A/N: This is a work in progress. I imagine it will be anywhere from 5-10 chapters. This universe is as realistic to the canon as I could make it while keeping Snape alive and allowing for LBGTQ+ elements. The title of the story comes from a (bad) short story by F. Scott. Sorry F. Scott. Did good with the title, tho.

Chapter 1

The photograph of Snape was one he'd clipped from a copy of the Daily Prophet. The article was about how he was stepping down as Headmaster of Hogwarts and taking up his Potions Master position again. They described him as an "EXONERATED DEATH EATER," but Snape didn't look exonerated- he just looked like a sad person looking at a stupid person.

Harry didn't read the Daily Prophet and had to write to the paper to stop sending him copies when they started to appear at his door everywhere he and Ginny moved. He hated being surprised by the image of himself in the morning if Rita Skeeter decided to write about him in her column. Even 5 years after the Battle of Hogwarts, the paper's reverence and obsession with him now that the trouble was over made him sick and it was hard for him to head into work at the Ministry if he thought about it too much.

But one day when he was coming into the Auror office, he walked the straight line between desks to get to the back near the window where his own was and saw his colleague Jamsen Campbell sitting with his face in the paper. Snape's face on the other side, looking at him, Harry, as if to say "Hey, stupid."

"Where'd you get that?" Harry said to Jamsen before he'd really thought about it.

"It's the Daily Prophet, Harry," Jamsen said. He started to laugh, pleased with himself for catching the wave of a good joke. "And this is the Ministry of Magic. And you're an Auror and the year is 2003." He had white whiskery eyebrows that twitched up when he chortled.

"Right, thanks arsehole," Harry said, smiling, obviously without meaning it. "Will you give it to me when you're done?"

"Sure thing, prick," Jamsen said and disappeared behind his paper again.

When Jamsen dumped the paper on his desk, telling Harry to mind the grease stains from his breakfast, Harry just ripped the page out with Snape's photo and tossed the rest in the bin. He kept it in his desk drawer and everytime he was about to leave the office to go out into the field (to protect protesting house elves or to visit the site of a magical murder or to go undercover spying for information) he opened the drawer to grab his Auror badge and he stared down into Snape's black eyes and it wasn't unlike saying a prayer to a patron saint before leaving the house.

Except there was no religion or comfort in Snape's gaze, only faithlessness.

It was the last thing he collected from his drawers, because he kept thinking the whole time about what to do with it. In the end, he couldn't bring himself to bin it. He slipped it into the cardboard box on top of his desk, made sure it wasn't visible. He didn't understand why he kept it. After all, he wouldn't need it where he was going.

He'd be face to face with the real thing.

After the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry had what Hermione called his "come down shock." He thinks it lasted two years or so- or maybe it was still happening and that explained his obsession with Snape- maybe it would always be a little part of him.

In the few silent spaces afforded at that time- between cameras and people following him, reuniting with Ginny, mourning Remus and Tonks and Fred- he thought a lot about the night Hagrid came to get him from the hut in the middle of that stormy sea. The way it all seemed like a layered dream working so hard to be real to him. How attracted to the danger he was from the beginning, running into that dark cloud even as he wished to be normal-by wizarding standards, anyway. How he just seemed to belong to that pool of trouble.

Then, 7 years later, it was gone.

It wasn't easy getting it gone but the abruptness still felt just like that- abrupt. A draft where furniture used to be.

Thinking about Snape helped him. He never spoke to Snape, never reached out to him (Gryffindor courage always seemed to fail him when he tried), but he thought about him constantly. Had so many questions, so many impressions that needed confirming or correcting.

When Harry heard Hogwarts was offering the Defense Against the Dark Arts position, he couldn't stop thinking about it. Hogwarts was his first real home and he liked the idea of living there again as an adult where he didn't have to worry about rule breaking and he could leave and return to the castle as he pleased. He ashamedly knew the Auror office would let him keep his badge, maybe even his desk, and let him come back when he was ready. His London flat now was lonely with Ginny constantly on tour or practicing with the Holyhead Harpies.

And he could see Snape for the first time since the war ended.

Harry had no idea what he would say to the man or if Snape wouldn't just make him feel exactly as he did when he was a boy (like toad slime stuck to a desk) but to be close to him somehow seemed right. Maybe 5 years was about the right amount of time people should take before delving back into painful pasts and asking questions no one ever dared to ask.

Why love her?

Why hate me?

Maybe the answers were obvious.

Or maybe there were a few moves left in the game.