and the funny thing is i would’ve married you (if you’d have stuck around) - angelica_barnes - Harry Potter (2024)

There are two events in everybody’s life that nobody remembers. Two moments experienced by every living thing, yet no one remembers anything about them. Nobody remembers being born... And nobody remembers dying. Is that why we always stare into the eye sockets of a skull? Because we’re asking—

What was it like?

Does it hurt?

Are you still scared?

— The Twelfth Doctor

It takes Severus six years to find the Dursleys. By that point, Harry’s eyes are already dark. Severus looks into them with his wand pointed towards the paralyzed Dursleys in the kitchen and sees Lily reflected back at him.

Harry blinks at him. “Are you going to hurt them, Mister?”

Severus tilts his head. “Do you want me to?”

Harry shakes his own. “‘S bad to hurt people,” he mumbles. “They hurt you back.”

Severus tilts his head the other way. “I knew your mother,” he says. “Lily. She was my best friend, and she never hurt anybody.” He stretches his mouth in a gap-tooth smile. “She’d be proud of you.”

Harry looks very confused. “Who’re you?”

“I’m Severus,” Severus says. Petunia sneezes and he hexes her face frozen that way. “Your mother and I were best friends.”

Harry looks at him a long moment.

Then he pushes his way into Severus’ arms, tucking his face into his neck. “I wanna go home now, please.”

Severus strokes his hair, lifting him in his arms. “Then home we shall go,” he says, and glowers at the Dursleys. “If I hear a single peep from or about you for the rest of Harry’s life, rest assured, I will return here and finish the job.”

Vernon squeaks. Severus rolls his eyes and apparates away.

He lets Harry down the moment they’re inside the cottage door, lulled by the hum of the layers upon layers of protective spells he’s put on the house over the past few months. The two of them are undetectable and unharmable for at least a fifty-mile radius. Harry toddles over to the kitchen table and curls up under it, rocking back and forth with his knees pulled to his chest.

Severus frowns, hanging up his Slytherin scarf on one of the hooks by the door. He walks over to the table and kneels down next to it, smoothing the skirt of his dress down over his legs. “Why are you hiding under there?”

Harry mumbles something into his arms.

Severus frowns harder, brushing his hair behind his ear with a ring-adorned hand. “You can stay under there as long as you want, but you don’t have to,” he says. “You’re allowed to take up space here, Harry.”

Harry’s big green eyes peek up over his arms. “No.”

“Yes.” Severus folds his hands in his lap. “I know you’re scared. I grew up in a house a lot like yours, and I was scared all the time. But you don’t have to be scared anymore. Not with me.”

Harry lifts his head and rests his chin on his arms. “I don’t even know you.”

“Why did you come with me then?”

Harry shrugs. “I trust you,” he sighs, picking at a knot in the hardwood floor. “Don’t know why. Just do.”

Severus shifts so he’s sitting criss-cross, pulling his wand out of his pocket and muttering an incantation.

Harry stares wide-eyed at the ghostly doe, reaching out to touch its back. “Mommy,” he whispers, wondrous.

Severus’ breath hitches. “Yes,” he says. “This was hers. Your father’s was a stag.”

It’s never gotten any easier, to talk about James and Lily. He doesn’t utter their names if he can help it, not since their wedding. He hasn’t at all since their deaths; then again, he hasn’t spoken to anyone since their deaths, unless it was about finding that wretched woman Petunia and the precious child she didn’t deserve to be entrusted with.

“What’s yours?” Harry asks, petting the doe. He uncurls a bit more with every stroke.

Severus nods to the doe, which is now sniffing Harry’s hair. “Same as your mother’s,” he says. “As I said—best friends.”

Harry nods absently, hugging the doe’s neck now. It’s laid down beside him, resting its head in his lap. “This isn’t home,” he says. “You said you’d take me home.”

What Harry knows as home is long gone. Severus hasn’t been back to Godric’s Hollow since the funeral. “I know this isn’t home, but it’s the best I can do right now,” he says. “Your real home isn’t safe. As soon as it is, though, I’ll take you there.” He holds out his pinky. “Promise.”

Harry stares.

Severus shakes his pinky. “You gotta wrap yours around mine, that’s what makes the promise official.”

Harry does as he’s told, though he doesn’t look any less confused.

Severus drops his hand. “This house is yours as much as it is mine, so I want you to make yourself comfortable,” he says. “But there are going to be some rules.”

Harry shrinks, hiding himself behind the doe.

Severus panics. “Wait, no, not those kinds of rules.” He forces himself back onto his knees. “You can’t go anywhere without me, not because you’ve done anything wrong or because I don’t trust you, but because I can only keep you safe if I know where you are. And if you’re feeling bad—if you’re feeling sick, or sad, or angry or scared or even just off—I want you to tell me, so I can help you feel better. And if you ever doubt that I care about you, even a little, I want you to say so, because you need to know I love you better than you know your own name.”

The Patronus finally runs out, disintegrating in Harry’s lap. His lip wobbles. “Where’d she go?”

“She’ll be back,” Severus says. “Every night at bedtime, I promise. Do you understand the rules, Harry?”

Harry straightens himself up, flattening his mouth. “What happens if I break them?”

“Nothing, really,” Severus says. “I’ll explain them to you again, and why they’re important. But I will never hurt you, and I will always love you.”

Harry nods. “I know you,” he says. “I’ve never met you, but I know you.”

Severus doesn’t cry, as a rule. He won’t break it now. “You do. I met you when you were very, very young, before your parents went away. I’ve always been sorry we weren’t able to meet again.”

Harry crawls out from under the table. “You seem sad,” he says. “Like me. No one should ever be sad like me.”

“Except bad people,” Severus amends, because he must teach his kid some pettiness. “Bad people should always be sad.”

Harry reaches out for Severus’ hand, touching the gold ring there. “Pretty.”

“Thank you.”

“My mom gave it to you,” Harry says, tapping the emerald at the center.

Severus’ brow furrows. “How do you know that?”

Harry shrugs. “I dream about you,” he says. “And Mommy, and Daddy. There are other people too. I always wake up sad.” He pulls his hand back. “It’s okay though. You’re here now.”

Severus thinks, very suddenly and very terribly, that he will have to call the ex-almost-love-of-his-life. “Yes, I am, Harry,” he says, standing and brushing off his skirts before offering his hand. “Come on. Time for lunch.”

Severus drags his feet for another week before making the dreaded call. He leaves Harry in the kitchen with a white tablecloth and finger paints and steps out into the garden, settling down on a bench some hundred feet away, facing the kitchen window with a joint burning in his hands.

The phone rings three times before Remus picks up. “I don’t want to talk to you, Sna—”

“I took Harry.”

Remus stops. “What?”

Severus fists his hand around the folds of his dress. “He was staying with Lily’s sister and her family,” he says, “and they were awful to him. So I took him and I’m taking care of him, because those wretched people won’t.”

Remus is very quiet for a very long time. Severus waits, watching Harry through the window. He has James’ curls.

“How long?” Remus asks finally.

Severus winces. “A week.”

“You found our son a week ago and you didn’t call me until today.”

“He’s not our son, Remus.”

“He became as much when James and Lily died and you know it,” Remus lashes. “Where are you?”

Severus swallows. “If I tell you, will you come?”

“I’ll come if you don’t.”

Severus closes his eyes. “Home.”

“I’ll be there in an hour.” Remus hangs up.

They had bought this cottage together, shortly after their graduation from Hogwarts, two years after their family fell apart for the first time. Sirius was in the wind, as he had been since the Prank, and James was living with Regulus, and sleeping with him too. Lily had retreated to Muggle society for a few months, leaving Severus and Remus alone together for the first time since the morning after the Prank, when they had held each other in the infirmary as the world crumbled down around them.

Two years after that, Regulus was dead. Severus and Remus both received a wedding invitation in the mail, each with an ex listed on the card. James and Lily were married, and Harry was born a suspicious seven months later, and a year after that they were buried and Sirius was caged up in Azkaban. Severus and Remus had lived in Ramsrot Cottage together up until the funeral, at which point they began to fight. After Sirius’ trial, Remus left, and they haven’t spoken since.

Severus is still in the garden when Remus arrives, and Harry is still happily destroying the tablecloth. Remus glances at him through the window, then stops dead in his tracks to stare, forgetting about Severus entirely.

“I know,” Severus says. “He’s like a mini James.”

Remus flinches at the mention of his ex-boyfriend, coming over to the bench and settling next to Severus, though still a good few inches away. “I have my own children at home,” he says. “They’re entrusted to Minnie at the moment. Did you know I teach at Hogwarts?”

Severus did not. He himself has occupied a small shop for healing potions in Diagon Alley for the past five years, which he bought after the veil of grief lifted somewhat. He keeps to himself mostly, and he hasn’t stepped foot on the grounds of Hogwarts since he graduated, though he supposes if Harry makes it to eleven (which he will, come hell or high water) then he’ll have to return.

“What are their names?” he asks, to be polite, and tries not to burn with the thought of someone else having Remus’ children.

“Luna and Draco Lupin,” Remus answers, watching him carefully. “Formally Lovegood and Malfoy.”

Severus’ hands tighten around each other in surprise. “You adopted.”

Remus shrugs, looking forward towards the house. “They needed a home, and I did my best to provide them with one,” he says, then gives Severus a lopsided smile. “Besides, I needed the company. I’d been alone since we separated.”

Severus ignores that, shifting his palms to cover the silver and red ring he wears on the fourth finger of his right hand. “I wanted to love you,” he says. “After. I was just bad at it.”

“No, you weren’t.” Remus’ own hands are dotted with crude tattoos—all Sirius’ handiwork, no doubt—most notably, a paw- and a hoof-print on his left ring finger. When he moves his right hand, Severus can see a snake slithering up from under one of Remus’ many silver rings. “I’ll bring them here tomorrow, if that’s alright with you.”

Severus blinks at him. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I’m staying, idiot,” Remus says, bewildered, as if the whole damn thing were obvious and Severus is the moron here. “Did you think you would call me, tell me you found our son, and then just go on raising him alone? Because if so, you’re not nearly as intelligent as I remember you being.”

“And you’re not nearly as selfless,” Severus bites back. “Honestly, Remus, I called you because it was the right thing to do, but why do you think it took a week? I had to be half-high just to pick up the phone.”

Remus falls quiet at that. It’s a fair shot, and he knows it. “And I only answered because I was fully drunk,” he mutters, staring at his lap. “I was your life partner, Sev, but you were also mine. Don’t you dare say I don’t know the pain of existing without you.”

Severus once had a patient with a hacked-off limb. He had regrown her arm from the wound, but it hadn’t functioned quite right, lagging from thought to action. Things seemed the same on the surface, but they were harder, they took longer. Severus thinks of her now, when he thinks of life without Remus. It’s not unlivable. It’s just worse.

“We weren’t even supposed to be friends,” Severus says, watching as Harry slams his blue hands down on the table with a delighted scream. “I bet they hated that we loved each other.”

Remus huffs. In another life, it could be a laugh. “Sirius never understood it,” he says. “But he was never himself after he ran away. Losing Regulus broke something in him and no amount of love could put it right.” He rubs the hoof-print tattoo with his thumb. “James, though… I think he understood. To an extent, at least. When Sirius betrayed me and tried to kill you, the two of us, we weren’t… It wasn’t the same. He saw how I clung to you, in the days after. I think he knew we belonged together the same way he, Sirius, and I used to. And I think he died wishing he could still belong with us like that. Just like Lily died wishing she’d married you instead of him.”

Severus shuts his eyes. “You can stay here, and so can your children, and we can raise Harry together, but you can’t call him our son, and you can’t talk about what happened here.”

Parties. Wine. An arm around Severus’ waist, a hand in Remus’ hair. Laughter from the couch, from the bedroom, embers burning in the fireplace. Throwing up in the sink, in the toilet, crying over cartoons and kid mysteries, giving and getting gifts, saying Merry Christmas, singing Happy Birthday. Sleeping in a bed that was too small for all of them. Love spilling out of the windows and into the garden, making the flowers grow.

And then tea, and black clothes, and Frank Sinatra crooning The World We Knew as doors slammed shut and stuck that way.

“Do you think the love left when I did?” Remus asks now, his voice muted by the wind. “Because it didn’t. The love never went anywhere at all.”

Severus’ face threatens to fold. “Harry told me he wants to go home,” he says. “And it kinda f*cked me up that he meant Godric’s Hollow and not here.”

Remus takes his hand. Severus accepts the peace offering. The world was at war, but their souls never were. Severus threads their fingers together and it feels like coming home.

“We can’t just pretend nothing happened,” Remus says.

“No,” Severus says. “No, but I can love you like it.”

The door creaks open. Harry peeks out into the grass, paint-covered and smaller than he should be. “Can I come out, Sev’riss?”

“Yeah, baby.” Severus stands from the bench, going to gather Harry in his arms. “I want you to meet someone.”

