Chapter Text
Later, Harry will start telling people he fell in love with Severus after the war.
It will not quite be a lie.
You have to understand: time curled around itself more often back then; it was harder to know where the war ended and where the feelings began. So it will not quite be a lie, and it will be easier to tell at dinner parties and to puzzled acquaintances, but it will also not quite be the truth.
It’s a funny thing, about time (about grief too), how it leads you in circles sometimes—you’re certain you’re going forward until you find yourself back exactly in the place you began. This is a story about grief and this is a story about time. It is a story about love too, about the way two men find each other again, and again, and again, after the war, and before the war, and in all the spaces in between. And this story, it goes like this:
In the wake of the war, there are bodies everywhere, and Harry finds that he doesn’t know how to grieve. He never meant to come back from the forest, never meant to survive the death he’d been raised for since birth; he doesn’t know what to do with all this life. So he kisses Ginny, and he eats from the plates placed before him as feast after feast after feast celebrates peace, or freedom, or something. The days are hollow, in the wake of the war, like discarded snail shells or the brittle form of wasps, caught in spiderwebs and sucked dry. He still gets up every morning. Makes his bed and eats breakfast and lets muscle memory steer him through the day until he can finally fall asleep again. Harry’s life feels like a stone around his neck then, heavy and unwanted, burdensome and awkward. It’ll pass, he thinks. It’ll pass, and he’ll stop thinking about death with every breath. He’ll figure out how to be alive. He’ll finally learn to be happy.
Then, the news that Snape isn’t dead starts to spread.
It is a right miracle, that Snape’s still alive. The healers are unanimous: Snape isn’t breathing and he hasn’t moved since he was found in that shack with bright-red blood all over his pale throat, but there’s the low thrum of his magic still emanating from his flesh even months after it should have rightfully stopped. They weren’t certain at first, that the magic meant life at all, but it’s been months now, and the body isn’t decaying as it should—the flesh still firm, the skin still warm.
Snape is still alive.
Every healer in the country is called in, at first. Snape’s a war hero and a medical mystery, and everyone wants to be the first to crack the case. The Daily Prophet does a front-page article about him, then another, before, slowly, the news of him starts moving back to page two, page three, page eight. Tens and tens of people try and fail to wake Severus Snape. The media interests die down, move to more pressing matters such as the dress Celestina Warbeck wore to the last charity gala and whether Hermione’s pregnant or putting on weight. The medical interest dies down too when none of the treatments work and there is no change in Snape’s condition despite all the spells and potions.
Harry should be moving on too. Should be unearthing his heart from the tomb of grief, should be putting old ghosts to rest and making an entirely new life for himself, in this beautiful new world where every heartbeat isn’t a countdown to his inevitable death anymore.
He’s not.
Harry’s fascinated by the stone-still form of Snape, by the general consensus that he’s frozen in time—alive but not living. It is all he can think about. It fills up the hollowness of the days, it pushes away the heavy grief that lives at the bottom of his stomach. And because it’s the only thing that colours in the grey-white outlines of things these days, because it’s the only thing that sparks something inside his gut that isn’t cotton-damp and fog-silent, he latches onto it entirely.
Harry doesn’t sign up for Auror entrance exams when spring covers the parks of London in green leaves and vibrant flowers.
His friends worry, of course. They don’t tell him outright, but Ron invites him over to spend time with his family, and Ginny kisses his head softly, and Hermione suggests a mind healer. (Harry doesn’t tell them that he worries too—this was who he was going to be. An Auror. A hero. A fighter and a victor. He’s not entirely certain who he is, now. Who he even wants to be.)
Harry spends an entire year trying to disappear, hidden in the dark, grimy rooms of Grimmauld Place. Then, because he can’t stand the feeling of his grief-stone heart anymore, he applies for a mastery in time magic.
