"No Albus."
"Severus.."
"Sebastian!"
"Oh for goodness sake Severus, does it matter?" Albus may not be losing patience, but Minerva was. This was ludicrous. Severus Snape living as a hippy, dreadlocked and refusing his own name, not to mention the safety of his family; it was insane. "Death Eaters attacked your wife. They've marked your house. They know where you are. Who cares what you are calling yourself. You cannot honestly think that you can stay here?"
Severus slumped backwards on his beanbag, his yogic calm flailing. He anchored that calm in sharp white light behind closed eyes and willed away the whole day as a bad dream.
"This is not happening. This is all a dream. Buddhists are messing with the dream scape. I've had too much goat's milk this week. It's a twisted form of invisible theatre set up by some old therapist who wants revenge for whatever headfuck I gave him. It's a drug induced flashback; I'll give up weed. I'm still at the Wicker Festival rat-arsed on mushrooms and I am screwing with my own head. There is no place like home. There is no place like home. There is no place like home."
"Bastian, are you okay baby?" Having shuffled the kids upstairs to gather essentials, she squatted down in front of Sebastian/Severus, crossed her legs and took his hands in hers. Sebastian/Severus sat up and rested his forehead against hers.
"No hun, I'm not. My worst bloody nightmare just drifted down like a blood-soaked flag, over all of us and I don't know what to do."
The Order members found perches, seats and beanbags upon which to wait. Dumbledore motioned Minerva to sit quietly, which she did with the minimum of huffing. They waited dumbstruck, not by the events, they dealt with those all the time. They waited dumbstruck, by this Snape. He was not at all the man they remembered. He sat quietly, intimately connected to his bizarre muggle wife, who was far calmer than he was, despite him actually being calmer himself than any of them would have thought possible.
"So, truth me up."
He laughed, a kind of desperate hopeless laugh. "It's a big fucking truth."
"I gathered that. Go. Start with 'Severus'"
"My name. My original name. Severus Snape."
"Okaaay. The rest?"
"It's too big."
"Give me the "Ten worst punk rock hits" version. We can do the Discovery Channel version later."
Severus took a deep breath, pulled back, looked deep into his wife's eyes and started speaking.
"Number one. This is the biggest really. No drugs. No flashbacks. Magic is real. Wizards and witches and monsters, bogeymen under the bed."
He watched for a reaction and got none.
"Jude?"
"Muggles and squibs and house elfs, oh my!"
"What did you say?"
"Muggles and squibs and house elfs, oh my!"
"But..."
"Dad."
"Brian? Huh?"
"He's a squib. My grandparents were magically inclined. Dad wasn't. Hence the bizarre family."
"You never said."
"Neither did you."
"Hmm. How much do you know?"
"Enough for the top ten hits to make sense without sounding like you're talking in Arabic. More truth."
"Voldemort"
"Moldy Fart? I know that name, Grandpa told tales about him. Your damage?"
"I was a spy for the Order of the Phoenix. A group dedicated to bringing down Voldemort "
"Moldy Fart. Go on."
"I was spying on Voldemort, as a Death Eater. I was a teacher at Hogwarts, it's a school of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Scotland. There were two prophecies made. Two people to work together to destroy Voldemort. Two powerful wizards. One was Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, he's sitting behind you. The other was me. We killed him. The Death Eaters still roam free. I guess I am one of their prime targets, now that they know that I'm alive. The Death Eaters always worked against families, even their own. If I'm a target, then so are you and the kids. I don't want to leave our home, but I think Albus and Minerva might be right, there doesn't seem to be a choice."
"What do we need to do?"
"You aren't phased at all, are you?"
"Seb, my father was a wandering storyteller, I grew up in a bloody campervan. I can do revelation and relocation deaf, dumb and blind with my hands tied. As for secrets, so what? We all have memories that we'd like to stick in a box and forget about, but we can't, so our decisions on how to move on in life define who we are. How does this define you? As a brave man who conquered his demons, abandoned his foundations and sought to build something stronger and safer upon which to live a good life. It didn't work. That's not your fault. What we have is movable, so let's get safe. I'll get some cousins to sort out the house and all our stuff. How are we travelling?"
Severus looked flummoxed. His hands flapped wildly as he sought for something to say to his far too calm, far too informed wife. They were learning things about each other that neither had ever imagined broaching and it was all fine, all normal, all comprehensible.
"I don't know. Albus?"
He looked over at the old man, begging for guidance.
"We will apparate."
"I don't have wand. I haven't done any magic since I left Hogwarts. I have squib wife and underage children who have no experience of magic beyond reading Lord of the Rings. How exactly do you expect us to apparate?"
"We can do side-along apparition. There are enough of us to take one of you each. I'll take you, Minerva can take your wife and you will have to entrust another with each of your children,"
Said children re-entered the room at a frantic pace, each armed with stuffed bags and cuddly toys. Albus chanted out a few spells, calling photograph albums, documents and family mementoes to him, shrinking and stashing them. There was no proper time to explain to the children, who stood goggle-eyed in the wake of their own personal Gandalf-experience.
Jude calmly ushered the children closer to the Order members.
"Okay kids, we are going to do something remarkably strange now. We are going to travel by magic. Stay chilled and Daddy and I will explain everything when we get where we are going. You trust us right?"
The children all nodded.
"Well, these guys are all old friends of your Dad's, we are in trouble and we need to go somewhere safe. They are going to take us there. Everyone ready for an adventure?"
The nods continued.
"Good. Okay, we're good to go!"