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Severus strides through the halls of the Potions Guild, keeping his face stern and his demeanor unapproachable. Leaving the silence and the calm of his own laboratory for the commotion of the Potions Guild is something Severus avoids whenever possible, but he has the rare need for a recipe which he unfortunately does not own. His only comfort is that it’s early in the morning, and the halls are nearly empty. The few people who are here at this time are either scared off by his attitude or busy in their own rights, and he’s been able to avoid conversation. Just as Severus reaches the library, he sees the Aldermaster exit, head buried in a sheaf of papers. Severus makes to move past him quietly, but the movement catches Hurst’s eye.
“Severus!”, the man exclaims. “So good to catch you here. I’ve been meaning to talk to you; have you considered talking with Edward Newman about your Wolfsbane improvements? He—”
“I’ve already told Whitaker I won’t do it,” Severus interrupts, brow furrowed. “I see no need to talk to a fluff journalist; the people who need to know about my research already do. Has he not informed you?”
“No, no, he did. Don’t know how that slipped my mind.” He pauses. “I had been meaning to talk to you though. Hm. You haven’t published any other groundbreaking research recently, have you?” Hurst laughs at his self-deprecating joke, but his usually jovial voice seems strained.
Severus shakes his head slowly. “Aldermaster Hurst,” he begins carefully, “are you alright?”
“Perfectly so!” Hurst states with a quick smile.
And Severus would leave it there, truly, and he should, it’s none of his business, but. “Are you sure?” he asks, looking pointedly at the papers clutched in the man’s hands.
“Oh, goodness,” Hurst exclaims, releasing the tense grip he’d had on them. Half-heartedly smoothing out the crumpled papers, he shakes his head. “No, I suppose I’m not.”
Minding his own business was looking more and more tempting, but he was in too deep now. Steeling himself for some emotion-laden conversation, he asks, “Would you like to talk about it?”
Hurst smiles at him again, though this smile is less perfunctory. “I appreciate that, Severus, I truly do. It’s nothing so terrible; my wife asked me for a favor, and it’s simply consuming quite a bit of my thoughts at the moment.”
“She runs a clinic, correct? What was her request?”
“Yes, Maywell down past Knockturn Alley. She asked if I could get her a potion, only it’s… a tricky one. Logistically, I’m finding it difficult to provide it for her, but it’s rather important, hence the stress.”
Giving in to whatever altruistic spirit chose to possess him today, Severus says, “If you need someone to brew it, I am willing.”
Hurst’s face lights up in relief. “Oh, would you, Severus? That actually works perfectly, you’ve no idea.”
Severus hums, uncomfortable in the face of such gratitude. “What potion does she require?”
Hurst grimaces. He takes a moment to scan one of his papers, and then says hesitantly, “I hate to ask more of you when you’ve offered your time so generously, but if you’re able to drop by the clinic, I think Eleni could explain better.”
“How much explanation does a name need?”
Hurst’s mouth twists. “You really should talk to Eleni.”
Severus rolls his eyes, but acquiesces. “I can stop by the clinic tomorrow, if that’s not too late.”
“No, that would be perfect. Thank you, Severus.”
“I’d say ‘anytime’, but this won’t be a regular occurrence.”
The other man laughs. “Fair enough.” He walks away, and Severus is left wondering what he’s gotten himself into.
He decides to drop by Maywell the next morning. It’s the second day in a row he’s had to leave his flat earlier than he likes, but the sooner he asks about the potion, the sooner he’ll be able to hand it off. With that thought in mind, Severus walks into surprisingly elegant clinic. It makes sense, he supposes, that the Aldermaster’s wife wouldn’t work in a run-down hospital, even given that it’s located in the middle of Knockturn.
Unsurprisingly, it’s a rather busy clinic; when he enters, the young woman at the receptionist’s desk greets him and rapidly recites, “If you’re in need of urgent care, please head to the left, but otherwise, if you could answer these questions, we’ll have someone with you as soon as we can.” She taps a board with a sheet of paper affixed to it and goes back to scanning the file she’d been reading before Severus approached her.
He interrupts her work with a quick, “Actually, I’m here to speak with Madam Hurst.” It gets him a sigh, and then the girl is leaving the desk, presumably to find the healer. He settles into one of the chairs against the wall, expecting to have to wait, but Hurst appears almost immediately.
