Author's Notes: This is a sixth-year Severitus' Challenge fic, inspired in part by my euphoria at the real Severitus finally updating her fic, A Father's Sin, (which I'm sure you've all already read), after a six month hiatus. I doubt this will turn out to be overwhelmingly Snape-centric, though. Right now I'm planning to tone down that whole aspect of it, but we'll see what happens. I take my sweet time getting around to anything, so bear with me, but I assure you that, yes, there is a plot. I've had a pretty comprehensive plan of it all mapped out very prettily before I even started writing. Most everything has a point. Also, I've recently come to the conclusion that my writing style is wordy and hard to understand, so this is what you get when I consciously try to remedy that… sort of. And now for a bit of pointless trivia: the first few pages of this fic were originally written… on paper! Archaic, aren't I?
Chapter 1 – The Letter
Not for the first time that summer Harry Potter could be found lying flat on the bed in his bedroom at Number 4, Privet Drive, staring listlessly at the cobwebs gathering by the ceiling and contemplating his continued existence. Outside the house the wind howled, thunder crashed, and cold rain hurtled from the pitch black sky. It filled the storm sewers, turned the usually immaculate front lawns, flowerbeds, and gardens of Privet Drive into pits of mud and rotting green gunk, and otherwise thoroughly soaked anyone and anything unfortunate enough to be caught out in the open. Great drops of rain beat against the windows of Number 4, making the panes of glass rattle threateningly in their frames. The storm had been going on and off for weeks now, and if Harry didn't know any better he would have suspected Voldemort of magically interfering with it just to pester the boy-who-lived. But truly, Harry wasn't especially bothered by the weather. In fact, he found the storm strangely comforting. It complemented the way he felt. Each flash of lightning and roar of thunder was an angry protest against reality, against fate, and the now familiar rumble of falling rain soothed Harry's nerves. It was nice to know that the heavens themselves were mourning Sirius' loss.
Still, Harry thought as another flash of forked lightning lit up the sky outside the window and momentarily threw the shadows in his room into sharp relief, tonight's storm was especially bad. He didn't want to think of Hedwig making her way back through this gale, and as much as he missed her company, he hoped that she would have enough sense to wait it out at Hermione's. He didn't need more of his friends suffering because of him.
Hermione and Ron had written to him almost everyday since the beginning of the summer, often not waiting for a reply before sending the next letter. Harry supposed his friends were trying to make up for their lack of meaningful contact during the previous summer, and that he really should be grateful for the effort, but he was in no way sorry that the raging storm outside put a definite damper on whatever post he would have received. It seemed that everyone who had been even remotely aware of Sirius' innocence had felt obliged to send their condolences, and Harry had found himself on the receiving end of dozens of politely sympathetic letters from everybody ranging from Remus Lupin, Luna Lovegood, and Neville Longbottom to Professor McGonagall, his transfiguration teacher, who also took the opportunity to congratulate him on his O.W.L.'s, Mrs. Figg, an old squib that lived two streets away, and Dedalus Diggle, a member of the Order that Harry hardly knew at all. Harry had trouble keeping track of all the owls, and Hedwig certainly hadn't been happy with the intruders. Most of the letters avoided any direct mention of Sirius, for whatever reasons, but skirted around the issue constantly. Just reading them left Harry feeling mentally and emotionally exhausted, and his replies tended to be rather curt.
It wasn't as if he had much to say, really. So far this summer had been comparatively uneventful. The Dursleys had been sufficiently intimidated by Moody's threat back at King's Cross Station and largely ignored Harry, which was just fine with him. Harry no longer ate meals with the rest of the family, so the most Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon could do is scowl at him as they occasionally passed him in the hallway. Dudley, still unnerved by last summer's Dementor attack, avoided Harry altogether. The foul weather also meant that Harry spent most of his time shut up indoors, in his room, staring at the ceiling as he was doing now, or else practicing Occlumency, which was an extremely convenient excuse not to think. The only halfway interesting thing that had happened so for had been the incident with Dudley and Mark Evans, an eleven-year-old boy who Harry knew lived in the area, and who, like the rest of the neighborhood, had believed Harry to be a delinquent criminal who went to St. Brutus' Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys. Harry wasn't sure how he felt about the whole thing.
