Chapter Text
It’s requested that he use muggle transport to get to Hogsmeade station. Nothing to worry about he’s assured, just a precaution.
There are only a few muggle trains that take the route. For a non-magical person there is nothing but treachery on this side of the Scottish Highlands; a no-man's land where centuries of word of mouth has scared even the most courageous of explorers away from its terrain. Some of these rumors come from the careful fabrication of wizards. Others from the true inhospitable nature of the land.
Either way, it’s his new home.
Again.
The irony that he’d made the trip by apparition just a day before needles him all the way to the station. He wonders if this is penance, the start of a long odyssey of punishments he will have to bear in order to prove his worth, and it is a thought that is heightened by the man snoring in the bunk above him.
For hours, Severus stares out of the window and watches the sun slowly disappear behind the tops of the trees. He wishes he could have a cigarette, wishes he could sleep, but he hasn’t had the pleasure of either in ages.
Behind the glass, the vast forests stumble into darkness and soon the only thing to look at is his reflection staring back.
Lately his days have been spent doing mental maths: the news had gotten to him by exactly 3:24 a.m November 1st. The attack happened the night of October 31st. If the sun sets around 5pm that means there was exactly an eight hour and twenty-four minute window where Lily Evans had her last breath and he didn’t even know.
An eight hour and twenty-four minute gap he will obsess about forever.
Today is November 2nd—not that he gives a shit.
Annoyed with his own reflection, he turns and pulls out the beat up rucksack and begins rechecking his belongings. He never had much even while at school but being on call for the Dark Lord had reduced his personal affects to just a handful of things: a pair of socks, an empty pack of Lucky Strikes, a dull but serviceable parring knife for ingredients, and a scrap of cardstock.
He pulls out the card carefully, smoothing the bent edges.
Happy Birthday Sev!
I know you hate your birthday but I couldn’t resist. Don’t pout like I know you are doing right now! I promise you it will be
His heart gives a horrid lurch at the end of the note. He doesn’t remember what she had promised. A good day maybe? Better than last year? As far as he can remember she was the only reason his birthdays were worth a spot on the calendar. With a finger, he follows the jagged rip that ends the sentence, the heavy cloud of regret filling up impossibly higher above him. He reckons the remaining bits of card have already rotted in some muggle sewage pileup on the outskirts of Cokeworth—that or never even made it there, already decomposed in one of the million rotting alleys that make up his childhood home. He knows because he sent it on its way there during seventh year hols—torn up and thrown in the bin in a fit of rage at the image of Lily tucked into Potter’s side as they apparated away to spend boxing day no doubt at his posh manor.
His eyes follow the curve of her s’s and the dot of the i’s like he’s done a thousand times before.
Nearly eight years of being together and only a half sentence and bit of cardstock to show for it.
The train pulls into Hogsmeade as the sun kisses the tops of the ridgeline. The snoring man awakes and doesn’t acknowledge him as he gathers his rucksack and turns off the platform into the wilderness, trekking poles in hand. Nobody else steps off the train and nobody waits on the turnstile.
In years prior, Severus would have relished the silence, but now the solitude feels claustrophobic.
With a sigh, he walks this way to the end of the station in the direction of the school when something white flashes past the corner of his eye. A skeletal beast grazes at the end of the platform and attached to it one of the ruddy carriages that pulled students in droves each September. The creature raises its head at the sound of his footsteps, green grass getting gnawed into paste behind a gleaming set of teeth.
Severus doesn’t know what else to do but stare. He could never see them while in school, but she could.
“They’re…cute.” Lily’s voice reverberates from the back of his head. He can place the moment easily: the beginning of fourth, just after her mum’s death. The train ride was the longest he hadn’t seen her cry all summer and he’d made a promise to himself to keep it that way.
“Honestly, I don’t see the hype around them being scary—it’s not like they chose to be born like that!”
Severus stares at the Thestral, watching its beady red eyes stare right back.
Fuck, if that hadn’t been a loaded then, what did it mean for him now?
With a concluding sniff, Severus hikes his rucksack onto his shoulder and pulls himself up into the rickety carriage. The Thestral turns its head, looking for permission to depart, but Severus avoids its quizzical eye.
From what he knows about Thestrals they can sense who can see them but for what reason is still wildly debated.
They don’t look at each other the rest of the way.
🝓
The spires of Hogwarts Castle have always reminded him of smokestacks.
