Trigger warning: historical homophobic act of violence.

Chapter 13: Beltane

The school day had ended early. Beltane was being celebrated outside with massive bone- and wood fires, students crowded around with almost tangible gaiety. They were full of happy spring, and Severus fled swiftly, flames winking at him as he walked past the thronging students to apparate from Hogwart' gates.

Beltane made him antsy, the opposite of his affiliation of Samhain. Being all about spring, youth and birth he always felt uncomfortably out of place, old beyond his time and stuck going nowhere.

In muggle London it was busy. The sky overhead resembled tagliatelle at full boil, but thankfully it wasn't raining. People were thronging on the streets-it was rather more early evening than night.

Soho's bustle was much more homey, although even here the magic could be tasted with every breath: burnt coffee on the back of his tongue. It was barely six but he knew his crowd would be here, hopefully Mark wouldn't be tied down by family traditions so they could laugh and revel among friends, all of them going nowhere with spring in their steps.

Entering the Duncan, he was surprised to see it so busy. The music wasn't too loud, the air not yet stuffy, but the people were already gathered in seats around the room, chatting, drinking. Touching each other the way friends and lovers do but cannot in a world that does not accept them.

This was the only public place where a thigh could be slapped, a hand held, a chaste kiss pressed against a temple. As a result some went overboard, but none of them could hold it against one another. They knew what the world was like out there.

Severus looked around for familiar faces, immediately spotting Gramps dancing with a pair of women, looking surprisingly spry considering his permanent seatedness. The man had to take advantage of times when it was less crowded; once the people began to jump and throng the he would sway at the table, pretending he didn't feel left out, and they would sit with him pretending they wouldn't rather be out there grinding against another.

Gramps kept them close, kept them talking to each other. The other groups of regulars didn't know each other half as well for sheer lack of forced dialogue.

The woman he was dancing with looked bewildered but was laughing nonetheless. Gramps caught his eye and they exchanged nods, then Severus scanned the room for the rest of his friends. Mark, gossip that he was, chatted with the usual barkeep, the man's many piercings reflecting the light. Severus knew it wasn't a dragon's tooth in the man's ear, but from afar it was a disturbingly accurate facsimile. Spotting Ricky nearby, Severus stalked over to catch up.

Last he had heard, Ricky had just learnt he was HIV positive, but the state of muggle medicine meant it wasn't an immediate death sentence any more. He felt sick to his stomach with fluttering uselessness over Ricky's uncertain future. Severus wanted to offer help: not that he had drug contacts, but he knew how to turn invisible and rob apothecaries if need be. He wouldn't let his friend die for lack of trying

After an awkward conversation wherein Severus attempted to be comforting came an even more awkward silence. Despite their chemistry and compatibility between the sheets, it was evident they had little to say to each other, and Ricky had enough helpless sympathy to not need Severus' as well.

Seeking a convenient out, Severus scanned the room again. Mark and the barkeep were now over by a table, examining someone's forgotten bag. There was a couple, one of them pregnant, sitting at the table laughing.

He excused himself and headed over as Mark made eye contact. There was something frantic in the way Mark was moving; he pushed past someone roughly and they met halfway.

"Something's wrong," Mark had to shout over the music. "Help me get people out. Everyone needs to get out!"

The barkeep was gesticulating frantically to the table, eyes too wide and festivities too noisy. The Beltane energy was one of the few that touched muggles, and it was lowering inhibitions and increasing exuberance across the room. Flamboyant and carefree, they unknowingly drank in the magic of the night as they escaped from their ugly lives, if only for a while.

He wanted to nod to Mark but he was already gone. Severus tapped the nearest person on the shoulder. "Go. Something is wrong. Everyone needs to leave."

"Do you even work here?" the woman replied scathingly. "Hey, I've seen you with—"

The fire alarm went off with an ear-piercing wail. People started pushing each other, thronging for the exit. Somebody fell to the ground nearby, and Severus found himself beside them, erecting the mildest of shields to stop the woman from being trampled. What was wrong with him? He cursed his own foolishness, which had momentarily replaced his Slytherin instinct for self preservation.

