In which Severus Snape has the last laugh. Also: Snape discovers the joys of toaster ovens!


On the first day of July, I finish the letter by signing the name I have both honoured and shamed. I even add a little flourish to it in the same manner as James. Remembering my brother — seeing him in my mind, bent over his letters as a youth and his tongue caught between his teeth in concentration — fills my heart with a now-quite-familiar ache. It hurts even more to let a simple memory from my past, back then a simpler and more kinder life, interrupt my stream of thoughts than to remember those milestones where the changes were catalytic.

I stare at the letter and release a heavy breath, settling back and relaxing at last. Forty rolls of parchment I have used to explain to Harry Potter that which he has the right to know, and more than three weeks of steady daily writing went into this. That does not include how many times I've had to rewrite the damn thing.

There is so much to tell him still.

Too much. I have not the time. I skipped both sleep and meals to do what I could, resting only when my hand cramped too painfully to curl around the quill and force words forth.

Food and sleep no longer matter; I will soon be rid of this body and its mortal needs.

With each approaching day I feel Voldemort call me. Each burst of energy and burning agony in the Death Mark is stronger than the last, until it feels as though my arm is crippled. I know he will be murderously angry with me for taking so long in answering, but it cannot be helped.

Yet I still feel frantic as I roll the parchment together. Should I tell Harry there exists more reasons for my showing dislike towards him besides his acting like Petunia, which is, of course, the truth? I understand that, as the only major mother influence in his life for his youngest years, Harry would unconsciously imitate Petunia to attract her attention and approval. I cannot blame him too much, but every time I see him, I also see James; noble, brash, loyal, and trusting in the end.

I feel I have cheated both my brother and my nephew – that I am cheated of my brother and nephew. For all that I have told Harry there is still so much more to be said.

I want to tell Harry of how I used to baby-sit him when he and his parents still lived at Dinsmore before Easter's attack. I want to tell Harry of how the portraits had cooed over him as a child, how he stared wide-eyed at Francis with fascination as his great-grandfather recited stories to him, and how he giggled as the twins made faces at him. I want to tell him Neville's talents are locked away, trapped behind a wall of clumsy ineptness Voldemort erected before my eyes on the very day Frank and Alice were driven mad, and the only way that wall can be broken is if Neville somehow manages to summon enough strength to sunder through. That will never happen as long as the intimidation Voldemort implanted within Neville's mind rules his life.

I want to tell Harry more of the family connections and family politics, to explain nuances and subtleties that would otherwise escape him. I want to explain connections that the knowledge of would die with me; of who to trust and who not to trust, of the brave adventures his father had, of the different Orders bent upon protecting the world from Voldemort.

I want to tell Harry I feel regret over Sirius' life wasted away in Azkaban.

I justify my hesitancy by thinking I have no time. I have told what I can, given the circumstances. Neither Sirius Black nor Remus Lupin is knowledgeable, and there is an urgency that pushes me towards Voldemort.

In the end though, it is the gutter rat within me, the part of me I could never distance myself from and never be rid of, that ultimately refuses to tell Harry. My sense of survival still screams at me. My sense of trust still aches and bleeds. I have never opened up to anyone as I had to James and Pandora and I never again shall.

I peep forth from behind my walls to lay bare this blackened lump known as a heart to Harry Potter – but not for him. I do it for James, and for Pandora. The loyalty I had for James and Pandora reaches out now to strangle me, forcing me to bravely put myself out there. That damned bloody Gryffindor quality forces me to tell the boy what I can. He may not be my flesh and blood, but he is still my nephew. Somewhere within him is the little baby I held and rocked and cleaned every time he crawled into the fireplace and ate the ashes with the simple childish belief that everything forbidden tasted good.

Oooh, that's a good memory.

I cannot help but smile at that baby, black all over from chimney soot and his bright green eyes smug with innocence and knowledge that his uncle would never hurt him. Little Harry had done everything within his limited power to turn much of his uncle's hair grey.

The smile disappears as I suddenly recall those harrowing adventures of his during the past four years at Hogwarts where he continues the traditional of giving me grey hairs.

That impertinent brat.

