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Take Me As I Am	By : KohakuShadow Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Snape Views: 7654 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of its characters, nor am I making any money off of it. It's called FANfiction because I DON'T own it, right? Right. Good that we're clear.

Chapter List
- 1-1
- 2-2
- 3-3
- 1
- 2
A/N: This fic was written as a birthday gift and has been sitting on my computer unattended for a few weeks. If I've forgotten any warnings that I ought to include, let me know and I will add them.

As always, if you want to be added to my mailing list, email ladyloire@yahoo.com. You must include some kind of clue that you want to be added - I will not add blank emails. "Add Me" or "Mailing List" are perfectly sufficient.

Inspired by "Take Me As I am by Tonic" .

Take Me As I Am

1.

Severus leaned heavily on a birch staff that was only slightly less humiliating than a cane. He was a careful and diligent man who followed instructions precisely, and as a result his terrible wounds were healing quickly. Even so, he tired easily. He was certain that he was still far too young to feel this old.

'Better old than dead,' he reminded himself for the thousandth time since he'd regained consciousness. But looking down at Lily's grave, he wasn't convinced.

He'd never come here before. He'd somehow always felt that if he did, it would be the same as admitting it was all really over and until his own near-death experience Severus couldn't bear the thought of letting go. He should have done so years ago. He knew that, but intellect rarely serves a man in love.

Standing there now, reading very clearly 'James and Lily Potter' hammered home the truth, that she had never been his and never would be, more firmly than he had ever imagined it could. It seemed so stupid to think he ever stood a chance now. She'd barely said three words to him since they were fifteen and he was the smartest idiot in school.

'I made so many mistakes, Lily, and all the worst ones to do with you. I wonder if I ever had a chance at your heart.' Well, he would never know. 'Perhaps, when we meet someday in the afterlife, you will be kind enough to sate my curiosity on the matter. Take your time thinking about it – I've no intention of dying just yet. I have even decided that I may just forgive your husband for being a pompous arse. Well, I still rather dislike him, but I promise to throw away that photograph of his stupid, grinning face that I've been using for target practice for the past twenty some-odd years – as soon as I remember where I put it last. I rather think that will do for a start, don't you? And I also promise, in the future, if I happen to sneer at your son, I will make absolutely certain it is for his own failings rather than his father's.' Yes, insulting her offspring was probably not the way to win Lily's favor, but nobody's perfect. 'I suppose what I mean to say is, should fate be kind enough to send me wherever it is that you are when I die, I should very much like a second chance at being your friend, if you can find it in your heart to forgive me for being piss poor at it the first time around.'

Severus was no fool – he didn't believe talking to a headstone meant the dead could hear you, so thinking at one must be at least doubly useless, but it helped him ease some of the ache in his chest. It helped him come to terms with it all and let it go. Mostly though, it helped him accept that fate was not always kind, and life seldom fair, but living was still worth it in spite of both, and that would just have to be enough.

He lost all sense of time as he stood there. He'd been cooped up in the hospital for so long – sleeping a strange schedule, eating at odd hours, being awakened for healing spells and potions in the middle of the night, drifting in and out of restless slumber as he endured the pain of Nagini's venom working its way out of his system – that his body no longer acknowledged the difference between day and night. He knew the difference between dawn and dusk, mid-afternoon and midnight, but the passage of time didn't have any real meaning and he didn't think it would until he was back at Hogwarts teaching potions and off of these infernal painkilling draughts that left his thoughts jumbled and his body perpetually weary.

Speaking of, he clutched his staff a little harder as a bit of dizziness overcame him. His stomach lurched, and just an instant before he toppled over, someone caught him by the elbow. He snapped his head around, but that only increased the vertigo, and he was forced to stumble as some unknown force pulled him from the cemetery to a bench beside the adjoining church. He had to take a moment to rest his face in his hands and let the world stop spinning before attempting to lift his gaze again.

'Oh, how the mighty have fallen,' he thought bitterly.

"Alright there, Professor?" Harry asked as gently as he could. He hadn't expected to find anyone at his parents' grave. He came often since the war. At first it was that he finally could, but after a while it became a quiet place where he could just sit and think for a while, get his mind around everything that had happened. He'd been planning a bit of quiet time, but if he had to share it, he could think of no one better than Severus Snape to share it with. He thought his mother would have been happy to know Snape had paid her a visit.

