Prologue
Sarah Creevey took the stairs two at a time. The summer job she had working at the Grangers' dental practice looked good on the resume, which was very important to her. Unlike her brothers, she had chosen to stay with one foot in both worlds, the muggle one and the Wizarding one. Even though Voldemort was finally dead, the Wizengamot was still made up of pureblood bigots and Sarah wasn't as optimistic as her brothers were about her job options. So, during summer she took lessons in all the muggle subjects and got an internship working at the Grangers' practice after Hermione put in a good word for her.
During the one year when Voldemort had been fully alive and kicking, using Lucius Malfoy to take over the ministry and Imperius-ing Wizengamot members to pass restrictive laws for muggleborns while carrying out raids in muggle areas, Sarah had been brought into the Order of the Phoenix. Her brothers had complained saying she was too young but Professor Snape had put his foot down saying she was too useful as someone who knew of magic but had taken the year off from Hogwarts to do some muggle studying. And she had been useful, Sarah had been in consistent contact with some higher ups in the government, passing on whatever information the Order gathered on any possible attacks on muggles.
In fact, Sarah was pretty sure that Snape thought her dual education plan was a good one, although he'd never shown it. She could tell by the relieved nostril flaring he had done while looking in her general direction that one time after Hermione and Ron had announced their engagement and that Hermione would be a housewife since the ministry was restricting Muggleborn hiring. Another time and Hermione would have led a protest against the ministry, now she twiddled her thumbs.
But Sarah couldn't fault her entirely. The war was over and people weren't dying anymore, sure, but the bigotry was still there. With Dumbledore dead and Snape being a Slytherin double spy, the only true advocate of muggle and Muggleborn rights was Arthur Weasley, who wasn't exactly the icon the movement had been looking for.
What they needed was a champion and they just didn't have one.
It was with these absent thoughts in mind that she took the elevator down to the parking garage of the hospital she had been sent to. She was supposed to give them some documents, dental records for the morgue. Some car caught on fire or crashed or something. It sounded interesting but she didn't care much for dead bodies, they freaked her out.
The whole place was silent and it gave her the creeps honestly, especially since she had corpses on her mind. So the loud tinkling sound that suddenly started and echoed in the place sent her shrieking. She quieted down quickly, especially as a gruff voice cried out, "Sorry about that!"
Her heart still beating out of her chest she walked in the direction of the sound to find a man sitting on the metal staircase in the corner, his longish messy black curls held back by a thin wavy metal headband, eyes a bright green behind sleek silver glasses and neatly maintained scruff running down the sides of his face. A lit cigarette was in his mouth and a lighter lying on the ground near him, clearly the thing he had dropped.
He grinned and Sarah was struck by a sense of déjà vu, "Sorry for scaring you, long day, hands aren't quite working right."
He wore a doctor's coat over his clothes with a clip attaching his id card to the pocket of it. Harvey Flannel? Pathology, she could make out, the rest was a bit squiggly.
But that déjà vu-like feeling grew.
"Are you alright?" He asked, voice raspy from the smoke he was indulging in. Another time and she might have told him this was a public space and he shouldn't smoke there, but she was rattled and it was throwing her off.
"Fine," Sarah said and fled. Instead of heading home as she usually did, she went to Grimmauld place instead. Sirius didn't live there anymore, not since he'd been pardoned and no longer had to hide. He had signed the house over to the Order as their official headquarters and bound Kreacher to the house. Right now, Professor Snape was probably in the study, Fleur and Tonks likely in the library discussing the Auror exchange program that they'd been trying to push with France and various others scattered over the house. Sarah ran across the wall where the house elf heads had once been mounted and where pictures of the former members were hung.
There was a special picture in the middle of the Potters, Lily, James and the baby Harry. James Potter wiggled his finger under his son's chin and grinned when the green eyed baby gurgled in delight, and Sarah realised exactly why she was experiencing that déjà vu and ran up to the study immediately.
xxxxx
xxxxx
When it came down to it, Snape was always surprised by how easy it was defeating Voldemort. Oh, there had been a few difficult years, to be specific the ones when Dumbledore was in charge. The man hoarded information, kept it to himself and wouldn't let anyone help him at all. It was the kind of arrogance that the world hadn't seen because it was too blind to it, had even encouraged it. Albus had been vaunted by the Light while feared by the Dark, and thus had grown to feel too self-important. The one man who dared to criticise him was Aberforth and he had always been more fixated on Albus' past transgressions rather than his current ones. So Albus had been allowed to get away with things, keep secrets and play chess with their lives for so long.
Pity then that he was so bad at the game.
Dumbledore had taken years to find all that information on horcruxes and lost his life to the curse on the one he wore on his ring finger. Snape had found all the memories Albus had left behind and as the new head of the Order of the Phoenix, managed to find and destroy all the horcruxes. Lucius' attempts to slip the diary had been caught by Dumbledore and while he hadn't found a way to destroy it, Snape knew well enough what to do.
Fiendfyre.
Finding the rest had been only slightly more difficult. The locket had been found easily enough, Snape feeding the potion he had created to a transfigured bunny. Knowing Regulus as well a she did, he knew that there was no one the younger Black brother would trust with the locket but Kreacher. From there it was easy enough to figure it out, Voldemort did have a rather unseemly obsession with the Hogwarts houses, he would have wanted to taint artifacts of the other founders as well. And while Flitwick negotiated with the goblins to have Bellatrix's vaults searched, discreetly, Snape had created a potion that would allow for the soul fragment to detach from the container and thus safeguard priceless artifacts. The diary was worthless enough but to use fiendfyre to destroy beyond all repair Slytherin's locket, Ravenclaw's diadem and Hufflepuff's chalice would break whatever tiny bit of heart Snape had.
It had been easy. Draco was their spy this time around, tired of all the cruciatus' thrown around like candy. He had mixed in the potion to Voldemort's food and Nagini's rats. Voldemort had died where Nagini had writhed in pain but ultimately lived.
And he had needed no prophecy, no Chosen One as Albus had said they would in the letters he had left the Order his final will and testament, the ones that urged Snape to find Harry Potter, certain as he had been that the boy was out there somewhere.
Ridiculous, that, everyone knew that Harry Potter was dead by dragonpox. The news had been all over the Wizarding world's newspapers, especially since it had happened in the year when Potter was supposed to join Hogwarts, a good 14 years ago. It was probably for the best, for all that eh might have wished that Lily's child lived, he was a horcrux after all. Nagini might have lived after the potion had been administered but by then she wasn't really a snake only another dimension of Voldemort. A child would have been just as easily possessed and—
"Professor Snape!" The voice, screeching away accompanied by the thundering of footsteps on the landing broke him out of his maudlin thought, "Professor Snape, I think I saw Harry Potter!" cried out Sarah, younger sister to the infamous Creevey brothers and Snape felt his world collapse around him like a house of cards.