Ah, Harry. What would you think of the cruel Professor Snape now, who laughs gently as he remembers you slipping out of your diaper and crawling naked through your great-grandmother's herb gardens, cheerfully eating those bugs too slow or too stupid to escape your clumsy grasp? There are a great many times I was also annoyed at Harry, and I admit the majority of my time with him at Hogwarts was spent resenting him for making me feel pain I have tried for over a decade to bury.

The moment I had seen Harry standing in the Great Hall waiting to be Sorted, I hurt. I felt that was surely how James should have looked like, eager and somewhat nervous, had I not been knocked from the boat and he frantic for my welfare. I hadn't stopped hurting then. Every time I saw Harry's head bent over parchment as he made notes, I remembered James. I remembered how much I loved my brother and tried to trust — no, did trust — him. Every time Harry found trouble, I remembered James. Everything about Harry spoke of the father he should have had.

The brother dead and gone so many years from my life.

The gutter rat hates Harry with fierce passion. It needs to survive, yet the feelings Harry inflicts upon the uncle forces the gutter rat to fight like a cornered animal, ferociously trying to maintain the brick walls that protects it from the betrayal of a selfish and deceitful world.

I double over as I feel another jolt of pain from the Dark Mark. My arm becomes momentarily paralysed from the pain, and I impatiently wait for its use to return. Lord Voldemort grows exceedingly impatient. I finish rolling the parchment when I can move my arm, tie a sloppy ribbon around the huge roll, and then tip my candle over to pour molten wax along the crease. Before the wax cools, I press the Snape seal against it. I spend a brief moment to admire the gracefully winged Pegasus standing triumphantly on the single word, Snape. The Snape family did not believe in having a family motto and in that we differed from almost all of the other old wizarding purebloods.

"It is whatever we make it," Pandora had explained to me when she first showed me the seal. "Uncle Hector Snape's motto was 'Tactics? I don't need no stinkin' tactics! Cry havoc and release the hounds of war!' Cousin Quigley's motto was 'What can I do but accept what comes? After all, what will be, will be.' Your great-grandfather Severus' motto was 'There is an exception to every rule.' And there was one relative — who shall remain nameless — whose motto can be remembered as, 'HAHAHAHAHAH!!!' Each one possesses a different motto that express different philosophies, but each to his own, yes?"

I had asked Pandora of her motto. She smiled at me then and said, "We are what we are, and that is all that we will ever be. If we aren't who we are, then who are we but someone else?"

Of all the things I may not know if James, I did know his motto: "Life: it is the ultimate disease. No one has ever managed to survive it before, because you always die from it in the very end." He came up with it when he was fourteen years old and never outgrew it.

Alas! That too I have not the time to tell Harry. I wonder if Harry has a motto…

I brush my finger against the seal and then pick up the roll of parchments. I walk over to my large four-poster bed and pull a trunk out from beneath it. It's slightly singed from being too close to Dinsmore's fire. I pick it up to set it on the bed. Before I open the trunk, I place charms upon the parchment's seal to ensure no one but Harry reads what I have written.

It is bad enough I have had to share so much of my private life with an adolescent who is little more than a stranger to me, but I will not have others privy to the Potter and Snape family secrets. I open the trunk and stubbornly refuse to look at the mirror and box within. Those items, the last things Pandora gave me, belong to Harry. These things are a part of his heritage and I will not deny him anything that is his after I am dead and gone. I placed them in this trunk the very night of James' and Lily's deaths and never looked upon them since. I had not had the need for them, nor the desire to remember the most painful night of my life.

I set the parchment roll in the trunk along with the family seal, close it, and then place a few charms on the trunk as well. Having finished with that, I drape my newly written will over the trunk and drag both along behind me to Albus' office. The headmaster of the school looks up as I enter his office. He stands. He knows I have written my account for I told him my intention when he sought me out for missing meals.

It was my idea to write that family history for Harry. Albus had not suggested it.

I had some dignity to retain!

Albus had preferred otherwise. "Leave the boy," he said. "He will feel as if he must live up with his family's reputation. It is hard enough with being connected to Voldemort."

