Harry sat quietly as his mother recounted her story to him of why she had left and how she had discovered she was pregnant with Severus' child soon after. She told him of how she had raised that child in the muggle world. She told him of how her heart had leapt every time she heard the flutter of bird wings, hoping against all hope that maybe it was an owl telling her that it was all over and that she could see her son again. Then she listened attentively as he told her about his childhood, his treatment by the Dursely's, his adventures at Hogwarts, his battles with the Dark Lord. They were up talking well into the early hours of the morning. When she finally entered the small bedroom where Severus waited for her, she looked angry.
"Harry has been telling me about his time at Hogwarts, his experiences with you," she frowned.
"I swore to protect him," he sighed, "not to make sure he was happy. He's alive, that's all I promised you."
She sat down on the bed.
"I know he looks like James, but he's not."
He didn't look at her.
"I know if must have been hard to see the face of the man you killed staring back at you every day in your classroom, but he's my son."
"I know. I know that. I protected him for you. It was all I could bring myself to do."
She studied his face. The past fifteen years had been much harder on him than it they had been on her. He had been a spy, playing both sides. He had committed deeds that no man should be asked to do, but she had asked him. And he had done it. He had done it all for her.
Could she ever ask any more from him?
She settled down into the bed next to him and wrapped her arm around his side, drifting off to sleep against him.
xxxx
Harry woke the next morning and looked around. His bleary eyes took in a small unfamiliar room with dark curtains that emitted the early rays of morning sun. It took him a few seconds to remember where he was: His mother's house. The words even sounded strange in his head. She had asked him to stay with her, to live with her. He had agreed. He wanted to spend time with her and leaving the residents of Grimmauld place to empty out while he finished school the next year seemed like a good plan. He walked downstairs to the kitchen to find some breakfast.
He noticed there were only three bedrooms upstairs. He hadn't realized that before he went to bed. At some level, one that he couldn't completely accept even to himself, he realized that his old professor was in that third bedroom with his mother. He quickly pushed that thought away. It would have to wait at least until after breakfast, if ever.
Entering the kitchen, Harry found his sister already in the kitchen helping herself to a bowl of cereal.
He took a good look at her for the first time. Her build was very similar to his mother, as were her facial features. Her hair was dark and straight, like Snape's, while her eyes were a brilliant green.
"Good morning," she smiled shyly at him, taking her cereal and sitting down at the table.
"Hey," he mumbled sleepily and helped himself to some cereal. He went to pour the milk but it sloshed and ended up all over the counter. He reached for a towel to mop it up.
"Can't you just use evanesco?" came the voice from the table
He looked up and eyed her curiously, then pulled out his wand and performed the spell.
"I thought you were raised as a muggle, that you couldn't do any magic so that they couldn't find you."
"Oh yes, I've never actually done any spell, but I've read all about them. Mom taught me everything to do with magic and I read all sorts of books about it…I've just never actually tried any of it, but I know all sorts of spells. Alohamora, Expelliamus, Lumos…."
Harry stifled a smile as she continued naming all the spells she had read about. This girl was going to be worse than Hermione. Hermione, he needed to owl her and let her know what had happened.
Violet stopped listing spells as her mother entered the room. Harry stiffened as his professor walked in behind her.
"Violet, dear, your father is going to take you to get a wand today."
He nodded and stood there awkwardly as if unsure how to act and what to say around his new daughter. He looked at her for a moment and then focused his gaze on the wall.
Violet's eyes lit up at the mention of a wand.
"I'll go get ready," she said quickly, running upstairs in her excitement. This left Harry in the uncomfortable position of sitting in the kitchen with his mother and Snape. He was thankful that Violet was quick and returned in only a few minutes and left with her father.
Severus apparated to Diagon Alley with his daughter. He had wanted to make his way quickly to the wand shop, but she had never been here before and was determined to look in each and every store window. He waited uncomfortably, allowing her time to catch up to him. She ran up breathlessly.
"Did you see that? That frog was made out of chocolate!"
"Yes."
