To a precise intellect, it was a particular torture. A lifetime’s worth of questionable fortune should have precluded the feeling that it could not get any worse, and yet a perusal of the damp, cold room, the pile of unburned letters awaiting wand flame, the dust on every surface and a kitchen which offered nothing in the way of food save oatmeal (There were regular and inexplicable owl deliveries of oatmeal, steel cut, the pricey sort) still seemed to say that it could not, or at least, not by much.
He had given up on the Prophet entirely after reading Slughorn’s firsthand account of his own improbable and perhaps unfortunate rescue, disgusted with the wizard’s self-satisfied preening. Any one of my students might have remembered my standard first day, first year speech and my reference to putting a stopper in death--anyone with a NEWT in Potions ought to be able to brew a blood-holding potion and know enough to use one when going into battle. It was just my luck Granger had to spend her NEWT year in the wilderness. He had his fireplace removed from the Floo network, placed Imperturbable Charms upon the windows and doors and still, after all these months, still, he could feel them out there, not every minute of every day but often enough to make venturing out perilous. A Fidelius required a trusted Secret Keeper, and Severus Snape had none.
“And I have Potter’s mouth to thank for all this,” he tried sneering mentally. The thought had none of the fire it should have carried. I must forgive myself, he thought sarcastically. I’m still recovering from that damned snake. That and the charming notoriety. Poor Potter! And to think what it must be like for him!
The thought was a touch less searing than he was accustomed to feeling it. The months of reading the Prophet before he had given up on it, the ensuing months of idleness, unavoidable when he was clearly too weak, at times, to start a fire for his oatmeal, had forced him to observe certain facts and draw possible conclusions. He found…
But his train of thought was interrupted by his front door being blown open, taking half the doorjamb with it. The sound of a yelled, “Thanks! Later then,” warned him seconds before it happened that the one thing which could make everything worse, had, and Potter himself walked through the door.
“Good evening, Professor. Greetings from everyone in the Order, and anyone else you’d rather not see. I can’t possibly remember them all.”
He had a short scarf wrapped round his neck and a long, thick wool traveling cloak. His air was cheerful, perhaps determinedly so, and his tone was devoid of both hatred and hero worship. There was something else different about him, hard to define. Severus sat back in the chair and lightly grasped the wand which never left his hands these days.
The boy “ the young man, for that “ swung the backpack off his shoulders and began pulling things out. He hummed, mumbled, made some sort of noise which was not directed at the man in the chair, but not to be hidden from him, either. A pile of firewood appeared, mounds of dark black, woolen material, a pair of low boots, also black, an enormous tin of tea “ still, Severus managed to say nothing.
There are times when an entire lack of energy is…useful. I’ve nothing in me to rail with, and this will end the sooner for it.
Did he want it to end sooner? The very doubt surprised him. He had thought the last few months of solitude had been to his taste. He certainly hadn’t been missing Harry James Potter, of all people.
He hadn’t thought he’d been missing anyone.
For the first time in his adult life, he had not missed “ anyone. He was merely existing. Tired, worn out, depleted, he had had nothing to sustain anger with. Potter, damn him, was humming. Snape recognized the tune “ “Weasley is our King”. A reference, perhaps, to the family he had left behind this evening? Could it possibly be a reference to Draco, and thus obliquely to Snape’s own house?
“Are you using this pile of mail to start fires then? I do too, but Hermione insists that out of every thousand or so there may be one I really need to look at, so I hired a house elf to check them first.” It was conversational, as if he were in the habit of dropping by for a few words, as if this were a routine of long standing.
He’d been building a quite adequate and well-constructed cone of kindling in the fireplace and touched his wand to it now. The flames caught immediately, and he fed the letters in carefully until the thin sticks lit, then began placing the larger splits. In a reasonable period of time, without any annoying chatter, he had the flames busily burning and was pulling a shovel out of the backpack.
“I can see Miss Granger has been at work,” Snape attempted to sneer.
