He’d had this dream for the past few nights. He wasn’t complaining. It was fairly tame, as far as his dreams usually went. Anything was better than Voldemort or his parents dying or Cedric dying or Sirius dying or Dumbledore dying…. He felt safe in this place. In a kind of abstract, passive way, he felt loved, cared for. In a way that didn’t demand anything at all of him. He liked that.

The dream was a curiosity in itself, in that nothing actually happened. He was just sitting in a room which looked a bit like the common room, only it wasn’t. Nothing ever happened, no-one walked past, and he never did anything. It was just a place.

So when he was there the sixth night in a row and someone actually walked into his dream room, he stood, a little surprised. She was normal-looking, he supposed. Muggle-type normal, around his age, long brown hair, blue-ish eyes, plain face, jeans and, strangely, a Weasley jumper.

“Do I know you?” Harry asked in his dream. He eyed the jumper; it was green with a black infinity symbol, instead of an initial. What did that mean?

“No, you don’t, but we know you, Harry.”

He looked around for others, but there was only her. “We? What’s your name?”

She shook her head. “I am we. All of us. We are one.”

Great, he thought, even his dream-people had delusions of grandeur. “Okay,” he said slowly, “but do you have a name?”

“You may call us Parcae.”

“‘Parcae’, uh, that’s… The Fates?”

She sat down, nodding. “History of Magic finally proving useful?” she grinned. He remained standing, eying her warily.

“Why are you here?” It seemed rude to add what he had been thinking: because I like this space empty.

“We created this place so you would feel comfortable here.”

“And?”

“We have come to tell you that you shouldn’t be here.”

He blinked. Huh?

“Not here,” she gestured round the room, “we mean in this life. We are going to give you a better chance, Harry. We are going to show you an alternate world, the way your life should be.”

Harry wondered if this was all merely wishful thinking, a product of his own mind..

“It happened wrong, you see.”

“Er, what did?” Harry asked.

“Your life, Harry,” she answered simply.

Harry snorted. “Tell me something I don’t know,” he muttered.

“You feel bitter, angry,” she said calmly. “And you should.”

Now she was sounding too much like Dumbledore for his tastes. He tended to get fed up and irritated with people quickly these days. “Are you going to apologise, too? Say it was your fault, but could I look past an old man’s mistakes? Or a spirit’s, whatever.”

She did not seem at all perturbed by his attitude. In fact, she was grinning. “No,” she answered, matter-of-fact. “We are going to fix it.”

Now she had his attention. Still cautious, he asked, “How?”

“We go back to the fork in the road. The moment that could have been handled differently. That should have been handled differently.”

Harry was getting really frustrated now. “Look, are you going to answer in riddles or actually explain what’s going on?” he asked with exasperation.

She smiled and patted the seat next to her. After a small hesitation, he sat.

“Some years ago,” she began, “there was a prophecy about you. Prophecies, Harry, are simply pieces of information that we give you early. We craft one when we sense that you will need to be prepared. It was our job to make sure that this one was sent to the Seer who would reveal it to Albus Dumbledore. He, in turn, was to take care of matters after Voldemort tried to kill you.”

Her face tensed a little, and it was the first time her face wasn’t cheerful. “But he didn’t. He didn’t have the resources. He did the best he could,” she broke off when Harry snorted. “He did, Harry, believe that. But he should have been able to do more. We had created a situation that made it impossible. Your parents, Sirius Black, the Dursleys.

“We gave Trelawny the prophecy for Dumbledore to hear, and everything went as it should. Or so we thought. But we didn’t realised that our mistake had already been made.”

Harry thought for sure that she was going to say something about Sirius and Pettigrew, but instead another name came from her lips.

“Severus Snape is your father, Harry. But no-one knew, not even Snape himself.”

Harry stared at her. Snape?

Snape.

His mother had dated Snape. Had….urgh…with Snape. A bizarre image struck him: a teenaged Severus Snape, hook nose, greasy limp hair, with an awkwardly-not-quite-adult gangly walk and the ever-present scowl, snogging in the Astronomy Tower.

He snorted. He tried to put his mother into the cartoon-like scene and was disappointed when he couldn’t. While it was easy to imagine one of his school mates or professors in any situation, he couldn’t grasp a clear image of his mother. He didn’t know her well enough. He only had one memory of her that had not been defiled by Voldemort, and it wasn’t even his. In Snape’s Penseive, the Marauders had –

Wait. Snape’s Pensieve. She’d defended him. Was that what he hadn’t wanted Harry to see? That he and Lily had feelings for each other? Were there other memories like that in the pensieve? He must have been jealous of James …. and perhaps he had never let go of that…

Was that why he hated Harry and made his life hell? Had he loved Lily Evans? Maybe he saw Harry as proof of his own failures, or as something that could have been his.