On their first boat ride he’d been extremely disappointed to make the comparison. Huddled beside him, Lily didn’t seem to have the same problem; she’d gasped in delight as the twinkling lights of the many windows glittered onto the sleek expanse of the Black Lake, clutching to his sleeve with her voice so high and breathy he’d thought the air had been removed from her lungs.
He’d been happy for her, even if he couldn’t experience the joy himself. They’d made it, he remembered thinking. Who cared if the castle reminded him of the smoggy skyline of Cokeworth, they were free.
Now, he watches as the towers loom closer and tries to conjure up her voice but the memory comes warped like being run through a buggy telephone box.
As the carriage gets closer, a light shimmery film starts to take up the skyline, then the castle is obscured all together by a blanket of trees. A man waits for him at the end of the road.
“Yeh made it then, did yeh?”
The half-giant doesn’t address Severus but the Thestral. For the first time, Severus is able to remark that Hagrid has aged. His face is sallower, his body thinner somehow despite the enormous width.
Opening the door to the carriage, Hagrid averts his eyes with a dismissive sniff.
“C’mon. Dumbledore’s waitin’.”
Hagrid turns towards the gate and the shimmery film of light contracts then blinks away, opening a space big enough for himself and Severus to pass. It’s Flitwick's work, that he’s certain. He’d watched the professor cast the exact protection spell on the school back in sixth when the war was really beginning to ramp up and the security of the school was starting to come into question. One of Lily’s jobs as prefect was to walk the perimeter of the force field and make sure there were no breaks. A job–to his disdain—Potter always insisted on tagging along for.
As Hagrid bounds up the hill, Severus struggles to keep up with Hagrid’s strides, his thin legs burning in protest.
“Awful nice thing Dumbledore is doin’ for yeh. Awful nice.”
For a moment, Severus thinks Hagrid is talking to himself the way he mumbles out his words.
“Not tha’ my opinion means nuthin, but I don’ think you deserve it.”
He doesn’t know how to respond so he stays silent, opting to focus on the stitch in his side from the intense climb of the slope. He doesn’t need some lackey of Dumbledore’s to rub in his face what he already knows: Dumbledore might be inviting him here, but that doesn’t mean he’s welcome or wanted.
“Were close teh Lily Potter weren’t yeh? Recall yeh two were thicker than blood fer a while…”
Severus feels a painful twist in his stomach and he fights the urge to scream.
Potter.
Lily Potter.
How dare he call her anything but her real name. The only name she should have ever had.
“Lily Evans was my friend, yes,” Severus seethes, making a point to emphasize the surname out of sheer petulance. If Hagrid notices, he doesn’t let on.
“Awful—jus’ awful,” the half-giant goes on, losing himself in a bout of grief. “So young… and the lil’ tyke looks jus’ like ‘em you know…calm as rain too despite it all…”
Severus’s feet come to a halt.
“Wait…you—you saw them? When?”
For the first time, Hagrid looks at him, his eyes growing wide. Quickly he turns and begins to stride away faster than before.
“Er—nevermind tha’,” he mumbles. “Shouldn’t have said tha’. ”
Protesting limbs forgotten, Severus sprints up the hill and grabs the giant by his coat, giving it a hard tug.
“What—what do you know? I need you to tell me!”
Hagrid grunts, his eyes lowering into slits as he tries to shoo Severus off. Narrowly avoiding a giant hand, Severus does the only thing he can think of and pulls his wand.
“Goddamn it, you worthless oaf,” Severus spits. “Did you see them in hiding? H-how was she?”
Hagrid stares wide-eyed at the wand, his hands starting to raise in surrender. His lips tremble and just barely open when a cough echoes from the top of the hill.
“Am I interrupting something?”
An elderly wizard stands at the entrance, his half-moon glasses twinkling from some unknown light source. His presence is a stark contrast to the loaded scene before him: his star accented, twilight blue robes and dangling jewelry reminiscent more of silly muggle imposters pulling woodland animals from hats rather than a real wizard.
Staring vengefully at the dayglo yellow star that hangs on a hoop in his ear, Severus lowers his wand.
Of all the confounding things he’s seen in his last decade of life, this has always been the one to stun him the most: that this person is the one the Dark Lord feared the most.
Dumbledore smiles warmly.
