Title: Leave the Snake His Privacy

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairing: Harry/Snape

Warnings: Slight angst

Rating: R

Wordcount: 3271

Summary: Harry could understand that Severus had objections to romance after the life he'd led, but he had no idea why the objections seemed to center so strongly on the restaurant he'd chosen for their date.

Author's Notes: Another Advent fic, for goddess47, who gave me the prompt of Harry wanting to take Severus on a romantic date, and it possibly not going well.

Leave the Snake His Privacy

The flicker of candles over the small round table where they sat together—the table that hovered in the middle of the air, supported by thousands of Levitation Charms—made the light intense near them and soft, romantic shadows further away. Around them flitted fairies, not real ones, but illusion-disguised servers who would bring any dish they desired. The chairs felt as firm as though they were on the ground. The table, the chairs, the candle-holders, and everything else visible were made of some dark wood with the sheen of cherry but the smell of cedar. It was hard for Harry to imagine a more intimate atmosphere.

"So how was your day?" Harry asked.

Severus raised his eyes and pinned Harry with his gaze across the table. "I spent the day purging bubotubers of their pus," he said.

Harry winced. It wasn't the particular use of the words "bubotuber" or "pus," or the echoing voice that Severus used to speak them, or how he sat bolt upright and apparently refused to believe that the hovering chairs were safe. It was all of those at once.

Romance was purged, too. Harry picked up his glass of champagne and sipped it. "I thought we could both use a holiday," he murmured. "You've been working so hard, and I've had those arguments with Kingsley lately." Kingsley wanted Harry to take up the position of Head Auror, an idea Harry wasn't a fan of. "I thought we could use a holiday."

"You have already said that," Severus pointed out, leaning forwards. The table didn't wobble when he leaned a hand on it, but Severus gave it a dark look anyway. "And this is not a holiday."

"Yes, it is!" Harry waved his hand around as another server soared past, her gown sighing around her. Large, glamoured butterfly wings spread out from her shoulders. Harry knew she was really on a broom, but the illusion was so good that you couldn't see any trace of that. "We don't have to cook!"

"We could have eaten leftovers." Severus's chair creaked as he folded his arms. Harry had no idea how he'd managed that, since he'd already rocked his own chair around for fun and it hadn't made any sound.

"We can talk to each other in an intimate setting," Harry tried.

"I was under the impression that you preferred to grunt when intimate."

Harry could feel his face flaming, and especially his ears. He knew the servers soaring past were hearing Severus's words, and while everyone knew he was dating Severus now and large segments of the wizarding public had come out of denial after Severus had sent potions-soaked Howlers to everyone who objected, there was a level of detail that they didn't need. "Severus!" he hissed.

"Cease your inane justifications and tell me why you have dragged me here." A server passed and floated a glass of Firewhisky onto the table in front of Severus. Severus didn't give it a glance. His attention was all for Harry.

Most of the time, Harry treasured that, but right now, it was hard to think of anything more embarrassing. He coughed and picked up his own champagne again to give him something to toy with. "I thought—I thought we could enjoy some time together that's not in the Potions lab or the bedroom."

"There are plenty of other places that we could enjoy our time together." Severus glanced around the restaurant with distaste.

Harry sat up a little. "Fine. Where? And what's so objectionable about this place?" He waved his hand around. He would have liked to come here on a date, he thought wistfully. He would have liked Severus to escort him in through the door and take his cloak and seat him in the floating chair that had brought them up to their table, the way he'd done for Severus.

Harry had made his choice about being with Severus the first time he'd poured a potion down Severus's throat after the war and seen him open his eyes and focus on the potions vial, with a criticism for how well it was made. But sometimes he did regret what he didn't have. He thought everyone did.

It was just, usually it was a different kind of gentle treatment that people regretted, not the complete lack of it.

"It is a restaurant," Severus said.

Harry passed a hand over his forehead. "It's a romantic setting!"

Severus gave him a glance of the kind that skewered any romance left in the evening and turned it into a Potions ingredient. Harry finally placed his hands on the table and gave up. "Finally. Where would you go if you wanted to romance someone?"

Severus paused reflectively. Harry held his breath. He hadn't rejected the notion of romance altogether. That might mean there was some hope after all.

"I would choose it and not tell them until we got there," Severus retorted, and stretched out his arm. "Will you come with me now? To the place I choose, and not ask questions until we get there?"

Harry thought about it. Severus's conditions were usually hooks with hidden bait, but this time, he thought he'd spotted the hook. "Do I get to ask questions afterwards?"

"My hope is that your mouth will be too full."

Harry hesitated again. Severus had an objection to restaurants. Maybe he was taking Harry to a private place where they could get a meal? Harry knew that some witches and wizards ran small kitchens out of the back of their houses. Molly had taken to doing that after the war, and had found an unexpectedly greedy market for her cooking.

But either way, even if the food wasn't as good as it was supposed to be here, that place would have one undeniable advantage. It would be Severus's choice, and he would be more cheerful. And since Harry had wanted to arrange this date for Severus's pleasure, it was a failure if he wasn't.

