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Chapter Text

There is a terrible sound. The sound is Severus. The sound is a wail and a sob. 

When the world falls apart, here is what it sounds like: it sounds like a man with his head in his hands, crying.

"You were going to keep her safe."

The sound is coming from a hole in the world, and its name is Lily Evans, and it lives in the bottom of Severus Snape.

This is a question. This is also an accusation. Severus never knew how to say anything kindly and if he ever did he would no longer, because, you see, there is this hole—

Albus adjusts his spectacles. "She and James put their faith in the wrong person. Rather like you, Severus."

—a hole where everything good goes to die, the light and the kindness and the joy and the laughter—

"Her boy survives," says Albus.

—and nothing good outlives it, for this is how Severus dies: this pain so deep he hopes to die of it, and if he were capable of movement he would drop to his knees and pray to this world’s monstrous God that he should be allowed to die of it—

"...remember the shape and color of Lily Evans's eyes, I am sure?"

Albus is still talking.

“Don’t,” says Severus, and he means it. He will kill Albus if he says another word.

Albus tilts his head curiously. 

In his eyes Severus is a laboratory specimen. In his eyes Severus is a dog that taught itself speech.

"Is this remorse?" he asks softly, and Severus realizes this is the first time Albus has considered him fully human. 

Remorse?

He wishes he were dead. He wishes that the hole would eat him and tear up whatever savage animal now lays waste to his insides. He wants to crawl under the earth, the earth where Lily is, the earth where everything he ever loved runs away from him.

"And what use would that be to anyone?" sighs Albus.

Damn it. 

He had forgotten Dumbledore could read minds. Or perhaps he has been speaking, after all. Severus no longer feels in control of his body, and this is the only relief he knows, or will ever know. Beyond the pain there is a numbness, a place where he feels so much that he feels nothing, and it is to this place he runs. Yes, here Lily is not dead, because there is no Lily, or Severus, or anything but the gracious sear of oblivion, where pain wipes his head clean of suffering.

Albus is reading something out loud. The seal of the Ministry Department of Legal Affairs brands the wax on the envelope.

Severus looks at it.

"What is that."

Albus pauses. “I will start again,” he says, in that Albus tone meaning he is making the deliberate choice to exercise patience. "I, Lily Evans Potter—"

Flinch.

"—being of sound mind and body, married to James Fleamont Potter, also of Godric’s Hollow, Gloucestershire—"

"This is cruelty."

"No," says Albus calmly, "this is a necessity. Please let me finish."

"They are one and the same thing."

"Never when I can avoid it, Severus. May I?"

Severus hangs his head and gestures to the will. There is not enough left of him for this to hurt, not really.

"...in the event that I, Lily Evans Potter, and my husband, James Potter, become deceased," reads Albus, "I do hereby name Severus Snape as sole legal custodian of my son, Harry James Potter, until such a time as he comes of age." He folds his glasses on the table.

The hole at the bottom of the world gets bigger.

In his ears there is a symphony of percussionists and they are trying helpfully to deafen him.

He thinks: perhaps I am dead, and this is what purgatory is. Locked in a room with Albus Dumbledore. There are less fitting ways to spend eternity, but he would prefer almost all of them.

"Severu—"

"Fuck," says Severus, with feeling.

Albus says, "Please take the time you need to reconcile yourself to this matter."

"She thought I was a Death Eater." She died thinking he was her enemy.

"She knew you were an Order member."

"She thought I betrayed the Order." She died thinking he had betrayed her.

"And she knew if you had really done so, the consequences would have been much graver than those we have seen,” said Albus. “Lily understood your task. Did she not, after all, invite you to the christening?"

"I didn’t go." He would have been followed. It would have raised eyebrows. Mulciber had been on edge that week. There were a hundred reasons. He can’t remember why he allowed any of them to persuade him.

"Lily knew you were no Death Eater," says Albus, in what he probably thinks is kindness, the old fool. "She knew you were our man. Hers, if you will."

But she didn’t and that was the thing: Lily hadn’t known, not for sure, any more than Albus could ever be truly sure. There were a million points during the war when he could have sold out them out, and the only one to know it would have been Severus Snape. She had put his name on the paper on a wing and a prayer that he was still the man she’d grown up with, and that years under the godlike sway of Tom Marvolo Riddle still could never make him into anything else. 

Lily had bet her son’s life on the love of the boy next door, and the possibility that she was wrong was only slightly less endurable than the possibility that she was right.

"She was a fool."

"She was the smartest witch of her age," says Albus, "with the possible exception of the one now entering into the room. Hello, Minerva."

Minerva McGonagall still wears the clothes she’d killed Death Eaters in that morning, down to a spray of arterial blood on her thigh. She carries a blue bundle.

"No," he says sharply. "No. Take it away. Take it out. I don’t want—"

"Minerva, please hand Severus his godson.”

"—to see it, I don’t want it, do you hear me? I don’t want him, take him away—"

“His name is Harry,” says Minerva, in tones so stiff they might crack.

And then the thing is in his arms, and against his will he looks down, and his fate comes to him with a jolt like iron bar to the throat: for there are Lily’s eyes, blinking wetly out of James Potter’s tiny face.

For now he can see her, he can hear her, too. Laughing and teasing and daring him to come on, be brave, Severus, be better, I know you can.  

Wild Lily, madcap Lily, loud brave compassionate Lily, who shot first and asked questions only when she was wrong, which she almost never was; never but the once, and it killed her.

“Fuck you,” he tells her.

Minerva gasps. “He’s only a baby,” she says.

When Severus was in fifth year he said a word that ended his life. When Severus was in sixth year he spent the whole summer practicing his silences, learning how not to talk, not even when he’s angry, especially then. First he tried counting, but that wasn’t hard enough to distract him, so now he closes his eyes and does the Fibonacci sequence. When he’s struggling, he’ll choose a random number in the middle, and start from there. 

One one two three five eight thirteen twenty-one thirty-four. He has stared Tobias Snape wordlessly in the face as blood pours from his shattered nose, staining the knuckles of his father’s right fist, and he has said absolutely nothing at all. 

Fifty-five eighty-nine one hundred forty-four, two thirty-three, three seventy-seven. Eileen Prince is in a box of ashes in the garden outside, and when he turns eleven a tawny owl will arrive bearing a letter that is the only inheritance she will ever give him.

 Breathe. You’re alive. You’re bleeding, but that still counts.

Confess: he has been hit. He has taken it on the jaw from the world, and the world has drawn blood. So he counts, and counts, and counts, until he’s five digits deep and doesn’t feel like dying.

Lily’s son is crying. Severus sympathizes. 

Minerva looks like she’d rather hock the baby to a wild hippogriff and let it take its chances. Albus looks the same way he always does, which is: kind, and gentle, and not very caring at all.

Severus hoists the head snugly into the crook of his elbow. "He’ll grow out of it," he tells Minerva.

There is a street called Spinner's End. It is in Cokeworth, which is a town full of dull bricks and dull smoke and dull people, and it looks just like every other street in town. There is a house on the street, and it does not have a name. Inside the house there is a half-blood boy, who is crying because the world is over, because his mother is dead.

(It is 1980. It is also 1967, and both things are true at once. There are some places where time moves differently, and childhood homes are one of them.)

The will left him the house in Godric's Hollow, but that much even he will not do — will not raise her son in the house she bought with her husband, the house where they lived and died as man and wife, for even he is not that ghoulish.

Albus offers him use of Grimmauld Place, which sits empty now that Black has been taken to Azkaban, but that, too, would be unendurable — the place where her friends all fought and laughed and lived, where she and James had their wedding reception, just a month after Alice and Frank's, in that dreary sitting room that was for four years the beating heart of the Order of the Phoenix.

And still, he could buy something of his own. He has the money. He could get an apartment in Diagon Alley or a cottage in Wiltshire, or he could do what Sprout and Flitwick do, which is set up little residences of their own, hidden on the Hogwarts grounds. But he has a house, is the thing, there is a house on a street in a town called Cokeworth and it's his, and the man who lived in it before is dead. And the ghost of that man doesn't deserve to have a house all to himself. He shouldn't be allowed to keep it.  

So.

There is a street called Spinner's End.

He Apparates into the sitting room, throws up twelve wards and seven Shield Charms, and pours a line of acromantula lymph under every window and door, to scare off anything that navigates by smell. Harry doesn't like the smell, either. Harry makes his disapproval as clear as he possibly can, namely by screaming at it. This is also how Harry expresses his approval for things. In fact it is rarely clear if he is trying to express anything in particular, or if he simply decides it has been too long since he had last screamed.

Harry is quite vocal for a one-year old. In retrospect, it was silly to expect Lily's son would be anything else.

Severus puts him on the sofa. There's a rip in the leather. Harry grabs a fistful of stuffing and tries to eat it.

"No," says Severus.

Harry stops. He looks consideringly at the stuffing. He screams.

"Stop," says Severus.

He does not.

(Never worked with Lily, either.)

"Please stop," says Severus, after a minute of unbroken screaming. 

Harry gasps for breath. Severus's hopes lift. Then they go plummeting again, because Harry fills his lungs and carries right on.

He walks into the kitchen. The screaming gets quieter when he isn't in the room. He thinks, for a long, indulgent moment, about walking right out of the house, letting the kid scream himself out. Albus wouldn't know.

Severus never wanted children. Not as a kid himself, and not once he'd grown up. Never thought he'd like being a father, and always knew he'd make a bad one, if he tried. He gave himself points for knowing that, though. People should know whether they were going to be bad parents. They should take precautions to prevent it, if they would. Severus is a cautious man.

Harry is still screaming. He's started crying, too, great gulping sobs that only babies and the wildly grieving ever make, both of which, Severus supposes, Harry is.

He goes back into the sitting room.

"Hello," he says to Harry. "You must stop this."

Harry bays in misery. He appears to be trying to rip his own clothes off. It's very Greek.

Severus puts his finger out.

Harry looks at it, choking on a sob. Then he tries to eat it.

He's too young for his teeth to have come in yet, so mostly this amounts to gumming on Severus's finger, sliming it up with spittle up to the second knuckle. Severus is disgusted, but the disgust takes a backseat to his intense relief at the newfound pleasure of silence.

In Narcissa's second trimester, she had taken an interest in baby-proofing. For several days, she had all but driven Lucius around the Manor with a riding crop, demanding to test the sharpness of each table corner and the shatterproof quality of various objects of decor. She had explained to Severus, utterly against his will, why she had insisted on purchasing boutique highchairs, feeding blankets, bibs, rockers, prams, self-flushing diapers infused with anti-rash ointments, and altogether enough equipment to make even Lucius wince at the monthly bill. But the acme of her vigor had been the crib, which she custom-designed with a doula ("An extortionist," Lucius had hissed, while Narcissa ducked out for her bi-hourly bathroom trip, "set on me to steal my fortune — I'm paying two hundred galleons for something called cocobolo wood, whatever the fuck that is") with sliding doors and padded siding that was bespelled to rock ceaselessly whenever the baby was inside it, and a Warming Charm that prevented the need for dangerous, suffocating materials, like blankets.

Severus dumps Harry on his bed.

"Sleep," he says.

Harry grunts, smacking his lips.

It's a tattered double mattress, no box spring, stuffed into a threadbare fitted sheet, with a greying wool blanket tossed sort of absently on top. There's one pillow, punctured in several places, as is the occupational hazard of sleeping with a knife.

Harry, awash in righteous fury at the unjust removal of a finger to chew on, starts screaming again. 

Severus returns to him a finger. Meanwhile, he lifts a different one on his other hand.

Slobbering contentedly on Severus's index, Harry quiets immediately, rolls over, and promptly falls asleep.

Severus sits down on the end of bed, and only then — carefully, quietly, so as not to wake the baby — he cries.

"Why not Black?"

They are walking in a muggle park. Albus carries Harry, who has made the understandable decision to cease wailing only when other people hold him. 

Albus looks down at his robes. "I have it on good word from Mirabel Malkin that I am a winter," he sighs. "She has put me under strict orders to wear blues instead. I have long hoped for a set of dress robes in canary yellow, which is my favorite color, but it was not to be..."

"I mean Padfoot, Albus."

"Ah," he said. "I did wonder. No, Sirius will not be taking Harry."

"He's the other godfather," says Severus. "I read the will. He comes first, in the order of custody."

"Sirius Black is going to Azkaban for the murder of Peter Pettigrew, in addition to aiding and abetting the murder of James and Lily Potter," says Albus calmly. "I do not think that he will make a suitable guardian for Harry."

"What about the other one, then? Lupin. He's not charged with anything, is he?"

"I am surprised at you," says Albus. They pass under a gnarled oak, billowing curtains of Spanish moss. A roaming frisbee makes a lazy arc over the field, chased by a thundering herd of children. "It was my understanding that you did not consider it safe for Lupin to live in the vicinity of children, given his unique medical needs."

Severus kicks a stone down the path. "It's not."

"But you would abandon Harry to his keeping?"

"You're being facetious," he accuses. "You don't actually think he'd be unsafe."

Albus sighs, patting Harry's head absentmindedly. Harry burbles, the picture of contentment, and spits up. This is a gesture of great affection.

"Correct. I do not think any child, least of all Harry, has anything to fear from Remus. With the aid of a Wolfsbane Potion, especially, he has made great strides in controlling his temperament."

