author's note: Content warning for descriptions of violence against children. It's not graphic or detailed but might be upsetting to some readers.
This is a one-shot and can sort of stand on its own taking into account that it is an AU where Snape survives and is Harry's biological father, but will make more sense if you read "Carry That Weight (A Long Time)" first.
The back door opened behind him. He shut his eyes tightly, sucking in a deep breath of the sharp, cold October evening air. He shook his head and lurched to his feet.
He knew he shouldn't get so exasperated with his wife, especially not in her current condition, but he felt she didn't really understand.
He didn't want her to understand. Not this. He was sure he just needed some time, really. Time to work through... whatever this is.
"Fine, okay... I'll come back inside."
He turned around, expecting to see Ginny with that half-worried, half-impatient expression she'd taken to wearing lately.
"Oh... it's you."
His father stood leaning against the door jamb, a dark, angular silhouette haloed by the cheery light pouring out of the kitchen. Snape nodded once and stepped through, pulling the door shut behind him. He stood beside Harry with his arms crossed, looking out over the garden in the rapidly dwindling twilight.
Harry watched him for a moment, waiting for him to offer some explanation. He rarely ever visited them at their home here, a few miles outside of Godric's Hollow. (Harry had been skeptical about moving to the area where his mother had been murdered, but they were far enough away that he did not find himself reminded of it too often, but the cottage had been a good deal, especially given size of the surrounding property, so he'd put aside his misgivings. Ginny had been quite happy to find the place and he'd not exactly had any practical objections, after all).
Harry had invited his father around for tea nearly every Saturday since they moved into the house, a few months after their marriage, but the man generally declined, making some excuse or another. Harry knew that Ginny was not overly fond of him, though. It was not that she hated him, or felt some particular animosity, but there was a mutual discomfort between them that made conversation a bit... awkward.
Harry had hoped over time they'd at least be able to tolerate one another, if not become friends of a sort. They both had a rather acerbic wit, after all, but a similar sense of humor wasn't enough when they barely spoke to one another in the first place.
So that left the question... why was he here?
"Er... not that I mind you dropping by, but... um, why are you here?"
Snape turned to look at him for a moment, although what he though he could see in the dim light, Harry wasn't sure.
Harry was standing close enough that he could feel that Snape was worried about something. The empathic connection that had been forged between them in the aftermath of Voldemort's downfall had not waned in the least with the passage of time. But a feeling isn't a reason.
His father took a seat on the back step, where Harry had been sitting earlier. There wasn't quite enough room, but Harry took the hint and sat beside him.
"Your wife informed me that you needed to speak to me."
Harry sat for a moment, trying to take that in. Ginny had spoken to his father. He tried to think of a moment before today, any moment, when she had contacted the man without him asking her to. Or, really, even a time she'd spoken to him at all other than the usual pleasantries, unless he spoke to her first.
"I, uh... don't recall asking her to get in touch with you."
Harry rubbed at his arms, gooseflesh rising as the temperature was dropping quickly now that the sun had dipped below the horizon. The barest green glow lingered just over the distant hills. He heard a door slam in the distance as the neighbor down the lane let their dog out at the usual time.
"She seemed to think it is was necessary."
Harry shook his head, pulling his sleeves down. He should have put on a jacket, maybe. He took a chance and leaned against the warmth of his father next to him. Surprisingly, Snape did not move away.
"It's nothing really. It was a difficult case, is all. It's just... part of the job. I can handle it. I just need some space for while. Ginny... I know she worries but she doesn't really understand it."
Snape leaned back suddenly and Harry sat up, thinking he'd annoyed or offended him, but his father merely reached around his back and pulled him closer, wrapping a wing of the voluminous black cloak over him.
Harry tried not feel too shocked. Snape was not prone to showing affection, not like this. He'd grown less awkward in the last couple of years about it, or at least no longer went completely stiff as a board when Harry insisted on giving him a hug (although he still always looked a bit wrong-footed when Molly Weasely did).
