Fic: 'Dark-Eyed Wanderer', Part One, Severus/Filius, NC-17
Title: Dark-Eyed Wanderer
Author: purplefluffycat
Pairings: Severus Snape/Filius Flitwick, mentions of Severus Snape/Lily Evans (unrequited) and Severus Snape/Lucius Malfoy
Rating: NC-17 (although most of the story rates lower)
Word Count: About 13,800
Warnings: Canon character death, discussion of grief.
Summary: After the first war, Severus is reprieved by law, but not by himself. It takes a special person to make him embrace life once more. Death, however, always waits.

Author's/Artist's Notes: This story was originally written for the 2009 hp_beholder fest, for odogoddess, here.





The courtroom was cold and the benches were painfully hard. Severus supposed that the last thing they wanted the accused to feel was 'comfortable,' but given the swarming Dementors about him, such attention to detail regarding the furniture was hardly necessary.

He had been waiting for a very long time, it seemed, to discover his fate according to the Wizengamot. Severus supposed he should care, or at the very least have a vested interest in the matter. As it was, however, all he felt was numbness; the world without Lily was chill grey and desolate, and it seemed to matter little whether he were condemned to observe it from the interior of a genuine prison, or a school that would serve much the same purpose.

He watched dispassionately as many of his former colleagues were marched away, some shrieking, some cursing, some sobbing. Indeed, it was striking how many 'fearless' Death Eaters broke down into tears when stripped of their mask and their Master; the poor creatures had never felt self-worth without such things.

Neither had Severus, of course. The difference, however, lay in the fact that he had never been gullible enough to believe that he was anything to the Dark Lord but a tool, just like all the others. Brewing for Voldemort had been a better job than anyone else would have given him straight from school, and he had managed to be carefully blind and deaf to the consequences.

Such self-delusions had been ripped like flesh from bone at the loss of Lily. The horror of his involvement was writ large across every waking moment.

"Call Severus Snape."

He stiffened as his case was finally announced, but it was born of instinct, not real apprehension. Truly, Severus thought once more, it didn't matter what the court were to decide; he would reside within his own personal Azkaban in either case.


*****

Life at Hogwarts was different as a Professor than as a student, and Severus considered that, at least, a minor blessing. His own schooldays had been marred by bullying on all sides; the hateful Gryffindors, the teachers who considered him beneath their notice no matter how hard he studied, and the gilded Lucius Malfoy who made Severus bend over at nighttimes for his own personal use.

Not that he was popular with his colleagues as a professor - indeed, quite the opposite. A heavy cloud of distrust seemed to follow him about the corridors; mutterings accompanied him as he passed; an artificial silence befell the staffroom should he make the mistake of going there to fetch coffee.

"Just because Albus likes him, it doesn't mean the rest of us should."

"Once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater."

"I wouldn't trust him as far as I could hex him."

Severus was sure he didn't care, of course. He had seen, endured and, for Heaven's sake been responsible for far worse than any of that, and held no illusions of being liked or of making friends. The mere facts that he was able to enter and leave the buildings as he pleased, and shut the door of his rooms to the world was blessing enough.

Of an evening, he would sometimes scrawl across a pile of essays as he must, venting frustrations in red ink and harsh words that belonged to people other than their adolescent recipients. The marking quill still felt heavy in his hand; Severus had never imagined taking stolid responsibility for others, and the thought that he should be a role model for these young wizards was frankly laughable. Indeed, while he sat gawkily at his desk, it was all too easy to forget that he was correcting essays, not still trying to write one. He felt far too young to be retired in that old castle. Even though he had witnessed greater horrors than most men see in two centuries ripe with life, he oft wondered when the sorry little existence of one Severus Snape was actually going to start.

More often, however, when there was not so much work to do or the firewhisky bottle called too loudly, he would mutely sit, alone and hollow as the hours ticked by and the ice in his glass rattled with his shaking hand. The spectre of Lily loomed large - Lily suffering, Lily gone, Lily dead - and sometimes, sometimes, Severus could numb himself enough to bear it, if only until morning when his head pounded and the sickness that had nothing to do with a hangover dawned clear.