"He should know what he is about. That is his right," I replied. "If he learns he was kept from the truth, it will shatter his trust in those who hold it. Believe me, Albus; it will do more harm in the long run keeping away the truth than giving it to him all at once." That is to say nothing of how I personally feel about the entire matter of everyone constantly reminding Harry of how special he is to the wizarding world.

Lying, deceitful hypocrites, the whole lot of them. Cowardly as well, since they need a little boy, the most innocent of all, to protect them from the horrible monster known as Voldemort. They turned on him in a single instant once, and I know they would not hesitate to do so again. He is their scapegoat; a sacrificial virgin thrown to the angry volcano to appease its raging temper. Harry needs to know about his past so he can draw the strength he needs from it. Eventually, he can use his family connections in retaliation.

After all, I know that he hates being who he is because of some sadistic madman out to recreate the world. To him, that is what his past is.

But it's not. The future is a lock, and the key to freeing what lays within is the past. After all, the past is what shapes us, and it is the hardest thing to escape. How well do I know that. And how well do I know the suffering created when one cannot escape. For Harry to change himself, to move beyond the image of being the Boy Who Lived, he must know of what else there is. This letter will show him how things can be changed.

"This is it," I say as I set the trunk before Albus. "This is what I wish Harry to have upon my death." I hand him the will and he glances over it. "And this is my last will and testimony, made in sound mind and body." His eyebrows arch upon seeing what I have left to those mentioned within. In Pandora's will, she had the Snape estate split equally to between myself and James, with little trust funds to neighbourhood families and children. When James died without a will, his inheritance shifted to my care until Harry's age of majority. I now leave everything to Harry with Remus as caretaker until Harry becomes a legal adult. I know I can at least trust Remus. Remus would sooner allow himself to be flayed and tortured with silver pikes before allowing anything of Harry's entrusted to him come to harm, though I have left him — as I had with the Weasley family, all the permanent school staff I cared for in my own way, and the Longbottoms — a small fortune unto itself, though it is but a bare dent in what I inherited or what Harry will find he possesses.

That should surprise Harry, I think dourly as I leave Hogwarts Castle and head for the grounds beyond the anti-Apparating shields. He about to go from being a pauper to one of the richest wizards in Europe. The puny allowance I had created for his schooling is nothing compared to what he will soon learn he possesses.

I feel my Dark Mark burn and I finally open myself to the foreign power that resides in me. I have not used it for more than fourteen years, and though I have used it hundreds of times before, to find the link and follow it to where Voldemort demands me to be, I am still filled with the thrill and repulsion of its strength and feeling.

I had not lied when I explained to Harry the power was both pleasurable and painful, but those words do not do it any justice. Each time I use it, the power kills me in an agonizing, horrible death of fire that burns and burns. Yet is also recreates me each time, giving me back my life in a glorious splendour of reborn emotions and energies.

The feeling is almost seductive. If I could get away with it, I would allow myself to be permanently swept away in the cycle of death and birth. The power is an echo of what Voldemort, the man formally known as Tom Riddle, is like. He destroys and creates. He is both glorious and horrible. Pandora was right; had he walked a path of honesty, truth, and integrity, the man could have had everything. He had the charm and the guile to enrapture the world, and he threw it all away for the sake of ruling through fear and madness.

The power carries me away and in the process my shields are down and my entire being accepts the presence of my Dark Lord. I Apparate, the power lending me strength I usually lack. I am instantly in the room I have come to call Voldemort's Throne Room. The title is not very imaginative, but every time I see Voldemort seated in his chair with shadows cast over his features, I cannot help but think he is like a king or a god.

I gaze upon him for the first time since that fateful night Dinsmore burned. He is so different, and yet nothing about him has changed. It is as if the unnaturalness of his being finally destroyed the fragile human shell he existed within. White hairless skin glows in the darkness as lidless red eyes — still all-seeing, still filled with cunning and hunger, and yet so unnatural and empty of anything remotely human — gaze at me. They are filled with anger and his hands grip his chair arms tightly, as if he can barely restrain the urge to strike me down.