It’s not a well thought-out decision by any means, and he can tell his friends don’t think it’s a good one. Ron takes him out for beers and punches his shoulder and never says anything. Hermione gifts him the heaviest, driest, most boring books she can find. One memorable evening, as they’re gathered together for cheap take-away in her living room, she holds an entire presentation on the fact Harry’s always been keener on Quidditch and danger than on studying too.
Still, the rare visits to Saint Mungo’s, where he haunts the hallways and stares at the stone-still form of Snape in his hospital bed are the only times when Harry can breathe at all, and he’s tired of feeling like his entire life’s been wrapped in gauze. If studying time magic lets him understand the one mystery he still cares about, lets him feel alive or gives him something to do with his time, he’ll risk it, he thinks.
Besides, what else is he going to do?
He receives three acceptance letters. When he finally tells her, Hermione smiles. It’s a soft, sad thing of a smile. “We can’t tell you how to grieve, Harry,” she tells him one evening, “and I can’t say I understand, but if that’s what you need to do, then that’s what you need to do.” Ron nods. Harry doesn’t know that it is grieving exactly he’s doing, but he’s grateful that he gets to choose this for himself. That he’s allowed—just this once, just this once—to pick a path and make his own mistakes, instead of forever fixing those of people he never knew.
There is a strange, contemplative kind of quiet in time magic, Harry finds out. He’s training with Master Hjálmarsson in a desolate area of Iceland, and everything is beautiful here—a stern expanse of jagged rocks and grey-green skies, where the fire kisses the sea in columns of smoke and the deafening sound of waterfalls drowns out the sound of gulls.
He’s alone, most days.
“The time magic, it needs come from here,” master Hjálmarsson says, in broken English, pointing to Harry’s chest. He also says a great many things in Icelandic that Harry doesn’t always understand. Things about meditation, and truth, and finding where the strings of time hide inside your mind. Harry never learns how to meditate—his thoughts forever crawling all over his mind like an anthill—but he reads complicated books, and he learns obscure runes, and he goes for long hikes, and he thinks about what time means to him.
After two years of walking and thinking and learning and reading, Harry’s finally ready to start working on his dissertation. He’s not entirely certain he completely understands what time means to him, but he’s found interesting occurrences of accidental time travels in ancient texts, and he thinks he can link them to solstices, and it interests him well enough. He might be able to draw on solstice magic to enhance time turners, he thinks. It’s a good subject for a dissertation, his master agrees. And it could be this, just this—a broken boy learning how to grieve in the middle of the majestic wilderness, with the sea and the sky around him, mending his heart with knowledge and solitude. But this story—it is a story about grief, yes, but it is a story about love too.
And the part where it first flickers inside Harry’s heart? Hush now, we’re getting to it.
Nothing about Harry’s first experiment goes as planned. He’s been working on a set of experimental runes, one he hopes will help him create time-turners capable of turning time back entire weeks—months even perhaps. He’s devised a spell that will draw from the inherent magical force of the solstice. He’s gone through the wand movement and incantations numerous times, he’s double-checked every last rune, and he thinks it has a decent chance of working.
He writes the spell, and he casts the runes, and a white stream of light emerges from his wand. But, instead of latching onto the time-turner, the light just—lingers there for an instant. Then, it grows, and grows, and grows, until it fills the entire room. Harry suddenly understands something has gone terribly wrong, and at this exact moment, there is a tug behind his navel, and the room around him blurs.
When the edge of the universe starts to arrange into clear lines again, Harry finds himself in a different room. A smaller room. Shabbier. Which is saying something, Harry thinks, considering his Icelandic cottage hasn’t got running water and that the wind’s almost made away with the roof five separate times over the course of the two years he’s been there.
“Who are you?” a voice asks. It’s high pitched and nasal, with pinched vowels and consonants that sound like pebbles.
Harry turns. A child is staring him down. Harry doesn’t know where this is—doesn’t know if this is real or if he’s lying face down on the rough wooden floor of his own bedroom. He wonders briefly if he’s dead (he doesn’t think he’d mind if he were.) Death somehow felt brighter, though. Lighter, too. Not dead, then. Magical damage, perhaps? He hopes his mentor will find him eventually.
