It is as though nothing has changed and no years have past, and Draco almost finds himself longing for it; to be back at thirteen years old, when all was simple and the fortress of Hogwarts was home. The door makes the same sound, the same two-note creak as he pushes against it, and the room smells the same — a mingle of earth and green-fire and the subtle perfume of dried flowers. The light is the same, low, wavering lamplight, the windows looking out only into the dark water of the moat.

"Late, Draco." Snape doesn't look up from his papers, familiar features hidden by the curtain of his hair. "You know I expect you to be prompt when I send for you."

Draco pulls his shoulders back, hands clasped behind him. "I came as soon as I could."

"Not good enough." Dark eyes flick up and catch Draco's, and it feels like he's falling. It's real suddenly in a way it wasn't before. In a way he'd never dared permit it to be. Snape frowns. "You look different."

The question is there, lingering between them, unable to form shape.

"I'm twenty-five now."

Snape makes a disparaging sound. "I don't have time for games, Mr Malfoy—"

"And you are dead."

The ghost freezes, stuttering like the static on the Potters' TV screen, and for a horrible moment Draco thinks this is it, this is how ghosts move on — by the reminder of their own strange mortality. But the moment is brief and time starts again as smoothly as though the glitch had never happened.

Snape picks up a translucent pile of papers and knocks them into order. "I wanted to discuss your report before you returned home for the summer. Take a seat. Your academic work is as near perfect as it's possible to be without being Granger. I'm not concerned about them. It's the comments from your teachers that disappoint me, Draco. These are issues we have discussed at length, and by this point I can only assume that your determination to be antagonistic is intentional. I do not expect you to become fast friends with Potter's lot, but I do expect you to show your peers and your teachers at least the minimal amount of respect. Yes, even Gryffindors. Yes, even Hagrid."

Draco sinks into the chair and the past.

He remembers this report, this discussion, the repetitive, Mr Malfoy struggles/refuses to connect/respect his peers/professors. So much potential wasted due to a lack of interpersonal skills. The ends do not justify the means and perfect grades mean nothing if no-one likes you, scripted in ten different handwritings in ten different ways.

He remembers fidgeting angrily, biting his tongue against arguing the unfairness of it. Numerical grades were enough to concentrate on, why should he worry about anything else? As long as his essays were perfect—

But that was twelve years ago and Draco neither needs nor wants to hear this lecture again.

"I am twenty-five," he repeats, louder. "I'm not a student anymore. You wrote to me, do you remember? Through McGonagall. You said… You said—" Damn, what did the letter say? He had paid so little attention to it, scanning the perceived nonsense before shredding and discarding it when he should've known… he should've recognized…should've trusted— "I-I should've come sooner," Draco says stiltedly. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't know. I would've. If I had—"

The ghost of a touch to his cheek.

"You are here now," says Snape, voice gentle and more present.

Draco reaches for the hand resting against his face and touches only his own skin. "I hate this," he whispers. "You should be here."

"I am here."

"You're not. You're gone. You're dead."

"Look at me, Draco."

Those words in that voice have never failed to coax Draco's head up, as much as he doesn't want to look, doesn't want to face the world that seems determined to hate him, those words in that voice means that he doesn't have to face it alone.

A cool brush of air beneath his eyes and a breeze in his hair, and Draco raises his face to look up at his godfather through his tears.

"I don't understand," says Draco. "How can you be here?"

"If it's any consolation," says Snape with the first curl of a wry smile, "I'm not entirely sure myself."

He sounds so real and looks so solid, apart from the distinctly ethereal glow and the pale grey-scale tint. Not that Snape had ever been one for colour in general. Draco makes himself look and see properly, to absorb this moment as face when it feels so much like one of the hundred dreams, one of the thousand memories, only less convincing.

"Do you remember what happened?"

"I remember every second of my life," says Snape. "I remember the moment of my death but beyond that, there is nothing. When I awoke it was like I'd fallen asleep. I thought I was alive. It wasn't until Minerva told me that I realised I was dead." He grimaces, rubbing his head like it hurts. "It is still difficult to remember specifics."

