The Usual Disclaimer: Jo Rowling has the only rights to these lovely gentlemen. Wish I did... just so I could see them whenever I want. However... I do appreciate her willingness to let them out to play. No galleons, sickles, or knuts have come my way... nor do I expect them to. Perhaps you could feed me some feedback? Thank you all.


When they finished, Snape sat at his desk and graded the rolls of parchments his NEWT students had turned in. One or two required remediation, an equal number were brilliantly done. Most were satisfactory. He made appropriate comments, rolled the parchments up, and sent them to his classroom with a wave of his wand. Potter was leafing through a potions book again. Snape cleaned his quill carefully, then leaned back in his desk chair, twirling his wand idly in his hands, watching the boy for a while… trying to memorize him… Potter… the man… what he was like now… while he could. Something about watching the man made his heart ache… loss, maybe. Or fear. Or… something like longing.

He did not want to leave the room, he realized… wanted to pin the boy here with his eyes… keep him here… not have him disappear, wander off, leave again… for another six years, five months and seventeen days… for forever. His heart kept hurting, and his eyes kept wanting to tear up. Don't, Sev. Just… don't. Focus on something else.

"Anything interesting?" he said, after a while.

Potter looked up. "Just refreshing… been a while since I cracked a book."

He nodded. "I need to make a restorative draught for Poppy's apothecary. I should spend an hour in my lab."

Potter nodded absently and went back to his book. Snape went off to his lab, his ears alert to any sound… waiting for the boy to abandon him, he realized. He tried to shake it off, tried to work past the moisture in his eyes. Focus. Potions. He pulled out the advanced potions book. There was no way he could trust his memory in this state. He'd have to be careful, check instructions, measure twice. He heard Potter moving around in his study and using the loo; then the boy came into the lab and perched on a stool at the end of his table, watching him work. Merlin. He felt his shoulders and stomach relax.

"Hand me that, would you?" Snape asked, nodding at a bottle of valerian. Potter handed him the vial. "Measure out a teaspoon of that motherwort?" The boy laughed and handed him the spoonful. He tried not to think about it… the boy's fingers passing it to him.

"You could make another for yourself, if you want. You look like you could use it."

Potter canted his head at him, searching his face, then got up and took out a small cauldron and a set of measuring spoons and cups, and worked side by side with Snape, reading the instructions from the book Snape moved between them. It was like dancing, their movements coordinated, working around each other, in time with each other. Each time Potter's arm or hand or hip brushed against his, Snape's concentration faltered, and he had to pause, inhale, steady himself. Focus. But… he'd have done… anything…

No. Gods, Sev… Focus.

Snape kept an eye on Potter's work. His hands were steady, and his work was precise. He nodded as Potter glanced at him for approval at one point. He finished his potion several minutes before Potter's was done simmering, then helped him decant his potion into an appropriate vial.

Potter compared the two – his and Snape's – and turned to him, lifting an eyebrow. Snape recalled a discussion they had had sometime early during his recovery, about the fact that older wizards' potions tended to be deeper in hue and tone because of the greater burden of life experience they carried, which tended also to make their potions stronger. Potter smiled at him wryly and said, "Looks like I caught up."

Snape looked at his vial and Potter's and nodded. "Sorry to see that," he murmured. Not because he did not want Potter's potions to be as effective – he certainly wanted that for the boy – but because of what it implied about the burdens he was carrying.

Potter shrugged.

"I'm going to take these off to Poppy's. Care for a walk?" Snape said.

The boy hesitated a moment, then shrugged again. "Why not?"

He was afraid to leave the boy, he realized. Six years was… a long time. His heart ached with it, fear, hurt and anger fighting with each other. Six years, damn it. You couldn't write? Not once in six years? It was hurt, he realized… and loss… and fear that the boy would disappear again… that he wouldn't be able to handle it – not again.

They walked through the halls of the school. It was late, even for seventh years, so the halls were deserted, but they felt less empty to him with Potter at his side than they had in years.

"I miss this place," the boy said.

Snape glanced at him. Gods, I've missed him. He missed Potter's voice, and the slightly clomping way he walked, stark contrast to his agility on a broom and his dance-like movements in Defense Against the Dark Arts. He missed the dangerous glint in Potter's eyes when he confronted him. He missed the challenge of it. He missed… guarding Potter, being aware of him, knowing where he was every moment of the day and night. He closed his eyes against it, then opened them and stared up the hall, into the darkness. Merlin, Sev. Stop.

"I think it's the only place I ever felt at home."

It had been home to Snape, too, once. It still was, but… Minerva and Hagrid and Sprout were pale substitutes for Potter… though Minerva was a more faithful friend than Dumbledore had been. "Don't you own Grimmauld Place?"

