[Advent fics]: Defender's Armor, S/H, PG-13
Title: Defender's Armor
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Snape (mostly pre-slash).
Warnings: A bit of angst, AU in that Snape survived the war.
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4400
Summary: Severus could have expected to meet Harry Potter in many places, but not at a potions conference. And especially not a Harry Potter like this.
Author's Notes: This is another of my Advent fics, this time for
darkhawkhealer, who requested Harry and Snape meeting on equal ground and Snape being impressed. Here you go!
Defender's Armor
“And welcome to our featured speaker on the topic of defensive potions work in battle, Harry Potter.”
Severus found that he could not move. He would have walked out of the room if he had known those words were to be spoken; he was certain of it, with a certainty as firm as bones. But instead, he sat in the middle of the politely applauding crowd and watched Harry Potter step up to the podium in the front.
The podium was on a raised platform, but the crowd was smaller than the kind Potter could have expected if he was speaking about Defense as an Auror. He didn’t look as though that bothered him. He was taller than Severus remembered, taller than the scrawny child who had crept into the Shack to look Severus in the eyes during what should have been his death moment-taller than his father. Older than his father had been when he died, too, a shock that rocked Severus like the bite of poison.
Potter kept his shaggy black hair pulled back in a careless tail that smoothed a lot of the shagginess out of it. And his glasses were small, and he only slipped them onto his face when he had to peer closely at the notes in front of him.
Severus found himself listening for the voice, for the note of arrogance and condescension that he was sure would be there.
It didn’t come. Instead, Potter cleared his throat as though in apology and began, “Thank you for listening to me. Most of you know the traditional limit of potions in battle is that they can’t be drunk fast enough. I have been working with time-delayed spells, and I have created a combination of potions that can be swallowed before the battle and remain inactive in the blood until called upon…”
The subject was interesting, which, of course, meant that Potter had probably stolen someone else’s work. Severus looked around the crowd, studying faces. Who would have considered the research important enough to let someone else take credit for it, as long as it was presented and respectfully listened to?
But no one looked that way. Most people were gravely listening, and some with the spark of interest in their eyes and the flush of it on their cheeks. A few people were talking in low voices to their neighbors or checking their watches. There are always a few, Severus thought, mind flashing back to the speeches he had given, and the times he had taught and there were people who would not pay attention no matter what.
Then he stiffened again. Why should he care about who wasn’t paying attention during Potter’s little speech? He should be rejoicing that there were people unimpressed by Potter’s reputation around him, his own kind. He should be preparing to walk out. He should be one of those whispering dissidents!
Instead, Potter’s speech drew him in despite himself, particularly the part where Potter described how he had used the time-delay charms to keep the potions from reacting to each other at crucial moments. When Potter finished with an ungraceful, “That’s it, really,” and some people applauded, Severus had to convince his hands not to move to join them.
People asked questions, of course, and at least some of them had the proper spirit and didn’t seem inclined to exempt Potter from criticism simply because he was a famous face. Potter listened and responded to most of them intelligently, and only shook his head over one.
“I don’t know why I didn’t consume Patton’s Slowing Elixir,” he admitted. “I have to say that most of my knowledge lies outside the Potions field, but I still should have thought of something that obvious.”
And he didn’t look upset! He was smiling! He had learned to laugh at himself!
Severus wondered if the way he had saved himself-studying the poison in his bloodstream by the signs as it poured through him and enchanting the few ingredients he carried in his pockets into an antivenin once he was alone-had, after all, been the dream it had always seemed like. Maybe all his life since the Shrieking Shack was only a dream, and he was dreaming then, sitting there and thinking he had heard Harry Potter converse intelligently on a complex Potions topic.
Potter gave his smile around at the rest of the audience and turned to step down from the podium.
He hadn’t once looked at Severus or acknowledged him. He might not even have seen him in the crowd.
And that was unacceptable. Severus rose, and ensured that he made his way through the crowd in enough time to intercept Potter at the entrance of the room.
Potter stopped walking when he got to Severus’s side and nodded. Severus stared into his eyes, and still found nothing of the mockery that he had expected, that he had thought was an inescapable part of the way Potter would always relate to him. Instead, Potter looked as though he was thinking of a nap and a bath after the difficulty-Severus sneered-of the talk he had endured.
“Potions master Snape,” Potter said. “Did you have a mistake that I made in my talk to point out?”
That made Severus wish he had paid more attention, because doubtless he hadn’t paid enough if he hadn’t found one mistake. But he shook his head, and winced as the stiff muscles in his neck protested against it. “No. I wanted to know what you are doing here, and since when you came to research defensive potions. You are not a Potions master. You don’t have the talent.”
“No,” Potter said, and smiled slightly at him. “You wouldn’t believe how much time it’s taken me to get even the few potions I do use to work together well.”
“I would believe it,” Severus snapped.
Potter’s smile widened. “Yes, you would, wouldn’t you?” he murmured, which wasn’t hostile but was provoking, especially when he wasn’t trembling in fear of Severus uncovering his mistakes the way Severus had always assumed he would. “But, truly, my specialty is defense. Self-defense, against anything and everything that can attack you.”
