’d know if it w-wasn’t real. It’s l-like my whole chest is in a v-vice, for God’s sake.”

“No one’s saying you’re imagining things,” Neville says, with a raised-eyebrow glance at his wife. “What you described sounds a lot like anxiety. You might have been experiencing panic attacks.”

Anxiety? What bollocks. “I’m n-not anxious,” Harry says, frowning. “I’m fine.”

“Harry, you just told us how not fine you are,” Neville points out.

“It’s n-not anxiety, okay?” Harry replies hotly. He looks between the three of them, and isn’t sure why he’s even trying. They’re all as mad as each other, pretending to be professionals, with this whole weird three-way relationship thing going on. They’re barmy, and he’s allowed to think so because two of them are his mates. Or they were, once. He sighs, trying to reign in his temper. “If I was g-going to have p-panic attacks, it would have h-happened ages ago, after… after Ginny d-died. I’m f-finally s-starting to get my sh*t t-together. I feel b-better than I h-have in ages. Why w-would I be anxious now, after all this t-time?”

“Why, indeed?” Neville asks. It looks like a serious question, and Harry throws his hands up in despair. They’re not going to understand.

He stands up. “It’s n-not, okay? I’m just g-gunna go. You’re not even-” a real mediwizard. He bites off the sentence, but he can tell from the sudden tension in Neville’s shoulders that he knows exactly what Harry was going to say. “I’ll just go,” he says again.

Back at the Engine Shed, he slams the door shut behind him as he stamps into the workshop, which makes Snape drop his stirring rod into a cauldron. He throws an acerbic comment in Harry’s direction, which just feels like the perfect thing to round out the afternoon. He barges into the bathroom, slamming that door shut as well, and sits on the toilet with the lid down, his head in his hands until he starts to feel human again.

He’d know if he had bloody anxiety, he thinks angrily through the pounding of his heart.

Chapter 29: Risotto

Chapter Text

Harry still feels jittery when he comes out, but he can’t stay in the bathroom forever. Snape scowls at him - a proper one, not his usual background frown - but he’s still too whatever-this-is to apologise so he goes to the kitchenette and gets out the chopping board and his kitchen knife. Maybe if he’s doing something with his hands, he can stop thinking about everything. Stop feeling everything.

He finely chops half an onion while oil heats in the pan. This hob is useless, one of the ones with the metal rings that take forever to change temperature so you always end up burning things or else not cooking them at all. He’d do better using one of Snape’s cauldrons, except that he might never be forgiven for it.

Once the oil is hot he throws in the onion, along with a few cloves of crushed garlic and some cumin seeds. He spells a wooden spoon to stir them around while he cuts up a few mushrooms, a pepper and half a courgette. At least he has a good quality non-stick pan, so the onions don’t burn despite the high temperature. He tries to think positively - remembering something from a muggle tv show about professional chefs using higher temperatures than normal people, and so maybe he’s doing the right thing in having the temperature set to 6. He adds the rest of the veg just as the kettle lid flashes blue to let him know it’s boiled.

Despite the fact that he hasn’t cooked a risotto in ages, he goes through the steps automatically. Fry the veg a bit, add the rice and cook without water until the edges look slightly translucent, mix the stock and add a little at a time while constantly stirring… He’d add cream under normal circ*mstances, but there isn’t any so they’ll just have to make do with non-creamy risotto.

He discovers that it’s easier to adjust the heat by levitating the pan over the hob slightly, and is just making adjustments when the corner of his vision goes all black. Harry straightens up to face Snape, who is holding the notepad and a sticky note. He turns the latter to face Harry.

You’re being too loud, it says.

“Oh, am I?” Harry answers sarcastically. Just being too loud, while he’s out here cooking a meal for the both of them. How selfish of him. He throws the chopping board into the sink to demonstrate how much he cares about the damn noise.

Snape places the clipboard on the newly cleared part of the small kitchen counter - if Snape were the one cooking, there wouldn’t be any space at all, but Harry cleans up as he goes along. He puts things away, because he’s not some f*cking troll.

It smells good.

Harry’s expecting something sh*ttier after the sticky note, so he doesn’t know how to respond. He gets a teaspoon out of the drawer and tastes the food instead, annoyed at having nothing to be annoyed about. It’s missing something, but he can’t tell what. He opens an overhead cupboard and scans the ingredients he bought from the supermarket. Oh, of course. Pepper. How could he forget pepper?

Snape taps a finger on the notebook once Harry is turned back in that direction, drawing his eye to the page.

Did something happen?

As if he bloody cares. Harry huffs. But Snape really does look concerned, and not just because the Feel Wheel is red. Why is he being all worried? Why not angry? Why is he never bloody angry? Harry tightens his grip on the teaspoon.

“No. I j-just met some old f-friends,” he responds, and then busies himself with washing the chopping board and knife. He can see Snape watching him out the corner of his eye, and it makes him self-conscious. He forces himself to think something scathing about Snape not having seen anyone washing dishes before, otherwise he’d know how to do them himself. It doesn’t make him feel any better.

Weasleys?

Snape knows that he only goes to the Burrow on Saturdays. Harry is about to say so, but changes his mind at the last moment. It’s not like the man has done anything to deserve being at the wrong end of Harry’s temper. “L-Longb-b…” Hell, even their name is impossible to pronounce, adding to his irrational annoyance. “N-Neville, I mean. And Luna, and their…” He scrubs a hand over his cheek, catches a whiff of garlic on his fingers. Their boyfriend? He knows there’s a special word for it, but he can’t recall what it is. “I’m s-still g-getting problems with m-my chest. From the smoke,” he explains, and pretends to be busy scrubbing the chopping board even though it’s thoroughly clean by now, so that he can avoid looking at Snape as he talks. He squidges more fairy liquid on, making a lather so thick he can’t see the wood he’s cleaning. “And Nev’s opened a n-new p-practice. Medicine. So I w-went, and his- uh, his assistant d-did a test and there’s no d-damage. All clear.”

He looks sideways at the notebook to check if there’s a response, but Snape is just listening so he continues. They don’t usually talk like this, about feelings or whatever. “Which is g-good, I suppose, except it d-doesn’t explain why I g-get so… Like the other day. Can’t breathe, c-can’t think.” Merlin’s balls, why is he telling Snape about this? Harry puts a hand over his heart, which is thundering under his skeleton. He feels jittery now, less angry and more unstable, as if a breeze could come and knock him over inside. “A-and they said it’s all in m-my head.” He slams the board down in the sink, sending bits of foam flying in all directions. He wipes down the front of his borrowed jumper self-consciously.

Snape writes:

Excuse my ignorance on matters of your psychological welfare, however if there is no physical or magical cause for your illness, then surely even you can admit to it being related to your mental wellbeing?

For God’s sake, even Snape’s against him. Harry leans on the counter with both hands, reigning in his frustration with a slow breath. They all bloody know what’s going on in his head, don’t they? They know better than he himself does, apparently, because not a single person will damn well accept his opinion, despite the fact that Harry is the person actually going through it. He’s the one feeling it, so he’s the one who knows. Surely so?

“If I had anxiety, I w-would know,” he says slowly. He balls his hands into fists on the edge of the sink. “I’m n-not some teenager m-making sh*t up, it’s real. It h-hurts. It can’t be in m-my head.” He’s all too aware that the stutter isn’t helping him sound like a strong adult man who isn’t falling apart. Maybe that’s part of the issue. It’s the stutter, making him look weak. He grinds his teeth. This isn’t productive thinking.

He rinses off the soap from the chopping board and dries it with a tea towel, his movements jerky and annoyed. He glances sideways at Snape, who still hasn’t written anything. He’s just watching Harry, probably weighing him up. Reassessing him, realising how weak and silly and not at all put together he is.

Harry spins, suddenly unable to hack the appraisal any longer. “Would you s-stop that?” he says angrily.

Snape’s gaze drops to the knife in Harry’s hand. He doesn’t look startled by it, but Harry drops it guiltily into the sink. He was cleaning it. It just happened to be in his hand. He stares at it, lying there half concealed by a mountain of bubbles, and then looks up to tell Snape so.

The man is gone, and he’s taken the notebook with him.

Merlin, why can’t he do anything right today? Why is the world determined to make him look like a total sh*t? Why is he a total sh*t? He’s being angry for no reason. Isn’t that Snape’s territory? Shouldn’t he be the one irrationally angry over small things, all the time? Harry feels cheated, somehow.

He’s supposed to be a calm, reasonable person. Wasn’t he always like that? Energetic, annoyingly positive at times but generally level-headed. It made him a good curse-breaker. It makes him a good broom restorer. He’s patient, calm…

But he hasn’t felt calm lately, has he? He puts his hands in his hair, pulling clumps to either side as if to pull out the muddled thoughts racing and scrambling over one another in his brain. Ever since Snape revealed himself, Harry’s been behaving erratically. Calm and happy one moment, unable to cope the next. Being unable to breathe, having what feel like small heart attacks every day.

It dawns on him then. It is in his head, but not because he’s weak.

Snape has done something to him.

Chapter 30: Fallout

Chapter Text

Harry storms out of the kitchenette to find Snape sitting on his work stool, staring at the notebook but not writing in it. The biro sits uselessly in his hand, and he’s frowning. Always bloody frowning, isn’t he? Well, Harry’s about to give him a reason to.

He looks up in surprise as Harry marches over, stopping a few strides short of arm’s reach. “What d-did you do to me?” Harry demands. He has his fingers wrapped around the wand in his pocket. “It’s you, isn’t it? I w-was fine before you sh-showed up, and n-now-” Damn this bloody stutter. He can’t even hear it, and he can tell how stupid he sounds. His mouth doesn’t listen to him, doesn’t work properly. Nothing does. Nothing ever goes how he wants it to. “You d-did something.”

The feel wheel bursts from red to black, betraying Snape’s fear even as he calmly puts the lid back on the biro and places it next to the clipboard. He stands slowly, as if to emphasise how he’s half a head taller than Harry. “Is this what we’re doing, then?” he asks.

“It’s n-not what we’re doing - i-it’s you. You’re d-doing s-something to me, I know it.” Harry responds, tightening his grip on the hidden wand. “I was f-fine.”

Snape’s lips curl into a sneer. “Oh yes, you certainly seemed fine to me,” he says, and his expression betrays sarcasm. Snape steps closer. “Starving in some knee ad-” starving insomniac “-working sixteen hours a day. You were lifeless.”

“I was-”

“Fine!” Snape exclaims with a roll of the eyes, and a droplet of spit flies between them. “I know. You say it all the damn time, so of course it must be true, despite all evidence to the contrary, which any cod-- —recognise, if he had two s--”

Harry has to step back as Snape’s arms sweep up in a quick, wide gesture. “I c-can’t f*cking understand you,” he growls, raising his own hands to create space between them. He leaves his wand in his pocket.

“Ah yes, allow me to accommodate your appalling grasp on the English language,” Snape responds acerbically. The notepad flies into his open hand, but he only scribbles on it for a moment before throwing it back in frustration. “We can’t argue like this,” he says, turning to survey the room.

For a moment, Harry thinks he’s backing out - but he should know better than to believe that of Snape. They can't fight like this. Harry can’t understand Snape when he’s having a rant, because of the ten million letter words he uses to prove how he’s so much smarter than everyone else, but Snape can’t just write it down because - well, it would take all the anger out of it. Harry feels his energy dissipating. They can’t even have a bloody fight because of his hearing.

Before his anger can fully disperse however, Snape finds his solution - an old dictaquill produced from a drawer. Without preamble, he flicks it into the space between them and it begins to write his words in the air, in a suitably spiky and dramatic font. Harry angrily wonders where that dictaquill has been for the last few weeks, but he doesn’t have the time to complain before Snape launches into his tirade:

It occurs to me that even after decades have passed, I must once again be the villain. Severus Snape, planning yet another evil plot to bring down the great and noble Potter household. But I cannot blame you, of course - how could I possibly so much as insinuate that you may not be the perfect paragon of mental fortitude, oh great and wise Mister Potter, the boy who lived twice, wizard of his age - because it is my own idiotic ingenuousness that allowed you once again to take all evidence presented to you by multiple credible sources, including but not limited to your own body and the words of your close friends, who just so happen to be medical professionals, and throw it all out the proverbial window in favour of the quite frankly demented and incredible theory that I am still, after all this time, after all of the instances in which you were proven thoroughly and embarrassingly wrong, an evil bastard with nothing better to do than manipulate you into a breakdown.

Thank you for dropping the pretense, by the way. You have no idea how stressful it has been living with you, knowing that you must be presenting a false face. I’ve been waiting ever so long for the other shoe to drop - and now that it has, I can finally speak freely without forced politeness. All thanks to your shocking inability to understand or control your puerile emotional outbursts.

Free to face whichever way he likes, Snape paces back and forth across the room, gesturing with his hands to emphasise this or that point. He turns back to Harry now, who finds himself speechless in the face of the sudden speech. He doesn’t know which to focus on - Snape’s furious expression, or the words writing themselves in the air between them and disappearing like angry muggle subtitles.

With a free mind, let me tell you what I know for certain: you were never fine. Any belief otherwise is pure intentional obstinance on your part, easily disprovable by examining absolutely any day that has passed in your miserable excuse for a life since the unfortunate demise of your wife. Had you been born with more than two brain cells to rub together, it might have occurred to you by now that perhaps the reason you were able to fool yourself into the illusion of good health is that you spent over a year hiding from the world, from yourself, and from everything that happened - and that it’s only upon your decision to re-enter the world of the living that you have tragically been forced to deal with the terrible reality of being alive when the woman you love is not.

Snape twirls on his heel again, walking away from Harry, leaving him with only the words to read.

But what would I know? What could I possibly understand of the darkness of surviving alone when the people you love are dead? What could I know of the guilt, the stress, the worry, the anger and self-loathing? Of crawling - crawling - my way back to a life worth living, and not knowing if I will ever get there? What would I bloody know?

The words melt away, and no more come to replace them. Snape leans over his work table, back bent and both palms pressed into the wooden counter. Harry takes a step towards him, then stops. He doesn’t know what to do. His anger is still rattling about inside, but it’s all mixed up now. He can’t work out how he’s feeling, so how’s he supposed to say anything useful?

The quill starts flicking through the air again.

You should go.

Harry looks past the words, to where Snape is standing. His hair has come loose from its ribbon, falling about his face so that Harry can’t see his expression. He steps forward again, starts raising a hand. Stops again. He can't think of anything to say.

Snape looks up. His face is drawn; pale and exhausted. He looks his age. His dark eyes are unreadable as ever, and the Feel Wheel has gone white, occasionally flickering with thin horizontal lines of colour. Broken. “I want to be alone,” Snape says. The quill echoes his words.

I want to be alone.

Harry stumbles back as if punched in the chest. He nods once, sharply, then scrambles over numb legs to the veranda where he can apparate home.

He lands on his bed, barely taking in the dark room around him. He summons one of the spare blankets and buries himself in it, trying to stop the feeling that the outside world is pressing in, strangling him. He’s such a bastard, such a f*cking bastard… He can’t tell which of them he means, but he repeats it over and over in his head. Bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard.

Annoyingly, reluctantly, he has to get up eventually to take a piss. He doesn’t take the blanket with him, but it’s a close call. While he’s there he takes his glasses off to splash water over his face, and then leans back against the wall, letting the water drip down his neck to soak his shirt. The room is a collage of fuzzy grey blobs, the sink and toilet barely distinguishable without his glasses. He stares at the dark shape opposite: his reflection.

“Y-you’re a right b-bastard, Harry Potter,” he says, finally deciding which of them he’s talking about.

The room stinks of mildew. The whole house smells old, musty and mouldy. It’s dark. Grimy. Neglected.

You were never fine. Any belief otherwise is pure intentional obstinance on your part, easily disprovable by examining absolutely any day that has passed in your life since the unfortunate demise of your wife.

Merlin. He’s been a f*cking disaster all along. The flashbacks, the nightmares, the squeezing pain in his chest… None of it’s new.

He groans, burying his face in his hands as he slides down the wall to the stained tile floor. He has to sort out his life before he ruins it completely. Before there’s nothing left to fix, and no one left to help.

Chapter 31: Fridge

Chapter Text

Harry dithers over sending Snape a letter all through the next day. He starts writing one at least a dozen times, but he doesn’t have the right words and his intent is still confused, all over the place. He tries apologising, then explaining what happened. He writes some nice things about Snape to demonstrate that he doesn’t think he’s evil and out to get him, but the list is pitifully small so he crumples up all of the failed letters and chucks them in the bin.

He banishes the fridge. The whole thing. It feels awful and wasteful, but he’s relieved after it’s done. Now he can finally stop thinking about how bad it would be if he just banished the fridge instead of cleaning it. He can get a new one, and then in a year’s time he’ll look back and laugh about how silly it was, and how he couldn’t cope but it doesn’t matter anymore. He scourgifies the rest of the kitchen, banishes all the curtains in the house. Then while he’s in the mood to forgive himself for unreasonable actions, he banishes every item of clothing from the floor in his room. Now he doesn’t have to wash them, because they don’t exist. Sorted.

Of course, his only clean clothes are now at Snape’s place, and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be allowed to return, so he spells what he’s wearing as presentable as possible and apparates to Diagon Alley to buy new ones.

He knows he’s going overboard, that acting this overly okay is just another sign flashing and screaming that he’s not okay, but he doesn’t know how to stop. He only has two ways of existing: doing things and thinking things. He doesn’t want to think, so he must do. He’ll just call it a reset. New clothes, new fridge, new Harry.

The street is quiet. Mid-morning on Tuesdays isn't the busiest time, and he’s glad for it. He gets only a few surprised looks and whispers on his way to Madam Malkin’s.

The shop is pretty much exactly as he remembers it, though the purple paint has started to peel. Something hits the door as he opens it, and he looks up to see a bell jangling back and forth over his head, but no one comes to the front of the shop for a long minute afterwards. He wonders if he should call out, or if perhaps someone shouted from the back, telling him they’re busy and to come back in an hour. He stands awkwardly, looking around at the assortment of colourful robes on display, some on hangers, others on creepy headless mannequins with pale hands. He’s not sure if he’s supposed to look around and get his own stuff off the hangers, and thinks he would have been better off going to Debenhams or Top Shop instead. But it’s always so busy in muggle shops, and the isles are so narrow he sometimes feels like the racks of clothes are closing in like the maze from the Triwizard Tournament.

A squat witch appears, bustling into the room through a purple drape of curtain. Harry smiles when Madam Malkin sees him - “Harry Potter, in my shop!” - and pushes down the fear and knowledge that this is his first solo appearance in wizarding Britain in quite a long time. And that he’ll have to talk, and then she’ll know how bad his stutter is, and then the papers will know… Suddenly, it all seems too stressful to go through with.

Before he can object or say that he’s changed his mind, Madam Malkin pulls him into the back of the shop. “I’m sure you’ll want your privacy, famous lad such as yourself, and you know I don’t like having any trouble out front.”

Harry’s not sure exactly what kind of trouble she thinks his presence would elicit, but he remembers fondly how she reacted to Malfoy calling Hermione a mudblood. “I’m j-just here for some robes, no t-trouble,” he assures her. He forces himself to look her in the eye and keep his back straight, acting thrice as confident as he feels in the hope that it will counteract the speech impediment.

“Robes! Well, of course dear-- --everyone comes to Malkin’s?” she babbles. Of course he came here for robes, what else? Harry has the wild thought that maybe the business is a front for something else, money laundering or something, and he’s the only one who’s ever come in to buy actual robes. It hasn’t exactly escaped his notice that the place is quiet though - not just empty of customers, but also still. There are no robes magically knitting themselves together, and no cheerily flickering lamps. Along with the peeling paint, Harry gets the impression that it’s not the center of wizarding fashion it once was.

Well, that suits him just fine. He feels more comfortable knowing that no one else is likely to barge in while he’s getting his measurements taken. “I d-don’t really know what’s f-fashionable, but I need n-new everything. And I l-like g-grey.” He gestures to his current ensemble with a wry smile, then adds: “And orange. M-maybe not for an entire r-robe though.” He looks around for something orange to demonstrate the shade, but the fabrics are a bit more tasteful than the example he has in mind. That armchair really is monstrous, why is he inviting it even further into his life?

Reading his mind, Madam Malkin fetches a book of samples and starts explaining them to him. He can’t follow her words as he’s flicking through the book, and he hopes that she’ll forgive him the apparent rudeness of ignoring her. He picks out a few greys he especially likes, mostly in the darker shades. When he points out a garish orange cotton, he thinks the seamstress might faint from disgust but she holds herself together. “B-but do as you like. I’m not really - you know. J-just make something nice.”

She looks between him and the sample book incredulously. “Just make something nice, he says. With this,” she flicks an open-palmed hand at the orange square, but he can tell she doesn’t actually mind. The little cogs in her mind are turning already, working out how to get it done.

She takes his measurements - “all just the one spell now, thankfully. No awkwardly standing around in your undies, wondering if I’m judging you for the size of your wand-” - slowly comes to the realisation that like Snape, Madam Malkin is also a real human being with depth and fears and possibly a large pile of crippling debt. He writes her a gobwrit for ten galleons more than she asks, and she promises to have the robes ready in just three days, which she assures him is a miraculous speed for four sets along with trousers, socks, underwear and shirts.

He’ll have to brave muggle London after all.

While it’s quiet, he takes a walk down the full length of the North Side. Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes is as bright as ever, windows clean and shiny, but Harry doesn’t step inside. George has part timers running the place so that he can concentrate on inventing new products and not thinking about Fred, and there’s nothing Harry wants to buy anyway. He grabs a chocolate frog before exiting through the Leaky Cauldron.

By the time he gets home again, a new pair of jeans, some pants, socks and three t-shirts in a plastic shopping bag under his arm, he’s exhausted. There’s nothing to eat, and he didn’t get a new fridge so there’s not likely to be anything later either. He eats the chocolate frog and distracts himself with more housework.

The place looks different in the light, now that he’s taken away all the dark curtains. For one thing, he can see the dust and cobwebs. He walks around, banishing and scourgifying things in turn, wondering if there are specialised charms for this sort of thing. He should ask Molly on Saturday.

By Thursday afternoon, he has a new fridge. It’s empty apart for a small tub of Vitalite, a jar of jam and a netted bag of easy peelers. He’s almost afraid to put things in it, just in case there’s a repeat of the rotten vegetables incident.

The rest of the house is cleanish as well, even the rooms he’s been avoiding for two years. The spare room that he hopes might become James’ when he gets old enough. The downstairs loo, which is now at least usable if not exactly nice. A lot of the issues can’t be solved with the two spells Harry knows though.

There’s damp everywhere, and the wallpaper in the living room is peeling away at the corners. Then there’s the stains from mould and moisture, yellowish patches on the ceilings and walls everywhere, and no matter what Harry tries, he can’t get the carpets remotely presentable. All in all though, he’s pleased both with the results and the fact that he’s managed to set foot in half the rooms in the first place. It doesn’t make Ginny more dead, just because he’s moved all her stuff into the attic. It doesn’t make her more dead that he’s thinking about turning the living room that should have been the center of their home together into a work space so he doesn’t have to apparate back and forth to the Engineshed.

He receives an owl letting him know that a broom-shaped package has arrived at work, the Nimbus-2001 probably, and he goes in to collect it. His old workroom feels empty as he steps inside, paper-wrapped broom held awkwardly in the crook of his elbow. It’s probably because half of his tools and materials managed to migrate upstairs without his really thinking about it. He’ll have to use his second favourite pair of dismantlers, which are exactly the same as his first favourite pair, but less worn.

He sits experimentally on his old stool. It’s familiar and uncomfortable, the angle ever so slightly off. Still his favourite stool, though. He’s resolute that no better furniture will ever replace it after everything they’ve been through together.

The Nimbus is disappointingly straightforward. He looks super carefully for any fault, problem or imbalance that might add to the interest and give him something to concentrate on, but once he has it dismantled and laid out on the bench, he knows there’s not much to it. This one got the worst of the fire damage and he’ll need to replace almost half the brush, but he already has the materials he needs set out in drawers: polished, sorted and ready to go.

He stands up to stretch his back. There’s about ten hours of work to do here, and it’s almost two in the afternoon now. If he knuckles down, he can have it all done tonight and then spend another few days at the house. Maybe he’ll buy a book on housekeeping and decoration when he goes to pick up his robes tomorrow.

Despite the unexciting nature of the work it does take concentration, so Harry barely notices the hours sweeping by until the door ward tingles over his skin. He carefully lays down the bundle of brush twigs in his hands, trying not to ruin the work he’s done so far.

The hallway is empty when he opens the door, and he trips on a box as he steps out to look both ways. Steadying himself, he looks down. Well.

He doesn’t have to use his second-favourite dismantlers any longer.

He brings the box inside but puts it to one side of the door, not wanting to deal with it when he’s been doing so well at pretending that Snape doesn’t exist. Regardless, the extra distraction tugging at the back of his mind adds hours to his work, and it’s past three before he’s happy with what he’s done.

Two days’ work in one, and he’s being paid for four. All in all not a bad job for a self-employed wizard. It almost makes up for the months when he barely gets enough work to justify renting the space. Not that he needs the money particularly, considering that he doesn’t have a mortgage to pay and his living costs are the equivalent of a few meals a month.

He wants a sandwich.

Did Snape eat the risotto in the end?

He tries not to think about it, even as he walks up four flights of stairs to the hallway outside of Snape’s room. He’s in there now, probably. Harry doesn’t get anywhere near close enough to set off the wards, sitting on the floor a safe twenty feet down the corridor. He doesn’t want Snape to know that he’s here. He just… just wants to be nearby.

Chapter 32: Robes

Chapter Text

A door opens, rousing Harry from his almost-sleeping state with a gust of wind to the face. He looks up, startled, but of course it’s not Snape. It’s just the sharp-featured woman who rents the next space over. Harry thinks she might be a painter, but can’t remember her name.

He has no excuse for being here, so he doesn’t make one, looking instead up the corridor to Snape’s shut door. Harry is probably warded out by now, not that it would be any trouble for him to break in if he wants.

The woman regains his attention with a soft nudge of her shoe. He looks up. “It’s alright,” she says. “I watch him too.”

“Huh?” is all Harry can say, still slow from his half-nap.

“Snape,” she clarifies, then snorts, crossing her arms over her chest. “Everyone’s pretending not to know, but I’ve seen him. Reported it to the aurors, but they’re sitting on their hands.”

She reported Snape to the aurors? Harry’s breath catches - is that, does that mean..? “W-when?” he croaks.

She waves a hand with another disgusted look. “Ten days ago. They said he’s not doing anything wrong just by existing. You believe that?” she asks incredulously.

Harry can’t believe it. The aurors have known for almost two weeks, and they’re not doing anything about it? Does that mean Ron knows? And if Ron knows, surely Molly knows, and if she knows then- no. There’s no way anyone would think to put all those dots together. Not even Molly Weasley.

“Who else have you t-told?”

She huffs, gestures again in a motion that could mean lots or no one. “Not that it did any good. No one-- --said he’s here for the month, like it or lump it. I’ve let them know what’ll happen if he stays any longer, don’t you worry. I won’t be staying-”

Harry pushes past her, back to the stairwell, and leaps the steps three at a time until he gets to the first floor, where the main concourse and apparition point lie. He can’t be here. If he’s here, he’ll do something stupid. He knows it - so he apparates home where he can pace back and forth for the rest of the night, convincing himself that it’s really none of his business.

He writes a letter to Ron asking if they can meet up somewhere private next week, but doesn’t send it. He hardly thinks that panicked 4am owls match the whole I’m-totally-put-together look he’s going for at the moment. Besides, he doesn’t even have an owl at home to send it with.

He tries again to write Snape a letter, but once more his words feel empty and stupid. He keeps replaying their last conversation over and over, imagining a thousand permutations of what he should have said at the time. Words that would have meant something a few days ago, but which seem flimsy now that time has passed.

When he shows up at Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions at 10am sharp, she doesn’t comment on his obvious exhaustion. He’s clean shaven, and he even tried to run a comb through his hair, so despite the bags under his eyes and a possibly demented expression, he must look better than he has done in months.

The socks are all orange, as is one pair of boxers, which the seamstress looks embarrassed about as she lays them out on the massive cutting table. She follows quickly with a few shirts, as well as a tie and bow-tie, both in woodsy brown with copper embroidery. Overall, there’s a lot of copper and gold embroidery in fact. And not a lot of orange, though he can hardly blame her. He sees a flash of it in the lining of a waistcoat he’ll probably never wear, and inside the pockets of an otherwise tasteful pair of dark grey woollen trousers. Last to come out are the outer robes, which she lays almost reverently on top of everything else.

