Acta est fabula

Every year, the first meal in the Great Hall was charged with looks--looks of friends, enemies, secret crushes, and new lovers. Some tore into the heaping plates with the enthusiasm of starvation while others picked at their food, too nervous to eat.

And this year, one man was acting distinctly out of character.

"Harry..." Hermione kept her voice lowered, trying not to look at the staff table as she spoke. "Have you noticed Professor Snape tonight? No, don't look!"

"If you won't let me turn around and look, how am I supposed to have noticed him?"

"Looks like he always does to me." Ignoring Hermione's order and her groan of despair with him, Ron looked straight up from his plate at the Potions Master, and with Ron's transgression, Harry turned and looked too. What he saw surprised him.

For once, Professor Snape's eyes weren't narrowed at Harry, nor were they focused on another subject of conversation. Instead, they lingered on him with an expression that could only be called--pain. And Professor Snape was the first to look away.

"Reckon he's depressed about losing out the Defence Against the Dark Arts position again." Ron shrugged, dismissing the oddity in favour of another chicken drumstick.

"But he's never looked like that before." Hermione tore her eyes away from the black-haired man to look from Harry to Ron. "Not even when Professor Lupin got the job, and you know how much reason he had to hate him then. And besides," her voice lowered until only the three of them could hear over the hum of conversation filling the hall, "he's not looking at Professor Ganymede. He's looking at you, Harry."

Harry shrugged the subject away, pushing his potatoes back and forth across the top of his plate. "He's always looking at me. He hates me, remember?" Privately, Harry wondered if it would be too much to ask from Professor Snape to leave him alone for his last year. Even for a month.

It was amazing how quickly Hogwarts had changed from his sanctuary into a bleak reminder of death and Voldemort.

He stole another glance at the staff table just in time to see Professor Snape push back his chair and slip from the room. Perhaps he wasn't the only person for whom things had changed.

***

Once wrapped in the relative safety of Dumbledore's office, he folded his arms across his chest, hands habitually tucked into his sleeves against chill that failed to materialize this high in the castle. He didn't notice, in fact, he shivered, perhaps also out of habit, and reviewed his mental list of what-went-wrong that led to his presence in this room that seldom failed to make him feel 13 years old.

Staff meeting, of course. It did often begin there. Most frequently following his return from a 'holiday' that wasn't. He allowed himself a quiet, derisive laugh. For a man with so much holiday time, he was remarkably tense. Perhaps it had something to do with his choice of destination.

I hear Lord Voldemort's lair is charming this time of year. Relax in opulent splendour to the soothing sounds of tortured Muggles and mudbloods. Visit the lovely countryside in dead of night wrapped in quaint warm robes of deepest black behind a blank white mask--join in the fun, join in the surprise--they'll never know it's you! Fireworks provided at the end of every performance.

How repetitive. Always the same shape. The old skull and snake was beginning to get old.

That had, in fact, been the argument discussed at the meeting--whether Severus, himself, was in need of a new type of holiday. One possibly designed to prevent his growing urge to wrap fingers around incompetent students' necks and squeeze.

"If you are all through discussing me in hushed voices as if I were on my death bed," he had interrupted smoothly, "I would like to remind you that I am quite alright." The sarcastic voice was soft, but carried through the sudden silence of the staff room as if Snape had charmed himself with Sonorus. "I'm certain you have more interesting things to fill your time with than the imagined nature of my emotions."

So saying, Snape turned, robes swirling behind him, and stalked from the room. Only McGonagall's voice followed him, a murmur filled with a bemused amusement, just loud enough for the Potions Master to hear as the door closed behind him. "He always was a dramatic boy..."

Boy.

For an instant, Snape wanted to give in to the temptation, just once, to drive his fist into the stone wall, feel it bite into his knuckles and bring some form of tangibility to the increasing haze of his life. Forever the poor boy pining after his saviour. The boy nobody liked. The boy who held top marks in Potions, and nothing else thanks to Potter and Black. And even with the man dead, it seemed he'd be the boy who couldn't escape Potter's magical attraction, but couldn't have it, either. Certainly not in the form of the son who was young enough to be his own. With green eyes that should, by all laws of unnatural torture, be blue.

"Severus?"