Severus squinted at him.
Potter had either heard tales of that squint or he remembered something about Severus’s expressions from Hogwarts, because he explained. “I wanted to help people like Ron after the war, people who’d lost someone. There was nothing the Mind-Healers could do unless someone was amenable to letting people into his mind, and Ron wasn’t. Not that I blame him, with the history of Legilimency I told him about.” Severus glanced at him sharply, but Potter’s expression was mild; they might have been speaking about some other Legilimens who had tried, and failed, to train Potter. “But I thought there might be something you could do with a combination of spells and potions and talking.”
“That profession exists, Potter, and is called Healing,” Severus said, pleased to have scored a point against him at last.
Potter shook his head, his eyes deep and fiery now. Severus was also pleased to have uncovered the stubborn boy behind the man, but wondered where he had been hiding until now. “No. The Healers deal with poisons and curses and transformations and magical accidents, but they don’t deal well with grief. At all. Do you know they didn’t do anything for Neville, all those years he was visiting his parents in the Janus Thickey ward? Not even common human kindness to make it easier. I wanted to make it easier. No one should have to suffer. I hate suffering. I want to make it go away. So I set out to find out what would make it go away.”
Severus stared at him again. It should have been easy to despise that declaration. It was just the sort of naïve pronouncement that Potter would have launched during his schoolboy days, expecting everyone to applaud him at once.
But if Potter had limited himself to his friend at first, or to other scenarios in the way of the battle situations he had spoken about just now…
“Did it work?” Severus asked, despite himself. Since the war, the test of competence was the only one he truly respected.
“Yes.” Potter’s smile was one Severus had only seen before in the mirror when he proved some long- and dearly-held theory about experimental potions wrong. “I helped Hermione brew a variation of a Calming Draught that Ron would take, and we also used a Pensieve and a spell that recreated that part of the battle where Fred died, so Ron could say good-bye. It took a long time, but Ron was at peace after that.”
Severus nodded slowly. “But no doubt you found it impossible to apply the exact same methods to someone else.”
Potter shrugged. “I can recommend some of them to people who are in similar situations, which is a start. But yes, I have to work one-on-one with most of my clients. I have to know exactly what they want, what they need, and what they aren’t willing to do. Most of the time, I do succeed. The ones I can’t, I can at least find a Mind-Healer or other qualified expert for.”
“So you take on individual people and then end their suffering?” Severus examined him again. It was so far from anything he could imagine Potter doing. Potter had cared for the whole world; he had cared about doing the things that could give him the greatest amount of glory. Perhaps he had an intellectual dominance among those who knew about his work now, but it wouldn’t bring him the same amount of admiration as killing a Dark Lord had.
“So I can destroy their suffering,” Potter corrected. “Teach them to defend themselves against suffering. Yes.”
Severus started to ask another question, but Potter held up a hand so commanding that Severus fell silent and blinked at him. “If you wouldn’t mind,” Potter said in a gentle murmur, “I’m very tired. I was traveling by Portkey and International Floo last night, and it took me hours to get back on track when they sent me to Iceland, for some reason. I’m going to rest. Nice seeing you again, Snape.” He nodded to him, and walked out of the room.
Snape watched him go. From the back, he wouldn’t have known it was Potter; the shagginess really didn’t show when he was wearing his hair like that.
And that was perhaps the biggest difference. Once, he would have known the annoying brat anywhere. Now, he didn’t.
And perhaps that meant he wasn’t the annoying little brat anymore.
*
Severus stepped out of the dining room with a sneer and a shudder. It was full of men and women who wanted to talk about their work-but not in a way that involved listening to what anyone else said, or comparing notes, or making links and connections that would enable them to further their projects in the future. They wanted a willing ear to pour their voices into, and that was all. The balcony would be quieter, and if devoid of an audience, devoid also of those who made an audience impossible.
Severus almost changed his mind and walked back inside when he saw the figure near the railing, however. Potter leaned there with a wineglass dangling limply from his hand, his head bowed as if in contemplation of the moon.
But Potter showed no sign of noticing him, and no coterie hung on his every word. After a few silent seconds of debate, during which Potter remained absorbed in the moonlight, Severus moved slowly towards him instead.
He began to find Potter’s obliviousness annoying when he was a meter from him, and loudly cleared his throat. Potter visibly started, but not enough to drop his wineglass. He turned around and nodded, then went back to the light in front of him.
“You seem intent on ignoring your colleagues,” Severus murmured, leaning on the railing beside him. “Or do you not consider them your colleagues since you work in a different field?”
Potter shrugged without taking his eyes from the moon. “I’m thinking about my next research project, that’s all,” he said. “I’m sure that their minds are filled with equally deep and interesting thoughts. But when you’re dealing with a werewolf whose major problem is that she has panic attacks every time the moon rises, sometimes you don’t have much room for anything else.”
Severus blinked. Then he said, “There is so much else to fear about becoming a werewolf.”
