Title: A Pastoral Interlude
Author: cruisedirector
Team: Phoenix
Genre(s): Romance
Prompt(s): Career Change, Time Capsule
Rating: R
Warning/Kinks: Mild adult language, fairly discreet offscreen sex. Drag mouse over space if you wish to know more: *Past-tense minor character death.*
Word Count: ~12,000
Summary: On an unhappy Christmas Eve in Somerset, Harry finds the last person he expects to see cooking in the kitchen of an inn.
Betas: The wonderful dementordelta and the amazing celandineb.
Disclaimer: Some ideas for recipes came from Maxime de la Falaise's Seven Centuries of English Cooking, though I borrowed mostly lists of ingredients. The King's Arms Inn is a real place in Shepton Mallet, but to the best of my knowledge, wizards must make reservations there the same way as everyone else.

A Pastoral Interlude

"What are you doing here?"

They spoke the words simultaneously, staring at one another, Harry as though he'd seen a ghost and Snape as though he'd seen a dung beetle in the bowl of soup he was carrying. Which, Harry supposed, was how Snape had always seen him: an annoying insect, a parasite even.

This was the last thing he had expected, sitting in the dining room of the Dusthole — in appearance, a newly restored Muggle inn bearing the official name of the King's Arms, but in fact one long frequented by wizards, since it was situated just off the ancient Fosse Way from Exeter and the coast. Harry had chosen the inn because, despite its discreet broom closet and small owlery, he knew that on Christmas Eve the only visitors were likely to be Muggles on holiday. None of them would recognize the onetime hero of a quickly forgotten wizarding war.

As he had anticipated, the restaurant and parlor of the inn were nearly deserted, with the handful of guests already retired to their rooms and most of the staff off on holiday. Which left Harry alone with Snape. Ghost or Polyjuiced double or Geminio spell gone wrong, it was definitely Snape standing in front of Harry, holding the steaming bowl and looking as though he wanted to toss it in Harry's face.

"You — you died!" Harry spluttered. "I watched you die, and I saw your memories and did what Dumbledore wanted — "

Snape set the bowl down with such a clatter that it was a wonder the stoneware didn't crack. "I have no time for this nonsense. I am the cook in this establishment," he declared. And with that, he whirled and marched back through the double doors to the kitchen, which shut behind him and locked with an audible click.

Forty years old, and Harry still didn't know how to talk to Snape, not even a ghost or duplicate Snape or whatever it was that had been haunting him in an apron. Perhaps, Harry thought grimly, it should have been a comfort to know that some things never changed, no matter how much everything else did. "Hey!" he called loudly, but there wasn't a waiter to be seen and the old man at the bar who had taken Harry's order seemed to have disappeared. In fact, besides Harry, the only person in the large room was a slightly older man with several empty glasses lined up in front of him like a row of unlit oil lamps, who had looked up neither at Snape's entry nor at Harry's exclamation.

Scowling, Harry picked up a spoon and slurped the soup, even though he wasn't hungry. He hadn't been hungry before Snape had appeared. It was miserable spending Christmas Eve alone, but he couldn't bring himself to accept Luna's invitation to her family's dinner — clearly offered out of pity — any more than he could bear the thought of visiting Neville and Hannah at Hogwarts. He had hoped that spending a quiet Yuletide at the ancient stones of Dartmoor might help him clear his head, but the winter forest looked so dry and barren that it might have been under a curse. Harry's plans for the next few days — to seek private solace at the ancient magical sites in nearby Glastonbury and Amesbury, away from the festivities of Christmas and Boxing Day — offered little consolation.

Besides, he was obviously losing his mind. That couldn't be Snape. Even if Snape hadn't been dead, Snape would be, what, about sixty years old now? The man who had come from the kitchen with the soup didn't look much older than the Snape whom Harry remembered...the one he had watched bleed to death on the floor of the Shrieking Shack. Moreover, what in Merlin's name would Snape be doing working as a cook? In an inn that served Muggles? An hour or so on the latest model Firebolt from Harry's home in London?

The idea was mad. At least the soup was good. Not that that made it any easier to be alone at Christmas with a son in Azkaban.

The doors to the kitchen banged open once again. And again, there stood Snape, looking cross and carrying a tray with the rest of Harry's meal. The way Snape swung his arm about, the plates should have gone flying off, but they held their positions; the tray must have been under a spell.

Harry reminded himself to stop thinking of the cook as Snape. Even though, on second glance, the man looked even more precisely as Harry remembered Snape from all those years ago, despite the uncharacteristic apron and white sleeves. As he leaned forward to deposit Harry's platter of Cumberland sausage, Harry could see two puncture scars on his neck.

"If you're the cook, how come you're serving? Where's the waiter?" he asked somewhat belligerently.

"I sent him home. Not worth ruining his Christmas Eve for one late customer." The annoyed voice implied that, had Harry not been there, Snape — oh, it might as well be Snape — could have been somewhere else enjoying his Christmas Eve, too.

Even though it was ridiculous, since Harry was a paying guest, he felt guilty. Lately everything made him feel guilty, even those things completely beyond his control. "Have you had your supper?" he asked Snape.

"No."

"Will you be eating later, then, after work?"

"Don't be absurd. I'll need my sleep. Tomorrow this restaurant will be packed with patrons wanting goose and figgy pudding." Snape whirled, presumably to return to the kitchen.

"Wait," Harry called after him, watching him pause without turning back. "I'm not very hungry and there's enough food here for two. If there's nobody else you need to cook for now, why don't you join me? It — it smells delicious."

Still Snape did not turn around, and Harry thought perhaps he would ignore the invitation altogether. He glanced in the direction of the Muggle drunk, frowning. Then, slowly, he glanced back.

"I can't help you, Potter," he said distinctly.

Harry leaped to his feet, upsetting his teacup which sloshed over the tablecloth. "I knew it. I knew it was you!" he cried, his voice unnecessarily loud in the empty space, as Snape snatched a carefully folded napkin off a nearby table and mopped at the spill. "What are you doing here? As a cook? In Somerset? How come you let everyone think you're dead? You don't look any different — it's like you traveled through time — I can't believe it — "

"Sit," Snape ordered, and like a frightened first-year, Harry dropped into his chair. "I used three fresh eggs in that. I expect you to eat it." Picking up Harry's knife, he cut a chunk of sausage and Yorkshire pudding and spooned gravy over it, pushing the plate toward Harry.

Sheepishly Harry took a bite. Like the soup, the sausage was superb — rich with Moorish flavoring, on a bed of mash in Yorkshire pudding with thick port gravy. Blushing faintly, Harry grabbed at the folded napkin and place setting on the empty table beside him. "It's good," he said. "You should have some." He nudged the utensils in Snape's direction.

"I know it's good; I made it," Snape said crossly, yet he cut into the sausage and placed it carefully onto the plate, then cut himself a bite. Harry watched him chew for several moments before realizing that he was staring.

"How come you haven't aged?"

"Potter, what was my profession in my previous life?"

"Your previous...!" Harry set his fork down with a clatter. "Were you actually dead...how did you come back...how come you look the same...?"

With a dramatic roll of his eyes, Snape sat back and regarded Harry. "Potions," he said distinctly. "Even you should be clever enough to figure this out. Do I look like an Inferius? I did not literally return from the dead because I never died. I do not appear to have aged as quickly as you have because I spent many years in magical hibernation. I don't imagine you studied it because you skived off your seventh year at Hogwarts." He sounded almost smug about this.