The voice, always hovering on the brink of laughter brought Snape's whirling thoughts to an abrupt halt, and slowly, he turned to face its source. "Yes, headmaster?" There was a hint of resignation to Snape's tone, a complete lack of surprise that it should be Dumbledore to interrupt him. Didn't the man have an uncanny ability to show up just as his own thoughts reached the boiling point and left him defenceless?

"If you have a moment, Severus, I should like to have a word with you in my office. Perhaps after dinner?" The headmaster glanced at Severus, pinned him for a moment with blue eyes more keen than jolly.

Damn the man. Did he have to ... twinkle quite so much? "Of course, headmaster."

And so, of course, in his supreme reluctance to discuss anything, particularly anything at all to do with PotterandBlack with the headmaster, Severus had shown up, as always, early.

He fixed the Sorting Hat with a habitual glare, and waited. As semi-animate objects went, the Sorting Hat had become, over the years, a favoured target for times of nebulous malevolence.

Not for sorting him into Slytherin--no shame in following one's talents, but for sorting a Black into Gryffindor to join with James Potter in creating a particularly keen brand of hell for one lone, greasy, Slytherin.

The hat had a positive knack for fuelling an endless supply of Gryffindors set to make Snape's life unpleasant.

"I think you'll find, my boy, that it's a losing proposition to attempt out-staring a hat." Dumbledore's appearance at the top of the stairs, and the humour in his voice were meant to reassure. Severus was fairly certain. And it did indeed reassure each time, to a point--until the feeling that the headmaster knew far more than any man should about a former pupil crawled through his veins and left him violently resisting the urge to squirm.

"You asked to speak with me," Severus offered, hoping that the reminder might encourage Dumbledore to do so--and end the far more uncomfortable attempts at small talk.

"Of course. Of course." With the faintest creak of well worn leather, the headmaster lowered himself into his chair. Lowered, Severus thought with some degree of reluctant admiration, might be the wrong word. Once seated behind that impressive desk, Dumbledore towered. "I couldn't help but notice a growing ... tension between you and one of your students, over the years."

That, Severus thought with a small tinge of bitterness, was beyond obvious even for the Headmaster. He remained silent.

"Perhaps this growing animosity is more firmly rooted in the past, than in the present?"

Of course it is, Severus answered, silently, realizing that he was likely glaring at the old man who now remained silent, clearly expecting confirmation or denial. Severus gave neither, yet still gave in. "I assure you, Albus, Potter creates sufficient cause on his own for my animosity."

"On his own. Indeed, Severus, that is what I wish to discuss." Dumbledore leaned forward, hands steepled together before his lips, regarding the Potions Master from behind lenses that twinkled quite enough themselves without those ever-knowing blue eyes behind them. "Perhaps you have been accommodating the past unaided for too long. I believe, Severus, that your particular history with the Potter family is taking a stronger role in the present than is strictly healthy for you." The eyes pierced spectacles with ease, pinning Severus and his unvoiced objection, though the tone remained kind. "Or Harry."

"If you are referring to the crumbling of his illusions, Albus, look elsewhere. I refuse to posthumously alter my relationship with James Potter for the sake of his son's need for hero worship."

"Ah," Dumbledore's voice broke through the sarcasm with that single warm syllable, leaving silence in its wake until he spoke again. "And your own hero worship?"

Severus looked up, startled, and his eyes narrowed, despite the identity of the man on the other end of his glower. "I hold no feelings of worship for James Potter, Albus."

"No, I suppose you wouldn't." The piercing stare softened, then, as Albus leaned back in his chair, opening a desk drawer, and removing a Honeydukes bag, setting it pensively on his desk. "I do, however, sense that there is quite a lot lying unresolved between the two of you. It is expecting too much of the boy, Severus, to look for resolution in his son."

"I look for nothing in Potter, Albus, save a glimmer of intelligence which I have yet to find."

"I think you're looking for James."

"James is dead." Severus's tone went flat, as did his eyes, but he refused to look away, admit guilt of any other sort.

At this, Dumbledore's tone became more grave, and he leaned forward, intently. "Severus, you cannot treat Harry as you treated James."

A bolt of cold shot through Severus's middle, a leeching, spreading horror of what the old man was suggesting. "I am aware that Potter is not his father, Albus."

"Now. But in a week, Severus? Next year, when Harry has grown, enough to look you in the eye as James did?"

"Albus..." At this, Severus looked away, fingers curling on the armrests of the chair. "He's a boy."