The first is a dark grey woollen piece that matches the trousers, with wide sleeves and a heavy hood. The second is a light, almost lavender shade, with piping around the edges and in horizontal lines over the chest. The third is… It’s…

“I d-did ask for orange,” Harry says hesitantly, because he knows he has to say something. His inner reaction to this thing is pretty much the same as his first sight of the armchair. Revulsion, fascination and the intense desire to take it home just to piss off Snape.

But of course, he’s not going to do that because they’re… no longer friends, he supposes. They’re not, are they? Friends. If they were, Snape would have owled him by now. Or he would have owled Snape, but he hasn’t. So they’re not friends. Which is fine. It’s fine.

“Garish, isn’t it?” Madam Malkin asks, ignoring the fact that she’s the one who made it.

Harry nods, smiling. “Outr-ra...rageous,” he agrees. “Shall I t-try them on?”

They start with the dark grey outfit, which is the safest. Harry’s not sure how the wide sleeves will look - they seem ridiculous on the table - but once she’s finished with the adjustments, he can’t help but stare. “That’s me,” he says, pointing at the mirror.

Madam Malkin laughs, hearty lines crinkling around her eyes with genuine mirth. “Yes,” she says, kneeling to adjust one of the trouser legs even though there’s nothing wrong with it so far as Harry can tell. He turns to the side, stands a little straighter.

He looks good.

Is he allowed to look good? Stupid, of course he is. It’s just- well, it’s just that he looks good. Like, sharp and rich Draco Malfoy good. Not like if only he’d stop wearing those cursed jumpers good. He fingers one of the buttons, which is made from a disk of polished copper. “I like this,” he says. “M-metal and wood, I l-like the t-textures.”

Malkin beams. “This isn’t my first rodeo, I’ve clothed a few craftsmen in my time.”

The lavender set is more casual, the sort of thing he might wear to the Burrow. Day-to-day wear, but still nicer than anything he’s owned before. There’s no orange or copper in this outfit, just greys and purples. The sleeves are buttoned in, tight around the wrists and practical, and Madam Malkin assures him that it’s stain-proof, accident-proof, tear-resistant and self-repairing. She doesn’t outright say that this is the outfit for visiting James in, but Harry understands the subtext. She also gets out a matching ‘sun hat’ with a wide brim and floppy, tapering point. He holds it up, wondering if it’s supposed to be ironic for wizards to wear wizard hats. Granted, it would probably be very good at keeping the sun out of his eyes, but he can’t imagine wearing it without looking like a fool.

Speaking of which, they move somewhat embarrassingly to the third outfit. The trousers are brown, a shade and pattern that reminds Harry of Remus. When Madam Malkin brings him a dark leather belt to go with it, he shakes his head. “N-not leather,” he says, and she thankfully doesn’t ask why as they select a woven fabric belt instead. Next is a light powder-blue shirt, along with the bowtie, which comes with a demonstration on how to tie it with a spell. The word is unfamiliar, and it’s difficult for Harry to learn new spells without being able to hear them so he resolves to look it up later once he’s alone.

She hands him the waistcoat he thought he’d never wear, and he falls instantly in love with it as soon as he sees it in the mirror. It’s of the same material as the trousers, and the orange lining doesn’t show, except when Malkin shows him a few different styles for wearing it.

“If you’re going for the casual look-” she spells the buttons open, then grips Harry by the shoulders to rotate him left and right in front of the mirror so that the garment flaps open occasionally, revealing the hidden colour. “Or if you’d prefer…” another spell pulls it tight again, forcing Harry into a straighter posture.

And then there’s the robe. It’s not nearly as bad as he feared, but that’s not saying much. It’s so… bright. Awful. Not even Dumbledore would wear this out in public. It’s eye-watering. There’s no way, no way in hell that he should leave the shop with this.

So why can’t he stop bloody grinning? “B-brilliant.” Even feeling the vibrations in his throat, the exhale of breath and the movements of his mouth, he’s shocked that it’s him saying the word. It’s not brilliant, his brain insists. It’s terrifyingly bad. He looks like one of the easy-peelers in his fridge at home. A very stylish easy-peeler, admittedly, with a very nice figure and a flattering cut, but-

“I l-love it.”

His mouth isn’t listening to him at the moment, it seems. Half an hour later the monstrosity is bundled up with everything else, all shrunk down to fit in a single bag. Malkin won’t let him leave the shop wearing any of it because he hasn’t got the right shoes. His ratty old trainers would ruin the whole look apparently, so she makes him wait as she writes a letter of recommendation for him to take to Unique Soles. He peeks over her shoulder before she seals up the letter.

-no leather, mind you. He’s one of those vegiwotsits I reckon, you know the sort. It’s all the rage with young folk these days. Best to go along with it.

She bundles in sketches of the three outfits, telling Harry sternly that he isn’t to get one pair and think they’ll go with everything. She has a reputation to uphold, after all.

Harry hurries directly to the shoe shop, under the same type of fear elicited by Molly when she finds out that he hasn’t met up with Ron in a while. The same fear which in all likelihood made Neville send him that letter. Terrifying, these women. On the other hand, he’s not blind to the positive impact he could have on her business by being seen wearing her robes in public, and she’s been more genuinely kind and understanding than he expects from anyone.

The man at Unique Soles is friendly too, though not as much as Madam Malkin. He introduces himself as Parsley - “Like the herb, but starting with a B for banana,” he explains. Barsley.

It takes over an hour to pick out three pairs of shoes, though it’s mostly Barsley’s going back and forth, wanting to see this or that fabric, comparing with the sketches and transfiguring the bottoms of Harry’s jeans to different styles. Harry can hardly tell the difference between the three pairs, beyond the fact that one is black, while the other two are brown. After a third explanation goes right over his head, the shoemaker simply writes the words ‘orange’, ‘lavender’ and ‘charcoal’ inside the shoes, shaking his head sadly about the state of the world.

Harry pops into the public owlery to send his letter to Ron, then apparates home with his shopping. He puts the orange outfit on and walks around the house in it, strutting from room to room like an idiot and imagining that he has somewhere to go.

Chapter 33: Noodles

Chapter Text

“Look at you!” Molly exclaims. He’s in the lavender outfit, paired with the brown shoes he thinks are indistinguishable from the other brown shoes, but which he checked the label on anyway because there must be a difference, even if he can’t see it. “Look at that, who’s that looking so swish? Is that dada?” She asks James, who giggles as she rocks him up and down on her hip.

Harry holds out his arms, taking James. “Yes, it’s daddy,” he says, in response to his son’s da da da da da da da.

They walk to the kitchen table, and Harry sits on the bench with James on his knee. As always, Molly boils the kettle and brings him a cuppa, which James seems especially determined to reach today.

“Things are going well with your friend, then?” Molly asks. As if that has anything to do with anything.

Harry shakes his head, only too happy to prove her wrong. “We h-had an arg-gument.”

Molly wrinkles her nose in sympathy, tilting her head to the side. “Aww, well now, you show him what he’s missing, dear. He’ll be back soon enough when he sees how handsome you look!”

Harry frowns. “That’s n-not why I-”

George pops into view to his right, grin so wide it could split his head open. “Bloody hell Harry, if I knew you’d to clean up this nice, I’d have-”

Harry looks away, embarrassed, and spots James’ exploring hands just in time to stop his mug from getting knocked over. “Hot b-burn,” he warns, jiggling his leg. “No.” James doesn’t look reprimanded at all.

Once he thinks it’s safe, he looks back up at the other two, who are now sitting together on the opposite side of the table. It feels almost like an auror interrogation, or a job interview. Not that Harry has been subject to either recently. “What?” he asks suspiciously, under the weight of their joint gaze.

“You’ll get him back,” George says, his eyes a mockingly exaggerated mirror of his mother’s sympathetic look.

Harry knows that the more insistent he is, the more they’ll think he’s deluding himself, but there isn’t a sane person on the entire planet who could sit here and let people think that they’re in love with Severus Snape. “He’s n-not my b-boyfriend. He’s not .”

George grins again, having gotten the rise he wanted. “You’ll get him, don’t you worry,” he says, much to Molly’s approval and Harry’s incredulous annoyance. He’s doing this on purpose.

“C-can we talk ab-bout something else?” Harry asks resignedly, rubbing his forehead with his free hand. He can just about feel where the scar used to be, hidden under his unruly fringe.

“We should do something about that,” Molly replies, raising her eyebrows and nodding at his head. “It’s a shame to look so smart from the neck down, and-”

“-a stray dog in a hurricane up top.” George finishes helpfully.

Harry agrees to let them cut his hair, which means that Molly has to brush it first - no easy feat, considering that Harry’s just been running a comb loosely over the topmost layer for most of the last two years. He grits his teeth as she tugs out the knots, while George sits nearby and encourages James to laugh at his father’s pain.

They’re all surprised with the length of it once it’s brushed out properly. “It’s magic,” George claims, tugging on a lock to straighten out the natural wave. “There’s no way all this was here an hour ago.”

They summon a mirror for Harry, who is taken aback by how much he looks like Sirius. Since when has that been a thing? Molly approaches with a pair of kitchen scissors, but Harry waves her away. “No, I… I l-like it.” He’s never had long hair before. Not intentionally anyway, except maybe fourth year.

He excuses himself to the bathroom, but ends up in Ginny’s old room instead. Everything’s the same as it ever was - the quidditch posters, the small bag of makeup on the nightstand and the little hearts carved into her bed posts with the initials of various historic crushes scribbled out. It’s not the room of the Ginny he married - this is a tomb for the little girl, Molly’s daughter. Still, it soothes him to be here.

He catches his reflection in the full-length mirror by the door. He looks different. Smart, presentable, maybe even a little bit cool except for the bug-eye glasses. Young Ginny would probably cut pictures of him out of Witch Weekly to stick on her wall - he turns and looks for the right spot. Probably there, between the picture of Myron Wagtail in his leather and fur getup, and Benjy Williams flying loops over the pitch at River Piddle.

Teenage Ginny would be all over him, but as he turns back to the mirror, he can’t help but wonder if the woman she became would. He doesn’t just look different, he feels it. He acts it. He’s not the adventurous, unkempt guy she fell in love with. He’s more… reserved. Still angry, yes - there’s nothing he can do about that particular trait - but not reckless or sarcastic, he’s not the person who would make sharp jokes to make her laugh, who’d race her to the next door in a room full of booby traps. He wants to sit and read books, live a quiet life repairing brooms and visiting friends.

She wouldn’t love him like this. He doesn’t know what it means, but he’s certain about that. She’d think him a terrible bore. A handsome terrible bore, he admits, trying out a smile in the mirror.

Merlin, what’s he doing? He turns to the door and almost jumps right out of his new look to find George standing there, leaning against the frame with glittering eyes. “I came to tell you dinner’s ready but I didn’t want to disturb your me-time.”

“Thanks,” Harry replies, battling the blush of humiliation creeping over his cheeks.

“You ok?” George asks, his expression more serious, searching.

Harry looks at his reflection, thinks about the progress he’s made this week. “Yeah,” he answers. “B-better than I’ve been for a w-while.” He turns again to see George nod, and by the time they get to the table all seriousness has vanished once again.

He meets with Ron on Monday evening and they apparate to a small noodle shop in Bristol. It’s cash only, and Ron doesn’t carry any so Harry covers them both. They sit at the far end of a long table covered in a thick, clear plastic sheet. Ron talks way too loudly about how the plastic sheet is strange, how the open table anyone can come and sit at is strange, and the small metal containers of szechuan spice are strange, and who even knows how to use these weird chopstick things?

Harry responds as patiently as he can, aware that he looks way too posh for this place in his charcoal trousers, self-polishing shoes and grey button-up shirt. Ron comments on his new look as well, and even accuses Harry of wearing new glasses, which he isn’t - but he notes the idea, because it’s probably about time he tried out a new shape.

Once he gets Ron on work though, it’s smooth sailing. He’s doing better on homicide than he ever did on the fraud team, probably because he actually cares about the cases now.

“-and then I turned the corner, and he was right there, Harry, with his wand pointing right at me!” Ron holds out a chopstick menacingly to demonstrate, almost poking a passing service worker in the arm. She scowls at him, and then looks down at the ticket in her hand.

“Fifty-two?” she asks.

Ron looks at her dumbly, but Harry checks their receipt. Fifty-two - she sees it as well, and motions towards the counter, annoyed. “Your food.”

“You w-were supposed to listen out f-for the number,” Harry hisses at Ron, then turns to the girl before she can leave. “S-sorry, I’m deaf.” He points to his ear, and thankfully her expression softens. Until she looks at Ron, that is, and it’s even darker than before. She shakes her head chidingly at him before she leaves.

“Harry, I can’t believe you dobbed me in,” his friend says, scandalised.

“I can’t b-believe you didn’t l-listen!” Harry replies, and makes Ron collect both trays as punishment.

Harry tries to think of a way to bring up Snape. His time with Ron is slipping away, and he hasn’t asked what he meant to ask. He just has to be careful not to reveal anything, just in case Ron doesn’t know after all. In the end, he decides that Ron won’t notice how poor his attempt is anyway, so he goes with the embarrassing: “Noodles always k-kind of remind me of s-snakes.” He picks one up with his chopstick, but it’s a bad demonstration since the yellowish white thing doesn’t look anything like a snake. “Can you imagine a S-Sl...Slytherin c-coming here? Like... Snape.”

Ron’s eyes go wide and guilty for a moment, then he tries to cover it with a laugh. That half second is enough for Harry though. They’re not best mates for nothing, even if he’s been a bit sh*t for a while.

Harry jabs him with his chopsticks. “I can’t b-believe you knew, and you d-didn’t tell me!” he accuses, poking Ron a second time just to make sure.

“Ow, what’s this, ‘pick on Ron’ day?” Ron complains, batting Harry’s utensils away. “Thought you knew. I asked you about the love potion thing when we went to dinner with ‘Mione, and you brushed it off, so I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”

Harry’s chopsticks pause on their way to his mouth. How does Ron know about the love potion? No one knows about it, not even George. Do they have secret surveillance on Snape? God, Ron knows. He bloody knows- “Love p-potion?” he echoes.

“Yeah,” Ron says, frowning. “The wizengamot thing, you know?”

Harry shakes his head. What wizengamot thing? Is Snape in trouble with the Wizengamot?

Ron grins, leaning forward excitedly. “Aw mate, I thought you knew. Get a load of this: it’s not confirmed, right, but it makes sense. We find out Snape’s been alive all this time, and we’re all thinking he’ll be pulled up for a trial, but the Wizengamot pulls a Section— —can’t touch him. Apparently he’s already-- —his crimes, but there’s no paperwork about the trial. Nothing.”

No paperwork from the trial. They can’t arrest him. Harry realises what this means just before Ron explains it.

“Snape was the guy that got love potions banned by making the entire wizengamot fall in love with him!”

-*-

An extra treat because I love you all. Some rough concept doodles of what Harry's new robes might look like in my head, based off some historical menswear drawings I had saved on my computer.

Chapter 34: Consequence

Chapter Text

Harry gapes. Of course. It makes so much sense. He feels stupid for not putting it together earlier.

“Can you imagine being in love with Snape?” Ron says, then laughs so much he drops his chopsticks.

Harry looks down at his barely-touched ramen with a frown. “No, I c-can’t,” he answers faintly. He tries to make himself laugh, because objectively isn’t it funny? All those people fawning over Snape. Ugly, bitter bastard.

Exactly as ugly as Severus Snape.

He can’t laugh about it.

Ron nudges him and he looks up again. “You alright? I’d have liked him to go on trial too, you know. Not like… Azkaban or anything, but something.”

Harry nods, unsure of what to say.

What could I know of the guilt, the stress, the worry, the anger and self-loathing? Of crawling - crawling - my way back to a life worth living, and not knowing if I will ever get there?

He thinks maybe Snape’s suffered enough, but he can’t tell Ron that.

“Look on the bright side,” Ron says, nudging him with an elbow again and smiling wickedly around another mouthful of noodles. “The Wizengamot’ll make his life a misery.”

“What?”

Ron waves his chopsticks. “Yeah, yeah. They can’t do anything legally, but— —pissed about it. He won’t ever work in a school again, that’s for sure.” He pauses to capture a peanut, and Harry realises he must have cast a sticky charm on the chopsticks because he’s not even holding them properly. Bloody cheat. “Rumour is that Barnabas Cuffe was there, and you know--”

Harry scowls automatically at mention of the man’s name. Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Prophet. Skeeter has nothing on this guy, or his ability to whip up drama and falsehoods over any little thing he likes. If Snape were ever to come out in the open, the newspapers would make a storm of it. Cuffe would go out of his way to destroy anything Snape tried to build, using the public as his primary tool.

“There’ll be mobs,” Ron says, echoing Harry’s thoughts. Merlin, it’s no wonder Snape goes around polyjuice’d all the time, it’s the only way to stay safe - or rather, it was the only way to stay safe, and right now Snape doesn’t even have that. Harry’s stomach turns as he thinks about the pointy-faced woman from the Engineshed, and he can barely swallow the food in his mouth, let alone eat any more. He pushes the bowl away.

Ron goes obliviously back to talking about his latest case, probably information Harry shouldn’t be privy to, and Harry watches the man talk without really absorbing any of it. He has to tell Snape, it’s not safe for him to leave his workshop. Hell, it’s probably not safe for him to stay, either.

It’s nine o’clock when he finally shrugs off Ron, apparating straight onto Snape’s veranda. The familiar darkened glass stands between them, and Harry feels the repelling ward pulsing against him before he’s even knocked on the glass. Any thought he had of being able to waltz right in are dispelled. Well, he could, it’s not like the wards are anything he hasn’t dealt with before, but then he’d have an angry Snape to deal with afterwards.

He knocks, then yanks the charcoal robe out of his pocket and unshrinks it, pulling it on over his head before he gets any colder in the evening air. Snape has to be in, doesn’t he? Where else would he be? He’s ignoring Harry on purpose, making him wait outside out of stubbornness and- and because of the horrible things Harry said. Because he’s a stupid git.

He growls, turning away to look out over the city lights instead. He’ll just try the other door, then. He’ll knock all bloody night if he has to, he just needs to know that Snape is safe. He apparates to the first floor concourse and legs it up the stairs. He’s breathless by the time he gets to the top floor, dizzy and frightened, but he doesn’t pause to rest until he’s outside the door to Snape’s workroom.

He rests a hand against it, and the wards push back. No luck here, either. He knocks - reasonably, at first, and then with increasing agitation. “Let me in, you b-bastard!” he shouts, in a moment of especially strong frustration.

Something small hits him on the back of his shoulder, and he spins around, wand out. A small clear gemstone lies on the floor nearby, and further down the hall the pointy-faced woman is smiling at him, pleased with herself. She summons the quartz back into her hand and Harry lowers his wand. “Sorry. I called out to you, but…” She points to the door. “He won’t answer, you know. We got him good, doubt he’ll have the gall to show his fa-”

“What?” Harry says threateningly, taking a few steps towards her and raising his wand again. Her eyes go suddenly wide. “If you’ve done anyth-”

Someone grabs him from behind, and Harry barely has time to register the dark robe sleeve passing in front of his eyes before he’s dragged backwards into Snape’s room. The door slams shut, and Harry is thrown against it, Snape’s arm pressing into his chest. “Are you trying to get yourself arrested?” the man asks, his face close and angry.

Harry sags, his tense muscles melting into jelly. He’s safe. Thank f*cking god, he’s… Oh.

“Your h-hair,” he says, raising a hand to Snape’s head without thinking. A strip around his left ear has been shaved clean, and there’s a slightly raised, jagged red line running horizontally backwards from his temple. Harry’s heart hardens. “What did th-they do?” He struggles against Snape’s arm, twisting to get back outside and ask that bloody witch to her face, but it’s no use.

“They missed, Potter. That’s what they did.” Snape keeps him pinned to the door until he stops struggling, and then steps back, hands out in a calming gesture. “They missed.”

“But your h-hair,” Harry says, and it sounds stupid but it’s important.

“It will grow back, I’m sure,” Snape responds calmly. His eyes are worried though - well, they’re furious actually, but the particular kind of furious that Harry recognises as worry. “I knew what I was doing when I made this bed, and now I must lie in it.”

Harry shakes his head. “Come to m-my house,” he says. “I c-cleaned out my spare room, you could set up the lab there. It’s s-safe.”

Snape raises his eyebrows at that statement. “You’ll have to excuse me if your presence doesn’t make me feel particularly safe.”

Oh.

Their argument flashes through Harry’s mind, and his face goes bright red. “I’m s-sorry, I was angry-”

“Not that,” Snape sneers. “This.”

A circle of white paper flies from the bookcase into his hand, and Harry’s widen. sh*t. With everything else going on, he forgot about the Feel Wheel.

“Familiar, is it?” Snape asks with a twitching, angry half-smile. He looks in this moment exactly like the Professor asking Harry about stolen gillyweed, totally certain of his guilt. Except this time, Harry really did do what he’s being accused of. “All that time, I believed that we were building an understanding,” he shakes his head, then throws the paper towards Harry.

It flops and twists in the air, landing closer to Snape’s feet than Harry’s, which might possibly be funny when Harry thinks back on it tomorrow, but right now he’s just terrified that Snape is going to kick him out again. “W-we were,” Harry says. The words are hollow. Can real understanding be built on the foundation of such a breach?

f*ck, he’s such an idiot. He knew it was wrong at the time, but he ignored it for his own convenience, and because it was only Snape. Not someone who actually mattered.

But he matters now. Doesn’t that mean anything? He tries in vain to think of something, anything, he can say that Snape would listen to, that he’d believe. But he’s already broken their trust, what else can he say? With their positions reversed, there’s no way Harry would listen to a word the other wizard has to say. There’s nothing. He just stares at the Feel Wheel lying on the floor, white and broken.

A scrap of parchment floats over to him.

You should go.

It’s not even on the notepad. He looks up, notices that Snape has moved, standing a safe distance away near his cauldrons. Turned half away, his arms crossed and his entire posture closed off.

Now that he’s looking, Harry sees that the orange armchair is gone as well. It feels like the final blow, an indisputable sign that there is no saving their friendship. He messed up, and there’s nothing he can do to make up for it, not with a man as stubborn as Snape.

Chapter 35: Luna

Chapter Text

The next day, he doesn’t get out of bed until eleven despite the bright sunlight streaming through his un-curtained bedroom window. Harry can’t avoid work forever though, so he does get up. He dons a t-shirt and jeans instead of his new robes, which seem a bit ridiculous now, even though they were definitely nothing to do with Snape. He just… doesn’t feel like wearing them today. So he apparates to the Engineshed in his last remaining muggle outfit, and ignores the stares of the lunchtime crowd as he weaves through the room towards the inner doors.

He wraps up the last Nimbus, tying it carefully with a cord, but leaves it on the worktable. The box of stuff Snape brought down is still sitting by the door, unsorted, and he brings it over to balance on the stool. He sifts through, not realising that he’s looking for the stupid armchair until he ascertains that it isn’t here. Snape probably incendio’d it. About what it deserves, but still.

He thinks he might have been able to sleep better last night if he had it, but it’s gone so he’ll just have to stick with his comfortable, designed-for-sleeping-in double bed.

If only there were some way to apologise to Snape. Not just for the Feel Wheel, but for what he said when he was angry, and probably a dozen other things as well.

Damn, and Snape isn’t the only one he owes an apology to. The Longbottoms. He should apologise to Neville, especially since it turns out he was right.

He finds a fresh sheet of paper - not from the notepad, which he can’t bear to look at right now - and a pen, and starts a letter. As usual though, he can’t find the right words so he ends up crumpling it and starting again.

After his third attempt, he writes to Luna instead, and manages to put three coherent sentences together inviting her over for tea tomorrow. While he’s at it, he writes Hermione a letter too, just to say hi and that he misses her and they should have dinner again at some point when she’s not too busy saving the world. Maybe she can give him more information about the kind of revenge the wizengamot might enact, and what Harry can do to stop it, if anything. If he can’t be friends with Snape, he at least wants to protect him.

He takes the two letters and the broom up to the owlery, and hangs out with the birds a bit before selecting three of the friendliest ones to send his post. They get an extra treat each, which was probably their goal all along when they butted their heads against his arm and nibbled playfully at his fingers.

He spends the rest of the day doing an inventory of stock, a task he usually avoids, but the insurance company has been chasing him for an estimate on the value of the contents of his workshop for ages and he has nothing else to do but mope. He knows all too well where that leads.

The evening reception closes at nine, so at half past eight he wanders over to check if anyone’s replied to his letters.

Madam Cassel is at the desk, but instead of the usual adoring smile, she watches him warily as if he might cause trouble. God, what else has he done wrong lately without thinking about it? He leans on the counter and offers his most charming smile, which he thinks might go down better if he’d put on one of the nice robes this morning. Her returning smile is professional and distant.

Harry stands back, awkward. “I’m expecting some p-post, thought I’d check in b-before I leave,” he says, uncertain. He doesn’t often collect the post in person, but he’s not sure if he’s coming back tomorrow morning so he doesn’t want to miss anything that might have arrived this evening.

“We have two letters for you that just arrived,” she replies. She rifles through a drawer on the left of her desk, which Harry can see contains sliding separators with room numbers on.

She hands him two envelopes. One of them is decorated with little drawings of fruits. Harry thanks her and apparates home, a bit perturbed by her change in manner. Not that he liked how she idolised him, it was downright uncomfortable, but still.

He opens the undecorated letter first. It’s from his client, saying that she’s pleased with both the speed and quality of his work, and that she’ll recommend him to all her friends if they need any repairs.

He smiles - not every client bothers to send a thank you note, and he has a box for keeping the nicest ones in. He puts the letter aside to join them the next time he goes in.

When he opens the other, it lets out a small puff of yellow smoke that smells strongly of lemons. Definitely from Luna then, though he already guessed that from the envelope.

4pm. Your kitchen.

That’s all. It’s not even signed. Don’t tell me even Luna’s mad at me, he thinks tiredly. That’s all he needs, even if he probably deserves it.

She arrives as promised at four o’ clock, though technically they don’t walk into the kitchen until one minute past. She doesn’t seem angry, which is a relief, and they settle down at the narrow kitchen table with mismatched mugs of milkless tea. She compliments his hair and expresses her disappointment that he’s not wearing the new robes Molly’s apparently been raving about to anyone who’ll listen. Harry can’t help but smile at the thought - even now, after everything, Molly treats him like a son. One she’s proud of, and who’s worth loving.

“She says there’s a man you like, is that true?”

Harry chokes on his tea. Does she have to be so straight-forward all the time? He takes advantage of the time it takes to wipe his face dry, to compose himself. “It’s not what M-Molly thinks. It doesn’t matter,” he says, carefully dismissive. “He’s made it clear how he f-feels.”

Which he realises isn’t true at all. Snape hasn’t made anything clear - not the reason they became friends, or why he cut Harry off the first time, or why he let Harry invade his space so thoroughly, or what he’s feeling now that it’s over. Is he hurt? Does he want Harry to come back, or does he never want to see him again? Snape hasn’t explained anything.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Luna replies, and Harry wishes he could hear her sing-song voice instead of just seeing her mouth move. Everyone sounds the same to him; the silence never changes, and it hits him as especially tragic that the sound of Luna talking about snorkrumps or whatever is forever lost to him. It’s the same way he feels about Snape’s voice. “Did you like him a lot?”

Harry’s taken aback by the question, though there’s no reason to be. It’s a natural follow-up, but no one’s actually asked him until now. Molly and George just assume; Ron hasn’t a clue, and Snape - well, he can only hope that Snape doesn’t know anything. “N-not really,” Harry answers.

Luna stares, her expression open and patient.

He sighs. “I guess. I d-don’t know, maybe.” Yes, of course he likes Snape. He misses just existing near the man... and all the long words scribbled in spidery writing with a muggle pen, and the sandwiches and the tea, and watching the sunrise every morning from a veranda in Manchester. And those stupid notes on the cupboard door, and being reminded to put a jumper on every time he’s about to go outside, the smell of citrus and waking up with someone else in the room. Sleeping on an uncomfortable orange armchair, the look of outrage on Snape’s face when he first saw it, and a whole plethora of other expressions. Cleaning the kitchen, the quiet trust in Harry’s ability to prepare potion ingredients, and even the loud distrust of his ability to do anything more. He likes all of it, and now it’s gone. “Yeah, I did,” he finally admits, and Luna nods as if that’s what she was expecting to hear.

