Snape sighed and dared to tighten his arms just a little, a tiny squeeze.
"That was the memory I lingered in, the most often," he rumbled quietly. "You were afraid of heights. That's what gave me the entire idea, you know," he added. "It was so wrong that you should feel fear of something so beautiful. But it wasn't the beauty of the sky or the mountains or flight that brought me back to that memory. It was something more sublime than all of those together.
It was the fact that, although you had even more than the normal fear of heights, you trusted me enough to take that step, out of the window and into empty air, for no other reason than because I begged you to do that, to trust me, to take that leap of faith."
His chest heaved in a slow sigh, and he husked past the tightening of his throat, "That was when I finally learned how it feels: not just to be in love, but to be loved in return."