~OOooOO~

To say that breakfast the next morning was awkward was a serious understatement. Harry had walked into the study at 6 that morning to grab his trainers and had discovered Remus and Lucius intertwined with each other on a transfigured sofa. Harry had stared for a moment before shaking his head to see if it was just a hallucination; Lucius would have laughed, but he didn't want to wake Remus.

"Were I you, Mr. Potter, I wouldn't say anything; Remus discovered you and your sleeping partner in the middle of it last night." Harry blushed bright red before turning and walking out of the room without the trainers he had gone in to get.

So, sitting at the breakfast table were three embarrassed men, one highly amused man and one very confused man. Charlie looked from one to another before shaking his head; he wasn't going to ask, it wasn't worth the loss of his sanity. As soon as breakfast was done, Remus and Lucius left for Hogwarts and the rest retired to the Library; Harry wanted nothing to do with the study at the moment.

An hour after Charlie had started his Herbology lesson, an owl pecked at the window; Bill let her in and took the letter, casting revealing spells on it before handing it to Harry; Charlie paused the lesson so that Harry could read the letter.

"It's from Dumbledore; he wants to meet with me. This says that he agrees to meet at Gringotts on my terms...I wonder if he knows that means he will be under binding spells for the duration of the meeting."

Bill chuckled. "I can guarantee he doesn't. He won't think of things like that, he thinks you'll just go along with him on..." Bill broke off as two more owls flew through the window and were forced to land in front of Bill instead of Harry; he removed those letters and checked them over as well. He snorted as he removed a tracking spell from one letter. "Someone thinks they're being smart...I'd be willing to bet that it's Snape."

Harry nodded once he had opened the letter. "Yeah, it's from Snape; he's also agreeing to a meeting on my terms." He picked up the third letter, figuring it was from Sirius; he was proved right. "Sirius agrees to the same terms." He looked up at Bill. "Could you arrange a room at Gringotts? I want the highest security, at least two goblin guards, and binding spells on everyone."

"Everyone? Even you?" Bill's eyebrows rose.

"Even me...I don't want to be able to use my magic if I get angry; they won't be able to protect themselves from that. I'm almost guaranteed to get angry, though, so it's really for my own protection; if they can't use spells, neither can I, you or anyone else there with me."

"Alright, who do you want there?"

"Me, you, Remus and Charlie. Any more than that and we'll have all my tutors there; I don't want Snape to find out who's tutoring me in Potions and I don't want Dumbledore to find out that Professor McGonagall is tutoring me at all."

"Why do you want me there then?" Charlie couldn't figure out why Harry wanted him at the meeting.

"Well, it's either you or Lucius. If you don't want to go, it might be better if Lucius did go; I chose you because I think, if it came down to it, you would be best in a physical fight." Harry grinned at Charlie who just laughed.

"Yeah, I can see that...Severus Snape takes a swing at you and I get to deck him. Maybe both Lucius and I should go; he's just about the only one that can control Snape when he gets going.."

Harry thought about that for a minute...it wasn't a bad idea; he told Charlie that he would think about that. "In the meantime, if you could see if you could arrange it for this Saturday, I'd appreciate it." Bill leaned down and pressed a kiss to Harry's lips before heading out to Gringotts.

Charlie looked at Harry, wondering just what was going on between him and his brother. "So...you and Bill are a couple now?"

Harry blushed and nodded his head. "Yeah, I think we are. We haven't really talked about it, though."

"Judging from the kiss, I think I can honestly say that Bill considers you a couple. He doesn't just go around kissing people and, to my knowledge, he hasn't kissed you where anyone could see it before...has he?" Harry shook his head. "Well, the fact that he'd kiss you in front of me tells me that he wants to be with you and is kind of staking his claim...not that I'd steal you away. I have my eye on someone else."

Harry's eyes lit up. "Who?"

"Uh-uh, no way. I need to make sure that person wants me as much as I want them."

"Okay, that tells me that I know the person, so it has to be someone who's been here. Hmm...Draco."

Charlie's jaw dropped open and his eyes widened. "How did you...no, never mind...I don't want to know how you knew. Just get back to the lesson."

~OOooOO~

Albus and Severus stood outside of the door to the private conference room Harry had reserved for this meeting; they were not willing to go in if their magic was going to be bound. Harry rolled his eyes and looked at Lucius, who nodded back and rose gracefully from his chair. He walked silently to the door and stood looking at the two idiots just outside of the doorway.