Then the world exploded.

Severus found his Slytherin side as he flung himself neatly down, in no way covering the woman as he did so.

Her butter yellow scarf burned into his retinas just before he closed his eyes, instinctively covering his head with his hands. He wasn't worried for himself, he was a grown wizard, and even a child had enough accidental magic to protect themselves.

The first thing he saw was the red racing through the yellow fabric. His hearing was limited to incessant ringing. When he breathed out through his mouth he exhaled a black cloud, the taste of metal and sulphur on his tongue.

There wasn't a scratch on him, only a hurt wrist from having thrown himself to the floor. His automatic wandless shield had caused everything that was supposed to hit him to ricochet into the people around him. That a Slytherin had stopped to help Yellow Scarf was the worst thing that could have happened to her.

His ears were still ringing. His wand was in hand, flowing smoothly through the motions of a diagnostic and a butchered combination of Wizard-Muggle first aid.

Nobody was watching him, he knew. They had become animals, concerned? only with themselves and perhaps their immediate neighbour.

If his ears weren't still deaf he would have heard the approaching sirens.

Nobody heard his prayers of, please, please let my friends be safe.

His vision blurred, and he realised his eyes were crying. Yellow Scarf was stable, so he turned to help the next grounded person he could see. They were all greys and crimsons, covered by soot and dust and the life bleeding out of them.

Severus stopped himself from automatically charming the soot from his robes—it wouldn't do to stand apart in this crowd of muggles.

He took it as a good sign he couldn't see Gramps' chair among the debris.

The man he was kneeling over now was sitting up, looking confused but alert. He was saying something, but Severus didn't care. He christened him Metal for his band t-shirt, which Severus promptly ripped to form a bandage for his bleeding shoulder.

When he searched to find the next, there was a policeman, red smears on white shirt, helping him up. Severus scanned the room. There were more people here, they needed to be helped more than him.

He was a wizard, with magic and he'd had his shield—he was fine.

"I'm fine," he tried to protest as his arm was slung over an unsanitary shoulder. He probably shouted it. He couldn't hear himself think, although the ringing had receded enough for the sirens to give him a pounding headache.

They took a step, and Severus almost fell. He clung on tightly, suddenly grateful for the shoulder no matter how dirty. He could feel a tightness in his chest and clawed at his own shirt's buttons.

Outside there were people on blankets, so many people, filthy greyscale waiting for first aid and having the misfortune of being triaged least important. Severus was helped into an ambulance, unsure if he should protest or not. He recognised none of the faces around him.

He couldn't breathe.

The muggles were saying something, but he couldn't focus properly on their words. His name seemed to be important, what was his name? Nelson? Snape? Prince? Mark Evans, where was Mark?

"Evans," he said as they sped off down Old Compton, even though that was not what he had meant to say at all. And Gramps, what was his real name anyway? How would he find them? How could anyone find each other spread across several hospitals in a world of nicknames they invented to be someone else, even for just a moment?

He must have drifted off, because he awoke when the girl sharing the ambulance with him was carried out with her life dripping from her temple, and then he was helped out and popped onto a gurney.

"'M fine," he murmured desperately, but they were all talking over him, the jargon washing over him like a fuzzy blanket.

He was reminded of his mother, who had died in a muggle hospital much like this one.

"I don't want to die," he said to nobody in particular.

Nobody heard him. He drifted back under feeling intensely, soul-crushingly alone.

xoxox

He awoke to voices. Whirring. Beeping. Noise.

And pain. Pain everywhere. Like his body was a bruise, and his head was empty except for the cotton wool in his mouth.

"Can you hear me," he heard, and tried to glare in response. What had they done? Had they operated on him? He was a wizard, he had had a shield to protect him. This was all completely unnecessary.

"—removed the nail from your left lung," the voice was still speaking, uncaring if he had been listening or not.

"Ngh?" he rasped back, ignoring the shooting pain through his fuzzy skull. A nail? There had been a bomb, but he had had a shield. There shouldn't have been any nails at all.

