As you had guessed, our last piece of fic and art did go up and technically we ended the fest. However, because I failed to gracefully close the fest before the end of the academic year caught me up and spirited me away, I shall contribute this one last fic as penance for my sins... and then formally close the fest. :)


Title: Stop Me If You Think That You've Heard This One Before
Author: dueltastic
Pairing: Snape/McGonagall
Rating: R
Prompt: #5 Severus and Minerva both survive the war and think they have another chance together, but the war leaves scars that neither expected.
Content Information/Warnings: None
Length: 6000 words

Stop Me If You Think That You've Heard This One Before

"Nothing's changed, I still love you, oh, I still love you
Only slightly, only slightly less than I used to, my love."
--The Smiths, Stop Me If You Think That You've Heard This One Before

I.

Severus goes to the shops in Spinners End rather than taking the bus to the Tesco in the city center. He walks to the dingy little corner shop two streets over, where he ignores the bloke behind the counter talking on his mobile to someone named Gazza who may or may not have pulled the ugliest bird in all of Manchester the previous night. Personally, Severus doubts that she was, and feels a stab of envy for the unknown Gazza, even if shagging drunk divorcees in miniskirts doesn't appeal to him. He gets a box of PG Tips, more bog roll, a copy of the Guardian, and a Dairy Milk bar, which is shite and he knows it, but old habits die hard and the whole world feels like there are Dementors lurking now. He hesitates, unimpressed by shelves of ready meals and children's snacks, and finally gets a loaf of wholemeal bread, some milk, and a packet of cheddar cheese. Severus fingers the pound coins in his pocket before dropping them on the counter. They're satisfyingly heavy between his fingers and glitter like pale gold, the way real money ought to be.

He mostly reads the Guardian now, rather than the Prophet. It's not to help him fit in; these days, people who read the Guardian stand out in Spinners End almost as much as accents like Snape's. The main thing to recommend it, aside from a decidedly civilised tone, is that he never sees his own name or picture in the pages. There's a world out there that keeps ticking on without Severus Snape. He ignores the politics section. He makes a cup of strong, milky tea with two sugars and a cheese sandwich, and he reads the arts pages and the book reviews. This is the new normal.


II.

Minerva goes to bed every night with her joints aching from boots clicking on stone floors all day, and takes nasty potions so she doesn't wake up stiff every morning. There had been a few days like this in the past, but during the last year, the infamous year of Headmaster Snape's reign, it became more nights than not, and now, with the rebuilding and now the return of the students, it's every day. She refuses to acknowledge it; to rest or coddle herself is a self-indulgence she doesn't want, and it would take time she doesn't have.

Instead, she drinks enough cups of tea to float a battleship during the day, which makes her piss like a racehorse, and she has fires in the Headmistress's office that are too warm for the early autumn nights. She sits in front of them after dinner with Filius and Pomona and Horace, and whoever else wishes to drop by, and she holds court while going through her correspondence, resting in the soft cushions of the sofa with a gentle heat radiating out to warm her joints through. It makes her feel weak and terribly vulnerable, this sole concession to her body. She waves her wand to cast a warming charm on the sofa, and her lips thin in frustration.

"It'll pass," says Filius quietly. "It's not age." He's right, at least about the second part. It's Cruciatus, and month upon month of fatigue and strain, and age.


III.

It's Severus who cracks first, even though he knows it's a mistake. He's tired of soup for tea and takeout chips and the telly for company. He hates University Challenge, and he can't stand Richard and Judy. He's tired of pubs. They're loud and stupid, and he mutters "watch it" and "fuck off" while nursing his pint, rather than experiencing a rich and varied social life eased by the relaxing effect of alcohol. He likes Graham Norton, but you can hardly build an intellectual life around Graham Norton. Nor can a man of intelligence get by on, "That's five pounds twenty, mate," or "The usual, love?" He puts on his wool robes, which feel enveloping and heavy after weeks of nothing but Levis and cotton V-necks, and apparates outside the gates of Hogwarts.

