Chapter 10: Snape's Summoning

Harriet was five minutes late for her standing appointment with Severus for her Occlumency lesson. Over the last three weeks, he'd praised her progress as she consistently resisted his legilimency attacks. She'd almost blown up her cauldron when he'd surprised her with a silent attack during a lesson, and the twenty points he'd taken still stung a little, as did the memory of the veritable tongue lashing.

She sped into her room, dropping her bag and seizing a pinch of floo from the pot hidden on her mantlepiece. "Severus Snape's living room," she cried out.

She was apologising almost as soon as she whirled into the fireplace, stumbling out onto the hearth. Severus might be much nicer to her now, but he still didn't tolerate tardiness well.

"It's okay," Robin said moodily. "He's not here." He had his knees drawn up to his chest, his sock-clad feet on the cushions in front of him.

"Oh… erm, where is he?" Harriet asked. Was she supposed to have met him in his classroom again, like last week, where they'd practiced Occlumency in less comfortable surroundings?

"He was summoned, a couple of hours ago," Robin informed her. His eyes never left the fire. "I doubt he'll be in any shape for lessons when he comes back, so you can go, if you want."

"What kind of shape will he be in?" Harriet asked, still standing uncomfortably in the middle of the rug. She shifted from foot to foot, unsure of what to do. Robin's black eyes flicked up to her. He looked… almost angry. He stared into the flames again.

"As good as can be expected after going three rounds with a magical megalomaniac, I suppose. I'll probably pour some potions into him and stick him in his bed. He should be okay for lessons tomorrow. He usually is."

Robin shouldn't be left alone like this, she decided, staring into the fire and worrying. She perched on the opposite end of the sofa to Robin. "Do you always wait for him, when he's summoned?" she asked.

He shook his head absentmindedly. "He doesn't exactly let me know when he goes," he told her. "I just happened to be here, today. He's been gone two hours already. It's never good if he's gone a long time. At least if I'm here, I can patch him up, or call for Poppy if he's really bad."

"I'll stay too," she said. "We can keep each other company, and if he's hurt, I can help."

Robin shook his head. "It's fine. I'm sure you have friends to see, or magic to do, or something."

"I can't leave you like this," Harriet insisted. "You've been sitting here staring at a fireplace for two hours. You'll go mad!"

Robin threw a cushion across the room and buried his face in his hands. "Why does he have to go and be such a bloody hero," he growled, his voice muffled. "Why can't he be like anybody else's dad, just living a normal life?"

"I'm sorry," Harriet said quietly.

He sighed deeply. "It's not your fault."

"It kind of is," she pointed out. She knelt on the floor to fill the kettle and set it to heat. Robin looked like he could do with a cup of something hot. "It was because of me that Voldemort came back in the first place. It was my blood that made his body."

Robin shook his head. "I may not be magical," he said, "but I know my magical history and theory. And I know all about the madman my idiot father had the terrible idea to pair himself with. You were a child, you had no hope against him."

Harriet looked down at the rug beneath her knees. She could feel tears prickling at the backs of her eyes. She'd had no idea, not really, that she felt this strongly about Severus, that she cared this much. "How bad will it be?" she asked, shakily.

He finally looked at her, looked properly. "Usually cruciatus. Sometimes something more physical." He paused. "I was here, you know, that night when he came back. The Dark Lord. I was living here, and I was here when everyone found out that he was back, the dark Lord was back. I've never seen Dad like that, so shaken, so desolate. You're caught up in all of this, but it's not all about you. It's much bigger than you."

She shook her head. He didn't understand. "It's all my fault," she sobbed, a tear finally escaping. "If I hadn't survived, if I'd never been born…"

Robin slid onto the ground beside her. "Don't be an idiot," he said, putting a warm arm around her shoulders. "Megalomaniacs have existed all over the world; this is just another one. You were a child caught up in it all."

Harriet turned her face into the soft cotton of his t shirt. "You don't hate me?" she asked quietly.

He pulled back from her so he could look at her. "Why would I hate you?" he said gently. He brushed away a tear caught on her cheek. "This started before you were even born, and my dad made his choices then. He has to live with them now, no matter how much I wish he didn't." Green eyes met obsidian, and they just stared at each other for a few moments, her eyes bright with unshed tears, and his deep with thought. "Have you ever been kissed, Harriet?" Robin finally asked, his voice rough. "May I kiss you?"

Harriet tried to force her muggy brain to answer. She'd kissed Cho, and Ginny, but had she really ever been kissed, or just kissed someone else? She never got to respond before he lowered his lips down, brushing them over hers, so gently as to be hardly there. She let out a startled gasp. "I'm sorry," he said gruffly, drawing back and looking away. "I shouldn't have…"

"Can we do that again, please?" Harriet said, interrupting him.

A little smile played on his lips… his lips that he wasn't currently using to kiss her, much to her annoyance. She reached up and tangled her hand in his hair, tugging down until they were on hers. He wrapped a hand around the back of her head, cupping her skull as he deepened the kiss, his tongue brushing gently over her lips, inviting her to part them and let him in. She obliged.

