"Let me see that '' Snape snatched the Prophet from where it was tucked under Tonks elbow. He ignored her protest and saw his own face glowering back at him from the front page. The same one they'd used to announce his appointment as Headmaster, and below it a smaller picture of Lily Potter on her wedding day. Potter was trying to explain himself, "I thought you were dead, you gave me these memories, I thought…" Snape would hear none of it over the sound of the blood rushing in his own head. He barely registered the headline but saw the words "tragic", "hero" and "star-crossed".
A lot had happened in the two hours it had taken Potter to leave and return with the Lupin's in tow.
Narcissa had shown up in all her beautiful glory almost the instant the trio left , slapped him, asked how could he, and that she was probably pregnant and it was probably his.
Severus tried to ask for clarification on what she was mad about but she dramatically just kept saying how dare he and pouting at him. He was wildly attracted to her as he had been since he'd met her at one of Lucius's parties years ago. He thought he loved her, begrudgingly, now that their brief affair had gone on for three years. He didn't think he could put up with her or her theatrics that long if he didn't. Right now in his inebriated and injured state he was swinging wildly between being extremely turned on by her presence and wanting to ban her from his house forever. The latter he couldn't act on because he'd made her the bloody secret keeper. Alternatively, he couldn't act on his warmer feelings toward her because even if he hadn't been physically exhausted, he wasn't sure he could coax her out of this fit she was having over how many dares he dare have.
Severus knew Potter had cleared his name, he figured out as much while at the hospital wing but hadn't heard much else about the specifics of the final battle. He had gone from unconscious in the Shrieking Shack, his last thoughts on Lily and all the regrets there, to a blinding pain in the hospital wing at Hogwarts floating in and out of consciousness. He was just together enough to remember Minerva holding his hand and saying she was so sorry while simultaneously scolding him for not confiding in her. When he had stayed lucid a whole eight hours, Severus deemed himself checked out and tried to put as much distance between him and that wretched castle as he could.
He had figured he would sort everything else out later and felt twinge of guilt that Narcissa hadn't been higher on his list, behind junk food and a tv. He had not gotten any better with women even after Lily and Charity. (Poor Charity, he still felt a vice like grip of guilt and despair when he remembered how he couldn't help her. He'd been bitter about the ending of their loveless tryst, she said he'd been clingy and distant and demanded everything but gave nothing emotionally. Even though she wasnt wrong, it still stung to hear. Severus was not bitter enough however that would wish on her what had happened.)
It was some time after being dumped by Charity and Narcissa coming to him to protect her son that he now found himself, three years later, in this position. Severus had arrived at Malfoy Manor to deliver a message and found the place deserted except for a very bored and boozy Narcissa. He hadn't been in a mood to say no, and she wasn't too boozy not to give a resounding yes. Now, it was three years later and he may or may not be the father of her may or may not baby.
"Narcissa, we haven't even seen each other much in the last few months."
"We've seen just enough of each other."
"Your almost 50, the chances of you conceiving-"
"You half bloods, so ignorant, I cant believe I've set my baby up for this. I am a pureblood , I can live to 150, I'm hardly past my prime-"
"I didn't say you were past your prime, you'll always be in your prime, I just meant..." She looked like she wanted to beam at his compliment but she shook herself out of it and made her features stoic. "It doesn't matter anyway. You've made your feelings perfectly clear at Hogwarts."
He racked his brain for what he could have said to her back at the school, he couldn't even remember seeing her.
She rose from her perch on the couch, placed her hand on the back of his head and gave him a single lingering kiss farewell (She must love him back, because he was pretty sure he hadn't had the chance to brush his teeth in several days). She glided to the door, turned dramatically to face him with her hands gripping her perfectly flat stomach. He rolled his eyes as she said calmly declared, "I hope you and your Lily are very happy together.", and left slamming the door behind her.
He was about to argue with the door, that he couldn't be happy with a dead woman when he realized Narcissa wasn't supposed to know about Lily. Nobody was supposed to know about that .
He spent the hour between her departure and his new tenants arrival seethed in worry and anger and fear and embarrassment. Desperate for answers but unable to rally himself to move and not knowing who he'd even go to for answers to his questions. Then Harry Fucking Potter had dared show his face again trying to lie his way through his crimes again.
"I honestly don't know how that Skeeter woman got that photo or if she was even there but-"
Snape grabbed the younger man by both shoulders barking, "Legilimens!"
Harry felt his mind invaded, there were flashes of the Shrieking Shack, flashes of everything Harry had seen in the Pensieve. Snape lingered on the moment before Harry and Voldemort faced off there were others, he assured me and then Snape threw Harry away from him. He was livid .
"What is WRONG with you Potter? Why would you DO that? Those were my memories, my PRIVATE memories! Why the hell did you think they were necessary to bring up in front of the Dark Lord?"
"You gave them to me, you were dying and your face was leaking and I thought-"
"Thought what, that i wanted you to take what you saw and use it to discuss my love life with the Dark Lord?"
