"Happy Birthday, Severus" (a new short story in the TBWLAB arc)
Title: Happy Birthday, Severus
Author: anal_cram_ink
Pairing: Snape/Harry
Setting: The Boy Who Lived A Bit / Care Of Magical Teenagers universe
Rating: PG-13 for a bit of language, adult themes.
Words: 4,176
Spoilers: events through OotP in JKR's universe, all of the TBWLAB / COMT events in mine.
Notes: This is a re-visit to my TBWLAB / COMT universe as a celebration of Severus Snape's birthday. It is set eight months after the end of COMT.
Summary: January 9th 2000 - Snape's 40th birthday - looms. An event both anticipated and dreaded.
Saturday Evening
'Oi, Harry! It's your round, mate!'
Harry glanced up at Ron's shout. 'Can't you see I'm busy?' he grinned across the table. On his lap, Harry was bouncing another Harry, this one just three-and-a-half months old and currently gnawing droolingly on the side of Harry's left index finger.
Ron pushed his chair back and stood up. 'Chuck us yer wallet, then, and I'll go to the bar.'
Fred stood up beside his little brother and took his own wallet out of his robes. 'Here, Ronnikins.' He pushed his wallet against Ron's sternum. 'Harry's hands are full making sure my son's secure, if you don't mind.' He flashed a big grin. 'Remember mine's a bitter this time, eh? Off you go.'
'You could give me a hand carrying it all!' Ron grumbled.
From beside Harry, George piffed a beernut at Ron. 'Swish and flick, bro!'
'Yeah, yeah,' Ron groused and, already poking about in Fred's wallet, set off for the bar.
Hermione leaned across the table with a cloth and wiped up a particularly long line of drool from her son's face. 'Are you alright, Harry?' she asked the larger version. 'Just say when you've had enough of the spit and the sucking and I'll take him back.'
'Nah, he's fine.' Harry smiled down at the top of his godson's downy red head as the baby resumed his toothless "chewing" on Harry's finger. 'Feels kind of… squidgy. Nice.'
George finished the last of his pint and set the empty glass back on the table. 'Harry's not averse to a bit of suck - '
'DON'T make dirty comments while I've got an innocent baby in my arms!' Harry interrupted him, laughing as he said it. 'That's just wrong!'
A faint explosion sounded from across the pub. Everybody looked up toward the bar where Ron was trying to make a cloud of glittery orange smoke dissipate by wafting his hands, and Fred's billowing wallet, through it. Little Harry tried to clap his damp hands together haphazardly as the glitter fell through the air.
George kicked Fred's leg lightly under the table. 'Ron's discovered that secret wizard space compartment you put in, then.'
'Looks like it,' Fred shrugged. 'You'd reckon he would've learnt not to go poking around in our stuff by now.'
'Is he okay?' Hermione frowned. 'It's nothing harmful, is it?'
Fred patted her shoulder. 'Just a trick, love. No harm done.'
'Bloody hell!' George looked accusingly at Little Harry. 'Was that you, you little monkey?'
Harry extracted his finger from his namesake's mouth and wrinkled his nose. 'I think it still is him.'
Fred stood up and held his hands out for Harry to pass the baby over. 'Phew!' he said as his son giggled up at him. 'Harry Arthur Weasley! You are hereby accused of crimes against noses. How do you plead?' Little Harry laughed delightedly as Fred casually slung him onto one shoulder. 'I knew you'd say that.' Fred had his wand halfway out of his pocket before Hermione interrupted him.
'He's probably had enough cleaning spells for one day, Fred. He must be overdue for a proper nappy change by now.'
Fred slid his wand back into his pocket and unhooked the change-bag from the back of Hermione's chair. 'I knew your Mum was going to say that, too,' he confided to Little Harry and headed for the pub's conveniences. 'Make sure Ron leaves my change!' he called back at the table before the loo door swung shut.
'I should dock him his bloody change after that glitter prank!' complained Ron, sliding back onto his seat while four pints and a wine spritzer followed him to the table.
'But it brings out the highlights of your hair so beautifully, Ron!' smirked George.
'So, is everything set for tomorrow evening, Harry?' Hermione successfully changed the subject.
'Pretty much.' Harry passed one of the pints to George and took one for himself. 'Dobby's got all the food and drink sorted. I just have to make sure the cake doesn't have anything pink on it and there's no carrot sticks with the dip and it's all systems go, really.'
'I still say you're a brave man,' George winked.
'You all get along well with him now though. Don't you?'
'Course we do, Harry,' said Ron. 'At least, you know - well enough. That's not really the issue though, is it? It's more… the fact that it's a party.'
'I told you, it's not a party,' Harry insisted. 'I know he'd never go for that!' He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose a little further as George's nearest hand squeezed his knee under the table. 'It's just a get-together for a few drinks, really. He's coped okay with those before.'
'Never for an occasion like this, though,' George murmured into his pint glass.
'He was fine at my birthday in July!'
George smiled and squeezed Harry's knee again. 'Yes, love, YOUR birthday. He's quite content to make sacrifices of that magnitude on your behalf, but for himself? Completely different cauldron of toads, you might find.'
Sunday Evening
Severus spent all day expecting to be ambushed. Every hour, every meal, every moment, he had spent on his considerable guard, expecting the worst - assault, humiliation, anguish.
It was his fortieth birthday. And his husband had been making threats of a celebratory nature.
Birthdays meant little to Snape. He couldn't remember having one mentioned when he was a child - at least not before he started school at Hogwarts. His father had never approved of such indulgences. As far as Snape's memory recalled, Headmaster Dumbledore was the first person ever to have said the words "Happy Birthday, Severus". Twelve-year-old Snape had frowned at the phrase, mentally searching it for artifice, for scheme or motive; it had made him tetchy that he'd been unable to find any.
