The Journey Cycle pt 1: Europe *pt 1 now complete*

Series Title: The Journey Cycle

Novel Title: Part One: Europe

Novel Summary: After the death of his partner of eighteen years from a long illness, an older Harry decides to travel and he takes his new lover, Severus Snape, with him. Along the way they discover new things about each other and make new friends but not all is sweetness and light. Harry’s fight is far from over and a new Dark Lord is rising….

Series Summary: A new global conspiracy is uncovered as they journey and soon, Harry and his friends are deeply embroiled in plots and machinations that take them right around the world and even beyond it……

Who is this new Dark Lord and what is his connection to a global clandestine muggle organisation? What is the relationship between one of their new friends and Harry’s long-dead godfather? The connection between a fellow traveller on the road and a former staff member of Hogwarts? Just what was the final curse that Voldemort cast? And what was the mysterious illness that took Severus and Harry’s previous lovers from them in the prime of their lives? Will this be Harry’s battle once more?

Read on and see……

For those of you squicked by watersports, I have started and ended all such scenes thus: -

~~~~~~~~WS~~~~~~~~~

To enable you to pass them by without losing the essential flow of the story.

Character death (Snape/Harry): Everyone dies!! Eventually!!!

Gender change: - I know that this might displease the purists among you and again I debated this for the longest time, but it all fits in with the story and therefore I make no apology for it’s presence here…..and I’m not tellin’ you who it is either…….you’ll have to find out for yourselves!!!

This is a series, therefore these pieces must be read in order, they will make little sense otherwise as the action continues from book to book.

So, stoke up the fire, make a large pot of tea, sit comfortably and come with Harry and Severus on….

The Journey.

Enjoy! Review!

The Squig.

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Part 1: Europe

1

The last of the mourners straggled back to the large imposing mansion eager to get out of the driving rain. Heels sank into the wet grass and the hems of cloaks were weighed down with water. Even the grave-diggers had put off their final onerous task and waited under a gazebo for the rain to slacken off. As the last of the mourners passed out of sight a middle-aged man stepped up to the hole in the ground and stood silently looking down at the coffin.

Another man observed him intently from the shadows under the nearby trees, part of his weight propping up the bole of the tree against which he leant. One leg stuck out at a slightly awkward angle, the remainder of the elder man’s weight was supported by a rather handsome walking cane. Rain dripped from the ends of his dark hair but he didn’t notice, intent on the younger man at the grave side.

From his position under the trees he watched the man’s mouth move and his hand withdraw something from under the voluminous folds of his cloak, a flower, probably a rose but he was too far away to be sure. He watched the younger man kiss it’s petals then throw the crumpled thing into the hole, crouching to do so caring not that his cloak and robes trailed in the mud and wet grass. With a dejected slump of his shoulders, he climbed wearily to his feet and continued to look down. He could hear the swish of feet in the grass behind him but did not turn, continuing his litany, his one-sided conversation with the cold dead occupant of the box several feet below him.

The older man stopped a few feet away not wishing to intrude. He could give the other this at least for neither had received any invitation to the ceremony today. The younger man had been rejected from the invites list and the deceased’s wife had walked at the head of the cortege with her two fine strong sons, her head swathed in the masks of appropriate veils, her two boys tow-headed and tall in deepest funereal black that leeched what little colour there was from their cheeks.

He couldn’t quite hear the words of the man before him. He bristled at the hypocrisy of it all. The man in front of him had really and truly loved the dead man, nursing him through his final years of lingering and debilitating illness but protocol demanded that he be buried by a wife and family that he had barely seen for more than eighteen years. The truth of his life would be as trampled as the grass at his grave-site so that the niceties could be correctly observed and his one true love had to sneak in and say his goodbyes in the rain, alone.

Taking a deep breath, the younger of the two mourners squared his shoulders and turned, espying the other and managed a watery smile, “Severus. I’m glad you could come and say goodbye. I hate this. He was everything to me, you knew that more than anyone else”. The other man nodded and stepped up awkwardly to the side of the grave. He, too, drew something from his cloak, a roll of parchment, said a few words and tossed it into the grave next to the crushed rose.

