A/N: Apologies for the delay in posting! Real life has been completely crazy the last 6 months, complete with moving to a new state and a new job. As always, I promise to continue this story, no matter how long it takes me.
Disclaimer: still not mine, still just having fun
Snape apparated Hadrian and Helena to King's Cross early on September 1. The apparition point was a small room off one of the underground tunnels connecting King's Cross with St. Pancras, hidden from prying Muggle eyes with a small illusion. He led them briskly up to the station and onto the platform, barely glancing behind him to be sure they were keeping up.
Luckily the children knew their way—or at least Helena did—and they made it to Platform 9 ¾ without mishap, in spite of losing sight of Snape a couple of times.
On the platform, Snape turned to face them. "I trust you can behave yourselves on the train?"
They both nodded, Helena with more alacrity than Hadrian.
Snape continued, "You will be sorted into houses tonight upon your arrival. Allow your new housemates to help you navigate the castle—as you are not yet familiar with it, you will get lost easily at first."
Helena almost smirked in response. The real warning in his words was clear, but it would sound entirely innocent to anyone listening.
Seeing her recognition, Snape continued. "Have your housemates show you to my classroom—the Defense classroom, that is—after classes finish tomorrow. I will need to show you my quarters, and we will have other matters to discuss."
Helena and Hadrian assented. Snape rather stiffly bid them farewell, then spun around and departed from the platform.
# # #
They had well over an hour to wait before the train left—indeed, the platform was nearly (but not quite) empty—but Hadrian and Helena chose a compartment in the second car from the front of a train and settled inside. By unspoken agreement, they hoped to delay the interest and gossip their appearance was bound to garner: two unknown students, clearly too old to be first years, both with a clear resemblance to Snape.
Helena pulled out her new copy of Hogwarts, A History, causing Hadrian to grin at her predictability. For his part he pulled out the new defense textbook, less out of real interest and more from a lack of other options.
But instead of burying herself in her book, as Hadrian expected, Helena pulled out her wand and surreptitiously cast a charm to prevent eavesdropping. Slipping her wand back into her sleeve, she settled back into her seat and turned to Hadrian.
They were alone together—really, properly alone together (and well enough to appreciate it)—for the first time since Snape had appeared in Ireland.
"I'm so glad we're here—that we're going to Hogwarts—but also so nervous about it all." Helena admitted, her words tumbling out. "It's like being a first year all over again, except not, because we actually know what it's like, except everything will be so different now that I suppose we really don't, and that's what makes me nervous."
Hadrian grinned wryly. "I'm sure it'll be strange, but it's much better than being hidden away somewhere."
He hesitated a moment, then asked the question that had been eating at him for the past several weeks. "Do you regret volunteering? Being here like this, instead of being here as your proper self?"
"No!" She answered quickly. "I mean, I had no idea what I was volunteering for, and I can't help suspecting that I still have no idea, but I suppose that'd be true even if I were still Hermione and not Helena.
"And, well, I feel really awful about how much I'm hurting so many people by pretending to be dead when I'm not, and a little silly for not having considered that when I agreed. Honestly, I don't really understand why Dumbledore allowed me to—to participate given that, since I quite see that I couldn't have participated any other way. It would have been too suspicious if I hadn't pretended to be dead. But that's something I intend to ask him when I get the opportunity, not a question for you."
Taking a deep breath, she raised her chin and continued, almost defiantly. "I'm glad I'm here, because you're my friend, and because you deserve not to be alone in all this. And besides, you saved me from loneliness years ago. It's only fair that I return the favor."
They smiled at each other almost involuntarily, both remembering three tiny first years in a bathroom, the massive figure of the mountain troll, and Professor McGonagall's mingled fear and exasperation.
"Thanks." Hadrian mumbled the word, not quite sure what to say. "It's been—you've made it bearable, being there with me."
