Chapter Text
Severus
Severus stood still.
It was over. The trial. The last chance. The desperate hope he hadn’t dared name aloud. Gone.
They had won - in theory. But the air in the courtroom reeked of loss.
Of the sentence the Wizengamot had originally demanded - life in Azkaban - he had been granted a mercy. Three years. Just three. A mere fraction of a lifetime. But in high-security Azkaban, time distorted, stretched, bled. It might as well have been eternity.
The courtroom had emptied in slow, stunned silence. Minerva had tried to speak - had reached for his arm - but Severus hadn’t heard her. The guards had allowed him a final moment, and Harry had demanded privacy. Perhaps it was pity. Perhaps it was guilt. Or perhaps no one could look them in the eye anymore.
Now, the door was shut behind them. Just the two of them.
In a small, cold interview chamber down the hall from the courtroom, the light flickered overhead, casting long, thin shadows across the walls. The silence pressed in, broken only by the faint sound of footsteps fading away.
Severus didn’t look at the judge. Or the guards. Or even Minerva, who had stood stricken in the back as the verdict was delivered.
He looked only at him.
Harry was pacing in front of him, jaw clenched, hands curled into white-knuckled fists. His face was pale, drawn thin with exhaustion and weeks of sleepless nights. His eyes - always so achingly bright - shimmered with unshed tears, dulled by a pain that hadn’t yet found words.
“Sev,” he choked out. “I’ll find a way. I swear it. I won’t give up. I won’t.”
His voice cracked on the last word.
Gods, what had he done to deserve Harry Potter?
Severus had expected the war to kill him. Hoped it would. But Harry had returned for him in the Shrieking Shack, bloodied and frantic, cradling his ruined body and dragging him back from the edge of death.
And somehow, in the long, bitter months that followed - in hospital wings and dim corridors and the quiet between storms - the hatred had crumbled.
Respect had grown. Then something warmer. Then something frighteningly, recklessly real.
Love. Impossible love.
And now… this.
Harry had given everything. His reputation. His sanity. Weeks of testimony. Private memories made public. And now he stood there, trembling and raw, like something flayed open.
He was so young. Too young to throw his life away waiting for a man like Severus.
The air between them pulsed with grief.
Severus stepped forward, slowly, as if moving through water. His own limbs were heavy. His breath shook.
He wrapped his arms around Harry, who collapsed into him without hesitation. That familiar body - too light, too thin - pressed against his own, clinging like he might come apart without him.
Severus closed his eyes. Inhaled. Lavender. Ink. That faint woodsmoke scent he would carry with him into the darkness.
He tilted Harry’s chin up. Their mouths met, desperate and silent and slow. Not a goodbye - because even that was too cruel a word.
When he pulled back, Harry looked shattered.
With one trembling finger, Severus reached up to his temple.
He didn’t speak the incantation. He didn’t need to.
The memory charm surged forth, wordless and perfect. Harry blinked, once. The grief in his face dimmed - but only slightly. Like a storm cloud retreating behind mist.
“Be happy,” Severus whispered, voice ragged. “You deserve the world.”
And then he turned away, before his hands could shake, before his will could break. Before the guards came to take him.
Before the boy he loved could remember he had once loved him back.