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Waking up on the birthday he turned thirty-nine and find that he was still alive after nearly two decades of warfare and nearly as much time spent in the most perilous position a spy could imagine should, by all reason, have felt gratifying. When Severus Snape opened his eyes on January 9th 1999, he found to his immense satisfaction that, indeed, it did. However, the fierce triumph he should have felt for having outsmarted innumerable Aurors and Death Eaters, not to speak of the Dark Lord, was diminished to a regrettable degree by the circumstances he found himself in. It had been eight months and his injuries still prevented him from leaving British soil. The Boy Who Lived Some More may have suddenly turned into his biggest fan, but he still had to hide the fact that he'd even survived so as to avoid spending his next thirty-nine birthdays in some cell in Azkaban. He was still stuck at Malfoy Manor because the home of the family he was tied to by an Unbreakable Vow was the only place he could go to to heal.
He dreaded going downstairs because he had long since tired of Narcissa gushing about the next of a long string of celebratory dinner parties. Of course, the Boy Who Lived Some More had got her off scot free, and if he hadn’t had to put any ward he could possibly think of on the bedroom she so generously assigned to him so that her snooping guests wouldn’t find him, he would have felt more inclined to admit she had every right to be deliriously, hysterically happy.
When his stomach finally told Severus in no uncertain terms to brave the lioness to at least get a cup of tea, however, both the kitchen and the small dining room only used for breakfast were empty. A steaming mug of his favourite brand was waiting for him, and the parchment tucked under it read:
Professor,
I have finally managed to persuade my Mother that my Father may have had enough excitement and is, indeed, in need of a vacation. They will spend the next few weeks in what she likes to call “our little hut” in the Provence. I thought you might like a quiet start to the day; however, I would be delighted to see you for lunch.
- Draco Malfoy.
Spending the morning of his thirty-ninth birthday in a library that was even more meticulously arranged than the one at Hogwarts was a by far more peaceful experience than it could have been. The books had gotten to know him; after seven months of acquaintance, Severus felt fairly safe that none of them were prone to attack him anymore… if left unprovoked. He could not help but think of the days he spent at the library at Grimmauld Place where the books never really got accustomed to his presence, of the strangest werewolf he’d ever met telling them sternly that they should not be as childish as Black and be content to be read by a man of such academic skill and ambition as Professor Snape. He felt a twinge of regret that the only person his own age he had ever ceased to resent believed the sob-story the Prophet conjured up for his funeral.
The other person who he no longer resented was sitting on a chair opposite Draco when Severus emerged from the library for lunch. No longer having to endure the boy’s clumsiness in the Potions Room had helped, as had watching him grow a spine during the year he’d had to pose as headmaster, watching him inspire even Draco to acts of bravery. The fact that he’d managed to keep their burgeoning friendship secret from his so-called “Dumbledore’s Army” had been enough for Snape to stop hiding whenever he visited his certainly soon-to-be boyfriend. It also did not hurt that he’d been the one who'd cut off the head of the bloody snake that had bitten Severus. So he managed to return the boy’s polite greeting quite amiably, more comfortable in the one room of the Manor the Dark Lord had never wandered into than he had ever been at the teacher's table. He was content to listen to his former students lament the futility of arguing with overprotective parents – slash – grandmothers that they’d like their own space, please, when they lived in such a huge houses, contemplating if he should offer them the use of Spinner’s End while eating Augusta Longbottom’s houseelf’s home-made stew.
The longer he sat there, the more convinced he became that they were planning something they in their youthful little minds might call “sneaky” but really was ridiculously obvious in the glances they so deliberately were not throwing his way. Neither boy had remarked upon the date, yet Severus highly doubted it was a coincidence that today was the day Draco had driven his parents out of the house. His suspicion only strengthened when there seemed to be a lot of activity in the breakfast dining room once he was back in the library. He imagined he heard Neville hiss “no silver”, but the books were averse to the clatter of cutlery coming from down the hall and were making a fuss, so he could not be sure. Hours went by, and the kitchen was locked and busy when he opened the sixth book of the day and sipped his afternoon tea alone. He felt a mixture of well-placed trepidation and embarrassingly childlike excitement at the anticipation of the surprise the two adolescents had in store.