Title: The Sketchbook, the grump and the wheelchair

Written for: youuuu

Ratings and Warnings: none for this epilogue

Word Count: Around 35k all together

Summary: The Boy Who Lived had grown up to be The Man Who Lived in a Wheelchair, and although he's quite happy with a life of solitude and sketching - everyone else seem to think they know better. Will the reappearance of Professor Severus Snape in his life change things for the better, or will it end in aggravation like always?

Author notes: Uh so I was done with this story, but a bunch o' peeps gave some feedback around not really getting a glimpse of Severus' feelings at all. I thought ok if the fic gets like 10k views or something then I will write an epilogue chapter from Sev's pov. None of my fics had gotten even 5k views before so I felt pretty safe. And then I checked on this a while later and it had like 14k and I was like oh. . oops. So I told myself I'd do it if it ever got to 20k. Which it now has, and I didn't expect that either so I wrote this in a hurry last night.

**THIS WORLD AND ITS CHARACTERS ARE NOT MY PROPERTY AND I MAKE NO MONEY FROM THEM. I JUST LOVE THEM AND ALSO WANT THEM TO LOVE EACH OTHER**

Severus Snape was a man of many emotions. Well... Sarcasm, mostly. If that could be called an emotion - he certainly had enough of it in his mind to call it so.

There was something beautifully satisfying about dancing the line in its vocalisation, in leaving the recipient of his amusement questioning its existence.

Harry's eyes narrowed at him, and it was a struggle to keep his expression solemn. He was a statue of sincerity, the very image of innocent concern. Of course, he could remember a time when it would have been no struggle at all. He was losing control with age, but didn't much find that he minded. Sometimes - on occasion - he even allowed a laugh to escape. Not now, naturally. He had no desire to agitate Harry, which he supposed was a strangeness in itself.

The other man huffed, lowering his eyes to the sketchbook in his stubby yet somehow elegant fingers. "Yeah well, just you see when they ask me back. Can't even put one accessible toilet in the entire bloody stadium? That's the last time I do something for that Slithe- imbecile."

Imbecile? Severus thought, his amusement growing. Someone had his big boy pants on today, using three syllable words. He turned away, pretending to search the packed bookshelf beside him in order to hide the upturned corner of his mouth. He removed a loosely-bound packet of parchment from the shelf and dropped it carefully onto his lap, murmuring a spell to undo the brown string that tied the collection.

He read automatically, mind running through the twisting patterns of ancient glyphs without pause as if it were plain modern English. There was a special skill to reading Eravarian, which not only had its own alphabet but a totally unique pattern on each page, and he did not consider himself the least bit arrogant for acknowledging his mastery of the language. His thoughts however were elsewhere. Words flowed through him without stopping to be processed.

Sarcasm was not the only emotion with which he was afflicted. There had been a growing number of them in the last year - or more precisely, emotions that had previously never seen the figurative light of day were now rearing up out of the soil under a certain someone's nurturing glow.

It was quite terrifying, when he dared to think about it. Positivity was vulnerability. Optimism, hope… Caring. They were terrible, fragile things, so dependent on the continuation of his current circumstances. It would have been sufficient to make him turn tail, if not for his damnable loyalty and stubbornness. He had chosen his path, had been committed to it from the moment he'd floo'd into Potter's hearth and laid eyes upon him.

What a horrible mess.

Even now, he couldn't place exactly what had caught him. Despite his extensive preparations, he hadn't been all that invested in the whole helping-Harry-Potter-again idea. He'd expected to arrive and be sent straight off again by the arrogant little fool, relished the prospect of righteous anger that would have fuelled him through the rest of the year. Oh, the rants he could have had. He'd even practiced tirades in front of the mirror; epic monologues on the genealogical origins of Potter's ignorance and ingratitude, going back at least three generations. Ah, the wasted research… It still pained him. Then again, he was sure to have use for it someday.

It had been all he looked forward to for weeks, and then-

Harry had looked so beautiful, so regal and composed, sketching away in his book as the window's morning sunlight framed him. If Severus had been a painter then the moment might have inspired him. It was still a shock, knowing that Harry felt that way about him. There had been no arguments, no childish games or purposefully annoying behaviours. He'd found in the man a sort of kinship. A shared understanding of pain and expectation.

He'd never intended… Couldn't have hoped… For this. Us. They had no name for it bar that.

He caught familiar movements in the corner of his eye. Harry seemed not to know how his body language changed when he drew Severus, becoming more furtive and defensive. As if he thought even now that he might be denied the right. Not that Severus had discouraged that line of thinking.

"What," he said in a slow drawl, without raising his head, "was the purpose in my purchasing that extraordinarily expensive, if admittedly aesthetic, figurine - if you insist on continuing to draw me in its stead?" Not to mention the fact that they were in one of the world's most beautiful libraries, and even this small side study was filled with objects from around the world, scattered amongst the books on the gorgeous mahogany shelves.

The pencil stopped for barely a heartbeat before resuming at a faster pace. It was the same every time. He caught the end of a quietly grumbled sentence from Harry: "-eyes on the side of his bloody head..."

He couldn't help it, the quick quirk that tugged at his lip. Though it lacked subtlety, he was left with no choice but to cover his mouth with a hand, pretending to cough.