It's instinct, years of apparating to this same place, and it was a bloody stupid one. He can't wander the streets of Hogsmeade and blend in, another teacher doing his shopping. Hogwarts would be worse, not just stares and whispers, but memories. What did he imagine, he was going to drop in for a casual visit with old friends, or pay his fond respects at Dumbledore's grave? He'd instantly apparate away, but Hagrid's spotted him from just inside the gates, where he's trimming the hedge.

"Professor?" says Hagrid in disbelief, squinting at this black shape standing outside the gates, a familiar silhouette dredged up out of his happy memories and nightmares alike. He puts down the shears.

"Yes," says Snape, then he corrects himself. "No."

"Snape, then," says Hagrid. "You'd best come in." He opens the gates, not with magic but with massive hands pulling the heavy iron till it swings and creaks on its hinges, and he wipes the reside of rust on his fur-lined waistcoat. "D'you need a stiff drink before I take you up?" Hagrid knows a fair bit about caring for dumb beasts and wounded animals, and he knows the look.

"I've had one," says Snape, absently.

"Then off we go," says Hagrid. "Side entrance. You know the one." He waits for Snape to move ahead of him. He's not precisely either protecting Snape from folk or folk from Snape, but best keep things well in hand anyway, he thinks.

In front of them, the castle rises out of the hillside like a grey stone fortress that grew up out of the soil and stretched upwards towards the sky, throbbing with a slow pulse. Severus feels for the first time what it's like to belong on the outside of those walls.


IV.

Minerva comes back from the toilet (Merlin help her, she'd had to stop for five cups of tea already this afternoon, and it's not yet time for supper) to find Severus Snape in her office, with Hagrid looming over him, hat politely in hand. Severus looks ghastly. He looks uncomfortable and small, and terribly bitter. She feels a twinge of pity; once, for a few years, he'd been lovely to look at. Not pretty, but tall and slender and assured, moving with an aristocratic grace, a sharp eye, and the honed physical strength that comes from hard work. Now he looks like a crabby village vicar, proper and correct and suitably austere, but frustrated and worn and small. It's the pity that keeps her from sending him away immediately. She's tried her best not to think more on Severus Snape than duty required - she's done her duty to him, no question; he's a free man, isn't he? - but she hates to look back on those days and think of her lovely lad come to this, wasting away, made small. And he had been her lad, then. It hadn't been much, and it didn't last, but he'd been hers. That was much harder to toss out of her office than a man who'd merely been Dumbledore's, or the Order's, or Hogwarts'.

"Thank you, Hagrid," says Minerva. "You may go."

Hagrid doesn't move. "If yer sure," he says carefully. "I don't mind."

"If it helps," says Snape in a waspish tone, "I shall give you my word that I shan't murder the Headmistress in your absence." He realizes almost belatedly what he's said, and brazens through it. "It would hardly speak well for my rehabilitation if I picked up the habit again."

Minerva thinks that she probably hates Snape. It's a feeling she hasn't explored in detail, but every thought of Albus's death causes something hot and black to knot up in her chest. But Severus was always so splendidly alive. Even the anger and pique and stubbornness were like sparks that flared somewhere inside him. She's strangely reassured to see he's still got them, that it hasn't been fully beaten out of him. Even the survivors usually seem like the walking dead to her these days.


V.

When they're alone, she says, "What do you need, Severus?" This will be his pension, or his pardon, or Ministry business, or Order business, or perhaps, if the universe is feeling whimsical today, some outstanding complaint about Potions instruction or Slytherin House. It's bound to be something of the sort, if it's dragged him out here in person. She doesn't look at him as she takes her seat behind her desk, and wishes he'd hurry this along.

Snape doesn't have an answer for her, and he frowns in embarrassment.

She pauses and looks up at him at last. "Why are you here, Severus?" she says.

"I wanted to see you," he mutters.

The idea of Severus Snape making a purely social call on anyone bemuses her, until she wonders how well she ever knew Severus. Is this who he was under all his façades, the sort of man who drops in for a chat when he's feeling lonely, or feels nostalgia for former lovers? Or is it a symptom of the sort of life he's living now? She's not certain which one of them feels more awkward at this moment, but if there's anyone in a position to be more disconcerted by these questions than she, it must surely be Severus. He may not know the answers any better than she.