Amongst it all, he neither sought nor invited the company of others, but living under one large roof with so many people and creatures never quite afforded him the solitude he craved. The Headmaster did not allow him to languish as thoroughly as he might have - there were always invitations to tea with their accessory innocuous and not-so-innocuous chats - but whether these were from lingering suspicion or a genuine concern for his welfare, Severus could not tell. One never could with Dumbledore.

As time wore on, and that first peculiar term threatened Spring, the other professors remained either aloof or hostile. Minerva McGonagall still regarded him as one might a wounded creature that should be put out of its misery; a mixture of pity and disgust on her taut features. Aurora Sinistra was the ringleader for the rest; an elegant woman well-versed in catty remarks and the knack of making someone feel unwanted; she must have been a delight to share a dormitory with, Severus was sure. Even Hagrid gave him a wide berth, a worried look on his slow features whenever Severus was present, as if he feared his immediate demise in a flash of green.

'The Death Eater' was clearly destined to remain persona non grata in the eyes of Hogwarts' great and good - and to be frank, thought Severus, who could blame them all?

All save one, that is. Filius Flitwick - the Charms professor of indeterminate age and minuscule stature whose natty dress sense rivaled even Dumbledore's, and whose eyes didn't so much twinkle, but danced with barely-contained pleasure in the world and all its eccentricities. In Severus' school days, Flitwick was one of the few Professors to mark his work fairly, and treat him as a student like any other - even when he was a hair's breadth from becoming a Death Eater.

He had never had cause to resent Flitwick - and that, coming from Severus, was practically a compliment. The man had been a competent and engaging teacher, even though Severus' own talents in Charms had been unremarkable. He was also clearly a powerful wizard - one who often hid his talents under the bushel of silly ornamental spells and frivolities, but powerful none-the-less, and if there was one thing that Severus could recognize, it was power. Indeed, the greatest triumphs and mistakes of his sordid young life had stemmed from that moth-like tendency to the powerful, continuing until he was badly burned, or until the light itself went out.

Not much danger seemed to present itself in the form of Filius Flitwick, however. Wreathed in smiles and bonhomie, his enthusiasm for everything from the Goblin Rebellion of 1492 to today's flavour of biscuits was infectious, and no-one was left out of these cheerful observations. Indeed, Severus began to imagine the man one feather short of a wand given his incessant encouraging smiles and cheerful greetings in his own direction, blithely in the face of the cold front expressed by all their other colleagues.

Whereas most of the teachers would ignore Severus, Flitwick would make a point of wishing him, 'good day.' When the others would remain pointedly silent during his address at staff meetings, the Charms Professor would commend his work. Whereas the norm was to feign busyness should Severus make himself a drink, Filius would settle beside him, offering a novel ingredient for a cocktail of which Severus had never heard, and cajoling until he had tried at least a drop.

It was uncommon, peculiar - even unsettling - but yet Severus couldn't quite bring himself to repel such pleasantries. He knew next-to-nothing about that small, talented man, but he was well-enough informed to realize that it was probably nothing to do with the Order; duelling-champion he may be, but Filius was not one of Albus' spies. No, even a mind as suspicious as Severus' could not discern the ulterior motive behind such warm behaviour, and perhaps that - the sheer contrariness of it - made him acquiesce from time to time to such overtures of friendship.

Further, Severus found his capacity for ire had diminished of late. Any sense of joy in the world had perished with Lily, as had much of his fire and spleen. All was numb, all was grey. A lifetime of nos were difficult to propagate, and Severus sometimes found himself saying "yes," just because he was tired and it seemed easier.

And so it was that Severus found himself in Filius' sitting room one evening, nestled into a feather-soft armchair with an umbrellaed hi-ball of cherry liqueur in one hand and his wand in the other.

"Go on Severus, try it again!"

"It's hopeless." The messy scene of squashed fruit on his side of the table told its own story. "I said I don't have the knack for-"

"-Rubbish! Just swish and flick and think of something nice." Filius demonstrated once more, causing a little parade of cherry-people to meander across the table, doing somersaults. A sprightly fire danced in the grate, warm against the sleet that was lashing the windows outside, and it lit up Filius' unbridled joy in simple pleasures with the sort of glow that is usually reserved for antique Christmas cards. The cherry-people formed a pyramid on the rim of a glass, leapt off in formation, then took a bow. "This sort of thing's great value at a party!"