They sat in silence a while, simply comfortable in each other's presence—comfortable in a way they had not been since leaving Ireland. Slowly the platform and the train began filling up around them, and Helena reluctantly cancelled the anti-eavesdropping charm around them, as it was unfortunately rather obvious.
Both children read for the first hour or so of their journey, when Helena put aside her book. Hadrian followed suit with considerable relief. Other students were peering into their compartment with increasing frequency as gossip spread along the train, the weight of their eyes distracting and uncomfortable. Knowing they could not safely discuss the past, they instead discussed their impending sorting.
Helena insisted that she didn't care what house she was sorted into, so long as they were together. Hadrian did his best to convince her that Hufflepuff would be better than Ravenclaw (Helena remained unconvinced), and tried to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that insisted that the Hat would definitely place him in Slytherin this time around.
Not long after the train crossed over into Scotland, Ron's face appeared through the glass outside their compartment, glaring with an intensity he usually reserved for Malfoy… and Snape.
Ginny's voice sounded in the corridor behind him. "Come on, Ron! They haven't done anything to you. Remember, Mum told us to be kind to them. The least you can do is leave them alone."
"Slimy Slytherins," Ron grumbled audibly as Ginny dragged him down the corridor. "Can you honestly believe they're not evil?"
Hadrian turned bright red, while tears leaked from Helena's tightly shut eyes. Helena reached for Hadrian's hand and squeezed it tightly. It hurt, hearing their best friend talking about them that way, even knowing that he didn't know and couldn't know.
When the train arrived in Hogsmeade, the pair disembarked and followed Hagrid's voice down the platform, away from the stream of older students.
"First years! First years!" Hagrid bellowed, as timid-looking 11 year-olds gathered cautiously around him. "Ye'll be the Snape twins, then?" he asked Hadrian and Helena as they approached.
When both nodded, the half-giant smiled. "Good man, yer father, good man." Hadrian found himself grinning back, less at the sentiment than at Hagrid's consistent friendliness.
Hadrian and Helena climbed into a boat behind two anxious first-year girls. Hadrian caught Helena's eye, and they grinned at each other as the boats began to move, silently reminiscing about their first journey across the lake to the castle.
The sight of the castle from the water was no less breathtaking than it had been five years before, though they found it much more necessary to duck their heads when entering the docking cavern than they had then, since even as 14-year-olds they were both much taller than they had been at 11.
They stayed together at the back of the group as Hagrid led them up staircase after staircase towards the castle. The first years' nervousness was catching, and Hadrian felt himself growing anxious about their sorting. Judging by the way Helena was biting her lip, she clearly felt the same. He reached out and took her hand, squeezing it gently. She squeezed tightly in response, and they finished their walk up to the castle hand in hand.
# # #
With a new subject to teach and a new classroom to set up, Severus found himself far busier on September 1st than he had been for many years. His illness had not helped his preparations—indeed, he was nearly a week behind, blast it—but nonetheless he found himself soothed by the familiarity of the work.
It was bittersweet—he was even more keenly aware than usual of what Albus had asked of him, and highly conscious that this would be his last start of the school year with any sense of normalcy—but he relaxed into the rhythm of the work with a feeling approaching peace.
As he worked, the worries that plagued him faded into the background: Albus's waning strength, Draco's blind anger and hopeless task, the pair of increasingly perplexing children for whom he had (however grudgingly) assumed responsibility.
Here at his desk, the pesky students still yet to arrive, there were no Death Eater meetings, no alarming demands from the Dark Lord, no sense that the world was spinning alarmingly from its axis. Planning lessons, writing out a schedule for exams, anticipating the detentions he would give: this was a world he knew and understood, a place in which he had complete control.
Snape frowned absently as he considered how many classes the second years would need to master the shield charm before moving on to Rictumsempra. He drank a cup of tea as he considered whether the fourth-years ought to cover the impediment jinx or the jelly-legs jinx first—the theory behind jelly legs was far more complex, but it was an easier spell to cast.