"I'm assuming this is to do with the Sykes girls?"
Harry nodded and swallowed heavily. The newspapers, both magical and Muggle, had already had their field day, churning out their lurid and sensationalist headlines all week, but they did not know the half of it, really.
"I just... I keep seeing them. Not just the two girls, all of them. He'd been at it for years you know. They just hadn't caught up to him."
Harry shut his eyes tightly, he could feel them burning again. He would not cry over this, not again. He'd broken down once already during their investigation. He knew he wasn't the only one among his Auror colleagues who was affected by this. Neville had gone outside to lose his lunch, twice. Even the handful of Ministry-approved Muggle investigators that had been called in from Scotland Yard had seemed a bit shaken up by the end of the day.
The arm around his shoulder shifted slightly but Snape said nothing.
"We'd thought we were dealing with a Dark wizard right up until... but he was just some Muggle! He looked like... like anybody. You could have sat next to him on a bus and not even noticed."
"Will you be returning?"
"No. No, we've handed it over to the Muggles now. The Sykes case is closed, the family's been... well, at least they know what happened now. One of the Muggle investigators said he thinks this will close at least a dozen missing persons cases going back decades, though. They haven't... they haven't finished going over the property, they think there's more... that..."
Harry took another deep breath, trying to push back the panicky feeling that was threatening to take over him again. All those children! To think their families never knew what happened to them. Kept hoping they'd come home someday...
He pulled his glasses off and scrubbed at his face with his sleeve. He felt utterly foolish. He'd been doing this for five years now, he wasn't some green trainee anymore. It wasn't as if he'd never dealt with murderers before... with Death Eaters. Why was this so much worse?
Harry laughed at himself bitterly. He glanced up at his father's face but could not make out his expression in the light of the stars and sliver of a moon. Harry tried to feel him out instead, but his own emotions were so crowded at the moment he could hardly breathe.
"You'd think after everything, I'd be used to this by now, you know? I mean what could be worse than Voldemort, right?"
He was laughing again, a harsh sound bordering on hysterical. The arm his father had wrapped around him drew him in more tightly. Harry thought he could feel a strange fear coming from him and tried to reign in his own emotions, but it all just seemed to have gotten away from him. He couldn't stop himself now, it was all just spilling out like a dam had burst.
"Oh God... you don't know... It's just all so damned senseless. What is even the point? Kidnapping children and tormenting them, then killing them and chopping them up for your bloody supper... and for what? At least Voldemort thought he was accomplishing something... building something. It's just so... so stupid!"
Harry slumped over, burying his heated face in his hands. His wife had left her professional Quidditch career behind and was now six months along and he was sitting on his back stoop crying on his father like a child with a skinned knee. His panic finally receded, leaving him feeling drained and exhausted instead. It didn't help that he hadn't slept a full night in over a week.
"I thought I understood it you know. I thought after Voldemort and Death Eaters and everything else, that I knew what Evil is... I guess I just never thought I'd find hiding in some pathetic Muggle pensioner with a collection of bones in his garden shed and his basement."
Harry jammed his glasses back onto his face and picked at a loose thread on his sleeve.
"The real irony of it, though... if he hadn't made the mistake of targeting a witch's daughters he might never have been caught. Not til after he'd died and someone else went into that house... I just start thinking, is it even worth it to... Well it's too late to start second-guessing it now. She's due in January."
Harry sat up and leaned into his father again. He felt a little ashamed at just how absurdly comforting he found it at the moment. He was a grown man, for Merlin's sake, he shouldn't need such things. He'd certainly never had anything of the sort when he actually was a child.
"I just... I keep seeing those girls' dead eyes staring out at me. And all those stacks of little bones. Why...?"