“Ah, I see you didn’t get much sleep—as expected I’m afraid. The Caledonian Sleeper doesn’t quite live up to its name but the breakfast pancakes particularly in car three are actually quite delicious…”
Intentional or not, Dumbledore moves to stand between the two men, Severus’s wand now pointed directly at him.
He doesn’t even blink an eye at it.
“Thank you again for your help this morning,” Dumbledore says, turning to offer Hagrid a nod.
“...and your discretion.”
A hand descends on Severus’s wand arm, giving it a warm but firm squeeze.
“Now, Severus, I know you must be tired but there are things to discuss. Let’s have a chat in my office—I know you don’t have a sweet tooth but I did get a new package of jelly slugs…”
Severus’s feet remain rooted to the ground, his eyes staring pointedly at the giant who no longer looks back.
He’d seen her. Him, that giant idiot of a man, was able to see her in her last days—after she’d already gone—but not him.
A version of Severus that existed just a day ago would have already cracked that oaf’s head open just to get a glimpse of her in her final moments. Was her hair long? Did she still wear that necklace her mum left for her? Had she lost weight like he had from the war?
Was she happy?
Another hand softly lands on his back, the fingertips pressing him back onto the hill.
“Severus?” Dumbledore asks, cocking his head. “What is it?”
Quickly realizing he’d been staring at the giant, he turns his back and begins to walk in the direction of the castle. He shakes his head, trying to dispel the thought, but it keeps rounding back.
It feels like he’s turning his back on a piece of her.
“Nothing. It’s fine.”
🝓
It’s the second time Severus has sat in Dumbledore’s office in the past 32 hours and both times have ranked as some of the most shameful moments of his life.
If asked, he honestly can’t recall how he’d made it there the first time. Struck with the news of Lily’s death he’d used some deep well of manic energy to apparate to the entrance gate of the school and throw every disarming he could think of until someone let him in, not knowing if he planned to kill Dumbledore for his failure to save her or to beg for death himself.
This time he walks with much more composure to the armchair he’d sobbed in not a half a day before and settles in.
“Ah, back again,” Dumbledore says jovially, taking up his seat at the desk. He rifles through his desk and comes up with a large sack of jelly slugs which he opens and offers to Severus.
“It’s a shame you couldn’t have stayed the last time you visited. Would have certainly saved you a trip…”
Severus quirks his head like shooing away an annoying fly. It had been his idea for him to go back. Staying hidden after the immediate fallout of Voldemort’s downfall was not an option. Fingers were being pointed and names given without second thought as Ministry workers and aurors swarmed all facets of the Death Eater networks in order to clean shop. If he’d stayed at Hogwarts the day after Voldemort’s demise, no one would think twice about handing his name to the ministry as one of Voldemort’s top followers. As irksome as it was to go grovel at the likes of Lucius Malfoy, it was a small annoyance to pay for assurance that his name wouldn’t be dragged through the mud—or worse, off to Azkaban.
“So,” Dumbledore says, swallowing a slug, “Should we start with why you were threatening my friend and colleague just now?”
Severus sinks into his seat.
“He was goading me.”
Dumbledore’s eyebrows raise.
“Fine— he brought up Lily. It seemed like he’d seen her before she…she—”
His sentence ends abruptly with a sharp pang hitting at his heart. It isn’t like saying it makes it any more true, but a part of him hopes that if he refrains from saying it out loud it will all magically disappear. That she will still be out there…perhaps ready to finally forgive him….
“And this made you pull your wand?”
“No,” Severus huffs, “but he was being dodgy. It was clear he didn’t trust me—”
“And who would be given the circumstance?” Dumbledore cuts in with a cold edge in his voice. “Hagrid was a good friend to the Potters until the very end. He has every right to be wary of someone like you…but to answer your question, yes. Hagrid did see The Potters before their deaths and I’m afraid to say he was one of the few who saw them after as well. In fact, it was he who deposited little Harry at his Aunt and Uncles—”
“What?” Severus sputters incredulously. “You gave the child to…to Petunia?”
Dumbledore blinks. “Who else? She is his only blood family left. I don’t doubt that Harry will be in safe care—”
“Then you’re an idiot,” Severus spits back. “He’d be better off in a ditch than with her, I swear it. If you even knew the kinds of vile hatred she had towards Lily…”
Like being conjured in a pensieve, memories of Lily crying over her sister slip past his vision like a highlight reel. A familiar rage creeps up the back of his neck.”
