Chasing Moonbeams.

[pekeleke]

Title: Chasing Moonbeams.
Author: pekeleke
Pairing(s): Severus Snape/Harry Potter
Rating: NC-17, eventually.
Length: 82K+
Warnings: Extremely Slow burn. Pre-slash to slash. Enemies to friends to lovers. Pinning!Harry. Oblivious!Severus. Implied Bottom!Severus. EWE.
Disclaimer: Don't own these characters. I make no profit from writing fanfiction.
Summary: “Really?” Harry beams, green eyes wide and full of wonder. “You’re going to let me snog you to my heart’s content?”

“Of course not.” Severus replies contrarily, curling elegant digits around the brat’s neck and tugging him down low enough for a quick and dirty kiss before the Savior has a chance to protest. “I’m going to let you snog me to my heart’s content, Potter.”

A/N: This is a multi-chapter work. It’s already written in its entirety, all 35 chapters of it. I will post one a day until all of them have been uploaded. 

 

Chasing Moonbeams. 

 

We are all wanderers of this Earth,
all of us chasing moonbeams,
our hearts are full of wonder,
and our hearts are deep with dreams.

                                                   Gypsy proverb.

Chapter 1.

 

The first time Harry Potter beams at him sunnily and wishes him a very loud, very obnoxious, “Top o’ the morning to ya,’ Master Snape!” Severus realizes two things at once: Potter is spending far too much of his free time around that shameless Irish reprobate, Seamus Finnigan, and he -Potter that is, not Finnigan- has finally come up with the requisite Gryffindor plot to get under Severus’s skin. Both conclusions are exquisitely logical and perfectly justifiable, in Severus’s humble opinion. That ridiculous ‘top o’ the morning’ nonsense is the sort of crime against the Queen’s English that only the Irish would dare to commit. Moreover, even the most antisocial wizards, the ones who pride themselves on having spent the last twenty years or so cowering under a rock in some unpronounceable valley up in the Himalayan mountains, are aware that Severus Tobias Snape and Harry Bloody Potter have never seen eye to eye.

It’s no wonder then that Severus finds it deeply suspicious when he opens his kitchen’s window for that morning’s Prophet owl and is confronted with Potter’s ridiculous grin flashing unexpectedly manly dimples at him above the small hedge that surrounds his cozy cottage. Potter’s even more ridiculous greeting floats in the gentle morning breeze towards his astonished ears. To his credit, Severus neither flinches nor hexes the brat even more stupid than he currently is as soon as The Great Monday Morning Oddness starts. He grabs his copy of the Prophet from its hovering carrier, blinks in the direction of Potter’s pestiferous little grin with arrant disinterest, slams his windowpane closed in both bird and man’s faces, and uses his wand to cast a quick Finite at the seemingly stunned figure of the Heroic Brat Who Lived To Annoy Him that he can still see through the glass —just in case some treacherous fiend has managed to land an underhanded Congenial Charm on Potter while the idiot wasn’t looking.—

Potter squeaks like a girl the moment Severus’s magic washes over him, but he casts neither furiously angry hex nor grateful charm back. He stands there, staring moronically at Severus through the clear windowpane, for about five minutes straight and then leaves with a forlorn little shake of his head, looking for all intents and purposes like the most disappointed lion that ever ‘lioned’ on a perfectly unremarkable Monday morning around Severus’s carefully tended hedge for no good reason whatsoever. Severus shakes his head too and flicks his wand towards the kettle. Tea. He needs tea. And toast. And an hour or two reading his paper in peace.

It doesn’t work though. For the first time since the end of the war, Severus’s precious routine fails to engulf him in its soothing waters. It fails to allow him to drift into a world of his own that nobody else gets to intrude on unless expressly invited by him. Severus has never invited Potter to smile at him and ruin his morning via unwelcome intrusion into his thoughts. It’s incredibly rude of the ex-Gryffindor to have done so, and Severus steams in his frustration while pacing his living room after lunch. He growls unhappily at his bookcases because it galls him to acknowledge that he’s unable to settle into any given activity for longer than ten minutes due to his inability to make sense of the bloody brat’s actions.

Potter has, unsurprisingly, followed in his irksome father’s footsteps, and joined the Auror Corps after graduating from Hogwarts. Severus himself never returned to the school, but Minerva keeps him apprised of what goes on up in Scotland during their standing Firewhiskey Fridays. Severus is well aware that Potter’s Eighth year was boring enough to allow the Savior enough time to study. Potter graduated with more N.E.W.T.s than Severus ever thought he’d earn and then proceeded to lose what little respect his academic accomplishments managed to inspire in Severus by deciding to waste all that potential on the brainless work of a junior Auror's beat.

The idiots running the Ministry these days have Harry Potter, Savior Of The Wizarding World, Defeater Of The Dark Lord, Gringott’s Robber Extraordinaire, Rider Of Dragons, and Ancient Basilisk Slayer, patrolling perfectly respectful tree-lined neighborhoods in the hope that nothing untoward will happen to the idiot from here until he reaches retirement age, by the looks of it. As if anyone or anything would dare to damage Potter. The brat is obviously indestructible. He survived the killing curse twice, for Salazar’s sake.

