I do not own Harry Potter. He and his magical world belong to J.K. Rowling. I'm merely borrowing them. I do, however, own the story and my original characters. Thanks go out to LittleMasa-ouki, willz, and RurouniKen-ouki for their assistance and criticism.

Chapter 34: Blood

Ginny was avoiding him, Harry thought as he made his heavy way up the stairs to the Stepenwolv apartments. It was the Wednesday after the incident in which the red-headed girl had confronted Cord. He understood how she felt, but how was he to tell her that if she turned and walked the other way every time she saw him approach. Often during the past few days he had wondered if perhaps there had been a Ginny-repelling field emanating from his robes, extending into a ten-foot radius surrounding him.

It was rather interesting, he pondered, that their roles of the last year seemed to have been reversed. Now, HE knew how SHE felt but she wouldn't listen when he tried to talk to her. He thought, perhaps, that it was not so much being a Parselmouth that bothered her, but instead the reminder of the connection that she had had with Voldemort, erstwhile Tom Riddle. Harry would rather like to forget his connection with the dark wizard, himself.

But still, he had meant what he said to her. It was alright, she didn't need to be afraid. Being able to talk to snakes certainly did not make one a bad wizard, and most snakes were rather nice creatures, he had noticed.

Harry looked up, and saw that while his mind was wandering, his feet had kept the intended path and he had arrived for yet another lesson with Texi.

"Kumquat." He said, pulling off his invisibility cloak and hanging it over his shoulder as the portrait swung open.

It was a particularly draining lesson that night, but Harry was satisfied that he had managed to either block Texi out, or throw her out after she had broken in, five times out of seven.

Texi had pronounced him ready for the next stage, which was allowing only selected memories to be viewed. But, even though there was plenty of time remaining that night, she decided to save it for next time. Harry assumed that he looked as drained as he felt, because he caught her looking at him in concern several times during the course of the lesson.

They had summoned up some tea, and spent most of his lesson time just talking.

Tainn, who had not been there when Harry had arrived, entered looking rather harried and at an unusually late hour. He flopped, in his boneless puppy-like way, into a chair and seized a cup of strong-smelling coffee with relish. His eyes were half-lidded, and he seemed to be a little, in Harry's opinion, tipsy. Though, of course, with Tainn it was sometimes hard to tell.

Harry and the others attempted to make some conversation with him, but he kept losing track of his sentences halfway through them. So finally they allowed him to just listen in silence, nursing his coffee between his hands like a baby bird.

Tainn dropped off to sleep a few minutes later, still holding his coffee cup halfway to his mouth. Luckily, Sarven managed to catch it before it tipped, thus saving the animagus from a rather uncomfortable awakening.

His sister shook her head at him. "He must've had a hard day."

Finally, Texi announced that it was time for Harry to return to his dormitory.

"Why don't I walk with you tonight, Harry." Sarven told him as the three stood. "I'm having a bit of an uneasy feeling about tonight."

"Why uneasy?"

Sarven smiled. "It'll just make me feel better to see you safely to your dormitory."

Harry recalled feet moving back and forth and hushed voices.

"I'll come, too," Texi announced, turning from where she was putting a blanket over her brother, who was snoring like a handsaw.. "Phew," she added, waving a hand in front of her face as though to clear away smoke, "He smells like whisky."

"We'll dump him into bed when we get back." Sarven laughed.

"Strange, though. Tainn's not a drinker." She shrugged.

"Hagrid probably persuaded him," Harry provided.

"Could be." She agreed with a silent little laugh. "Well, let's get going."

The three pushed aside the tapestry and climbed out the portrait hole into the darkened halls of Hogwarts castle.

"So how are things, Harry?" Sarven asked after a very brief period of listening to the sounds of their own footfalls. As Harry was wearing his invisibility cloak, by Sarven's request, he didn't even try looking for him as he spoke.

"I've been better." Harry said shortly.

"Women troubles?" He asked with a half-smile.

Harry missed a step, "H-how did you know?"

"Much experience." Sarven replied lightly, glancing at Texi, who smiled at him benignly. This seemed to make him a bit nervous, for he cleared his throat several times before continuing. "Can you tell us?"

Harry shrugged irritably, then realized they couldn't see him anyways. "I don't know. She's been avoiding me for a couple days now."

"Do you know why?" Sarven inquired, taking Texi's arm in his as they walked through the dim halls.

"Yes."