Remus comes to meet them by the door. “Hello, Harry. It’s been a long time.”

Harry pats his nose. “Moony,” he says.

Remus loses all composure. “Yes,” he says, dragging Harry into him. “Yes, I—Moony. Moony. That’s me.”

Remus retrieves Luna and Draco the next night. Draco is quiet and withdrawn, immersed in his books and uninterested in talking much with Harry or Severus. Luna, on the other hand, plops herself right down next to Harry, grabs his hand, and starts babbling about the fairy kisses on his palm. Harry looks at her with stars in his eyes and asks if he can touch her hair.

“When’d they come to you?” Severus asks, washing the dishes.

Remus dries them beside him. “Luna’s been with me for five years,” he says. “Her mother died during the war in an accident, and her father killed himself soon after. Dray came to me last year, after his parents’ arrest. He doesn’t speak.”

“By choice or by condition?”

“I’m not sure, but considering the level of abuse he was put under, I would guess it’s a mix of the two.” Remus puts the last plate in the rack. “I thought this place would fall to pieces, if I’m honest. Have you always stayed here?”

Severus has never left. “No, I moved around a bit before coming back and setting it up for Harry.”

“Ah, the wards.” Remus leans back against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. “How’d I get through?”

Severus turns off the sink and dries his hands off on a towel. “I spelled the place so nobody with the intention to harm Harry could come in,” he says. “There’s a few extra layers of protection for myself and the rest of our family, too, even the ones lost to us, but they’re just precautions. Most of the spellwork is for Harry.”

“Do you mind if I add my own layers for Luna and Draco?”

“Not at all. Just don’t f*ck up the base wards.”

Remus leaves for the garden, his brown coat billowing behind him. Severus gathers the laundry from upstairs, throwing it into the dead machine that he forces back alive with a few well-placed spells. He climbs up to the attic and pulls boxes down, unpacking Remus’ clothes and folding them back into the half-empty closet and drawers. He also takes out Sirius’ leather jacket and James’ Quidditch jersey, hanging them in the wardrobe too, before reaching into his own collection of things and taking Lily’s green ribbon from the bowls of jewelry, tying his hair back with her love.

Regulus’ cloak is in the back hall, resting dusty on an otherwise empty coat rack. Severus doesn’t think families are supposed to be half-gone before they’re twenty-five.

There’s a knock on the wall and little Luna wanders in, climbing onto the bed and squirming around until she’s comfortable.

“Hello, маленький кролик,” Severus says, turning from the dresser. Luna watches, captivated, as his dress swirls around his legs. “What can I do for you?”

“You’re very strange,” Luna says, flapping her sweater sleeves. “You feel like those tiny doors in old houses that don’t go anywhere. You just open the door and there’s more of the wall. But I think there probably used to be something, before they filled it in. Secret tunnels and rooms and all that. And the tiny door protects it all, because even though it’s small, it’s very very brave.”

Severus thinks she’s absolutely mad. “Thank you?”

Luna nods decisively. “You’re welcome.”

Severus goes back to sorting the jewelry. Luna kicks her feet against the bed and hums Queen, which Severus supposes makes sense, if she has truly been raised the second great love of Sirius Black’s life.

Remus comes back in around dinnertime, seemingly unfazed by the refound trinkets of their lost family scattered around the house. The table has six chairs, and Severus supposes it’s better to have five of them filled than one, even if three of them are holding the wrong people. Remus looks frail and harsh, like fresh snow packed into a bootprint. The valley is quiet, and the house is dark. Severus lights the lanterns and cuts the children’s chicken. Years pass in a single sunrise, and then stop.

Two weeks after Remus comes home, Draco scrapes his knee. Severus and Remus don’t find out for four days, because Draco doesn’t cry; he cleans out the wound, wipes the blood from the floor, and washes his clothes, all without uttering a single word. They only find out at all because of Harry, who tugs on Severus’ hand one day and says, “Sev’riss. Dray needs you to kiss him better.”

Severus stares at the mess of pink and red on Draco’s knee and thinks of how Regulus used to stitch patches onto Sirius’ jackets to cover up the blood stains there. He kisses the scrape and says, “You are allowed to make messes, маленький голубь, and noise. You are allowed to do whatever makes you happy, so long as it isn’t dangerous for yourself or others.”

Draco blinks at him with the blankest of looks. Severus pats his knee and steps away.

Harry toddles after Severus into the garden, where Severus fits him with a sun hat and gloves. “What’re these?” he asks, tugging at the leaves of a cluster of red flowers.

“Petunias,” Severus answers.

Harry scowls and rips them out of the ground by the stems. Severus grins and joins him.

“Can I ask you a question?” Harry asks after about twenty minutes of vicious weeding. (Any and all petunias have been ruthlessly removed from the premises.) “Moony gets sad when I ask him, and you don’t look sad.”

Severus finds this slightly concerning. “What do I look like, then?”

Harry shrugs, cutting the leaves off some black-eyed susans. “You don’t look like anything,” he says. “Well. You look like Mommy, a little bit. When she said everything would be okay. Not scared.”

“Not scared doesn’t mean not sad, Harry,” Severus says, and knows deep down he’s always been both. “But alright, ask your question.”

Harry grasps some weeds and pulls. “Are you and Moony in love?”

Severus picks up the watering can to offer some relief to the wilting daffodils. “Yes and no,” he says. “We’re life partners. He’s my best friend, but he’s also more. I’ll be able to explain it better when you’re older, probably. Sorry.”

Harry doesn’t seem bothered. “I can wait.” He presses his pointer finger to the underside of a daisy petal until a ladybug crawls onto his skin. “Were my Mommy and Daddy in love? Petunia says they weren’t. She says Mommy was f*cking someone else because she was a whor*.”

It takes everything in Severus not to flinch. “Petunia was wrong about everything she ever told you,” he says. “Don’t say f*cking, and don’t say whor*. whor* is a bad word we don’t call anybody. f*cking is a word we can discuss when you’re thirteen.”

Harry crosses his eyes to watch the ladybug. “So Mommy and Daddy were in love.”

Severus tosses the last of the thorns into a bowl, considering the consequences of either answer. In the end, his brutal realism wins over. “Your mommy was in love with me,” he says. “We were engaged, back in school, before some adult problems got in the way. And your daddy was in love with Moony and their boyfriend, Padfoot, though I doubt you remember him. Your father was also in love with a man named Regulus for awhile, before he passed away. I’d been in love with Regulus myself, a few years before that, but we never acted on it.”

Harry frowns. “That sounds complicated.”

“It was,” Severus says, reaching for some tiger lilies. “But it also wasn’t. We were a family, and in families everybody loves each other.”

“I don’t think anybody in Petunia’s family loves each other,” Harry says.

Severus laughs. “Fair point. But real families do, and we were as real as you could get.”

The ladybug on Harry’s finger unfolds its wings and flutters away. Harry watches it land only a few feet away on the flower Severus is tending to. “Your wrist looks weird.”

Severus glances down at the mess of welts and scars that was once his Dark Mark. He winces at the memory of its removal—he burned it away himself in a train station bathroom the night Lily was killed—and nearly flinches at the memory of its imprintment—he’d taken it the same day Regulus had, in a desperate attempt to protect the boy he considered his own.

“I’d rather not talk about it,” he says.

“Oh.” Harry ducks his head. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright.” Severus spies a family of dandelion puffs in the grass and hacks it out of the earth. “Here,” he says, plucking one of the stems and offering it to Harry. “Make a wish and blow.”

Harry takes the dandelion. “I wish Mommy and Daddy were here.” He cranes his neck to watch the seeds float away in the wind. The moment the last one’s out of sight, he drops his eyes on Severus. “Now you.”

Severus’ throat tightens. “No, Harry.”

“Yes, Sev’riss,” Harry snarks. He pokes Severus in the chest. “You.”

Severus sighs, snapping his own dandelion off the bunch. “I wish for you to have a long and happy life,” he says.

“And Luna,” Harry demands, leaning forward onto his stick-straight arms, his palms flat on the ground. “And Dray, and Remus. And you. Everybody.”

Severus loves this stupid, stubborn child. “And Luna,” he agrees. “And Dray, and Remus. And…”

“And you,” Harry prompts helpfully.

“And me,” Severus finishes, and wonders if it’s possible to die from affection. If his squeezing heart is any indication, it is. He looks up at the house. “Do you think we should have them make wishes too?”

Harry beams, nodding so hard his hat flops off his head. “Race you inside!”

Severus wonders what magic has him brightening in only a month of being removed from the Dursleys’ cage. There is a strong aura of magic around him, far more than his own power, as if multiple spells have been cast directly on his soul rather than simply his skeleton or the objects he carries with him.

Severus does not have much time to worry over it, however, as he chases Harry back inside, hiking his skirts up to his knees. He drops his hat and gloves at the entryway and tiptoes into the kitchen, where Harry is handing out not-yet-dandelions to Luna, Draco, and Remus. The world seems very small, suddenly, and manageable.

“What’s this?” Remus asks, taking the dandelion from Harry’s tiny fingers. He’s wearing a pink dress today, and it reminds Severus of when Remus used to practice pirouettes in his worn-out ballet shoes in the Room of Requirement with only the fireplace for light and a million mirrors keeping them apart. Severus used to dance with him, before their lives ended.

“Wishes,” Harry whispers, which doesn’t make literal or grammatical sense, but that is none of Harry’s concern as he is seven years old and possibly has ADHD.

Remus nods along, cognizant of all of this of course, and brings the fluffy flower to his lips. “Well then, I wish—” He cuts himself off, clearing his throat and pasting on an incredibly unconvincing smile. “I wish for your eternal happiness.”

Harry groans. “You and Sev’riss are so boring,” he whines. “You can’t both wish for the same thing!” He stomps his foot at the end there, which fails in its mission to convey seriousness quite terribly, as all it does is make Remus laugh.

“I wish the horses outside my house would come here,” Luna says in that dazed tone of hers, her eyes clouded over. “I miss them.”

Remus frowns. “There are no horses at our house, Luna.”

“No. At my old house,” Luna says, blowing the fluff off her dandelion. “They were soft, for skeletons. I used to feed them pumpkin seeds.”

Remus stares at her.

Harry frowns. “I know those horses,” he says. “They’re nice. They came to my aunt’s house sometimes. I’d take them to her bedroom and watch them chew on her ugly curtains.”

Severus drags Harry into his side, kissing his head. “You’re a very good boy, you know that?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Draco flinch.

Remus notices too. “Would you like to make a wish, Dray?”

Draco’s mouth twists up and twitches, as if struggling to stay shut. He mouths something quick and little and crushes the dandelion puff in his hand, stomping out the door.

Remus glances at Severus. “You or me?”

“Me.” Severus gives Harry a gentle push towards Luna and scurries for the front door, patting his pocket to make sure his wand is there. He doesn’t see Draco by the bench, or in the flowers, or even in the little patch of stone and wooden birds Severus has carved over the years, but when he ducks around the edge of the house, he finds Draco curled against the bulkhead, counting down on his fingers.

Severus stops a good few feet away. “Do you mind if I sit with you, маленький голубь?”

Draco shrugs.

Severus settles back against the house with his knees to his chest, careful to keep some distance between himself and Draco. “I knew your parents in school,” he says. “We were in the same House at Hogwarts, and we lived together in the same part of the castle.”

Draco peeks up at him.

Severus attempts a smile. He pulls out his wand and turns two nearby flowers into a notebook and pen, offering them to Draco. “You don’t have to talk, but do you think you could write a little bit?”

Draco nods. His tiny hands unfold from his knees and wrap around the notebook and pen, drawing them in. He opens up to the first page and scribbles something, then holds it out to Severus.

Were you friends?

“No.” Severus had been on okay terms with Narcissa, until she started dating Lucius. Sometimes they had hid away from Bellatrix together, sneaking sweets in the kitchen and trading stories about their crushes. Severus talked about Lily, and Narcissa, for a brief and bittersweet time, talked about a Hufflepuff girl named Maggie, with auburn curls and sweet green eyes, whose freckles Narcissa wanted to count with kisses.

Sometimes Severus wonders where Maggie is now, then thinks better of it. He hasn’t seen her since she came into his store with a bleeding stub in place of an arm.

Draco takes the notebook back, starting a new line. I don’t like wishes. They’re stupid.

“Why?”

Draco huffs. They don’t come true.

Severus’ heart squeezes. “That’s fair,” he says. “I used to wish for my friends to come back, and those wishes didn’t come true. But sometimes I would wish for a good day, and that would happen. Or I’d wish for some item I couldn’t find in stores for months, and then it would be there on my next visit. The key to wishes is asking for small miracles, not big ones.”

Draco frowns. I did, he writes. I always did, but they never loved me.

“Ah.” Severus drops his head back against the house. “I know that wish.”