It had been only a couple of weeks into the summer holidays and one of the first finer days of the season in terms of weather, meaning that the sky was overcast but it wasn't pouring. Harry had taken advantage of these conditions to mope around aimlessly through the streets surrounding Privet Drive. He had been wondering who was following him, for someone undoubtedly was. After last summer Dumbledore probably had people watch him sleep, and now that the Ministry was openly admitting Voldemort's rebirth they would almost certainly help out as well… Harry imagined a horde of Ministry Aurors in invisibility cloaks following him around the neat little houses that made up the neighborhood surrounding Privet Drive. It was oddly disturbing. Harry strained his ears as he walked down the road and thought he heard footsteps other than just his own. He turned around suddenly and glared accusingly at the air directly behind him. Now he distinctly heard a rustle of cloth, a shuffling footfall, and a loud gong, as something invisible banged into a nearby street sign, causing it to quiver slightly, followed by soft cursing. Harry winced sympathetically. Tonks? He thought. He considered calling out to her, but as there was a chance that it actually wasn't Tonks, (there were bound to be dozens of clumsy Order members), it might turn the whole thing mightily awkward. Especially if it was someone like Snape who was actually following him.
He had still been in the process of deciding what to do when he had heard shouting from an alleyway up ahead. The alleyway, in fact, where he had seen Sirius for the first time, and where he and Dudley had been attacked by Dementors only the year before.
"I mean it!" a distant voice yelled shrilly. "I'll turn you into a frog!"
Sufficiently distracted, Harry jogged over to see what was going on. He had been mildly surprised to see Dudley, Piers, and Malcolm cracking their knuckles menacingly while surrounding a fourth, smaller figure; Harry wouldn't have thought Dudley would dare to go anywhere near here after what happened last summer. The little boy, who Harry then recognized as Mark Evans, was waving a stick wildly in the air. Piers and Malcolm sniggered, while Dudley turned considerably more and more red in the face, but nevertheless eyed the stick warily. "No you can't, you freak!" Dudley spluttered. "Freaks like you can't do any freak stuff over the holidays, freak! I'll teach you to -"
"I mean it!" Mark Evans shrieked over him as the three bigger boys cornered him against a wall. "I'll turn you into a frog and then you'll be sorry!"
"He means it, Dud," Harry called, making Dudley and the two others turn around to face him instead, but in such a way that kept the other boy stuck between them. Malcolm scowled, Piers grinned mockingly, and Dudley clenched his teeth and turned purple. "The rule against using magic out of school doesn't apply to kids below first year." Harry continued calmly, having no idea if this was true or not, and even less whether Mark actually was a wizard or whether he was just making it up to scare Dudley. There wasn't supposed to be any other wizards living near here. Either way, Harry's cousin was in little danger of getting turned into a frog.
Dudley looked hesitant, but Piers let out a disbelieving snort. "Magic?" he sneered. "I can understand how this brat can come up with these idiot things, but you, Potter? How stupid do you think we are?"
Harry chose to ignore the question, privately thinking that the measure of such stupidity could not be conveyed in words, and instead addressed Dudley, who now looked very much like he would have been running away if not for Piers' and Malcolm's presence, and the shred of pride he had left. "Leave him alone, Dudley."
"Or what?" Piers asked maliciously. "What are you going to do, Potter?"
"Yeah," Dudley attempted a sneer but there was a definite quiver to his voice when he spoke. "What are you going to do?"
Harry folded his arms over his chest and smiled nastily at his cousin. "What do you think?" he bluffed. Dudley turned white.
"Let's go, you guys," he said with all the nonchalance he could muster. "This is boring. We've got better things to do…"
"No, wait," Piers interrupted. "We aren't finished here. We'll pound this squirt into a paste," he motioned at Mark, who was staring wide eyed between Harry and Dudley, "and then we'll leave."
"No, I don't think –" Dudley began, but Piers already reached out towards the younger boy. Harry felt an immense wave of anger course through him as he reached for his wand, and he probably would have done something he would have regretted later if Piers hadn't inexplicably jumped back with a yell almost immediately, waving his arm around wildly as if it were burnt. He stared wild-eyed at Harry. Harry blinked.
