A/N:  Another quick update!  Thanks again to everyone who is reviewing so faithfully and to all the first time reviewers as well!  You guys rock!

Disclaimer:  Unfortunately, no, they do not belong to me.

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Ron pounded on the heavy door impatiently.  "Where the hell is he?!"

Harry was standing back a bit and glancing around the hallway nervously.  He looked over to Hermione, who he didn't remember ever looking as pale as she did at that moment.  In what he hoped was a somewhat soothing manner, he reached for her hand and squeezed it gently, but she just looked at him with eyes far too deep for what she normally would have.

Ron banged on the door again.  "The one time we bloody need him, and he's not even here!"

Suddenly, though, the door swung open, and the three Gryffindors were face to face with a very agitated looking Severus Snape. 

"Where's Professor Lupin?" Ron asked, completely ignoring the glare Snape was giving him.

"What, may I ask, is so important that you would nearly break your knuckles banging on a wooden door?"  Professor Snape's eyes lowered to Ron's left hand, which was turning red rather quickly.

"You may not ask," Ron said smartly, and Harry flinched, knowing perfectly well that a statement like that was the last thing anyone needed to say to Snape.


The professor's eyes narrowed.  "Seventy points from Gryffindor, Weasley, for impertinence."

Ron's mouth dropped open.  "Seventy?!"

Snape just looked at him in response.

Rolling his eyes, Ron shrugged.  "Oh, who cares anyway?  This is important!  Where the hell is Professor Lupin?!"

"I will not deal with this right now," Snape said slowly.  "I do not have time for jumpy Gryffindors, who apparently think their association with certain other Gryffindors," his eyes flickered briefly to Harry, "give them the authority to be demanding and overly forward."

Ron opened his mouth to say something that Harry was positive wasn't going to be helpful to them, but thankfully Hermione managed to keep a level head and cut him off before he could even start.  "Professor Snape, we really need to speak with Professor Lupin.  It's very important.  Do you know where he is?"

"I'm not dealing with your high and mighty attitude any better than I deal with your little friend's rudeness, Miss Granger." 

Now Hermione's mouth fell open.  Her face turned red, and Harry was scared that for a split second she was going to cry.  However, she apparently had been pushed far enough, and her eyes narrowed considerably.  "I wasn't being high and mighty, Professor," she said snidely.  "I simply asked you a relatively easy question, one that only requires a yes or a no answer, but apparently that is too difficult for you to comprehend."

Ron and Harry both stared at Hermione in silent shock.  They had never seen her be that way to a teacher.  To Malfoy, yes, but this was different.  This was Snape.

Apparently the Potions professor wasn't ready for her sudden backbone, either, because he looked at her blankly for what seemed like an eternity before swallowing and saying through tight lips.  "Another seventy points from Gryffindor.  You three really need to be taken down a notch or two."

One-hundred and forty points, all in a matter of minutes.  But Harry didn't even care.  He was outraged, and he figured they were already losing the House Cup now, they might as well try and make it two-hundred and ten.

"No, you're the one that needs to be taken down a notch or two," he said fiercely, staring at his teacher with a healthy dose of disgust.  "You're the one who always finds ways to make us miserable.  We never did anything to you!  If you're so petty that you let something that happened twenty years ago still affect you, then maybe you need some psychological help."  Snape turned very white, and Harry was vaguely aware of Ron and Hermione both holding their breath.  "All we wanted to do was see Professor Lupin, so God forbid we go to his office to look for him!  I don't know what you're doing here, and I don't care.  All I want to know is where Lupin is!"

There was a very heavy silence after that.  Harry could feel the blood pumping behind his ears, and he knew that he had definitely crossed the line somewhere, but he honestly didn't care.  He was sick of Snape thinking that he could intimidate them simply because he had the power to take points away from their House.  But Harry didn't even care about Gryffindor's win anymore; this was something much, much more important.  The House Cup was child's play.


This was anything but.

Finally, though, Snape began speaking again.  He spoke in a raspy, strangled tone, as if he were visibly struggling not to strangle any of them.  "Potter, I have had about as much of you as I am going to take.  You are nothing more than an irritable little brat, who seems to think that you've actually done something to earn yourself the right to be above the rules.  Well, let me tell you something, little boy."  Harry felt as if he were going to explode with anger.  "Just because the rest of this world thinks you're some sort of hero doesn't mean that you are.  I know what you really are, and I know what your father really was.  There was nothing wonderful, heroic, or noble about him, either."  He took a step closer and lowered his voice considerably.  "Perhaps, no one has ever told you the true story of what your father was.  Maybe no one has ever told you that the only reason that a marriage ever occurred between your precious parents."  Harry told himself not to listen, that Snape was a liar, but he couldn't stop himself.  "There was never going to be any Lily Potter, I assure you; your wonderful father had absolutely no intention of marrying anyone outside of Pureblood status.  However, certain incidents occurred, certain, how was it put... accidents, and they had no choice."  He looked very pointedly at Harry.  "Do you follow what I'm saying, Potter?"  Harry knew he shouldn't be listening to Snape, let alone believing a single word that left his greasy lips, but there was a part of him that couldn't help but continue listening.  "The accident, as it was so eloquently named, happens to be standing right in front of me."