They drink tea in silence. Luna doesn’t bring up the state of the house, nor its smell.

He means to bring up his actions from the other day, to ask how he can effectively apologise to Neville for almost saying that he’s not a real mediwizard. Maybe a plant or something? But as he thinks about that day, something else comes out instead. “How can you love b-both of them?” It’s a rude thing to blurt, but he doesn’t think it’ll offend Luna. In fact, she doesn’t seem to understand the question at all.

“How?” she asks, a furrow of confusion appearing between her brows. “I don’t think there’s really a how when it comes to love, Harry. It just happens.”

Harry tightens his fingers around the hot mug of tea. “N-no, I mean… How is it possible to love s-someone with all of your heart, but then also to l-love someone else with the same heart?”

Luna smiles indulgently at him. “Oh. Well, you see, love isn’t actually a physical thing that lives inside your heart. That’s just a-- --pumps blood around the body. It delivers oxygen to the other organs and keeps rot sprites at bay, did they not teach you that in muggle primary school?”

A flush creeps over Harry’s face, and he reminds himself not to get angry at Luna. She’s not being condescending on purpose, and he was rude first anyway. “I know that,” he responds as levelly as he can. “I mean metaph-phorically. H-how can you… be so full of, of l-love for one p-person, and s-still have some left for someone else?” He runs a thumb along the lip of his cup, back and forth.

She taps her fingers on the table, thinking, then gives him an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, I still don’t understand. Are you afraid that you’ll run out of love? You have quite a lot of it, you know. We all do, but you especially. I can tell, from all the-'' She says a word that looks like it could be forliboos or vurtipeuce, which apparently are very numerous in his house. “There’s no reason to believe it might run out, you know.”

Harry shakes his head. She doesn’t get it at all. “It’s n-not…” He tries to find the right words. “This kind of love is s-special.”

“Oh yes, very.” Luna agrees.

“R-right. Because it t-takes up so much of you. I mean, you g-give a lot of yourself,” Harry continues, not sure that her agreement is actually a good sign. “Even if I h-have a lot of l-love to give, there’s only so much s-space in my mind to hold it.”

“Is that so?” Luna sips her tea delicately, and looks at him with great interest. Like she’s learning about some new and interesting creature she’s never encountered before - like he’s the weird one for thinking that he can’t be in love with two people simultaneously.

He puts his mug down on the table, clenching and unclenching his hands. “Yes,” he answers, with all the certainty he can muster. “When you l-love someone like that, you think about them all the t-time, you w-want to talk to them and be c-close to them, and… You know.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Luna nods again, her expression as open and curious as ever. She seems to think they’re making progress, but Harry is only getting more frustrated. He ploughs on, regardless.

“W-well, if there’s two of them, you w-wouldn’t have the time to love them b-both p-properly,” he finishes lamely. It’s not at all what he’s trying to say, but it’s one small part of it. How can he describe the feeling of loving someone so much with all your heart that there’s no room for loving anyone else? How can he tell her how much of a betrayal it is to replace some of that with new feelings? To overwrite the memories?

“I see…” Luna says slowly, though her expression shows she doesn’t see at all. She bites her lip. “Do you like desserts? I love rhubarb crumble, did you know? And strudel. I love them both, and it barely takes any time at all.”

“But you only eat one at a t-time,” Harry points out. “You ch-choose one over the other after dinner.”

Luna nods. “Yes. I suppose I do. Sometimes I go months without eating rhubarb crumble, and there are times when I prefer one over the other.” She pauses to take a sip from her mug. “For example, if I’m researching an article for the Quibbler, I tell the rhubarb crumble about it because the strudel thinks it’s all rubbish I made up in my mind. But when I’m sad and need cheering up, rhubarb crumble - that’s Neville, by the way - is totally useless because he empathises too much and makes himself upset as well. Strudel is much better then.”

“But if you s-stopped eating strudel,” Harry says carefully, trying not to imagine the human equivalent of such an action. “Then w-wouldn’t you f-forget how much you loved it, and then s-slowly over time, you might come to only l-love rhubarb c-crumble, and it’ll be l-like you never l-loved the strudel to… to b-begin with.”

“Oh, Harry. You really are so full of love,” Luna says, which for some reason makes his eyes sting. He blinks rapidly. He hasn’t felt full of anything recently, especially not love, and it’s unexpected to hear someone tell him that it’s still inside him somewhere. He hasn’t felt it for such a long time. She reaches over the table to place a hand over his. “You’ll never stop loving her, even when you love someone else. Trust me - and if anyone says different then you should hit them over the head with one of your broomsticks.”

He laughs shakily, wiping his eyes with his spare hand. “I don’t condone v-violence.”

“That’s a shame,” Luna replies, once he’s blinked his eyes clear again. “Some people need a bit of sense bashed into them.”

“L-like me?”

Her smile widens and she pats his hand before going back to her tea. His skin tingles with the residual warmth of her kindness. “No, you don’t need a bashing. You’re just a bit slow, so you need extra time to work things out.”

From anyone else it’d be offensive, but there’s no being angry at Luna Lovegood. “Thanks,” he says instead.

They sit and drink their lukewarm teas in silence for a while, until Luna drums her fingers on the table again. “I’d better get going, the puddings will wonder where I’ve got to.”

“Damn,” Harry replies, realising that time has slipped away while he was lost in thought. “We d-didn’t even talk about what I m-meant to ask you.”

Luna stands up, gets her flowery green cardigan off the back of the chair and puts it on. “Don’t be silly, Harry. Of course we did,” she answers, fetching her coat next and then turning back to him. “If you want to talk about your anxiety, feel free to pop over any time and Neville will see you. Or you can go to St Mungos. We won’t mind.”

She kisses him on both cheeks before leaving, and the kitchen feels gloomier without her presence.

Harry stays seated at the table for a long, thoughtful hour. He does still love Ginny, and he’s always going to. It’s not that he believed otherwise for even a moment, it’s just with everyone else telling him to move on and do new things, find someone else… It feels a bit like no one thinks he should love her anymore, which is silly, because of course Molly and George and Ron all know that he will. Having someone affirm it out loud takes away some of the pressure.

Yeah. He does still have a bit of love left in him. His eyes well up again, but he doesn’t bother wiping away the tears. You really are so full of love. He chokes, covers his mouth with his hand. His cheeks and fingers are damp, but he doesn’t try to stop himself from crying.

He doesn’t have to move on. Or rather, he can add things to his life, and it won’t destroy what he still feels about the past. Merlin, just calling it ‘the past’ hurts. That’s what it is though. The past. Ginny isn’t here anymore, and she’s never going to be a real part of his life again, but that doesn’t mean she stops being a real part of his identity.

He sits back, sniffing and blinking up at the ceiling, then lifts up his t-shirt to wipe his cheeks with. He exhales slowly.

He has a lot to fix. Friendships he’s let slide away, and… maybe he should visit James more often. It doesn’t have to just be Saturdays, does it? He can’t remember who decided that, way back when it was hard to see his face. When everything was so bloody hard.

And maybe, just maybe he should do something about the new people in his life too. He took the effort to run up all those steps, banging on Snape’s door for an age - and then when he got inside, he didn’t say anything, did he? Not about how he feels, and not about how he thinks Snape feels. It’s just- when he’s there, faced with the man, he’s so closed off it seems hopeless. There’s nothing Harry can say to penetrate that shell.

That doesn’t mean he won’t try. He’s a curse-breaker, right? Or was. Breaking in and looting and finding interesting things, all while avoiding the traps and hexes. He’s bloody good at it. “What about it, Gin?” he asks aloud. “One last go.”

Chapter 36: B'gulbl

Chapter Text

It starts with a letter. He’s rubbish at them, but that’s only because he gives up too soon, worries too much about the words. If he just writes exactly what he’s thinking, as if talking aloud, and then maybe doesn’t even read back over it, he might just about be able to send one. He’s not certain he’ll have the courage, but he tries anyway.

He starts as bravely as he can:

Severus,
Look. I’m sorry, okay? I’m a massive dickhe*d, a gigantic loser and you’re totally right to be angry. I won’t make excuses for the Feel Wheel, I knew what I was doing was wrong but I wanted to understand you and that was more important to me than your privacy, which is something I of all people should totally have known was more important. It was so wrong. I thought there wasn’t any way to tell from your face when you’re angry or not, and that was wrong too. I can tell without the stupid toy, I was just too much of an idiot to look properly before. I’m a cretin, an imbecile, a bastard and a git. I’m really really stupid. I don’t know, I can’t think of other words so if you want you can write me a list and I’ll tell you how much of each of them I am.
That’s the first thing, and it should probably be the only thing because you’re absolutely justified in not wanting to speak to me any more, and it’s stupid to even try rolling back time, but here we go. Stupid is what I’m good at.
I think you’re okay. I mean, I like you. I enjoyed working with you on potions, and watching sunrises while drinking tea, and all the rest. It was nice. I was thinking about how I don’t know how you feel, if I was just an annoyance you put up with for some reason, if you ever liked me at all, and then I realised that maybe you don’t know how I feel either. That’s why I’m telling you, just so you know. It was good, and I have enjoyed being friends.
Harry.

He folds it quickly into thirds and slides it along the table away from himself. He swallows a lump in his throat, sits back and sighs. Well, it’s an entire letter, which is better than any of his previous attempts. Now all he has to do is work up the nerve to send it, preferably without reading it back first.

He gets up and cleans the mugs, then wipes down the side where he spilled droplets from the teabags. He wipes around the sink as well, and then makes himself put the cloth down because he doesn’t want to end up becoming one of those people who compulsively cleans all the time.

The letter is still there when he turns around. Obviously it’s still there, where would it have gone? He gets an envelope for it and carefully writes TRYGVE TANDBERG on the front in his best handwriting, then slips the letter inside. He doesn’t seal it. Once he seals it, he’ll lose the option of going back to read how pathetic it is.

He has another cup of tea, sits for a while longer with a light frown, and then finally gets up and rifles about in the kitchen drawer for a stick of wax. The only one he can find is Gryffindor red, and he debates it for a moment. What if Snape decides to incendio it because of the outrageous colour choice? Then again, he’ll find a reason to incendio it no matter what, if he doesn’t want to read it - and, well, Harry is a Gryffindor. He gets a surge of courage from that. He is Harry Potter, brave and idiotic Griffindor.

He melts the end of the wax blob and seals the envelope shut. Then he rushes to the living room and throws it into the floo to the Public Owlery with a galleon for processing, before the seal has even dried.

With all these letters he keeps sending recently, he should probably get an owl again. He’s almost tempted to rush over to Diagon Alley, but he’s too drained for it. Despite the early hour, he falls into bed and lies there, staring at the ceiling. The entire house needs repainting, probably on the outside as well as inside, although Harry can’t remember when he last stepped out of the physical entrances to look at the outside of the building. The outer doors are just places guests appear from.

He spots movement in the corner of his eye, sees an owl battering itself angrily against his bedroom window, and jumps up to let it in. How long has it been? Surely it’s too soon for a reply, unless Snape wants to come over right now, or if he’s sending Harry’s letter back unread. God, it was the wax, right? Gryffindor red, what was he thinking?

The owl pecks at his hand, obviously annoyed at having been ignored for however long. “I’m sorry, I d-didn’t hear you,” Harry says soothingly, trying to smooth its ruffled feathers, but it’s having none of it. Damn, and he doesn’t even have any owl treats or bacon.

He manages to grab the letter with only minor scratches, but it’s not the one he sent earlier. It’s sealed like a muggle envelope. His heart leaps into overdrive for the three seconds it takes to recognise the handwriting as Hermione’s.

The letter smells of lavender, reminding him of Luna’s lemon smoke. Is that a thing now? Smelly letters? He’s not exactly against it, but he can’t imagine a scent he’d use. Maybe Collod’s CrystalWax, that broom polish people are always talking about. It’s a far inferior product to the stuff Harry uses, but it does smell really, really, really good.

Hermione is apparently fine, both pleased and surprised to get a letter from him. There isn’t much substance to it, even though her response is over a page long - she’s another one who can’t seem to write one word instead of ten, but at least she uses her vocabulary prowess for the force of good. She insists on their meeting soon, but can’t put a time down in the diary, what with “all this going on”, whatever that means.

The owl follows Harry into the kitchen, waiting for a reply, and he looks through his cupboards for something to give it. Not that he’s expecting anything, but when he opens one of the lower cupboards, there’s a rush and a wild flurry of feathers and then the owl flutters over to the back of a chair with a mouse in its beak.

Harry stares open-mouthed. He has mice. On top of everything else.

Well, just one more reason to get an owl. He tries not to stare at the bird’s meal as he gets his stationary out for the second time this evening.

Hermione,
No rush or anything, I’m sure Ron gives you the lowdown and I’m going to try and meet up with him more often. I know I’ve been a bit sh*t.
Lots of love
Harry
P.S. don’t suppose you could lend me one of your owls for a few days until I have time to pop into town and buy one? And a perch, and some food. Promise I won’t get attached.

After sending the bird off with its letter, Harry goes round the house and sets wards on every window to alert him when owls arrive. At first he sets them to tingle a finger each, but by the time he’s doing the upstairs ones, he’s forgotten which fingers he’s already used, and has to double up anyway. It’s a bit of a mess but at least he knows that if one of his fingers starts to feel weird there’s an owl somewhere.

An hour later, he feels a jolt so violent it makes his hand twitch, and looks up at the nearest window. Nothing appears for a moment, and then a shadowy figure thuds into the frame for a second time, and Harry grins.

Of course Hermione wouldn’t send him one of her nice well-trained ministry-approved owls. He gets up quickly to open the window before the poor thing can injure itself any further, and a harrowed-looking little owl with bright yellow eyes stares up at him. Even for its species, it’s one of the smallest Harry has seen. It’s carrying its own perch, along with a bag that is comically almost the same size as the owl, and a letter. It flops inside the house, landing in Harry’s quick arms with a shocked look.

Harry quickly takes the package that has been tied to its leg, probably so that it couldn’t be dropped. The sender didn’t have much faith in its abilities, which doesn’t give Harry much hope, but he suspects he knows who’s behind it. This is confirmed as he opens the letter:

Harry, dearest!
I was just popping around to Ronald’s little flat this morning, it’s really quite lovely, a bit modern for me but I do appreciate that the younger generations must have the latest of everything just to keep up appearances. I was so surprised to hear that you had sent our Hermione a letter! Please feel free to write me any time, though I’m sure you’re terribly busy running your business. Just so you know, we at the Burrow are never further than a note away if you need anything. Oh, I’m going off topic, aren’t I? Hermione mentioned that she was going to lend you her big barn owl Mr Scratches for a few days until you get your own, and I said nonsense! We have a perfectly good owl back at the burrow no one is using. Yes, he’s a little wet around the ears, only ten months and I thought you might like to have a go at training him. He’s had the basics, of course, but he’s still prone to distractions so make sure you have plenty of cord and some treats about.
I’ve had a go at training him on the perch, but I must confess he doesn’t seem to have a knack for sitting still. He’s called B’gulbl - James happened to be there for the ceremony, and now the bird won’t answer to anything else. I hope that won’t be an issue for you. If there’s absolutely anything else you need, don’t hesitate!
All of my love and more,
Molly.
P.S. I’ve written the directions for a spell on the back of this parchment. If you cast at your window and then at B’gulbl, he should be able to get through without you needing to open it for him.

Harry turns the paper over and reads the directions. It’s a bit of a cheat, and the existence of this spell does explain a lot about why none of the Weasleys’ owls ever seem to have learnt what a window is. Then again, he wasn’t banking on having an owl to train almost from scratch, so he shrugs and casts it. Luckily Sineporta is easy enough to pronounce without having heard it before.

Once he’s finished setting up the perch next to the window, he turns to see that B’gulbl has somehow found a home wedged between the radiator and the wall. As someone who has often felt the need to hide away in a small space and not come out until the world has gone away, Harry decides it’s probably okay to leave him be.

Chapter 37: Harry

Chapter Text

Harry sends B’gulbl to the Engineshed to collect any post that might have arrived there. Not any letter in particular, of course. Any kind of post at all. He needs a new work project, and he gives far more quotes than receive a reply so he should keep an active eye out for potentially interesting requests. Regardless, the owl comes back three hours later empty-clawed, and Harry honestly can’t decide whether B’gulbl actually found the place or not.

They should probably start small.

He quietly agonises over the letter he sent Snape, unable to remember exactly what he said. It was too much, probably. Or too little. And it didn’t say half of what he wanted it to. It’s no wonder that Snape hasn’t replied.

He keeps clearing up the house, stripping off the bad wallpaper in the living room and the hall as best he can without tools, while B’gulbl helps by finding new ways to get inside his robes. It looks worse afterwards, ragged strips and triangles still stuck to the wall here and there with yellowed plaster between, but at least it’s a small step closer to getting new paper up.

The boredom of staying home gets to him, so on Friday morning he apparates to work, bringing B’gulbl with him so that they can check the post together and get him acquainted with the company owls. He hides inside the wide sleeves of Harry’s charcoal robe, surprising the receptionist when Harry reaches out to take a few letters.

“C-come on, see these? I sent you to c-collect them yesterday, yeah?” Harry says, waving the letters in front of the owl’s beak, but the creature looks up at his face instead. The letters mean nothing to him, so Harry shakes his head at the receptionist and rolls his eyes.

There’s nothing from Snape. Not that he was expecting a reply, of course. He throws the post down on his work table with a sigh. He poured his heart out to a brick wall and now he’s disappointed that it didn’t respond. What an idiot.

He finishes off the inventory he started the other day, writes up a few new quotes - 100 galleons, 3 sickles for a brush reconstruction; 15 galleons for a charms diagnostic; 12 galleons, 2 sickles and a knut for a 12 month certification of safety - and takes his new owl up to the owlery. Maybe meeting some real postal owls will help him get a feel for his responsibilities. The older Weasley owls can’t have been very good examples to follow.

B’gulbl hides up his sleeve the entire time, so Harry has to hold his arm straight out to make sure the owl can watch from the depths of his armpit. He keeps up a narration, hoping that no one else comes in to hear him apparently talking to himself, holding his left arm out in front of him. “S-see how Mandy holds the letter in h-her claws? She’ll hold it tight all the w-way to Bournemouth, won’t you girl?”

Mandy takes off with the last letter, and Harry points his sleeve in her direction, following as she swoops gracefully out of the building and out of sight. He’s not sure if B’gulbl has paid any attention at all. He should pick up a book on owl training when he’s next in Diagon Alley, on top of the house maintenance and decoration tomes he’s known for at least two weeks that he needs.

It’s still only 11am and he’s done everything he intended so he browses his stacks of half-finished personal projects, and selects an old Wytchway - one of only 50 ever produced - and starts stripping it down for cleaning. He’s been putting it off because he knows that once he starts, he won’t be able to take on anything else until he’s finished it. It doesn’t look like there’s anything interesting coming though, and the Wytchway is a beautiful broom. The shaft is made of three interwoven branches of willow - willow for a shaft! - and the brush is of red dogwood, giving the whole thing a unique and striking appearance. He got this one for a bargain price, mostly because of the hairline cracks in the dry old willow and the fact that its previous owner thought it was a useless piece of garage art. He knocked another twenty galleons off the asking price by complaining about the grimy state of the broom, but in reality the brush only needs a scrub and polish. It’s not like he’s actually going to fly it, so he can get away without refreshing the charms until he decides to sell it on some day.

After half a day of satisfying cleaning, it’s almost ready to put back together. If it was for a client, he’d replace some of the worn brush twigs and the whole project would take days longer for it, but instead he simply buffs out the scuffs and city pollution. He polishes them off with a mixture he created himself from beeswax, pine resin and a cherry blossom fragrance oil. Not as addictive a smell as Collod’s CrystalWax, but it’s pleasant and durable, and his hands will smell of it for the next week. The thought makes him smile, and as he leans back to review his work, he reflects that he’s had a lot more things to smile about in the last few months.

Which he absolutely doesn’t need to feel guilty about, because as George helpfully points out every time they meet, Ginny would want him to smile. Knowing that doesn’t actually kill off the knot in his chest, but he’s determined to keep reminding himself until one day it gets a little more bearable.

B’gulbl shifts in Harry’s sleeve a moment before the door ward buzzes over his skin. It’s good timing, at least, since he was about to take a break anyway.

He rushes to answer the door, but when he opens it no one’s there. Again. Harry spots the letter attached to his door just as B’gulbl shoots out of his sleeve to capture it with a triumphant shake of his feathers. He turns, perched with his claws digging into Harry’s hand, and presents the letter as if he just flew halfway across the country with it.

“Good boy,” Harry says drily. So he can deliver letters, but only so long as they’re already within arm’s reach. Great.

Harry

That’s all that’s written on the envelope. Harry frowns, pulling the letter gently out of B’gulbl’s beak. It’s familiar, but it takes him a second to realise where he’s seen it before... Of course.

He goes to the box of stuff Snape left him the other day, roots through until he finds a book on wandmaking he was reading and then unshrinks it to its original size. He holds the covers and wriggles it until a white envelope falls out. Harry, it says. He still doesn’t really know why he kept it, but something about its straightforwardness must have left an impression.

B’gulbl tilts his head in confusion between the two identical letters. Harry kneels and places them side by side on the floor. The handwriting is definitely the same, as is the envelope, but there’s enough of a difference that it can’t be a magically created copy. A new letter from his secret admirer, except that this one was attached to his door.

A chill creeps down his back. He’s had stalkers before, but not for a while, and none of them have gotten so close. He casts a belated diagnostic charm on the letter to make sure there’s nothing dodgy in it. The results come back plain paper and ink, no charms or hexes. Traces of plant matter, but that’s not unusual.

“Sh-should I open it?” Harry asks B’gulbl, who has tip-tapped into the harsh, cold world outside of his robe sleeve. The owl pecks at the older letter, nudging it closer. Harry obligingly opens it and shows him the contents.

You ought to know that I love you.

“What d-do you think?” he asks again. B’gulbl bobs his head at the letter, which could mean anything really, so Harry decides to interpret it as a yes. He doesn’t usually bother opening his weird fan mail, except that one time when he was trying to wind up Snape - especially not fan mail that’s gotten this far through his layers of defence. Well, the reception desk anyway.

He opens the envelope and lays out the second letter next to the first.

They will not let me renew my tenancy. I’m to be out by 5pm today, prepare your floo to accept an outsider at that time.

Harry frowns, confused. What? What tenancy? Out of where - and the floo, the only floo he has is in his house! Why on Earth would he let some random person into… into... his house.

They will not let me renew my tenancy.

The wizengamot’ll make his life a misery. They can’t do anything legally, but I bet they’re still mega pissed about it.

Management said he’s here for the month, like it or lump it. I’ve let them know what’ll happen if he stays any longer, don’t you worry.

Harry’s mouth falls open.

You ought to know that I love you.

But… but that letter was written months ago. After Trigger told him to bugger off. Why would he do that if he- Hell, why would he ever… How-? “Oh m-my god,” he says, because he’s not sure what else there is to say and he feels like he should say something. B’gulbl picks at the letters, but Harry barely registers the movement. Snape can’t- He can’t love Harry. It’s absurd.

The dark blue feel wheel.

But he thinks Harry’s an idiot! He pushed him away.

He put up with the orange armchair.

He threw away the orange armchair.

Merlin, this is getting him nowhere. It has to be a coincidence, a mistake. Severus Snape can’t possibly be gay. He’s not anything. He’s a kind of… Harry puts his head in his hands. In his head, Snape doesn’t even have a body under those dark robes, let alone anything like a sexuality.

What about Lilly? Didn’t he love Lilly, before? He can’t be gay, and whatever happened to ‘Always’?

He looks up suddenly and casts tempus. 4:32pm. He has 28 minutes to get home and open the floo, clean up a bit. God, he needs to clean himself up as well, he hasn’t brushed his hair yet today. He looks down at his knees, which are now covered with wood dust from the floor. Good thing they’re self-cleaning. He scrambles to his feet and brushes off the worst of it, picks up the letters and legs it.

There’s no reason to run, but he does. He runs to the apparition point, ignoring the people he almost knocks over on the way, and barely takes a second to check that B’gulbl is safely tucked in his sleeve before apparating home.

4:36pm.

The room looks a mess, why did he have to pull all that paper off? Harry doesn’t dare do anything else lest he make it even worse, and instead steps up to the fireplace in the living room. He stops with his wand hovering over the old wooden mantle.

What if it’s not Snape? The letter isn’t signed, and anyone who knows about Harry having been at Snape’s a lot recently and about his tenancy not being renewed - if that’s even true - could have written it. What if he opens the floo and the pointy-faced painter struts through to hex him? No, no the first letter was written ages ago, more likely to be that receptionist who went cold on him last week. She has all the information she needs, and easy access to Harry’s workshop door, as well as his address.

He grips his wand tighter as the room starts to press in on him. It’s not Snape. It’d be so stupid if it was Snape. He can’t love Harry. It’s not possible… But what about his reaction when Harry was reading out the letters. When he got to that one, the one he wrote, he looked like he was about to faint or something. Unless that’s a coincidence, which is far more likely because once again - Snape can’t love Harry.

4:40pm.

He pulls his wand back from the mantle without activating it. There has to be a way of verifying the writer’s identity, he thinks. He’s aware that his breathing has become erratic, that his chest is tight and his hands feel like they belong to someone else. He tries to clear his muddled thoughts. The handwriting. He’s seen enough of it, surely he can recognise it?

He takes the letters out of his pocket. He can’t tell. sh*t. sh*t, damn, f*ck. He needs to compare them to something else.

He apparates back to the Engineshed concourse and scares more witches by barreling past them in the corridor on his way to his workshop, cursing management with every step for not letting him apparate directly there.

He knows there’s nothing else of Snape’s in the box, so he spins, looking all over the workshop until his eyes fall on the scraps drawer. He yanks it open, spilling its contents over the floor. He sifts through until he finds two dusty potion bottles and an old note - I can make anything you like, for a price. He holds it up next to the first letter.

It’s the same. It’s the bloody same.

Holy Merlin’s pants.

4:52pm.

Harry huffs, trying to stabilise his breathing to get rid of the stitch in his left side. B’gulbl stares at him from his latest hiding place inside a glass vase on the mantle. Harry leans against the wood, catching his breath, holding his wand against it. He just needs to open the floo and then in eight minutes’ time, Snape will walk through. Snape, who loves him.

He catches his reflection in the mottled old mirror over the fireplace. He looks crazy, his hair and robes in disarray and his brow shiny with sweat. He probably smells, too. He needs a shower, but there’s no time.

He just needs to open the damn floo.

He leans forward and presses his forehead into the wood. He’ll just brush his hair first, and then… And then the rest will sort itself out. Somehow.

Chapter 38: Tour

Chapter Text

With only thirty seconds to spare, Harry does it. He opens the floo, and retreats at first to the corner of the room, then all the way to the kitchen. He puts the kettle on and stares at it, trying to pretend that he can breathe and isn’t about to pass out.

When B’gulbl pokes his head suddenly out of Harry’s sleeve, looking with interest towards the kitchen door, Harry swallows hard. He walks with a measure of calmness that can only be achieved by supernatural beings and dissociating mortals, back to the living room.

It’s Snape. At least, it looks like Snape and it has a frown like Snape - the worried variety of frown which looks just like the angry variety, except for a tighter set to the jaw and slightly different crinkling of the lines around his eyes. Harry imagines the feel wheel pulsing red and black. As Snape looks at him, the frown deepens into one which looks even more angry, but which Harry associates with swirling deep blue. The look Snape has whenever he looks at Harry.

Like right now.

His knees wobble, and he finally takes in a breath. It might be the first full lung he’s inhaled in the last half hour. He still can’t believe it - that Snape loves him - but he’s relieved to see that expression again. He grips the door frame. “Hi,” he says, because Snape is just staring at him and it’s awkward and Snape loves him and what’s he even supposed to do with that information.

The word breaks Snape free of whatever weirdness has come over him, and he takes a few miniaturised boxes out of his pockets. “Is this to be my workroom?” he asks.