Over the years, it had remained Albus who marked the occasion. Since Severus had returned to Hogwarts to teach, the word had spread among his colleagues - first to Minerva and Filius, and then suddenly the entire Faculty knew. How surprising. Albus liked Faculty members to "enjoy some refreshment" with their colleagues on their birthdays. Severus had had to endure more than a dozen of these "enjoyments" - thankfully, such things as critical illness and Death Eater meetings had saved him from a few here and there.
Of course, last year, last birthday, had been different again. Severus had marked the occasion of his thirty-ninth birthday on an Order mission into suburban Surrey. He had witnessed the destruction of Harry Potter's childhood home. He had very nearly got himself killed defending the lifeless body of that odious Muggle, Vernon Dursley. And afterwards, when he had dragged himself back to Grimmauld Place and told the brat his news, he had weakened sufficiently to share a splash of scotch with the so-called Saviour of the world. How different his life may be now, if only he had kept his wits about him a little longer that night, if only he had not been so careless as to leave his hipflask in the kitchen when he retired upstairs. (Damn Albus! He'd only given Snape the hipflask that morning. There hadn't been time for Severus to develop any habits concerning the item, and had therefore forgotten it that first night of ownership.) For, if there had been no need for Potter to seek him out the following day in order to return his property, what happened then would probably never have come to pass.
Severus fiddled with the wedding band on his left hand. Tomorrow - the tenth - would mark an entire year since himself and Potter had… fallen into bed together. To put it mildly. Everything had moved so fast from there. Somehow, they had stumbled into a relationship. The War careened headlong toward inevitability. The Dark Lord fell, for once and for all, at their hands, his demise fuelled by the connection they had (somehow, unbelievably!) managed to forge. Then further stumblings forward, deepening bonds, encroachments into domesticity… And then the ultimate weakness - Severus had proposed - followed by the ultimate foolhardiness - Potter had accepted. Eight months of marriage had worn a ridge into Snape's ring finger, had given him an absent-minded habit of playing with the runed band of platinum.
And all of this, everything from Tom Riddle's assassination to this sallow furrow on Snape's finger, was due to simply having left a hipflask on a kitchen table on his birthday last year.
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed softly, pulling Severus up out of his annual birthday-related melancholia. It was seven o'clock already. The early Sunday evening had disappeared under Snape's black cloud of darkened thoughts. If he didn't get his arse over to Grimmauld Place soon, his husband would only come looking for him. And being discovered here in his dungeon, sitting in the gloom with a grim expression and a depleted whisky decanter beside him would not win him any favours.
Seemingly with a great effort, Severus dragged himself up out of his chair and cast a couple of refreshment charms in order to feel a little brighter. Even the best of refreshing magic couldn't do whisky-breath justice though, so a quick visit to his toothbrush was in order. He avoided looking at himself in the bathroom mirror. The love of a good man hadn't helped Snape's looks at all, had it? He still persisted in wondering what Potter even saw in him. And whenever he saw Harry with his friends, the wonder intensified ten-fold.
At nineteen years, Potter was a most delectable young man, a fact that never seemed to be lost on anyone with an appreciation for delectable young men. Ginevra Weasley, the Weasley twins, Nymphadora, Minerva - for gods' sake, even Draco Malfoy seemed to be reconciling himself to the more subtle of his inclinations when Harry was around.
Why does Potter persist with me? Snape rinsed his mouth and dropped the toothbrush into its holder. 'Why did he turn his back on so much just to be with an irascible, unsightly gloom-merchant like me?'
'Well, the sex was just too amazing to contemplate giving up, I guess.'
Snape spun around toward the voice at the bathroom doorway. Harry was slouched against the architrave, wearing the blue shirt Severus liked best on him and a new pair of black denim jeans. Through Draco's influence, Harry had even taken to wearing boots instead of those infernal trainers in which he'd seemingly spent his entire life. His hair would never behave itself, of course, which just topped off the ensemble so sickeningly well that, if Severus didn't know better, he'd swear the tousled look was done on purpose. If there was one word that could sum up how Harry looked right now and indeed, most of the time, it would be "gorgeous".
'I beg your pardon?'
Harry smiled softly. 'I was just answering your question. That's all.'
'Question? I asked no question.'
'Yeah, you did. Talking to yourself again. You'll have people thinking you're turning senile.'
Severus gave a half-arsed eyebrow quirk. 'Well, I am middle aged now…'
'And lovely as ever.'
'Don't push it, Potter.'
Harry stepped up behind him and slithered his arms around Snape's waist. 'If we didn't have guests waiting for us back home at the moment, I'd bend you over this basin right now and show you just how lovely I think you are.'
'Hmph. From behind?' Severus imperiously looked down the length of his nose at Harry's reflection. 'Nothing says "Oh, darling, you're so beautiful!" quite like being fucked in the style of a submissive canine.'
Green eyes glittered up at him, full of laughter. Then Harry leaned in and kissed him so softly it very nearly made an ache bloom in Severus' chest. 'I love you, you git,' Harry murmured against his lips before taking a step back toward the door and smiling at him. 'Shall we?'
'If you insist.'
'I do.'
'That's what I was afraid of.'
