Chapter Seven
Click: Harry with his red-haired girl, dressed for his wedding, jittery with excitement.
Click: Snape and Harry arguing. Harry throws one of Snape's books. Snape throws Harry's broom out the door and tells him to go after it.
Click: Harry and his wife, curled up together, taking turns feeding their new baby.
Click: Harry bent, clutching the table. Snape fucks him from behind, his hands ceaseless in their gratitude for Harry's body, his eyes alternately bottomless with hunger and half-lidded with the immersion in a happiness that he doesn't have to remember, because it's here, now.
Click: Harry as an Auror, his robes brilliant and spells crackling with self-confidence.
Click: Harry as an Auror, his robes brilliant and spells crackling with self-confidence. Lily smirks. Apparently some things remain the same, no matter what the future holds.
Click: The growing Potter family, three kids, Harry guiding one petrified child atop a miniature broom, his Weasley wife reading out an article on the latest Holyhead Harpies match. There are plaques on the wall. Family pictures. Kitchen spells whisk and clatter in the background.
Click: Harry perched on a rock with his broom parked alongside, gazing out over stone-helmeted hills and sunshot clouds. Snape rooting about nearby, parting the clover with careful fingers, snipping herbs and harvesting strings of tiny sundrop flowers – creeping jenny, Lily's picked it herself. They're shouting casual insults at each other, warped and hurled away by the wind; Lily's resigned to the fact that it's their primary language. Then Snape, crouched beside a stand of bog myrtle, snaps off a sprig and crushes the fragrant leaves, holding them up to inhale. When he stands, the wind sluices his hair off his shoulders and flaps it behind him, while the thin sun fills his shirt with light. Inside that incandescence, his shadowy torso tapers like a stem into a vase. His pale fingers rove the red catkins of the myrtle, squeezing, assessing.
One minute Harry's face is squinty and indolent behind shimmery glasses. The next, it's a-blaze with the angel's presence. He burns up at Snape, lovestruck. Calmly uncinching the drawstring bag at his belt, Snape's about to drop the crinkle of leaves inside when an invisible wing skims over him. He starts up, suspicious. Then in a single stride he stands before Harry, looms over him, clasping his wind-chapped cheeks between stained palms.
He kneels – uh-oh, Lily thinks, wondering how much sex she can bear to watch in one go.
Snape drags Harry backward onto the grass. He doesn't disrobe but unfastens their clothing from breast to groin, opening them both up to sun and air. His white shirt struggles to take flight around his ribs – ribs like a terraced fountain, Lily sees, the descending ledges from breast to hipbone laddered and perfect. She shouldn't think this way, but she does. She doesn't care. No one will ever know. Call it payback for once finding him scrawny and insufficient.
Sunlight ricochets off Harry's glasses. He unhooks and hands them to Snape, who tosses them aside onto a slab of rock. Harry protests the cavalier treatment. He's so young like this. So bright with anticipation. Shaking out the bag, Snape rolls the herbs and flowers between his hands, then sprinkles them in clumps over Harry's bare skin. Before the wind can snatch them away, he lowers his body down upon Harry's and touches his lips to the hints of green sap streaking his face, whispering all the while. They start to move, rubbing and crushing the freshly picked leaves between them. Harry undulates hard beneath Snape as though trying to buck him off, both legs wrapped around him to make sure he stays put. A gasping sound spills from him, earthy and uninhibited, and Snape dips his head, inhaling the laughter with the same serious appreciation he'd given the scent of myrtle.
For reasons she doesn't dare examine, Lily finds it harder to bear the sight of Severus in love than of him dying. She flees to the other channel.
Click: Dark bedroom, Harry walking quietly out the door and down the stairs. He stretches out on the sofa and stares up at the ceiling. Lily's about to switch scenes, when Harry reaches down his pyjama bottoms and starts to masturbate. She changes channels quickly, but it's her first glimpse that Harry's got a private world.
