The Healing of Severus Snape

Author: Adrienne Wolter (catsncritters).
Summary: Severus Snape suffered a cold life, but one boy can make it all worth it.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Implied SLASH, between Severus Snape and Harry Potter. If you notice, there is quite an age difference as well. If you don't know what slash is, you probably don't want to read this. If you do, and like it, I'd appreciate feedback, but it's in no way necessary.
Reviews: appreciated--but not required. I'm still trying to decide what to do next with Switched. I'm feeling rather guilty - I can't even honestly say I've written more than one paragraph to chapter eighteen. Oh, dear me.
Archive: I don't really know how archiving works, since I've never had a story that's been archived. I'd certainly like to know if it is archived, however.
Noted: This is one-shot. The age is based on the assumption that Severus was born in the spring of 1959. I think. If it's off, oh well, it's based off Addy Math (which simply isn't always right) my crazy confused timeline for Four Hours and the Potter Lexicon. I really do want to write actual slash and not just implied stuff, but the ideas simply aren't coming to me. That, and my writing style is, at the moment, freaking me out. I think there are some crazy fan fiction fumes (the newly invented FFF, man) affecting my ability to write stuff that, uh, doesn't freak me out.
Yes, that is all.

.---.

At the age of eight, he stopped liking people.

He had been so naïve, so childish to believe that people really cared about anyone but themselves. Precious few understood the importance of others. In much late years, he realized that this belief was more than likely do to his young age, but it still came as a blow when he first realized that no one was perfect.

Well, not exactly. His parents had unwittingly prepared him for the blow; they were so imperfect and led such a crazy existence in the household that even at eight years of age he knew something was wrong. He stood by and watched their fights; he listened silently when they vented to him even at five years old, believing him incapable of understanding.

If there was anything Severus Snape was good at, it was understanding.

But his parents were still reasonable people. They weren't entirely evil souls; they each had their good and bad sides when it came to parenting, though together it mainly amounted to bad. They never intentionally hurt him. He knew they both loved him.

But even so, it didn't change the fact that his father drank a little too much and his mother was a sickly, weak-willed woman.

At ten, he had come to understand power and greed. By watching someone as they interacted with a Muggle or a Muggleborn, he could read their true intentions. There were some whose personality never changed with the people they associated with, pureblood or not. There were some who would be polite but stab them in the back when they turned. And there were some who treated those with impure blood like the bug on the sole of their shoe, something disgusting to be despised.

When he had received his Hogwarts invitation at the age of eleven, his parents were pretty much unfazed; as they shipped him off to school, he was the excited one and they remained unexcited, bored perhaps.

His first year had been a difficult one. He'd watched a group of four friends form between three houses and been horrified, almost, when they began targeting him for pranking. Even though he'd come to the school prepared–watching his parents and their guests had allowed him to soak up a great deal of magical and dark knowledge–it still scared him how much people started to dislike? What had he done wrong? Why should people care if he had a rather prominent nose, or flat hair? But they unwittingly turned him in on himself, for others simply could not provide comfort.

At fourteen, Severus Snape had his heart broken. Lily Evans, a rather shy part of the group of most pursued female students at Hogwarts, had always tried to be nice to him. They had started seeing each other at thirteen, but by the next year Potter had, for the most part, turned her against him. He never did find out how.

At sixteen, he made a mistake. Led on by his senior by one year, Lucius Malfoy, he had believed that he was loved. He didn't like to think about the things they did together, but before Lucius had graduated he had succeeded in recruiting him into the Dark Lord's younger circle. Then he had promptly tossed him aside in favour of Narcissa Black, whom he married.

At sixteen, he stopped trusting people.

At eighteen, he became a spy. Years later he would realize that Dumbledore, though more dignified and caring a fool, had led him on similarly to Lucius; the only thing missing was the sex, really.

At twenty-one, he became a teacher. Dumbledore had fudged some paperwork and magical contracts and suddenly he was a Potions Master, apprenticeship entirely bypassed; he had always had a talent for the subject, but it still made him feel guilty, sometimes.

At thirty-one, he became an enemy all over again. He had hated Harry Potter from the minute Lily had named the freshly born baby boy after her great uncle, and when the boy had the... pleasure of meeting him at eleven, he'd made this known. He almost felt sorry for the boy sometimes–he couldn't stop. If he was going to act like he loathed the boy for the first time in front of Draco Malfoy, the son of Lucius, he'd better for the life of him keep up the act. He'd realized very quickly that the boy was not his father, of course. And he hated the boy for not fearing him, having the same fear that he himself had been forced into having of the boy's father.

At thirty-six, he fell into love again. No one could ever know of course–the look that Albus gave him whenever Lily was brought up by him was enough to make him swear not to break his heart again. But seeing all the memories of Harry's–that's what he called him in his mind–in Occlumency made him care the tiniest bit about the boy, though he hated himself for it. And throughout the year, even after the boy had scared him by seeing the pitiful memory of himself and his own father, he had too much time to think about the matter. And in all his over-analyzation, he somehow tripped right over the line dividing fascination and love.

At thirty-seven he became a mentor. Dumbledore, always having to meddle, made him teach Harry Occlumency again, and one evening when he'd let his guard down just a little bit the boy had seen that he was a real person after all. Then, Harry began to stay after lessons to talk to him about his problems, to pour his heart out when he couldn't to his friends. After all, they were all over each other, making him a sort of third wheel in the friendship.

And at one point he'd fumbled in conversation again. At first only he had realized his mistake; he sent Harry away immediately, and the boy, dazed, had left. He'd obviously figured him out by the time he came back, of course. And in a move that surprised both of them, he'd accepted it, even returned the feelings.

At thirty-eight he was spared of the burdens of being spy. The Dark Lord was defeated.

In the spring that he turned thirty-nine and the June that followed, he sadly watched Harry complete his final year of Hogwarts. Graduation had been an affair that the man skipped altogether, much preferring the comfort of his office to the overly-dramatic graduation speeches, crying females, and the dance that followed. Disobeying the headmaster for once in his life, he shirked his chaperoning duties, prowling the hallways before deciding to return to his chambers.

Where he found Harry waiting for him. In one sentence, the boy had managed to brighten his life, dissolve the worry that he would leave and break Severus' heart so like Lucius had. And for that he was unspeakably grateful.

"You didn't actually think I'd just leave, did you?"

He remembered the smug expression he'd managed at that sentence, while his insides were fluttering with joy. "Of course not."

Amazing, how one boy could make his whole life worth it. How one boy could heal the seemingly impossible Severus Snape.