"...Potter," Snape said slowly as he sat back and relaxed the death grip he held on his walking stick. "I suppose it would be pointless to ask what you're doing here."

Harry shrugged and offered a meek smile. "I come a lot, these days. You're looking well, all things considered."

"Your lies have become slightly more convincing. It seems you've grown up a bit after all," Severus replied around a grimace as his stomach flopped again. Had he taken his potion without eating again? He must have to feel this wretched.

"Seriously though, Professor Snape. You look really pale. Are you okay."

"Well enough, all things considered," Severus answered tightly. "The side effects of the various potions I am obligated to take are, at times, more trying than the ailment they are intended to treat. It is nothing more than that."

"I remember," Harry laughed a little nostalgically. He was recalling the bone-growing potion that he'd had to suffer after Professor Lockhart accidentally de-boned his arm in particular. Having no bones in one's arm was unpleasant, to be sure, but there had been a times over that night when Harry thought it might be better than having to endure the pain of having them grow back. He couldn't imagine what sort of horrible side effects potions that effectively brought one back from the brink of death must be like, but in some minute way he liked to think he could empathize.

"Don't give me that look, Potter," Snape sneered.

"What look am I giving you, sir?"

"That look that implies we have something in common." Severus was still loathe to admit that there was even the slightest commonality between himself and the Boy Who Lived, even if the boy had, somewhere along the way, become a man.

Harry grinned, the skin at the corners of his eyes wrinkling. "We have things in common," he said. "Tons of things." They were both essentially abandoned by their caretakers, never quite fit in anywhere. They had few friends, but the friends they kept were close ones. Brave, of course, though Harry tried to pretend he was modest enough not to call the quality for what it was in himself. And stubborn, which Harry liked to think the vestiges of youthful petulance on his part and bitterness on Snape's – but deep down he knew it was just ordinary stubbornness in both cases. And of course, they had Lily. They would always have Lily in common, which was probably the reason they had such a hard time admitting to the rest of it.

"Hn," Snape scoffed. "Yes, well, I suppose I have no choice to admit that we do have several things in common if you insist upon it, but make no mistakel; the things we have in common are all the wrong ones."

"Maybe," Harry hedged.

"Most certainly," Snape retorted.

"You think? I was just thinking we might have a lot of the right ones in common, too, but we were never willing to give each other a chance to find them."

"And I was just thinking that you exerted your best efforts to use every last one of your chances to try and make a fool of me."

"Who was trying?" Harry quipped, unable to keep the barb off his tongue. The glare he got from Severus, and the way the man quickly shifted forward in an effort to rise to his feet and abandon the graveyard and the grave conversation with it made Harry amend his words.

In the end, Severus was still too weak to lift himself from the bench, and an expression like he'd just gotten a whiff of rotten fish was all he could offer as a sign of his distaste.

"I just mean that I'm pretty sure you're the only one who ever thought something I'd done made you look particularly foolish. And anyway, I never tried to make you look like a fool. I saved all my best efforts for Draco, and he deserved them. Revenge 'n all. You understand."

It was a statement rather than a question. Of course Snape understood. Harry had Draco. Snape had James. That was another for the list of unfortunate circumstances they had in common, though Severus was fairly certain that Harry had never been hung upside down and pantsed in front of several of his peers. With no way to counter the statement that wouldn't make him sound like a bitter old fool, Severus chose not to say anything at all. He stared out at the neat rows of gray stones. He couldn't help but wonder: if the war had found him dressed to the nines with arms neatly folded across his chest and stuffed in a wooden box six feet under the ground, who would visit him there? Who would pretend his life, and death, served some greater meaning? Draco? Perhaps, though he thought it might be several years yet before Draco truly understood all the things that had come to pass and the part he'd played in them. He didn't think Draco would ever understand why Severus tried so hard to protect him when he could. It was that he saw himself in Draco – all of the worst parts, all of the biggest mistakes. Snape had realized only too late that no one can save a man from his own demons – he has to do that himself. Perhaps, in time, Draco would overcome them, but it wouldn't be today, and Snape highly doubted it would be tomorrow, either. Who else? McGonagall might, once or twice, out of a sense of obligation that she had misconstrued as friendship. 'Infuriating old hag.' But he thought the slander with its due share of affection. She was a friend, but Snape would die a thousand deaths before admitting it.

