Severus cast a charm so that passersby couldn't see the butterflies pulling his hair in every direction, and another to calm them, but they kept getting loose and making his hair look all flyaway. Naturally the Prophet's Beauty section (they'd inclusively renamed it that after the many new gay readers protested) snapped a photo of him looking like that on his walk home.

Nothing happened that afternoon upon returning to the Ministry building, however. Nor at dinner. That didn't stop his mind from racing most of the night, making and unmaking plans.

Severus had a hard time tuning in to the light-hearted needling at the officer's mess the next morning. Harry had come in very late and gone to sleep, and was out again to eat breakfast with his troops. Something was happening, was the clear undertone at the dining hall.

But Severus had known that since yesterday with the butterflies.

It had been damn difficult to get them off. He had to hand that to Draco's movement. Their spellmaking was rock-solid. Snape's former student had rightfully realized that was important. New charms not only required good magical understanding to undo, they sent a message that their technology was reflected their side's untapped abilities. Trying to live in the past won't be enough, the many street stunts said.

And the butterflies were specially chosen for him, rather than some of the meaner and more harmful pranks that had been employed to shame or pressure someone into joining. "Look at this pedestrian—they've already joined the Traditionalists!" similar spells would say. Eventually, enough stunts and people would believe that a given man or woman was indeed a rebel, and they'd be pushed into the only arms that welcomed them.

Because there were only so many people who wanted to throw everything over without a push, and Slytherins had an innate knowledge of how to produce that push.

No, the butterflies were lovely, reflecting admiration. Severus was sure of it. Like his father before him, Draco had shown all signs of being very appreciative of the potions master no one else gave the time of day to. It had happened a few times while he was a spy—someone on either side finding him attractive for reasons he himself couldn't fathom. Severus had used these crushes, especially in Malfoy the elder's case, so he couldn't complain. Lucius was a family man, through and through, and very stuck on a narrow definition of what it meant to be a wizard, so he'd never act upon the favoritism he'd shown the dirty spy right up until the end.

Draco was from a younger generation. The professor had noticed the boy watching him and thought it much more dangerous than the father. If he had favored the boy it was because he saw clear indications that any sense of rejection might have gotten him a one-way trip to Azkaban on false charges of interfering. Severus had no intention of going back to that particular Hell for a besotted schoolboy's crush.

When Draco turned sixteen and there would be no more chance of a statutory charge, Severus breathed a sigh of relief. After the Slytherin dropped out around the same time as Harry in the first wave of those drawn into the fray, Severus had had to resort to the old "I don't want to take sides against a family I think so highly of" to avoid the two overtures Draco had made, inviting him over to his cause.

Severus was almost beginning to miss the old whiff of failure that followed him everywhere and could be clearly discerned on his arm.

Because whatever quality Draco had so desired in him as a decrepit almost-forty-year-old, was now imminently acquirable as a 22-year-old dandy. Or so Draco must have thought.

The former master of espionage had lain awake the previous night, wishing he could talk about his fears with Harry, but the longstanding enmity his Gryffindor lover held for his former Slytherin bully would make Harry apoplectic.

Besides, Harry was the only one who knew exactly why the Traditionalists were everything that Severus loathed.

It had started one evening, early on in Harry's treatment. The paraplegic had an outburst of paranoia about Snape's motivations and the fact that the cure was taking so long. Severus knew that Harry was no slouch when it came to human nature, and obviously he'd figured Snape's motivations to be more predictable than anyone usually grasped. He was exactly the vain, self-centered ill-humored man he appeared to be, and little else. Otherwise, the desperate young man would have put himself into a different grate.

"You're different than I thought," Harry said after Severus misted a soothing vapor over his patient to calm the extended tirade against everything he found unjust in the world. Which was at this moment, equal to all the Slytherins who tormented him in his youth.

The teacup clashed in the saucer as Severus handed it to him. This he didn't like.

"How can I un-disappoint you, Potter? Better victuals? More sarcasm? You'll have to spill your potion like you used to in my class and see what happens. I deserve time off like everyone else," he finished more softly than he intended.

