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Severus knew it was a general belief among people who had known him in childhood that he had been deeply in love with Lily Potter.

Deeply. Irrevocably. Tragically.

People said it with pity, or with disgust, or with that soft, maddening certainty reserved for stories that had been repeated so often no one bothered to ask whether they were true. Poor Severus Snape, they thought. Poor ugly boy, poor bitter man, ruined by his love for a girl who had never chosen him.

It would have been almost touching, had it not been so completely incorrect.

Severus had loved Lily. Of course, he had loved Lily. She had been his first friend, his first miracle, the first person to look at the strange, sharp, hungry thing he was and not immediately turn away. He had loved her with the desperation of a neglected child clinging to the only clean hand ever offered to him.

But he had not been in love with her.

That particular misunderstanding had always irritated him.

Not because loving Lily would have been insulting. 

Lily had been lovely. Clever, bright, stubborn, occasionally sanctimonious in a way that made him want to put his head through a wall, but lovely all the same.

No, the issue was far simpler.

Severus Snape was gay.

Quite simple, really.

Of course, it had not been simple to come to terms with it. Nothing about Severus had ever been simple when it could instead be dragged through years of self-hatred, denial, intellectual justification, and private misery.

It had taken years of mental healing. Years of surviving. Years of having his mind carefully, painfully put back together after the war by healers who insisted trauma was not a personality trait, no matter how efficiently he had weaponized it. It had taken exposure to several disgustingly adorable couples of queer tendencies, including but not limited to Kingsley Shacklebolt and his broad-shouldered husband, Minerva’s niece and her wife, and one particularly appalling pair of young men at St Mungo’s who held hands during blood tests.

As if needles were romantic. 

It had taken time for Severus to understand that he had never been the problem. Well, not for that, at least.

He had many problems, and he was honest enough to admit that. Cruel, defensive, unpleasant, vindictive when cornered, and almost pathologically allergic to emotional sincerity. 

But his attraction to men had not been one of them.

So then, one might ask, if Lily Evans had not been the great doomed romance of Severus Snape’s youth, who had been?

The answer was unfortunate.

Humiliating, even.

Catastrophic, if one cared for dignity.

Because the first boy Severus Snape had ever noticed was none other than James Potter.

His life had always had a talent for irony.

It had happened one afternoon in the fourth year: James Potter had cornered him behind the greenhouses, with Sirius Black at his shoulder and that bright, vicious amusement in his face.

It had not been one of the worst days.

That was the terrible part. It had been ordinary.

An insult. A shove. Laughter. The sharp sting of humiliation in his throat. James had said something cruel about his clothes, his hair, his face, his poverty. Severus no longer remembered the exact words. Cruelty blurred with repetition. What he remembered was James stepping too close.

What he remembered was spitting.

Not much. Just enough to shock James into silence.

It had landed on the sharp line of his cheek.

For one bright, clean second, everything stopped.

Then James lunged.

Severus hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of himself. Mud smeared beneath his shoulder. Sirius laughed somewhere above them, delighted and ugly. James had him pinned, one knee braced near Severus’s hip, one hand twisted in the front of his robes, the other pressed hard into the mud beside his head.

“Say that again, Snivellus,” James hissed.

Severus should have been afraid.

He was afraid.

He was furious, too.

But beneath the fury, beneath the shame, beneath the animal panic of being trapped under a boy who hated him, one thought rose with horrifying clarity.

He is beautiful.

James Potter, flushed with anger, hair falling into his eyes, mouth curled around a threat, was beautiful.

Severus went cold.

Not because James was hurting him. Not because Sirius was laughing. Not because he knew, with bitter certainty, that no one would punish them properly if they were caught.

Because James Potter was beautiful, and Severus had noticed.

Worse.

Severus had wanted.

The knowledge struck him harder than James’s fist ever could have.

He went still beneath him.

James must have mistaken it for fear, because his grin returned.

“There,” he said. “Finally learned something.”

Severus said nothing.

That night, he locked himself in the bathroom on the second floor and vomited until his throat burned. Then he went back to the Slytherin dormitory, climbed into bed without undressing, pulled the curtains shut, and cried without making a sound.

It was the first time Severus understood that the body was not loyal.

The body could be beaten and still want warmth. It could be humiliated and still notice beauty. It could be pinned in mud by a boy who despised him and still betrayed him with a horrible, secret longing that made him feel filthier than the ground beneath his back.

After that day, everything became worse.

