Foolisness Springs Eternal.

[pekeleke]

Title: Foolishness Springs Eternal.

Rating : G.

Author: pekeleke

Word Count: 2640

Challenge: Written in celebration of April Fool's Day.

Warnings: None.

Disclaimer: Don't own these characters. No money is being made out of this work.

Summary: Severus Snape has always despised being made a fool of. That all changes when Harry Potter forces him to realize that, if foolishness springs eternal and, therefore, is never-ending, he might be better off embracing the dammed thing.

 

Foolishness Springs Eternal.

The moment he entered his favourite pub Severus gritted his teeth. Potter was here again, sitting right by the bar as if there was no other place in the whole of England he'd rather be. Severus couldn't understand the gryffindor's irritating determination to ruin the former peacefulness of his own personal haven, but the situation was starting to annoy the hell out of him.

“ Hello, professor...”

He sighed, realizing that ignoring Potter wouldn't work this week either and turned reluctantly around, in order to stare at the persistent little pest frostily.
“I'm not your professor anymore. You have no right to address me thus any longer, Potter. I clearly remember telling you as much last week although now it seems like I wasted my breath, as usual. You've never been particularly inclined to listen to anything I have to say, after all.”

”I'm trying to be respectful, you know? I thought you'll appreciate it.”

“Why bother? It's not as if I care all that much about what you think of me, Potter.”

The auror smiled sadly.
“Why wouldn't you? You always deserved my respect and I never granted it to you during my school years. Now that I'm trying to make things right it's impossible to convince you of my sincerity. Why can't you believe that I mean you no harm at all, professor?”

“Because I know you. You wouldn't touch me with a barge-pole, Potter. Let alone address me with genuine respect.”

The gryffindor's beautiful green eyes flashed with the kind of challenge that hadn't been directed Severus' way since the brat finally left Hogwarts, almost six years ago.
“Do you really think so? Sounds to me like one of us is wrong about this then and, since I'm definitely here -minus barge-pole I might add- it becomes obvious that you don't know me as much as you'd like to believe, professor.”

Severus didn't even bother to hide his derisive reaction to that ridiculous claim.
“I live in a school full of unruly children, Potter. I've spent the day sidestepping rather uninspired attempts at April Fools' Day pranks. Do you really imagine that I'm not perfectly aware of exactly what day it is? I'd be an idiot to believe anything of a friendly nature coming from your lips under normal circumstances, but to do so today, of all days, would be nothing less than criminally stupid.”

The brat's reaction wasn't what Severus had expected. He became puzzlingly still, blinked owlishly at least twice and then proceeded to slap his own forehead hard enough to leave a palm print underneath the unruly mass of bangs that he still used to hide that scar of his.

“I can't believe how much of a moron...”

Severus stiffened from head to toes, utterly aghast at the unwarranted verbal attack, and wondered how much trouble he'd get into if he turned the precious Wonder-auror of the Wizarding World into a fatter, slimier, version of Longbottom's old toad.
“Excuse me?”

Sudden awareness of the imminent danger he was in flashed across Potter's rather beautiful eyes and, instead of shuddering with terror -like any reasonably witted ex-student of his would have done- and beating a hasty retreat towards the bar, the irritating creature plopped rudely on the free chair that stood on the other side of Severus' table, blatantly disregarding the fact that he hadn't been invited to occupy it.

“I'm not talking about you, Severus. I'm talking about myself. I forgot the date completely, don't you see? April Fools'... of all the bloody days to try talking you into bed I have to go and choose this one. Gosh!  I can't believe how stupid I've...”

“You seriously expect me to believe that you wish to engage in... acts... of physical intimacy with me?  What kind of a fool do you take me for, Potter?”

A small, adorable blush blossomed across the auror's disgustingly attractive features and Severus gritted his teeth with impotent indignation. He couldn't afford to drop his guard at this particular second. Not with Harry looking so bloody... fuckable... that the very vision of him staring shamelessly right back was making Severus too aroused to think clearly. He was used to people attempting to trick him in this particularly cruel manner and wasn't willing to allow his own peculiar attraction to this text-book gryffindor heart-breaker to colour his reaction to this unlikely, if secretly thrilling, offer to have a forbidden rendezvous with the object of his unacknowledged affections.

“Why are you so convinced that this is a prank?”