At the side of his chair, standing where Lucius used to stand before his precious son was born, is Peter Pettigrew. The coward flinches as I look at him, human handing clutching at a hand of silver. That's… new. Perhaps he feels the rage burning in me and the yearning I have to dump this man naked in the middle of the London slums with a "Mug me" sign plastered on his back. Let the vultures of the destitute tear him apart; I can think of no worst fate.

"Come, Severus." The anger disappears from Voldemort's eyes, but my Dark Mark burns and I know he is still fuming. He holds his arms out and beckons me into a sweet embrace. I hesitate only an instant before kneeling at his feet. His arms wrap around me and I find myself filled with peace as I relax against his bony knees, breathing in the stench of death. He runs his hand through my hair and grimaces at the grease.

There are many things I have never understood about Voldemort and this need of his to touch. Why? There is nothing sexual about his touch. I remember when people have touched me sexually, and it is easy to distinguish the difference between lust and simple necessity of reaching out. It's almost as if he revels in the ability to feel. I do not fight or protest. Yet how ironic it would seem to me that Voldemort is the only one, besides Pandora and little (very, very little) Harry, who has ever touched me merely for the sake of physical contact.

"Do you hate me?" Voldemort asks softly as he runs his hand over my cheek and down the line of my throat.

I cannot lie. I have never lied to Voldemort. "Yes." He laughs softly at that. Still I amuse him.

Some things truly never change.

"Would you give your life for me?"

Magic calls to magic. That part of him that exists in me sings in harmony with that part of me that belongs to him. Even as the gutter rat cowers and refuses to yield, that which is his carries me along and answers. "I would."

"Your life?"

Not that I really ever had one. "My life."

"Your soul?"

"I would if I possessed one."

He laughs again at that. "Ah yes; you sold that to me many years ago for knowledge."

"It was worth the price."

"Your heart?"

"Somewhere in the slums."

Another laugh and softer words this time. "Your blood?"

"A rock does not have blood."

"Everything?"

"That which you hold."

Hands sweep through my hair again. "For everything human granted to me out of free will, so then I become human." I feel something cold press against my throat and I know this is the end. The cold presses further against my neck and I lift my head to ease the pressure. I see it is a knife, but I do not panic. "I once said I would destroy you only for a good reason. I cannot afford to play games but you remain useful to the very end. Do you willingly grant me your life?"

My eyes glance upward into Voldemort's. So empty. So very, very empty. No matter how many human gifts are granted to him, he will never be as human as he was before he sold his own soul to the Darker Powers That Be. I sometimes wish I could have seen what he was before he became this soulless monster. I wish I could have seen what Pandora saw when Tom Riddle first appeared on the Potter doorstep, what Francis saw when he was alive. I drop my neck onto the knife, feel its edge part skin, a silent assent for what I know will happen next.

To Pandora's grandson Voldemort is, at least, merciful. The little gutter rat's throat is slit from end to end, a fate that, no doubt, had originally been in store for me living in the slums had not Pandora hijacked my destiny.

How fitting.

I do not struggle but allow the pain to wash through my body. With each fluttering beat of my heart, blood bathes Voldemort. I choke as the blood floods into my lungs. His arms hold me close, gentle and caring in death. I see his hands. They are white, yet slowly gaining a healthy colour. Cold lips press their farewell to my forehead.

From out of nowhere I hear a scream. Awareness blossoms in me a moment, then pours away with my blood. I had not told Harry that, when the Mirror of Rebounds had shown James' death, I heard Pandora scream in agony. Why does that scream echo now? Does her soul feel the loss of her adopted grandson, the son of her heart? Is she still ali…


Ding ding ding.

"Harry!" Uncle Vernon did not look up from his newspaper as he shouted. Sitting next to him at the kitchen table, listlessly chewing on the other half of Dudley's banana, was the very person Uncle Vernon yelled for. "Answer the door!"

Harry rolled his eyes as he silently stood. He walked around Dudley's bulk and ignored the warning look Aunt Petunia shot him from where she stood beside to the toaster. He sighed as he opened the door, half expecting a neighbour or a deliveryman or — "Professor McGonagall?" Harry's eyes grew huge behind his glasses as the Head the Gryffindor House bustled past him into the living room, dragging a trunk behind her.

