Co-written with Starsailor Iphigenia, quite a while ago.
It was an unprecedented era of prosperity. Voldemort's horcruxes had been destroyed by Regulus Black and the killing blow had been the privilege of Severus Snape, not as a spy or double agent, but just as someone fed up with all the pointless squabbling. Dumbledore's adherence to a half baked crackpot's prophecy had come to naught. Thus, the man had retired.
The great hall was full for the evening meal, the chattering students and teachers a dull roar. Harry sat at the Hufflepuff table with Neville, conversing with an amiable and interesting first year called Luna Lovegood who was turned in her seat at Ravenclaw, shouting across their opposite bench and the table. Susan occasionally paused her conversation with Rowan, a first year half blood, to add her own comments.
At the high table, Severus Snape, official Hogwarts brewer and Head Of Slytherin, was enjoying his evening espresso, keeping up a casual conversation with Headmistress McGonagall.
"No, Severus. If I've a banshee forbearer, then you've got elvish blood." Minerva snorted. "Not bloody likely."
Snape smirked like a cat at the cream. "The Princes have numerous-" The doors to the great hall blew open and hit the wall with a bang. Severus jumped, dribbling his coffee down his chin, neck, and into his robes.
"F-!"
"Severus!" McGonagall admonished.
Snape aimed his scowl for the door where the intruder responsible for his third degree burns was storming in. A seething mass of red hair and righteous fury, commonly referred to as Lily Evans since the divorce from Potter, stomped up to the high table where Snape sat, her magic crackling.
"SEV'RAS!" Lily barked.
"Lily! Ye made me spill me damn covvee!" Severus shrieked. Thus was the introduction to a high decibel conversation that sounded vaguely like infuriated Northerner cows mooing across distant fields. It was probably English, but nobody seemed to follow it except for a couple of seventh year Hufflepuffs and a Ravenclaw firstie who kept looking at each other and back to the adults and laughing so hard they were going to crack a rib.
The Slytherins were staring in silent horror. Had their Head of House been replaced by someone?
The Gryffindors were Confused. This was pretty much a ground state of being, so nobody paid much attention or was concerned.
Albus etc. Dumbledore popped out from behind a pillar and frowned in concern. "Minerva, should you allow these young, impressionable minds to —"
McGonagall absently conjured a flyswatter which smacked him around the wooly head until he popped back again. Nobody could figure out how he kept getting through the wards, but all the prefects and the upper years were now really, really good at the banishing spell.
Suddenly the mooing noise also began to emanate from Harry. The entire hall turned to gaze at him in varying degrees of shock, astonishment, fear, awe, irritation, and incomprehension. The Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaw that had been following the adults' conversation now began to include Harry in the rotation. They looked like spectators at a particularly fast-paced tennis match. Some of their friends wondered if their necks were all right.
Neville waited until the mooing had subsided on all sides and Lily Evans and Severus Snape had settled down into a serious who-blinks-first-dies match before nudging Harry. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, sure," said Harry, who was sniggering into his sleeve. "Why?"
"I don't think human throats were meant to make noises like that. Is it some kind of parseltongue?"
"Eh what? No, it's just the Cokeworth accent. Mum and Sev grew up across the street from each other. They don't really have that much of one anymore though."
Neville stared off into space, a broken boy.
"They sounded just like the mating cry of the Greater Dimorphous Atlantean Crumwing," said Luna Lovegood, brightly, dreamily, and with her eyes firmly fixed on a large green beetle that was sitting on a candlestick nearby. If anyone had paid attention to the little Ravenclaw, they would have seen a definite hint of smirk about the mouth and a rather disturbing gleam in the eye.
They say no true Slytherin is ever sorted into the house bearing that name.
The staring match broke abruptly and the mooing began again. A shard of tension flew haphazardly off into the middle distance and struck Albus etc. Dumbledore in a rather painful place just as he was emerging from beneath the Gryffindor table. He retired, muttering into his beard in an oddly high-pitched wheeze.
A few of the duller Gryffindors and Slytherins clapped for him, the Gryffindors because that was just their sense of humor and the Slytherins on principle. It was almost a law of nature. Dumbledore had spent his years as Headmaster secretly loathing the Slytherins and now they spent their years not-so-secretly hating him. You'd think they could hide it better, being from the house of the cunning. Honestly, the sorts the letters were going to these days . . .
"AND IT'S 10-NIL IN FAVOR OF EVANS!"
The voice of Lee Jordan boomed over the hall. He had gotten some kind, thoughtful, and community-minded soul to cast sonorus on him so he could narrate.
