Chapter Eleven:
"Meeting your mama on the train," Harry recollected wistfully, "Merlin's beard, we thought she was the most annoying girl we'd ever seen."
Morgana cocked her head, "Did you think that – actually – or did you get the feeling that's what Ronald Weasley thought so you convinced yourself with your tiny, eleven-year-old, boy brain that you agreed?"
"Woah, where did that come from?" Harry retorted.
"Ron was never nice to mama, Harry, not once. I can only imagine that if mama had been school age, his words and actions would have had a real effect on her. I mean the time you thought she went to the girl's bathroom in your first year when the troll came, she actually was crying there because of an argument she had with papa – not because she overheard some slight. When you first knew her, you were not kind to her, it's true, but you were led by Ron, who didn't like her because she was smarter and stole attention away from him."
"I don't think that's fair-" Harry interjected, feeling bad for his best friend, although they had grown distant of late.
His companion huffed, "Yes, it is. I mean, don't get me wrong, I get it. Ron is the youngest son in a big family, and he likes attention. It's part of who he is. I'm not saying he's a bad person, Harry, I'm just saying he wasn't a good person in mama's story. She brought out the worst in him. That's all I'm saying, but you have to admit it's the truth."
Morgana's words were true, he had to admit. Hermione and Ron always clashed from the time when they were little squirts at eleven years old until yesterday. Ron had been his first friend but there were so many times when Hermione had been whom he truly needed: the Triwizard Cup, breaking Sirius out of the tower, traipsing about the countryside on the hunt for sodding Horcruxes – to name a few. She had been his most vital friend, and as it turned out, fulfilled needs in ways that he hadn't even conceived. Hermione had put up with Ron's jibes, his jokes, and his taunts for years and Harry had never defended her, not once. She had forever turned the other cheek and stood by him even when it caused their 'best friend' to throw accusations of a secret relationship and preference at them. Even though she had been married and a grown woman, Harry had known they pained her, especially during the last few months when they caused Ron to abandon them.
"You're right," Harry murmured morosely, "I let him influence me in first year. And then, over the years, I guess I just let it slide. It was just Hermione and Ron being Hermione and Ron. I should have done more, especially before we all came to a head this year. If I had, maybe she could have survived the final battle. She gave up a future with you for my life and all I did was let her cry and let people hurt her. Some bloody 'Chosen One' I turned out to be…"
Morgana let out an unexpected laugh, "Oh, Harry! You're putting too much on yourself. Mama wasn't some victim, powerless and persecuted. She rose above it and put you first. Her not coming back is no more your fault than mine. It simply is the way it is. Circe save us, she would have laughed at this – the two of us excusing the other of blame! She used to do this with papa all the time…they would always get into massive shouting matches saying neither of them were to blame and it never ended any other way but both of them in each other's arms laughing at how daft they were being. I'll miss their laughs."
Harry put a gentle knuckle to her cheek in a fleeting caress, as a tear slipped down his own, "I don't think I will. You have the same laugh as her, you know? Fitting."
"No, I never knew that," she replied, beaming at his touch, "but, I'm glad."
The wizard noticed as she grew quiet and pensive in that moment, and asked, "What is it, Morgana?"
The young witch tacitly revelled over how her name sounded coming from Harry Potter's lips, "I just…I want to know, no, I need to know, Harry. I need to know how he died."
He sighed and pulled her away from the pensieve and towards the couch. Once they were seated, close without an iota between them, Harry took her dainty hands in his and said, "Snape di-"
"Professor Snape, Harry."
