Snape closed his eyes. "Potter." He didn't have to look to know. He could feel the boy's presence, like an aura. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Harry entered into the office slowly, pretending to inspect the objects stacked neatly on all the shelves. "I always liked this office. Bet it's nice to be out of the dungeons—"

"Is there a point to this visit?" Snape demanded irritably.

Harry's gaze drifted to meet Snape's. "I just wanted to welcome you back."

"Thank you. Now, if you don't mind…." He gestured with is his wand at the door, which flew open.

"I still don't understand why you've been avoiding me," Harry burst out, frustration latent in his voice. "I sent how many owls this summer? And I got two lines as a reply. I can recite them for you. No progress with the Sectumsempra research. Will be returning next term. Not even full sentences. Do you have any idea—?"

"I don't need your pity, and I don't need to be looked after like some miserable child. And watch your tone, Potter. I won't be scolded in my own office—"

"It's not just me!" Harry cut in. "Professor, you were a the only reason we were able to defeat him. You did what no one else wanted to do, what no one else could do—"

"I am the very reason any of this was necessary," he hissed, losing control. The door slammed back shut and Snape spun around, his black clothing fluttering as he did so. "The reason he set out to kill you. The reason she had to die. The reason you had to walk to your death. So do not pretend that I am some—some grand martyr. I have been paying for my dearest mistake for all these years, nothing more."

"We all make mistakes—"

"This was cowardice. Treachery of the lowest sort. You've witnessed it, Potter. Don't deny it."

"But you spent years—you risked your life—"

"And what good did it do in the end?"

"What good?" Harry exclaimed. "You can't be serious. You helped to keep me alive all these years. You fooled Voldemort—"

"And none of it can undo the past."

"That was never the point! No one can do that. If that was what you expected, you set yourself up to fail."

"Get out, Potter. I'm not in the mood to be cheered up."

"No." Harry rounded the desk and planted himself firmly in front of Snape. "Why can't you even talk about this? I mean, if you don't want to speak to me, fine. But talk to McGonagall, or Dumbledore's portrait—anyone. You're suffering—"

"And perhaps I deserve to suffer," Snape bit out, his voice cracking a little in spite of his best efforts. "I could not be a better man, not for her, not for you. I could not save Dumbledore. I could not protect the students of Hogwarts, even when I swore that I would—"

"You did everything in your power in a difficult situation—"

"I said that I don't need your pity. Go. I won't ask again."

Harry's eyes flashed like steel. "I'm not going. You know how much you risked. You played the villain just so—"

"Playing the villain was never much of a stretch for me," Snape sneered. "Oh, it was only too easy. Too easy to loathe Lily Potter's son, who looked so much like his damned father. What, you thought it was all an act crafted to fool the Dark Lord? That I am truly so noble?" He shook his head bitterly to himself. "No, even after losing her I could not bring myself to learn from my mistakes, to show you the same kindness she once showed me. It was too easy to make you pay for your father's wrongs. Even after I sent the Dark Lord after him…."

"But that's just it," Harry protested. He tried to touch Snape's arm, but Snape shook him off and strode over to the window. "It was Riddle. Riddle who started this whole thing, Riddle who acted, Riddle who cast the killing curse. Not you—"

"I acted on his orders many times. I will not pretend that I was forced or coerced. I relayed the information freely. I am just as guilty. And there is nothing you can say to—"

"She would have been proud."

Snape rigid. He could feel the blood draining from his face.

"My mum. She would've been so proud of you."

"Don't," Snape warned him hoarsely.

"She left you because she was afraid of who you were becoming. I know that. I saw—"

"I gave you my memories because I thought—I was certain—I was about to die—"

"Our choices show who we really are. Dumbledore told me that. And you chose to put yourself in mortal danger for years to keep me alive when you didn't know why, when you thought it was just for her. You were selfless in the end, and you fought for the right side. She would have been proud and grateful—"

"Out." Snape could feel the tears in his eyes, and he wasn't about to let the boy see them. "Out."

"I told you I'm not going anywhere."

A glass orb behind Snape shattered into a thousand pieces. Without turning, Snape waved his wand, causing the fragments to rise and mend back into a ball. He had to get a handle on himself.

"Potter, please, leave me," he ground out. "I don't wish to have this conversation."

"Will you talk to Dumbledore?"

"It is not your place to—"

"Will you talk to him or not?"

"Fine," Snape hissed. "Leave—"

"Do you swear it, on his grave?"