"I'm sure there's so much the Carrows could have taught me under you as headmaster," Harry shot back. He couldn't help it. Snape! Alive! And not a bit changed! Even though Harry had imagined that, if Snape had somehow survived, everything would have been different, once the war was over, once Harry knew Snape's secret concerning Harry's mother, once Voldemort was no longer a threat...

Snape had cut himself a larger bite of the sausage and was chewing with evident pleasure. "You don't look quite so much like your father now," he said with his mouth full.

"My father was half my age when he died. Go back to the magical hibernation. How does that work?"

Swallowing the food, Snape reached over to take a cup from the next table and filled it from Harry's teapot. "It's a form of stasis. Rather like sealing objects in a sterile time capsule and removing them many years later. In my case, the spell was designed to release me only after my body was restored, but because the snake that bit me carried a curse of enormous power, the effects of its bite lasted longer than I anticipated."

Harry's head was whirling. Snape had anticipated that Voldemort might eventually try to kill him. Snape had made extensive preparations to survive. Snape had given Harry what Harry needed to end the war, but he had not let Harry, nor anyone apparently, know his plans. Snape had chosen to disappear from the world, and when he returned, had chosen a different life...

A life, apparently, that suited him. Harry watched Snape dig his fork into the vegetables on the platter. "Eat some of this, Potter. You're no use to anyone wasting away."

The past months — the events that had brought Harry to this Christmas Eve alone at an inn — came crashing back. "Do you know what happened?" he asked, pressing his own fork into the fluffy mash and examining the lines it left as though they were ancient runes. If there was a hidden message in the symbol the tines had created, he didn't know how to interpret it.

"I know what The Daily Prophet reported." Snape's fork lifted away a pile of the mash, cutting through Harry's designs. "Although I also know better than to believe The Daily Prophet."

Even though it was a statement that Snape might have made years before without any sort of discomfort or pity motivating him — a statement that anybody might have made, really, since the Prophet's reputation for accuracy and fairness had been blemished since the days of Rita Skeeter — it struck Harry as the kindest thing Snape had ever said to him. And one of the kindest things anyone had said to him in months, really. His throat threatened to close over and he took a swallow of tea to cover it, knowing that he was not going to be able to choke down any more of Snape's excellent Yorkshire pudding.

"I presume it is not true, at the very least, that Theodore Lupin harbored a secret fascination with Fenrir Greyback?" asked Snape in precisely the same tone with which he had dismissed the Prophet.

Harry swallowed again. "I don't really know," he said. "I thought I knew Teddy...he's practically family. Was." Like Peter Pettigrew had been to his own parents. At least Snape hadn't asked about James yet. "I thought he considered himself part of my family. We all thought it."

Snape frowned skeptically. In his own mind, Harry heard the words of his own daughter, words he wished he had considered more carefully at the time: It would be lovely if they got married...Teddy would really be part of the family then.

"I never worried about what it meant to Teddy that his father had been a werewolf," Harry added guiltily, filling the silence created by Snape's scowl. "When Victoire, that's Bill's daughter, started seeing another boy at Hogwarts after Teddy had left school, he still kept coming round to see Bill. Fleur thought he was trying to get Victoire back. I thought he just wanted to be a Weasley and have all those cousins, like I once did. None of us thought of Bill as any sort of werewolf; I'd let myself forget how he got those scars. But I guess Teddy didn't want Weasleys for family so much as he wanted the closest thing to a werewolf for a father-in-law."

Snape was rhythmically poking his fork into what was left of the sausage, leaving oozing puncture marks. It made Harry's stomach flip over, and he looked away. "You believe it's possible Lupin's son did seek out the werewolves, then," Snape surmised.

"There was enough evidence...the Prophet didn't have to stretch the truth about that. I never got to ask Teddy myself." An odd sort of satisfaction filled Snape's dark eyes. Angrily Harry remembered how much Snape had loathed Lupin — how he had always believed him a threat. "Would you stop doing that!" he snapped, gesturing without looking at the sausage.

Flipping the sausage over, Snape dug into the Yorkshire pudding. "The egg tastes better mixed with the juices," he said calmly, cutting another bite.

How ironic that Harry would be paying for supper for the chef. Harry's mouth twisted into something approximating a smile, which made Snape raise an eyebrow.

"I'm not certain I understand the connection between wishing to understand a father who was a werewolf and wishing to make a Horcrux. I presume that that part, at least, was true, or the Quibbler would never have done something so outrageous as to explain the principle behind the technique," mused Snape.

"It's true. I'm the one who told Xenophilus and Luna, because the Prophet wouldn't even print the word 'Horcrux.' I warned the Ministry after the war that hiding Tom Riddle's secret was going to come back to haunt everyone; if they'd exposed it, and shown Voldemort's weaknesses for what they were, it would have looked a lot less attractive to anyone tempted to try the same thing. But I never thought..." Teddy. James. "I didn't think it would happen again so soon, and that we'd be so unprepared."

"You haven't touched your vegetables," sniffed Snape, sounding for a moment like Molly Weasley, a thought that made Harry simultaneously amused and painfully homesick. The conflict must have shown on his face, because Snape added, "Don't you feel well?"

"Not really. It's Christmas Eve and I'm alone in Somerset. How do you think I feel?"

"A quiet Christmas Eve is what I wished for," Snape replied, beginning to gather the plates. "But if you feel ill, I have a potion in the kitchen that will settle your stomach."

"You still make potions, then?"

"Only the ones no one else can produce as effectively. Cooking isn't so very different from producing potions, and I've taught myself to be an expert at both."

Familiar smugness filled the voice; that, too, made Harry feel both amused and sad. Snape. Alive. Maybe there was hope for everyone. "I — I never thanked you," he said awkwardly, helping to collect the teacups.

"The food has already been charged to your room."

"Not for the food, you git!" That got Snape's attention. "For...my mother. And me. And all of us, really." A thought struck Harry, a bit of madness that made him smile in earnest for the first time all evening. "You're the one who saved us from Voldemort. I just did what you told me in your memories. So, really, you're the hero and they should put your statue in front of the Ministry."

Something akin to sympathy flickered across Snape's face. Even in this remote location, he must have heard that Harry's statue had been defaced and people were calling for its removal. "I chose my path out of loyalty to the only person who ever showed me any understanding," he said. "It was entirely selfish on my part, Potter, as were all my subsequent actions. Now, if you want that potion, bring that teapot with you."

Harry's hands were full with the cups, saucers, and spoons. He made the teapot float along behind him as he followed Snape through the doors to the kitchen. The silent, lonely Muggle drunk by the bar never once glanced up.

Snape's potion made Harry feel much better, at least physically. And as absurd as it seemed, so did Snape's company. Harry performed a few discreet tests while Snape's back was turned to try to be certain that it was really the man he had known at Hogwarts; even if common sense and recent events hadn't demanded it, Harry's years as an Auror had made him understandably suspicious. It would make sense that anyone using Polyjuice to disguise himself as Snape would look as Snape had at the time of his death, since whoever found his body could have stolen his hair at that time.

