Hermione took the polyjuice to look like Tallis. Then Severus applied glamours to make the Hermione-Tallis look like Harry Potter. The purpose of the polyjuice was so that if someone was suspicious and removed the glamour then Mione would still be protected as well as making it easier to apply the glamour (fewer changes would need to be made, especially in regards to height and sex).
Nearly the entire visit was planned in order to stir up gossip and get a spot in the paper. They purposefully planned (rather loudly) to have Ron and Harry come over to the manor to spend the day. They wanted to establish in everyone's minds that Tallis is friends with both of them. This is how Tallis will be able to still be friends with Ron (and by extension, Hermione) while they are at school. They wanted people to overhear the fact that Harry Potter was going over to Snape manor for the day.
I will fix the chapters in regard to the scar soon. I realized it yesterday morning before I posted the chapter but I didn't have time to fix it. As I said earlier, I don't have any of the texts here with me so I am going solely on my memory. Sorry!
Hope this clears some things up. Enjoy!
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Chapter 26Severus sat at the breakfast table waiting for his son and Bill to make an appearance. The Prophet was spread out in front of him. They had, indeed, made the front page. Picture after picture of him and his son were splayed across the first few pages of the paper, all of them with Bill either wrapped around Tallis or else very close by. A number of them also included Harry Potter. Things couldn't have worked out better. Now, before school even started, people would have what seemed to be firm evidence to separate Tallis Snape from Harry Potter. They might be acquaintances or even friends but there was no possibility for someone to come up with the wild theory that they were the same person.
Strangely enough, if you didn't already know that Tallis had the tattoos you wouldn't be able to see them in the pictures. Bill's arms were either covering Tallis' arms or else one of the other Gryffindors was standing in the way. The article mentioned that he had gotten a crest tattoo that day but it didn't mention any of his other tattoos. Hogwarts was in for a shock, it would seem.
Tallis and Bill stumbled onto the balcony, eager for breakfast. They again started to unconsciously help each other to get everything ready as had become habit for them. "That the paper?" Tallis asked, clearly still waking up.
"Yes. We evidently made quite a scene yesterday with your appearance. I'm glad we got it over and done with now and didn't have to wait until the school year started. I believe that Rita Skeeter might have spontaneously combusted if a Snape heir was unveiled and Harry Potter disappeared at the same time. She wouldn't know what to do with herself." Tallis snorted. Sad thing was, he was completely right.
Bill reached over for the paper that Severus had finished and he spread it out in front of them. Tallis laughed when he saw a picture of the whole group of them with Harry cowering away from Severus. "That's a great picture of you glaring at Mione. Or Harry. Damn it, it's confusing seeing her as me. The old me. I give up." He took another long sip of coffee.
Severus smiled. "Yes. I thought it rather appropriate. Can you imagine the world's reaction if I had smiled at the Boy Who Lived? Gods, a good half of the population would have died off from aneurysms alone. Perhaps I should have done it and rid us of some of the more irritating dregs of our society."
Bill laughed. "No doubt they would had a collective stroke. You know, Rita Skeeter actually seems to have done a relatively good job here. Aside from her rather inappropriate conjectures about our relationship and a few snide comments about your own possible connections with the Dark Lord she was fairly accurate."
"I'm actually impressed that she managed to stretch an hour long visit to Diagon Alley into a three page story" Tallis said as he spread a thick layer of jam on his toast.
"That woman could embellish a sneeze into the next world catastrophe" Severus said dryly. "At least she seems inclined to like you. I was worried that my own reputation would mar yours."
"Well now that your role has been exposed as a spy can't Dumbledore tell the world what you have been doing all these years?"
"Well he could do so but I sincerely doubt that he would. He'll probably keep it as a back up plan of sorts in order to have something to hold over us. He is fully aware that it is only on his word that I escaped Azkaban. I could be thrown back in there upon his word alone."
