Author's Notes: I am no longer dating the entries as that is going to get confusing fast. Also, THANK YOU to CosmicPotter for reviewing and reminding me about Spell Check. I had forgotten!!! Anyway, I reloaded chapter one, which erased your review, but I really appreciated. Now, onto the story!

I can't believe it! He wants me to teach Potions. Me. The ex-Deatheater. He trusts me enough to let me near his precious students!

After I ate my lunch, I had returned to my room and sat thinking of what would happen now. Where would my life lead me? I was cleared by the Ministry, but if their attitude showed me one thing, it was that I still would not be accepted and liked. I should be use to it by now, but it still hurts. Of course, I buried it and was at my meanest by the time I left there. They will never know that it bothered me.

It was with these thoughts running around in my head that Albus found me. He lead me down into the dungeons. Once we were on the main corridor of the bottom most level, he stopped. I think the disappointment must have been written plainly across my face. He was going to hide me down here, below even the level where potion classes were taught.

"Severus?" he said gently, breaking into my thoughts. "This level is not as large as the rest of the school. But there are two sets of rooms here, a personal suite, and a laboratory suite. They are yours, to do what ever you wish. We will ward them from the students. You will also have an office on the level above, by the classrooms where you will be teaching potions."

Two sets of rooms. a lab. At least I would be able to research some of my ideas I had kept written down over the years. Of course they would be warded. Couldn't have the Deatheater near the children. Wait a minute. Did he say office above, and classroom and teaching potions?

"What?" I asked weakly, looking directly into his twinkling blue eyes. Please don't let this be a joke, I implored him silently.

"No, Severus, I would never be so cruel as to joke about such a thing."

How does he do that. All the years as a spy, and he can still read the thoughts in my eyes.

"You are really going to let me teach?"

"Of course, my boy. Did you think I was going to hide you down here?"

My face showed that answer. He pulled me into a hug. "I don't care what anyone says, child, I am proud of you. I doubt anyone else could have done the things you did. You may stay here and teach as long as you would like." He paused as I pulled back. "You do still want to teach, don't you?"

It had been what I had planned to do with my life before the night the Dark Mark had been forced onto my arm. He was giving it back to me.

"Yes, Albus," I whispered. I smiled at him and turned to go look at my rooms. He trailed behind me.

"I don't have the qualifications, Albus." I said as I reached the first door.

"All I ask is that you sit for the Potions Master's test. As you could have passed that in your fifth year." he broke off with a smile as I glanced at him.

"Flattery, Albus?"

"Of course not," he snorted with amusement. "You will need to pick some paintings to go down here. This corridor is so bare! Perhaps some neon colors to do away with the gloom. Definitely must get rid of the spider webs!"

"Albus!" I said indigently, trying not to laugh.

"Oh, alright. It is yours. Aren't you going to open it?" We were still standing outside the door to the first set of rooms.

I opened it. There was a large empty room with a fireplace. Two doors led off the room. The first was a smallish size room that I quickly decided would be my office. The other opened onto another largish room. It had a large fireplace on one wall, bigger than the sitting room. Along another wall was floor to ceiling windows, showing the ocean below the cliff. The fourth wall had a set of French doors covered with a stain glass scene of a dragon fighting off some unseen evil. I stopped and stared at it for several minutes.

"I made that with you in mind, Severus." Albus' voice came from the door into the bedroom. "The bathroom is just through them. Minerva did the bathroom. She said that you would not tolerate the theme to be what she termed 'childish'. Although I don't see what could be childish about my own bathroom."

Severus openly laughed for the first time in years. Albus' bathroom was done up in peppermint candies. The towels, the walls, the rugs, even the shower curtain all had the red and white candies on them.

Still chuckling, he pushed open the door to his own private paradise. It was a bathroom. With a bathtub the size of a small swimming pool. It was done up to look like it was outside. The floor was the same stone as the dungeons were. The tub was made out of marble, the ledges rough, the inside smooth. There were plants hanging down from baskets suspended from the ceiling that surrounded the tub, giving it privacy. A large bird cage stretch across the end of the room opposite the tub, with a pair of doves in it cooing softly. Greenery, from herbs in planters to small flowering trees sat on every possible surface. Here and there amongst the plants sat candles that gave off the soothing smell of rose blossoms. In fact as I looked at the plants, I saw several verities of roses. She had remembered that I loved roses.

I turned to Albus. "I don't know what to say."

Minerva was standing in the doorway with him. They were leaning against each other with their arms around each other's waists watching me. They both had big grins on their faces.

"Next week, when you take your test, we will go with you and pick out some furnishings. Now, shall we see your other rooms?" Albus asked.

My other rooms were a large laboratory already completely stocked except a large bookshelf, with a supply room almost as large off to one side. The supply room shelves were half filled.

"We ordered a set of the supplies that are always kept in the teaching labs for you," Minerva said. "If you make a list of the rest of what you would like I will order it when I go to Hogsmeade this weekend. Unless you want to go down yourself?"

"No, I would appreciate it if you would." I replied then hesitated. I turned and walked to where they stood leaning against a table, watching me in the supply room. "I can't thank the two of you enough."

"Now, Severus, it is just a fraction of what you deserve," Minerva said. "To be honest, because of various things, we never formalized our relationship, or even made it public. We never had any children to care for, until you came into our lives all those years ago. You, Severus Snape, are the child we wanted, and this is the least we can do to show you just how much we love you."

I listened to her speech in shock. I had known about their relationship, and that it was a secret that only the three of us knew. I had never realized that I was loved by them. That they saw me as their child.

It has definitely been a day. Not only do I get to have the job I had dreamed about for years, but I had gained surrogate parents. I was loved.