29th January 2054, Godric's Hollow

Dusk had fallen on the tiny cemetery more than an hour earlier, and the winter winds howled between the gravestones. The cold was little more than a minor discomfort for Severus, however, as he swooped in to land on the narrow path, a darker shadow against the indigo sky.

He picked his way carefully along one of the rows until he reached the headstone that marked Lily's final resting place. He crouched down, laying his burden to one side and wiping away the few hailstones that rested on top of the marble with a leather-gloved hand. A quick flick of his wand trimmed the slightly overgrown grass back to neatness. Another banished the slight green taint where algae had dulled the stone, restoring it to pristine whiteness. He lifted the cover on the memorial vase and tipped out the rainwater that had accumulated in it before refilling it. Only then did he replace the cover and begin to arrange the flowers he had brought, feeding them one by one through the holes in the chromed lid.

Once everything was perfectly arranged, he rose from his crouched position. He stood there, every muscle in his body inhumanly still as the minutes ticked by. His cloak billowed around him, and his raven-dark hair was whipped away from his face to reveal a visage that had been spared the ravages of time.

"Come out, Potter!" he commanded in the same sarcastic drawl that Harry remembered from his Hogwarts days. "Your teeth are chattering loud enough to wake the dead."

Harry stepped away from the corner of the church where he had been sheltering and lowered the hood of his invisibility cloak. "How did you know it was me?"

"Who else would it have been?"

Harry shrugged before he remembered that the cloak still shrouded his shoulders, but it seemed as if Snape had picked up on the gesture anyway.

His former teacher had returned his gaze to the ground in front of him, but he did nothing to indicate that Harry was unwelcome.

"Every year since we moved here, there have been irises on her grave on her birthday," Harry commented. "It took me years to work it out. We all thought you died that day."

"Technically speaking, I did," Severus answered.

"Not dead enough to get your portrait in Dumbledore's study," Harry remarked.

Severus gave an impatient sigh and turned to face the boy who was now a man moving from middle age into his twilight years. "I'm sure even you should remember enough from your Defence lessons to work out what I am, Potter."

"It was Hermione who put it together. When little Ginny started talking about 'The Bat Man' who scared away the monsters. You were turned that day, weren't you?"

"You always did have a knack for stating the obvious."

"Why irises?" Harry asked.

"Because they were her favourites," Severus answered as if the question was ridiculous, but then his voice softened. "Your grandmother used to grow them under her window. Lily used to say that she knew spring was on its way when they came up. She loved the colours."

"I never got a chance to thank you for what you gave me that day," Harry began rather hesitantly.

"Spare me the false sentimentality," Severus cut in. "I didn't do it for you. I thought I made that obvious."

"No, I know you didn't, but that doesn't make what you gave me any less precious," Harry argued.

"I had no more desire to live in the Dark Lord's vision of Utopia than you did."

"I'm not talking about what I needed to beat Voldemort. I'm talking about something that meant a lot more to me than that. You gave me a mother."

The vampire's gaze was once more fixed on the white marble, but this time there was a rigidity to his posture that had been missing before.

"All I had until then was a stranger in a photograph album and her dying screams when the Dementors came too close," Harry explained. "My aunt did her best to pretend she never existed. She called her a freak. Sirius and Remus hardly ever mentioned her without mentioning my father in the same sentence, as if she'd never been anything other than half of a couple. I never even knew what she looked like until I was eleven. You made her real to me. I don't think anyone else saw her the way you did. You l—"

"I'm so glad that the outpouring of my heart and soul, in what I believed to be my dying moments, was able to entertain you."

"That's not what I said. It wasn't some cheap thrill. I named my son after you."

Severus turned slightly to his left, his gaze sweeping over Ginny Potter's grave and the space beside it, which he assumed was reserved for Harry himself, to that of Albus Severus Potter. "I gathered."

"Then, why do you find it so difficult to believe that I truly appreciate what you did that day? Because I look like my father?" Harry demanded, pulling off his glasses. Shucking the invisibility cloak from his shoulders, he stepped forward until his face was only inches from Snape's. "Would it have made a difference if I'd looked more like her? Would you still have hated me, if I'd had auburn hair? Or maybe if I'd been a girl?"

Snape stared down into Harry's eyes, his only obvious legacy from his mother, seeing them for the first time without the barrier of his spectacles.