Malcolm looked confused for a moment, before apparently deciding that Harry was the offending target, or perhaps the more vulnerable one, and charging meaningfully at him. Before he could do anything himself, Harry heard someone whisper a soft "Petrificus Totalus" in the area to his right, and Malcolm froze in his tracks. A moment later Tonks, because he was pretty sure it was Tonks now, released Malcolm from the spell, at which point he let out a shriek, turned tail, and ran. Dudley and Piers wasted no time following.
Harry stared at their retreating forms for a second before approaching the younger boy, who was still huddled up against the wall. "Are you all right?" he asked awkwardly, smiling uncertainly. Mark Evans nodded and beamed back up at him. "Can you really do magic?" he asked eagerly.
"Er…" Harry shifted around uncomfortably. "Can you?"
"Uh-uh," the boy nodded, carelessly throwing the stick he had still been holding into a nearby clump of bushes. "I don't have a real wand yet, though. My mom says she'll buy me one when we go to London." He looked up at Harry expectantly as they made their way slowly out of the alleyway and down the road, apparently unfazed by narrowly being beat to a pulp by three kids five years older and collectively at least four hundred pounds heavier than him.
"Er…" Harry repeated, somewhat stupidly. He was distracted by staring at the top of the kid's head, which hardly seemed to reach up past his waist. Were first years always so short?
"So do you have a wand?" the boy prompted. "Do you really know how to do Magic? I heard you go to St. Brutus', is that a Magical school? I'm going to go to a Magic school. How did you do that back there?"
"Er, I didn't," Harry said, thinking that if this kid really was a Muggle he could always say he was pretending. "I'm not allowed to do Magic out of school until I'm of age. My friend Tonks-" he said, looking around suddenly, before remembering he couldn't see her, and turning back to Mark. "Uh, anyway, my friend Tonks can, though. She's an Auror for the Ministry."
The kid nodded as if he understood. Harry was doubtful. "I didn't even know that Magic was real until a week ago. Well, I didn't think that it was real. Then I got a letter that said I could go to a school to learn magic and this cat-lady came and told my parents I was a wizard," he told Harry proudly. "They didn't believe it at first – and my letter," he added impressively, leaning in towards Harry as they walked, "it was delivered by an owl." Harry smiled at the kid's enthusiasm. Was this what he had looked like when he had gotten his Hogwarts letter? He was pretty sure now that Mark was genuine; the circumstances with the owl and the letter all fit, and 'cat-lady' sounded suspiciously like McGonagall. "So what's an Auror?" the younger boy asked suddenly.
"What? An Auror?" Harry asked, startled from recollections of his own first meeting with Hagrid. "Aurors are Dark Wizard catchers."
"There's Dark Wizards?" Mark asked, wide-eyed.
"Yeah," Harry replied, his smile turning somewhat grim. The other boy didn't seem to notice. He continued to prattle on cheerfully, informing Harry, among other things, that he was going to get his own owl and name it Bob, after a pet hamster that he used to have, that he was going to learn how to turn Dudley into a frog by next summer, and that the 'cat-lady' was going to come by later and take him and his family on vacation to Scotland to visit the school for the rest of the summer. Harry walked him right up to the door of his house before heading back towards Number 4.
The meeting with Mark Evans had left Harry feeling distinctly ill at ease. Dark Wizards. He had owled Hermione about it later, and she wrote back that due to the rise in Death Eater attacks since the Ministry had finally admitted Voldemort's return, and the likelihood of Muggle-borns being targeted, the families of prospective Muggle-born students were being offered sanctuary at Hogwarts until their houses could be properly warded by the Ministry.
Now, as he lay stretched out on his bed and listened to the rain drum against the window, Harry wondered if Mark's very proximity to himself had made him more likely a target. He remembered his own first contact with the Wizarding World, his own feeling of jubilation on learning that he would be leaving the Dursleys to go study magic with other wizards and witches who were just like him, and then he remembered his first meeting with Draco Malfoy, and how it felt to learn that he didn't quite fit into this world either, that he was an outcast either way. He wondered how long it would take Mark Evans to learn that a significant part of Wizarding society considered him to be beneath them, and that some wouldn't think twice before killing him with a casual wave of a wand. He was exchanging one world with one set of problems for another that wasn't as utopian as it might seem at first, and whose problems could be a lot more drastic than mere schoolyard bullying… although there was plenty of that as well, Harry scowled at the ceiling, thinking of the Slytherins. Was it really worth the trouble?