"I also told you I don't like parties." That came out more sharply than even Severus had intended.

Filius stopped short, then regarded him squarely, his kind face tinged with sadness. "I do understand, you know, Severus. No-one would talk to me either, when I had just been released from Azkaban."

A silence befell the cosy chamber, and Severus stopped very still. Surely Filius was jesting. "When you had...?"

"-Just been released from Azkaban. Yes." He chuckled. "I don't suppose you'd ever guess that, to look at me now."

Severus regarded his colleague, sugary drink in hand and benign smile upon his lips. "No, I suppose not." That seemed to be the only possible response. Nevertheless, his curiosity was piqued. "May I ask what exactly...?"

"Oh yes, of course!" Filius grinned and moved forward in his chair, as if about to tell someone a charming bedtime story. "It was all Charms-related. And to be frank, I wasn't even considering hurting anybody... it was just that Xenophilius and I had so many good ideas and it was so difficult not to experiment. But oh, listen to me, I'm telling it all backwards!" He chuckled again and poured himself another drink. "We were dabbling in magic that the authorities considered too dangerous to be allowed - of our own devising, of course. We worked very well as a team, as it happens. He came up with all the crazy ideas in the first place - absolutely barking, to tell the truth, and the dear chap still is - but I had the eye to refine the better ones into spells that would actually work. We ended up making something that was pretty dicey, almost by accident, and there inlaid the problem. We were actually trying to create a time-turning charm - still haven't cracked that one, I'm sad to say - but it turned out to be a spell that probes that most delicate area somewhere between life and death. If the corporeal and the non-corporeal are separated for too long, well... you can imagine."

"So you killed someone?" Severus asked, more rapt than he would have liked to have been.

"Not to my knowledge," Filius replied, seeming to muse, "But we could have, very easily."

"And how long were you..."

"In chokey? Just a year, I'm relieved to say. I'm not sure I could have stood much longer than that."

"No..." Severus hadn't meant for that to have sounded as blunt as it came out, but honestly, he was surprised that the little man had lasted a day. "Sorry, I mean..."

"Not at all!" said Filius, smiling and waving a hand, "I can see exactly what you mean. But luckily enough, most of the other inmates didn't know any wandless magic, so what I lacked in brute strength I was able to make up for in hexes. How do you think I learned to duel?"

"Oh." That certainly put his companion into a different light, thought Severus. "And the Dementors?"

"Ghastly. Absolutely ghastly." Filius shuddered, almost spilling his cocktail. "Again, I was thankful for everything I was able to do without a wand. Sometimes it took twenty cheering charms a day just to stay in one piece."

"I can imagine." And he really could. The threat of being sent to that place had pressed upon Severus all-too-closely of late. He supposed it always would.

"But yes, as I was saying, when I came out, no-one would have anything to do with me. All my old friends - poof! Wouldn't say a word, wouldn't come and visit; all gone. I was an utter pariah, and to be honest that made more unhappy even than I had ever been inside the awful place. Had reached a very low ebb, indeed. Might even have ended it all. But luckily, along came Albus, and the rest, they say, is history!"

Severus laughed out loud at that, despite himself. "So you're one of his waifs and strays, too?"

"Doubtlessly so, dear friend, and all the better for it." Filius smiled his calm smile and then drained the rest of his drink. "Would you like another?"


*****

As the months wore on and even the recalcitrant Scottish climate was forced to accept that it might be nearing summer, Severus was honestly surprised by how much time he seemed to have been spending in Filius' company - and even more staggered by the realization the he didn't find that fact totally objectionable.

The chap was interesting, it was true, and although his cheery nature was the antithesis to Severus' own, he did at least have the sensitivity to moderate his smiles and chuckles as the occasion demanded. He was clever; well-versed in runes and astronomy and magical history as well as in charms, and generous with his understanding. Severus had learned much from their conversations, even though it had never felt like a lesson. He was also pleased to note that Filius deferred to his superior knowledge of potions and the shadier forms of magic... although truth be told, neither party particularly wished to dwell on Dark topics.

