"Olivia Snape!" Severus took the stairs two at a time, spurred by the deafening crash he'd heard from his daughter's bedroom, where she had been sent minutes before after her plan to use her late grandmother's wand to procure a puppy had been found out. The seven-year-old had not been able to lure the dog she'd been begging for, but she had managed to light the living room rug on fire.

When Severus reached the room, the door was open, and his dark-haired child was standing in the middle of the floor, surrounded by what remained of her furniture, which was shattered and littering the floor. Olivia was obviously shocked, and when she saw Severus in the door, her shock turned to dread written all over her face.

"I didn't mean to!" She said, panicked. "I swear! It was an accident!"

Severus silently waved his wand and watched the room put itself back together. "I have no doubt," he came into the room and picked up the girl, settling her on the bed. "We've talked about this, have we not?" The Potions Master folded his arm across his chest. His child's accidental magic tended to be explosive, no matter her emotion. He'd never heard of a child with such dramatic magical moments.

"You have to keep your emotions steady," Severus scolded. "It might help not to do things that get you in trouble." He regarded the green-eyed child on the bed. Tears were welling in her eyes. "You know better than to touch someone's wand, correct?"

Olivia nodded, the tears slipping down her cheeks. "Yes, sir."

"I thought perhaps we had left the wand-grabbing stage behind; the last time was so long ago." Severus forced himself to remain stern despite the tears. She'd set the house on fire, after all. "Using a wand is dangerous, young lady. You are not to touch one until you have your own. Apparently I didn't make that clear in the past."

Olivia squirmed on the bed. Severus really didn't like to repeat himself, and now she'd done two things he'd warned her against. "I'm sorry, Daddy."

Severus closed his eyes briefly. Those eyes and that phrase made it nearly impossible for him to keep up the disapproving father attitude. "I'm sure you are. You are going to think about how sorry you are sitting right there until dinner, when we will talk about how to keep you busy so you won't be tempted to get into trouble."

"Where's Remus?"

Severus suppressed a smirk. "Remus is not going to save you, little girl. You sit there and think about how lucky you are that you didn't burn the house down." He resisted the urge to pick her up and cuddle her and tell her everything was forgiven. There would be time for that. She had to understand that she couldn't play around with magic. There was clearly an intense magical ability in his child, and if he couldn't get her to control it, he could see many more fires in their future.

Casting a monitoring charm on her door, Severus went back downstairs, just in time to see Lupin coming through the floo.

Originally, Remus living at Prince Manor had been a decision made of circumstance. Severus had moved from his childhood home to the one inherited from his mother's family because it was easy to ward, and it fit with the façade he was creating as a Slytherin, close-to-pure-blooded household.

Remus had moved in because it was difficult for his kind to find employment. Severus had always seen Lupin as the least obnoxious of Potter's friends, and when he lost the entirely of his group in one night, Snape gave him a place to stay. Olivia had barely learned to walk at the time, and the idea of being able to keep her at home instead of at a Muggle daycare was attractive to Severus, who always wanted as little official paperwork involved with his daughter as possible.

And so they had basically raised a child together, two men who were anything but friends in childhood.

"Why does it smell like smoke?" Remus raised his eyebrows.

"Someone forgot that she is seven and cannot magically make a stray dog come into the house and be her friend." Severus ran a hand through his hair. "Instead, she lit the rug on fire." He sat heavily in his armchair.

Remus shook his head. "It would have killed you to get a dog?"

"Perhaps," Severus rolled his eyes. "Anyway, she's in her room until dinner. Which she destroyed with a burst of accidental magic, by the way. We've got to get that under control or move to a bunker of some kind."

"I'll start looking for a bunker," Remus grinned. "But in the meantime, maybe we could invest in a good sedative."

"Daddy?" The small voice came from the foot of the stairs only a split second after the minding charm alerted Severus that his little felon had broken out of her enclosure.

"Olivia Eileen…" Severus sighed and then decided that he'd really had enough of responsible parenting for the day. "Come here, reckless little doxy." There was a quick shuffle of socked feet, and he found himself with a lap full of little girl.

"I'm sorry, Daddy."

"I should hope so," Severus scolded lightly, smoothing her hair. "Where are we going to live if you burn down the house, hmm?"

"I wanted to get the puppy. He's all alone."