"Gentlemen...you both agreed to attend this meeting on Harry's terms; those terms were that you surrender your wand to the goblins and have a binding spell cast on you for the duration of the meeting. He suggested this for the safety and well-being of everyone in the room; this way, no one can cast spells at anyone else if they get angry. Everyone in the room has already been bound...now if you don't mind, you're holding this up."

Albus reluctantly handed his wand to the goblin standing next to the door and submitted to the indignity of a binding spell; they were usually used on children whose accidental magic proved to be very strong and uncontrollable. Severus glared at his son before handing his wand over and allowing the spell to be cast on him. They took seats across the table from Harry, Bill, Remus and Lucius and next to a resigned Sirius Black; Charlie Weasley stood off to one side with the three goblin guards, watching for any sign of an altercation.

"Alright, you asked for this meeting, Potter; what did you want?" The sneer on Severus' face seemed to be a permanent fixture; Harry was going to change that.

"I merely thought it was time to acknowledge several facts. First...you, Severus Snape, are my biological father; James Potter was my other biological father. Second...you, Sirius Black, are one of my godfathers; the other is Remus Lupin. Third...you, Albus Dumbledore, are my former mentor and someone I had looked up to until recently. I have heard many things about each of you, not all of them are flattering.

"You, Albus, wanted to use my money to further your goals with the Wizengamot. Do you realise that all you really had to do was ask and I would have, most likely, given you the money? But you didn't; you planned to take some of my money and use it to bribe certain members of the Wizengamot, so that they backed your law proposals. It's amazing that you were once the head of that group, but now they no longer trust you enough to even let you vote for the Dumbledore seat; I've heard that Aberforth is voting for you now." Lucius looked stunned at this pronouncement; he was going to have to check up on this one.

Harry turned to Sirius, who bowed his head, accepting whatever Harry was going to say...he deserved every word. "Sirius, just when I needed you the most, you turned on me. Seeing your reaction is probably what made Ron and Hermione act the way they did; true, they were disgusted, but I think that, if you had shown me acceptance, they would have gotten over it...but, you didn't. You don't know how much it hurt that the man I had looked up to like a father turned his back on me when he realised that my parents weren't who he thought they were. Everything that I had been taught by the Dursleys came back to me...I was worthless, useless, a freak. Thanks ever so much for the self esteem boost." Bill looked at Remus and nodded his head; he would be talking to Harry more about this subject.

"And, last of all, Severus Snape. Everyone in this room knows exactly what Snape has done to me." Harry's use of Severus' last name didn't go unnoticed by anyone. "Even when you were shown proof that you are my biological father, you didn't want to admit that you might be my other parent. Instead of talking to me or even to Remus about it, you chose to persecute me; you gave me more detentions than any other Hogwarts student has ever had to serve...not a distinction that I am proud to claim. Not only that, but they weren't even deserved; they were for what someone else did. Ron and Hermione learned how to manipulate you, after Neville blew up his cauldron and I received the blame for it; most of those detentions that I served during my fifth year at Hogwarts were for things that they did. Not once did you even think about making things right...you just kept right on making me serve detentions. It did have one positive effect, though; I received an O on my Potions O.W.L." For a brief moment, Severus looked as if he wanted to cry; he controlled it and tried to regain his sneer. He hadn't considered that he, of all of them, had done the most damage to Harry's sense of self worth...but Harry wasn't done with him yet.

"The goblins here at Gringotts have proved to be extremely nice and very reliable. They came to me to perform my emancipation when I was unable to go to them and Ragnok, the director, was able to remove blocks on my magic. I wonder, Snape, if you realised what you were doing when Dumbledore had you place a block on me. He just gave you the incantation and told you to do it, right?" At Severus' nod, Harry nodded in return. "I thought so. For those of you who don't know, I am talking about an episode during my first year at Hogwarts; since I was raised by muggles, I was never taught how to control my accidental magic. Dumbledore told me that Snape would be casting a spell on me that would allow me to control it much better; what it did was block almost 40 percent of my magical core from functioning. I defeated Voldemort using less than 65 percent of my total magical ability. Ragnok removed the block during the emancipation; he had to place a containment field around the flat I was staying in or the release of my magic could have levelled Flourish and Blotts and every other building within a 9 metre radius of that building. If you had known what the spell did, Professor, would you have done as Dumbledore asked?"

