Oh, this site. It has been years. I had not expected to write this at all, and then suddenly I was writing it. I've had glorious fun with it; I hope you will too.

This story is COMPLETE and will be posting every Monday and Thursday. Chapters vary in length, so I may sometimes be posting two at once. It is largely focused on the development of the Snape-sort-of-mentors-Harry-though-he-sucks-at-it relationship, but several other characters feature heavily, because I love them all.

Trigger warnings for: self-harm and suicide discussion and ideation, mature language, and young adulthood being a little horrible. There will be one explicit self-harm scene that I will warn about in advance. Otherwise, this is a little bit of angst, quite a bit of hurt/comfort, dark and snipey humour galore, and everyone trying their best even when their best isn't, well, the best (looking at you, Mr Snape).

MASON JARS.

October 22nd, 1998.

On the day of the visit, thunderheads had scratched themselves into a gloomy sky, and hung menacing above Harry's head. He had seen glimpses of the house in Snape's memories, but he was unprepared for just how tumble-down Spinners End was, years on, mouldered by time and lack of care. Paint had come off in strips, baring the walls. The doorbell was held together by tape. He did not think it made any sound when he pressed it, but after a beat of silence, the door opened on its own accord.

He stepped through and looked, disoriented, from the steep stairway past a dusty corridor and into a seedy kitchen, until a voice rang from the doorway to the right,

'Sitting room, Potter.'

A soupçon of old fear crept up on Harry: the tone matched exactly what he remembered from years spent sick with anxiety in Potions, and he had the sense for a moment that he was about to lose house points. Annoyed with himself, he squared his shoulders. Just a few months prior, he'd defeated one of the most powerful wizards of their time. He'd fought in the war just like Snape had. He would not be cowed like a schoolboy.

Snape sat in a threadbare armchair, dressed in a Muggle clothes, hair pushed out of his face and complexion swarthy from exposure to the Greek sun. His eyes on Harry felt just as intimidating as they had in the classroom, and it was all he could do not to look at his feet. The turtleneck obscured the place the snake had bit. Harry wondered if there was a scar.

'I've brought cake,' he offered, as he took stock of the tea set laid out on the coffee table.

'Shall I genuflect?' Snape replied, with the usual acid. 'There are plates in the kitchen. There should be some dessert forks in the first drawer.'

Nettled already by this small exchange, Harry welcomed the chance of temporary respite, and walked himself to the kitchen. Here, he took a breath, leaning against the old gas stove. This had been his idea. He struggled to remember why he'd ever thought it was a good idea, but it had been his.

Although the tiles had ingrown with mould, the cutlery and plates were without a mote of dust. Snape would have cleaned them magically, but not bothered with the rest. If there was a spell to cast away mould from kitchen tile, Harry wasn't sure. Mrs Weasley would know it. Harry tried to imagine Snape and Molly Weasley chatting over tea and scones, exchanging household spells. How do you keep your dessert forks so spotless, Severus?

When he returned, carrying two plates of the apple pie he'd been baking at half midnight, he found his tea already poured. Snape sent him a sour look from above the rim of his cup.

'Do you not like apple pie?' Harry asked, stomach tightening.

'It's fine.'

He wasn't sure what that meant. He'd deliberated between apple pie and cheesecake for an hour. Before that, he'd considered wine, firewhisky, a box of chocolates, stationery and Potions books, and even the gold cauldron from Diagon Alley he'd wanted when he first went. Those had all been shot down by Ginny and Ron, which had settled the cake. Ron had grumbled about it, because he didn't think anyone should be baking apple pie for Snape in the middle of the night, but his sole contribution had been proposing Harry bought a nice bouquet of roses, and then sniggering about it for ten minutes.

He shouldn't care if Snape approved of his baking skill, but when he raised a forkful to his lips, Harry held his breath.

Snape said nothing of the pie at all, but he didn't spit it out, either, and after a sip of tea, took another bite. Harry felt a little as if he'd just won another war.

'How was Greece?' he inquired politely.

'Too hot, but I was enjoying the troglodytic aspect,' Snape said. 'I would have stayed longer if it weren't poorly regarded not to accept an Order of Merlin personally.'

'Oh, right,' Harry remembered. 'Congrats on that.'

Snape stared at him.

'Congrats—stop this humbuggery, Potter,' Snape's nostrils flared. Harry did his best to subtly shuffle back in his seat. 'I know you recommended me for it, which is the same thing as if you'd given it to me yourself. Shacklebolt is a fine leader, but he'd award the Order of Merlin to a house elf for doing your laundry right if you so much as hinted at it.'

