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The baby, in one of the great karmic circles of fate, was left in a basket on Harry's doorstep.
He was sleeping. He didn't really look like either of his parents. There was a note clutched and partially torn (he'd sucked on it at some point) in his little fist.
The note was from Andromeda Tonks. It explained that the baby was Harry's newly orphaned godson, Teddy Lupin, who Harry had never met.
Andromeda had left a few instructions in the note as well. Teddy's current sleeping schedule. What to feed him and how often.
As another orphan, you might find it natural to care for him, the note said, although of course I'm aware that you'll be doing it alone. I'm so sorry I can't help, and I know this isn't fair to you, but I'm putting all of my faith in you, Harry.
There was also a small bag tucked under one of the baby's socked feet that turned out to contain enough wizard space to be holding a crib, a stroller, three blankets, nine onesies, six small books, four bottles, two large containers of powdered baby formula, eight stuffed animals, three rattles, and a harness for allowing Harry to carry the infant on his chest.
Over the next week, Harry was able to piece the story together. How Lupin and Tonks had left their one-month-old with his grandmother when they'd gone to fight in the battle. How stricken Andromeda had been when they died. How her last action before admitting herself to the Janus Thickey Ward at St. Mungo's had been to deliver the infant to Harry's door.
By the time Harry discovered all of this, however, Andromeda had decided that the Janus Thickey Ward couldn't do anything to help her, so she'd left it and disappeared.
~
It was the seventh time that night that the baby had wailed loudly and insistently enough to wake Harry up.
This was what the world had become. Needy, wordless cries in the dark, and answering them. This was what Harry had become.
He was keeping Teddy's cot at the foot of his bed. Jerking up onto his knees, he leaned over the edge of it, groping for the boy clumsily. Lifting him, feeling his tiny body vibrate with his announcement of existence and discontent, smelling his clean baby sweat.
This was Harry's life now. There had been so much death up to this point; but this was life.
~
Hogwarts, to put it bluntly, was a mess.
Rubble still cluttered the floor of the Entrance Hall. Strapped in the front harness carrier to Harry's chest, Teddy started sneezing in his sleep because of all the grit and dust in the air.
And yet, the school was far from abandoned. Some of the witches and wizards who Harry passed as he carried Teddy through the safest hallways looked cheerful while others looked grim, but everyone was hard at work on the cleanup and rebuilding efforts.
Harry, by contrast, had been holed up at Grimmauld Place with Teddy for two months. This was the first time he'd been back to Hogwarts since the final battle.
The infirmary, at least, was just as Harry remembered from his many trips to it during his school days: spotless, airy, and almost empty. "He's in here," Madam Pomfrey told him as she rapped smartly on a door in the far wall that Harry had never noticed before.
"Headmaster!" she called through the door as she knocked. "House arrest, of course," she added to Harry in an aside.
"Enter," said a familiar voice.
"I'll leave you two—excuse me, three—" Pomfrey had glanced down at the sleeping infant on Harry's chest, around whose delicate head Harry had cupped his left hand. "—alone."
She opened the door and ushered Harry through it, adding, "I'm much too busy to supervise, so do attempt not to kill each other, please."
The door literally hit Harry on the rump as she swung it shut. "Er," he said into the sudden silence that followed as he took an involuntary step forward. "Hello."
The room that he'd entered was not large but not small. It contained a cot, a couch, a large window, a table, a bookshelf, a wooden chair for visitors, an armchair, and a man.
The man was sitting in the armchair, one of his legs crossed over the other beneath his typical black robes. "You are holding an infant," he answered, staring at Harry with the single most gobsmacked expression that Harry had ever seen on his face.
Despite any gobsmackery that was currently being experienced, Snape looked a lot better than the last time they'd met. Which, admittedly, wouldn't have been difficult. Considering that this was the first time Harry was seeing his former professor since the man had had his neck ripped out by a giant evil soul-snake and all.
"Your room is nice. Sorry you've been stuck in it for months," Harry offered, pleased with how level his voice came out.