"You were in surgery for five hours," the voice spoke slowly now, as if he were stupid. Dunderhead. "You'll be alright." Severus couldn't see beyond blurry outlines and heady pain, but the voice sounded masculine. Ish. "You need time to heal. You're waking from anaesthesia now, and I'm here to inform you what happened and check you're alright."

Severus was not alright. The muggles had cut him open in some barbaric surgical procedure. He wanted his potions. Where was Mark? He had been nearby. He must have set off the fire alarm, and probably made it outside. Or he had a heroic streak and was trying to help. The man was a wizard, of course, but that was no longer as reassuring now that he had learnt of a nail embedded in his own lung.

"Mark Evans," he spoke over the nattering nurse.

"Sorry dear, what was that?"

"Mark Evans."

He could hear paper rustling. "Yes, we have you down as Evans. I'll add the Mark now. Can you help me contact someone for you?"

Severus groaned. The man was useless. Utterly, magnificently useless. He closed his eyes and pretended to go back to sleep.

"There's nobody," he added when the noises around him grew from shuffling to clattering and tutting.

He drifted again, exhausted. Mark was no dunderhead. He'd certainly figure it out.

xoxox

The next time he awoke properly it was to Mark bursting into the room he had been moved to. The dim light burst painfully behind his eyes. A nurse was trailing along with complaints of visiting times.

Severus squinted around for a timepiece or window but found none. The room had a crushing timelessness unalleviated by a flickering television.

A quick Confundus from Mark's wand dispatched the busybody nurse, and a privacy bubble formed around them. Severus closed his eyes in relief that he could still feel such subtle magicks—it meant his wand was nearby, and undamaged.

Mark had sunk into a chair at Severus' side. "Prince," he was panting, "Gods, are you alright? I brought potions." A cardboard box was thrust into his sling-free hand. His floating mind was still sluggish but nonetheless able to recognise his salvation. Fumbling the lid he examined the racks inside. They were neatly labelled in his own shorthand.

"These are my from my own potions supply," his mouth decided to state the obvious. Mark had to have been in his rooms, or stolen Pomfrey's supplies. But no, he marked those differently, colour coded them according to her system. These were his private stash of the potions, the ones that he'd skimmed from those that Potter had brewed for the medical wing.

Mark's breathing had already evened. Was it late? Magic buzzed around them, momentarily upsetting some machine behind him. Then it grew suddenly quiet.

Time had obtained the consistency of clotted cream and his thoughts were taffy.

Mark's smile was fond, though his eyes were full of badly-concealed panic. "As if a potions master would settle for anything less. Your wards took me a full fifteen minutes, by the way. Your lack of faith in the student populace is astounding."

Severus decided to ignore the fact his potions had been stolen and concentrate on consuming the ones that would heal his lung. And stop the painful everything barely dulled by the muggles' concoctions.

"If you broke my wards, there shall be traces of your magical signature there. I will know your name within a day, at most." He did not know how to say thank you. If Mark hadn't brought these it might have taken a week for him to escape to Spinner's End to floo his quarters—there was no way he would have sent a Patronus off to get help.

He was grateful to magical healing as he felt his thoughts clear, his breathing ease and the dull throbbing recede from his arm. The breath-freshening charm he could cast wandlessly, dispelling the putrid taste from his mouth. A Tempus showed it was almost two in the morning.

"My own concerns are less relevant than your well-being, Prince," Mark said with utter sincerity.

There was an awkward pause. Severus really didn't know how to reply to that. He studied Mark's face. Was that a glamour over his glamour? Severus reached out and touched his cheek. It was gentler than he'd meant it to be, and Mark looked up at him, surprised. "Why are you layering glamours?" he decided to just ask. "You usually only have the one."

From the corner of his eye he saw a wand flash out quickly. Mark tapped himself on the head with it, and met Severus' eyes again.

Except he only had one working eye—the other was covered by stained gauze. When Severus pried it gently off he could see a gaping, oozing wound that quite frankly looked disgusting.

"What happened?" he asked gently. "May I?" Receiving a hesitant nod, he indicated Mark sit on the bed beside him. Severus' wand was gently handed back to him, wherever from, so he could finally be a wizard again. The wand hummed happily in his hand, magic brimming and ready to cast a diagnostic.