Draco throws the notebook and pen on the ground, shrinking into himself again. He doesn’t have to say anything for Severus to know exactly what he’s thinking.

“I know you’re sad you lost your mom and dad,” he says. “I was really sad when I lost mine, even though they weren’t good to me. But Remus is gonna take really good care of you, okay? And so am I. You’re gonna grow up very, very loved. Even if it’s not by the people you want.”

Draco doesn’t lift his head.

Severus waits a few seconds, but when Draco doesn’t move, he sighs, readying to push to his feet—

A hand shoots out and grabs his.

“Okay.” Severus scoots a little closer. Draco holds on tight enough to bruise, but Severus doesn’t dare let go. “Okay, маленький голубь. I’ll stay.”

The night Luna and Draco arrived, Severus had expanded the second floor using the spell most wizards use on tents, ensuring there were enough bedrooms for all five of them. It had lasted for one night before Remus altered it back into two bedrooms with a pointed look in Severus’ direction, marching right back into what was apparently now their bedroom with his arms crossed and his chin jutted up.

Admittedly, Severus has never slept better, but it’s the principle of the whole thing.

Still, living with other people has thrown him for a loop. He’s a creature of very specific habit, and while he’s kept his routine so far, there are certain things he’d rather keep to himself, and that’s difficult in a house of three children and an ex-not-quite-lover.

Sometime after one in the morning, when the children have been put to bed and Remus has retreated that way too, Severus moves to the kitchen and into the divet that is the entryway, sitting down on the cushioned bench that also serves as a boot rack. He pulls his phone from his pocket and he calls Lily’s number, the device that holds it locked away in the attic on silent.

“Hey, it’s Lily! I can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a message at the beep! Oh, and if it’s you, Sevvy, I love you and your glasses are probably on your head.”

Severus reaches instinctually for his hair, despite knowing his reading glasses are in his nightstand upstairs. “Hey, Lils,” he whispers. “I love you, too. Remus says hi. We made wishes on dandelions today, and Harry wished you were here. And James.” He laughs. “God, James. Jamie. I miss him too, can you believe that? I never got to snog his stupid face. Always wanted to, but never got up the courage to ask. Knew you’d understand, though. Like you understood Reggie. Merlin, but I miss Reggie. I even miss Sirius, the stupid git, and you know I hated him. But he was Remy’s, so he was mine. And I wish—even though it wasn’t what I said to the dandelion—I wish we were all together again.”

He presses the end call button, letting the phone and his hand fall back down to his lap.

“I wish that too.” Severus’ head snaps up as Remus comes around the far corner of the kitchen, out of the left opening from the living room. “That we were all together again, I wish that too.”

Severus looks away, out through the window on the door. It’s split into six tinier panes, though three of them are missing now, two on the bottom right and one on the top left. Severus had punched them out the day each of his family members had died, leaving only himself, Remus, and Sirius still here. He’s thought about destroying Sirius’ square too, marked with a pawprint, but he’s never quite been able to bring himself to do it.

Remus sits down beside Severus on the boot rack—it’s really too small for the both of them—and folds his hands in his lap. “I call Sirius’ phone once a month, on the last day,” he says. “I’d call James’, too, but I could never find it.”

“It’s upstairs with Lily’s,” Severus mutters. “I used to call him, but somehow it was worse. I couldn’t—”

Well.

He couldn’t do a lot of things.

“You couldn’t pretend,” Remus says. Sure, good enough. “Can I see it?”

Severus nods, wiping his eyes. “Wait here.”

He doesn’t want Remus to see the attic. He keeps what he has left of their family up here, mostly photo albums and boxes of clothes. He digs around for the right chest for awhile, eventually finding one holding Regulus’ sweaters. He takes one of those down with him too, after unburrowing three phones from its folds.

Severus surrenders James’ phone to Remus’ hands, keeping Lily and Regulus’ for himself. “I have a bunch of their other stuff up there too, if you’d like to see sometime. Not tonight, it’s too late, but—tomorrow, maybe.”

Remus shakes his head, thumbing the phone. “Not while the kids are here,” he rasps. “Sorry, do you mind if I—”

“No, go ahead.”

Remus pulls out his own phone, dialling James’ number from memory.

“Sirius, give me the phone back, hey, no—Ah!” There’s a breathy laugh, and the sound of a smacking kiss. When James’ voice returns, it’s loud and clear. “Hi, this is James.”

“Jamie!” Remus’ face crumples at the sound of his own voice in the background, slightly disgruntled but still leaking fondness in spades. “You said you’d do the dishes!”

“Sorry, sweetheart!” James shouts, and then, quieter, “Look, you know what to do, yeah? Call back soon.”

Remus buries his face in his hands. “What does Reggie’s say?”

Severus bites his lip. “Remus—”

“What. Does Reggie’s say.”

Severus calls Regulus’ number.

“If you’re unsophisticated enough to use a Muggle invention for contact, I have no interest in speaking with you,” comes Regulus’ dry drawl. “Unless you’re my idiot boyfriend, my genius boyfriend, or one of the other three freaks I call family. In that case…” He pauses. “… f*cking Floo me.”

Remus snorts, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Never was one for tact, was he?”

“No.” Severus pulls the phone back into his lap, folding his skirt over it and Lily’s. “You know I almost killed myself when he died?”

Remus shakes his head. “No,” he says, staring down at James’ phone, “but I spent half the night James died holding Sirius’ gun to my head, so I’m not exactly surprised.”

Severus laughs. It isn’t a funny laugh. “Isn’t it kinda f*cked-up that the suicidal kids are the ones that lived?” he asks. “I mean, you, me, and Sirius are practically the DSM-5, yet it’s James and Lily who kick the bucket.”

“Regulus had depression,” Remus deadpans.

“Shut up, I’m trying to make light of a bad situation.” Severus lets his head loll to the side, threading their fingers together. “You know, some sick, selfish part of me is glad it’s you. Here, I mean. Alive. When I found out Lily was pregnant, and that the kid was James’, I just… I don’t know that I could’ve handled that. Even if that makes me a terrible person, which I know it probably does.”

Remus shrugs, rubbing his thumb along the back of Severus’ hand. “When James told me he and Lily were having a baby, I threw him out of my apartment,” he says. “Literally. I grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him out the door and into the wall. He gave me his puppy dog eyes, whimpered Moony? at me, like that’d change any of it. I slammed the door in his face and didn’t talk to him for three months.”

Severus vaguely remembers that. “Is that when he started calling me drunk and off his ADHD meds? He was driving Lily up the wall.”

“Yeah, probably.” Remus drops his head onto Severus’ shoulder. “We should go to bed, shouldn’t we?”

Severus looks out at the moon. “Does it still hurt?” he asks. The bed would feel like a cage. He doesn’t want to go. “When it’s full, I mean.”

Remus kisses Severus’ shoulder. “Not since you healed me,” he says. “Not too badly, at least. It’s more of a dull ache. I still put wolfsbane in my tea on the three surrounding nights, though, and I’ve got your recipe for the cure in the pocket of my coat, just in case.”

He won’t ever need it again. Severus made sure of that in sixth year, after the Prank, and he’s ashamed it even took him that long. (Not that the alchemy made it easy for him.) Remus Lupin is a cured werewolf, the first and for a long time the only, until Severus started stocking the potion at his shop. To this day, it’s still the only thing he gives away for free.

Speaking of his shop, he probably needs to deal with that at some point. At the very least put a sign up that says Away on Vacation. Maybe he’ll call Maggie.

Severus is startled from his sleepy reverie by Remus lifting Severus’ left wrist and running his fingers over the scars there.

“Does it still hurt,” Remus echoes, but it’s not a question the same way Harry’s was. He lifts Severus’ arm to his lips and kisses the mess of scars there, the same way he used to kiss the Dark Mark, saying, I know this isn’t you. I love you anyway.

“Only when I remember,” Severus says, and means now, and always, and forever and probably after that, too. “Любимый. I can’t sleep in that bed with you. I won’t survive it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m halfway in love with you and never fully there,” Severus breathes, “and sometimes I wake up and I think you’re Lily, or Reggie, or even goddamn James, and it kills me. And then I realize it’s you and the relief is so intense I have to bite down to keep from crying, and the grief that follows that is so deep it chokes me. I got used to sleeping in an empty bed, Remy. I don’t think I can unlearn that.”

Remus sits up. “You and I both know what’s loved cannot be unloved,” he says. “And you love me.”

Severus sighs. “Romeo.”

“Juliet.”

Severus nearly smiles at that, but stops himself at the last second, leaning forward onto his knees. “I love violently,” he says. “Like a snake reared for the kill. If I had found Regulus’ murderer, I would have stripped them of their skin, muscle, and bone layer by layer, ounce by ounce. If I had found Lily’s, I would have carved his limbs off one by one and made him watch as I sautéed his flank into my dinner. I don’t have mercy and I don’t give second chances. You do, you hand them out like candy to children, and you would rather tear your own teeth out than sink them in another’s neck. You love gently, Remus, and I love violently, and because of this we cannot sleep in the same bed.”

Remus slaps him. “You’re an idiot,” he breathes, then grabs Severus’ face and tugs him up into a kiss, giving all that he’s got. “You’re an absolute moron, I would have taken on Voldemort himself if I had known it would keep you safe.”

“Don’t say his name—”

Remus kisses him harder, quieter. “You splint the wings of broken birds,” he whispers, “and you burn bugs with cigarettes and you don’t even smoke. I break the birds’ wings and I keep the bugs in little jars. We are insane and f*cked-up and grief-spelled and I will love you forever and you will love me and we’ll be mad for it and that’s alright. One day we’ll wake up sad and chisel each other’s names into our wrists with a rusty screwdriver. I’m not worried about us, calon ddewr. You are good inside and a little ruined; so am I. Come to bed.”

Severus goes limp in his arms, one arm around Remus’ shoulders and the other crawling up his back. “Dance with me a little while,” he says, closing his eyes to the moonlight. He tucks his face into Remus’ neck and sways.

Remus cradles the back of his head. “Cariad fy mywyd,” he says, and though Severus is sure he has said that very thing to Sirius and James too, he finds he cannot be sorry for having the honor, however shared.

Upstairs, they stretch their arms across the sheets and link their fingers. The house is haunted and their heads are worse. “Любовь всей моей жизни,” Severus answers, feeling the wind come in through the window and carry their secrets away. “I’m so happy you’re home.”

Morning comes and Severus readies the fireplace for a visit to Diagon Alley. Remus eyes it skeptically, and outright scowls when Severus steps into it. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Severus raises his eyebrow at the mess of conjured stuffed toys Remus is currently buried in, with a flower-crown on his head and three children in fairy wings scattered around him. “Yes, dear. I’ll be sure to only insight a small riot.”

He’s gone before he can hear Remus’ answer, but he’s sure it was equally as bitchy.

The shop hasn’t been ransacked in the month he’s been gone, likely because of the absolute crap-ton of protection charms Severus has cast on it over the years. He hangs his cloak by the door and checks inventory, takes what he can from the register and the safe, and starts to gather some healing tonics, sleep draughts, and protective potions into a box to take back to Remus and their children.

He’s readying the Floo to leave when there’s a knock on the window.

“You’ve been gone a long time,” the woman says when he lets her in. He locks the door behind her. She waves three seconds after it would be socially appropriate. “We were starting to think you’d died. Well, everyone else did. I knew if the war didn’t kill you nothing would.”

Severus tries to stifle a smile and fails. “Hi, Maggie. Been awhile.”

“You dropped off the face of the earth, Sev,” Maggie says. “Oh!” She reaches down into her pocket and pulls out a handful of sweets. “These are my best. I just introduced them to the shop, finally perfected the recipe.” She jiggles her hand. “Come on, try ‘em.”

Severus takes one, unwrapping it and letting it melt on his tongue. “Tastes like… home, somehow.”

Maggie beams, shoving the rest into his pockets. The two of them have long lost the idea of personal space. “Yes! I used one of your compass and comfort potions, I hope you don’t mind. It’s just regular chocolate, flavor-wise, but when you add the potion and a bit of grassroot, then cast a—”

She keeps babbling, but Severus zones out, going back to his task of collecting bottles. Maggie follows him around, happy to talk and be heard even if there’s no listening involved. Severus is just unpacking the last shipment of bezoars when Maggie says, “Hey, Sev, where’ve you been? Really.”

Severus tears up the empty box and folds it up, throwing it in the recycling. “One of my sons had an emergency,” he says. “He’s fine now, nothing to worry about, but my partner and I decided it was best for ourselves and the children to take a little time off from the world.”

Maggie doesn’t seem too surprised, which Severus finds odd, considering he’s never mentioned a family before. “That’s nice,” she says. “I was kind of worried you’d shut off that part of yourself after Lily died. I know I did, when I lost Cissy.”

Severus is careful not to freeze, but his hand twitches.

