If I Remember Tomorrow

Snape stood at the reception desk of St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.
The witch who had mistaken him for a man seeking treatment for a serpent’s bite had fallen silent beneath his glare—then vanished through the door behind her.
Several minutes slipped by, and still he remained, waiting.

Behind him, a wizard in panic, his wand fused to his hand, sent spells bursting without pause.
Walls split, the floor cracked, chairs toppled.
With each detonation, magazines and newspapers shattered into fragments and rose into the air, while cries rang out and people pressed toward the exit.

At last—whether by a guide, a guard, or a Healer—they managed to restrain the frenzied wizard and drag him away, his spells bursting wildly to the last.

The explosions ceased.

The last flutter of paper
settled on the floor.

The building grew still.

He lowered Protego—
and, as though nothing had happened, kept his gaze fixed upon the door through which the receptionist had vanished.

The quiet pressed in.
His finger tapped the desk—sharp, solitary.

“Well now—sorry to have kept you waiting.”
A slim witch in lime-green robes came briskly forward, her smile warm yet composed, carrying the air of one long accustomed to calming tempests.
Her eyes took in the wreckage of the reception hall at a glance, and she gave a low, resigned, “Oh, of course.”

“Again—yes, again. And I am meant to heal bodies, not mend walls.
In the twenty-three years I have worked here, do you know how many times I’ve had to put that wall back to rights?
If they ever dismiss me as a Healer, I could set up as a restorer—or a builder, perhaps.”

She drew her wand with steady confidence and traced a measured arc.
The fragments of stone slid back into place, the cracked floor sealed, and the torn Prophet, though not whole, stood once more neatly in its rack.

She slipped her wand into her robes.
“There.” She brushed her brow with the back of her hand, smoothing back pale hair tied in a loose tail.

“It has been some time, Severus.
Still in black from head to heel—
and as pale as ever.”

She leaned a little closer, her tone gentle, searching.

Snape, silent, drew back a step.
Her smile softened, yet did not waver.

“Half a year, perhaps? When you were brought here two years ago, I feared it was already too late.
And yet—now you stand here, living as though nothing had been lost. It does my heart good to see it.
I may have said so before, but I mean it still.

The potions you supply us are spoken of with gratitude.”

Snape had already turned, intent on ending the encounter—
but the Healer checked him with a light step forward.

“No—not that way, Severus.
This way.

Don’t you remember?”

He had not yet spoken a single word—not that it mattered.
She went on regardless.
Even when he fixed her with a glare, she met it with steady calm, as though it were no more than the natural cast of his face.

They came to the stairs, she leading, and after a few steps upward she glanced back at him—only briefly.

“Well then—did they tell you everything, as they should have? At the Ministry, and here at St Mungo’s. After all those weary formalities, I expect you knew what lay ahead.
And yet—you never once came to see him.”

“I do nothing without purpose,” Snape answered quietly.

“Indeed.” She nodded several times, as though to reassure herself.

“You recall the Weasleys, don’t you? Their daughter is married now. Did you know? …No, I expect not. Hardly the sort of tale to catch your ear.
They say the two of them were courting before all this began. That family had resolved to care for him all his life.
But with the daughter—it was a bitter choice. Love does not mend everything; no one can be blamed.”

She paused, the lightness of her tone dimming.
“And still I wonder if you truly grasp what this means.
I would not see him returned here because you undertook it without knowing.
I am his Healer. I have seen it all.”

“He remembers none of it, I suppose,” Snape said evenly.

“That’s right! But still—”

She halted with a sigh and looked back at him.
From three steps above she said, “Listen. He will not recover.”

“By morning, he forgets the day before. I was told as much.”
Snape’s voice was steady.

“More precisely, the reset comes with sleep. At the beginning—truly—that was all.”
Her brows knit, heavy with a sorrow that wished the words untrue.

“He could not recall the day before—no more than that.
But now, even the older years have vanished.

He does not remember that he is a wizard.
He does not remember why his parents died.
He does not remember Hogwarts—
nor the face of the girl he loved,
nor the friends he once made.

And of course—”

Her eyes fixed upon Snape.
“You as well.”

He did not look away.
If she supposed that being forgotten could wound him, she was mistaken.

The sorrow in her gaze pressed upon him with a weight that might have been mistaken for anger—yet his face did not shift.
At last she turned, and went on.

“It all slipped away so suddenly. In the end, it settled only once he had lost every memory from the time he first learned he was a wizard.
Yet the reverse holds true—he still remembers up to about the age of ten, so he manages the basics on his own.
From the look of it, he was made to do much in the household; by Muggle measure, he can even keep up with the chores.”

“I was told,” Snape said wearily.

“His magic has not vanished. That is the hardest part… but the body does not forget what it has learned.
So long as he believes himself a wizard, knowing he must restrain his power, he can.
The spells once mastered still answer when spoken—even though he recalls none of them.”

“I have heard all this before,” he said curtly.

“…Yes. Yes, you are right. Forgive me. I only needed to say it aloud.”
Her voice faltered, catching in her nose.

“It is my work, after all. I can bear it.”

“So can I,” Snape said, his face unchanged.
“Because it is my duty to protect him.”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose it is so for you.

Only… even when I tell myself it is no more than work…
he’s such a good boy.”

He gave no reply.

“A very good boy,” she said again, softer still—
her voice dwindling almost to herself.

A trembling sigh escaped her,

and for a while the silence lingered—
heavier than any further words.

They climbed the stair in quiet.
Along the walls, portraits of grim-faced Healers leaned from their frames, calling out diagnoses in voices dry as dust, offering dire remedies from centuries past.
Their mutterings faded as the pair ascended, until only the echo of their own steps remained.

For a little while longer the silence lingered; then, as though her thoughts had settled, the Healer spoke.

“If all we sought was to keep him alive, the hospital could manage that.
Ordinarily, we would never discharge one whose magic might surge beyond control.
For the record—I opposed it. Before as well… and most of all this time.

Listen.

If all you mean is to keep him like livestock,
do not take him from here.”

In silence they ascended—flight after flight.
At the entrance to a corridor marked Spell Damage, a pair of double doors with narrow windows stood.
Snape fixed his gaze upon them and made no reply.
She sighed once more, pushed the doors open, and led on.
Snape followed in silence.

The Healer spoke at last.
“I told him this morning you would be coming to fetch him.
I even gave him your photograph.
And—just as you instructed—I told him your name was Professor. Surely you cannot be serious? You truly will not give your name?”

“I do nothing without purpose.”
Snape repeated the same words as before, his tone unchanged.

She drew a deep breath.
“He writes down whatever he learns that is new.
Once he knew his memory was slipping, he began to record so much—all manner of things—”

“The Battle of Hogwarts?” he broke in.

“I cannot say. To read what he has written would be an intrusion.
But I imagine he must have.”

Her breath caught.

“Is that why you refuse to tell him your name?”

Before them stood a door marked Janus Thickey Ward.

She murmured, Alohomora.

And with that, her question trailed away.

They stepped inside.

The Janus Thickey Ward lay hushed.
Most of the beds stood closed about with lime-green curtains, as though it were the hour for rest after midday meals.
A few patients stared upward at the ceiling, vacant-eyed, but none turned their gaze toward the two who passed among them.

Lowering her voice, mindful of the resting patients, the Healer said,
“His memory reaches back only to the age of ten.
Yet in his nature, and in his control of magic, there is little sign of decline in intelligence.
So there remains a chance—slender though it is—that the years from then to the Battle of Hogwarts may yet return to him.
But what we fear far more is that, day by day, he may lose still earlier years.

Even so, we have chosen not to burden him with the past.
Not all of it is worth recalling, and it would be cruel to force upon him the weight of what is lost.
We answer when he asks—that is all.”

“…Though he never has.” Her voice fell soft,
the restlessness of a moment before pressed back into her chest.

“Here we are.”
She stopped at a door and turned toward him.
“He has been awaiting you. All right?”
The corners of her eyes creased, her gaze softening into greater gentleness, as though she were waiting in the wings for her cue.

Snape was prepared too—with the same impassive face as ever.
Yet for the first time, a tightness caught at his chest.
He gave the briefest of nods, and she—after a slow blink, turning her gaze aside—moved on.

“Harry, we’re coming in.”

She pushed the door and stepped inside.
Snape caught his breath—unseen by anyone.
Then, slowly, he followed.

Beyond the doorway stretched a short passage, ending in a broad window and the foot of a bed.
On the right stood a door with a large sign: Toilet and Shower.

She went straight to the bed without pause, her words flowing in one unbroken line.
“Writing in your journal again?”

“Yeah.”

The reunion began with his voice.

That bright note carried an echo of Hogwarts.

As Snape advanced, his gaze moved over him piece by piece: the legs first, then the arms, and at last the face, bent over a diary.
Upon the overbed table lay the open journal—and with it several other books besides.

Snape had feared a far worse state.
Yet Harry Potter seemed little altered from the last time he had seen him.
There he sat in T-shirt and jeans, the diary spread before him—just as on a weekend at Hogwarts, bent over a report.

Only the hair was different: still untidy in every direction, but bearing none of the care a young man his age might have given it.

The Healer bent slightly toward him, her tone softened.
“He’s come to take you home.”

At her words, Harry looked up at once.

It was as on their first meeting at Hogwarts—
his whole face alight,
as though every moment before him were new.

Snape turned his eyes away.
From the edge of his vision, he knew Harry Potter was smiling softly.

“Would you mind waiting a moment? It won’t take long.”
Harry lowered his gaze again and bent over his journal.

“Don’t stop him,” she said to Snape. “It matters to him.”

Harry gave a small laugh.
“Sorry—must seem awfully rude of me.”

“Never mind. Keep writing. We can wait as long as it takes,” she replied.
“I’ll be just outside. Call me when it’s time to leave.”

Harry lifted his head once more to see her off.
Snape, too, watched as she passed through the door.

The door closed—

and from the edge of his vision Snape felt Harry’s gaze turn toward him.

When at last their eyes met, Harry set down his pen.

“Sit down,” he said—
and with his right hand made a gesture as though seizing something out of the air.

A chair in the corner slid forward of its own accord and came to rest between the window and the bed.

“Your wand?” Snape asked quietly.

“I don’t have one. Or rather—they don’t let patients wave wands about in here. Please, sit down.”
Harry tilted his head toward the chair.

When Snape moved to take it, Harry gave a faint smile and bent once more to his journal, writing something anew.

Snape sat down.

“You’re not supposed to do that, are you?” Harry said, without lifting his head.
“They told me wandless magic is for children—I guess that means not me anymore.”

“Small children only do so because they’ve not yet been given wands, being too young to control their magic,” Snape said, his eyes lingering on Harry’s untidy hair.
“What you’re doing is something even grown wizards would struggle to manage.”

“All I can manage is moving things. If I had a wand—and if someone taught me the spells—I suppose I could do more…
What’s your wand like? Um… Professor?”

Harry raised his face.

Never before had he spoken the word Professor with such a smile.

The sound of it, light as it was, stirred the faintest flicker in Snape—
a flicker he wrapped away before it could surface.

When Snape gave no reply, Harry suddenly began rummaging across the overbed table.

“Um… Professor—that is you, isn’t it?”

In his left hand lay a photograph: Snape, taken when he had assumed the post of Headmaster at Hogwarts.
He was scowling.

And in the background, written in Potter’s hand Snape had seen for years:

His name is ‘Professor’.

Pressed to provide a photograph, he had told them to give him whatever they pleased.
Yet he had never imagined it would be this one.
Still, it was, undeniably, the most recent true likeness of him.

“May I ask you something?”

Harry closed the journal, cleared a narrow space on the overbed table, and set the photograph there.
His right hand still held the pen.

“Finished with your journal?”

“Oh—yes, I’ve finished. I was writing a thank-you letter to my Healer… I wish I’d had a card to give her, but only a few hours ago I was told we were parting.”

Harry’s brows knit, awkwardly.

“You and that Healer have known each other only a few hours, have you not?” Snape said dryly.

“Because I can’t remember? Well, that’s true,” Harry answered with unclouded brightness.

“But I had written in my journal all about how she’d been looking after me…”

A restless stir went through Snape’s chest.