It was as bad as it looked. "It cannot be regrown by magic. This was done by way of a cursed weapon," he determined. He'd thought Mark had gotten out, and besides that, it had been a muggle bomb in a muggle club. They oughtn't have been injured at all. "Tell me what happened."

Mark groaned and fell back against the pillows. "I'd like to say for the record it has been some time since I was involved in a combat situation, and I haven't kept up with my hand-to-hand as I well as I should have."

"You were stabbed in the eye by your own knife," Severus deadpanned. "Your own cursed knife." That was disgraceful, and who carried around a cursed knife anyway without the counter firmly memorised? "Did the other person at least also take damage?"

The wards around them thickened until they were visibly distorting the air. "The man who laid the bomb is dead."

Severus nodded dumbly. That was an efficient way to take care of the problem. Muggles were so fragile, and helplessly inferior to magicals who had tracking spells and instant forensics. Nevertheless, a cursed weapon could be used against magical and muggle with equal efficiency. It had been stupid to fight with one, but also a Gryffindor way to even the odds. Pervertedly noble, though.

Yellow silk turning red flashed in his mind's eye before he heaved an occlumency wall into place. Those memories he would deal with later, in private.

"It astounds me that you yet survive the extent of your own monumental stupidity," he said to Mark instead, clutching to insults and sarcasm as a child with a safety blanket.

"Sheer dumb luck." Mark winced as Severus ran a particularly unpleasant scan. "You're worse than Pomfrey, did you know?"

"A more intelligent man would go to St. Mungo's with this." A trainer healer might be able to remove the curse, especially as Mark presumably knew the ritual counter for his own knife.

Severus was a field medic and a potioneer. The best he knew was a general counter for what he could recognise as a non-latin anticoagulant curse.

But Mark was predictably stubborn. "I'd have to explain more than I'm comfortable with. Besides, they wouldn't treat me without removing my glamours." He ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture that echoed with unplaced familiarity. "This is possibly the most stupid thing I've done in my life—except flirting with you, that was pretty stupid too." Mark sighed. "I really hope you don't kill me."

"You could always save me the effort, and find some other muggle to stab yourself with." Severus sniped. "I would imagine someone of your intellect could find a more elegant method of suicide." He raised his wand and began unwinding the residual curse from the gaping eye wound. It wasn't too complex a spell, as long as he didn't rush.

Mark thought his identity more important than his eyesight. An important family, then, or he was afraid of being linked to the muggle bombing? Someone like Lucius would have had the connections for an illegal portkey overseas, but apparently Mark couldn't afford one. "Considering you treated this yourself it is not that poorly done."

His speculation wasn't whitling down much. There were too many important politicians' sons passing through Hogwarts, and anyway it didn't matter. Mark's secret would be out as soon as Severus got back to his warded rooms.

"From you, that's a compliment." Mark sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. "Shite, that stings. Do I need to keep my eyes open?"

Severus hummed and continued to cast. The next ten minutes were silent except for the occasional murmured incantation from Severus and sharp gasps of pain from Mark.

Finally finished, he moved to holster his wand. Into a holster that wasn't there, because he was in a foreign bed wearing foreign clothes. The sheets were unbearably scratchy, but he fell back into the pillows nonetheless. He felt entirely exhausted. "Approach me again in two days, I will check it is healing correctly. The wound will not scar, but the eye will never see again."

Mark closed his eyes gratefully and turned tiredly to his side. "You can give me detention if you're still interested in helping. Might I trouble you for a blood replenisher from your stock?"

Fumbling for the box, he hastened to hand over the right vial, which Mark drank before lying down next to him again, evidently just as spent.

After that brief respite Severus re-covered and taped the injured eye, then let himself sink back into the uncomfortable bed. "I was under the impression," he murmured into Mark's hair, "That you were seventeen when we met. Which means you had graduated last year, and are now no longer able to receive detentions from me."