But so far as Harry could determine — and he had very good judgment in such matters, most of the time — there were no potions or spells affecting Snape's appearance. Snape knew all the things that Harry's former Potions teacher would have known. There might have been some remote possibility that someone Snape had known among the Death Eaters had stolen Snape's memories and appearance at the time of Snape's death, but Harry was certain that all the Death Eaters either had been killed or interrogated extensively. There wouldn't have been a rogue enemy lying in wait for him all this time. Anyway, Harry didn't have any secrets left that anyone else would want.

"Can I ask you something you won't like?" he asked Snape, who had set a cleaning charm on Harry's dinner dishes and the pans in which they had been prepared and who was now mixing pie crusts for the next day.

"When has that ever stopped you?" Snape demanded.

"Good point. I think you'll understand why I need to ask this. What did my father and Sirius threaten to do to you for insulting my mother?"

Snape shot him a look of pure, familiar hostility. "If you wish to prove that I am really myself, Potter, why don't you ask me how I saved Malfoy when you used the Sectumsempra curse in the loo? Or what I confiscated from you in a corridor at Hogwarts during your third year? No one but ourselves would know that, either."

"Point taken." Harry felt his cheeks warming. "I guess I'm wondering why you're talking to me, if all you wanted was a quiet Christmas Eve."

"Perverse nostalgia, I suppose." Snape thrust a rolling pin into Harry's hand. "Flatten those," he said, urging Harry toward the balls of dough on the counter. "I never imagined that all my hard work to keep you alive would be very nearly undone a single generation later by a group of boys."

"Just two boys, mostly. Lupin's son, and..." He took a deep breath, pressing at the dough, watching it flatten beneath the roller. "...and mine."

"You put him in Azkaban yourself?"

"I had no choice. He was guilty of every one of the charges against him. Happy now?" Harry shoved down on the rolling pin ferociously. "You must find it very satisfying that James Potter's namesake is in prison."

"You're shredding the circle," Snape scolded, gesturing at where Harry had pressed down hard enough to rip through the uneven dough. "Give me that. I will roll, you may chop."

There was a sharp knife and a large pile of vegetables on the block to which Snape steered Harry, who whacked at a carrot with dark glower. Harry had never learned to cook properly — his early experiences at the Dursleys had left him with little tolerance for the activity — but chopping up the vegetables gave him a kind of satisfaction now.

"Your son is not your father," Snape said eventually.

"No more than I am mine. Never stopped you from telling me all the faults you saw in me that you assumed I got from him."

Snape lifted a perfectly smooth circle of dough, examining it critically. "I risked my life repeatedly to rid our world of murderous wizards. I find nothing satisfying about your son's alleged crimes. I will admit, however, that I am curious how the son of an Auror became involved in such forbidden magic without drawing attention to himself."

"James drew plenty of attention to himself...we just didn't understand." It was easier to talk while chopping, Harry found. He was about to ask why Snape wasn't doing this by magic, the way Snape was doing the dishes, when he realized that the answer was obvious. "James was always testing. New spells. New curses. Kind of like the Half-Blood Prince, but I didn't think of it that way. Everything he did, we excused as just playing around."

"Just as the Weasleys did with their twins."

Harry couldn't bear to hear such a comparison. He chopped viciously at a thick stalk of celery. "That's not fair! Fred gave his life to rid the world of murderous wizards. It wasn't the same!"

"Wasn't it?" Sliding a crust into a dish, Snape went to work rolling out the next one. "If we might set aside the prohibition on speaking ill of the dead — "

Chop. " — like that ever would have stopped you — " Chop.

" — I've a mind to tell you precisely what I think of the Weasley twins."

Chop. "Fred was a war hero to whom a younger generation were afraid they could never measure up. Ow!" Harry flinched as the knife sliced across the pad of his thumb.

Before he could reach for his own wand, Snape had fired a spell at him, resealing the cut. "The Weasley twins were petty tyrants. Certainly as cruel as your father and Black — "

"Shut up about Fred, and leave my father out of it! He's been dead more than half your life."

"Indeed? To whom do you attribute your son's 'playing around' if it is not a Weasley family trait?"

This was something Harry had struggled with for years now, the question of the role of blood in determining a wizard's makeup. Even after the fall of the Death Eaters, there were ancient Pureblood families who continued to insist that unbroken wizarding lines were better than those mixed with half-bloods and Muggle-borns, despite all evidence to the contrary. Then there were wizards who claimed that early nurturing and training made all the difference. Harry did not want to believe that the trace of Peverell blood in his veins had given him his quick wizarding reflexes, but it was preferable to believing that a fragment of Voldemort's soul had shaped the wizard he became. And he certainly didn't want to credit the Dursleys and his miserable upbringing for his strength.

"I'm not my father, no matter how you always treated me," he told Snape, carefully lifting the knife and wiping his own blood from the tip of the blade. "I know some of his pranks crossed a line. And — fine. Some of Fred and George's pranks may have crossed a line as well. But it's not like they were the only ones. Look at your own students from Slytherin House. Don't you think Malfoy and Crabbe and Goyle's 'playing around' crossed a much more dangerous line?"

Snape's expression darkened. His smooth rolling faltered and the crust tore across the center. Squeezing the dough between his hands, he mashed it back into a ball and began to pound it with a fist. "I did everything I could reasonably hope to do as their Head of House to prevent them from becoming Death Eaters. After a time, I knew that I could not hope to prevent them and maintain my own position. I was not a parent." Snape gave Harry a look that Harry interpreted as half disgust, half pity. It hit him again, with the same churning force as it had the first time, when he had first understood what Teddy had done, what James had wanted to do...

"Potter, you aren't going to be sick, are you? There are stronger potions — "

"Maybe I'd rather be sick than take one of your potions!"

"Not in my kitchen! I still make the best nausea remedy in Britain. Do you require it?"

Snape's bragging, and Snape's sounding so very Snape-like in general, once again came as an absurd comfort. Harry's fist unclenched from around the handle of the knife. "I'm all right. And you're right," he admitted dully. "My son might have gone on to do what Draco did. I didn't really know my father, but I did know Fred Weasley. Whatever Fred and George may have done, however inexcusable it might have seemed — "

" — at least you are calling it inexcusable — "

"Would you stop interrupting! There was a time you'd have given detention to anyone who talked over you like that. Whatever Fred may have done, he would have died rather than become what Teddy did."

He braced himself for Snape to argue with him again, but Snape merely picked up the rolling pin and began to flatten the dough once more. "'A war hero to whom the younger generation were afraid they could not measure up,'" he murmured, echoing Harry's words. "Perhaps your children suffered from a sense of inferiority." The tone implied that Snape did not believe it could have been otherwise.

"It's so much more complicated than that." Taking a clean knife from the block, Harry cut a potato in half, then into quarters, then eighths. "We thought we were raising them to feel safe. We didn't talk about the war or what we did during it. I didn't tell the Ministry everything I knew, and the Ministry ruled that most of what I did know about Voldemort should remain secret so no one could try to copy him. After I became an Auror and started to discover how often wizards start down that path, I thought keeping secrets like that was a big mistake. You can't hide the fact that certain things are possible, but you can try to make it difficult and repugnant to pursue them."

"Your children were adequate students in Defense Against the Dark Arts?" asked Snape.

"Better than adequate. They were better students than I was, probably. I didn't have to try very hard in Defense, and I didn't pay attention in History of Magic. It isn't as if the Sorting Hat considered putting me in Ravenclaw." Reaching for another potato, Harry smiled slightly. "Lily, my daughter, told me the Sorting Hat wanted to put her in Slytherin and said she had a brilliant and cunning mind, but she demanded that the Hat put her in Gryffindor. Ginny and I were so proud. We were sure she'd made the right choice."