“Yeah, she taught me the spell. Dead useful. Here they are. My only problem is that I can’t really regulate how big the inside gets as well as she does yet, so sometimes things get loose and rattle around in there. Chestnuts,” he finished, by way of explanation, and cutting crosses on the top with a penknife and arranging them on the shovel, he balanced the whole with a spell that kept the handle a good foot and a half off the ground with the blade of the shovel directly over the fire.
“Haven’t hung up your stocking, I see. No problem. I’ve got one for you. Hermione made it “ it’s hideous. You’ll enjoy disparaging it.” A Sticking Charm attached the offending bit of knitting to the mantle, and Potter stood back to admire the result. He chuckled. “The card I sent you is missing. Did it burn well?”
“Why are you here, Potter,” Snape attempted in his best intimidating drawl, but the young man did not rise to the bait.
“Why?” He smiled. “Even Scrooge got visitors at Christmas, Professor.”
“But I am hardly so charming as Scrooge, or as welcoming.”
At this Harry burst out laughing. “No, you aren’t, are you? Well, that’s all right “ I’m not as amusing as a night full of Christmas Spirits, either. We do know the Spirit of Christmas Present, though, don’t we, and she’s sent along some dinner.”
He thrust his hand into the bag again and pulled out a shepherd’s pie. “This is just for tonight. You’re expected at the Burrow tomorrow. I’ve learned how to do that messenger Patronus, too, so don’t think you’ll get out of it “ I can call for reinforcements if things get ugly.”
Snape had continued silent throughout and was not sure what to say even yet. Potter was stark raving mad, apparently, but didn’t seem dangerous, and Snape was quite well able to send a message himself. He had not had chestnuts in a very long time, either.
“And here are a set of robes from Professor McGonagall. She thought you might like to have a change. I’ll heat this pie up, why don’t I.”
The pie was placed near to the fire, also hovering by means of a charm at an appropriate distance “ he must have been given very precise instructions. It started rotating as well, quite slowly. Harry smiled like a small child. “That’s a refinement of my own. Aunt Petunia had a microwave oven,” he explained with an air that betrayed he’d spent a bit of time with Arthur Weasley.
The older man could see, as he turned to go into the loo and change clothes, that Harry was appraising the little house, looking for something although Snape was not sure what. He made free with the place, walking off down the hall towards the kitchen. Cheeky. Severus noticed, and was surprised that the word was “cheeky” and not “arrogant.” Hadn’t’ Potter always been arrogant?
And yet, the papers had had a devil of a time getting any information out of him, and he had been turning down invitations right and left all summer and fall, up until Severus had stopped the paper, sick of reading about himself. Harry’d gone back to Hogwarts to do his NEWTs and refused to take back captaincy of the Quidditch team, although he did Seek for them. “Why isn’t he swanning about, enjoying his renewed notoriety?”
It had been a year and a half, at least, since they had last had anything resembling a confrontation - they had never had a conversation. Those few tense minutes in the Shrieking Shack had been desperate business, and there had been no leisure to note any change in him, whether he had gotten, as Snape always expected, even a little more obnoxiously like James or perhaps, miraculously, somehow a tiny touch closer to Lily.
“Potter,” he asked abruptly when Harry appeared, carrying a small round table which he had shrunken from the large round table in the kitchen. “That first day in class, why hadn’t you done the reading?”
If Harry thought it was odd to be asked this well over seven years after it happened, asked about that day as if it had been the week or the month before, he showed no sign.
Snape could barely see that young boy in this young man “ even since the Forest of Dean his shoulders had broadened, and no one, no one who had heard his last shouted exchange with Severus outside the walls of the castle the night Dumbledore was killed, would have seen that young man in this one.
Harry stood, blinked, but did not argue with the question. “Well, I had read them, Professor. It was just all so new, I couldn’t remember it all.”
“You had read my assigned work?” Could it have been that simple? Not arrogance, just… imperfect memory?
“Yes, I had. I read all my assignments. A bit like Greek, actually, and I had to do it at night under the covers “ well, you’ve met my Aunt Petunia. But I did read it.”
Snape nodded, quietly. It took a great deal out of him, recently, to speak of anything at all, but his mind was racing. It would not stop saying to him, Lily did better her first day “ but Lily had you. Lily had you.
