“Harry!  Harry, wake up, mate!”

Harry opened one bleary eye and looked up at Niamh, who was bouncing up and down on his bed, her black hair flying about her face in a disheveled manner.  She thrust her face in his own and cried, “C’mon!  Get up, sleepyhead!”

A voice from over to Harry’s left groaned, “Shut up, O’Feir!”

Niamh turned and snapped, “Sod off, Malfoy!”  She then turned back to Harry and shook his shoulder.

“Come on!  Harry, presents!!”

Harry groaned and sat up, ending up knocking Niamh off the bed.

“Ooomphf!”

“Sorry, Ni.”

“Nice job, Potter,” drawled Malfoy.

“Shut i’, Malfoy,” snapped Harry and climbed out of bed to help Niamh up.  He pulled her up easily and said, “Sorry, Ni.”

Niamh smiled and said, “S’okay, Harry.  C’mon.  We wouldn’t want to let Malfoy miss his beauty sleep.”

“Oh, how ingenious you are, O’Feir.”

“Such a big word, Malfoy.  Did that hurt?”

Harry chuckled and ushered Niamh out of the boy’s dormitory.  They sat down in the common room by the sparsely decorated tree and opened their presents.  Jardin flew in to join them eventually, making the two of them remember the last Christmas, when Harry had received the raven.

Niamh squealed and hugged Harry about the neck as she opened her present from him, which was a pair of Quidditch gloves.  She had talked endlessly about trying out for the Slytherin team and had finally decided to tryout next term.

“Hey, Harry, you’ve got one more.  Somebody stuffed it back here in the back.”

Harry took the present from Niamh after he had pulled the emerald green sweater he had received from Mrs. Weasley over his head.  He opened the package, wondering what on earth it could be and who it could be from.

“Whoa…”

It was a thick green cloak.  Silver thread lined the trim and outlined the small serpents that ran along the edges.  A silver clasp lay atop it, the metal worked into the shape of a coiled serpent, small blood red rubies gleaming up from the snake’s eyes.

Niamh gaped at it and ran her hands over the smooth fabric.  She breathed, “Who sent you this?”

Harry shrugged and picked up the cloak.  Underneath it, he saw a small piece of folded parchment.  Setting the cloak back down, he picked up the letter and unfolded it.

Perhaps it would be wise for you to not wear this, but I hope that despite the fact of the reputation it would bring you that you will.  Merry Christmas.

Your father

Harry quirked a smile and shook his head as Niamh asked, “What is it?”

“Nothin’, Ni.  Nothin’ a’tol.”

/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/

Snape was sitting in his office later that day when he heard a soft rapping at his door.  Without looking up from the novel he was reading, he said, “Come in.”

The door opened and Harry stepped in, Jardin perched on his shoulder.  As he closed the door, Severus – still not looking up – asked, “Come to talk?”

“Yeh,” replied Harry as he sank into one of the chairs in front of Snape’s desk.  He peered at the novel for a moment then said, “Charles Dickens?”  Arching an eyebrow at his father, he continued, “I never pictured ye as one ter read Muggle novels.”

Severus smiled slightly and marked his page in the book.

“I have always like Dickens.  Particularly Oliver Twist.”

“The orphan boy who was taken in by Fagan and taught pi’pocketry by th’ Artful Dodger.”

Severus arched an eyebrow and said, “You’ve read it?”

“Yeh.  I’ was one o’ the books I taught meself ter read out of.”

“Ah.  Well, I suppose you didn’t come here to talk about novels…”

“Na.”

Severus nodded and sat the book down on his desk, leaning back in his chair and watching Harry.  The boy looked him straight in the eyes and asked, “‘Ow?  ‘Ow did i’ happen?”

“Your mother and I?”

“Yeh.”

Severus sighed and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk.