'Wait, can house elves get the Order of Merlin?' Harry asked, thinking of Dobby. 'Because I actually know one that—'

'Potter!'

'What? Look, sir, I thought you'd be happy. I remember how excited you were when Fudge talked about maybe giving you one for Sirius, in my third year, and you never got that one, well, it was kind of because of me, so I figure it's only fair that I helped you a little in getting this one. And it's not like you don't deserve it—'

'You think I acted the way I did because I wished for an award, Potter?'

'No—'

'And do you truly believe you've done me a disservice by depriving me of a trophy for delivering an innocent man into the hands of the Dementors?'

'I—okay, bad example, but all I meant was, I know you didn't do it to get an award or anything, but you've done so much to help win the war, and all these years you had to keep everyone sort of always doubting your allegiance, so it's only fair that—I mean, I think you should finally be recognised for all the good you've done. That's all. I didn't mean to upset you or anything.'

He'd run out of breath. Snape seemed to have calmed down in turn, as if there existed some set balance in the energy of the conversation, and Harry had tipped his scale. He watched him with narrow eyes, but there was now reflection there, not accusation.

'Merlin knows I don't care a farthing for your opinion, Potter,' he began, though even the way he said it made Harry doubt this was entirely true, 'but I hardly think it healthy for you to twist the facts into some deluded hagiography. I served the Order during the war like many others, and I attempted to fulfil my obligation to Albus Dumbledore and to your mother. I have not gone above or beyond this. Whatever cross you imagine I bore, you can hardly argue I did so with much dignity. As the primary beneficiary of the resulting bitterness, I would have thought you of all people, Potter, would be a little more critical of my conduct.'

Harry stared. Was this post-Greece sunstroke? It sounded very much as if Snape had just admitted to having treated him unfairly, and that had not been on the agenda for this visit at all. It was perhaps a little pathetic, Harry thought, that he was so starved for validation, it felt like no hardship to conveniently forget every cruel thing Snape had done to him. However, Harry's parents were dead, most of his parents' friends were dead, and most of his mentors and role models were dead. Harry was fast running out of adults in his life who genuinely cared for him, so if someone did not wish him dead and wanted to eat his apple pie, he figured he might as well take it. In this respect, childhood damage probably worked to his benefit.

'Are you going to speak, Potter, or are you having a stroke?' Snape inquired, voice dripping with distaste.

'I'm just trying to think of something to say to that,' said Harry. 'I think I understand what you mean. But I guess if I was unable to look past someone's deficiencies, there would be no one left in the world for me to look up to.'

Snape stared at him. He seemingly had no answer to that.

They sipped their tea in silence for a while, while Harry considered the oddity of the scene. Before the war, he would have laughed if someone had said he'd be sharing a cup of tea with Severus Snape. After the battle everything had changed, of course, but even then, he'd thought of Snape in the abstract. He had lain in the hospital wing, where Hermione and Ron had dragged him from the shack after Harry had left, for several days, then had been transferred to St. Mungo's. Harry had been informed when Snape awoke, and when he'd left to nurse himself back to health on the continent, though he'd suspected that choice had less to do with the snake bite than a wish to escape the mess that were the Death Eater trials, the rushed elections, the Daily Prophet insider scopes on Muggleborns murdered. Harry had signed his name on a letter drafted by McGonagall, and co-signed by several Order members, wishing Snape a quick return to health, and secretly fantasised he could run off to Greece too.

'Was there anything in particular you wanted to discuss, Potter?'

Harry braced himself. This had been the reason for coming after all.

'I guess I just wanted to—I mean, we never got a chance to talk after the battle, and I've never thanked you for everything. For, you know, the sword, and delivering me the message from Dumbledore. Without everything you've done to help, we would never have been able to destroy Voldemort,' he noted the wince on Snape's face at the name but did not halt to apologize. 'But also, I wanted to thank you in general, for protecting me all those years. I know it's not—I know it's not much, just saying oh thanks, after everything, but…' he shrugged, growing embarrassed now at Snape's silence. 'I made cake,' he said, with a strange half-wave at the pie.

Snape's mouth twitched.

'You are aware, of course, that I didn't do any of those things for you,' he said. 'If anything, it may be argued I did them in spite of you. And I believe vanquishing the Dark Lord to save the entire wizarding world will suffice as thanks, possibly for any favour you might find yourself receiving in your life.'