"You no longer believe that?" Snape sounded surprised. He slid the pile of vegetables that Harry had been chopping into a bowl, leaving the block free for more.

Harry sighed. "I'll never accept Salazar Slytherin's belief that blood purity makes a better wizard — not a stronger one and certainly not a wiser one. But evil isn't restricted to Slytherin House. I don't know why I ever thought it was, really. When Hagrid told me that there wasn't a dark wizard who hadn't come out of Slytherin, he failed to mention that everyone thought your favorite Gryffindor Sirius Black had been Voldemort's right-hand man. Gryffindors aren't particularly less ambitious than Slytherins, they just have different ways of doing things."

"I could have saved you a great deal of time figuring that out if you'd listened to one word I'd said about the Gryffindors who attended Hogwarts with me," grumbled Snape. "What changed your mind?"

"Do you know who turned in Teddy's group? Scorpius Malfoy. Draco's son. A Slytherin, like you'd expect. No one believed him at first and he was punished, repeatedly, for telling lies and snooping around. I mean, he's a Malfoy and James is my son...he must have known they wouldn't listen to him, but he kept trying. When that Muggle went missing near Hogsmeade, he was accused of being behind the whole thing himself and questioned by the Ministry. By the time anyone got around to asking after Teddy..." Harry set the knife down. He did not trust himself chopping vegetables and remembering at the same time. "Scorpius almost died trying to stop them."

"At the hands of Gryffindors." Again that note in Snape's voice, not satisfaction exactly, but justification. Harry remembered what Sirius had tried to do to Snape, telling him to look for a full-grown werewolf, calling it a prank. For years he had told himself that Snape overreacted, that his subsequent loathing of Lupin and of Harry's father had been excessive.

He didn't think that any more. "We didn't understand how scared our children were," he said softly. "Especially Teddy. We thought he felt at home with us...that he knew he had a family, even though Andromeda was getting old. We didn't think it made any difference that his father had been a werewolf, and he didn't have any contact with any of his extended family — Remus's parents had hidden him from Muggles and wizards both. Teddy was smart and strong and powerful, and I thought my children looked up to him."

"He represented everything they were afraid of losing," said Snape as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Not always. Only when they realized he wasn't going to marry Victoire and he wasn't going to become part of the family and he resented that. We tried to keep Teddy close. I owed Remus that much." Harry reached for an onion, peeling away the dried brown outer layers. Usually his glasses protected him somewhat from the acrid aroma, but tonight it made his eyes water. "You know they were rebuilding the Shrieking Shack, right? Teddy wanted to go see it. We'd told him about how it was made to appear haunted for his dad. He always asked about those things with a smile, like it made him feel good to have some connection. We couldn't see how angry he was."

Swiping at his eyes with his sleeve, Harry sniffled, making Snape give him a sharp glance before returning to the refrigeration charms he was setting on the crusts. "The Daily Prophet said the Shrieking Shack had been dismantled and a secret tunnel found beneath it, leading to Hogwarts, had been filled in," Snape prompted.

"That was us. We did that. Ron and I." Harry grabbed at a tissue and wiped his face, shoving the chopped onion into the bowl with the rest of the vegetables and pushing the discards away. "Teddy had taken our boys to see it — James and Al and Hugo, while Ron and I were in Hogsmeade following up on a report of vampires at the Hog's Head. When they came back, Hugo was angry because he had refused to go past the gate and James had teased him for being scared. Al was terrified and wouldn't talk about it — usually when James caused any serious trouble, we found out about it from Al, because he'd get scared. James was excited and proud. That must have been when Teddy put him in charge of recruiting students and bringing them out through the tunnel."

"Arrogant," Snape muttered. Harry let it go. He hadn't spoken to anyone about any of this since the Ministry hearings, and then he had said as little as possible, desperate to find a way not to incriminate his own son. He had offered to leave the Ministry then, to oversee the rehabilitation of the children whom Teddy had recruited, but as quickly as the Ministry had made him its hero during the war, it distanced itself from Harry's entire family, with some of the Wizengamot hinting that his other children and their cousins should be brought in for observation as well.

At least Snape hadn't suggested that it was Harry's fault, as out of character as that seemed for the Snape whom Harry had known. "You think it was my arrogance that made me fail to see what was happening?" he asked, the question coming out more defiantly than he had intended.

"I think that you share Albus Dumbledore's tendency to dismiss the deepest failings of those for whom you feel affection," Snape replied.

Probably he meant it as an insult, but being compared to Dumbledore — Dumbledore, whose legacy Harry felt certain he had damaged — felt instead like a gift. "Oh," Harry said, and promptly sniffled. He had to wipe his eyes again and wished he was still chopping an onion. As if embarrassed to see Harry so emotional, Snape thrust a bundle of chives in front of him, and Harry began to cut them up. "That's a lot nicer than what Ginny said about it," he added eventually.

"Is that why you are here instead of spending Christmas Eve with your family?"

"Well," Harry said slowly, shuffling his feet, not sure he really wanted to explain this to Snape, despite the miracle of having Snape alive and using some potion Harry had never seen before to keep chopped potatoes from turning black. Just because Snape hadn't yet ridiculed him the way Snape had delighted in doing when Harry was a student didn't mean that he wasn't about to start. Maybe Snape was only curious so that he'd have better ammunition against Harry than ever before. "She said she didn't know what kind of Auror couldn't figure out what his own son was up to. She said she didn't understand how the Boy Who Lived couldn't find a way to persuade the Ministry to excuse him for his youth and inexperience. She reminded me that it wasn't as though I'd never used an Unforgivable Curse myself before I was an Auror."

"I did try to stop you."

"I remember. You never thought I was a hero, though. Ginny did. She married the hero."

"And you married Fred and George Weasley's sister."

"Meaning what? That I shouldn't be surprised she couldn't tell the difference between pranks and bullying? It's not as if I did a particularly good job at that, myself. But that isn't why she left me." Harry took a breath. "I'm pretty sure my not wanting to have sex with her was the reason she left me."

Snape's eyebrows shot up. "Did you blame her for your son's actions?"

"Not at all. It started before all that. But until James was caught, we thought we should stay together for the sake of the children." He watched Snape put a spell on the vegetables, presumably to keep them fresh until morning. "I'm pretty sure I've always been gay."

Snape was quiet for a moment. He looked thoughtful, though unsurprised. "It's just as well you never knew your father — he hated queers."

Oh, what a bastard Snape was, even after all this time. Behind him, the icebox magically slammed closed. Snape met Harry's glare with his own narrowed eyes.

"Don't you dare give me that look. Your father thought queers were a lower form of life than doxies. Believe me, Potter, I would know."

Oh.

"I need a drink," Harry sighed.

"I assumed you chose to stay in this town and this inn because you knew its history," said Snape, placing a large two-handled pot in front of Harry. The scent of nutmeg and cinnamon rose from the froth on top, making his mouth water.

"Not at all. What's the history? I chose it for the usual reasons — friendly to wizards but not crowded with them, haven for travelers from the coast, not far from Amesbury, restaurant with a passable reputation." While Harry grinned, Snape made a discreet harrumphing noise and took a sip of ale. They were the only people at the bar; its single occupant from earlier had apparently wandered off to suffer through the sort of lonely Christmas Eve that Harry had anticipated for himself. "Did you know that Muggle who was here before? I'm surprised you talked as much as you did in front of him."