Click: Snape's cottage starts out uncluttered, albeit stuffed with books. The more often Harry pops around, the more the small cosy rooms start bulging at the seams with things. At first Lily assumes it's all Harry's influence, but gradually, about the time the upright piano appears on the scene, it dawns on her that fate has brought together two men who suffered privation in childhood and have had, in their lifetimes, very little to call their own. They're starting to make up for it now, and it's not just Harry.
Quilts, magical clocks, wizarding artefacts of all kinds, racing brooms, windowbox herbariums, paintings, odd-shaped lamps, stained glass, copper pots and pans, astrolabes, maps and globes, telescopes, a self-organizing desk, a puppet theatre designed as a Quidditch field, three chess sets, and a scattering of joke gifts delivered by Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, are only some of the things that encroach upon Snape's asceticism. Snape refuses to touch the latter items, and when the owl drops them off, he makes Harry open them outside. The piano, Lily notes, is nearly identical to the one that used to reside in her mum's back parlour, just down the hall from where she's watching the telly. Snape, who seems to have devoted considerable time to a private study of Harry's breaking points, periodically drives him out of the house when he wishes to be alone through the simple expedient of playing scales. Three pages of Hanon finger exercises, and the door bangs shut. At which point, smirking, Snape either switches to practicing actual pieces of music or else gets up to apply himself to something that requires uninterrupted concentration.
Click: Lily frowns. Hang on. That nondescript gent in Muggle clothes handing money to a predatory-looking older bloke? That's Harry under Polyjuice. They go to a bar and just sit. The bloke is confused and puts pressure on Harry to rent them a room. Lily can't decide if Harry's there for himself or if he's working an undercover assignment.
She looks for evidence that Harry's cheating on his wife. She finds more scenes of him paying men to sit and have dinner with him. Once, he submits and actually pays for private lodgings. The rentboy gets as far as taking off his shirt before Harry abruptly stands up and leaves.
Harry in the middle of the night, drink in hand, levitating children's toys out of his way as he totters across an unlit room. He fetches up against the window and stares out, his breath misting the glass, his face catching the glare of a street lamp.
And yet, in daylight, Harry's jolly and comfortable with his kids, a bit of a pushover as a dad. He's affectionate with Ginny and seems to depend on her to maintain their busy public schedule.
Click: Snape naked, except for a pair of reading glasses. Harry naked, his head on Snape's chest, both of them safely tucked under blankets and a luxurious counterpane. They look sated, and their hair's in tangles, so Lily reckons she's safe from another bout of sexual athletics. A fire crackles in the hearth, and rain rattles in sharp bursts against the window. Snape's reading aloud from a book, and Lily can just make out the title on the dust jacket: The Return of the King. Under the sheets, Harry's hand lies between Snape's legs, petting contentedly. Lily reflects that she has a similar penchant as regards James. Apparently she and her son both enjoy the soft, silky feel of a limp penis. Too bad James hasn't anything like Snape's ability to invest his voice with a purring quality. Every now and then, the throaty feline monologue jumps a few notes and Snape stops reading to glare down at Harry.
Another assault on the window, rain spitting like nails. There's a draft in the room; the flame in the copper lamp flutters.
" …the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back," Snape reads, "and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise." Closing the book on one finger, he leans back against the pillow and gazes over the rims of his glasses at the black, streaming panes. "I suppose it must be so for some. Is that how death seemed to you, Potter?"
But Harry's asleep, or perhaps just pretending.
Click: White walls, blood, the flick of wands, the flash of silver. She can't see Harry, but she hears him. She knows his voice, and that's him, screaming.
The golden ball thuds to the floor. Panicked, she scrambles after it, but not before a figure onscreen sets a knife to one of Harry's fingers. Then Lily's screaming, too, shrieking, "No!" as the blade cuts through bone. The close-up shows two stumps, two other fingers, already removed from that hand.
The finger comes off. Harry's moaning, a delirious sound, half-mad.