'But you weren't protecting me so I could kill Voldemort,' Harry pointed out. 'I mean, you probably wanted me to, but that wasn't why. And I know it's going to sound really childish, but that just means a lot to me, that you would do that for a reason that wasn't limited to, I need him alive to win the war for the rest of us. That you did it for my mum instead,' his breath came out shaky. 'So by your logic, I guess I didn't kill Voldemort for you. But I made the pie for you, so that's got to count for something.'

He tried for a grin, deciding he'd humiliated himself enough to risk it. Snape didn't smile, but there was a hint of it in his eyes, and after a moment of silence, he reached for his pie again.

'I hear you've decided not to return to Hogwarts this year,' Snape changed tack, just as the first stroke of thunder trembled outside. It had begun to rain, and there went Harry's easy escape. I'd better get going before the skies break open, he'd been supposed to say, and they would have both known it for an excuse, but silently agreed to pretend.

'No,' he admitted. It was hard to say even that much on the subject. Ron hadn't wanted to go back either and Ginny had taken a year off. But they both had obligations at home – George struggled to do as much as get out of bed in the mornings, and the youngest Weasleys had scrambled to keep Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes from sinking. 'He needs something to go back to,' Mr Weasley had told Harry one night when neither of them could sleep. 'If he loses that, then—then I'm not so sure we're not all wasting our time, trying to make him better.'

But what real reason did Harry have for not going back? Hermione had spent hours trying to talk him into it, prattling on about how important NEWTs were for his future career, and how a return to normalcy was an essential step in trauma recovery. Only Harry had never truly expected to need his NEWTs for much beyond becoming an auror so that he could kill Voldemort. Hermione didn't seem to understand that had been part of the normalcy she wished him to return to. So that he could kill Voldemort. Without it, there could be no 'normal.' Returning to school, to essays and books, in the place where he'd watched friends die; to being loved and hated by the student body for something he did, genuinely, do, this time; to being expected to live up to the moniker of evil wizard slayer, to excel beyond what he'd ever been able to accomplish, even with Hermione holding his hand – it all filled Harry with such crushing fear, you would not have guessed he was the Boy Hero of the Wizarding World. And he wasn't sure it was worth it anymore.

None of that he could possibly share with Snape. Thankfully, the man didn't ask.

'I'm assuming you've been taking the time to reconnect with family,' he said instead. Harry couldn't help but smile at the image of himself, trading stories with his aunt and uncle. The Masons threw a barbecue party in the middle of November, what? No wonder you're still shaken up, Aunt Petunia. I can relate, I'm still recovering after being hit with a killing curse and coming back to life.

'No, I haven't seen them. I've mostly been staying in Grimmauld Place.'

'You're staying in Grimmauld Place?' Snape repeated, frowning as if the idea struck him as wholly incongruous. 'Why on Earth would you do that?'

'Oh, I own it,' said Harry, realising Snape might not remember. 'I got it in Sirius' will—'

'I know that, Potter,' Snape waved him off. 'I was referring to the fact the place is miserable, and long deserted by the Order. And you've elected to live there alone, instead of returning to your Muggle family?'

'I'm not all alone,' Harry ignored the comment about the Dursleys. He was oddly annoyed with Snape for being so blind. 'Kreacher keeps me company.'

'Of course, not even the most loving of families could ever be a match for an ancient house elf who conspires to kill you in his free time.'

'That wasn't really Kreacher's fault—I mean, it's a long story, but he's really nice now.'

'Well then,' Snape mocked, 'of course in that case it hardly matters he has openly despised you for years, as long as he's nice now. Perhaps we should contact Mr Shacklebolt. I believe this calls for an Order of Merlin.'

Harry glared at him. He did not like the feeling worming its way into his chest: a sort of uneasy shame, as he realised some small part of him thought that actually sounded like a fair idea.

'Grimmauld Place is not nearly as miserable as here,' he retorted. 'And you don't even have a house elf to keep you company, sir, so I really don't think you're one to talk.'

Almost immediately, he froze, realising what he'd said and how; anticipating an outburst, he shrank a little, then remembered he'd promised himself he would not be cowed. It was easier said than done.

'There is one major difference in our circumstances, Mr Potter,' when Snape spoke, his voice was surprisingly level, if cold. 'I have no family to return to. You, on the other hand, seem like you need a reminder that several people you fought for are very much alive.'

Harry blushed. He thought of Hermione, who was probably sitting in the Hogwarts library right now, going through her Transfiguration notes alone. He thought of Teddy, too: he still hadn't found the guts to ask Andromeda for a visit.

'What is your plan if you're not returning to Hogwarts this year?' Snape hardly allowed him a moment to breathe. 'Do you still intend to get on the Auror Programme?'