“Madam Hurst,” he greets, dipping his head politely. “Severus Snape. Your husband sent me, said you were in need of a potion for one of your patients.”
“Just Eleni, please. Malcolm mentioned you, said you’d come by. And I cannot tell you how grateful I am, truly, but it happens that I found an alternate source for the potion we needed. I’d meant to send word once I was reasonably sure of my source, but then we had an influx of patients in the past few hours and it slipped my mind entirely.” She pauses to check her watch, then continues, “I am incredibly sorry to have wasted your time, Master Snape, but at least you won’t need to spend more of it on this.”
“Might I ask what the potion you needed was? I’d already prepared to assist you, and if I make another batch you can have it for any future needs.”
“Well—” she begins, but is cut off by the shout of a child.
“Harry’s here! Harry’s here, Miss Eleni!” A young boy runs in, and behind him are two teenagers. One is an unfamiliar witch, but the other is someone he recognizes far too easily.
Harriett Potter looks up from her bag and blanches. “Pr— Master Snape! I didn’t know you came to Maywell.”
“Nor I you, Miss Potter.” The girl is looking over at Hurst with questioning eyes, and with more than just a hint of panic. Before he can press further, the healer steps in.
“It’s not a common occurrence, Harry. Malcolm had asked for Master Snape’s assistance before you came by yesterday.” Hurst looks at Potter’s empty hands. “Did it work? Leo said you were entirely confident when he left, but—”
“It turned out perfectly,” she says, drawing some vials out of her bag.
Hurst takes them gingerly, then beckons for them to follow her into a patient room. Severus stays behind, a little confused and incredibly curious, but he knows how protective healers are of their patients’ privacy. He can’t imagine Madam Hurst would be any different.
When she gets there, she ushers the children in, and then waves Severus over. “The patient doesn’t know you, and I don’t want you in the room for that reason, but I don’t mind you seeing the treatment. So long as you stay out here. Will that work?” He nods, and then he’s left alone outside some poor child’s hospital room, listening to Hurst’s soothing voice as she treats her patient.
Seifer’s Syndrome. And an incredibly progressed version at that, if the girl—Cora—had been bedridden for as long as it seemed. No wonder the Aldermaster had seemed so rushed. Severus runs through the implications—of course he’d been ‘perfect’ for this, what with Seifer’s Solution needing a basilisk scale—while the children visit with Cora.
Once all the other guests leave the clinic, Madam Hurst returns to the doorway by which he’s standing. Her hands are clasped tightly, but her voice is even when she says, “I imagine Malcolm’s previous reticence makes more sense now.”
“I won’t say anything, Madam Hurst, not about Miss Potter nor about your husband.”
“Oh, I knew that. Malcolm sent you to me, even knowing you aren’t licensed to brew Seifer’s Solution and knowing that you know he’s not licensed. I trust my husband’s judgement. That was never the hardship, but truthfully, I wasn’t expecting you to agree once you knew what the potion was. I still don’t know, I suppose, but it speaks well to your character that you offered to help even once I’d told you I had it covered. That’s why I let you stay.”
He doesn’t say anything, only peers into the hospital room at the child who is chattering so energetically at Hurst’s son. Looking at the bedridden girl, Severus is uncomfortably reminded of the summer he spent wheezing, when his father was too drunk to care and his mother too poor for medicine, too scared for magic. He’d gotten to Hogwarts and had promptly been treated by Madam Pomfrey, the cough that ailed him for months gone by virtue of one singular potion.
Even now, twenty years gone, Severus carries cough relief on him all the time. He drinks pepperup at even the slightest hint of a cold; his cupboards are stocked with at least 5 different types of common illness cures, and he brews more monthly, even when he could spend that time on better pursuits.
Had he access to a service like the one Hurst is running, he might not have suffered for an entire summer. Then again, he still might have, if Cora is anything to go by. Poor street urchin can’t afford expensive medicine, almost dies from it: a sad story, but not a rare one. Hogwarts had paid for his medicine. There was no one to do the same for her, and it almost killed her.
He’s been silent for too long, he knows. He swallows, his throat too dry, and says softly, “I would have.”
