Snarry-a-Thon21: FIC: Indelible Imprint Title: Indelible Imprint Author:MagicaDraconia16 Other pairings/threesome: Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley Rating: Gen Word count: just under 6000 Content/Warning(s): Amnesia Prompt: No. 5: When Harry and Severus are both struck with amnesia, their friends and family must work backwards from diary entries and photographs to try and figure out how they first got together, in the hope that replicating these events may trigger their memories to return. Summary: An unknown potions accident erases Severus and Harry’s entire memory, meaning they will have to build their relationship all over again. If they want to, of course. But if they do, then at least they already have a solid foundation. A/N: “I know for certain that we never lose the people we love [even to death]. They continue to participate in every act, thought and decision we make. Their love leaves an indelible imprint in our memories.” – Leo Buscaglia, author and motivational speaker
Tomorrow is our fifteenth anniversary. It would be so nice to rub it in with those naysayers who didn’t even think we’d last fifteen minutes. Not that we will do. Or, at least, I won’t. I make no promises about Severus.
He has been calling it “utter nonsense” and pretending that he’s forgotten about it. I was quite happy to inform him that he can’t have it both ways – if he’s forgotten about it, then what exactly is he calling nonsense?
He retreated to his potions lab to sulk over that and has been in there for hours now. I’ll give him a few more minutes and then go and dig him out. Might as well get the celebratory party started early!
He blinked awake to the sight of an unfamiliar ceiling.
Which was rather an odd thought. Had he spent so long staring at ceilings that he could tell when one was unfamiliar?
He spent a few more minutes staring upwards, waiting to see if the ceiling was going to suddenly become recognisable to him, but eventually came to the conclusion that no, it wasn’t. He hoped he might have better luck with the rest of the room and began to lever himself upright.
Ow!
The instant his head left the pillow, it felt as though he was standing inside an extremely large church bell, and someone was ringing it with all their might. The vibrations echoed almost all the way down his spine, and fainter echoes veered off into his arms. Groaning, he lowered his head back down the measly millimetre he’d lifted it.
“Ah, you’re awake,” a man somewhere nearby observed.
Carefully, gingerly, he rolled his head that way. The room, what he could see of it, looked as unfamiliar to him as the ceiling had. Although the fact that the man who’d spoken was sitting in a bed of his own dressed in a hospital gown made it fairly obvious where they were.
“Where am I? What happened?” he asked.
The other man looked almost as lost as he felt. “I… I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’d hoped you could tell me.” His face fell even further. “I don’t even remember my own name,” he murmured, plaintively.
“I’m sure they’ll sort you out in no time,” he said, although he had no idea just who ‘they’ might be. “In the meantime, I’m—” And his vocal cords froze. “I’m—” Why wouldn’t his tongue work? “Oh, god!”
He didn’t know his name, either!
The other man raised an eyebrow at him. “That’s an odd name,” he said. “Did your father choose that, or your mother?”
“I—” There was something, that time. But the flash of emotion, or memory, or whatever it was, was gone too fast for him to grasp it. “No, that’s not my name. But I don’t know what my name is.”
“Ah.” The other man’s face went blank for a moment, as though he had to seriously think about what kind of emotion he should be showing. “I’m sorry,” he offered, finally. “I suppose whatever happened affected both of us, since it rather beggars belief that two people would independently forget their own names and end up in the same place.”
“Actually,” a new, female, voice chimed in, “it happens far more often than you’d think. In this case, however, you’re right.” The woman, who looked to be some kind of lawyer by the way she was dressed, came to stand at the bottom of his bed and smiled kindly at him. “I’m glad to see you’re awake.”
“You know me?” he asked, and almost forgot himself enough to attempt to move again.
The woman’s smile widened. “I should hope so, we’ve been friends for just over twenty years,” she said. “Your name is Harry. Harry Potter-Snape, and that’s your husband, Severus Potter-Snape.” The other man – Severus; what kind of a name was that? – grimaced at this, but the woman didn’t pause for him to interject anything. “My name is Hermione Weasley.”
Hermione? Really? That was almost as bad a name as Severus.
The woman – Hermione – apparently read his thoughts in his expression, and her smile turned rueful. “My parents were very into Ancient Greek literature,” she explained. “Anyway, the two of you suffered some kind of accident in Severus’ lab; we’re not sure what yet, but Ron – that’s my husband, and your best friend, Harry – called in one of his colleagues from the Potions Division, and they’re—”
“I beg your pardon, I must have misheard,” Severus interrupted, finally. “The what division?!”
Hermione’s smile froze, and she blinked at him, then back at Harry. “You – you don’t remember?” she asked, haltingly.
Severus drew himself up and folded his arms over his chest. The air of authority he was going for was rather spoilt by the brightly patterned hospital gown he was wearing. “It appears that I’m not the only one having problems remembering things,” he sneered at Hermione. “We didn’t even know our own names, and you expect us to recall… whatever it is you’re hinting at?”
Hermione looked, for the briefest moment, as though she was going to argue that she hadn’t been hinting at anything, but then she just looked worried. “I need to confer with Healer Smethwick for a moment,” she said, eventually. “I’ll be right back.”
Harry – and he didn’t feel like a Harry; but then again, just what did being a Harry feel like? – watched her go. “I hope this… healer, did she say?… can tell us what happened,” he said. “Or at least something more than just our names.”
“Severus,” said Severus, thoughtfully. “What an old-fashioned name. I wonder if my parents were as into Roman literature as that young woman’s were into Ancient Greece.”
“You know, I can sort of see it?” Harry rolled his head back over to face Severus again. “You do have a very Roman sort of nose.” Severus glared down said nose at him. “What?” Harry protested. “I think it suits you!”
Any further conversation was cut short by a tall, thin man in billowing white robes bursting through the door, followed closely by Hermione who appeared to be protesting something. The man peered closely at them both with eyes that Harry would have sworn were actually lavender. He was also brandishing a stick in one hand.
“What—?” Severus began to demand but cut himself off as the stranger began waving the stick over him.
“You’re right, Mrs Weasley,” the man said as he turned to wave the stick over Harry. “Complete amnesia, not just the usual kind surrounding a physically traumatic event. Dear me, dear me.” He tutted as he held the stick up to examine the end of it. “I don’t know what Mr Snape was doing in that lab, but it doesn’t appear that he took any safety precautions against it.”
“Professor Snape,” said Hermione, insistently, in the tone of voice that even Harry recognised meant she’d said the same thing too many times to count. “And we don’t know that there were any safety precautions he could have taken – because we don’t know what happened yet!”
The man waved this off with the hand not holding the stick. “Yes, yes,” he said. “I hope the Aurors come back with something soon. It will be most interesting to see if the experience can be repeated…”
Hermione scowled at the man. “What for?” she snapped. “Why on earth would you want to induce total amnesia? Oh…” She frowned harder as a thought apparently struck her. “I think it might be best if another Healer took over their care. Or if they were able to be released.”
Now the man turned to brandish the stick at Hermione, looking insulted. “How dare you…?” he spluttered. “How dare you imply…!”
Harry cast a quick glance over at Severus, but he looked just as confused as Harry probably did. He met Harry’s gaze and gave a small shrug.
“I think it would be best if we continued this conversation outside,” Hermione said, taking note of their interest. She stepped back and gestured for the strange man to precede her out of the room. Instead of moving, however, he just rolled his eyes in exasperation and waved his stick in the air.
Oddly, after that, he began a mimed argument.
Hermione looked even more cross but began to mime right back at him.
“What on earth…?” wondered Severus in bemusement. “Just what kind of a place is this?”
Harry had no idea, either. He stared intently at the arguing pair, wishing that he knew how to read lips, but if he’d ever known then he didn’t now. He thought he could make out his name, and Severus’, but that was about it. The rest of it was mostly gibberish, since he didn’t think Hermione was the kind of woman to randomly shout “Hakuna Matata!” in the midst of an argument, even one that she was miming.
The door opened again, and a nurse stuck her head through it. She looked even more annoyed than Hermione when she saw the pair, and within minutes they’d been hustled out of the room, the quack of a doctor still brandishing his stick.
“I’m so sorry you had to witness that,” the nurse said as she shut the door very firmly. She was brisk and efficient as she did a quick examination on both Harry and Severus, although Harry wasn’t sure what she was doing, because there was no equipment either attached to them or nearby, nor was the nurse carrying anything. They didn’t even have charts at the ends of their beds.