Severus frowned, curious despite himself to find out why the other man hadn't already dropped his little seductive act the moment that it had been so thoroughly exposed for the lie it was.
“What else could it be?”

“It could be the truth, you know? It could be nothing as sinister as whatever plot you imagine that I'm hatching, but a genuine desire on my part to get to know you better. It could simply be my poorly-timed attempt to offer you something that I think you might accept more readily than an out-of-the-blue invitation to a romantic candlelit dinner. Sex isn't as threatening as outright affection in your mind, is it?”

“Affection?” Severus scorned in a deadly whisper that dripped with all the self-protective poison that his thoroughly savaged heart could manage to produce at such short notice. “Now I know you are definitely either drunk or too stubborn to know when to throw in the towel, Potter. I don't appreciate anyone attempting to make a fool of me and this little game of yours has gone far enough already...”

Potter dared to cut him off, speaking over him with disarming sincerity.
“I'm not playing games with you. I'll swear it on my mother's memory if that's what it takes to convince you of my sincerity, Severus!   I know that you don't trust me all that much and I have no right to blame you for that attitude, but... I could be in love, you know?  With you, I mean. I could have heard somewhere that this is where you come to drink a pint or two every Friday night and decided to try my luck at gaining your attention, just like any other bloke who feels something unique and special towards another might do. I could have been coming here all along just to see you, to breathe the same air that you breathe, to feel... connected... to you. I could have been trying to talk to you, rambling wildly about whatever crossed my mind at that second, while telling myself harshly to stop dithering already and ask you out before your impatience gets the better of you and you finally decide to walk away in a huff...”

Severus stilled in his seat, blinking rather stupidly with a sort of dazed agitation. His heart felt way too heavy to remain locked within the narrow confines of his ribcage at that moment and his lungs were dangerously low on air. His pulse pounded against his ears with a loud, unpleasant roar that was making him feel dizzy with flustered dismay.

No matter how much he might now desire it, he could not “un-hear” Potter's words. Not now that they had been uttered in that fierce and wobbly tone. Not when they so frighteningly resembled the hufflepuffish avowals of heartfelt adoration that Severus' own imagination liked to conjure while he was trapped inside the hope-filled prison of his own dreams, night after night. Yet he wasn't dreaming now. He was wide awake and sitting in a public pub while the very owner of his heart granted him his every wish on a silver platter...

This could not be happening to him. Luck like this never bothered to touch pariahs like him. Love did not favour charmless little nobodies. Nor was it ever granted to aged, ugly has-beens...

Harry was studying him with a frightened kind of expectation. He looked genuinely sick with nerves. He had, quite unmistakably, uttered the most difficult words that any man alive could possibly speak before another and yet none of that mattered at all. Severus couldn't really bring himself to trust the gryffindor's Earth-shattering admission of fragility. Not today of all days. That'd be utterly absurd...

“I'd be a fool to believe you, Potter.”

“I've been told that I'm a fool for loving you and that hasn't managed to stop me feeling this way, so far. Foolishness could be wonderful, Severus. It could be beautiful and freeing. It could be... magical, if we dare to share it together. I honestly believe that we could be happier than we've ever been, if we have the courage to embrace this particular kind of foolishness like the precious gift it is, rather than reject it out of hand as if our emotions are some gruesome character flaw that must be hidden at all costs...”

“So... you are saying that you didn't realize it's April Fools' today and that you weren't attempting to prank me when you claimed that you want to sleep with me tonight. Maybe even do more than that, eventually. Is that correct?”

Harry's emerald-green eyes shone like bright jewels as he pushed himself slightly forwards against the table, reaching out boldly for Severus' hand and speaking with the kind of undeniable sobriety that would have earned him the riveted attention of every single member of the Wizengamot in under a second.

“I'm saying that I love you. That I've loved you for a while now and that, although I may not have picked my moment to best advantage, I've got no intention of hurting you, or tricking you, or treating you with anything other than genuine devotion, Severus.

"I'm saying that I'll walk away right now and return to you tomorrow with this very same offer, if that's what it takes to make you feel less threatened about... us. I will do anything, anything you want, to soothe your fears regarding my intentions. The only thing I won't do is deny my feelings. Not anymore. Not now that I've finally managed to confess them.”