Harry nods. “Uh, y-yeah. Let me just…” he lets go of the door and walks up to the fireplace. “P-put your hand here? I’ll k-key you in, then we can d-do a tour of the house.” f*ck, he’s nervous. His palms feel gross.

Snape does as he’s told, placing a pale, bony hand on the wooden mantle where Harry pointed with his wand. His fingers are long and slender, ending with nails yellowed by decades of brewing potions. They’re not particularly nice to look at, not the kind of hands Harry is used to seeing on a person who loves him. Not the kind of hands that he’s ever imagined touching him.

He looks away quickly, muttering the spell for tuning the wards to allow Snape free entry. Then he closes the floo so that only the two of them can use it. “There,” he says, turning briskly towards the door. “Now you can app-parate or f-floo whenever you like, let me show you the k-kitchen.”

He doesn’t check to see if Snape’s following him. The kettle is flashing blue, and Harry quickly turns off the stove. Tea. He can make tea. That’s a thing. A real, solid, normal everyday thing to do. He feels adrift, like a boat whose mooring has come loose. Only the ritual of tea-making can help him now..

He takes out two mugs, setting them on the side, and pops teabags in them. He puts two teaspoons of sugar in his mug, which has the cringingly bad phrase “DEAFLY HALLOWS” printed on it. He can’t even remember which of his mates got it for him. The other mug is a more reasonable cream colour dappled with spots of green.

Once the tea is made, teabags removed and binned, and sugar stirred in for Harry, he’s forced to turn around. Snape is standing in the doorway, obviously ill at ease. He’s back to the worried variety of angry frown. Harry should say something, but what? He needs someone to put him at ease, first.

“Here,” he says, holding out the cream mug for Snape, then putting it on the table when he realises there’s a chance of hand touching. “F-feel free to use whatever you’d l-like. You can put your jam in the f-fridge. It’s new.”

Merlin, Snape doesn’t need to know he has a new fridge. Harry glances at it, noticing for the first time how its shiny modernity casts the rest of the kitchen in a bit of a poor light by comparison. The yellow patches on the wall where he cleaned off mould suddenly look a lot worse than they did this morning, and there’s limescale around the tap, and the cupboard doors are all hanging crooked.

“It’s a doer upper,” Harry explains, gesturing around. “B-bit like me.” A bit like me? Really, Harry? He’s not waiting for someone to do him up, or- God, why is this happening right now?

Snape catches his eye. “Would you rather I leave?”

What? Harry puts his mug down again, because his hands don’t feel too steady. “Of course not, no,” he answers quickly. “God no, I’m g-glad. Didn’t you g-get my l-letter?”

Snape’s scowl deepens again, and it’s silly how it means he’s happier, but Harry understands. Snape nods.

“Well, l-let me… let me show you round,” Harry says, when nothing else seems to be forthcoming.

He makes a break towards the door, anything to escape this awkwardness. His limbs are jerky and stiff, and he can’t work out how to make them move normally so he doesn’t look like one of those puppets from the Thunderbirds. How’s he supposed to make Snape feel comfortable if he’s so obviously uncomfortable himself?

Snape grabs his arm as he’s walking past, and Harry freezes, eyes wide. “Thank you,” Snape mouths. Harry gives him a jerky nod, and the man lets go again. Harry’s chest is getting absolutely hammered from the inside.

They do the full tour - the living room can be a potions workroom, since it has an outside wall at the back of the house to which ventilation can easily be added, and the spare bedroom upstairs is Snape’s to sleep in so that he doesn’t have to transfigure the armchair. There’s no bed or other furniture at the moment, but Harry assures him that they can grab something tomorrow.

“The armchair will suffice,” is all Snape says in response, and Harry doesn’t push the matter. He probably feels indebted enough to Harry as it is, without adding furniture purchases to the mix.

Harry shows him the family bathroom, which sports a shower over bath that he admits he hasn’t tested or used before. “B-but if you have any p-problems, let me know.” He berates himself for not putting towels and toiletries in there earlier. He spent too much time panicking and not enough actually making useful preparations. Oh, but at least he brushed his hair, ugh. Snape probably hasn’t noticed. He hasn’t said anything about Harry’s new robes, either, or about how he smells like cherry blossom and pine. Doesn’t he like cherry? Everyone likes cherry!

They pause briefly outside of Harry’s bedroom door. “This is m-me, if you need anything in the night,” Harry says, scratching a hand through his hair to hide the heat rising up his neck.

They end the tour back in the living room, where they are greeted by three walls of scrappy wallpaper, an age-speckled mirror and one wall of bookcases filled to bursting with books Harry took from Grimmauld Place, which Teddy’s grandmother is looking after as his inheritance. Harry waves a hand at the bookshelves. “Feel free to r-read anything you like. The rest are at G-Gringotts, but if you’re interested w-we can go take a l-look sometime.”

“Thank you,” Snape responds, but doesn’t move to peruse the collection so Harry casts about for something else to say.

“W-we can add some v-vent… ventil-lation up there.” He points to the far right corner of the room. “Tomorrow. Um. D-do you need help setting up?”

“You’ve been quite generous enough.”

Harry hesitates. What now? He can’t take any more of this awkward nothingness. Snape being overly polite and reserved, and Harry straight up acting like a weirdo. “I s-suppose I’ll just, um.” He points to the door and takes a hesitant sideways step, and then another. “If you need anything, th-then just uh. Call for B-B’gulbl, I g-guess. He’s an owl. This owl. J-James named him.”

Harry raises his arm straight out and gives it a little shake until B’gulbl tumbles down to the end of his sleeve, and Snape’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Obviously, he never suspected that Harry would have an entire actual owl living inside his robe all this time.

“B’gulbl?” Snape says, demonstrating by his shock that he has never been victim to a Weasley owl before. The little owl drops out of Harry’s sleeve and then bobs up to land on Snape’s shoulder, head tilting this way and that. Probably trying to find a way into his robes.

“You got it,” Harry smiles, taking another step backwards. “I’ll b-be in the kitchen if you n-need me.”

Chapter 39: Parts Unknown

Chapter Text

Snape doesn’t need anything of him that evening, and eventually Harry goes to bed feeling jittery and strange. He has no way of knowing if Snape’s busy building cupboards or demolishing walls, which only makes the feeling worse. Even with someone else in the house, it still feels like he’s alone.

He waits until he’s safely in his own room again before taking the letters out - the two addressed Harry and the note from the scraps drawer.

It has to be a mistake. Snape doesn’t love him.

It’s not that the idea of a man loving another man is totally unfamiliar to him, he knows that gay and bisexual people exist out there in the world, being in love with eachother or whatever. It just never occurred to him that one of them might be Snape, or that they might be out there in the world, loving him. And putting those two ideas together and then thinking of it as a real thing that’s actually happening is too much for him to handle.

Snape.

Harry’s relieved that he’s safe, naturally, and that he’s forgiven Harry at least enough to get by for now. Enough to be friends - he recalls the expression on Snape’s face when he first arrived today. Relief, and maybe a teeny tiny spark of joy? He’s making that up, he knows, but translated onto the Snape scale of emotions it was definitely up there on the nicer end of scorn.

But if he loves Harry, wouldn’t he have done something about it by now? Other than an anonymous letter. And the orange armchair acceptance, and letting Harry effectively move into his workshop and key himself into the wards without asking permission, and… No, that stuff doesn’t count. Shouldn’t he have said something by now? Like, a declaration or confession or whatever?

He can’t imagine it. He doesn’t want to of course, but he can’t. Snape looking Harry right in the eye and saying “I love you”, it’s laughable. He can’t imagine Snape saying that to anyone.

And what about other relationship things? Surely Snape’s never done those before. Holding hands. Cuddling on the sofa while reading. Spooning in bed - does he prefer being the big spoon or the little spoon, or does he not spoon at all? In those full-length black pyjamas of his, with his hair lying loose. And then Harry would accidentally lean on his hair and he’d get annoyed and - no, not Harry. Harry isn’t in this story. Merlin. He needs to get a grip, get whatever this is out of his system before he does something stupid.

Harry isn’t attracted to men. He’d know by now if he was, surely? He just needs to force himself to recognise that, and then he can move on.

He tries to think about sex

Merlin, he can’t... He can’t think about it. Not with Snape. He doesn’t have sex. Oh God, Snape has a- he has… He must have one, and… Harry can’t think about it. Obviously, Snape is a human being with all of the requisite parts, barring that he was born without some of them, or with different ones, or had an accident. A horrific accident.

Melin, does he have to be such a child about it? Like curse-breaking, he simply needs to start with what he knows and extrapolate from there. Thinking methodically about it will put him more at ease. He’s seen Snape’s face. His ugly, pale, lined face that isn’t attractive in the least. And his hair, which is quite nice except for the grease, and the fact that some of it is currently missing. The missing chunk of hair has also revealed that Snape has ears, or at least one ear. That’s new information this week. He has a throat, scarred, and that bony bit at the back of the neck. Which means he almost definitely has a spine going down from there.

He has hands, of course. Fingers and the ends of thumbs, which presumably means that he has the base part of the thumbs as well, despite the fact that they’re covered by sleeves all the time. He also has feet, which Harry has seen in their entirety. Long spidery toes, the kind that look kind of creepy. Above those: ankles, which Harry has felt with his own two hands, but which he doesn’t really remember the feel of since he had a lot to worry about at the time.

So the facts are: Snape has a head, some fingers - maybe thumbs, although this is unconfirmed - and two entire feet, attached by ankles to… Well, parts unknown. Between all of those other things, he probably has the rest of a body. Legs with leg hairs and knobbly knees, arms - a dark mark on one wrist - reaching up to bony shoulders. A long back, possibly with spikes sticking out of his spine like a demon. At the front, a chest and stomach. All very acceptable normal human things. No boobs, of course, which is to be expected.

Unless it isn’t, Harry thinks. Maybe he has them, who is Harry to judge? Oh god what is he thinking?

And Snape has certain other bits. It stands to reason that if he has a head and hands and feet, and assuming that he has male characteristics under there, then… Then yes, he has- other parts.

“Wow, great g-going Harry,” he mutters. It only takes half an hour of following logical steps, to not be able to say it in the end anyway. It doesn’t matter in any case, because the things that are under Snape’s robes are none of Harry’s business, and not anything he has any interest in. Snape’s a fifty year old man for goodness’ sake, and not even one of the ones who aged well, with chiselled jawbones and soulful eyes. He’s just not the type of person that people get physically attracted to. Or emotionally attracted to, either.

So that’s that.

He’s not sure how he manages to get to sleep knowing that someone else is in the house, but he wakes up feeling almost refreshed. He pops out to the 24h first thing to get bread, and on a whim he buys a pack of Linda McCartney frozen sausages that proclaim to be vegan, though how anyone can make a sausage without meat is beyond him.

Snape doesn’t appear to be about when he gets home, still too early for him, so Harry goes on a hunt for clean towels, flannels and toiletries to pop in the bathroom. He optimistically includes a bottle of shampoo.

Snape emerges from the living room at ten o’clock, surprising Harry as he’s trying to work out why the kitchen door doesn’t close properly. Bent hinge, maybe. “You d-didn’t sleep in the spare r-room?” he asks, pointing up the hall as if Snape might have forgotten where it is.

“Morning,” Snape responds, blinking slowly. He doesn’t look like he’s slept at all. Harry glances past him into the living room, but no shelves or units have been put up. What was he doing all night?

Snape follows him into the kitchen and Harry pops the kettle on just because it feels like the right thing to do. He puts together a couple of jam sandwiches while the water is boiling, even though he isn’t hungry, and then brings it all to the small table. He nods at the chair opposite to encourage Snape to sit because his constant hovering in doorways is really starting to freak him out. “It’s b-blackc-currant,” he says as he puts down the plate. Snape’s favourite. He’s cut them into triangles for Snape too, even though every reasonable person in the universe knows that rectangles are better. The man doesn’t appear to notice this moral sacrifice as he sits, looking for all the world as if he’s just sat down for dinner with both Voldemort.

Is every interaction going to be this awkward from now on? Harry thinks longingly of mornings on the veranda and afternoons spent quietly slicing ingredients. What happened to all that? You happened, he reminds himself. With that bloody Feel Wheel. He picks at his sandwich, watching Snape do the same and trying not to look like he’s watching. It’s just that, if Snape wants to say something then Harry needs to be looking, so he is. He’s not staring.

He has to think of something to say. An interesting topic, something they have in common. “D-did your scar fade?” he asks.

Snape looks up from his distraction and touches a hand briefly to his neck with a deepened frown. The scar from Nagini’s bite goes almost all the way up to his eye, pulling at the skin in a jagged, shiny line. It looks like it could connect up to the fresher line along his temple, but he’d have to lose the eye first.

“I m-meant the Mark, sorry,” Harry clarifies. He lifts the curtain of hair that no longer quite covers where his scar used to stand out like a stark red crayon drawing. “Mine’s s-still there, but you have to l-look c-carefully.”

Snape doesn’t look - of course, probably bad memories. The war and all that. Harry lets his hair drop and quickly picks up his tea instead so that he can cover the embarrassed flush growing over his face.

Snape regards him with the most neutral variety of angry expression Harry has seen yet, and then holds out his arm. With a well practiced movement, he carefully undoes each of the three small buttons holding the sleeve against his hand, and then pulls the black material back with a flick. He’s wearing a white shirt under the black robe, and that goes next. Two buttons this time, with excruciating slowness and deliberation. It’s transfixing, like some kind of religious ceremony: and lo, there was flesh.

Harry sucks in a breath. There’s one patch where he thinks he can make out a scale or two from the snake, but the rest of the mark has been obliterated by a mass of bumpy white scar tissue. Before he can reach out or look any closer, it’s gone, sleeves rolled back down as Snape efficiently buttons them back up. Harry’s gaze flicks back up to the man’s face.

“Not one of my proudest moments,” he says, and Harry doesn’t know how to respond. Is he talking about the moment he took the mark, or the one he tried to… untake it?

He shouldn’t have asked. Why does he always say the most stupid things? One would think that a couple of years of silence would have taught him to think before opening his mouth, but no. Maybe it’s best if he leaves the house early, give the man some space. Give them both some space. Merlin knows he needs it.

“I’m g-going to the B-Burrow in a minute, if you w-want to-“ come with me? Yes, why not ask Snape to go over to the Weasleys’ for lunch, that’ll take care of all this awkwardness. Possibly through a hex or six. “-eat with me l-later? Molly won’t let me l-leave without something f-for-“ my vegan boyfriend. Jesus. Keep it simple, mate, and try not to f*ck up any more. “We c-could eat at eight.” Why is talking to Snape so bloody nerve-wracking now? He vaguely remembers a time when Snape was the only person he felt comfortable talking to, the only one whose opinion and judgement didn’t matter. When did that change?

Snape’s scowl takes on a new dimension, possibly at the mention of Weasleys or at Harry’s awkwardness. “Perhaps,” he says, but his knuckles have gone white from gripping his mug, and his shoulders are bunched and tense.

Harry knows instantly that he’s done something wrong. But what?

It could be anything, maybe even nothing at all. Nothing reasonable, anyway. “I should…” he gestures to the door, although he can apparate out from anywhere in the house, and rises out of his chair. Snape nods, scowling into his tea, gripping the cup so tight it looks like it might break.

Chapter 40: Shatwits

Chapter Text

Harry can’t breathe properly again until he sets foot on the springy grass of Molly’s garden. He takes in a long, shaky breath. The sun shines brightly overhead, reminding him that it’s coming towards the height of summer, and that nice weather continues to exist outside even when he’s being too miserable of a git to notice it.

The calming breeze brings with it the exhaustion he’s been repressing all night and all morning. His interactions with Snape weigh on him, and since he’s early anyway he flops down on the grass. He just needs a minute to steady his nerves before facing the busy house and the social pressure to smile and be fine.

Because he is not fine. He’s coming round to accepting that. He’s just not fine. Everything’s wrong. Ginny is gone, James is here, Snape is living in his house and loves him, and he’s trying so bloody hard but the universe won’t give him a day to breathe. There are so many things he hasn’t had the time to process.

Like for instance the angry but not angry potion brewer who is literally in his house right this very minute, possibly sitting at his kitchen table and staring fiercely at a mug of tea for reasons unknown.

He can’t get that wrist out of his head. Not just the mass of scars itself, but more disturbingly the act of revealing it. His brain plays and replays the memory of buttons slowly, purposefully popped open. He holds his own arm up above his face and thumbs the single shirt button at his wrist. He circles it and scratches it lightly with a nail, then pushes it through the buttonhole. The cuff springs open, exposing Harry’s arm.

It’s not the same at all, but he notices suddenly that his heart is beating quickly. Like waking from a trance, the feel of the world pops back into clarity around him. The ground against his back, the grass tickling his neck and the light wind blowing stray hairs to tickle his nose. The clear blue sky. The warm air on his exposed wrist and the hot sun on his cheeks, and the tightness in his- nope.

Nope nope nope, no no no no no. Not happening.

He sits up, bringing his knees to his chest and clutching his shins tightly to counteract his inability to take a full lungful of air. He breathes in shallow gasps. It’s not happening, it’s not happening. Not Snape. It’s… it’s the intensity of it all, it’s doing something funny to him. Like that time when he was having a wank, it wasn’t about Snape, it was the intensity of the imagined stare. And now the tension of the moment at the kitchen table. It’s probably normal, even for a straight guy.

He leans his forehead against his knees. It’s normal. Totally normal...

“Harry, you’re early!” Molly exclaims as he lets himself in, hoping in vain not to be noticed until he’s been to the bathroom to splash his face with water.

She’s seen him worse, he supposes. “Morning,” he answers, looking over the long table, which is covered in flour. She’s rolling pastry. “What’re you m-making?”

“Come and help,” she says, waving him over and accio’ing a spare rolling pin with a smile.

She doesn’t bring up his red eyes or wobbly smile as he helps her roll out sheets of puff pastry and then cut them into squares. They spoon out little dollops of caramelised onion onto some, leave others plain and then plonk halves of peach on the last long row, sprinkled with margarine and demerara sugar.

With his hands busy, his mind finally grows steady and still. Rolling, spooning, glazing and placing an impossible number of pastry squares onto a mismatched collection of baking trays. With impeccable timing, George appears with James sitting against his chest just as the last tray has disappeared into the oven. They all got in there, somehow - it shouldn’t amaze Harry, but newly discovered magic still does.

He washes his hands hurriedly and takes James with a broad smile. His son is still half asleep, eyes unfocussed and bleary. It reminds Harry of when he was a small baby, of the panic and uncertainty of every waking, and the fear that he was going to be sh*t at this whole ‘dad’ thing.

Their conversation is pleasantly non-romance related, though Harry spends more of it playing with James than actually talking or reading. It’s only been a week, but he swears that James has gotten bigger. His features are changing, and Harry can see a bit of Ginny in the shape of his eyes, although his hair is disappointingly dark like his father’s. It doesn’t pain him to see her features in their son any more, which he takes as a good sign. He doesn’t want to be one of those people who can’t bear the sight of their own children. Not that he’s sure ‘those people’ actually exist, but they do in his head, and he won’t be like that. James brings him nothing but joy.

Well, that and fear and insecurity and guilt and worthlessness. But that’s all on him, and he can continue to work on it. He’s determined to make sure that James grows up knowing his dad loves him more than anything else in the whole damn world.

They eat the pastries. What seemed like an impossible number earlier are quickly devoured - apart from a few that Molly sets aside with a keep-fresh charm for Harry’s ‘friend’ - especially once Arthur pops in from his shed.

“Ah, Harry!” he says, wiping his feet vigorously by the door yet still managing to traipse in dirt, much to Molly’s obvious ire. “Just the man I was looking for. Tell me, what do you know about the internet?”

Harry knows very little except for the basics, but he explains those as best he can, and fields the questions he can’t answer. He remembers Hermione explaining it to him once, that the internet isn’t actually a thing that exists in one place, that it’s a network of computers all talking to each other. The concept makes no sense at all, and the conversation confuses both Harry and Arthur tremendously.

“But where does it come from, how do they access it? Is it just…?” Arthur waves a hand to show that he means the air, all around, everywhere.

“They have wireless r-routers,” Harry answers, although the specifics of wireless anything is mind-boggling. All that information, zipping through the air around them all the time, it’s quite scary. Childishly, he wonders if some of that information might have gotten into his head without him knowing. Hermione would probably have told him if that was the case, but there was that time when he was queueing at the supermarket, and the woman in front of him told the cashier all about how wireless internet and mobile phone signals cause behavioural problems in children. He should really ask Hermione about it.

Through the route of various questions - no, Harry doesn’t have a wireless router and no, he doesn’t know how muggles get them installed and he most certainly doesn’t have the skill or knowledge to set one up at the Burrow - they get to the topic of Harry’s attempted home improvements.

“I just n-need something for m-mold, and then there’s the wallp-paper a-and-” the extractors. Harry stills, half a peach pastry freezing on its way to his mouth. The extractors, he told Snape they’d put the extractors in today. He stands suddenly, pulling James up into his arms and looking around for the lavender robe he discarded while baking. George is sitting on it. “I n-need to go. Do you have any b-books on home improvements I can b-borrow?”

He hands James off to Molly, who is surprised but efficient. She accio’s the box of pastries for Snape, and orders Arthur into the living room to find ‘Shatwits’. No one asks what’s so urgent that Harry has to go immediately in the middle of contact with James. He explains anyway, guilty.

“I’ll c-come again Wednesday,” he begins, accio’ing his robe now that George has also stood up. He has time to make up, and he fully intends to do so. “F-forgot I promised to help a friend t-today. I’m g-going to come more often though. N-not just S-Saturdays.”

George grins, raising his eyebrows twice in a suggestive gesture that Harry decides to ignore.

“Of course Harry, we’d be delighted to see more of you,” Molly exclaims, then pulls him into a hug. When she pulls back, there’s a book in her hand, which Arthur must have handed to her behind Harry’s back. He turns slightly so that he can see everyone in the room, an uncomfortable prickle in his spine despite the fact that he trusts the Weasleys.

Bedknobs and Broomcupboards: Essential Home Improvement Charms for Modern Wizarding Homes, the book states. He’s not so sure about the modern part, taking in the dog-eared, battered tome. The Author’s name is Nospin Chadwick - not Shatwits.

Book in hand, he apparates home.

Chapter 41: Kindness

Chapter Text

He lands in the kitchen, half expecting Snape to still be sitting at the table staring dully into his tea. Obviously he isn’t, though he did leave the mugs and plates out with half-eaten food still on them. This bloody man, Harry thinks, but somehow the thought comes out fond.

He steps out into the hall. The living room door is open, but he doesn’t need to go inside to tell that it’s empty of both shelves and angry wizards. He rushes up the hall to the stairs.

His steps slow as he approaches the door to the spare room. It’s closed. He hesitates outside and then knocks, hopefully not too hard. A handful of heartbeats passes, and he’s about to knock a second time when the door swings slowly open.

Snape is sitting in his armchair, one leg crossed over the other with a book on his knee, and his wand pointed in Harry’s direction. He looks to be casually reading, but if there’s one thing Harry knows, it’s that Snape is utterly incapable of being casual. It’s a good act though.

Harry steps into the room with his mouth open to apologise, when something else comes into view and he is stunned immobile. “Y-you kept it,” he breathes. He walks hesitantly, reverently, to the disgusting, terrible, offensive orange armchair, but keeps his eyes on Snape. “I thought-”

“That I would destroy your belongings?” Snape asks. His eyes flash with genuine annoyance.

Harry doesn’t presume that he’s welcome to sit, although it’s promising that Snape set up both armchairs together, so he stays standing with one hand resting on the arm. It’s comforting to feel it, like that first day Snape revealed himself and Harry kept having to reach over and touch him to reassure himself that he was real. “I’m s-sorry for going,” he begins. Then, in the interests of honesty: “Well, n-no I’m not. I only see James on Saturdays, so I guess I’m sorry I told you we’d sort out v-vent...til… the air today. But I c-came back as soon as I realised. Which doesn’t make it b-better, just- It’s important, yeah? You’re- it’s important to me, so you know.”

Snape appraises him, possibly staring for a few seconds longer than necessary just for the torture, and then his false facade falls away. Tension returns to his body, and it’s strange to know how that means he’s more relaxed, more himself than before. “Your speech is improving,” he says, finally.

Harry straightens his back. “It is?” He doesn’t feel like it. As if to disprove Snape’s assertion, he can’t get his next words out right. “Th-thank you.”

Snape nods. In the lull that follows, Harry realises that he’s holding the pastries and the book under his arm. He holds out the box. “I n-noticed you didn’t finish your s-sandwich.” Snape takes it and opens the lid. The smell of caramelised sugar fills Harry’s nostrils, followed by a more subtle savoury scent. “I’ve already eaten too m-many, so t-take them all if you’d l-like,” Harry says, though in truth he could still eat the box twice over.

Snape frowns down at the steaming pastries, then at Harry, looking him over. “You could use a few more,” he replies. Before Harry can take offence - he knows he’s too thin but he’s eating again now - Snape follows it up. “The new robes suit you.”

It’s possibly the first time Snape has complimented him without it being a veiled insult. Technically he only complimented the robes, but Harry will take it. He smiles self-consciously, overly aware of the man’s gaze. He loves me, his brain supplies unhelpfully. His hand goes unconsciously to his hair, pushing back the left curtain behind his ear in a gesture he hopes isn’t interpreted as but what about my hair, you haven’t complimented my hair yet. Stupidly, he wishes Snape would. “You sh-should see the others,” he responds quickly. “One’s orange.”

Snape makes a face. “Spare me.”

Harry laughs. This is fine, this is good. Maybe they can get back to how they were after all. He holds up the book. “I got this. H-hopefully it might help.”

Snape nods towards the armchair so Harry sits, uncomfortable at first - but once he opens the book and starts flicking through, he finds himself leaning into the familiar lumpiness. He smiles to himself, reading the titles of each page while glancing up occasionally to watch Snape take a bite. It’s only then that he spots B’gulbl’s yellow eyes shining under a cascade of black hair. Sitting in the space between Snape’s neck and the back of the chair. The little owl has his gaze trained on the pastry in Snape’s hand, while the man himself seems utterly aware, holding it ready for a bite as he continues to read a book propper up on the arm of his chair.

B’gulbl shifts, slowly extending one leg out from his hiding place, and Snape frowns at the movement. He lowers the pastry into his lap in a moment of foresight, just as the owl leaps out to grab it. Flustered at the missed opportunity, B’gulbl flaps in mid-air for a second and then tumbles to the floor in a fluffy ball of disappointed feathers.

“No,” Snape says, scowling down at the poor little thing. The owl shakes himself off, twitching his head to the side. Snape glances sideways at Harry, who hurriedly looks down at his page and pretends not to notice him throwing a piece of pastry for B’gulbl after all.

They share a peach pastry first, and Harry makes note of the choice. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re Snape’s favourite, but he files the information anyway: likes peach; dislikes orange.

He finds a spell that might work, turns the book around to show Snape, who pulls back a guilty hand in the act of feeding B’gulbl. “You’ll have to c-cast it, I don’t know how to p-pronounce this.”

Snape scowls, opens his mouth and then closes it. Then he reaches a hand down the side of his armchair and pulls out the clipboard with its notepad and biro. Harry’s chest swells at seeing it, at what it means...

I cannot speak.

It’s an awfully short message to have taken so long to write, but all of a sudden a cascade of understandings pour through Harry. Of course. This is why Snape was so annoyed about Harry leaving. Since when has he gotten angry at anything Harry does? Only the big things - when Severus Snape is annoyed, it is almost always at himself rather than anyone else, because he holds himself to a higher standard. An unreasonably high one. He wasn’t upset that Harry left this morning, rather that he couldn’t do the job on his own. Having to wait, to sit and be reliant on someone else to do something so simple and straightforward, must be galling. Humiliating.

Harry tries to remember all the times he’s seen Snape perform magic, and can’t recall anything more complex than summoning objects, or shrinking and unshrinking them. No wait, there was that one time with the flipiendo. Trust Snape to be able to cast combat spells wordlessly, but not cleaning charms.

sh*t, he should say something. Silence is too easily misinterpreted. “Right,” he says, turning the book back around. “W-well that’s fine. We can work it out t-together. I’ll read it, and you c-can point out everything I’m doing wrong.”