"Good," she says with a certainty she doesn't feel, nodding towards a chair. "Sit. We'll have dinner."


VI.

Dinner isn't soup, or canned baked beans from the corner shop, or toast and strong tea; rather, it's a roast, parsnips, elderberry sauce, and a particularly good bottle of Merlot. After his self-imposed asceticism, Severus scarcely knows what to do with an elf-cooked meal. It comes back to him as he eats, but it doesn't feel quite like his life, even after some thirty years of being fed from the kitchens of Hogwarts.

Minerva, he realizes, is being careful. She's speaking about recent developments in theoretical magic, not just transfiguration, but charms, potions, defence... she's not mentioning Hogwarts, or politics, or anything of substance. He's glad, as it doesn't require him to feel anything, and he can concentrate on the triple novelty of good food, company, and conversation. He wonders if his younger self understood his good fortune, and is instantly ashamed of such a trite and frankly Huffepuffian sentiment.

It's a good meal. Better than he hoped for from her, a subject about which he thinks as little as possible, so as not to ruin things. He will enjoy this much more if he thinks neither about what has preceded it nor what will come after. He knows it's coming to an end when she offers him a firewhiskey, and he accepts, not so much out of desire for a drink, as for the excuse to take a few more moments before going... home. For a blessed moment, he forgot it was home.


VII.

She sits back down, silently cursing the shooting pain through her knees and the left leg that refused to take her weight. "You know well enough where it's kept, Severus," she says with a nod towards the sideboard. "You can help yourself." He is sitting forward in his chair, watching her all too attentively, dark hair, dark eyes, too cunning. She can only think that he's a dangerous man in front of whom to display weakness.

He pulls a tin out of his pocket and puts it on the table between them, a battered old pumpkin pastilles tin from Honeydukes, dented and covered in scratched cream-and-brown-and-orange paint. She raises an eyebrow and flips it open. It's been refilled with a thick paste the colour of beeswax, scored with finger-shaped ruts. She closes it and pushes it back towards him.

"I suppose you think you're very clever," she says bitterly. She feels old, and tired.

His hand covers the tin, but he doesn't take it off the table. "Do you imagine," he says with a scowl, "that you're the only person who needs it? I was trying to be nice."

"Merlin help us all," mutters Minerva, but she smiles despite herself.


VIII.

Her gown is made of black-dyed linen, densely-woven and hard-wearing, covered in anti-crease charms and full-skirted. The hem is drawn up over her knees, and he sits in front of her with his legs pulled under him. Severus spreads the salve on her ankles, then her knees, rubbing it into her skin with gentle fingers, massaging her sore joints. The smell is pungent, herbal at first and spicy as the green scent fades, and her skin tingles and warms as the salve absorbs in. Minerva is taken aback at how gentle his fingers are. The nights when he was this gentle with her are long past, and even then, she thinks, he never managed something so close to concern.

When he's rubbed the salve into her knees, he pushes her robes up to her waist and tentatively kisses the inside of her thigh, and however strange this side of Severus is, it doesn't seem unexpected somehow. She looks down at his dark head as he kisses up the pale white skin, and sighs. "I'd be a crap shag in this state, Severus," she says, with a touch more regret than she expected. She brushes her fingers over his limp black hair, which is flecked with the first strands of grey, and expects him to stop, but he doesn't.

"You could jerk me off later," he says, the warm exhalations of his breath against her skin. "Or not." He's not sure it even matters. He wants it, no question; he wants sweaty, sticky exchanges of fluids of every description. But he's not going to stop without it. He hasn't touched another human being in any fashion for longer than he can remember, let alone like this. Let alone someone worth it.

"Not in the chair," she grinds out, finally, squirming.