Harry looked up, realisations buzzing around in his head like a disturbed hornet’s nest. His thoughts seemed irritated with one another, dodging each other and zooming back and forth without destination.

The girl stared back at him with a passive little smile. Harry stood suddenly, for some reason, very pissed off that she seemed to be aware that she’d dropped a bombshell and was happily waiting for him to catch up. He blustered about for half a minute, annoyed there was nothing in the room to fiddle with, wondering what the hell was going on.

After a moment of aimless pacing, he huffed and sat back down, recognising there was nothing he could achieve by it.

She continued as if he hadn’t moved at all. “Lily and Severus were friends with similar interests. That’s where most of the animosity between he and the Marauders came from. after spending a few years studying together, they began a romantic relationship in their seventh year at Hogwarts. It wasn’t heavens-singing, one-true-soulmate love, but it was enough.

“Then he pushed her away for her own safety. Malfoy was after him to join the Death Eaters, through orders from Voldemort. She turned to her other friends, the Marauders, for comfort. That they gave her. After a while – a long time, Harry, she had loved Snape – she and James got married. One year later, she gave birth to you, Severus’ son.”

The look on Harry’s face made her laugh. “You’re so Muggle sometimes,” she giggled, ruffling his hair. “Have you ever heard of a child born out of wedlock in the wizarding world? Or a family not being prepared for a child?” She didn’t give him time to think, let alone give an answer. “There is a spell you can place on a conceived foetus before it reaches three months. This Stasis spell can be held for up to five years, it’s purpose was to give the parents-to-be time enough to create a safe environment for a child.

“The reason there are so many witches and wizards two and three years younger than you, Harry, is that those couples who conceived during the bad years leading up to the night in Godric’s Hollow, chose to remove the spell shortly after you vanquished him.”

Harry’s subconscious decided at that moment that nothing else could surprise him, so he listened with attention rather than complete disbelief. “But my mother did it to protect Snape?”

“She did it for you and Severus and herself. She hadn’t had the chance to tell Severus she was pregnant, so James was the only one who knew. The spell was his suggestion when she came to him distraught over her break-up.”

She sighed. “Snape became a Death Eater, the prophecy was made, Pettigrew betrayed the Potters, Voldemort came, Sirius was sent to Azkaban and Snape went to Dumbledore in his grief.”

“That was the mistake?” Harry now had a good idea where this was leading, and was waiting for her to say it. That his parents shouldn’t have died, that they shouldn’t have switched secret keepers.

“We’re sorry, Harry,” she said with true sorrow. “It was unavoidable. The Potters were destined to lay down their lives for you. Even we cannot completely change fate. But we can nudge it a little.”

He lowered his head, defeated. It had been too good to be true, of course. Things like this always were. “So?” he said sullenly. “What’s good about that? How can you make this better?”

“She never told Severus about you. And we let it slide,” she answered. “Severus was Marked shortly after he pushed Lily away. If he had known about you, no matter that you were to be named a Potter, he would have had something to live for. He wouldn’t have taken the Mark.”

“But what about my – about James?”

“Snape would not have begrudged James his own wife’s baby. Remember the reason he’d pushed her away: they’d be safer.”

“Fat lot of good it did.”

“Safer, Harry, not safe. If you had been the son of Lily and Severus Snape, Lucius Malfoy would have been ordered to kill you to ensure Snape became a Death Eater. Malfoy, not Voldmort, and the prophecy would never have been fulfilled, Voldemort would have won. And before you ask,” she held up a hand, “it wasn’t Neville. He just happened to fit the description.”

“So how should it have been?”

“Had Snape known about you, he would not have taken the Dark Mark. He would have been able to claim you as his son that night, in a Voldemort-free world.”

“No Dursleys?”

“No Dursleys, Harry. And Sirius would have been cleared. Everything is a chain reaction. Lucius Malfoy, for example, was never supposed to have the influence he does in the Ministry. That came inadvertantly because Snape was a Death Eater. However much he regretted the decision, things he had done and was forced to do had consequesnces. It was through Snape that Pettigrew was able to remain in hiding. But without that indirect help, and the fact that Snape would be hell-bent on finding justice for his son, Pettigrew would be caught a year after the incident and Black cleared.”

She leant back into the sofa to wait for his reaction.

“Are you saying that I have the chance to do it all again?” he asked. “That you’ll fix this one little thing and the world will be all different?”