“What are you doing here?” the child asks again.
He’s young. Harry’s not good with children, never paid them much mind. He doesn’t know how old the child might be—four, maybe? Six? He might be older than that too, and it’s the oversized wool jumper he’s wearing—hanging to his knee and darned with different colour threads throughout—that’s making him look vulnerable and frail like a fawn.
Then, there is a loud noise. Something breaking downstairs. The scream of a woman. More things breaking. Glass. Crockery, perhaps.
The child goes entirely still.
“Are you okay?” Harry asks though he knows the child is not. He recognises that silent stillness like he recognises the worn-out jumper, like he recognises the barren room without a toy in sight.
A man shouts. A woman sobs.
Harry feels like it’s a scene from his own childhood. He feels like Uncle Vernon will walk up those steps, will grab him by the arm and lock the cupboard door behind him. His airways close with the fear of that dark-cramped space. It’s okay, he reminds himself. It’s okay. There is no cupboard anymore, no Uncle Vernon.
He takes a deep breath, opens his eyes. Turns his head towards the child. He hasn’t moved. Under the overlong sleeves of the jumper, Harry can see little hands clutching at the fabric. The knuckles are entirely white.
“Hey—,” Harry tells the boy, “hey. It’ll be okay. Shhh. It’ll be okay.”
The child looks up at him with beetle-black eyes. He’s not a beautiful child—too thin and too pale, with hair that is growing too long, and an odd gait to him, too. There is no beauty in being unloved , Harry thinks. And: I’ve looked like this too, once.
“My name’s Harry,” he tries again when the child doesn’t respond. “It’s okay. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
The child hushes him.
“My dad will beat you up,” he whispers.
“I won’t let that happen,” Harry whispers back. He’s crouching next to the child, now, looking into his solemn little face.
The child doesn’t avert his gaze but doesn’t move either. He settles for observing Harry with a thirsty, desperate kind of curiosity—and fear, always dancing behind the dark of his eye.
“You don’t deserve this, you know,” Harry blurts out (and he doesn’t know if he’s talking to the child or to himself.) “You don’t deserve any of this. You don’t deserve to be afraid. It’s not your fault—none of this ever was.”
“Shut up,” the child hisses. “Shut up. Go away.”
Then, in a softer voice, he adds: “my dad will kill you.”
“I’m not afraid,” Harry answers, and he finds it is not a lie. “I am not leaving. Not now. I’m not going until I’m certain you’re not in danger anymore.”
Harry’s not prepared for the way the child hugs him. He should be—he’s been this desperate for affection once too, this ready to love anyone who might show him any kindness at all. It’s funny, how time has a way of blurring memories until Harry can’t recall how it felt, until he isn’t even sure what happened in his uncle’s house was even abuse in the first place—there were happy moments, weren’t there? He found one of Dudley’s toy soldiers once. There were all the times the Dursleys went out and left him alone to clean the kitchen, too. He always pretended he was a princess, then, and that there were small songbirds helping him with his every task, like in the film Dudley received from a distant relative for Christmas. (Dudley hated it, of course, screamed his awful little head off until Aunt Petunia bought him another video cassette—but Harry was charmed, and the memory of it stuck with him for years.)
Harry will never be certain he didn’t somehow deserve his childhood. He will never be certain that if he’d been different—just a little different, with a different face or a different smile or a different past, he wouldn’t have been loved. But in this instant, as he closes his arms around the small body of a trembling child, he is entirely sure this child has not deserved this life. Could not have deserved this fear (the kind of fear that clings to your skin and turns the blood in your veins to ice.)
“You’re okay,” he whispers, “you’re okay. I’ll make sure you are.”
There is the sound of doors slamming shut, downstairs. The woman is still sobbing. The child doesn’t say anything. Harry doesn’t break the hug.