“I would rather you ask me nothing,” he said. “There is no need.”

Harry’s face clouded only slightly—
and Snape felt a fleeting relief.

“My only task,” Snape said, “is to see you out of the hospital and into some semblance of life outside.”

Harry kept his eyes on him, listening as though hoping to catch some word he might set down upon the photograph.
Even that, Snape disliked.

Slowly, Harry lowered his right hand, though the pen still clenched within it.

“I’m sorry. You’re right, of course…
but tomorrow’s me will probably end up asking you something I shouldn’t.

So, just a little—
enough to convince me I mustn’t be startled by you and wander off.

Then I’ll write at the end: Do not ask any more questions.”

The words caught Snape off guard.

And when he saw unease flicker across Harry’s face, more than before, there stirred in him the faintest impulse to grant the boy’s request.

Snape gave a slow nod.

Harry’s face lit at once.
The pen tightened in his hand.

“Um… are you someone who looks after me, like a Healer, or—”

“Merely a housemate. We share the same roof, nothing more.
I have been told you can manage on your own.”

Beneath His name is ‘Professor’, Harry added:

My housemate.

“And your work? Do you… go out every day? Or—”

“I brew potions at home and supply them to this hospital and to apothecaries.
I am always at home, but shut away in my laboratory. You will hardly see me.
At times I may be absent, but when that occurs, I will inform you then.”

Snape’s eyes flicked to Harry’s hand, curious what he would set down.

Harry wrote beneath My housemate, simply:

He makes potions at home.

Then Harry lifted his gaze, steady upon Snape’s face.
“Sorry… did you and I know each other?”

Snape looked back at him.
“No. I never knew you well.”

“I see. That’s a relief.”

Harry’s expression eased, and he wrote nothing of it on the photograph.

In Snape’s mind, Harry’s words lingered.

Sorry.
That’s a relief.

The words echoed—faint but persistent.

“Thank you,” Harry said at last.

“Are you finished?”

“Yes.”

With a bright stroke, Harry added at the bottom:

Do not ask any more questions.

Then, with a gentle touch, he took up Snape’s photograph and drew toward him the largest of the books on the overbed table.
It was broad, not very thick, bound in leather, with a sheet of parchment fixed upon the cover.

Opening it, he slipped the photograph into the pocket inside the cover.
About half of it still showed—Snape’s scowling face, with the words His name is ‘Professor’ and My housemate visible.

Snape’s attentive gaze upon his every movement did not escape Harry.
“Oh… this?”

He closed the book with a quiet snap and turned a guileless smile toward him.
Then he held the volume out.

“This is the book I look at first thing every morning.”

Snape took it.
On the parchment fixed to the cover, in Harry’s own hand, it read:

I’m Harry Potter. Nineteen years old.
I suffered a head injury and lost all memory from the age of eleven onward.
I cannot even keep the memories of one day until the next.
For this reason I am in hospital.
This book must be read every morning without fail.

First: I am a wizard.
At eleven I learned this and studied magic while living in a dormitory at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Magic must be controlled by oneself, and I can do so.
I have no employment, but my parents left me an inheritance, so as long as I live modestly, I need not worry about daily life.

My parents were not killed in a car accident, but by an evil wizard.
At seventeen I defeated that wizard, but in the battle I sustained a head injury and became as I am now.

For daily living, follow the detailed instructions inside.
Do exactly as written.

For all the memories he had lost, it was a short text.
Apart from the single word parents, it spoke only of Harry Potter himself—
no friends beside him, no Dumbledore, not even his godfather.

“Inside, it’s all about daily life.
Shaving, for example—it makes me laugh.
There’s a schedule written out, bullet points for when to eat, when to shower.
Then the names of the staff here… things about the bank as well.
Honestly, without this book I couldn’t live.

…I know I said I wouldn’t ask questions, but later, about how to spend my time at home—”

“I understand.”

Snape was still gazing at the parchment fixed upon the cover.

In the margins of the text, small notes had been added.
Beside nineteen years old and wizard at the beginning, he had written: Really??
Next to dormitory life appeared the word: Gryffindor.

And around those notes, above and below them, lay countless tally marks—sets of four vertical strokes crossed by a single diagonal.

The greatest cluster stood beside the note written against became as I am now: What a fool, at the very last.

“What are these marks?” Snape asked.

At his words, Harry’s eyes lit—

as if to say, At last, you asked.

“Every morning I’m supposed to read this text.
But every morning I’m astonished by it all over again.
And by the next morning, I’ve forgotten even that surprise, haven’t I?
So I make a record of it—each time I think Really?? I mark it down.

When I see the marks, I know—oh, yesterday and the day before, I was astonished too.
I don’t remember it, but I thought the same thing.

And then… it doesn’t feel so lonely, does it?”

Not so lonely.

The words moved back and forth within Snape’s chest.

He chose to disregard the words still wavering before the door of his heart, and turned instead to the other books upon the overbed table.

“And that one?”
He handed the book back as he asked.

“This… is a record of the people I was supposed to have known.”

It too was bound in leather.
From its edges protruded slips and scraps, as though many things had been pasted within.

“It seems I put some of it together before I lost my memory.
And I think I’ve added to it even since then,”
Harry said, offering the book toward him.
With a sudden jolt, Snape accepted the book.

Harry Potter had looked at his face and could not tell whether they had ever known one another.
But perhaps it was only that he had not yet opened this book today.

The tension reached his fingertips, holding him still.

“You may look,” Harry said.
“The book says—whenever I’m told someone is coming to visit, I should check in here.”

He lifted The Book He Was to Read Each Morning a little, to show what he meant.

Snape had been working his way toward the section under “S.”
Harry spoke on, heedless of his downturned gaze.

“The first four seem to visit me often.
Friends from Hogwarts, the school of magic where we were together.
The visiting days aren’t listed, but there are plenty of notes about their work, and their lives, and all sorts of things, so—”

Then a name caught his eye: Ginny Weasley.
He had not sought it.

Every other entry was dense with notes, each spreading over at least a page.
Hers, however, ran to only four lines.

He angled the book slightly, shielding it from Harry’s sight, and read:

Witch. Ron’s younger sister, one year below me at Hogwarts. Gryffindor.
At Hogwarts, on the same team as me in Quidditch—the wizarding sport.
Now a professional Quidditch player.

Then came a hesitation, the pen having faltered, followed by the words:

She is to be married.

Beneath it, in smaller script, was written:

Congratulations—surrounded by a cluster of tally marks.

Snape turned the page.

On the page for “S,” Snape’s name was nowhere to be found.

He flipped idly through the pages until he came to one marked Weasley.

There were photographs of Arthur and Molly, with many notes written around them.
But one of the pages had been torn out in large part.

Harry had gone on talking, his voice light, when his eyes caught Snape turning to the torn page.
“Oh? It’s torn,” he said brightly, peering into the book in surprise.
“I’m always scribbling notes, so maybe I pulled that page out to write on.”

Snape looked at the books that remained.
There were two he had not yet examined: one was the journal Harry had been writing in when they entered the room; the other, like The Book He Was to Read Each Morning, had a sheet of parchment fastened to its cover.

“And that one?”
Snape jerked his chin toward the parchment-covered volume.

“Dunno,” Harry answered in a vaguely vacant tone.
Then, with his hand, he brushed over the cover.

“Here it says, Number of times I regretted looking…”

Harry lifted the book to show Snape its cover.

Some title had once been written there, but the ink had been blacked out.
Of all the volumes on the overbed table, it was the thickest.
As Harry had said, a note read: Number of times I regretted looking.

Beside it—fewer than might be expected for two years, yet still a fair tally—stood a row of marks.
But even those bore the traces of having been roughly scribbled over, as if with an effort to blot them out.

Snape reached for the book.
Harry drew it back.

“Actually, this morning I tried reading it—wondering if there might be any hint of what sort of connection you and I share.”

Snape, taking care not to betray unease, asked,
“And did you find a hint?”

Harry’s gaze wavered, drifting about Snape before returning to him.
“There wasn’t a single photograph,” he said, his brow furrowing.

Snape said, with a thin curl of irony—

“So even if you and I had known each other, unless I gave you my name, there would be no way of your knowing.”

Harry’s eyes met his.
“Did we know each other?”

“No. —And? Did you regret it?”

“Yeah…” Harry smiled, his gaze drifting somewhere distant.

“Just something trivial.”

It was several months after the Battle of Hogwarts that Severus Snape first learned of Harry Potter’s condition.
He had awoken from a long coma, and the season was turning toward summer.

Of that time he remembered little.
There had been incessant commotion all around, yet his own days seemed to pass as if he merely lay upon a hospital bed, watching things drift by.

When his strength at last returned, he braced himself for trial—for Azkaban.
Yet in the midst of the battle, Harry Potter had—why, Snape could not fathom—declared his innocence before Voldemort, and others had borne witness to it.
And the memories he had entrusted to Harry, preserved in the Pensieve of the headmaster’s office, were found untouched.
By the time he understood any of this, all had already been decided.

It was in those days that he first saw the article:

Harry Potter Hospitalized — Consequence of the Battle of Hogwarts?

He looked at it as though it were nothing more than clouds passing overhead.
But then, he had been in no state to take notice.
At that time, both of them had been kept in private rooms in the same ward, away from public eyes.
He could not even recall what he had felt when he learned the boy had survived.

The next time Snape learned of Harry Potter’s condition was after his own discharge—when he had hidden himself away from the clamorous world and begun to make a living from his knowledge of potion-making.
It was a bitter winter.

Harry Potter — Memory Loss — No Prospect of Recovery.

The press clamored daily over his symptoms.
It was widely reported that each day his memory reset, and he awoke as a ten-year-old Harry once more.
Yet the furor lasted no more than a fortnight.

Alone, he gazed once at the article—and afterward Harry Potter faded from his mind.

The seasons turned; it was autumn the following year.
The world lay in peace; Harry Potter was a hero of the past, and faith in his recovery had long since faded.

Ordinarily, Snape sent in his potions by owl.
But on that day, for once, he went in person to St Mungo’s.

There, by chance, he met again the witch who had once tended him—now tending Harry.

As they exchanged a few words about the delivery, she mentioned Harry Potter’s name, almost in passing.
“Keeping him in hospital forever, well… there’s hardly anything wrong with his body. Going outside ought to do his brain some good.

I know he has an aunt. But every morning he tells me, ‘I’m so glad I don’t ever have to go back to that house.’
She’s a Muggle, and in any case entrusting him to her is out of the question…”

“No one else?”

Snape spoke with the bare civility expected of an adult.
Yet even as he did, the faces of Weasley and Granger, who had once surrounded Harry Potter, came to mind.

“There isn’t anyone,” the Healer replied.

Then came the faces of Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Dumbledore.

“I see.”

Without knowing why, Snape began the formalities to bring Harry Potter into his home.
In it lay an indefinable sense of mastery.

No one questioned his motives, but the answer he had prepared was only this:

Because it is my duty.

—Duty.
Yes, duty.

From the moment Harry Potter set foot in Hogwarts, protecting him had been Snape’s duty.
Snape had left the school; Voldemort was vanquished.
The role seemed finished.
And yet, if Harry Potter still bore torment from the mark Voldemort had left—perhaps Snape’s duty was not over.

The Ministry officials found every reason to object.
They spoke of devotion wasted on one who, come the next morning, would forget him entirely.
But to Snape, that meant nothing.

—It was scarcely different from what their relationship had always been: watching Potter take his meals at a distance, teaching him on occasion, never once thinking of him at day’s end.
However he corrected, however he punished—Potter never learned.
Harry Potter was, every day, the boy who exasperated him.
Always at the edge of his vision, visible—yet nothing that required his concern, unless duty compelled him to look.

At Hogwarts he had played his part to the hilt, and took pride in having watched over Harry Potter with precision.
So it had been in those last years as well: he had not met the boy.
Nor had he grieved that absence.
No idle thoughts, no needless sentiment.
And so he judged himself the only one fit for this duty.

—There are reasons I never gave Harry Potter my name.

Snape whispered it inwardly.
No other words came—only the same phrase, repeating.