"He's a squib. Married a Muggle. Lost his wife and children in an accident he could have prevented if he had any magical abilities. Comes in regularly in search of bottled oblivion. Often his tab exceeds what he can afford and I allow him to mop the floors on weekends to make up the difference. He does like to talk about local history. What's the most prominent feature of this town, Potter?"

"Besides the Dusthole, I mean, the King's Arms?" Snape flashed him an unimpressed look, and Harry amended, "I suppose the Market Cross is why tourists come. And isn't the brewery here supposedly the first one in England to brew lager?" He paused, then frowned. "Oh. I suppose it's the prison."

"The oldest standing prison in the country, according to Muggles. The King's Arms served as its original provisions house. The nickname 'the Dusthole' comes from the fact that this square was formerly occupied by a mill and a quarry. People came and went all day with flour and dirt on their clothes. Can you imagine what the inn must have looked like then? Covered in powder in dry weather, running with mud in wet."

Harry dipped his spoon into his posset, nodding. "Is that why you picked it? Because it's a historic mill town like Spinner's End?"

"Spinner's End was not 'historical' in any sense beyond generations of poverty and misery," Snape growled over his glass. "You saw the place."

"Yes. I went there to see if I could find my mum's house, the one where she and Petunia grew up. And..." He had a feeling Snape already knew this. "I went to your house, with the Aurors, when they were taking away your books and things. Everyone thought you were dead; we never imagined you'd be coming back..."

Snape waved away the apology. "You never did find my money, not even at Gringotts," he said smugly. "That was still waiting for me. Everything else I wanted, I've replaced."

It seemed sad that Snape apparently hadn't wanted any souvenirs from his childhood, although Harry too had nothing that had been his at the Dursley home. He did, however, have a couple of Snape's books. "Did you always intend to come here?" he asked.

"Not to this town precisely, but once I took on this job, I realized that it was perfectly situated. I am surrounded by Somerset countryside, far from the filth of any mill. I have a staff of squibs who understand not to interfere with my work. Until you walked in this evening, no one had ever recognized me."

That surprised Harry even more than Snape working as a chef, but he supposed that few former Hogwarts students ever had reason to be in the kitchen of the inn; indeed, with the newer, faster brooms, wizards and witches were apt to travel directly to London from the coast rather than stopping overnight. "You don't have to hide, you know," he said. "Your name was cleared years ago."

"To what would I wish to 'come back,' as you say? I have no wish to teach Potions again to sniveling first-years."

"Don't you get lonely?" Harry blurted, chasing a bit of spice around his mug with his spoon. He could not imagine what it would be like to awaken in many years precisely as he was now, while his friends and family had gone on with their lives without him. Then again, Snape apparently didn't have much family left — the Ministry hadn't been able to track down any heirs, which was how Harry came to have those books, plus that mortar and pestle that Harry should have turned over to the Ministry but had never got around to doing. "You must still have friends from before."

"With whom do you imagine I would wish to reacquaint myself? The surviving Death Eaters?"

"I was thinking more people like Professor Sprout." Again Snape snorted, pouring more ale into his glass. "Even if you weren't friendly at Hogwarts, she's not the sort to hold a grudge. Or someone like Draco Malfoy. You did save his life. Or, I don't know, you could have come looking for me."

Snape blinked at him over the rim of the glass and Harry braced himself to be told all the reasons Snape had never wanted to see him again, but Snape said, "Why would I have suspected you would have wished to see me?"

"You knew my mum! You gave me your memories! You almost died for me!" Harry dropped his spoon into his mug with a soft plunk. "Of course I'd have wanted to see you. Didn't I just spend an hour chopping veg for your pies?"

"I had thought that was merely Christmas Eve distraction." Now Snape looked uncomfortable. Maybe it had been a bad idea to mention being gay. "I am as misanthropic as ever."

"Yes, I can see that, but I wasn't planning to suggest regular Tuesday teas, just that it would have been nice to know you were alive!"

Snape studied the contents of his glass. "Shepton Mallet Prison was a place of execution," he announced. "Its most efficient and prolific hangman used to stay at this inn and sit just over there, calculating the height of the gallows and length of rope necessary to drop prisoners of different weight in order to break their necks. Just after the Civil War, the Muggles of this town put two witches on trial for allegedly tormenting a twelve-year-old boy. One of them died in the prison; the other was burnt to death in the marketplace."

"Is that true?" Harry stared at him in horror. "Why are you telling me this?"

"This town is full of ghosts, Potter, and I don't just mean the infamous highwayman Giles Cannard. They go back to the era of the man for whom I was named."

"Septimius Severus, the wizard-emperor?"

"Ah, you did pay attention in History of Magic."

Harry blushed a bit and hid his face behind the two-handled cup containing his posset. It wasn't that he had paid attention in school, but that he had once looked up "Severus" to learn the origins of the name. He hoped Snape didn't know that the false name under which he had registered at the Dusthole was Ignotus Prince.

"The Black Death of 1348 killed nearly every man, woman and child who lived here," Snape was continuing. "Royalists from Wells killed Parliamentarians. Rebels were hanged and quartered in the square for supporting the Duke of Monmouth. There were riots throughout the 1740s by the starving rural poor. The Americans carried out executions of their own servicemen in the prison during the second world war."

"Are you saying you prefer the company of those ghosts to your own?" demanded Harry. "However clean it is now, you're still living in an mill town like the one where you grew up. And living in the shadow of a prison, even if it's not Azkaban. It doesn't sound to me like you're free of the past, Severus."

The moment the name had slipped past his lips, he expected to be hexed or at the very least chided like a schoolboy, but Snape only tilted his glass to study the contents, his lips pressed together in a tight unhappy line. "One need not be Merwyn the Malicious to find that one's reputation for cruelty has outlived whatever inventions or heroics one has attempted in life. It is easier for people to believe the best of a dead man."

Just as Harry had suspected, Snape had not returned because he had not believed anyone would welcome him or even miss him. It made Harry angry not even to have been asked. "I believed the best of you after I saw your memories," he retorted. "I wished you were alive so I could thank you."

"But then you wouldn't have named your son after me." Snape's voice, muffled by his glass, still held an unmistakable note of pride. Who would have guessed it would have mattered to him?

"Ginny wanted Albus's middle name to be Fred. I insisted that it should be your name." Harry had not told anyone that before. "Then I convinced her never to tell her family that we considered any other name."

Snape smirked. "The Weasleys would have branded you a traitor, naming your son for the man who cut off George's ear when you could have named him for their fallen hero." His expression turned serious. "I cannot understand why it was important to you to give your son the name of the man who failed to save your mother."

"You saved me. You're right, they would have branded me a traitor, but none of them ever understood what it was like to grow up without a whole family around to trust. Even the ones who didn't always fit in don't understand. Percy's been harder on me and James than any of them." Harry took a sip of the now-cool posset. Now that his stomach had calmed down, he was a bit hungry, not having eaten much of his dinner. "Hermione's the only one who still treats me the same. I always thought Ron was my best friend, but family comes first with the Weasleys, and I'm not, anymore."

"She was always the cleverest of you lot," Snape said. "Though I daresay the others will come round. As will the rest of the world. The next scandal will come along..."