Snape’s frown shifts, and Harry can almost imagine a circle of orange swirling away into a pool of deep, dark blue. He swallows, unable to break their locked eyes. Then Snape does it for him, and they both carry on reading even though Harry has found the spell he was looking for. Snape’s ear goes red, and Harry pretends not to notice, but wonders how he managed to spend so long without ever working it out before. It’s so obvious now, that Snape loves him.

Snape loves him...

Two hours later, Harry thinks he’s got the pronunciation down. Which of course, he hasn’t.

Put more stress on the “ah” sound. Second syllable of the word.

“I am b-bloody stressing it,” Harry argues, throwing his hands in the air in exasperation. “I’m sorry if v-ventil..at..atione aedof-ofico isn’t exactly the easiest ph-phrase in the world to s-say with a stutter and n-no ability to b-bloody hear it.”

Aed-A-fico, Potter.

“That’s w-what I said,” Harry exclaims, barely resisting the urge to knock the notepad out of Snape’s hand. They’re standing side-by-side on the old sofa, unsteady on the lumpy cushions, as if being higher might help somehow. He sighs, lowering his wand hand.

They’re a right pair. One who can pronounce fancy words but can’t speak them, and the other who can speak them but not anywhere near correctly. It’s really not ideal, and he’s about ready to give up.

Snape tilts the notepad in his direction.

It is difficult being unable to do things that were once simple. I understand.

Harry scowls at him. He doesn’t want someone to understand, he wants someone to cast the bloody spell. “Stop being nice. It’s f-freaking me out,” he says. It seems better than making this into a moment. Harry’s too angry and frustrated to have a moment with anyone, least of all Snape. It’s enough that they’re standing so close together, do they have to make a thing of it?

Snape purses his lips as if in deep thought, and then writes again. Harry is close enough to read in real-time:

Your inability to cast this simple, straight-forward home improvement charm makes you less of a wizard and less of a man. Combined with your disturbing lack of intelligence, tact or sophistication, this means that in all likelihood no one will ever love you again.

Harry takes a deep breath, expelling it slowly. He knows one person who will, but he really doesn’t want to think about it. “Thank you,” he says. “You had me w-worried there.”

Your new robes make you look fat.

He barks a laugh. “I thought you s-said I should eat more pastries.”

Snape shrugs, quickly writing out: I was ‘being nice’.

Harry shakes his head, then pushes his hair back behind his ears and points the wand up for the twenty millionth time. He catches Snape watching the movement in the corner of his eye.

“Ventilatione a-aedafico!”

The wall bulges, as it has a few times during his previous close-calls, and then a circle unfolds to reveal a cylindrical hole in the wall. He’s… has he done it? It’s a bit anticlimactic. Isn’t there supposed to be some kind of covering? He jumps down from the sofa, causing Snape to unbalance and almost fall off. The book’s open at the right page, and Harry picks it up to compare the image with the hole in the wall. There’s definitely a mesh of some kind in the picture. He flips to the next page, scanning it as if there might be a second section to the instructions, but instead a sink unclogging charm sits there, as if to taunt him with previous failures as well as his current one.

“I g-guess we could put something over it,” he says slowly. “Like muggles do.”

Rumbling vibrations under his feet make him look up to see Snape pushing the sofa closer to the wall. He stands on it again, steadying himself on the uneven cushions, then reaches towards the hole with his hand. He doesn’t actually put it inside, then with a deepening frown he makes a knocking motion over it. He turns to look over his shoulder at Harry. “Do you hear that?” Harry raises his eyebrows meaningfully, and Snape turns quickly away, busying himself with climbing down. “It worked,” he says then, without mentioning the mistake.

Just to be sure, Harry casts fumos, creating a curling cloud of smoke to fill the room. It doesn’t disappear instantly, but he’s pretty impressed with the five-second clearing time regardless. “Good enough?” he asks Snape, just to be sure. The man nods.

They carry on with the improvements, going through the book methodically and stopping to cast any spell they think might be useful before moving on. Snape has already waited long enough, but there’s no practicality in avoiding the mold or the damp, the peeling wallpaper and all the other issues. So he helps Harry with the pronunciation, making sure to heap on as many taunting remarks as possible at the same time.

They transfigure blackout curtains from the old sofa, against Snape’s protests that boarding up the window would be a much better solution.

“It’s not g-going to be a potions lab forever, is it?” Harry says in response to the man’s written arguments, then realises what he’s said. “I mean, n-not that you’re n-not welcome to stay as l-long as you like…”

Snape has that carefully casual look about him again, and Harry wonders if the wizard really thinks it makes him seem relaxed.

“I had not presumed to stay for long,” he replies. “I assume you’ll meet a nice witch to settle down with, at which point I will be a hindrance.”

Harry frowns. “I’m n-never going to remarry,” he says simply. There won’t be another Ginny. “I c-can’t imagine…” living with someone else, sleeping with them, loving them, raising a family. Argh, but he’s supposed to be moving on. What was that talk with Luna about, if not this? He feels like he’s lying on a beach, sometimes. When the tide goes out he can breathe and see the bright sky above, but the tide always comes back in to drown him. One step forward, five steps back. “I d-don’t know, I k-keep thinking… I want to be happy, of c-course I do, but-“ he runs a hand through his hair, sighing.

Snape pushes the notepad towards him, and he looks down in surprise. He was back with Luna for a second there.

You have the rest of your life to decide. Be kind.

He gapes. It- well. Yeah, of course he has the rest of his life, just like everyone else. I know that already, he thinks dismissively, but then it hits him just how long that’s likely to be. He’s almost thirty, and will probably live that long two or even three times again. It’s such a lengthy time to spend in mourning, and the thought that he’ll never love again seems silly and childish when he thinks how many girls he’s already fancied in the first few decades of his life. On the one hand it’s mind-opening to think of the years stretching out ahead of him, but on the other it paints his time with Ginny as short and insignificant. If he loves again, will he be with them longer than he was with Ginny? It seems like a betrayal, more so than his previous thoughts on the subject.

Even if it’s okay to fall in love again, would it be okay to spend the rest of his life with someone else, to get to his eventual deathbed and think of this more recent and lengthy romance as the main love of his life? He’s slowly coming around to the idea of maybe one day having feelings again, but they’re still secondary to the ones he has for Ginny. What happens when the secondary person overtakes her?

Realising that he’s gone quiet for too long, Harry shoves the notepad aside. “You’re b-being nice again,” he says warningly, shaking his head in mock frustration. “If you c-carry on, I m-might think that you like me.”

Merlin! Why does he keep doing this to himself? He swallows back his panic, willing his shoulders not to stiffen. He can’t show a special reaction to the words, or Snape might realise that he knows.

He half expects the next note to say I do, or maybe Like is not strong enough a word, or something like that. The perfect timing for a confession. He reads as Snape writes, to prevent the man from scribbling out his first draft, as he often does.

If it were possible to prevent you from coming to erroneous conclusions, I’m quite certain my efforts would have worked at least once by now. However, as futile as it may be I shall make the attempt. Such a thought as the one you mentioned is based on two assumptions: firstly, that I am not capable of change or growth; and secondly, that you are. As it stands, this is quite backwards. While I have displayed great progress in recent years towards becoming a patient, understanding and morally upstanding citizen of the wizarding world, you have clearly yet to discard the incredible arrogance of your school days. To believe that you, of anyone, could be liked by me. Utter foolery.

Well, that’s about what Harry should have expected. He finds himself grinning. “G-good thing you’re here to b-bring me down a peg, then.”

“Indeed.”

Chapter 42: Snap

Chapter Text

Though Harry expects Snape to be impatient to set up his laboratory, they’ve barely made a dent in the work before he casts tempus and declares it time for bed.

Harry supposes there’s no urgency to get back to work. They haven’t discussed rent, and Harry doesn’t plan on bringing it up unless Snape does. It can’t have been easy on his cash flow to move laboratories twice in the space of a month.

In their usual style, they haven’t discussed anything meaningful at all. Nothing about mealtimes or whether they’ll drink tea together in the mornings, or what they’ll do if Harry wants to invite friends over, or what they actually are to each other. Not about the old space, of Snape being denied renewal, or Harry knowing about the incident with the wizengamot. Not about practicalities, and most certainly nothing about… feelings.

On the upstairs landing, they pause outside Snape’s room. Snape hesitates, looking like he’s about to speak, but frowns instead. He opens the door and crosses the threshold, then turns back to Harry.

He’s going to invite me in, Harry thinks. To sleep in their armchairs like before.

But Snape pauses again, and then bids Harry good night. The door closes between them.

Harry stares at it for a few long moments. He realises now that he’s been expecting to sleep on the orange armchair since the moment he saw it. No, not expecting. Planning. It’s just a fact - the orange armchair is here, and so Harry will sleep in it. Of course that wouldn’t be the case. This is his house. He has a bedroom, and inside of that an actual bed. Why on Earth would he sleep in the armchair?

Shaking his head at the foolish thought, he stalks to his own room. It’s dark and spacious and the paint on the walls is bubbly with moisture. The window is uncovered, and two shiny golden owl eyes stare down at him from on top of the wardrobe. It’s home. His home. It’s just… well, it was nice before. With the armchairs.

The next morning, Harry is faced with the practicalities he’s been avoiding. He cleans up the lunch dishes from yesterday, wiping down the table while imagining the rant he’ll have at Snape about housework and tidying up after himself. It sounds shamingly close to one Ginny once gave him for the very same thing. He knows that he won’t say anything until he’s really annoyed about it though. It’s a habit of his - to say as little as possible for as long as he can, almost convincing himself that he’s fine with the way things are, and then explode all at once about something quite small.

The fact that he’s aware of the pattern doesn’t make it any easier to stop.

With the kitchen clean, he finally settles down with a mug of tea and a plate of toast. It’s already quite light outside, though hints of orange remain in the square of sky he can see out of this window. Even with Snape back, he can’t have his tea mornings.

He frowns into his mug. That bloody artist woman, and the management too. Bowing under the thumb of whichever Wizengamot member or narrow-minded bastard pressured them into forcing Snape out. Anger flares up in Harry suddenly, a feeling that’s been lying there under the current for days without a target. Well, he has a target now.

It’s a snap decision, but as soon as he makes it he knows it’s the right one. He goes upstairs to change without finishing his tea and then apparates straight to the Engineshed reception.

His old fan is sitting at the counter, sifting through some post with bleary eyes while sipping an impressively large mug of coffee. The smell of it is strong, wafting over to Harry as he walks up to the desk. She straightens up at his approach, blinking her eyes quickly. “Good morning Mister Potter, what can I-”

“I’d l-like to end my tenancy, please,” Harry says, cutting across. It doesn’t feel so rude when he can’t hear the other person, which is a pleasant surprise. Maybe he should be rude and arrogant more often. “I’ll be m-moving out t-today.”

Madam Cassel gapes. It’s evidently too early in the morning for this sort of thing. “You’ll have to talk to-”

So he spends half the morning being bounced around from supervisor to manager to owner and back to manager, explaining as patiently as he can, over and over, that he’s definitely ending the tenancy, that he’s leaving today and that it’s primarily because he doesn’t approve of their handling of the Snape issue. He does end up softening the blow a little by adding that he’s been renovating his house anyway, and it’s just time.

In truth, he doesn’t know where he’s going to set up all his stuff. Even at 4pm when he arrives home with the entirety of his workspace packed away in a single wooden trunk, he has no idea. He apparrates into the kitchen and slides the heavy box onto the table, forgetting his abandoned tea. It knocks over and spills all over the floor.

Harry sighs, leaning on the surface with his palms to either side of the box. Cold liquid pools between the fingers of his right hand. It’s silly, but he feels quite unable to deal with it so he just stays still. If he doesn’t move then he doesn’t have to think about what to do next.

He’s tired. A morning of decisive talking followed by an afternoon of packing has left him exhausted on all fronts. And now he can’t even clean up a spilled cup of tea. He sighs again, harder.

A shadow moves to his side, and he glances up to see Snape. He looks furious, as usual, but interpreting the subtleties of Snape’s expressions is quickly becoming second nature, and Harry can clearly see the man is worried. Worried about Harry. Is he ever going to stop being surprised about this stuff?

“I’m fine,” Harry says automatically, and Snape raises his eyebrows.

“What’s this?” he asks, laying a hand on the trunk. He runs his fingertips over the metal edging, and Harry finds himself following the movement with his eyes.

“Don’t touch it,” he snaps impulsively, and the hand pulls away as if bitten. Gods, Harry is too tired to deal with… well, whatever this is. Thinking about how Snape’s fingers are so dextrous and graceful, about slowly popping buttons open, about intense glares. He’s too damn tired. He can feel the tide coming back in to drown him, and fights to control his breathing. He clasps the edge of the table tightly with both hands, forcing air in and out of his lungs. “I’m sorry,” he says after a minute, straightening back up to look at Snape, but the man is gone.

sh*t. Everything was going so smoothly, too. Between them, if not with anything else. Harry always finds a way to f*ck everything up again, doesn’t he?

He grabs the trunk and lugs it upstairs to his bedroom. It’s the only place left to set up his workspace, now that Snape has both the living room and the spare room. Perhaps he shouldn’t have offered both to the man, after all. Snape is used to sleeping in his workroom, so it’s not like he actually needs a bedroom, but Harry can’t exactly rescind the offer.

His bedroom will have to do. Especially now that he has the home improvements book.

He passes Snape’s room on the landing, the door slightly ajar, and stops outside with the trunk in his hands. He should be levitating the thing. He needs to apologise for snapping.

Later. He’ll do it later. He turns on his heel and shuts himself inside his bedroom instead. The way he’s feeling now, he’ll only mess it up or make things worse.

He surveys the room. It’s large enough except for the bed - and does he really need a double, right in the middle of the room? He transfigures it into a smaller cot, then shoves it towards the corner. Already, the room feels larger. He moves all of his other bedroom furniture towards the same side of the room. Wardrobe, bedside table and the low dresser. He’s surprised by how little he actually owns. Well, there’s everything at Grimmauld Place too, but he’s not counting any of that. His old Hogwarts trunk is somewhere in the attic as well. He never opens it.

Now that he’s had the practice from refreshing the living room, he gets through the same spells much faster. Stripping and banishing the old paint, killing off the mould and drying out the walls. Once those are done, he’s not sure he has the energy to set up his workshop again, so he sits on the edge of his now tiny bed and flips through the book looking for any other potentially useful spells.

The bathroom still needs doing. The windows need cleaning and the doors need de-stiffening. Oiling? Do the doors creak? They feel stiff sometimes, but he hasn’t thought about it until now, hasn’t had reason to. Has he invited Snape to live in a house of creepy creaking doors and peeling paint?

Somehow, despite his tiredness, Harry wanders through the rest of the house performing various renovation spells. He starts with the en-suite, then the hallway outside his room, then the stairs with the worn-out carpet and scratched banisters. He fixes up the walls, mostly. He does the downstairs hall, then Snape’s bathroom and finally ends up in the kitchen. Snape’s workroom door is shut, but Harry’s not sure if he’s in there or not.

It’s not like there’s any point in calling out, and he can’t hear the man’s footsteps. He might not even be in the house at all. Maybe he left earlier. Maybe he took a walk around the block and got stabbed by a muggle. Or one of his old enemies found him. Or he could be lying somewhere in this very house, after a loud bang and a scream of pain that Harry was completely oblivious to. Or perhaps he’s standing behind Harry right now, wand drawn in anger, ready to cast a curse.

Merlin, this is stupid. He forces himself to walk calmly to the sink to fill the kettle, without looking over his shoulder. The tap judders a little before water gushes out. Does it squeal? Does it make an awful racket when he runs the shower, pipes knocking and gurgling through the entire house?

He flicks the switch on the kettle and leans against the counter, turning to look out at the room. It’s not like he really thought anyone might be standing there with their wand out, but he still feels a small knot of anxiety unwind at seeing the empty room. He hates when he gets like this. Just listing through all the things he can’t do anymore, the things he doesn’t know - the reasons he shouldn’t be allowed around people or they shouldn’t be around him. He hates himself, like this.

Chapter 43: Garden

Chapter Text

Snape appears when Harry is halfway through his evening mug of tea, flicking through the book and using pieces of an old receipt to mark locations of spells he’d like to try later. Both bathrooms could do with regrouting around the sinks and a good deep clean. Then again, Hermione needn’t know if he just borrows Kreacher from Andromeda for a bit...

Snape refills the kettle, and Harry wishes he placed himself on the other side of the table to keep a better view of the whole room. He has to turn in his chair to watch, which makes it far too obvious. He pushes his hair back behind his ears again. “Look, um… I’m s-sorry. About earlier.”

Snape turns to face him. “Gaining a greater mod— control would-” modicum of control “-be preferable to this steady stream of apologies.”

Harry nods tiredly. “I know. W-working on it.” He’s working on bloody everything. He downs the last of his tea, and Snape reaches a hand out for the mug. Harry passes it up. “I ended my t-tenancy. At the Engine Shed. It seemed s-silly for you to be living and working here w-while I apparate every day.”

“Do you have the space?” Snape asks, the telltale signs of worry appearing around his eyes. Worry that he’s going to get kicked out again?

Harry waves a hand as casually as he can manage, even though he’s not actually sure he does have enough room. “Yeah, I d-don’t need much.”

They fall still again, waiting for the kettle to boil. After all the fuss he went through all day with moving his workspace, that conversation was a bit anticlimactic. But then there’s no reason for Snape to make a fuss, is there? Harry starts speaking again anyway. “I d-don’t agree with the way they t-treated you.”

Snape’s shoulders jump in what might be a huff or a mirthless laugh. “If you’re planning to shun everyone who dislikes me, then prepare yourself for a long battle.”

“I will,” Harry responds. Then he turns quickly to face the other way, hands clasped together on the table. God, why did he say that. It doesn’t even make sense, and… He refuses to groan or put his head in his hands, but internally he thinks he might have finally passed some threshold of insanity. It’s been a long day, at the end of a long week, at the end of a very long few years - and hell, if he wants to tell Snape that he’ll always have his back, then why not. Why the hell not.

A minute later Snape takes the chair opposite him, and they sit with their too-hot-to-drink, milkless teas in front of them, looking out the window. The kitchen is pleasantly cool after the warm day, and the wild mess outside the window sways in a growing breeze.

Snape taps a finger on the back of Harry’s hand, making him jump.

“Whose garden is that?” he asks, nodding towards the window.

Harry feels a blush creep up the back of his neck. “Ah…” It’s been so long that he keeps forgetting, but the ‘wild mess’ out there is actually, well... his wild mess. It all seemed too much when Ginny died, the entire house plus a garden to look after. Merlin knows he’s done a sh*t job at both. Harry stands, motioning for Snape to do the same, and then pulls the table away from the wall to reveal that the window is actually a door. He offers a grimace to Snape’s incredulous expression. Scratches on the floor show how long the table has sat there, unmoving.

How to explain all the myriad little reasons and thoughts that led to Harry feeling he had no choice but to block off the door and pretend it wasn’t there? Anxiety over entrances to the house, feeling like anyone could walk in without him hearing even though he has protective wards. Not having anywhere else to put the dining table where it wouldn’t be at least partially in the way anyway. The way the door seemed to taunt him with his inability to do anything with the garden. The fear that he might walk outside and lie down in the weeds and never get back up. The symbolism of it, how long they looked for a nice house with a lawn for the boys - there were going to be more boys - to play on. More than any other part of the house, the garden was supposed to be a family space. It’s where he keeps his grief, not for Ginny but for the children that were never born.

So he just… pretends it isn’t there, isn’t anything to do with him. How can he possibly explain all of that to Snape?

“It’s locked,” he says instead, and goes to one of the kitchen drawers to rifle through. The key’s in here somewhere… Ah. He turns and holds it up, but Snape has already opened the door. Right. Magic - obviously. He drops the key back into the drawer in embarrassment. “You can… I m-mean if you want to, you can use it. For… herbs.”

Snape steps into the dewy wilderness, his long robes catching on the long purple-flowered stalk of a delphinium. The long seedy grasses grow up to his thighs. He turns. “Herbs?” His expression shows that he was thinking of something else, so Harry shrugs.

“Or w-whatever,” he adds. Snape nods slowly, surveying the garden. Harry can almost see the vision reflected in his eyes as he imagines the transformation. “I can b-buy whatever you need.” Harry offers, still hanging back by the door, unwilling to step out of the house.

Snape kneels by a fuchsia and inspects the deep red flowers dangling from it. It reminds Harry suddenly of that dream he had, where Snape was the live-in gardener. Some kind of premonition? No, Ginny was alive in the dream. He tries to avoid thinking about what happened after he woke up from it, though it’s difficult with Snape right there. He looks up at Harry then, and his breath catches in his throat. It’s all too much.

Harry spins and escapes back into the kitchen. Merlin, why does he keep getting like this? It’s so stupid. He half-falls into his abandoned chair, orphaned from the table as it was moved out of the way, and clutches his knees with clawed hands. It’s not the full-blown panic he’s felt in the past, but he feels on the edge of it. A little nudge could tip him over.

His abandoned mug of tea appears under his nose and he takes it without looking up, but mumbles a thanks. He can see Snape’s feet on the tiles in front of him. Sturdy shoes, but worn - especially in comparison to Harry’s own fancy new outfit. He feels like he should say something to explain, but what? That he keeps having weird intrusive thoughts about Snape, now that he knows the man’s in love with him? Yeah, right. “The garden is… It’s a b-bit- I don’t know.” It’s as good a reason as any, easier to explain than the real one. “We had plans, but n-now they’ll never…”

Never mind, it’s not any easier after all. That’ll have to do, because for some stupid, stupid reason his eyes are blurring and he’s been doing so well and he doesn’t want Snape to see this. He doesn’t want anyone to see this. Merlin’s balls, when is it all going to stop being so difficult? He squeezes his eyes shut, takes a slow breath and wipes his eyes. Just a couple of droplets, nothing big. He’s fine. He’s totally fine.

When his eyes are clear, Snape’s shoes - and thus also the man - are gone. Harry isn’t sure if he’s happy to have kept his privacy intact, or annoyed that Snape just walks off every time he’s struggling. Before he can decide, the shoes reappear, along with the notepad and biro. There’s nothing on the page, so it must be for him. Trying to find an easier way for Harry to communicate. God, Snape is such a… some kind of disdainful word for a person who is thoughtful when you don’t want them to be because it’d all be so much easier if they were the bastard you always thought they were. Yeah, one of those.

Snape takes the tea back, swapping it for the biro and notepad. The empty page stares up at Harry. Even without having to say anything out loud, he can’t find the words. He’s not about to write Earlier for just a second when I was having a minor breakdown obviously, I could imagine for a second letting you touch me, and now I’m having a crisis over and over because you’re Severus Snape, but also it wouldn’t matter if you were anyone else. And really, this is all a mistake because I’ve never liked guys and I’m a bit too old to start, and speaking of old you’re the same age as my dad and you were my potions teacher and I’m sure I’m supposed to hate you. And you’re a bastard, you really are. You’re so mean sometimes, but other times you’re not, and more often it’s me who’s the bastard and I don’t want to be the bastard. Knowing that you’re not as much of a bastard as I thought makes me feel like more of a bastard than I am, and I’m fed up of feeling sh*t. But you’re right here in my house and it would be so easy in some ways, but so unfair when I have no idea what I’m feeling and you love me and it would never be small to you. I can’t test it out, can I? Just ask you to kiss me like it’s

He stops, realising that he’s just written two letters on the page:

Ki

Well sh*t, now he has to think of a different word to write at the start of a sentence, starting with ki. Kim, kid, kig, kit, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, no kip, kipper? At this point, writing Kippers are my favourite breakfast food wouldn’t be that much weirder than anything else Harry has done or said recently. He shuts his eyes again, clutching the pen tight. None of this is working. He puts the pen down, looks up.

Snape is ugly. He is. Harry knows this. He’s right there, with that pickaxe of a nose and that white jagged scar puckering the skin over his cheek. And the greasy hair, and the scowl and the pale face, and the thin line of a mouth and the uneven teeth. He’s ugly. Exactly as ugly as Severus Snape. And yet.

And yet.

Why is there even an ‘and yet’? There isn’t! There’s nothing to redeem the ugliness of Snape. He keeps having to take himself through this. Harry is clearly going a bit mad. A lot mad. And now he’s staring.

He looks back at the page, scribbles out the half-word “ki”. Maybe by erasing that, he can get rid of its equivalent in his brain. He just has to write something at this point, before his temporary insanity takes over and he does something they’ll both regret later.

I wish I knew how to help you.

There, that’s safe.

I like you and

Dial it back, dial it back…

I like you and you deserve more than you have. I know we’re supposed to be enemies or whatever, but honestly I don’t think about school when I look at you at all. You’re a different person. We both are. I just want to help you, as a friend, and I don’t know how to do it without offending you. The workshop rent was my biggest and pretty much only expense, and that’s gone now - partially thanks to you. I’ve been a bit of a mess, you may have noticed, but I’m getting better. So if you need something. Or want, whatever. I’ll get you plants or clothes or furniture. They don’t even have to be orange.

The garden isn’t easy for me to deal with, so if you want to go crazy out there then do it because it’s a weight off my mind to be honest. I just don’t want to look at it.

He hands up the clipboard and watches Snape read the paragraphs. For the first time in a while, Harry finds his expression unreadable. He tries to imagine what the Feel Wheel might look like, but nothing fits. He hasn’t seen this face before.

Snape glances at Harry, scowls and then sits heavily in the chair opposite with the clipboard gripped tightly in his hands.

“What I want?” He asks. His head is angled downward so it’s difficult to read his lips, forcing Harry to lower his own head to see. “You can’t give me what I want.”

He thinks he probably wasn’t meant to see that.

Chapter 44: Toast crumbs

Chapter Text

Whose idea was caffeine after 7pm? Harry wakes feeling exhausted, having only slept a few hours. Regardless of this fact, he’s pulled from his dreams at the same early hour as always. Stupid body clock.

He lies there for a few minutes longer, willing himself back into that fluffy sleepy state, but he knows it’s fruitless. Now that he’s awake there’s no helping matters. Doesn’t mean he has to get out of bed though.

His room looks different from this corner, tucked away against two walls. Safer. He stares at the gloomy ceiling.

You can’t give me what I want.

Snape was talking about love, right? Or some form of physical gratification at least… No, knowing Snape he meant love. Which is still weird to think about, but at the same time it isn’t. It’s a fact in his brain now that Severus Snape is a real human with an actual real heart and feelings and everything.

Of course Harry can’t give him what he wants. How’s he supposed to give someone else what they want, when he doesn’t even know what he wants?

He wants Ginny back, that’s what. He wants her here with him, her skin soft and warm, her eyes teasing. He’s surprised by how difficult that is to imagine. She doesn’t fit into his life the way it is now. The narrow bed he actually likes better than a spacious double, the non-dangerous job. He enjoys working with brooms. He likes the slow, meticulous process and he likes feeling safe. Being at home. She’d hate that. She’d feel trapped in the life he leads today.

Merlin, but he still wants her. He’d try, given the opportunity - an impossible opportunity. This is stupid. She’s dead. Dead. There is no trying, no future, no point dreaming about it.

Harry rubs a hand against the stubble on his cheek, still staring at the ceiling, and tries to remember if he was a more decisive person in the past. He’s so slow sometimes, and he knows it. Cautious like a snail peeping out its eye after getting poked. She made it so easy to be brave.

He lets his hand glide down to his throat, then over his chest to the flat of his stomach. The thin t-shirt material is scratchy and worn, old. Ginny has stripped this t-shirt off him, slid her hands under it, over it. She’s slept dribbling on the shoulder of it.

He carries on to his thigh and then back up, this time taking a route up his side, presses hard enough not to tickle. He moves his hand across to the opposite shoulder and down his left arm until his fingers are entwined, and then pulls it to his face. Through his hair, tugging against the weight of his head on the pillow, and the back of his neck. Over his chest again. He repeats the movements - stomach, thighs, sides, chest, shoulders, head, neck, chest, stomach, thighs… He concentrates his thoughts on feeling the old t-shirt and his skin, over and over, until he stops thinking about anything else. His hands become warm from the friction.

He could try having a wank.

The thought reminds him of his last time, in the orange armchair. Much more comfortable here, at least. And private. He’s afraid to try.

It’s something about the intensity of those eyes, or rather the force behind them. The mind, or soul or whatever. The being of Snape. He’s so cool on the outside, with that immovable frown, but behind that there’s more. Harry can sense it, and here in this moment, running his hands up and down his body, he’s in a mood to admit that it attracts him. It would certainly be an experience to get immersed in Snape, to let himself be pulled in like an asteroid bending around the gravity of a planet.