He held his arm out to the younger man who moved closer to feel it draped over his shoulders. With a shudder, he turned into that arm and bent his head to the shoulder before him, his body wracked with sobs. The other arm joined the first holding the other man to him as he sobbed, “Dammit, he was mine, not theirs. I should have been able to....”. Severus nodded, “I know. Come on, Harry, let’s get back and have a cup of something hot before we join him dying of the cold”.

He fished out a clean handkerchief and Harry took it, wiping at his eyes, still encircled by the man’s arms, then managed a watery smile into Severus’ eyes, “Yes, let’s. I’ve been saying goodbye to him and with him for the last eight months ever since he took the turn for the worst”. Severus let him go to say a last goodbye. “Farewell, my Drae, my only love. Wait for me. One day, we’ll be together again. I love you, goodbye”. He turned and allowed the arm back around him again. They walked slowly to the edge of the trees and Apparated away.

****

I was furious when they allowed that fiend back into school. I could not believe it. He killed Dumbledore. I watched it with my own eyes. Malfoy failed and ran away into the darkness and that greasy bastard did the deed instead. I was a ball of hysteria until Professor McGonagall had had enough and along with other members of the Order, I was allowed to witness Albus’ last thoughts and plans. Even then, my rage knew no bounds until I noticed how broken Snape was. His teaching was lacklustre at best as if a huge weight rested on him which indeed it did. It wasn’t until I had to turn up for a detention with the hated man that I began to understand.

I went to the dungeon with a heavy tread and even heavier heart, my wand itching to kill him and my hands restless with the need to punch and maim. He admitted me, his voice cracked and hoarse. I saw him sitting at his desk, a decanter half-full of something tawny and by his attitude, I could tell that the other half had been recently imbibed. His eyes were red-rimmed and he was as drunk as a skunk.

“So, Mr Potter, you have me on my own. You are quite welcome to put me out of your misery if you wish. I can pretty well assure you that nothing would be said against you if you did” This speech caused me to pause at the threshold. The man before me was on the verge of breaking apart. No trace was there of his usual sarcasm, he simply beckoned me in, asked me to close the door behind me and poured me a couple of fingers of the tawny fluid into a beaker, pushing it across the desk to me and inviting me to sit.

That night we talked, really talked. Well, he talked and I listened, once I told my internal voices of hatred to shut up. For all that I hated him, he had saved me on so many occasions throughout school and he deserved at least this from me, although I will own, I kept my hand on my wand while he explained, keeping the other busy with the glass, sipping slowly, much as I wanted to smash the rim from the glass and twist the remains into his face.

Throughout, he eyed me warily as if he could divine my intentions, not surprisingly, but I silenced the voices raging through me and met his eyes as he spoke. There was so much that I had been kept from and he started to reveal what he had done and why. The Unbreakable Vow he had made to Narcissa Malfoy, the plans he had made with his own mentor and the hurt and the pain of having to kill the one person who truly meant anything to him in this bloody mess called Hogwarts school. I watched tears trickle down his face that he fought a losing battle to hide and gave up, weeping freely. At the end of the evening, we both realised I was out well after lights-out and when he had collected himself sufficiently, he walked me back to the tower so neither Filch or anyone else out on rounds could bust me.

I went to bed with a heavy heart that night after fending off various irate comments from my dorm-mates as to why I hadn’t killed the greasy bastard when I had the chance. Ron wouldn’t speak to me, nothing new there. I cried myself to sleep that night waking with a rusty head the next morning, my eyes like sandpaper. At least Hermione tried to understand when she questioned me over breakfast. She smiled at me wanly and praised my big heart and generous nature. But it wasn’t kindness or generosity that stayed my hand. It was nothing more than the truth, and, wayward and impulsive as I have always been, I cannot kill a man in cold blood without knowing the story beforehand.