"We'll think of something, Father, even if it means blackmailing him ourselves."
Severus looked interested at that statement. "What…oh yes, yes I see. Yes, that would work nicely. I do believe that our beloved headmaster would cave immediately." Father and son smirked evilly at each other.
"Will you two stop talking Slytherin so early in the morning? I have no idea what you are talking about" Bill said grumpily.
"Tallis wishes to blackmail the Headmaster into revealing that I have been a spy for the past seventeen years" Severus explained. "If the Headmaster does not comply then Tallis can simply threaten to withdraw completely from the war. Without Tallis the war effort would be a complete and utter wash—more, it would be an enormous bloodbath as people on both sides slaughtered each other until there was no one left to kill. Yes, in lieu of such a fate, I do believe that Dumbledore would love to make a statement to the press."
The smirk slowly left Tallis' face. "We should keep that card for as long as we can though. As much as I would love to see you fully exonerated in the press I fear we may need it more later," Tallis said slowly. He had originally thought it a brilliant plan…he still thought it a brilliant plan but he worried that they were facing bigger troubles than a potential PR battle with the Daily Prophet.
"You are right," Severus said with a sigh. "We'll keep it until we know that we must use it. If we went back to Hogwarts threatening blackmail on the first day then we would also instantly alert the Headmaster that he no longer has our full and unquestioning support."
"I don't want to go back to that school without having a few back up plans of our own. This might not be a perfect one but it could ease us out of a tight spot if needed. I know that everything should work out well but it still makes me nervous. Dumbledore is too crafty and frankly, he worries me more than Voldemort. At least Voldemort is predictable."
"Keep this in the back of your mind. You can go back to school and lull him into a sense of security. He'll return to a bit more normalcy and hopefully be a bit more predictable. And no matter what happens, you know that you still carry the trump card." Bill said, pouring himself more coffee.
They had all sat down and read Lily Evans Potter's will the evening before and Tallis' anger with Dumbledore knew no bounds. Lily had directly stated in her will that her child was, under no circumstances, to live with the Dursleys. She in fact preferred an orphanage over their care. It also detailed the amounts in each vault and set aside a vault for Remus Lupin, who clearly had never received it. He was yet another person harmed by Dumbledore's duplicity. While Remus had struggled to make ends meet over the last sixteen years he had, in fact, been the owner of a vault containing over a million galleons.
The will had been made out many months before their deaths so they mentioned nothing of their secret keeper or any other valuable information like that. Even if they had it wouldn't have done much good. Sirius was dead and Tallis couldn't possibly bring forth James and Lily Potter's will to prove that someone who was completely unrelated to him in any way was innocent. No one would believe it for a second and he would risk exposing them all, only to clear a dead man's name. It was perhaps fortunate that the will had no mention of anything to do with the fidelas spell, thus eliminating any potential turmoil.
James Potter had also named Tallis as the heir to the Potter family in a separate will. He wrote in his will that he was fully aware that the child was not his by blood but that he was bound to him by love nonetheless and that this bond was more important than blood. He had stated everything very carefully to ensure that his adopted son would be able to inherit everything upon his death and that no one could possibly contest it. He had kept his will separate from the main will so that if Tallis wanted to keep his true parentage a secret then he could do so by only releasing the words of the other will. The goblins were the only ones who knew that two wills existed. This will would also prove that Tallis should inherit everything if anyone ever tried to call his inheritance into question.
Nothing was found in either will that could have been important enough for the man to have tried to break in to their vaults. They would have to go themselves to the vaults someday to try to see if they could figure it out. Unfortunately, it did not look as if they would have time to do so before school started. Severus turned the problem over in his mind endlessly but he came no closer to a conclusion than Bill had. Unfortunately, the vaults could only be opened by the blood of the heir since they were still in a lockdown mode with the death of James and Lily. Money could be drawn out but no artifacts could be removed. It was impossible for Bill to go search the vaults for Tallis and it was too dangerous to send Tallis in, either as himself or as Harry Potter. The world was watching both young men right now and it would look mysterious for either one to disappear into Gringotts for hours on end. Questions were one thing that they could not face right now, with everything still hanging by a thread. The men had resigned themselves to not knowing the answer for a few more months.