Monday Lunchtime
Severus firmly and gladly spelled his office door shut and looked down at the stone basin upon his desktop. He'd planned this pathetic little piece of pensieve-based self-indulgence for a free period earlier, but a kafuffle between two Ravenclaws and a Hufflepuff outside the kitchens had leached away that particular piece of free time. So here he was, giving up his luncheon hour instead, about to do something for which he would probably think less of himself afterward - he wanted to re-live some of the moments from last night.
He touched his wandtip to his temple and closed his eyes, drawing forth a memory of a conversation with Minerva. Trailing it into the pensieve, he fished his thoughts for another, this one featuring a mad-as-ever Arthur Weasley. Another one followed that, and another, before Snape set his wand down on his desk and stood up, leaning over the stone bowl until his nose almost touched the silvery surface.
Minerva was coughing delicately into her hand and Snape was eyeing her with faint bemusement. Severus moved to stand beside his memory self just in time to hear him drawl laconically, 'Fur ball?'
Severus smirked - an exact copy of the one he'd executed the night before - and looked around the room for the person he'd really come into the pensieve to see. He didn't have to look long. While Minerva accepted a glass of wine from Snape to help soothe the tickle in her throat, a pair of emerald eyes smiled in their direction.
Harry was standing near the fireplace, chatting with Charlie and Ronald Weasley. Severus moved through the assembled guests like a phantom until he reached his husband and lingered in his presence for a short while. From here, he could see that Potter's only view of the conversation Snape was having with Minerva was minimal. That hardly seemed to deter the boy though. While the three ex-players talked Quidditch stars and Quidditch moves and Quidditch bloody bum-splinters for all Severus cared, Harry's gaze barely managed five seconds at a stretch without seeking out Snape. Just as he had suspected.
The room seemed to melt and shift, and Severus found himself again beside himself, this time holding a misshapen lump of clay with a hole in it. Snape turned the thing over in his hands a couple of times before glancing up at a beaming Weasley Senior. 'Erm - ' was all the language that bubbled forth.
'It's Muggle pottery, Severus!' Arthur cried. 'Isn't it delightful?'
Snape nodded at the thing. 'Seems rather… Nordic… Iron Age, perhaps?'
'Wigan Pier Tourist Shop!' Arthur's eyes were wide and dewy with pleasure. 'Brilliant,' he murmured over the thing. 'Brilliant. Absolutely no idea what it's FOR, of course! Spare quills, maybe…'
'Thank-you, Arthur. It'll go well in the dungeons.'
Snape and Severus both heard the wry chuckle that issued from nearby and they looked up simultaneously. Harry was offering a platter of canapés to various little groups of guests, his house elf friend trailing after him, pulling its ears and insisting Sir didn't have to serve Sir's own guests. Obviously, Potter had heard the exchange with Arthur, for he was glancing over at the thing in Snape's hands and then meeting Snape's eyes to deliver one of his very most brilliant smiles.
Severus, still standing beside himself, looked down at the potion-stained hands around the clay thing and nodded. Yes. He really had almost dropped it, hadn't he?
Some swirling, some re-focussing, and Draco Malfoy was handing Snape a glass full nearly to the brim with red wine. 'I realise there's no actual rules against it, Severus, but Sutton IS a Slytherin prefect. Do you really think it's appropriate?'
'So long as the Gryffindor gentleman in question is precisely that, I don't feel the relationship should be of any concern.'
Draco scoffed a little at the suggestion. 'He's the captain of their Quidditch team! Do any of them even know how to spell the word?'
Lupin was standing beside them, smiling as annoyingly benignly as ever, despite his evident exhaustion. It was only two days since the full moon, after all. 'Inter-House relations have vastly improved of late, have they not, Draco?'
'Well…' Malfoy shrugged elegantly and took a sip of his wine. 'Ravenclaw are being a bunch of sods lately,' he muttered.
Snape gave a slow nod. 'I had more Ravenclaws than Gryffindors in detention this past week. Must be a first.'
'Potter's not making you soft on his lot, is he?' Draco asked, grey eyes narrowing a little way.
Harry chose that moment to seemingly appear out of thin air and nudge his shoulder against Malfoy's, making a few drops of merlot spill onto the floor. 'You don't REALLY want an answer about how not-soft I make Snape, do you, Malfoy?' he leered.
'Harry,' Snape admonished quietly, waving a hand over the wine spots on the rug.
Potter looked up at him and winked. His lips were reddened by wine and the bottom one, especially, looked so plump and inviting that Severus felt the ridiculous urge to try and touch it. 'Enjoying your party?' Harry asked him directly.
'I thought you said, quite repeatedly if I recall, that this is not a party?'
'It's just a get-together for a few drinks,' Lupin and Draco both chorused at the same time, obviously having heard Potter repeat the phrase often enough in the past days. Surprised and appalled, respectively, Lupin and Draco both suddenly pretended to be interested in other things.
Potter dissolved into laughter over that, and Snape and Severus both lost the battle against that urge to reach toward his mouth and caress that lovely bottom lip.
When the memory next changed, he and himself were among the last remaining attendees, standing beside the library sofa. Stretched out languidly upon said furniture lay the Weasley twins, Baby Harry asleep and secure between them, Fred half-asleep himself, George wandlessly levitating a plainly-wrapped gift toward Snape.
'Bet you thought we hadn't got you anything, Snapey.'
Snape plucked the gift out of the air. 'If this blows up when I attempt to open it, Weasley G, I'll keep you and your brother in torment for a week.'
'Empty threats,' George grinned. 'You know you can't give us detention anymore.'
Eyebrow. 'Did I say anything about detention? I should think casting Petrificus on you both and setting you in Harry's bathroom for seven days would constitute a singular and most grievous torture. Don't you?'