"I know you did," Severus shook his head. "But you can't have a puppy. And you can't do any magic at all until you go to Hogwarts." He ducked his head a bit to look at her. "We keep Grandma Eileen's wand on the mantel to honor her. But if I can't trust you to leave it alone, I'll have to put it away." He noted the appropriately guilty look in his daughter's eyes. "And as far as a puppy is concerned, we've talked about this. When you are 10, you can have a pet."

Olivia turned sad eyes on Remus, who laughed. "Don't look at me, troublemaker. I'm surprised you got off as light as you did. You must have mind control powers."

Severus rolled his eyes. The problem was, there didn't seem to be consequences that kept Olivia from doing things fueled by her savior complex. It was her damn Gryffindor blood, not that he could say it out loud. Lily's blood.

July 15, 1980

Lily Potter's belly was nearly bursting, making her not only uncomfortable but short tempered. Her mood was not helped by the July heat, nor by the large number of guests that crowded her kitchen. She was in no mood for the general frivolity that was going on, not with the current climate, and not with the current size of her stomach. "Sirius Black, get your mangy feet off my furniture!" Sirius was sprawled in a kitchen chair, his feet on the seat of another chair. At her shout, he sat up, looking to James for protection.

"Don't look at me," James moved from his chair to stand beside his wife. "The woman who carries twins lays down the laws around here."

"You would think," Severus said dryly from the end of the table, "that the mutt would have the human decency to keep his feet on the floor without reminding."

"Human describes very few of you," Lily frowned at the men who ringed her table. "Can we get back to the facts at hand?"

"The facts," Remus swirled the dregs of his tea in the bottom of his cup, "are that Millicent Bagnold is a twit, and we are losing ground. We are hemorrhaging information, and if we don't find the leak, we might as well walk right into He Who Must Not Be Named's lair and give up."

"Can't imagine who the leak could be," Sirius glared at Snape, who looked back at him placidly.

"Think what you like, Black. If you'd like to trade roles in our little gang, I'm sure that the Dark Lord would imply adore having another of your family in his ranks."

"It isn't Severus," Albus Dumbledore spoke for the first time. "But the leak is the reason our group tonight is greatly limited." He looked around the table. "And we hardly have time to fight amongst ourselves." He played with his wand. "Sybill has given a prophecy."

"What else is new?" James tried unsuccessfully to get his wife to sit down.

"Occasionally," Albus said carefully, "She strikes a specific tone. And when she does, she is correct."

"So what did she say?" Remus scratched at the back of his neck.

Dumbledore turned his attention to Lily. "Have you learned what you are carrying?"

"Babies," Lily said irritably, leaning against the counter.

"I assumed," Albus said, his tone never faltering from one that would be used to invite someone to a particularly exciting party. "Boys? Girls? One of each, perhaps?"

"The latter," James answered, giving up on trying to get Lily to sit and sat himself. "The Potter seed, you know." He grinned at his contemporaries, who answered him almost universally with eye rolling. Severus continued to stare at his wand with a bored expression.

The twinkle didn't leave the oldest wizard's eye, but some of the jovial nature did leave his voice. "Troubling, to be sure."

"What's troubling?" Lily frowned at the Headmaster.

Albus tapped his wand on the table and conjured a pensieve, before pointing the wand at his temple and drawing out a long wisp of memory. Tapping the edge of the bowl, an image appeared above the liquid, like a hologram hovering for the group to see. In the image, Sybill was a fright, her head thrown back, her arms and legs gone rigid.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies..."

The Sybill image collapsed, and Albus carefully retrieved his memory, vanishing the pensieve. "You are due to give birth any day now, correct? Toward the end of July?"

James moved slightly, as if putting himself between his wife and Albus would change was was being insinuated. "There must be hundreds of women in Britain ready to give birth."

"How many of those women have so openly defied Voldemort?" Dumbledore ignored the flinches the went around the table at the name of evil.

"Alice Longbottom for one," Snape said quietly, his eyes now on Lily. "We hardly have the information to jump to conclusions." His usually calm voice had a hint of unease.

"Then perhaps," Dumbledore looked at Snape, "we need additional information."

Lily's green eyes met Severus's dark ones. He was helpless when it came to those eyes. Completely, maddeningly helpless. "Of course," he said quietly. "More information. And in the meantime, no information flowing out of here. There are several people who know Lily is pregnant, but I believe we are the only ones who know that there are 2 babies. Let's keep it that way."