"Speaking of spying," Tallis said suddenly, "is Draco still going to visit this summer?"
"It is doubtful. I have written Narcissa a time or two this summer. She is trying to arrange it for him to come over for a few days but I believe it will be too difficult and dangerous for us to arrange. Lucius is the only true believer in the family. Narcissa supports Him when it is convenient but the only person she truly supports is her son. She will do anything to keep him safe and happy. Draco has no desire to follow in his father's footsteps. For now though, it would be too dangerous for him to announce so openly that he plans to side with me rather than his godfather. I believe he will make his intentions clear when he is once again within the relative safety of Hogwarts walls but until then he needs to remain with his father."
Tallis nodded. "I suppose I'll 'meet' him on the train then."
"Have you decided what you are going to tell him yet?" Bill asked, well aware of the struggle that Tallis had been having over what to tell his father's godson about himself.
"No. I don't know. We'll see when the time comes."
Severus nodded. While he wanted Tallis to tell Draco the truth he would not force him to do so. Too many people had forced Tallis to do too many things in his short life and he would allow his son what autonomy he could.
"So, anything on the plans for today?" Bill asked.
"Well, the spell worked much better than I expected. I want to tweak the potion a bit to strengthen the occlumency aspect of it but other than that I feel good about it."
Severus hated to bring it up but he knew he had to, for their own safety. "Speaking of occlumency Tallis, I fear that we may need to begin your lessons again. We cannot risk the old man looking into your mind."
"He can't. I'm a natural occlumens."
"Tallis, I've worked with you before. You were…" he quickly searched for a word beside 'terrible.' "Well, you struggled with it. I believe we need to strengthen your abilities before we return to school."
"I really am a natural occlumens. Think about it. What was the worst memory of mine that you saw? A dog barking at me? My cousin threatening to hit me? Trust me, I safely hid all of the memories that I couldn't let you see deep within my mind. I only let those out so that you had a few "bad" memories to root through or else you would have known. I didn't care so much if you knew but I didn't want the Headmaster knowing and I was worried that you would have to report back to him."
Severus stared at his son blankly. How had he been so stupid? Even at the time that he was giving the lessons it was ridiculous that he had ever thought those few memories could possibly be as bad as it got. Hell, he knew that his son had killed a man with his bare hands in his first year! That alone was the stuff of nightmares in any normal child. And now, knowing what he did about his son's life, he could almost say that many of the memories that he had seen were probably his good memories, comparatively.
"I can't believe I missed that. May I test you?" Tallis nodded and looked up at his father. "Are you ready?"
"I'm always ready. I never drop my shields."
Severus nodded and raised his wand. "Legilimens" he said quietly but firmly. Absolutely nothing happened. "Legilimens" he said, this time with more force. This time he could distinctly feel that he had entered his son's mind but he was met with a deep, velvety blackness. The darkness was nearly suffocating in its power and intensity. He hurriedly pushed himself back out, gasping. "Absolutely incredible. Well, I suppose I needn't fear the old man looking into your mind. What about you, Bill? Have you ever practiced occlumency?"
"Not really, no. Tallis has given me a few pointers to make my mind a bit more difficult to break in to but I've never truly occluded my mind."
"It might behoove you to strengthen those skills. It would be prudent for all of us who know the truth to protect it through occlumency. We could always use the new spell to protect it but having the ability to occlude your mind will protect any plans that we make throughout the school year. I assume that you will be in the castle quite a bit since it is now public knowledge that you are dating my son."