He spent most of the afternoon ordering and reordering the sixth year syllabus as he thought through what sequence would best accommodate the incredibly uneven speeds at which students learned to cast spells silently. The variation in the sixth year classes oriented towards wand work was well known to be even larger than the variation in speed with which first years gained conscious control of their magic—Minerva and Filius groused about it every year, but it hadn't been relevant while he taught potions. Severus finally settled on teaching Langlock the week of September 30. Having the students glue each other's tongues to the roofs of their mouths before having them cast spells at each other was a particularly effective method of ensuring everyone had mastered silent casting, and if giving them four full weeks to master silent spellcasting before then felt almost absurdly gentle, he was also keenly aware of how deficient their defense instruction had been up until now.
At half past six, Severus put aside the OWL syllabus, which he'd turned to after settling his plans for the sixth years. He tidied his desk, stretched out the muscles in his back, and went to his quarters to change for the Welcome Feast.
He blinked a bit as he approached his bedroom, seeing a new corridor leading off to the left. Rooms for the children, of course, he realized after a moment—torn between irritation at the imposition in his private life and gratitude that no effort or even thought had been required of him. Shrugging his emotions aside, he proceeded into his room and changed into slightly more formal robes.
On his way to the Great Hall, his mind finally leaving the defense curriculum and turning to the upcoming Welcome Feast, Severus was struck by the terrible conviction that Hadrian would be in Hufflepuff. He was so accustomed to thinking of them both as Gryffindors (and particularly irritating ones), and had been so busy working on the defense curriculum, that he simply hadn't thought about the children's sorting. But now he remembered that the Hat had agreed to sort them elsewhere.
The girl would obviously be in Ravenclaw, which was perfectly respectable, especially since her reputed mother had been in that house. But the boy had neither the brains nor the subtlety necessary for Ravenclaw or Slytherin, even as he had plenty of the thick-headed loyalty characteristic of so many Hufflepuffs. Merlin, how humiliating it would be to be known as having fathered a Hufflepuff. Severus shuddered.
When he entered the Great Hall and took his seat at the high table, Albus was beaming genially. Seeing his mentor's obvious delight made Severus feel even more sour.
"Must you persist in such an obscene display of levity?" he groused at the Headmaster.
"Come now, Severus! You know the Welcome Feast is one of my very favorite occasions! There is such magic in the start of a new school year—magic so powerful even Muggles without a breath of magical ability have been known to remark on it!"
"The only magic I've ever noticed about it is the students ability to cause me an instant headache," grumbled Severus, "and it's nothing a good silencing charm couldn't fix."
Albus merely smiled in response and reached over Minerva's empty chair to pat Severus on the shoulder, before turning to Filius on the other side and engaging in a conversation that was far too inanely cheerful for Severus to follow.
Before long the doors of the Great Hall swung open, and the cacophony of hundreds of chattering adolescents preceded the students into the hall. Predictably, a blinding headache immediately attacked Severus's temples. He schooled his face into a mild grimace—there was no need to broadcast just how much the noise pained him—and braced himself for the humiliation of the world believing he had fathered a Hufflepuff.
Before long—though Severus could have sworn it was an eternity—the older students were settled into their seats and Minerva ushered the first years into the hall. Two gawky figures stood close together at the back of the group, taller than any of the first years. They were too far away for Severus to see their faces clearly, but from the way they stood they were obviously uncomfortable—and little wonder, given the many speculative glances directed their way from the long house tables.
As she had done so many times before, Minerva retrieved the Sorting Hat from behind the Headmaster's podium and placed it on the four-legged stool in front of the high table and waited for it to sing. The rip in the hat's brim opened, and it sang:
A thousand years ago
In times of deepest dark
Two witches and two wizards
Kindled here a spark.
Gryffindor brought courage,
Hufflepuff brought trust,
Slytherin the willingness
To do whate'r he must.