"Who is it?" Uncle Vernon yelled. Harry did not answer as McGonagall set the trunk before him and straightened upright. Her eyes were red-rimmed and tear tracks were prominent as she gazed sadly down at Harry. Any bright mood Harry might have gained at seeing her plummeted at the sight. He had a feeling that the news McGonagall brought was not good at all. The cold lump ever-present in his chest since Cedric died dropped to the pit of his stomach.

Uncle Vernon entered the room to see what kept Harry and froze when he saw what sort of visitor had come calling.

"You're one of them!" he roared as his face flushed a deep red. One steely-eyed look from McGonagall silenced what else he was going to say.

"I bring terrible news, Mister Potter," McGonagall said gently. "Professor Snape is dead. I understand this will come to a surprise, as there is no love lost between the two of you. However, he left some very important things meant for you only." She pointed at the trunk. " I advise you to look at them at your earliest convenience."

"Snape?" Aunt Petunia was chalk-white as she stepped forward. Harry had not realized she had entered the living room until she spoke.

McGonagall glared at her. "You know of whom I speak." A look of severe anger swept across Aunt Petunia's face.

"That worthless slimy bastard of a gutter rat?"

Something clattered suddenly in the kitchen and Dudley screeched. He waddled an escape from the kitchen. "Mum! The toaster attacked me!" he cried with one thick finger pointing behind. The others ignored him.

McGonagall picked up the trunk and shoved it into Harry's arms. "Look at them," she said softly. She glared at Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. "Leave him be until he has had a time to examine the things. Unless you would rather I stay and ensure his privacy?" Shock and revulsion filled the faces of Harry's family members. Puzzled, intensely curious, and a tad regretful as to why Snape would leave him anything, Harry carried to the trunk over to the base of the stairs. He paused on top of the first step, and then regarded McGonagall. "Voldemort killed him, didn't he?" he asked. "Because Snape was a spy."

McGonagall shrugged. "Voldemort killed him, but why I don't know." Harry and she silently gazed at each other for a long moment before Harry turned away. He heard Uncle Vernon speaking rapidly to McGonagall in a soft voice, but did not care for what was said. He sat the trunk down beside his bed and opened it. Colour flashed as the wards on the trunk acknowledged Harry and dissipated harmlessly. The first thing Harry noticed was the large roll of parchment papers, sealed with wax.

He pulled that out with only a brief glance at the box and mirror, and then sat cross-legged on his bed. After a moment of studying the seal, he broke it. Again colour flashed, but Harry did not feel his senses prickle in warning, so he knew the magic meant him no harm.

He read. All that day he read, until he finished as the sun was setting. Harry listlessly dropped the roll of parchments into the trunk. He felt emotionally and physically drained; well, more so than usual.

He had taken in so much information of his family, of Voldemort, especially of Snape (perhaps a little more than what he would have liked… Well, all right. A great deal more than what he would have liked), that his head like it should burst. He was giddy with delight of knowing something about his father beyond the vague recollections Remus, Sirius, and Dumbledore had granted him.

Yet, also because of this letter, he had the vague notion that there was a reason why Voldemort hated him floating somewhere in the words. He understood why his family suffered. There were still questions unanswered, such as how and why he had managed to survive the Killing Curse, but this was all so confusing. Harry knew he would have to read the letter a few more times to understand and appreciate the layers of nuances.

But now was not the time. Harry did not have the strength to reread the letter. To be sure, that what had been written was rather one-sided. Harry felt that Professor Snape placed emphasis upon the things he wanted Harry to pay the most attention, and skimmed very briefly over the things he felt Harry had to know but did not want to admit too much about the matter. It was clear that he had even exaggerated many things, such as Peter Pettigrew's overall pathetic personality (though Harry was not going to complain about that point) and Sirius Black's mischievous nature.

Although it seemed disrespectful to think that maybe Snape might have exaggerated his life in the slums.

How very depressing all of it was. Harry thought he had a difficult life, but all of his pain and torment paled in comparison to the rest of the family. His father witnessed a bloody massacre; his uncle survived some of the worst living conditions known to man; his grandmother persevered despite burying the scrappy remains of her beloved family. Strange how it seemed that everyone he was related to met with horrid ends even before he knew them. It spoke ill of what may be, since history had strange ways of going full circle.