The man ignored this overture of friendliness and continued staring at him. "Why are you holding an infant?" he demanded after a pause.
Snape actually looked better than Harry had ever seen him looking, Harry realized. His hair was clean and gleaming; his skin had an unaccustomed bit of color in it; and there weren't any dark shadows under his eyes.
And yes, the man's neck, which was unbandaged, was still a bit horrible to look at, with its stretched purple-red mangle of newly formed scar tissue.
But Harry certainly wouldn't be the one to make an issue of scars.
"His name is Teddy Lupin," Harry explained. "Professor, I wanted to talk to you about your defense."
"Lupin and Nymphadora left their child in your charge?"
Harry leaned down to nuzzle at Teddy's forehead, then flushed when he looked up again and saw that Snape had been watching him closely.
"He's my godson. And an orphan like me now. Your defense, professor? At your trial tomorrow? I'm giving testimony that will clear your name, I hope."
Snape raised an eyebrow at this. "You hope to give testimony?"
"I hope to clear your name," Harry huffed out, unable to keep from rising to the bait.
And of course the berk seemed to be enjoying the fact that Harry was visibly getting flustered from this conversation.
"How long have you had charge of the infant?" was the next thing that Snape wondered.
He had remained sitting this whole time, his chair facing the door, in front of which Harry was still awkwardly standing. Giving up with a sigh, Harry perched himself on the edge of the extra chair for visitors and submitted himself for questioning.
"Since the day after the battle."
"Haven't you asked Molly Weasley to step in?"
Harry scrubbed his free hand through his hair, agitated at the idea. "No, I couldn't. Not when she and everyone—the other Weasleys—they're all still mourning Fred—"
Snape uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. For the first time during this interaction, he was glaring. "You've accepted responsibility for maintaining the welfare of an individual in the most critical stage of human development with no preparation and no plans to request aid."
Well, when Snape put it like that...
"Hermione and Luna have each tried taking shifts with him," Harry protested in a heated voice, glaring right back. "But he doesn't like being separated from me. Everyone else seemed to think I wouldn't have a problem. Because, you know."
"I do not."
"Because I'm also an orphan. And because I defeated Voldemort."
"Hm. And here I believed that child-rearing and the destruction of megalomaniacs took different sets of skills," the man mocked, the edges of his dark hair brushing his cheeks as he shook his head in a way that should not have been as distracting as it was.
Then his sarcastic tone softened. "Although I'll grant that tenacity is necessary in both cases."
"Oh." Slowly, the tension that Harry had been holding at the top of his spine trickled out of it. Snape had just given him a compliment, he was fairly sure.
He yawned. "Sorry. That would probably make more sense to me if I'd slept more than two hours last night."
Dark eyes narrowed at Harry. "And you propose to exonerate me tomorrow with the clarity of your testimony."
Harry couldn't help the slight laugh that escaped him at the softly muttered words. "Do you think we're fucked?"
He'd expected Snape to question the 'we.' Or maybe tell him not to use such improper language. Instead, the man continued regarding Harry for a moment, then said, "Not necessarily."
A promising answer, and one Harry could work with.
Unfortunately, Teddy chose that moment to wake up.
"I'm so sorry!" Harry gasped over his godson's strident wails. "He's probably hungry. Or he needs a clean nappy. Or his tummy hurts. Or he just didn't like the way I was holding him—"
Other babies might wake up with soft little coos or sighs. They might blink at the world and examine the mystery of their own wiggling fingers for a while.
Teddy was not the same kind of baby as those.
As his face turned red, his hands clenched into minuscule but implacable fists. The sound of his rage continued to blast from his tiny lungs.
"Shhh, Ted, it's okay, it's okay. I've got you… He'll refuse his bottle if I give it to him right away," Harry babbled. "Usually he calms down enough to drink after a couple of minutes…"
Snape's expression had been growing more and more pained as Harry continued to ramble. "For pity's sake, Potter," he finally snapped. "Give him here."