Their meeting came again in spring.
A warm wind was blowing,

and it carried the illusion that they were inside a dream.

The meadow spread wide before them, swaying in the wind.

“It’s a lovely place.”
These were Harry’s first words upon arriving at Snape’s dwelling.

As the Healer had said, his body had not forgotten what it once knew.
Though the records named it his first accompanied Apparition in years, Harry walked on, steady in his stride.

“A house in the middle of a sea of grass!”
So he declared, in a turn of phrase oddly poetic.
The sky arched high above, and the strong wind stirred the blue-green meadow into waves.

Harry ran through the knee-high grass, away from the house.
A faint floral sweetness drifted on the air.
“What’s over there?” he called, pointing toward the far edge of the meadow.

“A wood. Don’t enter it alone.”

“Okay. I’ll write that down in my book later. Anything else I should know?”

His gaze left the fields and fixed on Snape’s eyes.
Snape folded his arms, looking down at him from above.

“There are wards on these grounds.
Muggles—non-magical people—will never think to approach.”

“Nobody’s going to come out here anyway… are they?”

Snape shot him a sharp glare, but Harry’s gaze slid away.

“Hidden from wizards as well.
To Muggles it’s nothing but a house in the fields.
And—”

Doubt lingered that Harry had grasped the explanation.
He looked up at Snape with a faintly puzzled expression—again.
Snape turned his eyes away and added:

“You may come and go as far as the postbox at the end of the lane.”

From the house a narrow path cut through the meadow, joining the larger road.
At their junction stood a weathered postbox.

“So I’m allowed to wander on my own, within the grounds and as far as that postbox.”

“Correct. You’ll see where the magical boundary lies.”

Harry turned, taking in his surroundings: the small brick house, and behind it something like a greenhouse.
Everywhere, in every direction, the meadow stretched on.

And indeed, to Harry’s eyes, a transparent veil seemed to hang over meadow and sky alike.

“There’s a garden out back as well,” Snape said curtly.

“I see. Then I can wander quite a bit, can’t I?” Harry replied, flashing him a smile.

Then, turning away, Harry gazed toward the great road as it vanished over the rise of a hill.
A smile lingered—the very smile that set Snape’s nerves on edge, though perhaps it was nothing more than habit.

“Where does this road lead?”

“Roads lead everywhere.”

“…I suppose it doesn’t really matter if I know, then.”
Catching the edge in Snape’s voice, Harry answered more softly.

“Ah—well.”
Seeing the deepening crease between Snape’s brows, he added with sudden cheer,
“That thing you did—bringing us here like that! With that, things like this hardly matter to you, right?”

And without waiting for a response, Harry set off toward the house, as though Snape’s irritation meant nothing at all.

“What’s in the garden?”

“A greenhouse,” Snape replied, falling into step behind him.
“Small. Still, I grow what I need for potion-making.”

“For your work? That’s amazing—you grow them yourself?”

“What I lack, I order by post. Owls—”

His words faltered, 　
as Harry turned back, eyes alight with curiosity.

“By owls?”

“…Owls deliver them.”

“Wow. I’d like to see that sometime.”

“Several come to the house. They bring letters, potions. Their names—”

“Ah… Don’t tell me.” Harry smiled a little, almost apologetically.
“I’d rather not meet them.”

Then, turning again toward the house, Harry set off.

“I’d only forget anyway.”

And in that instant, Snape caught it—

the bright smile, slipping into shadow.

The moment passed.

“…May I help with the herbs?” Harry asked.

Snape halted.
At once Harry noticed, his gaze dropping to Snape’s feet—unease written plainly in his posture.

“I won’t have you bitten or fainting from contact.”

Harry’s face lit at once.
His eyes shone as he looked straight at Snape.

“Incredible! Of course—they must be magical plants if they’re used in potion-making, right?
But I think I can manage…”

His voice faltered.
Softened.
As though under Snape’s gaze.

“If I’m told the incantation…
I can still cast it…
If you’d only show me the steps, I’ll write them down—
and follow them exactly.”

“It’s not like watering flowers in a garden.”

Yet Snape thought: shutting him indoors all day would make a mockery of taking him from the hospital.

Even if Harry Potter never wearied of the same book, read again and again—

“…Very well,” Snape said.
“Simple gathering—the sort of work a first-year could manage. And pest control.”

Once, Harry would have met such words with irritation, glaring back at him.
But now—

Now he showed only unrestrained delight—
as though he could scarcely keep from leaping up.

“Thank you, Professor.”

And with that unfamiliar phrase of gratitude, Snape at last allowed Harry inside the house.

Inside, Harry seemed to marvel at everything.

The front door opened directly into a sitting room with a fireplace.
Snape had left it unlinked to the Floo Network—no such nuisance would intrude upon his home.
A large sofa stood before the hearth, firm but comfortable, with a table set between them.
Bought new, chosen for nothing but practicality—yet their freshness lent the place a certain air of quality.

Bookshelves lined the walls in crowded ranks.
The table was bare, the carpet spotless.
Alone, the room might have seemed austere.
But the weight of so many aged, dark-spined volumes pressing in from the shelves gave the place a mismatched, uneasy air.

Harry made no move to touch the furniture.
Instead, what drew his admiration were the three doors set into the walls.

Three black doors, half concealed by the bookcases, bore the notices Snape had been instructed by the hospital to post:

– Harry Potter’s Room
– Professor’s Room (Do Not Enter)
– Corridor (Bathroom and Kitchen This Way)

Harry read the labels with a sudden grin.
“Thank you. Now I won’t get lost inside the house!”

The same unwelcome pang brushed him as when he had first written those labels and fixed them to the doors.

—That I should one day write Harry Potter’s Room—
I had scarcely believed it possible.

Harry peeked briefly into his own room, then opened the door marked Corridor and stepped inside.
The narrow passage smelled of polished wood; at its far end a small window let in the sun, and on either side were doors leading to the bathroom and the kitchen.

On the refrigerator in the kitchen was a note:

Anything inside may be eaten freely (tell me if you need something restocked).

On the cupboards, photographs showed the dishes, condiments, and utensils within.

“I will not interfere in your daily life,” Snape said—his tone dry and measured, like one reciting from a manual.
“But it would be dangerous for you to be entirely on your own, so I am here.
If you wish to go somewhere, I will accompany you.
If you lose your way, I will help you.
The house has electricity, water, and gas. No less convenient than any Muggle home—and as you see, the basic appliances are here.”

Harry, who had been opening drawers and inspecting their contents one by one, turned back with a smile when Snape finished.
“So basically, I’m to live without using magic, right?”

“Essentially,” Snape replied.

“Then… as I mentioned earlier, why don’t we set down a few more rules between us?
I’ll write them in the book I read each morning—then I won’t have to ask you again about what you’ve already explained today.”

So the two of them spent the time that followed setting the book in order.
Seated face to face at the kitchen table, Harry rose now and again to confirm the “places” for things, repeating the routine several times—
as though hoping that, by sheer repetition, he might carry a little of it into tomorrow.

While Harry went to the bathroom sink to decide where to put his razor, Snape leafed absently through the book.
So orderly was it that he thought he himself might live as Harry Potter from tomorrow, were he told.
There were tables noting the locations of valuables, even something resembling a household account book.
One page carried a timetable, setting down from morning to night the general hours for each action.

Over the years the book had taken shape as a complete template; now it was only being refreshed.
Snape’s part in the work was little more than lending a hand with the timetable.

Even for something as simple as rising and readying himself for the day, Harry wrote with care—where each act should be done, and where the needed things were kept.

Snape watched him in silence, waiting until Harry seemed inclined to speak of the next schedule.
The silence held between them—
filled only by the scratch of Harry’s pen.

He found himself, almost unawares, watching—
the long lashes stirring now and again.

And nothing more.

After a pause, Harry murmured,
“Meals are to be taken separately, then.”

The schedule had come to dinner.
For breakfast and lunch the notes already read: Cook and eat alone, as you like.
The afternoon lay empty—and in that blank space, the single word dinner pressed forward like an unspoken agenda.

“Yes. Each prepares and eats for himself—”

“May I cook your portion as well?” Harry cut across Snape’s words.
“See, otherwise the afternoons are too empty.”

His face, lowered in idle focus, suddenly lifted to meet Snape’s eyes—

—and Snape’s heart gave a violent thud.

He kept his posture still.
His gaze vague, his voice steady—
not to betray his disquiet.

“You may. But—”
Even to say it was proof of unrest.
“I cannot promise we shall eat together.”

“That’s fine.”
With that permission, Harry bent to write: Make dinner for two.

“I want to eat alone as well,” he explained, still cheerful.
“But I know that by tomorrow morning I’ll want something to do.
So it’s better if I leave it here for myself.”

And beneath, he added in his brisk hand: Meals are taken separately.

“By the way, are you even capable of cooking for others?”
Still gazing absently at Harry’s hands, Snape posed the question.

“Ah—well… I’d be glad to have a cookbook.”

“I’ll order one at once.”

If a book could guide him to a meal, so much the better.
Yet Snape recalled how, in Potions, the boy had so often failed to follow even the simplest instructions.
A flicker of unease stirred—though Harry Potter seemed to have time in abundance now.

“I do not eat much,” he added.

Even if the result proved poor, it would scarcely matter.

“The book should arrive by tomorrow noon.
I’ll set it in the kitchen—there, on that shelf.”
He indicated the cupboard with a motion of his hand.

Harry added beside Make dinner for two: smaller portions and cookbook in the far-right kitchen shelf.

“And please tell me the price later—the cookbook’s.
I’ve written it here, so do make sure you tell me.
And then, about living expenses—”

The steady stream of talk—like the settling of a shared life—wearied Snape.

In truth, it was only a matter of shared rooms—nothing beyond.
It was, after all, merely a continuation of what had been at Hogwarts—duty carried out beneath the same roof, nothing more.

Yet in the way Harry Potter spoke—unguarded, oddly fresh—

—it gave Snape the strange sense of looking out at some new landscape through a window.

They checked through the notes in the Book more than once, ensuring nothing had been overlooked, and that evening they cooked supper together from what provisions were at hand.
Harry’s sense for cookery was not half bad; Snape gathered with some relief that their table would not often be disgraced by anything burnt past recognition or seasoned with reckless invention.

Yet beside him, Harry grew suddenly quiet.

It seemed he meant in earnest to abide by the words he had written on Snape’s photograph—Do not ask any more questions.

When Snape informed him he had ordered a beginner’s cookbook through the owl post, a faint smile returned to Harry’s face.
Even so, he settled once more into silence, as though willing his presence itself to fade.

After Harry had showered, he busied himself in his room—putting his belongings into the cupboards and fixing notes where each thing could be found.
By the time he finished, it was late.

Dressed now in his nightclothes, he rubbed at drowsy eyes as he spoke.
His glasses clicked softly against his hand.

“Thank you, Professor.”

The lamp on the bedside table was the room’s only light, holding the quiet close.

Snape stood in the doorway and gave no reply.

At last Harry marked the day with a cross upon the desk calendar, set his glasses atop The Book to Be Read Each Morning on the bedside table, and slipped beneath the covers.
Snape turned away then and left the room.

The lamp on the bedside table went dark behind him.

“Goodbye.”

Harry’s voice reached him just as the door was closing—
a small breath slipping through,
fading like the last sigh before silence.

Of what followed, Snape remembered little.
But on the second morning, he came upon a heap of papers in the bin: records from Potter’s stay at the hospital, the sheet of parchment that had once adorned the cover of his morning book, even diary-like pages set down in terse lists.

He did not ask Harry whether he truly meant to discard them.
If the papers had not been thrown away today, then Potter would already have forgotten ever doing so.

Snape refused to dwell on what it might mean—
and chose to act as though he had not seen.

Life with Harry Potter proved scarcely different from what Snape had foreseen.
From that day onward Harry asked him nothing.
Now and then they crossed paths in the house or garden, but all Harry ever offered was a brisk “Good morning” or “Good afternoon,” slipping past without the faintest pause for reply.

It called to mind those times in the Hogwarts corridors when Potter tried to dodge punishment or the loss of House points.

But here there were no troublesome incidents, no failures in Potions class—only days passing in unbroken calm.

