Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

PHASE TWO: SINCERITY (DISGUISED AS CHAOS)

The Dungeons — Monday Morning, Before Anyone Sensible Is Awake

The plan was elegant in theory.

James had thought it through extremely carefully, which for him meant for about four minutes while eating toast and watching Severus walk through the Great Hall looking like someone had scheduled him an appointment with the entire concept of Monday.

The mugwort. That was the move.

Regulus had confirmed it — quality dried mugwort was hard to source through school stores, the grade Severus actually wanted for his independent work was only available through specialist suppliers, and if someone were to quietly leave a bundle on the Slytherin table before breakfast, tied with plain string and a small label, it would be a clear and tasteful act of service that communicated effort and consideration without being—

"—obvious," James said, to Sirius, at 6:47am, in the corridor outside the Slytherin dormitories.

"You are standing outside the Slytherin dormitories at 6:47am," Sirius said.

"I'm leaving something."

"You're lurking."

"I'm not lurking. Lurking implies bad intent. This is—" James held up the bundle. "This is a gift."

Sirius looked at the mugwort. He looked at James. He looked at the label, on which James had written, in his extremely distinctive handwriting, the words: From a well-wisher. "James."

"Yeah."

"That's your handwriting."

"It's anonymous."

"It's extremely your handwriting. I can identify it from across a pitch. McGonagall has had your first detention essay framed in the Gryffindor Dormitory and it stayed ever since."

"The point," James said patiently, "is the gesture. The gesture is anonymous."

"The handwriting is you, man. Look at it," Sirius said. "The handwriting is essentially a signed confession."

James looked at the label. He looked at the bundle. He looked at the label again.

"I'll leave it anyway," he said.

"Sure bud," Sirius said.

James left it. He placed it on the edge of the Slytherin table with the careful precision of a man defusing something, straightened up, and walked back through the Great Hall with the unhurried dignity of a person who was absolutely not doing anything and had not been doing anything and was simply up early for reasons of personal wellness.

He walked into a suit of armour in the entrance hall. It clanged.

"Smooth," Sirius said, from behind him.

"That was always there," James said, and kept walking. "It's like we weren't even here@

The Great Hall — Monday, 7:12am

Severus found it before he sat down. It was on the edge of the table, which was already wrong — no one left things on the edge of the Slytherin table unless they were being performatively careless or had miscounted the benches. The bundle was neither. It was placed. Deliberately, by someone who had thought about placement.

He picked it up. Quality dried mugwort. The grade he'd been substituting around for three weeks because the school stores carried the inferior variant and he hadn't gotten around to the supplier order. Tied with plain string. Label in handwriting he identified in approximately two seconds, because it was the same handwriting that had been appearing on increasingly creative excuses submitted to Professor Slughorn since second year, and Severus had an excellent memory for handwriting he found professionally irritating.

From a well-wisher.

He set it down. He sat down. He poured his tea. Across the hall, Potter was walking into a suit of armour with the focused attention of a man pretending he hadn't just done exactly what he'd just done.

Severus looked at his tea. He looked at the mugwort. He picked up his book.

He did not use the mugwort that morning. But he did put it in his bag.

Behind a pillar, two Slytherins had watched the whole thing with identical expressions of mild disgust.

"That went well." Barty charmed the ink from his quill tip, the ledger still open. "Too well. I'm almost offended."

Regulus took a bite of his apple. "Three points to Gryffindor for sheer sappiness." He glanced sideways. "Right, Professor?"

From the shadows, Dumbledore emerged, stroking his beard. "Indeed, my boy.”

The Library — Wednesday Afternoon

James had thought, carefully this time, about what he wanted to say.

He had written it down. He had practised it. He had specifically and deliberately not included any references to medieval medicine, root vegetables, or moisture of any kind.

Severus was in the library, in the usual spot by the window that now hummed on Thursdays, cross-referencing something between two volumes with the methodical focus of a person who found this genuinely enjoyable, which was, James had come to understand, not strange but simply Severus.

James sat down across from him. Severus didn't look up.

"I… read your notes," James said. "In Borage's class. The one about timing the incantation of runes."

A pause. Severus turned a page.

"You were right," James said. "I tried the adjusted timing last Thursday in independent study. Borage noticed and said it was—" he checked his memory, "—an improved technique for someone who usually blows things up."

Severus looked up

"You adjusted the timing," he said, flat.

"Based on your notes, yeah."

"And it worked."

"More than usual. I got Exceeds Expectations"

Severus looked at him for a moment with an expression that James was choosing to interpret as something other than suspicion. It might have been. It was hard to tell with Severus. The registers were subtle.

"Your grades on Runes aren't actually the best in class," Severus said.

"I know. I’m dead last in that class. That's why I—"

"You're always doing it in the wrong order," Severus said. "Not the timing. The sequence." He turned the book around, pointing with one finger at a diagram. "You're following the standard method, which is written for generic results. It's basically a technique we only do during Second Year"

James looked at the diagram. He looked at Severus.

"Um…Can I write that down?" he asked.

Something in Severus' expression did a small thing—a recalibration, minor but legible. "You have a quill," he said.

"Right," James said, pulling one from behind his ear. "Right."

They sat in a not-unfriendly silence while James copied the diagram and Severus returned to his cross-referencing, and the window hummed faintly behind them in the draft from the corridor, and nothing caught fire.

From behind a bookshelf, Lily watched this with an expression of someone who has, at long last, turned out to be right.

She didn't say anything. She went back to her book. Some things were better observed than interrupted.

A Window Alcove, Second Floor — Thursday Morning

"McGonagall," Lily said.

Severus didn't even pause. "Ten."

"Ten," Lily agreed immediately.

They looked at each other.

"That's the only one we've agreed on immediately," Lily noted.

"She's the only one who's earned it without discussion," Severus said.

"Fair," Lily said. She turned the page. "Okay. Flitwick—"

"Eight and a half," Severus said. "He loses half a point for the incident with the levitation charm and the garden gnome in third year."

"That wasn't his fault, that was Peter—"

"He should have anticipated Peter. They're experienced Professors"

"That's—you can't deduct for other people's chaos."

"In a rating system that includes aura and presence, a failure to anticipate chaos is a legitimate deduction."

Lily stared at him.

"You have very strong feelings about this system," she said.

"No comment," he said.

Lily wrote: Flitwick: 8.5 (disputed). She underlined disputed.

Down the corridor, James Potter appeared around the corner, caught sight of them, clocked the notebook, and performed a smooth, unhesitating one-eighty that took him directly back the way he'd come.

He walked into the suit of armour from before. It clanged. He kept walking.

Lily looked up at the noise.

"Was that—" she started.

"Yes," Severus said.

"Did he just—"

"Yes."

"That's—" She pressed her lips together. "That's embarassing… well, he at least straightened himself up. Kinda cool. Or should we say… he gave us aura"

"I… what did we give Gilderoy again?," Severus questioned before he returned to his book, a chuckle stuck on his throat. 