Sometimes they took tea together; sometimes they shared dinner in Filius' rooms away from the hubbub of the Great Hall. Almost always there would be things to say, and Severus found himself even volunteering a snippet or two - a lesson that had gone spectacularly wrong, an owl that splatted itself against his window that morning - and strangely enough he began to find that the bad things didn't seem quite as awful when they had been shared, and the things which, technically speaking, might be regarded as funny, even seemed slightly amusing.

Such notions swiftly disappeared when away from Filius, however. Around him, life in the castle continued as usual; the teenage spats and romances, the bustle of the staff and elves and even the ghosts. No one seemed to notice that Severus existed in his own personal limbo. There was no bustle, no motion in the world for Severus Snape, just days and days of blankness, and dreams of red hair mingled with blood and screams to disturb him at night that made him wake with chills and the desperate realization that it was too late.

When dawn came, Severus pushed all such things away; it was far better to feel nothing than to feel that.

It was after one particularly troubling night in June that Filius stopped him in the corridor - jovial as usual, and clearly making full use of the fact that most of the students were in Hogsmeade that bright Saturday morning. "Hello Severus. What a lovely day it is!"

Severus glanced about the corridors, registering the beams that danced upon the tiled flooring as if they might have been dangerous creatures. "I suppose some would think that."

Filius chuckled. "I daresay they would. Now, tell me - do you like music?"

That was certainly unexpected. Severus supposed he ought to say 'yes'. After all, who on earth didn't like music? Anti-social bastards, that's who, a small voice reminded him.

"Not particularly."

Filius smiled, undeterred. "Well, you obviously haven't heard the right kind then! Come with me."

"I really don't..."

"Hush. You might not have heard something like this before." He gave a cheery grin then beckoned forward.

That statement filled Severus with a sense of dread. It had been parroted at him by every shameless Muggleborn he had ever met who had made the mistake of thinking he would be enthusiastic about their particular variety of contemporary noise just because he wore black and washed his hair slightly less often than most. Wizard bands were no better, of course. The same crooning, twanging and yelling seemed to disease both magic and non-magic folk, so it was with very low expectations indeed that Severus allowed himself to be led up three floors and into the Head of Ravenclaw's office.

Filius scurried over to a device of some sort in the corner of the room and pulled a velvet cover from the top of it with flourish. "Voila!" he exclaimed, "My Victrola - modified, of course."

The object in question seemed to be some kind of old-fashioned Muggle music player. However, the part which must have originally housed the cassettes - or disks, or barrels, or whatever-they-were called - seemed to have been completely replaced by a reservoir for liquid with a tiny drip point at its bottom, not unlike an hour glass.

Severus looked at the machine skeptically. "And to what, exactly, are you intending to subject my hearing?"

"Bach. Perhaps a little Mozart, and but first-"

"-Mozart?" Severus recognized that name from somewhere long in his past. "Hang on, what are you doing with Muggle music?" The question sounded accusatory, and Severus supposed it was. Filius had never shown the slightest interest in Muggle goings-on to date, and it was generally assumed that anyone who had goblin-blood in their ancestry was as pure-blood as you can get... well, clearly not pure-blood, Severus corrected himself - but very firmly rooted in the magical world, nevertheless.

Filius chuckled like a fairy-collector whose best glow-worm trap had just yielded sparkle. "And that's exactly where you - and most others, for that matter - are wrong, my dear! Mozart was no more Muggle than you or I. Listen."

He hunted through a cupboard to the right of the Victrola and extracted a vial of glowing orange, its contents too viscous to be a potion. Filius poured the liquid into the top of the device, and a glutinous drop formed beneath the upper container. As it fell, the music began to play.

It gathered volume as the next drop widened but remained serene. Sceptical as he had been, Severus was forced to admit that this recording was nowhere near as bad as the sort of noise he had expected, and the slight smirk on Filius' lips seemed to register his lack of complaint. The melody soared and gathered pace, harmonies swelling and as it did so, Severus was visited by the distinct impression of familiarity, as if he might have heard this strange music somewhere before.