Harry couldn't quite make sense of this request. "What?"
"Give him to me," Snape repeated.
Harry gaped at his former professor, still having a difficult time understanding what the man meant.
When he finally processed what was happening, Harry stood up and cautiously approached the other wizard. He unhooked the straps of the harness carrier to free Teddy from it. Snape was holding out his hands, palms up.
Slowly, Harry lowered the squalling baby into them.
And Teddy stopped crying.
Harry's thoughts swam at the sudden silence.
Or maybe they were swimming because of the fact that it was Snape—Snape, of all people—who'd managed to get Teddy to calm down.
Teddy never wanted to let anyone except Harry hold him. He'd certainly never sat on someone else's lap and craned backward to stare at their face, reaching up to explore their eyes and nose and mouth with one hand, which Snape allowed without any change of expression.
And then, to Harry's further shock, once Teddy had satisfied his curiosity, he said, "Ah-uhh," laid his head on Snape's shoulder, and went right back to sleep.
Harry knew that he was goggling, but he couldn't help it. "He doesn't usually..."
He had to swallow and try again. "He's really strong magically, and he usually has outbursts of accidental magic whenever someone else tries to take care of him," he explained in a voice that was rushed and low. "He once gave Ginny a beard…"
(Which might have been part of the reason Ginny broke up with Harry, although it had mostly just been that he couldn't make much time for her while he was taking care of Teddy 24/7.)
"…and he glued me to him with a sort of Sticking Charm one time when I was trying to leave… He actually managed to reverse gravity on Luna so that the two of them had to stay on the ceiling for an hour, but, being Luna, she didn't mind… He gave Ron these weird teddy bear arms without hands for a few minutes when Ron tried to hold him… Oh, and he turned Hermione's chair to jelly last week. I mean, it still looked like a chair, but it was actually made of jelly—"
"Follow me," Snape interrupted, slicing neatly through the wall of babble and rising to his feet. It was a maneuver that he performed without using his arms, since one hand was on Teddy's back and the other was bracing the baby's head against Snape's shoulder. Teddy gave a quiet whine of protest at the movement and snuffled deeper against the man's robes, but he didn't wake.
And the next thing Harry knew, the wall behind Snape's chair had opened.
"Is this...a secret passage?" Harry didn't remember it from the Marauders' Map.
"To my quarters," Snape answered as he entered it. "Hogwarts made it for me."
Harry scrambled to follow. "That's...not creepy, I guess."
The door closed behind them, plunging the three of them into darkness.
"I am the headmaster, if only for the time being," Snape said dryly as the tip of his wand began to glow with a Lumos.
Harry quickly pulled out his own wand and followed suit.
The passageway was stone on all sides and climbed upward in a gradual series of twists and spirals.
Light, nearly blinding: another door had opened as they approached.
Proof positive that Harry was addled from exhaustion, he hadn't once during the journey thought to wonder why Snape was leading him down a secret passage to his quarters.
"Oh. Is this your bed?" Harry really hadn't meant for his voice to squeak on that last word. The room that they'd entered was dominated by a large four-poster with a dark green bedspread across it, neatly tucked in at all the corners.
"Hm. I moved it from my quarters in the dungeons when I was...promoted," Snape explained, an expression of distaste flickering across his face.
"Okay," Harry replied slowly.
Snape's expression turned to one of frustration. "Rest, Potter," he ordered. "I will take charge of Mr. Lupin in the interim."
"But he'll need to eat soon."
"The house-elves can provide a bottle."
Well, that sounded…reasonable.
Harry sat on the edge of the bed tentatively, at the same time as he protested, "I couldn't presume—holy crap, this is comfy." In spite of himself, he'd sunk back against the pillows.
Continuing to cradle Teddy, Snape looked down at Harry.
"Sleep, Potter," he reiterated. "I will keep Mr. Lupin safe and entertained."
"All right." Carefully, Harry kicked off his trainers and slipped between the sheets.