Ravenclaw brought wisdom,
And so it did transpire:
Their project here did blossom,
And minds were lit on fire.
Those early years were heady,
But soon they slipped away
As unity was shattered
And discord won the day.
Now as then division
Threatens Hogwarts' heart
Yet my task remains
To set you each apart.
Remember that the founders
When they were firmest friends
Each needed all the others
To reach their common ends.
May Gryffindors be cunning,
May Ravenclaws be kind,
Lest the coming conflict
Destroy the ties that bind.
May Hufflepuffs be wise,
May Slytherins be brave,
Only with each other
May you this castle save.
Uneasy murmurs mixed with applause as the hat finished its song. Severus snorted in derision at the students' expressions of surprise. The hat had given similar warnings last year, for Merlin's sake! Though really, no one who had even halfway paid attention to current events over the last few months should have been surprised.
The Sorting Hat always couched its warnings of danger in pleas for unity between the houses—really one would be pardoned for thinking it had belonged to Hufflepuff rather than Gryffindor, with such milky sentiments. Yet though he would never admit it, after experiencing and witnessing decades of suspicion and harassment directed towards all Slytherins, a small part of Severus wished the other houses really would start taking house unity more seriously—not that he was holding his breath, of course.
With a start, Severus realized that the sorting had begun. A pudgy blond boy whose name he had missed was sent to Hufflepuff, and Minerva called up the next first year.
"Alverstoke, Felix" was next, and Severus watched with some curiosity. The Alverstokes were an established pureblood family, and wealthy, too, but unusual in that they did not tend towards any particular house. The hat was not particularly quick with this one.
"SLYTHERIN!" the hat finally announced, and Severus allowed himself a small smile and polite applause, as he always did for new members of his house.
Next came "Arbuthnot, Rachel"—very quickly sent to Ravenclaw—and then "Bunter, Harriet," who sat on the stool for nearly five minutes before being declared a Gryffindor.
Severus rather lost track after that, between his headache and the impending humiliation of having a child in Hufflepuff. He managed to smile and applaud appropriately for each new Slytherin, but absorbed nothing. No matter. He'd learn all the little cretins' names soon enough.
"Waitely, Cleo" was the last of the first years, a small and wiry girl who impatiently pushed her flyaway hair out of her face as she jogged to the Gryffindor table.
His moment of doom had arrived. The volume of chatter in the hall rose to fever pitch, as if driven solely by a malevolent desire to enhance his agony. Severus glared at the tables full of noisy students.
Minerva raised her chin by an inch and waited as silence (blissful silence) descended. "As many of you have noticed, we have two more new students this year who are not first years. They have recently moved to Great Britain and will both be entering the fourth year." Minerva's remarks were brief and factual, to Severus's great relief, though the Great Hall echoed once again with student murmurs. Minerva cleared her throat, and the Hall fell quiet again.
"Snape, Hadrian."
The volume of sound surged to a dull roar and students began whispering heatedly as the boy walked up to the stool and sat as Minerva placed the Sorting Hat on his head. Severus concentrated on the muscles in his face, determined to show absolutely no reaction at the boy's sorting.
The boy sat for several minutes. Unsurprising, really—the boy was such a quintessentially obnoxious Gryffindor that it must be quite difficult for the hat to settle on another house. Though as the wait stretched on, Severus recalled vaguely that Harry Potter had not been sorted quickly, either. Curious, that.
Severus remained tense as he waited, knowing he would have to immediately school his reaction when the hat's announcement came. The tension crept up through his neck, worsening his headache. Though his face remained impassive, mentally he cursed at the hat to get on with it already.
Finally, the hat shouted, "SLYTHERIN!"
Severus found himself smiling slightly out of sheer relief that the wait was over before his mind caught up to his ears. Slytherin?!
The boy glanced at him as he turned to replace the hat on the stool, and Severus nodded slightly to him in a gesture he hoped would look like approval.