Harry was looking carefully at the tablecloth he was spreading over the table - white linen, with the Hogwarts crest. Harry frowned, “I’m not breaking any rules, Professor. The headmistress sent this along.”
“So this was not your idea?” Snape asked. He could not possibly be disappointed.
Harry grinned. “Oh, I had the idea, but so had everyone else. Took a full Order meeting to determine who got to come.”
“And you lost? I find that difficult to believe.” The slow measured tone that covered the viper about to strike slipped out of Snape’s mouth naturally, without his even thinking it, but was ignored.
“No, I pulled rank, actually. Like I’ve done to keep them away so far. I won’t be able to manage tomorrow, though.”
“You kept them away?” Snape said in an unreadable voice.
“I couldn’t imagine you wanted all that fuss. Professor McGonagall and Mrs. Weasley have decided that you’ve had long enough to nest and recover. You can’t expect me to hold the both of them back when they’ve got their minds made up.”
He waited for the little offhand reference to Voldemort being one thing, but Molly Weasley another “ the offhand reference to his great triumph. It never came. Harry merely placed the table closer to Snape, waved his wand, and brought the surface down to a convenient height without looking directly at him.
“Mrs. Weasley sent you clean robes, too. So that’s two sets, one for tonight, and one for tomorrow, Professor. She wouldn’t let George near them, either,” he finished with a grin.
“You never call me Professor unless you’re forced.”
Harry turned to face him. “No, I never did.” There was no explanation of what exactly had changed, but an admission that it had.
Harry pulled a few butterbeers from the sack, moved the pie from where he’d been heating it - or perhaps keeping it warm “ next to the fire, and sat down with Snape at the table, pulling up a rickety stool to sit on.
“You’re the headmaster, I think you get to make the speech for the feast.”
Snape stared at him. “What are you playing at, Potter?”
“Nothing. I asked you to make the speech.”
“A few short words: ‘Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!’”
How had he recalled that so precisely? It had been Harry’s first feast, and he had dreaded with all his being, having to see him, had prayed for a red-headed boy who looked nothing like James. Not that Harry had had red hair as an infant, but things could change.
“You looked just like your father.” Now why had he said that? He picked up his fork and stuck it into the slice of Molly’s delicious pie Harry had placed on his plate.
“Is that why you were glaring at me?”
“Glaring? I was not aware of glaring. You would have been easier for me to supervise in Slytherin. I had hoped your connection to the Dark Lord, whatever it was, would place you there.”
Harry stared at him. “You wanted me in Slytherin? The Hat considered it. I’d already met Malfoy, though. I’d still pick Ron over him any day. And my parents were in Gryffindor.”
“Yes, well, Dumbledore thought that having you less obviously accessible to me was perhaps a good thing.” The food, not surprisingly, was very good, and Snape, who had had little appetite the past many months, found himself taking a second piece.
“So you pulled rank on the Order of the Phoenix to have Christmas Eve dinner with me. Would you mind telling me why?”
Harry looked up. His right hand drew circles on the white cloth with the tip of one finger while he spoke, nervously, nervous for the first time that evening, “I’m the only one who can begin to understand, that’s why.”
“Understand what, Potter?” he asked in a warning tone. He had a Muggle clock on the mantle, and it ticked, loudly.
“How much you hate it. All the fuss, the people hounding you. How much you’d rather just be back in a dungeon, anywhere, doing whatever you’re doing and left in peace.”
It was such an accurate statement, as far as it went, that it gave Severus pause. “And you know this because?”
“I know it because it’s how I’ve always felt. I never liked people looking at my scar, whispering about me, talking behind my back. They’d want me to be a hero one day and a madman the next, and I was never anything but just plain Harry.” Just plain Harry applied himself to shoveling another piece of pie onto his plate.
“You loved it.” It was a flat statement, devoid of the customary heat. Sometime in the past months it had occurred to him that James Potter was as dead as Voldemort, and that his own sniping gave the man life he would not have otherwise. He had begun to distance himself.