Potter smiled at him. “Yes, and someday I’ll have someone whose primary terror is lycanthropy. But since she can keep her mind with Wolfsbane and there’s no cure in sight for the condition right now, she doesn’t fear that so much. It’s the moon, and it debilitates her when she sees it out during the day or glimpses its light or even sees the shape of a crescent moon on a calendar. That’s the problem she came to me to get help with, so it’s the one I’m helping her with.” He frowned and leaned more over the railing, as though the shadows the moon cast beyond the balcony were fundamentally different than the ones on it.
Severus took a delicate step back. He didn’t want accusations of murder to fall on his head when Potter inevitably tumbled to his death over the railing. “How do you think that you can help someone with so irrational a fear?”
“With a Beauty Charm, partially,” Potter said, his voice abstracted again. “Teach her to see the moon as a source of beauty, and she’ll feel joy and delight in it. Joy and delight are the best antidotes to fear I know.”
“They cannot be,” Severus snapped. “Neither of them is the emotion induced by a Calming Draught, and Calming Draughts are the potions that are the antidotes to fear.”
Potter turned to him, although from the way he cocked his head, he would have far rather kept staring into the sky. That irritated Severus to the point he found it difficult to draw breath. “Really? But you know that a small number of people have a reaction to a Calming Draught that results in giggles, and you know that some people grow giddy on it. It doesn’t work for everyone. Sometimes, joy needs to come in and make it work.” And he turned back to the moon as though a thousand years of Potions theory could be dismissed in the same way as a single man.
Severus shook his head. His throat was dry and his tongue thick with rage. “You cannot know that.”
“I know it in the people I work with.” Potter glanced at him, and abruptly grimaced. “I’m sorry. I said something careless again, didn’t I? I do that a lot. But I do mean what I’m saying. The people I work with find joy and delight the best antidote. Maybe others wouldn’t. I don’t know. I tend not to look much beyond the individual case.”
“A problem you always had,” Severus muttered, but he found it tiring to scowl. He turned away instead and stared blindly at a far wall.
Potter walked past him. Severus knew that he did not imagine the hand that rose and squeezed his shoulder, but by the time he turned around and glared, Potter was beyond him, passing through the arched doorway back to the inner rooms.
“I hope you find some peace, Potions master Snape,” Potter said.
And the formality was the most infuriating thing of all, but by the time Severus got to the doorway, Potter had vanished in the crowd, leaving Severus to make his way back to his bedroom alone.
*
He woke fumbling from what he thought at first was a nightmare, but his hands grabbed the parchment beside his bed and began to write, almost of their own volition, and he recognized the impulse a moment later. One of the dreams that provided inspiration for experimental potions, dreams that he rarely had anymore. He needed to get the ideas down as quickly as he could before they vanished.
And he did. When he managed to blink the sleep fully from his hands and look at the parchment, Severus found instructions that might serve to lift him past at least one of the obstacles blocking his path to a reliable Transfiguration Potion, which would let anyone become an Animagus.
The inspiration had come from Potter. He knew that much. The thought of counteracting some of the ingredients in the potion that could make a drinker feel anxious and spoil the transformation with ingredients that induced a state of happiness came straight from his theory.
His ridiculous theory.
But it was there, and it was an intellectual debt-the only one he had formed at a conference like this in several years.
Severus fell limply back in bed and stared at the ceiling for the rest of the night.
*
“Good morning. Is there something I can do for you?”
Severus wanted to bristle at the utter surprise in Potter’s voice, but he supposed he couldn’t blame the brat. He had sought Potter out at breakfast this morning, coming straight to his table through many others where he could have sat and had privacy, or at least the company of colleagues who had been practicing the art for a long time.
But it wasn’t the company of his colleagues he wanted. He wanted the company of the one who had inspired him.
“Breakfast,” he said, sitting down in the chair next to Potter and staring at him as hard as he could.
Potter looked thoughtfully back, not flinching from the challenge, and then lifted his hand. One of the house-elves that served the conference appeared, and Potter cocked his head at Severus. Severus folded his arms and said nothing.
“Plain tea,” Potter told the elf. “Thick pieces of toast with the lightest butter that you can put on them. A few kippers.” The elf nodded and vanished again. Potter turned to Severus with a faint smile. “Did I get it right?”
Severus had made this a test, but he had never expected Potter to pass. It took him long moments to force his surprise past the lump in his throat. “I thought you wouldn’t remember what I ate for breakfast all those years ago.”
“Well, I did.” Potter shrugged, and started to turn back to the pamphlet he’d been reading.
Severus reached out and deliberately put a hand over Potter’s. Potter looked not at him but around at the other people at the tables, as if he assumed that Severus had forgotten their audience and might want to take back his hand.
Severus had done everything this morning on purpose, though, and he did not withdraw. “I want to know how and why you remembered,” he said. “How and why you became the person that you are, instead of the one I expected you to become after the war.”
Potter narrowed his eyes, but said nothing, perhaps because the elf returned with Severus’s breakfast at the moment. Sure enough, when it had gone and Severus had had time for a few bites of toast and a few sips of tea, Potter said, “What did you expect me to become?”
Severus wouldn’t have hesitated to defend his position on Potter’s probable transformation only a short day ago, but now he found himself floundering in the face of that quiet gaze. He finally drew himself up and said, “You can’t deny that you were a spoiled brat the last time I knew you.”