The Charms Corridor — Monday

Disaster Three and a Half: The Staring Incident (Contested by Anonymous)

The problem with Regulus Black as a strategic consultant was that he was extremely confident and completely unverifiable. He had, for instance, produced from his inner pocket a pamphlet titled "The Architecture of A Male Gaze: A Self-Study Guide" and presented it to James with the energy of a man handing over a winning lottery ticket.

"Where did you get this," James said, staring at it.

"I collect things," Regulus said. He tapped the pamphlet.

Barty added “We concluded after reading that you are as Gryffindor as it gets. Zero to nil self-preservation”

Regulus:  "The key issue is mystique. You have none. You are, and I say this as a professional, the opposite of mysterious. You announced your feelings about breakfast this morning to a corridor. You do not have an inside voice. You are all outside voice, all the time."

"The eggs were cold," James said. "That was a public service announcement."

"Mystique," Regulus repeated, unmoved. He straightened James' tie as though preparing a mannequin for auction. "Chapter four. Eye contact. Sustain it, don't break it. You hold the gaze and you let him feel the weight of your regard."

"Like this," Barty said, and turned to demonstrate on Remus, who had arrived from nowhere with a stack of essays and the immediate, bone-deep expression of a man who already regretted today.

Barty stared at Remus. Without blinking. For a very long time.

"Stop that," Remus said.

Barty kept going.

"Barty."

"Feeling it?" Barty said, still not blinking. His eyes had gone slightly aquatic. "That's the weight. That's the regard."

"I feel deeply uncomfortable," Remus said. "Is that the intended effect?"

"On Snape it reads as unresolved tension or mutual pining," Regulus said confidently. "The discomfort is part of it. It means it's working."

“Trust us. We read enough slow-burn enemies to lovers—most of the chapters just involves two people having eye conversations”

"This will not work," Remus said. "This is a hostile act. James, please don't."

James tried it anyway. This was, historically, what James did.

The opportunity presented itself approximately four minutes later, when Severus appeared around the corner of the Charms corridor carrying a teetering stack of books and a look of profound focus. He had not noticed James yet. He was navigating by memory, reading the top book while walking, which was either very impressive or a significant liability depending on what was around the corner.

James planted his feet. Fixed his gaze. Attempted to radiate.

Thirty seconds in, his eyes started to water. He blinked furiously and reset. The weight of regard, he told himself. The magnetism. He was a man of mysterious depths and smouldering—

Severus looked up from his book.

And stopped.

James Potter was standing in the middle of the corridor doing something with his face. It was unclear what. His eyes were slightly bloodshot. His expression had the quality of a man attempting to communicate multiple complex emotions simultaneously through his eyebrows alone and succeeding at none of them. He looked, Severus thought, like he was either about to confess something or pass out.

Severus looked at him for a moment longer than was strictly necessary to process what he was seeing. Then looked at the books in his arms. Then looked back at James.

"Are you having a medical event?" Severus said.

"Gazing," James said, with as much dignity as a man whose eyes were currently producing tears against his will could manage.

"At."

"You. Mostly."

Something happened to Severus' face. It was quick—a flicker, there and gone, the way a candle reacts to a sudden breath of air. His ears went, almost imperceptibly, pink. He looked down at his books. He looked back up, and the expression was gone, replaced with the flat, controlled register he kept in reserve for situations he had not been prepared for and absolutely refused to show it.

"Regulus," he said, to the corridor at large, in a tone of infinite flatness.

"Regulus," James confirmed, blinking aggressively.

"How long."

"About a minute." James paused. "Maybe ninety seconds. It was going well until the tearing started."

"Did it work?" Regulus called, from wherever he was. His voice was the voice of a man eating a biscuit.

"He felt something," James said, with more confidence than was warranted.

"I felt concerned for your corneas," Severus said, with absolute precision. He hefted his books. He turned. He walked away at a pace slightly faster than his usual one, which James was going to clock and file and think about later.

Down the corridor, Severus turned a corner. He stopped. He set the books down on a window ledge, which was not their destination. He stood with his back to the corridor for approximately four seconds, doing something with his face that no one was going to see. His ears were still slightly pink. This was deeply annoying. He picked the books back up. He walked on.

Back in the corridor, Barty had materialised from behind a suit of armour and was already writing. "Half disaster confirmed. I'm counting that," he announced. "Putting the description as Tears: present. Pining result: ambiguous. Severus Snape walked faster than usual afterward, which is actually not intended but that's as much success we've had in the past week”

"You bet against me," James said.

"I bet against the incident," Barty said. "I bet on you since I believe in my flirting skills. This will be part of history and I will be the willing scribe."

Regulus: “I'm actually surprised on how well that went”

Barty: “Guess it got published for a reason eh”

"It did work," James said, mostly to himself. "He walked faster afterward."

“It either worked or you scared him enough to run away”

Remus, who had witnessed all of this in the manner of a man watching a building fall in extremely slow motion, said: "Please don't read too much into the walking pace of a man you just silently cried at."

"I wasn't crying," James said. "That was my eyes' opinion, not mine. My opinion my gaze was smouldering."

"Smouldering," Remus said. He looked at the ceiling. The ceiling had nothing to offer. " James—"

"He felt it," James said, with the unshakeable certainty of a man who had noticed the ears. "Something happened. I'm not imagining it."

Remus looked at him. Remus was an honest person. This was, occasionally, the most inconvenient thing about him. "The ears," he said, reluctantly.

"The ears," James said. He was grinning. It was a problem.

"Do not," Remus said, "make this weird."

"It's already weird," Barty said cheerfully, from the ledger. "

The Courtyard — Wednesday Afternoon (A Different Angle)

The girls had claimed the best bench in the courtyard with the territorial instinct of people who had done it every Wednesday since third year. Mary had her knitting. Alice had someone's Charms essay and a red quill. Marlene was eating an apple and pretending to study. Lily had the notebook.

Severus was beside Lily because he was always beside Lily on Wednesdays and because the bench was in full sun and he ran slightly cold and would never say so.

He had a book. He was not, technically, reading it.

Across the courtyard, James Potter was demonstrating to Sirius that you could, theoretically, balance a second-year on your shoulders and still catch a Snitch if the second-year was cooperative and the Snitch was slow.

The second-year was not cooperative. The Snitch was not slow.

The attempt lasted approximately six seconds before everything fell over, and then James laughed so hard at himself that he had to sit down on the cobblestones, and the second-year landed on Sirius, and everyone in the vicinity was fine but covered in mud.

Severus turned a page. He had not read the page he was turning from.

"He fixed the window in your section," Lily said, not looking up from the notebook.

"I noticed," Severus said.

"And the mugwort."

"Obviously."

"And the corridor. Which Filch thinks he did himself."

"Good for Filch," Severus said. He turned another page. Still not reading it.

“So he basically fixed all of the inconvenient things you complained about for the past 5 years”

“He wants to be helpful, Evans”

Marlene leaned over to Alice and said, at a volume she clearly thought was a whisper: "He's still looking."