Snape had thought Harry would clamor to use magic, to learn new spells, to demand instruction.
Instead, every such expectation fell away to nothing.

There was only the quiet sense of another’s presence in the house.
Each morning, on the table in the sitting room, Snape set down his instructions for the greenhouse—sketches of herbs, notes on how best to cut them.
Harry followed the paper faithfully, never once failing in the task.
By noon the sheet was back upon the table, unchanged—yet now and again another appeared atop it: a list of errands, pared down to nothing but the bare names of things to be bought.

At night, supper waited in the kitchen.
On the refrigerator was fixed a week’s worth of menus, set out by breakfast, lunch, and dinner, each annotated with page numbers from the cookbook.
Finished dishes were crossed out, and nothing else was written.
Even in the refrigerator, whatever was meant for Harry bore his name.

Side by side.
No words exchanged.
No touch shared.
Only the one-sided traces of work between them.

Snape often watched Harry’s back when he thought it would go unnoticed.
He chose not to ask himself why.
Perhaps it was no more than a habit left from Hogwarts—once his eyes had fallen on the boy, he found it hard to look away.

Living now beneath the same roof was no different from then—
and yet it was.

One day the thought came to him: the deductions, the detentions, Potter’s eyes lifted in protest.
Strange to admit it—
but in those days there had been an exchange between them.

In the spring, Harry would often go out into the meadow, sit among the grass, and gaze at the unchanging horizon.
More often than not, he carried his diary with him.
Yet by some turn of chance, Snape never once saw him reading in it, nor writing upon its pages.

And so—how long had it been since Harry Potter came into his home?

At the close of spring, Snape wept.

He was beneath the shower when it began, and at first he did not know.
Only when he dried his face with a towel and glimpsed himself in the mirror did he see it: warm drops falling slowly from his eyes.
There was no pain in his chest—only the sight of those tears slipping down.

And with them came the thought:

Harry Potter is dead.

The Harry Potter I had known was gone.
As he turned that truth again within his breast, another tear fell.

And yet—how much of him had I ever truly known?

Had I known him at all?

Summer was drawing near.
No longer did Harry Potter sit out in the meadow, bare beneath the sun.

Instead, he placed a chair by the window of the sitting room, and there he sat—gazing out at the grasslands just as he had in spring.
So he spent every idle afternoon.

Beyond the glass the meadow shone bright, its grasses vivid green beneath a sky of fresh, translucent blue.
Yet within the room that brilliance seemed unable to cross the threshold; all colour lay dimmed, subdued into shadow.
Still, the wind came through the open window, carrying the scent of cut grass—and at times the faint tang of smoke from some distant fire.

For days Snape turned words over in his mind, restless.
Yet Harry remained unchanged—perpetually at the window, as though by his very existence he could provoke irritation, just as he always had.
It was proof that something within that body still remained to rouse his ire.

And only then, at last, Snape found the way to speak—stern, as in his days of teaching at Hogwarts.

“Do you not read at all?”

The sudden voice from behind made Harry’s shoulders give the faintest jolt.
He looked at Snape for a long moment, his eyes shifting as though searching for words—until at last he fixed his gaze and spoke.

“I’ll only forget it by tomorrow.”

His eyes lowered then, and with a hesitant motion he turned them back toward the view beyond the glass.

“I too have not remembered every book I have ever read—”

Harry turned back to him at once, gazing upward with unguarded astonishment.
The words had slipped out unbidden—and no one was more startled by them than Snape himself.

“Often I read the same book again, or find I recall nothing of what I once believed I had read.”

How long they held one another’s gaze, he could not tell.
Only when Snape felt himself at the brink of breaking beneath those emerald eyes did Harry at last speak.

“Thank you, Professor.”

There was a smile upon his lips.
And why he liked it, Snape could not comprehend—for such a thing should never have been.
Yet he thought he liked that smile.

Within only a few days, Snape came home with a broom.
Among Potter’s belongings there was no trace of the one he had flown at school—and even had it been there, its reckless speed would never have persuaded Snape to hand it over.
So he lied, claiming it had always been in the house, and without preamble thrust toward him a cheap broom that had long gone unsold.

The rain had only just passed.
Harry, puzzled, carried the broom outside and began dragging its bristles across the rain-damp earth.
Snape gave a long sigh and stepped out after him.

“Fly this…?”

Harry repeated the words just as they had fallen, stark and unsoftened, from Snape’s mouth.
Then, almost under his breath, he murmured in wonder:

“Wizards really do fly on brooms.”

“They say you were flying on a toy broom on your first birthday. I expect you’ll manage this one without difficulty.”

The merciless summer sun had slipped behind clouds; a breeze stirred, softening the afternoon.
At his words, Harry frowned.

“I thought I still remembered up to about ten years old… but that one must be gone.”

He stared at the broom—
as though sheer will might summon back the day he first mounted one.

“Few people retain memories from the age of one,” Snape said.
And as he spoke, he recalled the photograph he had torn.
The one with Lily’s image ripped away.

Had he not done so, he might have shown the boy astride the toy broom Sirius Black had given—
with his mother looking on, radiant with delight.

“I was going to ask if you—”
Harry began, then stopped.
He must have wondered how Snape knew anything about him at the age of one.

“You are famous in the wizarding world,” Snape cut across, forestalling the question.
“Mount it and push off the ground. Your body will remember. Do not cross the boundary.”

“Did we have broom lessons at school?”

“Of course. From your very first class, you were said to be an exceptional flyer.”

“People know even that?”

Harry glanced up at him with faint amusement, emerald eyes glinting with a bashful light.

“Get on with it.”

“Yes, sir.”

A small smile touched Harry’s lips.
Well enough. Snape thought he liked that smile.

Harry flew—
with true brilliance.

His body seemed to recall the knack at once.
Or perhaps, in that first lesson Snape had never witnessed, he had already flown just so.

He circled the house with the swiftness of the wind.
Soared in a single breath to a great height.
Dropped again until he skimmed the ground.

Each time he swept past, a fine spray of droplets brushed across Snape’s skin.

To master a broom—
the phrase might have been coined for him.

And it was the very Harry Potter Snape had once seen upon the Quidditch pitch.

Snape stepped beneath the eaves of the house—
and watched him wheel through the air.

He had flown long enough for his shadow to cross the house again and again, when at last he descended to where Snape stood.
His face was clouded, its color drained away.
From his clothes came the sweet scent of rain’s aftermath, as though carried straight out of the meadow.

“What is it? Grown weary already?” Snape asked.

“Not exactly. I just thought—maybe I was keeping you bound here. Away from your work—”

Harry looked up at him, apologetic.
Such concern came far too late; by now it was plain the broom had taken him wholly captive.

“If I require you, I shall call. Pay it no mind.”

“I see… but I think I’ll go in for now.”

“Had enough?”

“Yes,” Harry said quietly.
And as he turned back toward the house, Snape did not miss the way he rubbed at the arm that held the broom.

“Does it pain you?”

Harry halted, startled.
His gaze met Snape’s squarely—wavered—shifted into something more sheepish.

“I’m all right.
It’ll mend on its own if I just leave it—”

Snape wrenched the broom from his grasp. Harry shrank back—eyes fixed in startled wonder on the hand that had torn it away.

Snape acted as though he had not seen.
He set the broom beside the front door.

And then—he took Harry’s wrist.
The skin, cooled by wind, was startlingly cold.

“Foolish, to endure it when the cure is within reach.”

Harry’s gaze fell at once to the fingers that closed around his wrist.

Snape did not let go.
Still holding him, he led Harry inside—and seated him on the sofa.

Even after Snape released him, Harry’s eyes followed his movements—drawn, until he returned with a vial of potion.

—And then, slowly, Snape knelt before him.

Snape looked up into Harry’s face—
and at once, as if caught in the act, Harry turned his gaze aside.

When he uncorked the vial, the sharp scent of the potion drifted into the air.
Snape poured a measure into his palm and, with slow precision, spread it along Harry’s arm.
He kept his gaze fixed on the limb—yet he knew Harry’s eyes were on him once more.

“Is it only the right arm that pains you?”

At that, Snape glanced up—
and met those emerald eyes.

Whatever lay behind them could not be read.

“The left as well,” Harry answered.

For a moment they regarded one another.
It was Snape who broke the gaze first.

“Apply it wherever it hurts. You can manage that yourself?”

He held out the vial, pinched delicately between his fingers.

Only then did Harry turn his eyes away, reaching out hesitantly—his palm upturned.
Snape let the vial drop into his waiting hand from just above, then rose swiftly.

He had taken a few steps toward his room when, out of habit, he cast a glance back—
and saw the boy still bowed over it, clutching the vial too tightly.

“That potion reacts to warmth.
Do not grip it—apply it at once.”

So saying, Snape turned aside for the kitchen—
too swiftly, as though the sound itself could not catch him.
His fingertips still carried the sharp scent of the potion.

A few minutes later, Snape returned to the sitting room with a tray bearing two cups.
Why he had prepared two, he did not stop to consider.
He set the tray down upon the table. One cup he might have taken away, yet he left it standing there, and went empty-handed to the boy’s door.

His hand faltered once—
then knocked against the wood.

“Have you applied it properly? Even if your legs or shoulders are not sore now, rub the potion in. And I have brewed tea—come out when you are done.”
He spoke it all in one rush to the closed door.

“…Yes. I’ll apply it, then come out.”

The small reply lifted something from his chest.
Yet even as it did, he knew something in his own conduct had been amiss for some time.

Before long Harry appeared, carrying with him the faint sharp scent of the potion.
He came to sit at Snape’s left upon the sofa, his right hand extended, tentative.
The vial was pinched lightly between his fingertips, as though mindful not to clench it.

“…Thank you.” The words almost faded as they left him.

When Snape turned his palm upward, Harry let it fall into his hand from just above—just as Snape himself had done before.

Snape set the vial down upon the table as he spoke.
“Sugar and milk—see to them yourself.”

Then he summoned a book from the wall with his wand and opened it before him, so that he would not watch how many spoonfuls of sugar, nor how much milk, the boy might pour.

The delicate sound of a spoon stirring in a cup touched the silence.

“It doesn’t hurt at all anymore,” Harry said softly.
“As it should not,” Snape answered, tilting the book just enough to glance at him beside him. “I brewed it, after all.”

There was a smile upon Harry’s mouth.

Snape thought he liked that smile.

“For now it may feel a little cool, but that too will soon fade.”

He waited until Harry had lifted the cup to his lips, then turned his eyes back to the book.

After a moment of quiet, Harry said—almost as though to himself—

“That was fun.”

An unaccountable weight rested in his chest, though he could not have said why.
Surely it was things such as this that became memories.

At that thought, an image rose before his mind: Harry’s back, seated at the window, gazing out upon the fields.

An ordinary day—yes, that was all it was.
Harry Potter lived so as not to make days that could turn into memories.
It was the sameness itself—yesterday felt as today, today as tomorrow—that had become his one ground to stand on.
Not lost, but days so plain they might be forgotten—so it seemed.

“Make a habit of riding the broom. To ache after scarcely an hour is proof you are out of shape,” Snape said, his eyes lowered to the book, though not a word of it entered his mind.

“Keep the broom by the door. No one will take it. You seem fit to manage without my supervision, so mark it into your afternoons as you please. Remember too—there are excellent potions at hand.”

A small laugh sounded beside him—quiet, restrained, scarcely more than breath.

“I shall label the bottles and leave them in the refrigerator.”

He did not lift his eyes from the page, yet he thought Harry Potter must have smiled—at those words.
The smile, he was sure, was the one he liked.

“Thank you, Professor.”

In the midst of that summer, a letter arrived.
It bore Snape’s name—the sender, Hermione Granger. Written on smooth white stationery, faintly patterned with flowers, it asked whether she and Ronald Weasley might visit on Harry’s birthday—every line in her small, precise hand.

Snape returned a brief reply of consent, with one condition: in Potter’s presence, he was to be called only Professor.

A few days later came their answer, accepting, and naming the hour—two o’clock.
Snape burned both letters in the waste bin in his room, out of Harry’s sight.