“I can deny the spoiled,” Potter said, with a quiet inward chuckle that Severus didn’t like the sound of. “You never really knew the way I grew up, Snape. But the brat part, maybe.” He shrugged. “You’re asking a question I’ve asked myself and not got an answer to. I think living through the war had most of all to do with it, but also I wanted to help people, and also I was bored with the thought of being an Auror once I really thought about it.”
“But-” Severus spent another minute eating, so he could think about his words, but in the end he came up with nothing diplomatic, and Potter would distrust diplomatic words from him anyway. He chose the bluntest way of saying it. “Your intelligence. I saw no evidence of that before.”
“Not in the fields you taught, certainly.”
Stung, Severus snapped back, “I taught Defense Against the Dark Arts, too, if you remember.”
“Only for a single year. And during a year when I did very little fighting of Death Eaters except at the close, and had other things to focus on.” Potter’s eyes rested on him, not challenging, and all the more challenging for that. They simply refused, not indignantly, Severus’s interpretation of events, which he had never thought to question before. “I was intelligent, Snape. I didn’t always use it, no.”
Severus snorted bitter agreement.
“But I had the talent, and after the war I chose to exercise it.” Potter shrugged and stood up. “It doesn’t seem worthwhile talking to you when you won’t believe me no matter what I say. Good day, Potions master. Enjoy your breakfast.”
And to Severus’s intense astonishment, Potter turned and walked away as if-
As if nothing Severus did mattered to him at all.
And Severus, who had come intending to work the discussion back around to theory and what he had gained from Potter in conversation the night before, found himself sitting there with little appetite for the food that followed.
*
“I wished to talk to you before you left the conference.”
Potter looked at him warily. His gloved hands were full of rose clippings; the gardens at the conference were open to anyone who wanted to venture into them and harvest the ingredients. “Yes?” he asked, his voice polite and empty.
He had been more welcoming to Severus last night, even distracted by the moon. Severus was determined to have that back again, but he knew only one way to get it, offensive as expressing admiration was to him.
“Your potions theory makes sense,” Severus said. “That is something you could never have done before this.”
Potter shifted his weight to one leg and reached out to pluck another rose from the bushes. “You don’t know when I began to change,” he said, politely but firmly. “You have no idea of the decisions I’ve made and the ways I’ve grown. So excuse me for thinking that your praise doesn’t mean much because of that.”
Severus stared at him, lips parted. It was the same attitude he had seen in Potter when he left Severus at the breakfast table-
That he didn’t care what Severus thought. That he had put that phase of his life behind him with ease and gentleness that Severus had never mastered.
And that made Severus want his attention all the more. Someone who wanted nothing from him, who held no guilt over him, who wielded no weapon and no grudge against him, but would still speak to him, was worth infinitely more than patronizing colleagues or people who wanted to benefit from Severus’s own intelligence or those who turned away with their noses in the air because of the Dark Mark.
Potter knew his past. There would be no surprises there, no sudden repudiation of Severus years after the fact.
Severus cleared his throat. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “your theory inspired one of mine last night.”
For the first time today, Potter glanced at him with a flicker of interest in his eyes. “Really?” he asked.
Severus nodded, and told the furiously pounding heartbeat in his ears that it could wait. “Yes. What you said about joy made me think that I might be able to add some joy-causing ingredients to a potion of my own.”
Potter at once leaned forwards, resting the roses he still held against a mostly-stripped bush that his weight couldn’t damage. “And what would you classify as joy-causing ingredients?” he demanded. “Just because it makes certain people laugh doesn’t mean it works the same way for everyone. Remember what I said about Calming Draughts.”
Severus gazed at him once more. He could hear, as if from another garden, echoes of the conversations they would have in the future. The debates that Potter would involve him in. The debates he would instigate, because clearly he knew more about potions than the modest knowledge he had disclaimed.
He could feel the way that Potter might reach out to him-a careful touch at first, then a careless tug on his elbow when Potter wanted his attention, and then finally to help with the cauldron, with the experimental potions like the Transformation Potion Severus was working on.
He could see the bright sparks of that intelligence rising and falling in his mind, hear the words Potter would speak in proof of it. Not showing it off, simply demonstrating it, the mind that Severus would have given a great deal years ago to see in any student but Malfoy and Granger.
Better late than never.
And he thought he could taste the future, too, staring at the shape of Potter’s lips and the way his hands moved in front of him.
“Snape? Did you hear my question?”
Severus woke up and looked at Potter. Still hovering, like a hawk, ready to dart away if Severus offered him the same sort of insults he would have in the past. And still ready to plunge down from a height and dazzle Severus with his speed, with what he had to offer.
“One word in your question is inappropriate,” Severus said. “Call me by my first name. That is what colleagues should do, should they not?”
Potter blinked a few times, eyelids dipping down over his eyes and hiding the glorious certainty. Then he smiled. “Severus,” he said.
Severus turned to walk with him through the rose garden, feeling the weight of the hawk settle on his gloved fist.
The End.
