Not mine. As if. No monetary profit made with this.

M/M Harry Potter / Severus Snape

If that's not on your ticket then I'd suggest finding your own boat.

Rated for brief sexual content and awkwardness.

Obviously, this is AU. Less obviously is that this is my pet AU at the moment. If you find any mistakes I'd happily correct them.

They didn't fit together at all, but that was sort of the point. Harry was small, compact, but awkwardly long-limbed. Severus was length and elegance and gracefully curved bones. But they didn't fit together. They were not two pieces of one puzzle, tucked into each other snug, comfortable. Harry was neither small enough to fit in Severus' arms nor big enough to easily hold him. Severus was too much limb and bone to be comfortable and too awkward and unused to such intimacies to be fluent at it.

But it was perfect for them. It was precisely what they wanted. When they walked side by side they didn't hold hands and didn't stand closer than would be polite for strangers. They didn't touch each other in public— no brushes on the arm when talking or knocking shoulders when they sat by each other. Sometimes Harry would tap Severus' knuckles in a playful manner when he was teasing him while in the staffroom in the evenings or lean his hip against the potion master's desk in the afternoon and look down at him with a rakish grin and folded arms.

When they were alone in their small sitting room they were not gentle or tender with each other but matter of fact and just the right kind of aggressive. They had spent so long fighting each other that they now moved in the exact opposite of tandem. When Severus swoops down and steals a kiss Harry pushes back and clashes teeth against teeth. They pull at clothes and sometimes they are not quite sure if they are having a dirty fistfight or a heated fuck. They don't particularly care.

They kept up a constant flood of insults and snipes even when together and once came to blows in front of students. (Unknown to the student population was that said blows later came to a different type of blow with Severus on his knees, desperate, with more teeth than lips and a hard tongue and fingers that pressed painfully into Harry's lean thighs.)

Once during an Order meeting they fought so angrily that they began attempting to curse each other with magic that may or may not be illegal in most civil countries. This episode ended with Harry cursing continuously (of a different type) with fingers digging into the wooden tabletop in the kitchen and Severus' filthy mouth uttering things so dirty that it made his own head light. The next meeting Severus made sure to sit in front of where Harry's fingernails had left scratches in the table.

Hermione, clever and observant witch that she is, had asked Harry if he was alright after all the blood had migrated so quickly elsewhere from his face when he realized that Severus was slowly scratching a trace over Harry's marks.

But it was more than fighting and sex between them that kept them together (although both of those were definitely some of their favorite things). It was the mutual respect gained from watching a boy become a man and by realizing that just because someone is not charming does not mean that they are not the best man that you have ever met. It was from trust garnered through pushing and testing and habitually breaking each other's patience, from never settling for having it up to here and going all the way past argument into ardent enemies. And from companionship built on realizing that the similarities they shared (in personality, temperament, stubbornness, habits, and thoughts) far outweighed the social expectation for them to hate each other. It was a common passion for life and righteousness and privacy and not caring what other people thought and a mutual obsession for a certain red head that both carry around with everywhere they go.

So that when the people that knew them both, were observant, unbiased, and intelligent enough to put the clues together, were not surprised when Harry and Severus announced that they had had a quiet (and private) wedding ceremony over the weekend and were now husband and husband (no, you're the wife you big batty wench). And yes, we are speaking of precisely Hermione Granger and no one else.

When the newspapers found out that the The Man Who Slayed You Know Who (and was subsequently tried for murder but, sh, we don't like to talk about that) and the Snake Who Slithered Free (with an order of Merlin First Class but really, hush-hush on that also) were not only together but married it was as if controversy itself was having kittens; great green, scaly kittens that pissed fire (or so Harry said).

There was a public outcry to nullify their wedding papers and to get Severus put in Azkaban for pederasty (A twenty-seven year old man who lead the resistance to victory against an evil megalomaniac now qualifies as a child). But Harry quickly put a stop to that with a short but concise speech (piss off you pedantic troglodytes). The students didn't know what to make of this development. Some had to get counseling what with their entire universe no longer being right side up. A few, very poor souls, attempted to become friendly with the potions master (If Coach Potter likes him he can't be all that awful.) Oh, how Severus relished in proving them wrong. And several students got up the courage to ask Harry what he saw in Severus.