Harry's eyes flitted to the wall, and he stared at it, trying desperately to remain standing; his knees felt as if they were going to give in at any moment.  His breathing was short, but he paid it no attention.  Suddenly, he understood what the term 'blinded by rage' meant; his vision was clouding up far worse than it ever had when he'd been without his glasses.  But it wasn't really rage at all; it was something far, far more dangerous.

And then Harry knew he couldn't stay there a second longer.

He forgot all about Hermione's vision, forgot that he was supposed to be finding Professor Lupin, forgot that he was probably in the worst trouble he'd ever been in.  And he just turned around and ran down the hallway, as far away from Snape and his stories as he could get.

He heard Ron and Hermione both call after him and even start to chase him, but he was far too quick of a runner and had too much of a head start for either of them to catch him.  He kept running and running until he stopped suddenly, realizing that he had no clue where he was.  He was in a part of the castle that he'd never seen before, or perhaps he had seen it before and was just too out of it to place it.  He opened the first door he saw and went inside.  It was an old maintenance closet, filled with brooms and mops and other cleaning supplies that looked as if they hadn't been used in years.  There was a very large array of cobwebs, and the dust was almost enough to choke on, but Harry didn't care.

He felt as if he would actually have liked to choke.

Realizing suddenly that all of the running had left him completely out of breath, he slumped to the floor and struggled to ease his breathing back to normal.  It took him a good three minutes to finally get enough oxygen to his brain for it to function.

And then all of Snape's words came flying back at him like two extremely pissed off Bludgers. 

An accident.

That's what he'd been to his parents?  A fucking accident?!  Harry felt sick and angry and completely overwhelmed.  He didn't know whether to believe Snape or not; obviously, Snape didn't care too much for Harry, and he would probably do whatever was in his power to make him miserable.  But he had been around then.  And it was no secret that Harry knew nothing about his parents except for what others had told him.  And anyone who had ever told him anything about his parents had been their friend and probably wouldn't speak so lowly of them.


Even if it was the truth.

Harry wished suddenly that he could find out the date of his parents' anniversary, just to know.  It just wasn't fair!  He knew nothing!  Nothing!  And he had no real way of finding out.

He could just imagine that conversation.

"Professor Lupin, would you mind telling me if my mother got pregnant and forced my father to marry her?  Was my father really against marrying anyone who wasn't Pureblood?  Was I really just a bad accident that eventually caused them both to die?"

Yeah, right.

And asking Sirius was even more of a ludicrous idea.  He had absolutely no one. 

And who was he supposed to believe anyway?  Maybe Snape disliked him enough to actually tell him the truth.  But it was Snape.  And Snape was an asshole.

But what if he was an honest asshole?

Harry could feel the tugging before he realized what it was.  His eyes were watering, and his throat felt even tighter than it had a few minutes before when he'd been so out of breath.  He was going to cry.

He was fucking going to cry!

Over Snape!

He tried to distract himself by thinking of the last time he had let himself cry.  He'd been nine years old, two full years before he'd even begun at Hogwarts.  His aunt had called him a worthless piece of trash, who wouldn't end up any better than his lowlife parents had.  Then she'd locked him in the cupboard and left him there for hours.  Harry had cried, not because he was being punished for a reason he didn't even know, but because his only known living relative had called his parents worthless lowlifes.  And he had just known that it wasn't true; his parents couldn't be worthless lowlifes.  They had loved him.  He knew it.

But what if they never even wanted him?

Harry grabbed furiously at the glasses on his face and ripped them away, flinging them against the far wall, surprised that they didn't break immediately.  With his vision even more blurry, he rubbed relentlessly at his eyes, willing himself not to do this.  He couldn't cry over something Snape had said.  He wouldn't.

But then something terrible happened.

A feeling of intense resent overcame him, and he realized something that he'd been keeping hidden for years and years.  He was angry with his parents for abandoning him.

It was an unforgivable sin.

Parents who loved their children didn't just go and get themselves killed!  They raised their children, nurtured them, tucked them in at night, held them when they were scared, sang to them when they couldn't sleep, visited their classrooms and had conferences with their teachers, praised them when they were good, laughed when they were being humorous, and wiped their tears away when they cried.

But Harry was crying, for the first time in almost seven years, and there was no one to wipe his tears away.

Maybe his parents hadn't loved him at all.  If they hadn't wanted him, it would certainly explain why they didn't care enough to stick around and watch him grow up.  And if their death was to be inevitable, they should have at least had the decency to take him with them.  Instead of leaving him to be raised by the worst possible guardians imaginable.

But they hadn't had that sort of decency; they'd died, and Harry had been forced to endure years of abuse, both physical and mental, because they hadn't cared enough to take him with them.

And then Harry was sobbing, just like that, without even realizing.  He felt as if there were literally years of pent-up emotion escaping his body.  He was crying in such a way that his head began to ache, and his stomach began to hurt.  The tears were so rough and so violent that he wasn't sure he would ever be able to stop.