They stay like this for a long time, Harry sitting on his heels, softly rocking back and forth, and the child holding on to Harry’s cable-knit jumper like he’s hanging on to the edge of a cliff. Then, Harry’s legs cramp up, and he sits back on the floor. The child doesn’t let go. Harry strokes his hair softly.
“Will you tell me your name?” he asks. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk. I won’t be mad. But I’d like to know your name if you want to tell me.”
“Severus,” the child whispers, and Harry’s vision turns white.
Severus.
Severus.
Severus.
It makes sense, doesn’t it? The rough accent, the shabby clothes, the beetle-black eyes. Severus. This is his Snape, somehow a child, somehow in his arms. His spell worked—in an entirely unpredictable, entirely unexplainable manner, his spell worked.
“It’s a beautiful name,” Harry whispers back because what else can he say? This child will consort with Voldemort, someday. This child will cause his mum’s death, and bleed out before his eyes, and lie frozen in Saint Mungo's coma ward for years. It is too much to process, so Harry turns his face back to the child and—it is just a child, now. A small, scared child with fear and hope dancing at the corner of his mouth as he looks back to Harry. A small, broken child smiling a small, broken thing of a smile. Harry smiles back.
“I’m tired,” the child says. “Will you stay with me all night?”
“If you want me to.”
Without letting go of Harry’s hand, the child climbs into bed and slips himself, fully clothed still, under a scratchy-looking blanket. As his eyes close, there is something peaceful in his little face. Harry resists the urge to stroke it—it feels wrong somehow, caressing the cheek of the man he’s hated for all of his school life and obsessed over when grief turned his heart upside down. He settles for squeezing the child’s hand softly instead.
Harry watches the child sleep. In the darkness of the small room, to the muffled sounds of a woman sobbing and a dog howling somewhere in the distance, he watches the child sleep. Severus. Snape. The man who saved his life and killed his mum. The man who is lying motionless and unliving in a ward, somewhere in a different place and in another time. Before Harry can figure out what it all means and how he feels about it—there’s the tug behind his navel again and he finds himself back in his bedroom, lying over his scattered rune stones.
He does not know how to think about any of it, so he crawls into his bed and falls into a restless sleep.
In the days that follow, Harry goes for long walks, and he stares at the sky, and he tries not to think about the way the black-haired child looked at him. Looked like him, too. Looked like he once had.
He fails miserably.
Less than a week later, Harry decides to go back—back to the old little house and the odd little child. He can’t leave Severus like that, he decides. He can’t let him grow up unloved and lonely. He doesn’t examine exactly why. Instead, he casts the runes and recites the spell, and—
Nothing.
Harry tries again.
Nothing, still. No white light, no pull behind the navel, no world blurring around him.
The solstice, he realises. This one part of his original theory had to be correct—the fact that solstice magic can be drawn upon to make time magic more powerful. He’s stuck here now, in this place. (In this time.) Harry doesn’t know how he should feel about any of it.
Six months pass, slow as molasses dripping off a spoon. Harry still walks and reads and learns—but when Hermione asks about the state of his research, he tells her he’s thinking of writing his dissertation on the ritual time-travel practices in 13th-century sects. And it’s not a lie—not really.
Winter solstice finally crawls its way across the calendar, and Harry finds himself casting his runes again, reciting his spell again. Immediately, the white light appears, as bright and blinding as the first time. When the magic tugs at his navel, Harry lets relief steal the breath from his lungs.
The room is the same as it was the first time—same bare walls, same old furniture. There are books on the small desk. Harry turns around. Severus is glaring at him with crossed arms.
“Why did you come back?” he asks. He’s wearing mismatched clothes again—a man’s shirt thrown over a jumper several sizes too small for him. His trousers are bunched up at his waist, held in place with a piece of string. His hair has been cut short by an inexpert hand, unequal strands sticking up from his head at odd angles. He’s grown too, Harry realises, but the core of him is still there, still the same. The vulnerability, carefully disguised into defiance.
