I saw your name. I sighed. (Why do you have to be on the Other team?!) I hit print.
So, what can I say that hasn't already been said? I loved it, that I do have to say.
I loved the concept. I loved the characterisations. I loved the relationship between Harry and Severus, the yelling, the screaming, the coughing, the reluctant acknowledgments that the other was right. Their working together, the books.
Minerva and Severus, what a team. Even if she needs to drink to get up the next morning and deal with Hogwarts.
Severus and AD (not to confuse this one with AS): I still don't like AD. Though your explanations of why he did what he did are...acceptable. But I still don't like him.
Draco: still Draco, but not.
Harry and Draco: OMG! And to be found out the way they were! No wonder Harry remained celibate at Hogwarts after that!
Harry and his relationships with his children. Very real, thank you.
James...My father likes you. I don't. (Loved Severus's response.) And the American wife no one likes.
AS... Poor kid. In love with Draco Malfoy. Well, we all have to have one unrequited love in our lives. AS and Teddy? Hmmmm, well, through University, I guess. After that????
Lily. Lily! OMG! Severus in drag! I *adored* their relationship! The daughter Severus never had! And I wonder how Draco felt when she married his son.
The children and Harry. Also real. Their varied acceptance of their parents' marriage, their father's homosexuality...(Though I did wonder if the reason James goes off to America is to put distance between himself and his father???)
As for Harry and Severus...all those years waiting...both of them. I hooted when Harry had his portrait done when he was 42. Severus is 38. Harry is older than Severus (yes, obvious, but what a hoot!).
And the fact that Severus can't sleep. What bait to hook your readers!
I was delighted at the end when Harry invades Severus's portrait...and that he has a bed painted in his. (See, he had been listening to Severus's complaints!)
Yes, I hope they do find pleasure in each other, happiness as well. And whether it's one year or ten...or more... Well, very wide grin. (To balance out the tears I shed when Severus tells us that no one was there for him when he died. THAT was horribly heartbreaking.)
You don't go in the bedtime reader binder: you have your own which is usually by the bedside. (Oh, loved the anti-American cracks...which was a greater hoot since I had read Home Fries Nazi -- and it's pro-Americanism -- earlier in the week!)