Paternity

Harry is told that Severus Snape is his father. Surprisingly, this changes little. Oneshot.

Harry looked over the large desk to his professor.

"Sorry," he asked in a reasonable tone of voice. "I don't think I heard that right. What did you say?"

Dumbledore sighed. He felt that he should have known that Harry would need this explained multiple times. It was a lot to take in.

"As I said," the teacher repeated, "Your mother and Severus Snape were very close for a time. Very close. You are not the child of James Potter. You are biologically the son of Severus Snape."

Harry had a very blank face. Dumbledore hoped that this was simply because Harry didn't know how to react to this information rather than Harry not believing it. He pushed onward again.

"Your mother disagreed with the . . . . political views of Severus and they ended things before knowing she was pregnant. When it was discovered, she and James were already dating." Dumbledore waited again, hoping for a reaction. He got one, sort of.

"Dad- James knew I wasn't his?" Harry asked mildly.

"He did. It was a bit obvious with timing and all of that." Dumbledore replied. "Your mother didn't want Severus to have anything to do with you, considering your blood status and her own. She worried your lives would be forfeit. James, and I don't know how this happened- just that it was his idea, offered to be put down on the documents as your father. Your mother agreed- since they were friends and had begun to date. Just before you were born, they decided to marry."

Dumbledore stopped talking, once again hoping for a reaction. The boy had thrown several expensive objects when his godfather had died at the end of the last term. He kept waiting for a repeat performance.

But nothing happened.

After a time Harry asked another question.

"But," He seemed to mull this thought over for a while before giving it voice. "I look like James Potter."

A good point.

"And after you were born, when it was pretty obvious that you were Severus's child, James performed a powerful transfiguration. He was always good at human transfiguration. He changed you to look like him. That's why you are so very similar to James Potter. I think he only just remembered to give you your mother's eye color since your eyes were already light as a child."

"Oh," Harry said quietly.

They waited.

Dumbledore understood that this was a shock to the poor boy. He needed time to absorb it. But after waiting for what seemed to be a long time he needed to ask Harry an important question.

"Harry," He started, "I know this is a lot to take in. But I need to know if I can call Severus up here and tell him. Your mother and James swore me to secrecy and I am only allowed to tell Severus if you deem it necessary or safe."

"Wha', " Harry jerked his head up from where he had been staring at his clasped hands to look at Dumbledore like he was crazy. "NO!"

Dumbledore sighed again, moving to rest his forearms on the desk. The cursed arm stung slightly at this movement, but this was ignored with practiced ease.

"I know you two don't have the best of a relationship," Dumbledore said "But he is your birth father and he does have some right to interact with you as his son."

"No," Harry repeated. "We aren't telling him."

"If this is just because you don't like him- ," Dumbledore started.

"No," Harry said haitally. "This isn't about that. Or rather, not just that."

"Then what is it?"

Harry waited a moment before speaking slowly.

"My mum, well- she had the right to chose who I'd call dad. It was her choice who would be the guy to raise me. And she wanted my Dad, James.

"Also," He tacked on, his eyes moving to look to the bookshelf on the left side of the room. "Dad was willing to raise Snape's son. Snape's barely willing to teach James Potter's. Definitely not willing to be fair to Harry Potter. If he cared about my mum at all he'd be willing to do something more than that for her."

Dumbledore felt a surge of anger at all of the stupid promises he'd made over the years. Snape's insistence on hiding his betrayal of Voldemort for Lily was keeping him from ever meeting the son she'd born him.

"And, you know, along with that, James Potter died for me. He stood by my mum when she was pregnant- even with another man's kid. He hid with her when she was in danger. He told her to take me and run when Voldemort came for me."

Harry's eyes were squarely facing Dumbledore. He thought for a moment that if green eyes and pale skin and glassed could erupt into flame by sheer intensity then Harry's face would be burning now.

"I'm going into war, Professor. I've got to face down Voldemort. And being James Potter's son, being the son of my Hero, has always giving me courage." Harry's voice cracked and broke as this confession came.

"I saw his and mum's faces in the Mirror of Erised when I face Quirrel. Second year I knew I couldn't be the heir of Slytherin since I was the son of a muggleborn and James Potter the Gryffindor. I only saved Sirius third year since I thought that Dad was going to! And it's just always been like that! I'm James Potter's son so I have to be-" Here the choked and cracking whisper died.

"I just can't. I may have been born because of Severus Snape, but I was born James Potter's son. I'm alive because of James' sacrifice. And mum's. They are mine and I'm theirs and I don't need some man who can't stand to look at James Potter's child to suddenly sweep in because I'm his and expect a different person or treat me any differently because of something I have no control over. Because If I had a choice I would would rather be the son of the man who loved my mum enough to not care about her blood and loved me enough not to care about mine. The man who loved me. That's who I'd choose."

Dumbledore felt as though his eyes were glued to the boy in front of him.

"So that's what I'm doing. I'm James' son. That's the long and short of it. Anyone who my mum and dad wanted to know- knows and I'll tell anyone else who needs too. And Severus Snape only needs to know that I am James' son!"

Harry was sitting straight backed in his chair. His face rigid with determination. His whole soul seemed to be spilling out of his body: he had too much spirit to be contained.

And Dumbledore knew he could never take this away from Harry. He knew that Harry was going to struggle enough over this. So he cut himself off from the part of him that wanted to cry, and agreed with the child.

And when Harry had left, Dumbledore called Severus up to his office and asked the young, unknowing father to kill him.