"A domesticated werewolf." Severus laughs harshly.

"Forgive me, for I seem to have lost track of your argument. Is your position indeed that Remus is a clear-headed and responsible human being, who should be appointed as Harry's caretaker? Or that he is a dangerous and unstable predator who is unfit for magical society? He cannot possibly be both."

Harry babbles passionately in agreement. Albus coos and bounces him.

"To answer your question," Albus says, "Remus has gone into hiding. He is underground, with werewolves, and even were I to drag him out—"

"Which, you admit, you could—"

"—he would be no fit parent to Harry. He is grieving."

"And what am I doing?" Severus doesn't say. "What the fuck am I doing, exactly, Albus?"

Because Severus's pain has never counted, not to Albus. And not to anyone else, either. Only one person ever treated his feelings like they mattered, and he fucked it up, because of course he did, this is who he is, this is what he does. And that is why he doesn't count.

He does the first four numbers of Fibonacci, and then says, "All right. Petunia."

"Dursley?" Albus breaks into a laugh that sends the squirrels racing away. "Goodness. From convicts to werewolves to muggles; you must be desperate, Severus." 

"She's his last living blood relative."

"And as you know, blood relations do invariably make good parents," says Albus, with a flintiness to his tone that would have made lesser men than Severus flinch. But he is unfazed; Albus has been rummaging around in Severus's head for so many years that it no longer surprises him to hear one of his secrets tossed out like an upended drawer. "Yes, Petunia would qualify for custody, on the bare credit of being his family — and I use that word in its loosest sense. Would you like to hear the reasons she would not suit? Shall I count them?"

"They have a nice house," Severus lies through his teeth. "She and her husband are already raising a boy. Harry's age — they could be friends. And they could give him — a comfortable life." He pauses, and adds, "These are things I cannot give him."

"Petunia Dursley will never be a mother to Harry Potter," says Albus tiredly. "You know why. She was long estranged with her sister; by the end of her life, she and Lily had not spoken in many years. She hates magic, and will be little help to the boy as he matures and comes into his power. Independently, she and her husband are both muggles, and do not have the resources to protect Harry from the forces that will soon come after him, as you very well know." Albus pauses. "Also, less relevantly, she is one of the most unpleasant people I have ever had the misfortune to meet."

He adds, with a lightness that is not actually light: "You intend to vest with Petunia Dursley the life of a boy whose mother's wedding, her sister's, she could not even bring herself to attend?"

A squirrel runs into their path. Severus kicks it. It squeaks.

He feels better.

"What do you expect me to say?" he says.

"I never expect you to say anything. I rather like you taciturn, in fact. It is one of your better qualities."

"I wish it was one of yours," says Severus. "I meant what do you want me to say to the other reformers. Malfoy. Goyle. Crouch. I'm not going to be able to hide the boy forever. They're going to want to know where he came from."

Albus's lip twitches in one of his least likable smiles. "Why, where do they ever come from?" he says. "I suppose you might always suggest—"

"No."

"Would it not be easiest? To let them believe, if nothing else?" He tousles Harry's rich crop of black hair. Severus has not yet figured out how to cut it, so it hangs long and shaggy in Harry's eyes. "You have the same hair. And Lily's eyes, for those who recognize them, may not arouse as much suspicion as you would think..."

"Absolutely not," he says. It shakes. "I could not — I would not — I would never—"

Albus raises his eyebrows. "Do you care so much for James Potter's honor?"

"Don't make me laugh. His honor — swine had more honor than he did. But I will not — on her honor, not his, I could not—"

He chokes himself on stammering.

Albus makes a sympathetic sound in his throat. Severus wants to step on his windpipe until all that's left of that sound is a painful wheeze.

"Besides," he mutters, "he's going to be the spit of James."

"I think you are right about that," Albus admits reluctantly. "Which means he must be hidden, at least for now. Keep him out of sight; tell your friends — I am sorry, your associates — that you have taken a ward from some dead relation in Albania, perhaps on account of an Unbreakable Vow... or what you will. I do not need to instruct you in crafting lies."

"No," agrees Severus.

The frisbee cuts a jagged seesaw over the field, and alights in the branches overhead. Disappointed shouts erupt from its pursuers, who mill around in the field, staring forlornly at the lost toy.

Sliding his wand from his sleeve, Albus flicks it at the frisbee, which shakes itself free from the boughs, like a bird taking flight. It sails gently into the arms of the smallest child: a boy with dreadlocks and a Man U t-shirt, who has spent most of the game trailing after the bigger boys.

With a gasp of awe, he catches it, and then turns to stare at them.

Albus waves, smiling.

"There is this thing called the Statute of Secrecy," says Severus.

"There is this thing called childish wonderment," says Albus gently, "and though I may be a fool, I somehow trust our eight-year-old friend will not go spilling my secrets, at least not to anybody who will listen."

Harry grabs some of Albus's hair and starts to chew it. Well done, Severus thinks.  

Albus, ever blithe, either doesn't notice or doesn't care that his follicles are being greased with childslobber. "I realize that you may feel yourself unsuited to the task," he says. "I have instructed Minerva to assist you."

"That's not necessary."

"She has volunteered herself as a candidate, should you ever require a trustworthy sitter," continues Albus, "and I think she will not refuse you any questions or troubles you have about childrearing, if asked. She has several young nieces."

"I'm not asking Minerva for help."

"And I am not asking you for your consent," says Albus regretfully. He turns to face Severus. They are at the end of the path, and stand ensconced in a glade, under a dappled canopy of summer leaves so dark a green they are almost brown. "He is the Boy Who Lived. His fate is tied to that of our world."

"And his mum left him to me," says Severus, bitter and he cannot help it, childish and he cannot help it. "If you insist on saddling me with this mewling goblin—"

"'Goblin' is a touch pejorative, no?"

"—then I will do your bidding, as I have always done, but I will not tolerate Minerva's meddling—"

"Minerva has demonstrated tremendous generosity of spirit," says Albus clearly, "not only in agreeing to aid you, but in refraining, at my desperate entreaty, from kidnapping the child while you slept. On what grounds you deign to scorn her charity, I struggle to comprehend. Are you really so proud you cannot accept her help?"

"Proud?" he repeats. "Proud?"

Because he is, of course. He is a proud man. He is full of spite and venom and pride at his accomplishments, of which there are many, and his skills, of which there are many. He can make men dance like puppets at his fingertips with a stir of a cauldron, can carve new spells into existence at the slash of his wand, and lead Tom Riddle in dizzy circles through the sunless maze of his mind. He is proud because it is all he has to love about himself, all these vile, clever, monstrous things that he can do. 

But this is not pride. This is frustration, exasperation, anger at the ceaseless audacity of Albus Dumbledore, who would shackle Severus and then tell him how to wear the chain—

But not pride, he doesn't think.

(Unless it is. Just a little bit. Because she did leave him to Severus, didn't she? Not Minerva.)

"Give me the boy," he says.

"Severus—"

"I am not asking."

Albus hands him over. Harry screams, ruthlessly, until Severus offers him his index finger, which he shoves eagerly into his mouth. Of all the many objects he has tried to put in it, this appears to be his favorite.

"I am going," he says, with as much dignity as he can muster while an infant fountains drool onto his sleeve. 

He Apparates away.

Precisely on the eighth toll of the grandfather clock, and his door starts banging like there’s a Ministry raid on the other side of it, because Minerva McGonagall runs on the kind of schedule you could set clocks to.

Severus sits up. He’s on the floor, with a threadbare blanket drawn over his shoulders; he gave the bed to Harry. Narcissa had a whole anthology of horror stories of mothers who slept next to their infants and crushed them to death by rolling over. He’s in yesterday’s robes. A swipe of his jaw reminds him that the last time he shaved was a different month from this one.

He opens the door. Minerva looks perfect. Minerva never does not look perfect. If he ever sees a single hair escape from her bun, he plans to board up his house and run for the nearest bunker. 

She gives him a once-over, and to her credit, merely clears her throat, instead of pointing out his torn shirttails, or the stains of spit-up on his pants. 

He steps aside. She sweeps into the room and plants a voluminous wicker basket on the dining-room table, or at least, the spare four inches of it not covered in books, parchment, and melted candlesticks he hasn’t bothered to clear out.

"Food," she says, pointing at it.

"Thanks," he says.

"Not for you. For the baby." He wonders if Minerva was born with a sense of humor, or if she had it surgically removed when she applied for Deputy Headmistress. "Also, clothes. He can’t wear the same pajamas forever."

"He wouldn’t notice."

"I would," she says calmly, which is, in truth, a very compelling reason. "I also bought a rattle and a teddy bear." She lifts the bear. It is yellow and wears a red jumper. It squeaks when she squeezes it.

Severus already knows he is going to hate it with his whole heart.

"He needs toys," she adds.

"Why."

"Because children require enrichment, and watching a grown man brew potions does not suffice to entertain a baby."

"Why not."

"I was opposed to this," she says vaguely, to no one in particular. "I told Albus, in no uncertain terms, I was strongly opposed. I said: let me give the boy to my sister. She has three daughters.’ A very competent woman. Smart. Clean."

This last one seems pointed, considering the state of his dining room.

"Do they have to squeak," he says.

"What?"

"The toys." He points at the bear. "Do they have to squeak."

"Many do," Minerva says gravely.

"Ah."

"Some do not. Puzzles,” she says, "and blocks. Books, once he can read."

"So. When he’s older."

"A few years older, yes," she says.

They regard each other grimly. It seems to come home to both of them at the same time: this is real. They are in this. This is the world without James and Lily Potter, and the war was won, and their prize for surviving is that they will not have to worry about being attacked when they go to funerals. 

Harry gives a wail. They both turn, and Minerva beats him up the stairs, moving with speed he hasn’t seen since the Battle of Gringotts, when she and Mad-Eye chased Avery on foot for eight miles through the streets of London. Mad-Eye said he had to pull her back by the cloak to stop her from running him all the way back to Wiltshire.

When she picks him up, Harry goes quiet. Severus decides to hate him.

"Have you fed him?" demands Minerva. She is holding Harry on her hip, and somehow, even in this, she is the height of poise. Harry rests his chin on her shoulder and gazes adoringly, as if the freshest, coldest butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

"He was sleeping."

"Never mind, I’ll do it," she says, in the tone of someone well used to saying this. "Come. I will instruct you how to use the high-chair."

"About the job," says Minerva.

Severus shakes his head. They’re sitting on folding chairs at the Formica table in his kitchen, wedged between the stove and the refrigerator. Pots bubble on the stove, the way they always do, when he’s home: Pepper-Up Potion, Muffling Draught, chicken noodle. Fluorescent lights pave creases under every wrinkle on Minerva’s face. There are more than there used to be.

"I don’t want it."

Harry, who deemed the feeding spoon an acceptable substitute for a delicious finger, burbles in his lap. Severus decides to interpret this as agreement.

"Dumbledore wants you at the castle."

"If he wants to reach me,” says Severus, adjusting his grip on the spoon — Harry chases it with his mouth — "he knows where to find me. Namely, here."

"He would like you to be within reach. And it would have the advantage of keeping you at the school."

"Why do you think I don’t want to do it?"

"It would be safer," she says, "for Harry."

Harry frowns, and gives her a righteous scolding for using him as leverage in an argument. Most of the nuances are lost, since he has yet to discover the fruitful effects of consonants, but the sentiment is there. Severus jogs him approvingly.

"He thinks the Dark Lord is coming back," adds Minerva, folding her hands around her mug of tea. It is bad tea: Lipton tea bag, scalding water, splash of store-bought creamer. She drinks it anyway. No one could accuse her of not having class.

The mug says: IT’S NOT THE SIZE OF THE GLASS, BUT THE MOTION OF THE POTION. Crabbe likes to give Christmas presents. Severus still isn’t sure whether he meant it ironically or not. 

He’s in Azkaban, now. So are an astonishing number of people that Severus knows. He’s twenty-one. He shouldn’t know this number of people in Azkaban, he feels.

"He is coming back."

"So help us," she says.

"I am helping," he might have said. “I am giving more than anyone has any right to ask. I am giving every iota of myself to a creature whose existence was the end of mine, and you come with hat in hand, asking me for more, asking if there is one cell of marrow I have yet to devote to this fight—”

"Do you think I would make a good teacher?" he asks her instead, and enjoys watching her squirm. "Do you think so much of my patience? My generosity? My talent for instruction?" He leans forward, pressing the knife. "Do you think the children of Hogwarts deserve me as their Potions Master? How would their parents like a grizzled former Death Eater, stained with Dark Magic, leering over their cauldrons?"

Minerva straightens her shoulders, impossibly, because he had thought they were already straight as could be.

"Teaching is a skill," she says crisply. "It can be learned. As with parenting."

They both look doubtfully at Harry. Harry looks doubtfully right back.

"And," she adds, "Slughorn did recommend you. He said you were the best student he ever taught."

"Taught," says Severus, "is a strong word."

"Quibble as you will. Horace was a man of many vices, but one cannot say he lacked an eye for talent. And honestly, ‘grizzled’ is hardly accurate," she sniffs. "You’re twenty-one. Get a shave and a haircut, and I could mistake you for a seventh year."

"Thanks, Minerva."

He’s been growing it out. It makes him look older. It hides his face. It’s tactical.