If Severus were younger, he'd pick her up, impatient, and carry her to her bed. Minerva has never weighed much, and he's certain she lost at least a stone over the past year. But he's not younger; he's a middle-aged man who's had his throat violently ripped out and then reconstructed, nearly dying several times in the process. And the year before took its toll on him, as well. The days when he might sweep anyone off their feet are well and truly over.


IX.

He's not used to sunlight first thing in the morning. Civilized people, when they must live above ground like Muggles, or, god forbid, in towers like pigeons or church bells, put curtains on their windows, while mad Scots heathens do not, a detail that he'd forgotten. It hurts his eyes and makes him cranky; Severus squints, and gets up to go to the loo. It would have been less awkward to pull some old slapper down the pub - he could have just grabbed his clothes and apparated back to his gaff, first thing - but at least he knows where the toilet is.

Severus stretches out his spine, cracking his vertebrae slowly, as he takes a leisurely piss. When he turns on the taps to wash his hands, he glances up at the mirror above the wide white basin. He looks wrecked. The bags under his eyes make him wince; his skin is blotchy and grey, his hair greasy and matted.

"Bloody hell, it's you again," says the mirror.

"Fuck off," mutters Snape. He shakes the water off his hands and dries them on a hand-towel monogrammed "MM".

"You're stark bollock naked," says the mirror, who apparently takes a rather disapproving view of such things, or perhaps simply disapproves of his naked body in particular.

"Well spotted," says Snape. He performs a shaving charm, which removes some of the unhealthy-looking bruise-like shadow from the lower half of his face, and drags a wet comb through his hair till it at least lies straight.

While he fills a glass and swishes water through his mouth and spits, the mirror speaks again. "I suppose it's an improvement," it says. "But you still look like death warmed over."

"Haven't you heard?" says Snape. "That's exactly what I am."

But when he goes back to bed, Minerva's there, lying in the sun from the window, black hair across the pillowcase, with the diamond pattern of the panes falling across the sheets. She looks deeply shagged out, dead to the world, but she has the faintest hint of a feline smile on her lips as she sleeps in the morning sun. Severus isn't used to things being clean and lovely and good, or the strange light feeling in his chest. It wasn't even a particularly good shag, she'd been right about that; she was stiff and pained, not nearly as nimble or adventurous as he remembered. But they'd managed, and that alone was something. He'd taken care of her, and she'd taken care of him. That was something. Sex doesn't mean much when it's easy. Snape gets back into bed. He's glad, he thinks as he closes his eyes, that something between them had felt good again, after everything else that'd happened between them. There's so little in his world that can be put right, that he's always surprised when he finds things that can at least be made better.


X.

It's half-nine when she wakes, perhaps nearer to ten. Minerva can't remember the last time she slept in on Sunday morning. She can't think what's got into her, till the dawning awareness of a faint ache brings back memories of precisely what did get into her last night. She closes her eyes and curls up, pausing when she realizes that her knees, while tender, are not protesting the motion. Well-being is a quality that's been in short supply for some time, and yet here she is, rested and relaxed and rather less achy than usual, so she chooses not to think too hard about the fact that Severus Nominally-On-Our-Side-The-Bastard-Now-Let-Us-Speak-No-More-About-Him Snape was in bed beside her. And, as it happens, he still is, sitting up against his pillow and reading a book from her shelves. It's surreal. The mere sight of him the year before made her sick with adrenalin and worry, and now he's naked in her bed, reading like an overgrown schoolboy. It's surreal.

"Breakfast?" she says briskly, after reaching across her bedside table and putting on her glasses. It's partly politeness that makes her offer post-coital toast and eggs to Severus With-Friends-Like-These-Dot-Dot-Dot Snape - she was not, after all, brought up to be impolite, and there are social niceties for the men who come to one's bed, however poorly chosen - but it's also partly the memory of him on the floor massaging his own salve into her ankles with something so close to concern on his face and such very gentle hands.

"No," says Severus. "Just waiting for you to get up." He slides a bookmark into her book. "I'll be off."

"You may as well stay," says Minerva. She Accio's her dressing gown from the wardrobe. "I'll be eating anyway."