"I've been here for weeks. We've debated about what's going on in the papers. You've pontificated about the right way the make a good bone repair potion versus Skele-gro, and many, many other tirades about the superiority of your unlisted medicines over the approved potions list." Severus laughed, though he knew what was coming. "And you've said nothing about your past or your present. This is you, this is you relaxed, and you still have nothing to say about yourself. Show me the Pensieve if you can't bear to tell me. You must have brainwashed yourself to forget your past."

"I have forgotten exactly nothing. Just as I won't forget this attempt to invade my privacy after I have been so kind to you." Severus was more hurt than he realized, and Harry caught it. "After all is said and done, I am merely a dull, empty person. Adulthood is all about disappointment."

Harry was undeterred. "I don't understand how your wardrobe works, but I swear we have telepathic conversations, and he doesn't seem to think so."

"I am glad you are finding the company of my furniture agreeable, as a friend with true discretion is very rare." And the potions master had slammed himself in his bedroom. The memories he'd learned to push away were crowding around by his bed where he lay with calm, wide eyes while he listened through the door to Harry sweet-talking a Lawrence that kept sliding away.

It took the advent of their true sexual intimacy, after the second kiss (Severus forgot nothing) for him to start telling Harry unprompted one day over dinner.

"You know that I am from muggle ancestry on one side of course," Severus said. There had been an incident with one of his old schoolbooks falling into Harry's hands. It seemed so long ago, their eyes said to each other.

"Yes, I know." Harry let the silence stretch as long as he needed.

"I gather that your muggle family is not full of enviable specimens of humanity." Harry had told him all about it during their long hours together. "But you may not be aware of the particular brand of nasty that English muggles become when they get bitten by the mystical bug."

"You mean like religious fanatics?" Harry inquired.

"I mean spiritualists, occultists, and all the dark fairy tales that are more properly an excuse to indulge their urge for power. Have you ever heard of the Society of the Golden Dawn?" Harry shook his head. "Picture a group of muggles led by a good facsimile of Voldemort. Except what they, what not even their leader knew was that magic is real. That even their cheesy rituals could, very rarely, tap into some hidden gene and make a table levitate, for instance, A sudden breeze to overturn a tarot card. They were helpless to replicate the results, if they were results. But in the meantime they were indiscriminately fucking and doing anything else they pleased. 'Do what thou wilt' was their snide little refrain to justify swindling and stealing the peace of mind from the vulnerable and doing all manner of regrettable acts."

"And your muggle parent was like this."

"He was my father, and yes, he was one of that sect. The rare kind of lunatic that could keep it together perfectly, bowler hat and 8 hours at the bank, five days a week. But when he left those walls he was obsessed with bending the universe to his will with a mishmash of incantations that probably never meant anything to anyone."

"And your mother?"

"She was a thoroughly normal and lovely witch who had the misfortune of being something of a clairvoyant. Occasionally a very determined muggle would hear of my mother's well-deserved reputation as the genuine article. She was normally very selective and only helped good causes. People wrongly accused of a crime, or an orphan trying to locate a lost relative. Legitimate magical historians, and the like. Whereas most people with her talent were practically owned by the Ministry, something she was very careful to avoid. 'Never sell yourself to any side, Severus,' she told me. 'Only work for yourself.' This one piece of advice saved my life, as it turned out."

"Why would she help your father, then? Couldn't she tell what he was like?" Harry pressed.

"She fell in love. I think she'd seen his face in one of her visions and that was why such a beauty had remained alone, patiently waiting for him to appear until the age of 25. He showed up at one of her exclusive appearances and said he wanted to know some rubbish. What the true meaning of some Egyptian chant was that could grant him special powers. She had enough sense not to tell him, but not enough to refuse his invitation to dinner."

"She didn't tell him about magic!" Harry exclaimed, correctly deducing what such a person would do with that knowledge.

"Give my mother some credit! Besides, have you ever tried to tell a muggle about magic?"

"I've talked with Hermione's parents before," Harry said.

"Who have a very powerful binding charm preventing them from disclosing our world, just like every muggle in the know." He burst out laughing at Harry's expression. "Yes, your precious Ministry maintains very precise but very close audio surveillance to protect this world. Else the secret would have been out long before now."