Trembling with horror, Lily makes the rings clash as they spin. Go forward, forward, find him. Find him healed and whole, for God's sake, don't let this be his future. Bile rises in her throat, but there, Merlin be praised, there he is, home. Harry's home, not dead, it's all right, it can't have been that bad. Look, his fingers are re-grown. Ginny's bustling about the room, packing, stopping to firecall her mum every few minutes to pass on instructions about how her daughter Lily should be treated, what toys are forbidden her, how magical creatures always follow her home, and that, no, she can't keep them.
It takes Lily a while to realize that Harry's just sitting there stirring his tea round and round, repeating over and over in a monotonous whine: "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I wish I could get over this. I'm sorry, Gin, you shouldn't have to babysit me while you're managing the team. I could stay behind with Ron and Hermione again, but – I'm sorry, please don't leave me. You and the kids, you're all I have. Please, I won't be a bother, I'm sure I'll be better soon – "
Ginny's been binding brooms together in pairs. Now she sits down across from him with a gusty sigh, then leans forward and ruffles his hair. "Hush, love. You're getting fussed over nothing. I'm not going anywhere without you, all right? We've got you billed as my personal assistant, so you can travel with the team and the world will be none the wiser. You've nothing to apologize for." She speaks slowly, with forced brightness, and Lily understands that she's said the exact same thing to him many times before. "I'm the one who should be sorry. And I am. I'm sorry it took the Aurors three weeks to find you, Harry. I'm sorry you had to suffer like that. We'll do our best to make this work. I promise. I promise never to leave you, do you understand?"
"Yes, of course," Harry says anxiously. "I believe you, Ginny. You're so good to me. I'm all right now, really. I promise, I'll do whatever you say. I won't act up on tour. I'll take my Dreamless Sleep every night. No one will ever know. Just, for Merlin's sake, don't leave me alone - "
Oh God.
Click: Quickly, she spins through the years. Maybe it won't happen if he's with Snape. Maybe that's why this future exists.
But then she's in the potions lab, the one embedded in the hillside. Snape's brewing with sharp, controlled motions, his face waxy and sunken-in like a shrivelled pepper, his eyes flat and calm. The cauldron smokes. As Lily watches, sickened, Snape cuts his palm open with a slash of his wand, bleeds into the black water, then pulls up his robes and urinates. In succession, he adds tears and semen. It requires the use of a Pensieve to provoke the necessary level of grief, and a certain amount of pacing and pinching to work up a willing erection, but Snape extracts both fluids with grim efficiency. Lastly, once he's reduced the substance at a rolling boil and stirred it until it separates, he summons a mirror from the far end of the room, cracks it in half, and feeds one sheet of it into the cauldron, crooning an incantation that makes Lily's nape prickle. The fragment melts. Snape times the cooling-off period with evident impatience, then skims off the silvery gelatine on the surface and – Lily grimaces tensely – drinks it down. He covers his mouth with both hands and waits out the impulse to vomit. Then, eyes watering, he picks up the second fragment of mirror and concentrates.
Within seconds, his eyes turn silver. Lily can't see what he sees, but she's pretty sure she knows what it is. Snape's hands start to shake. Soon his whole body is trembling violently, and the mirror slips from his grasp, shattering at his feet. He stands for several minutes, blind, his sockets glittering, until the silver film fades and his eyes are fully human again. Then he crosses to the utility sink, sticks his finger down his throat, and vomits up the potion. Casting Scourgify, he disposes of the evidence. To Lily he seems unsteady on his feet, but without giving himself time to recover, he Disapparates.
She expects him to reappear in the whitewashed, sterile cell of Harry's other future, but the picture shifts to the home of Harry's friends. Ron is taller than Snape, but Snape's singleness of purpose booms out, filling the room. He buttonholes Ron, snarling, "Either you come with me now or I do this alone. Going through official channels will only waste time, and Potter has no time. The wizards who kidnapped him are part of an underground market dealing in dismemberment and magical transference through cannibalism and similar atrocities. They will sell him off piece by bloody piece until nothing's left."