"Only this wasn't just a scandal. Do you have any idea of the chaos it caused at the Ministry and at Hogwarts? After they had opted for secrecy, making it illegal even to talk to students about the existence of Horcruxes or answer their questions, suddenly they had to tell the truth about Voldemort and how he did what he did. And they blame me — my son and me."

"They're only alive to complain because of you." Peering into Harry's mug, Snape frowned and rose, returning a moment later with a steaming hot bowl of soup smelling of cardamom and aniseed. "You need to keep your strength up. None of this sitting around looking wan and pathetic. Remind them of who you are."

"Play the hero, you mean?" Harry scooped up a spoonful of the soup and blew on it. His stomach growled. "That's what started all this. Teddy hearing stories about his martyred parents and concluding that they must have loved glory more than they loved him. James hearing stories about Fred's admirable end and thinking he was never going to be as important as Fred, let alone a Boy Who Lived. But no one ever wants to die. The Ministry should have preserved Teddy's body to show other wizards what happens when you try to make a Horcrux and it goes wrong."

"Precisely what did happen?" asked Snape, trying to sound casual, though Harry could hear the curiosity in his voice.

"I don't know how much Dumbledore told you about Voldemort's Horcruxes. Dumbledore led me to believe that no one at Hogwarts knew anything besides me, but I guess you must have had some idea about that ring and the snake. I didn't think they'd be hard to create. If it was so terribly difficult to cast the spells to create the magical object, it wouldn't have mattered so much if people knew in principle how to do it, because most people wouldn't be able to, right?"

"Yet surely you have learned that some people will try any monstrous thing just to see if it can be done." Snape's thigh was very close to Harry's own as they sat on their stools, hand resting above his knee. For a moment Harry thought Snape was going to reach out and touch him, but Snape's restlessly drumming fingers did not reach toward him.

"Nearly every adult wizard knows the incantation for the Killing Curse, yet it's almost never used successfully. I always thought having to murder someone would be the most difficult part of making a Horcrux." Harry dabbled his spoon in the soup, watching the ripples. "Teddy apparently didn't have too much trouble killing a Muggle. He never met the Muggle grandfather he was named for, and he heard stories about my horrible aunt and uncle. But even so, tearing his soul — that didn't work the way Teddy planned. No one ever loved Voldemort, as far as I can tell, and maybe that made it easier for him to do it, but lots of people loved Teddy...Ron said it looked like his soul just didn't want to rip..."

He couldn't bear to remember any more, putting the spoon in his mouth to avoid speaking, feeling Snape's eyes on him and Snape's hand hovering very close, as though he would have touched Harry if he had been certain of not being pushed away. "Even when it works, making a Horcrux is a pretty silly way to go about not dying," Snape said with quiet scorn in his voice. "You'd do better to transfigure yourself into a flying carpet. At least then you might see the world and have some fun."

Harry swallowed too quickly and nearly scalded his throat. It took several moments of spluttering for him to realize that Snape was trying to cheer him up. Then he had to put the spoon down before he sloshed hot soup over his lap, laughing, incredulously, at the terrible joke. "You're mental!" he wheezed, elbowing Snape.

"No more than ever."

"The Ministry should have you put out a pamphlet: '101 Routes To Oblivion More Fun Than Creating a Horcrux.'"

"I'd charge the Ministry a good deal for that. I'm retired from teaching."

"James may be out of Azkaban by next Christmas. He can't finish at Hogwarts — they've expelled him. I wish you'd tutor him."

The words were out of Harry's mouth before he'd thought them through, and Snape sat back to stare as though he'd uttered them in Parseltongue. "Someone here is certainly mental," Snape muttered. "Potter, how much ale did you put into that drink?"

"I didn't use a drop. You made it." Frowning, Harry sniffed at the nearly-empty cup. "But I didn't eat much supper, so whatever there was probably went right to my head." He'd succeeded in embarrassing Snape, he saw, and pressed the advantage. "Not trying to get me drunk, are you?"

"Given your lack of discretion while sober, it would hardly be necessary," Snape fired back. "No matter how angry you might be with your son, I am astonished you would subject him to such a punishment as myself as his teacher."

"Why not? It's brilliant, really. You're the perfect person — a reformed Death Eater who hates all the hero-worship stuff from the war. You're more qualified than anyone to teach Potions and Defense, and you were good at Charms and Transfiguration too; I read all the notes in the Half-Blood Prince's textbook. Plus you thought I was completely mediocre, so in your eyes, James wouldn't have any expectations to live up to."

"I have no intention of returning to London."

"That's even better. People in London know what James looks like. Out here, they're less likely to figure out who he is. None of the wizards I saw in Postbridge recognized me." The idea got better and better the more Harry thought about it. He slurped his soup enthusiastically. "I know you would never go too easy on him. And I would pay you, of course. I could find a house in Somerset..."

"Harry." Harry stopped talking. He tried to remember whether he had ever heard Snape say his name before. "What in Merlin's name makes you think I would have any desire or inclination to return to teaching?"

"I didn't mean full time. Obviously I wouldn't expect you to stop working here. You seem to like it."

"It's a life that suits me."

Disappointment began to knot in Harry's chest. "Does that mean you're happy?"

Snape huffed out a breath, scowling. "Why should you believe that teaching your errant child would make me happier? Do you imagine that a bucolic life in Somerset will satisfy a boy who had delusions of power?"

"He's sorry. He didn't meant to let things go so far. Don't you remember being young and stupid? You were still following Voldemort when you were older than James is." The bitterness of his frustration rang clearly in Harry's voice. Evidently Snape was still Snape, despite everything. He could in one moment be proud that Harry had named a child for him and in the next point out that their lives no longer touched in any way. "All right, never mind. Forget I said it. How much do I owe you for the drinks?"

"You earned your keep in the kitchen." Snape's voice sounded low and certainly not happy. "As for your request, I would not be not unwilling to attempt to teach your son, but your expectations are absurd and immature. They would only lead to greater resentment against both the boy and myself when no quick magical transformation occurs."

It was simultaneously such a Snape thing to say and so unexpected that Harry closed his fingers around Snape's arm to express emotion before he could reply. "They're not absurd," he said. "I have no expectations. I have...nothing, really." He counted off on his fingers. "A wife who's left me, who doesn't even want me spending Christmas with two of our children. A son who's in prison for the very sort of stupidity that cost me my own parents. Former friends who either look at me with pity or think I've bollixed up their lives too. This is the first time I've felt like I could even hope for something..." Bloody hell, he was going to start sniveling in front of Snape.

At least Snape looked as mortified as Harry felt. "You should go to bed," he said.

"I hate going to bed alone." Beneath his fingers, Snape's arm stiffened, and Harry realized how the words had sounded. Then he realized something else. "You could come with me."

Snape's expression was stiff and unreadable. Harry wondered whether he was Occluding, although it had always been easy to guess when Snape was furious or disgusted; some things, Snape either had not been able to hide or just hadn't bothered. "I could not," Snape said formally. "If my employers were to discover that I had spent the night with a lodger, I would be asked to resign my position."

Harry had no idea whether this was true or a convenient excuse. He decided that it was worth pressing the matter, because Snape's arm felt good under his hand and it had been so long since he had touched anyone and he owed everything left in his life to Snape and Snape hadn't pulled away. "I could come with you, then. I assume you live nearby."