Harry's brow knit as he tried to take that new information in. "And if I tried?"

"You, like my mother, would find yourself unable to pronounce the words. You'd say, 'The other day I was out picking gooseberries," where you'd meant to say you were casting a spell. She found it very amusing and thus, effortless, to have these dinners among my father and these other people who had the most curious ideas."

"And any regular muggle would have smelled a rat immediately," Harry completed.

"Yes. My mother avoided entanglements with all the perils our magical society had to offer, but she was unprepared a creature like my father. Luckily, she was canny enough never to give up her home in Magical London. Right on the Alley, we used to be. What snapped her out of every young witch's dream of a new family was when I was born. She came into the nursery in the home they shared in the Muggle part of London, and my father was apparently splashing some liquid on me while a couple of his mad friends were chanting and dancing."

"It was some kind of ritual?" Harry asked.

"Yes. They splashed so much of some supposedly magical oil to almost choke me on it, she said. When she snatched me up they were all looking at her with this queer expression. 'What have you gotten in your foolish muggle heads this time?' was what she meant to say. But instead they heard a certain expletive, the Ministry's monitoring spell never intending to interfere with the expression of free speech."

"'He's our Magickal Childe,'" her husband said. 'He's destined to greatness, our son; he'll be the latest in a long line of magicians just like' and here they mentioned the name of their pet prophet."

"'Oh yes? Well I'm close cousins with Nicholas Flamel, and you don't hear me bragging about my magical abilities while nearly drowning my son in oil!'" she retorted.

"Are you really?" Harry asked then, to relieve the tension.

"My pedigree could have gotten me through any door in magical society, at one time," Severus admitted.

Now that he'd started, he couldn't seem to stop his tale. "She apparated with me in her arms, right there, and once she explained the circumstances, the Ministry wouldn't even levy a fine for violating the Magical Subtlety Act in doing so. And it was the Ministry itself that told my mother about my father's threats to take her to muggle court for visitation rights. They did everything they could to prevent my father from having contact with this unhinged muggle who could be very dangerous for me, and our world, though my mother was too stubborn to listen to everyone's advice until it was too late."

"When did you meet him?" Harry asked.

"On my tenth birthday. I don't believe he really would have taken my mother to court over the child he had no interest in whatsoever. It was some tatty little prophesy he'd read somewhere about some 'Magickal childe' coming to lead their flagging movement in the year I turned ten."

"He can't have been very nice," Harry said, as if he wished to lance that boil and find out what had really happened.

"He wasn't bad. Bad never is, Harry. Evil is completely disarming. The next time someone makes all of your misgivings go completely silent, that's when you should have your wand ready for the attack. He was different than anyone I knew; he gave me muggle toys; he was my father. Up until this point my mother had tried to give me a more normal family life by scuttling me off to her extended family for summers and holidays. Sometimes she joined me, sometimes she didn't. I could have done without all that conviviality, as you can imagine," Harry giggled. "She and I were perfectly happy together on our own. But I can make nice when needed, and that's what I thought she needed. Lawrence was there, to save me packing up my things all the time, and that made it easier."

Harry nodded seriously. "But you figured out he was crazy."

Severus scoffed. "Children are much quicker to pick up on these things than parents. But fatally, they are much kinder. They see this game that the disturbed person is playing with rules no one else can catch, they feel sorry for the adult and try to play along with them to keep them company.

"After two months of weekend visits with sweets and trips to the park, when my mother had gotten used to getting me back in one piece, all of a sudden one day she didn't get me back at all."

Harry's eyes widened.

"It wasn't the worst year of my life, Harry. These so-called magical societies are simply an unwholesome combination of the ineffable and the British genius for systematization. They have members in the highest places—people who aren't content with their already considerable power. This means they had the money and the access to keep a ten-year-old boy hidden from the Ministry and a mother who could be quite formidable when she had to be."

"But how could they? I thought she was psychic?" he protested.