That's all it takes, of course. Snape grips Ron's arm and instructs, with the icy calm of the man who executed Albus Dumbledore, "Send your Patronus to the Ministry the moment we arrive. And do not be a milksop. Kill if you must."
Lily can't watch. But she can't not watch. She fast-forwards, bombarded by fragments. Snape, Stupefying the wizard standing over the bed where Harry lies shackled. Harry's left hand, spread on the bloodstained sheets, already mutilated, less one finger. Snape risking a precious second to ensure he's not otherwise damaged, getting hit broadside by a roaring Incendio. The snap of Ron's wand, the flames imploding with the sound of a burst paper bag. Snape, face murderous, pivoting in a cloud of charred and smoking robes.
Lily slows the speed to play this sequence in real time, because – well, because she wants to see Severus flatten the bastards. He sizes up the opposition, shouts, "Weasley, get the fuck out, now," and then proceeds, with a single cast, to Cruciate the lot of them.
Mass Cruciatus. Merlin, how much hatred and sheer bloody-minded power does that take? Lily really shouldn't be cheering. Because there's no doubt to whom he owes that skill.
When the Aurors arrive, three of them Stupefy Snape simultaneously, knocking him with a crash into Harry's bed. Someone else adds a Body-Bind for good measure. By that point, he's unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. A fourth summons his wand, while a back-up pair struggle to cancel the curse that has three men and one woman screaming and flailing on the floor. Ron steps forward to report, standing fast even though the Auror in charge is clearly royally steamed at this evidence of an unauthorized raid. A rogue member of her department in the company of a former Death Eater, no less. She gives Ron the stink-eye and orders that Snape be carted off with the kidnappers – "Shut up, Weasley, I wouldn't give two knuts for your job at this point" – while a security contingent rushes Harry to St. Mungo's.
For gratuitous and illegal use of Unforgivables, Severus Snape is sentenced to Azkaban.
Lily's seen Snape in prison and would prefer not to repeat the experience. For the first time since discovering the number thirteen, she switches from Snape's future with Harry to Harry's with Snape. It's a subtle difference, pure superstition on Lily's part, but she's always scrupulously observed it. She regards this channel as the 'real' future, Harry as husband, father, celebrity, honourable member of Magical Law Enforcement. When she uses the black ring on channel three, it's to watch him with Ginny, to bask in the antics of the grandchildren she will never meet. Giving preference to his future with Snape threatens their very existence.
She keeps expecting a ghostly seepage from one future to another, the shriek of his children's voices calling for their dad echoing under the image of Harry flying tight laps around the countryside. When he angles his broom back to earth, he lands in Ron and Hermione's garden. Until Snape's release, he stays with his friends.
The months pass. The hills change with the seasons. The purple nightshade flowers twining around the door yield to blood-red berries. Snow whistles over the peaks, and the hills glow under a milky crust. Lily longs for a Patronus to come cantering through the moonlight, but the stars stay where they are, in the sky.
Click: She ventures back to the Harry-Ginny channel, and there he is, slouched on a bench in a Hogsmeade square, with history repeating itself. Perched beside him is a young woman, a slip of a girl with red hair and green eyes. She's dressed a bit hoydenish, and her hair's cut on a slant in an asymmetrical bob. This time, there's no mistaking them for husband and wife.
"Mum sends her love," the girl remarks, and he nods, taking a small sip from a flask. Dead leaves scud around their feet.
Harry's daughter glances up, clearly impatient, in time to catch the quizzical look from a passer-by. She bestows a tiny smile, and the portly older man pauses. If he's hoping to pay his respects to The Chosen One, he's doomed to disappointment. Harry mutters, "S'not me," and the older wizard shrugs, tips his head in sympathetic farewell, then takes his leave. The camera angle changes, and Lily realizes that the square is dominated by a huge animated monument to the Riddle Wars. It's cast in bronze, and the figure that represents Harry emits a constant golden light.