"Does it… feel any different?"

"It feels frustrating. As though I'm in a near-constant state of deja vu. Which, in a way, I suppose I am. The others say that feeling passes in a decade or two."

"The others? The other ghosts?"

Snape nods. "Nick has taken it upon himself to teach me 'the ways' as he likes to call it. Not that I'm not perfectly capable of learning 'the ways' on my own, but I suppose it is important to feel helpful in this state. Opportunities are few and far."

"Why didn't you write to me earlier? Why did you wait… seven years?"

Again, the ghost's form stutters.

"Draco, I know it's felt like a long time, but it's only been three months. I came as soon as I could." He looks younger than a moment ago. Sounds it too. The Snape of Draco's earlier memories. "Let me look at you. Are you hurt? I only have a little time, your father won't let me stay but—"

"No, go back to before. I want to talk to you about now." McGonagall's warning is a bell in his head: he can span his entire lifetime in just a few moments, from from twenty to eleven to five.

"You are so much stronger than you think and so much braver than you know." That's a book they used to read together. Draco can almost feel it in his lap, curled up in the big chair in the nursery by the fireplace, listening to Snape read.

But what was helpful when he was five isn't anymore.

"I want to talk about now," Draco repeats more firmly. "I want to tell you about Scorpius. My son. I have a son. Scorpius. I want you to know him. He's so good — the best — but Father's taken him—"

"You know I cannot act against your father."

"I know this! That's not what I'm asking for. I'm not asking for anything really. I just want you to know… I just need you to know that…" Draco falters, suddenly, not sure what to say or whether he should say it.

This feels like a hallowed moment, and all he's wanted to tell his godfather to his face is far from sacred. So much so that he has never permitted his thoughts to touch his memory of Snape, too fearful of disrespect, of betraying the memory of the man who loved him.

And it feels like before, like being thirteen and staggering away from Lupin's classroom, burning with humiliation because it would've been one thing if it'd turn into Father — that's what he expected, that's what the all expected, Theo and Pansy and Blaise — but for it to be Snape, to have the same damned Boggart as Longbottom—

He had avoided tackling it in class, at least there was that. He didn't need every fucking Gryffindor bearing witness to what a fucking hypocrite he was with 'wait 'til my father—' and he knew he was lucky Lupin hadn't called on him when he hadn't been able to control his mouth, but he hadn't expected it to turn into Snape. Hadn't prepared for that conversation. And he'd struggled badly enough with trying to find anything that might make Lucius Malfoy not completely terrifying. But in the place he'd expected his father to be, stood Snape.

He wore the sneer he reserved for Potter and the disdain he kept for the likes of Longbottom. His lip curled as it always did when irked by Granger, and his eyes were cold with impatient dislike.

And all directed straight at him.

Draco reeled, forgetting everything he had memorized and studied for. He had been prepared to face his father but this…

A fear so deep it felt blasphemous even to acknowledge it. Because if Snape could look at him with that expression, what was left for him?

But he had to… he had to beat it. It was just a boggard, and this was a test. An exam. If he failed, it would be marked down, he would be marked down, and his father would see and the mark of his failure would be another stripe across his back. He knew the spell, had practised its theory a hundred times, and he gripped his wand so tightly Draco could almost feel it splinter.

But it wasn't funny. Could never be funny. And he just couldn't think. Not at the flash of a buckle and he no idea if it meant a beating or something else and something about owing and no-one's ever nice to you unless they want a piece of you in return and—

"I don't want to talk about it."

He'd snapped it at Lupin after the professor had stepped in, then at Theo waiting for him outside the door. He didn't want to talk about it, not with anyone. He'd failed the exam. That's all he could afford to worry about. No point in any other discussion.

But of course Lupin raised his concerns with Snape who wanted the conversation with Draco.

It was late evening and Draco was in his favourite chair by the fire — the one that implicitly meant 'do not disturb' — pretending to read A Theoretical Study of Practical Charmistry whilst trying to reason with his still-battering heart.

