Severus Snape loved being dead. The last four weeks since his 'must be mourned premature demise' - as Fudge, pompous as always, had lied by the funeral - he'd felt more alive than in years before and sometimes - even if he would rather swallow his tongue than to admit it to Albus - even happy. Naturally: Happiness in Severus Snape didn't mean he was going to dance in joy or to embrace the next human or elfish being as Hermione sometimes did. But it meant that he didn't mind - at least not too much - that Albus had started to hug him as the usual finish of the evenings they spent together.
As Albus had done it first, Severus had felt overrun - and so idiotically touched he'd said in his most vitriol tone: "I take it, you're becoming senile. So I don't feel insulted for being mixed up with Miss Granger."
Albus - being Albus - had laughed and said: "Does this mean, you won't give me a sweet good night kiss?"
The next evening Albus had hugged him again. This time Severus had been prepared hissing an "I hate it when you become sentimental."
But once again he'd got laughter back and a kind: "Sleep well, Severus."
And so Severus had resigned. He'd always envied Albus for his master ship - no, not in swallowing insults, but in letting them bounce off. In the years they'd known each other, Severus had often tried to get on Albus, he really had shot from every angle - but only once he'd got something back which had sounded hurt. It has been sad: "I don't want to believe you really mean that, child."
After that Severus had felt miserable for days - so much he wished he could tell Albus at least once how he really felt. Yet he couldn't. Although Albus was the only human being Severus ever had trusted and probably the only one he loved, Severus was afraid to give in to these feelings, to admit them, to speak out loudly what he almost didn't dare to think. It would only make him feel weaker and more deflessless against Albus than he already felt. And Severus hated weakness; he loathed it especially when it came in connection with Albus.
Actually it had already started in Severus' first year at Hogwarts. He had been a thin, small boy with swallow skin, greasy hair, a nose much too big for his face and no social skills at all. Having grown up in the dim Snape mansion in one of the wettest and most lonesome corners of Yorkshire with a father who avoided seeing his only son as much as possible and only a terrified house elf to look after him, Severus had never played with other children, he'd never talked to one before he came to Hogwarts. So the noise in the train had frightened him and by entering the great hall, hearing all the laughter and talking and shuffling of feet he'd wished to be back at home where he could escape the world by burying himself in books.
In Hogwarts he'd tried this way of fleeing too soo soon as he discovered the library, he'd become a regular there, always hiding with a book in the darkest corner. And if he couldn't hide in the library, he'd tried to make himself as invisible as possible. Mostly he'd succeeded in that. Nobody had seemed to notice him - except the old man.
Severus remembered how he felt the first time. It had been at breakfast in the hall in his second week at Hogwarts. He'd mumbled on a slice of dry toast - the richness of the Hogwarts meals had still irritated him and so he hadn't tried something else at breakfast than what he was used to from home: Dry toast and bitter tea - as he suddenly felt someone watching him. Looking up he'd seen the headmaster's blue eyes resting on him, unusually sad and grave and filled with something Severus couldn't describe. But this gaze had warmed him and from then on Severus had by then almost every meal gazed - of course secretly, through his eye lashes - to the head table. Often enough he'd found the blue eyes then watching and warming him.
Then, two or three months after the first eye contact, Professor Sciglione, Hogwarts' that time potion master, had been away for a conference and instead of him the headmaster had swept in for the traditional double potion Slytherin-Gryffindor class. Severus had already heard - though he never talked to someone in the common room and always hide behind a book, he always heard what the others were talking about - that the old man liked to have fun when teaching and always came up with something Severus found 'frivolous', like a potion to change hair colors or a pimple remover.