“A particularly good question, Harry.  We were third years.  I had flown to school on my broomstick with my trunk tied to it because my father refused to let me return and Lily thought it was a very stupid thing to have done – which it was, though I did not know how so then.  Your mother and I were vague friends at this time as I’d been tutoring her in Potions since week one of first year.  She in turn had been tutoring me in Transfiguration, my most dismal class.”

“Anyway, my father came to the school during the Christmas holidays, supposedly to bring me home because my mother wanted to see me.  The true story was he wanted to take me home and beat me until the floor ran red with my blood for disobeying him.”

Severus paused and looked at Harry to see how he was taking that.  The boy stared calmly back at him so he continued.

“He never got to take me home.  Dumbledore expressly forbid him to do so (I believe to this day he threatened him).  In turn, my father decided that if he could not beat me at home, he could do just as well at Hogwarts.  He cornered me in an empty corridor and had broken my left arm and given me a number of bruises and cuts by the time help arrived.  In the form of your mother.  She, like you, was an expert at curses and hexes and taught me most of them.  And like me are yourself, she had a temper.  She hexed my father so badly he had slugs dribbling out of his ears for a month.  He nearly hit her in return but not before I brought him down with a curse and threw myself in front of Lily.  My father, beaten by two thirteen-year-old’s, left.  After that, your mother and I were best friends.  And eventually (and through all of James Potter’s sabotage) boyfriend and girlfriend.”

Harry nodded slightly then said, “Tha’ doesn’ explain…”

“Let me continue.  At the end of our seventh year, Lily and I were together for our second time.  She found out what I was that night and told me she never wanted to see me again.  A few days after our graduation I heard she was marrying Potter.  A month after that, I heard she was pregnant.  I had no thoughts at all as if you could possibly have been mine.”

“Why?”

Severus sighed and said, “Harry, have you ever heard of Death Eaters?”

“They were Voldemort’s followers.”

“Yes.”

Harry gave him a quizzical look and Severus thought, Might as well get it over with.

“Harry…I was one of them.  That was the reason why your mother told me she never wanted to see me again.  I suppose she felt betrayed for all our years of friendship, the many time she had defended me against Potter and his friends.  The Ministry was in chaos then, Aurors taking in anyone who was thought to be a Death Eater.  Voldemort himself killed some of his Death Eaters for disobedience.  I sometimes thought back then that she was actually afraid for me, rather than of me.”

Harry blinked a few times then nodded solemnly.  He said, “Ye were a Death Eater.  Alrigh’.  So tha’ explains why me mum married James.”

“Yes,” said Severus.  “She went to him.  It hurt me like hell to see her marrying him because I still loved her.”

“‘Old on.  Ni said ye were an Auror.”

“I was.  A cover for my Death Eater duties.  I had to catch some of my own to keep it up and in some ways it was not a charade, as it was to originally be.  An Auror’s life is as dangerous as that of a Death Eater’s, though a Death Eater’s possibly more so.  But…fighting against the dark was much more satisfying than fighting with it.  Although I did not truly have much choice in the matter…”

Seeing Harry’s confused look, Severus continued.

“Just after my seventeenth birthday, my father took me to Voldemort.  He was a Death Eater and he knew how much I myself loathed every bit of news of the Death Eater’s.  So, he cast me under Imperius and took me.  By the next day when he released me I was Marked.  And there was no going back from a pact made with Voldemort, even if it was not of my own will.”

“Your mother should have understood that.  She knew me well enough to know I would never have joined Voldemort on my own.  That is why I did not simply vanish from existence but took a post as an Auror.  Because I wasn’t truly with them.  When I was doing my duty as an Auror, I felt as though the Death Eater half of me was gone.”

Severus looked at Harry, who was watching him with a perfectly blank face.  Harry gave a little shake then looked at the raven on his shoulder, his eyes going opaque for a moment.  A moment later he was back.

“Sooo…”

Severus waited, watching his son for his reaction.

“Why wou’ yer father do tha’?”