“It seems impossible, doesn’t it, that such a little thing could change the world? For almost twenty years, it has seemed not to matter.” She looked directly into his eyes then. “Harry. We wanted to stop and help you before this, but we sensed only your need for a better life, and that is not enough for us to interfere. Recently, though, we have sensed the need of the world. In this life, Harry, you will die to Voldemort. If we continue down this path, you will fail.”

Harry blinked. He had often felt his own inadequecy regarding the prophecy, unsure that he was so special; to hear it like this took his breath for a moment.

“We’ll come again tomorrow night, Harry, to show you how it should have been. Sleep well.”

He hardly noticed her leaving, but he spent a few more hours in that room before he woke.

He spent most of the next day in a daze, just going through the motions of his seventh year classes. He realised he hadn’t for one moment not believed his dream to be true. Was it just a product of his warped imagination begging for a way out? Or was it true? It made just as much sense as not. Something like that was just the icing on the cake of his life. Every time he seemed to find his equilibrium, he was shoved through another twist.

Harry thought about the events that defined his existence. He’d thought he was an orphan with a not-so-grand home life. Nothing so strange there. But no, he was a wizard. An ordinary wizard? No, he was a hero, his parents were heroes and the world knew his best friends’ names and how he liked his tea. One of his professors was acting strange… didn’t every school have an eccentric teacher or two? No, this one had a revengeful evil spirit living in his skull.

He’d set a snake free at the zoo. Okay, Hagrid often let worse things out on the students, but no, that was also bad. Voldemort, The Dark Loser had made him Slytherin’s heir by default, so now he was a hero of both Gryffindor and Slytherin. Then he discovered that plenty of other freaks and abnormalities just happened to be closely associated with him. An infamous convict had been his parents’ best friend. The professor who taught Defence Against the Dark Arts – incidentally classified as a Dark Creature himself – was also a dear friend of his parents.

The next teacher wasn’t even a regular freak, but was an evil freak disguised as good freak. This one had rigged an entire inter-school competition in Harry’s favour in order to sacrifice him to the aforementioned Dark Loser. Well, that just made perfect sense, didn’t it? Then fake prophetic warnings had been inserted into his already-questionable state of mind, which, in effect, turned out to be true.

Now his arch nemesis, it transpired, had deposited parts of himself in all sorts of places to insure against complete destruction (well, who didn’t now-a-days?), and the man who had killed the only person with any real power in his life was his father.

Figured.

When he got to Potions, he could hardly sit still. Hermione only slightly misinterpreted his worry.

“Why are you so jittery? It’s not as if Professor Snape will be teaching potions ever again. Ron has been celebrating his departure all summer.”

“What?” That had been pretty close to the direction of his own thoughts, if with a completely different meaning. If he had grown up with Snape, what would Potions class have been like? Would Snape even be the professor?

Would Harry know – understand – the enigma that would be Severus Snape, Potions Master and Non-Ex-Death Eater? He’d always been fascinated by the fact that such a dislikable man, to put it mildly, was for all intents and purposes, good. Until he killed Dumbledore. Even then…

He felt that he’d kind of missed out on that opportunity somehow. The chance to use his Slytherin side. The Hat had said that the serpents’ house would help him find his way to greatness… Parcae said he would fail on his current path. Would he have been better off as a Slytherin? Would he be able to defeat Voldemort as a Slytherin?

That night, he made an excuse to go to bed early and luck was with him, he fell asleep fairly easily. He was both excited and terrified to be in that room again. But once he was there, he was filled with a calm sense of purpose.

“Hello, Harry.”

“Hello, Harry.”

He nodded at her and sat quickly, not knowing what to say. She gestured to where, in all his previous dreams, the coffee table had been between the two sofas. In its place tonight was a shallow puddle, as if someone had spilled a glass of water on the stone floor.

“Are you ready to see?”

He hunched forward, hands braced on the sofa between his knees, and looked at the pool. The surface shimmered, and he saw the corridor outside the Room of Requirement. A pretty girl was leaning agaist the wall there – wait. He looked closer. It was his mother.

Lily.

He stared at her, trying to take in as many details as possible, burn her image into his memory. Her long red-blond hair, her green eyes, her petite figure. He watched her worry her bottom lip in nervousness and wondered what she was anxious about. Her expression turned to apprehension when James Potter arrived.

Messy black hair, Harry’s own facial features. He did look a lot like his foster father, he realised. James’ face mirrored the concern Harry felt over Lily’s fretting.

“James, what will he say?” she whispered, clutching his arm.

“I guess we’ll find out,” he said simply, tapping her nose affectionately. He walked up and down the corridor three times and the door appeared. Just as they were about to enter, Severus Snape walked up to them cautiously.