"It would not be inconceivable to take what I said as a compliment." She extends her finger to stroke Harry’s cheek, and Harry grasps it. He does not attempt to eat it, and it inspires a deep, cosmic horror in Severus to realize that he was on the verge of feeling smug about it.

Harry coos. He is not yet two years old. He has a full head of hair, ten chubby fingers, ten chubby toes, and the eyes of a woman who died for him, which he casts around the tiny kitchen in Spinner’s End as if he owns the place, and is trying to decide how to fix it up. "Bah," he says, which might mean: Jesus Christ, the world is so big, why didn’t anyone warn me about this? Or Of all the shitty godfathers out there, how did I get such a raw deal? Or Can I get some more fingers over here, please?

"This is wrong, Minerva," he says.

She sighs. "Albus believes you will suit—"

"Not the job."

Minerva traces the lines splintering Harry’s forehead with one finger. Harry giggles and swats at it, trying to catch it with his terrible slow baby reflexes. He’ll never be a quidditch player. Severus imagines him zooming around on a broomstick, his fat little legs dangling around him, and goes cold with anxiety.

"I am told," she says, "that most parents feel that way, during the first few years. So I am told."

"I am not his parent."

Harry sits up and shouts in shock.

"Sorry," he adds, mostly to Harry.

Minerva watches the exchange with an odd expression.

"No," she agrees. "His parents are dead."

Severus scowls. 

She rises and goes to dump her tea out in the sink. "So I suppose we’ll both have to simply get over it."

Here are some things that Severus learns:

—It is easy to burn eggs. Far easier than anyone who made him eggs ever made it look, including Goyle, who had once served him the shittiest, wateriest plate of breakfast scramble he had ever tasted in his life, because Goyle’s wife was pregnant and he was trying to learn to cook before the baby came. Everyone made fun of it. Standing over a chipped skillet in a smoke-filled kitchen while Harry screams, hacking a burnt crust of pureed egg from his "nonstick" pan, Severus has never regretted it more.

—It is easier to filet a pufferfish than to change a one-year-old’s clothes.

—A child, much like a wizard, will never sleep late, nor will he sleep early, but sleeps precisely and only when he means to. Harry, being both child and wizard, embraces this quality.

—After a week without sleep, the edges of the world turn soft and fuzzy, and you forget things like “turning off cauldron burners” and “locking up the knives” while your infant ward goes through an exploratory phase.

—When this happens, it is best not to leave the door open for women like Minerva McGonagall, who will come in and dedicate the next several hours of her life to making you regret it.

He does not, however, learn any more valuable or productive lessons, such as:

—How to entertain an infant after it grows bored of its squeaky toy.

—How to convince an infant to part with said squeaky toy before it has grown bored, and, if possible, before three hours have elapsed.

—Where to purchase any of the baby gadgets that mums in parks always seemed to be carting around. Where one might procure diapers, for instance, if a certain matronly Scot ever ceased delivering them.

—What constitutes appropriate bedtime reading material for a two-year-old, and why "One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi" does not make the list. Pursuant to that, whom one should see about adding "One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi" to the list.

—How to get an infant to stop crying.

—How to get an infant to stop crying.

"I hear you have a boy," says Lucius.

Severus folds his arms. Dobby reappears with a bottle of Dom Perignon and tops off their champagne flutes. The white tablecloths flutter in a sweet breeze coming down from the hills, and stirs the willow trees, through which sunlight dapples and dances like a cadre of fairies doing a promenade on the lawn. Narcissa, ethereal and gorgeous in a white garden dress, holds Draco’s hand as he takes his first tottering steps into the Manor lake. Each time the chill water nips his toes, he shrieks delightedly, and hurries back up the bank, out of reach. Narcissa’s scarf beats like the wing of a swan, and every time Draco squeals, she laughs and laughs and laughs. 

"What you will do if I deny it, I wonder?" he remarks to Lucius. His tone is absent. "Which of your spies would take a flogging tonight? The woman at my laundromat? My greengrocer?"

"Whatever unholy den of iniquity you refer to by that name, ‘laundromat,’ I have no desire to know," says Lucius coldly. "I do not require spies to know of your affairs. War heroes—" each syllable is an accusation— "cast long shadows."

"Are you telling me you read the tabloids, Lucius?" He sips his champagne.

"I am telling you," says Lucius, "that if you wish to secure your interests against the prying eyes — and fingers — then a measure of discretion would not be unwarranted."

Severus looks at him. Lucius watches his wife and son play in the surf, and something fierce and fearless glimmers in his face. 

"I say this as your former fellow soldier, now fellow survivor, and the godfather of my son—"

Fuck. He’d actually forgotten that. It had been Narcissa’s choice; Lucius named some obscure cousin from France. He recalls now, with some alarm, that Draco, too, has no living relatives except for Sirius and Andromeda Black, both of whom have assuredly been excluded by name in the Malfoy will.

"—and, as much as that puerile word can ever mean for us, 'friend,'" spits Lucius, as if this, too, hurts him, "but you are not a well-loved man. Your son—"

"He is not—"

"Fine, then. Nephew, or ward, or whatever you have agreed to call him. Be advised that you are invisible to no one, least of all those of us who once wore the mask." With his eyes fixed ahead, "It is my hope and expectation that if anything ever happened to me, you would secure Draco’s interests. I now endeavor to do the same. If you ever have need of a safehouse—"

Severus bursts out laughing. He can’t help it. He does regret it, inasmuch as one can ever regret it when it gets that ridiculous face out of Lucius, the puffed-up scowl that means he’s got his feelings hurt and won’t show it. But he’s only human.

"I was in earnest, I assure you."

"You know, you’re getting better at this. For a second there, I almost believed you." He chimes his flute against Lucius’s, pretty much for the sole purpose of irritating him. "I’m not telling you where the boy comes from, Lucius. I don’t put stock in empty gestures. And stop Imperiusing my barista. I know it’s you, and you keep getting my order wrong."

Between the ages of one and three, Harry sleeps on the mattress.

On his third birthday, Minerva and Filius turn up at the door of Spinner's End with a cart full of boxes from some muggle syndicate called IKEA, and they monopolize his afternoon assembling a kiddie bed. (He bitches and moans about this, but secretly he is relieved, since two years of sleeping on hardwood have given him a case of back problems like you would not believe.)

(They hammer in three pieces incorrectly and Filius has to practically glue the whole thing together with Sticking Charms, but at the end of the night, Harry is sleeping peacefully in a bed his size, across the room from the double mattress — under the window, as Filius suggested, so he can see the stars. There are no stars in Spinner's End, Severus was tempted to say, but at that point he and Minerva had collapsed on the mattress with twin highballs of whiskey, which had considerably improved his ability to hold his tongue.)

On weekends and summer afternoons, a tabby cat haunts the neighborhood. It never tries to come in, nor do anything more invasive than skulk around the nearby alleys and annihilate the local rat population, but after a while, he starts putting out dishes of cream on the front stoop, especially on hot days. Then he starts leaving the kitchen window open, once Harry is large enough to crawl, and soon enough, he catches it napping on Harry's chest in a puddle of sunlight on the living-room floor. Harry learns to walk with one hand on the animal's back, buffeted by its nervous nudges and pokes, although he is sure the animal lives to regret it once Harry develops the fine motor control necessary for things like hair-pulling and tail-yanking.

Albus sends presents every year. Almost invariably these are some sort of book, by muggle authors and wizards alike: The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, for instance, shares a shelf with Goodnight Moon and The Little Prince, while darker additions, like Beedle and the Brothers Grimm, Severus tucks away for later years. The boy will see the gruesome face of the world clearly, in time, without taking a peek before he's learned to floss. For his part, he still doesn't see anything wrong with "One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi," and funnily enough, neither does Harry, who reliably selects it as his chosen tome to fall asleep to, on the rare occasion Severus feels like indulging his choice.

In the kitchen, Harry is treated to the greatest hits of Eileen Prince. Macaroni cheese with hot dog bits, spaghetti al dente with red sauce from a jar, enough beans on toast to feed a poorhouse. Minerva keeps the shipments of applesauce and stewed carrots coming long after she lost the excuse of his incompetence, and in his desperation, he is grateful to her, because as it turns out, Harry loves applesauce like a lion loves deer.

What would Lily have fed him? Not these miserable meals, scraped together from a potioneer's wages, served on paper plates with cutlery he stole from the coffee shop. She would have fed him home-cooked dinners of roast chicken and baked potatoes, warm chocolate chip cookies for dessert, like Grandma Evans used to make—

And he stops himself, ruefully, because Lily Evans Potter, as she lived and breathed, would have fed her son breakfast, lunch, and dinner with Nando's. If James could cook, he might have done better, but Harry's mother had not the culinary skill God gave a sea sponge, and she would have laughed herself sick to hear his reveries of blissful domesticity.

There's a thought that stops him cold: he hasn't thought about Lily Evans' laugh in a long time.

It lasts for about three seconds, and then the other shoe drops. The hole in his stomach opens up again. He drops the sock he's darning and goes into the kitchen, and brews a Drought of Living Death that could put down a hippogriff under with two drops.

"How is the boy?" asks Albus, and Severus says, "Living."

Winters at Spinner's End look the same as the summers, only colder. A few children venture up the drive every Halloween, bravely, and try to trick-or-treat. Severus turns out the lights and lies in his bedroom, smoking a cigarette, while Harry does a puzzle in the corner.

He doesn't mean to, but he learns things. He learns that Harry likes to eat his meats before his vegetables, and loathes the taste of ham. That he hates slimy textures, and enjoys bristly ones. That he likes being picked up and carried around, like his imperious whelp of a father, but also being swung and tossed around like a hackey sack, which he discovers when Albus brings Hagrid to visit one Christmas.

(He hears the first scream of delight from the kitchen, where he and Albus are talking battle plans, and tears into the sitting room to find Harry dangling by the ankle from Hagrid's thick fist, emitting the sort of primal howl that can only signify a dying boar or a happy child.)

(It takes all of Albus's considerable powers of persuasion to get Severus to lower his wand, and Hagrid will never know how very close he came to a bloody haircut.)  

He learns these and other things: that Harry has an ear for names, and can remember people remarkably well, even after meeting them only once. That he prefers to rise early and likes to climb things. That he will fall asleep anywhere, including most parts of Severus's body, the more uncomfortable the better. That he is too clever for his own good, and he watches Severus far more than Severus knows.

Harry's first word is not "Mama" or "Papa." He doesn't have either of those. He works methodically from monosyllables to compound words, and by the time he's four, he can produce a passable "Sebberus" when he needs something. It is unclear whether he understands this to be Severus's Christian name, or simply the command he issues when he has need of adult attention, but either way, the house soon fills with cries of "Sebberus, up," and "Sebberus, where?" and "Sebberus, blease."

('V' is a hard letter. So is 'N.' They're working on it.)

On their fifth Halloween at Spinner's End, Severus steps out for his yearly cigarette. He leaves Harry playing with his teddy bear (christened "Bah," in a feat of perspicacious linguistic brilliance) and goes up to the roof.

The sky is black, because it always is. He can't tell the clouds from the smoke from the fog. Intellectually, he knows that somewhere behind them, there are stars, because he once laid with Lily Evans under the one tree in the neighborhood, the one in her backyard, and counted each grain of salt in the big black tablecloth above. That was the night he learned the smell of her hair, which was one part drugstore shampoo to many parts woodsmoke. He remembers the dirt hard and packed under his shoulders, the smell of nicotine from the alley behind her house, the way that wretched old tree's bare branches made a mockery of nature. But it was all right, because without leaves, you could see the stars.

"...Orion's Belt, one, two, three! That's three points for me, hah. Yes, it counts! Because I say so and I came up with the game, that's why... S'posedly Orion's a hunter. Doesn't look much like a hunter, though. More like Orion's Knob, if you ask me! What do you think? ...What are you looking at? Sev? Sev."

There are no stars in Spinner's End.

When the world falls apart, here is what it sounds like: it sounds like a man with his head in his hands, crying.

A minor explosion comes from inside the house. Severus's cigarette flickers into nothingness.

He pops into existence in the kitchen, wand ready, with half a dozen curses (three of them Unforgivable) on the tip of his tongue; and there he finds Harry, perfectly happy and healthy, mounted atop a mountain of toppled cookware.

The door to one of the cabinets hangs open, listing from a broken hinge. Harry has a steel pot gripped ably in each fist. A jar of applesauce levitates lazily around his head like the moon orbiting the earth.

"What the fuck, Potter," says Severus.

Harry opens his mouth, and the jar tips forward, heaving a lava flow applesauce down his face and onto his shirt. He giggles, spitting up sauce everywhere. "Soss," he assures Severus.

"Stop that. Now."

He Vanishes the applesauce with a swish of his wand, and levitates the other pots out of Harry's reach. But the boy holds fast to the ones in his grip. He bangs them on the floor, and Severus winces as dents appear in stainless steel.

"Let go."

With a wild gleam of belligerence in his eye, Harry starts beating the pots together. He shouts, "Potion!"

Severus roars, "STOP!"

Harry burbles and falls silent.

It is not the first time Severus has raised his voice, but it does not happen often enough that Harry is used to it. He watches Severus curiously, as if he is waiting to see what will happen next.

