Ron's screams woke Harry up early in the morning of Harry's sixteenth birthday.
"What the hell?" Ron yelled as he sat up in his bed surrounded by Chudley Cannon posters. "Who the hell are you?"
"Whut?" Harry blindly searched for his wand, worried Death Eaters might be invading the Burrow. "What's happening?"
"Harry?" Ron blinked his wide eyes a few times while he kept staring at Harry. "You look… different."
Harry was utterly confused about what the hell Ron was talking about. "Really?" He carefully ran his hand down his own face and he was quickly forced to conclude that his lips and nose and eyebrows did feel differently. Without pause, Harry threw himself through the door, thundered down the Burrow's stairs and stormed into the bathroom. What he saw in the mirror was decidedly not his face.
Everything was wrong. His hair was much thinner and flatter than it should be. His face was narrower, his eyebrows slightly heavier and thicker. His lips were thinner, his cheeks a bit more hollow. His nose was a bit larger and slightly hooked. But the most striking difference of all were his eyes.
They were black. Gone was Lily's vivid green.
"Harry?" Hermione stood in the doorway, gaping at Harry with her mouth opened in shock.
"Wow," Ginny said as she came up behind Hermione, both still in their nightgowns. "You look like Snape." She was unable to hold back a huge grin. "Eat something from the twins, did you?"
"No," Harry whispered, because he was fairly certain he hadn't ingested something he shouldn't. "I don't know what happened."
Apparently Ron went and got his mother because the next thing Harry knew Mrs Weasley was there, pointing her wand at Harry's face. "When I get my hands on Fred and George, they'll be sorry, mark my words." Mrs Weasley frowned as she silently cast a few spells. "I'll have you back to yourself in no time, don't you worry, dear."
But no matter what Mrs Weasley tried, Harry's face remained the same.
"It might be a potion," Bill suggested with a dubious look at Harry while they were all having breakfast half an hour later. "It might very well wear off on its own. I'll floo the twins later, see if I can get them to cough up an antidote or something."
"Thanks," Harry said, barely meeting anyone's eyes. He hated suddenly looking like an ugly Snape look-a-like. He usually appreciated the twins and their humour, but he felt that they'd gone a bit too far to turn Harry into his most hated teacher on his sixteenth birthday.
Well, second most hated, probably. Umbridge firmly stood in first place, and Harry realized he should probably be grateful the twins hadn't turned him into a copy of her.
Mrs Weasley had baked Harry an amazing birthday cake and despite Harry's cosmetic troubles he still enjoyed getting his very own birthday party in the Burrow's garden. He bravely underwent everyone's teasing about his uncanny resemblance to the Dungeon Bat of Hogwarts.
He even got in on it after a while and started doing his best impression of Snape while everyone got the tables set up outside. "Ten points from Gryffindor, Ms Granger, for your utter incompetence at setting a table. Why are you laughing, Mr Weasley? That's another ten points from Gryffindor and a week's worth of detention with Mr Filch."
"That's so creepy," Ginny cried out in between hysterical bouts of giggles. "You really sound like him when you talk like that."
The fun came to an abrupt end when their guests started arriving.
"Wow," Fred and George said when they arrived and took a good look at Harry. "What kind of magic did you use to make yourself look like a young Snape?" George asked eagerly while Fred leaned in to study Harry's face. "This is really well done."
"This wasn't your doing?" Harry asked while his heart skipped a few beats in his chest.
"Nah, but it would have been a brilliant prank," Fred said with an eager grin. "Now fess up, how did you manage this? We might be able to sell something like this in the store."
Before Harry could deny his own involvement, Lupin arrived. The man took one look at Harry and lost all colour in his face. When he swayed on his feet, Bill quickly grabbed his elbow and steered him into a chair.
"So they used Severus," Lupin muttered while he stared at Harry as though seeing every one of his dead friends resurrected before his eyes.
"Who did what?" Harry demanded as he looked between his friends before glaring at Lupin. "You know who did this?"
But Lupin refused to say another word to Harry. He turned to Mrs Weasley instead and said, "Contact Dumbledore. This might change everything."
It took ten minutes for Dumbledore to arrive and no matter how much Harry pleaded with Lupin during that time, Lupin kept his mouth shut while he sat pale as a ghost staring into the distance at nothing at all.
"What is the emergency?" Dumbledore asked and finally Lupin pushed himself up from his chair and gestured at Harry and his brand-new face. Dumbledore's eyebrows rose while he looked from Harry to the twins and back. "Am I to understand this isn't the latest prank from the Messrs Weasley?"
"No," Fred said at once with a vigorous shake of his head.
