Chapter Text
Harry knocked twice, the sound dull against the painted wood, and tucked his hands back into his coat before he could fidget. The evening smelled of rain and woodsmoke, the kind of damp cold that crept through his collar and made his skin prickle. Herbs crowded the window box beside the door, their leaves still slick from the earlier shower, dark green turned almost black against the pale stone of the cottage.
He had thought about the shape of this door often, ever since Minerva had sent a photograph of Severus and the rest of the staff, standing in front of the cottage to celebrate its completion. The image was small, poorly lit, but it had lodged in his mind: Severus half in shadow, arms folded, his expression carved into distance even as others smiled beside him. After that, he had written Severus’s name into notebooks meant for reports, asked after him in short questions whenever a former professor wrote. Five years overseas and still, he had not managed to leave him behind.
The door opened only halfway. Severus stood framed in the narrow gap, wearing a plain black sweater that made the candlelight behind him seem warmer by contrast. His hair was longer than Harry remembered, his face no less stern but healthier, the sallowness of war burned away. Glasses sat low on his nose, giving him the look of a man pulled reluctantly from thought. He looked… not softer, exactly, but more alive than the last time Harry had seen him. Harry’s chest tightened with relief, pulse of warmth he told himself was only gratitude but felt like something closer to longing.
“Potter,” Severus said at last, his voice a low drawl that carried both irritation and caution. He didn’t open the door further.
Harry’s throat went tight. He could have said many things - hello, how are you, may I come in - all the simple, neutral words that would have bought him a moment longer. But none of them was why he was here. What came out, steady despite the pull in his chest, was the real reason he had come.
“I came to say I was wrong.”
The silence stretched for a beat too long. Harry almost expected the door to shut again in his face. But Severus only narrowed his eyes, assessing, and the faintest shift in his stance suggested that he was listening, even if only to weigh whether Harry’s words were worth the bother.
“You were wrong about many things. Be precise.”
“I was wrong about you.” Harry kept his voice steady. “About the things I thought. The things I said. And the times I stood there and let others talk. I’m sorry.”
For a moment, Harry thought he would be shut out anyway. But Severus stepped back, silent, and Harry took the invitation for what it was.
Harry stepped over the threshold when Severus shifted back, the door swinging shut behind him with a quiet click. The cottage was warmer than he expected, carrying the mingled scents of woodsmoke and something faintly herbal, dried lavender in a bowl on the mantel, perhaps, or the ghost of potions ingredients worked with earlier in the day.
The room was neat, almost severe in its order. Books lined one wall in careful rows, their spines dark and tidy. A low table held nothing but a mug resting precisely on a coaster. The armchair closest to the fire was set squarely toward it, positioned as though man and flame had been in steady conversation all evening. Harry took it all in quickly, unsettled by how domestic it seemed, how far it was from the bitter, shuttered rooms of Spinner’s End.
Severus crossed the rug and lowered himself into the chair. He picked up a book lying open on the side table and drew the ribbon through the pages with absent precision, though Harry doubted he had been reading at all. The gesture was deliberate, a way to put something between them.
“You came to tidy your conscience,” Severus said, without looking up.
Harry stayed standing for a moment before stepping closer to the firelight. He closed the door softly so the latch wouldn’t snap and betray his nerves. “No,” he said, his voice low but steady. “You deserved to hear it properly.”
That drew Severus’s eyes at last, sharp and measuring. “I have never deserved anything from anyone. I have fulfilled my duties and paid for my mistakes.” He shut the book and set it aside, folding his long fingers on the armrest. “Say what you came to say.”
Harry took a breath. His throat felt dry, but the words pressed forward anyway. “Thank you,” he said. “For keeping me alive. For all of it. I know I was - ” He stopped, unable to find the right word. “I know I made it harder. But I’m here now to say thank you.”
The fire snapped softly. The light caught the edges of Severus’s profile, cutting his expression into planes of shadow and sharpness.
“Again, I was doing what needed to be done,“ Severus said at length. His tone wasn’t cruel, only tired. ”Is that all?”
Harry swallowed, forcing himself not to look away. “It’s a start. I’d like it if you’ll allow me to do better than this.”
For a long moment, Severus only regarded him with the careful attention of a man assessing a mislabeled jar: was it dangerous, was it useful, was it worth the risk of testing? Finally, he inclined his head a fraction.
“You may try,” he said. “I will not help you.”
Harry gave a short nod. “That’s fair.” He stepped back toward the door, though something in his chest ached at how quickly the moment had closed again. “I’ll see you around.”
“You will not,” Severus replied, already turning his face back toward the fire. “Unless you make a habit of knocking on doors that do not open.”