They eye each other for a moment. They have what Avery, whose secret pastime was sneaking into muggle movies and then lying about it, would have called a "Mexican standoff."

Severus can't help it. He sits down with his head between his knees, and laughs.

"Fuck," he says. "Have it your way, Potter. You win."

Harry clangs the pots together, horribly.

Lily Evans is three years dead to the day, and her offspring is a born hellion, a mad-cap delinquent son of a Gryffindor. He is a curse on Severus's life, the worst piece of magic anyone ever thought up, and he is entirely his mother's son.

"Potion," he intones.

"Yes," Severus agrees, reaching out to wipe some applesauce off his cheek. "Potion."

Chapter Text

It happens for the first time when Harry is six.

(He wishes he could say it was the last time, but he knows whose boy he's raising.)

The problem is: Lucius Malfoy is a pompous, bumptious, high-handed bureaucrat, but he's not a moron.

The problem is: sometimes, Severus forgets things. He is more cautious than any ten men he's fought and deadlier than all of them at once. But he can’t be in the house all the time. Albus doesn’t allow it. The only Dark Arts specialist in the Order often has to wear many hats.

The war taught him better than to leave trails, so he Apparates from the end of the street. There’s a tabby cat sitting under the streetlamp and he nods to it as he leaves the house, changing guards.

(He whispers another Notice-Me-Not on the old Evans House when he passes by. It’s sat empty ever since her mother died. Muggles say it’s haunted, and they're not really wrong.)

He appears on a storm-washed rock in the middle of the sea, with rain coursing down in a hail of bullets. The tides rumble and shatter against the rock. A rain-slick pathway leads down into a winnowing tunnel in the rock, and he casts Lumos, sends up a prayer, hopes he doesn’t break his neck on the way down.

"Lord Voldemort is returning," said Albus. "When — not if, but when — he returns, we must anticipate him."

"So her sacrifice meant nothing," said Severus flatly. "He is coming back. She failed to kill him. She died for nothing."

The war will commence again. The only difference is you will have to find new children to do your bidding, one of them hers. You and Tom Riddle, playing your games of chess with our bodies, all your countless pawn sacrifices, what if we killed you, what if we killed both of you, would that make it stop—

"Her sacrifice meant everything," said Albus, putting his hand atop Severus’s. Severus casts him off with a look that warns him of the dangers of getting too familiar. You mistake me for James Potter. You mistake me for Frank Longbottom. You mistake me for one of your friends. "Don’t you see? She gave us time to prepare — to eradicate his defenses, before he can resurrect himself. When he returns, we can force him to come to us as a mortal… a man we can fight, Severus, as a mortal…"

"James Potter and L—" He is weak. He is wretched. He is vile, less than scum, less than a worm: he still cannot say her name. "They gave their lives."

"So that their son would live," insisted Albus. "And lo: he survives. So long as his heart beats, the altar upon which Lily laid her life stands tall."

Severus stared at the ceiling for a long moment. 

"Do you know how to kill him?"

"Yes," said Albus, and it was not relish in his voice, not exactly — but enough passion, enough true human emotion, enough hunger, that Severus trusted him to tell the truth.

So down into that black cave on the edge of the world, down to the dark lagoon where white hands drifted below the surface like water lilies, out to the island with the basin in the rock, and the instruments that will tell him what, exactly, lies within — the potioneer’s kit, his favorite set of tools, the pewter set of spoons and scales that once saved the life of a twelve-year-old boy at Spinner’s End.

"My dear boy, it is simply the law. There can be no magic outside of school. I respect your diligence tremendously, and you are, of course, a credit to my house—"

"But that law applies to spells," said Severus. He was twelve and drowning in a robe with the sleeves rolled up, second-hand, but the green badge on his chest shone in perfect condition, and his tie was a flawless knot. He even brushed his hair, because Slughorn liked his students well-groomed. "I read it all the way through. There’s nothing about brewing in it."

"Well, yes, I suppose, but… young man, you understand that in any recipe that calls for a wave of your wand, or a heating charm, or a siphoning spell…"

"I won’t use my wand."

Slughorn smiled indulgently. "In that case," he sighed, "for one of my finest students… there is nothing inappropriate, I think, in allowing school equipment to be rented over the summer…"

Severus, twenty-six and still drowning, skims a tablespoon of the potion from the basin. He puts it in a vial, and shakes it. The vial turns red. He puts the vial in his pocket and with a last glance at the locket at the bottom of the bowl, he gets back into the boat, sails away.

The corpses under the lake wave goodbye to him. He scrambles on hand and foot up the slick, steep tunnel to the surface, and Apparates away as soon as he can.

"It is a vile potion."

"That much I have deduced. What else?"

"The purpose is pain,” says Severus. “Extraordinary pain. Exceptional, singular, unendurable pain."

Albus lifts the vial to the light, inspecting it. "Can it kill you?" he asks mildly.

"No. But you’ll wish it did. It’s psychoactive, probably a hallucinogen. Whatever Tom Riddle put in that cave," he says, "will make you scream. Loud enough to wake the horde of Inferi that he put in the lake, incidentally, which I would guess is the purpose."

"And it must be drunk," says Albus, putting it down.

"Perhaps. There’s a Replenishing Charm in the basin. I obviously didn’t try any to find out."

"Interesting. Thank you, Severus."

He takes a secret passage out of Hogwarts, and Apparates from Hogsmeade.

 When he gets to Spinner’s End, he knows that something is wrong because of the way the air tastes. He knows something is wrong because the wards on his house are quiet, but too quiet, in the way they wouldn’t be, if the normal coterie of rats and birds and insects were moving in and out and through the walls, the reassuring low-level chatter of a thousand benign points of pressure on his guards. He knows something is wrong because when he runs up the drive, nothing stops him, not the instinctive pressure of a Shield Charm against his sternum, or the curious poke of his blood wards feeling him out. He is up and running through a door that swings open at his touch, into a house that is silent and peaceful as the grave, because a six year old child cannot put up a fight.

There is a hole in the bottom of the world and it is howling—

No, that’s still Severus.

He closes his eyes. 

Ten thousand nine hundred forty-six. One seven seven one one. Two eight six five seven, four six three six eight. It’s not working.

"Expecto," he says, and thinks of — fuck, what does he think about, how can he think about fuck all, Lily Evans is a pile of rotting bones and her son, the little boy with her eyes and her laugh and her terrible mischief that she gave him to protect is GONE—

"Expecto — expecto patronum—"

Think about something happy, you piece of shit. Think about something happy, do it for her, do it, or you’ll run back to that cave and drink every drop like you’re parched for it.

He thinks: Orion doesn’t really look like a hunter, and he thinks of the shittiest, skinniest little tree that anyone ever did see. This is the memory that has never failed him, a memory strong enough to build a life around.

The doe erupts from his wand in blossoming white, trailing strands of gossamer where she’s incorporeal around the edges.

"Harry’s gone. I’m going after him. If I don't send word tomorrow, assume I am dead."

The doe bobs its head and gallops out the splintered door. He follows it out to the porch, where it mounts the sky, racing for the distant towers of Hogwarts, and winnows out of existence. 

Seven-five-zero-two-five. One-two-one-three-nine-three. Dead as dust. Red hair on the carpet, tattered like a flag. Three one seven eight one one.

Severus turns on his heel.

He finds them in a run-down shack on the edge of Liverpool. Shattered shingles, a hole in the roof where a great horned owl roosts. It shrieks at him as he walks in.

Green light flares. It falls silent.

The door moves open of its own accord. Their wards shrivel and fall like paper blackening at the touch of fire, crumpling under his approach. 

They are good enough to think that they should ward the place, but not clever enough to hide their tracks. Magical trails smear a long bloody footprint of their flight all across Britain. They only made two stops to try and break the Apparition trail. Not even a single Portkey or Floo jump to break the chain. Severus could laugh. In the war, he would make seven jumps, three Portkeys, and still ride the bus for the last ten miles to his house, and that was only when he was trying to get home from a meeting.

His first thought is to blow the windows in. But then he thinks: Harry. Doesn’t know where he is. Doesn’t know if it’s safe. Element of surprise is safer.

He cuts the door down with a flick and strides over the fallen board of it. His first spell is a Silencing Charm strong enough to quell thunder.

Severus was a spy, not a soldier. When others ran off to trade curses in back-allies and brawls, he sat in the kitchen and brewed potions. Healing potions, killing potions, potions for truth, potions for lies. He filled his pockets with them and then went out to greet the aftermath, and prayed that the losses were numbers he could swallow. Spies could not fight. He held in his brain the only secrets that could end the war. Or so Albus always said.

But even so.

Severus remembers his first. It was dark, somewhere in the Forest of Dean. Avery to the left of him, Mulciber to the right. A muggle-born Order member on his knees between them, stone-faced, because even at nineteen he was brave enough not to beg. They were all wearing masks. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t live to remember the sight of their faces.

“Your turn, Severus,” said Avery. He clapped Severus on the back. “My treat. You pick: fast, or fun?”

And Severus, who was thinking about how he watched this boy win the Quidditch Cup for Ravenclaw in fourth year, lifted his wand and gave him the only mercy he had to offer.

He used up all his mercy on people who deserved it, and then the last of it died on an October night. Severus Apparates into the house in Liverpool. The windows blaze green.

Snatchers are often difficult to fight. They travel in packs, but they lack organization, which makes them unpredictable, and though their curses are as liable to hit each other as you, the lack of pattern makes strategy impossible. Scabior in particular fights like a mad dog, spitting curses in every direction, like he doesn't really care if they hit something. He won’t always duck spells; sometimes he’ll run right into them, take them on the chest, plow through, and be on the inside of your guard when it’s over. He can suspend his concern for whether he lives or dies. That’s what makes him dangerous. 

What makes Severus dangerous is everything. What makes Severus dangerous is now he doesn’t care, either, and he means it. Severus hasn’t really wanted to live for seven years, and his heart is a hollow scraped clean where violence goes to foment.

He holds his wand in his left hand. Holly wood, nine and a half inches. It moves. Bodies fall.

Sectumsempra. Sectumsempra. Sectumsempra sectumsempra sectumsempra SECTUMSEMPRA

Blood fountains like water on a storm-washed rock. He rips open Scabior’s throat with a flick of his wand and carves a cavernous bolt of a gash across Scranton’s body, shoulder to hip. With a crack he shatters Corban’s ribcage, and then Summons the man’s individual vertebrae, which rip through the skin of his back and clatter, bloodstained and shining, against the floor. He Apparates out of the path of Worblatt’s Killing Curse and appears behind him in a coil of smoke, shoots a bolt of ice through his stomach. It erupts through his abdomen and Severus has already Apparated behind Lovell, and with a wand to his temple he casts a spell he learned from Minerva on the beaches of Dundee, which transforms the man’s blood to a thick oil. He collapses as a series of ongoing heart attacks seize and shake his body. 

 (Their faces are contorted in screams, but the Silencing Charms do their job. The house is a grotesquerie of soundless death.)

The last Snatcher tries to run. He throws a Killing Curse over his shoulder and Severus knocks it aside like a toothpick. Nine and a half inches of holly accuse the fleeing coward, and green light blooms like sunrise.

In the aftermath there is a different kind of silence. It’s broken by a wail from the room upstairs.

Severus flings open the door to the bedroom closet — a closet, a closet, they had him in a closet — and Harry gasps. Severus remembers belatedly that there is blood and viscera and all manner of horrible things on his robe, trains of it splashed across his face, and that he smells like the slaughterhouse he made of this place. He steps back.

Harry flings himself forward and wraps himself around Severus’s legs.

He is talking, in the high-pitched babble of scared children, saying nothing of substance, all of it relieved. Severus picks him up and wipes some of Scabior’s blood from Harry’s forehead, cleaning off the ridges of his scar.

"...then they were HERE in the HOUSE and it was SO SCARY, Severus…"

Severus doesn’t answer, which is fine by Harry, who is too busy talking to be concerned with anything Severus has to say. 

(For him, it is simple: he was not safe, and now he is. Severus wasn’t here, and now he is. He was alone, and now he isn’t.)

Severus takes him back to Spinner’s End and gives him the longest, scrubbing-est bath of his life. When it is over, Harry is pink-faced and complaining and short a full layer of epidermis, but not one drop of Snatcher’s blood remains on him. Not one drop to remind Severus of his failure. Harry puts on pajamas — red with a pattern of yellow lions, a birthday present from guess fucking who — and Severus makes them drinks, hot cocoa for Harry, a whiskey for himself, and they sit together on Severus’s bed, drinking their nightcaps, while Harry points out different plants in "One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi" and Severus explains what they do.

"Wolfsbane."

"A poison. Contains aconitine, is a potent neurotoxin and cardiotoxin that causes persistent depolarization of neuronal sodium channels."

"Belladonna?"

"Atropa or amaryllis?"

Harry peers at the page. 

"Sound it out."

"A-tro-pa."

"Good. That’s another poison. Deadly nightshade. It causes seizures and difficulty breathing."

"Oh. You definitely shouldn’t eat that one, then."

"No."

"What is that?"

"Alcohol."

"And what is that?"

"Also a poison."

"Oh. Should you be drinking it, then?"

"No," says Severus, and drinks.

He locks the bedroom door while Harry sleeps, and sits outside it. He stays up all night with nine and a half inches of holly pointed at the front door.