'I don't know,' Harry mumbled. 'I'd need my NEWTs for that anyway.'

'Please,' Snape huffed. 'As if Harry Potter himself will have anyone asking after his NEWTs.'

'I don't want to cheat my way in! If I did that, the programme I mean, then I would go and get my NEWTs first—'

'Judicious. But until then, am I to understand your intention is to sequester yourself in your godfather's house until you've been driven into depression?'

'No,' Harry spat, glaring at him. His teacup shivered with the vibrations of the storm outside. The window was streaked with rivulets of rain. 'But I can't go back to Privet Drive—I mean, my Muggle family. I just need some time to figure stuff out, that's all—'

'Why not stay with the Weasleys, then? I believe Ronald Weasley is at the Burrow anyway, as well as the young Miss Weasley.'

'Well, I've stayed with them for a while, and I come visit,' Harry said, thinking Snape had a curiously detailed knowledge of his ex-students' whereabouts. Perhaps it was a natural instinct, to stick your nose where it didn't belong, when you'd been a spy for nearly two decades. 'But I'm eighteen now, I can't very well hang around there indefinitely. And I don't know how long it will take me to—I can't just keep thinking how I should hurry up deciding something for their sakes. And it's not like they would ever allow me to pay rent, so—'

Snape regarded him with obvious befuddlement. Harry didn't know how he could explain the hot coil of, whatever the feeling was, some sick perversion of shame and gratitude and ache, that took hold in his chest whenever Mrs Weasley served him breakfast in the morning like he belonged. He didn't think he wanted to try, either.

'I am unsure how to even comment on that, Potter,' Snape said plainly. 'I very much doubt you'd listen to a word I said anyway, so perhaps that makes little difference.'

Harry crossed his arms and stared resolutely at the wall to the right of Snape's head. He wished it would stop raining.

'I have some items for you,' Snape said after another awkward silence, rising to his feet. 'Finish your tea.'

Harry took a gulp, nearly choking himself on it, and craned his neck to follow Snape's path until he disappeared into the dark corridor. He heard footsteps leading up to the first floor. He stared, miserably, at his piece of apple pie, wondering what sort of items Snape could possibly have to show him. Another one of Dumbledore's messages from beyond the grave? What if it were something of Voldemort's, some magical artefact, some new piece of the puzzle Harry had thought they'd closed the lid on?

It had been months since they'd destroyed the last Horcrux, and Harry was still just so tired. This had been part of the reason, too, why he'd elected to curtail the time spent at the Burrow: after a few days of smiling at Ginny's jokes, of leaping off the chair to help Mrs Weasley with the washing up, of going out to play Quidditch in the lawn and politely enthusing over Mr Weasley's new car, there would come days when he couldn't even get out of bed. On those, he would send Kreacher away to Hogwarts: if he were to stay and see that Harry did not have the energy to even shower, he would insist on drawing him baths, on spoiling him with meals in bed, on changing him into day clothes himself. Harry didn't think he could stand it.

Snape returned with a small wooden chest, and Harry hastened to sweep the cups and plates to the side to make room. Snape touched the tip of his wand to the copper lock and the lid creaked open, revealing a mess unlike anything Harry could have anticipated.

'What are these?' he asked, stopping himself before he instinctively reached to touch. The chest held leather-bound books, notepads and albums, but also a myriad loose scraps of paper, some crumpled and frayed, and countless trinkets: an elephant figurine with a broken-off trunk, a postcard, an old hard candy, sundries so bizarrely commonplace, ugly or damaged, that many seemed to belong in the bin.

'Some things I have of your mother's,' said Snape, and Harry choked again, this time on what felt like his heart.

He went straight for an album. He could count on his fingers the number of photographs of Lily Evans he'd seen in his life, and here they were, pages and pages of them: little Lily in a flowery dress and a face streaked with chocolate sauce, little Lily posing with her wand en garde, little Lily sticking her tongue out at the camera. Some of the pictures featured Snape, but he was much more camera-shy, and rarely pulled the sorts of faces she did; and none of the pictures moved. They must have had access only to a Muggle camera, likely his mother's, and they were too young to know the spell.

'When I received your letter, I assumed this was the reason you wished to see me,' Snape said. He wasn't looking at Harry, but at his fingers on the pages of the album, as if reassuring himself he was being careful with it. 'I will admit I am surprised you haven't asked.'