****

They landed in Severus’ sitting room and he set about starting a fire in the grate and fixing drinks for them both. He prepared a steaming pot of hot chocolate then took in the dejected picture of Harry in his soaked robes. “Go and get changed, Harry. Borrow my dressing gown and get out of those wet things”. Harry nodded and sloped off to the bedroom. He stripped and grabbed Severus’ dark blue gown from the back of the bedroom door and headed to the bathroom. He had a hot shower, as hot as he could take it, letting the water pounding on his head and neck massage and soothe where it could. He tried to keep thoughts of the indignity of the whole funeral away from the forefront of his mind. He should have expected nothing less and this is how it had worked out. He wrapped the gown around him, at least the shivers had gone and warmth was starting to pinken his extremities. He picked up all of his wet clothes and stepped back into the living room.

He curled up in one corner of the sofa hugging his mug of chocolate generously laced with brandy and stared into the fire. The two were long used to the silences that would exist between them and neither found it awkward. Harry’s clothes steamed gently on a rack above the fireplace winched out of the way, a bowl placed beneath to catch the drips.

Severus, at the other end of the sofa, regarded the tightly curled form of the recently bereaved man and held out an arm, “Come here, Harry”, he ordered gently. Harry smiled and scooted along the sofa and huddled under the arm offered to him, curling close to the man’s chest still clutching his mug. Severus felt the shakes and stealthily relieved Harry of his mug before the storm broke and the younger man folded his face into Severus’ shoulder and howled his grief, his hair softly stroked, words of comfort murmured into his ear. There were no reassurances, this was not the man to come to for reassurance and platitudes so often bandied about at a time like this and it felt all the more genuine for that. They had both loved the recently deceased dearly and this they could share. In Draco’s more lucid moments right at the end, he exhorted his godfather to look after his beloved and Harry to turn to the taciturn man. “You’ll need each other”, he smiled one of his, now, rare smiles and made Harry promise to try and move on with his life. “If you can, find love again, Harry, you are such a loving man. You should always have love in your life. It was you that taught me the true meaning of love and continue to do so”.

Severus held him until he had cried himself dry letting his own tears flow unselfconsciously and spared a thought for his own lost love, gone now these past three years. The Sickness had taken them both.

****

The service was quiet and dignified. Remus had no living relatives so Severus did the honours and was able to bury his lover with the dignity he deserved. There were a few attendees, mainly Gryffindors and a few of the man’s close colleagues and friends from the school. Even the Weasley boys didn’t make any fun of the man realising the hurt that he was feeling, knowing that such open jocularity was unseemly at a time like this. At least this ceremony wasn’t a sham like the farce that Harry had had to not endure today, being kept away like a dirty secret, an object of shame. That time everyone knew what the two men had been to each other, lovers for many years. The fact was emphasised in the eulogies, even the short speech that Hermione Granger had composed, her husband proud and silent at her side. Their quiet children stood around them on their best behaviour.

****

“I couldn’t even bury him properly”, Harry stuttered out between drying sobs. Severus held him tight. “I know. He only married that milch-cow out of his mother’s paranoid need to continue the family name and once he had produced the ‘heir and the spare’, he came back to you. You know he never stopped loving you through all of that. He did his familial duty and came straight back”. Harry nodded, “She got four years and I had eighteen with him. I should count myself lucky. Oh, God, I miss him so much. Even how he was at the end, decrepit and incontinent, sometimes not even knowing who I was. It was time for him to go. I’ll never stop loving him. It’s like there is a hole in my centre that will never be filled. What the hell am I supposed to do with my life now?” The silence stretched out from these words, neither having any answers. Severus suddenly chuckled and Harry looked up into his face, “What?” he asked. Severus leaned down and planted a kiss in the younger man’s hair, “Harry, no-one was more surprised than me when I realised what you had become to each other. It was quite a shock to say the least”.

****

Draco Malfoy re-appeared at school just after the Christmas holidays dressed in Muggle clothes several sizes too big, his hair longer and dirty. He smelled to high heaven. He had obviously been living rough and not in the style to which he had been born. He raised an outcry as he crossed the wards but he didn’t care. He trudged up to the castle, his old anorak hood pulled up over his head to disguise the tell-tale white-blond hair until he reached his destination. He got as far as the main door before he was met by a hostile crowd composed of students as well as teachers. He turned to run but a dark voice from the back of the crowd ordered him to stay his feet and turn and explain like a man. Severus pushed to the front of the group bristling with fury that the traitor had dared to show his face back at school.