Nobody had been more shocked than Severus when he’d realized they’d assigned Potter to patrol his perfectly orderly neighborhood. Nothing ever happens around here. It’s all sunny little wizards and witches zipping around in their toy brooms and fluffy, if witless, crups tangling themselves around everybody’s feet sprinkled with cheerfully waving, fruit-pie sharing, honestly respectful adult members of the public going about the business of living their idyllic little lives in peaceful harmony from sunup to sundown.

Severus had been utterly revolted by the place’s sugary sweet air of suburbian perfection when he’d first clapped eyes upon it. However, he’d fallen in love at first sight with the rambling cottage that stood, drooping with age, decades-old neglect, and the delicate weight of about a dozen tangled climbing roses clinging valiantly to its façade, at the end of the street. Severus rarely allows himself to fall in love but, every time he does, he doesn't hesitate to embrace the madness of his feelings and follow their lead wherever they take him. He’d bought the place and moved in within two weeks of having been granted his freedom by the Wizengamot, and now lives in a perfect house that’s inconveniently located on a sunny, smiley, little piece of hell that most of his Slytherin acquaintances and ex-students refuse to visit on principle. A sunny, smiley, little piece of hell patrolled on the daily by Harry Bloody Potter himself.

Severus is probably the only neighbor in the entire street who has managed to ignore the Savior among them for the two years plus that the brat has spent strutting up and down their quaint cobbled stones to ‘guarantee their safety.’ Severus doesn’t need anyone to guarantee his safety, but he can see why the rest of his irritatingly cheerful and overly polite neighbors might. He hasn’t put too much effort into making it clear to the Savior that they are most certainly NOT TALKING TO EACH OTHER. In all fairness, Severus had assumed that point was written on stone and is now more than a little pissed off at the oblivious, idiotic Gryffindor for failing to realize such simple universal truth and all the not-so-subtle behavioral cues associated with it.

Severus is usually safely ensconced inside his cottage while Potter does his ‘rounds.' They consist mostly of Potter ambling lazily down the lane with that syrupy smile of his while randomly helping old ladies do things they’re perfectly capable of doing on their own when he’s not around, patting children's heads, signing autographs for besotted sycophants, and offering unsolicited advice to equally sunny people who return his syrupy smiles. Severus has failed to open his door the last six times Potter has bothered to knock on it -the short list of those occasions includes last Christmas day and, surprisingly, Severus’s birthday,- but he’d sent a specialized healing potion by owl, instead of delivering it in person, the only time the Savior was injured in the line of duty via the bite of little Brady Bibgsby’s escaped Madagascar Rattle-Lizard. Severus has also rejected -with no politeness whatsoever- the somewhat unexpected invitation to speak alongside Potter at every annual ball the Ministry has held to commemorate the Battle Of Hogwarts. On top of all that, Severus hasn’t said a single word to Potter since his trial. Now that he thinks about it, Severus is pretty confident he hasn’t said a word to Potter since the shack. His vocal cords hadn’t yet recovered enough to allow him speech at the time of his trial, so he must have thanked Potter for his favorable testimony via standard Thought To Speech Spell.

All of those things make the strangeness of the morning all the more— well, strange. Maybe Potter had been under the effect of a Congenial Charm after all. Perhaps the brat is really so dumb that almost seven years of complete silence, two and a half of which include a 100% dose of studious indifference towards the Auror on Severus’ part, haven’t been enough to drive home the idea that fighting on the same side of the war doesn’t make them friends. Maybe it’s time for Severus to put some effort into making sure that Potter understands his position on the matter. ‘Hmm,’ he muses and stops his infernal pacing to approach his third tallest bookshelf. Perusing the titles held within is the work of five minutes. Severus slides out his tome on Rare Brews For The Green-thumbed Englishman, cracks it open to examine the index, and flashes the satisfied smirk common to every Slytherin plotter as he finally finds something useful to do with the rest of his day. He must brew Liftblast’s Shrub Nutrition Solution at once. He will coax his hedge into growing at least a foot taller overnight.


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Table of contents.

 

Comments

[teryarel]

Hello there. :D It's you, my friend - I'm so happy to see you again! Reading the message that you had posted a story gave me a huge smile, and reading the story (the first of many chapters, yay!) made my day.

I just love your style and your characterisation of Severus and Harry. Reading about disgruntled Severus (who, lo and behold, did NOT hex Harry but instead sent a spell to cancel any ill affects on him) and (poor) gobsmacked Harry who is being very chivalric, in spite of his girlish scream. (I mean I totaly get the high-pitched squealing, er... Screaming.) And I'm sure Harry won't be so easily diverted - growing hedge or not. (Else, there'd be 33 chapters of watching the shrubbery grow.)

Anyway, I just wanted to say that it's awesome to be reading a new story of yours. I look forward to many more hexes, squeals, forlorn looks, doubts of sanity, bouts of insanity, and whatever else you've come up with! ^^