Maggie flushes. “Sorry. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it, it’s just—We went to school together, even if you don’t remember, and I figured we’re sort of friends by now—”

“I remember,” Severus says, slowly reaching for the tape to seal the box he’s taking home. “And we are. I just—wasn’t expecting it. That’s all.”

Maggie lifts herself onto the counter, kicking her legs against the cabinets. Severus notices for the first time that her hair is held back with bee barrettes. “Who’s the partner, then? Kinda makes sense you have kids. You always seemed like you’d be a good dad.”

Severus reminds himself he does not cry. At all, and especially not in public. “Remus Lupin. Gryffindor.”

Maggie laughs. “Oh, I remember him. Real troublemaker, even if he seemed like a teacher’s pet. Good on you, Sev. I bet he’s lovely.”

Severus smiles. “He is.” He shifts the box off the counter and into his arms. “Look, Maggie, I’ve gotta go, but could you keep an eye on the shop for me? It won’t be long—”

“I’ll watch it forever, if that’s what you need,” Maggie says. “I know the rules. All healing potions are a proportionate price to the kindness of the patient, the wolfsbane potions are free, and the dark magic potions are a phone call to the Ministry. Understood. Call me, yeah? We miss you around here, Sev.”

“Of course, Miss Melrose.” Severus does a tiny curtsey, at least as well as he can holding a box of heavy potions. “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

Severus tosses her the keys before disappearing into the Floo.

Back at home, Remus is sitting on the couch, fiddling with his cane. Severus had found it in the back of the closet and brought it out when Remus moved back in, for his bad pain days. The children are napping on the floor, Luna’s hair in Harry’s mouth and Harry’s hand over Draco’s eyes. Remus looks up when Severus comes through, shooting to his feet with a newspaper clutched in his knobby fingers.

“I’m guessing it’s not good news,” Severus says, putting the box of potions on the coffee table and holding his hand out. “Well, give it here, come on.”

Remus’ jaw ticks. “Severus,” he says, his eyes manic. “Sirius escaped.”

Severus stops. “Excuse me.”

He races for the door, wand already pulled. Protective wards are bursting from his lips in clean, uncut Russian, his fury building the magic up into impenetrable walls. He’d have made a damn fine Auror, or even a Death Eater, if he had the stomach to watch good people die, but he doesn’t. All he has is a terror so instinctual he doesn’t know how to live without it and three children he needs to protect with his life.

Remus grabs him by the arm. Severus falters, nearly dropping his wand. “Let go of me—”

“Severus,” Remus says again, squeezing his wrist. “We need to find him.”

“We need to protect ourselves,” Severus lashes, wrenching back, but Remus holds him fast. “Maybe leave Ramsrot. Do you think we could blend in with Muggles—?”

“Sevvy,” Remus says, blinking back tears. “I want to bring him home.”

Severus growls low in his throat. “He’s a traitor,” he spits. “He’s a f*cking murderer. He killed my girlfriend and your boyfriend. And you want to bring him home.”

Remus drops his hands and his head, hugging himself. “I’m sorry. It’s stupid.”

“Yes, it is,” Severus bites out, then softens. “But you’re not. I know it’s—” He cuts himself off with a huff, kicking the dirt. “I know it’s been hard, without him. And I know you want to believe in the best in him. But we’ve got children, Remy. We can’t just give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Remus shrinks into himself. “I know, I know.” He wipes his eyes, but it doesn’t help; they still leak. He laughs, tilting his head back towards the sky. “I knew there was something twisted in him after the Prank, I just didn’t think—I don’t know. I didn’t think he’d do this.”

Severus shakes his head. “Not a far leap, is it?” he whispers. “Attempted murder to actual murder.”

Remus twists away. “I wish I’d died that night,” he says. “I would’ve never had to know—” His breath hitches and he covers his mouth with his hand. “Well. What I know.”

He doesn’t look too unlike he did the morning after the Prank, if you put a cap on the bottle of emotional soda so only a bit leaks down the sides. Severus recognizes the shattered look in his eyes, darting around, the way he stumbles on his feet, as if he no longer knows how to walk when he isn’t sure the ground will hold him up. Severus reaches out to steady him with an arm around the waist, drawing him in and kissing the side of his head.

“I wanna bring him home, Sevvy,” Remus rasps. “I want him to come home—”

He dissolves into tears. Severus lowers them both to the ground, holding him tight. He doesn’t say anything else, instead comforting Remus with kisses and hoping against hope that what he’s about to do doesn’t make him a f*cking idiot.

The Howler is simple, as far as Howlers go—

We’re at Ramsrot Cottage, in the center of a fifty-mile radius of guarding spells. If you intend to harm any of us, I swear on my life you will be dead, drawn, and quartered before you hit the forty-nine mile mark. However, if you wish to come home… That can be arranged.

He laces the letter with Veritaserum, just for good measure. Then he sends it out the window and saunters off to bed.

Harry’s birthday rolls around at the end of a string of hot days. Whether the break in the heat is magical or natural, Severus will never tell.

They finagle the kitchen table and chairs out into the garden, and Remus blows some of the lilies up into balloons with a hex he says he learned from James for a prank back in school. Remus also makes the cake, because Severus burns off his eyebrows when he tries and Remus has to grow them back with two (rather hard) taps of his wand.

Luna is talking to the teapots, and Severus is about to reprimand her for it when he notices they’re talking back. Remus smiles softly at her, resting his hand on her head. “I love you, plentyn lleuad.”

Luna doesn’t seem to hear him. Draco does, though, and he tilts his head up at Remus, signing something at him. Remus tears up, bending to kiss his head. “Yes, I love you too, plentyn seren.”

Harry reaches out his grabby hands for Severus, who answers his plea, bending down by his chair. “Yes, маленькая змея?”

Harry squishes Severus’ cheeks. “Can I open presents now?” he asks. “I’ve never had presents. Dudley always got all the presents.”

Severus officially adds Murder the Dursleys to his bucket list. He can make it look like an accident. Lord knows he’s skilled enough.

“Of course you can,” he says, and hands over the presents. Harry claps in delight at each and every one, though they aren’t much—just a few plushies Severus had sewn and stuffed over the last month’s nights. A stag, a wolf, a dog, a doe, a cat, and a lioness, all with black button eyes. Severus had considered dying the buttons different colors to correspond with their human counterparts, then decided against it.

Harry has just opened the last present, a rat, when a letter careens out of the sky and sets the toy on fire.

Severus snatches the letter and puts out the fire with a wandless charm. Remus reaches for the charred rat with sad eyes. “Oh, Sev, you spent so long—”

Severus slaps his hand away. “Wait, don’t touch it.” He breaks the seal of the letter and unfolds it.

Guard heavily against rats. Be home soon.

Severus frowns. “The f*ck does that mean?”

“f*ck!” Harry repeats happily, and Severus winces, patting his head.

Remus grabs the letter. His eyes go wide and glassy, then fiery, nearly brimming with gold. “Severus. Get the children inside.”

Severus knows that look. He reaches out for Harry and Luna’s hands, letting Draco grab Luna’s. “I love you,” he says, and closes his eyes for the single hard kiss Remus presses to his mouth.

In the house, Severus spells the peeling blue boards holding up the staircase to fold outward, allowing them in. With a quick cleaning spelling, he rids the space of spiders and dust and hurries the children in. “I love you, my dears. Stay here, and don’t make a sound, not even if you see me or Moony, unless we let you out of the wall. Be safe now.”

Harry’s eyes have gone blank. Severus realizes, rather unfortunately, that this must remind him quite a bit of his cupboard. Luna seems unbothered, brushing her hands through Harry’s curls, but Draco has gone eerily still, looking up at Severus with hardened eyes.

“I won’t let any harm come to you,” Severus says. “I solemnly swear.”

Draco looks away.

The moment he’s reboarded the wall, Severus races outside, calling Remus’ name. “Moony!” He’s not in the garden, not by the stone wall. “Remy!” Not by the river or the willow trees. “ Remus! ”

A scrap of paper pops into existence above his head, floating down into his hand.

Meet me at the edge.

Severus is apparating before he can blink. Of course this leads to him splinching himself in the thigh, and he crumples to the ground in a mess of blood.

In an instant, Remus is on him, tutting softly as he casts a healing spell across the wound. “Idiot,” he murmurs, pushing Severus’ hair back from his forehead. “You’re not allowed to leave me.”

Severus screams a rather unsavory curse word as Remus casts the next spell.

Remus stuffs a handkerchief in his mouth. “I cast sixty-three new wards,” he says. “Twenty-eight of those were specifically against rats and Animagi. I’ll let you put up your own and strengthen mine, but only if you promise to stop hurting yourself in your endless attempts to protect us.”

Severus spits out the hanky. “This is the first time,” he grumbles.

Remus is unimpressed. “May I remind you of your wrist,” he says. “And your back, and that time you played a double agent so both the Death Eaters and the Order were after you—”

“Okay, shut up.” Severus pushes up, pulling himself to his feet with Remus’ help. “My leg’s just fine, see? You fixed it right up.”

“You’re an idiot,” Remus deadpans, but wraps his arm around Severus’ waist and drops his head on his shoulder. “You’re not the only one who can protect us, you know.”

Severus kisses his head. “I’m sorry for scaring you.”

Remus looks up. “You wrote to him,” he says. “You hate him, and you wrote to him.” He crushes their mouths together, long and hard. “Thank you.”

Severus holds on a little longer than he should. “I love you,” he whispers into Remus’ arms, fingering the wispy strands he used to braid back in school. He lets his hand fall to Remus’ nape, gripping his neck. “Tell me what’s happened. I don’t understand.”

Remus shakes his head, pulling away. “You knew of my condition,” he says. “But the Marauders, they knew first.” He clutches Severus harder, ducking his head to touch it to Severus’. “You are a Marauder too, of course, I did not mean to imply—”

“Remus.”

“Right. Sorry.” Remus kisses his forehead, blinking fast. “James, Sirius, and Peter, they became Animagi in our fourth year, in an attempt to help me during the fulls.”

“I know all of this,” Severus says, who became a doe in his sixth year with Lily, who morphed into a lioness. “Hence Harry’s birthday present.”

“Rats, Severus, come on. You’re smarter than this.”

Severus’ face flattens.

In an instant, he’s stalking off down the hill, casting curses up to the sky by name. Bellatrix Lestrange. Lucius Malfoy. Peter Pettigrew. Remus chases after him, calling his name, but Severus barely hears him, and he certainly doesn’t stop. This is a warpath now.

Remus catches his arm in the first valley. Severus whirls around, another spell on his lips, when Remus captures them for his own, gasping into his mouth: “We’ll kill him. Together. I promise. But not yet.”

Yes, yet. Very much yet. They’re past yet. Yet was eons ago.

“Juliet,” Remus says, and finally, Severus’ eyes start to focus through the red haze. “Lily would not want this.”

On the contrary, Lily would probably rip Peter apart with her own teeth. But Severus allows the quiet thumping of Remus’ heart under his hand drown out the rage buzzing in his head. “If he comes here,” he says, low in his throat, a promise, “if he comes here, I will sicc the wrath of hell on him.”

Remus squeezes his arm. “I know,” he says. “And I’ll help you. But for now we have to go home.”

Severus collapses into his side. “Okay.”

Remus apparates them back to the cottage, into the garden. They wade their way through the grass, Remus clutching Severus’ hand like the man himself might disappear if he lets go, which, considering their family’s history, is a fair assumption. “Juliet,” Remus says again, stopping by the bed of daisies, and Severus answers, “Romeo,” and wonders for the first time in six years if they should get married.

Remus doesn’t say anything else. His fingers loosen in Severus’; his eyes shut and open too quickly, tears rising unbidden; his lip quivers. He looks as though he is at the funeral of somebody he loves very much, and they are being lowered into the ground. Severus follows his gaze to the porch, and straightens up like lightning has struck him from above.

Then he’s wrenching away from Remus and catapulting himself across the lawn.

Sirius catches him easily, spinning him around once with ease, the scruff of his beard brushing against Severus’ cheek as he buries his face in Severus’ neck. “You hate me,” he reminds him as Severus cups his face and kisses his jaw.

“Yes, I do,” Severus says. “But you’re home.”

Sirius breaks into a brilliant smile, and for a brief, mad moment, Severus understands why half the world’s in love with him.

Then Remus stops short at their side, and Severus steps away.

“Padfoot,” Remus breathes, wide-eyed and pink-cheeked. He touches Sirius’ arm, his shoulder, his face. Pat, pat. Are you there, are you there. “Padfoot.”

Sirius reaches back. “Moony,” he whispers. His face crumples. “Oh, god, Moony.”

“Padfoot,” Remus says, and they fall into each other like stars.

Severus shoves aside the aching in his chest, walking the rest of the way to the house and climbing his way up the front steps. He comes into the kitchen and opens up the wall, letting out his three sleepy children. Harry pushes his way into Severus’ arms, and Luna follows his lead, dragging Draco with her. They sit on the floor, a mess of tangled limbs and head kisses, and Severus thinks the world might be ending, and also it already did.