Harry closed his eyes and tried to push away every wretched thought in his head. A cold breeze was kicking up now, and he could hear the swaying branches of the trees at the edge of the property. The neighbor's dog down the road was barking at something. If he strained hard enough, he could just barely hear the hissing of passing cars on the main road over the hill. He could feel as well as hear his father's voice when he finally spoke.
"Why? Why do the innocent die? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does evil exist? There are volumes of philosophical and religious writing on that subject. You're welcome to read them all if you wish, but I don't know that anyone has discovered a definitive answer. As for your child, as you say, it is too late to question it now. You'll just have to figure it out as you go along like everyone else I suppose."
"Hmph. Some help you are."
Snape sat back, leaning against the heels of his hands. Harry moved with him, not willing to give up the cocoon of warmth quite yet.
"I cannot 'fix' this problem for you, Harry. People have struggled with these concepts since the dawn of time, you are hardly in a unique position. Do not misunderstand me. I am not entirely unsympathetic; I may be a cold-hearted bastard but I do not think that even I could remain entirely unmoved by what you have witnessed."
"You're not a cold-hearted bastard, you just want people to think you are so that they'll leave you alone."
"I'm well aware of what I am, Harry."
"Yea, so am I. And you're changing the subject."
"Perhaps. But if you are going to continue in this profession of yours, you are likely to come across such things from time to time."
"Yea, I know that."
Snape paused for a moment and Harry could almost feel the gears in his head working away.
"What?"
"It occurs to me that perhaps in their rush to replenish their ranks, the Auror training program may have neglected some areas. I recall seeing Occlumency on the list of subjects they gave you, but I see no evidence that they bothered to actually teach you—"
Harry groaned in annoyance, cutting his father off mid-sentence.
"Yes, they did in fact teach us! I just... suck at it. I hate to even bring it up, but I'm no better now than when you were shouting at me over it years ago. Even Robards got cross with me, neither of you would ever believe me when I said I was trying."
"Well were you?"
"Yes! Well, okay, maybe not so much during my fifth year, but I most certainly did with Robards. I just... I can't fucking do it. I don't know why. Robards and the rest never could figure out my problem either. I don't have any problem chucking off an Imperio and it's supposed to be similar. In the end he just gave up and said it probably had something to do with that blasted horcrux I'd had stuck in my head all those years and stuck a memo in my file to the effect that they maybe probably ought not send me up against any known Legilimens unless they want my mind turned to jelly. It's... embarrassing."
"Hm."
Harry scowled into the darkness. At least annoyance was a preferable distraction to existential despair. He felt he sort of had the right to get annoyed at his father, at least in this. Those 'lessons' when he was fifteen had been completely absurd, after all.
"'Hm'? Is that all you have to say, then? I can't help what I am, you know."
"Indeed. I suppose I should have given more thought to the matter at the time."
Harry resisted the temptation to say something nasty in return. It was an old wound and not really worth reopening. If he started tearing into his father, the man would probably just get up and leave, anyway, and Harry still wasn't inclined to let go of him quite yet.
"Did you already know about the horcrux, then?"
"No, I did not. Dumbledore... I think he must have at least suspected it but I cannot say whether he knew... well, there were many things which Albus Dumbledore did not share with me. I do not think he had quite proven it to himself yet, at any rate. But this discussion is entirely beside the point. If you can't learn to cope with the worst which Humanity has to offer, you might need to consider a change of career."
"No. I'm not quitting. I know I'm being a stupid child about this latest case but there is literally nothing else I would want to be doing with my life."
Harry pulled his glasses off again and stashed them in his shirt pocket so he could turn his face into his father's shoulder. If he was going to be a stupid child, he might as well go the whole way, after all. He remembered very little about the immediate aftermath of the spell which that healer Smethwyck had used on himself and his father five years ago, but he'd had the strangest recollection of doing something just like this.
He'd thought for ages it had been a dream until Professor McGonagall had said something about it in passing one day, when he'd dropped by her office after one of his Potions tutoring sessions during that first year of his Auror training.
