Thank You!
First off, I have to say I'm so thrilled that you enjoyed this story. I was, admittedly, really intimidated to write for you, both because you're such an excellent writer and because of your remarkably insightful reviews. I spent all month chewing my nails, waiting for this to be posted and convincing myself it was going to disappoint. (Also, I want to apologise - I would have done more to be anonymous had I known you had read "The Art and Science of Change." For some reason I was convinced you hadn't, and so I liberally borrowed some fanon from it.)
That this was a very oblique story only added to my nervousness. I know not everyone likes subjective stories that require puzzling out and guesswork, but I do and I hoped from your reviews that you might too. It started out a little more straight-forward, but I soon fell in love with writing a Severus who (while probably not the most sensitive to others' feelings to start with) is so wrapped up in his own headspace that he's incapable of ascribing much reality to anything, and is still young enough among the people who knew him as a youth to have a complete lack of conception that they are people just like him.
I'm also tickled pink that you liked Minerva here, since she's the character I most worried about getting 'wrong' and since we only see her shadows here. The motivation I was working with was that she's been here before. She was widowed young, and she had her life yanked out from under her, and she has had to grieve both a tangible loss and a loss of what might have been, and she has had to start all over again. She's been where Snape and Moody both are, and she knows that no amount of coddling or confrontation is going to help; that all she can do is offer them a safe place to get their acts together. She does think a summer affair might be something Severus would enjoy (certainly she doesn't think it would do him any harm) but mostly she instigates that because she promised herself a little selfish pleasure after all those years of sacrifice during the war.
In the early stages of writing this, I was thinking back to the scene in the first book of Minerva sitting alone on watch at the Dursleys', and the impression we slowly get over the series that while the 'civilian wizarding world was coming out of isolation and joining together to celebrate after the first defeat of Voldemort, the Order members were coming out of years of uncomfortably close conspiracy. I liked the idea of them all needing a little solitude and selfishness to remember who they are as individuals. Minerva, that she's still a sexual creature, an independent woman entitled to her own hobbies and privacy and boundaries, not just a teacher and deputy headmistress. Alastor, that he's still got enough fight in him to drag himself up now that he's hit rock bottom. And Severus...well, he certainly comes into his own here a little, but he doesn't let go of the summer the way they do, which I saw as part of his character; even in later canon, he's someone who's never entirely grown up, someone still chained to the place where he was a child, holding on to grudges and bad memories. I like to think, though, that between the end of this story and the time that Harry and Voldemort come back into his life, he gets to enjoy a few ghost-free years.
Finally, I want to thank you so much for your wonderful, blush-inducing comments. I was just gobsmacked by your response and so, so happy you liked it. This was definitely 'roll over and light a cigarette' feedback and was a holiday present all on its own. And most of all, thank you for making this request. This is definitely something I wouldn't have thought of on my own, but I had an absolute blast writing it.