The kettle whistled, and they sprung apart, Harriet giving a nervous giggle. Robin took over the tea-making, leaving her a private moment to touch her lips in something like wonderment. Cho had been highly uncomfortable and the only real kiss she'd ever shared with Ginny had been in the heat of the moment, emotion and passion spilling over. She regretted that kiss now, for leading Ginny on. But that kiss had felt nothing like this one, her head cradled in Robin's hand, his lips so insistent on hers.

He stood wordlessly, but bent again to carefully place a kiss on her forehead. It was covered by hair, but he'd unwittingly kissed her just over her scar. She gave a shudder, more from pleasure at the kiss than the odd feeling that always came when anyone touched her scar. He was only gone for a minute or two, long enough to fetch a plate of biscuits from the other room. Harriet guessed that there must be a kitchen somewhere; but she'd never seen any part of Severus' quarters besides this room. It was also long enough to give Harriet a few more minutes to let it sink in. Her stomach was in knots, and it felt like her heart was in her throat. She'd actually just kissed Robin… more than that, she'd asked him to kiss her!

He put the biscuits on the table, and folded himself to the floor again, facing her, but carefully not touching her. "Were you… are you okay with this?" he asked quietly.

"I..I think so," she replied.

"I know we don't know each other very well," he said. "I don't want to scare you, or, or force you into doing something you're not comfortable with. I didn't mean to make a move on you so soon… you know, with you still being at school and that." He twisted his fingers together, a nervous habit.

"I wanted to," she insisted quietly. "I'm not some stupid kid. I know what I'm doing."

"Harriet," he asked quietly, "What is this to you? Are you just… playing the field? Or could this be… that is… are you interested in me? In making some kind of relationship with me?"

How could anyone resist the look him Robin's dark eyes at that moment, Harriet wondered? He looked genuinely scared. Could it be possible that he really did want her, really felt the same way about her as she did about him, even though she'd been desperately trying to bury those emotions? "I know what people call girls who sleep around," she said firmly. "I'm not a slut."

"I never said you were!" he exclaimed. "A kiss most certainly doesn't make you a slut, Harriet. Just… if you're not interested, can you tell me now? Because I'd rather not be led on."

She leaned forward, kneeling up to close the distance between them. She kissed him again, just lightly, not much more than a peck. "I'm interested," she said. "But I'm scared too… I've not really been here before, done this. I've only been a girl for a few months."

He brushed her hair back behind her ear. "I know. We can go slow, I promise. Nothing until you're absolutely ready for it. I can wait. For tonight, we just cuddle and wait for my dad to get back, okay?"

"Okay," she agreed.

Robin moved the cushions from the sofa onto the floor, making a nest for Harriet and himself. She transfigured a spare cushion into a blanket, and together, they curled up.

"Do you miss your family?" Robin asked. Harriet was tucked against his side, her head against his chest and her heart still feeling fit to burst.

"I don't remember my parents," Harriet admitted, "but yeah, I guess. I wish they'd lived."

"I meant your other family," he said. "Didn't you live with muggle relatives?"

Harriet snorted. "Miss them? I hope I never have to see them again. I spent my childhood locked in the cupboard under the stairs and my teenage years locked in a bedroom with bars on the window. I was called a freak and a burden every day I spent in that house."

"Seriously?"

"Deadly," Harriet replied. "They hated everything to do with magic. They only kept me because they were scared of Dumbledore."

Robin tightened his arm around her shoulders. "I'm sorry," he said. "That's a terrible way to grow up."

"Well, I can't imagine your childhood was brilliant," she commented. "Severus… he's not exactly a bundle of fun, is he?"

She felt as much as heard the snort of laughter he gave. "He didn't exactly play football with me," Robin admitted. "But he's always been… kind to me. He always made sure I had what I needed, and he was around when he could be."

"Didn't your mum mind that he lived at the school?" Harriet wanted to know. "I can't imagine it made having a marriage easy. Why didn't you live here, with him?"

Robin really laughed this time. "For a start, she was a muggle," he pointed out. "Muggles can't visit Hogwarts. Secondly, they weren't married. I think I was the result of a one night stand, but neither of them would actually confirm that."

Harriet snuggled further down under the blanket, the chill of the dungeons permeating despite the cheerful fire. "I can't really imagine Severus having romances," she said with a yawn. "What was your mother like? Do you look like her? Because apart from your eyes, you're not that much like your dad."

"My photo album's here, if you'd like to see photos," he offered. "Let me just go and get it."

Harriet raised her wand "Accio Robin's photograph album."

"Or, I suppose, you could just summon it," he said with a sigh as the album landed on her lap with a thump. "Because magic makes everything so much easier." He opened the album to the first page, showing a round-faced, dark haired woman grinning down as a tiny, squashed, red baby. It was a muggle photograph, stubbornly still, but Harriet got the impression that had the photography been a wizarding one, the woman would still just have been smiling down at the swaddled baby.