On the morning of his birthday, Harry could not conceal his confusion.
No sheet of instructions lay upon the table—
and Snape himself sat on the sofa.

Perhaps because the photograph he was bound to see each morning showed the Professor glaring out, together with the words Do not ask any more questions, Harry asked nothing.

“Today, two of your closest friends will call. They are to come at two o’clock—Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley. You would do well to review the book. And as you have reached another year this day, amend the age written there accordingly.”

And that was all.
He did not say congratulations.

Harry listened, his brows knit in bewilderment, gave a single nod, and withdrew again to his room.

Past noon, Harry had taken his usual seat at the window, gazing out across the meadow.
Snape too, with a quiet restlessness about him, sat upon the sofa, a book open in his hands—though little of it reached his mind.

Not long after two, the pair appeared at the post.
Catching sight of them, Harry rose, lingering a moment to watch before opening the door and stepping out to meet them.

As the door swung open, a sudden breeze swept into the house—
carrying the dry warmth of midsummer, and the faint scent of grass baked in the sun.

He walked slowly toward the approaching figures.
Hermione Granger waved broadly, running to him with a cry of “Harry!”

Snape stood at the open doorway, watching.

Beyond the thin white curtain, the brilliance turned the three figures into shifting shadows—
blurred, as though in a dream of summer light.

As they drew nearer to the doorway, Hermione was speaking—“How have you been?”—while Ronald Weasley trailed behind at a sluggish pace.
Harry, glancing now and then at Ronald’s weary steps, gave his answers to Hermione’s questions.

They had scarcely reached the doorstep.

“Good afternoon.”
Ronald and Hermione offered Snape a stiff, uneasy greeting.

Harry, a little flustered, said—
“Um—this is Hermione Granger. And Ronald Weasley. They’re my friends from Hogwarts.
And—they’re also together.”

The words came out with a stiffness, as though recited from a manual.
Yet Hermione’s smile did not falter.

“And this is the Professor—my housemate. He brews potions.”

Snape shifted aside from the doorway, admitting them.
At his glance toward the sitting-room sofa, Hermione set down her bag and sat, her smile unbroken, while Ronald dropped heavily beside her.

Before long, the food and drink they had brought lay spread upon the table.

Snape lingered only long enough to see it, then turned as if to withdraw to his room.

“Won’t you join us?”

Harry stopped him just then.
When he turned back, beyond Harry’s shoulder—Harry standing there, at a loss—he found two faces silently entreating him to remain.

So he drew over the chair Harry always kept by the window, seating himself across from them at a slant.
Harry too was guided to sit between Hermione and Ronald, where he sat stiff-backed, his hands pressed tight against his knees.

They had brought with them a small cake.
Awkwardly, Harry blew out the candles, and Hermione cut it into four, setting each piece upon a paper plate.
She placed one before Snape. He left it untouched.

For a moment they sat in silence—
the weight of it pressing between them.

Then Hermione, as though determined to sound perfectly natural, said brightly,
“Today we’ve something to tell you, Harry.”

“Strange thing to bring up on your birthday, though,” Ronald added, already reaching for one of the muffins.

“What?”

“We’re… getting married,” Hermione said.

For a heartbeat—
silence fell.

Then Harry spoke, softly, haltingly:
“Wow…
congratulations.
You’ve been together a long time,
haven’t you?
Congratulations.”

“And—we wondered if you might come, Harry. To the wedding,” Hermione continued.

“I…”

Harry’s eyes turned at once to Snape.
Drawn by that glance, Ronald too looked in his direction.

“It will be a small family affair,” Ronald said, in a formality of speech quite unthinkable back at Hogwarts.

“My parents alone will attend. We’re telling only a few others, so… no unwanted attention,” Hermione said, glancing at Snape. Her meaning was plain enough—no press, no Daily Prophet. It was safe for Harry.

“It will be near Ron’s home. In the orchard,” she added.

“When?” Snape asked.
At that, both their faces showed a visible easing, as though they had been holding breath.

“The first Saturday of September,” Hermione said.
“And Ron’s sister’s leave happens to match as well,” she added, glancing at Ronald.

“You mean—the one who plays Quidditch professionally?” Harry asked.

“We’ll go.”

Snape spoke.
It cut clean across the moment,
leaving no room for reply.

Harry, broken off, turned to him in confusion.
Hermione and Ronald, too, had their eyes on Snape.
He chose not to see any of them.

Harry led Ronald out of the house, saying he would show him the greenhouse he tended each day.
At once, the fixed smile on Hermione’s face fell away.

“Professor?” she said, halting Snape as he moved to rise from his chair.

“Thank you—
for Harry.”

Reluctantly, Snape lowered himself back into the seat.
“I’ve done nothing worth your thanks.”

“But he looks better than he did in hospital.
A little stronger, even.”

“Lately he has flown almost every day.”

“I see…”

Hermione’s voice faltered.
Snape could see it cost her to hold her tongue.
Her eyes grew wet, and she tipped her head back—
as though to keep the tears from falling.

“Why did you take Harry in, Professor?”

The answer he had long prepared—Because it was my duty—rose to his lips.
Yet when he sought to speak it, it struck him as so out of place that he held his tongue.

“I spoke with Ron.
We thought we should take Harry ourselves.”

“About to be married—
and the pair of you think to take him in?”

A surge of inexplicable anger swept through Snape.
“And was it not the Weasley household that once failed to keep him?”

“That—!” Hermione began.
But her voice failed her.
Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly before she dropped her gaze.

Snape pressed on.
“What happened in the Weasley home?”

She said nothing.
Her hands rubbed against each other, her eyes fixed upon them.
She had no intention of answering.

“In any case, Potter is here by lawful process.
I will not see him taken so lightly.
As you see, he manages well enough in this house.”

Even as he spoke, Snape gave a start—
his gaze fastening on Hermione.

She could not stop the tears that streamed unchecked down her face.

“We keep asking ourselves what would have been right…
what we ought to have done for him…”

For a time Snape watched the tears as they fell.

“Compose yourself,” he said, turning his eyes to the door.
“Quickly. Before Potter returns—at least that much you can manage.”

After the two had gone, Harry did not speak a word for the rest of the day.
The food they had brought remained upon the sitting-room table, serving as supper.

Late that night, when Snape left his room for a glass of water, he noticed a light still burning beneath Harry’s door.
He opened it quietly, and found the boy already asleep, curled small upon the bed.
He drew a blanket over him, and let it fall still across his form.

Beside the pillow lay The Record of Those He Was Supposed to Have Known, left open.

The Book He Was to Read Each Morning lay on the bedside table, beneath his glasses.
Harry had not only rewritten his age, but replaced the parchment affixed to its cover entirely.

I’m Harry Potter. Twenty years old. I suffered a head injury, and I cannot remember today when tomorrow comes. This book must be read each morning without fail.
First: I am a wizard. I learned this at eleven. Magic must be controlled and used properly. Concerning daily life, the details are written within. Follow them.

The words were chilling—
in their stark simplicity.

There was a coldness.
Stripped even of the small mercies he had once allowed himself.
No tally marks.
No scrawled Really??

And tomorrow morning, when he woke—

was he truly to receive the loss of ten years
with nothing more than these few bare lines?

Snape’s eyes drifted to the desk calendar upon the same bedside table.
It had been turned to August: a blank sheet, no marks, no notes—nothing but its days.
Almost without thinking, he reached out and turned the page.

On the first Saturday of September, a single entry was written: My friends’ wedding—
and it was not enough.

His hand strayed to The Record of Those He Was Supposed to Have Known left beside the bed.
Opening to the pages of Ronald and Hermione, he found a new note: They are to be married.
Only then did the impulse in him ease.
There was a small note—Congratulations—with a single tally mark drawn beside it.

Still, his hand turned the pages toward ‘P.’
There were entries for Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall—enough to catch his interest, yet his thoughts were already bent on another search.
He looked for “Professor”—the name he bore now—and, on the thought, for “Professor Snape” as well.

Neither was there.

For Harry, the scrawl he had once set upon that photograph had sufficed.
Nothing more seemed worth setting down.

And so, when he sought to fasten what was slipping away—
his years as a wizard—

Severus Snape was not among those chosen.

Harry Potter himself had judged that memory no loss.

Snape returned The Record of Those He Was Supposed to Have Known to the shelf.
There, beside it, lay the diary Harry had been holding when they first met again, and the book whose cover had been blackened.
On impulse, he let his hand fall upon the diary—
and at once it yielded a strangeness unlike the touch of any ordinary book.

So many of its leaves had been torn away that it seemed ready to come apart in his grasp.
And yet not a single word remained.
The new, untouched pages stood in neat, pristine ranks—
but the whole seemed always on the verge of ceasing to be a book.

That fragility—
to Snape’s eye—
was the likeness of Harry Potter himself:
outwardly unchanged,
yet each day a memory stripped away—
and with it, the slow unmaking of himself.

At last Snape took up the book whose cover had been blackened—its surface still bearing the words Number of times I regretted looking, with the tally marks beside them.
Of all he owned, it was the thickest.
Resting its weight upon the shelf, he opened the sturdy cover—
and his heart gave a dull throb.

The pages were drowned in ink, as though the bottle itself had been spilled across them.
Here and there, where the darkness had failed to smother completely, Harry’s hand could still be glimpsed—though never enough to form a word.
Page after page, without exception.
Countless words he had once wished to preserve.

And yet, toward the very end, the carefully blotted book yielded at last a white page.
Upon it, scrawled in haste, stood the only words left to be read:

What use to know? Endure today.

It read like a chastisement—
as though the words themselves accused him.

When had he first thought to blot out what he had once resolved to keep?

Snape recalled the page of Ginny Weasley.
It said only, She is to be married, yet no new name had been entered—
the trace of a hand that had faltered, unable to write.

How much had he known,
in that moment when he first set down the word Congratulations in small letters?
How much—

Snape looked back at Harry.
He was curled so small, so still it was scarcely clear he breathed.
Snape stepped closer and, for a moment, let his hand pass lightly across his face.
Harry stirred faintly.
Then Snape put out the light.

The next morning he woke in tears.
At first he did not know he wept.
Wondering why his ear felt wet, he blinked—
and a tear slipped down to dampen it.

And then the thought came to him:

Let it remain so.
Let me grant him days so ordinary they are unworthy even of a line in his diary.

Thereafter, in the midst of his work, Snape set himself—as once at Hogwarts—to preparing his potions lessons, this time for Harry alone.
More carefully than in those teaching days, he wrote out each step upon parchment.
He longed to place it in his hands at once.

And yet, even as that restless urgency pressed upon him, Harry Potter was—heedless as ever—aloft, wheeling through the sky.

That morning, Snape entered the greenhouse.
Harry, wearing protective gloves, was carefully gathering herbs, steering clear of the Devil’s Snare.

“…Me? …Help with the work?” Harry echoed, uncertain.
He lifted his arm to wipe the sweat from his brow with his gloved hand.

“That’s right. I am short of hands.”

“But I don’t know anything about potions. What if I’m no use?”
He stepped closer, tugging off the gloves.

“You will brew the Boil-Cure—taught in the very first lesson.
There is no need to burden yourself with worry.”

Harry blinked.
Then his face lit with curiosity.

“You actually brew something that simple? Even a first-lesson potion?”

“Many wizards disdain the trouble. And though it trades for a pittance, the demand is high.”

“That makes sense. So… when do I get to try?”

“Every day, after lunch. Come to my room.”

A small smile touched Harry’s lips.
Snape thought he liked that face.

And so, that afternoon, Snape at last succeeded in drawing Harry into his rooms.
At the first knock he opened the door without delay, and Harry, a little flustered, looked up at him.
Snape said nothing—only turned on his heel and moved toward the second door at the back of the chamber.

To have Harry at his side was, for an instant, to see Hogwarts rise again before his eyes.
He thrust the thought aside.

That Harry Potter was dead.

The laboratory was not large, yet it held every instrument and ingredient required.
Harry’s gaze was caught by the tall glass vessels along the walls.
He seemed to know he ought not to stare—yet could not master his curiosity.