George added, "Though we'd like to know the magic that was used to accomplish this. Stellar work all around."
"Perhaps we should talk in private," Lupin said with a small gesture between himself, Harry and Dumbledore.
Harry took a step closer to Lupin. "Whatever you tell me, I'll tell my friends later anyway, so you might as well just spit it out."
Sighing, Lupin sank back down in his chair and gestured at everyone else to do the same. "Before I tell you what I know, you must understand, Harry, that both Lily and James wanted you very much. They went to great lengths to have a child together."
"Okay," Harry whispered while Hermione sat down beside him, with Ron finding a seat on his other side.
"Both James and Sirius had been hit with an infertility curse, courtesy of Bellatrix Lestrange. It was one of her favourite curses to use on every single member of the Order, as many of them as she could hit." Remus kept his head down though he did give Harry a glance every few moments. "They couldn't use me as a donor because of my lycanthropy and Pettigrew refused to help them. Eventually they found a distant family member who was willing to help, though they never told us who it was exactly."
"Wait… it's not Snape?" Ron asked with a frown.
Harry was grateful his best friend asked that question because Harry had at least a thousand more questions but his heart hammered in his chest, breath coming in tight gasps that made it impossible to speak.
Dumbledore gave Harry a look full of sympathy, his eyes wide and knowing. "I believe Severus is related to James through his mother's family, though not very closely. A third cousin, perhaps."
"Did you know?" Harry asked in a trembling voice while he narrowed his eyes at Dumbledore. Harry had lost so much over the last few years, and just a few months before Dumbledore had dropped that blasted prophecy in his lap. If it turned out that Dumbledore knew all along that James Potter wasn't Harry's real father, Harry was going to strangle the man with his own beard.
"I swear to you, Harry, I had no knowledge of this," Dumbledore said, voice steady as anything. He apparently understood how important it was for Harry to hear that.
"Blimey," Ron said, face pale beneath his freckles. "So Snape's really your father?"
"We don't yet know that, Mr Weasley," Dumbledore said as he slowly got up. "I shall go and have a word with Severus and ask him to prepare a paternity potion, just so we can be sure. I'll contact you as soon as we know more, Harry." And with that Dumbledore swept back into the kitchen to use the floo.
Harry sat stock still in his chair, his ears ringing and his vision blurred. There were voices around him but he couldn't make out any words.
James Potter was not his biological father. His adoptive father, according to Lupin, but someone else's seed had impregnated Lily and created Harry.
And it might actually be Snape.
Fucking Snape.
The man who'd done his very best to make Harry's life at Hogwarts as miserable as he could while actively trying to get Harry expelled every chance he got.
Why the hell had Snape treated him as horribly as he had done for five years if he was Harry's biological father?
It might not be Snape. It might be some other ugly bloke who just looked a lot like him for some reason. Some other third cousin or something like that.
Did Snape even know he was Harry's father? It would explain his appalling treatment of Harry, if he simply didn't know. But how would he not know?
"Harry, dear," Mrs Weasley said with a kind smile as she gently placed her hand on Harry's arm. "I understand you must be feeling all sorts of confused right now, but it's still your birthday. Let's have a cup of tea and some cake."
Everyone was subdued as they ate and drank and tried desperately to make small-talk that had nothing to do with either Harry or Snape.
Meanwhile, Harry's mind would not stop spinning, no matter how hard he tried to talk about Quidditch with Ron and Ginny. When Dumbledore stepped out of the kitchen again and gave Harry a nod, Harry was all too eager to rush up to the Headmaster.
"Severus has prepared the potion," Dumbledore said as he briefly glanced around the people gathered in the yard. "If you'll come with me, Harry, we'll hopefully get some answers within the next few moments."
They flooed to the Headmaster's office where Snape stood waiting with a steaming goblet and a sheet of parchment. Snape did not look at Harry, much to Harry's confusion. He simply stood off to the side, arms crossed tightly over his chest, head lowered so his lanky hair obscured most of his face.
"We'll just need a few drops of your blood, my boy." Dumbledore flicked his wand and made the tiniest of cuts on the tip of Harry's finger. He then held Harry's finger over the goblet and the moment seven drops had fallen in, Dumbledore healed the cut again with another flick of his wand. Then he poured the potion out over the parchment, which absorbed the shimmering liquid almost at once.
"Just a few minutes now," Dumbledore said with a reassuring smile while Harry sat stiffly in a chair. Harry's back was straight, yet he couldn't stop his leg from bouncing from the sheer nerves that raced through his entire body.