“No, I didn’t. I’d have much preferred being one of the Weasleys. About the only Gryffindor I wouldn’t rather have been, in fact, was Neville. Neville’s got it worse than I do. But other than him… And you hid in the dungeons.”
“Is that all you have to say, Potter?” He had come too close, and Snape could not be comfortable.
“No, Professor, it’s not all. But the rest will wait till later.” Harry saw a particularly large piece of meat in his portion of pie and took a knife to it.
“She used to hold her knife that exact same way. Even her Potions knife.” Where had that come from? Why on earth would he tell Potter that?
Harry looked shocked, at first, and then as if he was trying, with great difficulty, to hold down his enthusiasm. “Thank you, Professor,” was all he said, and Severus, seeing this, thought, A bit of self control. How odd from him.
And then the pie was gone, and Potter was checking the chestnuts. “Still don’t seem done. Maybe later. But we have got a proper desert. Well…”
Pulling a cake out of the bag, he continued, “I have to warn you, Professor, Mrs. Weasley didn’t make the cake.” There was a barely repressed smile on his face.
Comprehension slowly dawned in Severus’ eyes. “That OAF? Why on earth…”
“A peace offering. He was crying over some of the things he’d said to himself behind your back. Not that he said anything to any of the students you sent down to him last year “ Ginny told me he was defending you as headmaster, but Hagrid is all heart really. The frosting’s all right. It’s just the cake part you have to watch.”
They hacked bits of cake off the almost rocklike whole and scraped frosting off them. It was impossible not to want to smile.
“All heart, you say?” Snape observed. “That would account for the lack of brains, then. No room, evidently.” Harry was trying not to smile again, because he loved Hagrid, but there was a certain perspective from which some people “ possibly Hagrid himself, in fact “ might have conceded Snape’s point. “Minerva showed me, in the Pensieve,” he continued, shocked at himself, and yet, apparently, unable to stop himself, “Hagrid carrying you in, thinking you were dead, and then screaming for your body when you disappeared…”
Harry swallowed. “I knew he’d never be able to hide that he knew I was alive, so I couldn’t let him see. And he carried me with the tears streaming down his face, carried me like “ carried me, and it was an honor.”
If he had had to carry the dead, limp body of Lily’s son out before the school, could he have done it? It occurred to Severus suddenly that there were, indeed, horrors he had been spared, and he shivered. “People have different strengths.”
It was possibly the most charitable thing he’d ever said about Hagrid, and Harry was taken aback. He was startled enough to ask a totally unrelated question which had been on his mind. “Do you even have any idea, Professor, how you really think about things, as opposed to how you had to think about things, to get by?”
Snape blinked. “I had not considered the question.” Harry nodded, and cleared up the table, piling the plates efficiently, without thinking, as he had done so many times growing up on Privet Drive, obviously careful not to drop the utensils, while Snape watched.
He did have to admit that, in front of a fire, with new, clean, warm robes on, and a stomach full of an excellent dinner, he felt better than he could remember feeling. Harry had moved over to a spot on the hearth and sat staring into the fire as he boiled tea water and tested the chestnuts.
“My, my, Potter. Quite the little house elf. You’re a wizard, why are you wasting time waiting for that water to boil over the fire. Heat it with your wand…”
“I’ve been a house elf, actually. My aunt and uncle’s. Boiling the water this way is really no more trouble.” A simple statement, and Severus could easily picture how the Petunia he had known would have justified this to herself, because she had taken in her only nephew and kept a roof “ “They kept you in a closet, I was told?”- over his head.
“Oh, yeah, right “ a fairly large one, under the stairs. They put in a little grate for air. And they locked it sometimes. After my letter came, though, they gave me a room. They didn’t like my getting mail addressed to me in my cupboard.” He smiled a slightly sad smile. There was no accusation. Harry knew now that Snape had always known Lily, and therefore always known Petunia, and that he, Severus, had done nothing about Harry’s being placed there. He did not mind, or rather, did not blame?
“Game of chess, Professor? Hermione and I have a bet going. She says you’ll beat me in five minutes, but I thought it might only take you three.”
“Your unexpected good humor is wearing, Potter.”