Harry let out the smallest huff of air, something between exasperation and amusement. “I’m persistent,” he said, and slipped out before Severus could add something sharper.
When the latch clicked, Severus pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose, holding them there as if the pressure might banish the ache gathering behind his eyes.
The mantel in Grimmauld Place grew cluttered. At first, it was only one envelope, set there because Harry couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. By the end of a month, it was a neat row, lined shoulder to shoulder like a silent audience. The wax seals were still unbroken, each one carried back by his owl with quiet futility.
Harry wrote in the evenings, sitting at the kitchen table with a quill or sometimes a simple pen, whichever felt less formal. He lingered too long over the words, more than he ever had with Ministry reports, scratching out lines and starting over. Sometimes he wrote simply: Severus, tea at my house. Five minutes? Other nights, the page filled too quickly, spilling awkward humor and half-confessions until he crushed it in his fist. What he finally sent was always pared down: Walk Saturday? The lane by the hawthorn. Or, Come let me bore you in person instead of by letter.
When the owls returned, he stroked their feathers longer than necessary, whispering an apology as he untied the envelopes. He kept every letter, stacking them beside the book he had carried home from the war; the one he had been absurdly lucky to snatch from the wreckage before the Fiendfyre swallowed everything else. The cover was frayed, the margins still alive with Severus’s sharp handwriting. He told himself he only kept it for its usefulness, but most nights it sat near the unopened letters like a companion: words Severus had once given, and words Harry could never get through.
When the letters failed, Harry tried meeting Severus where he was.
The shop in Diagon Alley bore a name that sounded like a warning, Thorn & Mortar burned into a slab of oak in blocky letters left rough at the edges. The windows had been scrubbed to a severe clarity, glass so clean it seemed almost judgmental. Behind them, rows of jars stood in ordered ranks, neat as soldiers, each one promising to outlast the person foolish enough to question their shelf life. The place looked so like him, Harry thought, severe, precise, enduring. He almost smiled at that.
Harry waited until the bell over the door had stilled between customers before stepping inside. Even then, he knocked once against the frame, because barging in felt wrong. The air was dry and heavy with chalk and herbs, and Harry thought absurdly that if he shut his eyes, he could almost believe Severus was everywhere in it.
A sound rose from below: the creak of steps, the scrape of a door. Then Severus emerged from the cellar, a faint haze of steam curling up from the stairwell after him. His sleeves were rolled past his elbows, cuffs damp, fingers still smudged with chalk and something darker. The black of his hair was tied back loosely at his nape, but a few strands had slipped free, sticking to the sharp angle of his cheekbone.
Harry’s throat went dry. It was absurd, the way his body reacted as though it had caught the truth his mind refused to name. For a half second, he simply stared, the words in his head dissolving. Severus looked more at home among the jars and shelves than anyone Harry had ever seen, as though the place had been built around him.
“Your sign says Open ,” Harry managed, because everything else had fled.
“It is lunch,” Severus replied, turning the placard to Closed with a flick of his wands. “Even the damned observe it. Now, was there something you needed, or have you come to stand in my doorway out of habit?”
“Five minutes won’t kill you,” Harry said. It had sounded firmer in his head. Out loud, it came across like a plea scrawled in crayon.
Harry shoved his hands into his pockets before they could betray him. “If it’s lunch,” he said, forcing a note of casualness that didn’t hold, “let me buy it. Tea. Whatever you want. Five minutes won’t kill you.”
The faintest quirk touched Severus’s mouth, humorless. “Five minutes with you is precisely what I cannot afford.” His eyes, dark and sharp as obsidian, stayed on Harry just long enough for the words to sink in. “My shelves will not stock themselves, nor will my brewing wait for your persistence. Take your tea elsewhere.”
Then he was gone, back through the curtain, the lingering edge of steam curling in after him.
The refusal landed cleanly, not cruel but final, the kind of dismissal that closed a door without needing to slam it. He held Harry’s gaze only a moment longer before he vanished through the back curtain, ledger tucked under his arm as though that were the end of the matter.
Harry really did not want to use his former Head of House like this. Minerva had already done more for him than he could ever repay, and the thought of pulling her into his half-formed pursuit of Severus sat wrong in his chest. But everything else had failed. Letters, visits, slammed doors. And yet, for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to give in. Not when the thought of Severus going on as if Harry didn’t matter made something in him twist and resist.
He learned by accident that Severus could not refuse Minerva. It was one of those things that slipped out in passing, during a shared tea at Hogwarts when Harry had visited her office with a bottle of decent firewhisky and a promise to drink it only if she joined him. She had sighed, reminiscing about staff dinners, and mentioned that the only way Severus ever left his cottage was under her hand, because he would rather suffer an evening’s company than her disapproval.