"If you don't want people to recognize you, you shouldn't sit here."
Harry shakes his head. "S'not me, though."
"I still think it's a good likeness." The girl's face softens. "Put your gloves on, Dad. Your hands look frozen." The camera follows her gaze, and it's true, a bluish tinge has crept through his re-grown fingers.
"I don't mind," Harry says reasonably. He waves the flask at the statue, not toasting, more in a "go away" gesture. Vapour swirls up, and he takes another quick swig, then caps it. "I wish they'd pull that bloody thing down. Can't ever get away from it." His daughter taps her wand in a bored way, and the sparse piles of leaves around the bench wad together, flap their papery wings, and start skimming and bobbing above the ground. "Don't they see? I'm not like that. Never was." A brief silence descends. Harry fetches out his wand, neat and quick in a way that shows up his daughter's ennui, and one of the leafy imposters flourishes suddenly into a fat, blinking pheasant. It chitters and explodes into flight, glorious feathers rippling. "Sorry. I dwell on that too much, don't I. How's your mum?"
"We've gone over that already," the girl whinges. "Right as rain. Still kicking arse like nobody's business." A fond smile illuminates the subtle ways in which she resembles Harry, but then it fades. "I told you, right? She sends her love."
Harry huddles down on the bench, hands tucked inside a jumper emblazoned with a Holyhead Harpies logo. "Thanks, Lils. Yeah, I heard you the first time."
The name hurts. The whole thing hurts. She can't watch any more.
Click: Snape is home, seated in his battered armchair, attenuated and sombre. There's a worn beauty about him, like the stone escarpments visible through the window, a tribute to erosion and endurance. His greasy hair's frost-blighted, and Lily wonders exactly how long he was in prison. A dressing gown puckers tight around his middle. She remembers him standing in the silvery light of his Patronus, purified, as black and white as the shadows and the snow. She wonders if he ever told Harry how he watched over him that night.
The amber light of afternoon burnishes the inlaid mahogany of the piano. The lid's been lowered over the keys; errant sunbeams show up the dust. Harry paces and rants. Snape's been home less than an hour, Lily estimates, and already they're fighting. Or anyway, Harry is. Lily blinks at the feathering of grey at his temples, the fines lines around his mouth. It wasn't a boy the kidnappers took; this Harry, with his stubble and his uncombed hair and two layers of jumpers, is forty at a guess, possibly older. Which puts Snape past sixty. It's a shock, not because her son is aging, but because it means she's been watching them together for twenty years.
Partway through Harry's list of reasons why Snape is an arsehole – reasons that include risking Ron's life, risking his own life, suffering second-degree magical burns, using a fucking massive Unforgivable that's probably crippled him for life (Lily frowns, until she realizes he means Snape's magic, and then she thinks, better him than you), getting himself thrown in Azkaban for nine frigging months – Snape dozes off.
He wakes up when Harry crawls into his lap. Slowly, as if unsure whether he's dreaming, he curls one hand around Harry's leg and one in his hair. He doesn't speak. After a minute, Harry mutters, his face pressed to Snape's neck, "Can I get you anything? Is there anything at all you want?"
Snape blinks and shifts, urging Harry to budge over. "I've always been partial to blow jobs," he says, harsh and low.
"No problem. One phenomenal blow job, coming right up."
Neither of them moves. Then Harry lifts a hand to Snape's cheek and starts smoothing his thumb back and forth along the bone. Snape closes his eyes, and Lily assumes he's fallen asleep again, but then one arm drops over the side of the chair. He gestures, frowns, waits a moment, opens his eyes, and gestures again. The armchair shudders and lurches downward, converting without grace to a rocking chair. Snape glares at his hand, clenches and straightens the fingers, then sighs and goes back to groping Harry's leg.