'Severus!' Harry smiled and rolled his eyes in faux consternation as he came to stand beside him, placing one hand gently and proprietarily at the small of Snape's back. 'Just open your present!'
'Certainly be torture of some description…' George mumbled into his brother's hair.
Snape tapped his wand to the present and the wrapping paper disappeared, leaving him holding a most handsome, hammered metal frame.
'It's for your Order of Merlin,' explained George. 'Harry tells us you've just kept it rolled up on a shelf.' He smiled as Snape lifted his black gaze to George's face. 'It deserves to be on display, Snape. Somewhere prominent, yeah? Put it up in your office so all the kids coming through can see it!'
'Would an Order of Merlin have impressed you during your juvenile delinquency?' Snape drawled.
'On YOUR office wall? Course it would've done!'
Snape actually had a smile for George then. 'Liar.' He shook his head slightly, secretly impressed by the workmanship of the silverwork. 'Thank-you, George. It is a most thoughtful gift.'
Harry and George exchanged grins before George looked back to Snape. 'You called me George!'
'I believe it is the name your parents imposed upon you.'
'But I'm your Weasley G, Snape!'
Severus stood back a pace so that he could watch Harry's hand rubbing small circles on Snape's back. Potter had grown another inch or so in the eight months of their marriage; observing the two of them standing together in a memory like this allowed the dwindling height-difference between them to be most clearly noted. As he watched, Harry leaned in closer and nuzzled at Snape's ear. Although Severus was standing too far away to hear what exactly was whispered, his recall told him the phrase that was making him square his shoulders right then involved the words "wait", "can't" and "fuckable".
Mist rolled in, and Severus found himself back in his dungeon office, peering down at the swiftly settling pool of memories before him. Casting a glance at the ring on his left hand, he took up his wand and began depositing the moments back into his mind.
He was middle-aged. He was an irascible, unsightly gloom-merchant. And he was loved by a delectable, adoring, horny young man. He found himself contemplating a long line of future birthdays and realised suddenly that he no longer entirely dreaded the prospect.
Monday Evening
Harry arrived home at 12 Grimmauld Place after a quiet day in Zim's Magic Shop. Mondays were always their quietest day of the week and today, Harry had been particularly thankful for that fact. Severus' birthday party had thundered on until almost three-thirty in the morning and rising for work and facing Muggle London today had taken all of Harry's lauded Gryffindor bravery. Thank god he was married to one of the greatest potion makers in all the world, or else the hangover he'd awoken with that morning might've kept him bedridden for most of the day!
During his lunch hour, he'd Apparated to Diagon Alley and had lunch with Fred and George and Ron. Harry had noted that Ron still seemed just as "merry" as he had at two a.m., when he'd bravely slapped Severus on the back and then excused himself to go and throw up in the back yard. George had offered Ron some pickled onions over lunch, just for the entertainment value of watching him turn green at the smell.
Harry took his jacket off as he walked upstairs, beginning on the buttons of his shirt as he ambled along the top landing toward his bedroom. When he opened his door, he was surprised to find Severus stretched out on their four-poster, bat-like teacher's robes fanned out around him as he lay still in the centre of the bed. Harry smiled as he dumped his jacket and his shirt on the nearest piece of furniture and advanced toward the bed and his waiting husband.
'Severus? You awake?' He sat down and laid his right hand gently on Snape's chest. Dark eyes blinked open and regarded him. 'Everything okay? I wasn't expecting you here. I thought I was coming to you?'
Snape reached one stained, elegant hand up and caressed Harry's bare chest. 'I… missed you today.'
Harry smiled a little. 'Missed me?'
'I've never had a birthday party,' the deep voice suddenly announced. 'And with it running so late as it did, and with us both having to work today, I didn't get sufficient time in between to…' Severus sighed, 'thank you adequately.'
Harry melted onto Snape's body, his mind full of sweetened softness, even as hardness began to swell up at the core of his being. He loved how Severus' teaching robes smelt of chalk dust and chicory root and, even more than that, how the rough wool felt against bare flesh. Snape's lips were cool when he first pressed his own against them, but they warmed quickly.
'I didn't know you'd never had a birthday party,' he said gently when they broke for air. 'I hope it wasn't too traumatic for you.'
Snape wrapped his arms around Harry's back and interlaced his fingers, making Harry feel cocooned in the swathes of black fabric. 'There was no singing, nothing pink or frilly, everyone treated me respectfully and a Weasley vomited. I've endured worse, I assure you.'
'Well, that's a relief.' Harry deposited a swift kiss to Snape's left temple. 'And if you could cope okay with that, then I guess a romantic dinner out tonight will be a breeze for you?'
'Tonight?' The tiny frown line between Snape's brows deepened an eighth of an inch. 'Ah. Happy fucking anniversary.'
'I beg your pardon?'
The black eyes betrayed Snape's amusement. 'Happy anniversary of the occasion of our first coupling, Potter.'
'Oh!' Harry chuckled and squirmed a little atop Snape's firm body. 'Oh yeah. Happy fucking anniversary to you, too, love. I was worried you might've forgotten.'
Severus rolled his eyes up at the canopy. 'Please. As if any true Slytherin would ever forget the visual of the Gryffindor Golden Boy in such compromising positions!'
Harry tried for an indignant pout but lost it in a lazy smile. 'Remembering the visuals is one thing. Remembering the date is quite another.'
'I shall never forget it, Harry,' Snape said seriously, his voice low and sensual and sending messages straight to Harry's groin.
Harry gazed down into the eyes he loved most in all the world and took in a deep, slightly shuddery, breath. 'Happy fucking anniversary,' he said again, this time in a whisper that ended somewhere against Severus' tongue.