Potter twitched. "Yeah… but…" He shrugged.

It was probably empty there, too, for the boy, without his godfather. Or a wife. "What about the Burrow?"

Potter shifted his shoulders uncomfortably. "The Burrow's a great place. Molly makes a good home. But… ah…it's not my home."

"What happened with you and Ginny, anyway?" Snape asked as they reached the fourth floor. He shook his head at himself in the dark corridor. Why are you asking that? He knew why. What's the matter with you? Are you trying to make it hurt? Stop it!

Potter walked beside him a few steps before he answered. "If you don't mind, I'd rather not talk about that in the hall, Professor."

Snape nodded. "Of course, Potter. I apologize."

"You don't need to apologize. It's just… I don't mind telling you…" Potter hesitated as if reconsidering that, then twitched his shoulders and went on. "But I'd rather tell you… maybe when we get back."

"As you wish."

"What have you been up to, these last six years?"

Snape gestured around. "Teaching. Potions."

"Potions? What happened to Defense Against the Dark Arts?"

"Didn't have much… didn't have the stomach for it, after the Battle. There are better teachers than I, for that particular topic."

"You taught Defense great, though."

"Did I? Didn't know you were paying attention."

"Yeah, well… I was a bit miffed with you at the time… Those Occlumancy lessons…"

"Indeed… I apologize," he said again.

Potter shrugged. "Dumbledore told you to do it."

"I should have refused."

"Why?"

"It…" It was rape, that's why. "We had no right to do that to you… there were… there should have been… other ways to protect you… protect us."

"Like what?"

"… I don't know. I don't know anymore. I've tried to figure it out… how we could have made it easier for you… what I should have done differently…"

"Professor…" The man did not go on. What could he have said? It had been brutal… unfair… so very unfair. There was nothing to say. Snape went back to where they had been before.

"You and your classmates came into that class rather more prepared than I expected, as I recall. Neville tells me you taught them, fifth year, when Umbridge was here."

"Yeah." Potter scratched at his ear. "Well – we weren't learning anything from her. And we needed something."

"Good thing you did that."

"Was it?"

"What you taught your friends saved their lives, Potter… some of them."

The boy snorted. Snape shook his head. When had Potter become so cynical?

"I found I had no interest in Defense Against the Dark Arts after the Battle. Took me better than a year to be in condition to teach anything."

"Yeah – you didn't look too good at the memorial."

Didn't know you'd noticed...

Don't say that, Sev.

"I wasn't. But by the end of that second summer, I was better – better enough to teach, anyway. Even so, Defense would have been too physically demanding. Slughorn stayed to teach Potions again, that first year after the Battle, but they'd had to appoint a Defense teacher. McGonagall found someone, thank Merlin, as that's still needed."

Potter snorted. "Yeah."

"Dennis McDuffie. Know him?"

Potter shook his head.

"He's… adequate. Not very experienced, but… They need someone better, really... In any case, Slughorn put his foot down at the end of that year, and McGonagall accepted my request to teach. I was very grateful."

"Why wouldn't she have?"

Snape looked at him strangely. He'd have thought that was obvious. "As I was widely considered to be a murderer, Potter… not to mention a traitor…"

"Yeah, but that all got cleared up."

"Don't be naïve. You know as well as I do that questions were raised about both of us afterword."

Potter eyes glinted angrily. "Yeah. People wondering if I was going to be the next Dark Lord, since I conquered the first one. Not really, though. They just don't understand."

"I understand."

"Do you?"

"Yes – you think I didn't put it together? Voldemort talked about the Elder Wand before he tried to kill me, before he tried to kill you. And then – I heard enough stories from witnesses… Arthur, Neville, McGonagall. Besides, you told me – when I was… recovering. And I got a letter from Hermione Granger."

Potter looked down and away at that.

What? Was the boy not even in touch with his best friends? What in the name of Merlin and Circe…?

They reached the infirmary. He waved his wand to let them into the apothecary, set the restorative down, and wrote a note for Poppy while Potter leaned on the doorjamb, watching him. They retraced their steps back to his quarters. How strange it was, to be pacing the halls in the dark with Potter at his side. The last time he'd done that, it had been to drag the boy off to Occlumancy lessons… Don't go there! He shook his mind free of that.

"You used the Expelliarmus on him," he said, continuing where they'd left off. "Hardly a killing curse."

"Yeah… his Avada rebounded and hit him… he committed suicide," Potter said in a contemplative tone that was almost frightening to Snape, and he felt his heart give a fearful lurch.

Merlin and all the gods! Please don't, Potter. His mind automatically repeated the protection spell he'd been uttering for… twenty-five years, two months, twenty-one days. His mind calculated it automatically.