Harry stammered, embarrassed for both of them, "I was trying to show him how wrong he'd been! How he could be-"
"He could be what ? Redeemed ?" Harry had the good grace to look further embarrassed. Snape continued in his scathing tone, "That's just like you isn't it Potter? Thinking you should waste precious time trying to talk down the most soulless man in history? Try to get one more clever word in, instead of just getting the job done!" Snape continued in a mocking voice, " 'Other women ' what the hell does my sex life have to do with the Dark Lords redemption? Why the hell did that have to come up? And why the hell would you think I meant to show you any of that in the first place?"
Harry was about to interject again that Snape had supposedly been on his deathbed, but Snape wasn't having any of it,
" Precisely. I was dying! I should be dead now!"
Lupin made a gesture as if to interject but his wife shushed him. She'd conjured a chair and was watching the show from the doorway beside her husband whi stood awkwardly beside her holding their son.
Snape seemed to be talking more to himself now than anyone else, "I didn't have any control over what I was giving you! I just knew you needed to understand. You needed to know that you had to die! I tried finding you that whole night, I should have just confided in Minerva-"
Harry grasped at the chance to change the subject, "She wants to see you too! McGonagall, and Madam Pomfrey. She says you shouldn't have left, you looked pretty rough when you left." Harry noticed how pale his ex professor looked.
"Don't look so great now, either" Tonks conquered.
Snape seemed to only have used the time Harry was speaking to catch his breath so he could continue his tirade.
"Pulling specific memories is hard enough when one is lucid, I could barely breathe! I'm shocked I was even able to leak out what I could. I had barely enough control to show you what you needed to see. I was dying, I gave you whatever was at the forefront of my mind at the moment! You could have as easily gotten my grocery list, or a detention slip, or or or-"
Unable to help himself Harry grasped at anything he thought might absolve him, "But those things weren't on your mind were they? You asked me to look you in the eye, my mum's eyes. My mum was what you thought of last and you loved her and-"
"AND WHAT?" Snape roared. Teddy did not appreciate this, and let the small group know by starting to wail. Snape continued over the infants complaints and his parents shushing, "So what if I did? That wasn't anyone's business, it wasn't YOUR business, Potter!"
"It is my business, she was my mum and-"
"She was my friend, my only friend, I knew her far better than you did-"
"Yeah well, kind of hard to get to know my mum after SHE WAS MURDERED BASED ON INFORMATION YOU GAVE VOLDEMORT."
"YOU HAD NO RIGHT, those were private-"
Teddy gave an almighty shriek as he tried to join the discussion.
Harry kept his voice raised over Teddys wails, but tried to stop himself from screaming, "Well they're not private anymore! I thought you were DEAD! I thought I was honoring your memory! The man who'd just been helping me for years was dead, a man who apparently knew my mum, who knew my aunt... did you know my grandparents?"
Harry suddenly realized he had a thousand questions. He looked at Snape now, who looked out of breath and sweating with the effort of their fight and barely standing. Harry tried to look at him not as the man he thought he'd known for seven years, but as just a man standing before him. Hermione's haircut had taken years off of him, but like Lupin behind them, he looked older than he was. He was in muggle clothes, a baggy black t shirt and sweatpants with a few stains on them. Harry remembered what he'd seen of his father, the brief and unflattering glimpses, who in contrast had always been so full of life and confidence. He tried to put himself in his mother's shoes, Dumbledore had said in the memories that he had much more of Lily in him than James sometimes. Who would he have been friends with then? If he was his mother and knew what he did now about these two young men Lily had known? This man had bullied and berated him for six years, tortured Neville and insulted Hermione every chance he got. But had James acted any differently towards Snape? Harry knew his father was a good person, he knew he had changed. Knew his father wouldn't have stayed as bitter as Snape had, but it was easy not to be bitter when...
As Harry was stewing, Snape had directed Tonks and the crying baby beyond a bookshelf door to a set of stairs where he told her she could find some privacy and give them all a rest from the infants noise.
Lupin had been the one to win the silent eyebrow battle over who would take Teddy and who would stay to keep the peace and Tonks had lost. Or Lupin had, he wasn't sure whether he wanted to see this or not, he was battling over his own feelings at these recent revelations. Lupin tried to sink back into the door frame he'd been occupying and brace himself for whatever came next, should he need to intervene. No amount of time could have sufficiently prepared him when Harry busted out, "You could have been my dad."
Snape looked as horrified as Lupin felt.
"No I bloody well couldn't have. I may have been an idiot, but Lily wasn't." He scoffed, "I was a controlling, obsessive, creep with nothing to my name, vying for a Dark Mark. What was my plan, join a society that was hell bent on eradicating her and everyone like her and then pop the question? Even I wasn't that delusional back then." Snape continued to look at Harry like he was a complete idiot, "I joined the Death Eaters because I wanted to join. Lily knew what I was, I've been a bigot ever since I could remember. My mother made sure of that." His eyes focused on a curio that sat on top of the mantle, the one Bellatrix had fiddle with the afternoon he'd made an Unbreakable Vow with Narcissa. He walked the short distance to an old armchair and slumped into it, looking defeated and now more ghostly than human.