Harry hadn't asked because this was too much. He didn't think Snape understood what he had given him: he likely thought Harry had grown up hearing stories about his mother, and reminiscing over old photographs, instead of being too afraid to ask Aunt Petunia what colour Lily's hair had been. As Snape saw it, Harry was simply discovering a new facet of her, hungry for more like any orphaned child. He didn't know he was giving Harry something he had no longer hoped he would ever receive.

'Well, you didn't want me to know,' Harry spoke slowly, scrabbling for something to explain himself without giving too much away. 'In one of your memories, you had Professor Dumbledore promise he wouldn't tell me, and the only reason you'd given me those memories in the first place was because you had to get me to believe you. So, I didn't want to overstep.'

Snape looked at him at that, eyebrow arched.

'I'm not sure whether you've discovered some deeply buried recess of respect for privacy over the past year, Potter, or if I should check you for Polyjuice Potion.'

Harry's fingers tensed, crinkling the page, and Snape barked at him to be careful. He had been referring to the Pensieve incident in fifth year, likely, which had been so long ago it was decidedly petty to even bring it up. Then again, Snape had hated Harry on sight for things his father had done over a dozen years prior, so Harry didn't know why he should be surprised. He was, though, and the disappointment ached: disappointment with Snape, but more so with himself, for having expected any different.

'I guess I find it easier to show respect to people who have earned it,' he retorted, too upset to mind his tone. He imagined getting the rest of the apple pie from the kitchen and smashing the tray into Snape's face. It helped.

To that, Snape said nothing. Harry breathed for a minute, listening to the patter of rain against the windowpane, before taking out another album. This one held quite a few moving photographs, many taken at Hogwarts. He liked especially a set from a winter trip to Hogsmeade, complete with static-stood hair and butterbeer moustaches. He realised he had a photograph of himself and Ron, taken some time in fourth year, in which he laughed in the exact same way Lily did here, as a teenage Snape pouted at something she'd said.

The initial shock had faded, and now he was beginning to feel awkward in the silence, with Snape's glare drilling into him. He cleared his throat, shifted where he sat, and then for lack of other ideas, grabbed the elephant figurine from the chest, and asked,

'What's that?'

If he hadn't been looking, he would have missed the way Snape tensed in surprise at the change of tack. When he replied, his voice was coarse.

'Lily found out my maternal grandfather came from Pakistan,' he said, eyes now trained somewhere above Harry's head. 'It must have been the summer before our second year at Hogwarts. She had been bored for weeks, and thought it was the most exciting thing. We went to an Indian store, which was the closest we could get to Pakistan. It sold ceramic figurines and pottery, and she insisted on buying me an elephant, for luck,' there was a shadow of a smile, then, as his gaze grew longer, focusing on somewhere Harry couldn't see. He felt a stab of jealousy. 'They had a whole shelf filled with those, and she picked the only damaged one. She said if we didn't buy it, no one would, and she felt sorry for it.'

'And I'm the one with the saviour complex?' Harry said before he could stop himself, and Snape chuckled. It was a simple sound of amusement, and if it came from anyone else, Harry would not have even counted it a laugh, but this was Snape. If the auror thing didn't pan out, perhaps Harry should consider a career in stand-up.

It was easier after that. Harry would pick up random notes exchanged during class, drawings, old letters and cheaply made Muggle toys, and Snape would contribute anecdotal evidence to their importance. The moments he described were chiefly mundane, even inane. Harry knew there must have been other events he remembered, grander, more important: neither Snape nor his mother had fought a Basilisk during their early Hogwarts career, but Petunia and Lily had been fighting, and Snape's parents had not been great, and there had been bullies, crushes, arguments and the rising tensions as Voldemort gained influence. But these were not things Snape would have discussed with him, and Harry found that he preferred it that way: these small details were what he'd craved all those years, a sense of a real person, palpable proof of existence.

Once the rain had stopped, Harry glanced at his watch and realised he had decidedly outstayed his welcome. He thanked for the tea and arranged everything with care back in the chest, with the trunkless elephant on top. Snape watched him stall, then proposed Harry selected a few photographs from the albums that he wanted to make copies of. With a grin, Harry pulled out all of them, 'These,' he said, and stacked them in front of Snape, who rolled his eyes.

'You do realise the spell requires you copy each photograph individually.'

'I don't know the spell.'

He thought he would have a bit of good-spirited fun with it but was ready to concede at Snape's next complaint. It never came. Though his tone left no room for mistaking he had better things to be doing with his time, he taught Harry the incantation and wand movement, and they spent the next quarter of an hour spelling a copy out of each and every photograph.

On Thursday, we venture into Muggle London for the night. See you then.