Harry? Would Harry visit his grave? He stole a sideways glance at Harry Potter – the bane of his existence – and decided, yes, Harry would visit his grave. Something about that felt right. He'd spent several years loathing the boy, but now he thought, if he had died, and Harry wanted to visit his grave, he wouldn't mind it. Quite the contrary, he would be glad. Why?

"...tea and biscuits."

Severus snapped from his morbid thoughts and looked up at the young man.

Harry tilted his head and grinned playfully. "Still don't have the least bit interest in what I have to say, huh?" he joked. He waited only a moment, not long enough for Severus to conceive of a witty retort, and repeated himself. "I said, why don't you come over to my place, Professor. I'll let you sit in my favorite armchair until you get your bearings, and we can talk some more over tea and biscuits."

"Why in Merlin's name do you think I would be willing to follow you all the way to London for tea?" Severus scoffed. "Especially given that, I believe, you've taken to boarding with several of the Weasley boys." Oh yes, that would be relaxing.

"Not that place!" Harry laughed again. "My place here, in Godric's Hollow. It's not much yet, but it's got a roof, walls, a working stove, at least. Come on, Professor." He pulled the older man to his feet as gently as possible before Snape had the opportunity to reply. "It's getting late, and the nights are getting colder. I forgot to bring my jacket." He didn't dare say he didn't think Snape, in his current condition, should be out and about after hours, letting the chill night air get to him when his health was still so weak. It was what he was thinking, and he figured Snape probably knew that, but he'd learned at least a little bit of tact somewhere along the way. "It's not far, just up the hill."

"Up the hill," Snape echoed. Surely, the boy didn't mean...

"Yeah," Harry smiled again, but it was softer this time as he nudged his former professor to walk with him. Once he was moving, with the help of his staff, Severus managed well enough on his own, though his pace was markedly slower than it used to be. Once upon a time, Severus Snape waited for no man. You either kept up, or got left behind. For the moment though, Harry was shortening his steps as best he could to help Snape keep pace. Snape secretly hated him for that, but only because he hated pity, and having something worth hating Harry for offered some sense of normalcy. "I guess it seems weird," Harry continued. "Rebuilding my parents' house. I mean, it's where they were killed. But no matter how I look at it, other than Hogwarts, there's really nowhere else that I feel...well, feel like I'm home, I guess." He shrugged. "I think houses probably have memories just like people do. Some of them are good, and some of them are bad, and you don't get to pick which ones you want to remember and which ones you don't. Anyway, the war is over, right? So leaving it in ruins just seems sort of..." Harry struggled for the right way to explain himself. "I mean, it's just...it's kind of like..."

"It is time to put the nightmare that Voldemort wrought behind us and move on," Snape offered. He knew exactly how that felt. That's why he'd come to visit Lily's grave. It was long past time to move on.

"Yeah. Exactly," Harry said. "That's exactly what I mean. Leaving it in ruins like that is just proof that in some small way, he won. I don't want to forget all that's happened, that's not what I'm saying, but I think ...well, I guess I sort of just want to start putting back together all the things he tore apart. I've decided to focus on 'right now', and worry about what to do with the rest of my life later."

"I thought you were planning a bright future as an Auror. Quick to toss away your dreams, aren't you?" Snape replied.

Harry offered another wistful sort of smile as he pushed on the front gate. It opened with a loud creak, the hinges weary from age and lack of use. "Dreams end," he said simply. He didn't know how else to explain it. He had really wanted to be an Auror once. But he was young and stupid, and he was still mostly young and stupid, but not as young, or as stupid. "If I were to become an auror, it would just be the same thing all over again. I liked Professor Moody, and I respected him loads, too, but I don't think I'm ready to become him just yet. Chasing dark wizards, jumping at every shadow...that's not the life I want. I've seen enough of the worst in people. I don't want to forget that there's more to the world than that."