He'd scoffed at the time, thinking he must have temporarily lost his mind when he'd been put into that bewitched sleep, but at this particular moment he sort of understood the appeal of it. The connection between them grew stronger with greater proximity after all and he felt almost surrounded now. Like this, it was as if he tried hard enough he could almost just disappear into someone else for just a moment, could just put down the burden of existing as himself.
"You're neither stupid nor a child, Harry. Your reaction is fairly typical, I should think. What were your esteemed colleagues doing at the time? Skipping along and singing a merry tune?"
"No. No, they weren't. Neville was sick twice and the rest looked like they might be, even the Muggle team who said they've dealt with this kind of thing before. I'm kind of glad Ron wasn't assigned to this job. He really loves kids. He'd probably be sleeping even less than I am right now."
"Hm. You really can't Occlude, even to a small degree?"
"No... sorry. Really, I am. I did try, please believe me."
"There's no point in apologizing to me, you're the only one suffering for it. I can't fix whatever deficiency you apparently possess in this matter but I might be able to do something about it in the short term."
"I'm not exaggerating, I really can't Occlude at all, I couldn't even with Robards trying to guide me—"
"Harry, I am not suggesting we bother with another lesson. I had something else in mind, if you are willing to trust me enough to try it."
"Trust you... um, what exactly are you thinking of? Or do I even really want to know?"
"Hmm. People tend to think of Occlumency and Legilimency as separate and opposite arts, but they are in fact largely the same discipline. One involves only a single mind – one's own – and the other involves two. That is the primary difference."
Harry blinked and took a bare moment to take in the meaning.
"Please tell me you aren't suggesting that I just sit here and let you Legilimize me."
"In essence, that is precisely what I am suggesting."
"You're joking. I haven't forgotten what that was like, I assure you."
Snape hesitated and Harry could feel a twinge of guilt from him. Serves him right, he thought.
"I absolutely do not intend to attack you in this. Legilimency is frequently used as a weapon, but it is not strictly an offensive magic. There are specialist healers at St Mungos who are quite adept in the art, in fact. Think about what I said to you a moment ago."
"That Occlumency and Legilimency are the same thing?"
"Yes. That."
"So... you think you can do it for me, you mean?"
"Hm, the boy can be taught, after all... Yes, I might be able to do something for you. Memory is a complex thing, you understand. It is not simply the recollection of a sequence of events, but has an inherent emotional aspect. I cannot take away what you saw without damaging your mind, but I might be able to weaken some of the connected emotional components associated with the memories. You will not forget what you saw, but perhaps we can let you get a bit of sleep at night and stop worrying your pregnant wife enough to send her seeking out my help?"
Harry still didn't like the idea of letting him muck about in his head again, he remembered far too keenly how it went the last time, but Ginny...
"Fine. Try it. I can't keep driving Ginny spare with my ridiculous nightmares. She needs her sleep more than I do right now."
"Well then, shall we? You'll need to sit up and face me, however."
Do I have to?
Harry reluctantly moved away, turning himself to sit cross legged on the damp grass at the bottom of the steps. His father pulled his cloak off and wrapped it around Harry's shoulders before pulling his wand out of a sleeve pocket.
"This time... do not fight me. I swear to you, Harry, I will not harm you. Do you trust me?"
Harry looked up at his father, watery starlight glinting in the man's black eyes but otherwise unable to see his face in the dark. What a strange world, he thought. What a strange life. Who ever would have believed the two of them would ever willingly be doing something like this?
"Yes."
"Legilimens"
It wasn't so different, really, was it? He was leaning into his father again, except not. He felt like he was dissolving, in a way. It was a sensation like sinking down to the bottom of a warm swimming pool, except without the need to hold one's breath. He could feel a shifting, a kind of movement. His thoughts and his memories were above him; he was below, formless and waiting. Like something in a cocoon...