“I’m well aware the Evans’s sisters had a complicated history,” Dumbledore cuts in frankly. “But that doesn’t mean she isn’t fit to take care of the boy. In fact she’s the best we have.”
“Then what is this? What am I doing here?” Severus spits. “Aren’t I supposed to be the one protecting him?”
There’s a pause. Dumbledore’s eyebrows raise. “You thought you were going to raise the child?”
Severus blanches. “No—christ no,” he stammers, the muggle swear coming easy. “But you explicitly asked me…I made a deal with you to take care of the boy and he isn’t here. If this is some way to lock me up and—”
“Oh no, Severus. I think you misunderstand me.”
Dumbledore gives Severus a long look, his eyes twinkling out from his spectacles.
“If my memory serves, you and Lily Evans had quite a talent for potions. Correct?”
“...correct?”
“Then, perhaps you’d be interested in honoring your school legacy while we wait for time to pass”
A raw, disturbed silence settles over the room while the words seep into Severus’s brain.
“Are you—you’re asking me to teach?”
Dumbledore offers him a small smile. “You are a very talented wizard, Severus, and a great potioneer. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’d find you a good candidate to—”
“No, you’re mad,” Severus sputters. “This isn’t what I agreed to. I’m here for Lily. I thought you understood this—”
“ —and I’m not saying that isn’t what you are doing,” Dumbledore cuts in patiently. “Harry needs to grow up with his blood relative and in that time I need a reason to be keeping you in my care. You know very well it wouldn’t look good if I just harboured an ex Death Eater in the castle for no discernable reason.”
“Then don’t keep me then. I can find another way.”
“And what way is that?”
Severus sucks in a breath, ignoring the knowing look in Dumbledore’s stare. Of course he’d seen the papers: every last one of them filled with the arrests and trials of anyone who’d even breathed in the direction of a Death Eater. Barty Crouch Sr. had certainly made sure of it—it was his crowning achievement even at the expense of his own son.
“I-I’ll say I was under the imperious curse…that they forced me—”
Dumbledore offers another pitiful smile. “Ah, normally I’d say that’s quite a clever idea but—”
From the desk, the copy of the Evening Prophet zooms into Severus’s lap, a diptych of two men splashed across the front page. On one side, Lucius Malfoy grins as bright as his silvery blond hair while camera’s flash on either side of him as he holds up his infant son. On the other, Edwin Mulciber appears to be dragged away, chains magically appearing around his ankles.
“Both of them claimed to be under the imperious,” Dumbledore explains, “Lucius was quick to go to the ministry with his alibi and in turn was given a full pardon but I can’t say the same for your old school friend Edwin. I’m sure you can parse out the reason.”
Severus sits back in his chair, pressing his shoulder blades into the seat. His eyes linger on the pleading face of Mulciber, still handsome even in a struggle. In school, he’d seemed untouchable; a boy made for greatness.
If pureblood, golden boy Edwin Mulciber could get Azkaban for life, then what would they do to him? A penniless, no name halfblood?
“You’re mad,” Severus musters out, thrusting the paper away. “Even if I do agree to teach here, what will people say? What will—”
“Oh, no need to worry about that,” Dumbledore says with a wave of his hand. “I can handle any sort of gossip that might befall this decision.”
“And the boy…Lily’s son—”
“Babies, as I understand it, do grow up,” Dumbledore says coolly. “In ten years from now, Harry Potter will arrive for his first day at Hogwarts and your job will finally begin. Until then, perhaps you can look at this time as a period of reflection—a vigil if you please. I imagine you have much to think about.”
Dumbledore pauses, watching Severus carefully. “Do we have an agreement? You will take the post as potion’s professor?”
He holds his hand out over the desk. A ring twinkles on each finger, some of the incrusted stones looking like they hold entire universes within them.
“For Lily?”
Severus closes his eyes and reaches a bony hand out to clasp the one across the table.
“For Lily.”
🝓
It was magic, he’d always thought, how much the potions corridors made him think of her. The smell of wet mold, the darkened shadows etched into the walls—no other woman would find such an association pleasing but Lily always just laughed, giving him a soft poke in the stomach whenever he brought it up. “Great, I remind you of gross shite,” Lily had cried more than a few times in those early years. “Seriously Sev, you really know how to make a gal feel special.”
