Finally getting my second Snarry story up. I swear I've edited this thing so much that I'll never get it up unless I force myself to it. I can only say that some things will be made clear in time, as always. First chapters always make me so nervous. But... time to see how I do!

Enjoy the chapter!

Chapter One

Harry sat quietly and lost in thought in the grass of his backyard, absentmindedly continuing to toss handfuls of seed to the wild birds who he fed daily. They flitted around him as a whirl of vibrant colors with hungry enthusiasm, in the process ignoring the other human sitting next to their self-appointed caretaker.

"Harry?" Hermione nudged gently, mindful of Harry's preoccupation with his thoughts. Courtesy might tell her not to press him so soon, but familiarity with how Harry could get lost in his thoughts caused her to recognize the importance of not being passive if she wanted an answer in the next week.

He slid back into the present, and paused in his bird feeding to give his full attention back to his closest friend. "I haven't been back to England since I left five years ago." He said in the quiet voice he'd over time adopted – or been conditioned to – due to a life led in relative self-imposed seclusion.

After he'd survived killing Voldemort and subsequently been able to graduate Hogwarts, Harry had by all accounts, vanished into thin air. Only his friends and the remaining members of the Order of the Phoenix knew where he'd gone, and he liked it that way. Yes, he still had gotten what could only be termed "fan-mail", but that had only lasted for about the first year and a half. Now it was only the odd letter sent to him, or the rare gifting of some materialistic item from a still grateful person. Other than that, his mail consisted of entirely missives sent out by friends or in regards to work related matters.

For the first time since Harry had realized his existence as a wizard, he had peace untainted by his unwanted titles and the suffocation of hero worship.

"I know." She replied, resting a hand on his knee. "It would mean a lot to me if you came. Even in disguise."

Harry smiled at her, and leaned over to kiss her cheek. "I vanished to this place once, I can do so again. I wouldn't miss this for the world. I always knew that one day you'd be doing something like this."

Hermione laughed at the admission. "Really now?"

He nodded. "Though honestly I've always thought you'd make a brilliant Minister of Magic."

She made a face. "Kingsley has got that covered, bless him. Fudge rather made me sick of the thought of being a politician."

"I'd say becoming the new Transfiguration professor is an acceptable compromise." Harry smiled at her. "How is Minerva? I haven't seen her since the winter."

"Better now that in her words, she has someone competent to fill her position upon her retiring." Hermione gave a half smirk. "I think she was waiting for that."

Harry chuckled, that did sound like his old teacher, comrade, and now friend. She would sacrifice years of retirement in the name of finding a suitable replacement to fill her position. He couldn't blame her for the need she felt to take no chances in making sure the students learned. And learn they would under Hermione. "And I suppose it didn't take much to convince him?"

Hermione knew to who Harry referred, and smiled tenderly. "When two women put their minds to something, little can stand in their way." She replied smugly. "It's been five years, can't you say his name?"

Harry gave a muffled sounding laugh, but it was not a happy one. "Of course. But I am trying to forget about him, remember? I can't do that if I put a name to what is finally becoming a shadow in my mind."

Hermione pursed her lips, and with a moment's hesitation, pulled a sealed envelope from her robes. It was marked with the Hogwarts crest, and she handed it to him. "I know, but I also know that I promised to deliver this while I was here. I'm not sure what it is, I didn't ask him."

Harry took it with a feeling of trepidation swirling in his stomach. "Thank you, Hermione." He said, looking upon it with a guarded expression.

She nodded, and kissed his cheek before standing. "I need to be going. I'll see you in two days though?"

Harry stood as well, and embraced her in a hug. "I'll be there, and congratulations again."

She beamed at him. "Take care, Harry."

And then she was gone with a crack of apparition through the wards.

Harry banished the remaining bird seed back to his small country house, and ignored the disappointed twittering as he walked towards the open back door. The envelope still in hand, he made his way into the kitchen. He sat down at the table, debating whether or not to trash the correspondence. It remained clutched in one hand for several minutes before he let it drop to the table with a sigh.

He'd rather not spend a perfectly good day dwelling on what he'd read. There was plenty of time to do that when he was being an insomniac later. Besides, he already knew the generic contents of any correspondence from a certain cynical man. It would have a biased tone, an undercurrent of cutting sarcasm, a bitter aftertaste, and annoying sprinkles of irrefutable good points.

It could wait.

Hogsmeade

Hermione sat down at the table with a smile to those already there. Her fiancé, Ron, Minerva, and Severus. Over the years they'd all come to at the very least, a cease fire. Though this had been more between a disdainful Severus and a grudging Ron. But it made things a good deal easier. "Hey." She said as she reached for the glass of water before her.