And so he just cried.

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"What are we going to do?"  Ron asked irritably as he shrugged out of Hermione's hold on him.  After Harry had run away, Hermione had smartly recognized the look on Ron's face, and, mostly out of fear for Ron's future at Hogwarts but just a tiny bit out of fear for Snape's life, she had grabbed his arm and yanked him down the hallway, being careful not to even look at Snape because she wasn't quite sure that she trusted herself not to try out 'Avada Kedavra' on him.

"What are we going to do about what?" she asked, glancing behind them, thankful that they were now a good distance away from Snape.  "About finding Professor Lupin or about finding Harry?"

"About both!"  Ron kicked at the wall as they continued to walk.  "I'm going to tell Professor Dumbledore what that bastard just said!"

"Ron, what good is that going to do?"  Hermione actually agreed, but she was trying to keep reason.

"What good will it do?"  Ron threw his head backwards in the direction from which they'd just come.  "Maybe that jackass won't have a job anymore!"

"You know that's not going to happen."

"Well, it should!" Ron was outraged, and Hermione was surprised that people weren't popping out from all over to see what the noise was.  "He shouldn't be able to speak to people like that!  He's supposed to be a teacher!"

"Well, what are we going to do?"

"We need to tell someone about your dream," Ron said, calming his voice long enough to be at least partly rational.  "But we need to find Harry, too.  I don't trust him when he gets upset like that."

Hermione shook her head.  "Me, either." 

"Why would Snape do that?" Ron asked, completely dumbfounded.  "Does he really hate Harry that much?"

"I think he really hates Harry's father that much," she answered quietly.

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence and then Ron glanced over at Hermione and posed another question.  "Do you think he was telling the truth?  You know, about Harry's parents?"

Hermione stared very hard at the floor.  She didn't know what to say, so she just shrugged. 

Ron also stayed quiet for a little bit, but he finally broke the silence.  "Do you think it really matters if he was telling the truth?  You know, if that really was the reason they got married?"

Hermione shrugged again and still didn't look up.  "I don't know his parents.  I've never met his parents.  I will never meet his parents."  She kicked at a tiny piece of parchment, which was littering the hallway.  "But I do know that Snape would like nothing more than to hurt Harry and his father, even if he never got to do it while they were in school."

"Yeah, but can you imagine hearing that?" Ron asked seriously.  "What if you suddenly found out that the only reason your parents got married is because they got pregnant?"

Hermione didn't want to think about that.  And anyway, that would never happen because she knew for a fact that her parents had been married for three years before she was born.  "We don't know that's the truth," she said, finally looking up at him.  "Snape's probably lying."

Ron glanced away and then nodded, though it looked rather forced.  "Yeah.  Probably."

"What?  You really think Snape would know something like that even if it was true?  It's not like they were all best friends or anything."

"Hermione, you know how gossip is around here," he said pointedly.  "I'm sure it wasn't that different back then.  People talk."

"Well, who cares if it is the truth?" she asked, finally bewildered.  "It's not like they were the first people in the world to get married because of something like that!  It happens all the time."

"I know it does.  But Harry's always imagined them to be the perfect people."  He frowned.  "And it probably scares him that they might not be what he thought they were."

Ron never ceased to amaze her.  She had no clue where he got all this inner psychology talk from, but she knew that he was right.  Harry wasn't all that stable mentally, and he hadn't been for a long time.  She hated to say that, but it was the truth.  Everything around him was slowly starting to crumble, and she knew from past experience that when that started to happen, Harry would start to cut himself off from everyone else.  She realized that he was very prone to depression, and it frightened her that he might be headed right back down that same path.

She looked at Ron and sighed, speaking very softly.  "I don't know what to do."

Ron just stared at her before reaching for her hand and holding it in his own, pulling both of them to a stop.  "We still need to tell someone about your dream.  If we can't find Lupin, then we'll go to Dumbledore.  Or McGonagall."  He gave her an encouraging smile.  "And then I'll take care of Harry."

Hermione wanted to protest and say that she would help, but she knew this was the right thing.  Harry and Ron had their own secret understanding that bonded them to each other.  If anyone was going to be able to help Harry, it was going to be Ron.

Leaning up, she kissed him quickly.  "Okay," she whispered, lowering herself back to flat foot. 

And it was at that moment that she wondered if she was actually falling in love with Ron Weasley. 

It amazed her that he could still be loyal enough to his friends to think of them even when there was earth-shattering news about his missing brother.  He was so caring, so thoughtful.  She wondered how in the world she'd ever been blind to those things.

Maybe it really was love.  Maybe she was actually falling in love.  At fifteen, no less.  But it was possible, right? 

She stared into the most beautiful blue eyes she could ever recall, and a shock went through her.  It was terrifying.

But it was amazing.

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I know this one is shorter than the other ones, but that's okay.  More than one pivotal moment in this story occurred in this chapter, so the length isn't really the main focus.

As always, I love feedback!!!