Tallis blushed happily and Bill smiled. "Yes, I'm sure I will be there often. You're right, I do need to strengthen my skills. After all of the work we have done to protect you both I don't want to ruin everything by simply thinking about it in the wrong person's presence."
"Either Tallis or I can help you whenever you wish. We will also need to teach Weasley and Granger." Tallis nodded but didn't comment. He would talk to his friends later and see who they wanted to teach them. There were definite benefits with either himself or his father as a mind magics teacher. His father may be harsh but he would also never go easy on them, as Tallis would feel the urge to do. Bill picked up on this idea immediately.
"I think I'll work with Tallie a bit but once I'm better I may switch to you. I doubt that Tallis will be as hard on me as he needs to be."
Tallis tried to defend himself. "Well it is really hard to force yourself on someone that you…are dating" he finished quickly. He wasn't ready to say the word "love" yet. If either of the other men noticed the small hitch in Tallis' words they did not mention it.
"Why don't you two go work some on that. I'll start looking over the notes to see if I can come up with anything to help the potion. We can discuss everything at lunch to see where we are."
Bill and Tallis stood from the table and returned to their rooms, bringing full cups of coffee with them. They sat on the bed with Bill at the footboard and Tallis at the headboard, both preparing for their impromptu lesson. "Are you ready?" Tallis asked quietly.
"I guess so."
Tallis instantly pushed himself into his lover's mind, not even needing to use a spell. He could do many spells without a wand and the mind magics came so naturally to him that he never really needed to use his wand. Flashes of Bill's childhood flashed before him: a fight with Charlie, stealing cookies from his mum, hiding under his bed when the thunder crashed loudly above the house. Tallis pulled himself from Bill's mind.
"What am I doing wrong?"
"That wasn't bad actually. You managed to keep me focused on something of your choice rather than mine. I entered your mind trying to see you in fights. After the first memory you pulled away control. You couldn't kick me out but you pushed me toward memories that happened while you were that same age, pulling a small detail from the memory that I had chosen and using it to direct me toward other memories. A very good defense, actually. This time try to focus on protecting your memories, hiding them rather than redirecting them. I hide mine in the darkness. I believe my father hides his in a fog of some sort. Dumbledore seems to use a bloody field of wildflowers. I'm not sure that that isn't an illusion though to hide what he really uses. I've never pushed too hard since I didn't want him to know I was doing it."
"What should I use?"
"You'll need to figure that out on your own. I have a few ideas of what I think you'll end up using but I won't tell you. You need to make up your mind completely on your own or else it might not work well for you."
The two young men sat quietly for a few moments, thinking. Tallis picked up a book that was lying near the bed and started reading it while he waited for Bill to be ready to continue. Bill finally broke the silence after about twenty minutes. "Tallis? Do you think you'll ever go back?" Tallis looked up, confused. "I mean, do you think you'll ever be Harry Potter again?"
Tallis looked out of his window toward the overcast sky, thinking. After a few minutes of careful thought he looked back. "No."
"Why not?"
"I have nothing in that life. The bit that I had came with me to this life. Here I have a father and friends and a boyfriend. When I was Harry Potter I had nothing. I had friends I was scared to keep too close, a lover I was afraid to call boyfriend, and family that…" he faded off, his eyes closing in pain. "No, I have no desire to return to that existence. If I had my way I would never be Harry Potter again. I had long been planning to disappear after the war. Now I won't have to."
"Why don't we kill Harry Potter then?"
"Whether we like it or not the world sees him as a great symbol of light, a rallying point for the war. It will cause a mass panic."
"Yes, it will. But why not do it? We can do it this summer, expose some of what life was like with the muggles by having it look as if they killed him. It would cause less of a panic than if we pretended that Voldemort did it and it would expose some of what Dumbledore did. If nothing else it would shake up their faith in him a bit and make them realize how foolish they were to place such an enormous weight on a child."
"Yes but if there was a trial then we would be exposed again. Dumbledore could simply testify that I was really Harry Potter and then everything would be lost."