He tries to sleep on the couch that night, but Remus comes and finds him in his pajamas, holding out his hands. “Cariad fy mywyd,” he says. “Remember? Always.”

Severus takes his hands. He stands, and he lets Remus twirl him once under his arm, tugging him back in and swaying side to side. Their foreheads touch and life implodes.

“It’s okay,” Severus says, hoping to quell the wild thumping of Remus’ heart under his hand. “You can love him more.”

Remus closes his eyes. “I don’t.”

“You can.”

“I don’t.” Remus squeezes his hip, kisses his cheekbone. “Come to bed.”

“I miss you,” Severus says, nonsensically.

Remus pulls him up the stairs.

“Tell me again tomorrow,” he says. “We have time.”

Severus wakes before Remus, which is not entirely unusual, but certainly strange. He pries himself from Remus’ arms, kisses his head good morning, and makes his way downstairs to the kitchen, only to stop short at the sight of Sirius, slouched in some of his old clothes at the table.

Sirius doesn’t seem all that surprised to see him, stirring his tea with his tea bag. “I tried to kill you in fifth year,” he says, bland and dead-eyed. “It’s been thirteen years since then, and I spent six of those in Azkaban, and I figure I should probably admit that there was definitely some part of me that belonged there, even if it wasn’t for what they charged me with.”

Severus wants to deny it the same way Remus would, and if he’s being honest, he could do so truthfully. Azkaban is for monsters like Bellatrix Lestrange, barbaric and greedy people who will do anything for a leg up in life, and Sirius Potter-Lupin has never been that. He can be selfish, and thoughtless, and yes, even cruel at times, but he does not have a rot sitting where his soul should be, sucking every kindness out of him.

Severus moves past him for the cupboards, taking down his own mug and tea bag. “You still haven’t apologized.”

Sirius laughs. “Would it matter?” he asks, running a hand through his hair. “I mean—It’s f*cked a bit, don’t you think? Everyone always thought I should apologize to Remus, and I should, but no one ever mentioned you. It was like your well-being was irrelevant, and at the time I didn’t think about it, because James had just dumped me and I hated you more than ever because Remus loved you out of nowhere—”

“It wasn’t out of nowhere,” Severus says quietly, taking the kettle off the burner and filling up his mug. “We’d been friends since third year, we just never told you ‘cause we knew you’d lose your head over it—”

“The point is, you’re not irrelevant,” Sirius barrels on, looking slightly sick. “And though it makes no difference and I can’t change what I’ve done, I want you to know that I am sorry for what I did to you, and to Remus, and I’m very happy you found each other, and I know you still hate me but I don’t hate you, not anymore, and thank you, thank you, for taking care of him.”

Severus sits down at the table across from Sirius, staring past him through the window over the kitchen sink. The sun is just rising over the hills, and maybe ten years ago Severus would’ve seen the poetry in that, but today is not ten years ago and Severus is not a poet anymore.

“Would you say something, freak?” Sirius says, exasperated, like it’s a pet name, like this is love. “f*cking hell.” He buries his face in his hands, laughing like one of those psychopaths in Muggle horror movies.

Severus isn’t scared of Muggle horror movies, or psychopaths. “I don’t care if you’re sorry,” he says, and means it, somewhat. “I care if you would take it back, if you could.”

Sirius lifts his head, his eyes tortured and wet. “Yes,” he breathes. “Without question.”

Severus sips his tea. “Because it was a terrible thing to do?” he asks. “Or because it cost you everything?”

Severus huff-sighs. “The first one, Severus, obviously.” It’s the first time he’s ever called Severus by his first name.

Severus doesn’t think it’s so obvious. “I’m not going to just forgive you,” he says, tracing the rim of his teacup. “Then again, I suppose you have just spent six years in prison.”

Sirius laughs again, but it sounds funny this time. “Sometimes I get it, you know,” he says, stretching out his arm across the table. “Why Remus fell in love with you, I mean.”

Severus smiles into his tea. “I sort of understand why Remus fell in love with you, too.”

Sirius lets his head loll to the side, resting it on his outstretched arm. “They threw me in with Bellatrix, the first week she was there,” he says. “Think they wanted to give her a plaything. I was never popular there; the Aurors thought I was a Death Eater, so they hated me, and the prisoners knew I was innocent, so they hated me too. Called me a blood traitor. Everyone seemed perfectly happy to let mad little Bella have her way with me, and I’d lost everything that ever mattered to me, so if we’re being honest, I was perfectly happy to let her kill me, too.”

Severus doesn’t like the thought of a world without Sirius, even if he is a righteous dick most of the time. “You’re here, though.”

“I am,” Sirius says, daring to grasp the ends of Severus’ fingers. “Because she went for psychological torture first, and instead of killing me, it brought me back from the dead.”

“Stop faffing around and get to the point,” Severus snaps.

Sirius grins. “They’re alive,” he says. “James and Lily are alive.”

Severus’ chair screeches as he bolts up, wand and hand held to Sirius’ throat. “I’ll f*ck you up,” he hisses, his eyes glinting gold in the morning light. “I swear, Sirius, if you are lying to me, I will skin you alive and make you into a coat.”

“Hot,” Sirius croaks, clawing at Severus’ hand. “Not—Not lying. I wouldn’t lie to you, baby girl.”

Severus drops him, fingers tingling.

Sirius falls back against the counter on his knees, clutching at his neck.

“Where are they.” Severus turns to see Remus in the doorway, stock-still and bed-worn. “Sirius, where’s my baby?”

Sirius stares up at him, the cracks peeking through and bleeding black. “James is somewhere in London,” he rasps. “Obliviated to high heaven. They put Lily in Glasgow, I think. And—” He swallows. “And Regulus is in Kilkenny, though he remembers everything.”

Remus marches across the room and slaps him.

“Moony!” Sirius shouts, holding his cheek, only to be drawn into a kiss deep enough that Severus wishes he wasn’t there.

“You’re an utter fool and I love you,” Remus says, breaking away and wiping the spit from his lips. Sirius blinks at him, stunned into a rare silence. “How Obliviated?”

Sirius sputters. “What?”

“How Obliviated, Sirius, it’s not a difficult question,” Severus snaps, rolling his eyes. “Do they remember their names?”

Sirius scrambles to his feet. “Their names, yes, but little else. They’ve no idea magic even exists, apparently, and You-Know-Who wiped them clean of our love. They don’t know about Harry, or Ramsrot, or anything, really.” He drops his voice down to a whisper. “Bella said they’re living among Muggles.”

(Of course, there is nothing wrong with living among Muggles, but if you’re a wizard, it’s generally considered bad to think you are a Muggle. Especially if you’ve been presumed dead for six years.)

“Bellatrix told you this,” Remus says, flabbergasted. “Lestrange. Crazy bitch.”

Sirius smirks. “Yes, that’s the one.” He sighs, fidgeting with the cuffs of his sleeves. “She’d been hunting for them, apparently, ever since they disappeared that night from Godric’s Hollow. Voldemort’s last orders were to kill Harry Potter, and when she couldn’t find him, she figured his parents were the next best thing.” Something almost like a smile flits across his face. “She’d found them too, but the Aurors were tipped off by a Squib who wasn’t too pleased with a Death Eater poking around their neighborhood. She was captured before she could do anything to them.”

“She could be lying,” Severus says, gripping the nearest chair to keep from collapsing. “I wouldn’t put it past her—”

“She could,” Remus breathes, “but god, Severus, are we really going to take that chance?”

“No.” Severus feels iced from the inside out, just at the thought. “No, of course we’re not. I’ll call the Aurors.”

“The Aurors?” Sirius growls, lunging for him, fists out. “You would entrust their fates to strangers? No, we have to go—”

“We would sooner trust strangers with our lovers than our children,” Remus bites out, dragging Sirius back, “or have you forgotten the three babies up those stairs, one of which used to call you Papa?”

The color drains from Sirius’ face. “Harry?” he asks, a lost little boy all of a sudden. His eyes strike with joy. His hands twitch. “Can I see him?”

Remus’ face softens. “Of course you can, Siri,” he says, taking one of Sirius’ hands and laying his own on Sirius’ back. “Let’s go right now, yeah? While Sevvy calls the Aurors.”

Sirius trembles like the earth about to crack. “Can I hold him?”

“As long as you want, Padfoot.”

Severus doesn’t move as they leave, his cheek cold from where Remus used to kiss him goodbye and didn’t just now. “These are the ends days, aren’t they?” he mutters to himself. “Again.”

He lowers himself down into the chair, looking out the window at the periwinkle sky. It’s not too dissimilar from Sirius’ eyes. Sometimes Severus forgets what color James’ eyes were and it kills him.

It’s a long time before he draws his wand out and opens the scrying call, face to face with the very man he had spoken to the day of his defectment.

“Dumbledore,” he says. “How lovely to see you again.”

People like us, we go on too long. We forget what matters. The last thing we need is each other.

— The Twelfth Doctor

It takes the Aurors less than a week to locate James and Lily. It takes them two more weeks to find Regulus, which Sirius is strangely proud of, crowing quietly about his little brother to the children when he thinks Remus and Severus aren’t around to hear him. Mcgonagall arrives a week after that, proclaiming that the Aurors failed to make headway in retrieving the three wizards, and assigns them each a ward to bring home while she watches the babies in their absence.

Sirius apparates away the moment Mcgonagall utters Regulus’ name, disappearing in a cloud of smoke that leaves Remus coughing into Severus’ shoulder. Severus holds him fast and Mcgonagall looks at them like she couldn’t be less surprised they turned out this way, and Severus wants to ask her if she thinks they’d be happy if there’d never been a war, and it doesn’t even matter, does it, because there was a war and they were dead and now they’re not and suddenly Remus is fading off to James and Severus is standing in Lily Evans’ living room, knocked out by the sight of her wedding ring.

His wedding ring.

“Hi,” Severus breathes.

Lily bashes him over the head with a vase.

He wakes up some few minutes later, soaked to the bone and spitting out flower petals. He’s tied to a kitchen chair, his wand digging into his thigh, while Lily sits across from him brandishing a rolling pin and a glare sour enough to ruin brownies. “Why are you here?” she asks, and it isn’t a question, she knows the answer, even if she doesn’t know it she knows it—

“I love you,” Severus says.

Lily’s cheeks flush the color of the strawberries they used to share in the summer. “I don’t know you, stalker,” she spits, crossing her arms over her heart like she’s hiding it from him, as if he would ever dare to take if she wouldn’t give.

“I know you wish you were a boy sometimes,” Severus mumbles, his head hanging low even as he tries to hold it up. Lily’s breath hitches. “I know you wear a green ribbon in your hair and you can’t remember why, but it feels like the world’s ending if you don’t have it on. And I know you love ladybugs and you hate black-eyed susans and you don’t like ice cream but you like mint chocolate chip and you bite your thumbnail when you’re nervous and your pinky when you’re sad and you saved my life by being in it.” He finally manages to lift his head, attempting a smile through the haze. “I know all that, and I love you for all of it too, and I thought you were dead for six years so it’s okay if you don’t remember me right now and I forgive you for giving me a concussion with that very heavy vase.”

Lily stares at him, her lips parted, her eyes crazed. “Who are you?”

“Severus Snape,” he says, and for the first time feels no shame at the sound of it. “Well—Snape-Lupin, probably, if we’re going by hearts. And your name is Lily Evans, and you’re my wife.”

His girlfriend, technically, but if he’s honest he’s been married to her since the first time he saw her, even if they were only seven at the time.

Something flashes in Lily’s eyes. She lunges forward onto her knees, picking flower petals out of his hair. She tucks a few strands behind his ear. “I don’t know you,” she says. “I swear I don’t. But I’ve been missing something, right here—” She pats her chest with her fist. “—and when you came through the door, I swear the constant ache suddenly went away.”

Severus wants to kiss her, but won’t. “I came to take you home,” he says. “We have a family waiting for us. They’ve missed you very much.”

Lily sits back on her heels, considering this. “What are their names?” she asks. “Tell me their names.”

“Remus,” Severus says, first and always, a sweet pain forming in his stomach. “That’s my baby. My life partner, my—He’s my soulmate. There’s his husband, Sirius, and their other husband, James, who you’re also married to, I think, but honestly I’ve never seen you together so I don’t know what he is to you. And then there’s Regulus, my and James’ husband, and I’m probably in love with James, too, since I’m in the habit of telling you everything even when I’m a stranger to you, and we all have a son named Harry and Remus has two children named Luna and Draco who are kind of mine now too, and have I mentioned I love you?”

“It’s come up once or twice,” Lily murmurs, her eyes glazed over. “Six of us? All in love or halfway so? And three children?”