Was it worth it for him, for Harry? Well, that was easy, really. Even if Harry had had a choice, which he didn't, the prophecy had taken any choice that he might have had away from him, he knew that he wouldn't have been able to leave the Wizarding World anyway, for the very simple reason that he had nowhere else to go. While he was sure that Sirius would have gladly turned his back on all-things-Magical and lived Muggle-style with Harry if Harry had asked him to, Sirius was dead, and the only other real family he had left was inextricably tied to the Hogwarts and in turn to the Wizarding World.
But what about Mark Evans, who already had a family that loved him no matter what? Did his parents know they were sending their son into a world on the brink of a war in which he would be one of the most vulnerable, simply because of his background? Did they know that they were trusting a single sixteen-year-old boy to murder one of the most powerful wizards of all time, or else their son would have no chance of a peaceful existence? The thought made Harry feel sick. He couldn't understand it. True, Voldemort killed Muggles too, and not going to Hogwarts wouldn't have necessarily stopped him from harassing a Muggle-born, but there were other options. Harry wouldn't have trusted himself, he would have taken his family and moved to Australia, and waited there until either the war burned out here in England or else Voldemort took over the world., in which case it would make little difference where he lived.
It was these kinds of morbid thoughts that preoccupied Harry's mind when the owl arrived at his window. He didn't know how long it had waited out there before he noticed its presence, the tapping of its beak drowned out by the roar of the wind and the rain splattering against the glass. The sight of its dark, ragged profile against a turbulent sky momentarily lit up by a flash of lightning gave Harry quite a start, and he rushed up to throw open the window. The large tawny owl fell into the room in a rush of wind, rain, and feathers, and Harry felt a guilty sort of relief, as he struggled to close the window again and dull the roar of the storm outside, that the bedraggled owl was not in fact Hedwig. Harry carried the owl to Hedwig's cage, where it gave him a feeble hoot of thanks as he pushed some owl treats in its direction, before picking up the envelope it had carried.
The owl was quite understandably soaked, but the large, thick, parchment envelope it had delivered seemed to have been charmed against the rain. It had the Hogsmead Post Office symbol stamped in a corner on one side, followed by the longest, most complicated list of delivery instructions Harry had ever seen, all written in bright Gryffindor-red ink, in a graceful, feminine hand he didn't recognize. It read:
"Destroy upon the death of the primary legal heir of James and Lily Potter.
If, by the date of 12 August, 1996, he is still alive and of sound mind, send to James William Potter.
If, by the above date, James Potter is deceased or otherwise incapacitated, send to Joseph and Isabella Evans.
If, by the above date, both Joseph and Isabella Evans are also deceased or otherwise incapacitated, send to Wilma and William Frederic Potter.
If, by the above date, both Wilma and William Potter are also deceased or otherwise incapacitated, send to Marlene Josephine McKinnon.
If, by the above date, Marlene McKinnon is also deceased or otherwise incapacitated, send to Alice Tiffany Longbottom.
If, by the above date, Alice Longbottom is also deceased or otherwise incapacitated, send to Sirius Orion Black.
If, by the above date, Sirius Black is also deceased or otherwise incapacitated, send to the primary legal heir of James and Lily Potter."
For the first few moments after reading the instructions Harry could do little more than stare at the envelope, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of death it had taken for it to get to him, 'the primary legal heir of James and Lily Potter.' The bright red ink now resembled nothing more so than freshly poured blood. Harry looked at the back of his right hand, where a faint pale scar still marred the otherwise smooth skin, and wondered somewhat vaguely if he was ever going to be able to write anything in red ever again without thinking of these sinister connotations.