The Boy Who Lived rolled his eyes, recalling another witch who like reminding him of that, and continued, "Professor Snape died in the Shrieking Shack trying to convince Voldemort that the Elder Wand, the most powerful wand in the world, truly served him. Voldemort thought that Sn- Professor Snape was the master, you see, because he killed Dumbledore. From the moment he killed Dumbledore, your papa was going to die so Voldemort could have mastery of the Elder Wand. While Voldemort talked at him, your father was completely silent. It seems now – knowing what I know – that he and Hermione were probably saying goodbye. She was right behind me, you see, and the whole thing was in earshot. Bloody hell, it must have taken all her strength not to rush in and try to save him…"
"Probably. They knew their deaths were more than likely at that point. They were prepared, but I'm glad papa got a chance to say his goodbye. He loved mama more than anything, Harry. I hope one day someone will love me like that. Though, hopefully we get more time together than my parents did."
Harry smiled and squeezed her hands, "Morgana, I can promise you that someone will love you enormously. And, now that we're at peace, there's nothing to stop you both having a long and full life."
In that moment, Morgana could pick out the flecks of emerald, jade and shamrock tones in Harry's eyes. There was such feeling behind them and promise of better for her; she felt as though she had truly known this young man sitting beside her for years rather than hours. Such a strange thing, when two entwined souls come together at long last…closeness comes easy and swift, Morgana mused.
"Harry, in the end did papa go quickly and without suffering?"
He winced, "I wish I could tell you that he did, but I would be lying."
"What happened?" Morgana lamented, tears already filling her hazelnut eyes.
The witness to her father's cruel and savage death told his only child how the professor's throat was sliced open, before Voldemort commanded his serpentine familiar to "Kill". Though he told her his view of the onslaught itself was obscured, he heard the seven times Nagini went at the dying man (fortunately, he was spared as a listener only from providing harrowing detail).
"When we could go in," Harry continued, as his companion paled before him, "he was still alive, but barely. Hermione and Ron hung back but I went to him. I was by his side trying to stop the bleeding and at first I thought he couldn't find me with his eyes – from the pain – but I think he gave a moment to the same chocolate, hazy eyes I'm looking at now before he went back to the mission at-hand. He cried one tear, Morgana, as he told me to take his memories and your mum could barely get the flask out of her bag, she was shaking so hard. I thought nothing of it – put it down to the stress, the hunger, and fear we were all feeling. I used the tear for the memories and the last thing he wanted to see were 'my mother's eyes'."
"What?"
"You know he loved – that is his first love was – my mother, Lily?" Harry asked tentatively.
"Yes," Morgana said, "I knew. But I never knew the details or how that came to be. Do you?"
Harry waved her off gently, "That, we can talk about some other time. I'm not trying to keep it secret from you but it's barely important now and we have plenty of time to talk about it later. The only thing that remains to say is that your father glanced once at my eyes and then drifted away silently. I still thought him a villain then, but I went to the pensieve with his memories and then, I knew the truth. Or, at least, the part of the truth he wanted me to know before fighting Voldemort."
"Now that you do know everything…what will you do with the knowledge?"
Relaxing into the sofa, and taking Morgana's lithe self with him, Harry replied, "I am going to enjoy the peace we fought so hard for. And, I am going to make sure the world knows about the Snapes – all three of them – and their sacrifices."
Being in Harry's arms as she was now positioned, reclining comfortably on the soft couch, Morgana wiped her last tears from her eyes and looked up at The Boy Who Lived. "Will the world listen to The Chosen One, do you think?"
He guffawed, "They will. They'll have to. I'm not giving them a choice. You and your family have lived too long in the shadows and hidden away, especially you. Now that war is over, in the peace, you can live in the light…with me."
Morgana sat bolt upright at Harry's final two words, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, she replied, "With you? You want me to live with you?"
"Yes. No doubt about it. You, Morgana Eileen Snape, are coming to live with me at Grimmauld Place and you're going to shop in Diagon Alley, have a Butterbeer at The Leaky Cauldron, eat Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream until you're sick and – if you're anything like your mother – invest in a subscription at Flourish and Blotts bookshop." Harry became suddenly aware his mouth had run away without his brain tagging along, looked at Morgana and whispered hopefully, "That is, of course, if you might like that."