Severus shakes his head and gets dressed silently. She goes to the loo, and he's dressed when she comes out again. He's put on the Muggle clothes he had underneath, and shrunken the heavy woollen robes. Minerva's not certain she's ever seen him in Muggle clothing before, not even as a student. He doesn't look like a man she knows well at all.

"Right," he says. "See you."

Minerva raises an eyebrow. "Yes, that seems likely," she says tartly.

Severus snorts. "You ought to... to..." he says. His hair swings into his face when he looks down, a black curtain flecked with grey, uneven and straggly.

"To what?" says Minerva.

"Take better care of yourself," he says, each word dripping with something between irony and disdain.

"That's good, coming from you," says Minerva. She tightens the tartan sash around her waist. "Let myself go to seed, have I?"

He doesn't rise to the bait, something not unheard of but certainly rare in the history of Severus Snape. "I know better than most," says Severus. "This place. You. We're none of us well, are we."

Minerva showers after he's gone, filling the bathroom with steam and the scent of soap. A house elf brings her a pot of tea and a rack of toast, and she sits down with a book and a cup of tea till noon, an unprecedented self-indulgence after Albus's death. She wants to delay being the Headmistress for another hour or so, and enjoy this rare morning when things seem right and she feels well. Happy, even. The thing is, Severus was right. He does know better than most, and he does know a thing or two about her. That's always been the irritating thing about Severus Annoying-Prat-At-The-Best-Of-Times Snape.


XI.

When he leaves, Snape goes out for a full English at the local caff, a rare treat, over which he lingers till he's pushing around bits of egg yolk and fried tomato with the last piece of toast. He stops for the Sunday paper and a jar of Branston pickle for tonight's cheese sandwich on his way home. He thinks a lot that afternoon, though he tries not to, about how things might have been different.

He doesn't see McGonagall for nearly a fortnight; two weeks later on a Friday night she turns up on his doorstep, no hat, a warm coat, a Muggle dress he hasn't seen since a meeting at Grimmauld Place years ago, and those rectangular glasses that make her look like she had an affair with a pop star in the '60s.

"Invite me in, then," she says, tipping her head towards the hallway. He purses his lips and steps away from the door to let her in.

Minerva looks around his sitting room, sees his mug of tea, the half-finished crossword in today's paper sitting atop a pile of books, the plate with the morning's toast leftovers sitting under the styrofoam container of takeaway fish and chips, the ancient telly that's quietly blaring the news into the room.

"Well?" says Severus. "What do you want?"

"Ah," says Minerva, and she stops and fiddles nervously with her wand.

"I see," says Severus, and he sits back down in his arm chair, picking up his crossword. "Well, let me know when you remember." He ignores her, though from the corner of his eye he sees her turn her head to look at his kitchen. Let her, he thinks, it's dingy, but it's clean. His housekeeping might not be much, but he's immaculate with knives, cutting surfaces, and pots. That's his stock in trade, even now that he's not practising a trade. He drains his mug of tea, and takes it to the kitchen to wash out. Snape calls over his shoulder, "I suppose you'd like a cup of tea, or some equally absurd gesture of hospitality?"

"Don't bother," says Minerva. "I didn't come for your tea or your hospitality."

Severus turns to look her up and down, wondering what she did come for. She's standing as though she doesn't know herself. "I could be good for you," he blurts out, and turns away. He didn't mean to say it out loud, but he's been thinking it for nearly two weeks now. Said here, in Spinner's End, it sounds ridiculous even to him.

"Aye, I dare say," says Minerva. "That's why I'm here. I dare say I could be good for you too, by the looks of things."

"We could have been good together once," he says, scarcely hearing her. He remembers days of Quidditch and teasing and books, things he'd never imagined he'd have.

"Severus, stop blethering before I change my mind," says Minerva.


XII.

The stone vault of the Hogwarts entrance soars above. In the damp winter weather, the house elves have difficulty keeping up with the mud tracked in through the main doors on student shoes as quickly as it reappears, and two of the cleaning elves are risking being spotted by students in order to get in a little more scrubbing. Minerva stands in the entrance hall and inspects the hourglasses, glaring over the top of her glasses at piles of Gryffindor rubies and Slytherin emeralds. "Hmm," she says.