James Potter did not become cruel because Severus wanted him. James had been cruel already. That was the one mercy. Severus had not caused it. He had not summoned it. He had not invited it by looking too long, or wanting too quietly, or existing in the wrong shape.

But knowing did something to the cruelty. 

It gave it teeth.

Before, James had been an enemy. A nuisance. A privileged, swaggering idiot who strutted through corridors with Sirius Black at his side and the rest of the world smiling indulgently behind him.

After, James became a punishment Severus had not known he deserved.

Every time Potter laughed, Severus hated the sound and listened for it anyway.

Every time Potter shoved him against a wall, Severus felt fury first. Then fear. Then the terrible, traitorous awareness of hands, shoulders, heat, breath.

Every time Potter leaned too close to sneer some childish insult into his face, Severus memorized the shape of his mouth and despised himself for it.

It did not last forever.

That was something Severus wished he could tell the boy he had been.

It would not last forever.

Cruelty was a remarkable solvent, and given enough time, it dissolved even beauty.

James Potter made himself ugly by persistence.

There were only so many times a boy could laugh while his friend lifted Severus into the air by his ankle before Severus stopped seeing the clean line of his jaw. There were only so many times James could wash his mouth out with public humiliation before Severus stopped wondering what that mouth might feel like if it softened. There were only so many times a person could be made into a joke before desire curled in on itself and died from lack of air.

By the seventh year, Severus could look at James Potter and feel nothing but hatred.

It was almost a relief.

By the time Lily stood beside James with love shining clear and impossible across her face, Severus did not feel jealousy. Not the sort people later imagined. Not the ruined, romantic devastation of a man who had lost the woman he loved.

He felt grief, yes.

He felt abandonment.

He felt the old child in him go silent as the only clean hand he had ever known slipped permanently out of reach.

But he did not look at James Potter and think, he took her from me.

He looked at James Potter and thought, of course.

Of course, the world would give him everything.

Even goodness.

Even Lily.

Even redemption.

A war came.

Then another.

James Potter died beautiful and young, which Severus considered one final act of selfishness. Death fixed him forever in everyone’s memory as brave, charming, reckless, beloved. The dead were allowed to keep their best angles.

Severus survived, which meant he was not afforded the same luxury.

This was inconvenient.

Everyone had been prepared to mourn him. Very few had been prepared to deal with him alive.

There was a trial. There were witnesses. There was Harry Potter, standing before the Wizengamot with his father’s hair, Lily’s eyes, and a voice that shook only once as he told the truth. The whole truth. The ugly truth. The truth Dumbledore had buried, and Severus had agreed to become.

Severus did not thank him. Of course not. 

He ran.

He did not announce it. He simply sold what could be sold, sealed what could not, packed three trunks, and took a research position in Prague that required no conversation beyond Latin names and brewing temperatures.

It suited him.

For eight years, he lived in rooms with high windows and excellent locks. He wrote papers under his own name. He brewed for hospitals. He took commissions from ministries that pretended they had always respected him. He learned to sleep without listening for footsteps outside his door.

He also learned, slowly and with enormous resentment, to be alive.

There was also therapy, because Poppy Pomfrey had threatened to cross international borders and drag him into a chair herself if he did not attend. There were meals at regular hours. There were evenings spent reading instead of brooding. There was, once, a disastrous date with a Bulgarian curse-breaker who had described Severus as “intimidating but sad” and then asked whether he had ever considered wearing colors.

Severus had considered murder. Instead, he considered the date and his desire for romance over.

By the time Minerva McGonagall wrote to inform him that Horace Slughorn, having finally been beaten down by the horrors of modern adolescence and whatever the sixth-years were calling “self-expression,” and she needed him to return, Severus had nearly become civilized.

Naturally, England had to interfere.

He returned in September beneath a grey sky that smelled of rain and old grievances.

Hogwarts looked unchanged. This annoyed him more than it comforted him.

The castle still rose from the hills like a great, stubborn beast. The lake still glittered darkly. The gargoyles still judged. The portraits still gossiped. The dungeons still smelled faintly of stone, smoke, and adolescent panic.

Minerva met him in the Entrance Hall with bright eyes and a face determined not to show too much emotion.

“Severus,” she said.

“Minerva.”

“You look well.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I am.”

He almost smiled.

Almost.

She showed him to his old quarters, now renovated and insultingly comfortable. Someone had removed the worst of the damp. Someone had added bookshelves. Someone had placed fresh flowers on the sitting room table, which Severus threw out immediately on principle.

Then he saw the note beside them.

