Author's Note:

Surprise, surprise, I never abandoned this fic, despite a deceptive lengthy delay in publishing the next chapter, but I've given you a mammoth chapter in compense. Basically, with this story, I've written the chapters all out of order and had a big gap here that I've only recently been able to fill in. So, I've actually written the next chapters after this one which I will post in the coming week. I'm super proud of this story but it's a f***ing bugger to write as often I not only have two timelines but two sets of couples in situations to think about. I'm just going to lay out these difficulties, which I want desperately to get spot on, so prepare for a mini-rant! Generally, Hermione and Severus take precedence over Harry and Morgana in flashbacks as it's the former's story, but no way are the kids going to watch silent and unfeeling while H&S get on with their life. It's also quite challenging to get the new H&S relationship to work with existing Rowling moments, none of which I really want to change – you will notice, I don't really go into them but I've planned a whopper of a Chapter Eleven which will have lots of Hogwarts Hermione moments that wouldn't make sense if her husband didn't intervene or have a role (this is also a request to not tell me I've missed stuff out in the existing canon). Anyway, mini-rant aside, I hope with all my heart you stick with this story. Do leave me reviews if you think it works or if it doesn't, let me know why you think so. It's my first and probably my last "wibbly, wobbly, timey-wimey" (thanks, 10th Doctor) story so I'm keen for feedback!

DaenerysTargary3n

Chapter Five:

"I thought he told Voldemort." Harry murmured, still on his back at the pensieve's foot. "The memory I saw in the Headmaster's pensieve…Snape said he told Voldemort. He didn't really mean to tell him anything. Voldemort stole the information from his mind."

Morgana smiled sadly, "It would appear so. Yet another part of your story that you didn't truly comprehend, Mr. Potter."

"But he was so guilty."

"Wouldn't you be?" Morgana sighed, "Wouldn't you be wracked with the most tremendous guilt if something in your head, that you saw and could not conceal with your immense skill at Occlumency led to the murder of your childhood sweetheart and her husband leaving an innocent baby an orphan?"

Harry considered her words carefully. "I know the feeling. That's what I've done to you. You're no innocent baby though."

Morgana rouged starkly and awkwardly laughed off the moment, "You didn't kill them, Harry. It's not your fault they're dead."

"No, but my life put them in danger and took them away from you." He pouted.

"We're not doing this. We're not having this conversation, Harry. It serves no purpose. Now, let's take a break before we go back in. We've barely skimmed the top of papa's memories."

Harry nodded before wandering over to a door, in hope it was a bathroom where he could wash his face and refresh himself. What he really needed was a decent night's sleep and a slap-up meal – it had been months, since Shell Cottage really, since he'd had either, let alone both. With the substantial losses he had suffered the past night during the Battle, and the new revelations provided by this surprise child of his dearest friend and the man he had always owed his life to but hated, Harry could safely say that he would never see the over-complicated, tumultuous, and unapologetic wizarding world the same. He really wasn't sure, as the cold water from the faucet of the Snapes' bathroom washed away the dust and weariness, that the world he had fought for, that Hermione, Snape, Dumbledore, Sirius, and his parents had died for was worth it all.

"Maybe after all this crap, they'll let me just leave this all behind and I'll move to Sussex and be a greengrocer." Harry daydreamed aloud before scoffing, "Yeah, as if, Potter."

Dismissing his fantasy, Harry dried off and went back into the living room of the Potions Master's apartment where more memories and opportunities to turn the world he thought he knew on its head awaited.

"Ready?" Morgana asked, back on her feet, holding out her hand expectantly.

"Not in the slightest, but let's do it anyway."

Memory Date: 23-05-1980

Location: Headmaster's Study, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry

"Headmaster, a word, if you please."

Harry marvelled as a much younger Albus Dumbledore looked up from behind his desk, eyes glinting over his half-moon spectacles at his youngest teacher's ingress. "Of course, my boy. Have a raspberry bonbon."

"No, thank you," Snape replied, waving off the offer, "you forget I am fully aware you put mild Veritaserum in whatever confection you keep in that jar."

"Ah, yes. It had slipped my mind that you were aware of that…habit. Now, what can I do for you."

Snape slumped into a chair and looked directly at a man who, like Voldemort, evoked conflicting and strong emotions. There was no doubt in Severus' mind that the failings of this man drove him straight into the waiting arms of the Dark Lord. He was a lost youth at school and was mercilessly abused by those the teaching staff championed – Potter and the like. All it would have taken to guide him to his better self, was a kind hand and a care in the world from a single teacher when his parents' marriage disintegrated. But Severus was not so fortunate to be a Gryffindor or have famous, wealthy parents. So, the only hand that extended friendship was Lucius and that had been it for him to indulge in his percolating darkness and commit himself entirely to his master's cause. All he could hope now was that in this moment of clarity and realisation, Dumbledore would proffer the hand of allegiance if not friendship now.