Inside, his mind was whirling. Slytherin? He had not considered for a moment that the boy might be placed in his own house. For now, at least, it would be quite convenient. Having the boy in Slytherin would be helpful for cementing his own position, and for hiding the child more effectively—for who would possibly guess that Harry Potter was masquerading as a student in Slytherin house?
But later—later there would be… complications, if not outright difficulties. It would be harder to deflect the Dark Lord's interest in the boy as he grew older, harder to keep him separate from the students who wanted to become Death Eaters. And the boy knew nothing—nothing at all—about the politics and hierarchy of the other boys in his year. Severus had not briefed him, because it had not occurred to him that the boy could possibly need to know. Mentally Severus cursed his own lack of foresight. That was one set of problems he would have to rectify soon.
"Snape, Helena." Minerva called up his other putative child, and Severus braced himself once again. He'd been utterly unable to predict the boy's sorting… Merlin knew where the girl would go.
The girl's sorting was quicker than the boy's, but not by much. Severus breathed a sigh of relief when the hat finally shouted, "RAVENCLAW!"
Not only was Ravenclaw a perfectly respectable house—appropriate given her putative mother, and the only house apart from Slytherin that was well-regarded among the Death Eaters—it was what he had expected. Severus was not fond of surprises, and the boy's sorting had been more than enough surprise for the night.
Slytherin. Slytherin for a boy who had never once demonstrated a single ounce of survival instinct. Internally, Severus blanched. Unless he was gravely mistaken about the boy, he would be eaten alive.
And yet—perhaps the boy's sorting was concrete evidence that he had misjudged the boy. The boy Severus thought he knew would never have been sorted into Slytherin. If he was honest with himself, the boy had been surprising him ever since the ill-fated dinner with Malfoys—perhaps even before, though only in retrospect.
It had been one thing to stand as father to a boy he couldn't stand—a pure formality, whatever Albus might pretend. It was quite another to stand as father to a boy—a Slytherin boy, no less—who he now realized he did not know at all, once James Potter's familiar face and hair and Gryffindor tie were stripped away. It was… deeply unsettling, he admitted to himself.
Severus was so lost in his thoughts that he was only vaguely aware of Albus giving the start of term speech and Minerva taking her seat next to him. The appearance of dinner shook him out of his reverie, and after serving himself he turned to Minerva—one of the few members of the faculty whose conversation he really enjoyed.
Minerva looked worn, he noticed. She was not young, and she had taken four stunners to the chest back in June, he recalled. Still, she looked more fragile than he had expected, which he found unsettling.
"It must have been quite an adjustment for them, with Maureen's death and then living with you and now Hogwarts," Minerva commented, direct as ever. "Had they even met you before this summer?"
"They had not," Severus answered quietly. "Maureen had not previously informed me of their existence."
Minerva simply looked at him, whether assessing his answer or considering potential responses, he couldn't be sure. "Well then," she continued. "How are they coping?"
Severus smirked. Minerva knew him far too well to ask how he was coping—she knew he wouldn't answer. "Well enough, as far as I can tell," he responded. "The girl seems to be coping rather better than the boy." At least, he hoped that would help explain her superior of academic performance, and the girl had always shown a higher degree of emotional control. "I barely know them," he added, a half-defiant admission.
"You will," Minerva assured him. "These things take time, but you're their father. Listen when they want to talk—they won't, most of the time, being teenagers—but be sure to listen when they do. Remember that they're not you, or Maureen either, for that matter. And give it time."
Severus swallowed and nodded, suddenly torn. Did he even want to get to know these children? Just the idea of it was incredibly uncomfortable, though somehow less so than it had been a month ago. No matter—he must, for Albus's plans to succeed. Damn the man.
"You'll manage," Minerva tried to soothe him, clearly having decided he was in need of reassurance. What she would say if only she knew which two children had become his, Severus couldn't begin to imagine.