Turn he did, spreading his hands wide, “I have no wand. I snapped it. Kill me please. I cannot take any more”. That very morning the Daily Prophet had trumpeted on the front page the demise of Malfoy senior to the Dementor’s kiss at midnight the previous night and hands all over the Wizarding world could be heard rubbing together in glee. But all Severus Snape and one other saw, was a broken child who had just lost his father. The other was Harry Potter.

After a hurried conference on the front steps, Draco was re-admitted to school and immediately placed in a strong body bind until an Auror could be summoned to check him over. Then he was released but under the strictest warnings to keep out of the way as many including those from his own house wanted him dead for various perceived crimes of treachery and betrayal. He was ruthlessly dowsed for Dark magic and stripped to reveal the existence or not of the Dark Mark. He explained under Veritaserum that this was to be his initiation test, the killing of Dumbledore, and he had failed. Not because he had lost his nerve as many suspected, but because he loved and respected the old man. He did not know of the onerous position that his godfather had been placed in and wept when he was told. He had only two champions in the whole school. Severus and Harry.

He was placed under guard in Severus’ chambers and an extra room was conjured into the space for him. He did not appear in classes but work was brought down to him by his House Master. Once he had been fed and allowed to rest for a few days then there was a punishing schedule of work set up for him. He took his Potions practicals alongside Potter who was doing extra work to make up for laxity in his lower Sixth year. For the first month they exchanged nary a word, both working silently under the beady black eyes of their tutor.

One night, Draco broke down in tears when Snape left the room for a staff meeting and Harry was charged with his care. Harry had no idea what to do with a blubbering Malfoy so did the only thing he knew how to, he shifted to the boy’s side and held him as he wept. Draco turned startled eyes on him and tried to pull away. Harry held on tighter, “He may have been a bastard, Malfoy, but he was your old man after all, and I know what it’s like to lose family. It turns out my dad was no saint either, though not a Death-Eater or anything, but he was the only dad I ever had too”. It made him feel worse in a way, the only understanding he had was from his old worst enemy. Despite himself, he sank into the embrace and the two were still holding each other when Snape walked back into the classroom. Draco made to pull away but Harry stilled him, hushing him, still rocking him in his arms despite Snape’s eyebrows raising at the sight. Harry looked up into those dark eyes and shook his head slightly as if to say, ‘he needs this’, and that was that. Snape nodded in reply and left them to it.

Warily, over the next few weeks, they started to work together, Draco tutoring Harry in the finer aspects of Potions-making and when Harry saw the other boy spacing out, he would reach out to him and bring him back. Snape watched from under his hooded eyes and approved as Draco started to eat more and sleep better at night. By and large he left them alone, sitting at his desk marking work while they got on with it. He would look up from time to time and noted with approval the Potter boy’s marks improving as well as his godson’s temperament. Gone was the high-flown snobbery. There would occasionally be laughs that they shared, digs in the ribs as well as whispered conversations, their heads close together. They were good for each other now that the animosity of over six years was melting into friendship.

One night, he returned from the monthly staff meeting to find them both looking extremely guilty with flushed faces casting furtive glances at each other as they worked, trying to be discreet with the touching of hands, the brushing of shoulders as they moved around, the hand on an arm to attract attention or make a point. His brows raised internally but he said nothing.

The next week, he returned to an empty classroom and his heart leapt in his chest. Their phials were laid on his desk and the work area was clean and tidy. He rushed through into his rooms and made to burst into the boy’s room only to be stilled at the last moment by the sounds coming from within, moans and low cries. Exhortations to move ‘faster’ and other cries of, ‘there, oh fuck, there. Yessss’ and a gasped ‘Harry’, over and over before another voice groaned out his godson’s name in the throes of ecstasy and the sounds silenced. Sometime later, he heard the door to his chambers close quietly and knocked on his charge’s door. He popped his head around to find Draco curled up in bed hugging a pillow, his face flushed wearing nought but a slight smile as he slept. He shook his head and smirked as he sought his own bed.