"All right," Harry said abruptly, and saw Severus's teeth flash in a way that made a tingle flood down his spine.

"Why did you assume I would enjoy a date in that place?"

Harry rolled his eyes a little as he stepped off the floating chair that had taken them down from their table as it had brought them up. "I told you, it's romantic—"

"And why did you assume I would enjoy romance?" Severus picked up Harry's cloak and tucked it around Harry's shoulders before Harry could do it himself.

That made Harry pause and eye him a bit suspiciously, but he answered. "Because I wanted to make a fuss of you. So few people ever have." He took Severus's hand under the disguise of their cloaks and squeezed it. "I thought you would enjoy having a fuss made."

Severus's face grew dark and shadowed, and Harry held his breath, wondering if he had said something wrong after all. But then Severus shook his head and focused his gaze on Harry. "I wanted to make a fuss over you."

Harry laughed softly in spite of himself. "Well, I had my chance, and it didn't go that well. Why don't you Apparate me wherever we're going?"

Severus nodded and took Harry in his arms. Harry closed his eyes and felt the familiar rushing into darkness, then the spin and whirl. He coughed and opened his eyes.

They stood by the gate that closed off the white gravel path leading to their own house.

Harry turned around and stared at Severus. "What…"

"I cannot make a fuss of you in public," said Severus, his hand resting on the gate. That gave him an excellent excuse to avoid Harry's eyes, but Harry also knew that he was doing it on purpose, however accidental it seemed. "I need privacy for any…indulgence I might feel."

A second later, Harry nodded. He ought to have thought of that. Severus was too private a person to enjoy a public romantic place, however much he might appreciate the intention.

"Well, then, let me cook for you," he said, taking the gate himself and swinging it back. "And then we can do whatever you like."

Severus's arm glanced against his shoulder. Harry looked up. Severus was leaning towards him, and his eyes were so focused and gleaming that Harry leaned away without meaning to.

"What I want to do is cook for you," Severus said, his voice low and holding all the intimacy that Harry had missed at the restaurant. "You cook for me all the time."

"Because I didn't think you would want to after brewing most of the day," Harry said. "And you told me once that you didn't like cooking."

"For myself? I do not. It is a foolish waste of time that could be put to better effort." Severus closed the gate. "But for you? I wish to."

Harry blinked one more time. He wondered if this was also part of Severus's idea of a romantic evening: doing something he didn't ordinarily do, in a setting where he could feel calm and secure.

It probably was.

Harry caught Severus's hand and squeezed it. "Thank you," he said. "Lead the way."

Severus's method of cooking was a lot like his brewing, Harry discovered, once he was seated at the table—Severus drawing his chair back for him as if Harry was a prince—and watching Severus dart from fireplace to Muggle stove to counter to pot boiling over a fire Severus had created in midair, and back again.

There was the squinting and the frowning, the poising of hands, the sudden pounce that made Severus's robes rattle like the wings of crows. There was the equally sudden grunt of satisfaction and the cocking of the head that meant Severus was satisfied with the results—for the moment. Then he would whirl around and deal with the other fire or device in the room that was boiling or roasting or baking or cooking something he wanted to have ready at the same time.

Harry had once thought of Potions as a sedate pursuit, until he had learned to watch Severus. He also thought of cooking as relaxation.

Well, it might be, for him, he mused, as Severus took out the neatly roasted potatoes and laid them triumphantly on the plate in the middle of the table, following that with baked fish, steaming soup that had small peppers floating in it, and a heated pudding of pears and cream that looked as if it would be delicious. But Severus had different ideas.

And it wasn't just the edge of danger that came with watching Potions cauldrons prepare to overflow translated into an anxiety about cooking. Harry thought it was, in large part, just the sort of man Severus was. He had a sharp eye on Harry, certainly, as he ceremoniously set down the last bowl on the table.

Harry took a bite of the pudding first, because he could, despite Severus's glare. He gasped. The heavy, scalded cream seemed to pour into his mouth and burn it at the same moment as the hotter—surely they were hotter?—pears cooled it. "Thank you," he gabbled around the large gulp of water he swallowed to drown the heat. "It's delicious."

"I knew you would like it."

Harry kept his eyes on the food in front of him so he could hide how much Severus's self-assured tone amused him.

Severus took the seat across from Harry, watching him narrowly, as though he assumed that Harry would get up and leave the kitchen any moment. But Harry had enough here both to eat and to cool his mouth. He took another bite, a smaller one and a cooler one this time, and grinned at Severus around it.

It was easier than he had thought, to relax into Severus's definition of romance. As he would not have in public—and Harry thought himself a fool now, for not recognizing that—Severus began talking, his hands making wide curves in the air. He talked about Potions, he talked about the charm he'd had to use on his lab after mice got into it, and he complained about the new seller of potions vials in Diagon Alley who didn't use glass that was strong enough to withstand a little heat.