"I am reading," Severus said, without looking at Marlene.

"You're on page forty-three," Alice said pleasantly. "You've been on page forty-three for twenty minutes. You were on page forty-three when James showed up. The fact that these events correlate is, I think, interesting."

Across the courtyard, James had gotten back up. He was brushing mud off his robes and saying something that made Sirius fall over laughing again. He pushed his glasses up his nose. He grinned at the second-year, who had, despite everything, clearly decided to worship him.

Severus closed his book. He looked at his hands. He opened the book again and turned to page forty-three with the energy of a man who has never, not once, been caught doing anything.

"He's been trying very hard," Lily said, with studied casualness. "You could be terrible about it, or you could just—see it."

"I'm seeing it," Severus said.

"Of course you are sweetie.," Marlene said, with the serene confidence of someone who had just won an argument without technically entering it.

Severus gave Marlene the look he reserved for failed experiments and structural arguments built on sand. Marlene ate her apple and was unimpressed. She had been used to his glares since he knows it's his way of pouting.

"The rating," he said, mostly to Lily, because she was the only one who would not turn whatever he said into ammunition. "If I were to revise it." He said this in the tone of a hypothetical. He meant it in a different tone entirely. "It would be based on demonstrated data. Instead."

"Of course," Lily said. "Very scientific."

"My data is," Severus said, and turned a page he had not read, "accumulating."

Mary, who had not looked up from her knitting once, said: "He's looking over here now."

"No he's not. That's irrelevant," Severus said.

"He just waved," Mary said, clicking her needles.

A pause of geological patience.

Severus looked up. Across the courtyard, James had indeed spotted them and was doing an extremely enthusiastic wave in their general direction that managed to include everyone on the bench simultaneously, including Marlene, who had never once shown him any goodwill. He grinned. He turned back to Sirius. He did not notice that Severus had looked, because he had already looked away.

Which was the only reason Severus allowed himself the expression he had.

It wasn't much. It was the corner of his mouth. And then James glanced back, the way people do, and their eyes connected across the cobblestones for approximately one second, and Severus's entire face did something involuntary.

He looked back at his book so fast the pages rustled. His ears were red. Not pink. Red. The back of his neck was red. The tips of his fingers were probably red. He was, from the neck up, the colour of someone who had been caught doing something they absolutely were not doing and would be providing a written statement to that effect at the earliest opportunity.

“Oooo, that's quite a reaction”

“What now lover boy?”

“You should wave back, Sev. Don't be rude”

"I am," Severus said, to his book, to the girls, and to the universe, at a register slightly higher than his usual one, "reading."

Nobody said anything.

This was, collectively, the kindest thing four people had ever done for Severus Snape in the same moment. Lily looked at her notebook. Alice found her essay suddenly fascinating. Mary's needles resumed their clicking. Marlene finished her apple with the forensic calm of a woman who was going to sell this information to Barty Crouch Jr. for a minimum of five Chocolate Frogs and had already decided the price was worth it.

Barty's ledger, Wednesday: "NOTABLE DEVELOPMENT (CONFIRMED, UPGRADED): Severus Snape remained on page forty-three for thirty-one minutes AND went visibly red when James Potter looked at him across the courtyard. I was not present. Marlene McKinnon provided the data. She charged me five Chocolate Frogs. I paid without negotiation. Some intelligence cannot be haggled. For those who are reading, this is PROMISING (VERY PROMISING).

Regulus: I'm winning

The Quidditch Pitch — Friday Afternoon

The thing about Quidditch practice on a Friday afternoon was that it ran late, always, because Sirius believed in the spiritual value of one more lap and no one had successfully argued him out of it yet. The team was packing up as the light turned that particular shade of autumnal gold that made Hogwarts look like a painting of itself.

"Latch the chest properly, Prongs," Remus called, already off the pitch, clipboard in hand.

"I AM latching it properly," James called back.

Those were James’ famous last words.

The latch held for approximately three seconds before the Bludger decided it didn't.

The chest burst open with a metallic shriek. The Bludger rocketed into the open sky, assessed the general situation, and—with the unerring instinct of a thing that existed purely to ruin someone's afternoon—arrowed directly toward the path running beside the pitch.

Severus Snape was on that path. He was minding his business. He had an armful of freshly picked shrivelfigs from the greenhouse, his robes were unrumpled, and he had been having, up to this precise moment, a perfectly reasonable Friday.

James didn't think. There wasn't time to think, and besides, thinking had never been his strongest mode in a crisis. He moved—broom up, kick off, a lurch of acceleration that pushed the air aside like a curtain.

"SNAPE!"

Severus turned at the exact last possible second. His expression went, in rapid succession: mildly curious, comprehending, and then briefly but genuinely appalled. James hit him in what could be generously described as a tackle and less generously described as a full-body collision, carrying them both clear of the Bludger's trajectory.

They hit the grass in a heap.

The Bludger screamed past—close enough to ruffle Severus' hair—and wheeled away, circling back like a very stupid bird.

For a moment, neither of them moved. James was breathing hard, arms still instinctively braced around Severus, both of them horizontal on the Quidditch pitch with shrivelfigs scattered around them like an explosion in a grocery.

James became aware, in sequence, of: the grass against his cheek; Severus' sharp intake of breath; the proximity; the Bludger, coming back around.

"Hold on—" He twisted, wand already in hand. "Arresto!"

The Bludger froze mid-arc and dropped like a stunned toad. The impact shook the ground.

Silence.

Then Severus said, very flatly: "You tackled me."

"The Bludger was—"

"You tackled me," Severus repeated, as if cataloguing this fact for future reference.

"It would have hit you in the head," James said, sitting up. He was winded and grass-stained and checking Severus over with the anxious attention of someone running a diagnostic. "Are you—is anything—you're not hurt?"

Severus sat up with the controlled dignity of a person who refuses to be undignified even horizontally in a field. He looked at James. He looked at the frozen Bludger. He looked at the shrivelfigs on the grass.

"You saved me," he said. Like it was a fact he was still deciding what to do with.

"Yeah, well," James said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Can't have you getting flattened by my Bludger. That'd make me look terrible."

"You already look terrible."

"Still." James started collecting shrivelfigs. "These are mostly fine, I think. That one's a bit—yeah, okay, that one's gone. Here." He handed a small pile over. "Completely un-squashed. Like you."

Severus looked at the shrivelfigs. He looked at James.

"You're an idiot," he said.

"Yeah," James said, with a crooked grin. "But apparently a fast one."

A pause. Something in Severus' face did the complicated thing again—the thing that wasn't warmth but was adjacent to it, the way a coat is adjacent to comfort without being the same.

"Thank you," Severus said, quietly. Looking somewhere slightly to James' left.

James went very still.

"What?" he said.

"Don't make me repeat it," Severus said, and his ears were the faintest pink, which James was going to remember for the rest of his natural life.

"You're welcome," James said, grinning despite everything, despite himself, despite all of it.