What a strange dream.
But, like all dreams, one must eventually wake up. Something like a mental hand grasped him, yanking him back up toward the surface. But he didn't want to go!
Harry, move now. Stop fighting me.
But I'm not!
Another panicked mental yank and Harry was again aware of himself, a strange weight in his limbs as though he'd been sleeping late into the morning.
"Harry!"
His father had grasped him by the shoulders and gave him a light shake.
"What?"
"I thought for a moment... Never mind. I can see why Robards found you a frustrating pupil. You have a very... peculiar mind."
"Oh gee, thanks dad. I love you too."
He'd stung him with that remark, Harry could feel it. He was too annoyed, still, to be entirely remorseful as he struggled to his feet, still feeling a bit wobbly.
"I did not mean it as an insult. I simply cannot think of another word for it. You are not quite put together in the normal fashion, is all. Your mind is... less compartmentalized than most, although that is not quite an accurate description either. I may have accused you of wearing your heart on your sleeve in the past, but it is something rather more fundamental, I'm afraid. I do not know how to explain it any better than that. And I am also not entirely sure I was able to accomplish anything useful, but I suppose we will find out soon enough."
"Just another hopeless sentimental fool then, am I?"
Harry bit the end of his tongue after that remark, trying to push aside old anger. Part of him forever wanted to lash out at old hurts, but it wasn't... constructive. His father was trying to help him at the moment, after all, whatever the past might have been.
"You are forever going to make me eat my own words, is that it? I suppose I deserve no less, but I would rather you did not misunderstand what I am trying to tell you today. It does indeed mean you are probably never going to be an accomplished Occlumens but beyond that I cannot say whether it is good or bad or neutral. I cannot even speculate on whether it is something inborn or a result of the horcrux. It simply is. But you would do well to not dismiss it as unimportant."
Harry pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them back on. He wondered what time it was. He glanced up at the bedroom window. There was no light on; Ginny was probably already asleep in bed.
"Sorry. I just... I'm still a bit wound up I guess."
"Hm. Well, it's getting late. I ought to be getting back to Hogwarts before Minerva decides I've officially gone AWOL. I need to check up on my House; they tend to get up to... mischief... on Friday evenings. Even the bloody prefects this year. They're nearly as bad as a pack of Gryffindors lately..."
Harry laughed despite himself. He'd lived in mortal terror of being caught out by Snape when he'd wandered the halls after curfew as a boy, but the image of his father as the Dungeon Bat flushing students out from behind suits of armor was merely amusing these days, somehow. Maybe because he knew him now. No longer Schroedinger's Death Eater or Spy, but simply an exasperated, middle-aged school teacher trying to keep a pack of hormonal teenagers under some semblance of control.
Harry put up the lamps with a flick of his wand after returning to his warm kitchen, his father following him inside and shutting out the cold wind behind him.
"Um... thanks. I'm sorry if I've ruined your evening. I didn't know Ginny would even think to—"
Snape held up a hand, forstalling his apologies.
"Do not apologize. I know I am not much of a father and have certainly not been any sort of a father at all for most of your life. If I can lend a bit of aid now and then, I do not begrudge you a bit of my time. Next time, though, I would prefer it if you came to me before you are so out of sorts that your wife has to do it for you... and if you ever repeat what I say next, I will flatly deny it, but you married a very shrewd woman. It would not do to take her for granted. And with that, I am afraid I really must be taking my leave."
Harry spared a smile for his father as he turned to head to the fireplace to floo back to Hogwarts.
"You're still invited over for tea tomorrow, by the way."
"Hmph. I'll think about it."
With that, Severus Snape tossed a handful of powder into the hearth. A shouted "Hogwarts!," a flash of green and he was gone.
Harry realized he was still wrapped in his father's cloak as it trailed on the floor behind him as he made his way upstairs. Well, he could just come over tomorrow and fetch it back if he wanted it.