Lupin noticed his paler, illuminated under the harsh electric desk lamp in the corner Snape now sat. The man did not look good, they needed to get him to calm down. Lupin was about to press his concerns when Snape, looking up at Hary where he still stood in the middle of the room, continued more quietly than he had all night, "Your mother loved James Potter and they got married and I joined the ranks of the Death Eaters. There are no 'what ifs' Potter. It took me a very long time to realize that. It took me a long time to realize it wasn't love I felt for Lily Evans, but obsession." The fight seemed to come back into him a bit and he sneered, "It wasn't romantic, it wasn't lust that kept me going for so long, that's a cheap headline."
He shook The Prophet in his hand at Harry for emphasis. "It was shame. It was the knowledge that I'd destroyed the one good thing I'd ever had in my life. See! I even call her a thing. Charity said I always did that with women, always dehumanized them so- " He seemed to catch himself here and paused before continuing more calmly, "I tried to salvage what I could of who Lily really was and what she stood for. Tried to be a little more of the man she had thought I could be. Failing more often than not. So yes, I loved your mother. I'll always love her memory." He paused again, his breathing labored, and spat "But not because of some tawdry reason," Harry continued to stare at Snape, even as the man sighed and closed his eyes, "but because she was my friend and I miss her."
There was a long silence as Harry and Lupin stared at the man in the chair who'd now gone quiet.
POP.
Kreacher appeared at Harry's feet mumbling that Mr. Harry Potter was taking too long and he'd been sent to make sure Mr. Harry Potter was alright. The loud noise jerked the dozing Snape up, who looked at both men bewildered and demanded "Why the fuck are you two in my sitting room?"
Harry looked to Lupin for help.
"Right." Lupin clapped his hands together and took a long stride into the other side of the room. "Medical attention. He shouldn't have ever left Hogwarts. Kreacher," Kreacher started to call Lupin many of the lovely old pet names he'd had for the werewolf during the occupancy at Grimmauld Place. Trying to stay light he smiled mildly, ignoring the creature, "Harry! Do you think you could ask Kreacher to bring us some medical supplies? I'd bring Severus to Poppy but I don't want to move him too far just yet and it's already getting too crowded here to bring her." Snape was continuing to demand why Lupin and Harry were present and how did they find the place? making Lupin suspect the man's recollection of the last few minutes were not presently remembered. Lupin thought it a good idea to take advantage of this, better to deal with an irate Snape than a vulnerable, melancholy one.
"Harry, why don't you return as well," Lupin put up a hand in anticipation of Harry's protests, "It sounds like you're needed, I'm sure Dora and I can set ourselves up just fine. Once our host is feeling better I'll make sure you're informed, but at the moment…" Snape was now asking the room at large why he was alive, who had the nerve to not let him die? "At the moment I think our friend here needs to rest." Snape's head gave a violent loll to the slide after a failed attempt to stand and Lupin rushed to his side, pulled out his wand and muttered something Harry couldn't hear and mobilicorpused Snape's body before he could slump forward and onto the floor. Lupin began to lift Snape's arm over his shoulder to hoist him up and Harry was about to protest more when Snape looked beseechingly at Lupin and asked "Who saved me? I was supposed to die."
Lupin got the man on his feet and awkwardly leveraged him (he had lighted Snape's body with a mobilicorpus but was trying to save him the decency of not being floated about. Lupin had had that done to him too many times for his own comfort and he hated the feeling of being moved around like an infant.) He answered Nsape evenly, "I believe it was Mr. Lucius Malfoy who went back in after Voldemort's departure. Said he got lucky and was able to find some blood replenisher in your pockets and got it into you." Snape started laughing, a sort of high wheezing laugh. Lupin started to work towards the stairs and was wondering how to get the bookshelf-door open when Tonks came thundering down the stairs and opened it on the other side. "Ah bollocks, I just got him down! Did I miss all the good bits? What's so funny?" She noticed Snape who continued to laugh. He smiled at Tonks and exclaimed jubilantly, "Lucius is going to regret that! Once he finds out I've been fucking his wife behind his back for years!"
Lupin turned his head awkwardly over Snape's head which was bowed in laughter, "Time to go Harry, I'll contact you when I can. Send supplies. Please."
Dora was beaming as she reached for Snape's other arm to assist her husband up the stairs. She threw over at Harry, "Looks like I skipped right to the best bits! Aunt Cissy , who knew?" (Snape, in response shouted "I did!") "Now, Jaffa Cakes, Harry. And licorice wands, and Remus has got me turned on to muggle breakfast cereals. The sugary the better. Ta!"
With that they took their now passed out charge upstairs and Harry ordered Kreacher to return and tell the others it was done and to gather supplies. Deciding he needed some time to himself to digest what hed just heard apparated to the nearest supermarket.
A/N: This was the scene that really inspired me to write and it ended up being my least favorite. I reread the end of the books and was like "what the fuck Harry, no one needs to know about that?!" It's such an awkward moment. I also don't buy the "virgin martyr" angle people love to tout, for any of these characters! Adults get around!