Carefully and with a mild sense of foreboding, Harry slit the envelope open and pulled out the contents. Inside was no less than seven of what looked like standard, white, Muggle post envelopes, all of which were unsealed and labeled in the same elegant script: "Dear James," "Dear Mom and Dad," "Dear Mom and Dad Potter," "Dear Marlene," "Dear Alice," "Dear Sirius," and "Dear Harry or Elizabeth." There was also a small, heavy, metal object on a chain loose inside the big envelope, which Harry pulled out and examined first. It was a two-headed snake, he realized, with one head at each end, shaped out of silver and gold and curved to resemble the number eight, with the tips of the miniscule, two-pronged, golden tongues of the two heads almost touching, but not quite, where they crossed the middle of the gracefully curled and patterned body. The whole of it was no more than two inches in length. Four tiny rubies glinted in the eye sockets of the two heads, making the snake blink and causing Harry to half expected the thing to uncoil and slither down his palm. It had to be Wizard Jewelry, he decided, there was no way that Muggles could have kept the little tongues curved like that; gold was too soft. As if to prove his point, the negative space between the two tear-shaped coils of the pendant momentarily flashed bright blue. At first Harry thought he must have imagined it, but then, as he tilted the snake a little to the side, he could clearly see a flash of that same clear blue, as if there was a thin sheet of tinted glass between the coils, only visible when just the right amount of light hit it. But there was nothing there; a thin gold chain was running clear through one of the openings, and Harry felt nothing when he put his finger through either of them.
Bemused, he slipped the pendant back into the big envelope and pulled out the paper from the one marked "Dear Harry or Elizabeth." The letter inside covered three sheets of plain Muggle paper with handwriting so small it would have made Hermione proud. The front page was headed, "12 December, 1980." Harry skipped over to the back and stared; the letter was sighed, "Your loving mother, Lily." He flipped back to the front and read:
"Dear Harry or Elizabeth,
I'm sorry I don't know which one you are, but you haven't been born yet, you see. You'll be Harry if you're a boy, and you'll be Elizabeth if you're a girl and James gets his way. If you're reading this that means that me, James, both of our sets of parents, both of your godparents, and Alice Longbottom are all dead. It also means that I died rather young, since I fully intend to update this in a couple of years. Tough luck, kid.
The reason I'm writing this, to be blunt, is that your father isn't who you think he is, and this has the potential of causing you some serious problems sometime in the near future. I'm not going to tell James about this, but not because I don't think he wouldn't love you if he knew. It just seems safer this way, for all of us.
Your real father doesn't know about you either, but by the time you'll read this he'll be long dead, most likely, so you don't have to worry about that. His political obligations kept us from ever having a relationship out in the open, so there are few who would see reason to call your parentage into question. Your father is a man by the name of Severus Snape – "
Harry let out a snort of disbelief. Snape? He'd almost believed it for a moment, and probably would have seriously considered the possibility of anybody else being his father, say Flitwick even, but Snape? Harry grinned from ear to ear, that was just a little too perfect to be believable. He stuffed the letter and all the other little envelopes back inside the big parchment one. He really should have figured it out sooner, Harry thought as he glanced at the address again. How could Sirius' middle name have been Orion? That would make his initials read 'S.O.B.'
He was about to chuck the whole thing in the trash when he reconsidered, tossing it instead into his school trunk, which lay open in a corner of the room. Maybe Hermione would know some spell to trace who had sent it. If he had received a letter that covered him from head to foot in orange toothpaste upon opening, Harry would have known who to blame, but he didn't think the twins would bother with something this subtle or elaborate. Maybe Malfoy.
Whoever had sent it, Harry thought as he flung himself back onto the bed, really, how stupid did they think he was?
*****
"14 December, 1980.
Dearest Severus,
I am writing this to you because I am pregnant with your child. - "
Back in the dungeons of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Professor Severus Snape let out a snort of disbelief, leaned back in his chair, threw the letter he had just opened back onto his desk and smiled down at it with an air of good-humored superiority. God, he thought, wouldn't that have been a nightmare? As many fond memories and wistful emotions as receiving a letter from Lily had brought up in Severus, he couldn't have been more glad that she had been mistaken. Harry Potter was the image of James Potter, both in terms of appearance and personality, and being the father of the Boy-Who-Lived was a burden Severus did not envy him in the slightest. He let a thin-lipped smile grace his features and wondered idly how the illustrious Harry Potter would have reacted to the knowledge of how close he had come to being fathered by his most hated Potions Master.