Mark cuddled into him, half asleep already. "Let's worry about that tomorrow. Thank you for your help with the eye. And thank you for your friendship, Prince Nelson."

There was now a sleeping man, who was actually his student, curled up next to him in bed.

Severus decided that this was terrifying.

But it was something he could worry about after a solid night's rest. He sunk his mind into the forced calm of meditation and let himself drift to sleep.

xoxox

When he woke the next morning, he was punched in the gut by the smell of death and antiseptic.

Severus shifted, aware that he had been roused by the sensation of something moving beside him.

Correction. Someone moving beside him.

Cracking open an eye, he was confronted by the sight of Mark, who had moved into a defensive crouch. From somewhere, he had acquired a knife worthy of Bellatrix Black.

Severus leaned to see past him. The apparent threat was nothing more than the man in the next bed sitting up, staring with wide eyes.

His surprise was in itself unsurprising; this had been a three-bed hospital room and now there were four people in it.

One of them now wielding a knife, with a hint of madness in his single eye.

"Dude," the man decided not to improve the situation.

The final occupant of the room began shifting, threatening to take this from 'bad' to 'out-of-control'.

"Mark," Severus barked. He saw the man's head tilt minutely and scrambled for the most effective thing to say. 'What in Merlin's name are you doing,' was out. 'Stop it and sit down? Are you insane?' seemed a fair possibility. But then he saw the military rigidity in Mark's back and knew. "Stand down."

The man blinked, the stiffness melting from his shoulders. Straightening, he sheathed his knife and cast Obliviate and Somnium at both men in the space where Severus had been scrambling for what to do next.

"That man startled me." Mark explained unnecessarily, squinting his good eye at Severus. "Fuck, I can't see a thing." He looked around helplessly. "Do you see my bag? Let's get out of here. People will be looking for us soon, thank the Gods it's the weekend. And we must find Gramps, Ricky...who else was there with us?"

"You only brought the box." Severus assessed their situation. His neck was stiff, and his wrist sore, but otherwise he was fine. He needed clothes, though. With sleeves and buttons—some barrier between him and everything else. Where was his wand holster? Where was the tea in this godsforsaken place?

And where were their friends?

Mark ran a hand through his hair and began patting down his pockets. "Aha!" he pulled out a shrunken bag, expanding it and tossing it over once. "There are muggle clothes inside for us both. Choose and resize what you find least unbearable." He pulled a small bottle from his pockets and sank into a chair as he began applying some kind of liquid to his remaining eye. Severus watched him as he began to suck his breath through clenched teeth and blink glassy-eyed at the ceiling.

"Are you alright?" It didn't look alright, nor could Severus fathom what was in the bottle. There were almost no potions for eyesight, he knew. He had already looked into it extensively before Yule break in hopes of finding Potter a Yule gift. He'd come up empty.

Mark laughed humourlessly. "Of course. Just give me a minute, it'll pass."

Severus reached out tentatively and ran his fingers carefully through Mark's limp curls. A minute later, his breathing had evened out, and the remaining wonderfully, painfully green eye focused on Severus' face.

"Better?" Severus withdrew his hand.

"Hmm." Mark rolled to his feet, tossed Severus' chart into his bag and shouldered it. "Thank you. Make sure you vanish anything with blood on it." They changed quickly into very nondescript garb.

There were only three buttons. Severus could already feel the building tightness in his chest—this wasn't near enough to hold him properly together.

The door clicked shut with echoing finality as the wizards strode from the room.

Rather—they moved slowly, deliberately. Severus was cradling his wrist and Mark kept blinking, leaning awkwardly as if he expected to walk into something.

They found a desk soon after, staffed by a nurse with hair and eyes in dull contrast with her shiny lip balm. Some neat Confundus-work checked Severus out. "You are very fortunate that you were barely injured."

It must have been a strong Confundus.

When Mark asked about their friends, she'd apologetically sent them on to the bobbies. They'd thanked her and continued Confundus-ing their way through the hospital, finally finding Gramps arguing with a detective near the main entrance.

Gramps cut off mid-sentence when he saw them, racing over to capture Mark's waist in a tight hug.