His lack of enthusiasm dampened her spirits; It almost seemed as if he was mad at her. She had been hearing stories about this man her whole life. She had spent her whole life waiting to meet her father and here he was and all she wanted in the entire world was for him to like her. It seemed to her that he didn't.
"I'm sorry I'm taking so long," she said awkwardly and apologetically.
"I don't know how to do this." He glared at her.
"To do what?" she stared at him with a blank expression on her face.
"I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to be a father," he snapped, as if blaming her for his awkwardness in the situation.
"Well, I've never exactly had a father either," she retorted. They stood for a moment at a stalemate, staring at each other silently.
"It's not like I'm a child. It's not like this is anything you don't deal with on a daily basis. You teach people my age, don't you? Can't you just treat me like you treat them."
"I'm not a very nice teacher." He was not making this easy. If her mother hadn't warned her this might happen, she might have given up right then and there.
"You were sixteen once, maybe you could try to remember what it was like, what you would have wanted to do."
He looked around him. Yes, he had been sixteen. By that point he had been abused and bullied. He had a fervent desire to make sure his daughter had a better life than he had had. Encouraged by his first fatherly emotion, he thought about his sixteen-year-old self, hiding in his room reading and experimenting with his potions set.
"Ok, come on," he lead her into an open doorway and carefully watched her reaction. If his daughter was anything like him… He judged by the expression on her face as they entered the bookstore that she was.
They left an hour later with arms full of purchases. He had always watched Lucius spoil Draco with distain. Now he felt himself succumbing to the same impulse.
They resumed their shopping with their original goal: a wand. They stepped into the wand shop just as Olivander came out from the back.
"Here for a wand?" He greeted them, looking at Violet. When his eyes traveled upwards towards her father, his expression hardened. Apparently he had not forgiven Severus for being on the same side as those who had kidnapped him and held him prisoner. The court had handed down their decision, but there would always be those who refused to believe it.
"Your first wand?" he asked with a raised eyebrow, assessing that she was a little old to not have one already.
"Yes," Severus stepped in, ending the conversation there.
"Try this one," Olivander offered to Violet. She waved it and nothing happened. He went into the back and came back with a different one to test out.
"Your daughter?" Olivander asked coldly as Violet tried waving the newest wand.
"That's none of your business," Snape bit back.
It took a few tries to find the right one. She held it and stared at it with wonder as her father paid. She had wanted one of these since her mother had first told her about wands when she was a little girl. It was her key, her way in to this world that she had been denied entry to for so long. A father and a wand, it was all she had ever wanted.
Severus opened the door and Violet stepped out.
"The illegitimate daughter of some muggle you raped?" The wandmaker asked bluntly as soon as she was out of earshot. It took all of Severus' control not to hex the man right there. If his daughter had not been waiting for him outside, he would have. He narrowed his eyes and sent the man his vilest glare before following his daughter outside.
They stepped outside the shop and Violet was surprised when he father did not start walking immediately. Instead, he paused and began to speak.
"You don't have to tell anyone…if you don't want…that I'm your father. You could keep using your assumed name."
Her eyes focused on the ground, trying not to look at him, trying to steady herself so that she wouldn't cry.
"You don't want…you don't want anyone to know you have a daughter?"
"No, that's not why."
"It's ok. I understand if you're ashamed to have a daughter who will be so behind in her classes and can't even do simple spells and…"
"No," he interrupted, "I meant that I have a reputation, a past. The other students know me. They know what I've done. If you want to start clean and not be associated with that then…"
"No, you're my father."
"But you don't know what I've done, what I've been. You will hear things from the other students that might shock you."
"Mother told me. She told me what you had to do."
"But.." he protested.
"At Hogwarts, it doesn't matter what anyone says. I know the truth. I know that whatever terrible things you were forced to do, you did them to protect mother, to protect Harry, to protect me even though you didn't even know I existed. People who want to see you as a murderer can hold that against me if they want, because they don't matter. You're a hero and anyone who matters will know that and won't hold it against me for being your daughter."
He studied her for a few moments.
"You're too much like your mother.
She grinned at him, "she always tells me that I'm too much like you."