"My mother could tap into things at will, and this element of will is what kept her from her own potential for madness. She knew which doors to open and which to leave closed, usually. As far as I knew, this gifted clairvoyant actively avoided finding out things about her family members' destinies or world political events. I found out later that she second-guessed herself only once, and that was in relation to my father, and thus me. If she'd looked ahead, she might have prevented some things. But at the same time, she would have been expecting them, and that would have been worse for me, I think."

"But, but, she didn't try to find you?" Harry demanded.

"She did, Harry. But this must have been my destiny, this year of captivity. Because no matter how hard she concentrated, my mother's visions never led her to me. As luck would have it, these people surrounded me with so many confusing and contradictory symbols from their so-called philosophy, that my mother's vision of me being near the sea was actually of me held underground in a ritual space whose walls and ceilings were painted too look like the sea. These people loved their cheesy symbolism. You get the idea."

"Did they—" Harry asked in a small voice.

"They never used me for any of their sexual rituals, some of which went on near me. But they did a frightful lot of naked dancing in enactments of ancient Egyptian myths and invocations of these queerly named angels. During which I was often naked, or clothed in a loincloth, which was worse somehow."

"I'm sorry," Harry faltered.

"They didn't beat me most of the time, though I could have used more regular food and the chance to walk outside, instead of being drugged and carted around between secret rooms all over London."

Severus could see Harry relaxing a little from his worst fears. "The truly damaging thing they did, besides keep me from my mother and my society, was that they looked at me like an object. A child picks up on this immediately: someone looking at them like one of those vending machines that if you turn it upside down and shake it right, you might be able to get a free packet of candy. Except they wanted something from me I was absolutely powerless to understand or to speak, for that matter.

"For ten months I shouted, 'Tell me the spell and I'll try to cast it! I'm not very good yet, but I can do a Leviosa and a rather good spell for cleaning a room.' And instead, because of the binding spell, they heard a load of nonsense, such as 'I can sing God Save the Queen while standing on my head and crossing my eyes, want to see?'

"When they got tired of my admittedly strange responses, sometimes I got a backhand. Or my clothes were taken away during non-ritual hours. Or they'd dock me a meal or two." Severus made an exasperated noise at his listener's horror. "Compared to the misery lived by some children, it was nothing, Harry. No broken bones. No—other physical injuries. I did learn that without a wand, one type of magic still open to me was potions. Through trial and error, or what you might call more accurately desperation and natural aptitude, I made something out of the ingredients in one hiding room that made my father's hand cover itself with boils when he hit me. It only worked for a few days, but it was enough to send them back to the drawing board, trying to make me do the magic they were convinced I was able to do."

Severus took a breath and softened his tone. "You'll learn, Harry, that there is nothing so strong as the truth. I come from a long line of very capable magical folk, and I'd already been using a training wand since I was a toddler. I am, in fact, magical. They desperately waned some sliver of magic for themselves. It was the perfect recipe to keep them turning me upside down forever."

"But then your mother found you," Harry prompted.

"My mother died, some would say from grief, while I was imprisoned. I did see notebooks full of her visions from that time that were, as I say, accurate but never good enough. But as you may be aware, nothing will divert those Hogwarts letters from reaching their destination." A light came into Harry's eyes. "And a drove of envelopes and birds found me where not even the Ministry could. The authorities and three of my more frightening uncles came to rescue me that August before school."

"They must've killed your father when they got a hold of him," Harry said hopefully.

"No, they didn't Harry. It would have caused an international incident and they didn't want to touch such a creature, besides. Don't worry. They Obliviated all of the muggles in that branch of that particular sect. It was done so thoroughly that they, my father included, ended up drooling on themselves in a back ward for the rest of their lives. It wasn't the last I saw of my father's side of the family, however."

"You went back? After all that?" Harry asked incredulously.

"Not exactly. My school career started off on a bad foot, as you can imagine, and I had little interest except in learning to defend myself from a hostile world. But one day I was in Muggle London for some reason, probably to eat some of the muggle food I'd grown to rather like. An elderly lady was sitting in the park and she looked up at me as if she's seen Father Christmas. It was Christmas time, and I was pretending I had somewhere specific to be, instead of an ignored place at the table of whichever of my relatives had drawn the short straw. 'Severus?' she asked in wonder, stretching out her hand as if to an apparition.