"You know whose cause I serve, Dumbledore," Snape stated plainly, "you know I have been his since I was a teenager."

"Your long-time fidelity to Riddle's evil is indeed no secret, Severus."

Snape sighed, "In his service, I have committed all manner of…perversions, evils, mistakes. I have murdered, I have raped, I have tortured. I have blackened my soul beyond recognition, but, I no longer wish to, Dumbledore. I can no longer be his instrument. I want to – no, I need to – serve his end. His intentions will cripple the lives of those I love and I will not help him. In this, I come to you to promise to serve you and your ends however I can, with my life and death if necessary. My time as a Death Eater is at an end. I will pledge an Unbreakable Vow if you so desire it."

Albus held up his spindly fingers to pause his Potions Master's confession. He peered over his half-moon spectacles at the young man before him in full flow confessing his misdeeds and errors. The wizened teacher pondered Snape as he sat with a heaving chest and near-tearing eyes before his desk and professed a need to return to the light. He had long known that Snape had been present at revels since he was seventeen years old, having been coaxed out by the young Malfoy heir. The Slytherin pupils had not been tended to as they should and it had caused further divide that had given Voldemort sympathetic apples ripe for the picking.

"Your conviction is admirable, but I will not take a Death Eater's word without facts, m'boy. What has brought about this change of heart? Are Muggleborn witches and wizards suddenly deserving of their place in society to you? Are they no longer thieves of magic? What is it, Severus, that has changed your mind on the Death Eater credo?"

"Love."

"Ah," Dumbledore whispered, a knowing smile gracing his thin lips, "yes, that's very often what does it. Your heart has long been made of stone since your mother was taken from you. So, I will ask again. What has warmed its cockles? And more than a one-word answer, please."

Snape wiped his hands over his dry face, feeling the fatigue of his thoughts and worries, before explaining, "Let me start at the beginning, then. A few nights ago, I was summoned to the Hog's Head. I overheard a prophecy told to you that spells out the end of the Dark Lord. Voldemort took the words straight from my head and now, is making plans to destroy this threat. I assume you have an idea as to the identity of the unborn child mentioned. I personally believe it could be one of two children and the Dark Lord has focused on one alone."

Dumbledore hummed, "Mmmm. Permit an old man to hazard a guess. The two you envision are the Longbottom baby and…the Potter. The latter being Riddle's favourite."

"Indeed. And you will know, if you recall anything of me as a pupil here, I will not allow the latter to be harmed and I will do all I can to help you protect the Potters."

"After all this time? You can put aside your hatred of the man for her, despite the break between you?" Dumbledore asked with soft eyes and softening heart.

Snape sighed dolorously, "I still love her. She will ever be my first love, my first friend. And I was prepared to pay a hefty price in the Dark Lord's service, but her life, her safety, her happiness is one I refuse to pay."

"You need not worry for the Potter child-to-be. Steps have been taken," Dumbledore said, with a serious, cautionary expression forming, "yet, to protect the mother, I will require your service. Your tireless service, never to end until the child is ready."

"What can you mean?"

"I mean…the prophecy speaks of a child who will bring about Voldemort's end. But it will not be as a child. This child must have the experience of years and the allowance of time to grow into such a force that will topple such an evil. I must keep them safe and I could use an agent in his inner circle. I could use such intelligence, such advance warning of attacks and knowledge of intent that such an agent might provide. If you will act for me, for the Order of the Phoenix, in such a matter, I can promise my full effort to safeguard your first love as well as her child."

Snape sat back, agog at the Headmaster's audacious proposition. "You would take such a toll from me for something you would do anyway? You cannot – at this juncture – protect one without the other. So why?"

"Because I would have you make amends for your past sins and earn back the pieces of your soul."

Severus had already given his answer before he entered the Headmaster's Study. He had already vowed to do everything and anything to protect Lily Potter. "You have my word."

Dumbledore smiled as though he had just deciphered the indecipherable. "You have my thanks. You may let me know any information by Patronus, but mark my words, Severus, I expect to hear from you. The Potters have been sequestered away under an airtight Fidelius. Incidentally, I believe that there is one more child that the prophecy could refer to…by your own actions this night."

Snape frowned, "The Longbottom heir is a pureblood and will be untouched. There is no other boy due at the end of July to thrice-defying parents."