Snape guided him to the central table and brought forth one of the spare robes, holding it out.
Harry slipped his arms through with some hesitation.
The robe hung loose on him—and as he faltered he looked up, as if for help.
With a flick of his wand Snape altered the fit.
Harry met his eyes, bright with a flicker of admiration.

Clad in the robe, he looked disconcertingly like the boy he had once been—
like Harry Potter as Snape had once known him.
Snape gave a sharp shake of his head, careful that Harry should not see, and laid upon the table the chart of instructions he had prepared.
Standing close beside him as Harry bent to read, he could almost feel the warmth of his body.

Snape spoke, his tone clipped and precise.
“First, read through the instructions once to grasp the whole process.
Then fetch the ingredients from the shelves—the labels bear their names.
Lay them out in order of use—mistakes are less likely that way.
And be warned: if you add the porcupine quills before removing the cauldron from the fire, it will be dangerous.”

Harry’s fingers tensed.
Snape drew out a quill and held it toward him.
“Write down what I just said.”

In the corner of the parchment, Harry copied: Read instructions first → fetch ingredients from shelves →

“If you arrange the ingredients in the order they are to be added, you will avoid mistakes,” Snape remarked, leaning over the parchment.

Their faces had drawn close—without either of them noticing.
Harry, intent only on the task, added: Set out in order of addition.

Together they went to the shelves, seeking dried nettles, crushed serpent fangs, horned slugs, and porcupine quills.

“Transfer only what is needed into the dishes on the table. These glass containers must always be returned to their places. And would it not be easier if you note which shelf, which tier, and which spot each jar occupies?”

As instructed, Harry set down only what was required, and wrote beside each ingredient’s name the position of its jar.
“The porcupine quills must be added only after the cauldron has been lifted from the fire,” Snape reminded him.

Once Harry had written it, Snape gave the word to begin.

Then he deliberately ignored him.
Harry bent over the parchment, his eyes fixed so hard it was as though he meant to let nothing escape.
He worked through the steps.

When the preparations were done, Snape returned to his table, studied the work in silence, and took up the instruction sheet.
There he wrote: Potter completed the task perfectly on his own.
Beneath it he drew a tally mark.

Harry stared at him in astonishment.
Snape’s face did not alter.
“Continue.”

Casually, he watched Harry resume his work.
At the close of each step, Snape inspected it, added the same line—completed perfectly—and beneath it, one more stroke of tally.

He had thought the instruction sheet well made; and indeed, by following it without mistake, Harry brought the Cure for Boils to completion.

“Well done,” Snape said.
And, as though grading a report, he wrote: O — Outstanding.

Harry’s eyes widened as he read it.
“You really are like a professor.”

Snape gave no reply.
He pressed the parchment against Harry’s chest.
“You will need this again tomorrow. Keep it carefully.”

At last he dismissed Harry from the room.

This would do.
In the days that circled endlessly—to give him new habits, quietly, without ever being noticed.

To forget special days and special people—
that was Harry’s fear.

To be remembered—
that was Snape’s.

Harry wished for days so uneventful that nothing need be forgotten.
Snape, rather than be forgotten, chose never to be known at all.

Habit was the refuge Snape had found.
To call it habit was to strip the day of its exception.
To call it habit was to make Harry accept it all.

And for the two of them—fragile, always near to breaking—
what held them in balance was only that single word: habit.

Yet in the end, it proved a failure.
Snape understood this only a few days after Harry had begun brewing.

The tally marks he inscribed upon the parchment multiplied.
But from that day onward, Harry wrote nothing more.

The boy repeated the same motions—
and with a fidelity almost unnerving, turned them into habit.

Still—
their writings had once stood side by side upon the same sheet.
Now only Snape’s tallies gathered there.

It had been meant as nothing more than ordinary days.
Yet it became, to him, a record of his own feelings laid bare.

Harry wrote nothing.
That much was true: each morning he was reset.

And so, in the days to come—unchanging from today to tomorrow, and from tomorrow to forever.
Snape remained before him only as a housemate.

It was what he had wished.

And yet—
confronted with Harry unaltered, he felt a bitterness.
One that almost resembled hate.

Summer was ending.
The scent of fresh-cut grass had turned to the dryness of withering stalks.

Autumn, as ever, carried a wind edged with cold—
a wind that spoke of solitude.

To drive it away there came a day of clear autumn sky:
the wedding of Hermione and Ronald.

That morning Harry was, for once, alight with excitement. From the first he spoke to Snape—when on any other day he would have kept his distance. Long before the hour, he was eager to don his dress robes.

The ceremony was set for three o’clock, yet Snape, caught up in Harry’s restless anticipation, found himself glancing at the clock again and again.

After lunch Harry changed into his robes at once, and pressed by his impatience, Snape yielded—against his better judgment, though perhaps with a trace of hope. Thus they arrived at the Burrow a full two hours before the appointed time.

In the orchard stood a vast white tent, where George, Bill, and Arthur were busy with the finer details of preparation.

When the three caught sight of Harry,
they froze.

As though time itself had stopped.

The silence stretched.
Endless.

At last Bill raised a hand in greeting, a gentle smile upon his face, and the two behind him stirred to life once more. Harry lifted his hand in answer. The bright excitement that had filled him only moments before ebbed away, leaving him subdued.

Led by Bill, Harry and Snape climbed to a room high in the Burrow, there to wait until the ceremony began.　　
From far below drifted the bustle of the women preparing, their voices rising faintly through the stairwell, mingling with the warm fragrance of food from the kitchen.

Harry stood at the window, looking down toward the orchard beyond. Snape, seated on a chair behind him, saw only the pale autumn sky—
and the boy’s back outlined against it.

When the women carried the dishes out toward the tent in the orchard, Snape and Harry descended the stairs. In the dining room, Ronald and Hermione were waiting—already dressed: he in his robes, she in her wedding gown.

On any other day, Hermione would have greeted Harry with an embrace.
This time, she only shifted shyly, her gaze fixed on him.

“Congratulations,” he said—
and with a smile added,
“You look beautiful.”

That smile was painful to see.
Snape thought he disliked that smile.

The morning’s excitement did not return.
Yet as the ceremony began, it seemed to catch at Harry’s heart.

When the couple were declared husband and wife, silver stars poured down, spiralling about them as they held one another close.

“Beautiful.”
Harry’s voice rang out—alight with wonder.

The Weasley clan was large, yet the gathering numbered no more than forty—
a modest ceremony, measured against the breadth of their ties.

Afterward came the feast. Harry kept to a quiet corner, taking his meal apart from the throng. Now and again someone, driven by curiosity, sought to speak with him, but each time Snape stood in their path and turned them aside.

The bride and groom approached more than once, yet could not linger; drawn back to their guests, they drifted away again. And still, amid their light conversation, Snape saw them glance—again and again—toward Harry.

He sat as though walled off by something unseen, his eyes lowered to the ground.

Amid the passing guests, Snape became aware of a gaze upon him.

He lifted his eyes—
and there stood the youngest Weasley, watching him.

Her eyes were steady, betraying no outward emotion—
yet in them burned a force that seemed ready to consume whatever it fixed upon.

For an instant unease flickered in her eyes.
Then her gaze turned aside.

Snape followed it—
and found Harry looking at her.

They regarded one another—
until a man came up behind her and spoke.

She turned to the man, smiling.
But Harry did not look away.

When they returned home, Harry at once grew talkative.
Hermione had been beautiful, the magic at the ceremony splendid, the food delicious—
he poured it out unbidden, word after word.

Snape could take none of it.

Saying he had had enough at the feast, Harry took an early shower and forwent supper.

“I’m going to bed,” he said.

Snape sat in the sitting room, eyes lowered to his book.
He felt Harry pause, watching him—waiting for a reply that did not come.
He did not look up.

“Thank you for today—for taking me to the wedding. … Goodbye.”

The words came as the door shut.

Snape lifted his eyes from the page.
The black door stood before him.

Do not say goodbye to me.

He set the book aside and rose.
His eyes clung to the door where Harry had vanished.

DO NOT SAY GOODBYE TO ME.

His steps carried him forward.
The force of feeling broke loose—his stride faltered.
He flung the door wide—

Harry flinched where he sat on the bed, startled.

The lamp was still lit.
He had just drawn a cross upon the desk calendar.
Across his folded legs lay the diary.
He was about to write.

At the sight, a fierce fire surged in Snape’s chest.
To write—
when all this time he had written nothing,
when nothing of this house had ever entered those pages.

And now he would mar the fragile book,
perhaps soon to fall apart,
with the memory of such a day.

“—Professor?”

He let out a breath.
It trembled; perhaps it was no sigh at all.

He strode forward, wrenched the calendar and diary from Harry’s arms, and swept them aside.
Harry’s eyes wavered, staring up at him in stunned disbelief.

Poor boy—he could not have known why.
Nor, indeed, did Snape himself. His mind was filled to the brim with a force he could not name, nor restrain.

Snape set one knee upon the mattress.
Poor thing—Harry recoiled, pressed against the headboard with nowhere left to retreat.

As Snape leaned closer, Harry’s eyes wavered, their focus slipping.
With deliberate care, Snape removed his glasses and set them on the bedside table—may it be nothing more.

His hand came to Harry’s cheek, and the boy trembled ever so slightly.
Snape inclined his head—until their foreheads nearly touched.

Harry Potter’s face was so close.
His lashes—eyes lowered—were near enough to count.

For a moment—
time seemed to pause there.

Snape tilted his head and brushed his lips against his.
When he drew back, Harry blinked slowly, staring up at him.

Guiding him down from the headboard, Snape eased him onto the mattress—
until he lay beneath him.
Once he had him there, Snape looked down.
They stared at each other—betraying no emotion.

Then Harry flinched, struggling as if to break free.

Snape bore down, his weight holding Harry’s arms fast against the bed.
With both hands he cradled Harry’s head—
and in desperate urgency pressed his mouth to his.

Harry clamped his lips shut, shaking off the grip, pushing against him.
Snape held him fast, pressing the full weight of his body over him.

Poor boy—his chest barely rose under the burden.
And as he opened his mouth to breathe, Snape did not relent.

A breath hissed through his nose.
Was it pain—desperation?
He writhed beneath him.

After a moment, Snape lifted himself just enough to break the kiss.
Harry’s mouth opened wide, lungs clawing for air.

Snape met his lips again—
catching that breath.

Just enough—
enough to let it be believed, if only for this moment,
that it might be wanted.

The next morning, they lay close upon the bed, facing one another.
Snape had woken long before Harry, and had been watching his face.
Morning now—he could do no more than watch, never touch.
Yet still, he could not bring himself to leave the bed.

When at last those eyes began to open, he shut his own in haste.

In the silence that followed, Snape knew Harry was quietly astonished.
Beside him lay a stranger—he could not know where he was, nor why his body had grown so large.

Harry found his glasses, and beneath them seemed to notice The Book He Was to Read Each Morning.
Turning his back to Snape, he sat on the edge of the bed, staring intently at the words upon its cover.
Through half-closed eyes, Snape watched the slight line of his back.

Harry opened the book.
In the inside cover pocket, he seemed to be looking at the photograph.
At once he glanced over his shoulder, to assure himself of the man’s presence.
For a moment he lingered there.
Then he turned back to the book, studying the lines on daily life.

He said nothing.
The silence endured.

Having read The Book He Was to Read Each Morning through, Harry noticed the calendar and diary lying at his feet.
He picked up the calendar and found a cross marked through the day of My friends’ wedding.
Then his hand reached for the diary.

At the instant he tried to lift it, a dull sound met Snape’s ears—
pages scattering across the floor.

Harry crouched down and gathered it gently.
The diary lay unwritten, its pages loose and scattered.

Once more he turned to look at Snape.
He could not bring himself to move.

Without a word, Harry dressed quietly and left the room.

At last Snape opened his eyes.
His chest ached—
at his own selfishness.

Had he, in truth, longed only to wound the boy?

He sat up, and saw that from the bedside table Harry’s book was gone.
Then he lay back once more, lingering far longer than he needed.
At last he left the room.

Because no instruction lay upon the table that morning, there was no trace of Harry’s hand in the greenhouse.
Snape had not gone to seek him, yet through all the forenoon he found no sign of the boy.