They rock in silence, but Harry's breathing is wet and audible. Snape remarks, "I don't think I've ever had the dubious pleasure of receiving a blow job that consists solely of heavy breathing in my ear." He grabs a handful of hair and pulls. "Potter." Harry shakes his head, but Snape insists. He drags Harry's damp face into view and studies it, then pushes his glasses up his forehead, leans over, and places his mouth on the tear tracks. He licks slowly, thoroughly, before sitting back. "As I informed Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger," he says, his voice gaining strength, "I have partaken of your blood, your semen, and your piss – "
"What?" Harry yelps. "You what? No, you're joking. Oh my God, please tell me you didn't actually say that." He groans. "Oh, fantastic. Now they're probably convinced we get off by pissing on each other in bed."
"Even you, Mr. Potter, are not squeaky clean one hundred percent of the time," Snape says snidely. "I've just added tears to the list of bodily fluids I've ingested. And believe me, you aside, I'm not in the habit of making public confessions of my sexual proclivities to former students. I wanted Auror Weasley to understand that I'd used a Dark spell to find you and that this would place him in a precarious legal position if he agreed to assist me. Apart from which, I needed to persuade them both that I knew where you were." He snorts. "Oddly, they had no trouble believing my story. Such are the perks of my reputation, that even my allies take it for granted I always have a Dark spell up my sleeve."
"I'll never be able to look Ron in the face again," Harry whinges.
"You count this a hardship? Rest assured, Potter, that if Miss Granger should ever disappear in the dead of night, Mr. Weasley will waste no time dismantling our wards and our door to demand that I instruct him in the particulars of this spell. He never even flinched, and I've no doubt he filed it away for future reference."
"Hey, that doesn't mean I'm not grateful." Harry straightens his glasses. "It's just – all right, don't get mad, but I've got to say this. If you hadn't used the Cruciatus – "
The rocking stops. Lily holds her breath.
"No," Snape says explosively. "We will not do this. Potter. For fuck's sake, I shouldn't have to explain. Not to you. You're the one who was chained to the bed, you stupid boy. They were going to cut you up for sale to the highest bidders. They intended to make a fortune by killing you as slowly and painfully as possible and auctioning the scraps. Do you have any idea how much some Dark wizards would pay for the blood and bone of the Chosen One? How much more magic inheres if the pieces are harvested while the donor's still alive?" Snape's breathing is harsh. "If you'd been missing more than the little finger of your left hand, I wouldn't have resorted to the Cruciatus. Or the Killing Curse, for that matter. I would have made their deaths an absolute agony."
Lily suspects he's spent months alone in his cell, replaying over and over what would have happened if they hadn't found Harry in time. Well, she knows what would have happened, because she's seen it.
"You forget," Snape whispers. "I am not a good man."
Harry sits up, and his lips are ruddy, his expression famished. He leans toward Snape's mouth, one hand snaking inside his dressing gown, seeking the shape of a nipple.
Snape grabs his wrist and dodges the kiss. For a moment Harry freezes, stricken, looking horrified and bewildered. "Oh – you don't – sorry, I didn't mean to – "
"Don't be an idiot," Snape says, restraining him as he tries to push out of the chair, then forcibly resettling them both. "I'm – I can't yet, Potter. I'm wound too tight. Too much sensation right now will – it will take me apart. Look." He raises one hand, and they both stare at the tremors. "I almost lost you, and it's – impossible. I'm sorry. You may think me in control, but I'm not. Until I am, until I've stripped the memories and stench of Azkaban off me, I'm," his hand tightens, and he dredges up the words from somewhere dark, somewhere he must have lain curled at the bottom of his mind during those long, silent months, "I'll only be capable of tearing at you like some ravenous beast." His voice escalates, suddenly furious. "Because they touched you, they dared to take you, and I should have cursed them straight to hell. They had no right, no right, you're mine, you belong to – "
He stops short, his body shuddering like a horse shying at the fence.