"July is not the only seventh month, Severus," Dumbledore explained, twirling his slender fingers, "and as you know prophecies rarely speak in straight lines. One could presume that the other seventh month might be September, wouldn't you say? A name that literally means the seventh. Tell me, know you of any child due to be born towards the end of September? To parents that might have recently displeased Riddle."

Severus' pitchy eyes blew wide, and his heart beat out a polka in his chest as the Headmaster's meaning hit their mark. "But…"

"Honestly, did you believe one of my teachers could marry and sire a child and I wouldn't be aware of it?" Dumbledore asked, pitching one eyebrow in challenge.

"You know about Hermione and the baby." Severus stated more than asked.

"I do know about Mademoiselle Gra- or Madam Snape as she now is. I do not know the details of how you came to be attached and I am entirely sure I do not wish to, for I'm not sure I could forgive you, but I do know that you were wed and that you are expecting a little one at the end of a seventh month. So, your child has a third of the chance to be the child in the prophecy. I would therefore advise you to make arrangements for your own household. I do not think it likely to be your child, but stranger things have happened."

Snape bolted up, anxious to be reunited with his wife. "This much is true. If you will excuse me, Headmaster. I presume we have our mutually satisfying arrangement and I can count on you to keep your word on the Lily's safety."

"You may. I will ensure all the Potters' safety."

Harry and Morgana suddenly noticed the edges of their environment fizzling out as the memory reached its conclusion.

"I always knew that Neville might have been the child in the prophecy but…it might have been you." Harry murmured once the pair had resurfaced in the dungeons. "Your parents defied Voldemort three times at this point – once when Snape didn't kill Hermione, twice when they conceived you and then got on where Voldemort wanted them both to suffer in marriage, thrice when Snape defected to try and protect us."

"It could have been me. I was a thread away from growing up without them. Voldemort would have killed them for sure if he'd have thought I was the child. I guess our fates were intertwined way earlier than I thought. Before we were both born, we shared a destiny."

Morgana gazed at the boy standing beside her with an awareness she hadn't possessed before. All the way through her formative years since she had memory itself, she recalled this boy growing up beside her, sharing her parents' attention and care. To know that even while both mothers were still expectant the unborn children were at the forefront of the Snapes' thoughts was mindboggling.

"I always thought that it was on that Hallowe'en night after we were born that we were really brought together. After your mother died. But papa was already turning his life around to save you, us, before we were even born." Morgana said, eyes becoming bleary once more.

Harry smiled, realising the man who fathered his new friend was more incredible and multifaceted than he knew, "Let's go back in. The next memory is the day I was born."

Memory Date: 31-07-1980

Location: Spinner's End, Cokeworth

"Severus, come here." Hermione's voice carried through the first floor of the house.

Harry and Morgana watched from Snape's side as he left the nursery, where he was currently attempting to assemble a changing table and strode purposefully into Hermione's bedroom.

"What is it? Are you well?"

Hermione, sitting cross legged on her bed, contently cradling her large bump with magazines littered about her, replied, "I'm fine. But I have something to show you if you'll come and sit by me for a moment."

Her husband cricked his eye into a puzzled glare but approached the bed and elegantly lowered himself to sit next to Hermione, who took his hand in hers and placed upon her taut belly.

"Wait."

The pair sat there for what seemed like an eternity waiting.

"This is riveting." Morgana said, with all of her Snape sarcasm.

Harry snorted, "Hey, don't knock the interval from all the drama. It doesn't look like anyone's dying, getting attacked or deciding life or death for anyone I care about. I'm liking this memory."

"You're such a softy, Potter."

Harry's eyes softened, "After seven years of the crap I've had, it's a bloody miracle and it's thanks to your mum."

Hermione's daughter smiled gently, "Yeah, she had that effect."

"There, Severus, do you feel it?" Hermione shrieked with delight, turning to face her husband, and shutting up the two spectators.

Severus' expression was a painting. As he felt the dull jabs to the palm of his hand from beneath Hermione's jumper, he left behind the stern visage of the austere Potions professor and the impending father struggling to get furniture to cooperate. Gone was the enforcer, the disciplinarian, the Death Eater. Taking his place was a new man: a man who was opening his heart to the child that would idolise him and depend on him in roughly three months' time, a man who couldn't comprehend that he was feeling his child thriving, the child he had made with a woman he had grown to respect and care for beyond his reckoning, a man who found the future hopeful and full of possibilities.

"That's when he went from Professor to papa, I think, Morgana." Harry mentioned off-hand. "That look in his eye. I hope I get that some day when I'm about to be a father."