"Hear me out though. We have been really careful to cover everything up. Your father is even working on the potions to mask your signature and disguise your scar. By the time we are through with you and we have all of the students spelled we will have almost a foolproof case. No one will ever be able to prove that you are Harry Potter with either physical evidence or magical evidence. All evidence they can get will point to the fact that you are not. Your signatures will be different. You seem to be older. You look incredibly different, not to mention your tattoos. Dumbledore will look insane if he tries to assert that you are the same person.
"I mean, look at how fantastic the whole thing sounds. Lily Evans carried Severus Snape's love child while married to James Potter, a man that the world loved for his unwavering devotion to the light? Lily made a glamour so strong that it lasted for seventeen years? You discover your Snape heritage and happily chuck it all in order to be close to your Death Eater dad? Please, it all sounds completely impossible and too far fetched to be more than a bedtime story."
"But what about presenting a memory as evidence? His memory of my father and I where he told us that we were related? Or the memory of my mum telling him she was pregnant with me?"
"Memories are inadmissible in court. Every memory is colored slightly by the person who saw it so no memory is pure fact. He wouldn't even be allowed to show it, much less use it as evidence. I suppose veritaserum could always expose it though."
"Not really. Veritsaserum forces the user to tell what they believe to be the truth. If he truly was insane it wouldn't matter."
"Let's do it then. We'll get rid of the Dursleys, Dumbledore and Harry Potter all at once. You'll be completely free."
Tallis thought about this for a moment. "Do we really want to kill Harry Potter now, before school starts? That might get rid of Dumbledore immediately and I'm not entirely certain that we want to do that." Bill started to object but was quiet when he heard Tallis' reasoning. "As much as I dislike him and the way that he operates we need him to keep leading the Order of the Phoenix. If he is dragged away to Azkaban before school even starts then the Order will collapse into chaos and probably disband. We need them to fight Voldemort."
"Yes, I see" Bill said, deflating. "And it's not likely that they will jump at the chance to follow your leadership, either, since they won't know that you are Harry Potter, well, apart from my family at least." Bill sighed deeply. Well, it had seemed like a good plan.
"Let's keep thinking about it some and tell the others so that they can be giving it their thoughts as well. I believe it may be a good idea someday but I'm just not certain that this is the time, unless someone can come up with a way to keep everything else from falling apart." Bill nodded. He did tend to rush into things before giving them enough thought. It was a good thing that Tallis had a bit of a Slytherin side to balance him out.
"You ready to try again? Did you come up with what you will hide your memories in?"
"I think so. I was planning on—"
"No, don't tell me. Let me see if you can use it strongly enough that I can discover it on my own."
Bill nodded and got ready. "Ok, ready when you are."
Tallis once again pushed his mind into Bill's. This time he was met for a moment by what seemed to be a tunnel but it faded almost instantly into Bill's memory of seeing Ginny for the first time after she was born. Tallis pulled out after viewing the memory. "That was a beautiful memory." Bill smiled. "You're using a tunnel…a Gringotts tunnel if I'm not mistaken."
"Yes. Those things are damn confusing even if you do know where you are going. If you get lost you could be lost for days without ever finding a way out. They all look the same so it is impossible to have landmarks of any kind to help you and they are numbered randomly so you can't just follow the numbers to get out. It seemed like a good idea. And memories that need much protection can be locked behind vault doors."
"A good plan. Keep working on your image. Start to sift through your memories for a few hours each day, setting aside those that you know right now need to be locked up. It sounds like an impossible task but trust me, the memories that you don't want anyone to ever see will come to the forefront of your mind almost automatically when you start to give it some thought. Go ahead and lock those up tight. The longer you work on it the more you will run out of those kinds of memories and be left with everyday memories that you don't care about anyone knowing. When you get to that stage, let me know."
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Coming up: Tallis tests his magical power and administers the spell on the first student! Review!