"Leave us," Snape ordered.

There was a brief clamor as the other students obeyed.

The silence that followed was thick and unbearable.

"Draco."

He tried his hardest not to flinch at the touch on his shoulder. The book creased as his hands spasmed, almost tearing the thin pages.

"Lupin told me what happened," Snape murmured. "We need to talk."

"Why?" The word came out jagged like a bitten fingernail. Draco swallowed, refusing to look up from his book. "It doesn't matter. It's done. I lost the marks."

"I don't care about the marks." The almost-admonishment set Draco's stomach curling. He couldn't hold the book anymore. He cringed, dangerously close to tears, to losing himself to the fear he despised himself for feeling. "I don't care about the marks," Snape repeated, crouching down in front of him. "I care about you."

"I don't want to talk about it," Draco tried again, knowing perfectly well that it wouldn't fly with Snape.

"Draco, look at me."

More than anything he didn't want to. Because what if that look was real, what if it was true? What would it mean and what would he do?

But Snape's face — his real face — was nothing but concern. "Longbottom I can go some way towards understanding," he said. "But you, Draco? What cause do you have to fear me?"

"I—" He did not want to cry, and it was a herculean effort not to. "I don't know. It's not as though I was expecting it."

"Your father?"

Draco shrugged. "That was my best guess. I suppose I… I suppose I didn't dig deep enough. Stupid. I-I feel so—"

"Don't. There's no need."

"There's every need! It was stupid. I should've known. I should've prepared. And now everyone's going to know that I have the same fear as Longbottom a-and I… and I f-failed the exam—"

"You will retake the exam," said Snape gently. "The circumstances are more than extenuating, and you are fortunate that your Defense professor has a bleeding heart. For once that might benefit a Slytherin. As for Longbottom…" He sighed and shook his head. "I have no idea what goes through that mind, but I do have more than a little experience with yours. It is not the same, Draco, however it may look to anyone else. And Lupin is not one for gossip. I know I have some difficult conversations ahead of me, given that two of my students fear me enough to make me their Boggart, but I can handle that. More importantly, I want us to be okay. If there's anything I can do to assure you that I'd—"

"No. I know. I do. Boggarts are never exactly rational, are they?"

"No, I don't suppose they are." He rose, one hand lingering on Draco's shoulder, then stooped to press a kiss to the top of his head. "My door is, as ever, open to you, Draco. Always."

"I know. Thank you, sir."

Snape had forgiven him as though there had been nothing to forgive. Always had done, in life.

Is death different?

Draco hunches down, frowning at the burn-mark in the desk — tiny, smaller than a silver sickle. "I just… I just want you to know," he says, "that I'm learning, from all your mistakes. I will succeed where you could not. And it's because of you that I can. And it's not a bad thing. Really. And it doesn't mean that I'm angry or that I… that I think any less of you, only that I want my son… Scorpius is so different than I was. And I want him to stay that way. And that means that I have to be different. Not just from Father, but from you. Even though you were

"Draco."

"A-And I would never know how if it wasn't for you. I know what to be and how to be it. And I'm going to fight and I'm going to win. I'm going to win all the battles you lost. I have to. I have to." The tears come like a wave, but they are not in grief, rather relief; for Scorpius and Severus, and being here, doing what they are doing, and Draco is so so thankful for it all. He laughs. "I don't even— I-I can't even regret any of it. It's been hell — it's still hell, not being able to get to him — but I'm stronger than I've ever been, with more support than I ever imagined. It's never been more possible to beat Father than it is now. And in the meantime…Pansy's seen him. She's says he's alright. She would know, and she wouldn't lie. I have… time." His heart aches for Scorpius. It doesn't feel like he has time, but saying it out loud almost makes it feel true.

"Where is his mother?" Snape asks. Then, with a beat of confusion, "Who is his mother?"