"As were you. As was James." The seriousness remained, but the headmaster's words gentled their sting. "It is a dangerous path, Severus, comparing them too deeply, and embracing those similarities you find without honouring the differences."

"He's only a boy, Albus."

"And almost a man. What will you tell yourself then?"

Severus shuddered, eyes falling anywhere but the headmaster's desk. "And what would you have me do? Obliviate every trace of James Potter's memory?"

"No, no my dear boy. But perhaps you ought to consider what your fellow staff members might have to offer you in the resolution of this particular inner conflict, to see to the heart of the matter, as it were."

"And share my troubles with Sibyll Trelawney? I think not, Albus." Snape swept the hair from his face, heedless of it returning in lank strands, a show of agitation only Dumbledore was permitted to see.

"It wasn't Sibyll I was thinking of to help you, Severus." The headmaster's fingers steepled together on his desk, and he regarded the Potions Master with a faintly amused twinkle. "While I suspect a cup of tea might do some good, the leaves are unlikely to make a difference. No, I was thinking we might take this issue to Professor Flitwick." And then, in the ensuing silence, a small Honeyduke's bag materialized from an inner drawer of Dumbledore's desk. "...lime fizz?"

Severus shook his head, grimly. "I don't need a confessor."

"I don't suppose you do." Unperturbed, Dumbledore ate a candy, regarding his Potions Master. "But you do have a talk some twenty years past due, and I think it's time that you had it. Telling me won't help, Severus, and James isn't here."

"What do you propose?"

"The next best thing."

***

Once released from the headmaster's office, Severus took the shortest route back to the dungeons, his face set in a scowl, robes billowing in a manner that suggested, very strongly, that any student to get in his way would be summarily bowled aside. None were brave enough to test him.

Closing every door available between himself and the rest of the school, Severus spelled them locked, and then, without so much as undressing, crawled into bed and pulled the pillow over his head to shut out the rest of it. Particularly the bit bearing Albus Dumbledore's sympathetic, kind, and entirely too reasonable voice.

Even so, sleep escaped him.

It would be a simple matter to remove the memories, place them in the pensieve and conveniently choose not to look at them. But the pensieve didn't quite work that way--the memories would be gone, but his knowledge of them there, waiting for him, would breed them anew every time the damnable Potter boy turned up for Potions class.

No, he thought bitterly, Potter was not his father. Not with Lily's eyes in that face, and Black's undeniable influence. Not for the first time, he spared a moment's wonder marvelling at the sheer quantity of Black's influence on Potter's development in such a short time. If it weren't for the undeniable Potter family resemblance, Severus might have been able to convince himself in recent years that Black and Evans had gotten up to more behind Potter's back than he knew.

Not that James was much better. But better where it counted. A faint juvenile sneer crossed the Potions Master's lips and he rose abruptly, grabbing quill and parchment, poured himself a tumbler of Ogden's Old Firewhiskey, drained half, and dropped gracelessly into a chair. Simply put, James Potter left Severus Snape feeling perpetually 13 and awkward. From humiliation at the hands of the school golden boy to a stomach-turning girlish crush on his savoir.

Savoir--the very thought left the tumbler shaking in his hand with fury. If not for that one bloody incident, he may have been able to relegate Potter and Black to the same box--hex on sight.

But no. Somewhere in between his brief life flashing before his eyes, Potter standing up to his best friend for a Slytherin's sake, and the usual amount of teenaged hormones, he'd started to think.

Severus tossed back another lung-burning mouthful of amber torture. Trouble always started when he thought. And thought too much. By the end of the year, he remembered strong suntanned arms lifting him bodily away from the jaws of the beast as vividly as he recalled the beast itself.

Which led to remembering hands.

And that led in a direction that was thoroughly unacceptable to Severus Snape even then--as unacceptable as it was obsessive.

Then he'd begun to think again--and traipsed down the path to teenaged ruin with only himself to blame. It had taken the better part of a year after to convince himself that for good or ill, he would demand satisfaction, one answer to put Potter out of his mind for good.

He cornered Potter in the library after Potions, so near to the Restricted Section that, in hindsight, he wondered what he'd interrupted the Gryffindor doing there.

"I want to talk to you, Potter. Now." Not for the first time, he'd been thankful that his voice developed before the rest of him. Already rich and silky in quiet moments, perfect for lending what menace possible to a face more like a newly hatched eaglet than a man to be feared.