At the end of the year Dumbledore lay dead in the courtyard and Harry felt justified in his choice. He watched Severus Snape run away from him and he screamed coward and felt that he knew, at least a little, of what his mother must have felt.

He screamed coward louder.

And he never stopped using the Half-blood Prince's spells. Snape had never given him more than existence. He felt more than justified in stealing his spells.

That office of Dumbledore's was a place where secrets and wisdom are shared and shown and buried. It was in that office that Tom Riddle first learned that his murders, even dissociated from himself, could cause problems. It was there that Harry Potter learned many a deep secret and new wisdom. It was there than Dumbledore planned his own death. It was in this office that James Potter realized that he and his friends had nearly killed a boy. It was there that James Potter promised himself that he would become a better man. Years later he and Lily would come to their old Headmaster's office and tell him of the baby that would be born in June and let him in on the child's paternity.

And in this room, the child would learn of his fathers, both of them. One in sixth year, when he was told that he wasn't his father. The other at the end of a war that should have been a seventh year of school for him, when he dipped his head into a pensive. There he learned of a father he had never acknowledged, whose life could be told in a series of betrayals. A man who never held his son- but lived and died for the love of the boy's mother.

James died for his son.

Severus died for Lily's.

And both had a grandson who carried their name.

(I really hope that this feels unsatisfactory. I am really tired of fanfics that have Harry turn out to be related to Voldemort or Snape and then make either of them wonderful and good. Snape was never a good man. He was a devoted one, an obsessed one, and died for the winning side, but that never made him good to me. Just human and complicated. And I do not think that Harry's friends or family would have abandoned him over a change in parent not do I think that Harry would have abandoned his philosophical life view due to a change in genetics. But that's just me. And I totally read Snape/ Voldie as Harry's parent stories. I just dislike how forced they feel and have found they tend not to keep Harry in character and not have a good reason for the change. END OF RANT.)

Outtake: year seven, Remus shows up to talk to Harry and join his hunt for Horcruxes.

"What? You and Sirius knew?" Harry looked up from the floor, embarrassment forgotten by the unexpected response to his news.

"Well, yeah." Remus said. "James would have told us if he and your mother ever . . . um-"

"Oh," Harry said because Remus looked incredibly awkward. It took him a moment to think of what the end of that sentence could be. Then he blushed a brilliant red. "OH!"

"Yeah," Remus muttered.

"They didn't . . . ?"

"Waited until after you were born and they were married by then," Remus said.

Harry decided to change the topic before his hair caught flame from sheer embarrassment.

"Why didn't you or Sirius ever mention it?" Harry asked "Why hasn't Pettigrew told anyone?"

"Well, I imagine that it was all the same reason for the lot of us." Remus collected himself. "First we were all terrified of what Lily and James would do if we ever mentioned it. And second, and more importantly, it was the greatest prank the Marauders ever played. It was actually the last prank we ever played together. It made it special to all of us."

Harry wondered how he should feel about being a prank on his birth father. He asked.

"Don't think of it like that," Remus said gently. Harry had hope for some great advice and counsel. Then Remus reminded him that he had been one of the 'great marauders' as well. "Think of it as being the greatest and last prank of the marauders."

"One that even a traitor, isn't even willing to betray." Harry added tired of the conversation now.

"Well, I think that has more to do with how much Peter hates Snape than any consideration for you or me." Remus admitted. "Snape has always picked on Peter, even in first year. And given that they are working together now, Peter must enjoy knowing where Severus' child is. Lording it over the man silently in his head."

Harry was done with this conversation. Remus seemed to recognize this.

"Well," Remus said, moving on, "I was wondering if I could join you three. . ."

Outtake:

"I'm dating Severus Snape's son," Ginny said weakly.

Harry didn't like hearing it said that way. But in the face of the shock that Ginny had received he let it go. He shifted slightly. It had been a good idea to let her know this before he bought the ring, he decided.

"Severus Snape." Ginny's eyes were a bit glassy as they stared straight through the world. "Severus Snape reproduced."

She took the next long moment to herself to process it. Then a terrifying idea struck.

"Wait! If James performed magic on you to make you look like him does that mean our kids will look like what you would have looked like if you hadn't been transfigured? Oh Merlin, does this mean that you look just like James? Am I attracted to your dad?"

Harry blinked at the onslaught of questions.

"I checked with Hermione about the kids thing. We had a test done while you were in Russia for that game. Dad, James, was really good at transfiguration. He changed my DNA, my blood, permanently. It means that I really am genetically, James and Lily's blood child. There might be some traits from Snape left over but it isn't noticable if I do."

"Of course Hermione and Ron know," Ginny sighed. She was calming down a bit. "And Hermione researched it."

One of the reasons Harry loved Ginny was that she could say things like that without sounding or really even being jealous at all. She had close friends, too, and family members she told everything before Harry heard about it. They were both making the transition to couple-dom but it wasn't destroying their own relationships with others. Harry really did love Ginny. Thus this conversation. Even the awkward bits.

"So, while I look a lot like James I'm not his identical twin. Even if I was, I'd hope you'd be more attracted to my amazing personality than his." Harry teased. She was beginning to blush on the tips of her ears and her neck. "But if you do find yourself attracted to dead people than you probably have a problem. I bet Hermione would be able to get you phone numbers for muggle mind healers who help with that."

Ginny hit him over the head with a pillow before going for her wand.

They didn't get back on topic for a good half hour.

the end