And all the while, he watched Harry with a passion that he wouldn't have showed in public, either. Harry finally reached out and took one of those flying hands, and Severus left it there, squeezing Harry's fingers now and then, and only gestured even more emphatically with the other one.

The meal finished, with Harry sucking a little on the last pear in his bowl just to see Severus flinch, and then Severus got up and sent the dishes to the sink with a flip of his wand. When he turned around, his gaze was so dark and challenging that Harry blinked.

"Come," Severus whispered, and beckoned.

Harry stood up, feeling as if he was borne along on the flood of a river. The tide swept him up and pulled him along, and he laid his hand in Severus's, and Severus turned him around so that his back was against the wall.

"You need do nothing," Severus whispered. "I want to do this for you."

"Okay," Harry breathed back. He reckoned that he could trust Severus by now, even if his tone was mysterious and his eyes looked almost as dark as they had sometimes during the war.

Severus gave him a deep smile and wrapped his arms around Harry. He must have cast a Lightening Charm without Harry noticing, the sort of nonverbal magic that he was good at, because he could easily carry him into the bedroom. Harry smiled as he laid his head back on the pillow and stretched his arms. The least he could do was give Severus a good show for the care that Severus was giving him.

"Beautiful," said Severus, which might have been a compliment to either Harry or himself, and flicked his wand again. This time, all of their clothes blew off their bodies on a gentle wind, lifted off over their heads, while the breeze caressed their skin and made the hair on Harry's arms stand softly on end.

"I didn't know you could cast that one nonverbally," Harry breathed. He knew Severus had been working on it, but he hadn't thought he'd mastered it without words. And it was hard to think about, anyway, with the way that Severus moved towards him with an easy stalking motion, his body gleaming pale and scarred in the moonlight through the window.

The window that hadn't showed moonlight until a moment ago, either, Harry realized. Severus had also nonverbally changed the scene it looked out on.

"It took a long time until it could." Severus knelt down in front of him and held Harry's eyes. "And now I want to know if you will let me take care of you."

Harry smiled and let his muscles go languid until he didn't know if he could have stood up had a wand-wielding assassin suddenly burst into the room. "I'm all yours."

Severus's eyes widened a little, the usual sign that he was greedy or impressed. "Yes, you are," he said, and it was the solid belief in his voice that reassured Harry the most. Severus had had his fears and doubts after they got together, but this showed how close he was to at least letting the doubts go, if not forgetting them altogether.

Severus prepared him with long, clever fingers, with an oil of his own devising that kept Harry comfortably warm but aching a little until he was filled, and then paused for one moment before he slid into him. Harry blinked a little in question. Relaxed by the potion and the touch of Severus's hands, it was the only motion that he really felt capable of at the moment.

"You are well-loved," Severus whispered.

Harry nodded, and reached out a clumsy hand to catch Severus's fingers. Severus squeezed them once and slid into him, and added, when Harry was gasping and his mind was full of other things, "Including by me."

Harry thought, hoped, that he moved his tongue and jaws in the right pattern. "I love you, too."

If he didn't get to say it, it seemed that Severus could at least tell he meant it, because his face broke into a fierce smile that Harry didn't think anyone but him had ever seen, and he began to fuck Harry as if his life depended on it.

Or as if Harry's did, Harry thought, his head sagging a little to the side, his eyes closing. It had taken him years, after the war and then through friendship and then through dating, to gain Severus's complete loyalty, but once it was given, it didn't go away again.

Even if it was just loyalty to a little thing, like making sure Harry had plenty of pleasure, Severus would take it seriously.

Harry lost himself in the liquid effect of the lovemaking—not liquid just because of the potion, but because of the smoothness with which Severus moved, and the glance of Severus's hands over his skin, and the soft murmurs that sometimes slid out of one or both their mouths—and in the half-dream that rolled him over, his orgasm took him by surprise. He gasped, and heard Severus chuckle smugly, as the pleasure throbbed through him, then diminished slowly, in rings that seemed to focus on his arse.

Harry forced one eye open and muttered, "What did you put in that potion?"

"Something of my own devising," said Severus, which answered the question not at all, and his hands quickened abruptly in their grip on Harry's hips, and his mouth parted in a whistling hiss. That was the only sign he was ever willing to give of what was happening inside his body.

Given that Harry could feel a little more like this, however, and given how well he knew Severus, he was perfectly willing to accept that. He reached out and touched Severus's side a moment before Severus collapsed on him.

Even that was to be treasured, Harry thought. Months after they had started sleeping together, Severus had still been pulling away from him immediately afterwards and curling up in his own corner of the bed, or even leaving altogether and going to brew for the rest of the night.

It wasn't everyone who would have understood and treasured these gestures from Severus, but Harry felt lucky that he got to.

And then when Severus fell asleep immediately, his head tilted slightly towards Harry and his mouth open…

Harry smiled and pulled the blankets up to Severus's chin. It wasn't the romance other people dreamed of, but it was the one he had, made of history and passion and vulnerability, and wouldn't trade for anything else.

The End.