His hands halt over his eyes. What would happen then? The asteroid would enter the planet’s atmosphere and burn up before eventually hitting the surface, causing an extinction event and destroying them both. He huffs, then with a grimace he pulls back the duvet.

He dons a clean t-shirt and some jeans. He’s too tired to do the whole robes thing, but he does comb his hair and brush his teeth. He casts tempus on his way out of the bedroom - 7:12am. He must have been lying there rubbing himself like some weirdo for almost an hour. He really needs to get a life. B’gulbl appears from his radiator hidey-hole - the little pervert - and hops onto Harry’s shoulder.

The garden door is wide open when he enters, and he pulls out his wand in a quick slashing movement. He steps carefully sideways towards the fridge, a vantage that gives him the best ratio of protective cover to view of the room’s entrances. He can feel his heart beating in his wrist, erratic and strong.

On the third step, a figure comes into view. Outside. Someone outside - just the one, or is this the lookout and there are more already inside? A hex is halfway to his mouth before his brain catches up with his eyes and he realises that it’s Snape. He casts tempus again, arm still outstretched in an aggressive pose. 7:15am.

Severus Snape, up this early? It could be an imposter.

Harry lowers his wand but keeps hold of it as he steps out from his half-cover. He waits until he’s just over the threshold, outside the house, before saying “Good morning.”

Snape spins quickly towards him, and before Harry knows what’s happening they both have their wands raised. The potion brewer’s eyes widen under his scowl as he recognises Harry. He turns away again, dropping his wand back into a pocket, and it’s not until he begins rolling down his sleeves that Harry notices they were rolled up in the first place.

“You d-don’t need to-” he starts, but Snape has already tugged down the left sleeve and expertly closed the buttons of his shirt. Harry steps up and puts a hand on his shoulder. “It’s alright.”

Snape freezes, right sleeve hanging half open, showing a little of the scar tissue underneath.

“Sorry for d-disturbing you,” Harry says, hoping that he sounds calmer than he feels. He’s overly aware of the fact that he should let go of Snape, but also knows that if he does then the man might move again. Which would be bad, for some reason. “This is fine.” He pushes his hand down past Snape’s elbow to the outside of his wrist, where his flesh is covered by the dark robe.

What is he doing. What is he doing. What is he doing. Oh God.

Snape stands frozen, and Harry can’t look up to meet his eye. He concentrates on the wrist instead, putting away his wand so that he can hold his other hand over the open side of Snape’s cuff. He slowly, carefully rolls back the sleeve.

The scarring is ugly, a mess of silvery streaks overlapping in a bumpy lanscape leaving very little unmarked skin to be seen. It goes up higher than Harry expects. Hesitantly, he touches the ridged skin. Snape’s hand balls into a fist as he does, and Harry twitches his fingers away as he feels the blood pulsing in a vein.

Blood. Beating. Heart. This is a real human, not some cursed dollhouse waiting for him to solve the puzzle inside. He steps back and finally looks at Snape’s face. He’s somehow both ghostly pale and red in the face at the same time.

“H-have you had anything t-to eat?” Harry asks. A normal topic. Everyday. Domestic. B’gulbl ruffles his feathers against Harry’s ear, witness to another of Harry’s newly discovered perversions.

Snape shakes his head, just once from side to side. Merlin, Harry’s broken him. Asteroid. It’s the asteroid thing, he was right. He’s got to be more careful.

It’s one thing for him to get caught up in a moment, maybe even to think Snape’s not all that bad, but there’s nothing between them. There can’t be anything between them. So giving any signs to the contrary is just cruel. Leading the poor man on.

“I’ll go p-put some toast in the- I mean, b-bread in the toaster. If it was already toast, I w-wouldn’t need to… ah hah... Right.”

Harry’s heart keeps hammering all the way through the process of making tea and toast. This is dangerous. Living with Snape. He cuts off a piece for B’gulbl.

Why is it that he’s suddenly thinking all this stuff now? The timing is so inconvenient. He hasn’t got any rituals or patterns to hide behind at home, and it all feels so much more personal here than it did at the Engineshed.

He levitates the plates and cups out into the garden, where Snape has uncovered a wrought iron bench hidden amongst the grass and bushes. His sleeves are rolled all the way down, buttoned up tightly.

They sit. The metal is cold through Harry’s t-shirt, and morning dew soaks through the fabric of his jeans. He shivers, wrapping his hands around the mug and leaving the toast uneaten on his lap. His stomach feels hollow, a void sucking all the volume down from his chest.

He looks out over the garden, batting down the feeling that he shouldn’t be here while he tries to work out what Snape’s done with it. Some weeding? The meadowy grass is still almost hip high, seed heads bent under the weight of dew dripping from them. The fuschia has been pruned right back, probably a bit late in the year for any meaningful new growth but so long as it survives it’ll be better off for it in the long run. Next to the kitchen door lies a tall pile of uprooted fennel. That might be it. The grass looks more naturally meadowy and less weedy because the other stuff has been pulled out.

So he’s planning on keeping it as a wild garden? That hardly seems very Snape-like, but then again neither does veganism. Harry would have gone for raised vegetable beds once upon a time, but that desire is long dead.

“It’s c-coming along,” he comments, looking sideways at his companion.

Snape has gone the opposite way of Harry, eating his toast while holding the mug of tea between his knees. Harry watches with a sort of disconnected dismay as toast crumbs fall into the mug. It’s such an idiotic setup that it forces him into another jarring realisation of Snape’s humanity. He’s not just a person - he’s as much of an idiot as everyone else as well.

So far as small talk goes though, looks like that’s not happening.

Harry turns back to the garden, half so that he won’t have to see when Snape drinks the crumb-saturated tea. He blows on his own brew and his glasses fog up, but he’s got nothing to look at anyway so he allows himself to relax into the bench, clutching the warm mug against his chest.

There’s a chilly breeze, though it looks like it’s going to be a lovely clear day later. He doesn’t bother pushing the strands of hair away from his face.

The garden is a lot more peaceful than he thought it would be.

Compared to the turmoil of yesterday, anyway. Now that he’s here, sitting and enjoying the morning, it’s harder to feel sh*t about everything different the space could have been. It’s okay. The waving grass and stocky bushes, the bench - and most importantly, the high fences and privacy charms that stop anyone else from being able to see inside. Existing in this moment feels almost indistinguishable from their mornings on the balcony.

He tilts his head back to look at the sky. Lovely, bright blue with just one fluffy cloud. It’s a suspiciously perfect sky. “This is nice,” he says, partially to himself and partially to Snape, but mostly to the open air.

This is nice.

Chapter 45: Out

Chapter Text

“And I’m saying we need a b-bit more… I don’t know: h-height variation.”

They’re the only customers in this section of the garden center. Harry waves a hand in an arc over the collection of spiky grasses to his left, which in his opinion would break up the levels a bit and make the garden seem less… Well, like a lawn with roses round the sides.

That seems to be what Snape is aiming for, despite the wilderness that currently fills the space.

Snape frowns over Harry’s shoulder, then nods in that direction, causing Harry to turn. A woman in uniform - or rather, a branded t-shirt and hat, and a pair of loose denim shorts - is standing a few paces away.

“Sorry, d-did you say something?” Harry asks, making the I’m-deaf gesture and smiling to make up for Snape’s resting bitch face.

The girl looks at Snape. “Could you ask him if there’s anything I can help with?” she asks.

Snape props up his clipboard with an annoyed, snappish motion, scribbles on it and then passes it to Harry.

I despair.

Harry laughs, then remembers the girl is right there and stops himself. “He c-can’t talk. Uh. We’re fine, but thanks f-for asking.”

She looks both mortified and relieved, gives an awkward half bow and stumbles off.

“Do you think it’s her f-first day?” Harry muses aloud, watching as she glances over her shoulder at them and almost trips over a stone cherub. Snape shrugs and holds out a hand for the clipboard. Harry holds it to his chest. “M-maybe we should call her back, see what she thinks about l-levels.”

Snape rolls his eyes, snatching the clipboard away. It’s the only method he’s used for communication for the last hour and a half. Doesn’t want to be seen moving his mouth without sound, in case people think he’s a madman talking to himself. Harry doesn’t see what the problem is, since they must already look like a couple of loons. Him in his ill-fitting t-shirt, jeans and grubby trainers. Snape in a grey shirt, long-sleeved cardigan and black robe trousers - and a scar on his face, and a quarter of his head shaved. He’s definitely the most odd looking of them both, though that could just be Harry’s perspective. Rather than a formidable double-spy and feared potions master, he looks like someone’s muggle dad.

Hell, he probably looks like Harry’s muggle dad.

For someone who wanted no involvement whatsoever in the improvement of the garden, you’re getting awfully involved.

Harry picks up a small purple-black leafy thing, inspects the label. Prefers well-drained soil apparently. He has no idea what his soil is like. He hasn’t noticed it turning into a bog though, so maybe it’s fine? He puts it back.

“We m-might want to invite guests,” Harry answers, picking up a second specimen that looks pretty much the same as the first, but bigger. “I want it to look p-pre...presentable.”

Maybe the spiky bushes aren’t right. Not to pair with roses, anyway. He turns and comes face-to-face with a tall box hedge, making him grimace. The clipboard taps him on the arm.

Who exactly would you invite? It hardly seems as if you have been entertaining guests until now.

He shrugs at Snape, looking up momentarily but then distracting himself with wrinkling his nose at the box hedge. It’s easier to talk when he doesn’t have to actually look at the other person. A bonus to Snape’s decision to use the clipboard - Harry doesn’t have to watch him all the time. “I’ve not, you know… b-been well. But if we’re doing up the h-house then…” He shrugs a second time and plucks a leaf from the hedge to inspect until the clipboard pokes him again.

And where shall I be hiding whilst you hold these parties?

“Nowhere,” Harry says with a scowl, tearing the leaf in two. He’s been thinking about this. It was a bit of a snap decision, maybe even a non-decision to have Snape move in, but now that he’s here it’s not like Harry can invite people over all the time while forbidding them from entering half the rooms in the house, or telling Snape he can’t come out to use the bathroom. And they’d find out, somehow. Especially George, who never saw a closed door in his life that he didn’t try to open. “I’m g-going to the Burrow tonight. I’ll tell them you l-live with me.” And that you’re not my boyfriend.

Snape writes again, the pen moving in a series of little jerking movements at the spiky scrawl.

It may have escaped your notice, much like everything else of any import, but I am generally believed to be dead. It won’t do much good to your image as a recovered man if you begin telling people that Severus Snape, your old potions teacher, hangs around the house and talks to you.

Harry snorts, watching the clipboard over Snape’s shoulder. “Ron already knows,” Harry says. “W-which means the others know. I don’t think that’ll be a p-problem.”

Six hours later, Harry has to admit that perhaps he was a little bit wrong. He’s sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, with James on his lap playing a muggle game in which blocky shapes must be placed with great urgency through shaped holes in a big plastic human head.

What was initially a small group - just Harry, James, George and Molly - has since grown into a bit of a mob. He can see Hermione and Ron having a hissed conversation in the corner - “-didn’t tell me he was alive-” Eesh.

It turns out there’s this thing called Professional Confidentiality. Which Ron broke when speaking to Harry, though to be fair Harry tricked him into it with noodles - and Harry is the only other person who knew officially, apart from those at the Engineshed who were threatened into confidentiality by aurors. Until about forty five minutes ago, that is.

Arthur is murmuring with Molly, who has her back turned, and George is standing with them with an unashamedly gleeful expression on his face. Percy and his wife are sitting quietly at the table, sharing a disapproving scowl and making Harry wonder why they’re here at all. George catches Harry looking, and wiggles his eyebrows up and down suggestively.

sh*t. In all the drama, Harry hasn’t yet had the opportunity to explain that there’s nothing between him and Snape. He holds in a groan. He can already see where this is all going, and he doesn’t like it. He should… he should say something.

In front of all these people? All at once? He’s been doing better recently, sure, but he can’t just go and talk to seven people at the same time. He can’t watch that many mouths, especially not when they’re so dispersed about the room.

James demands his attention, slamming the plastic head up and down on his thigh to indicate that all of the pieces have been entered correctly. Harry, still a bit disturbed by the thing, opens up the face for the millionth time to pour all the shapes out onto his lap. The face opens like a couple of doors, split down the middle of the nose. He closes the doors again, completing the ‘O’ of the open mouth. James begins afresh, getting off to a good start by placing the square block through an ear, but then gets stuck trying to fit a star through an octagonal hole at the back of the head.

When Harry looks back up, Molly is walking towards him. She offers a smile, which only makes him more nervous. What’s there to smile about? Or more pertinently, what’s there to cover up the awfulness of by smiling?

“Harry dear,” she starts, once she knows he’s looking. A strong, normal Molly thing to say. She crouches in front of him, puts a hand on the arm of the chair. “How’re you doing?”

He nods. He can’t say aloud that he’s fine, can’t say anything. Suddenly his chest feels tight again. God, what has he done? He just wanted to tell people so they won’t be shocked later on, but instead he’s created all this drama. Multiple little arguments going on throughout the room, people hurt and making assumptions, and he can’t open his bloody mouth to fix any of it. He clenches his teeth, breathing measuredly through his nose.

James puts an oval lengthways through the square hole, which is definitely cheating.

“Don’t you worry, pet,” Molly says, her smile reassuring and confident. It reminds him of Ginny. “We’re shocked of course, and it’s a lot to take in, but I stand by what I said. Anyone who makes you happy, makes me happy, alright?”

Merlin, he has to say something. If he doesn’t say something now, they’re all going to think-

Molly’s head whips suddenly to the side, outraged, and shouts something. Harry follows her gaze to where Ron is standing with Hermione, his eyes wide.

“Oh, come on,” Ron says, throwing up his hands. Hermione puts a warning hand on his shoulder, but he ignores it. “I’m not the only one, right? He’s moving--” he scrubs a hand over his face, momentarily obscuring Harry’s view and making him lose track of the sentence “--when he’s replacing her with that old bastard.”

Molly shouts again, and though her head is half turned away, Harry can read the words easily enough because he knows exactly what they’re going to be. “RONALD BILLIUS WEASLEY, YOU WILL NOT-”

Harry returns his attention to James, who’s getting upset and grizzly with all the tension and noise. He holds up the dragon shape - which belongs to another toy set entirely, but which does theoretically fit through the pentagon hole with a little force - and waves it in front of James’s face. He can’t bring himself to make the sounds or any particular expression.

His vision begins to spot around the edges, tunneled on the little dragon and James’s face. He tries to breathe in, but there’s something around his ribcage pressing in. It’s all in his head. He tries to keep his expression neutral, keep wiggling the dragon, keep breathing. He can’t. He can’t breathe. His heart thumps a panicked beat and his face goes unnaturally hot. He drops the dragon.

Chapter 46: Admittance

Chapter Text

Harry throws himself onto his bed and turns to face the ceiling. Ending the day as he finished it, staring at the shadows and being a messed up dickhe*d. He feels jittery and raw. Like the frayed end of a rope held together by habit, just one slip from unravelling. He doesn’t know how things resolved with Ron, and he doesn’t really want to know either. His head is full to bursting with reasons to stress already.

It would be stupid to let all his progress slip from one comment, but he can’t get the image out of his head. The outrage, the disbelief.

-replacing her with that old bastard.

He’s not replacing Ginny. For one thing, there isn’t even anything between him and Snape. But even if there was, he’s spent so bloody long trying to learn and convince himself that it might one day be okay to maybe - slightly, perhaps a little bit - go out with someone else. Right now, he feels right back to square one. His stomach knots with worry and guilt.

Because, well. He does like Snape. A bit. He’s not in love or whatever, and he’s not sure if he’ll ever get his old libido back so that’s hardly on his list of worries right now. But if he’s honest for just a second…

He sighs, curling up on his side with an arm over his face. He just needs to categorise the problems to make them more manageable.

One. Resurgence of guilt about moving on with his life without Ginny. It’s all in his head. Doesn’t make it any more controllable, though, and he reckons he’ll never fully get rid of the feeling.

God, that’s depressing. For the rest of his life, he’s going to have moments like this. When all he wants is to curl up in a ball and stop existing.

Two. Ron’s being an arse. Harry wants to feel angry, but he hasn’t had any fuel in that tank for a long while. He just feels a monotonous sort of sadness about it. Numb. And it’s not like he can blame Ron - of course he’d be upset. He loved his sister. He’ll probably calm down after a good talking to from Hermione. They’ll all have a go at him until he gives in and apologises, as usual - but he’ll be apologising for the wrong thing, because…

Three. Thanks to the fact that Harry is a worthless, useless bag of meat, he hasn’t told anyone that Snape isn’t his boyfriend. Can people of that age be boyfriends? Maybe partner is the word. Significant other, that’s his least favourite. Regardless, Harry quietly let everyone think whatever they wanted, then as soon as he had an opportunity to clarify, he passed out with James in his lap - heaven knows what might have happened if not for George’s quick thinking - and then afterwards was too much of a coward to correct them after all the arguing they’d gone through in the meantime.

Which leaves him with a dilemma. An insurmountable obstacle, a maze with no exits. He either has to admit after even more time has passed that they’re all wrong, and explain why he didn’t say anything earlier to stop the fighting... or he has to carry on pretending.

He knows which his gut immediately prefers, but that won’t work. Molly will want them both to come to lunch, and if Harry puts her off too much she’ll go straight to Snape and then that’ll end up even more embarrassing. Which means Snape would need to be in on it.

Which is clearly out of the question, he reminds himself sternly. Snape is in love with Harry. This isn’t one of those stupid television programmes Aunt Petunia watched. Real life is painful, and he can’t imagine any bigger pain he could inflict on Snape than being the pretend partner of the person he loves.

Harry draws his knees up closer to his chest, wishing for something to hug. He’s never been into stuffed toys, but a giant teddy bear would be really nice now. He wants one almost as much as he wants an easy way out.

As if by legilimency, B’gulbl hops onto the pillow beside him.

“Hey there,” Harry says softly, reaching up a hand. B’gulbl extends his wings playfully and butts his head into Harry’s palm. His feathers are soft and warm. “You want to d-deliver a letter for me, l-little guy?”

B’gulbl opens his beak, possibly hooting. Harry takes it as an affirmative.

Unfolding, he walks to his dresser and fishes out a notebook and a biro that actually works, then sits on the floorboards with his back against the bed frame.

Severus,
FYI everyone thinks you’re my boyfriend. Sorry if that’s awkward, but how would you feel about carrying on the pretense for the rest of our lives so that I don’t have to have one awkward conversation with the old in-laws?
Harry.

He tears out the page, telling himself to take it more seriously. Then again, what’s the point in using letters instead of a face-to-face conversation, if he’s just going to fart around the topic anyway? He tries again.

Severus,
Isn’t it weird how I call you Severus in notes and letters, but Snape in real life? Anyway I’ll have to call you Severus now because you’re my fake boyfriend, surprise!

Severus,
Things didn’t go as planned. Everyone thinks that you and I are going out, and are being weirdly supportive - apart from Ron, who thinks you’re the worst person in the whole world and that I’m betraying the memory of my ex-wife by going out with you. How great is that. Also I had another panic attack and almost squished my son. And that’s why I didn’t correct everyone, not because of my aversion to drama, conflict and conversations involving more than two people. Just kidding - I’m a coward!!

Severus,
This is the fifty millionth letter I’ve written, and I should really just come have a conversation with you. It doesn’t solve anything to write this down instead of saying it, because there’s no good way of putting it in any case.
Basically, I’m a terrible person. I love Ginny but she’s dead. Everyone wants me to be getting on with life, recovering and all that but for ages I’ve just been drowning. I was trying, I really was. And then you came along and I don’t know, all the arguing we did must have got me talking a bit more and Molly assumed that I had a girlfriend. Big mental leap, not my fault. Then when we stopped talking I got a bit mopey again, but since we were never going to speak again I didn’t think it was that important to dislodge her belief that my ‘girlfriend’ had broken up with me. And then I saved your life - you’re welcome - and you’re here in my house and my stutter and lip reading are both improving, and there was that few weeks at the workspace that were okay. Basically, I didn’t think anything would happen or that they’d ever find out about you, so although I was clear about not having any romantic associations, I ended up mostly ignoring the suggestions and speeches they kept giving me instead of shutting them down. And then you moved in here, which is fine. I invited you. But then suddenly blam I have to tell them it was you all along, and it was always going to be a weird conversation.
Well it turns out they didn’t know you’re alive after all so I really didn’t get as far as telling them you’re not my boyfriend. And then they were shouting and arguing, and it was difficult to keep up with what was being said but depending on who you ask, you’re either a despicable arsehole who deserves to be in Azkaban or the Light and Joy of my life who has brought me back from the brink of depression. Or something. And I don’t think you’re a despicable arsehole so I let them think you’re the Light and Joy of my life.
I know I have to fix this, and I’m sorry for doing another thing I have to apologise for, instead of doing things right the first time. Lifelong habit, hard to break.
So I guess this is just a heads up, in case you get an invitation to the Burrow or something. And obviously I am sending this letter from my room because as awkward as that is, it’s less awkward than explaining myself to your actual face.
Harry.

He blows out a breath, reading back over it. Godric, but it sounds pathetic laid out like that. “Hello I’m Harry and I l-let everyone walk all over me out of a s-stubborn sense of apathy,” he mutters to B’gulbl, who doesn’t appear to disagree.

Harry shoves the letter at him. “Take that to S-Snape, alright? Inside the house.” He points to the door just in case, and then spells it open a foot so that the little owl can escape into the hallway.

Chapter 47: Realisation

Chapter Text

Maybe the letter was a bad idea. For one thing, who knows what that damn owl has done with it? And even if he delivers the thing, what then? Will Snape reply with a letter, or will he just take the information and stew on it until morning? Maybe this is another Big Thing Harry’s done wrong, and they’ll stop talking again.

Selfishly, he thinks that would be a great solution. He’d simply pretend they broke up, maybe even lay on the guilt thick with Ron about what he said being the reason, get a few beers out of it. He even thinks having Snape out of his life again, though a large price, would be worth it for all the trouble it’d save.

It doesn’t occur to him at all that the man might show up in person until a hand pokes through the gap in the door, holding a wand lit with lumos.

f*ck. Harry pretends not to have seen it, casting about with panicked eyes as if he might find somewhere to hide. sh*t. sh*t. He grabs his wand to apparate out, then realises that Snape will hear the pop. Damn.

He gets up off the floor, collects up the discarded pages and throws them down the side of his bed before sitting down on it. “Uh, c-come in,” he tells the hand.

The door swings open. Snape’s in his daytime robes despite the late hour, though he’s not wearing shoes.

Harry waves. God, why is he waving? He forces both hands to lie still on his legs. Snape walks over and waves his clipboard at the end of the bed, asking for permission to sit. It’s not like there’s anywhere else, but Harry still hesitates. It’s his bed, after all. He nods, trying not to let his discomfort out, though Snape is showing enough for the both of them.

His side of the mattress bounces up a little as Snape sits, then he passes the clipboard up to Harry. The notebook is open to a page:

This is where I should have written three paragraphs about your incredible stupidity and thoughtlessness. Seeing as I am the Light and Joy of your life however, I have decided to show mercy. I suspect there is little I could say that you will not be thinking to yourself in the dark hours of the night for years to come. Oh, just a moment, my mercy appears to have run out. You are quite possibly the most gormless man I have ever known.

Tense as he is, Harry laughs. Snape makes a gesture for him to turn the page, and he finds more behind, even though what’s on the first barely fills a tenth of the space.

As for our predicament - and I should like to say YOUR predicament, however I have been dragged in quite effectively - my suggestion is thus. I shall ignore any letters, field any questions et cetera until Saturday. On that day you will admit your folly to every Weasley on the face of the Earth, if you can find them all, and I shall henceforth no longer be required to speak to a red-head for the rest of my days. I would ask whether that is amenable to you, however I do not care. I had thought the depths of your ineptitude fully explored, yet you have proven once again that mankind may never in your lifetime achieve that feat.

Harry nods slowly. It’s not that he really thought there was a way out of the situation other than coming clean, but his stomach tightens into a sudden cramp. “That’s... f-fair,” he says, still staring down at the words. He doesn’t want to see Snape’s face, not after revealing himself to be this much of an idiot. “Could you-? I, uh, I’m a b-bit tired and…”

Snape places a hand on Harry’s wrist. Harry nods again, mostly because it’s the only easy response and he doesn’t know how to act. The hand shakes his arm a little, prompting him to look up. At Snape, who is sitting on his bed, with him.

“Y-yeah?” he asks, when Snape doesn’t say anything immediately. He can feel his spine slowly filling up with terror, though he can’t imagine why. Snape is still holding his wrist.

“It will be alright,” Snape says. His frown evens out to match the certainty in his eyes, and he looks almost like a normal non-grumpy person. Again, Harry can only nod. The feeling creeping up his back has reached his neck, making it prickle with heat. He realises that it’s not fear at all.

Snape lets go, rising, and takes his clipboard out of Harry’s hands. “Good night.”

As he walks away, the wavy ends of his long hair bouncing behind his back, Harry recognises the sensation crawling over his skin. He watches the door close with a rising sense of dread.

sh*t.

Oh sh*t.

He knows exactly what this is.

He was hoping that Snape would use the opportunity to declare his love, that the perfect solution would be for them to go out for real. Not as fake boyfriends, but as boyfriend-boyfriends. And now he’s disappointed because why the f*ck would that happen.

f*ck.

He scrambles to his chest of drawers, yanks out the pants drawer and finds his box of secret things. The letters are in there. Of course they bloody well are, aren’t they? Because he- because that’s just where Harry would keep a love letter from the person he likes. Oh god. He pulls it out and reads it.

You ought to know that I love you.

His stomach flutters. f*ck. f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ckity f*ck.

He twirls away. Naturally he knows there’s been something brewing in him for a while - a very long while - and maybe he should have recognised it earlier, but he didn’t want to. Even as he was thinking all of the individual thoughts making up the whole of a feeling, he refused to acknowledge it. He doesn’t want to now either, but it won’t go back in its box after being brought to the surface.

Oh God. Oh Merlin. How did this happen? This can’t be a thing. It’s Severus Snape. He’s not even handsome! Surely if Harry was going to go in for a guy, he’d start with George or Charlie or Viktor Krum. He must have been the only person in the entire school who didn’t fancy the guy. Of course, there’s always Donaghan Tremlett. Bassist for the Weird Sisters, who Ginny always teased him about for his apparent ‘man-crush’. Shoulder-length black hair.

Damn, it’s the bloody hair, isn’t it? Hair and black clothes and too many buttons, the allure of the unknown - in this case, the unknown body of a fifty year old man. sh*t.

He doesn’t even know how to flirt. At Hogwarts, it always seemed like there were invisible signals everyone else could see apart from him, and then Ginny sort of happened without any effort on his part. How do people get together? Would a Snape get together with someone the same way as an ordinary person? What if he doesn’t want Harry?

He looks down at the letter in his hand again.

You ought to know that I love you.

He doesn’t know for certain that it’s from Snape. Even if the timings and the handwriting match, and the man’s reaction was weird when he saw it... And even if it is real, what if he’s changed his mind since then? They stayed together at the workshop, maybe he found things out about Harry that he doesn’t like?

Like the fact that he put a bloody Feel Wheel in the man’s head. Bloody sh*tting f*ck in a bucket.

Harry sits on the bed abruptly.

He needs to calm down. Not his strong point recently, but the problem is clear. He likes Snape, and he doesn’t know what to do about it. So he just has to research his options.

Chapter 48: Flirt

Chapter Text

Harry has been finding it more and more difficult to get out of bed in the mornings, while Snape appears to have been having the opposite issue, because he’s been out in the garden every day by the time Harry gets to the kitchen for breakfast.

Usually Harry goes out to join him with a cup of tea, but the idea of doing that now is utterly terrifying. He puts the kettle on, glancing through the doorway to make sure that Snape is concentrating on his potted roses. He won’t plant them out until Autumn, for reasons Harry can’t remember. Something to do with growth or soil or moisture. Plant things. Harry’s more interested in the results than the process, not that he knows of any brooms that use roses. That’s an idea though, why not rose stalks?

He drinks his tea while standing against the wall opposite the back door. Just standing here, creepily watching the object of his affection dead-heading a rose bush, trying to work out why exactly the man is the object of his affection.

