DISCLAIMER:

This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books,

Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

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"Head Master, there's no need for Harry to translate." Sam said. "I was born a snake I'm fluent in parsel tongue… We all are."

Harry looked confused, he tilted his head and looked at Sam as if he were the last piece of a puzzle that did not fit. "I don't understand." He said. "Snape's your father." He began to recite the facts. "You were born a snake. Your mother married Filch…" He scratched his head. "Who was your mother anyway?" he looked at the inscrutable face of Dumbledore. "Is there another Basilik around? A really, really small one?"

"No." Sam shook his head and looked at the Head Master for assistance. The last thing he needed was an irate Harry Potter on his warpath. "Hermione is my mother. She and Snape conceived all four of us while they were snakes."

"Holy shit!"

"Mr Potter, language."

"I mean…" His gaze searched the infirmary in desperation. "How?" He repeated, quickly adding as his ears blushed. "I mean I know how, I know how we do it- they did it!" He swallowed painfully, "But not Hermione…not-" Gulp, "Sna-" he couldn't say the name, "with you-know-who? Isn't there an anti-conception ward over Hogwarts?"

Pomfrey suppressed a chuckle, jostling the small black snake against her bosom as she shook with laughter. Dumbledore pursed his lips and hummed. The Mediwitch's response was quite a contrast to the one he had endured earlier in the day. When he had told her Sam's story, she had – to put it mildly – detonated like a primly packaged starched bomb, her untapped magic exploding books from his bookshelves and upsetting Fawkes from his stand. 

A student pregnant by a teacher, never in all her born days!

The chimneys and roof shingles rattled with her exclamation. She was not so naïve to believe that these things did not happened, but not in her twenty years at Hogwarts. Never! In her eyes this was far worse than a simple hormone driven romp in the sack, (especially as Snape was a very sad sack) but she had already vented at long and hard about that. Albus checked to see if his ears were bleeding, selected another lemon drop and calmly allowed her to stomp about his office while Sam discretely slid into a corner and tried to hide.

Hermione pregnant by Snape and giving birth to four live snakes, it was unspeakable! A travesty of all good witching and wizarding! The papers! The Daily Prophet, Rita Skeeter and her ilk! Dear Merlin, where were her smelling salts? She was beginning to feel quite faint.

Dumbledore sighed when the Mediwitch had calmed down sufficiently enough to fire questions at Sam. She effectively cracked the young man's arrogant exterior with a snort of disbelief. "Really?" she trapped the boy in his corner as he tried to spider up the wall. "Filch you say? I hardly think so! You need a good clip behind the ear my lad for lying to teachers! Argus Filch doesn't have an altruistic bone in his body and he married Hermione?"

"Y-yes." The boy stammered his dark eyes glittering with doubt. "No, not technically. No, he didn't jump the broom with her. But he took us in when she was desperate, four children in the middle of winter and nowhere to go. Hagrid was away; by the time we reached Hogwarts we were exhausted. We got into the dungeons and met Filch. I don't know what was said but we were ensconced in the dungeons and have lived there ever since." At Pomfrey's look of disbelief, Sam added. "Filch does look after us. He feeds us and –" He gulped and looked away. "Mum made us take his name out of gratitude. Here-" He fumbled in his pocket and held out Hermione's time turner. "This is how I got here. Filch found it amongst her things after she died." He fixed the Head Master with an unfathomable glare. "It's set to send me back by tomorrow morning."

Poppy looked at the gold and silver device and then into the boy's dark eyes, scrutinising what she saw there. "So why did you come back?"

"I wanted to see my mother."

"Is that all?"

Sam looked contrite his mouth twitching. He stared down at his scuffed black shoes, but said no more.

Poppy gave Dumbledore an exasperated look. "Two Snapes at Hogwarts! What did we do to deserve this?"

"It's not what we did, Poppy." The Head Master corrected her enigmatically. "It's what we will do."

Albus Dumbledore felt better – not completely happy, but better. Poppy's niggling doubts about Sam fell in line with his own. That the boy was from the future he had no doubt. That he was the product of Severus and Hermione's misguided union he was certain. However, how Hermione could end up so desperate to live with Filch and stay with him was puzzling? How did it come to this? How did she end up disowned? More puzzling was how he kept his position in light of the media feeding frenzy Sam described? It was a stretch of credibility, but truth as Dumbledore knew, was often far stranger than fiction.