“Who was that?” Severus asked.
The nurse sighed. “That was Healer MacCauley,” she said, and lifted Severus’ wrist to take his pulse. Harry scowled at her; she didn’t even have a watch to time his pulse against. It looked a great deal as though she was just holding him for the sake of touching him.
That’s MY husband!
“He’s not even in charge of your case,” the nurse continued, still holding Severus’ wrist in the air. “His speciality is actually in research, so he was very interested when your case came in. But Healer Smethwick – who is in charge – will be by shortly, and then we’ll see when you can be released.”
Finally, finally, she let go of Severus and turned to Harry. “And how are you feeling?” she asked, reaching for his hand as well.
Harry had to suppress the urge to yank it petulantly away from her. “Fine,” he snapped, irritably.
“You couldn’t even lift your head up,” Severus helpfully pointed out. Apparently deciding he’d been given a clean bill of health, he had swung himself round to sit on the edge of the bed.
Harry switched his glower to Severus as the nurse raised her eyebrows at him. “Fine,” he repeated, even more grumpily. “It hurts when I move; I lifted my head up and it felt like someone was banging a large bell over my head.”
The nurse hovered her hand over his head for a moment before resting her palm on his forehead. It was very warm; Harry felt muscles he hadn’t even realised were tense start to relax and loosen under the heat. He groaned as he seemed to sink deeper into the bed.
“That’s it, there we go,” the nurse cooed, softly.
Before he knew it, Harry was asleep.
Christmas Eve already. Where the hell has this year gone? Severus and I decided that, for once, we’d prefer to stay home for Christmas, celebrating with just the two of us. Molly tried to convince us to spend the day at the Burrow, as we normally do, but I told her that Minerva has invited us to spend the day at Hogwarts.
Which is true – she did do.
It’s just that Severus told her that we’d be going to the Burrow as normal.
Here’s hoping the two women don’t decide to mention it to each other!
He blinked himself awake and stared up at an unfamiliar ceiling.
Well, that sure gives me a case of déjà vu, doesn’t it?
This, however, was a different unfamiliar ceiling. Apparently, he’d been out of it enough that he’d been moved without waking up. Thankfully, he also seemed to have been cured of whatever had been causing him pain before – he managed to haul himself upright without feeling as though his head was about to split open.
He was in a normal-looking bedroom, even if it was rather dark. All of the wood was black, and most everything else was a very dark shade of green. Light was pouring through the window, but it wasn’t making much of a dent in the darkness of the room.
Wondering where Severus was – there was only one bed in this room. Severus was his husband, they’d said; surely that meant that they lived together and shared a room? – Harry carefully lowered his feet to the floor.
He barely had time to wiggle his toes in the thick, plush rug that was beside the bed when there was an odd popping noise, and a small… creature appeared out of mid-air.
Unsurprisingly, Harry screamed at the sight of it.
Almost immediately, there came a storm of running footsteps, hastening in his direction. The creature bowed, taking hold of the ends of its extremely large ears and tugging harshly, squalling in equal distress. “Plimsy is sorry, master!” it bawled. “Plimsy is forgetting that master is not to be disturbed!”
The door to the room burst open to reveal a tall, lanky young man that Harry didn’t recognise. Hermione was bobbing around behind his shoulder, attempting to see over it into the room.
“Harry!” the man said, sounding relieved. His gaze darted around the room and fell on the creature. Rather than screaming as well, though, he merely frowned at it. “Plimsy, what did we tell you?” he asked, sternly. “Go to the kitchen; we’ll be having words with Harny.”
The creature wailed louder and just… disappeared.
“Oh, Harry, I’m so sorry,” said Hermione, almost in a wail herself. “We were hoping that you’d remember before we had to tell you—”
“Tell me what?” Harry demanded. He laid a hand over his chest. His heart was beating uncomfortably hard.
“Oh.” Hermione was actually wringing her hands together. She chewed on her lower lip for a moment before visibly gathering her courage and blurting out, “You’re a wizard, Harry!”
Harry gaped at her for a moment, fully expecting her to burst out laughing at his expression, but when she didn’t, he flopped back on the bed and did it for her. It rang loudly in the otherwise silent atmosphere, and he slowly hiccupped himself down to just grinning. “You’re joking,” he said, and rolled over to face them again.