'There's more to the world than that.' The words echoed through Snape's mind as his eyes dragged around the sitting room. It was spartan, at best. Harry lit a fire in the hearth, and there was a burgundy armchair angled near it, a crate propped up on a few piles of books was serving as a makeshift end table, and there was a mattress and rumpled bedding a few feet away on the floor. Some of Harry's clothing was tossed carelessly into the corner. Laundry, Snape assumed. He blinked, noticing the way Harry stared at him, shifted his weight awkwardly. "It is..." Snape struggled for a word that would be relatively polite (he was a guest, after all) while not being dishonest.

"It's a work in progress," Harry said, letting Snape off the hook in finding a redeemable adjective. "It's a lot more work than I thought it would be when I started. Come on, Professor Snape, sit by the fire and I'll put on some tea." He gently pulled Snape's wrist, and Severus found himself allowing Harry to gently tug him towards the chair. 'It is only because it looks so comfortable and you need to rest for a while,' he assured himself. He would tell himself anything if it meant he didn't have to admit that, once James was pulled out of the equation, he was having a hard time finding things about Harry to dislike.

He sunk into the chair and let his eyes drift closed – only for a moment – when Harry left for the adjoining room. Snape could hear the young man fumbling about with what he could only assume was a teapot on the hob and rummaging through the cupboards while he brought the water to a boil. It was the last thing he could remember before the birds started their incessant chirping outside.

He opened his eyes slowly, and tensed when he realized he'd fallen asleep sitting up. 'I am getting too old to doze off reading in armchairs.'

It was the grumbling slightly to his right that pulled Severus back into reality. He sat upright abruptly and instantly regretted it as pins and needles raced up the back of his arms and down his spine. His gaze shifted. Harry was on the mattress a few feet away curled up underneath...ah, it was his black school robe. Harry grumbled again and pulled the robe up over his head to block out the sunlight.

Snape was just about to wonder what the young man had done with his blanket when he realized it was drooping down into his own lap. It didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened. Harry had gone to make tea and when he returned to the sitting room it was to find Severus unconscious in his only chair. Snape grimaced and sat back for now as he thought on it. It was humiliating, but Potter didn't seem in any rush to rouse from slumber and he needed to give his body a few minutes to register that it was awake now and thus, would have to begin moving in short order. Having slept, the nausea had passed, but the potion that dulled the pain of his wounds had moved on as well. His body was stiff and the scars on his neck throbbed. Fine threads spread from the source of the injury like tendrils, pulsing threads of agony, that made his entire head and his shoulder down to the bicep ache. He always thought his health had improved remarkably until he missed a potion. He should have taken one several hours ago, but he had none on hand. He would have to settle for some hot tea and impose on Harry further for whatever manner of headache potion he had in the house.

He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning as he rose, leaning heavily on his staff, and moved to the kitchen with short, careful steps. He kept close to wall and what furniture was present in case he lost his balance. The world was spinning by the time he leaned on the counter. He scanned the room for a teapot, but all he found was an ordinary cooking pot and a lot of clutter. It would have to do. He filled it with water and set it to boil while he rummaged for tea and something that might, at the very least, do away with the double vision. The tea was easy. Harry had it sitting out on the counter next to a half-empty box of biscuits, but all he managed to find that might do something for his splitting headache was half a bottle of muggle asprin with an illegible expiration date. 'Might be legible if you weren't seeing double,' he thought, but it was no consolation. He fumbled with the tea bag and leaned against the counter to wait.

When the pot came to a boil, he reached for it, but his grip on the heavy handle slipped. The boiling water came up at him...and froze mid-path. He turned his head abruptly and his mind swam. James? No, no, this was Harry. He fought through the fog of pain. When had Harry mastered non-verbal magic? Somehow, the moment had slipped past the Slytherin undetected. 'Too busy hating him for existing to notice, weren't you?' he chided himself. It was just this sort of thing that he'd promised Lily's grave that he was going to overcome.

"You should have woken me," Harry said around a yawn. He flicked his wand a few times, and the pot clumsily returned to its place on top of the stove with only a few splatters, none of which scalded Snape.