Crystalline Dreams.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/514166.html. Comment wherever you like.
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Snape (mostly pre-slash).
Warnings: A bit of angst, AU in that Snape survived the war.
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4400
Summary: Severus could have expected to meet Harry Potter in many places, but not at a potions conference. And especially not a Harry Potter like this.
Author's Notes: This is another of my Advent fics, this time for
darkhawkhealer, who requested Harry and Snape meeting on equal ground and Snape being impressed. Here you go!
Defender's Armor
“And welcome to our featured speaker on the topic of defensive potions work in battle, Harry Potter.”
Severus found that he could not move. He would have walked out of the room if he had known those words were to be spoken; he was certain of it, with a certainty as firm as bones. But instead, he sat in the middle of the politely applauding crowd and watched Harry Potter step up to the podium in the front.
The podium was on a raised platform, but the crowd was smaller than the kind Potter could have expected if he was speaking about Defense as an Auror. He didn’t look as though that bothered him. He was taller than Severus remembered, taller than the scrawny child who had crept into the Shack to look Severus in the eyes during what should have been his death moment-taller than his father. Older than his father had been when he died, too, a shock that rocked Severus like the bite of poison.
Potter kept his shaggy black hair pulled back in a careless tail that smoothed a lot of the shagginess out of it. And his glasses were small, and he only slipped them onto his face when he had to peer closely at the notes in front of him.
Severus found himself listening for the voice, for the note of arrogance and condescension that he was sure would be there.
It didn’t come. Instead, Potter cleared his throat as though in apology and began, “Thank you for listening to me. Most of you know the traditional limit of potions in battle is that they can’t be drunk fast enough. I have been working with time-delayed spells, and I have created a combination of potions that can be swallowed before the battle and remain inactive in the blood until called upon…”
The subject was interesting, which, of course, meant that Potter had probably stolen someone else’s work. Severus looked around the crowd, studying faces. Who would have considered the research important enough to let someone else take credit for it, as long as it was presented and respectfully listened to?
But no one looked that way. Most people were gravely listening, and some with the spark of interest in their eyes and the flush of it on their cheeks. A few people were talking in low voices to their neighbors or checking their watches. There are always a few, Severus thought, mind flashing back to the speeches he had given, and the times he had taught and there were people who would not pay attention no matter what.
Then he stiffened again. Why should he care about who wasn’t paying attention during Potter’s little speech? He should be rejoicing that there were people unimpressed by Potter’s reputation around him, his own kind. He should be preparing to walk out. He should be one of those whispering dissidents!
Instead, Potter’s speech drew him in despite himself, particularly the part where Potter described how he had used the time-delay charms to keep the potions from reacting to each other at crucial moments. When Potter finished with an ungraceful, “That’s it, really,” and some people applauded, Severus had to convince his hands not to move to join them.
People asked questions, of course, and at least some of them had the proper spirit and didn’t seem inclined to exempt Potter from criticism simply because he was a famous face. Potter listened and responded to most of them intelligently, and only shook his head over one.
“I don’t know why I didn’t consume Patton’s Slowing Elixir,” he admitted. “I have to say that most of my knowledge lies outside the Potions field, but I still should have thought of something that obvious.”
And he didn’t look upset! He was smiling! He had learned to laugh at himself!
Severus wondered if the way he had saved himself-studying the poison in his bloodstream by the signs as it poured through him and enchanting the few ingredients he carried in his pockets into an antivenin once he was alone-had, after all, been the dream it had always seemed like. Maybe all his life since the Shrieking Shack was only a dream, and he was dreaming then, sitting there and thinking he had heard Harry Potter converse intelligently on a complex Potions topic.
Potter gave his smile around at the rest of the audience and turned to step down from the podium.
He hadn’t once looked at Severus or acknowledged him. He might not even have seen him in the crowd.
And that was unacceptable. Severus rose, and ensured that he made his way through the crowd in enough time to intercept Potter at the entrance of the room.
Potter stopped walking when he got to Severus’s side and nodded. Severus stared into his eyes, and still found nothing of the mockery that he had expected, that he had thought was an inescapable part of the way Potter would always relate to him. Instead, Potter looked as though he was thinking of a nap and a bath after the difficulty-Severus sneered-of the talk he had endured.
“Potions master Snape,” Potter said. “Did you have a mistake that I made in my talk to point out?”
That made Severus wish he had paid more attention, because doubtless he hadn’t paid enough if he hadn’t found one mistake. But he shook his head, and winced as the stiff muscles in his neck protested against it. “No. I wanted to know what you are doing here, and since when you came to research defensive potions. You are not a Potions master. You don’t have the talent.”
“No,” Potter said, and smiled slightly at him. “You wouldn’t believe how much time it’s taken me to get even the few potions I do use to work together well.”
“I would believe it,” Severus snapped.
Potter’s smile widened. “Yes, you would, wouldn’t you?” he murmured, which wasn’t hostile but was provoking, especially when he wasn’t trembling in fear of Severus uncovering his mistakes the way Severus had always assumed he would. “But, truly, my specialty is defense. Self-defense, against anything and everything that can attack you.”
