The Undiluted Truth, Chapter 2: The Contents of the Letter
AN: Just a note, please be courteous when reviewing; not just for me, but for anyone you are giving feedback to. As in, don't post anything you would not say to someone's face, because feelings can be hurt, and I know some authors who have abandoned stories because of negative reviews. This fanfiction will bash James, as I have mentioned, and since it is a pseudo-Severitus, I'm assuming a Snilly ship. For the purposes of the story, I'm writing James evil- if you don't like it, just don't read it, don't tell me all about how my opinions are wrong. That said, if I actually got something grammatically or canonically wrong, I would like feedback so that I can fix it. Sorry, rant over.
Harry stared down at the letter, hardly daring to touch it for fear of smudging it. Finally, when he couldn't bear it any longer, he adjusted his glasses and bent over the letter.
My dearest baby, (the letter read)
I hope this letter finds you well, wherever you are. If I could have my way, you would be sitting with me and your father as I tell you these things, but in case I do not survive, I want you to know the things that I've written here. I would like to think that this is foolish, and that this letter will just crumble to dust in your trust vault, or become a curiosity to your grandchildren, but something tells me that I will not survive, and these things should not be forgotten.
The first thing you need to know is that I am not a muggleborn, whatever my husband leads you to believe. I was not able to take an inheritance test before my marriage, and James didn't allow me to take an official, documented test afterwards- probably because I could have contested the marriage if I'd known- but I had my friend brew me an illegal Heritance Tincture, and discovered that I, and by extension you, are descended from Salazar Slytherin- you might even be a parcelmouth, or speaker of snakes. ('Was that what it was called?' Harry thought) Do not tell James if this is the case; parcelmouthes are not well liked in the Wizarding world, and James in particular will not be pleased. I don't want you to be hurt.
The second thing you need to know is that James Potter is not your father.
Harry had to stop and re-read that line several times. It wasn't as if he knew his father, so he wasn't grief-stricken or in denial, but he was still somewhat surprised. If James Potter wasn't his father, then who was, and why had they never come to rescue him? Unless whoever it was was dead too? He went on.
This will probably come as a big surprise, especially if James raised you, and before you go any further I want you to know that I love you no matter what, and nothing I'm about to say will change this.
Harry frowned. From what it sounded like, his mum expected that he had been raised by his father- by James, actually. Harry was far from stupid, and something told him that he would not like everything that he was going to learn today. Why had his mum married James- she didn't actually seem to like him, and if he was not even his dad, then what was going on?
You might as well know that I never wanted to marry James. I did have a crush on his best friend Sirius, but James himself was always too big-headed and inclined to bullying. (Harry winced, thinking of Dudley) James, however, wanted to marry me, so he used an old pureblood marriage law to make me marry him. As for your real father...it's complicated. I was always friends with him, since when we were nine, but I never thought of him as more than a friend, and when we went to Hogwarts together we got sorted into different houses, straining our friendship still further. He was smart, funny, and very competent...but I didn't like the boys he was hanging out with, and he always had a vicious, dark streak that made me nervous. In my- our- fifth year, our friendship died a painful end after I defended him when James and his friends were bullying him, and he called me a mudblood.
I started fancying him in seventh year, but by that point he had friends in a terrorist group called the Death Eaters who targeted muggleborns, and when I learned that he had actually joined, I had to let him go. That and James did not like me to associate with him.
I thought, when he came back after the first revel that I could save him. He wanted out, and I couldn't blame him; he told me that he joined because his housemates had given him an ultimatum- either he join the Death Eaters or he would be made to "commit suicide" or meet with "an unfortunate accident". Not only that, but he had been offered patronage for his Potions and Defense masteries, and he couldn't afford not to take the opportunity. I was worried for him, even if there was a little part of me that worried that he was lying to me, and that he really did join the Death Eaters by choice. But we couldn't associate as long as long as he was a Death Eater, and there's no way out once you are branded. We met in secret a few more times after the meetings. Then James forced me to marry him, and I was no longer allowed to talk to your father.
It was one day in late September when I met Severus Snape for the last time. It was a farewell, of sorts. Alice Longbottom- a school friend of mine- and I were out shopping together since James was away overnight at a Quiddich game in Peru; the first time I had left the manor in months. I met him in The Leaky Cauldron, and, in a moment of rebellion, stopped to talk to him. Long story short, we had far to much firewhiskey to return by floo, so I ended up staying the night at the Leaky.