'Ah, perhaps it is a bit premature to say 'mastered'. Even so, not bad, Potter. Not bad at all.' He refused to be impressed, even if Harry had managed that much whilst obviously still half asleep.

"There was no need," Severus lied. "I am not so ill that I cannot prepare tea for myself."

"That's not how it looked from here," Harry blurted before he could think to swallow the words.

"Yes, well, a cooking pot is hardly ideal for use in the brewing of tea," Snape replied stubbornly.

Harry shrugged casually. "I've been managing with it well enough for now," he answered. "I've only got the bare necessities here."

"I rather noticed," Snape answered, unable to protest as Harry brushed into the room, prepared two cups of tea and opened a fresh sleeve of the biscuits. He did it so quickly that Snape found himself painfully reminded of how ill-equipped he was to care for himself in his current state. He hated the weakness. He often wondered if death would not have, perhaps, been a kinder fate than the constant barrage of blows to his masculine pride.

Harry rubbed his eyes and transfigured some shipping crates into an extra chair. He took that one – it was only good manners to offer one's guests the actual furniture wherever possible. "I promised tea and biscuits," he said. "Why don't you take a seat?"

Severus sat carefully. His equilibrium was starting to return, but his head and back still ached. "What is this about, Potter?" he asked after an uncomfortable silence.

"Does it have to be about something in particular?" Harry returned.

"Between us, it always is. You know this."

Harry shrugged. "Things change."

"People don't," Severus answered.

"Well, you don't. That's for sure," Harry said, trying not to laugh. "Do you want that pain-relieving potion now? Or do you want to keep pretending that you're fine?" He hid his smirk behind the rim of his teacup, but couldn't keep the amusement from his eyes.

Snape frowned. "Where did you hide it? All I found was muggle asprin."

"I didn't hide it," Harry answered defensively. "Here." He pulled it out of his pocket and put it on the table. "I put it in my pocket when I was getting the tea last night. Thought you might need some, but you fell asleep."

Snape didn't answer. It was too embarrassing. Answering Harry would acknowledge that it had happened, and while they both knew damn well that it had, he wasn't willing to say so. He took the bottle and tilted it back. The liquid burned its way down his throat. It never ceased to amaze him that so many pain relief potions caused almost as much agony as they cured, if only for a moment. He let his eyes fall closed against a swell of dizziness and all but jumped out of his skin when he felt hands on his shoulders. "What do you think you're doing, Potter?"

"Harry," Harry said firmly. "I'm not your student anymore, and it's probably better for both of us if you stop calling me the same thing you called my dad, right?"

Snape grit his teeth a bit. There was a bit of wisdom in what Harry was saying, but he was loathe to admit it. "...what do you think you are doing, Harry?" he amended rather than starting a pointless argument that he was in no condition to win.

"Just relax, would you? I'm not going to throttle you or anything. Kind of sick of all the grudges, really." Harry's grip tightened, then loosened, smoothed over the back of his shoulders.

'Oh,' Severus realized belatedly. 'A massage.' He had spent most of his life stiff as a board from the back of his neck to the curve of his arse. There was a tiny little voice in his head that said he should not be letting Harry Potter give him a massage. It was the same voice that had warned him against following Harry home for tea. He ignored it, again, and the tiny little alarms that went with it, for the exact same reason he had ignored it the previous night: instant gratification. Last night, the thought of sitting down somewhere and relaxing overcame his reservations. This morning, the hands coaxing the knots out of his back and shoulders were more than he could argue with. His frame relaxed against his better judgment as Harry worked magic on knots that were several years old.

Harry smiled as he watched the older man relax before him. It was its own reward – finally seeing some of the walls crumble. He thought it was good for both of them. Finding Severus Snape asleep in his armchair had led Harry to a sort of epiphany the previous night. He hadn't been able to get the man off of his mind since the end of the war. Now that he'd seen some of the hard lines in the man's stress-worn face softened in slumber, and the sharp edges of his back rounding off as the pain eased, it was like he was seeing his former professor for the very first time. This wasn't the bitter, angry man who tried to make him miserable at every turn, nor was it the brilliant spy who did everything in his power to make sure Harry stayed alive. This was the man that his mother had once called a friend. At least, Harry thought it must be. Snape wasn't being argumentative or disagreeable. He wasn't trying to control every aspect of the world around him. In fact, Harry could swear he heard a slight murmur of content as he kneaded the man's shoulders. 'Probably just my imagination,' he thought. Content murmurs would be expecting too much.