Welcome home, Professor.

H.P.

Severus stared at the initials for longer than was reasonable.

“Potter is here?” he asked when Minerva returned with tea.

Minerva’s expression shifted in a way Severus distrusted immediately.

“Harry comes twice a week,” she said. “Defense seminars. Practical dueling. Some work with the older students.”

“Of course he does.”

“He started after the Ministry made him Head Auror.”

Severus paused.

Then, slowly, “They made Potter Head Auror?”

“Two years ago.”

“At twenty-six.”

“Yes.”

“Has the Ministry considered developing standards?”

Minerva’s mouth twitched. “He is very good with students.”

“Tragic.”

“He has grown into a fine young man.”

Severus set down his tea.

“I have no desire to hear praise of Potter over biscuits.”

“Then you had best avoid the staff room,” Minerva said. “Everyone praises him there.”

Severus should have left immediately.

Instead, two days later, he walked into the staff room and found Harry Potter standing by the window with a cup of tea in one hand, laughing at something Filius Flitwick had said.

Severus stopped.

It was a small pause. Barely perceptible. No one noticed.

Except for Severus, who noticed everything about himself when it became inconvenient.

Harry Potter was now twenty-eight years old.

That was the first problem.

The second was that the title suited him far better than it had any right to.

Severus remembered him at eleven, all knobby knees and wary eyes. He remembered him at fifteen, angry enough to burn and lonely enough to mistake anger for warmth. He remembered him at seventeen, bloodied, exhausted, too young for death and too stubborn to stay dead.

He had not prepared for twenty-eight.

Harry had grown into himself.

He was not as tall as James had been. Not quite. His shoulders were broader, though, and there was a quiet strength in the way he stood now, easy without being arrogant. His hair remained a hereditary disaster. His glasses were round and familiar. His jaw had sharpened. His mouth had softened.

At first glance, anyone might have said he looked like James.

Severus knew better.

The resemblance was there, of course. The universe had always enjoyed crude jokes. Black hair. Glasses. That particular Potter talent for looking windswept indoors.

But Harry’s face did not carry James’s cruelty.

His mouth did not curve as if every room were an audience and every person in it waiting to be impressed. His eyes did not slide over people in search of weakness. He held his teacup in both hands, warming his fingers around it, and listened to Filius with his whole attention.

Then he turned.

Their eyes met.

For one sharp, miserable second, Severus was fourteen again, mud beneath his shoulder, James Potter above him, beautiful and hateful.

Then Harry smiled.

Not a smirk.

Not a challenge.

Not a weapon.

A smile.

Warm. Startled. Unhidden.

“Professor,” Harry said.

And Severus thought, with immediate despair:

Oh no.

Because Harry Potter was cute.

Not handsome in the way James had been handsome, sharp light and arrogance. Not beautiful in the way Severus had once found devastating because he had mistaken violence for intensity.

Harry was worse.

Harry was cute in a way no grown man had any right to be. His smile arrived like sunrise and looked equally unaware of itself. He had laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. One curl stuck up at the back of his head, defying gravity, grooming, and God. His jumper had a loose thread at the sleeve because, of course, it did. He held his tea with both hands, as if absorbing warmth through his palms.

He looked kind. So kind. 

The bastard.

“Potter,” Severus said.

Harry’s smile widened.

“I heard you were back.”

“And yet you failed to flee.”

“I considered it.” Harry took a sip of tea. “But then I thought you might miss scowling at me.”

“I assure you, I have scowled at better men.”

“Good to know I made the list.”

Severus wanted to sneer.

He managed it, technically.

But the problem with Harry Potter was that he did not wither under disdain. He did not rise to it either. He simply looked amused, as if Severus were a language he had studied for years and now enjoyed hearing spoken aloud.

It was intolerable.

Over the next month, Severus discovered several terrible facts.

The first was that Harry Potter had grown into a competent adult.

Not merely tolerable. Not passable. Competent.

This was offensive.

He arrived on time. He knew the material. He spoke to the senior students as if they possessed brains worth cultivating, which was generous of him, considering some of them had recently attempted to brew a swelling solution in a pewter cauldron and then looked surprised when it behaved like a bomb.

The second was that he did not frighten people into learning.

He corrected nervous hands with care. He adjusted elbows, wand angles, foot placement. When a seventh-year Ravenclaw flinched during a disarming drill and dropped her wand, Harry picked it up, held it out to her, and said, “That happens to everyone. Try again, same motion, don’t think about me watching.”

The girl tried again.