"Thank God," Gramps said, as if Gods had had anything to do with it. Severus knew—this ugliness had been human, and not Godly at all.

"Thank God, thank God, thank God." Mark had knelt to effectively return the hug, patting Gramps on the back as Severus stood awkwardly beside them. "There were...no reports...of you...anywhere," Gramps was saying between heaving breaths. "We were so worried—I was so worried." His voice suddenly turned bitter. "Nobody would give us any answers. Harold's been trying to pull strings all morning."

Mark kissed Gramps on the forehead and righted himself. "I'm okay, and so is Prince. Take us to the others, alright?"

Gramps seemed to pull himself together, rubbing the lines on face. "Alright. Alright. We're camped out in an overpriced restaurant across the street."

The reunion was tearful and involved more thanking of a single deity than Severus thought strictly necessary.

And they finally had numbers, a way to weigh the horror of their experience: dozens of injured, and still counting.

Three people dead.

And of their group, Ricky just had scrapes, one across his jaw likely to scar. He'd proclaimed it 'wicked', and turned a deaf ear to their worries over his HIV-weakened immune system. Harold had been working late and was now working again, barely having had time to check in with them.

Gramps had been on the disability toilet, and thus there had been several walls between him and bomb.

"I never thought I'd be so glad to be caught in an emergency with my pants down," he joked.

They all laughed, but the sound was hysterical and hollow, a too-familiar ringing in their ears. It wasn't funny for any of them, Severus knew, but especially not for Gramps. As a child the man had been trapped under a building during the Blitz, his spine crushed. Even as an adult he was easily startled by loud noises.

Judging by the concern on Mark's face, he knew as well that Gramps was not okay.

"We'll get you through this," Mark reassured quietly. "Together, alright Gramps?"

The conversation shifted to his eye then, covered with gauze and unglamoured, which he only said was injured, "in an act of supreme stupidity." His tone effectively ended all further lines of inquiry.

Feeling lucky to be alive but tremendously shaken all the same, they trooped and stumbled and rolled to a hotel nearby where Gramps had stayed the night before. They huddled in the dingy room with the chintz sheets, old-fashioned prints on the wall and tulle curtains.

Passing around a bottle of vodka—replaced by bourbon when Harold could finally rejoin them—they pretended they weren't intensely aware of every breath in their lungs.

Severus could feel his pulse even before tipsy became drunk—which became him and Mark downing sobriety potions, disentangling themselves from the sleeping group and apparating their separate ways.

xoxox

It was the early hours of Sunday by the time Severus finally made it back to his rooms. Going immediately to his cabinet, he re-shelved the leftover potions Mark had stolen from him. Then he conjured himself a chair and began casting diagnostics on his wards.

He was very glad to already be sitting down, because although he had suspected several students Potter had not been one of them.

Fuck. This was a mess.

There were so many thoughts clawing for attention in his head, a mess of wriggling, unfinished thoughts. It was very, very loud.

Potter. His apprentice. The child he had been trying to protect.

He cleared his mind. He was on the astronomy tower, looking out over Hogwarts. He swept up the Forest. Poured away the Black Lake. Dismantled sun and moon.

Lily's son.

He packed up the stars, one constellation at a time. His world plunged into inky black.

Clear. Still.

Collecting himself in the present, Severus stood. Showered, dressed. Meticulously buttoned his robes and strode from his rooms. Right now he was in no state to confront Potter, but he knew what needed to be done.

xoxox

"Sev'rus," Argus rasped warmly, welcoming him into the dingy office and accepting the usual gift of loose-leaf tea.

The squib filled the kettle while Severus stoked the stove, casting the thumbscrews and chains decorating the walls in a homey, flickering light.

"What's got yeh so bothered, then?" Argus asked when they had assumed their usual positions, nibbling on Jammy Dodgers.

"I feel betrayed," Severus replied, and as the words formed in his mouth he realised it was true. The chaos under his forced calm settled a little. He'd figure this out.

"S'it that apprentice of yours? I told yeh, can't trust the sprogs."

Severus swallowed. "Hypothetically, he is less of a child than I had been led to believe."