Harry might actually have a living father. Yes, the man was an utter bastard who seemed to despise Harry with all his being, but he might still be Harry's real, living family.
"Ah." Dumbledore leaned a little closer to the parchment. "It is as we suspected, Severus."
Harry got a quick glimpse of the parchment, which showed Harry's name as Harry James Potter, but which had two lines leading to Lily Potter-Evans and Severus Tobias Snape.
Snape snarled something guttural that seemed to rise up all the way from the Chamber of Secrets and slashed his wand in the direction of the wall. Several trinkets exploded and books flew off the shelves, paper flying everywhere. "How could she? How dare she?" Snape screamed and slashed his wand again, this time exploding several of the large windows outward.
Launching himself to the floor as his heart raced in his chest, Harry crawled up to Dumbledore's heavy desk to take cover. Snape looked absolutely demented, as though he'd just lost all touch with reality. His black eyes were wide and full of blind rage, his skin was far paler than usual and his lips were drawn back in a vicious snarl. Over the next few minutes Snape demolished large parts of Dumbledore's office and he did a much more thorough job of it than Harry had managed at the end of his fifth year.
Well, it seemed that Harry took after his father when it came to his inability to deal with bad news in a healthy, productive way.
"Severus," Dumbledore whispered as he stood to the side and quietly watched Snape wreck his office. "Lily might have simply obliviated you for your own safety."
"I never would have agreed to give her a child in the first place!" For a moment, Snape looked like he might curse Dumbledore, but he aimed his wand at a chair instead, slicing it clean in half. "Do you truly believe I would have ever, out of my own free will, given Lily my semen so she could make a baby with James Potter?"
Dumbledore pursed his lips and shook his head and let Snape get on with it.
"She raped me!" Snape sent a burst of blue magic at a cabinet, turning it instantly into splinters. "The only friend I ever had and she raped me for her own selfish desires."
Harry squeezed his eyes shut and hoped with all his might that he would wake up soon, because what was happening around him now was an absolute nightmare. He'd gone from having loving, yet dead, parents, to having one living parent who'd clearly been made a father against his will and got his memories wiped for his troubles.
Harry really, really wanted to wake up.
"We must decide how we're going to continue," Dumbledore said in a surprisingly calm voice given that his entire office lay in pieces around him.
"We're not continuing anything," Snape whispered in a hoarse voice. All that screaming had caught up with him, apparently. "I want nothing to do with Potter's spawn. I did not consent to his creation, so I'll have nothing to do with him now."
"Severus." Dumbledore gave Snape a pleading look. "None of this is Harry's fault."
"And none of it is my fault either." Snape still wouldn't look at Harry as he slid his wand up his sleeve and squared his shoulders. "Leave me out of this mess." And with that, Snape stalked out of Dumbledore's office, leaving his trembling son behind.
"I'm truly sorry," Dumbledore said when Harry finally managed to get to his feet, his legs still shaking far too much. "Severus had no idea that he might have a child."
"Did my mother really rape him?" Harry asked in a small voice, looking at the headmaster in desperation, willing it not to be true.
"I doubt she physically forced him to have sex," Dumbledore said matter-of-factly. "But forcibly extracting semen from someone can most certainly be counted as rape unfortunately."
"But why?" Harry couldn't hold back a single sob, though he willed himself to keep it together. "Why would she do this?" Everyone Harry knew always said what a kind and good witch Lily Potter had been. Why then did it turn out that she'd raped her friend, because apparently she and Snape had been friends at some point.
"Desperation," Dumbledore said while waving his wand around, fixing things left and right without uttering a single spell. "We were at war and they desperately wanted a child. Their desire was so great that they were willing to use unsavoury methods." Harry stared at Dumbledore in disbelief, so he quickly added, "I don't condone any of it, Harry. What they did was wrong, without a doubt. But I do understand the pressure they were living under and how that might have affected their decision making."
"But why not use someone willing?" Harry asked, his breath suddenly wheezing. "Why do…that?"
"They needed a blood relative, however distantly, to make sure James' blood adoption succeeded. It also helped that you're related to James to anchor the blood glamours. That's why they lasted for sixteen years."
Harry stared at the floor, his entire mind suddenly empty. His body lost all feeling as well, as though he was being hollowed out from the inside out. Harry wasn't the person he'd always thought he'd been. Had never been that boy.
With a flash of overwhelming grief Harry suddenly realized it was probably a really good thing that Sirius was dead. According to Lupin, Sirius had known Harry wasn't James' biological son, but Harry doubted very much that Sirius had known that Harry was Snape's offspring. Sirius truly despised Snape, and vice versa, for Sirius to be able to let that slide without at least throwing it in Snape's face when he least expected it. If he didn't decide to simply disown Harry in the first place.