Morgana balked and stared up at Harry with a deer-in-headlights face, "You want children?"

"Yes, don't you?"

Morgana turned back to the idyllic tableau of her parents bonding over feeling her turn and kick in her mother's womb. Her father's smile grew with each second and her mother's eyes glistened as bright as starlight. "If I'm honest, I've never thought about it and I'm not sure I'm built for it. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself now that they're…gone and I'm left here and there's no war, so no need to hide. All I really want to do once this is all over is get out of this castle and see what's out there. Whether that includes children or a love like they had or death and destruction, it doesn't matter. It'll just be new experiences and they'll be my choice."

"Fair enough." Harry agreed, willing to concede that Morgana was now fully in charge of her own future for the first time in her life, but he would let hell and high water come before her future – and indeed, his – featured more death and destruction.

"Hermione," Severus gushed, "this is incredible. It is almost beyond my belief that we made this…this life. And I promise you, I'm going to do everything in my power to protect it."

"Please don't call our baby 'it', Severus." Hermione chided in good humour.

"Very well, witch," he retorted with a teasing smirk, "I will refrain."

Suddenly, with a wearied sigh, Severus retracted his hand and began to pinch his eyes, as he did when something bothered him.

"Oh, don't take it to heart. I wasn't really telling you off, Severus." Hermione mollified, utterly aghast that she had shattered their parental reverie so forcibly.

"I know, I know. It's just I have something important, something vital to our survival to tell you and I am – for wont of a better word – nervous."

Hermione watched the usually poised man before her wrestle with his anxiety and knew that this was going to be one of those moments that was going to turn her life on its head…again. "Whatever it is, you can tell me."

"I went to Dumbledore some months ago. It was after we had fought, and we were getting on well. I got called away and I overheard something in Hogsmeade. To cut a long story short, I no longer believe that the Dark Lord's ethos and mission is something I can stand behind. I am…changed. I do not want our child to exist in a world where it is a criminal offence to be magically gifted when born to Muggles or halfbloods. I do not want our child to ever fear for her safety or life because of who her parents are or what we believe. So, I went to Dumbledore and I told him that from then on, I would feed him any information I had on planned revels, attacks, shows of power. Also, that I would act for him as a double agent in any manner of his choosing. I am going to make that world for our child, Hermione. To keep them safe."

"And this only occurred to you after we fought? You knew I was pregnant weeks before that." Hermione asked, perplexed. "Tell me the truth. The whole truth, Severus. What happened in Hogsmeade that made you want to save the world?"

Severus huffed, feeling slightly dense for attempting to get that past her. His wife was no fool and latched on to the details. He had no wish to discuss the implications of his choice with regards to the Potter family, or in particular, the Potter matriarch, but he would not conceal it from the mother of his child.

"Very well, I'll tell you. But, please, for my sake, Hermione, no interruptions. You can ask me anything, anything you wish at the end, but what I'm about to tell you, I've never really told another soul, and it concerns matters of the heart, so I will need your full forbearance."

"You have my word." Hermione promised, squeezing his hand soothingly.

"Then I'll begin. Perhaps the easiest place to begin is with our wedding night. If you recall, I mentioned that at school during my early years, I had one friend. That friend was a girl called Lily…Evans as she was then, Potter," Severus spat, "as she is now. We grew up in the same neighbourhood and she was a Muggleborn. She brightened every day of my life – you will also remember, no doubt, what I told you of my own upbringing – and I began to fall in love with her, even as the young boy I was then. When we were at school, I was bullied mercilessly and tortured by four boys who made it their life's mission to make my life a further hell. It went so far that they nearly killed me on one occasion. Lily and the ringleader of this set of boys, James Potter, became closer and I grew jealous and resentful. I wanted her to see them for what they were and remain with me when she was straying further away, I gave in to my Slytherin friends and their leanings towards Voldemort's way of thinking. After a particularly gruelling incident at Potter's hands, I lashed out and called her a filthy Mudblood. She was actually trying to defend me there and I couldn't bear it – for her make me seem weak in front of people who had been the first to befriend me and include me in a group – and I snapped. She never forgave me, and we never spoke again after that. I regretted my words almost instantly and tried to make amends, but I'd gone too far and hurt her irrevocably. She went on to marry James Potter and I went on to join the ranks of the Death Eaters. She thought of me only as a friend in those early days and that went away, but I…I have never stopped loving her all this time."

As Severus paused for a break, he leant back to rest against a pillow on the comfortable bed. Breathing harshly, trying to calm the storm in his mind and heart, he felt Hermione recline beside him and lay her lithe hand into his. It was novel – this form of comfort, of companionship. Novel, but not unwelcome.