By afternoon, however, Harry came to the laboratory.
When he opened the door, there was no “Good morning,” no “Good day.”
Without a word, he set himself to the work.

When a stage was nearly finished, Snape drew near as was his custom.
But Harry was already passing on to the next.
He stepped back, and returned to his own bench.

The instruction sheet had been rewritten upon a fresh slip of parchment.
There was no trace of Snape’s hand upon it.
Every marginal note was Harry’s own.

Beside the line I completed the Cure for Boils unaided,
a few tally marks had been drawn.
And indeed, he had completed the potion alone—
and afterward left the room.

Though the weather was fine that day, Harry did not take to his broom.
It was as though he were refusing the gift placed in his hands.

When night fell, Snape sat upon the sofa in the sitting room.
His gaze fixed on the closed door of Harry’s chamber.

An hour earlier, Harry had been preparing supper.
But at Snape’s entrance to the kitchen, he had left without eating.
While Snape dined, Harry had taken his shower and withdrawn to his room—though it was far too early for sleep.

At length Snape rose and knocked on the door.
“Yes?” came the reply.

Opening it, he found Harry half-risen from the bed.
Snape looked at him; Harry looked back.

“Do you want something from me?”
His voice cut sharp with anger.

Snape stepped back.
“If not, then leave.”

The boy’s gaze was fierce—anger burning in his eyes.

With a sudden thrust of his arm—
Snape was hurled back.
The door slammed shut.

From within came muffled sobs.

He had stolen from the boy the memory of his friends’ wedding.

It was Snape’s sin.
Yet Harry, cursing his own fate, took the blame upon himself.

Snape could do nothing.

Tomorrow.
tomorrow it would be as though nothing had happened.
His trespass, Harry’s grief—both gone, as though they had never been.

The days passed, each a mirror of the last.

Harry’s life was ruled by order: in the morning he gathered herbs, then tended to the household tasks; after luncheon he brewed potions; and when the weather was fair he took to the broom.
Indoors and out, he and Snape at times crossed paths, but exchanged only greetings before hastening apart.

His life was simple.
Peaceful—almost unbearably so.
Beyond those brief salutations, their dealings were one-sided—
bound only by habit, with nothing to become a memory shared between them.

At the margin of each day’s written instructions—changing with the seasons—were the faint creases left by Harry’s handling, and the robe that bore the lingering scent of him.
These alone were Snape’s anchor.

He remembered the day Harry had first come into the house, when he had thought himself best suited to such a duty.
Not yet a year had gone by, and already his resolve faltered.
How many decades of such a life must stretch before him?

And one day.
He would go first.

Harry Potter would not even know.

And after that—how would he live?
Would he only go on, repeating the days in this same manner?

He turned his eyes away.
That year, autumn was brief.
The cold season drew near—one Snape left Harry to meet alone.

It was winter.
Beyond the windows the world lay white with storm, and Harry sat, for once, in the sitting room, bathed in the glow of the hearth.

He had a book open in his hands, and the sight caught Snape’s attention.
That day he had an errand, and would not return until night.
He thought he ought to tell him—so, after long silence, he spoke.

Harry turned his face toward the window, gazed uneasily at the snow.
“Be careful,” he said—his voice scarcely above a whisper.

Almost without willing it, Snape’s hand reached out, coming to rest lightly on the boy’s head.
Harry flinched—yet beneath that gentle weight he smiled.
Snape remembered: he liked that face.

“I shall be back tonight,” he said, as though making a promise to this day’s Harry.

So he had intended.
Yet delay held him.
Never had he meant to trouble Harry, never to wound, never to flee.
Only—so long as he reached the house before Harry woke, all would be well.
Or so he told himself.

It was a bitter morning.
Harry would not wake for some time yet.
Snape Apparated to the lane before the house; the world was still dark, the storm so fierce that even breathing was a labour.
Hunching his shoulders, he hurried toward the faint outline of the house.

Within, the fire in the hearth had guttered out.
All was cold, and still.

Snape longed to see Harry’s face.

To be, today as ever, only Professor.
Only housemate.
Only the one who brewed potions.

That was enough.
To be folded into the fabric of some ordinary day where Harry might smile—
that would suffice.

When he opened Harry’s door, quiet as breath, Snape wheeled at once—
and broke into a run.

Every room was still and empty.

At his whispered Lumos the wandlight flared, and he hurried through the grounds.

Forcing down his panic, he returned to Harry’s chamber.
He lit the lamp upon the bedside table.
In its glow lay The Book He Was to Read Each Morning, left behind.
The bed was smooth, untouched.

No sign of intrusion.
That was only to be expected.
The wards, the refusal of the Floo—Snape’s own doing, laid perfectly to shut out all unwelcome presences.

If no one had taken him, then Harry had gone of his own accord.
Yet the book remained.
Had he gone out clad against this bitter cold?

Snape went to the window.
Darkness spread without end, the sun not yet risen.

He stepped out into the storm.

Falling snow had erased every trace of his passage—
blotting out even the memory of his steps.

Guided only by the faint glow of Lumos, he pressed on—
driven by a haste that had no destination.

By chance, his feet carried him into the forest.

Homenum Revelio.

At the spell’s repeated whisper—at last, a stir.
Within the hollow of a tree lay Harry, huddled.
only his pyjamas upon him, a blanket thrown about his shoulders.

Snape raised his wand, letting the light fall.
A pale face blinked against the brightness.

He was alive.

And in that instant, with relief came the cold—he was shaking.

“Who?”
The voice was Harry’s—first a whisper, then louder, trembling.
“Who are you?”

“I—”
He faltered.
How could he explain?
He should have brought the book.

“Who are you?”
Again, the frightened voice.

“Have you come to take me away?”

“There is nothing to fear. I am here to help you.”
Yet whether from the frozen air—or from his own words—
a chill crossed his chest.

“Are you… police?”

The word—police—dragged from some half-remembered corner of his past, cost him a pause to recall.
Suspicion shadowed Harry’s face; his body poised, ready to break from the hollow and flee.

“Who are you?”

“It is cold here. Let us go back to the house.”

“House—where is this? Why am I—no! Don’t come any closer!”

As if struck by an unseen hand, Snape was hurled back several yards.
The one most startled was Harry himself.
He bolted, running as if driven into flight.

The sky was paling toward dawn.
The storm too was changing.
The great flakes that had battered the night gave way to finer snow, falling silent through the air.
The paling sky cast its light upon it.

Snape forced his aching body upright and raised his wand.
He muttered the incantation, and far ahead Harry stumbled mid-stride—
collapsing as though frozen in place.

Slowly Snape advanced.
With care he turned the boy onto his back.
He lifted Harry’s glasses.
Gently he brushed the snow from his face, then from the lenses,
and set them once more upon the bewildered eyes.

And then—without pause, without measure—he began to speak.

“Your name is Harry Potter. You are twenty years old. You were raised at Number Four, Privet Drive, with the Dursleys. You are a wizard, and from the age of eleven you lived at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

When you were seventeen, there was an accident. It left you with a peculiar infirmity of memory. Twofold. First, all the days you spent as a wizard are gone. Second, you cannot keep hold of today once it becomes tomorrow.

What you did just now—blasting me back—that was magic. You have done such things before, I daresay. When you were angry. When you were grieved. Strange things must have happened around you.

I live with you because of this. Because on days such as this one, when you forget what manner of man you are, you run out into the cold. That is why I live with you.
Do you understand?”

The torrent of words fell silent, and he released the body-bind.

“It is cold. Let us return home.”

Harry shivered—teeth chattering, lips blue.
Snape stooped and raised him to a sitting position.
Then he gathered the fallen blanket and draped it once more over his shoulders.

“Who are you? Why are you living with me?”

Harry pulled the blanket close about himself.
Yet still he sat upon the frozen earth, gazing up at him.

Do not ask any more questions.
This Harry knew nothing of that compact.

“Why will you not answer me?”

“…Snape.”

“What?”

“Professor Snape, Potter. Once your Potions Master at Hogwarts. Now—come at once.”

Harry’s eyes lifted to him.
“I see… You know me, and at least I know who you are.

But—why are you crying?”

An arm stretched out toward Snape.

Was it because Potter was safe that tears had fallen?
No.
He knew, in that instant, they were of another kind.

He took the hand that reached for him.
Both were cold as ice.
He drew him close—
and Disapparated.

Still holding Harry’s hand, Snape led him back into the house.
With a single sweep he set the hearth ablaze.

As Harry’s gaze was caught by the sudden flare,
Snape pulled him onward—
toward the bathroom.

Snape gave a sweep of his wand, and the bath filled at once.
Then he reached out his hand to Harry.

“Am I to get in with my clothes still on?” Harry asked, half-bewildered, wiping the fogged lenses of his spectacles before setting them back on his nose.

Snape took his hand and drew him—clothed—into the steaming water.
At first the chill was so deep it felt like stepping into ice.
Only after a long moment did warmth begin to creep back.

Harry shivered, sneezing again and again, each one sharp in the steamy air.
“Forgive me.”

“Is that for spraying me with your sneezes—or for dashing into the night without a thought?”

“…Both.”

“Each morning you wake in your own room, consult the book beneath your spectacles, and learn where you are. Why, then, did you rush outside?”

Snape reheated the water they had cooled together, and saw colour finally return to Harry’s cheeks.

“…I don’t know. But perhaps—I was in the first room, just inside the house.”

“The sitting room?”

“Perhaps. On the sofa… When I woke, it was pitch-dark, cold. I didn’t know where I was, and I was frightened.”

He said he had thought he’d been abducted, and fled in fear.
He had meant to find help, but no houses appeared before him, and so he had hidden instead.
And perhaps, in the midst of it, Disapparition had come upon him.
By then he had already stumbled into the woods.
It was as though he had left the house only moments before Snape returned.
At the very door, they might almost have met.

“If you had woken a little earlier, or I a little later, it might have ended in disaster.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No—”

Had he been waiting?

The thought came unbidden.
Snape recalled the anxious smile with which Harry had seen him off the day before, the words Be careful.
He had promised: I will return by night.

Had the boy trusted that—
and waited?

That boy—dead with yesterday—was dear to him.

A tightness seized his chest; something swelled, threatening to overflow.
He washed his face, as though it were nothing more than that, and hid it.

When Harry was warm enough, Snape drew him—clothes sodden and heavy—from the tub and dried him with a charm.

“Wizards do have the strangest ways of bathing, don’t they?” Harry murmured, half-bewildered, a flicker of curiosity in his eyes.

“You meant, then, to bathe with me naked?” Snape asked, his voice as dry as ever.

“What?”

“Ah. So you would ignore me, frozen from dragging you back, and slip into the water all on your own?”

“No! I—I didn’t—what?”

And yet, though scarcely an hour had passed since they met anew, he seemed far too quick to trust.

Snape seated him on the sofa in the sitting room and summoned a tea service from the kitchen.
Curled with his knees beneath him, Harry gave a cry of delight.

Snape would never, under ordinary circumstances, use magic for such trifles.
It was neither boast nor vanity.

But so that Harry might know him for what he was—
a wizard.

With that thought whispered in his heart, he cast Harry a sidelong glance—
watching him lean forward, as though wondering what other marvels the world might yet unfold.

While the leaves steeped, Snape went to fetch Harry’s book.
In its accustomed place lay The Book He Was to Read Each Morning.
The lamp he had lit a short while ago cast its glow across the cover.
It had not changed since that day.

Taking it in hand, he opened it softly.
In the inside cover pocket still lay the photograph, scowling as ever—
and in Harry’s hand were the words: His name is “Professor.” My housemate.

Turning the page, he found the timetable.
What had once been mere jottings of habit now stood there in orderly bullet points, as though they had always belonged:
Professor’s instructions will be on the sitting-room table.
Dinner is to be made for two (in small portions).

And between them—　　
new lines, new habits that had grown in the days they had shared:

Make potions in Professor’s room (take the instruction sheet from the book and bring it there).
Fly the broom by the door (sit astride and kick off from the ground; do not cross the boundary).
Use the potions in the refrigerator if sore (Professor gave them to me; they work well).
Read a book (Professor seems to forget what he reads too).