From across the pitch, a distant voice: "POTTER, ARE YOU CUDDLING SNAPE?"

And another, tired and faint: "He's saving him, Sirius. Saving. I think."

Severus stood up. He brushed grass from his robes with the dignity of someone who was not going to acknowledge that his ears were still slightly pink. "This conversation," he said, "did not happen."

"Absolutely," James said, springing to his feet. "It did not happen at all. I did not tackle you. You did not say thank you. None of this occurred."

"Good," Severus said.

They started walking back toward the castle, which could be described—loosely, generously—as walking together. James pushed his broom along. Severus carried his rescued shrivelfigs. The light was doing the gold thing again.

At some point, Severus glanced sideways and caught James looking.

"Stop smiling," he said.

"Medical condition," James said.

Severus rolled his eyes. But he didn't look away quite quickly enough, and James—who was paying attention now, who had been paying attention for longer than he'd admitted to himself—saw it. The corner of his mouth. The ghost of something.

Gryffindor Common Room — Tuesday Morning

On James's demise, the story of the Bludger tackle had, in the way of all great Hogwarts legends, achieved mythological status within roughly eighteen hours. Sirius was narrating it at breakfast with the commitment of a professional bard, complete with dramatic reconstruction that involved standing on the bench and miming a dive.

"—and THEN," Sirius proclaimed, to an audience of Gryffindors and two intrigued Hufflepuffs (plus the curious ears of the whole of Hogwarts), "with the aerodynamics of a man who has absolutely zero self-preservation and one hundred percent of my respect—"

"Sit down," Remus said.

"—POTTER LAUNCHES HIMSELF—"

"Sirius."

"—off the broom, through the AIR, onto Snape—"

"That's not—it wasn't—I didn't launch, I more sort of—" James made a gesture. "Angled on rge way."

"He angled," Sirius repeated, reverently. "He heroically angled."

James put his head in his hands.

Lily appeared with tea and the expression of a woman who has reached the limit of something. She sat down across from James, moved Sirius' abandoned Quidditch magazine out of the way, and said: "Potter."

James peeked through his fingers. "Evans."

"I'm going to say something and I need you to actually hear it."

"I'm hearing things."

"You're running yourself into the ground trying to prove something that doesn't need proving," Lily said. "He already sees it."

James lowered his hands. "He what?"

"He notices," she said. "The window. The corridor light. The mugwort—yes, he knows it was you, your handwriting is extremely distinctive—"

"Oh no."

"—and the Bludger." She wrapped her hands around her mug. "He doesn't know what to do with it, which is different from not noticing. Sev doesn't get—" she chose the word carefully, "—tended to. Not often. So when someone does it, he doesn't have a ready response."

"Oh," James said. Something in his chest did a slow, complicated thing.

"So stop the grand gestures," Lily said. "Stop the schemes and the bets and the coordinated disasters—"

"To be fair," Sirius said, "the bets weren't really—"

"Sirius," Lily said, without looking at him.

Sirius sat down.

"Just talk to him," Lily said, back to James. "Honestly. Tell him what you think. Not what you think you're supposed to think—what you actually think." She paused. "Can you do that?"

James was quiet for a moment.

"Be honest," he said slowly. "No schemes. No performance."

"Exactly."

"Just—me."

"God help him," Lily said warmly, "but yes."

Sirius, who had been maintaining an uncharacteristic silence for approximately forty seconds, broke: "This is beautiful. This is the most beautiful thing. I'm so invested in this. Remus, are you invested?"

"I have been invested since the library incident," Remus said. "I'm just better at not showing it."

"The brownie points thing," Sirius said to Lily. "Is that a Muggle concept? Are they edible? Can we—"

"No," Lily said.

"Just asking."

James looked toward the common room window. The morning was grey and slightly damp, the castle doing its atmospheric thing. He thought of the greenhouse, of the corridor, of a butterfly on an open page.

"Right," he said. "Honest. Simple. I can do that."

"No, you can't," Remus said, "but we'll be right here while you try."

James stood up. He straightened his tie, which immediately came slightly undone again because that was just how his tie existed. He didn't fix it.

"Okay," he said. "I'm going to go be honest at someone."

"Terrifying phrasing," Lily said, "but the spirit is right. Merlin knows this needs to escalate soon. I need you to stop circling around each other— it's been a year"

And so James left. The portrait hole swung shut behind him.

Sirius turned to Lily immediately. "What's he going to say?"

"I have no idea," Lily said. "He might walk into another armour first."

"Hundred to one he says something about spices again," Sirius said.

"Don't bet against him," Remus said.

"I'm betting on the armour, not against James," Sirius said reasonably.

The armour in the second floor corridor would, in fact, be struck later that afternoon. But not by James.

That was Barty. He was running to catch up.

Charms Corridor — Tuesday Morning

He found Lily in the Charms corridor after breakfast. She looked at him over her parchment and did not say anything.

Severus had prepared a sentence. He had prepared several sentences, actually, on the walk up from the dungeons, and selected the best one.

"You know. That rating system," he said, "was not designed as a mechanism for behavioural modification."

"No," Lily agreed.

"And yet."

"And yet," Lily said mildly. "Curious, that."

Severus looked at a point above her left shoulder. There was something happening to the back of his neck that he declined to acknowledge. "It suggests," he said, "that the original assessment was incomplete. The four was accurate for the surface data. But there may have been—" a pause, a rather long one, "—depth that went unaccounted for."

"Mm," Lily said.

"Don't."

"I didn't say anything."

"You're doing the face."

"I'm reading," Lily said serenely, "about Charms."

"You haven't turned the page in four minutes."

Lily looked up. She looked at him — at his jaw, specifically, which was very set, and at his ears, which were not. "Sev," she said, with great gentleness. "Your face is very red."

"It's warm in here," Severus said. He was already turning away.

"It's a corridor. Magicallly-ventilated corridor."

"Goodbye, Lily."

"I'm sure it's nothing," she called after him, helpfully. "The mugwort is probably just a coincidence."

"Don't," Severus said.

"Sev."

"Whatever you're about to say."

"Your ears are still red," she said kindly.

"They are not."

"Both of them. Quite red."

"It is a known physiological response to temperature fluctuation—”

"It's April," Lily said. "And you're blushing about James Potter in a corridor."

"I am not—" he stopped. Reset. "I came to make an

observation about the methodology of the rating system. I have made it. Good morning."

"He replaced every torch," Lily said to his retreating back. "By hand, I think."

Severus kept walking. He stopped, briefly, at the window that no longer rattled, and stood there for a moment with his hands in his pockets, looking at absolutely nothing.

His ears were very warm.

The Trophy Room — Tuesday Afternoon

Disaster Four: In Which James Potter Injures Himself For An Audience Of One

The plan, as plans go, was borderline sensible. James had heard—through Regulus, who had heard it through Barty, who had overheard Severus talking to himself in the potions storage room, which raised its own questions—that Severus needed a particular trophy polished for extra credit in History of Magic. The trophy was on the high shelf. The high shelf required a charm ladder, a specific stabilising spell, or being very tall.

