Chapter Text
10.
‘I’m not talking to you,’ announced Harry the moment they stepped inside the house. He felt for the light switch on the wall, then got annoyed, jerked his wand out of his pocket and spelled a little light to float at the ceiling above them.
‘Yes, I gathered that,’ said Snape. ‘You have never managed to be quiet for five minutes before, let alone thirty-five.’
Harry did not know what to say to that, which was just as well. He went and sat on the sofa without taking his shoes off. The little light followed him, now casting a pleasant flickering glow on the dark furniture of the living room. Snape had taught Harry that spell.
‘Take your shoes off.’
Harry didn’t.
‘If you are trying to enact some sort of revenge, Potter, I suggest you try harder. You’ll be the one whining about not knowing a spell to launder the sofa cushions tomorrow, and you can be sure I will not help.’
‘Then I’ll move in with Sirius. He has a clean sofa,’ said Harry, who’d forgotten he wasn’t supposed to speak. ‘Because that’s all I care about, right? Living in a big fancy house and having a box to myself at the World Cup. According to you.’
Snape was standing in the doorway, the light barely strong enough to bring out the features of his face. He was massaging his temple. He smelled of alcohol, too, even though Harry could tell he’d tried to shower it off. Harry hated him.
‘It’s late,’ Snape said. ‘Go to sleep.’
‘No. You don’t get to tell me what to do. You’re the one who left my birthday party even though I didn’t know either that Sirius was going to give me another gift. You don’t get to be angry with me.’
‘I’m not angry with you. I’m just tired.’
‘That’s what happens when you leave a birthday party to come home and get drunk.’ Harry nodded with faux compassion. ‘And then try to get sober again in time to pick me up and act like I’ve done something to you—’
‘What do you want from me?!’
Harry fully jumped with surprise, nearly falling off the small sofa. That had been a full yell, and Harry might have expected a raised voice, maybe, or a snapped order to stop being awful, or scorn, or something—
‘I cannot—’ Snape had pressed a hand over his face now, hiding it fully from the light, and a sick, horrible taste flooded Harry’s mouth. ‘I don’t know what—’
Harry almost fell as he rushed to where Snape was, needing to see from up close that he wasn’t having a stroke, or a heart attack or something, because the taste in Harry’s mouth and the frantic thudding in his ears were exactly the sort of signals you’d expect your body to send you if something horrible was about to happen.
‘Don’t cry,’ Harry pleaded. ‘It’s okay—’
Snape smacked his hands away. ‘I’m not crying, Potter,’ he said, sounding wet but not like he was crying, so Harry tried to believe him. ‘I am—I don’t know what you want from me.’
Right now, all Harry wanted was for him to sound normal again, but he didn’t suppose saying so would help. ‘Don’t be sad,’ he tried instead, though sad didn’t really seem to cover it. ‘I’m sorry.’
Snape laughed. ‘You are—you ask for a lot, do you know that? You have exceedingly high expectations. I suppose that is a good thing.’
Not really understanding, Harry hesitated. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘You want things from me that I don’t know how to give you, do you understand?’ Snape had lowered his hand now and his eyes were indeed dry, only the look in them didn’t make Harry feel any better. ‘I do not know how to give you the sense that we are a real family, whatever that means. I do not know how to deal with you when you’re biting your fingernails bloody. Heavens, after everything, it would not be out of the ordinary for you to succumb to depression, or develop some other mental state I do not know how to deal with, and I am horrified every day that you might wake up and refuse to get out of bed, and then what am I supposed to do?’
‘I—don’t know?’ Harry said. He was more confused by the second.
‘I have never thrown a birthday party in my entire life,’ Snape continued. ‘I am trying not to focus on the indignity of allowing Sirius Black of all people to organise one in my place, but I am incapable of being the bigger man you demand me to be and rising above it when he implies that I am the hired help, or insists I should be paid for pretending I know the first thing about being a parent.’
Harry wished he’d go a little slower. He had no idea what he was supposed to respond to first, or what the right thing to say was. ‘I don’t think that’s what Sirius meant,’ was the first thing that came to his mind, which probably meant it was the wrong one. ‘I think he just wants to feel like he’s helping, too.’
‘I know what he meant,’ Snape snapped. ‘Despite what Black may believe, I am not quite so self-involved to believe my interpretation of the world is the complete and whole truth of it.’