He closed the book and returned to the sitting room.
Handing it to Harry, he poured the tea while the boy read the cover.
Then, with a word about fetching a blanket, he withdrew.

For some reason, he could not bear to remain—
not to watch Harry bent over that book, staring at his picture.
In that moment, he wished only to flee.

Back in Harry’s room, he lingered as the boy finished reading.
He took the blanket from the bed.
The lamp, fading before the coming day, no longer held his eyes.
And so they strayed, at last, to the shelf.

There it was—the book with its cover blackened, the same as it had been that day.
The diary, once torn apart, was gone; at some point it must have been cast away.

Drawn as if by unseen cords, Snape reached for the one that remained.
He set its weight upon the bed and sank to his knees before it.

When he opened it—just as it had been that day—
the pages lay drowned in ink, as though a bottle had been spilled and left to dry.

And at last he came to the final page, where a single line remained.

What use to know? Endure today.

His finger lingered on the words—
tender, as though upon a scar.

“Professor?”

Harry stood in the doorway.
Snape, still kneeling, looked up.

Harry came slowly forward, bent over the book spread open on the bed, and let his eyes wander across the words written there.
He turned a page drowned in ink, then looked at the cover, then back again to the single line that remained.
Straightening, he gazed down in silence.

Snape did not pause to ask himself why.
He seized Harry’s hand and drew him down beside him.
Startled, Harry looked at him, but Snape’s eyes did not leave the book.
The boy sank at his side.

Glancing about, Snape reached for the pen that lay upon the bedside table.
After a moment’s hesitation, he set it to the page and wrote:

You repeat the same things every day—gathering herbs, aiding in the brewing of potions, flying with remarkable command of the broom, and cooking meals tolerable enough.

A smile, wry and unbidden, touched his lips as he looked at Harry.
Harry, who had been watching his hand, lifted his gaze.
Snape bent again to the page and added:

For me, there is nothing much to record: plain, monotonous days.
Yet without you, they would be lost altogether.

“But I… forget. Don’t I?” Harry whispered.

“What you forget,” Snape said, “is only that your housemate, ‘Professor,’ makes his living brewing potions. That is all. It is nothing of consequence.”

Harry slid the book toward himself and stared at the words Snape had written.

“But today—you are Professor Snape, Potions Master of Hogwarts.
Why didn’t the me of yesterday know that?
Why did I never write it down—you did not tell me?”

And suddenly, the answer rose unbidden in Snape’s mind.

There were reasons I never gave Harry Potter my name.

“Because I wanted you to forget,” he murmured—
as though, at last, a piece had fallen into place.

“What was it?” Harry asked. “Say it.”

Their eyes held.
“Say it,” Harry urged again.

“Professor Snape did you a grave wrong,” he said at last.
“A wrong beyond forgiving—”

Harry drew a sharp breath, his gaze wavering.
Sunlight, flung back from the snow, blazed so brightly through the room it felt almost holy.

“I see,” Harry murmured.
“Then I must have wronged you as well. I’m sorry. Surely I did something—something that made you hate me, something that made you so furious.”

In Snape’s mind rose the image of Harry Potter in the corridors of Hogwarts.
No matter how often he corrected him—no matter how severely he punished him—the boy never learned.

Day after day, he exasperated him.
Always at the edge of his vision.
Always there.
Always—
yet nothing that required his concern, unless duty obliged him to look.

“But it’s all right. You see—I’ll forget it tomorrow.
I don’t even remember what you ever did to me. …But I’m sorry.
I don’t even know what I did to you. And if you will—let us treat it as though it had never been—”

He did not think.
He simply drew Harry into his arms.

A moment later, Harry’s arms, hesitant, came around him.
Shifting his head aside as if pressed too tightly, Harry murmured,

“What I forget… it isn’t only that, is it?”

Harry drew back from Snape’s hold.
“Tell me, sir.”

“You forget,” said Snape.

“Then tell me anyway. I’ll forget it for you.”

“I do not want to lose you.”

“…All right.”

“Do not say goodbye.”

“All right.”

“I do not want you to forget ….”

“Forget what?”

“…That I love you.”

“…I see. Did I know that—yesterday?”

Snape shook his head.
Harry gathered him into an embrace once more.

“I don’t know who you are.”

“I know.”

“All we’ve ever had is what was written in that book, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“But thank you. You’ve always tried to make it so I’d have a little less to forget, haven’t you? I don’t dislike you—not at all.”

“You put your trust in others far too readily, Potter.”

“Do I?”

Harry looked up at him, soft-eyed, gentle.

“If you don’t mind,” he said,
“sometimes… could you hold me like this again?”

Snape blinked. Rapidly.
Harry only gazed back, guileless.

“You are not startled, then, when a stranger takes you into his arms without warning?”

“Of course I am. But by tomorrow I’ll know nothing, so you can tell me a lie—make it a wizard’s habit. Like the habits in that book. For example: Wizards greet each other with a hug.”

A smile touched Harry’s lips.
Snape knew there was no love in it—not the kind that burned within himself.
He knew it sprang only from Harry’s kindness.
And still—
he loved.

To tell the Harry Potter of tomorrow a gentle lie, he wrote in his book: Wizards greet one another with an embrace.
Just as on the first day he had come here, he sat at the kitchen table opposite Snape, rewriting the rules of his life.

“So that’s all?” he asked.

So they agreed upon a few more habits, and Harry inscribed: We share our meals together.

And more than that, he wrote that he was the Professor’s assistant—though his memory often failed him, his task was to help keep the household in order.

Smiling, Harry drew the photograph from the inside cover pocket, and in the margin he scrawled: I am his assistant!

He lingered on the photograph a moment, then murmured,
“So I am not to ask any more questions, is that it?”

“Yes.”

And so, as though loath to part, they came together again and again, holding one another close.
Snape’s irony met with Harry’s bright rejoinders, answered by laughter.
Together they gathered herbs in the greenhouse, shared a simple brunch, and brewed potions side by side.

Snape set his cloak about Harry’s shoulders and, narrowing his eyes, watched him rise into the winter sky on his broom—
dazzling with light.

And together they prepared their supper.
The day waned.
The hour came when this day’s Harry Potter would die.

Before Harry’s door, they embraced once more.

“I had fun.”

“Tomorrow will be the same day again,” Snape said.

For a moment Harry was quiet, searching his face.
“Is that truly enough for you?” he asked.

“I’ll forget, so it’s all right,” he said.
“Leave before tomorrow’s me awakes, and I’ll never know.”

Snape tightened his arms around him.
He must not weep.

Tomorrow—
and the day after—
and all the days to come—
must close in joy.
Nothing else.

And so the days passed, each like the last.
Snape took to waiting upon the sofa in the sitting room for Harry to rise.

“G–good morning.”
Harry stammered, his nerves breaking the words into fragments.

Doubt shadowed his face—was he truly a wizard, could he truly play the part?

Snape rose and, with arms outstretched, gathered him in.
Enfolded in one another, it seemed the wall between them had melted away.

Snape knew.
He knew that what lay within Harry was not love.
He knew that these days, however they endured, would never ripen into love.

Still—what they had was enough.

To trust so swiftly was Harry’s gift;
to live each day as though yesterday and today were one—that was Snape’s.

Their days repeated, yet neither turned aside from the other’s presence.
That once they had kept their distance—he, out of fear of being forgotten; Harry, out of fear of forgetting—now seemed scarcely believable.

Instead, before them stretched a plain succession of days, filled with quiet contentment.

And Snape came at last to see: no man remembers every detail of every passing day.
It was enough that the truth remained—
that Harry had been there, each day, beside him.

Winter passed, and the season of Harry’s first coming.

One afternoon Snape stood before the hearth, watching as the letter he had finished reading caught flame.
Across the smooth white paper, faint flowers shimmered and blurred; the small, precise hand began to waver, darkening at the edges as ash crept in—
—and still he watched, unmoving.

The clock struck one—the hour when, before long, the day would turn to the brewing of potions.

Harry returned in eager strides, having gone to fetch the chart of instructions after clearing away the remnants of lunch.
Snape, still gazing into the fire, lifted one arm with practiced ease, leaving space for the boy to come into his embrace.

Without hesitation Harry stepped close and pressed himself against him.
Caught off guard, Snape looked down.

Harry buried his face in his chest and murmured something, muffled, beneath his breath.

Snape’s ears doubted what they had heard.
Surely it could not be so.

Harry lifted his face.
From the pocket of his robes he drew a photograph.

Snape took it.
Once more the familiar scrawl met his eyes: His name is 'Professor'. My housemate. He makes potions at home. I am his assistant!

Then Harry closed both hands around Snape’s, and—guiding him—turned the photograph over.

There, words had been written.
And beneath them, covering the surface, countless tally marks.

When had the first of them been drawn?
With what thought had each stroke been made?

Tomorrow, I want to tell him I love him.

“I love you,” Harry said, softly.
And once more he held Snape close.

Snape’s arms encircled him in return.
Harry’s hair brushed his cheek, carrying its familiar scent.

Snape closed his eyes—
and he did not see the man before him, but the boy.

Harry Potter, striding through the corridors of Hogwarts, eyes blazing, their glares locked as bitter foes.

That was the boy he longed for.
That was the boy he yearned to embrace.
Why now—
That was the boy he wished to hold close—
and whisper at last: I love you.

It was spring.
Beyond the window, a warm wind stirred, carrying with it the illusion of a dream—

Professor Snape,

Thank you most sincerely for bringing Harry to the wedding. I regret that this note comes so late. Since that day, I have not known how to act, fearing that through our selfishness we may have hurt him.

I hesitated long over whether to write this. Please understand that what follows is only our conjecture. The truth was lost to us forever on that day.

Professor, we still believe—even now—that what befell Harry was an act of suicide. Of course, it may be that his injuries alone brought him to this state.

Is not dying much the same as never meeting someone again? In both, one is unable to record new memories with that person. I believe this holds for Harry’s condition as well.

His first symptoms, after the Battle of Hogwarts, were only these: he could not move even a single day forward. Harry’s heart was burdened with grief for those who perished there. And so, when I look back now, I cannot help but think that in that moment, in that place, Harry chose to remain—together with those who died.

And yet, in those days, I believe we managed well enough. Even when the next signs began to show in Harry, no shadow fell upon the bond of friendship among the three of us.

At that time Harry wrote as though possessed, filling his book each day. He seemed desperate to set down and preserve all that had happened to him—all that he could not bear to forget. Above all, he feared losing his memories of Ginny, the one he loved.

Harry’s recollections wavered—sometimes blurred, sometimes sharp—yet still he could, just barely, remember who we were.

I shall never forget Harry as he was that day. For once, he carried no book in his hands, and his memory seemed clear. Yet, as always, he could recall nothing of the day before.

We took tea together, and then we parted. And after that—

The next morning, Harry was blackened all over with ink. He knew nothing—not that he was a wizard, not who we were, nothing at all.

It was then, for the first time, that we opened the book he had blotted out in ink. And so we can never know what Harry had written there, what conclusion he had drawn.

Afterwards, we found another book, left at his side—the one where he had written of us. When we opened it, we felt, for a moment, as though some small measure of solace had been given.

But then we turned the pages, and came to Ginny’s name, and we thought: this was a last testament—a message Harry had left for those who would have to go on without him.

That Ginny’s page should hold fewer words than any other—when it was she whom Harry had feared most of all to forget.

I think Harry wished to grant Ginny permission—to love another, one day. And I think he wished, too, to be forgiven by her, for what had befallen him.

And we know whose name was not written in that book.

That day, I asked Harry: would you not go to see Professor Snape?
Harry looked a little troubled, and said he thought you would not want it.

And so I have come to believe—that the one Harry truly longed to forgive, and to be forgiven by, was you. That by forgetting everything, he wished to return to a time when nothing yet stood between you.

And at the same time, I wonder if Harry chose to remain in that day of battle because, for him, it was the day he lost you for ever—…………………………………………

………………………………,……………………………………………………………….
………………………………………….………………………………
……………………………………………………,………………………………
……………………………………….

…………………………………………………… ……………………………….
………………………………,
……………………………………….

……………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………,
……