"On his grave," Snape echoed mockingly, though his voice was far too hoarse to carry its normal cutting edge. "Now out—"

"You deserve to heal and move on. I don't care if you don't believe that. Besides, it's what she would have wanted. She cared about you—"

"Enough!" Snape shouted. He could feel the tears beginning to seep down his cheeks, winding their way along his nose. He whipped around and, brandishing his wand with a flourish, he sent Harry back out of the office, dragged from his collar as if by an invisible hand. With another flick he locked the door and warded it.

At last he slumped back down in his chair at the desk. What Lily had wanted. She'd wanted nothing to do with him, hadn't she? After he'd uttered that vile, unforgivable word. He'd been dead to her. He still would have been dead—worse than dead—had she lived, had the Dark Lord actually spared her.

And now? he thought sullenly. Oh, he'd saved her precious son. But how many times had he delighted in watching the boy suffer over the years? How many times had he chosen snide, cutting remarks, how many times had he called him arrogant and insufferable? Even now, when her son was trying to save him from himself, he found himself completely unable to act decently.

"Ahem."

Snape's hands balled into fists. He whipped around to the wall where, for some reason, he'd chosen to hang a painting—a still life. Yes, for some reason he'd left a door open for the subjects of Hogwarts' portraits to still intrude upon his privacy.

"What is it, Phineas?" he snapped, dabbing his eyes quickly on his cuff. "I believe my instructions were clear—only under dire circumstances—"

"Dumbledore wishes to chat." Phineas glanced around himself in the painting, appraising its subject, a table laden with food and drink. "Well, I wouldn't have gone with this at all, Severus. It clashes with the décor—"

"If Dumbledore wants a word, why didn't he come himself?"

Phineas paced around in the frame, still inspecting every aspect of the peculiar painting. "Something about the comforts of familiarity, his aching bones and the arduous trek it is down here, he hopes you will indulge him… the usual. He says to come at midnight, and that the password is—"

"Hopscotch, yes, I've been informed. Now begone."

Phineas harrumphed indignantly. "After all my work, you think you can dismiss me out of hand like some house elf? I think—"

Snape whipped his wand at the portrait and, with a loud crack, it split in two; Phineas managed to leap out of the frame just before the two halves hit the floor.

Potter had probably already spoken to Dumbledore. They were two peas in a pod, two little meddlers and schemers and manipulators…. He shook his head to himself and returned to his desk.

Impulsively he reached into his desk and pulled out the half of the torn photo, the one of Lily watching her son on his toy broomstick. He stared at her face, as he so often did, tracing the shape of her cheeks, the curve of her bright smile. He felt the tears rising again, and this time he did nothing to fight them down.

After everything he'd done, would she have forgiven him?

XXXXX

Snape sighed and roused himself from his bed. It was nearly time. Though he didn't understand why meeting earlier hadn't been a possibility, seeing as he had a class of rowdy second years to teach in the morning. He only hoped that they would all be as well-behaved and deferent as his first year class.

His wand lit before him, he made his way through the corridors up toward the headmistress' office. The faint sound of giggling met his ears.

He sighed to himself. Was it too much to ask for him not to encounter rulebreakers just once, especially when he had somewhere to be?

He stopped dead in his tracks and extinguished his light, then moved carefully toward the sound of the soft tittering.

"Sh—sh! I think someone's coming!" a boy whispered from behind the stone statue of a witch.

"No one's there—you're just scared—"

"I swear I saw a light—"

Snape approached the side of the statue, where two young students, a Hufflepuff boy and a Ravenclaw girl, were huddled, peering out the other side. Snape allowed his wand to flare back to life.

The two fell over each other in their fright.

"Now, aren't the two of you supposed to be in bed?" Snape inquired silkily, rounding the statue and watching as they struggled to their feet. They couldn't have been older than third years. He held his wand out before him so he could get a closer look at their faces. "Gossamer," he identified the girl, "and… Fawley."

The two stared at him, wide-eyed, like paralyzed nocturnal animals.

"Professor," the Gossamer girl stammered, "I—we were just—"

"Heading back to your respective dorms. Five points from Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. Go on, before I change my mind and make it a detention."

The pair's expressions collapsed into relief.

"Thank you, sir," Fawley mumbled, clearly aware that they were being let off easy.

"Insipid flattery won't get you any points back. Run along."

