Wishlists: "Complicated" (Rosmerta/Severus)

[kelly_chambliss]

Author: kelly_chambliss
Recipient: mywitch
Title: Complicated
Pairing: Rosmerta/Severus
Request/Prompt Used:
"Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh."
---W. B. Yeats, "A Drinking Song"
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~2200 (a little long; sorry!)
Summary: It's four years after the war and after Severus Snape's funeral, but life goes on.
Notes: Dear mywitch, your marvelous art and generous gifts have given me endless pleasure over the years, so I wanted to write something to repay you a little bit. Hope you enjoy!


My grateful thanks to that best of betas, therealsnape.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I set the double firewhisky at the headmistress's elbow, and she nods her thanks. Minister Shackelbolt takes his pint and downs half of it in a single swallow. "Ta, Rosmerta," he says.

These are their first drinks of the evening, but they won't be the last. Time was, Professor McGonagall never had more than gillywater in public, but the war has changed a lot of things. Kingsley, he never used to drink at all -- "An auror is always on duty," he'd say -- but clearly being Minister of Magic is even more stressful than auroring. I don't imagine that headmistress-ing is much easier.

So Minerva will have her two double Ogden's tonight and Kingsley his two pints. Three, if it's been a bad week. They both come in here on Friday night once a month or so, and I'm always that glad to see them. Everyone needs somewhere to relax, and I'm proud that I've made the Three Broomsticks into a place where people can.

I find it a comfort myself just to be here, the way I've been these last three decades. I confess, I had a rough year after that business with young Malfoy and his damned Imperius curse, but I'm better now. Talked things through with a head-healer from St. Mungo's. Elna Torres. Old Tom from the Leaky Cauldron, he's the one put me on to her, if you can believe it. I wouldn't have pegged him as a magi-therapy fan, but it just goes to show. You never know about people. Anyway, we barkeeps, we look out for each other.

I feel safe in my own pub again. I'm myself again. In control.

Hagrid waves at me, and I Levitate another tankard of warm mead over to him. I keep his refills ready behind the bar, under a stasis charm so they're just the temperature he likes. "Rosie, your mead is good health in a mug," he always says.

I see that Pomona Sprout has joined the headmistress's table, so I walk over, not so much to take her order (she'll have her usual G&T), but just to make conversation. I've always liked Pomona.

She greets me with her typical cheerful smile and surreptitiously brushes a twig off her robes. "We were just talking about Severus," she informs me. "Four years today since his funeral ceremony, poor man."

"It was a lovely memorial," I say.

"It was, wasn't it?" Pomona agrees. "Harry Potter gave such a moving little speech. He'd never struck me before as someone who had a way with words, but that speech -- you could just tell it was heart-felt."

"Severus would have hated it," says Minerva, her lips quirking.

Kingsley laughs outright. "I can see his scowl now," he says.

"You know," Pomona says, and she sounds thoughtful. "When I picture Severus in my mind's eye, I never see him when he was a professor. It's always the first-year little boy I see. Skinny and pale, with his robes too large. He was so serious even then, so intense."

The headmistress sips her whisky. "Severus was a difficult boy and a complicated man," she says. "But whatever his many flaws, he fought his way out of darkness."

She's quiet for a moment, twisting her glass in her hand. "I miss him."

No one replies; we're all into our own thoughts. It's hard to find that balance, that space between mourning and moving on. Between the remembrance you need and the regrets you don't. For many people, talking helps; Elna taught me that.

So does alcohol, although I doubt Elna would agree.

"Another round?" I ask into the silence. "G&T, Pom?"

They all nod, and I head back to the bar.