As she eased back into his arms with scenes of afternoons out-and-about on Harry's arm gliding through her mind, she breathed, "I would like nothing more."
"Thank Merlin! You know, it's taking everything in me not to kiss you right now?"
She smiled, "You always have dithered about in that department. Why don't you?"
"I – wait a minute, what do you mean 'always have dithered about'?! One: I have not! Two: if I had, how would you know?" Harry groused, truly mortified at what she might know about his tenuous love life.
She chuckled, "Ginny Weasley and Cho Chang come to mind. You waited so long with Cho and if Gryffindor hadn't won the Quidditch Cup in your fifth year, I reckon Ginny Weasley would still be awaiting her first lip-lock with you. Anyway, now you've owned up to it, I have no intention of being the third in that succession."
With that, Morgana gracefully rolled over Harry and landed each leg on either side of his thigh, her arms automatically falling to hug his strong forearms, pushing her up to be only a fraction away from his lips. Languidly, she touched hers to his in their virgin kiss. The touch did not linger. Morgana wanted to give him an opportunity to retract his earlier words and voiced intentions if he wished.
"You'll never be third, or second or anything but first now." Harry vowed. No further words were exchanged as Harry reclaimed her lips as his own passionately. Once he had committed the sensation, the fill, the taste of her lips to memory, his kiss became more insistent. As she met his desire and parted her lips, Harry slipped his tongue into the inviting cavern of Morgana's mouth. While they kissed the sorrow away, both stuttering moans of pleasure and encouragements, the pair lost track of time and purpose. All they had in that first moment of intimacy together, was the other, and it was perfect and felt to both like fate had somehow slotted them into place now that the war had been won.
"I need to breathe," Morgana gasped, grudgingly pulling away, "but that was an exceedingly good start to something."
"It seems I exceeded expectations. Bet you're glad about Cho and Ginny now that you've benefitted from my experience." Harry retorted with a teasing glint in his emerald eye.
"There's going to be no living with you now, is there? No need to answer that. I already know how big The Chosen One's head is."
"Your mama once hit me over the head to reduce the size of the bloody Chosen One's head. I think I can still feel the mark, so if you could try and not take after her in that respect, my IQ points would be forever in your debt." Harry reminisced, rubbing the spot where The Daily Prophet had so abruptly scraped his brow. "I don't know how she died but I'll do everything I can to find out."
"Harry, I told you earlier, but you were still 'processing'," Morgana reminded him, "I know how mama died. Once papa died, she would have known her time was coming quickly."
"What do you mean?"
Morgana curled further into Harry's embrace before she continued, "The potion that allowed mama to appear younger requires a lot of power. That power comes from someone's magical core. Papa made the potion and used his magic to fuel it. When taken over time – and I mean the years that mama took it – the potion connects the magical core of the creator and the recipient and when the time comes to change back, the process is infinitely more dangerous."
"So why didn't she stop taking it over breaks when she wasn't with me?" Harry asked, regretting his decision not to take Arithmancy (aka How Magic Actually Works 101).
"She did, but the last time she wasn't with you or the Order of the Phoenix was fourteen months ago. It only takes a year for the cores to align irreparably and then things become dangerous. Before, it was fine because mama would stay here during the holidays where she could. Your first year, when you thought she went home, she was really down here with us. She realised Quirrell was not all he seemed to be and told papa. Then when you all went away, she could not let up the disguise. She had to keep going, even though she knew the risk. When papa was dying, I can only imagine that they were thinking that he would not have to wait long for her to join him. Had she been in her peak physical condition, she could maybe have survived the transition back to her real age, but she wasn't. She warned us before the battle began that she might die once she needed to be weaned off the potion. She was malnourished, weakened and her wounds from Malfoy Manor never did properly heal. I heard Papa tell her that she would be alright, that as long as he was alive, he'd do anything to save her life. She died about an hour after papa did."