Snape knew he was being extremely lax, considering what the usual penalty was. But he wasn't in the mood to quibble with students over their punishment. He just wanted to get this over with.

He reached the statue guarding the stairway to the headmaster's office without running into any more troublemakers. He gazed up at the repugnant stone gargoyle. "Hopscotch."

The gargoyle rotated with a great groaning, revealing a spiral staircase. Snape strode up, his robes billowing behind him, his glowing wand held aloft before him. When he reached the great wooden door leading to the headmistress' office, he tested the door and found that it swung in easily.

The office was, more or less, just as Dumbledore had always kept it, minus several of his personal odds and ends. McGonagall hadn't gone overboard in decorating, though she had moved her personal library into the space.

Snape conjured a fire in the hearth and sat in front of the headmistress' desk, eyes roving over the rows of portraits in search of Dumbledore's.

"Ah, Minerva remembered to leave the door unlocked."

Snape twisted to his left and saw that Dumbledore was there, just behind the desk, in a place of prominence. The shock of seeing him again, whole and untortured, caused his chest to tighten painfully.

"You wished to discuss something?" Snape inquired faintly through a stiff jaw.

Dumbledore smiled warmly at him, his blue eyes twinkling as they so often had. "Severus. I must say, I'm rather surprised that you haven't been to visit before now."

Snape looked away, focusing instead on the fire in the hearth, which was spitting and crackling noisily. "I've been busy."

"Things have gone so much better than we could have hoped. I thought you might wish to celebrate such a hard-fought victory."

Snape continued to stare at the logs, his eyes narrow. "We have accomplished what we set out to do. There's little more that needs to be said on the matter."

"Severus." Now a note of gentle admonishment entered into Dumbledore's tone. "You have acted valiantly, even in the face of death. Nothing short of great love and bravery could have called Fawkes to your side."

"I told you a thousand times over that I would not betray you. You know that I did all I could to aid Potter and his friends. You know I carried out your every order, even after…." For a moment he could see Dumbledore's limp body hurtling over the edge of the astronomy tower, the lingering glow of green in the air, the terrible, unbearable tightness in him as he struggled to appear indifferent. "I did not stop the Carrows when they began torturing students on your orders, because I could not appear too soft."

Snape could feel the frantic rise and fall of his chest, the way his blood hummed in his veins.

"I watched Charity die on your orders. I watched the light leave her eyes, Albus. I listened as she pleaded with me to help her. Do you know what agony—"

"I do not," Dumbledore murmured softly.

His unexpected confession choked the words in Snape's throat. "It was necessary, I agree. I know it was. I could scarcely stomach it. But I did. I did not falter. I never strayed—"

"I am afraid I've not made my point very clear, Severus," Dumbledore interjected amiably, though Snape saw something akin to pain lurking in the lines of his soft smile. "To call Fawkes back to your side in that precise moment, to coax such potent tears capable of repairing such a grave wound… Harry may have won the day to all onlooking eyes, but Fawkes flew to you. You have performed extraordinary feats at the cost of great personal suffering. By all accounts, you have been instrumental in stopping the greatest threat to us since Grindelwald. And yet…."

"And yet what?" Snape demanded.

"You are still deeply unhappy."

"You've been talking to Potter."

"Harry, yes, and Minerva and Filius and many, many others."

"Do I need to repeat myself? I have watched colleagues die. And you. I—"

"There is a time for grief. But I fear that this is more, that you are sinking into the darkness and dwelling there, in the pain of loss and failure." Dumbledore shifted a little in his seat and adjusted his robes, though Snape guessed that he was only manufacturing a pause here, time for Snape to absorb his words. "Perhaps you do not believe that you can be happy."

Snape's lips pressed together tightly. "Perhaps I've forgotten how," he suggested dryly.

"Perhaps you believe that you do not deserve to be happy."

Snape looked away again. He said nothing for a very long time.

Dumbledore did not seem inclined to speak either, so there they sat, the fire flickering in the hearth, the rest of the headmasters sleeping soundly in their frames.

When Snape did at last respond, his voice was thick, choked over. "You believe I do?" he scoffed, though again, as before, the edge was lost in the brokenness of his voice.

"Severus," Dumbledore sighed, "I would argue that you, more than anyone, deserve happiness and respite."