His grin slid slowly off his face as he realised that Hermione was slowly shaking her head, and the young man that he didn’t know was giving him a look so full of pity that it made Harry want to smack him in the face to get rid of it. “Right?” he tried, hopefully.
“I’m sorry, Harry, but no, we aren’t,” Hermione informed him. “Both of us and you – and Severus, of course – all have magic. Severus was brewing a potion in his lab downstairs – oh, this is your home, by the way. Twelve Grimmauld Place – and there was some sort of an accident. The house-elves, like Plimsy whom you just saw, took you to St Mungo’s, but they can’t tell what happened, or why, or how to restore your memories.”
Harry found himself speechless. Hermione didn’t really believe what she was saying, did she? But then, why was the stranger with her going along with it? Had Harry ended up in the care of some kind of lunatic asylum – with the lunatics in charge?
I’ve got to get out of here!
“Better show him the diary, love,” the man said to Hermione. “He won’t believe you, otherwise. Remember how you said your parents reacted at first?”
Hermione immediately brightened. “Ron, you’re a genius!” she exclaimed. Ron flushed bright red, which clashed terribly with his bright red hair, as she darted out of view, calling, “Harny!”
When she came back, she was holding a leather-bound book – also a bright red colour – which she held out to Harry. The sight of the book caused a strange twinge in the back of his mind, and he eyed it warily, but took it anyway. The corners of the front cover were edged in gold, and the pages inside were made out of something stiff and creamy off-white. It didn’t look like the kind of notebook that Harry would have expected to use as a diary.
Not that he’d ever expected to use a diary in the first place.
“It won’t answer everything,” Hermione was saying when he tuned back in. “But it should at least prove that we’re telling the truth. Maybe once you’ve read it, your memory will start improving.”
Harry didn’t think that was how things worked, but he was willing to give it a try.
At least until he managed to find a way out of here.
Thank goodness the Easter holidays start tomorrow! For some reason, this term has been really difficult. I can’t even say why – there’s nothing I can directly point at and say, ‘that right there is the problem’. And Severus hasn’t mentioned anything too out of the ordinary, either. But spring seems to have sprung really hard on the upper years this term, especially – according to Severus – the Gryffindors.
(Considering that Severus always complains about the Gryffindors, then I’d take that with a pinch of salt.)
Still, as of tomorrow, he, and the rest of the poor souls masquerading as teachers, get a two-week break from them. Well, as much of a break as you can have when you have to spend it in the same castle still as several of the students.
Minerva tried to rope Severus into being one of the professors on-call during the holidays, but he flatly refused, so she gave him the Christmas holidays instead.
Somehow, I don’t think Severus came out on top with that one…
Severus was standing in the middle of the hallway when Harry finally crept his way downstairs. He’d spent a couple of hours reading through that diary and found his conviction that this was all a joke crumbling further with each page he turned. It was his handwriting; he didn’t understand how he could recognise that when he’d had to be told what his own name was, but…
But it meant that the chances of a joke being played dropped considerably. There was no way Harry would have done that to himself.
“What are you doing?” he asked, hoping that conversation with his husband would take his mind off things for a while.
Of course, with his luck—
“Attempting to see if I can find this potions lab of mine,” replied Severus, scowling at an innocuous patch of wall. “I’ve been informed that the doorway to it was around here somewhere, but nobody has the ability to get in. I apparently… warded it,” he stumbled over the words, his tongue moving as though the words tasted strange in his mouth, “so that only you or I could enter if it wasn’t an emergency.”
“Losing your memory doesn’t count as an emergency?” Harry guessed.
Severus scowled even harder. “Apparently not,” he grumbled, sneering at the poor wall. “And the—” He verbally stumbled again. “—the… house-elves – and dear god, I can’t believe I’m saying that – aren’t allowed in, either. ‘Elveses is causing too much destruction’,” he said, in what was a pretty good mimicry of the high-pitched voice of the creature that had been in Harry’s room. “‘So Master Severus is telling us to stay out on pain of clothes!’”