He didn't lie all the way down or take off his glasses yet. He needed to be able to give Snape a stern look.
Unfortunately, he suspected that it came out a bit more on the pleading side.
"Be careful with him, professor. Please. He means the world to me."
Harry didn't really know what to make of the way Snape looked at him after he said this.
He also didn't know what to make of the way he felt when Snape looked away. It was sort of like relief, and sort of…not.
"I would never imagine otherwise," Snape agreed.
~
Harry woke to orange light.
Once he put his glasses back on, he saw that it was coming from a high stained glass window, with the sun shining directly through the fiery breast of a phoenix. If the window faced west, that meant he'd slept until the late afternoon.
He could tell that he'd slept deeply because of the unaccustomed clarity and unhurriedness of his thoughts. But his body felt strangely taut, as if in preparation for something, like an arrow notched in a bow. He'd been dreaming, as far as he could remember, of sitting in a field of bright flowers with a blue glacier surrounding it on every side. The cold wind off the ice tufted his hair and bit at his skin. He'd dug his hands down into the earth and wrapped the stems of the blossoms around his fingers to stay warm.
There was also a cloud of scent around him: Snape's scent, spicy and unprepossessing. Before this, Harry hadn't realized that he would recognize Snape by the way he smelled.
And strangely enough, the knowledge of exactly whose bed he was in didn't particularly make Harry want to leap out of it.
Still, he needed to know if Teddy was all right.
Luckily, the entrance to the passageway to the infirmary was a lot more visible from this side. Harry traversed it quickly and emerged back into Snape's sickroom/house arrest prison, which was empty.
He found the two he was looking for in the main infirmary, which was empty now except for Snape and Teddy, Pomfrey nowhere in sight. Harry wasn't actually surprised that the infirmary matron let Snape leave his sickroom if he pleased; most people that Harry had talked to seemed to believe Harry regarding the man's innocence.
And they'd left him his wand, apparently, which showed a very high level of trust.
Snape was sitting in a cushioned chair, making bubbles in a variety of colors and shapes—a pink sailing ship, an orange dragon—burst from the tip of said wand. Teddy was on his tummy on a blanket at Snape's feet, lifting himself up on his elbows, staring at the bubbles and shrieking with laughter.
"Hi," Harry said, plopping himself down on the edge of a cot next to them both.
Teddy did a double take, then gurgled and held out his arms. Harry scooped him up and tickled him for a few minutes so that he would keep giggling.
Then he started fussing, so Harry pulled out the bottle of formula under a stasis spell that he always carried these days in a wizard-space pouch on his belt, along with other essentials like dry nappies. He would have remembered to give the pouch to Snape before leaving Teddy with the other wizard for hours if he hadn't been so addlepated.
Once Teddy was nestled in his arms and quietly feeding, Harry looked toward Snape again.
The man had been closing his eyes, obviously fatigued, but he opened them after a moment. "Feel better, Potter?"
There was genuine curiosity in the question. "That was the best sleep I've had in ages," Harry answered honestly. "Probably since some time in sixth year."
Snape smiled faintly. "Think nothing of it."
The smile did funny things to Harry. He didn't know what they were, but they were definitely funny. And things.
And they were also probably the reason that he blurted, "I will not think nothing of it. Seriously. I'm so grateful I could give you a blowjob."
Snape blinked at him slowly.
"You, Mr. Potter," he finally answered, "are seventeen."
It was Harry's turn to blink slowly. "So your main reason to object is my…age?"
The man looked at Harry from under his eyelashes, an expression that was almost…coquettish?
"I could easily come up with a dozen more."
Harry caught himself wondering, wildly and nonsensically, how many years it took a person not to be seventeen anymore. "No!" he cried. "No, don't."
Teddy finished his bottle and spat out the nipple, then burped and cuddled closer.
"Don't," Harry repeated in a quieter voice.
