It took weeks, but he finally found it. The resurrection stone was his to command once again. But he didn't know how it worked. He kept summoning his mum, dad, Remy, and Sirius, but he didn't need them. He tried to concentrate on who he wanted, but he never came. He figured out how to stop summoning his family, because it was clear they were suffering from his attempts, but then Fred started showing up. The dead twin didn't seem bothered by the separation of their worlds, or the torture he endured. Harry spent hours talking to him, begging him to tell him something of the afterlife, and if perhaps he had seen a certain someone. The boisterous prankster was decidedly quiet on the subject. He refused to speak of any but those Harry had summoned, but Harry felt a little safer with Fred watching over him as he slept. Still, he wanted the one man he couldn't have. He wanted an explanation. He wanted to shout and scream at the ghost of a man who haunted him endlessly.

In desperation, Harry snuck into the school during the summer, when no one would notice. He traipsed down to the dungeons, ever on the lookout for Filch or his ratty cat. He went unseen and entered the Potions Master's old office, empty now of everything but a desk and an empty portrait. Harry sat down in the center of the room, and held the ring in his cupped hands in his lap. He closed his eyes and tried to picture what the office had looked like the last time he'd seen it, tried to picture the man that had sat behind the desk, rather than the one who had died on a dusty floor. It wouldn't come.

"What are you doing?"

Harry started and opened his eyes, certain his concentration had finally worked. He looked around, but the effervescent glow of the dead was nowhere. The Gryffindor frowned, and nearly leapt out of his skin when he found the very real, opalescent black gaze staring at him. He forced himself to calm down as his eyes adjusted to the dim light from his lone candle, and he realized it was the man's portrait and nothing more. He frowned.

"I'm trying to summon you."

"You play with dangerous magic, foolish boy."

Harry was on his feet in seconds. "Don't you call me that, you bastard!"

"Oh, so that is why you've come? To derogate and deride the dead?"

Harry frowned. "Why do you always have to talk like that? Why can't you talk like a normal human being?"

Snape's black eyes rolled. "If you hadn't noticed, Potter, I am neither normal, nor human any longer. I am a painting."

Harry looked away, ashamed of his outburst.

"Why are you here?"

"Why should you care?" Harry bit back. "You're a portrait, remember? I don't want to talk to you. I want to talk to the real Snape, or what I can get of him with this useless old ring. But every time I try to summon him… you… I get somebody else. Which is stupid, because I know he's dead."

"Why?"

"Why do I know he's dead? Because I watched you die, you big-nosed prat."

"Idiot boy, I was inquiring as to why you wished to summon my spirit. Did you not get enough of my abuse whilst I lived?"

Harry was slightly taken aback by the slight tone of regret, and suddenly all of his anger was boiling to the surface. "Don't you do that, you bastard!" He shouted as tears sprung to his eyes. "You put me through hell for six years, and when I'm finally convinced you're what's wrong in the world, you turn everything on its head! Wasn't it enough to make me your verbal punching bag? Wasn't it enough to make me hate you, without taking it all and tumping it into the last dying embers in your coal eyes?"

"How poetic-"

"I'm not finished!" Harry shouted. "I trusted everything! I trusted that you were bad and Dumbledore was good, and Ginny would be my wife, and I'd get my happily ever after, and instead you were good, Dumbledore led me like a sheep to slaughter, and Ginny wants nothing to do with a washed up war hero who doesn't know what to do with his life! You and Dumbledore used me! And then you had the gall to force me to watch you die-"

"I never intended-"

"That isn't the point!" Harry interrupted again. "You had to have known I was there! You always did! And you didn't even fight back! You just let it happen! And those memories, your memories," Harry collapsed, sobbing, to his hands and knees, his fists clenched against the cold stone floor. "Those memories of my mum, and the two of you together… your love for her was pure and brutal, and everything I've ever wanted. Even with your last breath you loved her, and what you saw of her in my eyes. You loved her until the very end."

"Not the very end," Snape said calmly.

Harry shook his head. "Why else would you-"

"Look at me," Snape instructed gently.

Harry started when a hand touched the back of his head. He jolted away, but the touch was gone, and before him stood the unearthly form of Severus Snape. He swiped the tears from his eyes, hiccupped a little in surprise, and regained his feet. Snape stood stock still, waiting. Harry glanced to the ring on the floor, but knew this was not the ring's doing. He looked back up into the transparent gaze.

"But, how-"

"I died an unjust death," Snape said. "I could only ever have come back; it was simply a matter of what form I would take. With some clever rune work carved into my body, combined with a very ancient, very forbidden potion, I was able to ensure I would return to Hogwarts as its newest poltergeist. The potion grants a sort of immortality. I am trapped in this form, but I can interact with the world around me. It is… a half-death. Cursed to wander these corridors for an eternity, not truly dead, but neither truly living, either."

"But… you can feel?" Harry asked.

"In a way, yes," Snape answered. "If I concentrate, I can experience the joys of the living, save food and drink. I will never hunger, I will never grow any older or younger, and I will never pass on, so far as I know. The potion came with a warning that after the first few centuries I would start to experience Plato's hell, which is the absence of 'God', whoever that may be to the user. I imagine it means I will feel the pain of being separate from the spirit world. However, as I am not an inferi, or what a Muggle might call a 'zombie', the pain will be bearable. I was willing to accept that consequence."

"But… why? What has this world ever offered you to make you want to remain where you'll never see my mum again, where you'll never experience paradise, or whatever it is that awaits us?" Harry demanded.

"I was unwilling to risk that I might experience the Christian hell for my misdeeds," Snape said matter-of-factly.

Harry frowned. "That's really stupid."

"Think of it what you will," Snape replied calmly. "It was my decision."

Harry stepped forward hesitantly, reaching a hand out. "May I?"

Snape nodded, but didn't otherwise move. Harry sidled closer and reached out. His hand met cool flesh, but not dead flesh, and he frowned as he stepped closer.

"So cold," He murmured.

Lips descended on him unexpectedly and Harry trembled under the heady sensation this wrought. A shiver raced up his spine. When Snape pulled back, but not away, his face was entirely without emotion. Harry was forced to restrain himself from flicking the dark façade, to see if the man hadn't become stone.

"But… my mum-"

"Not at the very end, no," Snape said stiffly.

Harry shook his head with a furrowed brow. "But, you wanted to see her eyes-"

Cold fingers found his chin and tilted his gaze up. The opalescent black eyes had softened the slightest bit, and Harry melted when cool lips touched his again briefly.

"They are your eyes, Mister Potter."

Harry's mouth formed a surprised 'o' before he threw himself into the transparent arms of the Potions Master. Unlike the two kisses Snape had bestowed, this one was full of fire and passion that seemed to be the exact opposite of the fire and passion he used to feel for the man. When he pulled back, but not away, he was grinning like the inexperienced teen he was, and couldn't resist running his fingers through the limp hair that hung around the ghostly features. His grin only widened as Snape's arms tightened around his waist.

"How long do you think it would take the two of us to come up with a counter-curse?" Harry asked. "Because I will not be spending an eternity wandering a school full of rambunctious children."

Snape smirked. "A lifetime, I think."

Harry grinned again. "You already have the antidote, don't you?"

Snape continued to smirk as he placed a gentle kiss on Harry's waiting lips. "A Slytherin never reveals his tricks, Mister Potter."