Severus nods. “Lily,” he says, his mouth dry around the prayer. “I promise I’ll explain as much as you want, and I’ll do everything I can to return your memory, but I can only do that if we go home.”

Lily reaches for his wrist, untying the first knot. “What if I want to come back here?” she asks, and Severus’ heart splits clean in two. “Will you let me go?”

“Yes,” Severus says, because he had let her go in sixth year, and a thousand times after that too. “Yes, I will, but if you do, could you write me at least once a year, to tell me you’re alright? Because I’ve lived in a world where you aren’t and I can’t go back there. I won’t.”

“Deal.” Lily pulls the last of his binds free, helping him up. “Strange question—Can I kiss you?”

“That’s not strange, you’ve kissed me every day of your life since we were nine,” Severus says, and he means on the cheek and on the mouth and on the soul. Lily drags him down to her height and stars burst behind Severus’ eyes.

Lily hums as she pulls away, a smile tugging at her lips. “Okay,” she says, patting Severus’ cheek. “I believe you. Take me home.”

Severus blinks as she threads their fingers together, swaying forward. His mouth finds its home against her forehead, his eyes drooping shut. “I’m so glad you’re not dead,” he says, lifting his wand with a trembling hand.

Lily beams. “You know what, Sevvy?” she says, and Severus’ heart leaps. “Me too.”

The moment Severus comes through fireplace with Lily in tow, he’s surrounded by James Potter.

“I’m in love with you,” James gasps into his mouth, his hands buried in Severus’ hair. “Have been forever. Think we should move in together. You should marry me. Seriously, marry me. I’ve missed you so much. Hi.”

“Hi, Jamie,” Severus laughs against James’ cheek, wrapping around him. “There is something very wrong with you, I think.”

“Probably,” James says, nuzzling his nose into Severus’ hair. “So, will you?”

Severus slaps him ‘round the head. “Yes, I’ll marry you, you idiot.” He glances over at Remus, who’s blinking at them with a cross between a frown and a pout. “Managed to restore his memory, then?”

Remus nods, wordless. Lily has shifted over next to him, studying the scars on his face. She reaches out to take his hand, squeezing. “Which one are you, then?”

“Remus,” Remus says, still staring at Severus. Lily pokes him in the cheek and he startles, looking down at her. “Sorry. Did you want me to do you, too?”

Lily smirks. “Any day, handsome,” she teases, and seems delighted by the way Remus sputters and burns bright pink. “Kidding, kidding. Severus assures me you are perfectly uninterested, both in women and in sex.”

Remus nods choppily, looking as though he may faint. Lily steadies him with an arm around the waist, lifting his wrist so his wand is pressed to her head. “If you could, my dear, I’d like to remember sooner rather than later.”

Remus closes his eyes and mutters the incantation.

Lily’s smile fades entirely.

Severus pulls away from James just enough to nod at her. “Harry is upstairs.”

Lily tears up the steps. Severus drops his arms, expecting James to follow her, but instead, he hums contentedly and tugs Severus close again.

Remus ducks his eyes. “Sirius should be back soon with Regulus,” he says, heading for the staircase. “I’ll give you two a moment.”

Severus nods, and watches him until he disappears beyond the banister. Severus aches for him, and the way they were before all of this mess, when it was just the two of them against the world.

James kisses his cheekbone. “Hey, sit with me, Sevvy.”

Severus tears his eyes from the stairs, following James to the couch. “You remember, then,” he says, brushing James’ curls back from his forehead.

“Everything,” James says, grasping Severus’ hand. “Severus, I—Thank you.”

Severus frowns. “For what?”

“For—” James’ face smoothes over. “You don’t—Nevermind.”

Severus turns to stone. “No, tell me—”

“Severus,” James says. He touches Severus’ face and Severus goes quiet. “Trust me.”

Severus sits back, far enough that James can no longer reach him. Lily is probably already wrapped around Harry, and James is—James is—

James is smiling. “You think it’s strange I don’t want to see Harry.”

Severus tilts his head. “Don’t you?” There’s a fuzzy feeling in his brain, like it’s been stooped in ginger ale. James wouldn’t keep things from him, James would want to see his son—

“Stop, stop, I can hear you overthinking.” James sighs, reaching out for Severus’ hand. “I want to see him, of course I do, but I—I needed to explain. I told Remus a bit of it already, and I’ll tell Sirius—oh, god, Sirius—when he returns, but you have to know—” He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. “Severus, we were drunk.”

Severus raises his eyebrows. “You’ll have to be more specific,” he drawls. “You and Sirius were borderline alcoholics before the war.”

James winces. “And a bit during, I know.” He presses a kiss to Severus’ fingers, squeezing them tight. “But I meant—Lily and I. After Regulus, I was a wreck. Lily never recovered from losing you, and with Sirius in the wind and Remus off doing god knows what we just—We lost it. We got drunk together, often, and one night we took it too far and we sort of…”

Oh.

Severus tsks, patting James’ cheek a little harder than he needs to. “Идиот,” he mutters, then kisses it better. “So Harry was an accident?”

James flinches. “We never loved him any less for it,” he says. “But there was a war on, and then that stupid prophecy showed up, and Lily and I did the math about Harry’s due date and we kinda freaked out, so we got married and we boarded ourselves up in that house and don’t get me wrong, she’s my family and I love her, but not like that. We weren’t—I know our whole family’s kind of a f*cked mess of relationships but she and I were never supposed to be like that.”

Severus strokes his hair. “That’s okay, Jamie,” he says. “Hey.” He taps James under the chin. “Look at me,” and James does. “It’s okay if you aren’t in love with your wife. We’ll dissolve the marriage and you can marry me instead. And I’ll marry Remus, and so will you, and then you’ll marry Sirius and I’ll marry Lily and we’ll both marry Regulus and we’ll all raise Harry together like the absolute lunatics we are. Okay? You don’t have to love her, Jamie. You’re not a bad person. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

Jamie’s face crumples inwards like a black hole. “I’m sorry,” he blubbers, keeling over into Severus’ arms. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Severus wrinkles his nose. “Christ, Jamie, you’re a right mess, aren’t you?”

James nods, then blows his nose on Severus’ dress.

The audacity.

Severus scowls, shoving him up. “Get it together, Potter.”

James sniffles. “Potter-Lupin.”

Severus rolls his eyes. “Yes, yes, I know. Come on.”

He stands from the couch, reaching back for James’ hand. James follows him, still weeping, to the top of the stairs, where Remus is waiting. Severus looks at him and they have an entire conversation in absolute silence before Remus moves back from the door to let them in.

Lily is in the corner, cradling Harry. At the sight of them, James goes cloudy-eyed, his Adam’s apple bobbing beneath the weight of untold love.

Severus squeezes his hand. “Don’t be an idiot, Jamie.”

James looks at him. “Thank you,” he says, and goes.

Severus lingers in the doorway, watching as James kneels down at Lily’s side and reaches out a hand to Harry, who curls his tiny fingers around James’ palm.

“Dad,” he says, and James crumbles.

Severus looks away. Remus slides their palms together and locks their fingers.

Severus stands up a little straighter.

“Mum.” Severus glances down at Luna, who is tugging at Remus’ coat. “Mum, who are the strange people hugging Harry over there?”

Remus bends down to a squat, cupping Luna’s neck. “That’s James and Lily,” he says. “James is my husband, and Lily is Severus’ wife.”

Luna blinks, turning her attention on Severus. “But aren’t you married to each other?”

Severus hopes Remus doesn’t notice the flush in his cheeks. “Yes, somewhat.”

“Well how can that work?”

Remus kisses Luna’s hair. “Sometimes grown-ups fall in love with lots of people,” he says. “I love James, and I love Sirius, and I love Severus. And Severus here loves many people too, including me.”

“Yes, very much,” Severus says, his eyes straying to Draco in the corner. “Be back in a moment, dear.”

Draco tugs his knees even closer to his chest as Severus approaches with his hands up, tucking his skirts under him as he sits down. Draco stops his sullen glaring to look up at Severus, who smiles and transfigures a couple dust bunnies into a notebook and pen.

Why does HE get parents, Draco writes, stabbing the paper so hard it rips. It’s not FAIR, and it isn’t.

Severus takes the paper and crumples it up, tossing it to the side. “No, it’s not,” he says. “But it’s not your fault.”

WHO CARES, Draco writes, then shoves his arms out, hurling the notebook and pen away from him. They careen past the nightstand and slip under the bed, and Severus doesn’t bother retrieving them, instead wrapping his arm around Draco and carding his fingers through his hair.

Draco lifts his hand and traces letters in the air, smoke lingering behind. Sorry.

Severus kisses his head. “You have nothing to be sorry for, маленький голубь,” he says. “We love you.”

Draco stares across the room at Luna, who’s babbling happily to a very confused James. With his smoking finger, he draws a heart around her head, then blows it away. Sister, he says, then does the same to Remus. Mum.

He turns and looks at Severus, reaching up to trail his fingertip in a heart on Severus’ gaunt cheek. “Mama.”

Severus drops his head to the side, letting himself go glassy-eyed and soft-smiled. “Yes, my love,” he murmurs. “That’s me.”

Sirius returns with Regulus late in the night, late enough that nobody else is awake. The house has three more bedrooms now, the upstairs expanded by the very same spell Remus had undone so long ago now. Severus is sitting on the couch when they return, Pride and Prejudice open in his hands and a cup of tea beside his feet on the coffee table.

Sirius’ face is covered in cuts, his neck mottled with bruises that lead down to his chest. His eyes are dead, his mouth downturned, and he holds Regulus bridal-style in his arms, laying him down over Severus’ lap and disappearing into the kitchen without a word.

Severus hasn’t seen Regulus in ten years, the war separating them long before death did. He runs his fingers down the side of Regulus’ face, up around his ear, into his curls. He leans down and kisses his head, tears dripping onto pale skin.

“I love you,” he whispers, pulling back again. “Thank you for coming home.”

Then he casts a spell for sweet dreams and follows Sirius into the kitchen.

Sirius is rummaging through the cabinets, though he closes every door gently, careful not to make noise. Severus would question this if he didn’t know that Remus is a light sleeper with leftover lycanthrope senses. “You will not find any bandages in there.”

Sirius curses, his shoulders jumping. “That’s not—Where’s your tea?”

Severus moves to the drawers, nodding to the table as he opens one. “Sit down, Sirius.”

Sirius grumbles. “I’m fine.”

“Siri,” Severus lashes with a glare, slamming the box of bandages down on the counter. “Sit down.”

Sirius wises up and does as he’s told, albeit with a scowl.

Severus wets a towel and grabs a handful of alcohol wipes, then takes those and the bandages to the table. He sits down next to Sirius, angling their chairs towards each other, and dabs at a cut on Sirius’ cheek.

“Can I love you?” Sirius whispers, and Severus rolls his eyes. “Hey, no, don’t do that. Can I love you, please?”

Severus patches the cut closed with a butterfly bandaid. “Did Regulus hit you in the head during your fight?”

“Yes, many times, but that’s not why I’m asking this.” Sirius blinks up at Severus through his eyelashes. “I’m asking ‘cause I think you deserve it.”

Severus isn’t as gentle with his next washing-out. “Me,” he deadpans. “I deserve your f*cked-up love.”

“No,” Sirius says, wincing. “You deserve love in general, and if you want mine, I want to give it to you.”

Severus is bewildered. “What is wrong with you?” he asks, slapping a bandaid over a gash on Sirius’ forehead. “You hate me, I hate you, those are the rules of the universe. Catch up, Sirius.”

Sirius’ hand shoots up and curls around Severus’ wrist. “I like breaking rules,” he says. “But I won’t break any that you don’t want me to break.”

Severus doesn’t move, his eyes flashing with a decade-old fury. “You tried to murder me.”

“I apologized.”

“Murder, Sirius, apologizing for that is like sticking a bandaid over cancer—”

“Then tell me what to do!” Sirius shouts, digging his nails into Severus’ wrist. “Then tell me what to do, because I will get a goddamn Time Turner and f*ck over our entire lives if I have to; I just need you to forgive me. I just need to know that I’m not the person that Prank made me.”

“Not a prank,” Severus murmurs. “A prank would imply it was funny.”

“And done with good intentions, I know, Jamie’s given me that talk a billion times before.” Sirius sighs, dropping Severus’ arm. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll shut up. I’m sorry.”

Severus picks out another bandaid, laying this one across Sirius’ nose. “You don’t have to shut up. I like it when you talk.”

Sirius blinks. “You like it. When I talk.”

Severus makes an indignant noise, his cheeks burning. “Yes, somewhat. Your voice is… not terrible.”