****

Harry grinned then, “I know. I was stunned, too. I never meant anything like that to happen, but, hey”, he shrugged in Severus’ arms feeling a flush heat his face. His voice dropped, “I remember the first time I saw him really smile and I was knocked for six. I was a goner from that moment on. I remember having to keep everything secret, going back to my dorm and trying to keep the grin off my face, having to lie to my best mates and grumble about what a bastard it was with all the extra work I was doing. I missed those sessions in the dungeons so much but still had to look reluctant as we separated after dinner and I would head off one way and Hermione and Ron went another. I would help Draco with Charms and Transfiguration so it wasn’t all one-sided. I was in love with him before the Easter break. I always did lose my heart rather easily”.

Severus chuckled, “It was so obvious to me that you two had formed a rather deep attachment. That’s why I undertook to teach you both over the Easter holidays. Dumbledore wasn’t there to stop me any more. I could truly start to teach you the things you would need to know to defeat Voldemort and Draco was a very apt duelling partner for you as his father had been teaching him illegal magic for years, preparing him, of course, for a life as a Death-Eater, but it all came in handy.

You were such a quick study. Theory was never your strong point but watching the two of you duel with each other, you both had such grace and speed. That’s why I let you both out late at night to fly, you needed the physical strength and flexibility for what was to come and I was insistent and eventually overrode those who would coddle you, keeping things from you, insistent on ‘cotton-wooling’ you. I detested that attitude. You were a fighter without all the knowledge you needed. You would have died out there and no amount of hand-wringing would have prevented Voldemort from just walking all over us.I finally knew the full extent of the Prophecy after your fifth year and I abhorred Albus’ trait for keeping you in the dark. I know you were only young, but as the chief weapon, you deserved and needed the information”.

Harry nodded, “Eventually Remus also saw sense and between the two of you, you pressed for me to be allowed nearer the centre of things. I’ll always be grateful for that. That was when you and Remus got together, wasn’t it?”

Severus smiled, “Yes, bless him. I still can’t believe it sometimes. We hated each other for so long. Mine was irrational and for that I’ll always be sorry. He had ample reason to hate me, after all, I’d outed him as a werewolf in your third year. He didn’t deserve that, but we joined forces over your training, and, big-hearted idiot that he was, bless his soul, we started to see eye-to-eye a bit more. It was over that Easter holidays.. We all knew that the final battle wasn’t far off and everyone was jumpy. It can bring folks closer together knowing you may all be dead soon. It was just comfort at first, two lonely men reaching out to each other, but, wretched Gryffindor that he was, he captured my heart and held on tight, refusing to let me pull away from him. I’ll always be grateful for that. Just as you saw the good in Draco, he saw past my crusty demeanour and melted my damn brittle heart. It felt so good to finally climb down off the fence to commit myself one way or the other. I hated spying. I hated Voldemort with a passion almost equal to the passion I felt for Remus, but this was something pure and good and whole. Something I had never known...”, his voice trailed away and Harry glanced up to see his friend lost in his own reveries.

He gently unwrapped himself and went to the loo. On returning, he paused by the bottles on the top of the cabinet, Severus looked up at him and smiled, “Make mine a large one”, as Harry charged two glasses with brandy and brought them over along with the decanter, sitting beside Severus once more and snuggling up beside him.

They drank in comfortable silence for awhile watching the dancing flames in the fireplace. They both finished their drinks and Harry poured them fresh ones before the conversation started up again, “Then it came”, was all he said and felt the man’s arm tighten around him, “The fucking battle. I can remember it all as if it were yesterday”. He glanced up at his friend’s face to see him wince, “Aye, the trouble for both of us, that led us to where we are now”.

