When Lightning Strikes

A/N: This is a short one-shot and very AU. No Horcruxes.

…

Knock! Knock! Knock!

Lily jumps up as she hears three loud thumps on her door.

She hates it when James comes home this late.

But today, today she has good news.

She sets her empty tea cup on the table as she quickly walks to the door, her smile beaming with giddiness.

She gasps as she sees the dark looming figure standing in the rain, all dressed in black.

Lightning strikes, revealing the face of her solicitor.

Severus Snape.

Lightning strikes again and that's when she notices the limp body in his arms.

She falls to her knees as her scream shatters through the night.

But he was to be a father!

Severus assures her he tried to save him from the Dark Lord but there was nothing he could do.

He wanted her to have his body so he could have a proper burial.

But Lily can't speak, all she can do is hold her stomach as her cries pierce her body.

Her dear James dead.

Snape steps inside and lays the body on the sofa.

Lily manages to walk to it, her face crying on top of James' body.

Snape looks to the image before him and tries to remember why killing James had seemed like a good idea.

How had he fooled himself into believing that he could make her happy if he were only out of the picture?

But how can he leave her like this, knowing her suffering is his fault?

He stays that night and holds her as she cries herself to sleep at dawn.

But how can he leave her like this now?

Knowing he has caused her all this suffering, knowing he has left her child without a father?

So he stays and when her cries announce she is awake he brings her tea.

She throws it at him and beckons him to return to his Dark Lord.

So while she wallows in her grief, day after day, he makes all the arrangements for his funeral and brings her food she refuses.

Even long after James's body is under the earth, he stays.

She will starve if he doesn't feed her, he tells himself.

To hell with the Dark Lord.

If it hadn't been for him he wouldn't have turned into a Death Eater and lost Lily.

So he cleans around the house to keep it up and tries to get her to eat.

Reminds her she needs to eat for her baby.

This works but she stays in bed.

So he fixes that loose screw in the back door that makes that insufferable sound every time you open it and close it.

And the rain gutters are backed up so he cleans those.

And as the months pass, Snape doesn't leave and Lily doesn't send him away.

And when the labor pains come, he takes her to a muggle hospital.

And when the baby is born, the nurse comes out and tells him his son and his wife are alright.

A pang hits his chest because she isn't his wife and that child doesn't have a father.

And it's his own fault, albeit she doesn't know it.

As the months pass, Lily grows fond of the man who used to be a boy she loved.

The man who risked his life to bring her her husband's body.

But her son needs a father and so when little Harry calls Snape daddy, she doesn't correct him.

And neither does Snape.

But every time he does, it's as if he was once again under the Cruciatus curse.

Because he knows he isn't Harry's father.

He is the reason he doesn't have one.

But it feels too good to pretend that this is his family.

And the first night that Lily falls asleep in his arms he can't sleep because he knows what he did.

As Harry grows older, the guilt becomes too much and he has to get away.

So he begs Dumbledore to let him teach at Hogwarts and he becomes the Potions Master.

This allows him to be away for most of the year.

Away from the woman who loves him under false pretenses.

And the child who bears his last name and calls him father.

The child who looks like James more and more with every single day.

And so at eight years old, little Harry wonders why his father left them.

Mom explains it's for work but it doesn't make him miss him any less.

Snape comes back every summer, decided to tell his wife and adoptive child the truth.

But then he walks through the front door and they run to him and hug him and tell him how much they have missed him and he can't let go of this fantasy he has created for himself where he has a family and he is happy.

So he doesn't say anything.

He can't lose them now that he has them.

And when Harry is sorted into Slytherin, Snape frowns.

He is sure he was only sorted there because of the child's own desires to be in the House of his father, to make him proud.

But he knows his brave little Harry should be nowhere but in Gryffindor, the home of his true father and of his mother.

So when he runs to him that night, beaming, he can barely bring himself to pat the child's head and no more.

But being the son of the Head of House isn't what Harry was expecting.

He is scorned and laughed at.

He is shoved aside and friendless.

Who would want to be friends with the child of the meanest and scariest teacher?

And in his fifth year, it becomes too much to bear and he punches Malfoy for calling his mother a whore.

And Draco can't help it and spills out what he has heard in hushed conversations between his father and other Death Eaters.

Harry calls him a liar and runs to his father to demand an explanation of why Draco would say such a thing.

But Snape's silence is enough confirmation.

So he starts asking around.

And he finds out about his mother's first love and her first marriage.

He learns of James Potter and finds his picture among the old Quidditch pictures.

And it's like looking in a mirror.

He cries in front of the glass for hours.

For how could his father… no he wasn't his father… how could he have lied to him?

How could he have pretended to be his father when he was his murderer instead?

He refused to answer to Harry Snape.

He demanded to be called Harry Potter.

Not many paid any mind to the things he said though.

It's just that weird kid, the son of Snape, now ashamed of the father he has and trying to get attention.

But loneliness, shame and betrayal do things to a young mind.

Wouldn't you have gone to the Dark Lord too if you had found out your mother had lied to you your whole life?

Wouldn't you have done it if you knew the man you thought was your father was actually his murderer?

Wouldn't you have if you told your mother and she didn't believe her own child?

Wouldn't you have if all your peers hated you and humiliated you and shunned you?

Well, Harry did.

And he rose through the ranks like wildfire.

In three years he was the Dark Lord's right hand man.

So when the Final Battle arrived.

It was Snape against Harry.

Father and son no more.

But when it came down to it, how could he kill the man who raised him?

How could he kill the horrible man he loved?

How could he kill that figure whom he had always aimed to please and make proud?

How could he kill the one who held his tiny hands as he took his first steps?

How could he kill the one who spent countless hours devoted to him?

How he could he not kill the man who murdered his father?

And at his hesitation the Dark Lord did it for him.

And in that moment of weakness he uttered that unforgivable curse at his Lord.

In the aftermath of it all, he was claimed a hero for killing the Dark Lord.

But what no one saw was the seventeen-year-old boy who cried over the man who didn't deserve it.

And so eighteen years after the death of her James, Lily sat in her home, worried sick for the husband she had come to love and the child who had abandoned them.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

She leaped to her feet and set her cup of tea down to open the door for her husband, hoping to hear good news, that somehow their child had been spared in that final battle.

But when lightning struck, she saw that face of her son.

Her heart rejoiced to see her son until lightning struck again and she saw the body he was carrying.

…

A/N: This is my first shot at writing Harry Potter fanfiction so any feedback is greatly appreciated. This was an idea that wouldn't leave my mind and demanded to be written. So let me know what you all think. Thank you for reading! (: