All That You Leave Behind

We expect to hear cheering from you, dear reader, during this chapter.



Chapter Thirty-Nine





Severus glanced up as Harry returned from the bathroom. He felt his heart leap at the so familiar sight, although, at the same time, his brain struggled to process what he was staring at. He mouthed one word silently, eyes filled with pain, before a single tear tracked down his cheek. "Harry," he choked out, overcome.



"Oh God!" Harry\'s mind wailed. "He knows!" Utterly distraught, he turned and fled from the house, not even considering magic. Blinded by tears and still drunk, it took Harry some ten minutes to reach the quiet and solitude of the nearby woods. He stumbled among the trees, tripping and staggering a little, unused to this body, to being a girl. At last he simply stopped, legs shaking with effort, and slid down a thick old oak tree, the rough bark almost painful against the sensitive skin on \'his\' back.



His chest hurt. He had breasts. He was in his mother’s skin! It was all getting a bit too Grecian.



A hysterical sob broke from him.



Sev had rejected him. Severus didn\'t want him, not as Lily, anyway. Had Sev lied all this time, saying he had loved Lily? Surely he must have done, otherwise how could he have resisted?



Harry bent over, one hand clenching into the mulch of leaves at the base of the tree. The cold, almost slimy material helped him focus, helped him ground himself.



He could leave. Simply apparate away for a few days, claim he was needed at work. He could avoid Severus until this painful incident was forgotten between them. Harry felt his face begin to burn again with humiliation. He began to shiver, whether with cold or reaction he couldn\'t have said, but soon \'his\' teeth were chattering together so badly he couldn\'t speak. He shuddered, annoyed with himself for his weakness. Angered, he reached into the robe for his wand, and it wasn\'t there. He cursed. What the hell else was going to go wrong?



"Harry?"



Oh fuckohfuckohfuckofuck! thought Harry.



Harry hid his face in his hands, wanting nothing more than to curl up in his mother\'s arms. Clutching at the rough bark, he pulled himself unsteadily to his feet. He couldn\'t stay here, not and let Severus find him and pity him. But, he wasn\'t a child any longer, Snape wasn\'t his teacher. They were both men, both adults, and it was time Harry started acting like it.



He wasn\'t afraid of Snape\'s anger, he was afraid of the other\'s disapproval, of somehow being seen as "less" in the older man\'s eyes.



He wanted Sev\'s approval, wanted ... he didn\'t know how to phrase it, but knew there was something he wanted from Severus, something that he himself wasn\'t yet ready to admit. How could he approach Severus and speak to him as a man when he felt so insecure and lost?



Harry squared his shoulders and turned to face the black cloaked figure approaching through the trees.



"Harry." Severus\' voice seemed almost entirely expressionless.



He came close enough for the younger man to make out the concern on his face, close enough that he saw what Severus held in his hand - Harry\'s wand.



An awkward stillness descended.



Severus felt his breath leave him. Lily, standing looking at him with those eyes, so unsure of herself, so lost. No, not Lily. She had never looked at him like that. This was Harry. His Harry.



And then Severus wanted the effects of the potion to end - wanted to see Harry’s face, Harry\'s body, Harry\'s eyes looking out at him.



His voice gravelly, Severus said, "You dropped this."



And then everything changed.



Harry was babbling at him, apologies spilling relentlessly from his lips, eyes big and pleading and desperate, so desperate that Severus ached to hold the other.



So he did.



Severus pulled Harry to him. Felt the softness of Lily\'s curves against his chest, felt tears that were Harry\'s alone wetting his shirt.



He bent his head, smelling the red hair, but it was Harry he smelt, not his long remembered scent of Lily. And now his arms were filled with hard plains, tense muscles, angular bones. The hair he was smelling was shorter, was black, was sticking out as it always did. His Harry was back.



"Harry," he said, softly, gently, "Look at me”



Tear filled green eyes gazed into his deep black ones. Harry seemed so lost, and Severus knew the way home. He bent his head to show Harry what it was he had been searching for.



His lips just touched the younger man\'s. Harry\'s eyes widened, but he didn\'t pull away. He felt the surprisingly soft lips press against his, felt them feather kisses across his lips. It was so different to how Ginny kissed him, and yet it felt so good.



Ginny!



Harry wrenched free and began to run again. But Severus\' voice stopped him. "You can\'t keep running Harry." He waited for the other to turn towards him once more. "You\'re no longer a child. You are an adult. Come back to the house and we can discuss this like adults, instead of chasing all over the forest like seven year olds." Despite trying, some of his usual snarkiness crept into his tone and Harry reacted to it. He gave a small smile - this was his Sev, the one he knew and loved.



He nodded, accepting that yes, he was grown up, and yes, he did have to talk about this whatever-it-was going on between him and Snape.



Walking unwillingly back to the house, Harry couldn\'t help again feeling utterly mortified and foolish about what he\'d done, and found he couldn\'t look at Severus. His face burnt with remembered embarrassment, but he also felt unsettled thinking of the man\'s warm, soft lips caressing his own. That had been a moment out of time, and it had felt just ... wonderful. On the heels of that came a twinge of guilt over Ginny. What the hell was he playing at? Severus was their friend! He had no business even thinking the things he was thinking!



But his mind raced away from him.



He fought to bring it to heel with thoughts of his wife and son, so that, by the time they reached the study, Harry\'s emotions were in a roiling mess of confusion, humiliation and pain again and his legs felt shaky.



What he desperately wanted to do was run and hide, just as Severus had accused him of doing, but he knew that he could also no longer bear this constant state of confusion.



Something had to give.



He crossed the threshold of his house, feeling that it should look different, so much had changed in the past hour, but it didn\'t. The bottle they had shared earlier still stood boldly on the small table. He stepped over to it pour himself a shot of liquid courage, but the bottle was empty, he remembered too late. He took a deep breath, telling himself he was an adult and adults didn\'t hide, not even from snarky former Potions professors. Even ones that had the ability to instantly make him feel like a stupid little boy again. Even when they kissed him. Steeling himself, he lifted his chin and turned around to face the music. He found those endless black eyes watching him with affection, compassion, and a trace of amusement, and it was the amusement that caused his face to flush warmly with embarrassment along with a flare of indignant ire.



Harry opened his mouth, to explain, to accuse, to scream, he really didn\'t know. But Severus\' next question stopped him before he even got started.



"Which of us are you angry at, Harry?" the man asked quietly.



Biting back the instinctive "you!" and the diatribe that would have followed it, Harry fought past his embarrassment to the core of the emotion. He swallowed hard and said grudgingly, "....me..."



"Harry...," Severus began, his voice soft and understanding, warm and kind. Harry had done a kind thing for Severus, however misguided, and he tried to convey his appreciation of the gesture in the calm gentle tone of his voice.



It served the opposite effect, and Harry couldn\'t contain his anger and humiliation any longer. "Do you have any idea of how ..stupid ...I feel?!" he choked out. He felt strangely like crying, but forced it back harshly, hiding it under a swell of rage: "Why didn\'t you want me … her?!" he screamed, almost hysterical, "Why didn\'t you touch her?! I thought that was what you wanted!"



Severus made no answer, which made Harry more furious, yet growing in him, diffusing the anger, was an impossible problem: "Why did you do that...out there? What you did...why did you do that?!"



"I thought that\'s what you wanted," Severus replied calmly, "why you pretended to be Lily. Wasn\'t it what you wanted? Why you did what you did?" The ex-professor held his breath, hoping.



"No!" Harry yelped, "I...I just thought to...do something for you! Because you loved her, and I thought you might want to ...to have...what you didn\'t.....have...". He trailed off with the feeling that he would never be able to explain his reasons adequately, especially when he was still lying to himself.



The black eyes were bottomless as the man looked silently back at him, waiting.



"Don\'t look at me like that!" Harry growled, but the black eyes remained implacable, and Harry squirmed feeling like a second year caught stealing potions.



"Harry," Severus said after watching the younger man fidget, "you can tell me the truth." He waited, watching the younger man steadily.



When he felt Harry had had enough space he continued, "I appreciate what you said you were trying to do, but....that isn\'t the whole of it...is it?"



Harry couldn\'t seem to pull his gaze away from Severus\'. Severus, who had always demanded the best from him, who had never allowed Harry\'s name or "position" to make a difference, who had always been someone that Harry had been able to rely on (if only by knowing the other would be horrible!). This man didn\'t see "The Boy-Who-Lived" or the Wizarding World\'s Saviour, or Ginny\'s husband, or James\' father, or Hermione and Ron\'s friend, he saw Harry.



And Harry finally saw himself.



Harry looked up into fathomless black eyes, only they weren\'t fathomless, he could see Severus in a way he\'d never seen him before.



Harry drew strength from the dark eyes, strength enough to speak. "You...you kissed me." he stated, voice odd. "We kissed." His voice now held a hint of wonder. "But," he went on, "we\'re men, I\'m married! You, you encouraged me to marry! And we\'ve kissed! I thought…you loved my mother…" Harry was confused.



"And you love Ginny," Severus replied infuriatingly.



"Then how can this be right?!" Harry burst out, “I\'m married, Happily, to a girl you said was perfect for me! And now my world is being turned upside down! By you!”



"Harry," Severus sighed, "Can we please talk about this as adults? Like we agreed? Without the histrionics?"



Harry glared at the man. Dammit! How did he always do that?! Make him feel as if he were an errant boy again?! Biting back any further outburst, Harry got a grip on himself and said, "Yeah...you\'re right.....it\'s just....I\'m really confused!"



"Of course you\'re confused," Severus said, not helping at all.



"And you\'re not?!" Harry shot back hotly "This doesn\'t confuse you at all?!"



"Yes, Harry, it does," Severus conceded gently.