So, of course, he planned a dinner. A harmless thing, or so he told himself. A chance to see familiar faces, to thank those who had pulled him through the war and the years after. If Severus happened to be there, all the better.
He brought the invitation to Minerva in person, parchment folded neatly in his hand. She was bent over papers when he arrived, but she set her quill aside the instant he entered.
“I’m having a small dinner,” Harry said, keeping his tone light. “Just a few of us, a chance to catch up properly. I’d love it if you’d come.”
Her stern expression eased a little. “That’s thoughtful of you, Potter. You’ve been back for months, and I daresay a gathering will do everyone some good.”
Harry smiled, relieved. “That’s what I thought. I’ll send along the rest of the invitations soon. Oh- speaking of which, I should probably drop Severus’s by as well.” He made it sound like an afterthought, like he had only just remembered.
Minerva hummed, already reaching for the invitation he had given her. “If you like, I can see that he gets it. I’ll be meeting him tomorrow. He’ll grumble, of course, but he won’t refuse me.”
Harry blinked as though surprised, then let his shoulders relax. “Would you? That’d save me a trip.”
“Think nothing of it,” she said briskly. “Thursday evening, then?”
“Thursday,” Harry confirmed.
She returned to her papers, and Harry left her office with his pulse beating faster than it should.
The first dinner passed without comment, and perhaps it should have ended there. Harry told himself it had gone well enough: people talked, glasses filled and emptied, laughter warmed the corners of the old house. Severus sat, silent and severe as ever, but he arrived and stayed till the end, and Harry clung to that small victory.
So he tried again. And again. He told himself it was because he liked cooking. After all, Grimmauld Place felt less like a tomb when the hearth was lit and the rooms were full. But the truth revealed itself quietly, in the choices he made.
At first, the menus sprawled: roasts and puddings, elaborate spreads meant to fill a long table. But Harry noticed, because he was watching, the things Severus reached for most. The bread with its dark crust, the soup with the heavy stock. He saw how quickly the mushrooms disappeared from Severus’s plate, how his teacup never stayed full for long. So the next time, He had already known, if he was honest. Scraps, gathered from old remarks, like things Pomona had let slip, details overheard at the staff table years ago. During his years abroad, he had tucked these fragments away, one after another, until he could use them now
The weeks fell into rhythm. Every two, another gathering. Every time, the table tilted more toward Severus. Dishes Harry thought he might like, wines chosen dry and sharp rather than sweet. He filled the room with a warmth that had less to do with fire and more to do with the stubborn hope that, if Severus felt at ease, he might stay.
No one else seemed to notice. Minerva praised his cooking, Pomona teased him about finding a domestic streak, and Flitwick marveled at the seasoning. Harry brushed them off with a shrug, saying he’d picked up tricks during his travels, that cooking gave him something to do with his hands. He never said what the meals truly were: offerings, one after another, set before a man who gave no sign he saw them for what they were.
Severus came each time because Minerva insisted. He sat where he could leave quickly, offered a word or two when pressed, and was gone before the candles burned low. Harry told himself it was enough. For a while, it almost was.
But when even the careful meals failed to draw more than silence, Harry scaled the gatherings back again.
He tried smaller suppers, stripped of spectacle. Bread he baked himself, edges uneven and crust dark where he had left it too long. No music. Only the soft hiss of the fire and the clink of cutlery. A shorter list of guests, chosen so the table felt less like an audience and more like breathing room.
In summer, he strung fairy lights close to the beams so their glow stayed low, intimate, not a stage display. In autumn, he made stew that filled the house with thyme and smoke, thick enough that the kitchen grew warm and coats were shed as soon as people came through the door.
He told himself these touches were for everyone, but the truth was there in how his eyes flicked first to Severus’s plate, waiting for the smallest sign of approval.
One evening, Harry caught him at the threshold, Severus’s hand already on the latch.
“You don’t have to keep leaving so early,” Harry said quickly, before he could swallow the words.
Severus turned, his expression carved into edges. “I am not leaving early. I am escaping tedium.”
Harry’s chest went tight. “Or you could stay. Just once.”
“And to what end?” Severus’s voice was cool, surgical. “To sit through another hour of chatter I have no desire to hear? To humour you while you play host?”
Harry flinched but pushed on. “No. To talk. To actually—” He faltered, then forced it out. “With me.”
The faintest curl touched Severus’s mouth, humorless. “If it is conversation you want, find someone eager for your company. You have no shortage.”
The words landed heavier than any insult. Harry drew in a sharp breath through his teeth, the fight draining from his shoulders. He stepped aside without another word. The loose board in the hall creaked under Severus’s weight, and the door shut behind him with a click that rang louder than any slam.