“I promise I’ll look after them. She’s my best friend.” He left the room, letting the two say their goodbyes. If Snape was going to escape Malfoy, he would have to leave Britain altogether.

The image rippled and then Harry could see the stone floor again. He sat back. His brain had not really managed to get past seeing his mother and fath– James again for the significance of the scene to register.

“So,” she began, “this is the turning point, the crucial moment. Because this never happened…” she trailed off. “Harry?”

He jerked his head back up. He had seen James’ fierce protection of his mother. He’d seen a smile on her face, however fleeting. And Snape hadn’t been so bad-looking, he realised with some surprise, although still rather tetchy.

But he hadn’t a clue what they’d said. “Er…”

“Do you want to watch it again?”

Sheepishly, he nodded. After the second viewing, he nodded his understanding. He looked at her, wondering what was next.

“So Snape leaves the country for safety. Then nothing else changes until the night the Potters were killed,” she said as the pool shimmered again.

Grey smoke choked the air, but failed to hide the Dark Mark, hovering like a sentinel over the remains of a house. It looked as if it could have been called cosy. A man dressed in black stumbled up the path unsteadily towards the destroyed cottage.

“You promised!” he yelled, his voice raw with emotion. “You promised you’d look after them!” he screeched, falling to his knees in the debris, swollen eyes taking in the blackened remains of his Lily’s home. He felt a hand on his shoulder and he wrenched away, staggering up to his feet. He saw Black, tears falling freely down his face, a deadened look in his eyes. It was the first time he’d seen the mutt not bouncing off the bloody walls.

“Snape. You should know,” he said, getting the words out one by one, concentrating on giving the message. “Harry survived.”

“Harry?” Severus stepped closer. “Where is he? Where is he?!”

Harry sat back on the sofa, scrubbing his eyes. It had been a very short scene, but it was hard to see even Snape with such powerful grief. Knowing the house was his parents’, and that Sirius would not be free for long hadn’t helped.

“What happened after that?” he asked quietly.

“He took you back to Prince Manor. A mediwizard’s charm and the Potters’ wills proved you to be his son and the papers were signed. After seeing Sirius at Godric’s Hollow that night, Severus believed he was innocent, and, with Remus Lupin, searched tirelessly for Pettigrew. For your sake he hunted the rat down and turned him over to the Aurors within a year. All charges against your godfather were dropped, so he and Remus returned to live close to you.

“Sirius’ cousin, Narcissa Malfoy, also had her life turned upside down by this event. Or perhaps, right-side-up. Pettigrew incriminated many Death Eaters, including Lucius, with solid proof, and Malfoy was sentenced to the Kiss. Narcissa was glad to be rid of him and his influence over their son.”

Draco.

“So do I meet Malfoy before Hogwarts?” he asked.

“You’re practically brothers.”

He screwed up his features in distaste. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

“I want to show you a few short episodes from your life that could have been, Harry. Tell me, what are the things you feel the most strongly about not having at the Dursleys’?”

He didn’t have to think hard. “Friends, family, birthdays and not knowing who I was.”

“Let’s look at these then,” she nodded, gesturing to the water.

A child’s bedroom at night, with the soft glow of a nightlight. A dark-haired figure was sitting upright next to a small lump in the covers, telling a story. Another person could just be seen, hovering in the hall.

The puddle rippled, but stilled again almost straight away. It showed a series of images from what was obviously a child’s birthday party. Harry saw himself, happily blowing out four candles; a blonde boy trying to sneak a bit of icing before he was given his piece of cake; a magical game he could not identify involving colourful bubbles that the children were chasing; himself unwrapping presents with unequaled joy; Padfoot tearing around in the wrapping paper with various children on his back; finally himself sitting in a corner with a toy, but it wasn’t working, or little Harry couldn’t figure it out.

He grunted in distress, yanking at the box again, and looking around for someone. In a language that only passes between a parent and their child, Severus sensed the little boy’s frustration, and disengaged himself from his conversation, kneeling next to his son.

“Harry?” he asked softly. “What’s the matter?”

The puddle rippled again, and when it stilled, showed lots of grass, with two figures rolling in it.

“Argh! Not fair, Drake, I had it first!”

“Didn’t!”

Harry’s daddy was much scarier than Draco’s mummy, so they scampered inside on the double.

Harry sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Malfoy and Snape. For the life of him, despite a very strong inclination, he couldn’t summon the hatred, disgust, or even contempt that he usually felt for the pair.

Malfoy was just a normal little boy. Severus looked like a capable, caring father, and he was friends with Sirius! They chose to be in each other’s company. That was …good, wasn’t it?