“I’m sorry,” Harry says softly because he is. Because this child had to live through days and months and years without an adult by his side to protect him. Because Harry wishes magic and time and fate had let him be there.
“It’s okay. I don’t need you to protect me,” Severus sneers. Then, casting a careful glance around him, he adds: “I’m a wizard. You wouldn’t understand. That means I’m very powerful.”
Harry smiles.
“Don’t laugh at me! I could kill you, you know? I could make some accidental magic right now if you made me angry enough, I could cut you straight in half or I could make the roof collapse on your head. You should be afraid, you know? You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
“I wasn’t making fun of you,” Harry answers. “I know you’re very powerful. I’m sure you could be very dangerous if you needed to be.”
Severus beams with pride at the words and the sight of it goes straight through Harry’s chest—but the joy is gone as soon as it came, and Severus’ face clouds with worry.
“You can’t tell anyone I told you this. I’m only allowed to say it because dad is at the pub. Mum says I can’t tell anyone, so you have to keep my secret.”
“I’m very good at keeping secrets. Do you want one of mine?”
Severus inches closer, curiosity lighting up his eyes. He nods eagerly.
“I’m a wizard too,” Harry whispers loudly.
Severus pouts.
“You said you wouldn’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not.” Harry reaches into his back pocket and takes out his wand. “See?”
Severus reaches out to touch the wand, running his little fingers along the wood.
“Mum’s got one of these too,” he whispers. “She won’t let me see it, but I know she keeps it hidden in one of the kitchen cabinets. I look at it in secret when she’s gone, sometimes.”
He turns his eager little face to Harry. He’s not any more beautiful than he was the first time, a hollow-eyed child, with bony shoulders that speak of hunger and an intensity that speaks of neglect, but Harry feels his heart fill with affection at the sight of him all the same.
“Would you like me to tell you about how wizards live?” he asks.
Severus nods, transfixed.
Harry tells him of Diagon Alley and Hogwarts. Of the time the Ministry could only be accessed through the Whitehall underground toilets and of the dragons of Gringotts. He speaks of ghosts and pixies and magical houses. Severus does not say a single word, but he reaches out and grabs Harry’s hand and holds it in his own as he listens. They stay like this for a long time, sat on the floor together, holding hands as Harry talks and Severus listens. Then, there is the sound of a rusty gate hinges and a woman’s voice outside. Severus stands up like a Jack-in-the-box. He lets go of Harry’s hand.
“It’s my mum,” he says, with wide panic-search eyes. “Oh, she’ll be cross with me if she sees you. She can’t see you. You need to hide.”
“I’ll Apparate out if you like,” Harry says, slowly pushing himself to his feet. “If you’re okay with me going, this time.”
Severus looks conflicted, then there is the sound of keys in a lock downstairs and he nods. Harry kneels in front of him.
“I’m not abandoning you,” he says. “I didn’t mean to leave you the first time. I still believe every single thing I said.”
Severus’s entire body is tense, his mouth a tight little line, his eyes ink-black and panic-wide. Harry wants to tell him he’s enough, wants to tell him he deserves to be loved, wants to assure him he will be one day—but he doesn’t think Severus would listen if he did. So shoots Severus a smile and wink, then he grabs his wand and Apparates out of the small house.
He finds himself standing by the little river he remembered from Snape’s memories, surprisingly unsplinched. He’s never been here, not really, but the memories Snape gave him in the awful shack, amidst the scent of blood and the deafening noise of war—those memories dug a little hole for themselves inside his head until he knew them as well as his own.
He walks along the river.
It is not a beautiful place, it is not meant for leisure and happiness—but his mother knew this river, Harry realises. His mother would have walked there once, would have known this path and this water and the distant black smoke of the factories, too—and if he walks long enough, and if fate is kind enough, he could meet her here, a red-headed child in an old-fashioned dress running or skipping or playing with a dollie.