Harry had just smiled a bit awkwardly and told them that that was rather private (students quickly learned to take questions or concerns of a "private" matter to other teachers as Coach Potter's intense awkwardness when it came to "touchy-feely" was so overwhelming that students couldn't bear to even hear about the stories of students who attempted to get advice from Harry). Several people would spend the rest of their lives trying to work out how or why or when the two of them had gotten together. Particularly, most of the Weasleys and the rest of Wizarding Britain).

All three of those questions, however, can be answered by close friend and Care of Magical Creatures professor: Luna Lovegood. The secret is safer with her than if it had been left with no one.

The When is late one evening near the end of the War against Voldemort.; Harry and Severus were bent over a table together, exchanging information and insults. The slow buildup had finally come to a pique and they had looked at each other and Severus had looked back down at the map under his hands, watching the inky footprints that marked the path of one Salzburg Blackburn quickly make his way into the private office of Lucius Malfoy. Harry had slowly and carefully walked around the table and crowded against Severus until the man turned. Severus was not surprised, no, they had both known this was coming and had relished the delicious growth and expanding of their chests at each other's presence. Harry had thoughtfully grabbed a handful of Severus' hair and robes each (a fetish he never grew out of. Something to do with being able to bend and contort this immovable force before him) and had strained his smaller more muscled body until he was standing on tiptoe and Severus was forced to curve forward. They hadn't kissed, no that would have been trite. Harry whispered words in Severus' ear and Severus had clutched victoriously at Harry's hips so hard that his long fingers had left red marks. Luna had sat, forgotten, in a corner pretending to snooze but watching avidly behind her Quibler Zed-ray glasses.

After that they had been careful around each other, tentative and excited, testing and pushing to see what the new rules were.

The how had been two months later, again so late that it was actually early, when Severus found Harry on the back porch (largely unused due to the fact that most people had no idea it was there) smoking a cigarette with a slow contemplation that many thought Harry incapable of. Severus had been surprised by the fact that Harry smoked and Harry had just been tired and a bit down about the world at the time. They never said a word. Harry had stared off at nothing (a look he perfected from his long-time friendship with Luna) and Severus had stared at the butt of that off-white stick slowly turn to cinder against Harry's stubble lined mouth.

At last, Harry ground out the spent butt against the step and was just sliding in his legs from where they had spread out into the weeds to stand up when Severus had smoothly stepped between Harry's legs and knelt (his own unending fetish. There was just something about getting his knees dirty for this man before him that he relished greatly). Harry's breath had rattled out the way some of his more illegal curses did and he had pushed forward with such vigor that Severus was forced back to lean on his heals.

Harry had slid forward, squatted in a sort of straddle over the thighs of the kneeling potion master in front of him and had fisted Severus' hair in one hand and tugged at Severus' shirt with the other, pulling it down but not really forward to balance. Then he had stopped, suspended in front of Severus' face, looking down with intent eyes that spoke of a suspense in action. It was Severus who reached up with both of his balled fists (what were fingers for, again?) and had clumsily taken Harry's jaw in both fists and forced him the rest of the way.

Their first kiss had been nothing but biting at each other's mouths and grunts. It had lasted far longer than any kiss possibly should. Harry had taken to instinctively tensing and untensing his thighs against Severus' torso; Harry's body spooned over him. Severus had been capable of doing nothing but clutching with great dexterity and strength at everything he could get his hands on, though, mostly that happened to by Harry's ribs, shoulders, and back alternatively.

Luna had slowly closed the curtains on her room's window, assured that what she predicted was indeed true. She had smiled touched her hand to her breast over her heart. She was ever so happy for Harry and his Professor.

The why was because they recognized each other as equals and saw in each other what the rest of the society refused to see in them. Harry saw his bad temper, dark humor, and stubbornness in Severus and Severus saw in Harry his unerring need to do good, his courage, and his flair for the dramatic. They found in each other a companion that wasn't silly with trivialities and a mutual need for intellectual stimulation and adventure. They found with each other a companion but also a rival, competition, support, loyalty, and, most importantly, understanding.

Sure, they didn't fit together; both more similar to chess pieces than puzzle pieces. Meant for batting at each other and occupying a space on piece at a time. And sure, they fought habitually and yes, they knew that their ages were quite far apart but they were what each other wanted, needed, lived for. And that was all that mattered to them.