"So, have you worked it out, yet?" asked Filius.

"Worked what out?" That came out snappishly, but he didn't take well to being set puzzles that he couldn't immediately see his way through.

"What he's up to!" Undeterred, Filius gestured at the Victrola. "It might help to know that he titled this one, 'A Little Night Music.'"

Severus creased his brow in concentration. Irritating as it might have been, his pride would not be outwitted by some daft old recitation machine. He certainly couldn't shake the feeling of familiarity - more so in some passages than others it was true - but was sure that he had never had reason to happen across 'Mozart' before in his life...

And then - hang on a moment! - wasn't that the sonic symbol for the moon? Closely followed by yes - the pattern of tones traditionally used to represent the stars.

Severus snorted as it all became clear - the higher instruments were painting the setting of a night sky while the lower ones chimed wove in and out with a handful of typical cantations for 'calm,' 'peace' and 'wistfulness.' "What a hack!"

Filius' smirk blossomed into a broad grin. "Yes he is, - but effective, no? It's amazing how well the formulae work together when taken out of an academic context. Of course, it's a bit like using arithmancic symbols to decorate your wallpaper, but he certainly had the Muggles fooled - they'd never heard anything like it."

Severus considered. "That may well be so. But what a lot of trouble to go to, just to entertain Muggles."

"Ah. Well, he didn't have much choice. Old Mozart was in fact a runes specialist who had an unfortunate run-in with the authorities. Not dangerous enough to be sent to Azkaban, mind, but his wand was snapped and he was exiled to live as a Muggle for twenty-odd years. He managed to keep the werewolf-from-the-door by confuddling a family who'd had some sort of musical child prodigy to take him as their own, and then by cranking out page after page of sonic runes that pulled at the Muggle heartstrings in ways so affecting and evocative they found it almost magical.When the sentence was over, he bought a new wand, faked a tragic and untimely death for himself and went back to live Diggory Littleton with his wife and twenty-seven cats."

"I am at least impressed by his lateral thinking," Severus allowed.

Filius rummaged in his cupboard and changed the orange liquid for something blue. Severus was listening out for tricks this time, and it didn't take him long to notice the particular patterns of intervals in which the melody climbed: "Well that's just the Merlin Series, isn't it?"

"Yes - but when juxtaposed with the Sorcerer's Sequence in the bass it makes quite an effective ditty, don't you think?" He waved at the Victrola again. "This is Bach: his 'Toccata and Fugue in D Minor' to be precise. He was an arithmancer - German again - who managed to pass off the standard magical numerical patterns as an amazingly innovative tuning system to the Muggles, then used those very same principals to write harmonic, rhythmic and bar-number patterns that keep the poor dears entranced to this very day."

"So, another charlatan."

"I suppose it depends how you look at it," Filius mused, "He wasn't doing anyone any harm, and the Muggles tend to think they're much better with it than without it. This, however-" He busied in the cupboard for a third time, "-is something rather different."

Severus prepared himself to be nonplussed once again by whatever type of trickery someone else had seen fit to employ. The glutinous drops of purple swelled and fell, and then slowly, slowly, sounds began to weave their course to his ears, hesitant at first but gathering force until Severus found himself rapt and blinking. He had never heard music such as that before. He knew not the name of the instrument that played nor anything about the piece or composer. He simply understood that it was - and Severus did not use this word lightly - it was beautiful.

The melody did not follow a tune, per se. Rather it meandered with purpose, reaching sinuously toward the listener as might a cat winding about its owner's legs, or a snake appraising its next meal.

No, not a snake, Severus corrected himself. There was nothing sinister about these sounds, despite their intensity; something dark and sticky and delightful, but not vindictive.

After a long pause in which he merely listened, Severus found his tongue once more. "And what is...?"

Filius shrugged. "Oh, never mind that." He then turned a knob on the Victrola causing the music to fade - slowly, but its course to extinction was clear. Severus had mind to protest, but instead watched intrigued as Filius produced yet another item from his cupboard of music: a sort of instrument which bore resemblance to a violin, but sporting a number of bells and buttons along its gleaming sides. With a wink, he lifted it beneath his chin and took a bow - flush with unicorn-hair - to the nearest string, then closed his eyes and began to play.