He rubbed the back of his neck. "Do you think…do you think we could visit again, professor? Sometime after you aren't on house arrest, I mean? Wherever you end up living?"
Snape had turned away from him. "Aren't you too busy, Potter? Being wooed in tediously unoriginal ways by your adoring fans, perhaps?" His voice had become harsh.
Despite this, Harry burst into laughter. "No. I'm not really sure if I actually have any of those. Teddy and I…he takes up my time. Not that I'm not open to romance. I think I'd like to be romanced. Er."
Having dug himself deeper and deeper into this verbal abyss, Harry stood, nearly knocking his chair over in the process. "Anyway, it's time for us to get going. I'll see you tomorrow. I mean, we'll see you tomorrow."
He backed up and bumped into another chair, stumbling both physically and over his words.
"At your trial, that is. Where I'm definitely going to exonerate you."
"I look forward to it. Goodbye, Mr. Potter."
"Er. Bye."
Still cradling his godson, Harry finally made it out the infirmary's door.
In the corridor outside of it, Harry paused to catch his breath, his cheeks flushed and his head reeling. Had he been…had he just been flirting with Snape?
He had. He really, really had.
And Snape, he was almost certain—Merlin save them both—had flirted back.
Flushing, Harry shook his head at himself. Nothing would come of it, he was certain.
~
He was wrong.
~
Snape's trial went surprisingly well.
"I didn't know it at the time, but he was the one who brought me the Sword of Gryffindor—"
"Bwaaaaaaahhhh!"
"And he made sure I got Dumbledore's orders about how to kill Tom Riddle for real this time—"
"Waaaah—ah—bweeeyahh!"
"He was always on our side. He protected the kids at Hogwarts from being tortured by the Carrows—"
"Waaagaa—ah—AH!"
"And Dumbledore was dying. He AK'd him under his own orders—"
"We can't understand you, Mr. Potter," the Head Witch of the Wizengamot interrupted. "If only you could find some way to quiet the child. You could try handing him to Ms. Granger, perhaps."
"The Accused could hold him," Harry answered cheerfully. "Teddy has a soft spot for Sn—for Professor Snape."
To demonstrate this, Harry stepped out of the witness stand to approach the uncomfortable chair where Snape was sitting, unbound as a courtesy due to his good behavior while on house arrest.
When Harry plopped the baby into Snape's arms, Teddy's sobs immediately ceased. Snape, for his part, merely rolled his eyes and turned the now-docile Teddy to sit on his lap facing the judge.
Harry returned triumphantly to the witness stand.
He'd thought up the plan last night. It would be difficult, he'd reasoned, to give more than a slap on the wrist to a man who was letting such a cute baby slap at his wrists already.
~
When Snape was acquitted, Harry decided to treat himself for a job well done to a celebratory ice cream at Fortescue's.
Snape was just stepping out when Harry arrived, already holding a well-topped cone.
The sight of Snape's tongue getting personal with a delicious-looking dessert was not something that Harry had ever expected to face. He felt cold at the vision, and then hot. It was like an adrenaline reaction, in some ways. The short hairs on his arms and legs and the back of his neck were standing up.
Snape, trained observer that he was, couldn't fail to notice the teenage wizard with a baby strapped to his chest who was standing like a dunce in his path. He stared at Harry down the crest of his nose without lowering his ice cream, then took another lick.
Teddy had recognized the man and was gurgling a greeting. "Hello again, Mr. Lupin," Snape said casually as he passed.
~
The next time Harry saw Snape, it was because he and Teddy had knocked on the man's front door.
Eight months had passed since the trial. Teddy could walk and even run on his own wobbly legs now. In conjunction with this, Harry had realized that Grimmauld Place was fundamentally incapable of being baby-proofed. He could remove the mounted house-elf heads and de-Curse the doorknobs, but Dark magic had seeped into the woodwork. Like dust motes, it permeated the air and would dance and shiver whenever somebody sneezed.