Severus and Sirius were in complete shock; Lucius and Remus were not far behind. Bill and Charlie had been there for the emancipation and had been knocked unconscious from the backlash of Harry's magic. Only Albus Dumbledore had known what the spell would do to Harry's magic. Severus slowly became aware that Harry was waiting for an answer. "No, had I known what the spell did, I would have refused to cast it."

Harry nodded; Severus may be a horrible father but he had a fairly well developed sense of right and wrong, it's what led him to be a spy. "Albus, you knew what the spell did and you had Severus cast it for a reason. I'm going to guess that, if the block was discovered, it couldn't be traced back to you. You aren't the wonderful 'grandfather' that you portray yourself as; if you were, you wouldn't have done something like that to the one person you believed could destroy Voldemort." Three quarters of the people in the room flinched (not including the goblins); only Harry and Albus didn't. "You also wouldn't have been contemplating using me for my money. I realise that Snape didn't know what the spell did, but if it came out, the spell could only be traced to him, not to you. At one of the Wizengamot meetings I asked if, in such a case, would they take memories as evidence exonerating the caster of any kind of maliciousness; they would not. The only evidence that would have been needed to convict Snape of any wrong-doing would have been his magical signature on the spell itself; he would have spent 5 years in Azkaban for casting that spell."

Harry looked back at Severus. "Now that I've cleared you of any wrong-doing in relation to that spell, you should have known what spell you were going to cast. For all you knew at the time, it could have killed me and then where would that have left you? Did you hate me so much, even then, that you would cast an unknown spell on me?"

"I thought the same as you, that the spell would help you control your outbursts of accidental magic; that is what Albus told me it would do. I had no idea that he would lie to me about it." Severus didn't know why he was defending himself to his own child, but he felt that he needed to.

"Is Albus Dumbledore such a paragon of virtue and honesty that you feel absolutely no need to question him or his motives? Personally, I think he decided to use that spell so that, just in case I did actually win, he would still have control over me; after all, who wouldn't trust the person who arranged for them to be able to control their magic. If you had thought about it, just a little, you might have realised that I had no control because I was raised by muggles; every other muggle-born or muggle-raised student was given instruction on how to centre their core and stabilise their magic. I was not given these lessons, nor any other lessons that muggle-born students usually receive. I found out, in my third year, that there was a specialised class held every evening, for the first month of the first term, for those students who weren't lucky enough to be raised in the wizarding world.

"So, to recap...We have a manipulative Headmaster who wants to control me and my money; we have a parent who doesn't want to believe he's a parent and so makes his child's life miserable; and, last but not least, we have a godfather who refused to accept the proof right before his eyes and also made that same child miserable. You all wondered why I ran away; well, there it is in a nutshell. I want nothing to do with you, Dumbledore. You made what childhood I had completely and utterly horrible; I think you knew what was going on at the Dursleys' but you refused to take me away from them. You needed me malleable and, for a while, you got what you wanted, but no longer. I'm not too sure about you, Sirius. It's going to take me a long time to get over what you did; I am open to trying to work things out, but, again, it will take a while before I trust you again."

Harry turned to look at Severus. "You are my biological father. You should have some scrap of emotion stuck in your chest for just such an occasion as this, but I honestly don't think you do. I'm not sure I can ever forgive you for what you've done to me. You humiliated me, you debased me by making me feel lower than pond scum, you encouraged others to do the same and you have not once...NOT ONCE...apologised to me for being wrong. All these years you've accused me of being an arrogant prat, just like my father; wouldn't that father be you, as well as James Potter?" Harry stood, signalling the end of the meeting; Bill, Remus and Lucius all stood as well and Charlie joined them at the table. "This meeting is over. Dumbledore and Snape, I don't want to hear from you. Sirius, I will contact you through Remus if I do want to see you; until then, don't send me letters or any kind of communication. I need to think things over. Good day...gentlemen." No one missed the subtle stressing of the final word.

Harry left the room and was escorted to another room where everyone in his party had left their cloaks and wands. They all stood still as Ragnok removed the binding spells and they flooed from that room directly to The Lion's Den. Harry collapsed in Bill's arms, sobbing; Bill lifted Harry in his arms and took him to his bedroom. Lucius wrapped his arms around Remus, comforting him as best he could. Charlie looked around for a moment, then fire-called Minerva to see if he could come to the school for the afternoon...there was a delectable blonde that he wanted to see.