Nimble fingers danced along the instrument, sounds blending seamlessly with those of the recording and swelling higher as the Victrola dimmed. Any beauty that was present in the recorded version was magnified tenfold by such accomplished performance. Truly, Severus was captivated.

He stood dumbly for what might have been hours; watching, listening, as the music keened and soared and Filius played as if the strings and bow were a natural extension of his very hands. There was a rawness, a passion to the sounds, as if they carried some wordless truth that bled from the heart of another and came to nestle in his own. Severus found his breath caught, and his better sense seized by a feeling that he could not name, such was its novelty. He studied Filius closely; the grace with which he moved, the spirited concentration upon his features - and he was struck by the idea that not only was Filius a handsome man, he had been a fool for never having seen that before.

All to abruptly, the music stopped. Severus started as he was transported back to an office on a Saturday morning in June; his mind had been luxuriating somewhere quite apart.

Filius smiled, a tad apologetically. "That's all I have, I'm afraid."

"So what was-"

"-Oh, never mind that." Another smile, perhaps a little too bright; too rapid. "Well, thank you very much, Severus, for coming to see my little collection. It is terribly nice to have people to share these things with, isn't it? But - oh gosh!" A glance at the wall-clock. "I think the little terrors are going to be back any moment, so you better go back to Slytherin, I suppose."

Severus was still preoccupied; it took him much longer than usual to register the clock and the time. "Yes, I suppose I should."

"But will you have supper with me next Friday?"

"I can see no reason why not."

"Excellent!" Filius beamed on as Severus finally gathered his wits and urged himself in the direction of the door. "I'll look forward to it."


*****

The days following that Saturday accosted Severus with appalling violence.

Nightmares spilled into waking time and he could do nothing to stop them; numbness, which had been his refuge, had vanished. He felt haunted by everything at once; the guilt, the grief, the pain. Everything was razor sharp. Sometimes, his chest felt so tight he could hardly inhale. Severus found himself merely sitting, quivering at the horror of it all as the clock ticked, and he wanted to cry or to scream but couldn't.

Lily - of course, it was all about Lily. Yet strangely - yes- very strangely - there was also a new element to Severus' suffering; a yearning for another, for someone to understand and listen and be his when he truly had nothing. For someone to want him without condition of his friends, or his magic, or his past. Severus thought it was all a foolery; a sick joke.

In those six days, Filius was little in evidence. There were passing greetings in the corridor or staff room, of course, but he always seemed to be rushing somewhere, professing insufficient time to talk. Severus realized quite how much he had come to expect Filius' company - enjoy it, even. The notion sat uncomfortably, but he couldn't deny its truth.

It was therefore a terribly worn, desperate Severus who presented himself at Filius' doorway at eight o' clock on Friday, purplish circles painted crudely under his eyes and face drawn white. Naturally, he sought to betray none of this, returning Filius' greeting smoothly, pressing himself to discuss the students, choking down the excellent dinner when it came. Indeed, the charade was holding well. Well, that is, until they retired to the sofa with wine and the conversation turned to matters more serious:

"My parents? I lost them both when I was about your age," Filius answered, swirling the last of his wine in goblin-crystal. "Rum business, indeed."

"What happened?"

Filius hesitated. "Oh, not something to tell now, Severus. I'm sure you won't want to hear-"

"-Because I'm the sort of person who killed them aren't I?" Severus looked away, shocked with what he had said, swallowing hard, hands beginning to twitch.

"No! I meant no such thing, it was just that..."

But Severus was no longer listening. "It's my fault she's dead. I killed her, as good as. I can't bear it, I wish I were dead and..." He never finished that sentence, as the twitching became a shaking that threatened to swallow his whole body. Every line of his face tore with anguish; he felt as if he would explode.

Filius edged closer on the sofa, extending a hand to Severus' shoulder, his voice soft. "Keep her with you always, but let the pain leave now."