Her spell worked.

Harry nodded once, already moving on, as if her success were entirely expected.

Severus looked away.

The third was that he had a sense of humor that Severus found, against his will, genuinely funny. Dryer than expected. Quieter. Often directed at himself.

When a Hufflepuff asked whether Auror training was difficult, Harry said, “Only if you object to being shouted at before breakfast by people who think running in mud builds character.”

“Does it?” the student asked.

“No,” Harry said. “It builds the laundry pile.”

The class laughed.

Severus did not.

Not visibly anyway.

Unfortunately, Potter glanced at him at precisely the wrong moment and caught the almost-smile before Severus could murder it.

Harry’s expression brightened.

Severus hated him.

He did not hate him.

That was becoming a theme.

The fourth was that he apologized when wrong.

This nearly ended Severus.

It happened during a curriculum meeting in October. Harry had made an assumption about antidote theory, something half-remembered from his school days and entirely incorrect. Severus corrected him sharply, because sharp correction was one of the few pleasures left to him.

Harry listened.

Then he said, “You’re right. I misunderstood that.”

Severus stared.

Harry made a note on his parchment.

“Could you explain the stabilizing principle again?” he asked. “I think I see where I went wrong.”

Severus looked at him for so long that Minerva cleared her throat.

“Severus?”

“I am deciding whether this is a trap.”

Harry blinked.

Then he laughed.

Severus hated the laugh.

He did not hate it.

By November, Severus had accepted that he was in danger.

Not physical danger. He had survived Voldemort, Dumbledore, Lucius Malfoy’s dinner parties, and a near decade of teaching Longbottom to handle explosive ingredients. Physical danger was familiar.

This was worse.

This was the danger of looking forward to Thursdays.

Harry taught on Thursdays.

He arrived at Hogwarts in the late afternoon by Floo, usually windblown, usually carrying too many things, usually with some absurd Muggle coffee drink in one hand. He had a habit of pushing his glasses up with his knuckle when his hands were full. He remembered everyone’s names. He thanked house-elves directly. He asked Severus questions and listened to the answers as if they mattered.

Once, he brought Severus tea. 

The tea was black with no sugar and barely any milk. Correct.

Severus looked down at the cup.

“Who told you?”

Harry shrugged. “I remembered.”

“You remember how I take tea?”

“I remember lots of things.”

That was far too dangerous a sentence to say casually.

Severus said nothing.

Harry did not press. He only sat across from him and began marking dueling essays, his brow furrowed in concentration, his left hand tapping absently against the table.

Severus spent twenty minutes pretending not to look at him.

He failed.

He failed on Thursdays, mostly.

Sometimes Tuesdays.

Occasionally on Sundays, when Harry came to visit Hagrid and somehow ended up in the kitchens, stealing biscuits and allowing the elves to fuss over him. Severus saw him once in the corridor outside the Great Hall with three biscuits in his hand and guilt on his face.

“I assume those are evidence,” Severus said.

Harry looked down at them.

“Would you believe I confiscated them?”

“No.”

“Would you believe I was framed?”

“By a biscuit?”

“It was very suspicious.”

Severus should not have smiled.

He did not, precisely.

His mouth betrayed him by a fraction.

Harry noticed.

Of course, he noticed.

His whole face changed. Not dramatically. Just softened. Brightened. As if that tiny failure of Severus’s control had been a gift.

Severus turned away before it could ruin him completely.

By December, Severus understood the shape of the disaster.

He was pining.

At fifty years old.

For Harry Potter.

The universe, having exhausted all reasonable cruelties, had apparently decided on farce.

It would have been easier if Harry had been arrogant. Easier if he had carried James’s cruelty in him like an inherited cloak. Easier if he had smirked, strutted, mocked, demanded, or assumed.

He did none of those things.

Once, Severus found him in the empty Defense classroom after hours, sitting on the floor among scattered cushions while a seventh-year Hufflepuff sobbed into his sleeve. Harry did not look embarrassed. He did not offer shallow comfort. He sat beside the boy, shoulder nearly touching, and said quietly, “You survived it. That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”

Severus left before either of them saw him.

He stood in the corridor with one hand against the cold stone wall and breathed until the ache in his chest became manageable.

That was the difference.

James had taught him that beauty could be cruel.

Harry taught him, without meaning to, that gentleness could be devastating.

Severus did not want him because he looked like James.

That would have been simple. Ugly, perhaps, but simple.

He wanted him because Harry looked like James for half a second from across a room, and then moved, spoke, smiled, and became himself entirely.

