Wow, this was really lovely to wake up to this morning. :) I hope it's done all that; my main intent here was to try and make a plausible case for a sea-change in their perceptions of each other, while sticking as close to canon as possible. And I can't help but think that if JKR had been paying attention to her own story, she would have known that there's no way that a) Severus would have left the one really important message he had until the last possible minute, and then only imparted it because of the coincidence of Harry not being able to leave well enough alone; b) Severus HAD to know that Harry was there, because he had a history with the cloak and he was freaking looking around in the air!! Someone had to stay true to everything that had happened up to that point, you know? ;)