Mist shrouds King's Cross Station, coming around Harry's feet in thick white plumes, but he barely notices it, is barely cognizant of it as he moves quickly toward the main platform of the station, feeling the familiar stone floor beneath his feet. There's no train in the station yet, and thus, no one waiting at the platform to get on—

No one except one.

Harry feels everything stop when he stands with his feet flat on the concrete, his hands at his sides, his gaze staring forward. A tension he hadn't known was in his chest, a desperate uncertainty he hadn't let himself acknowledge, untangles itself in one smooth movement, and leaves his chest free and empty.

Perhaps King's Cross Station is how it always is: perhaps there is bustle, and noise, and yelling. Perhaps people are rushing back and forth around him, crying out for lost trolleys or missing family members, insisting they need just one thing patched onto their robes before the train gets here, asking if you've got enough sandwiches for the train, Susie, have you got enough money for the trolley witch—

Perhaps it all goes on as usual. Perhaps King's Cross is its usual array of colours and laughter and brightness and yells.

If it is, Harry notices none of it.

He inhales, taking in a great lungful of air that makes him feel like he could float, and he looks at the exception to the natural brightness of the little pocket universe around them (which is what King's Cross is, what it always has been, if truth be told, he's always known that, always known it's a little existence of its own, between one world and another) to the figure dressed all in black, his hands loosely clasped in front of his stomach.

"Hello," Harry says, and Severus turns his head. He looks at Severus silently, expectantly. His skin doesn't look as unhealthily sallow as Harry had always remembered it being – but then, he's much younger now, much younger than he was. There aren't as many wrinkles in his face, and his hair is longer, too, than he always had it when he was Harry's teacher, and isn't it odd, to think of that Severus Snape, when this one is so different? "Were you waiting for me?"

"Yes," Severus says. "Are you coming?"

"I think I have to," Harry says, with no small amount of rueful humour, and he sees the other man's lips quirk at their edges just slightly, just a little sadness showing in the black of his eyes. Harry steps forward, and he comes to stand in parallel with Severus, his toes touching the line at the edge of the platform. "Onwards and upwards."

"If you say so," Severus says, seeming sceptical, but he's so… relaxed. Harry's never seen him so relaxed, not here, as he's seen Severus for the past year or so, and not twenty years in the future, when… But that doesn't matter anymore, does it? That's a different world. It's a different universe. "I think I hear the train coming."

"Do you?" Harry asks, leaning forward to look: he doesn't hear anything, doesn't see anything either, but he knows the other man's hearing is good, better than his own, probably. Beside him, on the platform, the side of Severus' hand brushes against Harry's, and Harry turns to look at him, feeling his lips part slightly—

And then he interlinks their fingers, their palms together. He sees the momentary uncertainty, the momentary grit of Severus' crooked teeth, unused to actually touching somebody else… But then he relaxes, his shoulders loosening again, his jaw relaxing.

"Onwards and upwards, Mr Potter," Severus murmurs, so quietly Harry can barely hear it, and Harry smiles.

"If you say so, Mr Snape," he replies, and they stand just so, like that.

The train comes.