~fin~
Author: anal_cram_ink
Pairing: Snape/Harry
Setting: The Boy Who Lived A Bit / Care Of Magical Teenagers universe
Rating: PG-13 for a bit of language, adult themes.
Words: 4,176
Spoilers: events through OotP in JKR's universe, all of the TBWLAB / COMT events in mine.
Notes: This is a re-visit to my TBWLAB / COMT universe as a celebration of Severus Snape's birthday. It is set eight months after the end of COMT.
Summary: January 9th 2000 - Snape's 40th birthday - looms. An event both anticipated and dreaded.
Saturday Evening
'Oi, Harry! It's your round, mate!'
Harry glanced up at Ron's shout. 'Can't you see I'm busy?' he grinned across the table. On his lap, Harry was bouncing another Harry, this one just three-and-a-half months old and currently gnawing droolingly on the side of Harry's left index finger.
Ron pushed his chair back and stood up. 'Chuck us yer wallet, then, and I'll go to the bar.'
Fred stood up beside his little brother and took his own wallet out of his robes. 'Here, Ronnikins.' He pushed his wallet against Ron's sternum. 'Harry's hands are full making sure my son's secure, if you don't mind.' He flashed a big grin. 'Remember mine's a bitter this time, eh? Off you go.'
'You could give me a hand carrying it all!' Ron grumbled.
From beside Harry, George piffed a beernut at Ron. 'Swish and flick, bro!'
'Yeah, yeah,' Ron groused and, already poking about in Fred's wallet, set off for the bar.
Hermione leaned across the table with a cloth and wiped up a particularly long line of drool from her son's face. 'Are you alright, Harry?' she asked the larger version. 'Just say when you've had enough of the spit and the sucking and I'll take him back.'
'Nah, he's fine.' Harry smiled down at the top of his godson's downy red head as the baby resumed his toothless "chewing" on Harry's finger. 'Feels kind of… squidgy. Nice.'
George finished the last of his pint and set the empty glass back on the table. 'Harry's not averse to a bit of suck - '
'DON'T make dirty comments while I've got an innocent baby in my arms!' Harry interrupted him, laughing as he said it. 'That's just wrong!'
A faint explosion sounded from across the pub. Everybody looked up toward the bar where Ron was trying to make a cloud of glittery orange smoke dissipate by wafting his hands, and Fred's billowing wallet, through it. Little Harry tried to clap his damp hands together haphazardly as the glitter fell through the air.
George kicked Fred's leg lightly under the table. 'Ron's discovered that secret wizard space compartment you put in, then.'
'Looks like it,' Fred shrugged. 'You'd reckon he would've learnt not to go poking around in our stuff by now.'
'Is he okay?' Hermione frowned. 'It's nothing harmful, is it?'
Fred patted her shoulder. 'Just a trick, love. No harm done.'
'Bloody hell!' George looked accusingly at Little Harry. 'Was that you, you little monkey?'
Harry extracted his finger from his namesake's mouth and wrinkled his nose. 'I think it still is him.'
Fred stood up and held his hands out for Harry to pass the baby over. 'Phew!' he said as his son giggled up at him. 'Harry Arthur Weasley! You are hereby accused of crimes against noses. How do you plead?' Little Harry laughed delightedly as Fred casually slung him onto one shoulder. 'I knew you'd say that.' Fred had his wand halfway out of his pocket before Hermione interrupted him.
'He's probably had enough cleaning spells for one day, Fred. He must be overdue for a proper nappy change by now.'
Fred slid his wand back into his pocket and unhooked the change-bag from the back of Hermione's chair. 'I knew your Mum was going to say that, too,' he confided to Little Harry and headed for the pub's conveniences. 'Make sure Ron leaves my change!' he called back at the table before the loo door swung shut.
'I should dock him his bloody change after that glitter prank!' complained Ron, sliding back onto his seat while four pints and a wine spritzer followed him to the table.
'But it brings out the highlights of your hair so beautifully, Ron!' smirked George.
'So, is everything set for tomorrow evening, Harry?' Hermione successfully changed the subject.
'Pretty much.' Harry passed one of the pints to George and took one for himself. 'Dobby's got all the food and drink sorted. I just have to make sure the cake doesn't have anything pink on it and there's no carrot sticks with the dip and it's all systems go, really.'
'I still say you're a brave man,' George winked.
'You all get along well with him now though. Don't you?'
'Course we do, Harry,' said Ron. 'At least, you know - well enough. That's not really the issue though, is it? It's more… the fact that it's a party.'
'I told you, it's not a party,' Harry insisted. 'I know he'd never go for that!' He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose a little further as George's nearest hand squeezed his knee under the table. 'It's just a get-together for a few drinks, really. He's coped okay with those before.'
'Never for an occasion like this, though,' George murmured into his pint glass.
'He was fine at my birthday in July!'
George smiled and squeezed Harry's knee again. 'Yes, love, YOUR birthday. He's quite content to make sacrifices of that magnitude on your behalf, but for himself? Completely different cauldron of toads, you might find.'
Sunday Evening
Severus spent all day expecting to be ambushed. Every hour, every meal, every moment, he had spent on his considerable guard, expecting the worst - assault, humiliation, anguish.
It was his fortieth birthday. And his husband had been making threats of a celebratory nature.
Birthdays meant little to Snape. He couldn't remember having one mentioned when he was a child - at least not before he started school at Hogwarts. His father had never approved of such indulgences. As far as Snape's memory recalled, Headmaster Dumbledore was the first person ever to have said the words "Happy Birthday, Severus". Twelve-year-old Snape had frowned at the phrase, mentally searching it for artifice, for scheme or motive; it had made him tetchy that he'd been unable to find any.