‘Okay.’ Harry nodded slowly. ‘You know, I have money. I mean, what my parents left me. You can take it if you want. I don’t really feel like moving or anything, but if it would make you feel more—I don’t know—if you had more money?’
Snape’s lip quirked up before he frowned again. ‘Do you genuinely believe you are being helpful, or is this more revenge?’
Harry sighed. ‘I don’t know why you have to make this whole money thing so complicated.’
‘I am afraid any conversation about money is bound to be complicated, Harry.’
‘It’s stupid. And there are special healers for people who get depressed,’ he remembered. ‘Viktor’s been to one, but don’t tell anyone because Inna told me that in secret. So if I get depressed, that’s one thing you can do. I’m not, though.’
‘That is good to know, I suppose.’
‘Yeah.’ Harry tried to remember what else Snape had said. ‘I was only biting my nails because I was worried about things going wrong at the party, and now that they’ve gone really wrong, I feel like I won’t even be that nervous next time. And I know how to throw a birthday party now, so I can teach you if you like.’
Snape had leaned his full body weight against the doorjamb and was looking at Harry with a strange expression on his face. It made Harry feel timid and uncomfortable, but he knew he couldn’t show that now—not until he’d made sure Snape wasn’t having a mental breakdown anymore.
‘And if you don’t want to stay for the whole party next time, I guess that’s okay,’ he added. ‘You just have to tell me first. It might be better, to be honest, because it got a little wild after you left, and we were all sort of annoyed that Mrs and Mr Weasley wouldn’t just argue and storm off like you did.’
‘And—’ he took a breath. ‘And I know I said I’m sad but it’s not really your fault. You know? It’s not like—it’s not about you, really. And I’m not sad all the time, just sometimes. I don’t think that’s such a bad thing, to be sad sometimes. Right?’
Snape shook his head, still looking at Harry oddly. Harry decided he needed to wrap this up.
‘So there,’ he said. ‘Have you got any other problems I can solve?’
‘No,’ Snape said. ‘I think it’s time for you to go to bed.’
Harry snagged an arm around Snape’s arm, like they were going on a stroll, and kept very close to him on the stairs up because he was afraid something awful might happen to him otherwise. He left Snape in Snape’s bedroom, then went back to his own bedroom, and changed into pyjamas very quietly, stood by the door and listening out for any sounds from across the landing. He didn’t hear anything much, just fabric and fumbling.
It made Harry think of parents and children, what he was doing now: listening at the door, worrying, talking someone down from a panic. Only now Harry was the parent. He hadn’t played pretend in what felt like ages, but suddenly felt an almighty compulsion to do it again. If he pretended that Snape was his child and Harry was the parent, he thought maybe it would be easier to cross the landing again and check on him like Harry wanted to do, and maybe it would not give Harry such a horrible feeling inside to think of Snape being afraid, or insecure or embarrassed, and of Snape having once been a child in the first place.
When Harry entered the room, he found Snape lying on his back, dressed in nightclothes and with his hands crossed neatly over the duvet. He’d lifted his head when Harry had knocked, and stared at him in the dark, his eyes reflective in the glow of the streetlight outside the window.
‘Is everything alright?’ he asked Harry, and because Harry was pretending he was the parent and Snape was the child, it sounded funny.
If Harry hadn’t been pretending, he would have found it awkward to stay in the room any longer. But he didn’t now, because now it was simple: Harry wanted to be a good parent, like Mrs Weasley when she’d made him laugh when he was upset or like Snape when he’d take a calming breath before speaking when Harry was already angry, and so Harry wouldn’t just leave Snape to be sad on his own simply because he felt awkward.
He pulled at the corner of the duvet to slide it from under Snape’s hands and climbed in next to him. He put his head on Snape’s chest and hugged him as hard as he was able, scrunching his eyes shut to force his muscles into tightening.
‘You have to hug me back,’ he told Snape, and grinned when he felt Snape’s hands find themselves a place on his back and in his hair. It filled Harry with such warmth, when he lay like this, and an urgent want to make Snape feel good, too, and not sad or worried anymore; to share with him somehow the way Harry had now managed to play-pretend himself into not feeling strange, not wondering if he wasn’t too old for this, not obsessing over whether this was normal. But it wouldn’t work for Snape, would it? He could hardly play-pretend a parent when he was actually one in real life.
Harry told him instead, ‘I love you.’