Harry rummaged through the trunk and pulled out the Mirror of Rebounds. Before he knew what he was doing, Harry found himself captivated. As the pads of his fingertips brushed the cool glass, light glimmered in the glass' depths and eyes the colour of turquoise stared into his, curious and happily surprised. Harry jumped and back snatched his hands. Belatedly, he remembered what Severus Snape had told him when he saw Voldemort look at him through the mirror.

Harry hastily closed the mirror within the trunk and shoved it under his bed. With a sigh, he collapsed face-first onto his pillow. Why, he wondered, did everything always seem to happen to me With that thought, he drifted into an exhausted sleep.

That night, he had a strange dream of a toddler-James chasing a toddler-Severus, the latter screaming something about how the former's children were going to be Fate's revenge for the pranks of his youth. Around they circled the legs of a giant woman with piercing blue eyes; she merely shook her head and told them to behave or the Big Bad Riddle would come and eat them up as he did all naughty children.

He dreamt, also, of a small boy who cried a river of blood, and of another child with black curls and haunted eyes who ran frantically through dismal streets, past rundown buildings and piles of garbage, all the while crying for his father and mother, who left him abandoned in an ugly new world. The dreams were a change from repeatedly hearing Kill the spare, and seeing the faces of those who died come to rescue him from the tip of Voldemort's wand.

Not exactly a welcome change.

Harry awoke early the next morning just as the sun was rising. He still felt emotionally drained. So Severus Snape, the Terror of the Hogwarts Dungeons, and Harry's uncle, was dead. Surely that meant something important at least. Harry felt the need to do something in commemoration of the man; something like a memorial. He supposed it was the least he could do for someone who had given him actual information of his family's heritage.

He truly had no idea what sort of commemoration that called for, but after a moment of thinking he dug out his Potions homework from beneath the floorboards. For the next three hours, he sat cross-legged on his bed and poured his best effort into the homework. He finished just as Petunia called the others down for breakfast. He stared at the essay and experimental potion recipe.

Harry swelled with pride. It was some of his best Potions work yet without help; he would not be surprised if it was his very best Potions work!

"An F," said a silky voice behind Harry. The pride shrivelled into horror. "That is definitely an F if I ever saw one, and believe me: I have certainly seen many in my career as an instructor."

Harry pressed his lips together, turned to face the voice, squinted, rubbed his eyes, and finally stared in slack-jawed amazement.

"What?" Severus Snape snarled as he floated before Harry. "Haven't you seen a ghost before? Snap your jaw shut before something particularly disgusting flies into it. You look like Neville Longbottom does whenever he succeeded with a potion in class."

Harry was silent for a long moment. Then, "I didn't know your hair was curly!"

Severus grumbled as he whirled around so his back was to Harry. He pressed his arms against the afore-mentioned wild curls of black hair and muttered something about how it was bad for his image. Harry cackled in glee. "Was that why your hair was greasy?" he demanded eagerly. " 'cause it was always so curly and you didn't like it?"

Severus made a sound much like a whistling teakettle. Harry felt his initial surprise and amusement slide away. He slumped over the edge of the bed and knotted his fingers together between his knees.

"I can't imagine you as my uncle," he admitted softly. "Thanks for telling me. You didn't have to."

"It's not as if I expected to come back," Severus grumbled darkly with his back still turned to Harry. "If I had known this was going to happen, I wouldn't have spent so much time writing that blasted letter. Should have known though; ghosts are always those individuals with miserable lives, and my life was miserable, no doubt about it."

Harry winced at the stark harshness in Severus' voice. The ghost's shoulders heaved with a sigh. "However," Severus continued with such a little bit of gentle softness, "living with false illusions of who you are and who you parents were is like lying about your identity. If you aren't who you are, then you're someone else." A note of sadness appeared in Severus' voice. "You deserve to know." They both fell silent as Harry recalled the letter's beginning, where Severus related his earliest memory of standing before a restaurant window.

What did you say to your uncle (who was dead and floated in front of you) when you thought for four years he was a horrible monster out to make your life a miserable hell? "Um, thank you?"