The soft sounds filtered into Severus' brain. So kind, so smooth.

Madly, he turned and pressed his lips to Filius', eyes closed and screaming inside even as he did it; desperate, lovely, forbidden to the likes of him, but yet...

And then Filius pushed Severus gently away. "Hush, my dear."

Utter panic overcame Severus as his cheeks flushed and his hands quailed anew. What had he done? How stupid could he be? He had had one person he could possibly have called a friend, and now it was all ruined. He was hideous. Of course he was hideous, everyone knew that, even a tiny bachelor who he thought might have been his friend, but now- "I'm sorry," he blurted to the floor, "I'll understand you won't want to speak with me again and-"

"-Don't be silly!" interrupted Filius with more force than Severus had ever heard him use. The air sat heavily between them and silence drew on.

Finally, Filius let out a deep breath and took one of Severus' hands in both of his, bringing it chastely to his lips. "I like you very much indeed, my dear friend, and I'm honoured, I really am. In fact, it takes the better part of my self-restraint to say this, but - even though I'd like to have you in a second flat, it wouldn't be fair of me. You're grieving, Severus. You probably don't even realize it yourself, but it's only in the last week or so that you've allowed yourself that. I don't want to take advantage of you. I want to be here for you - and maybe, in a while, if you really do think there could be something between us, then I'd be over the moon. But give yourself time, first. That's all I ask."

Severus could do nothing but mutely listen, watching the scene as if it were playing out elsewhere, with another individual entirely as the subject addressed. When Filius had finished speaking and squeezed his hand before dropping it, he managed to nod and mutter something vaguely in agreement before taking himself away to the dungeons, more shocked and confused than he had ever believed possible.


*****

The next day, Severus took himself far away from Hogwarts; to bleak moors that were both achingly familiar and so alien to the life he now led; to scruffy parks and riverbeds and hedgerows of his - of their - youth. Her ghost seemed to follow him there; bright, mocking, affectionate.

He roamed these places, remembering and aching, hidden by a disillusionment charm such that he could sit without interruption on a park bench; atop a hill. As he climbed up away from the village, the wind whipped his face, cold despite the season, and Severus allowed the remoteness to consume him - no-one to please, no-one to witness. He stood as a speck in the moors; the feeble beat of his own heart the only life he could note - and then finally, painfully, that terrible rigor mortis within him broke away. Severus Snape collapsed to his knees and wept.

He wept for the woman he loved - hot fiery tears - and wailed, just a little. He wept for himself, for his foolish mistakes, his arrogant pride. He wept for the future that he had denied himself and for life's promise that would never come his way. Severus wept for all these things and more, the strange Muggle wind carrying it away from wizarding ears and stinging his face as it smeared with grief and salt.

Much later, when the stars had long risen and he shivered with cold, Severus apparated back to Hogsmeade. Of course, nothing was better - but he did feel somehow different. That is, he felt perhaps human. The pain in his heart was real and raw - as opposed to the limp numbness that had beset him before, interposed with episodes so psychedelic and unhinging they had to be unnatural. He did not know whether such wounds could ever heal, but at least they felt as if they were real wounds.

It was several days more before he saw Filius again. The man went out of his way to be nice; to make Severus feel welcome and comfortable, and no-one mentioned what had happened before. It was almost pantomimic, Severus reflected, as he was being asked his opinion on hellebore in Sleeping Draught for the second time that week, and poured his third cocktail, but strangely enough he did not rebuff Filius' kindness with acerbic comments.

For the first time, they spoke directly about Severus himself. Filius was careful never to pry, never to ask more than what Severus was about to give - and because of that, Severus surprised himself with how much he was willing to volunteer. There were some things he had never said aloud before - how he had loved his Muggle grandmother more than his wizarding one, but had been banned from seeing her past the age of eight lest he pick up 'funny ideas'; the time in fifth year when Lucius Malfoy had first invited him to a secret meeting and exactly how many potions he had developed at the Dark Lord's instruction.