Severus squinted at him.
Potter had either heard tales of that squint or he remembered something about Severus’s expressions from Hogwarts, because he explained. “I wanted to help people like Ron after the war, people who’d lost someone. There was nothing the Mind-Healers could do unless someone was amenable to letting people into his mind, and Ron wasn’t. Not that I blame him, with the history of Legilimency I told him about.” Severus glanced at him sharply, but Potter’s expression was mild; they might have been speaking about some other Legilimens who had tried, and failed, to train Potter. “But I thought there might be something you could do with a combination of spells and potions and talking.”
“That profession exists, Potter, and is called Healing,” Severus said, pleased to have scored a point against him at last.
Potter shook his head, his eyes deep and fiery now. Severus was also pleased to have uncovered the stubborn boy behind the man, but wondered where he had been hiding until now. “No. The Healers deal with poisons and curses and transformations and magical accidents, but they don’t deal well with grief. At all. Do you know they didn’t do anything for Neville, all those years he was visiting his parents in the Janus Thickey ward? Not even common human kindness to make it easier. I wanted to make it easier. No one should have to suffer. I hate suffering. I want to make it go away. So I set out to find out what would make it go away.”
Severus stared at him again. It should have been easy to despise that declaration. It was just the sort of naïve pronouncement that Potter would have launched during his schoolboy days, expecting everyone to applaud him at once.
But if Potter had limited himself to his friend at first, or to other scenarios in the way of the battle situations he had spoken about just now…
“Did it work?” Severus asked, despite himself. Since the war, the test of competence was the only one he truly respected.
“Yes.” Potter’s smile was one Severus had only seen before in the mirror when he proved some long- and dearly-held theory about experimental potions wrong. “I helped Hermione brew a variation of a Calming Draught that Ron would take, and we also used a Pensieve and a spell that recreated that part of the battle where Fred died, so Ron could say good-bye. It took a long time, but Ron was at peace after that.”
Severus nodded slowly. “But no doubt you found it impossible to apply the exact same methods to someone else.”
Potter shrugged. “I can recommend some of them to people who are in similar situations, which is a start. But yes, I have to work one-on-one with most of my clients. I have to know exactly what they want, what they need, and what they aren’t willing to do. Most of the time, I do succeed. The ones I can’t, I can at least find a Mind-Healer or other qualified expert for.”
“So you take on individual people and then end their suffering?” Severus examined him again. It was so far from anything he could imagine Potter doing. Potter had cared for the whole world; he had cared about doing the things that could give him the greatest amount of glory. Perhaps he had an intellectual dominance among those who knew about his work now, but it wouldn’t bring him the same amount of admiration as killing a Dark Lord had.
“So I can destroy their suffering,” Potter corrected. “Teach them to defend themselves against suffering. Yes.”
Severus started to ask another question, but Potter held up a hand so commanding that Severus fell silent and blinked at him. “If you wouldn’t mind,” Potter said in a gentle murmur, “I’m very tired. I was traveling by Portkey and International Floo last night, and it took me hours to get back on track when they sent me to Iceland, for some reason. I’m going to rest. Nice seeing you again, Snape.” He nodded to him, and walked out of the room.
Snape watched him go. From the back, he wouldn’t have known it was Potter; the shagginess really didn’t show when he was wearing his hair like that.
And that was perhaps the biggest difference. Once, he would have known the annoying brat anywhere. Now, he didn’t.
And perhaps that meant he wasn’t the annoying little brat anymore.
*
Severus stepped out of the dining room with a sneer and a shudder. It was full of men and women who wanted to talk about their work-but not in a way that involved listening to what anyone else said, or comparing notes, or making links and connections that would enable them to further their projects in the future. They wanted a willing ear to pour their voices into, and that was all. The balcony would be quieter, and if devoid of an audience, devoid also of those who made an audience impossible.
Severus almost changed his mind and walked back inside when he saw the figure near the railing, however. Potter leaned there with a wineglass dangling limply from his hand, his head bowed as if in contemplation of the moon.
But Potter showed no sign of noticing him, and no coterie hung on his every word. After a few silent seconds of debate, during which Potter remained absorbed in the moonlight, Severus moved slowly towards him instead.
He began to find Potter’s obliviousness annoying when he was a meter from him, and loudly cleared his throat. Potter visibly started, but not enough to drop his wineglass. He turned around and nodded, then went back to the light in front of him.
“You seem intent on ignoring your colleagues,” Severus murmured, leaning on the railing beside him. “Or do you not consider them your colleagues since you work in a different field?”
Potter shrugged without taking his eyes from the moon. “I’m thinking about my next research project, that’s all,” he said. “I’m sure that their minds are filled with equally deep and interesting thoughts. But when you’re dealing with a werewolf whose major problem is that she has panic attacks every time the moon rises, sometimes you don’t have much room for anything else.”
Severus blinked. Then he said, “There is so much else to fear about becoming a werewolf.”