“Probably. I generally find other people’s good humor pretty wearing myself, especially when I’m not in a good mood, but it will be a victory over me “ even such an easy one - come on, you can’t tell me you’d just throw that away.”
Severus surprised Harry by sitting down on the floor across from him, the light from the fire illuminating the chess board. It had been a long time since he had had the luxury of a game.
“I am out of practice, Potter. You may last as long as two.”
In fact, he lasted four minutes the first time, six the second, and only two the last, when he was clearly preoccupied. “Interesting. Your mother also had the tendency to protect the pawns as much as possible. I think she felt sorry for them.”
“Maybe she saw something in pawns other people didn’t. Together they are very useful, Ron’s always pressing that, even if individually they are very easy to kill,” he swallowed.
“Tearing up over that house elf, then?” Snape responded. It was a touch less unkind than he remembered himself sounding.
“Damned straight I am. And I hope I always do. He took Bella’s knife for me and still got us away. What more could anyone else have done?” Harry said simply, and Snape bowed his chin in mute agreement.
He filled a teapot which had also, assuredly, come out of the bag, and placed two chipped tea cups next to it. “You just escaped without a new tea service. That wasn’t my doing though. George pointed out it wasn’t a wedding shower.”
Snape barked a laugh at the thought of weddings. Him, married? Impossible. It was only when Harry spoke that Snape realized he had been cleverly maneuvered by the comment.
“She’s gone, isn’t she? The part of my mother you kept alive in yourself, that’s gone.”
How did he know?
“It is a little hard adjusting to not having to protect me, or spy for the Order, either, isn’t it, Professor?”
Severus carefully took up the teacup and sipped, effectively hiding a portion of his face.
“I know because…it is very, very odd not feeling hunted, and responsible, and terrified that yet another person is going to die for me. I never liked that. Even Voldemort knew I never liked that.”
While Snape still reeled internally “ outwardly sipping unsweetened tea as if he were taking it with the Muggle Prime Minister “ Harry came to his point.
“We’re here. We’ve got to do something next, even if we haven’t got the damnedest idea what that something is. It’s great having it all over, but we both know it’s…strange.” The word strange was uttered in a tone which indicated that Harry knew it to be inadequate, but hadn’t any word better to offer.
They knew. The question of whether they would become friends over the shared knowledge and experience, or continue through to their deaths as embittered over each other as they had been for at least eight years seemed to be obvious. Snape could hardly afford to be less rational than a Gryffindor.
And then Harry offered, into the silence, a small gift. “I’m sorry, Professor, that she died because of me.” He paused, and then moved on to, “I think the chestnuts are done. Would you like one?”
It was the last thing of any import Potter said that night. They sat as the fire died down, and then Severus walked up to his bedroom, a hot rock from the fire levitated in front of him. Harry refused the offer of a cot. “I’ve got one, thanks,” he said as he pulled it out of the backpack and unfolded it. He had set it up by the hearth, curled up on it in his cloak, and gone immediately to sleep.
That was another gift, letting down his guard entirely, completely, in front of Severus Snape.
Lily was gone. Harry was right. She had been gone since that night. Was it when he was floating somewhere near the ceiling looking down on himself, or when Voldemort had been undone by Harry’s clever ploy? By the time he had come to, she had been gone from him, entirely gone, for the first time since he had realized what danger he had put her in, all those years ago.
She had been gone before then, probably from the time she realized what he was doing, and definitely from the time she had chosen James. By protecting her, he had gotten some part of her back, and now that was lost, as well. The young man downstairs did not need protecting “ had not wanted protecting. And there was…a hole where that had been.
As he lay down in the bed, wearing the new robes he did not care to take off both because they were warm and because there had been a note with them - they had been a gift and even his wizened old heart might occasionally open to a gift - he heard them: the bells of Christmas day. They chimed out over the town, the drab, frightening, depressing town, and over the hills and valleys, between there and Hogsmeade and all over Britain, proclaiming that the world had survived to this Christmas, and that on the day which was beginning, even Muggles might expect a modicum of magic. With that thought as a surprising comfort, he turned over, and found himself asleep.