****

The attack, when it came, was nasty, brutish and short. Death-Eaters appeared to drop out of the sky and onto the grounds of the castle. Harry rounded up all of the old DA who had been training under Ron , Neville and Justin, carrying on the work that Harry could not under the weight of his extra tuition. Hermione was the only one he’d dared tell about his growing feelings for a certain luscious blond. She tried to understand, struggled with it. But it was when they were seen together on the battlefield along with their Potions Master, operating as a team, that she finally understood the closeness that had grown up between the three. Four, if you counted the fully changed werewolf unleashed amongst them all, gaily ripping out the throats of the fallen Death-Eaters, yipping and growling, ensuring that they no longer had complete bodies with which to haunt or return in any capacity. She found a small part of her mind to smile with in the thick of it when she heard Snape bark commands and the Wolf came willingly to heel, realising that Harry and Draco weren’t the only surprise here.

It wqas when McNair threatened Minerva and was in front of the cowering tired woman with his wand pointing boastfully at her throat that the Wolf leapt at him and snapped his wand like a stick that he was meant to fetch and then looked down disappointed at having no stick to play with. He took the man’s arm off at the shoulder instead. He bled to death in agony and none of his cohorts released him from his pain. This wasn’t a team, just a megalomaniac with dispensable underlings that he cared not a jot about.

Harry had Draco beside him as they acted in concert, Draco drawing the bastard’s attention while Harry moved in for the kill. Several who saw this were somewhat astonished but didn’t let this unlikely alliance put them off their stride and polished off as many Death-Eaters as they could leaving Harry clear to concentrate on the main prize.

Draco taunted him and used his speed and agility to confound the man, laying no hexes, wishing for no accidental protections between the bastard and the final curse that would finish him. Harry duly obliged, standing over the panting exhausted body and delivering the Avada in ringing tones. The snake-man dropped finally and Harry whistled Remus over to finish it, patting the coarse coat in encouragement and feeling the wolf nuzzle his thigh before stepping up and ripping the wretch’s throat out with a loud howl that chilled everyone that heard it.

There was no celebration that night. Folk were spending most of the time up in the hospital wing. Severus, exhausted, his face and robes covered in blood, shrugged off Poppy’s ministrations and assisted her patching up and dosing the injured.

****

“We didn’t realise what he’d done that night, did we?”, Harry asked softly. He felt Severus shake his head, “Indeed we didn’t. After it was all over, I just wanted to run and hide, so I resigned from Hogwarts and just ran off with my Wolf for the summer”. Harry hung his head, “I wasn’t so lucky. Narcissa had her plans for her son and since Lucius was no more: in a way I can’t blame her for wanting things cementing faster. After the battle, she was exonerated from all association, after all, she bore no dark mark, so there was no reason to hold her in custody, and when she was released, she put her plans into action as quickly as she could. She summoned Draco home and before he knew what was happening, he was married to Gabrielle Delacour, Pansy and her family having disappeared before the battle. She was desperate for heirs, and I’ll give it to Drae, he only fucked his wife twice and each time she caught. An heir and a spare. The moment he had wet the baby’s head he Apparated out that night. I remember him turning up at my flat. He’d spent a night in the ‘Cauldron waiting for me to get home. I was an Auror by then. He knocked on my door, poor love, but I knew I had him back and he was mine from now on.

I bullied and cajoled him into keeping up with his two boys, he wanted to wash his hands altogether. After all, she had his money, his genes and his sons, but I insisted. Every boy needs his daddy and this I told him. I finally convinced him that he needed to take at least a background role in bringing the lads up, even if it was a bit distant. Eventually the boys accepted the idea of mum and dad not being together and why. He never made a secret of me to his lads and I will always be proud of him for that. Apparently the boys wanted me to be there today, properly and officially, but their mother overrode them. I had condolence cards from both of them and I noticed a wreath that purported to come from me and I knew that Xavier and Gaius had arranged it, much, no doubt, to their mother’s annoyance. I don’t know why she made such a big deal about it. It wasn’t like she didn’t take other lovers once her duties were fulfilled”. Harry sighed.