Potter smiled at him. “Yes, and someday I’ll have someone whose primary terror is lycanthropy. But since she can keep her mind with Wolfsbane and there’s no cure in sight for the condition right now, she doesn’t fear that so much. It’s the moon, and it debilitates her when she sees it out during the day or glimpses its light or even sees the shape of a crescent moon on a calendar. That’s the problem she came to me to get help with, so it’s the one I’m helping her with.” He frowned and leaned more over the railing, as though the shadows the moon cast beyond the balcony were fundamentally different than the ones on it.
Severus took a delicate step back. He didn’t want accusations of murder to fall on his head when Potter inevitably tumbled to his death over the railing. “How do you think that you can help someone with so irrational a fear?”
“With a Beauty Charm, partially,” Potter said, his voice abstracted again. “Teach her to see the moon as a source of beauty, and she’ll feel joy and delight in it. Joy and delight are the best antidotes to fear I know.”
“They cannot be,” Severus snapped. “Neither of them is the emotion induced by a Calming Draught, and Calming Draughts are the potions that are the antidotes to fear.”
Potter turned to him, although from the way he cocked his head, he would have far rather kept staring into the sky. That irritated Severus to the point he found it difficult to draw breath. “Really? But you know that a small number of people have a reaction to a Calming Draught that results in giggles, and you know that some people grow giddy on it. It doesn’t work for everyone. Sometimes, joy needs to come in and make it work.” And he turned back to the moon as though a thousand years of Potions theory could be dismissed in the same way as a single man.
Severus shook his head. His throat was dry and his tongue thick with rage. “You cannot know that.”
“I know it in the people I work with.” Potter glanced at him, and abruptly grimaced. “I’m sorry. I said something careless again, didn’t I? I do that a lot. But I do mean what I’m saying. The people I work with find joy and delight the best antidote. Maybe others wouldn’t. I don’t know. I tend not to look much beyond the individual case.”
“A problem you always had,” Severus muttered, but he found it tiring to scowl. He turned away instead and stared blindly at a far wall.
Potter walked past him. Severus knew that he did not imagine the hand that rose and squeezed his shoulder, but by the time he turned around and glared, Potter was beyond him, passing through the arched doorway back to the inner rooms.
“I hope you find some peace, Potions master Snape,” Potter said.
And the formality was the most infuriating thing of all, but by the time Severus got to the doorway, Potter had vanished in the crowd, leaving Severus to make his way back to his bedroom alone.
*
He woke fumbling from what he thought at first was a nightmare, but his hands grabbed the parchment beside his bed and began to write, almost of their own volition, and he recognized the impulse a moment later. One of the dreams that provided inspiration for experimental potions, dreams that he rarely had anymore. He needed to get the ideas down as quickly as he could before they vanished.
And he did. When he managed to blink the sleep fully from his hands and look at the parchment, Severus found instructions that might serve to lift him past at least one of the obstacles blocking his path to a reliable Transfiguration Potion, which would let anyone become an Animagus.
The inspiration had come from Potter. He knew that much. The thought of counteracting some of the ingredients in the potion that could make a drinker feel anxious and spoil the transformation with ingredients that induced a state of happiness came straight from his theory.
His ridiculous theory.
But it was there, and it was an intellectual debt-the only one he had formed at a conference like this in several years.
Severus fell limply back in bed and stared at the ceiling for the rest of the night.
*
“Good morning. Is there something I can do for you?”
Severus wanted to bristle at the utter surprise in Potter’s voice, but he supposed he couldn’t blame the brat. He had sought Potter out at breakfast this morning, coming straight to his table through many others where he could have sat and had privacy, or at least the company of colleagues who had been practicing the art for a long time.
But it wasn’t the company of his colleagues he wanted. He wanted the company of the one who had inspired him.
“Breakfast,” he said, sitting down in the chair next to Potter and staring at him as hard as he could.
Potter looked thoughtfully back, not flinching from the challenge, and then lifted his hand. One of the house-elves that served the conference appeared, and Potter cocked his head at Severus. Severus folded his arms and said nothing.
“Plain tea,” Potter told the elf. “Thick pieces of toast with the lightest butter that you can put on them. A few kippers.” The elf nodded and vanished again. Potter turned to Severus with a faint smile. “Did I get it right?”
Severus had made this a test, but he had never expected Potter to pass. It took him long moments to force his surprise past the lump in his throat. “I thought you wouldn’t remember what I ate for breakfast all those years ago.”
“Well, I did.” Potter shrugged, and started to turn back to the pamphlet he’d been reading.
Severus reached out and deliberately put a hand over Potter’s. Potter looked not at him but around at the other people at the tables, as if he assumed that Severus had forgotten their audience and might want to take back his hand.
Severus had done everything this morning on purpose, though, and he did not withdraw. “I want to know how and why you remembered,” he said. “How and why you became the person that you are, instead of the one I expected you to become after the war.”
Potter narrowed his eyes, but said nothing, perhaps because the elf returned with Severus’s breakfast at the moment. Sure enough, when it had gone and Severus had had time for a few bites of toast and a few sips of tea, Potter said, “What did you expect me to become?”
Severus wouldn’t have hesitated to defend his position on Potter’s probable transformation only a short day ago, but now he found himself floundering in the face of that quiet gaze. He finally drew himself up and said, “You can’t deny that you were a spoiled brat the last time I knew you.”