Snape shook his head slowly to himself. "After I have caused so much pain? There was a time when I was ready to sell two Potter souls to save the one I pretended to care for, the one I jealously sought, as if she were a possession—"

"The man who came to me that fated night, pleading for Lily Potter's life, is not the man sitting before me today. I have known you for more years than I care to count, and you have been a dear friend throughout almost all of them. If you cannot trust my judgment on this—"

"I trust that you feel the need to assuage my guilt." Snape rose to his feet and paced over to the hearth, feeling too agitated to remain in his chair. "I trust that you always try to see the best in people. I trust that you are trying to do me a great kindness now. But there is no sense in dancing around the truth. I have never been good, not like you, not like Potter. I have been loyal to you, to the memory of Lily."

"And have you not just told me what great personal cost you have borne for the sake of that loyalty?"

"We have all paid a great price for what has been achieved. That I am no exception is irrelevant."

Snape still felt the tightness in his chest. It had not left, had not let off. The Weasleys had lost a son, the Lupin boy two parents. The dead had littered the courtyard, at least fifty lifeless and still.

"The cost you have paid has been higher than most."

But he'd had no one left to lose.

Snape whipped back around to face Dumbledore. "You would say that to the parents who buried their children? To the children who buried their parents?"

"Those losses have been tragic, yes. But there was time to gather, to mourn, to comfort one another. You were forced to watch those atrocities unfold without being able to change anything, even to participate in Voldemort's barbarism. And you have done it alone, without reassurance, without recognition."

"And what is the point of this?" Snape demanded at last. "I will tell you the same thing I've told Potter. I do not need pity—"

"Harry doesn't pity you by far, Severus. He respects you. In spite of your best efforts, he cares for you." Dumbledore paused, as if gathering his next words. "I would like to think that Lily's spirit lives on in him. He looks like his father, but he has his mother's heart."

Snape could think of nothing to say. He stood there, trembling. His chest ached so sharply that it hurt to breathe.

"Do you think she would regret for an instant giving her life to destroy Voldemort that night?" Dumbledore asked quietly. " Because you forget, Severus, that but for her sacrifice, all might have been lost long ago."

Snape collapsed into the chair before the desk, tears already streaming down his cheeks. He could scarcely force his lungs to work. He could have saved her son a thousand times over. It would not erase what he'd done.

"She might not regret giving her life. But that has nothing to do with my betrayal—"

"You cannot think that, after everything you've done for her son, she would wish for you to be in this much pain?"

Snape lost himself in his tears then. They flooded down his cheeks, erupted and tore through his chest. He wrapped his arms around himself, fighting to hold together. But now, of all times, he could not summon that control and self-possession that he so often relied on.

Dumbledore's portrait watched silently, offering no words of solace. But Snape sensed his benevolent gaze all the same. He did not have to look up to see that.

A soft blue light flared behind him, bathing Dumbledore's portrait in a soft hue.

"Severus?"

McGonagall. Snape snapped to rigid attention, sitting up straight and attempting to dry his eyes, which he was certain were hideously red and swollen.

"Minerva," he choked faintly. "I didn't mean to disturb you—"

"Oh, Severus," she breathed, lowering her wand. She wore her dressing gown, a long tartan garment that flowed around her, and looked as if she'd just risen from bed. "No—there's no need to say a word. Let me fix us some tea." She seemed a bit flustered as she went searching for the kettle.

"I was just leaving," Snape mumbled.

"Please sit." Her normally stern tone was, for once, soft, almost pleading. She tapped the kettle, and a billow of steam immediately issued forth from the spout. McGonagall fussed over the cups for a moment.

Snape still had not resumed his seat. "Minerva, I'd best go. I have a class in the morning—"

McGonagall set both saucers down on the desk and made her way to Snape's side. She was a tall witch, but she still was an inch or so shorter than Snape. She took him firmly by the arm and squeezed, her blue-grey eyes meeting his teary gaze. She did not speak, but the strength of her hand on his arm and the mistiness of her eyes told him more than words ever could.

Snape could not help it, could not stop it. He was crying. Again. His lungs felt raw in his chest, and his jaw was so tight that he doubted he could speak.

McGonagall wrapped an arm around him, and for once Snape did not pull away instinctively. He stood frozen in the embrace, lost and broken, grieving the losses he had not been able to grieve for fear of giving himself away. But McGonagall's arm was like driftwood in a storm, the sturdy promise beneath him that he would not drown.

He dared to look up after a time and caught the sad smile on Dumbledore's lips, and—only briefly— a faint glimmer of liquid in the corner of his eye.