Severus shrugged casually. "Pandora would have expected it of me."

Harry wanted to say he would like to hear more of his relatives, but something nagged in his mind. Some of what Severus had told him did not quite add up to what the others told him. "Did Professor Dumbledore lie?" he asked softly. Severus turned around. One eyebrow cocked in question. "And Remus Lupin? I mean, they said you hated my father and you were probably jealous of him because he was good at Quidditch."

Severus snorted. "Difficult to say," he said finally. "Different facets of truth become distorted when certain things are emphasized to take notice away from others although they are correct in and of themselves."

Harry made a mental note to keep that in mind when he reread Severus' letter.

"I hated to love your father and perhaps I was jealous of him. James Potter was the apple of Pandora's eyes, though that has little to do with Quidditch — I admired your father on the broom, but not once did I envy him of that skill. Although there is one thing that I never meant to tell you but find I must." Severus straightened upward and hovered dangerously over Harry.

Harry flinched at the sight and felt that once more he was back in the dungeons with the Potions Master cruelly pointing out every little thing that went wrong with the potion.

"I was a Death Eater," Severus announced as his eyes narrowed. Harry slowly shrank away. "When Pandora sought and received a recall on my sentence, she did not make it known that I was a spy. For all intent and purposes of the world, I was a Death Eater kept at bay and under control only because of Pandora and Albus' combined threat. Imagine the shock of those in the Ministry of Magic whom Pandora had called upon when they learned that Harry Potter — the very person who vanquished Voldemort – would attend the school where the Potions Master was a former follower of the Dark Lord."

Harry could imagine. He nodded slowly as Severus waited to see if he understood the fine irony of the situation.

"I could hardly be removed from the premises as they presumed the only thing that kept me from attacking my nephew in the first place was Dumbledore. However, it would not do to send you to another school of magic other as this was the school that educated generations and generations of Snapes, then Potters. It was practically your heritage to attend!" Severus began to pace in the room, a preying predator whose menace filled the area like a choking fog. "Given that, all those who worked within Hogwarts and those close members of the family who would be involved with you were immediately notified — though ordered with all sorts of threats involving medieval torture methods would be more accurate — that under no circumstances whatsoever were you to be informed of our relation."

Harry bit back rising anger and bitterness. "So no one could tell me who you were and you couldn't do it either because you were a Death Eater? How would that protect me?"

"For the same reason no one was to inform you that your godfather is Sirius Black. For the same reason I was ordered not to encourage a relationship with you. It was all for the sake of 'protection'."

Harry frowned. "I fail to see how that could've possibly have protected me."

"If I gained your trust, it would have been very easy for me to hurt you. Unguarded, you would have no protection against that which I could do to you — Barty Crouch Junior, who posed as Alistor Moody, is a prime example of what they feared would happen. How would it appear to the Ministry of Magic should a Death Eater befriend you?

"On the other hand, then, too, I was surrounded by children of those Death Eaters who escaped the purging after Voldemort's vanquishing. Their parents knew I was James' brother – how would it appear to the former Death Eaters should their children informed them of James Potter's adopted brother befriending you?"

"Not too well either way, I would imagine."

"Exactly. I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't."

Harry scratched his head. "Well, thank you for telling me that," he said sincerely, unsure of what else to say.

Severus looked put out. "I could do no less."

"But everyone knew Remus from early childhood and he said he never had any real friends until he met my father and Sirius at Hogwarts. He lied to me."

"Remus had a lot to cover up. Dumbledore warned him about your knowing about me, and if he said that Pandora Potter — James' grandmother and your great-grandmother — had covered for him as a child at Dinsmore while he was just a pup, he would have had to explain about Pandora, and there was risk of my being mentioned. Although Remus didn't so much as lie as he, ahem, emphasised a different version of truth." For a moment, Severus' expression of stern impatience shattered into the pain of someone who knew it all. "I imagine Remus did not completely trust James and Sirius. There was usually something distant about him as a child. In his child-like belief that his friends would hate him if they realized he was different, he must have felt they were not quite true friends."

"Until they still cared for him upon learning he was a werewolf."