If he was honest with himself, he’d admit to feeling a few pangs of… not jealousy, there was no-one to be jealous of… but a sort of wistful longing. He had once told Ron, quite seriously, that anything would have been better than the Dursleys; now that he was shown an alternative, he was unwilling to dismiss it instantly simply because of who it featured.

Maybe, given an alternate set of circumstances, both Malfoy and Snape would be quite different. Oh, he was sure they’d still be arrogant, elitist Slytherins, but they would be his family. Narcissa didn’t constantly look like something had died under her nose. Which could have been from the absence of her husband, he supposed.

Was this reality even possible? The presence of a recognisable Sirius helped a lot, he realised. He could tell that Padfoot was still the Marauder he’d known, and was happier, given many less years in Azkaban. He longed to see his godfather again, remembering the wonderful but far too brief relationship they had shared. To imagine growing up with him as a constant presence made his heart ache.

He looked to Parcae, ready for the next installment. He was now prepared to accept this as a better alternative, deciding to swallow his pride where the Slytherins were concerned. If Sirius could get over Snape, then why couldn’t he?

He looked to Parcae, ready for the next installment. He was now prepared to accept this as a better alternative, deciding to swallow his pride where the Slytherins were concerned. If Sirius could get over Snape, then why couldn’t he?

She raised her eyebrows in question, and he realised she was asking what he wanted to see next.

“Malfoy’s mother said I’d have to be trained, even at that age…”

Harry, six years old, was wrestled to the ground by a large black dog. They rolled in the grass, loud giggles escaping him in bursts. The dog barked a few times and bounced around him, then went in for the kill. Mercilessly, he nuzzled all the boy’s ticklish spots, never letting him recover.

“Black, really,” Snape admonished from the deck chair. “He’ll get a stomach ache if you don’t let him breathe.”

Harry sat back, thinking. So he wasn’t insane. Every now and then, during his life, he’d felt like he was … moving through molasses, like his mind was telling his body to do things it wasn’t capable of. As if he had a potential that couldn’t be reached, even though his subconscious knew he should be able.

If he had been trained properly, he would be able to tap into that power that the prophecy was talking about. He thought the bedtime story was disturbingly cute, especially coming from one as acerbic as the professor.

He wondered how the story had evolved over time. Snape had told Sirius about gradually changing the details… When did he know? When did he fully realise what it meant?

“How did they tell me about the prophecy?”

She paused before answering. “It was hard for them, Harry. You know what it’s like to bear the information yourself, imagine knowing you must tell a child this, taking away their innocence long before it should be lost.”

He nodded, appreciating the struggle it must have been for them.

“Whenever you asked why you had to train more that Draco, you were told ‘because you have a special job to do’. This answer, as you got older, changed to ‘you are the only one who can do it’. Severus added more details to the story he told you at night, each time your young mind drew a parallel to it and asked questions, like the fact that you had two fathers.”

“You’d also been told the story of your mother. That she and the ‘nice man’ had been taken away by Voldemort. The details of this story also grew, until you were around eight, and the two stories had compelely merged to become, as Draco called you, ‘Angel Harry’. Eventually, just before your tenth birthday, they filled in the blanks, explaining how serious it was and what the prophecy really meant.”

He knew very well what it meant, and had no intention of getting into it now. He wanted to see something completely unrelated to his fate. “I don’t suppose I’m any good at Potions, given who my father is?”

Snape glanced at the time. “Harry, are you finished?”

“Almost, Dad. There’s one step left,” he answered, stirring his cauldron anti-clockwise and counting the strokes. “There,” he said triumphantly when it turned from off-white to yellow and chalky. “All done.”

Harry sat back, amazed at the simple but fundamental difference it was for him to be good – really good – at potions. His smile faded as he thought back over it.

“Why did Dra-Malfoy call me ‘Potter’? I thought I was Harry Snape in this…” he gestured in an attempt to name it, “there.”

“You were a Potter for over a year, before Voldemort marked you. People know that the famous and powerful Harry Snape was once called ‘Potter’, which is the name they use to recite the legend of the Boy-Who-Lived. They also know that you were retrieved by your true father after the incident, who changed your name to his.”

She smiled conspiritorially. “I think the two of you love stirring up the rivalry that your father and godfather share from their schooldays. Draco calls you that to fan the flame.”

Harry closed his eyes, imagining what it would be like. Family rivalry. To have someone close enough to know how to push your buttons. Sort of like himself with Ron and Hermione, he guessed, but moreso. He tried to put his finger on what it was, the difference between friends and family, but couldn’t quite grasp the idea.

