Thank you for reading! I don't own any of Harry Potter! Please let me know if you enjoy! Updates every Saturday!

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The secretary kindly showed the three visitors to a room at the end of a long, dingy hallway.

A small sign outside the room clearly read:

Tobias Snape

Voldemort, still disguised as Severus, glided through the doorway as Harriet and Ellery followed.

The secretary nodded at Voldemort, who nodded in return as she left the room to give the family some time alone with Tobias.

Harriet and Ellery frowned as they looked upon their paternal grandfather for the first time in their lives.

From his pitiful bed, Tobias's chest rose and fell with the weight of his laboured breathing as Harriet and Ellery slowly approached.

They could guess he had once been thin and slight like their father, but the nature of his illness had left his abdomen bloated.

His eyes had sunken into his hollow face so much that even the young children could see the heavy haunting of remorseful regret he had endured.

"S-Severus?" Tobias called as he glanced vaguely towards Voldemort, who lowered himself into a tattered chair across the room.

The facility in which Tobias had been placed was far from ideal.

It was obvious no cosmetic improvements had been made to London Morning's Hospice and Palliative Care for quite some time by the chipped paint on the walls and the stained floor tiles.

The smell that permeated the air was nauseating, a foul fragrance which had resulted from musty mildew and the acrid lingering of neglected waste.

Decay and rot seemed to be overall themes in the dilapidated healthcare establishment.

"Hello." Harriet nodded at Tobias as she and Ellery approached his bed.

They came to stand by his side as he scowled and asked, "Who are ya?! Where's my boy?!"

Worried her grandfather would become too agitated, Harriet nodded at Tobias and spoke, "He's right there." She said as she pointed at Voldemort, "We're his children. My name is Harriet and this is my younger brother, Ellery. It's nice to greet you, Grandfather."

Tobias narrowed his eyes as an incredulous scowl crossed his withered face.

He peered at Harriet as if she had just told him a great, unbelievable lie before he scoffed, "My boy has no bairns!"

"Sorry……" Harriet began, "But he does, actually. He has us."

Tobias kept his eyes narrowed as he peered back and forth between the two siblings before he squinted at Ellery.

He grinned as he scanned over Ellery's black hair and hooked nose while he mused, "You…..I can believe. You're as ugly as ya father, aren't ya, boy?"

Ellery frowned before Tobias turned his attention back to Harriet and argued, "But you……….Ya don' belong to us…..I don' see Snape blood in ya at all."

"Then perhaps you should look a bit closer." Harriet quipped, "I am very much my father's daughter."

Tobias snorted as he laid back on his pillows and lifted his hand towards Voldemort while he begged, "Severus……..come here, boy. Your Pa has somethin' to tell ya before they put me in the ground."

Harriet and Ellery both looked over at Voldemort who deftly rose from his seat and glided over to the opposite side of the dying man's bed.

"Your mam always loved ya more than she loved me." Tobias laughed as he cracked a smile while he looked up into what he believed was his only son's face, "Be that as it may, I….I….have somethin' of hers for you."

Despite her grandfather's abrasiveness, Harriet kindly laid a comforting hand on Tobias's shoulder as he groaned and attempted to sit up, but Voldemort coldly stared down at the struggling muggle with no hint of mercy in his dark eyes.

"Tell me where it is and I'll help you." Harriet offered Tobias.

"The drawer, there, in that bloody thing!" He huffed as he pointed weakly to a small bedside table while he laid his other hand on his heaving chest.

Voldemort said nothing as Harriet walked over, opened the table's drawer, and took out a black, velvet pouch.

"Your mam……Your mam liked holding those stones in her hand when she was young." Tobias nodded up at Voldemort, whom he believed to be Severus, "That, what does your kind call it, the 'Gobstones Game' or what have ya? I think some of 'em may have been used for that, maybe not……A worthless pile of rocks, I s'pose, but they're the last of her things. I thought you might like to have 'em…...as sentimental as ya are."

Voldemort glanced down at Harriet who blinked up at him as she held the pouch in her hands.

Ellery watched with the Dark Lord as his sister pulled the pouch's drawstrings to reveal dozens of round, smooth rocks.

Voldemort turned away a second later, having no interest in Gobstones.

"Keep 'em, throw 'em in the rubbish bin, let the bairns play with 'em, whatever….." Tobias said as he raised his hand in a dismissive gesture before he laid back and closed his eyes, "I don' much care what you do with 'em. I just want you to know, boy, that if I could go back, years ago, I'd live differently."

As Tobias closed his tired eyes, Harriet walked over to stand next to her brother.

Both children frowned while Voldemort turned to walk away, but Tobias reached out, grabbed his arm, and gave him one last sigh as he nodded, "...Differently, Severus….I would have acted differently."

Voldemort scowled until the muggle man let go and collapsed into a fitful sleep.

If Harriet and Ellery hadn't been watching, the Dark Lord would have dispatched the filthy oaf who had dared to touch him in an instant, but he was very careful about how he curated his youngest followers' opinions of him.