“He was a hard man, Harry.  He loathed me, hated me; despised me even.  He did all he could to get rid of me, even going as far as to leave me at an orphanage in Knockturn Alley when I was two.  None too happily, he took me back after I received my Hogwarts letter.  Most of that was my mother, who by the time I got to know her, was already half dead.  My father, if I could call the man that, had beaten her constantly, taking out his rage on her.  She barely even recognized me when I came home for the summer.  The last one was the one before my third year.  Dumbledore refused to let me return after that and my mother died in the second term of that school year.  I never even knew until Lily told me.  My father had neglected to tell me of her death.”

“Tha’s ‘orrible.  Wha’ ‘appened ter ‘im?”

“I, in my Auror duties, took him in.  He went to Azkaban for eight accounts of Muggle-torture and use of the Unforgivables.  The last time I saw him was when he was dragged, raging, from the courtroom, screaming at me for being a traitor.  No one guessed that he was calling me a traitor to Voldemort and not a traitor as his son.  And he, being locked in Azkaban, could not tell any of our fellows that I was a turncoat.  Though, I never truly was with them at all so I wonder why he ever even considered me one of them.”

Harry nodded vaguely and looked at Jardin again, his eyes growing dull once more.  He then turned back to Severus and asked, “Wha’ – wha’ abou’ the nigh’ Mum died?”

Severus sighed.  He knew this would come up.  Taking a deep breath, he launched into another monologue.

“I-I was there that night.  Voldemort had finally found out where the three of you were.  I still haven’t the slightest idea as to why he wanted Potter dead.  It wasn’t simply the fact that he was an Auror and had picked off almost as many as Mad-Eye Moody, I know that much.  But, I was there.  All of the Death Eaters were there outside the Potter Manor in Godric’s Hollow.  I watched helplessly through a window as Voldemort killed Potter – something I wished I could have stopped despite the fact that he and his comrades in arms made my school years miserable – and moved upstairs to supposedly kill you.  I heard the entire screaming fight between him and your mother through an open window in your room.”

Severus paused for a moment then continued, reliving that night in his mind’s eye.

“I nearly killed myself when I heard the words of the Killing Curse and saw your mother fall.  But then that amazing bout of magic you are so famous for happened and Voldemort was gone.  The Death Eater’s dispersed in confusion as pain lanced through us from our Mark’s.  I ignored my own pain and entered the house.  A fire had been begun by another Death Eater and was slowly spreading.  I got you out then went back in for Lily and Potter’s bodies.  By the time I had returned, you were gone.  I left that place before I killed myself from the sheer sorrow I felt looking at your mother’s body.”

Harry looked across the desk at his father and softly said, “Nobody’s ever tol’ me the whole story about wha’ ‘appened.”

Severus forced a smile, which must have looked like a grimace, and said, “I don’t believe anyone knows the entire story, Harry.  Albus might but he holds his secrets like a man drowning and will not let them go.”

Harry chuckled slightly then sent a mild scowl at Jardin.  He snapped, “Yeh, I know we ‘ave ter meet Ni.  I ‘aven’t fergotten.”

Severus smiled and said, “The two of you seem to get along quite nicely.”

“Yeh.  When e’s na botherin’ the ‘eck out o’ me.”

< I highly resent that remark, > said Jardin, puffing up his feathers slightly.

“Well, i’s true, Jar.”

< It is not! >

“Jus’ keep tellin’ yerself tha’ an’ i’ might come true,” said Harry with a smirk.

Jardin gave a < Hmph! > and began to preen the feathers on his right wing.  Severus laughed at the two of them (Jardin had been speaking so Severus could hear) and said, “I think you two make a perfect couple.

< “Hmph,” > said both Harry and Jardin, making Severus laugh all the more.

Harry smiled slightly as he watched his father laugh, which seemed to make the man much younger.  Perhaps that was how he had been when he and Lily had been friends.  Harry simply smiled some more and joined in the laughter.