Another doe flies to Albus that night. Harry safe. Five dead in Liverpool. Clean it up.

"How is the boy?" asks Albus, and Severus says, "Still living."

It takes a year for Severus to let him out of the house again. Harry learns the house in Spinner’s End like Rapunzel learned her tower. He knows which stairs will squeal traitorously when a boy is trying to steal a midnight snack, and where the pigeons like to roost in the rafters, the crawl space beneath the porch where he tries to keep a nest of racoons for pets (Severus blames Hagrid) and the drainpipe running up the back, which can, in fact, bear the weight of a small boy climbing out from his window. He knows the fungal smell in the bathroom comes not from mold but from rusted pipes, and that the kitchen tap takes three minutes to heat up, so it’s easier to nag Severus for a Warming Charm.

Harry gets homeschool lessons in the mornings: not Transfiguration and Charms, but mathematics, chemistry, physics. He reads books by the armful and fills the crowded kitchen table with stacks of workbooks. Aunt Minerva comes by in the afternoons to give him primers on History of Magic, and Severus will occasionally, occasionally, leave a kettle of tea on for her in the kitchen. Boxes of cherry danishes appear in his refrigerator after she leaves. She calls him "Snape," and he calls her "Professor."

The boy spends the evenings watching quidditch on the black cube of a television that Charity finally agreed to wire up for him, after several entreaties and at least one personal handwritten letter from Harry. He wraps his arms around his knees and sits in perfect stillness on the sofa in that shabby living room which still has a rip in the lining, and it is the only time he is ever perfectly still. His eyes shine when the players take off and Severus is afraid, so very afraid, of how much he looks like his father. 

For his eighth birthday, Harry gets a Comet Two Sixty in a brown paper package. There’s no card, but Severus still spends the better part of the night composing a Howler that he dispatches to Gryffindor Tower.

If you wanted the boy dead you should’ve said so, his father nearly died a dozen times on that pitch, the most dangerous sport in the wizarding world, you couldn’t have sent him a set of fucking gobstones, Minerva—

Harry falls in love with the sky on a rainy Wednesday in August, and as Severus watches his shadow disappear into the gray oblivion, he recognizes the joy in Harry’s war whoop. It isn’t James. It’s the sound of a ginger girl who’d spring up and yell whenever she perfected a Charm, who’d shout when she won a game of chess, who climbed every tree on the Hogwarts grounds because she loved being close to the clouds.

In these and other ways does she make herself known: in the smirk that Harry gives when he gets an answer right, and the way he pitches a fit when Severus takes away one of his toys; in the way that Harry runs everywhere, once he’s old enough to run, like he showed up five minutes late to his own life and he’s been racing to make the time up ever since. She’s in Harry’s clumsy scribble, because Lils had the penmanship of a dog with thumbs, and the way he thatches his sevens, something Severus never taught him to do. He doesn’t even know how Harry learned that, but he did. He does his Y with the same loop that sat on the end of Lily’s signature in every letter she ever wrote.

Sometimes, at night, he hears Harry laughing at the television, and he comes staggering into the living room, because in his sleep-weakened state a traitorous part of his brain piped up: She’s here. But it’s just Harry on the sofa, the old tabby cat curled in his lap, with the dull glow of the television on his grinning face.

"Severus," says Harry, in a very polite, very grown-up, very ‘please take me seriously’ edition of his I Want Something tone.

"Potter," says Severus.

(He doesn’t call him Harry. Harry, who has never known anything else, does not see anything strange in this, and assumes that this is yet another one of his strange caretaker’s innumerable quirks, like his habit of brewing the most noxiously inedible substances known to man on the burner next to their evening supper, or his distaste for haircuts.)

He folds his hands on the table. He is nine years old, and it is his birthday. He pushes his chunky glasses up his nose, the ones Minerva hauled him to a muggle optometrist for, when at seven years old he still struggled to read anything at a distance of more than three feet.

"Aunt Minerva says you knew my parents."

Severus stands up and dumps his bowl in the sink. 

He walks out back to the porch and lights a cigarette, and an hour later, when Harry comes outside to find him, he is still finishing the last one in the pack.

"Sorry, Severus," says Harry quietly. "I didn’t mean to—"

He flicks out the butt and crushes it.

"No," he says. "I didn’t."

Then he goes back inside and gives Harry an extra hour of quidditch on the TV, because it’s his birthday. And he lets him have another slice of cake, because fuck it, he’s not made of stone.

His magic comes in early, and it comes in strong. When he’s angry, he shatters dishes and windows, throws books, breaks faucets. When he’s happy, he turns teacups into teacakes, levitates furniture, and makes daisies sprout from cracks in the floorboards. Severus makes batch after batch of Weedkiller Potion and hunts them down ruthlessly. It never matters. Harry reads a book he likes, and blooms a dozen more.

"The boy will get his letter soon," says Albus. 

They’re having Christmas at Minerva’s, that year. Hagrid is in the kitchen, making something called "figgy pudding" which promises to be de minima unpleasant and, quite possibly, lethal; Severus has several bezoars in his pocket. Minerva and Harry are cross-legged on the carpet by the fireplace, where she’s teaching him to play chess.

Severus sips a fifth of firewhiskey. "That is how age works."

"Might that impel you to reconsider the job of Potions Master?"

Severus set down his glass, hard, on the table. Harry glances up from the board — Minerva’s teaching him the Tennison Gambit, if Severus had to guess — and gives his godfather a quick, serious look: Alright, Severus?

Concern commingled with respectful hesitation, the need to be of use tempered by the desire for approval, and eagerness, above all else, to serve: this is not a look that ever appeared on Lily Evans’ face. But he has seen it. A hundred times, he’s seen it. A thousand. During the war, James Potter sometimes wore it for days at a time.

He nods at the game. Harry returns to it.

“I’m not a teacher,” he tells Albus.

Albus swirls his firewhiskey. "Do you know," he says, watching the snow fall outside Minerva’s cottage, "that is, almost to the word, what I told Armando Dippet, seventy-six years ago to the day."

Severus despises the indulgent navel-gazing of the old. He loathes it almost as much as Albus himself, who lies through his teeth about these things, ceaselessly, and who could order Severus to do just about anything, if he wished, making this whole endeavor an exercise in futility. 

"He should have listened to you," he says.

"Perhaps. But who knows, Severus, where I would have ended up, if I were not a teacher? If I had been permitted to let my ambitions roam free?"

"Because you so clearly bottled those ambitions when you came to the school," says Severus, in scathing tones. "Headmaster."

Albus acknowledges this with a tilt of his head. "I see that ambition is not your vice," he says. "But we need you at Hogwarts, Severus. The boy will require protection there, just as he does now."

Harry traps one of Minerva’s knights with his own knight and his rook. He cheers. Minerva beams, partly in pride.

"Severus," he shouts, pointing. "Look!"

"I see it. Don’t gloat, Potter."

"I’m not gloating," says Harry matter-of-factly. "I’m telling you that I’m winning."

Albus laughs softly. 

"Thank you for the information," Severus tells Harry. "Continue."

Harry returns to the chessboard in time to see Minerva’s queen descend on his knight with a brutal swing of her sword.

"I don’t do well with children," says Severus, and it is the truth.

"You’ve raised one."

"I’ve raised him. He’s weird."

"He’s a perfectly healthy and normal boy."

"He’s alive," Severus admits, begrudgingly.

"And, to hear Minerva tell it, he is quite the clever hand at Potions.” Albus paused. “Do you know that yesterday, he corrected her on the luminative properties of zinc sulfides, when mixed with photocatalysts?"

"How embarrassing for her. That was a question on my N.E.W.T."

"Which you took at seventeen." Albus pauses. "Never mind that. Will you admit, at least, that I am right? And that your duty can be better served by joining him at school than by sending him away?"

"It’s Hogwarts. What exactly do you think he needs protection from?"

"Tom Riddle began at Hogwarts."

"And he has returned, has he, without my noticing?"

Albus shakes his head. He draws into himself, slightly, and Severus knows the flicker of emotion that broaches his old dignified facade as shame.

"You want me to protect him from you," he realizes. "You hypocritical old fucking bag of bones."

"Severus, please. There are young ears present."

This is a weak stab at manipulation: they are whispering, and Harry is still cheering on his knights.

"You don’t trust yourself with him. You’re worried you’ll… what, use him? Manipulate him? Try to recruit him?"

Albus shrinks.

"You will teach him not to be a hero too soon," he murmurs to Severus. "There are some things he cannot learn from me."

"Oh, really?" Severus could laugh. "You think he’ll try to be a hero? From watching you? Do you even remember his mother? Have you forgotten what she was like?"

“I have never forgotten,” says Albus. “There is not a day goes by when I do not think long and solemnly on Lily's sacrifice, and how to honor it.” He reaches for Severus, but stops himself before he touches him. He has learned, Severus thinks, with satisfaction. “Will you help me do it?”

Severus sneers.

"FIGGY PUDDIN’!" bellows Hagrid, and Harry springs up with a shout of delight. For some reason, the boy has an insatiable hunger for Hagrid’s cooking, which can only reflect poorly on the food to which he has grown accustomed in Severus’s care. 

Harry runs to the door, screeches to a halt, and then runs back to the board. "Knight to E-seven," he blurts, and then runs out again.

The pudding is a jellylike round of mushy dough that collapses at the first touch of a spoon. It tastes of flour, sour orange, and half a bottle of vanilla extract. Harry eats two slices and asks for a third, which Severus denies him, on the grounds that he is not actually sure three bezoars will be enough if he does. Severus sneaks his and Minerva’s serving into the kitchen sink while Hagrid’s back is turned, but he lets Albus eat every spoonful.

(Severus is a spiteful man. He has never denied it. In a life of so few simple pleasures, why deny himself when one appears?)

"Hagrid says I can come to his house and he’ll bake other things for me," Harry reports dutifully, as they emerge from the fireplace at Spinner’s End. "Can I Severus? If I do all my workbooks?"

"We’ll see."

"What if I brew a Pepper-Up Potion correctly? Then can I go?"

"It is not inconceivable that I should allow it."

"What if I brew a Pepper-Up Potion and a Pompion Potion correctly? What about then?"

"You are evidently unfamiliar with the concept of 'bidding against oneself.'"

"What if I brew a Pepper-Up Potion and a Pompion Potion and organize your herb cabinet? And promise not to take my broomstick out for a week?"

Severus sighs.

Harry comes back from his first visit to Hagrid’s cabin smelling of woodsmoke and dog, with a cauldron-sized basket of muffins like geodes and a grin from ear to ear. Severus’s herb cabinet has never been in better shape.

"Severus," says Harry, in tones of now hear me out, "If I’m really good, can we get a—"

"No."

Harry’s letter comes on the thirty-first of July. Severus sees the owl alight on his windowsill and thinks, for one terrible hopeful moment, about flushing the envelope down the toilet.

Then Harry comes bounding down the stairs, fully dressed and starry-eyed, because he knows: today is the day. He’s been waiting for this for years.

"Severus! Severus! Sev Sev Sev Sev Sev!"

He scrambles into the kitchen and brandishes it. He opens his mouth.

"Eggs, Potter?"

"Severus," he breathes. "I’m going to Hogwarts."

Severus looks at him. He is eleven years old and skinny as anything, despite eating three square meals a day for years. James was tiny before he hit his growth spurt, he remembers that. Jet black hair falls like a pile of rags from a head he’s always been too nervous to give a haircut. Lily’s eyes glow like holy green fire, just like they did on the same day twenty years ago, when she came sprinting up his driveway to bang on his door.

Sev! Sev Sev Sev! Didja get it? The owl?

"Happy birthday," he says instead. Harry beams.

He takes him to Diagon Alley, and Harry picks out the meanest, ugliest owl in the whole shop, which greets every touch except Harry’s with horrible violence, because Severus does not have the kind of life where anything else could possibly happen. They get robes. They get books. He takes him to Ollivander’s, and Harry runs around throwing open boxes, until finally old Ollivander — with a glint of something in his eye — takes down one from the highest shelf.

(Eleven inches flat, holly and phoenix feather. It has a brother, but neither of them know that yet.)

The night before the Hogwarts Express, they both pack their trucks. Severus packs up his cauldrons and toolkits, his herbs, his ingredients, the coterie of dishes and glassware that has held his kitchen hostage for eleven years. Harry packs a fresh set of robes and a bunch of shabby old hand-me-down jumpers, muggle trainers with the soles worn smooth, a bear named Bah (which he shoves under his socks so nobody sees), and as many books as the physical limitations of the trunk will admit.

On a dingy white stove where the burners hardly work, Severus boils milk for hot cocoa, and pours himself a glass of wine.

They sit on a threadbare mattress, with the window open, to let the thick breeze creep into the house. Harry has already put on his uniform. Every so often he will run over to his trunk and take out his wand, just to look at it. He can’t sit still. In this way, he is both his mother’s and his father’s son.

"What house do you think I’ll get, Severus?"

"I don’t know."

"Do you think I’ll get Gryffindor? Then I could hang out with Aunt Minerva all the time. But Filius says that Ravenclaw is the most fun."

"Either he is a liar, or dementia has come for him at long last."

Harry snorts. “Okay, but like, Ravenclaw isn’t that bad, though.” He pauses. "Right? I mean, if I get Ravenclaw, it’s not that bad, right?"