By Teddy's first birthday, Harry had moved the two of them to a small but comfortable cottage on the outskirts of Godric's Hollow. Harry had thought that it might be nice to try living in a place with trees and streams, not to mention ducks and crows and jarvies for Teddy to chase.
He'd been right: Teddy loved it. The one-year-old would have slept in his dinosaur galoshes if Harry had let him.
And they'd recently learned that they were not the only newcomers to the neighborhood.
It was early spring, a time for new beginnings. The path between Harry's house and Snape's could be walked in less than ten minutes.
"Er, hi. We just moved into a cottage back that way," Harry told Snape when the man opened his front door. "It's a coincidence! I swear."
"Hello!" Teddy added proudly from the ground at Harry's feet, a word he'd been practicing since last week.
As Snape glanced between them, Harry tried not to be obvious about the fact that he was attempting to peer through the doorway behind the man to scope out the inside of his house. He just wanted to see what it looked like. How Snape decorated. Whether Harry could spot the four-poster with a green bedspread from the headmaster's tower at Hogwarts.
He definitely didn't mean to overbalance and tip forward so that Snape had to catch him by the upper arms.
There was a wrinkle between the man's eyebrows as he set Harry upright again. "Potter, what's wrong with you? Are you intoxicated?"
"I haven't touched a drop!" Harry protested. Sheepishly, he rubbed the back of his neck. "Like, ever."
"Flower?" Teddy asked, offering Snape a light pink cherry blossom that he'd pulled off of the cherry tree that grew next to Snape's own front walkway.
The man bent down gingerly to take it. "Thank you, Teddy," he said.
Teddy beamed. Harry tried not to beam as well at the fact that the man had called Teddy by his first name.
"I suppose," Snape said dryly, looking between them (and wasn't that a twitch at the corner of his lips?), "I had better invite you two in."
~
Four more years went by.
Four long years, and the question of blowjobs, sadly, hadn't come up again a single time.
Other questions had been asked, of course. Plenty of them.
Questions like whether Harry should accept the contract that Snape drew up for him, in written form, about how often he was willing to babysit Teddy in order to free up Harry's time for things like catching up with friends and pursuing a career and sleeping.
("The satisfaction of knowing that the years I sacrificed on your behalf were not an utter waste of time when you drop dead of sheer exhaustion," the man had said with considerable venom when Harry ventured to ask why Snape would be willing to babysit Teddy in order to free up Harry's time for things like catching up with friends and pursuing a career and sleeping.)
"It should be weird, right?" Harry asked Hermione later that day, waving the contract in front of her face. "I mean, Snape and Professor Lupin were practically enemies. He might even still be mad about how werewolf Lupin almost ate him when they were teenagers."
Harry's friend had agreed to meet him before work, so they were at a Pret near one of the Ministry entrances. Teddy was in a highchair next to them, making broad slashes across the pages of his coloring book with an orange crayon.
"I don't think he was thinking of Professor Lupin when he made the offer, Harry," Hermione said, taking a dainty bite of her breakfast scone.
Hermione had been doing well lately: it was obvious in the confident way she held herself and her general air of calm, so different than the jittery shadow of herself that she'd been right after the war ended.
"Okay, so say he's just trying to help me. Us. Me and Teddy. But it's weird, isn't it?"
"Well, he obviously feels as if he owes you something." Harry's best friend tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "And it's sort of what a father figure would do, isn't it?"
"A father figure for...Teddy?"
She snickered. "No, you dolt, for you."
Harry felt the bottom of his stomach drop. "What do you mean?"
Hermione glanced once around the crowded cafe before answering, obviously gathering her thoughts. "Making space for you to pursue your career goals, stabilize your life. It's what many parents of teenagers who became parents themselves would try to do, if they were able."
"Snape isn't my—do you think he sees me that way? Snape isn't my father!"
Hermione frowned at Harry, obviously not understanding—or misunderstanding—why he was so upset.
"Well, no. Not technically," she agreed.
"Oh my god," Harry groaned, burying his head in his hands.