He shook his head and started off towards the apparition point, the patter of footsteps behind him letting him know that she was following.
"I have some business to take care of, but I will apparate you home first."
"I could just come with you."
"No."
This was not something he wanted to see. He still had some loose ends to tie up before he could live his new life.
xxxxxx
Draco sat in a bare, cold room. An dull, eerie light filled the space, illuminating the two aurors who stood guard over him in the room, wands at the ready. He had spent the past two months in a cramped cell with no light and no visitors. He had been kept in isolation and not even allowed to see any of the other prisoners. The dementors did not guard Azkaban anymore, but their presence seemed to linger. Or maybe it was the place itself which sucked the soul dry of any happiness, of any hope.
In the back of his mind, as he had been dragged down a path he had never wanted, as he had committed despicable acts against his better judgment, he had always known that this was a possibility. In the back of his mind, he had always known that he was breaking the law and might one day be punished, but that possibility had seemed remote when compared to the very real danger he faced at that moment if he did not do as he was told.
As far as he had been able to tell, there was no end in sight. He would spend the rest of his life in this place. His mother had died not long after the battle. She had not been well and the stress of it was too much for her. If he was to believe the whispers he overheard in the halls, his father and aunt had been captured as well and were being held in a different part of the complex.
Draco had gotten thinner and paler during his imprisonment. This was the first time he had been taken out of his cell. He now sat in a dirty room with walls painted a sickly green that was peeling off the walls in large chips. He was scared and alone and he felt that whatever reason he had been taken to this room, it could not be good.
He stared down at the rough table surface in front of him, lost in his own thoughts when the door abruptly slammed open and a dark figure strode into the room. It was his godfather, who had revealed himself to be working for the other side. It was the one person who was not a prisoner here who cared what happened to him. Severus motioned for the guards to leave them and they complied.
Draco expected him to relax once they had left, but his face remained stone cold, betraying nothing. There was no sign of the warmth that Draco had come to expect from him, and when he spoke it was cold and businesslike, without greeting or preamble.
"Did you kill anyone?"
"No," he whispered. "I did other things, terrible things. I had to, but I never killed. I couldn't. I couldn't do it."
Severus approached the table and put both hands on it, leaning his weight onto them and getting close to his godson.
"Draco, listen to me closely. I will try to get you out of here, but you have to listen to me. You have to tell them everything. Every word you heard, every action you saw, no matter how significant. You have to tell them."
"But my family…"
"Draco, save yourself. Lucius, Bella, they deserve whatever they have coming to them and you know it. I can get you out of here, but you need to give them whatever you have on everyone else."
He had been raised to believe that family was everything, that you were not to betray your family name. He had very little left, to betray his few remaining relatives would be to destroy even that. He would have nothing left.
"Ok. I'll do it."
Severus nodded and left without any further words. The aurors came back inside the room and began to take down his story, word by word. He started with his childhood, the things he had heard his father say, had seen his father do. Every word he spoke against his father was a knife through his heart. He had been taught that the worst crime was betrayal of your family name. He had believed that when he had been younger. But now, after he had lived through a war, he wasn't sure if he believed it anymore. He had seen things, seen his father commit crimes in the name of the dark lord, in the name of the Malfoy family. It was hard for him to believe any longer that a family name was worth anything in the face of rape, murder, and torture. And so he told his story, betraying everything he had been brought up to believe in favor of everything he had learned for himself the hard way.
Before Severus had come, he had known that he wanted freedom, but hadn't really been sure that he deserved it. Sure, his crimes had not been as bad as some, but they had still been crimes. He had played with dark magic, had even liked the way it tasted on his tounge and felt at his fingertips. Sitting in his dark cell, he had wondered if his soul had been corrupted beyond repair, if perhaps Azkaban was really the safest place for him. But Severus had come, and then Draco had known that there was one person he believed in him, who didn't think that he had been consumed by darkness. His godfather, the one person who had always been there for him above all others, who had always known him the best, believed that he should be free. And so he began to believe it himself. And so he betrayed his family, not as much for himself as for his godfather, to prove that his belief was not misplaced.