He could always tell when she was taking the piss rather than actually offended. It was a gift seeing that Lily had the habit of being temperamental. He wouldn’t be able to count the amount of times she’d screamed at the likes of Black or Potter for doing something that would make her kick off, yet could only think of one time he’d done the same.
The only difference was his one and only time would never be forgiven.
“I’m afraid you’ll need to stay in one of the unused classrooms until Horace can move out,” Dumbledore explains, walking leisurely down the corridor as though taking an evening stroll through the park. “He claims to be returning next week but Horace does have the habit of getting a little waylaid with his indulgences…”
Thick memories permeate every crevice of the corridor.
They pass the first year classroom where he and Lily had sat front and center, Lily clutching his hand under the table so hard on the first day she left little crescent moon marks in his palm.
“What if I’m rubbish at magic and they send me back?” she’d whispered to him before Professor Slughorn took his place in the front of the class. An hour later she left having made the best pepper-up potion Slughorn had ever seen a first year produce and smile that lasted for days.
He could almost hear her laughter coming from the fifth year OWLS room. He’d been helping her revise her levitation tincture for the exam but in their faffing about he’d forgotten to add the essential ingredient. With one testing sip, he’d fallen to the floor as if squished, unable to get up like gravity was pressing down on him. Lily’d laughed herself silly for what felt like twenty minutes before making the anecdote.
“What do you think would happen if we slipped that into Potter’s pumpkin juice the next time he’s being a prat?” Lily giggled afterwards.
The potion might have made him sink but his heart soared at the thought.
By the time they reach the bend in the corridor, Severus knows where they are going.
“Here we are!” Dumbledore says jovially as they stop in front of a worn, wooden door. Severus has the room in his mind’s eye before they even enter: a small, modest classroom with only three rows of lab tables, a tiny but serviceable fireplace, and a dusty ingredients cupboard where Lily had once organized their small but mighty amount of foraged ingredients. She’d been “gifted” the space by Slughorn after second and they used it to the very end—only ever sneaking out after curfew to wind up in the comfort of its walls.
Some of the best memories of his life happened in that room— and five years later the only thing that has changed is a small bed that sits in the place of a professor’s desk.
“Like I said, just a temporary lodging until Horace can get back, but it should still be quite cozy.”
Dumbledore flicks his wand at the fireplace grate and a fire blooms into place, then goes to open the cupboard. Inside, a tiny row of jars still sit, dusty but still there. Lily’s neat scrawl labels each side in her tight, sloping handwriting: Mugwort, Blackthorn, Moon Water, Fey Honey.
He’d seen her handwriting just this morning, but it makes his heart flip just the same.
“Forgive me if I was presumptuous,” Dumbledore says, turning to regard Severus with a smile. He picks up the jar of Fey Honey and presses it into Severus’s hand. Lily’s handwriting burns into his palm.
“But I figured in dark, chaotic times like these, fond memories can be a comfort. Now get some rest, Severus—you look like you need it.”
🝓
When Severus is finally left alone, his exhaustion sets in.
He doesn’t even bother taking off his shoes when he climbs into bed, his whole body suddenly becoming heavy and burdensome by the new, strange life he’s now found himself living. Four days ago, he’d been holed up in the home of Adam Avery—a plush, respectable townhome in the heart of London where Lucius had demanded he set up a brewing station for blood poisons. The linens of the guest bed always felt too slippery with their high thread count but he liked the way the room settled into complete silence.
Now, in the old potions classroom he closes his eyes and tries to use the sound of water dripping through stone as a lullaby. The noise and smell of grime make it easy to conjure her: young with her hair so long it nearly hovers at her waist with scuffed Mary Janes peeking out from her robes and a smile so wide he’s called to it like a moth to a flame.
His mind swims, sifting through the memories easier and easier as the time passes. The night they stayed up so late making Hydrocorpus Elixir they heard Slughorn humming his way to breakfast before they’d even finished. Or, the time a tweak of the Alihotsy Draught turned both their hair purple for a day. Countless days of comparing notes, practicing their dicing techniques, sitting on the ground and speaking of their day; all of it so close she might as well be there with him, ready to shake him awake.
The fire crackles and the castle creaks and settles. Severus’s consciousness shifts again.
At first she’s blurry, like reemerging out of a deep water, then everything sharpens. She’s older than before, gasping, laughing, clutching onto a head of black hair that isn’t his. Potter presses her into the wall, whispers something in her ear and she giggles again, kissing his cheek, his jaw, his nose, until slowly finding his lips with a smile.