It was imperative to Voldemort that Severus's children did not view him negatively.

Harriet and Ellery frowned as they watched their ill grandfather snore loudly, as if his burst of consciousness to bid his son farewell had been a tremendous effort.

Before they could drown in their sorrow, Voldemort walked behind them, placed a hand on each child's shoulder and began their journey back to the Snapes' cottage.

As they traveled through the air, Harriet and Ellery both found themselves sickened by broken hearts.

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Once they reached their destination, Ellery stalked off to his room, too upset to linger.

Harriet stared numbly at the floor while unwelcome tears gathered in her green eyes as Voldemort passed a hand over his face and removed his mask.

"T-Thank you….." She nodded as she tried not to sob through her words, "I'll gladly repay you someday…..however you see fit."

Voldemort's sharp teeth showed as he grinned widely and asked Harriet with a chuckle, "Tears……why? You never weep……I rarely heard you sniffle in the days of your infancy!"

As Harriet raised her sleeve to her face and wiped away the evidence of her rageful sadness, Voldemort narrowed his eyes at her, completely unable to comprehend the feelings produced by the evening.

"I, um……I dunno, it's a bit difficult, really." She said as she cleared her throat and looked up at Voldemort, "You know…….everything?"

Voldemort stared down at her as if she were some sort of difficult puzzle he couldn't quite solve.

Harriet silently realized her friend did not in fact know why seeing Tobias had been difficult.

"Your tears have always been few, Harriet." Voldemort replied in his eerily calm voice, "Which makes them precious……Why waste them on a muggle you never met before this very evening? You have no memories of him."

"But that's what makes the tears come!" Harriet exclaimed.

Voldemort narrowed his eyes to slits.

"...I can't stop thinking about what could have been! How things could have gone!" She cried as she threw her hands up in exasperation.

She and Voldemort both realized she had spoken too loudly when rustling came from her parents' bedroom down the hall, followed by the sound of creaking floorboards that signaled someone had stood from the bed.

"A broken heart is time wasted, remember that, Harriet Snape." Voldemort said as he grinned down at Harriet with a smile so evil it could have wilted flowers.

Harriet frowned as Voldemort slowly faded away before she turned and scrambled down the hallway to her room as the doorknob to Severus and Lily's bedchamber began to turn.

She threw the pouch of rocks onto her desk and jumped into bed before she hastily pulled the covers up over her head and turned to face the wall.

Her door opened a second later.

While Harriet kept her breathing deep and rhythmic to let the movement of the covers give the illusion she had fallen asleep, she resisted the urge to let a wailing sob rise from her throat.

As her uninvited visitor refused to leave, she wondered how she would possibly explain sleeping in her glasses, until her door mercifully shut.

Harriet blew out a relieved breath as the sound of receding footsteps came from the hallway.

Once she heard her parents' door open and shut after Ellery's, she rolled onto her back and frowned up at the ceiling.

In the privacy of her room, Harriet allowed herself to cry, a luxury in which she didn't often indulge.

She usually rejected the weepy tendencies her female peers often displayed, but that night, as she mourned the great loss caused by Tobias's death and neglect, Harriet released her pain with the sobs that wracked her chest.

Hedwig cooed from her cage as if she made her own attempt to comfort Harriet.

Across the room, Anuman's reptilian body tensed in his cage as he watched his beloved suffer.

He kept his mouth firmly clamped shut while he waited, too afraid to speak before Harriet calmed down.

If he called out to her, he was frightened his words would come out in the language of man, not Parseltongue.

Anuman thoughtfully determined Harriet had endured enough shocks for one day.

Unable to sleep after her weeping had subsided, Harriet rose from her bed and reached through Hedwig's cage to gently pat her owl's head.

Hedwig closed her eyes as she accepted the bit of affection before Harriet removed her hand and walked over to Anuman's cage.

By then, he had collected himself enough to hiss, "You can confide in me, Harriet Snape. Are you and I not friends?"

Harriet sighed as she hissed back, "Of course…..it's just……..I……"

"Go on….." Anuman nodded as he moved his scaly head, "Tell me everything."

Harriet passed the next hours talking to her serpentine friend as she sat on her bedroom floor.

She laughed, she cried, but Anuman managed to lift her spirits enough that shortly before sunrise, she crawled back into bed and fell into a restful sleep.

Harriet's heart had mended but Anuman's had shattered.

As he watched her rest, he desperately wished he could have changed into his human form, walked over to Harriet, and cuddled her close.

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Severus hadn't managed to fall back asleep after he had woken from his nightmare.

He had been so certain Ellery and Harriet were missing that even seeing his children sleeping in their beds hadn't comforted him.

While Lily rested peacefully on his chest, Severus held her close and frowned.

He had failed to see the black, velvet pouch on his daughter's desk.

Harriet hadn't examined each piece of the pouch's contents in great detail.

Inside the folds of velvet, hidden amongst Eileen Snape's other, much less valuable rocks from the wizarding world, the Resurrection Stone had even managed to escape Voldemort's notice.