"It is not bad."

"Okay good."

"You won’t get Ravenclaw."

He knows this like a chemical equation. He knows this like heat is energy is matter, like light is a particle and a wave, like Lily Evans is dead and She is never coming back for you, not now, not ever. 

Harry Potter climbs drainpipes and flies broomsticks for fun. He eats Hagrid’s rock cakes by the dozen and rides his giant black dog around like a mount. He has covered the walls of this house in footprints and fingerprints ever since he was old enough to move, and he has never remained still for more than five minutes at a time. He is the son of a supernova and the very brave man who loved her. 

He will be in Gryffindor House, or Severus is going to punt that shitty old hat into the Great Lake.

But Harry is staring out the window like his mind is a million miles away, and Severus realizes that Harry doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know his mother outside of Albus’s endless mythologizing and Minerva’s tight-lipped praise; he doesn’t know that she had scabs on her knees for about a decade because she could never be bothered look down while she was running; he doesn’t know that she loved music but sang like a strangled albatross, and once climbed through the same window he’s looking out of, carrying a backpack of smushed ‘happy birthday’ cupcakes and a knife to cut them between her teeth.

He could say: once there was a girl at the end of a dirty street in a shitty town, and her love burned so bright it killed a god, and in this room sits the only good thing she left behind.

He could say: someday you may love something so much you will shatter yourself so you can weld the pieces into something they deserve. And the pain will almost kill you, and this is how you know it works.

He could say: Harry James Potter, you were named for the luckiest man I ever knew, who even in death had the good fortune to never see a world without her.

Harry turns when Severus makes a sound. His expression is calm and open and peaceful. He is eleven years old, and he has grown up in a household with three square meals a day, and where the adults in his life never raise their voices at him.

"There is," says Severus, "a street called Spinner’s End."

Chapter Text

Somewhere in the highlands of Scotland, there is a magical castle. It is a vast castle, with lots of secret passages, hidden rooms, doors that appear and disappear based on time of day; it is a castle full of beasts, with walls that will rearrange themselves to guide lost eleven-year-olds back to their dorms, stairs that disappear when bullies forget to look, and taps that always run just the right temperature. There is a hall with a ceiling made of sky, and portraits that talk, and ghosts that poke their heads through the walls to point you in the direction of that class you’re late for. 

Severus forgot what a big place Hogwarts was. When you live your whole life in a house with four rooms, anywhere is big. But Hogwarts, in particular, is a Castle.

A hall full of vultures watches Harry’s Sorting. Severus grasps his wand and resists the urge to hex them all blind for the sin of looking at his godson that way, like a time bomb, like a falling star.

It doesn’t matter. Harry hops up like a groundhog when the Hat gives its verdict and waves at Severus. 

He forgets to take off the hat before he joins his table, and Minerva has to go running after him to recover it, giving him the first of what will be many scoldings. Laughter commingles with the cheers.

Once he’s squared away among his fellow ruffians, parked between a Weasley and a muggle-born with the largest teeth he’s ever seen, Severus leans over to Minerva and says, "Tag."

She gives him a dreadfully arch look over her spectacles. Minerva is the grand mistress of the Dreadfully Arch Look. His own Scathingly Arch Sneer is nothing in comparison.

"I’m sure I don’t know what you mean," she says.

"Give it a day," he could say, but doesn’t. Decides to let her find out for herself.

"When you applied for the deputy headmistress position," he says instead.

He spends a year scowling at children in Potions, and lamenting how execrably their previous Potions Master failed them. He docks points and snaps for small mistakes. He was not lying, when he told Minerva he was not a good teacher. But he also knows that no one will come to a hated professor for help — that none of Albus Dumbledore’s future soldiers will come to Severus with their round smiling faces, asking for advice and counsel and offering up their small shiny hearts. He does not permit himself to feel affection for Hermione Granger, who brews a pitch-perfect Drought of Dreamless sleep on her first try, and snaps at Weasley for asking a stupid question about counterstirring. And he does not permit her to feel affection for him, either, when he docks her ten points for raising her voice out of turn.

(But later that night, while Harry sits on his desk, frowning, "You know, Severus, it really isn’t fair how…" Severus says nothing, but the next day, he awards twenty points to a Gryffindor prefect for helping a Slytherin first year find the loo.)

"Why the fuck," he shouts at Minerva, as they jog down the corridor to the first-floor girls’ bathroom, "is there a TROLL—"

"Language, Severus!"

"Has Hagrid lost his mind?"

"Not Hagrid," she cries, rounding the corner, and they see the trail of muddy footprints, a broken lavatory door. "Quirrell — he was attempting to erect his set of defenses, for the Stone—"

"A TROLL?"

"...said he had some sort of affinity with them," she pants, hoisting up her skirts. In heeled boots and petticoats, she’s still faster than he is.

"With the wide world of magic at his fucking fingertips," gasps Severus.

"Mm. Try to keep up."

"A troll. If Albus doesn’t fire him, I’m resigning."

"You’ve been working here for two months."

"Then it’ll be one month and thirty days overdue."

"He’s going to die."

It's becoming a familiar setup: desk, chair, glass. Head on desk. Arms over head.

Albus refills his glass of firewhiskey. "Eventually," he agrees. "But not on your watch, Severus. In any case, I find Harry to be a quite capable young man, and he has dealt with these trials most admirably. Additionally, he has acquired himself a pair of excellent friends."

"Mere children," he mumbles, pressing the cool glass to his temple. "They bested Minerva's chess game. And my logic trap. Could have died with him. Almost did. I can’t take care of all of them, Albus. Won’t do it. The other two on their own."

"How soon the old forget what feats the young have wrought," sighs Albus. "I think the other two will be your allies in Harry’s defense, not your charges. The young Weasley will protect him, I think, and ground him, which he will need, as his star grows… And are you familiar with this character, Hermione Granger? She reminds me very much of myself, when I was a boy."

Severus drinks deep, and holds out his glass for another. "God help us," he says, and means it.

The door to Albus's office flies open and bangs against the wall.

Lucius Malfoy, Chairman and Fop Supreme of the Board of Directors, and now, technically, Severus's boss, peers over his shoulder. Albus leans around him to see who it was.

"I must insist you stop doing that, Severus," he calls. "It strips the paint from the walls."

"Basilisk," Severus spits, slamming it behind him. "Children. Harry Potter. Lucius, draw your wand."

"It was an honest mistake."

"Honest! Honest! A piece of the Dark Lord's soul in the hands of a child—"

"I had no knowledge of what it was!" snarls Lucius. "None! I was told it was a Dark Artifact, something capable of great harm, nothing more—"

"—a Class Five monster loose in the castle where your son lives, five students paralyzed, have you lost your mind? This is a SCHOOL! Draw your wand!"

"Please do not kill the Chairman of the Board in my office, Severus," says Albus pleasantly, reaching for his own wand under the desk. Severus feels a stiffness run along his arm. "It is ever so difficult to get bureaucrat out of carpets."

Lucius shoots a quelling glare at the headmaster, who simply smiles.

"Draco could have died," snarls Severus.

(Lucius has the good sense not to bring up blood purity or Tom Riddle or the Heir of Slytherin, because a giant snake with eyes that kill — it's not exactly a precision weapon, Lucius, you dumb fucking cretin.)

Regret puckers the weathered planes of Lucius's face. It is older now than it was when they last spoke. A waxy texture has crept along the planes, and shadows cluster in new wrinkles near the eyes and mouth. How long has it been? He tries to remember Lucius in seventh year, six foot tall and bulletproof, the object of every Slytherin girl's desire, a pale Adonis in expensive suits. He started a cigar club for the pureblood upperclassmen and two fourth years dueled each other to get in. How did Severus ever admire him? Did he really once believe that Lucius was the king of anything, instead of a scared little rich boy pretending to be grown?

"I know," says Lucius quietly. "I will carry these and other thoughts to my grave."

"Damn right, you will," says Severus savagely. "Do you know who we found down there with them? Gilderoy Lockhart. The tabloid adventurer. He was the victim of a spectacularly malformed Memory Charm. Poppy says it's sophisticated neurological damage, well beyond her range, possibly beyond St. Mungo's. If that curse had fallen on Potter or Weasley..."

"Really?" says Albus, sounding almost sad. "It may be permanent, she says?"

"Will you draw your wand, you coward?" says Severus.

Lucius says, "Severus, for the friendship you have shown my family, and the favor you have shown my son, I will ignore the threat you have levied against me on this day, and forgive you."

And the idea of that, of Severus being forgiven, as if Lucius is the one with the high ground — he can't stand it. For a moment, it doesn't matter that Lucius knows Severus better than most creatures on this earth. He whirls around and stalks out of the office, because if he stays for one minute longer, he's going to kill him.

And it's not like that would be a problem, necessarily, but it would be a mess to explain to Cissa.

Bad form, to kill your friend's husband, probably. Lily wouldn't approve. Once said: Not that he doesn't deserve it, Sev, but it's not sporting. Can't go offing all the prats, that makes you a prat, too. It's a Prat's-22.

Okay. Where does the twenty-two come from?

One day, you'll read anything written by muggles, and on that day they will hear my victory cry from Barcelona.

He goes down to the lake and casts a few unsporting curses on the Whomping Willow. Lily wouldn't have approved of that, either — she loved trees, lived to climb them — but she'd settle for the compromise, he thinks.

Over the summer, Harry comes back to Spinner's End, like he did the year before. There are no dinner parties with bloated aunts. There is, under absolutely no circumstances, a word said against the memory of Lily Evans.

So Harry never runs away. He never meets Stan Shunpike, or Cornelius Fudge, and he never sees a black dog slinking around the rushes outside his home, because Severus's house is warded six ways to Sunday and sits under a Notice-Me-Not charm strong enough to hide a nude Princess Diana on top of the Gateway Arch.

He spends the lazy, hot summer days lounging on the carpet, sucking icee pops and other treats from the muggle ice cream truck. He reads books on broomsticks and potions, and practices flying quidditch formations on overcast afternoons, coming in sweat-slick and grinning, asking Severus for tips.

"I have no idea," says Severus. "I detest flying."

"Really?" Harry is aghast. "But Sev, it's wicked!"

"So they have told me."

"What about quidditch?" says Harry (clearly thinking this is a trump card.)

"I detest that, too," says Severus, but then, when Harry makes a sound of raw and uncomprehending grief: "Don't pout, Potter, I watch the games anyway."

"Even the ones without Slytherin?"

"Have I missed one yet?"

(He has to be there, in case Harry falls off the damn broom. It's not a sentimental thing. Lily hated quidditch, he can't claim to be there in her memory. So: it's for Harry's safety. Obviously. Just that, nothing else.)

(It's got nothing to do with how Harry's the best Seeker Minerva's got in years, and how he gives that dumb little cheer every time he catches the Snitch, like he's surprised, every time. It's the sort of humble surprise at his own skill that James never showed once in all his years, and it makes it — tolerable, somehow, the rest of his gung-ho athletic braggadocio.)

On Harry's thirteenth birthday, he gets a flurry of owls from all over the place, totally ruining the whole "Notice-Me-Not" situation, and Severus has half a mind to shoo them away with a broomstick. But Harry comes sprinting down the stairs, barefoot slapping on the wood, hair a-rumple, glasses askew, shouting: "Sorry! Sorry! I've got them! Sorry, Severus!" and does his honest best to hide them from the neighbors, which involves trapping them under his Invisibility Cloak and turning the kitchen into a small rookery.

(Severus watches him read his correspondence from the kitchen door, unaware that Severus is watching, and he beams widely at each letter, some of which ramble for pages and pages. Severus's thirteenth birthday was spent carrying his father's rod and tackle box down to a muddy river eight miles north, up to his ankles in hot mud, dreaming of redheads and new cauldron kits his family couldn't afford. He got one card, and it was hand-delivered from down the street.)

Severus leaves the house and goes to the telephone booth across the street. He fishes a few pence from his pocket, accidentally deposits a knut, and makes two calls, the first to ask Minerva for the second number. 

"HELLO?" bellows the recipient. Severus jerks the receiver off his ear. "WHO IS THIS? THIS. IS. ARTHUR. WEASLEY."

He braces the bridge of his nose. "Hello," he says thinly. "Good morning, Mr. Weasley. You are the father of Ronald Weasley?"

"YES," bellows Arthur, not without pride, but not without wariness, either. "WHAT'S HE DONE NOW?"

"Nothing," he says. "I am calling on behalf of Harry Potter. Are you accepting visitors in your domicile at this time?"

"OH! YOU'RE HARRY'S GUARDIAN, ARE YOU?" Arthur booms delightedly. "YOUR VOICE SOUNDS FAMILIAR. DO I KNOW YOU FROM SOMEWHERE?"

"No," says Severus. "I have been told I have 'one of those voices.'"

Arthur goes silent.

"ALRIGHT," he says, sounding suspiciously amused. "WELL, HAVE HARRY FLOO OVER. THE BURROW. WE'D LOVE TO HAVE HIM. REAL TREAT FOR RON, HE'LL BE THRILLED." Another beat. "YOU'RE WELCOME TO COME, OF COURSE."

"That won't be necessary." He hangs up.