Pain of… clothes? Harry puzzled over that for a moment, then shook his head. He’d probably reinjure himself if he tried to make sense of it all. “So, I know they said we’re husbands,” he began, slightly awkwardly, “but has anyone said yet how we got together in the first place?” Severus was, after all, at least twenty years older than him, but the diary Harry had read had been full of warmth and love when it spoke about Severus. So much so that some of it had been uncomfortably intimate, even if there hadn’t been anything racy or explicit about it.
Severus turned to face him. “Ron professed not to know,” he said, looking thoughtful. “But I’m unsure as to whether he actually doesn’t know, or whether he’s just uncomfortable thinking about it.”
“Ron. That’s the tall redhead guy, yeah?”
“Indeed.” Severus inclined his head. “And Hermione’s husband. And, apparently, your best friend,” he added.
“Oh, dear,” Harry muttered. “Better hope he forgives me for forgetting him, then!” Although he didn’t appear to have been holding it against Harry so far.
Something on the wall caught his eye, and Harry leaned in closer to look at it. It was a framed snippet from a newspaper of some sort and showcased both Harry and Severus in the middle of what looked to be a fairly large crowd. They were standing very close together, obviously in the middle of some private conversation. Harry had his head thrown back in laughter, and Severus was gazing down at him fondly, his lips barely turned up in a small smile.
“Hey, look at this!” he exclaimed, gesturing for Severus to join him. The still figures of themselves looked a lot younger than they currently were. “This must be from fairly soon after we started dating.”
“Actually, that appears to be our wedding,” Severus corrected, and pointed a long finger at the headline: “HARRY POTTER LEAVES THE MARRIAGE MARKET; Thousands of young witches devastated at the loss of the Wizarding World’s most eligible bachelor!”
Harry pulled a face at it. “That’s ridiculous,” he complained. “Surely it wasn’t that big a deal!”
“No, it was worse than that,” another voice chimed in from behind them. Harry spun round to discover Ron shaking his head at the newspaper clipping. “Bloody Rita Skeeter,” the other man sniffed. “Worst gossip reporter you’ll ever come across. Always blows everything way out of proportion.”
“And we invited her to our wedding?” asked Severus, sceptically.
Ron gave a huff of disdain. “No, but Rita’s an Animagus – um, that means she can turn into an animal,” he added, when both Harry and Severus gave him puzzled looks. “In this case, a beetle. She uses it to sneak into places and spy on people; gets a lot of her ‘facts’ that way.”
“Why hasn’t she been sacked or sent to prison?” asked Harry, horrified.
“Blackmail, probably,” replied Ron. “Anyway, Hermione sent me up to fetch you two for dinner, so let’s not spoil our appetite anymore by talking about Rita Skeeter.”
Harry glanced back at the newspaper clipping as Ron led them to the doorway and staircase that led downstairs to the large kitchen. To his utter shock, the Harry in the picture winked at him!
Harry hastily turned around and pretended he hadn’t seen anything.
Nothing beats the summer holidays. Unless, of course, it’s a summer holiday in Greece. Severus has some sort of symposium/conference thing being held there, so he will go and spend several days being cooped up indoors with a bunch of stuffy old potioneers, and I will go and spend several days soaking up the sun beside the pool.
Severus keeps telling me that the conference’s hotel doesn’t have a pool, but I’m trying my best to convince him to rent out one of the holiday homes that are on the outskirts of town. They very definitely have pools – I might have schlepped over there one night to doublecheck and try one out, but shhh! We won’t mention that to Severus ;)
Another good thing about getting away will be escaping Rita Skeeter. She’s been even more intolerable lately, and I didn’t think that was possible, but there it is. We’ve just had our seventh anniversary, and she keeps dropping little hints about Severus – or me – getting that “seven-year-itch”. The amount of fan mail for me has tripled in the last couple of weeks, loads of witches (both too young and too old to know better) thinking they can get their foot in the door first, plant the suggestion so to speak.
Never mind the fact that neither Severus nor I are feeling any kind of “itch” about our marriage at all.
Hopefully the Daily Prophet won’t be very popular in Greece…
Harry had been in the attic, staring out of the little window, for what had probably been far too long. His right foot had fallen asleep some time ago, and his neck was screaming at him to just bend it the other way for a while to relieve the muscle spasm.
He didn’t even know why he was staring out over London. Most of what he could see at this level was roofs and chimneys of the surrounding houses and the odd far-off skyscraper.