“Hm?” she questions.
“I would have. Brewed Seifer’s Solution unlicensed.”
Hurst pats his shoulder. “It’s a moot point now, but I’m glad.”
“No. I mean—” He hasn’t struggled to get words out like this in a long time. “Is there anything else like this? A potion you’re waiting on, or potions that you use that I could make for you?”
“Severus, I appreciate it, but you have no obligation to.”
“And if I want to?”
Hurst looks at him appraisingly. “Aren’t you busy?”
“It’s summer now. The only obligation I have is my research, and even that I can cut down on if I need.” The conviction in his voice surprises him, but Hurst takes it in stride. If Severus said that to anyone else aware of his reputation, he’d be met with complete incredulity, but she doesn’t even question it.
“If you want to,” and Severus nods, “I can make a list of the potions we go through the most? We don’t have any special needs at the moment, but maybe in the future? Not that I expect you to brew for us forever or anything, if you brew once and then never again that’s still more than enough, but if you still want to when we need a more complex potion I could let you know—”
“Eleni,” he says, and that cuts off her increasingly rapid speech. “I want to.”
She reaches for his hands and squeezes them gently. “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” he says. And surprisingly , he actually means it.
Over the course of the next few weeks, Severus grows increasingly familiar with Maywell Clinic, and consequently more familiar with Eleni Hurst. He goes by the clinic once a week, sometimes more if he can. It’s enjoyable, having a place outside of his flat where no one expects anything of him. SOW functions, he hates because Riddle expects his loyalty, and the Potions Guild, he hates because they expect him to be someone he’s not. All Eleni expects from him are potions, and even that, she barely expects of him.
He’d stopped by one evening, even though he’d delivered potions a few hours earlier, for no reason other than that he was “in the area”. Eleni didn’t say a word about potions, just let him chat with her in between her rounds. Eventually he’d ended up sorting through the large St. Mungo’s shipment that had arrived earlier in the week because he felt awkward having nothing to do, but she didn’t ask it of him. And that was, for lack of a better word, nice. Since then, he’s spent more time at the clinic; on days where Maywell isn’t busy, he’d wait for Eleni to be free and they’d shelve potions together.
At present, Severus walks in carrying his latest brews. Eleni is free already, standing by the receptionist's desk and talking to another healer—Janice, he thinks. He sets down his crates on a nearby chair, and the noises catches her attention. “Severus!” she says, greeting him with a hug (which has been new for him, but, again, nice) and he returns it . As they separate, Eleni says, “I’m so glad to see you; Malcolm won’t stop bugging me to ask you if you’ll go to the internship presentations this year. He says that you should, seeing as you’re leaving your lab and coming out into society more.
“My coming to Maywell once does far more good for our world than me attending a year's worth of the Guild’s events could.
Eleni chuckles. I’ll tell him you said that.”
“Please do,” Severus says dryly. “Maybe then, he’ll get the idea and spend less of his time on those ridiculous functions and more time brewing.” That sets off another round of laughter,
“I can see why Malcolm likes you.”
“He likes me?”
“Why else do you think he keeps trying to get you to attend all those ‘ridiculous functions’?”
“Because apparently I make for good publicity?”
Eleni snorts. “Okay, yes, that is a part of it. But you have to realize, he doesn’t enjoy all the schmoozing either. He’s good at it, and he’ll do it, but he hates it. You’re a breath of fresh air for him, because you can not care, and he can drop the act around you.”
“Oh.” He has no idea how to respond to that.
“Oh. Your mind works in interesting ways, Severus; did you really not realize?” Severus shakes his head, causing Eleni to hum. “You should think about it,” she says. “It’d make Malcolm’s day if you did go.” He nods absentmindedly, and Eleni smiles. “Enough of that. Tell me, what wonderful potions do you have for us today?”
He accepts the change of subject gratefully, and the rest of his visit proceeds as normal, but once he gets home and no longer has company to distract him, her words keep coming back to him. Malcolm likes him. Malcolm likes him.