"Astoria. Astoria Greengrass. Mother married me off to her the moment Astoria finished school. We tried to make it work, but it was never…" Draco takes a deep breath to catch up with himself. "I don't believe that Astoria means badly, but Mother groomed her well. She is the perfect Malfoy, and as such—"

"I remember Astoria. Creative girl. Talented. She wanted to be a tailor. Thought about an apprenticeship with Madam Malkin."

"I… never knew that," Draco admits. It is strange, learning something new about his wife. "She never said anything to me. We've never said much to each other. Never learnt how to talk with one another." He touches the ghost of his wedding ring. "I don't blame her. I know what it's like when my parents get into your head. And after Father came home— I couldn't stay and try anymore. I ran away. Twice. The first time, it was a compromise. Stuck in limbo. I tried to pretend it was what I wanted, and it was certainly better than living in the Manor, but the second time—" Draco grins. "It's taken a while, and I'm still learning, but I'm coming to believe that I deserve more than what my parents are willing to give me. No matter Father's best efforts. He hates it, you know, more than I thought. He can't stand that I'm happy on my own, or that I have people around me who want to be there because they love me, not simply because they want a part of what the Malfoy name can provide. I'm with Theo now, by the way, properly. We have a home together. And I'm alli— friends with Potter. He saved me, really, gave me place to stay when I didn't have anything else. I've been very lucky. Pansy and Blaise too. She's married now, to a good man, though she's only just starting to admit it. I think we're both learning how to be happy. But we are. Learning, I mean." Draco gives a breathy laugh and shakes his head. It is only now, relating it all outloud to the person he's wanted to share this with the most, that he can really see how much has happened.

He looks to Snape, tangible and real before him.

"I wish you'd been here."

"I am here," says Snape. "I have always been here."

"It hasn't felt like that."

"Really?"

"Really." The word comes out more forceful than he'd expected, but Draco finds he means it. Being present means being present, and he's spent too many years pretending that a thought is enough. It isn't. It never was. Snape might have stayed with him in there, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't real. He wants more for Scorpius. "I'm not angry. I'm not blaming you. I know you did everything you could for me, and more than you should've, but I have to stop thinking I can survive on wishes and promises. You weren't here. You haven't been here for seven years. And I— I needed you."

"No you didn't." It comes softly, a simple statement of truth that Draco finds impossible to deny, as hard as his instincts are to try. Because he did. He does. He always has. It has been an intrinsic part of his core since the first time Snape crouched to his five-year-old level and tipped his chin up, looking at him with nothing but the concern and kindness Draco hadn't realised he'd been starved of. He needed Snape. As much as he could get.

"You have done so well, Draco."

"You don't know that."

"I do. Of course I do."

They sit across from each other as they had so many times in the past, Snape talking impossible sense as Draco resists it best he can because practical sense is so much harder than Malfoy sense.

Draco studies his hands, fingers long and bare without his ring. He has done well. Even without Snape and his guidance, even when it felt like he was thrashing through the thicket blind and weaponless. It has been a fight the whole way, never once letting up and feeling easy, but he has done well. He has come out the other side, not just having survived, but thrived and improved and look at his life now. He is better for himself, and better for Scorpius, and when Scorpius finally comes home—

"I couldn't've done any of this without you," Draco tells his godfather, looking Snape right in the eye and meaning it with every part of himself. "I could never have managed to become this if you hadn't shown me what I wanted to be and what I didn't. You gave me options. That is everything. I won't waste them." Options are precious and rare in this world, more valuable than a vault packed with gold.

Snape rises. He doesn't move like a ghost, doesn't glide separate from the corporeal world. It's like he's still part of it, with one foot in front of the other until he's standing above Draco, black robes a soft grey, black eyes just as bottomless as they always had been.

As much here as he'd ever been.

A whisper through his hair at the ghost's kiss to the top of his head.

"You are everything I hoped you would be, Draco."

A/N: This chapter took much longer than anticipated, partly because it feels like one of the most significant part to Draco's story and because motivation has been lacking. I hope I did it justice. It was originally one scene in a longer chapter, but I felt like it should sit on its own. I would love to know what you think.