James was very tall. James would do the shelf. James would be helpful and tall simultaneously, which seemed like an efficient use of his available assets.

He arrived in the Trophy Room slightly ahead of Severus, located the relevant trophy ("Outstanding Achievement in Magical Antiquities, 1892, do not let Barty see this"), and climbed the rolling ladder with the confidence of a man who was excellent at climbing things.

The ladder, which had not been used since approximately the last time anyone cared about Magical Antiquities, had opinions about this. Specifically, it had opinions about the wheel on the left, which was stuck, and the shelf bracket on the right, which was not.

James reached the trophy. He began polishing. He was doing extremely well. He was, objectively, performing an act of service with zero explosions. This was, by any measure, a breakthrough.

Severus walked in.

James, who was apparently physically incapable of being caught doing something quietly, immediately tried to look casual at the top of a ladder. He turned, lost his grip on the polish cloth, grabbed for it, missed, connected his elbow with the trophy instead, and the trophy—a solid brass thing shaped like a very angry badger—dislodged from its bracket and fell directly onto James' hand.

The sound he made was not one he would be putting in his memoirs.

The ladder, having waited for this opportunity, chose the moment of James' maximum distraction to roll briskly sideways. James grabbed the shelf. The shelf, being a shelf and not a structural element, protested. He managed to drop himself to the floor rather than fall, which was the only graceful part of any of this, and landed in a crouch with the trophy—still clutched in his uninjured hand, somehow—and a wrist that had made contact with a shelf bracket on the way down and was now arguing about it.

Severus crossed the room in six seconds, which was fast enough that James noticed it.

"Let me see," Severus said, which was not a question. He caught James' wrist—carefully, with the particular practiced care of someone who knew where the injuries usually were—and looked at it. The wrist was bruised in a stripe, already purpling, where the bracket had caught it. Nothing broken. Probably.

"It's fine," James said, which was his reflexive answer to most physical injuries, accurate or not.

"It's bruised," Severus said. He produced, from his inner pocket, a small square of cloth that smelled of dittany and something cooling, the way Potions people always had things on them that other people didn't know to carry. He pressed it to James' wrist with the brisk, impersonal efficiency of a field medic. Then he looked at the trophy, still clasped in James' other hand. "You were polishing it."

"I was polishing it," James confirmed.

"For me."

"For you," James said. "Yes. And now I'm on the floor, which wasn't in the original plan."

Severus looked at him, crouched on the Trophy Room floor with a bruised wrist and a polish-smeared badger trophy and an expression of someone who has decided to find this funny rather than tragic. Something in Severus' face did a complicated thing that was not a smile and was adjacent to it in the way that mountains are adjacent to each other.

"You are," Severus said, "categorically the most accident-prone person attempting to help me, in recorded history."

"In recorded history," James said. "That's a significant sample size."

"It is." Severus took the trophy from him with two fingers, examined it, and set it on the table with the care of a man who had just decided he wasn't leaving until this was done properly. He retrieved James' abandoned polish cloth from the floor.

He sat down, which Severus Snape did not do, not informally, not on floors, and began polishing the badger with methodical efficiency. "Sit still," he said to James, who was beginning to get up. "The cloth needs a minute."

James sat still. They were both on the Trophy Room floor. The afternoon light came in sideways through the high windows, the way it did this time of year, and landed on the brass badger and made it glow in a way that was objectively absurd given what had just happened.

"You didn't have to," James said.

"The badger wasn't going to polish itself," Severus said.

"I meant the wrist thing."

A pause. Severus kept polishing. "The cloth," he said finally, "is dittany-infused. It'll hold until Madam Pomfrey. Don't be dramatic about it."

"I wasn't being dramatic," James said. "I was saying thank you."

Severus' hands slowed on the badger for a moment. Then resumed. "You're welcome," he said, in the tone of someone who found the word unusual in his own mouth. "Don't climb ladders when you're nervous. That's just a safety hazard"

"I wasn't nervous," James said.

Severus looked at him once, briefly. "You were reckless neverthehless," he said, and went back to the badger.

James decided not to argue with someone who was currently doing the task he'd injured himself attempting. He looked at the ceiling instead, at the late afternoon light, at the very shiny Trophy Room walls. "Four disasters," he said.

"Four confirmed," Severus said. "The half remains contested."

James turned his head and stared at him. "You know about Barty's ledger."

"Everyone knows about Barty's ledger," Severus said. "He showed it to Madam Pince."

"He showed it to—" James briefly closed his eyes. "Of course he did."

Severus held the badger trophy up to the light, examined it, and nodded at his work. He handed it to James. "She's in the pool," he said, which was not something Madam Pince had ever done before in recorded history, and both of them sat with that information for a moment.

The Trophy Room — Tuesday Afternoon (Six Seconds)

He was checking for injury. That was what this was. Potter had fallen off a ladder — Severus had heard it from the doorway, before it even happened — and the medically appropriate response was to assess the situation, which required proximity, which explained why Severus was crossing the room.

He was not worried.

Worrying about Potter would imply a level of investment that was not currently supported by the available data. He was conducting a rapid situational assessment.

In six seconds. Because that was how long it took to cross the room, not because six seconds was any kind of urgency, and anyone who suggested otherwise was working from incorrect premises.

Potter was on the floor. He still had the trophy. His wrist was the wrong colour. His expression was the expression of someone who had decided the correct response to injuring himself trying to do something nice was to find it funny, which was either very stupid or—

Severus caught his wrist. He looked at the bruising. The dunderhead.

Severus had not been staring. He had been observing the corridor with the general passive attention of a person who happened to be facing a particular direction, and if that direction had contained James Potter sitting against the Trophy Room wall with his wrist wrapped and his hair worse than usual and his expression doing that thing where he was laughing at something no one else could hear — that was incidental. 

He had been back in the Slytherin common room for approximately four minutes when Regulus said, without looking up from his book: "You were staring at Potter at the Trophy Room while you were leaving"

"I was observing something and left. He was just on the way."

"You walked into the same stretch of corridor three times. What else could it be?"

"I was— the route was—" Severus stopped. "The corridor connects to the east staircase."

"You came from the west staircase."

Silence.

Lily, who was sitting across the room allegedly reviewing Charms notes and actually watching this with the focused satisfaction of someone whose patience had been entirely vindicated, said nothing.

She turned a page. Marlene, beside her, ate a biscuit.

"He injured himself," Severus said, which was not what he'd intended to say, and was in fact the thing he'd been specifically not saying for the past four minutes, and it came out in the tone of someone making a professional observation rather than an admission of anything.

"We know," Lily said, still not looking up. "Regulus told me. "

"He was trying to do something for you," Regulus said, with the studied neutrality of a man who had a consulting agreement and was choosing not to invoice for this particular service. "The trophy was yours to polish."

"I'm aware of what he was doing."