"Not very. The Glastonbury Festival crowds drive me mad. I would eventually have hexed a Muggle and found myself before a Ministry judge." Harry couldn't help grinning, but Snape drew his eyebrows downward. "Potter. You've spent the past several hours confessing to me, as it were. Whatever sense of intimacy you may have presumed..."

"It has nothing to do with intimacy — I'm not planning to start picking out curtains. But you did let it slip that you're as queer as I am. And I haven't gone to bed with anyone in months." That was true, although Harry thought he might have wanted to go to bed with Snape even if he'd been having sex regularly with someone else. Considering there was no one he'd met since he and Ginny had separated who made him feel anything like the combination of gratitude, awe, and longing that he felt in Snape's presence. Which was probably a sign that Harry had lost his mind during the past few months — if not a sign that the sleeping giants in the Welsh mountains were about to rise and herald the return of Merlin — but not a sign that he shouldn't try.

"Ah, I see. Now you find yourself sufficiently desperate to resort to me. When you were young, you inclined toward the handsome ones. Diggory. Malfoy."

Merlin's balls, Snape had known that about him? Even before Harry did, or at least before he understood it? It was perhaps the only thing Snape had never taunted him about. "I'm not desperate," Harry objected, flushing. "I'm still in good shape. I get offers. Though I've aged a lot more since you last saw me than you have since I last saw you — I might be older than you, physically. But even you must know it's more complicated than that! You saved my life, and I thought you were in love with my mother but I guess it wasn't that, and I thought you were dead and now you're here...and it's Christmas Eve. We could celebrate. Or don't you feel like celebrating with me even a bit?"

While Harry talked, Snape had stoppered the bottle and now he sent both his glass and Harry's cup floating into the sink behind the bar, which turned itself on to wash them. Perhaps Snape thought that sending a signal that they had had enough would be a more polite gesture than outright denial.

Harry sighed and let go of Snape's arm. It had been foolish to think that Snape might have changed that much. "Happy Christmas, then," he said, stubbing his toe as he slid down from the seat at the bar. He hoped he hadn't ruined his chances of convincing Snape at least to meet James, eventually. "You're working here tomorrow, right? If I come down for dinner, I'll see you then?"

"For dinner? Do you make a habit of fleeing before breakfast?"

It took a moment for Harry to understand. Which probably didn't matter, since Snape had always thought he was slow. "I don't...oh! No, I don't flee. More likely to overstay my welcome." He shut his mouth before he could say anything else stupid.

"Good. If you expect another free meal, then I'll expect your help cleaning up after the Christmas crowds."

"I'm thinking about becoming your kitchen slave so I can also be your bedroom slave," Harry admitted as the faintest hint of light delineated the edges of the curtains, after they had spent far more of the night awake than asleep.

Snape let out a low chuckle. "Satisfied, are we?"

If Snape alive had been a pleasant shock, Snape as a lover was a sublime revelation. He was as slow and careful in preparation as he had been with potion ingredients and food, but once he concluded that the chemistry was working, he became creative and slightly wicked. And assertive and demanding and a bit of a show-off. Not that Harry minded in the least under these circumstances.

Best of all, Snape knew how to take a compliment, even when that compliment was no more than a grunt or a moan. He couldn't have been better attuned to what Harry liked if he'd used Legilimency. Or maybe Harry would have liked whatever they did because it was Snape and he'd never thought Snape liked him, certainly not this way. Certainly not so much. Certainly not with greater enthusiasm than Harry had encountered in his admittedly limited experience with men. Certainly not so bloody well.

"I can't speak for you, but for me...wow."

"You sound like a Muggle-born Hogwarts first-year who has never seen magic before."

Harry grinned; he could tell that Snape was smiling, even in the dark of the winter morning. "Sorry. I should have said it exceeded expectations."

Snape's head turned toward him. "Not outstanding?"

"Oh, all right, it was outstanding. Though you never gave me an O at Hogwarts."

"You never tried to earn one from me." They both snickered softly. "Certainly not in Potions."

"You were convinced I was undeserving from the start. I'd have tried much, much harder if I thought it would be like that. Are we both satisfied, then?"

"Potter, if you can't answer that, you obviously require remedial lessons..."

"Mmm, probably. We should begin at once." Snickering, Harry poked Snape — whom he supposed he had better start thinking of as 'Severus' — in the ribs. He raised an eyebrow when Severus squirmed. "Ticklish?" Harry grinned more widely, rolling on top to find out.

"Out of condition," objected Severus, grabbing Harry's hands and holding them down before Harry could launch a full tickling assault.

"You're in pretty good condition."

"For a man my age." Harry was tickling Severus's foot with his own, and Severus was wriggling and twitching helplessly. "Whereas you apparently suffered arrested development at the age of fourteen..."

"Did not! You're just old before your time, except when it comes to Os. Lots of men tickle each other."

"Is that the sort of man you prefer?" Severus asked him, now unsmiling.

"Don't know really. There haven't been very many — the last thing I needed was to read some partner's description of my prick in The Daily Prophet along with every other detail of my life." Harry hoped that, should such an article come into existence, Ginny would find out about it and put a stop to it before it could be printed, but she edited the Quidditch pages, not the society column. "What about you? Did you learn all this at Hogwarts or after?"

"I was celibate as a unicorn rider at Hogwarts," snorted Severus, shifting Harry to the side to stop him from tickling his feet. "While both a student and a teacher. There are a few advantages to being dead; no one is tempted to discuss the size of your prick with newspaper reporters."

"I could call the Prophet and tell them you've returned as the Cerne Abbas giant..."

"It's only slightly larger than yours," Severus demurred, but he was smirking. "In addition to farmers and families on holiday, this region attracts all manner of people who engage in what polite Muggles describe as alternative lifestyles. Spiritual pilgrims, amateur minstrels, alien hunters, squibs, wizards who pass themselves off as Muggle magicians..."

"Homosexuals," Harry guessed.

"Mostly seasonally, for music festivals and solstice rituals in Glastonbury, and flower shows at the Bath and West Show Ground. It's not like the large communities of Brighton or London. Which has suited me very well. Fewer entanglements."

Sighing a bit, Harry unraveled his leg from around Severus's and shifted to the side so he could raise his head on an elbow. "You've never wanted to be entangled?"

"Not for any length of time. Any sane person would lose interest once he realized that there are many aspects of my past I will never discuss. I prefer my privacy to the hazards of that sort of exposure."

It pleased Harry to know that there apparently weren't current competitors for Severus's affection, even though he felt that he should feel sorry for Severus's not-entirely-voluntary isolation. "Even with me?" he asked, playing with a bit of Severus's hair to make the question sound lighter in case Severus scowled and shut down.

"The situation is entirely different. You knew me in my previous life. You saw my private memories. I appreciate that you did not share them with your friends who are in the business of publishing such material."

Again Harry felt that sense of hope that had buoyed him briefly at the bar the night before. "Then maybe we could do this again?" he asked, trying not to sound too eager.

Severus shook his head slightly, raising himself up so that his head was level with Harry's. Despite the long night before and busy day he had ahead of him, he looked better rested than Harry recalled him being at Hogwarts. "I am not unwilling, but perhaps you should consider your priorities. Do you believe your son would listen to a word I said once he discovered that I was his father's lover?"

Lover. Oh, Harry wanted that. The vague feeling of optimism he had began to coalesce into a much more specific wish. "I wasn't planning to tell my son that part right away," he told Severus.

