First off, this is my much delayed birthday fic for To Kill a Mockingjay. :D This girl is awesome~ And she'll forgive me for the extreme delay ;)
This piece was inspired by and written for selenehekate's Pieces of a Wedding Competition on HPFC. Thanks to Selene for such a wonderful and fun competition! Enjoy!
Happiness
By silver-nightstorm
Summary: He was getting married (to a young woman who decided to inform him on a daily basis of the unnaturally large number of wackspurts that apparently occupied his residence). Or he would be, if he could get through his damned bachelor party.
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Severus Snape never thought he would get married. He was the cranky spy, the greasy git, the bat of the dungeons, the Death Eater. He would never be happy. Not only was his fate predetermined, but his destiny to fail was proven in the written word too many times to count.
Snape was a scholar, a literary critic. He knew stories and novels and thrillers like the back of his hand. He knew that every story worth a glance had a hero, a villain, a wise old man, a scapegoat, loyal friends, princesses. He knew his life was basically one of these stories. And he knew perfectly what part he had to play. He was the scapegoat. He was doomed to die for his cause. He was the sacrifice for the greater good. Severus Snape never expected to survive and when he did, he didn't know what to do with himself.
The first thing Harry Potter did when the war was over was visit the Shrieking Shack. He (supposedly) had this nagging feeling that he had something to do. Going to the Shack proved to be a stellar decision; Harry Potter found Severus Snape inches away from death – not from blood loss (blood replenishing potion), or snake venom (bezoar), but from almost choking on the second bezoar that he ate for… precautionary measures (when in a situation where blood is pouring out of one's neck at an alarming rate, most tend to panic just a little bit).
When he was conscious enough to know what was going on around him, he found the Wizarding World in a rightful uproar because of his actions. He sat through his trial, waiting for a life's sentence in Azkaban. It never came.
Snape was content to live as a pariah for the rest of his life. His naturally acerbic nature and sarcastically biting remarks kept even the most nagging reporters and devout admirers away. He was left in peace for seven years until a certain air-headed former Ravenclaw came banging on his door, wishing to write an exposé on him for her Quibbler. Why he opened the door, he still didn't know, but nonetheless, through a series of baffling events, he found himself growing fondof the girl.
But now, now he was getting married (to the young woman who decided to inform him on a daily basis of the unnaturally large number of wackspurts that apparently occupied his residence). Or he would be, if he could get through his damned bachelor party.
Severus Snape never thought he would be on cordial terms with a Potter, least of all Harry Potter. In fact, when Snape found he was alive with no war to fight, he expected Potter to promptly hex his greasy arse all the way across the Hogwarts grounds. After all, his love for Lily could have been easily misconstrued as an obsession (and, he was loathe to admit a few years later, probably was).
But Potte—Harry surprised him. The boy had done his very best to mend the relationship between himself and his former professor and it had kind of worked. And now the dunderheaded boy was doing everything he possibly could to reverse his efforts by throwing him a fucking bachelor party!
Severus didn't want a bachelor party. He had no desire to look at scantily clad women willing to do all sorts of debauched acts when he had a perfectly beautiful young woman who was actually willing to spend the rest of her life with him. Granted, she spent a lot of her time talking about Merlin-knows-what, but Severus, snarky git of the dungeons, didn't have the heart to tell her that her beloved creatures didn't exist. He actually had a heart now (but only for her).
A ridiculously blonde witch dressed like a Muggle Playboy bunny tried to sit on Severus' lap. He scowled at her. She scampered away in a disturbingly rabbit-like manner. He fought back the overwhelming urge to smirk.
Looking up to survey the crowd, he got a much-too-long glimpse of Longbottom and… best to just not think of it. Severus shuddered. How long until this was all done? Snape stared at the clock above the door for a few moments before noticing the engraving of a nude woman on it. Shuddering he looked away.
The tinkling noise of a knife hitting a fine wineglass pulled Severus out of his mental self-pity monologue. Turning his head to face the annoying sound, he bit back a groan of annoyance when he saw The-Boy-Who-Lived-To-Defeat-Voldemort-And-Then-Attempt-To-Drive-Severus-Snape-To-The-Grave-With-Suffocating-Kindness grinning widely at him. Resisting the urge to bang his head repeatedly against a wall, Severus softened the intensity of his glare for half a second, prompting the Potter boy to simply get on with it.
"Erm…" Severus snorted at Harry's eloquence.
"We've come a long way…" started Harry, before he was cut off by a drunken 'hear, hear' from… Finnegan? Severus shook his head at the young man's antics. He was – blatantly, obviously, pathetically – pissed. Severus still didn't know why his bachelor's party was dominated by former students and current colleagues.
"We've come a long way," restated Harry. "And we've seen a lot of things. We all have known this guy," he gestured to Severus and grinned, "for much longer than we care to admit and we never thought he'd marry dear Loony. But," Harry flinched a little under Severus' glare (no one insults his Luna), "this great man who has always been there for us has now found true happiness. And we're just here to celebrate with him. No matter how much he pretends to hate this party, we know he's happy to have us with him!"
Amongst all the cheering following Harry's speech, no one noticed the tiny genuine smile that graced the face of Severus Snape for a fraction of a second. He never thought it possible, but he had great friends and a beautiful, loving, caring wife.
Severus Snape was… happy.
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R&R~! :D