"Are you." It was not a question. Regulus turned a page. "And yet."

Severus looked at his own book. He had not read any of it. The words were doing nothing useful.

The mugwort was in his bag. Quality grade. His specification. His handwriting that was not his handwriting, technically, because it said from a well-wisher.

He had been thinking about what you could do with quality dried mugwort. If you had it. And access to a private workspace. And approximately forty minutes and the right secondary ingredients.

"You could just check on him," Marlene said, not looking up from her biscuit. "It wouldn't be weird."

"I'm not going to—"

"He's probably still in the Trophy Room corridor. Or the common room. You could bring him something." She finally looked up. Her expression was the expression of someone who had charged five Chocolate Frogs for intelligence and considered it money well spent. "You've got that mugwort."

Severus looked at her.

"It wouldn't be weird," Lily said, very gently, in the tone she used when she meant: it would be fine and you know it and I am being kind enough not to say so directly.

Severus closed his book. He stood up. He did not say anything. He went to his workbench.

Regulus watched him go. He looked at Lily. Lily looked at her Charms notes.

"Five minutes," Regulus said quietly.

"Four," Lily said, turning a page. "He works fast when he's motivated."

Marlene ate her biscuit. "I gave him three and a half."

The Gryffindor Common Room — Tuesday Evening

The problem with the Gryffindor common room was that it was full of Gryffindors.

Severus had known this going in. He had accounted for it. He had a specific, targeted objective — deliver the vial, confirm the bruising was minor, leave — and he had not accounted for the fact that the Gryffindor common room at half six on a Tuesday was not just full of Gryffindors but full of Gryffindors who had apparently already heard about the Trophy Room and were treating it as an event.

Sirius was mid-reconstruction by the fireplace. Peter had a plate of biscuits. Remus was sitting in an armchair with the expression of a man watching something he'd predicted and was not surprised by but was resigned to.

And in the middle of it, on the sofa, wrist wrapped, laughing at something Sirius had just said, was Potter.

Severus stopped in the portrait hole.

The Fat Lady, behind him, said: "In or out, dear."

He was not going in. Going in meant crossing the common room, which meant being seen, which meant Sirius Black noticing him and whatever Sirius Black did when he noticed something, which was never quiet.

He was also not going out. Going out meant the vial was still in his pocket, which meant the mugwort was wasted, which meant two days of circling the problem and forty minutes at a workbench and the very specific kind of effort that he was absolutely not going to examine too closely had amounted to nothing.

He stood in the portrait hole.

"In or out," the Fat Lady said again, with diminishing patience.

Potter looked up.

He looked at Severus in the portrait hole, standing very still with one hand in his pocket, and something in his face shifted — recognition first, then something quieter, something that had no immediate name.

He stood up. He said something to Sirius that Severus couldn't hear, and came across the common room.

The Gryffindor Common Room — continued

James Potter did not corner people.

He was not, by temperament, a cornering sort of person — he was too loud for it, too present, too much of everything at once. But he crossed the common room in the specific way of someone who had a direction and was going to it, and Severus — still technically in the portrait hole, Fat Lady now openly sighing — found himself stepping inside and then, by some geometry that he hadn't quite tracked, standing against the wall beside the door with Potter's arm on the stone above his shoulder, not touching, just — there.

Not a threat. Not quite posturing.

It's something else entirely, which was worse, because Severus knew how to deal with threats and posturing and had no framework at all for James Potter looking at him with an expression that was quiet and warm and a little uncertain in the way of someone who has something they want to say and is still deciding whether to say it. 

Basically, his head was caged by the arms of James Potter and he is now at loss and trapped.

"You came," Potter said. Stating it like a fact he hadn't been sure of.

Severus looked at the arm on the wall. He looked at the vial in his own hand, which he had at some point produced from his pocket, because apparently his hands had decided to move the situation forward while he was still deliberating.

"Your wrist,' he said. "The bruising looks deep."

Potter looked at the vial. He looked at Severus. Something happened to his expression — a slow, soft thing, like a door opening in a room that had been closed a long time.

"Is that—"

"Bruise paste. I modified ver. The base is—" Severus stopped. Started again. "...It'll work better than what Madam Pomfrey gave you."

Potter was still looking at him. Severus was looking at the vial.

"The mugwort," Potter said. Not a question.

A pause. Severus's ears did something he was categorically not going to acknowledge. "The school stores carry an inferior grade. For a bruise paste at this depth you need the—" He stopped again. "Yes."

"You used the mugwort I left you," Potter said, slowly, like he was working through it. "To make something. For me."

"It's a better grade and it's needed for the modification. The logic is—"

"Severus."

Severus looked up from the vial. This was a mistake. Potter's face was doing something that Severus had no available response to — not a grin, not the wide bright thing he usually deployed at the world, but something smaller and more careful, like he was trying very hard not to frighten something off.

His ears were warm.

Both of them.

He was aware of the wall behind him and the arm beside his head and the fact that they were approximately the same height, which he had known in the abstract and was now knowing in a more immediate and inconvenient sense.

"Take it," Severus said, and held out the vial, because it was the only productive thing currently available to him.

Potter took it. His fingers were warm where they touched Severus's briefly, and Severus filed that under: irrelevant data, do not process.

"Thank you," Potter said. Quietly. The specific quiet of someone who means it without performing it.

Severus looked somewhere to the left of his face, which was where he usually looked when his face was doing things. "The instructions are on the label. Apply twice. Don't use it before bed or you'll stain the sheets."

"Okay."

"And don't tackle anymore people. Or climb ladders"

"No promises on that."

Severus looked at him. Potter looked back. The common room made noise around them — Sirius's voice carrying, someone laughing, the fire — and none of it was particularly relevant.

"Why did you really come?" Potter said. Still quiet. Still careful.

Severus opened his mouth. A number of accurate answers presented themselves, none of which he was going to say out loud in the Gryffindor common room on a Tuesday with Sirius Black fifteen feet away.

"The bruise paste works best applied within six hours of impact," he said. "After that the tissue sets."

Potter smiled. Not the big one. The small one — the one that lived at the corner of his mouth and appeared when something had actually landed, not when he was performing happiness. Severus had been cataloguing that smile without meaning to for longer than he was going to admit.

"Sure," Potter said. "The tissue."

Severus's ears were now a temperature that probably had medical implications. He took his hand off — he had not been aware of his hand being on the wall, had not been aware of leaning slightly, was now aware of all of it at once — and straightened.

"…I'm going," he said.

"You're going," Potter agreed, and stepped back, and let him.

He walked across the common room. He did not look back. He went through the portrait hole. The Fat Lady closed behind him with a satisfied click.

The Gryffindor Common Room — Immediately After

James stood with his back against the wall and the vial in his hand and the specific internal quality of a person who has just had something happen to them and is still in the place where it happened, looking at the shape it left.

The vial was warm from Severus' pocket. The instructions on the label were in his handwriting — precise, compact, the same handwriting that had been on the mugwort label three days ago, from a well-wisher, like James hadn't known immediately, like there was anyone else in the school who sourced quality dried mugwort and tied things with plain string and wrote labels in that handwriting.