What he and Dudley had shared was indefinable. It wasn’t really fighting, as that suggested momentary disorder within a caring relationship, as well as two equal participants. They were antagonistic, but Harry rarely spared the effort to care, only escaping when necessary, and occasionally teasing the lump with comments that went way over his head, a rather pointless exercise.

He’d been stunned, on several occasions, watching Ron and his brothers almost tear each other limb from limb, then twenty minutes later pass each other their favourite food along the dinner table. That the twins would prank their mother as much as Percy. How exactly that worked, he hadn’t a clue.

He wanted to know.

“Do Malfoy and I ever fight?”

She looked at him with her eyebrows raised. “All the time, whenever you weren’t terrorising or conspiring against your parents.”

He smiled. He would have hated to give up sparring with Malfoy. It was almost as much a part of him as his friendship with other Gryffindors.

“So I grow up with Malfoy, learning all sorts of cool stuff, training.. and then we go to Hogwarts, right?” Struck by a sudden horrifying thought, he said again, desperately, “Right?”

“So I grow up with Malfoy, learning all sorts of cool stuff, training.. and then we go to Hogwarts, right?” Struck by a sudden horrifying thought, he said again, desperately, “Right?”

She chuckled and waved a hand at the puddle.

“Dad! Dad! Padfoot! Cissa!”

“Mum! Sev! Sirius!”

Harry laughed at Sirius, suddenly wishing the man was right there beside him. He missed his godfather fiercely, and stared at the fading image of him until it disappeared. His family.

A vague uneasy feeling crept into the back of his mind. This was all too good. There had to be something… Oh.

His stomach clenched. Being friends with Malfoy would probably mean… “Ron? Hermione?”

The water showed the corridor outside the Great Hall. Harry was striding confidently towards Ron, who was leaning against the wall, but straightened abruptly when he saw who approached. This was it, Harry thought. Here’s the catch. He wouldn’t be able to keep his best friends. They would hate each other.

“Snape.”

“Weasley.”

So he was a Slytherin, he’d checked the colours on his robes. Quite logical, he realised, given how he had grown up. The Hat had originally wanted to put him there, and two Marauders in his family mustn’t have been a match for Snape and Malfoy.

But he could think about that later. He had a more pressing concern for the Fates to answer.

“So what’s the catch?” Harry said dryly.

“What do you mean, Harry?”

“Well, apart from my – the Potters dying and the prophecy, everything else seems to be perfect. My friends are still my friends, I have family that care for me, school is okay, no-one’s lying to me, I’m not treated like a house-elf, I know who I am and I’m being prepared for the inevitable. Where’s the catch?”

“You said it yourself, Harry. The prophecy.”

He didn’t understand. “But why are you offering me…”

“No Harry, you have it backwards. We made a mistake. Not you. You were always supposed to be the saviour of the Wizarding world, and we thought that was enough hardship to put onto one boy. The rest of your life was supposed to be as wonderful and carefree as anyone’s can possibly be.” She smiled at his quizzical look. “That’s the catch. The prophecy was supposed to be your only difficulty, but things got away from us.

“We’re merely explaining everything to you before we put things to rights. No-one who has that much responsibility on their shoulders or in their future should have to deal with a less-than-happy life as well. You should have family that love you, you should be trained for the final confrontation, you should know as much as you can to understand your position and your world.”

“So what happens now?”

“We turn back time, to make James and Lily tell Severus about you.”

“If you were going to do that all along, then why bother telling me about it?”

“It’s not as simple as all that, Harry. Going back this far, changing things to this magnitude is difficult. Any changes we make must be anchored onto something, or time will disintegrate. We chose you, your soul, as the pivot point. One’s soul lives forever, through time, even when time bends and when time reverses. It is complete in its existence.

“Not telling you would be disastrous. Souls are very powerful things, yours would have known it was being ripped from its current time and put in limbo until your birth again. It would have prevented us changing anything. We have to tell you, so your soul will accept our alterations.”

So, he would cease to be Harry Potter. “Harry Snape,” he said aloud, testing the sound of it. He just stopped himself from putting his hand out and miming an imaginary introduction: ‘Hi, I’m Harry Snape’. He coloured, looking at her sheepishly. She smiled.

“Harry Snape,” he said again, softly. It did not give him shudders like it would have only two days ago. Would he still be, well, him?

“No matter what your name is and who you grow up with,” Parcae said, “We are who we are. Nothing will change that. Details will be altered, but you’ll still be Harry.”

He wondered if he would miss his old life. There were plenty of reasons he would be happy to leave it behind, that was certain. Maybe there would be things wrong with his new life, too. Would it be a case of ‘better the devil you know’?