Severus smiled, “Ah, well, it was ever the Malfoy way. Lucius and Narcissa were the same. Theirs was a marriage of dynasties not love. He couldn’t even bear to bed her twice, just enough to be assured of his precious heir and then they went their separate ways sexually as befits all such aristocratic families. So long as the pretence is upheld, who gives a damn what goes on privately”. Harry shook his head, “I’d have married him myself if I could, and that would have been a love match, no doubt about it”. Severus squeezed him momentarily, “I know, Harry. I know how much you loved him”. Harry could feel the tears again, “I may love again, but I will never love anyone like I loved him. He was truly the love of my life. I remember reading in the Prophet of their second son’s birth. He waited until she was officially out of the lying-in period and then he owled me. He appeared on my door-step the following day with a small suitcase and that was that. He was back. Back in my life and back in my bed. In all that time, I stayed faithful to him”, Harry sighed again, lost in his memories.

****

The knock at the door of his small flat. It was the weekend and he should have slept in as he usually did on his days off from the Ministry, but he’d seen the announcement in the paper and received the owl from his lover. Four bloody years it had taken. Four long years and now he was coming back as promised.

Harry was out of bed in a heartbeat, wrapped in his ratty old gown and stumbling to the front door of his flat, checking through the spyhole, spotting a blur of blond beauty on his doorstep before flinging the door open wide. Propriety be damned, he had waited so long for this moment. Draco and he looked at each other for a long moment. He was all sleep and bed ruffled, Draco was impeccably dressed and coifed as usual, even his nails were freshly buffed and manicured. Harry felt a momentary pang for not being so prepared, but, hang it all, this was just him. The smile that lit the hallway was worth every day of the long wait and in a heartbeat, they were in each other’s arms, their tongues in each other’s hungry mouths as Harry dragged his beloved over the threshold still kissing him and slammed the door behind them before flinging his lover against it and pressing against him full length as they kissed.

As hands raked hair and body, as clothes were swiftly despatched, Draco’s only words were, “Yours now, Harry, yours and no-one else’s. Be mine forever”. Harry could barely murmur a “Yes, lover”, before he pulled at his lover’s hands and led him to a soft place where they could get horizontal and make love. Harry’s knees impacted on something and they tipped over backwards, Harry pulling Draco after him. The sofa it was then. No problem. Draco landed hard on Harry knocking the breath from him in a rush, both laughed as they struggled to remove Draco’s clothes, Harry’s easy enough to dispense with and they were all over each other with lips and hands, relearning once familiar territory and laughing at their discoveries.

They had both grown from boys in the intervening four years, Draco taller, Harry broader. They still tasted the same, smelt the same as they buried their faces in each other’s necks, licking and tasting. There was no time for finesse. Harry Accio’d the lube and they joined in ecstasy, Draco riding Harry below him to mutual grunts and hisses of pleasure, to a loud moan as Harry hit Draco’s sweet spot and they readjusted in haste, Harry using the arm of the sofa for thrust leverage with his feet, Draco hanging on with desperation lest he be catapulted off in their urgency. Harry roughly handled Draco’s cock, pumping almost viciously at the shouts from above him and it was all over, pumping and coming and filling and loving and his Draco was back, was back, was back...... and Harry nearly blacked out with the intensity.

****

Harry came back with a rueful grin as he felt Severus move beside him and a recharged glass thrust into his hand, “Sorry, just remembering the day he came back to me. Four frigging years”, he snorted softly. Severus resumed his hold, then felt the shoulders beneath his arm shake once more, “I still keep thinking that I ought to get back to him, that his dressings need changing, his foot rub that seemed to comfort him, remind him that there was something below his waist that was still capable of feeling....”, the rest was lost to deep sobs that only abated when he slumped against Severus’ chest and his weight increased against his friend. Severus only realised he was asleep when liquid from the glass dripped onto his leg and he gently took the glass from Harry’s hand and placed it on the low coffee table.

He untangled himself from Harry and laid him down. Flicking his wand, he enlarged the sofa and Summoned blankets and pillows from his bedroom, he stripped off another layer down to vest and undershorts and lay down beside Harry covering them both in blankets, flinging an arm around him, they both slept.