"That was taken the day I was born," he told her. "Apparently my dad delivered me- you wouldn't think it to look at him, but he's actually a trained midwife. He was going to be a mediwizard before he decided to stick with potions."

"I did know," Harriet murmured as Robin turned the page. "He delivered me too, or so I'm told. I don't exactly remember." The next photo was of a younger Severus cradling a slightly older Robin, a cuddly toy floating in midair in front of the child's face. One chubby baby arm was reaching out to make a grab at the green teddy bear.

"I hate looking at me as a baby," he said. "I look so… squashed. Oh, here's a better one of my mum…"

This was a wizarding photo. Robin's mother alternated between smiling at the camera and glancing at something out of the frame. She was rounded, Harriet thought. A round face, rounded limbs. She had a delicate, pink mouth, an equally dainty nose, and big round china-doll blue eyes. "She's beautiful," Harriet said, a touch of envy evident in her voice.

"Not as beautiful as you," Robin told her, dropping a kiss on her nose. "Her name was Annie. She wasn't very old when she had me, about twenty. She was… sweet, but not very grown up, to be honest. I think my dad sorted a lot of stuff, like the rent and the bills. She just wasn't altogether… there. She accepted the magical world like it was just perfectly normal, although I think she was secretly quite glad that I turned out to be a squib. She was kind of… jealous of magic, I think." He fell silent for a moment, leafing through a few more pictures of him as a child. "You know," he said, almost conversationally, "I'm the same age now as my dad was when I was born."

Harriet still had trouble wrapping her head around Snape as a father, let alone as a nineteen year old father. That was just a couple of years after her own father had dangled him upside-down by the ankles, she realised. The idea of that gangly, greasy teenager being responsible for a tiny baby…

The fire had burned low when Severus stumbled into the room. There were no cushions on the sofa, his addled brain informed him. He wavered on his feet, ready to collapse when he caught sight of the nest of pillows and blankets, and two dark heads leaned close to each other, fast asleep.

"I told you to go," he growled, as the world spun around him. He braced his hands on the back of the sofa, his head hanging down limply. Voldemort hadn't been delighted with him: he'd been insistent that he did not know Dumbledore's plans regarding the newly- female Potter. He'd hardly been able to hold onto the shields of his occlumency through the minutes-long bout of the cruciatus curse. He wished that the Dark Lord would find some creativity; he was sick of the endless unforgiveables.

Robin leapt to his feet. Harriet's head, which had been resting on his shoulder, thumped painfully back, and she sat too. "Come on, Dad," Robin said, supporting Severus under his arms. The spell- befuddled potions master leaned heavily on his son. "You should have gone," he repeated stubbornly, his words a little slurred.

"Then there'd be no one to put you to bed," Robin explained. "Harriet, can you do healing spells? He's got a few cuts and bruises."

"Erm, yeah, little ones."

"I fell over," Severus ground out. "I'll be fine."

Robin rolled his eyes at Harriet, and gave a tiny grin. He slowly walked his father over to a door near the fireplace. Harriet followed cautiously, unsure. Would Severus get angry at her for being here? She decided it wasn't important. No matter how angry he would be, she had to try to help if she could.

She followed their ponderous progress into a gloomy corridor and left into a bedroom. Robin deposited his father as gently as he could on the bed. "Heal what you can," he muttered to Harriet, slipping through an archway in the stone wall.

Severus was flopped the wrong way across the bed, his feet off one side and his head thrown back on the other. Harriet nervously perched on the edge of the mattress next to him. "What're you doing here, Potter?" he growled.

"Helping heal you, Sir," Harriet said quietly. Respect was probably the best option with Severus at the moment, she decided. He groaned, and she gulped. Focus on the injuries, not Severus, she told herself. Don't think about how angry he'd be later on.

A shallow gash at his left temple had bled, leaving a thin trail of dried blood. She healed that first. There was nothing too serious that she could see, nothing that would require more than a decent application of episky. She'd knitted together the flesh on his forehead and was starting on a graze by his chin when Robin came back, his hands bristling with potion bottles. With a grunt of exertion, he pulled Severus up into a reclining position and held a vial to his lips. The black eye Severus had sported faded under her spell, as did the abraded skin on his palms.

Harriet couldn't see any more injuries, and she didn't really want to think about what was under Severus' clothes, so she watched Robin tip the last of five potions into his father's throat. "You should go to bed," he told her. "I'll get him into his bed, and I'll kip here."

"Will I see you tomorrow?" she wanted to know.

He shook his head. "I'm on early at the cafe tomorrow, and I've got lectures all afternoon. I'll come and see you as soon as I can though, yeah?"

"Can I owl you?" she asked on a sudden impulse.

A slow smile spread across his face. "Yeah, if you want. But it'll only be a few days, I promise."