Regardless, it had come to Harry suddenly as he'd watched Snape sleep, that he was drawn to the man and always had been. At the time, he thought it was his mind playing tricks on him, but this morning, he felt exactly the same. In spite of his foul temper and his smart mouth and his complete inability to answer any question concisely, there was something underneath it all that had drawn Harry in when he was a young boy and never released him. That thing had always been there; it had taken form as an obsession because Snape hated him and he was too young and far too stupid to understand the true nature of the attraction.

Then, after the war, he knew he was still obsessed with the man. He was worried for his health, he told himself. He'd done so much for Harry, and Harry convinced himself that he wanted to give something back in return. That had been a lie, too. Their connection was so much simpler than that. It was just desire. Harry was attracted to him, plain and simple. He'd never have said the man was handsome, but he thought the unflattering way the other students described him was grossly exaggerated. It was just that Snape's most attractive features were the ones most people never looked at – like his elegant fingers and his bottomless eyes.

"Feeling better?" Harry whispered as he leaned forward a bit. His breath ghosted over the shell of the older man's ear.

Snape startled. He hadn't realized the way he'd let Harry turn him to pudding. "I...yes, well, I am well enough. Thank you for the tea. I should be going."

Harry wrinkled his nose. Leave it to Snape to ruin a good thing. "Just stay," he said. "Relax. Let the potion do it's thing." 'Let me get to know you better, get my head around the fact that I've spent the better part of my life wishing I could get in your pants and being daft enough that I only just noticed. Give me a chance to figure out if what's in your pants is the only thing about you I'm interested in.'

"I think I have already overstayed my welcome. I cannot dawdle here forever."

Harry abruptly changed tactics. It was obvious who was going to win this particular battle if the conversation continued on its current course. "Hey, before you go, there is one thing I always wondered." He waited only long enough for emphasis, and not long enough for Snape to get a word in. "What made you decide to teach?"

Snape quirked a brow. Of all the things that Harry could ask him, that's what he wanted to know? He couldn't be serious.

"I'm serious," Harry laughed. "Don't look at me like that! It's just...well, I was thinking about becoming a professor, so I was wondering how you knew you wanted to be one. That's all."

"The great Harry Potter wants to lower himself to a humble teacher's salary? It's a thankless job, Potter, and lacking in the glory of your...previous endeavors."

Harry frowned. "I don't care about glory. You know I don't."

Severus was surprised to find the young man sounded hurt. He acquiesced. "I know. Why did I become a teacher, hm? There were several reasons, I suppose. The most obvious was that I had become fond of Hogwarts. The time between my graduation and my employment felt very much like a sort of limbo. And, of course, there was a certain degree to which, as events unfolded, I was not given a choice," he reminded. "But that isn't what you are asking. You are asking why, given the freedom to live what is left of my life how I please, I am still choosing to return to Hogwarts as Potions Master."

Harry shrugged and slid into the makeshift seat across the table. "You never seemed to care for it much, so it seems a bit odd. I was surprised when I heard."

"Do not misunderstand. Most days are a journey through several of the levels of hell. The students are noisy, the food mediocre. Do not even get me started on the tea. I often find myself talking to walls and sacrificing my limited free time to detentions only to find the same students committed to breaking the same rules. The godforsaken Slytherin Quidditch Team yaps at my heels incessantly, and I find myself, at times, signing anything they shove in my face just to be rid of the lot of them and have some peace, and then, if the students aren't bad enough, the parents are worse," he complained. "But, there are these rare moments when one of the little ingrates in my class suddenly understands, when one student out of a hundred comes to realize just what it is about potions that is so fascinating, the reason I find it a subject of endless intrigue, and that singular moment, Harry, is the reason I continue to teach. It is because every time I consider being done with it once and for all, one of the little toads gets it, and that makes it all seem worth it again, if only for a while." He shrugged. "Besides, when all is said and done, Hogwarts is still my home, in spite of everything. I am in no mood to look for a new one. All of my things are there and arranged in just the way I like them."

Harry felt a warmth spread through the pit of his stomach. Snape really could snark until the cows came home, but what he was really saying under all the talk of ingrates and toads was so simple. Snape, secretly and perhaps buried so deep down in his psyche he didn't realize it himself, liked kids. He liked watching them learn and grow. When a student who was having trouble finally understood the lesson, it brought the bitter old fool joy. Snape would never admit it in those words, but Harry understood. He was not the kindest teacher, nor the gentlest. His students often thought he was the devil incarnate, but he did truly wish to see them succeed. It endeared Harry to him.

"I think I understand," Harry said. "After Voldemort, I've had a lot of time to think. Now that it's all over, I guess I've just had more than enough of the worst side of people. I thought I wanted to be an auror, but that was just because I didn't know what I wanted. It's the kind of job that seems glamorous to a stupid kid, but when you grow up and know better...well, I'm not a stupid kid anymore, I guess. I just keep looking back and remembering teaching my classmates the patronus charm and everything, back when Umbridge was...well..."

"...yes, I remember her quite well," Snape said to stop Harry's fumbling for the proper adjective to describe the sadistic little pink clad maniac.

Harry laughed. "Yeah, I guess some people are pretty hard to forget."

"No matter how hard one might try," Snape agreed.

Harry laughed. "Anyway, I guess what I'm getting at is, in spite of all that was going wrong, I think the DA – ah, that's what we called it, Dumbledore's Army – which, I guess was a little extra stupid now that I'm looking back …"

"Hindsight is 20/20. I believe that is what the muggles say," Severus confirmed. "And no need to continue your rambling, Harry. I understand. If that is how you feel, then you are more than welcome to the Defense Against the Dark Arts post. I have no intention of fighting you for it. It is more trouble than it is worth."

"Oh! I, that's not really what I was getting at," Harry laughed sheepishly. "But thanks. Professor McGonagall already offered it to me. I've decided to accept."

"In that case, I will see you at the beginning of term, but I really ought to be on my way for now. I have been away far longer than intended and there is the small matter of a mangy feline that will ransack my home if she is not fed in due course."

"You have a cat, Professor Snape?" Harry asked. He'd never imagined the man to care much for animals, but somehow found himself enchanted by the idea of the man asleep in an armchair with something furry curled up in his lap.

Severus carefully rose to his feet, summoning his staff to hand. He sincerely hoped by the start of term he would no longer need either the walking stick or the constant infusion of potions. "She is a recent addition," he said. "The staff at St. Mungo's suggested that having something to take care of would be good for my health. I suppose it is pleasant to have someone at home to talk to, even if the only thing the little miscreant has to say in reply is meow." He didn't know why he'd admitted that. It made it sound like he was lonely. He was, but Harry didn't need to know that.

"I understand," Harry said. "I miss having a pet, but ever since Hedwig died I...well, I just haven't been able to bring myself to get another one, I guess."

"All things come in due course," Snape answered. "There is no need to rush to such decisions. Good day, Harry."

"I, uh, Professor Snape...?" Harry stumbled into a sentence that he knew was going nowhere. What could he say to make the man stay longer, to get to keep his company just a few more minutes? Was there anything?

"Severus, Harry," Snape answered. "If we are going to be coworkers, it would be prudent of you to become accustomed to calling me by my first name. All of the other Professors do, whether I like it or not."

"Severus." Harry grinned as the name passed his lips, and he was afraid it must be a terribly goofy grin. He wanted to say something more, but Snape disapparated before he could get another word in. Harry fell back against the transmogrified chair and sighed, raking his fingers through his hair.

"Bloody hell." 'How is it I never noticed before just how awesome he is?' He licked his lips, imagining what it would be like to kiss the stern lips. His fingers twitched, imagining what it must feel like to drag his fingers through inky hair, and he laughed at himself, wondering what Hermione would say about his chances with a man old enough to be his father. He knew exactly what Ron would say. He'd say 'You're mental!' And, Harry figured, he'd be right.

To Be Continued...
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Take Me As I Am