He’s had this same conversation in his head at least once a week for the last month, he realises. Listing all the things that are wrong with Snape, the reasons not to like him. He flips that on its head. What does he actually like about the man..? He’s not as much of a bastard as I thought. That’s hardly an endorsem*nt.

Snape isn’t good looking by any measure, but he does have a strong aesthetic. His hair is still all-black, even though he’s lived through enough stress to turn three other men grey. With the shaved side, he’s got a bit of a punk vibe going on, and the scar only adds to that.

Harry sighs into his tea. After all the years being the popular guy with the beautiful, perfect wife, he’s rebelling and going after the Bad Boy. It’s so predictable and tragic that he almost changes his mind.

Except that this bad boy is planning a rose garden, and is actually a bit of a softie. At least, Harry senses the potential for softness.

He sneaks back out of the kitchen without being spotted, gets dressed in some baggy muggle clothing and apparates to the little nook of a boarded up doorway round the side of a big shop near the Engineshed. Somewhere Snape wouldn’t frequent even in the most unlikely of weird scenarios Harry has run through in his head. Oh, you just so happen to have left for the very same shop just a few seconds after me, even though you didn’t look like you were planning on going out - haha, what a coincidence!

He walks into the shop, turns right at the entrance and comes face to face with a long aisle of magazines. He browses the racks, trying his best to look like a guy who has been sent to the shop by his girlfriend, and who is embarrassed and somewhat annoyed to have to find that one Girl Magazine she likes.

It doesn’t have to be a girl magazine, of course. His eyes flick to the top shelf and then quickly back down. He’s not the kind of person who goes to a supermarket to buy Bear Life though, and he doesn’t know where else to look. He’s certainly not going to talk to anyone about this.

He selects three magazines that look promising from the text on the front covers: “I asked out my best friend and I don’t regret it”; “5 flirting tips from the dating experts!”; and “How to bag the perfect Summer boyfriend”. He also grabs a packet of Walkers while he’s here because it would be too weird to only buy the magazines.

The elderly gentleman at the till pays him no mind, and doesn’t seem to register that the man in front of him is buying magazines for women. It makes Harry feel like even more of an idiot for making a big deal of it in his mind. He still asks for a bag though, so that no one will see him walking around with the goods.

He apparates straight to his room again, throws the bag on his bed and then strides to the door to cast a privacy ward. It’ll let him know if Snape comes up this end of the hallway, with enough notice to hide or possibly incendio the magazines.

Finally, he sits down and pulls them out. It takes almost an hour of skimming to realise that there’s only two useful pages between them. The article on “flirting tips from the dating experts”. One of the aforementioned experts has Prof before her name, so it seems about as legitimate as any other source of information he can think of.

The article starts off by stating all of Harry’s problems, almost as if they’ve been pulled directly from his mind. It’s like the paragraph was written just for him:

Knowing how to flirt and actually show someone you're interested in them romantically or sexually can be a minefield. Sure, some people just have that flirty spark right from the beginning, and they might not understand why you find it so difficult - but we do! The rest of us are a socially awkward bunch, which can make flirting a real struggle. Apart from outright telling someone you like them, how do you flirt subtly and show someone you're into them? How do you know if they’re into you, and how do you get them to take notice? Once you know they probably do, our dating experts, body language experts and psychologists are here to share their best flirting advice and tips to help you make a move! And if you're a lesbian, don’t worry - these tips are for and about men, women, non-binary folk and everyone in between.

Harry scans through the rest of the article.

According to this, he should make eye contact (three times?) but not too much - and staring at people’s mouths for a long time is a big turn-off. Well, that’s him done for already. He also should up his “accidental” touches, while also not touching Snape because it’s better to… step in and out of his personal space? Seemingly by accident or for purposes unrelated to romance. There are no details on how exactly to do that.

Subtle things - ones that are just enough to get their imagination going - are often what arouse people the most.

Well that explains how Harry got here, for sure. Maybe Snape’s the one who has been using these techniques on him? Then again, the last tip says to smile, and Harry can count on one hand the number of times that’s happened.

He reads through it twice more, trying to glean any extra details he might have missed the first time round. He scans through the rest of the magazines. Clothes ads, makeup tutorials and gossip. Apparently white jeans are back in fashion this year. He shoves them under the mattress, then sits up and puts his hands on his knees.

So he just has to make eye contact but not too much eye contact, and to not stare at Snape’s mouth when he’s lip reading, ask him lots of questions to seem interested, somehow work out how to invade the man’s personal space without getting hexed, and smile! Then, by some mysterious form of magic Snape will realise what’s going on and then… something?

One step at a time.

He finds Snape in his laboratory. The setup is nice and spacious, with room to expand. A single pink rose has been placed in a tall potion vial next to one of the cauldrons.

Harry tries to think of some way to use that, but nothing comes to mind. He’s never been the flowers and chocolates kind of guy. He knocks on the open door, making Snape look up from chopping some Crimson Barsha root.

“Just being nosy,” Harry says, entering the room. “What’re you m-making?” He steps up to the work table beside Snape and gages the distance between them. Eighteen inches, the magazine said. He knows how close that is by eye, and it sounded like a lot when he was reading, but now that he’s here it looks like nothing. He needs to put himself closer than 18 inches to Snape for just a few seconds, in a natural way that seems innocuous.

While he’s thinking about it, Snape reaches past him to grab a stirring rod from the counter, his arm brushing past Harry’s t-shirt.

Harry turns and gapes at him. That was it. Closer than eighteen inches, natural and unassuming. Harry stands there watching Snape brew what looks like a foot fungus treatment potion, and the man does it two more times in the space of five minutes. The first time is to sweep the Crimson Barsha into a cauldron, the second to nudge Harry out of the way so he can access a cupboard. He’s a bloody natural at this.

With a sense that he’s losing some kind of competition, Harry leans unnecessarily close to grab the chopping board out of Snape’s reach. “I’ll help,” he says, careful to make eye contact for only half a second before leaning away again. Snape smells like citrus. Is it a body wash or a deodorant? The getting close thing is backfiring, he thinks.

Time to break out Plan B: ask questions.

“H-have you thought about p-publishing the book? With your real n-name, I mean,” he says. He frowns down at the fraust stalks on the chopping board. They need slicing from head to root very precisely. Not exactly work conducive to a deaf man holding a conversation.

As if sensing his thoughts, Snape takes the chopping board back and passes Harry a knife and a honing rod. More careful work, but he can stop and start easily as and when the conversation dictates.

“So?” he prompts.

Snape turns the board forty five degrees, angling his body so that he’s more or less facing Harry while slicing the stalks. “Would you purchase a book by Severus Snape?” he asks.

Harry grins. Smile: check! “How do you think I p-passed my NEWTs? All thanks to the Half B-Blood Prince.”

“Apologies. I meant to ask: would any sane person purchase a book by Severus Snape?”

“Yes,” Harry replies immediately. Doesn’t he realise that he’s a potions celebrity? That not one but two of the potions he invented are being used as the stick by which future masters are being measured? Harry slides the knife along the steel the way he was taught during Intermediary training. He misses the satisfying metallic swish sound. “I’ll write a f-foreword for you, they’d l-love that.”

Snape scowls - deeper than usual, that is. “What a conundrum. The very name that would draw the masses in, would also repel any serious and intelligent brewers.”

Harry huffs, thinks briefly of doing some sort of playful shove but decides against it. Snape would murder him if he caused a mishap. Fraust stalks are expensive. “One day I’m g-going to find my certificate and then you’ll be sorry.”

“If you have completed the Potions Intermediary as you claim, I shall be very surprised.”

“Okay, do you w-want to b-bet on it?” Harry challenges. “If I p-prove I’ve done it, you let me read the m-manuscript.”

“Fine.”

Harry grins again. Not because of the bet - he knows Snape doesn’t really think he’s faking the certification. Not with the accuracy of his ingredient prep or knowledge. As much as it must gall him, they both know that Harry isn’t that bad at potions these days. Which means Snape secretly wants Harry to take a look at the manuscript. Which means that he trusts Harry. And maybe he’ll consider publishing it one day.

Chapter 49: Escalate

Chapter Text

Harry raises his hand to knock on Snape’s door, but it opens smoothly on its own before his knuckles touch the wood. He steps in, and through some awful momentary lapse of judgement says “knock knock.”

Snape doesn’t react to the statement, which is both a relief and not. The fact that he could let Harry know how idiotic it is but is choosing not to, presumably out of pity, is worse. He raises his eyebrows instead, glancing at the paper in Harry’s hands. It’s like he doesn’t expect any better from Harry than to be the type of person who walks into a room and says knock knock out loud with his mouth.

Harry holds up the certificate. He found it in a box of Ginny’s things, next to her matching one. Despite being the more reckless between them, she was also the more sensible when it came to documents and record keeping.

“A forgery,” Snape replies, opening a book on his knee to signal that this farce is of no further interest to him.

“Oh, come on,” Harry says. He drops the certificate onto Snape’s book on his way to the orange armchair. “It has the s-seal and everything.” He sits, makes a show of settling himself comfortably before taking out his wand and casting revelio on the paper. A series of pale blue lines and runes appear across its surface, and he sits back smugly.

Snape holds it up to the light, turns it over and inspects the edges carefully. His mouth curls down into a dissatisfied grimace. It’s an unattractive face, even for him, yet Harry finds it endearing.

Another sign he’s gone round the bend.

“The manuscript?” Harry asks, grinning.

Snape flicks the certificate at him and Harry accio’s it before it falls to the floor. “Tomorrow,” he says. His face is all annoyance and disgust, but Harry sees through it.

He settles sideways onto the orange armchair, legs up on the opposite arm, and finds a comfortable place to put his face that doesn’t press his glasses weirdly as he stares over at Snape, and which holds his head upright enough that he’s not trying to lip-read sideways.

He should do one of the flirting things, he thinks. Eye contact? Definitely too late to keep it brief. Entering personal space? Should have done it on the way in, really. He’s too comfortable now. Ah. Questions.

“Don’t you g-get fed up sleeping in that chair?” He asks. “We c-could get you a bed.”

While still giving the appearance of being engrossed in his book, Snape drops one hand to his armchair protectively.

“Y-you could still keep the chair. In your w-workroom,” Harry says. And then Snape’s bed would go here, and the orange armchair would go somewhere else and… The thought rises unbidden that Snape wouldn’t need his own bed if- no. He has to not think about this. Snape is right there. Harry’s skin gets hot, and he decides to stop talking just in case the man looks over and sees that he’s red as a tomato.

Snape flips a page, and Harry catches a glimpse of interested yellow eyes peering at the movement from under his long hair. That bloody owl.

Harry can imagine the old Feel Wheel sitting on Snape’s skin, a block of calm, interested green. He does seem quite intent on whatever he’s reading, although there’s a tension in his shoulders that Harry reads as worry. Trying to work out what Snape’s worried about is like trying to catch a tadpole in a pond though. Could be any of a thousand of the little blighters - and as soon as you put your hand in the water, it turns out the tadpole was a shark and it eats you.

Harry doesn’t notice he’s staring until Snape looks up. His expression softens minutely. Harry’s stomach flips and a strange sensation creeps over him.

Oh God, he’s still staring - but Snape’s doing it too.

He should say something. “I…” he swallows, and suddenly the room feels too close, the air too thick and intense. He sits up, scrambling to put his feet under him. “I sh-should unpack my workshop.”

He keeps his head down as he rushes out, hoping that his hair covers the red skin of his throat and ears.

Once he’s safely in his room, he continues to ignore his packed trunk of brooms, choosing instead to lean against the door and then slide down to his knees.

He clutches his chest, forcing himself to breathe in long, even counts. In, two three four, out, two three four…

He’s replacing her with that old bastard.

“Oh, f*ck off Ron…” Harry mutters, but the image of his friend’s face remains. He conjures up Snape instead, half out of spite and half because it’s the only other image strong enough to remove Ron.

Undoing the buttons of one sleeve in a slow and practiced movement. Under the dark wool there’s another layer of fabric, more buttons to flick open. Slow. One at a time. After that, the cuff pulls back to reveal pale skin. Scars, the remnants of the dark mark peeking out from the edges of the mass of bumpy, shiny tissue.

The memory ends there but Harry ploughs on, closing his eyes and filling in the blanks. He rushes through the second sleeve and then watches in his mind as Snape lifts his chin to undo the topmost button at his throat. The second. The third, down and down. In the fantasy - oh God, he’s having a fantasy about Snape - Harry is only watching. He doesn’t know what he’d touch, and can’t imagine what the man’s torso might look, never mind feel, like.

Harry’s got a few buttons of his own. He falls back against the door, unfolding his legs. He’s wearing a t-shirt now, but fantasy Harry’s in a shirt. Lots of buttons on a shirt. Slow work to undo them all.

He can’t tell if he’s going for the slow tease because he likes it or because it puts off working out what happens next. The good thing about imagining is that he can go through the shirt unbuttoning three times, changing a detail here or there, working out where Snape is kneeling over him.

He lifts a knee, maybe it brushes against the inside of Snape’s thigh. His eyes are dark, consuming.

This- is this… Do they kiss here? He can’t imagine it, can’t see himself kissing Snape on the mouth, but luckily his body has decided it’s quite enjoying this and so other ideas come to mind. In the unreal, skipping way of daydreams, Harry sees Snape sucking at his throat. He tilts his head, though it’s not real, and presses his palm over the erection pushing up against the fly of his jeans.

It’s not his first hard-on since the armchair wank, but it’s the first he’s intentionally encouraged. The first created by thinking of someone other than Ginny. He feels like he’s cheating on her still, but in fantasy land that’s exciting. Maybe Snape is their live-in gardener after all, and Ginny’s due home from work any minute now but the man is insistent. He wants Harry, wants to claim him, mark him, own him.

With a newfound sense of urgency, he opens the fly and pushes his jeans down to the knees. He spits into his hand like a teenager and starts going at it. Snape is kneeling in front of him, watching without touching. Watching Harry wank. Harry spreads his legs, as if to give a better view, but Snape’s not looking down at his dick. He’s looking Harry right in the eyes, in the soul.

He comes, the back of his hand pressed against his mouth and his glasses askew on his face. On the floor in front of his bedroom door, with his jeans round his knees.

f*ck, he thinks groggily. This escalated quickly.

Chapter 50: Something stupid and ill-advised

Chapter Text

Harry dons the orange robe on Saturday. He hasn’t worn it until now because it really is the most atrocious colour, even if the style and tailoring is almost good enough to make up for it. Today he needs something extra, and the orange robe feels like armour.

If nothing else, maybe no one will be able to hear his confession over the loudness of the colour?

He brushes his teeth and his hair, trims his stubble to an even length in front of the mirror. He normally likes to stay clean-shaven, but again he feels an intense need to add layers between himself and the world. Perhaps he and Snape are similar in that respect.

He considers his reflection. Apart from the slightly magnified eyes from the dorky glasses, it’s not a bad look.

He sits on the edge of his bed all morning, re-reading the silly magazines again for something to do that doesn’t involve possible run-ins with Snape. He managed to avoid the man all day yesterday, and plans to do the same today. And maybe tomorrow as well.

At some point he expects that he’ll be able to look Snape in the eye again - it’s not the first time he wanked to the thought of that gaze - but alas, not today. He needs to focus on the Weasleys.

He runs through various speeches in his head, even though he knows it’s useless. They’re all too wordy. The things he’d say if not for the stutter. No matter what he plans, at the end of the day he knows himself well enough to accept that something stupid and ill-advised is going to come out instead.

Finally, yet also too soon, it’s time to leave. His heart skips a beat, thumping irregularly as he grabs his wand.

He just needs to go over there, act totally normal, hang out with James and then tell everyone that Severus Snape is not his boyfriend. Then he can come home and have a few days of peace to recover from the embarrassment before seeing any of them again.

He apparrates to the garden. It’s drizzling, a miserable misty sort of day but still warm, so the air is close and sticky.

They’re already sitting at the kitchen table when he walks in. It feels suddenly like an inquiry from the Wizengamot. Heads turn to face him. Molly, George, Arthur and Hermione smile. James laughs with a trail of dribble and snot hanging from his chin. Ron grimaces awkwardly, and Percy- well, he’s just Percy. He looks curious and expectant, mildly disapproving.

“Uh, hey,” Harry says, still standing in the doorway. He knew they’d all be here of course, but now that they’re sitting together it feels twenty times more daunting. Maybe he should have asked to meet with Molly and George separately last night - but then, a smaller group is intimidating in its own way. At least with this many people, Harry has an excuse for feeling so nervous. His palms are actually sweating, and he wipes them on his trousers.

Molly motions for him to join them at the table, where a place has been left for him at one end. He steps up, forcing himself to make eye contact with everyone in turn. George’s grin is wide enough to swallow a griffon. He shifts his gaze down and up, just to make it clear to Harry that his robes are the source of mirth today.

Harry looks down self-consciously. sh*t, the orange ones were such a stupid choice. He looks like an idiot.

He puts a hand on the back of the chair but doesn’t sit. He reckons that if he bends over at all, he’ll be sick. “Uh,” he begins. A strong start. God, he just has to tell them now. He can’t keep it in for the next few hours, with everyone looking at him. Not knowing who might bring it up, or if they’ve agreed with each other to ignore the topic for today. “I have s-something to s-say.”

He’s locked in now.

Molly looks concerned. He decides to tell the dresser on the far wall instead. He gives the third plate from the left a good long stare before blurting it out. “I… I’m n-not g-going out with Snape. E-everyone was t-talking like that’s a thing b-but it’s not and I n-never said it w-was. But, ah, I sh-should have c-corrected you earlier a-and that’s m-my, my fault. I just- w-we’re not… We’re j-just friends.”

He looks away from the plate, to the faces around the table. George is surprised, Molly has a confused but supportive smile plastered on, and Arthur and Ron are obviously relieved. Harry doesn’t catch what Ron just finished saying, but he does see Hermione slap him in the arm with the back of her hand, an annoyed frown bending her features.

“I j-just thought I’d t-tell you now. I d-didn’t think it’d matter b-but he’ll be around so I… I d-don’t want it to be weird wh- if you v-visit.” sh*t, his tongue feels like it’s made of rubber. He grips the back of the chair harder.

Molly starts to speak, but Harry’s gaze is drawn to Ron instead as he throws his hands up. “Bloody hell, couldn’t you have told me sooner?” He exclaims. He laughs, making it more awkward to read his lips but the words are predictable enough. “I’ve been having bloody nightmares about you and that git. Had half a mind to get you tested in case he pulled another move with the love potions-“

Hermione gives him a nudge, looking with wide eyes towards Harry and the door. Always was good at reading Harry’s moods, Hermione. And boy is he suddenly in a mood.

His blood boils.

In his usual oblivious manner, Ron carries on. “-with Snape! Can you imagine-?”

“Yes I can imagine,” Harry says, shocking everyone including himself with the vehemence behind his words. “I do b-bloody imagine, and I h-hope one day I don’t have to just imagine it. I love Gin b-but she’s d-dead and I… I like him, yeah? If th-that’s b-b…bloody alright with-“

The words go stale on Harry’s tongue and the hairs on his arms rise with a sudden, terrible realisation. Hermione, looking with wide eyes towards Harry - and the door. They’re all doing it now. Looking over Harry’s shoulder with matching expressions of horror.

He screws up his face into an angry scowl - of course the universe would do this to him. As if this whole thing isn’t embarrassing or difficult enough as it is.

He turns his head to the door, the rest of his body remaining stiff against the table as if paralysed. Yes. Yup, the universe hates him.

Of course Snape is standing in the doorway. Of course he decided to come, after saying he has no intention of getting involved. Of course he arrived at just the right time to hear Harry declare his intent, and not a moment sooner. Of f*cking course.

Snape’s hand is frozen on the door handle, one of his feet in front of the other, having clearly taken one step into the room before pausing. His expression is easy to read for once - shock. Total shock.

Harry doesn’t want to see it change into anything else, so he turns to give Ron an accusing look instead - but everyone’s staring at him, apparently too surprised by what just happened to say anything. He reaches into his pocket. “I… I th-think I’ll just…”

After a moment of disorientation, he lurches forwards and finds himself standing in his bedroom. He drops his wand and kneels heavily in front of the bed, then flomps his torso and head against the duvet with a deep groan. He wraps his arms over his head to block out the light, then pulls the duvet over himself - if he can’t see the rest of the world, then it can’t see him, right?

Bloody hell.

Why? Why was he there? And why did Harry have to rise to the bait, couldn’t he have just sat down and eaten lunch and played with James and then come home?

Snape knows. He would eventually have known anyway, but that’s besides the point. In Harry’s mind, there was loads of time to slowly come to terms with what it would mean to go out with Snape. How that would work while they live together, what happens if he changes his mind or if it turns out he’s mistaken in these weird feelings...

There was going to be time to work it all out. Talk to Neville, sort himself out as a human being and then… something.

And now Snape knows.

Harry pushes off his glasses because they’re getting smudged against his cheek, and covers his eyes with his palms, his face still planted firmly against the bed sheets. He groans a second time, and again. “f*ck,” he says. The grumbling sensation in his throat is satisfying, matching his mood.

What’s he supposed to do now?

Chapter 51: Severus

Chapter Text

The corridor ward alerts Harry to someone walking towards his bedroom door, and he scrambles up off the floor. It’s been what, a couple of hours? His knees hurt.

He searches for his glasses and then cleans them with a spell. The room appears as he puts them on, including a curl of white spell-light falling round the edge of the door. It twirls lazily across the floor towards Harry’s right foot, and then climbs up to pool in his lap as he sits down on the bed. He cradles it in his hands.

There’s no putting this off.

“Come in,” Harry calls, and the spell dissipates. The door opens. He has a last moment of hope that maybe it isn’t Snape, but Molly instead. Or George, or even Ron. Not that they can get through his wards.

Snape steps inside. His hair has been pulled neatly back from his face, tied loosely at the nape with a ribbon. It emphasises the size of his nose, and the shaved section of his head where dark stubble has already begun to grow back. He’s wearing the same dark robes full of buttons, and the same scuffed shoes. His expression is gently furious and his shoulders are tense. Just an angry, ugly fifty-year-old standing in Harry’s bedroom, holding a clipboard.

That is all to say: Harry’s insides flip upside down. He forces himself to make eye contact, goes for a disarming smile because it’s not like this could be any worse. “W-well this is… awkward.”

Snape pauses and then nods in agreement. The fact that he’s not saying anything is worrying. He has it all written down, apparently. Maybe that’s why it took him several hours to get here.

Harry scooches up on the bed to make space for Snape to sit with considerable distance between them, which he does. He hands the clipboard to Harry, who gets a sense of deja-vu while taking it. Their hands don’t even come close to grazing together on the handover.

Harry,
As you may have guessed, this is not my first attempt at writing this. I have written longer letters, however upon consideration I decided that it is best to keep it brief: I am sorry. I do not wish to enter into any romantic relations with you. Whatever you feel, I am humbled and flattered but the feeling is not returned. I would like to pre-emptively decline any offer of affection or intimacy between us.
Severus.

Harry clutches the page, frowning. But… No, it doesn’t make sense. Snape loves him. Doesn’t he? He stands quickly and retrieves the notes from his sock drawer. Standing there, he holds the letters and the potion label against the notebook. “It’s the same,” he says, confused. He turns back to Snape. “You sent these, d-didn’t you?”

Snape takes the clipboard and its extra contents and his eyes widen a fraction. It’s enough for Harry.

“I want to read the l-long letters,” he says adamantly. “N-not this. I want to know how you feel.”

“Harry-“ Snape begins, but Harry is already turning towards the door. He stalks out into the hallway and down to Snape’s room.

The floor is littered with them. Tens of scrunched up papers, all over the room. Harry kneels among them and picks up the closest. Snape steps into the room to his left, but makes no effort to stop him. Harry works through the notes, making a pile of carefully flattened pages.

While I am humbled and flattered-

How could I not be elated at hearing such a declaration, however-

-went to school with your father. It would not be appropriate-

I had rather contented myself with being the sad old git with affections-

-too old-

-a waste for such a handsome, sarcastic and reasonable young man to-

I have been terrible to you, and in return you have shown patience and kindness that is wholly undeserved-

-that you are simply choosing someone who is the opposite of your wife, in hopes of saving yourself the pain of loving an individual more worthy-

I am aware of my shortcomings, and they are numerous-

-would the papers say. We would never be able to leave the house-

-and no matter what I do, there will be some who believe that I have cursed, charmed or poisoned you into what are quite frankly unbelievable feelings.

He doesn’t read them all, just the ones in easy reach of his position sat on the floor. He’s… angry. That all these excuses are enough to stop Snape, but also that he largely agrees with them. Snape is too old, and an ex-death eater. If it were Ron in this situation, Harry would suspect foul play - he’d probably act exactly the way Ron is acting. And of course Snape isn’t exactly the most beautiful specimen of wizardkind out there, and Harry could undoubtedly pull better.

But he doesn’t want better. For whatever stupid reason, he doesn’t want some handsome young wizard or beautiful young witch with perky boobs and a nice smile. He want Snape, who has no boobs and no smile, and who undoes buttons slowly and looks at Harry like he’s the meaning of life - in a world where the meaning of life is something very stupid and annoying.

He puts aside the stack of letters.

“I won’t tell you none of that m-matters,” he says, still frowning at the papers. “Or that half of it isn’t true. You’re older, and you have s-scars, and you can be mean. But… I d-dunno, I can’t say what I feel or w-why, but I like being with you. I want you to stay and d-drink tea and p-plant roses and call me an idiot. And…” Harry’s hands bunch up in his robes, his knuckles white. “I want to t-touch- I mean, I… I just mean y-you don’t have to worry about n-not being, like- Ah. Ph-physically…”

Merlin’s balls, he can’t say it.

He looks up, as if seeing Snape might inspire the right terminology, but he’s as ugly as ever. He has one hand on the doorframe and it looks like he’s barely holding himself upright.

Harry lifts a hand. “Sit with me?” he asks.

Snape comes back to life one piece at a time. His eyes move first, flicking between Harry’s hand and his face. A hard tension drains away from his shoulders, though this makes him look even more like he might pass out. Then his tongue darts out to wet his lips. “I can’t. I’m afraid that you may be the one who needs to comes here,” he says. His face is pale, his expression still shocked and disbelieving.

Harry doesn’t think he can move either. The stress of so many difficult admittances in such a short amount of time seems to have short-circuited the part of his brain that controls his legs.

This has to be the worst coming together of two human beings that has ever tried to happen, he thinks, watching Snape’s throat bob as he swallows. The shiny scar stretches with the motion.

Then Snape holds out a hand, mimicking Harry’s. “Come,” he mouths, and Harry’s legs obey.

He stands up and walks to the door, to Snape, and takes his hand. It’s warm, making his heart thunder. Not that he was expecting lizard-cold skin, but he kind of was.

It’s funny, but even hours after declaring his intent, it’s not until this very moment that he really considers the physical act of kissing Snape.

He’s only a few inches taller than Harry, but up close it feels like a much bigger distance. Harry hasn’t ever kissed anyone taller than him before. Always the one craning down instead of up, although with Ginny there was hardly any difference.

He swallows. Should there be more talking? Do people usually talk before they kiss? Is that even what’s happening here? He searches Snape’s face for a sign.

He looks shocked, still. Like the moment Harry met Trigger for the first time. Now they’re here, in a different doorway, and he looks just as surprised - but perhaps not quite so angry.

Harry raises a hand and places it hesitantly against Snape’s chest, letting it hover close to touching for a few seconds first. Time to say no. He kind of needs a more distinctive yes before kissing someone though.

“Do… do you w-want to..?” His cheeks redden, and he can’t say the word. He feels like laughing, suddenly. This is all so absurd.

Snape’s still standing somewhat frozen, so Harry moves his hand up to a shoulder and strokes a thumb there, frowning. “A-are you alright? We don’t have to...”

As he starts to pull his hand away, Snape covers it quickly with his own. “No,” he says. “I want to kiss you.”

“Okay,” Harry responds, breathless.

Snape jerks his head forwards, stopping short of headbutting Harry, and then pulls back a little, uncertain. Harry tilts up his head, not sure if he should close his eyes. What if Snape wants to say something suddenly? But then it’s not like it’ll matter if they’re kissing, he won’t be able to see.

What is he thinking? Hopefully he was never this awkward in the past, but then he did make Cho cry so maybe he’s always been bad at this.