"THAT WAS A SOLID BOOK TO THE NOSE, WELL DONE MA'AM! LET'S HAVE A ROUND OF APPLAUSE IN FAVOR OF THE AMAZING DRAGON WHO CAN TAME THE EVIL PRINCE'S HEART!"
"The ;^.&?" said one of the Weasley twins to him. They had learned to pronounce punctuation so they could swear without reprisal. After all, a teacher couldn't deduct points for someone innocently saying 'ampersand'. It was practically Muggle Studies extra credit.
Lee looked a little confused. "AREN'T THEY, YOU KNOW?"
"What?"
"DATING AGAIN?"
"What do you mean again?"
Someone took the sonorous off Lee in the interests of public safety. Snape was a sneaky bastard and it was entirely within the realm of possibility that he could listen to two different people who were shouting in the same room at the same time.
"Didn't someone say he's Harry's real dad, just is afraid of passing on his time-honored hair care tips so he won't come out and say it?"
")+ % /)*#," said Fred, or possibly George. Either way, the whisper went around the tables at the speed of gossip, which, as everyone who has ever lived in a small close-knit community for any extended period of time knows, is considerably faster than the speed of light. It's the kind of speed Captain Kirk means when he says "Warp 35, Mr. Sulu."
Luna Lovegood smiled eerily at the place where the beetle had used to be. She had Plans for the media, yes indeed she did. The Daily Prophet was not in them.
The gossip did get a bit mangled, with the Ravenclaw table hearing that Harry was Snape's father, which started a few fistfights among the pro- and anti- long-distance-time-travel-is-possible-so-why-aren't-we-building-a-TARDIS-instead-of-doing-essays-we-are-magicals-after-all-would-Merlin-waste-this-opportunity-no-he-jolly-well-wouldn't-young-Stibbons factions, and the Hufflepuffs hearing some weird tale about unrequited love, spies, and the tragic death of Lily Evans at the hand of the Dark Lord resulting in Harry's being hailed as a national hero for killing said Dark Lord in revenge when he was fifteen months old. They dismissed it as the work of those damn emotional drama queen Gryffindors again.
Harry Potter as the Chosen One, indeed. Kid could barely choose what to have to breakfast most days.
Besides, Lily Evans was right there, leaning over the teacher's table, nose-to-nose with the Head Of Slytherin, and shouting at him in some strange cow-calling language. You couldn't hallucinate something like that, no matter what plant matter had fallen into your food.
Without breaking eye contact Snape reached into the depths of his robes and produced a book. Those closest could see the title: 'The Romans Took It From Uss: The First Denial Of Our "Dark" Arts Heritage'. Snape held it aloft dramatically, cocked his elbow, held it for a moment, then hurled it like a frisbee down the table. Madam Pince went down with an undignified squawk.
"MA — WO —" Lee Jordan shook himself. "LIBRARIAN DOWN! BOOK TO THE HEAD WITHOUT LOOKING! TEN OUT OF TEN! SNAPE AND EVANS TIED!"
George or possibly Fred elbowed him. "But Lee, it wasn't a player. Are you ruling the librarian as a goal or part of one of their sides?"
Lee cleared his throat. "FOUL FOR SNAPE. EVANS GETS A PENALTY SHOT. SORRY, PEOPLE, WE'RE KIND OF MAKING UP THE RULES AS WE GO HERE. STILL 10-NIL IN FAVOR OF EVANS. THAT WAS A BEAUTIFUL SHOT THOUGH, WELL DONE PROFESSOR, THAT WILL BE A TREASURED MEMORY OF MINE AND I'M SURE MANY SPECTATORS WILL AGREE WITH ME."
And indeed in the future, many students who didn't care about Quidditch would answer questions about the sport with some variation of 'Snape hit the librarian bang-on without even looking but Evans still got the penalty shot' when asked about their favorite game memory. It even made it into trivia quizzes. There were jerseys.
The aforementioned Snape and Evans had still not broken eye contact.
McGonagall sighed and considered asking a house-elf for some doilies and a few plants. If they were going to freeze to the teacher's table, they could at least brighten up the room a bit. She had an aspidistra in her quarters that was looking for a new home.
The Weasley Twins suddenly vanished underneath their table. They had just gotten a wonderful new idea for an indoor sport and needed the dark, cramped, and full of feet aesthetic to plot in peace as true snakes. The other Slytherins watched them go with faint smugness. They had two loaded Twins and were not afraid to point them at the other houses.
Neville made a faint croaking noise as he started to recover. Harry eyed him in bewilderment and then patted him gingerly on the shoulder.
"You ok, mate?"
"What — why did the Professor throw that book at Madam Pince?"