"Well, you have a head start, then." He smiled. "Usually the most trouble comes from trying to figure out what you've done wrong."

"I didn't do anything wrong!" Harry protested. "I didn't expect to see her when I got in that morning. I didn't get much sleep, and I forgot I had Cord with me. It wasn't my fault that she answered him."

"Harry...what?"

Harry stopped, looking behind him. Sarven had stopped as Harry had walked on. "What is it?"

Texi and Sarven were looking at him, well, in his general direction, in confusion. "What are you talking about?" She asked.

Harry could have smacked his own thick head. Hardly a week had passed and already he had let slip Ginny's hard-kept secret. He really needed some real sleep or he would soon find himself spewing his deepest secrets over the breakfast table.

A brief vision appeared, with him standing on a bench in the great hall during dinner and bellowing at the top of his lungs, 'I'm being visited in my sleep by my dead godfather, and he keeps telling me I have to do something, but he won't tell me what it is! Furthermore, I have to kill Voldemort, or he has to kill me! If anyone ELSE has something they need me to do, please join the queue! If I'm still alive I'll attempt to accommodate you! That is all!' Harry groaned to himself, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

"I've recently discovered that I'm not the only Parselmouth at Hogwarts." He said tiredly.

Texi had her head tilted towards him, her lips pursed in thought. "Was it...acquired...similarly?"

"Yes. But I don't want to say anymore." He said sharply. "It's her secret to tell, and I didn't have any right to blurt it out like that."

"Understood, Harry." Sarven said soothingly. "I'm sure you'll work it out yourself."

"As though I don't have enough to do," Harry murmured under his breath.

"We've noticed that you seem stretched a little thin recently." Texi told him, and for a moment he thought she had overheard him.

They started walking again, and Harry fell in beside them. "Are your classes going alright?" She continued, "How about your lessons with Professor Snape?"

"My classes are fine...although..." He hesitated. "I might have to give up the animagus class. There's just too much extra studying I have to do, and with the DA..." He felt rather uncomfortable. It was really the stag that made him hesitant to continue with animagus training. The uneasy feeling it gave him hadn't dispelled one bit. "The lessons with Sna...Professor Snape have been better. My scar doesn't hurt anymore, at least."

Texi shot a sharp glance in his direction. Sarven just kept walking, his gaze fixed straight ahead. Just then, Harry caught a shadow out of the corner of his eye and he turned his head to look behind him. He didn't see anything for a moment and had almost convinced himself it was just a trick of the eye when he saw it again. He turned the rest of the way, his hand on his wand. Then he recognized the swoop and stalking motion of the figure.

"Sarven," He hissed at his back, padding quickly and lightly to catch up with them. But the dark young man didn't hear him, and he and Texi kept walking. "Sarven." He whispered urgently. The young man looked in the direction of his voice.

"Well." Came a smooth, silky, terribly familiar voice out of the shadows behind them. "What have we here?"

Sarven froze.

"I understand," Snape continued in a smooth voice, "that the halls of the castle must be terribly...romantic...and inviting to midnight strollers, hm?"

Sarven's face had turned pale, and his hands, Harry noticed, were shaking. Texi was tugging at his arm, her eyes alarmed.

"Face me!" Snape snapped. "I will not suffer to talk to your backs."

He thought that Sarven and Texi were students, Harry realized. Perhaps the situation was salvageable. His mind raced furiously. It was dark, Snape couldn't see them properly. Maybe if he raced back and overturned a suit of armor...

He was forestalled in his plans, though, when Sarven set his shoulders. In a quick, fluid movement, he turned, sweeping Texi behind him as though she were a rather heavy cloak. Texi shot a wild look in Harry's direction.

"Say nothing." He heard her declare from where he had flattened himself against the wall.

Snape stalked forward. "What house are you from?" He demanded. He came closer, looming ominously and folding his arms over his robed chest. He stopped. He looked at Sarven closely.

Snape pulled out his wand and held it between them. "Lumos."

Harry watched in stunned silence as Snape lit their two faces.

Now that they were close together, Harry could pick out some rather significant differences between Snape's and Sarven's features. Sarven's face was fuller, and youthful, while Snape's face was drawn. Sarven had a rather squarer jaw, his nose was not quite as long, and he was also a hair taller. Black eyes and blue eyes met and glittered in the white light emanating from Snape's wand, which, Harry noticed, was trembling slightly in the air.

Other than that, they could have been brothers, or father and son.