Those words are enough to compel him to attend the internship presentations. He regrets it the moment he gets there, and he regrets it throughout the presentations, but once the presentations are over Malcolm makes a beeline for him, and the grin on his face erases half the regret. The conversation they have erases the rest of it, for all that it lasted only a few minutes, and once Malcolm gets dragged away by his various obligations, Severus feels no guilt for leaving. He marks the evening as a net neutral in his head and puts it away, determined not to think about it any longer.
He’s forced, the next day, to drag it back out and re-mark it as a net positive; Eleni is beaming. “You listened to me!” she says, kissing his cheek quickly. It takes every ounce of control he has to keep his hand from coming up to where she’d just kissed him. She’s a physically affectionate woman; he’s known that since the beginning. But it can be hard, when—
He shuts down that train of thought, and wills himself to get through the day as normal. Then he wills himself to get through the next day, and the next, and soon, he’s gotten quite good at ignoring [something which he firmly tells himself does not exist].
Severus measures the rest of his summer in minutes spent at the Guild with Malcolm and hours spent at Maywell with Eleni, in between the various and sundry other obligations he has. It’s incredibly fulfilling, so when the last week of August comes around he’s loath to leave. He’s not alone in that; when he walks into Maywell on the thirtieth of August, Eleni looks ready to cry.
“I’m not really used to the whole boarding school thing, you know. I didn’t meet Malcolm until after he was done with Hogwarts, and we homeschooled Leo. I’m a bit of a mess, unfortunately.”
Severus doesn’t know what to do about the tears, but he can offer her something. “I’m not out of reach. There’s letters, and I’ll still come by to drop off potions.”
Eleni sniffs and murmurs, “I didn’t think you’d have time to keep brewing for us. Not that you need you to, I—we—like having you around as it is.”
“So you’ve said, time and time again. But I like brewing for you, so I’ll make the time to keep doing it.”
She’d given him a hug when he walked in, but when he says that, she gives him another one anyway. She gives him yet another hug right as he’s leaving, and as he walks away, he has to fight the urge to turn around and ask for one more.
Once term starts, it takes him a few weeks to settle in. He talks to the new Slytherin first-years and sets expectations for all his classes and starts Rigel’s sensitivity training and preps for the idiocy that’s bound to occur once the Triwizard Tournament is announced. By the last week of September, he’s gotten back into his routine, and he thinks maybe it’s time he takes some potions to Maywell.
Eleni always tells him to come by whenever, but he writes her a letter anyway, letting her know that he plans to stop by Thursday evening. That’s why he’s surprised, when he exits the Floo of the Potions Guild, to be greeted by Malcolm Hurst.
“Severus! It’s so good to see you, it really has been far too long. Has Hogwarts been treating you well?”
“As well as it can.” With that, Severus hefted his crates and started moving towards the exit, but Malcolm interrupted him.
“Oh, you can just set those down in my office.”
“They’re not for the guild, they’re—”
“No, no, they’re for the clinic, I know. Only Eleni mentioned earlier that she’d be busy until quite a bit later, unfortunately. Don’t know what it is, but she likely won’t get out until 8. I figured in the meantime, you and I could get dinner, and then you can drop by the clinic when she’s free.”
“Oh.” Severus follows Malcolm to his office where he deposits the crates, but then he hesitates. “I really shouldn’t leave Hogwarts for so long, not on a weekday.”
“They can survive a few hours without you, can they not?” He stays unconvinced, and Malcolm says, “You couldn’t possibly tell me you’d leave Hogwarts without being prepared for this.” His knowing gaze forces Severus to admit that, yes, he does have a ward on his office door which lets him know when a student comes knocking. “There you have it. Join me for dinner, then.”
He’s still slightly unconvinced, until Malcolm says, “I need to get away from the Guild for a while. By Merlin, if I look at one more letter from Albright I might go to the Alchemy Guild and strangle him myself.” That successfully piques Severus’ interest, and Malcolm, cunning man that he is, says, “I’ll tell you about it over dinner!”
So they head off to some restaurant which Malcolm swears by, some Chinese place not too far from the Guild. Severus isn’t picky so Malcolm, having been there far more often than he’d admit, orders for the both of them, and then he gets to learn all about Albright’s latest nonsense. The conversation flows from there, and while it’s the first time Severus has had such an extended conversation with Malcolm Hurst, he finds himself relaxing swiftly.