"Or would you have loved me?"

The vampire visibly wavered at the question, taking time to consider before he replied. "I don't know. You would still have been his." He took a step backward.

"But you've watched over me for nearly sixty years, regardless?" Harry asked.

"I watched over you for her. I made a promise," Severus stated as if that answered everything.

"I couldn't have done it," Harry said. "Ginny's been gone two years next month and it's been two years too long."

The vamp gave a derisive snort. "I always said you were weak."

"I guess you were right," Harry answered, turning it into a joke at his own expense. "Or maybe I just don't want to feel empty forever. Dumbledore once told me that to the well-ordered mind death is but the next great adventure."

"In case it escaped your attention, Albus Dumbledore was grooming you for martyrdom. He had to say that," Severus pointed out.

"I believe him," Harry said. "Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm ready to find out. Are you saying that you wouldn't be glad for it to all be over? No more Harry-sitting?"

"That is one duty I would gladly relinquish," Severus responded, "but if you're hinting at what I think you're hinting at, then I doubt it would be in the spirit of my agreement with Dumbledore."

"They're all gone," Harry continued. "Ginny, Al, even Ron and Hermione. The other kids are all grown up and have grandchildren of their own. I'm superfluous. Think of it as escorting me on the last steps of the journey."

"Well, since you put it like that," sneered Snape, "of course I'll murder the person I've sworn a vow to protect."

"I'm serious."

"In that case, you don't need me. If you really want it, the Killing Curse should work just fine."

"I probably could..." Harry said. "But it might go wrong. That curse doesn't have a record of being particularly effective when it comes to me. I'd hate to end up in the Janus Thickey Ward with permanent spell damage."

He waited but Snape didn't rise to the bait.

"Surely, your promise to watch over me should prevent you from allowing me to do something that might leave me locked up with Lockhart."

"Perhaps," Snape conceded, bringing a smile to Harry's face. "And, if you should happen to find yourself a mindless vegetable, then I will respect your wishes. Until then, your life is in your own hands."

"I thought vampires were meant to crave human blood, especially wizards' blood," Harry hinted salaciously. "Shouldn't you be drooling at the thought of draining me?"

"I know potions was never your forté, Potter, but even you must have heard of Sanguine Solution. It has been half a century since it was invented," Snape answered.

"You mean you don't even drink blood?" Harry asked.

"Rarely."

"But you do drink blood?" Harry pushed.

Snape gave an impatient sigh. "Only when I wish to heighten my partner's sexual pleasure," Snape explained, as if to a particularly slow pupil, raising an eyebrow to emphasise his point. "You hardly qualify."

"There's nothing I can say to convince you, is there?" Harry asked, stepping so close to his former teacher that Snape's coal dark eyes came back into focus, filling his vision.

"Nothing," Snape confirmed, though his voice had a slightly husky quality.

"Not even— Diffindo!" A deep cut sliced into the side of Harry's neck, and blood flowed freely from the wound.

Severus's nostrils flared, the coppery tang invading his being as no other sensation could. Through half-closed lids, he stared into emerald eyes, eyes that he had adored for as long as he could remember.

"Please," Harry whispered, like the hoarse entreaty of a lover.

Severus closed his eyes and swooped in, cradling Harry's head and tilting it to one side as he slowly licked away the blood that had overflowed the edge of the wound.

Harry moaned at the touch, but this was only foreplay. When Severus buried his teeth into Harry's neck, he let out a keening cry of pain and ecstasy before he felt his body go limp in the vampire's grasp. For the first time since he had entered the cemetery Harry felt warm, his pulse pounding in his ears even as he knew it must be weakening.

Severus held him close until his blood began to slow. Then, he scooped Harry into his arms and sat down with his back to James Potter's side of the gravestone. "Why?" he asked. "Why?"

"I didn't want to be alone," Harry sighed. "I thought another Lost Boy would understand..." His eyes drifted closed for the last time, but Severus did not let him go.

Through the darkest hours, the vampire held Harry's body in his arms, watching over him for one last night. Finally, his promise had been discharged and he was free... and just possibly he'd done enough to see forgiveness in a pair of emerald green eyes.

As the sky finally brightened, he rose and laid Harry out on the ground between Ginny and Albus. Returning to Lily's grave, he checked it over one last time to make sure everything was as it should be.

Then, he waited for the dawn.