Wake up. Wake up! He screams at himself, but it is no use. Lily tugs on Potter’s collar and with a bite of her lip leads him into an open door where a fireplace and cupboard stash of ingredients sit in their jars waiting for them.
Perhaps even a bed conjured up in the place of the professor’s desk, just like the one he’s in now.
With a gasp, Severus jolts awake, sitting up in bed. The room is empty, save for the crackling of the fire on the other side of the wall but he can feel them there.
Without thinking, he reaches over and finds the bottle of welcome scotch Dumbledore left on his bedside and throws it at the wall. The amber liquor dribbles into the cracks of the stone, then disappears like it never existed.
With a gasp of anger, Severus takes his quilt and pillow and storms out of the room, willing to sleep on the stone floor of the corridor if he needs to.
Fuck knows he’s had worse places to sleep.
🝓
Summer 1974
“Hey…do you think we should stop sleeping in the same bed?
Beside him, the mattress groans and Lily suddenly takes up his vision.
“Why? Oh Christ, do I snore?”
“You don’t snore.”
“Oh god. I do, don’t I!”
Lily flops dramatically against her side of the bed, taking one of the dayglo green pillows and pushing it into her face. Her movement shakes the bedframe, making the soft voice of Jim Croce skip on the portable turntable.
“Oh come on, you don’t,” Severus repeats softer. “Promise…but I was just thinking and…”
That was the problem these days, he was just thinking. Thinking about her. About how she walked and talked and laughed and dressed and…and….
Quickly, Snape turns onto his side to face the wall, hugging his knees up to his chest.
“Hey, you alright?”
The bed shifts and Lily is leaning over him again, her chin resting on his arm. Her green eyes glitter in the fluorescent lighting.
“You sick? Need me to grab the bin?”
Her chest presses up against his back, confirming what he has been keenly aware of since they made a sudden appearance over last summer. Her breasts, full and always braless no matter the circumstance nudging into him.
He takes a few shallow, useless breaths just for good measure until Lily leans away again to stare up at the ceiling.
“Do you think Potter and Black sleep in the same bed?”
Severus’ eyes snap open, the clawing in his stomach moving from hot and lusty to disgust. He turns sharply to look over his shoulder.
“Why the fuck are you thinking about that?”
“I dunno,” Lily says with a small giggle. “I heard from Mary who heard from Bertha who overheard from Pettigrew that Black’s been living at the Potter’s now—god, can you imagine the headache they must be under the same roof? Of course I know the stuff they get up to at school but I’m sure Potter’s mum wants to do her head in, poor lamb.”
Lily gives a theatrical shudder but it does nothing to quell the feeling of sick rising in Severus's throat.
“I don’t fucking care,” retorts Severus tersley. “Probably wish they could shag each other…probably do shag each other.”
The regret washes over him even as Lily wrinkles her nose in disgust. The last thing he wants is for Lily to picture either of those two gits starkers.
“Do you ever think about shagging anyone?”
“E-Excuse me?”
Lily giggles and shifts onto her stomach, bunching a pillow up under her chest. Her eyes twinkling up at him in curiosity.
“Or,” she amends, “To be less crass: do you fancy anyone?”
It feels like Severus’ heart is shaking the bed. No, shaking the entire house.
“No, of course not,” Severus says. The tenor in his voice betrays him, going higher an octave and he turns quickly towards the wall.
“I don’t have time for that rubbish.”
“What? Fancying someone?” Lily asks, astounded.
“Any of it…all that nonsense. Turn off the light will you? We need to go to bed.”
Lily sucks in a frustrated breath. “...But I thought you didn’t want to sleep in the same bed?”
“Well, I changed my mind, haven’t I?”
He stares straight ahead at the wall, counting the seconds in which he can feel Lily’s eyes boring into his back. The bed shifts and suddenly the room goes dark save for the yellow streetlamp just outside her window.
Severus closes his eyes and focuses on his breath while the bed behind him shifts behind him again.
A curled up hand presses against his back.
“G’nite Sev. Sleep tight.”
Without control, a long, contented sigh leaves his mouth and a warmth spreads throughout his body.
He might not have time for fancying someone. But he does have time for her.
All the time in the world, actually.
“Yeah—goodnight.”