"My grandmother had seen pictures of this purported grandson from my father, but she'd never met me in person. Still, was able to recognize the ten-year-old me in the much angrier fifteen-year-old that my other relatives had a hard time recognizing. This must have been why I went back to see her, though I knew how upset my family would be by these visits. She gave me a real Christmas¬—until she looked up from the meal and started calling me by my father's name. She was suffering from advanced dementia, you see, and probably never realized that her imaginary grandson for whom she'd been knitting sweaters for fifteen years was actually there."

"She was nice, then?" came the hopeful question.

"She was very, very nice. My gran left little cakes for me all over her apartment, the way you would to attract fairies. She never grasped what age I really was but had no trouble with me showing up out of nowhere, as I learned to apparated very young. I started charming one of her wardrobes to connect with Lawrence, much as I did with the cupboard in my laboratory at Hogwarts. She made my favorite foods and they'd appear in Lawrence here at school. It was quite lovely for a time; exactly what I needed. When she died a year later I had nothing left, or so I thought. Voldemort reminded me of my father: it was a clear madness that I felt I had to excuse by trying to play along myself. In the end it seems so simple, something so easily avoided, but as I said, it is the absurd things in life that catch you and keep you."

It was the best explanation Severus had for his failed life, and one that sounded very hollow to his ears. Harry hadn't protested the narrative at all, to Severus' surprise. The young man sat very quiet and still for some long minutes. Finally, he asked, "Is he still alive?"

"My father? He was in an asylum somewhere until he died three years ago, from what I gather. I never went to see him."

As if wanting to fill the desolation of Severus' life, Harry suggested, "You said you had a big family. There must be some relatives still around."

"Oh yes. You've met one of them many times." Harry looked up eagerly. "Cornelius Fudge was my first cousin. I stayed at his house several times a year as a child."

He spit out his tea.

"My mother was a Fudge, though she deemed her mother's maiden name, Courtenay, to be more melodic and fitting for a medium. Unfortunately, it didn't suit me."

"That is a lovely name. You could have taken it rather than your father's," Harry said gently.

It was Severus' turn to spit tea. "Do you know what Courtenay means?"

Harry shook his head.

"It's French for 'short nose,' idiot. To anyone with any French at all it would be like introducing myself, 'Hi, I'm Severus Staunch Heterosexual,' or 'Hi, I'm Severus with the Not-at-all-Fluctuating-Alliances."

They laughed. They'd gotten through something together.

"None of them will even look at me to this day, not even after the pardon and the lukewarm commendation," Severus resumed placidly.

"Why not? Most of the lads my age think you had a lot of balls to survive as a spy for that long."

"They what?" Severus bolted out a guffaw and soon his listener joined him. They laughed until they wept.

"That must be why we get along. You're a Boy Who Lived as well," Harry said softly. They clinked teacups. Then Harry thought for a moment. "You were like the Lindbergh baby!"

"More or less. To those in the know, the comparison is very apt. But if you were to look in the old issues of the Prophet, all you'd find would be a mention that Severus Snape had rejoined his mother, the medium Aurelia Courtenay, after living for a time in the muggle world. The ministry did a splendid job hushing it up. No, I'm not afraid to give credit where credit is due. They rescued me and then tried to hush the scandal. I had less reason than anyone to be angry with the authorities, Harry. They did all that they could and I never blamed them, but they imagined my entire sordid life to be one public exercise of blame. Perhaps they feel as though they could have done something more to prevent it. If they weren't decent people we would have got on better, basically. In another reality I never lost all my family, and things turned out better, I like to think sometimes."

"But the Death Eaters were a family of sorts. I saw the way some of them killed themselves rather than turn out their comrades. You never turned on any of them, either."

"I know so many secrets, Harry, that only a great fool such as you could stand to be around me," Severus said wryly. "And yes, there was that about my sometime-companions from Voldemort's circle. I've always preferred to stay on the sidelines, but I like having something warm nearby to dip my toes into, or rebel against, as the situation calls. Preferably more than one thing."

He let Harry look at him after this long speech he'd never had with anyone. "So you're all right then?" the young man hazarded.