"No." Snape whispered, "You're not supposed to be here..."

Harry gaped, aware that his mouth was hanging open but finding himself unable to do anything about it.

"Why should I not be...dad?" Sarven asked quietly.

If Harry had thought his jaw could not drop any lower, he was terribly mistaken. His head swung between Sarven's too calm visage, and Snape's too pale face. Finally, his gaze came to rest on Texi, and he found an almost satisfied look flitting across her features.

Snape stared a moment longer. Then he turned on his heel and swept off quickly into the darkness.

"Harry." He turned and saw Texi looking in his direction, past Sarven's pale face and painful eyes. "Will you follow?" She asked urgently.

Harry did not hesitate. "Yes." He answered, and he sped off into the night.

He caught up to Snape just in front of Dumbledore's office, and he hung very close behind him as the Potions Master told the gargoyle the password. It sprang aside, and Snape mounted the rising staircase that carried visitors up to the Headmaster's apartments. Harry hesitated a moment before climbing onto a stair only a few steps below the obviously troubled man.

"Headmaster!" Snape bellowed, pounding on the door. Harry, finding not much room on the platform at the top of the stair, hoped that he wouldn't take a step back. But, luckily, the door swung open under Snape's hand. The Potions Master, his face terrible, walked in.

Harry hesitated, quite torn. He was fairly sure that Dumbledore could see through his invisibility cloak, and if he stepped into that office he would be immediately discovered. His answer came a moment later, when Dumbledore himself appeared at the door. Under the pretense, he supposed for Snape's benefit, of checking for anyone there, he glanced out. His eyes caught Harry and flashed behind him, into the office. An obvious invitation to enter.

Harry was gratified, but confused. Nevertheless, he didn't hesitate long, moving past the Headmaster and quickly positioning himself near the door. While he was thinking of his good fortune, and trying to slow down his speeding pulse, Dumbledore, clothed in a dressing gown tossed over a nightshirt, crossed to the chair behind his desk and sat.

"Now, Severus, what was it that brings me the pleasure of your company at this time of night?" He asked pleasantly, "Would you like some hot chocolate, a cup of tea, a nice snifter of brandy?"

"What I would like, Headmaster, is to know why my son is in this castle." Snape said, his voice a trifle more venomous than when he usually addressed Dumbledore. "What I would like, Headmaster, is to know what he is doing in this country. He is not supposed to be on this side of the ocean!" Snape controlled himself with an effort.

Dumbledore fixed him with a calm gaze, his hands folded over his stomach. "He is of an age to make his own choices."

Snape made a convulsive gesture. "I sent them away, as you may recall, to protect them, Headmaster. This is the worst time for them to return, the worst time." Snape, perhaps unconsciously, rubbed at his left arm.

"Eloise is not here, Severus." Dumbledore said sadly.

Snape gave him a sharp look. "Is she not well?"

"She died eight years ago." Dumbledore told him gently. "You asked not to be told of them, I might remind you, to keep them from further danger. I also might say that I debated with myself when I learned of it." He fixed Snape with a wise look. "Do you mourn for her?"

Snape looked caught off guard with the question, and he took the chair that Dumbledore gestured him to almost cautiously before answering. "She...she was kind to me. But we have been apart for nearly seventeen years. I have moved on."

"Hmm..." Dumbledore mused.

"What happened?" Snape asked, his voice much less demanding than before.

"From the point that she arrived in America?" Dumbledore asked, half to himself. "As we had planned, she was introduced to some trustworthy people, and she and Sarven, your son, I should say, established a life there." Dumbledore paused, standing and pouring himself a drink, offering the decanter to Snape, who refused it with a sharp snap of his head. "But then, she met Accalon Tristan."

Snape's hands tightened so on the arms of the chair he was ensconced in that Harry fully expected to hear the snapping of wood or bone. "Tristan." He hissed.

"Yes." Dumbledore nodded, "Sadly, no one at that time knew that he was a supporter of Voldemort." Snape flinched slightly. "And she ended up marrying him."

"That vile...!" Snape burst out.

Snape calling Tristan vile somehow made Harry think the man was even worse than he had thought previously.

"Perhaps he had plans of using them, but then Harry Potter came along, and Voldemort was broken and fled." Dumbledore continued. "Apparently, a few years after that, she began to grow suspicious of his dealings, and confronted him on several occasions. He tired of her, I should say, knowing, and yet not knowing his mind. And when your son was in his ninth year he began to poison her."