"He can't be such a fool that he wouldn't guess."

"I suppose not." James had been a fool about many things, but Severus was probably right that this wouldn't be one of them. Severus aimed a cleaning spell at the sheets, making Harry realize that they were only still lying there because of him...he was making Severus late. He sat up slowly, running a hand through his hair. Severus followed suit, shifting off the mattress and reaching for his clothing.

"James knew that Ginny and I were having problems even though we tried to hide it from the children," Harry explained as he hunted on the floor under the bed for his pants. "I think he hated the idea that we might not love each other any more — that was what he always said when we quarreled. We raised them all to believe that love was the most important thing. You remember the way Dumbledore used to explain it, about how my mother's love kept me alive? I don't think James really understood that Ginny and I could care about each other and love our children and still not work as a married couple."

"Did you tell him that you had realized you were gay?"

"No — I didn't even tell Ginny at first. I was stupid." Severus paused from the ironing charms he was aiming at his clothing to look at Harry. "You'll probably laugh at me but it took me a long time to put it together, what it meant that I noticed good-looking men and why sex was always disappointing with Ginny. I was sure I was doing something wrong because she was in great shape and enthusiastic about it."

"And as in so many things, you wanted to be just like everyone else." Severus's tone was slightly mocking but Harry had the sense that it was directed inward. He reminded himself again to ask later about Severus's relationship with Harry's mum, which Harry always assumed had been an unrequited romance.

Nodding, he went back to collecting his clothes while Severus ducked into the loo. Harry followed after Severus came out, noting with satisfaction in the mirror that although he hadn't played any Quidditch recently, he was still in pretty good shape. No amount of wetting down his hair made it less unruly, but hopefully Severus had forgiven him by now for inheriting his father's hair.

When he came out, Severus was fully dressed and looking awfully good to Harry. Oh yes, he wanted to do this again. "I think things might actually work out better with James if he thought we were together and happy," he said.

"Why is that?"

"Let's just say that Ginevra found her Lancelot while I was still trying to be noble. James knew that we were both unhappy but he didn't talk about it — he distracted us with jokes. We thought Albus was the sensitive one. When they got older, I should have been honest with them, but I still thought of them as children. I didn't think they'd want to hear about their father's sexual inclinations."

"You kept it a secret, like the mystery of Voldemort's seeming immortality," said Snape, who was combing his hair. Like Harry's, it was beginning to show signs of greying, which made it look less greasy.

"I didn't mean to. My own parents' romantic lives were always completely theoretical to me, since I didn't know them. I have no idea, really, how it would affect James's attitude toward you, but I don't think he has any stupid prejudices in that regard. He's different since he's been in — in Azkaban."

As always happened when he talked about the prison, Harry had to swallow hard. Severus studied him in the mirror, then reached out a hand to stop Harry from putting on his shirt. "Do they let you write to him?" The cleaning charm that Severus aimed over his chest left Harry's skin tingling.

"They let me visit him. I'm still an Auror, although the investigation was taken out of my hands — all that work overhauling the department for nothing. But I could never do what Barty Crouch did and disown my own son. At least no one quite dared to suggest that I might have been involved, just incredibly stupid not to have known and stopped it. Azkaban's a lot better than it was, but still...for a boy his age...with some of those people..."

Severus's eyes were dark and wary. "When he is released, what makes you believe he will wish to complete a formal education?" he asked.

"He says he does. What else is he going to do? No professional Quidditch team will consider him and he doesn't want to spend his life cleaning up after dragons or working in George's warehouse. He isn't lazy." It was very frustrating knowing that Severus would likely have had no interest in meeting Harry's son when Harry had thought he was one of the most wonderful children who ever lived; it was precisely because James had fallen so spectacularly that Severus was willing to entertain the notion. Which, Harry supposed sadly, might be true of himself being in Severus's bed as well. "I know it's asking a lot. Everything, really — I show up in your restaurant and convince you to feed me and listen to me and take me home and give me the most amazing..."

Severus interrupted with a snort. "I would not have brought you here if I did not wish to take you to bed."

"I know that, but you thought I was looking for more than that. And I said I wasn't. And I lied."

"I know."

"Even if you never want to do this again, I still want to ask you about my mother — you're the only person I ever knew who really cared about her — and I want to know why you didn't want to try to come back, and after all this time, and everything that's happened..."

With a final tug at his collar, Severus turned to face Harry. "I am not a complete fool either. One does not need to use Legilimency to guess the reasons for your interest in me."

"It isn't just that! You can't really believe after last night that I'm only here for tea and sympathy." Harry studied Severus's face. "Besides, if that was what you thought, why did you bring me here anyway?"

Reddening slightly, Severus nodded shortly. "It was Christmas Eve. Perhaps I wanted to test the axiom that misery loves company."

"I'm not feeling miserable right now. Are you?" Harry smiled a bit, hoping he didn't look tremulous and pathetic. When Severus gave a brief shake of his head, sitting on the bed to pull on his shoes, Harry leaned over to kiss him. "Good. I was expecting to have the worst holiday of my life. And instead I feel better than I have in ages. I don't think I knew how much I missed you until you turned up holding my soup."

"Happy Christmas, then." Severus kissed him back, slowly and a bit speculatively, with rather more heat than was necessary for a holiday greeting. "Unfortunately, I won't be able to celebrate until well after dinner. At this moment I need to return to the inn."

"Me too...my things are there. I don't suppose you can get into trouble if I chose to neglect my room to come here?" Harry managed a more confident smile. "And I don't suppose I'll see you at dinnertime? Will you be in the kitchen?"

"With a full staff. May I suggest the Christmas cider? We obtain it from an outstanding local producer." Severus smiled wryly at Harry's nod. "And this year the inn is hosting a Christmas panto. If you allow them to recruit you to play Idle Jack, you're sure to have a custard pie thrown in your face."

"I'll keep that in mind. Assuming I manage to stay out of trouble, can I look for you? After dinner? For a proper celebration?"

"Assuming you manage to stay out of trouble," agreed Severus. He and Harry shrugged into their coats and headed out into the cold early morning. Nothing seemed to be stirring yet besides the sheep who dotted a distant field.

"Thank you," said Harry awkwardly. "For feeding me and all the rest."

"Don't thank me. I expect my Christmas present later."

"Don't worry. I'm looking forward to giving it to you." Harry wondered whether any shops were open where he could find Severus a proper gift. Then he realized that he didn't know the first thing about what might make a proper gift for Severus besides the rather naughty thing he planned to offer as soon as they were alone in the evening.

In the meantime, the winter sun would be rising over the ancient stone circles and melting the fog that hid the tower atop Glastonbury Tor. The solstice had passed; the light would be returning. And Harry had someplace he wanted to be tonight, for the first time in so long...there was no gift that could equal that, unless he could make Severus feel the same way.

Smiling, Harry reached for Severus's hand to squeeze it, and Severus squeezed back. "Happy Christmas."

THE END

Don't forget to close this window to go back to vote and review!

Disclaimer: Harry Potter, Severus Snape and other Harry Potter characters belong to J.K. Rowling, her lawyers, handlers, editors, personal umbrella carrier, pedicurist, and those guys in the suits from the WB. The Snarry Games and its participants want nothing to do with that lot or their money. Okay, we'd take their money, but they aren't offering. Web space doesn't come for free, ya know?