Severus blinked. Convinced, despite himself, by the fiercely determined look that was brightening those green eyes, by the earnest tone of that young voice, by the warmth of the fingers that had wrapped around his own and were anchoring him to the moment, refusing to let go...
“I must be a fool then, Po... Harry, because I'm about to do the most ridiculous thing I've ever done. I'm actually considering throwing caution to the wind and daring to trust your impossible claims...”

His words halted when the gryffindor whooped like an unruly teenager, pushing himself further against the table until he was leaning almost entirely over it, placing his wide-eyed face so close to Severus' own that his every word fell against the pale skin of the potioneer's face like a delicate puff of body-warmed air:
“You'll say yes? You'll trust me about this? You'll give us the chance to behave like a couple of deranged fools together?... Oh, Severus!...”

He could not resist halting whatever mushy thing Harry planned to say next with a small kiss to those thoroughly tempting lips. He'd never planned anything beyond a simple peck but, as soon as their mouths touched, their skin seemed to become too tight for their own bodies, too hot to be endured, too thirsty for the other's touch to accept anything less than total, toe-curling passion from a kiss that they both seemed to have spent a veritable eternity longing for. Harry groaned against his lips, opening his mouth wider in a blatant invitation for Severus to explore further and the slytherin's greedy heart could not find the strength to deny himself the chance to discover the reality of the mouth that he'd been, literally, dreaming about for so long.

Their kiss grew wilder, harsher and more reckless as it consumed them entirely, driving them directly into a spiralling vortex of desire where nothing else existed beyond their hunger for one another. They kissed and kissed until the lack of air forced them apart and they plopped bonelessly against the backrests of their chairs, staring dazedly at each other with equal expressions of wide-eyed vulnerability and passion-swollen lips. Silence settled between them for a tense minute as they both struggled with their turbulent emotions, with their thoughts and fears, with the thoroughly unexpected development that seemed to have terrified them both into stunned silence.

“We'll do the candlelit dinner before we go any further, Po... Harry. I might be a fool for even bothering to put a stop to all of this now, but... I think I'm old-fashioned that way. Sex is fine by me, when that's all I'll ever get out of a partner, but you...  You'll give me more, won't you? You'll give me... everything.”

The disappointment that Severus half-expected to see flashing across the gryffindor's face never actually materialized. Harry smiled at him tenderly, rising in the next second to walk around the small table until he came to a kneeling position right beside him, looking for all the world like a supplicant peasant trying to court the favour of a powerful king.

“Yes, my love. Of course I'll give you everything. I'll give you everything you want. Everything I am. Everything I've got to offer... I'm not going to complain about this decision, you know? I think you are right about this. We should definitely start with candlelight and dinner. We should start with outright romance, because this isn't only about sex. This is about love, Severus, and we both have been cheated enough in this particular arena to realize that we deserve... perfection. Or as close to it as we can possibly manage, don't we? We deserve to take things slowly, savouring each second to the fullest.”

Severus swallowed with difficulty, awed beyond words by how easily Harry had managed to understand the powerful need that had fuelled his request to cool things down a bit between them.
“Yes... We deserve to give each other the chance to create the kind of memories that neither of us has ever managed to compile. I want to enjoy the knowledge that I don't have to try to grab as much of you as I can tonight, because tomorrow will definitely come for both of us.”

Harry smiled sweetly at him, looking directly into his eyes with limpid adoration.
“Of course it will come, Severus. We have all the time in the world to be complete and utter fools together.”

Severus couldn't help the small peal of laughter that escaped his lips then. He felt lighter and more hopeful than he'd felt in a long time as he edged slightly forwards, buried both his hands in the wild nest of Harry's dark hair and used them to cradle that eager young face between his palms, like a cherished treasure.

Their lips met once again, sharing a calmer, more relaxed kiss this time. There was no reason to fear that this would be their very last kiss anymore. This wouldn't be their last... anything. They had already promised tomorrow to each other. They had promised each other the day after and the day after that one, too. They would have next week and also next month. They'd have next year and the year after that... They'd need all the time they could get their hands on, if they were to properly embrace utter foolishness together, because becoming a fool isn't precisely easy.

Embracing foolishness is a very tricky endeavour indeed, one that requires years of stubborn practice and a complete disregard for one's own safety. Foolishness requires both natural talent and constant dedication. It requires commitment. Perseverance. Diligence. Foolishness is an art, a joy, a priceless gift. Because foolishness, like hope, springs ever eternal...

The end.