Harry nodded to himself, recalling Sarven's memory of the last minutes with his mother.

"What did he use?" Snape asked with an almost clinical detachment.

"Blood Pendelum." Dumbledore said.

"That has a distinctive taste." Snape mused, still in that strange, detached voice. "She would have recognized it. She would have known how to make the antidote."

"It was fed to her over a long period of time, mixed into her regular food." Dumbledore told him gently, as though assuring him that she would, indeed, have recognized it. "By the time she realized what the symptoms meant, it had infused her too deeply for the antidote to work. She, instead, made it for her son."

"He was poisoning the boy, too?" Snape snarled.

"Sure you wouldn't like a quaff, Severus?"

Snape hesitated. "Yes, thank you, Headmaster." He finally acceded. Dumbledore poured him a generous finger of brandy before returning to his chair.

"Sarven, a very intelligent lad, saved the bottle the antidote was in, and by his testimony, the state of Eloise's destroyed blood, and testing of the remnants in the bottle, they managed to have him convicted and sentenced to life for murder."

It may have been Harry's imagination, or some trick of the light, but Harry thought for a moment that he saw pride in Snape's face at Sarven's foresight.

"What happened to him after that, to Sarven?" Snape asked.

"As luck would have it, Eloise had managed to keep in contact with one of those trustworthy people she met when she first arrived. She made a provision naming her as his guardian. He has lived with her ever since." He paused, deep in thought. "He went to Sundonoma Academy, had excellent marks in Transfiguration, Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts, History of Magic, and Arithmancy, graduated high in his class and is the beloved of Mitexi Snowfoot."

"You've certainly kept tabs, Headmaster." Snape said.

Dumbledore smiled. "Well, it gives me something to do in my spare time."

"Who was his guardian?"

"Ah, she was born Tala Snowfoot, but of late her surname has changed to Lupin."

Snape lifted a sinister eyebrow. "He was raised with werewolves? How are his table manners?"

Harry nearly fell over his own invisibility cloak. Over the course of the conversation he had nearly forgotten that he was an unknown, or nearly so, listener. Was that a glimmer of humor he had just witnessed?

"Severus." Dumbledore said warningly, but with a rather amused sparkle in his eyes. "I assure you, all the werewolves I've met have had excellent table manners."

"Headmaster..." Severus began, almost hesitantly, "He is well, isn't he? Did she tell him about me, or..."

Dumbledore drained his brandy before answering. "From my encounters with him, I have found him most well-adjusted, with a keen sense of right and wrong and a sharp mind. And as for telling him about you, he has carried the truth of his identity, and paternity, with him since the day they set foot on American shores."

"How do you mean, Headmaster?"

"What name was he given when born, Severus, if you recall?"

"Gaius." The Potions master replied shortly.

"Ah, a fine tradition in naming." Dumbledore smiled. "Yet this could be a beacon pointing to you, as Eloise realized. So she instead gave him the name, Sarven Pensouss." As he spoke, Dumbledore traced the name in bright white letter in the air above his desk. He flicked his wand, and they reformed themselves to spell, 'Severus Snape Son.' "I daresay she left out an 's' to avoid too much hissing while speaking it." He smiled again, but this time sadly, Harry thought.

"She was always a clever woman." Snape mused.

"Indeed she was. A pride to the house of Ravenclaw at her time in school." Dumbledore agreed. Then he looked past Snape, to where Harry stood against the wall. "Hm?"

He tilted his head and rose, heading towards the door to his office, catching Harry's eye as he went. Harry moved from his place against the wall, and followed. Dumbledore opened the door and peered out, leaving Harry enough space to squeeze past him.

"I do hope this will set his mind a bit more at ease." Dumbledore said in an undertone, as Harry passed under his arm. "But now the hour is far past for you to sleep." Harry nodded at the headmaster, and stepped onto the platform. Dumbledore closed the door.

"Thought I heard something, Severus." Harry heard him say brightly, "But I suppose I am only allotted one late, yet delightful, visitor a night."

"I see." Snape answered smoothly, yet a tad suspiciously, as Harry stepped onto the descending staircase.

"Actually, it may have been Sarven himself, you both seem prone to prowling the halls at night, and since I have put him onto researching that tome of which we spoke..."

Harry started and turned, but the staircase, still descending, had taken him out of earshot. After it had deposited him back in the hall, the gargoyle resumed its position and Harry was left standing outside Dumbledore's office, quite alone.

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