"Well?" Ron asked, impatient still despite the added years on his life. In all actuality, only his body had changed, making him taller, and erasing any lingering youthly fat from the lean face swamped by red hair.

Hermione smiled again. "He's coming."

"Yes!" One of Ron's fists punched the air enthusiastically.

Severus rolled his eyes at the display, but Minerva ignored Ron in favor of addressing Hermione for further details. "Does he plan to come in a disguise then?" She questioned.

"No." Hermione responded promptly. "Which should prove interesting, seeing how long it takes people to recognize him after so long."

"No doubt he'll come in banner flying." Severus sneered and looked away. "It'd take that idiot Longbottom not to recognize him."

"I'm sure that if you provide him with the banner," Minerva said blandly to her colleague, "that he'd humor you. Right before he tells you to stop being a single-minded prat."

Ron snorted inelegantly, "among other things – ow!"

Hermione frowned at him, not seeming to see the dark look he gave her.

Severus leveled a narrow-eyed black gaze on him, but said nothing. Sometimes, words were just unneeded. And in cases of tactless and witless Weasleys', words were a waste on them. All it took was a single look to cow them… perhaps Mrs. Weasley had managed to do something right after all.

Minerva was the one to brace herself into breaking the silence that had crashed down over their table. "Do you know how long he plans to stay with us?" She asked Hermione.

The young woman shook her head, and a small smile tugged at a corner of her mouth. "It's difficult to say. He may come for only the party. Or he may stick around a bit longer."

"Bloody hard enough to get him to leave that forest of his as it is." Ron rolled his eyes, his courage recovered for the most part. "Not that I blame him." He said, a quick glance shooting towards where Severus sat.

Courage recovered, yes. Common sense? …it was looking bleak.

Severus decided that he should probably wait to hex Granger's fiancé into a million undetectable pieces until after she'd signed her employment contract. How it hurt.

So it was with a great mustering of patience and self-control – in his mind he should really have a sainthood for this by now – that Severus turned his attention to more important things. "Did he read it?"

Hermione's eyes were not the only ones to turn to him. "I don't know." She replied honestly. "But he took it."

"Then that is something." Severus said, mostly to himself. It was better than what he felt became of the majority of the letters he'd had carried to Harry by owl. They probably had been incinerated on site without a second thought.

Minerva pursed her lips into a thin line as she regarded the man. "You're going about it the wrong way, Severus. His wards would allow you through."

"If you're under some misguided notion that I want him to come back, discard it immediately." Severus sneered at her.

Minerva gave him a severe look, but lowered her gaze with a shake of her head, saying quietly to herself, "one wonders then why you keep sending him letters."

"Leave him alone then, I'm sure he'd not mind." Ron piped up without regard to self-preservation. Just as a true friend would do.

Severus leveled him a frosty look that he was pleased to see still made the young man turn several shades paler. "Wanting him to come back and needing him to come back are two separate things. Not that I'd expect you to appreciate the line between them."

At that point, Hermione decided it was best to distract her fiancé with food, while he was still alive. Minerva merely was hoping that Severus wouldn't piss off Harry when he showed up for the party. Perhaps she could lace his drink with something that would make him incapable of speech?

It was worth the research.

Hogwarts

Three hours later found Severus in a different sort of company. That of hundreds of animated paintings of deceased headmasters and headmistresses all gamboling around or chattering with each other. Honestly, he wasn't surprised that Dumbledore had been so barmy. Anyone who was subjected to this mayhem was bound to suffer ill side-effects. He longed, achingly so, for his dungeons. But alas, as Headmaster now, he was bound for the same fate. To be driven to the brink of insanity by mere paintings, and live above ground.

It was the profile of the same man who'd plunked him into this position that he was currently staring at on its place nearest his desk. "You're insane." You'd have thought he'd already determined this, but no, it needed to be said aloud.

The portrait of Albus Dumbledore winked at him. "It will work, you just have to give it a bit more time."

"I've given it three years! Three! And nothing." Severus ignored some of the paintings chastising him to keep it down. Just wait… once he wasn't occupied by Albus, he'd hex every single bloody one of them into blissful silence. Or ash, whichever first came to mind.

"Three years of letters hardly counts as much of anything." Albus sighed, "especially not the way you write letters."

Severus glared, but Albus merely twinkled at him with those infernal blue eyes. Even painted on canvas, the damn things still twinkled. "It's not as if I can just show up on his doorstep after what happened. That's taking too many liberties."

"In that case, perhaps you don't know Harry as well as you should, all things considered. So maybe he has the right of it in not answering your letters."