Severus Snape has been gone from Hogwarts for four years. But in so many ways, he will never be gone.

~~~~~

Minerva and Pomona head up to the Castle about ten o'clock; Kingsley does a little politic table-hopping before he takes his leave, too.

"A very pleasant evening as usual, Rosmerta," he says when he's finally reached the door.

"Always glad to see you, Minister," I tell him with truth.

He smiles and strides out. I give the last call, and by midnight, I'm locking the door and Levitating the chairs onto the tables and getting the cleaning charms started. By half past, I'm done for the night.

Done with the pub, that is.

It takes me only a few minutes to freshen up and then Apparate to the little Welsh village where I spend most of my nights now.

He's waiting up for me, of course. He always does.

Severus.

He's reading by the fire, spectacles perched on his nose, his hair tied neatly back. He's filled out now that he's not living under constant grief or the threat of torture and death. He looks good.

His students would never recognize him. I wonder if even the headmistress would.

"Another successful evening killing off people's brain cells and removing their necessary social restraints?" he asks, looking up. The words are his typical snark, but there's no bite to him these days.

"Another successful evening of providing a safe space for community and healing," I retort, laughing. He gives his ghost of a smile.

Our embrace is quick but tight, and he's almost unbearably gentle as he brushes my hair off my face. Once, he might have said something about how I didn't need to keep the pub, how we could just live here in peaceful obscurity together. But he knows better now. I will never give up the Three Broomsticks. Just as he will never return to the wizarding world. We both accept each other's lines.

"The headmistress says you were a complicated man," I tell him.

He rolls his eyes. "Why is she still talking about me? Doesn't she know I'm dead and buried?"

"She also says she misses you."

Oops. This is not something he wants to hear, apparently, because he draws back abruptly and turns away, stalking out of the room. He has a lot of what Elna would call "unresolved psychic issues" left over from. . .well, from everything. And no wonder.

I curl up on the settee to wait for him. He'll know I didn't mean to be hurtful; sometimes he himself doesn't know what's going to wound him. He'll be back to massage my shoulders or something once he's sorted himself out.

I think of what Pomona said about remembering Severus primarily as a child. I can see why the notion appeals to her: easier to think of an "innocent" kid, before all the ugliness and moral lapses and bad decisions, before everything went tits up and got so bloody "complicated."

But I can't think of Severus the child, even if I wanted to, which I don't. He never came to the Three Broomsticks as a schoolboy; wouldn't have had the lolly or, most of the time, the friends.

I've only ever known him as an adult, from the time he turned up as "Professor Snape," someone so obviously an emotional wreck that I couldn't imagine why Albus would want him in the classroom. Well, of course I know the whole sorry story now, but then. . .

Then, I just saw this bitter, rude, sarcastic man, and I can tell you, it took me a while to warm up to him. But gradually I saw -- or he let me see -- glimpses of his better self. I even witnessed a couple of things during his headmaster year that let me know he wasn't nearly as dark as he was painted. Once when one of those demented Carrows tried to use the Cruciatus curse on Ambrosius Flume outside Honeydukes, I saw Severus muttering what looked like a countercurse under his breath. Ambro told me later that even though his limbs jerked just like a real Cruciatus, he felt no pain at all. He couldn't make sense of it, but I knew what it meant. Severus had helped him.

I'm the one who found Severus in the Shrieking Shack after the Battle. I was at the castle when Harry Potter finally defeated Voldemort (Aberforth had sent his patronus, asking for help with the wounded) and when I heard Potter's story about Severus's death and heroism, I rushed to the Shack. I wanted to recover his body before any sensation-seekers could.

There he was, crumpled on the floor, but before I could touch him, I saw that he was moving. It gave me quite a turn, as you might well imagine. He seemed unconscious, but his hand kept clutching at his robe pocket.

When I made myself look in it, I found a little vial of potion.

Severus gasped, "Give. . ." or he might have just been groaning, but I heard it as "give," so I got that potion down his throat somehow, and, well, the long and short of it is that his bleeding stopped, and he opened his eyes.

I babbled something about St. Mungo's, but he held my hand with a grip like iron and said, "No. Your flat."

"No, I -- " I started, but he interrupted.

"Please. I'm begging you." It hurt to listen to him, his voice was so hoarse.

This was totally against my better judgment, but he'd been through so much. I did as he asked.

Once we got to my rooms, he insisted that he could treat himself far more effectively than St. Mungo's could. He'd been wary of the Dark Lord's snake for months and had studied up on treatments. And he didn't want to go back into public; he couldn't stand the thought of dealing with the uproar he'd face now that his story was known.

I agreed to let him stay for a week, which turned into another week, and then another. I got so used to him, I didn't want him to leave, and he didn't seem to want to, either. Eventually we just stopped mentioning it.

He ended up staying for months, recovering. He really did know how to heal himself. Had me owl-order all sorts of potions for him from overseas. Even had a healer friend Apparate from Italy to see him a few times, someone he'd met at potions conferences and swore to secrecy.

Once his body healed, it took him a long time to come out of his depression. I talked to him, and little by little, I got him to talk, and I tried to listen the way Elna listened to me, and very slowly, I think it helped him. I know it helped me.

The turning point was the day I told him about the funeral ceremony that Hogwarts and the Ministry had held for him. I hadn't mentioned it at the time, since he'd been so unwell. But as I described it all, he responded with more animation than he'd shown in months. Sat there snorting in disdain and growling in irritation and finally actually laughing -- quite possibly the first time I'd ever heard him do it.

And the headmistress was right: he hated Harry Potter's speech. I showed him the transcript from The Daily Prophet, and he blasted the paper into flame.

"Potter," he snarled. "Asinine fuckwit."

I knew then that Severus would be all right.

There were still a lot of ups and downs, but he did get gradually better after that. He wasn't a totally new man, this recovered Severus -- a lot of the old resentments remained -- but he'd changed. He was calmer, easier. He laughed more.

By the first anniversary of the Battle, we'd become lovers, though of course it wasn't easy. Nothing ever is, with Severus. The snake venom left muscle and nerve damage behind, and, to be blunt, he can't always get it up, if you know what I mean. He was frustrated and furious, but I just kept showing him, over and over, that there are many avenues to pleasure. "Let me be the professor," I said, and I taught while he learned. Merlin, did he learn! Soon he was even finding ways to teach me.

After the summer of that second year, he came here to Wales, and this has been our life ever since.

Severus has been moving about the kitchen for the last few minutes, and now he appears before me holding two glasses of wine.

"'Wine comes in at the mouth,'" he says, handing me a glass and sitting down beside me.

The line comes from a Muggle poem that he knows. I know it now, too, so I thread my fingers through his and fill in the next part: "and love comes in at the eye."

He kisses my neck as he murmurs, "That's all we shall know for truth. . ."

"Before we grow old and die," I finish.

And we will, some day. Grow old and die. But not now.

The first sip of wine is delicious, deep and fruity and smoky, and then it's replaced by Severus's lips on mine and somehow the glasses are floating away to the sideboard and his welcome weight presses me into the settee and he's warm and we're safe and together and there's no war. I feel his hands slide along my thighs, under my skirts and it's so easy to open to his questing fingers and hold his face in my hands.

He's a complicated man, my Severus, and he's my love.

That's what I know for truth.