"Hmph."

Yes. Hmph. Though not as articulate as Severus' other friends, Argus had his own way with words. It was usually very accurate, cutting through the underbrush in a determined line.

Severus really needed to talk this through. "Would you object to some privacy charms?"

Argus bit into his biscuit with more violence than necessary. "Hmph," he said around it, but with his hand he made a gesture that could be interpreted as go ahead. Severus went ahead.

"There is a man I've been getting to know, in muggle London. A young wizard."

Filch waggled his eyebrows suggestively, adding a lecherous grin for good measure. Severus did not roll his eyes.

"When the wizard introduced himself it was clear he had recognised me, and took an assumed name."

You'll be Prince Nelson, and I'll be Mark Evans. Bloody hell. Potter had practically spelled it out for him.

Severus suddenly felt a little less lied to.

"He told me we should not be intimate, because I would hate him."

Which had been very mature and farsighted, actually. Had Mark intended the truth to come out eventually?

"Hmph."

"And now, I have come to understand that this man under his fake name, ageing potion and glamour, was Potter."

This, finally, caught Argus' full attention. "Harry Potter, yer apprentice? Severus, boy's twelve!"

"He does not act like he is twelve."

They sipped more tea and ate more biscuits. That was the crux of the matter. Harry Potter had never acted his age.

"So," Argus summarised, "yeh met someone, both usin' aliases, and now yeh know yeh didn't bugger yer apprentice."

There must have been something on his face at that which gave him away.

"Hmph."

"I did not bugger him!" But Argus merely raised a brow, and Severus understood not to argue this point. "I wanted to protect him. All this time, worrying about the child, and he has been walking around as an adult."

Argus got up and fetched them a bottle of Odgen's Fire. "If he ain't actin' like he's twelve," he said, pouring, "well then—maybe he ain't twelve."

Severus was regretting his sobriety. He downed the first glass and promptly refilled it.

Potter had kept his mother's name in his Mark persona. He had kept his mother's eyes, and the facial structure was probably his own. Bloody buggering fuck, how could he have been so blind? And Severus called himself a Slytherin! Not a wit of cunning in him.

Potter on the other hand—he had prevented them from having sex. In fact, he'd been very adult about the whole thing. He had kept a large portion of truth in the lies between them.

Argus cleared his throat. "I'm just a squib, Sev'rus, but I know there's a way to do just about anything, with magic."

Severus decided he could give Potter the benefit of the doubt, for now at least. It wasn't like he had much of a choice.

By the time he returned to his own rooms, the Firewhiskey bottle was empty.

xoxox

On Monday at breakfast, Potter received the owl Severus had sent. It was the same envelope from first year, containing the reply to the question Potter'd asked then, about the nature of his relationship with Lily and the extent of his feelings towards her.

Severus had laboured over the letter most of the previous day instead of doing his grading.

Lily Evans was my best friend until mid-fourth year. She was unfailingly kind; a source of hope and goodness to me in a lacking childhood. I was in love with the idea of her, and the thought that something so beautiful could love me. As I had realised my sexual orientation by the summer before fifth year, my infatuation with Lily was platonic and short-lived.

Lily Potter was the woman who was too good to forgive me. She understood my situation, but was too wrapped up in herself to care for her childhood friend. I was not kind to her; we both hurt- and drove each other away. I regret the bitterness we left between us, but my grief and mourning was for the Lily Evans I grew up with.

Come to my rooms after your last class tonight. We will discuss the reasons you are more than you seem. Bring your ageing potion, and anything else you think appropriate.

Potter did not read the letter at the table. He examined the envelope carefully, seeming to recognise it. He barely looked at Severus long enough to make eye contact and nod, then fed the owl and departed from the table.

Severus was not sure if he was dreading or anticipating the coming evening

Perhaps it was both.

xoxox

Most events in my story (barring the magic) are based on real things that happened to real people.

On April 30th 1999, a Neo-Nazi planted a nail bomb in the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho, London. Andrea Dykes who was four months pregnant, as well as her friends Nik Moore and John Light were killed. Around 70 people were injured.