Yes, no matter it made him weak with guilt, Harry was ever so grateful at that moment that Sirius wasn't around anymore to learn the truth about Harry Potter.
"We at least know that James officially adopted you and named you his heir." Dumbledore tapped a finger on the parchment, indicating Harry's last name, which was officially Potter, apparently. "That at least is good news for you, Harry. Now we have to decide what to do about your face."
"What?" Harry barely understood what Dumbledore was saying, since his brain seemed to have completely left the castle.
"As you may know, Severus has an important job to do in this war. If it came out you're related to him, that might lead to unwelcome consequences." Dumbledore even managed to repair the large windows with just a few flicks of his wand. "It might be wise to hide your true parentage for the time being."
"How?" Harry stared at Dumbledore in confusion. "I look just like Snape. Everyone noticed it right away this morning."
"There are magical ways to change your face, much like Lily and James did to you in the first place." Dumbledore frowned for a moment, running his fingers up and down his wand before casting more magic to put all the books back on the shelves. Harry noticed that one of Dumbledore's hands was blackened and looked almost dead. How on earth had that happened? "I'm sure they used a blood glamour, since the magic lasted for as long as it did. That's no longer possible, as they are no longer alive to donate new blood. But there are other ways."
Harry had no idea what to think about that, though he had to admit that the idea of looking like his old self was a welcome one. Snape certainly didn't seem eager to play dad for Harry now, and Harry wasn't all that ready to allow that man into the role of father even if he wanted to. The more he thought about it, the more he knew that simply going back to the way things were was probably for the best.
"I can use a pensieve memory to make an exact copy of your face as it was the last time we saw each other," Dumbledore explained while he continued to put his office back to rights. "I'm powerful enough to make sure that magic will stick for at least a few years to come. No one will be the wiser that you are not biologically James Potter's son, as is perhaps for the best until the war is over."
"Yeah," Harry whispered, heart aching in an otherwise empty chest. "It would be nice to go back to how things were."
It took Dumbledore almost an hour to cast the necessary magic on Harry, but once he was done Harry looked exactly like he'd always done. "Thank you," Harry said sincerely, filled with nothing but relief that he'd be able to ignore this complete nightmare from now on. He could pretend to simply be Harry Potter, son of Lily and James and no one else.
"You're welcome, my dear boy." Dumbledore kept quiet for a few moments as he stared at Harry's face, taking in every detail he'd just transfigured to look like a lie. "I can make it permanent, if you wish. Perhaps that would be the wisest choice, so no one can accidentally or otherwise reveal your true origins."
Harry inhaled a sharp breath. It was a huge decision, yet it didn't take Harry much time at all to make it. He wanted to be himself, or at least the person he'd always thought he was. And he wanted no part of whatever his mother had done to Snape. "Yes, please. I'd like that."
It only took a few moments of Dumbledore waving his wand in Harry's face to ensure Harry would look as he'd always done for the rest of his life.
Dumbledore waved Harry towards the fireplace. "I'll accompany you back to the Weasleys."
Harry was met with plenty of confused but smiling faces when everyone saw he was once again in possession of his old face.
"If you'll all look this way for a moment," Dumbledore said, standing in the doorway while aiming his wand at all those gathered in the yard.
Harry blinked and looked around in confusion. Had something just happened?
"Happy birthday, dear boy," Dumbledore said, giving Harry a warm smile. "I must be off to Hogwarts. I will see you on September 1st."
"It's nice that Dumbledore came to your birthday," Hermione said as Harry joined her at the table. "But did you see his hand? I wonder what happened?"
Harry hadn't seen his hand and he asked Hermione what she meant, right as Mrs Weasley came bustling out of the kitchen, announcing that dinner was ready and to clear the table of all the cups and plates they'd used before.
"Are you enjoying your birthday?" Lupin asked as he gave Harry a warm smile.
"Yeah, it's been great." And Harry wasn't lying. He'd never had a birthday party like that before, where he simply got to spend time with his friends under the sun.
It wasn't until a year after the war that Harry finally learned he'd been obliviated that day, along with everyone else.
Right in the middle of Auror training, Harry received a letter from McGonagall, asking him to come to Hogwarts at his earliest convenience. Harry apparated to Hogsmeade that evening and trekked up to the castle with a strange sense of trepidation, though he had no idea where that came from.
"Headmaster Dumbledore left you this letter and this pensieve memory," McGonagall said right after they'd exchanged a few polite pleasantries. "I'll leave you to it." And with that, McGonagall disappeared out the door.