He wanted the man who remembered his tea.

He wanted the man who treated frightened students like they were worth patience.

He wanted the man who stole biscuits from house-elves and looked guilty about it.

Naturally, Severus told no one.

Unfortunately, Minerva McGonagall existed.

“You are staring,” she said one evening.

Severus did not look away from the staff table.

“I am observing.”

“You are staring at Harry.”

“I am observing Potter.”

“With the expression of a man losing an argument with himself.”

Severus turned his head slowly.

“Have you considered retirement?”

“Frequently. Then I remember I would miss watching you make a fool of yourself.”

“I am not making a fool of myself.”

Across the Great Hall, Harry laughed at something Hagrid said, head tipped back, throat exposed.

Severus looked away too late.

Minerva hummed.

“I dislike you,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “But you trust me.”

That was the trouble with age. People learned where to put the knife.

“It is nothing,” Severus said.

“Is it?”

“It will pass.”

Minerva’s expression softened, which he disliked more than her teasing.

“Severus.”

“No.”

“You deserve—”

“I said no.”

She stopped.

For a moment, there was only the sound of students eating, laughing, living loudly in the way children did when they had not yet learned how easily life could narrow.

Then Minerva said, gently, “Harry is not James.”

Severus’s fingers tightened around his fork.

“I am aware.”

“I know.”

“No,” he said softly. “You do not.”

Because no one did.

No one knew what it was to look at Harry and feel the first wound reopen, only to find no poison left inside it. No one knew how humiliating it was to have his body remember fear before his mind recognized safety. No one knew how strange it felt to watch James Potter’s face become the shape of mercy.

Minerva, wisely, did not answer.

Christmas came.

Hogwarts dressed itself in snow and candles. The Great Hall glittered. The students grew restless. The staff grew tired.

Then, on Christmas morning, beside a hilariously dressed Hagrid in a red suit and white beard, came Harry Potter.

Severus could only stare.

Harry wore a soft brown jumper, dark trousers, a red-and-gold scarf, and a headband from which two velvet antlers rose with cheerful confidence. Tiny flakes of snow drifted from the tips and vanished before they touched his hair.

Worse, Teddy Lupin wore a matching pair.

The children staying behind laughed until the Hall no longer felt quite so empty.

“A stag,” Severus said later, once the children had been sufficiently cheered by the humiliation of the Man Who Lived, and he finally found a quiet moment near Harry.

“Harry looked down at himself. “Teddy begged.”

“Ah. Child manipulation. Unavoidable.”

“I thought you’d hate it.”

“I do.”

Harry grinned. “That’s why I wore it.”

Severus should not have liked that.

He did.

He liked it too much.

That was why, at the staff Christmas gathering, he made the mistake of drinking wine.

Not a great deal. Severus was not an idiot. But enough to soften the edges of his caution. Enough that, when Harry sat beside him on the sofa in Minerva’s office, their shoulders nearly touching, Severus did not immediately move away.

The room was warm. The fire low. Filius was telling an outrageous story about a dueling tournament in 1963. Pomona had fallen asleep in an armchair with a glass of sherry balanced dangerously on her knee.

Harry leaned closer, not touching.

“You all right?” he murmured.

Severus looked at him.

Big mistake.

Harry’s face was close enough for Severus to see the faint scar near his lower lip. Not the famous scar. A small one, nearly hidden, pale against his skin. His glasses had slipped down his nose. His hair was worse than usual. His eyes were steady and green and full of a concern Severus had done nothing to earn.

“No,” Severus thought.

He said, “Obviously.”

Harry’s mouth twitched.

“Obviously,” he agreed.

That made it worse.

Severus stood too quickly.

“I require air.”

He left before Harry could answer.

The corridor outside Minerva’s office was cold and quiet. Snow tapped against the high windows. Severus walked until the music and laughter faded behind him.

He stopped near an alcove overlooking the grounds.

The lake was black beneath the moon. The forest rose beyond it, dark and waiting.

He heard footsteps behind him.

Of course he did.

“Professor?”

“Potter, if you have come to offer seasonal comfort, I advise you to reconsider.”

Harry stopped a careful distance away.

“I came to make sure you weren’t about to dramatically brood yourself off a balcony.”

“There is no balcony.”

“I noticed. Good planning.”

Severus closed his eyes.

“Go back inside.”

“In a minute.”

“Potter.”

“Harry.”

The correction was quiet.

Severus opened his eyes.