I was so happy when I learned I was pregnant. You were so beautiful when you were born, but I knew immediately who your father was, and only then was I afraid. In the end, I cast a full body glamour, making you look almost like a twin of James, except with my eyes, and I don't think James ever knew, or he probably would have hurt both of us. The glamour is an old Hungarian disguise spell called "Teljes alruhaban" and there is no British counter; the only counter I've heard of is in the same language, (vege a varazskatnak), which will break the spell. To replace the glamour, since you won't have any of James's blood to complete it, you will probably need to use more ordinary glamour spells.
Harry stopped dead. He had a sneaking suspicion of what a glamour was- did that mean that the pale face that always stared back at him out of every mirror was not actually his own? The thought was definitely frightening, and he had to stop for a few moments before he could recover himself enough to go on.
I hope, now, that you will forgive me for my deception. If by this point James has gotten rid of me in favor of a pureblood, I hope you at least find it in your heart to still think of me as mum. But if, as is also likely, you are an orphan- there is, after all, a war going on between the Death Eaters and Magical Britain as a whole- I want you to know that you are loved, and that you might possibly still have living family.
'Got rid of me in favor of a pureblood?' Harry definitely didn't like the sound of that.
You don't have to tell Sev who you really are, if he's even still alive, but I know that he would want to get to know you. He is a good man, if not an easy man to get along with, and he is loyal to a fault, if not always kind- he would never betray you, although it will likely be difficult to break through the shell he has built around himself. I implore you to find him, if he is still alive, but in the end that is at your discretion. Enclosed here also are my notes for a spell to remove his Death Eater brand, also- I was never able to test it.
Also, if Dumbledore is alive and at Hogwarts when you go there for your first year, I want you to be on your guard. He is very manipulative, and he uses compulsion and coercion spells on the students that he doesn't trust, to keep him loyal to him; try to make sure you get into Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, so you're under the radar, and don't ever meet his eye until you've learned rudimentary occlumensy, or he'll read your mind. Also don't eat any candies or tea he offers you in his office; it's usually laced with something- Sev palmed some on various occasions and tested them, and they contain things as diverse as loyalty potions to truth serum.
Harry paused to digest that bit. Dumbledore as in Albus Dumbledore? Headmaster of Hogwarts? What on earth was he getting into?
Actually, if Dumbledore is alive at all, be careful. He's good with words, and he likes to act like a sweet old grandfather, but he'll let you rot in Azkaban (What's that?) if it's part of his plan for the "Greater Good". He'll also guilt trip you, and he dispenses unequal justice; Sirius Black tricked an enemy of his into going into the Forbidden Forest when there's a transformed werewolf out, and got lines for his "prank", whereas the boy who was almost killed lost a hundred points for being out after curfew, to offer one example.
He is actually the reason James and I are in hiding at the moment- one of his Death Eater spies heard that there was a prophecy (James never told me the full text) about a child born at the end of July, like yourself and Neville Longbottom, who would have the power to defeat Voldemort, the head of the terrorist organization, and that Voldie was going to hunt all of them down, so he told James to put the cottage at Godric's Hollow under the Fidelius Charm, which means only those who know the secret can find it, and the only one who can tell anyone else the secret is the Secret Keeper. Dumbledore told us that Sirius, the one we were going to use, was to obvious, and to pick a man named Peter Pettigrew, one of James's friends. James agreed. I am afraid. Peter is weak- they could make him tell them the location with only a little firewhiskey or a few threats, and besides, I think he's a Death Eater. James says I'm paranoid. But I know I'm right, and I'm suspicious that neither James nor Dumbledore is even listening to me.
After he had finished the letter, Harry simply sat there, mulling it over for a long time, heedless of the purple and gold twilight outside his window. Then he picked it up, rereading bits until it was too dark to see, even with his glasses. He was not even close to understanding it all, but what he did understand petrified him. The great, magical world he had been introduced to that morning suddenly seemed a whole lot darker, and a whole lot more dangerous. But as frightened as he now was, he was also excited. Soon he would be entering a world that was his birth-right, to learn magic, escape the Dursleys, and possibly, just possibly, find a father. Now if he could only figure out just what all those magical words meant!