He used it for me, James thought, clearly, the way you think something when it finally stops being a thing you were afraid to look at directly and becomes just — true. He made me something with what I gave him.

He was smiling. He was aware he was smiling. He was not doing anything about it.

Sirius appeared at his elbow. He had the expression of a man who had witnessed the entire exchange from across the room and had been physically restraining himself for the past three minutes and was now, finally, free.

He opened his mouth.

Lily's hand appeared from nowhere and pinched his ear.

"Ow—"

"Not now," Lily said, without looking up from her Charms notes, which she had somehow carried across the room.

"But—"

She pinched again.

"Lily—"

"He's having a moment, Sirius."

"I just want to—"

"I know what you want to do and the answer is not now."

Sirius looked at James. James was still looking at the vial with the expression of someone who had recently been rearranged at the molecular level and was finding the experience largely positive.

"He's not even listening," Sirius said.

"Exactly," Lily said, and went back to her notes.

Sirius looked at the portrait hole. He looked at James. He looked at Remus, who had not moved from his armchair and was watching all of this over the top of his book with the quiet satisfaction of someone who had predicted this outcome in second year and had simply been waiting.

"This is the most—" Sirius started.

"Sirius," Remus said.

"I'm just—"

"Leave him."

Sirius sat down. He ate a biscuit. He was, despite everything, smiling, the specific smile of someone who loved a person very much and was watching something good happen to them.

James turned the vial over in his hand once. Twice. Read the label again, which he had already memorised. Applied twice. Don't stain the sheets. Don't tackle humans.

He thought about the mugwort.  He thought about an arm on a wall and warm ears and the small careful smile,  by someone who had come across the school on a Tuesday evening with a vial in his pocket because James had hurt his wrist trying to do something nice.

"I'm going to marry him," James said, to no one in particular.

The common room did not respond. Sirius made a noise into his biscuit. Remus turned a page.

Lily, without looking up: "One thing at a time, Potter."

James looked at the portrait hole. He was still smiling. He was going to be smiling for a while that night.

Greenhouse Three — Tuesday Evening

Madam Pomfrey had prescribed fresh air and light tasks for the Amortentia lung situation—a very mild condition; symptoms included sighing, apologising to furniture, and standing next to windows for longer than necessary. Thus, the greenhouses in the evening were occupied.

James found Severus there.

He was working at the far bench with his sleeves pushed up, fingers sorting through something fanged with the practiced ease of someone who had done this enough times that the danger was simply a variable to account for.

The glass around him had gone foggy with evening warmth, the light inside soft and slightly gold, and the whole space smelled green and alive and complicated.

James stood in the doorway for one breath. Two.

Then: "Hi."

Severus looked up. He clocked James, and did not produce the go away that lived behind his eyes like a standing instruction. He just looked.

"Madam Pomfrey's fresh air prescription?" he said.

"Sort of," James said. He came in, letting the door close behind him. "I came to—" He produced the parcel from his robes. Small. Brown paper. Plain string, because Regulus had confiscated the Gryffindor ribbon on the grounds that it was tactically unsound. "Here."

Severus looked at the parcel. At James. At the parcel again.

He accepted it, carefully, the way one accepts things that might be more significant than they appear. Unwrapped it.

"Dried dittany," he said. "The quality grade."

"Slug—I mean, I heard it's hard to get in the right grade from the school stores." James looked at the foggy glass. "I used my Hogsmeade money."

"This is expensive."

"Yeah." James took a breath. Thought of Lily saying: what you actually think. "I wanted to re-rate."

A pause.

"I beg your pardon," Severus said.

"Re-rate," James said. "Re—me. I know I'm a four. I know I was a conditional six. I know there was a negative-something after the laundry." He exhaled.

"But I've been working at—being better. Not for the number. The number is—" he made a gesture, "—just a number. But because you—" He stopped.

Started again.

"You're interesting. You're the most interesting person in most rooms you're in, and I've spent years being obnoxious in your direction instead of just saying that, and I'm saying it now, and also I like you. I like you, and I don't know what to do with that except keep showing up and trying not to explode anything in your vicinity."

The greenhouse went very quiet. Outside, something rustled. A toad coughed in the middle distance, elderly and unimpressed.

Severus had not moved. He was looking at James with the focused, careful attention he gave to things that required precision—not because they were dangerous, but because they were delicate.

"You," he said, slowly, "are catastrophically earnest."

"I know," James said. "It's a condition."

"And relentlessly annoying."

"I've been told."

"And you compared me to a plague doctor."

"In my defence—"

"There is no defence," Severus said.

"No," James agreed. "There really isn't."

Another pause. Longer this time. The kind that has weight to it, that presses gently on all the available surfaces.

Severus set the dittany down with care. He stepped closer—not a lot. Just enough to constitute a decision. His hands were very precisely where they always were, at his sides, and the fact that he was aware of where his hands were was itself information he wished he didn't have.

Severus looked at him—the particular looking that James had noticed across months and dismissed and re-noticed and dismissed again, and was now, finally, standing still enough to receive.

"You're a four," Severus said, quietly. "But you think you're a ten." A pause. "And annoyingly enough—" and there it was, the ghost of a smile, small and private and ruinous, "—that makes you a six."

"Still a six," James said, and his voice did something slightly embarrassing on the last word.

"Still a six," Severus said. He stepped closer still.

"You're a ten," he said, "in stupidity."

James could not speak. He appeared to be having a small private crisis about this, which Severus was watching with the focused attention of a man who was absolutely not also having one.

"But," Severus said, and then he stopped, because what came next was the kind of sentence a person could not come back from, and he knew it, and he said it anyway: "apparently that's my type."

He leaned in, and kissed James on the cheek.

It lasted barely a moment. It was not cinematic. It was warm and brief and exactly the right size—a sparrow landing on a windowsill because it knows the window.

James made a noise that was part gasp, part system error. Severus stepped back. His face, in the immediate aftermath, was doing something it absolutely refused to acknowledge it was doing.

His ears were red.

Both of them.

His jaw was set with the specific tightness of a man performing composure at a level that required active effort, which was itself a form of honesty, and he turned slightly away under the pretense of examining the nearest plant, which was a geranium and had nothing to offer him.

From outside: "HE SCORED. HE ACTUALLY—REMUS, HE SCORED—"

"SHHHH—"

"HE—"

"There are fanged geraniums three feet from your face, Sirius—"

A sharp yelp. Sirius' voice, an octave higher: "IT BIT ME."

"I told you," Remus said, with profound satisfaction.

In the greenhouse, James and Severus ignored all of this with perfect, mutual, unspoken agreement.

"You kissed me," James said, when he had recovered sufficient language function.

"On the cheek," Severus said. He was still examining the geranium. The geranium was not interesting. He was aware the geranium was not interesting. "Don't be dramatic."