It was an established fact that Harry Potter did not know how to give up.
Snow made the street outside pretty and shut up. Inside, the house was warm, full of lamplight and smells of roast goose and thyme, clove-stuck oranges steaming in mulled wine. Harry had trimmed a tree in the corner himself, the lights slightly uneven but glowing. Ribbons curled along the mantel. Parcels waited under the boughs, each with a tag in his hurried scrawl.
Only eight people tonight, professors mostly, and the handful Harry could still convince to come. He had laid out his best dishes, roasted chestnuts alongside sugared pears, little things he’d spent hours perfecting because the thought of Severus finding fault made him care more. Harry had even tucked aside a gift wrapped in plain brown paper. His heart beat a little faster.
He told himself it wasn’t obvious. It probably was.
The dinner stretched on, warm voices threading across the table, silver catching the firelight. Harry carved, poured, and passed dishes down the line. Severus sat near the end, coat hung behind him, posture set like a barrier. He ate without comment, dark gaze steady on his plate, until he put down his spoon after three mouthfuls of pudding and pushed his chair back. Harry hovered without meaning to, tending without notice.
Then, the table was cleared of the main course, and the dishes were stacked in the kitchen by charm. The talk shifted to something lighter. Harry had looked forward to this part, the part where everyone lingered together, where laughter softened the edges. Where maybe Severus would stay.
But Severus pushed back his chair after only a few spoonfuls of pudding.
“Don’t go yet,” Harry said quickly. His voice pitched too light, too casual, as if he could disguise the urgency with cheer. “We’re about to do the gift exchange. I - ” He hesitated, hating the heat rising in his face.
Severus regarded him in silence for a beat too long. Then, with a faint incline of his head, he answered simply, “I have already given my gift. I must be getting home.” He turned from the room with the clean precision of a man leaving a lecture hall, nodding once to the others as he passed.
Harry froze. For a minute, he stood as though rooted, the sound of laughter and clinking glasses muffled behind him. Then he swore under his breath, summoned the parcel from under the tree, and strode out after him.
Severus was only a few steps down the street, his cloak dark against the pale snow.
Harry caught up to him at the edge of the lane, breath quick in the cold air. He reached into his coat and pulled out the small, neatly wrapped parcel before his nerve could break.
“Severus—” His hand shot out, pressing it against the man’s palm. “I might’ve…got you something. Probably shouldn’t have. But—it’s Christmas, and—”
Severus stopped short, looking down at the weight in his hand as though it had burned him. His fingers closed around the paper before he could stop them, and the faint crease of care in the wrapping told him it had not been hastily chosen. That was what made his voice come sharper, cutting.
“What game is this, Potter?”
Harry blinked, thrown. “What?”
“Is it charity?” Severus demanded, the parcel still in his grip like evidence. “ Penance? A chance to flaunt your wealth and parade me as your prize?”
Harry stared at the gift in Severus’s hand as if it had betrayed him, throat burning.
“You think I don’t see it?” Severus pressed, his tone dark as the sky overhead. “You tailor every detail to me. The food, the wine, the Music. Yet you fill the house with people I do not care to see and keep me at the edges while you play benefactor. What do you gain from this?”
Harry’s throat closed, but he forced out, “I just wanted you to stay. Maybe talk.”
“Talk?” Severus’s mouth curled into something colder than a sneer. “If you wanted to talk, you might have sought me in private. But no. Every kindness you offer comes with an audience, a chorus to cheer the savior’s generosity.”
The words landed like a blow. Harry stared at him, chest tight, breath caught halfway. “You bastard.”
The night seemed to contract, the warmth from the house behind him gone as if it had never existed. His voice shook with fury and shame. “Sought you in private? I wrote to you. Dozens of letters. I came to your shop. I came to your bloody door. And you shut me out, every time. You have stopped me at every point despite letting me try and- ” He gestured back toward the light spilling from Grimmauld Place, his voice breaking. “This was the only way left. A table you might sit at. A door you might not slam.”
His words broke, his eyes hot and stinging. He dragged a sleeve across his face, but the tears kept coming. “What the hell do you want to hear, Severus? That I was desperate for your attention? All I wanted was a chance to get close? That I-”
The last words caught, strangled, too dangerous to let out. Love you. They stuck in his throat like a blade.
He swallowed hard, voice raw. “What else could I have done…. Fine. Leave then. That’s all you’re good at anyway.”
He turned, shoulders rigid despite the wet on his face, and walked back to the house without breaking stride. The door slammed shut, muffled by snow but sharp all the same.
Severus looked down at the parcel still clutched in his hand, its plain brown paper softening under his grip. He did not drop it. He did not open it. He only walked on, the weight of it burning colder than the snow.