From the archway, Severus smiles, thin-lipped, and smooths out the front of his frock coat. "Is there a problem, Minerva?" he says. He has missed this. Even this, he doesn't take for granted.

"You've cheated," she says.

"Surely not," says Severus. He moves to her side and stands just slightly too close for propriety. "I couldn't award or deduct points if I wanted to."

"Aye, you've wanted to, no doubt," says Minerva. "But I still say you've cheated, and I'll find out how."

He opens his mouth to answer her, but the doors open and a group of fourth and fifth years comes in from outside. Their voices hush as they notice him there, and he closes his mouth again, staring back as heads turn to stare at him.

"Oh, goodness, it must be nearly six," says Minerva. More students pour down the staircases and head towards the Great Hall.

"My dear chap!" calls Horace, resting at the top of the stairs that lead down to the dungeons. "How good to see you. I've just awarded the points, as you can see. I cannot thank you enough for taking on that tutoring before exams this term. Between you and me, they were not the most promising of my students."

"Anything to help my former house," says Severus blandly, while Minerva raises an eyebrow.

"How very generous," says Minerva, making it clear that she thinks it was anything but. "Ten points from Gryffindor," she calls out. "A modicum of decorum, please, Mr. Chilcott, Mr. Khan."

Filius and Aurora come down the stairs together, deep in conversation. Filius looks up. "Severus!" he cries warmly. Aurora glances up at Snape, then away, then strides off to the Great Hall without another glance. Severus looks after her for a moment. "Severus, are you joining us for supper?" says Filius.

"You know very well that I am not," says Severus. Because he never does. Even if he had any desire to sit on display at high table, he's - blessedly - no longer a teacher. "I trust, Minerva," he says, "that you've delegated your evening duties to the lesser minions?"

"I'm not sure that's quite the approved fashion of referring to the junior teachers, Severus," says Minerva. "But have no fear. Barring bizarre or unfortunate accident, tonight my time is all yours."

Snape nods and heads upstairs, against the tide of students coming down for dinner.

The elves bring Severus's supper to the Headmistress's rooms; radish soup, roast chicken, mash, gooseberry trifle. He opens his book on the flora of the Northern steppes to chapter 6, places it on the reading stand, and charms the pages to turn on command as he eats. When he moves on to the trifle, he takes the dish to Minerva's desk to browse through her correspondence. The bulk are from the school's suppliers, a handful from parents and the Ministry. He skips the Prophet. Thanks to the Prophet, everyone can read at length about his sex life between the lines of stories about his unexpected return to Hogwarts, in a variety of euphemisms that dance around the fact that he left his Muggle self-exile to fuck Minerva McGonagall. He occasionally feels a bit of nostalgia for the Guardian and a cheese sandwich.

It's dream-like, in a way, being back here in a life that both is and is not one he recognizes as his own; he feels like himself, or at least like the man whose life he lived for fifteen years, but he never conceived of anything past the war and everything that's the same feels as strange as everything that's different. Most startlingly, he and Minerva still want each other, despite their better judgment. He thinks he even loves her in his way; he has tried to be as good for her as he'd said he could be, though Merlin knows what a challenge that is. He supposes he can't be doing too badly if she enjoys his company each morning and is glad to have him back in her bed each night. Surprisingly, and no one is more surprised than he, they're happy.

Which is why Severus pretends he doesn't notice her flinch and turn away when she returns from dinner and sees him sitting behind the Head's desk.


XIII.

April is a difficult month. Minerva imagines that, like herself, Severus is all too aware of the days as they count down to the second of May. If they made a mistake, it was in doing this too soon, before a full year was out.