Harry stood with his hands in his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched against the cold. Snowlight silvered the edges of him. He looked nothing like James in that moment.

Nothing at all.

James would have pushed. Laughed. Turned concern into conquest.

Harry only waited.

That was the worst of it.

Severus could withstand cruelty. He had built a life out of withstanding cruelty.

Patience undid him.

“You should not be kind to me,” Severus said before he could stop himself.

Harry’s expression changed.

“Why not?”

The question was simple.

Severus hated simple questions. They demanded impossible answers.

“Because I was not kind to you.”

Harry took that in.

“No,” he said. “You weren’t.”

There was no accusation in it. No flinching either.

“I know.”

“I know you know.”

“Then why?”

Harry looked out toward the snow-covered grounds.

“For a while, I thought kindness was something people earned,” he said. “Then I realized that idea had been used on me by too many people who wanted an excuse not to give it.”

Severus looked at him.

Harry shrugged, uncomfortable now.

“I’m not saying it fixes anything. It doesn’t. I just don’t want to be cruel when I don’t have to be.”

Severus’s throat tightened.

How unfortunate, he thought distantly, to have survived everything only to be murdered by decency.

“Besides,” Harry added, quieter, “you’re easier to be kind to than you think.”

Severus laughed once.

It sounded unpleasant.

“You are very young.”

“I’m twenty-eight.”

“As I said.”

Harry smiled faintly, but it faded.

“Do you want me to go?”

Yes, Severus thought.

No.

Never.

“For your own good,” he said, “probably.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

Severus turned back to the window.

Snow fell over the grounds. Soft. Relentless. Covering old tracks.

“I am not good at wanting things,” he said.

The silence after that was very gentle.

Then Harry moved.

Slowly. Carefully. He came to stand beside Severus at the window, close but not touching.

“That’s all right,” Harry said. “I’m very stubborn.”

Severus should have replied with something cutting.

He had nothing.

For several minutes, they stood in silence.

Then Harry said, “You know, when I was a kid, I thought you hated me because I looked like my father.”

Severus’s breath caught.

Harry did not look at him.

“I’m not asking,” he said. “I know it’s complicated. I just wanted to say I’m not him.”

“No,” Severus said.

His voice came out rougher than he intended.

“You are not.”

Harry turned then.

Severus did too.

They stood facing each other in the narrow pool of moonlight.

For one fragile, impossible second, Severus allowed himself to look.

Not at James Potter’s echo.

At Harry.

At the man who had grown past his father’s face. At the man who carried grief without making it a weapon. At the man whose kindness had chased Severus into corners more thoroughly than cruelty ever had.

Harry’s eyes flicked down.

Briefly.

To Severus’s mouth.

Severus went still.

Oh.

Harry seemed to realize what he had done at the same moment. Color rose along his cheekbones.

“I should,” Harry said, then stopped.

Severus waited.

Harry swallowed.

“I should probably go back inside before I say something stupid.”

Severus’s heart beat once, hard.

Cowardice had saved his life many times.

It had also cost him nearly everything.

“What kind of stupid?” Severus asked.

Harry stared at him.

Then, slowly, a smile began at the corner of his mouth. Not bright this time. Not careless. Something younger. Nervous. Hopeful.

“The kind where I admit I’ve been bringing you tea for three months because I like the way you look at me when you pretend not to be pleased.”

Severus forgot how to breathe.

Harry’s smile trembled.

“And because I like you,” he said. “Rather a lot, actually.”

Severus stared at him, utterly silent.

Harry winced.

“Right. That was the stupid thing.”

Severus reached out before sense could stop him, caught the front of Harry’s ridiculous brown jumper, and pulled him down.

The kiss was brief.

Awkward.

Far too late.

Harry made a small, startled sound against his mouth, and then Severus let go as if burned.

“There,” Severus said, voice thin with terror. “Now we have both been stupid.”

Harry blinked at him.

Then he laughed, breathless and bright, and reached carefully for Severus’s hand.

This time, Severus let him take it.

Harry’s thumb brushed over his knuckles.

“Professor,” he said softly.

“Do not ruin this by calling me that.”

Harry smiled.

“Severus, then.”

Severus looked at their joined hands.

Outside, the snow kept falling.

Inside, for the first time in years, something old and frightened in him went quiet.

Harry squeezed his hand once.

“I was hoping,” Harry admitted, “that you might eventually notice me.”

Severus looked up, incredulous.

“brat,” he said, and Harry’s smile widened at the tremor in his voice, “I have been trying very hard not to.”