Harry was about to do something that could probably be classified as blindingly stupid. He was about to go to his detention with his father without reapplying the illusion charm he used to maintain the fiction that he was James Potter's son. Harry watched in the mirror as the charm melted away. The changes had completed by this point -- his mother's potions having finally worn completely away. He inspected the changes carefully before nodding firmly to he reflection. "Right," he whispered to himself before he put on his invisibility cloak, after all, it wouldn't do to be seen walking through the halls looking so much like Snape as he did.

Harry knocked uncertainly on Snape's door. His earlier confidence was fading as he faced the door to the Potions classroom. The door was harshly yanked open, and Snape stood before Harry, glaring as usual.

Snape's eyes narrowed in suspicion and he looked around. "Who's there?" he asked harshly after a moment.

Harry had forgotten about his cloak. "It's just me, sir," he said softly after stepping into the shadows to remove it and then coming back.

Snape studied the student before him. It was a Gryffindor -- that much was obvious from the school robes -- but he didn't recognise the student. The student had straight black hair that was cut short. He looked uncomfortable in his robes, and when he shifted, Snape could see that the robes were just that much too short for him. Snape moved his glance up to the student's eyes; the green shocked him. It was a shade he'd only ever seen on two people previous to tonight -- Lily and Harry. His eyes flicked up to the student's forehead, but the boy's hair was covering whatever scar may or may not have been there.

He hazarded a guess anyway. "Potter?" he asked harshly. His anger grew when the student nodded silently. "Get in." Harry could hear the anger in Snape's voice quite clearly. He winced as he followed his father into the classroom.

Snape shut the door behind Harry and warded it with several layers of locking and silencing charms. Then he whirled on Harry and asked in a deathly calm voice that was quite surprising in light of his earlier harsh actions, "What do you think you are doing?"

Harry sighed and looked his father straight into the eyes. "I'm tired of dancing around the school all the time in a hopeless attempt to avoid each other. I'm tired of pretending." Harry looked away. "I'm just tired of it all, I suppose," he finally said, softly.

If it was possible, Snape's glare seemed to turn even harsher upon hearing Harry's words. "Tell me," he hissed, "how would you propose that we stop pretending? Coming out as father and son would be a death sentence for me. Voldemort would surely demand to know why I haven't already handed you over to him. Tell me, Potter, how would you handle this?"

Harry's shoulder's slumped as the truth of Snape's words sunk in. He looked away from his father's harsh gaze and shook his head. "I don't know!" he shouted. "We don't have to be public about it, but you could stop treating me this way in private!"

"Potter, that's impossible. Attempting such a charade would make it far too easy to slip up when we are around others. This is simply what we must do, at least until the war is over," Snape answered in just as harsh a tone as before.

Harry shook his head. "Two deceptions too many for you then?" he asked bitterly. "You'll do it for Dumbledore, but not for me?"

"Potter --" Snape began to answer his son's accusation -- funny how Harry had firmly entrenched himself as Snape's son even while the two were avoiding each other -- but he was interrupted by his son's firm denial.

"No," Harry said quietly. "No." And he ran out of the room, unlocking the door as he got to it.

Snape shook his head as he watched his son go. The truth was that just the one deception he had going on was difficult enough to handle. He had to work desperately to try to keep his Slytherins from Voldemort's side, even while guiding them in attaining their goal as per Voldemort's orders. Keeping up the role of loyal Death Eater in an environment such as Hogwarts was very difficult -- he had to walk a fine line of keeping up the appearance of a barely-cleared-former Death Eater, while still being completely loyal to Voldemort, or rather, appearing to be completely loyal to Voldemort.

Adding in the difficulties of appearing to hate the boy-who-lived while at the same time carrying on a father/son relationship with the boy, would be more than he felt he could handle. At the same time, he was beginning to think the burden of knowing he had a son while at the same time denying that very fact, was getting to be more than he could deal with.

It did hurt him to see the pain in his son's eyes when Harry looking in his direction. It did him hurt to treat Harry the way he did. It did hurt him to sneer at his son's pain when he wanted to offer what help he could -- however incompetent he may be at that sort of thing, though after the years of working with his Slytherins, he liked to think that he wasn't completely hopeless in a parenting role. It hurt because every time he looked Harry in the eyes, he saw Lily's eyes staring back at him, and truly, he had never stopped loving her - everything he did against Voldemort, he did for her.

Severus began to pace around the classroom. The current situation was that the war was beginning to pick up. Voldemort was growing more active, albeit slowly. The frequency at which he was called had begun to increase, again slowly. He had thought it would be easy to deny Harry, and it mostly was, but now he had seen undeniable evidence of Harry being his son -- the perfect blend of his and Lily's features on Harry's face.

It was a shock, to say the least. Knowing that Harry was his son even while Harry wore James' face was a very different thing from knowing that Harry was his son and seeing that Harry was his son. It suddenly hit him all at once that Harry was his son!

Snape sunk into his chair at his desk, and put his head into his hands, almost as if he was trying to hide from the onslaught of sudden emotions. Behind the shock, there was a sense of loss as he realised all the years that had been lost to him, not that Harry would have ever been raised as his in the first place; though perhaps if the facts had been known, then Harry could have lived with him following the Potters' death. Still the sense of loss he had could not simply be reasoned away.

Snape sighed heavily. So much had been denied to him, some as a result of an upbringing, but many more as a result of his own choices. He could not deny the fact that his poor choices as a young man had played a large part in bringing him to his current position in life. If he hadn't become a Death Eater, he could play a larger role in Harry's life. On the other hand, if he hadn't become a Death Eater, Harry would never have been born. Lily would have carried James' child instead.

The realisation that his role as a Death Eater had such a major impact on the current situation was more than Snape could handle at that point. He could practically see the ripple effect surrounding them all.