Over the years, it had remained Albus who marked the occasion. Since Severus had returned to Hogwarts to teach, the word had spread among his colleagues - first to Minerva and Filius, and then suddenly the entire Faculty knew. How surprising. Albus liked Faculty members to "enjoy some refreshment" with their colleagues on their birthdays. Severus had had to endure more than a dozen of these "enjoyments" - thankfully, such things as critical illness and Death Eater meetings had saved him from a few here and there.
Of course, last year, last birthday, had been different again. Severus had marked the occasion of his thirty-ninth birthday on an Order mission into suburban Surrey. He had witnessed the destruction of Harry Potter's childhood home. He had very nearly got himself killed defending the lifeless body of that odious Muggle, Vernon Dursley. And afterwards, when he had dragged himself back to Grimmauld Place and told the brat his news, he had weakened sufficiently to share a splash of scotch with the so-called Saviour of the world. How different his life may be now, if only he had kept his wits about him a little longer that night, if only he had not been so careless as to leave his hipflask in the kitchen when he retired upstairs. (Damn Albus! He'd only given Snape the hipflask that morning. There hadn't been time for Severus to develop any habits concerning the item, and had therefore forgotten it that first night of ownership.) For, if there had been no need for Potter to seek him out the following day in order to return his property, what happened then would probably never have come to pass.
Severus fiddled with the wedding band on his left hand. Tomorrow - the tenth - would mark an entire year since himself and Potter had… fallen into bed together. To put it mildly. Everything had moved so fast from there. Somehow, they had stumbled into a relationship. The War careened headlong toward inevitability. The Dark Lord fell, for once and for all, at their hands, his demise fuelled by the connection they had (somehow, unbelievably!) managed to forge. Then further stumblings forward, deepening bonds, encroachments into domesticity… And then the ultimate weakness - Severus had proposed - followed by the ultimate foolhardiness - Potter had accepted. Eight months of marriage had worn a ridge into Snape's ring finger, had given him an absent-minded habit of playing with the runed band of platinum.
And all of this, everything from Tom Riddle's assassination to this sallow furrow on Snape's finger, was due to simply having left a hipflask on a kitchen table on his birthday last year.
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed softly, pulling Severus up out of his annual birthday-related melancholia. It was seven o'clock already. The early Sunday evening had disappeared under Snape's black cloud of darkened thoughts. If he didn't get his arse over to Grimmauld Place soon, his husband would only come looking for him. And being discovered here in his dungeon, sitting in the gloom with a grim expression and a depleted whisky decanter beside him would not win him any favours.
Seemingly with a great effort, Severus dragged himself up out of his chair and cast a couple of refreshment charms in order to feel a little brighter. Even the best of refreshing magic couldn't do whisky-breath justice though, so a quick visit to his toothbrush was in order. He avoided looking at himself in the bathroom mirror. The love of a good man hadn't helped Snape's looks at all, had it? He still persisted in wondering what Potter even saw in him. And whenever he saw Harry with his friends, the wonder intensified ten-fold.
At nineteen years, Potter was a most delectable young man, a fact that never seemed to be lost on anyone with an appreciation for delectable young men. Ginevra Weasley, the Weasley twins, Nymphadora, Minerva - for gods' sake, even Draco Malfoy seemed to be reconciling himself to the more subtle of his inclinations when Harry was around.
Why does Potter persist with me? Snape rinsed his mouth and dropped the toothbrush into its holder. 'Why did he turn his back on so much just to be with an irascible, unsightly gloom-merchant like me?'
'Well, the sex was just too amazing to contemplate giving up, I guess.'
Snape spun around toward the voice at the bathroom doorway. Harry was slouched against the architrave, wearing the blue shirt Severus liked best on him and a new pair of black denim jeans. Through Draco's influence, Harry had even taken to wearing boots instead of those infernal trainers in which he'd seemingly spent his entire life. His hair would never behave itself, of course, which just topped off the ensemble so sickeningly well that, if Severus didn't know better, he'd swear the tousled look was done on purpose. If there was one word that could sum up how Harry looked right now and indeed, most of the time, it would be "gorgeous".
'I beg your pardon?'
Harry smiled softly. 'I was just answering your question. That's all.'
'Question? I asked no question.'
'Yeah, you did. Talking to yourself again. You'll have people thinking you're turning senile.'
Severus gave a half-arsed eyebrow quirk. 'Well, I am middle aged now…'
'And lovely as ever.'
'Don't push it, Potter.'
Harry stepped up behind him and slithered his arms around Snape's waist. 'If we didn't have guests waiting for us back home at the moment, I'd bend you over this basin right now and show you just how lovely I think you are.'
'Hmph. From behind?' Severus imperiously looked down the length of his nose at Harry's reflection. 'Nothing says "Oh, darling, you're so beautiful!" quite like being fucked in the style of a submissive canine.'
Green eyes glittered up at him, full of laughter. Then Harry leaned in and kissed him so softly it very nearly made an ache bloom in Severus' chest. 'I love you, you git,' Harry murmured against his lips before taking a step back toward the door and smiling at him. 'Shall we?'
'If you insist.'
'I do.'
'That's what I was afraid of.'
Monday Lunchtime
Severus firmly and gladly spelled his office door shut and looked down at the stone basin upon his desktop. He'd planned this pathetic little piece of pensieve-based self-indulgence for a free period earlier, but a kafuffle between two Ravenclaws and a Hufflepuff outside the kitchens had leached away that particular piece of free time. So here he was, giving up his luncheon hour instead, about to do something for which he would probably think less of himself afterward - he wanted to re-live some of the moments from last night.
