"What are you doing, Potter?"
Harry stood, and wiped the sweat off his face with the handkerchief he kept in the back pocket of his jeans for just that purpose. "Professor. I almost didn't recognize you, I don't think I've ever seen you in broad daylight before." Harry put the hammer he was holding down next to what he was working on, and Snape just waited for an answer to his question. After a few minutes more, Harry sighed and squinted through the sweat that was beading on his face already. "I'm building a boat."
"A boat? Why are you building a boat?"
"Because a man in white flowing robes came to me in a dream and told me to. He said to make it big enough to carry two of every animal. He said I needed a boat because there was going to be a great flood, to wipe out the wicked men." Harry smiled, and he looked like his father, he looked like a normal twenty-eight year-old, joking and smiling, but Snape knew better, could read the man's eyes could see the grief there. Snape knew better because he had fought in a war at the man's side, and knew that Harry Potter was a warrior and not as happy as he the he would have the rest of the world think.
"Ha-ha, Potter. Biblical stories. Why are you really building a boat?"
"Think, Professor," Harry still calls him professor even though it has been years since he was in school. "Think, why would you build a boat?" He's serious now. The grief in his eyes has started to seep into the rest of his features, rather than let Snape see it; he turns back to his work.
Snape doesn't really have to think about it, he already knows why Harry is building the boat. He waits though, realizing that what he'll say next is on the more profound side of the spectrum, and needs to be said at the right time, he feels the moment coming and whispers, because profound things, he thinks, should always be said softly. "I would build a boat so that I could mourn properly, so that I could get needed solitude, and so that I would not be surrounded by those who rejoice when they should be remembering."
Harry nods not looking up from his work. More time passes and Snape walks over to a table that holds the blueprints for the boat. he looks at them for a minute, not understanding any of it, he knows nothing about building, boats, or blueprints. "They'll look for you."
"They won't find me."
"They'll need you. Once they do remember."
"I'll come back."
"When?"
"When I'm ready, or when they need me. Whichever comes first."
"Be safe."
"I will, I promise."
"Come back."
"I will." Harry never looks up from his work, but he feels when Snape leaves, he continues working for a couple hours, then it starts to get dark and he packs up for the day, returning to the little cabin he'd bought years ago, when he had just finished Hogwarts, that he had never really lived in until a couple months ago when the war finally ended. It's small and only has two rooms, it's not quite home, but it's cozy. He showers, eats some pasta, and settles down to read another chapter in his boating manual. When he's done and barely able to keep his eyes open, he goes to bed.
In bed he weeps, as he never does elsewhere. He weeps for his lost friends, Ron, Hermione, Hagrid, Seamus, Fred. He weeps for his lost allies, to many to even begin to list. He weeps for lost innocence, for the heartbroken, even for fallen enemies, but most of all he weeps for all that has been forgotten, that the world seemed to look the other way, now that the threat was gone, that all who sacrificed their lives are gone. Finally when there is nothing left he sleeps. He sleeps and dreams of being rocked to sleep by the sea, and of a world that understood.
Fin