Talking to Malcolm is different from talking to his colleagues, much in the way talking to Eleni is different from talking to others. In some ways, it’s even better, because while he and Eleni have developed a sense of camaraderie, he and Malcolm have technical interests in common. They have a riveting discussion on Thompson’s latest work—both the publicly published article and the confidential one—and Malcolm offers advice on how to introduce Rigel to battle potions safely, and Severus starts losing track of the time.
Truth be told, he loses track of the time entirely, so he’s completely blindsided when midway through a conversation, Malcolm announces that they ought to be getting back, as it’s past 8. Malcolm pays, and the pair finish their conversation on their way back to the guild. Malcolm goes back to work, and Severus goes to visit Eleni.
It’s the start of a new routine; every Thursday when he is free, Severus will take his potions and leave Hogwarts. He has dinner with Malcolm, then he spends time with Eleni, and then he goes back to Hogwarts.
The other routine is a little less new, and also one which the Hursts don't know about. It involves Severus pushing to the back of his mind the reason why he never sees the both of them together, pushing away the reason he looks forward to Thursday nights beyond companionship. There’s nothing there, he says.
Weeks turn into months, and before he knows it, December is upon them. The second Thursday of the month finds Severus as usual: at dinner with Malcolm. He’s ranting about his apprentice, which has become a common topic of conversation over the term. The only difference tonight is that for once, instead of lamenting all the trouble Rigel finds himself getting into, he’s bragging. They’d had Rigel’s first free brewing lesson last Friday, and it was—
“—truly incredible. He’s so powerful.” Severus is waving his arms around as he speaks, a wild departure from his normal reserved demeanor, but just thinking about the lesson has Severus more animated than he’s been all term. “ He doesn’t like to talk about it much, but Malcolm, I swear I’ve never seen anything like it. His first time freebrewing, and he stabilized the potion before I could even step in. Granted, it was still ruined, but he managed to stave off an explosion just like that.”
He pauses to breathe and notices that Malcolm has stopped eating. His companion’s arms are propped on the table, his head resting in between his hands. There’s an intense, blistering look in his eyes, but it’s offset by the soft smile on his lips, and he looks so—
Severus tears his eyes away from him. He glances around the room, because that look couldn’t possibly be for him, but when he turns back Malcolm’s eyes are still on him. Severus picks up his fork and pokes at his food, needing an excuse not to meet Malcolm’s eyes. Through the very top of his vision, he can see the other man’s hand reaching out towards him. Just as Malcolm takes a hold of his hand, there’s a voice calling out from behind him.
“Hello, you two,” says Eleni, dropping her bag onto the seat beside Severus. He must have missed seeing her when he glanced around the room earlier, for Malcolm doesn’t look surprised to see her. He squeezes Severus’ hand briskly, then lets go just as Eleni leans down to kiss him on the cheeks. She then walks around the table to kiss Malcolm: a proper kiss, for her proper partner. There’s a pang in his stomach, and he can’t pretend it's from hunger, as his plate is more than half empty.
Eleni settles in next to Malcolm, asking, “What were you talking about before I interrupted?”
“Severus was just telling me about his apprentice’s first free brewing lesson! It went well, but I’ll let him give you the details himself.” The couple looks at him expectantly, waiting to hear his thoughts.
The only problem is, he can’t get the words out. He knows he should be able to, he knows he should just tolerate the change in circumstances, but there’s a tightness in his throat, in his chest. He can’t speak; she’s been there for all of twenty seconds and he can’t speak, and it’s only getting worse the longer he sees the two of them sitting together.
Abruptly, he pushes away from the table. “I have to go,” he says, and when they look at him with twin looks of dismay, he offers weakly, “I feel a student at my doors, I must attend to them.” It’s not convincing, not at all, but it is plausible and he feels justified in walking towards the Floo as fast as he can.
He does cast an eavesdropping charm before he goes, because as much as it hurts Severus is intensely curious, and perhaps a bit masochistic. Even so, he has to leave the room and take a minute to compose himself before he can bring himself to activate it, so he manages only to catch the tail end of their conversation.
From where he’s standing, Severus sees Malcolm holding Eleni while she weeps. Malcolm says “We’ll keep trying,” and understanding flashes through him. Also a considerable amount of hurt, that they immediately moved on to their own conversation, but. That is why he left them alone.