(He's a worthless baker, and a terrible gift-giver, so he lets Molly Weasley craft the architectural marvel of Harry's nine-layer German chocolate birthday cake, and lets Arthur take him out to the shed and teach him how to drive the car, on the ground, for a birthday present. He never knew how to make people laugh, so he leaves it to Fred and George to jinx a herd of dormice to follow Harry around, singing "Happy Birthday" until it drives Percy insane. Severus never had an older brother, so it's Bill Weasley who shows Harry how to bypass the lock on Arthur's wine cellars, and steals a sip of firewhiskey — just the one — then shows him how to fill the bottle back up with tequila, so the adults don't notice. These are things he can't give Harry.

Here's what he can: when Harry stumbles back through the Floo, long after midnight, when Severus is already asleep, he finds a small vial and a card on the kitchen table. He picks up the potion and holds it to the light, watching champagne bubbles rise through the pale gold, and reads the card, in a scribbled, looping hand: For luck. Use carefully.

When Severus wakes up, there is coffee on the bedside table, and Harry's bed is empty but the broomstick is missing, and there is a smiley face drawn on the note beneath the coffee. Flying!! it says. Do not worry will not die. Thank you!!!!!!!!

It is so very Lily that he has to go in the bathroom and pour the mug out, to have any hope of maintaining composure. 

In many ways, Harry's third year at Hogwarts is the best. Nobody tries to kill him. At least, not intentionally.

Severus makes Remus a wolfsbane potion, and Remus trails Harry around the castle, sort of helplessly trying to connect with him, only—

Only Harry was raised with someone looking out for him. He isn't hungry for fathers in the way he might have been, and he respects Remus, but he doesn't need him. He's Harry's professor. He's a man who once, a long time ago, knew Harry's father, and while that's intellectually interesting to Harry, it's not the same thing as Severus, who changed his diapers and put three meals on the table for thirteen years, and whom he knows — because Harry is a smart boy, and he knows what aconite smells like — is brewing a wolfsbane potion.

He drops into the chair beside Severus's desk, and says, "So Lupin's a werewolf, huh?"

"Boots off the table."

Boots go off the table.

"I'm right, aren't I?" says Harry, grinning. "Hermione figured it out. She noticed he's out every month. And his boggart was the moon. And he's got all those cool scars."

"Scars are not cool," says Severus.

Harry pouts and touches his forehead.

"That was given to you by a murderous cult leader on the occasion of your parents' death. Do you think it is cool?"

"I thought it looked kind of badass," says Harry, frankly, squinting at his reflection in a beaker. "Gives me an edge."

"You're thirteen. You don't have an edge."

Severus thanks God that he doesn't remember most of the stupid things he said when he was thirteen. He doesn't know how Lily tolerated him that long.

"He's a great professor, anyway," says Harry. "I really like his class."

"You were always going to do well in it," says Severus. "Lupin specializes in your style of magic."

"Active?" says Harry eagerly. "Practical? Cool?"

"Straightforward," says Severus, severing a fish-head with a great THWACK of his cleaver. "Direct. Technically undemanding."

"Aw. That sounds like you're calling me stupid."

"You're not stupid," he says. "You're perfectly capable of more sophisticated magic. It will never be the first thing you reach for."

Harry says, "Cauldron's boiling over."

Severus swears and cuts the burner, and the bubbles retreat, sulkily, from the lip of the pot. "What do you mean, anyway," continues Harry, "the first thing I reach for?"

"You'll understand once you've been in a duel. Pass the oxtail."

Oxtail is passed. "What's your style of magic?"

Severus hesitates.

James Potter wasn't a duelist. Severus could have handed him his arse in ten out of ten rounds, seven days a week. (He'd dreamed about it, for years on end, even after Severus joined the Order and they professed to be on the same side.) That was because James — proper, grown-up James, not the fifteen-year-old bully with a taste for curses — only ever looked at his enemies with grief, not hatred, and if he could spare them, he would. He believed eternally that if you put him in a room with a Death Eater, and gave him enough time, he could walk out with two Order members at the end of it. He had a fathomless capacity for hope, and so when he raised his wand, he raised it to Disarm. He raised it to Stun. He raised it to petrify, and slow, and impede, but he killed only under orders, and never gladly.

Severus has done it gladly. Severus knows a hundred curses for killing and none of them are Unforgivable. Put Severus in a room with a Death Eater, and one Order member would walk out.

"Textured," says Severus.

"Isn't that just another way of saying 'complex'?" replies James Potter's son, in smug tones far too reminiscent of his father.

Severus brushes off his hands and gives the potion a final stir. "Come smell this," he says. "Name three ingredients you can detect by scent, and then describe their magical effects. I want to see if you can surmise the theory of the potion before I tell you what it does."

"Aw, Sev, I came to hang out, not for more homework—"

"Make it five ingredients."

After five years of two migraines called Fred and George Weasley, Severus takes one look at the Marauder's Map and makes a mental note to go leave some dungbombs on James's grave.

He makes a mental note to leave even more of them on Lupin's, once he gets there, for laughing at him. Which might be soon, if he keeps trying to sneak out to see Black, because Severus is going to kill him.

He signs Harry's permission slip for Hogsmeade, on the condition that he learn how to practice a Patronus first. (He asks Lupin to teach him; Severus isn't showing Potter his Patronus, not on pain of death. They're not having that conversation until Severus can be well-assured of his own death shortly thereafter.) Harry comes home with armfuls on armfuls of shoddy toys from Zonko's, but that's not the real pain of the map; the real pain of it is watching him poke and prod at it with his wand, muttering things, in the hopes that he can get his father's handwriting to say something new. Hungry for the words of a man he never got to meet, one Severus never knew well enough to tell him stories about. 

Lily Evans is their mutual ghost. James is the faceless man in Harry's daydreams, the disappointed shadow in his nightmares, the specter breathing down Severus's neck.

And to top it off, he still hates him. He still loathes James, almost as much as he envies him. How can he not? Severus Snape will forgive James Potter on the day he forgets Lily Evans, and not one minute before. 

Prongs, he thinks. Moony. Padfoot. How did they ever think they were clever?

(He wished he'd been good enough friends with Lily at the time to make fun of her for marrying him. He wished he'd been able to go to her wedding. Not for anything nefarious — he would've been good, wouldn't have made a fuss. He'd just liked to have been there — to take her out and get her shitfaced at Hen Night, properly, with a pub crawl through London's greasiest and slimiest holes in the wall, like she would've wanted; and then turn up on her doorstep the morning-of with a Pepper-Up Potion and a Calming Draught, and Mr. Evans' infamous hair-of-the-dog. He would've sat beside her parents at the reception and explained all the magical parts under his breath, the bespelled vows, the fireworks, the flock of doves that he just knows the Potters would've sprung for, and he would've danced with Mrs. Evans at the reception. And he would've told the band to play her favorite Sinatra, and then he would've asked her to dance — just once, just the once, he's not greedy — and held her tightly, Lily Evans Potter, and told her he was happy for her.)

(That's what he dreams about, when he dreams about it. Not her love, but her forgiveness.)

And still, however, there comes a night when the moon is full, and Lupin's potion sits un-drunk on his desk for far too long, and Severus starts to worry. So he takes it down to the Whomping Willow, through the passage where Sirius Black almost made his best friend a murderer — almost, without knowing it, saved the lives of Lily and James Potter, ten years before any of them knew it — and into the Shrieking Shack, where he finds two men far younger than they look, and three teenagers far younger than they seem. 

(But this time, the Stunners don't hit him. Instead, Harry sighs in relief when he comes through the doorway, even now dreaming of the historic scolding he's going to get when they all escape, because it's Severus, and Severus means he's safe.)

But Sirius Black sees the man who killed Lily and James, and Severus looks at Sirius and sees the same thing, and they raise their wands with the same curse on their lips.

"Don’t you dare," shouts Harry. He throws himself in front of Severus and raises his wand — and Severus is sick, for this is not how it is supposed to be, he should not be protecting Severus, it should only ever have been the other way around. "Don’t touch him! Don’t you dare, you traitor!"

Sirius looks from Harry to Severus, and Severus watches a thirteen-year-old’s thoughtless words do in an instant what dementors could not do in thirteen years. His face contorts, on the verge of tears.

"What did you do to their son?" he asks Severus, quiet with horror. 

"He raised me," snarls Harry. "Where were you?"

Black makes eye contact with Severus, and they both remember how very cruel James could be, sometimes, when he wanted to.

"I'm his godfather, too, you know," says Sirius, apropos of nothing.

Hagrid is preparing Buckbeak's saddle. Harry rests, safe and sleeping, in the Hospital Wing. He'll be crushed when he finds Sirius is gone.

"I'm sure you think that means something," says Severus, yawning.

"I'm just saying. I have — rights."

"It's a bold play to invoke the law, in your position, Padfoot."

Sirius doesn't even flinch, that's how intent he is.

"I'm not going to ask for custody," he says, like he thinks he's being generous or something. "I'm not in any position to ask for that. I know. But I'd like to... I'm going to send him a broomstick."

"No."

"He's my godson, he's a Potter, he needs a decent broomstick—"

"—first chance to keep him off the quidditch pitch in years, and you want to send him right back to it—"

"You can't keep him out of the sky," Sirius says plaintively. "You can't. He's James's son, too."

"I know," he snaps. He thinks: But he's not James, any more than he's Lily. I've had thirteen years to learn that. You've had thirteen hours. I don't think you know it, yet.

But he's obviously not going to say that to Black, so he says, "Make it a safe broomstick, or I'm sending it back."

(A Firebolt turns up with Harry's morning post, and Severus flings his napkin on the table, rubbing his eyes. He forgot how much of a fucking showboat Black was, the great sodding peacock.) 

Albus says, "The Goblet of Fire—"

"I’ll kill you," Severus says calmly, throwing his boots up on the desk.

"But to find out who did it—"

"I’ll brew you a fucking cask of Veritaserum," says Severus, "and we can dose every man, woman, and child at this school, and we’ll have an inquisition that would make Salazar Slytherin give three cheers, but Albus, put that boy in the tournament, and I’ll kill you." He adds, "If Minerva doesn’t get there first."

Albus sighs.

"All right," he says, obviously put out.

So Harry, instead of flying for his life from an angry dragon, shouts himself hoarse from the stands while Cedric Diggory does a piece of animal transfiguration that has Minerva grinning from ear to ear (or her equivalent, which is a half-inch smile and an imperceptible lift of the chin). He asks a fifth year Ravenclaw to the Yule Ball and gets his heart broken, which Severus gets several whinging earfuls about, and then goes with a lovely girl named Parvati whose sari matches his achkan, and he seems to have a good time anyway. Then he watches Cedric fish said fifth year Ravenclaw from the lake, and digs his fingernails about three inches deep into Severus’s arm, hissing, "Oh my God, they’re not gonna actually — Severus, are they serious? She could drown!” and Severus says, "Get used to it, Potter," and casts a Stinging Hex on Harry’s fingers. 

And because of that, in the Third Task, Harry isn't in the maze to touch the portkey.

Instead, Barty Crouch's shithead son kidnaps him from the stands, and Severus goes tearing off the castle grounds, to the place where he can Apparate, throwing out tracing spells like a sloppy weaver yanking wool from her loom.

It doesn't matter: he's too late. Peter Pettigrew loses a hand, and Harry loses three precious drops of blood, and Voldemort rises again from a cauldron in Little Hangleton, and Severus's mark burns like it's being branded afresh.

Harry lives, though.

And so does Cedric Diggory.

"Have you ever wanted to kill somebody?" says Harry savagely, as Severus rubs ointment into his scars.

"If that's a threat, you should try for specifics," he says, reaching for the bandages. "And I'm not budging on the potions homework. If you have any hope of passing that O.W.L., then nine inches should not be a strenuous requirement."

"No, seriously," says Harry, who could write twenty without breaking a sweat, but always complains anyway, because the Gryffindor students have unionized and nominated him to negotiate on their behalf. "Have you?"

"There's this thing that happened," says Severus. "They call it a war."

"Okay. Dumb question, right. I just — Sev, I want her dead. Like, seriously," he says, and his tone is scared, and he is young and full of feeling, and oh, how well Severus remembers this: the guttering fires in the bottom of his stomach, the first embers of a grownup resentment he'd nurture with age. First love was like a warm breath of sweet summer air, surprising and delightful, but first hate was the thrill of one's first touch of snow, the sting, the chill, the shock.

I will not tell lies.

"I know you think you do," he says.

Harry shakes his head. "Anyway," he says angrily. "We're getting together — a few of the students. We're starting our own D.A.D.A. class. Ron and Hermione want me to teach — I'm starting them with Disarmers, Stunners, that kind of stuff. Just things that could help, if they ever have to... I mean, you know. But — d'you want to help us?"

His eagerness splinters Severus's willpower without a thought. He continues, "We could really use a teacher. And a lot of the Gryffindors are scared of you, but I told them, if they just got to know you, they'd know you were a really good teacher."

"I'm not," he says automatically.

"Yeah, okay. But like, seriously, Sev. You could teach us all that... 'textured' stuff you say I'm not good at," he says, quirking his fingers. "And I could teach them Stunners and Patronuses and we could — we could teach together."

Severus closes his eyes.