“Ron figured you might be up here.”
Harry startled at the new female voice. He hadn’t even heard anyone coming up the stairs, and god knows those stairs creaked loud enough to announce someone’s presence to the entire house.
The newcomer had the same red hair as Ron did, although hers was more ginger-y. She smiled as she advanced to stand beside him, having to stretch on tiptoe to glance out of the window as well. “You look like you’re missing flying,” she said, sinking back to stand flat on the floor. “I’m Ginny Longbottom, by the way. Ron’s sister.”
“Ah, nice to meet you?” said Harry, tentatively. He and Severus had been kept isolated since their accident several months ago. Ron and Hermione had been their most frequent visitors – visitors, hell: guests. The couple had pretty much moved in here – and they’d had an older woman, who’d looked very strict and spoke with a heavy Scottish accent, drop by on occasion, but for the most part, anybody else who might want to see them had been turned away. Not even Ron’s mum had been allowed to see them, and there’d been a two-week period where she’d pestered both Ron and Hermione mercilessly to make them agree she could drop by, “just for a quick visit.”
So what makes Ron’s sister so special?
“We dated, for a brief period, while we were at Hogwarts,” said Ginny, almost as though she’d read Harry’s mind. He eyed her, warily. That, apparently, was a thing that wizards could do. “Hermione thinks if we can jog your earlier memories loose, then they’ll cascade, and the entire thing will come back.”
“I see,” Harry murmured. To be fair, that wasn’t an entirely rubbish idea… “How long did we date for?” he asked. Must have been a good while, if Hermione thought this Ginny could jog some memories loose.
“About two weeks,” Ginny informed him, airily.
Harry turned and gaped at her. Two weeks?!
“We got together at the end of my fifth year; your sixth,” explained Ginny. “But then things happened, and you decided that you were leaving school and going off on a quest, so it was safer if we weren’t seeing each other anymore. And things changed so much during that year that by the time everything was over, we just… weren’t the same people anymore.” She shrugged. “So I started seeing Neville – my husband – and you started seeing Snape. Um, Severus, I mean.”
Harry shook his head. Not only had that not knocked any memories free, but he had no more idea of why Hermione thought it would now than he’d had before. Ginny seemed like a nice enough person, based on the grand total of two minutes that he’d known her, but it didn’t sound as though they’d been close at all. And surely if any early memories were going to shake loose, then it should be because of something Ron or Hermione had told him, right?
He glanced back out of the window. The small patches of sky he could see were calling to him. “What did you mean before, flying?” he asked.
“We have a sport that’s played on brooms,” she said. “It’s called Quidditch. You’re very good at it – you were the star player for the Gryffindor team – but I think it was really the flying part that you loved the most.”
Flying on a broom? On the one hand, yeah, that resonated with something deep inside Harry. On the other…
Flying through the sky on a broom? What happens if you fall off?!
His expression was probably priceless, because Ginny laughed at him. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look like that when discussing flying,” she chuckled. A loud bell abruptly rang throughout the room, and Ginny startled, turning to face the door before sheepishly turning back. “Right, almost forgot,” she said. “Hermione sent me up here to fetch you for lunch. Then something about a Healer’s appointment?”
Harry nodded, and took one last glance out of the window before he followed Ginny out of the attic.
This will be an intriguing school year. Severus finally persuaded Minerva to take over as Headmistress – oddly enough, not long after that, I discovered that our store of well-aged Firewhiskey had mysteriously been depleted… – and so he’s back to just a plain old Potions professor.
He's also taken back the role of Head of Slytherin House. Obviously during that last year of the war, things like Houses and the Heads thereof kind of went by the wayside, and afterwards he couldn’t be both Head and Headmaster. Professor Sinistra had been the only other Slytherin alumna, and she was killed in the Final Battle, so the Slytherins had to make do with a makeshift Head of whoever was the DADA teacher that year.
I know Severus wasn’t happy about that – he complained often enough that his Slytherins wouldn’t be able to form the necessary bonds to a temporary Head, and goodness knows that it seemed like a constant stream of Slytherins kept coming to him to talk – but it was what it was. Slytherins don’t tend to come back to Hogwarts; once they’re gone, it remains firmly behind them.
But now that Severus has passed on the mantle to Minerva, then he’s free to become a proper, official Head of House once again.