Severus cancels the charm and Floos back to Hogwarts. Ten minutes later there truly is a student at his door, so he shoves the Hursts away into a corner of his mind, with one small note.
On Monday, when he knows Malcolm has a conference and Eleni a meeting with St. Mungo’s, Severus drops by the clinic with potions. He’s carrying his regular assortment of healing potions, but he’s also got a myriad of fertility potions. The former, he puts away in the storage room as he usually does, though without Eleni it’s lost all charm. The latter, he puts directly on Eleni’s desk. Then he leaves.
That Thursday, Severus goes to Maywell earlier than he usually does. He bypasses the Guild entirely, not wanting to see Malcolm, and instead walks from the Leaky Cauldron. He’s only carrying a single crate of potions, seeing as he’d delivered the bulk of what he’d brewed on Monday. Truth be told, he could have left delivering these potions for next week, but there were other reasons to go to the clinic.
When he arrives, he again goes directly to the back. As he mindlessly puts his potions in their designated place, Severus scans the stores for the fertility potions. He finds the crate tucked into one of the front shelves. It’s half empty. His stomach drops, because even though he knew already, now he knows. Severus rushes out of the storeroom, intent on leaving, but he runs straight into Eleni.
“Severus!” she gasps, and she moves to hug him, but he steps to the side.
“I— I have to go. I delivered some more potions, but I have— I must meet Rigel to prepare him for the third task. I will see you another time.” Eleni’s face falls, but Severus rushes past her anyway. Just before he leaves, however, he turns to say, “I’m glad you found use of the potions I delivered on Monday.”
Without giving her a chance to reply, he Disapparates.
Another week comes and goes; Severus does not. He stays safely within the confines of Hogwarts, enlisting one of the house elves to deliver his potions for him.
Thursday night, he receives a letter from Eleni. Upon opening it, he winces: the letter is stained by tears.
'Dear Severus,' it begins, and already his heart hurts. 'Did I do something wrong? You hardly spoke to me last week, and then today you didn't even show up, and I don't know why. Then again, Malcolm says you've missed dinners with him as well. But I know you're fine, I received your potions. Did we do something wrong, that you won't see us? I don't know what's driving you away but whatever it is, please tell me. We would do anything to fix this, if we can. We miss you terribly.'
He swallows around the lump in his throat as he reads the last line. 'Please reply, even if only to tell us you won't return. I can't bear not knowing.' It's as though the letter was crafted specially to send a blade through his heart.
Severus never meant to hurt them by distancing himself. It just seemed like it would be for the best. He says as much in his reply, adding, 'You're trying for a child, and you're both so busy, and I simply did not wish to burden you to entertain me for a whole evening, not when you could instead be together.'
'Severus. We're not trying for a child,' he receives the next morning, and the burst of relief is so intense that even the students notice it. He tries reigning it in. He fails miserably. Instead, Severus excuses himself from the Great Hall to write another reply, this one detailing his thought process.
Eleni does not dignify it with a response, only asks 'Now that this misunderstanding has been cleared up, will you come visit?'
Severus wants to, but unfortunately, the third Task is actually imminent, and he truly must train Rigel. He promises to come by after the Yule Ball, and receives in response, 'We'll be waiting.'
Severus has never looked forward to winter holidays more. He’d had to stay an extra day to supervise the Yule Ball, and while in years past he wouldn’t have minded, this year he had people to go home to see.
After dropping his holiday luggage off at his flat, Severus immediately heads to Maywell. When he arrives, he finds the clinic nearly empty. A group of on-call Healers are sitting on the floor playing a game of Snap—the non-exploding kind. Upon seeing him, one of the healers gets up, likely to heal whatever brought him to the clinic.
“No, don’t bother,” Janice tells the healer. “He’s just here to see Eleni.” Grinning at Severus, she says, “Sorry about that, he’s new. He doesn’t know the drill yet. Eleni’s with our one patient, but she should be done in a few minutes.”
He nods in acknowledgement. When Eleni comes out, stripping off a pair of dirty gloves, he thinks he’s never seen someone so beautiful. He stays seated, not because he doesn’t want to greet her, but rather because he thinks he can’t. Eleni sees him and rushes over, hugging him.