Sirius whines, burying his face in his hands. “Not terrible. Not terrible?! What the f*ck is that supposed to mean—”

Severus rears back, accidentally ripping a bandaid off Sirius’ forehead. Sirius howls and Severus flaps his hands in a panic. “I don’t know! You’re the asshole here, you tell me—”

Sirius groans, flopping back in his chair. “Why do I like you, you’re so infuriating, god, no wonder Remus is so f*cking into you—”

“Yes,” Severus blurts, then immediately considers Avada-Kedavra-ing himself. Severus’ head snaps up. “Yes, you can love me. Fine. Just shut up.”

Sirius stares at him. “Thought you liked it when I talked,” he croaks, raspberry red, and Severus laughs.

Sirius smiles. “You don’t hate me anymore.”

Severus puts his fingers together, barely apart. “Well, a little bit.”

Sirius’ eyes are shining. He reaches into the box on the table and pulls out a bandaid, sticking it to Severus’ chest, right over his heart. Severus stiffens under his hand, unused to being touched by him.

Sirius leans down, glancing up through hooded eyes. “May I?”

Severus nods, starry-eyed.

Sirius kisses the bandaid, rocking back up slowly to full height. He’s taller than Severus, his head ducked to look Severus in the eye, and that used to make Severus feel small and insignificant, but it doesn’t now. Instead he feels like he’s being watched over, guarded, like he’s one of the pack. Part of a whole.

“There,” Sirius whispers. “All better.”

Severus still hates him. Always has, always will. But for the first time, he thinks maybe he could love him, too.

“Not all better,” he murmurs. “Not yet.” Sirius goes to pull away, but Severus pulls him back. “But getting there.”

Sirius looks up at him in earnest, leaning down onto his elbows, kissing Severus’ hands. “My whole life,” he says. “It’s yours, all of it. Whatever price I need to pay.”

Severus shakes his head. “Why’d you’d call me Snivellus, the name clearly fits you better—”

Sirius lunges forward. Severus flinches, only to find himself wrapped in a hug, a bright pink bandaid right next to his eye. His hands feel strange as he touches them to Sirius’ back, as if they’re not attached to his body anymore.

“This is nice,” Sirius says, smushed against Severus’ shoulder.

“It is,” Severus says, surprised about it. “You smell good.”

“Oh, for f*ck’s sake.”

Sirius and Severus scramble apart, staring wide-eyed up at Regulus in the doorway, frowning and cross-armed.

“Hi,” Sirius croaks.

“Hi,” Severus breathes.

“Hi.” Regulus smirks, teeth bared. “So. What did I miss?”

Severus rounds the table and kisses him.

“Ugh, gross.” Sirius shoots back from the table, scurrying out the second door. “Bye.”

Severus is taller than Regulus, but only by an inch or two. He’s always liked their height difference, because it means he can cradle Regulus’ head and kiss the top of it, like he’s placing a blessing there. A small, sweet gift, just for his baby, just so he knows he’s loved. So he can carry that assurance with him everywhere, like a crown for his heavy little head.

“I missed you,” Regulus says, going soft. “You know nobody’s kissed my head in eight years? Maybe that’s why life’s been so sh*t.”

Severus laughs into his hair, leaking like a faucet. “Thank you for coming home,” he mumbles, squeezing tighter. They aren’t close enough. Is there a spell that can merge them together so they’re never apart again? “Thank you for not being dead.”

Regulus laughs into Severus’ neck, pressing a kiss there. “f*ck off, you think a few Inferi can kill me? I obliterated the whole lot of them and left there with a Horcrux in my hand.” Severus freezes under his hands. “Oh, yeah, by the way, Voldemort made Horcruxes.”

Severus isn’t ready for the world again. “Can we pretend a little while longer?” he asks. “I don’t want to fight anymore. I’m not built for it.”

Regulus lifts his head, shifting up on his tiptoes for a kiss. “Nobody is,” he says, nuzzling Severus’ cheek. “Some people renovate themselves to be, but no one’s born that way. If anyone is, they’re probably deeply f*cked-up, and not in the fun way.”

Severus hates how they were raised as lambs for slaughter. He hates that they never had the chance to love each other stupidly. He hates that he has too many last names to fit on a gravestone.

“I’m tired,” Regulus says, tucking Severus’ hair behind his ear. “Tell you what, we can worry about it tomorrow.”

Severus touches their foreheads together and wishes they had never been born. “How about never?”

Regulus smiles in that way that makes his eyes light up like twin suns. “I wish,” he says. “Hey. Come sleep next to me.”

Severus doesn’t want the world to end, but if it does, he hopes it’s now. So he’s stuck forever like this, cradled close and loved, and never has to heal the rifts in the earth beneath them. “Okay,” he says, because what else can he say, and the world skips like a record player on your favorite song, ruining the moment. “Okay, let’s close our eyes.”

The Dursleys die on a Thursday. Remus brings in the newspaper, and Harry reads the headline and giggles himself to tears. Severus goes out into the garden and shoots as many spells as he can remember at the sky.

By the time Remus joins him, all the outdoor furniture is floating three hundred feet in the air.

Severus doesn’t expect Remus to join him on the hovering bench, but then, Remus Lupin has never been anything he expected. “You didn’t have to follow me,” he says, linking their fingers together, and Remus says back, “I’ll follow you anywhere.”

They lie in silence for a long time, staring up at the sky as it slowly becomes littered with stars. “Sometimes I think I’m Alice,” Severus says, counting constellations, “and the only home I’ll ever have is in my head.”

“I’ll be your Mad Hatter, then,” Remus answers, because he knows Severus better than the way the earth moves, than the password to the Gryffindor dorms, than anything else. And Severus loves him, the way he loves cherry tarts and bubblegum and Taylor Swift songs.

“Sometimes I wish it was just you and me,” Severus says, his eyes fuzzy. “And I know that’s terrible, and I love them all, I promise, but you’re in my bones and the world is so heavy. I just want to put it all down and lay here beside you.”

It’s a strange thing, to wish for a sadness back. But Severus, more and more, finds himself missing the emptiness he’s gotten so used to over the years.

“Isn’t it better, to have all of us together?” Remus asks, grasping his hand. “To finally be spared of this grief we’ve been carrying for six years?”

Severus shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “I had kind of gotten used to it, I think. And now I’m so tired, and I know fitting them back into our lives will be hard, and I kind of miss when it was just me and you and nobody else, before everyone died and we had kids. Why did we have kids?”

“Alcohol,” Remus answers, then pulls a Time Turner from his pocket. “Do you want to undo it?”

Severus swats his hand away. “As if you would let me.”

Remus shrugs, tucking the necklace into Severus’ own pocket. “I might,” he says, turning his head back up towards the sky. “I understand, you know. I’ve spent years missing Ramsrot, but the moment I came here, I started to miss Lackadaizle.”

Severus wrinkles his nose. “The f*ck is that.”

“The town where I lived with Luna and Draco,” Remus says, shooting a flowering spell at a table as it floats by. The whole top bursts with daisies and Remus smiles. “Well—We lived a bit outside of town, actually. Had our own road, dirt and pebbles, leading to the stone tower we lived in in the midst of a field of wildflowers and reeds. It was at the top of a cliff overlooking the hills and the sea, and the sky was always grey, just like here. It was lonely, but in a sweet way. We’d spend hours, the three of us, out in the fields, chasing the ducks. Luna named every single one, and Draco would feed them sunflower seeds. It was a good life, a quiet one. And I miss it, no matter how grateful I am to be here with you now.”

Severus brushes his thumb over the back of Remus’ hand. “Would you like to visit?” he asks. “We could take a day, I’m sure. Maybe it would help to get us all out of the house.”

It would definitely help. Ramsrot Cottage was just right for Severus and Remus, but it was never meant to house four other adults and three children. If Severus could go back, as terrible as it is, he thinks he’d probably keep it this way, the two of them and everyone else alive but separate, so he doesn’t have to deal with all the sh*t from their past and the people that caused it.

Except Maggie. He’d keep Maggie.

“Okay,” Remus agrees. “I’ll get up early and pack a picnic basket. We can go once everyone’s awake.”

Severus lets his head loll to the side, straining to meet Remus’ eyes. “When I die,” he says, “I hope you’re there.”

Remus looks back, smiling small and kind. “I hope I’m not,” he answers. “I hope I go first.”

Severus kisses him. The stars fall, and so does the furniture. The world should probably stop spinning, but it doesn’t. Instead, it lurches on beneath them, rocking forward, and Severus holds on, and Remus holds back, and life trembles slowly on.

Severus calls Maggie that night, caught in the front hall on the boot rack again. She picks up on the second ring, and Severus closes his eyes against the grin in her voice, finding it blinding. “Are you coming back, Sevvy? The shop’s doing splendidly, of course, and I’ve been following your recipes down to every dotted detail, but we really do miss you—”

“No, sorry,” Severus cuts her off, twisting the folds of his dress in his fingers. “But I wanted to call and see how you were doing.”

Maggie giggles, but Severus can tell she only half-means it. “Oh, alright then. I’ll call you if anything goes wrong, yeah? Enjoy your holiday—”

“Maggie, I meant—” Severus coughs into his hand. “You. How are you?”

Maggie goes quiet. “I’m fine, Sev,” she says. “I’m safe and I’m not going anywhere.”

Severus deflates into the turquoise boards of the wall, his eyes slipping shut. He hasn’t slept in so long, not really. There’s been no time for rest or peace. “Good. Good. I thought—Remus and I adopted Narcissa’s son. I thought you might want to meet him sometime.”

Maggie’s voice hardens. “Narcissa Black isn’t a part of my life anymore,” she reminds him. “I appreciate your kindness, Severus, and I would love to meet your children, but I will meet them as yours, not hers. She does not deserve our kindness anymore. Perhaps she never did.”

“No, she did. Once.” It’s an unhappy truth, one none of them want to face: Bad people were all good people once, and Narcissa is no exception. Severus twists his dress in his lap. “Did you hear about the Dursleys?”

Maggie frowns. “Who’s that?” she asks, her voice softening with the subject change. “Some other magical family exposed as Death Eaters? I swear they’re in the papers every week.”

Severus draws his knees to his chest. “No, they’re Muggle relatives of Harry’s and Lily’s. They died this week. ”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be, it’s wonderful.”

Maggie laughs. “Alright,” she says. “Why’re you asking if I’ve heard, then?”

Severus turns his head towards the door, so he can see the moon through the little windows. “They were murdered by a Death Eater, one I believe has a personal vendetta against James Potter-Lupin and his family, which, against all odds, includes me. And I think he may be travelling well below the radar, so I thought I should tell you.”

Maggie grins. “Because you care about me and you don’t want me to die.”

“Yes, that, now shut up.” Maggie coos and Severus growls. “I said shut up. Look, you need to guard heavily against rats and Animagi. Spread the word: Peter Pettigrew is out for blood.”

Maggie tuts. “Peter Pettigrew is dead.”

“Would I be calling you if he was?” Severus drops his feet back down to the ground, standing up and sticking his thumbnail between his teeth. “Maggie, please. You need to warn everybody.”

“Should I call the Ministry?”

“Dumbledore’s already done that, and they’re proving entirely ineffective,” Severus says blithely. “I figure you might have better luck. Care to do me a favor, Captain Melrose?”

“Hmm, sure, since you asked so nicely,” Maggie teases, then sobers. “Be careful, Severus. If he’s coming for you, you’d best be prepared.”

Severus grips the doorknob, watching lightning flash across the sky. “Don’t you worry, Maggie,” he says, pulling his wand from his dress. “I’m not going anywhere either.”

He’s apparating to the edge of the spelled radius before he realizes what he’s doing, staying just inside the shield.

Peter smiles at him from the other side. “Hello, Doe.”

“Wormtail.” Severus had never had a funny nickname like the others—Regulus had been Mewls, what with the cat form, and Lily had been Goldie, but Severus remained Doe, though on occasion James would call him Softeyes. Still, it never stuck like Doe did. “Well, Pettigrew, maybe. We aren’t friends, after all.”

Peter smiles even wider. His teeth are rotted and chipped. “No, I suppose not.” He holds up a grimy hand, missing a finger—goddamnit, Severus is an idiot—and presses it against the shield. It glitches against his skin. “The flower woman. Lily’s sister. Oh, she was a tasty one. She told me everything.”

Severus raises his eyebrow. “That’s nice,” he says. “I’m not sure what that has to do with me, but it was sweet of you to stop by.” He turns to walk away, muttering a help me charm into his wand.

“I’ll get in,” Peter says. “You know I will. I got into Godric’s Hollow, after all, and that place was warded far more impressively than this.”

It wasn’t. Severus had been there that night, after the bodies had all been taken away (or so he had thought), including Harry. The protective spells were powerful, to be sure, but James and Lily had largely counted on secrecy as their protection, and too many charms would surely draw attention, so the spellwork was kept small and few. And as Severus graduated at the top of his class at Hogwarts, even above Lily and Remus, the last of whom came in second and helped him with the Ramsrot wards, he has a very hard time believing they are somehow lesser than those at Godric’s Hollow.