When Harry feels the familiar tug behind his navel, he’s been walking for the better part of an hour. He’s met a group of rowdy men fighting over fishing spots and one middle-aged woman in a flowery dress and sensible shoes, doubtlessly hurrying home from her job in the factory, but he’s not seen any children at all. He’s not entirely sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed.
Harry doesn’t tell anyone about Severus, about the old house and the fact he’s taken to stepping into the past to hold a little boy’s hand. He tells his mentor he wants to change the subject of his dissertation. The time travel rituals of the numerous dissident sects that established themselves in the Black Forest during the reign of Disibod the Daft are fascinating, he explains. His mentor doesn’t question his choice. He doesn’t ask why Harry is stacking book upon book on runes on his study table instead of medieval manuscripts either.
It’s no big deal, Harry tells himself. He’s still not figured out why the runes will send him to seemingly random moments of the past on the solstice, or why he always seems to find himself in the same room as Snape. He doesn’t question it. What good would come out of that?
Yet, as the solstice nears again, Harry knows he’ll cast the runes once more. It’s not a decision—not really. It is an unalterable reality.
Harry is near the river again. It’s changed since last time. There hadn’t been houses there, and he’s certain the small park he’s standing in had been waste ground. The heat is heavy and unbearable; it is the height of summer. He turns around. Severus is sitting on the grass with a book in his lap.
Harry’s certain he’s grown, this time. He looks almost old enough for Hogwarts, still bony and pale, with the same hollow cheeks, the same readiness to run hidden in every muscle, always just underneath his skin.
Harry walks towards him.
Severus has grown out his hair—or Severus’ hair has grown and no one’s bothered to do anything about it, perhaps. He raises his head in panic as he hears Harry’s footsteps.
“Hi,” Harry says, and Severus’ tension bleeds away from him.
He closes his book, but he doesn’t move.
“What are you reading?”
Harry sits down next to the child.
Severus clutches the book to his chest and doesn’t say anything at all. Harry can make out the drawing of a dragon on the front cover.
“How have you been?” he asks instead of pressing Severus to talk about the book.
“I’ve been good,” Severus answers. The is a familiarity to his voice—a certain cadence Harry remembers from the potion classroom and his childhood. A certain clipped quality to the vowels, too. The accent, Harry realises. He’s trying to hide it.
“I’ve been learning magic. I’m good at it. I know a lot of hexes. Curses too, you know? When I get to Hogwarts—and I will go to Hogwarts because I can do magic and this is where I belong—when I get to Hogwarts, everyone is going to fear me.”
There’s something in the words that makes Harry pause. They’re not right, those words—it’s not right to want that—to want power over others, to want to instil fear in people you’ve not met yet. It’s not right at all. Harry’s fingers are itching to grab Severus’ bony shoulders and to shake the boy like a plum tree. It’s not that he’s angry, really, it’s not, but he wants Severus to be happy, and Severus keeps making all the wrong choices, keeps wanting all the wrong things. And he shouldn’t be surprised, should he? Snape was a miserable man, Harry remembers. He’d been petty and prickly and cruel—did Harry really expect Severus to not have the exact traits that made him hate Snape?
But Severus is not Snape—not yet. Years of regret and isolation haven’t turned the blood bitter in his veins, he’s not hurt anyone (not yet, not yet.) It feels wrong to hate a child, Harry thinks, so he doesn’t say anything. He lies back on the grass and watches the sky.
Minutes go by.
When Harry raises his head again, Severus is trying to hide his book under his outstretched thighs, frozen and tense. His eyes dart from Harry to a spot near the river where boys are sitting next to their bikes.
Harry watches as one of the boys points his finger at Severus and the entire group laughs. The boys start walking forward, in that slow, dangerous swagger of bullies. Dudley used to walk like that too, Harry remembers, when he was with his friends and trying to stick his head down a toilet or use him as a punching bag or something. He sits up. Looks at Severus.