"The dust's terrible here, isn't it?" Harry said, not bothering to hide his own quivering mouth.

Severus decided generously to pretend he hadn't noticed the tone. This moment was going to end up in the sketchbook, he knew. Not the one in Harry's lap. The other one. The secret one that Harry didn't know he'd found. The first page was soppily - sickeningly - scrawled with the words "Reasons I Love Severus Snape", and it was filled to the brim with sketches he had been sure at first were pure imagination. He was smiling in some of them, in others he looked only fond, or showed wrinkles of amusement around the eyes in an otherwise stoic face. In yet more, he was clearly upset or angry. That night so long ago, when he had trashed the laboratory and answered the door with a bleeding hand, it was in the sketchbook too.

If only he'd known that Harry wanted his company more than his cure, he could have saved them both a lot of heartache. It had been pure foolishness to continue with treatment after the blood test - foolishness and arrogance both. He had managed to convince himself that he could do it, with a tweak here or there, despite the reawakening of the curse. He'd put Harry in danger for his own desire to play hero. For this man to see him being the hero. It was downright shameful behaviour.

"Can we go to the ruins again?" Harry asked, cutting through his thoughts.

Severus sent him a scowl. "I'm reading." He refocused on the pages in his lap, trying to find the last glyph he remembered seeing. He couldn't remember a one.

Harry nudged him with his chair. "No you're not, come on. You were staring into space for like twenty minutes - and don't you tell me you weren't, look." He tilted his book for Severus to see, flipping back through the pages quickly to show numerous sketches of a pensive potions master. "I was drawing you for ages. Ruins? I'll get you an ice cream. Choc mint chip, your favourite. You can't say no…" He sang the last few words, wiggling his eyebrows with a half-grin.

Severus held out for as long as he could, which was all of three and a half seconds, before retying the parchment. Oh, how far he had fallen. There had been pride in him once. Resilience and willpower. They were insignificant rock pools drowning under the tide of his... other feelings. "Muggles don't sell choc mint chip, and you know it. They have the proportions quite reversed."

"Alright, I'll get you a chocolate cone and stick some chewing gum in it," Harry replied patiently, as if to a favourite child.

When in the world had he begun allowing people to speak to him in such a manner? Severus really was a lost cause. Seeing his too-slowly-schooled face, Harry sent his best peacemaking smile. It was difficult to hold ill towards such brightness.

Harry turned his chair with a soft sigh, sketchbook already tucked away in his bag. "Come here," he ordered gently, holding his hands up like a child wanting to be carried. That was not his intention, of course. Severus stood to slip the research material back into the slot from whence he had taken it, and then leaned down to his - ah, his Harry.

The man pulled him down the rest of the way until their lips met, his hands slipping through Severus' hair to the back of his neck. He closed his eyes, drank in the intimacy. He leaned on Harry's chair to take pressure from his aching back, and simply enjoyed the slow but shallow kiss. When it was done, he nudged Harry's nose with his own and didn't move away. He loved these moments, when they were so close as to be blind to each other and he could almost imagine himself to be a more handsome, deserving man. He felt like one when Harry kissed him, and the loss pained him when they parted.

Harry smiled against his cheek, and Severus valiantly attempted not to reciprocate the action. "I love you," the man whispered, only just loud enough to hear.

Severus' heart jumped, leapt, danced, sank, all at once. The result was a hitched breath, giving away more than he would have liked Harry to know. Love. That was certainly… a word. A noun, an adjective that suddenly, clearly, stunningly encompassed and described all of those non-sarcasm emotions that had been floating about causing havoc in him for so long now. It just had to go and be bloody love, didn't it. As if he wasn't vulnerable enough already.

Well, he supposed there was nothing he could do about it now.

"You don't have to say it back," Harry said, like the clueless Griffindor he was.

Severus dropped to his knees, because it was the only way he could keep his creaky old back from complaining as he took Harry's face in his hands. "You're a fool, from a long line of fools", he said. His voice was quiet and raspy, but he could add nothing to strengthen it. "Only a moron of the most boneheaded, cretinous of calibres could do something so stupid as feel such a thing for the likes of me."

Harry sighed again. "Sev-"

"I will however, make an allowance just this once owing to your unfortunately moronic lineage, for which you can hardly be held accountable-"

"Severus."

"Furthermore," Severus said loudly, then dropped his voice again. It was a library, after all. "I shall permit your continued stupidity and go so far as to add that I also… That I- Ah, in a way, I suppose can be capable of my own… That is to say…"

Merlin, he was reduced to a stuttering awkward teenager. It really was simple, all he had to do was say three small, easy words. One syllable each. It was hardly advanced arithmetics.

This was the problem with being a man of many emotions, especially when one was not used to admitting to them. They were simply too numerous and too large. They filled him to such bursting that there was no room to feel them out, to reach between them and pull out the words that would sufficiently describe how utterly, utterly lost he was to them. He was powerless, as he always had been in such matters.

"You don't have to say it," Harry repeated, moving his hands along Severus' jaw to his chin and lifting it. "I already know."

So he didn't say it, at least not that day. There would be time to say it later. They visited the ruins, and Harry insisted on trying to hold hands as they went. Severus settled for an orange flavoured Calippo in the end.