Severus whirls back around. “There is nothing here that you could want, Pettigrew,” he seethes. “Would you leave me alone? I don’t make a habit of company since the deaths of our friends.”

The word our feels slick in his mouth, a lie off a silver tongue, but Severus will tell all the lies he has to to get Peter “The Traitor” Pettigrew off his lawn.

“Nobody has this many wards in place to protect against company,” Peter says, baring rotted teeth. “You must be hiding something.”

“Yes, myself, from Death Eaters and Aurors,” Severus snaps. “Or do you not remember I was a spy?”

Peter pushes harder at the barrier. “Do you not remember I knew that?” he hisses. “And I told no one. Don’t you trust me, Severus?”

“Don’t call me that, you are not allowed my name,” Severus lashes. “And I have no doubt you betrayed that secret, as you betrayed James and Lily’s.”

Peter co*cks his head. “Cat’s out of the bag, then.” He grins around black gums. “Let me in then, Severus. I’ve come to betray you, too.”

“You never made me any promises,” Severus says, standing his ground. “And I never made you any either. Now be gone from my home and my life. It’s been so quiet without you.”

Peter’s tongue pokes out from between his teeth. “You aren’t trying to kill me.”

Severus glares. “I’m a good person, Peter. Good people don’t kill other humans, even those who’ve wronged them. Do keep up.”

Peter tilts his head. “You know things.”

Severus grits his teeth. “Go away, Pettigrew.”

“You know things, Doe,” Peter says again. “Things you shouldn’t know.”

Severus stalks up to the shield, wand brandished and pointed. “Leave, Peter—”

The tip of his wand breaks through the barrier. Peter grins, reaches out, and tugs.

Severus tumbles to the ground of hell.

Peter snatches his wand. “Crucio.”

Severus’ back arches so sharply he feels it straining to break, a scream erupting from his mouth. Peter laughs, snapping his wand away. Severus collapses back down to the ground, rolling over and retching in the dirt.

“Pathetic,” Peter mutters, flicking his wrist. “Imper—”

Severus lunges for his wand.

Peter backhands him across the face. “You have him, don’t you?” he whispers, gleeful. “You have the Chosen One.”

Severus coughs, smiling through blood. “You can kill me,” he says. “You still won’t get past that shield.”

Peter’s eyes shine. “I don’t need to,” he says, creeping closer.

Severus sees what he’s reaching for a second too late. “No.”

Peter spins the Time Turner.

Time crumbles.

Severus grabs Peter’s ankle just as darkness splits the earth and swallows them whole.

Severus has been careful never to step foot in this house, not since that Halloween. The place had always felt cold and empty, even when James and Lily were alive, because it was where they were married and where they had a child and where Sirius drank himself stupid to forget his losses and Remus and Severus sat quietly in the corner, clutching each other and staring petrified at the strange creature crawling on the carpet, sending them gummy smiles.

Now, the place is quiet. Deathly so, the way graveyards are even in daylight. Severus is strewn out between the couch and the coffee table, his head pointed towards the side of the stairs. He doesn’t lift it at first, instead shifting his eyes across the room, but Peter is nowhere to be found.

Neither are James and Lily.

It occurs to him, very suddenly, that there is no reason at all for Voldemort to leave the Potters alive. He had come here to murder their child, and he would murder that child’s parents if they got in his way, which they inevitably would. There was nothing keeping him from ending their lives, when that would be so much easier than forcing them to forget themselves and their loved ones and holding them hostage in fake lives.

In fact, Voldemort had never been one for psychological torture at all. Not when he could simply draw blood, which was so much more reliable.

Severus pushes to his feet, careful not to grunt. He tiptoes upstairs, avoiding every spot he knows that creaks, and he peeks through the cracked door of James and Lily’s bedroom. He doesn’t dare turn on the light.

James lifts his head, rubbing at his eyes. “Sevvy? You alright? You need another blanket?”

Severus could cry. Instead, he scurries across the room and gathers James’ face in his hands, kissing him.

“What’s this for?” James murmurs. “Not that I’m complaining.”

Lily rolls over, reaching for the light. “James—”

“Don’t.” Severus shakes his head at her, lifting a finger to his lips. “Wormtail is coming for you.”

Lily’s eyes flash. “The baby—”

“I’ll take care of him.” Severus squeezes James’ shoulder, then reaches out for Lily’s hand. “I will take care of him, you understand? But it’s very important that you do exactly—exactly—as I say. Promise me.”

“Promise,” Lily says.

“Promise,” James mumbles into Severus’ hand, biting his palm affectionately. “We promise, Sev.”

“Good.” Severus drops his hand. “I love you both. Now—”

He lifts his wand to James’ head. “Obliviate.”

Lily lunges for him. “What the f*ck are you doing—?”

Severus stops her with a hand around the wrist, not looking away from James. “Enslumber.”

James’ blank eyes roll back in his head and he sinks back into the pillows.

Severus lets go of Lily’s wrist, pressing a sweet kiss to James’ forehead. “Go to London,” he whispers, infusing the words with magic. “Wait for me.”

James disappears beneath his hands. Lily makes some sort of punched-out noise, curling down over the empty space. “What have you done,” she whispers. “Where have you put him?”

“London, just as I said.” Severus cups her face. She slaps him away. “Lily.” He stretches his hand out again, but this time doesn’t touch her. “Lily, where do you want to go?”

“Nowhere—”

“Lily.” Severus kisses her, long and hard, the warm way he used to back in school, when she still wore a green ribbon in her hair. “Where do you want to go?”

Lily clutches the front of his dress. “Glasglow,” she breathes. “Where I proposed to you, in the summer of our seventh year. By the park with the willow trees. Send me there.”

Severus nods. “I love you, Lily Snape.”

“You’re a prick.” Lily grins. “I love you, too.”

Severus taps his wand to her head. “Obliviate,” and her eyes dim of affection. “Go to Glasgow. Wait for me,” and she fades from his grip.

Severus wants nothing more than to sink down onto the empty bed and sleep forever, but his work is not finished yet. There is a child down the hall that must be saved from the rat coming to kill it stone dead.

He checks the clock in the bathroom on his way to Harry’s room. Eight-oh-three. Nearly time, then, but not quite.

Severus slips through the door to the nursery. Harry smiles at him, toothless, and makes grabby hands in Severus’ direction. Severus bends down by the crib, gripping a bar in one hand and using the other to poke Harry in the nose with his wand. “May you always know our love,” he whispers. “May you always trust us.”

Harry giggles, grasping the wand in his tiny fingers. “Mama,” he babbles, then bites down on the tip.

Severus smiles. “Yes, маленькая змея. I’m your Mama. And I love you more than life, you understand? And even though I have to go away for a very long while, I’m always going to be here, and I’m always going to protect you.” His wand alights with a spell, sending blue light spurting from Harry’s nostrils. “And those who harm you will pay.”

“Not me, I hope.”

Severus whirls around, shielding Harry with his entire body.

Voldemort grins at the tip of Severus’ wand, pointed at his neck. “Traitor, traitor, traitor…” He clicks his tongue. “Should’ve known. Little snake.”

Severus does not take kindly to his son’s nickname in this monster’s mouth. “You will not harm him.”

Voldemort waves the spell away with a flick of his wand. “Pettigrew told me of your talent for unspelled magic,” he says, tilting his head. He takes a step closer and Severus shrinks back against the crib. “And that you were not to be trusted. As a reward, I’ll kill him quickly.”

Severus straightens up, keeping Harry carefully behind him. “You will not harm him.”

Voldemort bares his teeth, stalking ever nearer. “Your death, however, will be slow,” he says. “The way one cooks a turkey. Perhaps I’ll cook you. Though I imagine you won’t taste very good.” He leans in, slit eyes glinting in the dark. “Too greasy.”

Severus punches him in the mouth.

Voldemort rears back.

Severus raises his wand. “Avada Kedav—”

Voldemort smacks him across the face.

Severus tumbles to the ground, leaving Harry unguarded. He scrambles up again just as Voldemort rounds on the crib, a desperate cry on his lips—

Sirius crashes through the window and tackles the Dark Lord to the carpet.

Severus doesn’t waste second chances. He stabs his wand into Voldemort’s ear and howls, “AVADA KEDAVRA!”

Voldemort shivers, then shrivels, then shrinks. Before long he’s popped away completely under Sirius’ palms, leaving the nursery, and the world, quiet and safe again.

Severus looks up from the floor at Sirius—his Sirius—and lifts his wand in a shaky hand. “What the f*ck are you doing here?”

Sirius his hand, opening his fist to let the Time Turner hang from his finger. “Turns out Moony’s a bit of a klepto.”

Severus laughs, collapsing back into the ground. “f*ck,” he gasps. “We’ve gotta get the other one from Pettigrew before we leave.”

“It’s in my pocket. I killed him on my way in.” Sirius grasps his hand, tugging hard. “Severus, we have to go.”

Severus wrenches away. “What? No, we have to—We have to take Harry—”

“We can’t change the future any more than we already have,” Sirius says, though his eyes soften, falling to the child rocking himself back and forth in the crib. “You know that, Sevvy.”

Severus reaches for Harry. “f*ck you.”

Sirius pulls him back, grabbing his chin and forcing Severus to look at him. “I’m sorry, Doe,” he whispers. “Forgive me.” He turns the necklace—

Severus shoves him away, lunging for Harry, but Sirius holds on to his wrist, dragging him back to their present. Severus chokes out one final plea.

“Don’t forget me—”

They crash into the kitchen table of Ramsrot, Sirius tipping a chair over and Severus tumbling straight into one of the table legs. Severus winces, clutching his head and reaching out for something to pull himself up, only to find Lily’s hands wrapped around his. She looks at him like she’s been missing him forever, even though he can’t have been gone more than an hour. James is helping Sirius to his feet, Regulus waiting in the doorway with Luna and Draco holding each of his hands.

Severus searches the room for the other half of his soul and finds Remus by the counter, an arm wrapped around their child’s chest, the child he just left behind.

“Harry,” Severus whispers, and the world creaks forward into place.

Harry’s eyes sparkle. “Mama,” he says, wrapping his not-as-tiny fingers around Severus’ wand. “I remember you.”

The funny thing about the world ending is that it always seems to start back up again.

They fix up the house. They replenish the garden. They go grocery shopping and they throw birthday parties and they argue over stupid, meaningless things that feel very important in the moment but hardly matter later. Life is all around quiet, and generally very good.

Four years after the world’s reset finds Severus in Ramsrot’s kitchen, surrounded by floating dishes that are scrubbing themselves clean. It’s there that Remus finds him, dressed in a soft pink dress with lantern sleeves and deep V-neckline that falls more like a U, folds of rayon falling like an infinity scarf down his chest. His skirt brushes against Severus’ own as he joins him at the sink, reaching out to take his hand.

“Hi, Juliet,” Remus says, and Severus says, “Hi, Romeo,” back and it all feels very well and domestic, and Severus is terribly bored sometimes, but he supposes he prefers that to being terribly sad.

Their children are off to Hogwarts now, their spouses off to work. Severus has taken the day off from the shop, though he supposes he should enjoy it for as long as he can, since he’s handing the reins over to Maggie in the fall, when he’ll join Remus on the staff of Hogwarts as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.

Here in the kitchen, Remus, ever the Herbology teacher even when he’s not on the clock, opens his hand and lets a daisy grow from his lifeline. Severus looks at it for a moment before plucking it from his husband’s hand, kissing the patched-over skin in its wake.

“I miss this, sometimes,” Remus says, an echo of too many years ago now, on a floating bench above a garden. “You and me. Quiet.” He glances down at the flower in Severus’ hand. “Daisies.”

Severus points at the ceiling, twirls his finger, and sends the dishes pattering softly into their open cabinets. “I’m right here.”

Remus hums, shifting to stand behind him, his hands curling around Severus’ hips. “This is forever, you know,” he says. “You’re my whole life, calon ddewr.”

Severus knows this. It is not a new joy, but it’s still his favorite. It sits in his chest like a nesting bird and sings lullabies into the void. He turns in Remus’ arms, putting his hands on his neck. “You should know,” he says. “Everything feels smaller when you’re here. I feel bigger, with you.”

What a gift it is, to take up space. Remus kisses him and Severus balloons into the sun.

“Sometimes I think the world might end again,” Severus says, when Remus pulls away.

“But it doesn’t feel like it matters,” Remus finishes, tying Severus’ hair back with a red ribbon. “I know.”

Severus holds out his hand. Remus takes it. The world outside is big and wide and wonderful, and it is still spinning.

“You’re my best friend,” Remus says, similarly wide-eyed and wonderful, and Severus thinks he probably looks much the same.

“You’re my ending,” Severus says, and turns off the sink.

Come on. I’ll take you home.

Which side are you on? Are you the enemy?

I’m not sure if any of that matters. Friends. Enemies. So long as there is mercy. Always mercy.

— The Twelfth Doctor & Davros