"Yes. Which happened at Hogwarts."

"I guess that makes sense." Harry stood. He and Severus locked eyes for a moment, and then Harry shrugged. "I guess this is goodbye."

Severus blinked twice. Slowly. "Goodbye?" he echoed. He sounded almost innocent. Harry felt a sudden flash of wariness.

"You did come to say goodbye, didn't you?" he asked. "I mean, you're a ghost and you can't stay here—"

Severus snickered and rubbed his hands together. "I'm going to get my revenge for all those grey hairs you gave me! I have come to haunt you!"

Harry stared at his ghost of an uncle. "But… You can't do that!"

"Odd; that's what your godfather said too."

"You're haunting Sirius too?!"

"On holidays," Severus replied casually, as if Harry was not standing before him and beginning to hyperventilate in shock. He knitted his fingers before himself and pressed them against his collarbone. "Which reminds me, July 4th is tomorrow and that's supposed to be a national holiday for the USA. I don't see why I have to limit myself to just the UK's holidays."

Harry's legs gave out from beneath him in his shock. He collapsed on the bed and stared at Severus for a long moment as the ghost roamed the room and poked at things, mumbling about how it wasn't much, but he could live with it — figuratively speaking, of course, since no pun was intended. "Wait." Harry pressed his hands to his head and tried desperately to think. "You said you were going to haunt Lucius Malfoy when you died!"

Snape didn't even look up from his explorations. "I'm doing him every other weekend."

"What about Voldemort? Why not haunt him too since he killed you and destroyed the family and all?"

"He's the other every other weekend. Really, if I have to spend my afterlife on this plane of existence, I fully expect to have some fun for the first few hundred years or so."

Harry rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. "So you're haunting me all the time except on holidays and weekends?"

"Well, haunting you, to be precise, is the operative word."

"What?"

Severus ignored Harry as he floated down through the floor. There was a sudden scream from the kitchen below, and Severus' head appeared as he stuck it up through the floorboards.

"If you want me," he said solemnly, "I shall be haunting your lovely Aunt Petunia's toaster oven." He disappeared again. There was another scream, and then a clatter.

"MUUUUUUUUMMMM! THE TOASTER'S ATTACKING ME AGAIN!"

"SEVERUS!" Petunia screamed. Harry stared at the spot where Severus had disappeared. A moment passed. Another scream was heard. "YOU STOP THIS AT ONCE, YOU ROTTON BASTARD!"

"HARRY!" It was Uncle Vernon this time. "IF THIS IS ANOTHER ONE OF YOUR YOU-KNOW — AHHH!"

Harry listened to the commotion below and shook his head at the chaos. A moment passed as a smile flitted across his face, and then, for the first time since Cedric Diggory's death, he laughed.


In the far-off distance, beside a little cottage some few hundred meters from the burnt ruins of Dinsmore, Remus Lupin watched Sirius as amusement flickered in his gold-rimmed eyes. Sirius stopped chanting and waving his wand to glare at Remus. "You aren't helping!" he accused angrily. "You know I am trying to get these barriers up before he comes back!"

"Why should I? Severus has no reason to haunt me."

"Oh be quiet then. I'm trying to concentrate." Sirius squinted and waved his wand about in a circle. The shed behind the cottage exploded. "Drat. I'll get it right one of these times."

Remus watched Sirius once again launch into the intricate hand motions that were involved with the charm. After the tree behind them caught fire, he stood up. "If you need me for something besides the anti-ghost charm, I shall be roaming the catacombs beneath Dinsmore."

Sirius said nothing, and in the forest a tree crumbled into dust.


author's notes:
Adventures of Severus the Ghost and Harry Potter the Boy Who Lived continues in Pandora's Box.

The Psychological aspects of the Pegasus (positive) is one with the natural ability to change evil into good and (negative) one who feels superior to others because of his or her knowledge. Magical attributes most attested to the Pegasus include: changing evil into good, learning astral travel, poetic inspiration, visiting with deceased souls, fame, eloquence, and learning great secrets of life and magic - all of which will be seen in the sequel. This little tidbit is for anyone who is curious as to why the Pegasus is the seal of the Snape family.