Dumbledore's portrait pretended to not know what was going on, humming to himself while Harry rolled his eyes and opened the letter.
It was short and to the point and made Harry's legs so weak that he almost fell flat on his arse. He quickly sat down in the first available chair while he read through the whole thing.
Snape was Harry's biological father. They'd discovered this right before Harry's sixth year but that revelation had not gone well, so Dumbledore had obliviated those who knew.
Harry's eyes filled with tears as he looked up at Dumbledore's portrait. "How could you? How could you make me forget I had a living father! I watched him die, for fuck's sake, and I had no idea he was my dad!"
Dumbledore looked the picture of regret, head bowed and lips pursed into a thin line under his long beard. "Please watch the memory, Harry, and you'll understand why I did what I did."
Harry did understand once he dove into the pensieve and found himself standing amidst a situation that could best be described as uncomfortably tense. Harry watched in quiet grief how Snape reacted when he learned the truth. Part of Harry felt heartbroken all over again, but another part understood that Snape had other, far more important things to do than try to come to terms with the sexual assault committed by the one person Snape had always counted as a friend. Perhaps the only person Snape had ever truly loved.
"I obliviated Severus, too," Dumbledore said once Harry emerged from the pensieve. "At his own request."
Harry nodded and wiped a tired hand across his face. Part of him felt hollowed out, knowing that he'd had a living parent, at least for a bit. It didn't even matter that this parents wanted nothing to do with Harry. But now Snape was dead and any possibility of any type of reconciliation or acceptance had been stolen from them and that left Harry with a sense of regret that struck him deep inside his core.
At the time, when they all discovered the horrible truth, there had truly been no opportunity to come to terms with the truth. Snape had been far too wounded, far too broken, to be able to process the thought of Lily hurting him in such a way. That didn't even take into account that Snape had a much more important job to do for the war effort that he couldn't risk because he needed to get in touch with his sensitive side so he could bond with his unwanted son.
And still, a part of Harry wanted to go to the Forbidden Forest and look for the resurrection stone, just so he could summon Snape and yell at him for a good long while, about what a horrible man he was for how he treated his own flesh and blood.
Because while Snape had been hurting, Harry had been hurting all the same as well by Snape's resounding rejection.
Yeah, Harry understood all too well why things had happened as they had, but that did nothing to ease the soul-deep pain that took up residence inside of him. This was going to be a regret Harry was always going to have to live with.
When he got home, Harry contemplated calling Ron, Hermione and Ginny and telling them the truth, but in the end he decided against it. There was nothing to be gained by it, but Harry might lose things if he confessed the truth to them. Ron would be freaked out by Harry being Snape's child, no question there. Hermione would urge Harry to talk about things and perhaps even to seek some form of counselling, which was the last thing Harry wanted to do.
And Ginny might not love him anymore. Yes, Harry knew that was a silly thing to think, because he was fairly sure Ginny loved him for who he was, not for who his father was, but Harry's insecure side, that little boy who'd been told his entire life he was a good-for-nothing freak, was genuinely worried Ginny might not like him anymore if she learned the truth.
So Harry kept his mouth shut and went on with his life as though nothing had happened.
Harry visited Snape's grave a few times, but ultimately didn't know what to say to a cold headstone, so he stopped going in the end. He did make sure Snape got his own Headmaster's portrait at Hogwarts, but he never visited it. Whenever he got the urge to do so, Harry remembered the raw pain he'd seen on Snape's face and heard in his voice in that memory of their confrontation in Dumbledore's office. Snape deserved to find peace, even just as a portrait.
Harry was forced to come clean with Ginny when their first child was born and he didn't look a great deal like Harry. James Sirius Potter grew into his fairly large nose eventually and his black eyes were just as intense as his grandfather's had always been.
Permanent transfiguration might change a person's face, but it did not change their DNA, as it turned out.
Understandably, Ginny was quite upset with her husband for a time. Not for his biological origins, but because he'd kept such a huge secret from her for all those years. After Harry showed her the pensieve memory Dumbledore had left him, Ginny understood why Harry was so reluctant to share the truth with anyone and she eventually came around and forgave him.
Harry named his second son, who also looked a great deal like Snape, Albus Severus and figured that was tribute enough to the man who had provided his genetic material to create Harry, even if it had been against his will. Albus sorted into Slytherin and Harry was very proud on Snape's behalf.
And Harry eventually took the knowledge of what had really happened around his own conception with him to the grave, never telling anyone aside from his wife.
Some things were better left in the past, so the people in the present could simply go on to live their lives in peace and quiet.
The end.