"I know," Harry says with equal intensity. "Fuck it, Severus. I had to stand by while they threw you in that filthy hole, with no guarantee that you'd ever come out again. Don't you think I feel the same way? I know."
The light in the room is suddenly muted, both luminous and dark, like the underside of a raincloud. It's that divinity between them, that sublime force perhaps only Lily can see, kindling out of nowhere. She suspects that if it were to take shape, incarnate, it would possess not merely wings, but a sword. It hovers over them, the dark side of all that is transcendent about them, merciless, terrible in its wrath.
Harry's arse has slid off Snape's legs onto the seat cushion, and they're tangled awkwardly around each other, cluttered together in an interlocking geometry of knees and elbows that looks extremely uncomfortable. At any other time, Lily suspects Snape would have had no qualms about dumping Harry off the chair. Right now she reckons it would require an Unsticking Charm to pry them off each other.
Harry uses one finger to trace the outline of Snape's lips. "Potter," Snape says repressively.
"Shut up. If you won't kiss me, then you can fucking well call me Harry, don't you think?" He's staring at Snape's throat, and for a second Lily thinks he's going to lean down and bite the long tendon, a bookend to Nagini's mark.
Snape brushes his grotesquely aquiline nose over the top of Harry's head, inhaling the smell of home. "You are always Harry," he says, violent and soft. Mimicking the finger to the lips, he pets the tense curve of Harry's mouth, and Harry engulfs the finger, sucking it in. "But it's not something I wish to bandy about, to use constantly, until it loses all significance. I prefer to save it for the right moment." Harry looks at him narrowly, still sucking, and Snape rolls his eyes, giving in. "Yes, yes, all right. Harry."
Letting go of the wet finger, Harry butts Snape's shoulder. "I'll tell you what. All these months, there's something. It's been bothering me. You being gone for so long has made me realize – my life could so easily have been different. Unthinkably different."
Snape gazes off over Harry's head, the tired light in his face wavering like a flame in a draft. He's afraid, Lily sees. Harry huddles down, silent, and Snape resumes rocking. "The truth is," Harry whispers, "the day Voldemort died? I almost didn't come back for you."
Snape goes still. "Or I for you." A bird on the windowsill pecks at the glass.
Harry gives a startled huff, and Snape gestures impatiently. He snaps his fingers three times before the logs in the fireplace hiss and suddenly burst into flame. "I could have – stayed. There. On the other side. Amid the green hills, just as it says in the book. With white sand, and the swings creaking in the breeze." He sighs. "Ironically, it was only in death that I realized I'd finally let go of the past. And that I wanted something I'd stopped believing I could ever have."
"What, me blowing in your ear?" Harry says, trying to smile.
"I don't know why I bother having conversations with you, Mr. Potter." Harry tightens his hold, and Snape idly rearranges his legs, tucks Harry's hand around his waist, and it's as if he's just solved the puzzle. Suddenly they fit together, nothing superfluous, arms and legs neatly intertwined. "I wanted a future."
"You really died?" Harry says, after struggling with it for a moment.
Snape frowns past him, into the fire. "I was there when your – when all those who loved you were summoned. Those who watched over you when you walked to your death."
"I didn't see you."
"You didn't call me."
Harry's head rises. His hair's sticking up all over the place, and his eyes are strangely panicky, staring at Snape. "Well, I'm calling you now. I can't, fuck, I – listen to me, I literally can't imagine what my life would have been like without you. I swear to God, Severus, if you ever try dying on me, I'm summoning you back."
Snape nudges Harry's chin up with his fingers, just enough to shape their lips together with the same sweet, uncomplicated fit as their bodies share, a promissory note for the moment when Snape can finally let go. "I heard you," he breathes. "You were my future, Harry. I heard you call me from all the way over there. From the other side. In death. I saw a white road, and you on it, ahead of me."
He kisses him again, and Harry twines his hands desperately in Snape's hair. "So," Snape closes his eyes, "I came back."
Click: Lily turns off the telly. She's seen enough.