They were silent for a moment, which was good because although it hadn’t been as hard to say as he’d expected, Harry did feel after like he’d just shorn all the skin off his body, and had to focus on breathing through it.
‘Hm,’ Snape said finally. His arms around Harry were shaking so badly, you might have thought he had a fever.
‘Can I sleep here tonight?’ Harry asked, because he really wanted to. Snape didn’t answer, but his chin did move against Harry’s scalp in what Harry guessed had been a nod.
‘Remember how you said I could talk to you about Quidditch for one day a week?’ Harry whispered. ‘Maybe if I don’t talk to you about Quidditch for, like, a month, then instead you’ll come to the World Cup with us, since Sirius has the box and everything. I don’t really care about the box, but it would be nice to sit all together, and then both you and Hermione could come. Because when you gave me the tickets, I was really happy, but I was sad that you wouldn’t come, too.’
‘Fine,’ Snape whispered hoarsely, then swallowed and added, ‘Two months.’
‘Deal,’ Harry laughed. ‘By the way, we played this game at my party where you had to tell a story about how someone ruined your birthday. And Mr Weasley won with the best one, but actually I was thinking I should have won. Remember when on my twelfth birthday you were supposed to adopt me but then it turned out you couldn’t because of the Death Eater thing and all? And I wouldn’t talk to you?’
Snape exhaled through the nose. ‘I do recall that, yes.’
‘That would have been the best story. But I thought it was a little too depressing for the party.’
‘Hm. Yes.’
‘Do you also remember that summer, when we were in—I don’t remember where we were, but do you remember when we stayed in that really expensive hotel and you didn’t know how to turn the shower on?’
‘The hotel was in Tallin,’ Snape corrected. ‘And from what I remember, it was you who didn’t know how to work the shower.’
‘No, I think it was you. And then you did it by accident and got all your clothes wet. Do you remember that time in Amsterdam when I thought you’d killed that guy?’
‘You—you thought I’d killed someone? What on Earth are you talking about?’
‘Yeah. Your friend. The guy from the marijuana shop. I was hiding under the bed and you Obliviated him, but I thought you’d killed him.’
‘Christ.’
The shocked tone made Harry erupt in laughter. ‘I thought you knew. Don’t you remember that I was really afraid when you figured out I was there?’
‘Yes, afraid of being punished, or—not of being murdered! Why on Earth would you think I’d killed him?’
‘I don’t know,’ Harry giggled breathlessly. ‘I—I was little. I think it just seemed like the sort of thing you’d do. I don’t know why, but I remember I was really scared of you back then. I thought sometimes that you’d kidnapped me, and you were going to sell me on the slave market. You know, to be a child slave. I mean, I mostly played that, I think, but I’m pretty sure I believed it a little.’
Snape’s laughter was warm and ticklish on the tip of Harry’s head. ‘I would have thought that journey sufficiently stress-inducing on its own merits, but clearly not, if you were bored enough to invent dangers for yourself. Child slave, honestly—and following murderers to their crime scenes so you could play witness. If this is the sort of excitement you were expecting when you agreed to live here, then I suppose it must have been a great disappointment.’
Harry clutched at his stomach to ease the pain of laughing. ‘Stop,’ he demanded weakly. ‘Stop making me laugh.’
‘I could poison your godfather if it is so important to you. You are very welcome to watch.’
‘Stop!’
Eventually, Snape did stop, if only because Harry found himself in real danger of suffocating. He told Harry to close his eyes and sleep then, and be quiet, which Harry tried to do, but from time to time something they’d said echoed in his brain and another bit of laughter escaped from between his pressed lips. Snape’s lips would quiver then like he wanted to smile, too, but he did the smart thing and kept his face impassive, knowing anything else would set Harry off again.
When Harry had calmed down, he finally did feel sleepy. He yawned twice, rolled onto his stomach and then his side, got told to stop moving, and finally found a good position to lie and think in. He wanted to find a soft, nice thought to focus on, but whenever he tried to hang onto one, it seemed to slip through his fingers.
‘I wonder if I’m ever going to have children,’ he whispered.
‘Wonder that tomorrow.’
‘I think maybe I’d like to one day,’ said Harry, twisting his head to escape the hand Snape had pressed over his lips to shut him up. ‘But then I don’t know. You just make it seem very stressful.’
And Snape did laugh then, and that made Harry laugh, too, and no one managed to sleep for quite some time.
The End.