"Reverse psychology won't work on me." Severus stated rather firmly, and leaned back in his chair with a sigh.

"It worked on you when Harry did it." Albus reminded him, sounding almost perverse in his smugness.

Severus, despite his want to glare, could only close his eyes with a sigh. "He always was the exception to everything, no matter in what ways I tried to deny or fight against it. But your little plan won't work. There's absolutely no way he'd even consider helping out. Not that I want him to, but I've no bloody choice now. There's no one else qualified-" he ground out the word bitterly, "enough."

The smugness seemed to have entered the painted twinkling blue eyes now. "Telling him that just might sway his mind. You don't hold out much hope for someone who would sacrifice being around your acerbic tongue for the betterment of the school."

"He didn't think it so acerbic once." Was the soft reply, as the dark eyes took on a faraway look. But with a shake of his head, Severus cleared such pointless nostalgia from his mind. "See you tomorrow, Albus." And with that he rose from his chair, hexed the majority of the portraits silent for the appeasement of his own temper, and made his way up the ornate staircase that stopped at the door that led to the quarters the headmaster occupied.

Thus, him.

The rooms were bigger, brighter due to the many windows. But otherwise it could have been a near exact replica of his former quarters in the dungeons. He'd meticulously made a note of where everything had gone, and as such, it had been placed back in his new quarters exactly where it belonged.

Well… almost exactly.

He didn't look at the mantel over the fireplace for a reason. He hadn't looked at it for years now. And he bypassed it without a single glance as he made his way to his bedroom.

Norway

It was well past midnight, and Harry was still awake. Such was the life of insomnia he led. Dreamless Sleep potion no longer helped, his body had developed an immunity to it. And over time, being constantly woken up in the middle of REM sleep was far more annoying than waiting for the sleep to just come. At least then he didn't wake.

But it could get rather tedious waiting for sleep to come.

So here he sat at his table, an Irish Setter curled up nearby next to a food dish labeled 'Sahara', and a still unopened letter from Severus Snape resting innocently in front of him. He stared it down, until finally he could ignore the siren call no longer and picked it up.

Slitting it open deftly, Harry pulled free the short note. They'd been progressively getting shorter word by word over the years. And he began to read the meager four paragraphs.

Harry,

I am sure by now that Miss Granger has talked you into coming
to her party to celebrate her replacing Minerva. So in light of the
fact that you wouldn't risk hurting her by not showing up, I'll get
to the point.

Clearly, it must be money, as by now I've exhausted
all other ideas. Unless you've been burning all these letters.

I will double any funds you are currently being paid by your
current highest paying school or parent. You are an adequate
resource these days, and I'm in need of a new Defense professor
before the year starts. I've been forced to sack yet another one.

Again, if you change your mind on teaching, many here would
gladly see you back even with your lack of hard credentials.

It wasn't even signed.

Folding it closed again and shaking his head with a tired sounding exhale of breath, he couldn't even be bothered anymore to dissect the letters and be indignant over some of the comments. It did him no good, and it wasn't as if dissecting them made Severus run out of little jabs he could toss here and there. If anything, it probably would have delighted Severus to know that he was constantly irking him with them in some fashion. So he didn't dissect, didn't open himself up to being irked over them.

And if he had to admit it, the letters were getting quite far from being snarky. Almost as if Severus was finally tiring of writing them. Oh how he could hope! But he knew that until he only started receiving scraps of parchment bearing just his name scrawled in old red ink, he'd be getting the letters. "Most stubborn man I know."

And with that, the letter incinerated in his grasp. He didn't even flinch. Only rested his head in one hand as his eyes fell shut – the ashes gathering on the table in a thin layer. "But not stubborn for the right reasons."

It was true, at least in his mind.

Here Severus was, stubbornly asking for three years over and over again for help. Help he'd gladly give if he didn't want to just forget about it all. Forget about Severus. And he couldn't do that with the man constantly pestering him! The man redefined the term 'bastard'. He'd thought that Severus would eventually get a clue, but luck it seemed was not to be with him any time soon. The man had never, in the end, understood him anyway.

Despite what he'd told Hermione, he couldn't let the man be a shadow in his mind. It was impossible with Severus not allowing it.

"Why couldn't he have been stubborn when I broke it off with him?" Harry asked quietly, not really caring that the only other occupant was a dog. "He just let me walk away, didn't fight for me. Only proved me right that he didn't really care, and that his damn insecurities mattered more to him than I did."

Maybe that party could be beneficial to finally getting the man off his back, in between celebrating with Hermione. With that uplifting thought firmly in mind, Harry stood up, finally feeling as if he might sleep at last tonight.