I wish I could be a fly on the wall at the Welcome Feast this year. It’s likely to be very interesting…
Harry hadn’t spent much time in the room that Hermione called the Black Library (apparently he’d inherited this house from his godfather, a man named Sirius Black. Severus’ eye had begun twitching when she mentioned him). Severus, however, had greeted the room like a starving man at a feast, even if he couldn’t remember anything about any of the subject matters.
Consequently, Harry hadn’t spent that much time with Severus, and lately, oddly, it had begun to wear on him. They were supposedly married; sure, they’d forgotten each other, and themselves, but why couldn’t they make a second go of it? Get to know each other all over again and build their marriage back up better than ever?
He worried that perhaps Severus didn’t want to be married to him anymore. Had the other man been looking for a way out before the accident? Now that he didn’t remember Harry, did he have what he’d wanted? So he’d gone looking for Severus, hoping they could at least have a conversation.
He didn’t have to look far, once he’d entered the Black Library. The front of the room was set up as a reading nook, with overstuffed armchairs and settees gathered around a fireplace that looked large enough to fit the entire Library into it. Severus was sitting sideways on one of the settees, legs casually crossed at the ankles and deep into a tome that could have done double-duty as a doorstop.
“I, um, brought you a cup of tea,” Harry informed him, awkwardly. What if he’d mis-stepped? What if Severus wanted to be alone? What if he didn’t want the tea? What if he didn’t like the tea? What if—?
Severus looked up and gave him a small but genuine smile. “How did you know that I was just wishing for one?” he asked.
“Lucky guess?” Harry shuffled forward to put the tea on the small coffee table within Severus’ arm reach, then shuffled backwards again, still unsure about how welcome he was. “Um, not interrupting, am I?”
Severus carefully closed his book and swivelled around so that he could more easily reach the tea. “Not at all,” he said. “Are you joining me?”
Harry nodded, then hurriedly sat down in a chair before Severus changed his mind. There was a long silence, broken only by Severus drinking his tea.
Say something, you idiot! That’s what you came here for!
Harry cleared his throat, and almost jumped at the sudden noise, even if it had come from him. “I… I was hoping that we could, ah, talk, a bit?” he said, tentatively. “I know we still don’t really know each other that well…”
“But we are married,” Severus finished, nodding thoughtfully. He took another sip of his tea, then leant forward to place the cup back on the table. “I must confess, I’d never imagined myself married,” he admitted as he sat back again. “I didn’t think anyone would want to marry me.”
“I did,” Harry assured him. “Hermione gave me some diaries that I’d been keeping. They don’t say how we got together – I don’t think she could find that one – but from the way I wrote, I definitely wanted to be married to you.” He paused and bit his lip. “And,” he continued, cautiously, “I think I want to… still be married to you?”
Severus raised an eyebrow. “Do you?” he enquired. “You haven’t seemed all that eager for my company lately.”
“I know, and I’m sorry about that.” Harry twisted his fingers together. Why the hell did this have to be so awkward? “I just – it’s been hard, obviously, trying to piece together just who I am, and who we are. And then it just… it just seemed like you’d settled in here and were happy to continue with this – this blank slate between us. I’ve been trying to get up the courage to come in here all week.”
Severus eyed him for a moment, and then his mouth quirked up into a rueful smile. “From what Hermione told me, you’re very definitely a Gryffindor,” he said. “And I – I am not. I apologise, Harry. I was informed that my childhood was a very lonely one, and it seems that old habits have carried over, despite me not remembering them.”
Surprised, Harry just blinked at him. He hadn’t expected Severus to apologise to him. Then he beamed at Severus, as a feeling of soft warmth blossomed in his chest. He stuck out a hand. “Hi, my name is apparently Harry Potter-Snape,” he said. “I’ve no idea who that is, but maybe we can find out.”
Now it was Severus’ turn to blink. Then he reached out and firmly gripped Harry’s hand in return. “And mine is apparently Severus Potter-Snape,” he said. “I’ve no idea, either, but maybe we can find out together.”
“Definitely.” Harry shook his hand once, emphatically. “Here’s to a long and beautiful relationship.”
Our wedding day. Mine and Severus’. I love that man so much. I don’t really need to say anything more.