No. He had seen proof that his new life would be much better, for himself and everyone else. Knowing that, he just couldn’t return to the current one. All of the awful things would feel that much more wrong, if he were to ignore the Fates.

But he couldn’t help feeling like he was losing a part of himself. He thought of his two best friends, and everything they’d been through together. He couldn’t just ignore that.

“Will I have any memory of this life?”

She eyed him for a moment. “Very good, Harry.”

“Huh?”

“You recognise the importance of knowing. Certainly, ignorance is bliss, but how will you appreciate your second life if you have nothing to compare it to?” She nodded slowly. “You will remember, in a way.”

He’d had enough experience with wise old meddling eccentrics to tell he wouldn’t get a clearer answer than that. Still, he felt like he had to be certain that he wasn’t going to lose the connection he had with Ron and Hermione. Being in competing houses would create a very different dynamic between them.

“Can I see how we became friends? The four of us?”

Harry sat in the compartment by himself, mentally going over the things his father had told him. Draco was taking a little extra time talking to his mother, but Harry hated long goodbyes. He’d just held his father for a moment or two longer than he normally would have, and barely looked at Sirius, ducking to avoid the inevitable ruffle Sirius was prone to giving his hair in overly emotional moments. He hadn’t wanted to see the loss he knew would be in his godfather’s eyes.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about finally going to school. Draco, as a Malfoy, had the pressures of his name and social standing to maintain, so his brother had always been off cavorting or whatnot, trained well by his mother in the art of being loved by all while getting exactly what one wanted.

Harry was grinning ear-to-ear when the images faded from view. He was so glad that his friendship with the other Gryffindors would be as similar as possible. He would have been devastated if he’d lost his two best friends, but he realised that he would have felt the loss of the entire Weasley family just as keenly. With that introduction, he felt confidant that he’d still receive a knitted jumper with his initial on it for Christmas in his first year.

And Neville hadn’t changed a bit.

Harry looked up at Parcae. He’d seen enough. He took a deep breath.

“Do it.”

“Goodbye Harry, we will speak again one day. Good luck.”

She disappeared, and Harry felt giddy for a moment….

Harry and Draco, in their seventh year, were walking down the path from school to Hogsmeade to meet Sirius for lunch before checking out new brooms. Draco was repeating a story he'd heard about a second year exploding a cauldron right in Slughorn's face. They saw the Animagus up ahead.

Harry stopped dead in his tracks. There it was again, that feeling. In a second, his vision would go funny, and he would see -

They were in a great stone amphitheatre, he was in pain, terrified, breathing heavily and had his wand out. He saw Longbottom to the side, who was holding his nose, blood streaming from it. He saw Sirius duelling with a Death Eater, then his godfather was forced backwards through an archway, disappearing from sight. The Death Eater laughed manically.

He shook his head, dispelling the vision from his eyes. Draco was calling his name.

“Hello?! Do I need to Enervate you?”

Harry looked across to where Sirius was waiting for them. His godfather was there, right there. So, what was that feeling, the vision? Why was he always seeing dreadful things? They didn't exactly feel like warnings, more like…he felt like he was watching history. Detached, even though he was part of them.

He stopped and sat down abruptly in the middle of the path, drawing a surprised “Harry?” from Draco. Sirius had seen them and approached quickly.

“What happened, Draco?” he asked.

“Another dizzy spell.”

“Harry?” he knelt by his godson.

Harry put a hand on his godfather's arm, to let him know he was all right, and keep him quiet. He ran back through the episodes in his mind.

Ever since he could remember, he'd seen these things. When he'd received his Hogwarts letter, he’d got a vision of a hundred of them raining down on him, a big angry man lunging towards him, a rickety cottage on some rocks in the middle of a stormy sea, and strangely, the Hogwarts gamekeeper, Hagrid.

Sometimes when he was laughing or playing with Draco, he'd get a disturbing flash of the boy hexing him with a murderous expression, or himself holding his wand on the blond.

As a child, the visions had really frightened him. A boy twice his size would be chasing him, or a thin, pinched woman was screeching at him and hitting him with a wooden spoon. He never knew who they were.

His father would be instructing him in potions, and all of a sudden he was in a classroom full of students laughing and his father was sneering at him, saying the most horrible things.

Sometimes on his birthday it would be dark, like the inside of a small room, judging by the cramped feeling, and the only thing to see would be small vertical slits of light bleeding in from somewhere else.

At Christmas, he might see a similar pile of presents under a similar tree, but none of them were his, and the fat boy was screaming at him.