"I'm far from the best case scenario, but also not the worst, I like to think," Severus replied primly.

"No, Severus. Do you know none of the people my age think you're the worst?"

"Did something happen to wizarding society in your generation to make all of your heads go soft? Why do you say that?"

"Because you fought for something that couldn't be reduced to a side. You were you, and not what anyone tried to make you," Harry struggled to articulate his peers' estimation.

Severus was irate. "That's because my life can't be understood by anything so comprehensible! I was desperate! That's all. Don't make me a symbol of adolescent rebellion!"

"And what were you after you didn't have to be desperate?" Harry asked, smiling.

"Desperate for desperation. Which has been in short supply," Severus scowled.

"Is that why you like a firm hand?"

"I think being in a relationship with someone nearly 20 years my junior is the very definition of desperation."

"You can hate on yourself if you like, Severus. I won't stop you," Harry said, glancing over at Lawrence, who had come over to lend his support.

Severus had merely nodded. He was exhausted and wary about having talked about his most precious dark corners. When over the next two days, Harry showed absolutely no signs of treating him differently, Severus finally couldn't stand it anymore.

"Go ahead and say it!" he burst out.

"What?" Harry looked up from his exercises.

"Whatever grotesque thing you've been dying to say!"

"What are you on about, Severus? I've got a lot on my mind, no offense."

They left it at that until dinner, when Harry said, "If you'd tried pitying me for a second I would have socked you one. But you didn't because your head is screwed on right, like it or not. Just because I'm young doesn't mean I'm stupid. I find the supposition that it is to be rather 'grotesque.'"

"Fair enough," Severus had said.

And then they'd spoken no more about it. But something had changed between them, and Severus wondered whether it was just trusting someone enough to talk about his past, or whether it was specifically Harry. But of course it was Harry.

Their lovemaking became immediately deeper, more free and yet more delicate. They talked about the occasional newspaper articles on the missing Captain Potter, and they both knew what it was like to be a symbol. Harry even seemed less cynical about the Ministry he worked for.

Severus had hoped his many tales of Ministerial duplicity would have sunk in better, but if he made it easier for his partner to deal with the ambivalence any thinking person felt about their government, then that was all right, he supposed.

"I always wondered why you were so hard on me," Harry said out of the blue one day when they were in bed.

"You must be joking!" Severus sat up. "Though you claim to not be stupid, you think I singled you out? That I was exceptionally cruel to you." Harry was nodding his head slowly as if Severus were finally recognizing something obvious. "I was the only one to treat you normally! You did something annoying, I was annoyed. You didn't answer a question properly on a test, you got marked down. There was no differential grading based upon your fame. I wanted you to have a chance to be normal, to be prepared, if anything." He took in Harry's skeptical look. "I notice you've not made any move to contact Dumbledore, though he's right upstairs. You chose my grate because I have proved myself trustworthy, though I may be an inveterate liar. As is our mutual friend, I might add."

"He's like a father to me." Harry surveyed their current state within the sheets. "I don't want him to 'understand,'" here he did a good rendering of Dumbledore's toleration. "I want him to really understand. And I don't want him to see me this way," he indicated the still-shrunken legs. "He'll try to help, and it will be horrid."

"Albus is a beloved friend, but Lawrence has never once looked at me like a Problem To Be Solved," Severus agreed. The cabinet wandered over and he stroked the side. "You've not seen him be firm with me. Lawrence made sure I looked at myself every day so that at least I understood the choices I was making and what each of them did to me. It was not an easy sight."

"You must not have looked in the mirror recently," Harry observed, stroking his hair. "You could go out somewhere and pick up your choice of guys." He watched closely for Severus' reaction.

"Lovely. Seduction was always a sorely missed tool in my spy's arsenal."

"Maybe you should. Just so you know you can," Harry had said casually.

"I don't want to seduce, stupid boy. I'm too old for all that. I want a good, stern seeing-to."

"You're as old as you feel, Severus, and I'd say you've got much more life left in you than you've been allowed to show."

Severus was seen to that night in his dungeon quarters, all right, but Harry knew he meant that he wanted to be loved.