Finally, with a dazed sort of excitement, he leans up and presses a kiss onto Snape’s mouth. For a brief, strange, warm moment Harry feels the softness of skin against his lips. It’s wonderful, surreal, terrifying, giddy.

He rocks back, can’t help a low giggle from escaping. He just kissed Severus Snape. “S-sorry, I just… It’s not-“ he raises his hand to the side of Snape’s head, runs his fingers through his sleek hair. A strand pulls free from the ribbon. “I’m touching you,” he whispers.

Snape is trying for nonchalance again, not that it works. “So it would seem,” he says.

“Kiss me?” Harry asks. He smiles as Snape tilts his head slightly into his hand.

Snape nods, but still hesitates. “You should know,” he says, though up close it’s harder to read. “That I will be quite miserable at it.” Snape pulls Harry’s hand down to brush the scar on his throat, though he understands quickly that he means his tongue.

“Okay,” Harry responds, quietly admonishing himself for not thinking of the slack, slow way Snape’s tongue moves when he mocks speech. It’s not like he was expecting Snape to be an amazing kisser though, so he has nothing to feel disappointed over. He twirls a second lock of hair free from the ribbon, enjoying the feel of it in his fingers. “Anything else?”

A shake of the head. Snape sighs - what a terrible hardship Harry’s acceptance must be.

Thinking it best to start somewhere other than the mouth this time, Harry takes Snape’s hand and raises it palm up in the space between them. It feels like the world has stopped around them. He leans forward and places a kiss on Snape’s palm, and his fingers twitch in response. Harry smiles against the warm skin, breathes the bitter smell of potions under the sharp citrus scent he’s become increasingly familiar with.

He moves his attention down to the wrist, glancing up at Snape’s face for permission, and the man nods with wide, dark eyes. He kisses the space where Snape’s wrist disappears into his sleeve, and then scrapes his teeth over the delicate skin there.

Harry pulls back just far enough to watch his own fingers as he opens the first button, making Snape’s hand twitch again. The thick woollen fabric pulls free, revealing a small triangle of white cotton beneath. Harry kisses the end of Snape’s index finger, and then opens the second button. The third. He peels back the dark wool cuff, and kisses Snape’s wrist through his shirt.

f*ck, this is just like he imagined. He feels blood rushing into his co*ck, and pushes back the embarrassment of being half hard from undoing three buttons on a robe. He doesn’t dare look back up at Snape’s face right now.

Harry unbuttons the shirt cuff as well, his fingers faster and shakier. He pushes the material up Snape’s wrist, takes a moment to survey the blue-white skin, the veins. He wishes that he picked up the arm with the mark on it, wants to trace the texture of those scars with his mouth, but this will do. He kisses the base of Snape’s hand again, then the place where his veins lie closest to the surface. He keeps his lips there, feeling the man’s pulse against his mouth. His tongue darts out to wet the skin, and he kisses it again, sucks against Snape’s wrist. sh*t, this is good. He pushes his left hand against his erection.

Harry moves up the wrist one kiss at a time, until he can’t push the fabric up any further.

Snape pulls his arm away, bringing Harry’s attention back to his face. He’s frightened for a moment that Snape is grossed out, thinks he’s weird, but that clearly isn’t the case. His eyes are a carbon copy of Harry’s fantasy, consuming in their depth, possessive and strong. But instead of succumbing to it, Harry finds that he wants nothing more than to destroy that composure, that strength.

Snape wraps his arm around Harry’s waist, pulling him close, and any residual doubt is wiped from his mind as he feels Snape’s erection against his stomach.

Oh god, he shouldn’t be turned on by this. It’s a co*ck, a dick, a man thing. He’s never thought of wanting to hold one that isn’t his own, slide his fingers along its hard length, but he wants to now. He presses his hips forward, grinding them together, and Snape’s hips jerk in response. sh*t. It feels too good, amazing, to press himself against another body. A real body. It’s been too long.

Harry kisses Snape again, and bites his lower hip into his mouth. He runs a finger up Snape’s cheek, following the line of his scar. “C-can you feel it?” he asks. The skin is puckered at the edges, silky smooth in the middle. Snape nods against Harry’s mouth, and Harry rolls their hips together as a reward. He slides his fingers down the length of the scar to Snape’s throat, making him shiver, then sideways along his stiff collar. “Do you l-like it?”

Snape nods again, a gasp of warm breath huffing past Harry’s cheek. Harry kisses him, on the mouth first, then the cheek, up to where the scar tapers away just under the eye. He follows the scar downwards to Snape’s jaw, while their hips jolt together in an ill-timed rhythm. Snape’s hands clutch desperately at the small of Harry’s back, creeping ever closer to his arse, and he enjoys that as well.

Harry’s hands are busy with their own task trying to undo the buttons at Snape’s neck. Snape raises his chin, open-mouthed, to allow access as Harry continues to lick, bite and kiss his throat.

He has two buttons undone, almost enough to reach the collarbone, when Snape’s legs give out, and his arms fly back against the wall to keep himself upright. Harry grabs him, grinning, and nudges Snape’s neck with his nose. The skin is damp with his saliva. “Armchair?” he breathes. Snape still stands motionless against the wall, apart from the quick movements of his chest as he breathes.

Harry pulls back. “You okay?”

Snape nods. “Yes.” Harry can’t help but feel satisfied at the sight before him. Severus Snape, his hair and robes in disarray, one sleeve hanging loose and the top buttons of robe and shirt open, revealing never-before-seen skin, flushed red from arousal. His hands splayed against the wall behind him, his lips red and shiny.

Merlin, Harry just wants to- to ravish him, to kiss every part of him. It’s like his fantasy in reverse - instead of being owned and devoured, he’ll be the one doing the devouring. “Come on,” he says, and pulls Snape into the room, to the black armchair. Snape follows, falls into the chair, still for all the world looking like he’s in shock. “S-Sev-verus, are you... sure?”

Snape’s mouth twitches at the sound of his name. It makes Harry want to kiss him again. “I’m fine,” he replies, stealing Harry’s catchphrase. His words are contradicted as he leans back and puts his hands over his eyes, pressing his palms into his face. Harry steps back, uncertain. Then the hands fall away, gripping the arms of the chair instead. Snape looks at Harry again. “This is more than I expected.”

Harry nods. It’s not like he thought they’d be jumping right into it, either. It’s good though, isn’t it? He thinks it is, anyway. “Do you w-want to stop?”

Snape laughs, and the expression is so real that Harry’s heart leaps in his chest. “No,” Snape says. “God help me, no.” He holds his hands out, and Harry takes them, let’s himself be pulled onto Snape’s lap. “Do you like this?” he asks, letting go of Harry’s hands to flick open the next black button over his chest. Harry catches his first glance of collarbone. Snape pops open another button.

“Yes,” Harry answers quickly. f*ck, yes. “Severus.”

f*ck. Harry rubs at the front of his trousers, watching. This is so unreal, so real. Severus is really here, doing this, his bony legs an uncomfortable platform for Harry’s arse. The matching bulge in his trousers that Harry could reach out and feel but doesn’t, because he’s too mesmerised by Severus’ hands. His long, graceful fingers make quick work of the robe’s buttons. Quicker than Harry would like, but they’ll have time for slow later… And holy sh*t, there is going to be a later. There has to be.

Severus reaches the last button and his robe falls open. He’s left the shirt half done up underneath, but Harry can’t wait any longer. He slides his hands down the scratchy shirt fabric from Severus’ chest to his belt.

“Can I?”

Severus places his hands over Harry’s, tangling their fingers together, and somehow they still manage to get his buckle open. Harry drops his head onto Severus’s shoulder as he opens the fly and slips his hand inside. The positioning is awkward for his wrist, until Severus pulls his trousers down, bumping up his hips on the armchair in a way that makes Harry laugh. He carries on grinning into Severus’ shoulder, can’t help himself.

Still smiling, he wraps his hand around Severus’ co*ck and pulls it free of his underpants. f*ck, it’s so hard, as hard as Harry feels. Harry just holds it for a moment, processing the fact that he has another man’s dick in his hand, and that he likes it as much as he liked the soft, wet folds of Ginny’s puss*. Severus’ hand tightens around his, squeezing.

“We need some l-lube or s-something,” Harry murmurs, turning his face into the corner of Severus’ neck, breathing in the smell of his arousal. Severus accios the green book while Harry is busy exposing and kissing the man’s shoulder. God, he wants to feel more, to take it all in, to taste every inch of Severus.

Severus pushes a small jar into Harry’s hand. The lubricant is cold and tingly, and Harry takes a more than generous helping, too much. He wants to see Severus messy, wild, undone, overdone, totally f*cked. His facade broken, his pride wiped free, nothing left but a need for Harry. Just Harry.

He wraps his slick fingers around Severus’ co*ck again, and the man shivers in a most satisfying way, his hips pumping once into Harry’s hand. “S-Severus,” he says, kissing him just below the ear. He whispers the word again, “Severus.”

Harry runs just his thumb up the length of Severus’ co*ck, and Severus squeezes his hand over Harry’s, slides it up and down. Harry sucks at the spot on the man’s neck as they pump together, Severus setting a faster and faster pace, his hips jerking up into the movement and his other hand gripping tightly onto Harry’s thigh.

Harry forces them to slow, leaning back to watch Severus’ face. His eyes are closed, his mouth open, and his back arches up as he gasps. It’s not enough, Harry thinks. He wants to see more, to see Severus spent, ruined, with all reason and awareness abandoned.

He pulls his hand free, and Severus deflates beneath him, his head turning to the side as he pushes his hips forward, parting his knees in an unconscious gesture. God, Harry wishes he could hear this. He wants to make Severus moan, call out his name so loud the neighbours hear it, completely out of control. f*ck. Without thought, he shifts to the side, riding Severus’ right leg. He rubs himself against the tight-muscled thigh. Severus still has his own co*ck in his right hand, his left clawed into Harry’s thigh.

Harry grabs that hand and slides the index finger into his mouth. Severus’ eyes snap open to watch, and Harry looks into them as he takes the finger down to the base, like Gin used to do, and then presses his tongue against it on the way back out.

“Merlin, you’re trying to kill me,” Severus says. His head rolls back, but he keeps looking, his eyes focussed and yet not.

Harry nods and takes the middle finger in as well, sucking on them both as Severus masturbat*s. He remembers what it was like being on the other side of this experience. Hot. He wants to know it’s that good for Severus, too. He sucks the tips of the fingers, smiling. “Talk t-to me.”

Severus frowns, starts an excuse. “I can’t speak and you can’t hear, I hardly- ah!” Harry cuts him short with a little nibble.

“Do you l-like it?” He asks.

Severus nods. Still too reserved. Harry slows his own strokes in favour of putting a hand on Severus’ instead. “Talk to m-me.”

Severus waits, two, three, four seconds. Then: “You’re beautiful,” he mouths, and it’s not at all what Harry expected. He’s never been beautiful before. Always hot - f*ck, you’re so hot Harry - but he likes it. He’ll be beautiful for Severus.

He licks the end of Severus’ middle finger, his tongue scraping lightly against the nail.

“You’re driving me crazy,” Severus tells him.

“Yeah? W-what else,” Harry asks, and sucks the fingers into his mouth again. He starts jerking Severus off, watching his face.

“I don’t- I don’t know… what… to say,” Severus gasps. Harry picks up the pace, drops the hand in favour of yanking his own trousers open. He can’t hold back, not with Severus like this. “I’ve never- f*ck! Merlin. Harry.”

Harry shuffles further onto the armchair, then pulls Severus’ hips towards him until he can hold both their co*cks together in his hands.

“f*ck,” Severus continues, and Harry watches those lips as he pumps their co*cks together. Severus is so hard against him, and it shouldn’t feel this good but he loves it. “f*ck, Harry, oh f*ck. You’re so beautiful, f*ck. Harry.”

Yes. Yes, this is it. Impatient and desperate, Harry wandlessly spells Severus’ shirt open to complete the image. He wants to take a photograph, put it on the wall - Severus, undone. He wants it to last forever, to always see this, to watch his lover’s mouth form ecstatic nonsense. “You feel so- f*ck, I can’t… oh f*ck, I’m going to- Harry, I’m…”

Their hands move together, frenzied now, but Harry holds himself back, wanting to see the moment. Wanting to see Severus.

Severus - his hair in messy waves falling over his shoulders and the back of the chair, his throat red and glistening from Harry’s ministrations, his eyes wide but unfocussed, his chest and his dick exposed to Harry’s gaze - jolts still, with his back arched and his mouth open wide in a guttural cry as he comes onto his stomach and their joined hands. He shudders with the force of it, and Harry can’t take it anymore, pumps faster, harder, riding Severus’ lap until-

He falls forwards onto Severus, boneless and gasping. His glasses are smudged, and he suspects that Severus isn’t the only one who looks messy. Harry kisses him. They pant into each others’ mouths, too tired to do more but reluctant to part.

Harry laughs, dropping to the side and turning so that he can stretch out his cramped legs. There’s no room on the armchair, but Severus’ arm around his waist stops him from slipping to the floor. “W-well that was okay,” Harry says, and he’s not sure why he’s laughing except that it’s all so absurd and wonderful. He feels giddy again, exhausted, spent.

Severus’ chest rumbles under him, and he turns to see that he’s laughing too, which only sets Harry off more, until they’re both laughing so hard that tears roll down their cheeks.

Severus’ arm tightens around him.

“We should g-go somewhere more c-comfortable,” Harry whispers, and the man nods, so Harry summons his wand and apparates them onto his bed.

Instantly, Severus just… melts into it, his head flopping sideways on the pillow. His chest rises slowly, falls in a burst as he sighs deeply. “You’ve converted me,” he says, turning his head to look at Harry. “I’ll never sleep in that armchair again.”

Chapter 52: Ought to know

Chapter Text

Harry wakes, slowly at first and then in a sudden storm of awareness. Holy sh*t, he slept with Snape. Holy sh*t, Snape is in his bed. Holy sh*t, this is Snape, right here, lying with his head on Harry’s shoulder and his feet off the end of the mattress, smelling of sweat and sex and citrusy goodness. This is Snape. Shirt open. Trousers and underpants who knows where, and his arse bared to the world. In Harry’s bed. With Harry. Holy sh*t.

Like a mouse in a field, Harry finds himself lying very, very still. A puff of warmth from Snape’s nose tickles his chest, and Snape’s hair is spread around them both like seaweed, tangled everywhere. Snape’s hand lies casually over Harry’s stomach, his right knee over Harry’s thigh. Harry’s own arm is cradled around the man’s back.

Harry pats around carefully with his other hand until he finds his wand, casts a cleaning charm on his glasses which have miraculously stayed on his face overnight, and then screws up his nose and casts more cleaning charms as unobtrusively as possible on himself and Snape. He is totally not falling asleep without showering next time.

Oh Merlin, next time .

With characteristic slowness, a scowl creeps its way onto Snape’s face as he wakes. It’s the only sign that he’s on his way to consciousness, and it has Harry’s heart pounding.

Finally, Snape’s eyes blink open. Severus ’ eyes. His hand slides over Harry’s stomach and then lifts away, leaving his skin cold. Blearily, he pushes stray strands of hair away from his face - and then freezes, just now noticing that he’s not in his armchair, not alone, not clothed in his customary pyjamas.

“Morning,” Harry whispers, half hoping he won’t be heard. Severus’ eyes focus on him and his mouth tightens into a thin line. “Shall I m-make tea?”

Severus’ hand drops onto Harry’s chest, and he shakes his head, closing his eyes as if it hurts to keep them open. “Five more minutes,” he says, chin tilted slightly upwards so that Harry can read the words.

He reads around the phrase. Severus is hardly the fastest wizard in the world to wake up in the morning, but he’s no snoozer either. He wants five minutes of waking up in his lover’s arms before Harry’s presumed regret crashes his dream. Harry goes for a reassuring squeeze against the man’s back. “I’m n-not leaving, you know. I d-don’t regret it.”

Severus stays still, his breathing even and his frown frozen in place.

“I can t-tell you’re awake,” Harry says, and pokes the deep line between his eyebrows. Still no reaction. Harry lets out an exaggerated sigh. Rests his hand against the slightly stubbly cheek. “Damn. I w-was hoping… I mean, it’s morally not cool to k-kiss a s-sleeping man, you know?”

He smiles as Severus’ cheek twitches.

“Are you sleeping, S-Sev…Severus?” Harry asks, brushing his thumb lightly over Severus’ lips. The man’s scowl deepens, and then he nods. “Hmm? Well that’s a shame.”

Harry lets his hand fall away from Severus’ face, and they lie still for several long minutes. Then he feels Severus’ cheek moving against his shoulder, and looks down to see him staring right back. “Mm?”

He huffs a breath across Harry’s skin. “I am awake,” he repeats.

So Harry kisses him, and grins. Severus’ eyes open again, searching his face. The frown falls away, leaving behind an expression Harry has only seen on the man in his sleep. He doesn’t know how to parse it. So he doesn’t. “Breakfast?”

Severus shakes his head, rising, and then leans over Harry, a hand to either side of his shoulders. Harry’s co*ck fills with, uh, interest. “We must talk about this,” Snape says. Harry doesn’t need to ask what he means. This. Us.

“Over b-breakfast?” he asks hopefully, though with every second his hopes are moving in a different direction. He tries not to glance down at Severus’ arms, or his chest, the robe and shirt hanging open to brush against Harry’s ribs. And further, hanging down-

“Fine,” Severus says, just as Harry decides breakfast isn’t for him after all, and then he stands - just one step off the side of the narrow bed. He turns away to do up his buttons, and then looks around, finding his trousers off the end of the bed. He looks back at Harry. “Well?”

Ah. He needs to get up too. He scrambles to his feet and grabs a clean pair of underpants from his chest of drawers, but doesn’t feel like putting them on even after spelling himself clean. “D-do you not want a wash first?” he asks, gesturing at Severus’ rumpled clothes and knotted hair.

Damn, he really shouldn’t have suggested breakfast. Seeing Severus like this, so uncharacteristically messed up, obviously shagged, it encourages a curl deep in Harry’s chest. He did this. No one else could, or has, or ever will. It’s a possessive feeling, and struck through with guilt - because he realises that he’d never be willing to share Severus with someone else, the way a part of Harry will always belong to Ginny.

The man looks down at himself, probably sees what Harry does - a royal mess - and then narrows his eyes. “One hour,” he says, before popping out of the room.

Harry casts tempus for a frame of reference, then pouts through the process of gathering clean clothes and showering. He should have suggested they bathe together, or something.

Fifty five minutes later, Harry is clean and dry, sitting on the garden bench with two mugs of tea and two plates of toast beside him. The world feels very real and present, in a way it hasn’t since he kissed Snape last night, and he’s nervous. The air is chilly, so he’s cast a warming charm on the bench as well as the food. He keeps his eye on the house. It doesn’t look so bad from this angle, though the white paint could do with freshening up, and maybe the windows need a clean.

Severus comes out a few minutes later holding two cups of tea, and Harry lets out a relieved breath. Hasn’t run for the hills, then. Harry lifts the ones he brought out with a grin.

With four cups of tea and two plates of toast between them, they juggle everything around until there’s space to sit. Severus pulls a tiny clipboard and pen out of his pocket and unshrinks them. The top page on the notepad is blank.

“I like what you’re d-done with your hair,” Harry offers, since they’ve shared loads of awkward smiles and uncertain looks, but no words as yet.

Severus pushes his hair back with a frown. “What have I done with it?” he asks, laying the clipboard sideways on his lap and putting his plate on top of it. Always prioritising toast over tea, Harry simply can’t understand it.

Harry grins and reaches out to feel a lock of the long hair. “Washed it.”

Severus’ ears go red, widening Harry’s smile. “Shall we begin, then?”

Shall we begin . How ominous is that? Like a ritual or something. “W-why don’t you start?”

“You know my feelings,” Severus says dismissively, taking a bite of toast. Harry doesn’t know how he can stand to eat, but then he’s the one who made the toast.

Harry turns, leaning his elbow on the back of the bench, back to the metal arm. It digs uncomfortably. “I h-haven’t heard them from you,” he replies. He has a few notes and pages of text detailing all the reasons they can’t do this. Not much saying why they are or should.

Severus nods as if he was expecting Harry’s words. He picks up one of the mugs and cradles it in his hands, just in time to catch a couple of toast crumbs falling off the corner of his mouth. He faces Harry, but his eyes stare over his shoulder instead. When he speaks, it has a rehearsed quality to it. Harry wonders if he practiced in the bath. “I'll keep it short: I was alone for a very long time. You appeared, and though I tried to scare you off, you were quite persistent. I felt…” he frowns, shakes his head. “Seen, as we spoke. Though you couldn’t know my identity, I came to feel that you could see… me.”

Harry nods, concentrating. If he messes up and misses something here, he’s sure it won’t get repeated. He watches Severus’ face intently, determined not to lose a single word.

“It was quite absurd. Our interactions were unpleasant, there was no reason to feel this way. Therefore, I decided to get rid of you.” Severus swats a hand in the air, as if to bat away an annoying insect. “Afterwards, I could not return to my usual self. I caught up on the news I had missed, and found your story and character far removed from what I had imagined. I would find myself remembering the odd— —Ah. Short, I said. I wrote that note as a cathartic exercise, to rid myself of you. You ought to know that I… ”

Harry’s heart skips a beat, but Severus doesn’t finish the sentence. He frowns into his tea for a moment before continuing.

“But you came back. I believed that revealing my identity would set you running again, so I allowed it. I could not have predicted that you would…” He gestures down at his robes with a look of distaste. Probably referencing Harry sobbing all over him in the workshop. Harry feels an anxious spike of sympathy with his past self. Severus Snape - alive !

“I had not imagined that anyone would react in such a manner to my continued existence, least of all you. I resolved to bury myself in work and forget, but I could not. You appeared to enjoy and desire my company. I could not refuse you.”

Severus stops, and Harry waits for more. About them living together in the workshop, Harry’s disregard of his privacy and the debacle with the Feel Wheel. Harry’s accusation that Severus did something nefarious to him. The letter about being his fake boyfriend, or witnessing Harry’s confession. But nothing else comes. Severus breaks the spell by taking a sip of tea.

Maybe it’s where he starts. Harry swallows, looks down at the cup in his own hands. He can no more look Severus in the eye than the other way round. “I, uh… Well I was a bit s-slower. ‘Cause of Ginny. Or r-rather ‘cause of me, w-worrying. I didn’t think of you like that, j-just someone who gets me. Even before, when y-you were-“ ah, he still doesn’t know how to pronounce Trygve “-a stranger, I could talk to you. I could b-barely string two words together for my b-best friend, but you had me talking s-sentences. After you threw me out on my arse, I m-missed you, and then when you were b-back I couldn’t stop worrying about… about… It d-doesn’t matter, you know w-what I did. The point is: I got to know you, and I liked what I found and… and then I g-got scared. That I was b-bet… betr-r… getting rid of her memory. But she’d want me to be happy.”

He looks up at Severus. They can’t avoid eye contact every time they have something important to say, and this is. “And I am. B-being with you, it makes me happy.” He shrugs - and that’s it. There’s so much more he could say, and he’s sure he will at some point, but this is enough for now. He hasn’t had enough time to sort through everything in his head, but he’s not lying. Severus makes him happy, as weird as that is, and he has no intention of giving that up.

Severus nods to accept his words, then turns to face the garden and drinks his tea. Behind the cup, Harry sees the man’s cheek twitch, and he leans back to see a different angle. Hmm, yeah. That’s a smile, no doubt about it. Harry can’t help but return the expression.

“So w-will you go out with me?” he asks. “I’m a work in p-progress, but I’m g-gunna go back to speech therapy. And learn sign l-language, and g-general therapy as well, and I hope to get James back, so if that’s n-not…”

Severus touches his arm, nodding. “Yes. For as long as you’ll have me.”

-*-

“Come on, B’gulbl. It’s just one l-little letter,” Harry grunts, feels feathers at his fingertips. The owl slips out from behind the radiator, leaving Harry stuck by his arm, flailing angrily.

Severus glances up from his book, raising an eyebrow in amusem*nt. “Yes, just one little letter and then ten more,” he agrees. B’gulbl stays away from him as well, flying up to the ceiling lamp and sending it swaying.

Harry yanks his arm free and walks to the middle of the room, then puts his hands on his hips to look up at the little bird. He stares back with shining yellow eyes and flaps his wings twice in rebellion. “He’s going through his t-teenage phase,” Harry says, hoping the words are true because it would mean an eventual end to B’gulbl’s behaviour. “Won’t you d-do something? He listens to you.”

Severus holds up his book between them. Doesn’t want to get involved, huh? Some owl-dad he is! Always around to dish out the treats, but never there for the discipline. It isn’t fair - Harry was supposed to be the nice one, not horrible greasy old Snape. Well, he's not so greasy anymore, but the rest stands. Harry huffs and then holds up the stack of letters threateningly. “Look here, you l-little devil, I just need you to take this b-bundle to the sorting office,” he says. “Then some b-better owls than you can take it from there.”

B’gulbl opens his beak, probably to let out an offended hoot, and Harry sighs. “See what you’ve done?” he tells Severus. “You’ve s-spoiled him.”

Severus rolls his eyes and then holds up a hand. B’gulbl swoops instantly down to land on it and both of them turn smug eyes on Harry, who crosses his arms over his chest but can’t stay angry at them for even a minute.

Forming a new plan, he grins and saunters over to Severus’ armchair. He takes the book out of his hand and places it aside, then parts his orange robes to sit across his lover’s lap. He holds up the bundle for B’gulbl again, but the owl still refuses to take them.

Fine. Harry strokes his other hand along Sev’s cheek, over the silvery scar and down to his throat. “You ought to know…” he whispers, and gets no further before Severus silences him with a kiss.

The bundle is snatched right out of his grip, and a second later the middle finger of his right hand tingles as B’gulbl flies out of the study window. Ha! Typical teenager - can’t handle the thought of his dads kissing.

Severus pulls back, running his hands through Harry’s hair to the back of his neck. “You ought to know,” he confirms.

-*-

Nev
Hope you’re doing well. I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of a good therapist? Not doubting your abilities or anything, I’d just be more comfortable talking with someone I don’t know socially.
Speaking of, maybe you’d like to go for a drink some time? I still owe you an apology.
With great thanks for your patience and understanding,
Harry

-*-

Ron
You’re a git and I love you. I know we’ve gone longer than this without speaking, and also that it was largely my fault, but you kept trying all that time and you never pushed for more than I was ready to give. You’re my best mate. So I guess this is me trying too.
I get why you don’t like Sev. I do. But he really does make me happy and I want you to see that, because I know as soon as you understand, you’ll be happy for me too.
You and ‘Mione are welcome to come for dinner on Friday night. 7pm. I’m making cauliflower buffalo wings. They’ll be awful, truly. Something you can take the piss out of for years to come! You’ll regret missing it.
All of my love,
Harry

-*-

Madam Tristil of Tristil Legals,
Just a quick question, how much sh*t would I be in legally if I hypothetically sent someone’s book manuscript to a publishing house without their knowledge or consent, but not with the intent of stealing their words for my own? Just to help them because they’re too stubborn... How bad would it be on a scale of one to Hungarian Horntail?
Kindest Regards,
An anonymous and dedicated follower of the law.

-*-

To the secretary of the WBSL Institute,
Please find attached a gobwrit for six galleons and two sickles, for the enrollment of two adults in your Zero to Hero British Sign Language For Wizards course starting October 12th at the Sheffield Outreach Center.
Can’t wait to be a hero!
Pippin Proudlout and Trygve Tandberg.

-*-

Molly,
That mock chicken pie recipe was divine! Worked a treat, Sev even made me show him the results of a diagnostic charm to prove it wasn’t real cream.
See you Wednesday!
Harry

-*-

Ms Penswilfillock, G.B.W.S.S.,
I, Harry James Potter, am writing to apply for weekend custody of my son James Potter, effective from the date of November 15th of this year. I have attached forms EEV-12b S1, COOC-Temp_D 208-7 and MoM_General Section E-19 as requested, as well as a signed letter of recommendation from Molly and Arthur Weasley, who are the grandparents and temporary guardians of my son.
I will also be dropping by on the morning of October 2nd to queue for another six hours just to be told which forms I need to fill out to regain full legal guardianship. If you could find it in your heart to send me a list before then, I would be eternally grateful.
Kindest Regards,
Harry Potter.

-*-

You ought to know that I love you.

-*-