He touched his wandtip to his temple and closed his eyes, drawing forth a memory of a conversation with Minerva. Trailing it into the pensieve, he fished his thoughts for another, this one featuring a mad-as-ever Arthur Weasley. Another one followed that, and another, before Snape set his wand down on his desk and stood up, leaning over the stone bowl until his nose almost touched the silvery surface.
Minerva was coughing delicately into her hand and Snape was eyeing her with faint bemusement. Severus moved to stand beside his memory self just in time to hear him drawl laconically, 'Fur ball?'
Severus smirked - an exact copy of the one he'd executed the night before - and looked around the room for the person he'd really come into the pensieve to see. He didn't have to look long. While Minerva accepted a glass of wine from Snape to help soothe the tickle in her throat, a pair of emerald eyes smiled in their direction.
Harry was standing near the fireplace, chatting with Charlie and Ronald Weasley. Severus moved through the assembled guests like a phantom until he reached his husband and lingered in his presence for a short while. From here, he could see that Potter's only view of the conversation Snape was having with Minerva was minimal. That hardly seemed to deter the boy though. While the three ex-players talked Quidditch stars and Quidditch moves and Quidditch bloody bum-splinters for all Severus cared, Harry's gaze barely managed five seconds at a stretch without seeking out Snape. Just as he had suspected.
The room seemed to melt and shift, and Severus found himself again beside himself, this time holding a misshapen lump of clay with a hole in it. Snape turned the thing over in his hands a couple of times before glancing up at a beaming Weasley Senior. 'Erm - ' was all the language that bubbled forth.
'It's Muggle pottery, Severus!' Arthur cried. 'Isn't it delightful?'
Snape nodded at the thing. 'Seems rather… Nordic… Iron Age, perhaps?'
'Wigan Pier Tourist Shop!' Arthur's eyes were wide and dewy with pleasure. 'Brilliant,' he murmured over the thing. 'Brilliant. Absolutely no idea what it's FOR, of course! Spare quills, maybe…'
'Thank-you, Arthur. It'll go well in the dungeons.'
Snape and Severus both heard the wry chuckle that issued from nearby and they looked up simultaneously. Harry was offering a platter of canapés to various little groups of guests, his house elf friend trailing after him, pulling its ears and insisting Sir didn't have to serve Sir's own guests. Obviously, Potter had heard the exchange with Arthur, for he was glancing over at the thing in Snape's hands and then meeting Snape's eyes to deliver one of his very most brilliant smiles.
Severus, still standing beside himself, looked down at the potion-stained hands around the clay thing and nodded. Yes. He really had almost dropped it, hadn't he?
Some swirling, some re-focussing, and Draco Malfoy was handing Snape a glass full nearly to the brim with red wine. 'I realise there's no actual rules against it, Severus, but Sutton IS a Slytherin prefect. Do you really think it's appropriate?'
'So long as the Gryffindor gentleman in question is precisely that, I don't feel the relationship should be of any concern.'
Draco scoffed a little at the suggestion. 'He's the captain of their Quidditch team! Do any of them even know how to spell the word?'
Lupin was standing beside them, smiling as annoyingly benignly as ever, despite his evident exhaustion. It was only two days since the full moon, after all. 'Inter-House relations have vastly improved of late, have they not, Draco?'
'Well…' Malfoy shrugged elegantly and took a sip of his wine. 'Ravenclaw are being a bunch of sods lately,' he muttered.
Snape gave a slow nod. 'I had more Ravenclaws than Gryffindors in detention this past week. Must be a first.'
'Potter's not making you soft on his lot, is he?' Draco asked, grey eyes narrowing a little way.
Harry chose that moment to seemingly appear out of thin air and nudge his shoulder against Malfoy's, making a few drops of merlot spill onto the floor. 'You don't REALLY want an answer about how not-soft I make Snape, do you, Malfoy?' he leered.
'Harry,' Snape admonished quietly, waving a hand over the wine spots on the rug.
Potter looked up at him and winked. His lips were reddened by wine and the bottom one, especially, looked so plump and inviting that Severus felt the ridiculous urge to try and touch it. 'Enjoying your party?' Harry asked him directly.
'I thought you said, quite repeatedly if I recall, that this is not a party?'
'It's just a get-together for a few drinks,' Lupin and Draco both chorused at the same time, obviously having heard Potter repeat the phrase often enough in the past days. Surprised and appalled, respectively, Lupin and Draco both suddenly pretended to be interested in other things.
Potter dissolved into laughter over that, and Snape and Severus both lost the battle against that urge to reach toward his mouth and caress that lovely bottom lip.
When the memory next changed, he and himself were among the last remaining attendees, standing beside the library sofa. Stretched out languidly upon said furniture lay the Weasley twins, Baby Harry asleep and secure between them, Fred half-asleep himself, George wandlessly levitating a plainly-wrapped gift toward Snape.
'Bet you thought we hadn't got you anything, Snapey.'
Snape plucked the gift out of the air. 'If this blows up when I attempt to open it, Weasley G, I'll keep you and your brother in torment for a week.'
'Empty threats,' George grinned. 'You know you can't give us detention anymore.'
Eyebrow. 'Did I say anything about detention? I should think casting Petrificus on you both and setting you in Harry's bathroom for seven days would constitute a singular and most grievous torture. Don't you?'
'Severus!' Harry smiled and rolled his eyes in faux consternation as he came to stand beside him, placing one hand gently and proprietarily at the small of Snape's back. 'Just open your present!'