“I can deny the spoiled,” Potter said, with a quiet inward chuckle that Severus didn’t like the sound of. “You never really knew the way I grew up, Snape. But the brat part, maybe.” He shrugged. “You’re asking a question I’ve asked myself and not got an answer to. I think living through the war had most of all to do with it, but also I wanted to help people, and also I was bored with the thought of being an Auror once I really thought about it.”
“But-” Severus spent another minute eating, so he could think about his words, but in the end he came up with nothing diplomatic, and Potter would distrust diplomatic words from him anyway. He chose the bluntest way of saying it. “Your intelligence. I saw no evidence of that before.”
“Not in the fields you taught, certainly.”
Stung, Severus snapped back, “I taught Defense Against the Dark Arts, too, if you remember.”
“Only for a single year. And during a year when I did very little fighting of Death Eaters except at the close, and had other things to focus on.” Potter’s eyes rested on him, not challenging, and all the more challenging for that. They simply refused, not indignantly, Severus’s interpretation of events, which he had never thought to question before. “I was intelligent, Snape. I didn’t always use it, no.”
Severus snorted bitter agreement.
“But I had the talent, and after the war I chose to exercise it.” Potter shrugged and stood up. “It doesn’t seem worthwhile talking to you when you won’t believe me no matter what I say. Good day, Potions master. Enjoy your breakfast.”
And to Severus’s intense astonishment, Potter turned and walked away as if-
As if nothing Severus did mattered to him at all.
And Severus, who had come intending to work the discussion back around to theory and what he had gained from Potter in conversation the night before, found himself sitting there with little appetite for the food that followed.
*
“I wished to talk to you before you left the conference.”
Potter looked at him warily. His gloved hands were full of rose clippings; the gardens at the conference were open to anyone who wanted to venture into them and harvest the ingredients. “Yes?” he asked, his voice polite and empty.
He had been more welcoming to Severus last night, even distracted by the moon. Severus was determined to have that back again, but he knew only one way to get it, offensive as expressing admiration was to him.
“Your potions theory makes sense,” Severus said. “That is something you could never have done before this.”
Potter shifted his weight to one leg and reached out to pluck another rose from the bushes. “You don’t know when I began to change,” he said, politely but firmly. “You have no idea of the decisions I’ve made and the ways I’ve grown. So excuse me for thinking that your praise doesn’t mean much because of that.”
Severus stared at him, lips parted. It was the same attitude he had seen in Potter when he left Severus at the breakfast table-
That he didn’t care what Severus thought. That he had put that phase of his life behind him with ease and gentleness that Severus had never mastered.
And that made Severus want his attention all the more. Someone who wanted nothing from him, who held no guilt over him, who wielded no weapon and no grudge against him, but would still speak to him, was worth infinitely more than patronizing colleagues or people who wanted to benefit from Severus’s own intelligence or those who turned away with their noses in the air because of the Dark Mark.
Potter knew his past. There would be no surprises there, no sudden repudiation of Severus years after the fact.
Severus cleared his throat. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “your theory inspired one of mine last night.”
For the first time today, Potter glanced at him with a flicker of interest in his eyes. “Really?” he asked.
Severus nodded, and told the furiously pounding heartbeat in his ears that it could wait. “Yes. What you said about joy made me think that I might be able to add some joy-causing ingredients to a potion of my own.”
Potter at once leaned forwards, resting the roses he still held against a mostly-stripped bush that his weight couldn’t damage. “And what would you classify as joy-causing ingredients?” he demanded. “Just because it makes certain people laugh doesn’t mean it works the same way for everyone. Remember what I said about Calming Draughts.”
Severus gazed at him once more. He could hear, as if from another garden, echoes of the conversations they would have in the future. The debates that Potter would involve him in. The debates he would instigate, because clearly he knew more about potions than the modest knowledge he had disclaimed.
He could feel the way that Potter might reach out to him-a careful touch at first, then a careless tug on his elbow when Potter wanted his attention, and then finally to help with the cauldron, with the experimental potions like the Transformation Potion Severus was working on.
He could see the bright sparks of that intelligence rising and falling in his mind, hear the words Potter would speak in proof of it. Not showing it off, simply demonstrating it, the mind that Severus would have given a great deal years ago to see in any student but Malfoy and Granger.
Better late than never.
And he thought he could taste the future, too, staring at the shape of Potter’s lips and the way his hands moved in front of him.
“Snape? Did you hear my question?”
Severus woke up and looked at Potter. Still hovering, like a hawk, ready to dart away if Severus offered him the same sort of insults he would have in the past. And still ready to plunge down from a height and dazzle Severus with his speed, with what he had to offer.
“One word in your question is inappropriate,” Severus said. “Call me by my first name. That is what colleagues should do, should they not?”
Potter blinked a few times, eyelids dipping down over his eyes and hiding the glorious certainty. Then he smiled. “Severus,” he said.
Severus turned to walk with him through the rose garden, feeling the weight of the hawk settle on his gloved fist.
The End.
Crystalline Dreams.
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