The day he met Ginny Weasley, on the train at the beginning of second year, he’d seen a flash of her lying cold and sick-looking in a vast dank room, and a creepy boy standing over her, smiling in malice.

When Granger had suggested starting the Defence Club to relieve the boredom of schoolwork he could do in his sleep, he’d had a vision of a very ugly, toad-like woman glaring at him as he scratched his quill on the paper, pain exploding in his hand.

The day he'd beaten Diggory to the snitch, he’d seen the seeker being killed in front of him.

And now he'd seen something happen to Sirius, something he knew was bad.

What did they all mean? None of them were ever true or became true, though they all were somehow connected to what was happening at the time. He was only thankful that they were nothing like reality.

He felt dizzy again, his vision spun and Sirius’ voice sounded too far away.

He blinked. This room was familiar, but he couldn't place it. It was fairly non-descript, it could have been inside Hogwarts, but he wasn't sure.

A girl walked in and sat opposite him.

“Have you figured it out yet, Harry?”

In a split second, he felt everything land inside him, like all the pieces had been floating around, but he'd been unable to look at more than one at a time. He had the memories of two lives, like he'd lived twice.

He remembered being Harry Potter, he remembered the Dursleys, Sirius, Snape, Dumbledore. Then he felt it. He felt being Harry Potter, he felt the despair, the loneliness, the injustice, the weight of the prophecy, the guilt ...

Then he remembered her. Parcae.

She had said….that they'd made a mistake?

Oh. He sighed with relief. That wasn't him. He was Harry Snape. His father loved him. His friends were protected. Sirius was alive.

She was still there, sitting quietly when he opened his eyes. “Do you forgive us for our mistake, Harry?”

“Yes,” he said, looking at her and seeing the worry in her eyes. This could have gone very badly, for the whole world.

And his life could have been hell.

With very sincere gratitude, he added, “Thank you.”

“Thank you, Harry. Good luck.”

He woke, his mind clear. Sirius was still standing over him, and Draco was pacing nearby, agitated.

“Don’t move, Harry, we’ll take you to Madam Pomfrey.”

“No, it’s okay,” he said, sitting up. He looked at his godfather, really looked at him. What was the difference, niggling at the back of his mind?

The man looked happy, despite his concern. There were no more lines on his face than there should have been, and his eyes sparkled. He looked at Draco. The boy was worried for him. There was no sneer, no dark glare of loathing. Suddenly, Harry flung his arms around Sirius and burst into tears.

“Um, Harry?” Shocked, Sirius looked at Draco, who was equally surprised.

“It doesn’t usually make him upset,” the blond said quietly.

“Hey,” Sirius said softly, rubbing his back. “What’s the matter? What’s got my little Angel Boy so upset?”

Harry sniffed and his arms tightened. “I’m just so glad you’re here,” he whispered.

“Of course I’m here, Stripes,” he said, still confused. “I always meet you on Saturdays.”

Harry pulled out of the embrace, grinning like a loon, tears pouring down his face. “Never mind,” he said. He scrubbed his eyes with his sleeve and stood.

Turning to Draco, he said “Let’s go. First round’s on me.”

As the three started back down the path to Hogsmeade, he thought, Life doesn’t get much better than this.

“Ummm,” Harry began, not sure how to bring up the topic. “I don’t suppose…if, ah…”

Parcae smiled. The water shimmered.

“Snape?” someone called behind him. “Harry?”

Harry turned and saw Ginny Weasley standing in the middle of the corridor, hugging her books to her chest rather nervously.

“What the hell was that?” Harry exploded out of his chair and gestured wildly at the blank puddle. “Why didn’t I tell her ‘yes’?” he screeched. “Why did –”

She held up a hand, then pointed down again.

Harry stood over a cauldron in his lab at the Manor, brewing with quick, sure movements. Malfoy was leaning against the wall watching him with a smirk. The door opened and Snape walked in.

“What are you two doing here? It’s a school night.” He looked at the potion ingredients and watched Harry’s motions for a minute. “And whom, may I ask,” he said in a darker tone, “is that for?”

Malfoy’s smirk became wider. “Ginny Weasley,” he said mockingly. “She asked him the the ball today.”

The water swirled and stilled.

Just before dinner, Ginny Weasley approached Harry as he was walking up from the Slytherin common room with Malfoy. She was ready for any response he had to give her, not really understanding what yesterday had been all about. Without needing to embarrass herself by asking to speak to him alone, Malfoy left Harry after a quick parting word in his ear.

Harry motioned for her to follow him, and they stopped around the corner where there usually wasn’t much traffic. Before she could gather herself to ask that question again, he touched her hair.