'Certainly be torture of some description…' George mumbled into his brother's hair.
Snape tapped his wand to the present and the wrapping paper disappeared, leaving him holding a most handsome, hammered metal frame.
'It's for your Order of Merlin,' explained George. 'Harry tells us you've just kept it rolled up on a shelf.' He smiled as Snape lifted his black gaze to George's face. 'It deserves to be on display, Snape. Somewhere prominent, yeah? Put it up in your office so all the kids coming through can see it!'
'Would an Order of Merlin have impressed you during your juvenile delinquency?' Snape drawled.
'On YOUR office wall? Course it would've done!'
Snape actually had a smile for George then. 'Liar.' He shook his head slightly, secretly impressed by the workmanship of the silverwork. 'Thank-you, George. It is a most thoughtful gift.'
Harry and George exchanged grins before George looked back to Snape. 'You called me George!'
'I believe it is the name your parents imposed upon you.'
'But I'm your Weasley G, Snape!'
Severus stood back a pace so that he could watch Harry's hand rubbing small circles on Snape's back. Potter had grown another inch or so in the eight months of their marriage; observing the two of them standing together in a memory like this allowed the dwindling height-difference between them to be most clearly noted. As he watched, Harry leaned in closer and nuzzled at Snape's ear. Although Severus was standing too far away to hear what exactly was whispered, his recall told him the phrase that was making him square his shoulders right then involved the words "wait", "can't" and "fuckable".
Mist rolled in, and Severus found himself back in his dungeon office, peering down at the swiftly settling pool of memories before him. Casting a glance at the ring on his left hand, he took up his wand and began depositing the moments back into his mind.
He was middle-aged. He was an irascible, unsightly gloom-merchant. And he was loved by a delectable, adoring, horny young man. He found himself contemplating a long line of future birthdays and realised suddenly that he no longer entirely dreaded the prospect.
Monday Evening
Harry arrived home at 12 Grimmauld Place after a quiet day in Zim's Magic Shop. Mondays were always their quietest day of the week and today, Harry had been particularly thankful for that fact. Severus' birthday party had thundered on until almost three-thirty in the morning and rising for work and facing Muggle London today had taken all of Harry's lauded Gryffindor bravery. Thank god he was married to one of the greatest potion makers in all the world, or else the hangover he'd awoken with that morning might've kept him bedridden for most of the day!
During his lunch hour, he'd Apparated to Diagon Alley and had lunch with Fred and George and Ron. Harry had noted that Ron still seemed just as "merry" as he had at two a.m., when he'd bravely slapped Severus on the back and then excused himself to go and throw up in the back yard. George had offered Ron some pickled onions over lunch, just for the entertainment value of watching him turn green at the smell.
Harry took his jacket off as he walked upstairs, beginning on the buttons of his shirt as he ambled along the top landing toward his bedroom. When he opened his door, he was surprised to find Severus stretched out on their four-poster, bat-like teacher's robes fanned out around him as he lay still in the centre of the bed. Harry smiled as he dumped his jacket and his shirt on the nearest piece of furniture and advanced toward the bed and his waiting husband.
'Severus? You awake?' He sat down and laid his right hand gently on Snape's chest. Dark eyes blinked open and regarded him. 'Everything okay? I wasn't expecting you here. I thought I was coming to you?'
Snape reached one stained, elegant hand up and caressed Harry's bare chest. 'I… missed you today.'
Harry smiled a little. 'Missed me?'
'I've never had a birthday party,' the deep voice suddenly announced. 'And with it running so late as it did, and with us both having to work today, I didn't get sufficient time in between to…' Severus sighed, 'thank you adequately.'
Harry melted onto Snape's body, his mind full of sweetened softness, even as hardness began to swell up at the core of his being. He loved how Severus' teaching robes smelt of chalk dust and chicory root and, even more than that, how the rough wool felt against bare flesh. Snape's lips were cool when he first pressed his own against them, but they warmed quickly.
'I didn't know you'd never had a birthday party,' he said gently when they broke for air. 'I hope it wasn't too traumatic for you.'
Snape wrapped his arms around Harry's back and interlaced his fingers, making Harry feel cocooned in the swathes of black fabric. 'There was no singing, nothing pink or frilly, everyone treated me respectfully and a Weasley vomited. I've endured worse, I assure you.'
'Well, that's a relief.' Harry deposited a swift kiss to Snape's left temple. 'And if you could cope okay with that, then I guess a romantic dinner out tonight will be a breeze for you?'
'Tonight?' The tiny frown line between Snape's brows deepened an eighth of an inch. 'Ah. Happy fucking anniversary.'
'I beg your pardon?'
The black eyes betrayed Snape's amusement. 'Happy anniversary of the occasion of our first coupling, Potter.'
'Oh!' Harry chuckled and squirmed a little atop Snape's firm body. 'Oh yeah. Happy fucking anniversary to you, too, love. I was worried you might've forgotten.'
Severus rolled his eyes up at the canopy. 'Please. As if any true Slytherin would ever forget the visual of the Gryffindor Golden Boy in such compromising positions!'
Harry tried for an indignant pout but lost it in a lazy smile. 'Remembering the visuals is one thing. Remembering the date is quite another.'
'I shall never forget it, Harry,' Snape said seriously, his voice low and sensual and sending messages straight to Harry's groin.
Harry gazed down into the eyes he loved most in all the world and took in a deep, slightly shuddery, breath. 'Happy fucking anniversary,' he said again, this time in a whisper that ended somewhere against Severus' tongue.
~fin~