Potter looked around, and for a moment, missed the thin smile on Snape's face. The Slytherin had prepared his location well--he wasn't about to provide James Potter with the audience that encouraged grandstanding. Even then, Severus wasn't a fool--it would take a fool not to notice he was only tormented when there were other students around to appreciate the joke. "Alright, then. Talk." James's eyes had settled back on Severus's face, lips quirking at the edges as if still sharing a private joke with himself, perhaps planning to save it for later, to share with Black. "What do you want?"

Severus's lips thinned. There was a great deal of courage in having no greater humiliations left to suffer. "A resolution." He'd drawn himself up to his full height, looking eye to eye with the Gryffindor, smouldering black to amused blue.

"Go on."

And then he'd said it, bracing himself for the hex or blow sure to follow a schoolboy confession of desire for another boy--a boy who lived for nothing other than torment. What he hadn't expected was The Kiss.

The kiss that involved those arms surrounding him again, pulling him against muscle, skin, and bone that forever held the summer sun, and warmed the dungeon chill from his bones, lips, breath, a broad hand splayed between his shoulder blades, another at the small of his back, kneading away the last tension that flowed from his shaking knees like water.

When James had finally released him, Severus fell back against the opposite shelf, panting, his fingers grasping into the books. "What... what was that?"

"All I can give you, Severus. I'm sorry." And for once, James had looked as if he truly meant it.

"I want another." Already, Severus hated himself, the crack in his voice, the shaking in his knees, and most of all the phantom hands whose warming touch he couldn't escape. He hated himself for begging--and Potter for not ending the madness where he should have.

And the final blow, James had said the one thing that could keep Severus obsessing over him even now 16 years after his death. "Some day. When you work up the nerve." He'd grinned, broadly, the same grin as his infuriating son. "It's your turn to kiss me this time, after all."

Then he'd turned and walked away without a backwards look.

The memory alone, in its vividness left Severus gasping, one shaking hand clutched in his hair, pulling some sensation of the present into the clarity of the past. So perfectly like a Potter. As soon as it was over for him, it was finished and put out of his mind. Snape glanced down at the parchment he'd been drawing on while lost in memory, and then with quick, angry motions, crumpled it in his hands and threw it and its innumerable lightning bolts into the fire. After only a moment's hesitation, a pinch of Floo Powder followed it, and so did Severus Snape.

"Professor Flitwick's rooms."

***

imitor persona

There was no shimmering, no feeling of vertigo, no moment of blankness. One moment, Severus had been staring at Flitwick, wondering just what the Charms professor and Dumbledore had in mind, and the next, he found himself eye-to-eye with James Potter for the first time in over 17 years.

Only years of practice at guarding his emotions prevented Severus's outburst of indignity, though he found himself unable to tear his eyes away from the still-too-familiar features. One eyebrow lifted, dangerously.

"Say what you have to say, Severus."

"This is absurd, Fillius." Severus found himself folding his arms tightly, looking away at last to scowl at the nearest window--it, like all the others, was shuttered. The charms professor had been expecting him.

"James," he insisted, but didn't step forward. "Until this conversation is finished, Severus, I'm James."

"I suppose neither of you will leave me alone until I've participated in this farce?"

The open, confident grin on the youthful face made Severus's chest feel as if a maw were opening within and he found himself needing to look away. "You've been waiting nearly 20 years to say something, Severus. Reckon there's no time like the present."

"You always were an insufferable prat."

It was unclear, just who Severus was speaking to, the Charms professor, or the body he wore. The silence stretched between them.

"....is that all Severus?"

For a moment, Snape wanted nothing more than to snarl, loose yet another comfortable, safe sarcastic barb in the direction of boy wonder--Quidditch star who still made his heart pound and his knees weak, but the insults, he found, had been exhausted 20 years since. There was only one piece of unfinished business, really. He looked down, a distant part of his mind surprised at the clenching of his fingers against his palms, turned abruptly, and made his choice.

In two quick steps, he closed the gap between them amazed at the contrast of potion-stained fingers--the hands of a middle aged man--against that smooth cheek, just as he remembered it. And then, before he'd have time to notice more, leaned forward, pressing his lips against James Potter's one last time, nothing exchanged between the two of them but breath. And the man before him, Quidditch star, and Charms professor within stiffened, eyes widening in something very like shock.

Severus withdrew, a bitter smile curving his thin lips. "That," he said, quietly, "is all."