"Besides the obvious," chorused the entire Ravenclaw table, unabashedly eavesdropping. They hated Madam Pince with the fury of a thousand supernovas, the nasty flaming sword that guarded the paradise of all the free books that she was. One enterprising halfblood was organizing a campaign to buy Snape a medal.
"Oh, apparently Sev borrowed a book under mum's name eighteen years ago and never gave it back. Pince reported her to the petty crime division of the Ministry, and sent her a bill. So, apparently, mum was trying to apply for a research position at the Ministry but she has a criminal record so she can't until she gets her record cleared, but Sev said he didn't know where the book is. I reminded mum that our library at home is alphabetized and organized by subject and the nationality of the author, so of course he knows where it is. They both swore some more, she threatened to kick his arse and destroy his special bag of premium coffee beans from Brazil, so he caved and gave Pince the book back. At high velocity."
"It's like the family friendly version of Jeremy Kyle . . ." Rowan whispered.
Harry cackled. "Trust me, there was nothing family friendly about their conversation. It stopped being family friendly at the second sentence when mum threatened to —"
"Hey, wait a minute. How does your library at home have anything to do with Snape knowing where his books are?" Lee had rousted out the twins from under the table and come over to hear the translation, as narrating the staring game at the high table was decidedly uninteresting, and Pince had just decided to stay where she was, sipping (spilling) her tea, still in her tipped over chair. She and Pomona had acquired a new batch of a rather fabulous little plant. Once consumed, she found she didn't particularly care that her former student — that skinny goth shit — was lobbing heavy tomes across the table at her.
"Well, Sev organized it when he moved in."
"What," several voices said in chorus.
"Oh, yeah, we live at Prince Castle, me and mum. Sev's mum's family's ancestral home." Harry answered.
Lee Jordan levelled a triumphant look at the twins. They owed him two and a half galleons for doubting his word, as per a standing bet they'd had on since first year.
"Uncle Remus lives there too."
A few eavesdroppers had juvenile heart attacks. Lily Evans was living with two men? Even if one of them was constantly at Hogwarts. And who was 'Uncle Remus'?
"But he lives out in the gatehouse. Father and Sirius call it 'a hive of debauchery and dark magic'. But I think they're just jealous. Father only has a manor, and Sirius only has that rancid townhouse because Sev says he spent all his assets on women — though how I don't know since they outlawed slavery ages ago — and never had the money-managing skills of a oyster on cocaine anyway, and now they can't even get Uncle Remus to plan things out for them, and our castle has a quidditch pitch."
Lee mouthed "debauchery" "our castle" and "oyster on cocaine" at the twins. Harry was oblivious.
"Actually it's not that impressive inside, even though the outside is pretty great. Like, our rooms are all in the south wing. The rest of it is falling apart. Mum works on it sometimes when she wants to test a new charm or something, but Sev just snarls at the holes and Uncle Remus is too shy to fix Sev's house. He's fixed up the gatehouse something awesome though. It has a slide. I want to live there when I move out."
"I still can't believe you can call Professor Snape — that," said Neville.
"Well, he wouldn't let me call him Dad. Said it felt weird."
An instant hush spread across the hall, rippled for a few milliseconds, then exploded into a furious cyclone of whispers.
Luna followed the flight of the beetle away from the Hufflepuff table and smirked. The Daily Prophet was going down. Who knew all those old law books could be such useful and relevant reading.
"What old family is the Professor related to?" Neville was uneasy but game. He knew all the old family names from his etiquette lessons, and 'Snape' was not on the list.
"Prince," said Harry, taking an enormous bite of something gooey from his plate.
"So when he calls you 'Prince Potter' . . ." said Susan, her eyes going wide.
Harry flapped a hand in negation, but there was no getting that remark back, and his mouth was too full to talk without spewing things all over Neville, and he liked Neville too much for that. He swallowed. "Nah, that's just his name for when he thinks I'm getting a big head. But I love him anyway. We're going to see Black Panther this weekend."
"SNAPE KNOWS WHAT MUGGLE MOVIES ARE?" Lee shouted. "CAN I COME TOO?"
"I'll ask," Harry said cheerfully. "He's actually really nice." He stood up and mooed.
Snape glowered for a moment and then mooed back. It was a reluctant moo, but it sounded forgiving.
Harry beamed at Lee.
"Could you translate?" he asked.
"Oh, he said you and the twins could come," Harry chirped.
The twins high-fived and then turned to salute their Head of House. He'd been unexpectedly . . . nurturing over the years, especially when contrasted with the rest of their family. As long as they kept the pranks on Dumbledore coming, they had the backing of the rest of Slytherin house, and a good deal of Hufflepuff too.