Disclaimer: The characters, settings and world used in this piece are borrowed from JK Rowling's Harry Potter book series.
Answering a Call to Change
Snape watched the oblivious heir to both the Dark Lord and Dumbledore leave the common room and shortly thereafter felt the familiar pull in his left forearm. How anyone who radiated as much pure magical energy as Harry could remain so obtuse about the extent of his own power was beyond Snape's comprehension. The newly freed pawn caught himself getting up to answer the "summons," an instinct left over from a bygone era, and then decided to go ahead and, just this once follow the magical pull. He could feel Harry in his quarters near the Astronomy Tower. Snape briefly wondered if the other Death Eaters felt the tingling of power as well and if they had guessed what it might have meant by now.
To say that he had secretly liked the boy before his glorious defeat of the Dark Lord would be outright self-deceit. Snape was honest enough to know that his coming to value Harry had everything to do with the death of Voldemort. To the potion master's relief, he could at least console himself with the fact that he was not one of the Boy-Who-Lived's many mindless sycophants that seemed to be constantly underfoot as of late. No, Harry did not gain Snape's approval by killing the Dark Lord per say, but instead, either through Gryffindorish honor or, more likely, sheer ignorance and naiveté, not stepping up to replace Albus and Tom as the leader of the magical world. After the deed was done and Harry's power was proven, the boy sunk into himself rather than taking his place as Snape's personal master and the grand manipulator of the entire wizarding world in the tradition of the most powerful wizards that had come before him.
Finally reaching the child's doors, Snape raised his hand to rap three sharp knocks. "Come in," came the confused sounding reply muffled by the too thick door and the portrait guardian's ostentatious frame.
Harry had been laying strewn across his bed, as was his habit of late, listening to Fawkes' honey like soul balm. That the phoenix sung almost constantly now, that he never stopped or seemed to tire didn't give Harry pause. It might have in his youth, when the bird was still wrapped in myth and fantasy, when everything magic was still magical; but now that the bird should sing or not sing was a thought decidedly mundane. Harry could still remember imagining some mysterious bond connecting his mentor to the phoenix in an abstract, spiritual way. At one time he had even thought of the immortal bird as a manifestation of the mortal man's soul. The thought that had seemed self evident while Albus lived, had become obviously inane now that his ashes lay scattered about the grounds.
Feeling unsettled by his mind's wonderings, he had found himself desperately longing for some company. The precise knocking that could only be Severus was a welcome but unanticipated relief from Harry's solitude.
The potions master entered with the usual drama. His eyes took in Harry and his quarters with a scientific coolness. The magically powerful phoenix that was now perched on Harry's shoulder was at odds with his boyish pose. Harry's face looked up at his colleague in confusion. Snape was right; Potter remained unaware of the summons. Naiveté and ignorance then, not Gryffindorish virtue.
After waiting for and not receiving a vocal response to his confusion from his imposing guest, Harry suddenly looked self conscious of the rather relaxed arrangement of his limbs on the bed. Stumbling in his haste to right himself, the defense professor blushed and stuttered something to the effect of "Please come in." Snape was already in but decided to spare the flustered boy from his derisiveness just this once.
"A professor at twenty! A man!" Snape's thoughts seemed to scoff. Harry was a boy despite his colleagues' blindness to the fact and regardless of the boy's own assertions to the contrary. His tendency to vocalize assertions of his adulthood was so remarkably adolescent that it was a wonder Molly ever let the boy live on his own in that tribute to some misplaced sentiment he mistook for a home. Snape made a move to straighten the papers stacked around him and stopped himself.
As the potions professor contemplated his former student, Harry's discomfort grew increasingly obvious. "I have come to request an appointment to discuss your lesson plans for the coming year," came Snape's improvised excuse a few moments too late to feel natural.
The request was one Harry had yet to hear in two years of teaching, but a lingering fear of his former professor kept him from voicing the observation. After some thought Harry decided it was a natural request for a deputy headmaster to have. "I am not busy now."
Snape was not busy right then either, but decided after being in the presence of the boy who had, by all magical laws, more or less inherited ownership of him, that he could not stomach being too agreeable. "Your schedule is not the only one that must be taken into account. As it is, I am available tomorrow at four. If it is convenient, shall we meet in my quarters then?" Harry nodded his assent.
Fawkes took a rather regal stance and then flew in front of Snape to trill an incomprehensible musical oration that made the professor feel both comforted and unaccountably small. The potions master returned to his rooms, acutely aware of the tendrils of magic that extended throughout the school fluttering slightly. He was reminded of leaves before a spring storm.