A/N : This is for the Het vs. Slash Competition. I hope you like it. :)

Angel and Devil

Severus growled under his breath, hating the thoughts going through his mind but not being able to prevent them.

Just because the damn war is over, it does not mean you can forget your dignity, Severus! A voice inside his head screamed.

Like Severus wanted them, these thoughts that his traitorous body was inducing and that his mind was not preventing.

He is twenty years younger than you, a child! The voice continued.

Didn't Severus know that? But no, he was not a child. After all he had gone through, and all he had done for him, he would not disrespect him by thinking him a child still. And age mattered not in the wizarding world, not when their life-span was so much more than an average human's and it was perfectly normal to see a couple with such an age gap.

No, what mattered were Severus' own morals and his Muggle upbringing.

And the fact that if he knew the kind of thoughts you entertained, he would be disgusted, he would run the other direction and break any kind of friendship that you had with him, The voice taunted him.

Severus sighed. That was the crux of the matter, wasn't it? No matter what he felt, his feeling would not be returned and he would once again destroy a great friendship. Once again, he would be left heartbroken with the helpless feeling inside his chest. Severus just had that sort of luck. He couldn't do anything halfway, could he? If he had to fall, he fell deeply, or not at all.

Once again, another green-eyed angel had stolen his heart, and he, the devil, had been helpless to stop it.

But this is so much more than you ever felt for her. She was an obsession, the only one who seemed to care. This is more, the voice said.

Severus hated to admit it, that he had spent all these years in an illusion, that the love had not been true, but he was done with lying to himself. He knew that now, that what he had felt for Lily Evans had been unhealthy. They played a major part in all his life-altering decisions. His anger, jealousy and bitterness shamed him, all he had done under their toxic influence haunted him and his dreams.

And that's where it all started really, those dreams. Severus had never had anyone to care for him, when he woke up, shaking from another nightmare, unable to prevent the vulnerabilities that he hated showing, even in the dead of the night, alone in his quarters. But he had changed that, like he did everything. Severus didn't know what he had been doing there that night, why he had come, he hadn't even thought to ask. The novelty of someone holding him in his pain had been too much and he was ashamed that he didn't feel even a bit ashamed at showing his vulnerabilities to someone who had been the enemy so long.

And he knew that he would never even dream to exploit his weaknesses, for he knew what it was like. He had been on the receiving end of it, and that was partially why it didn't bother Severus. How could it, when he knew that he suffered the same way? When he had shown his the same openness?

No, there was an understanding between them that addicted Severus and he was afraid of it. Afraid that he would ruin it and then he would be alone again.

He sighed as the classroom shook with the fifth explosion of the day and sealed away the thoughts. He was getting too old for this.

HPSSHPSSHPSS

He came in the night, like he always did, and pulled away the covers quietly and carefully. Severus pretended to be asleep, like he always did, and gathered him, as if subconsciously, in his arms, tucking him to his chest.

It was quiet, peaceful and they fell asleep like that, like they had for what felt like thousands of times.

It was in the morning, when their relationship changed again.

He was always gone, whenever Severus woke in the morning. It gave him a horrible feeling in his stomach, but he never stayed. Their friendship was just like that, they talked in the day and they didn't acknowledge the comfort of the night.

But he did, this time. This one, brilliant, Christmas morning, Severus woke up to the most wondrous feeling in the world. The hollowness was as absent as if it had never even existed and he was still there, in the same position they fell asleep every night. But it was not night, and this was the first time Severus had ever woken up with that warm glow inside his chest and he basked in it as much as he could.

Finally, he opened his eyes, and found his green-eyed angel looking quietly back at him, the emotion in his eyes undecipherable and foreign. He looked back, and he knew that in that moment, when all his defences were down in this marvellous after-glow of the morning, his companion could read his every emotion, every speck of what he felt in his eyes.

He was not prepared for this. He wanted to close his eyes, but was helpless in the face of bright emerald looking at him so intently.

Was this the moment, then, which he had always known was coming? Was this the moment when he would finally lose everything? He wouldn't be able to cope with it, he knew.

Or, could he hope? Was that emotion in his eyes really what Severus hoped it was, or was it just wishful thinking?

"Severus," he started, still looking at him so intensely, so seriously that he held his breath.

"Yes?" he hardly breathed back.

"Would you…" he seemed to hesitate, then, but looked at Severus' hopeful eyes and went on.

"Would you like to… build a snow man with me this afternoon?"

Severus looked incredulously at him, while he gazed back calmly. Then realisation hit him like a dozen hippogriffs.

Was he actually suggesting…? Severus looked closer in his eyes and his thoughts were confirmed.

He was.

Finally, Severus smiled and said, "I would love to," even though he absolutely hated the snow and considered the foolish fooling around in it absolutely beneath him.

His companion sighed, let out a relieved little laugh and smiled back at him, his eyes shining more than he had ever seen before.

Severus tightened his hold on him, and knew he would never let go. And he knew he would always remember this strange Christmas morning when he finally got the happily ever after Lily had said he would get.

In the afternoon, they would be seen by the only occupants of the castle, sitting outside in the snow, making a snow man and then having a picnic by the lake, looking as if the temperature outside wasn't completely freezing. And everybody would look around, checking to see if the end of the world had come.

But Severus would take it all in a stride.

After all, stranger things have happened than Harry Potter asking Severus Snape on a public date in the school grounds to make snow mans, and said Potions Master actually accepting it.

The End