~
And then there were questions like whether Harry ought to let Andromeda Tonks back into Teddy's life.
The woman had apparently been traveling since the end of the war. When Teddy was three and a half, she wrote to Harry to tell him that she was back in the UK and to ask if she could meet him and talk.
Harry had lunch with her in the Leaky Cauldron. He left Teddy with Snape for the interim. Teddy loved adventurous and magical stories, even ones by Muggles, so Snape had been planning to read him another installment of The Princess and the Goblin. Then they were going to take a walk together to look for non-dangerous magical flora that Snape could use in the owl-order potions that he brewed for his income nowadays.
"I suppose I forfeited the right to be part of his upbringing when I left," Andromeda told Harry nervously and sadly.
The older woman was wearing jeans and a beaded blouse despite their non-Muggle surroundings, and her long hair, which Harry remembered as being loose and brown, was now braided and white.
In her apology for what she'd done, she had explained that she'd been afraid she would hurt Teddy if she kept taking care of him. She'd lost everyone in her family except this tiny new addition to it, and she had been worried that being loved by her would doom him, too.
Harry couldn't help liking the woman, and he decided to trust his instincts.
"No," he said carefully. "Teddy doesn't know you yet, but he could use a grandmother. As long as we start slow?"
"I understand." Andromeda's smile trembled at the edges. "Would you two like to come by for dinner next week?"
~
All in all, it had been surprisingly easy to stop thinking of Snape as his former professor and instead think of him as his friend, neighbor, and occasional babysitter.
Seasons went by. Harry was active from dawn until dusk, and before dawn, and after dusk. Every day that passed was dense with the business of being alive.
Then came the moment that he looked at Snape's jawline in the sunlight and lust drove all the breath from his body.
In every other aspect, it was just a regular afternoon. The weather was fine; Harry had the day off from the owl sanctuary where he worked, so he'd been showing off on his broom, doing tricks while Teddy, Snape, and Andromeda, in Harry's backyard, sipped drinks and chatted (Andromeda and Snape) and practiced headstands (Teddy).
Then Andromeda rose and held out a hand to Teddy to take him inside, likely, if Harry was reading the boy's body language correctly, to use the bathroom. And the sunlight glinted off Snape's jawline and the breath was driven out of Harry's body by lust.
Which didn't bode well for his ability to continue flying.
He ended up landing with a thump in the field beyond his garden wall, at which point the breath was actually driven from his body—physically, that is, by the impact.
Then Snape crashed through the gorse and bracken surrounding the muddy spot where Harry had fallen.
He was kneeling next to Harry in an instant, checking him over with his wand.
"Are you alive, Potter?" he demanded.
"Think so," Harry confirmed, the most coherent answer he could manage at the moment.
Which turned out to be okay, because Snape said, "Good," and he caught Harry up by the shoulders to kiss him.
The older man's mouth against Harry's was hot and imploring. Harry allowed himself to be implored upon for quite some time.
~
Their first "date," if it could be considered as much, did not get off to the best start.
They were having dinner at Snape's house together, just the two of them. Andromeda had been busy, so Harry had left Teddy with Hermione and Ron for the evening.
By the time the appointed hour on the appointed day arrived, Harry was feeling more nervous than excited. He'd been thinking about what might happen, even fantasizing about it. He'd spent far too long that day fussing with how he looked.
And it appeared that his nerves were merited, because Snape was only picking at his food, alternately scowling at Harry and staring doggedly away from him. Silence reigned. It seemed like they didn't have anything to say to each other. Harry could hear himself chewing.
They spoke at the same time, talking over each other.
"Maybe I should—"
"If you are no longer inclined—"
They both paused and waited for the other to finish.
"Go ahead," Harry said.
Snape grimaced and rose swiftly to his feet.
He ended up standing behind his dining chair. "If you are no longer inclined to develop anything...intimate...between us, we can call a halt to the evening at present," he said in a tone of deliberate calm.