"On the cheek," James agreed. He was smiling so hard it was probably visible from space. "I'm not being dramatic. I'm being accurate. You kissed me on the cheek."

"I am aware of what I did," Severus said, to the geranium, at a volume suggesting this was not a conversation he was currently enjoying being part of, despite having started it. His ears were, if anything, redder. "Stop saying it like that."

"Like what?" James said.

"Like you're—" Severus stopped. Made a gesture. "Like that."

"Don't get lost," Severus said abruptly, turning back to face him, expression reconstructed to something approaching its usual flatness, except for the ears, which remained a problem. "In the numbers. A score doesn't determine someone's value. It's a snapshot. I might give you a ten tomorrow and a three on Thursday if you do something insufferable." He tilted his head. "Which you will. But that's not the point."

"What is the point?" James asked, genuinely.

Severus looked at him for a moment. "That you came here with dittany and a speech and a face like that," he said, which was not an answer and was also entirely an answer. He paused. "And that you're still smiling like that."

"Medical condition," James said.

"Shut up," Severus said, without heat. He looked somewhere slightly to the left of James' face, which was where he kept looking when his face was doing things he was pretending it wasn't doing. "Remove your scoreboard."

"I'll remove the scoreboard," James repeated breathlessly.

The greenhouse hummed around them. Something leafy shifted in the corner. The geraniums, calmer now, rustled.

"May I—" James started, and gestured vaguely at his own face.

Severus looked at him. He reached out and gave James' nose one extremely precise boop with a single finger, which was somehow both the least romantic and most sincere thing James had ever experienced, and then turned away immediately because his own face was doing something that required urgent privacy.

"Go away, Potter," he said, to the plant. "Before this becomes sentimental."

"Too late," James said, already backing toward the door, already grinning so hard his face was probably a structural hazard, and the door swung open behind him and let in the evening air.

He nearly collided with Sirius—pressed against the wall outside with one hand on his face where the geranium had got him, wearing the expression of a man who has suffered for love (adjacent).

"TEN," Sirius whispered, fist pumping.

"Still a six," Severus called, from inside the greenhouse, without turning around.

"CONDITIONAL SIX" James called back, already walking, already grinning, already gone.

The Corridor Outside the Library — Wednesday After Dinner

The corridor that smelled of old wood and slight coffee—nobody knew why it smelled of coffee, nobody had ever traced it, it was simply one of those things—had achieved, by Wednesday evening, a tentative peace.

Barty had set up a small table. He had a ledger, a box of Honeydukes, and a sign that read: CLOSING BETS — POTTER/SNAPE RESOLUTION. Huffington was collecting her winnings with the serenity of someone who had always known from the beginning how it'll end up going.

Regulus stood at the wall. He had, at some point, produced chalk. On the wall—and this was going to be a problem for Filch tomorrow—he had written POTTER: 10/10 (IDIOT) and drawn, above the word IDIOT, a small crown.

He stepped back, assessed his work, and nodded.

Sirius was on a chair giving a speech.

"Ladies," he announced, "lads, and those of ambiguous moral alignment—we gather tonight to celebrate one James Potter, who has taken his own catastrophic earnestness and, through sheer stubborn refusal to give up, successfully weaponised it for romance."

"It wasn't—" James started.

"Shh," Sirius said. "I'm in the middle of a speech."

Peter was handing out biscuits. He had, at some point, also produced a small banner. Nobody asked.

Remus sat against the wall with his tea, looking at the ceiling, looking at the banner, looking at his hands. "I want it known," he said to no one, "that I supported this emotionally while maintaining consistent reservations about the methodology."

"Noted," Barty said, writing it in the ledger.

"Don't write it in the—"

"It's in there now," Barty said.

Lily leaned against the opposite wall. She was smiling the smile of someone whose patience has been entirely vindicated.

When Severus appeared around the corner—arms crossed, expression doing the thing where it was severe and complicated and carefully not warm—she raised an eyebrow at him.

"Still a six?" she asked.

Severus looked at the chalk wall. At Barty's table. At Sirius, still on the chair, now gesturing. At James, who was heading his way with the energy of a man who has won something and is being decent about it.

"Under review," Severus said.

"That's better than before," Lily said.

"Don't."

"I'm just saying—"

"Evans."

"You like him," she said pleasantly.

A pause.

Severus looked at James, who had stopped a few feet away and was doing the thing where he stood very still, like a question waiting to be answered, not pushing, not grabbing, just—there. Present. Slightly grass-stained still, from Friday. Tie undone as always.

"He's an ongoing experiment," Severus said.

Sirius, who heard this from the chair, swayed. "That," he announced, to the corridor, "is the most Severus Snape thing that has ever been said in the English language."

"Don't encourage him," Remus said.

"We're not a—" Severus started.

"Couple?" James finished, from where he'd arrived, hopeful and terrified in equal measure.

Severus looked at him. James looked back. The corridor did its coffee-smell thing.

"We are," Severus said, "....under review."

"I'll take it," James said.

"You don't have much choice," Severus said, but something in his voice had gone slightly—not soft, exactly. Quieter. The sound of something that doesn't need to perform its sharpness.

"Ugh. They're being pleasant. Barty, they're being pleasant."

"I know," Barty said. "I've revised my entire outlook."

"On them?"

"On everything." He closed the ledger. Patted it. 

Dumbledore materialised at the end of the corridor with the unhurried quality of a man who has nowhere to be and everywhere to be simultaneously.

He looked at the chalk wall. The biscuits. The chair. The table. He said: "What a cheerful gathering." He reached into his robes. He produced a biscuit. He ate it. "Lovely corridor for it," he said, mildly, and walked on.

Everyone watched him go.

"Did he know?" Peter asked.

"He always knows," Remus said. "He just prefers not to make it awkward."

"Gracious of him," Severus said flatly.

"Wildly," Lily agreed.

The crowd was thinning now, Huffington departing with her winnings, Regulus brushing chalk dust off his sleeve, Barty reorganising his bets by category for his own private records. The corridor returned slowly to itself.

James stood beside Severus—not touching, just beside. A question offered without demand. The specific patient language of someone who has learned, finally, that some things can't be rushed.

Severus didn't move away.

"Library?" James said.

Severus considered him for a moment. "If you promise not to knock anything over."

"Absolutely cannot promise that."

"Honest," Severus said, almost to himself. "At last."

"It was always in there," James said. "Just required some disasters to come out."

"Four and a half," Severus said.

"Four and a half," James agreed.

They turned toward the library. James held the door—correctly, this time, without too much gusto, with exactly the right amount of care—and Severus walked through it without looking back, which was, by now, its own kind of answer.

From behind them, Sirius's voice, in full, ringing benediction: "TEN OUT OF TEN—"

"Six," Severus said, without turning.

"CONDITIONAL—"

"Very," Severus agreed, and the door swung shut on the corridor, on the chalk wall, on Barty's ledger and Lily's smile and Remus's tea and Sirius's ongoing speech to a rapidly emptying audience.

END OF STORY