It's the middle of the night when Minerva feels Severus jerk awake and get out of bed. It's not an immediate concern; he doesn't always sleep well. Half-awake, she listens to the creak of the wardrobe door and the slide of fabric as he pulls on a dressing gown, the footsteps leaving the bedroom, the clink of the firewhiskey decanter and the glass tumbler. When she hears the glass clink again and the second pour almost immediately after the first, she curses and reluctantly pulls herself out of bed, sitting on the edge for a moment to wake up.

Severus sits on the sofa, hunched over, holding the glass in both hands. The fire has burned down to glowing coals, casting little light out into the room, but the moonlight is bright tonight. Minerva stands in the doorway, and one of Dumbledore's ridiculous clocks strikes two as the hand with the painted waxing moon slides into place.

"Come back to bed, Severus," says Minerva.

"We were such idiots," says Severus into his glass, "to think this would work."

"Nonsense," says Minerva. She comes up behind the sofa and rubs his shoulders lightly. "We knew it wouldn't be easy." In truth, she isn't certain that's a contradiction of his point.

"I'm sleeping with a woman who tried to kill me," says Snape bitterly. "Am I rehabilitated back into society now, Minerva? Is that how that's meant to work?"

There's little she can say to that, because it's true. She bends down and wraps her arms around his shoulders. "One does seemingly nonsensical things in nonsensical circumstances," she says gently. "It's probably asking a bit much for any given action to do with the war or its aftermath to make sense." This is what she tells herself when she can no longer make heads nor tails of what she or anyone else has done, and she finds that it helps.

"You were glorious," Severus says, a note of despair creeping into his voice. "I can't get the sight of you out of my mind. You were glorious."

Minerva sits beside him on the sofa and takes the tumbler from his hands, swallowing a large gulp before giving it back to him. "I was," she says. "I was also a pathetic and terrified mess at times, but on the whole, I was rather good. And the best of it, you didn't even see. I dare say you were rather fine that night, too, for a sour old git with an unfortunate magical brand. I know what I'm sleeping with, and you know what you're sleeping with, and it's not all flattering or sensible in either case."

Snape drains the rest of his glass and grimaces. "Just tell me we're not doing it because we're afraid we can't do any better," he says, rubbing at his eyes. "Because we're too afraid of being alone."

For one terrible moment, Minerva doesn't know what to tell him. The importance of the question compels some perverse honesty. "Aren't we?" she says finally. "Some days, I'd rather imagine we are. Who wouldn't be, in our positions? But some days we're doing it for splendid reasons, Severus, we really are." She reaches out to touch him; his cheek is rough with stubble and scored with deep frown lines around his mouth. "We're all right. Under the circumstances, we're doing quite well." He leans his head on her shoulder, and she strokes his hair comfortingly.

"I love you," he says desperately, muffled against her shoulder, "Even after all of it." Minerva doesn't think she's ever heard anything more heart-breaking, because she hears nothing so much as the lost little Snape boy, making extravagant promises he can't keep in the vain hope of finding somewhere he belongs.

She kisses his hair. "Aye, you do," says Minerva reassuringly, though she has no idea if he does or not. "And that's no small thing. So let's have no more talk of what idiots we are. It's all right. We're both all right," she repeats, ignoring the tears and snot dampening the shoulder of her night-dress. "It's nothing time won't fix, Severus. Trust me on that." She hopes it's true, for her sake as much as for his.


In the morning, Minerva dresses in a green frock and sits to pull a pair of soft black dragonhide boots up over her calves, glancing at Severus asleep in the bed. He mutters something about the godawful glare and rolls over, burying his head in his pillow. In her office, she reviews her schedule for the day, and hears the shower run, followed by Severus moving around. She opens the middle right-hand desk drawer with the infinite extension charm and flips through the file folders to "E" to pull out the eulogies written for last year's memorial service. Colin Creevy grins up at her excitedly and waves, then fixes his red-and-yellow tie, forever fifteen in his last school photograph. She places them in a stack on her desk to come back to first thing after breakfast; it's long past time to start writing the speech for Saturday next's memorial service. At twenty-five minutes past seven, Severus still hasn't emerged, which probably means she'll be lucky if he's civil before lunch. Minerva leaves for breakfast in the Great Hall. This is the new normal.