Harry stared up at him in shock. "But I am inclined," he protested. "How could you think I wasn't inclined?"
Snape was still standing behind his chair, gripping the back of it with white knuckles as if it could act as a wall between them. "You are decadently beautiful," he pointed out.
Harry blushed. "My son loves you," he offered as his counterargument.
The chair, as it turned out, did not remain an effective barrier between them for much longer.
~
They ended up on the dining room floor. Harry was trying to take off his clothes as quickly as possible. Trousers and pants down first, stopping when they were at his knees to work on his shirt.
He'd managed to get his shirt halfway off but still had it tangled around his arms when Severus (because you really ought to start thinking of someone by their first name once they'd stuck their tongue repeatedly into your mouth, Harry had decided) leaned over him, still fully clothed in contrast to Harry's complete nudity, lips red from Harry's hungry kisses, hair in disarray from Harry's grabby hands.
"Tell me that you've been just as horny as me for the last five years," Harry gasped, digging his fingers into the man's upper arms.
"I can say unequivocally—" Severus licked at Harry's ear and pushed down against him in a long, sensuous surge. "—that it's been the greatest trial of my life."
~
One year later...
The cherry tree in front of Severus's house had been blooming for a week and was starting to lose its petals. The evening air was warmer than Harry would have expected for early spring, soft and perfumed with the scent of blossoms.
Spring: a time for new beginnings. Harry, for example, was beginning to go mad.
Three weeks. He'd picked out the ring for Severus three weeks ago, and he still hadn't found the right moment to propose.
He had the ring in his jacket pocket right now. He reached down and touched it, reassured by the familiar cool, intricate texture against his thumb and forefinger while he knocked on the man's front door with his other hand.
The door was opened almost immediately. "Dad!" Teddy cried, throwing himself up into Harry's arms.
"Hi there, lovey-dove," Harry said, blowing a raspberry against the little boy's cheek.
Teddy shrieked with laughter, then said, "Daddy, Severus let me paint his nails! With nail polish! Real nail polish."
Harry's eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline. "He did?"
"Do you like the color, Harry? Alluring, are they not?" Severus had come into the doorway, holding up a hand on which each fingernail had been coated in a blindingly glittery pink.
Harry knew that he was smiling like a fool. "I'm impressed, Teddy. You'll have to do mine, too."
The boy bounced on the balls of his feet in excitement. "Now?"
"Tomorrow. You know it's time to go home." Harry transferred his attention to the only other adult present and smiled. "You'll come by later, right?"
Severus nodded. "The brew will probably be finished by nine."
Absently, Harry sifted a petal that had drifted down from the cherry tree out of Teddy's sandy hair. "What do you say to Severus for watching you today, Ted?" he prompted.
"Thank you, Severus," Teddy responded dutifully.
Then the boy added, "I love you. You should marry my daddy."
As Harry's heart hammered, Severus glanced at him once, then raised his eyebrows and looked down at Teddy again. "Should I? Your father might have something to say about that. Ask him for me, will you?"
Teddy was nodding. "Okay. But I'll wait until the right time."
"Good plan."
The boy's expression turned sly. "It's got to be romantic."
Severus's expression was sly as well, but also solemn. "Yes, I agree. Your father puts a great deal of store into that sort of thing, as we both know."
Harry coughed into his hand to cover up his laughter. "Time to say goodnight, boys," he interjected. It was either that or press the man against that damn cherry tree and snog him silly. "Severus needs to get to work, and you—" He caught Teddy by his middle and swung him over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. "—need your dinner and bedtime, you little troublemaker."
Teddy yelled and kicked, then said, "Again! Again!" when Harry put him down at the turn in the path. So Harry picked him up again and relished a moment of hugging his son close.
Glancing back over his shoulder, he could see that Severus was still standing in the open doorway, watching the two of them go. Just then, a gust of wind knocked a big flurry of pink petals down from the tree between them.
"My answer is yes!" Harry called, content that the words would be carried back to Severus with the cloud of blossoms on the wind.