“Oh, it’s so good to see you. I missed you terribly, you sweet, foolish man.” She moves back, breaking the hug, but still she reaches out to grasps his hand, and he squeezes tightly. Her voice washes over him, soft and strong at the same time.
It hits him how much comfort he takes from her voice, how much he’d come to rely on both her and her husband to destress. He’s relaxed, right now. He’s too relaxed, and that’s dangerous. As she keeps talking, the comfort slowly turns to sharp blades of guilt, that he’s exposing them to danger just by being there.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he bites out, and then he’s getting up and walking out and Eleni is chasing after him.
“Severus! Severus,” she gasps, out of breath, “what can’t you do? What happened?”
“This! Us! You and Malcolm, I can’t—”
“You can’t pretend you don’t need company, Severus, that’s not healthy.”
“It’s not about what I need, it’s about keeping you alive!” His voice breaks at the end. There are tears that this close to escaping his eyes, and he thinks maybe it’s time that he leaves. Before he can apparate away, though, Eleni grabs ahold of his hand.
“Great Mother Goddess, give me strength,” she mutters. She tugs on his hand and the world spins around him until he finds himself sitting on an unfamiliar bed, Eleni sitting right next to him. She reaches up to wipe away his tears. “Come on. Start from the beginning. Why did you leave?
He can’t look at her. Instead he looks down at his hands, and mumbles, “I haven't been entirely honest with you, and it’s not safe.”
Eleni takes his hands again. “Secrets aren’t a bad thing. Sometimes we have to keep secrets, either for our own safety, or for someone else’s.”
“What if my secrets put you at risk?” He cries, pulling away. “I can’t do that, Eleni, I can’t put you or Malcolm in danger, because I need—” Severus cuts himself off. Then immediately he wishes maybe hadn’t, but Eleni’s words put an end to those trains of thought.
“You won’t. You have an obligation to the SOW Party, but the Party doesn’t care about us.” He stares at her in shock, and she says in a softer tone, “Your bindings are quite visible, to anyone who’s looking. It’s never really been a secret.”
“Even if it's not a secret, it still isn't safe. They don’t care about you now, but they could, and if they started to, I wouldn’t have a choice but to—”
Eleni cuts him off. “You will. You would never hurt us, and you will have a choice.
“You can’t say that. You don’t know that.” Eleni stood there, eyebrow raised as if to say ‘Can’t I?’ And then it clicked, and everything got worse. “Eleni, what do you know?”
“Sometimes, Severus, we have to keep secrets from each other. For someone’s safety. Can you accept that?”
He says nothing, and she swallows heavily. “If that’s not something you’re comfortable with, secrets that we—that I—have to keep, then that’s fine. But if it's the danger you think you pose, that’s nothing. We want you in our life, with or without danger. For better or for worse. You make our life better. And if you don’t feel the same way, you can say so and we’ll leave you be, but if you’re willing to accept us, if you want us in your life, no matter what danger we might bring to you, then—”
“I do,” he says, and she falls silent, her gaze flicking above his shoulder. “Want you in my life. I want you in my life more than anything I’ve wanted before, but I can’t justify—”
Eleni leans forward and kisses him. Severus kisses her back unthinkingly. He’s thought about it too much. As she pulls away, he remembers, and he gasps, “Eleni, your husband—”
From behind him, Severus hears, “What about me?” He spins to see Malcolm, and as the older man approaches, Severus tenses. Eleni wraps one of her arms around him, intertwining her fingers with his. Her other hand reaches out to hold Malcolm’s, while he uses his free hand to cup Severus’ face. “She calls you a silly man all the time, but I didn’t quite agree until now.” He tenses even further, and Malcolm sighs. “Won’t you relax?” His thumb brushes across Severus’ cheekbone as Malcolm kisses him, and—
“Oh,” he says, dumbfounded. It makes sense, he thinks. Both of them. And before things like common sense or reality can break the moment, he kisses Malcolm again. Eleni’s lips press against his neck, Malcolm’s hand on her back, his arm around the both of them, and the last thing Severus thinks before he loses himself in them is this: they’re worth any risk.