Severus’ face is all painted in fear. In shame, too. His jumper is falling off his shoulder, and Harry can see the faint watercolour stain of a bruise there—from those boys, or from his father, it doesn’t matter. And Harry understands, in that moment—he’s looked like this too. Afraid and unloved, hurt and sticking out like a sore thumb. He’s been that child too, once. Had he wanted power too then? He doesn’t remember.
The boys notice Harry’s presence. He’s old enough to deter them. Old enough to pass for a proper grown-up. They shuffle awkwardly for a while, waiting for Harry to go, perhaps. For Severus to be alone. When that doesn’t happen, they go back to their bikes and disappear behind the row of houses.
“Do you know other spells too?” Harry asks.
“Not really,” Severus says.
He’s still afraid, Harry can see. Still ashamed—there is vulnerability in letting someone else know your peers consider you worthless and strange. It feels like a flaw, Harry knows, when you always manage to be the odd one out, when you’re not even good enough for indifference. (When you let yourself be hurt because you half believe that you deserve it.)
“All the other spells,” Severus adds, “they’re harder. Curses and hexes, they come naturally to me.”
“Magic is funny that way, isn’t it? My childhood… Well...”
Harry pauses. Hesitates. Looks at Severus. He looks unbearably young. Unbearably hurt. He’ll understand, Harry decides. It might make him feel less broken. Less odd. Less lonely, too.
“My childhood was pretty shit,” Harry continues. “My parents—well, they’re dead. And my aunt and uncle who took me in weren’t the nicest people. They locked me in a cupboard under the stairs, fed me whenever they felt like it. I didn’t tell anyone, not for the longest time—but when it came time for me to learn magic, defence magic always came easiest to me. Like I’d only learned how to run and hide my entire life, and my magic was attuned to that.”
There is a stricken look on Severus’ face. Harry can’t quite decipher it, but the intensity of it goes straight through his chest. Severus doesn’t move.
“I’m okay, now. I mean. It’s not okay—what happened to me. It’s not okay at all but I grew with it. It made me who I am.”
He reaches out to Severus, places a hand on his shoulder. Severus flinches but wraps his fingers around Harry’s forearm before Harry can think about removing it.
“It’s not okay, what you’re going through, Severus. It’ll never be okay, but you will. You will grow and move on, and one day, you’ll look back and you realise everything you’re going through? It made you into who you are. And you’ll be a wonderful man, Severus. I promise you this, you will be a wonderful man.”
Severus doesn’t move. He stares stubbornly at the trees or the river or the sky. Harry doesn’t remove his hand. Under his palm, Severus is stiff as a statue. The bones of his shoulders are hard as marble.
“Would you like to hear about dragons?” Harry asks softly, remembering the cover of the book still hidden under Severus’ legs.
Severus’ face immediately comes alive. He nods.
Harry smiles. He tells him about the dragons guarding the vaults at Gringotts. About the dragon sanctuary Charlie works at, about the work of caring for the creatures, about harvesting their heartstrings while mourning for them too. He doesn't tell Severus about his own encounters with dragons—about the Triwizard tournament and how he stole the dragon’s egg. It doesn’t feel right, somehow, to divert Severus’ attention from the wonders of the magical world with stories of himself.
Harry talks, and talks, and talks, and Severus listens, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Then, a bell chimes in the distance, and Severus immediately tense again.
“I’m late,” he says, his mouth twisting into a thin, lemon-sour line.
He pushes himself to his feet.
“I need to go, or mum’ll get really angry.”
Harry can’t read the emotion on his face—it’s shut entirely. There are no traces of the curious boy Severus was mere moments ago. Instead, there’s this shell of a child, resigned and hardened, willing to walk into whatever beating life’s got in store for him without shedding a single tear. He starts walking away, throwing desperate looks at Harry as he does, “I need to go. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He breaks into a sprint after a few metres, and Harry finds himself alone. Then, there is the tug of magic in his belly and he is gone too.