Oh, he is going to die. Harry Potter is going to run around hurling his life at the feet of anyone who so much as looks at him, until finally, someone takes the hint and steps on it, and when that day comes he will go gladly into the fire, dreaming terrible hero's dreams of a life well-lived, a death well-earned. Harry gives away pieces of himself like it's a fire sale, EVERYTHING MUST GO, he scatters his love thoughtlessly on every living thing that crosses his path. He doesn't get that from his mother, nor his father. Neither of them would have thought of something like this. It's Harry, all Harry.

"I could lose my job," he says.

Harry scoffs. "What, Potions Master? You hate this job."

"Let us return again to the part where you praised me as a teacher."

"There are some risks worth taking," says Harry, ignoring that, which, again, neither of his parents would have. He's nobler than either of them, Severus thinks — a bit wildly, because where the hell did that come from? How did it get in there? Not from Albus, surely.

Minerva, perhaps? Then again, Minerva would've poisoned Dolores by now, if she could have.

(She has, in fact, already asked Severus to brew her a Draught of Living Death. He gave her a kale smoothie with angostura bitters mixed in and told her to use it sparingly.)

"Be that as it may," says Severus.

"Lily's Army?" reads Dolores, sweetly, during their standoff in Albus's office. She looks around, inquiringly, waiting for someone to inform her. "Who is 'Lily'? Is that a student?"

Albus meets Severus's eyes. He asks a question, silently. Severus shakes his head.

"A better woman than you," spits Harry, and Severus thinks, quite against his own volition: Bless.

"Nonsense, Harry. Dolores, that parchment is mine," says Albus, clearly. "I founded the organization. I started it for the purposes of preparing students for, as I understood it, a compelling threat to their lives. If you have quarrel with me for that, it is your right."

"But it is illegal," says Dolores, ecstatically. "It is expressly in violation of Ministry decree. If you admit to starting this... army of lilies, Dumbledore, I have no choice but to arrest you!"

"No!" shouts Harry. Severus claps a hand over his mouth, and hauls him bodily into the corner of the room.

The Aurors come shortly. Dumbledore smiles and twinkles his eyes, and then vanishes in a clap of phoenix smoke, and Severus thinks: Showy old fop. Never could resist a dramatic exit.

Harry thrashes in Severus's arms.

"Let me go," he says furiously. "Let me go, Sev, let me at her, how could you, you didn't even help—"

And it is breaking some part of Severus that he hadn't even known was still whole, but he can't tell Harry that this is how he helps, that this is Severus, helping; that he is a spy, and the spy's job is to lie, to keep the peace, even when everyone hates you for it. Because wars are won by liars.

Albus, the only other man at Hogwarts who understands that, is gone.

The windows of Albus's office are dark. It's midnight, and Fawkes is silent on his perch, shedding feathers the color of Lily's hair. Albus is perambulating, as he likes to do, when he needs to say something but doesn't want to look the person in the eye while he does.

Severus has come to dread being summoned to this office, almost as much as he dreaded it during the war. The conversations rarely wax reflective or philosophical, anymore. He comes in, and Albus gives orders, and he goes out. He has stopped breaking out the firewhiskey whenever they grow unpleasant; Minerva has been nagging him about a drinking problem.

Harry won't tell Severus what it is he and Albus are doing in the Pensieve, and Severus refuses to get it out of him through Legilimency. He wouldn't do that to Harry. Couldn't, anyway — the boy's been working much harder on his Occlumency, ever since last May.

(He also smiles less, and spends more time flying. It's wartime, now, and the first casualties have started rolling in. Having a godfather to spare doesn't make the loss of another hurt any less.)

(If Severus had any idea of how to comfort people, he'd try. But he never knew Sirius Black, any more than he knew James Potter, so instead of insulting them both with attempts at condolence, he walks down to the telephone booth on the corner of the street, and calls Remus Lupin.)

"Harry must not know, not until the last moment, not until it is necessary," Albus insists. "Otherwise, how could he have the strength to do what must be done?"

And Severus thinks: You old fucking fool, how could you possibly know what Harry has the strength for? Have you seen what I have seen? Have you watched him as I have watched him, how he gives himself, how he lives and breathes to protect anyone brave enough to ask? If you told Harry to die for his friends, he would plunge the knife into his own chest.

"There will come a time— after my death—"

"How very convenient, Albus, that the most difficult parts of your plan seem to begin there."

"Do not argue! Do not interrupt!" snaps Albus, and Severus recoils, shocked, because rarely does Albus ever raise his voice. The curse on his finger has blackened his finger up to the third knuckle, now, and is gnawing up the back of his hand. "There will come a time when Lord Voldemort will seem to fear for the life of his snake."

"...For Nagini?"

"Precisely."

And then Albus tells him, in a rush, what he must have known even on the night of Harry's birth, the horrible secret at the heart of Albus Dumbledore, the secret for which Severus Snape has lied and spied and sweat and bled these seventeen years.

Severus once sat in this chair and thought he had seen the ceiling of pain. He thought he knew how much he could bear, because he had borne it all already, and now the worst was behind him, and nothing could scare him any more.

He had been, as always, grotesquely wrong. 

Another long silence.

He says, "I thought...all those years...that we were protecting him."

"We have protected him because it has been essential to teach him, to raise him, to let him try his strength. Meanwhile, the connection between them grows ever stronger, a parasitic growth. Sometimes I have thought he suspects it himself. If I know him, he will have arranged matters so that when he does set out to meet his death, it will truly mean the end of Voldemort."

Avada kedavra, thinks Severus, is a very short spell. It takes but a moment to cast.

Properly done, it can bypass even the soundest wards and Shield Charms.

This is what makes it Unforgivable.

There are worse things in this world than Unforgivable Curses, thinks Severus. There are worse people.

There would be far worse ways to die than saving Harry Potter's life.

"Don't be shocked, Severus," says Albus, mounting audacity on audacity. "How many men and women have you watched die?"

"Lately, only those whom I could not save." He stands up. "You would have me spit upon the memory of Lily Evans. You would have me lead her son to the knife, a pig to slaughter, one of your countless pieces of chattel—"

"It is touching, Severus, that after all these years, you still serve her so dutifully."

"Serve her?"

He is nothing: he is rage with a body. He is adrenaline and cortisol. He is chemical compounds producing electrical reactions in space and time. "Serve her? EXPECTO PATRONUM!"

A silver fawn blossoms from the tip of his wand. It lands on the office floor, bounds once around the office, and nuzzles feebly at Severus’s legs. Then it climbs into the air, and soars out the window.

As the glow fades, Dumbledore turns back to Severus, and his eyes glisten.

"For how long?"

And Severus says—

Somewhere in the highlands of Scotland, there is a magical castle.

It is a vast castle, with a few more holes in it than there used to be, now, thanks to several belligerent giants. It is a castle full of students and soldiers and teachers and generals, with walls that start to rebuild themselves quietly once the fighting has stopped, and a basilisk skeleton in the basement, and ghosts who flit hastily through walls and up through floorboards, urging Healers to come quickly, telling recovery teams where the collapses happened and whether anyone was trapped. There is a hall with a ceiling made of sky, and four tables with no colors hanging over them, and adults and children sit shoulder to shoulder in the same ranks they fought in, without energy left to care for what color they wore on their badges. There is a boathouse where a man's body lies, yet to be discovered, and there is a man in the headmaster's office with a penseive, talking to a portrait of an old man in white.   

"He'll get a portrait, won't he?" says the man.

Albus says softly, "If you ask for it, I cannot imagine they will deny you."

"Because he was — he was a hero. In the end." He lifts his chin. "I can prove it, too."

"He would not have agreed with you," says Albus, as if he has the faintest idea what Severus would have thought about anything, as if there weren't just two people in the world who could ever claim to know Severus for true.

"That's alright," says Harry. "He was wrong about a lot of things. You know, I found a better counterstirring method for Polyjuice, while we were camping in the forest. Hermione and I figured it out." He rubs a heel into his eye. It's late; he died three hours ago. He's just tired. "I wanted to tell him."

"He would have been proud," says Albus, because broken clocks.

"He would've argued with me," says Harry, laughing wetly. "He would've told me to — to check the results, and then check them again, because — scientific method, or something. And then he would've been fussy about it, when I was right. I wanted to see his face do the thing with his lips."

He says, "I don't think he ever said he loved me. He was my — he was my fucking dad, and he never told me he loved me. Not once."

Somewhere far away from the castle, there is a train station in the middle of nowhere, and it looks a little like King's Cross.

There is a train pulling into the station, and a man in black with a small suitcase, containing nothing but a change of robes and a brewing kit. 

There are voices on the train already, strange voices that echo and jostle queerly in the vaulted ceiling of this not-station, and faces through fogged windows he can't make out.

And when it stops, there is a girl hanging from the carriage in a first year's robe, her hair knotty and short, her knees scabbed utterly to hell.

"All 'board," she calls.

Severus grips his trunk anxiously. 

He is eleven years old, and he is drowning in robes three sizes too big, with the sleeves rolled up.

He is thirty-eight, and staring into the face of a woman who never saw the north side of twenty-one. Behind her stands a man with chopped-up black hair, and brown eyes the color of bourbon in firelight, and a grin that tells you you're in for a fresh taste of hell.

"There you are, you old slimeball," he says. "I've got a bone to pick with you."

Severus goes stiff. He hesitates, in the doorway to the train. Doesn't get on.

James brandishes his finger. "Let me be clear: I am a Holyhead Harpies fan first, and a Potter second."

Severus's jaw drops.

"And that you, scoundrel, had my poor son running around in a bloody Pud U jersey—"

"Fuck off, Potter, I didn't want him flying in the first place," says Severus, outraged. "It's your own fault he's got no self-preservation, your ancestors must have crossbred with lemmings." Then, also: "And Minerva bought him the damn jersey, anyway."

"A likely story," says James grimly. "She'll hear it from me, when she shows up. Probably got to wait a century or so, that bird's going to live forever."

Lily says, "Oh feck off, James, honestly, like you could ever get a word in edgewise with Minerva."

Severus shivers.

She glances at him. "Wot?" she demands. "Whatcha looking at me like that for?" Then she grins, all wickedness, and it's everything he's ever wanted. "He's a menace, isn't he? My boy?"

"The worst," he says, with feeling.

"He brings hell, does he?" she says, pleased.

"And then some."

"Bet you got no rest, all those seventeen years, didja?"

"None," he says. "It was a relief to die, honestly."

"Ah, shut up, you liked it," she says affably. "I had to get someone to keep you in line, didn't I? Couldn't have you slinking around unsupervised, not with only ol' Dumbledore to look out for you. Would've been disastrous."

"Lily," he says, "please — I couldn't — I did my best."

"Your best?" She raises her eyebrows. "What, with Harry, you mean?"

"Yes."

"Damn right, I'd think so," she sniffs. "Wouldn't have anything less." She turns to James. "I did tell you he'd do alright."

"She did tell me so," admits James. "I'll eat crow, there, I guess. I made a hard push for Mad-Eye Moody."

Severus imagines a wizened, scowling, Harry creeping around on tiptoe, checking his corners, terrorizing first years with barks of: Constant vigilance!

He snorts a laugh.

Then he covers his own mouth, horrified.

Lily stares.

James beams so wide he's like to catch flies.

"I hate you," he says to James.

"Okay," says James, breathless with excitement. "That's fine. Snivellus, you didn't — you didn't go on and develop a sense of humor, did you? After I died? You wouldn't be that cruel."

Lily batters his arm with punches, spitting, "I told you he was funny, I did tell you, you didn't listen—"

"Lily, I love you more than chocolate and quidditch and those footrubs where they really work their thumbs in there, but shut up for a second, this is important. Severus, do you now, or have you ever, harbored sentiments which might be accurately described as jocular? Have you indulged in the wicked majjyks known as 'chuckles'? Will you admit to cracking a smile at the well-applied use of a whoopee cushion?"

Severus thinks: They are so very much twenty-one.

It occurs to him, watching them in their gorgeous youthful bickering, that they will always be twenty-one. When they finally meet their son, he will be older than they ever were.

Here, past his deathbed, Severus feels something entirely new.

He doesn't know that he's ever been sorry for Lily and James, before. He's been sorry for himself, and sorry for Harry. But to pity Lily and James is to suppose that he had something they didn't.

Which, of course, he did. He had many things: many years, many moments, many chances. He had long summer days watching Harry fly his broomstick over Spinner's End, and birthday cakes, and hot dog mac-and-cheeses, and Harry's first set of O.W.L. scores, when he came hurtling into Severus's bedroom, shouting, SEV LOOK! TWO O'S! I'M A GENIUS!

But then Lily, turns, smiling, and — well, it's impossible to feel sorry about anything, now.

He says, "You two are both awful. You deserve each other."

"Yeah, and you're just as," says Lily. "Get on the bloody train, so we can go, already. We already schlepped out to come get you, you might as well not keep us."

The engine gives a great belch, and pours mist. He adjusts his grip on his suitcase. He thinks of a boy in a boathouse, his tear-streaked face buried in his godfather's coat. He thinks of a baby, sitting on a great big mattress, trying to eat Severus's finger. 

Here is the wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles: He is standing at long last in front of Lily Evans, and he still feels so very sad.

"Where is it taking us?"

Lily smiles, sweetly, sadly. She is seven and wild. She is eleven and fearless. She is twenty-one, and holds out her hand.

"Home," she says.