He caught Pomfrey eyeing the young Mr Filch suspiciously and was gratified that the tall thin young man had the good sense to look guilty.
 
"Anti-conception ward? That old wives tale?" Pomfrey told Harry. "Do we live in a barren wasteland Mr Potter?" The black snake tried to get away from the woman; but was firmly clasped behind the head. "How could the mandrakes reproduce or the flowers or the trees? Not to mention the ethical and moral dilemma the existence of such a ward would construe."

Harry looked at Dumbledore in frustration. "Rumours of my omnipotence are highly over-rated. I'm afraid I cannot stop people from procreating as much as I can stop them from making bad decisions." His eyes twinkled mischievously as he consider Sam then the black adder in Poppy's arms, "However Madam Pomfrey usually intervenes before circumstances get out of hand."

Pomfrey puffed out her ample breast and the snake squirmed under the sudden constriction.

"So what happened here?" Harry demanded.

Dumbledore sighed and shrugged. "An accident, Mr Potter, as we told you."

Sam shifted uncomfortably on his feet and looked sad. Dumbledore continued, "A happy accident for you Mr Filch, but the circumstances you revealed about our future seemed to say the opposite?"

The black haired boy looked pinched, "Our life is not unhappy, though… " He mumbled knowing he was on a losing wicket, "I haven't been entirely honest with you."

Pomfrey gave Dumbledore a look that oozed of self-congratulatory 'I told you so'. But before they could ask Sam anything else Harry blurted, "Does Hermione know?"

"No and for the time being we want to keep it that way." Pomfrey replied, her words adding a new tension to the air. "Discretion is called for."

Harry gave Sam a quick look to see if the Ravenclaw understood the obvious implications behind her words. To Harry's way of thinking, you did not tell anyone about a pregnancy unless you were planning use a post-conception potion, so there would be no need. 

If Sam understood he did not give so much as a glimmer away. It struck Harry that Sam was very like his father, for all the boy professed to hating Snape (and a Snape claiming a Black as his father was proof enough in his book), he had somehow perfected Snape's patented look of icy antipathy. Harry watched Sam lean back against the workbench paste a passive aggressive sneer on his face and sniff at the Mediwitch, as if to say: So what? Do your worst. I don't care.

Genetic bastardy, Harry mused. Poor sod.

An unhappy squeal rang out behind them and the group turned to see Lavender Brown pop back into existence.

Draco screwed up his nose and waved a hand in front of his face. "Whatever cheap chemist shop plonk you've sprayed on yourself smells like cat's piss! Whrooar Lavender! I think you need to refund. You pong!"

Lavender's face crumbled as she looked down at the muck in which she stood, her knees knocked together under the hem of her filthy uniform kilt and her bottom lip stuck out and began to quiver dangerously. "Mummy?" She looked about the infirmary, searching the questioning faces blinking back at her. She must have been asleep her face was puffy and eyes half closed and her voice wavered as she cried. "Mummy!"

"Oh deary me." Dumbledore flapped over to the girl. "Poppy allow Sam and his father a moment alone while I deal with Miss Brown. Mr Malfoy, wait with Mr Potter." he turned his attention back to the distraught girl in the pigpen. "Come along Lavender I know a few odour eater spells and a couple of noxious fume and stain removers." He opened the pigpen gate and led the girl out, gently unhooking the lead about her neck. "Yes, we can get industrial strength cleaners piped into the Gryffindors girl's bathroom…" He answered her sniffle question with an empathetic smile. "And yes, I'm sure Madam Pinch can find a weight watchers magazine too."

"Right then Mr Filch." Poppy drew Sam's attention by the derisive way she slurred his surname into something that sounded very much like 'filth'. "Here's your father." She unlooped Snape and draped him carefully on the workbench beside the boy. "Don't just stand there like looking like a limp dishrag! Talk to him. Let us know when you're finished. I'll be over there with Mr Potter and Mr Malfoy… with wand poised."

Sam looked down at the blacksnake as it rolled about on the smooth surface of the table, then to the boys and Mediwitch who were standing in an uncomfortable circle down the ward. "Okay…" he breathed in resignation. "Where to begin?" He looked at the snake as it edged toward his hand and flickered its tongue at his outstretched index finger. "Yes," He said softly, slipping into parsel tongue. "I do smell familiar." Gingerly he ran his finger over the snake's head. "I should you see…" He smiled weakly, a watery expression on his pale face, "I'm you."

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tbc