It seemed that nothing could shock Filius. Of course, Severus had met others who displayed that very trait - but Albus was always calculating ahead, deciding how he might outsmart, and the Death Eaters took a perverse pleasure in being unruffled by any depravity that came their way. Filius however, seemed to press no agenda of his own. He was merely worldly enough to listen without blinking and knew that people behaved awfully as a general rule, but were still people, all the same. As Severus spoke he would sit calmly atop his cushions, arms crossed in thought and sipping at his drink, offering an encouraging remark or helpful question along the way. Severus had never felt so noticed.

Eventually, the students left, and summer wore on in much the same way. Those staff who had spouses and other homes left the castle, but many of Hogwarts' bachelors and spinsters stayed - including, of course, the Charms and Potions masters, who were both relieved to have a little more time to themselves when classes had stopped and there were no difficult children prowling the corridors.

In these days of relative peace, a shock became Severus one evening. It was by no means an exceptional evening; indeed its very normalcy was the shock in itself. Severus had just finished playing a game of chess with Filius and was putting himself to bed, the tiny portrait of Lily on his bedside table as ever his sole companion and constant reminder of his woe. - Only, in that split second between taking off his socks and swinging his legs into bed against the chilly stone floor, Severus realized he didn't feel as desperately miserable as he was accustomed, or usually did, or perhaps rightly should. He felt... well, not happy exactly, but somehow lighter. The chess game had actually been fun. Just before pulling himself up on the matter, he had been thinking not about death and doom, but about the fact that he and Filius had planned to have a rematch at teatime the next day, and was considering taking along some liquorice cakes because he couldn't quite cope with the level of sugar contained in those of Filius' preference.

Had he any right to be thinking such things? A part of him felt immediately guilty. Severus Snape did not deserve enjoyment or frivolity.

Yet there was also another part of him - the part that had been taking the most notice of Filius, he supposed - that said Go on, for Merlin's sake! Stop being a limp lettuce.

Conflicted, Severus closed his eyes and hoped that things would be clearer by morning.

Naturally, they weren't, but Severus went to his chess game anyway - and won, as it happened. The liquorice cakes were good, too. So good, in fact, that he had to bat Filius away from his plate when their popularity became clear, and then parry for all he was worth when the man engaged various sneaky charms to try to levitate, disillusion and apparate them away from his grasp.

Unfortunately for Severus, however, he soon learned that there was no use in trying to match a Charms master. He was just dealing with a flock of sickeningly sweet bluebirds that had been called to chirrup about his shoulders when he saw his beloved cakes had grown little legs and were marching in an orderly fashion inches from Filius' plate.

"Oi, that's not fair!" he exclaimed,

- only to be met with a, "Really, dear boy?" as the sofa throw wound about his knees toppling his balance and Filius levitated somewhere near the lampshade with a mouthful of liquorice-flavour crumbs.

As he hit the floor with a well-cushioned thud, a bunny rabbit appeared from seemingly nowhere and kissed the end of his nose. "I'm sure that using wildlife is against the rules," Severus grumbled from his breathless, cakeless position on Filius' carpet.

Filius laughed as he floated down, and offered Severus one of his own cakes with a flourish. They were both smiling.

That very evening, Severus felt a sensation so alien to him of late that he took some moments to identify it as sexual desire. It bubbled within his blood, subtle at first, but quickly building to a throb beneath his skin that could not be ignored.

He slid his hand beneath the sheets, warm and dark and urgent, and his flesh awoke for seemingly the first time since the end of the war. As he stroked himself, the image in his mind was not of a pretty girl, or even a buxom woman. No, as his arousal grew, Severus' mind flooded with thoughts of a small, neatly dressed man playing music that sang from his very soul, eyes closed in rapt concentration and elegant fingers gliding across the instrument like a lover's caress.

When he had completed, the thoughts of Filius did not go away, but softened: his cleverness, his laugh, his uproarious sense of humour. That crazy, needy kiss from months before that they had both done their very best to forget suddenly began to make sense, on his own part at least. Filius had said that he'd take Severus. It had been spoken in clear black and white, but had the man only been dissembling to be kind? How could anyone possibly want him, Severus Snape, if not just as a tool?

As he lay there, limp, sated and confused, Severus dared to wonder if it could ever be true.


Part Two