"That's why you made such a to-do about me calling myself a Mudblood when we met." Hermione realised.

"Indeed."

Hermione laid her head on his shoulder for support, knowing that her husband needed the solidarity though he would never ask for it, "I'm sorry she never forgave you, Severus. I'm even sorrier your heart has been hurting for so long."

"Thank you." Severus hoarsely acknowledged. "I…appreciate that. Anyway, now you understand the full history between Lily Evans and myself, I'll tell you what happened in Hogsmeade."

"Take your time."

Severus smiled at his wife's incorrigible kindness before continuing, "I ended up outside a room in the Hog's Head pub and I overheard a prophecy being dealt. A prophecy being told to Albus Dumbledore about a child who would spell the end of the Dark Lord. Voldemort took the words I had listened to straight from my mind – I couldn't stop him because I was concentrating on shielding memories of us living not in misery as he wished, but in relative happiness and conviviality. He believes that there are two children to whom the prophecy relates: one is the Longbottom baby, his second choice and the other is the unborn child of James and Lily Potter, both of whom are being born as I speak 'as the seventh month dies'."

"Oh no." Hermione breathed, instantly covering her domed stomach in her arms as if she could protect the trinity of children by doing so.

"He announced his intentions to seek out the Potters and put them all to death before long." Severus sighed, rubbing his tired brow with worn out fingers. "I cannot stand the thought of her or her child dying while I have it in me to stop it. I might have sacrificed anything for my friends in the Death Eaters and their leader, but threatening Lily…that I will not do. So, I went to the only person I knew who could save her. Dumbledore and I bargained that for the price of saving Lily, her baby and the other children, I would give him my service and allegiance."

"That's insane!" Hermione exploded, eyes bulging.

"It's Dumbledore. He always exacts a price. He already had them under a Fidelius."

"Well, that's still not ok." Hermione said, before thwacking Severus quite hard in the arm. "Hang on. Severus, you said 'Lily, her baby and the other children'. You only mentioned two. Who else might be in danger from this prophecy?"

"Dumbledore believes there's an outlying chance that our child could be." Severus admitted sadly.

"But how?! How is that possible?! Our baby is not due until the end of September. You said the child would be born at the end of the seventh month. Let me help you with that: January – one, February – two, March – three, April – four, May – five, June – six, and finally and most importantly July – seven!"

As Hermione's shouting got louder and louder and her attempt at education more patronising, Severus put his arm gingerly around her and said firmly, "I am well aware, Hermione. Dumbledore was of the impression that there are two ways to define a seventh month. You went to Beauxbatons, so think with that brain a moment – September. The original seventh month. Bear in mind that I think that's tenuous, and I don't believe the child in the prophecy can be our child, but it is a possibility. And that is why I'm moving heaven and earth and everything in between to keep you, Lily and Alice Longbottom safe. So that whichever child it is that holds Voldemort's end in their future, they survive and all three grow up with all the other children in the world in peace and happiness."

Hermione visibly calmed down as she leaned into her husband's embrace. She hated herself for it in the moment, but she wished that one of the two babies about to come into the world had an earth-changing destiny and that the child still growing and bumbling about inside her would just be a normal child with no care in the world.

"Is it wrong of me to hope that it is the Longbottom or Potter baby? Does that make me an awful human, Severus?" She asked in a small voice, tears threatening to fall.

"Oh, Hermione. No, it categorically doesn't. It is understandable for you to feel this way. Whichever child it is, they will grow up with an immense burden on their shoulders and I pity their parents. The Dark Lord will never stop hunting them as long as he walks the Earth."

"Poor child." Hermione sighed.

Morgana took one last glance at her parents sitting side-by-side on her mother's bed as the memory began to dissipate and she and Harry who stood silent beside her were heaved out of the pensieve and landed back on the cold dungeon floor.

"They knew. They knew as I was being born. They knew that I was the favourite, and that Voldemort was coming and he, he, your father was always in Voldemort's presence and he didn't do anything. He just fed information and told lies. He could have saved everyone outright!" Harry burst. "They could have done…something. Everything could have been different from the moment Snape went to Dumbledore. They had the time, the knowledge, the power to save my parents. All they lacked was the will. They just didn't want to take the risk. Bloody cowards – Dumbledore, 'Mione, Snape! They were no heroes; they were just lucky it was me and not Neville or you!"

Before he knew what had hit him, Morgana had. A powerful open hand had landed and flew off his cheek leaving a puce welt in its wake.